Seal of Blood/Martyr 3.1 and Weapon Speeds

SoB is an unnormalized attack because it procs on "next swing." Since it is not by definition an instant attack, the damage it deals is directly related to your weapon's speed. This makes faster but higher DPS weapons marginal upgrades at best, since Seal damage has been buffed to be the primary damage dealer instead of the judgement. Remember that this seal applies to crusader strike AND divine storm. This unnormalized damage, when attached to normalized instants, creates a damage disparity that makes a significant number of weapon upgrades unattractive or sidegrade at best.

A paladin with a Sword of Justice and 10000 attack power will only be a little over 2% behind in DPS than a Paladin wielding Rune Edge with the same stats. This is perhaps an unrealistic gear level in this current content patch(it is likely achievable with a few trinket procs, though). The fact that a very slow Blue weapon can even compare to a Faster high end Epic due to Blood not being normalized is absurd. Given 30% armor mitigation, you expect a Crusader Strike to deal 3800 damage with the Rune Edge, and 3622 with the Sword of Justice(noncrit). However, their blood hits will amount to 2073 and 2163 respectively. The totals? 5873 for Rune, 5785 for Sword of Justice. That is an extremely small difference given the ilvl difference of the two. If sword of justice were 3.4, the damage difference would be over 400 for a crusader strike+blood hit.

The issue here is that a normalization of all SoB damage would reduce the effectiveness of haste/haste effects for Paladins, haste being a fairly low priority stat to begin with. This comparison is understandably skewed, but even standard situations such as Sword of Justice Naxx10 weapons become sidegrades, such as Demise vs Sword of Justice. The heroic HoL axe becomes a downgrade. This is a huge problem with itemization as it may end up forcing Paladins to wait on extremely low drop rates of the slowest two handers, as the others simply cannot compare. It would be a repeat of the 1.0 MS warrior and the arcanite reaper.

"When it's ready" - 3.1 Paladin stuff that STILL doesn't work

Holy Wrath still only hits demon/undead. Tooltip seems to imply that it would deal the damage, and additionally stun demon/undead.
Divine Storm tooltip/ability(?) still 100% instead of 110%.
SoC still proccing at 5 yards on Judgement, but not at any greater range.
Judgements still being "lost" when CC'd at the same time.
Divine Guardian does not stack with Blessing of Sacrifice and vice versa. Not an issue with one spell being more powerful, they simply consume each other and cannot be overlapped.
Righteous Vengeance DoT breaks repentance. Two patches and counting on this introduced regression that still remains unfixed.

Who knows what else. Apparently all these bugs can simply be swept under the rug until the "next patch," Blizzard certainly is not going to hotfix these issues in. Thx Blizz.

3.1 Ret PvP Specs

So far for 3.1 I see two likely specs.

http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=sxhdZVZVfMxbIuGdubsu
11/x/5x, for Fear/Disorient reduction, incredible team support through aura mastery+conc aura, and added support healing ability through Spiritual Focus and Healing Light. Obviously this is more suitable for larger brackets where you will most likely have a healer. Remaining points would likely go toward finishing off Ret, possibility Divinity but it doesn't seem worth the points.

Alternatively there is :
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=sxhdZVZVfMxbIuGdubsu
0/19/52, nearly the same as your classic 3.0 0/20/51. 6% healing is tempting but I'm of the opinion that 1min SS with 20% more absorb and SoL scaling will probably end up doing more with so much MS flying around these days. Improved Divine Guardian is just a minor boost.

In either case, I consider Vindication essential to any Ret build. 20% stamina greatly increases your team's ability to kill a player while CCing another, especially with the limited duration/long cooldown nature of Paladin CC. Seal of Blood/Martyr will likely be the go-to seal for PvP, though most Ret paladins already did use SoB in PvP. Damage moved off the Judgement into the Seal means skipping Fanatacism is not as big a deal, and SoB now behaves like SoC but with a 100% procrate, no internal cooldown, a slightly weaker Judgement, and some minor feedback. Things honestly look good for Ret in 3.1. Added utility, more reliable damage, and far less bloat.

Parity and well tested changes.

Seal of the Martyr is still broken on PTR. They're receiving very little feedback as a result of the bug and posters are being told to wait for the next PTR patch. Business as usual except 3.1 is planned to go live in 2 weeks. Well tested changes? Focus on class parity? Really? This reminds me of the phantom judgement bug which made unlucky RNG a huge mana problem for Ret. Supposedly Blizzard tested it internally and "did not oom." They declined to state any other details besides L2P.

This is a pretty massive change, one that could potentially make or break Ret dps and pvp. Yet its likely only going to get one week of feedback/analysis, if even that. You could argue that they could simply amplify the values of a given parse by the percentages given and call it a day, but GC has said repeatedly that they employ well versed players to run these tests and greatly value that avenue of testing. "Mere theorycraft" is not useful. I'm not seeing it.

Conspiracy theory points toward the relatively COMPLETE resolution of the glyph of backstab change. Altering/fixing a bug and then understanding possible ramifications and immediately rectifying the problem. Meanwhile Paladins remain the red headed stepchild.

Bugs still outstanding :
Martyr not doing the right amount of damage.
Judgement not working but consuming cooldown when CC'd a the same time of casting.
Judgement of Command having a 5 yard range requirement to proc the seal, but a 10 yard range. Same may be true for divine storm.

Unfixed and Unloved /wrists