Every Tuesday, Chris Jahosky contributes Build Shop, which takes a look into one of the many talent specs available to players.

Ah, warlocks. Before the Burning Crusade, there was no class I hated more. Of course, my opinion of the class did a 180 once I got my own Warlock to 70. This build (and variants of it) is often called SL/SL, because it picks up both Siphon Life and Soul Link (talents in the Affliction and Demonology trees, respectively). Unlike most other Warlock builds that focus on damage output, this build is meant to help you outlast your opponents by mitigating some of the damage you take, while using Siphon Life and Drain Life to get your health back. Warlocks with this build can be annoyingly difficult to kill, and is still a popular spec in 2v2 Arena.

The downside (and there's almost always a downside, folks) is that you won't top any DPS charts when it comes to PvE -- it's just the nature of the build. If you think you can live with that, I strongly encourage you to try this build out for yourself. I'm a big fan. And if you're looking for even more info on it, Zach covered this build in-depth last week.

Every Tuesday, Chris Jahosky contributes Build Shop, which takes a look into one of the many talent specs available to players.

Welcome back to the wonderful world of Build Shop! I've got a lot to say this week, since this is a spec that is near and dear to my heart (even though my Paladin is Protection spec these days) -- Retribution. I've tried to strip it down to the essentials (or what I think is the essentials) so that you can shift points around depending on what you want to do with it.

Now that the patch is upon us, it's a good time for reflecting upon all the new badge rewards available to us in the near future. As a hybrid class with 3 main viable specs (healing, tanking, DPS), it's no wonder that there's a lot of new badge gear for paladins in this patch. Allison did a fantastic write-up of new badge gear for druids a few days back, so I figured I'd follow her format as it relates to paladins!

Holy

Itemization for Healing specs has been pretty solid when it comes to badge gear, and the new stuff is no exception. Just like the Pier 1 set that 2.3 introduced, you'll find lots of healing, spell crit and mana per 5 on the new gear... just more of it.

When I first decided to roll a Paladin, I had no interest in healing or tanking. I rolled one back in the days before Burning Crusade, back in the heyday of the Reck Bomb. The idea of having what seemed essentially like a Warrior who had access to spells and could self-heal was extremely enticing. I've also had a fascination with the Paladin ever since I played Final Fantasy IV (released here in the States as Final Fantasy II). I've had a Paladin in every game I ever played where it was possible to have one.

I used paladins to great effect when I played Warcraft 2, and as anyone who's ever played Warcraft 3 can tell you, paladins were central to the story (Arthas Menethil, better known these days as The Lich King, started out as a Paladin of the Silver Hand under Uther the Lightbringer, the original Paladin). Oddly enough, when I started playing WoW back in June of 2005, my first character wasn't a Paladin (I rolled Horde, and thus couldn't). However, as soon as I started playing as Alliance on a different server, I created one immediately.

Every Tuesday, Chris Jahosky contributes Build Shop, which takes a look into one of the many talent specs available to players.

It's been a long while since there was a Shaman build featured on Build Shop, and I think it's time that changed. I'm looking at an Enhancement build this week that's built for raid damage yet provides a good amount of utility and group buffs. As expected, the majority of the points go into the Enhancement tree, but instead of putting the remaining points into Elemental to buff personal DPS, this build places them in Restoration in order to provide stronger utility for the raid and additional hit chance for you.

Every Wednesday, Elizabeth Wachowski or Chris Jahosky write Encrypted Text, a look into the shadowy world of rogues.

Last time, when I discussed raiding on your rogue, I talked about the differences between the 3 talent trees as they relate to raiding, and the Hit cap. A couple of people made comments that basically say there is no magic number for Hit rating that you need to be at, and this is true. I'm not advocating stacking hit at the expense of all your other stats. There should be a balance, and you don't want to gimp yourself in other areas just to stack Hit rating.

Today, one of the things I'm talking about is the Expertise cap, which should be viewed in a similar light -- the information is there so that you can make good decisions regarding your gear. Don't just run out and start stacking Hit and Expertise and leave your other stats to twist in the wind.

Every Wednesday, Chris Jahosky brings you another page of Tales from the Lion's Pride Inn, a WoW webcomic you'll find only on WoW Insider!

It's been almost a month since the last installment of Tales, and I'm very sorry for the delay. About a month ago, my old computer died, taking a good chunk of the comic with it. I've since recovered, and I have a new computer, so Tales will resume it's normal Wednesday updates. As a peace offering, I've made a new wallpaper based on one of today's panels. It's 1920x1200, and you can find it here. Enjoy!

As for the comic, you can view today's page by clicking the image above, or browse to it from the gallery below if you need a small refresher. Looks like Kat arrived with help just in time to save Byron!

Note: When going to the gallery page, click on the HI RES button in the upper left of the screen to see a full sized version of the image.

Every Tuesday (and sometimes Wednesday, when dealing with broken computers), Chris Jahosky contributes Build Shop, which takes a look into one of the many talent specs available to players.

I'm sure some of you noticed that Build Shop went on an unscheduled vacation -- this was unfortunately due to the death of my old computer. My new computer is all set up and ready to go (and plays WoW better than ever), and so I'm now officially back on the scene. There was a lot of talk in the comments from last time about the RiP (Rogue in Plate) build, so this week I'm taking a look at it for those who are interested.

RiPper builds (like 17/44, the one I'm examining) are so named because their DPS potential is quite close to rogues (hence, Rogue in Plate). It's a sustained damage build, similar to a combat spec Rogue, but because of their ability to wear plate (and a shield) have more survivability and off-tank potential. They're quite capable of inflicting incredible damage, and can be especially nasty when paired with a Shaman's Windfury totem.

The Fury tree is utilized extensively for this build -- points are mostly put into Arms in order to grab Impale, which increases critical damage, but it also picks up a few nice talents for tanking and utility.

Every Tuesday, Chris Jahosky contributes Build Shop, which takes a look into one of the many talent specs available to players.

This week's build comes to you courtesy of reader James (who put this together anticipating the changes to the Fury tree coming in 2.4), so today I'm going to dissect his build. Fury heavy builds are quite strong and very popular for PvE encounters through the end game (the most famous perhaps being a variant of 17/44, sometimes called a RiP (Rogue in Plate), which is desirable for the high damage output).

However, this kind of hybrid build has started to see more use in other areas. While not as effective as a RiP build in PvE, these hybrid builds often pick up a weapon specialization from the Arms tree in addition to some utility talents, making them more adaptable in PvP and solo play. James' build is 28/33, and seems to be based off of the standard Fury/Weapon Spec build of 26/35. They have a good bit of variation, though -- James' focus seems to be on PvP, with talents like Iron Will and Improved Intercept, whereas the standard build focuses on damage output.

After the break, I'm diving into my thoughts on the build, but make sure to share your experience and suggestions with James in the comments!