SS does work on ice tombs, but wouldn't absorb until the pulse after you apply it. Much more efficient and safe to just heal it up.

Less effective than what? HL spam a few weeks earlier?

All I care in any progress fight - ability to do as much healing as possible during some definite fight time. Int is the best way to do it. If you think that HL spam is not needed, then socket haste. Why socket sp and crit if they give less burst HPS? Also haste gives not only better burst but also allows you to cast your heal faster and thus be more effective.

I played a lot with the new rawr that has burst built in. There are almost no reasonable fight settings where spellpower or crit was worth gemming. You either gem int if you want more healing done overall or haste if you care about burst. If you think that spellpower and crit is better - try to explain it. If you want them as some middle between effectiveness and burst then 1 int and 1 haste gem are better than 2 sp/crit gems.

Example - more or less balanced 25man gear, 6min fight, average settings. T7 chest with int haste gives 528/127 fight healing/burst healing scores with int+haste gems, while with 2 sp/crit gems it gives 517/125 scores.

As a summary - gemming for not haste or int (except if socket bonus is worth it) is good only for e-peen to show big crit % and sp numbers. Until our mechanics is changed, haste and int is the best way to gem from theorycrafting PoV (under standard assuptions).


P. S. Let me rephrase my question - what will sp/crit give you that haste/int won't?

I totally agree with the above post.

Haste + Int if u want Burst Healing and still be able to cast heals after burst.
Crit is not much of an issue with the new talent points in retri tree.

My favourite priority (ofc open to debate) at the moment is int > Crit ~ Haste > SP > mp5
I say Crit ~ Haste because in my opinion you should stop stacking more crit and go for haste at some point. 45% HL crit would be more than enough including all set bonuses, talent points, etc.

In my opinion, you should gem for max int, then go for the gear of your taste (more crit or more haste or a balance of the two) but still keep gemming for int.

As for Spell power, if it's epeen you're thinking, minimizing your overheal, I would guess it's the end of the game for you With Holy light Glyph, you'll be way more effective healing melee than you could possibly do anything with FoL, holy shock or the like.

Since WoTLK yields small raidwise damage, you'll be high in meters with Beacon of Light and JoL anyway. Maybe not number 1, but enough to feed the epeen. As for effectiveness, if your HL is not effective, then maybe it's wrong usage of preemptive healing? Since it's a relatively long cast (insert haste here), you should be casting it before someone tops off your target for you. And since you have BoL on an additonal target or the MT as well, you can shock here and there for the extra effectiveness you seek.

That's funny; in Holy spec I'm sitting at around those numbers for crit while still gemmed up to 28k mana. I have a heck of a lot less SP than you do, to be sure, but I'm doing enough to keep up a Patch off-tank for the duration so I'm doing enough. I admit, more SP would improve my mana economy on fights where I don't need huge mana like Patch, but the whole point of swimming in the deep end of the mana pool is to render mana economy unimportant.

Looking at your spec, I can see how you might get less out of HL spam than you should - you're not ideally specced for it. I can only assume that's your PVP spec; no PVE Holy Paladin should be passing up the 10% discount to Holy Shock and the first 5% crit in the Ret tree, and unless your guild is so Paladin-light that you can't guarantee Kings from someone else you should take the full 8%.

I am using Spellreminder and it seems to do the job nicely.

I have read and heard many references to "prehealing" or "preloading heals", and understand that one's skill with this separates the good healers from the excellent healers. I have not, however, been able to find any discussion on the actual mechanics involved. While the concept is not exactly rocket science - time your heals to land immediately after your healing target takes damage by preanticipating the boss's attacks - implementing it is proving elusive. I would like to hear from other healadins how best to follow the bosses' actions.

What mods/addons do you use? (I tried using Quartz to show a Swing Timer for my Focus, but either my understanding of Quartz is all wrong, or I didn't set it up right.) Or do you literally just "watch" the boss, memorizing what he does before each style of attack?

I've actually been using DoTimer and I find it tracks buffs on all targets if you set it up to. I'm not really sure how you have it set up but this is how I have it set up:

http://i43.tinypic.com/2ut23xk.jpg
http://i39.tinypic.com/29n7yw8.jpg
http://i42.tinypic.com/6og6c6.jpg
(I didn't touch the other three panels.)

Didn't know how to describe it so I just screenshotted everything. Anyway with this set up it tracks all buffs that I cast/proc on myself and other people. It also tracks debuffs that I apply to a mob - I mainly use this to see my judgement. It doesn't track buffs that are over 6min so it wont track blessings but it can. You can also filter out any timers you'd like but I haven't messed with this option too much myself.

There's two components:

1 - Overhealing to preempt damage spikes. This was made popular on Brut in Sunwell, but it's been around forever. Most people did it inherently by spamming Flash just to have something to do. It's simply spamming when you have nothing else to heal, because there's really no reason to ever stop casting as a Paladin. Sync'ing to swing timers is an exercise in futility.

2 - Sync'ing castbars. This is the "trickier" version and what you really want to improve on. It's very simple in reality. Anything that has some type of cast-bar damage, you will usually want to sync your heal to land as soon as the damage impacts. This is to prevent cast+melee gibbing in particular, but it also allows you to begin working on the backlog of damage if the damage happens to be gargantuan. However, be careful not to undershoot the timing or you will simply massively overheal and worse, set yourself back an entire GCD. There are a few instances in the current content where this applicable:

- Sartharion and Breath Attacks. Sarth's flame breath has a very distinctive cast bar; set Sarth as your focus and monitor it. When you see the cast bar toggle, sync your heal and begin casting. Sarth can definitely breath+melee gib your tank if you're doing 3 drakes and all of your healers are slow on the heal.

- Malygos and Breath Attacks. Malygos' breath is particularly damaging on a tank, there's also a delayed bomb component to it as well. Malygos can also breath+melee gib your tank, especially if Malygos has eaten a spark.

- Backside of 4H. Both bosses have a cast-time nuke as their primary damage, and it even has travel time to boot, so you must sync to the cast-time and travel time. This is more an educational experience as the chances of you doing is pretty minimal as long as you're handling things correctly. Use this encounter as training, as you will.

There are probably others, but these are three distinctive ones off the top of my head. Obviously you can extend the second component to any type of RSTS cast time ability or RSTS ability in general. If you have aggro warnings enabled in grid, you can usually deduce RSTS targets without even bothering with target of target. Trying enabling aggro monitors on Razuv sometime to determine dagger targets before they are even hit with the debuff / indicated by the raid warning. Again, this is mostly an exercise as the lethality is rather low.

Methods to implementation:

Grid + Aggro Warning. I use a red border whenever someone has "aggro". Aggro in grid is defined by target of target, so if a boss turns to face someone to use an RSTS, you will get a momentary warning on that. It's up to figure out the patterns between RSTS and genuine true "time to eat your face" aggro. Target of Target is identical if you want to use that.

Quartz + Focus. I use a focus cast bar with a gargantuan size. When it pops up, I know something that I conciously focused on is happening, and I react appropriately.

I mentioned this briefly a while back, however one thing I find myself doing is filling in Holy Light spam with Flash of Light until I'm satisfied with my Holy Light sequence on rather hard-hitting bosses...I continue casting (so the tank is never lacking heals) but the cast time difference lets me adjust my Holy Light to exactly the interval where I'll hit right after the swing.

For tracking purposes I utilize ClassTimer, typically using a focus target macro to keep BoL up on various targets. Any click-to-cast mod is very helpful in this regard, as you can change focus targets in a single click (e.g. I have /focus bound to middle mouse button - simply middle mouse clicking on another character in grid makes them my focus, then I can cast whatever target=focus macros on that person). I have the ClassTimer bars very obviously placed next to my HUD so it's hard to miss them. I might experiment with a target=specificplayer macro in the future for Sartharion so I can focus-watch the cast bars on the boss, however then I'll lose my timer on BoL.

On a side note, I find Grid amazing with the flexibility it offers - I forgot about setting up SS and BoL as a buff.

I've been using Yatba to track things like judgements, beacon, sacred shield, etc. I like it's appearance and it's highly customizable.

I've been reading the forums for a while this is my first post. I read a lot about what mods people use to keep track of buffs things like Class Timer and such. The mod I use to keep track of beacon and SS as well as heal and cleanse and put beacon on the tank and SS and so many other spells is Healbot.

I've used it for over a year and I would not heal a raid without it. Having a mod that does so much is awesome. It tracks SS and Beacon and you know when they fall off. Putting them back on is easy and simple. I use it to help me cleanse as well. I can cleanse so fast I have 2 to 3 people cleansed before the priests finishing casting MD.

I also use XPerl unitframes as well as Healbot. Healbot makes so I don't have to download a lot of other mods.