The damage from a Seal on a full health paladin really isn't an issue at all, it will be handily covered by DS and JoL. The issue is that during high raid damage times you and your healers have to worry because your health is actually 3k less than it seems due to big JoB recoil damage. The health of a dpser isn't critical most of the time, but when it is you really don't want to either 1. Blow yourself up by accident because you got low or 2. Not Judge and lose dps because you are worried about blowing up. You also don't want to lose a big chunk of health and force healers to react by dropping heals on you when they might have something else that needs doing.

You might note that although warlocks function using Lifetap (they have no choice) they have choices about how they use it. During phase changes, low raid damage points, etc. they can LT to full and get healed costing very little. When raid damage is high or things are dicey they can simply stop casting LT for awhile and beat down. Paladins simply do not have the choice to stop judging for 40 seconds when the going gets rough, warlocks can and do make that choice with LT. Of course, you COULD stop judging for 40 seconds because you are worried about recoil, but obviously any other seal at all would be a much stronger choice at that point.

One last point is smart heals. You don't actually want Chain Heal and Circle of Healing wasting targets on you. Sometimes people near you need the heals but you will suck them up because you just took a chunk of damage from your judge/seal. It often won't matter, but occasionally you are going to just drain away a heal someone really needed and cause a problem.

Obviously a raid can deal with a paladin using SoB. It isn't like it makes you horrible, but if you are going to try to maximize your personal raid contribution you should really consider both the dps you bring as well as the support you need to do that dps at the same time. It is my feeling that all these small penalties for using SoB outweight a mere 1% damage bonus. You may feel differently, but I think you are looking at this from the perspective of a damage meter rather than the perspective of a raid leader.

Does the 1% number still hold true after the recent SoCommand nerf?

On Proffesion choices for Ret:

Currently i have JCing, and Drumz

I was considering going with Alchemy and herbalism, or Engineering and herbalism. The idea's being the the Fire leaf's picked for Herbalism would combine well with CD Nukes useing AW ect. Alchemy boosts the stats of Potions and Elixers so poping one of those at the same time, also the static bonus to flasks....and Engineering has the Haste to Gloves you can pop.

yeah its more micro managing, then getting a couple better gems, or other similar bonus's, but i also like the the Herbalism Instant HoT, which is useful in conjunction with blood damage, but more so in pvp givin its CD time.

As a Dreanei this would give me the potential to self HoT my self with 3 seperate HoT's, 2 of which are zero mana; Sheath, Racial, and Herblism.

I would still like to see the BoP recipes for other prof's, as the JC trinkets have never been that good, and the Necks didnt come out till end game (i still dont have mine and weve been on m'uru for 2 weeks now).

Any other thoughts on Prof's?

Do you mean the -20% damage applied to SoC and SoB (and SoV)?


If so, then yes.

I've had ~3k JoB recoils fully buffed. While I agree that it's probably not much of a healing pressure due to all the chain heal, PoM and what not, you can very easily kill yourself with this if you get unlucky with a badly timed secondary random effect or heavy AoE, especially since you can get hit by that every 8 seconds.

I just did a 5 minute test with SoB.

At the end of it solely between JoL and DS heals I was still at 70% health. Nothing else, no pots, no heals. Just a standard DPS rotation. Really now, are you saying that because your health drops an average of .1% total health per second you're going to wipe your raid?

Your job as a DPS class is to bring as much DPs as humanly possible. You chug pots, enchant weapons, don't run around in green gear. This is the same thing. You can wish as much as possible for SoC to be better, but the fact is that it is not. Tell your resto druid to take 1 second every minute and throw a lifebloom up on you. As anyone who has done M'uru can tell you, even if it is only 1% more DPS there are situations where you're going to need it. 30 DPS can make the difference between a kill and a wipe.

And all of this becomes moot if AoW FoL's are changed to not break the swing timer. There is no excuse not to be using SoB at that point, you have infinite sustainability in both health and mana at that point.

3k recoil would be a 9k hit. Are you sure that's right?

Assuming you're using a weapon like this (good base speed and ilevel 213 is what I'm really looking for) and even accounting for Avenging Wrath that would mean you had something close to 7685 Attack Power... Are you talking about a special fight like Thaddius?

Well taking the average weapon damage of that thing (713) and the percentage modifiers of Crusade (3%), Crusade (3%), Vengeance x3 (9%), Sanctified Retribution (2%), Avenging Wrath (20%), and Judgement Critical strike (245%) and assuming your spell power is equal to 30% of your attack power you get a formula that looks something like this.

9000 = (2.45 * 1.03 * 1.03 * 1.09 * 1.02 * 1.2) * (.45 * 713 + .2 * AP + .32 * (.3 * AP))

Which, simplified out, looks like (rounding to 2 decimals here, exact numbers are in my calculator):

9000 = 3.47 * ( 320.85 + .2 * AP + .096 * AP)
2595.34 = 320.85 + .296 * AP
2274.49 = .296 * AP
7684.08 = AP

Did I miss a percentage modifier or two or something?

EDIT: Okay, Glyph of Judgement would be one... Anyone know if Ebon Plague effects holy damage? Actually would Ebon Plague even affect Judgements given they are coded as ranged attacks now?

No. If you consult the post you quoted, you will note where I say that the aggregate damage from the seal is really almost irrelevant since JoL + DS + ILoTP will heal it trivially. The issue is the massive spikes from the Judgement.

This is completely missing the point. The total damage dealt to you over time simply isn't the problem. The problem is the rather large spikes of damage you will occasionally receive that will kill you. Would you take a talent that said "Increase damage dealt by 1% and lower your maximum health by 20%"? Using SoB is actually a lot worse than that because you will soak up chainheals and CoHs that could have targetted someone else.

Your logic implies that having a healer use 2% of their time to increase your damage by 1% is a good thing. By this logic a paladin that could do double damage would be justified in asking for two full time healers to support only them. That is clearly nonsense, but it hopefully gets across the point that you can't just ask for healers to do anything to support your dps. More dps is always good, but decreasing healer load means less chance for a random death, and random deaths are vastly more impactful than 1% more damage.

With Avituus' current level 70 gear he would be hitting 8k critical JoBs, with recoil over 2600. I did the calculations with his gear with full raid buffs. Ripping off 20% of your own health is dangerous.

Note I am not saying that SoB has no place in any environment. When AOEing trash packs it would be a much better choice than Command because the damage on DS really does go up significantly, and if you happen to blow yourself up the cost is much less because you can always be rezzed once that trash pull is done. Same goes for boss fights where there are bunches of trash mobs to DS, the benefit increases quite dramatically so it can be worth the cost. That said, in a single target situation I feel that the danger of SoB simply does not support the benefit. You are going to do 1% more damage and require slightly more healing all of the time, barring of course those times where you are face down on the floor doing -100% damage. The facedown times are simply not worth the cost. Dps timers rarely hinge on a single dpser doing 1% more damage, but they constantly hinge on everyone in the raid being alive.

Edit: Beaten to the reply

Judgements may use a ranged attack table, but they resist just like any other spell, so there is no reason to think that Ebon Plague won't buff them. That said, I have not actually done the test myself, since I have no beta access.

With all due respect then you might need to check your math. A lot.

Avitus has 2250 AP. With the raid AP buffs (Battle Shout) and the additional Strength from Mark, Strength of Earth, and Kings and the additional 10% from Unleashed Rage he has a total of (at level 70) 3336 attack power. With Sheath that works out to be 1001 spell damage as well.

His Apolyon has an average damage of 505.5 damage.

With the percentage modifiers of Crusade (3%), Crusade (3%), Vengeance (9%), Sanctified Retribution (2%), Avenging Wrath (20%), Judgement Critical Strike (245%), and Glyph of Judgement (10%) he has a total modifier coefficient of 3.815.

JoB = Modifier Coefficient * ( Avg Weapon Damage * .45 + Attack Power * .2 + Spell Power * .32 )
JoB = 3.815 * ( 505.5 * .45 + 3336 * .2 + 1001 * .32)
JoB = 3.815 * ( 1215 )
JoB = 4635

Or a recoil of just over 1500 damage. And remember this is crit and only while Avenging Wrath is active. 90% of the time the damage will be smaller than this!

Incidentally a level 70 Renew with Glyph of Renew and only 1300 spell power tics for just under 1200. I believe the slack is made up for with Divine Storm, no?

The really funny thing here is that JoB hits you so hard, yet Life Tap is a non-issue according to you. Check out the new scaling for life tap. Yeah, that's right. 1500 + 3 times their spirit in life gone every time they cast it (and before you say it, yes spirit is a good Warlock stat given they get a 30% conversion into spell damage as well as the benefit of having to tap less). With a paltry 500 spirit they're hitting themselves for (*gasp*) 3000 damage, the number you're so afraid of. So again I ask, if your Warlocks are going to be tapping every 10 seconds for 3k and your healers can handle it just fine (unless your healers are, again, absolutely terrible) why is a ret pally sometimes hitting himself for 3k so bad?

Yes there are situations where SoB isn't a good idea (Thaddius is a good place you can and will insta-gib yourself) but saying that the recoil is the reason you shouldn't use it is just foolish.

Ebon Plague and Curse of the Elements affect all magic damage dealt, including Holy.

Earth and Moon currently does not affect Holy, but is only waiting for the change to enable it.

just as a side thought:

with 2/2 pts in art of war, and instant flash heals from crit, you could almost work in a rotation of the next GCD to flash of light yourself.. instantly covering any mass dmg from SOB recoil. It would take some awareness but no reason why it cannot be considered as its like a constant HS we could use.

I've been experiencing a bit of an oddity today with respect to crit rating. I know that defensive ratings now experience diminishing returns, but has there been any word on offensive ratings such as crit? The reason I ask is that I recently substituted De-Raged Waraxe for my [Cataclysm's Edge] enchanted with executioner. This is a gain of 30 crit rating... my crit from crit rating goes up on my character sheet, but my overall crit chance goes down about 0.5%. Any ideas?

My money is on weapon skill. Check your axe skill.

With all due respect you need to check your math. A lot.

I will now list the things you forgot about in your calculation.

Food
Flask
Savagery Enchant - it is by far the best now
Expected AP from Shard
Metagem crit
13% spell damage debuff
Flametongue SP boost

You also included the Crusade damage bonus but not the Crusade crit bonus.

You are calculating the JoB wrong. It is 25% of the weapon damage including AP contribution. You have it calculated at 45% of the base weapon damage.

Why don't you put all of those things in your calculation and try again.

Also, the difference between a warlock LTing and a paladin is twofold:

1. The warlock can control when he loses health and space it appropriately. To maintain his 1% dps advantage, the paladin must Judge on the cooldown and has no control.

2. The warlock has NO CHOICE. The paladin does. I would love for warlocks to not damage themselves, but I cannot have that. I can choose to not damage myself as a paladin, so I should think about whether or not to do it.

Toaster, add 10% from Judgement Glyph, 1% to Undead from Minor Glyph and 13% from Ebon Plague as well as 3% from Metagem and we start moving closer. Also fixing the way you calculate the weapon damage multiplier as Redcape correctly mentioned.

Keep in mind my actual experience has been ~2.7-2.8k recoils, however as said I'm still wearing half level 70 gear and I can see this number increasing to ~3k. I can post my stats next time I log on if we want to further tune this mathematical exercise.

Taking all this into consideration, the numbers become a lot more realistic.

2750 recoil -> 8333 judgement damage

8333 = 1.1 * 1.13 * 1.01 * 1.03 * 3.47 * ( (713+AP/3.5) * 0.2 + .2 * AP + .096 * AP)
8333 = 4.487 * (142.6 + AP * 0.057 + AP * .296)
1857 = 142.6 + 0.353 * AP
1714 = 0.353 * AP
4857 = AP

This sounds very much within the range of what I have fully buffed during an ongoing raid.


Why are we doing math on level 70 gear when the whole "3k recoil!" is based on beta gear/numbers?

Anyway, this all aside, I actually don't disagree with what you're saying. I don't think SoB is a "healer drain". Judgement of Light, DS, Feral Aura and what not do soak up a large pat of it. If you're put with a Shadow Priest (which has been the case for me in the majority of our beta raids) you'll stay full health all the time. No healer will actively have to watch your health and heal in the traditional healer drain sense, except maybe isolated incidents.

Personally I'll be using SoB in every fight except the heaviest of AoE fights and obviously gimmick fights.

For example in Naxx 10/25 I've used SoB for every boss except Thaddius (gimmick), Loatheb (gimmick) and Sapphiron (heavy AoE). Heavy AoE = You don't want to be taken down to 3k of your life due to some sudden AoE and then kill yourself as you judge (it does and will happen).

That was it... haven't held an axe since 70. Good catch.

CoE
Curse of the Elements - Spell - World of Warcraft
Note: "Increases magic damage taken by 10%." and "[Apply Aura]: Mod Dmg % Taken (All) Value: 10"

Earth and Moon:
Earth and Moon - Spell - World of Warcraft
Note: "[Apply Aura]: Mod Dmg % Taken (All) Value: 13"

Ebon Plague:
Ebon Plague - Spell - World of Warcraft
Note: "[Apply Aura]: Mod Dmg % Taken (All) Value: 13"

So, CoW and EP both say increases magic damage taken and all 3 increase all types of damage (assuming bar physical) by 10-13%

Ghostcrawler said in this post that Holy damage is intended to be included in Ebon Plaguebringer, Curse of the Elements and Earth and Moon.

If it's not, that's probably a bug and should be reported.

As I was meticulously following the recent discussion 2 things came up:

1. 

   Originally Posted by Redcape Savagery Enchant - it is by far the best now

2. 

   Originally Posted by Prinsesa I believe the consensus is that 1 point in Imp. Judgement for a 9 second cooldown is the best. 8 seconds is not a multiple of 1.5, so it won't line-up with GCDs correctly, while 10 seconds will collide with Divine Storm.

If I understand this well, Savagery enchant works best now due to ShoL scaling? Would that include the upcoming patch 3.0 at level 70 as well? Also 9 second judgements are preferable to 8 second ones?

Would appreciate the confirmation on those.

Also one minor matter, in a manner of speaking: I suppose slow 2 handers would still be more viable to use with SoC after patch 3.0? To put it differently - should I switch my [Cataclysm's Edge] with [Torch of the Damned] for SoC as I have till now?

Savagery works best because of Sheath and the fact that AP scales all of our damage (with more emphasis on instant attacks.) Nine second judgements are part of the current Attack rotation of prioritizing CS over Judgement.

umm im not sure about this savagery's added spell damage wont make up the 20DPS difference that mongoose has..Crit also scales with all our damage and haste with the biggest 2 components of our damage.

In short your comparing 70AP + 21 spell damage against haste and crit proc...Maybe im too much of a noob to get the idea that this static enchant is better...

I don't see how having 9 seconds CD Judgements can in any situation be better than having 8 seconds CD Judgement, any one with half a brain could still prioritize abilities over eachother even when they come up at (nearly) the same time.
8 seconds CD Judgement has the upside of making Judgement more often usable in situations where you can't always use your melee strikes (Illidan P2 for example).
So what's up with all those "1/2 Imp. Judgement > 2/2 Imp. Judgement" rumors?