As I said in my last post, I love to review my site’s incoming search terms. One that has been coming up lately is TPS rotations for Paladins.

With WotLK, Paladins received a fairly large overhaul, mechanics-wise. We have a few more buttons to push, and combined with relatively short cooldowns on our core abilities, we have a set rotation, and occupies every global cooldown (GCD).

We have 5 abilities that occupy our rotation. These spells are split into 2 categories, dependent on the length of their cooldowns, 6 seconds and 9 seconds **.

9 seconds:

• Holy Shield
• Judgement
• Consecration

6 seconds:

• Shield of Righteousness
• Hammer of the Righteous

Now, the math behind this all revolves around the GCD being 1.5 seconds. Fortunately enough, 6 and 9 are both evenly divisible by the GCD. I’ll make a quick list of the CD’s here, so you can see the flow.

1. 0.0s Holy Shield (9)
2. 1.5s Shield of Righteousness (6)
3. 3.0s Judgement (9)
4. 4.5s Hammer of of the Righteous (6)
5. 6.0s Consecrate (9)
6. 7.5s Shield of Righteousness (6)
7. 9.0s Holy Shield (9)
8. 10.5s Hammer of of the Righteous (6)
9. 12.0s Judgement (9)
10. 13.5s Shield of Righteousness (6)
11. 15.0s Consecrate (9)
12. 16.5s Hammer of of the Righteous (6)

Now I know this seems a little complicated, however, its really not. I’ve included a handy little video that will show you exactly how to do this. Please try to follow this order for these spells, as this is most effective for 1) getting Holy Shield up ASAP, and 2) best for immediate TPS generation.

Source for good stuffs!

** Ok, Holy Shield, and Consecrate aren’t really 9 sec CD’s, but you can treat them as such, Holy Shield has a 10 second duration, with a 8 second CD, so you’re not sacrificing any mitigation.

We’ve got a few patches headed our way. Tomorrow, we are supposedly getting patch 3.0.9. This brings about a few class changes, some spell changes, and a few other minor things.

Now me being a paladin, I am greatly looking forward to 30-minute seals. I don’t know why this wasn’t changed back when shaman weapon imbues were lengthened.

When this came up, it made me think, why haven’t they made Righteous Fury undispellable? I think the largest reason is the position of Improved Righteous Fury in the protection talent tree. Its way too low for the benefit it gives. Making this undispellable would allow ret to have a permanent 6% damage reduction, since they will already be deep in prot for Imp HoJ.

The next patch to head our way, will likely be 3.1. Dev’s have already started releasing information about this patch. Lots of class changes, some bigger things have been announced. Replenishment has been given to more classes. I agree with Josh about the effects this has on raids. In my opinion, if Blizzard makes a buff “mandatory”, it should just be scrapped and baked in, like Blessing of Salvation was, and hopefully with 3.1 Blessing of Sanctuary. If I’m throwing together a 10 man for Ulduar, and I somehow, don’t have one of the 4 classes that give Replenishment in my optimal set up, I’m going to have to bench one of my good raiders simply to fill a buff slot. This goes against Blizzard’s “bring the player, not the class” mentality of Wrath of the Lich King.

Additionally in 3.1, Blizzard has announced Dual Specializations will be delivered. From what has been said by dev’s this will give you two talent specs that are your “permanent specs” and you can switch between these freely, in town and more than likely in the “prep time” for PvP matches. Now they have said it won’t be free out of town, but not prohibitively expensive, since people could just port/summon out of the instance and back to town.

Blizz has states they don’t want any mandatory classes in a raid. They have supported this with overlapping buffs from different classes as well as reworks of a few mechanics.

Tanking was the “sort of” focal point of the mechanics changes in WotLK. Crushing blows were removed, Deathknights were added, (protection) Paladins were completely reworked, among other things. Any time there are drastic changes, habits and patterns often get opened up to change. However, peoples choices are not always 100% pure and unbiased. Many people still hold what was true in The Burning Crusade, and even back to Original content as true today. Paladins and Druids have gained huge buffs since those days, and some people are beginning to accept some of what new information is out there, while others cling to old concepts and refuse to open an eye to see what’s out there.

In Wrath of the Lich King there are four tanking classes, Warriors, Paladins, Druids, and Deathknights. Now that crushing blows have been removed, the line between the classes has been blurred to a certain degree. Paladins and Warriors can use shields, while the other two tanks cannot. In WotLK Block Value has shot through the roof. At the peak of my (boss) gear, I might have been a bit over 300 BV in TBC. Now in Wrath I am just shy of 1,400 BV completely unbuffed, and in a raid setting I can reach up to 2,000 BV. Additionally, WotLK did not bring with it a “huge” stamina jump like we saw in The Burning Crusade. Therefore boss damage numbers haven’t scaled quite as fast, and blocking a hit can significantly up your overall damage mitigation.

Druids compensate for this with very large health pools, and larger than normal armor ratings. Bringing their mitigation almost up to a Warrior or Paladin. However their high HP pool is there simply because they take much less consistent damage. They have dodge, miss, or full-hit on their incoming combat table. Deathknights have a similar situation, however they add parry to the list.

Paladins and Warriors can shave off another 1-2.5k from those hits. Warriors can also get a “critical block” for two times their block value (albeit not very frequently). Paladis are the only class that can (with a little raid gear) consistently block every I coming hit (that isn’t avoided). This brings their (physical) mitigation to the smoothest of all tanks.

People that raided pre-BC still have it stuck in their minds that Warriors are the end-all tank. However I feel the playing field is much more even, if not slightly leaning towards paladin MT’ing. I’ve gotten into several raids and been designated to OT duty (damn pugs), until the warrior (who has less health and avoidance) gets smashed by the boss.

Wrapping up, anybody reading this, please try to educate people that the scene has changed and sometimes there is a better choice than what worked in the past.

PS – maybe “Bring the player, not the class” is true, and I am just that leet. LOL!

They released a new build on the beta servers. A few updates for every class, but most important to me is the 3% mitigation buff they put into Shield of the Templar.

With the 30% hp nerf that was in 3.0.2 dungeons and raiding have become a joke. The guild is making an attempt at Hyjal tonight. I really wish I could be there. The Heart of Kazrogal would be nice, as well as T6 gloves.

Blizzard will take the realms down for a very extended maintenance (2am-2pm PST) tonight. This is very good news for most classes and specs. I know there are a few out there who feel they got the short end of the buff stick, but I think most things are pretty good.

To divert the happy feeling I’ve got here, there is one thing that has been bothering me about the class changes lately: Taunts.

It seems Blizzard was more than ok to give the other tanks AoE ability like paladins, but in general they have always pulled the “homogenization” card when talking about changes. I understand this point, but so much has been given to warrior, and I’m not going to lie, we have received our share of buffs too, however, one thing paladins need is a RELIABLE taunt.

Righteous Defense is nice in certain situations, but it’s downfalls out weigh the benefits. As many paladins have suggested, I would love to see RD switched to 2 ranks, one that taunts the mob directly, and the other that taunts the mob directly as well as two addition enemies attacking their target.

This change would eliminate many annoyances in 25 man raid scenarios. Several occasions during BT trash, I’ve had to get a mob off another tank, however, I don’t really have an ability that just pulls a single target from another tank. Every other tank has (or will have, regarding DKs) a single target taunt. Blizzard has responded that they don’t feel it’s needed. If it’s not needed then why doesn’t one of the other tanks have a “alternative taunt”?