This was something I had experimented with and while it does seem to have just that one use, that particular use is very nice. It still won't be as much dps as a DMC:G and a Death's choice/verdit combo but it might be worth picking up for the near future. Most other DPS I've seen stay away from this trinket entirely so it's pretty much up for grabs every time it drops.

Are you doing okay with the swap there? While half the night tonight I was having some higher than normal MS issues, I'm finding myself only getting up to about 6.9k on 25(h) when I swap to SoC and even bother with the smaller adds. The other times I was just dropping consecrate on them and using DS, leaving SoV up the whole time pulling about 7.3k. It could just be I was having a rough night, but I have not found my niche on this fight glyph or seal wise, and am landing at about 10th every single time.

We are getting to p3 consistently now however, so I'll have a bit more face time with p2 as we work on this Swarm vs. healers thing.

Its been my experience that Seal of Command is 100% useless on every Coliseum boss including Hardmode Anub 25. Part of it might just be how my guild does the boss (positioning of Anub and burrowers).

SoC will do great if the burrowers are being pulled to be under or right next to anub. You can then stay focussed on Anub and if you position yourself right, hit both adds as well with SoC procs (CS+white), DS, and Consecrations. it works great in Anub normal. Can't say how it works out for Anub HM though :p

If adds are tanked away from anub, you end up with less targets to hit and thus lower dps. A lot of classes have AOE built in to their normal DPS rotation or have a means to do aoe damage by changing their rotations. Tanking them away from anub you loose that advantage, and on anub at least, every damage done on any target does matter, everything does need to die afterall.

I found this interesting enough to note, Seal of Command procs from melees and Crusader Strike are recorded differently from Command procs from Divine Storm in parsing tools much like how MH/OH hits with certain abilities are tracked (Obliterate, Mutilate, Killing Spree, etc).

Here's a World of Logs from Sept 30th to confirm.

56 Auto-attacks
29 Crusader Strikes
216 Command procs (expected 170-255) from CS+AA

30 Divine Storm hits
30 Command procs from DS

On the other hand, it commits you to using SoCom for the whole fight because you can't swap trinks in combat.

There is a case to be made for picking up [Grievance] - or more realistically for most of us, [Sharpened Obsidian Edged Blade] - as a weapon switch for SoCom. However, they're both close enough to the equivalent versions of Justicebringer/DBB that you'd do as well or better capping yourself with two other pieces and swapping to Glyph of Exo.

Has anyone considered if seal switching is back on the cards or not for fights like Anub heroic? Our recent 10-man raids have been relying on using cleave damage from the melee in addition to the ranged dps going all-out on the adds, which for me means switching to SoCommand. Is it worth taking a dps loss from switching approximately every 12 seconds to renew the Blood Corruption stack on the boss, rather than staying with Command entirely till the adds are down? This is currently taking our 10-man raid group about 30 (ish) seconds to get the first wave down.

I disagree. There is still an embargo regarding strat discussion for Anub'arak 25H, so I won't go into details. Needless to say, a combination of SoV and SoC at various points has proven the most effective for me and our second paladin, after much testing.

And to be perfectly honest, there is no reason to be set in stone entirely either way. As my earlier post here points out, there are many reasons why SoV is still very strong even in AoE situations.

And using two different people with different characters, playstyle, and skill is NEVER a good way to prove or disprove a mathematical problem.

The question is not which Seal does more damage overall, but which Seal inflicts more relevant damage. The faster Anub loses hp, the better (to put it simple (I'm talking Anub non-hc)), and there is enough "cleave" damage to go around even with SoV, through DS and Consecration. As many of us already pointed out, SoC does in most cases damage, that is absolutely not relevant to the cause, best example: Adds on Emalon, where the cleave damage serves no purpose at all but to inflate your dps.

[edit: What I'm trying to say is that dps numbers alone do not indicate which Seal is more useful, but perhaps rather the actual damage on targets that matter.]

Seal switching would completely lock out any libram, if you twisted them with the corresponding Seals. Question is here: will the SoVlibrambuff stay up, even if you don't have SoV up (and don't libramtwist of course)?

I don't have any logs to hand, but as far as I remember the buff activates (with an ICD of 6 seconds) every time Blood Corruption procs - so there's no need to libram twist as long as the DoT is kept up.

I'll test this tonight.

That's what I'm trying to say: you can't libramtwist because the buff will be locked out everytime you equip/unequip it, much like trinkets, only that equipping works infight. If I understand it correctly, the buff is locked out for 10 seconds, and of course removed if you un/equip the corresponding libram, so switching Seals (with librams) in a frequency of once per 12 seconds locks you out of both buffs.

I don't think changing glyphs is going to yield the most dps. I think rather changing to gear that focuses more on crit, haste, even ArP will do more than glyphing the last in the rotation spell. There are 3 non set pieces in TotGC that have more than enough expertise to cap with the glyph. In all reality DMC:G and Death's Choice/Verdict will be more DPS than the expertise loss from leaving Victor's Call off.

But like you said, realisitcally what people can obtain differs from BiS many times.

Delete please.

Unless the change was not actually implemented, as-of the patch notes for 3.2.2 all relic buffs share a buff category such that only one can be up at any time. I'm not aware though if the buff is lost upon swapping out librams, as I haven't actually paid attention to it myself. 3.2.2 Patch Notes, Items>Relics.

*Edit*: Just got done testing libram procs, and the buffs do share a buff category, so only one can be up at a time; however, swapping from valiance to deadly (for example) doesn't remove Holy Strength until the deadly libram procs.

As Exemplar and others have stated, the usefulness of swapping to SoC depends entirely on how your guild handles Anub'Arak. Outside of Anub, SoC's usefulness in ToC is nonexistent, and like Xyrm stated there is currently an embargo on discussion of the Anub 25H strat, so I'm not going to explain why SoC can be useful then. For Anub 25N though, remember that SoC loses its benefit once the last of the adds die in P3, as they stop spawning once Anub casts Leeching Swarm and SoC no longer has anything to potentially cleave to. However, depending on how your guild handles the burrowers (we stack them near the inside back of Anub's hit-box), SoC can net you some nice additional damage that isn't just fluff until that point, as the burrowers do need to die.

This post from 9/26 (post 3.2.2) states you keep Holy Strength. I have not tested to verify, at my current progression (10 Heroic, 25 normal) I find no need to seal twist.

Also, for the record (before someone pokes me about it) I was talking of more long-term seal twisting. I.e. Valiance+SoV on target A for 20+ seconds, then PvP+SoC on adds for 20+ seconds. Not SoC for 10 seconds, SoV for 1 swing to refresh Holy Vengeance/Blood Corruption, back to SoC. This one swing would not step past the 6 sec ICD of Valiance. I'm of the firm opinion that using 2 GCD within every 15 seconds just to keep the DoT on a single target would be a vast DPS loss due to inability to use those GCD for effective damaging attacks. Not to mention a mana sink. You would be better served to swap to SoC/libram, finish its use, return to target A and build DoT stacks from scratch.

Ah. My mistake then, I believed you were referring to having both libram buffs at the same time, which, while possible prior to 3.2.2, like you said would be a massive waste of resources and DPS to attempt to maintain.

I also edited my above post to confirm that libram buffs are not removed upon swapping librams. And now that you mention it, I did forget about that post.

Libram twisting has been rehashed many times, but you've nailed the core of the issue. The losses incurred from trying to flip librams will not be offset by the gains. There are almost no circumstances where you can afford 2 full free GCDs within 15 seconds. Additionally, the swing timer reset for each libram swap puts you even further behind.

Bear in mind that even if you leave the Libram of Valiance equipped when you switch to SoC, you're still going to be getting some benefit from it. Your DoT will still be ticking on your previous target after you've swapped which will keep your 200 str proc up for some time (up to 30 seconds, but likely a bit less).

Edit: I would also note that fights that have a movement corresponding to the time at which you would swap seals, the said movement would be a perfect time to actually swap the GCD and swing timer resetting bits, be it weapon, libram, and/or seal.

It's a combination of the two reasons, as the burrowers need to be close to Anub for SoC to cleave, and only one add spawns in 10 man, whereas 2 spawn in 25. In P2, SoC is more useful based simply on the fact that you don't have time to stack SoV on the beetles and you can use it to mop up any burrowers that might still be alive in 25-man; it's also not very effective to group them up for the very reason you listed unless you're going for The Traitor King 10 or 25.

As for swapping a weapon and libram at the same time, yes, it would work. You wouldn't even need a free GCD for the weapon/libram swap because those just reset the swing timer, (hence why addons such as Outfitter and Wardrobe, or the default equipment manager, can swap to an entire other gearset at once), but you would still need the GCD for the SoC cast to go off.

Someone help me out here, I'm just floored as far as this goes. I've picked up the 2pc t9 bonus, and the 4pc is within in my grasp as well (have trophies and badges), but I'm extremely relunctant to pick it up. The only rationale I can see for the 4pc t9 is just additional support for the 2pc to increase RV uptime, and therefore, hopefully increase the amount it crits for (by having rolling damage stack). I'm not even sure how to begin to mathematically calculate what kind of dps increase it will be, and I'm experiencing a serious lack of faith in rawr at the moment.

Any suggestions or comments?




edit:: before someone asks, yes, I've searched the thread for answers, but either I was too ignorant to find it or it's not there. The only real thing mentioning the set bonus seems to be the front page saying 'we'll see how it pans out'.

Armory lists you as prot, so I checked Wow-heroes. You have 2 pieces of 245 T9, 1 piece of 232 T9, and 1 piece of T8... the question is why WOULDN'T you want 4 piece T9? The T9 helm is a direct upgrade of the same stats. Even if you still ran with 2 piece T8 the dps change is probably marginal. 5% more crit on our hardest hit that also creates a lot of RV dmg vs 10% more dmg on a lesser used, lesser dmg ability and then a nice one at 20%. JoV is still higher priority than HoW so it would definitely take some number crunching to see which is better. 2 pc T8 vs 4 pc T9... I'm gonna guess it's too close to call, in the meantime you'll be getting stat increases from going 226 to 245...

Try running your gear through RAWR, as it is an extremely useful tool for determing optimal dps setups with whatever gear you have on hand with and how they scale with raid buffs.
Rawr Retribution Model

Ret nerf:
Seal of Corruption now deals [ 13% of AP + 6.5% of Spell Power ] instead of [ 15% of AP + 7.8% of Spell Power ]

We had it coming, but at least it isn't going to be hotfixed and we get to wait a few months.