Yeah, I would say SS is a great tool for pvp, since it absorbs a lot of damage and is another instant for us - it effectively allows us to delay playing our trump card for a very long time; whereas it is situational in pve, although if in Naxx10 it's nice to put on the tank if you need to go afk for 30 seconds. You can also throw these on the raid if you feel like limiting the effective healing of CoH and wild growth =) But yeah, in general the synchronicity between the shield and flash of light is as pointless as it is unreliable with sub 1.5 sec HLs.

I don't know what you've experienced in terms of PvP at 80, but the Sacred Shield absorption is almost useless against most comps. An extra 2-4k health while being bursted is almost irrelevant. What I'm saying is that if the difference between 20k HP/700 resil and 25khp/1200 resil isn't enough to survive the kind of burst that's being put out (and it isn't when a Mage can do nearly 14k dmg in under 3 seconds without critting), the extra HP won't really help. It makes a slight difference in 2s against healer/dps comps, but that's about it.

The hitch is that mana doesn't tend to be an issue if you stack int, divine plea on cooldown, and have replenishment. The main reason I do it is because I'm the second-most important person to keep alive on Sapphiron, because I'm the person keeping the most important person alive. If I have to concentrate on healing the tank for a moment and the raid healers fail to keep someone alive, it's not going to be the tank because I got it covered, and it's not going to be me because I have beacon. I also don't BoL other healers because healers tend to heal themselves first.

I don't know about you but I find Sacred Shield really useful in PvP: you got hit, it procs, your holy shock crits -> you get an instant FoL with 80%+ crit. And it absorbs some damage too, some can argue that it's really small but every little bit helps.
Back to PvE, one trick I was told which is very helpful is to have each holy pally (we often run with 2, or with a prot pally in healing gear) cover 1-2 groups in Loatheb fight, and we just refresh sacred shield when we have the debuff which prevents us from healing.
Again, sorry for my bad English.

Again, sacred shield isn't a spell that is supposed to replace your other heals. It's something you cast when your regular heals are going to overheal anyway, in order to need even less heals afterwards. It's always better to use SS than not, unless you actually never manage to get the tank back to 100% (not realistic), or if he's rage/mana starved (only happens in easy content).

The power of SS is that its preemptive healing. You can cast it when there is a no-low amount of healing needed, and then its there as a ~2k damage absorption every 6 seconds. Its just an extra buffer to help prevent the tank from getting bursted.

Anyone else noticing BoL healing for more than the original heal? eg I crit heal for about 15.3k and then beacon proceeds to heal the BoL target for 16k+. I'll see if I can find proof in last nights WWS when I get some time.

Its effected by +% heal effects, like ToL and Imp Devo. You will also receive smaller Beacon heals while DP is active.

The problem with this sentence is it not pre-emptive healing. Its a CHANCE to pre-emptively heal.

Consistency/reliability are crucial in future difficult encounters. In saying my original comment, I was merely pointing out that in such an encounter this is not an ability holy paladins should really be using over refreshing beacon or judging or any other miriad cooldowns and timers that need monitoring. It doesn't justify its place in an intense healing fight. It could be retooled though to the point of where it would be useful, by merely allowing the shield and the FoL crit effects to be detached from one another. This would permit Flash of Light oriented builds to be more successful and have a meaningful tool for their kit.

Honestly PvP implications of this are of minor concern to me, so if this was intended as a PvP ability, it only further justifies my original sentiment of it being useless for PvE.

Have to disagree here, its pretty reliable to go up straight after the target takes damage. I never let it drop, of course I wouldnt use it over something vital gcd wise but judging instead (assuming jotp has 45s+ left) is just a question of your priorities.

I especially use it in long hard hitting fights where every crit (and thus mana returned) counts. We did 20man naxx this week and I solo healed the MT, if not for SS uptime I am confident I would have gone out of mana.

I find myself struggling to find a good and consistent use of SS, but can think of 1 definite and several questionable times to use, the definite is on malygos right after a Vortex and as the tank is initially picking Maly up. Otherwise I can use on Sapph right as he lands after is AoE and maybe 1 or 2 other times where I have fouind I did not need to use it. I find myself not liking it personally, but that is just me.

Another quick question about HoSalv....I find I use this more on the Tankadin than other DPS(I know they are getting nerfed on threat so that is fine.) but is this a worthwhile spell to keep on a hotbar since the amount of threat a tank can generate. I think the only time I come even close to using it is once again on Maly since it is all burst but I do it premptively. With new harder content coming out eventually how effective is HoSalv?(I guess that is the short of my question)

It's also great for slow, periodic raid damage. Sapphiron is by far the best (and perhaps only right now) example of this. It would also be great for the Malygos vortices... if it actually worked.

works nicely on Loatheb as well, once doom starts ticking

like people have said, SS on loatheb is just great and in any fight you should always keep it up at the very least on the tank. Think of it this way, its a 1.2s cast presuming some amount of haste and JotP. With 2000 SP (Easy raid buffed) you're looking at 2000 mitigation per proc, lasting 30 seconds that'll be 5 procs for a total of 10000 mitigated damage. Unless your tank has a crazy amount of avoidance, he's gonna get hit in the 6 seconds that the buff lasts and so you're guaranteed to use the mitigation, so really we're looking at 10000 effective 'healing' done for a 1.2 second cast instead of maybe a 5k heal that will partially become overhealing.

Sorry to revert back to the BoL topic, but yes - this is exactly what I was talking about.

In general, if I'm running low or out of mana on a fight, I won't have the mana to cast BoL to begin with...however, last few times I've run Saph I had no issue with mana, and proceeded to keep my tank and myself up through blizzards (feeling less guilty about standing still for an extra second to finish that heal) and the aoe damage - not to mention you can guilt-free toss hand of sacrifice on the tank. If I were to start drastically running low on mana I would simply stop casting BoL period and take some heals ^_^

That is why I would only recommend it in case of specific situations where your survival is questionable.

SS goes on the tank for me in my experience whenever I notice the buff missing and am not otherwise occupied...too much work, too short duration, too small return to chain cast it on anyone else in the vast majority of cases.

I'm in agreement with this. The spell is really only effective if you know someone is going to take damage within six seconds of taking damage, and in most situations in current content that person is the tank and no one else. It's great for putting on the MT on Loatheb, terrible for anyone else.

Even on a fight like Sapphiron, it's better to just BoL the MT and roll around with FoLs rather than waste globals on SS. That leads to a pretty solid manual HoT on the MT, in essence.

The spell is pretty snazzy on MT healing, but generally speaking we usually let the Disc priest do that with the assistance of my BoL. Either way, a 1.2s global is 2/3 of a Holy Light, and you're gonna get more bang for your buck with that, particularly after the glyph changes come through. GoHL is just about the most OP thing in the healing game right now, and the changes to it are only making it better.

Apoll, your efficacy argument is silly. Prevented damage does not compare to ACTUAL healing. SS cannot prevent the entirety of damage coming in from a boss. A heal is required. 2000 health on well geared tanks is a drop in the bucket. It does not preclude you from having to cast holy lights and therefore it seems odd you'd be contrasting SS and HL efficiency.

Its odd that a few of the contributors here are using numbers from Naxx 10/25 man. The bosses (hopefully) in future content will be considerably more difficult (read bigger burst damage). The idea that a 2k buffer every 6 seconds will save a tank and that you'll have time to not function as a holy light turret (look at the new changes and I'd question anyones decision to not be spamming holy light on the raid after them) seems a bit delusional.

As much as Blizzard has changed the game for DPS/Tanks, the healing game of going back to spamming heals seems more and more likely from what i've seen and heard. The exception is that many of the more difficult fights in the game require amazing amounts of mobility and raid-awareness for healers (Sath+3 drakes for example), more so then any other fights in my raiding experience.

Feya, you criticize previous posters for using current content to argue SS's usefulness by stating that future content should be more challenging, with harder hitting bosses requiring higher overall throughput. You continue on to argue that SS's 2000ish absorb values every 6s aren't useful with that kind of incomming damage when in fact, if throughput demands exceed that provided by a single spamming paladin (which is likely), SS can but help your overall effective throughput (damage healed + damage prevented)... by something between 5-10%, which is non-trivial.

It might not allow you to ignore tank duty, but, flipping your argument around, it might very well be required to maximize your contribution to keeping the tank alive.

I understand what you're saying about the ability currently increasing your overheal by the amount absorbed in some situations, but:

- it's great in 5mans (regular and heroics)
- it's not terrible in PvP to give you some extra breathing room.
- it's useful on some bosses as is (Loatheb, Malygos with some tweaking on the developer's side)
- it might in fact be factored in to the holy paladin throughput equation when they tune harder content, so you might very well have to rely on it in the future.

Actually what Feya argued was that even with SS up, the amount absorbed is not enough to keep us from having to heal after the hit anyway. Thus it's not whether we use SS or HL, it's that we use SS and HL even with SS up.

He/She wasn't arguing that it's not worth putting up, but was debating the argument that SS is better than HL because it absorbs 10k damage and has a lower mana cost.

And discussing current content with regards to most abilities is a tough cookie at best, because it's all so easy. If we bring 5 or more healers to Naxx 25 I am bored out of my skull.

Hey there all. I'm a new poster on EJ, so forgive me if I don't know the conventions. What I am basically looking for is a compiled list of enchants for the Healadin in your life. I have read through this thread and read several contrasting opinions, and while I understand that gemming/enchanting for Intellect is the way to go these days, clearly there is not a +int for every single slot. I have looked at Rawr Healadin, and frankly, I'm now just looking for a human perspective. Essentially I want to understand where I should enhance my items with either +Int,+Crit,+Haste and +SP.

If this is the incorrect place to put this, please tell me where I should go for this. Thanks for the wonderful thread and also for the amazing Rawr - Healadin.

Feya, I agree with your point that with SS up and with procs the tank will still be taking damage, but in all cases it's going to help the healing no matter how you look at it. If its a really light healing fight, it could pretty much mean that we can stop pre-healing and just reactively heal. A bit of a heavier DPS fight would mean that because of that extra mitigation at points we're going to be able to keep FoLing instead of going over to HL to do our healing resulting in more mana-efficiency. If its a crazy fight with tons of healing requirements, then we're going to want to squeeze every ounce of healing out of our characters. If you really have a problem with the way Im wording it that Im saying 'replace' a holy light with SS, just think of it as if you're replacing a FoL with SS instead, either way you're casting a 1-1.2 second spell that will mitigate 10000 damage.



I haven't seen anything on the forums here, but if you look at imba the options for the enchants there are pretty much accurate, the only missing one would be the option to choose 16 int on your bracers instead of 30 spell power. That choice pretty much depends more on what stats you already have and how you like to heal than anything else. If you are running oom a lot in raids and arent overhealing too much, so something in the 50% range then go int, if you arent running oom then go spell power.

Well, the logic is simple: the harder is the fight (in the sense that tank gets hitted more) the more healing per unit mana you would like to do to maximise the output. And SS has the best HP/mana ratio (excluding glyphed LoH that gives mana to you) among all our healing spells. Only situation where use of SS in progress content is not actually worth it is when spending a single GCD on it risk tank death. But I doubt it will ever happen - no one except paladins could keep the tank alive then.

Also, as soon as fight involves some movement, not to spend 'free' GCD on SS is just a waste of GCD. Even 2k 'heal' from a single proc is better than no heal at all.

P. S. One more thing to mention - I never considered the 50% extra FoL buff as a mean to increase the viability of FoL as tank healing tool. Tank healing tool for any sort of progress fight is HL. For me FoL itself (till i could chaincast HL) is something I chaincast on tank till he is hitted hard and I have to HL. That FoL that landed after big hit gives more breath to survive 1.5-2 sec of HL cast. And SS proc as well as SS itself gives just more buffer. FoL is healing tool for raid healing, but for tank healing it is rather support tool like shield or hot or even armor proc. In progress content I never rely on it to really heal the tank, I just fill the time between HL casts and reduce the need in those HL casts.