Valithria Dreamwalker

The Dragon Who Loved Me.
from the memories of an Icecrown raid healer

Ok, that's a completely silly and cheesy subtitle, but I can't help. That's probably the first fight in the history of WoW that puts healers in the center of the stage. Yes, during that fight the goal is not to kill something, but to heal a captured green dragon.
My healer friends, we will have to bring back this mighty dragon from 50% life to full while our raiding brethren will protect us from the enemies assaulting us and trying to prevent our task.
Isn't that so cool to be the one that will decide on the length of the fight ? Yes you've read correctly this fight is not a DPS race, it's a ... Healing Race !

Let's come to more details. Valithria Dreamwalker is the first boss of the Frostwing Halls of Icecrown Citadel and is encountered before Sindragosa. She starts the fight at 50% life, you will need to heal her while killing the adds that will spawn to stop you. Once the dragon is back to full health she will destroy all remaining adds and teleport her (and you) out of the citadel effectively ending the fight.
During the fight players can use portals created by Valithria to switch to dreamstate, and alternate plane where dreamclouds will spawn. These clouds will regenerate your mana and greatly increase your healing for a short time, you can then get out and bomb heal Valithria before going back in there. While some healers (and a few dps as the clouds have to be destroyed to give buffs) will rotate between healing & regaining mana, the rest of the raid will have to deal with all the adds.
There are 5 kinds of adds. Glutonous Abominations will be especially dangerous as they'll spawn Rot Worms when they die (8-10 in 25-Man) that will melee their target (for about 5K) and can easily OS any character that is not a tank if they gang on him. But the key of the fight will be Suppressers, a class of adds that cast a strong debuff on Valithria reducing all heals on her by 10% and effectively making the fight longer as long as they're up. In 25-Man there is 6 Suppressers per wave when this fight was tested on the PTR.
You can find some details about the abilities on the wowwiki page, or the MMO Champion page (with a nice video of the fight).

Now about tactics, my guess will be for the Valithria healing squad to switch to dream state when a wave of adds spawn, buff and regen there until the Suppressers have been killed by the raid and come back to heal Valithria with full mana and the healing bonus while not being hindered by the Suppressers healing debuff on the dragon.
Now for the classes, I think Holy Paladins and Restoration Druids will probably be the healers assigned to Valithria if you have enough of them, while Shamans and Priests will probably stay on the raid. Why ? Because their single target spam healing is probably the best of the 4 healing specs, though very mana intensive, hence the use of the dreamstate plane. Holy Light spam and Nourish spam (whith full hots active) will be hard to best.

It really looks like a very interesting fight and I'm really eager to try it, especially in 25-man where the number of adds can turn the fight from controlled to hectic in a few seconds ^^

Waiting for IC ...

I don't know about you but I'm seriously waiting for Icecrown Citadel. Not that I've finished
all the content, I've yet to see Yog Sarron die, but that requires several evenings on Udluar and most people don't spend that amount of time on this raid anymore. Too much "free loot" on ToC (normal) or Onyxia or Lolaron to motivate much people about Ulduar.

I still think Ulduar is the best raid from WotLK up to now, despite it being too big, it should have been split in two raids as it was done all along BC. I still have some friends motivated by Ulduar hard modes and we're trying them from time to time, usually one or two nights a week when we are lucky enough to make our suicidal squad (Auriaya with all cats is a crazy fun mess of a fight to heal). If I find ToC hard mode mostly a "gear check", Ulduar hard modes are, at least for some of them, very entertaining.

The first news from the next raid Blizzard is giving us are starting to appear, and the first boss was tested on the PTR these last days (report on Mmo Champion). It doesn't seem super hard, as least on paper, I hope the normal/hard mode gap will be lower then ToC, and my wish is for hard modes to contain more abilities, more strategy than just be a gear check put over a normal difficulty boss.

I guess we'll all see that in IC, hopefully not too long from now, but even more hopefully nicely tested and balanced.

Pre-raid gear in patch 3.2

Last article about rolling a new paladin character to 80. This article will target gearing your paladin from fresh 80 to Ulduar raid level (at least enough to start Ulduar without shame). As I'm a healer this will obviously be more healing biased but most can apply to any paladin spec.

Wrath of the Lich King Patch 3.2 changed a lot of things for everyone, and even more for Holy Paladin. The two most impacting changes are:

• changes (read mana regen nerfs, BoL buff) to the Holy Tree;
• changes to the badge system in heroic and raid instances.
  

I'll try to look on these two changes and how it changed things for new 80 characters, and then I'll try to give tips about how to use them to your advantage. I recently leveled a Druid to 80 and got her from fresh 80 to a WoW Heroes rating of about 2246 (Ulduar 10/25 level according to WoW Heroes) in two weeks following these tips. Just so that you know my Holy Paladin has a score of 2290 and I've run nearly all of ToC 10-Man and all Ulduar but for Yog with her (but for Anub as I'm in vacation since he's up).

Holy Paladin Changes in 3.2

I've already discussed the changes to Holy in patch 3.2 in this post. If you've played a Holy Paladin in WotLK before patch 3.2, you should read it, and perhaps even this post on Elitist Jerks. If you're new to paladin healing or have not played a paladin healer since BC or before, then most of what you need to know is:

• your mana is not "infinite" anymore by specing for crit rating and intellect;
• you'll have to use Beacon of Light to be competitive, it is now the main tool of your healing skills and no sane Holy paladin will let it drop down.
  

I'll discuss more about the gameplay changes since 3.2 for me in a soon to be post, give it a look then. What matters for us here that mana will be an issue for you, intellect, mp5 should be big focuses for you in your gear, more than crit or haste, at least at the beginning (spellpower will still be your main gear focus).

Badges in 3.2

The huge change is that all raids and heroic 5-Man instances drop Emblem of Conquest (Ulduar 25-Man badges before 3.2). As you can guess, that allows you to gear in nearly full 213 and 226 gear just by doing heroics.
A lot of people, me into them, think that it is not a good thing, as a way too easy Naxramass wasn't good. This does not push people to do good to get their gear. And if you want to do high level raids (read end of extension arc raids like AQ40, Naxramass 1, Black Temple, Sunwell) gear won't be the only thing you need, and in fact it is the easiest to obtain thing. Skill on the other side needs hours of raiding and training. But I won't talk about that here, it is not the point.
I'm not going to give you the list of items you need. As I strongly incite you to raid at the same time you'll be gearing through heroics. Start with Nax10, proceed until you reach Ulduar, you'll be able to gear up from there. you can use the badges to complete what you'll get during your raids, and all your raids will give you badges too (Nax25 is the fastest source of badges if you can find a good group).

Here are a few pointers about loot lists for patch 3.2: on WoW.com, lots of different posts on The Holy Paladin.net.

Remember also that you can get 2 Emblems of Triumph (for your Tier 9 armor) per day with the daily heroic quest. And you can run the new Trial of the Champion instance in both normal and heroic mode, even normal mode will reward you with very nice items like this "you must have" trinket: Tears of the Vanquished.

Time to gear-up !

My earlier post about pre-raid gear is still useful, you can find it here.
Now how can you get as soon as possible to the gear level to pleasantly run heroic and "easy Nax"?
I'm not going to advise reputation gear, as it'll probably take you time to get these reputation high enough to get anything useful (read epic gear), reputation are useful but focus on the once you want at revered level for your head enchant (Kirin Tor for Holy, Knights of the Ebon Blade for Retribution, Argent Crusade for Protection).
I'll advise you to PvP during you last levels (78+), get the lvl 78 pvp gear and play as holy or ret as you like, your goal will be to get xp and honor points. At lvl 80 you should be able to do buy Epic arena armor and Wintergrasp gear. For that:

• run Wintergrasp battle as often as you can (especially if your faction is on the attack);
• run Alterac Valley as often as you can (best reward in term of xp/honor per hour).

Then once 80, get your pvp gear, complete it with Titansteel gear (head, feet, mace). You should be around half epic. Keep your lvl 78 pvp gear or crafted pve gear, gem for spellpower & intellect. Enchant your epic items (esp. your Titansteel Guardian). You should be ok for heroics and Nax 10 and Trial of the Champion (at least normal).

From there progress with badge gear, what you can get on raids, and what you'll get on the Trial of the Champion normal & heroic (you'll want that mace from the heroic version).

You can also run the dailies from the Argent Tournament, there is ilevel 200 (Nax10) epic gear to get and a lot of pets & mounts of you like them (I'm not the most patient type and never got anything from them).

Final Words

I hope you'll enjoy playing at a Paladin, especially if you joined the rank of the healers in this game :)
Your first days as a Holy Paladin won't be easy as we miss on the mobility part, you can't heal and move nicely. Try to play often with a tank you know, and that will know when to move and when to give you 10s to heal & mana regen, that will really make things easier for you, and that is really the best advice I can give you (especially for heroic timed CoT 4 or heroic Utgarde Pinnacle).

edit:
A first version of this guide can be found here, there are pointers to other good Holy paladin gearing guides.

Rolling a paladin ? A few leveling tips.

Now is probably the best time to roll and alt. It's the end of summer with its low raid activity. Patch 3.2 sent everyone into 5-man, which is a very friendly environment for new lvl 80 characters. And once you've done a few heroics with your main, and unless you're like some of my friends with already 4+ lvl 80 and are spending your whole day running heroics with all your toons, you could be wondering what to do in WoW for the rest of your daily play-time.

So I'm going to give a few tips for those who don't know yet the paladin class and want to reroll, or just roll if it's you're first character, a paladin. Several of my tips won't apply if you're new to WoW, unless you're really good at grasping the game economy and making ingame money, you'll probably not have the gold to buy what I'm advising. But the general tips on spec and itemization should still give you good ideas to follow.


Paladin Leveling Guide (part 1, your time in Azeroth from lvl 1 to 58)

The first tip, which is common to all leveling guides you'll ever find is: maximize your damage output. Don't try to gear for survival, the game isn't that hard most of the time and you'll want to down mobs fast.

The second tip is, try to get a good leveling guide if you want to. If you're new to the game, enjoying the discovery is probably the best thing to do, and using Wowhead to search when you're stuck in a quest will be enough. If you're a bit tired of the vanilla content, or want to reach 80 much faster, then leveling guides are for you. I used Jame's Leveling Guides for my 3 last characters, from 1 to 78 (last levels are not yet in the guide but really not hard to do) both on horde and alliance side, and I strongly advise them.

Ok, now let us start with paladin stuff. You can find all the paladin skills by level on Wohead here, if I'm not direct linking a skill, go there for more info.

The first levels, 1 to 10

Your first skills until level 10 will mostly be your first damage skills. Your first seal: Seal of Righteousness. Your first judgment: Judgment of Light. Your first benediction: Blessing of Might. Keep your blessing and seal up at all times, judge each time it's up. It's up to you to chose between a 2 handed weapon or a 1 handed one, the difference is very little for now.
As for survival, you'll have your first big heal: Holy Light, and your first mini-bubble: Divine Protection. Try to not run too low on mana, always having enough for a heal, and don't hesitate to use your Divine Protection each tie you get a "link" (two or more monsters at the same time). It will greatly reduce the damage you take and most probably ensure your victory.
You will also get your first aura as soon as lvl 1: Devotion Aura. As for seals and blessings, you can only have one aura at any given time (unless you're in a group with other paladins). And as for seal and blessing, you should keep your aura up at all times.
The first paladin levels are fast and smooth, good armor, good survival tools and several passive buffing abilities ensure an easy gameplay and very little deaths, even if it's your first time playing.

The early days in Azeroth, 10 to 58

"talenting" your paladin for leveling
Now you're level 10, what is going to change ? As all wow players know, lvl 10 is the time to chose a "talent spec", a way to spend points that customize your character skills to your liking. Paladins have 3 talent trees, that I'll try to roughly summarize as Holy for healing, Protection for tanking and Retribution for damage dealing. You won't be surprised, I'm going to advise you to put your points into the Retribution tree. You'll get one point per level, don't wait put it into retribution as soon as you level-up.
I'm going to give you some talent trees for leveling from 1 to 50, you'll most probably have enough experience to chose by yourself from then. I'm not saying they're the best, they are the ones I used, with the changes done to them since I did level my paladins.
level 10 to 20: Wowhead talent tree for lvl 20 paladin
level 20 to 30: Wowhead talent tree for lvl 30 paladin
level 30 to 40: Wowhead talent tree for lvl 40 paladin
level 40 to 50: Wowhead talent tree for lvl 50 paladin
I always chose flat damage increase over critical hit chances, you can pump your critical first if you like it's mostly equivalent.
Your biggest changes of playstyle from talents will be at lvl 20 with Seal of Command, that will replace any other seal you used until then and will stay as your damage dealing one until the end. Then Judgments of the Wise at level 40-42 (3 steps talent), that will hugely reduce your downtime, from then you'll very rarely sit to drink and get some mana back. And then Crusader Strike at level 50, that will add some spice to your judage & wait routine.

the daily leveling
Not much will change up to level 40, keep up your buffs, judge, kill some monsters, use your Judgment of Justice to prevent them from fleeing if needed. New skills useful for multiple monsters encounters: Retribution aura, Consecration. New "oh shit" buttons will be added to your inventory with Lay on Hands (install full heal on a long cool down timer), and Divine Shield that is our signature move and a complete damage immunity for a short time (very usefull to flee from harm). You'll also get new seals and blessings, you can play with them and try them, but I still advise you to keep Might & Righteousness/Command for leveling.
Don't forget to get your paladin horse at lvl 20 and epic horse at lvl 40 (they're so nice at blizzard these days ;p).
And keep up a stack of the best drink you can find at the vendors at all times, that will greatly help you to refresh this mana bar that always seem to be drained until you'll get Judgments of the Wise.

the weapon that will be yours
Now as you could expect a good weapon is a very effective tool for a melee damage class. As soon as you'll get Seal of Command, you should get a good 2 handed weapon and stick to that choice (of 2 handers) for all your retribution time. Free attacks hurt much more when this is a free huge 2 handed word dealing it that a puny 1 handed one :P
If you already have a lvl 80 and can get the heirloom weapon Bloodied Arcanite Reaper, or the Repurposed Lava Dredger, this is most probably a good choice. It won't be as potent as a blue weapon when you're in a x5-x9 level range (read second part of a 10 level span). But it'll avoid you to chore to camp the auction house for good blue weapons.
If you don't have a reaper, or can't get it as you don't have a lvl 80 toon already, then please use that list: blue 2 handed weapons from lvl 1 to 58. If you can get your hand on one of these, it will probably be your best friend for 5 to 10 levels, so check up the auction house, even 10 to 20 gold isn't too much for some of them, and if you don't have the money, take-up mining and make a few dozens of gold pieces in a day of mining :P
If you're rerolling and have access to enchanting, buying blue weapons and putting a Flaming Weapon and later Crusader enchant on them is the best and most effective way to level. I've used a Burning War Axe with a crusader enchant from lvl 33 to 52 myself ... and even if it was starting to get weak after 45, the crusader enchant made for it until I was able to use a Destiny.
All in all don't be shy with your weapon, it's your best friend and best tool to level fast.

but I want to play a healer / tank ...
If it's your first character, I'd strongly advise you to wait until lvl 58 and you reach Outland to chose anything else than retribution for leveling. If it's not then dual spec at lvl 40 will be your friend. Get a protection or holy spec as your second spec and use it if you're ever asked for a group as a tank or healer. But keep your retribution spec for your solo play.
Now, once you'll reach lvl 58 and time will be to go to outland, you'll have more freedom. The main reason will be that you'll hit the Death Knights bandwagon and you'll find much more people to group & play with, I can promise you healers are in huge demand in outland and later on. But keep in mind that, if a protection spec can level-up decently once this level reached, a holy healing spec will still be a dreadful time soloing.

58 it's time to move on
Once you're 58, it'll be time to move from Azertoh to Outland through the Dark Portal that is south of the Blasted Lands. With the last patch, you can reach it by a portal in Stormwind or Orgrimmar.
And then you'll have to read part 2 of the guide, that I will hopefully not take 1 month to write.

Have fun, leveling a paladin in the retribution tree is, even if the first levels are mostly sit and hack :)

edit:
You can find the other parts of the guide here:
Paladin Leveling Guide (part2)
Paladin Leveling Guide (part3, end)
end for gearing your new paladin at lvl 80
Pre-raid gear in patch 3.2
hope you'll enjoy the whole thing ^_^

Holy Paladin pre-raid gear for WotLK

This isn't a super new post on the holy paladin blog community, but this a question I've been asked so I'm just using this blog to answer it. Perhaps it can be useful for someone else :)

There are several very good gearing guides that have been written by fellow paladins when Naxxramas was still new. If we're a few content patches later now, little has changed on the gearing side pre-raid, but mostly the argent tournament.
The guide I'll site mostly don't include that, so you can go there and give a look to the rewards in case some of them look cool. The Titansteel Spellblade has been added too, but is a dagger (I guess so that shadow priests can use it). The Titansteel Guardian is still the best for paladins, despite its nerf some time ago.

My best gearing guide pointer will be Banana Shoulders:
Pre-Raid Holy Gear Guide
Gemming Your Holy Paladins
(I don't completely agree with Siha as she's a spell power addict, I'm an intellect addict, so I gem for +16int gems on my yellow slots, for example. It's mostly a question of having enough mana or enough hps to keep up the tanks ^^ This is explained very well here.)
Holy Paladin Guear Enhancements
(Arcanums, all enhancement of guear from head to pants)

Now, as gear isn't all what you need, I'll advise you to read this very good (as always) article on Ferraro site Paladin Schmaladin (don't ask me how she got that name) How To: Healing Raids.

edit:
I have written an update of this post for patch 3.2 that changed so much about gearing in Wrath. You can read it here: Pre-raid gear in patch 3.2

WotLK raiding views from around, Paladin in 3.1.

A few links for you to read, if you mind.

A view of TBC raiding at lvl 80 on A Secret Agent Cat. It ends with the same point I've already talked about here several times. Challenge is lacking in Wrath. The sense of achievement we could have in earlier raids is not really here anymore, just because bosses fall one after another, and you clear content in about a month. I like the idea of 10-Man & 25-Man raids a lot, it is not a matter of difficulty, but of raiding style. A small bounded group is a stronger human experience and really requires everyone to do their best. But I really hopes that Ulduar, hard modes at least, will give us a little more challenge than Naxxramas.

I was listening to episode 1 of A View from the Top this weekend. In this podcast from VirginWrolds they interview successful raid guild leaders, and the guy said: "We need to fail if we want to better ourselves." This is so true ! Exactly why I think what we need is a difficulty that pushes us a little more to improve.

Sach Yonzon pusblished on WoW Insider today a view of patchnotes for patch 3.1 from a paladin point of view. Though the analysis is interesting, it lacks all undocumented changes. I'd advise you to read the analysis I made before, here, especially if you're holy.

Now if you're a French speaker, I'd advise you to read that post from Rominet on his blog about HL10 vs HL25 : un bilan. It tries to address the strong debate on the EU forums about the difficulty of 10-Man vs 25-Man. A lot of people think that 10-Man is too easy compared to 25-Man (most of these people are doing 10-Man content after having cleaned and geared in 25-Man, go figure). And some people are even advocating for no epic in 10-Man content (go figure more ... pseudo-elitist people).

What's about healing in WotLK ?

Ok, you're getting used to it, yet another rant ^.~
I could been seen as a grumpy person, it's not the case, but when things don't go right, I just want to say it. Anyway, off with the mundane talking and let us get on topic. Be careful it's going to be a long post.

An introduction to the problem.

If you've healed in WotLK, and especially if you've also healed before in classic WoW and TBC, you can feel a real difference. Let me stress out the main differences:

• mana issues have nearly disappeared;
• damage is very spicky, and that is the only reason for someone to die;
• there is a lot of aoe damage;
• mobility can be a real issue.

Most of these points were not as strong, or even not existing at all before.

Spicky damage is obviously very bad from a healer point of view, it stops you from thinking, reduces your choices of spells and encourage you to constant healing spam. Even if your tank is full life, you will precast a heal, because if you wait for him to be half-life before you start casting a big heal, he could well be dead before your heal land.

Aoe damage is bad as a mechanism, it promotes spells like Circle of Healing that are no-brainers (no harm intended to the priests). It encourages behaviours such as Holy Light spam to get some raid heal (thx the glyph), which is the worst thing I've ever seen on the side of mana efficiency. It also promotes all the "fast" or "aoe" healers over the other ones on the charts, and I know you should not pay attention to them but too many people do. I've already discussed about overhealing and healign meters in a previous post.

Mobility can be interesting in fights, even if it's sometimes gimmicky, it adds variety to simple tank & spanks. Now ... mobility is very bad for some healers, especially paladins and shamans. And fights such as the end boss of the Nexus (don't say me Hodir, it's going to be worse) are very bothering (I don't say hard, I say bothering) for a "static healer". Promoting this kind of fights just tend to ostracize some classes.

Now the biggest point : where did the mana go ? Do you even see your mana bar going dry ? Ok, paladins are the best at mana endurance, so I'm not the best to tell, but seriously, every healer I've talked to or read is saying the same. Mana started to be a non issue at the end of TBC, which was a clerly pointed when Circle of Healing spam started to be something you can do. And now the "problem" is even worse. To the point that Blizzard is nerfing mana regen, but only out of casting (see this post on WoW Insider).
Going out of casting was a "trick" for priests and druids to get a few full mana regen ticks from time to time. Was is still used a lot ? Is it going to change much of the mana regen state ? I think not !
They buffed all the regen while casting with talents, making these ones even moer mandatory than before (if they were not enough already). All in all the net result is the end of this little trick which was often a sign of a good player. you can now spam your heals without thinking about timing at all (or nearly). Your mana regen won't change much.

Some discussion over the web.

Before going further, let me point you to a few other blogs, with very good articles I sincerely encourage you to read if you're interested into healing:

• a general post of Tobold on the state of wow healing : Has healing changed ?;
• a very nice post from Tobold on his blog about why long casting heals are out of the scope right now : Goodbye, Greater Heal;
• a good most about the mana-regen "nerf/change" in 3.1 by Sydera, from a druid perspective with lots of arguments on why it is bad design : A Druid’s Response to the Upcoming Change in Mana Regeneration;

So what are Blizzard answers ?

First, the mana regen nerf announced for patch 3.1(see this post on WoW Insider). I'll refer you to Sydera post just before who discusses that in depth, for a class much more affected by it than mine.

And now for my paladin and shaman friends let's grin with this piece of news on WoW Insider : Blessing of Wisdom and Mana Steam totem go exclusive. Some of the best mana regen buffs out of Replenishment are nerfed to not stack anymore. Even if it's another step to address the infinite mana problem, it's a bad step if you ask me. Why ? Because it's yet another nerf to the worst healing class right now ... A word of Lodur on that same point on World of Matticus. Yes, it's a really sad thing and another step towards reducing diversity between classes.

Are these changes going to the right direction ? I think not !

The nerf of the mana regen through spirit, and the removal of the Blessing of Wisdom, Totem of Mana Stream, are steps to go even more towards int over spirit. Intellect is already a much better stat for Paladins, but it wasn't for tree druids and holy priests up to now.
These changes are obivous nerfs for tree druids and holy priests, if that will perhaps reduce their strength, and make other healers less pitifull in comparison, that is not the right way to go.
Holy priests will just be replaced by discipline priests in raids if they start to have too much mana issues (Disc Priests already stack intellect over spirit). And tree druids will have to use mp5/int over spirit ... which will just be a nerf for them in the end, going against the design.

The real reason behind all of that ? There is one !

Mana regen through spirit was too strong, so they nerf it. They decided to make Replenishment (which is based on your mana pool, so int) a mandatory buff for raids, so they nerf all other forms of mana regen (which was mp5, so independent from int).
In the end, your mana regen depends on the same stat as your mana pool : Intellect is the kind, and spirit disappear into history. This is a bad design choice, reducing player choices and classes diversity, even more...