Flash of light viable in end game raiding??

[Wiseguy]

I have been giving this alot of thought lately, and eventhough im currently full out int geared with holy light healing, i cant help but think if i geared/specced differently i could be a move viable healer for alot of the fights where the holy light healing is a waste.

The kind of gearing im thinking about is basicly full out Spell power, while keeping haste of around 650 and 35% crit.
Having the jol glyph, holy shock one and ofc the flash of light one.
the spec i aimed towards was this one.

I loosely calculated with endgame gear you should tip about 3500 spellpower totaly unbuffed, in the toc hard mode loot.

That would make your flashes hit for over close to 6k. add in the different bonuses you get from talents glyhps raidbuffs etc i think we could see flashes upwards 7.3-400 and seeing flashes are something you can spam close to forever and it being a 1sec cast i feel it might be viable.

Would this be viable in a raiding perspective?
is there any paladin that plays with flash of light and holy shock as their main spells in end game raiding atm ?

[Kairu]

I currently use a SP geared Flash spam spec, and IMO it works fine. I don't do hardmodes on 25 or anything like that, but the Flash spam for normals does perfectly fine. When theres enough damage you can put out the same numbers as well, just with less overheal.

Though if you were to go for flash spam, you only need ~480 haste to hit your soft cap.

Basically, you won't be as good as a HL spam, but if you don't need a HL spam, flash is perfectly viable.

[thoukaia]

i seriously doubt you can reach 3500 spellpower even with full BiS. even then, you'd have to gem and enchant everything for spellpower, which means low mana pool, low regen, low everything. you'd also run oom very fast without the 8% crit from the ret tree, especially if they're as fast as 1 second cast.

[Kairu]

i seriously doubt you can reach 3500 spellpower even with full BiS. even then, you'd have to gem and enchant everything for spellpower, which means low mana pool, low regen, low everything. you'd also run oom very fast without the 8% crit from the ret tree, especially if they're as fast as 1 second cast.

Using holy shock on every cooldown, spamming flash, i rarely ever go oom, just due to the low mana-cost, 1s at 300 or 1.4s at 1100.

Even without the crit. Int trinkets still do awesome, I'm currently rocking Pandora's + Sif's remembrance, with flash spam, i NEVER run out of mana (unless I don't drink between boss fights ???)

[FiveDkp]

Using holy shock on every cooldown, spamming flash, i rarely ever go oom, just due to the low mana-cost, 1s at 300 or 1.4s at 1100.

Even without the crit. Int trinkets still do awesome, I'm currently rocking Pandora's + Sif's remembrance, with flash spam, i NEVER run out of mana (unless I don't drink between boss fights ???)

The disturbing thing is recommending a spec that doesn't work for 25 man hard modes.
Of course you wont oom spamming FoL and HS. Problem is that how much does your FoL heal for and Do you have a WorldOfLogs (your guild) so i can inspect it.
FoL seems to be very unimpressive without tier 9.5 4 set and with the TBTL nerf i doubt that a HL spec would lose to a FoL spec.
FoL isn't viable in end game hard mode raiding at all. 10 mans maybe but Algalon 10 man and most 25 man hard modes.
Atm for the normal modes, HL spec would be king.
FoL spec is hard to pull off. Also i dont know how you can pull 3.5k in full BIS Gear unless you've been including 25 man hard modes.
a 6k Fol. Won't save your tank from 18k back to back hits from Algalon 25 man and Thorim + Steelbreaker hard modes.

[Caean]

I guess if it is working for you that's fine, but some of the stuff I have healed lately like 25 man ToC I cannot imagine doing it with purely flash spam.

I certainly wouldn't want to do it in 10 man hard modes which is where my experience is the greatest.

Honestly if a raid is counting on the paladin to heal on the move, then it's time to add a better resto druid and/or mix things up in terms of why you are moving so much.

The only fight I can think of where you have to move all the time is Hodir, and that's fairly trivial to heal without resorting to a completely new spec/gem style.

Even on stuff like running out of overloads on IC hard mode, I find a holy shock, instant flash to be fine until I can get planted again.

[Eire]

I wouldn't rely on spam of any one spell any more. It was far too easy to spam HoL for a while with the gear itemization and talents. Today, with the changes in talents and some of the spells, a balanced approach seems optimal. Could you manage in non heroic encounters with flash of light spamming, pretty sure that you could. I don't know that I would want to do so. Hell, paladin healing has been boring enough, take the variety and minor addition of complexity and run with it.

[Xs]

Take Aura Mastery in that build then just switch between Flash gear and HL gear

For Harder fights keep up Flash HoT and HL spam, easier fights can work with just Flash, but its very hard to make a viable spam just 1 spell spec now

[Prophyt]

Check my gear and spec FoL is totally viable in HM encounters. I've been doing it since the release of 3.2 and I haven't ran into any issues yet. Of course you still have to throw out some HL and shocks at the right times(i.e. Frozen blows, Plasma blast, lol falcon punch ect.). Gearing and specing for FoL is viable for those of you who say it isn't have you even tried it yet? Or do you just read elitistjerks and assume you know your class from other people posting about it?

[Wiseguy]

The 3.5k spell power number, i found out by looking over the Togc loot, as in the hard mode 258 loot, going for all out spell power trinkets enchants gems etc, just to see how high it would get..not an achivable goal that most would get though

But yeh, i guess the holy light spam is the thing atm.. ill have to hold my dreams thight a few patches more and see if things change

[Firecrest]

I have been giving this alot of thought lately, and eventhough im currently full out int geared with holy light healing, i cant help but think if i geared/specced differently i could be a move viable healer for alot of the fights where the holy light healing is a waste.

I think the biggest flaw in your thinking started here. The only times healing is ever a waste is if you put it on the wrong target or end up not being able to sustain yourself through a fight. A new spec or spell won't fix anything if you're healing the wrong target and HL is completely sustainable. So long as it continues to be so, bigger is still better.

[Caean]

Check my gear and spec FoL is totally viable in HM encounters. I've been doing it since the release of 3.2 and I haven't ran into any issues yet. Of course you still have to throw out some HL and shocks at the right times(i.e. Frozen blows, Plasma blast, lol falcon punch ect.). Gearing and specing for FoL is viable for those of you who say it isn't have you even tried it yet? Or do you just read elitistjerks and assume you know your class from other people posting about it?

I'm honestly not trying to be antagonistic, but I am not sure what you are calling gearing and spec'ing for FoL.

I don't know what about your gear would change if you were going to emphasize holy light more, and your spec is what lots of people use regardless of how their heal style is.

Mostly what I see is that you're gemming for every socket bonus.

You seem more like you're trying to balance sp/mp5/int rather than maximizing sp for flash of light.

[Firecrest]

The slack for people who say things like "I MT heal with FoL and it works just fine!" is almost always being picked up by other healers. Having to assign two tank healers when one is enough, bringing 5 healers when 4 will do or having other healers feel like they need to put a heal on your assignment is a disservice to your raid.