You're again going off of the wrong principle behind it.
The job of the FOL paladin is not to keep the tank alive, that would usually be the job of the HL paladin or whatever healer you have that's best suited for it. But if you have a paladin specced FOL, i'd also expect you to have a HL specced one.


Have you also done some investigation as to whether said FOL paladins are mains or alts and if they're in a progression guild or not ?
More likely than not the large majority of these FOL specced paladins are alts, and at best they do pugs and don't or only rarely do hardmodes.
It means they don't have access to the kind of gear that will take their manapool to 35K+ which is necessary for true HL spamming.
The healing requirements for normal modes are a lot more relaxes, you can get a FOL spec, and use fol as your main heal swapping to HL when needed only.
This trend seems to be true on my server at least. So I'll assume it's true on most other servers. Stop thinking that everyone has access to the best possible gear, that everyone is in a progression guild and that a HL build is the best that every paladin can hope to achieve.

But also for a paladin in a progression guild doing hardmodes, a FOL paladin offers several advantages. You just have to give this paladin a proper place in the healing team and stop going off the assumption that "paladin is MT healer" because that's not what the FOL paladin's primary job is.


"The math" you speak off is just a number, calculated by some formula that says higher HPS is better. Under those conditions a HL build will always be superior to FOL.

Higher numbers work for DPS and DPS only since every bit of damage is assumed to go on the boss. You can gear and specc as best as you can assuming all your DPS time is on the boss. But in reality, it's off as well. You aren't 100% on the boss since you're running out of variously colored fires and have adds to deal with. But on a whole the numbers for boss damage tend to translate well to a 'swap to the add' type condition as well.

But neither healing nor tanking can be crammed in a formula and give you the absolute positive "best" for all conditions. HPS calculates what a single healer can potentially do, but how often does he actually get to do a heal that will hit for full force without any overheals ? How do you model a 25people raid with 5-7 healers with multiple people taking damage ? HPS is a number just like the current gearscore trend is. It's a number and nothing more, it may give you a rough indication of what that healer is capable off, but you can put 6 of the highest HPS healers into a raid and still not manage to keep the raid alive.

"smoothers" and "emotion calmers" is probably a good approximation of what a FoL paladins job in a raid is. Is it the best of what a paladin can be ? I guess that would depend on your definition of best. If by best you mean highest HPS, then no. If by best you mean 'best tank healer' then no also. If by best you mean 'most worthwhile addition to the healing team' then yes, that could be it if you already have the tank healing covered.

Healers (not just paladins) have on more than one time in the history of wow taken "substandard" builds and gearing because in actual boss killing it worked out better even if it meant having lower overall personal HPS. Stop thinking of healing as X individuals each individually casting healing spells and start thinking of the healers working together as a team. It's funny that probably all of you will agree that healing meters mean nothing, but yet, a lot of you seem to revere that HPS number as the book of truth.

the crit %s I posted were from Rawr.Healadin. If they're wrong, then maybe we should tell the person who codes that module. And no, with that group we have not successfully downed IC HM yet. Our main problem is a lacking OT, who can't handle the other two bosses at the same time, and/or can't take the hits from the last boss after I explode. We're still fine-tuning. That should change within the next week. This is a fairly new raid group that I've put together, and our progress and group solidification has been solid over the past two weeks. He does have a solid "holy" healing spec as well, so next time we run, i'll get logs to pick over and compare. Since most of IC HM is spent with the raid separated, his beacon wouldn't do any good either way.

As far as the splitting of the quote goes, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that wasn't acceptable here, and I won't do it in the future. I appreciate the post not getting trashed though.

@Neraya: I've never thought of him as a raid healer rather than a MT healer, but with his HoT, I'm curious to see how that goes. I'll have him do that, as well, and see how it looks in the logs.

DiSac doesn't stack with similar effects (another DiSac or Hand of Sacrifice). What I don't know (and don't want to assume) is what happens when the second paladin uses it 5 seconds into first one, and both DiSac's run for their whole duration. The way I understand it, the last buff overwrites the previous. Although the buff "icon" from first paladin will be on, the effect will not.

Beacon is 60 yards, so it would take some effort to outrange it.

Not sure if you're talking 10 or 25 here, although it sounds like you're talking 10... so on a side topic I should just mention that you can simply strand Stormcaller back in the back and heal through his Chain Lightning until you get around to killing him (tanking Runecaller on one side and Steelbreaker on the other, the raid should be out of range of Overload).

The explanation I got earlier on the strengths of FoL paladins referred to tank healing. Wouldn't you say tank healing is pretty much like dealing damage on a patchwerk-type fight? If both spells can so fast that you can hit them between boss swings, it leaves little to compare but the HPS.

I'm really curious to know FoL paladins would better heal the raid without the HL beacon, after all, HL seems better suited for healing RSTS damage and aura damage.

It seems to me people are trying to justify having 50% of a paladin. 50% of the FoL pallys job is to heal the tank and 50% is to heal the raid. Fine I get that. Is he good at it? sure, hes the best pally in the world at casting FoL with Beacon up. The real question and someone asked immediately after is; is this spot better filled by someone else. No FoL pallies have come forward to defend Yes. Thats likely because its impossible to prove. Its hard to say that in situation x, class y will do better. I get this, trust me. That doesn't make your build valid.

You have a situation, a single normal holy specd paladin is unable to keep up a tank. Do you bring in a second to assist him? No you say, its overkill. If your solution is to bring in a FoL pally is it because thats your only choice (no other players left in your healing roster?), or is it based on veterancy (i've been in the guild ten years, i deserve a raid spot on this boss!), could it be pride? (trust me guys, this is the best build EVER!).

I whole heartedly agree. I took an insane prot-specd healing build to General for the larger shields and bigger spellpower pool back in the early Ulduar days. But I did this, because we didn't have another Discipline priest in our guild capable of providing a steady stream of mitigation shields (arguably 10000X better at shielding the maintank then any paladin regardless of spec).

So how does that make an FoL build better at the fights your refering to then any other class/build? So far, i've seen no evidence that a paladin in FoL digs is the superior choice to a different healing composition.

I previously belonged to the HL-spam, int-stacking school of thought until our guild started working on 25man Heroic Anub. Based on our typical healing setup: 1 Resto. Shaman, 1 Tree, 1 Holy Priest, and 2 Paladins, I swapped over to the SP-stacking, FoL-adin build and have found it immensely more helpful - specifically for this fight only. I believe that most of the FoL-adins are really only stacking SP and going for this build for this one specific gimmicky fight.

As several have mentioned before, HPS is not the end all, be all of things that matter. If you are doing Penetrating Cold healing, HL heals for way too much, and Holy Shocks/FoLs from an int-stacking paladin won't be able to keep 2 PC targets alive. An SP-stacking paladin however, can keep the PC targets alive, without overhealing them too much such that Anub unnecessarily leeches extra amounts. Not to mention, an SP-stacking FoL-adin will have a significantly stronger HoT on the tanks, and a much stronger Sacred Shield. Mitigation, strong HoTs, and less overhealing, all make the FoL build much stronger for 25man Heroic Anub than the int-stacking/HL build. I really think it all boils down to your raid composition, and what your raids healers do best (or fail at).

Out of Heroic Anub however, I will concede that int-stacking/HL spam is still king, unless you are trying for some crazy setup such as solo healing 10man ToGC, in which case the FoL build might trump. Although having said that, anything besides 25man Heroic Anub is really trivial enough that even with sub-optimal healing builds, there is no danger of failing.

Not prot-FoL or ret-FoL builds, no. Haste loss is too big. FoL-gearing might be. But would you trade excellent tank healing for OKish steady healing with ability to do a tad more burst? I wouldn't, since we tend to underheal encounters and every bit of overall HPS helps there.

HL provides "very steady tank healing." I mean, at the FoL haste cap, the difference in cast times between FoL and HL is, what, like .3 seconds? And that gets smaller as you push over the haste cap as an HL build. Over the course of a five to eight minute fight, you would have a lot more FoL casts than HL casts, but on a cast by cast comparison, .3 seconds is a small window. Bosses will not be sneaking in very many hits that would've been covered by FoL but not by HL. Any insurance you need on the tank can be easily handled by some druid hots or earth shield procs (that don't require an entire raid spot). I can't really stress that last sentence enough. The things that people claim FoL is good for are already being accomplished by other classes currently, only it's such a secondary role that we don't even assign it a name, let alone exchange it with a dps class.

People are treating HL like it's some kind of awkward ten second cast that is unwieldy and burdensome, when in reality, we're talking about a relatively nimble spell. With JotP, HL straddles the line between the traditional categories of "bomb" heals and "flash" heals. It's much faster than its cross-class counterparts (healing wave, healing touch, greater heal), but it still heals for just as much -- more, actually, if you get much use out of the HL glyph.

I guess I'm just sort of mystified that people keep treating FoL as something other than the kid brother of HL. FoL is only marginally faster, it heals for a lot less, and its mana efficiency is negligible given the mana pools that any serious raiding paladin can achieve heading into Icecrown.

I've gone through both INT and SP builds extensively over the past month. And I will try to explain this so that newer paladins can understand:

It seems that many are forgetting that T9 4pc is the only way that FoL comes close to HL. Many people ask me why I swapped to SP over Int, and basically the answer is the ease of Anub HM and what kind of tanks we have. Should they switch to spellpower? No. I don't advocate the spec since there is a small niche where the spec is viable. Most guilds are either overgeared, or the paladins are undergeared for FoL to be used longer than a small section of ToC.
And it is my belief, that the play-style is a little more difficult than the typical HL build.

1. You need 4 piece t9.
2. You should have well over 4k Spellpower with FoL
3. It depends on the number of tanks/paladins you have. You should have a sacred shield available for each tank.
4. The spec depends on the encounter, Anub HM, NB, FC are fights where the spec really shines. On encounters like LJ and VT, you will never come close to a HL spec paladin, mainly because there is so much raid damage taken and so little tank damage. I attempted to heal VT a few times as FoL, but quickly reglyphed for HL.

In terms of gearing, I went as close to the haste cap softcap as I could, ideally slightly under it, and then I stacked SP/crit for throughput.

http://www.death-jesters.net/sparty/SpartyFoL.xml was the gear-set I was working with.

Not ever having to worry about mana is nice and all, but not really the biggest point of contention. A typical FoL will heal for 7-10.5k, translating to 1100-1600 healing per second in addition to the FoL spam that you are throwing out. While most HoTs tick every 3 seconds, the strength of T9 is that its hitting every second. Three tanks is probably the ideal amount you want for rolling FL HoTs.

NB Parse:
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

LJ:
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Two of our Anub Parses:
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

So not only am I healing my own assignment, but adding those 1500/sec to each tank as a 'buffer.' We obviously didn't use ideal tanks for those kills but you work with what you have. There's lots of different parses available from FoL paladins. Compare them to HL builds. But if people are too lazy to look and compare how the different specs can function, their loss.

Rawr is and has always been very limited and cannot properly model a FoL build, so the math you must do yourself.

With Icecrown on the Horizon its quite clear that this kind of build is no longer viable, and we will continue to stack INT as our primary stat. I will be swapping back to INT/HL today as well. So unless you are working on Anub and your tank setup is very close to this one, stick with INT but don't discredit it until you've tried it.

FoL could be done on FC actually, since it's easy to shield and beacon yourself then heal whoever needs it. That way you don't have to worry about yourself too much. Of course, since it's such a dynamic fight typically, HL, FoL, and HS are used a fair bit on their own really and that's where a haste and int setup shines because there are plenty of ways for us (and them) to drain our mana.