Paladin Tips 40 Men Instance Raids
05-03-2008 wowgoldsites
In this article I will cover use and configuration of addons for an improved efficiency of your play in 40 men instances. I won't cover tactics about bosses because they can differ from guild to guild. For tactics just listen to your paladin class leader (if you have one in your guild) or at experienced players, they know what to do.
Basically paladins duties are these: (not in order of importance)
  • buff
  • regen raid health and mana (judgement of light and judgement of wisdom)
  • deal damage
  • heal
  • cleanse
Now we will cover all these points. Remember that paladin is a hybrid class, capable of covering multiple roles. Don't limit yourself playing as gimped priest or warrior. Be flexible and play smart.
 
 
 
 
 
About damage meters
People loves damage meters. Usually raid members compete to rank best in damage, dps or healing. Competition is a good thing, it leads to improvements. But don't trust totally in damage meters. They don't tell the truth, especially for paladins. First of all remember that you're playing with other 39 persons in order to achieve common objective. Kill the bosses is the goal not rank first in meters. Your work is to benefit your mates not to show off.
Some examples of what the "damage meters frenzy" leads to:
  1. People with cloth/leather/mail armour steal aggro from MT, forcing healers to put massive amount of healing on them and under risk of aggro from mobs. Well damage meters won't report if you play like an idiot only your damage.
  2. People healing as much as they can in order to rank best in healing meters, with
     
    over 50% of overhealing, wasting their mana and then shouting /oom after 1 min of combat when healing is needed most. Note that if you use recap addon as damage meters you can see overhealing % too. Just check in the options to show it. You will be surprised the amount of mana wasted. On methods to avoid overhealing just keep reading this article.
  3. People that prefer to cast an healing spell than cleanse. "Yeah I will heal a couple mates for 4k hitpoints in 5 sec cool!". Or you should cast 5 instant cleanse in the same time and avoid them 10k damage, but that will not show on stats... Too bad!

Buff for the masses
With the introducion of greater blessing in 1.9 patch the paladin life in 40 men instance has really improved. Just coordinate with your fellows and you can cover easily the raid. Usually 5 buffs are requested: BoK, BoM, BoW, BoS, BoL so five paladins can cover a raid with buffs efficiently. If only 4 paladins are in raid assign one to BoM/BoW and let him cast bow on paladin. Then the one casting BoS on raid will do bom on paladins. If you have doubts on the buffs needed by every class check the Blessings section in the guide. You can automate the blessing duty with addons, buffahoy for example support greater blessings and let you bless your raid efficiently.

Judgements
Two paladins should be assigned to keep judgement of light and judgement of wisdom on mobs. This is heavily underevaluated (hey, it don't show on damage meters you know ^_-) but can grant raid members large benefits. Having two paladins keep judgements active means that they can't heal but let's look at the advantages:

  1. They deal damage. Obviously not the same damage of a rogue/warrior but a good amount, moreover...
  2. They allow raid to regen health and mana. But how much? (math incoming!! warning ! warning!). For example we have the following members: 6 rogues, 5 warriors, 5 hunters, 6 mages, 3 warlocks, 6 paladins, 5 priests and 4 druids. This means that 6 rogues + 5 warriors + 2 paladins = 14 will go melee, and that all but priests and druids will damage the mob. Let's say that anyone in melee will hit on average every 1,8 secs (sure a few will wield a slow 2hander but there are also a lot of dual wielders). For judgement of light we have 61*13 members /1,8 secs = 440,55 hps. That means more than spamming flash of light with zero risk of overhealing. Now lets consider judgement of wisdom we have 59 * 18 (6 mages + 3 warlocks + 2 paladins + 5 hunters) /2 secs (estimated average, spellcasting is usually slower than melee) = 531 mana every second. Consider also that on need priest can use wand to replenish their mana bar.

As you can see having 2 paladins in melee is definitely worth it.

If you are on thrash mobs and want to speed things all paladins can go melee with one that keeps JotC in order to raise holy damage. Just remember that the debuff slots on a mob are limited. Pay attention to keep the warrior's sunder armor debuff in the list or the MT could loose aggro suddendly.

Configuring the addons
I will take into consideration CTRaid assist and decursive. I will show how to configure these addons in order to optimize your duties in MC and BWL. It's also desiderable to customize your UI in order to have easily readable on screen all the information needed. Here's a screenshot of my UI (quite old, now it's even simplier, but the important elements are still in the same place). 

On the middle left you can see the emergency monitor from CTRaid in action, while on the right there are the MTs list and the decursive addon list.

CTRaid Assist
The CTRaid assist addon (widely referred as CTRaid) is one of the most used in World of Warcraft. It supports a wide range of options useful in raids like Main Tanks list, messages on screen, bosses special ability alert and so on. Now we fine tune it for paladins. ^_^

First of all uncheck all groups on CTRaid tab in social options (O key). You don't need them because you can heal way better with the emergency monitor (keep reading). Press the option button. In the general options just check if the "display main tanks" option is active and set "show number of main tanks" to 10. Don't be surprised of that, with some bosses with multiple adds like Garr or Majordomo this can happen (btw some of the "tanks" are usually warlock or mages that keep the add banished/polymorphed).

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