I've had the opposite problem. I've had to take every single new holy paladin in my guild aside and explain to them why they shouldn't be casting judgment of light. I had one holy paladin refuse to change because he was, "trying to win the meters." He isn't in the guild anymore.

I'm very thankful for this article finally getting this information out there. Also, why does it seem that a lot of holy paladins can perform fairly well with very little understanding of their class? Is it really just the easiest healing class?

As for all of these comments about judging justice... Personally, I say ret judges light, and all other paladins judge wisdom. Sure they don't stack, but they also don't scale (so any paladin's judgment of wisdom is equal), so if you overwrite someone else's judgment of wisdom then it really isn't an issue. This also helps increase the up time of the given judgments.

I think this comes down to some subliminal misconception that the healing paladin would have the best healing judgments.

Maybe blizzard should change Light to be more beneficial from the Holy paladins, and Wisdom from the Ret paladins (after all, they now provide Replenishment)

Manatank,

I'm assuming by your name that you play a pally tank. I am a little concerned that you may not know your class and spec as well as you think you do because of your comment: "[...]so if you overwrite someone else's judgment of wisdom then it really isn't an issue. "

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.

So with the current set up, Prot should always be judging Justice because no one has a chance to overwrite it. Holy should be judging Wisdom because a Prot or Ret Paladin's JoL will scale better. Ret Paladins should be judging Light. This is of course if you have all three in your raid.

Tom,
I completely agree with you. Judgements of the JUST, Judgement of the WISE simply imply JoJ and JoW respectively. EnLIGHTened Judgements anyone? I think Blizz should rework JotJ to only be applicable if JoJ is up. Same with JotW, I think it should only cause replenishment if said Ret Paladins are using JoW. And I think JotP should give an increase to the SP coefficient that JoL receives.

@Tom and Healtuff

Sure, let's limit all paladins so that we cater to those with fragile egos. What if you don't have all three, like in a 10 man? Your pally tank can't get Wisdom without giving up JotJ? That's just dumb. The current system is flexible, but certain Judgments work better for certain specs, so you are only "forced" to use a certain Judgment if you already have all 3. Why take away that flexibility for no good reason?

jbodar,

My example might have have been a bit extreme. I really still think Holy should do Light, Ret should do wisdom, and Prot should do justice just out of principle, but you're right, my idea seems like it might be more of a hindrance than an actual improvement.

Perhaps an alternative solution would be to make JotP affect SP scaling, and make JotW increase the % of mana gained from JoW. Leave JotJ and JoJ alone, and just let Prot do it since it wont erase anything.

@Healtuff

"So with the current set up, Prot should always be judging Justice because no one has a chance to overwrite it. Holy should be judging Wisdom because a Prot or Ret Paladin's JoL will scale better."

In theory you may be right, but in practice this is way off. Holy Pallies judge once a minute to maintain their own buff. It is an extremely rare Holy paladin that judges more often than that. Ret and Prot judge every time it comes off cooldown. Worst case scenario is 20 seconds of full speed melee hits, and that's assuming you have no prot warrior or feral druid on the same target.

TL;DR Version: Holy can judge whatever they want, their judgement debuff is only on the mob 30% of the time anyway.

This issue makes me really proud of the other paladins in my guild. With nothing ever having been said on the topic we all know which judgement to use and when to use it. We all care enough about the workings of our class to know which is best and we aren't idiots either. A potent combination.

"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."

That would be true, IF I wasn't judging again in less than 9 seconds. So unless it is a ret paladin overwriting me, (which they shouldn't be because they should be doing light and me wisdom) then I am not going to see my speed debuff down very often.

In most raid situations where I have actually seen a ret paladin, it didn't matter anyway. The mobs were hit by a thunderclap whenever it was off CD, and often by 2 warriors staggered so it was always on them.

Manatank actually has a clue. I won't ever judge justice. My holy paladin does so he overwrites nothing, and the ret paladin gets light. Otherwise I do. Please stop hurting your raids with what you think should be the case when it isn't.

@Angus

It's not the case of he is judging X because he thinks his spec should.

He, and I, were just suggesting that common sense should dictate the healing paladin would cast a healing judgment - and those who don't know better would assume this.

By altering the judgments to be beneficial from a different talent tree would end any of this confusion - such as ending any confusion as to who blesses wisdom, might or kings depending on who has the improvement talents.

"I won't ever judge justice. My holy paladin does so he overwrites nothing[...]"

Holy Paladins can no longer judge justice in 3.1

One thing that is not mentioned in this article is the fact that only one judgment can be active on a target at a time. So you cannot have 3 pally judgment affects going at once, and each successive judgment over-writes the last one. While there has been some talk that occasionally more than one affect has been seen to stack on a target, the validity of such claims is under question. If it has in fact happened, it is a bug that will get fixed or otherwise addressed.

I keep my judgment up (usually light, but I don't mind using Wisdom) on every CD for the Judgments of the Pure talent affect (15% casting and melee haste for 1 minute for the caster only). I have a mod that flashes the judgment icon in the middle of my screen to remind me to cast Judgment (does the same thing for all item and spell CDS).

I would not acquiesce to a request to stop judging for the following reason. The increase from my Judgment in throughput and HPS is significant and essential to my build and the gear I have chosen to support that build. When I judge, my GCD for spells is drastically sped up, with some of the shorter CDs being virtually refreshed (Holy Shock). [Is the GCD refresh a bug? Who knows. It's certainly not mentioned in the talent tool tip.] My Holy Shock crits about 67% of the time, and after every Shock crit, my Flash of Light becomes an instant cast and my Holy Light casts in ~1.2 sec. That gives me, most of the time, 2 instant cast heals which I can cast while moving, to the tune of about10k. There is also the benefit of improved melee haste and if I’m down on my mana (long fights with perhaps undergeared DPS or DPS deaths due to lack of experience) and need to go in to beat on the mob to refill it, I’ll want that haste to increase my melee hits and, therefore, my chance to proc a mana return (from my Seal of Wisdom, not the judgment).

It is MUCH easier for a pally to change their SEAL based on their changing situation than to have folks change judgments. The effects from seals are 2 times that of judgments. For example; Seal of Wisdom has a chance to return 4% of the Pally’s max mana, while Judgment of Wisdom has a chance to return only 2%. I believe Rets already have great talents for mana regen and they shouldn't need either Seal or Judgment of Wisdom. If it gets too hairy, pot and pop up your SoW until you refill. I can see rets that worship damage meters having an issue with changing their seal, but I feel it is their responsibility to manage their mana before anyone else does it for them. Same with all other mana users; they should NOT be relying on mana regen from other classes to maintain raid viability and longevity. It should be a bonus, not a requirement for their success.

I also argue the point about who does a better judgment of light. While ret pallies do have a portion of their AP as SP, Holy pallies also have a base AP. Without Kings, my base AP is 538 and my SP is 1808 (AP is roughly 29% of my SP). The ret talent gives 30% of your AP as SP. Personally, I think it’s a wash, at least until you’re talking full T7 with all the bells and whistles. At that point, the ret should have the better stat balance for judging Light. I would say Prot pallies are the distant 3rd because they will have neither the AP of a ret or the SP of a Holy. The prot pally will be just as busy focusing on tank specific spells and abilities as the holy pally will be on healing, so the argument that a Prot judges more than a Holy isn’t accurate. However, this is a fairly silly thing to even bring up in regards to judgments since all pallies will be judging anyway and over-writing each other.

The bottom line is that all pallies judge and only one affect can be active at a time. If mana is the group’s Achilles heel, have them all judge wisdom, if your group is lacking raid heals, have them all judge light. If you have them judging different things, then every 6 seconds or so, the effect will change. Since each judgment gives only a “chance” to heal or return mana, you will seriously decrease that chance if you change the effect every 6 seconds (or so). Justice is far too situational for regular use in heroics or raids. Most mobs will be immune. It should never be used by anyone, IMO.

As for the additional judgment benefits from tree talents, again, nice as a bonus but should not be relied on for overall raid efficiency and success. Most of these benefits are best for solo play or 5 mans where the chance of multiple pallies being in the same group is low. If your raid is relying on these talent benefits to be successful, you have more far-reaching issues to address.

(no consideration for 3.1 changes is included in the preceeding comment)

MAJOR ERROR IN MY PREVIOUS COMMENT...

Everything regarding having multiple judgements up on a target from different pallies is wrong. It is per paladin. My bad.

@ Ariahealz

Another major error in your post:

"I would say Prot pallies are the distant 3rd because they will have neither the AP of a ret or the SP of a Holy."

Pala tanks get 30% stamina as SP, and most of their gear has strength on, so they have a decent amount of AP too. You're right that they won't have the AP of Ret or the SP of holy, however they do have more AP than holy and a similar (depending on their stamina) SP to Ret, though usually slightly less, so it balances out to an extent :-P I had over 2k AP and 560ish SP before I even got to tier7, so Prot pallies JoL will have about the same effect as a holy pala, if not more depending on how the tank has stacked his stats. I use a


"The prot pally will be just as busy focusing on tank specific spells and abilities as the holy pally will be on healing, so the argument that a Prot judges more than a Holy isn’t accurate."

Prot pallies do focus on tank specific spells, however judgements are an integral part of these spells for that classic 9696 spell rotation, hence why most pala tanks take at least 1 point in Improved Judgements to lower the CD on their judgements to 9 seconds, so they can keep applying it regularly within their rotation. Holy palas don't really need to judge as often (once per minute according to JotP) and I'd rather they kept up with healing people rather than judging everytime it comes off CD. But then, as a tank I prefer to know I'll get that heal rather than die seeing a judgement land on the bosses head instead :-P