paladin questions

[rollincoal73 0]

Hello everyone. I'm hoping to get some insight as to how much the game has changed since I played about three or four years ago. I decided to start fresh and play the paladin once again. My questions were to see the communities opinions on pally tanking/healing. When I was playing WOTLK they both seemed to hold their ground quite well. Secondly, I've been partial to alliance and from what I can tell, as far as PvE is concerned I feel the dwarf race has some benifits out weighing other races. Any tips/help/suggestions are welcome and appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[Miirsal 4]

First off, welcome back! Killing the emberbeast in minecraft just not doin' it for ya' eh? I have to admit, there has yet been an achievement quite like the kingslayer since you've been gone.  DEFILE! (/shudder) KILL THE VALKYRIE! (/panic) Challenges yes but as far as the story went, I personally am not sure there's been a fight to top it. And that moment when...well, never mind.

 

But yes, there have been a few changes since you've been gone but prot/holy is still highly desirable.

 

First off, this xpac is the garrison. Basically, you can create any combination of any professions you need for basic stuff. If you want the really good stuff, you'll need to have that profession yourself.  You have followers and they are invaluable in going off and doing missions while you're asleep like getting gold, supplies and even epic ilevel gear. 

 

Second, much of the game is now based on priorities now rather than a 'rotation' and on 'stats'. There are players that go rotation based but they suck and I highly recommend a priority based approach. You'll heal and tank better.

 

The days of solo-tanking a raid are very recently over.  As recently as pandaria, I was solo tanking the end boss Garrosh which would allow a 10 man to bring in another dps and burn him faster but these days with flexible raid size, that's hardly worth it as you can always bring in more people. 

 

Instead of gearscore, there's ilevel and unfortunately, the reliance on this gearscore type of number hasn't changed a bit since lich king. Bring the player, not the gear. But, of course gear never hurts. Still,  I love out healing others 10 ilevels above me and perhaps even more fun is outhealing a fellow pally because they don't understand illuminated healing and dual beacon healing properly (some good reading material on this forum) or better yet, mana management. 

 

And the biggest change of all is 'looking for raid' wherein you can search for a raid or even a particular boss you'd like to do and join up as a pug.  People started doing it with 'premades' and websites for years and it was finally implemented in the game. It's a neat way of getting into raids even if your own guild or raid group isn't progressing very quickly. Only problem is that you can meet all sorts of ill-tempered jerks out there and there's an over-emphasis on 'ilevel' rather than looking at their achievements or actual performance metrics.  Particularly as tank, I would expect a bit of 'harsh language' and the occasionally boot on your backside if you don't know the mechanics or they do a different mechanic than you.

 

As far as the actual tanking mechanics, no tank has a proper aoe taunt, just aoe damage that hopefully gains aggro.  Different tank classes do different things well and for our class, it's still not dps. We are more of the mitigate/heal and "helpful hands" people. We've lost our raid-wide devotion aura which was a big plus but we still have very useful hand of protection and hand of sacrifice (which glyphed is the bomb) and can still cheese a lot of mechanics with bubble taunts or bops/cancelaura type of macros.  For healing, illuminated healing is a secret weapon the more you understand about, the better you'll be.  Holy power is also a secret mana-free healing mechanism that needs to be worked in. Complicated yet actually powerful if you can use it right.  

 

But! If you really want to be an overpowered tank, go bear.  Druid tanking this xpac has been very high dps and easy to heal. Some druid tanks are outhealing their weaker healers.  And of course, they've always been an outstanding healing class too. Just gotta get that rage mechanic thing down.... :)

[rollincoal73 0]

Well thanks for all the info! My main was a rogue, I played a pally briefly, yet I find them to be very fun and often needed. I'm not one to roll the class of "the best" in terms of tanking, dps or healing. Obviously being a rogue in vanilla and TBC it was sort of rough at times. I know racials don't mean much to an extent, that being said I'm starting from the ground up due to my account being hacked/lost whichever. So I'll need all the benifits I can get. That being said, I'm not even remotely close to an idea of which server to choose. I don't want one where this entire patch is on "farming status" yet I'd like an experienced group of people who make the game enjoyable (since that's the sole purpose of this) is pvp still a hot topic or has the game shifted to pve? Any insight or opinions are greatly appreciated as to I'm basically brand new in terms of gear and achievements. Thank you again!