It’s only a game…

Judging June 15, 2009

There have been some excellently eloquent and detailed articles on who should judge what in a raid containing multiple paladins, one of the best being on HolyPaladin.net. Fantastic as these accounts are however, I must confess to finding Blizzard’s underlying principles a touch out of kilter.

I’m a holy paladin right? My raison d’être is to heal, yes? So why, in the heat of mayhem, should I ever be deferring any of that responsibility to another Paladin? Do they care about the health of the rest of the crew? Perhaps, but only in a back-of-mind kinda way, not as a primary thought process. That’s what we do. So why is it that one of the tools of the trade, the Judgement of Light, is actually better for the team coming from a Prot or Ret pally than one of a Holy persuasion?

Not only that, but judging light over the top of theirs can adversely affect a number of different abilities from those pallies, almost making it a complete no-no. Now some may say simply judge wisdom and be done with it, put up and shut up. But not only does it not sit comfortably the fact that other pallies should have anything to do with one of the tools of our trade, but what if they don’t judge (possible), they use a different judgement (possible again), or judge a different target to the one my tank is looking after. This means we not only have to focus on healing our charges, but we now have to check the target of our charge to see what if any judgements he has on him? Once a minute?

Yeah right.

So if Replenishment has now been redirected to other more suitable paladins, does that now pave the way for JoL’s inherently holy mechanic to be re-jigged to favour the spec that it connects with the most?