It’s that time of year people. And so here I am to let Aggy-Claus and his team of elves know what’s on my xmas list 
Disclaimer: I have no idea how easy or hard it would be to implement any of this, the purpose of this wish list is to hopefully aid in brainstorming ways to make shockadin viable in SoD. Here’s a link to this in video format for those who don’t want to read my wall of text And no this isn’t a plug to make money off my channel, I’m not monetized.
Now that we have seen all the new loot for this phase, many shockadin players are feeling a bit deflated due to the lack of upgrades and support. With the updates to the AQ 3set, we’re seeing support for a 1 handed melee dps style, and while I think that’s interesting and I do support experimenting with things like this, I feel that shockadin has lost it’s identity. We now have four melee dps variants for paladin and three of them primarily focus on casting exorcism. And as much as I love Holy shock, it’s basically just a shorter range exo, there’s almost no difference between them.
And so, I’ve been thinking to myself, what can be done to make shockadin feel different and interesting? Where does it fit best in a raid? Well the way I see it, I’m not super interested in a 4th version of melee dps, one that oddly does very little melee damage, and in fact is primarily using ranged spells to deal damage while being forced to also melee to reset the ranged abilities and regen mana. But I AM interested in seeing a ranged/spellcaster version of paladin dps. It doesn’t have to be the “ele shaman for alliance” just something paladin flavored that fills the int/spell damage dps role while being thematic and cool (and not having zero healing please no +holy dmg gear 
)
Here are some of the ideas I have, that could shift shockadin into a ranged dps role, and while I know that not everyone agrees with my take on this, I hope my thoughts can serve as inspiration for you to come up with ideas of your own.
The first thing on my list is a new Hand rune. Crusader strike is pretty low impact for a shockadin and it’s one of the things that forces it into melee range. So a new hand rune is a very much needed change. I know the dev team has workshopped some shockadin stuff and I heard that it was really difficult to make the other spells like judgement/hammer of wrath good enough to be useful in the current pve environment, which I understand given the crazy set bonuses that make shock and exo as strong as they are right now. So I was thinking, if the abilities aren’t strong enough by themselves… what about combining them? What if I can throw a hammer of wrath at my target, and it also casts judgement from range without consuming my seal, AND it casts a consecrate on the target’s location? Maybe I’m wrong here but having judgement and consecrate both being used on cooldown and without a gcd should result in some very strong damage for the gcd cost. This would also solve the issue of needing to be in melee range to use consecrate. Part of the inspiration for this idea comes from playing my paladin on D2R the other night, messing around with my talents and looking at the different synergies. In diablo 2, there’s only one attack that has a synergy with holy shock, Fist of the heavens. FOH is basically an attack where the paladin calls down a holy lightning bolt that strikes the target and then blasts out an aoe that damages enemies and heals allies. I think using hammer, judge, and consecrate together would produce a really cool fist of the heavens like effect and would make for a perfect throwback to another of blizzards most legendary classic games. Not to mention we’re talking about the “hand” rune here, so FoH is a natural fit.
Fist of the Heavens
Gain the Fist of the Heavens ability
Hammer of wrath can now be casted regardless of enemy HP and costs 50% less mana. Using Hammer of Wrath now unleashes your judgement effect up to 30yds, applies consecration at the target location, and refreshes your current seal for no mana cost. When used with divine favor, Holy Wrath will also explode from the target.
I can already hear people saying this would be “too OP” for PvP. but I don’t think it’s really that strong in a pvp context, the reasons being that it’s a casted ability which requires you to plant, and a good chunk of the damage can be negated by simply moving out of the consecrate.
The second wish I have for enabling a ranged paladin is even more crazy but here goes nothing: A paladin only RANGED/MELEE WEAPON. The way I imagine this happening is via a new quest from the underutilized Wildhammer Clan in the hinterlands upon completion of the “saving stormbeak” questline and earning at least friendly reputation. Maybe a new questline can be started where we go to grim batol and rescue some downed gryphon riders, return to the wildhammer gryphon aviary to celebrate with falstad and his riders. all this culminating in the new weapon: Mountain King’s Blessed Stormhammer. The secret ceremony of the gryphon riders allows this weapon to return to the user’s hand after being thrown. deals 100% holy damage + 0.15% sp scaling, 1.5 speed. these hits will also proc seal damage, and return base mana to the paladin with a chance on hit.
The last thing I want to talk about is just something that’s been a long time coming. It’s time to do an actual shockadin tier set… We thought we were getting one in molten core and we didn’t, we’ve got a somewhat pretty good ZG set and then we had to piggyback on ret and holy bonuses last phase. It’s been a huge pain getting all the gear and now that people are able to play it we’re basically in a new phase where it’s irrelevant again. We’re overdue for a real set! I think some version of the lamellar set from the burning crusade but with more int, crit, and hit would suffice. And as far as set bonuses go, i’m a big fan of the ramping or stacking buffs/debuffs that increase damage on bosses but also don’t interfere too much with pvp since they take time to power up. here’s one example of a t3 set bonus setup:
2 Set: 10% increased chance to critically strike with Holy Shock against targets standing on hallowed ground
4 Set: Increases Damage done by Consecration by 50% and Hammer of Wrath by 25% Your Damage spells have a 15% chance to restore 300 Mana
6 Set: Reduces all threat generated by 50% Icreases Damage done by Holy Shock and Exorcism by 50% Exorcism cooldown reduced by 2 seconds
8 Set: Damage from consecrate now increases your targets damage taken from Holy Shock, Exorcism, and Hammer of Wrath by 5%, to a maximum of 25% Lasts 12s
Other minor wishes:
- remove Guarded By the Light rune and replace it with Divine Plea from wrath as a baseline ability
- allow us access to the horde loot table to for those juiced up mail items/shields we’ve been wanting for two phases
That’s really all I have to say on that. I’d just like to re-iterate one more time that everything I talked about in this video/post is simply meant to be taken as food for thought. These aren’t demands or anything like that, I have no idea what’s actually required to implement most of this stuff, and I appreciate all the efforts so far that have been put into making the shockadin a reality in SoD.
Thanks for reading, OGB out.