This is something I’ve been pondering for months: why WoW is going to be so hard to knock off its pedestal as the premier MMORPG. There are a number of factors involved, but there’s one I haven’t seen anyone else mention, so here we go:
0. Blizzard Are Just Good
Diablo was still in the top 20 [...]

Blizzard have finally released information on the dual specs feature talked about for months. You can read the full Q&A on the official site; here are some of the highlights, with my reactions.
Nethaera: Who will be able to use it?
Ghostcrawler: Players who have reached the maximum level will be able to set up dual [...]

Some information has started to trickle out from Blizzard about the way loot will work in the next tier of raid content. Some of it’s what I expected, some of it surprises me.
Here’s some of what we know, now.

There will be a new Emblem type: the Emblem of Conquest.
You will be able to spend Emblems [...]

(I originally titled this post “Divine Plea Nerf Ahead of Schedule” but I thought that sounded too bitter.)
At the end of last week, I posted about the changes Blizzard announced for 3.1, including a nerf to Divine Plea (changing the healing penalty from 20% to 50%).
Not content to wait until 3.1, Blizzard continues the fine [...]

The blog downtime is over and all the dust should be settling. If you notice any problems, please contact me on Twitter (my username there is Siha) or via email, at siha @ bananashoulders.

Expect half an hour or so of downtime sometime today or tomorrow; I need to install some updated software, and I’ll have to take the blog down while I’m doing so.

This post refers to gear that drops in 25-man raids. If you’re looking for a list of gear to get ready for raiding, you might be more interested in my Pre-Raid Holy Paladin Gear List instead.
This post aims to provide a nice ‘wishlist’ of holy pally gear to aim for. Let me say up front [...]

Just posted on the WoW forums by Bornakk:
As we have suggested, we have become concerned that mana regeneration is currently too powerful, especially for healers. We want players to have to keep an eye on mana. We don’t want you to go out of mana every fight, but running out of mana should be a [...]

A lot of Holy paladins dally with Ret when they’re not busy raiding, and with good reason: Ret has never been more fun, dynamic, interesting or well-balanced.
However, for the dedicated Holy paladin, Ret is quite a shift in approach, gearing, playstyle, the works. It takes a while to learn your way around this very different, [...]

An essential part of playing a spec is choosing the right glyphs to support your spell use. Here’s a quick guide to the best glyphs for Holy Paladins, current as of patch 3.0.8. (I originally covered holy paladin glyphs here and here; however, those posts are out of date since the changes during the WotLK [...]