For the first time, my Paladin is now my primary alt (second to my Priest). I leveled up ret, and really enjoyed it. However, everyone knows that Immer's dps is /meh, so I was wondering if anyone mained a holy pally here and could share their thoughts on talent build, glyphs, and approach to healing. What are your thoughts on the Eternal Flame versus Sacred Shield approaches? (Icy-veins prefers EF slightly)
My main isnt my Hpal, but ive been playing him more frequently lately. I personally run Sacred as it can benefit multiple people at the same time. Im still struggling myself on raid healing as i mainly pug with my alt so people focus on HPS and fail to look at overhealing. Generally if i am the only hpal ill focus the tanks and spot raid heal when i know there is damage incoming. Im only pulling like 16k HPS, however im never in danger of mana healing this way and the tanks are havent died yet due to lack of heals. If i wanted to crank out more HPS i struggle cause our raid healing is pretty mana hungry (14k mana for our radiance is a pain).
What stats are you stacking (or better yet trying to as gear is hard to optimize at the moment)? I prolly should go research some builds more.
So far, the guides prioritize Crit, so I'm running with that for now. I'm not ready to attempt any raid-healing yet, so I cannot add any personal insight on this yet.
I did raid with my Hpal last night. I changed my build a bit after reading through icy-veins. I think they changed their stance on SS and EF, as they have SS edging out EF now. They state if you run SS dont waste holy power on glory, instead use it on your AOE heal. I did this and focused more on shocking on CD and i picked up 3k HPS (granted I had more overheal). I also didnt realize that the glyph of salvation was so strong. Apparently i read over it but with it you have another nice CD.
Would need very, VERY strong tank healers for that fight - assuming two paladins would be ideal, swapping beacons. I'm guessing a guild like that each core raider has 3/4 alts that are also fully geared.
I straight up embarrassed myself last night in heroic grimrail. while I hate being bad at something, I'm determined to fix my issues and figure out this holy paladin.
reminds me of when I figured that since I was so great at tanking 5-mans, I'd q up for a raid. After the first pull, I dropped group and logged off and I don't think I even played that toon again for about a month.
thanks. I went on a treasure hunt through Nagrand and got some shoulders from a follower mission, so my equipped ilvl is now 612, and I will be able to craft a plate item in a couple of days. My inscriptionist is working on a DM deck, but if that pans out it's going to the priest main, lol.
There is a healing trinket that drops from a rare in Nagrand. You have to blow open a cave on the side of the hill just outside the Ogre/cat people place. When the cave is opened an XT look-a-like tries to kill you .....LOL It is the only spirit trinket I've seen from the rares.
I've identified that one of my struggles with healadin is Holy Shock. It's my only HoPo builder so I need to fire it often. The problem is that I'm simply not used to anything with such a short CD. I miss precious seconds thinking it's still on CD when it isn't. It's a muscle memory I just need to adjust, but that takes time.
Going back to the EF vs SS build... in an EF build you are burning more HoPo, since EF uses HoPo but SS does not. How does that work out for you guys, because I end up using my HoPo mostly for the AoE heal.
There is a Holy Paladin that talks after most of the CTR podcasts. Last week (CTR 164) he went through the rotation and I believe talents. Might be worth listening to.
at ilvl 620, my healing still feels superfluous. I realize I'm still learning (because I feel so very busy and slightly panicked) and I am getting better at generating HoPo. I'll need to log some fights but SS isn't feeling like it does much, I may try EF just so I'm no longer wondering about it.
I will say that Holy Prism is a real favorite of mine. I'm casting it directly onto the tank if he's the only one taking dmg, or onto the mob if there are melee who could use the heal. While leveling up (ret spec) I used the ground-pound hammer (forgot the name, lol) and I can see switching to it for several fights (Butcher comes to mind) once the rest of the spell book becomes more instinctive.
I didn't realize just how much movement there is in all of these fights until I healed on the paladin... sheesh... it really just makes me love my priest all the more.
I switched from SS to EF and I really like it. I healed a few fights in Normal Highmaul last night and really like the healing throughput for tank healing, but mana is still a concern at i631.
EF and SS are still closely matched because they meet different needs. My throughput is higher with EF, but I noticed I missed having the SS to at least feel like I was providing some stability. It might just be a perception thing, but it pained me to realize there was nothing I could do for the individual if HS was on CD other than hope my FL lands before he dies or the tanks get into trouble.
Ya, i keep bouncing back between the two but i think im going to stick with SS. EF is nice for tanks as it is affected by beacon and multistrikes but i just use my power on raid heals more often. If your raid has a good number of aoe healers then id probly stick with EF and just EF raid members that will require healing and rest stick with tanks.
Personal preference as they are pretty close to being even on most sims.
Your primary Holy Power (HoPo) builder will be Holy Shock, every 6 seconds. If standing close to the fight (trash or questing) is safe, you can throw in a Crusader's Strike for a HoPo. When 3 or more are in need of a heal, use Holy Radiance while Holy Shock is on CD for additional HoPo. With beacon on the tank, the tank gets some of the healing you cast on others. With Eternal Flame (replaces Word of Glory) you'll use 3 HoPo to but a healing bubble on your target, generally a tank so that it doesn't get wasted on overheal.
During low-dmg lulls, I like to wait until I have 5 HoPo and then fire EF followed by a HS so that I have another EF ready to go. It's a great way to quickly prep 2 tanks for something big, EF tank 1, HS, EF tank 2.
Hand of Salvation is an important external CD to get comfortable using to spare your tank some hard hits. For AoE healing, don't forget using Holy Prism on the boss heals allies a good bit, so toss that in there in addition to your Holy Radiance and Light of Dawn. At max level, I use the second beacon talent, so the tanks are always getting some heals from me (or a tank and the melee who can't help but take dmg).
My healadin is my alt, but feel free to give him a look (for talents/glyphs): Immerstark on Whisperwind.
Preech put together a Holy Pally guide that is fairly good. He discusses the SS style versus EF, and I agree with him that SS is good for while you are figuring out healing but it does look like Blizz is sending us more towards EF style in the near future.
I am still at a hard place with the choice. I ran EF the other night and put out some good numbers, i just feel like i am not helping the AoE healers as much if i use my HoPo on EF. I understand my job is tank healing but every little AoE heal helps, and ill be damned if i use radiance (the cost heavily...heavily outweighs the heal for that range). Thats the benefit of SS is that i can keep on the active tank(s) and use my HoPo on aoe heals at every chance.
I guess i could start blanketing the raid with EFs when heavy damage is coming....i dunno. Guess ill experiment more this tuesday.
I run mostly EF (prefer tank-healing on my pally), but there are times when I'll switch to SS. Most notably for Brackenspore. The EF hot is rendered moot during infesting spores, so the SS is far better there. I generally prefer SS for Twins and for Butcher to help bubble some of the cleave soakers. When I do get caught in EF build during an intense AoE fight, I've started firing off 1 and 2 HoPo EFs with some measure of success.
I struggled to get on board with the new Shadow Priest playstyle, so I went back to dual healer. I will be trying again next week (when one of our r.shamans is back online).
My retadin OS does okay, we'll see how well I do with a real weapon (currently i630).
My overall problem with dps is that I don't rack and stack CDs like I should. I always seem to be "saving them". This bites me in the butt on the healing side sometimes, too, but the effect is far more visible in dps role.
Well, we had a healer talk the other day with our core healers and looks like i get to finally run EF.
Main reason i havent been running it is that my HoPo has been used exclusively on AoE heals (which is weak by comparison to EF). Being now ill be focusing just on tanks (for the most part) i can swap some glyphs and talents around accordingly.
I tested last night on a pug normal imp run and pulled 43k HPS for the kill. My top heal swapped from Holy light to Beacon (comparing my previous kill with this one). Also running the Avenging talent i increased my Shock output by roughly 40%. Having Avenging every 1.5m is awesome as i can use it on every major damage scenario. Hopefully tonight the raid healers handle everything accordingly cause i enjoy this build much more.
So to people that are debating, run EF cause if your like me your gimping your overall healing if your trying to cover for your raid healers.
