Seal of Blood. An explination please?Follow

Can someone explain the use of this to me? This ability is god awful.

I've tried it in every way I can think of, and I fail to see the value or purpose of this ability other than to take up some space in my spell book.

I was really excited to get this too. Hey it's my racial deal. It was special just to BE paladins I wanted to check it out. But when I take it out for a spin I have to wonder what they were thinking when they wrote up this ability.

Okay, so it adds on an extra 35% damage in holy, and does 10% damage back to me... Well if it has to hurt me to use it, it's got to be awsome right? Nope.

I pulled up a spreadsheet and started punching in the numbers.

In the end I came to this conclusion.
It is useless.

I when i compared it to seal of righteousness I found that SoR not only does more holy damage, but costs less mana. The only place where SoB won is in a bit more judgement damage, but taking the 33% completely cancled it out and put it into deficit.

I even went through the trouble of getting a 2 hander and grinding my skill up to par. I figured maybe they were gearing this toward the 2hander, but nope, SoR still beat it.

So it does less damage, costs more mana, and hurts you when you use it...

Can someone please explain this? I mean I could see it if it healed you for 10% instead of harming you. That would make some sense (in fact I've seen BE NPCs use a very similar ability and I wouldn't exactly call it unfair or tide turning) considering it would only end up giving me personally back 13-20 health back a swing.

Then in my angst my roomate (who plays alliance) logged on his paladin and showed me what they were given, SoV, which is infinitly more useful than this crap heap they threw to Blood Elves.

what the hell? If ANYONE can find a practical use for Seal of Blood, please share it so maybe my brain will stop hemmoraging from trying to figure out what was going through their heads.

Okay (glad I saved those figures I recorded)

Averages derrived from 20 swings with a 1handed sword (excluding misses, dodges, blocks, and crits) against a same level mob (lvl 65)

Standard melee hit - 136.4 damage
Holy Damage with SoR - 87
Holy Damage with SoB - 42

With Judgement of Crusader in effect:

Holy Damage with SoR - 132
Holy Damage with SoB - 71

So as we can see, SoB doesn't measure up in standard hits.

But wait! I measured Crits too! (judgement of crusader in effect)

Average crit (out of 10) 272
SoR holy damage - 131
SoB holy damage - 114

So SoB packs on more with a crit because it's a percentage rather than a formula derrived from the weapon specs, but still not as much as just the standard holy damage of SoR.

Average SoR judgement (out of 10, crits excluded) - 324
Average SoB judgement (out of 10, crits excluded) - 391

So the SoB judgement does more average damage, but considering I take 33% return damage (129 damage) to cause an extra 60-80 to an enemy, which is less than one extra attack.

Edited, Apr 5th 2007 10:03pm by Kyoseyto

SoB isn't like SoC, where higher attack delays matter. SoC is based on a 7-procs-per-minute system, so at a 4.2 it'd proc every 2 swings, but at 2.1 it'd proc every 4 swings. However, with the 4.2 it might do 200 damage, with the 2.1 it'd only do 100, so it's better to go slow. SoB hits every hit just like seal of righteousness. Both hit more for slower weapons. DPS is what matters most, not the attack speed.

What he's shown is that SoB is basically 50% as effective as SoR. Yet this is our special attack. The ONLY thing it's good for is if the target has more health than JoR would be able to finish, but if JoB could do the job. All you get is an extra tiny bit of burst damage to use to finish an enemy off. I personally would rather have SoV, where I can just do 600 damage (instead of 300), assuming I have 5 applications on.

EDIT: Based on the 130/70(115 crit) model, if we use a 2.0 attack speed and no talent then we can assume 5 hits per judgment. Let's also, for the sake of simplicity, assume a 20% crit chance, which means 1 hit will crit. SoR then gives you 130 x 5 damage, or 650, where SoB gives you 70 x 4 + 115, or 395 damage. So per judgment CD, you get an extra 255 damage out of SoR. So why use SoB just to get < 100 more per judgment? Overall, you still go down about 235 damage by using SoR.

Then, without any + spell damage, SoV (which procs 20 times per minute) would give you about a 2/3 chance to proc with a 2.0 attack speed. Which means that out of 5 hits, 3 of them should proc. So on the first judgment, you'll get maybe 100 damage from the seal so far, but 360 damage on the judge. After the second cycle you should be pulling 600 damage per 12 seconds with the seal, and 600 damage per 10 seconds with the judgment. That's more than the total from SoR...and again, assumes no + spell damage (and he obviously has some). Also assuming (because I haven't tried it) that the SoV stacks aren't consumed by JoV.

Also, Imp SoR talent shouldn't make this big of a difference if someone wants to bring it up, because if he used it in his model this would do 110 or so instead of 130...which it's still more powerful than SoB by a lot.

EDIT #2: I'm not sure if it works this way or not, but if absorbing damage makes SoB useless, then it also becomes ineffective against PW:Shield or the trinkets that absorb physical damage. Right now when people blow that trinket, I can still do holy damage with SoR. If someone absorbs my melee attack, will SoB still do damage? Even if it doesn't, there's still several other disadvantages.

Edited, Apr 6th 2007 4:13am by skribs

Edited, Apr 6th 2007 4:21am by skribs

Yes, but the higher your DPS, the MORE damage you will take. With sword-and-board, you'd take 4 or 7 damage depending on the hit. If you have a very heavy 2-hander with like say 300 damage per hit (on a 3.0 attack speed that'd be like 100 DPS AFTER AP and bonuses) you'd do roughly 100 damage with SoB. Then you'd take 10. I personally don't want to cause myself extra damage. Let's say through the duration of the fight against a mob with like 100k health, you do 20% of the damage...meaning 20k. About 5k is going to be SoB, which means you'll take 500 damage. I don't want to give myself 5% of my health in damage (assuming I have 10k), or the equivilant of more than a hit.

With SoV, if you have a 2-hander with a 3.0 attack speed, you can expect every attack to proc (at 20 procs/minute, it'd be a proc every 3 seconds). So you have 120 damage per proc, over long fights (which a pally fight will be) you're going to do a tremendous amount of damage with it. Once you get 5 stacks up, it will keep refreshing, and you basically have a permanent DoT that does 50 damage per second. Assuming no +spell damage. SoB on the other hand is affected by armor, so you'll do even than what the tooltip (assuming DPS * 0.35) says, while with SoV you'll do more.

It wouldn't go through PW:Shield, as the shield absorbs the holy damage as well. What I was wondering is if since you do maybe 100 damage to the shield, but 0 damage to the player, do you do 35 holy damage to the shield or 0 to it? Simple check - have a priest duel you, simply put PW:Shield on itself and then attack it and see if you take damage. For a more advanced test, you can figure out how much damage his shield SHOULD absorb, then add up how much white damage you SHOULD do, and that will tell you whether or not you were getting the damage in.

Exactly. We get an ability we will not use. Where SoV is BETTER than SoR for single-mob tanking and for DPS. It turns the Paladin into a sort of rogue, what with 5 stacks + finisher (5 combo points + finisher). In the choice of SoB vs SoR, I would choose SoB. In the choice of SoV vs SoR, it becomes a question of how many mobs am I up against? 1, SoV. 3+, SoR. 2, depends on what I feel like and how long the fight would last. So, we get the following equation:
SoB < SoR
and
SoR = SoV
so
SoB < SoV

Balanced?

well i asked one of my guild mates about this (70 paladin prot) and he said he had finally found a use for SoB. He said its useful for proccing. Instead of having a chance to only proc once with a normal hit you get 2 chances per swing. So you could make up for the lost health by double proccing life each time. Also, if you have any trinkets that proc on hit they have twice the chance now. He said the judgement also gives a chance to proc. So this seal may have a good usage after all with the right equip. of course even in this case it isnt useful all the time, esp not as a tank (SoR ftw and aggro hold), but it still has a use.