Vindicator Vaelin
I've had my first taste of endgame PvE as Retribution. Having reached a pretty decent gearing point, I rejoined my old guild with whom I cleared MC, BWL, and set foot into AQ/Naxx. It was good to play with my old mates again, and I think I may have helped contribute to their new Gruul kill record time. With that being said, I've come to personally experience the last remaining unresolved issue - the Alliance Ret Paladin disadvantage without Seal of Blood.
Seal of Command's holy procs and judgement rely on spell hit rather than melee hit, and the judgement damage will consistently be lower than Blood (most raid mobs and all bosses are immune to stun). Command also still scales, albeit poorly, with spell damage as well as melee stats. Seal of Blood, by contrast, is based purely on melee stats (including melee hit) for scaling - the ideal candidate for Blizzard's new Ret reitemization scheme. Seal of Vengeance is useless to a Ret Paladin, since it scales purely with spell damage. It is, for all intents and purposes, a tanking seal.
While I can understand Blizzard's desire to add "flavor" to Paladins in their respective factions, this isn't the way to go about it. Shamans weren't stuck with fundamentally different post-60 spells. Instead, Alliance Shamans got Bloodlust with a different name (Heroism). Now that I've finally experience endgame as Ret firsthand, I fully understand why this is still something that needs to be addressed.
Seal of Command's holy procs and judgement rely on spell hit rather than melee hit, and the judgement damage will consistently be lower than Blood (most raid mobs and all bosses are immune to stun). Command also still scales, albeit poorly, with spell damage as well as melee stats. Seal of Blood, by contrast, is based purely on melee stats (including melee hit) for scaling - the ideal candidate for Blizzard's new Ret reitemization scheme. Seal of Vengeance is useless to a Ret Paladin, since it scales purely with spell damage. It is, for all intents and purposes, a tanking seal.
While I can understand Blizzard's desire to add "flavor" to Paladins in their respective factions, this isn't the way to go about it. Shamans weren't stuck with fundamentally different post-60 spells. Instead, Alliance Shamans got Bloodlust with a different name (Heroism). Now that I've finally experience endgame as Ret firsthand, I fully understand why this is still something that needs to be addressed.
posted by Vaelin at 8:21 PM
4 Comments:
It's spell hit for Seal of Command? Are you sure it still is? I'm asking because the information I can find (specifically WoWWiki's article about Seal of Command) says that both Seal of Command procs and Judgement of Command hits work off of melee hit and melee crit. This seems backed up to me by the double damage crits of both SoC and JoC at least (hit may be different but my ret paladin isn't high enough level to really get a good idea).
Now I'll be the first one to jump on the bandwagon and say that JoC needs a huge overhaul to be less reliant on spell damage since Blizzard is moving Ret Paladins away from this and towards STR/AP. SoC/JoC is a fine option for the previous design but with the changes being made to the tree and what it requires SoC needs to change with it, being that it is the mainstay of the tree.
Now, as a Protection Paladin, I would benefit from Seal of Blood almost as much as you would, since it would allow me to use a physical tanking weapon for single target bosses for more mitigation. Also, the addition of dealing me a small amount of damage from the seal and judgement would cause the healers to heal me a little more giving me more mana back via Spiritual Attunement.
I'm not against Alliance Paladins getting Seal of Blood, but I would rather they fix Seal of Command. The changes being made to the Retribution tree are absolutely steps in the right direction. Now the central seal of the tree needs to be changed to match the new tree.
From what I know all the while and past experience, SoC hits and crits off melee crit rate while JoC crits off spell crit rate. But I believe JoC crits off melee crit too, if not how the hell am I critting with it so often.
But I'd love to see Blizzard makes changes to SoC/JoC and a couple of other things in the new ret tree to sharpen the entire tree.
In my recent 10 days back in WoW, I've seen all of the new ret (I've always been ret anyway), and at times I still find 1 or 2 things lacking. The tree needs more tuning and modifcations still.
Xphxgelis, Kalecgos (US).
(Well if you choose to armory me for any reason, please note tht my gear isn't that up-to-date as it is, but overall I still work out good.)
They changed CS to be independent of spell damage (in fact, they made it 110% melee damage just like those fake notes said). I was quite surprised they didn't change S/JoC at the same time.
I'm expecting more changes in the near future, including something happening with S/JoC. Either that, or they listen to the overwhelming feedback and eliminate the faction-specific aspects of SoV/SoB, giving them to both sides.
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