Sweet Hammer of Rightous Steatlh Buff ...hopefully intended...

[Reith]

Small nerf: Hammer of the Righteous no longer procs the direct damage of Seal of Truth, before the only thing it didn't proc was Censure. Oh well, at least it's more indication that the other seals, hopefully Justice especially, will be left alone.

Haha I know why they did that too: the glyph. Glyph of Immediate Truth would raise it to 21%, 5% higher than Seal of Justice - and it would still proc Censure on your main target. This change makes it so it doesn't compete with Seal of Righteousness at all. Makes perfect sense. Seal of Justice still doesn't compete with Seal of Righteousness, so unless they find something extremely unbalanced about Ret finally having an AOE snare that only works when you use Hammer of the Righteous, I don't think they're going to change it.

EDIT: Oops I meant 18%, but still, that's higher than Seal of Justice.

[Tangra]

Haha I know why they did that too: the glyph. Glyph of Immediate Truth would raise it to 21%, 5% higher than Seal of Justice - and it would still proc Censure on your main target. This change makes it so it doesn't compete with Seal of Righteousness at all. Makes perfect sense. Seal of Justice still doesn't compete with Seal of Righteousness, so unless they find something extremely unbalanced about Ret finally having an AOE snare that only works when you use Hammer of the Righteous, I don't think they're going to change it.

Yeah makes sense; glad they are putting so much though into this. AoE snares are just so common these days, so I would think we would be fine.

Speaking of AoE, seems like a MoP AoE thread might be in order since Ret's AoE got quite a bit more interesting:
DS and HoR seem like dps gains on even two targets.
Easier Censure rolling via shorter Judge cd.
Glyph of Double Jeopardy
Glyph of Mass Exorcism
Holy Prism
Light's Hammer

A Ret that knows what he's doing might actually be very noticeable when it comes to AoE....

[Raugnaut]

Okay, looking through them now (I'm going to include stuns and roots as well as snares, for

Death Knights have Remorseless Winter and Chillblains, both of which are talents.

Druids (as Feral or Guardian, since we're talking melee) have no AoE snares that I can see. The closest thing to mass CC available to Feral/Guardian druids would be Mass Entanglement, which is a talent and limited to 5 targets.

Monks have Flying Serpent Kick (as Windwalkers), Dizzying Haze and Keg Smash (as Brewmasters). They've also got the level 60 talent choices Leg Sweep and Charging Ox Wave.

Rogues can count Fan of Knives, since it has a chance to proc their poisons (Crippling, specifically).

As far as I can tell, Shamans have access to Earthbind Totem as a snare (that can be talented to Earthgrab, making it a root/snare). Capacitor Totem is an AoE stun available to them as well.

Warriors also don't seem to have an AoE slow. The best I can see would be talented options in Shockwave and Dragon's Roar, for stunning and a knockdown (respectively).

The only reason I call out talent abilities specifically is because the SoJ+HotR combo is baseline for Ret. So the only people that would be able to compete with that specifically would be Rogues, Monks, and Shamans.

For Monks, FSK has a 25 second CD, and would be awkward to use when you're already on top of your target (I would think, anyways).

Enhancement AoE snaring is tied to Earthbind Totem, and that can be killed (am I correct in assuming someone would burn an instant on the totem just to get it out of the way?).

The closest in comparison would be Rogues with FoK and Crippling Poison as their utility poison. Both generate points (combo points for FoK on the primary target, HoPow on your target for HotR), so the only real difference is with the resource cost. FoK is 35 energy, and HotR is 3% base mana. As far as I can tell, a rogue would be able to run 3-5 FoKs in a row (depending on Haste levels, I'm overestimating too).

So the SoJ+HotR combo would be able to provide a blanket snare across an area with little to no counter, with minimum loss to the Paladin in general. I really can't see that as an intended change to the skill.

If I missed any AoE utility abilities for melee classes in MoP, let me know. I think I was pretty thorough, but I was rushing.

Warriors have Piercing Howl- AoE snare, 10 yd range, dont think it has a rage cost/CD.

Druids, while they dont have a very spammable AoE snare, have a talent that covers a small area, generating a 50% snare, and will yank a target back to the center once, 10 sec duration, 60 sec CD, and they can have either that talented Entanglement for a 8 sec root, or, if they are a smart druid, talent Typhoon, an AoE knockback/snare, 20 second CD.

The thing is, for everyone else to get a snare, they talent it, and then they got it. It generally costs no damage output to use it. For Ret to use thier AoE snare, they must first A) take a slight hit to dps by using Seal of Justive over Righteousness or Truth, and B) take a slight hit to single target damage by using Hammer rather then Crusader. Frost DKs, they gotta talent it, but then they have it on top of normal dps. Same with everybody else, except maybe monks, cause I dont know much bout monks.

Everyone else looses a chance at different utility to AoE slow. Ret looses single target dps to AoE slow.

[Reith]

Yeah makes sense; glad they are putting so much though into this. AoE snares are just so common these days, so I would think we would be fine.

Speaking of AoE, seems like a MoP AoE thread might be in order since Ret's AoE got quite a bit more interesting:
DS and HoR seem like dps gains on even two targets.
Easier Censure rolling via shorter Judge cd.
Glyph of Double Jeopardy
Glyph of Mass Exorcism
Holy Prism
Light's Hammer

A Ret that knows what he's doing might actually be very noticeable when it comes to AoE....

Maybe that's what they intended. I mean, other melee can cleave on 2 targets also, so I don't see what's wrong with Divine Storm being cleavable. They might even be balancing a little around that.

[Malthanis]

Warriors have Piercing Howl- AoE snare, 10 yd range, dont think it has a rage cost/CD.

Druids, while they dont have a very spammable AoE snare, have a talent that covers a small area, generating a 50% snare, and will yank a target back to the center once, 10 sec duration, 60 sec CD, and they can have either that talented Entanglement for a 8 sec root, or, if they are a smart druid, talent Typhoon, an AoE knockback/snare, 20 second CD.

The thing is, for everyone else to get a snare, they talent it, and then they got it. It generally costs no damage output to use it. For Ret to use thier AoE snare, they must first A) take a slight hit to dps by using Seal of Justive over Righteousness or Truth, and B) take a slight hit to single target damage by using Hammer rather then Crusader. Frost DKs, they gotta talent it, but then they have it on top of normal dps. Same with everybody else, except maybe monks, cause I dont know much bout monks.

Everyone else looses a chance at different utility to AoE slow. Ret looses single target dps to AoE slow.

Yeah, we went over that. The only thing that made it seem like a bug to me is that everybody else has to spend a talent or some similar investment to get an AoE slow, and Ret's is baseline to the toolkit. As for the damage argument, it looks like it's just us and Rogues that can do damage in the same GCD that we make use of our AoE slow, and ours can be maintained indefinitely.

But hey, if it's still in, I'm cool with it.

[Tangra]

Maybe that's what they intended. I mean, other melee can cleave on 2 targets also, so I don't see what's wrong with Divine Storm being cleavable. They might even be balancing a little around that.

I hope so, at the end of Warth it seemed like the developers got sick of "free" or almost free cleaving such as how Divine Storm was both our top priority move and a lot of AoE damage with no dps loss. Other melee had similar things too, and to some extent they got nerfed, but I don't remember the details. A bit later they sort of changed their minds, possibly due to the insane damage casters could do with multi-dotting. Now they seem to be going in the exact opposite direction... Ret has more nearly free cleaving than ever. Most of our cleaving comes at a small single-target price, but usually not much, and Glyph of Exorcism is completely free cleaving if you don't have to switch between distant targets. Have other classes received as many new AoE and cleave options?