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 examine how to tackle the Valithria Dreamwalker encounter in Icecrown Citadel.

If you've been raiding much in WotLK, you've seen quite the spectrum of 'new' mechanics. While Naxxramas was just a refresh of the old level 60 dungeon, the other raid instances have provided some truly unique fights. The vehicle fight, which started with Malygos and was followed up by Flame Leviathan, gave us the opportunity to step outside our abilities for a few moments, and work with an entirely new (or even nonexistent) healing toolbox. We've also seen fights where healing was the wrong thing to do, with the case-in-point being Anub'arak (specifically on heroic). Healing the wrong target on that fight was literally anti-DPS, as it healed the boss.

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Every Sunday (and the occasional weekday) Dawn Moore reinvents what "smitelol" means to her shadowy cohort, Fox Van Allen, by busting down a door with penance lasers and raising holy hell to a Tarantino soundtrack. In the column Spiritual Guidance she offers advice to holy and discipline priests on how to wield the holy light, with style.

When I first started raiding, it was in late Burning Crusade. At the time I fancied myself a PvPer, shying away from raids due to attunements, and the long gear climb I'd have to perform in order to catch up with friends doing tier 5 content. Despite this, sometime during tier 6, a friend of mine convinced me to come along to a raid. How he convinced the raid leader though, I can't imagine. I remember standing there in my resilience gear, surrounded by players in their various shiny gear sets, and asking myself over and over, "what am I doing here?" I sheepishly put my talents into the holy tree, and tried to arrange my bars to accommodate the spells I hadn't cast in months. I was out of my element.

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It's the weekend again, and that means it's time for another Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that would like to continue its ongoing series of "Pictures of things you're hitting that warlock in the face with." In today's installment, we'll be hitting that warlock with a large chunk of ice. As you can see, the ice has sharp edges, pointy parts, and is hurtling toward the warlock at an absolutely painful rate of speed. Other things we'll be hitting that warlock in the face with in future installments include massive balls of flame, rapid-fire salvos of arcane energy, and of course monkey feces.

To contribute to the increasingly awesome collection of guides that make up WoW.com's class 101 series, I bring you Frost 101. As with the Arcane 101 column I did a few weeks back, let me begin with what this guide is, and also with what it is not:

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Reader comments -- ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.

While some players are hailing the Icecrown Citadel "tugboat" buff (Strength of Wrynn/Hellscream's Warsong) as a great equalizer that will open up endgame content to the player base at large, others have spotted holes in its implementation. The most common complaint is that doing the encounters the hard way yields no bonus at all: no achievement, no title, no recognition.

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This week, we have a healthy crop of WoW-related webcomics for your perusal. Before we get into that, let's look at last week's challenge.

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Vendarvan of <Lost in WoW> on Kael'Thas knows that you can't hurry love. He's decided to sit and wait for his true love, the Maiden of Winter's Breath Lake, to warm up to his advances. When you can live for thousands of years, hanging around for a couple of years waiting for a date isn't that big a deal. Tyrande Whisperwind's been doing it forever.

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(With apologies to anyone who played Mass Effect or who brings Jack along in ME2.)

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US First Glory of the Raider (25) by Midwinter
Midwinter (US-Ysera) was the first guild to complete Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25 player) and I totally forgot to report it. Shame on me, and congratulations to them!



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Axes, maces, lightning, fire, frost, and wolves, and best of all, Windfury. It can mean only one thing: enhancement. Rich Maloy lives it and loves it. His main spec is enhance. His off-spec is enhance. He blogs about the life and times of enhance at Big Hit Box and pens the enhance side of Totem Talk.

Last week I went over the talents in great detail. Exhausting, two page article detail. I also linked to two specs which included glyphs. Those specs will serve enhancement shamans everywhere well enough to get the basics done, but I didn't get into the glyphs. This is what we'll tackle today.

There are 28 major glyphs for shamans but of course not all apply to enhancement. Of those 28, two are considered must-haves for PvE (once you hit level at least 60). They are: Glyph of Stormstrike (level 40) and Glyph of Feral Spirit (level 60). And when it comes to PvP no other glyph beats Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem.

After the break we'll review the enhance-related glyphs and get into a few options for glyph setups.

Standard setup

At level level 80 I'd suggest major glyphs:

• Glyph of Stormstrike
• Feral Spirit
• Windfury Weapon


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