As I found out my first pull of Felmyst last week, a trinketed + AW at the start JoL gives a ton of threat (I pulled aggro) since there is no cooldown on procs and a lot of melee guys taking damage.

JoW gains on other people doesn't affect the Paladin judging, and the aggro gain from gaining JoW is very small.

Here is what WOW Meter Online said about JoW:
24297 Mana threat 12129 threat total 3%

I meant a dps weapon. In TBC, a two-hander was more dps for a holy spec; the extra melee damage made up for the loss of spellpower. I'm guessing that SotR changes that, but curious as to the numbers.

RF no longer increases threat from healing, I thought? So that 1.9 would not be there.

RF's tooltip still indicates 'Holy spells', and I've not read of any empirical testing with RF+healing threat post-3.0, so I assumed that it still applied to heals.

RF does increase threat from healing with FoL and HL. I tested it myself in Beta a week ago. I don't know about JoL though.

What makes you think it doesn't?

I thought I'd seen somewhere that it only applied to Holy Damage as well, although I'm still wracking my brains as to where I saw it. Might well have been some Beta iteration of Patchnotes, in which case we all know what that means.

Correct, however the patch note writers aren't very good about proofreading, and get notes wrong or forget to remove old notes. RF isn't changing next patch.

for raid level dps absolutely. However there's got to be a fight length where sor is dramatically superior to sov. when you start out a fight with sov, you need to wait 5 swings before you judge, (almost one full cooldown? more?) so your net seal/judge dps is going to be abysmal for a bit. When mobs take 10-15 seconds to kill, I think sor is the clear winner. if they take 30-45 (like they did in 1.7...) maybe sov pulls ahead. Where's the point of inflection, assuming nothing misses or is resisted, as a function of spell damage and weapon speed? Does the generalized function change between 70 and 80?

can sov ticks crit? if so, what rate does it crit with?

SoV gets applied very quickly as soon as you start throwing HotR into the mix. Typically within the first 6 or 7 seconds I've got a full stack no problem.

Whaa? No you don't have to wait for 5 swings before you judge, that's crazy talk. Maybe you have to wait 5 swings before you get the 50% bonus from the judgement, but you can still get a reasonable sized judgement immediately.

Secondly, you only have to wait 4 swings + hotr before you have a full stack, which is anywhere from 6-8 seconds, so yeah, by the time the cooldown is up from your first judgement, your second will be hitting for full.

If a mob is dying in 8 seconds, Improved Hammer of Justice is probably the best tanking talent you could take. If you're talking about a hypothetical supermob that only lives for 12 seconds, is immune to taunt, is immune to stun and causes real problems if the tank loses aggro, then yeah, maybe you need to consider using SoR over SoV.

You get 3+ stacks of SoV very quickly applied just by running in, swinging once, using HotR (you'll swing again before your GCD is up more than likely) and then Judging.

The only reason I've seen so far to use SoR is to avoid putting the SoV DoT on mobs that are supposed to be sheeped (not that it matters in 3.0, even in Sunwell anymore).

# Judgement of the Wise now grants the paladin 15% of his base mana. (Down from 33%)

....

Fuck.

For the MMOC challenged, full list:
Skills
Holy

* Seal of Wisdom now deal [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 1 ] holy damage when unleashed. (Down from [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 1 ] Holy damage)
* Seal of Light now has a chance to heal for [ 15% of AP + 15% of Spell Power ]. (Down from [ 28% of AP + 28% of Spell Power ])
* Seal of Light now deals [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 1 ] (down from [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 1 ]) holy damage when unleashed.
* Seal of Righteousness now grants each melee attack [ 2.2% of Melee Weapon Speed * AP + 4.4% of Melee Weapon Speed * Spell Power ] additional Holy damage. (Down from [ 2.8% of Melee Weapon Speed * AP + 5.5% of Melee Weapon Speed * Spell Power ])


Protection

* Seal of Justice now deals [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 1 ] holy damage when unleashed. (Down from [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 1 ])


Retribution

* Judgement of Command Holy damage reduced from 56% to 45%.
* Blessing of Might (Rank 8 ) and Greater Blessing of Might (Rank 3) now increase AP by 306. (Up from 305)
* Seal of Corruption now deals [ 15% of AP + 8.8% of Spell Power ] additional holy damage over 15 seconds. (Down from [ 19.2% of AP + 9.6% of Spell Power ])
* Seal of Corruption now deals [ 14% of AP + 22% of Spell Power + 1 ] Holy damage. (Down from [ 17.5% of AP + 28% of Spell Power + 1 ])
* Seal of the Martyr now make all your melee attacks deal [ 22% of mw ] to [ 22% of MW ]. (Down from [ 28% of mw ] to [ 28% of MW ])
* Seal of the Martyr now deals [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 36% of mw ] to [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 36% of MW ] Holy Damage when unleashed. (Old - [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 25% of mw ] to [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 25% of MW ] Holy damage)
* Seal of Blood now make all your melee attacks deal [ 22% of mw ] to [ 22% of MW ]. (Down from [ 28% of mw ] to [ 28% of MW ])
* Seal of Blood now deals [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 36% of mw ] to [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 36% of MW ] Holy Damage when unleashed. (Old - [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 25% of mw ] to [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 25% of MW ] Holy damage)
* Seal of Vengeance now deals [ 15% of AP + 8.8% of Spell Power ] additional Holy damage over 15 sec. (Down from [ 19.2% of AP + 9.6% of Spell Power ])
* Seal of Vengeance now deals [ 14% of AP + 22% of Spell Power + 1 ] Holy damage. (Down from [ 17.5% of AP + 28% of Spell Power + 1 ])
* Judgement of Wisdom now restores 1% of the attacker's maximum mana. (Down from 2%)
* Judgement of Light now has a chance to heal the attacker for [ 10% of AP + 10% of Spell Power ]. (Down from [ 18% of AP + 18% of Spell Power ])


Talents
Retribution

* Divine Storm doesn't deal Holy damage anymore. Now heals up to 3 party or raid members for 25% of the damage caused. (Up from 20%)
* Righteous Vengeance changed to - When your Judgement and Divine Storm spells deal a critical strike, your target will take 8/16/24/32/40% additional damage over 8 sec.
* The Art of War now increases the damage of Judgement, Crusader Strike and Divine Storm by 5/10%. (Old - Increased critical strike damage only, by 10/20%)
* Judgement of the Wise now grants the paladin 15% of his base mana. (Down from 33%)
* Seal of Command now deals [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 24% of mw ] to [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 24% of MW ] Holy damage. (Down from [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 30% of mw ] to [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 30% of MW ])

TLDR version of the lastest patch:

• All seal and judgement damage reduced by approximately 20% across the board.
• JoW and JoL effect reduced approximately 50%.
• Expected changes to Divine Storm, Art of War, and Righteous Vengeance.
• JotW mana return reduced by a little more than 50%.

To borrow an analogy that popped up in one of the presidential debates, they're definitely using a hatchet and not a scalpel.

In game tooltip on live right now is inline with Beta and says it affects all spells, not just damage. I am guessing the notes are incorrect.

Try "nuclear weapon".

I guess they're trying to really cripple the spec and build it back up balanced. I hope...

Huh well, and the lead designer was joking about NERF TO THE GROUND? :-/

This is relatively close to old pre-3.0.2. paladin. I guess the biggest problem now is that mana regeneration is halved, so that narrows paladin rotation to what CS or DS while waiting for judgment? Meanwhile you can do what, watch TV?

Consecration - 22% of base mana (bm)
DS - 12% of bm
CS - 8% of bm

Even with current build, there is still some time when you're idling in your rotation when everything is on cooldown, but at least you can keep up with mana. That's as far as pve is concerned.

For PvP-arena I guess mana draining ret paladin now could potentially be viable -- I imagine Disc priest could do it by spamming mana burn.

If I were the sort of person to post "Facepalm" images then I would do so now.

I think I could have lived with most of the changes bar the one to Judgements of the Wise. Given that as Ret you'll probably have Benediction you are effectively spending 7% of base mana to restore 19% of base mana (including replensishment). That's going to pretty heavily restrict our rotation after very little time.

I'd suggest keeping a close eye on Judgement debuff proc rates in the new build too.

*sigh* This is pretty depressing TBH. And Righteous Fury only affecting Judgement and DS is a shame too, even more so if it doesn't roll.

EDIT:

But hey, at least Divine Plea is more useful to Ret now! /snark

I've tried my best to remain reasonable. I really have. This is just retarded at this point. There's no other word. These changes are retarded. The entire Paladin class is in pretty piss-poor shape when compared to other classes in raids at this point. They decide to nerf our PvP healing by...nerfing our PvE and PvP longevity completely. Holy Paladins are the most limited healer by leagues, and Prot is...slightly worse than the other options. I'd say they're the best off spec atm.

Anyway on to my own spec. Seals and Judgements nerfed again. JotW, our single most important talent, nerfed in reaction to PvP healing longevity, to such an extent that I'm unsure if we'll be able to sustain a DPS rotation for more than a few minutes. I'm looking for some reason to be hopeful, but my Arms Warrior alt would be really attractive to me if not for some irrational attachment issues to the Paladin class.

Anyone got any hope at the end of the tunnel?

What I find ridiculous is that they nerf us now already and because of what? some PVP...

And then they make a bluepost that you can't counter a Retpalas Stun and Burst like you can with a Rogue?

Its much easier to break our stun then a rogues who even if you can break it, vanishes and goes again, or simply disarms you for an eternity.
And if you don't break it at all will easily kill you despite whatever armor because Killingspree on a single target is more burst than a Ret could do in that time.

We aren't even in the top 3 in damage right now, eventhough I have Appolyon etc I can't compete with our Rogues, Warriors pulling near 5k DPS on Brutallus with 10k Deep Wound ticks and BM Hunters doing over 3k etc.

And to top it off we get no new relevant spells with the Wotlk Release unlike pretty much any other class/specc and we won't add any relevant talents either with the 10 additional levels.

TO THE GROUND BABY (We couldn't even compete in our OP state in the ESL 3's). And I'm not happy about doing less damage when Im holy spec either.

A proposal: swap Righteous Vengeance and JotW.

If the problem really is healers taking it, push it even further up the tree, or make deep holy better (Blizzard's insistence that Beacon is an AOE healing solution is another matter entirely). As it stands our sustained DPS is crippled by this change.

Well let's look at it this way. With every point in Benediction we'll be looking at these costs for just our minimum DPS abilities:

Seals: 12.6% base
Judgements: 4.5% base
CS: 7.2% base
DS: 10.8% base

Base mana at level 80 is 4394, leading to these costs:

Seals: 554
Judgements: 198
CS: 316
DS: 475

JotW restores 15% of your base, or 659 mana per Judgement.

Assuming a base intellect of 100, Improved Mark of the Wild (+52), Arcane Intellect (+60), and Blessing of Kings you will have a total of 233 intellect, or a total mana pool of 7889. Divine Plea is thus worth 1972 mana if used on cooldown. Replenishment will restore 20 mana per tic and JoW will restore 79 per proc.

I'm going to assume a different priority system based on mana consumption instead of DPS for the sake of argument. Judgement will clearly have highest priority in a vain attempt to eek out some extra mana, CS right behind it because it's cheaper than the last place "tree-capping talent", DS. This leads to effective cooldowns of:

Judgement: 8 seconds
CS: 8 seconds
DS: 11.5 seconds

Your mana consumption, assuming you reseal every 110 seconds, is going to therefore be:

Seals: 5.04 mana/second
Judgements: 24.75 mana/second
CS: 39.50 mana/second
DS: 41.30 mana/second

Combined deficit: 110.59 mana/second

Regens are as follows. Judgement of Wisdom (assuming a 3.5 second autoswing) has an effective cooldown of 4.82 seconds.

JotW: 82.38 mana/second
Replenishment: 20 mana/second
JoW: 24.56 mana/second

Total gain: 126.94

Net gain: +16.35 mana second

So without popping Divine Plea you can afford to use Consecration once every 53 seconds. However, assuming a best-case scenario where you can use Divine Plea on cooldown you gain an additional 32.87 mana/second, allowing you to use Consecration with an effective cooldown of just under 18 seconds.

Assuming you go balls-to-the-wall regen with BoW and Mana Spring (improved) you can get another 21.84 mana/second and 21.25 mana/second (respectively), allowing the use of Consecration with an effective cooldown of 9.3 seconds to break even. Naturally there are additional things you can do to increase regen (pot, LoH), but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's pretty safe to remove Exorcism, Flash of Light, and Hammer of Wrath from your bars now.

It is important to note though that the attack rotation I used gimps your DPS horribly. A good FCFS rotation would use a ton more mana and get less back from JotW given that you push back Judgements with such a system.

EDIT: If I wasn't clear enough, this is completely and fully raid buffed. Solo, small group, PVP... Ret is completely and totally fucked.