I really enjoy the Holy Healing for PVE, its why I play the game, but there is no point to spend 2~3hours for 3 days/week to lose to someone that can just spam HoT´s and keep 3/5 peoples alive when I just can keep one, maybe two with beacon.
...
I just want some 'light' and maybe some advice. Should I start a new alt healer/dps? I like my retri pally, I stoped playing with my warrior ( 2 years ) because of it, but now idk if worth it.
Like everyone has said, the pally main job is to heal MT, not to top healing meter.
Having said that, I'm still 2nd on the healing meter, thank to JoL (the prot pally left the raid and I forgot to switch shortcut to JoW), we just down Mimiron last night as well.
If don't enjoy healing or seeing yourself falling behind other healers, you should stick with your ret spec.
The recent posts stating that paladins should not top charts have me a bit confused. As you see, I play a shaman, but my wife plays a paladin, and I generally try to follow the current recommendations so I can help her stay a valuable healer for our raid. With that said, there are many fights in which my wife *does* top the charts. As the raid leader and a long-time healer, I know that's not strictly relevant, so long as everyone lives, but it's a fact that I'm trying to reconcile.
Is my wife's healing "success" likely an artifact of other healers who are not doing their job (I know of at least one healer who just can't manage to learn how to get the most out of their class), or is it something she's likely doing that I should encourage her to refrain from? I know her style is to Beacon the main tank and heal them along with the raid occasionally. Is that use of Beacon not the recommended way now that we're in Ulduar with harder hitting bosses?
I can provide anonymous (or not) WWS links if people think it's necessary before giving solid advice.
The recent posts stating that paladins should not top charts have me a bit confused. As you see, I play a shaman, but my wife plays a paladin, and I generally try to follow the current recommendations so I can help her stay a valuable healer for our raid. With that said, there are many fights in which my wife *does* top the charts. As the raid leader and a long-time healer, I know that's not strictly relevant, so long as everyone lives, but it's a fact that I'm trying to reconcile.
Is my wife's healing "success" likely an artifact of other healers who are not doing their job (I know of at least one healer who just can't manage to learn how to get the most out of their class), or is it something she's likely doing that I should encourage her to refrain from? I know her style is to Beacon the main tank and heal them along with the raid occasionally. Is that use of Beacon not the recommended way now that we're in Ulduar with harder hitting bosses?
I can provide anonymous (or not) WWS links if people think it's necessary before giving solid advice.
Well, personally, I find it depends on the boss and the encounter.
In Naxx, as a holy paladin, I frequently topped the charts (except on certain bosses), just because of my ability to cast a lot of holy lights and get some nice splash heals from the glyph. I was also able to cast sacred shield on multiple targets, beacon one of the tanks, and help with raid healing (or beacon the OT and heal the MT). In Naxx, except on specific fights (Patchwerk, Four Horsemen, KT), we really didn't have healing assignments since they weren't really needed. There were a lot of fights where I could just stand still (or only move a bit) and cast a lot of heals, and well, that's where I personally shine as a player and can use the strengths of my class, since holy paladins only have one instant heal and since I don't have the greatest "twitch" reactions and I find healing when I need to move a lot very difficult.
In Ulduar, our guild uses healing assignments on every single boss fight. So if I am assigned to heal the MT or OT, I generally stick to that target, and only help heal the raid when either: 1. the MT or OT isn't taking a lot of damage but the raid is (Razorscale until permanently grounded, XT during tantrum) or when I'm assigned to help out on healing portions of the raid (ie. the corridor group on Thorim, XT when people run to the "safe" zone on my side when they have a bomb). So, since I generally stick to my assignment, it is only natural that one of the AoE healers is going to top the healing charts (usually a holy priest or resto shaman, depending on the fight).
In Ulduar, I personally find, except in very specific circumstances, that I can't just beacon the tank and raid heal, since I can't guarantee that healing others will have the heal transferred to the tank. If I go to heal someone in the raid, a smart heal or instant heal may reach them faster than my heal, and so there may be absolutely no heal transferred to the tank. If the tank is taking a lot of damage, and I'm relying on that beacon heal to go through, well, the tank could easily die, and we could wipe. So typically in Ulduar, I beacon whichever tank I'm not assigned to heal (MT or OT), and heal my assignment. There is also a lot of movement in Ulduar fights, and all that movement shows both the weakness of the holy paladin (only one instant heal on a 5 or 6 sec CD) and my personal weakness (not great twitch skills while moving).
Now, I haven't tried any hard modes yet in Ulduar, so things may change, but that's how it stands for me right now. On our last raid night, the only fight where I topped the charts was on Emalon in VoA. On the boss fights in Ulduar I was 2nd or 3rd on some bosses, and second last on others, but what mattered was that I kept my assignments up.
As as it is every encounter since the game came out, certain classes are catered to in certain fights. In fights with minimal aoe and purely main tank incoming damage paladins will likely excel (as was the case in many Naxx fights). In fights with lots of movement, druids are likely to "win" on meters (priests too I suppose). Every encounter has certain advantages towards one aspect of the game, be it casters or range or melee; this also includes styles of healing.
The point was being made that unless your guild is failing in encounters, meters are of minimal importance. If your succeeding, then likely your doing something right.
The true trick is minimizing your healer spots for DPS as this does indeed seem to be the philosophy behind how hard mode encounters have been designed.
Which is going to happen anyway as all the actual group healers are using abilities that heal multiple targets. When we need to support the group healers, our job is not to fill health bars to 100%. It's to keep endangered targets alive long enough for the groupies to get round to healing them. Flash is thus our group healing spell of choice because it lets us heal more targets in that manner.
You can also turn that idea around. Group healers are not there to heal people to full, they just need to keep them alive until you can hit them with HL.
Scenario: Hodir hard mode, priest and paladin healing. During frozen blows the priest cannot keep the raid up alone, so you need to help while also healing the tank. So you give tank beacon and tell the priest to mainly focus on one group with his prayer of healing (which is not a smart-heal) while you spam the other group with holy lights. Priest gives one or two heals to the group you are healing so you have time to cast HL once on everyone. In this scenario you would surely fail if you used FoL.
A priest can keep the raid up alone during frozen blows alternating poh on the 2 groups.
I really hate the idea of healing a 40k hp target (that can be bursted down) through beol from 20k hp targets. Especially when first 4 heals will most likely heal for less than 10k. Had to do it with a shaman and it's really edgy...
As TimWischmaier stated before: If people are about to die in the next 2 seconds, HS and FoL are usefull.
However if i hit somebody with a HL he won't (usually) be targeted by the smart-AoE-heals of the other classes, automatically redirecting these heals to people who need it more(if in range).
Except that the smart-heals are being launched at the same time as your first HL. If your HL lands first it shifts the smart heal, sure, but if the smart heal lands first you've wasted your time healing that target as they've already been saved. After allowing for vagaries in haste levels and latencies, whether you heal someone who needs it or not becomes a lottery. If, OTOH, you use a Flash first you are all but guaranteed to land first and shift the smart heal.
HL is better than Flash for healing the raid through AOE only if the targets cannot survive with a Flash alone and can survive long enough to get the HL. If the targets can be saved with a signle Flash or HS then they should be, as it lets you save more people in the same time.
My guild is currently progressing through Ulduar (6/14). I understand that Paladins are generally MT healers, however there are usually at least 2 of us and sometimes 3 pallie healers in raid. The other pallie healer who attends regularly with me has been given MT healing duties which leaves me with OT duties as well as healing the raid. I try to read up here as much as possible which means that I have been stacking int. I'm at the point now where I'm wondering if stacking int is worth it for me. If I am using divine plea I'm not going oom on any fights so far and often have plenty of excess mana. As a mostly raid healer at the moment (healing the pot, stone grip, tantrums, etc.) would it be more helpful to stack haste, sp and use a Flash style healing? Should I stick with the Int stacking and use HL spams? Or simply stack haste and use HL, Flash at intervals? I've been debating this for a little while now (especially since I lost the roll off for the legendary mace, meaning no more MT healing for me) and feel like trying to raid heal is hard to do when other quicker heals are hitting them first.
This issue isn't that complex, these two spells have only a ~0.35 cast time difference, it is just a massive difference in the raw healing of HL/FoL.
Raw healing of HL on a raid member standing with the raid is ~17-18k (12k+6k glyph).
The raw healing of FoL is 4k.
Literally, you would need to cast 4-5 seconds of FoL - fully effective, to match the healing done by a single fully effective HL in 1.4 seconds.
Literally, if you overhealed your primary target every time with HL, you could outheal someone casting FoL (100% effective) with the glyph of HL.
Few topics I'd like to bring up in regards to Holy Paladin healing in Ulduar. Note unless stated otherwise I'm referring to 25 man raids.
First off (and my main reason for making this post) is anyone else feeling compleatly useless on Yogg-Saron (All 4 Guardians down) Phases 1 and 2 in regards to healing? We downed him over the weekend in 10 man and I didn't notice any real issues, but in 25 man last night I found I spent more time dispelling that healing, and there still wasn't any real healing problems. Our healer composition was this. 1 Holy paladin (myself), 2 Resto Shamans (with one going Ele in the later attempts to lower healer numbers and increase dps), 2 Holy priests (with one going shadow in the later attempts same as the shaman), and 2 Reostoration druids. In Phase 1 I spent alot of time just moving around, dispelling MCs and HSing people I thought were abit low, and tossing the occasional HL out. But was moving a tad much (or having badly timed MCs to dispell) to easily keep LG up, slowing down my HLs considerably and further increasing the amount of HL overhealing due to heals arriving late. With Phase 2 there just was very little healing at all. I stayed on the outside for this phase and found again.. all I did was dispell. I went into the brain a few times when another healer couldnt make it due to the healer ment to be going in getting Squeezed right before the portals popped, and actually did some healing. Maybe going in the brain would be a better choice for a holy paladin? Now we didn't manage to get to Phase 3 at all, but I remeber from 10 man that the tanks do get hit pretty hard to start with by the adds when they first spawn, but I'm thinking that maybe the fact that there is little raid healing (Assuming people turn away from the purple lightining quickly) would mean that the shamans and priests could keep the tanks up pretty effectively with abit of help from Druid HoTs. Having said all that, is anyone else experiencing this? or am I just failing really badly?
Also I found that a good test of our mana longevity is doing Iron Council Hard Mode (Steelbreaker), and being the only healer on the Steelbreaker tank, with maybe the occasional heal from a raid healer after a Fusion Punch. See if you can last till the first two die without having to pop DP (assuming you dont have extensive Ulduar gear)
I apologise in advanced for any mistakes or typos I've made in the above post. It's 6:30am and I've yet to sleep. Just wanted to get most of this down before I forgot.
Few topics I'd like to bring up in regards to Holy Paladin healing in Ulduar. Note unless stated otherwise I'm referring to 25 man raids.
First off (and my main reason for making this post) is anyone else feeling compleatly useless on Yogg-Saron (All 4 Guardians down) Phases 1 and 2 in regards to healing?
Also I found that a good test of our mana longevity is doing Iron Council Hard Mode (Steelbreaker), and being the only healer on the Steelbreaker tank, with maybe the occasional heal from a raid healer after a Fusion Punch. See if you can last till the first two die without having to pop DP (assuming you dont have extensive Ulduar gear)
Yogg P1/P2 with all keepers down is an abortion in healing design. There just isn't much to do for anyone, let alone Paladins. Your main priority is obviously dispelling Apathy in P2, as that has the most meaningful impact on your raid as a whole. Just DPS for the most part and keep yourself occupied by mashing your cleanse button. I think most guilds are running 4-5 healers for 25-man Yogg/4 keepers since the only time you really need to heal hard is P3 and in small doses: P1 (fervor and anger still needs some attention).
Steelbreaker with no DP is relatively trivial, just use the SoW melee trick.
This issue isn't that complex, these two spells have only a ~0.35 cast time difference, it is just a massive difference in the raw healing of HL/FoL.
Raw healing of HL on a raid member standing with the raid is ~17-18k (12k+6k glyph).
The raw healing of FoL is 4k.
Literally, you would need to cast 4-5 seconds of FoL - fully effective, to match the healing done by a single fully effective HL in 1.4 seconds.
Literally, if you overhealed your primary target every time with HL, you could outheal someone casting FoL (100% effective) with the glyph of HL.
This i true. I definitely see the point in using HL over FoL. The difference for me is .4 seconds. I can cast a 1.5 second HL or a 1.1 second FoL. What I don't know is if stacking haste will make a big enough difference to make it worthwhile in lowering my HL cast time.
My guild is currently progressing through Ulduar (6/14). I understand that Paladins are generally MT healers, however there are usually at least 2 of us and sometimes 3 pallie healers in raid. The other pallie healer who attends regularly with me has been given MT healing duties which leaves me with OT duties as well as healing the raid. I try to read up here as much as possible which means that I have been stacking int. I'm at the point now where I'm wondering if stacking int is worth it for me. If I am using divine plea I'm not going oom on any fights so far and often have plenty of excess mana. As a mostly raid healer at the moment (healing the pot, stone grip, tantrums, etc.) would it be more helpful to stack haste, sp and use a Flash style healing? Should I stick with the Int stacking and use HL spams? Or simply stack haste and use HL, Flash at intervals? I've been debating this for a little while now (especially since I lost the roll off for the legendary mace, meaning no more MT healing for me) and feel like trying to raid heal is hard to do when other quicker heals are hitting them first.
You're generally not seeing the fights have heavy raid damage. If you're raid healing and getting into sniper wars with other heals (e.g., "the other heal landed before mine") then you're essentially saturated on raid healing. At this point, you're simply healing the raid for the sake of redundancy and safety (and there's nothing wrong with that). In these circumstances, you can generally do what you want since it's kind of a wash (think of Naxx).
Eventually though, you will start to get into fights where raid damage overtakes your available amount of raid healing (Freya hard modes, Thorim hard modes, etc) and you will have to be smart. In this case though, the tried and true HL methodology still comes out ahead simply because you'll be playing catch-up most of the time. Reserve FoL for saving last second deaths until another healer catches up with you, or if FoL fits the damage profile specifically (~avg 5k DoTs, basically). If you think you're on the slower side of reflexes in your raid, just stick to HL and do your best to preempt where the raid damage is going to go. Be aggressive about adding debuffs to your grid so you know where to aim your heals (blizzard, nature's fury, iron roots, etc) and make use of focus frames on RSTS abilities (sun beam, chain lightnings, etc).
I would generally stick to the int stacking mentality in this case. The longer you can sustain HL without having to DP is very useful when raid healing, as the self-MS can be particularly costly as a lot of the hard mode raid damage is fairly non-stop.
This i true. I definitely see the point in using HL over FoL. The difference for me is .4 seconds. I can cast a 1.5 second HL or a 1.1 second FoL. What I don't know is if stacking haste will make a big enough difference to make it worthwhile in lowering my HL cast time.
The global cooldown is still 1.5 seconds however, so although your HLs will LAND quicker, you won't be able to cast the next one until 1.5 seconds after you first started casting. Stacking haste past this point doesnt really benefit you much in terms of HPS.
Last edited by Soralin : 05/11/09 at 1:50 AM.
Reason: Posted in Error.
The global cooldown is still 1.5 seconds however, so although your HLs will LAND quicker, you won't be able to cast the next one until 1.5 seconds after you first started casting. Stacking haste past this point doesnt really benefit you much in terms of HPS.
This is false. Spell haste reduces the global cooldown.
This is false. Spell haste reduces the global cooldown.
To clarify, haste can reduce your GCD to 1 second. As, conincidentally, FoL is a GCD long cast, you can use it to check your GCD. Once you hit 1sec FoL, you shouldn't stack more haste preferentially (it's not completely wasted, but it no longer affects your reactivity as drastically, just your throughput).
"I've often not been in the fire!"
"No, what you've been, is not in the fire."
-from Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Raiders.
Steelbreaker with no DP is relatively trivial, just use the SoW melee trick.
I feel stupid now for having forgotten that. In my defense we've only tried Steelbreaker mode for one night. Well try it without SoW meleeing and see how long you last :P
Thanks for the comments on Yogg-Saron, thought I was going crazy for abit there. Atleast there might be a few things to do in P3, we'll see how things go tonight.
I'm having issues trying to find some sort of consistency in the behaviour of Divine Sacrifice. Unfortunately the new parser we're using, worldoflogs, while showing a lot of potential, still needs a lot of work on its log browser, but the general picture that something isn't working quite right is easy enough to see.
On Thursday, doing XT-002, several of us used Divine Sacrifice during tantrum, with each of ours lasting the full 10 seconds. Each Divine Sacrifice was absorbing at least 80k damage, and I was the only paladin with more than 22-23k raid buffed, so each DiSac was definitely not being affected by a cap.
On Hodir it looks like it lasts the full duration, though this combat log parser makes it difficult to see. Searching for Ilidrail as the source for Divine Sacrifice shows him casting it at 18:52:34.734, and it falling off those who didn't go out of range at 18:52:45.093, so near enough 10 seconds.
On Mimiron though, there's a lot of variation.
The incident that made me have a look at this was when our Leviathan mk II tank got one shot by a Shock Blast in phase 4 - something he should have been able to eat with a combination of last stand and my divine sacrifice:
[20:58:41.750] Rhiannon casts Divine Shield
[20:58:43.265] Rhiannon casts Divine Sacrifice
[20:58:43.500] Highlifë gains Divine Sacrifice from Rhiannon (Highlife being the tank - lots of other people gained it as well)
[20:58:44.734] Rhiannon takes 0 damage from Rohtgar's Divine Sacrifice
[20:58:44.734] Rhiannon takes 0 damage from Morrt's Divine Sacrifice
[20:58:44.734] Rhiannon takes 0 damage from Findecano's Divine Sacrifice
[20:58:44.734] Leviathan Mk II Shock Blast Highlifë 57031 (O: 19109)
[20:58:53.750] Rhiannon's Divine Shield fades
So, I cast Divine Shield, then Sacrifice. It absorbs maybe 18k damage as far as I can tell. My hp was about 42k. Sacrifice lasted about 1.5 seconds, and my tank got insta-gibbed. I was definitely in range of him, everyone lost my Divine Sacrifice at the same time, so there's no chance I accidentally got 30 yards away from him.
After looking through other Mimiron attempts, Divine Sacrifice doesn't to appear to have lasted the full duration a lot of the time on this fight. We had four paladins in the raid with Divine Sacrifice - usually we were doing a rotation for the plasma blasts of:
Shieldwall.
My divine sac (I had 43k or so hp).
Holy pala divine sac (had about 22k hp).
Ret pala and holy pala using them in p2 if raid hp was low for some reason (running from laser barrage or something).
In conjunction with last stand in p4 to eat a shock blast.
My first divine sac tended to last full duration. The only people who were suffering large amounts of damage when this divine sac was up tended to be the tank and sometimes whoever was napalmed, plus a bit of self-damage from the ret paladin.
The holy pala's divine sac during p1 was under the same conditions - plasma blast on tank, sometimes napalm damage. Hers was usually cut short. Obviously she has less hp than me. In the first mimiron attempt:
[20:16:01.062] Kareha casts Divine Sacrifice
[20:16:01.187] Highlifë afflicted by Plasma Blast from Leviathan Mk II
[20:16:02.156] Leviathan Mk II Plasma Blast Highlifë 14771 (A: 9848)
[20:16:02.312] Kareha takes 0 damage from Highlifë's Divine Sacrifice
[20:16:02.312] Kareha's Divine Sacrifice fades
That's the only damage being absorbed I can see in the timeframe that DiSac was up.
The phase 2 divine sacrifices with heatwave tended to last 1-5 seconds normally.
Is it just a peculiarity of this fight that Divine Sacrifice seems to behave erratically? Is anyone seeing similar behaviour elsewhere?
Divine Sacrifice behaves strange. I saw my own logs, where it last for full duration, absorbing much more than my 150% HP (rather something like 400%), on other encounters it was fading just after few seconds. Some say it coud be because of server lag. I doubt there would be so drasticall differences. Personally i think it is simply bugged and wrong implemented. We cancelled DS build as mandatory raid build for our holy pallies. It's too unrelevant.
Is it possible that this could be causing some of the strange behaviour of it dropping off early?
* Divine Sacrifice: Damage done to the Paladin while this is active will no longer cause the effect to break early, and if it is dispelled or cancelled early, the damage counter will reset correctly the next time the spell is cast.
Maybe there was some lag and a hit got through the shield? or soemthing?
Is it just a peculiarity of this fight that Divine Sacrifice seems to behave erratically? Is anyone seeing similar behaviour elsewhere?
I tested it on Thorim hardmode yesterday, and DiSac + Divine Shield lasted only about 2 seconds before it faded due to the massive amount of aoe damage etc. Seems pretty much hotfixed to me.
Has anyone braved the new territory of using 4PC T8 with any positive experiences? Everything in rawr points to 4PCT8 as a a downgrade from 4PCT7 (no matter the pieces, the offset helm and chest paths are both viable) outside of the meager stamina gains. I'm still a little surprised nothing has changed here, considering what happened to Death Knights and their recent T7/T8 changes.
It sounds like the DS thing was indeed a bug according to the latest PTR patch notes.
Divine Sacrifice: Damage done to the Paladin while this is active will no longer cause the effect to break early, and if it is dispelled or cancelled early, the damage counter will reset correctly the next time the spell is cast.
Has anyone braved the new territory of using 4PC T8 with any positive experiences? Everything in rawr points to 4PCT8 as a a downgrade from 4PCT7 (no matter the pieces, the offset helm and chest paths are both viable) outside of the meager stamina gains. I'm still a little surprised nothing has changed here, considering what happened to Death Knights and their recent T7/T8 changes.
A few people have been using the 2T8 bonus and are enjoying it (those are the interesting Raid healing Paladins and PvP Paladins). The only value I see in 4T8 is for hard modes, when you likely want all Ret/Holy Pallies to rotate DiSac, so might as well get more shield procs. Note you get meager Int gains as well!
As you know, GC rather fix dps issues (previously, DKs didn't want T8 but now they do) than healer issues. However, they did fix the broken set bonuses on T3 (no cooldown LoH) and T6 (too much HL crit) so who knows. I don't see 5% cheaper cost to HL as broken as the previous set bonuses.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
Has anyone braved the new territory of using 4PC T8 with any positive experiences? Everything in rawr points to 4PCT8 as a a downgrade from 4PCT7 (no matter the pieces, the offset helm and chest paths are both viable) outside of the meager stamina gains. I'm still a little surprised nothing has changed here, considering what happened to Death Knights and their recent T7/T8 changes.
I really have not found it necessary for me to keep 4pT7, however we aren't doing hard modes and it might be necessary there. I strategically use DP for mana regen, but I definitely do not use it on cooldown and do not use it during intense healing situations. On top of that, I'd say about 1/3 of the fights I need to use a mana pot, and about half of those I additionally need to use LoH for mana reasons. I also tend to place myself outside of the resto shaman group because I haven't needed mana tide. I do have a very large int pool (around 31k mana fully raid buffed) and am using the Greatness Card with Soul of the Dead. I try to time DP as often as I can anytime there is a lull in healing.
As soon as I can pick it up, I plan on getting the 4pT8 bonus.
Edit:
Morrison, did you mean to say people were using 4pT8?
I tested it on Thorim hardmode yesterday, and DiSac + Divine Shield lasted only about 2 seconds before it faded due to the massive amount of aoe damage etc. Seems pretty much hotfixed to me.
Thanks for this. I've been trying to sort through logs to see what Sac is really doing. I originally assumed Div Sac had the 150% HP cap to help Pallies avoid being insta gibbed when Bubble was on CD and that with Bubble up (since no damage is taken) t would absorb infinite damage for the duration.
If it really is capped at 150% no matter what is it even worth taking anymore at the expense of the nice talents in Ret? If anything the ability should scale with Raid size or when we are Bubbled.
05/09/09, 2:25 AM
(assuming you dont have extensive Ulduar gear)
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