Shockadin 4.0.3a

Hi all, long time only reading, now I try to post something.

Yesterday I got an idea about a shockadin in the content.

I tried it in a non heroic instance with crappy gear (some Prot, mastery) and reached just about 5k dps. What do you thing about. It is a spec that can do something or is the spell coef. on the spells to low ?

The hint for this is: I don't will take retri as 2nd spec for Cata. Maybe Holy or the Shockadin. When you say it doesn't work i go as 2nd Holy

I have read now a few different Holy Paladin blogs in the past 2 weeks that talk about the "return" of the Shockadin.

Basic premise of the spec is that there are various talents/glyphs that prop up Exorcism and Holy Shock and that you now have Inquisition to help Holy Damage even more.

I was toying with the idea for my 2nd spec which I only ever use for questing and farming and switching from Ret to Shockadin. My avg gear level as Holy is 334 while my avg gear level for Ret right now is 321 and I am only spending effort to build the Holy set so the thought is attractive.

However, I am worried that if my DPS dropped to only 3-4k from my current 6k DPS that the extending time it took to kill a 90k health mob greatly decreased its attractiveness.

What kind of gear are you in to achieve a 5k DPS and what type of rotation do you use?

Cheers,

Okay here the stats unbuffed:

4326 Spell Power
8,33% Haste
10,69% Hit
2222 Mana Regen
10,54% Crit
348 Mastery Rating (waste of)

Head, Wrist, Trinkets are Protection.

Rotation: Start up with Judgement (Seal of Insight), Holy Shock, spamming Exorcism till Holy Shock Ready and with 3 Holy Power buffing Inquisition. Keeping Divine Favor (not glyphed) and Avenging Wrath up.

Only use Judgement when loosing to much mana or missing the Haste Buff.


Tested in Grim Batol non Hero with Pala Tank, crappy Disc Priest, Warlock and something other in the team.

Next time testing i create a WoL

So, I have tried out a "Shockadin" spec to DPS and quest with and find it.....surprisingly interesting.

My healing spec is 31/3/7. The only real difference from a "healing" spec to a "shockadin" spec is to pull talent points from Divinity (in Prot) and (tier 2 talent that gives increased crit change to WoG under 30% health) and place them in Blazing Light (plus dmg for Exo) and Denounce. Key switch is also to place 2/2 in Blessed Life instead of 1/2 in my healing spec.

Pull starts with Exo then Judge and Holy Shock before mob gets to you. You will get a 2nd HoPow charge from Blessed Life on the mob's first hit and then you Crusader Strike for a 3rd charge. Your next GCD is Inquisition for the 30% Holy Damage buff and then Exo and Holy Shock for the win.

My questing DPS is around 5k and my instance DPS is around 6k DPS on boss fights. The really nice thing about it is that you also have virtually your full healing abilities available to use if needed and full mana since with Denounce your primary DPS nuke, Exo, is costing virtually zero mana.

So, my 2 cents is:

1. Shockadin is a viable questing/farming spec. Good damage output with great surviability and zero, and I mean, zero mana issues.

2. Shockadin could be an interesting spec for, say, a 10-man raid whom is debating between bringing 3 or 2 healers to an encounter. The Shockadin can do some okay DPS but also be available to help heal the raid back up after a Decimate type boss mechancism or to help during a tank burn phase.

But, I would assume that all healer specs have some of the same DPS capabilities and could all fulfill that "swing" role.

For me, I think I am going to keep the Shockadin spec for now. I love that of all my other healers, I can use virtually the same gear for both my healing set as well as my DPS set. I hated that I needed a whole new Strength based gear set to quest as a Paladin healer. Now, I can perhaps "retire" that Ret set (that was way behind in I-levels anyway) and just go with my strongest gear set.

Cheers,

Yeah, just did Herioc SFK last night and have to say 2 things:

1. Having a Shockadin around can be great if your healer is not up to par. I had quite a few nice "saves" on the group with a quick Divine Light on the tank or being able to Divine Radiance when appropriate.

2. However, I was grouped with good guild DPS who just fricking blew my DPS numbers off the charts. To have both DPS doing 12k DPS, the tank doing 8k DPS and me lagging back at 5.5k DPS on pulls where I was not doing any healing or cleansing (and worse DPS on pulls where I had to help out) made for a long, long night. And that was on a majority of undead pulls where Exo is an automatic crit. I think Shockadin DPS probably about maxes out at 5-6k DPS and that is it. I don't think there will be much upside.

So, while Shockadin is fun, I think I am going back Ret as an off spec because it has much more upside on its DPS. I don't DPS much but when I do, I don't want to be a liability.

Cheers,

sherck wrote: I think Shockadin DPS probably about maxes out at 5-6k DPS and that is it. I don't think there will be much upside.

Shockadin is dead... (i heard this so many times)
I tried this during the weekend, it's fun, and kill's stuf fast...

Faster that 8pieces of retri offspec...
Can you DPS on a raid? ARE F***ING MAD?
Can you DPS on a HC? Hell NO
Can you DPS on a normal? Yes and you probably will do as much damage as the Hunter's pet unless it's BM.

Going as the second and a half healer for supporting healers...
forget it... Shaman resto gooing all-out dps wil bow you off the charts..
/TLDR
Shockadin spec is good for dailies and fun, unless something changes very much you should use it for that - FUN - ...
/TLDR

Mannstein wrote:

sherck wrote: I think Shockadin DPS probably about maxes out at 5-6k DPS and that is it. I don't think there will be much upside.

Shockadin is dead... (i heard this so many times)
I tried this during the weekend, it's fun, and kill's stuf fast...

Faster that 8pieces of retri offspec...
Can you DPS on a raid? ARE F***ING MAD?
Can you DPS on a HC? Hell NO
Can you DPS on a normal? Yes and you probably will do as much damage as the Hunter's pet unless it's BM.

Going as the second and a half healer for supporting healers...
forget it... Shaman resto gooing all-out dps wil bow you off the charts..
/TLDR
Shockadin spec is good for dailies and fun, unless something changes very much you should use it for that - FUN - ...
/TLDR

Excellent post. You deserve a cookie.

Cheers,

I have noticed an increasing number of 'Shockadins' in the BG's. Is it viable for PVP? My thoughts were that it was dead as a dodo but am I missing something?

Barathorn wrote:I have noticed an increasing number of 'Shockadins' in the BG's. Is it viable for PVP? My thoughts were that it was dead as a dodo but am I missing something?

Survivability can be good with a pretty powerful instant heal every 6 sec, self-Beacon, Cleanse ability, Protector of the Innocent if they are healing, Judge heal, VERY powerful Holy Light after getting a killing blow (mine can crit for 40k) and the normal Paladin CDs.

Exocism can consistantly hit for 9-11k every 1.25 sec or so with normal Haste amounts so there is some burst capability there (alone with double Holy Shock attacked from Daybreak) to help get an injured target dead. And, it is a dirt free attack with the 75% mana reduction from Denounce so throwing it does nothing to impact their survivability/healing ability other than use up a GCD.

Remember, if the Shockadin has any interest in healing, the spec from a pure PvE healer to a Shockadin is only about 5-6 talent points difference. You take 3 out of Divinity, move 2 out of [cannot remember name, Tier 2 talent the props up WoG if target is injured] and put them in Blazing Light and Denounce and you pretty much have the Shockadin build. It does not "under heal" a pure Holy PvE build by much.

I know all healer specs should not have the capability to do some okay damage while healing but the Shockadin build seems to have some PvP possibilities.

Cheers,

I'm putting together a shock set specifically for fooling around on undead and demon bosses. Argaloth is Baradin Hold is a good example. It presents a few interesting gearing requirements, but I think has the potential to rival top tier DPS under these advantageous conditions. In practice, I was pushing 11k DPS with poorly designed gear until I ran out of mana midway in the fight. We also lacked Replenishment and Mana spring/tide.

Firstly, stack int. If you can get it on a trinket, proc, gem, flask, food, enchant, tinker, shirt, pet, or tattoo, do so.

Then there are the secondaries.
Since we have a 100% crit rate with Exorcism, crit rating is worthless. If you intend to bring it against other fights though, this becomes the secondary to stack once we reach our limits below.
Mastery does nothing at all for us.
Hit rating is needed, but Spirit is not only just as effective at its own job but also aids mana regen.

That really only leaves Spirit and Haste for stats we can use. Haste is only useful to the point of a 1 second cast time, since the GCD will go no lower. Remember, you're getting 3% from your spec and judging once every minute nets another 9%. I'm not entirely sure what other classes can bring you on this front however.
Spirit is our Hit Rating. The bonus regen is very welcome; in my experience it is very easy to drain your mana with little means of recovering it.

Glyphs.
Prime take Judgment, Exorcism and Holy Shock. The Exorcism dot rolls much like locks and priests, and benefits from double dipping; that is, it bases its damage on the critical Exorcism, then in turn crits itself 100% of the time on the unholy sorts.
For Major, I picked Divine Plea, Divinity and Lay on Hands. I geared these towards mana savings, since there's little other option. Consecration will slaughter your mana for little return.


Then there's the stuff I'm not so certain about.
I think hitting Holy Shock on cooldown for Inquisition on will be beneficial. I haven't been so ambitions as to run numbers, but I would expect a flat 30% extra to make up for replacing 3 Exorcisms for Holy Shock. They do similar damage, but Shock isn't guaranteed to crit, especially since we eschew crit on our gear for this experiment. Plus the uptime does kind of suck.

Also, listed in the 4.0.6 patch notes is this tidbit.

Blizzard wrote:Seal of Truth: All single target attacks (including Judgement, Hammer of Wrath, Exorcism, and Templar's Verdict) can now trigger this seal.

It may just be my not reading it closely enough, but if Exorcism procs all aspects of Seal of Truth, there should be some consideration taken as to what weapon we use. It may be significantly better to favor a Gladiator weapon (with 260 dps) over even Heroic Andoros (with a whopping 65 dps).
More than likely, I expect Exorcism to apply Censure, but not convey the 9% weapon damage.

I'm not certain 'shockadin' is still a good name for this spec.

I myself have been using a PvP Exorcism spec for questing/PvP/EZ-PvE encounters over my normal healing spec on my main for sometime now. Most of my damage comes from exorcism, with some burst capability, from an instant Exorcism due to talents. Combined with AW, a few quick 10k shots are usually pretty devastating in PvP. In PvE I can usually pull ~3.5K+ while still healing almost as well. Against undead/demons I can pull over 6K, depending on how much healing I have to do on the side, and how well I work my throughput CDs. But I love it for the undead wing in H-Halls of Origination.

I have also come to appreciate the new Turn Evil in H-HO, and H-Shadowfang Keep. Although sometimes the long duration of it enables the mobs to run so far that they either pull other groups, or I am left waiting around for them to return.

For progression raiding, the loss of the 30sec-CD on Holy Radiance can be acute, but outside Progression Raiding, its actually fine. Of course, I only put my PvP gear on for actual PvP, but the spec works quite well in my same raid PvE gear.

Hrobertgar wrote:I'm not certain 'shockadin' is still a good name for this spec.

What would you suggest otherwise... Exodin? Palacism? Lowdpsinghealadin?

I decided to start a Pally and was going for Ret for dps, however, I stumbled onto the wonders of an Exodin. At low levels it was poor dps wise, but, then when I hit about lvl50 it took off! In an Alterac Valley I alway get the highest dps! At lvl61 when everyone (including Marks Huntards) were doing 900 dps, I was getting 1700dps on bosses! All I had to do was spam exorcism and get 2900 hits every second! By the time my haste trinket and talents hit cooldown the boss was dead! I also wipe rogues, who get such a shock when I stun them and wipe them in 3 secs! I don't know what it will be like at lvl85, but, it is Imba atm!

Well, it might not be viable for PvE at 85 thanks to the poor scaling on Exorcism, but it's certainly viable while leveling. I've been leveling a Shockadin up just for fun and I have yet to be out-DPS'd by another player in 5 mans. At level 70 I'm consistently pulling around 3,5k DPS on single target boss fights. I've seen maybe one or two hunters go over the 1k mark, but nowhere near my damage output.

I've started a new paladin on a server to play with a friend, and have been wondering if it's worth trying to level/quest as holy. Part of me screams "No, you retard, you want to be Ret", but then I'd also like to try learning healing. How much slower would it be, do you think?

If you're questing against just 1 level appropriate mob, it can be pretty quick, but against multiple targets Exodin is not a patch on prot or ret. Holy dmg output is low enough that the mobs WILL dmg you a bit forcing you to self heal and lowering your output further.

Of course, reset after a mob/group is down can be quick. Running around in low areas it can be fun having 3 ranged abilities to blast gray trash mobs: Judgement, Shock, Exorcism. But levelling as Holy unless you plan to heal for instance runs would almost certainly be noticeably slower for questing/grinding.

For levelling I might go ret until you can get HotR, then maybe switch to prot. I leveleld both a holy pally and a prot pally thru Wrath and now Cata and Prot definitely burns thru multi mob pulls much quicker.

Kelaan wrote:I've started a new paladin on a server to play with a friend, and have been wondering if it's worth trying to level/quest as holy. Part of me screams "No, you retard, you want to be Ret", but then I'd also like to try learning healing. How much slower would it be, do you think?

No, you retard, you want to be Ret.

Also you can still totally heal low level dungeons as any spec.

Haha. Yeah, I think you're right. CS->HS->judge->CS kills almost everything while questing, but it's still slower than ret, because ret has the periodic Templar's Verdict that it can use. Mana regen is CRAP, too, I really notice the loss of judgements giving mana back.

Dungeons are a lot faster to get as holy, though, and I get to learn to heal, which I think is the novelty I wanted. I still quest fast enough to not be grumpy about it, right now -- though in a few levels I will likely start gearing a ret spec. Right now, I level so fast (under 30) that I don't hit a dungeon more than once or twice, so gear intake is pretty unplannable... so I am focusing on holy.