Archive for Paladin
Wipe Insurance: Am I Prepared?
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Welcome to the first edition of Wipe Insurance, Waranvil.com’s new raiding column. This will be posted every monday, so make sure you come back every week for new strategies, tips and tricks! This week we are going to discuss when you are ready to raid. So you’ve just dinged 80 and all you’ve heard about since level 5 is endgame raiding – many people will tell you its where the real game is, you level up and may even do some raids at your level along the way. But entering the current endgame raiding is different. Theres tiers, caps, stat weights, enrage timers, gearscore, jerks, death knights in full tier 9 doing 2k dps (Theres a lot of them…), casual, hardcore, no-lifers, hard modes…its enough to make your head spin.
Cataclysm Class Change Expectations, Part 1
Posted by: | CommentsI don’t know whether it’s come to your attention, but Cataclysm is sliding towards us inch by inch, and Blizzard is giving us teaser on teaser. Azeroth is being re-done, and destroyed in the process, we’re getting flying mounts in the old world, all the classes are seeing significant updates, and, of course, we’re getting new race/class combinations. Of course, the day Cataclysm comes out, we’ll be drowning in Worgen and, to a lesser degree, Goblins. I’m betting we’ll see a fair few Tauren Paladins knocking about as well.
What’s got me thinking though, is wondering how deep the class changes are going to go. Blizzard have given a few hints and tips about what’s going to happen, but at this stage most of it is meaningless noise. That doesn’t stop us from being able to speculate and hope though, right? That’s what these guys were doing after a jaunt through Karazhan the other day:
3.1.2 Releases Today
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Hey all, its patch day again!
Now before you go running screaming into the night and threatening to cancel your account, lets note that its just a minor patch – but it brings some nice changes.
Big General Changes:
- The long awaited equipment manager has made it live.
- Gear now scales SotA and Wintergrasp vehicles.
- Wintergrasp quests are now weekly instead of daily.
A few class tweaks and bug fixes in the full notes included after the jump.
Read More→
Val’anyr Proc details direct from Blizzard
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Last week I went over the stats of the new legendary healer mace Val’anyr. A lot of people have been unsure of whether the proc on this mace is worth the effort and who should get it in their raid. Bornakk was nice enough to give us a good overview of how the proc actually works over in the official forums.
Here’s a quick TL;DR:
- It can proc off both HoT ticks and Direct Heals (as long as they actually heal the target).
- It has a 10% proc chance and a 45 sec internal cooldown.
- The healer gets a buff for 15 secs that allows them a chance to cast the shield on any targets they heal.
- The shield absorption is 15% of the heal, rather than just what the player received. [This means overhealing will still produce good shields.]
- The shields stack. Meaning if you have a 1500 damage shield up on someone, another heal will proc another shield (lets say also for 1500) which would be a total of 3k damage absorption. All heals cast on a shielded target contribute to the shield while the healer is buffed.
- It stacks with Power Word: Shield.
- The shield last 8 seconds and is refreshed on each heal while the healer has the buff.
(Source)
So thats the official word. Now, opinions on over or underpowered?
I know I would be pretty happy to have my pocket healer carrying one from the tank standpoint.
Armory Crawling Discovers Val’anyr Stats
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A bit of digging through the official armory over at MMO-Champion has revealed the stats for the new legendary healer mace.
The stats have been updated into wowhead – but here they are anyway.
Val’anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings
- Main Hand (93-298 dmg)
- 1.8 Speed/108.6 dps
- +52 Stamina
- +54 Intellect
- +47 Critical Strike Rating
- +46 Haste Rating
- +587 Spellpower
On Equip: Your healing spells have a chance to cause “Blessing of Ancient Kings” for 15 seconds, allowing your heals to shield the target, absorbing damage equal to 15% of the amount healed.
Tooltip: “The power of creation courses through this weapon”
Ghostcrawler’s comments included:
The proc is probably better than you guys are assuming (even for druids). I’m not going to spoil it though.
and
It’s our intent that it is useful to all four healing classes. That’s about all I’m going to say.
(source)
I’m not a healer myself, so I can’t pretend to know if this is amazing or poorly done … your thoughts?
Patch 3.1, Secrets of Ulduar – New Glyph Edition
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I don’t know about you folks, but I’m pretty excited about 3.1. Granted, since I’ve rerolled Priest and am only at level 70, I can’t take advantage of the new raid (although I might break out my Paladin for a sneak peak), but one thing I can take advantage of is the swathe of changes that have been made to my class, and of course the other classes. As we’ve said, Grim has also rerolled, bringing in his Mage, ditching his obsession with tanking for an obsession with massive numbers. He’s even gone so far as to respec Fire for levelling. Last night we were hacking up some corpses, and discussing the changes in 3.1, and the subject of Glyphs came up. I was complaining as usual about the lack of Discipline glyphs when Grim reminded me that we have a swathe of new glyphs arriving. So, filled with enthusiasm I headed onto Google and got looking for the glyphic goodness that would arrive with 3.1.
Read on after the break to see what we’re getting!
Holy Paladin Heroic Healing Tips
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Despite my previous article on the healing plate in Northrend’s Heroics, and my in game enthusiasm for getting the best of that gear, I’m afraid my luck with finding most of the items on that list has not been brilliant. Although in other ways I lucked out, so it’s not that much of a problem really! Grim and I are now at the stage of being able to pretty much chain pull our way through most of the HCs, piling through from boss to boss. We might lose a DPS or two on the way, but it’s all in the name of progress. As we steamed through Utgarde Keep today on an easy badge run, it occured to me that its only fairly recently that I was able to heal through at such a pace without running out of mana or allowing the whole group to become dirt inspection officers time after time.
So, read on after the break for my tips on the minimum requirements for healing swift Heroics!
Paladin Heroic Gear Guide – Holy
Posted by: | CommentsSo I was sat around earlier, thinking about what I’m going to do when I hit 80. And it didn’t require much thought. I intend to heal my way to the top, most likely with Grim as the main tank. We know how the other plays, what to expect and so on. Of course, with sufficiently daft DPS, things can still go to hell, but generally we do ok.
To that end, I’ve compiled a little list of instance loot and reputation rewards that should set me up well for the next content patch. It won’t include quest rewards yet, as I like those to be a pleasant surprise, and by and large to get a decent blue quest reward you have to fight your way through about 6 other quests. Bear in mind that the items I’m linking in are all Heroic jobs, so don’t go looking for them in the normal instances.
So, hit the link to see the hottest Heroic loot healing plate gear in Northrend.
WE GOT A TAUNT!
Posted by: | CommentsGhostcrawler has posted… and can you guess what part of it says? And does this piece of news warrant a post of it’s own? Maye not, but I’m going to show you Ghostcrawler’s post after the break to make it worthwhile… the rest of it will be me saying this:
YES! All Paladin’s get a taunt, regardless of spec, it’s baseline, and it’s on an 8 second cooldown.
Hand of Judgement – All paladins receive a single-target, 30 yard taunt on an 8 sec cooldown. This spell also does minor Holy damage in order to break CC and the like for pulling ease
Hell. Yes. Maybe my last post is going to look dated and out of place sooner that I thought. Lets hope eh? Anyway, here are the rest of the changes after the break.
The Plight of the Protection Paladin
Posted by: | CommentsWhen Wrath hit, I was specced Protection. Grimhammer is my levelling partner, and as a Warrior the most sensible combination was to have him specced Protection, and me specced Holy. Getting groups for instances was a breeze, and since we know each other’s playstyle, healing and tanking was very, very easy. Now, Grim is 74 and I’m 73, and I’ve been entertaining the idea of respeccing Protection to try the new talents out. I was happily working out a spec when I had to stop and hesitate…
Having healed Grim as we quested and ran instances, I got a good feel for the abilities that a Prot Warrior has at his hands. And looking through the Paladin Prot tree I felt… underwhelmed, frankly. First, lets address the issue of interrupts. Hammer of Justice is a stun… which interrupts if the target is immune to stuns. That’s fine, no problems there. But for Human, Dwarf, and Draenei Paladins, this is the ONLY interrupt they get. Prot Warriors have 3 interrupts, one of them not even on the global cooldown. Added to which, they have Spell Reflect. Now, as a Blood Elf Paladin, I have an advantage over my Alliance counterparts in the form of Arcane Torrent. So, with the improved Hammer of Justice, and Arcane Torrent, I have 1 interrupt (which is also my only stun) with a 30 second cooldown, and one with a 2 minute cooldown
Hit the link for the rest…
