In the 3.1 thread there is a Q&A as follows:

Q: What does weapon speed do to us? Do we want slow or fast?
A: Slow. Every .1 speed slower is equal to ~30 DPS due to SoB/JoB not being normalized; so given a choice between a 3.4 203 dps 2h and a 3.8 203 dps 2h, the 3.8 would win. Of course, weapon DPS means quite a bit to us so there is no real comparison between a 3.6 212 dps and a 3.4 226 dps weapon!

I haven't seen any discussion on this with SoB/SoM going away. I am assuming this is because SoV has a similar dynamic but I thought I would ask to make sure. It just occured to me that if the reason for a slow weapon being better was due to a SoB/SoM dynamic that things might change when it goes away.

So, my question is "Will the best weapon for ret still be the slow weapon with high max damage?"

Thanks,

Xanndor

Yes. Whether or not the value of weapon speed changes has yet to be definitively determined, but it's safe to say its at least in the same ballpark.

I think that pretty much depends on whether or not SoV is normalized, which I haven't seen anyone test yet.

I went ahead and per the prodding here, posted my earlier suggestions to the PTR forums. If you would like to lend support or criticism feel free to do so in this Blizzard PTR forum thread. Hopefully with the PTR cycle still being early, we can get Blizzard to really give us a good look over.

They said they didn't want to revamp the class, but honestly, with the removal of a seal, and a restructuring of 2 more seals, and changes in the workings of AoW, and Exorcism, I think they are already sliding down the slippery slope of a revamp. Lets hope they take the time to be thoughtful about it.

I know this doesnt really count for anything I havent recorded any evidence but with high end Ulduar gear from Live to PTR Im seeing a DPS increase of around 600DPS single target Its also worth noting when DPS'ing trash it makes sense to stack SoR on as many targets as it only takes 3 globals for a stack, especially with lower CD of CS. But as others have reported above, I'm finding full abilities spam, only viable for 3-4 minutes before going OOM, still very interesting changes as of this minute.

I 99.99% feel that Corruption/Vengeance makes a ret scale better but that could just be personal opinion. Just putting on a few buffs makes a big difference though, and I'm curious to see how somebody possibly testing a raid out would do on dps.

I also am starting to feel that ret is not so terrible at pvp. Corruption and Command are going to be hard choices, especially since Corruption has potential for alot more damage. I've been dueling for quite a few hours now against a multitude of players, both horrible and very good and my opinion is that:

- Ret cant kill any decent Prot healing Paladin or Resto Druid. You could maybe wear down a Disc priest if fears resist. Shaman are bugged with dropping Fire Elementals and Earth Elementals on no cooldown so I haven't dueled too many of them.

- Sacred shield + Sheath of Light hots are absolutely amazing. I have watched my health go from nowhere to almost full just from it.

- Exorcism on targets is very nice. It's pretty cool to use on pets as well while line of sighting their owner.

- I feel comfortable in saying that a new ret won't totally destroy lower geared players anymore, but I could be wrong about this one.

- I still feel we need a gap closer or interrupt.

Gotta say, that sucks a bit because I really enjoy trying to be hit/exp capped

There isn't any reason to believe that SoV procs are normalized. None of our seals based on % weapon damage were ever normalized, and it would break the seal's scaling if it did. (interacting with haste or very fast 2h Weapons)


Verified on the PTR.

3.2 AS 2h
582~585 white
192 SoV procs

2.0 AS unarmed
362~363 white
120 SoV procs

1.6 AS 1H
454~594 white
151~190 SoV procs


All SoV procs are roughly 1/3 of weapon damage, regardless of speed. I had 5/5 SotP for this test, showing that the weapon damage proc scaling is unaffected by the talent.

Even if Exp in 3.2 remained as good as it was on live, with the SoV glyph of 10 expertise it would be easy to reach the cap (note the SoV glyph may change).

Relative stat values are only accurate for your exact gear and situation. A character in normal 10 man gear is going to get less value out of hit then someone in BIS 25 man hard mode loot. Loading one of the profiles from the BIS thread, you will still see hit being better then strength, but just not as much as before.

Reading that again only strength is of any decent use to, I started thinking why that is the case and what to do against it. The reason is of course that all damage scales with strength, and in multiple ways, one of them Sheath of Light converting AP to spellpower. And then I got the idea of Sheath of Light converting Armor penetration to spellpower(and lowering the AP to SP conversion). It seems so elegant, giving armor penetration the ability to increase the holy damage as well by simply converting it to spellpower.

Since I am sitting at home with headaches, I am not completely sure whether this sounds reasonable, but I wanted to run the idea by you guys before I forget about it and later am angry when 3.2 hits and ArPen is as useless as always.

i see u have haste rated as the lowest stat, wouldnt it be higher now due to the fact that using the wep dmg portion of SOV requires u to have5 stacks up first? having some haste would imporve the amount of weapon attacks and seal attacks too that would also increase our dps. just got alil confused at how armpen ranked higher than haste when it has such optimal benifits

You said it yourself, haste affects auto attacks and seal procs, while armor pen affects not only auto attacks but also crusade strike and divine storm. Also seal damage is nearly exactly the same as before with SoB however now we have the added dot affect and don't get the 33% weapon damage from the seal until 5 stacks. So therefore to consider the minimal time to get 5 attacks in, say 2 auto attacks and 3 strikes (or 3 and 2 doesn't really matter) so as you can see getting 5 stacks takes say a max of 10 seconds (this is generous really) so haste is slightly better for that period then before. Over a 6 min fight that is nothing.

My view on the values given via Redcape is that Blizzard should really look into it, they said that stacking one stat is not something they want to happen but that is what is happening to Ret. They want to lower how good int is for Holy however strength is always so high for Ret. To be honest i can't see how they can change this easily without some major changes which they don't want to do. So I hope they are not done in making Ret take more skill then just AoW and Exo.

That is just my 2 cents on it.

Haste has actually no effect on the stacking time until very high levels. Unless you can get your swing timer down to 2.25 seconds or less (Which requires about 30% haste with Windfury and Swift Retribution), you'll basically always reach a full stack when you use a second crusader strike (Assuming CS-Judgement-DS-CS as opening); of course that's when you're at the expertise and hit caps. Each individual seal proc also deals less damage than it does now, so that would also make attacking quicker relatively weaker compared to now, the seal procs from auto-attacks are a smaller amount of your damage with Seal of Vengeance then they were with Seal of Blood.

I am pretty sure about the haste value. Do you have any numerical reason to think it is wrong, or just intuition?

Weapon Damage and Weapon Speed are dropping in value. Not hugely, but they are down a bit.

Given that our expertise scaling and hit scaling are irrelevant (we capped ourselves anyway, you can't benefit from more of it) the only real question is whether or not increased Str scaling is more impactful than the decreased scaling of haste, crit, ArPen and agility. I am quite convinced that overall our scaling is slightly better because we stack so much str and because it is the largest stat on our gear. Also the increase in str scaling is larger than the decrease in the other stats by a fair margin. Unless things change we are simply going to do slightly more sustained damage, substantially less snap damage and have substantially worse utility due talent point pressure.

Str being so powerful is a double-edged sword.

If Str scaled worse, we would have even more reasons to pick up DPS leather than we have already, given how crappy plate is itemized. However, just stacking Str is incredibly boring.

I think that Jamora is on the right track - a new baseline ability (or deep Ret 1-point talent, similar to Primal Gore for Ferals) that gives us bonus AP equal to our Haste and ArP rating (probably with reduced benefits for Haste and Armor Penetration, depending on how powerful it would be). AP scales with all of our attacks which would eliminate the current issues ArP and Haste have due to limited number of attacks they affect.

That kind of solution solved Feral scaling, so why can't it work for us as well?

The new PvE libram is overpowered in it's current form on the PTR, and while I would be one of the last to complain if they let it go live like it is, I know it'll cause no end of complaints.

Personally I think that it should be between a 5% and 15% chance to proc each time the dot ticks, it wouldn't have 100% uptime which is what makes it so overwhelming, but it would still have reasonable uptime over the corse of a fight. I'm not sure how to do the math on it to determine the uptime, otherwise I'd list it, but those numbers seem about right to me.

Uptime would depend on "Did the libram proc off any SoV ticks in the past 16 seconds?" Over 16 seconds, you get 5 SoV ticks, or 5 independent chances to proc. The chance of the libram not being up is the chance of it not proc'ing 5 times in a row.


5% chance (95% chance not to proc):
.95^5 = 78% chance of 5 consecutive non-procs (22% uptime)

15% chance (85% chance not to proc):
.85^5 = 44% chance of 5 consecutive non-procs (56% uptime)

25% chance (75% chance not to proc):
.75^5 = 24% chance of 5 consecutive non-procs (76% uptime)


The % uptime time of the buff gives us the average value of the libram. (50% uptime would be roughly equivalent to 100 Str, but is somewhat better if timed with AW/Hero)

These calculations assume single target. With multiple targets and DS, uptime would be much higher.

Posing a few questions for discussion.

frmorrison mentioned that the SoV Glyph and its 10 expertise could prove valuable. However, redcape's numbers support strength more favorably as a stat over expertise. What are the advantages/disadvantages of expertise cap with these new stat numbers?

And furthermore what does that say for the SoV Glyph.

Speaking of glyphs, what do we expect to be our standard? I'd assume our glyphs wouldn't change from 3.1.

I'm curious about what is making the most impact on our dps, so bear with my odd requests...

Exemplar/Endo/Redcape, can one of you try modeling CS as it is on live (6s version) and see how much dps the seal changes are doing by themself? With all the extra gcd clumsiness the new 4s CS is causing, I'm not so sure it is actually providing any realistic gains. I'm also wondering what our dps/rotations would look like with exorcism on a 6s cd; so to make it clear -

- (live) CS(6s) + SoB = # dps
- (ptr) CS(4s) + SoV = # dps
- (theory) CS(6s) + SoV = # dps
- (theory) CS(6s) + SoV + Exo(6s) = #dps

As for Arp/haste and stat scaling stuff, remember that more stats to balance is not always a blessing (and certainly makes loot competition worse). We're really no different from casters (stack spellpower gems after hitcap) or even other melee (all plate wearers stack str gems, leather stacks ap/agi ect). A bit boring perhaps, but it works better for everyone - you don't want to be in the position that ele shamans were in during sunwell (certain haste % + crit % then stack spellpower while hitcapped).

Results from my own personal testing:

LIVE Seal of Blood



PTR Seal of Corruption


Both tests are with exact same gear and gemming. Stats on PTR will actually be LOWER since my JC gems no longer are prismatic and socket bonuses (and probably meta also) won't be activated. Seal damage on PTR is lower that SoB seal damage on live, but the dot from Vengeance/Corruption makes up the difference to bring the two seals to similar levels.

The biggest difference I see is that Judgement of Vengeance hits a LOT harder than Blood. Crusader Strike damage seems about the same with the lower CD and nerfed dps.

This was all done with the current FCFS rotation.

Is that over the same time period? I assume not because of the large variance in the number of consecrates... but regardless, interesting info.