holy
Latest
Ghostcrawler's late night Paladin news
Ghostcrawler displays her dedication yet again as she popped up on a few of the Wrath of the Lich King Beta forums in the wee hours of the morning today. Or would that be late last night? What does 2 AM qualify as, again? Anyway! Ghostcrawler popped into the Paladin forums to check in with some concerned players, and brought some fun news. She says herself that it may not be 100% what Paladins want, but it should prove to be good stuff regardless. Let's dig right into it, shall we?From Ghostcrawler: We'd like to do something else with Kings. I don't know that a core ability is the answer, but burying it deep in Prot, when Prot paladins would just as soon play with BoSanc, doesn't feel great either. We'd like to mess around with the top 2 tiers of all 3 trees, still encouraging you to cross-spec a little, but making that initial bite into the upper tier more tasty instead of just an icky appetizer to get the what you really want down deeper
Spiritual Guidance: 2 Talent Specs to Power Your Priest to 80
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is now Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Matt scored a beta key and busied himself speccing and respeccing his Priest multiple times to figure out funky ways to level to level 80 and has arrived at 2 possible specs! What do all Priests have to look forward to when Wrath of the Lich King comes out? Leveling. The grind starts all over again.I'm going to dive right into it and suggest not one but two possible talent builds that you may wish to consider once you get your shiny copy of the new expansion.
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.
Spiritual Guidance: Holy talents - Did we get the shaft in Wrath?
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is now Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Matt scored a beta key and busied himself speccing and respeccing his Priest multiple times. This week, he takes time off to answer an important question about the Holy tree: Is it worth getting excited over? Generally, the new Holy Priests' talents in WotLK beta seem pretty underwhelming. Compare the flashy things some classes are getting, and take a look at Holy Priests... did we really need a THIRD talent to increase healing of some spells by 10%? Especially since the second one (Empowered Healing) was nerfed to always be weaker then the first one (Spiritual Healing). Yet another +healing talent for a different set of spells just smells like "we needed a talent to fill this spot and had absolutely no ideas." The way it looks right now, I expect that I'll be healing pretty much exactly the same way at 80 as I am right now - except without down ranking. So, how about it, WI? Has anything really changed for Holy Priest healing? The short answer would be no.
Hybrid Theory: Healers, gear, and entering Northrend
Welcome to Hybrid Theory, where we discuss all things hybrid in the World of Warcraft. Hybrid Theory is brought to you each week by columnist/blogger Alex Ziebart.Remember a few weeks ago, I mentioned how if you want to be extra-cautious about preparing for Wrath of the Lich King, you should figure out a calm, easy way to farm gold that won't burn you out? After having hit the current level cap on the beta realms... I still recommend that, if you want to be extra prepared. If you're a very casual, don't worry about it too much, really. It's not that big of a deal. Leveling will get you enough for the bare necessities. If you're the type that wants to start leveling professions and gearing up immediately upon hitting the level cap though, think about going into Wrath with at least a couple thousand in your pocket, which really isn't that hard of a task.Moving past that, though, a lot of people have asked about gear across all classes, but mostly Hybrids. Hybrids have asked because all of the Healing classes are amongst them, and if you're a Healer you may not necessarily have a set of DPS gear. My first comment on this: Don't worry. Really.
The Light and How to Swing It: The shocking truth in Beta
Ok. So Paladins rock in Beta. There are a whole slew of abilities and talents that make life a whole lot easier and a lot more fun. One popular request on the comments has been to test drive the new Wrath Shockadin, with improvements like a 6 second Holy Shock and ranged judgements from Enlightened Judgements, it really does seem like the spec has finally come into its own. Of course, what looks good on paper doesn't necessarily translate into actual gameplay. With the reshuffle of talents and the consolidation of spell and melee crit, what used to be a fringe off-spec with a loyal following might actually turn into the spec of choice... for healing Paladins. Before anything, though, let's make one thing clear -- this is Beta, so everything we'll be taking a look at today might (and is likely to) change by the time Wrath of the Lich King is live.
Select Priest glyphs changed in latest beta push
Do you remember when the Shadow Priest glyphs made their rounds, and then we all complained a lot and made suggestions as to how they should be fixed? Guess what, guys. They aren't terrible anymore! I know, it's a shock! The updated Shadow Priest glyphs are all pretty much straight buffs, while some of the Holy ones are buffs, and some are fixed balancing issues. Let's take a look, shall we?Glyph of Lightwell - Increases the amount healed by your Lightwell by 20%.I've played around with Lightwell on the beta quite a bit, actually, and its current incarnation is fantastic. The HoT rarely breaks, and my guildies are generally intelligent enough to know when to use it. At level 77 in full level 70 gear, each tick of LIghtwell currently heals for around 2,200. Each tick healing for 2600-2700 with this glyph is pretty amazing, considering it's a "set it and forget it" heal.Glyph of Renew - Reduces the duration of your Renew by 3 sec. but increases the amount healed per tick by 40%.Sounds good to me. It will be a little more mana intensive to keep the HoT on a tank, but strong HoTs are priceless.
Hybrid Theory: State of PvP in the Wrath beta
Welcome to Hybrid Theory, where we discuss all things hybrid in the World of Warcraft. Hybrid Theory is brought to you each week by columnist/blogger Alex Ziebart.Before I start, while you read this remember that the Wrath beta does not currently allow you to hit the level cap. Everyone is level 77, and there's a lot that is unfinished. This is more anecdotal about the state of things, and not really analyzing how things will look in the end. You still with me? Good.I decided to try out incredibly, insanely buggy Lake Wintergrasp when the beta realms went up yesterday, and later on I gave the new Battleground a whirl, too. Through all of this, there was one constant: Holy crap Ret Paladins are OP. No, really. I know, it blew my mind, too. Retribution Paladins. Overpowered. Hell has frozen over.
Paladin glyphs and Blizzard's direction for the class
Inscription is shaping up to be one heck of a profession. After seeing the interesting Druid and Mage glyphs in an earlier build of Beta, this latest build pushed yesterday revealed some Paladin glyphs and gives us an inkling of where Blizzard wants to take the class. Unlike the Mage and Druid glyphs, there are no cosmetic ones just yet -- what spells could be cosmetically upgraded, anyway? Avenging Wrath, perhaps? Here are the functional ones:Glyph of Seal of CommandIncreases the chance of dealing Seal of Command damage by 20%.From how I read this, it seems like the glyph increases the proc rate of Seal of Command by 20%. Since Seal of Command currently works through a PPM or Proc Per Minute, mileage may vary depending on your weapon. With an optimal 3.8 speed weapon, Seal of Command can proc around a whopping 64% of the time. Note that PPM calculations for SoC are done after haste is factored in. It's a definite increase in DPS and provides a slightly more consistent burst. Glyph of Hammer of JusticeIncreases your Hammer of Justice duration by 1 sec.This glyph extends the stun duration to 7 seconds -- still not enough to deal dual Judgements. Pure PvE Paladins might want to skip on this glyph, but it's a particularly powerful glyph for PvP especially when specced and geared for the 20 second cooldown (3/3 Improved Hammer of Justice + PvP set bonus). Taking advantage of the stun even without the glyph every 20 seconds subjects it to diminishing returns, so longer stuns won't necessarily go the full duration against a single target. However, this works extremely well with the Glyph of Crusader Strike, slimly allowing 2 Crusader Strikes against a stunned target.
A Holy Disc Priest's thoughts on the new Priest glyphs
A list of tentative Priest Glyphs have been released into the recent beta for Wrath of the Lich King. Since I am no expert in Shadow, I'll defer an examination of those Glyphs to the resident WI guru. All I can say for the most part is that these Glyphs show promise. I'll go over the Glyphs that affect the healing Priest (Discipline or Holy) and discuss their application raid environments, PvP environments and otherwise. Alex Ziebart published his initial review of the Shadow Glyphs earlier today so be sure to give that a read after this one. Glyph of Lightwell - Increases the amount healed by your Lightwell by 1 to 6% So here is Lightwell as it is currently in the Wrath beta. As you can see, a level 80 max rank unbuffed Lightwell offers 4620 health over 6 seconds. Let's assume that lady luck is with you today and you managed to hit a 6% increase. Your Lightwell now heals for a whopping, jaw dropping, fear inducing 4900 healing (give or take). Now is that really worth a Glyph? I don't think it's worth a Glyph slot. But before we judge too quickly, lets move on down the list.
Hybrid Theory: Spell Power hands on
Welcome to Hybrid Theory, where we discuss all things hybrid in the World of Warcraft. Hybrid Theory is brought to you each week by columnist/blogger Alex Ziebart.We've chit-chatted about the new Spell Power mechanic off and on, but we've never gone into serious detail about it yet. Why? Well, we didn't really know how it worked. We knew what it does but very few of us had a real hands-on experience with it. That has since changed.Spell Power has done very very good things for the Hybrid classes, pretty much across the board. Obviously it will not drastically change Feral, Enhancement or Retribution, but it actually does add to those last two as well to some extent. Primarily it changes the Healing and Caster specs of the Hybrid classes, obviously. It brings back a lot hybridiness* to classes that... really haven't felt that way in quite awhile.
Ask a Lore Nerd: Now now, there's enough Light for everybody
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, the column that answers your questions about the story and lore of the Warcraft universe. Click the Comments link below, ask your question, and blogger/columnist Alex Ziebart will answer you in a future installment!Aydinn of Cenarion Circle wrote in to ask...My question is (which may seem obvious to some), who is the goblin statue at Booty Bay? Why does he deserve a statue?Answer: Thanks for writing in! Good to hear from people from my home server. That statue on Janeiro Isle might be of Baron Revilgaz, the overseer and top dog of Booty Bay. He deserves a statue because... he wanted a statue, and he's freaking Baron Revilgaz. He runs the show. Really, though, it's kind of a generic Goblinoid figure so it could be nobody at all. At one time, it was a statue of a Human Priest. It's a nod to a really cool landmark here in the real world. It's based on Christ the Redeemer, a statue found in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. You may recognize it from an episode of Lupin III. Eh? No? ...oh. Oh well. It's a pretty awesome sight to see in real life regardless of whether you put faith in what it represents or not. The in-game model was likely changed from a Human to a Goblin to back away from the religious overtones while keeping the reference, and Goblins fit the area better anyway.
Wrath Beta patch notes: Paladin part III - the Holy tree
Finally. We get to the most exciting -- albeit also most likely to change -- part of our Paladin abilities analysis. The new Wrath of the Lich King talents! Readers who have been keeping watch on the expansion's Alpha and all the rumors and leaks know only too well that Paladins have had nothing significant throughout the entire Alpha stage. That all changed with the sudden release of the Beta yesterday, however, and a flood of overwhelming Paladin information came streaming in. You can read the list of changes in my first post, and a general review of baseline abilities and existing talents in my follow-up post. Paladin talents have been greatly reworked, with some talents jumping from one tree to another, and other talents scrapped completely. The general vibe from the new talent trees is that Blizzard, after so long, has finally given the class some much needed love. I don't think I've gotten this excited about the class -- or heck, about the game -- in a long time. We'll take a look at each tree, the new talents, and what they could mean for Paladins in Wrath after the break.
Wrath Beta patch notes: Paladin part II
When Ghostcrawler mentioned on the closed Friends & Family Alpha that Paladins were the last to receive changes because the entire class was being majorly reworked, he wasn't kidding. The patch notes from the recently opened Wrath of the Lich King Beta revealed massive changes to spells and abilities as well as a shuffling of talents among the three trees. I covered an overview of the changes as well as the new Hand nomenclature for old Blessings in the first part of our beta analysis. It's now updated with the new Paladin talents in all three trees, so be sure to check it out.Before we get into the really juicy things, namely the new Wrath Paladin talents, we'll take a look at the changes to baseline spells and current talents. In some cases, these were totally reworked, and in others they were significantly improved. The first spell that leaps out with a huge buff is the change to Avenging Wrath, which no longer causes Forebearance. Its damage increase has been reduced to 20% (down from 30%), and now increases healing done by 20% (up from 0%).
Wrath Beta patch notes: Priest
My main is a Priest. A Shadow Priest, to be precise. While I started out Holy, my Priest has always been my main and probably always will be. The only thing that could possibly draw me away is my Protection Paladin, should my raid ever need another. Obviously, the very first thing I looked at in the Wrath Beta patch notes were the Priest notes. I've talked about what we saw in Alpha, and I was cautiously optimistic at the time. After seeing these notes... well... yeah, I'm still optimistic. I am (dare I say it?)... excited, even!I'll tuck my analysis behind the cut, but here are my three favorite notes out of the Priest notes: New Talent: Improved Spirit Tap (Shadow) - Gives you a 50/100% chance to gain a 50% bonus to your Spirit after gaining a critical effect chance from your Mind Blast or Shadow Word: Death spells. For the duration, your mana will regenreate at a 25% rate while casting. Lasts 8 sec. Lightwell (Holy): Cast time reduced to .5 sec, down from 1.5 sec. Charges increased to 10, up from 5. Now breaks from any attack that hits you for 30% or more of your total health. Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, down from 5. Shadowform (Shadow): Now has an innate 30% threat reduction. Now has a shapeshift UI.
Hunter, Paladin, and DK info from the alpha forums
With new talents and spells for all the other classes having come to light by now, it would be easy to understand if Paladins and Hunters were feeling a little bit left out. I don't have talent trees or anything to share with you right now, but I do at least have a few tidbits that appeared in the official Wrath of the Lich King Alpha forums yesterday: Hunters: Loyalty is being removed for pets, though you will still have to feed them to keep them happy. They're looking at pet stat scaling, especially in PvP, and particularly resilience; they want pets to be killable if that's what other players want to do. The idea is to make you, the Hunter, strike a balance between damage and mitigation for your pet. There will be new abilities in the pet talents, including "some that will make it less painful when your pet dies just a few moments into a fight." They want all pet families to be viable (Wryxian mentioned specifically turtles; they should have more DPS now while still having powerful defensive abilities). Update: New pets will only need to gain a maximum of five levels, implying that if you're level 80 and tame a level 17, it instantly becomes level 75 [thanks, Wabbajack]. Paladins: The devs recognize that Holy is at a bit of a weak point right now relative to the other healing classes. The goal is for Holy Paladins to be powerful single target healers: they should be tank healers, or be able to spot-heal a low-health target "super fast." They're working on building "mechanics that don't make running fights so punishing," as well as new talents and skills. There's also a note for Death Knights: Death and Decay and Army of the Dead are feeling too similar, both being long-cooldown AoE abilities. To remedy this, Army of the Dead is going to become an emergency button (Wryxian compares it to Retaliation or Recklessness), while Death and Decay is having its cooldown lowered to let it become more part of your normal spell rotation. [via DeathKnight.info]
Hybrid Theory: Gold and the road to Wrath
Welcome to Hybrid Theory, where we discuss all things hybrid in the World of Warcraft. Hybrid Theory is brought to you each week by columnist/blogger Alex Ziebart.It's a little early to get nervous about not being prepared for the upcoming expansion, but it's never too early to start the preparations. If you start ahead of time, you'll never even need to worry about it coming down to crunchtime. Plus, if you finish getting ready ahead of time, you can take those last few weeks before Wrath nice and easy. Something I noticed a lot as we neared The Burning Crusade, everyone and their mother spent eight hours a day in battlegrounds that final month before the expansion, and by the time we could go through the Dark Portal most of them were burned out on playing WoW.The absolute number one thing we can be sure you'll need in Wrath is gold. It doesn't matter what they do to your gear or your class, gold will be needed. Even if gold won't be worth as much as it is right now, you'll need it. You can be sure of that. Heck, even if you don't need gold for anything at all in Wrath by some miracle, it's cool, don't worry. 10,000g can buy you roughly 6,666,666 bottles of Moonglow when the Lunar Festival comes around. Think about that, man. Moonglow is awesome....Hm, I hope that math is right.
Hybrid Theory: PvP viability
Welcome to Hybrid Theory, where we discuss all things hybrid in the World of Warcraft. Hybrid Theory is brought to you each week by columnist/blogger Alex Ziebart.A pretty substantial point of debate when it comes to Hybrids is their place in PvP. The thought that only one spec is viable per class is most problematic in the context of Hybrids for a couple of different reasons. Some argue against every spec being arena viable, some argue in favor of it.The argument in favor of each spec being viable that I feel is the strongest is the fact that each Hybrid spec is vastly different from all of the others. In the arena, an Enhancement Shaman isn't doing the same thing as an Elemental Shaman. They are doing similar things like dropping totems and casting Shocks, but the role they play is different. Enhancement is in your face, Elemental throws lightning at your face, and Restoration is healing your face. This is not like Rogues in which all three specs are about hitting you until you fall down, just in different ways.Why is it a problem that all three of them aren't viable? It essentially feels like a forced block on your chances at success. "Just spec Resto" isn't really a valid answer, because it means you are not able to play your preferred role. Someone who rolled a Shaman to Stormstrike people's faces off are told to go get some Elemental gear, and that isn't very fun. To be successful in the arena, they are more or less forced out of how they want to play the game.
Forum post of the day: Faith in healing
The community seems to be in agreement that Paladins need a little love. At one point the champions of light, along with Warriors dominated the arenas. It's pretty clear that Paladins have been left behind in PvP. This class has found a niche alongside Druids and Warriors in the tanking corps. But is this the only place for a Pally any more? Lolbubble of Ysera opened a discussion about how well Paladins fair as PvE healers. The thread continued with some of the pros and cons of holy heals. Pallies have the ability to bless their party members, which is always pleasant. They are also mana efficient, especially when there's a knowledgeable player behind the keyboard. They tend to be focused healers, falling short of Prayer of Mending or Chain Heal. This is not necessarily bad if the player is assigned a tank to heal, but not great for overall raid heals. Paladins also have a noticeable lack of reusable instant healing spells.
Hybrid Theory: Healers, hit, and homogenization
Welcome to Hybrid Theory, where we discuss all things hybrid in the World of Warcraft. Hybrid Theory is brought to you each week by columnist/blogger Alex Ziebart.Brace yourselves, ladies and gentlemen. Today's Hybrid Theory is purely guesswork and speculation. In no way will I pretend that these are facts, and you should not take them as such. It's a topic that grabbed my interest, and it's something I really enjoy trying to figure out despite the missing pieces of information we don't have yet. I welcome all of you to add your thoughts on it in the comments section below. Perhaps we can get a decent idea of what's to come.Let's get started, shall we? In the previous weeks of Hybrid Theory, we've discussed all we knew about some of our favorite classes. During this discussion, matters of itemization often came up. Most notably, the new Spellpower mechanic. This would allow healers and DPS classes to use the same gear, but Healing spells would get twice the benefit.First thought is that DPS and healers will share gear. Right? Well... maybe. Possibly. There are a lot of factors we don't really know yet. While it isn't always the case, for some classes there is a pretty large divide between gear that is good for a caster and gear that is good for a healer, and the deciding factor isn't how much damage or healing is on that item. In some cases you'll be able to switch seamlessly from DPS spec to Healing spec and not need to change your equipment, but trying to optimize your gear in both cases is not going to be so easy.
