As far as i can tell from reading the notes, it won't matter who is judging light:
"the attacker" = the player who triggered the proc, not the player who placed the debuff on the mob. JoL will work just like JoW now, only for health instead of mana. The only difference between the different specs will be uptime.

e:f;b

I agree, the JoL wording strongly leads me to believe that it doesn't matter who judges it: it's 2% of the "attacker's" (meaning the person who hits the mob) health. So it will be the same as wisdom: it won't scale, so it no longer matters who judges what (except for prot's extra debuff, so have prot judge wis and everyone else judge light, or vice versa). Maybe they will actually fix that too.

Now, why they didn't make JoL scale with spell power (so Holy could have the strongest version), have JoW scale with AP (so Ret could have the strongest version), and give the demoralizing shout debuff to JoJ and scale with STA (so Prot would have the strongest version) is beyond me. As a side benefit, the healer could have the best healing buff, and it would go a long way to giving Holy pallies a unique, low power, but raid-wide HoT (two things they've been clamoring for, group heals and HoTs).

As for the recent DPS changes, I don't see how lowering 1 cooldown makes our playstyle any different from "mash whatever is off cooldown." Isn't it exactly the same thing? It actually will give us more cooldown clashes and less free time to throw a heal (those procs will also be used for Exo instead now) or a SS or salvation or whatever now also... which is one of the best ways that good Rets can currently distinguish themselves beyond mere facerolling. So I fear it will have the opposite effect of what they intend.

And a 4 sec CD - when the effective CD will likely be at least 4.5 due to GCDs - seems odd to me as well.

Also, it looks like our AoE damage will likely take a hit, since we'll never have 5 stacks of Vengeance on more than 1 mob.

We could also have a situation where SoC is better for trash or multi-mob fights, and SoV is better for single-target or stationary fights. We'll have to see the final numbers (a lot will still change).

Hooray for them completely recapitulating and admitting that SoB recoil was pointless and needed to go.

Well, even a 6 second CS gets pushed back a little in the name of GCD conflict resolution. I guess a min-maxer would ask for the amount of haste needed to reduce Judgement, Consecrate and Exorcisms GCD to 1 sec, hence nibbling away at the .5sec issue a 4s cooldown creates.

I'm not terribly impressed with the Ret changes, especially as it really doesn't do a whole lot to change up our Rotation. The net effect is to smooth out our DPS, which is without a doubt nice for PvP balance, but not to make the job of Ret DPS more interesting. By contrast, I like the look of the changes to Prot and Holy, debates over balance notwithstanding.

I was under the impression that Judgement was not effected by haste, am I wrong?

I'm pretty sure Judgement counts as a melee/ranged special for GCD purposes, not a spell, so it's always 1.5s regardless of haste.

I have to say that I actually like a few of the changes. Vengeance is a fun seal and should be infinitly more interesting to use than Blood. The only thing that actually made Blood interesting is the fact it had recoil. Assuming they don't change the SoV glyph, that will help new 80 paladins hit the expertise cap quicker and give geared 80s more gear options, which is never a bad thing.

I like the exorcism change, but I don't see how it adds "skill" to playing Ret as long as the cooldown is there. If they were to remove the cooldown, or shorten it considerably, then maybe they could call it "skill." As it seems now though, we have to mash buttons more often (4 sec Crusader Strike) and nothing has really changed the FCFS.

Assuming perfect latency and timing, we still have an open GCD at 12 sec with a GCD clash between CS and DS at 13 sec.

Time Ability Used Off CD
0 CS 4
1.5 J 9.5
3 D 13
4.5 CS 8.5
6 Cons 16
7.5 Exo 22.5
9 CS 13
10.5 J 18.5
12 Nothing til 13
13 CS 17
14.5 DS 24.5
16 Cons 26

Now, what I think would actually give us a "Rotation" would be to drop DS cooldown to 8 sec. This would allow it to fall in always after Judgement. Unglyph Cons and make the Exo CD 8 sec as well. Then the rotation looks like...

Time Ability Used Off CD
0 CS 4
1.5 J 9.5
3 DS 11
4.5 CS 8.5
6 Cons 14
7.5 Exo 15.5
9 CS 13
10.5 J 18.5
12 DS 20
13.5 CS 17.5
15 Cons 23
16.5 Exo 24.5

Now, I don't know how they could go adding "skill" to that, unless they gave us an 8 sec CD attack, and we had to fit in Exo somewhere into it, much like a mage with Hot Streak.

EDIT: HTML fail

Which is a shame, cause I hate sitting there twiddling my thumbs, waiting for Cooldowns.

Which shows more skill than I think GC gives credit for. I just hit 80 on my new Belf pally which I rerolled with 3.1. Although I have some pretty good gear (Greatness, t8.5 gloves), I still also have quest greens and blues. Yet, I find myself out DPSing paladins much better geared than myself. A lot of people here and on other forums say that good and bad paladins are close and dps and I don't find that to be true at all.

EDIT: For clarification, my Belf pally is my second 80 paladin. I am not a new paladin player, as some of you may have thought.

Keep in mind when you develop your new rotations that if SoV/Corruption is in fact our new raid seal, we will be refreshing Sacred Shield more often. While it isn't as vital as it currently is with our recoil, it still helps being healer friendly (and we could even macro it to an offtank now.)

Additionally, is it possible that Seal of Command will provide more trash dps, since Divine Storm would take a little while to stack debuffs on several mobs? (barring trash packs requiring focused dps, of course.)

None of those would be worth it. Not sure what you mean with A though, as of now in Ulduar most Rets use Divine Sacrifice already. These changes have us most likely sacrificing some of its utility for a DPS gain.

This looks like the new ideal build.

Is it possible that CS will end up as a 'filler' attack, and we will instead hit the highest damage button when it comes off CD (as opposed to the current 'highest DPS' button), and use CS when we have nothing much else to do? A 4s cooldown is getting close to 'on demand' considering all the other buttons we have in PvE. PvP is a different matter, but I don't see burst being very useful if these changes go live anyway - Resilience reducing all damage in PvP without corresponding healing nerfs would seem to make outlast comps the only real winner.

Well, our great raid utility (JoL) will get nerfed, so no point of taking Divinity anymore (as it will heal for fixed amount). I will gladly go with divine intelect instead.
And the fact that they think that pressing the same button more often is the same as pressing new button really amazes me (not much surprising as this is coming from the people who thinks that SoR is the tanking seal).. not that i wanted new buttons tho.

I really hope they will remove exorcism CD, i already have shockadin PvE dps build ready :/ Mages beware..

You can still use Divine Sacrifice even though it will be a weaker version since you should be putting points into Seals of the Pure. Why you would waste points in Divine Intellect? When there is better utility? What does Divine Intellect get you? Few hundred mana and less than 1% crit?

There is still nothing saying Divinity won't affect JoL. It just says it won't scale with SP/AP anymore.

Divine Intellect wouldn't give anywhere close to 1% crit. Raid buffed it would give closer to .2% and only apply to one of our spells. So I wouldn't rule Divinity out and Divine Intellect in just yet.

Divinity increases the healing per proc you do to someone with 27000 health by a whopping... 27.

No matter how "bad" things like Guardian's Favor may be, I'm pretty positive its better than Divinity at this point.

I've always found Guardian's Favor to be quite useful. Breaking people out of constrictors and novas more often is a great thing.

This does not work. Like I posted on the previous page: Exo's CD is too long. You're trying to use it every 10 seconds or less. It has a 15 second CD.

Oh, sorry, I was experimenting back and forth to make an actual rotation. After seeing that it's still not possible, I simply forgot to update with actual values.

Bottom line is (as has been stated several times by several people): We won't get a rotation. We will still have to use FCFS with the same prio.

The only question now is: Will they make SoV or SoC the PvE Seal? So far it looks like SoV, but that might be adjusted. Generally, I don't like the idea of having a Retribution specific Seal that is rubbish for PvE.

Only on spells of which ret uses Consecrate and Exorcism for dps and FoL, SS, Divine shield/sacrifice and hand spells for sporadic utility.

I definitely do not believe that they are done with us. We and Holy are going to get much more attention during this PTR cycle.

Concerning our DPS: Personally, I would really like a proc based nuke. Our DPS ceiling is far too centered around getting our Wings off during a Bloodlust (which ultimately turns into a debate of whether to use Wings as often as possible or to limit its use until BL is called for). Maybe lowering Avenging Wraths CD to 1:30, but decreasing its uptime (15 seconds) would help with this. I also think that allowing our DOTs and Cons to crit would help us out tremendously. As far as the new seals are concerned it feels like (as it is currently stated) that our DPS will be roughly breaking even (with the new SoV barely pushing ahead of the current SoB). Make no bones about it though that our AOE DPS will suffer because of this (of which I can only assume we will see many more AOE fights in upcoming content). SoV will hit our main target for its full force but the procs off our DS will hit AOE mobs for much less, and getting x5 stacks on the same four-ish targets will prove to be nearly impossible (with exceptions being Kolorgan-esque style fights).

Concerning our Nitch(JoL): In a way I am happy about losing our JoL nitch. This way I can make sure I am using JoW always for 100% up time on whatever mob I am DPSing.

Oh, and to anyone hoping for a more interesting rotation that would allow us to drop Cons, keep dreaming; until Cons has its mana use greatly increased it will always be used as a means of increasing our dps. Personally I wish the devs would accept this and either greatly reduce its mana cost or greatly increase it. As it stands it isn't much of a liability for me in 25 mans, but in ten mans it becomes quite taxing, but not so much so that I completely drop it. Either way what we can achieve (DPS-wise) definitely includes Cons in our "rotation"; so, a decision needs to be made either way. Should it be a part of our DPS cycle or should it be changed in a way that it is only used for Prot? I wouldn't mind seeing it moved into a prot talent and seeing DS moved to unlimited targets.

Just a few thoughts from reading through the changes. I really hope they wait to do our Paladin Q&A until much further into the PTR.

It might be possible to use SoC in aoe situations. Examples:
Thorim:
Thorim arena phase: SoC
Thorim tank/spank: SoV

Freya:
Freya add phases (6 in total): SoC
Freya tank/spank: SoV

I do believe SoC would dish out significantly higher AoE damage than SoV (since it now triggers on every attack, much like SotM/SoB).

Of course it would, but the limitation of a poor mana pool would in some fights rule that out. I think Thorim would definitely be a fight where switching your seal out for a large amount of time would be viable, however a fight like Freya would not.

A lot of this is hearsay until we see exactly how hard judgments have been nerfed while in SoC.

We also need to see the mechanics for judgments while in SoV as well.

The funny thing is I see SoV being used in PVP as well. Its not as if it would take more than one rotation to build up a 5 stack on whatever player is tanking you. I think its all going to depend on how hard judgment hits for each seal; whichever one it hits harder for is going to be the one that is used in PVP. Blizzard might as well merge them into one seal now and balance around that. Rather than giving us a different way to DPS in PVP and in PVE.

Why is that? If we just ignore seal switching on the giant tree phase on freya, the fight behaves the exact same way as Thorim regarding seal switching.

I suppose but I would rather have more single target damage during the 3 add phase personally than AOE. The tree add is obviously the easiest to deal with so having SoV up for it is inconsequential, but if I am tasked at taking down a specific add when the 3 spawn then I want on command single target damage, but like I said that all depends on how much judgements change between seals. If Blizz means that it will do SoB style judgement damage than whatever, but if it does even less than that then I'd rather stick with SoV for the whole fight as constantly switching seals would be a poor idea. This isn't even considering fights like XT where when I peel off to help with adds that I love being to use DS to significantly damage them. Who knows what kind of fights we will face where our AOE is a great asset. Drop cons from our system (make it prot only) and let DS hit a higher number of targets.

I still think a 2 seal dps system is kind of whack, and I wish they would just balance around one of them.