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The new Glyph screen, showing only 6 slots.
Glyphs in World of Warcraft will change a lot when Mists of Pandaria is released. There will no longer be three different classes of Glyphs, instead there will only be two: Major and Minor. As before you will only be allowed three of each type of glyph, however now major glyphs are the only glyphs that boost abilities. Minor glyphs provide very minor changes or cosmetic changes only.
To deal with this massive change to glyphs many of the glyphs themselves have been changed, been removed from the game, and new glyphs have been created.
Here I focus on some of the best of the new or changed Paladin glyphs and why they are either good, awful, or interesting. There are too many glyphs to cover everyone out there, so remember this is just a base list, there are more there.
NOTE: It is of course also very important to remember that this is beta and things are constantly changing,
Mists of Pandaria - Paladin Major Glyphs
Glyph of the Alabaster Shield
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Your successful blocks increase the damage of your next Shield of the Righteous by 20%. This boost can stack up to 3 times.
Another really great ability for tanks, since you will be blocking throughout a fight anyway, and then use your SotR to pickup new adds at distance or for additional threat and damage to a boss. This helps in both situations ensuring more damage or threat. This will become one of the must have tanking glyphs that no Pally Tank should be without.
Glyph of the Ascetic Crusader
This glyph reduces the mana cost of your Crusader Strike and Judgement by 100%.
This is really all about ensuring that Retribution Paladins have enough mana left to use other abilities. Depending on their rotation in Mists of Pandaria and their normal mana regeneration will determine if this is a required glyph or not. In live right now mana is almost never an issue, so we will have to wait and see.
Glyph of Avenging Wrath
This glyph adds another ability to your Avenging Wrath ability, while active you are healed for 2% of your health every 4 seconds.
Since Avenging Wrath lasts 20 seconds that means you are healed for 10% over that time. You can use it at least every 3 minutes which makes it decent ability.
Glyph of the Battle Healer
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Melee attacks while using Seal of Insight heals a nearby injured friendly target for 10% of the damage inflicted.
This to me is one of the best of the new glyphs, even if the effect turns out to be insignificant. The reason I like it so much is that it puts some focus on getting healers into melee range and dealing some damage. Even though it may never happen, the idea of a healer being in the fight and mixing it up to provide some secondary healing is a great idea.
Glyph of Consecration
You can now target Consecration anywhere within 25 yards.
This is an awesome ability for tanks, let me explain why. In many boss fights there are adds that spawn during the fight that need to be picked up, however many times that can be hard to do since you need to worry about boss positioning or facing, or they spawn from several points around a room. This ability will allow you to focus on the boss a little more and throw the consecration out to where the adds are coming from to get initial agro, allowing them to come straight to you without even moving.
Glyph of Divine Storm
Your divine Storm also heals you for 1% of your maximum health.
This is an awesome glyph for Retribution Paladins. Given that the Divine Storm ability now costs 3 HP and has no cooldown this glyph isn’t as bad as it first appears. In reality in AOE situations you could probably use Divine Storm every 4.5 6 seconds if you needed to, and that would mean a likely 10% health per minute, which isn’t a bad thing.
Glyph of Divine Plea
This glyph now changes your Divine Pea to have a 5 second cast time instead of being an instant, but it grants the 12% mana instantly once cast and does not reduce your healing.
This is an interesting change as it allows you to get the 12% mana back in 5 seconds instead of over 9 seconds. More importantly you no longer suffer from a healing debuff. The downside though is pretty big in that you need to stand and cast for 5 seconds. I think the change is worth it though because the 50% healing decrease always meant that you could never really use Divine Plea during a fight anyway. Now you can if there is a brief break in the fight and then immediately start casting again.
Glyph of Double Jeopardy
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This new glyph is an interesting on in that it provides additional damage, but only if you are switching targets between attacks which is a little odd.
While in theory this is a free 20% damage boost, the need to shift between targets to get that 20% makes it situational at best. I can see this being somewhat useful to tanks since you will often be switching targets to keep agro on multiple targets. However if you are fighting a single target the glyph is a complete waste, same on most raid boss fights.
Glyph of Mass Exorcism
Exorcism becomes melee range only but hits all enemies within 8 yards of your target.
This is a really cool change to an ability as it turns your single target pull, and proc use ability, into an AOE damage ability that has the potential to do some really serious damage. The tooltip is a bit vague though as it says causes damage, it doesn’t say it is full damage or a portion of or anything else. I hope it is full damage, but that has the potential to be a huge AOE damage ability, so much so that I worry about the nerf bat swinging before release if that is the case. I hope that doesn’t happen as Retribution Paladins could use a bit more AOE damage.
Glyph of Protector of the Innocent
This glyph heals you for 20% of the amount healed whenever you use your Word of Glory on another player.
Since Word of Glory is a common dump for Holy Power it is a great secondary ability for it. You can use it to heal others while still doing some healing to yourself that could cancel out some AOE or splash damage that you have suffered.
Glyph of Immediate Truth
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This is another odd glyph at first glance as it increases damage from your Seal of Truth by 20%, however it lowers the DOT damage of your Seal of Truth is 50%.
Since Seal of Truth deals 14% additional damage as holy damage when you attack and the Censure proc deals a set amount. The 20% increase to the takes the 14% to just under 17% and that comes pretty close to the amount you lose on the censure procs, so it comes out about even right now. This one is more about straight damage on hit or damage over time and which is better for you.
Glyph of Word of Glory
Increases your damage by 10% for 6 seconds after you cast Word of Glory.
This new glyph has some real potential at least looking at it from a Tanking or DPS perspective. As a Tank I like using WoG to dump some HP once I am ahead on threat to help out healers in randoms that are not well geared. However to do so I am giving up some damage that I could be causing to increase threat. This glyph sort of evens that out, sure you lose some initial damage, but you deal more for a while after. I can see some use for this from Retribution Paladins and especially from PVP players to boost damage while still healing themselves.
Mists of Pandaria - Paladin Minor Glyphs
There are several cool minor glyphs that change some minor things that make for either some fun appearance differences or some minor perks.
The ones that I really like are the Glyph of the Luminous Charger which makes your mount glow with holy light, Glyph of Winged Vengeance that grants you 4 wings while affected by Avenging Wrath, and Glyph of Bladed Judgement which allows you to display and axe or sword as appropriate when judging.
Lastly the coolest glyph is Glyph of Righteous Retreat, which allows you to hearthstone 50% faster while under the effect of Divine Shield. This is a cool throwback because it allows you to bubble hearth like we used to be able to.
Mists of Pandaria - Paladin Glyphs
As you can see, many of the Paladin Glyphs have changed substantially since Cataclysm. Also there are many new glyphs to choose from. Also fairly evident is that Blizzard has tried to make Glyphs more interesting, provide various different benifits, and effects. For the most part I believe they are on the right track, as several of the new glyphs look to be very useful and provide different effects.
I am especially curious to see how the Glyph of the Battle Healer works out as it provides an extremely interesting benifit. I believe that if we see that benifit works out in the game it could lead to an eventual change in at least one classes long term healing methodology and allow Blizzard to make a melee healer that works entirely through splash healing. It would be a secondary type healer for sure, but a very interesting one.
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