I have a question about SoCom. Can someone explain me how the tread generated by this seal work. Because I have some aggro problems. Lats time when my guild was on OS10man 3d up (we make it every week because of the mount), I was dead like 2 times on trash (I used AoE on every cd and my rotation was like JoL-DS-CS-Cosc). We used a pala tank with ToC25/Uld25 gear and I hardly can take the aggro from him. Maybe my question is stupid but I trying to improve my gaming as much as possible and if I taking the aggro from the tank every time we clear the trash, will be better to keep my old SoR instead SoCom.

There is nothing special threat-wise on SoCom. Be aware that it is an AOE effect (just like Consecration and DS) and if the adds aren't picked up fast or aren't getting additional threat by the tanks then you can indeed easily overaggro. If the Raidleader asks for 'no aoe', or if aoe threat (side damage on anything but your main target) is an issue, then don't use SoCom.

DS and Cons already did 'side damage', SoCom only adds more of that. We do get a decent amount of damage (and thus threat) done on mobs other than what you have targetted. Sometimes that's a bad thing.

Has anyone used the new SoC on the final phase of Mimiron yet? I am wondering if attacking the bottom/middle it'll hit the head.

From what I've heard so far the answer would be Yes. Kologarn sort of falls into this as well. No matter which part you hit on Kolo it will hit the other parts as well since he is considered a "stacked vehicle" like Mimiron P4 is.

There has been some talk about how SoC actually bounces though. There is the slight possibility that if you hit the body of Mimiron and it first bounces to the base that it won't then bounce all the way to the head. Same goes for the other way.

Can anyone confirm exactly how it bounces? I've read some speculations so far. Things like if there are three mobs in front of you and you hit the middle one it only bounces once (to the left or right, whoever is closer)

I can confirm yes. During Thorim at the start, i was hitting the worm, and while the other adds were a good 10 yards away SoCom was still hitting them AOE wise. I would assume based on that it should hit all three parts of mimiron.

I can confirm it bounces in a chain. If you had 3 targets in a line spaced just close enough to be hit, you would only get 2 procs from hitting the middle target, but 3 from hitting either end. If the targets were arranged in a triangle, all 3 would be hit at all times. Alliance can confirm this by testing on the target dummies in the exodar, which are just properly spaced.

totally agree!
here is a log of it. I was on vx-001: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Read the post again. He's talking about pulling aggro on the trash, not on Sarth himself.

Okay something that bothers me for quite a long time.
Fight length unknown or hard to predict, you engage the boss and both Greatness and Death's Verdict trinkets proc.
Considering you are using SoV what you do:
-You pop Avenging Wrath instantly so you couple it with both your trinket procs, but having AW up without fully stacked Holy Vengeance?
-You save your Avenging Wrath and use it 45 seconds later when the trinkets proc again thus risking to loose 1 usage of AW in the fight?

Since I couldn't find nothing about this I am hoping for someone to give me a suggestion here, or share how you start the fight.

Popping AW right off the bat, while a potential DPS gain, may not be the best idea due to threat issues. If threat isn't a concern though, pop it at the start if you're doing Heroism/Bloodlust midway through (2+ minutes in) or at the very beginning. If heroism isn't going off at those times, every 50 seconds or so from the start is typically the best chance to do it so make sure you know when it'll happen to get the most benefit.

Hi,
I have a problem getting my Divine Shield / Divine Sacrifice macro working. Currently using the following macro:
/castsequence reset=5 Divine Shield, Divine Sacrifice

What happens is only DS is going off and nothing else happens. Any suggestions as to what may be the problem here?

Thanks,

If you want to squeeze out that little bit more, my strategy is as follows. This assumes you do not know precisely when the raid will use Bloodlust/Heroism:

1. ~20 seconds before the pull cast Flash of Light on myself until my DMC procs (only ever takes a few casts)
2. Fight begins, start building SoV stacks
3. Shortly after I have built 5 stacks, my DMC will proc again and then I pop AW.

I have found if I can get the timing right, I get my DMC (dont have Death's Verdict yet) proc just after I hit 5 stacks. I prefer this method as popping AW off the bat can cause some initial threat issues and I get my AW cooldown started ~30 seconds earlier in the fight which may result in more AW as the fight progresses.

Well, it's easier to unequip and re-equip your trinket than spamming FoL
Re-equipping a trinket or libram will lock the ICD for its specific period, in this case for 45 seconds.

This is really the key. If you can push the cooldown of AW longer to have it sync with Greatness/Verdict without costing you an AW later in the fight it is worth it. However costing yourself a use of the cooldown is always a DPS loss, so in most cases it isn't a huge deal working on syncing it up. Kill times vary greatly depending on your guild's RDPS, so there isn't a hard and fast rule for when to use AW (though its usually good to aim for having it up sub-20%, I've found).

My bad, I thought he meant the spawns during the fight: lava spawns, the drakes, etc. The obvious solution is to hold back on trash where DPS is meaningless. I guess I assumed that trash clearing was too trivial to warrant a question so he must have meant boss spawns when you have to go all out DPS, for which I was suggesting SoV over SoC.

Meh, feel free to delete this post and my previous one. I hate to clutter up these useful threads...

Would soc ever out damage sov? Like in a situation like kologarn or something where you had 2-3 sustained targets that you were chaining to. Or would sov always out damage do to the expertise glyph and libram?

When you have a single target available at all times, I don't think so. SoV's proc (at 5 stacks) hits harder, and has a DoT that ticks every 3 seconds which also hits harder than a single SoC proc (though in fairness it can't crit). Right off the bat you're doing a good deal more damage to your primary target. Next, you have judgements that hit twice as hard with SoV, and cause corresponding RV damage with their high crit rate. Then figure you only get extra value out of SoC on CS, DS, and auto's. 2 extra procs for CS/auto's, 3 for DS. But this is for less damage and at a higher miss rate. The miss rate is actually a big issue, because you need TWO rolls (auto + seal) to get it to proc at all on your current target, and more misses means less RV and ability damage. And while I'm not 100% sure, I have a suspicion that if it fails to hit your primary target, it won't chain at all (this is just something I seem to have noticed off-hand via MSBT, worth some testing, and I'll look into it later today... I could be 100% wrong).

That's not to say SoC doesn't have a niche. As it turns out, most of the time target swaps are needed, you are in a cleave/aoe situation. Basically, the SoC changed filled in our damage on things like Freya's "detonating lasher" phase, or Anub'arak's Phase 2... something that was sorely lacking for retadins in 3.2.

I believe with 2 targets, you would pretty much have to keep SoV on both targets in order for SoV to be more damage than SoC (and you would need roughly a build time of 2 minutes someone said earlier in the thread). For 3+ targets it seems that SoC would outdamage SoV. Even though you get less single-target DPS with SoC, the cleave off it is pretty rediculous and the additional damage from the seal from DS (unless you are somehow able to magically keep SoV stacked on 3+ targets) will more than make up for the single-target loss.

However, as it has been stated multiple times, it seems like the only fight in ToC where you would really want to use SoC is Anub'Arak when the adds are up, otherwise SoV is the best seal to use. As far as ulduar goes, you really only need to use SoC on Freya lashers, Thorim arena, Mimiron P3 and 4, Razorscale adds.

I said earlier that my math showed it takes a very long time to stack SoV on 2 targets to catch up to using SoC right off the bat. That was seal only dmg though. As Zurm points out there is Judgement and therefore higher RV dmg to consider. I also didn't factor in expertise lost with SoC and assumed everything hit. I do throw an expertise ring on if I know I'm using SoC the whole fight. I don't know if there is something that models scenarios like that and let's you switch gear/seal to see which is better...

My guild finally pulled twin valks next to each other and I gave SoC a try. I wasn't impressed, but as you can see in the graph, I didn't get the full stack buff until the very end and half of it was wasted after the kill. I did get it as my opposite color during a switch though so there would have been no SoV stacks anyway... Next week I'm giving SoV a try and sticking to one target, not trying to build 2 stacks. Because of the color buffs this is more like a single target fight with some incidental aoe dmg. I've heard Ret does really well on this fight, so besides using SoV what's the best approach to DPS'ing this fight? Go for the orbs and get that buff as much as possible or stick on the valks and let the buff happen whenever...?
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Time off target is bad. Let good orbs come to you, dodge bad orbs. If your tactics involve colour swaps, try to hit beneficial orbs during any movement, but don't go severely out of your way. Unless it would negatively impact the raid (everyone's stacked and cause excessive splash damage from bad orbs), if you get the "wrong" empower during some colour swap, use it. DPS the counter colour before returning to the correct colour.

Ret scales well with % modifiers - counter colour is a 50% increase (150% damage), Empowers are 100% (not positivie if 200%, 150%+100% = 250%, or 150% * 100% = 300%, most likely the last) increase. So everything hits and crits significantly harder - which means 30% RV from crits is subsequently larger. Same colour is 50% normal damage, but if they're tanked close the splash damage is still free (and useful!) damage. So your Consecration and Divine Storm are effectively at 200% normal at all times (150 on one 50 on other).

Right, so comparing Seals, that's 2 SoC procs (one at 150% and one at 50%=200%) vs SoV (one target for 150%). SoCx2 = 72% weapon dmg vs SoV DoT+57% weapon dmg procs. Plus you'll get an extra 18% (SoC x50%) weapon dmg proc from Divine Storm. Is the DoT x150% = 15% weapon dmg (72%-57%) on every attack? I would think so, I averaged about 1200 per tick on Sarth 3D, which was a quick fight so the 12 or so seconds to build up SoV has a bigger impact on the average. Add 50% for valks bonus and that's 1800 average. At 2000 weapon dmg that 15% is only 300 dmg. Can I get 6 attacks in every 3 seconds to proc SoC enough to balance against the DoT? Not without DW

Then you have to factor in JoV to JoC and the increased RV dmg that results.

Clearly SoV > SoC on twin valks by a significant amount.

At the moment for SoC fights versus Anub, I've been switching in Vengeance of the Forsaken 232 over my wrathstone while using SoCom and the Deadly Libram. The trinket gives the same Expertise level as the SoV glyph, so you lose some Crit rating but gain about 400+AP on use, and i'm finding it works great as that kind of combo.

Another advantage - if you use this right before a swing and CS use on multiple mobs, it WILL go from 0-5 stacks within 1 GCD because each hit from SoCom, your swing and CS causes a stack, so you can gain a large amount of AP effectively in that kind of fight.

Means you can't really switch out the trinket to something more effective once your down to direct damage on Anub in phase 3, but it does help alot on maintaining a decent level of hit/expertise needed for the fight. I hope to get the Heroic version of that trinket, because it is fairly decent for AOE roles using SoCom in my opinion.