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In Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard took one brave step to overhaul the Seal and Judgement system. Finally admitting their failure in designing the class Paladin, Blizzard now adjusted Seals and Judgements in a welcoming way, making Paladins finally fun to play again! Now we all know that the original Judgement spell are now split into 3 different spells. Namely Judgement of Light, Judgement of Wisdom and Judgement of Justice. As Synovia has discussed the new mechanics thoroughly in her entry New Seal/Judgement System, I am not going to elaborate much on that.

In her article, it is mentioned that Judgement of Justice deals damage everytime the debuff is being refreshed. Up till now, nobody is sure if it’s intended. Many argues that since Judgement of Justice does not have a proc effect, much like JoL and JoW, the damage is hence intended as compensation. Others think otherwise. However, it is to note that this is no longer the case at the time of writing.

In fact, the very reason why Judgement of Justice is no longer dealing damage when refreshed is because, it is not refreshing anymore. Melee hits and Crusader Strike, the 2 main components to refresh Judgements are now dysfunctional. Yes, this has been reported as a bug by many Paladins in beta already so don’t worry. But the question is… is this really a bug?

First and foremost, we have the hypothesis which says that Blizzard has decided to turn off the Judgement refreshing mechanics to work on the Judgement of Justice’s damage on refreshing bug. Definitely viable, but we aren’t even sure if it is a bug in the first place. What if the damage is intended then Blizzard definitely has nothing to fix.

Then we have the next hypothesis that is a little more interesting. We know that Seals are now changed to 2-minute, and Judgement are now changed to 30-second. It is possible that Blizzard no longer wants it to be refreshed since 30-second is ample time for you to reapply the debuff and subsequently refresh it. Such an act is much like the original Judgement system, where Seals and Judgements are both 30-second, and you will have to re-judge to refresh the debuff. However, if Blizzard was to push forward such a change, it should be properly written on the patch notes, which it isn’t. So maybe this hypothesis is a bit far fetched. Although if it’s in fact true, then perhaps we can anticipate more buffs to Crusader Strike in upcoming beta builds as it’s core refreshing utility will then be useless.

Regardless if any of these hypotheses is true, what we should pay attention to is that… Judgement is broken. And since it shouldn’t be broken for no reason unless Blizzard attempted to do something with it, we can safely assume that just perhaps, Blizzard isn’t quite done yet with the Judgement system. More changes on the way? Only time will tell.