2nd plateau - Help from the Pro's :)

[rezznator 4]

This forum helped me better understand my class when I first dipped my toe into the Holy Pally waters.  I'm back again asking for some more insight on how I can improve.

 

My perspective:

 

I'm not doing badly and we are progressing as a team, I know I can do better, but am at a loss for where I am missing key skills/spells in my healing.

 

Our team is currently made up of some verteran raiders and some new to raiding (myself) being one of them.  We are still 3 healing content and are 8/14 Normal SoO.  We have a MW(Heroic Geared), a Druid and myself(HPally)

 

Here is my armory link:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/proudmoore/Rezznator/advanced

 

Here is my latest logs:

3/18/2014

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/u59o5o5o45eivtzj/

 

3/20/2012

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/zfh4qrbk4yjn6rp5/

 

Thanks in advance

[Fouton 266]

I'll peak through them once I've finished my fun run. My response won't be as perfect as say... Geoda's response though, since he heals heroic raids. I'll respond in a few hours!

[Geoda 253]

Hi Rezznator! 

 

I'm glad you're enjoying the fun as a Holy Paladin. I too am one and enjoy it the same. I'm going to try my best to give advice. Please note that I am not a pro so take everything with a grain of salt. However, I do believe I am one of the better holy paladins and have had success in the game.

 

Okay so I see you're using EF. Checking your armory you have your haste set to a 4290 haste rating. I would suggest playing around with your weights and getting closer to the 3506 haste rating or 7170 haste rating for the added +3 and +4 "EF Ticks" respectively. Anything in between is "wasted" haste.

 

Looking at your 3/18/14 raid of the first 5 boss kills you did very well with using your defensive CDs. I can't stress enough how viable a holy paladin is when using their hand of sacrifice, bop and salvation. keep it up!

 

However I'd look into managing your offensive CD's a little better. You use them, but not as often as you could. Here's a quick scenario that may put it into perspective:

 

Let's say it's a 7 min fight. You have a CD that is on a 3 min timer. To maximize your CD you'll want to use it between the first 0-60 seconds and then on CD thereafter to get a total of 3 uses. However, if you go into the fight knowing that the first big damage portion is at 1:30, you might want to wait on using it and may only get to use it 2 times in the fight. This is completely fine and actually the smart thing to do. Just try to go into fights knowing how often you can use your CDs and try to track them the best you can. This takes practice and many boss pulls before you come up with a "rotation" before your progression kill though.

 

Your Illuminated healing has a solid uptime but I would try to get your EF a little higher. It was at 85% on only boss kills for the night. This means that for 15% of the fight there were no EF's anywhere. At minimum you want to have it on the tanks. Try your best to keep at least a 1 charge EF on them but preferably a 3 charge one.

 

My last suggestions, and this is clearly preference.. but I see you have the meta gem. I'm not sure how you try to benefit from it.. but I would suggest at least getting a weakaura to track when it procs. That way you'll know when to be a little more liberal on your high mana spells during that 4 second window. To give you my honest opinion, (and I found this the best using an EF talent) is when your spell procs, to immediately spam 2 Flash heals on your beacon and then cast a holy shock. You'll immediately have 3 Holy Power charges and can then use your EF on the tank or even the off tank. Again, you can do whatever you like but I found it helpful and a way to at least get some free Holy Power on the proc.

 

I hope this serves you well and keep up the good work!!

[rezznator 4]

Hi Rezznator! 

 

I'm glad you're enjoying the fun as a Holy Paladin. I too am one and enjoy it the same. I'm going to try my best to give advice. Please note that I am not a pro so take everything with a grain of salt. However, I do believe I am one of the better holy paladins and have had success in the game.

 

Okay so I see you're using EF. Checking your armory you have your haste set to a 4290 haste rating. I would suggest playing around with your weights and getting closer to the 3506 haste rating or 7170 haste rating for the added +3 and +4 "EF Ticks" respectively. Anything in between is "wasted" haste.

 

Looking at your 3/18/14 raid of the first 5 boss kills you did very well with using your defensive CDs. I can't stress enough how viable a holy paladin is when using their hand of sacrifice, bop and salvation. keep it up!

 

However I'd look into managing your offensive CD's a little better. You use them, but not as often as you could. Here's a quick scenario that may put it into perspective:

 

Let's say it's a 7 min fight. You have a CD that is on a 3 min timer. To maximize your CD you'll want to use it between the first 0-60 seconds and then on CD thereafter to get a total of 3 uses. However, if you go into the fight knowing that the first big damage portion is at 1:30, you might want to wait on using it and may only get to use it 2 times in the fight. This is completely fine and actually the smart thing to do. Just try to go into fights knowing how often you can use your CDs and try to track them the best you can. This takes practice and many boss pulls before you come up with a "rotation" before your progression kill though.

 

Your Illuminated healing has a solid uptime but I would try to get your EF a little higher. It was at 85% on only boss kills for the night. This means that for 15% of the fight there were no EF's anywhere. At minimum you want to have it on the tanks. Try your best to keep at least a 1 charge EF on them but preferably a 3 charge one.

 

My last suggestions, and this is clearly preference.. but I see you have the meta gem. I'm not sure how you try to benefit from it.. but I would suggest at least getting a weakaura to track when it procs. That way you'll know when to be a little more liberal on your high mana spells during that 4 second window. To give you my honest opinion, (and I found this the best using an EF talent) is when your spell procs, to immediately spam 2 Flash heals on your beacon and then cast a holy shock. You'll immediately have 3 Holy Power charges and can then use your EF on the tank or even the off tank. Again, you can do whatever you like but I found it helpful and a way to at least get some free Holy Power on the proc.

 

I hope this serves you well and keep up the good work!!

Thanks for the quick response and the great feedback

 

Haste:  I was sitting on 7170 for a good while for the extra tick of EF, but played around with 4290 since I'm an herbalism/alchemist and macro'd lifeblood to EF/HR/LoD to maximaze the uptime on the buff.  My thought was I would get the Haste I needed for the extra tick of EF this way without spec'ing 7170.  If I goofed, I can easily go back to 7170.

 

I have my 2min and 3min CD's macro'd to each other to fire together.  I admit that I am not skilled with Weakauara's and their use, but do have indicators in my ElvUI frames that alert me when they are off CD.

 

I do not have a way to track my meta-gem proc, so I will absolutely address this.

[Geoda 253]

I would suggest that if you want to be raiding more often, I would pick up a crafting profession like jewelcrafting, blacksmithing, enchanting and the like. They all give good bonus' that will give a direct impact to your game play instead of a minor CD in which herbalism gives. 

 

Honestly, I find a lot of healing towards the end of the expansion to be going towards over-healing. That said, I wouldn't macro the CD's together and instead stagger them more when high damage output requires more intense healing.

 

The haste break-point is more towards your style of game play. Personally, I went for the 7170 breakpoint and then dumped the rest into int/mastery. 15k spirit is a solid amount, I wouldn't go towards anymore to be honest. 

 

Other than these minor changes I think you are on the right path of becoming a great healer. Just research fights and make sure you have boss timers located in an easily view-able location. Knowing when damage is going to be spikey is the key to a good healer. While reaction is always important, preparation is even better. This will also help with sniping away heals from your fellow colleagues such as Gwenymph who might arguably be one of the best priests in the world (and my guildmate/friend) 

Edited March 22, 2014 by Geoda

[rezznator 4]

Geoda,

 

Thanks for the solid fedback and help to better understand the Hpally.  I will try out these changes and since we have the first 4 bosses under our belts will use that as a testing ground.

 

Ugh, to level a new profession, but if it must be done so shall it be.

 

No doubt, I will be back with more questions, hopefully at new level of play.

Edited March 22, 2014 by rezznator

[Astherion 4]

Don't level up a new profession if you don't want to. Profession perks were helpful when the gear was around 490 item level (remember Mogushan Vaults). However, with higher item level the importance of professions is much lower.

 

3 healing normal, when one of the healers has heroic gear, doesn't seem to be a good idea. If you have two healers over 560 item level, 2-healing should be possible for any fight (maybe some exceptions where 3-healing makes the fight easier, like Galakras). Make sure your dps are using their defensives in periods of heavy damage.

 

From your gear, I would say that trinkets are your biggest weakness. Get yourself a stat trinket (either LFR or flex) and I would also recommend the single-target one from Nazgrim. Cleave trinket is not useful for all the fights, it's terrible for Malkorok, for example. (however, it's amazing for others, e.g. Sha, Galakras, Thok).

 

If you are 3 healing the fights, you should never be low on mana so you should not be using the Siegecrafter spirit trinket.

 

Note one thing - healing is easy. The difficult thing is to heal well and not getting out of mana.

Edited March 25, 2014 by Astherion

[rezznator 4]

I actually mentioned to our raid leader that we start 2 healing the fights that we know (first four bosses of SoO) and if we need help to 3 heal some of the more difficult fights for our team. The team is new and people are still getting caught by mechanics and taking avoidable damage. This is probably the real reason we are 3 healing fights. We will go to 2 healers because we will have to.

I'm still gear challenged on the trinket side so I'm using what I have atm.

I have the Nazgrim trinket in my bags (LFR), I am in my 3 trip through Normal SoO with my team and am competitive to a point with my healing peers if you subtract our Heroic MW. He would prefer to DPS and we need him to, so if we can start to 2 heal that should help on a number of levels.

Thanks for taking the time to help.

Edited March 25, 2014 by rezznator

[Geoda 253]

The crafting profession was more in the terms of long term. Yes, it may not give as much benefit now, but if you want to be raiding often and more consistently from expansion to expansion, crafting is the way to go. 

[Krazyito 521]

Having a crafting profession IMO also shows that you care about your performance. Personally when I see an application of someone who is missing 2 crafting professions it immediately puts me off because they didn't take the time to maximize their performance at least by a little bit.

Of course, this comes from someone who does multiple heroic bosses and tries to min max in my gear so I know when I suck it's cause of my playstyle.

[Fouton 266]

I would look foraged professions but changing to a crafting one specifically is a large cost for a small game. Would you spend 5k+ gold for two gems worth of stats? I wouldn't unless I needed the profession.

[rezznator 4]

Having a crafting profession IMO also shows that you care about your performance. Personally when I see an application of someone who is missing 2 crafting professions it immediately puts me off because they didn't take the time to maximize their performance at least by a little bit.

Of course, this comes from someone who does multiple heroic bosses and tries to min max in my gear so I know when I suck it's cause of my playstyle.

As someone like many of you who have multiple toons, I level professions for all of them. I don't feel right knowing that I can do something that may have an impact on my level of performance like professions, gemming enchants etc. I may raid, but I do not yet consider myself a "raider". I am willing to ask for help and make changes in order to progress.

To Astherion's point.... It may be easy to heal, but it is another to heal WELL.

[rezznator 4]

I would look foraged professions but changing to a crafting one specifically is a large cost for a small game. Would you spend 5k+ gold for two gems worth of stats? I wouldn't unless I needed the profession.

I agree in general with your statement. Changing something on one toon is expensive without a question. In my case, I have a support base of toons covering all professions where I can make a change like this with minimal expense where the real cost is my time to farm mats and level my main toon in the new profession. I would not do this on a whim, but if it makes long term sense, better to do it now when I am still learning.

Great feedback

[Geoda 253]

This is a very good point. I think in your stage of healing it would first be optimal to get familiar with the playstyle (CD usage, spell usage and rotation) before dumping all this gold into a profession for minimal results. Again, in the future if you do decide to become a "raider", min/maxing will be the next step you'd want to look into which will require you to gem and reforge often along with maxing out crafting professions.

[Fouton 266]

Excellent replies and tips :) Thanks so much for the consistent input on these types of threads Geoda, Astherion, and Krazyito.

 

<3

[Moonglen 4]

With the exception of MAYBE Siegecrafter or Thok, none of the fights in SoO really warrant more than 2 healers. The majority of the time when there is a "need" for a third healer, it has much less to do with the other two healers' competency and much more to do with the rest of the raid not handling mechanics in the proper fashion, I'd be confident in saying well over 70% of damage in a raid environment is avoidable, it's up to the raiders to help the healers out.

[Geoda 253]

With the exception of MAYBE Siegecrafter or Thok, none of the fights in SoO really warrant more than 2 healers. The majority of the time when there is a "need" for a third healer, it has much less to do with the other two healers' competency and much more to do with the rest of the raid not handling mechanics in the proper fashion, I'd be confident in saying well over 70% of damage in a raid environment is avoidable, it's up to the raiders to help the healers out.

 

As a healer, you are preaching to the choir. I sometimes wonder if DPS even knows when they're standing in fire. They rely so much on us healers! :P

[Oreoxd 165]

I know when I stand in fire I promise D: I'm just so cold that I don't wanna move :(

[rezznator 4]

I know when I stand in fire I promise D: I'm just so cold that I don't wanna move :(

And by the power vested in we healers we save you from yourself :D

[Fouton 266]

If we feel particularly nice that day... *mischievous finger movements*

[Oreoxd 165]

fout, I feel you wouldn't hesitate to let me die XD

[Fouton 266]

I'm more the type of person to HoP you when I see wings get popped. I know how much I hate being on the floor and would not wish that upon someone who hasn't disrespected me (excluding jokes)

[Magdalenn 4]

I definitely feel these kind of posts are responded and taken care of very well. I asked for help not to long ago and Geoda and Fouton helped me, And this post helps me quite a bit also. Thank you for the amazing Community of people on this Site.

[Fouton 266]

Glad to have excellent people helping me out when I can't provide the best answer ;)

[Geoda 253]

:D I have received so much help from the community in the previous years, it's nice to be able to send it as well.