You're only useful until everything changes

The other day I was googling myself in a vain attempt at vanity and I found that an old guide I wrote about paladin blessings is still around. At the time it was fairly handy, or at least I thought so. With the help of the paladin forums I'd managed to explain their uses and nuances. I was damn proud of it.

Now it serves as a reminder of times past. A time when hands were blessings, when blessings lasted ten minutes (you thought I was going to say five, but this was BC). Let's look into these dark ages. Or maybe dim ages. This isn't vanilla we're talking about here. Oh man, the dresses. Don't ask.

Blessings are the primary form of buffing for paladins. There are three general categories of blessings: short, regular, and greater. The short blessings are sacrifice, protection, and freedom. The regular blessings are wisdom, might, light, salvation, sanctuary, and kings. Greater blessings are longer versions of regular blessings.

Despite my categorizing, blessings are all considered to be the same type of buff, so without exception you can only have one blessing on you per paladin. They are magic buffs so they can be removed by many spells including purge, dispel, devour magic, and arcane shot. Both spellsteal and death have an effect on blessings.

In other words, hand of freedom would remove blessing of kings. This was super-convenient.

In regard to Blessing of Might: "The ret talent Improved Blessing of Might increases the effect of this talent by 20%. For 5 talent points that gives 44 additional attack power"
44 AP wasn't a bit deal then either, though more than it sounds like now. But consider the implications of talents like this and improved Blessing of Wisdow (Might didn't always give mana/5) "The holy talent Improved Blessing of Wisdom increases the effect of this by 20% (8mana/5)." These were marginal gains, but expensive to get, so we often coordinated talents to maximize the effect. Blessing required coordination as well to ensure that everyone got the best blessing they could. Between kings, wisdom, might, light, and salvation, this got complex.

What was Blessing of Light? Well duh, it buffed Holy Light and Flash of Light. DUH! "Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing the effects of Holy Light spells used on the target by up to 580 and the effects of Flash of Light spells used on the target by up to 185. Lasts 10 min." What class doesn't have an entire buff slot taken up by a buff that only affects one third of their possible three roles and is of no help whatsoever to other classes?

If you've ever thought "how dumb is it that blessing of kings is so gret but only paladins and drudis can cast it", then I offer you this: "Ten points in protection are needed to get BoK." That's right, not only did druids not have kings, instead having a strange weaker than every other buff buff in the form of Mark of the Wild, not all paladins could even use Kings. It was a 10 point talent!

"Hunter pets, voidwalkers, and felguards are counted as warriors while buffing so do not make the mistake of buffing the tank with kings, then giving the hunters’ pets might and overwriting the tank’s blessing. Succubi, imps,and felhunters are counted as warlocks."
Super-convenient.

I'm sure you can't even believe it, that I, the most useless blogger ever, who once apologized for accidentally giving useful advance (I have standards), was once upon a time useful. But dammit, I was. Then Blizzard went and ruined it by streamlining everything. Can you imagine a blessing guide these days? It would be too simple! Too easy! Dammit, I like pointless inconvenience and arbitrary mechanical restrictions. They are what separate the awesome detail-obsessed weirdos from the people are are just weird for pretending to be owls. I'm saying druids are weirdos.