The question is, why would Prot need SA with a permanent Divine Plea?

Because DP alone is not enough for them perform properly?

Reading on PTR forum, I noticed this post from Blizz rep (Dresorull) in a thread discussing SA for ret pali's:

Presumably this means more ret changes are to come ...

Buffing JotW will probably be enough.. personally I also liked the idea that someone shooted off in TBC where mana regen occurred when you dps'd so making it a blue rage bar.

Possibly Blizzard foresees an impending issue with mana regen with the new Mana Spring/BoW changes. I would be even more willing to bet that it's due to a Prot Pally's inability (whom out-gear content) to gain sufficient mana from inflicted damage/SA.

And also when a Paladin is off-tanking and not taking damage for the entire duration but needs to maintain a high level of threat.

I will be interested to see how changes to our mana regen are going to affect the value of hit. It can be harsh currently when a Judgement is missed but with the changes to SA it seems like something that could be potentially devastating to dps output, especially if GC's comments about increasing JotW return come in as a fix. I think it is a little short-sighted to invest so much mana return into a single ability but in the end, only time will tell how it all works out.

There was a good post about this on the Blizzard forums, actually. The person suggested allowing the mana return portion to be based around firing the spell rather than it landing -- so when Judgment's damage misses or is absorbed (like on those Cavaliers in Naxx) it won't be such a massive hit to our sustainability.

I plugged 30% bonus damage on SoR into my spreadsheet and it came out 50 dps higher than Blood. To achieve that you did need to dump 5 points into the holy tree and use a Glyph slot. That said, since recoil mana regen is no longer going to be a thing, you are essentially trading 5 points (we have more than are useful anyway) and a glyph slot (20% more exorcism damage) for 50 dps, which is a miniscule gain from my half and half 213/200 gear. As long as you can put points in the holy tree, SoR looks just fine to me damagewise and you get no recoil. All they have to do is up the mana regen deep in ret and potentially tweak damage numbers up a small amount and we are ready to rock.

SoR was massively overhauled. It scales with AP and SP both, in fact it scales very well. Of course you NEED the glyph for it to be competitive, but the damage is good enough with this change. The seal does not scale from crit or expertise, so swapping to it would basically mean that Str would pull even further out ahead of all the other stats.

2*2 must ALWAYS be greater than 5, because you are multiplying, right? Wrong. SoR with current implementation and the 30% glyph is in fact slightly superior to SoB/SoM if you have the 5 points in Holy. Make a spreadsheet and check if you don't believe mine.

Blues have stated (quoted in the last few pages several times) that they intend to tweak up Ret regen. Since they have that on the agenda, this Glyph change neatly gets rid of the SoB recoil problem everyone here has been lamenting, we won't need the recoil for mana and we have another competitive seal.

The prot mana changes are great, they actually support a protadin offtanking or building secondary threat which has been a problem for ages. Now they get a lot of mana from being hit, but a quite reasonable amount of mana from just beating down, which is obviously a reasonably successful model (see bears and warriors!).

Getting rid of SA as a global paladin talent does have the issue that holy paladins will be pretty miserable 5 man tanks since they have no mana regen whatsoever when they slap their tanking gear on, but ret paladins should be fine since our mana regen does not depend on gear.

Overall I am very optimistic about these changes, an awful lot of our concerns seemed to be addressed all at once.

The change to Glyph of Seal Blood/Martyr is quite bizarre though, I assume it is just an artifact/error that will be removed.

This is a very interesting turn of events. Given the new circumstances regarding these changes (in particular the SoR Glyph...) has haste just gotten a ridiculous shot in the arm as a stat for us? Obviously strength still takes the cake, but now that we get that bonus haste (mentioned somewhere in patch notes, can't find it at the moment) and if SoR remains unable to crit... has haste become preferable to AP or Crit?

My question is, If SoR is Blizzard's new "Ret dps" seal, what is the point of having SoC in the retribution tree? It just feels very strange that SoR would be the new direction for ret dps considering the fact that their are currently already 2 considered ret seals.

I assume you would use Glyph of SoR, Judgement, Cons. The Exorcism glyph is worse than Cons.

It is entirely true that if the Judgement isn't boosted by 30% then SoR still isn't quite good enough. The seal itself would still be miles ahead of blood, but the judgement would fall too far behind.

I calculated SoR 50 dps ahead of SoB and the loss of the Exorcism Glyph at 40 dps. Very close to a wash.

I highly doubt it will increase the judgement and seal damage by 30%. Blizzard has stated they want major glyphs to add small plusses to abilities. Why would they make a glyph that is twice as effective as a 5 point talent? The glyphy becomes too mandatory. Glyphs are supposed to be a chouce and it's poor design to balance assuming you are going to be using a 30% glyph.

Also it's worth noting, it looks like the glyph is "discoverable". It would be absolutely horrible if we had to start out gimp out of the gate waiting for someone to discover the glyph before we could use something they were balancing us around, if that is indeed the case. LOL.

In case you havent noticed, serious raid spec's have had mandatory glyphs since the inception of the idea. And past that, the majority of the good endgame glpyhs are all discoveries. It's not a conspiracy, it's just the way it was designed.

Very interesting. Buffing SoR (via glyph) to make it the new ret seal also solves the problem of bursty ret damage in PvP because of the lack of crits (plus, would there be smaller judgements? Looking up coefficients now). In fact, I'd imagine that's exactly why they're going down this path.

I bet the new SoB glyph stays exactly as it is (+30% SA) and it is formally assumed to be seal of prot pally OTs, the one group for whom the seal and glyph are absolutely perfect. Tough day at the office for SoB since its been demoted from workhorse ret pally seal to niche seal, but that's life. At least its still got a clearly defined role, albeit a small one.

I remain curious what they'll do with SoC, though. Maybe the devs are waiting to see if the loss of SA makes SoB recoil more trouble than its worth for PvP, resulting in SoC actually getting used again. I bet they've got a new SoC glyph waiting in the wings with some sort of increased PvP utility for SoC, but they'll only bring it out if SoC still doesn't feel like its worth blowing the talent point on.

I think a creative and balanced solution to seals with the upcoming removal of Spiritual Attunement is firstly, the removal of the damage recoil from SoB/SoM. *Very Important*

With that, give a considerable buff to JoW and disable Holy Light and Flash of Light whenever SoB/SoM is activated. Give it a 5 second cooldown to reactivate both abilities when switching to another seal. And/Or add healing penalties to both abilities when specced into JoW.

This will in fact dissuade most people from using the seal in competitive PvP. Which is one of the major reasons why Blizzard decided to keep the recoil damage.

Another possibility is to implement an armor reduction mechanic with SoB/SoM... possibly converting armor values to mirror Leather or even Cloth... somewhat like a reverse version of the Druid's Dire Bear Form.

All in all it would still hold true to the concept behind the Blood and Martyr seal, which in essence involves leaving oneself susceptible to martyrdom or the spilling of ones blood without actually having to damage yourself to produce competitive dps.

Then we can also look at ways of making SoC more attractive in PvP, like possibly adding an RNG speed proc, or a new ability which unlocks only when SoC is activated, like a gap closer or an interrupt.

If they make Seal of Righteousness the DPS seal, doesn't it limit the design space of seals in the first place? Why would you ever use any other seal over Righteousness, save Seal of Light and Wisdom? I can understand using Command in PVP but the Seal procs critting, but if Righteousness is doing more than Blood, doesn't that translate into Righteousness doing more threat than Seal of Vengeance? I'm not totally up on my Paladin tanking, but I believe SoV is the MT seal for Paladins.

At that point, the seal system almost seems redundant. It's either Righteousness for DPS, Light for health back, or Wisdom for mana back. That's cutting down on a lot of design for the class.

I'm not saying it isn't true; Seal of Blood/Martyr has been pretty much obsoleted by this change; where the recoil had the benefit of spiritual attunement regen, now it's just a penalty for doing comparative (theoretically) DPS. So, something has to change.

I think, however, it's clear they aren't done with us, and it'll take another patch cycle or two for the pieces to come into place.

I honestly think if we drop the recoil damage on SOB, add an extra effect into swift retribution, making our damage scale our mana pool in a smiler fashion to rage might work, just tweeking the % according to how many CDs we need to be using.


And, i like the idea of putting heals on a longer CD or something while SOB is active.

Assuming for the moment that SoR + Glyph is designed to be the new ret PvE seal, wouldn't that massively increase the value of Haste, to attempt to make up for the loss of Blood judgement damage?

And also along the same thought process, wouldn't the complete lack of SA mana regen bring up the question of Command + Swingtimers once again?

It would seem no matter what, unless there is a damage nerf to seal of blood, none of this matters. Everyone speaking of the new Glyph of SoB making it a go-to tanking glyph seems to have forgotten it was never a Ret glyph, at least if that Ret was informed. The synergy of it for Offtankadins is obvious, but let's be honest, given the choice between continuing to take SoB recoil and sustaining acceptable dps Vs. doing less dps but free of recoil is a no brainer.

Same crap they pulled with Command, make it 'almost' usable. I had much higher hopes of them going the SoCorruption route, and adding in a Deep Ret talent that allowed the DoT's to crit.

An interesting note when I mouseovered my crusader strike talent it says "an instant strike that causes 137 to 138% weapon damage" or something along those lines. I understand 15% is from sanctity of battle, but where does the 12-13% additional come from? Of course the libram of radiance is up to +144 damage as well.

damage bonuses are multiplicative

1.10(initial bonus)x1.10(art of war)x1.15(new sanctified seals) = 1.3915 modifier.

More dps k thnx, one HoT please. Yes, that was a no brainer.

Simple choices aside. Once those glyphs are available, lets get some recorded numbrs to support our claims that one seal is better than the other. Some good honest data gathering so that more informed decisions and opinions can be made.