How to Use Seal of Blood Effectively

[Vanifae]

Give me Righteousness or give me Death

[Candiru]

I have been thinking that the best way to tank an elemental boss would be a huge 2-H weapon and SoB.

Holy shield won't be in play, so that takes a large chuck of the benefit of spell damage away. Judge wisdom or light and go SoB happy

With the lack of double procs and the judgement scalling with spell dam but the seal scalling with attack power its not the best idea in the world

But perhaps when you pull a boss you should always use JoB rather than JoR for your initial agro? Since It does a fair bit more damage on the judgement, and if you have a prayer of mending on you that will instantly heal you up and generate even more initial agro for you

[Joanadark]

May I quote this post in "Mysterious Ways" 2.0?

Also, what are your thoughts about SoB with a retadin? Consider the way it would interact with the stuff procing off of crits and the fact that SoB scales with the exact same stats as white damage, allowing greater synergy in gear.

[Kathryn]

Also, what are your thoughts about SoB with a retadin? Consider the way it would interact with the stuff procing off of crits and the fact that SoB scales with the exact same stats as white damage, allowing greater synergy in gear.

Every BE Retpally i know uses SoB over Command. SoB is sustained and over time deals a bit more dmg over Command. Also, the neat thing about loosing health with it is that you catch random jumps of Renew, Chain Heal, Rejuv, etc.. and you get mana back allowing even more sustainability.

[Harlequinn]

Seal of blood is really only useful against a single target. Personally I use it with http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29362 and with a nice mongoose enchant it makes it easy maintaining aggro even at 0 spell damage. The fact that it drains my health a bit helps too with the mana back.

[Joanadark]

Seal of blood is really only useful against a single target.

why?

[Lore]

I believe he meant SoB with a non-spelldamage weapon. You're nerfing your Consecrate and HS threat by a fair amount, usually in favor of better tanking stats on the weapon (Sun Eater with Mongoose is a good example) so in multi-mob situations you're not going to do nearly as well. AOE threat is nerfed, so it's really only useful in single-target situations.

[Joanadark]

ok, I follow. thats an interesting point.

[Lore]

In response to your previous question, sure, use this wherever you like =) Some of the information is no longer correct tho, lemme edit to show what's no longer true after 2.1

[Joanadark]

question about crit chance in relation to seal of blood:

does the seal purely take its damage from the size of the white damage done on THAT swing? or does it merely take the damage range of your white attacks and vary independantly?

Specifically, let's say I attack with Seal of Blood up...
My normal white hits are for 250.

The white attack crits for 500.

Will my Seal of Blood on the same swing cause 175? (35% of 500)
Will it instead cause 87.5? (35% of 250)

My understanding is that SoB also has an INDEPENDANT crit chance from the white attack it is connected to.
So, is the following situation possible?

You gain Seal of Blood.
You critically hit Monster for 500 physical damage.
Your Seal of Blood critically hits Monster for 350 Holy Damage.

Based on my understanding of the mechanics, thats what should happen, as the Seal of Blood proc should be taking its base damage from the connected white attack, yet has a seperate critical hit chance from the white attack and crits for 200% damage.

If that is the case, the above attack would deal 1165 threat all by itsself.


Implications would be:

-further justification of gaining Weapon Skill via Weapon Expertise due to the critical hit chance you would receive.

-Crit Chance would be a significantly more scalable threat stat for SoB users in a tanking role than spell damage, and (though I havent done the math) likely AP as well.

-haste rating, such as that available in the Black Temple and Hyjal instances, would be considerably valuable for paladins.

-SoB would be a vastly more effective Retribution Paladin seal than any other alternative, and would help to counter the disadvantage they have as PvE dpsers caused by the necessity of them stacking exorbitant amounts of crit chance in translating that crit chance into a greater DPS contribution than any other class receives, since these "double-crit" combinations have a large bonus to their holy damage by being a multiplicative effect on an already multiplicative value.
Their scaling of weapon damage through AP, though gimpled by less AP than other classes, would be redeemed by this coefficient potentially bringing their overall DPS up to the same level.

-Again in reference to Retribution Paladins, imagine the fight is just starting and there isnt already a Vengeance stack up (5% higher physical and holy damage dealt by them for 15 seconds, stacks 3 times, procs of crits).
In the quoted situation, would the physical attack crit result in a Vengeance proc that the SoB attacked to it would then take advantage of?
If the seal still functioned as a seperate swing, I'd think yes, but even if it counts as one attack, the wording of Vengeance ("increases DAMAGE dealt" following a crit, not "the damage of your attacks") and the independant crit chance of Seal of Blood would lead me to speculate that there is the possibility of seeing this:

You gain Seal of Blood.
You critically hit Monster for 500 physical damage.
Monster gains Vengeance.
Your Seal of Blood critically hits Monster for 367.5 Holy Damage.

Am I mistaken in any of these points or have I misunderstood the functionality? I am not able to test things myself, as I dont have a blood elf.
Appreciate your help.

[Tauxalot]

From what I have seen, the damage SoB does is dependent only on the weapon range of your weapon, not how much damage the white hit does. If your SoB normally does 120 and your white swing crits, I am pretty sure your SoB will still hit for 120 if it doesn't crit itself.

[Lore]

Correct, the tooltip is misleading. It's just a second swing, the damage is independant of the damage dealt by the first swing.

[Igrado]

I haven't used SoB in a while, and I've heard that the change to it in 2.1 DID in fact remove double judgement procs, so it kinda lost a lot of it's appeal. I haven't been using it.

It should still be a viable option in low-threat situations if you have a weapon (like sun eater) which has better "tanking" stats on it, however.

The "guide" OP was very helpful, but if, as you say, it is no longer effective, could you edit your original post to include the new data at the beginning of the post?. This might prevent people from reading it and thinking this method was still viewed as effective, as they may not notice the date, or may not be aware of the change

[Lore]

The section that talks about the double judgement mechanic has an edit that makes note of that

Er, maybe not, it's supposed to. Even shows me editing it on the 25th to put it in. Wonder where my note disappeared to...

[Joanadark]

well that sucks...
double-crit mutually-reinforcing functionality would make a whole lot of benefitial possibilities for paladins.

though they still need to bloody give the faction-specific seals to both factions already.