Holy Paladin - Low Healing? *Need Advice*

[Songweaver]

I have a Holy Paladin in my Raids that I get the feeling is healing below what he should be. We're a 10 man guild, and I have no resource within my guild that knows enough about Paladins that I can put my head together with to get a better idea of where his issue is.

As he logs out frequently in Ret gear/Spec I'm not going to link in his armory, but I can tell you his ilvl is 464, Stats are:
12433 Int
5332 Spirit
19.60% Mastery
3.39% Haste
12.23% Crit

Meta: Ember
2 Gems Slots, both are Red with Brilliant Ruby

Currently has nothing Reforged.

Talent/Glyphs:

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#l!JM|pnf


Logs:

Stone Guard:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/l...?s=3291&e=3686

Feng:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/l...?s=8320&e=8856

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. It did appear that he was having some mana issues - any helpful information regarding possible regen issues would also be appreciated. Thanks for your time and input.

[Xs]

His spirit is very low, if you can provide an Armory I can give you an idea of how much lower than the average for his gear level, even if hes in Ret/Prot gear you can see some basic ideas from the activity log

[Hatanaka]

Well, a lot is going to be assumption since I'm not sure of his actual stats and what he is stacking. As a Holy Pally I find that we still over heal a crap ton so stacking Int is pointless especially since it doesn't effect our mana pool size anymore. Stacking haste like we used to just leads to going oom faster. What I found is that our mastery is now our greatest tool in MoP. The more I can absorb the less I have to actually actively heal and, in turn, burn through less mana. I see from the logs that illuminated healing is the number one heal which looks right but I'm seeing that holy shock is lower than what I see on my logs. I usually use my aoe heal and follow it up with holy shock to get an extra aoe heal in at times of raid damage. It all comes down to knowing the fights better and knowing what heal to use at the right time. If he isn't stacking mastery try doing that. He shouldn't worry about casting slower and not getting a heal in before the other healers, our "bubble" works better than most think. Other than that, more than ever, it is important to not just spam one heal. In MoP choosing the correct heal is what will set the good healers from the bad.

EDIT: Also, going on the above poster. I also reforge from haste and then crit into spirit. We don't need as much spirit as other healers because of our ability to use powerful free heals but having enough spirit to allow us to regen during low damage parts of a fight is a must. Also, make sure he is using his holy power heals at 3 stacks of HP I find that some of my Pally friends tend to spend their HP at one or two for an aoe heal which isn't as functional.

[Pasta Assassin]

Alright, right off the bat. He should run a couple of heroics (maybe get some guildies to help hasten the process) to get some gloves + legs. If he has spare justice laying around he can atleast grab some justice gloves for a quick upgrade. Get rid of that PoS egg and get him another healing trinket from heroics, the spirit that one of the heroic trinkets give is > that crappy egg. His tier 3 talent (selfless healer) is pretty much the worst of those 3, personally I would get sacred shield as it does some insane numbers, but the math puts it at about equal with eternal flame. I would say clemency on the tier 4 talent is almost a must have since it gives you so much more utility with those CDs. The final talent choice is the best overall, however I would definitely suggest grabbing lights hammer for fights like Feng where you are stacked up most of the time! At a quick glance at the logs I can't see anything glaringly obvious, so I would say have a go with a few changes and see how he does!

[Kezotar]

28 holy lights in that encounter seems a bit low. I was a god at PvE healing in Cataclysm, doubt that it has changed too much

Just make sure to keep Holy Shock on CD. If no uptime on instant casts such as Divine Light / WoG, dump with holy light (goes 100% through beacon)

Statwise - I used to reforge spirit until I could handle it - rotation of course casting holy shocks - holy light without going oom. Obviously you will if you then use divine light of flash, but it was with the rotation in there. That's how I looked on Holy light. Enough spirit to just not go oom spamming that + holy shock. Haste came after that. Nothing better than fast holy lights - that new WoG for more over time etc.


Sorry that I'm not of much of a help, but at least I give you something, hope it helps.

A mistake I see. You've specced on Selfless Healer, yet there was no Flash of Light casted on LOGS. That is alot of healing gone right there. I'd say at least 3-4k HPS ( Average of flash heals 70k +/- with that thing if not more and say the cd for judgment is 6 that means 70k / 18 = 4,4k hps extra. Also don't go with it, pick something else (obviously you lose 3 4 gcds for casting 3 judgment and 1 flash so it wouldn't be accuratly 4,4k, but more in 3k as I started with.

[Xs]

His spirit is very low, if you can provide an Armory I can give you an idea of how much lower than the average for his gear level, even if hes in Ret/Prot gear you can see some basic ideas from the activity log

Having looked him up hes in his Holy gear

I'll start with the basics of gear since thats the easiest to analyse

• His Meta gem should be Spirit/Crit, as the meta he has right now is terrible for us at the current stage of gear
• He should really be overall gemming for Spirit rather than Int, especially with how low his is, depending on where he feels comfortable it could be anywhere from 8-10k unbuffed that he would be looking at before he can realistically sustain throughout an entire fight.
• Along the same lines, hes using the Brewfest egg, which is a very poor trinket for Holydins as it has almost no regen possibilities and the haste is something we really don't want, specially not on procs, I would recommend he either try and get the Valor trinket or do some runs for the two healer trinkets from heroics
• Overall he should really do a full reforge and stack as much Spirit and Mastery as he can to help with the mana issues, personally I'm sitting on 9.5k spirit and just about able to heal 10 man content comfortably enough to start thinking of other options, once he can show he's at least competitive with the other healers and his mana lasts most of the fight, he can consider thinking about socket bonuses or even changing to haste (although that probably won't be viable till at least the next content patch or very high end of this patch)

And as for his Talents

• With regards to his spec, Selfless healer is the only choice on that tier that can be considered bad for a healer, Sacred Shield is a good choice for 10 mans but Eternal Flame tends to be the superior raiding choice right now, once you understand how it works with all our other abilities and other healers.
• He should also try swapping from Holy Prism to Light's Hammer, as that can provide a huge buffer to mana and healing done, requiring less GCDs, being free and being a more effective AoE heal (which we severely lack, at least in the fire and forget sense)

Once hes looked at the above changes and tried to change things around, he should see that his healing done changes to something like
Mastery, Illuminated Healing
Beacon of Light
Eternal Flame
Holy Radiance
Holy Shock
Holy Light
Divine Light

With various changes depending on the fight, and obviously very much depending on the fight, Light's Hammer will either be near the 4th spot or way down the bottom, specially while you're getting used to it

Once hes made the above changes he should be able to keep up with the other healers and potentially give them a good stomping depending on how good they are in comparison

And with regards to some of the above mentioned posts, Unbreakable spirit is the better of the 3 talents, as there's not a huge amount of places to use Hands in PvE currently, with the exception of Sacrifice, but with how weak our self healing is its not quite as good as it once was (imo) and he could also take advantage of that talent by using Glyph of Divinity to help with any mana issues

Hopefully this can help him improve and help you down some more bosses

[Deleted]

In my current experience, even though Holy Prism would technically be better for the other two on spread out fights, the majority of the healing it does is wasted on overhealing. Light's Hammer is just a far better alternative doing massive healing on fights like Feng. Also, he appears to only have used it once (?) on SG, which is just a waste.
He used a total of 33 HS on SG, where a fight that is 6:30 would have allowed him to cast 65, I find myself casting holy shock every now and then despite the fact that some of its use is lost on overhealing because the holy power gain is worth it. Same goes for his HS usage on Feng.
He should reforge all of his gear that isn't giving him Spi/Mas. It could be argued that haste gives more output (and utility) than mastery, but it also depletes your mana faster, and at current regen levels it isn't worth it. He should also switch those int gems. Stacking int is no longer viable on pretty much any fight but Garajal because of not having to worry about mana.
In terms of glyphs it comes down to preference. He should, however get rid of GoLoD, he should definately get GoDiv instead for the extra 10% mana from LoH, speaking of LoH, he appears to not be using it either. GoDP is, to me, not worth it, because it makes you completely locked down for 5 seconds instead of debuffed for 9. I make sure to pop DP at times when healing isn't intense, and 90% of the time spend those 9 seconds meleeing the boss for extra mana gain.
He also seems to be casting a very small amount of HL, I barely even use DL for the normal fights, looking at last night I used it once for SG and three times for Feng, chaincasting HL while weaving HS definately does the job unless there is an emergency.
In terms not regarding his healing, I see he died twice on the feng fight, but only used Divine Protection once, something that could have helped him survive. I also do not know if he has mana issues or not, but he seems to only have used DP twice for both fights, considering they are 6/8 minute fights he should have at least used it 3 times.

[Hawk44]

I have raided holy paladin for 3 weeks now in MoP. My spirit for those 3 weeks was broken down roughly to: ~5200 week 1, ~6400 week 2, ~ 7100 week 3. I cannot stress enough what a world of difference I felt healing from week to week. That first week, I was questioning my ability to heal in MoP. An 8 minute guardian fight and I was oom for probably 6 1/2 mins of it. Seeing his spirit where it is, I sympathize with him. As others have said, he needs to regem and reforge. Gem for spirit, reforge any non spirit gear to spirit. Then reforge for mastery.

[Lucyrotten]

So... a couple things in addition to what has been noted above:

1) He's not using the benefit from Selfless Healer by using the free FoL *but* he's Judging a LOT. Like WAY more than he should unless it's specifically to build stacks for the FoL but that's not happening. There's literally no reason to cast the spell right now. I judge approximately never at this point.

2) He's not using his CDs at all. On a 6 minute fight he should be using Avenging Wrath and Divine Favor at least twice. On a 9 minute fight he's got time to use it 3 times.

3) Holy Shock usage seems low. I sort of use 8 per minute as a gauge to see where I should be for a fight. So 52 on Stone Guard (he used it 33) and 72 on Feng (he used it 45). This is our primary Holy Power generator and what our entire spec is tuned around. If he's not generating HP, he's not spending HP which means he's losing effectiveness from Divine Purpose which procs from using HP spenders and as you can see he only got 4 procs on Stone Guard and 2 on Feng. I just checked my logs from tonight and I was sorta bad in a couple different ways but still saw a lot more Divine Purpose procs so I'm wondering if he's having some trouble spending HP effectively.

4) Engineering tinkers. I wouldn't really put Engineering at the top of my list for awesome healing professions as I would rather have static bonuses that give me spirit than an on use like the Synapse Springs that only supply intellect but I know a lot of healers have engy and do fine so chalk that up to personal preference but... for it to be even marginally useful you actually have to tinker the gloves and then use it which he hasn't done.

In general what I see is sort of an overall laziness toward his character. There a plenty of upgrades for the crappy pieces he has in heroics. There are crafted pieces that are quite good for chest and gloves but I understand that can be costly. He's not reforging well. He's not enchanting his gear for raiding. I know his pants are crappy (see above lazy to not farm better) but he didn't even throw a cheap leg enchant on them. He's doesn't really seem like he's trying to do the best he can with the gear he has which is indicative of a lack of effort. I can pretty much guarantee he's put the same level of effort into researching his class as he has into his gear. Point him as some guides and see if you can get him back in line. Encourage him to ask questions or look at logs to see what other pallies or doing.

I can't see in the logs if he's eating and flasking but he should be and it should be spirit food and a spirit flask.

For the super picky finisher the only cooking specializations he hasn't learned are Steamer and Grill which would benefit him the most by giving him Spirit or Strength for his ret set.

[Kurzior]

Gear - Not much I can see just by looking at stats but if you're gearing for Int=Spirit>Mastery>Haste/Crit, then you should be ok there. Your spirit looks kinda low. If possible, try to farm up the heroic dungeon items that have spirit as a baseline stat rather than reforging it. Nearly every gear slot has 2 options in heroics, 1 with spirit and 1 without. There are some exceptions, but doing that you should be able to get near 7k spirit without increasing your item level. You may be able to get there just by reforging crit>spirit, but I can't be sure without seeing your gear setup. Also, you'll want to replace your meta gem with a Revitalizing meta rather than your Ember meta. The mana increase isn't as good as it used to be because it doesn't scale with intellect. The spirit from the Revitalizing meta gives much higher Mp5.

Glyphs - consider swapping out of glyph of Light of Dawn in favor of Divinity. Realistically, LoD isn't a healing increase unless you can't reliably hit 6 targets, and for most of the fights in MSV, you can usually do that. 6 target LoD does 100% of its healing to 6 players, lets say 600 healing. Glyphed, it does 125% of its healing to 4 players, for this example, thats only 500 healing. Even if you only hit 5 targets with the unglyphed spell, that's still the same as with the glyph. On the other side, you have Divinity, which gives you 10% of your mana back every fight. In your case, you're spec'd for Unbreakable spirit as well, meaning you could actually get 20% of your mana back on a longer fight, and that's far more valuable to my mind than having a slightly more efficient LoD, which is a mana free spell to begin with.

Talents - I recommend dropping Selfless Healer for Eternal Flame. I've tried all three tier 3 talents and EF wins hands-down on most fights. The possible exception is Stone Guard where there should be more tank damage than raid damage in most cases (maybe not if you have the Jade dog up). More importantly, it looks like you aren't using your Selfless Healer procs at all anyway, and if that's the case, its not a talent that works well with your playstyle, either because you don't have the time to Judge on cd, or because you're spending more time healing the raid than single-targets. Even in that case, if you really want to use SH, at least burn them on your beacon target for some free holy power.

I also recommend picking up Light's Hammer instead of Holy Prism. Again, I've tried both and baring cases where everyone's spread out for parts of the fight, Light's Hammer wins. Holy Prism is not a smart heal, so it will often pick pets as targets, (imp swarms, hunter pets, army of the dead, blood worms, etc.) meaning it's rarely giving you your mana's worth by healing priority targets. I see in the 2 logs that HP overhealed for 54% and 68%. I have to assume you aren't using it when people are all topped off, so the only conclusion can be that it's just not working the way you might like. LH is a straight ground effect heal, so it will hit pets, but that doesn't diminish healing to your raid, making it the better choice in most scenarios.

Lastly, I'd consider Holy Avenger over Divine Purpose. This one is really more personal preference because I can't definitively say HA is better, but I like the control it provides over the somewhat erratic Divine Purpose. Also keep in mind that DP has a reduced proc chance if you cast a spell with fewer than 3 HP. I'm doing a good amount of EF blanketing with only 1 holy power, meaning its proc rate is going to be worse for me. HA gives me a 4th big CD for healing that's on a fairly short cooldown. It lets me decide exactly when I want to burn a lot of holy power heals (which incidentally, allows me to heal extremely hard while staying almost mana neutral for 18 seconds).

Playstyle - It looks like you're depending pretty heavily on mana intensive heals. There's a lot of DL and holy radiance in both of those logs, especially for your gear level, which is probably why you feel like you're having mana problems. Some things you can do to help:
- Triage heal - don't heal targets that don't need it. If someone's at 85% health, let HoT's or incidental aoe healing handle it, or just drop a 1 HP eternal flame on them. Mana free and you won't overheal in most cases. Every heal you cast that isn't necessary is costing you mana in 2 ways. First, its mana to cast the spell, and its time you could be meleeing the boss to pick up some free mana from Seal of Insight.

- CS weaving - if you are able to be in melee range, use some crusader strikes on the boss. It has a much shorter cd than HS and costs slightly less mana, so you can almost double your HP generation, reducing the mana needed to heal a fight because you're getting more 'free' healing done. Also, CS ensures you get at least 1 melee swing on the boss for some free mana. I do this by macroing CS to the same hotkey as HS with a shift-key modifier. That's just a personal thing, but since our hotkeys seem to be overcrowded these days, it helps quite a bit.

- Divine Plea - use it early, use it often. On Feng, you only used DP twice in a 9 minute fight. You could have easily gotten a 3rd and probably 4th into that fight, provided you use the first one early enough.

- Aggressive CD useage - We have a lot of CD's this expansion. Divine Favor, Devotion Aura, Avenging Wrath, GoAK, Holy Avenger (if specced, and its very good if you do). Except for GoAK, they're not particularly long cd's, so why not use them. On a 9 minute fight like Feng, you can easily use each 1 at least 3 times. Using CD's is going to significantly reduce the mana you burn for a rough healing phase and will do the same for other healers who don't have to pull as much of the workload. The mentality for cd's always seems to be 'if I don't use them now, I'll have them when I really need them'. But when do you really need them? When the raid is near death? For that final burn phase that's 6 minutes away? If you use the cd early, you'll conserve mana for later in the fight, and with a fixed mana pool, that's nearly as important as having a cd up for a high damage phase. After all, you can't really use a cd like Divine Favor if you don't have the mana to support the spells.

[Karazee]

GoDP is, to me, not worth it, because it makes you completely locked down for 5 seconds instead of debuffed for 9. I make sure to pop DP at times when healing isn't intense, and 90% of the time spend those 9 seconds meleeing the boss for extra mana gain.

If you're meleeing for 9 seconds, then you're not healing and that means you're locking yourself down for 9 seconds instead of 5. Plus, if you're going to use Divine Plea "at times when healing isn't intense" then your healing partner can likely keep the raid up for 5 seconds by himself while you divine plea. Then you're only out of action for 5 seconds rather than 9.

[Tyllastus]

Another thing I noticed from these logs that I don't believe anyone has mentioned is that it appears he's using Divine Light mostly on non-beaconed targets, as you can tell from his holy power gained from Tower of Radiance. Divine Light is very expensive, especially combined with his low spirit, to be casting it on non-beaconed targets.

[Honnycorns]

Hello there Songweaver. I saw your post and decided to take a peek.

I looked at your friend logs, spect and gears and I can tell you there is something wrong in it.

First week of MoP I ran 10man but then we switched to 25man and I can assure you Holy pallies are currently the strongest healers on most fights so far.

First id like to talk about talents. First tier is good, passive mvm speed increase is always great.
Second tier is wrong. In raiding you will never need repentance. going for First of justice lets you stun the adds on most fights. always better. Maybe repentance could be used for WotE but usually the raid has enough CC for that fight.
Third tier is wrong again. Judgement became useless in cata, I never use it in pve and rarely in pvp. going for selfless healer is not a good idea. Eternal flame on the other hand is the right choice to make. Why is that? Eternal Flame procs on your beacon of light, it benefit from mastery, even the HoT, its stronger with the pvp 4set ( Ill get to that in a moment ) and the fourth tier talent makes it a raid cooldown stronger than tranquility.
Fourth tier is wrong, clemency is the way to go even on 10man. Lets you use Hands of Sacrifice twice, thats another tank cooldown. Same with BoP and Hands of salvation.
Fifth tier is wrong again. lets put out Sanctified wrath, during wings reduce Cd of holy shock by half. you end up spamming Holy shock every 3seconds, thats a bit lower than 10k mana every 3seconds, yea its good but you will oom very quickly. For divine purpose, procs are really unreliable and when I tried it I found it really hard to have a consistant income of holy power with that talent. Holy avenger, on the other hand, is another 2min CD. Everything that grants you Holy power gives you 3 instead and increase their effectiveness by 30% With the pvp 4set bonus ( which is still better than the pve gears ) You can for those 18 seconds put a Eternal flame on all your raid, which means, healing your raid for about 60% of their health, and granting them a sheild equal to a bit lower than 25% of their health over those 18seconds if used right. on top of that, your beacon will receive 50% of all that healing on top of the healing he just received. ( This statement wasnt tested, depends on your gears and the execution of the rotation. ) Making the cooldown stronger than tranquility and on a 2min CD. the mana cost of the operation is a bit high but hightly worth it, to make up for the mana cost you need a high amount of spirit.
Sixth tier isnt exactly wrong but not right either, Im unable to give informations about that one since I switched 25man but I belive Lights hammer will be better for some fights such as Elegon Fang and the stone guards.

4Set pvp bonus. That one is important, I found out sadly that the 4set pvp bonus was far stronger even if they are the blue pieces than a set of 489 epic pieces from vault. Why? Because it basicly makes eternal flame 33% more reliable. Also Allow the use of Holy avanger non stop healing rotation ( The tranquility thing ) on top of the 2set bonus ( 10% more healing on Holy shock ) it makes it very strong. You should tell your friend to do pvp and try to get the 483 pieces. they are stronger than whatever he can get in vault

The Holy Avanger rotation : Its simple, but only works with the 4set. Holy shock (3hp) Eternal flame (1hp) Crusader strike or holy radiance (4hp) Eternal flame (2hp) holy shock (5hp) eternal Flame (3hp) Eternal Flame (1hp) and repeat. That gives you a maximum healing output for a very low mana cost as well as leaving Hots on your party/raid.

Gears : Gears are quite easy to go with. You want the pvp 4set, not 5pieces but 4, Meta gem would be the Spirit+3% crit. Red slots are Int/Spirit, blue slots pure spirit, yellow spirit/mastery.

The stat priority would be Spirit>int>Mastery>haste>crit

You want to use the spirit flask not the intellect one for raiding.

the glyphs he should be using are illumination, protector of the innocents for 20% extra healing on eternal flame and Divine plea.

Thats it for that I can help with. Wish you good luck

[Theholypally]

I can tell you right now he needs to double his spirit at the very least. 5k is just way way low.

Spirit and mastery are the best stats right now. If you have spirit and mastery on an item leave it alone, spirit and haste: reforge haste to mastery. Spirit and crit: reforge crit to mastery. No spirit? Don't use the item because there is better.

[KeirAdish]

If you're meleeing for 9 seconds, then you're not healing and that means you're locking yourself down for 9 seconds instead of 5. Plus, if you're going to use Divine Plea "at times when healing isn't intense" then your healing partner can likely keep the raid up for 5 seconds by himself while you divine plea. Then you're only out of action for 5 seconds rather than 9.

Aye, but take stone guard for instance, there is always a chance that mid cast a puddle appears under you and you have to move, cancelling your cast and then making it so you have to start over drawing it out, without the glyph you can always pop your guardian and negate the harmful side effect of DP if you absolutely have to.

[hoserr]

I made account just for this post.

He used Holy Radiance 40 times. Tell him to cut that out. Holy light Holy light Holy Light, with a holy shock. Tell him to get Eternal Flame.

[Songweaver]

Thank you to everyone who took the time to reply with such well thought out responses. Its definitely given me a little more perspective on Holy Paladins and something constructive to give to our healer.

[silverhatred]

Lastly, I'd consider Holy Avenger over Divine Purpose. This one is really more personal preference because I can't definitively say HA is better, but I like the control it provides over the somewhat erratic Divine Purpose. Also keep in mind that DP has a reduced proc chance if you cast a spell with fewer than 3 HP. I'm doing a good amount of EF blanketing with only 1 holy power, meaning its proc rate is going to be worse for me. HA gives me a 4th big CD for healing that's on a fairly short cooldown. It lets me decide exactly when I want to burn a lot of holy power heals (which incidentally, allows me to heal extremely hard while staying almost mana neutral for 18 seconds).

For someone having trouble with hps I wouldn't recommend this. Holy Avenger is only barely comparable to divine purpose and when it is its based completely on smart usage of said cooldown which is something paladins with low hps.

I agree you need to be aggressive with your cds but only once he is comfortable with the cds he already has should he look into another one.