Group healing is one of those assignments that's often necessary but also easily forgotten. Many raid leaders whether they're leading pickup groups or guild raids often forget to establish specific group healing assignments. I include myself in the category of forgetful leaders.

Group healing back then

Naxx really spoiled us. It was extremely easy to just tell healers to raid heal and brute force heal our way through the various encounters. Sure we'd have dedicated tank healers but I know I never designated specific group healers.

Why?

Because there was never a need to. Raid healing was very simple. Coordination wasn't even needed at all. Target players, hit healing spells and call it a day. It was quite easy to "faceroll" your way to victory as a healer. Healers did not have to be assigned to heal group 1 or group 2 or so on because a smart heal would just happen to land on a player who desperately needed it (Chain Heal or Circle of Healing as an example).

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.

I have to admit, o' faithful Queue readers, that I considered pawning off answering questions today to someone else so I could have more time to catch up on other work. Patch days can get quite busy around the WoW.com head quarters.

Last night for example. Alex, Mike Sacco, and I had heard that there was a new raid lockout extension feature in place, so we rushed onto the Patch 3.2 PTR to grab some screenshots. Of course that meant we had to deal with the thing crashing every few minutes. And once we finally did make it into ZG to get a quick boss kill, Sacco disconnected and the server announced a shutdown in 5 minutes. But hey, we got the kill off and the screenshots captured with 15 seconds left until the shutdown. We won!

Aideros asked...

"When are more "hero classes", like the Death Knight, coming out? What are the speculations? Has anything been said about them since WotLK?"

Ok, we've got quite a bit of information on Patch 3.2 now, and even though this major content patch isn't introducing too many new things to the class, it does shake it up a bit. Nothing too big, but it should keep everyone on their toes. But first we'll talk about one thing that isn't related to class skills or nerfs or anything like that... first I'd like to encourage everyone to get chummy with the Argent dudes. Do their mind-numbing daily quests and all that, get the Crusader title if you want... and along the way collect 100 Champion's Seals.

According to the PTR, the new Paladin-exclusive Argent Charger is available on the Tournament Grounds for a mere one hundred seals. Of course, Blizzard is also giving away Tier 9 gear for free during the testing phase, so that cost could still change. Still, here's that pony that Ghostcrawler promised all of us. It's a fitting item for an entire faction run by Paladins, right? Anyway, enjoy that pony because not everything in Patch 3.2 is as nice a ride.

Ah, Replenishment. No buff might be more welcomed in raids and reviled in theorycrafting. Ever since Ghostcrawler told us it was a necessary buff earlier this year, Blizzard seems to have twirled it around and around, taunting us like the proverbial carrot on a stick. It's been passed out to many classes, buffed a few times, nerfed even more (that Arena nerf was particularly strange), and in patch 3.2, soon headed to the PTR, it's getting nerfed again, even while MP5 (mana per five seconds) is getting a boost. What's the deal?

Merlot, the Shadow Priest behind the Misery blog, has a good breakdown of just why Blizzard is so schizo with Replenishment. The whole point of the buff was to have Blizzard have some control over mana during fights -- instead of worrying about each class' mana separately, they'd just have this buff that gave mana like a big spigot, which they could then control as they saw fit. But players are so different across the board that putting them all under one big buff umbrella hasn't worked so well: a buff to Replenishment helps some and hurts others, and a nerf does the same, meaning Blizzard is flipping back and forth on turning the spigot on or off nearly every patch.

Well, as we already discussed, block is currently a lackluster stat for tanking. But patch 3.2 has some changes in store, and one of those changes is to how much block value you'll see on just about everything, clearly aimed at boosting block's worth.

• Block Value: The amount of bonus block value on all items has been doubled. This does not affect the base block value on shields or block value derived from strength.
  
• On-Use Block Value Items: All items and set bonuses that trigger temporary increases to block value have been modified. Instead of increasing their block value amount by 100% like other items, they have all had their effect durations doubled. This applies to Glyph of Deflection, Gnomeregan Autoblocker, Coren's Lucky Coin, Lavanthor's Talisman, Libram of Obstruction, Tome of the Lightbringer, Libram of the Sacred Shield, the tier-8 paladin Shield of Righteousness bonus, the tier-5 paladin Holy Shield bonus, and the tier-5 warrior Shield Block bonus.

What this basically means is twofold. First, of course, you're going to be blocking for more damage. Since the amount of block value you get from your shield and from strength will not be affected, it won't be exactly double what you're blocking for now, but it will be close to that much: expect to see at least 75% more block value all told.

Secondly, however, any item you've been using to temporarily double your block value either for mitigation or for threat (I used to keep Coren's in my bags for that very reason) will not provide double the block value on the proc, but rather the same amount for twice as long. To use Coren's as an example, it will now provide 118 block value, and when used will provide 200 more block value for 40 seconds instead of 20.

If anything this will increase block's value as a threat stat (I've seen no changes to abilities like Damage Shield, Shield of Righteousness or Shield Slam) as well as giving it a bit more teeth as a mitigation tool. I don't think it's a permanent fix to block, but as a stopgap measure it should make the worth of it a bit more obvious.

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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Blizzard has just released a set of major upcoming changes to the Paladin class, due to come about with Patch 3.2. There are some major changes that are going to not sit too well with folks, while making others quite happy. But with that said, it should be noted that all these changes might not make it through.

A few of the key intended changes include:

• Removal of Seal of the Martyr / Seal of Blood
• Crusader Strike cooldown lowered from 6 seconds to 4 seconds
• Beacon of Light buffed significantly
• Illumination nerfed significantly
  
• Ardent Defender is getting an automatic Last Stand

For additional information on the upcoming patch, check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2. The complete announcement after the break.

This post is being edited live. Please bear with us.

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Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.

Long long time ago...
I can still remember
How that music make me smile, Alex.

And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And, maybe, they'd be happy for a while, Alex.

Tim asked...

"When discussing new content coming out, why does Blizzard always play so close to the chest? For example, the mount changes are due to be "in the next major content patch" which everyone knows is going to be patch 3.2, why don't they just say it?"

• Alterac Volly has a good look at the daily quests for the Frenzyheart Tribe.
• DeathKnight.info posted a guide to using tank points.
• Startin' a Ruckus explains Disc Priest PvP Glyphs.
• A nice 25-man Algalon kill video by Stars over at World of Raids.
• Do you know a Prot Paladin that needs help gemming? Check out this flow chart from Righteous Defense.

We love in-game fixes, right?

Blizzard blue poster Bornakk has announced a couple new in-game fixes. The updates are as follows:

First, the nerf to the Paladin's Vindication talent that set the Pally community on fire yesterday is now live. The nerf removed stamina and intellect from the 20% reduction that Vindication gave. All other primary statistics are still affected by Vindication.

Secondly, Maim, Bash, and Hammer of Justice will no longer cause a player's spell to be interrupted when they're immune to stun. They will still interrupt the NPC's spells however.

There have been a handful of other hot fixes that we've covered the past few days, and those are recapped after the break.

Mana regeneration has been a hot issue for raiding healers during this expansion. Basically, we had far too much of it in tier 7 content, to the point where we could ignore our mana bars in many situations. I once joked that I could replace our holy paladin's mana bar with a blue piece of paper without any loss of information; it wasn't very far from the truth.

When tier 8 came around they tried to nerf our mana regeneration so that we'd finally care about overhealing and gear for mana regen as well as throughput, but it seems they didn't go far enough, at least for one class. Many Holy Paladins are still ignoring MP5 gear; in fact, the aforementioned holy pally refused to pick up most Ulduar spell plate because it all has MP5 on it and he likes his Naxx-25 stuff better.

He's not alone in this tactic; many paladins are taking the same route, and mourning that this gear is no good for us. Ghostcrawler recognizes this problem, stating that "Regardless of any other changes we might make, mp5 just doesn't seem to provide enough point for point on gear." So what are they going to do about it? He says "It's possible (likely?) we'll just increase all of the mp5 on gear."

I'm honestly not sure this will solve the problem, since I suspect lots of people still won't want MP5, but it's a step in the right direction; MP5 has historically been a very expensive stat, which means the other stats on a piece of gear have to be lower just to get a little bit of mana regen out of it. And he does mention "other changes we might make," so I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

A hotfix is in the works for the Retribution Paladin talent Vindication. When the fix goes live ("as early as this afternoon"), Vindication will no longer reduce the Intellect or Stamina of affected targets. It will continue to reduce Agility, Spirit, and Strength. As usual, tooltips will not immediately update to reflect this change; the tooltips will be incorrect until they can be fixed in a content patch.

Bornakk says this fix was put in place to address Retribution paladins being "very prominent" in PvP, "especially in the lower Arena brackets," without hurting Ret PvE DPS. Nerfing a class based on performance in lower brackets seems a little weird to me, but whatever. We did have some rumblings that something like this was coming - a PvP nerf that doesn't affect PvE. This certainly covers those bases. It leaves Vindication a pretty lackluster talent, though. Will you still keep it in your talent spec?

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You've always wanted to be the eye of the storm: a World of Warcraft tank. You're working your way up toward level 80, quest by quest and zone by zone. Maybe you've consulted a leveling guide and done some research around the internet, and you're sporting a shiny, efficient leveling spec. Or maybe you're taking things more casually, experimenting with different specs and abilities on your own and devoting most of your energy to soaking up the sights and the lore, meeting new friends and settling into your first guild.

Either way, you're beginning to feel the first tendrils of apprehension curling around your ankles. You haven't been able to get many instance groups to knock the shine off that new armor. Heck, maybe you're not even tanking-specced yet at all. What's going to happen when you hit 80? Everyone's going to expect you to know the pointy end of the sword from what's under that fluffy tail you feel inclined to tuck beneath you ... What can you bring to the table with absolutely (gulp) zero experience?