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The Light and How to Swing It: Protection Paladin 101
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 24 other people, obsessing over his hair (a blood elf racial!), and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense. Since the earliest days of World of Warcraft, the protection paladin (also known colloquially as the tankadin -- or in some quarters, Why won't it just die already?) has stood out among the other classes bestowed with a tanking role. We've come a long way from being the joke tanks of vanilla or the guy with a shield and a puddle brought in to AoE murlocs in BC. Wrath was when we first really hit our stride as top-tier tanks, and we've only grown more potent since the changes brought about by the Cataclysm.
The Light and How to Swing It: Cataclysm 101 for protection paladins
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're doing a quick series on what it means to be a paladin in Cataclysm for people either coming back to the game after an absence or trying out the class for the first time. If you missed last week, we covered retribution paladins and some beginner info for them, and hopefully we'll finish them up next week. But first, we're talking about protection paladins and their 101 introduction.
The Light and How to Swing It: Holy 101
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 basics of a holy paladin, from gems and enchants to talents and spell usage. I have always been of the belief that the paladin is a healer at heart, with their hybrid nature simply an extension of their healing capability. In vanilla WoW, paladins were the Alliance's healing all-star, with our tier sets and raid utility focusing on the restorative arts. Retribution and protection both have abilities that heal in some way, and their talent trees even have pro-healing options. If you want to experience the purest distilled essence of the paladin class, you have to try holy. This is intended to be a guide to the holy paladin's basic principles and tenets, not an in-depth guide into high-end raid healing or specialized gearing choices. If you're new to the holy paladin or want to discover what the spec is all about, read on.
