One aspect of the game on which I am poor is healing. I just started healing on Kellanon and have a few questions - the last healer I ran was Judicanti as Holy until 49 so bear with me.
- I was running out of mana healing Heroic ToC last night. My gear is gemmed for spell power. I guess I should switch to some Intelligence, Crit and Haste, in that order?
- Judging Wisdom, a Holy Shock for the procs, and doing Divine Plea when couple with Divine Favor. What else do I need to do?
Ok... here ya go. For mana starved fights you can use wisdom and judge light. Feel free to get into melee range and actually chop with your sword. This will refill your mana.
Now, I damn near never use the big heal. I use flash of light every chance I get and flash heal. In the rare event I have to go to the big heal, it's very necessary to do those melee hits between. Having to go to divine plea means you're likely to wipe. Only do that between fights and in extreme emergencies.
A big advantage to being a paladin is how big your mana pool can get, and how Divine Plea and Replenishment take advantage of that. So you'll basically want to gem for intelligence, not because of the +sp, the +crit, but just for the straight up mana pool. Since regen got nerfed quite a bit for paladins, mp5 may now be the second most sought after stat on gear. I wouldn't gem for it, but sacrificing some crit or haste on gear will make up for any regen loss.
Divine Plea is highly underappreciated, but it's a great tool for managing mana when used correctly. The secret lies in being able to control how long the buff is up for, when to turn it off, and knowing the passage of time without losing your attention on the fight. An average paladin in ilvl 226 gear probably has around 28k-30k mana. One tick of Divine Plea regenerates almost 1500 mana. One tick only takes 3 seconds to happen, and you can do this once per minute. To only sacrifice 50% healing for 3 seconds is barely any tradeoff for what is in essence the ability to regenerate the same amount of mana as a potion over time. If you're only starting to use Divine Plea when you're almost out of mana, you're doing it wrong.
Thanks for the info.
I was dropping Divine Plea at the beginning where my hits were not as urgent. Unfortunately, even then my mana pool got hammered with all the damage the party was taking.
Now that I really started trying to heal, and not half in Retribution gear, need some pointers.
Just got out of VoA10, and while the Restoration Druid outgeared me by a significant amount (3066 vs 2549 on wow-heroes), I am unsure the meters should look like:
Recount - Healing Done for Toravon the Ice Watcher 16:46:17-16:48:45
[16:53:21][G] [Kellanon][Vitandus]: 1. Arevor 992633 (6777.0, 53.4%)
[16:53:21][G] [Kellanon][Vitandus]: 2. Kellanon 583220 (4706.0, 31.3%)
I also ran out of mana toward the end - blew Plea a few times and popped Divine Illumination.
I have not figured out on what to focus - spamming tons of Flashes or Holy Lights.
My details:
Holy Light: 36 cast, 324922 Healing, 55.7% of total (50% Crit, 10464 average crit, 7587 average normal)
Beacon of Light: 25 counts, 219536 Healing, 37.6 total (8781 average)
Holy Shock: 3 counts
Glyph of Holy LIght: 16 counts
Flash of Light: 1 - seemed the tanks were just taking way too much damage
The Tree of Life did:
Rejuvenation: 167 applications, 436910 healing, 44% of total
Wild Growth: 257 counts, 229171 healing, 23.1% of total
Those two alone crushed me. I realize I was tank healing in lieu of raid healing, but he still did 40% of healing on both tanks.
So... what am I doing wrong? I am going to change my glyphs and focus on Holy Light, I think. Other than that, ideas welcomed.
Oh, I am also going to replace my spellpower PVP trinket with a real one.
Yea, fights like the new boss in VoA10 tend to require quite a lot of Holy Light use. I would still recommend that you utilize Holy Shock a lot more though. It's a good way to pull someone up from the brink while buying yourself some decision-making time. The proc you get when it crits is also super sexy, regardless of whether you use it for an instant Flash or an improved Holy Light.
Also, don't limit yourself to boss healing unless you are specifically told by the raid leader to do so. As long as you keep Beacon up on the active tank 100% of the time, you can raid heal to your heart's content (as long as you're keeping an eye on the tank's health and using appropriate raid heals to fill them up - i.e., don't assume that raid healing with Flash is going to keep a Beaconed tank up. You'll often need to throw bigger heals out to the raid to be sufficient with your Beacon. This is where a lot of holy paly overheals come from, but it's still better than having to heal each person individually.)
Also, concerning mana, I blow Divine Plea _every_ cool down on boss fights that I know are going to require Holy Light spam. I use it in conjunction with wings as often as I can to relieve the healing penalty, but even if wings is down, slightly smaller heals for a few seconds periodically is better than hitting the bottom of your mana pool. The blood elf racial ability is also a good go-to cool down in tight mana situations, and be sure you're blowing Divine Illumination every single time it's available.
Edit: Also, you didn't mention whether or not you are keeping Sacred Shield up, but you want to make sure you have it up on somebody 100% of the time (usually the tank obviously). The HoT you can generate with it is a great help when applied to the tank, and simply having it up on somebody increases your chance to crit with FoL by an ample amount.
Dave is right about the Divine Plea. I use it every chance i get and then cancel it early if i need to get back on heals hard. And I too almost never use Holy Light. I can cast flash of light non stop forever, my mana replenishes faster than the cast, but i can only cast Holy light a total of about 25x before I go oom.
I don't do lots and lots of raiding, so I am not perfect in every fight, but the fights I do know, when I know a large amount of damage will be coming into the party or the tank, I will cast a holy light to proc light's grace. when the big damage comes in, 2 or 3 holy lights and holy shocks usually gets us caught back up. I hit divine plea and spam flash of light with some holy shocks again or divine plea and whack at the boss a few time to raise mana faster.
just my 2 cents....
Also, usually if you look at your meter, trees will almost always be at the top of the over healed. pallys can't afford to just keep throwing holy lights in hopes that it will land just as the tank looses health. when I cast a holy light and another healer beats me to the punch I cringe, cause it really is a big investment of both casting time and mana.
hope it helps.
I'll give my thoughts as well...I just looked and you have these glyphs currently: Holy Light, Beacon of Light, and Flash of Light. Have you thought of going with:
1st glyph - Holy Light
2nd glyph - Seal of Light or Seal of Wisdom (I'd suggest wisdom if you hare having mana issues)
3rd glyph - Pick one of: Holy Shock/Beacon/Divinity/Flash of Light
For the 3rd glyph slot, think about the following:
-FoL glyph will increase your mana efficiency and throughput by giving 5% more crit.
-Beacon glyph will increase the duration by 50%, effectively reducing the mana cost.
-Divinity will turn LoH into an emergency mana button by restoring more mana to you and your target (it will also restore double that mana if cast on yourself!).
-Holy Shock makes your instant heal a bit more reliable in fights that require a lot of movement by reducing the cooldown by 1 second. More of a PvP glyph really.
I agree with Sara on getting alot more use of Holy Shock. It's an amazing spell and it's great to weave it in between Holy light and Flash of light casts although you don't have to use it every cooldown.
Also a nice holy pally addon for tracking timers for Beacon, SS, FoL Hots, JotP is CLCBPT
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/clcbpt.aspx
(http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/clcbpt.aspx)