I have had my hand in the cookie jar that is the Auction House a few times during Cataclysm, and if there's one thing I learned, it's that information is your best friend. I downloaded Auctioneer / Auctionator to spot cheap bids and track how my own sales were doing. I browsed The Undermine Journal for data like average prices, standard deviations, and recent auctions. Even WoW Insider's own Gold Capped column helped me identify potential markets and provided general advice. All of these things made my profits possible.

Well, a new tool has entered the mix: Wowscan. I have to admit, at first it struck me as a bit too much like The Undermine Journal. Certainly Wowscan works very similar in that it scans auction data and posts it on its site in a searchable format. Now, I'm no Basil or even a Fox, but after some experimentation it seems to me that there are a few advantages and disadvantages to a site like Wowscan in comparison to TUJ.

First of all, and probably the biggest difference that I've noticed, is that Wowscan has the ability to compile all of its realm data into one searchable list. For example, if you wanted to find the absolute cheapest auction of Reins of the Swift Spectral Tiger, all you have to do is select All Realms and search for it. From all of my dealings with TUJ, I have never found the option to search all of the realms at once. Since most of my use of TUJ was focused on a single realm, searching multiple realms at once never really became an issue for me. This function becomes valuable when you are looking to buy an ultra-rare item and don't care how much money you have to spend on realm transfers to get it.

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Filed under: Economy

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!

It's hard to believe it's already May 2012. It seems like just last week that I was standing in line at BlizzCon with my guildmates, trying to make small talk and failing completely at it. Most of our interactions involved people watching and commenting on the information put forth at the various panels like those annoying people in the movie theater who feel the need to rate every preview on whether or not it will completely suck (see above).

Anyway, with any luck Mists will be released by the end of summer (I'm betting on an August launch, myself), so what better time than now to get your paladin ready so that you hit the ground running when the servers come back online?

The time will come during the next expansion when your hard-earned purples will be replaced by mismatched greens, but more work put into getting the best purples available to you now will keep that dreaded day far in the future. Also, how hard you hit is dictated by the strength of your gear, and the amount of time it will take you to kill a mob is dependent on how much damage you can dish out.

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

We have seen and heard a ton of information on questing, dungeons, and even Pet Battles in the Mists of Pandaria beta, but one thing that has been absent thus far is also one of the things I'm most excited about -- scenarios. From what information we received at BlizzCon, we know that Blizzard intends for scenarios to be phased and quest-like in their presentation. They could be used to move stories forward, with players interacting with non-player heroes directly and even fighting alongside them in important battles.

An idea for this new game mode that I have been tossing back and forth with a few friends is creating a series of how-to scenarios that introduces the player to the aspects of group play. Meloree at Sacred Duty has suggested this as a prerequisite to entering the Dungeon Finder, but I think even having the option would improve grouping experiences dramatically. Tanks could enter dungeons and raids with a better grasp on basics like threat, positioning, and proactive cooldown usage. Healers could learn mana management, throughput efficiency, and this fabled triage model that we keep hearing so much about. Damage dealers could become familiar with high-movement fights, interrupting, and burn phase cooldown maximization.

Clearly, this seems to be well within Blizzard's capabilities to produce. We already see NPCs that tank, heal, and DPS in the game in various quests. In my opinion, there are only a couple of things that may stand in the way:

1. Is this something the designers can do easily and quickly, or would a significant amount of resources need to be allotted to the development of this idea?
2. Would players react positively to such tools being made available to them? Would they feel pressured or upset if they failed to complete the scenarios in their chosen role?

What do you think? Is this something you would use? Would this help the dungeon running and raiding experiences, or is the potential for disaster too great here?

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Mists of Pandaria

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!

Before we begin, go take a look at the new beta build 15640 currently being mined. Some of it is a bit wonky and messed up (Blessing of Might now gives 0 mastery, huh?), but some big ret changes can be found.

Blizzard seems to be cleaning up some spell mechanics and tooltips by taking a weed whacker to those abilities that have both attack power and spell power dependencies. The new version of Sheath of Light, Sword of Light, boosts our SP by an additional 20% of our AP.

I'll wait until the number crunchers at Elitist Jerks have a chance to digest this material before I say whether or not the extra 20% conversion will make up for losing our double-dipping AP bonuses on things like Censure and Word of Glory, but really this move just strikes me as trying to clean up the mechanics so the devs don't get a migraine every time they want to tweak a few numbers. Hopefully, we'll come out of this change with most of our limbs intact, and the blues will successfully save a few brain cells in the long run.

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

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!

Well, comrades in arms, as the old Azerothian saying goes, the squeaky player gets the beta invite. I'd like to think my sobbing in coffee shops and passionate diatribes secured me a spot in the Jade Forest, where I can run around in the beautiful scenery competing with dozens of other players trying to tag one of the three quest mobs that respawns every six days, but I must admit to myself that I'm no more special than the 99,999 other players who received invites at the same time.

In short, I got into the beta. We've already been over what we expect to see when the mists part, but experiencing it firsthand is something else entirely.

The silent filler

One of the first things I noticed after rebuilding all of my macros and assigning keybinds was how disjointed the rotation felt when I was smacking the collection of wild creatures grazing around the outskirts of Dawn's Blossom. Judgment on the pull, Crusader Strike when in melee range, Hammer of Wrath under 20%, Templar's Verdict at 3 holy power ... but something was off. As it turns out, I had forgotten about Exorcism.

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

After we received a tip about a bug in Scarlet Halls on the Mists beta servers, I decided to give it a look for myself. The bug in question, located in the mash-up of the old Library and Armory wings, was actually a door frame that was a tile or two out of alignment, allowing the player to drop through the old monastery and onto an expansive field. A small bump on the horizon indicates that something is off in the distance, so I started running ... and running ... and running. Eventually, I reached some ruins, accompanied by what looked like hand-drawn blueprints for future content. The architecture of the ruins, especially the staircase, could indicate some sort of troll origin. Add to that labels written out for several "jungle zones," and you've got yourself a very troll-friendly area.

I think this is a pretty neat look at the development process; however, I hope it gets patched up soon. Things like this remind me of Alex's article last August about Z-axis secrets and how discoveries such as this -- unfinished content that wasn't meant for our eyes in the first place -- can lead to both a loss of immersion and higher expectations for future content.

Anyway, now that we've gotten that depressing bit out of the way, you can follow my journey in the gallery below!

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Filed under: Mists of Pandaria

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!

Last time, I promised to pack as much comprehensive beta information as I could into this post, so I won't bother boring you all with the story of what exactly happened in that hotel room at BlizzCon. Instead, I'll stop wasting precious words and get right to it!

As always when discussing content in an open beta, everything is very much subject to change.

New glyphs

This is probably the most retribution-relevant thing to come out of the recent Mists of Pandaria press tour. Sure, there's all the new zones, Battlegrounds, UI updates, and Pet Battle stuff, but the uniquely paladin piece of the pie is curiously small. Sacco wrote a detailed listing of all of the new glyphs available, but when perusing the paladin glyphs, I noticed something interesting -- there are loads more healing/utility glyphs (Cleansing, Protector of the Innocent) and cosmetic glyphs (Bladed Judgment, Fire from the Heavens) than glyphs affecting damage output (Double Jeopardy, Immediate Truth).

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

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!

I have always been a staunch supporter of the Ret Paladin DPS Equality movement. Ever since my male blood elf first picked up a two-hander and started swinging, I've been quite fixated with the entire meter-chasing DPS subculture that manifests itself in at least a small handful of raiders in each and every guild. There were a few tricks that felt too dirty to use (I'm looking at you, agility gear during Wrath), but for the most part, I have enjoyed the process of milking as much delicious damage from my character as possible.

Lately, however, I have found myself examining this philosophy in a wider scope. Sure, battling for the top spot on Skada has been fun, but is that truly what we should be aspiring to? Is there more to being a ret paladin than golden combo points and a big weapon? Clearly the answer to this question is, "Of course, Dan, are you mental? We have so much utility -- get the net!"

Well ... chyeah, right! Actually, you are right -- our utility spells are among the things that set us apart from other classes and keep us from being just better-looking rogues. But is their mere existence enough, or should our playstyle involve some form of active utility? What would this look like, and is it even feasible?

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Filed under: Paladin, Analysis / Opinion, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria

Loot drama is most often the biggest and juiciest type of drama. Lots of different guilds handle loot distribution differently, though most either do need/greed rolls or use master looter paired with some sort of external system. Sigtyr on the official forums brings up the loot council method, where a few individuals in the know get to decide who gets what piece. Sigtyr certainly feels that, despite objections from the peanut gallery, this system works the best for his group.

This discussion raises a good question: Is there such a thing as the "best loot distribution model"? When Star Wars: The Old Republic launched, Bioware seemed to have gotten a whiff of loot drama in games like WoW and even EverQuest (where anyone could loot anything, anywhere), devising a new system that is in use in its normal-mode operations (the SWTOR equivalent of a raid). There, most loot is auto-assigned based on class and spec. Personally, I've found that model to be frustrating because, among other things, it doesn't select against someone's receiving the same piece over and over again. Overall, I think that system fails because it takes the option away from the players and makes gearing up through operations as frustrating as needing on a piece of gear in the Raid Finder.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Guilds, Raiding

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!

One of the perks of this job, at least in my mind, is receiving reader mail and interacting with the community. I love doing what I can to help people new to the spec; it's really why I started blogging and writing about retribution paladins in the first place!

Anyway, last week I received an email posing the following question:

I have noticed that some other ret paladins have very high initial DPS. How are they doing this and how can I do the same?

The string of abilities and buttons you hit at the beginning of combat, called opening sequences or openers, are a much-discussed topic among theorycrafters and the community at large. Naturally, your first few attacks can set the pace for the rest of the fight. Fortunately, the spec is forgiving enough that even if you flub a button at the beginning of an encounter, your overall DPS won't go straight in the toilet. Even so, I have a few pieces of advice up my sleeve from my own experiences that can help you start the fight off right.

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