Welcome to my Holy How-To for PVE Paladins. This is the seventh of what I hope to be a great many posts aimed at helping holy paladins succeed at PVE content. I will focus primarily on max-level talent specs, glyphs, enchants, gems and the like, including tools, tips and tricks that I use, but I hope to touch on levelling content and advice as well.
Some time ago, I talked a bit about healing instincts and how my paladin healing instincts consistently screwed me over when playing any other healing class. For example, forgetting about Penance on my disc priest. Don’t get me started on Nature’s Swiftness or Tranquility on my druid, much less Nature’s Swiftness and Tidal Force on my shaman. I’m a good enough healer that I can sort of “fake” my way through content with which I’m already familiar if I’m performing the same role, like healing. But I’m not going to think to use Pain Suppression or any of the other tricks of various healing classes the way I do when I’m on my paladin.
Why is this?
It’s not because I’m not aware of the possibilities, but it’s because the moment to use those abilities is usually a high-pressure, quick-thinking moment. “Tank’s gonna die!” is not usually followed up by “Pain Suppression!” or “Nature’s Swiftness/Healing Touch/Healing Wave!” in my head. It’s usually followed up by “Thank God I started casting Holy Light a second ago!” ;)
So today, we’re going to talk a bit about paladin healer-related cooldowns and the times you want to use them. This is so that when you’re faced with those situations, you can actually react to the situation without thinking “uh, okay, so I can do… shoot. There goes the tank.”
We’ll divide this into two types of cooldowns: Mitigation and Healing Help
Mitigation
What it is: A talent that gives you a six second boost to your currently active aura. That is to say that if you have Devotion Aura up, it’ll double the armor contribution. Ret aura? Double the holy damage your attackers receive. Concentration Aura? It’ll prevent silences. It’ll also double the resistance amount of your active resist aura, too. And yes, it’ll increase the speed boost Crusader Aura gives you, too. :)
When to use it: When not to, really? Frost Resist Aura + Aura Mastery for Bonestorm on Marrowgar or to help counteract the Frostbolt Volley on Lady Deathwhisper or the overall aura damage from Sindragosa. Shadow Resistance Aura + Aura Mastery on Festergut’s Pungent Blight or during a fear on Blood Queen Lana’thel or when you need to run on heroic Blood Prince Council… Lots of times, basically. But the key is that it has to be YOUR aura. It won’t improve anyone else’s aura.
What it is: This poor talent was introduced in Wrath of the Lich King and is woefully misunderstood by basically everyone. First of all, it’s not as powerful without two points in Divine Guardian. By itself, it transfers 30% of all *party member’s* damage to you, up to 40% of your maximum health. It lasts ten seconds.
With 2/2 Divine Guardian, it does that and reduces your whole raid’s damage by 20% as long as they’re within 30 yards of you. This portion lasts six seconds.
Now, if you bubble first and then cast this, you will continue to get damage redirected towards you for the full ten second duration of Divine Sacrifice (as bubble lasts 12 seconds). Here’s a few lines from a recent log:
[23:38:55.630] Madrana gains Divine Sacrifice from Madrana
[23:38:55.630] Madrana casts Divine Sacrifice
[23:38:55.646] Madrana gains Divine Guardian from Madrana
So I am included in the 20% damage reduction, although I’m also bubbled at this point. Still, always nice to know. ;)
[23:38:56.172] Druid1 gains Divine Sacrifice from Madrana
[23:38:56.172] Shammy gains Divine Sacrifice from Madrana
[23:38:56.175] Priest1 gains Divine Sacrifice from Madrana
[23:38:56.175] Druid2 gains Divine Sacrifice from Madrana
The two resto druids, the resto shaman and the disc priest who were in my party all gained Divine Sacrifice.
[23:38:56.175] Warlock gains Divine Guardian from Madrana
[23:38:56.175] Priest1 gains Divine Guardian from Madrana
[23:38:56.175] Druid1 gains Divine Guardian from Madrana
[23:38:56.175] Shammy gains Divine Guardian from Madrana
[23:38:56.175] Druid2 gains Divine Guardian from Madrana
[23:38:56.175] Priest2 gains Divine Guardian from Madrana
Other people, including those in my party, gain the effect of Divine Guardian from me. Divine Guardian fades after six seconds, but Divine Sacrifice keeps going, redirecting damage from my party to me.
[23:39:03.164] Madrana takes 0 damage from Shammy’s Divine Sacrifice
[23:39:03.565] Madrana takes 0 damage from Priest1’s Divine Sacrifice
[23:39:04.357] Shammy2’s Divine Guardian fades
[23:39:05.233] Madrana takes 0 damage from Priest1’s Divine Sacrifice
[23:39:05.629] Madrana takes 0 damage from Shammy’s Divine Sacrifice
[23:39:05.770] Madrana’s Divine Sacrifice fades
So, yeah. Divine Sacrifice, paired with Divine Guardian, is basically amazing. They changed how it worked for 3.3, including reducing the duration from 10 seconds to 6 seconds.
When to use it: Endless possibilities. Marrowgar’s Bonestorm, Deathwhisper’s Vengeful Shades, Saurfang’s Marks of the Fallen Champion, Festergut’s Pungent Blight, Rotface’s Unstable Ooze Explosion, P3 on Putricide, anytime you have to move on heroic Blood Prince Council, just before the fear on Blood Queen Lana’thel, P3 on Sindragosa and basically a whole bunch of times on Lich King.
What it is: Formerly known as Blessing of Protection (and still called “BOP” for short), is a beautiful thing that makes the target 100% immune to all physical damage for 10 seconds. Only physical damage, though.
When you want to use it: In a moment where you know someone is going to be taking a lot of physical-based damage when they do not have aggro from something they’re supposed to be tanking.
As such, this is not something you generally want to cast on the tank, unless he or she does NOT currently have aggro and DOES have some sort of bleed effect. A good example of this is the phase transition in Trial of the Crusader or Trial of the Grand Crusader when Gormok the Impaler is dead and Acidmaw and Dreadscale are coming out, one or both of your tanks may have some stacks of the Impale effect still on them. BOP! That evil bleed is all gone.
Other moments where BOP shines include, but are not limited to, the Garrotted person on Moroes, a non-active tank on Gurtogg Bloodboil to get rid of Acidic Wound, one of the Gormok tanks (as previously noted), during the kiting phases of Anub’arak (particularly in Trial of the Grand Crusader) and, most recently, Boiling Blood on Deathbringer Saurfang.
What it is: Formerly known as Blessing of Sacrifice (and still sometimes called BoSac or now HoSac for short), will transfer 30%, 35% or 40% of damage the person you cast it on is taking. It gets transferred to you. (35% and 40% require 1 or 2 points in Blessed Hands in the holy tree.) This lasts for 12 seconds or until you’ve transferred up to 100% of your maximum health’s worth of damage to you.
When you want to use it: Now this IS a spell you want to cast on your tanks. I’ve been out of practice on using it, since my last guild only required it on one fight in all of Trial of the Grand Crusader, but basically, if your tank is taking stupid amounts of damage, bubble yourself and cast this on them. Always bubble first, because if you cast BoSac on your target first, you can die very quickly.
This is useful on any kind of damage at all that your tank (or any other raid member) may be taking. Off the top of my head, this was used a lot as a tank cooldown for Sartharion with three drakes, throughout Ulduar (Hodir’s Frozen Blows comes to mind, as does Mimiron’s Plasma Blast) and there’s no reason you shouldn’t cast this on someone, anyone, any time you bubble. The effect does NOT stack with Divine Sacrifice, however. This is the main reason I don’t use it very often, because I rarely bubble without hitting Divine Sacrifice.
Healing Help
What it is: A baseline ability for all paladins that increases our damage and healing by 20% for 20 seconds. The catch is that it cannot be used within 30 seconds of using Divine Shield, Divine Protection, Hand of Protection (on yourself) or Lay on Hands (on yourself). May be referred to as “wings” or “popping [one’s] wings”, including many Red Bull references.
When to use it: Usually best used during an enrage period of the fight; Saurfang’s Frenzy, Patchwerk’s enrage. Anytime that there is constant, incoming damage that you need to heal. Also, see below with regards to Divine Plea.
What it is: It’s the 21 point holy talent for paladins. It is a relatively cheap spell, instant, not on the global cooldown and forces your next Flash of Light, Holy Light or Holy Shock spell to be a critical hit. That’s right; guaranteed crit. It has a two minute cooldown so this comes up often throughout a fight.
When to use it: Assuming you have two talents in Infusion of Light (and you should!), one of the best times to use it is on the pull. Pop this before the pull, chase your tank in, then hit Holy Shock right after your tank takes their first hit, then cast your instant Flash of Light for the second hit as you’re running into place.
Other times to use it include, but are not limited to; other times when you have to be moving to use the same Holy Shock and Flash of Light combo; when your target is taking stupid amounts of damage and you NEED that Holy Light to crit for 25k; when you’re running low on mana and you’re waiting for Divine Plea to pop but you can’t stop healing, since the crit will still give you back 30% of your mana.
Be creative with it! I do not use this as often as I should, but it’s always there and I know it’s there. It’s like an old friend.
What it is: Divine Illumination is a talent that is 41 points deep in the holy tree and was actually our 41-point talent back in The Burning Crusade. It reduces the mana cost of all your spells by 50% for 15 seconds, is instant, is free, is off the global cooldown and has a three-minute cooldown. If you have two pieces of tier 10, this also increases your healing output by 35% for its duration. In short, Divine Illumination is freaking AMAZING.
When to use it: Honestly, this used to be good at any point in a fight — when you were getting low on mana, it was a life-saver. I always liked to pop it relatively early so it would be available more than once in a fight. But now, it’s mostly relegated to using it with Divine Plea, since I have the two-piece Tier 10 bonus. That said, even without the T10 bonus, it’s a great ability to use once you get it, but it no longer becomes an offset for Divine Plea.
Some advice that I have trouble following myself is to use abilities with short (under five minutes) cooldowns early and often. This is amazing advice and you are far better off using Divine Illumination when you’re at about 70% mana rather than at 25% mana, because you should be able to use it again when you’re low on mana, three minutes into the fight.
It’s also useful to use when your Beacon of Light is wearing off. I like to pop Divine Illumination (and Divine Plea) and then heal for about 10 seconds before re-beaconing my Beacon target, timing it so I’m just refreshing it with less than five seconds left on Beacon, for maximum coverage.
What it is: Divine Plea is a baseline ability available to all paladins that is trained at level 71. It regenerates 25% of your maximum mana over 15 seconds. Prot paladins use this to regen their mana (along with Blessing of Sanctuary and Spiritual Attunement) so that they don’t have a resource problem in maintaining threat. Retribution paladins use this and Judgements of the Wise primarily to regain mana throughout a fight to maintain their DPS.
The catch is that it reduces all your healing done by 50% for its duration.
As such, holy paladins should be careful in its usage. Back in Ulduar, if I hit Divine Plea without something to boost my healing output at the same time, the tanks would die. This would happen regularly on Thorim in particular. Good times.
When to use it: Carefully! The best time is just as you know you don’t need to heal. Lots of fights have a sort of break or downtime during them, where you can safely sneak in a Divine Plea. Examples include, but are not limited to; phase transitions on Northrend Beasts (and just before Icehowl’s stomp and just after Icehowl’s crash), Anub’arak’s burrow phases, Marrowgar’s Bonestorm (on normal, anyways), Unstable Ooze Explosion on Rotface, just before phase changes on regular Professor Putricide, air phases on Sindragosa (especially if you’re Ice Tombed!), transition phases on regular Lich King.
Of course, if you have what I like to call an “offset” for Divine Plea, you can basically use Divine Plea when you like without too much worry about the tanks eating it.
I use three offsets for Divine Plea’s healing reduction.
1) Divine Illumination (2pc T10): I have this macroed to Shift-S which hits Divine Illumination (off the global cooldown) and Divine Plea at the same time.
2) Talisman of Resurgence (50 Emblems of Triumph): This trinket is basically amazing. Available for Emblems of Triumph, it gives you a solid 128 intellect AND increases your spellpower by 599 for 20 seconds. Hot.
3) Avenging Wrath: Honestly, I hate this ability. I hate not being able to use this without it interfering with my bubble. This hatred actually dates back to my days of the Illidari Council in Black Temple when they changed Avenging Wrath to give us FORBEARANCE. I rarely pop my wings (which is silly) but most of the time, I can get away without using it as a Divine Plea offset. Exceptions include heroic Blood Prince Council, heroic Blood Queen Lana’thel, regular Lich King.
Together, these three abilities allow me to use Divine Plea once a minute without too much of a healing loss. That said, there IS a big ol’ healing loss and it’s noticeable in the logs, if not in practice. These numbers are all factoring in the 20% buff, not the 25% buff, by the way, and include full raid buffs.
Holy Light: ~17500
Holy Light crit: ~25000-28000
Divine Plea/Divine Illumination Holy Light: ~13000
Divine Plea/Divine Illumination Holy Light crit: ~20000
Divine Plea/Talisman of Resurgence Holy Light: ~11000
Divine Plea/Talisman of Resurgence Holy Light crit: ~15000-17000
I can’t actually find a 20% log to compare the Avenging Wrath numbers (because I REALLY use it that infrequently, because I am silly), but you can figure it out.
Divine Plea/Avenging Wrath estimated Holy Light: ~12000
Divine Plea/Avenging Wrath estimated Holy Light crit: ~17500
Having done the math, I now recognize exactly how silly I am. I actually heal for a good deal more using Avenging Wrath than I do with the Talisman, although the numbers are close. What this means is that I have gotten lazy and have just hit Talisman of Resurgence whenever I need a second offset without even *considering* “Hey, I probably won’t need to use Divine Shield in the next 30 seconds, will I?”
And now, because I’ve discovered the error of my ways, you all get to benefit from my being silly. ;)
What is it: It’s a baseline ability for all paladins trained at level 10. Using it on someone heals them for the total of YOUR health. This ability is instant and costs NO MANA, although prior to Wrath of the Lich King, it would use all of your mana. It’s on a 20-minute cooldown, but a proper holy paladin should have this glyphed (minor glyph, reducing the CD by 5m) and talented (2/2 Improved Lay on Hands) which shaves another four minutes off the cooldown, so it’s usable every 11 minutes. It can also crit, but Divine Favor does not force a Lay on Hands crit.
The catch is that it causes Forbearance if you use it on yourself. Bastards.
When to use it: Any time someone absolutely key to your raid is about to bite the big one. This is the Hail Mary of your toolbox. You can cast it on someone else (or even yourself, though I’m not a fan of that) to also give them 1950 mana. If you’ve got the major glyph for it (again, I’m not a fan, but I can see situational use for it) and you cast it on yourself, you get nearly 8k mana back, since you get as much mana as it gives your target, which is doubled by the glyph.
But basically, this is your raid-saving cooldown. And it can crit. (15k crit Lay on Hands on my sole-remaining tank on the Vashj encounter gave us the extra time we needed to down her on our first-ever guild kill of her.)
So, there you go. That about sums up the majority of our cooldowns. I didn’t touch on Divine Shield or Divine Protection much, because those aren’t really related to the raid so much as just dealing with your own damage intake, but bear in mind that anywhere I said to use Divine Shield, Divine Protection is not a bad substitute. Forbearance only lasts two minutes and while the cooldown on Divine Shield is five minutes, Divine Protection’s only three.
I also didn’t talk about utility-related spells like Hand of Salvation or Hand of Freedom. They’re sort of self-explanatory, I find, and I don’t see too much HoFreedom use these days in PVE content, although I can think of two hardmodes (Rotface, slime kiter and Sindragosa, active tank pre-air phase) where Hand of Freedom comes in, er, handy. ;)
What I always do before facing a new fight is read up on it, watch the TankSpot video if I can, and pre-determine when my best time to use any of these abilities might be. That way, when I walk into the fight, I already know that, say, in Phase 4, something is going to beat the tank to within an inch of his life. Use a cooldown there. Or maybe there’s a transition phase where I can sneak in a Divine Plea without an offset. Or maybe there’s a point where it would be super beneficial for me to bubble and hit Divine Sacrifice.
Alternatively, after fights, looking through the logs, is when I can determine when people (and which people) are taking the most damage and what I can do about it. Having Divine Shield/Divine Sacrifice up for P3 of Sindragosa is great! Ditto for Timpanic Tantrums on XT-002. But do I need to use cooldowns in P1 of the Lich King? Eh, probably not, assuming all goes well.
So it’s about looking at the fight (before or after) and determining what YOU can do to help out on the attempt. Oh, and something that really helps is to bind or macro these abilities to easy-to-reach buttons or click combinations so you don’t forget to use them!
Hope that was helpful and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below. :)
This was super-helpful, thanks a lot. Especially for the part about when to use the abilities…
“Uh, okay, so I can do… shoot. There goes the tank.” sums up my pally healing pretty well, followed by “I wish I’d started casting HL a second earlier”, followed by “QQ I miss my druid”. But since my druid can’t go on alt runs too… I’m glad this post is just in time for my Tuesday ICC.
OMG Kurn :-)
Now I’m seriously doubting if you either:
a) read my blog and decided you could do a better job
b) don’t read my blog and happen to do a similar post better than me
I wish my post was as shiny and fancy as this one. Very nice!
All very interesting to read, and gettign me tempted to start gearing my paladin’s offspec to be holy.
One thing that you didn’t mention:
Wings is also off the GCD, and thus can be macroed up like DI and the trink.
Is there a way to macro together the three offsets for Divine Plea? So that you only have one macro button to hit twice?
Great job. I really needed to read this!
RAZORSTORM
Agnostique: I wouldn’t want to. The first cast would probably blow all three mitigators at once, leaving you high and dry the next time Plea comes around.
What I’m curious is if you could do something like…
/cast Divine Plea
/castsequence reset=180,combat Divine Illumination, Avenging Wrath, Talisman of Resurgence
sorta.
it would be something like this:
#showtooltip Divine Plea
/use Divine Plea
/castsequence reset=/180 Divine Illumination, Talisman of Resurgence, Avenging Wrath
I am not 100% sure this would work, you would want to test it, however I think it should.
What it should do:
1) showtooltip simply makes it so the tooltip will always be DP
2) casts DP
3) Cast the next spell/item in the list, however it will reset if you hold a modifier key of your choice (alt/shift/ctrl), or if you haven’t used it in 3 mins (the CD of DI and wings).
Problems:
1) if you press they key twice, it will use your next cast sequence spell/item even if DP isn’t off CD, thus wasting it. So, you can’t spam this in an ohcrap moment.
2) the rest time for the castsequence will be rest every time you press it, so you would manually have to reset it if it’s been 3 mins and you want to start with DI instead of using the next one in the list.
No, I have a question:
Does any one know of good guides, similar to what kurn is doing, but for the other healing classes/specs?
Edit:
For #showtooltip to work you have to pick the big red ? as the icon.
Also, No -> Now
VERY nice post. I’ve been gearing up a holy paly and this helps LOT. I have a resto Shaman now, and he’s a walk in the park compared to all the abilities that a paly has/can do.
Couple of things I didn’t see mentioned.
DS/DG – One thing that made this OP in ULD was using your bubble in conjunction would cause this ability to provide a full damage reduction – basically since you weren’t taking damage, there would be no limit to what you could absorb (maybe this was Naxx – I think it was fixed in 3.1). Now there’s no need to pop your bubble. Also, the damage transferred to you is reduced by 50%. I use DS/DG without my bubble all the time – I just heal myself when I do.
Divine Favor – A bug with this talent allows you to basically ride a ‘free’ Holy Shock Crit immediately following your Holy Light. I like to use this on H-LK when I’m moving from a Shadow Trap. I get my HL crit (also good for mana conservation), followed by my HS crit and my instant FoL (so I can get 2 heals in on the move).
HoSac – Typically I have the tank beaconed, so I use this pretty regularly and just heal myself. This is also useful on Saurfang. I will generally use HoP on the first Boiling Blood – and use HoSac if it’s on a melee and I don’t want to kill thier DPS. You can also follow your HoP with a HoSalv to remove it if you need to hit a tank or melee DPS. Since Saurfang’s blood power is generated by the damange actually DONE to his target, HoSac helps (I also use DS/DG to reduce the blood power – and bubble it off myself).
Wings – I have yet to find myself in a position where having used my wings to offset DP has killed me (that I can recall). I’m sure it’s happened, but I just generally pop it on the 2nd DP use. If I “know” that I’ll need my bubble in the next 30 sec, I rotate the Talisman and my Wings.
Good post!
A follow up on why you don’t want a one macro does it all:
“I’m sure it’s happened, but I just generally pop it on the 2nd DP use. If I “know” that I’ll need my bubble in the next 30 sec, I rotate the Talisman and my Wings.”
Right there.
I tend to avoid castsequence as there are generally times when you are going to want to change exactly what you are doing. In fact, the only time I use castsequence is when I’m grinding specific mobs. I made one for my lock when I needed to grind out some cloth so I could just press a button 4 times and then target the next baddie and repeat as the other ones die behind me (affliction == win)
Why would you use HoSac on a Boiling Blood target? The reason you use HoProt isn’t to mitigate the damage (unless it’s late into the fight and blood power is super-high and healers are stretched thing) but to stem his income of Blood Power and delay the all-critical first Mark (since his blood power gain is logarithmically increasing).
Wow, so many comments. :)
Jen – You’re welcome! Thanks for giving me the idea to write a post about our cooldowns last week. I think that the proper use of cooldowns, whether you’re the one who thinks to do it or you’re given the idea to do it by someone else, is really the mark of a good paladin. Keeping up buffs/debuffs and proper use of cooldowns is basically the core of the class, so why not decipher all these mysterious abilities, right? :)
Kaboomski – I skim through your blog on occasion. :) Jen, as mentioned above, gave me the idea to start working on this post last week, though. :) At over 3000 words (granted, with some log snippets) it’s something I’ve been working on this weekend.
thansal – Is it actually off the GCD? I feel silly for not realizing that. :) Crap, new macro to make, I guess… :) Stupid freaking wings…
Agnostique – Well, hitting Divine Plea and Divine Illumination means I only need to hit it once: Divine Illumination first, then Divine Plea like this:
/cast Divine Illumination
/cast Divine Plea
ought to result in a one-push macro to activate both.
I’m sure someone who’s better at macros could devise something that essentially says:
Use Divine Illumination; if that’s on CD, use Talisman of Resurgence; if that’s on CD, use Avenging Wrath;
Use Divine Plea
But off the top of my head, I have no idea if binding them all together wouldn’t just blow all three at once, like Rilgon mentions.
Razorstorm – thanks for reading, I’m glad you enjoyed it. And thanks again for the RT!
Rilgon – The problem there is that moves it from being a one-push to a two-push macro, since Divine Plea IS on the GCD and while Divine Illumination and Avenging Wrath are 3m CDs (180s), the Talisman is a 2m (120s) CD. I may have to go digging around.
thansal – The other problem is, as I indicated to Rilgon, that you DO have to push that twice to activate it, so you’re going to blow the second one there.
As to other guides the way I’m doing it, I don’t think so, although I don’t read everything and everyone. I do know that the reason I started this for paladins is because I perceived there to be a lack of good paladin information out there overall. :)
Wendell_WoW – thanks for the comment, I’m glad the post was helpful! I often feel like I should be judging or shielding (beyond Earth Shield) or SOMETHING on my shaman when I heal. I chalk it up to how busy I can be on the pally. ;)
adgamorix – It’s true that the damage absorbed is reduced by 50% before it hits you, but if you still want the full 10 seconds of mitigation/redirected damage from Divine Sacrifice, bubbling is basically the only way that’s going to happen, unless there’s not a lot of damage hitting your party.
With regards to Divine Favor – I’m sure I’ve inadvertantly taken advantage of this myself without realizing, but how tricky is the timing? Or is it not at all tricky?
As to HoSac, what Rilgon asked below. It’s my understanding that every tick of Boiling Blood, no matter who it’s on or how the damage is redirected or absorbed (see: PW:Shield no longer being hax on this fight) increases his Blood Power, which is why spreading out and avoiding splash damage is a huge necessity on 25m heroic. I’d love to see a log showing HoSac’s effectiveness. If I get Boiling Blood this week and bubble through it, I may cast HoSac on someone after about 6 seconds so that I can look at the log.
And wings: Yeah, I should use wings much more frequently than I do. My distaste for it goes back two years and it’s unreasonable and silly. It took doing the math here for me to recognize just how much healing I’m losing when I use the trinket over wings. Sigh!
thansal – that’s a really great point. I have Divine Plea, Divine Illumination, Talisman of Resurgence and Avenging Wrath all keybound to separate bindings AND I have various macros as well, so I can easily switch things up based on the situation.
Rilgon – excellent question. :)
As far as DS/DG goes – it doesn’t matter if you bubble or not – it will stop after x amount of damage done (unless you hit 20% and it goes off). I did a bunch of math on this back in October of last year, but the short version goes like this.
Say you have, 40k HP – you can absorb up to 80k (200% of your HP pool). If you get down to 8k in the six seconds, the effect will break. So yes, using your bubble will gaurantee that it doesn’t break, but it’s not needed. Since the damage is halved as it’s incoming, you really only need to prevent 32k from hitting you and/or punching at once. I’ve DS/DG’d through a Festergut exhale without bubble. I puckered, but I did it.
Saurfang HoSac – this may have gotten nerfed/fixed when they made it so PW:S didn’t affect it, but the way it worked was that the same target you’d HoProt to remove the blood (maybe that’s the wrong ability), you can HoSac them instead. I don’t have a recent log to look at, but we still do this in our 10m H attempts to slow down the blood power gain. Maybe it’s just in our heads, but we do it anyway /shrug. I’m willing to admit that it may not work any more (which would mean DS/DG doesn’t either).
DS/DG – last note here, you might want to include the /cancelaura macro that kills the DS part, but leaves DG up for the 20% reduction.
Honestly, I think there is a lack of good information out there, full stop. It’s something I ran into when first starting to heal as a tree, and countered by teaching my self. Again, why I really like the holy how tos :D
As for macros:
You can’t have a conditional macro where “if X is on CD use Y”, as that’s playing the game for you. Same reason you can’t have one macro activate multiple spells that are on the GCD with one press.
The cast sequence macro actually only has to be pressed once to work, your macro should work like this:
First press: Cast DP and DI
2nd press within 3mins and the same combat: Cast DP and AW
3rd press within 3mins of 2nd press and the same combat: Cast DP and trink
4th press: Same as first.
Now, the exceptions to the above are:
1) If DP is on CD when you press it only the appropriate 2nd part will be cast, and will go to the next step. This is why it’s a problem if you double tap the button in panic as it will blow 2 CDs.
2) If the 2nd part is on CD and you press it ONLY the DP part will activate.
Castsequence will not move on until it casts the current spell (you will just get spammed with “that spell isn’t ready yet”). Same deal with castrandom. This is to keep people from making macros that play for them. Kitties (and any other priority based rotation) used to have a one button rotation consisting of:
castrandom All, Your, Spells
You spammed that and it would simply randomly pick your next ability, with out the worry about hitting something on CD or you lacked resources for. Now it will keep trying to cast the same spell until it manages to.
*shifty look*
no, I’m not a little bit too into macros, I swear!
I actually have very few macros now, most of them are things like:
/use disenchant
/use all my different things I craft to DE
@thansal: Keeva’s Resto Druid Guide is really, really, really nice and exactly what I was missing when I started playing my druid: http://treebarkjacket.com/restoguide/
It’s not in the same style as Kurn’s, but it’s full of useful info.
If anyone has priest or shaman guides to share I’ll appreciate lots :)
adgamorix – Divine Guardian will persist, even if you cancel Divine Sacrifice, yes. But if you’re in the tank’s group, it might not be feasible for you to want to cancel DS and you might not be able to avoid all the damage possibly incoming to you for the full seconds for DS. Bubbling and casting DS is never a BAD plan and I do occasionally get the chance to use it twice in a fight, once with divine shield and once without. I do feel more comfortable bubbling or at least using Divine Protection to ensure that I’m doing the most redirection of damage I can, though.
As to Saurfang and HoSac — I’m going to test that out next week. Now I’m all curious.
If you have a cancel Divine Sacrifice macro, by all means, please post it! I don’t currently use one. :)
thansal – isn’t it amazing that in this day and age, quality information is still scarce? I feel like I’m one of few people who not only know how to play the game but can explain (usually at great length!) what goes into my playing.
As to the macro, here’s one problem:
“First press: Cast DP and DI”
Can’t do that, because Divine Plea is on the GCD. If anything, it needs to be Divine Illumination, then Divine Plea, or else that’s not going to work, as I understand it.
Interesting other problems you pose there, though!
I ended up making an Avenging Wrath/Divine Plea macro that I used at length tonight. It always seemed to be up right when I needed it. Particularly on Lich King, for some reason, haha. That fight sucks my mana dry. :(
Jen – ooh, thanks for the link! :D
I don’t use it currently (I prefer bubble/DiSac), but I have a macro for Divine Sacrifice set up like this:
#showtooltip Divine Sacrifice
/cancelaura Divine Sacrifice
/cast Divine Sacrifice
You would have to click it twice to cancel Divine Sacrifice, but DG remains as expected.
The macro is actually fine as the 3 things in the cast sequence are all off the GCD, so they can be placed anywhere in the macro, as things off the GCD can be cast even when the GCD is going, just not when you are casting/channeling.
The only macros I currently use (outside of power shifting) are a barksin/tranq and a barkskin/TStorm macro. I could make them the same macro and change wich one is cast based off of modifier keys or mouse clicks, but I KNOW I will screw it up, and thus don’t. I also use VuhDo for my click casting, and it will use all my trinks/engie CDs as I’m a lazy sod and I will forget to use them otherwise :P (that and druids don’t seem to really benefit from the “must properly use CDs!” thing like some other classes do)
I personally think that the best set of macros for using DP would be:
#showtooltip Divine Illumination
/use Divine Plea
/use Divine Illumination
#showtooltip Talisman of Resurgence
/use Divine Plea
/use Talisman of Resurgence
#showtooltip Avenging Wrath
/use Divine Plea
/use Avenging Wrath
3 macros, each will track the CD of it’s respective offset tool, and you can track DP’s CD either via putting it on your bars, or via a CD tracker.
Jen: Thank you, that looks awesome :D
I like these posts, Kurn, but they always make me want to post some sort of “advanced lessons in paladin-ing” or something. LOL
Kaboomski – Thanks! :)
thansal – Would the all-in-one all work in a one-click?
I ended up making an AW/DP macro last night, in addition to having Talisman and DP available separately, and my existing DivIll/DP macro. Then I decided to get “fancy” (haha, I’m so not good with macros) and made one for the burn phase on Valithria:
/cast Divine Favor
/cast Avenging Wrath
/cast Divine Illumination
/use Talisman of Resurgence
/use Potion of Wild Magic
Boom.
I know that I also really like having all the abilities available separately so I can watch the cooldowns more effectively. Also, so that I can actually use them separately if need be. There are times to use DP without an offset, ditto the other abilities/things.
Having said that, damn, but I love having three offsets for those “Oh God, I have to use DP back to back to back!” moments. Stupid Lich King when your only source of Replenishment is lying dead off the platform. ;)
Codi – You know, I was thinking about that the other day. I think part of the reason I don’t focus on more “advanced” tips and tricks is because I spend a lot of time trying to discern whether or not what I do is common knowledge or not.
Also, I’m sure that part of it is that I’m not as efficient as I could be. I’m not super-pally and I’m sure there are a lot of parts of my play that can be improved, at least a little bit. Like, when I get a spellpower proc from my ring or something, do I re-cast Sacred Shield? Nope. I usually don’t even notice such a proc.
I guess part of it is also that I’m still learning myself, at least a bit. I don’t have some awesome paladin guru that I’ve been raiding with for months who has taught me everything he or she knows — and this has, sadly, never been the case. I have always bemoaned the fact that I am the best holy paladin I’ve ever played with. I think it speaks more to the fail that I’ve encountered in this game than my particular skills, but it’s true. I’ve never had a mentor. I strongly suspect that’s the case for most of us decent paladins.
Having said that, what do you consider “advanced lessons” and what would you want to see covered? I’m always looking for Holy How-To ideas. :)
Yup, the all in one macro would work, each click/press would use DP + one off set, and then set it’s state to use the next offset for the next click/press. castsequence is nifty, though also dangerous :P
You might be right that the cast sequence should come before the /use DP, but I’m not usre.
And yah, popping all your CDs in one go has an awesome feeling to it :D
While I know there’s no old, white-beared man out there for us, I think that if we pooled the knowledge of some of the best healadins, we’d come out with something truly amazing. Maybe, like, a co-op post by a couple of good healadins or something? Heck, I don’t know.
Something on advanced lessons would be like “how to pop CDs without bubbling” or “best use of BoL when compensating for the delay” and stuff like that. Heck, posts on macros for DP would work, too, from what I’m getting from the other discussions here. XD
I <3 you, Kurn. Please keep the Holy How-to's coming! I soak them all up like a sponge. :)