From Slacker to Work Horse.

Remember this guy?

Before we get to meat of this post, let's join Peabody and Sherman and ride the WABAC machine back to Vanilla wow.

Back then, during the less than Ret favorable days, it would auto crit for double damage when the target was stunned. If a ret paladin was fortunate enough to get the Field Marshall's Aegis, he could do some serious damage as either Ret or Protection... provided it was the famous tri-spec build you used previous to 1.9.

It also had a serious drawback. Considering the wording of the original seal state that it had "a chance" to deal additional damage, it was given the moniker "Seal of Casino". If one was fortunate, one could hit targets for massive damage. If not, you'll get a white swing and nothing more until it was judged and the seal reapplied for another attempt.

Fast forward to Lich King Times, where, after the removal of Seal of the Martyr and changing Seal of Vengeance to work on auto-attack swings only, the developers hoped that by making Seal of Command actually hit with every swing, we would choose that and still have a chance at pvp.

Nice idea, but the damage had been utterly gutted and hit like a wet noodle by this point in time, by several nerfs between Vanilla and now, and any ret paladin worth their salt would have to use Seal of Righteousness if they wanted to make any headway, considering they still had no snare, interrupt, or means to deal with casters (but that's for another time).

In a stroke of genius, or madness (take your pick), the developers decided to turn the seal into a cleave.

The damage by itself was nothing special, but the fact that it automatically hit three targets at once, when used in conjunction for both Hammer of the Righteous and Divine Storm*, resulted in much more AoE damage for Rets and Threat for Prots.

*Though Divine Storm will proc the seal on the attack itself, it won't proc the cleave, so, you're not hitting as many targets as we would have hoped.

As an example; for ret, let's take my current weapon Shadow's Edge without the two Bold Dragon's Eyes and enchant it with Berserking I have on it.

Here's the math:

Without all that stuff added on, it will do somewhere within the range of 313.92 - 471.24 damage per second. And it will hit four targets when used with Divine Storm. Add in the 2 piece t10 proc and you got lots of AoE damage going around... when it procs, of course.


Now, take all that and multiply it by three (four if you use the glyph) for Hammer of the Righteous, add in the amount of threat you get from Righteous Fury and you got pretty much the best AoE tanking seal in the game at present.

As a side note, it would have been nice to acquire Seals of the Pure for extra damage and threat when tanking, but it doesn't affect command, so, it's left to its lonesome.

So, there you go. Seal of Command. From Slacker to Booster, thanks ! (Fast forward to 10:08).

Got your ticket? The QQ Train's a-coming.

And who's the target this time?

Why, it's our good old friend Seal of Righteousness.

The old standby that we use from levels 1-19, until we get this underachiever.

Turns out that it, along with some undocumented double procs, has been performing a lot better than SoC, our supposed PvP seal, but of course, the wankers on the forums can't have Ret performing good on any level. Oh no.

So, the cynic in me is taking bets as to how long it will take because Ghostcrawler kowtows to the cryers in the Damage Dealing Forums and gets it nerfed.

The idealist in me, who is finding himself more embarrassed with each wrong guess, still hopes that allowing us to use Righteousness in PvP was intended, as we no longer have Martyr.

We'll wait and see... in the meantime, I need to get a 3s team started. I want to try and see what all the hubbub is about.

3.2 initial reports... and Icehowl down. Well done, Malice!

...well, tuesday was too laggy for us on Sargeras to try and to the new raid, so we went to Ulduar and got pwned by a bugged out XT... which would not surprise me at all and to wake up the scrub raids trying to farm him.

Wednesday, however, it was more stable and we were able to complete the first challenge in Trial of the Crusader.




As for pvp... I think I'm gonna wait until my other paladin is 80, so I can move Dallanna to full time Ret pvp and the other to PvE, before I try stepping into the arena again, but I'm going to try 3s and hope to get some of that sweet new Robocop pally gear they got there.

R.I.P. Seal of the Martyr.

Fare well, dear friend... you made us able to DPS in raids and shove the haters' vitriol down their throats with your Justice.

...looks like you and I are in it for the long haul.

And you? Stay in the corner and keep that dunce cap on!

Side-note: I don't acknowledge the existence of the Horde 'paladin' versions. Why? They're not real paladins.

To the surprise of none....

...the updated 3.2 patch notes:

Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption: These seals have been redesigned to deal substantially more damage. Now, once a paladin has 5 copies of the debuff from these seals on his or her target, on each swing the paladin will deal 33% weapon damage as Holy, with critical strikes dealing double damage. In addition, the damage-over-time effect is now considered a melee attack instead of a spell attack and the effects from these seals can only be triggered by auto-attacks and Hammer of the Righteous.

Ain't this just a damp squib for Rets?

For our Fathers...

This is a post I did in the RP forum, detailing my main's relationship with her father.

Da, ye were an odd one.

Why?

Not once did I hear ye raise yer hand or voice in anger against me, mum, or me brothers. Well... mum woulda kicked yer ass if ye did, but that's beside the point....

Ye were patient as the mountains when it came to bein' a parent, considerin' how much trouble we all got in when we were kids.

Ye were supportive of me covertin' to the Lightsworn and my choice to become a paladin all those years ago.

We didn' speak much, but then again, we didn' need to. Every time ye smiled at me when I did something great spoke volumes.... and whenever I got in trouble, that stern and disappointed look ye gave me made me want to hide meself under Blackrock Mountain.... which, ironically, that was one of the secrets to being a parent, which ye told me when I had me first boy.

I'll always be grateful.

Here's to ye, Da...

...ye sneaky bastard.

*Chug, chug, chug, thud.*

And because I'm a sucker for small animals...


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

A more interesting subject to talk about.

Wanna read a good post on the WoW forums? This explains the reason why you see so many QQ threads concerning paladins, in a thread written by a paladin asking the forums populace how they would fix Retribition. (Bad idea, in my opinion.)

Nomihoudai (Which, oddly enough, means "All you can drink" in Japanese.) from Spinebreaker said:

The premise of the OP just won't fly on these forums. No one here is interested in making ret balanced.

For 4 years all classes have had the benefit of ret being the village idiot--the one everyone could look down on and feel better about themselves. "Hey, at least I'm not a ret paladin!" was a comforting thought. At least in BC some raids would bring one ret paladin in order to keep up a holy paladin's judgment through CS.

Look at posts on paladin forums before 3.0. At the same time that rets were told they should never be able to do anything resembling half-decent damage, they would also be told that they were OP because of the devil's trifecta of plate, bubble, and heals. Unlike most paladin lore (including outside WoW), paladins were considered to be a healer worse than priests that sometimes did other stuff, due in large part to their status in vanilla WoW.

Now that paladins can put out good damage (although as one who used to play one, I wish the combat system wasn't so whack-a-mole simple), those classes feel threatened. Suddenly they have to develop strategies around rets in pvp. Comps with rets aren't horrible. Rets aren't a waste of a raid slot. They actually need to compete with what used to be the kid they got their lunch money from.

No one here wants a balanced ret paladin. They want their punching bag back. They need someone they can look down on. They don't want to have to look up arena ratings or check gem slots in order to put someone down. Even if you do everything right, in the end you still are a ret paladin, and that alone must mean "you are a face-rolling no-skill baddie."

Welcome to the forums. Enjoy your stay. Nerf your class, buff mine.


/discuss

A link:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=17367763444&sid=1&pageNo=2
Post #21