I thought about it being boosted by AW, that's why I said we could delay wings by a couple seconds - that won't hurt, since after Z ends we usually have 3hp, so if AW ends 2 seconds later than Z, the amount of boosted TVs doesn't change. Didn't think about 4pc in this aspect, though.

Simcraft shows Exo glyph as superior. From my own modeling, unless RNG is very unkind to you, Exo glyph remains superior to Judge glyph. Judge only pulls ahead when AoW Exo doesn't proc well for you, or is proccing at times when J, CS, 3 HoPo TV, or DP TV are combining. AoW has long enough of a length to mitigate most of that overlay, however. I ran this with what we have available as gear so far, both 2p and 4p.

Has anyone modelled yet a value for the T13-2p bonus?
Follow-up: Is it good enough to go for at least one item of raidfinder (RF) quality (and a second RF or normal raid), if you are close to BiS firelands gear, or simply put: is going t12heroic4p to t13RF2p an upgrade or a downgrade?

Rough analysis on 4pT12 vs 2pT13:

15s extra seconds of Zealotry means at best 15 extra HP every 2 min, which averages to 1HP every 8 seconds, provided you have a 3-second CS, which isn't true most of the time, and that you have very low latency. A more realistic approach would be 12 extra HP every 2 min, averaging to 1 HP every 10 seconds.

Considering Judgement has a 8-second CD and that you should be using that as often as possible, I think it's pretty safe to say that 384 + 397 T13 will be superior to 2x391 T12 breaking 4pT12. Even if you consider that Judgement will sometimes be pushed for higher priority spells, it should stay below 1 Judgement every 10 seconds. This doesn't take secondary stats or socket bonuses into account, so replacing items with different itemizations could be a further DPS gain or even a DPS loss. Fight length also plays a role here.

2x384 T13 vs 2x391 T12 would require a more careful analysis but, secondary stats and socket bonuses aside, I would guess it is a DPS gain to switch to 2pT13.

I don't believe this has been noted here but the current version of Gurthalak is now quite different. Now the spawned tentacle has a ranged mind flay attack and is stationary, it mind flays 3 times and each flay has 3 ticks for 11155 damage, with a possibility for critical ticks. It can still miss, but obviously can no longer be dodged/parried. Also it appears to no longer have an ICD but a much lower proc rate, I had three tentacles up at once in a dungeon.

As I acquired only recently my Apparatus of Khaz'Goroth, I delved a moment into what does stack it and what doesn't.
I came across interesting finds in general for ret-paladins:

• All obvious melee attacks do stack it: CS, TV, autoattack crits.
  
  
• The less obvious also do this: HoWrath and JoT.
  
  
• After this, things get complicated:
  
  Neither SoT (the Weapon based proc) nor Seals of Command nor Censure ticks seem to count as melee hits nor crits for the two firelands trinkets (Vessel/Apparatus).
  
  JoT, JoR and HoWrath crits do stack the firelands-trinkets (while the latter ability is locked out if silenced, the former 2 are not, which I discovered while attempting Voidreaver solo).
  
  I reviewed an older trinket, License to Slay:
  JoT and HoWrath both proc SoT and SoC and give 2 stacks of LtS trinket buff. Further Testing while specced out of SoC confirmed that it is SoT stacking LoS. In this case, it seems SoT at least does count as melee attack.
  Furthermore JoR also stacks this trinket but only by 1 at a time.
  SoR does not stack this trinket.
  
  SoC only crits at at a rate of around 6% as does SoT, but this could be a statistical error of mine, please feel free to correct me.
  JoR does not proc SoR nor SoC.
  SoR on the other hand procs SoC on every hit! (AoE galore)
  DS procs a singletarget SoR on every hit proccing SoC in turn.
  
  SoT, SoR and SoC are calculated as holy damage, increased by Inq.
  
  Also, Censure is not stacked by SoC nor SoT, as one could possibly speculate that SoT/C would possibly count as singletarget attack, as described in the tooltip.

This leads us to some conclusions:

Regarding trinkets:

Melee-ability-trinkets seem to follow their own mechanics on which ability is eligible and which isn't (if they are not obviously melee abilites as for example most of the Warrior or Cat abilites, or in our case CS or TV).
I presume this roots in the nature of most paladin abilities/spells, and the devs seem to have to include manually which ability does indeed stack a trinket or not (I say "seem to", because of the discrepancy between trinkets, as described above and below).
A good example for the weird behaviour of abilities: HoWrath locked out by silence, while obviously counting as melee based in most scenarios.
I say this because it seems to be very important for our class if the hidden strikes such as SoT and/or SoC do indeed proc a melee-based trinket, as in this example of the recent past:
LtS did not stack from SoT nor even JoT at the launch of cataclysm, and this was changed only after this trinket became obsolete for the normal or heroic raider, but nevertheless increasing its up-time and thus its value, perhaps even significantly in some fights as for example Atramedes, where you could now keep this buff up in the air-phase.
In this light, I don't understand why they didn't include at least SoT in the eligible abilities for the 2 fireland trinkets, roughly doubling the possible eligible attacks. Was it an oversight? Or was the change to LtS the unintentional one?

For the coming patch (and content in general) this inclusion of SoT and/or Soc into the melee abilities will determine if a trinket is mediocre, good or even great, as it is the only possibility for us to keep up with the other melee classes concerning the relative up-time and value of a trinket. The only melee dps classes roughly in the same boat are unholy dks and arms warrior, all the other ones dual-wielding in some form or attacking fast as a baseline (kitties) therefore greatly increasing their base number of melee-based hits/crits that land.

Regarding SoR:

SoCprocs on secondary targets seem to give SoR a potential of relatively good scaling.
Single-target-SoRprocs plus their corresponding SoCproc on every DS further consolidate that notion.

To expand on the HoW/Judgement silence lockout, both (as well as Avenger's Shield) are considered Spells (following school rules) that deal Melee and Ranged damage modifiers-- That is, Judgement/AS are magical spells that deal melee damage as Holy, and HoW is a spell that deals Ranged damage as Holy. A few patches ago, both Judgement an AS were removed from the list of abilities that were not able to be cast while Silenced/locked out.

Add to your information that any attack/proc/stack caused by SoT's Censure stacking and seal weapon damage, will also be caused by Exorcism (as this stacks SoT when active).

@Ronark: Quite right, forgot to mention Exorcism: does not proc in any way the firelands trinkets, but by means of proccing SoT, procs LtS (and stacks Censure).

@Exemplar: This is more or less what I mean: I view for example the Warrior or the kitty as the reference how a melee trinket can proc: in theory rets (and other spell/melee hybrids) should always underperform in regard to such trinkets. The difference to what it logically should be is completely arbitrary, and can be really great (tAiaJ) or, au contraire, mediocre (Vessel, only saved by its high ilvl) where stacks can fall off even in raidenvironment with 100% boss-up-time.
In addition you are quite right about the fact that 6 or 10 second to a full stack with Eye of the Unmaking does not make much of a difference, but only if the stacks don't fall off in the fight; on the other hand in fights with frequent target switching and much legshuffling, the fact that it could stack from a ranged attack (JoT) would be a great boon by either making restacking faster or much more important preventing it from completely falling off.

Thread updated for 4.3. Paladin-related patch effects added. T13 noted. Probably have a 4.3 spreadsheet release sometime tomorrow, for those interested.

Quick comments - looks to be an overall increase of about 10%+ DPS immediately on patch release due to the 2H Weap Spec and BoM tweaks. Other melee should gain similar instant buffs to their DPS, so this is unlikely to leapfrog us ahead of another class which may have regularly beaten us on numbers.

LFR Dragon Soul items are weaker than Heroic Firelands. In general iLevel wins. There is the slim possibility that 2T13 from LFR could be superior to Heroic 4T12.

We'll want some determinate testing on 4piece T13 when acquired - is it all damage during Zealotry, or some subset?

We'll also want to test Gurthalak when one is acquired. What can proc it (dummy tests with only one ability used at a time), average proc rate (lengthy autoattack only run with no seal), and average damage per tentacle (does this change between LFR, normal, and Heroic version)? Combine them and we can determine our effective DPS from the tentacles. Semi-expectation is ahead of equivalent weaponry based both on base DPS and the proc. It will take this detailed info to determine if Gurthalak can overpower a greater ilevel (ex: LFR Gurthalak being better to normal Dragon Soul Ataraxis).

Has anyone else tried eating Hour of Twilight on Ultraxion? We just tried it and sacred shield only absorbed 4700 damage. Is this an bug or an intended mechanic?

If this is intended, then it looks like we won't be able to absorb Hour of Twilights.

Anecdotal:

A few observations from hitting the target dummy after raid tonight and what i saw on Ultraxion (log is bugged and didn't record after hagara)

Bone Link Fetish was doing ~2.4% of my damage, and scales with our stats. The proc can crit, can be parried/dodged. Appears to be affected by Avenging Wrath, although I'm unsure if it is affected directly or is based of current weapon damage. Procs like landslide increase the damage as well, so I'm thinking its the former. Seems to have a fairly high proc rate and a 30 sec ICD. (got procs at 31, 32, 34, 30, 35 sec intervals). 10 yard range.


2 pc tier has about a 1.2 sec delay before the HP gain is registered. best I can figure is that the game has to check client side for the tier peice proc as a hidden buff (Virtuous Empowerment). observed when judging the target dummy from range and watching the GCD.

edit:
Auto attack w/ Whirling Maw (the WW) proc only applies 1 stack of censure. Does not appear to proc SoR.
http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r...oRnoProcWW.png