For all those wondering about group makeups, my guild did even better this week on Teron, placing 9th on recorded dmg done (now 11th, damn you Blood Legion!). Here is a WWS with ghost damage removed:

WWS--Teron Gorefiend

We only brought one rogue, and had only one melee group and one "hunter" group. The group makeups was ret(me)/MS war/rogue/enh sham/feral druid. The other group was hunter/hunter/feral druid/enh sham/(can't remember, possibly resto druid). The casters did have an elemental shaman.

In case anyone is interested I made anther video. This time I get to dps the whole time, but my fps drops really low at the end.

Enjoy

Spell damage is still necessary for Judgement and Consecration, which are still a fair portion of your damage output.

Imagine if they had put this change in and left crusader strike as it was, relying on both attack power and spell damage. 800 strength would not only give you 1760+ AP on your CS, it would also give you 176+ Extra damage per CS. You would get a double bonus from one stat, which would end up being overpowered.

The reason they do this in phases is so that they can see how things scale with small changes. They know how much CS is hitting for, and making this change would not affect it any more. It would only raise Judgement, Consecrate and Exorcism damage, which is why they are free to make it.

Plus it makes sense so that further down the line there is more overlap between paladin and warrior gear. As if this change went through, it would mean the only difference between warrior and paladin gear really would be that paladins can make use of Intellect.

No real opinion on whether the notes are real or fake. I would personally expect to see something like crusade given baseline, or in a tier 1 talent rank so that protection paladins could get it as well, and therefor share common plate tank gear as well as common plate dps gear.

I rather see parry on prot t1. It sounds more likely to me, and it will be better for prot and ret (and even for holy maybe).

And about those double SoB Procs, it might be fun to use them in PvP, but it clearly ain't pve wise (except for fights like Akama pre fix..). You can't wait for the SoC proc to launc SoB, or it won't work. So you have to cast two seals on each attacks... Even with chain drinking manapots, it's not possible.


Quick edit: I agree with the AP => SD talent. It would make sense. The burst was too heavy, so they modified CS. Now the judgements are too weak, so we can get that talent, and not seeing overpowered cs + judgements. I would like to see that. Or an interupt / charge (MS would be too much imho) but it wouldn't be any good for pve.

That Crusade rumor seems fake since Crusade is a 3 pointer at the moment and I don't think they'll make a 0/25/50 talent.

If those changes were real, we'd be looking at a slight Seal of Blood nerf, and a slight Seal of Command buff. Nothing earth shattering in either case, and nothing even close to bringing the two factions into parity. We would also lose our synergy with Protection Paladins by losing Sanctity Aura, and Shockadin builds would be killed for good.

I would be pretty disappointed if those were the best fixes they could come up with. Spell damage is the poorest stat available for improving our damage, so I don't understand why everybody has such an electronic erection over getting more of it.

Edit:

That's not so different from today. Warrior epics are already clearly superior to everything, with only two exceptions: Vengeful Gladiator's Scaled Gauntlets, and the two piece Lightbringer Battlegear set bonus. Punching in a 50% spell damage bonus from strength on the DPS calculator showed that there's almost exactly the same gap between paladin gear and Warrior gear that exists without the stat conversion, so unless something fundamentally changes about how our Tier sets are generated we're sitting in the same boat post-patch.

Assuming these notes are real. Which they probably aren't.

I'm not so sure actually about SoC vs SoB if those changes turn out to be legit.

So while spelldamage might not be the greatest stat, at ~800+ str buffed, that's 400 free spelldamage for SoC and JoC to gain from, that's quiet a hefty buff.


Also if sanctity aura would get changed to a total 4% damage buff, that would be a pretty welcome change to melee groups wanting us in their parties.

I'm undecided what effect this would have on our personal DPS however, 2% more total damage vs 10% holy damage. Sounds about equalish to me or a slight nerf.

I'm not saying that warrior gear isn't already better, I'm just saying that even if you do get all that free spell damage it won't help much. You'll still be stuck with a 5k mana pool, which means you won't be using consecration or exorcism 99 times out of 100, and that talent everyone has been salavating over will basically just up your SoC damage by 100 or so.

Tier gear needs to be reitemized or regen/mana needs to be adjusted for this to really be a useful buff IMO.

I don't know bout you... but I am wearing full warrior gear right now other than my s3 gloves/helm(illidari wont drop =[) and I don't have my 2 piece yet so I am not wearing any... which means I am sitting at 6500ish mana fully raid buffed... but despite that on every single boss fight I am able to keep up AT LEAST rank 1 conc and exorcism spam up just fine.... Combat mana pots make it easy on farm bosses, and mana injectors are cheap as hell...

If you are having mana problems and dont like popping pots, then just lower your dps and like it XD Full burn cycles for all classes take mana pots... shouldn't be any difference for us

I have a trinket question. As a Belf SoB Retributer, which combination of the following trinkets would I benefit most from?

Abacus of Violent Odds
Tsunami Talisman
Dragonspine Trophy

I was thinking of the Abacus and the Dragonspine trophy.

What do you guys think?

Super Manas cost about 15g a stack on my server, so it seems we're coming from completely different areas, but regardless. I'm assuming SoC because SoB throws in a monkey wrench to calculations in the form of SA regen.

Numbers:

Consecration:
Rank I

Avg. Base Damage: 64
Mana Cost: 120
DPS: 8
DPM: .533
Mana use: -75 Mp5
Coefficient: .422 (over 8 seconds)

Rank VI

Avg. Base Damage: 512
Mana Cost: 660
DPS: 64
DPM: .776
Mana use: -412.5 Mp5
Coefficient: .954 (over 8 seconds)

So, as everyone already knows, Consecration is a nice fat mana drain. Being generous and giving 400 spell damage from the "new talent" and 219 from JotC (619 damage total) as well as all the percentage modifiers (Sanctity Aura, Imp. SA, Crusade, Vengeance), your Rank I Consecration will tic for 54 and your Rank IV will tic for 183. Respectable numbers, but look at what it costs you. Even a Rank I Consecration cycle will basically eat any regen you may have been getting for JoW. Blowing every single form of regen normally available in a raid situation (Chain Super Manas, JoW, BoW, Mana Spring) you will be losing at least 100 Mp5 just from using a max rank Consecration, not even including your other spells. The only fight in the game I can think of that has that kind of luxury with mana consumption is Shade.

Exorcism is a much more efficient spell, balanced of course because there are plenty of bosses you can't use it on. Numbers:

Exorcism:
Rank I

Avg. Base Damage: 90
Mana Cost: 70
DPS: 6
DPM: 1.286
Mana use: -23.33 Mp5
Coefficient: .190

Rank VII

Avg. Base Damage: 665
Mana Cost: 340
DPS: 44.33
DPM: 1.960
Mana use: -113.33 Mp5
Coefficient: .429

So with the same conditions as before, Rank I Exorcism will hit for 276 (18.4 DPS) and max rank will hit for 1237 (82.45 DPS). Again, respectable numbers, though a max rank Exorcism will still burn through all your JoW regen and change.

A basic Rank VI SoC rotation with an 8 second Judgement and 6 second CS will cost you about 237 Mp5. So you'll be gaining about 63 Mp5 by blowing everything with a regular cycle. Now factor in Rank I Consecration. You're now up to losing 12 Mp5. Rank VI Consecration? -349 Mp5. Exorcism fares somewhat better. Rank I puts you at +40 Mp5, max rank runs you down at -50 Mp5.

With your 6.5k mana, max rank Exorcism runs you dry in ~650 seconds (almost 11 minutes). Max Rank Consecration spamming drops your time until OOM down to just 93 seconds. And for what? Assuming the spell damage bonuses go into effect, Rank VI Consecration drops your DPS time by a huge amount for a 183 DPS increase.

Just for fun, I wanted to see how much mana you could burn using max ranks of both spells with a full cycle. You will be burning 562 Mp5 after all regen (862 Mp5 before regen) to do a true Maximum DPS rotation. With your 6.5k mana pool that is OOM in just over 60 seconds seconds (i.e. Shade).

Of course these numbers are unrealistic (who would be dumb enough to spam max rank Consecration?) but you get the point. Even if the spell damage change goes through we're still sacrificing a huge amount of DPS time to pump out the things that are actually benefiting from it. We need something to cushion the high mana cost of these spells, whether its a focus proc like shamans or an activated heavy regen like mages or shamans or a passive regen like Battle Chickens melee or an X > Mana talent or even just a reitemization of tier gear to make Intellect gear more desirable. Otherwise we can continue being one of the few classes that is forced to heavily downrank to be effective.

And as usual, if my math sucks feel free to fix it.

And of course, AP > SD is a great idea that should be in, but its far from the final solution.

EDIT: big long rant!

When i try to use theDPS Spreadsheet from bellator i keep getting the same error: "Run-time error '1004' - Method 'Range' of object'_Global' failed"

Any idea how to fix it?

Ty