The Shockadin In Wrath

Synovia at wowpaladin.org wrote an amazing article on how great Shockadins are going to be when we go north. I'm running out the door now for a looooong day at the office so I'll post the article here for you to read but I highly recommend wowpaladin.org for a lot of raid Paladin news.

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"With WotLK being tentatively slotted for a November release, it’s easy to get overly excited about the possibilities. However, something in particular caught my attention today as I was browsing through the Beta talent calculator over at www.wowhead.com: Are Holy Paladins to be limited to back of the raid healbotting? After some deliberation and placement of talent points, I’m inclined to state that it certainly seems as though this time around Blizzard has opened the proverbial doors for a large variety of Paladin playstyles: the Shockadin being one of them.

Now while I won’t at all claim a Shockadin now or even then to have any kind of raid viability, as of the present I am extremely confident as to their effectiveness in PvP. Let me share with you my thoughts on just why I believe what I do.

As of present, the Shockadin arsenal requires the expenditure of talent points to retrieve all of the following:

• 1/1 Sanctity Aura (Retribution)
• 1/1 Holy Shock (Holy)
• 5/5 Holy Guidance (Holy)
• 5/5 Improved Seal of Righteousness (Holy)
• 5/5 Divine Intellect (Holy)
• 3/3 Crusade (Retribution)

Now we can all agree the list above, although comprised of “essential” Shockadin talents, is lengthy. They are required as such due to the nature of the spec. It is unarguable that each of these talents directly affects the damage output of the build but what’s more is that although WotLK is removing the first altogether (Sanctity Aura), it is providing not just one replacement to increase DPS but several.

At this time, I would like to draw your attention to the following build:

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=sEA0xhzGVzMxkZZVbhxbczh

The list above now receives the following additions:

• 3/3 Healing Light (Holy)
  • This talent currently only increases the healing done by Flash of Light and Holy light by 4/8/12%. As of WotLK it will still do this but it will additionally increase the effectiveness of your Holy Shock spell by 4/8/12% as well.
• 5/5 Conviction (Retribution)
  • As of today, this talent only increases your melee critical strike chance by 1/2/3/4/5%. With WotLK, it will also increase your spell critical strike chance by 1/2/3/4/5%
• 3/3 Sheath of Light
  • This new talent increases your Spell Power by 10/20/30% of your attack power and puts a HoT on your heal targets any time your crit them with a heal.
• 1/1 Sanctified Retribution
  • Allows for 2% flat damage increase by anyone affected by Retribution Aura. This essentially replaces Improved Sanctity Aura directly.

So we’ve lost the flat 10% damage increase to Holy spells granted by Sanctity Aura but in return we’ve gained the above four sources of extra damage on our Holy Shocks. Let’s see how this all breaks down in WotLK terms.

For this demonstration, I’m going to make a floored assumption that my statistics on my Holy Paladin, in her Holy gear, will remain unchanged at level 80. The only difference I”m assuming is the acquisition of 10 more talent points to spend within the WotLK talent trees. I makes these assumptions for simplicity in calculation and also so I can use real numbers taken directly from my Holy Paladin.

The coefficient used for instant cast damaging spells is 42.86%. Although Blizzard has noted that coefficients are being adjusted for healing spells given the removal of +healing gear and the introduction of spell power, the damage coefficients will remain in tact as no change is needed.

Holy Shock, at level 80, does a base range of damage beginning at 967 and ending at 1047. From here, we would first apply our +damage (or Spell Power) at rate consistent with the above coefficient of 42.86%. For my Holy Paladin, this is done as follows:

• 1047 + (740 spell damage * .4286) = 1365

However, we know that Sheath of Light will yield an addition Spell Power value of 30% of my attack power. At first consideration this many seem negligible but even someone completely naked has an attack power granted by their level alone. For example, my Holy Paladin’s level 70 attack power, while garbed in full Holy PvP gear is actually 436. Taking this into account we have the following base damage instead:

• 1047 + (740 + (436 * .3) * .4286) = 1421

With the base damage calculation completed, we now turn to talents for any further benefit to the spell. The order of application for these talents is irrelevant so we’ll begin arbitrarily with Healing Light which adds 12% effectiveness to Holy Shock:

• 1421 * 1.12 = 1592

Next, we account for Sanctified Retribution:

• 1592 * 1.02 = 1624

Lastly, we consider Crusade:

• 1624 * 1.03 = 1673

As we can see, our basetop-end damage on Holy Shock, in level 70 Holy (not even spell damage gear) PvP gear and without any additional stats (that will obviously be accumulated on our way to 80) is 1624. Now, let’s add the icing on our delicious cake by applying Avenging Wrath:

• 1673 * 1.20 = 2008

Now the fun begins. Spell critical strikes deal 150% damage after damage-increasing calculation has concluded. Given a top-end of 2008 damage as calculated above, let’s assume either a straight away critical strike or use of Divine Favor to yield one:

• 2008 * 1.50 = 3012

Please remind yourself that all these calculations were done off the statistics present for my level 70 Holy Paladin in healing(Ornamented) PvP gear. Most Shockadins presently in World of Warcraft float around 1200 spell damage and not my awe-devoid 740. Let’s make one last assumption, shall we? Let’s assume, on what I would consider to be the far low end of the potential spectrum, that a level 80 Shockadin has 500 attack power and 1600 spell damage. Using these new numbers, let’s run through the calculation one last time:

• 1047 + (1600 * .4286) = 1733 (base spell damage including Sheath of Light)
• 1733 * 1.12 = 1941 (Healing Light)
• 1941 * 1.02 = 1980 (Sanctified Retribution)
• 1980 * 1.03 = 2040 (Crusade)
• 2040 * 1.20 = 2448 (Avenging Wrath)
• 2448 * 1.50 = 3672 (Critical Strike)

As you can see, even low-balling the potential spell damage of a level 80 Shockadin immensely still leads us to near 4000+ damage Holy Shocks. I would argue that it won’t be uncommon for Shockadins, with proper buffs to be capable of putting out 5000+ damage Holy Shocks in PvP.

So what are the possibilities? You tell me. Seemingly, they are endless as already at level 70 the Shockadin has proven his worth in 2v2 arena by bursting down topped-off Warriors with 13K HP in 3 seconds. Perhaps Blizzard saw this video as well and realized the potential for a very fun aspect to the Paladin game play. We can only wait and see.

This is Synovia, taking her leave."