First off:
I searched and read, but have not found an article that directly addresses this issue; at least that is current as of TBC.

I am a Holy Paladin healing 5man instances preparing for Kara. This is my first Holy Pally and I want to know if there is any real benefit to downranking my FoL or HL heals. I have been told by my guildies that the downgrading has been "NERFED" although they have not healed since TBC on a Pally either.

I currently use my Max FoL in a semi constant manner to keep DPS and OT close to 100% and often am able to keep the MT up with it as well, only needing HL if he gets crit blows or other members take a lot of damage.

I find that I am over-healng 10-20% on DPS and OT, but less on the MT.

I try to anticipate damage and it usually serves me well as I catch the critical blows that could cause a wipe a lot easier, but this is also the reason i overheal and have been avoiding downgrading my heals, probably a real newb trend. I am concerned that I may no longer be able to catch the unavoidable crit blows on the OT or DPS and bring them back up to 80-90% without using my Max FoL. The mana I feel I may save could put me in a postition where i am struggling to catch up to the MT damage... I am able to get back to the MT more quickly to cap him back up to 100% even if it does mean overhealing... of course at this stage I have no problems with mana ... and i expect that to change in a raid situation.

Thus my dilema and question, What lvl FoL and HL do you use on a regular basis? And if you are ranking your HL or FoL what ranks do u consistently use for basic HP maintenance?

Pallan

I havn't done SSC/Gruul yet, but in Karazhan I use the max rank flash of light and mana has never been an issue, and I only occasionally use holy light(max Rank) for very healing intensive fights. In absolute worst case scenarios i might spam heal with rank 1 FoL for 35 mana (13 with LCPB) and it heals for 650ish with light up just to try and keep the tank up, other then that I don't down rank.



As for over healing, 10-20% Overheal isn't bad, expect to over heal when you spam heal the MT or crit heal, especially as a paladin where you should have a decent amount of spell crit.


I'm also curious if any more progressed paladins down rank holy light.

You can probably consolidate this in the main paladin thread here: Paladin TBC Talents/Spec Discussion

There is also another one floating around for Holy paladins I believe.

I throw out the occassional downranked holy light, the main purpose being to keep light's grace up for when you need to switch off FoL and land a big heal.

Keeping Lights Grace up with a lower rank HL is an excellent suggestion ...

At the beginning of healing intensive fights I quite often start with a Max HL heal to bring up LG just to save the 0.5 seconds on cast in case of major damage to the tank, so to start with a lower lvl spell makes huge sense. ty.

Having the improved LoH, i also will quite often use all my mana on an end boss, or particulalry difficult boss, then LoH the tank and drink a pot. Anyone else use this method for the 30% armor bonus?

Pallan

Think it's a pretty common tactic for Gruul after 8 growths or so, and potentially any other heavy DPS period on a tough boss fight. Given the mana situation of Paladins, it's not that risky.

The only downranked Holy Light I fire off is to start up Light's Grace. Between Shadow Priests, consumables and the Spell Crit equipment available for Paladins in TBC, mana should rarely be a problem.

The LoH thing is not that risky, a Paladin can LoH the tank for phase two of Prince (60%) and still end the fight with near full mana. In 25 man situations, the healing mana conserved through the armor bonus of Imp LoH is well worth one healer's mana pool for a few seconds, especially since that mana pool is easy to refill.

Before the downrank nerf, lower rank spells had a higher healing per mana than maxrank. In the nerf, they nerfed all rank spells to aprox have the same healing per mana with all ranks.

Using a lower rank spell is just as efficient than using maxrank, it just heals less, when you don't need those 4,5k heals. The benefit from blessing of light is full to all ranks (correct me if im wrong, atleast it seems like it), which makes lowrank heals slightly more efficient, though the difference is marginal.

does anyone know if the same applies to amplify magic?

Downrank heals are still more mana efficient than your top ranks, just not by such a dramatic amount. Since BoL gives the full bonus to all healing spells, paladins are especially good at it.

I have three heal spells on my bar: max flash, HL6 and max HL. If it's a fight where I know I'll have to chain up HL's PDQ (say the boglord pulls in heroic coilfang instances), I'll often kick up light's grace by healing the tank ~5s before the pull and drinking back to full.

I actually downrank quite a bit, often to rank 4 FoL, sometimes to rank 1 FoL, and often to rank 9 Holy Light.

I rarely use max rank Holy Light in 25-mans unless I'm the only healer on a tank or I'm using Divine Favor. 9 times out of 10 the added healing from max rank over rank 9 just results in overheal.

I alternate a lot between rank 4 and max rank FoL. My rank 4 with BoL up on the target hits for around 1200, so it's plenty of HPS while at a substantially higher HPM than max rank.