Then buff TbtL. As the previous poster noted yes, everything (save heals) scale with AP and SP now, and thats great, but I just dont see a reason for SoR/SoV to have that AP coefficient if your going to give talents which grant spell power. I think TbtL and SoL are fantastic talents which the class has needed for a long time it just seems like its to much to fix the scaling problems twice.

I guess I just keep agreeing with ZulazeeluIcecrown, but reverting SoR to how it is on live and buffing TbtL seem to be the best solutions to me as well.

So, the issue right now is that SoR scales better than SoB and SoC. Would it not make sense to simply adjust SoR's coefficient to be the same or possibly lower than SoC and SoB?

If the coefficient was the same SoC and SoB, but the later also scale with weapon damage, would that fix things?

No, because SoR is the levelling Seal, and thus needs a reasonably high AP coefficient in order to provide damage from levels 1 to 64. Remember that levelling is entirely AP, even for Holy paladins, with no SP.

Another idea is to introduce another source of damage for levelling paladins. Perhaps a weak Strike that does like 40% weapon damage as Holy, learned at level 8, maybe applies the Vindication effect. Since levelling paladins would have another damage source, we could lower the damage done by SoR without hurting overall damage.

Then have the weak Strike, Crusader Strike, Hammer of the Righteous, and Holy Shock all share the same 6s cooldown, so the max level paladin doesn't have an extra action. Essentially, each tree would be able to "upgrade" the weak Strike with their own specialized version.

I liked the idea when you blogged and like it still. I hope you've suggested it on the beta forums.

Numbers for SoR and SoB dps. (I'm ignoring SoV and SoC for the moment; the way I see it if SoR and SoB scaling can be fixed, then bringing the other two into line won't be hard.)

Assuming:

• Flat multipliers like Vengeance, Crusade, etc are the same for both specs and can be ignored
• 3.5-speed weapon, because it's a normal value for 2-h weapons and it makes the math easier
• Full 2-h spec talent, which boosts weapon damage, but does not directly boost seal damage.
• No haste
• Crit properties:
  • 25% melee crit rate and 5/5 Fanaticism; hence, 50% judgement crit rate
  • 5/5 Righteous Vengeance, so Judgements crit for +125% damage.
  • Hence, the following crit factors:
    • SoR: 1.000 (doesn't crit)
    • JoR: 1.625 (50% crit rate for +125% damage)
    • SoB: 1.250 (25% crit rate)
    • JoB: 1.625 (50% crit rate for +125% damage)
• Instant strikes:
  • 10 Crusader Strikes per minute
  • 5 Divine Storms per minute (assuming cooldown sync issues force one out)
  • Hence, 15 instant strikes per minute, totalling 52.5 seconds of extra seal time, or 87.5% extra seal dps from instants.
• 9 second Judgement CD to sync up with 6-second CS cooldown, hence 20/3 judgements per minute, or 1/9 judgement per second

So:


SoR (without SotP):

Seal dps = (0.05*AP + 0.10*SP)*1.875*1.0 = 0.0938*AP + 0.1875*SP

Judgement dps = (0.45*AP + 0.73*SP)/9*1.625 = 0.0813*AP + 0.1318*SP

Total SoR dps = 0.1750*AP + 0.3193*SP


Adding 5/5 SotP just increases this by 15%, so:

Total SoR dps with 5/5 SotP = 0.2013*AP + 0.3672*SP


SoB:

Seal dps = 0.35*1.06*WepDPS*1.875*1.25 = 0.35*1.06*WepBaseDPS*1.875*1.25 + 0.35*1.06*AP/14*1.875*1.25

Seal dps = 0.8695*WepBaseDPS + 0.0621*AP

Judgement dps = (0.45*1.06*WepDPS*3.5 + 0.36*AP + 0.58*SP)/9*1.625

Judgement dps = (0.45*1.06*WepBaseDPS*3.5 + 0.4793*AP + 0.58*SP)/9*1.625

Judgement dps = 0.3014*WepBaseDPS + 0.0865*AP + 0.01047*SP

Total SoB dps = 1.1709*WepBaseDPS + 0.1486*AP + 0.01047*SP


So there you go; unless I've screwed up the math (always a possibility) that's how the seals scale.

If SoL doesn't enter the picture (i.e., no spellpower at all), the crossover point where SoB/JoB do the same dps as SoR/JoR is when the ratio of AP to base weapon dps is 22.2. If you have a weapon with 186.5 dps (like the new Titansteel Destroyer), then you need 4144AP to make SoR better than SoB. That's a number you can reach in TBC gear with raid buffs (albeit the very highest-level TBC gear) and it'll probably be not too difficult to reach at level 80. And remember, that's without even considering SoL.

So frankly, even eliminating the SoL damage scaling entirely won't be enough to change the fact that SoR scales better than SoB.

If you nerfed SoR by 10% while leaving the judgement damage untouched, the ratio goes up to 27.9, meaning you'd need 5200AP to make SoR better than SoB.

If you nerfed SoR by 20% while leaving the judgement damage untouched, the ratio goes up to, 37.5 meaning you'd need almost exactly 7000AP to make SoR better than SoB.

If you nerfed SoR by 30% while leaving the judgement damage untouched, the ratio goes up to, 57.4 meaning you'd need almost over 10k AP to make SoR better than SoB. It's doubtful you'd get that much AP without also getting a weapon upgrade, which would increase the required AP to cross over by a good bit.

TLDR: Basically, if they want to do it, they could make SoB always better than SoR for Ret paladins by eliminating the damage portion of SoL (i.e., say that SoL only increases spellpower for healing spells) and also by reducing SoR damage by a flat 30% while leaving its judgement damage unchanged. Even 20% might be enough depending on what level 80 gear looks like.

I like this idea too, actually, combined with the suggestion of removing all AP scaling from SoR and buffing TbtL (100% isn't necessarily the right number, but 30% would be too low with no AP scaling on SoR). It allows you to retain the streamlined single-rank version of all the Seals without gutting leveling.

Not sure about 2-h spec, actually. I was assuming it boosted SoR damage, but you're right, the language looks like it doesn't. That might open up a little more daylight for balancing. I'll modify the post after I test.

EDIT: Yep, 2-h spec affects "weapon damage" but not seal damage (except when seal damage is derived from weapon damage). I'll update the math post soon.

On live, SoR benefits, JoR does not.


On a slight tangent, I always thought the main reason CS lost its SP coefficient was to make room for a AP->SP talent to add spell scaling WITHOUT increasing damage. It's kinda funny then, that they put AP/SP dual scaling on all of our damage abilities and created our current problem.

Prot needs SoR/SoV to scale with AP in order for their gear to be sucessfully combined with Warriors/DKs. Simply buffing TbtL and removing the AP coefficients isn't a workable option because it prevents Tankadins from making tradeoffs towards threat-focussed gear where needed. It also would mean that a huge portion of itemization points on tankadin gear (based on what we've seen from WotLK so far) would be completely wasted.

Personally, I've been advocating simply removing TbtL and having Tankadins completely dependent on AP and not SP as the crossover situation causes all kinds of potential for balancing error, and going SP only no longer makes sense in a shared-itemization world.

what about holy who need SP scaling of abilities for soloing?

How about just having paladin abilities scale with either AP or spell damage, but not both? Just take whichever is better.

Yeah, that's the one thing keeping SP coeffs from being removed SoV/SoR altogether, but simply removing TbtL and SoL makes that not a problem: Tankadins and Retadins simply wear their AP gear and don't pay any attention to the SP coeff (because SP gear itself wouldn't be worth using for them), and the Holy Pallies take advantage of the SP scaling for their solo'ing needs.

I can't understand why they haven't done that. When I first heard of AP/SP scaling of seals and judgements, this is the solution I thought Blizzard picked.

Huu.. No ? I mean, I was only talking about the seal system.

This "wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=41257" is the only item with that kind of iLevel that I have seen. The DPS on the 1h dps mace is too low for some reason.

Updated the "big math" post above to account for 2-h spec affecting only weapon damage. Basically, if they change SoL so that it's spellpower only applies to healing, and then nerf SoR dps by 20-30%, that'll balance the scaling.

Also, just tested on beta: Shield spec doesn't affect block value gained from strength, only the shield's innate block value and the bonus from explicit "block value" itemization.

Man, that makes Redoubt and Shield Spec almost completely unattractive.

I have yet to see a valid argument for why things need to be scaled back.

There should be nothing wrong with our original damage seal to be our best damage seal. It is not uncommon for classes to continue to use their very first nuke as their primary nuke endgame.

All this talking about it being for leveling does not make sense. SoB causes damage to us giving us additional longevity in PvE. SoC has increased (and somewhat controllable) burst damage. SoV can cause damage while we not focused on the target. The only think SoR has going for it is damage.

Here's another easy SoR solution that has been suggested a number of times in this thread: give it bonus threat, like Heroic Strike has, and scale back the damage coefficients.

And here's the response which also has been posted multiple times in this thread: Your solution makes it harder to level.

What about looking at seal scaling through crit?
Bringing JoR/JoV back to 150% crit damage would probably make a fairly large difference for retri while barely affecting anything else as far as I can see.
Changing Righteous Vengeance to affect all crits again (in particular SoC/SoB) could also make SoR/SoV less desireable for deep retri.

Possibly some kind of spelldamage coefficient SoB/SoC (personally I'd like to see it mainly for the latter, just to let our talented seal outperform a baseline one, or at least be on par for sustained dps) to make Sheath have a bigger impact on those could be good as well, but I don't really mind too much either way.

How on Earth would it be completely wasted? Consecration, Holy Shield, Hammer of the Righteous, and even Shield of the Righteous (via Strength -> Block Value) would all continue to scale with the Strength on tanking gear. Consecration, currently, is the number one source of threat for tanking. How would making Seal of Righteousness not scale with AP cause "a huge portion of itemization points on tankadin gear" to become "completely wasted"?

Excluding specific tanking skills from scaling with AP seems to go against everything Blizzard wants to change for tanks in this expansion. Every Warrior tanking skill but Revenge (I am confident this will get fixed in the Warrior patch) scales with AP - even Sunder Armor which doesn't even do damage. Removing one or two skills from that list could cause problems later on when you have loads of AP in Tier 10 or whatever which would make balancing TPS for all tanks a problem for Blizz because Paladins and Warriors are now the only two tanks that don't scale fully with AP.

The more Strength you get, the less worth SoR/Revenge becomes. Now take this to the extremes, and pretend you run around with 10k AP. Will it be worth wasting a GCD on judging SoR by then when every other threat move outscales it? What about 4k AP? 3k AP? Somewhere around those lines there will be a breaking point for JoR where it becomes less threat per GCD than other abilities. Do we really want that?