With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and helps with the puppet shows at the Argent Ren Faire up in Icecrown.
Here we are again with the final section on the low level paladin tanking guide. You can go back and read parts one, two, and three if you need to catch up. This final part deals with consumables, macros, and addons. As a dungeon runner, you don't have the high requirements usually associated with raids, but there are a couple things you'll want to keep an eye on. You'll want to keep reasonably buffed, have some useful macros to fall back on, and have some addons to help organize some of the more procedural steps. Let's take a look after the break.

Consumables:
For leveling up, generally you'll just want to keep a good stash of food and water. I recommend learning to cook so that your food will at least boost your stamina up a little bit. Most low level food is primarily stamina and spirit buffs and a lot of them are rather lacking. There are exceptions to that rule, but generally that's what you'll see. A lot of holiday food items are pretty good as they will usually scale with your stats. Some holiday food items even have unique buffs to things like hit and defense.

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The holidays, alas, are behind us, and most of us are back to our regular daily grind of work, school, or whatever other responsibilities life might have set for us. But on the weekend, we can put all of that behind us and slack off 'til our heart's content -- or if not content, at least more contented. For many of the WoW.com staff -- and perhaps many of you, as well -- this means we'll be in World of Warcraft, running ICC, leveling alts, and grinding our way through as many random dungeons as possible. So, if you care about our poor exploits (or even if you just want to brag about your own), read onward!

• Adam Holisky (@adamholisky): Assuming my internet connection stays up for more than 20 minutes at a time, I'll be finishing off another 80 while participating in some ICC 25-man raiding.
• Alex Ziebart (@aziebart): I am dumping my girlfriend for my XBox 360, but it's okay because she's dumping me for the Oculus in her furious attempts at getting the drake.
• Allison Robert: Some RL correspondence to catch up on, and likely some scheming on how to get my main over the last few-hundred points hurdle to the It's Over 9,000 feat of strength.
• Brian Wood: I'll be working on recruitment for my new raid team Wyrmfoe and meeting all the new raiders coming on board. I'll also finally buckle down and do all the math on the hunter tier 9 2-piece vs the tier 10 4-piece bonuses. I secretly think tier 9 will win until I can get tier 10.75.
• C. Christian Moore: Leveling up a level 60 paladin twink for AV. He's already 51. The instance leveling nerf wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, he's at /9 hours played. :D 45-64 are the easiest levels tho, so he should be 60 in probably ~11 or possibly ~12 hours played. IRL, it's the wife and I's engagement anniversary (as well as her birthday) so we'll be spending a lot of time together. Update: 11 hours, 53 minutes. Level 60 paladin is gonna start gearing up now to own some noobs in AV. :D
• Chase Christian (@madsushi): Working more on Putricide this weekend, and doing as many ICC runs on my alts as I can possibly handle.
• Daniel Whitcomb (@danielwhitcomb): Despite a really, really busy weekend coming up, I still want to make plans to get some random dungeon runs in to get at least one more piece of T9 on my druid. I'm also thinking I should level up my hunter again just so she can use all the ammo I churned out on my death knight while leveling up engineering.
• Eliah Hecht (@eliah): Done badge farming for the priest; time to start on the druid. Also excited for Chuck on Sunday.
• Fox Van Allen (@foxvanallen): I'm going to finally take on the Plagueworks in ten man. There's only one item from there on my wish list: the Abracadaver. Supposedly, the damage from the proc stinks, but there's still something undeniably cool about a shadow priest commanding the undead.
• Kelly Aarons (@Cadistra): Probably going to faff about in Zul'Drak for a bit, then I'm going to be drawing my cowhide off. I have a lot of comics to do before I am...ah...'incapacitated' near the end of January.
• Lisa Poisso (@eMused): Savoring a return to my original WoW character, who retired several years ago. I'll probably spend most of the weekend cleaning her bank. There are sooo many memories I simply can't part with. Last night, my husband and partner in crime re-discovered his Arcanite Reaper, while I was ooh'ing and ahh'ing over my Benediction, Prophecy, Transcendence, and Confessor's sets. So sweet. The chat on this old server today is amazing -- people in Trade actually chat about gaming! Very different from my current main server, where people use Trade to set up raids and talk smack. You think maybe the older servers mellow with age?
• Matt Low (@matticus): Working on Loremaster now and some other achievements. I made a resolution to try to break 8000 achievement points before Cataclysm hits. There will be some PvP ones I will need to go after as well.
• Matthew Rossi: Possible GDKP run Saturday, then ICC10 Sunday.
• Michael Sacco (@mikesacco): Podcast, more game design iteration for Hemlock, Law and Order reruns.
• Robin Torres (@cosmiclaurel): Wintergrasp on my druid. Otherwise, Ladies Robin and Cricket Gigglezilla will be tearing up Toontown. Splat!


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digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/WoW_Cataclysm_Friends_and_Family_Alpha_to_begin_Tuesday'; Earlier this afternoon, we received a tip stating the following:

• The Cataclysm alpha will be starting Tuesday, January 12th.
• The alpha will not be distributed digitally, but burned to disc.


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Protection spec warriors, did you enjoy being able to charge out of roots and snares to get back to the boss fast? Well, thanks to PvP, you won't be able to do that anymore. What else won't you be able to do? Well, if you've been stacking block value in PvE content, first off, I kind of don't get you. Seriously, except for very specific gimmicky fights, why would you stack block value? (I said value, not rating, and I also said gimmicky fights so don't bring up Heroic Anub) But if you have been... perhaps you have a block value set for totally destroying adds or something... then get ready for a Shield Slam nerf. They're 'testing that one internally' which, if you remember how horrible the Rage Normalization changes went in early BC, always works.

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World of Warcraft: MLG Orlando Championship
Today marks the first ever MLG World of Warcraft All-Star Challenge. The All-Star challenge is a double elimination, best of seven format bracket where four teams are drafted by four captains. The main rule is that no captain may select a player on their own normal roster. The draft itself will be broadcast beginning at 12:30pm EST / 6:30pm CET on Saturday with the entire bracket being played out that day.

High-Definition
To purchase the HD WoW Weekend pass for the 2009 MLG PC Circuit Championship live from Orlando, go to www.mlgpro.com/live/2009/Orlando/purchaseHD.

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The WoW Insider Show returns to the airwaves today at 3:30 PM Eastern time, bringing you the melodious sound of WoW Idols! Michael Sacco, as always, will be hosting, and Matthew Rossi will be your co-host, with special guests Daryl Brewer and Fatty of WoW Idol bringing their special musical touch to the show. We'll be talking about the strange case of the teen who ran away from home to meet his much older WoW soulmate, as well as the new wing of Icecrown Citadel and other top stories of the week.

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Now, what's a purty little thing like you doing in this here bank? Gonna take out some money to buy yourself another nice dress to hang on your ugly little meat frame? You know, this here's a tree bank, and we don't cotton to you fleshy types hanging around here, chopping off our limbs and eating our fruits. Y'all best go back to Silvermoon if you don't want to end up decoratin' our homes next Winter Veil. (Thanks to David for the screenshot!)

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Let's just cut to the chase: we've had old gods, dragons, fallen semi-demonic elves, troll heroes, and soon the former prince of Lordaeron. Then comes the Cataclysm and we'll be looking to burn down the cthonian Deathwing himself, master of the deep places of the earth. A host of other luminaries will undoubtedly get in our way. Who would you like to see there? Who do you want to kill?

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World of Warcraft: MLG Orlando Championship
A new MLG WoW tournament is coming this week-end! The stream on the site should be slightly less intrusive than the previous ones and I'll try to make sure the tournaments are once again an enjoyable experience for everyone on the site.

GotFrag.com - Teams have been officially announced for the Major League Gaming 2009 PC Circuit Championship, taking place in Orlando, Florida, at the Gaylord Palms Resort, January 9th-10th. The top four MLG Ranking Points teams for 2009 will battle it out in a double elimination, winner take all bracket for $15,000 and the right to be called 2009 MLG PC Circuit Champion.

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