I enjoyed seals when they were on the aura bar and you only changed them situationally (single target, multi-target, or healing). They’d certainly be a better thing to have on our bar than the current bland auras.
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That is your opinion, and there’s nothing wrong with it.
Yes, that is my opinion. Dislike it all you’d like, but both our opinions are equal. I like the OP’s post, and I would like to see Seal Twisting return in a robust form.
You are very literally trying to insult me, and anyone else that hasn’t done as much content as you. It’s blatantly obvious, and quite lame.
Sure, I’ve ONLY been playing my Paladin main since Nov. of '05. I’ve only used Seal Twisting in the open world, dungeons, PvP, and raids* back in the day. Thus, your basis for judgement matters nothing to me. I truly, genuinely do not care if I’ve played as much raid or ‘competitive’ content as you, a Paladin developer, or the very Spirit of WoW itself. Nothing you’ve done modifies my opinion on the matter, and never will.
Primarily because you’ve provided no reasons for me to see things from your point of view, beyond your “look at my achievements, that means I know!”. Further, you’ve offered zero alternatives from your vaunted position in content heaven. The end.
This is the most narrow-minded, elitist thing I believe I’ve seen in any part of WoW’s forum. Especially since, again, you haven’t offered a single improvement in here.
I’m not going to place you on ignore or anything, but unless you have actual content to compare against what the OP has offered, I doubt you and I have more to say to one another. We’ve skewed this thread way off course.
I genuinely like your ideas dude, and if you have any further, I’d like to see what you have!
My stance on Seals has been the same for a long time, let them RIP, they don’t improve gameplay, really are just passive garbage. The only awesome Seal we ever had was Martyr/Blood, and that was nerfed into oblivion and deleted because it was actually fun. Everything else before and after has just been lackluster junk.
Empowered Seals was a horrible maintenance buff, probably the worst the game has ever seen. Sure the buffs were good, and it kind of did well in PVP, but in raids, dungeons, any PVE content, it was a chore and just disrupted gameplay.
The OP hasn’t posted anything really original or interesting, just reruns of old versions of Seals or talents we had in the past, not very good ones either.
Look at Auras, people wanted those back also and how good are they, look at our “new” talent tree, loaded with Consecration talents, when Consecration SUCKS. So far bringing back anything from the past has not worked well for this class at all.
I agree with your overall observations.
The problem with modern Paladins, as I see it, is that when the Paladin developers removed our proper Blessings, Auras and Seals, they provided little to no compensatory addition to our remaining repertoire. Blessings, Auras and Seals weren’t just a ‘feel good’ mode of play, they accounted for a decent amount of our damage and survivability.
For example, the removal of Seal of Righteousness took with it a +12% Holy damage cleave that didn’t require Holy Power expenditure or mana. Consider this loss, along with the additional loss of our ability to stack Greater Blessings of Kings (a 270% shield with a 6 second refresh), Might (10% chance for +30% Holy damage on ALL attacks) and Wisdom (+.2% max health / mana regen).
That’s quite a bit, and again, in none of the patch notes do I see any proper replacements or compensation. We just lost power and class identity overnight.
Aura of Sacrifice and Blessing of Sanctuary was tanking paradise back in the day, and I could switch out Seal of Truth and Insight as needed, depending on my party, and I still had my Avenging Shield for threat generation and reliable damage. I’d take these back over Guardian of Ancient Kings ‘gameplay’ any day of the week.
That said, I believe that Auras, Blessings and Seals CAN be properly re-integrated into our gameplay, provided that the Paladin development team takes the opportunity to actually scale the returning spells upwards.
Sorry for the long post! Having discussed this, I’d really like for you to have a look at redesign of our old system that I’d created a few weeks ago. I just don’t want to overtake the OP’s thread anymore 
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As much as people seem to have problems with abilities that aren’t “do damage”, empowering themselves or others is a really iconic feature of fantasy Paladins over multiple genres which is something no longer true in modern WoW.
At the end of the day the game is still an RPG, so theme and identity still should be important even if slightly to the cost of gameplay for some.
Does that mean seals should return as they were previously? Not necessarily.
But I think there is still room for a modernised version that could both fill the identity and still feel good to play.
Either way, I think most people can agree that anything is better than the joke that is the “seal” talents in Dragonflight.
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I agree, Seals feel thematically appropriate for Paladins. The Paladin fantasy is a crusader/protector empowering themselves with holy magic before charging into the frontlines.
There have been many implementations of Seals throughout the years and from a gameplay perspective they have usually been lackluster. They are an iconic part of the Paladin fantasy and worth preserving, and I don’t think it is impossible to design Seals in a way that feels good to play.
The design I posted in the OP would relegate Seals to a passive 60min buff you apply to yourself before combat and rarely switch, similar to Auras. It adds a flavorful way to expand player power through talents that don’t necessarily require more interactivity, like receiving +50% effect from Seal of Light at all times.
Players that wish to engage further with the system and the complexity of swapping Seals in combat could take talents like Empowered Seals. Since some players may not enjoy that playstyle; it could be a choice node with another ability.
AOE vs ST Seals could work, but there are some issues with that paradigm. If you have played Retribution in Shadowlands, you know how awkward it feels to run an AOE build and then have a single target portion of the encounter (happens all the time in m+) and vise-versa.
Personally I don’t like the design of having an “AOE build” and a “ST build” because you always end up feel gimped in the other scenario.
Since Seals can be swapped in combat - unlike talents - this may not be a problem. However, if there are any talents tied to increasing the power of one of these Seals over the other then you will likely run into that same problem. This is not an impossible problem to solve, but it does require some thought.
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If I were to do seals here is what I think.
Seal of Command: CS: Deals a small amount of holy damage to all enemies within 5 yards of the target. Increased damage if target is standing in consecration.
Seal of Truth: TV: Leaves a strong slow ticking DoT on the target that can stack up to multiple times. Would move some of our damage profile out of burst and help relieve the loss if we have to move away from the boss.
Seal of Light: DS: Heals x number of party members within x yards for a portion of the damage done. TV heals a random party member for the portion of the damage done.
Seal of Insight: Judgement causes party members to regain X mana.
I’d rather these were options then some of the ones in the tree as it stands.
Are these active buttons or passive effects learned through talents? I’m assuming the former.
One of the things I really didn’t like about Seals in WOD was the “number vomit” that happened whenever you were in combat. Between auto-attacks and abilities, your screen was constantly flooded with tiny damage numbers from Seals… it wasn’t very fun. It also felt like the Seal was doing damage rather than empowering you, like a floating orb that zapped people. Didn’t feel thematically appropriate.
I’m also not sure that Paladins should have a DOT. A Holy Crusader causing people to bleed to death…? Seems more like something a pit fighter/brawler like a Warrior would be doing than a Paladin.
I also don’t think the gameplay of stacking the DOT on multiple targets feels appropriate.
I like that Final Verdict and Divine Storm feel like big chunky finishers. It feels right to have heavy hitting purposeful attacks as a Paladin.
I like the group utility here, but if the only thing this Seal does is restore mana then you will always have to swap to this Seal before casting Judgment and then swap back to your damage Seal immediately afterwards. Is that fun?
I’ve thought about how incorporate seals a lot into our rotation that isn’t just number vomit or a 60 minute passive that you fire and forget.
I’ve thought about tying seals to our abilities, so BoJ/Judgement/TV/Exorcism give us small temporary, thematically appropriate buffs and when you collect all the buffs then you cash them out with a new finisher… but it’s just a builder/spender relationship
I’ve thought about doing the same thing but granting us a powerful temporary buff but then it’s just a maintenance buff to juggle.
But in the end I think we’re better off without seals that are a new button to press or else they could potentially fall into how our auras are used, how often do you swap auras in an encounter, is it ever worth the GCD to swap and to swap back?
I was going for passive talents that modified your abilities because of ability bloat.
Are purely passive effects “Seals”? If you can have them all active, they are Seals in name only.
Again OP, I like what you’re trying to do, and I hope that it reaches the right ears. I’ve added your thread here, to one that I’d created, a few weeks back.
I conceptualized some new features for Paladins. Namely, a call for updated Auras, as well as a way for Auras to modify our Consecrations, Judgements, and the Forbearance status (since Blizzard will never get rid of it, we may as well work with it).
I also outlined a design for Cavaliers and Justiciars in our class fantasy, and I’ve created a few Angelic flavored Talents as well, because our class fantasy needs some help.
Think more holy burning, similar to the concept of consecration it’s basically the idea that being so holy it is painful to be in that area.
Similarly to that, being touched by a being of such devout holy blessing also causes the entity to feel lingering pain.
Think Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone when Harry murders Professor Quirrell.
Also it was something we had for a decent amount of time.
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I can see that. It makes sense for Wake of Ashes to have a DOT component.
For some reason the Seal of Truth DOT doesn’t seem to capture the same fantasy.
I am of the opinion that Empowered Seals should be an option in the talents
It needs to a facelift for sure but should be implement as an option rather than Seals being boring passives
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Increased anything for standing in Consecration is a terrible idea for Ret. For Prot it mostly works at the expense of any pretence of being a mobile tank, but for Ret it’s just a Bad Idea.
We had exactly this DoT for many years, mainly as a way of preventing Rets from blowing people up instantly on a target swap - it gave our damage a forced ramp-up time. It was handy for forcing Rogues to use Cloak if they wanted to stealth in the day, too. In PvE it added some small amount of skill to cleaving, but wasn’t used in straight AoE.
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You can force our damage to ramp without a holy DOT. For example, we could have a stackable “%holy damage taken” debuff.
Exactly in legend evil creatures cannot go near graveyards, churches, or bear the sight of holy symbols, or direct sunlight as it causes them extreme pain, or outright destroys them.
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Another idea is that seals work off a stacking buff, you could accumulate stacks through some action (maybe holy power generation, or a Crusader Strike use etc) and then either at a specific value or scaled (although probably not as that becomes very combo pointish) you could expend those stacks to cast a seal which gave you a buff.
Which seal you chose to use the stacks on would depend on the situation, with I’d imagine different types of damage profiles, as well as utility options. Basically a replacement seraphim with more options but removed from holy power.
Importantly, something which hasn’t been mentioned as I believe it’s a given. Regardless of how seals are implemented, they should be off the GCD and only share and internal cooldown with each other. (In implementations where there is no requirement to cast a seal)
You just created Holy Power + Inquisition 
I think Seals are better as almost-passive effects that get expanded in complexity through talents
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