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Huzzah! We got the sticky!
Let's begin with the Talent description:
Reckoning (Rank 5)
Gives you a 100% chance to gain an extra attack after being the victim of a critical strike.
There are two main functions of reckoning:
Instant Counterattacks
The first, and by most accounts the intended function of reckoning, is to provide an instant counterattack to the targeted enemy whenever you get critted. This can be a spell crit or a melee crit. There are several situations where this will fail, namely if you are stunned or otherwise cc'd, and if the enemy is out of range.
Additionally, the spell at its present state is not working *quite* as intended. Instead of an instant strike, Reckoning will shorten the cooldown of your swing timer to 0... which means that after it triggers, despite how much time you lost until swinging, you have [Your weapon speed] seconds until your next hit. Ideally, the instant attack would be independant of your regular swings, but this is not the case. Still, reckoning will provide some boost to DPS in all situations, although how far through your swing timer you are when you get crit will have a very significant effect.
Reckoning Bombs:
Reckoning bombs are what makes the difference between a "pretty good" talent, and an outstanding one. The term "Reckoning Bomb" is used to denote the instantaneous consecutive swings granted when a Paladin has "Reckoning Charges" saved. Here's how that works:
The first and most important condition of a Reckoning bomb is the Paladin MUST HAVE HIS AUTOATTACK DISABLED. Do this by using "t" to toggle it on and off, or just leftclick anywhere on the screen.
The next order of business is to get critted. Just standing there is a perfectly good way to do this, but this step will vary greatly by situation.
The last thing to do is to enable autoattack, by right-clicking or pressing "t", or your attack button. Done properly, you will attack the enemy multiple times in the space of a second, hopefully creating a significant dent in his life.
Seals and Reckoning
It has been my and most others' experience that the seals proc regularly, or more than regularly, from the reckoning swings. The frequency that all of the swings proc a seal is common enough that many conjecture that it will proc every consecutive swing if it goes off once. Nobody has proven as much, it's just an observation. This means you can tool your bomb to give you about 400 life or mana back, do 400 extra damage with righteousness, or create a significant amount of threat with fury if you are so inclined. I wouldn't recommend using Seal of Justice, as this will almost guarantee stun immunity in your target.
The notable exception is, as always, Seal of Command. Obviously, if the seal procced on every hit, this would be an incredibly devestating maneuver, probably the most so in the game (and reckoning isn't far off as it is). Luckily for everybody else, whatever the reason, seal of command will very, very rarely [if ever] go off more than once in a bomb (although it has a very high chance of activating the one time).
A Short (And Subjective) History (Thanks Nidhogg)
Reckoning originally reset your swing timer + gave you the extra attack if you were in melee range. This was nice, but did nothing if they were behind you (rogue) or at range. There was a bug with this, where if you had a Reckoning attack but were stunned, your swing timer was bugged, and you would not be able to attack until you were crit again (to fire your reckoning off).
They patched this, and gave it its second incarnation. This was the current form minus the charges. This was the most fun you could have as a Paladin to date in my opinion. Unlimited stores equalled insta-shotting anyone with enough charges stored up. The fix was to give Paladins a way to still have the talent be useful (instead of useless by being stunned from behind) and also to fix the attack swing bug the original had.
Well Blizz didn't like this new method of killing people. Sure it was situational, but it had adverse affects on PvE content. You could, if devoted enough time, one shot the outdoor Raid bosses. There was rumors (but no video links) of a Paladin getting Kazzak to 50% in one swing.
Blizz realized that they had struck gold with this talent fix but needed to fine tune it, so they added a reckoning limit, and voila. They should go one step further and explain the conditions it fails (or fix those conditions.. such as using Repentance) and call it working as intended.. but whatever.
Speckoning
There is no spec containing reckoning where it doesn't provide a significant boost, especially since it does about the same damage with command or with righteousness (disregarding crits)
Here are a few Popular ones:
I
Max Damage/control, less healing
32 Protection (Repentence, Reckoning, Holy Shield, Imp. BoF)
16 Retribution (Command, Vengeance)
3 Holy (Imp. HL)
II
More Damage/control, less healing
(My build if you care)
32 Protection (Repentence, Reckoning, Holy Shield, Imp. BoF)
11 Retribution (Command, Vengeance)
8 Holy (Spiritual Focus, Imp. HL)
III
Max Damage, less control, decent heals
27 Protection (Reckoning, Holy Shield)
16 Retribution (Vengeance, Command) Sub Parry for Vengeance for extra mitigation instead
8 Holy (Spiritual Focus, Imp. HL)
IV
Good Damage, improved heals
26 Protection (Reckoning/Holy Shield)
11 Retribution (Vengeance, Command)
14 Holy (Spiritual Focus, Imp. HL, Illum/DF)
V
Less Damage, improved heals + repentence
Jamaz's popular build
32 Protection (Repentence, Reckoning, Holy Shield, Imp. BoF)
19 Holy (SF, Imp. HL, Illum/DF, Imp. SoR)
FAQ
When will Reckoning be fixed to be instant?
Nobody quite knows. The devs have been closedmouthed about it, like with most things.
Why didn't my Reckoning bomb go off?
There are a number of things that can cause you to drop reckoning charges. Autoattacking too early (e.g. from out of range), zoning in or out of an instance, and using repentence, are the three that are confirmed. Additionally, some still say that Blessing of Protection, Divine Shield, and switching weapons will do it; I personally have done all these things without losing charges, but then again I have done all these things to have my charges poof into thin air. So, to be safe, I'd recommend using as little of this as possible.
edit: The popular opinion (shared by me I might add) is that DS does not drop the charges.
Isn't this "Reckoning Bomb" an exploit?
Several months ago Reckoning recieved a bug hotfix of its own. This hotfix put a hard cap of 4 on the number of charges capable of being stored. So, one can safely assume that the developers know exactly what is going on, and have chosen to allow it.
Have you ever killed anyone in one hit with this ability?
Yes.
Isn't that overpowered?
This ability is probably one of the most situational in the game. It requires you to take a significant amount of damage, and the charges can seem to randomly vanish at times. So, no, I don't belive this skill is overpowered.
Shouldn't this damage-dealing ability be in the Retribution tree instead of the Protection?
The short answer is, no, you're wrong, you [outstanding player with an understandable and obvious, but in my opinion misguided, intention to buff the retribution tree.] The long answer is that, in my opinion, the trees are not designed to specialize the paladin so much in one direction. Every tree has damage-enhancing and damage-mitigation talents, so that different-specced Paladins, while they may do damage or tank differently, still have the capability to do all of the above.
Does reckoning work on both spell and melee crits?
Yes.
Can I sit down to force a crit and gain a charge?
Charges generated by the forced crit when you sit do not activate reckoning.
Is reckoning useful in any PvE situation?
No, not really.
Will the charges last through being stunned/stunlocked?
Assuming you leave your autoattack disabled, the charges will persist, and continue to be generated through stuns.
How long do charges last?
Long enough. It seems like a few minutes or so to me; if you heal for a minute and then release you'll see them all. If you duel a rogue friend, charge up, and then run across the map to find a horde to kill, they will likely evaporate. So, as long as you use it sensibly you shouldn't notice an issue.
When would this ability to store charges be useful? Wouldn't just attacking things do more damage?
Getting crit from range, healing your team while under fire, of being stunned, or saving your righteous wrath for a more priority target who happens to not be right next to you are some very good reasons to charge up rather than autoattack.
If you're killing something right next to you, I would have to agree that attacking him is probably the best way to do so. I've taken out cloth casters more than once with 4-5 horde attacking me, just by instantly attacking for 800 damage (inc. command) on a string of offhand/autoshot/pet crits.
Here is a link to the SCT hack I made to count charges. It is featured in all of my recent videos, and requested on a daily basis, so I thought I would put it here:
http://www.engr.uvic.ca/~adambard/SCT_Reckoning.zip
Here are some video clips demonstrating the use of reckoning:
http://files.filefront.com/ReckBomb/;4205497;;/fileinfo.html
http://files.filefront.com/Reckoning_Bomb_Demo/;3994127;;/fileinfo.html
A mirror for all the above files can be found at
http://www.woworg.com/wowfiles/
Please post questions, comments, and just straight bumps below.
~Mc "Wreckoning" Hammar[ post edited by Mchammar ]
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tinyurl/bo8sv
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