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The Cataclysm Shockadin Guide!
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Post by
Arannia
Something else I've completely forgotten to point out -
Blessing of Might
! It now folds Wisdom and Might in as one. That's a buff to Ret and Holy (and Prot?) whilst levelling. I always use Blessing of Might as holy, when I'm solo'ing, and I get a fat chunk of Mp5 ontop of it now? Nice!
Levelling as a Holydin is just getting better and better.
EDIT: Ugh. I just realized they made it scale with your current AP, and not give a flat amount. That's a nerf. :(
Post by
svirve
Something else I've completely forgotten to point out -
Blessing of Might
! It now folds Wisdom and Might in as one. That's a buff to Ret and Holy (and Prot?) whilst levelling. I always use Blessing of Might as holy, when I'm solo'ing, and I get a fat chunk of Mp5 ontop of it now? Nice!
Levelling as a Holydin is just getting better and better.
EDIT: Ugh. I just realized they made it scale with your current AP, and not give a flat amount. That's a nerf. :(
Yea but according to the tooltip it gives 828 Mp5 so don't you worry ;p
Didn't realize til now they made it 1 hour though! Yaaaaay!
Post by
Arannia
FINALLY. Holy hell. FINALLY. Thank you, Blizzard.
...
Unless you've gone and made the previously 1 hour buffs 2 hour buffs. I- I am going to check. :(
EDIT: Nope. :D
Post by
pezz
I hope the reagent cost doesn't change, just so we can annoy every other class.
I mean, those amounts of silver will be negligible in Cata (hell, they are now) but it'll still be fun to be a loladin and have the cheapest buff by a mile.
Post by
svirve
FINALLY. Holy hell. FINALLY. Thank you, Blizzard.
...
Unless you've gone and made the previously 1 hour buffs 2 hour buffs. I- I am going to check. :(
EDIT: Nope. :D
Actually im more excited about the 828 Mp5 ^^ That's about twice what i have unbuffed atm =D
And roughly 8 times more than what we get at the moment.
Post by
Arannia
I remember a time when Paladins had to spend about 20% (Literally. Someone did some maths on it a while back) of their time buffing a 40 man raid. 1.5 second GCD, 5 minute duration, and the fact that you have to do them one by one, so that by the time you've buffed everyone, the first guy already only has 4 minutes left. And that's if you didn't OOM.
Thank God times have changed.
Actually im more excited about the 828 Mp5 ^^ That's about twice what i have unbuffed atm =D
And roughly 8 times more than what we get at the moment.
Truth! Although our spells are going to cost a LOT more at level 85. A lot more. We'll have to see if that's actually as large a number as it seems. We could well have mana pools equalling well into the 240k's by the time the Cata expansion is over. I expect 130k to be a common amount of mana to have as we all hit 85. 828 Mp5 is a relatively small number with those in mind.
The above all assumes we stack Intellect in Cata like we do in WotLK, which is looking quite likely.
EDIT: Tuning my numbers down a little because I forgot they're nerfing the amount of mana you get per intellect in exchange for giving us SP.
Post by
havtor
I hope the reagent cost doesn't change, just so we can annoy every other class.
I mean, those amounts of silver will be negligible in Cata (hell, they are now) but it'll still be fun to be a loladin and have the cheapest buff by a mile.
Actually in beta atm its 60min duration and no regent cost and its raid wide same with the new blessing of kings
o and yes hope holy wil be more fun to level.
Post by
Arkham
This thread should be named : "Shockadin in Cata: Haters Gonna Hate"
lol... looks like you got your wish!
Post by
Arannia
Well, it's a fitting name in hindsight. :P
Post by
Arannia
Time for a much needed update!
WARNING: Bigots, trolls, nay-sayers, and "Go ret"ers can stop now, and leave the thread.
Hey! As the author of the
Shockadin FAQ
guide, I feel it my duty to start discussing with you all the possibilities open to us regarding offensive holy builds in Cataclysm.
The run up to Cataclysm is going to be an exciting time for all Paladins of course, but for me, I'm most excited by the opportunities brought up by Blizzard's decision to give
all
healers optional talents to increase their DPS. Now, of course, I don't expect to ever equal the damage output of a true DPS, whilst at the same time, equalling the raw healing power of a true Holy Paladin, and neither should you! This spec is sub-optimal and will continue to be sub-optimal (and indeed, back in it's heyday in TBC, it was still sub-optimal!) With that in mind, let's discuss the changes to the Paladin class, starting with the current talent trees in the beta.
Now, the bad first: NO more hybrid builds. Absolutely none. Blizzard has decided to prevent the ability to throw points into other specs until you have at LEAST placed 31 points. This means, as Shockadins, we won't simply be able to place our first point in Holy to obtain our
main nuke
and then go full Ret. This would be killer, but, alas. (
You get your specs signature ability, no matter your class, at level 10 now, after you've spent your first talent point. Holy Paladins get Holy Shock
).
This is okay, though. Our
31 point talent
is pretty nice, though definitely more healer orientated, we are, after all, still hybrid healers. It will come in useful.
Lets look at what Blizzard has done, so far, to give hope to the existance of the Shockadin in Cataclysm, in so far as talent additions and changes.
I will only discuss talents and changes relevant to the Shockadin.
TALENTS
Paladins of all specs have recieved somewhat of a renewal. Holy Paladins especially, whom, in a healer orientation, no longer rely on single target casted heals! Whilst a Shockadin is not a healer as such, we are at least half a healer, and so I will be listing healing related talents we'll wish to take. The finished talent builds I provide will be for PvP purposes, as just an example. When 4.0.1 arrives, I will create various more builds for levelling purposes, PvE DPS rotations (if you want/need to stay holy but need to throw out just a little extra DPS to help out), as well as various versions for various reasons. Various.
HOLY
Tier 1
Arbiter of the Light
|
Protector of the Innocent
|
Judgements of the Pure
Holy starts off quite dull for us Shockadins, and there's not much here for healing purposes either.
Arbiter of the Light is here for Retribution Paladins, to give them other trees in which to spend their points. Neither Shockadins, nor Healadins want this talent.
Junk.
Protector of the Innocent is situational at best, but we'll take it. The extra survivability, and encouragement to heal others, is very appriciated, and since we'll almost always be
Beacon
ing ourselves, it'll stack up quite nicely with that. -
Nice Filler. Take it. 2/3 - 3/3, up to you. I recommend 3/3
Judgements of the Pure - 9% haste is nice for
casted
healing but has diminished value for Shockadins, as we'll more than likely be focused around instantaneous healing in a PvP environment. It doesn't do very much for our damage output either, although it is nicer in terms of DPS now than it was thanks to the removal of the cooldown on Exorcism.
Filler. Take it. 2/3 - 3/3, up to you.
Tier 2
Clarity of Purpose
|
Last Word
|
Blazing Light
Clarity of Purpose reduces the casting time of our casted heals. I don't like it.
Whether you want/need to put a point into this is up to you.
Last Word is random, but appriciated, granting you a very powerful heal when you need it most. 60% of the time.
Okay talent. Take it.
Blazing Light increases the damage done by our primary
DPS
abilities
.
Essential Talent. TAKE IT.
Tier 3
Denounce
|
Divine Favour
|
Infusion of Light
|
Daybreak
This tier was
made
for shockadins.
I'm not going to tell you why you need to take these talents, but max out every single one of them. It should be quite obvious why.
Tier 4
Enlightened Judgements
|
Beacon of Light
|
Speed of Light
|
Sacred Cleansing
Enlightened Judgements is... actually sort of optional. Judgement really doesn't do any damage for us, the healing return is minimal, the only reason I'd take this talent is if you hate missing, and don't want to gear for hit rating on your off-plate items (neck, cloak, etc).
Optional.
Beacon of Light, no bones about it, definitely a healer tool, but it's also very nice for us Shockadins. Yet more encouragement to fufill a support, combat cleric role, healing those around us whilst smiting those they oppose every second move. Heal your friends, so you in turn are healed, so you in turn can mete out justice! Hurr, poetry.
I'd take it
.
Speed of Light is half useless, half very interesting. It's haste buff is nice for healers, and more or less useless for us, as it benefits casted heals (redundant thing to say, however, since Instant heals dont benefit from haste). It's buff to our new
instant AoE
however is huge, granting us a 4 second, 60% sprint, every 30 seconds, whilst also helping out our buddies. That's
huge
.
Take it
.
Sacred Cleansing could be considered optional depending on how you play, though if you're playing how you -should- play, the ability to remove magic debuffs is very nice, and for only one talent. Oh, that's right by the way, they removed the magic part from
Cleanse
if you hadn't been paying attention. This talent restores that functionality for holy only.
Tier 5
Conviction
|
Aura Mastery
|
Paragon of Virtue
Conviction helps us do the 2 things we love doing. Healing and Damaging. Offers us a 9% buff to both, with some ramp up time, but when it's up, it's usually always up now at 85, provided you have average amounts of crit, not counting irregular dips in RNG.
Aura Mastery, honestly, I would consider optional though I would consider it a crucial talent for pure healers due to their openness to interruption and silence due to casted heals.
Up to you.
Crusader Aura + AM can
be quite cheesy in Battlegrounds though. Nothing like getting the flag in WSG just a few seconds quicker than the other team for that slight advantage.
Paragon of Virtue can be nice, reducing the cooldown on Avenging Wrath, most notably, as well as Divine Protection, which can come in handy against less than awake player opponents.
Optional Talent.
Tier 6
Tower of Radiance
|
Blessed Life
Boring Tier really. Both of these talents give us Holy Power, which we can use to
buff our damage
or
heal ourselves for "free"
. I'll take Blessed Life in my build, personally. I recommend you take at least one, but which one is up to you, if not both. Or neither. Entirely up to you! You'll probably need to spend some points here though.
Edit: Holy Power will make for interesting PvP as a Shockadin. Here are a few facts.
- Beacon of Light will still bounce all heals, but they will only bounce 50%.
- Healing a Beacon'ed target directly will generate Holy Power through Tower of Radiance.
- Holy Power can be used to improve holy damage or be a free instant heal that if cast on yourself, will still bounce to your Beacon.
- Crusader Strike and Holy Shock both build Holy Power, I assume HS will build whether it's used offensively or for healing.
I can see a few gameplay styles coming out of this.
Tier 7
Light of Dawn
Another big AoE heal, noteworthy for it's very unique animation, and that it is dependant on the direction you are facing, something, as far as I am aware, no other heal takes into account. Definitely more benefitial to true healers, but a benefit to us regardless, nice for helping out when you see swarms of people in bottlenecks, in AV or IoC.
SPLASH TALENTS
RETRIBUTION
I list retribution first because currently it's the more favourable of the two, between it and Protection, for our last 10 points. Key Shockadin talents here include
Crusade
,
Guardian's Favour
and
Pursuit of Justice
. Other optional, though in my opinion, less useful talents, include
Eye for an Eye
, and
Improved Judgement
.
Added 10/10/10 19:05GMT
Woops! One talent I did forget to discuss was old favorite,
Pursuit of Justice
. Pursuit of Justice guarentees us some holy power generation in events where we would be generating no holy power due to being CC'd. Whilst strictly a PvP talent for both Shock and Heal, I consider this close to mandatory for any Paladin seeking to engage in PvP activity, as it will add a much needed downside (if only slight) to the enemy CC'ing you, and reward you for surviving by giving you an earlier (or immediate if you already had 2 HP before the stun) Inquisition or Word of Glory.
Not only that, but as always, it'll give you 15% additional movement speed! Allowing you to catch up to that kiter, or, more usually, running away with your tail between your legs! You BG
hero
.
Protection
Protection isn't quite as good, in my opinion. It lacks talents that directly increase our burst potential, instead, offering talents such as
Divinity
,
Eternal Glory
, and
Improved Hammer of Justice
, which are the only REMOTELY useful talents to be had here. Taking these, you'll have 3 spare talents. Chuck them somewhere in Holy, or Retribution.
GLYPHS
PRIME
The best choices here are
Divine Favor
,
Exorcism
,
Holy Shock
, and
Word of Glory
.
Divine Favor increases the duration of our self-buff of the same name by 10 seconds, offering 30 seconds of pure joy every 3 minutes. I'd consider this a very nice glyph.
Exorcism is questionable. Whilst the DoT sounds nice, I do wonder if it'll be a rolling DoT, or if we'll simply overwrite the debuff. Rolling makes this glyph absolutely mandatory. Overwriting makes it junk.
Holy Shock is deceptively good. Whilst 5% doesn't sound like a lot in this day and age, in Cataclysm, 5% will be a lot, and a 5% chance for Holy Shock to synergize with some of our key talents is nice. Very nice.
Word of Glory makes our free heal that little bit more "oomph"y. Optional talent. Nice enough. Maybe a little bit underwhelming, but it depends on your style of play.
MAJOR
Sadly there's nothing very useful here.
Turn Evil
is a long-time Holy Paladin must have for PvP, Shockadin or not,
Cleansing
reduces the mana cost of
Cleanse
, which is now more expensive than in WotLK, and
Light of Dawn
lets us spam nerfed Holy Lazors a little more often.
MINOR
Even more useless and boring. Which I suppose is fitting.
Blessing of Might
and Kings
makes it cheaper for us to reapply purged buffs on ourselves and team mates, and
Insight
makes
our main Seal
cheaper, though if they haven't made Seals purgeable,
Lay on Hands
is an okay choice outside of Arena.
MY
FINAL BUILD
.
There. An evening well spent.
Post by
RedWinds
After I looked at the new holy talents I got excited for playing my pally again, but this post got me excited for all the lols I will reap from BGs with my shockadin. Thanks a bunch Arannia!
Post by
188466
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Arannia
Hey, any suggestion on how to itemize? Maybe get lots of crit, spell power?
Mmm, I'll make an article about abilities and gear soon. Intellect will be our main stat for sure, though.
EDIT: Because Intellect = Spell power now.
Post by
475128
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Arannia
ABILITIES
Also important to the guide are our abilities, Old, new, changed, and not changed. In rough order of randomness, I present to you the most important abilities to the Shockadin, in Cataclysm. Starting off with something old, but changed for the better.
EXORCISM
Yes indeed folks, the first ability I link is not Holy Shock. Why? Because Holy Shock is no longer going to be our highest DPS ability (though is certainly still very, very important). You'll notice that it no longer has a cooldown. A bug with the tooltip, you ask? An erroneous mistake on the behalf of Wowhead, or the developers? Perhaps a problem with your vision? No, no, dear reader. Your vision is fine, and no one has made any mistakes. What you see in that tooltip is 100% correct! Yes indeed.
EXORCISM NO LONGER HAS A COOLDOWN. BLIZZARD HAVE FINALLY GIVEN THE HOLY PALADIN A
SMITE
-LIKE ATTACK.
*takes a moment to contain excitement*
Right. With that out of the way, let's discuss some more reasons why you should be excited about this ability. The first one ties in very nicely with the next ability on this list.
Denounce
. You will have come to the conclussion, all by your lonesome, if you are at all giddy about the Shockadin spec, like I am, that this talent is awesome, and synergizes well with our signature ability. You will also notice that it cuts down on the mana cost of Exorcism.
The second reason is quite simple. We no longer have to spend cooldowns simply standing around, doing nothing, or optionally, hitting the enemy with our sticks for big, fat, juicy, 700 crits. Got nothing to do? Oh. You did buy Exorcism from the Paladin trainer, right? You didn't? That would explain it. No, you will always have something to do now.
HOLY SHOCK
I do not need to point this out, I know, but
NOTHING ABOUT THIS ABILITY, BY ITSELF, HAS CHANGED
. Which is fine. There is no reason to change it. The talents, however, and how this ability synergizes with other abilites, have changed. If you've been reading through this guide and haven't just skipped down here, you'll have read my blabbing on already about
Denounce
. Other talents that benefit Holy Shock, or allow Holy Shock to benefit other abilities in interesting ways are
Daybreak
,
Infusion of Light
(Not new)
,
Speed of Light
, and, least interestingly, but no less crucial,
Blazing Light
, and
Crusade (in Ret)
.
Important to note is that Holy Shock also generates Holy Power for us, which fuels two abilities I'll also point out, down below,
Word of Glory
, and...
INQUISITION
Inquisition is pretty big for us. I remember a time Shockadins were considered by some to be OP, solely for the existance of Sanctity Aura in the Retribution tree (but obtainable by those Holydins willing to sacrifice the then end-tree talent,
Divine Illumination
), which provided 10% additional Holy Damage.
Inquisition gives us
30%
extra Holy Damage. That's huge! That's 99.9% of all our damage (if we include the redundant amount of occasional melee damage we'll do). Thats a whole
129.87%
damage! (Arn't you glad I'm not a theorycrafter?). I don't really need to explain why this ability is nice. You're all smart folk! Downsides are that it requires maintenance, refreshing every 12 seconds, which isn't a major hassle, but it does cost Holy Power, which we'll also need to fuel the next ability in our list...
WORD OF GLORY
Word of Glory is going to do us a lot of favours. It'll be there when we need healing most, so we don't need to blow Holy Shock instead. It'll crit a lot at critical HP, with the right
talent
. It'll have a 30% chance to not cost ANY Holy Power to use, with a Protection
talent
. It's very, very useful, in that not only does it heal us, for free, but it allows us to reserve our Holy Shock for offensive purposes, rather than blowing it as a heal. OR, should we be taking excess damage, it allows us
at
least
two instant, back to back single target heals.
DIVINE FAVOR
and
AVENGING WRATH
Avenging Wrath has not changed much (though to the best of my knowledge it is now independant of Forbearance, and can be used with Divine Shield willy-nilly. The last sentance of the tooltip is null and void). Divine Favor -has-.
Divine Favor has always been a main talent for the Shockadin. Whilst previously underwhelming (used to guarentee a Holy Shock crit every 2 minutes), it is now infinitely more useful.
These two abilities are almost always going to be used together, for optimum burn or healing throughput (or both!). I don't need to tell you that 20% Crit, and 20% Haste are both huge buffs, but together? With an additional 20% damage AND healing boost? Oh. My. Freaking. God. We will put the fear of Shockadins back into people with these buffs. The only issue is that they are both dispellable, and, most dangerously, spell stealable. Use with caution. I like to think, however, that Shockadins (and regular Healadins) currently have the sickest self-buff in the game in Cataclysm. Two seperate abilities perhaps but there's almost no reason why you'd not macro them together into one mega buff. Pair with trinkets, and you -will- melt faces.
HOLY RADIANCE
By itself it's quite a nice little ability. Definitely more healer oriented, and situational. However, I didn't link it because it was a powerful heal (or for it's healing potential in any scenario). I linked it because
it's now a sprint, on a 30 second cooldown
too! Very nice for PvP, and even levelling.
STATS
This is the hardest part of this guide for me to write. I am not a theorycrafter. I play things by feel, and since I don't actually have access to the beta right now, it's very difficult to say. However, if you value my experience, and my gut feeling, then, basically, our preference in terms of gear is going to be...
Spirit (if talented for
this
. If not, Hit Rating) until capped
-
Intellect (Spell Power)
>
Resilience (For PvP purposes)
>
Stamina (For PvP purposes)
>
Crit
>
Haste
-
Mastery.
That about wraps things up. It's early morning, and I've not slept, so I may have missed something. Constructive criticism invited!
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
It's funny, I've been thinking about this all week, and I get back home and then see this. I'm gonna be testing Shockadin later this evening on beta (85) to see what it looks like and maybe crunch a few numbers. I've already tried both of my "current" mains at 85 (shaman and warrior) and I honestly don't like either = / So Paladin is next and if that doesn't work out very well, I've still got druid and mage to test out.
Also, reading through the whole Aestu debacle here was quite entertaining.
Post by
Garenzo
Also, reading through the whole Aestu debacle here was quite entertaining.
Speaking as "the shockadin guy", I approve of this thread. ;-)
Seriously though, I like where they're going with the holy tree... Looking forward to trying a shockadin build in PvP, although I wish they'd make exorcism scale better with spellpower.
Post by
188466
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Arannia
Woops! One talent I did forget to discuss was old favorite,
Pursuit of Justice
. Pursuit of Justice guarentees us some holy power generation in events where we would be generating no holy power due to being CC'd. Whilst strictly a PvP talent for both Shock and Heal, I consider this close to mandatory for any Paladin seeking to engage in PvP activity, as it will add a much needed downside (if only slight) to the enemy CC'ing you, and reward you for surviving by giving you an earlier (or immediate if you already had 2 HP before the stun) Inquisition or Word of Glory.
Not only that, but as always, it'll give you 15% additional movement speed! Allowing you to catch up to that kiter, or, more usually, running away with your tail between your legs! You BG
hero
.
Post by
Garenzo
Never noticed that PoJ change up until now... That's just icing on the cake on an already great talent.
Nice!
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