Category: healing

A Tale of a Heroic PUG

Kurn / / cataclysm, dungeons, healing, lfg, paladins, ramblings

I’ve done quite a few heroics lately, as I expect most of us have. I could tell you about my healing in heroic Halls of Origination, on the Setesh fight that lasted almost 7 minutes because we pulled by mistake when still fighting trash. (Hymn of Hope + even a feral innervate + tranquility + every effing cooldown in the book = win, apparently)

I could tell you about how I “healed” (I use the term loosely, because we died an AWFUL lot) heroic Stonecore yesterday. But I won’t. What I’ll say about that run here is what I tweeted yesterday about Ozruk, which should help out holy paladins everywhere:

I don’t know if this is a hotfix or something, but I found that I got the melee bleed debuff when I’d appropriately judge when he had his Elementium Bulwark up.

When Ozruk says “Break yourselves upon my body. Feel the strength of the earth!” judge at “Feel”. This will give you the bleed debuff for four seconds and you’ll break yourself out of Paralyze.

This was while using Seal of Insight, FYI, and I was at range the whole fight. I knew I wouldn’t survive the shatters if I was in melee range, so I came prepared with Sulfuron Slammers (again, drink them at “Feel”!) which also worked. Bubble works, Every Man works and Hand of Sacrifice (you can cast it on the tank at any point during the “Break yourselves” emote, I believe). But then I noticed I had the bleed debuff and realized it was my judgement that had caused it. So go forth, paladins, and heal Ozruk knowing you can get out of Paralyze very easily with just a bit of timing. :)

Having said all that, I will not regale you with my tales of heroic SFK (two Godfrey kills, no legs yet) or heroic Deadmines (Ripsnarl isn’t really that bad, though).

What I will say is that I did most of H Deadmines in a guild run yesterday as my holy pally and then swapped out to my hunter for the last boss (allowing one of our healers to actually heal the last fight instead of OS DPS) so I could snag the Chaos Orb for the crafting of a guildie’s gear.

I probably should have just stayed in on the paladin because then I would have gotten another 100+ Justice Points. And then would have had enough for my helm, the Crown of the Blazing Sun.

I logged back on to Madrana to see… 2143. 57 points shy of my damn helm.

Crap.

ALL of my heroic runs to date have been with the guild. I don’t know if it’s because I’m the GM or because I’m a healer or because my hunter can actually CC or what, but I’ve never had an issue finding a group in-guild. This is opposed to most of my guildies who complain constantly about the fail pugs/dungeon finder groups they’re in.

So I decided I’d go try a heroic random, all by myself.

Blackrock Caverns. Which I haven’t done on heroic.

Thankfully, at least to my eyes, I get a group of four people all from the same guild on the Akama server. I figure this should be less painful than most, even if the tank hasn’t done this on heroic before.

They’re really good at pulling the trash around the first boss, there’s great use of CC (sheep and sap and repentence) and things are going great.

We pull the first boss properly, after clearing most of the trash and the first thing I realize is the boss occasionally puts on a 25% reduced healing debuff on the tank. Peachy.

Then I realize that Quake spawns adds. Peachy.

All of this is handled okay, we kill the adds easily and then get chained.

We break the chains. I pop Holy Radiance to GTFO… and three people, including the tank, die to the thing the boss casts after he chains you. Sigh.

So I’m like “gotta run out of that, guys. :)” and the tank was like “lol I usually stay in on regular guess I can’t here!” I’m fine with that, no worries.

We go back in and take down the boss properly, now that we’re all aware that there are these crazy-ass adds and that we have to run out, etc. Goes fine.

Everything goes beautifully until Corla, the second boss.

Now, on beta, she had three adds. The way we did it on beta was have people rotating in two beams to prevent those zealots from evolving and just let one of them evolve at a time. But the version I tested didn’t have Corla fearing, nor did things hit quite as hard as they were hitting on live.

The Evolved Twilight Zealots, if you were unaware, have an ability called Gravity Strike and, in conjunction with Grievous Whirl and Shadow Strike, all of this will totally destroy the tank. It was actually a bit hairy to heal them separately in the trash leading up to Corla. So my group was basically planning to ignore the beams, evolve all three adds and I’m like, “I can’t heal that.”

“I’ll interrupt the strike,” said the rogue.

“That’s not the issue,” I said and linked them Gravity Strike.

“oh wow that sucks,” one of them says.

So I tell them I’m going to handle the stacks on the right-most add, which I marked with a circle. The mage says he’ll take the left-most add. The ret pally says he’ll do the middle one.

About thirty seconds into the encounter, the mage’s target evolves.

We wipe, despite a heroic effort by yours truly. The tank also popped his CDs appropriately, using Shield Wall and Last Stand. But the damage was just overwhelming.

Mage apologizes, we give it another shot.

This time, the mage himself evolves. He didn’t watch his debuff and got stacked to 100.

Wipe.

Mage apologizes again. They now inform me that they’re all on their vent and that they’ve got it all worked out.

So we go again. This time, the ret paladin’s target evolves. Apparently, there had been some confusion and he thought the rogue was going to get that target.

Apologies once more.

At this point, I’m like… I have my Justice Points. I literally only came in with the hopes of doing one boss to get the points that I need.

Then they suggest they let the zealots evolve in a controlled fashion. Bear in mind that I’ve had ZERO issues controlling my stacks and the stacks of my zealot in these three attempts, even when things went to hell.

Based on my mana and such on the previous attempts, I reiterate that there is no way I can heal through a zealot up along with the boss at this point, but that if they want to boot me and replace me with another healer, I’d completely understand, since it’s a guild run, basically.

They were like “no, no, that’s okay,” so we tried it again. And promptly died when the mage transformed because he, again, wasn’t watching his debuff and stepped in too soon, refreshing his stacks.

So at this point, it was clear to me that we weren’t going to get the encounter down. I had wiped five times with these people. Throughout it all, I’d been patient and calm. I’d been clear about how to go about doing the encounter. I had used buff food after every wipe.

On the run back to the instance, I basically said, “I think I’m going to take off, guys. Thanks for the run and I wish you the best of luck with the rest of the instance. Take care.”

And I dropped group, grabbed my body, then ran out, got my new helm and that’s all she wrote.

I feel badly about leaving. I feel badly about not being able to heal through an evolved zealot. But I’d gotten what I wanted and I gave it a really good try, educating the group about the evolved zealot’s abilities, giving them the opportunity to replace me to try their strat and basically being very patient with them.

I still feel badly, though. Shouldn’t I be able to heal through an evolved zealot? Maybe, maybe not. I mean, the issue isn’t that I can’t heal through one for 30 seconds, but I can’t continually heal through one up during the entire encounter. 85k mana goes FAST if you’re casting Divine Light and the occasional Flash of Light all the while praying Eternal Glory procs more often. Even with my Big Angry Man out (Guardian of Ancient Kings), I can’t maintain that kind of healing. Not even with a variety of both my cooldowns and the tank’s.

My paladin was always my alt. I’d be pulled into raids if we needed healers, back in Vanilla, but my main was always Kurn. As such, since then, I’ve always been lacking a bit of confidence. “This is my alt,” I used to think, “I have no business healing Molten Core!!”

Obviously, healing through Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King has alleviated the confidence problem. I had no problems being the strongest single-target healer in WotLK ICC25HMs. I had no problems shouldering the responsibility of healing two tanks at once or being the primary reason Valithria Dreamwalker got healed to full.

When I came back to Eldre’Thalas, I knew I was one of the most geared and experienced people in Apotheosis and so I was fine with taking a lot of responsibility on myself in our little excursions to ICC.

So it’s a little humbling to sit there in a heroic 5-man and be like “Yeah, I can’t heal through that.”

Should I be able to? I mean, assuming that the fears and Shadow Strikes are interrupted properly, assuming good cooldown usage by the tank, should I be able to heal through the Corla encounter with a single evolved zealot up at all times? If so, why can’t I? Is it gear? Spell selection? Oh, God, is it really because I’m just not good enough of a healer?

One half-hour spent working on Corla and all my WotLK confidence has flown out the window.

MMOMeltingPot linked to a great post about how healers have no instant gratification from casting a heal and seeing it actually DO something. The poster says “Random dungeons are a front for blamestorms and negativity that make folks discontent, and it’s a bit worse than I expected, but that is just one element in the shitstorm.”

While I wasn’t blamed by my group (they seemed to mostly understand that Gravity Strike is a Bad Thing), I came away from my pug feeling very negative and discontent and, worse, blaming myself. Questioning myself.

So I ask you, my fellow paladins, my fellow healers, my fellow dungeon-runners…

How have YOU done the heroic Corla encounter in Blackrock Caverns? And what kind of a healer did you have?

Well, I Don't Feel Very Heroic…

Kurn / / cataclysm, dungeons, facepalm, healing, ramblings

So I dinged Madrana to 85 early on Wednesday morning. I have effectively lapped several of my guildmates in that they’re still 83-84. This is hilarious to me. And I’m also done levelling anything for a while, yet.

Anyways, with just a couple of pieces, including the Gloves of Curious Conscience from the Justice Point vendor, I found myself at the 329 ilvl threshold for heroic dungeons, even with two pieces of Wrath gear. I’m still wearing heroic Corrupted Silverplate Leggings, which are ilvl 264, and the heroic Rot-Resistant Breastplate, which is ilvl 277.

Tip of the day: You cannot reforge resilience.

I got myself an Ornate Pyrium Belt for 91 gold to replace my Lich Killer’s Lanyard, since the intellect boost is just such a blowout, even taking 3 gem slots into consideration. I figured I could reforge the resilience into haste or spirit, but alas. So I reforged 56 crit into 56 haste.

I picked up Diamant’s Ring of Temperance from Therazane, with whom I am revered.

Of course, during the day, most people have these things called “jobs”, so I decided not to go on any heroics until my brother, Fog (a very nicely decked out tank), got home. Instead, I ran a couple of regulars. I got Vortex Pinnacle, Halls of Origination… Picked up Band of Life Energy out of regular HoO.

So when Fog got home and Majik got in, we took about 15 minutes to boost Majik’s item level substantially. He maaaaaay have 420 resilience in his new gear… But it got him to 329. I am not amused at the fact that so much of the blue gear crafters can make is PVP gear, and even then, in many cases, you have to pay out the nose in resources (leather, bars of metal, cloth bolts) in order to just get the patterns.

But anyways.

So Majik and Sephden (Maj’s brother), Fog and me and our friend Tia queued up for a random heroic.

Heroic Shadowfang Keep.

Horrifying.

My experience with SFK is pretty much on the exceedingly slim side. Like, I think I’d done it four times, total, in the preceeding five years.

So we get to Baron Ashbury.

Whose BRIGHT idea was it to have a mob who brings everyone down to ONE HEALTH in this new healing regime?

Having said that, I’m sure we were doing the encounter wrong and interrupting the wrong spell. We didn’t let Stay of Execution tick much, if at all and we definitely missed out on interrupting Mend Rotting Flesh. Naturally, seeing my ENTIRE PARTY WITH NO HEALTH led to panic on my part.

My advice is to let Stay of Execution tick 1-2 times just to make sure no one gets one-shotted, then interrupt it and DPS him down. If you have a Mortal Strike ability (we had Widow Venom), use it — not sure if it works, but it certainly can’t hurt.

Anyways, just as we thought we might be getting the hang of it (well, the rest of the group thought so. I wanted to curl up in the fetal position and cry.), Tia had to go since she had to work.

We then pulled in a shadow priest guildie to replace her and since we weren’t sure if he’d get the 70 Valor Points if he just zoned in and we cleared SFK, we elected to requeue for another random.

Total time spent in SFK: Close to an hour

Total JP/VP earned: 0

On the bright side of things (there’s a bright side?) I discovered that I can last an inordinate amount of time with under 10k mana, if I’m playing well. Do not underestimate the importance of the following combination:

1 Holy Shock on the tank -> 1 Holy Power Light of Dawn on the group

When you literally do not have enough mana to cast anything else, this is godly. Holy Light would have had consideration in Holy Shock’s spot, except that it no longer generates Holy Power, so it was HS to generate Holy Power. I also could have used Crusader Strike, except that, due to our positioning, it would have been difficult for me to get the whole group (including Sephden, the hunter) in line for Light of Dawn hits. So I was standing on the stairs, basically, with the entire party in front of me and willing my cooldowns to finish faster.

I used Divine Plea with Divine Focus to offset it (I know, this is Wrath-era thinking, but if you’re oom, you’re oom), I used my Dream Owl Figurine to boost my spirit, I used my “big angry man”, as I call him, but most paladins know him as the Guardian of Ancient Kings. I even blew Lay on Hands JUST for the mana return since I’ve got Glyph of Divinity.

Obviously, this attempt (which lasted close to five minutes, since I could ALMOST use my bubble again) went horribly awry and I shouldn’t have been so completely out of mana. But it was really interesting to see how long I could keep everyone at basically just enough health to live. Things went from bad to worse when I didn’t have enough mana to cleanse the Pain and Suffering off, but it was astounding to realize that I’d healed for close to three minutes without having more than 10k mana at any given time. (Note to self: make up a bunch of the new mana potions.)

Anyways. We requeued with the shadow priest and got Vortex Pinnacle.

I’ve basically been running this place for the last five days on normal. It’s actually old hat to me now on both my hunter and my paladin. Heroic? Not quite so much. I was pleased that we were making good use of CC. The thing that pissed me off the most was that my brother and Sephden were being all covert about something and wouldn’t effing tell me what was going on. “Just let it be a surprise,” they said. I don’t know about YOU, but when I’m in a heroic run for the very first time, and I’m the healer, the LAST THING I WANT is a damn surprise!

It was for a stupid achievement. Extra Credit Bonus Stage. Woo-freakin’-hoo.

Anyways, the first boss, High Vizier Ertan, is basically the same on heroic, except that I think the tornadoes slow your cast speed now. (Did they before?) So we ran out and I had a hell of a time trying to get everyone to stack up on me for Holy Radiance (which I popped each time we ran out). Fine, you don’t want my heals, you can die. :P

You also get a Lurking Tempest who’ll show up sometime during the fight. Just look at him to scare him away like you do with the others.

The second boss, Altairus, is also very similar to the normal mode of the fight… except you get FREAKING TORNADOES EVERYWHERE.

And the last boss, Asaad, is the same except he now does this Static Cling cast. It roots you to the ground and is a magic debuff, so it can be dispelled. Not a big deal. There’s an achievement if you manage not to get the debuff at all during the fight and that’s doable by virtue of jumping at the right instant while he’s casting it. I didn’t care to jump like a moron when I’m supposed to be casting, although I tried it once and avoided the debuff. Hooray.

So we finished the heroic and I promptly logged off to go have dinner and watch the hockey game.

I was drained. I didn’t even log back in until much later (I may or may not have fallen asleep while watching my Montreal Canadiens lose 5-3 against the Philadelphia Flyers. >.>) and I have pretty much zero desire to do another heroic anytime soon. Not because it’s HARD, though it’s challenging, but because it’s challenging in a way that saps me of my energy and desire to perform this role.

Throughout our attempts on Baron Ashbury, I kept thinking to myself, “You knowww… Focus really isn’t THAT bad. And is it really a bad thing to bring a useful pet to a raid? And you DO have an awful lot of healers…”

It’s ridiculous, I know, and it’s more of a function of gear and what my party is or is not doing than it is of my healing ability. That said, it’s very hard to go from being one of the best-geared and most-experienced players in the guild who could literally save the entire encounter if needed, to what I am now — a moderately undergeared healer who feels as though she has no real control over whether or not her group lives or dies.

I know that I’ll feel better in a week or in a couple of days or even tomorrow. But my first encounters with heroic dungeons are reminding me way too much of the insanity that was the Kael fight in heroic Magister’s Terrace.

Players are now extremely responsible for themselves and their lives. The mechanics out there are really deadly. Maybe in two tiers, we’ll be able to faceroll through this stuff with any old pug, but I can’t save you if you stand in the lightning in Vortex Pinnacle. I can’t save you if you pull aggro and Blessing of Protection is on cooldown. It’s like I see all this stuff happening that I just can’t stop and it’s one of the more frustrating parts of being a healer. The thing is, I’m sure it’s frustrating for a good tank, too. And I’m sure it’s frustrating for a good DPS, too.

What they’re doing it trying to bring people back towards being team or group-oriented. Which is awesome.

But everyone who played through Wrath of the Lich King picked up some awful habits and, in my case, some attitudes that are now out of date, and we now need to be broken of them. It’s not a pleasant feeling, but there’s nothing to be done except work through it and adjust. All the wishing in the world won’t bring us back to pre-Wrath so that we can skip two years of sloppy runs and bad habits.

Despite my knowing that it’s a necessity, it doesn’t make the process any easier.

Feh.

Tower of Radiance Nerf is Intentional

Kurn / / facepalm, healing, paladins, patch 4.0.3a

Nethaera just confirmed that a change to Tower of Radiance‘s functionality is intentional. There’s also been a change to lower the overall healing done by Light of Dawn (although it now seems to not have a target cap. Whether that’s intentional remains unclear, but is likely a bug.).

The change to Tower of Radiance means that healing your Beacon of Light target with Holy Light no longer results in any Holy Power being gained.

Here’s the text of the forum post by Nethaera.

These hotfixes were intentional and we wanted to share more information about the “why” for you all here:

Mana is supposed to matter for healers, and in the case of Holy paladins, that just wasn’t happening. We were seeing raid groups attempting to learn new bosses where the other healers were out of mana while the paladins were still at 90% of mana. We also thought the experience of paladins healing harder heroic dungeons was inconsistent with that of other healers, or our design intent. We thought it was only a matter of time before groups started going out of their way to stack paladins for raids or recruit them for dungeon runs, which of course is not our intent. For this reason, we thought it was important to address this point now rather than sitting on it until a future patch.

The main culprit for the increased paladin efficiency this was Holy Power from Tower of Radiance. We were seeing a strategy develop where paladins would cast Holy Light on a Beaconed tank, and then cast Light of Dawn on the raid (and use very few other spells). This strategy was remarkably successful considering how simple it is. The Holy Power-based heals are supposed to be an important component of the paladin kit, but because Holy Light is designed to be super efficient, the overall strategy was too efficient. The intent of Tower of Radiance was to make directly healing a Beacon of Light target less punitive, but instead it was becoming the only smart way to play. You can still generate Holy Power by using Flash of Light or Divine Light on a Beaconed target, or through a variety of other ways. Remember, overall it isn’t balanced if paladins are just as mana efficient as other healers and have several mana-free spells.

Light of Dawn was adjusted because it was completely eclipsing Word of Glory. We lowered the healing of Word of Glory late in development, but also redesigned Light of Dawn. They had fallen out of sync, and Light of Dawn was just too good.

So now, we have 3 points in Tower of Radiance and four of our six direct-healing spells do not give us holy power when we directly heal the beacon target. Holy Shock won’t give us holy power through Tower of Radiance (because it already gives us one charge for using it), Word of Glory doesn’t give us holy power through ToR, nor does Lay on Hands and now nor does Holy Light. Only Flash of Light (our fast, very expensive spell) and Divine Light (our long, very expensive spell) will give us charges of holy power through Tower of Radiance.

What does this mean?

For one, it means that, unless we want to resort to standing in melee range and attacking with Crusader Strike, we will rarely be generating more than 3 holy power in the span of 12 seconds. (00:00 – Holy Shock, 06:00 – Holy Shock, 12:00 – Holy Shock)

For another, it means  Blizzard hates us that Holy Light, our most efficient direct heal and the one that heals for the absolute least, won’t be cast as much because it really does very little in terms of healing someone up at all. With 125k tank health pools, is 7k actually going to make a difference? Not so much. We’d use it a bit as a filler, to get some healing out while Holy Shock was on cooldown, and also to generate holy power. Now? Well, I suppose it’s better than standing around doing absolutely nothing between Holy Shock casts.

The more important thing to realize here is that we’re now being punished for casting Holy Light on the tank instead of Flash of Light (which is stupidly expensive) and Divine Light (which is stupidly expensive and also stupidly slow). We’re actually being punished for keeping our tanks (or our beacon targets) at a relatively high level of health and are being encouraged by Blizzard’s mechanics to let them drop to a significantly low amount to justify casting things like Flash of Light and Divine Light. After all, no reason to cast a quick Flash of Light on the tank when they’re not in danger of dying really quickly, right? And there’s no reason to cast a long, big Divine Light when the tank’s over 75%, right?

So why bother casting Holy Light on the tank? Why bother keeping the tank at 75%+?

For that matter, why bother getting Tower of Radiance?

In thinking about it, the best reason I can think of to get Tower of Radiance is because we have nothing better to get. This is ridiculous. That’s five talent points (3 from Tower of Radiance, 2 from Protector of the Innocent) that I don’t feel benefit me particularly much, but we NEED them to get down the tree.

What else would we put the three points in? Fill out 3/3 Protector of the Innocent, 2/2 Enlightened Judgements and then… 1/2 in Blessed Life?

So take it. Besides, we’ll almost certainly have to use Flash of Light and Divine Light to save the tank’s ass now and again, so we can be pleasantly surprised to get a charge of holy power. :P

Does this mean we shouldn’t beacon the tank? Or shouldn’t take Beacon of Light?

Beacon of Light should always be part of a holy paladin PVE build and should be placed on a target who is tanking a lot of damage, which is typically a tank. Beacon is what allows us to heal the party plus keep the tank alive in a five-man setting, and allows us to attend to other wounded allies in a raid setting without leaving the tank without a heal for several seconds on end. Keep beaconing the tank. Keep taking Beacon of Light.

Besides, what else would you take? You’d end up with a build like this one.

So what does this change?

A lot less use of Light of Dawn. A lot less use of Word of Glory. Thought you were starved for mana before? Think again. I didn’t even use WoG and LoD all that much and I was still going through my mana like mad in regular instances. I assume at least some of it is because I’m still in a bunch of 264/277 gear, but if I still have these issues at 85 in heroics and in raids, it’ll be time to stack a ton of spirit.

In conclusion…

Clearly, a bunch of paladins who were stacking holy power through Holy Light have wrecked things for the rest of us who weren’t healing like cheap-ass chumps. Thanks a bunch. :P

Honestly, we should be using a variety of heals, and those who are will now find the overall healing choices they make to be very similar to what they were using before, only using less of the “free” heals. It SHOULD be only those who were exploiting this strategy who find themselves in trouble.

It doesn’t mean that the fix Blizzard has implemented doesn’t hurt us all, because it does, but it means that if you weren’t overly reliant on Light of Dawn and Word of Glory, you should be okay.

You can still be angry that a few morons who aren’t as talented and skilled as you are got Tower of Radiance nerfed and therefore really changed how holy power is earned and used drastically, though. I know I’m pretty livid at them and I’m ticked off by how Blizzard elected to “fix” the problem.

Lowbie Holy Paladin Guidance

Kurn / / cataclysm, guide, healing, paladins

After a discussion I had with Majik and Oestrus on the latest episode of Blessing of Frost, I thought I’d throw some thoughts out here with regards to lower-level paladins who are new rerolls and such. We’ll break this down into 5 sections: 1-25, 26-50, 51-75, 76-80 and 81-85. You can also refer to my 4.0.1/4.0.3 posts for advice at 80 to 85.

In each section, I’ll look at the talents available and the glyphs available. This advice is based on healing in a PVE environment, so levelling through the Dungeon Finder, primarily. You should ideally fill out the talents in the order I discuss them as I’m selecting talents that will help your overall healing output the most.

1-25

Here’s the Wowhead link: 9/0/0

Why those talents:

Tier 1:

– 3/3 Judgements of the Pure because Judgements of the Pure is awesome. Always pick talents that will increase your haste.

– 2/3 Protector of the Innocent because we need to get to Tier 2.

Tier 2:

– 3/3 Clarity of Purpose: Talent that reduces your cast time on two spells, even though you only have one of them at the moment. 3 seconds to 2.5 seconds on Holy Light? Yes, please.

– 1/2 Last Word: Useful talent. We’ll want to fill this out with our next talent point, as well.

Glyphs:

We get one Prime, Major and Minor glyph slot at 25, 50 and 75. Here we’ll go with Holy Shock, Lay on Hands and Blessing of Kings. Holy Shock because you’re using it all the time, Lay on Hands because it’s never a bad thing to reduce that cooldown and Blessing of Kings because our minor glyphs suck and that’s one of the ones that sucks least.

Tips:

– Always have a Seal up so that you can judge so you can get your Judgements of the Pure up! At level 30, use Seal of Insight and feel free to swap to the Glyph of Seal of Insight, or you can wait until level 50 for that, too.

26-50

Here’s the Wowhead link: 21/0/0

Why those talents:

Tier 2:

2/2 Last Word: Fill this out so you can get down to Tier 3.

Tier 3:

1/1 Divine Favor: A real cooldown to use that will increase haste and crit chance. Pop this when you’re in trouble.

2/2 Infusion of Light: Crit Holy Shocks lead to a much shorter cast time on Holy Light and, later, Divine Light. And this talent also gives us 10% extra crit to Holy Shock. Even if this didn’t lead to Speed of Light, this is beautiful.

2/2 Daybreak: A chance to get two Holy Shocks in a row? Yes, please!

Tier 4:

1/1 Beacon of Light: Beacon, also known as Bacon, lets you heal the tank (or another beaconed target, but typically the tank) while healing someone else. This is only 50% of the healing your target gets, mind you.

1/1 Sacred Cleansing: The ability to cleanse magic debuffs. Ecstasy!

3/3 Speed of Light: At this level, it’s just spell haste, yet again reducing the amount of time it takes to cast your heals.

Tier 5:

1/3 Conviction: This is a buff to healing based on your crits, so up to 3% extra healing based on your crits. You’ll want to fill this out with your next two talents.

Glyphs:

Prime: Seal of Insight (or put Holy Shock back in if you swapped it out at 30)

Major: Divinity (why not gain mana when you do use Lay on Hands?)

Minor: Blessing of Might (again, our minors suck.)

Tips:

– Have Seal of Insight up with the Glyph so that your healing is increased by 5%.

– Cleanse, cleanse, cleanse! You are one of two healers who can cleanse three kinds of debuffs, the other being druids. You can magic, diseases and poisons and resto druids can do magic, curses and poisons. So use your cleanse button!

– Typically beacon the tank and do not be afraid to directly heal your beaconed target.

51-75

Here’s the Wowhead link: 31/3/0

Tier 5:

3/3 Conviction: Fill out Conviction to bump up your healing done.

1/1 Aura Mastery: Ultimately, probably not the most useful talent in lower-levels, but play around with 100% extra resistance (with Resistance Aura up) or immunity to silence (with Concentration Aura up) for six seconds. Think of AOE Shadow, Frost or Fire damage. Or if a boss has an enrage and is doing physical damage, use it with Devotion Aura.

1/2 Paragon of Virtue: Divine Protection is a great button to prevent damage to yourself, Hand of Sacrifice is a great button to prevent damage to others and when you get Avenging Wrath, that’s a great button to help your output. This talent reduces the cooldowns on all these things. Pick this up at 1/2, we will definitely come back here.

Tier 6:

3/3 Tower of Radiance: Hooray, another way to generate Holy Power! This is why you shouldn’t be afraid to heal your beaconed target.

Back to Tier 5:

2/2 Paragon of Virtue: Here we go, pick up this remaining talent because it’s awesome and it can help us get down to our 31-point talent.

Back to Tier 4:

1/2 Enlightened Judgements: Now you can step back another 5 yards when keeping your judgement up. This is useful to get you the heck out of melee range.

Tier 7:

1/1 Light of Dawn: Hello, Light of Dawn! Our very own Circle of Wild Dawn! ;) This is our version of the holy priest’s Circle of Healing and the resto druid’s Wild Growth and even the shammy’s Chain Heal. Aim yourself at people. Hit the button (preferably with 3 holy power). Witness awesome group heals.

To the Protection Tree we go!

Tier 1:

3/3 Divinity: 6% increased healing. Bam, done. Eternal Glory is also an option, but mana should not be such an issue that you need the EG procs for more Word of Glory heals.

Glyphs:

Prime: Word of Glory (+healing)

Major: Light of Dawn (extra target, so up to 6)

Minor: Seal of Insight (see what I mean about our minors sucking?)

Tips:

– Get used to using Aura Mastery in various instances because it starts to get useful in BC dungeons and Wrath dungeons.

– Make sure you’re keeping Judgements of the Pure up. The extra haste is really going to come in handy in BC/Wrath dungeons.

– Make sure you’re keeping your Holy Power up and using it appropriately with Light of Dawn or Word of Glory as needed. Remember that 50% of each Light of Dawn heal will go to your beaconed target!

76-80

Here’s the Wowhead link: 31/3/2

To the Retribution Tree we go!

Tier 1:

2/3 Crusade: You’re using Holy Shock basically on cooldown. Increase its healing!

81-85

First, the Retribution tree:

3/3 Crusade: Fill this out for some awesomeness.

Back to the Protection tree:

2/2 Eternal Glory: This is where you end up learning how to use Word of Glory back-to-back when you get procs of EG.

And back to the Retribution tree:

2/2 Improved Judgement: Extra range! You now have a 35y range on your judgements, which is excellent.

So a level 85 spec looks like this:

31/5/5

Additional reading: 4.0.1 post /4.0.3 post

Hope that was useful for anyone who’s embarked upon the challenge of starting a new holy paladin!

Five Tips for Holy Paladin Healing in 4.0.1

Kurn / / healing, paladins, patch 4.0.1

We are at a horrible point in between expansions where we have new mechanics and are forced to try them out in Wrath content, where there’s a ton of AOE damage, where tanks can, and will, be two-shotted…

Here, then, are five tips for healing through WotLK content with our fancy-shmancy new Cataclysm healing mechanics. Please bear in mind that this advice is valid only for 4.0.1 and will likely be rendered useless come 4.0.3.

1) Flash of Light is Good. After a lot of playing around in the limited raid content I’m doing at the moment, and some advice from Chase Christian and Felomena, both of whom commented on this post of mine, Flash of Light is my go-to spell. Kind of.

I abuse Holy Shock and I cast Holy Light when I have a lull (and whenever I get an Infusion of Light proc) and most of the rest of the time, I cast the hell out of Flash of Light.

It’s expensive. Unbuffed, I have 383 mp5 in combat. That’s not a whole lot, either, although my Solace of the Defeated with 8 stacks, with Blessing of Might, ends up bumping that up to 602. (607 with a Flask of Distilled Wisdom, FYI.) Flash of Light, however, costs 1186 mana. So without Replenishment or Kings/Mark, both of which should be present in a raid setting, I just barely regen half of the cost of Flash of Light every five seconds. I have a 1.04s cast time on Flash of Light with Judgements of the Pure up and no other haste buffs.

See the problem here? If I’m casting a lot of Flash of Light, say 3 times in a 5-second window, I am spending 1186 x 3 mana, which is 3558 mana and in that same window, my regen is about 600, not including procs from my Insightful Earthsiege Diamond (which procs 600 mana back on a 15-second internal cooldown and can be assumed to be about 75mp5).

So while I highly recommend lots of Flash of Light use, don’t forget that it costs an arm and a leg, now! Hasted Holy Lights and Holy Shocks are good alternatives, as is Word of Glory, of course.

Flash of Light is also the spell of choice for a holy paladin for Valithria Dreamwalker, given the quick cast and the fact that, with a lot of stacks of Emerald Vigor or Twisted Nightmares, mana doesn’t matter. (Divine Light probably wins out in the heroism/burn phase at the end of the fight, though, given enough haste, since Flash of Light will almost certainly be under a 1s cast, so you’ll lose casting time due to the hard cap of a 1s GCD.)

2) Glyphed Light of Dawn is for Infest. Again, thanks to Chase (and other paladins commenting on LoD these days in general), I’ve managed to be the Infest healer on two 10-man Lich King kills in the last week by virtue of glyphing Light of Dawn, which reduces its healing done, but also reduces it to a 20s cooldown from a 30s cooldown. Guess what else has a 20s cooldown? That’s right, Infest.

If you stand just behind your ranged groups as Infest gets cast and you’re watching your bars, you can get rid of the Infest on all of your ranged, including yourself, plus your beacon target, who is the beneficiary of all your Light of Dawn heals. Yes, that’s ridiculous, but yes, that’s happening right now.

[21:33:50.890] Madrana Light of Dawn Hunter +*5937*
[21:33:50.890] Madrana Light of Dawn Shammy 1 +4043
[21:33:50.890] Madrana Light of Dawn Shammy 2 +4162
[21:33:50.890] Madrana Light of Dawn Druid 1 +3822
[21:33:50.890] Madrana Light of Dawn Druid 2 +3466
[21:33:50.890] Madrana Light of Dawn Treant +*0* (O: 5650)
[21:33:50.890] Madrana Light of Dawn Treant +*0* (O: 5360)
[21:33:51.671] Madrana Beacon of Light Beaconed Tank +0 (O: 2968)
[21:33:51.671] Madrana Beacon of Light Beaconed Tank +0 (O: 1758)
[21:33:51.671] Madrana Beacon of Light Beaconed Tank +0 (O: 1810)
[21:33:51.671] Madrana Beacon of Light Beaconed Tank +0 (O: 1911)
[21:33:51.671] Madrana Beacon of Light Beaconed Tank +0 (O: 1733)
[21:33:51.671] Madrana Beacon of Light Beaconed Tank +0 (O: 2825)
[21:33:51.671] Madrana Beacon of Light Beaconed Tank +0 (O: 2680)

Of course, Light of Dawn is changing in a big way come Cataclysm, healing for much more than it currently does, but will be limited to 5 targets, 6 with the glyph. But for right now, boy, this is actually fun! :)

You can see this in action in our guild-first LK10 killing. I actually missed the first Infest, but at about the 30s mark, look at the tank’s Grid on the right. You’ll see every box get a debuff (the Infest one) and then you’ll see my shiny Holy Flashlight, er, Light of Dawn, and almost all of the debuffs vanish. Beautiful.

I highly recommend trying out being the Infest healer in a 10-man if you can manage it between now and Cataclysm. Make use of our 31-point talent before it’s changed forever!

I do not, however, recommend being the Infest healer when you’re also the designated cleanser of Necrotic Plague as I was on Sunday evening. That was more than a little stressful and I suddenly cursed myself for never actually having been the Necrotic Plague cleanser before. Still, it worked out all right, but messing with two new things on a fight I’ve done a couple dozen times was… interesting.

Anyways!

3) Beacon Smartly! In 3.3 content, we tended to do one of two things with our beacon:

a) Beacon the other tank and heal our tank.

b) Beacon our tank and heal the raid.

What you did depended primarily on the fight, if it was 10 or 25-man content and any healing assignments by your healing lead.

Now, due to Tower of Radiance, it’s less clear as to who gets our beacon in a raid setting. It might be hard to assign one holy paladin to two tanks due to the change in Beacon of Light (from 100% of a copied heal to 50% of a copied heal) but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be using our beacons on *something* to benefit from the increases in Holy Power.

So here are my suggestions, although I always recommend listening to your healing lead if they give you specific beacon instructions.

a) Beacon Your Tank: Do this in situations where your tank is taking a substantial amount of damage and you can really, really benefit from the extra charges of Holy Power for Word of Glory. Also, do this in situations where there’s just one active tank (whom you’re probably healing) so that you can sprinkle Word of Glory heals around as needed.

b) Beacon the Other Tank: Do this in situations where your tank isn’t taking a ton of damage and you don’t feel you particularly need Word of Glory to be used a ton. It can still be used for extra healing on, say, the Keleseth tank on the Blood Prince Council fight, too, which helps get extra heals on a tank that is running around the room and may run out of range of their healer’s heals. I most recently used my beacon on the tank tanking the Lich King on LK10 while I healed Infest, dealt with Necrotic Plague and healed the OT through Shambling Horrors and some Raging Spirits. That allowed my beacon target (the MT) to gain all my LoD heals, then allowed me to gain Holy Power by directly healing him when the OT wasn’t tanking anything.

Really, the decision depends on how often you want to be using Word of Glory and if another tank needs the extra healing.

4) Don’t Forget About Divine Plea. Okay, it’s been nerfed. 15% (glyphed) of mana back every two minutes instead of 25% every minute. That doesn’t mean that it’s not at all useful. We should all have slightly larger mana pools now and, unbuffed (with about 43k mana), I’m getting about 1300 mana back per tick for about 6500 mana back per use. It’s not fantastic, but it’s something, at least, and will keep you casting just a bit longer. Similarly, don’t forget about mana potions!

5) Don’t Get Married to These Tips! These tips will be outdated extremely soon, perhaps even as soon as this coming Tuesday, when MMO-Champion reports that Patch 4.0.3 will be released. When Cataclysm comes out, or perhaps in a patch before that, like 4.0.3, 4.0.3a or some other patch, Light of Dawn changes, judging Seal of Insight changes to give us 15% of maximum base mana back and a variety of other things will change. I stress, again, that this is a temporary thing that will be hopelessly out of date by December 7th, 2010 at the latest!

Still, I hope it helps you feel better about healing as a holy paladin for the next little while. While I was pretty depressed about how ineffective I was, switching up my spell use quite a bit basically solved most of my issues and, therefore, alleviated a lot of my concerns.

Cataclysm Beta Builds 13221 & 13241

Kurn / / beta, cataclysm, healing, paladins

As always, thank you to MMO-Champion for listing the patch changes!

I never did talk about the last beta build (13221) so I’ll talk about those changes here as well.

13221:

* Holy Radiance’s effectiveness now diminish on targets farther than x yards away.

That’s cool. It was a little OP for someone 20 yards away to get the entire benefit of something that comes from us in a pulsing wave thing.

* Divine Light base healing has been increased by 30%. From 8538-9512 to 11100-12366

* Flash of Light base healing has been increased by 30%. From 5313-5961 to 6907-7750.

* Holy Light base healing has been increased by 30%. From 3202-3567 to 4162-4637.

* Holy Shock base healing has been increased by 30%. From 3033-3285 to 3943-4271.

Holy crapsicle. Buff time! Hooray! Maybe now I won’t feel like my heals are completely ineffective.

* Lay on Hands no longer restores mana.

That’s okay! No worries! The new Glyph of Divinity means that anytime you cast Lay on Hands, you gain 10% of your maximum mana. That’s on a 7m cooldown with the new Lay on Hands major glyph.

* Beacon of Light now lasts 5 min, up from 1 min.

Well, that’s handy. We can now remove the major glyph of Beacon of Light which reduced its mana cost to 0 and put in that snazzy new Lay on Hands glyph. :)

* Mastery: Illuminated Healing now absorbs 10% of the amount healed, up from 8%. Now lasts 8 sec, up from 6 sec. Each point of mastery increases the absorb amount by an additional 1.25%, up from 1%.

Effing. Awesome. 8 second shield that’s a minimum of 10% of your heal and mastery givs you even more absorption? This is amazing.

All around, 13221 was a huge buff to holy paladins.

13241:

* Holy Radiance  20 yards range added to the tooltip.

Good to know.

* Light of Dawn now uses Holy Power instead of Mana. Now heals up to 5 targets. No longer has a cooldown – Consumes all Holy Power to send a wave of healing energy before you, healing up to 5 of the most injured targets in your party or raid within a 30 yard frontal cone for 1008.96 to 1124.15 per charge of Holy Power.

Okay, this is NOT a nerf, I repeat, this is NOT a nerf! Walks was telling me about this earlier tonight (guild stuff has me buried, so I haven’t tested anything yet). Here’s what he has to say:

Walks: The new Light of Dawn is kind of amazing.

Kurn: The lack of cooldown is really that good, eh? Is it a smart heal? (That would be asking too much, I imagine.)

Walks: Yes to both. 3 stacks of HP will heal for about 8.5k non-crit. It is a smart heal, but the players must be in front of you.

Kurn: Wait, SERIOUSLY?! A directional, smart heal, that heals for 8.5k non-crit? SS or it didn’t happen!!!

Walks: I will later! <3 Raid time. Oh, the LoD glyph lets it hit a sixth target.

So here we have an ability with a variable “cooldown”, that is a smart heal! It’s our version of Wild Growth and Circle of Healing! Complete with the glyph that will add another target to the heal. This is, to be blunt, awesome. And is finally a 31-point talent worthy of its spot. IMHO.

* Blessed Life now cannot occur more than 8 seconds (up from 2 seconds).

PVP talent for sure.

* Protector of the Innocent now affects heals on any target except yourself.

Small nerf, but it makes sense. Why proc a heal on yourself after you’ve just healed yourself?

Overall, holy paladins are looking AWESOME.

But basically, you want to go out there and hit full raid groups of people with Light of Dawn while you still can. ;) My record is 26 people, not including myself.

Kurn's Healing Lead Philosophy

Kurn / / general, healers, healing, raiding

Tonight, November 2nd, 2010, Apotheosis will step into ICC 25 for the first time as a guild. Indeed, this will be the first 25-man raid we’ve run together since Naxxramas and Obsidian Sanctum back in February of 2009.

For the first time since then, I’ll be a raid leader in a 25-man group. And for the first time since April or so of 2010, I’ll be the healing lead.

I’m not the most fantastic raid leader. I am, however, a pretty darn good healing lead. I’m good at distributing resources, I’m good at identifying issues the healers may be having and I try my best to assign people based on their strengths both as a class and as a player.

So tonight, I get to test out my healing lead skills (along with the raid leading skills — gah! Suddenly, I’m glad that I did some ICC10s with the guild pre-4.0…) and get to look at (and thus, evaluate) some players for the first time.

While thinking about how I’m going to work things tonight, I thought I’d share a bit about my healing lead philosophy, which seems so different from many others I’ve seen or heard about.

1) Clarity of Instructions. I’m going to give you clear instructions as to who your target is. I will rarely say “you two, you’re on tanks, everyone else on raid”. I will assign you a tank and, taking a cue from my most recent healing lead, if you’re “on raid” I will probably assign you a group or two. If there’s confusion as to where to stand, I’ll assign that as well. (My healers from my Bronzebeard guild may recall the detailed guide I had for where to stand on Freya!)

2) Asking for Feedback. After a new fight (wipe or not) I will generally ask the healers how that was. Was anyone too stressed? Was anyone bored? Does anyone have any suggestions for the next time that would make things a little easier or better spread out? Back when my Bronzebeard guild was learning Yogg, this kind of feedback was invaluable. Same with when my RL friend’s guild was learning LK. Remember that feedback from healers doesn’t mean you have to take their suggestions or anything. It just means being aware of their perceptions of the fight. Remember that sometimes people will see things you won’t.

3) Having a Sense of Humour/Being Understanding. People make mistakes. It’s exceedingly difficult to wrangle 25 people together and do something “right” on the first attempt. The raid group is made up of people, too. I don’t have too much of a problem wiping the first few pulls on a boss, so long as we learn from each mistake. And as long as we’re learning, it’s all cool. If someone stands in fire for the third pull in a row, I’m less understanding. But for the most part, I’m a fairly understanding raid leader and healing lead. Perhaps a little too forgiving, but I don’t want to have an environment where people are afraid. Fear is a terrible motivator. I want to motivate people to do better because they want to do their best for the team, not because they’re scared Kurn is going to yell. (Although when I yell, you better freaking watch out… ;D)

Perhaps the best example of having a sense of humour about things is this one time on Yogg-Saron, where one of our healers didn’t get inside before someone started the fight. I was laughing so hard I was crying, particularly as this priest was using /say to crack us all up. Like /say Knock, knock? and such.

I mean, at that point, you already know the attempt will be more difficult than it should be, and may even result in a wipe, so why not laugh about it?

4) Understanding How the Classes Work Together. This is actually what’s got me a little worried about tonight, since I don’t really feel all that comfortable with the various changes. Obviously, I know how paladin healing has changed and I know chunks about how holy priests and disc priests have changed, but resto druids remain a little bit mysterious to me and I’m basically hoping that shammies haven’t changed much at all. ;)

When approaching a fight, you need to know how to divide your resources, though. Six healers? Who’s on the tanks? Who’s on raid? How do you make that decision? Part of it is what the classes are capable of, obviously. In the pre-4.0 world, you never would have put a holy paladin on anything but a tank (or a single target who is taking obscene amounts of damage). Now, however, druids can do some outstanding single-target healing, so while you probably still won’t want a holy paladin on “the raid”, you can probably put a druid on a tank to help pick up the slack from a paladin’s gimped Beacon of Light, which will allow the druid to help out on the raid as well.

(Probably.)

5) Understanding How Your Players Like to Play. No matter what’s more efficient or what’s “better”, you will undoubtedly run into healers who are not team players and will grumble and complain about how you’re wasting their awesome talents by assigning them to X or Y instead of Z. Usually this behaviour is seen in those who place a great deal of importance on healing meters instead of on their job, which is to keep people up.

If a shaman does terribly at doing anything but spamming Chain Heal, but does BRILLIANTLY at that, then they’re obviously going to be happier spamming Chain Heal and will probably look for ways in order to do that and “cheat” on their assignments. So head it off at the pass and, if you value them as a team member, assign them to what they’re going to do anyways. Of course, if you can swap them out for someone more team-oriented, that’s probably the best choice, but if you can’t (and who has a plethora of spare healers?) then try to work with them.

6) Know What You’re Seeing When Examining Parses. The worst thing to do in terms of evaluating a healer is to look at where they stand on the full report of healing, or even just the boss fights. It’s terrible. It doesn’t take into account anything like movement, assignments, cleansing, etc. What I look at, in order:

a) All healing done during all bosses: Just to get an idea of things. If all my healers are clustered nicely around 15% of healing done, sweet. But they probably aren’t. Looking at this doesn’t mean whoever tops it is godly. Rather, a large spread means that there may be problems in assignments or how the healer followed assignments. It’s telling you what to look at when you look at the individual fights.

b) Healing done on individual fights: Did we lose people? If so, how? Was it DPS failing to move out of the fire or was a healer slacking? Was it a tank death? What was that tank’s healer doing? This is where I get an idea of where the fight went wrong and if it was preventable and what healers were doing at that time. I will dig into the log browser and expression editor here. Was a healer locked out of all their spells thanks to Curse of Torpor and THAT’S why their tank died? If so, it’s a mage or druid or resto shammy fail for not cleansing the curse in time. That sort of thing.

c) Overhealing: Was overhealing a problem? Were people sniping other people’s heals? Overhealing can show if people are respecting assignments or not and can also show you if your assignments aren’t right. For example, if you have 7 healers and all of them have 65%+ overheal, drop a healer!

d) Abilities used: What were the primary spells your healers were casting? Is what they were doing right? Wrong? Unsure?

e) Uptimes: If your paladins aren’t keeping Judgements of the Pure up over 90% of the time during boss encounters, that’s a fail, for example.

7) Communicate With Your Team. If you see issues with your healers, tell them about it! Don’t just assume it’s going to fix itself. And be specific. Don’t be all “yo, dawg, don’t be fail”. Say something like “You know, I noticed that your Prayer of Mending use wasn’t very high, but it’s really something you should endeavour to use on cooldown as much as you can.” Being tactful here is key. And if you don’t understand why they’re doing something, ask them! “Hey, I was wondering, why are you using X glyph instead of Y? I’d love to hear the reasoning. From what I’ve read, X is more efficient, but I’d love to know if it’s not the recommended one!”

Basically, my healing lead philosophy is one that encourages teamwork, feedback, communication and specific instructions. It’s also a lot of work for the healing lead because you have to do your research and talk to your healers, which is something a lot of people don’t have time for, nor do they bother to make time.

I tend to either have the time or make the time for it and all the healers I’ve worked with in this game have noticed it. Trust me, healing leads — that extra five minutes you spend with a healer of yours can be the difference between them thinking you’re a snob who never has time for them or thinking that you’re pretty awesome and you know your stuff.

Trial of the Idiotic Crusader

Kurn / / apotheosis, cataclysm, coliseum, facepalm, healing, patch 4.0.1, raiding, ramblings

There are three things anyone who’s read this blog for any length of time knows about me:

1) I hate 10-man raids.

2) I’m a pretty decent holy paladin who is very familiar with the changes to the class, given time on beta and such.

3) I’m pretty damn well-geared. (Bear in mind that chardev isn’t all the way up to date, but at least the gear I’m wearing there is what I’m wearing on live.)

Tonight, a certain priest was asking in guild if anyone was up for TOGC10. I didn’t say anything. I purposely didn’t say anything. Until like, the third time she asked and I was like, well, crap.

So I sighed and let her know that if she desperately needed me, I’d heal. But I had a few things to do first — update a website, take a phone call… it would be 15 minutes at least, probably closer to 20. Ended up being about 30, but anyways.

It was mostly a guild group. 2 tanks (both paladins), two healers (me and O), then a hunter, an ele shammy, a warlock and an enhancement shaman all from our guild, with a ret paladin and a DPS warrior as pugs, rounding out the group.

I don’t know what anyone else was assuming about it, but I assumed the following:

People aren’t going to know what to do and this is going to be painful.

By and large, I was right. I wasn’t horribly frustrated by that. I expected it. I did not expect 7 wipes on heroic beasts. Nor did I expect a Jaraxxus one-shot.

This isn’t a blog post about how my guildies and I (well, mostly my guildies) got Tribute to Skill or got the TOGC 10 achievement. (I’d never done it all the way before.) It’s not even a blog post about how I still hate the warlock and felhound on Faction Champs or the pain that Light Vortex can bring. Nor is it about how we didn’t even actually get a burrow on our first Anub attempt.

It’s about my experience healing.

Fuck that place.

It dawned on me, perhaps on our fourth wipe on heroic beasts, that we are at that stupid time of the expansion where:

a) we are not tuned in our abilities,

b) the environment has not changed so that our abilities have even a SEMBLANCE of being tuned.

You can get away with this in ICC with 30% more health, more damage, more healing and more absorption.

It is very much a different story when attempting to do content that is a little more challenging than your average dungeon without a buff.

O and I are good healers and both very experienced in TOGC. We’re both 4/5 TOGC 25 (stupid Anub…) and, between us, we have 33 kills of heroic beasts on 25-man. Granted, she had those kills on her druid instead of her priest, but hey. Experience, you know? It matters.

So while I anticipated some problems, I was, in no way, prepared for the amount of problems we had.

First of all, I kept losing my tank on Northrend Beasts.

I didn’t know why. I STILL don’t know why, except for two attempts.

Seriously, I’m looking at the logs right now.

Barring attempts where I got Paralytic Toxin on the worms… and barring the attempt where someone got trampled and so Icehowl enraged (and no tranq shot was cast!)…

So attempt 1: Paralytic Toxin, which means running, which means not casting.

Attempt 2, Trample/enrage.

Attempt 3, not sure why, but my tank (as opposed to my brother, who was also tanking) ended up with both Molten Spew AND Acid Spit. Ow.

Attempt 4, ah yes, there I was standing around, casting, minding my own goddamn business and someone runs past me with a Snobold on their head. No, they didn’t run past me. They ran right next to me. So that the Snobold was actually IN RANGE of me.

[22:04:52.365] Madrana begins to cast Divine Light
[22:04:52.365] Snobold Vassal casts Batter on Madrana
[22:04:52.365] Snobold Vassal’s Batter interrupts Madrana’s Divine Light
[22:04:52.469] Snobold Vassal Batter Madrana 992 (O: -1)
[22:04:52.771] Madrana Retribution Aura Snobold Vassal 284 (O: -1)
[22:04:53.971] Gormok the Impaler Impale PallyTank 7046 (O: -1)
[22:04:54.377] Gormok the Impaler hits PallyTank 7474 (O: 7941)
[22:04:54.785] PallyTank dies

Dead tank.

Attempt 5, Paralytic Toxin.

Attempt 6, I tried to squeeze a heal out to a DPS who had stood in the fire just a touch too long and then got caught with the long cast time on Divine Light. Even with over 1000 haste, it’s just SUCH a long cast. My instincts definitely betrayed me here. Divine Light may be the spell the most similar to the old Holy Light and it may even have the same Clique bind as my old faithful HL… but the cast time ALONE needs to set it far, far apart from Holy Light. 2.5 second talented base cast time. That’s crap is what it is. In this world of content where your tank can and WILL die within 1-2 GCDs, that’s a death sentence.

Attempt 7, at least it wasn’t my tank who died. O got a Head Crack from a Snobold and couldn’t adequately cast, so Fog went down.

It’s not all bad RNG, but it looks like a lot of it was. If only I hadn’t been silenced. If only O hadn’t been silenced. If only Icehowl hadn’t trampled someone. If only…

We one-shotted Jaraxxus, though, mostly because hi, it’s a healing fight and O and I could probably both heal our way through that fight in our sleep, having a combined 29 kills on 25-man heroic Jaraxxus.

We wiped twice on Faction Champs before O had to go (she hadn’t anticipated taking so long with the issues we’d had on the beasts) and we pulled in my favourite BC-era priest, E.

Faction Champs down on the first try. At least this fight hasn’t changed much. I still hate Unstable Affliction.

Also, the Horde (or, I guess, Alliance, if you’re Horde) druid is still in perma-tree form. FYI.

On to Twin Valks!

This was the suck. Mostly because it felt like I couldn’t do anything EXCEPT spam Divine Light in order to keep up the tank. We’d gone with a one tank setup wherein the DPS all get dark aura and burn the crap out of the white Valk, leaving the tank to just use passive AOE and such to hold aggro on the black Valk. It was fine… unless I wanted to judge or something. So I judged on the pull on the third attempt and spammed Divine Light, so that it was more than half my healing done and I had pathetic use of the other spells in my arsenal.

Now, while this is somewhat an unorthodox method of doing it (I would have been much more comfortable with Fog and the pally tank on one mob each) it’s still ridiculous that due to the insanely high cast time (at least, relatively speaking), I can’t even afford to judge once a minute on that fight and have to use my other instants very sparingly.

Holy paladins are very broken here and I would submit that Holy Light should have a medium cast time. When they talked about a three-heal system, here’s what I thought:

FoL: Short cast, very expensive, average throughput

HL: Medium cast, medium cost, average throughput

DL: Long cast, expensive cost (not very, but higher than medium), huge throughput

Instead, we have:

FoL: Short cast, very expensive, average throughput

HL: Long cast, very cheap cost, less than average throughput

DL: Long cast, expensive cost, huge throughput

There HAS to be a step between FoL and HL/DL. That’s what we’re really missing. A two-second (talented) cast time on a casted spell. Like the old HL with Light’s Grace up.

Anyways. Anub’arak went smoothly, surprisingly, despite poor positioning. We had one wipe but we learned that, with hero, we could push him into P2 without a burrow.

Naturally, we pulled him a second time without first checking to make sure hero was up. Whoops.

We kited him around in the burrow phase without issue and then burned him down. Props to E for being a kick-ass healer, as per usual.

So that was most of my evening. I hate that instance. I never, ever, EVER want to do it again, not on normal 10 or 25 and certainly not on heroic 10 or 25. It’s just not meant to work with our current abilities and talents.

After getting down to a 1.3s Holy Light, having Sacred Shield and things like Divine Sacrifice/Divine Guardian and running TOC/TOGC with those tools and that speedy cast, I could do anything. Running it tonight (well, technically last night) was a painful reminder that I am gimped far beyond what I recognize and that I am nowhere near as good a healer as I was three weeks ago.

What sucks is that it’s not that I’m not a good healer. It’s that my mechanics make me a worse healer than I was. I could reliably do my job, three weeks ago. This raid picked away at some of my confidence.

See, I KNEW that I could do what was required of me in there. Or I thought I could. Now, I’m not so sure. And I’m not so sure it’s even that I’m not making the right decisions, because I think I AM making the right decisions, just about all of the time.

The mechanics, especially when matched against that particular instance on that particular difficulty, are just flat-out going to lose against TOGC10. Did we get the achievement and finish the instance? Yes. But would it have gone about 10 times more smoothly back in the world of 3.3.x? Hell yes. I wouldn’t have had any problems. None. I know my capabilities.

And what I saw in TOGC10 really hit me hard.

We have an ICC 25 coming up on Tuesday and perhaps one on Thursday. Guild runs, predominently. I was feeling pretty good about maybe flipping the switch to heroic Marrowgar and maybe BQL and maybe even Dreamwalker.

After the TOGC run? Not so much.

I’ll post more pally stuff soon, btw. I’ve been lax, I know. Guild stuff is always beckoning!

(By the way, still recruiting for Cataclysm!)

Kurn's Q&A #27

Kurn / / apotheosis, guild, healing, patch 4.0.1, q&a, raiding, ramblings

Wow, folks, it’s been a long, long time since I last had enough search terms to pull off one of these posts!

Looking over the last month, I have, oh, 2,927 search terms that brought people to my site. Hi, 4.0.1, thanks for the bump in traffic! ;)

1) Let’s consolidate all the “holy pally 4.0.1” stuff, shall we?

Go read my What Holy Paladins Need to Know for 4.0.1 post.

2) madranah + server

Interesting. Someone from one of my old guilds is looking for me? Sorry, people, I’m kind of doing this “GM of a guild for Cataclysm” thing, so I’m not going to join your reformed guild, even if one of my RL friends is in it. ;)

3) base mana paladin 85 kurn

I believe that would be 24,732 mana.

4) divine favor 4.0.1

Divine Favor has definitely changed. Once upon a time, hitting it gave us a guaranteed crit on Holy Light, Flash of Light and Holy Shock. Now, it’s a buff that lasts 20 or 30 seconds (depending on whether or not you’re glyphed for it) and increases your spell haste AND your spell crit chance by 20%. Not only that, but because Divine Illumination is gone (15 second buff that used to halve the cost of all spells for the duration), our 2pc T10 bonus has changed. Whenever Divine Favor is active, your healing spells are 35% stronger. So not only do you have 20-30 seconds of increased haste and crit chance (both of which strongly increase your throughput) but if you pop it while wearing two pieces of Tier 10 gear, you’ll have a bonus 35% healing going on as well.

While I still like to use this to offset Divine Plea, this is a fantastic utility spell for us. Either you use it to cover Divine Plea usage or you pop it when your targets are about to eat dirt. Or as often as possible on Dreamwalker. ;) Beautiful!

5) do improved judgements and enlightened judgements stack

Yes, Improved Judgement and Enlightened Judgements stack and so, with the base Judgement range of 10yd, you can get a maximum of 40yds as the range  on your Judgement spell.

You should not concern yourself with Improved Judgement yet, though. Enlightened Judgements is handy for the hit and a bit of extra range, but we have very few points to place at 80, so don’t waste two of them on Improved Judgement until you’re at 84, looking for a talent to spend a point on. I recommend 3 in Divinity and 2 in Crusade, then I’d fill out Crusade (3/3) and Eternal Glory (2/2) at 82 and 83, then Improved Judgement at 84 and 85.

6) does sacred shield use gcd

It certainly used to. That said, it’s gone. They got rid of it in 4.0.1. Rest in peace, Sacred Shield. You will be missed.

7) divine intervention gone in patch 4.0?

Also gone, yes. Don’t ask me why. Shaman still have Reincarnation (30m cooldown), druids still have Rebirth (although one druid popping it will put everyone’s on the 30m cooldown!) and warlocks still have Soulstones on a 15m cooldown. And yet, paladins lose their wipe-prevention ability entirely. Way to go, Blizzard.

8) lifeblood 4.0.1

It’s godly. I wish I still had Herbalism on my paladin. Lifeblood now grants 240 haste rating at 450 Herbalism, as well as producing a small heal. Sick! :)

9) addon for speed of light procs paladin holy

You don’t need an addon for this. At 3/3 Speed of Light, every time you cast Holy Shock, you get 4 seconds of 30% spell haste on Flash of Light, Holy Light and Divine Light. You also don’t need an addon for this because it will be changing to a flat spell-haste percentage (1% per talent point). So, for the time being, count to four after using Holy Shock. There’s your addon. ;)

10) 4.0.1 judgement 4% mana

I believe it was Walks who pointed this out to me, but right now, Judgements will not proc Seal of Insight. I tested this out myself today and got absolutely 0 procs while judging. That’s okay, though. Soon enough, we’ll be getting 15% of base mana back when judging with Seal of Insight up. Mana is, by and large, not a problem for us right now anyways.

And a bonus one!

11) holy paladin eternal glory vs paragon of virtue

Because mana isn’t a huge problem right now, I would advise against Eternal Glory for the moment. You basically have to take at least one point in Paragon of Virtue when building a PVE holy spec, so PoV wins over EG at this point in time. When we hit 85, especially considering that PoV will also reduce the cooldown of Hand of Sacrifice, I’ll seriously consider 1/2 Enlightened Judgements and 2/2 PoV when building my holy tree.

And just to pimp out a rockin’ resource, don’t forget to take a look at Oestrus’ Guide to the Chakra Sutra! Oestrus will be healing in Apotheosis in Cataclysm, on her little d0rf priest. :)

Finally, Apotheosis is recruiting for Cataclysm! Sadly, we are not in need of any holy paladins at this time. However, if you want a great raid group who DOES need a holy paladin, definitely check out Choice of Skywall, the guild I spent the last four months in. I can’t say enough good stuff about these people!

Cataclysm Beta Build 13202 & Live Hotfix

Kurn / / cataclysm, healing, icecrown citadel, paladins, patch 4.0.1, raiding, ramblings

Let’s chat a bit about the reported changes affecting holy paladins from Cataclysm Beta Build 13202. Thanks to MMO-Champion, as always, for detailing the changes so quickly.

Holy

* Seal of Insight – Unleashing this Seal’s energy now also restores 15% of the Paladin’s base mana.
* Mastery: Illuminated Healing now only affects your direct healing spells, instead of all healing spells.

Both a buff and a nerf, really.

The Seal of Insight buff is pretty huge. Every time we judge, we will regain 15% of base mana which, at 85, is in the realm of 3500 mana back. That’s instead of a CHANCE of 4% base mana (936ish mana) back when we judge. However, I believe we still maintain the chance to regain 4% of base mana back with this active, but we are guaranteed to get 15% of base mana back when we judge.

This means judgements — and not missing them — just became way more important. Judgement is an 8-second cooldown. Ideally, we are busy doing other things and are busy enough (though not overwhelmed) to not cast this on cooldown, but rather 2-3 times a minute, the way we did in most of Wrath. Remember that this seems like a lot of mana back right now, but with something like Flash of Light costing over 6000 mana at 85, this isn’t a ton of mana. It has the potential to be a lot of mana regen, however, when used wisely.

As to the mastery nerf, this is likely a direct result of the beta-realm raids where holy paladins apparently were using the hell out of Holy Radiance. It only makes sense. We’re not “the shielding spec”. We’re direct healers, primarily. There’s no way they want us to put tiny shields on 25 people with one GCD from Holy Radiance or Light of Dawn when it would take a disc priest a lot more time to do similar absorption (barring Power Word: Barrier).

I’m okay with these changes.

Let’s talk about the live server hotfix for paladins.

Source, Ghostcrawler, via MMO-Champion’s Blue Tracker:

Holy Paladin Hotfix
Yes, we buffed the 5 paladin direct heals (FoL, HL, DL, HS, WoG). This is a change for both level 80 and 85. We are going to tone down Holy Radiance as I described in the other thread. It can be powerful without being 75% of paladin healing.

I know it’s customary for players to classify everything as either overpowered or garbage, but we believe there are actual numbers in between say 1 and 100, so give the changes a chance before you dismiss them.

It is possible we will nerf Word of Glory for Prot and Ret at 85 to compensate for this buff since they probably don’t need stronger Words.

This went live late on Monday/early on Tuesday and pre-empted my rant about what a horrible time I had on Monday’s unofficial ICC 25 raid.

Just as an example, we had a resto druid, a resto shammy and Walks and myself go into portals on regular Dreamwalker, collecting orbs. We were also doing portal jockey. We wiped a few times. Obviously, the holy paladin method has changed here — Glyph of Holy Light is dead, so there’s no reason to beacon the dragon and heal a target near the dragon (be it yourself, a Tenacity pet for bigger splashes, etc). You just heal the dragon directly. (Oddly, Flash of Light worked better than Divine Light spam here, but that was pre-hotfix.)

I had 34 stacks of Emerald Vigor, more than anyone else. I came in fourth out of the four of us in the portals. And that includes a 600k+ crit Lay on Hands. Pathetic. Walks was just above me and then MILES ahead of us was the resto shammy and the resto druid at the top. Now I know that we’ve been supremely overpowered on this fight, but good Lord, that was embarassing. The entire night was an exercise in frustration. I couldn’t do what I was previously able to do, but not only the whole “handling two tanks alone” thing. I mean that I was unable to do my job with even half the effectiveness as before.

However, after the hotfix, I now feel better. NOW I feel as though I’m adjusting to the class changes. NOW I feel as though I’m fighting myself and my old habits to learn new tricks and tips, like #1 over at this bubblespec post, instead of fighting the new mechanics.

Is it a buff? Yes. Is it too much of a buff? Maybe. But it allows me to worry less about whether or not I CAN keep a target up, which lets me acclimate to the new ways of keeping my target up. Right now, that’s the priority for us — learn how to heal with expensive short heals and long heals, but a mana free heal and oh wow, need to generate holy power and all that jazz, too!

I feel that, since the hotfix, I’m playing smarter on the paladin. True, I haven’t raided on her, but I have recovered confidence in my spells and abilities just by virtue of playing with the heals alone and in heroic dungeons.

Is this the answer for all that ails holy paladins? No. But it’s about as good as it’s going to get at 80 before Cataclysm, probably. They’ve fixed us so that we can continue in our niche for the rest of 4.0.1 and still acclimate to working outside our niche with new mechanics.

Does this still terrify me for 85? Yes. But I do feel more hopeful and I think that while we’ll have to share single-target healing with others (and others will have to share some of the raid healing responsibilities with us!) it no longer feels as though an extra shadow priest can make up for our healing.

I do not think that paladins have gotten even remotely enough cool stuff. Still no Evangelism, Archangel, Atonement, Chakra, Holy Word: Chastise. We get Holy Radiance (at 83) and Light of Dawn and Word of Glory and then they screwed with each of our pre-patch heals, but nothing full of synergy, nothing really cool, although I definitely do like Holy Radiance. It has an unfortunately huge mana cost and 30 second cooldown, if you’re specced “properly”, so we can’t just slam on that button every time it’s up. I imagine it’s for those moments in Cataclysm that can be best related to XT-002. Quake? Holy Radiance. In other words, occasional heavy raid damage, but not an “on cooldown” ability, due to the prohibitive mana cost.

Still, there’s time yet and there will be patches in the future that will change talents and abilities. I hope to see more from Blizzard in terms of holy paladin attention, at least, if not new and exciting spells. This hotfix is a great step for us maintaining our raid spots and not screwing our raids over, at least until Cataclysm’s launch.