"Seal of Truth is not allowed for Prot"

[Peachpies]

Only the healing is 330%, the damage of harsh words is still 276%

[Reghame]

This was less so to nerf damage and more so to promote them to use insight more since its a worthless seal outside of dungeons

That said, This nerf STILL does not make prot pallys sit in insight, it will force them into righteousness instead.

Problem with insight is two-three things.

1. does no damage, damage matters!
2. does not provide significant healing
3.ish. Does not BUFF healing/absorbs enough


because of this, insight will never be used. by anyone but a holy paladin. Its that simple.

A better fix would be to make insight deal 6% wpd per hit and or buff the healing it does or the healing you do. as it stands insight had no use for ret either.

BTW seraphim nerf is stupid. blizzard is forgetting one thing is that when you give a tank that relies solely on AP co-effecients to do damage and healing, giving them MORE ap via bonus armor and mastery is going to be a problem. This is only a temporary nerf as VERY soon, empowered seals will outscale seraphim in damage and healing it gives.

Theres no good way to nerf seraphim for just prot without making it a pointless and overtunned nerf. Shoulda just left it as is because it will be replaced in t17 with the bonus regardless.

[Theck]

Only the healing is 330%, the damage of harsh words is still 276%

Hm... you're right, the spell data is misleading. SP coefficient in SimC is 2.763 as well, so there must be something else in the spell data that's overriding the reported sp coefficient.

In any event, it's larger than the 200% coefficient on SotR.

[Cows For Life]

And yet they intended for prot paladin to sit in seal of insight, why even have other seals then? And why does the aoe talent do more single target damage now, seals are not stances, there's no reason for such a drastic nerf to something that only accounts for a small amount of dps, but basically turning it worthless now along with nerfing mitigation for no reason

Wait a minute. The AOE seal does more damage than the single target seal now? I heard DK's have the same problem.

[Deleted]

Wait a minute. The AOE seal does more damage than the single target seal now? I heard DK's have the same problem.

Not anymore, they don't :P

[Museigen]

Not anymore, they don't :P

Almost right, the problem is they removed our single target blood rune ability from the game in this expansion. Not so much "Our AoE is also our best single target!" as is, "I have one button for both because the other was removed" and now it's nerfed rather heavily when Blood was already the worst on single target dps. It also shook up unholy and was a nerf to it's output and required a second round of hotfix buffs to band-aid away that problem.

Almost feels like two different teams working on different classes. One makes questionable changes targeting specific abilities/glyphs and compensates with an overall haste buff. The other throws a dart and lands on blood boil and then rolls a D-100 to see how much to nerf it. Done deal.

[Makh]

I find it so absurd that our AoE seal still hits quite solidly, and right next to it is the pitiful seal of truth. It is *literally* worse than Righteousness in any given circumstance. The ability was made entirely redundant.

I think this makes the developers look completely foolish - like they literally do not understand the class they are balancing. They could have adjusted any number of different abilities, passives, or coefficients, but they chose this? I'm just at a loss for words.

[Theck]

I think this makes the developers look completely foolish - like they literally do not understand the class they are balancing.

They understand it rather well, they aren't foolish. The fact that you can't see the logic behind it (yet) doesn't mean it isn't there.

[Zol]

They understand it rather well, they aren't foolish. The fact that you can't see the logic behind it (yet) doesn't mean it isn't there.

We all know you are plugged into the Blizzard dev's, Theck.

It would be nice if blizzard would actually post something explaining why Seal of Righteousness is now better than Seal of Truth... on a single target. I personally would also like something on just why they changed our stat priority right in the middle of the 1st tier, after many of us have already geared accordingly. Yes obviously since Haste is our "attuned" stat, Blizzard thought we would want it. Unfortunately, as you detailed on your blog, they failed horribly with that. It just doesn't feel correct that we have to change up our entire gearing strategy right in the middle of progression (for most of us anyway).

[Theck]

We all know you are plugged into the Blizzard dev's, Theck.

That wasn't really my point. My point is that perhaps when confronted with something that seems paradoxical, we should question whether we might be missing information rather than immediately assuming that devs are stupid. Especially given that they are quite clearly in a position to have more information than us.

It just gets irritating to see people immediately jump to "they must be stupid" rather than thinking critically.

It would be nice if blizzard would actually post something explaining why Seal of Righteousness is now better than Seal of Truth... on a single target.

I agree, I think it would cut down on the baseless assumptions and insults.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Ya, this was a good change.
However, Paladin tanks need a major damage buff.
With Warriors going god mode this last week, this leaves Paladins as the low man on the totem pole especially for CM.
Really, we need wings back.
It was just too important to maximizing Light's Hammer damage.

[Rawrzillasor]

perrsonally i am ok with SoR being better than truth. it takes all the work out of having to multi twins for example. i imagine it will help us on aoe fights to pick up adds maybe a little better aswell

[Simulacrum]

It just gets irritating to see people immediately jump to "they must be stupid" rather than thinking critically.

If they didn't have a long track record of, in fact, doing stupid things, maybe that response would make sense. However, they do have a very long history of making stupid design choices - some of them so mind-shatteringly stupid that they make this one look positively attractive by comparison. So it's a very reasonable assumption to make. I mean, they even had this exact same problem in mop... you'd think they would've been able to anticipate it... but no. So now we're, yet again, left with an ability that serves no purpose (so much for that bloat removal), on top of being a newbie-trap (who, without recount, will have no idea that their dps seal is doing no damage). It's really stupid.

[Maerad]

Dunno about you guys, but I use mostly seal of insight, only if I'm not offtanking. And then it dosnt matter what other seal I use, the DPS increase is really low. On the other side insight is IMHO important, because of the massive selfheal. The seal might not heal that much, but the heal increase has to count. I see my prot pala like my blood dk back then - I can't migate dmg as good as a warri, but I make up for it with my selfheal. Yesterday I was in a raid with a nearly same ilvl warri and he got less dmg in most of the boss fights. But I made up for it with a high self heal (not counting overheal), moving me way beyond.

Every tanking class has is little niche to live in or where they shine.

[Makh]

They understand it rather well, they aren't foolish. The fact that you can't see the logic behind it (yet) doesn't mean it isn't there.

I agree with you in concept Theck. It's arrogant to assume I know better - and I have been very deferential to balance changes in the past (I thought the 4-piece PvP nerf made a lot of sense).

I also agree that it appeared that Prot Paladins were doing excessively high DPS - especially in light of the haste buff (a substantial dps increase). I fully support dialing back Prot DPS!

But this change defies comprehension. If they wanted to reduce our damage output, they could have targeted an ability that made up a larger portion of our dps (like AS or SotR - or harsh words, if that is indeed the biggest culprit to overperformance on butcher). Instead they chose an ability that represents a very small portion of our DPS, and in order to obtain the desired reduction, had to nerf it by 80%. Balance should be about subtle changes - not bludgeoning.

What makes this change even more ridiculous is that immediately adjacent and just to the right of Seal of Truth, is Seal of Righteousness. It's still doing it's full damage, and consequently now makes Seal of Truth entirely redundant. Seal of Truth is single target, and ramps up with stacks to do... less damage than Seal of Righteous. Seal of Righteousness also has AoE cleave. It is 100% redundant. This is a glaring inconsistency, and is the primary reason I am so bothered by this change.

Finally, the last insult is the claim by Blizzard that this change was motivated by a desire to get Prot to use Seal of Insight. Apparently nobody has been using it? If the goal is have Prot Paladins only using Insight, why not remove the other seals? If they don't want us to have a choice, why give us the choice at all? On the other hand, if they do want it to be a legitimate choice, then why make the choice so meaningless? As it stands, Seal of Truth does less damage than Seal of Righteousness, so we will never use it. The choice we are left with is between Seal of Righteousness which does insignificant damage unless in an AoE situation, and Seal of Insight which provides insignificant mitigation. Yes, there is a choice, but it is a meaningless and superficial choice. It is not an interesting choice. I would much rather have seals comprise a larger portion of our DPS and mitigation such that the decision to change seals would have a noticeable impact on game play.

In Summary:

• I think this change betrays a lack of careful thought on the part of the Developers.
• If the goal is to reduce damage, there were countless better ways to reduce damage without reducing an ability's effectiveness by 80%.
• The change makes Truth redundant next to Righteousness, reducing the complexity of the class, and leaving less room for interesting, meaningful decisions.
• If the goal was to require use of a different seal, then why give the choice of seals in the first place?
• If the goal was encourage more variety in the use of seals, then why make the choice meaningless and uncompelling?

I've yet to hear a single person rationally defend this change. If someone has an explanation, I would love to hear it.

P.S. - Notice I don't complain about the Seraphim change. It had a much larger impact on both our mitigation and DPS, but I agree that it was warranted (of course, they didn't address the inevitable scaling issue that will come in later tiers, but that's a discussion for later). The Seal change was not warranted.

[Reghame]

i think if they made a change that actually made insight a good choice by lets say, actually doing something to insight, then i would be ok with it.

But as it stands, we wont use insight, and we lose a VERY little amount of damage since SoR and truth did the same damage, just truth had censure which was like 2% damage.

Theres is a DAMN good reason why insight is lacking in use, its not because truth and righteousness are "good" (infact, they hardly make much of a difference) it is that insight does not preform well in fights where your hp radically swings from 30% to 100% every 2-3 seconds, oh which is not effected by how you heal persay.

If tanks did not take so much damage every second, and healers not able to top them off every time. then maybe insight would have a use. But if it did, then we have the issue that we had in ToT, prot pallies able to just self sustain for years.

The paladin model that involves the paladin being able to keep themselves up ( aka the only time you can actually use insight) is broken. The current model we have, the one where healers need to keep you up means that you dont get to heal yourself very much. This same model where healers need to keep you alive is also the one where the boss will KILL you should a healer miss a single heal. one which insight cannot keep up unless it is overpowered.

Insight's use is limited because of this. You either have to buff the healing to a very high amount ( not going to happen ), give it SOME damage ( best option ), or increase prot's damage reduction to a point where the pittiful healing that insight gives MIGHT save you from a hit every so often.

and BTW, if the goal was to nerf damage like others have said, just nerf either holy avenger, or the finishers. its all burst damage from finishers with all the stacking that blizzard said they would have gotten rid of. ( didnt seem to work on ret paladins either, STILL lots of stacking Cds on us too :P)

[Sparklebeard]

You know, I cant help but wonder what would happen if Insight's heal were turned into a ticking absorb shield. Would that make it more interesting than a heal mechanic, while still fitting the paladin flavour?

[sexybeast]

harsh words hits for 276% of sp

Lets all try out theroy Theck shall we..?

[Deleted]

Nope , on aoe fights where you have a lot of melee attacks which don't hit too much going on , sacred shield & soi rules , SS puts the absorb , gets eaten in 2 secs then soi tops you off for the next 3 , ss absorbs after again. On tectus for example , last phase these 2 are really strong considering you'll have shitloads of haste (and all cds up) you won't need a single external while tanking all 8 motes , on mythic.

The only dangerous part of the last phase of Tectus in the first place is LoS'ing your healers. Between HA, DP, GoAK and AD, you can chain mitigation for longer than the Motes are alive no matter whether you're in SoI or not, and once pillars LoS your healers, SoI isn't going to save you anyway.

I'm all for SoI on some bosses at this point (if only to conserve healer mana on a fight like Mar'gok or make Ko'ragh less of a bitch) but the Mote phase of Tectus is hardly the strongest argument for SoI over SoR.

[Deleted]

Why not? I was able to survive solo for like 40 secs when everyone else died on mythic progress , sitting inside soi. You are not healer dependant at all (which is the thing I mainly want , being able to watch a movie during progress)

Well, honestly, if your Mote phase is lasting 40 seconds, then I completely understand wanting to sit in SoI. I think our average killtime from Motes spawning to last Mote dying is 25-30 seconds when we really suck.