Paladin Judgements in Patch 3.1
Note: This article is outdated. Judgements can now be used equally by any paladin spec (although you still should not overwrite a prot paladin’s judgement).
Judgements are confusing. They do different things for each Paladin spec and you can only have one type of each judgement on a mob. If you have a Holy Paladin, Protection Paladin, and Retribution Paladin in your raid, trying to figure out who should judge which judgement can be very confusing. On top of this, Patch 3.1 brings a couple changes to judgements that add even more complexity into the mix.
To help sort through it all, here is what you should know about judgements:
- Retribution Paladins have the Judgements of the Wise talent, which grants the Replenishment buff to raid members around them. This is a buff to your group and so it can’t be overwritten by other Paladin’s judgements. All the Ret Pally has to do is judge anything, and the buff is applied for its full duration.
- Protection Paladins have the Judgements of the Just talent, which puts a debuff on the target, reducing its melee attack speed by 20%. This debuff is tied to the judgement and is removed if another Paladin overwrites the judgement.
- All judgements are overwritten if the same judgement is judged by another Paladin, regardless of which judgement was stronger.
- Judgement of Light will return mana (as well as health) to another paladin who has the Spiritual Attunement ability, but only if the Paladin with Spiritual Attunement is not the one who judged Light. In Patch 3.1, only Protection Paladins will have Spiritual Attunement.
- Holy Paladins can not judge Judgement of Justice in Patch 3.1 (except in melee range).
And then some basics you probably already know:
- Holy Paladins get a permanent 15% haste buff from judging at least once a minute.
- Judgement of Light scales off of both Attack Power and Spell Power at the same time. So, add both values together and whichever Paladin ends up with the highest number will have the strongest Judgement of Light. Its debatable whether or not the Spell Power a Ret Paladin gets from Sheath of Light is included in this, but even if not, Ret and Prot Paladins almost always have more Attack Power than a Holy Paladin has Spell Power and so are better Light judgers (especially Ret).
- Judgement of Wisdom doesn’t scale, its exactly the same no matter who judges it.
- Many Paladins have the Heart of the Crusader talent, which applies a separate debuff along with your judgement. This debuff is not tied to the judgement and can not be overwritten (just refreshed).
- Edit: The healing from Judgement of Light does not generate any threat.
So, that’s a lot of info to sort through. But we’re not done yet. Here’s some more general judgement info that we should also consider:
- Judgement of Wisdom and Judgement of Light should ideally be up 100% of the time. Prot and Ret Pallies are more likely to keep them up 100% of the time compared to Holy Pallies (although a good Holy Pally can keep their judgement up almost 100% of the time).
- Judgements of the Just should also be up 100% of the time, which means no one else should judge the same judgement as the Protection Paladin.
- Prot Paladins should not judge Light since it will remove the mana they get back from Spiritual Attunement (unless they are the only paladin in the group).
- Judgement of Justice has no affect by itself for most PvE content, especially bosses.
So, who then should judge what, if you have a Holy Paladin, Retribution Paladin, and Protection Paladin in your raid? Let’s go through some scenarios and “judge” the pros and cons.
Scenario 1: Prot Paladin Judges Justice.
In this scenario, Retribution will probably judge Light and Holy will judge Wisdom. This gives you your strongest Judgement of Light and causes a 100% uptime for everything except possibly Judgement of Wisdom. If you have a Holy Paladin that will judge Wisdom at least every 20 seconds, then this is the most ideal strategy. Alternatively, if you want 100% uptime for Wisdom instead of Light, you can have Retribution judge Wisdom and Holy judge Light, at the cost of a less effective Light.
Scenarion 2: Prot Paladin judges Wisdom
In this scenario, both the Holy and Ret Pallies will judge Light, while Prot judges Wisdom. This guarantees 100% uptime of both blessings, but you may end up with a less effective Light part of the time. The loss of healing in a 25-man raid from Holy overwriting Light can be relatively significant. The other advantage to this though is that you really have no reason for the Holy Paladin to judge more than once a minute (in fact, you want to him to judge as infrequently as possible), freeing him up to pump out more heals. This is my preferred strategy, especially for newer/casual healers.
In Summary
In Patch 3.1, all Prot Paladins should judge Wisdom if there is a Ret or Holy paladin also in the raid. Both Retribution and Holy Paladins should judge Light, but Holy should judge it sparingly (only once per minute) if there is a Ret Paladin in the raid. If you have multiple Retribution Paladins, only the one with the highest Attack Power should judge Light, the others should judge Justice so that the powerful Light doesn’t get overwritten with a less powerful one.
Of course, this is assuming you have all 3 types of Paladins in your raid. If you have only one or two types, you’ll need to figure out which judgements will be most useful for your group. If there’s only one or two paladins total, you’ll want to judge every 10 seconds instead of every minute (assuming you are a Holy Paladin). I would recommended judging Light if you’re the only Paladin, since your job is to heal. If the encounter is a long one, or doesn’t have very much AoE damage, you could switch to Wisdom. Either way, take the information above and use your best judgement (pun intended).
In the end, a Holy Paladin’s Judgement of Light is not going to be that much weaker than a Ret Paladins, especially if the Holy Paladin is better geared, so don’t kill yourself or create drama in order to get these judgements exactly right. In most cases which judgement each person uses is not going to make that much of a difference on the outcome of a fight. Go ahead and follow these guidelines though if you want to bring the most benefit to your group and possibly save a wipe or two now and then. The best players are the ones who pay attention to every detail.
This is WAY off, not in terms of mechanics, but on bosses prot is not running out of mana and light generates threat by healing the whole raid. Prot has just as much reason to use light as wis
Judgment.
Also, most Tankadins also grab Heart of the Crusader. You want 1 pt in reducing the cool down of your judgments anyway, so why not grab this talent on your way to Pursuit of Justice?
Bladehawk, Light generates no threat as of 3.0.8.
And unless it is Patchwerk, you can easily run out of mana as a tankadin. If there is a Ret paladin, they get light, period. Much better for the raid.
Bladehawk no.. Just no. As the article clearly explained light scales with AP and considering a ret pally will have 2k more ap than a prot pally the ret pally should be judging light. Light does not generate threat it was patched out about 3 months ago.
And Angus no tankadins grab HotC or PoJ.
“This is WAY off, not in terms of mechanics, but on bosses prot is not running out of mana and light generates threat by healing the whole raid. Prot has just as much reason to use light as wis”
Since 3.0.8, JoL has produced no threat. The Prot pally is better off going with Wis (or justice to avoid JotJust being overwritten)
Source: http://blue.mmo-champion.com/26/12454617434-tankadin–judgement-of-light-hurts-my-raid.html
Ah, I never have mana issues when tanking in raids (aside from the gothic trash).I wasn’t aware they dropped the theat ten from JOL. I guess I’ll be judging wisdom from now on.
Actually, most Protection builds in 3.1 will pick up HotC on the way down to Crusade.
Most good prot pallies get pursuit of justice. The only thing they have to give up to get it is seals of the pure. The movement speed to get to where you need to be is much more important than the negligible and unneccessary increase in threat in most cases.
With that said, is there a reason why holy pallies can’t judge justice? Ret pallies keep up light, prot pallies keep up wisdom.
@Zhaoan
As stated, you need to be in melee range to judge Justice. Not ideal for a healer in most cases.
Reinforcing what Zhaoan said, good prot pallies get pursuit of justice.
If you read any kind of serious theorycrafting on dps or tps, time on the mob, versus time running out of environmental hazards, is a huge factor in increasing dps, and thus also tps. Any melee dps worth his salt will pick up any movement speed increase for the large increase in dps it provides.
Any good tank will also pick up pursuit of justice to increase his survivability while avoiding hazards, and threat by increasing his uptime on the mob. Also, quicker boss repositions allows melee dps to return to full strength in less time.
Also, Heart of the Crusader is a great threat increase and raid dps increase and a no-brainer talent pickup while moving down the ret tree to pursuit of justice.
Judgment!
The official Blizzard spelling in-game is Judgement, so that’s what I use.
nice job. well thought-out and well-written.
I seriously wonder if any of you play a prot paladin…
I can see getting heart of the crusader if you by some twisted working of alternate realities are the ONLY paladin in the raid AND there is no elemental shaman (Totem of wrath overwrites the +3 crit debuff)maybe… just maybe you could justify getting this talent. Otherwise 6 points into ret is as far as any prot paladin should go. 5 into seals of the pure far out way the thrown away 4 points into the tree that require you to move into the ret tree for PoJ. I can honostly not think of any fight currently in game where my movement speed has affected the outcome of the raid, speciall cnsidering unholy aura is allways up in our raids
The style of writing is very familiar . Did you write guest posts for other bloggers?
No, I haven’t Ex Girlfiend. I do read a lot of popular blogs, sites and other print materials and I’m sure those all have an affect on my own writing style.
Having played this game practically since the outset, I am still amazed that people think there is only one way to do things. If this is the case, why bother having talent trees at all? The way many of the commenters describe it, they make it sound like the game should be constructed such that you should pick from one of three pre-built builds – Holy, Protection or Retribution. If I may use this to illustrate a point, my wife is an amazing chef, but she uses a knife by cutting towards herself. ANY chef will tell you this is wrong, but it has no bearing on the food she prepares. My point, there is more than one way of doing things, and when you read these guides (and yes, that is what they are, guides) you massage the info gleaned to your liking. The World of Warcraft is filled with way too many knowallogists.
I dont know where to check it but am i wrong in saying that instant mana gains (as in from judgement of wisdom) produce threat. also, the heal from judgement of light is a % of the attacker. maybe a patch changed it since this post but it seems like the heals from the debuffed mob would be the same nomatter who judged it, only the damage caused by the attack would be higher from the ret pally.
btw great guides. i’ve read a few and they are very Healadin-For-Dummies great and also gives nice tips that i havent yet considered
I actually don’t think that mana gains produce threat. I’ve used Divine Plea before while someone body pulls a mob, and the mobs never run over to me.
This article is almost a year old now and judgements have since been changed. Its categorized under “Outdated”. I’ll add an outdated message to the top as well.
Outdated
hi