@ Paladins

Myself and the other Paladin theory crafters are honestly taking the classic demo with a large grain of salt due to the sheer litany of bugs that were on it - on the demo, SoR had a flat scaling coefficient of only 10% for both 1h and 2h and JoR had a 50% coefficient (this was tested with Judgement of the Crusader on the targets)

They were likewise affected by the level 20 downranking penalty as can be seen on classic wowhead:

Seal of Righteousness Rank 1
Rank 1
20 Mana
Instant
Requires Paladin
Requires level 1
Fills the Paladin with holy spirit for 30 sec, granting each melee attack an additional 1.2 to 4.3 Holy damage. Slower weapons cause more Holy damage per swing. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time.
Unleashing this Sealā€™s energy will cause (14.4% of Spell power) Holy damage to an enemy.
Effect Apply Aura: Dummy
Value: 107 (SP mod: 0.029)
Server-side script
https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=21084/seal-of-righteousness

Seal of Righteousness Rank 2
40 Mana
Instant
Requires Paladin
Requires level 10
Fills the Paladin with holy spirit for 30 sec, granting each melee attack an additional 2.5 to 8.6 Holy damage. Slower weapons cause more Holy damage per swing. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time.
Unleashing this Sealā€™s energy will cause (31.2% of Spell power) Holy damage to an enemy.
Effect #1 Apply Aura: Dummy
Value: 215 (SP mod: 0.063)
Server-side script
https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=20287/seal-of-righteousness

Terrible.

Vanilla tooltips for all classes are accurate only for the base damages and similar ā€˜stats if nakedā€™ things. For scaling and all that, we had to calculate it ourselves, and any attempt to put that sort of information into a tooltip is the result of guessing at best.

Ok, so stuff is missing for sure from the tool tips?

Guaranteed. The tooltips were never intended to contain the information about scaling and so on.

When you see a tooltip that contains scaling information, that info is either guessed or datamined, either of which has a real chance of introducing error.

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So there were obviously flaws in the demo with how the spells scale.

Thatā€™s not terribly surprising.

It shouldnā€™t affect JotC as that just increases damage taken as my clear memory tells me with the 20+ paladin alts I created that JoR low ranks recieved full benefit.

on the demo, Seal and Judgement of Righteousness were affected by the downranking penalty as they are learned before level 20 - even for the +Holy dmg from Judgement of the Crusader

So wait, if the spell is learned before level 20 the associated spell is also a nerfed version even at that level while below level 20?

Or is that a mistake?

Iā€™m legitimately confused.

according to wowhead it is and that was the case on the demo - whether that is correct blizzlike/intended back on Vanilla Iā€™m not 100% sure

cause I know when we first encountered it, we were like WTF IS WRONG WITH THIS CRAP?!?!?

then we remembered downranking lol

My best recollection of the way the downranking penalty worked is that it never applied to the highest rank of a spell you knew.

But IIRC, paladins in the demo had access to both rank 1 and rank 2 SoR, so rank 1 would have downranking penalty.

Now that said itā€™s entirely possible either that Iā€™m remembering wrong or that the demo was bugged. It only really comes up with paladins because no one else has access to a meaningful amount of +spell damage before level 20.

which is why I was kinda bummed that Blizzard left us kind of hanging by cutting players off at level 19 - it opened as many questions as it answered

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Hmm interesting, what if itā€™s a combination of our foggy memory and the demo being bugged.

Odds are pretty high that itā€™s both.

Fair enough.

hence why I said that the other theory crafters and myself only take the demo with a grain of salt - without a fully flushed out alpha/beta anything we tested on the demo can only go so far towards putting together the full picture

Except that both rank 1 and 2 never had a penalty at the very least from JotC. I had over 20 different paladin alts throughout vanilla. None of them had penalties when I would down rank or use the highest level. It was very consistent. I am extremely confident that my mechanical knowledge of low level paladins is accurate.

So waitā€¦ is the sub Level 20 Spell damage coefficient penalty wrong on the demo or is this something you did not notice before due to the extreme low level of your character?

Itā€™s all beginning to make sense, but itā€™s also still a bit confusing because I see conflicting information.

The way you want

Regarding Judgement of the Crusader

Seal of the Crusader Rank 6

160 mana
Instant

Fills the Paladin with the spirit of a crusader for 30 sec, granting 306 melee attack power. The Paladin also attacks 40% faster, but deals less damage with each attack. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time.

Unleashing this Sealā€™s energy will judge an enemy for 10 sec, increasing Holy damage taken by up to 140. Your melee strikes will refresh the spellā€™s duration. Only one Judgement per Paladin can be active at any one time.

What this says to me is that the up to 140 increase holy damage taken is contingent on the spell damage coefficient of the spell used vs that target correct?

So for example, if the spell damage coefficient is 50% then you would really only see +70 spell damage from the used offensive ability. (Not including any +spell damage and healing on the gear)

Am I interpreting that correctly?

Yup.

Thatā€™s exactly what it means with the ā€œup to 140ā€. Originally, all +damage items were phrased like that, I think, but over time they became inconsistent.