The class changes for patch 4.0.1 are listed after the break guys. This is the main systems change before Cataclysm, none of the world itself is being changed yet. This is kinda like when wrath hit, the class systems were changed to bring them into line with the new content. Anyway enough of my blabbing, hit the read more to see the full statement by blizzard.

Or hit this link to MMO Champion for the full breakdown.

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.

What should you run?

The number one thing I can recommend to people who want to start raiding is to know your limits.
The way blizzard tunes instances (Gearwise anyway) is so that it is just hard enough for people wearing gear from the last tier of content (and assuming a reasonable amount of skill). The problem with this is…people want the newest gear and freshly dinged 80′s want to run ICC. If you get into that ICC 10 group in your Naxx 10 or Uld 10 gear, there is a very (very) good chance you will not be up to the minimum requirements for that instance. This, boys and girls, is a carried player. Being carried will not get you invited back to runs, and it will most likely put you on a few players ignore lists, hurting your future raiding attempts – even after  you have the gear to pull your weight. Stay in your bracket and get gear, it doesn’t take long to move up the ladder.

Disclaimer: The badge leap

When WotLK first came out, there were 2 badge types you could get: Heroism and Valor. You got heroism from running heroics, and the 10 man tier 7 raids. The gear you got from badges was on par with running the raid content. These days, you can get a full set of tier 9, and its 25 man counterparts (245 gear) just from chain-running heroics. Thats great, its a great way to gear up -  but I still suggest doing the tier 7/tier 8 raids before jumping straight into ToC or ICC, they give excellent experience in your class and in raiding techniques. Below are the raid tiers and a dps mark of where you should be to do them. These are numbers are based on the way the encountered are tuned and failure to meet them may lead to your raid having difficulty. Think of it this way – if you dont meet the minimum, everyone else in the raid has to work harder to make sure it succeeds.

Tier 7

• Tier 7 is the entry level raiding tier in wrath – as such, the gear requirements are lax and you can pretty much jump into these raids with heroic gear.
• This tier comprises of Naxxramas, Obsidian Sanctum and The Eye of Eternity. To run tier 7, you can pretty much be a fresh 80. A few heroic drops, some level 200 craftables – your good to go. The main purpose for these raids is to wet your feet in raiding, give you a taste of its glory. By the time you have completed these raids and gotten a few pieces – you will be ready for the 25 man version of tier 7 and the 10 man Tier 8 stuff.
  • Fasttrack: The ToC 5 man dungeon will drop Naxx 10 level gear in normal mode and Ulduar 10 in normal. The ICC 5 man dungeons also drop Ulduar 10 level gear on normal. These are a great way to get gear without raiding the tier 7 stuff.
  • DPS Mark: 1.5-2.5k

Tier 8

• Tier 8 is comprised of the Ulduar raid, which is an amazingly well done raid that most players these days will never do. The prerequisites for this tier are gear from Tier 7 or higher.
  • Fasttrack: The ICC 5 man dungeons drop ToC 10 level gear on heroic. If you are in mostly Tier 7 or ToC 5H/ICC 5N gear these heroics are manageable and an excellent way to gear up.
  • DPS Mark: 2.5-3.5k

Tier 9

• Tier 9 is comprised of Trial of the Champion , which gets a real bad rep, and Onyxia’s Lair 2.0 (Which is easy if you understand the basics of movement) . Once you have farmed tier 8 or heroics, this will probably be where most of your upgrades are. As I said before, I highly suggest you do the previous tier raids before this. There is not a whole lot of room for error in these fights – you need to know how to play your class, what your utility is and how not to stand in the fire/slime/cloud.
  • DPS Mark: 3.5-5.5k

Tier 10

• Tier 10 is the final tier of raiding in Wrath, and is comprised of Icecrown Citadel and the soon to be released Ruby Sanctum.|
  Icecrown Citadel is the culmination of all that  you have done in wrath, and the fights are great – but some of them come with serious gear and skill checks.
  • DPS Mark: 5.5k-7.5k

With the badge changes in this expansion, it will be easy to get geared in a matter of time, but until you meet the gear requirements – try to resist the urge to go into runs you are not ready for. Now, I am a firm believer that skill heavily outweighs gear, and that a 200 piece can be better itemized than a 219, it happens. This brings me to my next point.

Know your class.

I know you know your class, but do you really know your class? Do you know what buffs you bring to the table? Is your spec giving you the best tools you need to do your job? Are you stacking stats that give you more of what you need to do your job?

Ok, I’m probably going to catch some flack for the numbers above, but if you are in a gear setup that the instance is tuned for (see above), you should not have problems meeting these numbers. If you are in all ToC 10 and 25 gear and can just barely hit 3k, ask yourself – “Do I really know my class?”. Blizzard tunes the enrage timers and add health around what they expect (from lots of data gathering) players wearing a certain gear setup to put out.

If you happen to be a tank, here are some numbers that are good checkpoints to START tanking a specific raid.Keep in mind these numbers are unbuffed. As you can see, health requirements scale up significantly, this is due to bosses progressively hitting harder as you go up in tier.

Minium Tank Requirements per instance: (ALWAYS at least 540 defense.)

• Heroics/Naxx 10: 20-23k health, 20-30% avoidance, 20-23k armor.
• Naxx 25/Ulduar 10: 23-25k health,30-40% avoidance, 22-25k armor.
• Ulduar 25/ToC 10: 27-29k health, 40-50% avoidance, 25-27k armor.
• ToC 25: 33-35k health, 45-50% avoidance, 27-28k armor.
• ICC 10: 35-38k health, 45-55% avoidance, 29-30k armor.
• ICC 25: 39-44k health, 50%+ Avoidance, 30k+ armor. (The icecrown numbers reflect the current 20% buff).

Be prepared.

There are mountains of information out there regarding raids, bosses and abilities. Videos, if you like to watch – text guides otherwise! Its all out there, It will even be here in this column. Theres no excuse for going into a run dry – if you have at least a passing familiarity of what the encounter is like, it will go a little smoother when you attempt it. Also, if this is content that is challenging for you (or geared towards you) be prepared with consumables. Bring your own flasks, pots, elixirs and food. Most groups will provide fish feasts, but is that the best food buff you can get? Always try to do your best.

Ok,I’m Ready! I got my flasks, know my class, and studied the encounters!

Great! Come back next week when we discuss the art of being a good pug, and until then happy raiding!

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:

A change that I’ve found interesting is the decision to make Tree of Life a cooldown, as opposed to a permanent form change for Druids. I only ever got into the early 30s with my Druid, but the defining feature of our nature loving friends is that they are capable of changing their form at will to augment and improve the abilities of their chosen spec. A Druid that stays in caster form… I don’t really know how to approach that idea. On the one hand, Tree of Life is currently a flat buff that happens to change the way you look, but then again so is Moonkin form and Shadowform. As yet, we’ve no suggestion that those forms are going to be altered in any way. Tree of Life will be something to keep an eye out on, I think. It’ll be… interesting, to see how that works out.

Warriors are getting their Rage normalised come Cataclysm, which sounds like a good idea on paper but I suspect will take a lot of tweaking come the time. At the moment my experience of Warriors in dungeons seems revolve around an equal split of them either having so much rage they don’t know what to do with it or so little that they either can’t keep aggro or can’t do enough DPS to stay on the meters at all. Normalising that vital component is going to take some work.

Death Knights… well, I don’t know how much change they’ll see. We already know that Blood is going to be the tanking tree, Frost the dual wield tree, and Unholy the 2hand DPS tree… so, basically it’s going to be how it is at end game now pretty much. Sounds like a big change, but really most of the ground work has already been done by the players. I’m intend to enjoy the last hurrah of Unholy tanking as I level my Death Knight, but I won’t be gutted when Blood becomes THE tree for that. As long as Unholy keeps the permanent Ghoul, I’m happy.

Now… a class close to my heart. The Paladin. I rolled mine well after they became popular. I started healing just after Holy got nerfed. I tanked before Ardent Defender got fixed. I even played Retribution, despite my deep dislike of DPSing. Whatever they do to Paladins, it can’t be enough. Despite my love my tankadin, Paladins are… boring. That’s it. They are boring. As Retribution, you get a choice 5 buttons to press. The way you decide which of these to press is simple. You press whichever button is linked to the ability which isn’t on cooldown. It’s mind numbing. As a tank, you start your 6969 rotation, and once you’ve started, you’re locked into it until either you or the mobs you’ve attacked are dead. Boring. As Holy, you cast Beacon of Light, maybe Judgement of Wisdom, and the Flash of Light, pretty much for the same duration as the tank does his rotation, i.e. until either you or the group of mobs are dead. BORING.

Whatever happens, I hope Blizzard do something to mix up the Paladin class a bit. It’s referred to as a face roll class, and as one of it’s staunchest supporters, I can honestly see why. It’s just so… BORING! The new cooldowns and abilities that are being added should be interesting, and provide a bit more in terms of choice and rotation for all 3 specs, but it’s going to take more than a few new shiny spells to make the class less dull and listless.

Part 2 will be up later in the week, after I’ve found things to moan about with my Priest and Shaman.

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.

General

• When enabled from the Interface Options menu, this feature will allow players to store sets of equipment, easily swap between saved sets using hotkeys, and pull items directly from backpacks or bank slots (must be at the bank to equip inventory from the bank).

• Equipment Manager
• New art textures have been added for Argent Tournament mounts. Any mounts already purchased from the Argent Tournament vendors will be updated automatically. Argent Tournament mounts with the old textures will still be available for purchase from the Argent Tournament vendors for a small Champion’s Seal and gold cost (standard faction requirements apply).
• Copied Test Realm characters will no longer be copied with their achievement history in order to better facilitate the character copy process.

PVP

• Vehicle health and damage output in Strand of the Ancients and Lake Wintergrasp now scale with the item level of the operator’s gear. Power scaling is now 1% damage and 1% health per average item level.
• All Lake Wintergrasp daily quests have been changed to a weekly format. The honor and Stone Keeper’s Shards rewarded for completing these quests have been increased to compensate.

Death Knights

• Improved Death Strike: This talent now also increases the healing from Death Strike by 25/50% and the tooltip has been adjusted to reflect the actual functionality after the hotfix in 3.1.0.
• Ghoul Frenzy: Now has a 10-second cooldown.

Druids

• Innervate: This ability has been redesigned to grant 450% of the casting Druid’s base mana pool to the target over 20 seconds.
• Improved Moonkin Form: Now grants 10/20/30% of spirit as spell power.

Hunters

Mages

• Mirror Images: The images summoned by this spell will now target the creature that most hates the Mage, and should no longer cast Fire Blast or Frostbolt on targets that are affected by crowd control debuffs that break immediately on damage unless they are already casting these spells when crowd control is applied.

Paladins

• Blessing of Wisdom and Greater Blessing of Wisdom: Now grant 92 mana per 5 seconds to prevent being overwritten by Mana Spring Totem.
• Exorcism: Can no longer be used on player-controlled creatures.

Priests

• Divine Hymn: Healing and healing scaling reduced by 30%. Buff on affected players changed from 15% to 10%.
• Renewed Hope: Effect can no longer be dispelled.
• Soul Warding: Mana cost reduction is now 15% down from 30%.

Warlocks

• Conflagrate updated: Consumes an Immolate or Shadowflame effect on the enemy target to instantly deal damage equal to 12 seconds of your Immolate, or 8 seconds of your Shadowflame. In addition, the increased critical strike chance of Conflagrate provided by this talent no longer requires the Immolate effect to have 5 seconds or fewer remaining on the target.
• Fire and Brimstone: Now increases the damage done by your Incinerate and Chaos Bolt by 3/6/9/12/15% on targets afflicted by Immolate, and increases the critical strike chance of your Conflagrate by 5/10/15/20/25%.
• Nether Protection reduced to 30% damage reduction, down from 60%.
• Sacrifice (Voidwalker) redesigned: Sacrifices a portion of the Voidwalker’s health, giving its master a shield that will absorb X damage for 30 seconds. While the shield holds, spell casting will not be interrupted by damage. 1-minute cooldown.
• Shadow and Flame: Now also includes Shadowburn.

Warriors

• Juggernaut: Critical strike chance bonus reduced to 25%, down from 100%.

Items

• Glyph of Innervate: Has been adjusted to grant the Druid 90% of his or her base mana pool over 20 seconds.
  Glyph of Mass Dispel: Now only decreases Mass Dispel cost by 35%.
  Glyph of Rapid Charge: Reduced to 7%, down from 20% cooldown reduction to Charge.
• Arena weapons with an item level of 239 have had their rating requirements increased to 2350.
• Darkruned Battlegear 2-Piece Set Bonus: The bonus critical strike chance for Frost Strike and Death Coil has been increased from 5% to 8%.
• Furious Gladiator’s Staff and Furious Gladiator’s Greatstaff: The agility values on these two items were too high. They have been reduced by 50%.
• Glyphs
• Guise of the Midgard Serpent: The base attack power on this item has been lowered to balance it against items of a similar quality.
• Increased the health and mana restored from Northrend food and drinks.
• Most scopes now have a level requirement and will bind the item to which they are applied.
• Nightsong Garb 4-Piece Set Bonus: Chance for Insect Swarm to trigger an instant Starfire changed to 15%.
• Scourgeborne Battlegear 4-Piece Set Bonus: The runic power gain has been reduced to 5 runic power from 10 runic power.
• Ulduar 10-player hard mode weapons have been updated to item level 232.

Professions

• Jewel of the Sewers: You can now fish in all parts of the Dalaran sewers for this quest.
  Phantom Ghostfish: Can now be caught from Nettlefish schools in Sholazar Basin.

User Interface

• For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros forum.

Bug Fixes

• Anti-magic Shell: Tooltip error corrected.
• Blood Boil: If no target is available for Blood Boil to hit, the spell will now cast and consume a blood rune but generate no runic power.

• Maim: Rank 2 of this ability is properly considered a stun and can be escaped by Blink.

• Go For The Throat: Explosive Shot critical strikes now trigger this talent.
• Lock and Load: The tooltip has been corrected to display its actual chance to occur.
• Rabid: This Hunter pet talent no longer lists a percentage chance to be triggered, as that chance varies by the attack speed of the pet.

• Divine Sacrifice: Damage done to the Paladin while this is active will no longer cause the effect to break early, and if it is dispelled or cancelled early, the damage counter will reset correctly the next time the spell is cast.

• Shadow Dance: Issues with action bars and ability use arising from using Stealth while Shadow Dance is active have been fixed.
• Tricks of the Trade: To prevent exploits, this ability can no longer be cast on non-player targets.

• Demonic Sacrifice: This spell will no longer appear in any Warlock’s spellbook.

• Swordguard Embroidery: Now correctly increases ranged attack power.
• Tailoring

• Ulduar
  • Hodir should now reset in a timely manner if a group fails to kill him.
  • 10-player bosses that drop Runed Orbs will also sometimes drop the recipes that use those orbs.
  • The Spark of Imagination: Characters that release in part of the boss room will no longer be ported to Westfall or The Barrens.

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.

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?

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!

First up, Glyphs:

Death Knight

• Glyph of Hungering Cold – Reduces the cost of Hungering Cold by 10 runic power.
• Glyph of Unholy Blight – Increases the duration of Unholy Blight by 10 sec.
• Glyph of Death Coil – Reduces the cost of Death Coil by 8 runic power.
• Glyph of Pestilence – Your Pestilence ability now refreshes disease durations on your primary target back to their maximum duration.
• Glyph of Howling Blast – Your Howling Blast ability now infects your targets with Frost Fever.

Now that is what I’m talking about.  Cost reductions aren’t really anything special, but the Glyphs of Pestilence, Howling Blast, and Unholy Blight are incredible. Unholy Blight can be devastating when used correctly, and the added duration makes it even more viable. Howling Blast infecting targets with Frost Fever is really good as well. Widespread plagues, anyone? In a similar vein, Pestilence will be excellent for keeping your main target in the hurt locker.

Druid

• Glyph of Berserk - Increases the duration of Berserk by 5 sec.
• Glyph of Wild Growth – Wild Growth now affects up to 6 targets.
• Glyph of Nourish – Your Nourish heals an additional 6% for each of your heal over time effects present on the target.
• Glyph of Savage Roar – Your Savage Roar ability grants an additional 6% bonus damage done.
• Glyph of Typhoon – Reduces the cooldown of your Typhoon spell by 3 sec.
• Glyph of Barkskin – Reduces the chance you’ll be critically hit by melee attacks by 1 to 0% while Barkskin is active.

Ah. Now here we have a problem. My knowledge of the Druid extends to the fact that they have 4 year old models. Still, from my limited experience, Savage Roar has been given a significant buff with that Glyph, as has Wild Growth. In fact, it seems Druids have been given some pretty good options. There’s a distinct lack of “reduces cooldown” rubbish.

Hunter

• Glyph of Chimera Shot - Reduces the cooldown of Chimera Shot by 1 sec.
• Glyph of Explosive Shot - Increases the critical strike chance of Explosive Shot by 4%.
• Glyph of Kill Shot – Reduces the cooldown of Kill Shot by 6 sec.
• Glyph of Explosive Trap - The periodic damage from your Explosive Trap can now be critical strikes.
• Glyph of Scatter Shot - Increases the range of Scatter Shot by 3 yards.
• Glyph of Raptor Strike - For 5 sec. after using Raptor Strike, you take 20% less damage.

The Glyphs of Explosive Shot and Trap should be a cause for happiness to all Survival Hunters everywhere. Raptor Strike looks pretty good, damage reduction is always welcome in PvP. Not too bad for those “Oh sh*t” PvE moments either.

Mage

• Glyph of Deep Freeze - Increases the range of Deep Freeze by 10 yards.
• Glyph of Living Bomb – The periodic damage from your Living Bomb can now be critical strikes.
• Glyph of Arcane Barrage – Reduces the mana cost of Arcane Barrage by 20%.
• Glyph of Mirror Image - Your Mirror Images gain the Winter’s Chill talent, granting their Frostbolt spell a 100% chance to apply the Winter’s Chill effect, which increases the chance spells will critically hit the target by 1% for 15 sec.  Stacks up to 5 times.
• Glyph of Ice Barrier – Increases the amount of damage absorbed by your Ice Barrier by 30%.

Well, I know Grim will be happy about the glyph of Living Bomb! Ice Barrier stands to be a very powerful survival tool with that extra 30% of absorbtion. Mirror Image looks to be even more devastating with the ability to increase crit chance on the target as well.

Paladin

• Glyph of Beacon of Light - Increases the duration of Beacon of Light by 30 sec.
• Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous - Your Hammer of the Righteous hits 1 additional target.
• Glyph of Divine Storm – Your Divine Storm now heals for an additional 15% of the damage it causes.
• Glyph of Shield of Righteousness - Reduces the mana cost of Shield of Righteousness by 1 to 6%.
• Glyph of Divine Plea - While Divine Plea is active, you take 3% reduced damage from all sources.
• Glyph of Holy Shock – Reduces the cooldown of Holy Shock by 1 sec.
• Glyph of Hand of Salvation – When you cast Hand of Salvation on yourself, it also reduces damage taken by 20%.

Well… this is nice then. Hammer of the Righteous, Shield of Righteousness, Divine Plea and Hand of Salvation all seem to have become a Protection Paladins dream. Extra mana conservation, reduced damage taken and an extra target for the Hammer? Incredible. Holy Shock is a bit meh, but Divine Storm is even better with this new Glyph.

Priest

• Glyph of Guardian Spirit – If your Guardian Spirit lasts its entire duration without being triggered, your Guardian Spirit cooldown is reset to 60 sec.
• Glyph of Penance – Reduces the cooldown of Penance by 2 sec.
• Glyph of Mind Sear – Increases the radius of effect on Mind Sear by 5 yards.
• Glyph of Hymn of Hope – Your Hymn of hope provides 3 times the normal amount of mana per time, but its duration is 50% shorter.
• Glyph of Pain Suppression – Allows Pain Suppression to be cast while stunned.

Good lord. That Guardian Spirit glyph is out of this world. Makes we want to spec Holy just so I can use it. Glyph of Penance, while only being a cooldown reduction is pretty nice since it’s the main Discipline heal. Hymn of Hope I’m not sure about, but time will tell. Pain Suppression is excellent.

Rogue

• Glyph of Killing Spree – Reduces the cooldown on Killing Spree by 45 sec.
• Glyph of Shadow Dance – Increases the duration of Shadow Dance by 4 sec.
• Glyph of Fan of Knives – Increases the damage done by Fan of Knives by 20%.
• Glyph of Tricks of the Trade – Your Tricks of the Trade grants an additional 10% bonus damage to your target.
• Glyph of Mutilate – Reduces the cost of Mutilate by 5 energy.
• Glyph of Cloak of Shadows – While Cloak of Shadows is active, you take 40% less physical damage.

Killing Spree looks good. That’s a very significant amount of time to have taken off the cooldown. Shadow Dance is excellent, as is Fan of Knives. Cloak of Shadows is incredible, and will end up being nerfed in short order.

Shaman

• Glyph of Thunderstorm – Reduces the cooldown on Thunderstorm by 7 sec.
• Glyph of Feral Spirit – Your spirit wolves gain an additional 30% of your attack power.
• Glyph of Riptide – Increases the duration of Riptide by 3 sec.
• Glyph of Earth Shield – Increases the amount healed by your Earth Shield by 20%.
• Glyph of Totem of Wrath - When you cast Totem of Wrath, you gain 30% of the totem’s bonus spell power for .
• Glyph of Hex – Increases the damage your Hex target can take before the Hex effect is removed by 20%.
• Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem – Your Stoneclaw Totem also places a damage absorb shield on you, equal to 4 times the strength of the shield it places on your totems.

Glyph of Feral Spirit is awesome. So is Earth Shield. And Riptide. And Hex. In fact, there is not a single new Shaman glyph that doesn’t impress me. Thunderstorm is a little dull, but hey it all helps with the mana regen doesn’t it?

Warlock

• Glyph of Haunt – The bonus damage granted by your Haunt spell is increased by an additional 3%.
• Glyph of Metamorphosis - Increases the duration of your Metamorphosis by 6 sec.
• Glyph of Chaos Bolt – Reduces the cooldown on Chaos Bolt by 2 sec.
• Glyph of Demonic Circle – Reduces the cooldown on Demonic Circle by 0.4 sec.
• Glyph of Shadowflame – Your Shadowflame also applies a 70% movement speed slow on its victims.
• Glyph of Soul Link - Increases the percentage of damage shared via your Soul Link by an additional 5%.
• Glyph of Life Tap – When you use Life Tap, you gain 20% of your spirit as spell power for 20 sec.

I’ve always been underwhelmed by Metamorphosis. Does this make it any better? I don’t know. The whole ability seems rather lacklustre in my opinion. The movement slow on Shadowflame looks good, and Life Tap looks good as well.

Warrior

• Glyph of Bladestorm – Reduces the cooldown on Bladestorm by 15 sec.
• Glyph of Shockwave – Reduces the cooldown on Shockwave by 3 sec.
• Glyph of Vigilance – Your Vigilance ability transfers an additional 5% of your target’s threat to you.
• Glyph of Enraged Regeneration – Your Enraged Regeneration ability heals for an additional 10% of your health over its duration.
• Glyph of Spell Reflection - Reduces the cooldown on Spell Reflection by 1 sec.
• Glyph of Shield Wall - Reduces the cooldown on Shield Wall by 3 min, but Shield Wall now only reduces damage taken by 40%.

Three cooldown reductions? Not brilliant… but Bladestorm is a great ability, so being able to cast it more often is never a bad thing. Same goes for Shockwave. The reduction of Spell Reflection is negligable really. Vigilance was good enough before, and now it’ll be even better. Enraged Regeneration is even more ridiculous, and looks even better for this glyph.

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!

I’m going to occasionally reference my Armoury in this article, so heres the link: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Nordrassil&n=Kirioth

As you can see, my professions are in a dire state. I thought we’d get that over and done with before we get to the helpful stuff. Long story short, I like healing and fighting, I don’t like cutting stuff off dead animals, and I can only powerlevel Enchanting for about 20 minutes every 3 days without feeling despondent and irritated. So! On with the good stuff.

First things first. Plate is best. One of the greatest things about being a Holy Paladin is that you’re covered in armour, and thus don’t take much damage, and you can still heal yourself for your entire health pool in 2.5 seconds. When I started running Heroics I made a pledge to myself that I would stick to plate, as plate is the best. That attitude disappeared when the Battlemap Hide Helm dropped. It’s leather, and yet its still awesome. I made an exception for this item. Then Dalronn’s Jerkin dropped, so I made an exception for that too. And, well, as you can see, I started making exceptions all over the place. The moral of the story is: If it’s an upgrade, TAKE IT! Don’t be put off by the casters, don’t be brought low by the “:(” of Warlocks and Mages, and Shadow Priests. Or the Shamans and Druids at that!

I’ve never claimed to be an expert on the Paladin class, I’m just an enthusiastic amateur. Still, I’ve been PUG’ing with Grim like an addict for about a week and a half now, so I can tell you from personal experience that to power through Heroics without having to let people drop all the time you need the follwing:

1) You need at least 200 mana per 5 seconds, with Blessing of Wisdom up. If you run out of mana, you run out of answers. The group dies, and you feel silly. Make sure you use Divine Plea all the time! Whenever it comes up, use it. It is your most valuable tool. If you have a trinket that grants spellpower, use it when you have Divine Plea going. Also, keep Sacred Shield up on the tank at all times, that extra 50% chance to crit with Flash of Light is invaluable. It provides a good amount of mitigation as well.

2) Crit chance. Make sure you have at least 20%. Crit chance for Holy Paladins is a very, very important stat. We get a 60% mana refund on all of our heals when they crit, which can, if you combine it with Divine Illumination, make us one of the longest lasting healers in the game. My crit chance isn’t great, it’s sitting at 25% for Holy Light and Holy Shock, and 19 for Flash of Light. My gemming is a mess, so that should be sorted soon.

3) Now this is a bit hard to judge… Intellect. You need lots of it. I’d suggest trying to have about 800 to 900 Intellect, closer to 900 preferably. It increases your mana pool, and your crit chance. A bigger mana pool is always, always something to be chased. No matter how lucky you are there will always be at least one occasion when you are low on mana. It’s unavoidable, but it happens. More is always good!

4) As much Bonus Healing as you can lay your hands on. There is no figure for this, the more you have the better, same as Intellect. When I started running Heroics I had about 1000 bonus healing, and as soon as those drops start coming it will skyrocket. As you can see, I’m looking at 1605 bonus healing at the moment, and once I’ve bought my new trinket, it’ll be over 1700.

Finally, and this is the stat that always gets me, we have Haste. There is a bit of debate raging at the moment as to whether Haste or Crit is the way to go, and I’ll be honest with you, it’s down to you. If you want to be able to lay down 4 Holy Lights in rapid succession, go for Haste. If you want to make your one Holy Light land for a staggering amount, go for Crit Chance. Personally, I wouldn’t chase Haste gear, if it comes on a piece of gear that’s an upgrade, go for it. If you’re dropping other stats for it, then it’s down to your own judgement. Speaking of which, Judgements of the Pure gives us a nice 15% increase in Haste rating anyway, which is just fine for me.

So there you go. You’ve had a chance to giggle at my lack of achievements and appalling professions, and seen how not to gem to your gear! And now, for the summary:

• 20% Crit chance
• 200 mp5
• 800 to 900 Intellect
• 1000 to 1250 bonus healing
• 15% Haste from Judgements of the Pure, and any more you happen to pick up!

Next time, I’ll go through a few builds, and some gemming guides. Don’t panic, I’ll follow them myself before I post them. “Find something that matches” is an attitude I don’t usually take, honest!

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.

Helm Of Purified Thoughts – Requires Argent Crusade, Exalted

Are you seeing that head item? It’s epic. And I don’t mean epic as in “LOOK AT THE PURPLE TEXT”, I mean epic as in “Holy crap that’s good”. A boat load of stamina, a decent amount of Intellect and Spellpower, 45 Critical Strike rating… and a meta gem socket. And a blue socket. I love this Helm. Also, I’m aiming for the “Argent Champion” title, so getting Exalted with the Argent Crusade is only going to help with that too!

A good alternative to this is the Faceguard of the Hammer Clan. Now depending on your gear, you can take or leave the 30 mp5 on this item. It’s a hell of a lot of mp5, I’ll give you that, but the Exalted reward from the Argent Crusade bests it in other ways. The Stamina isn’t as hefty, and of course you can’t gem it, but this drop from the Old Kingdom is an excellent head item if you don’t want the hassle of grinding rep.

Another good drop from our arachnid friends (in Azjol-Nerub) is the Facade Shield of Glyphs. It’s a good solid offhand option, and of course the extra armour will help in those melee AoE situations. If you try and stack plenty of mp5, you should be fairly safe for prolonged fights in terms of mana regen, especially with Blessing of Wisdom in there as well.

From the same instance you can find Flamebeard’s Bracers. I don’t need to tell you that these are definitely worth going for.

If you’ve got the time, try and plan to do those two instances back to back. They’re dead close together with a base close by for repairs. Make sure to pick up your Tabard of the Argent Crusade first though!

Once you’ve done that, nip across to Grizzly Hills and pick these up from Drak’Tharon Keep. The Legs of Physical Regeneration. Mp5 and a very nice bonus of 91 spellpower. Awesome.

If you fancy a brisk walk in the mountains, Storm Peaks have a goodies to offer us. First are the Skywall Striders. You can get these from Halls of Lightning, along with the Winged Talisman. The Striders are excellent, providing a good amount of spellpower, Intellect and Critical Strike Rating. And lets face it, we luuuurve Critical Strike. The Winged Talisman I wasn’t so sure about at first, but that mp5 is too good to pass up, not the mention the amount of spellpower you get on use. It’s worth mentioning while the Skywall Striders are a very good option, you can also get these, the Sabatons of Erekem. You’ll find them in Violet Hold.

From there, try and move onto the Halls of Stone. From there you can get another pair of legs if luck hasn’t been with you so far. Shardling Legguards are really good. They lack the mp5 you get from the Legs of Physical Regeneration, but they have a socket and a decent amount of haste rating on them. Also, you can get the Patina-Coated Breastplate from Trash mobs in there. If the drop rate from trash is anything like the normal instances, you’ll end up with about 5 by the time you leave! Lastly from the Halls of Stone we have this: the Spark of Life. I don’t know about you, but the prospect of gaining mana from just doing my job is excellent.

We’re going to take a detour to the Nexus for this next one. The Amulet of Dazzling Light is a fantastic neck item to aim for, and drops from Anomolous, who as far as I know is a breeze to down. From the same instance we have Grips of Sculptured Icicles, a good pair of gloves, and a very decent waist item as well, the Girdle of Ice.

Lets move onto the Oculus, shall we? Now, from here we get a whole load of excellent gear. First up, contenders for that leg slot, Leggings of Protective Auras. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how good these are. We also have the Catalytic Bands, the first plate wrist item I came across in my trawl of information on healing plate and a good alternative to Flamebeard’s Bracers. Again, if you can’t get hold of those epic wrist items, these are excellent. The crit rating is especially nice on these, a lot higher than I would have expected given the other stats. The last thing to look for here is the Ancient Dragon Spirit Cape.

Let’s take a look at the Utgarde instances now. They have some fairly tempting things to offer, after all! We’ll start in the Keep, where straight away you can find two awesome rings. Annhylde’s Ring is the one that caught my eye. It’s just good. Really good. The second is the Band of Enchanted Growth. Some of the stats aren’t as good as Annhylde’s, but it does have some decent mp5 on it. Oh yeah, and let me once again mention the Argent Crusade here… If you’ve got exalted, and of course you will have due to that awesome helm, pick yourself up one of these beauties: Signet of Hopeful Light.

Onto Utgarde Pinnacle and… wow, don’t even know where to start here! For another chest option, quite probably the best chest option actually, we have the Ornamented Plate Regalia. Excellent stuff. We also have wrist and shoulders options out this instance as well, in the form of the Bands of Fading Light and the Ferocious Pauldrons of the Rhino. Got sockets?

If you’re still in the market for shoulders, these are from Caverns of Time, the Culling of Stratholme. The Pauldrons of Destiny are just damn good, no two ways about it.

Finally, Main Hands. First up, the Gavel of the Fleshcrafter, again from Stratholme. Great spellpower, mp5, a decent amount of stamina. From Drak’tharon we have the Cursed Lich Blade, which is quite clearly a weapon meant for offensive spell casters, but if needs be it’s Intellect and Spellpower are not to be overlooked. Next, from our old favourite the Nexus, we move onto my favourite prospective mainhand, the War Mace of Unrequited Love. It lacks stamina and crit rating, but the 408 spellpower sends it hurtling to the top of the list for outright healing power. The War Mace is my favourite out of all these, but I think I’m just a sucker for shiny things.

And that, lads and lasses, is your lot!

I’ll be dealing with Tier set, badge loot and 10/25 man loot in the next post, where we’ll hopefully find a more compelling mainhand. If you’re lucky I might even stop being so lazy and go into quest rewards as well!

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.

Divine Shield: Penalty changed so that all damage done is reduced by 50% instead of a attack speed penalty.

1) Divine Protection no longer causes an attack penalty. Divine Shield’s penalty was changed to 50% less damage done by the paladin.

2) Sacred Duty: This Protection talent no longer affects the attack penalty of Divine Shield and Divine Protection, but grants additional bonus Stamina.

3) Avenging Wrath, Divine Shield, Divine Protection, and Hand of Protection have a shared, 30-second cooldown. The Forbearance effect is no longer triggered by Avenging Wrath.

CLARIFICATION: You can use Hand of Protection while under the shared cooldown. You just can’t use it on yourself.

4) Judgement of Wisdom now returns a percentage of base mana instead of a percentage of max mana.

5) All mana drain effects now return a percentage of max enemy mana (making mana drains less punishing to paladins and other characters without large mana pools.)

6) Judgements of the Pure: This Holy talent now increases the damage done by Seals and Judgements in addition to its current effects.

Some of these changes are minor nerfs, others are pretty good. All in all, nice and balanced.

Oh, and we got a taunt.