Noob's Guide to holy paladin??

[TankaBelle 1]

Does anyone know of a decent beginners guide to healing on paladin? Most guides this one included tend to presume a level of proficiency that lots of us don't yet posses. Leveling my pally prot helped me to understand the class but merely adding a holy spec teaches very little. I have other healers but doing a decent job requires an understanding born of lots of time. Even then most of us continue to seek out advice

Thanks in advance for any direction.

[Fouton 266]

Hey Tanka, could you clarify what you mean by the fact that you don't seem to have the proficiency this guide requires?

 

I feel the guide does a good job of giving you a good stat priority, how to gem/enchant, and a good idea on what to cast. I would love to help you use these tips excel as a holy paladin.

 

I can give you a basic system I use for healing, it's not what I do in intensive situations, but it could help you out a bit. Basically Beacon of Light should be placed on your Main Tank, and if you feel comfortable, rotated between the tanks as they tank swap to help maximize its usage. Holy Shock should be used as often as possible, on an injured player that is either going to take more damage, or the tank. Even if the player doesn't really need the heal that much, its still Holy Power generated for you. After that, I use Holy Radiance on the raid if they're grouped up and taking notable AoE damage, and if they aren't I tend to just cast Holy Light on whoever needs the heal most. Using your Holy Power is fairly easy to decide what to do, 90% of the time it's probably best to put Eternal Flame on your current tank, or someone who's taking consistent damage. If the group is taking AoE damage consistently, and there is 6+ targets, Light of Dawn will become more effective than Eternal Flame. Try to know what debuffs will come from the fight you're doing, but generally they will all be bad, and you should use Cleanse on any player with a debuff. Also try to use your cooldowns effectively. If you know when big spikes of damage will come from, try to save things such as Light's Hammer and your big Healing Buff CDs for those to pump out the quick AoE/Single Target healing you need.

 

From this basic standpoint of healing it will put you in a good position to keep the group alive, and you can begin to add your other spells slowly as you become more comfortable. Divine Light should be used if the damage intake on your tank is getting much heavier than you can heal up with Holy Light, which will take a bit of time getting used to. I don't really use Flash of Light ever, it's hard to know when you'll use it as a beginner, and it will drain your mana, so stay away from it unless you're certain your tank is about to die and you don't have the time to cast any of your slow spells. If Infusion of Light is proc'd, don't use this but instead use Divine Light, since the cast speed will basically be the same, and the output is much stronger.

 

Getting proactive with your healing, and CDs, is a difficult thing to start doing, and it requires knowledge of every fight. You want to be able to know whats happening in a fight to be able to pop CDs accordingly. For example, if a big explosion is about to happen Aura Mastery is likely the best thing you could use to prevent a chunk of damage, and it will be your job to know when to use it. This isn't too difficult, once you begin to know a fight you'll know when big CDs need to be used, but as you learn a fight for the first time, you may find it good to pop big CDs when they're up just to get your effectiveness out. If you're starting to fall behind in your healing start popping your CDs 1 at a time, like Divine Favor, Holy Avenger, Avenging Wrath, Guardian of Ancient Kings. Not specifically that order, but they will all give you a large gain in healing that will likely save the lives of your group.

 

Communicating between healers is also a very important part of raid healing. You probably won't get that from LFR ever, so as a paladin your job will likely be save tanks first, then worry about the raid second, but in a 10man or flex, you have the ability to communicate with reasonable players. Try to work out what each healer should be focusing on, heal what youre assigned to as your primary job, and help out the other healers when you feel your work load is light.

 

As you get more skilled at healing you can re-look over the guides to see if you're using all your skills to your potential. You can also look up some logs of high ranking paladins at worldoflogs.com to find out if you're getting the same healing %s by spell as they are, and also see which talents they chose for which boss. Remember though, these paladins are ranking in healing which isn't always a good thing. Sure they're putting out huge numbers, but it could mean they're using less healers than your group, they're padding the meters instead of sticking to their job, and their group is also taking more damage than they really need to. Healing ranks don't matter too much, the number of deaths in your raid does. Comparing yourself on a healing meter of other people in your group is helpful, if you're much lower than everyone else you're probably doing something wrong, but being 3rd or 4th of 6 people probably just means your class isn't the best at this fight. As I like to think of it: It's not my fault until my assignment is starting to fall apart first.

 

Let me know if there's specific things you want to know, have trouble understanding, or just can't get a grasp of. I can also explain to you the UI I use to heal, the macros I have, and the locations of spells on my bar. Also, other people may comment and suggest different things, they also will likely be correct. There's different styles to healing, and they often all work out well at keeping people alive.

[Fouton 266]

I also forgot to mention buffs: Keep Seal of Insight on at all times, sometimes I forget to apply it when I've swapped specs and it makes a big difference. There's not really much in terms of self buffs a paladin comes with, you will be told what to buff the raid with in terms of Might/Kings. There's the general potions/flasks/food: Eat 300 spirit, Flask 1000 Spirit (or 500 spirit/int/stamina if you have Crystal of Insanity and don't want to spend too much on flasks. It does have a 15 minute cooldown so you might have to use a flask anyways). As for potions, a lot of people use the Potion of Focus or whatever that has you sleep while you regen mana, but I personally like to stay in melee as much as I can to melee for my mana, which makes the straight Master Mana Potion while meleeing somewhat effective. It allows you to cast heals while you're meleeing with breaking your mana regen. This is also the reason I believe Divine Plea's glyph is just the worst glyph ever. You can melee and have divine plea active for extra regen and still cast a few spells in between if you must. No more melee for mana, so just use Potion of Focus, and try to be effective on your usage. Combo'ing it with divine plea may not be the best idea of you're semi high on mana, but if you're almost oom, its a perfect time to use them together.

 

Edit: I also forgot Divine Plea! Try to use this as much as possible when there is a downtime in the fight. If damage is stopping and you don't really have to heal, use this. If you're still at 80% mana, you can hit 100%. It'll be off cooldown before you go OOM again. Remember to cast it a lot when you don't need to be healing intensively. You'll know its a good time for it if you're casually spamming your Holy Light to keep the raid up and don't need to use a more intensive spell.

Edited December 8, 2013 by Fouton

[TankaBelle 1]

WOW!!! This is truly amazing help. I cannot thank you enough. The comment was only meant that to get the most out of the guide, which is great, someone needs to have a. It of experience in order to grasp the nuances of the relationship between the various spells and when to use them. I have noticed, even on my other toons that players with more skill than I can out heal me even with lesser gear. Requiring skills is a good thing, but acquiring them can be difficult.

Thank you again for your enlightening posts.

[Fouton 266]

Glad to be of help :) good luck out there, it's a fun world as a paladin ;)

[Krazyito 521]

One small thing: I'm pretty sure that paladins dont get mana any more from melee swings with seal of insight. They took that out sometime this expac.

So the only reason for a holy paladin to be in melee is for CS extra HP or stack mechanics.

Honestly you might still not want to be in melee because you can get targeted by range specific abilities and really screw melee over.

[Fouton 266]

I believe that was a 5.4 change then, since that's when I stopped playing my holy paladin, and when seal of insight got a fair revamp to it.

 

So then slight change, I'll edit the earlier post: No melee for mana, and focus potions actually are stronger now. Shouldn't be too difficult to get used to.

Edited December 8, 2013 by Fouton

[TankaBelle 1]

 

Let me know if there's specific things you want to know, have trouble understanding, or just can't get a grasp of. I can also explain to you the UI I use to heal, the macros I have, and the locations of spells on my bar. Also, other people may comment and suggest different things, they also will likely be correct. There's different styles to healing, and they often all work out well at keeping people alive.

Your help has been invaluable!!  Thank you so much for taking the time to give it.  I would love to understand better how you set up your bars, and addons.  I have always used healbot before, but I am finding that I dont seem to have enough space for, or the proper layout of all my spells.  

[Fouton 266]

Haha yea, I agree that there is a lot to macro. People may not like my bar setup, but I like it. Ill post it when I get the chance :) should be soon. :)

[Fouton 266]

Heres a link to my UI: http://i1190.photobucket.com/albums/z458/Deathfouton/WoWScrnShot_120913_161903_zpsf3dc8a07.jpg
 

Basically I'll go through the important parts of my UI, such as my raid frames, action bars, and locations of target/focus. This is from a post I made on my 5.2 Prot Paladin guide. Its about my UI though so its pretty much the same.

 

6.0 Macros and Addons
You will need several tools that the regular spells and bars won't allow you. Customizing your UI will bring down the amount of garbage and clutter on your screen, and can bring everything closer together to keep yourself from having to move your mouse all over the place.

6.1 Macros
There aren't many macros that you will find necessary as a paladin, there is only 2 I use in combat. The first is a macro for my hand of salvation. It isn't important, since the spell is barely used, but it just puts into raid chat that Im using my Salv on a specific target, so that people know the spell was cast, and that they don't overwrite it with their own. Not important.

The important macros I use are mouseover macros. This is a macro that will allow you to just simply mouse over the target you want to cast something on, and you wont even have to click them. This will save you a lot of time, and allow you to keep generating threat on the boss while you pick your target, since you wont need to click back and forth between targets while you heal. The downfall to this is that if you plan on having clickable buttons, you wont be able to heal while you go to click them, unless you precast a spell just before going to click your button. The way to set up this macro is simple:

#showtooltip <Spell Name>
/cast [@mouseover] <Spell Name>

(As holy, I have ALL my heals bound this way, that way I just mouse over and continue onwards. It's pretty excellent for not having to constantly click between targets as you cast spells, which once I finally switched to it, I loved)

 

This is all it takes, a simple macro that you will have to make for each spell you want to be mouseover. There are also addons that can do this for you, but I find its simpler to just make my own macros, and save the memory that an addon would use.

I also have a few other macros, that aren't useful for combat, but could help you out.

/usetalents 1
/usetalents 2

Is a macro that will quickly change your spec, no matter what spec you are in.

I also made:

#showtooltip Redemption
/raid Rezzing %t
/cast Redemption

This will let my raiders know who I'm rezzing, so they don't have to waste a cast and find out im already doing it. Most people don't look at this anyways, but it also stops people from being allowed to complain.

6.2 Addons
There are many many many addons you will find that can interest you. It's always up to you to pick the ones you like most. The following are addons I use, and the configurations I've set on them to maximize their potential. Each title is a link to the addon's download.

Grid:
This is THE most important addon I have. While Blizzard has made their UI very effective, It is quite plain and lacks a lot of information. With grid, you can modify the size in any way you want, show anything you want, and even add buffs and debuffs that most other raid frame addons wont be able to.

Dominos:
This is a bar mod, which allows you to move everything obnoxious into the sides of your screen, and bulk up all your bars so that they're all in the same area.

Skada:
Don't let anyone ever tell you meters are pointless. Sure comparing your healing to other peoples may not always be helpful, but in skada you can go into your own healing, and find out how your heals are working for you, you can check whats causing damage, or see how someone died. Theres always information in Skada that can help improve you, and you just need to be able to look for it and find out what it is. Just pick it up, stick it in the corner of your screen, and look into it when you need to. (Skada is better than recount because there is more info stored inside of it for you to look through to improve yourself or your raid members)

Deadly Boss Mods:
Deadly Boss Mods is very helpful, it will call out all the important information during your boss fights, and give you timers until it happens again. You can use this to time your cooldowns, or warn yourself to move out of the poop you were standing in. It may be training wheels, but they're damn useful. Just pick it up and let it do the work that would otherwise distract you.

 

Grid has changed since I made the post so I'll rewrite it.

Layout tab: Top 4 options are preference based. Solo Party layout: By Group 5, 10 player: By Group 10, 25 player: By Group 25, 40 player: By Group 40, checkmark on World Raid, Arena layout by 5, bg layout by group 40. Layout/Group Anchor: Top Left, Padding 0, Spacing 6, Scale 100%, Rest preference.

 

Frame Tab:

-- General Tab: Frame Width/Height: 41, Border Size: 1, Corner Size: 6.

-- Bar Options: Invert Bar Color and Enable Health Bar Color Indicator checked, other two aren't. Healing Bar Opacity: 1

-- Icon Size: 16, Icon Border Style: 1, both boxes checked

-- Font Size: 11, Center Text Length: 5, Font Shadow checked. Font: Friz Quadrata TT, Outline None

 

Indicators: This is where all your spells and debuffs pop up around on your grid.

Everything listed in each category is what checked.

-Border: Beacon of Light

-Health Bar Color: Death Warning, Ghost, Offline, Unit health.

-Health Bar: Incoming heals

-Center Text: Ghost, Offline, Unit Name

-Center Icon: Eternal Flame, Crystall Shell, Crystall Shell: Full Capacity!, Fading Light, Fiery Web Silk, Fully Mutated, Kor'thik Strike, Lightning Conduit, Parasitic Growth, Pungency, Scary Fog, Searing Plasma, Spray, Static Wound, Voodoo Doll, Wind Chill, Wind Step, Ready Check.

(as you can see, Center Icon is where I put all my dangerous debuffs I need to watch for)

-Top Left Corner: Aggro Alert

-Top Right Corner: Eternal Flame, Curse (Eternal Flame is here so that if something is more important on the center icon, you can also see that it's here, you just wont be able to see its duration)

-Bottom Left Corner: Disease, Magic, Poison (Your Cleansing section)

-Bottom Right Corner: I tend to use this section the same as I use Center Icon, if a fight has multiple debuffs, I put one here if its less important than one that the center icon has, that way I can see when both are active and watch carefully. Example Fiery Grip and Searing Plasma (Old reference I know).

-Frame Alpha: Death Warning, Offline warning, Out of Range.

 

Status:

Here you can add any Debuff or Buff by typing its exact name correctly into the chat boxes on the top right, while going through the list on the left to set their priority (to show over something else). If any of the things I listed on my grid is something you want and that you'd like to have on yours, just add it in, give it a priority you feel is correct, and make sure to check Only If Mine on your spells. If you want me to go further on what my priorities are, I can do that. Also, you don't have to put in all that extremely old content stuff that I had in my center icon list, I mainly showed it to explain that is where my major debuffs are listed.

 

 

 

As for my action bar:

My pinky finger cannot go completely straight, so I leave it resting on shift allowing me to use 1-6, shift 1-6 extremely easily, and sometimes even going up past that since my hands are of good size. Here's the placement of my abilities in accordance to that, the rest that are situational that you see on my bars are something I click.

 

1: Eternal Flame (Word of Glory)
2: Holy Light

3: Holy Shock

4: Divine Light

5: Light of Dawn

6: Tier 6 Talent

 

Shift 1: Cleanse

Shift 2: <Currently Unsure what to place there, I have Hand of Salv for now> It used to be my Sacred Shield but I no longer use that.

Shift 3: Flash of Light

Shift 4: Holy Radiance

Shift 5: Beacon of Light

Shift 6: Denounce

 

I also have a bar stacked beside my main bars that has lesser things like my hearthstone. That bar also has my Healthstone bound to T, and Hand of Protection bound to Shift T.

 

I have my cooldowns on my right hand side and require clicking; 7 is LoH, 8 is Divine Plea, 9 is avenging wrath, 0 is divine favor, - is Holy Avenger, = is Guardian of Ancient Kings. Shift = Devotion Aura.

 

In my opinion my bars could be better maximized... I don't have Hand of Sacrifice in a very usable position, divine shield is the same thing, as is divine protection. We have a lot of spells to use and not enough space. Whatever works for you that keeps your main spells easily reachable where you don't make mistakes is fine, you don't need the set up how I have them.

 

Note that all my targeted heals are macros, which are just the @mouseover macros I listed above. I do that for spells 1-4, shift 1-5, and 7 (LoH), that way I can get the use in quickly.

 

I hope this description helps you, if I missed something or something doesn't make sense let me know. If you want to ask how important something I can give you an example of how important I find that something to be in my UI. Good Luck!

 

[TankaBelle 1]

Can't thank you enough for your help!!

[Fouton 266]

I'm glad to have helped! Hope to see you achieve your goals of Holy Paladin healing!

[antimetica 3]

There is great information from Fouton thank you so much!

 

I've played a holy paladin for a while and only just recently started using the Hands more.  It came about in LFR the tanks would go down so fast, it stressed me out, so since I was standing in a hot usually a druid or something next to me, and I am easier to heal up - I started using Hand of Sacrifice on the tanks and it helps a lot.  I also started using Hand of Protection on myself and if a dps is targeted by a very damaging boss spell.

 

The thing is I do not think hands counts as "healing" because I look at recount and my heals in lfr are always like #4 (under the druids and shams, holy priests) so I have also started looking at the other Recount tabs to measure my success like dispels and absorbs - I dispel a lot, usually the top on that.  

 

If you do raid or in 5 mans, just check out the other logs of what you do so you can see your utility to the group, which goes beyond just healing.  It will boost your self esteem 

[Fouton 266]

Yea healing doesn't mean everything when comparing between classes because some, like shamans, have bundles of healing CDs, where paladins have a bundle of damage reduction CDs. As antimetica said, if you're looking at logs you can go into buffs cast, and see your spell usage to make sure you're utilizing all your spells in battle.

[Geoda 253]

To add, a Holy Paladin does a lot more than just pure throughput healing. IE: HPS does not mean everything. We have a lot of mitigation CD's that are very valuable. The more comfortable you feel on your Holy Paladin, the more you'll be able to use your spells like Hand of Sacrifice, Hand of Salvation and even Hand of Protection. When gearing up and doing dungeons, these simple spells can do wonders in saving mana with the lack of spirit you may have on your gear.

[Fouton 266]

Exactly right, as you get higher up you'll come to learn that people care about Cooldown usage. If you're not using your hands and healing CDs, you'll get replaced in raids that are more hardcore. Numbers on a meter are just numbers, they are useless unless read correctly, which is why world of logs is so helpful. You can find CD usage in the buffs cast section, which tells heroic guilds if the paladin really knows how to play the class to the best they can.

 

Another point I didn't post is communication. If you talk with your fellow healers and tanks, you can gain synergy with your healers and set assignments, like heal tanks (which means heal everything, but tanks are priority #1 and if any tank dies due to lack if healing, it's your fault. If others die it isn't your fault)

 

Ill reply when I get home about TellMeWhen, which is the greatest communicating addon for healing tanks.

[Krazyito 521]

To add, a Holy Paladin does a lot more than just pure throughput healing. IE: HPS does not mean everything. We have a lot of mitigation CD's that are very valuable. The more comfortable you feel on your Holy Paladin, the more you'll be able to use your spells like Hand of Sacrifice, Hand of Salvation and even Hand of Protection. When gearing up and doing dungeons, these simple spells can do wonders in saving mana with the lack of spirit you may have on your gear.

<3 yoda.

 

Also, I fixed your signature cause you did it wrong =P

[Fouton 266]

Okay so the TellMeWhen thing.

 

Basically the best way to communicate with your tanks, or other healers, is with TellMeWhen. You can have it set up to track any buff/debuff that anyone in your raid has, so you just need to track the right buffs, such as your tank's defensive cooldowns so that you know when they'll be taking reduced damage. You can also have it track mana bars so you know when other healers will need aid on their assignments.

 

Tracking other paladin Aura Masteries, any healing CD from another player, etc. All sorts of things can be done to help you understand when you need to worry less/more about other things. All of these are a bit more complicated and shouldn't be in a noobs guide, but its still good to post it here.

 

A lot of this can be done on grid as well, but TellMeWhen can be used to place it around your screen. I believe WeakAuras can do all of this too, but don't take my word for it if you cant find out how, I've never used WA.

 

To start using TMW, just right click the box of 4 buttons on your screen, and go to icon type, pick what you want to track, and poke through it's settings until you find the stuff that fits your needs. You may need to look around a lot, or even look up a how to for tell me when, but once you learn it, you can make some extremely helpful timers.

 

This is a lot of power though, so make sure you don't clutter your screen with too many buttons. You don't need to have it all, but I recommend tracking tank defensives, a few specific buffs like your Meta/Cloak proc, and maybe Aura Mastery so you don't double up on them with another paladin. Remember that a lot of this information can already be seen somewhere on your screen, so make sure it doesn't distract you more than just checking your own buffs or target the tank.

[Krazyito 521]

Talking about addons: I've written a short guide of how to see tank CD's using your Vuhdo frames here. Similar to what you're doing with TellMeWhen. The best part about this, is that it applies to all your frames so you know exactly who is using a CD/needs a CD.

[Fouton 266]

I never knew vuhdu could do all that! Nice guide =)