I just did some basic math and it looks like Seal of Vengeance will be the seal of choice for ret pallies. This, just from my quick numbers, is a significant boost from Martyr, so we’ll so how it works out.

The Crusader Strike at 75% weapon damage every 4 seconds comapared to 110% ever 6 seconds comes out to a smidge more damage, but that’s not counting crits. I’m not sure what it will look like with crits involved. If you hit CS exactly every cooldown, we would be getting 15 CS as opposed to 10 every 60 seconds.

OLD: 2400 weapon dmg * 1.1 = 2640 * 10 = 26400 dmg/min
NEW: 2400 weapon dmg * 0.75 = 1800 * 15 = 27000 dmg/min

This math leaves alot of loopholes, not counting crits, and assumes hit and exp cap, etc. but you get the idea.

Exorcism having a 1.5 second cast time is putrid in my opinion, but that’s the price to pay to use in PvP I guess. Art of War gives the option to have it instant cast, so I doubt many ret pallies will be using their Flash of Light, opting to Exorcism instead. However, we shouldn’t be needing the FoL as often due to the self-damage from Martyr being completely removed.

Art of War also now only procs off melee critical hits. I’m assuming this still includes DS and CS.

Judgements are out, and that hurts. I’m not much of a PTR person, so I’ll be waiting for EJ and others to post their findings, but I am eager to see how this plays out.

I’m still thinking we’ll be hurting for the burst damage. Some fights, like Yoggs phase 2, need the quick burst damage, or so I hear, so I’;m curious to see if they don’t make some change to give it back some oomph before release.

More to come, it’s still too early to declare this a pass or fail.

Khor