First time Holy Paladin with some questions

[Johnx014]

I'm building up a holy set on my paladin for some arenas and bgs. This is my first time healing at all, and I'm pretty lost. Could anyone point me to a guide that would teach me about what heals are appropriate at times and really all the basics because I have never healed once in my WoW life . Sorry if I'm posting in the wrong place.

[Blueobelisk]

Make a thread on the paladin section because I don't know enough to help you.

[announced]

wog and holy shock are your basic heals... beacon helps a lot too.. not much else to know just instant/quick heals will do u lots of good.

[WishFish]

Check out www.arenajunkies.com and then go to strategies or try to find a guide there. I'm pretty sure you'll find some very usefull stuff there.
Also, healing in bg/arena is totally different then pve healing, also talent tree. So don't look up pve guides

Edit: To save you a bit of time : http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/18...aladin-basics/ and http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/18...paladin-guide/

But I suggest to read the other guides as well. In pvp it's always good to know about the mechanics and "tricks" from the other classes.
Knowing what the enemy might do, can give you a big advantage

[Deleted]

WishFish's post should be enough to get you going but I'll move this to the paladin section regardless, pretty sure people will be more willing and capable of helping you there.

[hoonix]

another tip is: try the addon "healbot"

it makes healing alot easier IMO


for your question the posts before mine should help
but as for every class i can only tell you, that you get into it the longer you play
and it shouldnt take you too long to get into healing

[kosechi]

another tip is: try the addon "healbot"

don't take this as solid advice actually. healbot is a buggy piece of shit. use grid/clique or vuhdo if you insist on using mouseover casting in arena. ( bgs its less of an issue)

target macros are far superior for arena in my opinion.

[Phatfarm]

don't take this as solid advice actually. healbot is a buggy piece of shit. use grid/clique or vuhdo if you insist on using mouseover casting in arena. ( bgs its less of an issue)

target macros are far superior for arena in my opinion.

I completely agree, healbot also forces you to become a keyboard turner as your mouse is primarily hovering over nameplates on the party/ raid frames

Grid2 + Clique = win.

[Jenner]

Healing, especially in PvP, is a rewarding experience. More than any other role, it feels like you “push” the winning battle lines forward by keeping your teammates alive, or nail down that node/flag by allowing your team to whittle down the resistance or weather assaults. Healers in BG PvP are a lynchpin of success, and the better you do the more your team can feel it and the more satisfying it becomes.

But to answer your question, here are a few points and ideas concerning the role and how to heal efficiently.

How to Heal in General

Healing is about two things, mana efficiency and keeping you and your fellows alive. When you run out of mana, you or teammates start dying and your objectives are exposed to compromise. If you don’t use the proper heals, cooldowns, or ancillary abilities, you or your teammates start dying and bad things happen. There is a rhythm to healing that comes only with practice, where you can gauge the rapidly shifting health bars and know who is under attack from multiple sources, who is merely taking middling incoming damage or ignorable splash attacks.

That said, when you see a health bar dropping rapidly it’s time to switch to your big guns and make a snap decision on if you can keep your target up without a cooldown or if you need a boost, and if so, which cooldown to burn.

The healing game gets more intricate as you learn how other classes will deal with you, your cooldowns, and your teammates’ cooldowns. This is especially poignant in arenas.

How to Heal as Paladin in General

Single Target Heals

Holy Shock

This is your on-cooldown heal, it’s not very powerful, but cheap and more importantly gives you a holy power charge and sets up for an Infusion of Light proc if it crits. Use it every time it’s up, and if you’re solid on mana, use it even if it’s overhealing for the charge of Holy Power and a potential proc.

Word of Glory

This is a free heal, uses all your holy charges and heals for commensurately more per holy charge used. Try to save this for when you have three holy charges, but even a two charge Word of Glory is worth it if it’s going to keep your target alive.

Flash of Light

This will be a bread and butter healing spell for you, regardless of world, BG, or arena play. It’s quick, packs a punch, but is fairly expensive mana-wise. You’re not going to be able to spam this for long without going empty on the blue bar, but combined with your other abilities which give it some more lasting power, you’ll be using this often. So place it somewhere easy to hit.

Divine Light

This is a much more powerful heal than Flash of Light, but more expensive and longer to cast. There are only two reasons to cast this when your target needs more healing than you can give with Flash. 1.) You have a Surge of Light proc (making it much faster, like a supercharged Flash of Light) 2.) You are not at risk of getting interrupted/are being ignored and you get away with the longer cast time.

Holy Light

Our slow casting, mediocre, but highly efficient spell. You can cast Holy Light the entire Mayan greater calendar cycle and not go out of mana. As an additional bonus, heals from Holy Light transfer to a Beaconed target at 100%, so it’s two holy lights for the price of one. However, it’s easy to interrupt and packs a punch of lightly falling snow. If you can get away with using this without risk of interrupts and your teammates(s) incoming damage is slight, then by all means, abuse it.

AoE Heals

Holy Radiance

A narrow fast burning AoE heal you can cast on yourself or fellows. It has some uses in a packed clump of teammates in BG or Tol Barad fights, but is otherwise not as useful. It’s expensive and long to cast, unless you have the great and mighty Surge of Light proc. However, it does grant a charge of holy power just for casting it.

Dawn of Light

This is a cone you cast hitting everyone in front of you. It uses up your holy charges, like Word of Glory. In BGs or large scale world PvP, it can be useful but in 2s and 3s arena, it’s largely regarded as worthless. (I can’t attest to 5s, but can’t imagine it being useful there either), many PvP oriented LoSadins skip this talent for good reason.

Ancillary Spells and Abilities

Love your Beacon, Move your Beacon

This is key to both your efficiency and output. Cast Beacon on whoever is taking the most damage, whether yourself or another player. Basically, whoever is going to get your next barrage of Flash of Lights and Divine Light with Surge procs. Whenever you Flash or Divine light a Beaconed target you get a charge of Holy Power. Combine with this with Holy Shock and you’ve got 3-charge Word of Glories quickly and reliably for some amazing single target healing burst.
When Beacon is on another player, any heals you do to anyone else are transferred at 50% to the player with Beacon, give you a kind of healing-cleave. Mastering Beacon usage on the fly is one of those skills that separate the battlefield powerhouses from the rookies. It’s easy to forget Beacon in the flurry of PvP madness. Don’t. And don’t be afraid to move it.

Judgment

This is also easy to overlook but is just as key to efficiency and throughput. Judge and enemy target whenever you can, it has some range and there are talents that extend it if you want. What it does for you as a healer is amazing. It grants a considerable portion of spirit-based regen while in combat and gives you a 15% haste bonus for one minute. In PvP, a minute for buffs like those is an eternity, so make sure they are up. Always. Judge before you even start healing if you have to, to get into the habit.

Divine Protection

Anytime you become the target, if even just for a few seconds, pop Divine Shield for the 20% reduction in incoming damage. Once you get the hang of how other classes act around you, and you know when they are going to use cooldowns to ash-erize you, you can save it for then. The exception is when you want to use it for an escape mechanic. Should a melee target you, or you need to be Line of Sight yesterday, you can use Divine Shield to grant you a running speed buff. Typically, unless you’re in a situation you know no one can slow you down, it’s best to combine Divine Shield with Hand of Freedom, to generally secure your flee.

Divine Plea

This will grant you mana back rather quickly, but cripples your healing output while it’s running. Use then when things are relatively quiet or slow, but be ready to cancel it if the assault ramps up.

Hammer of Justice

This is a 6 second stun you can use at 20 yards. It’s great for locking down a healer when your team is about to score a kill or to protect your own teammates from rampaging enemy DPS. It’s best to use it on cooldown, unless you know what to look for in other classes and their own major cooldowns. Just be aware it is a spell, so things like Anti-Magic shell and grounding totem will negate it. Also, it shares diminishing returns with other stuns, so avoid using it on a target a rogue is currently on or right after a stun from another class including other paladins.
Hammer is a great crutch tool when an enemy player is harassing you. If you know their trinket is on cooldown, you can hammer them and buy yourself a few free casts. Even if their trinket is available, you can stun them and force them to choose to let you cast or break it and then become susceptible to your teams other CCs.

Dispel

Dispel is a great tool for removing a host of undesirable debuffs and damage over time effects. Use it often, use it quickly. Just be aware there are two classes that make a dispeller’s life miserable. The shadow priest DoT’s have a decent chance to send you running for a few seconds and the affliction warlock will cover the DoT’s with an unstable affliction that will silence and burn you a bit if you dispel it. Weigh those issues against the environment, if you can handle being silenced for a bit or running around in terror every other dispel isn’t a threat to your team, go for it, otherwise it’s safer to heal through the damage rather than dispel it.

Hands

Again, the mastery of using the Hands spells is a definitive difference between the Juggernautadin that keeps her melee mobile and deadly, saves the squishes from certain fatal bludgeoning and laughs in the face of burst and CC and the Wooladin that watches as her team is mowed down while quietly baahing.

Hand of Freedom

Freedom grants the target immunity to slow downs and roots. It’s usable often, so use it often and to great effect. You can keep that warrior on your team pounding their shaman by throwing her a freedom, or perhaps vis a vis, keep your priest alive by giving him the ability to run free and clear away from that pesky rogue.

Hand of Sacrifice

Transfers 30% of the damage your Hand of Sacrifice target takes to you, effectively mitigating burst and spreading the damage, making it much easier to handle their safety than otherwise. It’s not up as often as freedom, but it’s very powerful. If this skill is collecting dust on your bar, make it a point the next battle to use it every time it’s up. After it becomes a comfortable tool in your hand (pun intended: handception), then you can save it for crutch moments to better effect.

Hand of Protection

This puts a short lived bubble on your target that prevents and removes all physical ailments and damage but also prevents melee attacks. It’s good to keep casters alive against rogues, warriors, and hunters, but lacks against the elemental specs and damage dealers. Remember, if you use this to save your own melee or hunter against an onslaught they will be locked down from attacking during its duration.

Major Cooldowns

Aura Mastery

This is an extremely powerful cooldown that is not often understood by the Paladins that have it. It doubles the effectiveness of whatever aura you currently have active. Most often, it’s used in conjunction with concentration aura to prevent silences and interrupts for six seconds of delicious Flash/Shock/WoG spamming. Be aware that keen players will use stuns, fears, or other non-silence/interrupt mechanics to negate this buff.
While concentration aura is a favorite, both devotion and resistance can benefit from this in a large scale combat environment. Double the armor can mitigate a huge amount of physical damage from other players if your enemy is melee heavy, and if they are spell casting heavy, then resistance can cripple them for six seconds. In BG’s many DPS are lacking the spell penetration necessary to penetrate a resistance aura. However, in arenas assume they do and save Aura Mastery for a necessary free cast spam session.

Divine Favor

This will grant you 20% haste and 20% crit for a decent length. Not only do your spells cast much faster but also will crutch crit often. It’s one of your major cooldowns that often gets overlooked but if you need a major boost but don’t want to deploy the longer cooldown of the Guardian, use it. Combined with wings it’s a great for those fecal-matter-impacts-the-rotary-blade-cooler moments.

Avenging Wrath

A rather low cooldown which gives your heals more punch for the duration. Just be aware that “Wings” as it’s called, is one of the most prominent visual buffs in the game and smart players often go out of their way to lock you down during this buff.

Guardian of Kings

This is your major 5 minute buff. While Guardian is active, he’ll duplicate your healing spells for a bit. It’s powerful, so save it for when you need the most impact in the shortest time. Depending on the severity of the situation, don’t be afraid to combine Guardian with other cooldowns like Divine Favor or Avenging Wrath.

Divine Shield

This is the great iconic ability of paladins. You’re immune to everything for the full 8 seconds, giving you time to get those health bars back into safe ranges. Be aware of two things when using this, a priest or warrior can break your bubble early leaving you vulnerable and while you can LoS a warrior’s Shattering Throw, a smart priest can cast the AoE Mass Dispel in such a way to hit you around corners and pillars, so if possible lock down the priest with a Hammer to the face just before casting or get some really good distance between you and them.

The other thing to be aware of is you will almost inevitably become the target of choice after you bubble wears off. They know you can’t cheat them from a kill for another five minutes and many players will burn cooldowns to force you to use your bubble so they can gnaw your bones after.

Auras

Many paladins easily make the mistake of staying in crusader aura once the ground fight begins. Don’t fall into the trap, be aware and active in changing your auras, powerful buffs in their own right and impossible to dispel or remove by the enemy.

Devotion Aura

Devotion adds a significant amount of armor to everyone around you. This is great against enemy melee and hunters. Armor is an unsung hero of survival; it makes a difference, use it when appropriate.

Resistance Aura

Up everyone’s resistance to fire, frost, and shadow. When fighting an opposing spell caster with no spell penetration your resistance aura alone will negate a quarter or more of their damage straight off the top and increase flat out resists. This is common in BG’s and Tol Barad but not Arenas, where any spell caster or elemental damage dealer worth their salt will be spell penetration capped.

Concentration Aura

Reduces spell pushback by 70%, great when surrounded by friendly spell casters, mediocre when not. Be sure to switch to this before popping Aura Mastery if you need an uninterruptable spell casting period. There is no greater shame for a Holy Paladin then using Aura Mastery while having crusader aura active.

Retribution Aura

This is a worthless aura. It does insignificant damage back to attackers for melee attacks. I can only imagine using this if you were somehow assaulted by a dozen exceptionally poorly geared rogues and wanted some amusement.

Crusader Aura

Use this only when traveling from point A to B and at the start of a match or BG, always switch out before dismounting. Macro the switch out if you need to.

Healing in BGs/World PvP/Tol Barad

Start off every new battle with Seal of Light, Beacon on yourself, and the appropriate blessing. If there is a druid, you only need to use Might, but if no druid or other paladin is available, you’ll need to use Kings. Put yourself in Crusader Aura for the initial rush, but be sure to change your aura appropriately before entering the fray.

BGs and the like tend to be much more chaotic. You’re pitted against a vast arrange of skillsets and gear, against PvP titans and PvP kittens. Sometimes you get kittens with claws and titans with temporary brain damage. Health bars fly around wildly like some bizarre equalizer of mayhem.
This is where triage often becomes king. You have to answer questions on the fly such as “Is it worth it to burn my mana saving the 150 resil mage or let him die and keep myself in the green zone?” The situation will change your answer. Is he the only other guy helping you guard the flag? Is he throwing out CC’s and novas like a pro, blasting the flag cappers with ice lances or scorches, or is running up to melee and spamming pyroblast/frostfire bolt. Chances are if he’s the latter, saving him at your expense isn’t going to be optimal for the team.

You also need to decide if the situation is salvageable. If it’s you and aforementioned mage against six incoming well-played enemies, blowing cooldowns in a vain attempt to stave off a little personal defeat will be meaningless and worse, you won’t have those cooldowns when you rez to find four of teammates against another six, where they could have turned the tide of that battle.

BG’s are objective based. It doesn’t matter if you keep 10 people alive at farm in Arathi if the enemy four caps you to oblivion. The golden rule is do what it takes to achieve the objective. If that means you exorcism to death the weakly geared lone DK at lumber mill and it takes four minutes to do so, if it helps your team win, it’s worth doing. If leaving teammates to die at WW in Gilneas in a losing proposition so you can help the push at LM, then do it. Likewise, it doesn’t matter that it’s boring to sit your Flag Carrier in Twin Peaks for minutes at a time with no action, if you keep them alive long enough to cap it’s worth it.

Arenas

Where the brutal reality check of your skills will happen. Unlike the hectic feeling of BGs, arena hinges almost entirely on the execution of teamwork. Healing in arenas is hard, frustrating, and requires forethought and 110% focus. It has its own feel and rhythm. The team with the most control, teamwork, and best communication will win, often merciless and with fervor. When it’s your team, the feeling is great, like all the pieces of a well-greased machine coming together to award you that 12 rating. On the other end, it can reveal just how sloppy you play and shame you into doing better. A feeling I am well versed in.

Line of Sight is your friend. You should never be in the thick of things; you should romance and add to your harem every pillar in every match as necessary. You should only leave the safety of your pillars embrace to cast those quick instants and isolated Flashes. While you may have some keen survivability and defensive orientation, it all comes to nothing under a well-timed CC chain because you exposed yourself too long out in the open. With that in mind, if you have to come out for a prolonged session of Flash spamming, be prepared to pop Aura Mastery or another appropriate cooldown.

Never let health bars drop below half if you can help it. The golden rule of arenas is do whatever it takes to keep everyone alive, including yourself.

Afterword

Success in PvP is all about communication, and it’s two-way. Not only is it important to call out those incoming assaults, or when a flag is abandoned by the other team, it’s also critically important to act when someone else communicates. Be aware of the other healers and where they are, if someone calls inc to Stonehearth Bunker and no healer is there, it’s probably going to be a best bet that if you don’t hustle to them, you lose the bunker and possibly the entire match. Move and flow as a team and reap the rewards or be a lone maverick and end up in bitter disillusionment that every match you end up is somehow everyone’s fault for losing.
Speaking of mavericks, as a healer, more than any other role, you only shine with at least one other player in close proximity. A lone healer is merely an ignorable shiny pest, but a healer in tandem with multiple other roles is a bulldozer of righteous honor farming.

P.S.

The guides listed in previous post have advanced tactics and other great information, read them multiple times. As far as addons and macros and such. 2s arena is a great place to use macros that specifically target yourself or your teammate, but beyond that managing macros for more than a few targets becomes as much a challenge as the fight itself. Vuhdo is a tool I use for anything other than 2s, and it works well. Players may hem and haw on the virtues of keybinds vs. addons, or which addon is the best for what it does. The bottom line is your moving towards a zen where you can both react, plan, and assess the situation all at once. Tunnel visioning on health bars, regardless if you use a nameplates, Vuhdo, or the default GUI will gimp your ability. Not being able to move and cast is also a crippling habit to move away from. Use whatever tools you need to avoid these two pitfalls.

[Tehterokkar]

Wall of Text Crits for 9001

o.O...



I think this sums it up nicely

[Deleted]

Aura Mastery


Double the armor can mitigate a huge amount of physical damage

Fair play to putting in all that effort...however, Aura Mastery does not double your armor it doubles the EFFECT of Devotion Aura. So you (and your raid) get 8152 armor instead of 4076 for 6 seconds. Not bad at all but not massive like double your armor would be :P

I'm sure your information will be of great help to some new Holy Paladins

[deviancee]

don't take this as solid advice actually. healbot is a buggy piece of shit. use grid/clique or vuhdo if you insist on using mouseover casting in arena. ( bgs its less of an issue)

target macros are far superior for arena in my opinion.

wait what? Healbot has never bugged for me and i use it for 2 years, its also 15423412 times easier to setup (since its basically ready to go immediately after installing) and as good as grid + clique

I completely agree, healbot also forces you to become a keyboard turner as your mouse is primarily hovering over nameplates on the party/ raid frames

Grid2 + Clique = win.

I think that you forgot grid+clique does the same thing - you have to mouseover to heal

[ChromWolf]

Yeeeeah I don't know what the other posters who have said Healbot is buggy are on, I've never had a problem. Honestly, it's entirely preference: Think iPhone vs. Android, PC vs. Mac, what have you. If you have problems with healbot, just reload it with "/hb ri" out of combat. done.

And no, Healbot does not force you to become a keyboard turner. I use healbot and I'm still a solid mouse turner; you just drag your mouse just the slightest bit off the Healbot frame and then do your mouse turning. Bars to big for that? Make them smaller. Think you need Decursive? You don't, Healbot will track curses you can cleanse too. Why use 2 addons like Grid + Clique when you can use one that's pretty much ready right out of the box?

</Sales_pitch>

If anything, my advice would be to learn to heal *without* addons if you can, so that if your interface breaks mid-fight, or a content patch comes out and manages to break addons, you can still function, but in my opinion that advice stands for any healing assistance addon.