cataclysm-paladin
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The Light and How to Swing It: New paladin heals in Cataclysm
Every Sunday, Chase Christian of The Light and How to Swing It invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. This week, we examine the cool new heals that paladins can look forward to. If you've been playing a holy paladin for any period of time, you're familiar with the feeling of spamming one button. I pushed Cleanse so often in Molten Core that my mouse nearly broke, and the number 2 key on my keyboard has never forgiven me for the rough treatment it received in The Burning Crusade. Our ability selection has been a bit more flexible on Wrath, largely due to our potent mana pool, allowing us to cast any heal we want to. Holy Shock has found its way into our arsenal on a regular basis, and Flash of Light gets a fair amount of usage as a backup spell when Holy Light isn't necessary. While Cataclysm is introducing us to an entirely revamped healing model and our new core heal, Divine Light, the spells look nearly the same as they do today. Our hands do the glowy-light thing, and then someone gets some sparkles raining down over their head. Meanwhile, restoration druids are covering the ground with more flowers than Cenarius' gardener, and resto shamans are literally making rain to water them. Luckily for us, Blizzard saved a few tricks for holy paladins, and our new abilities actually have some amazing animations and useful functions.
The Light and How to Swing It: The new holy paladin toolbox
Every Sunday, Chase Christian of The Light and How to Swing It invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. This week, we discuss the our revised healing toolbox in the upcoming expansion. With the Cataclysm beta now underway, Blizzard's been kind enough to lift the NDA that had been shrouding any expansion information from our eyes. I have been using this opportunity to read up on what holy paladins can look forward to once we're level 85. We have some new information on Healing Hands, and it looks to be a fairly powerful AoE heal (more on that next week). I've also seen some recent changes to the holy tree to reflect the healing game in Cataclysm, as well as some cleanup of talents that were out of place. The biggest upset for me is our new 21-point talent, Divine Light. It's the "big and expensive" heal that was needed to move paladins to the Three Heal System, and I really don't understand why we need to spend a talent slot to pick up what's supposed to be a core healing spell. I don't care about spending the extra point in the tree, I had just been hoping we would've seen something cool put in the vacancy that was created by the new baseline Holy Shock. The next question is: so what's Divine Light good for anyway?
