(Apologies if this thread is better off in the class theorycraft forum, but it seemed like more of a raid-related issue so I've posted it here for now)

As a horde guild, Paladins were a new thing to us in TBC - luckily we were fortunate enough to have a couple of previous Paladins in our ranks who re-rolled, and our paladin team generally has a good deal of experience, and know how to play. However, I find that we rarely if ever use judgements in raids, and I wonder if we're missing out.

We don't have a ret paladin (and most guilds don't currently, it seems), so the only two really worthwhile judgements that are Light and Wisdom (as far as I know). Also, without a ret paladin, Judgements are obviously also a lot harder to keep up. My question is, do most guilds without Ret Paladins use judgements? On what fights? (I'm interested in anything from Karazhan on up). Are they things you just use if you have spare time, or do you plan on using them as part of your strategies? And do you bother trying to refresh them with melee attacks, or just let them drop off and then re-judge?

It seems to me that paladins often complain about the lack of AoE heals or HoTs, yet surely seal of Light can serve as both in some capacity? On a fight like Gruul, the raid takes a fair bit of environmental damage (Cave-ins, Shatter), and our guild generally runs around 7 meleers (something like 3 rogues, 2 dps warriors, dps feral druid), plus two tanks (Prot Warrior, Feral Druid), meaning that a seal of light can affect 9 people (plus hunter pets presumeably). Is it worth it, or is it too much to step away from normal healing for the time and mana necessary?

Judgements usually give reasonable return for investment, particularly Wisdom. It's mostly a matter of it being extremely irritating for your healers to have to stay within 8 yards of a boss and recast the spell (eating a GCD) every twenty seconds.

I'd definitely use them a lot more with a ret pally, but they're mostly perks of having me tank at the moment.

Judgement of Light makes VR really easy on the melee, and I would always have JoW up on a boss.

Forgive my semi-inexperience with Paladins, but the Judgement spell itself uses something like 1/2 a GCD. Perhaps it works like Counterspell?

You can somewhat time it based upon this to cast a Judgement about 1/2 way through the GCD from something else and then continue casting.

At least that's what appears to work when testing with a level 17 Paladin.

Casting the Seal still eats your GCD, so it's used up anyways if you're gonna use the judgement - which you can do while the GCD on the seal is running its course.

Typically, always and on every boss.

The returns you get from having both JoW and JoL on any boss far outweighs the loss of a GCD, being able to provide mana and health to basically everyone in the entire raid is invaluable.

We've started experimenting with a Ret paladin in the last month, and I've found the judgement utility to be much more significant than I'd previously thought. Crusader Strike doesn't keep them up permanently, but it makes it much more of a fire-and-forget type of deal, which is nice if it lets your paladins concentrate on other things.

As already stated, light usually all but removes the need to heal melee on most fights.
Wisdom is also really powerful - we use it when transfering between stages of fights mostly (get full mana before a dps dependant phase ie. kael)

Which are the fights where having two of your healers at melee range is too risky? I'm thinking of Prince in Kara as at least one such fight.

Also for the sake of completion in addition to Light and Wisdom there are two other judgements which cause a debuff:

Judgement of the Crusader - increases Holy damage taken and, talented, gives all attackers +3% crit against that target.
Judgement of Justice - prevents a target running away in fear and also prevents movement increasing buffs.

All other judgements are damage dealing.

As with most other fights, the danger in melee range is predictable so theres no real problem with moving in and out.

The only risk is a paladin who doesn't know what's happening. If he knows when that shadow nova is due, or the fel acid breath has been done, or that pummel just ended, etc.., he can take minimal damage.

Judgements are good on just about every boss, some more then others. Teron is a great boss for Judgement of Light for example, more so then others, here is a WWS parse of Judgement of Light - Wow Web Stats, healed some people for almost 30k on a ~5m fight. Judgement of Wisdom on the other hand is good on just about every fight, only parse I could find quickly was from Kaz'rogal which isn't too terribly long, but wisdom gave the raid about ~25k more mana - Wow Web Stats.
Judgements are very good and you should use them more.

Lets take Magtheridon as example, and use somewhat average guild as example for judgements.

Judgement of Light
2 Rogues 800 attacks each
4 Warriors 400 attacks each
1 Paladin 230 attacks
With 40% proc rate is 130 000 raw healing


Judgement of Wisdom
1 Shadowpriest 35 direct dmg spells
2 Hunter 300 attacks each
3 Warlocks 60 direct damage spells
3 Mages 130 direct damage spells
With 30% proc rate = 26 000 mana returned

JoW is ~11 super mana potions, ~1 extra super mana potions per mana user.

These calculations are not exact or perfect simulation of Judgement advantages, as bossfights are all different. But I hope it helps understanding what those judgements roughly bring to raid. (And Im not 100% sure of JoW proc rate, I remember it being 30% but I can be wrong).

We would all see a LOT more JoL's if it was added to the paladin's healing stats/meter

Does you have any empirical evidence at all for that 25% overhealing number?

I'm not disputing that JoL is good, but I'd expect the overhealing to be more like 75%.

I wouldn't bother with Holy Paladins judging on Hydross or Void Reaver personally. The risk of tombing or orbing your melee kinda offsets the utility from the judgements.

It's not really the GCD I worry about, but rather the fights where positioning and staying spread out is crucial.

There's no excuse for your boss to not have at the very least JoW up at all times. There are a few exceptions of course, where it's a bit more difficult; Void Reaver, Gruul, Prince, Solarian(if on AM duty), but on everything else you should at least be seeing it most of the fight. Particularly on bosses like Tidewalker or Magtheridon, where the Paladin can chill in melee range and guarantee 100% uptime. Even if you don't have time or freedom of movement to refresh your judgments, throwing one up for 20 seconds is still immensely valuable for the raid. I find our enhancement shaman gains about 6,000-10,000 mana per boss if I manage to keep up JoW the whole fight.

I wish Mana Tap refreshed them

Well, I could have said "Insert overhealing here what you desire". Those are just numbers. For example if we used voidreaver, the overhealign would be close to 0%. Those who are fighting the boss events are most likely to figure out possible damage that melee takes. Gruul could be 1 other good example. "These calculations are not exact or perfect simulation of Judgement advantages" I tried to give people freedom of thinking themself also about the results. As I said, they are not exact or perfect. if you want to declare the overhealing at 75% I wont stop you. You have freedom of aveluating the numbers based on your personal experience.

From my experience as a BM hunter I basicly stay at the same mana with JoW is up on a mob and I only use steady as the only special.
Thats with BoW on as well ofc.

So I honestly think that at least for hunters its way more valuable, it basicly procs every second or so shot.

With quick look hunters had around ~5500 mana gained from JoW at magtheridon. (Theoretical would be around ~6500 mana).

Sounds about right. When JoW is up I can go full out with arcane and multi ( they give around 120damage more than a steady ) but I also have to chainchug fel mana pots. On the other hand if the boss isnt judged I can only use steady and still have to chain chug FMP. We only have 1 SP atm tho and she is off course used to give mana to the mages.

I very much doubt that, unless your healers are in the habit of never topping off the melee. 25% overhealing is the absolute best case I could ever imagine for JoL, and it wouldn't surprise me a bit to learn that it's 50% overhealing even on the fights most favorable to it.

Well, no offense intended of course, but saying your estimate is "not exact or perfect" is a pretty gross understatment. In fact there's no reason to believe it's even remotely close. You're drawing the conclusion that JoL is worth half a raid healer based on your estimate of 25% overheal. If it's 75% overheal, then JoL is worth only one third as much, and the fact is that right now we have no reason at all to believe one number over the other.