So. Arenas. How have your Arena campaigns been coming along? Lately, we've been encountering a lot of melee teams in our bracket. Melee has been enjoying a rise in popularity since Season 3, when Armor Penetration made its debut in Arena gear. Of course, with Armor Penetration stats maintaining status quo across the board in Season 4 while Armor values went up, this has become less of a factor. Nonetheless, the melee pain train continues to chug along, with more double melee teams having a strong showing in 3v3 and of course the popular triple melee Cleave setup in 5v5. For the most part, any team comp with two or more physical DPS classes is technically a Cleave team.
Melee in 5v5 was popularized by Serennia in his Warrior / Rogue / Enh. Shaman and 2-healer set-up which he tried to dub 'Trifecta'. Trifecta never stuck, of course, so Cleave became a more popular term coming both from the Warrior ability and the fact that a target descended upon by multiple melee will feel like she's being cleaved in half. More than a few clothies have cried foul, and some have accused such comps as being brainless, skill-less, and -- pardon me quoting the term -- "gay". [EDIT: No, it is not okay to use the term "gay" in a derogatory manner, let's just make that clear.]
I may have mentioned this before, but I just have to say it again. Northrend is gorgeous. Gorgeous in a way that puts the rest of the game to shame. Just when you thought you'd seen all the good there was to see in Azeroth and Outland, Blizzard comes along and drops Northrend in our lap and makes everything we saw before look a bit plain and dull. Let's start off today with a question about Northrend's look:
grravie asked....
Northrend is an arctic zone. Will there be aurora borealis in the northern night sky?
A similar glow effect exists in Northrend's Howling Fjord zone. It appears there day and night throughout the sky.
For more on of your questions -- and our answers -- read on! But if you're the sort who wants to avoid spoilers, turn back now. We're aiming to avoid major story spoilers, but this feature is all about beta content and we can't talk about the beta without giving a few things away.
Tank Talk is WoW Insider's tanking column, promising you an exciting and educational look at the world of getting the stuffing thrashed out of you in a 10- or 25-man raid. The column is rotated amongst Matthew Rossi (Warrior/Paladin), Adam Holisky (Warrior), Michael Gray (Paladin), and Allison Robert (Druid). Our aim is to use this column to debate and discuss class differences, raid-tanking strategies, tips, tricks, and news concerning all things meatshieldish.
This week's Tank Talk is a little bit of a public service. Recently huddled around the ticker-tapes of WoW Insider, we came to realize that your intrepid Insider lacked a particular resource: a basic guide to aggro.
Certainly, this most important of subjects is old hat to us meatshields ... but maybe not quite so much to everyone around us. And gosh, who better to talk about this subject than your devoted Tank Talk tanks!
And, really. If your team doesn't know aggro, then you're going to have a hell of a time as a tank. So, let's Tank Talk about aggro. What it is, where it comes from, why you want it, and why they don't want it.
Step off the zeppelin or boat to Northrend and you're in a new world. Even when there's not snow, Northrend simply feels cold. Piano playing in the background in Dragonblight even sounds like ice should feel. It's a brave new world of strange sights, unusual architecture, and unheard of beasts. Curious about what you should expect? Read on.
Nizari asked....
Have you seen much of the Nordic influence that Wrath is supposed to have? I know you've discussed the Vrykul and the Val'kyr before, but I'm wondering if you've seen any more esoteric or obscure references? I'd find it mighty entertaining if there was a baker who sold Kransekake, or a cooking recipe to make Lutefisk.
I think this question pretty much floored most of the team -- because none of us really experts in Norse mythology. Your friend and mine, Alex, had this to say about Norse influences in the expansion: There are the jormungar, of course, and the Avatar of Freya in the Sholazar Basin. The Avatar of Freya is a vaguely Druidic being that is battling the Scourge and Freya is one of the Titans. The Titans themselves are heavily inspired by Norse and Greek mythology.
For more of your questions -- and our answers! -- read on! But if you're the sort who wants to avoid spoilers, turn back now. We're aiming to avoid major story spoilers, but this feature is all about beta content and we can't talk about the beta without giving a few things away.
Time for a little WoW blog roundup, cowpokes! Whoopie-ti-yi-yo!
Making gold with second account | Full Time WoW Addict With Blizzard's new refer-a-friend incentive, you might be thinking about opening a second account to get those XP benefits. Even better, Examino at Full Time WoW Addict shows you how to earn your raiding gold with some light multiboxing. No Wrath spoilers!
Spellpower and You: Gearing in WotLK | Banana Shoulders Siha at Banana Shoulders (best blog name ever!) compares theories to practice in Wrath's current Paladin spellpower changes.
Achievements and why they suck | Yet Another Warlock Nerf Some people think the achievements system coming in Wrath is awesome sauce. Horns at Yet Another Warlock Nerf vigorously disagrees.
"Like I promised, the paladin changes were more sweeping than most changes. As such, it's going to take us some time to go through a second pass on the abilities and get everything polished up enough to evaluate the shiny, new paladin." - Ghostcrawler, on the Paladin forums
The Paladin changes we've seen so far have been pretty massive. There's been a reworking of our Seal and Judgement system, a shuffling of our talents, and the addition of interesting baseline spells like Divine Plea, a much needed mana recovery mechanic. The important thing to remember, though, is that this is Beta -- meaning a lot of things can still change from now until Wrath of the Lich King goes live. And as Ghostcrawler indicated, a lot of things will change.
In fact, some spells we might love now could change or be scrapped. The Art of War, a talent I raved about and was wreaking havoc in the Beta, was fundamentally changed. From a pure DPS talent usable by raiding Paladins, it has become a utility spell more geared towards PvP. Some old spells such as the poor man's Divine Shield, Divine Protection, was reworked to actually be more usable. While we won't go through all the changes one by one -- there are a lot and I expect more in the future -- we can examine some key changes and try to figure out what Blizzard wants to do with the class.
It's 11AM, do you know where your beta testers are? If you're reading WoW Insider (and you certainly seem to be), then they're right here answering your questions. We've picked a few unanswered questions from recent installments of Ask a Beta Tester to answer this morning, and, as always, invite you to drop in any new questions that might be plaguing your poor brain. I'm going to start off with a question I've been waiting for -- because it allows me to properly express the full extent of my glee over the changes to the Paladin's seal and judgment system, which are, if I may be so bold, magnificent. Offhand writes in to say, "I'm getting confused as to how paladin seals work now. It seems like they keep updating and changing that system."
The old system of seals and judgements is dead -- long live the new system. At present, a paladin's available seals have been reduced to light, wisdom, righteousness, blood/vengeance (Horde/Alliance), and corruption/martyr (Horde and Alliance's new versions of blood/vengeance, to put them on even footing, insofar as seals are concerned)...You'll notice former staple crusader is missing -- it buffed holy damage on application and your all-around damage has been buffed so you won't notice a change. Madness! Now, when you cast a judgement, it does not use up your seal -- all seals last for two minutes. Also, while you have seal of light, wisdom, and justice, their use is much more limited, because you now have three different types of judgements: light, wisdom, and justice. Regardless of which seal you use, using judgement of light, wisdom, or justice will apply the debuff formerly associated with the seal of the same name while doing the immediate effect of the seal you currently have up. It may sound convoluted, but in practice, it really cuts down on the seal/judge/seal/judge keyboard action and streamlines paladin combat. Update: Clarified the new corruption and martyr seals which, as many commenters have pointed out, are versions of blood/vengeance for the opposite faction. Also, I'm a total idiot and forgot to mention righteousness. It's not gone, I promise!
Alright. So you got your weapon. I can't stress enough that this is the single most important piece of equipment in a Retribution Paladin's possession. Then there's your armor. Your armor pieces are only slightly more important than the stuff we'll be covering if only because 1) they confer larger stat bonuses, and 2) having a matching set makes you look cool. And Retadins must always look cool. It's bad enough that the pre-Wrath population laughs you out of raids and 5-mans. When the expansion hits, of course, you'll smash all their faces with the Divine Storm just to put them in their place. Until then, you gear up.
Today we're looking at the last few pieces of the puzzle. Amulets, cloaks, librams, rings, and trinkets. Unlike the weapons or armor pieces, where the real meat is Strength, you can have a little creativity with these slots because many items confer non-stat bonuses. Strength is obviously a premium, but it all comes down to taste. Once you've filled about half your gear slots, you should be ready enough for Karazhan and not gimp the raid.
Let's take a short breather from this whole flood of Wrath of the Lich KingBeta news for a bit. I know everyone's excited to find out more about what's waiting for us in Northrend, but some of us would actually like to play the game right now, instead of waiting for *cough* a few months. As exciting as the new Paladin changes seem to be, players with fresh Level 70 characters would do well to focus on gearing up for now. After all, it'll make it so much easier to fight the numerous baddies in Northrend.
Previously, we discussed the weapons for a Retribution Paladin only starting to gear up for the ever-popular Karazhan. More than anything -- more than any piece of armor -- a Retadin must find the biggest, baddest 2-handed weapon she can find to strike righteous fear into the hearts of her enemies. Once she has that, everything follows. In this installment of The Light and How to Swing It, let's take a look at the armor pieces that every Karazhan-bound Retadin should be wearing.
I saved the best for last. Best if only because Retribution is the tree I've enjoyed the most while on my Paladin, and because a quick perusal of the new talents show that Blizzard seems to be taking the right steps for the tree. Few class specs have had more stigma than Retribution, mainly because the class traditionally performed better in other trees and also because the Retadin, who could only muster average DPS, provided little by way of raid utility. It doesn't help that Kalgan openly ridicules the class, either, whether or not in jest.
Patch 2.3 saw a bunch of awesome changes for Retribution, dealing with threat management as well as some solid PvP-oriented talents. Despite that, few raids brought Retadins along, especially on progression. It's an old stigma that has carried over and has proven hard to shake. The other trees received fantastic upgrades -- you can read my overview of the Holy tree here, and my thoughts on the Protection tree here. You can read the entirety of the patch notes in my first post of this series, and my analysis on the changes to baseline abilities and existing talents in the follow-up.
Alright, we've seen the changes to the Holy tree, and as far as I can tell, it looks really exciting. Blizzard addressed some key issues such as mobility with possible instant heals, HoTs, and spell haste. Holy Paladins might actually use Seals and Judge them. There's still the quibble about mana regeneration, but for now, it looks as though Paladin healing is headed in the right direction. You can read about the changes to Holy here, as well as the list of changes to baseline abilities and talents.
What about Paladin tanking? The Protection tree in its current state is designed for AoE tanking, which Blizzard acknowledges to be the Paladin tank's niche. But where Paladin tanks shine with trash mobs and situational bosses, the reactive tanking mechanic is only moderately successful with single targets, particularly bosses with slow attacks or do not rely purely on Physical attacks (thus not activating a block). That said, Paladin tanks can frontload massive threat, scale well against multiple mobs, and are the darlings of 5-man content.
Before Death Knights show up and take all of the Paladins' glory, let's take a look at the weapon that originally defined Human Paladins, the two-handed mace of heroes.
+7 Stamina, +6 Intellect, +12 Spirit. A Paladin hammer of justice if there ever was one, and not just because it's only for Pallies.
The quest you can get it at (see below) is at level 20, and the weapon is so nice for the level it'll easily last you most of the way towards the 30s. There's no two ways about it -- any Paladin poking around midlevel should be wielding this hammer. Unless you're healing all the time, this is the thing to hit bad guys with. As soon as you get it, enchant it, because odds are that you'll keep it for a while.
And it's one of the best quest rewards before 60 -- in my opinion, one of the best for-the-level weapons in the game.
How to Get It: You've got to be an Alliance Paladin, which means Human (Update: or Dwarf or Draenei, of course, thanks commenters. But you still have to go to Westfall to run the quest). And at level 20, you'll get a quest called The Tome of Valor from your Paladin trainer, which will take you on a journey to save a lovely lass, and into a few instances for the level to do some weapon material fetching. It's a nice, and fairly simple quest chain, it'll get you not only this sweet weapon, but a nice shield and the Sense Undead ability, and, most importantly, it'll teach you how to be a Paladin and stand up for the Light wherever darkness encroaches (which doesn't include, strangely enough, QQing about ret gear itemization).
Blood Elf Pallys have a much easier quest, and can nab the Blood-Tempered Ranseur. But Verigan's Fist is a classic, so we're featuring that one. The Whirlwind Weapon is a good one for Warriors, but that's three different weapons -- no other weapon exemplifies a class, in our humble opinion, as much as this one. Disagree? Sound off in the comments.
Getting Rid of It: Sells to vendors for 74s 59c. Disenchants into a Small Glowing Shard. But don't get rid of it -- good Paladins always walk softly and carry a big hammer.
Finally. We get to the most exciting -- albeit also most likely to change -- part of our Paladin abilities analysis. The new Wrath of the Lich King talents! Readers who have been keeping watch on the expansion's Alpha and all the rumors and leaks know only too well that Paladins have had nothing significant throughout the entire Alpha stage. That all changed with the sudden release of the Beta yesterday, however, and a flood of overwhelming Paladin information came streaming in. You can read the list of changes in my first post, and a general review of baseline abilities and existing talents in my follow-up post.
Paladin talents have been greatly reworked, with some talents jumping from one tree to another, and other talents scrapped completely. The general vibe from the new talent trees is that Blizzard, after so long, has finally given the class some much needed love. I don't think I've gotten this excited about the class -- or heck, about the game -- in a long time. We'll take a look at each tree, the new talents, and what they could mean for Paladins in Wrath after the break.
When Ghostcrawler mentioned on the closed Friends & Family Alpha that Paladins were the last to receive changes because the entire class was being majorly reworked, he wasn't kidding. The patch notes from the recently opened Wrath of the Lich KingBeta revealed massive changes to spells and abilities as well as a shuffling of talents among the three trees. I covered an overview of the changes as well as the new Hand nomenclature for old Blessings in the first part of our beta analysis. It's now updated with the new Paladin talents in all three trees, so be sure to check it out.
Before we get into the really juicy things, namely the new Wrath Paladin talents, we'll take a look at the changes to baseline spells and current talents. In some cases, these were totally reworked, and in others they were significantly improved. The first spell that leaps out with a huge buff is the change to Avenging Wrath, which no longer causes Forebearance. Its damage increase has been reduced to 20% (down from 30%), and now increases healing done by 20% (up from 0%).
Faith has been rewarded. The Paladin changes have finally been revealed in the Wrath of the Lich King beta patch notes, and from a quick review of things... I'm just blown away. It appears as though Blizzard really seems to be on top of its game and isn't afraid to shake things up in order to get things right. Paladins are getting major changes to key abilities, and all of them seem like direct responses to grievances that have been aired in the past.
The talent trees are being moved around yet again (remember when Blessing of Kings used to be the 31-point Retribution talent?), but this time the changes seem to make more sense. There are major overhauls to some talents and abilities, as well as a removal of others. The changes are geared towards streamlining the trees and abilities, Blizzard remorselessly paring down the unnecessary and consolidating what needs to be rolled together. A list of the changes and my analysis after the jump.
Time for a little 
"Like I promised, the paladin changes were more sweeping than most changes. As such, it's going to take us some time to go through a second pass on the abilities and get everything polished up enough to evaluate the shiny, new paladin." - Ghostcrawler, on the 
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