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Two great things about the contemporary ret paladin

The Light and How to Swing It These are some of my favorite things
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions!

Patch 5.3 has turned out to be a great time to be a ret paladin. Well, in my opinion it's always a great time to be a ret paladin, but this new patch and the changes it brought with it really drive the point home. Granted, the only change we saw was a buff to our weapon-based damage via Sword of Light, which, while being a welcome boost to our DPS, isn't necessarily the most earth-shattering, game-changing thing in all of Azeroth. Still though, it opens some doors and allows us to be more competitive in the DPS game.

I have to admit, my inspiration for this column came from reading Matt Rossi's warrior column, The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Survival and the modern warrior. As I was reading through the piece, I found myself unconsciously caressing my keybind for Divine Shield, no doubt a realization of how blessed we paladins are when it comes to self-preservation mechanics and abilities. Some of the troubles that Matt detailed I have either sidestepped or easily handled with our generous toolbox, and his angst has given me a newfound appreciation for the veritable arsenal of useful spells at our disposal.

This week I'll be touching on a couple of our newer abilities that have proven time and time again to be so valuable and effective that I can't imagine playing a paladin without them.

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Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It

WoW Moviewatch: Darrowshire

Welcome to another edition of WoW Moviewatch Staff Picks. Today, Anne Stickney has chosen Darrowshire by Cranius, for some very poignant reasons. This is what Anne had to say:

Still one of my favorite pieces of machinima ever. Partially because I really loved the original iteration of the Pamela storyline in Eastern Plaguelands (the Cataclysm version is okay, but holds nowhere near the same emotion and depth as the original), mostly because the song he wrote for the piece is such a lovely, haunting tune. It's a perfect accompaniment to one of the creepiest, saddest, yet oddly touching quest chains in WoW. The video may be a bit outdated by today's standards of machinima creation, but honestly, this piece, to me, is the one where Cranius pretty much proved hands down that anything he puts his voice to immediately turns to gold.

I think Anne did an excellent job describing the video, though I think I disagree about it being outdated. All of the game's graphics show their age, even the ones run through advanced filters. I think, ultimately, a machinima is about the story and content, not the graphics. Darrowshire is stronger for the in-game graphics.
Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.


Filed under: WoW Moviewatch

Totem Talk: The Spirit of Restoration

Totem Talk The Spirit of Restoration Tuesday
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and content creation at InternetDragons.TV), shows you how

No matter what expansion, and regardless of the level of content you're doing, one of the things that comes up regularly as a topic of discussion is Spirit. A stat that took over for MP5 as the hot regen item, and rose to even more prominence and popularity among healers with the announcement of fixed mana pools. It is something that has a presence you will always feel and will never be able to escape.

This isn't a bad thing mind you, but it sparks conversations and discussion about how much Spirit you need. What is the right amount? How much is too much? Is there such a thing as too much? Is it worth it at the expense of other stats? I know that many of the fine folks I talk to have had plenty to say on the topic recently, which lead me to today's post.

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Filed under: Shaman, (Shaman) Totem Talk

Hearthstone play and developer Q&A

Hearthstone play and Q&A
Over the weekend, as I mentioned in WRUP, I was in Paris. What I didn't mention was that I was there for the EU Fansite Community Summit at Blizzard Europe in Versailles. Blizzard's EU team were fantastically generous and wonderful hosts, and it was an excellent weekend altogether. The biggest highlight for me, and almost certainly for everyone else there, was that we got to play Hearthstone!

We had about enough time for three full games, in a relaxed setting, but also with the Blizzard EU Community Team floating around to help us out and give us tips and input on how best to play. It was a fantastic surprise. Even more amazing to a Blizzard geek like me was that, shortly after finishing our game time, we got to sit down for a Q&A about Hearthstone with none other than the lead developers Ben Brode and Eric Dodds. So, what came out of that?

Hearthstone Gameplay

How was Hearthstone? First and foremost, what we got to play was an alpha, which only developers and internal staff had previously accessed. It has not changed a great deal in overall appearance since PAX, but many key gameplay changes have been incorporated. Unfortunately, due to Blizzard policy, we were unable to take pictures or video of the play session or anything else that took place.

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Filed under: Hearthstone Insider

WoW Insider Round Table: Diminishing returns on valor?

The WoW Insider staff at the Round Table this week are Dawn Moore, Matt Low, Sarah "Sally" Pine and Olivia Grace. We all sincerely hope you notice that we got lower thirds.

Welcome back to another WoW Insider Round Table! In this second round table, we're talking diminishing returns on valor. Managing Editor Adam Holisky posted a brief editorial last week on this topic, and it was interesting enough that we decided to bring it up for discussion.

We began by explaining just exactly how such a system would work, as clarified in Adam's original article, and then delved into the pros and cons of such a system. The Round Table was pretty universally opposed to such a system, based purely, of course, on our own gaming experiences, and while we tried our best to isolate redeeming qualities, we failed pretty miserably. And, finally, on comparing previous expansions' dungeon valor methods, the surprise winner was Cataclysm!

We're really hoping you continue to enjoy this new format, and do remember that you can actually watch the Round Table live on our YouTube channel every week. Keep an eye on Twitter for announcements of when we're going live. And if you have any ideas for future round table discussions, let us know!

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

Lichborne: DPS stats for tanking death knights

Lichborne DPS stats for tanking death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

So Rossi bought this up in his last column, and I feel like it is a valid question. If haste is a valid gearing strategy for Paladins, why shouldn't it be for the other tanks? The idea of haste and critical strike as being valid, even desirable stats for a tank seems almost anathema, but as of Mists, especially, it's worth a look. Paladins even have a gearing strategy built around haste. Are they the only ones? Should death knights be considering haste and critical strike rating? Should Blizzard be looking at ways to make haste and critical strike rating more desirable for tanks? We'll consider those questions this week.

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Filed under: Death Knight, (Death Knight) Lichborne

The WoW Insider Show Episode 297: To Twitch we go!

The WoW Insider Show Episode 247 In which we say hello to Anne
Every week, join us as we present you with The WoW Insider Show podcast -- an hour's worth of WoW community discussion covering everything from the week's top stories here on WoW Insider to emails from our readers and what's been going on with our particular characters in Azeroth.

This week we continued with our live recording testing, moving our presentation platform to Twitch.tv. It went well for the most part (sans a connection issue); likely we'll end up doing a live show there in the future. Stay tuned to the site for more information. Many thanks to those of you who joined us through social media, your feedback has been very helpful.

Want to have your question answered on the air? Email theshow@wowinsider.com!

Get the podcast:

[iTunes] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show directly in iTunes.
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[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.

Listen here on the page:


Filed under: Podcasts, WoW Insider Show

New Battle.net desktop client datamined

New Battlenet client datamined
MMO-Champion have been very busy datamining, as is their way, and have happened upon some files that indicate that a new launcher may well be appearing before too long. What they have found indicates that there is a battle.net launcher coming that will shift away from separate game-by-game launchers, towards an integrated launcher for all Blizzard games. Looking at the background files which have been datamined, it looks like WoW, Diablo, and Starcraft will be included, but also the older Warcraft RTS games.

Each major game group appears to have its own section, which itself includes breaking news, general information, and links to things like patch notes, guides, account management, help and support and more. There is also a news section which encompasses the news across all the games you have installed.

It is important to note that this currently appears to be datamined information and should be treated appropriately. It is always best not to pass judgement on such things until an official position on the veracity of early reports is released. But, that being said, whatever this turns out to be looks great.

Filed under: Blizzard

50% off character services in the EU this week

50% off character services this week
Several people have tweeted WoW Insider this morning to alert us to the fact that there is a fairly hefty discount on character services this week, and Blizzard has since confirmed it with a blog. A short look through the EU battle.net shop shows that server transfers, faction transfers, race changes, appearance changes and name changes are all 50% off. WoW Insider will keep this post updated with the sale's emergence in the US, which is fairly likely to occur later today.

Update: And that just happened, all character services are now 50% off in the US.

So if you're looking to try out a new home, a new race, a new look, a new name, or a new enemy, now's the time to get involved. It's really easy to do, just head over to battle.net, log in, and you'll be presented with your accounts, head through to the right one, select the service you require and you will see if your character is eligible. From personal, and very recent (darn it) experience, if you're looking to realm transfer you'll also need to empty your mailbox and make sure you're not in charge of any arena teams. Either that, or log in and out an awful lot!

What's more, it messes with your addons quite a bit, as the profile your character's using will reflect its new home. The same will happen with name changes, so ensure that you have addons with profiles wherever possible to avoid yourself a lot of reconfiguration. Enjoy your new perspective!

Filed under: Blizzard

The Queue: It's the final countdown


I've been rewatching Arrested Development lately with the wife, and I'm just struck at how amazing the Buster / Gob relationship is. Especially the scenes when they're doing a magic trick together. It's just priceless entertainment, and it gets funnier every time I watch it.

This is my third viewing of the series, and I realized all the reference to Buster getting his hand cut off early on in the series. Such brilliant writing, so far ahead of its time.

Jabbok asked:

How big of an effect did Dungeons and Dragons have on WoW? Obviously it was some, but did the coders reject D&D and want something else?

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Filed under: The Queue

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