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Next steps after boosting a paladin tank to 90, part 2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 9 other people, obsessing over his hair, and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense. It's always weird coming to the end of an expansion and seeing the road before you suddenly much shorter than you remember it was the last time you gave it a serious look. Very soon things will radically change -- the gear that made us gods will be obsolete, health pools will be laid low, and the stats that we had come to loathe will be no more. As they say, all good things must come to an end. Pandaria is no different. This is a path we've walked before, in the twilight of every expansion. As the content winds down in its own interminable fashion, and we run that end raid for the umpteenth time, we find solace in trying new experiences through the prism of alts. As I discussed in last week's post, with the advent of the boosting feature, many folks will be trying out paladin tanks for the first time -- especially since they now have the advantage of skipping the (painful) journey of leveling a tank entirely. This guide is for them.
Next steps after boosting a paladin tank to 90
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 9 other people, obsessing over his hair, and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense. With the introduction of level 90 boosts on the horizon, many players are going to be trying new characters, classes, and specs they may have never tried before. I expect this means that many folks are going to give protection paladins a go for the first time, which is a very exciting prospect, because the spec makes for a very fun tank playstyle. In order to help those new folks hit the ground running, I'm kicking off a two-part "quick start guide" that'll break down the spec in the 101-iest way possible, to give those new tankadins a barebones foundation that they can use to jump right into getting their faces pounded in. For today's post I'm going to talk about why one should choose to spend $60 or their free Warlords-given boost on a protection-specced paladin, and what they need to know to safely jump into that first dungeon.
The Light and How to Swing It: How will protection glyph come 5.4?
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 9 other people, obsessing over his hair, and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense. One of the most monumental changes that protection paladins will be facing in the upcoming patch will be a simple nerf to one of our favorite glyphs. Since just about the beginning of Mists, protection paladins have uniformly equipped the Glyph of the Battle Healer to great effect and, alas, the devs have finally decided to step in and put a stop to our shenanigans. You can't really blame them, Battle Healer was brokenly good -- free heals that were augmented by Vengeance, and while they weren't a gamechanger by any means (thanks to overheals), it was still an advantage that paladins had over any other tanking class. It was a needed change. Regardless, the change to Battle Healer has a ripple effect for protection paladins as it makes Battle Healer a purely situational glyph for fights where the raid needs your Seal of Insight procs more than you need them for yourself. Which means, for probably the first time in many, many months, we will have an open glyph slot. Let's take a look at what could possibly fill that empty space, both in our hearts and our glyphs tab.
Two great things about the contemporary ret paladin
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions! Patch 5.3 has turned out to be a great time to be a ret paladin. Well, in my opinion it's always a great time to be a ret paladin, but this new patch and the changes it brought with it really drive the point home. Granted, the only change we saw was a buff to our weapon-based damage via Sword of Light, which, while being a welcome boost to our DPS, isn't necessarily the most earth-shattering, game-changing thing in all of Azeroth. Still though, it opens some doors and allows us to be more competitive in the DPS game. I have to admit, my inspiration for this column came from reading Matt Rossi's warrior column, The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Survival and the modern warrior. As I was reading through the piece, I found myself unconsciously caressing my keybind for Divine Shield, no doubt a realization of how blessed we paladins are when it comes to self-preservation mechanics and abilities. Some of the troubles that Matt detailed I have either sidestepped or easily handled with our generous toolbox, and his angst has given me a newfound appreciation for the veritable arsenal of useful spells at our disposal. This week I'll be touching on a couple of our newer abilities that have proven time and time again to be so valuable and effective that I can't imagine playing a paladin without them.
The Light and How to Swing It: Talents and glyphs for tanking Terrace of Endless Spring
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 9 other people, obsessing over his hair, and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense. Terrace of Endless Spring is a weird conclusion to the joyous majesty of tier 14. We go from one large raid to another large raid, and then the tier caps with chasing a Sha back to his Breakfast Nook of Fear. I suppose, however, you do have to give Blizzard a hand for managing to efficiently cram so many bosses into such a small area. The economy of space in there is very well executed. Nonetheless, all meta discussion aside, from a tanking perspective, Terrace of the Endless Spring is nothing to write home about compared to the rest of the tier. The fights are okay, but don't really require the same engagement that fights in Mogu'shan Vaults, or even the Heart of Fear, demanded. Regardless, it being the last raid of the tier, the damage is higher and the need to keep yourself on two feet is oh-so-pressing. There are definitely some good tricks in your toolbox that will help keep you vertical and the thus the raid from going pear-shaped. Let's explore them.
The Light and How to Swing It: Talents and glyphs for tanking Heart of Fear
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 9 other people, obsessing over his hair, and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense. You know those awful kids in your neighborhood who, on a hot summer's day, would find an ant hill and roast the little suckers inside with their grandmother's magnifying glass, or push rocks and sticks in the hole in an attempt to starve the inhabitants? That's how raiding the Heart of Fear feels for me sometime. It's a hive of six-legged-pants-wetting terror and we're just adding onto the troubles of those poor insects. It's a little cruel, really -- kicking them when they're down. Incidentally, you know what class that awful kid grew up to play? A warrior; it's a fact of behavioral science. (OK, probably a rogue. But I have to get my shots in.) Anyway, when it comes to demolishing your way through piles and piles of exoskeleton-clad fanatics and extremists, sworn to protect the only female they have ever known, you'll need every tool and trick at your disposal. Much like in Mogu'shan Vaults, this expansion's iteration of talents and glyphs gives us a wide amount of latitude in how we approach a fight, and can provide some decisive advantages. Let's talk about how!
The Light and How to Swing It: Talents and glyphs for tanking Mogu'shan Vaults
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 9 other people, obsessing over his hair, and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense. My brawny colleague Dan Desmond covered this topic for his two-handed cohort earlier this week, but I think it's also worth exploring for all the tankadins out there. Namely, what talents and glyphs can be utilized to make tanking the first raid of tier 14 a little easier? Sure the new hotness is Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring (and I'll get to those!), but I expect that the vast majority of players are still actively working on clearing Mogu'shan Vaults, or are slogging through it weekly in LFR for precious, precious VP. Even if you've been doing this place ad nauseam for the last few weeks, there are always little tweaks that can be made to get the job done faster with less damage taken! For reference, these are the base talents and glyphs I go with. So any suggestions I make will be what deviates from those. Especially with regards to Glyph of the Battle Healer, you should make sure to have that up at all times and should be actively tanking with Seal of Insight. It can make a noticeable difference in your survivability, and can pay some dividends for the survivability of your melee colleagues.
Paladin glyph changes in patch 5.0.4
When the new 5.0 patch flips over on Aug. 28, will you be ready with glyphs? Blizzard is recycling old glyphs instead of making new spell IDs and charring old ones. Some glyphs are staying the same, some are new, but some share IDs with old Cataclysm glyphs. Below is our list of new or changing glyphs for paladins. This is not a list of changing tooltips, just which glyphs you ought to have if you want to automatically have the new glyphs when the patch flips over. Paladins have a handful of new glyphs. The rest of the paladin switcheroos are either renamed glyphs or entirely new glyphs. Totally new paladin glyphs: Glyph of the Battle Healer Glyph of Bladed Judgment Glyph of the Falling Avenger Glyph of Focused Wrath Glyph of Mass Exorcism Glyph of Righteous Retreat Glyphs that are changing into new majors: Shield of the Righteous becomes the Alabaster Shield Crusader Strike becomes Avenging Wrath Seal of Insight becomes Blessed Life Exorcism becomes Blinding Light Holy Wrath becomes Denounce Templar's Verdict becomes Divine Storm Judgement becomes Double Jeopardy Cleansing becomes Final Wrath Lay on Hands becomes Flash of Light the Ascetic Crusader becomes Harsh Words Hammer of Justice becomes Holy Wrath Divine Favor becomes Illumination Seal of Truth becomes Immediate Truth Salvation becomes Inquisition the Long Word becomes Protector of the Innocent Hammer of Wrath becomes Templar's Verdict Glyphs that are changing into new minors: Blessing of Kings becomes Contemplation Justice becomes Fire From the Heavens Righteousness becomes the Luminous Charger Blessing of Might becomes the Mounted King Truth becomes Seal of Blood Insight becomes Winged Vengeance It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Mists of Pandaria: Guide to protection paladins
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 9 other people, obsessing over his hair, and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense. As August begins, we are rapidly approaching the end of beta. Blizzard has indicated they are in the final stages of tuning for Mists of Pandaria, and with that comes the confidence to report on what we can reasonably expect our spec to look and perform like in the next expansion. Mists will be a pretty monumental expansion for us. We have some massive playstyle changes coming, as well as the game-changing new talent systems. Active mitigation, as well, will require prot paladins to adjust to a new style of tanking. This guide is intended to be a 101 introduction to the prot paladin as it stands in Mists of Pandaria. It'll cover everything from how to handle active mitigation and your rotation to how to spec, how to gem and enchant your gear, and everything in between. As we get closer to launch (and even after then), I'll continue to update it, so be sure to bookmark and check back in the future.
The Light and How to Swing It: Paladin Protection glyphs
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Please send screenshots as well as any comments to my email at gregg@wow.com. We've recently looked at builds for protection and retribution, so let's continue that trend and take a look at glyphs. I'm going to review all of them, as we're getting pretty close to Cataclysm, and I'm going to also review them in a more global context instead of talking about what is going to help you on hard-mode Lich King. The way I've set it up is that everything that you're likely going to want without question has an asterisk next to it; those are pretty much things you'll want to take. If you look through the major and minor glyphs, you'll notice that there aren't very many marked as such. There's a reason for that. We just don't have that many spectacular glyphs that are useful in all situations for those types. That's not to say the other glyphs are bad (well, some are, but we'll get to that), but they're more situational and require some choice on your part.
Glyph of Holy Light nerfed
Yesterday, the healing forums were flooded with complaints largely by Priests alleging that the new 3.0.8 version of the Paladin Glyph of Holy Light was completely overpowered and made Paladins into group healers, shoe-horning them into a niche recently left half-vacant by our Circle of Healing nerf. Such complainants will presumably be happy to hear that the glyph is being hotfixed, reducing the range from 20 yards to 8. Ghostcrawler calls the glyph "vastly overpowered," and goes on in a later post to give a bit more information. Like most changes, this was not done in response to QQ; as it turns out, the glyph was just overpowered. He also states that [major] glyphs are meant to be "about on par with passive talents" in terms of their power, which is in line with what I've been observing (maybe a few percent increase in damage/healing/mitigation per glyph, for the good ones). At any rate, sorry to my Holy Paladin friends; I guess this one was just too good to last. I'm still jealous of your everlasting mana.
Paladin glyphs in Beta build 8885
A few new glyphs have popped up in the latest Beta build, and basing it on MMO Champion's list, it looks like some old ones have changed. A quick glance at the glyphs show them to be rather underwhelming, however, and I'm not so sure Blizzard is taking the right direction with them. Let's take a closer look.Glyph of Blessing of KingsReduce the mana cost of your Blessing of Kings and Greater Blessing of Kings spells by 50%.This seems to be either a changed Glyph or another one for the same spell, I'm not too sure. The other one, which I discussed in a previous post, also increases attack power by 3%. Not very useful for casters, sure, but certainly better than this one. This Glyph downright blows. Why? Because Blessing of Kings and specially Greater Blessing of Kings are preparatory spells! The mana cost reduction is irrelevant because Paladins cast this spell during downtime, the buffing up stage. Paladins will have the opportunity to drink before the encounter so mana saved from this spell is utterly worthless. In PvP, where Blessings are routinely dispelled, this Glyph is slightly more useful. However, it's probably best to save that Glyph slot -- even a minor one -- for something better.
