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The Light and How to Swing It: Adjust your healing in patch 4.3
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like why paladins are so awesome. With patch 4.3 looming on the horizon, holy paladins need to be prepared for all of the changes that are headed our way. Both of our AoE healing options have been significantly altered, along with several of the talents and glyphs that support these abilities. Retribution paladins are also looking forward to a few buffs to their sustained DPS, but their ability to help with AoE healing is being greatly reduced. Our core mana regeneration mechanic is about to be completely scrapped. In fact, if we continue using Judgement without making any adjustments, we'll actually have less mana in patch 4.3 than we do today. We've been healing with holy power for nearly a year now, but many of the habits we've picked up along the way will need to change.
The Light and How to Swing It: Retribution in 4.0.1
With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and soon, an entire flight of black dragons. Please send screenshots as well as any comments to gregg@wow.com. A couple weeks back, I covered the changes to protection for the 4.0.1 pre-Cataclysm patch that usually goes out a month(ish) or so before release. The point of those patches is so that everyone can play with the new class features and get everything figured out before the chaos that is the actual expansion release. Now it's time to do the same sort of coverage for ret pallies. If you haven't been following the changes thus far, it's going to look odd. There are new class concepts and skill/buff consolidations. First off, picking your spec now has a lot more meaning from the get-go. You receive most of the passive buffs that you'd have to spend 40 talent points getting in the past for free at level 10 that are responsible for making your chosen spec usable. As an example, you get Sheath of Light, Two-Handed Weapon Specialization and Judgements of the Bold. That provides your attack power-to-spellpower conversion, your weapon damage bonus and your mana regeneration. All of this just for picking the spec. In addition, you get a new attack called Templar's Verdict that we'll get into later. First off, let's talk about the biggest change to our class in the expansion: holy power.
The Light and How to Swing It: Where did they go?
With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and soon, an entire flight of black dragons. Please send screenshots as well as any comments to my email at gregg@wow.com. Before we get on to business, I need another batch of screenshots for headers if anyone feels like tossing a couple my way. A lot of abilities have been either renamed, revamped or removed in the Cataclysm beta. This is part of a consolidation process to remove a lot of buttons off of our bars. Other abilities were changed to remove durability and healing from retribution. However, in the interest of explaining where things went, I decided it might be best to make a list of our lost and renamed abilities, for those of you who haven't been able to keep up with all of the changes.
Patch 3.3 PTR: Undocumented Paladin changes
Late last night while we were all in bed Blizzard left a patch on the PTR. For those of you who haven't read the patch notes yet, both documented and not, Blizzard is still trying to ease the level up experience for newer characters. This includes changing where certain skills and abilities are gained as well as changing what gear characters start with. For paladins, they've reduced the cost of the lower skill ranks of several skills. All of this seems to be preparation for Cataclysm when they expect people to level some of the new class/race combinations as well as the playable Worgen and Goblin races.HOLYHoly Shock/Holy Light/Blessing of Wisdom/Consecration/Exorcism/Greater Blessing of Wisdom/Holy Wrath/Flash of Light/Blessing of Wisdom: Mana cost of their lower ranks reduced.While this is something that won't be noticed by those of you raiding Ulduar and the Argent Tournament, it should help out those trying to do Wailing Caverns or Scarlet Monastary as mana can sometimes be an issue at lower levels. As Holy Shock, Holy Light, and Flash of Light are all included, this should make it easier on those of you trying to level as an instance healer.More after the break.
The Light and How to Swing It: 3.2.2 means re-balancing... again
While I'm not one to whine about incoming nerfs and changes for any of the classes I play, it sometimes gets a little annoying to see the developers tweaking things here and there trying to get the balance just right. Ghostcrawler recently said that in comparison to other classes, "... paladins (all 3 kinds) have been a bigger headache to balance this expansion, usually in the favor of the paladin." While we might not always think this is the case, there are several times since the moment 3.0.2 hit to start the expansion off where things just felt too easy. From ret pallies in substandard gear out performing all other classes to holy pallies being able to chain cast Holy Light with little regard for mana, the class has been a little off at times.
The Light and How to Swing It: Patch 3.2 and the Paladin
Ok, we've got quite a bit of information on Patch 3.2 now, and even though this major content patch isn't introducing too many new things to the class, it does shake it up a bit. Nothing too big, but it should keep everyone on their toes. But first we'll talk about one thing that isn't related to class skills or nerfs or anything like that... first I'd like to encourage everyone to get chummy with the Argent dudes. Do their mind-numbing daily quests and all that, get the Crusader title if you want... and along the way collect 100 Champion's Seals. According to the PTR, the new Paladin-exclusive Argent Charger is available on the Tournament Grounds for a mere one hundred seals. Of course, Blizzard is also giving away Tier 9 gear for free during the testing phase, so that cost could still change. Still, here's that pony that Ghostcrawler promised all of us. It's a fitting item for an entire faction run by Paladins, right? Anyway, enjoy that pony because not everything in Patch 3.2 is as nice a ride.
The Light and How to Swing It: The Tankadin for Dummies Again
Where were we? Ah, yes, tanking. Last time, we took a look at some basics of Paladin tanking, namely a few things about survivability. That's just the tip of the iceberg. When I said tanking was the most technical play style in the game, it's because tanks have to look at more factors and study more things than healers or DPS. Aside from working towards important gear requirements, a tank more than any other player must understand how a fight works. While many encounters are survivable with a few DPS not knowing too much about the fight ("get out of the void zones!"), a tank who doesn't know anything about a boss is likely to wipe the group or raid.In many ways, a tank is the most important member of a team. The cornerstone, so to speak. Because even though healers are indispensable, there's never really a 'Main Healer' position the way there is a 'Main Tank'. That's why a tank's responsibility goes above and beyond what players in other roles have. We've already examined for a bit how to build up your survivability. Today we'll look at three things: generating threat and the tank spell rotation.
Paladin changes in Beta build 8982
The nerf bat swung and we got grazed a little bit. I didn't cover the last build's changes because they were somewhat minor, and most of them were reverted in this latest build anyway except for the change to Beacon of Light's duration to one minute (and all ranks work now). That's a buff, just in case you were wondering. On the other hand, the rest of the news is not so good.Seals were nerfed again. The coefficients for Seal of Vengeance / Corruption, Seal of Blood / of the Martyr, and Seal of Command were lowered. I don't really have much to say about this other than that I'm disappointed but confident that it's all balanced. I haven't done as extensive a test of the Beta as I probably should, so if these damage nerfs were based on hard numbers that Blizzard has gathered, then they're probably right. I have to believe that.Melee hits no longer refresh Judgements, which means that in order for the debuff to stay on opponents, Paladins will actually have to continuously Judge them. With the change to Crusader Strike some time back removing its Judgement refresh feature, this means Judgements will be every Paladin's responsibility. This also means Blizzard is forcing Holy or healing Paladins to insert Judgements into their rotation. With Judgements eating up the GCD now, I'm not so keen on the idea.
[UPDATED] Paladin changes in Beta build 8926 part I
This is one of the biggest patches to hit Paladins in a while, and it's a mixed bag. Let's get the bad news out of the way first -- all of Seals have been nerfed. All of them. Seal of the Martyr / Blood, Corruption / Vengeance, Wisdom, Light, Justice, Righteousness and even Command have all had their damage reduced. The formulas are tweaks of the values of attack power, spell power, and weapon speed -- a bit complicated to explain in detail -- that result in an overall damage reduction. Now, before everyone gets their panties in a bunch, let me say one thing: don't panic.We can probably consider this patch the nerf patch, which is an essential part of the tuning process. The developers traditionally start from a high power scale and fine tune it downwards -- I mean, look at the poor Death Knight. This is still the Wrath Beta, and while there is a chance these numbers might stick through to live, testing these lowered numbers are vital to getting everything right for release. If you're in Beta, log in, play with it for a while, and give feedback. If you're not in Beta, hold back a bit from making a ruckus and exercise a little patience until the testing is done. Let's take a deep breath. Now where'd I put my inhaler...
The Light and How to Swing It: Paladin 3.0
It's pretty exciting, isn't it? Patch 3.0 is coming, well, "soon™" according to Blizzard. Considering that our favorite class hasn't gotten a second pass, it might be a bit premature to talk about Paladin changes when the pre-Wrath patch finally hits. That said, it looks like more than a few new talents will make it at least into the PTRs more or less intact. Hopefully and changes we'll see during our second pass will be tweaks to numbers and some mechanics refinements but hopefully no major changes.Assuming that most of the changes push through, we should expect a completely different Paladin in the coming months. Even without taking the new talents into account, there are baseline changes that should make gameplay technically different. The most significant change, of course, is in the way Judgements work. This is the one change that will take some getting used to. First of all, there are now three Judgements and they activate the GCD. This means no more macros for Seals and Judgements, which is actually fine because of two things: first, Judgements no longer consume Seals; second, Seals now last for a micromanagement-light two minutes.
The Light and How to Swing It: Levels 61-70
Hooray. Outland. Now this is the real home stretch. This, at least for now, is where most of your adventures will happen. After slogging through the first 20 levels, grinding up to the landmark 40, surviving the boring trek to 50, and eventually making it to The Burning Crusade content, the time has finally come to make that final push. You should probably celebrate a little, because from here on forth you will get new trainable abilities at every level so don't forget to pay your trainers a visit. Although odd-numbered levels usually have higher ranks of old, little-used spells, so it's not a huge deal to skip training between levels. Besides, the first few levels in Outland are such a breeze that you can hit a few levels without getting a chance to visit the old world.By this time, you really should be riding around on your pimpin' new mount. For Horde players, it's extra special because the Blood Knights get a tabard that's second in coolness only to the Tabard of the Shattered Sun, so there's every reason to complete the quest chain. If you entered Outland at level 58, questing in Hellfire Peninsula should get you past 60 in a very short time. The experience gains from quests are vastly superior to the quests in the old world, as well as gives heftier Gold rewards. This is important because you should be saving your money as early as now (if not sooner) in order to afford flight training.
Alliance to get Seal of Blood in 2.4?
Poster Tamerland from The Scryers posted an interesting nugget to consider over at the Paladin forums today, stating unequivocally that the Alliance will be getting the Blood Elf-only Seal of Blood in Patch 2.4. Conversely, the Horde should be receiving Seal of Vengeance. What's the big deal, you ask? Well, Alliance Retribution Paladins have been crying for Seal of Blood because it has, with numerous calculations, proven to be the superior PvE DPS Seal. In light of the removal of spell damage in Retribution gear and the focus on Strength (and consequently Attack Power), this has become less of a debate and more of a simple fact. Furthermore, Seal of Blood inflicts damage on the Paladin, which is absolutely great as this is incredibly synergistic with Spiritual Attunement, allowing Ret Pallies to regenerate mana as they're healed. While Seal of Vengeance has been argued to be an excellent tanking seal, Horde Paladin tanks have coasted along fine with Seal of Righteousness.Up until now, Alliance Retribution Paladins have had to balance spell damage along with other stats to optimize Seal of Command while Horde Ret Pallies happily picked up, um... *cough* Warrior gear. If the changes in 2.4 push through, the removal of spell damage severely gimps Seal of Command for PvE and consequently, raiding Alliance Retribution Paladins (yes, such things exist, believe it or not). Tamerland says that the writing is on the wall, and from the lore-shaking changes glimpsed on the PTR, his claims don't seem too far off. The chained up Naaru in the Blood Knights' basement is gone, and the lovely Lady Liadrin (I had to editorialize that. We swore these blood oaths, you know.) comes to Shattrath City to pledge allegiance to A'dal, who welcomes the Light-stealing, Naaru-shackling, demon-blood using Blood Knight matriarch in a totally WWJD moment. The stage really does seem set for such a change, and it wouldn't be the first time that Blizzard has shaken things up in order to balance things out. Paladins were formerly an Alliance-only class once upon a time, after all. Personally, I'm stoked at the possibility. I'm not too thrilled about the Alliance getting Seal of Blood ("my... precious..."), but if it does happen, it means Blizzard is actually listening to its community -- even if they don't say anything most of the time.
