Seal of Righteousness

For those of you that don't know, there was a time on test before 3.1 when the Seal of Righteousness glyph actually increased its damage by 30%. Unfortunately, they changed it back, and I'd like to make a point here about why it is unfortunate. Having Seal of Righteousness do more damage made it actually the best dps and threat seal when used with Broken Promise and about tied it with Seal of Corruption in other cases. This had a lot of interesting effects:

• It gave us a seal that wouldn't break CC
• It made Reckoning not useless again
• It made Expertise a good threat stat for us
• It gave us options
  

Having a seal that doesn't break CC can actually be quite useful in many cases. CC's been pretty obsolute since Wrath, when they turned us into AoE ministers of death, however, it's starting to show its power again in Ulduar. The adds in Razorscale's fight can be CC'd and the bolts from the Watchers can eat a healer. When I do adds on that fight, I use Righteousness, even without the glyph, to give the casters the option of CCing them.

Reckoning, on the other hand, is not our strongest talent, far from it. However, it is on all accounts our most awesome talent. A lot of us became very disappointed when the rise of Corruption in the horde basically became the death of the fun talent that got us to 80 (for those of us who levelled as prot). It makes me smile every time I hear those double-swings. With Righteousness, 5/5 Reckoning was great, even necessary. Now, it's useless again.

Being able to use Expertise, on the other hand, is nice, if only so that we have more gear options. Right now, it's virtually a useless stat. Plus, it's even on our t7 helm and its only competitor, Helm of Vital Protection. It's on the Legplates of Sovereignty, the only 226 leggings pre-3.1. Being able to look at an Expertise item and not say "ugh" was a really nice thing. Now, that won't be the case. Expertise is still "ugh".

Finally, it gave us options. Different paladins might pick different seals, depending on their play style. Some paladins like the steady drip of a Corruption debuff. Other paladins like to do more damage. Some situations would call for one over the other: for example anything with an aggrowipe would require Corruption, while anything that needed more snap aggro would use Righteousness.

Unfortunately, all of that is gone. Despite having the 30% buff on test and despite overwhelming approval from the paladin community, the change didn't go through. Again, we're finding ourselves put in a box, rather than having the kind of options that make being a paladin tank fun and interesting. Plus, I really wanted to use Reckoning. It always makes me smile.