So earlier this year, I leveled a holy priest and enjoyed healing so much, I decided to take my main, a prot/ret pally and switch his retribution spec to holy. So I put together a holy set from things I'd gathered while running heroics/zuls in prot spec, respeced and started running normal 5-man dungeons in holy spec.
It's been a difficult transition to say the least, I easily outgear the content but I find myself getting into trouble more often than I thought I would. What I find is that keeping the tank up is easy peasy, it's the rest of the group I have trouble with some times, especially melle. With my priest I'd hit PoM and CoH and the group would be covered outside the occasional direct heal. With my pally, if I fall behind with the group it's really difficult catching back up with holy radiance and light of dawn.
I'm also finding it difficult to "remember" to use judgement for mana, when I remember to cast it by the time the cd is up I forget about it again. LOL..
There's tons of info on talents, abilities, stat prioritization. But I haven't really seen an explanation of "how" to properly play a holy pally. Not like I found for my holy priest anyhow.
I'm sorry I can't find anything for healing with a Paladin since 4.0 was released.
I would suggest not to worry about Judgement unless you're getting into a raid. Almost all 5 man encounters will give you time to drink between pulls. A notification from Tell Me When or Power Auras is commonly used as a reminder. After 4.3 we'll only need to Judge once per minute anyway.
Radiance and Light of Dawn are not for catching up. They are for topping people off or stabilizing the group while you cast Divine Light.
It sounds like you know most of the fights, so remember to use one of your several cooldowns to keep up with the damage: Avenging Wrath, Divine Favor, Guardian, etc. Use Hand of Sacrifice on the tank for heavy damage or as a way to reduce tank damage while you spend time healing others in the group.
Of course there are all kinds of other things you can do, but focus on the basics: Beacon the tank, heal all the things, use cooldowns when appropriate or when you fall behind.
Some common things that people forget while pally healing is to make sure bacon of light is always on the tank and to judge(which you freely admitted to and I don't blame you) What I might suggest is using power auras and set it up to flash on screen when its available or even better chain it do another that monitors your mana level and reminds you once you are below a certain mana level.
The sad thing is that the ZA/ZG are really punishing for people standing in stupid, which as I'm sure you've seen there is a lot of that in there. In general if a silly melee has to die from avoidable damage then so be it and don't feel bad. The only fight where you as a Pally will run into issues is Kilnara(crazy cat lady) but that should be managed pretty well with shocks and WoGs.
As a side note I'd consider dumping aura mastery and picking up the other point in Paragon of Virtue for better throughput and also fill out your sockets and put the engineering enchants on your gloves darnit!
I disagree dumping Aura Mastery - thats a staple Holy Pally spell. (Most effective with Resistance Aura) You should be able to have enough points for AM and Paragon of Virture. If not - you misplaced a point somewhere...
Also, dont forget to use Hand of Sacrifice as much as possible, mostly on the tank. Its a spell I got to drill in peoples heads to use - its an easily forgotten spell int he middle of a fight, but really really good.
For maxmimum usage of Holy Radiance, use it with Divine Favor -youll get good aoe heals from that. A normal holy radiance is as Joe Ego said, its meant to stabalize the raid while you layer HL and DL on top.
Otherwise its about knowing each fight and where the burst dmg on tank or aoe dmg on raid happen and responding accordingly. Burst dmg on tank? Pop Guardian of Kings. Aoe dmg? Divine Favor+ Holy Radiance. Semi-heavy dmg on a few people? Avengers wrath and spam holy light around the raid. You have a lot of spells, spread them out and be ready for anything.
also holy shock and judge on cooldown!!!
also, when spamming heals, rotate the people order. In other words, dont focus on topping 1 person for a few seconds and then heal the next then the next. If person 1,2,3 have dmg, Holy Light person 1, then HL person 2, then person 3. Then back to person 1, and repeat, spreading out your heals.
I really appreciate the advice. I should've already thought of using power auras, not sure why I didn't implement that already. I do cast beacon on the tank and make sure I keep that up and use Shock on cd, although I use it to heal as opposed to attacking enemies with it.
The last couple of runs I've thrown hand of sacrifice at the tank if he took a lot of damage and that seems to work out pretty good. Still working on correctly using Avenging Wrath, Divine Favor and GOAK. I do appreciate that breakdown.
Still working on gemming and enchanting my pally. My game economy has been rough, wife had a baby a couple of months ago so I haven't had much time to farm gold.
The Light & How to Swing It <---I am a huge advocate of learning things from WoWinsider.com. That article is the latest, and there are MANY more before that one that will help you learn plenty of things for help with healing.
Final thought, I disagree with Joe Ego's advice on not focusing on judgment right now -- I mean if that's hindering you from remembering all of the other things, then ok, but all in all despite the incoming duration change to it, I feel you truly should be practicing it asap to get it a good habit of remembering it as a staple mana conservation tool.
I don't know much about holy pallies but I do know my bf mentioned in a bragging session the other night that his pally's haste is very high, something like 30% + , so his gcd is down to 1sec of course, which helps with his holy power procs and doing insta big heals. Maybe something to think about with your stats if you haven't already.
The reasons I recommend not focusing on frequent Judgements, with the assumption someone learning the class will not have the time to learn everything in a few weeks:
Fatherjav seems to be saying he is healing in 5-man environments and having trouble with output. Judging isn't going to help his output. He needs to focus on spell & target selections as well as reaction time.
Regen is not nearly as much of an issue on shorter fights, there is ample opportunity to drink between pulls, though I mentioned (and certainly advocate) some tools which are helpful for remembering to Judge if he wants to work on it.
4.3 is roughly one month away, when this mechanic is removed and most Holy Paladins are going to have to rework their UI to watch JotP up time.
- always be using your HS on CD to heal with - its a significant way to build holy power,
- always judge on CD (this will change in 4.3 - Bliz always likes to mess with us).
- know when to pull out your CDs, by understanding when the big incoming damage is.
- most of the time beacon the tank, but sometimes (in heroic 5 mans) if you have a melee taking significant damage it can work well to beacon them melee, then heal the tank plus others and you shouldn't have to worry about yourself or the beacon.
Morality is not obedience. Morality derives from empathy and a sense of communal obligation with our fellow human beings.
- PZ Myers
I am firmly of the belief that the difference between a good holy paladin and a -great- holy paladin is that a -great- holy paladin uses their cooldowns. Divine Favor + Holy Radiance seems like a great one for AoE damage, Angel Dude is a great one (GOAK) for AoE, hand of Salv for the over-eager retpally who doesn't believe in waiting for aggro, hand of protection for the mage standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, aura mastery + resistance aura for, say, the firehawk boss...
That being said, I'm just a good holy paladin myself, not a great one.
But those cooldowns and the added utility make holy paladins AMAZING.
Also, don't forget that every heal heals you too, and that holy light transfers 100% to the tank- using holy light on the tank is a waste of a heal in my book.
There's also the old rule of ABC- Always Be Casting.
I'm assuming that you have no issues as long as not everyone in the party is getting heavy damage, by beaconing the tank and holy shock/WoG/holy light use on the party and DL on the tank.
For heavy aoe, LoD might be a "filler', but it heals for a lot when you can spam it by buiding HP with FoL on the beacon and Holy shock on cooldown. Of course you need to make sure to be behind the party and of course this is only good for burst periods, as your mana will suffer. As soon as you get a moment to breath, judge and pop your mana regen talents/potions/trinkets.
Aoe healing would look like:
HoSac the tank > AM where magic damage is involved >
Holy Radiance > HS > FoL x2 > LoD > HS > FoL x2 > LoD and repeat the sequence as from Holy Radiance.
The use of FoL or DL on the tank to built HP depends on the rate of which the aoe is applied.
In general it's very important for a holy pala, to always stand in a good spot close to others for HR and behind others for LoD.
Another way to do heavy aoe healing, is to pop Avenging wrath + Divine Favor + GotAK together for +20% healing, +20% crit, +20% haste and double heals for your first 5 spells.
Normally you should be fine with very fast, buffed Holy Lights on the party and Divine Light on the tank, but when needed, you can use divine light on a party member here as well, to top them off from 30% to 100%.
You do have to make sure, that you cast one spell at each player, being DL or HL according to health deficit, as you want everyone to get a double heal from your angel.
Aoe healing would look like:
HoSac the tank > AM where magic damage is involved > AW+DV+GotAK (no GCD's triggered, so chainable)
Holy Radiance > HS > heal target 1 > heal target 2 > heal target 3 > heal target 4 > heal target 5
After GotAK runs out, you will still have 10 seconds of the other cooldowns left to keep the raid up.
Healing priority is lowest health target first.
For 5-mans you can only heal the party through avoidable damage that long. When you end up oom because dps fails, then the last bits of your mana go integrally to your tank, even when that dies that dps will die one by one.
