Seal of Command

Long time reader, first time poster.

First, let me say thank you to all of you theorycrafters out there. Seeing your math (or summaries) has been very very helpful for me and my small guild of friends.

Ok, on to my request for consideration.
Has anyone considered using Seal of Command as a tanking seal in 3.2? I tend to have plenty of expertise so I could replace the Vengeance glyph with the SOC glyph (8% base mana back after judging). This would theoretically let me shift my 2 points out of SA (Yes, I know I only NEED 1 in SA). 1 point would go into SOC and the other would then be a freeby.

Does SoC (which now just adds holy damage to all hits) work with HotR (hitting 4 targets for 39% holy damage)? Would that be better threat on those targets that the slowly applied SoV stacks?

What do you folks think? I know it's non-traditional, but this is about min/maxing.

Already looked at that possibility at the end of this post. The conclusion was that both SoR and SoCom are about 1.5k+ TPS behind SoV. This means they're effectively cutting your threat output by 20%. In addition, SoR was better than SoCom even without being glyphed, the SoR glyph would put it reasonably far ahead of SoCom, but still trailing SoV by a large margin.

As far as the SoCom glyph, if your base mana is around 5k, then the glyph grants you 0.08 * 5000 = 400 mana every Judgement, which works out to 44 mana per second or 222 mp5.

To compare that to other mana regen sources, specifically SA, I'll link you to this ongoing thread about a 2/2 SA build. In it, I've posted some math showing that each point of SA is worth around 250 mp5 for each 1k sustained damage taken per second by the tank. That means that the average regen of 1/2 SA should be between 500-750 mp5 for 2-3k average dtps, and 2/2 SA will be double that. The glyph won't even come close to making up for that loss.

Thanks! That's exactly what I was looking for.

theckhd wrote:Already looked at that possibility at the end of this post. The conclusion was that both SoR and SoCom are about 1.5k+ TPS behind SoV. This means they're effectively cutting your threat output by 20%. In addition, SoR was better than SoCom even without being glyphed, the SoR glyph would put it reasonably far ahead of SoCom, but still trailing SoV by a large margin.

As far as the SoCom glyph, if your base mana is around 5k, then the glyph grants you 0.08 * 5000 = 400 mana every Judgement, which works out to 44 mana per second or 222 mp5.

To compare that to other mana regen sources, specifically SA, I'll link you to this ongoing thread about a 2/2 SA build. In it, I've posted some math showing that each point of SA is worth around 250 mp5 for each 1k sustained damage taken per second by the tank. That means that the average regen of 1/2 SA should be between 500-750 mp5 for 2-3k average dtps, and 2/2 SA will be double that. The glyph won't even come close to making up for that loss.

will you marry me...

Theck gets that a lot.

I personally find the fact that prot and ret are using the same seal rather disconcerting. They were originally supposed to be part of a paladin's utility, and now over half of them have no place in a raid environment.

That said, moving Ret toward a stacking dot is a welcome nerf to its burst to me, opening doors for more sustained damage setup kills. Personally, I want to see Prot using a different seal.

theothersteve7 wrote:Personally, I want to see Prot using a different seal.

Wouldn't mind this myself. Seal of Justice is pretty useless and could be turned into a tanking seal, not to mention good old SoR that was left in the dirt by the end of TBC.

How about the following?

SoL - Same as now.
SoW - Same as now.
SoV - Same as Ptr, tanking seal, but maybe have talents to improve it for prot only.
SoR - Boost its dps, making it the PvE ret seal of choice and improve holy solo'ing dps.
SoC - Slightly less dps than SoR, but roll into it the stun effects of Seal of Justice. Judgements of SoJ same as JoJ
Do away with SoJ/JoJ.

So u have a dedicated pve tanking seal, and ret can choose between SoR and SoC for PvP... absolute dmg vs stun ability.

masterpoobaa wrote:How about the following?

SoL - Same as now.
SoW - Same as now.
SoV - Same as Ptr, tanking seal, but maybe have talents to improve it for prot only.
SoR - Boost its dps, making it the PvE ret seal of choice and improve holy solo'ing dps.
SoC - Slightly less dps than SoR, but roll into it the stun effects of Seal of Justice. Judgements of SoJ same as JoJ
Do away with SoJ/JoJ.

So u have a dedicated pve tanking seal, and ret can choose between SoR and SoC for PvP... absolute dmg vs stun ability.

Don't incorporate the JoJ into the seal. That would destroy our 20% attack reduction in situations where the ret and holy paladins don't stick to a single judgement between them all (which would be rare outside of guild runs). If you have a number of ret and holy paladins in a 25man raid all judging wisdom and light, then the only way to make sure that your 20% reduction stays on the boss is to use JoJ (since it's highly unlikely that anyone else will judge that).

Rinanth wrote:

masterpoobaa wrote:How about the following?

SoL - Same as now.
SoW - Same as now.
SoV - Same as Ptr, tanking seal, but maybe have talents to improve it for prot only.
SoR - Boost its dps, making it the PvE ret seal of choice and improve holy solo'ing dps.
SoC - Slightly less dps than SoR, but roll into it the stun effects of Seal of Justice. Judgements of SoJ same as JoJ
Do away with SoJ/JoJ.

So u have a dedicated pve tanking seal, and ret can choose between SoR and SoC for PvP... absolute dmg vs stun ability.

Don't incorporate the JoJ into the seal. That would destroy our 20% attack reduction in situations where the ret and holy paladins don't stick to a single judgement between them all (which would be rare outside of guild runs). If you have a number of ret and holy paladins in a 25man raid all judging wisdom and light, then the only way to make sure that your 20% reduction stays on the boss is to use JoJ (since it's highly unlikely that anyone else will judge that).

That will be irrelevant next patch, as JotJ is getting its own separate debuff. Doing away with JoJ this patch would be a pain for exactly the reason you suggested though.