The Holy Paladin Guide for WotLK - Page 91

sarufang · 02/16/09, 4:01 PM

Could anyone recommend a guide to getting pre raid geared as a holy paladin.

• frmorrison · 02/16/09, 5:06 PM

Originally Posted by sarufang

Could anyone recommend a guide to getting pre raid geared as a holy paladin.

Gearing up your Holy Paladin for Crit - WoW Insider

Don't be scared to use Mail and sometimes leather pieces. Armor value only matters in PvP.

galzohar · 02/16/09, 5:33 PM

go to Wowhead: We've got more style than a fashion designer who knows CSS.

database->items

create a filter

useable by: paladin

create a weighting scale->show details->input stats from rawr (int, crit, sp, mp5, haste)

select desired gear slot (ex: "back")

apply filter

check out where the top ones that you can actually get drop

repeat for other gear slots until you know what you're after

when your gear gets better and you can run harder instances, repeat the entire process.

seppukux · 02/16/09, 6:02 PM

Not sure if this has been asked or whatever but. Kinda just want some feedback, opinions. Sarth. with 3drakes up. Solo healing it with having to spec into DG (in prot tree to keep tank from dieing when flamebreathed) so i lose a fair ammount of crit. So basicly what im saying is my guild has me solo heal the MT. We have yet to kill him with 3Ds up, and i have not run OOM, but im a little worried i may. Since im solo healing i cannot really pop DP so that bites. Any suggestions comments?

• frmorrison · 02/16/09, 6:22 PM

Originally Posted by seppukux

Since im solo healing i cannot really pop DP so that bites. Any suggestions comments?

Between the breaths, you can use Plea. However, you may not safely be able to get the full 15 seconds, but you can get a few tics. Click it off when you need your heals to hit harder.

Also if you have a crazy Warlock, you can get a Voidwalker up to 90,000 health. That has to easy to heal.

Roknroll · 02/16/09, 7:02 PM

Originally Posted by seppukux

Not sure if this has been asked or whatever but. Kinda just want some feedback, opinions. Sarth. with 3drakes up. Solo healing it with having to spec into DG (in prot tree to keep tank from dieing when flamebreathed) so i lose a fair ammount of crit. So basicly what im saying is my guild has me solo heal the MT. We have yet to kill him with 3Ds up, and i have not run OOM, but im a little worried i may. Since im solo healing i cannot really pop DP so that bites. Any suggestions comments?

we have a holy paladin that solo heals it, although the other healers will pop hots or a single heal when they are in range. i wouldn't recommend getting DG in the prot tree to give up 8% crit. Solo healing you will want to pretty much spam Holy Light. You can get away with spamming FoL, using HL only after breaths, for the first minute or so (just before the whelp spawn). Before that, healing is moderate and other healers can always pop heals on the MT when they are in range.

When the whelps spawn, healing gets more hectic if dps take a hit or two, and there will be much more healing directed at the add tank. Soon after, Shadron lands and the Drake tank takes even more of the other healers attentions. I would say that you'll want to switch to a pure Holy Light spam once the whelps spawn. You'll want to have your 4-piece T7 bonus as well as the badge libram to get you through.

If you stick with a mostly FoL spam with occasional HL before the whelps spawn, you should be near full mana when you have to switch to the Holy Light spam. If not, i'd recommend popping Divine Plea as soon as the first drake's portal appears (whelps spawn maybe 8-10 seconds after that). Make sure you let the other healers know that you are popping Plea so they can help pick up heals.

If you DPS is doing their job, you'll only need to last for about a 2-3 minute Holy Light spam on the MT (basically the entire time Shadron and Vesperon are up). And even though Shadron dieing should signal a win, don't expect other healers to help you out, as the raid is taking a lot of damage from Twilight Torment (p.s. make sure your MT completely stops attacking during Twilight Torment).

Finally, your tank should have 2-3 cooldowns they can use to survive breaths (one cooldown per breath). If he has to survive more than 3 breaths, DPS is not doing their job. If it does get to that point, a Holy Priest should be using Guardian Spirit. The other option would be for you to pop Hand of Sacrifice on the MT and then bubble. But don't pick up DG in the prot tree. Don't worry if you go fully OOM after Vesperon is dead. Another healer can take over for you while you use Divine Plea

I'm our 2nd holy paladin and I keep up Righeous Fury to help pull adds to the add tank. I basically follow him around, but my anchor position is near where the first drake's portal is. It's basically on the sartharion-side edge of the middle safe wave spot. That keeps me in range of the entire raid, and Also lets me pop heals on the MT if needed. I'm assigned to healing the add tank, so the most intense time for me is just before and after the whelp spawn. All other times, I try to stay in range of the MT (staying in range of the add-tank is priority though)

• Mex · 02/16/09, 8:07 PM

Ignoring DG is a mistake. It is an incredibly powerful talent on this fight. Whether or not it strictly beats 8% crit is debatable, but it's definitely not a clear-cut case of the crit being better. It's a huge help to your other healer(s), especially if they're being overwhelmed by adds / TT. Additionally, DG+HoS will give your tank enough mitigation to completely ignore your DP's healing penalty (51%); although keep in mind that this won't translate to your beacon target or GoHL splash targets (although they'll still have 30% mitigation). You'll also need to go at least 5 into prot for kings unless your group brings a ret pally, in which case it would be only 5% crit lost.

That said, heart of the crusader is also very valuable if your raid lacks it. You should be judging the DPS' focus target throughout the fight anyway. And of course, if you didn't bring an unholy DK, PoJ is a huge buff too (worth taking over 2% crit imo). Imp BoM for the physical DPS too. It's a tough call, but I wouldn't automatically disregard DG completely, especially if you're having more throughput issues than mana issues.

If you're very careful, and have a finger hovering over a cancelaura macro, you can also sneak in DPs at other points during the fight. The best time to do this is generally after a tank has popped their CDs and after you've healed them up from the breath that they used the CDs to mitigate. Eg - tank pops barkskin and drops low after a huge breath. Heal him up, then pop DP and continue healing, ready to cancelaura it should avoidance RNG not favour you. A DK with a 1 minute IBF is great for this, especially if it happens to overlap with vamp blood (if he has it).

CrazyScot · 02/17/09, 6:41 AM

Originally Posted by TimWischmeier

Sorry for quoting a post 2 pages ago, but I jumped into this thread a bit late (healadin twink) and this quote is really something I want to reply to. My main is a mage, so your statement is not unfamiliar to me. Yet I do think it is not applicable to healers.

So, your job is to keep everyone alive. If no one dies (ie, no one has died and you did it in a repeatable way), you have done your job perfectly. To be exact, there is no way you could do better, because you don't improve the fight (this is, the outcome is always "boss killed, achievement gained, no one died).

So, if you are left with 100% mana or 0% mana is irrelevant. Heck, I would even say, if you finish the fight with 0 mana left, this was not your best, because if someone else would have made a mistake, you would not have had the mana to recover from it.

To contrast it, let me give you a mana dps class point of view (iven you have enough control over the rate of your mana to damage conversion). Lets assume the above: boss dead, no one died. Now, you did your job and did damage. But if you are left with more than 0 mana, you could have done more damage. So, you could have done better. You could have done more damage, thus making the fight shorter, playing better!

So I think healers can "cap content", because at some point, even with gear from higher tiers, they just cannot improve the outcome of the fight. Dps on the other hand can always improve the outcome of a fight, because they can shorten it. Some of the very few occasions where a healer could improve the outcome further would be something like the Twilight Torment Aura. If you can increase you hps, dps has to hold back less, thus shortening the fight.

However, now that you cannot improve in current content, I think there is really no point in thinking about how to do more overheal

. All you can do after "capping content" (I really get to like that term), is thinking about how you could lay out your gear to be most useful in the next tier of content.

I understand the "DPS" point of view as I've played a Warlock from Molten Core through to Naxx v2, I also having played my Paladin as a main for a short while (it was good for the guild at the time) through SSC/TK -> BT/MH understand to a point the healer point of view and my point stands, in the perfect kill (which is the only kill we look at theoretically) every mana based class wants to use all their mana, blow all their cooldowns efficiently, get the most damage/least overheal possible; in the perfect kill you bring just enough healers and stack DPS so that the boss dies in the quickest possible way, for this reason the best healers end on 0 mana unless they cannot put out enough healing to reach that point.

For a paladin in current content increasing HPS by the most efficent manner is via intellect, this is true unless one simple thing is true, a) You can spam holy light non-stop (whilst maintaining personal/raid buffs) from the very beginning of the fight until the very end of the fight. After this point the best increase in throughput comes from our other 3 "important" stats of haste/SP/crit prior to this point with the nature of overhealing crit is secondary as it brings both increased throughput and mana regen, haste and spellpower are deceptive as SP only really increases the amount you overheal with no return and haste only really allows you to heal more reactively maintaining your throughput at the same level.

Intellect also makes for the best gearing for the next level of content as I and I'm sure many others doubt that we'll still be coming up against 5 minute maximum fights, a 10 minute fight with high healing output requirement will cause undue healing stress to players geared towards spellpower or haste and even crit unless the fight is bursty enough that they can get strong levels of regen from their DP, comparing this to an intellect geared paladin that will get the same mana returns from less time regenning (through replen/DP/the ability to hit the mob for SoW returns/mana tide/etc) is why I will gem/enchant for intellect and keep coming back to the thread until I see hard proof of any benefits of those other stats.

Anyway I jabbered more than I intended, please feel free to comment on my thoughts.

sarufang · 02/17/09, 7:04 AM

Just a question, when tank healing in raids and 5 mans is it advised to keep a 100% uptime on sacred shield

Apollion · 02/17/09, 8:41 AM

Originally Posted by sarufang

Just a question, when tank healing in raids and 5 mans is it advised to keep a 100% uptime on sacred shield

You should always try to free up the GCD for the SS if at all possible. Essentially, a SS will mitigate 10000 damage easily (2000 spell power raid buffed, thats what most of us have unbuffed) , with close to a 1 second GCD, we're talking just under 10000 effective mitigated HPS, making it the most efficient spell in our arsenal in terms of HPS and HPM without even counting the buff to FoL that gets used to good effect once in a blue moon.

Aditu · 02/17/09, 11:55 AM

Mitigation overtime is pretty insignificant though and really is akin to counting JoL as part of your overall healing. Yea, stopping at most 2k damage per SS rotation isn't a bad idea in 5 mans for FoL utility, but in a raid situation its not worth the GCD and mana cost of maintaining it up 100% imo.

ManaTF · 02/17/09, 12:36 PM

Mitigation overtime is pretty insignificant

I don't get it. 500 mana to have 10-13k damages removed from total damages taken by your target. That, is efficiency. And if you have the time to use it, then you should.

Do not (never) disregard "insignificant" buffs, such as mana given by Spiritual Attunement, etc.

Little things can sometime make big differences, such as the one between life and death.

Tzeni · 02/17/09, 1:17 PM

Originally Posted by ManaTF

I don't get it. 500 mana to have 10-13k damages removed from total damages taken by your target. That, is efficiency. And if you have the time to use it, then you should.

Do not (never) disregard "insignificant" buffs, such as mana given by Spiritual Attunement, etc.

Little things can sometime make big differences, such as the one between life and death.

Well, with fairly top of the line gear, HLs will cost an average of about 700 mana per cast (45% crit, SoW glyph, 4 piece valorous) and do about the same amount of healing. So it's not like the HPM is really all that crazy.

And I think his point is that SS is a really small amount of HPS over time (even if it's good HPcasttime), and he'd rather use his mana to get more instant HPS from other sources.

It's a pretty fair argument. Personally, I think there is a middle ground for some bosses where I wouldn't try too hard to keep SS up. The way I look at it, weak hitting bosses are great for SS+FL spam and bosses with hard hits are great for using SS to keep tanks up (like Patchwerk or using SS on fire-buffed Sarth before breath). It's the middle bosses where you can't really say that SS is going to reliably save tanks or do much of anything (KT being a good example, I think) that I wouldn't really value SS all that much.

Arthaal · 02/17/09, 1:28 PM

If you can spare the GCD then any HL cast in that same amount of time would have overhealed... SS is essentially taking that HL and amortizing it over the next 30s, making your job easier for those 30s at a slightly reduced cost. I see no reason to ignore it when appropriate.

Tzeni · 02/17/09, 1:37 PM

Originally Posted by Arthaal

If you can spare the GCD then any HL cast in that same amount of time would have overhealed... SS is essentially taking that HL and amortizing it over the next 30s, making your job easier for those 30s at a slightly reduced cost. I see no reason to ignore it when appropriate.

The question was:

Just a question, when tank healing in raids and 5 mans is it advised to keep a 100% uptime on sacred shield

And the answer was thus:

You should always try to free up the GCD for the SS if at all possible.

We can quibble over word usage, but I don't think SS is worth trying to free up GCDs, on some boss fights. Thus, I don't view keeping 100% uptime all that necessary, especially as if you don't need that time on boss healing, you can always raid heal with beacon.

All that being said, I DID say that I keep it up 100% (or close to it) on any boss I FL the tank on, and bosses that have singular hard hits (Patchwerk and Sarth). I also use it extensively on Sapphiron during air phases (when the tank is not in danger) due to the unique nature of that fight (low, consistent raid damage where SS is guaranteed to do all 10-13K mitigation).