Posts with tag hand-of

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like why paladins are so awesome.

If healers were defined by their heals, then holy paladins would be the strong, silent type. Our roster of healing spells has always been meek. The three-heal model of Cataclysm and the introduction of our holy power heals definitely increased our selection, but we have nowhere near the healing spell diversity of a priest or druid. We're only now receiving a true AOE heal in patch 4.3 with Holy Radiance's redesign.

Rather than leaning on a variety of healing options, holy paladins like to keep it simple. We're able to compensate for our undiversified healing tool box by drawing on our numerous other abilities. We might not have as many healing spells as the other guys, but we certainly have more utility spells than they could ever dream of. Our "Hand of" spells allow us to go further than any other healer can.

Every Sunday, Chase Christian of The Light and How to Swing It invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. This week, we examine how it feels to heal a heroic in the new expansion

I've been spending my evenings churning through heroics on the Cataclysm beta. It's a bit unsettling to heal as a holy paladin in the dungeon environment, because it feels like you're playing bizzaro-WoW. Holy Shock is your main heal, Holy Light isn't the button you go to when your tank is dipping dangerously low, and you're actually watching for procs instead of settling into a steady state of heal spamming.

Not only that, but we've now got options when it comes to healing more than one target. Our precious Glyph of Holy Light is gone, but it's been replaced by far more powerful options. Holy Radiance allows us to heal either melee or ranged players, based on our location. Light of Dawn gives us our AoE toolbox a ranged option, with a sweet graphic effect to boot. The core fundamentals of paladin healers are still around, and our Hand spells are still as potent as ever, but now we've got a more robust set of tools to handle every situation. Needless to say, your number of keybindings will expand significantly.