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.

As I looked forward to this year last December, I wasn't sure holy paladins were going to survive 2011 in one piece. We were just learning to adapt to the three-heal model and figuring out how to manage our holy power properly, and I had serious doubts about our AoE healing and mastery bonus. Luckily, I was wrong, and we have thrived in Cataclysm. We started by focusing on our specialty, powerful tank healing, and then expanded to take over the raid healing role as the year progressed.

While holy power and the new healing model were the big topics of early 2011, AoE healing has clearly been the topic that defined this era in holy paladin history. Holy Radiance's first beta version, Healing Hands, was loudly trumpeted when the Cataclysm NDA was lifted. Light of Dawn's struggle to find a place in our arsenal has caused more lines of paladin patch notes than any other ability. Learning to AoE heal has been our biggest challenge this year but also our greatest success.

Continue reading The Light and How to Swing It: Remembering our first year of holy power

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The Light and How to Swing It: Remembering our first year of holy power originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sun, 01 Jan 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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 24 other people, obsessing over his hair (a blood elf racial!), and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense.

With some of the buffs from 4.3 (specifically the buff to Seal of Truth, when Judged) along with ever-increasing stats and item levels, our rotational priorities have changed as well. In order to keep everyone up to date on the latest theorycrafting being brought down from Mt. Sinai from Theck over at Maintankadin (as well as a refresher for the rustiest among us), this column today will look over single-target and AoE threat rotations and talk about what is the most optimal way to roll face.

First things first -- the right setup

Talenting is important when it comes to producing threat. If you're sacrificing a key DPS increaser like Reckoning for a monstrosity like Hallowed Ground, you're going to be doing yourself a disservice in the long run. No matter how cool a damage-dealing talent sounds (Eye for an Eye is case in point here), unless it brings the proper numbers to the table in the sims, it's not worth it if optimal play is your goal.

This is the pretty standard setup. I included the three heaviest-hitting prime glyphs in there as well. With regard to the talents, you can also go a little deeper by swapping the second point out of Pursuit of Justice and finishing off Grand Crusader. The second point is worth about 241 DPS with 2% hit/10 expertise.

Continue reading The Light and How to Swing It: An updated look at the prot paladin rotation

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The Light and How to Swing It: An updated look at the prot paladin rotation originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 30 Dec 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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!

When it comes to tanking or healing, it's pretty obvious when you're doing things correctly. The metrics for these important roles typically involve staving off death as long as possible, whether it be through drawing a monster's ire or invoking the name of some unseen deity to mend the wounds of one's allies. As members of the damage-dealing brigade, we ret paladins can be said to adhere to the same requirements in that we attempt to kill our adversaries before they kill us, but truly gauging a DPSer's value involves more than just looking at meter addons like Recount and Skada. Today, we will discuss the use of a very versatile and amazingly useful tool known as World of Logs in the context of retribution paladin DPS.

Buffs gained

In my opinion, buffs gained is one of the more handy parts of World of Logs. Here, you can see what buffs you gained throughout the course of an encounter, from Bloodlust to Divine Guardian and beyond. Notice that if you click on the pound sign (#) next to any ability, a graph comparing your damage done with overall raid DPS will pop up at the top of the screen. Underneath that graph will be your selected ability, with green boxes representing the uptime on the buff or debuff. The check box next to the name of the ability will overlay this uptime information on top of the graph itself.

Continue reading The Light and How to Swing It: How to evaluate your DPS using World of Logs

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The Light and How to Swing It: How to evaluate your DPS using World of Logs originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 28 Dec 2011 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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 you're a holy paladin with a pulse, there's no reason not to be raiding Dragon Soul. The Raid Finder allows us healers to find groups in minutes, with no strings attached if you have to leave early. The normal versions of the bosses are all accessible for guilds across the spectrum of dedication levels. Healing a raid in Dragon Soul gives you access to the best gear available and provides us with the greatest challenge we can face today.

I was looking at my World of Logs parses from the old days, and I was surprised to see how bad my HPS looked then when compared to more recent parses. The first step in preparing yourself to heal in Dragon Soul is to realize that the instance isn't built like Bastion of Twilight or Firelands. While the Ascendant Council repeatedly punished the raid for clumping and Baleroc crushed our tanks, many fights in Dragon Soul involve tight stacking and tons of AoE healing. Optimizing our AoE healing has become a key to succeeding in Dragon Soul.

Continue reading The Light and How to Swing It: 5 clever tricks for maximizing your Dragon Soul healing

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The Light and How to Swing It: 5 clever tricks for maximizing your Dragon Soul healing originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sun, 25 Dec 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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 24 other people, obsessing over his hair (a blood elf racial!), and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense.

Three down, five to go. Or, four, if that's how you prefer to count it. The difficulty is starting to ramp up at this point, and you'll soon find that it's all uphill from here. Hagara will test the awareness and mobility of your raid team, and Ultraxion will provide the first major gear check for the raid. Both will set you up for the pursuit of Deathwing and the closing out of the raid.

Hagara

Before I get too far ahead of myself, let's start with the next boss on our hit parade: Hagara. This is a very straightforward fight for you. There's some deadly burst that can be avoided with fancy footwork and an add you'll need to pick up, making the most exciting components of tanking the fight. Thankfully, to break up the monotony, there's some calisthenics to keep the blood flowing and the raid moving.

You'll want to start by tanking Hagara off to the side, somewhere between the middle and the edge of that large, central circle of the platform. The reason for this is when an ice phase begins and Ice Waves goes out, you don't want to be standing in the center where she spawns them. If she's off to the side, she has to run to the center and then unleash the ice. So don't get you and all your melee DPS killed! (Only the DPSers' dying is acceptable.)

Continue reading The Light and How to Swing It: Tanking Hagara and Ultraxion

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The Light and How to Swing It: Tanking Hagara and Ultraxion originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 23 Dec 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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 24 other people, obsessing over his hair (a blood elf racial!), and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense.

In the previous weeks, we've talked about getting prepped for patch 4.3, how to hit the ground running, and what pieces of gear should be on your hit list. Now we've come to the main event: the Dragon Soul raid. Deathwing's forces are assaulting Wyrmrest Temple, and it's up to you and your allies to knock them over and finally put a stop to his perfidy. The fights ahead will test your skills and the limits of your survivability. You'll also be taunt swapping like you've never taunt swapped before (which is its own kind of exciting).

Morchok

Morchok is a fairly simple encounter (and "fairly" is being generous). Consider it the Lootreaver of Dragon Soul.

When you pull Morchok, turn him away from the raid. His Stomp attack will split damage among all targets within 25 yards, but the two closest (that is, you and your co-tank) get a double share of the damage. So unless you're trying to play Kill the DPS, face the boss away.

You and your co-tank will be swapping at around two or three stacks of the Crush Armor debuff. Each stack reduces your armor by 20 seconds, so don't allow it to stack too high. Usually I'll take the boss first, co-tank taunts at two stacks, and then taunt when my stacks fall off, and we continue to taunt when stacks drop off there on out.

Continue reading The Light and How to Swing It: Tanking the first 3 bosses of Dragon Soul

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The Light and How to Swing It: Tanking the first 3 bosses of Dragon Soul originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 16 Dec 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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.

As the fifth boss of Dragon Soul, Ultraxion is the gateway boss to pursuing Deathwing and stopping the second cataclysm. While Thrall and the dragon aspects are busy with the Dragon Soul itself, we're tasked with defending Wyrmrest Temple from Ultraxion's assaults. Simple, right?

Ultraxion is an incredibly simple fight for tanks and damage dealers. In fact, it's already being called the Patchwerk-fight of this tier. Aside from a few extra button presses, non-healers are simply tasked with bringing Ultraxion down as quickly as possible. Healers, on the other hand, play a very special role in this fight. We're fighting against rapidly increasing AoE damage to the raid, and the aspects themselves step in to help us accomplish our task. Ultraxion is the healer-centric fight of this tier, like Baleroc and Chimaeron before him.

Continue reading The Light and How to Swing It: Blinding Ultraxion with the Holy Light

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The Light and How to Swing It: Blinding Ultraxion with the Holy Light originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sun, 11 Dec 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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