new-paladin-heals
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The Light and How to Swing It: Cataclysm heroics from a holy paladin's perspective
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 how it feels to heal a heroic in the new expansion I've been spending my evenings churning through heroics on the Cataclysm beta. It's a bit unsettling to heal as a holy paladin in the dungeon environment, because it feels like you're playing bizzaro-WoW. Holy Shock is your main heal, Holy Light isn't the button you go to when your tank is dipping dangerously low, and you're actually watching for procs instead of settling into a steady state of heal spamming. Not only that, but we've now got options when it comes to healing more than one target. Our precious Glyph of Holy Light is gone, but it's been replaced by far more powerful options. Holy Radiance allows us to heal either melee or ranged players, based on our location. Light of Dawn gives us our AoE toolbox a ranged option, with a sweet graphic effect to boot. The core fundamentals of paladin healers are still around, and our Hand spells are still as potent as ever, but now we've got a more robust set of tools to handle every situation. Needless to say, your number of keybindings will expand significantly.
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.
