Are shockadins viable now?

[sicness]

I'm still gonna argue that there are not more than 3 roles. How you fulfill those rolls doesn't really matter. You are either damaging something, tanking something or healing something.

^This, just because a class fills it's dps role a way that you don't prefer doesn't mean it doesn't fill all roles. They're more likely to look at enhance shaman tanking than they are to give paladins a caster dps role.

[Nikoll]

I'm still gonna argue that there are not more than 3 roles. How you fulfill those rolls doesn't really matter. You are either damaging something, tanking something or healing something.

In the most simplistic fastion, sure. But try doing saurfang or festergut without ranged dps. Or vezzax. Yogg. Litch king. Princes. Etc, etc, etc.

[Astray]

They're more likely to look at enhance shaman tanking than they are to give paladins a caster dps role.

They won't ever do that. If Blizz did make changes for shamans to be able to tank, even at lower levels, people would instantly demand them to be able to tank Lich king heroic and they know that.

To Shockadins:
Shockadins as a viable dps spec won't happen.
If blizz made a tree able to dps, the players would expect "dps that can compete in the hardest dps race in the game" as a minimum requirement. A "dps holy paladin" should be able to heal like an elemental shaman or a moonkin and with full caster/healer gear and 51 points in holy, it will most likely be better.

5% less life or 5% less dps than other classes and a spec is seen as "completely broken".
Flash of Light doing a hot on sacred shield made ret "too tanky", such much for "how much are dps allowed to be able to heal".

What would Blizzard gain from making a Shockadin?
Thousands of crying people. Some qq about imbalanced and op, others qq about broken.

[Nikoll]

They have already expresed the thought of enh tanking. Not saying it's going to happen, but they have said the idea has been brought up at their meetings. And really enh tanking isn't even that hard to accomplish. Toughness is already in the talent tree. Shamanistic rage can be altered a bit into a shield wall. A lot of enh talents are going to be merged or purged in catty so there is room in the tree to add tank abilities. There was a great suggestion in the shaman forums about a wind shield that increased dodge %. And give them a taunt and wala.

[Whoopzz]

So one sentence from your entire post was directed at PvE while the rest glamorized a 1 button gib macro for PvP. My head is out far enough to tell that you were a Shockadin fanboy and you're trying to relive your "glory days". Pardon me while I continue to piss all over your memories by reading your post for exactly what it is.

you're incredibly observant. What gave it away? Could it have been the "good ol days" comment? I happened to enjoy being a Paladin during those times. However, my head is out far enough to tell that you're a FoTM reroller from some time back in BC or early WoLK and clearly missed out on the "glory days". So excuse me while I piss all over you and your troll posts and point them out for exactly what they are.

[thundercles]

Shocakdin was only viable in Vanilla and particularly in BC. Primarily for PvP.
*edit, really ONLY for pvp. That distinction must be made. Anyone who tells you that it was never good for pvp doesn't know what they're talking about, when someone says it sucks in PvE, they are mostly right. It's not so great for anything but solo questing these days.*

In BC you could get all the prot pvp gear (yes they had it, it was pure spell power/crit gear go figure) and do pretty great burst.

The problem was and always will be mana. Holy Shock is a nice tool, but very mana inefficient as both a heal and an attack.

Even judging wisdom and using plea every cooldown you will still run OOM from using HS every cool down.

They made so many changes to the talents and all that shockadin isn't nearly as powerful as it used to be.

You can likely get some moderate success and fun out of doing 5mans as shockadin, but don't expect it to be any good in situations where you must sustain dps, like most bossfights.

It is definitely a fun and viable spec for solo questing and leveling. Lay off HS a bit when attacking and you can regen enough mana to really minimize downtime during your grind.

As far as PvP goes, you just won't have enough dps anymore to effectively deal with anyone that you don't grossly outgear. There is some decent utility to be gained from the spec, like having the stun removal from imp freedom, but you will find that you'll mostly be healing and that you're quite gimped without many of the holy talents like Beacon of Light.

I loved playing shockadin back in the day. I loved all the QQ it brought from everyone who wasn't a shockadin. However blizz didn't like us and they effectively killed the spec/playstyle. Oh well, I enjoyed while I could.

Hope this advice helps you and good luck!

[Guitarn]

lolshockadinwasandisterrible.

[Astray]

They have already expresed the thought of enh tanking. Not saying it's going to happen, but they have said the idea has been brought up at their meetings. And really enh tanking isn't even that hard to accomplish. Toughness is already in the talent tree. Shamanistic rage can be altered a bit into a shield wall. A lot of enh talents are going to be merged or purged in catty so there is room in the tree to add tank abilities. There was a great suggestion in the shaman forums about a wind shield that increased dodge %. And give them a taunt and wala.

Last thing i've read was "no". Since shamans were meant to be some kind of tanks in classic (look at old talent trees) i guess they will have talked a lot about it in the past years, but more has to be done than some simple changes to make enh. shamans competitive in end game tanking.

Giving them basic talents to tank is not the problem. +80% thread while wearing a shield, a taunt, some armor modifier, as you said a wind shield for dodge, should not be a problem.
But~ if there was a shaman tank patch, it has to make them almost perfectly balanced in their role almost immediately and that is a problem even for tanks that have been in the game for some years, so i dont think this will happen in the near future, since there are bigger problems to solve and other things that would more people happy that enh. as a tank.

[Thoelle]

They are going to give Paladins atleast 1 new healing spell in Cataclysm

[Prentice]

you're incredibly observant. What gave it away? Could it have been the "good ol days" comment? I happened to enjoy being a Paladin during those times. However, my head is out far enough to tell that you're a FoTM reroller from some time back in BC or early WoLK and clearly missed out on the "glory days". So excuse me while I piss all over you and your troll posts and point them out for exactly what they are.

Define FotM please. Last I checked, the M stood for month. How can I be FotM when I have been playing this spec since being asked to by my guild in TBC? Clearly, you have a vivid imagination that allows you to bend, twist, and edit definitions as you see fit. I would have started as ret earlier, but threat was too big of an issue during TK. My spec change had to wait until the addition of the threat reduction in the talent Fanaticism. It had nothing to do with my desire to, but rather that it just wasn't viable.

Notice how we have come full circle. Ret wasn't really viable before the threat issues got fixed. Shockadin has never really been viable. That word should haunt your dreams because you clearly need to come to terms with it.

*When I say ret wasn't viable before the Fanaticism change, I am referring to the threat issues only. Ret damage was definitely viable, but a dead ret that pulled aggro did no damage. If you were a complete idiot and did no damage, you probably didn't have this problem. For threat reasons, I was forced to raid as holy until the change.

[Lackluster]

Why would shockadins suddenly become viable?

They weren't viable back when we still had sanctity aura (and that was the only real spec difference between a holy paladin and a shockadin) so there's no reason they'd be viable now.
A holy paladin with subspec into ret for the -2 sec judgement cooldown and 8% crit is as close to 'shockadin' as you'll get nowadays, I guess. Inferior to the utility a prot subspec delivers for PVP.

Shockadin simply doesn't work, they require too many stats. Spell hit till 17%, expertise till 6.5%, attack power for white/seal damage, spellpower for holy shock... It's similar to enhancement shamans yet without the talents to help it. The talent that retribution has to get spellpower from AP (Sheath of Light) is 40 points deep in the retri tree, making it impossible to still get holy shock. Regeneration would mostly have to come from gear as holy can't keep DP running like protection and Judgements of the Wise is 30 points into retribution (I guess some strange 31/0/33+7 spec is the only viable option).

Furthermore, would you use a caster weapon (and lose 100+ mainhand dps) or a melee weapon (and lose 600+ spellpower)?

[Prentice]

So I went and checked my photobucket. This screenshot was taken right around the time I was referring to. Early TK/SSC progression before the Fanaticism change. Fun times for ret, but not in a raid.

[Rust in Peace]

Divine storm>holy shock.

End of discussion.

[Astray]

Why would shockadins suddenly become viable?

Remove the Ap part from abilities and make it scale with spellpower harder.

Example: the AP and SP part is most times roughly the same

30% of AP + 30% of SP

A ret with 6000 AP will have ~2000k SP, so thats

1800 + 600 = 2400 damage.

So if the formular was:
10% of AP + ?% of SP

600 + ? = 2400

the missing spellpower part is 1800, which would be 90%.

New Formular:
10% of AP + 90% of SP
Ret damage unchanged, holy damage heavily increased. Seals, Judgements, Exo, Consec they are all like this. Its changing some numbers, the problem is, that it would be too good. There nothing else~ broken or too good.

[Prentice]

Remove the Ap part from abilities and make it scale with spellpower harder.

Example: the AP and SP part is most times roughly the same

30% of AP + 30% of SP

A ret with 6000 AP will have ~2000k SP, so thats

1800 + 600 = 2400 damage.

So if the formular was:
10% of AP + ?% of SP

600 + ? = 2400

the missing spellpower part is 1800, which would be 90%.

New Formular:
10% of AP + 90% of SP
Ret damage unchanged, holy damage heavily increased. Seals, Judgements, Exo, Consec they are all like this. Its changing some numbers, the problem is, that it would be too good. There nothing else~ broken or too good.

Unless I am misinterpreting your post, your suggestion won't really work because of Sheath of Light.

Assuming your new formula of 10% AP + 90% SP, rets would gain a ton with this change. Your example starts with 6k AP/1800 SP and the attack hits for 2400. Compare to the stats of a current raiding ret. During combat, I have an average of 8500+AP which yields a SP value of 2550. Is that the kind of scaling you had in mind??

Applying these values to your formula: 850 + 2550= 3400. The SP coefficient is just too high when you factor in the AP--> SP conversion. While SP isn't anything that rets shoot for because we have the conversion, we could simply gear/gem for the highest possible AP and let our baseline damage(ie non-crit) be super high.

EDIT: The point I was trying to make might not have been clear. An attack that scales from 2400 up to 3400 that easily is not what anyone wants to see.

[Whoopzz]

Define FotM please. Last I checked, the M stood for month. How can I be FotM when I have been playing this spec since being asked to by my guild in TBC? Clearly, you have a vivid imagination that allows you to bend, twist, and edit definitions as you see fit. I would have started as ret earlier, but threat was too big of an issue during TK. My spec change had to wait until the addition of the threat reduction in the talent Fanaticism. It had nothing to do with my desire to, but rather that it just wasn't viable.

Notice how we have come full circle. Ret wasn't really viable before the threat issues got fixed. Shockadin has never really been viable. That word should haunt your dreams because you clearly need to come to terms with it.

*When I say ret wasn't viable before the Fanaticism change, I am referring to the threat issues only. Ret damage was definitely viable, but a dead ret that pulled aggro did no damage. If you were a complete idiot and did no damage, you probably didn't have this problem. For threat reasons, I was forced to raid as holy until the change.

just because you rerolled the FoTM doesn't mean you quit. Paladins are simple enough for individuals such as yourself, so it's easy to cling to. I have no clue where you're pulling this wild idea about my vivid imagination, other than thin air. But it seems to me now that you're back tracking and trying to justify WHY you rerolled, we've come to the point where I reiterate that I never said it was viable for PvE. You felt compelled to be a prick and focus on how I elaborated further on it's viability for PvP instead of beating the horse to death that 50 other people already took care of. You could have trolled 10 other people in this thread who contributed absolutely nothing. I'm not sure why you chose me, but take your attitude elsewhere.

[Horn]

So I went and checked my photobucket. This screenshot was taken right around the time I was referring to. Early TK/SSC progression before the Fanaticism change. Fun times for ret, but not in a raid.

I miss early BC so much.

[thoukaia]

[Prentice]

just because you rerolled the FoTM doesn't mean you quit. Paladins are simple enough for individuals such as yourself, so it's easy to cling to. I have no clue where you're pulling this wild idea about my vivid imagination, other than thin air. But it seems to me now that you're back tracking and trying to justify WHY you rerolled, we've come to the point where I reiterate that I never said it was viable for PvE. You felt compelled to be a prick and focus on how I elaborated further on it's viability for PvP instead of beating the horse to death that 50 other people already took care of. You could have trolled 10 other people in this thread who contributed absolutely nothing. I'm not sure why you chose me, but take your attitude elsewhere.

We can continue this banter until the mods finally lock this thread. At no point during TBC( counting 3.0 as essentially being WotLK and not real TBC) was ret the "FotM'. That didn't occur until the beginning of WotLK. If anything, warlocks and hunters were the FotM of TBC for DPS because they were so easy and did such high damage.

I have not backtracked at all. Just because I changed factions for WotLK doesn't mean that I rerolled. As I said, I have been this spec as long as it has been viable. If you reread the first few posts of this thread, you will find my post there. I continued to reply to this thread for additional comments, but my first post was one of the first posts replying to the OP.

As to the comment about your vivid imagination, go ahead and change the english language to suit your needs. FotM does not refer to someone that's been playing the same class for over 3.5 years. I may not have been a player during the hot times of vanilla, but I am certainly not FotM. You keep saying that I rerolled. When did I say that I did?? Are you referring to me changing spec? That's not rerolling. That is simply respec'ing.

You claimed that you posted about it's PvE invalidity, but you only sang the praises of some silly insta-gib macro for Shock arena. Who cares? How many people were like you with that gimmick spec?? The answer to that question is very few. My original reply post was one of the first (check page #1). Yours made you sound like a shockadin fanboy where you claim that it was amazing for arena, but you left out the real answer to the OP's question or at least your insight on the question. Because you weren't clear, I called you on it. Then came the totally unnecessary "head out of your ass" post when you were so clearly in the wrong that you deleted the post, or someone else did for you and didn't make note of it.

Please continue to hallucinate. Work is extremely boring today and this is almost keeping me entertained.

[Astray]

Unless I am misinterpreting your post...

The point is: i factored in Sheath of Light already.

Example with your AP of 8500, which leads to 2550 SP

Current Formular:
0.3 * 8500 + 0.3 * 2550 = 3315

My proposed Formular:
0.1 * 8500 + 0.9 * 2550 = 3145

its even a bit less than before since it took sheath for 1/3 of Ap in my previous post.
Plus: this is just a basic example with some not s far fetched numbers, the numbers may vary but the proportion stays the same.