Fast 1-Hander Seal of Vengeance Stacking
Starting a fight with a fast 1-hander to quickly gain 5 stacks of Seal of Vengeance (or Corruption if you're a dirty Blood Elf :), is a DPS loss. Someone already stated this on the forums and I can't remember if it was Selaya or Lynea but it was someone who knows the class.
There's a reason this expansion has been around for 9 years and these "new" DPS tricks were never discovered. That reason is that these are bad ideas and you shouldn't do them.
Gnimo, I am not picking on you dude, if anything I love the fact that you keep initiating these debates on the Paladin forums. I understand that starting off with a fast weapon means 5 stacks of SoV in 6 seconds instead of 12 but what you are not accounting for is the significant damage you lose by swinging a 1-hander around for 6 seconds and doing crap damage with your Divine Storm and Crusader strikes. I know it's only 6 seconds but unless you just stand there waiting for the stacks you will have to use your abilities.
The table below is a calculated DPS timeline of the first 12 seconds for someone starting off with a 2-hander vs someone starting off with a 1-hander then switching at 6 seconds.
- The biggest loss in damage comes from the Divine Storm and Crusader Strike with the fast weapon.
- Weapon damage is significantly lower and those abilities are 110% and 75% of normalized weapon damage respectively.
- The attacks with the 1.5 speed weapon would be normalized to the slower speed of 2.4 but damage output is garbage relative to a 2-hander normalized to 3.3.
- This even takes into account the Warmane bug mentioned by DarkenedHue. Go Vote: https://www.warmane.com/bugtracker/report/37101
- I excluded crits to simplify the math and all the trinket and ring procs that were just wasted while swinging around a1-hander like an *******.
- To summarize the table, starting with a fast 1-hander gains approximately 8k damage from extra seal procs and a higher Judgement damage while the 2-hander gets to 5 stacks. But it also loses 11k damage in the first 6 seconds because you were using Wirt's Leg on HC LK :D
I used the following weapons in my comparison. I don't care if you're using another 1-hander. Weapon damage for a 1-hander is still low.
I also ran a few 30 second tests on a HC dummy to make sure my math wasn't off. With the 1-hander I would switch around 5-6 seconds as soon as I had 5 stacks of SoV. It is a DPS loss and when the bug is fixed it will be an even bigger loss. It doesn't really matter what shield you use, the best you can hope for is something a lot of Strength to give you more AP and raise your weapon damage.
Stop switching weapons mid-encounter. If you're looking for more useful stuff to do as a Ret Paladin during LK transition phase here are some ideas:
- Stun a Shambling Horror at 20%. Your OT and healers will love you for it.
- Immediately cleanse your OT when he's hit with Soul Shriek. It's hard to tank silenced.
- In a bind, throw a Hand of Sacrifice on your OT and pop Divine Shield.
- Time Aura Mastery + Shadow Resist while you're transitioning to the edge to help minimize Pain and Suffering damage.
- HEAL! In an emergency you can get 50k heals out with a few Holy Lights and you always have Lay on Hands.
- No Raging Spirit to kill? Keep Replenishment up using a Ghoul or a Shambling Horror.
- If you see a loose Raging Spirit, you can always be the best tank in the world...for 12 seconds anyway :D
- Watch Omen and help manage aggro on the Ragings. A well-timed Hand of Salvation or Hand of Protection can save the raid.
