1. #1

    New Holy Paladin needs help

    Hi guys I’ve been healing m+ up to 17’s/18’s with a Holy Priest and Shaman. I’m effectively a casual trying to maximise opportunities to get in groups.

    Just dinged a Holy Paladin, popped some korthian armaments to get 170ilvl and have started with some heroics. To say the paladin play style is completely different to anything else I’ve played would be an understatement.

    For starters there’s positioning. I’m finding that watching my feet while also dealing with the usual healer issues of knowing teammate positions and their health status to be quite tricky. I guess this is just a matter of practice but any tips would be appreciated.

    Another is what happens when the group fails a mechanic and let’s say everyone is at low health. If I’m low on holy power I feel helpless like I don’t know where to begin triaging the group. I found I tend to switch Too quickly to FoL which does nothing and can’t bring myself to start doing damage to build holy power in order to WoG. Appreciate that I need to start being quicker to sac/bubble, knowing where beacons are so I can concentrate healing on one or two targets.

    Another question is BoP. What exactly does this immune? It says “physical and other harmful effects”. I know this covers necrotic but is there a list anywhere that shows where this is useful? I’ve used it a couple of times and people still died through it. What exactly are “other harmful effects”?

    As I said, I’m sure a lot of this is practice but if anyone out there knows the feeling of being lost with Holy P and then having a Eureka moment where you suddenly “got it”, would appreciate any tips.

  2. #2
    Hi welcome aboard ^^

    It definitely is different, hpal is by far the most DPS-like healer where if you aren't using every single GCD you're losing out on a lot.
    Quote Originally Posted by Mickb View Post
    For starters there’s positioning. I’m finding that watching my feet while also dealing with the usual healer issues of knowing teammate positions and their health status to be quite tricky. I guess this is just a matter of practice but any tips would be appreciated.
    I don't know what you are or aren't doing so I'll just list the most important things for getting used to it:
    -Frames in the centre so you don't have to move your cursor too far to turn with your mouse.
    -Mouseover macros so you aren't swapping between friendly and enemy targets or using an extra click to heal people.
    -Strafing, it lets you move while healing people on your frames. If you need to turn then use your mouse while dealing damage or between GCDs.

    You'll find a rhythm for it eventually.
    Quote Originally Posted by Mickb View Post
    Another is what happens when the group fails a mechanic and let’s say everyone is at low health. If I’m low on holy power I feel helpless like I don’t know where to begin triaging the group. I found I tend to switch Too quickly to FoL which does nothing and can’t bring myself to start doing damage to build holy power in order to WoG. Appreciate that I need to start being quicker to sac/bubble, knowing where beacons are so I can concentrate healing on one or two targets
    This comes down to a lot of experience, you're just incredibly weak without cooldowns. It's super important we use the tools we have to prevent the damage before it happens between our hammer/blind CC, sac/bubble/bop/freedom, aura mastery, but yeah if your group is on the much more uncoordinated side then it can be unavoidable. In that case it's knowing where your group is likely to struggle in the dungeons and having a plan for that.

    When you are in that moment, then it becomes about reducing the number of people you have to heal. Bubble if it'll prevent a lot more damage else use a health pot or healthstone if you have them, lay on hands someone, sac someone, bop someone, if your CC is ready that will be worth the GCD to stop casts and catch your breath. Remember that your most efficient healing is on a target without beacon, try to do that as much as possible without letting someone die.

    You're right that defaulting to FoL will make you fall behind, however it can be useful when you need the holy power from using FoL on a beacon in order to save someone right now and you have no other means of doing so. Your holy power is most of your healing so if you want to get out of a hole you need to trust that they will live until you can generate more. If you know that someone will die within one GCD before you can do any of that then don't be afraid to use light of the martyr but get back to generating as soon as death is more than one GCD away.

    Remember also that you can go up to 5 holy power so spending whenever you're at 3 or 4 will leave you much more starved than if you keep your holy shock/crusader strike/hammer of wrath cooldowns rolling and building to 5 before spending, unless they're in dire need of the heal of course. And this is kind of the most important thing along with always using your GCDs because the more efficiently you generate holy power, the less often you'll end up in these situations just because you'll be healing more before you can fall behind.
    Quote Originally Posted by Mickb View Post
    Another question is BoP. What exactly does this immune? It says “physical and other harmful effects”. I know this covers necrotic but is there a list anywhere that shows where this is useful? I’ve used it a couple of times and people still died through it. What exactly are “other harmful effects”?
    I don't know if there's a list. It covers all physical damage and clears any debuff classed as physical that does not ignore immunities. So it can be things like physical dots, a lot of stuns, some fears, all sorts. The classifications aren't always intuitive but you can check them on the wowhead page for the debuff next to where it says "School".

    I'm a little incoherent but I hope there was something helpful here.

  3. #3
    Yeah, H-Pal is very different. You often have to think several GCDs ahead based on your Holy Power generation/usage in addition to being in melee. Also, Paladins are very CD dependent, so you will often feel weak when you don't have any CDs up. It's definitely one of the harder healers to play in unpredictable/bad PuGs for that reason.

    Beacon of Virtue can be an absolute lifesaver for learning/pugging as Holy, for a variety of reasons.

    Which covenant are you? If you aren't already, I'd recommend Kyrian, especially for now. You may want to switch to Venth if you are actually pushing keys in a coordinated group, but Kyrian is really awesome since it gives you essentially a group LoH every minute (especially combined with Glimmer or Beacon of Virtue).

    Quote Originally Posted by Mickb View Post
    I’m sure a lot of this is practice but if anyone out there knows the feeling of being lost with Holy P and then having a Eureka moment where you suddenly “got it”, would appreciate any tips.
    I've been at it for a while, but (at least for me) it can still feel a bit uncomfortable compared to other healers- because of the drawbacks of switching over to Flash/Light of the Martyr in an emergency, you often have to be mentally calculating whether or not a group member will die in the time it takes you to get a couple more HoPo for WoG or for Holy Shock to come back (and hoping you aren't wrong).
    "We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
    -Louis Brandeis

  4. #4

  5. #5
    Thanks for all suggestions chaps, been reading for a few days and am getting more of a feel for it all.

    Another quick question if I'm Venthyr. When you Wings/Ashen, which comes first?

    I've done some testing myself and I notice the AH tooltip changes if I wings first (reflecting the Avenging Wrath damage/healing bonus), suggesting you should wings first.

    But have been watching some high keys on youtube etc and notice that people often AH first? I presume Ashens total damage isnt fixed at the time you cast it and wings boosts it if it is cast subseqently? (first tick aside)?

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Mickb View Post
    But have been watching some high keys on youtube etc and notice that people often AH first? I presume Ashens total damage isnt fixed at the time you cast it and wings boosts it if it is cast subseqently? (first tick aside)?
    Yeah exactly, and when/if wings ends during it then the ticks will go back down too. So using hallow before wings lets you get your hammer cooldown rolling or buff a better gcd than a single hallow tick at best, not to mention all the situations where you can precast hallow.

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