by Chase Christian
Paladins were the antonym, created to help defend their raid and party from damage and to provide useful buffs. While much of the original intentions have been diluted via homogenization, paladins are still the ultimate defensive class. Unfortunately, in order to perform our role in the face of constantly changing opponents and venues, our toolbox of abilities has become fairly large. We’ve got a utility spell for nearly every situation, and there are a vast number of situations out there. The key to being an effective paladin is to do your homework and to come prepared.
Get your buffs right
While Cataclysm is halving our Blessing count from four to two, making it incredibly simple to make sure everything is covered, we currently have quite a few different options when it comes to buffing the raid. Blessing of Might only helps physical classes while Blessing of Wisdom is only effective for classes with a mana bar. Blessing of Kings is good for everyone, and Blessing of Sanctuary is really only needed for paladin tanks and groups without a discipline priest around. With so many specific cases for each class, it can be hard to figure out what to buff. If you have enough paladins in the raid to buff all four blessings, then simply coordinate via chat or PallyPower to get all four buffs on the entire raid.
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by Mathew McCurley
Bati has created something that I truly appreciate: easy-to-use, easy-to-set-up, pre-made Grid healer profiles that give you everything you could ask for. The profile set even includes a DPS setup for your off spec, if needed.
An interface for every healer
Oren.1 is the paladin interface, showing all of the pertinent buffs on the target at the bottom of the Grid frame, with built-in timers from the excellent addon OmniCC. Bati is the priest Grid setup, displaying shields, Weakened Soul, Prayer of Mending and other vital priest information right on the Grid frame. Paired with a PoM counter addon, this setup proves very powerful for priests.
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by Chase Christian
I think that holy paladins have been pretty blessed this expansion, pun definitely intended. Our holy tree has been very solid throughout Wrath, and we’ve even got a few flex talents that we can use to pick up Improved Lay on Hands or even Blessed Hands. Our massive healing throughput has also made us one of the healers of choice for Anub’arak and the Lich King on heroic mode and even for bugging out Yogg-Saron’s heroic mode, as well. Our progression throughout Northrend has settled holy paladins into a pretty comfy healing niche. Even with all of the development our class has seen in the past few months, a few questions still remain.
For example, why are we still using the item level 200 Libram of Renewal instead of one of the shiny new librams from the Emblem of Frost vendor? The reason is that our old libram is too strong, and our new librams are poorly designed. Specifically, the Libram of Blinding Light just doesn’t mesh well with our playstyle. It forces us to use Holy Shock on a regular basis to keep it active and only provides extra spellpower. Of all the stats possible, spellpower is probably the one that holy paladins need the least of. What can Blizzard do to get things right the next time around?
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by Gregg Reece
With the latest build, we’re finally starting to see things get a little smoother and the mechanics to make a little bit more sense. Keeping Holy Shield up is easier than in previous builds, and a lot of depth to the types of strategies we can have while tanking has greatly improved. Also, our mastery bonus has been official revealed.
These may not be the talents we’ll end up seeing when the expansion hits, but they’re getting there. Some talents will look pretty close to how they exist currently, while others have absolutely nothing to do with their current versions. Let’s go take a look.
Spec freebies
Avenger’s Shield What was once our pulling ability is now actually one of our primary rotation abilities. It still acts like it used to, but it has a 24-second cooldown
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by C. Christian Moore
Drain teams were exceptionally successful in The Burning Crusade, so much so that developers went out of their way to make burst damage, and only burst damage, a successful strategy in Wrath of the Lich King. The problem, of course, was that it went completely overboard, and we were stuck looking at extreme dominance from classes that did best under high-burst-damage conditions.
In season eight, we’re seeing a return to some strategies that try to get an enemy’s mana to 0 percent before they make a serious attempt to kill anything.
I have a special place in my heart for drain comps. My first No. 1 title came from playing a drain team with fellow gladiators; it was our first time hitting No. 1 together and it was an amazing time. I probably sounded like a little girl when I screamed ridiculously loud as I saw that coveted title attached to my character’s name.
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by Chase Christian
I’ve recently started leading a 25-man pickup group that raids Icecrown Citadel. A few of the DPS classes in my guild are focused on obtaining a Shadowmourne, and so I offered to set up a run so that they can start collecting the legendary shards. While just about everyone has been to a PUG raid, leading them can be quite different from simply participating. The biggest difference for me is deal with the variety of personalities that come together.
Once nice thing about having such a diverse group of people in the raid is it allows me to talk with other healers that I normally wouldn’t interact much with. Recently, in our group 5 party chat discussions, the topic of “favorite tank to heal” came up. I had a few particular players in mind, but the healers actually started talking about the tank classes that they preferred to heal. While there’s more to tanking than simply picking the right class, the fact is that the tank classes take damage in different ways. Who’s your tank of choice when healing?
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?by Chase Christian
Paladins of all specs have been having problems with their ability usage. Retribution paladins could use a castrandom macro and do nearly full DPS, protection paladins have an incredibly static “969″ rotation, and holy paladins have been stuck using nothing but Holy Light since Naxxramas. We needed something to help us break the cycle of repetitive ability usage. The dev team looked at ways to give our class a little more flavor, and came up with the concept of holy power.
How holy power actually works
Holy power works mechanically like a stacking buff. Right now, we’re able to stack up to 3 holy power points (HPP). The HPP buff has a 30-second duration. Any new holy power generator (HPG) that we use will both add a point to the stack and refresh the duration of the stack to 30 seconds. This is nearly identical to how Serendipity works for holy priests, if you’re familiar with that mechanic. You can right-click off your holy power stack if you like, though I can’t think of a good reason to. While I’m not ruling out the possibility of Blizzard introducing a new bar to display holy power points, it’s likely that a mod like Power Auras will be our best bet for monitoring our HPP.
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by Gregg Reece
Spec freebies
Templar’s Verdict This is going to be your signature ability, next to Crusader Strike. It scales off of your earned holy power and gets more efficient the more power it gets. However, as you can only have three maximum, it doesn’t take much to hit your best damage potential. Get used to this ability, as you’ll be using it a lot.
Sheath of Light A nice freebie, as you’ll be able to watch your gear scale appropriately as you level up instead of getting a series of talents at level 51 to balance out your coefficients properly.
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by C. Christian Moore
I started enjoying 5v5 at the end of season two. For a large part of my time in WoW, 5v5 was by far and wide my favorite arena bracket. It’s also the bracket I’ve gotten most of my rank #1 titles from (clearly no coincidence to being my favorite bracket *wink*).
The 5v5 bracket is a far different beast than 2v2 or 3v3 and is far more misunderstood. I’ve met 2v2 and 3v3 gladiators who just cannot comprehend the differences in the 5v5 bracket. 5v5 is the Rodney Dangerfield of arena. The bracket just doesn’t get enough respect. The biggest misconception centers around 5v5 being a “zerg” bracket.
You like how I throw around StarCraft terms like cowpies? Mhmm.
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by Chase Christian
Our mastery bonus, according to the latest word from the Cataclysm beta, will place absorb shields on targets of our heals. The shields will absorb 8 percent of the amount of the original heal, with that percent scaling higher as we get the mastery stat on our gear. Currently, priests are the only healers with any sort of absorption effect. They’ve got both Power Word: Shield and Power Word: Barrier, though these are actively-cast absorption spells. Discipline priests also produce shields when they critically hit with a heal, via Divine Aegis. Our effect is clearly different from these, and actually has more in common with a few items than it does with an existing spell or talent.
Absorption bubbles are nothing new
You’re probably familiar with Val’anyr, the only healing legendary and the symbolic healing weapon of Wrath. It has a proc that allows for our heals to produce bubbles on our targets, which is exactly what our new mastery bonus will accomplish. Val’anyr may be the example most embedded in recent memory, there was actually an item long before Ulduar that yielded the same effect. One of the optional bosses in the Temple of Ahn’Qiraj, Viscidus, dropped a trinket called the Scarab Brooch. It produced the same messianic effect, turning healing into bubbles right before our very eyes.
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