Archive for January, 2010

Every Sunday (and the occasional weekday) Spiritual Guidance offers holy and discipline priests advice on how to wield the holy light and groove to the disco night. Your hostess Dawn Moore will provide the music.

I’m the fish girl.

I never wanted it to be this way. I never wanted to be that girl. You know, the fish girl: the woman in the raid who takes it upon herself to make sure all her fellow raiders are eating right by supplying Fish Feast after Fish Feast. Sure, sometimes it’s a fish guy (in fact, just the other day my heal captain joked that he had brought Capri Sun and orange slices for the raid) but usually it’s a woman. I guess it’s a maternal thing, or maybe it’s wanting to save time by always going in with max buffs. Whatever it is, I wasn’t always like this. In fact, I used to wonder why my raid leader’s wife would so willingly spend her feasts on our raid as we wiped all over 3-drake Obsidian Sanctum. I admired her generosity, particularly because I felt they were going to waste on stupid mistakes, and her efforts deserved better.

Then one day, after I had moved More >

Every Sunday, Chase Christian of The Light and How to Swing It invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. This week, we examine the basics of a holy paladin, from gems and enchants to talents and spell usage.

I have always been of the belief that the paladin is a healer at heart, with their hybrid nature simply an extension of their healing capability. In vanilla WoW, paladins were the Alliance’s healing all-star, with our tier sets and raid utility focusing on the restorative arts. Retribution and protection both have abilities that heal in some way, and their talent trees even have pro-healing options. If you want to experience the purest distilled essence of the paladin class, you have to try holy.

This is intended to be a guide to the holy paladin’s basic principles and tenets, not an in-depth guide into high-end raid healing or specialized gearing choices. If you’re new to the holy paladin or want to discover what the spec is all about, read on.

Continue reading The Light and How to Swing It: Holy 101

I’m going to assume that if you’re still reading this past the title, you’re interested in talking about tank gearing for your level 80 and that you’ve presumably used the Dungeon Finder to level him or her as a tank, but you’re certainly not rocking full T9 yet. It’s generally accepted that you’ll be saving up emblems for that, and of course filling the gaps for rings and trinkets and such as you can. You also may be a DPS player who wants to switch over to tanking but don’t have the gear yet.

First off, please, don’t pass on tanking gear just because it’s blue or dropped in a normal or heroic. Just because it’s not iLevel 232+ doesn’t mean it’s not good. You should be collecting and using upgrades as they drop, even if they won’t immediately put you at 35K health. Please remember also that a lot of people ran these instances and heroics back when Wrath first released with 22k or so health: despite what speed obsessed or hyper geared players will tell you, it is indeed possible to tank all the original Wrath heroics in blues.

Take the Nerubian Shield Ring, for example. If this drops More >

Reader comments — ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.

Some of us had a little trouble focusing on the topics at hand this past week. It seems we were, ahh, a wee bit distracted by the puppies.

Hooch [Quite possibly crazy]: Firs … *distracted by puppies* krizzlybear: Oh look, what a surprise. someone trying to mask a first po — *also distracted by puppies* Nicknin10do: Hooch, you’re so cra … *also distracted by puppies* Hal: This is the dumbest thing I … *distracted* D’awwwww. Narshe: What is this? I don’t even – *gasp* elstor: Wow you guys are so la – *distracted by puppies* Sev: C-c-c-combo brea — Dawww, so cute. God damn it, the puppies got to me, too. The220: Many pups … now! Handle it!

Ok, ok, don’t slap us with minus 50 DKP! … More of the week’s distractions (plus several juicy conversations that actually stayed on target), after the break.

Continue reading [1.Local]: Distracted by puppies