I believe the lowered Holy Power generation on the 4.0.6 PTR is intended for a few reasons.

First and foremost, the Mastery change. We're gaining an effective 30%+ increased damage on Templar's Verdict and Crusader Strike (which is also getting buffed) and without major mechanical changes, they really can't tinker with the rate at which we use CS, so throttling HP lowers our TV numbers. For me personally, this is about a 50% drop in secondary (IE not CS) HP generation which cuts my number of TVs cast by roughly (surprise) 30%.

Secondly, the Seal of Truth change effectively gives Exorcism, HoW, and Judgement a free boost in damage and an incredibly good scalar mechanic for future tiers. The increase acts as a sort of DPS stabilizer since we're gaining on abilities we're going to be using anyway at relatively constant intervals. As to the scalar portion of the these spells, they have a weapon damage component on them all now provided you're using Seal of Truth. All in all, this change increases DPS and damage contribution from our fillers, meaning less burden is placed on TV to compensate, and therefore less HP generation is needed.

In the end, if 4.0.6 is a sufficient enough increase in DPS to bring Retribution to the Blizzard's desired point, a lowered HP generation by comparison to 4.0.3a doesn't necessarily matter, as it's more a departure in gameplay style than gameplay effectiveness. For a terrible example, a forklift and a bugatti both can move you from point A to point B, just one makes it a bit more fun.

What does concern me is how this design change decreases Haste's impact on Holy Power generation and how disproportionately bad Haste is for Retribution in terms of resource generation compared to the other melee specs. At least in terms of basic tangibility. I couldn't tell you how impactful 5% Haste (640~ Rating) on our HP generation whereas a Rogue could just plug it into a formula and tell me it yields X more energy over Y seconds. I guess my point is that Haste effects our generation in such a fashion that it requires player action whereas basically every effected spec gets it passively, and this patch is just bringing that to the forefront for me. Just an observation.

I redid my sheet and calculations for the newest patch information. The results:

1. Zealotry and AW can be combined, or not. The difference in dps varies from -30 to +40 depending on the exact timing and shows no consistent trend either way. I suspect the best possible use is to combine them during the last 20 seconds of GoAK and then to just use on cooldown after that.

2. Hurricane is still by far the best trinket from normal modes and slightly better than hardmodes, even after the nerf. It's proc should still be worth 450 dps after the patch (into 20k dps) which is over 200 str, much better than any other trinket. It is BIS until the next raiding tier comes out as far as I can tell.

3. The best rotation I could find was:

Inq
TV
CS
HoW
Exo
Judge
HW
Cons

However! The difference between moving HoW/Exo up and down through TV/CS was virtually nonexistent. Into 20k dps the difference between those rotations was less than 30 dps, which is so far below the margin of error that is can be safely ignored. Basically the different rotations are closer together than ever before so just make sure you use all the good attacks (HoW, Exo, Inq, CS, TV) before the bad ones (HW, Judge, Cons) and you are playing optimally. More precision than that isn't possible due to variances in gear/situation and modelling limitations.

4. Stat ranking. As best as I can tell, using the rotation described above, our stat weights:

Str - 222
Crit - 82
Haste - 80
Mastery - 82

Mastery goes down a little if you push Exo/HoW above CS/TV in priority, but only a few points. Haste is, as always, variable and changes noticeably with small tweaks to the model so the value for it is very challenging to set with any precision.

But are we actually CSing on cooldown? Other classes have passive resource regeneration; ours requires us to use a certain attack precisely on cooldown in order to reap the benefits of haste on our resources. And, unless something has changed, we only get to CS on cooldown when a- there was only one filler available after the previous CS or b- we use two spell fillers after the previous CS (neither of which is all that common).

This does seem a little bland, both playstyle and decisionwise. It basically comes down to this:

All secondary stats are equal - doesn't matter what you stack it's all the same
Our procs and abilities have the same place in the priority list - doesn't matter what you hit first it's all the same.
Cooldowns can be used separately or together - doesn't matter what you do it's all the same.

Where's the decisionmaking in this new incarnation of retribution?

Although what I'm a bit curious about is how we best utilize our 4P bonus now. Since we will run into a lot more deadspace in our rotation, the opportunity cost (1 GCD) of using Inq more often is almost eliminated. So both 1P and 2P inquisitions might actually become better, since they more efficiently take use of our holy power, with very limited cost. Is this possible to model yet? Regardless of of what the best option is, it would seem that 4P will become very useful with our limited HP generation, since you won't have to spend as much HP on refreshing it, which results in more TVs. Atleast in my limited testing on the PTR, I found dpsing without 4P completely horrible, compared to with it (the benefit is much more pronounced with the PTR system, than live).

I completely agree. It seems Blizzard lost where it was going with the new Retribution system, and the skill floor is rapidly approaching the skill cap now. As long as we're using 3 TV's and keeping Inq up, our rotation is becoming hit the blinky thing with less and less to show between perfect rotation and button mashing again. It's not quite as bad as Wrath, but it feels we're going backward now.

I do personally believe that the next tier will show higher disparities though. I might be overly optimistic, but I'm hoping that right now, in this tier, Ret's skill cap/floor will be closer, and as the tiers improve, our caps/floors will move apart as well. Unfortunately, as I test different secondary stat values myself, I become more and more discouraged. I had hoped there were sweet spots we had been overlooking with some ratings, but it seems more and more unlikely.

Sadly, I am pessimistic in this regard. With the addition of a considerable increase to passive damage, (something blizzard wanted to specifically tone down from Wrath for us) I see the same problematic issue rearing its ugly head. Since most HoPo is spent refreshing Inquisition, it basically boils down to hitting the big blinking TV button when the Divine Purpose gods smile upon you.

It just seems that Blizzard doesn't know how to find a middle ground. Initially, HoPo generation was far too random, and now the pendulum has swung in the complete opposite direction; it is painfully and predictably slow.

I tested very quickly Seal of Righteousness on the PTR and observed that none of the newly-SoT-proccing-and-Censure-stacking-attacks procced it.

I pondered that fact and concluded that SoR now loses greatly in importance (which was admittedly not that big before) and I don't think that it will be used much anymore, not even in heroics.
It's maximum efficiency is reached with 2 additional targets, grouped up close enough together. It's prime attribute and advantage over SoT was the lack of a ramp-up time, it's primary drawback not being able to crit and not scaling off weapon damage.
With the ramp-up of SoT now close to 3-4 seconds, the fact that it procs off nearly everything in addition to Censure damage in itself and finally the free expertise (which we all include in our calculations for the cap) and its innate ability to crit, I don't see many scenarios, where SoR might me superior to SoT.
It would have to be 3 targets that die very fast, not too high in level, or else, the damage combined of Censure and the many possibilities of SoT to proc and crit will pull ahead of SoR very fast.
If the adds live long enough, it would perhaps even be more intelligent to stack Censure on each of them.

I concede that all of this is not backed up by math, but I couldn't get appropriate conditions on the PTR (i.e.: 3 targets close together) to really go into SoR damage, nevertheless I wanted to primarily express my thought on this matter, as it wasn't discussed before.

Where is Hit/Exp/AP sitting in your stat ranking now?

I'm kind of surprised that there hasn't been any discussion about the Fury of Angerforge trinket. I'm new, so I apologize if I'm missing something extremely obvious, however an on-use trinket that has a cooldown which aligns with our DPS cooldowns (AV/Zealotry) and provides the same amount of strength as a ICD proc trinket (Heart of Rage, etc) makes it seem like a competitive trinket. I do not have the trinket and cannot test it, but has anyone on PTR been able to get their hands on it ever since the ICD on the stacks were lowered?

As long as hit/exp are more valuable than the other combat ratings and less valuable than strength their exact values have nearly zero bearing on gearing. Reforging lets you turn any extra into the combat rating of your choice, so they are basically worth the same as your best other combat rating (82 in this case).

AP's value is just another way of writing the value of strength. 1 strength give 1 * 1.05 *1.05 * 2 = 2.205 AP, so given a strength value of 222 you can easily derive the AP value (222 / 2.205 = ~101).

(Note: This is a very slight simplifications since it doesn't account for the extra boost you get from strength with GoAK, but I don't think either of the spreadsheets is currently modeling GoAK anyway).

Yes, but at the very least would these (slight, in the end) changes mean that 50 Mastery enchant is now better than 32 AP on Feet slot? Seems possible to me, taking for granted those stat weights.