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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Queue: That paladin doesn't know what he's talking about
by Adam Holisky 
Mar 1st 2010 at 1:00PM
I love paladins. I really do. Back in vanilla WoW they really didn't appeal to me at all. They were just a raid healing class back then (save for the few awesome folks who bucked that trend), and I wasn't really interested in being a plate healer who wore cloth. In The Burning Crusade things got better, and I raided for a long time with an amazing paladin tank named JT (his brother, JT2, was a holy paladin -- they were kind of odd, but in a good way). JT's awesome tanking skills more or less convinced me to switch to a paladin as my main, away from my beloved warrior. So today I'm sporting a nicely geared prot pally (along with a resto shaman). Yay for switching mains!
Taristo asked...
"I was healing heroic Halls of Stone on my shaman the other day. I had a paladin tank complain that I was not healing enough and he was not getting any mana back. Mind you, my healing stream totem and Earth Shield kept him topped of so I was DPSing. He got so upset at me that he dropped group. Where did I go wrong? He was completely topped off at all times. I could not possible heal him more..."
First and foremost, you didn't do anything wrong. The paladin is totally at fault here. At issue is the paladin's understanding of his class -- not yours. The fact that you know to keep Earth Shield up and the Healing Stream Totem down is great. If he's being kept up with that, then you should go and DPS a bit. You're increasing your productivity and usefulness to the group. Grats!
Protection paladins have several ways to regain mana. One way is through a talent called Spiritual Attunement. This talent converts 10% of the healing received to pally mana. It does not count overhealing -- however it used to way back when. So the guy wasn't up-to-date on his paladin mechanics. Another way is to use Divine Plea, Judge Wisdom, keep up Blessing of Sanctuary, and use Seal of Wisdom instead of Seal of Vengeance/Seal of Corruption.
My prot pally is geared in T9, 9.5, and ICC-10man items. I out gear heroics by quite a bit. I use the above tricks, have no problems with threat, and basically chain pull the entire place (as long as my healer is okay with it). As a resto shaman if a paladin or another tank is complaining about my lack of overhealing or me doing some minor DPS, I just ask if they've ever dropped below 90% health. When they say no they realize how dumb they are and keep pulling.
People take heroics way too seriously. It's amazing how millions of people seem to have collectively forgotten that these things used to be done in item level 187 gear.
Carda asked...
"Has anyone confirmed what the cost of the PvP mounts will be once patch 3.3.3 hits? They currently cost something to the tune of 30 each of three different marks. Have the prices been updated on the PTR yet?"
50,000 honor each. You can check out our listing of all the new honor prices.
SirBroose asked...
"Why do we have to wait 20 seconds to log-out (when not in a resting area) even though you can quit immediately? What is the wait for?"
Grae said it as good as I could:
It's a balance mechanism to prevent players who are in a bad situation (e.g.: losing at PvP or PvE combat) from simply blinking out of existence and saving themselves from being killed. Whether you log out or force the game to quit, your character will remain in the game world for 20 seconds after they are no longer in combat. The difference is whether or not you are watching the timer countdown. Remember all those times you got disconnected fighting a mob and logged into to see your ghost on the character select screen? Yeah, you were standing there drooling on yourself while getting beat down because technically no one was at the controls, and the game wouldn't allow your toon to dematerialize from the world until after you were out of combat.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW.com crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column! Leave your questions in the comments and we'll do our best to answer 'em!
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 8)
Terethall Mar 1st 2010 1:27PM
No. The problem with that logic is that the different priests in WoW channel different energies. So forsaken priests, even though for game mechanics reasons cast holy spells, are actually drawing all their power from shadow. Trolls also aren't righteous priests, they channel voodoo from their loa gods. And it looks like Tauren will channel sun energy like night elves channel the moon.
Since paladins in WoW are ONLY holy, it only makes sense for light-following races to play them. The blood elves obviously had a special exception for a while, and it will be interesting to see why Tauren get pallies as well. The thing to remember is that priests are very loosey goosey in their alignments, while pallies are lawful-good holy types only.
Mike Mar 1st 2010 1:44PM
As far as has been unveiled, Tauren Paladins/Priests are following the Holy Light - just their version of it just like they have their own forms of Druidism and Shamanism, even at the very core it's the same religion. Think Christianity/Judaism/Islam. This is in contrast to Night Elves (whose priestly powers come from Elune) and Trolls (voodooism). Races who follow the Holy Light are those that have both Priests and Paladins. Except Gnomes. Gnome Priests learn the Holy Light from Dwarves and Humans. Why the hell aren't there Gnome Paladins?
Ametrine Mar 1st 2010 4:51PM
Gnome Paladins? I'm working on it!
http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll305/chaoswolf1982/WoWstuff/gnomepallymount.jpg
Not my fault Blizzard can't appreciate my suggestions...
Lucidien Mar 1st 2010 5:48PM
The Know Your Lore series on this site gives a great recollection of the Second War. From memory, it skips entirely how Paladins came to be in that war. Note, in the First War, we saw both Clerics and Knights playing active battlefield roles. From the canon lore, (Rise of the Horde novel), we learn that the Archbishop of the Church of the Light in Capital City, Lordaeron, proposed forming an order (The Silver Hand) which would consist of battle-priests who would wield the Light and turn it against the darkness. This order consisted of BOTH Warriors who had a religious interst (e.g. Uther, Tirion) and Priests who had military potential (e.g. Turalyon).
This order began with Humans and later broadened to include Dwarven clergy. The High Elves already had priests of the Light, but that isn't where they get Paladins from. Their reason lies in lore also. Remember, their paladins are 'Blood Knights', and they began by extracting the Light-power from a captive Na'aru, and eventually, through him were tought proper use of the Light. Similar to the human paladin order, the Dranei have the 'Hand of Argus' and other orders of Dranei paladins, and in essence, all martial Dranei (hunters, warriors, paladins) are paladins, they all carry at least a little of the Light's (Na'aru's) blessing.
So why can't we have Troll Pally's? Because they haven't formed such an order yet, and can't exactly join the Blood Knight order. Similarly, the Forsaken haven't developed such an order. The Tauren will turn to the Light as both something they can balance (visit the Elder Rise in TB, listen to the conversation there and you'll understand), and part of restoring balance elsewhere, so it actually (at least to me) makes a lot of sense that the Tauren would want to use direct channeling of the Light to further the balance of the Earthmother. So, they'll form a Paladin order of sorts when they do embrace the Light.
God I love lore speculation...
Valt Mar 1st 2010 1:12PM
I was counting about those PvP mounts just now.
Getting 50k honor at level 40 (epic mount skill) can be hard/impossible/tedious the "easier" way to get the mount in 3.3.3 for level 40 and up is to have these things:
Northend character(s) with total of
-750 Stone Keeper's Shards (188 heroic dungeon boss kills if you dont do WG weeklies)
-or 225 Wintergrasp Mark of Honor (225 WG losses or 75 wins)
=
to get 25 x Wintergrasp Commendation = 50k honor
Note that getting pvp mount at 40 is already impossible because of AV marks.
Now, if you dont have such amount of marks at the time of 3.3.3 you either need to:
Get to 51+, do AV/WSG/AB atleast 30 times each. Now is the LAST changes to do this! After this the easiest way is to just level to 80 and do BGs day or 2.
I cannot imagine how long it would take to get 50k honor at level 40. Its free and cool looking mount.
divinite Mar 1st 2010 1:33PM
They're also changing the turn ins for battle ground marks. One mark of ANY battleground = 2k honor. So 25 BG marks and you can get a mount. That's loosing WSG 25 times or winning AB 13 times, both possible well below level 40. That's not including the extra honor earned from BG dailies.
Aitron Mar 1st 2010 1:56PM
Actually, unless I'm mistaken (and anybody who can correct me, please do so), it'll be very simple come 3.3.3. The current cost of a PvP mount is 90 marks of honor (30 AV, 30 WSG, and 30 AB). With 3.3.3, you can trade each mark of honor for 2k honor points. Therefore, the honor value of those 90 marks is 180,000 honor points. At 50k honor per mount in the patch, that lets you buy 3 mounts and have 30k left over, for the same price as a single mount would cost you now.
I realize, you're probably talking about creating new toons, and you're correct in that regard, but for any low level toons you have now, get to farming those marks.
Valt Mar 1st 2010 3:49PM
" One mark of ANY battleground = 2k honor"
Sorry guys. Last time I heard they changed it drastically to about 150-200 honor per mark.
2k honor comes from "bug" if you can call it. It used same tooltip as http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44115 due same type of name I assume.
Reuben Mar 1st 2010 4:05PM
Can anyone confirm what Vault has said about the honor change? I haven't heard that.
Prinnygod Mar 1st 2010 1:14PM
Is there a possibility of the major faction cities coming under attack by world bosses again (not kited)? If Blizz is bringing world bosses back into the game in Cataclysm, this seems like a possibility. Unless, of course, if Blizz is completely against the major cities coming under attack.
Andrew R. Mar 1st 2010 1:16PM
How does Blizzard handle gold sellers? Do they give them a cease and desist order or do they try to find the source in the game and cut the cord that way?
Notmusha Mar 1st 2010 1:17PM
"People take heroics way too seriously. It's amazing how millions of people seem to have collectively forgotten that these things used to be done in item level 187 gear."
Nuff said right there!
Markus Laumann Mar 1st 2010 1:43PM
True that. Though I shudder to think of running heroic HoR in my lvl 78 blue PvP set...
JBluntz Mar 1st 2010 6:26PM
Yeah, for the new ICC heroics, though, all bets are off. Even in EoT gear, those instances are no joke if you don't know what you're doing. I hate having people in the group who never bothered to learn the strats and do really dumb things like not stopping DPS on the Devourer during Mirrored Soul (which can be even worse if they overgear the instance), ESPECIALLY when you try to explain nicely what they're doing wrong and their response is, "lulz its only faceroll heroics".
Tim Mar 1st 2010 1:17PM
You can download everything at the world of warcraft site. It is one big file, then it goes to update itself. I did it about....3-4 months ago. Real easy.
norcallights Mar 1st 2010 1:23PM
Another way to deal with Pally mana problems when they outgear the instance is to pull more mobs. More mobs=more damage=more healing=more mana. The pally tanks in my guild will always ask the healer first, and if the healer is cool with it, they'll pull two packs at a time.
Of course this only works when the healer outgears the instance also.
Angus Mar 1st 2010 3:55PM
I have another easy system.
Tankadins take off your pants!!
You take a lot more damage, the healer and entire party giggle a bit and you have a new sense of freedom.
Kylenne Mar 1st 2010 7:06PM
@ Angus: But then you'd look like a fool with your pants on the ground.
Lotak Mar 1st 2010 1:23PM
There i was, south of ratchet grinding pirates for my goblin faction rep, then i see in the distance a low lvl horde on an escort quest, so the way i see it, ive just cleared away all the mobs who could interfere with his escort but out of the blue he emotes /spit on me. Now i take offence to this as its pretty harsh and un called for, so i killed the mob he was escorting. Was this the right thing to do?
Candina@WH Mar 1st 2010 1:26PM
Yes.
But on my server, we'd just kill him (PVP)