Warning, long post ahead!
Howdy everyone,
I just wanted to bring attention to what is currently the largest change to a class currently on the TBC beta. If this mechanic is allowed to go live, it will be a substantial buff to ret paladins, when no other class is getting dps adjustments in TBC Classic. No, this change is not the movement of seal of blood to alliance, it is the changes to seal twisting that were implemented as part of a way to salvage the mechanic when spell batching was removed.
Overall, this is a large change in terms of the correct retribution rotation, mana efficiency, dps potential, and gearing strategies, and I’m going to detail both how these changes are not like the burning crusade version of seal twisting, but also why it is such a big deal.
If you don’t care about the details, feel free to skip them.
((Seal of Blood and Seal of Vengeance currently do not have the new seal twisting mechanics applied to them on the beta, but there’s the chance it does get added to the beta, hence the thread))
First off, What actually is seal twisting?
Seal twisting was originally an interaction that seals had with the spell batching system that allowed players to make use of spell batching delays on certain attacks (primarily Seal of Command) and fit in an extra seal effect. Some examples of seal twisting effectively being used are:
Swapping off of Seal of the Crusader (SotC) and applying Seal of Command (SoC) after the swing start, but before swing hit, in order to snapshot the haste, still have a chance at a SoC hit without being penalized by SotC’s -40% damage output (as the aura itself is no longer on the player)
Swapping from SoC to Seal of Justice (SoJ) to fish for a stun. This swap still allowed to get your SoC extra attack, but when timed properly, would also allow the seal of command hit to trigger a seal of justice stun.
and in TBC, the most relevant of them: Seal of Command swapping to Seal of Blood (SoB). This twist allowed for the paladin to Get a Seal of Command Hit AND get a hit from Seal of Blood on BOTH the white hit and the Seal of Command hit, effectively bringing your typical 35% or 70% weapon damage seal hit (depending on seal) and bumping it up to 140% weapon damage.
What were the limitations of seal twisting?
Seal twisting was incredibly powerful in the right applications, but had some serious limitations. Most notably, it only tended to work in singular directions. Most relevant twists relied on starting in one seal and then swapping to the other, but the twist only worked in one way.
Start in Command and Twist to blood? Chance at a 140% weapon hit burst
Start in Blood and Swap to Command? You just get the 35% weapon damage hit. Some seals had no appreciable effect when attempted to be twisted together.
Because seal twisting as an unintended mechanic based on a spell batching bug, it wasn’t exactly consistent.
This singular direction twisting made it fairly global cooldown intensive, and thus mana intensive, while also crowding out other abilities you might want to use (such as crusader strike) if you wanted to twist for that swing, forcing you to choose between the two options.
Lastly, the timing window of seal twisting was fairly tight, and involved watching for swing animations to make work properly, making it challenging to apply on non-standstill fights.
So what’s changing?
Because Blizzard wanted to maintain the legitimate behavior of seal twisting in tbc classic after they removed the spell batching mechanics, they decided to apply a universal ~0.5s window where seals do not fall off after you swap from one seal to another. Effectively, this makes it so that by swapping seals before the end of your swing timer causes your next swing to have the effect of both seals, regardless of what those two seals were, or which one you started in.
This allows many combinations of twisting that you could not do prior (such as seal of righteousness and vengeance), and removes any directionality requirements from the twists. You no longer need to start in SoC to get that juicy SoC + SoB + SoB hit for 140% weapon damage, you can get that twist regardless of which seal you started in.
This makes it much easier to complete the twist. You have a reasonably sized window to complete it toward the end of your fixed swing timer, you have to spend less global cooldowns to set up the twist, you can twist things you couldn’t twist before, and this unintended use of game mechanics is now significantly more applicable and reliable than it should be.
So why does this matter?
Well, if this “twisting 2.0” version is allowed to go live in a way that allows seal of blood and seal of command to be twisted together in both ways, rets will have a rotation available that much, MUCH better supports doing it every swing.
Originally, they needed to start in SoC in order to twist, that meant to twist on each swing, you needed to
Swap to Blood on the swing (1.5s global)
Swap back to Command (1.5s global)
and be ready to twist again for the next swing, making the entire twisting mechanic impossible to do every swing if your weapon was 3.0 speed or faster (ignoring spell haste). In addition, that global cooldown crowding made it impossible to use crusader strike and twist within the same swing. You were forced to choose between using a crusader strike or a twist.
Because Crusader Strike is the only ret paladin ability that is more valuable than a seal twist SoC + Double SoB burst potential, you would prioritize it over a twist. Because Crusader Strike had a 6s cooldown, you could effectively, under a best case scenario, twist every other swing.
Now, that global cooldown issue is resolved under twisting 2.0. Now you Twist, have a free global, and then can twist again so long as your weapon speed is slower than 3.0. So now, there’s no longer the need to choose between a Crusader Strike and a Seal Twist, you get BOTH!
So what kind of impacts are we talking here?
Let’s talk a late game paladin.
(all numbers estimated using Baranor’s TBC Retribution spreadsheet)
In a standard, no twisting rotation, no bloodlust/heroism/haste bursts this paladin could reasonably be expected to have a DPS of around 1813, using their full rotation of consecration, exorsism, judgements, and the like, with a breakdown of 760 DPS from autoattacks, 405 DPS from Crusader Strike, 371 from Seal of Blood, 98 from Judgement, 115 DPS from Consecration, and 64 DPS from Exorcism.
Now, under a 1 way twisting like in TBC, performed perfectly, you would lose the gains from consecration and exorcism in order to gain the DPS of Seal of Command and Extra Seal of Blood on every other swing (we are assuming best case scenario here, where crusader strike will never be delayed due to a fixed 3.0 speed). In this scenario, we lose a total of 179 DPS worth of spells to gain half the value of seal of command, or 156 DPS from command, and an extra 74 from extra Seal of Blood procs (about 40% chance to trigger from the twisted seal of commands), so a rough net gain of 51 DPS, about a 3% boost over the normal rotation by twisting in this scenario. (In reality it will likely be a bit more, since consecration is intensely mana intensive, and the standard rotation will end up dropping it often)
Now, under seal twisting 2.0, you now can twist every swing due to the lowered GCD requirements. In this setup, you still get the same 760 DPS from autoattacks, because our weapon speed is finely tuned, we still get the same 405 DPS from crusader strike. We now get the full value Seal of Blood with 371 DPS, The full value Seal of Command with 311 DPS, and about an extra 40% on Seal of Blood Triggers from the seal of commands, worth 149 DPS. Assuming that this rotation horribly messed up with your judgement timing (just to overpenalize it), lets say you only get half the normal judgements to bring it down to about 50 DPS. Without even touching exorcism or consecration, and only half using judgements, this seal twisting 2.0 paladin is now at about 2046 DPS. They have a net gain of 215 DPS, which is an 11.8% boost over the normal rotation
All of the boosts from seal twisting 2.0 are due to the added global cooldowns available by managing haste values to allow for more twisting without interfering with other abilities, such as crusader strike. No longer forcing ret paladins to choose between a twist or damaging abilities is a pretty massive dps increase. It is also considerably less mana intensive than the original seal twisting rotation.
So why am I mad about a dps buff to ret paladins?
First, this is unlike normal burning crusade behavior. All available seal twisting guides that have survived that era are clear that this only works in one direction, so twisting every turn required a choice between other damaging abilities and using twists.
Second, Blizzard stated that they were not retuning classes in the burning crusade classic. This change would equate to upwards of a 12% gain in dps given the right conditions. It is even a sizeable jump up from the rough numbers I ran from original seal twisting’s ideal gains.
Third, I find the rotation personally highly unfun, and having it tied to something that’s approaching 10+% of my potential dps makes it far, FAR less optional than the theoretical 3-5% of your dps that it would be if you were fully maximizing a traditional rotation.
Fourth, this new mechanic is likely to warp the play of a class around a workaround to save an unintended spell batching behavior. Seal twisting 2.0 is nothing like rets have ever played before, and if that’s the objectively correct way to play paladin, paladin is going to be the only spec that plays nothing like it did back in burning crusade, making it a failure of a “remake” for that spec.
Please don’t expand this new twisting to cover seal of blood / command twists in both directions. There’s no reason that rets should be the only redesigned spec of TBC Classic.