Holy Shock

Assuming you’re doing what almost 80% of your paladin brethren are doing at 70, you’re probably healing. This probably means you’ve got at least 40 points in the holy tree. In the 7th tier, you’ll see an ability called Holy Shock. It is first attainable at 40, but that’s assuming you’ve put all your points into holy up to that point. At any rate, the ability becomes further trainable as you level, increasing in effectiveness and mana cost. At rank 5, it reads:

Blasts the target with Holy energy, causing 530 to 574 Holy damage to an enemy, or healing a friendly target for 530 to 574 health.*

So here we have a multi-use ability. It’s an instant-cast ability on a 15-second cooldown. I don’t have any data on this, but I’d wager that many holy paladins take this talent. I know I did, and mostly for soloing.

Without Holy Shock, questing as a holy paladin becomes a boring sequence of seal/judge spam. Things take very long to kill. This kind of attack sequence is better suited to protection paladins who can return a spread of damage to multiple mobs when being attacked.

So unless you’re respeccing to Ret or Prot inbetween every raid, you might very well consider this ability for soloing/grinding. But what about its capability as a healing spell?

Well, frankly, it’s not very good. Being an instant-cast, it gets a reduced amount of your +healing (about 42%), and it’s base isn’t very high to begin with. Thus it will heal for less than your Flash of Light. However, it is instant…could it be used as an emergency heal?

Well, yes. But a couple things hinder its use here as well. First, its range is shorter than your main heal spells. If you’re standing away from the actual fighting, you’ve got to run in to cast it, and that amount of time could be better spent actually casting a spell which will heal for more. (However, if you melee while healing (an old post, but still valid), this probably isn’t a big issue for you.)

Second, again, it doesn’t heal for very much. I don’t have the numbers on this, but I think it’s less than or just about equal to the damage absorbed by a priest’s Power Word: Shield.

Lastly, it’s grossly innefficient mana-wise.

In my opinion, Holy Shock as a heal is best in PvP. It’s our only heal we can cast while moving, and given the mobile nature of PvP combat, having this in our limited utility belt can be a life-saver. In the arena you’ll face opposing teams that will do everything they can to limit your effectiveness as a healer…if your teammates have to move, so do you, and if this is all you can give them then you best give it to them. Also in pvp, using it as a damage spell to help the dps bring someone down can be of some help.

In PvE, it’s limited. Range is a factor, and due to its mana innefficiency, using it every time the cooldown is up is just a recipe for going oom. Stick with your other healing spells where possible, but don’t neglect the Shock…its a wasted talent point otherwise.

*If those aren’t the right numbers, sorry, it’s hard to pull data like this at work.