Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Fixing SotC

From my post on the WoW Suggestion Forums.

Now, SotC is one of the most cast seals a Paladin has, but only for 2 reasons:
1) leveling weapon skills
2) immediate judgment
Now, what's missing here? There is basically no reason to actually let the Seal run it's course in actual play (not counting raising weapon skills). Every other Seal has some value in a real fight. Some are obviously more useful that others (I'll almost always choose SoR over SoJ), but there are situations where they are useful. In addition to each Seal having uses both as a Seal and a Judgment, each of a Paladins roles should have Seals that are useful for it. Tankadins have SoR and SoV and Retadins have SoC and SoB. Again, you'll notice that I omitted somthing: Healadins. They certain could use SoW if they are melee-healing, but I see a real opportunity for SotC.

JotC gives the Paladin a certain amount of +Holy damage to that target, what I would propose is that SotC give the Paladin half of that amount as +healing/damage. You could keep the increased melee attack speed, as the two benefits wouldn't really overlap much. If you're taking advantage of the +healing/damage you're unlikely to be concerned about attack speed and if you focus on attack speed you're unlikely to be too focused on the +healing/damage. What would happen is that a casting focused Holyadin would be able to keep SotC on themselves to augment their healing. Obviously the mechanic I propose would need to be tweaked to make it mana-efficient (not sure if that that value is enough to make it a cost effective endeavor), but I think if done correctly (aka, the +healing/damage amount is enough to not only offset the cost of the seal, but actually making it's use a step towards increased efficiency), it could be very useful.
Not sure if anyone will every see it, but I thought it was a good idea :P

3 comments:

Rohan said...

Sometimes I think I am the only paladin who actually likes Seal of the Crusader.

s4dfish said...

Having read (and enjoyed) your prior post, I'm curious if you use SotC in non-raid settings? End-game raiding is doubtful for me, so most of what I'm focusing on is tanking soloing PvE content. Would you still use it in those situations?

Rohan said...

No, not really. Sometimes on caster mobs, or if I don't need the full regeneration of SoW + JoW. As well, ocasionally, I'll use SotC for a bit because I judged Wisdom on this mob, and plan on judging Crusader on the next mob.

I do occasionally use it in 5-mans (if I'm not tanking). I'm always judging Light or Might, so I use it if it looks like I may need more mana/health.

Generally, though, I would say the Seal is for raiding, and the Judgment is for soloing. You'd only judge Crusader in a raid if you were Retribution and had Sanctified Crusader.