I don't agree that we are dead last in aoe damage, but since there is no trash in the new instance, who cares about AoE (granted there maybe bosses that summon trash, but that would be rare).

I accept the AoE nerf for higher single target damage.

Retribution AoE may suffer when that is purely what you are doing (like exploding lasher wave on freya), but we have some of the best AoE while doing our normal single target rotation. Which for some fights (Thorim, P3 Mimiron) is just as good or better then just pure AoE. If they were to increase our pure AoE (without changing how Cons/DS fits into our cycle) we would be quite OP on those fights.

I understand your point, but I can't help but hear Avitus in my head say "We shouldn't settle in something that is fairly given to other dps classes".

Clearly, they don't believe that high single target dps should exclude you from significant AoE dps, and they continue to claim that Trash is a valid concern for raids. All I can reconcile in my mind is that they really do expect us to get better trash/aoe dps out of Command, and either it's not there yet or they simply can't be bothered to make the numbers line up.

It's possible that Blizzard's stance towards AOE is not about letting classes reach some kind of parity the way we tend to look for in boss parses, but rather to simply allow everyone to 'participate'.

That is, they don't give a lot of thought to who leads on trash DPS and if that leader 'deserves' it, but rather they just want people to be able to contribute meaningfully, insofar as remedying a complete lack of Shadow Priest AOE, or a 10 second cooldown on Fan of Knives still forcing Rogues to use single-target abilities most of the time.

Of course, this flies in the face of nerfing Volley for whatever reason.

As for Consecration, I don't see why having to use an AOE attack as part of our single-target rotation is a bad thing if we set aside mana issues. Warriors and Blood DKs also subscribe to this same ability use with Whirlwind and Heart Strike, respectively.

Divine Storm is better compared to WW/HS (note HS only recently added the second target). The best comparison to Cons is Enhance's Magma Totem.

It would be nice to have a cheaper cons that did the same damage (for 10 man Ret without mana buffs), which is people's issue with Cons.

Unholy Blight is another comparable abillity. Consecration as part of our single target DPS was an afterthought for Blizzard, and because the only things in place to stop us from eeking out the extra dps in single target situations from it is the occasional CD clash and rare mana issues I don't think blizzard will think about making it a more viable means of pure AOE anytime soon as doing so would mean a substantial overall dps increase. To me this means that if Blizzard wants to buff ret AOE it will mean either revamping the way ret is played so that we have more single target abilities to throw out there that outweigh consecration, or the addition of a new AOE ability, neither of which seem likely.

I'm going to assume you meant AoE dps (which boils down to the same thing though)
A combination of Unholy Blight and the new SoV would be best actually. Say, an ability that makes SoV ticks AoE.

Yeah dps not threat. I spend most of my time on tanking forums over dps ones, so you'll have to forgive me for that slip of the tongue. I'm not sure I can get behind the idea of making SoV's DoT stack in an AoE fashion. It seems frought with issues ranging from CC breakge in both PvP and PvE, Ramp up time too slow (still poor for AoE) or too fast (PvP issue), still tied to single target balance among others I'm sure I'm forgetting. And it may still not solve our issues with using AoE abilities on single target fights to get some dps parity.

While I am quite the fan of Avitus myself, you have to draw a distinction here... we are no worse off than ferals, enh sham, or blood DKs when it comes to AoE. Expecting anything different is setting yourself up for disappointment.

Just because they have an ability doesn't mean they use it. From what I understand from our feral druids, it's difficult to use because of the 5yd range. DS, consecration, and FoK are all 8yds. Swipe is only really good for mobs aggro'd to you as a tank, because that pretty much guarantees they'll be in 5yds. Show me a feral druid who tops thorim, IC, Yogg p3, or even a freya lasher wave and I will be fully impressed. From my experience, ferals only do well on single-target fights. Calling them unfairly disadvantaged is also not correct... they do hold their own. But the range of swipe makes rogues the unquestionable melee kings of AoE... by a massive margin. And ret should be beating them on most AoE situations. If your rogues aren't topping the melee on AoE fights (or any fight for that matter, rogues are rediculous currently), they are doing it wrong.

Does anyone know by how much they intend to nerf our aoe dmg? Are they lowereing the damage on Cons or DS or both and if so by how much? Or is it just the use of SoV that will lower our aoe. (Is Consecration even affected by what seal we have up?) If it is just the use of SoV that is affecting our aoe then what do the numbers look like if we use SoR with the new 5 pt we will be putting in Seals of the Pure? Or will it be worth it to put points in command JUST for aoe trash?

It doesn't seem that Blizzard is intentionally lowering our AoE, there haven't been any complaints or comments on that. It's a side effect of Seal Of Vengeance only putting a stacking DoT for (in my gear, using the DoT's coefficients) ~911 / 15 seconds on the targets of DS, instead of the DS hitting all your targets with Seal of the Martyr for 1k - 2k. Over 10 seconds the DoT would do ~546 damage, with a loss of at least 450 damage per target (more on crits) from Martyr, then it stacks a new stack and it's ~911*2 / 15 seconds, of which you get 9 seconds of until you get a third stack, and so on. Somewhere inside two or three stacks the DoT might reach Martyr's AoE prowess (really depending on crit rates.) Until then you lose dps.

Note that if you reach 5 stacks (minute long AoE pull? hopefully not), and even before that, but at 5 stacks your AoE dps would actually be higher.

So no, Consecration and DS are remaining exactly the same (minus the cooldown effectiveness as mentioned by Zurm), it's just SoV use losses, no, Consecration is not affected by seal.
Seal of Righteousness with 5/5 Seals of the Pure would do with my gear ~774 per target, no crits, so unless the fight lasts less than 13 seconds Seal of Vengeance is the way to go, always.

All math done using the spell coefficients on ptr.wowhead, 5/5 Seals of the Pure, and assuming stationary targets. When SoV's dot stacks it's effectively having two of the same dot on the target right? And so a two stack would be two times more damage than a stack of one, I'm assuming.

So it seems that DS is taking the biggest nerf since it is more dependent on the seal being used. Or am i wrong in that consecration is also affected by the seal being used? How much have they increased the effective CDs for DS and Cons and will Cons still last as long as its CD (Cons last 10 sec but its CD is also 10 sec)?

To answer the secondary question: assuming SoC is not supposed to double/triple/whatever proc, then SoR + SotP still appears ahead of SoC.

If you're picking up Seals of the Pure for SoV, then it makes SoR superior to SoC.

If SoC is intended to double/triple/whatever proc on certain attacks, then SoC could possibly pull ahead. This seems unlikely.

Honestly - are we really worried about trash DPS? Being unable to AOE effectively on a boss fight that involves it would be one thing. Trash is just silly. Fights like Mimiron or Kologarn where you can stack and hit each segment with SoV and Consecration will continue to show our AOE quite powerful, especially with Unholy Blight no longer being competition.


Edit to avoid double post:
You're not understanding. Divine Storm and Consecration have not been changed at all.
Divine Storm procs your Seal on every hit (up to 4 hits).
Consecration is not a melee attack and does not proc seals.

Since Crusader Strike was 6 seconds and will be 4 seconds, the effective Cooldown on CS drops. Since you'll be hitting CS more frequently, you may push back a few DS or Consecration and not hit them exactly at the 10 second mark - this increases their effective CD without changing their absolute CD.

Since SoV only applies a DoT on the first few strikes, rather than doing direct damage, Divine Storm will apply a DoT to targets rather than proc immediate damage. This indirectly reduces the value of Divine Storm on trash, as it likely will die before it receives 5 stacks.

I don't count Unholy Blight because in 3.2 it will change into a single target DoT (does damage over 10 seconds when you death coil). Unholy will still have strong AoE with Spreading diseases, Wandering Plague and death and decay (note two out of three of those abilities are a single target dps loss).

Counting Cons as an afterthought is a poor reasoning. Even back in TBC Ret used Cons (using different ranks due to poor mana talents back then), so the devs know people are using it.

I think the real problem at hand is like Exemplar said fights such as Mimiron and Kologarn where we are hitting the boss in multiple areas which count (yogg as well to a degree). Fights like Thorim arena for example are less important same as IC we link damage meters for Thorim/Steelbreaker only in those fights.

The issue is that Blizzard thinks SOC is viable enough to be used in these AOE situations. As we all know Blizzard's track record with SOC has been to always make it useless. I do not think they intend for it to be that way and that they leave it as a talent in our tree is because they are stubborn. Someone should do a fight like Kologarn on the PTR with SOC/SOV a few times and see if it is possible to get a good comparison of our AOE dps in those situations. That could show Blizzard that SOC is still useless and confirm some of our speculations.

Also perhaps on fights such as these instead of making CS priority we could make DS and consecrate? I Would think maintaining the 5 stack of SOV on all 3 parts of a boss like kolo or mimiron would be more important than getting in a few more CS

Agreed. However, 3.1 the start slow and buff approach bit them in the ass. They ran out of time and last minute changes lacked time for testing. The slower they move the less testing on the "final" output, which can lead to rolling into live OP and a justifiable nerf.

Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

Hopefully small, steady changes every revision will occur giving adequate time for testing and debugging. The fact that little has changed to Ret on PTR beside some tooltips in 2 weeks isn't heartening. This thread hasn't had new information to theorycraft and number crunch for quite a few pages. This with visible bugs such as double procs of seals on targets (triple with Command) and all procs (such as 4 procs from a DS on 4 buffed mobs) of SoV on your current target, regardless of range.

I'm not saying things are bad and not forecasting things will be bad. I'm simply saying that Blizzard's attention span seems to... oooh, shiny!


Last minute thought - anyone on PTR doing Ulduar? I'd love for a test. Get to, say, Kologarn. Have a priest mind vision to Freya. Target off priest. Don't target Kologarn, just Divine Storm 6 times. Is the SoV proc bug as bad as that Shattered Sun Pendant proc?

If it works like it does on live at this moment, it has a limit of ~50-60y tops. I put up 5 stacks of SoV on one of those Pestulent Horor's in icecrown, target one far away and used DS, it only did damage to them when they were relatively close.

Have I missed something or have we actually gotten ArPen on our T9 chestpiece? To me that just seems like a cruel joke unless they've revamped ArPen to affect magical damage as well. That would fix a whole lot of gear issues for paladins and death knights.

ArPen still only affects physical damage, and even if it did affect spells for us it's still poor because I don't recall there being any resistances to Holy damage.

Holy damage doesn't have player usable resist stat but it still suffers base resists from level differences like all other forms of magical damage.

Sorry being slow on this, but this sorta thing is funky to test. Anyway, my early conclusion that the "damage toss" has an infinite range provided you have LoS of the target. I just did a quick test in Black Temple (it's hard finding high HP mobs + good terrain) and was unable to hit Naj'entus from the ramp before his room, where I was out of LoS. However, I was able to hit Naj'entus from across the entirety of his room with LoS, a good 100 yard distance.

Edit1 - It does appear to have a range limit, not precisely sure what though.