While I effused about the great change to the otherwise lackluster Blessing of Sanctuary -- it should really be named Blessing of Badass -- Paladins have yet to receive the promised second pass. There have been massive changes to the class itself, but there's more to come. Hopefully on the positive side.

The Paladin community's new "Beacon of Light", Ghostcrawler, has popped up on the forums saying that the second pass is forthcoming. Blizzard is looking at making major changes to the Protection tree, stating that the developers feel that there are too many mandatory talents and mitigation talents that don't do anything interesting.

If you've got brilliant ideas about how to improve the Protection tree, now's your chance to speak up. Ghostcrawler is putting the entire Paladin community up to task by giving feedback on which talents are fun and which ones aren't; what areas feel bloated and what feels barren; and talents that seem mandatory, talents that seem fun but optional, and talents that often get the shaft. Head on up to the forums now and let Blizzard hear your thoughts. Given all the great changes to the Paladin class that have shown up in the Wrath Beta, I have a very good feeling that Blizzard actually listens. [EDIT: Ghostcrawler also mentions that the Beta forums aren't the only source of feedback they have, so head over to the Paladin forums, too, in the hopes of getting heard]

[UPDATE: Ghostcrawler has made the same call to Retribution Paladins, as well. Jump over to the thread now...]

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.

Today I thought we'd look at an addon that many guilds require their paladins to use. To be honest, I'd never really understood why until I transitioned to 25-man content. Coordinating blessings with one other paladin (our Karazhan runs rarely had more than two paladins.) was never complicated, but when you've got three or more paladins, it can get messy and can waste valuable raid time.

As my guild continues its efforts in The Eye and Serpent Shrine Cavern, I've found myself somewhat frustrated by paladins who don't use this one. Granted, I was that guy until recently, thinking that because ZOMG Buffs played nice with buff assignments via PallyPower, that I was good to go. Now suddenly I'm taking a more active role in buff assignments and realize that like Omen, Healbot and logging for WWS, the more players using a utility, the better.

Reader Ron dropped us a line about a basic gear quandary. A Holy paladin who cruised most of his instances with Bear tanks, Ron has amassed a small collection of paladin tanking gear. And he's kept it around, since experience has taught him to never throw away class-appropriate gear.

His current Holy kit doesn't pack the spell crit to unleash the full-fledged DPS frenzy of his Shockadin. His question? Ron would like to know if swapping out some of his Holy gear for a bit of Defense and Avoidance might make his dailies a little easier.

The easy answer here is...

Yesterday, I profiled a number-crunching addon that does the math to tell you about the actual effects of your abilities and spells. Therefore, I thought it appropriate to share this number-crunching macro. This is one I've only recently had to use. After a few hours debating the meaning and theory behind becoming uncrushable and uncrittable, I think this macro is a great tool for raid leaders and tanks alike.

Basically this macro adds up your total avoidance to determine whether or not you meet the sacred uncrushable numeral: 102.4% total avoidance.

Regardless of any arguments about the mechanics behind this system, its what is accepted as the way things are. If you're tanking, pushing Crushing Blows off the attack table is one of your primary goals. As a note, Druids cannot become uncrushable, sorry, you're stuck taking it like a bear.

Come back after the break so I can share the macro without cluttering the front page with scripting code.

In light of the recent inquests against our least favorite races, mobs, mob abilities, or tankadin writers, it seems only fitting to ask; what is your least favorite daily quest?

Now that the cap has been raised to twenty-five, and a slew of dailies has been added as of patch 2.4, many players are finding themselves spending a few hours on daily quests each day. Personally, there are a few that I enjoy doing most days, including the bombing runs, and some that I'd rather avoid if I didn't need the gold to fuel my rather Outlandish habits.

I'm not sure if I could pinpoint a single culprit though. The longer quests bother me up front, because I get bored spending half an hour each day mowing through the same exercise. As such, the Shadowmoon Valley quests might be my least favorite, because aside from the competition, they take forever.

Which daily quests are giving you a daily headache, and why?

Eyonix seems to have taken quite a lot of coffee this morning and made a rare appearance on the Paladin boards by making a lot of posts on a couple of threads. The Blizzard CM, not to be confused with the eponymous Innkeeper in Stormspire, surprised the Paladin community by responding to some threads dealing with Protection Paladin weapons and Avenging Wrath. One thread asks for a decent Paladin tanking weapon, which is in short supply compared to the numerous Warrior tanking weapons which have Warrior-friendly mitigation and threat-generation stats. A Paladin tank benefits from a +spell damage weapon -- oddly enough one of the best Paladin tank weapons are the different Gladiator Gavels. Eyonix responds that the amount of spell damage a Paladin tank needs is directly proportional to the raid's DPS capability (in a nutshell, strong DPS needs higher +spell damage) -- which doesn't quite answer the request for more +spell damage tanking weapons, but it was nice to hear from Eyonix, anyway. As a bonus, Eyonix reveals that his Paladin tank is currently raiding SSC and TK with a *gasp* Continuum Blade.

With regards to Avenging Wrath, Eyonix doesn't quite address the fact that it's an easily dispellable (leaving Forbearance, to boot!) buff that has little use for Holy Pallies and in PvP (great from screenshots, though!). He does chime in to say, however, that the Blizzard devs "didn't shoot down" the observation that Avenging Wrath currently confers no benefits to Holy Paladins. Without making any promises, Eyonix says, "you never know what the future holds." Of course, Paladins should learn not to expect anything. This is Blizzard, after all. Eyonix cleverly avoids posting a response on a thread that has had seven maxed response iterations -- suspiciously Kalganized. WoW Insider's Dan and Brian both think that Blizzard could communicate better, but any presence from Blizzard is better than no presence at all. Eyonix also posts a sobering thought on his own thread by saying that "All classes are a work in progress. That doesn't mean any class is "unfinished". Our design team will simply never be satisfied with any area the game. Our goal is to make this game the best it can be in every area imaginable." Coming from someone who has more than a few 70s -- and thus knows classes reasonably well -- that's certainly good to know.

Welcome to the first edition of our new twice-monthly column, Pimp My Profile. Readers submit their Armory profile to us and every two weeks we pick one to review. We provide a Gear Check, Talent Tune Up, AddOn/Macro recommendations and more to help you reach your goals in the game.

For the inaugural column, I asked my long time friend Jon to submit his new Paladin for da pimpage. He had recently shelved his Warrior in favor or leveling a new Paladin to 70 to be the main tank for our casual group. Having played the class for only two months, he had a few questions and concerns. Here is what he had to say:

"I'm highly aware of needing to obtain the "uncrittable" defense numbers so far in order to get a defense anywhere near 490 I've found that I have to sacrifice too much spell damage which eats into my ability to hold agro. I abandoned a 63 warrior in favor of my Pally tank and the teary eyed joy that comes with being able generate lots of agro quickly on multiple mobs. Big spell damage is essential to my ability to tank for my trigger happy friends whose 5 man instance approach is more akin to "Who's Line Is It Anyway" rather than the production of Shakespeare most people reading this think their guild regularly produces."

Jon's goals as a new level 70 Protection Paladin on the verge of tanking Heroics are:

1. To attain uncrushability by equipping more avoidance gear (+Dodge,+Parry or +Block equipment)
2. Regain his threat generation through +Spell damage
3. Retaining his uncrittable status by keeping his Defense at least at 490

Let's look at Jon's current set up and what he, or any pre-Heroic L70 Protection Paladin, can do to achieve those goals.

I've always though the biggest problem with Paladin tanking was gear (well, ever since I realized Paladins can tank, that is). Plate seems to come, for the most part, in three kinds: physical DPS gear, with strength, agility, and crit rating; tanking gear, with +defense, stamina, etc.; and caster gear, with Intellect, mana per 5, spell damage, and so forth. None of these three types is ideal for Paladin tanking -- if you take tank plate, you miss out on spell damage, and if you take caster plate, you miss out on stamina, +defense, and avoidance stats. The devs have heard this concern, and are planning to address it in 2.1.0. Ommra delivers:

As previously promised I passed this on to the developers. I took the liberty of summarising the thread; basically saying that what you are after is gear with +Stamina, +Defense and +Spell damage, and that you are not very keen on +Intelligence and MP5 (Youngblood emphasised the need for more HP and damage mitigation instead).

The devs have read this and thought it sounded fair enough. Paladin tanking gear is going to be more geared towards tanking/hp so this concern should be addressed in the next content patch.

So, again, thank you for compiling this and helping me passing your concerns on to the devs.

Looks pretty good to me. Paladins, what do you guys think? Have I got your gear situation totally wrong? This is good news, right?

[via PaladinSucks]