Beginner holy paladin asking about spread raid & intense AoE healing.

[Aleksej89]

Out of all the specs in WoW i have never seriously played a Holy Paladin.
I love the Prot and Retri paladin specs, but the Holy spec always seemed like a complete cripple when it comes to intense AoE healing on a spread raid.

My primary healer was always a Priest, and their AoE healing spells tend to have huge radius and are spam-able.
When i need serious spread AoE healing my Priest would spam Prayer of Healing and Circle of Healing, affecting anyone within 30+ yards.

I have read the guides on mmo-champ, icy-veins and noxxic about Holy Paladins and AoE healing, so i do have some basic knowledge about it.
However i can not see how would a Holy Paladin even remotely perform intense AoE healing when a raid has it's members spread widely apart.

While such a situation might not be all that common, it really matters to me that my character can perform it's role well under any situation.
However most paladin AoE healing spells seem to have a small radius of 10yards, with perhaps a few spells having a regular 30y radius (but a HPower cost or 20+ cooldown).
There are also the "bacons" that spread single target healing, but it is just no where near enough compared to the AoE damage the raid would be taking.

So how does a Holy paladin perform intense AoE healing on a widely spread party/raid - without having to rely on other healing classes to compensate?
Thank you for reading and replying.

[Miskat0nic]

We don't really differentiate between AoE healing and ST healing, we use the same spells, with the addition of Holy Prism, but that should pretty much be used on CD regardless. Holy Shock, Holy Light and Eternal Flame.

[Gravitor]

So how does a Holy paladin perform intense AoE healing on a widely spread party/raid - without having to rely on other healing classes to compensate?
Thank you for reading and replying.

What Miska said is essentially it. We simply don't have the healing kit available to do what you're asking. That's fine since that isn't our forte.

When the raid is very spread out and aoe healing is necessary focus on healing the lowest targets first so they aren't at risk of dying. After that just take your time healing people up as needed. If the amount of raid damage going out is that high it's likely your raid will just need to cd accordingly (tranq, hymn, tide, etc).

[Aleksej89]

I thank you both for replying

We simply don't have the healing kit available to do what you're asking. That's fine since that isn't our forte.

Honestly lacking the tools to perform intense spread AoE healing seems like a colossal weak point (to me, at least).

What do Holy Paladins get as compensation for having this really nasty drawback - something powerful that other healing classes lack?

[Miskat0nic]

We are still very strong, double beacons means that we can heal one target for 100% and get an additional 50%+50% on the beacon targets "for free" and our spot healing abilities are good; instead of a HoT that slowly will deal with the missing hp we can top them off fast without having to resort to expensive heals like Flash Heal/Regrowth/Healing Surge/etc.

[Deleted]

I've been wondering the same tbh, seems a little worrying that we have this much of a flaw.

[Methyltren]

We are still very strong, double beacons means that we can heal one target for 100% and get an additional 50%+50% on the beacon targets "for free" and our spot healing abilities are good; instead of a HoT that slowly will deal with the missing hp we can top them off fast without having to resort to expensive heals like Flash Heal/Regrowth/Healing Surge/etc.

To give you a visual of this instead of having to imagine it with the percentages given, here's an example:

I cast Holy Light on another healer or DPS (or any target in the raid that DOES NOT have a beacon on them). It hits for 30k. Since I am running double beacons, which almost 100% of the time are on both tanks, each tank gets 15k of that heal that I threw onto the other target I originally casted Holy Light on. This also means that I can heal anyone I please and ignore the tanks until they are taking a battering that the transfer heals cant handle.

There isn't any doubt that HPals are one of the weaker AoE healing classes, however if you're all stacked in a raid on a boss like Flamebender during firestorm, and I pop wings and start spamming Holy Radiance+Daybreak procs, I don't care what healing CD's you have, you aren't going to catch me in HPS unless you have the most OP healing spell in the game (revival).

So, the take away if HPals bring a lot of utility to a AoE healing fight if the raid can be stacked into a clump or multiple clusters. You do have a point that if it's a fight where people need to stay spread during AoE damage then we do not have the tools that other classes do, but I haven't ever ran into an issue where the AoE dmg was too intense to keep up with, even when running with double hpal in the raid, which is what a lot of world top guilds do.

[Chocoheals]

Honestly, if Hpals were capable of AOE raid healing, we would be the most OP healer in the game right now. Even lacking decent AOE healing, a HPal played well, will dominate on almost every encounter in BRF. All the monk revivals, tranqs, HTT, hymns; they don't matter when you are CONSTANTLY sniping heals from people.

IMHO I'm glad that we don't have the HR spam play style that we had in SOO. It sets us apart while giving us a definitive niche that most other healers can't even touch. You gotta weigh your pros and cons; if you are looking for good AOE raid healing, roll a shaman. If you are looking for a good balanced healer that can do what needs to be done on demand, roll a holy paladin and watch the numbers fly

[Verdell]

Personally, I find spread fights better for the pally toolkit versus other healers (aside from Disc).

Because most of our heals are targeted spells, we don't suffer from the spread and distance like other healers.

[Gravitor]

I thank you both for replying



Honestly lacking the tools to perform intense spread AoE healing seems like a colossal weak point (to me, at least).

What do Holy Paladins get as compensation for having this really nasty drawback - something powerful that other healing classes lack?

(I've only healed druid and pally om WoD, soo my experience is slightly biased.)
You're right for being able to heal 5 people at once while spread. It is a weak point that pretty much all the others healers are able to do better. Again, it just isn't our forte. However we excel in other ways that they don't.
The biggest advantage we have over other healers I would argue are double beacon. We are able to use holy power for free heals. Wog/EF heal for a very large amount. Add in our mastery and a single heal goes very far as Methyltren pointed out. We also have those op Hand spells. Sac and Bop are amazing to have (especially on fights like mythic gruul). Right, and we have wings on a 1.5min cd... <3<3 Our raid healing only falls behind when we're spread out. If we have 6+ people stacked holy radiance becomes viable and all of a sudden we're close to the other healers for aoe healing.

Keep in mind as healers we work as a whole to keep the whole raid alive. Let the resto druids slow down the aoe damage while we make sure the ones that dip too low are nuked up. That kind of diversity goes a long way imo.

[blackblade]

Honestly, if Hpals were capable of AOE raid healing, we would be the most OP healer in the game right now. Even lacking decent AOE healing, a HPal played well, will dominate on almost every encounter in BRF. All the monk revivals, tranqs, HTT, hymns; they don't matter when you are CONSTANTLY sniping heals from people.

IMHO I'm glad that we don't have the HR spam play style that we had in SOO. It sets us apart while giving us a definitive niche that most other healers can't even touch. You gotta weigh your pros and cons; if you are looking for good AOE raid healing, roll a shaman. If you are looking for a good balanced healer that can do what needs to be done on demand, roll a holy paladin and watch the numbers fly

The only time you really hold back your raid is if you've got like 3 or 4 pally heals in a 20 man group. which is non-ideal anyway (from a lot more angles like loot-distribution and token-distribution) and probably still viable pre-mythic, and perhaps across many mythic encounters.

[Chocoheals]

The only time you really hold back your raid is if you've got like 3 or 4 pally heals in a 20 man group. which is non-ideal anyway (from a lot more angles like loot-distribution and token-distribution) and probably still viable pre-mythic, and perhaps across many mythic encounters.

I disagree, you could have a full group of holy paladins and still do end content bosses. We have the capability of raid healing, our spot healing is one of the best in the game, and we passively heal tanks. Paladin healers are pretty much all around healers if you know how to use the talents available to you, and are able to implement them in the correct manner in order to maximize output.

[Kakera]

I disagree, you could have a full group of holy paladins and still do end content bosses. We have the capability of raid healing, our spot healing is one of the best in the game, and we passively heal tanks. Paladin healers are pretty much all around healers if you know how to use the talents available to you, and are able to implement them in the correct manner in order to maximize output.

Enjoy bringing 4 holy paladins to a fight where Devotion Aura is useless and/or movement is required. LOL

[Nawtqq]

You have to think of Paladin raid healing a little bit differently than you might think of it on your priest.

Paladins first of all have Beacon on both tanks, so they never sacrifice tank healing at the expense of raid healing, whereas every other healer has to make that choice. Most "raid healers" have a few ways of raid healing, either doing a bunch of spammable single single target spells (renew, rejuv, PW:S, to a lesser extent riptide), short radius/ground spells (healing rain, wild mushroom, sanctuary, rushing jade wind), and then true group healing spells (chain heal, prayer of healing, circle of healing, wild growth, uplift). These spells generally will either gradually heal people over time via HoT's (especially great for constant dmg intake and dots) or heal a large amount of people for a small-medium amount.

Then we have paladins. Yes, technically paladins have spells that fall into the raid healing categories, but in general they are too expensive and not mathematically good spells to use unless you have mana coming out of your ass and can afford to use them liberally. But instead, paladins typically just single target heal to top people off. Each heal you cast is healing the target for a bit more than a raid heal is healing each individual person, half of that 2 more people via beacon, costs much less mana, has no cooldown, and is most likely a faster cast time spell than the raid heal spells that dont have cooldowns or cost secondary resources. On top of that, every 20 seconds for higher bursts of raid dmg, you have Holy Prism, which actually heals for a LOT (~80k+ crits are pretty common in good gear) and heals 5 people. Technically speaking, Holy Prism is probably the most consistently powerful raid heal (a well prepped chain heal with a 2p proc I'm sure is much stronger), it just can't be used as often as spells like Circle of Healing.

So yes, most of paladin raid healing is just single target healing, but done much more efficiently than any other healer can do.

[Methyltren]

Here's some proof that Paladins are still viable raid healers. Here's a kill of mine from tonight on Mythic Org:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...&view=rankings

[Gevoth]

Here's some proof that Paladins are still viable raid healers. Here's a kill of mine from tonight on Mythic Org:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...&view=rankings

Nice ranking.