[Holy] Holy power ability usage questions.

[essem91]

Hey guys. So I've been kind of back and forth about my healing style lately. I'm part of a sem-hardcore 25m progression guild with 3/6 heroic MSV down. I'm top 5 holy pally on the server gear wise as well. A couple weeks ago we got rid of our other holy pally because his healing methods, despite looking awesome on the meters, were detrimental to the raid as a whole. He refused to use LoD at all, even on fights like heroic Feng where the smart heal saves lives, and simply EF blanketed at pretty much all times. Some might say that there's nothing wrong with that but we saw a dramatic change in our healing core performance with him gone. Because if this I've tried to shy away from that style.

Now my numbers are by no means bad but I feel like I should be pushing much higher than I currently am. I don't really care about my rankings as much as I care about doing what's necessary for a successful encounter but I am curious as to whether or not I'm performing as well as I should. I tend to radiance spam (I have 2pc) and holy shock on CD, alternating spending holy power on the tanks and LoD to raid heal. It obviously varies fight to fight, as I tend to EF spam the raid more on fights such as garalon with more predictable damage. My question is should I be EF spamming more?? When I look at top world of logs rankings, EF spam seems to be the way to go, but is that really what's best for the raid? or is it just good for pushing high numbers?

I posted this same thread on the official forums and the responses were encouraging but more opinions never hurt. What's everyone else's style like from fight to fight?

[nightfalls]

Just my opinion, EF is more long-term (HoT and beacon healing), while LoD is more burst-oriented, if you need group healing immediately.

Also depends on your comp, obviously LoD is a bad idea if you have disc blowing spirit shell at that moment.

[essem91]

Yea as much as I love the disc priest in my raid I can't wait for the spiritshell nerf so she can stop kicking my ass on fights with really predictable aoe xD

[Yzyz]

It all just depends. Some fights favor EF blanketing and some fights favor LoD. Predictable AoE damage makes EF shine due to our mastery always being used/a consistent HoT that all transfer to our beacon. Some fights have burst damage on a few targets at a time making LoD more viable. EF does happen to be a big meter pad as well.

This tier has a ton of big AoE damage abilities that usually persist throughout the fight. There are very few fights that makes it so LoD > EF. But that is just my opinion.

[Elovan]

It also depends on your healing comp as well, if you're raiding with a good number of resto druids and holy priests, they'll already have lots of hots rolling and you might be better off focusing less on EF.

[dennisdkramer]

Hey guys. So I've been kind of back and forth about my healing style lately. I'm part of a sem-hardcore 25m progression guild with 3/6 heroic MSV down. I'm top 5 holy pally on the server gear wise as well. A couple weeks ago we got rid of our other holy pally because his healing methods, despite looking awesome on the meters, were detrimental to the raid as a whole. He refused to use LoD at all, even on fights like heroic Feng where the smart heal saves lives, and simply EF blanketed at pretty much all times. Some might say that there's nothing wrong with that but we saw a dramatic change in our healing core performance with him gone. Because if this I've tried to shy away from that style.

Now my numbers are by no means bad but I feel like I should be pushing much higher than I currently am. I don't really care about my rankings as much as I care about doing what's necessary for a successful encounter but I am curious as to whether or not I'm performing as well as I should. I tend to radiance spam (I have 2pc) and holy shock on CD, alternating spending holy power on the tanks and LoD to raid heal. It obviously varies fight to fight, as I tend to EF spam the raid more on fights such as garalon with more predictable damage. My question is should I be EF spamming more?? When I look at top world of logs rankings, EF spam seems to be the way to go, but is that really what's best for the raid? or is it just good for pushing high numbers?

I posted this same thread on the official forums and the responses were encouraging but more opinions never hurt. What's everyone else's style like from fight to fight?

- 3/6H MSV in current gear is not going to TRULY test your healing performance, you can probably get far more benefit out of improving coordination between healers rather than trying to improve individually.
- If your old paladin was getting good HPS then he was probably doing things right, but you still made a good decision kicking him if he wasn't listening to guild leadership asking him to use a different method.
- Theres nothing wrong with normal healing (LoD etc) especially in a 25m its very viable
- EF spamming is only "good" when its healing is effective. For example when we swapped healers and I was 2 healing with an undergeared monk, I saw some abnormally high HPS numbers while I was carrying.
- When you get your 4 piece your healing should increase substantially

[nightfalls]

It also depends on your healing comp as well, if you're raiding with a good number of resto druids and holy priests, they'll already have lots of hots rolling and you might be better off focusing less on EF.

On the contrary, I'd say it's the reverse. Since they cover blanket AoE and spot hots, you can EF for more effective healing. Whoever isn't hotted will take more damage during the AoE, then you EF and they 1) get a hot, and 2) the direct heal will heal them. Same goes for holy priests - their CoH and PoH will cover a lot of the raid healing, so whoever isn't healed can be topped with EF. Especially disc priests will just snipe your LoD anyway.

Notably 1 fight I use LoD on would be Zor'lok (almost zero raid damage except for a few predictable heavy burst phases).

[Simulacrum]

Hey guys. So I've been kind of back and forth about my healing style lately. I'm part of a sem-hardcore 25m progression guild with 3/6 heroic MSV down. I'm top 5 holy pally on the server gear wise as well. A couple weeks ago we got rid of our other holy pally because his healing methods, despite looking awesome on the meters, were detrimental to the raid as a whole. He refused to use LoD at all, even on fights like heroic Feng where the smart heal saves lives, and simply EF blanketed at pretty much all times. Some might say that there's nothing wrong with that but we saw a dramatic change in our healing core performance with him gone. Because if this I've tried to shy away from that style.

Now my numbers are by no means bad but I feel like I should be pushing much higher than I currently am. I don't really care about my rankings as much as I care about doing what's necessary for a successful encounter but I am curious as to whether or not I'm performing as well as I should. I tend to radiance spam (I have 2pc) and holy shock on CD, alternating spending holy power on the tanks and LoD to raid heal. It obviously varies fight to fight, as I tend to EF spam the raid more on fights such as garalon with more predictable damage. My question is should I be EF spamming more?? When I look at top world of logs rankings, EF spam seems to be the way to go, but is that really what's best for the raid? or is it just good for pushing high numbers?

I posted this same thread on the official forums and the responses were encouraging but more opinions never hurt. What's everyone else's style like from fight to fight?

It's hard to believe that you saw "a dramatic change in [your] healing core preformance" as a result of his removal, if his only 'mistake' was casting EF with his HP instead of LoD.

EF is superior to LoD in almost every situation, other than maybe extreme burst damage on the raid with no warning at all (since EF is better over time, and warning gives you the ability to easily stack capped mastery shields with EF on several people in preparation for it, along with having hots rolling on them for when the damage hits), or situations where you desperately need to heal several people, for exactly the amount of healing that LoD heals them for, within 2-3 seconds. Otherwise EF is superior; for aoe, for single-target, for sustained damage, for burst damage. It's hard for me to imagine why you would want to cast LoD instead of EF on heroic feng 25m; EF is superior for absolutely everything on that fight.

Ideally you would never spent any HP on LoD at all.

- 3/6H MSV in current gear is not going to TRULY test your healing performance, you can probably get far more benefit out of improving coordination between healers rather than trying to improve individually.
- If your old paladin was getting good HPS then he was probably doing things right, but you still made a good decision kicking him if he wasn't listening to guild leadership asking him to use a different method.
- Theres nothing wrong with normal healing (LoD etc) especially in a 25m its very viable
- EF spamming is only "good" when its healing is effective. For example when we swapped healers and I was 2 healing with an undergeared monk, I saw some abnormally high HPS numbers while I was carrying.
- When you get your 4 piece your healing should increase substantially

I extremely strongly disagree. You don't listen to your guild leadership because they are your guild leadership; you listen to your guild leadership because they are right, because it's their 'job' to be right. If they're wrong, then you don't listen to them.

The only real exception to this is mid-raid, where you should listen to them just because mid-raid isn't the right place to get into a debate over minutia like wether to use LoD or EF; but if they make demands like that without supporting them with good reasons as to why they think it's superior (which I dubt they could come up with), then kicking him just for not listening to something like this is just an egotrip. I assume there were more reasons to do it.

Again, there is something "wrong" with healing with LoD instead of EF; it's worse. With the 4p pvp bonus (which anyone who cares about their preformance, and doesn't have the 4p pve set, should have) it is enormously superior to LoD, and even with the 4p pve bonus (or without any bonus at all, which again I would consider unacceptable levels of lack of interest in improving your character and preformance if you were in my guild, especially this many months into the expansion) it is superior.

[silverhatred]

Again, there is something "wrong" with healing with LoD instead of EF; it's worse. With the 4p pvp bonus (which anyone who cares about their preformance, and doesn't have the 4p pve set, should have) it is enormously superior to LoD, and even with the 4p pve bonus (or without any bonus at all, which again I would consider unacceptable levels of lack of interest in improving your character and preformance if you were in my guild, especially this many months into the expansion) it is superior.

Yea a single target healing spell should be competitive to a multitarget healing spell with the same cost, not vastly superior. The problem isn't eternal flame though, its LoD. I think the eternal flame talent should also create a 5second mini-hot with equivilant ticks on your LoD as well. This way the amount of extra ticks is the same (6x5secs = 1x30secs) regardless of spell used.

[Yzyz]

Yea a single target healing spell should be competitive to a multitarget healing spell with the same cost, not vastly superior. The problem isn't eternal flame though, its LoD. I think the eternal flame talent should also create a 5second mini-hot with equivilant ticks on your LoD as well. This way the amount of extra ticks is the same (6x5secs = 1x30secs) regardless of spell used.

I feel as if that would totally scrap using EF completely. Holy Pallys would feel an abolute need to spam HoPo generating abilities to keep HoTs on the entire raid for the length of a fight. You would also have to scrap the portion that transfers through beacon or nerf it to nothing. Although an awesome idea, I feel that may be OP.

[monikasun88]

Holy Pallys would feel an abolute need to spam HoPo generating abilities to keep HoTs on the entire raid for the length of a fight.

They are already doing this with EF. If the hot on LoD was smaller, then the preferential HoT would still be EF but the LoD would not be quite as weak as it is right now.

[Deleted]

What worries me is that you "got rid of" another player - if anything you should have just benched him for awhile and then done some healing comparisons yourselves.

The debate between LoD EF and how effective they are also depends upon what the fights are like and what the rest of the raid is doing. To remove a Holy Paladin in this situation was kinda unnecessary and just shows that your other guild members may be in the same situation - dont like his play style no worries we will get rid of him - instead of actually trying to figure out if his play style was actually better.

Anyway you should be showing us your WoL reports and then we can tell who was doing the correct thing. Sound like you were wathcing the healing/dps meters (skada/recount) too much rather than watching who was being kept alive. Making a post without giving evidence of play style makes it just into a discussion about the pro's and con's of EF/LoD.

Personally I use EF + LoD and anything i feel is worthy of using - even Flash of Light if i have to in order to keep a player alive as dead players dont contribute

Oh and the reason your numbers went up is because of the increased damage being taken by the raiders, the EF blanket your other pally was doing was adding Illuminated Healing bubbles on a lot of people and the preventative nature of his method was reducing the healing needed. A pally doing EF blanket allows the other healers to concentrate on healing those that really needed it, the Illuminated Healing and EF kinda pumps up the meters but at the same time it allows a very large margin of error for other healers to work within.

At the end of the day the other pally surely told you his reasons and tactics and you should have tried his method as well to see if it was an efficient use of mana and if that method also was good at keeping people alive.

I want to add more but I am sure eventually you will copy your other pallies tactics and test it for yourself ?

[silverhatred]

I feel as if that would totally scrap using EF completely. Holy Pallys would feel an abolute need to spam HoPo generating abilities to keep HoTs on the entire raid for the length of a fight. You would also have to scrap the portion that transfers through beacon or nerf it to nothing. Although an awesome idea, I feel that may be OP.

Its the exact same amount of hot duration per holy power. How is it op. And you already want to spam HoPo generating abilities to keep HoTs on the entire raid with EF, you can only wait so long until you have 5 hopo anyways and holy shock about to come off cd. The hots would still overwrite previous hots like it does EF. Its literally just balancing the two spells.

[monikasun88]

What worries me is that you "got rid of" another player - if anything you should have just benched him for awhile and then done some healing comparisons yourselves.

The debate between LoD EF and how effective they are also depends upon what the fights are like and what the rest of the raid is doing. To remove a Holy Paladin in this situation was kinda unnecessary and just shows that your other guild members may be in the same situation - dont like his play style no worries we will get rid of him - instead of actually trying to figure out if his play style was actually better.

Anyway you should be showing us your WoL reports and then we can tell who was doing the correct thing. Sound like you were wathcing the healing/dps meters (skada/recount) too much rather than watching who was being kept alive. Making a post without giving evidence of play style makes it just into a discussion about the pro's and con's of EF/LoD.

Personally I use EF + LoD and anything i feel is worthy of using - even Flash of Light if i have to in order to keep a player alive as dead players dont contribute

Oh and the reason your numbers went up is because of the increased damage being taken by the raiders, the EF blanket your other pally was doing was adding Illuminated Healing bubbles on a lot of people and the preventative nature of his method was reducing the healing needed. A pally doing EF blanket allows the other healers to concentrate on healing those that really needed it, the Illuminated Healing and EF kinda pumps up the meters but at the same time it allows a very large margin of error for other healers to work within.

At the end of the day the other pally surely told you his reasons and tactics and you should have tried his method as well to see if it was an efficient use of mana and if that method also was good at keeping people alive.

I want to add more but I am sure eventually you will copy your other pallies tactics and test it for yourself ?

It sounded more to me like he had talked to the paladin about changing his play style but it didn't work. Refusing to use LoD is not the problem I see but rather his guild mate's refusal to take a suggestion at all. Furthermore, I believe LoD in clumped situations such as the OP posted can be (arguably) better than eternal flame if the raid is taking AoE damage. Also if you're looking at healing meters, absorbs are factored into healing so it shouldn't matter how many paladins there are the healing should be the same.

[quellious]

So, as a paladin who is 9/16 Heroic (6/6 MSV and 3/6 HoF), I can tell you that I RARELY use LoD. EF just does more healing and is vastly more efficient. Instead of kicking your paladin, what you SHOULD have done is evaluate the weak points in the rest of your healing team. The only time on Feng when LoD is useful is during Arcane velocity, and that's if: A) The paladin didn't get good procs and couldn't shield everyone in time, and B) if the other healers slacked and people were about to die. Unless LoD is buffed and/or EF is nerfed, EF is the way to go for the current tier.

[Korosive]

@ Quellious, you have 4 set+you're in 10M(where EF really shines), LOD is amazing in 25m and EF blanketing becomes much less effective. My strategy with EF is to have it always up on tanks and when damage effects 5 targets or less in the raid. You should always use your free heals effectively.

[Reith]

It's hard to believe that you saw "a dramatic change in [your] healing core preformance" as a result of his removal, if his only 'mistake' was casting EF with his HP instead of LoD.

EF is superior to LoD in almost every situation, other than maybe extreme burst damage on the raid with no warning at all (since EF is better over time, and warning gives you the ability to easily stack capped mastery shields with EF on several people in preparation for it, along with having hots rolling on them for when the damage hits), or situations where you desperately need to heal several people, for exactly the amount of healing that LoD heals them for, within 2-3 seconds. Otherwise EF is superior; for aoe, for single-target, for sustained damage, for burst damage. It's hard for me to imagine why you would want to cast LoD instead of EF on heroic feng 25m; EF is superior for absolutely everything on that fight.

Ideally you would never spent any HP on LoD at all.

Nothing you say makes any sense unless you raid 10-man or raid with 2 holy priests or something weird like that.

[quellious]

@ Quellious, you have 4 set+you're in 10M(where EF really shines), LOD is amazing in 25m and EF blanketing becomes much less effective. My strategy with EF is to have it always up on tanks and when damage effects 5 targets or less in the raid. You should always use your free heals effectively.

Which is why I used the 4pc PvP set until I had the 4pc PvE. Granted, I am in a 10 man raid, but the number of targets for LoD doesn't change in 25, except in the probability that more people will be in range, which makes it more appealing. In fact, I would argue that EF blanketing is even more effective in 25 man, and World of Logs rankings only go to prove my point.

[Astraios]

Nothing you say makes any sense unless you raid 10-man or raid with 2 holy priests or something weird like that.

From my experience, most healers AoE heal with blanket spells. The fact that paladins can effectively AoE heal (throughput wise) with a single target SPOT HEAL is amazing. Basically, it's the best of both worlds: you get to intelligently pick who to heal (EF will save someone low on health, LoD isn't going to do anything for them, a 30k heal? RNG will still be very likely to kill them.) and keep up throughput wise with others. As well, using EF to raid heal means significantly stronger stability healing on the tank through the EF HoT+Beacon.

Aside from the benefits that EF brings over LoD (not even talking about the fact that it brings significant throughput increases), kicking someone for doing something you consider wrong, without doing research to back up your claims, seems rather single-minded or petty, and I hope your guild learns from the experience.

[silverhatred]

@ Quellious, you have 4 set+you're in 10M(where EF really shines), LOD is amazing in 25m and EF blanketing becomes much less effective. My strategy with EF is to have it always up on tanks and when damage effects 5 targets or less in the raid. You should always use your free heals effectively.

I would say EF is even better in 25m due to having more people to cast it on at any given time (with no overheal on blanket) as well as less chance you will overwrite your previous EF on someone who needs heals.