What is a Shockadin?

"I’ve seen Shockadin mentioned on your blog several times but I’m still not sure what it is and how it works. Could you maybe post some video and describe how one would gear for it and how to use it properly both for damage and for healing?

BIG THANKS,

Ruprecht – Skywall"

Well Ruprecht, it's something that I personally haven't dabbled in myself, or perhaps I have dabbled and haven't even realized it. Simply put, a Shockadin is built around Holy DMG and Spell Damage/Healing Gear and a lot of +crit. In my last post I touched upon the topic briefly and linked this cookie cutter build. I will try to break it down as basic as possible going over each talent and what I personally think it means to the build:

Holy

Divine Intellect - The more INT, the more Crit, and later on in the build the more SD/Healing you'll have.

Spiritual Focus - Doesn't hurt to be able to have guaranteed heals (With Concentration Aura) if a million mobs are beating on you, does it?

Imp. Seal of Righteousness - More Holy Damage is a good thing for this build, as that is what it's built around.

Illumination - You need this to get Divine Favor and nothing beats having extra mana to toss around, and it makes you a decent healer for 5-mans.

Divine Favor - Crits = Good, not much to explain here, a guaranteed half-cost crit spell is pretty sweet.

Sanctified Light - Not really much else to put this in, it helps out your healing a bit and can't hurt much, if you'd rather get Imp. Lay on Hands or something though, go for it.

Purifying Power - I personally like this one I have 2/2 in it, the crits on Holy Wrath are fun to watch in those AoE mobs in The Crypts & Blood Furnace or those ghost packs in Karazhan before Moroes. The lesser cost on Consecration helps out with mana too if you feel the need to AoE down mobs, and once again, crit (even against demons/undead) is always a good thing.

Holy Power - Crit = Good, once again not much to explain, this gets you crit on Holy Shocks, Healing Spells, Exorcisms, etc.

Light's Grace - This will help you be a good healer and launch out half second quicker holy light spells, it's more or less ideal for raid situations I would assume, or even some quick healing on tanks in Heroics where you just need to spam Holy Light, honestly though if healing isn't your thing, go for Blessed Life.

Holy Guidance - This is where it comes together for you, all that INT you've got is now being put into raw DPS & Healing, and you'll definitely notice the difference (35 SD/H per 100 INT you have, dressed in epics, is easily 100-200 more SD/H)

Retribution

Benediction - The less mana you have to spend means the more DPS you can put out. Can't argue with it.

Imp. Judgement - Most of your DPS is coming from your Judgements, the quicker you can do them, the more DPS you can do.

Imp. Seal of the Crusader - More bang for your buck, you'll always be judging Crusader and then unleashing Holy Shocks & Righteousness Judgements, so this can only be helpful.

Conviction - This is more of a "Why the hell not?" talent, I don't see any reason not to get it, you need 5 points to move on up in the world, and when you crit with melee strikes it'll cause your Righteousness Judgement to hurt more.

Eye for an Eye - It's a PvP talent and semi-PvE talent, If you'd rather have Vindication or something else, go for it. It's entirely up to you with this.

Crusade - Extra Damage is good Damage, can't argue with that.

Sanctity Aura - Kiss your other Auras goodbye, this is what you're after. 10% more damage on those Holy attacks, coupled with that 15% from Crusader, hey, that's a whole 25% extra (probably more or less depending on the mathematics of how these work, I'm not much of a math guy) holy damage you're pushing out.

Wrapping it up

So what does this all mean? What do you do? Honestly, I've never seen a Shockadin before, but I may actually BE a Shockadin (minus the talents). The way I play the solo game as my Holy Paladin is to pretty much unleash all my Judgements & Holy Shocks whenever I get the chance. I pop my +crit trinkets (The one from the Hellfire Citadel quest chain and the one from being revered with the Sha'tar), and let loose. I spam consecration when I'm in large groups (I also blow my Divine Illumination during that though, which you don't have as a Shockadin), and I just unleash.

The basic concept is:

Seal/Judgement of Crusader, Seal/Judgement Righteousness, Holy Shock, Exorcisms (on undead/demons), & Consecration in AoE packs. Heal as necessary, wash and repeat until mob/mobs are dead, make sure to refresh Crusader if it wears off.

What kind of gear do you need for this? I'll link you here to the Set Look Alikes page and check it out the look alike for Earthfury. I know, I know, you're completely offended at me saying to wear Mail, but it's built for elemental shaman who also focus on spell damage/crits, and so it kind of works out well in my opinion. However, I'm sure there are alternatives, look for gear with a high amount of crit and SD/H on it and I think you'll be fine.

Remember, I'm not a super expert, you can always learn more by inquiring on the hells known as the public forums (sometimes there is good information to be found if you ignore the QQ topics). Also, if any of you readers know something I don't, please feel free to tell me I don't know what I'm talking about and correct me.

lrn2play: Paladin Leveling Builds

This post is being dedicated to Gamer Mommy, who asks

"So I started an alt because I have a problem. My blood elf pally is coming up in the ranks. Mind sharing a good leveling talent tree spec with me?"

Hey, it's like I'm BRK now! Neat! Ahem... so, here we go.

Well ma, there are a lot of different specs you could try out, you would think that there was a single spec that excelled at leveling, and I suppose there is, but I'd like to give you a grinding spec based around each talent tree, that way you'll have more choices, and be able to learn how to play your class according to your chosen spec while you're leveling, because really, each talent tree for a paladin is like playing an entirely new class (much like a druid or shaman and their trees.) Here we go:

OOMadin

First up we have the Holy Tree, now a lot of people say "Hey! Holy is for healing, not for soloing." and for the most part I would say you're right, but with the right gear you can quickly become something I've coined the "OOMadin", you spend a lot of time drinking and spamming all your spell abilities, but it gets the job done, and did spectacular for more while leveling in Hellfire Peninsula later on.

The basic idea is to blow your various abilities and unleash some holy damage, spam that consecration if you have multiple enemies, and just keep on trucking with bubbles & crit heals from divine favor when you need to. If you're going OOM and struggling to get by, pop the 41 pt talent and keep on going. It's VERY hard to die with this build unless you get jumped while you're low on mana. This build will also allow you to be a relatively effective healer if you feel the need to do instances and such on your way to the top. Obviously you'll want to respec to be more healing effective if you plan on sticking with Holy. Also, feel free to swap out Redoubt with Devotion Aura if you enjoy two-handers over shields, Imp. Devotion Aura is actually surprisingly effective pre-outland, then it goes down hill.

Shockadin

This is the same basic idea as above, except you focus more on burst damage than healing, it's great for a PvP build, but it really isn't cut out for leveling, as it doesn't really entirely come together until 70, but I think it's fairly self explanatory, it's just a different method of the above option, allowing you to judgment more, etc.

Tankadin

Okay, you can basically do WHATEVER you want and live with the right gear. Always carry a shield around with you, keep righteous fury up, do whatever you need to do. You've got spiritual focus to heal yourself without interruption (unless they shield slam or kick) while you AoE farm and basically kill things by STANDING THERE. That's right, the mobs will slowly kill themselves just by attacking you. Holy Shield is your Thorns, Retribution Aura as well, and let's not forget Reckoning, you're just sitting there, sipping your iced tea, watching the sunset as millions of murlocs fall as they end up breaking their flimsy little hands on your plate armor. Fall back on bubbles or run or whatever if you really need to. But as far as I've been told, you're unstoppable. You can even solo out of instance elites that are a level or 2 above your current one, it'll be a long process, but you can do it.

Retribution

Just how BRK has the dreaded 'marksman' spec that everyone uses, this is that dreaded retribution spec that paladins use. I still have no experience with the retribution tree, but I respect it and admire the players who can make the tree work well. It's a VERY gear dependant tree, but it's the 'solo' tree as admitted by Kalgan, one of the lead game developers for WoW, and enemy to all paladins apparently. This one is more of a PvE raiding spec, but it's practically the same for solo.

You have a few options and choices you can make, if you enjoy 2-handers, take Imp. Devotion Aura (In fact, 2-handers are the way to go, and you'll probably be using devotion aura early on until you get Sanctity Aura, so go with that early on and make the switch to redoubt if you stick with retribution in the long run.) Also, if you'd like drop Precision and aim for Vindication since it works fairly well on the trash you'll be leveling up on, but it really seems to be more of a PvP talent. Here's a quick explaination on the balancing act of retribution stats and then I'll send you on your way.

Strength/AP -> Crit Rating/Agility -> Hit Rating -> Everything Else

Make sure you don't eliminate yourself from INT gear though in Azeroth, as INT Plate is very hard to find outside of the blood elf starting zones, wear shaman mail if you really need to or if you're very low on INT, but for the most part, just make sure you try to balance things out instead of focusing strictly on a stat or two. You are, more or less, a warrior with healing.

Remember everyone, I am in no means an expert on these things, if anybody else would like to provide comments or ideas or simply say that I don't know what the heck I'm talking about, feel free to do so. I hope these build ideas will give you a basic understanding of each spec, and some of the builds you can use to level/solo to 70.

Talent Specs

If anybody knows me, I am a HUGE fan of trying to do the impossible or going the 'odd' way about doing things:

Examples:

- Valkors doesn't have any sort of land mounts, at all.
- Sylvina is trying to be a Holy Tank
- I was dual-wielding as a Warrior back when it was the dumb thing to do (AKA Why not just use a 2-hander?)
- I prefer style of functionality (Ugly epics? Sorry, I'll pass.)
- I wanted to make my Priest a full Shadow Specced Priest, who refused to even heal or learn any healing spells (I figured this would ultimately screw me in grouping, so I decided against it... although, nowadays, I suppose I'd be able to get away with it.)
- I was a protection Paladin on alliance back when 'Paladins can't tank.' was the mentality.
- I was Survival spec before the Hunter changes, and I wanted to be a 'Melee Hunter'.

So... with all of that being said, here are some specs, and I want some opinions. I'm looking more along the lines of people thinking abstractly though, not telling me "Well, you should do this... and this is completely dumb, and why would you want to do this? etc.", and come up with creative solutions to my oddball desires. Also, have any of you ever made a weird spec like the following?

Shaman:

Shaman Tank - I'm trying to turn him into an off-tank, thus I took none of the threat lowering talents. Although, I may pick up the Parry talent and deal with the lack of threat for the benefit of being able to parry attacks.

Hunter:

I wish I was Accident - I may swap 2% to Parry for the Rapid Killing talent. My goal here is to be a support/CC Hunter, but I didn't want to directly copy Accident's build, so I added some of my own flavor. (This is Accident btw.)

Melee Hunter - Here it is folks, the Melee Hunter. I tried to boost my Dodge as much as possible, as well as Stamina, Armor, and other talents. I also tried to avoid any sort of Ranged Crit Proc talents (which Hunters have a TON of) btw.

Priest:

Shadow Inner Fire Priest - I'm toying with the idea of the shields & inner fire... I'm not entirely sure if these talents are worth it all. I'd like some priestly advice.

Shadow Misery Priest - I dropped the armor buffs and improved my DPS. I'm also curious if the improved Wand DMG talent is worth it.

Warrior:

Fury Warrior - Thoughts? Comments? No ultimate goal here, just a dual-wielding fiend, rogue in plate, etc. I was contemplating on swapping rend with thunder clap now because of the tanktitude it can cause, also... it's available in all stances now, right? (Schwack gave me some suggestions to change this around...)

Rogue:

Valkors' Build - Well, here's Valk's official plans. He's always been a little odd, I like to 'AoE' grind and be prepared to wtf pwn multiple mobs in the face, so I have a lot of fancy cooldowns. I've always thought of him as a 'Slice & Dice' rogue, stabbity stabbity with the daggers and watch the little numbers above their heads fly up like a machine gun chain. MoD is for PvP & general sneakiness btw.

Paladin:

Sylvina's 2.1 Spec - Don't worry, I'm still Holy. But I made a few extra changes, and they were even nice enough to give me an extra talent point to play with. yay.

Alliance Tankanub - This is the talent spec I was playing around with if I ever went back to play my level 48ish Alliance Paladin. (Albriech is my Alliance Paladin, btw.)

Support Nub - Most retribution paladins focus solely on DPS, and cry about their DPS, etc. I decided to try and make a 'Support' Paladin whose melee based attacks and buffs would help the team instead of his own DPS & Solo/PvP abilities.