1. #1

    Semi new holy tips

    Hey guys, quick question(s).

    Haven't played holy a lot since warlords started, and my raid leader wants me to gear up heals so I can heal for the heroic raids...

    Here's my armory so far, yes I'm still using str ring and cloak cuz haven't had any hd drops
    http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...alyhoof/simple

    My question is, what the best way to deal with raid or in this case dungeon party burst dmg?

    Say like the 2nd boss in grim rail or last boss in ups?

    All I can think to do is pop wings and spam flash heal, HS, ef on 3 people...cuz seems like to me our aoe heals r rather lackluster

    Thanks guys

  2. #2
    High Overlord Reica's Avatar
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    Heya,

    Lucy made a nice Fix my heals! thread to post these kind of questions to.

    A few pointers I can give right here and now though;

    Dungeon healing (and especially Heroics) are terrible until you get a bit of gear. When I was your gear level I had to use cooldowns like AW on trashmobs to keep even keep the tank alive with spamhealing Flash and Shock. It does get better though!

    Get a better weapon for starters. The 620 PvP Mace already is a nice upgrade and easy to get. If you don't want to PvP you can farm 2 rare mobs that drop either Cudgel of the Son of Goramal or Gug'tol's Imp Imperator. You can kill these rares once every day for a chance at their loot. Mind you that they take a few hours to respawn and do not always drop their items.

    You can also buy a 2nd 'legendary' ring for 500 gold (or 1000 gold for the 680 one if you complete the quest for it) near Khadgar. Get the one with Spirit. Use your Apexis crystals to get the Spirit cape from the vendor in Ashran.

    As for healing:
    Use Holy Shock on cooldown. Try to use Holy Light instead of Flash.. though at your gear levels it's practically impossible to keep someone alive with Holy Light .
    Use Holy Prism on an enemy target to make it heal your group! Try and use it on cooldown when a few people have taken damage. It's one of your biggest healing spells and very good during group burst damage.
    Try to avoid using Holy Radiance. It sucks. You're better off healing single-target and letting your two beacons heal a second + third target.

    Talents:
    I prefer Clemency (2nd use of Hands) over Unbreakable Spirit (-50% cooldown on LoH and bubbles). Having two Hand of Sacrifices is amazing.

  3. #3
    Heyhey, sounds like you're having issues without output at lower gear levels. In terms of talents, you're already off to a good start by using the Merciful Wrath+Sanctified Wrath combo. Considering how far behind you are on gear, I'd advice learning the fights in and out to begin with and making a plan for when you pop wings. If you feel you need to pop wings before you had planned, then find out what the party is doing wrong (because they most likely are). Perhaps consider asking them to stand closer to the boss so that you can hit them with Holy Prism (it's like a 5 man Lay on Hands when you pop wings). Secondly, I'd advice switching to Beacon of Insight for 5 mans. It offers a 30% boost on most of your healing abilities without too much effort (I'll talk a bit more about that talent below). In terms of aoe healing, your best bet is beacon and holy prism really, as holy radiance does way too little for too much mana outside of wings. It gets better with more haste and crit though, trust me.

    Right now I'm gearing my priest as a healer through heroics, and I've met some of the same problems you've faced. In most cases where I really struggle, it's due to party members playing badly. If keeping them alive means sacrificing the tank, then just let them die. It's a waste of stress and mana.

    ----------------

    NOTE: this part is kinda optional where I'll talk a bit about the new and exciting level 100 talents for holy paladins. If you just wanted your question answered and nothing else, then ignore this. I just wanted to write it down, because I've had some thoughts about it for a while, and I noticed you were using dual beacons while running 5 mans.

    First off, let's examine Saved by The Light. Awful talent that's only useful in PvP or in LFR. It's a talent that gives you a small hps increase "passively". You can be smart about it and shift the beacon around to give multiple party members the absorb effect, but it's generally not worth it considering that you have to remove the beacon from the tank which triggers the 3 second cooldown before you can place it back on the tank. Don't touch this for PvE.

    Next up is Beacon of Insight, which I personally think is a massively underrated talent. Assuming you follow the beacon around when you're healing, it's close to a permanent 30% increase in healing. However, in practice, you won't be able to do this, especially when you're undergeared because the tank often requires more than just a casual flash of light now and then to stay alive. There is, however, a trick to "controlling" where the beacon goes if you use Eternal Flame as the Beacon of Insight has a preference towards jumping to the caster when no one is taking damage. The only way to trigger a jump away from the caster is if you heal it. If we assume a situation where the healer and the dpsers are at 100% health and will be for most of the encounter, and the only one taking damage is the tank (this scenario is very usual for 5mans/CMs), then if the holy paladin Eternal Flames himself the beacon will continuously jump back and forth between the healer and the tank. The beacon will instantly jump off the healer, due to EF ticking, meaning you have close to a permanent 30% hps increase for absolutely every heal cast on the tank. Again, this is if all party members, except for the tank, is at 100% hp.

    Beacon of Faith, or dual beacons, is the most flexible level 100 talent, and has the most potential. The easiest way to use this talent is to slap one on each of the tanks in a raid setting and never move them. Assuming both tanks continuously take damage throughout the fight, this will lead to a hps increase, and longevity in mana (heals cast on either tank will be refunded). The second and slightly more advanced way of using this beacon is to swap it around on party members as you heal them. This technique abuses the glyph of beacon of light to allow you to cast two spells in one global cooldown. This will lead to a hps loss IF and ONLY IF the offtank that previously had the beacon is taking damage, BUT will lead to a mps gain because you're spending less mana to heal group members. In a classic 5 man setting, where there's only one tank, you should always swap the second beacon around to save mana when you're healing other party members. The third and most advanced way to use the beacon is to swap the beacon around for a hps increase (different to the second method, which was a hps decrease, but mps increase). Assuming only the main tank is taking damage, the best way to utilize your beacon if you're not struggling with mana is to swap the beacon to a raid member that has taken damage, while casting a heal on a different raid member that has taken damage. This playstyle has a pretty high skill ceiling and potential, but I really wouldn't recommend it unless you have a lot of practice with "micro" intensive games or unless you're very comfortable with mouseover healing and using keybinds in general.

    This third playstyle requires you to keep perfect track of both beacons at the same time and assign one beacon to each tank as long as the fight involves tank swaps. You'll have to be extremely quick to place the beacon and heal the different raid member, as you need to keep up "continuous casting" for this to be worth it at all, as if the pauses between switching beacon and healing a different raid member is too long, then you'll encounter an hps loss and the entire point of the "playstyle" is wasted. I think it's important to be aware of this "third" trick and use it when appropriate, especially for mythic, considering how weak holy paladins are in the multiple target healing department. But for 5 mans, there should be no need at all to utilize this trick, especially when we have the amazing Beacon of Insight talent for smaller parties.

    Both the "second" and the "third" way of using dual beacons require the glyph that removes beacon from the global cooldown.

    I hope some of this helped. I feel like I rambled a bit.
    Last edited by Kanck; 2014-12-16 at 10:06 AM. Reason: added information

  4. #4
    Appreciate it guys did take some of ur tips, and only 200 points away from the pvp mace....

    Just for fun I tried the ss+ha build cuz I kept seeing it had better Burst healing than sw+ef


    Worked out horribly lol

  5. #5
    i duno :/ but holy seems op right now

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Kanck View Post
    First off, let's examine Saved by The Light. Awful talent that's only useful in PvP or in LFR. It's a talent that gives you a small hps increase "passively". You can be smart about it and shift the beacon around to give multiple party members the absorb effect, but it's generally not worth it considering that you have to remove the beacon from the tank which triggers the 3 second cooldown before you can place it back on the tank. Don't touch this for PvE.
    What?
    I run with SbtL all the time in 5mans (including CMs)...
    Especially when the tank and you are a bit undergeared, it helps alot in keeping him alive

  7. #7
    directed at post above

    The reason I think SbtL is bad is because it's awful in comparison to the other two talents. For 5 mans, CMs in particular, I always run with Beacon of Insight because it helps me stay ahead of the damage, instead of being a passive "oh shit i messed up" ability that doesn't help you too much in terms of catching up.

    I'll reiterate what I said about Beacon of Insight in my original post:

    The reason Beacon of Insight is good is because we can abuse the target-finding algorithm that the beacon uses to determine which target it jumps to. The "algorithm" looks something like:

    1. jump to party member with lowest health.
    2. if all (other, not same as before) members have equal health, jump to caster.

    The holy paladin can then "force" the beacon to jump where he wants to by topping off the 3 dpsers, which is easily done with holy prism or with infusion of light boosted holy lights. By putting an Eternal Flame on yourself, you'll instantly "trigger" the jumping condition making it jump back to the tank. Because the time it takes for the beacon to jump to the holy paladin, get triggered by eternal flame tics and jump back to the tank is just about the same as the cast time of a flash of light, you essentially get 30% increased healing on every heal cast on the tank, which is super useful in a CM type environment where tank damage is high, and party damage low.

    Another reason I think it's a waste to spend a talent point on SbtL is because holy paladins have crazy good cooldowns to mitigate damage such as Hand of Sacrifice and Aura Mastery (Hand of Purity if there's a mechanic to abuse it on). On top of that we have an insane output cooldown in Avenging Wrath which we can choose to utilize 100% towards the tank (compared to Tranq/Hymn). I don't think it's necessary ever to use SbtL UNLESS you are lazy about your playstyle. In terms of hps it just can't compete unless blizzard buffs the talent significantly. 30% shield on a 1 min CD is borderline useless compared to the other two talents.

    Note: Beacon of Insight is great in a 5 man/dungeon setup, but in raids where group damage is higher, Beacon of Faith pulls so far ahead. I'd never use BoI in a raid due to how good BoF is in terms of giving you control of mana and hps.
    Last edited by Kanck; 2014-12-19 at 05:44 PM. Reason: can't type "@" rofl

  8. #8
    I used SbtL alot in the early gear levels while gearing up in heroic dungeons / cm's. What I found was nice with it was the shield it gave, and it triggered alot in CM's due to heals being a bit to weak to keep up with tanks in all situations, especially where dps took abit to much dmg from fire on the ground etc.

    What I think needs to be mentioned is that it triggers on the Paladin aswell when your hp drops aswell. I dont think this is stated in the talent, and it was something i felt was awesome when the tank didnt pick up some adds / you had to take a bit more fire dmg from ground to get that last cast off.

    In short, this is a talent to save the tank and the healer

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