[Holy] WoD Alpha/Beta Info & Discussion

[Keiyra]

All you can hope to do is spot heal and beacon transfer to the tanks. You're just as well going SS in that scenario, dropping SS on the tank and two raid members and using LoD when you finally generate some HP.

In short, you can't AoE heal in that situation. You just have to single target heal and hope you keep on on throughput via beacons.

Aye, though even in Malkorak, there was a melee clump... you may weave single target spot heals on range with Holy Radiance on the melee (when appropriate). Its definitely not an ideal style of fight for pallys (or shaman, even monks to some degree) - long as its not every fight, shouldn't be too big of a concern, just something to watch out for and adjust.

[Dubalicious]

Could someone please try to explain how we are supposed to heal on say mythic difficulty on a fight where you are kinda spread, (think like malkorok HC)

BoL main tank, get as many EF's out as you can, constantly swap BoF to low targets and spam FoL on them.

[Rife]

Just my two cents:

The decrease in holy power generation has made the whole spec utterly unfun for me.

It feels like most of what I'm doing is irrelevant to the resource of the class and yet there are still pretty huge limitation to having the resource in the first place. Any kind of spread healing ignores HP generation. Tank healing ignores HP generation. Stacked healing generates HP but runs you OOM.

Seems counter intuitive to chose between Holy Light/FoL for maximum throughput or HR/HS for HP generation with less throughput to then cast EF/LoD for what is probably the same net healing split between the HR and EF/LoD as just spamming Holy Light.

Why does generating Holy Power force lower throughput? Seems like an ass backwards design.

Holy Paladins, you get two choices! Heal for 30k with Holy Light and ignore HP generation or heal for 15k HR, gain 1 HP and then spend HP for a 15k heal. CHOICE!!!

Anyone found some new enjoyment in the spec in beta that I might be missing?

[Bionix]

BoL main tank, get as many EF's out as you can, constantly swap BoF to low targets and spam FoL on them.

That's one way to go but wasn't EF severely nerfed?

I think pre 2/4 piece (not sure if 4 would be even worth it), you go haste/crit build with double beacon on the two tanks and SS. Spam cheap FoL on tanks, HS on CD, when you get IoL procs use fast HLs on the raid, keep SS up on 2-3 targets, spend all HP on LoD. Pre 2/4 pc go with HA for the burst healing where needed and after DP's overall throughput increase will make up for the loss of a throughput CD.

[paladative]

That's one way to go but wasn't EF severely nerfed?

I don't remember EF being nerfed recently. But for fights where SS can be effectively deployed, it will be very potent

[MCC]

I don't remember EF being nerfed recently. But for fights where SS can be effectively deployed, it will be very potent

It has been, early on. The HOT is mostly useless for any meaningful healing now; it simply keeps the IH buff from falling off a bit longer.

[Clrg]

I don't remember EF being nerfed recently. But for fights where SS can be effectively deployed, it will be very potent

offtopic: dude, your signature is fucking huge.

[mcbubble]

The amount of attention that healers are getting this beta is abysmal.

[Deleted]

The amount of attention that healers are getting this beta is abysmal.

Yes I agree with you. For the first time since TBC I am considering rerolling to a dps :'(
Yesterday I got a Beta invite (yey thank you Wowhead) and I tried holy priest. It was awful. Maybe because of my lack of addons or maybe because the tank wasn't moving much I had to spam mostly flash heal to keep him alive.

[Arrowset]

Yes I agree with you. For the first time since TBC I am considering rerolling to a dps :'(
Yesterday I got a Beta invite (yey thank you Wowhead) and I tried holy priest. It was awful. Maybe because of my lack of addons or maybe because the tank wasn't moving much I had to spam mostly flash heal to keep him alive.

I wouldn't judge healing based on beta dungeons- they scale your gear down really far to the level that someone who bought a boosted 90 and started questing would have. I'm a pretty experienced healer, and I've had plenty of wipes in dungeons. A lot of them have difficult mechanics, and many of them are designed around tanks using active mitigation and turning mobs and bosses from the rest of the group. If you get a tank who is just used to MoP heroics, which you can sleepwalk through, it won't be possible for you to heal the damage.

[PosPosPos]

I wouldn't judge healing based on beta dungeons- they scale your gear down really far to the level that someone who bought a boosted 90 and started questing would have. I'm a pretty experienced healer, and I've had plenty of wipes in dungeons. A lot of them have difficult mechanics, and many of them are designed around tanks using active mitigation and turning mobs and bosses from the rest of the group. If you get a tank who is just used to MoP heroics, which you can sleepwalk through, it won't be possible for you to heal the damage.

Not if you play holy priest or resto druid. I got multiple tanks who could only keep aggro on one add at a time, and the rest were just wailing on the group.

Was a breeze for my holy priest, but not holy pally.

[Juicyjonny]

It is most likely other healer also believe tank healing be the paladin job, so they leave it to you

What guilds are you apart of that simply just go "Oh, we have a paladin in the raid. He can heal the tank." ???????

The same goes for when there is AoE, the paladins don't simply go "Oh, we have a shaman in the raid, I won't bother AoE healing."

- - - Updated - - -

Not what my question was.How many classes actually put up decent tank healing,AoE healing and heal on the move altogether out of the 6? Paladins sure don't...but most others don't either.

You have the mindset of a vanilla player. There is no "TANK DESIGNATED HEALER" so stop trying to create that category.

[PosPosPos]

What guilds are you apart of that simply just go "Oh, we have a paladin in the raid. He can heal the tank." ???????

For fights that feature high and spikey tank damage, the guilds I have been in usually assign the paladin(s) to heal the tank. That doesn't mean the poor sods can only heal the tank and nothing else, but rather as long the tank doesn't die to anything that isn't to do with 1 shot, enrage or lack of active mitigations/cooldowns, we don't care what the paladins do, which means they are more than welcome, or rather expected to heal the raid.

The same goes for when there is AoE, the paladins don't simply go "Oh, we have a shaman in the raid, I won't bother AoE healing."

Pretty sure this is just hyperbole. You need to stop exaggerating.

You have the mindset of a vanilla player. There is no "TANK DESIGNATED HEALER" so stop trying to create that category.

This only goes as far as whether Blizzard decides there should be one or not. Not you.

[Perkunas]

You have the mindset of a vanilla player. There is no "TANK DESIGNATED HEALER" so stop trying to create that category.

Um, Vanilla? Try Vanilla, BC, and Wrath. The Paladin was even tank healing quite a bit up until DS when SPAM THE RADIANCE became standard. If you're going to sit here and tell me the Holy Paladin has been at it's most fun mechanically post-DS you're a mad man.

[Angelgabriel]

It's not that it was/is at it's zenith now. It's just that they have made changes to the other classes and to the raid encounters that has made constant moving and AOE damage an integral component to the encounter design. They have also upped the ability for other classes to tank heal, while giving tanks a lot more survivability and self-healing, even after the nerfs. Bottom line is, we just don't need tank healers anymore and any healer is going to be expected to put out a lot of AOE healing. So with that, why would you want to gimp a class by making them under-perform in the encounters the way they were designed? How the hell are we supposed to complete heroic dungeons, not to mention Challenge Modes?

[Jackielope]

Um, Vanilla? Try Vanilla, BC, and Wrath. The Paladin was even tank healing quite a bit up until DS when SPAM THE RADIANCE became standard. If you're going to sit here and tell me the Holy Paladin has been at it's most fun mechanically post-DS you're a mad man.

Thankfully in WotLK we got good spot healing support through Beacon, so fights where only one tank was taking damage at a time were great for us to toss some heals on single raid members taking damage.

But yeah, as-is holy's mechanics just plain suck to play even if the final numbers on certain things like tank healing might compete. Our AoE healing is still shit because our heals there are tied to HoPo either by generating it or using it. If we had some way to AoE heal without using HR, LoD, or Daybreak (or cooldowns like LH), then we'd likely be much better because we could have SOMETHING to cast without having to worry about HoPo baggage.

Huh, I'd say it's a design flaw in our resource system if something that fixes us was totally outside that system.

[btard]

I think that LoD is mechanically better than any similar cooldown aoe heals like WG or CoH. You cast WG every 10s and cant do anything about this as a druid.
We, on the other hand, have a lot of options: we may cast two LoDs in quick succession, we may cast more LoDs if we stack haste, we may cast more LoDs with t75 talents, we may cast even more LoDs if we cast some HRs, we may cast a powerful (or rather "powerful") single target heal instead of LoD.

But the numbers on LoD and WoG are very low, and we cast LoD every 15s on the average. It's a 6k heal every 15s. These numbers kill all the fun mechanics.

[Jackielope]

I think that LoD is mechanically better than any similar cooldown aoe heals like WG or CoH. You cast WG every 10s and cant do anything about this as a druid.
We, on the other hand, have a lot of options: we may cast two LoDs in quick succession, we may cast more LoDs if we stack haste, we may cast more LoDs with t75 talents, we may cast even more LoDs if we cast some HRs, we may cast a powerful (or rather "powerful") single target heal instead of LoD.

But the numbers on LoD and WoG are very low, and we cast LoD every 15s on the average. It's a 6k heal every 15s. These numbers kill all the fun mechanics.

LoD is gated by our HoPo generation though, or lack of it as far as WoD is turning out to be. If we were able to do a finisher every 8-10 seconds instead of every 15 then we'd be in better shape. And of course if it was back to instant cast that would help tremendously.

To always be able to use it we have to bank HoPo though and only use at 5 unless we needed to "double tap" so to speak. Getting the generation for that is quite annoying since if we assume the 1st HS is a 0, then the 5th HS is going to be 25-30 seconds in. Can we even work okay if it takes that long to do a finisher and then keep one kind of in the back pocket? I really don't think so.

[btard]

This is better than resto druid's case. If your raid is hit every 30s, you lose 66% of your WGs. We will simply cast LoDs with 5hp. In some extreme cases we may dump an extra hp throug WoG if we know that there will be no aoe during the next 15 seconds. LoD, however, has two problems that make it hard to balance.

First, t75 and 4pc greatly increase the amount of LoDs we cast. 6k is probably a solid number for a spell that you cast every other time with DP and 4pc. Second, LoD is coupled with our mana regen mechanics. Increasing LoD spd ratios would mean that we get more mana (in form of free LoD heals) through general rotation and through t75 and 4pc. Again 6k looks like a reasonable value for a free heal that is our form of mana regen (like mana tea, priest t45, omen of clarity or shaman crits). As you see blizzard can't simply increase LoD ratios to 12k-18k (to be in line with CoH and WG) without changing a lot of other stuff.

[Deleted]

This is better than resto druid's case. If your raid is hit every 30s, you lose 66% of your WGs. We will simply cast LoDs with 5hp. In some extreme cases we may dump an extra hp throug WoG if we know that there will be no aoe during the next 15 seconds. LoD, however, has two problems that make it hard to balance.

First, t75 and 4pc greatly increase the amount of LoDs we cast. 6k is probably a solid number for a spell that you cast every other time with DP and 4pc. Second, LoD is coupled with our mana regen mechanics. Increasing LoD spd ratios would mean that we get more mana (in form of free LoD heals) through general rotation and through t75 and 4pc. Again 6k looks like a reasonable value for a free heal that is our form of mana regen (like mana tea, priest t45, omen of clarity or shaman crits). As you see blizzard can't simply increase LoD ratios to 12k-18k (to be in line with CoH and WG) without changing a lot of other stuff.

I don't agree at all. None is going to have 4piece t17 for quite a while into WoD and I consider Divine Purpose+ 4P T17 the source of the problem and not the solution anyway.