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Skill Mastery: Blinding Light
by
Matt Walsh
on May 23rd 2012 (2 days ago)
Now, Blinding Light returns in Mists for a second try at making it into the paladin spellbook. This time around, it looks like it is here to stay. If you're in the beta, you can try it out yourself as soon as you hit 87.
The spell itself is pretty straightforward. On a 3-minute cooldown, you can fire off a burst of light that will cause all enemies around you to wander confusedly for 6 seconds. As a tank, I can see myself getting a lot of use out of this in AoE situations, when I need a breather from a pack of enemies that are punching me in the face.
Ret and holy paladins will find similar use for it, whether out in the wilds of Pandaria or deep in PvP. Basically, any time you need to get a large number of enemies to leave you alone for a few seconds, this spell is there for you.
Admittedly, it doesn't have the same flash or zing as some other level 87 spells, but it can very much shine in the right situations.
It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!Filed under: Paladin, Mists of Pandaria
The Light and How to Swing It: c paladin run
by
Matt Walsh
on May 13th 2012 (12 days ago)
I still remember the unmitigated joy I felt, sitting in my crummy seat far off to the left of the main stage at BlizzCon 2011, as Blizzard began to go into the new talent system for Mists of Pandaria and a screenshot of the paladin tree was shown. Sitting at the top of the new tree was a tier of familiar names: Speed of Light, Long Arm of the Law, Pursuit of Justice -- all the names of the various speed enhancements that the class currently had. Sweet fancy Moses, it was a tier of "gap closers"!
I slap some scare quotes on the phrase gap closer because, despite that being my holy grail for the past two years, let's be honest -- the new talents aren't technically gap closers. They don't have the immediacy of a Charge or a Death Grip. But they're as close as we're going to get without some homogenized Divine Charge, and to a point, they will help us close a gap. They're acceptable substitutions, each with its own positives and negatives.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
The Light and How to Swing It: Latest beta build shakes things up for prot
by
Matt Walsh
on Apr 28th 2012 (27 days ago)
There are good beta builds, and there are bad beta builds, and then there are bad, bad beta builds. Build 15640, which went up this week, is a textbook example of the latter -- specifically with regard to how it handles our active mitigation. Considering that active mitigation (AM) is the most important change prot paladins are receiving going into the next expansion, the quality of a build hinges on how it handles this topic.
Needless to say, the next few builds are always going to include some new iteration of Shield of the Righteous, as the class design team works out the kinks and attempts to cobble together an effective version of the ability.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
The Light and How to Swing It: Beta's delicate balancing act
by
Matt Walsh
on Apr 13th 2012 (1 month ago)
Ah, beta -- a time for people to begin jostling and shouting for their favorite specs and classes to receive buffs and improvements, for deficiencies both real and imagined. While the warriors are most assuredly off demanding a free sandwich or whatever slight they're currently obsessed with, let's talk about our biggest concerns going into the next expansion.
Most of these concerns, you can imagine, deal with our balance relative to the other tanks, as well as how some of our mechanics will scale as the expansion continues. And let's not forget that Mists will mark the introduction of active mitigation, and thus it is exceedingly critical for Blizzard to get that right.
Suffice it to say, there's a lot on the line for prot paladins during this beta.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
The Light and How to Swing It: First look at protection in Mists beta
by
Matt Walsh
on Mar 30th 2012 (1 month ago)
Last week, we talked about the first tantalizing drip, drip, drips of information that were emitted in the Mists of Pandaria press tour that occurred, as well as the various media appearances that surrounded that event. Then, suddenly -- beta. So here we are, somewhere between the ecstasy of exploring a new world of ubiquitous wind chimes and rotund, alcoholic bear-men, and the agony of the occasional and painful glance at the beta invitation status on our account page.
Nonetheless, at least we can live vicariously through the goings-on of beta players while we wistfully watch from afar. There's a lot of information coming out of beta, from datamining to the experiences of those lucky jerks already inside, and so we have lots to talk about. Let's dig in and make sense of all the changes that'll be waiting for us when the next expansion hits (thus far!). Also, please note, I'm avoiding anything that we've already learned in the past run-up -- including changes to block, the new and various talents, and previously revealed abilities like Boundless Conviction.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
The Light and How to Swing It: A week of tantalizing Mists information
by
Matt Walsh
on Mar 23rd 2012 (2 months ago)
News hit Wednesday night that Mists beta was beginning to slowly open, capping a week that saw a deluge of new, juicy details from the next expansion. There wasn't much directly said about protection paladins in the press tour, though some tidbits got out that make for some interesting discussion. Moreover, with the launch of the beta client, datamining has begun; as a result, we already have a preliminary list of new glyphs -- which was also backed up during Blizzard's earlier presentation.
Glyphs 3.0
In Cataclysm, glyphs got a major numerical boost through the addition of prime glyphs, which were just straight buffs to various skills rather than tweaks like the major glyphs. As a result, they were easily mathed out to determine the best choice for each situation, which you likely saw listed in any class guide produced during Cataclysm's life cycle. This was pretty boring, as Blizzard saw it, and as such, the whole prime glyph system was chucked out of the game.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
The Light and How to Swing It: Being the main tank
by
Matt Walsh
on Mar 16th 2012 (2 months ago)
I've been watching an unhealthy amount of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares lately -- not the trashy Fox reality drama production, but the U.K. version, which is more focused on the food and, y'know, kitchens. Anyway, while watching the interactions between the various members of the kitchens depicted, it's interesting the parallels you see between the various degrees of chefs and how that correlates with the various degrees of tanks within a raid operation.
Without getting too, er, French, the two biggest fish in a kitchen are the chef de cuisine (or, as the rosbifs may call the job, the head chef) and the sous-chef de cuisine. This correlates directly with most tanking hierarchies you'll find, where there is a main tank and an off tank. (In some guilds, there may be a number of off tanks.) Much like how the head chef is the boss when it comes to what's being served, the main tank is in charge of handling the burden of developing the tanking strategy and executing it. And likewise, while the sous-chef is second-in-command and chief substitute, the off tank handles a similar role within their own structure.
Similar to how the head chef might not be the one always sitting there and actually preparing every single dish, the main tank isn't always the one on the boss. For both, their personal strengths might lend them better to a different, lesser role while the lieutenant gets a chance to step up and carry some of the burden. You see this in fights where one tanking class is stronger against a particular mechanic than another, like perhaps putting a highly mobile warrior on Shannox's dog Riplimb. Essentially, there is more to being a main tank than the jobs you perform. It's also the experience, the leadership, the dependability, and the prestige.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
The Light and How to Swing It: It's the end of block as we know it
by
Matt Walsh
on Mar 9th 2012 (2 months ago)
Much like Commander Shepard and the Reapers, we've known for a long time that doom was coming for us block tanks, some way, some how. The stack has been on the nerf list for quite some time. We dodged the bullet in 4.2, and then in 4.3, the devs called off the dogs entirely, giving us a respite. However, with the recent publishing of Ghostcrawler's Mists stat changes Dev Watercooler, we now have an idea how our most favorite stat is going to be unceremoniously slice and diced.
The changes to block will have far-reaching consequences for our class (as well as protection warriors). Obviously, this is pre-alpha and thus a nerf only in theory, but it's obvious what the intent is here: the defenestration of block to prevent mastery from being the powerhouse stat and block from being the powerhouse mechanic that both were for much of the Cataclysm cycle. And while it's evident that something needed to be done to block in the long run, I'm not quite sure that the changes Ghostcrawler outlined were the best avenue to take.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
The Light and How to Swing It: The case against Vengeance
by
Matt Walsh
on Mar 2nd 2012 (2 months ago)
Do you remember what it was like to tank before Vengeance existed? It's been a year and a half since patch 4.0.1 implemented the Cataclysm. Along with the myriad changes that followed, tanking threat was forever changed with the introduction of Vengeance. What I remember about threat generation in those halcyon days was you'd grab threat early on with an elaborate combination of burst and threat transfers from rogues and hunters, and then you'd spend the rest of the fight with one eye on Omen to make sure that shadow priest didn't sneak up on you and rip threat away.
I know this is a song that you've heard me sing many a time before, but I always found that constant threat (pardon the pun) of your DPSers ripping aggro from you to be an intrinsic, exciting part of tanking. And while I've always argued that being robbed of that aspect of our gameplay was the biggest problem with Vengeance, the fact is there are more mechanics-oriented issues with the design. Fellow paladin blogger Theck (he of numbers and pounding headaches, and the graphs that bring all the boys to the raid) has written a compelling indictment against Vengeance, recently posted on his blog, which has caused me to completely reevaluate my opinion of the design -- and not toward a more positive light.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
The Light and How to Swing It: Resistance, the magic stat
by
Matt Walsh
on Feb 24th 2012 (3 months ago)
Perhaps the most elusive of all tanking stats are the various magic resistances. You can't get them on any of the normal gear you strap to your various extremities, only on some trinkets. Some races have magic resistances as part of their racial bonus toolkits, but these are minimal and don't stack with any other resistance buffs. And speaking of which, two raid buffs -- Mark of the Wild and our own Blessing of Kings -- will increase all magic resistances by a set amount. Lastly, you can buff your resistances by a rather large amount with an elixir.
It fits that resistances are so rare considering how very, very powerful they are. Just the combination of a Prismatic Elixir and a raid buff can be worth about 28% magical damage reduction for fire, frost, and shadow damage, for example. Combine on top of the that the clicky effect from Mirror of Broken Images -- Image of Immortality -- which is worth 40.51% damage reduction by itself, and you're talking a serious percentage of magical damage just brushed off like dust on a sleeve.
A short history of magic resistance
In the early days of WoW, a key gear check for some raid fights was the requirement that everyone in the raid had to accumulate a set of gear with resistance stats for a specific type of magical damage. Molten Core was obviously the first, requiring raiders to grind out a complete fire resistance set so they could withstand the various fiery attacks that Ragnaros' minions would dish out.
This trend continued throughout vanilla WoW to fights like Princess Huhuran, for whom you needed melee players kitted out in nature resistance gear, to well into The Burning Crusade for fights like Hydross the Unstable. There, the encounter demanded one tank in frost resistance gear and one in nature resistance gear to correctly tank the fight. Black Temple had several fights that rewarded shadow resistance, and perhaps the grand swan song of the resistance set in The Burning Crusade was M'uru.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
