The Light and How to Swing It: A look at what's in store for prot in 5.4

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 9 other people, obsessing over his hair, and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense.

The first big 5.4 patch last week didn't have much of anything for prot, and despondently many of us found ourselves looking over what were primary pvp-oriented or retribution-focused changes. However, finally, our time has come! Wednesday night a whole slate of changes hit the PTR, with all sorts of eyebrow-raising additions for the tankadins out there. Let's dig in and talk about what's on our plates for the next patch as of the latest build.

The Sacred Shield one-two

It's still very (almost embryonically) early in the patch development process, but there's already been a pretty key reversal in what was an exciting change. A reversal which I'm really hoping does not stick.

The new build Wednesday night introduced a baseline Sacred Shield, renamed to our old friend Holy Shield, and a new, completely different Sacred Shield talent. Blizzard is apparently (and rightfully) concerned that since the start of the expansion, protection paladins by and large have chosen only Sacred Shield as their third-tier talent and completely avoided Eternal Flame and Selfless Healer like a warrior avoiding a bath.

However, late Thursday night, Rygarius posted on the forums that the developers were likely going to revert this change, bringing back the old/current Sacred Shield, and instead electing to make the other two talents in the tier more attractive for prot. I am disappointed, but I see their point, especially about the threat of having to nerf prot for getting a free talent (sort of).

By itself, the new (now dead) Sacred Shield wasn't anything amazing, but if paired with the gift of a free new mitigation spell, it would have given protection paladins a major buff going into the next patch. That obviously would have not gone over well.

Now, if the developers want to make EF and SH more attractive, they have their work cut out for them. The major reason we like Word of Glory so much is that's like a cooldown that you pop when your health dips and you need a boost back into safer territory. A heal-over-time doesn't have the same impact, and suffers from the same problems that most HoTs have by often being lost in overheals. Likewise, Selfless Healer is just a weak talent, the heal it allows isn't that great, and it eats up a GCD whereas WoG does not.

One way I think they could at least make SH interesting for tanks is to give it a protection-only hook where Flash of Light would apply an absorption shield instead of a heal. Make it weaker than the absorption offered by (the random) Sacred Shield, of course, because choosing when to front-load an absorb would be really powerful in of itself. Especially on any fight where there is a major, telegraphed burst. This would also avoid any redundancy with Word of Glory, since SH you would use preemptively and WoG reactively.

I think that could make the talent very situationally attractive. It's definitely a functionality that's missing in the tier!

Other major changes

Sanctified Wrath was changed to reduce the cooldown of Judgment by 100% (up from 50%). So basically, for the 30 seconds that Avenging Wrath is up, thanks to the talent, you can spam Judgment with every GCD. That sounds really boring, doesn't it? I doubt this will be the final iteration of this talent change.

Glyph of the Alabaster Shield (which is one of those glyphs you'll find on just about every protection paladin) is being nerfed from 20% to 10%. I'm sure they're concerned that it's considered near-mandatory.

And speaking of Shield of the Righteous, the T16 two-piece set bonus that would make using Bastion of Glory stacks generate holy power has been changed to the four-piece bonus. This is to prevent crafty tanks from pairing the T15 two-piece and the (old) T16 two-piece to basically keep the 40% block chance buff of the former up indefinitely. It's good they nipped that in the bud as quickly as they did.

Perhaps one of the 5.4 changes I'm most excited about, Reckoning (and other taunts) will now give the taunting paladin a 200% threat boost when they take over the boss. Ideally this will prevent the current situation where tank A is taunting a boss away from tank B who is drowning in free attack power from Vengeance, and then both tanks have to struggle to avoid B ripping the boss back from A over the next few seconds. Always a huge pain.

Personally I find myself using a cancel/apply Righteous Fury keybind these days to cancel the buff whenever my co-tank taunts off of me, so I can continue with my attacks keep the damage going without accidentally taking the boss back and blowing myself up. It's really not fun at all, so this is a great change for all tanks.

Proving our worth

Not directly a change to paladin tanks, but I think these are just as exciting and relevant to our interests. From earlier columns you may have noticed that a major bugbear of mine has been all the new stuff that Blizzard has added this expansion that tanks have to switch to a DPS offspec to do properly.

Yet we'll soon have the Proving Grounds to play around with, which has a mode specifically for tanks, and this is very awesome.

Proving Grounds will, I assume, be a great way for new tanks to practice skills like maintaining aggro and protecting their fellow groupmates -- essential for any new tank to learn -- in a high pressure environment. Perfect for stretching your wings for the first time without the threat of angry strangers just waiting to pounce with judgment. I'm glad Blizzard is adding this resource for all the new tanks out there and who have yet to pick up a shield for the first time.

For established tanks, Proving Grounds will give us a chance to flex our egos the same way that Brawler's Guild has allowed DPS to strut their stuff these past few months. And, unlike Brawler's Guild, will be able to enjoy the new feature in our preferred/main spec. As someone who is definitely not 100% comfortable/competent masquerading as DPS, I'm relishing the opportunity to really dive into this new content with the gameplay that I love to engage in. The Light and How to Swing It shows paladin tanks how to combat the Sha in the strange new land of Pandaria. Try out the new control gearing strategy, learn how to make the most of the new active mitigation system on your tankadin, and check out how to deck out your fresh 90 tank to get ready for any raids! Tags: featured, guide-to-paladins, guide-to-pallies, guide-to-pallys, paladin-guide, paladin-info, paladin-protection-the-light-and-how-to-swing-it, paladin-talents, pally-guide, pally-info, pally-talents, patch-5.4, protection-paladin-the-light-and-how-to-swing-it, wow-paladin, wow-paladin-info, wow-paladins, wow-pally, wow-pally-info

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The Light and How to Swing It: Retribution in 5.4

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions!

Earlier last week we got our first glimpse of the 5.4 PTR as Wowhead and MMO-Champion mined a massive amount of data from the latest update to the test realms. With new features like virtual realms, proving grounds, and flex raids, it's easy to be overwhelmed. As for myself, the first thing I did was hit Ctrl+F and searched for "Paladin" to see what, if any, changes we were due. Truth be told, I wasn't expecting a whole lot of changes for retribution -- we seem to be in a nice place, comfortably in the middle of the pack for DPS with heaps of utility to boot. Boy, was I mistaken.

Before we get into the discussion, do remember that none of these proposed changes are finalized. The "test realms" aren't named that by chance; the developers want to see how things like this play out on a large scale, larger than their internal testing can accommodate, and sift through player feedback from the community. So while we shouldn't get too worked up over one thing or another on the PTR, it's always beneficial to react to changes, at least in a civilized and logical manner.

The small potatoes

If the 5.4 patch notes were a meal, then the following would be the mashed potatoes -- hearty, delicious, but ultimately not the focus of the plate:

Turn Evil now has a 15-second cooldown. (Note: Glyph of Turn Evil will be redesigned and noted in a future PTR update.)Burden of Guilt has been replaced with a new talent called Evil is a Point of View, which allows the Paladin to use Turn Evil on players and beasts.Hand of Purity now reduces damage taken from harmful periodic effects by 80% (up from 70%) and reduces damage taken from harmful periodic effects that cannot be prevented by immunities by 40% (up from 0%).Unbreakable Spirit has been simplified. It now reduces the cooldown on Divine Shield, Divine Protection, and Lay on Hands by 50%.
Not being a PvPer in any sense of the word, I almost forgot we had Turn Evil in the first place. With the change to Burden of Guilt we'll have an alternative CC to Repentance. Options are always good, and it's nice that they're breathing new life into an old spell, but did they have to name the talent "Evil is a Point of View"? While the quote apparently comes from an Anne Rice novel (and countless people before it, I'm sure), all I can think about is that it's one word away from quoting Palpatine from Revenge of the Sith and I'd rather try to forget that experience.

Hand of Purity's alteration is interesting but it seems a bit overly complex. How easy will it be for the player to determine what damage can be mitigated by immunities and what can't? Will Blizzard finally add a little icon into the Dungeon Journal indicating which abilities go through immunities? Something like that would have been nice to have from the beginning.

The simplification of Unbreakable Spirit is welcome, especially considering how impossible it proved to halve Divine Protection's cooldown given its base cooldown of 1 minute. If you claim you were able to spend fifty holy power over the course of thirty seconds without cheating with Holy Avenger, I think some physicists would like to talk to you about breaking a few laws.

The meat of it all

And now we come to the main attraction, the stars of the show, the tender and juicy chateaubriand of the paladin patch note platter: Inquisition and Guardian of Ancient Kings.

Inquisition now lasts 20 seconds per charge of Holy Power consumed, up from 10 seconds.Glyph of Inquisition has been redesigned. The glyph now increases the duration of Inquisition by 30 seconds (up to a maximum of 2 minutes) each time the Paladin lands a killing blow on targets that yield experience or honor.
I am certain that a great many of you are excited about the idea that Inquisition's maximum duration could be doubled. Such a move might even get more players to try out ret if our "maintenance buff" was scaring them off. And since we would theoretically only have to spend half as much holy power on Inquisition as we are now, we could cast more Templar's Verdicts and Divine Storms -- an additional one TV or DS every minute, to be exact. Doing a bit of napkin math, it would only be a very slight DPS increase, but free damage is free damage, right?

On one hand, I'm all for the change to the glyph -- the current Glyph of Inquisition sees about as much use as a taunt in LFR, so making it something players actually might use is obviously a plus. It also makes Inquisition easier to maintain for shorter PvE content and during PvP combat (if it's not dispelled immediately after application, that is).

On the other, I can't bring myself to appreciate the change to the base spell. Weaving Inquisition refreshes into your rotation adds variety and a tiny bit of skill to pull off well, which presents itself as a mechanism for someone who wants to excel at ret DPS to do so. Doubling Inquisition's effective duration reduces the contribution of such skill to your overall DPS.

Ideally, I'd say let's split the difference: change the glyph but leave Inquisition itself alone. It seems to me that most people who truly abhor our holy damage buff are running shorter content like quests, dungeons, scenarios, battlegrounds, and arenas, where time outside of combat (or out of melee range) is more significant than a boss encounter in a raid environment, making Inquisition harder to maintain without a steady stream of holy power. The glyph would be a nice remedy for this problem.

I do recognize, however, that my opinion on this matter is a very unpopular one in the paladin community at large, so if push comes to shove I'll just grit my teeth and slowly turn into that guy that yells at joggers in the park about how everything was better back when you had to trudge barefoot uphill in the snow just to get enough holy power to cast Inquisition.

My other bone to pick is with the reduction of our longest cooldown, Guardian of Ancient Kings.

Guardian of the Ancient Kings (Retribution version) now has a reduced cooldown of 3 minutes, down from 5 minutes, and the maximum number of stacks has been reduced to 12.
The ability itself isn't getting any stronger by being available more often; as you can see, they reduced both the cooldown and number of stacks by 40%. Conceptually, having GANK available more often could make our play a bit more engaging, and getting to see the golden shuffler scoot around more would be nice.

As it stands right now, I will pop GANK and Avenging Wrath together at the start of the fight, then five minutes later I will see GANK come back off cooldown, wait another minute for AW to come up again, then tie them together once more. With a lower cooldown, I'm afraid that it would result in more DPS if we simply macro the abilities together, delaying AW until GANK would be back up, and pushing an AW cast or two off the table for the encounter in the process.

We could, of course, use them separately and only tie them together when their cooldowns align, but GANK isn't a very independent ability. Most of the time it is active we are slowly gaining stacks of Ancient Power, but we don't hold onto a full stack for very long. So what do we stand to gain by turning two buttons into one except a blander playstyle?

In the end, none of this is set in stone. I'm not too upset about GANK or Inq or the dumb name they picked for Burden of Guilt's replacement because it's not final. I have faith in the blues to listen to feedback, and use their experience to give us a quality product. But as a columnist here at WoW Insider, and as a paladin player in general, I feel it's my duty to complain in some regard. The Light and How to Swing It teaches you the ins and outs of retribution paladins, from Ret 101 and how to gem, enchant and reforge your retadin, to essential ret pally addons. Tags: featured, guide-to-paladins, guide-to-pallies, guide-to-pallys, paladin-5.4, paladin-guide, paladin-info, paladin-talents, pally-guide, pally-info, pally-talents, patch-5.4, retribution-paladin-the-light-and-how-to-swing-it, wow-paladin, wow-paladin-info, wow-paladins, wow-pally, wow-pally-info

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Fearsome paladin collective crusades for the Light

Knights in shining armor or divisive zealots? The roleplay opportunities for a group of paladins in Azeroth are fierce, either way you look at it. The catch is how they are perceived and manage to interact with their fellow players. Are they protectors of the faith and guardians of fellow citizens, or a fearsome hammer of intolerance to be brought down upon anything that deviates?

Amelas Langston of Caelestis Templares, a guild of paladins on Silver Hand (US-RP), walks that line regularly with a guild of roleplayers who've become known for their devotion to eradicating any opposition to the Light. Has its hardline approach made pariahs of its players? Or has its stalwart stand against the forces of evil made heroes and saviors of its characters?

WoW Insider: Most readers will probably assume that a guild of paladins is portraying a knightly, noble mission, but in fact, your roleplay focus is quite different. A recent recruiting post on the realm forums noted that many of your members roleplay "gruff, jackass characters," and the words "zealotry" and "intolerance" have been used to described the group's approach to its roleplay. Does your mission cast guild members in danger of becoming pariahs among the Silver Hand RP community?

Amelas: It's a fair thing to assume. I've found that the majority of people that role play as paladins have that sort of a character. The Caelestis Templares, however, are dedicated to a goal, that goal being the eradication of all that stands in opposition to the Light. Intolerance and zeal are actually key virtues of our guild, so to describe us as zealots would be pretty accurate.

If our characters encounter something that the Order dictates is heretical, then they are obligated to take action against it. It becomes a bit of a drag when the actions of our characters make people think that the player behind them are as hard and unfriendly as they are.
Main character Amelas Langston, human protection paladin
Guild Caelestis Templares
Realm Silver Hand (US-RP)

Combined with activities such as preaching in Stormwind and Goldshire, do you find that your characters' intolerant attitudes lead to difficult relations with other players and guilds on the realm?

Preaching usually just brings hecklers out of the woodwork, but our penchant for attacking death knights and warlocks on sight has led to some issues. Our style of play is sometimes seen as pushy since we tend to start a lot of fights. All members are told, however, that if somebody makes it known that they do not want to participate then they are to drop it and go their separate ways.

Of those that enjoy interacting with us, there are a great many ways that somebody can be deemed a heretic in the eyes of the Order, so we end up making a lot of enemies. Your web site is absolutely gorgeous! That said, I must admit that the sheer number of rules and regulations is more than a little intimidating. Do members have to learn and follow all of its guidelines?

Yes, all members of the guild must adhere to all laws of the Order. Every law, just like anything with a list of rules, is there because somebody did it in the past. Violation of the primary laws are grounds for immediate dismissal. Any violation of the many secondary laws is typically taken on a case by case basis, and most often the offending character is given some act of penance and one of the officers will have a discussion about it with the player. Most of the secondary rules are just common sense and good roleplay issues that, chances are, if a person makes it into the guild, we assume that they already are following most of the rules on the books.

How does CT interact with its sister guild, Caelestis Inquisitores? What are the differences between the two groups?

If the Templares are the right hand, then the Inquisitores are the left. The Templares' primary goal is to do battle with heretics, but how do you know who is a demon worshipping fiend and who is just another bystander?

The Inquisitores are mainly an information gathering group that passes along heretic identities, infiltrates hostile guilds, and finds all other sorts of inventive ways to point the strength of the Templares in the right direction. Tell us about any particular traditions or holidays you follow as a guild.

As a guild, we have only two traditions, really. Our weekly meetings have a strict dress code, but two times a year we break that. We hold a Halloween meeting where everybody is supposed to come in costume, and we all vote for who has the best. The top three costumes win sums of gold as prizes. We also hold an April Fool's meeting where we will change up our tabard as well as our playstyle along whatever theme the officers come up that year. Both of them are an opportunity to get away from the strict rules and act ridiculous in character.

Does the group's roleplay focus have an effect on how you approach game content? For example, are there certain PvE storylines or content you avoid because it's contrary to with the mission of the guild?

We never tell our members that they cannot participate in any game content, but there are some that decline to do certain things that go against our Order's beliefs. For example, there are a few members right now that refuse to participate in the troll rebellion quests, because aiding any members of the Horde would be seen as heresy.

Other events in the game, however, play right into our guild's purpose. The Scourge invasion events before the opening of Naxxramas and before Wrath of the Lich King were fantastic for us. During the entire event, all CT online were patrolling Stormwind repelling the undead attacks. People ran to the cathedral for protection from the ghouls, and the CT were celebrities for all of about three weeks. The paladin class has been notable throughout the history of World of Warcraft for its extreme versatility and ability to succeed at extreme soloing. How far does the guild push as a group into current PvE content?

Since we are not a raiding guild, it is difficult to have enough people on to do endgame content as a guild. We are able to get through heroic dungeons though with full guild groups and have even managed to down a good many bosses in 10-man raids with a full group of paladins.

What have you found to be the primary limitations of bringing nothing but paladins to the table?

Well, the only limitations I've found have been in game content. On the one hand, we have an entire guild of all three roles in a raid, but things get awfully hard when you need some ranged damage. The lack of class diversity does make certain things more difficult.

What activities might be included in a typical week for the guild?

Typical week might be a couple guild heroics, battlegrounds, and our weekly meeting. Sometimes higher ranks will hold lessons for members on the beliefs of the Order, but most events are off the cuff. Somebody wants to do something and just shouts our for anybody that wants to come. Coolest thing you never get tired of in game that's related to being a paladin?

Bubble-hearth!

Most tired thing you're sick of newbies or others saying or doing in game that's related to paladins?

What has always driven me crazy is when somebody encounters us for the first time and they act in a way that immediately brands them as heretics. When we go after them, they start screaming and yelling about how we're crazy Christian nut cases. They get ignored immediately at this point, but it's strange -- I don't seem to recall Jesus existing in Warcraft ...

Read more in our series on class- and race-exclusive guilds:

Blood elves continue their people's story with self-deprecating humor
Death knights squeeze WoW in ice-fisted death grip
Druids shred raid content by tooth and claw
Draenei inject ancient culture into mainstream Azeroth
Dwarves indulge in rollicking good world PvP
Gnomes ratchet to guild level 25 on steam-drive gnomish power
Goblin roleplay campaign inspires goblin NPC
Hunter collective takes aim across Azeroth
Night elf guild brings Darnassus to the fore
Orc clan leader offers fierce perspectives on RP, world PvP
Rogues stealth and stab their way into friendly player antagonism
Tauren guild stampedes beyond roleplaying
Trolls savagely roleplay the revenge of the Zandalari
Worgen run wild across Azeroth "I never thought of playing WoW like that!" -- and neither did we, until we talked with Game of Thrones' Hodor (Kristian Nairn) ... a blind ex-serviceman and the guildmates who keep him raiding as a regular ... and a 70-year-old grandma who tops her raid's DPS charts as its legendary-wielding GM. Send your nominations to lisa@wowinsider.com. Tags: all-paladin, amelas, caelestis-templares, facebookfeed, featured, paladin, world-of-warcraft-interviews, wow-community, wow-interviews, wow-people

Filed under: Interviews, 15 Minutes of Fame

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The Light and How to Swing It: How many abilities is too many?

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 9 other people, obsessing over his hair, and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense.

Remember Divine Intervention?

I was talking about bygone abilities with some guildmates the other day (we need a ret/holy hybrid, by the way!) and it evolved into an interesting conversation about ability bloat in WoW. Some of them thought that they had way too many abilities on their bars with far too many keybinds to manage, and were dreading finding room for anything new that could be added in the next expansion.

Personally, I don't feel like I'm in the saturation point just yet (maybe because I'm not a prolific macro-er) but I can definitely sympathize with the sentiment. Ever since TBC, Blizzard has been heaping more and more abilities into our toolbox, and if we're not yet at a saturation point, we will soon be at one in the future. Regardless, it's interesting to look not only at what our toolbox is like now, but also what it used to be like, and then if something had to be cut down the line, where the knife may well be pointed.

The state of our toolbox

At the start of Mists there was a noticeable ability prune, as some spells and attacks became exclusive to one spec or another. For example, holy took most of the healing spells we once had the possibility of draining our mana with. Not really a loss there. However, consider that when the spec walls went up, we managed to squirrel away Holy Wrath and Consecration from holy and retribution, and in turn retribution got sole custody of Exorcism and Inquisition.

To partially make up for losing access to these abilities, Mists introduced the new talent system with its various optional abilities. One moment you could have Speed of Light sitting on your bars, and then another moment it's gone because Pursuit of Justice and Long Arm of the Law are both passive. Protection paladins can be assumed to have to deal with a Sacred Shield button, unlike holy and ret. And on fights like Megaera you are probably going to have to deal with a Hand of Purity button, while other fights Clemency (with no extra buttons needed) may suffice.

And speaking of utility, paladins are probably a little unique among most classes in that because of our vast array of utility abilities and spells, we have a lot of "fluff" that might not always be used, but can be so critical that you can't not have them somewhere handy on your bars. A great paladin is one that has Hand of Protection, Hand of Freedom, and Hand of Sacrifice at the ready, and an overly prepared (possibly paranoid) paladin is one that finds room for Hand of Salvation as well.

I could go on and on with other uncommonly used, situationally useful buttons -- Blinding Light, anyone? -- but I'll spare you all the grocery list.

Considering all that, when I'm evaluating everything on my bars today, including macros, and despite everything that's been taken away, I still feel like we have a very healthy number of buttons demanding our attention. Sure we're not (for example) a pet class with an array of macros just to keep the pet from somehow eating a healer in the heat of battle -- but it's still very feasible to feel overwhelmed by what we have to work with.

And as much as I may make it sound like PvE paladins have a lot on their plate, I can only begin to imagine what PvP paladins need to work with since their gameplay revolves around random and unpredictable situations.

What could be pruned?

In the recent past, whenever Blizzard pruned abilities from our spellbook, it was often the most obviously redundant choices. Three different flavors of Judgment, for example, was hideously excessive. Did Seal of Light and Wisdom need to exist simultaneously? Not really, and it was easy to roll them up into Seal of Insight. Did we need to have two separate taunts? The devs felt no (I woefully would have preferred they didn't) and they cut us down to just Reckoning.

You could go even further back if you wanted and dredge up the ghosts of all the Blessings that have disappeared over the years, if they weren't lucky enough to get repurposed into a Hand spell.

And yet even then, it can be argued that the number of Hand spells we have these days are too many. How many times do we really ever use Hand of Salvation anymore, considering how insane tank threat is? Maybe on transitions when the passing tank has a large amount of Vengeance, but never (this expansion) on a non-tank character. Could Hands be combined, like putting the Freedom effect on Sacrifice? Perhaps, and I imagine that could be low-hanging fruit for a future prune come the next expansion, if the devs decide they need to cut back a bit.

There are some abilities that I hope that the devs do not usher to the chopping block, no matter how utterly inconsequential or situational they are. For example, Turn Evil: I don't think I've yet used that ability once this expansion and (confession time) I don't even have it on my bars. Yet, it doesn't add to any ability bloat I may or may not be suffering and it just feels so iconic as part of the paladin toolbox (this may be my old D&D days showing) that it would be a real shame to lose. For similar reasons I was annoyed when they chopped Sense Undead, which was utterly unobjectionable outside of the silly glyph that everyone used back in Icecrown Citadel.

Closing up this topic, I'm curious what you all think. Do you have too many abilities on your bars, are you drowning in buttons? Or do you feel like there's enough room for expansion and you're not yet pressured to go out and buy a Naga?

Addendum: The value of t15 set bonuses

Theck wrote a great blog post the other day, which I hope you'll read, simming out the value of the two and four-piece bonuses on our t15 tier. I won't spoil the ending, but regardless it's great to have some numbers backing up the general feeling I've seen among protection paladins that our four-piece bonus leaves much to be desired and our tier itemization makes it hard to justify going for it. (That might have been a spoiler.) The Light and How to Swing It shows paladin tanks how to combat the Sha in the strange new land of Pandaria. Try out the new control gearing strategy, learn how to make the most of the new active mitigation system on your tankadin, and check out how to deck out your fresh 90 tank to get ready for any raids! Tags: featured, guide-to-paladins, guide-to-pallies, guide-to-pallys, paladin-guide, paladin-info, paladin-protection-the-light-and-how-to-swing-it, paladin-talents, pally-guide, pally-info, pally-talents, protection-paladin-the-light-and-how-to-swing-it, wow-paladin, wow-paladin-info, wow-paladins, wow-pally, wow-pally-info

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The Light and How to Swing It: The problem with tanks

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 9 other people, obsessing over his hair, and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense.

Last Thursday, Ghostcrawler tweeted something which caused a bit of a stir within the tanking community. In it he revealed that the devs were looking at some strict caps for Vengeance levels (30% of health for 10s, 50% for 25s) that would prevent tanks from using Vengeance to pursue unintended things like solo tanking a two-tank raid boss or standing in fire to stack really obscene amounts of attack power.

Now, this isn't another column about the virtues or not of Vengeance. That's a pretty mutilated horse at this point, and from the looks of it, the mechanic is not going anywhere any time soon. However, the brief rekindling of the Vengeance debate did once again shine some light on what is a continuing problem in WoW: what should tanks be allowed to do (in terms of damage output) and what can be done to keep players from parlaying excessive survivability into unintended advantages?

What do you do when one third (arguably two-thirds, a lot of this can apply to healers as well) of your players' roles revolves around the mitigation and prevention of damage, and the primary means you have of creating barriers or challenges for players is the threat of character death?

Where we were

Back to Vengeance briefly -- when the mechanic was first introduced, it was billed as a response to a problem that had arisen with the unexpected item level inflation of Wrath. By the end of the expansion, DPS throughput began to truly test many tanks that had spent the previous tiers of the expansion stacking more and more survivability while DPS were improving their damage. The threat ceiling loomed close in raids for many players.

Vengeance, which allowed tanks to scale their threat output in relation to the damage they were taking (which scaled tier to tier), generally solved that problem -- for good or ill, as some would argue. The buff to threat modifiers mid-way through Cataclysm then outright removed any further worries of threat from a tank's mind, outside of sticky threat swaps.

While a success with its effect on the raiding sphere, the footprint of Vengeance reached far wider than just the boundaries of any raid. As anyone who leveled protection in Wrath and then Cataclysm can attest, those were two very different experiences, thanks to Vengeance. In Wrath, where we could do 30-40% of the average damage of a DPS player, we could eventually kill a mob in a one-on-one fight before either us or the mob died of old age. Arguably it was the golden age of tank (solo) single-target damage. In Cataclysm, with the yoke of Vengeance firmly on our necks and tanks only able to do about 20% of the damage a DPS could, we were not so lucky.

This extended to being an issue for many tanks when it came to doing dailies. In Wrath, I always made a point of doing dailies in my main, protection spec. I was way more familiar (and comfortable) with the playstyle, and I appreciated the extra survivability that being protection offered. In Cataclysm, unless I pulled a huge crowd of mobs, there was just no way it made sense to do dailies as anything other than retribution. It would have taken me three times as long to clear the same quests in protection spec.

A thin line to walk

There is a balance to be had with regards to tank damage output, though we do not currently have it. At one extreme, you'd have battlegrounds full of pseudo-tanks running around shield-slamming clothies to death and guffawing at rogues that furiously attempt to sneak their tiny daggers past layers and layers of plate and hit points. At the other extreme, you have what we have now: where you should really only spec tank for group, PvE content (and maybe some very limited PvP situations) and for anything else you switch to your DPS offspec.

Think of all the new content that has been added in this expansion that you'd be crazy to try to run in your preferred protection spec. If you were doing a Troves of the Thunder King run, you'd get bogged down by the very first troll you accidentally pulled. Sure, you wouldn't die, even if you stood in an alarm circle and got multiple mobs on you -- but you'd waste way too much time trying to kill them all. Time is of the essence, and none is available to waste.

The Brawler's Guild is similarly a terrible idea to try to do as a tank. Considering the enrages, both on the mob and the crowd of real players that you would be holding up by taking forever to kill your opponent; damage capability is of the essence. And while as a tank you'd ostensibly have a huge advantage (game-breaking perhaps), if the arena nukes you for taking too long to kill something (and it will), that advantage ultimately isn't worth squat.

My question is: is the current situation the best solution for the game? Isn't there a happy medium between the two extremes -- of god-tanks and our current weak-noodle tanks that require Vengeance to kill anything in a reasonable amount of time?

I understand why tank damage output is as low as it is right now. It would not be healthy for the game, for multiple obvious reasons, if being a tank meant that you had a game-breaking advantage over another DPS player in certain kinds of content.

Restoring the balance

I think the current situation has created some quality of life -- and fun -- issues for many players that style themselves as main-spec tanks. Personally, I love being a tank. I love running around with a shield strapped to my arm and the confidence that I am a bulwark against my foes. It is not particularly fun that I have to shuck off that play style anytime I want to do anything in WoW that doesn't involve 9 or 24 other people and computer-controlled enemies.

For example, I would love it if there was the possibility of doing the Brawler's Guild as a tank, with some kind of switch being flipped that made the opponent have less health but do more damage. The primary test could be how well you can perform your active mitigation rotation, much like how a DPS is tasked with performing their damage rotation, all while avoiding the same pitfalls and obstacles of each fight. It would go a long way to make me feel more relevant as a main-spec tank in the wider world of the game.

Nonetheless, all that said, I don't believe that Vengeance is the blame for our present situation (to bring it back to the spark that set this diatribe off). It is but one of several knobs available to the devs that tune tank damage.

Instead, I think the problem is that the devs have decided to play it safe and keep tank damage far too low at the baseline, and use Vengeance to compensate so that there are no major raiding ramifications. This may keep things on the level at the macro level, but for a specific subset of players (anyone who considers themselves first and foremost a tank) there are some very annoying consequences. I really don't think it needs to be this way, we can do better than this. The Light and How to Swing It shows paladin tanks how to combat the Sha in the strange new land of Pandaria. Try out the new control gearing strategy, learn how to make the most of the new active mitigation system on your tankadin, and check out how to deck out your fresh 90 tank to get ready for any raids! Tags: featured, guide-to-paladins, guide-to-pallies, guide-to-pallys, paladin-guide, paladin-info, paladin-protection-the-light-and-how-to-swing-it, paladin-talents, pally-guide, pally-info, pally-talents, protection-paladin-the-light-and-how-to-swing-it, tanking, tanks, Threat, vengeance, wow-paladin, wow-paladin-info, wow-paladins, wow-pally, wow-pally-info

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The Light and How to Swing It: Why retribution DPS is a-okay

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions!

Towards the tail end of Ulduar and into the beginning of Trial of the Crusader, I was in a guild that had a rogue that would consistently top the DPS charts. I would run so many heroics and PuG raids to get gear, all the while practicing what could laughably be called our "rotation" in retrospect, and I would still fall short. Over time, however, I began to notice that even though I wasn't beating him, I was beating many others. Soon the time came when I was neck-and-neck with him, always biting his heels and waiting for him to allow me an opportunity to beat him, once and for all.

When I eventually did overtake him and saw my character's name on the top of Recount, the feeling was greater than any boss kill. You can't ever see a boss collapse and have the feeling that you did that all by yourself, that you were the sole reason for this victory, because it took a combination of other players, all supporting each other, to see that end result. The DPS race is totally different -- aside from healers keeping you alive (which, if you're properly aware of your surroundings and your threat, shouldn't be an issue) you shoulder the responsibility to push out as much damage as you can. Seeing yourself at the top is a much more personal victory because you can honestly say that you did that, that you pulled yourself up there and truly earned that spot. And from what I understand, this is not a unique experience.

I have talked to quite a few players who have expressed concern over some fairly recent SimulationCraft results that show retribution ranking near the bottom out of all available DPS specs. Even ignoring SimCraft, many more players have expressed concern over their damage output as they compare it to their fellow raiders, guildmates, and random DPSers in LFR. Despite this mounting evidence, I have asserted that retribution is in a nice place -- not great, not OP, but comfortable. Indeed, Ghostcrawler tends to feel the same way. So what's the story here? Why does it seem like everyone and their uncle think ret is doing poorly?

Why does retribution sim poorly?

SimulationCraft is a great tool, and its developers should be very proud of the work they do. They make theorycrafting more accessible to a larger group of people by turning equations and calculations into a graphical interface that is fairly simple to operate. But every system has its limitations, and SimCraft is no different. When you plug in your character data and run a simulation, the program adheres to a set of predetermined conditions. In the case of their popular DPS comparisons, SimCraft uses the following:

Fight length: 360 – 540 seconds
Fight style: Patchwerk (tank-and-spank)
Iterations: 2500
Talents and glyphs (for retribution): 221223 with Templar's Verdict, Double Jeopardy, and Mass Exorcism

Basically what this all means is that the program runs through a calculated "optimal" rotation on a single-target, tank-and-spank encounter that's, on average, seven and a half minutes long. It does this 2,500 times and then averages the results to give us our final number.
So what's wrong with this?

First of all, how many Patchwerk-style fights are there this tier? The only encounter that I could say is even remotely like Patchwerk is Garajal, provided you either don't go down to the spirit realm at all or you spend the briefest of moments down there. You might be able to get away with doing nothing else on this encounter but DPS, but that doesn't change the fact that only one out of sixteen encounters reflects these conditions, which actually brings me to my next point.

A Patchwerk-style encounter is not a realistic situation in today's raids. So many fights these days have adds, movement, and debuffs that standing still to attack one target is no longer the norm.

Look at a fight like Will of the Emperor – as a DPS, you're either running around killing off adds, barely even touching the boss, or you're on one of the bosses dodging Devastating Combo and putting yourself out of melee range often but spiking your damage with Opportunistic Strike.

All Simcraft's T14H results show is that retribution does not perform as well as other specs under one stringent set of pretty unrealistic conditions. This ranking definitely has some uses (namely, finding outlier specs and identifying what separates them from the pack), but you need to treat it as a small piece of a larger puzzle instead of a scoreboard at the end of the game. Clearly, our strengths lie elsewhere.

Then where are our strengths?

Adaptation Aside from a few glaring omissions (* cough* untargeted, holy power-independent AoE), our damage loadout is very versatile: Suddenly have multiple mobs to fight? Thanks to Hammer of the Righteous, Divine Storm, a fast-stacking Censure and a fairly worthless Seal of Righteousness, switching to AoE damage is a snap.Need to close the gap? A robust tier of movement talents keep us very mobile, out of bad and in melee range.Stuck at ranged for the moment? Hard-hitting ranged abilities like Judgment, Exorcism, and Hammer of Wrath let us continue to do damage and gain holy power for those times when the boss is just out of reach.Burst potential For a long time now, one of retribution's greatest strengths (at least, DPS-wise) has also been the source of its greatest weakness – burst damage. Being able to hit Guardian of Ancient Kings, Avenging Wrath, Holy Avenger, and Execution Sentence together while Inquisition is running gives you an 18 second window of pure destruction. Of course there's a PvP tradeoff involved, the source of the saltiest nerfs in the quadrant, but don't be fooled -- being able to deliver massive damage in a small window can be very valuable.

Self-preservation Keeping yourself alive ensures that you can deal more damage in the long run, so our defensive toolbox works offensively when used sparingly and intelligently. The paladin's signature ability, Divine Shield, has snagged countless first kills and saved a multitude of lives.Off-healing with Word of Glory and/or Selfless Healer can keep you alive while healers are distracted or dead (especially on a fight like Chimaeron where a solitary self-heal can make the difference between life and death).Even better, shielding yourself with Divine Protection and Sacred Shield can prevent a lot of that damage in the first place.Overall, I'd say to not let a few numbers get you down. Any raid leader worth their salt wouldn't turn down a good ret paladin, what with all the utility we have to offer. Don't get me wrong, I'd like retribution to do better on single-target than what's reflected in the SimCraft results, but I think we're going to be just fine. I mean, at least we're not arms warriors!
The Light and How to Swing It teaches you the ins and outs of retribution paladins, from Ret 101 and how to gem, enchant and reforge your retadin, to essential ret pally addons.
Tags: featured, guide-to-paladins, guide-to-pallies, guide-to-pallys, paladin-guide, paladin-info, paladin-talents, pally-guide, pally-info, pally-talents, ret paladin DPS, ret-paladin, RetPaladinDps, retribution-dps, retribution-paladin-the-light-and-how-to-swing-it, simcraft, wow-paladin, wow-paladin-info, wow-paladins, wow-pally, wow-pally-info

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The grace between Light and dark: Roleplaying the priest

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. In World of Warcraft, that player is you! Each week, Anne Stickney brings you All the World's a Stage with helpful hints, tips and tricks on the art of roleplay in WoW.

One might assume that a priest is a benevolent servant of the Light, or Elune, or An'she, or whatever deity they happen to follow. Consumed with the Light's grace, a priest seeks to heal, drawn to the task by an innate need to heal and mend. For a priest, the world is a place full of lost, suffering souls waiting to be mended and healed, the gratitude of those mended being all that a priest needs. Humble, polite, quiet, the priest is a creature of benevolence and purity, an example for all those lost souls to follow.

One would be quite wrong in that assumption.

Priests are just as complex, perhaps even more so than every other class on Azeroth. While some are drawn to healing like a moth to a flame, there are others drawn to the darker side. A priest can harm just as well as heal -- in fact, they may be more deadly than even those dark practitioners of fel magics. For what makes for suffering more than a creature who knows quite intimately, inside and out, the inner workings of organs and mind?

Priests are terribly interesting creatures, and make for even more interesting roleplay.

Who you are

Your priest's background depends on his race, when it comes to the priesthood. Humans began the priesthood on the Eastern Kingdoms with the Church of the Holy Light, and taught these practices to the dwarves and high elves -- later blood elves -- that called the continent home. Much like the paladins, human priests tend to follow the same tenets of the Holy Light that their plate-wearing cousins do. But there are many other races that practice the art of the priest. In fact, orcs are the only race on Azeroth that can't.

For the draenei, their origins extend back in time to their lessons with the naaru upon escaping Argus. For the night elves, priests are devotees of the goddess Elune. For the tauren, who have only recently begun experimenting with the ways of both paladin and priest, An'she lights the way. For gnomes, the tenets of the Light are something meant to be studied and researched, combined with technology in delightful, if sometimes confusing, ways. And for goblins, the Light is just another bargaining chip on the table, for the most part.

It's the Forsaken that have the most bizarre relationship to the Light. As former humans, they were followers of the Church of the Holy Light just like any other human on Azeroth. But when they died, when they came back, that connection was gone. To many Forsaken, the Light has abandoned them. Only the most dedicated and persevering Forsaken can really master the ways of the Light, and for good reason -- the use of the Light hurts.

Without spoiling too much, we can tell you that wielding the Light is a matter of having willpower or faith in one's own ability to do it. For the undead (and Forsaken), this requires such a great deal of willpower that it is exceedingly rare, especially since it is self-destructive. When undead channel the Light, it feels as if their entire bodies are being consumed in righteous fire. Forsaken healed by the Light are effectively cauterized by the effect: sure, the wound is healed, but the healing effect is cripplingly painful. Thus, Forsaken priests are beings of unwavering willpower. -- Ask a CDev, Round 1

So what brings a priest to the priesthood? That's the question that you need to ask in regards to your character. Was he part of a long line of priests, simply following his expected path? Did he feel the Light call him to the priesthood -- and if so, what was he before he followed that path? If your character is a Forsaken, what is that spark that keeps him clinging to the Light, even though the Light is doing its best to burn him away? If your character is a gnome, what drew him to study the Light over any other number of fascinating paths of study out there in the world?
What defines you, and why you fight

It's the answer to that question that will tell you a lot about the character you've created. Is he a benevolent person, bent on good will and kindness to others, or is there something else that keeps him getting out of bed in the morning? What drives him to heal?

Yet there is a dual-nature to the priest that is unlike any other class out there. A priest can be dedicated to healing, or dedicated to damage in the form of shadow magic. Not to be confused with the fel magic of warlocks, the magic of shadow is a completely different thing. Most of what we know about shadow magic originates from the WoW RPG books, so keep in mind this information may not be canon, and is open to interpretation.

The concept of shadow is one of balance -- where there is light, there is always shadow. Hold your hand up to a light source, and you'll see it -- the shadow your hand creates. In a way, the priest is the hand standing between the two, and can draw from either side. The only known organization of shadow magic is the Cult of Forgotten Shadow, established by Forsaken priests as an alternative to the Church of the Holy Light. And just as the Church has its set of tenets to follow, so does the Cult, in a complete juxtaposition of what the Light teaches.

Where the Church of the Holy Light teaches the three virtues of Respect, Tenacity, and Compassion, the Cult of Forgotten Shadow teaches the three virtues of Respect, Tenacity and Power. Where the Light brings about positive emotions like hope, courage and comfort, the shadow does just the opposite, warping the mind and bringing about feelings of fear, doubt and despair. You can read more about the Cult of Forgotten Shadow and the teachings of that order on Wowpedia -- although the information is taken from the RPG guides and may not necessarily be canon, it offers all kinds of food for thought for a roleplayer.

Interaction with others

A priest is a character with a dual nature unlike any other in Warcraft. But priests by and large are some of the most trusted members of society -- those that heal tend to inspire both confidence and trust in others. A priest isn't likely to have any problems being social around other characters, especially if it means that they can continue to spread the message of hope and comfort that the Light brings.

Keep in mind that a shadow priest isn't necessarily an evil creature. Unlike warlocks, who tend to follow the path out of a keen desire for power, shadow priests are fulfilling a role that calls for balance in the world. If there is Light, there must be shadow -- if there are holy priests, there must be shadow as well. A priest that practices the art of shadow is not automatically doing so for the sake of power or greed, the reasons are often far more complex. A shadow priest is just as likely to be social as a priest of the Light.

For night elves and tauren, the story differs slightly, just because of origin. A night elf priest is a follower of Elune, and while the teachings of Elune and the tenets of the Holy Light are similar, they are not exactly the same. Elune and An'she are deities. While the Light is something to be respected and followed by the other races, it does not have a representation like Elune or An'she. The closest other thing to a deity might be the naaru for the draenei -- but the naaru are not really gods to the draenei, merely beings of higher power.

Troll priests also follow a more direct representation of the Light, but it's more polytheistic in nature than monotheistic like the tauren or night elves. The priests of the trolls are more witch doctor than practitioner of the Light, drawing upon the spirits of the Loa or the beings around them to heal or harm. The Loa are the spirits of powerful beings, either troll or animal, that have transcended death and remain to help or harm those that are still among the living.

Whether to heal or harm, the priests of the world live in a precarious balance that acknowledges not so much the balance of the world around us, but the balance that exists within ourselves, and how that balance is reflected in the rest of the world. Priests can be good or evil, right or wrong, social or introspective -- the possibilities are endless. And while playing a spiritual character may not seem appealing to all, the priests of Azeroth offer some incredibly compelling roleplay.

All the World's a Stage is your source for roleplaying ideas, innovations and ironies. Let us help you imagine what it's like to sacrifice spells for the story, totally immerse yourself in your roleplaying or even RP on a non-RP realm Tags: featured, guide, guide-to-lore, lore, lore-guide, role-play, role-playing-guide, rp-guide, world-of-warcraft-lore, wow-guide, wow-lore, wow-role-playing, wow-role-playing-guide, wow-rp, wow-rp-guide, wow-rping

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The Light and How to Swing It: Talents and glyphs for tanking Terrace of Endless Spring

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 9 other people, obsessing over his hair, and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense.

Terrace of Endless Spring is a weird conclusion to the joyous majesty of tier 14. We go from one large raid to another large raid, and then the tier caps with chasing a Sha back to his Breakfast Nook of Fear. I suppose, however, you do have to give Blizzard a hand for managing to efficiently cram so many bosses into such a small area. The economy of space in there is very well executed.

Nonetheless, all meta discussion aside, from a tanking perspective, Terrace of the Endless Spring is nothing to write home about compared to the rest of the tier. The fights are okay, but don't really require the same engagement that fights in Mogu'shan Vaults, or even the Heart of Fear, demanded. Regardless, it being the last raid of the tier, the damage is higher and the need to keep yourself on two feet is oh-so-pressing. There are definitely some good tricks in your toolbox that will help keep you vertical and the thus the raid from going pear-shaped. Let's explore them.Like the other two guides I've done like this, it's important to note that my default loadout for tanking is typically this setup of glyphs and talents. Most tips I give will be what deviates from these defaults.

Protectors of the Endless

Like most of the fights in this raid, the magic damage will be intense enough to warrant keeping Divine Protection unglyphed. Likewise, you'll want to keep Glyph of the Battle Healer up as a default.

Movement speed can be a damage saver in this fight, thanks to the Lightning Storm mechanic. It happens frequently enough that talenting for Long Arm of the Law makes sense, allowing you to zip out of any rings of electricity before you get fried.

Since each Protector heals to full when one of their numbers dies, it's not really worth doing anything that will buff your AoE damage. Be sure to use Glyph of Focused Shield for your Avenger's Shield so you're not "wasting" any damage. Likewise, I'd almost recommend going for Execution Sentence, if you don't care about the AoE healing of Light's Hammer.

Tsulong

For the adds that appear in the day phase, you have a few options to make them less dangerous. Glyph of Holy Wrath will allow you to stun them (especially the swarm of little ones that pop up whenever an Embodied Terror dies), and talenting Burden of Guilt can help you slow the Unstable Sha that slowly move in on Tsulong.

For night phase, you'll want to hold onto Long Arm of the Law for getting to the Sunbeam in a jiffy and dropping your Dread Shadows stacks.

Not really related to glyphs or talents, but don't bother using Lay on Hands on Tsulong during the day phase. He'll receive no healing from it (unlike Valithria Dreamwalker) and you'll just waste the cooldown.

Lei Shi

If any fight in this tier is *the* magic damage fight, it's this one. Indeed, Blizzard recently nerfed the magic resistance trinkets from Wrath and Cataclysm because they were -- even after the massive nerf resistances took in 5.0! -- still useful. That's how crazy the magic damage is on this fight. If you are crazy enough to equip Glyph of Divine Protection, I hope your healers take you out into an alley after raid and work your kidneys a bit as punishment.

Like the previous two fights, keep Long Arm of the Law talented for portions of the fight like Get Away! and for expediting the tank swaps. Because that Spray damage really, really hurts. (It's deadly even in watered-down LFR.)

I haven't mentioned it previously, but you'll really want to use Sacred Shield on this fight for proactive damage mitigation. You really need to shave every possible decimal point of damage off of this fight, because it can get hairy very quickly. As always, the ol' chestnut applies: damage prevented is better than damage healed. Especially when there's a lot of damage.

Sha of Fear

This fight upsets me, as a tank. After all the amazing encounters in tier 14, you would think that the very last boss would be the cherry on the delicious sundae. But, instead of getting something as intense or engaging as the fights at the very beginning of the tier, tanking the ultimate threat of tier 14 involves standing in one very specific spot painted on the floor and not moving, lest the raid explode.

But I digress. You'll want to keep Long Arm of the Law talented, if only to get behind of the Wall of Light before another Breath of Fear goes out. Other than that, as you can imagine, you won't be moving much at all.

Unlike the previous three fights, you'll want to glyph Divine Protection. As a tank, your biggest worry is going to be dealing with Thrash, where the Sha will strike you three times in quick succession. Divine Protection can help mitigate that. In addition, consider timing the use Shield of the Righteous to cover all three.

Likewise, since there will be a pile of melee behind you, Glyph of Battle Healer continues to be a fantastic idea.

Even if the fight is lackluster, the payday from his drops are excellent. Best of luck getting the sword to drop for you! The Light and How to Swing It shows paladin tanks how to combat the Sha in the strange new land of Pandaria. Try out the new control gearing strategy, learn how to make the most of the new active mitigation system on your tankadin, and check out how to deck out your fresh 90 tank to get ready for any raids! Tags: featured, guide-to-paladins, guide-to-pallies, guide-to-pallys, lei-shi, Paladin-Glyphs, paladin-guide, paladin-info, paladin-protection-the-light-and-how-to-swing-it, paladin-talents, pally-guide, pally-info, pally-talents, protection-paladin-the-light-and-how-to-swing-it, sha-of-fear, terrace-of-endless-spring, tsulong, wow-paladin, wow-paladin-info, wow-paladins, wow-pally, wow-pally-info

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The Light and How to Swing It: Utilizing retribution's utility spells

Sometimes it's easy to get yourself on a one-track mindset and put all of your effort and energy into maintaining the best DPS rotation you can to top the charts and kill those bosses dead. I often forget that I'm even playing a hybrid class as I swap around talents and glyphs to squeak out as much damage I can. Thankfully, the designers threw a number of challenges into our latest raid tier, situations where a retribution paladin's utility toolkit can not only shine, but produce truly epic moments and make the player of that classiest of classes feel truly fulfilled.

The last time I talked about utility was back in March, where I tossed some ideas around about how to introduce these spells to the newcomer or, in my case, to the utility-challenged. As with many classes, you're given a plethora of powerful abilities as you level up that work well in a wide variety of encounters, but both keeping track of these abilities and finding the best situations to use them in can be overwhelming. Therefore, I thought it would be a good idea to flesh out these spells and describe how one can and should use them.

Pretending to be a holy paladin

For the full experience, stare at your raid frames while on /follow with your guild's shadow priest. If you die, blame the shadow priest.

Selfless Healer & Flash of Light I know that in my previous column I confessed that I only use a full-stack of Selfless Healer to cast a free, instant Flash of Light on myself, but the true purpose of this talent is, of course, to heal your allies. If you're running in a small group, or if your healers are bogged down by a recent battle resurrection or something, tossing an empowered Flash of Light on a target in need of some healing can really save the day.

Also, seeing big numbers on this tier's Valithria Dreamwalker encounter, Tsulong's day phase, is quite fun while you're casting Judgment on adds to slow them with Burden of Guilt.

Lay on Hands A powerful cooldown on par with Divine Shield, Lay on Hands delivers one, large heal equal to your maximum health to your current target. Be aware of both the 10 minute cooldown and the fact that Lay on Hands will put Forbearance on its target – trust me, prot paladins can get really irritated if you toss LoH on them for giggles.

Word of Glory Both Selfless Healer and Lay on Hands only cost you a global cooldown in order to heal a target. Word of Glory, on the other hand, costs you a potential Templar's Verdict or Divine Storm cast, in addition to the lost global, meaning too many WoGs over the course of a fight can really tank your DPS. If you're struggling to survive, however, do what you have to in order to stay standing!

Word of Glory will have some nice self-synergy with Eternal Flame in patch 5.2. Additionally, both Divine Purpose and Holy Avenger have some nice survivability potential if you use their 3-HP procs to heal yourself or your allies.

A round of applause

Do you get it? Hands... applause... okay, let's move on.

Hand of Sacrifice This spell always reminds me of Ulduar and tier 8, when "bubble-sac" worked and every raid leader wanted a piece of that ret action. For those unaware, a paladin could cast Divine Shield on themselves, then Hand of Sacrifice on another player – this allowed the paladin to take as much damage as they wanted for the duration of the spell and never hit the damage cap.

Anyway, Hand of Sac can still be a pretty useful cooldown, especially if your tank is taking more than his or her fair share. Just make sure you coordinate this with the healers, or else you may end up getting pasted by incidental AoE raid damage after Hand of Sacrifice has run its course.

Hand of Protection "BoP," as Hand of Protection is affectionately known to many seasoned players, can be a powerful spell as it protects the recipient from all physical damage for 10 seconds, but also prevents them from dealing any physical damage themselves. As you can probably guess, this is ideal for casters or healers.

A great use for this ability, in combination with the talent Clemency, is seen in the Blade Lord Ta'yak encounter. Use BoP to protect a player that has the Wind Step debuff and is the target of Unseen Strike - both are physical damage, ideal for this ability.

Hand of Freedom Back in Wrath, when ret had access to 1/2 Acts of Sacrifice and Hand of Freedom, we were unsnarable juggernauts. Maybe that fact wasn't totally reflected in PvP (at all), but being able to get out of any sticky situation seen inside a raid instance was quite nice. Well, Blizzard chewed up Acts of Sacrifice and spit Emancipate back out at us, but at least we still have Freedom.

Truly, the "best" use for Hand of Freedom is freeing allies from movement impairing effects, such as that stubborn mage you're chained to on the Stone Guard encounter that forgot where her Blink button was.

Hand of Purity A spell that I'm sure has countless PvP uses, Hand of Purity seems to be primarily a tank cooldown in PvE. Patch 5.2 will see a buff to HoPur in the form of 10% reduced damage in addition to its DoT damage reduction, both solidifying the ability's use as a tank cooldown as well as opening up personal cooldown options.

Devotion Aura Finally, we have a raid cooldown again. Devotion Aura reduces magic damage taken by 20% and provides immunity to silences and interrupts for 6 seconds – that's nothing to shake a stick at. It's probably best to talk to your raid leader to see if you'll want to save it for a particularly crippling salvo, but if you're in a pickle hitting Devo won't do any harm.

Aside from Devotion Aura, you need a target to cast all of these spells. Sure, you could use some of them on yourself, but if you're trying to impress your raid leader or arena partners, you're not going to do it by casting Lay on Hands on yourself when you're at full health.

Macros can be extremely useful, once you can get past the pseudo-technical commands and start thinking inside the box. Here is a general mouseover macro that will work with whatever raid or party frames you happen to be running – just remember to replace the word "Spell" with the name of the spell you want to use:

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover] Spell; Spell

The Light and How to Swing It teaches you the ins and outs of retribution paladins, from Ret 101 and how to gem, enchant and reforge your retadin, to essential ret pally addons.
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Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It, Mists of Pandaria

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