Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.

Andrew asked...

For those of us who won't be able to play Wrath for a while still, what would be the best route to catch up with everyone and get into raiding as quickly as possible?

Just quest, really. Finding a good place to grind out mobs can technically be better XP per hour, but really, that's a horrible way to experience the expansion your first time through. Most of the people that did it that way (such as Nymh) did it after they'd already seen all of the leveling content in the Wrath beta. Just quest. The order I did zones in is this: Howling Fjord, Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills, Zul'Drak, Sholazar Basin until you hit 77, then get Cold Weather Flying and move on to Storm Peaks or Icecrown until 80. Exchange Howling Fjord for Borean Tundra if you want. I just went with the Fjord personally because it had fewer people.

MMO-Champion is showing a good run down of the recent paladin changes. We knew these were coming. While many of the changes don't seem like they're nerfing the Paladin class to the ground, the changes are definitely a nerf.

Most of the changes are centering around the Retribution tree. Some are pretty crazy, like Seal of Corruption dealing holy damage, and Divine Storm dealing physical damage. There is no indication if these changes will make it into patch 3.0.3 or arrive in a later update.

There's a couple of other changes that stick out for me.

• Seal of Command lost about 20% of it's overall damage
• Most other seals were reduced by around 13% to 21%
• Judgement of the Wise grants 15% of base mana instead of 33%
• Most other judgement effects are reduced by about 15%
• Art of War was retooled to increase damage of Judgement, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm instead of increasing critical strike damage

In the glyph department, the Glyph of Crusader Strike now reduces the mana cost of Crusader Strike by 20%, instead of increasing the damage dealt by 20%.

And finally, Blessing of Might now increases AP by 306. It used to be 305. So it's not a total nerf...

The nerf bat swung and we got grazed a little bit. I didn't cover the last build's changes because they were somewhat minor, and most of them were reverted in this latest build anyway except for the change to Beacon of Light's duration to one minute (and all ranks work now). That's a buff, just in case you were wondering. On the other hand, the rest of the news is not so good.

Seals were nerfed again. The coefficients for Seal of Vengeance / Corruption, Seal of Blood / of the Martyr, and Seal of Command were lowered. I don't really have much to say about this other than that I'm disappointed but confident that it's all balanced. I haven't done as extensive a test of the Beta as I probably should, so if these damage nerfs were based on hard numbers that Blizzard has gathered, then they're probably right. I have to believe that.

Melee hits no longer refresh Judgements, which means that in order for the debuff to stay on opponents, Paladins will actually have to continuously Judge them. With the change to Crusader Strike some time back removing its Judgement refresh feature, this means Judgements will be every Paladin's responsibility. This also means Blizzard is forcing Holy or healing Paladins to insert Judgements into their rotation. With Judgements eating up the GCD now, I'm not so keen on the idea.

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!

More questions after the break..!

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.

The Euro WoW site has recently posted a brief interview with Tobias of the German workshop BattleHeat, a group that has recently crafted a real life set of Judgement, the Paladin Tier 2 armor set.

The interview gives some cool insight into the creative process of the armor, in addition to Tobias's training and experience as a Blacksmith. It is interesting to hear that while he has extensive technical training as a Smith, most of his know-how of crafting armor is largely through practice. It boggles the mind how much practice and hard work it must have taken to get to the level of expertise required to make a Judgement replica, but I'll admit I have no knowledge of the field myself.

There are some incredibly fun details on this armor that you really should see, and I've tucked some of it just behind the cut!

I have once again managed to steal the Light for another week, as regular columnists Chris and Elizabeth are off on their own epic quests while I am left to tend to the shop, so to speak. For today, we'll take a closer look at how the class is designed and its inherent ironies.

When I first rolled a Paladin, I didn't know what I was getting into. I rolled it mainly as a companion toon for my playing partner, my wife, who was elated at the Horde finally getting a 'pretty' race and promptly rolled a Warlock. As I leveled with her demon-enslaving new main, the experience challenged and frustrated me and it soon became apparent that Blizzard had designed the Paladin under a completely different design perspective. I was hooked. If there are any perceived failures about the class, it is largely because Blizzard had a vision for the Paladin class that was different from traditional class designs.

Blizzard worked hard at defining each class with a clear directive to make each one feel different from the others. Rogues had Energy, combo points and finishing moves; Warriors had Rage, a sort of reverse Mana bar; and Shamans had the totem system. Paladins are designed largely around the interesting Seal system. Everything that a Paladin does revolves around Seals, Blessings, and Auras, with Seals being the primary mechanic for dealing any sort of damage. For the most part, class design has worked for many classes while others, like the Shaman, have had more than its fair share of issues.

Personally, I love the Paladin class. My main is now a Blood Elf Paladin, with my Troll Shaman getting a little less love than it used to. I also used to play a Troll Hunter and an Undead Rogue. While I enjoyed all of them as I played them, it was the Paladin that appealed to me the most. To be honest, I still have no idea why. Maybe it was the challenge. Maybe it was hybrid aspect. Maybe, for all I know, it was the coolness of it all. When you get right down to it, though, Paladins have -- if you examine it very carefully -- what is probably the most inherently flawed ironic class design in the game. Let me explain.

I really wanted to call this article "The Peculiar Purple Paladin of Porcupine Peak", but aside from being fairly non-descriptive, I was afraid the reference would be lost. Instead, I decided to just state exactly what we're looking at over on the right.

I hope we can all agree that the Paladin Tier 2 Judgement set is a solidly designed set of gear, which really breathed some life and energy into the Paladin class, stylistically speaking. As a paladin myself, it became my whole world. It was the single reason I played with my online dress-up doll, err.. paladin. When I had finally achieved the set, I felt satisfied and complete. Then the Burning Crusade came. Try as I might to not do it, I've had to put several pieces of judgement into storage as I'm leveling from 60 to 70. My poor little pally now looks like a hodgepodge of pieces from a bargain bin.

Luckily for those of us who plan to take our (forced?) places in a raid group upon hitting 70, there's a bit of a black light at the end of the tunnel.

While "Purple Judgement" isn't a fully realized set, with bonuses and a name, it is a grouping of very viable healing gear for the level 70 paladin. If you're keen on maintaining that Judgement look, and you're okay with being a healer at level 70, you'll want to seek out the following pieces, from helm to boot:

I wrote this post about "Dream Gear" way back in October when my Shaman was obsessed with the Pauldrons of Elements, the Tier 0 shoulders that dropped from Rend in UBRS. I just love the way they look, all hooky and Shaman-y. Unfortunately, despite a huge number of UBRS runs, they never dropped for me, and when the Tier 1 shoulders fell into my hands in MC, I abandoned my dream to wear the Pauldrons, I thought, forever.

Until now. A fellow Shaman friend was running the Mana Tombs, and announced in guild chat that he'd grabbed the Lightning Rod Pauldrons, a terrific set of mail shoulders that drops from Tavarok in there. I drooled over the stats, and then CTRL-clicked to check out how they'd look on my Shammy, and lo and behold, I'd found my shoulders again! The devs had reused the Tier 0 skin, in new and cooler colors! Now I've got a new goal to run an instance over and over again for.

And a lot of people are living the same dream. Cearrdorn over on LJ really likes the Judgement set, but his guild never made it long enough in BWL for him to get the whole thing. Fortunately, it looks like almost the whole set is findable in different colors in Outland, most of it in 5-man (both regular and Heroic mode) instances. I can't wait to find a Bloodfang lookalike for my Rogue, too-- for those of us who were never able to get all the cool-looking high end gear we always wanted (for whatever reason), it looks like the devs, by laziness or design, are giving us a second chance by reusing the old skins.