Umm no. SoV is extremely useful. Check page 2 of this very thread, where Fiola does some theory crafting on it: Post 68 (there are some corrections made on the following page).

There are certainly situations where it's not worth it. But to say it sucks, well that's just false. (Grammar Nazi in me would like to point out that "alot" is actually 2 separate words - "a lot" ).

To be fair, in an AoE situation it really doesn't matter if you judge. If you're not holding aggro solely with consecrate, ret aura and holy shield, then you're not going to be very successful anyway.

The weapon speed issue is annoying, but it's not that deal breaking. It's very, very seldom that I have a stack fall off on a stationary target. I generally have a 5-stack up within 2 judgements,

As for the starting generation, A) I find that as a pally tank the first few seconds to be the easiest, as I start with a full mana bar and I can front-load a lot of my threat, and B) no one out there says you have to use only one or the other. Mana isn't generally a concern for me, and I will actually judge righteousness once or twice while letting my SoV stack get up to full.

It's certainly not the end-all judgement. I won't use it for Al'ar's adds for example, they just don't stick around long enough. But if you're dismissing it outright I think you're making a mistake. Go back to VR, basically a static fight from a tank's PoV. Say it takes you 8 minutes to beat him. If you're a typical paladin tank (from my gleanings of this thread and the MT one), you're rocking between 400 and 600 spell damage. Lets take 600 (SoR scales better than SoV so the results will be even more in favor of SoV if you assume 400). Using the (corrected) data from Fiola's post:

SoV: 5.667%*600 + 50 + 4.3%*600 + 60 = 170dps
SoR: 9%*600 + 30 + 7.3%*600 + 17 = 145dps

or 25 more dps using SoV (38 if at the 400 spell damage mark). Now throw away the first 30 seconds of the fight for SoV for arguments sake, and give SoR a 4350 damage lead. 4350 / 25 dps = 174 seconds till they are even, or slightly under 3 minutes. So 3 1/2 minutes into your fight you're break even. On an 8 minute fight, that leaves 4 1/2 minutes of fighting with 25 higher dps. On a fight like VR, 25 more dps at a lower mana cost (according to WoWWiki, at work and can't check the actual values at the moment) isn't something to be sneezed at.

(Note: Thelyna, I just checked your armory and noticed you're holy spec and therefore don't have the precision or combat expertise talents. Grabbing these would probably drastically drop your resists, and you might find more favorable results using SoV).

I assure you, Thel's not normally holy- I suspect he was doing arenas or some such, and normally runs with a standard tanking build.

Even with 5% total spellhit and a 2.0 weapon, all of my math seems to indicate that SoV is quite likely to fall over an 8 minute period, and SoV falling is pretty huge. A parry, miss or dodge obviously can't proc it, and most 73s have nontrivial avoidance (not to mention the horrible 17% hit mechanic). Over fights it seems like it's going to constantly be in danger of falling, not to mention a KB even on VR will drop off 2 swings, bringing the likelyhood-of-falling way too high into the fuckup range for me to like it.

However, my primary issue with SoV isn't that it seems to be worse in every real world case, it's that it is simply not reliable. I have no desire, whatsoever, to play with dice any more than I have to, and a part of my soul recoils at the thought of taking one of my highest threat abilities and rolling the dice to see if it even works. Cons can't be resisted beyond the first tick, SoR cannot be resisted (and a JOR resist isn't punishing), Avenger's Shield can be hitcapped, and while HS can be resisted (and wow does that suck) there's not much I can do about it. Sacrificing one of my best selling points- immense lead threat- for a minor potential advantage and a huge potential drawback, I can't see why I'd go for it.

I do use it on Leo (I tank fire) since I have close to a minute to build a full stack (with 15% spellhit, by the way, and it's STILL not reliable), so I can judge, swap to SoR shield toss and excorcism (not in that order), followed by Cons and the standard threat rotations, with a +dam trinket and Avenging Wrath (depending on his HP) waiting in the wings in case I get a resist. I tried for months to use it successfully on VR, but got such erratic results even with fairly hefty melee and spell hit that I dropped it off my spellbook entirely with a happy heart (and coincidentally, got my first single tank VR like two weeks later).

But hey, if you've found it working so well for you, okay. I do wish that people would stop proclaiming it as our primary threat seal- it isn't, even if it may have nitche values for certain static fights, SoR should be the seal you use until you know the fight well enough to experiment. SoV has a host of issues and nontrivial randomness, and a lot of newer tanks see these people claiming SoV is great, go to try to use it on something like HAS or FLK (if you kite) and get eaten on threat gen.

I apologize for dredging this post up from page 5, but after reading most of the thread I didn't see more on this subject which I found to be quite interesting.

I'm a fairly new pally tank just starting in Kara after doing tons of 5-mans, and in fights where I'm taking a ton of damage and therefore getting plenty of mana from heals, I find that there is plenty of time where I'm not doing anything between the cooldowns of Judgement, HS and Consecration.

Does anyone make a habit of casting SoR in between cooldowns, in fights where mana is not a concern? It seems like it could be a very nice boost to threat.

I would also wonder if the above test was done with RF on. Since the tooltip says "Increases the threat generated by all Holy spells" it certainly seems like it would affect casting SoR, even though it doesn't do any damage.

Concerning the Seal of Vengance.

I'm using it on Bosses like Void Reaver. Sometimes great, sometimes it just breaks my aggro (if it falls of after like 45 Sek Aggro ist gone..).

One Idea I have, how about using 2 Weapons?

One usual tanking weapon (I have the S2 Arena Hammer, 1,6 speed, 265 Spelldamage with enchant) and as the second the lower city hammer (2,7 speed, 199 Spelldamage with enchant) as a emergency weapon if you have no proc and 5-7 sek left on your stacks.

So just make a weapon switch (global cd) and hope for the best. 90% SoV Proc Chance vs. 53% SoV Proc Chance should help.

Anybody ever tried this?

SoV was just to unreliable for my taste. I tried to make good use of it but didn't manage. I don't recommend to roll the dice any more than you have to. You have enough of these factors already (avoidance) and the small advantage in threat (IF the 5-stack stays on the target) is not worth introducing another one of these "luck" factors.

For newer tanks SoR should be the way to go.

That sounds like a lot of bother for minimal benefits.

SoV uses the +dmg of the first application, so you could start the stack with the S2 hammer and then switch to LC and build up the SoV more reliably. But while you gain reliability, you're also losing overall DPS with the lower +dmg on the LC weapon.


Pity that there are so few slow +dmg weapons for T4+. PPM seal mechanics need a review.

But here's the thing... It's not a small advantage in threat. If you can keep the stack active, it's actually a large advantage over SoR, especially for newer tanks that are packing under 200 spelldamage. The biggest difference between the two seals lies in the judgements, not the "on swing" effects, and the base value of JoV starts out nearly 3x what JoR does. At lower levels of spelldamage like this, you can actually afford to have your SoV stack drop off once a minute or so, and still have better long-term performance over SoR in certain cases. The best piece of advice I can give a starting tank for making use of SoV is to get all 3 points in Precision, and get Reckoning over 1h spec. Those two things will greatly increase the viability of SoV and reduce the chance of threat plateaus from losing the stack too often. As your gear gets better and you're able to add more spelldamage, melee hit, and spell hit while maintaining high levels of survivability, you can start to fine tune your spec and gear selection to fit the needs of the content you face.

SoV isn't "the" threat seal, and neither is SoR. They're both situational, and it's up to every tank to know when to use which one. I can only assume the same holds true for Horde and SoB.

Not really. SoB isn't situational for tanking at all except as a way to guarantee getting aggro on a mob immediately (since it doesn't miss or resist). It underperforms SoR in all cases save when you have a traditional tanking weapon, and even then it only takes about 200 spelldamage to be worse. The best normal situation you can use it is for offtanking, where you can generate a fair amount of threat with it and a warrior tanking weapon and get heals for mana regen. Even then, it's not all that great.

SoB has a use: it is better than SoC for ret.

So wouldn't judgement of blood be optimal for grabbing initial aggro / aggro resets? (and then reseal righteousness immidiately after)

Your ZA method is interesting and quite different from mine. My method tends to play to our strength. You'll notice a trend where all trash pulls are done AOE-Style.

On Eagle:
-Trash: I tank everything but the windwalker, using ranged taunt to pick up the warrior adds. The reason is we have melee nuke the windwalker and aoe everything else. If a windwalker is dead, we go pull the next group.
-boss: I tank the boss, and the Off-tank (Fury warrior, prot warrior, or Feral Druid) does more damage. The reason is purely for timers.

On Bear:
-Trash: Standard aoe tanking. Mounted bears are obviously tanked apart.
-Boss: I pick up the bear phase, usually. My effective health is often higher than anyone else's, and I find I generate more threat in this phase. What that boils down to, is when a warrior/druid taunts he has more threat for his phase (allowing more DPS).

On Lynx:
-Trash: AOE everything. Melee on Tamers.
-Boss: I tank Lynx phase. He is a dual-wielder so Holy Shield charges are used often for more threat. Sometimes, I also duo-tank the Spirit of the Lynx with the boss. If you Avenger's Shield at the transition, you can pick up the Spirit easily (with a judge for good measure). In Split-Phase I judge totems and we DPS down the troll form so Consecrate holds the Spirit easily.
--There is a 'diamond' pattern on the ground that is conveniently far enough for the rocket launcher or misdirect to hit without aggroing the boss. This makes stacking extremely easy without any risk of no-split due to lag or error.
--I highly recommend, if possible, the off-tank use two on-use evasion trinkets such as the Pocketwatch and SSC defense trinket. He can expect to, reliably, get hit for 8-9k and I've seen those trinkets make the boss laughable. I, personally, use DMC:V and the Goblin Rocket Launcher (without a Hunter) or Gnome-Regan Auto-Blocker for him. The Saber Lash is, ironically, not the deadliest part of the fight so much as surviving long enough for a big heal to land on you.

On Dragonhawk:
-Trash: AOE tank everything. Nuke order Scout > Flame Caster > guardians or Tamer > Hawks. Druid roots is very helpful as is Rocket Launcher stun.
--If you have a paladin healer or shamans, I advise Fire resistance totem/aura in the group you are NOT in, since you can cover this. The reasoning is, one Flame Caster can be stun locked. Two... you have to take a few hits regardless.
-Boss:
With a protection/feral Off-Tank: He tanks Boss, AOE sides. If the group doesn't have much true AOE (mage/warlock) then I use a 4/4/35 method where you do 4 spawns, 4 spawns, then spawn everything on the other side.
With a fury off-tank: Allow 3 spawns on each sides, 3 times, and have all melee handle them. Healers run through my consecrate and I cleanse myself. Yes, it's entirely possible to tank the boss and some adds before Enrage.

On Hexx Lord:
Really depends on the party. I tank the Hexx Lord himself, and the group burns through the adds. He does not 'empower' before 80% HP, so there's really no reason to rush the fight and die to bad CC timing. If you have a good healing mace/shield, it would be a lot more effective to probably just tank the adds then off-heal. Remember, you only have to 'tank' 1-2 mobs, usually. The snake and Demon are pretty untankable. Everything can be stunned.
--It's advised to keep Aimed Shot or Mortal Strike up as much as possible for the Paladin phase if you lack non-melee counterspells. He will generally heal after a consecrate, which is deadly to any melee, and could spell a wipe.

On Zul'jin:
We make excellent tanks for Zul'jin.
Phase 1: a joke.
Phase 2: We have a high effective HP, and we can self-cleanse paralysis. I use Devotion Aura here, too.
Phase 3: Equip-macro to Healing shield/mace, find somewhere nice and off-heal. Anything helps.
Phase 4: Let a paladin healer, if possible, take the first BoP for more threat time. Judge wisdom and misdirect if possible.
Phase 5: Swap to fire resist aura, chug a Magic Resistance Potion, pay your party doesn't stand in Fire Pillars.