Every Sunday, Chase Christian of The Light and How to Swing It invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. This week, we discuss how paladins are basically healing siege tanks.

Superman is faster than a speeding bullet, but even a sliver of green kryptonite can bring him to his knees. Batman may be incredibly intelligent, but a single bullet could end his career. Spider-Man's agility carries him through his endeavors, but he's crippled when his family is in danger. Every hero has a weakness. We may not have an "S" on our chests, but holy paladins aren't excluded from this flaw. We are as weak at mobile healing as we are strong at stationary healing. While standing still, we have the strength of Atlas, pillars of holy light that can hold up the world. While on the run, flailing is about the best we can do.

While many of our mobility issues are being addressed in Cataclysm, that's still out on the horizon and no help to us. We've got to figure out how to heal while moving now. The development team at Blizzard isn't going to stop making encounters that involve motion, and holy paladins need to adapt to these environments. Even if we're not the most potent healers while running, we do have a few tricks up our sleeves that can get the job done. As great as Judgement of Light may be, we still need to actually do some casting if we want everyone to stay alive.

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

Random expressions of love can be dangerous; that's the lesson for the week. Stay tuned next week for the debut of the Sunday Morning Funnies gallery guide, packed with all of the custom artwork I could squeeze out of your favorite comic artists!

• LFG: #375 and #376.
• AFR: My hovercraft is full of eels anal.
• Tales from the Crossroads: What a Long, Strange Trip it's Gonna Be!
• Daily Quests: Too Hot to Handle.
• DLC: Once on a Time.
• Fourth Wall: Reality Impaired. Also: The Dangers of Receiving a Beta Key. The first one isn't specifically about WoW, but it applies.
• Drunken Pirates Guild: The Highlord's Speech.
• Torment of the Week: Solstia's Interrogation.
• Slash AFK: Ew. Also: Love Fur Real and Random LFG Saga.
• Coffin Comcis: Zoinks.
• Beyond the Tree: Once Smitten... Twice Awry.
• NPC: Cutting Losses. Also: Happy Happy Critter Party and Bullet Hole Riddled Target.
• The Warcraft Hero in: The Best Plan Ever.
• Experience Points: Out of Your Element.
• Guilded Age.
• Teh Gladiators: For Hoofrich! Click "next" for part two!

Optional filler (or, you could say, 'bonus material'):

• Complex Actions: Work in Progress.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Humor, Comics, Sunday Morning Funnies

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Filed under: Around Azeroth

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com.

I've just spent a day being Scottish. My father's family hails from Scotland, and the summer months will find me out and about at a variety of highland games in the Midwest. Sometimes I'm a spectator, and sometimes I run a tent for my clan. There's a general understanding that the highland games were created to prepare men for doing battle with the English. Each part of what has become the athletic portion of the games can be traced back a need for hurling hurl rocks, logs or flaming bales of vegetation at advancing troops or fortified positions. At the games I just attended, a group gave demonstrations on medieval swordplay.

In World of Warcraft, the Argent Tournament springs immediately to mind. We were informed this was a training ground to prepare us for an assault on the LIch King and his forces. The Darkmoon Faire and Brewfest are examples of festivals with games of chance, food and vendors, and tickets you have to procure by participating in events or getting lots of items requested by vendors.

We've heard rumors (or perhaps it was a column of wishful thinking on WoW.com's part) about an upgrade to the Darkmoon Faire. I'd go more often if I could make an attempt to toss a caber, the stone or the sheaf. These are strength and agility events; having purchasable trinkets for both attributes would give everyone a chance to succeed. Rewards could be class-specific buff items of a certain duration. If you can get the caber to twelve o'clock (the prime position for this event; check out the North American Scottish Games Association for the rules), you get a scroll that will give a hunter an additional 50 agility for 10 minutes. It might be something of minor interest to a level 80 -- but you can be sure I'd be at the faire, just to try to toss a caber.

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Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts

Welcome to another article by elemental shaman specialist Matt Sampson, otherwise known as Binkenstein. By day, he's a geek; by night, he's also a geek, but with spreadsheets. He'd also like to point out that Time Warp is just another excuse to bring mages vending machines to raids.

Since I'm still the new guy here, I figure that it's best to start at the beginning, for it's a very good place to start (and I'm not intentionally putting song lyrics into my posts, it just happens). Given that Cataclysm is still in beta testing, I'm not going to talk about talents, rotations or even the new spells here.

"But Binks," you say, "how can you have an article about basics if you don't include any of those topics?" You can, I say, if you talk about the essential basic you have to get right in your playstyle. This is the thing that turns an average-geared player into a fairly competitive one, makes the top-end raiders great, and without which the guy languishing at the bottom of the DPS table will never get to the top no matter how many best-in-slot items he has.

What I'm talking about is skill. This doesn't just mean the ability to mash buttons faster or harder, or the bonus of having really low latency (trust me, a good ping for me is in the 300ms range), but rather being situationally aware, knowing when to move, how far to move and what to do while moving. It means thinking a few steps ahead so that when the next event occurs, you're already in position and ready for it.

Some players will never master the basics. Others don't even have to try because they're naturals. For the rest of us (and yes, I mean myself as well), it requires a bit of experimentation, some trial and error and most important of all, guides!

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The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

The Eternals of Azeroth are by and large fairly well known by the mortal races -- the Ancients of the night elves were a strong presence in the War of the Ancients, and the trolls worked intimately with their Loa gods. But there are still Eternals out there that are by and large unknown quantities in the universe -- vague historical records have been made, but the mortal races are mostly in the dark as to who these Eternals really are, and what their purpose is in the world.

Of all of the Eternals, the ones that remain the biggest mystery are the Titans, specifically the Pantheon of titans that were responsible for Azeroth's creation as we know it today. While the dwarves have uncovered a lot of information recently, there are still large chunks of time seemingly out of order or unaccounted for. There are a few different timelines, and varying opinions on what exactly occurred in each timeline -- so writing about the Titans and the creation of the world is an exercise in careful speculation. Today we'll be looking at the Pantheon -- the titan high council -- who they were, what roles they played in Azeroth, and where they are today, as well as taking a look at the creation of Azeroth.

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Filed under: Lore, Know your Lore

This article has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com.

Of all the PvP events I've participated in over the years, the battle for Halaa in Nagrand always sticks out in my mind as one of the best-executed examples of world PvP that the World of Warcraft has ever produced. The battle for Halaa brought together several areas of warfare in perfect harmony.

• The element of surprise The battle for Halaa took place at any time. Whenever the opposite faction felt like taking control of the city, they could form a raid and start bombing. It left the controlling faction scrambling to assemble a defense when the words "Halaa is under attack!" popped up on their screens.
• Aerial assault Players had to activate one of four wyvern stations and fly over the city of Halaa to drop bombs, causing massive amounts of damage. Until the defenses were weakened, players could not successfully enter the city.
• Sabotage While enemy players were taking to the skies, one of the keys to success was to destroy the activated wyvern stations to prevent those enemy players from immediately taking off for another bombing run.
• Siege warfare Once the city's defenses were eliminated, the conquering force moved into the city center and held the city captive. Either the defending faction would break the siege and regain control of the city or it would be lost to the conquering heroes.
• Spoils of war Defeating your enemy within the boundaries of Halaa yielded you a Halaa Battle Token. Once you controlled Halaa, those tokens could be spent on various rewards, including the coveted Dark War Talbuk.

With new expansions come new territories to explore and conquer. Sadly, Nagrand and the war-torn city of Halaa fell to the wayside in favor of Wintergrasp once Wrath of the Lich King was released. So what does a player who is hungry for world PvP do now? If you have some friends and are will to do a little organizing and promoting, here are three new ideas to spring on your server.

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Filed under: PvP, Guest Posts

It's time again for Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that strives to bring you all the latest in Flame Orbs and Deathfrosts, Arcane Missile Barrages and Frostfires, Arcanefireflamefrostfreezes and Iceflamefrostfirecanebolts and everything in between.

Well guys, we just got our second pass.

The arcane tree is finally beginning to resemble something semi-coherent, and the other two trees have gotten a spot of polish applied to them in this build. The mage talent situation in Cataclysm is finally beginning to take shape, and now that things are beginning to come together, it's time to pick apart that embryonic shape and see what makes it tick. Because that's just how we roll.

Grab your blowtorches and put the kids to bed, we've got some deconstruction to perform.

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Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance, Cataclysm

Every week, just at the start of the weekend, we catch up with the WoW.com staff and ask them, "What are you playing this week?" (Otherwise known as: WRUP!) Join us to see what we're up to in and out of game -- and catch us in the comments to let us know what you're playing, too!

Cataclysm hasn't arrived yet, and in the meanwhile, the WoW.com team is musing over what they need to get done before it does. And for once, there's something we (mostly) agree on: before Cataclysm comes, take a tour of the Plaguelands. Do the quests and run the dungeons, because there are some fantastic stories there that we'll never see again. But for what everyone's playing this weekend -- and the occasional non-Plagueland suggestions for your pre-Cataclysm to-do list, read on.

• Alex Ziebart (@alexziebart): I'm playing a game called "Petition to have Milwaukee renamed Atlantis."
• Allison Robert (@AllisonRobert): Now that my grandmother's moved into the home we renovated for her, this weekend's going to be spent working on a feature I've been kicking around for a bit, and then at a party to send my brother off to his study abroad program in style. And what should every player do before Cataclysm hits? Quest through Feralas and/or Desolace, I think -- just so you know exactly what you won't be missing. Disclaimer: I like both zones, but good God, could the travel time needed for questing have been any worse? Especially in the days before mounts at 20/40?
• Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey): Either we will be killing 25m HM Putricide, or we will have killed the bugger already, in which case we get to work on ... Sindrigosa. Not. Looking. Forward to that. Other than that, writing away and playing around on the beta! As for the list -- I already wrote an article on what to do in Azshara if you haven't, but other areas that should be experienced at least once -- Thousand Needles, absolutely. Western and Eastern Plaguelands. If you have not done Tirion Fordring's chain, go talk to him in the Eastern Plaguelands and do the kill quests, then continue with the chain. This will not be available after Cataclysm, and it's one of the most heart-wrenching chains out there. Go do it!
• Amy Schley (@wowlawbringer): There's this little test on Tuesday and Wednesday that'll I'll be studying for and panicking about. But my days in Purgatory are numbered, thank the good Lord! And on Thursday, Patent shall be celebrating however y'all choose. I'll be at least tipsy myself. As for a quest, I'll go a little off the beaten path with Favored of Elune? and its chain, as well as Sweet Amber, one of the greatest scavenger hunt quests ever.
• Chase Christian (@madsushi): Leading our 2nd ICC25 PUG this Saturday; we had great success last week so hopefully we can continue the trend this week.
• Christian Belt (@ihatewarlocks): Limbo Limbo Limbo. Also Deathspank. And finishing up Castle Crashers with my firstborn. Horde-side, I'd say everybody needs to hit up the Counterattack! chain in The Barrens, if only for the epic lowbie centaur battle it ends with. Also, I'll second the WPL and EPL recommendations. Both of those zones are so steeped in Scourge lore that'll be all but gone when Cataclysm hits. Nobody who is interested in the lore of Warcraft in any way whatsoever should miss out on the pre-Wrath storylines that culminate therein.
• Daniel Whitcomb (@danielwhitcomb): I'll be working my way through Loremaster of Kalimdor. Currently, I'm finishing out Bloodmyst Isle, then it's on to Darkshore. As far as stuff to do before the end comes? I'd strongly second doing both of the Plaguelands, and Scholomance and Stratholme while you're at it. I think they have some of vanilla's best quest design and storytelling (apart from a few annoying long walks like getting those damned termites). Also, Alliance should do the draenei starting zone quests, if only the questline where you learn the Furbolg language by finding totems and turning into spirit animals, then get declared the chosen savior of an entire tribe. Stuff like that is awesome.
  
• Eli Khoury (@Jagoex): This weekend, I'll be throwing hate towards Heroic Sindragosa and the Lich King, as well as attending a Cryptozoic Spectral Tiger Safari tournament. If you see a guy who looks like the love child of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, come say hello.
• Elizabeth Harper (@faience): Probably doing some more work on preserving classic WoW in screenshots, probably on my paladin because soloing old world content with a paladin requires very minimal amounts of thought. For Cataclysm must-dos: Scholomance and Stratholme. They're fun dungeons with some great story behind them -- and they're both easily soloable these days, even if you aren't a paladin.
  
• Fox Van Allen (@foxvanallen): I'll be spending part of the weekend trying to fix my damn computer, which hasn't been working since Wednesday. And since I'll probably wind up smashing it against the wall in frustration, I'll spend the rest of the weekend playing Phoenix Wright on my iPhone. Ah, and one thing to do before Cataclysm? Run Stratholme. Constantly. Repeatedly. Until the Baron's mount drops. DO IT.
• Gregg Reece: I'll be raid tanking on the Horde pally, leveling the Alliance pally, and occasionally mucking with the druid as well ... although which druid is the real question.
• Joe Perez (@Lodurzj): Getting ready to take on Lady Deathwhisper 25 hard mode next week which once we kill her will leave only Putricide, Sindragosa and the big man himself on heroic 25! More beta datamining as well as working on some videos and partaking in the test of a different beta. Overwatch is a mod for Half-Life 2 that has been in production for some time. It is a cooperative multiplayer FPS/RTS hybrid powered by the Source engine and based on the Half-Life 2 universe. A close friend of mine is on the development team and I'm looking forward to spending some time with the game and giving them some feedback. Between Cataclsym and Overwatch I'm going to have one busy weekend!
• Kelly Aarons (@Cadistra): Last week was a good week for mounts, and I got my Chef's Hat yesterday, so I'll mostly likely putter around with professions. I'm also starting to champion other cities, so dailies, dailies, dailies! My Steam account has finally been restored as well, so I'll most likely fart around with either: Torchlight, Machinarium, or Zeno Clash. Nom. :) As for the Cata 'bukkit' list? Off the top of my head, I'd say quest in both Plaguelands, especially the Darrowshire quest line. It brings up the very human background behind the original plague, and is both very sad and very touching.
• Lisa Poisso (@emused): Keeping my fingers crossed for fun choices for my upcoming Choose My Adventure -- give me something fresh and fun to work with here, guys! ... Poking through a whole list of kids games with my daughter that we're checking out for my column at sister publication Massively ... Peeking at the StarCraft II beta and roaming about a bit in another NDAish beta ... Reading an anthropological investigation of WoW from a writer who'll be profiled soon in 15 Minutes of Fame ... And after all the gaming stuff, off to Half Price Books to dig through the periodicals after dropping off a load to sell!
  
• Mathew McCurley (@gomatgo): A nice, happy weekend coming up. Hopefully. Writing and stuff. Um. I really have no idea what's happening this weekend. I'm greatly anticipating StarCraft II. Is that a thing? Before Cataclysm, everyone should do the worst quest in the game -- Super Sticky in Un'Goro. You get it from Gadgetzan. It's the worst quest in the game.
  
• Matt Sampson (@binkenstein): Busy writing stuff, continuing a love/hate relationship with beta, and getting Totemspot off the ground (we have a domain, a server, and a temporary home page so far). Also leveling a mage (currently 60!), have into a few horde "friends" along the way.
• Rich Maloy (@stoneybaby): I was hoping to spend Sunday on my new/used road bike doing the 32-mile loop around Manhattan, but all the bikes I saw this week on Craigslist were garbage. So instead I'll be (hopefully) playing the Cata beta, in addition to the usual QT with girlfriend and killing Lichie. I hate to sound like a broken record, but the Plaguelands, specifically Eastern Plaguelands. Definitely do the Darrowshire quest line, but also keep questing far into the upper parts of EPL.
• Robin Torres (@cosmiclaurel): The only thing I will be doing this weekend is preparing to move. If you see me online, I'll be slacking.
  
• Zach Yonzon (@Battlemasters): Unless the beta gods smile upon me and let me enter the world of Cataclysm beta, I'll be in hypersleep for the next few days awaiting the release of StarCraft II. Nothing else matter until then. As for what to do in before the expansion ... I have no attachment to the old world. Let Azeroth burn! Bring on the Cataclysm! (Ok, not really -- I just suck at remembering quest lines and stuff.)

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The weekend is the perfect time to kick back, relax and enjoy some game time. Are you an achievement junkie? Can't get enough raiding? Rolling a new alt? Considering taking the leap into roleplaying? Whatever your favorite way to play World of Warcraft, let us know in the comments what you're playing this weekend!

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Filed under: WoW.com Business

The sun is setting on our beloved racetrack. No more will we be running around it, collecting debris, scaring humans disguised as chickens and eating Tigul and Foror's Strawberry ice cream. Goodbye, Mirage Raceway!

Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We'd love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word "Azeroth" in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing -- use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, Val'kyr on mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran. Older screenshots can be found here.

Filed under: Around Azeroth