What the F, David Blaine! Stop confusing me!

[kingharbromm]

So, I have heard lots of people talk about reckoning. They say it's not worth it anymore. They say since 3.0 or whatever it's a waste of 5 talent points. Now, I look at talentchic.com and no one is using it in the top builds out there.

What the F?

I thought reckoning was the greatest thing in the world when going for mana back or healing back from judgement of wisdom or light, respectively. You get more attacks, you get twice the mana or healing back when fighting. It's awesome!

Hell, there was a whole "survivadin" build on WoWWiki for along time that was kindof centered around reckoning and the double proc on healing.

So, seriously. What the F? Can someone explain to me what happened?

Thanks!

[kenshin648]

Its ok for leveling, but reckoning also gives a higher chance of being parried and thus hit faster. I myself cannot really confirm this, but the judgements apparently have internal cooldowns on proccing anyway so it wouldnt matter.

[Dane]

This may not be the best job of explaining this, but as I understand it, Reckoning has several problems with it.

First of all, it only increases white damage done, which is a minor part of our damage/threat.

With the changes to Vengeance/Corruption, you really don't need the extra swings to get a 5 stack up/keep it up.

Most of all, the opportunity cost is too high. For the points spent on it, you'll be missing out on too much. I believe some math was done on it and it was found that if you HAVE to get Reckoning, 2/5 was the best ROI. Try searching the Talents forum, ought to be plenty on it there.

If any of you more knowledgable types dispute any of this, let me know.

[Mex]

TLDR at the bottom.

Reckoning is still just as good as it used to be, absolutely nothing has changed in regards to its mechanics. The problem is that OTHER mechanics have changed which make reckoning much less desirable for paladin tanking.

Back in TBC, seal of righteousness was the unanimous seal of choice for progression tanking. It provided reliable and consistent TPS that was higher than any other seal. Seal of Vengeance (which was alliance only back then), functioned much differently. Firstly, the application of the dot was based on a PPM system, which favoured slower tanking weapons for reliabile application of the dot. Secondly, the dot itself could be resisted. Finally, the melee swing itself had to connect. This meant that to apply the SoV dot, you had to pass 3 checks -- melee hit, proc chance, spell hit. This made it difficult to reliably maintain a stack on a mob, much less multiple mobs.

In 3.0, the mechanics of SoV changed, making it a guaranteed application with every strike, as long as the swing hit. It made keeping up a 5 stack of SoV on a single, or even multiple mobs, infinitely easier, to the point that it's so close to guaranteed that it's not even worth considering the 0.00001% chance or whatever that a stack will fall off. In addition, SoV's scaling changed, to make it the highest TPS seal to use while tanking.

The problem then is basically that because achieving a 5 stack is so simple, that extra swings do very little in terms of TPS increase (if you have a 5 stack on the mob already, the judgement will proc for an extra 5-10 damage or so per hit, peanuts really).

So why not use reckoning with SoR? Well quite simply because it's STILL less TPS. The extra attacks don't generate enough SoR threat to bring it into line with SoV, so there's not a lot of point dropping 5 talent points into reckoning for it.

There's also a lot of talk about the possibility of parry-gib with reckoning, while others say that it's a myth and isn't even worth considering. I don't really buy into either version, but there is some small amount of truth to both of them I think, you just need to think about how much exactly. Let's assume that you're roughly "dodge-capped" with expertise (easy enough unless you're not using SoV), leaving the mob with a ~10% chance (at the very most) of parrying you. Some would look at this and say that that leaves a 1% chance of the boss parrying both attacks, but it's not quite that simple. See, you'd perform the first swing anyway. If he's going to parry it, he'll parry it regardless of whether or not you have reckoning. It's the extra swing that causes problems, since it lands at the same time, and therefore the effect of its parry-haste is potentially much greater (the earlier an attack is parried, the more it hastes the mob's next swing, generally).

So potentially, you could be hit by a boss, then immediately attack twice and be parried both times, dropping the boss' swing timer by 40% and then 40% again, making his next swing activate in less than 1 second (generally). It's not a pretty situation, since if you then get unlucky with avoidance, there's very little time for your healers to react. Due to the nature of how reckoning works as well (extra attack on next 4 swings), you then have the potential for it to happen again (and again and again) in a very short period of time. Still, the chances are quite low that this will happen (10% chance of getting a double parry in place of a regular parry). This is then mitigated though by your avoidance (parry haste doesn't really "matter" if you dodge both swings), your reckoning uptime, additional expertise you may have, etc etc.

Ultimately, I'm going to go ahead and say that it's not really enough of an issue to make reckoning a "never take this" sort of talent. The chances of actually being parry gibbed _because of reckoning_ are quite low. The above is all basically stuff off the top of my head, I wouldn't take it as gospel, just more of a framework about how to look at reckoning. If you want a more in-depth look, the advanced training forum is the place to go.

The bottom line is that reckoning IS a TPS upgrade, but a veryveryvery minor one. If you're not picking up BoK, and want as much TPS as possible, then 3/5 reckoning is the best option to allow you to move deeper into the tree. Personally I'd probably take utility talents such as divine guardian or imp HoJ, but it's up to you. Putting more than 3/5 into reckoning for TPS is never right though, as extra points are better spent in the holy tree on seals of the pure.

Finally, the only real use I can see for it at the moment, is solo'ing / aoe grinding, where it's actually very powerful. With 10+ mobs meleeing you, it'll be up ~100% of the time, which means that you can cast SoL and keep yourself healed vs even the hardest hitting mobs (in these situations, blessing of sanc will provide more than enough mana return).

TLDR -- Reckoning is a highly insignificant TPS upgrade, and also very slightly decreases survivability. It's not worth taking unless you do a lot of solo aoe grinding / farming.

[Achtung]

I'm fairly sure this Reckoning issue has been covered a few times, especially in the FAQ threads by Knaughty and Winchester.

[majiben]

Mex summed it up pretty well.

[PsiVen]

This is easily the least on-topic thread title I've seen this year.

[supai]

Looking at our WWS last night of a complete Naxx 25 clear my reckoning only proced 25 times. 4+ hours and only 25 procs. I am dropping that talent as soon as I log in tonight.

I am going for this
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sVZaxVAbuMteIRGoxo

Currently I have points in benediction and recoking, but with the changes that we will get soon to judgement of wisdom I should be fine

[Frickit]

If I am not using Divine Guardian Ill put those two points into reckoning...2 points procs enough for me and its just a cool, extra thing to have but completely unimportant. I keep DG even though I never use it. Other than that I would hate to lose points anywhere else.

[Torquemada]

Parry gibs were really an issue for Paladins, since the only encounters where you could get hit enough times to burn through all your charges on Holy Shield were tanking trash that was below level 73 and thus could not crush. That was largely a concern for warriors. Having your melee DPS stand in front of the boss did/does lower dps because the boss will parry, and the parry hasted swings can up damage, but on a Pally that generally wasn't a deal breaker. It was Warriors with their 2 charge Shield Block which fell victim to that. It was one of the selling points of a TBC tankadin-never eating crushing blows whereas a Warrior still could.

Depending on the situation, I usually either ran with 3/5 in Reckoning(My "Threat") build, or 3 points in Pursuit of Justice. I've found that I prefer PoJ over SotP in Wrath, since I can also spec Heart of the Crusader, as we don't have a reliable Ret Pally. Vengeance killed the last gasp that Reckoning had. Let it die gracefully, and remember the good times we shared.

[Dakiros]

Parry gibs were not really an issue for Paladins, since the only encounters where you could get hit enough times to burn through all your charges on Holy Shield were tanking trash that was below level 73 and thus could not crush. That was largely a concern for warriors. Having your melee DPS stand in front of the boss did/does lower dps because the boss will parry, and the parry hasted swings can up damage, but on a Pally that generally wasn't a deal breaker. It was Warriors with their 2 charge Shield Block which fell victim to that. It was one of the selling points of a TBC tankadin-never eating crushing blows whereas a Warrior still could.

Depending on the situation, I usually either ran with 3/5 in Reckoning(My "Threat") build, or 3 points in Pursuit of Justice. I've found that I prefer PoJ over SotP in Wrath, since I can also spec Heart of the Crusader, as we don't have a reliable Ret Pally. Vengeance killed the last gasp that Reckoning had. Let it die gracefully, and remember the good times we shared.

Fixt?

[Elsie]

I spec'd reckoning because I didn't need kings anymore and there was nothing else good to take. I have two always-on paladins that spec kings.

My options without kings: Divine Guardian, Reckoning, PvP stuff.

Soo... I'm experimenting with 59/12 (reckoning / PoJ) and might swap to 5/59/7. I don't exactly recommend any of these specs as a general rule of thumb.

I also like ridiculing DPS at being below the tank on DPS.

[Candiru]

Reckoning is amazing with SoL and SoW though (for soloing)

In Hyjull I used it with SoW to keep my mana topped off.

With the BoSanc changes, this isn't really the case any more, but it could be useful on a fight like Loatheb where you might use SoW to top off your mana bar every so often. Wait for a reckoning proc, swap seal, profit!

Its just not that good in raids, sadly.

[Elsie]

Its just not that good in raids, sadly.

Unless you're getting hit a lot, such as on patchwerk and 10-Man OS.

Reckoning isn't a priority, but certainly if you have 1-2 dedicated kings paladins then there's nothing else to put points into that is really worthwhile.

[Torquemada]

Parry gibs were not really an issue for Paladins, since the only encounters where you could get hit enough times to burn through all your charges on Holy Shield were tanking trash that was below level 73 and thus could not crush. That was largely a concern for warriors. Having your melee DPS stand in front of the boss did/does lower dps because the boss will parry, and the parry hasted swings can up damage, but on a Pally that generally wasn't a deal breaker. It was Warriors with their 2 charge Shield Block which fell victim to that. It was one of the selling points of a TBC tankadin-never eating crushing blows whereas a Warrior still could.

Depending on the situation, I usually either ran with 3/5 in Reckoning(My "Threat") build, or 3 points in Pursuit of Justice. I've found that I prefer PoJ over SotP in Wrath, since I can also spec Heart of the Crusader, as we don't have a reliable Ret Pally. Vengeance killed the last gasp that Reckoning had. Let it die gracefully, and remember the good times we shared.

Fixt?

Yeah. Typing on a Blackberry sucks. The window is tiny. I meant to say never, not "Not", but the effect is the same. Thanks for catching that.