As a long time player of a Holy Paladin, I remember fondly the days of being able to be a “Shockadin” and quest and do my dailies while in a Holy spec. I also remember the days
of being able to switch from full heals to Shockadin when the raid was choosing between running 3 or 2 healers for an encounter and being able to be “1/2 healer and 1/2 DPS.”
Seeing two of the new, reworked glyphs for 5.0, I was somewhat excited by the possibility of the return of the Shockadin.
The Glyph of Holy Shock decreases the healing component of Holy Shock to zero but doubles its damage ability while the Glyph of Denounce added a 20% increased damage modifier
for the next 6 seconds to any Holy Damage abilities. At present, a third “DPS type” of glyph is lacking but perhaps the Crusader’s Strike glyph would help mana.
Regardless, the Holy Paladin now has a very decidedly lack of offensive abilities with which to try and be a Shockadin. The grand total of damaging abilities of a Holy Paladin
consists of:
1. Judgment
2. Holy Shock
3. Crusader Strike
4. Denounce
This now brings about a few problems:
A. If the intent is for a Shockadin to be viable in order to quest and do dailies, the game play with those 4 abilities is very……boring. Three of the abilities currently hit
for about the same amount (Judgment, Holy Shock, Denounce) and the 4th abilities hits for 1/3 of the damage of the others. This will change with the glyph for Holy Shock and it
will be “the big” gun but a rotation with only 4 abilities that all do pretty much the same thing (nuke) appears boring.
B. There is no compelling reason to hit Crusader Strike. Sure, you build Holy Power by using it and its mana/damage ratio is good. However, you only generate 1/3 the DPS as your
other abilities AND there is no damage boosting ability with which to spend the Holy Power on. I guess you use it to build Holy Power to heal yourself with WoG but adding a
damage boost use of Holy Power would be prime.
C. There is no “rotation” with a spamable ability like Denounce which has almost the same mana/damage ratio as Judgment and Holy Shock (unglyphed). With them being equal, you
only need to Judge currently to keep up your 30% in combat mana regen and to return back a very small amount of mana with Improved Judgment. You only need to Holy Shock to build
Holy Power….which does not increase your damage output at all.
D. There is no AoE damage ability outside of Seal of Righteousness.
I am just finding it weird. The glyphs appear to want to give a “Shockadin” play style viability; however the DPS output is terrible as currently tuned and even if DPS was good,
a complete lack of AoE capability and no CC outside of taking the Repentance talent truly limits the ability to take on more than one mob at a time.
