SoR vs. SoCom

Of the two seals I am currently using for damage, Seal of Righteousness and Seal of Command, I assumed that they were both used for different uses. Since SoR adds some holy damage to my attacks, and SoComm does damage to two additional mobs, I guessed that SoR will be my go-to single-target seal for boss fights and for solo play if I was able to pull mobs one at a time. SoComm would come into play mainly on multiple-mob encounters, primarily in instances, but also in open world content where I cannot pull one mob at a time. With this constant switching back and forth, I've developed a sort of mental trigger to constantly look at my seals and choose the right one. I have Smartbuff looking out for SoComm, and when I put on SoR, it will constantly nag me that I need to buff with SoCom.

Well, I decided last night to test out both seals. At level 46, I ran over to Tanaris and found the level 46-47 Ogres standing around in the middle of the desert. Why a bunch of ogres would want to stand around ruins in the middle of the desert is beyond me. but they were there, surrounding a small oasis. Ok, so it was the Oasis that they were guarding. But couldn’t they have found a better place somewhere else to inhabit? In any case, I started my test off with SoR. Ran around and attacked, one-by-one, all the ogres I could find. I was successful in never pulling more than one mob at a time. What was the result?

SoR produced 150dps. it isnt the 200-300 dps I do in instances, but that's because I am not attacking five to ten mobs at once. 150dps didn’t sound so bad, but I was hoping for up to 180 or even 200 dps like I was doing in STV. but I realized quickly that in STV, I was usually attacking two mobs at once, or aggroing a second mob while halfway finished with my first mob. They're pretty close together or their patrol paths always seem to be close to where I decide to pull the mob I want to attack. So with these almost stationary ogres, with some pathers/patrollers, I was able to kill one at a time with ease.

When I was halfway through with the camp, I switched to SoCom. The result? I started off doing much less dps, about 110dps at first. but after about five mobs, I was going at around 150dps. I did this for the remaining half of the camp, which included that one mini-boss inside his cave. But fighting him felt like just fighting a regular mob, but with some unlucky RNG streaks (you know, when you see all the misses and parries and wonder whats wrong with the RNG? yea that). Here's the screenie.

My fighting style was completely identical in both cases. I would usually open up with Exo, then judge, usually with Wisdom, but sometimes with Light. When AoW procs, if it's early on in the fight and I have exo to use, I would use exo, otherwise, I would use FoL. If im full on health, I'll wait on the proc to see if I will need it when it nears the end of its duration. at around 3-5 seconds remaining, if the mob is near dead and I have full health, I'd skip it. If the mob is near dead and I have 80% health or less, I'll use an FoL. If the mob is not close to dead I'll use Exo again, despite my health. I usually try to end the fight with Exo off cooldown so I can pull again. Sometimes I'll heal myself after the fight with a Holy Light. Never once did I have to stop to drink because Judgment of the Wise procs often (still talented at 2/3, so 67% chance of procs per judgement), replenishment procs often, and using Judgement of Wisdom about 75% of the time.

I go through mobs fast enough to only lose, at most (and this doesn’t happen often), about 50% of my health. but usually, I lose about 30% of my health, which is quickly replaced by AoW-FoL in-combat. Also, at times where I do reach 50%, I do a holy light out of combat and im back at full. With my mana bar never dipping below 50% (usually at about 70-90%), the mana cost in casting a Holy Light once every four of five pulls is trivial.

This reaffirms several of my beliefs already:

1. Deflection > Benediction for leveling - you don’t need the mana savings.
2. 2/3 Judgement of the Wise is all you need (2 points in this is better than 5 points in benediction; 2 points work wonderfully whereas 3 points can be overkill).
3. Art of War procs do not use up too much mana when coupled with Judgement of the Wise (since it procs insta Exo or FoL, using those spells cost mana, and since we're using them more, we're using up more mana. great way to balance more mana usage with more mana recovery).
4. Seal of Light is useless (although fun to use as a learning tool before AoW).
5. Seal of Wisdom is useless (although fun to use as a learning tool before Judgements of the Wise).
6. Mana conservation and utilization is the key to playing a Paladin well.

And #6 basically sums up everthing.

In closing, I know that SoCom will out-perform SoR when I fight against more than one mob. So the above is a quasi-controlled experiment to see if SoR is actually better than SoCom when fighting against one mob at a time. It looks like they're pretty identical with SoCom edging ahead should a second or thrid mob path into the fight, or gets summoned like some mobs often do. So in conclusion, at least for the next few levels, I'll have Smartbuff check for SoCom, Blessing of Kings, and Ret Aura, as there is no real benefit to having SoR on at all. My next experiment will be using Blessing of Kings vs. Blessing of (unimproved) Might. I guess you can say… stay tuned. =]