Retadin? Or Shockadin?

My main spec is Holy so I am just a bit excited by the concept of a dual-spec system where I can spec out to a "DPS" spec when I need to go questing or some solo play.

I have been gathering some quest rewards and such with the general concept that I would go Ret as my dual-spec and completely switch out my gear to support it. The main advantage I have in that I got the 2H sword drop Despair from Kara which should be a pretty good DPS weapon for the first 5 or 6 level of Wrath. My build would be a "standard" Ret build with almost everything in Ret except for Divine Strength and a couple of things in Prot.

However, I was looking over the talent trees this am and put together a Shockadin spec that went 31 into Holy and the rest into Ret which looked really, really strong. Excellent crit potential with both Holy Shock and Judgement, still retain excellent Spell Power for Ret Aura/Shock/Judge/HoW goodness as well as self-healing in PvE.

I know that Shockadin is usually for PvP but I wanted to see what the Beta players thought about it's potential in PvE for solo/questing.

Main Advantages of Shockadin:

-- Same gear as my Holy setup so I only need to concentrate on building one gear set.
-- Self-heal potential while in combat is excellent with the SP.
-- Burst is excellent for when I get jumped by those Alliance ba$tards when I am soloing.

Main Disadvantages of Shockadin:

-- I am assuming it is a lot less DPS than a full Ret build with Ret gear
-- I am very concerned about it's mana usage. Illumination with Shock will help but... (wait, does Illumination work with both sides of Shock or only when you heal with it?)
-- What else?

Again, I really don't want to solo/quest as Holy so I am looking into the alternatives. I have a couple of pieces of Kara plate that will do okay for a Ret build along with the rep vendor "Scaled" set and a couple of quest rewards which I could go get will build me a fairly good starting Ret set for Wrath.

But I really would like to try the Shockadin concept.

Thoughts?

Cheers,
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Thad, Current Toon = Blood Elf Pally Bloodprince on Altar of Storms

As ret healing is nothing really to sneeze at anymore and all scaling seems to be much more efficient with AP rather than SP, I couldn't see a shockadin being useful for anything, even arena. With the changes in the trees, is there really even a shockadin spec? Holy now by default goes into the Ret tree primarily anyway?

3 words :

Divine Storm Baby!
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Yes, actually, and in theory, it's even better than before, with Holy Shock being on a 6 second cooldown, it goes something like this

Shockadin

It sports like 19% Holy shock crit chance and 38% Judgement crit chance, but there is a problem...

I don't know if it's intentional, but Judgement atm does not seem to be scaling with SP nearly at all. When I tried it on the beta, I couldn't kill anyone simply because my Judgements weren't doing crap for damage.
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I have read elsewhere that the damage from Judgement appeared to be taking a big hit.

Which is fine for Ret and Prot because Judgement makes up a much less part of their DPS than it does for Holy.

But if true, it really hurts Holy DPS. Judgement is a BIG part of our DPS. Unless the damage from Shock is just killer and that was their balance tool.

However, if Blizz has decided that Holy will spec out when they need to kill something, it becomes much easier for them to tune damage to just Prot / Ret and assume that Holy will rarely ever try to kill something with SP.

Time will tell.

Cheers,
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Thad, Current Toon = Blood Elf Pally Bloodprince on Altar of Storms

When Judgment doesn't scale with SP, holy is really hurt for 2v2 and 3v3 compared to the other healers.

You will not be able to change spec in arena, however
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R.I.P. Sanctity Aura, it's Hammer Time

I'm still of the opinion they should give holy something to compensate, such as modify hammer of righteousness more for Spell Power.

edit: and then had that seal's special effect be +x damage on judgment modified by sp more than ap.

The gear differences are really only detrimental to paladin.

Most healers have a spell power DPS spec.
Most DPS have optional talents that are good for certain fights.

(the below assumes all trees do similar dps, and all talents can have a significant use)
For instance, on a progression fight like RoS a subtlety rogue is pretty hot for Prep. DoTs might become a lot more appealing than destro for a fight with tons of movement, so a lock can just flip to affliction. A boss might be disarmable (a la shadowfury berserkers) so a prot warrior can switch over to an improved disarm spec.