Othalon's Shockadin Guide for 6.2.3

[Dleduc02]

My name is Othalon, I'm a 2400 rated Holy Paladin. When I'm not pushing serious rating I'm melting face as a Shockadin. Below is a guide I've written up to going about it the right way and melting your own faces. Youtube link and accompanying script follow.

Hey guys Othalon here again with an updated and improved version of my Shockadin Guide. This time I wanted to be more detailed and provide a full overview of everything that adds up to make this work.

Shockadin's usefulness is entirely concentrated within the 30 second burst window of Avenging Wrath meaning it's more of a farm build for 2v2 skirmishes, LFR raids, or impressing ladies. Going in to this guide I'm going to assume you've had some practice with the basics of Holy Paladin healing and you have at least some PVP gear including your 2 piece PVP set bonus.

GLYPHS

First I'll start with the glyph and talent setup and then I'll move into the rotation. It is absolutely mandatory that you run Glyph of Holy Shock, Glyph of Harsh Words and Glyph of Denounce.

Your Glyph of Holy Shock is a 25% bonus to the damage of your holy shock at the cost of 25% of it's healing. This glyph actually scales really well with avenging wrath and is going to make holy shock your hardest hitting ability next to harsh words

Next up is Glyph of Denounce. This glyph reduces the cast time of your next denounce by 0.5 seconds after casting holy shock, stacking up to 3 times. The decreased cast time is going to help a lot not only with keeping Denounce up on your target (which also makes them incapable of critting) but also helps the fill the void between holy shocks cool downs perfectly and helps with sustained damage as well.

Finally your Glyph of Harsh Words. This glyph is the main source of your burst as the harsh word casts can hit for as much if not more than your holy shocks with wings. By pooling holy power you can cast two of these back to back between holy shocks.

TALENTS
t1
Alright on to talents. For first tier I would recommend Speed of Light. The on demand speed allows you to chase for a kill, with such a short kill window the speed will definitely come in handy. Long Arm of the Law is useless to use because Judgement deals very little damage and is rarely used while shocking or otherwise. Pursuit of Justice is a nice alternative but you'll be constantly spending your holy power and you'll be draining your mobility when it matters most.
t2
Second tier is also a no brainer, fist of justice is the only spell you have to stop or slow your target. Unfortunately holy paladins cannot afford to spec in to any slows on their own and the stun being on a short cooldown makes it a great choice. Repentance or blinding light may work for you if you need the CC and can afford to stun with a short range but most times you'll be running Fist of Justice.
t3
Third tier you want Sacred Shield. You can apply these out of the gate and not having to worry about reapplying it when Global Cooldowns matter most is important as well as having a nice dispel buffer. Eternal Flame doesn't work with your glyph of harsh words and selfless healer again calls for using judgements that you simply cannot afford to cast.
t4
Fourth tier is going to be the same consideration as your healing build, I'm not going to go into that in this guide.
t5
Fifth tier talent. Now Sanctified Wrath is also responsible for a huge chunk of Shockadin's power. it ups avenging wrath's durating from 20 seconds to 30. Reduces the cooldown of your most powerful spell by 50% and it's critical strike chance by 20% this is typically your default choice. Holy Avenger actually does more damage but because it's such a short window that requires you to stand and turret with more risk of CS and much less mobility potential it falls behind overall. Divine purpose offers no base damage increase or benefit to burst and the 30% chance for a second Harsh Word isn't guaranteed in our window making it the worst choice in this tier.
t6
Any talent in this tier will work for you, Execution Sentence is a great instant heal, but it also hits incredibly hard if your target plans on living for more than ten seconds. Holy Prism has nice aoe and single target burst potential, heals while dealing damage and has a cooldown short enough that you can get two in during avenging wrath. Light's hammer works well if you intend on using this build to farm old raids.
t7
Saved by light gives you a mindless heal for you and your partner while you burst which reduces the amount of active healing you need to during your burst window. Beacon of insight and beacon of
fight don't work well with the build's intent.

Gear & Stats

As for gearing and stats your priority is going to be the same as your holy recommendations, with critical strike and haste being king. Versatility is also a nice option. Due to being well over 100% critical strike chance on Holy Shock thanks to denounce, and the mark of Warsong weapon enchant in combination with wings nearly doing the same for your haste values Multistrike and Versatility become your best options for Shockadin burst. Mastery and spirit are outright useless for Shockadin and you should take as little as possible. The two piece PVP bonus, which allows you to leech crit from your denounce target is very important to your damage output. The 4 piece is nice but counterproductive to harsh words. Being human is also nice for the bonus versatility and a second trinket.

Rotation

Okay now let's talk rotation. It's actually really simple, you want to use Holy Shock on cooldown and denounce between them. Outside of wings it should be 3 denounces to a holy shock, during you will cycle between the two. When you have 5 holy power you will harsh words, holy shock for your 3rd holy power, and harsh words again, that is your burst. Always be sure to use denounce for the absolution (2 piece) buff before doing anything. Holy Radiance and holy shock can be used while out of combat to stack holy power. A holy avenger build would operate with a similar priority, however crusader strike becomes more desirable than denounce while holy avenger is active if you can manage to strike anything close by.

Mobility and Freecasting

Shockadin has a lot to help in the way of freecasting, including Hand of Protection, Devotion Aura, Divine Shield (Just be sure to cancel when no longer needed because of the 50% damage penalty) and any other things you would do normally to avoid CC as a healer such as using Hand of Sacrifice on CC that breaks on damage, hugging pillars when needed, using Speed of light to chase or get a clutch kick. Don't forget while chasing that when glyph of denounce stacks to three you can cast denounce without having to stop, and if you are moving, holy shock is on cooldown and you don't have a 3 stack of the denounce glyph you can also judge or use crusader strike to generate holy power.

Aside from that just don't forget that you are a healer and the Shockadin setup doesn't hurt your healing much at all, so don't let yourself or anyone around you die!

Until next time, thanks for watching.

[Deleted]

Nice guide, but IMHO bigger burst in PvP Shockadin gets from Versa/Multi.
Crit comes from our 2p PvP set, haste is good, but Multi with enchant 30% helps a lot!

[Grumit]

I'd love a viable shockadin spec for PvE content, I guess it'll never be on blizz's to-do list but we can hope, right?

[Animefreak3K]

Nice guide, but IMHO bigger burst in PvP Shockadin gets from Versa/Multi.
Crit comes from our 2p PvP set, haste is good, but Multi with enchant 30% helps a lot!

True Story .
Multistrike pushed your damage very much, and Versatility also helps.
Since you only need 66 Multistrike to gain 1%, it's pretty easy to stack it.

[Dleduc02]

Nice guide, but IMHO bigger burst in PvP Shockadin gets from Versa/Multi.
Crit comes from our 2p PvP set, haste is good, but Multi with enchant 30% helps a lot!

Thanks for your input, edited appropriately!

[Deleted]

Thanks for your input, edited appropriately!

For the Light!