Shockadin.

[Skiball]

Here is the deal with shockadin basically:

The build was a hybrid class, who could heal nearly anything, solo, and be used strategically in PVP as damage; even after s1.

In pve raids, shockadin dps was impossible because the mana was gone way to fast and they pulled aggro worse than a boomkin. However in 5 mans I always destroyed anyone, including tier 6 geared dps, in overal damage when I was specced shock assuming the tank wasn't a scrub and the group wasn't ccing 4 of the 5 mobs in a pull. Concecrate did that much damage.

However, the destruction of seal of righteousness, the removal of sanctity aura, the attack power spell damage talent, and the buffs to made to Ret in the heal and spell damage department basically killed the shockadin for good. Basically what happened is the two were merged. Ret now can heal and have the versatility of a shockadin, use of concecrate, and has a judgement (martyr for alliance now) that hits for big numbers like seal of righteousness did.

Petty much blizzard had the Ret paladin the way it was supposed to be all along, just had it split between two specs, Shock and Ret. Now the two have been merged, each applying their strength to the other, creating the Ret paladin the way it was always meant to be, a versatile dps who can fill multiple utility roles in many situations. Just too bad holy shock and crusader strike are just out of each other's reach. :-P

Thanks for your time.

[PalliesThrowStuff]

No, go away, it's a poor attempt to abuse a mechanic that was a joke build to start with.

Yes, it's abusing a mechanic... using a spell for its original function and to stack gear and other talents to increase the function of that spell...

I hope you dont procreate.

Being a Shockadin now, isn't really much different than just being full-bore Holy. You'll see a noteworthy damage increase, but twice that in a healing deficiency, because haste on melee only affects your white swings as Holy. Righteousness doesn't scale with haste any more, nor crit, which you'd have tons of as Holy, NOR does it proc on Judgement, the primary damaging ability for any spec of Paladin. IMO this is where Blizzard needs to look to increase Holy's DPS output, SoR needs to scale with spell crit, proc on Judgement, and scale with haste, that alone would crank up Holy's Soloing ability to well within reasonable levels for a healing spec.

[Offhand]

Yes, it's abusing a mechanic... using a spell for its original function and to stack gear and other talents to increase the function of that spell...

Going into holy for holy shock and then down ret for sanc aura, then bitching about how your build isn't viable is what I would label as an attempt to abuse game mechanics.

Being a Shockadin now, isn't really much different than just being full-bore Holy. You'll see a noteworthy damage increase, but twice that in a healing deficiency

In other words, purposely gimped heals for minor dps increase? Sign me up!

[hawk00]

i dont see where youre coming from. the only useful talent you wouldnt take is divine illumination, which cuts the cost of spells back 50%. thats the way it was before 3.0.2 as well. I was still able to heal just as well without that talent. In fact in a few AV's not only was i top 5 on damage, i was also #1 on heals bg-wide, so the heals arent gimped at all, theyre exactly the same, you just have one less 'oh shit' button, and you can do a little more damage.

[shockpally]

Going into holy for holy shock and then down ret for sanc aura, then bitching about how your build isn't viable is what I would label as an attempt to abuse game mechanics.

In other words, purposely gimped heals for minor dps increase? Sign me up!

People who go for a 31/xx/xx build are gimping themselves. However. A true shockadin build takes the deeper talents with Holy guidance being mandatory since you can not get Holy shock and Sheath together. DI and BoL are raid talents since a Ret in healing gear can heal any of the beginning 5 mans.

Infusion of light is also good to have. After Holy guidance there really isnt anything that ads to your healing though. BoL is a situational use spell and only lasts 1 min. JoTP is fine also for the haste since it affects cooldowns and cast times last time i checked.

When i refer to a shockadin build i am ALWAYS talking about at the very least a 50/00/21 build. No gimped healing. Improved damage. I dont compain about my spec, in fact i endorse it wholeheartedly. It works and is fun to play.

[LoLHoly]

People who go for a 31/xx/xx build are gimping themselves. However. A true shockadin build takes the deeper talents with Holy guidance being mandatory since you can not get Holy shock and Sheath together. DI and BoL are raid talents since a Ret in healing gear can heal any of the beginning 5 mans.

Infusion of light is also good to have. After Holy guidance there really isnt anything that ads to your healing though. BoL is a situational use spell and only lasts 1 min. JoTP is fine also for the haste since it affects cooldowns and cast times last time i checked.

When i refer to a shockadin build i am ALWAYS talking about at the very least a 50/00/21 build. No gimped healing. Improved damage. I dont compain about my spec, in fact i endorse it wholeheartedly. It works and is fun to play.

Main Qualifications of a "Shockadin"

* Burst Damage
* +spell damage gear

Being that it's impossible to have burst damage with a Holy build and ALL the friggin gear is +spell damage instead of holy I don't see why people even talk about this.

Prior to Patch 3.0 a "Shockadin" (which was still a joke compared to pre 2.3) could release decent burst. Judgement of Righteousness scaled WAY better than shock because of the ONLY spell dmg coefficient. Now because the judgment system is a combination of AP+SD Holy pallies can't scale it as well as Ret (eg: AP easier to get by gear).

Waiting till someone was at 40% health and throwing an AW + Divine Favor/Shock + Judge was enough to scare most players who didn't know a Holy pally was going to do anything but heal. It's not a "Shock" anymore when Ret is doubling Holy's burst damage in white or yellow attacks.

Most smart Holy players who arent going deep into their main tree will play around in the Ret tree to pick up +crit talents and perhaps as low as Repentance/JotW. It's a crazy-good CC to have up your sleeve for PvE if anything else and JotW is nice mana regen for solo duty (yep people only realize the 15% base mana but it ALSO gives .25% of max mana per second...about 80mp5 at level 70 w/ crap gear).

Last time I parsed my "shockadin" build at lvl 70 in Stormwind on a 70 training dummy I could do 450 dps for almost 2 mins (no consecration). Using consecration you can effectively add 120ish dps and you can last 50 seconds before going OOM. What's more, our burst is completely gone so even if you compare the first 5 seconds of the parse it's still pretty sad.

Lets get real and call ourselves "offensive holy" because the term "shockadin" is more dead than Elvis. Picking Ret talents for any non-raider or PvP build (non-Kings) isn't being a martyr but simply being intelligent. You can't even easily access Redoubt anymore so why wouldn't you go Ret? It just makes solo duty easy and you don't lack anything major in the world of survivability.