I believe I can definitively state that in present tier gear our full melee sequence beats Wrathspam hands down. Only at the pre-raid dungeon level of gear was Wrathspam competitive or roughly equal. WoG and Harsh Words shouldn't factor into it - spamming Wrath is better damage than casting Judge, but you have to use the lesser attack in order to generate sufficient HP to keep Inq running (the 10% Crit bonus outweighs spamming Wrath without it). Using more Judge (because there are no AoW procs for extra Exo when at range) in order to get the HP for WoG will set you further behind Wrathspamming. I actually believe that in a cannot-ever-melee situation you may be best using Glyph of Inq, then just Exo 3 times a minute for all the HP necessary.

It's useful for those periods when you simply cannot melee, but given the option you should always pick standard abilities over utilizing symbiosis to be a faux caster. I will be adding a Wrath section to the OP as previously suggested, I'm just horribly busy of late.

In my sleep deprived state, I was doing some theorizing tonight. My guild isn't cutting edge at all, but we all work hard to optimize ourselves as much as we can and do well on an extremely casual raiding schedule.

That said, I recently picked up Holy Prism for my tanking spec and fell in love with it. I wanted to check the viability of it in ret, and was a tad surprised. I currently run Divine Purpose + Execution/Hammer depending on situation, swapping into Holy Avenger for fights where burst is more needed. After tinkering around with SimCraft for a bit using absolutely unoptimized actionlists, I'm coming to the conclusion that Holy Prism ends up simming at worst about a 2-3% DPS loss compared to Execution Sentence for single target, is that about right?

(in my gear)
DivP + Ex = 88k
DivP + Prism = 86k
HA + Ex = 89k
HA + Prism = 87k

The thought process that spurred all of this was reforging everything into crit to bump up Prism even further, which unfortunately ended up being a good bit lower than the standard haste mantra.

Now, I hate dead spots in my rotation, which is why I go for DivP. However, I think that with the shorter cooldown of Prism and the flexibility of AoE vs Single, and the hefty healing, I might give it a try. Anyone had any thoughts or experience?

The reason that ES is so strong is that it is a true DoT-- it snapshots stats at the time of cast. This has the benefit of, say, casting ES right before GAnK's 20 stack and AW are about to dissipate, and both the 20% Strength and 20% damage modifiers being carried through the entire ES "cast".

The same thing would apply to any debuffs the enemy has that increases damage taken.

I am not sure if ES behaves differently than other dots in this regard (like it does with haste), but enemy debuffs are generally taken into account once the damage occurs, not on cast. But the snapshotting of major buffs on the player alone is enough to make it incredibly powerful.

The dots you mentioned also snapshot the stats of the player on cast (or refresh through other mechanics like fel flame), but every single tick of them uses the current debuffs on the target they are ticking on, like the spell damage debuff. I was just wondering wether ES also behaves differently in regards to debuffs just like it does in regards to haste.

To take the reply in a different direction:
Using ES (without DivPurp) you should have relatively few dead spots in your rotation, if you're using the recommended priority sequence (those optional 3/4 HP TV do a lot to fill the empty spots). Adding DivPurp alone you're often overloading the sequence (more times where multiple options are available, so something is being delayed). Swap ES to Holy Prism and you should further overload your sequence. From personally disliked dead spots you're going to excessive ability clash, which is a net DPS loss.

While you may hate dead spots, selecting DivPurp and Holy Prism is counter to your goal of optimizing yourself. If you're finding a lot of dead spots, use some Sacred Shield. Taking less damage can be considered roughly equivalent to generating heals.

Also, remember, as Ret your role is to do as much damage as possible. Killing something 10 seconds faster helps your healers than dropping a ton of offheals and dragging the fight out. One less boss ability or a slightly earlier phase transition are not insignificant. Or think of it this way: how would your raid feel if you're in tank spec but used 2H weapons to build more threat and do more DPS? 'I can heal more' as Ret is the equivalent of 'I can DPS more' as Prot - nice, but folks would probably prefer the Ret DPS and the Prot to use a shield to better survive.

P.S. Healers also tend to hate sniped healing or to feel you don't trust them to keep folks alive. Never underestimate the possibilities of Drama.

You would still agree that free heal is always nice to have. I suspect that the glyph of blessed life, giving it's effects to all seals makes it kind of mandatory for rets, doesn't it?

It will be mandatory for PvP, but it will be useless on most boss fights.

Running Lei Shen and Darkmist Vortex and using Sanctified Wrath + 4p, I'll generally delay the initial cast a few seconds to give time for GoAK Strength buff to stack up as much as I can allow within procs. I don't pay mind to Darkmist's haste proc for ES. Ideally, I try to hit ES when both Lei Shen and Dancing Steel are up. After that, I don't delay the next ES because I want to make sure I have more room for flexibility during the next AW.

Once the third ES comes around and the second AW is up, I'll delay it a few seconds if Lei Shen is close to proccing again; picking up a dancing steel proc is just icing. The only time I'll wait longer for an ES is if I'm at the end of the encounter and that will be the last ES cast that I will have time for. I don't want to delay too much trying to get a proc and end up losing an entire cast of ES, and though it's harder to do with Sanctified Wrath + 4p, I want to avoid the chance of missing ES during AW. Those seconds of delay can start to add up on a longer encounter.

Update from Ghostcrawler today in the PTR Class & Set Bonuses II thread:

Seems like after 2 patches' worth of content, they've finally realized that SoR is complete trash and never worth using except in extreme situations - at this point, it's basically a trap for uninformed paladins. :/ Hope they tweak it back to a point where it's worth using!

Taken directly from a blue post:

"Paladin
We finished looking at Seal of Righteousness and Justice. Righteousness we ended up buffing by 50% so it should be a good choice against 4 targets instead of 6.

Justice is much more complicated. It was intended as a PvP seal, but the damage loss is so significant and the snare just not that valuable (which is ironic when you consider Ret's history of not being able to catch things), and Burden of Guilt is there if you really do want to snare. Furthermore, just buffing Justice's damage risks Seal twisting in PvE becoming a thing, where you stack up Censure and then swap to Justice. It could be cool if designed right, but would probably just be annoying. We just don't have much room to buff Justice, and players might still forsake it in PvP.

So, we're going to redesign it and attempt to solve another problem, which is Ret's damage outside of cooldowns (which are quite potent). Justice will now proc (and Judgment will count for the proc) a stacking debuff on the target that increases the damage of your next Templar's Verdict. With 5 stacks, this will be a big hit (but not an insta-gib) and opens up some interesting decisions about how to use Holy Power, such as Inquisition or WoG, if you're trying to hold TV. While Truth + Censure will still do more sustained damage overall, there is a chance Justice will see some situational use in PvE, and we're okay with that. Justice is a Ret-only thing, so it should be a Seal they actually use. It won't snare at all, which I expect some will call a devastating nerf, but again, there's Burden of Guilt if you really need a snare."