I have a few issues that have cropped up since 3.2 and I just wondered if others have been experiencing it.

(Non-Informative Speculation)
Most notably last night working on Yogg-0 Keeper I use the Default Blizzard Scrolling Combat Text and it seemed very buggy when it came to divine storm. Many times I'd use it and no number's would show on the main target but sometimes on targets around it (if they were around). Sometimes they'd show on my main target and I thought it was a range issue even if my white hits were landing. Anyone else have this problem?
/end (Non-Informative Speculation)

I was also using Seal of Vengeance(Corruption) full-time in the tentacle/brain room because we assign tentacles and since I take the first on the right in every dream scenario I can get it down fine pretty fast (no where near as fast as SoB). I'm simply wondering is there mathematical proof that no matter how much time you're on yogg's brain that SoR would be better? Usually we had about 34-39 seconds on the brain which in my head I figured that's 29-34 seconds and thus SoV should be my seal of choice as it lasts that long. Am I incorrect in this, has anyone been able to see if they do better with SoV or SoR in this phase?

Here's one of our best attempts getting to phase 3 Yogg 0 Keeper.
WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay

Also in phase 3, as retribution in 3.2 I feel somewhat useless in helping kill the immortal guardians DPS wise. Do all the ret paladins simply tell their raid leader they'll be focusing on killing Yogg himself that have worked on 0 keeper since 3.2? I remember Zurm stating that we should always be on Yogg in that phase and leave the real AoE to the pure class's (Rogues/Mages etc) which I respect and made sense.

Basically I'm looking to make sure I'm doing it right, the patch has sort of thrown me off but we're all adjusting.

(Off Topic)
I'm really surprised Blizzard has yet to even make any statements on Retribution on the PvE scene or lack thereof. Having some sort of pestilence equivalent for our seal of choice comes to mind for situations like phase 3 yogg-saron.

SoV should be better for just about anything that doesn't die before you get 3 stacks up or so. Yogg's brain really should see a noticeable increase in DPS from SoV compared to SoR (also because presumably the SoV DoT will continue to tick after you exit.)

Here's a question though, when comparing SoR to SoV, are we also counting the fact that SoR is bugged and when judging righteousness we get two SoR procs and when judging SoV we get 0 procs?

It seems like once that issue is corrected (and judging righteousness only procs one seal and judging vengeance does in fact proc a seal), that SoV will be worlds ahead of SoR in all but the shortest of fights (mobs with like 12k health).

To somewhat continue the JoV conundrum.. I just judged Freya for an 11k crit with 0 stacks up. Will see if I can dig up the log after the raid is done, but it was such an extreme wtf-moment that I doublechecked that there weren't stacks up.

Our DPS in 3.2 is amazing... I'd even go so far to say a drop too good. I was consistantly beat pures on many fights in ulduar this week. Giving us a pestilence would be grossly overpowered, and lead to more homogenization. Swapping to SoR when appropriate isn't that bad, especially since you shouldn't have any mana problems anymore.

Finally, when doing yogg 0k, retribution paladins should be on Yogg FULL TIME, not the adds. You do a lot of single target DPS, especially now, and have an execute that greatly increases your DPS. Leave AoE to the classes that are actually good at it.

Here's how my guild did it (if I'm somehow violating some straying off topic rule, I'm sorry):

Group A: (Melee on guardians, keeping adds low and AoE'ing during Empowering Shadows)
Rogues, Unholy DK, DPS warrior(5 dps)

Group B: (swap dps who AoE during Empowering Shadows and dps Yogg otherwise)
Spriest, Hunter, Mage (6 dps)

Group C: (full dps on Yogg, only dps Immortals when Yogg is casting Gaze or incidental AoE like Chain Lightning and Consecrate)
Warlock, Feral, Ret, Sham (7 dps)

Here's a DPS breakdown of the kill (I was a baddie and got MC'd around 2.5%, killing 2 rogues with Ret aura). Note that I use SoR for most of the fight, switching to SoV only to DPS the brain or Yogg himself. Also note that you can still HoR the tentacles in P2, just not the brain.

There is a bug with SoV/HV. If someone else has a 5 stack, and you have 0, then your procs/judgement count as if you had a 5 stack until you get 1 up. Were you running with a prot or other ret pally?

No. I have always assumed double-proc is a bug and have never even modeled it. I've compared old SoB (no procs on Judge) to current SoR (1 proc on Judge, not 2) and current SoV (no proc on Judge).

As my math in the PTR thread showed, after about 15 seconds on a single target SoV beats SoR. After about 20 it beats the old SoB.

If a tentacle will die before 15 seconds (I hope) use SoR. I suggest: when you run to the brain spend a GCD to swap to SoV. As you fly through the air after clicking exit portal, swap back to SoR.

For brain room, I would always use SoR for the tentacles themselves and swap to SoV before I got to the brain itself. Since you are really only on the tentacles for like ~10 seconds, SoV is very inferior.

For phase 3 it is really best if you are on Yogg, but you are positioned in such a way that your Consecrates and Divine Storms still hit the Guardians. Rets also lose less dps then a lot of classes from Lunatic Gaze on Yogg since we have 3 abilities (J, DS, Cons) that don't require facing, and you can still use all of your AoE to hit the adds at the same time.

The two cases I used was with my [Aesir's Edge] for 2 hand, and the other with my [Constellus]. I turned off my Aura, had no stacks vengeance, and the mobs were Crusadeable.

2 Handed SoR (4080 AP, 1224 SP, 3.6 speed weapon)
Actual: 668
Expected: (WS*(0.022*AP+0.044*SP))*SotP*CrusadeAll*CrusadeMob*2HandSpec
(3.6*(0.022*4080+0.044*1224))*1.15*1.03*1.03*1.06
668.63

2 Handed JoR (4080 AP, 1224 SP, 3.6 speed weapon)
Actual: 1835
Expected: (1+0.2*APr+0.32*SP)*(1+SotP+GoJ+AoW)*CrusadeAll*CrusadeMob*2HandSpec
(1+0.2*4080+0.32*1224)*(1+0.15+0.1+0.1)*1.03*1.03*1.06
1834.95

1 Handed SoR (3748 AP, 1779 SP, 1.8 speed weapon)
Actual: 353
Expected: (WS*(0.022*AP+0.044*SP))*SotP*CrusadeAll*CrusadeMob
(1.8*(0.022*3748+0.044*1779))*1.15*1.03*1.03
352.98

1 Handed JoR (3748 AP, 1779 SP, 1.8 speed weapon)
Actual: 1891
Expected: (1+0.2*APr+0.32*SP)*(1+SotP+GoJ+AoW)*CrusadeAll*CrusadeMob
(1+0.2*3748+0.32*1779)*(1+0.15+0.1+0.1)*1.03*1.03
1890.35

As you can see the numbers match up exactly.

Well then, do you have a log? Also, was it during a Conservator/Mushroom phase? You do extra damage in the mushrooms.

This also makes for an interesting proposal... opening with Judge might be more DPS on short fights iff you're running with a prot paladin who can get stacks up fast on your first target... (regularly our tank has 2-3 before I engage due to gap closing, opening with hammer or shield, or what have you).

With regards to JoV... it just keeps getting stranger with our reports. Could someone do some dummy tests with JoV? Stack 1, judge a bunch, stack 2, judge a bunch, etc... It'd be nice to see what's going on here.

I don't think the numbers are really incorrect or bugged, its just a byproduct of how the spell scales. After converting all the numbers to AP scaling, JoB gains 0.231 damage per AP, and JoV gains 0.355 damage per AP (ignoring all modifers but SotP). JoV does 54% more damage per point of AP gained, so procs like Greatness and Berserking are going to have a much larger effect on JoV. So when all the stars align and you get a lot of procs at once, thats where you can see the really big numbers. They both ended up doing around the same average damage though, because a lot of JoBs damage was caused by you base weapon damage.

I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed this, but I haven't seen it mentioned . . .

Doing the heroic daily yesterday, which happened to be Culling of Stratholme, I was initially using SoR. I noticed almost immediately that my judgements (judging light, didn't try wisdom) were not returning any mana whatsoever, as if I had no talent points in Judgements of the Wise whatsoever. I would not get the base mana restored, nor would it proc Replenishment. I tried switching seals a few times, and even switched specs, and SoR judgements simply would not return mana. I tested repeatedly on both rats and the trash zombies while we waited for people to get there, back turned so I couldn't accidentally kill with a melee swing before judgement hit, etc..

Ultimately, I switched over to SoV and everything worked fine. Later in the evening, I went to do some other dailies, and using SoR I was getting mana back.

Seems that there may be some inconsistent bug with SoR judgements.

In addition to Selenia's point, you should note that JotW will not return any mana either if your judgement is fully absorbed. In fact, only if your judgement does at least 1 point of damage will you get any mana back from that talent.

Durrrr. This makes perfect sense. I guess in the back of my head I was thinking the seal proc (being a PROC) would occur after the actual judgement hit, not before.

Yeah, this point I was fully aware of. It was the seal damage hitting before the judgement that I missed.

Yea, like I mentioned, judging righteousness currently triggers 2 SoR procs, one before the judgement damage and one after, so judging a mob where a single SoR would kill it will result in getting 0 mana back as technically the judgement never hit.

The double seal proc on JoR makes SoR perform slightly better than theorycrafting says it should, and the fact that judging vengeance doesn't trigger any seal procs (it ought to proc it once since judgement is a melee move) means that if Blizz "fixes" everything our SoV damage would increase and SoR would decrease.

Actually this is incorrect. If you read the patch notes when they made the change to SoV, it is quite intentional that the judgement should not proc seals. In fact, SoR should not be proccing ANY seals, the fact that it procs two makes it FAR more powerful than it should be. Still though, that fix would only nerf the value of SoR by about 2-300 dps, max.

EDIT: I'm wrong. All seals with the EXCEPTION of SoV are supposed to proc ONCE from the judgement. So the loss/difference is even less.

Excellent, I'll update my spreadsheet. Thanks for cluing me in. SoR is probably superior for an extra second - still vaguely in the 15 second range.

Does SoV get (or double-dip) 2H Weap Spec? JoV get it?
Base weapon could be modified by 2H before SoV uses a % - does it? Does that % then get 2H again? Does JoV get it at all? As with SoR, I've been factoring as if it did not based on many months old data.

If SoV gets 2H Weap Spec modifier then the break even point (comparing to old SoB) is probably close to a whole second sooner than we thought - model redefining! ... or not.

And how many stacks of Pyrite were up? This gave me a good laugh.

Sorry, I took it as a personal poke coming directly after Endo's post, considering how frequently I bug people for logs and such to prove things so I put it right in my spreadsheet. As in, did he test SoR under mushrooms? Oh no, bad data! Does he have a log? Insert further hyperbole here.

Regarding 11k hits/crits.

Greatness procs 200 Str. Modify by Div Str and Kings. Convert to AP. Modify by +10% AP. You get around 835 AP from this proc alone. Convert AP to Spellpower. Apply both AP and Spellpower to base damage. Modify base damage by all our talent modifiers and raid buffs.

A single proc of anything can produce a huge swing in damage.

Thaddius Charges, Static Charge on Hodir, Mushrooms on Freya, Watchers on Yogg, Stunned Icehowl - there are a lot further % modifiers out there.

Paladins continue to scale well in such circumstances because we're % modifier stacked atop % modifier atop %modifier.

[edit]Potent Pheromones, Avenging Wrath, Wrathstone, 1 stack of the DoT. No Greatness and (as far as I can see) no Berserk. Crit was exactly 11532.

Still seems high, despite wings.

Wow Web Stats for a filtered log around the time in question.

I have been thinking about SoC, SoR and SoV (and I probably should not have been worrying my pretty little head), but is there a spread sheet around that will let us work out when SoV damage will overtake SoR damage, as I am going to assume there is a function of weapon speed in here as well so it will vary from person to person depending on their base weapon speed and the amount of haste. Or is this too little a difference to really worry about?

And secondly, with SoC vs SoR I know that SoC is meant to overtake SoR when in a lot of 3.2 gear, but are there any points earlier on in the endgame when SoC will out DPS SoR. After all SoC is based off weapon damage but SoR is based off AP and SP. The relationship between weapon damage and AP/SP is not completely linked. A +str, low damage range weapon I assume skews things in the favor of SoR, but a +AP, high damage range weapon might push things towards SoC. Or is the gap between the two seals and their judgements so great that this never comes into effect? And does crit come into this as well?

I ask because when I went from a worldcarver to earthshaper my weapon damage range increase by about 150 but my AP only increased by 80. And in the same regearing I also gained more than 3% crit. This would seem to have buffed SoC by considerably more than it buffed SoR. However my math has been failing as I always get SoC coming out on top, even with worldcarver so I wanted to check with people who know what they are doing.

I implemented that in Rawr, and it will be included in the next release.

I don't think there is any point where a proper SoR setup (GSoR and SotP) will do less dps then SoC. Even with just SotP it is far ahead of SoC. Though you can always use Rawr/spreadsheets to find out.

Thank you for the reply, it is something I have been looking forward to being able to test properly.

You keep pointing out the use of GSoR but when exactly do you plan on using the glyph over any of the other majors? Obviously won't be switching mid fights, and most fights there will be areas where you'll want to use Vengeance/Corruption. So when figuring out if Command>Righteousness. Probably best not to include the glyph in those calculations.