Paladin Seal choice in 3.2

I have been testing a little bit with the different seals and I would like to share my thoughts. Whatever people may say about Blizzard and their treatment of the Paladin class, I think they have done something rather special with 3.2. I believe it is a very very good thing that people do not know which seal to use. If there were one obvious choice for every situation then why not just use that one seal? Why even pretend like X seal is useful if Y is better in every way?

Our seal choices (speaking only for ret of course, the other spec's choices are obvious) are as follows:

Righteousness (SoR)
Vengeance/Corruption (SoV because I am alliance)
Command (SoC)

Each of these gives the user a unique playstyle, however subtle the differences may be. They are present. Let us go through them one by one so not only to be thorough, but to allow each of them their due respect.

Righteousness has been the underdog since I can remember. It is the first seal you learn, but it is discarded rather quickly when you come upon SoC (though after this patch who knows). Personally, I enjoy this seal of alot for a few reasons.

1: The damage is consistent and it cannot be dodged/blocked/parried (in contrast with SoC).
2: You can glyph and talent for it (which opens up Unyielding faith in Holy. An AMAZING talent).
3: You can hard switch because the damage does not depend on a dot to be up (contrast with SoV)
4. The AoE damage is consistent because of #1 which makes this very useful for cleave comps.
5. The judgment damage is almost on par with SoV and way more than SoC

The downsides you might ask?
1: It cannot crit, which in pvp does not make much difference because its chance to crit would only be somewhere around 12-13% anyway so who cares?
2: You HAVE to glyph/talent for it. By doing so you are losing some of the deeper prot talents that are useful like 6% damage reduction, better shields + 40 second stun cooldown (instead of 60).

So this comparison has outlined some of the differences between the 3 seals so it is therefore not necessary to do this twice more. I will throw some more info out there that I did not mention above. SoC can crit, but as I said up there it can be blocked/dodged/parried. DKs have a lot of parry so I can forsee some frustration with that. SoV can be glyphed so as to give you 10 more expertise. Not bad at all when everyone in the game has 5% dodge and many have 5% parry as well. Gives an overall dmg boost to all your attacks.

On the subject of SoV, it warrants its own little section here. SoV does more damage on the seal and judgment plus it has a dot that is just icing on the cake. The downside of course is that it takes FIFTEEN seconds of face time with your target to get this damage to ramp up. That is a lifetime in pvp my friends. And with the amount of time I spend twiddling my thumbs while freedom is down, this will be very frustrating.

Another downside of SoV is that it does basically no aoe damage. SoR/SoC both proc no matter what debuffs are on the target, so when I divine storm a rogue and warrior who are on my partner I am doing 3-4k damage to them if nothing crits. When I use SoV that drops to 2-3k. That adds up overtime. Also, if you are using SoV then you are forced to stay on one target (unless you get peeled then you can try to stack another target) because switching back and forth will be tedius with the 15 second ramp up time.

So what is a person to do? I think the smart paladin's brain is whirring at this point trying to figure out a way in which to use these seals' weaknesses and strengths to his advantage. I know I am. My thoughts are thus: When the fight begins, use SoV to put pressure. When you see an opportunity for burst (say a druid pops out to cyclone you so you repentence him), swap to SoR (or SoC, have not decided which is better for this purpose) and stun + wings on him. This way you have the sustained damage of SoV for pressure plus you can swap and still do good burst when you need to.

So problem solved right? Yes and no. The good news is that speccing for SoR and SoV are the same thing (seals of the pure) and you can glyph for judgment which helps both (I had considrered glyphing for SoR, but this looks like a better alternative). The bad news is the same thing: You are speccing out of a LOT of stuns over time. In a 10 minute match, which is 600 seconds, the paladin with imp hammer of justice will get 15 stuns. What I am alluding to currently will only yield 10. That is FIFTY percent more stuns. That is awesome. BUT I think the 30% less time feared/disoriented will make up for the stuns. Fear is a terrible problem for me and It will be a dream come true to never sit in a 10 second fear again.

My conclusion is that the smart ret paladin (oxymoron? some would say) will use his arsenal of seals at his disposal and swap seals depending on the situation. Oh, another reason swapping with SoR is bad is that if they know what youre doing, changing seals could be a dead giveaway that you are switching.

SoV for sustained pressure, then SoR for some burst. That is all for now folks.