Thank you!

After everyone had been traumatized by the SoV ramp-up nerf [myself included], I was extremely excited to see this compromise, and expected more gleeful jubilation with the news. Overall I think this is a massive win-win, where one of our own suggestions ended up being the solution Blizz found.

One last question I still have - would glyphing SoR be absolutely recommended for just the cases it's used? I can't see constantly switching out glyphs during a raid for minor trash, and don't really want to give up the current glyph setup of Judgement / Consecrate / Exo which are always in our main rotation.

While we're on topic of glyphs, I've come to the conclusion that we as rets basically have 6 points to throw around between Imp. BoM, Vindication, PoJ, and maybe a point of Swift Retribution. (basically we need to lose 1 point from one of these talents)

As the first 2 are likley mandatory for your raid, as is the last unless you run a moonkin, it would mean dropping a point out of PoJ would be required to keep the full stack of vindication as well as all the other utility like Divine Sacrifice among others. What do other s think about this option, or is there a better cookie cutter spec that im missing?

Until we know positively whether DSac is breaking 'correctly' or not it's tough to make this call. If it's only going to act as a 1.8k damage shield per person I personally would have a hard time justifying DPS talents or good raid utility for it. If it still behaves as brokenly as on live I think the best place to drop the points is PoJ, or Swift Retribution if you have 2 raiding Moonkins like me.

As far as I can tell DSac works the same on live and the ptr... to be absolutely sure though, you'd need the same conditions (and nobody is raiding freya3 or anything to test). If however it is working "properly" and stops absorbing even while in the bubble, I still think 5/11/55 is going to be our spec, especially with divinity working with JoL. After all, where do you go with the last 6 points anyways? I guess you could go 7/7/57, but I'm not aware of any fear fights. Much of our 3.2 speccing is going to be based on fight mechanics and gimmicks, so who knows we may end up with aura mastery or some non-sense. I've made changes to the talent section of the 3.2 post to clarify that YMMV with certain talent choices like vindication or swift retribution, expect to see varying builds based entirely upon what your raid is composed of. My spec probably won't be the same as zurm or exemplar or anyone because of specs like prot paladins.

Thanks for testing divinity, can you test something else while you have pvp helpers? First I still don't know how absorb effects interact with SoV dot applications (does a fully absorbed white swing still apply a dot, or not?), and we never answered if judgements stack. If you find time please test these out and post results.

Lastly, quite happy with the latest SoV change as it brings us to a middle ground between the initial 3s rampup and the horrible 15s one. It would seem that it really doesn't matter anymore if SoR is better than SoC and by what margin, because if it dies in 12 seconds then I doubt DPS matters on whatever you were killing anyways. SoR vs SoC is just a matter of "do you have a spare talent point to put into this?"... if so, go nuts, if not, SoR will do just fine.

Judgement is a melee attack - they specifically noted this "change" in the patch notes. Seals proccing from Judgement are intended - they proc from all melee attacks. Double procs are hopefully unintended.

Stacks should proceed as follows and match zeidrich's testing:
1 stack - 6.6 % of 220 = 44
2 stacks - 13.2% of 220 = 88 (within the 1 damage error margin)
3 stacks - 19.8% of 220 = 132
4 stacks - 26.4% of 220 = 176 (within the 1 damage error margin)
5 stacks - 33% of 666 = 220

A smooth increase of 6.6% weapon damage per stack.

We effectively reach stack capacity two autoattacks early (1 stack + 4 stacks ~= 5 stacks and 2 stacks + 3 stacks ~= 5 stacks. This is only roughly because special attacks will not balance and fall lower or higher on the spectrum). So 3 autoattacks in around 6 seconds. We still need about 28% time at 5 to beat SoR. Around 10 seconds on a single target and SoV should pull ahead. Half the time of rocket launch.

For all those asking when does SoV (3.2) pull ahead of SoB (Live) - it's very hard to compare. I'm finding JoV with 1 stack of debuff is ~= to JoB. So 2+ stacks pulls JoV ahead. Seal procs never pull ahead (1 SoB at 48% is always > 1 SoV at 33%). However Judge procs seal so there are more SoV procs than there were SoB procs. Finally, SoV includes a free DoT of not insignificant damage.

At rough guestimate I would say somewhere around the second Judgement of Vengeance you will have broken even or surpassed Blood. So worst case 16 seconds (you judged a previous target, then swapped).

Consider me content now that we ramp instead of rocket launch.

I guess you mean SoV instead of JoV.

So this means that the judgement for SoV is now:

BaseJudgement damage* (1+0.1*Stack_Size)+6%Weapondamage*StackSize?

Which means Judgement will hit for a LOT more once we have some stacks.

I approve of the new design in that it feels much more coherent, Specials proc seals. The proc for SoV is now 6%*stack_size*weapon_damage. It also stacks a debuff from auto-attacks.

Its a bit disjointed compared to how the other seals interact with specials, but its a lot better than the previous situation where they did nothing until 5-stacks.

I think having glyph'd+5/5SOTP of SoR being better than SoC is bad design though. If they want ret to alternate seals for burst and sustained you shouldn't have to glyph SoV AND SoR. SoC should get its judgement damage buffed so its always > SoR for ret.

Sorry, I should have been more precise. I meant the damage done by pressing the judgement button, rather than the way the game broke that down

Its a buff to Judgement damage though, which is good!

The ramp-up time will still be 5 auto-attacks (or rather, 4 auto-attack speed worth) but at least our damaging abilities will proc some seal damage before we hit 5 stacks. It should reduce the cross-over time for SoR quite a bit.

Do the auto-attacks which stack stacks 1-5 also proc this instant damage? From the description I have heard it sounds like they do, but does your first auto-attack proc a 0-stack, or a 1-stack instant-damage?

Greetings, first time long time.
A few quick questions.

With the new changes to our Ret Class, ramping up with SoV...does this increase the desire to have more haste? Meaning, would haste be more important than say...agility? (figure crit is ~35% or more)
List - Hit, Str, Exp, Crit, Agility, Haste
....to Hit, Str, Exp, Crit, Haste, Agility....

Understanding that we want to apply the Dots as quickly as possible...does anyone foresee grabbing trinkets with haste (use or equip) while we start to fight with SoV? ...Call it a Trinket Twist, and then swap them out for our normal trinks?
Will it even be worth it?

Thank you and dont be too harsh.

While stacking is certainly (an) issue of the coming patch, it's not quite as huge as people make it out to be. I think the value of haste will depend on encounter, but speaking strinctly from a long, single target burn fight, haste is actually slightly worse in 3.2 than 3.1. This is because more of our seal damage moved to a DOT (which stats like haste, crit, and arp have no effect on). On a fight with lots of swapping, haste might have a positive effect, but it would have to be a large amount of rating gain to see any appreciable difference in stacking speed.

And for clarification, JoV does hit MUCH harder with 5 stacks than JoB/JotM on PTR.

Trinkets, unlike weapons, cannot be swapped mid-combat.

The requirement of stacking to 5 does not appreciably change stat ranking.