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The Light and How to Swing It: Wearing metal dresses
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 what's in store for our precious plate dresses in a post-mastery world. If you've been following along with Blizzard's release schedule for holy paladin information, it's clear that there are going to be some serious changes. Imagine if you rounded up the four healer classes of WoW side by side, in terms of playstyle and capability. I am certain that paladins would stand out in the lineup. Trying to normalize us into the universal healthcare -- I mean, universal healing system is going to be a difficult task. Because of this, it's not a surprise that the other three healer classes received their talent previews this week, while paladins are left wondering what's in store. The previews for the other classes show us that Blizzard intends to make nearly all caster gear come with spirit, while adding talents for the DPS casters to convert spirit to hit. I remember the complaints when healing power and spell damage were merged into spellpower, but I can say now that I think it was a great change. Not having to shard a piece of cloth gear with hit on it because none of the healers needed it will be a welcome change as well. All casters will be able to share gear with their fellow cloth/leather/mail wearers. The question is: Where does this leave holy paladins? We're still stuck sporting plate armor, and there are no other casters around to use the same gear.
The Light and How to Swing It: Gearing a new level 80 ret paladin
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. As I said last week, I'm looking for action screenshots of retribution and protection paladins. I've gotten a lot of good shots thus far and am always looking for more (especially you retribution paladins out there, as I got a ton of protection ones). They can be any level between 1 and 80. I'll be using these for header graphics like the one above. Please send those as well as any other comments to my email at gregg@wow.com. If you've been following the column recently, you've seen the three-part series we did on gearing up a brand new level 80 protection paladin. We're going to take the same approach now to the retribution tree and work our way through the different types of items. First up, we've got craftables and reputation items. We'll be taking a look at stuff you'll be able to grab in dungeons next week and finish up the week after with a run-through of what all you can buy with the badges you got from all of that time in the random dungeon finder.
The Light and How to Swing It: Gearing a new level 80 tankadin, part 3
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. First up, I'm looking for action screenshots of retribution and protection paladins. They can be any level between 1 and 80. I'll be using these for header graphics like the one above. Please send those as well as any other comments to my email at gregg@wow.com. Secondly, this is it. We're almost done. We're finishing our final installment of how to gear your new level 80 protection paladin. If you've been reading our previous weeks of this guide, you know that we talked over reputation and profession gear as well as all of the various dungeon gear you can nab. This week we're going to be taking advantage of all of that dungeon running and spending our badges with a look at all of the badges from Frost to Heroism (and yes there are exactly 7 useful items that you can trade Emblems of Triumph down to Emblems of Heroism for ... and 6 of them are epic gems).
The Light and How to Swing It: Holy Shock mechanics
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 my least favorite healing spell, Holy Shock; though I might be changing my mind about that. I have been going over my guild's World of Logs parses for heroic Sindragosa recently, trying to find any holes in our strategy or areas that we can improve upon. While browsing the statistics, I examined the balance of healing spells I had employed. Our wipes were fairly typical fights by any account, with a 50/50 mix of healing from Holy Lights and Flash of Lights, and the rest of my healing coming from Beacon of Light and Judgement of Light. I noticed that Holy Shock was all the way at the bottom of my healing done chart, below even the Infusion of Light FoL HoT and the Glyph of Holy Light splashes. I'll admit it now, I have never really been a fan of Holy Shock. My very first character was a paladin that I tried leveling as holy, to take advantage of that seemingly awesome ranged attack, since that was the core weakness of paladins at the time. The concept of healers and tanks had never occurred to me, since I had never played a collaborative RPG before. Once I picked up HS from the talent tree, I found out that it was just a terrible spell that happened to cost 31 talent points. Disappointed, I put my paladin on the bench for several months. After realizing how little I was utilizing it in Icecrown Citadel, I decided to give Holy Shock one last chance to redeem itself in my mind.
The Light and How to Swing It: Gearing a new level 80 tankadin, part 2
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. We're still talking about fresh, up-and-coming tanking paladins who have just hit level 80 and are looking for gear. After taking another look back at it, most of last week was concentrating on items from reputation vendors and craftable items that you could either make for yourself or nab off the auction house. I decided that I could have done a lot more with various tanking drops from dungeons and items from the emblem vendors. So, this week we'll take a look at just about everything a level 80 can nab from a dungeon for tanking, and next week we'll take a look at what you can do with all of those emblems you earned up running dungeons.
The Light and How to Swing It: Gearing a new holy paladin at 80, part 2
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 most efficient way to use your emblems of triumph to pick up great holy gear. Do any of you remember raiding Naxxramas, back at the start of Wrath? What now seems so trivial today was actually pretty easy back then too, considering that guilds in level 70 gear cleared it on their first night in. Even considering how simple raiding was at that point, loot drama could still occur. A guild on my server, one of the larger and more successful guilds too, disbanded over a loot dispute. It wasn't about whether or not hunters should be allowed to roll on one-handed items (they shouldn't), but rather about whether an item with spellpower, mana per 5, and haste should be given to a healer. The item in question is the Torch of Holy Fire, which today, we would clearly state is a healer weapon: MP5 means that a healer should be using it. However, one of the guild's elemental shamans contested that it was also best-in-slot for him, and that DPS classes deserved gear before healers did. His argument was that letting the DPS gear up was more important than giving items to healers, because more DPS meant quicker boss fights. Once an encounter was beaten, additional healing did nothing to push progression. While the idea of a guild focusing on gearing their tanks first and everyone else second is not that uncommon, the idea of DPS superiority over healing was divisive enough to rip this group apart. Healers were arguing for their fellow brethren, while DPS derided them for being selfish. Paladins were particularly focused on, since critical strike rating was far more desirable back then and we were rolling on sp/haste/crit gear along with every other caster DPS class. Luckily for us, things have changed a lot since those early Wrath months.
The Light and How to Swing It: Gearing a new level 80 tankadin
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. The quiet before the storm. This is period of time where people are losing interest in their current characters and either start playing less or trying out one of their alts. As such, we've been getting a lot of requests for guides during the end of expansion lull. One of the requests we got last week was a gear guide to your up-and-coming level 80 protection paladin. Whether you're catching up an old character or rolling a new 'toon to try your hand at tanking, we'll show you where to get started.
The Light and How to Swing It: Gearing a new holy paladin at 80, part 1
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 most efficient way to pick up healing gear as a newly 80 paladin. I feel like raiding in Wrath of the Lich King has started towards a slight lull in the past week or two. Many high-end guilds are stuck at 11/12 heroic kills in ICC, looking across the gaping chasm that is the Lich King fight on heroic, focusing on the few guilds who have managed to topple Arthas for good. I also find that most of the casual guilds have also settled into their niches, killing those Icecrown bosses that they have the time or raw numbers to defeat and being content with that. With only Ruby Sanctum to look forward to in terms of remaining raids and graduation season already started, I can already feel the post-expansion exodus ready to begin. Guilds begin losing members faster than they can be replaced, and recruiting becomes a daily burden instead of a monthly chore. While all of this may sound like bad news, there is some hope in this transition period between the final tier of Wrath and the first tier of Cataclysm. Players will be using the free time to level alts, and I have already seen a deluge of newly minted toons appear in my guild this month. With any luck, there are future holy paladins in this mix, and in a few weeks' time, we'll have new brothers and sisters in arms. However, before they're truly ready to take up the mantle of keeping a tank alive through 3 stacks of Festergut's Inhaled Blight?, they're going to need some sweet gear to give them the throughput and longevity to pull it off.
The Light and How to Swing It: Bad habits in dungeons
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. If you've never seen the "How to Paladin" series by stoker2 ... don't. If you have seen it, my apologies and I will continue to attempt to stop Michael Gray from linking them in Moviewatch. However, I thought it would be a perfect example of things paladins shouldn't do for a lead into my article. We're going to talk a bit about bad habits. Some of these bad habits come from learning your class while soloing and the differences you have to make in your playstyle when questing versus when dungeon running. Some of these bad habits are born out of running mostly PvP content and then moving from there into PvE, where the same tricks are more harmful than helpful. Still other bad habits come from having extremely powerful gear. When you overgear content, you start to lose sight of what it's like to have to work at things. You forget that you used to do 1,800 DPS on a good day in your quest greens and what tricks you used to work through each pull. You also start to do stunts that would have wiped your party without question three tiers of content ago. After the break, we'll take a look at a variety of these bad habits and talk about why you might want to break those habits before the Cataclysm.
The Light and How to Swing It: Triage 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 discuss how the next expansion will change our method of healing, and might even be for the better. Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few days, you're aware that Blizzard recently started their Friends and Family alpha testing phase for Cataclysm. While a select few lucky individuals are playing the rough version of the next expansion right now, I am left here in Dalaran with only my thoughts to keep me company. Recently, I've been thinking about how Cataclysm is going to change the healing landscape for holy paladins, and what I can do to prepare myself over the next few months. We're obviously receiving at least one new healing spell, Healing Hands, and since Holy Shock is no longer our 31-point talent, it wouldn't surprise me to see another heal added in as well. How are those going to change our decision making process when choosing the right spell to cast? We'll actually have to think about mana costs and conservation now as well; will we flex between various heals or fall back to relying on Holy Light to solve every problem? We also have to consider that changes to the other classes affect our playstyle as well. Tank cooldowns may change drastically, and many DPS classes are picking up survivability talents and skills of their own. The real question is: what's not going to change for us in Cataclysm?
The Light and How to Swing It: Less AoE
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. Paladins have changed a lot over the course of the game. Originally, we were intended to just be healers with some additional specs for leveling. Then we were suddenly able to tank and everything was about reflective damage with a dozen or more things hitting you at once with a DPS spec that was usually relegated to the PvP scene instead of in raids. Finally, we've reached a point where all three specs are pretty viable in both PvE and PvP content. That isn't to say that they're the most phenomenal things to ever appear for those particular parts of the game but that we can still be competitive no matter which spec we choose. The problem with our class is a lack of tools. While our melee components were slowly built out of what was intended to be a healing support class, we've still got a lot of vestiges of the old days tacked to us. Sure, we had a fairly large overhaul in how a lot of our mechanics worked at the start of Wrath of the Lich King, but that isn't to say we're perfect yet. In fact, we need a few more tools in order to make it in Cataclysm.
The Light and How to Swing It: Healing through heroic Deathbringer Saurfang
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 how to handle healing as holy paladin on the heroic Deathbringer Saurfang encounter in Icecrown Citadel. When we first meet him in Nagrand, his name is Saurfang the Younger. When he is found in an image projected by the brain of the old god Yogg-Saron, he is called a Turned Champion. When we see prophecy fulfilled in Icecrown Citadel, we learn that his father named him Dranosh, which means "heart of Draenor." When we finally confront him face to face, his name is only Deathbringer; he is no longer our ally or even his father's son, but the Lich King's most powerful death knight. The Deathbringer Saurfang encounter is one of the easier fights in the normal version of ICC, due to Saurfang's position in the first wing of the citadel. The heroic version, however, proves to be much more difficult than the three preceding bosses. Due to his item table containing our first shot at ilvl 264 or 277 tier tokens, he has been tuned with the strength necessary to guard such valuable loot. While a fight like Valithria may showcase how powerful holy paladin healing has become, Saurfang on heroic difficulty is an example of an encounter that is nearly impossible without an appropriate number of holy paladins to keep everyone alive.
The Light and How to Swing It: Handily healing heroics
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 how to quickly and efficiently heal your way through any heroic. When Wrath of the Lich King was released, Blizzard shared a few things with us. First, Ghostcrawler campaigned with his promise of One (Star) Pony Per Child, ensuring that there would be No Alt Left Behind. We also heard that the developers were crafting a new hero class, the death knight. Not to worry, it totally won't be overpowered at launch. That, we could suffer under the death knights' oppressive rule for several months. Finally, we were also told that there was a clear progression plan for Wrath, and that there would be no more regular farming of Karazhan- and Mechanar-esque instances for badges. I guess the last statement was actually true; we're now farming Patchwerk and The Nexus for Emblems, not badges. All joking and semantics aside, the fact is that whether you're a freshly 80 holy paladin ready to get your feet wet, or a veteran battle healer who's seen all of Icecrown's overlords toppled, there's value to be found in running heroics on a daily basis. While most of the 5-man dungeons are nearly trivial now, there are steps that we can take to put the run on fast-forward. By minimizing the amount of time we have to spend killing Loken and Cyanigosa, we can get back in to the action in record time. Let me note that this is not a guide for newer holy paladins who aren't completely comfortable in heroics, or if you or your tank are still working on gearing up your character. I will be covering how newly 80 holy paladins should be handling heroics soon, this guide is meant for those who have run these dungeons many times before and have the gear necessary to tackle any healing situation.
The Light and How to Swing It: Cataclysm blessing overhauls
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. Well, we've had a small deluge of Cataclysm information about paladins in the past week. Some of it was fairly straightforward answers about design goals while other information was more hinted at with a wink, wink, nudge, nudge sort of feel. One of the items that has been fairly glossed over is all of the changes they're wanting to do to blessings. At the beginning of Wrath, we had some blessings and auras removed by moving them to talents, built into the base coefficients or changed into the hand abilities. It made life easier on trying to figure out who is casting what and which people in the raid were which spec so you know which spell to cast and then managing all of the exceptions. This is why there are multiple addons that people have designed to handle them for you and remind you to recast them. It looks like the coming expansion will be bringing more of these simplifications and reorganizations, but all of the details are still in flux. While some of the changes have been decided upon, others are more in the idea phase and will likely change greatly throughout the course of the possibly impending beta.
The Light and How to Swing It: Holy PvP basics
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 basic tenets of holy paladin PvP. When Wrath of the Lich King was released, Blizzard stated that it was one of their major goals to make raiding more accessible to every type of player. I'd say they achieved that goal, with just about every player who wants to able to experience a raid instance to see several of the bosses in each tier of raiding. With the easily obtained emblem and crafted gear, it's not hard for even newly 80 players to be raid-ready in a couple of weeks. Even the hardest instance in the expansion, Icecrown Citadel, is partially open to the most novice of PUGs. I think we can agree that Blizzard has figured out how to make raiding more accessible. Their next project in Cataclysm is to bring that same level of accessibility to PvP. They've already planned world PvP zones with the explicit purpose of promoting PvP, namely Tol Barad. We can also expect the new rated battleground feature to allow larger groups and guilds to participate in PvP without being under the arena microscope. Add in slower PvP pacing via an increase in life and decrease in healing power, and it's clear that the Horde and Alliance will be slaughtering each other in new and magnificent ways when we're not busy fighting against Deathwing and his minions. If you want to be ready for Cataclysm's new PvP environment, your best bet is to start practicing now!
The Light and How to Swing It: Cataclysm class preview wishlist
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. Well, here's the problem. I was going to do this whole long article on my predictions and wish-list for the paladin Cataclysm class previews that were coming out Friday. The problem is that they've moved them up to Wednesday which is the same day this column normally goes live. So, I can either write a nice long column with predictions that will end up going live after the real information comes out or we can do a short and sweet prediction article a day early with more time spent on analysis for tomorrow. I'm going with short and sweet version.
The Light and How to Swing It: We wait with bated breath
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 our upcoming pre-Cataclysm class preview. Today's date is Dec. 24, the night before Christmas. The children have been put to bed, with stories of fantastic Smoke Bombs and amazing Flame Orbs dancing in their heads. We're sitting quietly by the unlit fireplace, waiting for our friend St. Ghostcrawler to arrive during the night. His yacht is led by flying ponies, and he arrives each year to bring us presents. These gifts are morsels of information, crafted by the elven developers in their Irvine workshop. Blizzard has a tendency of saving the best for last. My friends, I am here to tell you, paladins are clearly the best class in World of Warcraft. I am eager to see what the developers have planned for us, but I am also worried about the level of change that we are going to see. Several of the other classes saw significant redesign, like warlocks, and if we're a week behind everyone else, I get the feeling the changes are going to go quite deep. I'm not saying that this type of invasive surgery isn't necessary, I just hope that I like what I see when I wake up on the other side of the knife.
The Light and How to Swing It: Tanking stat changes in Cataclysm
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 helps with the puppet shows at the Argent Ren Faire up in Icecrown. Since paladins are last on the list for the upcoming Cataclysm class previews due to how Blizzard ended up doing the development schedule, we've got another week and a half to wait for our details. I'm not picky as long as it gets done, so there's no reason to really grumble other than having to wait an extra week. However, I thought I'd go over some of the things we do know about Cataclysm for tanking. Blizzard has mentioned that they're going to rethink tanking cooldowns and has previously asked for feedback on some of the abilities we currently have -- but to what end, we're unsure at this time. What they have told us about thus far is how some of the avoidance stats will be working in the coming expansion. Essentially, the only avoidance stat that isn't changing is dodge, with the others either being overhauled or removed. Let's take a look.
The Light and How to Swing It: Beating the GCD
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 do deal with our biggest limiting factor: the GCD. Playing a holy paladin is a lot like participating in illegal street racing. We drive as fast as possible, have no respect for law or our fellow man, and we live our lives a quarter mile at a time. Well, at least the last part is true. We play our class one second at a time, with only a moment's time to process our raid's status before making our next move. We play in a GCD-capped environment: limited by the game's own internal pacing instead of our mana. It's because we're already capable of casting as fast as possible that our multi-target healing suffers. Most other healers can increase their number of spells cast per second to boost their healing output, whereas we're limited by the fact that we can really only heal one person per second. There are some tricks we can use to beating this GCD limit, and therefore raise our output over simply mashing Holy Light for five minutes a time. Knowing how to work efficiently in these short, one-second windows will ensure you're healing every last bit possible.
The Light and How to Swing It: Holy versus unholy, how to survive the Lich King
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 most difficult encounter to date: defeating the fallen paladin Arthas. Turalyon. Uther. Tirion. Paladins have a rich lineage of heroes in their lore, dating back for centuries decades. These crusaders of the light dedicated their lives to cleansing Azeroth of the darkness that has plagued us for time immemorial. Every new paladin looks up to these paragons of virtue for guidance and inspiration. Our ancestors set the example for how we should conduct ourselves, and show us the courage it takes to fight. However, the story of our paladin heritage has not always been so pure. The greatest threat on Azeroth was also once one of the powerful paladins in existence. Arthas Menethil was a member of the Knights of the Silver Hand, before losing himself in his crusade to stop the scourge plague from spreading. He gave up his humanity in a failed attempt to save the world, and ended up becoming the half of the entity known as the Lich King. Now, in our final effort to rid the world of the scourge blight, we must confront one of our former brothers, and put the Light's strength to the test against the unholy corruption of Frostmourne.
