A nitpick, but that's our chest with ArP.

And renny, while the CDs may align, they don't align with the GCD, which is the ultimate problem here and the reason the new "rotation" is such a small single-target dps gain over the current live rotation.

I think it's a bit early to start "the sky is falling" comments about our DPS and mana issues. While I admittedly cannot find the source (so take it however you wish), I do recall blizzard saying they would rather slowly buff than have ret grossly overpowered and then nerf us (like in 3.0). Does anyone remember WOTLK beta? Divine storm doing 100% holy damage... I could walk up to groups of 3 of the opposing faction and nearly 1 shot all of them with a divine storm.

Give it time, I expect we'll see solid improvements in the end for PvE.

Going to blame my lack of full understanding on being short of sleep (Work > Raid > Sleep). Please correct any which are wrong:
1. DoT application (5 stack) still spellhit based.
2. DoT application cannot be dodged/parried.
3. DoT ticks always hit.
4. DoT ticks reduced by partial resist.
5. Proc (after 5 stack) can be dodged/parried, but still refreshes 5 stack duration.
6. ?? Even if dodged/parried proc does damage??
7. Proc can crit.

That's a relief, you cannot accidentally damage someone in the raid with the DS on 5stacked mobs bug. I do hope they correct the bug itself and ensure the proc applies to the 5stacked mob rather than current target.

Wait, what? There are times where it's useful as Ret to taunt something temporarily (non-bosses) and there are no times when it should be viable for DPS. Its purpose is NOT DPS, it's a taunt. They've simply upped the damage for snap aggro purposes.

As others said while I was typing this, you mean chest. Hat has haste. ArmPen is crap. So is Haste. It continues to be the fact that very few stats are good. Hit cap, expertise cap and what's left? If everything is dumped in Crit it has serious itemlevel single-stat stacking issues, so splitting things to Crit + ArmPen or Crit + Haste is actually better.

Also, T9 stats could potentially be placeholders as much as the art and set bonuses are, however this is less likely.

I remember the quote - you're not mis-stating or mis-representing it. However, remember 3.1 - we sat untouched until last week, sudden buff, went live with Exo too powerful in PvP, hotfix nerf. Let's hope for actual slow iteration on changes - the history of last minute changes and then post-patch nerfs is already too long.

We need changes from current PTR, it looks like Blizzard may understand - let us hope for 5 more weeks of slow and steady updates.

Indeed, whilst the CDs do align properly and the GCD is as always the main limiting factor, i took that into consideration whilst mapping out new rotations. Even with setting CS back 0.5 secs every so often, its still a significant improvement over our dps (atleast self-buffed) on live.

Try it yourself if you want. Losing the consecration glyph makes the 'rotation' work far better than trying to fit consecration in with it.

Besides, the overall dps gain from the 3.2 changes can't really be classed as "a small single-target dps gain". Most testers have confirmed an increase of 400-800 dps in comparison to live. Thats a pretty huge buff frankly.

Plus, atleast from a mana point of view, 5 minutes of sustained dps without raid buffs is still quite impressive.

If such a severe DPS gain is intended, it might actually be intended for us to have to skip some consecrations, especially if we choose to use some of our utility spells as well. Although, how much empty GCDs do we seem to have with the new CS cooldown ? If there is close to none, utility spell usage won't even be a big additional loss of mana, although there will be a DPS loss now if used in stead of a DPS ability.

As I think someone has already mentioned, JoC has a 100% chance to proc SoC if one is in melee range. Command is the only seal that has this behavior.

I'm not saying SoC is great, but the extra proc every 8 or so seconds could be useful, especially in PvP on targets that can dispel our SoV DoT.

Personally, I think SoC will become our PvP Seal, since we can't pick up SotP (to boost SoR past SoC) in PvP specs (due to a minimum of 17 points in Prot to get Imp HoJ).

It won't.

The judgement damage is *far* too low, and the seal damage itself is low. SoC allows you to swap easier, yes, but the damage is so low that ret really isn't a swap/burst spec anymore, it's more of a tunnelvision/attrition spec now.

Going to correct these in the same format for readability:

1. DoT application (5 stack) is melee hit/exp based.
2. DoT application CAN be dodged or parried.
3. DoT ticks always hit. (correct)
4. DoT ticks reduced by partial resist. (correct)
5. Proc (after 5 stack) can NOT be dodged or parried, it is applied regardless of refresh once the target has 5 stacks.
6. As a clarification to the above however, if your auto attack misses, you will not get the proc. The proc is independent of the "strike" that applies the debuff, but not independent of the auto attack.
7. Proc can crit (correct)

Also, there is no "severe DPS gain"... there is a dps gain, but it is marginal. From changes endoscient made to Rawr to model these 3.2 changes, my character will see something on the order of 350-400 dps gain on a single target, but keep in mind our AoE damage will be lowered, especially on mobs with low HP. I think we'll see some buffs on both seals before all is said and done.

#6

If your auto attack is dodged, parried or misses, SoV will not do the proc damage. Tested using a low level character on a high level dummy.

In all honesty, i'm not convinced that the dps increase many of us seeing was intended. It seems like quite a huge jump whilst blizzard havn't expressly stated that anything outside of the CS change was intended as a dps increase (due to more seal applications).

To answer your question, using consecration regularly doesn't leave us with many free GCDs. In fact, I was struggling to find spots to use exorcism on each cooldown. To an extent, this is actually quite a nice change seen as it means we actually have to think on our feet rather than just mashing cooldowns in a routinely fashion.

Personally I think this is one aspect of the changes people miss when they get 'chicken little syndrome'. We asked for a more dynamic and adaptable combat system. Whilst we may not have gotten a huge overhaul like some people requested, we do have to think on our feet with these changes. Fitting in an extra cooldown such as DP or utilities such as HoSalv will result in us sacrificing an ability from our priority system, not to mention having to make snap decisions regarding AoW procced FoLs or saving for Exo.

Hopefully, with the additional dps we'll be able to pump out, thinking on our feet and playing our class to the fullest wont leave us lagging behind.

Going back to the Exorcism cooldown discussion from earlier, a really easy fix for making it more like a proc watching mechanic is for AoW to make Exorcism come off cooldown if it refreshes the buff (procs a second time).

Judgement is coded strangely it is a short-ranged Ranged-type attack, while using melee crit/AP. I think that Judgement will continue to proc AoW, since the devs likely don't want to mess with the code, since they have bigger things to worry about.

It's missing from the tooltip (and GC's clarification) so either AoW's tooltip or the actual proc on judgement will have to be fixed for live.

EDIT: Disregard, I was mistaken.

Here are some DPS results doing tests. Both characters on PTR and on live are wearing exactly the same gear. This actually puts the Live DPS at an advantage since no gems were changed. Meta is not activated because I'm having a hard time getting gems

Live Self Buffed: 12:28:38 - 12:32:26 time to oom. (total damage - 783776)

Result: 3409.2 dps



PTR Self Buffed: 13:38:54 - 13:42:18 time to oom. (total damage - 748882)

Result: 3607.5 dps

]

Live Self Buffed with food buff and flask: 12:53:33 - 12:57:56 time to oom. (total damage - 934505

Result: 3548.9 dps



PTR Self Buffed with food buff and flask: 12:58:40 - 13:03:42 *I had to stop dps because a moonkin started dpsing* (total damage - 1206162)

Result 3962.0 dps




Some observations I've noticed:
- Seal of Corruption seems to scales much better than Seal of Blood
- I found myself skipping consecration for a cycle to regain mana, probably not the best for dps

Yeah I could have worded that better, I was meaning if your AoW buff gets refreshed from any source. I blame lack of sleep.

Ashstrike is correct, judgements are indeed considered as melee specials by blizzard (there was an obscure wowhead spell link that made judgements immune to dodges/parries). For our intents and purposes it is just easier to call them ranged attacks to avoid confusion, because no other spell/skill in the game is as messy as far as coding goes. It's actually likely that AoW proccing off judgements will go live, though it hardly matters anyways (yet).

Rurahk, can you check again to confirm? When I tested judgements, I noticed they did not refresh the dot stack - be sure to turn your back to dummies and test it that way.

Bakla, SoV does scale far better with STR compared to anything we've seen before, because it effectively double dips (triple with sheath) - the dot portion gets noticeably stronger during or just after a greatness proc, as well as the "sob" seal proc portion. Even redcape noted that his stat values reflected the importance of STR again.

If you re-read my post it states i disagree with the idea of HoR as a dps spell. I simply stated there is an easy solution to the taunt effect of it, and with righteous fury being free now it is only 1 gcd away from being able to taunt a target(non-boss).

Just fyi... easiest way to remedy this and aid in your testing is to transfer over a premade character. All premades have Jewelcrafting and are STACKED with uncut gems and dragon's eyes.

To be honest you cant really compare dps to live unless you have copied over your live character so premades hurt any objective dps analysis unless your comparing something other than live vs ptr dps.
I spent a hour on live and a hour on the ptr. I constantly did 1million damage on the target dummy on both live and ptr.

With the best rotation i could find for the ptr i was consistently 200 tp 300 dps higher on the ptr with most rng taken out cause i did tests over and over.
With the buffs to our single target dps and the nerfs to aoe dps we will be right where we should be tbh, and i am guessing blizzard knows this. I looked over the wowmeteronline top 50 for all the bosses and a slight nerf to aoe and good buff to single target dps puts us right in the middle of all the hybrids (dps wise)and still lower than pures so overall for ret pve this is a buff imho and pvp i didnt have a hard time at all, of course thats with 2 hots ticking almost all the time.

Thank you for the direct answers Endo, Zurm, and Ranjurm. Kudos to everyone else getting good info, too!

Round two:
1. Autoattack hits, proc occurs.
2. Autoattack misses/dodged/parried, no proc.
3. CS/DS hits/misses/dodged/parried, proc occurs. (Really? Wow!)
4. Proc suffers partial resist (it's holy damage).
5. Proc gain from CoE (and equivalents). (It's Holy damage, but % of weapon.)
6. JoV (Judgement) is still (1 + (%AP) + (%SP)) * X, where X is based on stack. That's clear on tooltip. X is still 1.5^5 for 5 stack (~1,61 rather than 1.5).

Again correct where I'm wrong, please.

I ask #6 in case it was dis-proven at some point, as that was my last understanding

So as long as we can stay in melee range we can ensure 5stack remains, since we will be using CS, DS, considerably sooner than every 15 seconds.

SoV definitely sounds to scale better than SoB. SoB was straight % weapon, so scaled on better weapon and AP. SoV also gains (partially) from spellpower due to scaling on the DoT. Arikah mentioned this double/triple dipping.

Anyone else suspect they won't reduce CS mana cost and intentionally let Seal damage be higher, hoping the trade-off is we reduce Consecration usage? Cons would become more like BC (except for downranking), to a degree a "mana dump" on single target fights. I think others are touching on this in the last few posts.

I hesitate when it comes to declaring mana issues. In my guild's raids, I often find myself without BoW/mana spring and a low JoW uptime (slacker holy paladins!). In a raid environment, mana issues can change quite drastically too. Keep in mind, your mana is going to typically be hurting more on burn fights than fights with lots of movement and target switching. Also, I expect most ret pallies will switch to JoW (due to the JoL change) next patch, further improving our mana situation from live.

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. No. It seems to me there is a second "strike" if it can even be called that, that applies the debuff. This is independent of the proc. So for each melee attack (white/cs/ds) you actually have 3 things. The main attack (#1), which functions like it does on live, a "strike" to apply the debuff (#2), and the proc (which counts as an elemental holy strike) which can't be dodged/parried (#3). Strike 2 and 3 require strike 1 to land, but strike 3 will proc if strike 1 does (but doesn't care if strike 2 does), and strike 2 still follows the avoidance rules (so effectively continues the 2-roll system of SoB). Strike 2 and 3 are entirely independent of each other, and are both triggered by strike 1.
4. Yes, it behaves exactly like SoB procs in terms of resists.
5. I'm pretty sure, but not 100% that this is correct
6. Uh... I have no clue. You are right about the (1 + (%AP) + (%SP)) * X part, but the exact value of X I'm not sure of. My limited testing yesterday was at 5 stacks the whole time.

I'm sorry if point 3 is hard to read/understand. It's an overly complicated and convoluted mechanic, not unlike every other mechanic that ret paladins have had.