Can you play a SH Holy Paladin without Macros?

[Orcbert]

Hi, I've only had my paladin for a few weeks now but the way I've been running my SH build is setting a boss to a focus and using macros to Judge them and Holy Prism them. The macros are set so that it switches target, judges, then goes back to my last target.

On fights with one central target up the whole time this works well (like Sha of Pride). This setup gets a little shaken up on fights like Galakras or Spoils as I need to constantly be switching targets.

Am I doing this oddly or is there a more efficient way to work a Holy Paladin? It seems without these macros I would be constantly target switching to the enemy, which I don't want to do as a healer.

[Brainslol]

As selfless healer you are going to want to be using mouseovers to heal and always be targeting an enemy. Unless you want to make a target of target macro that will hit what the tank is targeting. Though doing so will still lead to some problems such as the tank not targeting something or his target being out of your range.

[Shahad]

As selfless healer you are going to want to be using mouseovers to heal and always be targeting an enemy. Unless you want to make a target of target macro that will hit what the tank is targeting. Though doing so will still lead to some problems such as the tank not targeting something or his target being out of your range.

Not necessarily. The way I have it set up is that I heal like normal, but use a Judgement macro that attacks my hostile mouseover target, then attempts to cast on target of target if there isn't one.

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover, exists, harm] Judgment;[target=targettarget] Judgment

I have a similar one for Holy Prism. I like this set up better because I don't want to make mouseover macros for every spell and don't particularly like mouseover healing.

[Orcbert]

Not necessarily. The way I have it set up is that I heal like normal, but use a Judgement macro that attacks my hostile mouseover target, then attempts to cast on target of target if there isn't one.

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover, exists, harm] Judgment;[target=targettarget] Judgment

I have a similar one for Holy Prism. I like this set up better because I don't want to make mouseover macros for every spell and don't particularly like mouseover healing.

I never got into mouseover healing myself so I agree. I'll give this one a shot when I play next. It seems interesting.

[Deleted]

Or just install Vudoh, Healbot or Grid and it means you can have the enemy targeted constantly.

[Musta Kyy]

Healing without mouseover macros or clique/vuhdo/healbot is comparable to being a clicker. There will be downtime and delay at some point if you change target all the time by clicking.

[Clrg]

Healing without mouseover macros or clique/vuhdo/healbot is comparable to being a clicker. There will be downtime and delay at some point if you change target all the time by clicking.

Unless you have a ridiculous low APM then no.

[Shahad]

Clicking your target is the matter of 1/10th of a second, if that. Even suggesting that it's comparable to the downtime caused by clicking spells is ridiculous. What makes clicking spells so bad is the cursor movement, which click targeting doesn't have, and the fact it restricts mouse turning.

[Nihilan]

I know you specifically asked about methods of NOT having to use macros, but consider mouseover macros for your heals. Using those, you never have to actually select your player target, you just hover thier frame, press keybind, ???, profit. All the while never dropping your selected enemy target.

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover, exists, noharm][@target, exists, noharm] Divine Radiance; Divine Radiance

This macro will prioritize a living mouseover target (be it their frame or their actual in-game character), if there is no viable mouseover target to receive the heal, it will next try to cast it on your currently selected target. Failing that, it will cast on yourself.

This macro will work with any and every healing ability, cleanse, and hand spell with the exception Holy Prism and Holy Shock. For those two remove the 'noharm' qualifier from the macro and you can still use it on hostiles should you choose to do so. Though given your desired means of using holy prism, you may just want to leave it unmacro'd.

[Brainslol]

The only benefit to healing by targeting players is that you can heal more easily while spinning your camera.

[lakhesis]

Clicking your target is the matter of 1/10th of a second, if that. Even suggesting that it's comparable to the downtime caused by clicking spells is ridiculous. What makes clicking spells so bad is the cursor movement, which click targeting doesn't have, and the fact it restricts mouse turning.

It's one mouse movement & two button presses (select, then spell) rather than one mouse movement & one button press (just the spell). It's less efficient. Not much - certainly not comparable to the extra movement of clicking - but it's unquestionably less efficient. That's not the big negative tho imo - it's actually a raid awareness issue.

The real weakness imo is being unable to heal while targeting something else. The SH healing style really underlines it - being able to have an offensive target selected & still heal defensive targets is distinctly advantageous. You effectively get the ability to have two focus targets rather than one.

I can routinely spot which healers heal via clicking-to-select because they're more likely to miss cast-time boss abilities and mob health percentages/buffs/etc.

Whereas my raid's holy pally is always on the ball with boss cast-time abilities, because he's constantly got the boss targeted to SH heal off.

There are other ways to do it, they're not as bad as keybinds-vs-clicking, but imo none of them are quite as efficient. I'd recommend getting used to mouseover healing & having an enemy targeted.

[Shahad]

You would have a point if the efficiency of the lack of clicking made any difference. Truth of the matter is, the GCD and cast times restrict your reaction time by much more than the extra click. If you're used to click targeting, there is nothing to gain from switching to mouseover, you'll just spend some weeks playing worse than usual while you break certain habits for so little gain it's negligible. And if you got good boss/unit frames you really don't need to have the boss targeted at all times either, as you'll see the cast time anyway. That and/or boss mods, which take cast times into consideration.

[Tyranader]

I click to heal as Selfless healer and use this judgement macro.

#showtooltip Judgment
/targetenemy
/use [harm] Judgment
/targetlasttarget

That macro allows me to just hit judgement and it will judge the nearest enemy target. means i dont have to mouse over the target at all.

I also use Vuhdo and click to heal as I find that way more fluid than mouseovers.

[Shahad]

I was never a fan of macros that changed my target, even for an instant. What I liked about my macro is that the mouseover part would trigger unintentionally just from me moving my mouse around to turn or select a new target and as a failsafe it would use it on my target's target. But you macro works too.

[blackblade]

Unless you have a ridiculous low APM then no.

or doing nothing but instant cast spells.

Healing without Mouseover basically means that you change to your next heal target between casts/gcds. Not a noticeable difference.

One big advantage to mouseover macros are for cases like fistweaving-monks, who can tunnel the boss and not drop target (and therefore not stop auto-attacking) to send out their instant-heals. Guys who're passively healing (shamans, druids, etc.) are generally fine doing target-cast-target-cast-target-cast.

If glyph of battle healer healing was viable, then mouseover macros would be fantastic for pallies, because you could stand in melee, autoattacking, and get some decent bonus healing by hitting the boss w/autoattack for periods where you get to cast instant spells.

[Smitus]

Unless you have a ridiculous low APM then no.

Even if you have the highest APM in the world clicking and than healing is worse than mouseover/vudho/grid/clique/etc
Here is why:
You are casting holy radiance on a melee because you have nothing else to do. Cool.
All of a sudden your boomkin gets hit for 80% of his health! Oh no!!! Better lay on hands him asap!!
Let's compare two scenarios, one with mouseovers, one with click+heal.
Mouseover:
1. Move mouse over boomkins name
2. Hit lay on hands keybind (assuming LoH has a cancelcast macro'd in)

Click+heal:
1. Move mouse over boomkins name
2. Click on their frame
3. Hit lay on hands keybind

Basically any scenario where you have to react to something rather than being able to anticipate it (this is true for many many healing scenarios) it is faster to use a mouseover. They are the same exact time except mouseover's remove the click delay. So It is always faster to use mouseovers.

[Shahad]

You can clamor about how it's faster all you want, it never really matters. We're talking sub 100 ms here (and I'm being generous), upgrading your internet has a bigger effect than that. If someone's in the position to eat 80% of their health as damage WHILE already being in danger of dying due to high raid-wide incoming damage (why LoH them if they aren't in danger despite the 80% in damage?), it's their fault. The devs don't design fights around differences in reaction times like these.

[Smitus]

You can clamor about how it's faster all you want, it never really matters. We're talking sub 100 ms here (and I'm being generous), upgrading your internet has a bigger effect than that. If someone's in the position to eat 80% of their health as damage WHILE already being in danger of dying due to high raid-wide incoming damage (why LoH them if they aren't in danger despite the 80% in damage?), it's their fault. The devs don't design fights around differences in reaction times like these.

No offense, but you are dumb. There are many situations were 100ms, 50ms, or even 10ms makes a life or death, kill or wipe difference. If you don't think so you've probably never experienced any high end progression.

[Shahad]

I have experienced high end progression. You're just way overestimating the extra response time from click targetting. Fact of the matter is, if a kill in hinging on a single person's 20ms faster reaction time, execution of the fight was going poorly in the first place. Mouseover healing is not, and has never been, required for top-tier kills.

[Smitus]

I have experienced high end progression. You're just way overestimating the extra response time from click targetting. Fact of the matter is, if a kill in hinging on a single person's 20ms faster reaction time, execution of the fight was going poorly in the first place. Mouseover healing is not, and has never been, required for top-tier kills.

I mean you could also just only use one ring if you want to knowingly gimp yourself