Paladin

Now that the Public Test Realms (PTR) have the Hellfire Citadel trinkets available for testing, let's take a look! There's a pretty good mix this tier -- some straightforward stat pieces, some funky proc/on-use ones, and a few really creative ones that should be a lot of fun to play with.

This week we brush off the minor mastery changes up on the 6.2 PTR and address an issue that has been festering for years: the unremarkable Exorcism. What's wrong with it? What can be done to change it? Let's take a look.

No matter how many moving parts an encounter has, how it is ultimately tanked can be boiled down to one of a few formulas that Blizzard repeats over and over again when designing fights. As human beings, one of our evolutionary survival skills is recognizing patterns – many times, if you're like me, you'll be tanking a new encounter and think to yourself “hang on, I've seen this before.”

Let's talk about healing our way through Blackrock Foundry and toppling Blackhand from his fiery crucible. We're looking at all 10 bosses today, so I'm going to keep things brief.

Update: Blackrock Spire is now open and available for play.

This week I’m going to shift gears from general tutorials and instead do a quick look at tips and tricks for tanking half of the bosses in Blackrock Foundry. As they say, it’s better to strike while the iron is hot -- BRF has been out long enough that I’m sure interest in the place is beginning to cool off.

Welcome to Lightsworn, Blizzard Watch’s regular paladin column.

In the comments for my introductory column the other week, I had a few folks ask me to write a 101 guide for those new to the spec and tanking in general. Considering this is only the second protection-flavored Lightsworn post, that sounds like an excellent idea!

I don’t know about you, but for me the transition from Highmaul to Blackrock Foundry has been a welcome one. Highmaul wasn’t a terrible instance, but it also wasn’t a particularly good one either. Not a single encounter stood out at me, bouncing up and down in a desperate plea for love and attention. Kargath, The Butcher, Brackenspore, and Twin Ogron were little more than stand-and-burn fights for melee classes with minor complications tacked on to make them feel not so “phoned in.” Ko’ragh was outright hostile to melee...

A dark and secret yearning in the soul of a many tanks is the want to pursue “big numbers” just as much as our DPS brethren do. Sure, we deny it, and dismiss DPS as an unwashed rabble more obsessed with chasing bigger and bigger damage numbers at the expense of basic things like not dying during a boss encounter -- but the truth is that deep in the heart of every tank lurks a green-eyed ego-monster that hungers for flashy critical strikes. (Whether tanks admit it or not.)