But the key difference is that the amended Seal of Righteousness would continue to scale, unlike Revenge. It would scale with Stamina (also a tanking stat, obviously) through Touched by the Light. So, no, there is not necessarily a gearing point where it becomes useless.

But aren't the other tanking skills also scaling up via Touched by the Light? I'd think that a skill that only scales from 1 stat (only SD) will end up worse than skills that scale on 2 stats (Str and SD). Am I wrong in this?

You're right as it stands now, and I concede it could be a valid point. But fixing it is just a matter of tweaking the coefficients. If SoR scales more with the spelldamage than the other abilities scale with spelldamage, then it could work out. But that would require a fairly crazy amount of work on Blizzard's part tuning it. Possibly more than it's worth doing. But finding other solutions isn't easy either...

It does not scale with AP on live and is still the leveling seal, so I don't see a problem. People who want better damage while leveling spec ret for SoC anyway.

It doesn't scale with AP on Live because it has different ranks that the scaling damage can be attributed to. When you remove these ranks, you need to make sure a leveling paladin isn't going to see even less damage with SoR than in TBC.

SOR SOV and judgements scale with stamina i dont see where is problem. Both Stamina and Strenght/AP are needed for both warrior and paladin. Paladin make threat from stamina > spell power and from attack power. Warrior only from attack power.

But then you make all that AP from tanking gear useless with regards to Seal damage.

True. Didn't think of that.

I'd say "just use SoV for tanking", but a lot of trash dies way too fast for that ability to beat out SoR imo..

What was actually first SoL or consecration and other abilities scaling with AP or was it in the same patch?

To me it seems blizzard implemented two solutions for a scaling issue that only needed one. Unless you interpret SoL as a hybrid talent that's meant to help ret Paladins heal, in which case it should only give healing spellpower.

Personally i am a bit afraid that holy and prot will have to suffer scaling issues because ret got SoL and i really hope it gets removed or drastically changed. You can always change AP coeffs on some seals or give an other damage increasing talent to ret to make up for the lost spelldamage. Long term we'd all suffer from nerfs because of that talent, that much is obvious by now.

And please, saying "but our end game raid dps at 80 is to low" how can you even know that? Nobody knows what other classes dps will be either because we've not really seen the gear. Until we see what gear looks like at lvl80, nobody can do any serious theorycrafting on raid dps.


I got the feeling that Blizzard itself is a bit confused and unsure on how they want prot + retri to scale.
Maybe the next patch will enlighten us tough.

Changing SoL will lower Ret damage output - and not neccessary fully solve SoR/SoV vs. SoB/SoC dillema, only moving the point when SoR/SoV become superior to higher AP level.

Changing SoR/SoV coefficents will lower holy/prot grinding power (less important... or maybe not?) and prot aggro generation (more important).

Of course both solutions are valid, as long as we actually know, what level of damage output end game Ret pally should have (and with what level of AP Ret pally ends before next expansion pack and gear reset) and what levels of aggro/grinding power are planned for holy/prot builds.

Personally I prefer clear separation of 1h and 2h seals (with SoC becoming baseline ability and talent being either removed or replaced with something else). It's more clear for new players (who can be quite puzzled which of 4 DPS seals they should pick for certain tasks), it separates holy/prot scaling from retribution and allows to keep decent scaling of spell power abilities without making SoB/SoC inferior.

I realise that most of this has been discussed already but I'll rehash/rethink some of the seal discussion anyway. It has become clear now that the current scaling mechanisms are not working with current itemization without restricting the 1h/2h use of seals or changing the formulae so that you are seriously shafting at least one of the specs at some point of gameplay. This is what I think *could* work:

BASELINE SEALS

Seal of Righteousness:
- Acquired at lvl 1
- Holy dps seal and "quick" trash tanking seal, leveling seal up till lvl 10
- Introduce an addition to one of the holy talents that increases SoR damage by x% ("Holy Power" talent name fits this quite well). Seals of the Pure is a tanking talent and no min/max holy has it so that doesn't help much. Soft cap the weapon speed scaling at 2.4 (*see below*)

Seal of Command:
- Trainable at lvl 10
- Leveling 2h-dps and PvP seal
- No other changes needed


TALENT SEALS

Seal of Blood:
- 11 point ret, replaces SoC. If wanted deeper in the ret tree, change places with Imp. Ret Aura or Sanctified Retribution (doesn't change much the power of points invested)
- Main PvE dps seal
- Scale judgement kickback damage down to 10%

Seal of Vengeance:
- 21 point prot, replaces Spell Warding. Spell Warding effect folded to O-HWS and incresed to 5% (1% per talent point)
- Main PvE tanking seal
- Introduce weapon speed "cap" at 2.4 after which scale *dot* damage back by [(MWS - 2.4) * 30%] or anything similar


I feel this should do it. One more change is needed to make prot work again: normalizing HotR damage. If you normalize HotR damage prot palas are no longer looking for the *slowest possible* 1h weapon for best threat output. If we cap "1h seal" scaling at 2.4 this this is indeed needed. This would also make warriors and paladins share the same 1h tanking weapons (usually 1.6-1.8 speed).

When SoC comes trainable at lvl10 it doesn't really matter if SoR damage scaling is capped to 2.4 attack speed and is a bit more reliant of a talent (in case you are holy). Levels 1-10 should be more than manageable with this change.

Hylo, while your changes might fix the scaling issue:
For PVP as retri, i'll want SoCorruption against stealthers and high armored targets - or just to AoE in PvE. I certainly don't want any solution to lessen the amount of tools at our disposal, they are already few and far between - most of our seals only just became worth using with WOTLK.

In such a case, i think it's better to just change the scaling mechanics so the abilities take either AP or SP depending on which number is higher/gives more damage to our abilities - and then upping the amount of spellpower awarded by stamina/threat caused by holydamage.

Well, we've seen numerous attempts to fix the AP/SP scaling in this threat already but they always leave some glaring issues as a result. There will be tuning to those numbers but I'm pretty sure tweaking the numbers alone isn't enough.

About SoCorruption; you still *can* use it with 2h weapon, it just scales worse after you reach 2.4 or slower weapon speed (my example gives it the damage it does in beta now -33% if you are using a weapon of 3.5 speed. I have no idea what percentage reduction is appropriate tbh). This is to reduce it's usefulness as main PvE damage seal (where you are using 2h) but still being usefull for tanking (1h). For stealthers you use SoCor to stop them stealth/vanish - the seal still does exactly the same thing.

As for high armor targets... all our seals are holy damage and thus ignoring armor no matter if you use SoCor or SoC

The problem is that noone speccs 21 prot for pvp just to get the Seal

Ah, you are quite right - that would leave PvP rets without Divine Storm what I can't see happening. I tried to check the prot tree for a fix (you'll need SoCor as 4th tier talent in that case) but didn't yet come for an obvious fix (I either shafted PvE prot or PvP utility).

That being said, I'm sure there can be a solution for that. PvP retris go for protection tree mainly for utility after Divine Strength so it would fit the utility-value of SoCor quite well actually.


[edit] think I got it: PvE prots are putting points to almost all tier 3 talents (12 in total) so they can easily reach tier 5 without any points in tier 4. If we change the place of Imp. Devotion aura and Spell Warding (to-be-SoCorruption/SoV), that would land SoCor nicely to tier 4 and PvE prots could skip rest of the tier. Only drawback I see here is that it makes it harder for PvE holys to get Improved Devotion if they wish to do so.

Talent tree like this would cater both PvP and PvE prot purposes fully (better than now actually)

If you're proposing fixes that involve restricting Seal of X to 1h/2h, or applying punitive penalties for using the "wrong" weapon speed -- Could you ask yourself, "Is this fun? Is this intuitive?"

Yes, 1h only skills exist - but every one of them is talented.

SoR, on the other hand, is a baseline skill that's meant to be used with the 2h weapon every L1 paladin starts with. It's much easier to introduce a NEW talent/ability that comes with a restrictive mechanics, than to change an OLD talent/ability into using a more restrictive mechanic.

Point taken. So it basically needs to come with a baseline 2h seal at low levels.
See, the problem is you can't change scaling really without screwing over prot pallys, spelldmg only is not intuitive either for a tank that mostly scales with AP now. so if it scales with AP and it scales well for a prot pallly it will scale well for a ret to if there isn't any difference between 1h and 2h scaling which is basically the same as restricting it to 1h.
Seems like blizzard messed this up big time with good intentions. I don't think this can be done with simple tuning of some digits.

Then make SoC lvl1 seal and give SoR as baseline at lvl10 for low-level tanking - much like warriors are getting many baseline tanking skills at lower levels. You'll upgrade your SoR to talented SoCorruption/SoV the same way as warriors are upgrading their Sunder Armor to talented Devastate.

So...the short version of the last several pages would be "Don't change SoR from how it is on live"?

They have already reduced it to one rank and removed the rank based damage component (all the damage is now derived from AP/SP). I can't see that they are changing the whole 1-rank-for-all-seals back only because of one seal not behaving nicely. Besides, which one is more readable and intuitive:

SoR rank 4 live:
[cond(eq(HND,1),0.85 * (668.676 * MWS / 100) + 0.03 * (MW + mw) / 2 - 1,1.2 * (668.676 * MWS / 100) + 0.03 * (MW + mw) / 2 + 1)]

SoR beta:
[MWS * (0.05 * AP + 0.1 * SPH)]

The short version would be "there's no universally agreed-upon solution." We've been over a lot of different options, and all of them have at least some shortcoming:

- Removing AP scaling from SoR hurts leveling unless progressive ranks are re-implemented, and also changes tank gear scaling.

- Restricting SoR to one-handed weapons changes the class and its leveling progression significantly.

- Removing the spellpower scaling from SoL isn't even enough to solve the problem.

- Major changes to the seals would require a lot of work to re-balance.

The developers have levers to pull and changes they can make, so I presume they'll figure out something that at least makes them moderately happy, and hopefully us as well.