I am curious when rets got the seal that let an auto attack hit 2 other opponents. I know they had it in TBC when I leveled a paladin for the first time, but I cannot remember when they got it.
I have dug through all the websites I know of to find its name and when they could use it, but no luck.
The reason I am curious is because I had found a way to make it work much better than most people expected and if it was in late Vanilla, then I may change some of my plans for Classic and see if I can abuse it more in that then I could in TBC.
My guess would be you’re thinking of Seal of Command, which was changed in WotLK to proc on every hit and hit 2 additional nearby targets.
Prior to that, Paladins didn’t have a seal that did that. In Vanilla our seals are:
Command - Chance on hit to deal 70% of weapon damage as holy damage
Righteousness - Deals holy damage on every hit
Light - Chance on hit to heal self
Wisdom - Chance on hit to restore mana
Justice - Chance on hit to stun
Crusader - Increased attack speed and power, but reduced damage per swing
Fury - Each attack does additional threat(Removed in 1.9, probably wont be in Classic)
In TBC Alliance Paladins got Seal of Vengeance which applied a DoT effect to the target, while Blood Elf Paladins got Seal of Blood that did 35% weapon damage as holy on every hit, but deal 10% of the damage to the Paladin as well.
TBC was an annoying time as an Alliance Paladin because Seal of Blood was so much better for DPS as Ret than anything we got.
I know there was one, but it only worked on white hits and only did that white hit’s damage. My memory says it was Righteousness.
The fact you dont remember one for vanilla means it didnt get changes even in 1.12 which means the weird combo I came up with I need to wait until to see if they do a TBC classic server until I can try to do it again.
I know that the seal existed in TBC because of how much that stunt annoyed my guild and that I had done the vast majority of my leveling using spiked shields, thorns and high block chance mechanics which got gutted in Wrath.
Once again, oh well, I will wait on that one. It was more of curiosity than anything else.
I played a Paladin from Vanilla to Cataclysm, and I can tell you that we didn’t have a seal that cleaved until WotLK =P
SoR was able to hit multiple targets but not until Cataclysm. Prior to that, it just added a flat amount of holy damage to every swing.
If Alliance you could use Seal of Vengeance to put a DoT on multiple targets, but that’s about all I can think of.
The build that uses a lot of block with reflective damage is still possible in Classic though, and is actually how you would tank on a Paladin. It might even be stronger in Classic depending on how Blizzard treats “when crit…” abilities in combination with sitting down to force a crit.
Redoubt actually got nerfed when it became a chance when hit rather than when crit. Same with Reckoning.
I know in Cata they removed Seal of Command and added a talent called Seals of Command, which made SoR hit additional nearby targets(and SoR was turned into a weapon damage based seal).
I hated that my class basically turned into Holy Combo Points so I didn’t play Paladin as much after that, but if I remember right the talent was eventually folded into the base functionality of SoR later on. I would guess in MoP when they completely reworked talents.
The Legion pre-patch also removed Seals entirely from Paladin, so it definitely wasn’t Legion.
They were all ST until 3.2.2 when Seal of Command was changed:
Patch 3.2.2 (2009-09-22): This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack that can only strike a single target.
The closest thing Paladins had to a multi-target seal in TBC was multi-dotting with SoV.
Yeah, Pallies only ever had consecrate (provided you specced for it) as a means of active AoE until WotLK. Then they were given cleaving seals and Divine storm. Prior to that Pallies were just one of the many classes that lacked many AoE options. Some classes like shadow priests and feral dps druids didnt even see an AoE ability until Wrath.
I don’t remember ret getting their first AoE until Wrath which was Divine Storm. Other then going hybrid and getting Consecration from the Holy tree.
This is really weird, I know there was a cleave because of how that trick worked and the timing of me doing that trick.
You know what, screw it, here is the trick.
The ability would would only duplicate white hits. This was important for what made it work so well.
The part that made it work well was the axe Ravager. You see, what I found out was that Ravager’s hits were all white weapon attacks. It would proc that ability. So for every spin it did, assuming you had at least 3 mobs to hit, its damage was tripled. Also, because those extra hits are white hits, they will reproc Ravager.
Now why I know it was an ability the was available during TBC was that I got to use it on a Kara run against Terestrian. If you will remember, he has a constant spawn of adds coming in. Well, because of them, after you start spinning with Ravager, you can get up and walk away. The damage was so high that I did as much damage as the rest of the raid put together. I got banned from using that trick ever again.
We neither had the Sunwell Plateau nor later raid gear on when I did that. That would have prevented the insanely different damage that occurred.
So, it had to be an ability that existed during that time, but could not have been 3.0 runs since we were only interested in our mains in the lead-up to WotLK.
Well, it doesnt matter for the Classic server either way. It is pretty definite that it will not be possible in Vanilla.
If by some outside chance I do remember right and a TBC classic is made, I will make a video with what I hope is an improved version. It takes a Vanilla quest item I had gotten rid of before I found that trick out.
Consecration stopped being a talent in the BC pre-patch, so all paladins had AoE before WotLK, but not in Classic, and as multiple other people have said, no cleave seal.