So are Shockadins More Viable now?

[Fhi]

I wish everyone would stop throwing around the term "Viable" so much when they give no context and therefore makes it questionable whether they know what it means.

I love you. It's so annoying to hear this overused, tired word being thrown around and half the time they don't' even know what it means.

More viable? What the hell? Something is either viable or isn't. My favorite one was still "Will Stormwind be viable?" Makes you wonder what they were doing in school.

[MerinPally]

I love you.

I guess I love you too. I'm not spoken for but I'm merely 18 so expect a terrible relationship with various degrees of immaturity on my end. However, I can cook.

[Deleted]

the reason they added semi-dps skills to holy paladins is also because it was harder to vouch for bringing a holy paladin to a fight where you normally need 2 or 3 healers, but also have a strict DPS requirement, or a fight where healers are useless for a certain point. examples: Chimaeron P2, LK final 10 percent, beginning of Ultraxion if you don't soloheal it, Ragnaros P3. on all these fights, every other healer had DPS that could get close to another spec: shamans could use FS, LvB and LB, priests had MB, HF, Smite and SWP, druids could either switch to feral or use boomkin skills. all paladins had was Exorcism and Holy shock.

[Deleted]

I rarely post but sometimes i get the feeling people are afraid to experiment - I am a Mastery Holy Paladin so the word Shockadin is just the same as Panzakin its an option that people can try if they wish and if they find it works for them then its all good.

We wont really know if Shockadins will be viable until later on after MoP is released and Blizzard has done a few rounds of the nerf/buff hammer.

Back in Burning Crusade it was fun to try new things - in WoTLK it was not so easy and most Holy Paladins fell into stacking one stat and doing one rotation that earnt them the titles of easy mode healing - in Cata we had a few choices and some differences of opinion about Mastery and Haste and in MoP well it isnt here yet so most talk is speculative on what has been seen in BETA so we can only guess at the possibilities.

Relax and consider that some people want to try something "out of the box" and not wanting to be a sheep following the crowds. Having fun is what a game is about however if your raiding in a top guild you may want to reserve your 2nd spec to something more along the lines of what your raiding guild needs.

[MerinPally]

Relax and consider that some people want to try something "out of the box" and not wanting to be a sheep following the crowds. Having fun is what a game is about however if your raiding in a top guild you may want to reserve your 2nd spec to something more along the lines of what your raiding guild needs.

It's nothing to do with wanting to be different though. It's the fact that at any given time there are countless threads on this exact subject and the word VIABLE is always used and it gets both repetetive and annoying because it shows people don't know about either the search function or a dictionary

[Deleted]

I just downloaded the beta last week or so, but I made 2 lvl85 paladins:

-One purely ret, grinding out the Jade Forest the traditional way,

-One with a double holy spec, one for healing, one for shocking.

When Mists goes life, I'm definitely going for the double holy spec, picking up Harsh Words, Holy Shock and Denounce Glyphs. I found the Fists of Justice, Sacred Shield and Divine Purpose talents to be particularly handy.
The awesome thing about shockadins in Mists are the new glyphs which are designed for them. At first, I tried to work with Word of Glory(Harsh Words Glyph), Judgment, Holy Shock(glyphed) and Denounce(glyphed), but found Judgment to be not viable at all (though I think they buffed the damage in a recent build). CS is also unviable both damage and mana-wise.

Keep Sacred Shield up all the time so you can cast freely. My "rotation" involved spamming Denounce until Holy Shock is off cooldown, then immediately hitting WoG hoping for a Divine Purpose proc which lets me hit WoG again. In the Jade Forest pretty much any mob died after 3 to 5 casts. I think crit is the stat we're going for because a lucky high crit lets us end fights early.

When the dungeon finder came up I just switched specs to my main healing glyphs and talents.

Overall, questing as ret went quite a bit smoother, but obviously the Dungeon Finder comes up a lot more when you're holy, which makes up for the slower questing as holy.

The awesome thing about Mists is the self-adjusting quest gear. This way you get a lot of gear you can use for healing dungeons AND do quests with as a Shockadin.

[Reith]

Keep Sacred Shield up all the time so you can cast freely. My "rotation" involved spamming Denounce until Holy Shock is off cooldown, then immediately hitting WoG hoping for a Divine Purpose proc which lets me hit WoG again. In the Jade Forest pretty much any mob died after 3 to 5 casts. I think crit is the stat we're going for because a lucky high crit lets us end fights early.

Just so you know, Divine Purpose scales with how much Holy Power you use. If you use 1 Holy Power, it's 8% chance and 2 Holy Power is 16% chance. You basically now have almost no reason to ever cast Word of Glory below 3 Holy Power unless it's an emergency situation.

[Malthanis]

I'll be honest, I wrote that as a gentle poke at a mod for a way to get them to lock "R Shuckadin viubble?" threads on submission but... ok I guess.

It's not really an 'insta-lock' topic. It gets a "that word, you keep using it, but I do not think it means what you think it means" response, and then slowly sinks off the first page.

To be entirely honest, I love the idea of a caster DPS play-style for the Paladin. But from what I know of the term, a 'shockadin' isn't that. They'll never make a healing spec's DPS any definition of the word viable. It just won't happen.

Now, if they decide to give a fourth spec to the other 10 classes...

[Berian]

I don't care about 'shockadin' spec, it being a viable PVE or PVP spec matters not to me. Holy is set up to heal.

But is slapping on some glyphs enough to turn Holy paladins into a decent daily questing character? I sure hope so. Not having the beta I don't know how Denounce or Holy Shock scales at 90 but at 85 it seems to be enough damage to quest comfortably. Not having to carry around a ret set will be nice.

[Tart]

I really wish this shockadin concept would die, it will NEVERRRRRR happen. They made holy a bit better to quest in and things like that. It will never be used for an actual DPS spec, some buttons can be used to assist some damage on periods of low damage but they would be very few and far between due to the actual conservation on mana.

I agree, even the name "Shockadin" gets right on my nerves.

[Gamdwelf]

I agree, even the name "Shockadin" gets right on my nerves.

Why? Its just a paladin who does lots of damage with holy shock.

[Thesentinel]

Actually - I don't mean to be silly - I would really appreciate a sticky, or at least a guide, well even just a paragraph on the Shockadin skills/talents/glyphs and their viability. Can it quest solidly without a Ret offspec and gear set? Can a solo healer fend off a solo dps (say Rogue or Mage or Hunter - the usual cowards), you see I am on a PvP server - so it would help to be able to do dailies knowing that if someone looks to gank me with my bubbles and cast heals I can survive and with HS's, Denounce and Harsh Words (lol) I can make them think about retreating if the stand-off looks like it will eventually go my way. This is powerful knowledge - no need for a Ret off spec and I only need to work on 1 PvP set - saving me thousands of gold and hours of time.

[Elovan]

Just a heads up to anyone who plans on Holy dps for leveling or w/e. Glyph of Word of Glory, the glyph that gives you 9% extra damage after use, currently is not working if you use it on an enemy target via Glyph of Harsh Words. Whether this is a bug or intended is unknown.

[Deleted]

I really wish this shockadin concept would die, it will NEVERRRRRR happen. They made holy a bit better to quest in and things like that. It will never be used for an actual DPS spec, some buttons can be used to assist some damage on periods of low damage but they would be very few and far between due to the actual conservation on mana.

I'm pretty sure we'll see a caster spec before WoW ends, when the next expansion comes out I can see a 4th spec for most if not all classes.

[Gamdwelf]

I'm pretty sure we'll see a caster spec before WoW ends, when the next expansion comes out I can see a 4th spec for most if not all classes.

I wish a 4th spec would be more obvious for more classes so that they wouldn't have to stretch it to come up with some of the new specs if they did give a 4th to all of them.

[Guyviroth]

I was planning on creating an essay-style analysis of the Shockadin build at 85 prior to MoP. You'd be surprised at how much damage they do at 85 (even in battlegrounds), though I've yet to test it in a dungeon or raid. But I can say for sure as raiding it is not viable at all, simply because hit rating is an ass to cap.

[Gamdwelf]

I was planning on creating an essay-style analysis of the Shockadin build at 85 prior to MoP. You'd be surprised at how much damage they do at 85 (even in battlegrounds), though I've yet to test it in a dungeon or raid. But I can say for sure as raiding it is not viable at all, simply because hit rating is an ass to cap.

all your spells are that you will use are already hit caped.

or at least they should be because priests got it and more than half the spells we use on enemies as a shockadin already are.

[Deathgoose]

Would be nice if they split the Holy tree into a Healer/DPS Caster spec, like Elemental/Resto or Boomkin/Resto or Shadow//Holy/Disc.

As it is, +Int plate is usable by 1 spec of 1 class in the entire game, and seems kind of stupid. Giving Paladins a 4th spec that is a legitimate and recognized caster DPS spec (i.e. you can queue for LFD/LFR as DPS in that spec) would at least increase the pool of specs in the game that use +Int plate from 1 to 2.

Until then... Shockadins are when you want to do things for the lulz, and not much more.

[Reith]

Would be nice if they split the Holy tree into a Healer/DPS Caster spec, like Elemental/Resto or Boomkin/Resto or Shadow//Holy/Disc.

As it is, +Int plate is usable by 1 spec of 1 class in the entire game, and seems kind of stupid. Giving Paladins a 4th spec that is a legitimate and recognized caster DPS spec (i.e. you can queue for LFD/LFR as DPS in that spec) would at least increase the pool of specs in the game that use +Int plate from 1 to 2.

Until then... Shockadins are when you want to do things for the lulz, and not much more.

Makes too much sense to give Paladins another spec. I think they won't do it because people will whine that their class isn't getting a 4th spec. People usually don't mind that Druids got one because having two roles in one spec was wonky anyway.

[Gamdwelf]

Makes too much sense to give Paladins another spec. I think they won't do it because people will whine that their class isn't getting a 4th spec. People usually don't mind that Druids got one because having two roles in one spec was wonky anyway.

well thats what they have now with holy coming in MoP