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. This week we're taking a look back at 2009 and the ups and downs we've felt as paladins.

Well, it's after Christmas and another year is almost behind us. Two-double-zero-nine was a particularly frustrating year for paladins, because we felt we were either at the top of the pile or the bottom and it changed from day to day. The development team has even been quoted as saying that paladins have been the hardest class in Wrath to balance even when taking death knights into consideration. Let's walk down memory lane and see where we were and where we're going.

Echoes of Doom...
Back when 3.0.2 dropped in October of last year, lots of changes came forth. Seals were changed to last 2 minutes and not be consumed by judgements. Seal of the Crusader was removed due to the fact that no one really ever used it and it was absorbed elsewhere into the class. This was a major quality of life change for paladins.

Judgements themselves also changed to be seperated from their related seals and in this we lost the old generic judgement and gained judgments of Light, Wisdom, and Justice. On top of that, all paladin abilities now scaled off of both spell power as well as attack power so that retribution and protection paladins no longer needed any spell power gear (which confused people for several months afterward).

Alliance players were able to access a clone of Seal of Blood called Seal of the Martyr. Horde players also got a new seal that was a clone of Seal of Vengeance called Seal of Corruption. Alliance finally had their dps seal and Horde finally had their tanking seal.

Blessing of Light was removed for the sake of simplifying blessings. Blessings of Salvation, Sacrifice, Freedom, and Protection were changed to the new 'Hand' spells and were independent from blessings. This meant that you could cast Hand of Freedom on someone without worrying about wiping off their Greater Blessing of Might.

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