Holy Paladin Hell! :)

[Scyclone]

Hey Paladins, Heres a shaman with a paladin alt looking for your advice!

I'll blunt and say that "I suck" at playing paladins, at least it feels that way. I just recently hit level 100 on my paladin, spent hours setting up my bars/clique/weakauras to give me the best visibility onto everything that is going on, and researched the numerous specs for holy paladins. AH Bought three crafted 640 pieces, grabbed a 1h weapon and offhand, and overall with random inventory items, I have 602 equipped/610 overall ilvl.

My next step, was heading over to proving grounds and queueing up as Holy.

Much to my mortifying dismay... I found out that I suck... bad. I cannot seem to even clear the last wave of Healer Bronze. Between just an onslaught of area damage coupled with the tank being squishier than I am, it just feels like I cannot seem to keep the npcs up despite my best efforts.

Currently, my spec is Sacred Shield, US, SW, HP and Beacon of Faith. I have tried both EF and SS, as well as tried both Lights Hammer and HP. While I noticed slightly better results with SS + HP, over the other combinations, I am still doing quite bad at healing.

I am just below 10k HPS in throughput... so with that said alone, I am just shaking my head, I know I shouldn't be THAT weak on healing.

My normal situation involves me keeping holy shock on cooldown, SS or EF up on the tank, and spamming flashes of light. That said, I am watching the tank consistently lose 2% hp a second despite me spamming this rotation hard. Using HP or Lights Hammer does succeed at boosting his health back up, but any time I have to switch gears to heal the rest of the group, the tank just plummets to his death (despite beacon healing). I figured under this sort of condition, I'd be running out of mana sooner than the tank would be running out of health, but that just doesn't seem to be the case.

After several tries and changes in spec, I still had yet to even complete healer bronze. Frustrated with the results, I logged off my paladin for the night.

I could use all the help I could get at this point, since it just doesn't seem to make sense to me. Am I simply just not relying on my cooldowns (Wrath, Hands, etc) enough? Or what is it that is making it so difficult to keep the group and tank up.

Any help is most certainly appreciated.

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Some brief back story on my healing experiences, I used to heal progression raids on both my shaman and holy priest, the net results of which have been very successful and I have even healed Heroic Rag solo on my shaman during many of our kills. I have not healed any in the WoD expansion, but I do have Gold Proving Grounds with both Restoration Shaman and Holy Priest. That coupled with being in Mythic progression, you can imagine my frustration at being unable to even clear bronze proving grounds as a paladin healer.

[Deleted]

Spamming FoL was one of the first things I had to teach myself not to do.
I'm running SS + HP and find HP vastly superior in proving grounds and raiding. Be sure to use it at the correct time on the enemy.
Also throw your second beacon around a little and focus mainly on the tank. The big group heal from HP should get them up whenever they drop and if it's necessary use defensive cooldowns on them and cast a HL.

[Thelxi]

Don't proving grounds now scale with your ilvl? perhaps it's a better idea to gear up you pally a bit more to get an even ilvl with 2 decent healing trinkets and spirit on everything that can have it. Maybe your current ilvl is a bit inflated and so it is scaled up a bit too tightly for your skill level. Still bronze shouldn't be too much of a challenge though, but I assume it's silver you want anyway.

[Ferg]

Maybe I'm weird, but on my Holydin I swear by Eternal Flame. Yeah, the HoT doesn't heal for much, but dat burst when needed is really nice.

I also run the 2 Beacon 100 talent, because it's OP.

[Scyclone]

Yeah, aiming for silver to get into heroics, but hell at this rate I am wondering if I could even handle healing heroics lol.

I was wondering if it was inflating my ilvl a bit, making it harder than it needed to be, but that still I figured would be more of an issue on silver, not so much bronze. I'll be honest though on what is really messing me up is those sonic aoe'r mobs. My throughput for getting the group back up just doesn't seem to be there. I will admit to having a small issue or two on silver with my resto spec on my shaman initially, but it wasn't due to the wave, it was simply due to running out of mana and being unable to drink during the waves.

[Samodin]

Funny cause I have a shaman alt and awful at it

[Scyclone]

Hehe, I'll gladly trade knowledge . I raid predominantly on my elemental shaman, and we do not need any healers or tanks (it is wierd when you do high enough DPS that they want you to take a PVP spec instead of a PVE spec, simply because they want you to always be the ranged dps role).

[Kaslia]

Although I didn't have issues with bronze or silver I sure did when it came to gold. I am currently spec'd using Eternal Flame also, that initial burst really helps. I use merciful wrath glyph which I found much better for the proving grounds and the dungeons. I am also spec'd into holy prism which I like more then light's hammer bec of the the cd. The npcs in the proving grounds are not grouped up. The range are spread out. Even in the proving grounds you should get a feel for when the big damage is coming in. I used holy light to heal and if tank was dipping then i used FOL. Remember that if he is taking big damage you do have the cd of LOH and you can mostly use HOS. The mage in the proving grounds is notable for standing in the fire you can put your other beacon on them. Remember you have a stun and you can help interrupt which the npc's seem to forget to do sometimes. Pay attention to where your standing and what enemy target you have targeted.(this is if you spec into holy prism)

I had no issues with mana at all I always felt the HP generation was so slow and the cast of the heal. Use HS on cd, sometimes this is challenging if your in the middle of a heal. Pay attention it does double proc sometimes. Knowing what heal to use when things proc. You also have devotion aura you can use if the aoe damage is a bit much. Put a eternal flame on yourself as the healing transfers to the tank if you go that route.

I have found paly healing varies on your group, boss fights. You can be a very under geared paly and heal a heroic just fine if the dps are good with the environment and their dps. Some tanks do not use their cds and some tanks are just plain squishy aka druid tanks this xpac for me. Proving grounds is great bec it actually assimilates what a typical group might be like in a dungeon. Some tanks like to wear dps gear and que as a tank and they don't know how to use cds. Good luck I am sure you will get it if you keep trying.

[Kanck]

What's your trinket situation like? Getting decent spirit trinkets makes or breaks a holy paladin (the hourglass is invaluable. I buy it for all my healing alts).

Anyway, to "gameplay" tips. When I was an undergeared shitter at the start of the expansion, I ran with Eternal Flame, Sanctified Wrath, Holy Prism, Beacon of Insight and Clemency as my talents. The reason I chose not to go for the highly overrated dual beacons, is because it doesn't help your tank healing one iota. It's great for saving mana when healing the dps or yourself in a 5 man situation, but when the tank's falling on his face it doesn't do shit. Clemency the best here as well as hand of sacrifice covers any dire situation when healer jesus is on cooldown (Avenging Wrath). Holy Prism is chosen because it's just does more on demand healing for 5 man content, compared to Light's Hammer. I used Light's Hammer when I did endless wave 30 on my paladin in MoP, but due to the higher mana cost, I really wouldn't recommend it for this expansion.

When it comes to the Eternal Flame vs Sacred Shield debate, you choose the one your mana can afford. Eternal Flame doesn't do some kind of amazing healing compared to Sacred Shield, but it doesn't cost any extra mana. Sacred Shield is definitely a hps increase due to our slow HP generation this expansion, but due to the mana cost, it's not always the best choice. Eternal Flame has amazing synergy with the Beacon of Insight talent though! Your BoI behaves like a Prayer of Mending, but jumps when the player who currently has the buff gets healed by a single target heal, or surpasses 100% health. You can abuse this with Eternal Flame, since the PG dps members don't really take much damage. Beacon of Insight will always jump to the paladin himself if everyone else is at full hp. If you then Eternal Flame yourself it will instantly do a check for if you're over 100% hp due to the HoT and jump to the next party member. If you can keep the party members up with Eternal Flame, the beacon should permanently be jumping to the tank. It's nearly a flat 30% increase to tank healing compared to dual beacons, which is rather lackluster for 5 man content (depending on the encounter). Saved by the Light is garbage because it's hard to control when it pops, and when it absorbs less than a fart. Useless talent.

For your glyphs, you should always be rocking the Merciful Wrath glyph in tandem with the Sanctified Wrath talent. Your Avenging Wrath has a potential 33% uptime with this talent/glyph combo, and the 50% decrease in effectiveness doesn't hurt at all due to most of that being overhealing during unglyphed Avenging Wrath. The Hand of Sacrifice glyph is also just about required. the last spot should go towards the Flash of Light glyph, but there's some room of choice here. Maybe you're amazing and you can abuse taunt with burdened judgment. idk.

During the waves, don't forget to use your stun. With Fist of Justice, you can stun twice per wave during the healing PG. When it comes to the aqualytes, you can soak the damage if the debuff is on yourself with Divine Protection. This is more relevant in the endless challenge when you get two aqualytes at the same time though. the debuff from the burrowers can be removed with Hand of Protection (you can do a quick hand of protection into hand of freedom if the tank gets the debuff, since only one hand can be active on one target). If you're a blood elf, abuse the racial on the waves with the lava dudes. And use your interrupt. I always stood in melee when I did PGs on my holy paladin. The rogue and the mage usually interrupt immediately, so save yours for when theirs is on CD.

Good luck! And try out Beacon of Insight, for god's sake. It's so damn good for 5 mans if you abuse the targeting algorithm with eternal flame.

[FiaaPaladin]

And try out Beacon of Insight, for god's sake. It's so damn good for 5 mans if you abuse the targeting algorithm with eternal flame.

Thanks for the breakdown. I never really entertained this option. BoI seems a little weak for raiding, but definitely worthwhile for 5 mans.

[Rorschachs]

Maybe I'm weird, but on my Holydin I swear by Eternal Flame. Yeah, the HoT doesn't heal for much, but dat burst when needed is really nice.

I also run the 2 Beacon 100 talent, because it's OP.

1. Eternal Flame transfers %50 of the healing while LOD transfers %15. So if your tanks are taking any kind of damage, Eternal Flame does better healing.
2. Light of Dawn is a stupid smart heal, you choose the target you Eternal Flame.
3. Eternal Flame keeps our mastery shields up, making it less likely to overheal.
4. SS costs too much mana.

So no, you are not weird at all. Just because two holy paladins in a world 2nd guild used the wrong talent for a while doesn't mean it wasn't.. the wrong talent. Who knows, maybe they would finish Highmaul world first if they ran Eternal Flame LOL.