by Bethany Myers
So you’re ready to venture into the thankless realm of healing? It’s not for the faint of heart. You will be begged to heal an instance you hate and blamed for deaths that aren’t your fault, only to lose gear upgrades to DPS — all in the same run! On the other hand, healing can be a nice diversion from faceroll macro-mashing, and it’s definitely nice to have instant dungeon queues.
Whether you’re changing specs at level 80 to help your guild progression, stepping into The Deadmines as a level 18 healer or twinking out a battleground medic — here are some helpful hints as you prepare to make those health bars greener.
5-man PvE
Regular dungeons, heroics and group quests in which you are the only healer
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by Mathew McCurley
Class-specific addons are a wonderful thing. These powerful addons serve very specific functions for their intended class. Featuring one of these addons in the Spotlight is a bit of a challenge — I do not want to alienate the players of nine other classes by showcasing one specific addon for one specific class, and nor do I want to dilute a Spotlight with too many addons. You are witnessing the compromise. Behold! AddOn Spotlight Class for Class. For the next couple Spotlights, we will focus on three to four classes with one addon for each. These addons aren’t necessary, but could be extremely helpful to these specific classes. Let’s get to it!
The paladin, shaman and death knight classes can be addon-intensive. Paladins keep track of a variety of buffs and their DPS specializations utilize a “first come, first served” priority rotation for maximum damage output. Shaman have totems to deal with in order to work at peak effectiveness and have intricate timers for both damage specializations in order to operate flawlessly. Death knights, diseases and fevers are no strange bedfellows, with cooldowns and DoT ticks under constant scrutiny. Today, we take a look at some addons for these three classes that can help the player with a bit of the confusing timer issues, rotations and cooldowns.
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by Mimetir
If you do know something about macros then have a read anyway – some of these might be basic to you, but you might pick up something that saves your skin, bark or cow-printed hide.
Paladins
1. Buffs up quicksmart
/castsequence [target=focus] Beacon of Light, Sacred Shield
- This macro will put both of your essential healing buffs up on your focus, which is likely to be the tank.
- TIP: you can use the addon Need To Know in conjunction with this setup. It’ll give you permanent timer bars for those buffs regardless of whom you’re targetting.
2. Easy judging
/cast [target=focustarget] Judgement of Light
- Casts your judgement of light which both does healing and gives you a powerful haste buff
- It won’t cause you to overaggro when casting your judgement as you’re using it on the tank’s target
- Means you don’t have to mess around with tab or mouse targetting a mob to cast it on. You may need to re-target your tank but that’s less trouble than having to target everything manually.
- TIP: you could use the addon Clique, which will allow you to set up mouse and key bindings for anything you could wish. Want to heal the tank? Sure, click the <insert mouse button here> and you needn’t retarget them after using your JoL macro.
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by Zach Yonzon
Ah, Paladins. Otherwise known as the game’s God-class. Paladins, next to hunters, arguably have the lowest skill to success ratio among all classes in the game. This means that many players with low familiarity with the game can pick up a paladin and play the class with relative ease and have moderate success in the battlegrounds. Retribution paladins, in particular, are so easy to play that it can be addicting. Many players easily get the delusion that they’re good. This is what prompted Blizzard to call out the spec, saying that it issuccessful in lower Arena brackets but significantly less so against tougher competition.
Paladins also enjoy a significant psychological edge against a lot of players because of their reputation, giving them an advantage even before the fight begins. Well, today we’re focusing on how to fight paladins in our series of guides aimed at teaching players basic strategies against particular classes. We’ve discussed death knights, druids, hunters, and last week, mages. After the jump, we’ll break down a paladin’s strengths, discuss their frequently used skills, and eventually their weaknesses. As fearsome as paladins can be in combat, they suffer from glaring weaknesses, too. As long as you keep those weaknesses in mind, you should fare better against them on the battlefield.
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By Rhidach @ Righteous Defense
Lovely Charms are somewhat of a rare commodity–going for huge chunks of gold on the auction house (as bracelets), and being divvied up sparingly by various miserly mobs. For the achievement alone I needed 120 of these random drops, and was looking for the quickest, least painful way to get them.
I first tried Ulduar on Tuesday, but apparently Blizz moved exceptionally fast and hotfixed that tactic (along with any other mobs you kill with a vehicle). I put out some feelers for a spot with lots of meleeing, aoe-able creatures. A guildie offered up a spot suggestion: by the Avatar of Freya in Sholazar Basin.
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by @Dtotheug @ World of Matticus
What spec and glyphs should I should I use as a Holy Paladin for raiding?
That is a good question and really depends on how you want to play and what your role is in the raid. Currently there are two prevailing specs and each have their plus and minuses.
The first spec is the Flash of Light spec (51/5/15) which focuses on a bigger Flash of Light (FoL) heal, more mitigation via Sacred Shield (because Sacred Shield scales with Spell Power), increases the HoT effect of your Infusion of Light talent, and relies more on your healing spells to crit. The problem with this spec is that if you are not mostly using FoL you’re going to have to watch your mana pool closely because Holy Lights and Holy Shocks are going to eat through your mana pool.
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By Rhidach @ Righteous Defense
just dinged level 50, rocking a 0/41/0 spec, enjoying our brand new Avenger’s Shield spell, and obtaining a new minor glyph slot. Today I’m going to show you have to jump those last thirty levels and hit level 80 specced and glyphed and ready for raiding.
Levels 51-60
51 — Redoubt (3/3) [putting last point in there]
52-54 — Touched by the Light (3/3)
55-57 — Shield of the Templar (3/3)
58-59 — Judgements of the Just (2/2)
60 — Hammer of the Righteous (1/1)
Nothing much exciting happens in this bracket, other than at 57 or 58 you can head over to Outlands. At 60 you get the Hammer of the Righteous spell which is amazing for heroics. Go ahead and drop your Consecration glyph for the HotR glyph. It’ll make dungeons that much easier!
Note that we’re skipping the Guarded by the Light talent for now, since we won’t have Divine Plea for another 10 levels.
Levels 61-70
61-65 — Deflection (5/5)
66-67 — Improved Judgements (2/2)
68-69 — Heart of the Crusader (2/3)
70 — Guarded by the Light (1/2)
We have everything we need from the Prot tree, so we can dip over to Ret and start picking out some new toys over there. Divine Plea is coming at 71 though, so the talent point you get from 70 should be spent getting ready for that.
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via Righteous Defense
Festergut and Rotface suck. They are hard bosses and require each and every raider to give 110%. Each player needs to maximize the performance of their role and minimize anything that hurts the overall team effort (especially avoidable damage!).
Here are some dopey little tricks you can use to bring your A game to each fight:
1. Use a slow dps weapon for Festergut
Considering how tight the enrage timer can get, dps from every member of your group matters, and as Paladins we have the luxury and privilege of contributing more than our fair share of tank dps to the pile.
While Festergut may hit hard, he only does during a small window of the fight. Assuming you have the defense to spare, don’t be afraid to use a slow dps weapon (the slower the better) to maximize your damage. The slower your weapon is, the more damage each 5-stack proc from Seal of Vengeance/Corruption will do.
2. When not tanking Festergut, stand behind him
You should be soft-capped for expertise anyway, so to maximize your damage done on this fight, stand behind the boss to avoid causing parries for yourself and the person currently tanking.
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by Messiah @ tentonhammer
How to play a Retribution Paladin
So you want to lay the holy smack down on the enemy? Want to prove that Paladins can dish it out as well as they can take it? Well, you have come to the right place. This guide will walk you through the basics of playing a Retribution spec’ed Paladin. Since part way through the Burning Crusade expansion Retribution Paladins have seen huge buffs in ability and utility. Through WotLK they have continued to be a strong DPS choice in any group.
Playing a Retribution based Paladin can be a lot of fun as long as you realize you may still not be to be at the top of all the DPS charts. You will however be able to hold your own in PvE and PvP content and level at a far faster rate than other paladin specs. Realize up front though that DPS classes and players FAR outnumber healers and tanks. In addition most players view Paladins as healers or tanks, so you will most likely be expected to have a heal or tanking offspec and gearset. Discuss your options with a group before joining so that they know what you are. If you are doing this for PvP then more power to you, explain to no one!
Talents and Glyphs
As a DPS Paladin you will be spending the majority of your talent points in the Retribution talent tree. You need to do this gain some serious damage causing abilities including some of your main damage abilities such as Crusader Strike and Divine Storm. There are also several other abilities that add a lot to your damage causing abilities through passive boosts to some of your key spells and stats.
Probably the most important talents are your Crusaders Strike and Divine Storm, since they will form 2 of the 5 main attacks that make up your DPS rotation. For more information on that rotation skip down to the Attack Rotation section of the guide. Crusader’s Strike is a single target attack with a short cooldown that will become a staple in all of your rotations, while Divine Storm hits multiple targets and factors in against groups of enemies.
Some of the other really critical talents in the Retribution tree are Judgements of the Wise, Sanctified Retribution, Swift Retribution and Heart of the Crusader. All of these talents grant you party or raid utility which is much needed since you are just a DPS player once you are in a group (Tanks and Healers being much more important in a group situation). Judgements of the Wise brings you the ability to replenish mana to up to 10 raid members, which your healers and casters will thank you for. Sanctified and Swift Retribution bring you a 3% damage and 3% haste buff that affects the whole raid as long as your retribution aura is active. Lastly, Heart of the Crusader puts a +3% crit debuff on any target you judge, once again boosting party damage output.
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