Meet Honorshammer!

[I'd like everyone to welcome Honorshammer to the Paladin Schmaladin team! That's right folks, all you tanks rejoice: We finally have a Prot Paladin writer on the team! He'll be covering strategies, prot changes and buffs and nerfs, and even guides. So give him a warm welcome and show him some love! ♥ F.]

Let me introduce myself.

My name is Honorshammer and I'm a Protection spec Paladin.

I started my Tanking career back in WoW Patch 2.0. This was the transitional patch to Burning Crusade where we got the Burning Crusade talent trees, but we couldn't level to 70 yet. I spent the month between 2.0 and Burning Crusade cutting my teeth in Upper Black Rock Spire.

Once Burning Crusade hit, I tanked my way through early 5 mans and Heroics. As my guild was keying up for Karazhan, I started my blog, Honors Code where I've detailed my adventures. At that point in time I was one of about 4 or 5 active Paladin Tanks on my server. As I went through Burning Crusade, I'd tank nearly every fight up to and including Illidan where I was a Flame Tank. I've continued my Tanking career in Wrath of the Lich King, though nowadays I'm pretty much strictly a 10 man raider. Naxx, Ulduar, TotC, I’ve done it all.

One of the aspects of Tanking I really enjoy is gearing. With a DPS class, there's generally some algorithm (spreadsheet or simulator) that will tell you exactly how to gear your toon. If you ask if Item A is better than Item B, you’ll most likely be told to check a spreadsheet or simulator. You generally don't find that with a Tank. We make lists and rank items, too, but sometimes Item A will be better than Item B for a certain kind of fight and then Item B will be better than Item A for other kinds of fights. We aren’t trying to maximize just one thing like a DPS, we are trying to balance a host of issues from threat to survivability.

In this article, I’m going to analyze the new Tanking weapons available and identify the Tanks who will find them most desirable. With three new 5 mans, and a new Raid there is plenty of new gear to be had for aspiring Tanks.

The first group of tanks I want to address is the newer tanks. You guys are most likely sporting the Peacekeeper Blade. You might even still be rocking an Axe of the Sen’jin Protector or Red Sword of Courage. For this group of tanks, you’ll find your upgrade with Lucky Old Sun. This baby drops from Bronjahm the first boss in the first new 5 man introduced in this patch, Forge of Souls.

The next group of Tanks is Uldaur 10 Raiders with Stoneguard or Legacy of Thunder, and guys who have snagged a Gleaming Quel’Serrar from Onyxia-10. Know that a deep and abiding jealousy runs through my Elf blood for you. This group also includes TotC raiders who grabbed a Crusader’s Glory off of Anub’arak.

You guys should pass up Lucky Old Sun; it’s not an upgrade for you. For you, you need Heroics, and specifically the Heroic version of the new instances. That’s where you’ll find Falric’s Wrist Chopper and Rimefang’s Claw. These Scourge types aren’t terribly original when it comes to naming things as Falric’s Wrist Chopper drops from none other than Falric. Rimefang’s Claw actually drops from Scourgelord Tyrannus. Tyrannus is the final Boss in the 2nd new 5 man dungeon Pit of Saron. Note that you have to complete Forge of Souls before you can attempt Pit of Saron. You’ll find Falric in the final new 5 man, Halls of Reflection, and he’s the first boss you’ll encounter. Falric’s and Rimefang’s are very close in itemization and either one will be an upgrade if you find your tank using a weapon in this range.

Now we get to the 25 man crowd as well as our Hard Mode 10 man Raiders. Thanks for being patient. Most of you guys are sporting something like a Gleaming Quel’Serrar from Onyxia-25, Titanguard, Sorthalis, or a Crusader’s Glory (245). Our Hard Mode 10 man raiders will be using their Shiver or Honor of the Fallen. You guys are not going to find any of the 5 man options appealing. For you, it’s time to get your Raid on. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to defeat Lord Morrowgar on 10 man. He can drop a Bonebreaker Scepter. This will be an upgrade for any Tank in this range.

For you high speed, low drag guys who killed Heroic Anub25 and have a Silverwing Defender to show for it, there isn’t anything yet released that will tempt you. But its coming, oh man, is it coming. None other than the Lich King himself holds the best Tank weapon discovered thus far. It’s called Troggbane, Axe of the Frostborne King. It is rumored to drop off the Lich King himself, in 10-man Hard Mode. Of course, we can’t even attempt this encounter for quite some time. But that Axe is an absolute thing of beauty.

So Tankadins, get out there and upgrade your weapon.

-Honorshammer

Retting it up: Icecrown style!

Forge of Souls

Before I start with this dungeon, I’d like to say that the words “cool” and “awesome” and “fun” go for all three of these instances; I don’t want to describe each of them with these words. Anyways, this is a pretty quick instance with 2 bosses, Bronjahm and Devourer of Souls. The first part of the instance consists mostly of 2-3 pack pulls and the second half is mostly 4+ mob pulls. I don’t want to spend too much time describing this instance, but I’ll give a rundown of each boss:

Branjahm

Mostly a tank & spank. He’ll give someone a debuff that, after 3-5 seconds, produces a soul from the target. When the soul reaches Branjahm, it heals him. At 50% he creates a swirl of magic around the room, and he’ll randomly knock people into it, causing you 2500 damage per second as your slowly make your way back (yes, it slows you too).
Loot: Weeping Gauntlets

Devourer of Soul

Pretty interesting fight, mostly because it shares the graphics of Reliquary of Souls (AMAZING voice too, imo. Turn on the sound for this!). This guy will cast “Mirrored Soul” which shares damage taken with someone in your party; i.e. stop attacking when he does this or you’ll kill someone. He’ll jump at someone and create a void zone and raise souls a la army of the dead – just run away from them. Apparently he casts a laser similar to Mimiron’s “Charing Up!” laser, but I think my group killed him too fast for me to see that.
Loot: Pauldrons of the Devourer, Needle-Encrusted Scorpion

Follow Jaina and continue to…

The Pit of Saron

You enter the instance with Jaina and watch a bunch of Alliance (or Horde I assume) get lifted into the air by Scourgelord Tyrannus and killed, much like the Black Knight does in Trial of the Crusader. Complete some quests and kill some trash, and move through the pit to each of the three bosses.

Forgemaster Garfrost

This guy has a stacking frost debuff that does damage and increases frost damage taken, similar to the Saronite Animus in the hard mode General Vezax encounter. At 66% and 33% he’ll incapacitate the group and get a new weapon, each dealing more frost damage on hit than the last.
Loot: Malykriss Vambraces, Barbed Ymirheim Choker

Krick and Ick

This guy is like Cait Sith from FF7; a little gnome on the shoulder of a big zombie. It’s a pretty straight forward fight. Move out of poison on the ground, run out for Poison Nova, run from Ick when he pursues you, collect loot.
Loot: Nothing of value... A Tank trinket if you’re interested in prot items.

Scourgelord Tyrannus

This can be a pretty tough fight. Tyrannus hits hard and does a powerful knockback, and his mount, Rimefang, does some nasty frost damage and aoe stuns. However, besides all of that, it’s a pretty simple fight.
Loot: Tyrannical Beheader, Band of Stained Souls, Frost Wyrm Ribcage

Once again, follow Jaina onto the Halls of Reflection…

Halls of Reflection

This is a pretty linear dungeon. You watch some RP events, fight some ghosts, and then encounter the Lich King. It’s a pretty epic finale to a well-done series of instances

Falric and Marwyn

You fight one after the other, not at the same time. This boss fight was very easy, so there’s not much to say. Dispell the debuff during Falric, don’t dispel the debuff during Marywyn. Move out of the circle for Marwyn. Win.
Loot: Nothing for ret, some offspec stuff though!

The Lich King
I won’t spoil it for you… It’s pretty sweet, especially for us lore nerds! Anyways, here’s some loot. P.S. use Seal of Command ;)
Loot: Grinning Skull Boots, The Lady’s Promise

And now for probably the best part of these new dungeons: Quel’delar. This is an epic quest line that starts with a quest drop in one of the instances. On the Test Realm the item is bought off of the Jewelcrafting trainer, so it’s not known which instance it will drop from yet. I don’t want to go into too much detail because it will be a lot to write, and I’ve already written a lot, but here is a great guide to the quest line on mmo-champion.com.

Well, that’s the rundown for the new 5-mans. Try out the new cross-server LFG system and maybe you’ll random some of these for some added bonuses!

-Trajer

The Chilling Culmination

Quick: Everyone type /whosyourdaddy.
This is it. Patch 3.3 hits in less than 12 hours and Arthas' heavy footsteps will grow louder and louder every week. The final push into Icecrown Citadel will begin, and all that we've been playing for all these years will culminate with old heroes being reborn, existing heroes dying in sacrifice, and new heroes taking their place. Everything that happens in this raid will kick-start an expansion called Cataclysm, and its effects will ripple for years to come. The world as we know it will be torn apart and ripped asunder, both politically and physically. Jaina Proudmoore, Bolvar, Tirion, Thrall, and the land of Azeroth will never be the same again.

And if that's not enough for you, RV ticks totally don't break Repentance anymore. So that's good.

Paladin Changes in 3.3

• Divine Intervention: This ability now also removes Exhaustion and Sated from the target. In addition, the cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

• Lay on Hands: This ability will place Forbearance on the paladin if used on his or herself. It will not place Forbearance on others.

• Infusion of Light: This talent now causes the paladin’s Flash of Light spells to heal the target for 50/100% of the Flash of Light healing amount over 12 seconds.

• Aura Mastery: This effect of this talent has been reduced in duration to 6 seconds.

• Divine Guardian: This talent no longer increases the amount of damage transferred to the paladin from Divine Sacrifice. Instead it causes all raid and party members to take 10/20% reduced damage while Divine Sacrifice is active. In addition, the duration has been changed to 6 seconds, however the effect does not terminate when Divine Sacrifice is removed before its full duration.

• Divine Sacrifice: Redesigned. The effect of Divine Sacrifice is now party-only and the maximum damage which can be transferred is now limited to 40% of the paladin’s health multiplied by the number of party members. In addition, the bug which allowed Divine Sacrifice to sometimes persist despite reaching its maximum damage has been fixed. Divine Sacrifice will now cancel as soon as its maximum damage value is exceeded in all cases. Finally, Damage which reduces the paladin’s health below 20% now cancels the effect early.

• Repentance: This crowd control effect will no longer break early from the damage done by Righteous Vengeance.

Key General Changes in 3.3


Barry contemplates his questionable use of AoE Cocaine, Rank 12.

So Just Turn The Heater Up
For Icecrown Citadel, we are implementing a spell that will affect every enemy creature in the raid. The spell, called Chill of the Throne, will allow creatures to ignore 20% of the dodge chance of their melee targets. So if a raid's main tank had 30% dodge normally, in Icecrown Citadel they will effectively have 10%.

And Right After Hallow's End, Too
Meeting Stones: To use any Meeting Stone, it is only required that the character’s minimum level be 15. There is no maximum character level requirement for any Meeting Stone.

Here's Lookin' At You, Consecration
AoE damage caps have been redesigned. Instead of a hard cap on total damage done, the game now caps the total damage done at a value equal to the damage the spell would do if it hit 10 targets. In other words, if a spell does 1000 damage to each target, it would hit up to 10 targets for 1000 each, but with more than 10 targets, each target would take 1000 damage divided by the number of targets. 20 targets would be hit for 500 damage each in that example.

Some Prot Lovin'
Taunt Diminishing Returns: Revised the system for diminishing returns on Taunt so that creatures do not become immune to Taunt until after FIVE Taunts have landed. The duration of the Taunt effect will be reduced by 35% instead of 50% for each taunt landed. In addition, most creatures in the world will not be affected by Taunt diminishing returns at all. Creatures will only have Taunt diminishing returns if they have been specifically flagged for that behavior based on the design of a given encounter.

This One's For All You Levelers Out There
Mana costs have been reduced for almost all lower level spell ranks. In general, if a spell decreased in cost with a higher level rank in patch 3.2.0, that spell now has the decreased cost at all ranks. In addition, spells learned before level 20 with reduced cast times and/or durations have even further reduced mana costs, proportionate to their reduction in cast time or damage.

Yay, Turning Tide Farming!
Players no longer need to kill the final bosses in all four wings of this dungeon in order to teleport to Sapphiron. Teleportation orbs have been added to allow players access back and forth from Sapphiron's lair.

Yay, Badge Farming!
You can hit heroics 24/7 (server restarts not withstanding) with the new LFG system. It'll auto-assign you into a group based on your role - DPS, Healer or tank - and will do so cross-servers. So casuals now have something to do at any time, and hardcore raiders can be busy after they stomp ICC in one night thanks to the gated lockouts.

Yay, Repair Bill Farming!
ICC hardmodes will be not be a separate "Heroic Mode" raid like ToC 10 and 25, nor will it be activated in-combat like Ulduar. Instead, the raid leader can simply toggle it on or off at anytime via the UI. Quick and easy. Hardmode will affect only the bosses, not the trash.

"What? We Have To Go Back!?"
Weekly raid quests are now available from Archmage Lan'dalock in Dalaran. Every Tuesday at 3 AM the Council of Six will choose a different strategic target that must die from either: The Obsidian Sanctum, Naxxramas, The Eye of Eternity, Ulduar, Trial of the Crusader, or Icecrown Citadel.

PUGers Rejoice
Group Disenchanting Option: In addition to rolling Need or Greed on items, players now have the option to elect for an item to be disenchanted if an enchanter of the appropriate skill level is in the group. Disenchant works exactly like Greed except if a player wins the Greed roll, they will receive the disenchanted materials instead. Players who choose Need will always win the item and will always beat those that choose Greed or Disenchant.

...And Every Alt Smiled
Top-level helm and shoulder faction-related enchants are now available as Bind-on-Account items that do not require any faction to use once purchased (they still require the appropriate faction level to purchase).

********

So big, big changes to the game and us Paladins. Still no Arena fixes, but by now we're used to it. But it's hard to get bummed out on the Aura Mastery and DSac nerfs when Icecrown is finally here and we have something new to do besides the horribly boring and terribly implemented Trial of the Crusader raid. If anyone has Anub hard on farm (or has been working on it), you know what I mean. I do, however, insist you watch this phenomenal video on Icecrown. If you don't mind a few spoilers, that is. This should totally get you excited about classic raiding again. Tuesday night can't come soon enough.

So that's all you need to get started, fellow Paladins. I'll be making some healing guides on both the 5-man and the raids in ICC, and I'm sure Trajer and Hoff will add in their own Ret strategies. After that, if I can't tag and bag a Prot Paladin writer, I'll just buck up and do it myself from a tanking point of view.

Arthas is here, people. As Paladins, this is our time to shine and the moment where the entire universe of Warcraft is watching us. The spotlight is on our class now more than ever, and under its bright lights we should enjoy the moment. Tank like the invincible mortal you are, smash faces in and make the Holy Warrior name proud, and flaunt your 40k mana pools and bomb the raid with heals like never before. Some of you may snag a legendary in the process, while others of you may already have one. In the end, realize that this is your story - our story - and it will never happen again. Whether you're in the twilight of your WoW career or you're just getting started, there's never been a better, more important and fun time to be a Paladin. We've climbed the mountain for years to get to this moment. So grab your shields, swords and maces... 'cause here we go.

Icecrown is here. Go kick some ass.

~Ferarro

Arthas: And then what?

Over a month from now, Arthas will be dead.

Read that slowly and take that all in. Around the time of the new year, the story we've all followed for the last seven plus years - Arthas and the Lich King - will be coming to a close.

With Icecrown Citadel being released very, very soon, it will only be a matter of weeks before the final section of the raid is unlocked to Live, which means the top guilds on your respective servers will have their weapons stuck in Arthas' corpse and linking shiny new loot in [Trade] chat. It will be the culmination of billions of hours played by millions of people all across the globe, and the final pieces of the story will settle in place, hypothetically crowning a new Lich King in his place. I know you're all excited. I am, too. Compounding this excitement is the fact that the entire story of Arthas, Uther, Bolvar, and Tirion are all centered around our favorite class, the Paladin. In every game I've played, if there was a Paladin or Paladin-esque class (i.e. clerics, knight, etc.), I played it. So the biggest videogame in online history climaxing it's biggest story with Paladins all at the top has got me psyched. There is, however, one nagging issue that's worrying me, and it can be summed up in one question:

"So then what?"

You see, killing off Arthas is pretty much akin to killing off Darth Vader in the Star Wars universe. They're both the big, bad face of evil, and the one we've been salivating at a chance to take on ever since we dinged 60 and jumped at dragons with thirty-nine other people. "Do you think we'll ever fight Arthas?" "Can you imagine if we fought Arthas?" "I wonder if we'll be able to wield Frostmourne!" Those questions have been asked in Vent and Teamspeak for five years now, and we're finally getting our answers:
1.) "Yes."
2.) "It'll be crazy."
3.) "No, but you will be fighting inside of it." (Oh sorry, spoiler alert. Ha.)

And top guilds will end up with at least one or two Shadowmournes by the time Cataclysm arrives. Anyway, so when you kill Darth Vader, what's left? Anything after that is borderline anti-climactic. It'd be tough to introduce a new villain with as rich a history or personal interaction as him. I know there's a lot of older bad guys in the Warcraft lore, but because of how the story's been told, none of them seem even remotely as important.

Arthas has been around since Warcraft III and his Frozen Throne storyline. The popularity of that revolutionary RTS not only made Arthas popular, but thrust him to the forefront of Warcraft as the icon of it's bad guy. He killed our favorite heroes, caused the most trouble, and best of all, we all related to him in some way because of how he became a villain. In truth, he was doing what he thought was the right thing to do - and acted as many of us would have acted in that exact same situation. But in the end, Arthas was the victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the best of intentions. The human soul can only take so much. And hence, the Lich King was born.

So how do you top that? What other villain do we have that's been around so long that we care about on another level besides wondering what loot he has on him? When Vashj, Kael and Illidan died, I thought, "Man, I played as you for hours. I was invested in you. I shared an adventure with you. I was reading your thoughts and your pain, and I was there when you were betrayed." The story felt complete when they died. Not so when I killed Algalon or Yogg or Anub or any of the other bosses. They were loot pinatas. So how can Blizzard make that connection again after Arthas dies? Maybe with the expansion Blizzard can release a mini-RTS game in the same style as WC3 that tackles the story of Deathwing. With the team they have now, it wouldn't take many resources or very long to make a quick, eight-level game where you play as Deathwing (the current big bad guy of the next expansion, Cataclysm) and bring us up to speed with his story. Preferably, they could focus on the tragedies of his story and get us to understand his reasoning and motives better. Heck, even get us to feel sorry for him if you can. It'll be something you can play during Tuesday mornings during server restarts. Or farming afk honor in the new rated battlegrounds. Or during a raid, when that pissy guy who thinks he's God rants about how everyone sucks but him, you can hop channel and play WC4 in windowed mode. Score.

I am, admittedly, not exactly a lore nerd. And hardly a Warcraft one at that. I know Deathwing is more powerful than Arthas and so on and so forth. Just like Darth Vader, there were more powerful Siths and villains than him. But that's not the point. Any writer for Warcraft or Star Wars or Star Trek can just create a new bad guy and say, "Yeah, now THIS guy is WAAAAY stronger than the last guy. Trust us." For a more modern example, just look at Dragonball Z. Virtually the entire series was building up the the Freiza saga and Goku going Super Sayin for the first time. That was an amazing and thrilling fight of our hero versus the monster that destroyed his home planet. But after that it was like, "Oh yeah, Cell. He's stronger than Frieza by the way. All those years you thought he was bad? No, now there's androids. Oh, and them? They're nothing. Here comes Buu. Done? Great. 'Cause it just so happens Broli is here and he's one notch stronger again." It just kinda lost steam. It's tough to keep momentum going when every new threat to the world *just* so happens to be a bit stronger than the last guy, but *just* weak enough for you to kill him. How convenient. Kinda like how you always wondered why the Voltron team didn't just form a Blazing Sword right off the bat and end the episode in 3 minutes. That can only go on for so long.

The second major obstacle for Blizzard - besides making a villain we actually care about killing - is to make it realistically stronger. What we need is for Deathwing to straight up knock us around like ragged puppets for an expansion. Like, we don't even come close to killing him. Imagine we're all 85 in ilvl 390 gear, charging in, thinking it'll be like Rag or Nef or C'Thun or Yogg or Arthas... and 10 minutes later at around 75%, Deathwing rears up on his hind legs, spreads his wings, laughs and says, "I'm done with these toys," and then stomps our faces in with one, gigantic swoop of his bloody claw. Then flies away laughing. We need something more "realistic." It would be nice if, for once, we as we heroes realize for the first time we simply bit off way more than we could chew. I mean, we can still die to Onyxia's Deep Breath. Did you see what Deathwing did to the world map just by dragging his tail? You're telling me we can take that down just by dinging five extra levels? C'mon.

Give us a villain we'll remember. If you ever played Final Fantasy VI (best one), remember Kefka? Remember how much passion you hated him with? That's what we need. Someone or something that really kicks us around as heroes of Azeroth and really puts us in our place again. A villain that makes us feel small. I want to step into his lair and feel like I'm in danger. Like when Ragnaros rose out of the lava for the first time and you frantically craned your camera up to look at him, and said out loud, "Oh... shh-" and 39 "whoas" filled Vent. I want that feeling back.

So by the end of Wrath of the Lich King, we'll have to accept that we're essentially killing the Darth Vader of the Warcraft universe. That leaves some pretty big bad guy shoes to fill, both in story and in scope. Maybe Blizzard's attempt to reignite the Alliance versus Horde war will keep things interesting. Personally, I always felt that war to be a bit on the petty and small side of things. Global and universal threats to our entire existence always seem bigger and more exciting than silly racial animosity. I get it, his dad's family killed your uncle's army back in the day and your honor was scarred. Cool. How about we focus on the Gods of the Universe that want to consume our planet?

Blizzard has a lot of straightening up to do. I'm sure most people will be happy with just new content and cool-looking weapons. Not me. I found Ulduar and ToC boring because so few bosses mattered to me. Cataclysm has a good start with bringing us back to Azeroth (which I love). Now we just need a bad guy. Hope they can do it.

~F.

Meet Trajer!

[I'd like everyone to welcome Trajer to the Paladin Schmaladin team! Known throughout the entire community for his razor edge PvE experience and advice, he's joined Paladin Schmaladin alongside Hoff for all of your PvP and PvE Retribution questions, answers and everything in between. Enjoy! ♥ F.]

Hail Fair Adventurers!

Don’t worry, I don’t actually role play, but I do enjoy swinging large axes and claiming to be a Holy Knight! Anyways…

Hi, I’m Trajer! I’m more than delighted to working alongside Hoffahoff, whom I respect as much as a Paladin as I do a PvP extraordinaire! I hope that between the both of us, you all will be able to appreciate the wealth of information we can provide to help better the paladin community as a whole. Before I tell you a little bit about myself, I wanted to apologize for taking forever to post. This whole “Thanksgiving” thing, if you’ve heard of it, kept me a little busy. I know, crazy right? I’m also going out of town this weekend so this is the perfect time!

So now to introduce myself. I couldn’t find a good screenshot, so I made a masterful rendition of myself:

That’s pretty much exactly how I look in game (my boots are darker because I’m still using the Algalon boots!). So who am I? I used to be a Holy Paladin, 100%, never straying from the righteous path. I raided in a small guild on Khadgar since 2005, dealing with all the super-fun Vanilla WoW things like wearing cloth for healing, buffing 40 people every 5 minutes, and speccing into things like consecration. Then BC came around, and a friend of mine said I should apply to his guild on Alleria, who happened to be quite a bit ahead of my current guild in progression – and that’s when my WoW career as I knew it changed. I applied to Premonition later that week, and was accepted. I transferred over, did some SSC, went into TK, and never looked back.

It wasn’t until after Black Temple was cleared that I actually went ret. I was in the “first wave” of ret paladins in raiding guilds, and it was pretty exhilarating. I’m pretty sure I wrote most of this in my article, so I don’t want to bore everyone! I’ve had plenty of raiding experience as all specs (yeah, even prot), and have experienced every boss since TBC pre-nerf. I’m a big enough of a nerd to know the roles of all classes other than just paladins on pretty much every boss. If you have a question about any PvE instance, spec, glyph, boss fight, raid comp, ANYTHING, I’ll do my absolute best to see it is answered.

BTW, I’m on the Sen’jin server (Armory here), and I plan on doing a lot of random heroics using the newly implemented cross-server LFG system, so hopefully I can see some of you folks in the Bloodlust battlegroup! From the looks of it, 3.3 will be out next week, and I’ll be writing a recap on ret changes and things to look forward to once it’s out.

-Trajer

Spec'ing for PvP Ret -- a bit more complicated than you might think!

I chose to write about this because I feel it's something everyone can relate to, but I wouldn't worry about it being too basic. The nature of my writing is intentionally meandering. If I can share a nugget of experience which isn't directly related to spec'ing properly, I will do so. Hopefully you like this style.

The max-damage build: 7/11/53

No, you're not going to get 10k crits in arena. No, that does not make this false advertising.

I'd call this the cookie-cutter PvP Ret spec because most high-rated Ret Paladins use it. It causes Judgement to hit like a truck at the cost of some utility/defense. Why is it so important to maximize Judgment damage? Well, it's our main nuke with Righteousness, our most commonly used seal. Our combat-system is pretty simple, but so many Rets don't use it properly. You see, Ret is an extremely mobile spec.

*gasp*
"What's he talking about!?"
"This man is mad!"

I didn't say we're good at closing gaps, just that we're mobile. I'll use a battleground example because while my statement holds true in arena, it's easier this way. I absolutely love when I'm riding somewhere on my mount, say to the Horde Flag Room in WSG, and a warrior decides it's a bright idea to charge a Retadin:

- If he got a Hamstring off (he probably didn't -- jump like a madman on your mount and even good warriors will have issues applying Hamstring), I'll probably Freedom straight away.
- Judgement as I continue strafing away, kiting him with my higher movement speed
- If I crit, I use Exorcism as I continue to kite. If not, I run in and out very fast, nicking him with a Divine Storm from max range (8-yds) if possible. Remember, if you're in auto-attack range (5-yds), you're in range of a warrior's auto and instant-attacks.
- HoJ him as I run in for an auto-attack (this way it won't get dodged/parried) followed by a Crusader Strike. Then start strafing away again and use Judgement
- It won't always go precisely like this, of course. You'll probably get more auto-attacks in than I described, for one thing, and every fight is a little different. If you see him turn in the opposite direction, he's probably trying to Intercept. Follow him.

I hope some of you don't feel babied (and I hope the rest of you don't feel insulted by me using that word "babied," heh). Remaining mobile as a Ret as you're doing damage is the most important thing a novice Ret PvP'er can learn. In arena, many ~2k Ret Paladins don't know how to use this knowledge properly. It's one of the main barriers which keeps them from breaking 2.2k and beyond. When you're facing RMP and you get opened on, why do you chase the mage? No, try to stay close to LoS and kite behind it. If the rogue follows, you can force him to pop some defensive cooldowns early. If the mage chases, you can switch to him since now he's right next to you. If neither do, you just ruined their opener. You're warrior is still tearing into them while they want to be killing you.

I can go into more detail on this topic, but I only brought it up to explain why 7/11/53 is such a powerful spec. Judgement & Exorcism is lethal. They synergize beautifully with Freedom and make Ret Paladins a pseudo ranged class. The ability to burst for upwards of 10k damage while kiting is a rare one for a melee class. You're likely to see this spec in the following:
- War/Ret/R. Druid -- also viable with 20/51, but there are arguments both ways. I'll go into that later.
- Rogue/Ret/priest -- this comp burns out pretty fast. You need to maximize your damage when you have a window of opportunity. Righteous Vengeance actually synergizes with this team now, even though it can break Blind if you're not careful, because rogues now use Deadly Poison in arena.
- 2v2 with a healer or a quick-gib comp
- A non-specialized 5v5 team
- Battlegrounds (especially next patch when RV doesn't break Repentance)

The Aura Mastery build: 11/9/51

Your mage teammate taunting your enemies, lining up a Shatter Combo under the effects of Aura Mastery. I'd share your priest's personal routine under the same circumstances, but it's a touch too lewd for this blog.

11/9/51 retains the high levels of damage of the previous build, but it trades Divine Sacrifice for Aura Mastery. DSac is an extremely potent ability. Many Rets don't use to its full potential. It can break CC if you time it well or if the other team is just not very observant. Against observant teams, it still gives you a window where you can't be CC'd which is very important. You know you can't CC a rogue during Cloak of Shadows; does that make it any less effective an offensive tool? It's a hard trade to make, but on some teams it's actually worth giving up for Aura Mastery.

This build is best for Frost Mage/Ret/Disc. Both the mage and priest are offensive forces. Once you set up a kill opportunity, popping AM is absolutely devastating. Would you want to be on the receiving end of uncontrollable mage/priest burst, along with a 5k+ Judgement crit? You can afford to give up Divine Sacrifice because your mage survives mostly through kiting rather than tanking, while your priest is often getting hard peels from the mage to live.

You can't get 3/3 Stoicism with this build, unfortunately. It's pretty annoying, but there's nothing you can do about it. You'll notice I chose 3/3 Swift Ret Aura and 1/3 2HWS instead of the other way around. Let me explain. While 4% extra damage to auto-attacks, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm is nice, your main burst is Judgement/Exorcism. An extra 2% haste (65.58 haste) for your mage is worth it. Haste is so important to mages that they sacrifice a good deal of resilience for it. While some priests run crit setups, others such as Hydra (#1 ranked player on arenajunkies) try to maximize their haste. I assume this is partly for faster dispels of Immolates against Wizard Cleaves. My point is 2% haste for these two classes is worth giving up a small amount of your damage, and haste doesn't exactly hurt you either.

Glyph of Turn Evil synergizes very well with this comp. Felhunters are powerful at shutting down mages; the glyph helps you build momentum without having to pop Aura Mastery too early.

You're likely to see this spec in the following:
- Mage/Ret/Disc or variations thereof such as mage/Ret/R. Druid
- Possibly other caster/Ret setups like Destro 'lock/Ret/healer
- 5v5 heavy caster teams, including but not limited to 4-damage setups, who couldn't find a good Holy Paladin so settled for a Ret (not trashing Ret -- Holy just synergizes better on these teams)
- Rets who love to surprise people in battlegrounds/world PvP with an off-kilter spec

The SoC utility build, aka the Guard Massacre Build: 20/51

I have a fondness for this spec that I can't quite shake. Not many people run it because it's sort of niche. Teams with fragile CC (such as Poly which breaks if the wind blows too hard on it) certainly can't use Seal of Command. Command's burst is not as controllable as that of Righteousness. You can sometimes get big seal crits with SoC (food for thought: the seal portion of Righteousness actually can't crit, but it also can't be dodged or parried, unlike Command), but its judgement hits very poorly. This doesn't only lead to more randomness in Command's damage output, but it also means you're more reliant on auto-attacks, CS, and DS for your burst -- all of which require melee range. You lose the mobility and damage of the 1-2 combo of Judgement-Exorcism.

Wikipedia's explanation of Judgement-Exorcism. For some reason I had to search for 1-2 punch instead of Judgement-Exorcism to get this to turn up. Well, I guess that's why they call Wiki the free encyclopedia.

What you lose in reliable single-target burst and mobility, you gain in Cleave (AoE) damage.

That may look like Divine Storm, but I assure you it's Seal of Command. Now do you see why I call it the Guard Massacre Build?

Let's take a look at some of the other pros and cons of an SoC build:
- Forty-sec HoJ can win games in which having a 1-min cooldown would have lost you a dozen points.
- One-min Sacred Shield is amazing. It allows you to ride out at the start of an arena with it up (30-sec SS gets removed if you put it up right as preparation is ending). In battlegrounds, you can use SS before mounting and expect it to still have some steam left when you get into combat. It's great not having to worry about refreshing it constantly, and the saved GCD can be used to put out extra damage. The Divine Guardian talent also makes SS 20% stronger and buffs Divine Sacrifice, one of our most important tools (it will buff it further in the next patch).
- Glyph of Seal of Command is overpowered for offhealing. One Judgement of Command gives you way more mana than you need for one Holy Light. Because of this and the weakness of JoC damage, you generally prioritize all of your other instant-attacks ahead of Judgement. You heal much less in arena than you do in battlegrounds, so this glyph sometimes leads to an excess of mana, but it is amazing against teams with a lot of absorbs/avoidance abilities to turn your mana pool into a mana puddle (think RMP). You see, if JoC gets absorbed, you still get the 8% from the glyph.
- I'd like to reiterate SoC is not kind to any form of fragile CC. It makes Repentance way weaker and you want to be surrounded by gritty CC like Fear or Cyclone if you're using it.
- You can't get Unyielding Faith with this build which means Fear/Blind & Scatter Shot last full duration rather than 2/3rds. This reduction can be pretty important on a team without a double-defensive dispel.

You're likely to see this spec in the following:
- War/Ret/R. Druid -- whether you use this build or 7/11/53 for this comp is preference. I won't go further into it than that except to advise you that if you go with SoC for this comp, try not to force Cleave damage. Call your targets/switches like you normally would and take advantage of the spread damage when it happens naturally.
- Aff 'lock/Ret/healer is a comp I'd enjoy trying with SoC, but Righteousness could possibly do as the job as well or even better. Also, the team would probably be better off with a damage-dealer other than a Ret (hello, WLD).
- I would try it on a 5v5 Cleave setup with a ton of spread damage such as war/Unholy DK/Ret/healers.
- Battlegrounds -- SoC is amazing against undergeared players since it's likely to unleash a crit storm on them. If you enjoy big numbers, you've gotta try it. Unfortunately, when you run into geared players it'll be harder to blow them up than if you were using Righteousness. This can sometimes be made up for by all of the cool utility you get with this build. It's really personal preference or, in my case, what you're in the mood for.
- Messing around in the opposing faction's cities

The SoR utility build: 20/51

Oh, I see. You can't make up your mind. You're the type who can't hop off that fence. Well, I've got just the build for you! (If you want to see the picture I was originally intending to use for this section, check it out. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to get quite the right point across.)

I find it interesting I listed this last because it's been my favorite build for much of WotLK. I gave it its own section instead of combining it with the last one because it plays way differently when you don't include Command. If you only have one build for PvP and like both this one and the last one, you can just switch Glyph of SoC out for Glyph of Judgement whenever you want a change of pace. There really aren't any situations where you'd benefit from having the ability to swap between Righteousness and Command. They're different play-styles and honestly, as simple as our combat-system is, if I switch too much between the two seals I find myself prioritizing my instant-attacks incorrectly. Muscle memory for the loss!

This build plays exactly like 7/11/53, but at the cost of some of your damage you get more tasty Prot talents. You're likely to see this spec in the following:
- Marks/Ret/R. Shaman -- I ran this matrix in S5 and S6 to Glad with a Resto Druid. With the fairly recent rise of Wizard Cleave (double-caster teams), playing with a Resto Shaman is better than a druid. I used 20/51 back then. My bet is most people who play this run 7/11/53, but if I am ever so fortunate to play Ret's #1 comp, I would certainly try 20/51 and, if I had to guess, I'd say I'd stick with it. My reasoning is while many people may attempt to play it differently, Marks/Ret's strength is outlasting the opposing team's cooldowns/burst attempts. The utility/defenses gained through 20/51 help in that regard -- once a rogue's Evasions are down, you don't need extra Judgement burst to kill him. Furthermore, Unyielding Faith's Fear reduction is always nice, but it's less important with Tremor Totem.
- It would work on most arena comps, but is arguably not often as ideal as 7/11/53. If I tried playing war/Ret/R. Druid with this, I would move 2/2 Imp Might into 2/3 Righteous Vengeance. RV stacks well with warrior bleeds and Imp Might is not needed since Battle Shout/Kings is optimal.
- Double-damage 2v2 with mage/Ret -- this comp has extreme lasting power if you play it correctly. I wouldn't play it with any spec besides this one.
- Battlegrounds if you feel like a mix between 7/11/53 and 20/51 w/ SoC
- Messing around in the opposing faction's cities (just be more careful of drawing the attention of guards. You can't AoE them down as well without Command!)

Miscellaneous info:

Well, that's that. There are other damage-dealing paladin builds such as Protribution, but that's another can of worms. No, Prot builds are not unquestionably better than Ret ones as some people now believe. I certainly don't direct this at everyone, but in my opinion many people who play Prot do so because they do not know how to survive properly as Ret. Surviving as Ret has more to do with kiting whether it's ducking & weaving in the manner which I explained earlier, or full-out LoS'ing and forcing the other team to switch to one of your partners. Many people need a more tanky spec to be successful.

Here are a few minor notes I wasn't able to fit anywhere else.
- I heartily dislike 3/17/51. The way I see it, you should either get 5/5 Seals of the Pure and Unyielding Faith (7/11/53), or go for Imp HoJ and Divine Guardian (20/51). I don't think people who spec 3/17/51 properly appreciate Divine Guardian. Maybe next patch they will (it'll reduce all damage by 20% when Divine Sac is up instead of increasing Sac's damage transfer by 10%).
- 1/3 Devotion Aura and 4/5 Divinity is better than 5/5 Divinity if you're not playing with a Resto Druid. Trees bring the same buff and it doesn't stack. If you're OCD and want to see Divinity at 5/5, I understand where you're coming from and will make no effort to stop you.
- Spec'ing into Imp Righteous Fury is arguably better than maxing out Divinity if RF is unlikely to be dispelled. With a Resto Shaman, I'd try Imp RF. Earth Shield doubles as the ultimate trash debuff since offensive dispels remove charges from it rather than the entire thing.
- I'm not a big fan of Glyph of Salvation, but some people like it a lot. I wouldn't suggest dropping Judgement or Exorcism in the Righteousness builds or SoC/Exorcism in the SoC build. It would be pretty foolish to not choose Turn Evil as your final glyph for the Aura Mastery one. For the rest, you can drop the third glyph for Salvation if you prefer it. I don't like it because Ret's usually kiting, often with Freedom, to survive. It also takes a GCD you can use to Flash of Light or refresh a dispelled Sacred Shield. Salvation just seems too situational/doesn't have enough bang for its buck to drop the other major glyphs. I guess it can be worth it on war/Ret/R. Druid, a setup which is sometimes in opposition of the "Ret survives by kiting" mantra. You often survive by giving your warrior Freedom so he can keep up offensive pressure. You then struggle around the arena, snared/rooted much of the time. You do the same thing on RRP, but the rogue is often the target rather than you.

-Hoff

Meet Hofflerand!

[I'd like everyone to welcome Hofflerand to the Paladin Schmaladin team! Known throughout the entire community for his legendary PvP videos and advice, he's joined Paladin Schmaladin alongside Trajer for all of your PvP and PvE Retribution questions, answers and everything in between. The following is part 1 of 2, with the second part arriving shortly. Enjoy! ♥ F.]

Nice to meet you!

Worker. Good worker. Hard worker.

Hey, everyone. I'm very happy to be here writing for you all. I'll take a few minutes to tell you a little about myself since (hopefully ;]) I'll be here for a while. If you're not that interested, feel free to skip ahead to my article! My name is Stephen Smith, and I go by the name Hofflerand on the interwebs. Unfortunately, my paladin in game is named Hoffahoff because when I transferred to a new server, someone had taken Hofflerand! What the heck. Who wants to be called Hofflerand, really? If you want to know what Hofflerand means, you should mind your own business. Kidding; it doesn't mean anything. That's the truth of it, really.

Anyhow, I've been playing WoW since the original game, patch 1.8 -- not earlier than some of you, I bet! I actually loved the play style of Holy. I uhh, actually leveled as Holy. It's a funny story, that. You see, I kind of, sort of ... didn't realize there were three trees. *runs and hides* It wasn't until about level 50 that I found the other two. Now that I've raised your confidence in me as an expert in all things paladin, I'll continue my story. Heal-botting in Alterac Valley, defending our bridge for hours on end and making the lives of swarms of Horde a living hell was priceless. However, it was not meant to be. I didn't like the typical player, usually a warrior, who felt entitled to my support. It was out of spite; a desire to try something new; and a feeling that if a group is being treated poorly for no good reason, you should join 'em (does that make me a masochist?) that I went Ret. In fear of sounding ignoble: my reasons for going Ret were not necessarily in that order! =P I enjoyed the hybrid play-style a lot. I don't know why people had such a passionate hatred for Ret back then because it really wasn't terrible if you played it right.

Yep, my posts are going to be PvP Ret for the most part. Don't worry, you've got Ferarro continuing her amazing job on PvE Holy, Trajer for PvE Ret (I personally enjoyed his submission), and the search for a tanking paladin is ongoing. I love the paladin class as a whole. I can answer fairly basic questions about any paladin tree in PvP, but my expertise in Ret is from years of battleground and arena experience. Yessir, I continue to thoroughly enjoy battlegrounds. My highest rated 3's team at the moment is war/Ret/R. Druid, and it's above 2.6k. I'm pointing that out because if you go to my armory, I'm likely to be on a number of different 3's, playing with friends and testing out different comps so I can answer your questions with an updated set of knowledge. Such is the wonder of having a team in the 5's bracket. :D

I'll finish up my story and then jump right into things. I didn't raid in TBC because while Ret was finally forcing its way into viability, people still hated us. If a guild leadership was willing to have me, but it was filled with players who weren't, well, then I didn't want them either. PvP is really cool in that you're very much an individual in battlegrounds, and you only need a couple good friends for a 3v3 team. I'm afraid I may sound like I'm on a soapbox telling this story, so I'm going to cut it short. I continued playing Ret through WotLK and I still play with some of those who were kind enough to play with me in TBC (if you got Glad in TBC, those you played with would have done infinitely better with an equally skilled/geared warlock). I find it pretty awesome that the priest I eventually played RRP (rogue/Ret/Disc Priest) with in Season Six, I actually ran rogue/Ret/Shadow Priest with in TBC, with great success. I see this triple damage comp as a precursor to one of the most dominant comps of the previous season.

I plan to continue playing my paladin so long as I don't get burnt out. Writing at Paladin Schmaladin will help in that regard, and hopefully Blizzard, or some less savory source (not that I, uh, condone such behavior), will release the Cataclysm talent trees soon. I was tempted to go Holy next season for a change of pace, but don't you worry! I'm far too lazy for that. I tell you this in the hopes you didn't get an image of a frothing, overzealous Ret Paladin from my little story. I'm certainly not, but I freely admit my obsession is borderline unhealthy. If you're of the same stock, feel free to check out my Ret PvP movies. I considered not linking them here because, in my tryout submission for Paladin Schmaladin, some guy accused me of being here to promote myself. I'm not going to alter my decisions based on his paranoia, though. As I told him, I get nothing from making movies. I make them for your enjoyment. Not telling you about them when I'm here to spread Ret knowledge and Ret love (take that to mean whatever you will =]~) would just be silly.

Onward!

- Hoff

Flash of Light vs. Holy Light

Arriving on time but all alone, he realized it was a mistake when he admitted to his guild
that he liked 'Twilight' and they suddenly told him the new raid time was 11am.

With Icecrown Citadel right around the frosty corner, many guilds have dove into ToC's Heroic modes, which offer a much higher requirement for not only gear, but skill, reaction time, and the willingness to attempt and learn new strategies. For tanks, this essentially means doing a bit more number-crunching on min/max values and trying to balance Block Value and Dodge while possibly squeezing in some elemental resists depending on the fight; Not to mention learning new positions and synching up with the off-tank's movements. For DPS, it's cutting the fat from useless +Hit and +Expertise and gearing/gemming up with as much +STR/AGI as they can get away with. They also have to research the fight and know when to blow their cooldowns and trinkets, since hard modes usually consist of very specific windows to "burn" the boss during it's weakened state.

Healers - and more specifically, Holy Paladins - have an all new fight on their hands. It's not as simple as just tossing gear with more stats on yourself (although that helps). Healing in WoW is most definitely a game-within-a-game, for better or for worse, and with the exception of Paladins Judging every 20-30 seconds, there's virtually zero interaction with the boss outside of running away from it. In fact, if there are no tangible movement issues - i.e. Patchwerk - you could theoretically black out the entire screen except for Grid or Healbot or whatever mod you use and just play Click-A-Box. Newer raids like ToC may have improved on this by forcing us to move out of something bad (fire) or move towards something good (someone on fire) but still, some increased offensive interaction would be refreshing. But that's another article.

Point is, the game-within-a-game known as healing has an additional game with itself: Namely, choosing gear and gems. The current debate right now for Holy Paladins is whether to go with the Spell Power heavy build and spam Flash of Light like the old days, or stack massive amounts of Intellect for a huge mana pool and bomb your friends with Holy Lights till the cow level comes home and drops The Grandfather. So which one is better? Which one fits your play style? Which one will benefit your guild more? Well, first, we'll break each one down individually and see what needs to be done to obtain them. Then we'll compare the two with pros and cons and I'll throw in my evaluation at the end and then you can decide for yourself.

Let's get to it.

Flash of Light Build

► What you'll need:

• Red Spell Power-only gems. Preferably the epic Runed Cardinal version; And if you're a Jewelcrafter, you can pop in three Dragon's Eyes as well. Bonus.
• Ember Skyflare Diamond for your helmet's Meta socket.
• Glyph of Seal of Light. Mana won't be an issue in the least, since you'll be spamming FoL. And you're rarely overheal in comparison to Holy Light bombing, so the extra 5% is fantastic.
• Glyph of Flash of Light. 5% crit to the spell you're completely leaning on. Required.
• One of the Arena Librams. Every Holy Paladin Arena Libram increases the power of Flash of Light, and they're super easy to get. This one is currently the best, but you could even pick up this one for 15,300 honor (hey, that's like two Alterac Valleys if you're Alliance).
• The Hard mode Holy/Ret spec. Because you picked up the FoL Glyph, you can forgo the last bit of 3% crit in the Ret tree and pick up Divinity in the Prot tree. With the Glyph and raid buffs, you'll be pushing around 45-50% crit, so anything beyond that isn't really gonna be noticeable. But Divinity + Seal of Light will not only add 10% to your FoL heals, but also improve the heals recieved by 5%, which is absolutely crucial when it comes to Hard modes and things like healers keeping you up through Penetrating Cold. Also, now that you're in Hard modes, go ahead and pick up Aura Mastery. It's actually useful now. =)


FoL healing: Kinda like this...
Flash of Light healing is just like it sounds: a lot of fast, popping, jolt healing, essentially playing whack-a-mole with your UI. And when you heal the MT with Heroism/Bloodlust up, it's just a blur of green numbers. You're gonna jump back in time and know what it was like to heal Molten Core and Blackwing Lair back in vanilla all the way to Kil'Jaeden in Sunwell. Remember, your mana pool doesn't have to be enormous for this build. Spamming Flash of Light isn't a particularly mana-intensive thing. When I went SP/FoL a month ago, I only had 30k mana (down from 40k) and I didn't miss it a bit. In fact, towards the end of fights, I still had about 78% of my mana, so I popped Divine Illumination and went to town with Holy Lights just for kicks. And with 4578 SP, 51% crit, Heroism, a trinket and Avenging Wrath, it was pretty hilarious. That's not to say you should use Holy Lights whenever you want. In fact, because your mana pool will be so much smaller with this build, avoid Holy Light as much as possible and use sparingly.

+Haste isn't too much of a big deal with this build, since your Flash of Lights are typically under a second anyway in raids, and you can't cast any faster than the global cooldown (1½ - 1 sec.) will let you. Generally speaking, +Crit is more helpful with the FoL build. Think of it this way: If a boxer's jabs are gonna be the same speed no matter what, he might as well make his jabs stronger. Not that you should ignore the stat. As long as you're around 650 Haste, you're fine.

Also, as a final note, be aware that this build requires moderate-to-high level gear to be truly effective. We're talking around Tier 9 (232) and comparable trinkets. This isn't a strategy to test out if you're still tackling Ulduar normal modes or having trouble with Faction Champs. Going full SP/FoL while in blues is just a waste of gems, enchants, Glyphs, and time. And with the smaller mana pool it's a much less flexible build, so you'll have to stick to your specialization as much as possible, which is Flashing. The entire philosophy behind the FoL build is predicated on being close to 3k Spell Power unbuffed or with just Kings. In other words, you can put high-octane jet fuel in a Ford Model T, but you'll only go as fast as it's limit. Wait till you own a Zonda before you starting tricking your Paladin out. It's a very risky build, and one that takes a decent amount of gold, research and skill to use, but the reward can be incredible, easily pushing past 12K HPS on any fight.

Holy Light Build

► What you'll need:

• Yellow pure-Intellect gems. Again, epic King's Amber version if possible, and three Dragon's Eyes for the Jewelcrafters out there.
• Insightful Earthsiege Diamond for your Meta socket.
• One red and one blue gem, due to the Meta gem's requirement. For the red, use the orange Int/SP Luminous gem. For the blue, use the green Int/Mp5 Dazzling gem.
• Glyph of Seal of Wisdom. An absolute must. Holy Lights cost 1,274 mana every second and a half or so, so shedding 5% off of each cast adds up. Over an 8 minute fight, let's say you cast 130 HL's. That's 165,620 mana. This Glyph alone just net you over 8,281 mana.
• Glyph of Holy Light. Considering you'll be using HL almost as often as LeBron James travels while driving to the basket, this Glyph is amazing. With the proper positioning, it can end up being 15-20% of your total healing by fight's end.
• Glyph of Divinity. It's like a free mana bar. C'maaan.
• Libram of Renewal. I know, it's sad. A year later and our best Libram is still from Naxx. Going back to that theoretical 130 HL casts, this Libram saves you a whopping 14,690 mana. That's like half your mana pool with this build. If you don't have it, spend the 15 Heroism badges and buy one. There is no substitute.
• The Hard mode Holy/Prot spec. There's a little wiggle room with the last three points; You can toss it in Improved Devotion if your raid doesn't have a Prot Pally in it, or you can throw the final points into Benediction for your Holy Shocks. Or max out Improved Blessing of Wisdom if no one else has it. The point is, dig down in Prot and pick up Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian. 99.9% of your Holy Lights are going to be overhealing, so you don't need the 8% crit from the Ret tree. Trust me, your non-crit 18k HLs will cover it.


...Holy Light healing is more like this...
Healing with Holy Light is akin to dropping bombs that do splash damage - except in this case it's splash healing. While Flash of Lights can get down to around .8 second casts in raids, Holy Lights take much longer but do far more healing. For this reason, +Haste becomes a necessary stat for you. As I mentioned before, pretty much every Holy Light you cast is going to overheal your target. So whether you heal someone for 11,000 or 22,000, if they only needed 8k, then it doesn't matter. However, Holy Light has a pretty lengthy 2.5 second cast time, and in Hard modes, two and a half seconds is a healing eternity. Which is why +Haste is a wonderful stat to look for when picking up new loot. To use a previous analogy, if a boxer's uppercut is going to knock the guy out no matter what, he might as well make them faster. If you can find a way to push your +Haste beyond 700, you're in good company.

Basically, this is far and away the safest build and one that I recommend to every Paladin either leveling up, just hitting 80, or stepping into raids for the first time. It works wonderfully for any level of gear or skill. There's no real weakness to it and it has a ton of advantages; The most obvious strength being your gigantic mana pool. Having that much mana lends itself favorably to being able to adapt to different kinds of healing in different situations; If you don't need big heals, spam Flash of Light to your little heart's content. With raid buffs and other procs, you might even actually gain mana doing this. And when the fight goes into overdrive, it's great to pop Divine Illumination/Avenging Wrath/Trinket in sync with Heroism/Bloodlust and start dropping Holy Light warheads on the raid and tanks every second. Then you can laugh at the Druids, Priests and Shamans crying while signing a big fat check for them made out to, "I Heal Better Than" in the amount of, "Your Mom".

Also, it should go without saying that due to your huge mana pool, Divine Plea is going to phenomenally effective, returning 7,500 - 10,000 mana every minute, depending on your max amount.

Overview

...and healing in Arena feels like this.
Mathematically speaking, the differences between the two are fairly noticeable. So let's check them out real quick from a simple gem perspective.

Your typical T9 set has eight sockets:
Helm (1 Meta, 1 regular)
Shoulders (1)
Chest (2)
Gloves (1)
Legs (2)

For giggles, let's add a belt socket (via 1 Eternal Belt Buckle), and a Wrist socket (1). That's a total of ten (10) sockets to gem, right? So!

Going with the Flash of Light/Spell Power build, we use:
Six +23 Spell Power gems = 138 SP
Three +39 SP = 117 SP
The Meta = 25 Spell Power.
Altogether, the gems give you +280 Spell Power.

Going with the Holy Light/Intellect build, we use:
Four +20 Intellect gems = 1518 mana, .60% crit, and 20SP
Three +34 Intellect gems = 1935 mana, .78% crit, and 29SP
The Meta = 395 mana, .16% crit, and 5SP
One orange gem (to activate the Meta) = 190 mana, .08% crit and 2SP
One green gem (to activate the Meta) = 190 mana, .08% crit and 2SP
Altogether, the gems give you 4228 mana, 1.7% crit, and 58 SP.

Bottom line, you're essentially trading about 300 Spell Power for 4000 mana and vice versa - give or take, depending on the rest of your gear (trinkets, enchants, etc).

Now the question becomes, "Is it worth it?" Well, as I mentioned before, that depends on your gear. Once you get decked out in ilvl 245s, 4,000 mana actually turns out to be... not that big a deal. And since the FoL strat doesn't exactly demand a lot from your pool, having 4k less isn't a noticeable. You do limit yourself by sacrificing flexibility for your specialization, though, so if you decide to go with the Flash strat, know your limits and play accordingly - meaning, don't spam HL/Shock combos like it's free. It's like playing a first person shooter and choosing between a shotgun (Holy Light) or a sniper rifle (Flash of Light). If you play to your weapon's strength, you can be a beast. The best part is, as long as you're geared, gemmed, glyphed and played correctly, either way can produce high-end results, even on hard modes.

On a broader scale, which option you choose may depend on your guild's healing corps. If you're the one and only Holy Paladin, it may be the best choice to go HL/Int and stay flexible while keeping Divine Sacrifice around. But if there are other Holy Paladins in the raid that are already HL/Int, then it's probably to your raid's advantage that one of you (the one with the best gear) goes FoL/SP so you can cover the gaps in between Holy Lights and lay on the sick icing on the cake when you burn the rest of your mana towards the end of the fight. Because of your Spell Power, your HLs are going to hit like Lindsay Lohan high on coke while driving Optimus Prime with anvils for a bumper. Just don't use those afterburners too early, or you'll be "oom" with only a weak Flash of Light cut in half from Divine Plea if you want mana back. So take into account not only your own situation, but your guild's raiding team as well. Being a team player is what killing online polygons is all about.

For what it's worth, the first time my guild killed Twins and Anub on Hardmode a month ago, I was using the FoL build and I topped all healers by a 5.1% margin. Take from that what you will.

Feel free to link this around to clarify confused Paladins. =)

♥ F.

Back in the driver's seat

The Miles-Per-Kenyan on the new Lexus is incredible.
Finally back home and ready to post again. All submissions have been posted and commented on (there was ten, but the one and only Prot Paladin never sent one in), so the winner will be chosen this week and then emailed. I'll update on what's happening after that as soon as the response comes back. Good luck to all the applicants! And much thanks to B. for keeping the site moving along while I was visiting family.

I have a lot of things to catch up on, most of all being the upcoming Patch 3.3 and all of it's changes for us Paladins. I've been watching closely and have plenty of ideas to write about, including gearing up and spec changes. Some things disappoint me, while others get me excited. Rest assured, I'll clean up my rough draft and post it as soon and I get done unpacking.

If you follow my Twitter at all, you know I'm planning on making a Holy Light vs. Flash of Light post soon, as well. Now that ToC has been out for some time, Hard Modes are being tackled, and a lot of people are looking up at cutting-edge guilds for builds and strats. The FoL/HL issue is a critical one, so expect an in-depth post to clarify the differences and pros and cons (not to mention how to do each correctly).

And finally, yes, the Prot guides are being finished up. It's easily the spec that requires the most research and number crunching to get right, and I've yet to find a night I can dedicate to just reading and soaking it all up. I have the majority of it memorized, but it's the final tweaks and min/max values that always end up changing depending on the encounter. When I post a guide I was it to be as perfect, clear and concise as possible. Quality over quantity in that regard.

There's also one, big, massive change coming to Paladin Schmaladin soon, but I'm not quite ready to announce it. It will change the way this site works and it's staff, but in a good way. Trust me, you'll all be okay and PS will still be around. =) Speaking of you guys, the final votes are in!

So you play a Paladin. What class is your alt?

My paladin IS my alt! 1,518 (25%)
Death Knight 1,385 (22%)
Druid 1,097 (18%)
Mage 1,078 (17%)
Hunter 1,055 (17%)
Rogue 1,015 (16%)
Shaman 946 (15%)
Warlock 943 (15%)
Priest 911 (15%)
Warrior 812 (13%)

Votes: 10,760

Some of this didn't surprise me. I mean, I understand why Warriors are so low; Why go from a plate DPS class to another plate DPS class but one that can't heal? DK's are kind of the natural fit, since it's still quasi spell-based and has had it's time in the OP spotlight. Druids make sense, considering they're high-profile hybrids much like Paladins, but more natural at it. I thought Shamans and Priests would be higher, though - like 3rd or 4th. And Hunters coming in 5th caught me off-guard; I guess some Paladins wanna try something new and play a ranged class? This is by no means a 100% accurate picture of all 12 million WoW players, but it's an interesting window to look through. If you guys have any ideas or explanations for the results, fire away. I enjoy theories.

It's like a really pretty sunrise. For casuals.

Few things before I go and jump into my jacuzzi and fall asleep with an iPod:

• Patch 3.3 is still weeks away. Emailing me about it won't make it Live any faster. =)
• Yes, Shadowmourne looks underwhelming for a legendary. But you can't hear people laugh at you if they're dead.
• Patch 3.3 Badges will go like this: All 5-man Heroics will drop Triumph badges (I know I still call them badges, shush). Any WotLK raid that's not Icecrown Citadel will drop Triumph badges. All Icecrown Citadel raids will drop the new Frost badges. Get it?
• Yes, there will be a new upgrade to the Kirin'Tor rings.
• Blizzard's Vice President of Game Design, Rob Pardo, admits Arenas were - and are- a mistake. 'Bout time. Now change the rules completely.
• Left 4 Dead 2 or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare? I need a new shooter fix.

That's all for now! Keep watching for the new writer winner and PS updates! Good to be back.

♥ F.

Paladin Schmaladin Hiring: Submission #9

By: GMP

Part One: Arena, Burst and Ret

Here we go again. Burst, burst, burst. It’s been the joy and torment of every retribution paladin since we had more than 2 buttons to press. And yes, like Jennifer Aniston, it’s old news but yet always remains a popular topic somehow. Why? Beats me considering it’ been, water downed and nerfed, nerfed , and nerfed again, ‘to the ground’ to some. And what makes it worse, Blizzard thinks it’s now cured us like we were some WoW pandemic version of swine flu. Fine, take the burst, I never expected to ass stomp someone within 3 GCDs but for god sake give us something that makes at least 50% as useful as a Holy Paladin in PvP/Arena (or at least 10% annoying as Protection Paladin).

Ok . I’ll admit that Paladins, as a whole, are probably in better shape than they’ve ever been. Two of our trees are now respected viable specs. Protection paladins are godly by their own right as tanks and Holy Paladins have their place in both PvE and PvP. And I will also admit, Ret Paladins, properly geared, can begin to piss off some of the mages and rogues on the dps charts (oh Recount…). However, as a pvp paladin & a former Grand Marhsal, I’m left wanting. Every dps class has been balanced PvP against the massive PvE healing output needed for Heroics and 25s. Look I’m not looking for Mortal Strike, the unimaginative solution that Blizzard has considered fit to give every dps and their dog but at 11 million subscriber ( a lot of them paying 15$ a month) surely the can pay someone who can come up with creative ‘no bursty’ solution. Something that would help give Ret paladins some utility so not to passed over for rogues and warriors in arena time and time again.

Look I don’t expect us to get something for nothing but since we’ve been reduced from ‘ZOMG Ret Pally! HELP!’ to ‘Ummmm target the Ret Pally last’, we do need some help. If that means sacrificing some of our defensive skills (ie DS) or healing skills to put bring the hurt I’m all for it. Give us a ret talent that makes us unsnarable and unfearable while AW is up (ie Beastial Wrath - It might actually convince me to press it before Divine shield for once in PVP). Moreover, we could have a talent that allows us to attack a healer’s mana pool or even extend a casters cast time with a stackable debuff. Shadow Form whatever. I don’t care. There are tons of good suggestions out there. I don’t have the answers but I can only pray Blizzard does.

Part Two: Don’t bring a Knife to a Gun fight,

Alright, ok don’t get me wrong, I’m not writing about how we’re absolutely broken, that our DPS is too low or that we can’t pownzors someone within 3 GCD’s anymore. My problem specifically with Ret Paladins is their effectiveness or lack off in Arenas. I’ve narrowed it down to a one specific thing. Range.

That’s our achilles heal. It’s not that we don’t have DPS, we do, it’s just that before we get to apply it to anything we’re CC’ed, snared, feared or that damn stupid ice chain thing that DK’s do. Yes I know, we have blessing of freedom, we have dispell, but it’s not doing us much good when we have 10+ effects on us before we get 10 feet across the arena . We can bubble but then we’re not really doing damage are we? Anyhow, who blows their trump card 5s after the match starts.

Warriors can charge, rogues and ferals can stealth up to targets, DK have that ‘get over here’ thing. We ret paladins well…not so much. Holy paladins don’t have a range problems because well they get ‘ranged’ heals. Imagine if they had to be 5 yards away from their target. It wouldn’t be pretty.

Once an arena match starts, it’s all about a good start to the match which usually determines it. As it stands we really can get into the fight effectively without facing a myriad of CC’s and snares to which we suddenly have to blow all our trinkets and CDs to counter. Yeah learn to play, yadda yadda, I hear ya but give a arena a good reason to take a ret paladin over a rogue, warrior or DK? We use to have the burst to do some real damage when we finally got in range. Then the nerf bat came down hard where Blizzard said it was too easy for a ret paladin to kill someone. Fine. Just give Ret Paladin some sort of nitch where we could be at least 40% as useful as a holy paladin. We’re just woeful against healers.

A interrupt. A charge. A snare. Fricken rocket roller skates. Anything. I don’t care. I don’t care that were not geting mortal strike Blizz, you’ve already played that card way too much (And no we don’t have anymore questions).

Signing Off