You're sorely mistaken if you think a healer will solo heal a tank through any of the 25 man hard modes. Between AoE healing, smart heals, HoTs, PoM/CH bounces and PW:S, the tanks will be getting a lot of healing from the raid healers. Whether the extra healing from the other healers is necessary isn't important, what's important is that the other healers are providing a buffer - most of the time a significant one - allowing the tank healer(s) to do their job which is spamming their assigned tank by mashing their 2 and 3 keys.


As far as healing Beasts goes, the fight isn't demanding on tank healers in the least bit. If your tanks are properly geared and using their cooldowns properly, neither Gormok or Icehowl will present a real threat - assuming the healers do the bare minimum and provide the necessary health buffers and mitigation, along with having Imp Demo Shout and such. The vast majority of the fight is knowing what to do and because of the nature of the tank damage in particular, not knowing what to do (read: when to use cooldowns) will result in tank deaths. The difference between HL and FL spam is mostly insignificant although I think the balance weighs in favor of FL due to providing stronger mitigation for the tank - which is key for the bursty nature of P1 and P3.

For Jeraxxus, outside of healing Incinerate Flesh, most of the fight revolves around fast reaction times and the raid in general having their heads out of their asses - moving away from Infernals when they jump around, purging the boss' buff and moving out of weak fire will reduce the raid damage to a nearly insignificant level.

For Champions I can't really comment since I spend 99% of the fight cleansing, killing totems, casting Holy Shock/SS/Beacon and casting Hand of Salv/Prot. If anything, the stronger Holy Shocks and fast FoL might be better than what HL provides.

For Twins there should be no argument that HL is king due to the splash healing it provides to counter the periodic damage aura. HL's biggest strength and FL's biggest weakness and on a fight like Twins where a significant portion of the glyph's splash healing is actually effective healing, it's a no brainer as to why HL is better.

It is still a dependency though, albeit a small one since any pally healer worth his or her salt will have SS up basically all the time on a tank unless they aren't taking damage at all. Given that there will usually be two or three tanks, each one would need a pally healer under FoL circumstances.. Two healadins works fine in many 25m cases, but three is certainly pushing it unless it's a guild run setup that won't change.

Actually, this line of thinking is all too common. It effectively means that you are seeing your healers as X individual healers that are given a single specific job and it's their sole responsability to keep their targets alive, rather than seeing the healers as a team that together "somehow" get the job done.

The whole point of the FOL build is that it DOESN'T typically work under those assumptions. Except for some fights, the FOL paladin can't keep up the tank on it's own. Nor can he keep up the raid on his own.

The point about it is that you get a continuous stream of fast paced 'low impact' heals on your MT, OT and raid. Duplicated on a target of choice (usually the MT or an OT) via beacon. And when done properly you'll also get an extra set of HOT's on potentially as many targets as there are paladins. The FOL paladin can keep this up indefinately, without ever taking a healing penalty from DP.

I think FOL gets underrated because there's too much focus on min/max and expecting each individual to get the most out of their build. And in that respect a FOL build is "substandard". A FOL build doesn't work on it's own, it needs the assistance of other healers or if you want, it's an assistant spec to the other healers.

It doesn't have to be the theoretical 'HPS' best at anything, if it gets the job done where a HL build seemingly doesn't, and the FOL paladin is enjoying himself healing in the raid this way, then that's all that matters. There's more than a handfull of top end guilds using FOL paladins and they are "making it work".
Maybe you should ask yourself what your guild and guild healers are doing wrong that it doesn't work in your guild (have you even tried) rather than keep finding reasons against it. I'll repeat what I said about it before... If you have a strong healing team that works together well, then a FOL build can be a real asset to the healing team. If you have a loose group of individual healers, it probably won't work out for you.

When I read 'FoL apologets' posts I get a feeling that it is assumed that HL palas never use FoL.

OK, where the HL build will be clearly inferior to FoL and 'won't work'? Only in situation where either

(a) tank is getting gibbed faster than HL cast but slower than FoL cast (but the value of FoL in '50k in one sec' spikes situation is greatly diminished)

(b) there is a need to cast loads of small heals on raid members and FoL from paladin in HL-centered gear won't cut it (Anub hard P3, probably)

In all other situations, in my opinion, HL build will be simply better. You trade ability to spam your heart out with your biggest spell for slightly higher mitigation and HPS of your smaller spell.

We are on theorycrafting forums. Something that just 'works' is not enough. Telling that 'if people like it it's fine' is not good enough either. We have to find out and share with other what playstyle/gearing/etc will be optimal in what situation. I agree that there are situations where FoL paladin will be slightly better than HL one. But much more often HL paladin is more optimal. You like to play FoLadin? No problem, do it. But don't confuse people who come here, see that it's written 'FoL build is equally good to HL build and FoL spam is as good as HL spam', try healing with FoLs only, then fail and get laugh at.

I have a waste experience of talking with different people and learning them how to gear or play. Quite often I point them to these forums. And you know, usually average Joe-the-paladin won't look into details why and when this or that thing works. He just tries to grab a general idea and realise it. In 3.1-3.2 it was 'stack int and spam HL'. Now he comes here and see that 'stack SP and spam FoL' might work. He doesn't go into the detail when and under what conditions it works. He is just happy that he can flex with his SP numbers like other healers do and goes all out for SP. Starts to spam FoL and fails. Because he has neither skill, nor gear to be a good healer with FoL spam. And in situation with badly geared tank it just might not work.

P.S. Just remembered - I was in VoA25 pug a few weeks ago. There was a pala with about equal gear who went for SP and spammed FoL. He did 30% of my healing. It's not that FoL spam is that bad. You just need a clear understanding of its strong and weak points and don't forget that you have that HL button. But for some people who seek for a solution on these forums even such simple things are like a calculus. They want clear recipes. In my opinion 'stack int and spam HL' would work much better as a general recipe. (sorry if it sounds offensive)

But it might work. And catering to lazy people who cannot be bothered to read after the first sentence of a post is not what these forums are about, as you said earlier. Furthermore, I don't really see why you're implying that using FoL primarily takes more 'skill' than doing HL.

What people need to realise is that the FOL spec/build is not a main tank healer spec for progress hardmode raiding. It doesn't have enough 'kick' to deliver on it's own.

Not every holy paladin is doing hardmode progress raiding. That's part of why you see so many of them. For normal modes and doing the 5man heroics, a FOL build is typically better. Not because it delivers more HPS, but because FoL is what you do 99% of the time. The times I have swapped to my holy spec for healing a heroic 5man, I've barely used HL.

But even in the hardmode progress raiding guild, FOL does deliver when put into context. I realise this is a theorycrafting forum. And while theorizing works great for DPS, it fails on healing and tanking. How do you theorycraft healing on a single healer 'in a void' when in reality he's in a raid with 5-6 other healers, JOL randomly healing, healing stream totems, hots ticking, spriests healing with VT, smart heals from ret DS, damage suppression effects, people being less than perfect and taking that extra tick of damage they shouldn't be, the tank dodging/parrying 10 hits in a row, then getting spanked by 5 hits in a row without any dodge/parry. etc...

If you have only 1 holy paladin in your raid, then yes, you will expect him to be HL specced. But what of that 2nd and 3rd paladin.. What of that imbalanced raid with 4 or 5 holy paladins (been there). Probably the paladins will be smart enough to realise some of them will be spamming HL's while others do FoL. Wouldn't you want them to be best specced and geared for that job ?


I'm not trying to break down the HL spec. It's still the primary goal for a holy paladin in a progress oriented raiding guild. But if you regularly raid with more than 1 holy paladin, it may be worthwhile to consider your options. Whether or not a FOL paladin will work in your guild. Depends how your healing group is composed of and how well they work together.

How does your guild recruit healers: I doubt it's something like "LF healer, any spec, any class, needs XXX HPS." And more like "need resto druid" or "need resto shammy". Why this obsession with "class/spec" ? Shouldn't theorycrafting tell you that Class/Spec delivers the most HPS so you only want your healers to be that one 'perfect' healer spec/class ?
It doesn't work in practice... you want your healers to be a 'bit of everything' not because that gives you the most HPS, but because it simply "works best" in practice.



Theorycrafting on healing will only bring you so far. There's been more than enough cases in the past where healers (any class, though mainly priests) have taken specs and gearing that was less than a theoretical optimal because in practice, when faced with real people in a real raid, fighting a boss, it "worked" where the theoretical ideal didn't or made it much more about luck and the stars ligning up.

Nor am I saying that your personal playstyle preference should be above all else. Just because you like playing shockadin doesn't mean it's a valid raid spec. I know a LOT of people that get their kick out of being "on top of the meters", even the healing meters. And if the gamemechanics got changed so that paladins suddenly would only be raid viable as FOLadins, they'd be very unhappy not being top of the meters anymore. Possibly even to the point that they reroll to whatever is now the healer that can top the meters. It's a game, you're supposed to have fun. If you don't, then why are you still playing ? What I did mean is that if you're a paladin and don't like the FOL style healing, don't get forced into it. If you don't like the HL style healing, then you could be in trouble depending how your guild feels about it.


And as much as this forum is about theorising, some things just don't fit in nicely square boxes. What's best for tanking ? just all stamina ? Just all avoidance ? Don't you need threat ? Isn't the ideal in a balance between the three ? What's the theoretical ideal balance point then ?
The good tanks will find a balance that "just works"... for them... in their raid... That same balance might not work in another guild that has slightly worse healers or slightly better dps so TPS is too low. The bad tanks casually read about things and just gem and enchant stamina everywhere. You see a lot of those too.
The theory will tell the good tanks how one thing compares to the other, but they'll still take a 'gut feeling' approach to a lot of decisions. What, tanks ignoring the theorycrafting ? Onoez !


As to your Voa25 pug. I think that's the point about it. The FOL spamming paladin won't top the meters, it's not really supposed to. That still doesn't invalidate why FOL in the right setting can be the better solution for a paladin. But yes, just because a paladin specced the FOL way doesn't mean they can take HL off their bars. Knowing when to deviate from your spec, I guess, is what separates the bad from the good healers. There is unfortunately no easy recipe you can point the bad healer to. You can point them to a good spec, can dump good gear on them, and you can tell them how to gem and chant, but they'll still be bad healers.


TLDR: keep an open mind, be prepared to try things that go against theory and accept that some things "just work" even if theory tells you it doesn't. And accept that not everyone is progress raiding and that they spec in an ideal' way for something other than that.

This really has no place on this forum. A terrible paladin in ilvl 200 blues can heal heroics with FoL with no issue, so theorycrafting it is useless.

The problem with using beacon on faction champs is who gets targetted is so random and damage is so spiky and single target based that it's almost impossible to come up with a good person to beacon. It seems to be better to just put it on yourself and watch who the rogue/warrior is targetting then start casting a HL to land shortly after they get hit. I generally am not assigned to dispel on that in 25 man, just because priests can do it so much better with mass dispell. Plus, ret pally DPS is so gimped by not being able to use divine storm and consecration due to all the CC they will break that they just play cleanse bots on this fight. Holy pallies are best used to bomb heals on people that get targetted.

If you have 2 holy paladins in a 25 man raid, I think you're better off with both of them specced for HL. The only fights in Ulduar/TOC that I can think of that are single tank fights are Vezax and Hodir. Therefore, you need multiple primary tank healers typically. Even on single tank fights, with beacon stacking, both pallies can HL the tank and put out top HPS on the tank. The only case I see an argument for a FoL specced pally is if you have 3+ holy pallies in a raid. With 5-6 healers being what you typically run, there is no way you want to be taking more than 2 pallies anyway so its a moot point. I basically see a FoL specced pally as a weakened version of a disc priest. Yes, they can throw out small heals to the raid with some throughput on the tank, but without the ability to shield multiple targets or crank AoE heals during critical moments. If that's what you're going for, you may as well just bring a disc priest; they are superior in every way to a FoL pally.

I never said we should be theorycrafting about it.
But someone did point out he was seeing a lot of paladins havign a FoL spec. I was merely commenting on why you could see a growing trend in it.
Simply, don't assume that every paladin you see is doing progress raids. Even if they have very decent gear. On our server we have quite a few TotC 10/25 pugs run on a regular basis.

That and the fact that some paladins just carbon copy their talent build from some other paladin out of a top end guild without really trying to figure out why that paladin had this build or what made it work. Healing = healing afterall amirite ? :p

[_] They faceroll first ToC 25 hard mode bosses with ease and want better chanse for undying in Anub P3.

Yes, I am 90% sure that they spec FoL because of one phase in one fight. To have more chanses for title and horsie. All other encounters in the game are 'old content' in a sense that with their gear and skills they can go either build/spec/gemming without nerfing the raid.

You didn't see those paladins going FoL builds in Naxx, Ulduar, ToC25 normal, did you? That means that HL-centered playstyle was probably better there and that also means that for 95% paladins who are still on that level of raiding it is better.

To futher support my claim - there is a trend among druids to spec suboptimal HT spec for Anub p3. So you could sometimes see druids from top guilds in a weird spec too. But that doesn't mean that they will use this spec in ICC or used it Ulduar and that it is now the best healing spec. It shines just for Anub P3, that's it.