Holy pally preparing for Heroics needs help

Khrormorgi · June 16, 2014

I've been reading the pally forums here and need some help as I prepare for Heroics.

Some background: I played Wrath and took a 3 year break until March 2014. I got my pally to 90 and pugged my way through LFR and flex to about a 545 gear level. I joined my guild about 4 weeks ago and have been running regular SoO. The guild was formerly a 10 man crew (Heroic Naz), but they decided to expand their numbers to prepare for Mythic raiding in WoD. The guild will be starting 25M Heroics shortly.

Gear:

Here is my armory at i559: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/ghostlands/Khrormorgi/simple

I do have a shaman in raid to give me spell haste. A few questions:

1. I think my enchants are correct. How is my gemming/reforging?

2. What order would you upgrade the remainng gear and how much (i.e. 2/4, 4/4 etc)?

3. I have a warforged Gaze of Echoing Despair and regular Plate Belt of the War-Healer in possesion, but I currently equip Headguard of Winged Triumph and Greatbelt of Living Waters (ugraded 2/4). I kept the lower gear level b/c of secondary stats. Is this the right strategy or should I sub the other gear? Also, at what ilvl is it proper to take a lower secondary stat?

Here is a sample log: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-nw7s57wmossmepg5/

I have a great fallen protectors fight, but was stuck in orb too long for Norushen, got turned around in Sha and died, and let a hunder die as I ran towers for Galakras.

I understand the 'if no one dies but the boss we win,' but I want to make sure I am doing my part. I'm not sure what data you can obtain from the logs, but any advice would be helpful.

Is there any general advice about making the transition from regular to heroic? Also, please let me know if I need to include any more relvant data. I appreciate this community as I have learned so much from reading the forums and the class guides here.

Edited June 16, 2014 by Khrormorgi

Fouton · June 16, 2014

1. I think my enchants are correct. How is my gemming/reforging?

The first thing I notice is your JC gems. For some odd reason blizzard made it that going for a secondary stat on your JC gems gives the same as going for a primary (160 int -> 320 int vs 320 mastery -> 480 mastery). If you swap your 2 JC gems into 320 mastery, and change 2 of your int mastery gems into pure int JC gems, you'll gain 480 int and only lose 560 mastery. I'm pretty certain Int is valued over mastery at that ratio. (I don't know the stat weights for holy paladins, but that just sounds right to me)

Your reforging depends entirely on how good you think you're doing on spirit. I personally manage my holy set with ~11k spirit, so you could consider dropping some into Mastery>Haste>Crit if you feel comfortable with your mana. To do this you can go to Askmrrobot.com, and then edit the weights they have. Put in a spirit cap at what you think is the right amount, pretend you're golden at 11839 (What you have now) and adjust their weights so it actually does Mastery > Haste > Crit, and it should come out with some advice on that. (I did mastery to 0.6, haste to 0.5, crit to 0.4, since I don't know the real weights).

It seems you're balancing some haste in your gear at times, might be because your haste is very low, or for some breakpoints I don't know about for a selfless healer build. I would understand that though, having very low haste feels absolutely hard to enjoy, so having haste does help keep a balance on the spec. Things people don't always remember is that everything multiplies off eachother so there isn't always a best stat all the way to infinity.

2. What order would you upgrade the remainng gear and how much (i.e. 2/4, 4/4 etc)?

I try to upgrade gear I wont replace for a while, such as tier/warforged offpieces. Upgrading something that you can't replace until you reach a higher progression is always a good choice, and if you have multiple you just have to upgrade whatever gives more stats. How I upgrade my gear:

What lasts longest > What gives the most useful stats

Example: Heroic Tier will always be something I equip, so that beats some pair of offpiece shoulders that I'll replace in 4 weeks, even if the shoulders are perfectly itemized and my tier is spirit/crit. Those Shoulders would win over a ring that I replace in 4 weeks because rings don't give a lot of stats in comparison. The ring would win over anything I think I'll replace even sooner than that, however if I think I'm getting a good upgrade very soon, I'll hold my valor for that.

3. I have a warforged Gaze of Echoing Despair and regular Plate Belt of the War-Healer in possesion, but I currently equip Headguard of Winged Triumph and Greatbelt of Living Waters (ugraded 2/4). I kept the lower gear level b/c of secondary stats. Is this the right strategy or should I sub the other gear? Also, at what ilvl is it proper to take a lower secondary stat?

Don't think of it in terms of item level. Intellect is another stat in your list of priorities, so you'll want to compare it with all stats in mind. Personally I think you might be better off using that 553 belt, since you can reforge out the crit and keep the spirit, and change spirit from other pieces into better secondary stats like mastery. The helm I definitely agree with you though, there's not much spirit to replace from other pieces on the crit helm so it's just hardly worth it overall. It could still be debatable because of the Intellect gain, but I would guess not.

These are all based off my inexperienced opinion, and I would wait for Geoda to get further input, since he's a holy paladin.

I'm pretty bad at looking at holy logs in world of logs, since I've gotten used to warcraftlogs, so I can't provide useful input on that. Your cooldown usage was pretty good on Protectors, though it looks like you might have forgotten to use them a bit on other fights. Another tip is that you can Hand of Protection Garrote off people, so make sure to get good usage of your Hand spells (they're very valuable)

Geoda · June 16, 2014

This is a place holder. It's a busy day at work but when I get home I'll take a deeper look.

Geoda · June 16, 2014

Hi Khrormorgi and congrats on starting heroic raiding! You'll find the challenge exciting and the thrill of progressing in the hardest content in MoP!

I first want to ask your opinion on your gear. I see you are reforging out of spirit, gemming pure mastery in your belt and legs, yet going for the feet and 2 ring +60 spirit boost. According to your choice, it may boost you a little if you went straight Intellect or Mastery gems since the +60 Spirit isn't something you seem to be wanting anyways.

Here's a quick overview of what I was able to catch on your logs. I too believe Warcraft logs can supply more in depth information, but I will try my best to give guidance on what I found through your WoL parse:

Immerseus

I see you used Eternal Flame. Your uptime was only 71.%. You really want to get this as close to 100% as possible.
Since you're using EF, I would suggest you make sure to put it, at the minimum, on the tank. The monk seemed to have been the tank since he took a majority of the damage, yet you only healed him for 60k total.
If you were not assigned tank healing, then maybe Selfless Healer would have been a better spec choice since you already used Light of Dawn so much.
Holy Prism was only used 5 times. This needs to be used on CD, on the boss. Or during transition either on a DPS blob near 2 or more friendly blobs, or directly on a friendly blob if none are clustered near by.
Who was your Beacon on?
Avenging Wrath, GotAK and Divine Favor and Lay on Hands were never used. This was a 5 min fight and should have been used 2 times. It works best during transition when needing to heal the blobs.

The Fallen Protectors

Better use of offensive CD's
Try to use Judgement on CD. You only cast it 31 times. This was a 4:17 fight. A perfect simmed fight would have had 42 Judgements. This would have increased your throughput a good chunk.
I see you casting Holy Shock 6 times for damage. This should always be used to heal (unless this is somehow a progression fight and your raid leader tells the healers to DPS, at which point this is okay)
94% uptime on Illuminated Healing. Unsure how this is possible since you used Light of Dawn so often. Unless you weren't there for the initial pull. What is your start pre pull? You should Beacon your tank, Flash heal the beacon 5 times, eat mage food back to full mana and then start casting Holy Shock on CD until the fight begins. This will get you into the fight with full Illuminated Healing on your Beacon and ready to rumble. *Note* It's also worth noting that you can also spam Holy Radiance on your raid to spread the love of Illuminated Healing if you know big AoE damage will be hitting the raid early.
Bad luck on the Lay on Hands. You put it on someone with 100% HP and was straight overheals :o
But yes, overall good fight.

Norushen

Personally I think Lights Hammer is superior on this fight over Holy Prism. Hopefully your raid will be stacked during Heroic Progression to maximize healing and have less overall movement. Switch to this spell if this is the cast, Holy Prism did sub-par heals for you that fight.
I'd work on your CD rotation a bit more.
Remember to swap your Beacon to the OT when the MT goes down into orbs. It appears Tinypaladin was the OT and had the same, if not less, heals as other raid members.
Again, try to use Judgement on CD. This is the perfect fight for the "Selfless healer rotation".

I'm actually going to stop there. I think overall you are a solid healer. There are some things you can do to greatly improve your skill. Here are some suggestions that can go towards any fight:

Are you pre-potting or using any pots during the fight?
When are you using your CD's? Are you stacking them? Do you need to?
Which tank is the current one holding aggro? Is my Beacon on him?
Am I tracking my Meta gem Proc? What is the best way to maximize the mana free buff?
Am I using Lay on Hands every fight? I should
Am I using Divine Shield every fight? I should
Am I ending the fight with 0 mana? I should. Any mana left over at the end of the fight means you could have healed one more thing (even if it's an over-heal).

I know I went very granular on the first few fights. Please take my criticism and advice with a grain of salt. And like always, let us know if there's anything else we can do to help. Everyone on the paladin forums and Icy-Veins all together are here to help others. All you gotta do is ask! :)

Khrormorgi · June 18, 2014

I have read these replies and have many, many questions. Thank you so much for taking the time to analyze my logs. I will take everything with a grain of salt, but your advice is exactly what I have been seeking. I appreciate your compliment that you feel I am a solid healer. I do feel I am capable, but I need direction. There are few holy paladins in the guild, and everyone tells me to do my own research.

I'll try to limit my posts to a few questions so that I don't bog down the discussion. Let's start with gear since that seems to most simple.

1. Do you agree with Fouton's suggestion to swap out mastery serpent's eyes for intellect ones?

2. TBH, I hate theorycrafting. I looked on icy veins and thought mastery was the way to go. I also peaked at your and several ohter high lvl pallies and tried to copy.

3. You have are right about the unneccesary spirit bonuses. What would you suggest? Should I go full int, mastery, or combo?

4. What do you think about the Warforged Gaze of Despair vs T16 Helm? Also War Belt vs Great Water Belt?

5. Do you weight stat for Mr. Robot? Due to my lack of desire, I have never used it. How do you?

We'll get these answered before I ask more.

P.S watched a bit of your twitch feed vs Iron Jug and trash clear before Shaman. Very cool! How do you get you camera at that angle?

P.S.S just finished raiding: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-vf04sax8mscf5hb7/. Here is what I worked upon:

1. judgment uptime

2. offensive cooldown use

how did i do?

Edited June 18, 2014 by Khrormorgi

Geoda · June 18, 2014

Hey dude! There's a lot of knowledge on these forums for every class, glad to help! Hopefully my stream wasn't too bad, my healing partner and I have been trying a strategy where we take turns trying to "solo" heal while the other healer "off heals". It's silly I know but it's a way to keep things fresh during farm nights. Some of the fights you watched may not have been our usual healing assignments or styles so it may have gone against a lot that I believe is the right way to heal. :X

But to you. I'll take a look at the logs first since they're the easiest to start a conversation with. To go toe-to-toe against your previous logs and the ones from tonight, using http://raidbots.com/comparebot/ .. here are some observations on the 3 bosses I analyzed last week:

Immerseus

A lot better with healing CD's.
Your HPS went from 63.7k up to 77.3k. That's a huge improvement!
The fight was a whole 30 seconds shorter, yet you were able to pump out an extra 1.5 million. That's awesome!
I see a lot less Light of Dawn, but a higher EF which helped improve your Illuminated Healing by 1.5 million. That's good stuff.
A little better with Beacon swap too. Good job at keeping the DK and Warrior tanks focused on healing.
Overall this was a huge improvement.

Fallen Protectors

Again a lot better with healing CD's.
HPS went from 147.6k to 161.8k. Again a big jump. Also healed 11 million more than last time with almost 45 seconds longer on the fight.
I think your better use of Holy Radiance helped a lot with your Illuminated healing since it went up 5 million.
Being that it was 25m, smart move with the Light's Hammer, that's the suggested talent.

Norushen

Could have used Divine Favor more. Only used 1 time. Being that it was a 6 min fight it could have been used at minimum 2 times.
Overall your healing went way up. Your Illuminated Healing uptime was at 73.9%. Unsure why. But the healing was high. Are you running these parses or someone else? I still think the glitch of going down for orbs may cause issues with some tracking.
Smart move with Arching light, again superior talent.

Honestly, I think the logs are good. In the future, just let me know which specific fights to look at since there's so much to analyze and may have a better idea of what exactly you may want specific help in.

To answer your specific questions, and this is purely my own opinion and other Holy Paladins on here can help since there are great ones always lingering around:

1. Mastery vs Intellect Serpent's Eye: This is all your opinion. At one point I used pure Intellect Serpent's Eye, but currently I use the mastery one since I'm able to still go for my socket bonus of +Int.

2. You hate theorycrafting and you looked at mine and other paladins to try to copy: This is where it can get gray. Right now I have really good gear. At one point I was going pure mastery gems and ignoring the socket bonus of +Int. However, after running my character through Ask Mr. Robot, I was able to go Int/Mastery gems since I was only losing about 3% mastery but gaining 12% more haste, 1.5k more int and 1.7k more spell power. This should all be done through AMR and you can edit the weights. If you need help on it I suggest you look at a great post by Krazyito labeled "To those people who ask, "Why does Mr. Robot do X and Y"

3.Refer to question 2.

4. I believe the warforged helm is better if you already have the 4 piece on other items. My helm is the off piece since it is my only heroic warforged non tier piece. Once I get others I'll start comparing the 2 but have yet to get lucky. Maybe someone else can better answer this question for you.

5. Refer to question 2.

Let me know if there's anything else man, I do all this because it is fun for me, just like other members of these forums.

Khrormorgi · June 18, 2014

I read Krazy's article and understand the premise. I also was searching the web for proper stat weights. Most sites seem int>spirit>mastery>haste>crit, and I should put spirit at the bottom b/c I okay with it. I also found this site: http://holybouch.com/stat-weights/. How did you weigh your stats and why did you weigh them the way you did? I also run Selfless Healer most of the time, but change to EF for fights like Immerseus and Malkorok. Do you weigh them based on the talent you usually run?

Thanks for reviewing the logs! I will be much more specific in the furture. You gave me a few suggestions, and I wanted to see if I had implemented them properly. From what you have seen, am I ready to start raiding heroics?

Regarding the cooldowns, do you reseach the fight and preplan when you will use them? I realized I did not use them b/c I was being reactive rather than proactive. Do you keep one in reserve in case things go badly? Also, when should I use Lay on Hands? Could you give me a few examples? I have glyph of divinity, and I probably am too hesistant to use it b/c I like having the 10% mana if I oom.

This has nothing to do with the topic, but why raid as a holy paladin? If someone were to ask me, I would reply that I like the class. What differietiates us? What are our pro's and con's?

Geoda · June 18, 2014

I'll discuss stat weights later since this is a deeper subject that I need more time than just the 5 minutes at my desk at work

Yes, I think you are ready for heroic raiding. This will be the best time to test your abilities. In regards to cooldowns, it's good to review some logs on guilds with similar progression / item level. This will give you an idea of the damage being taken and can start planning the length of the fight and what CD's you can line up. However, the biggest thing with progression is this is your time to do your own "theorycrafting". You may start the fight and wipe the raid 2 minutes in. Could you have used a CD to keep people alive? Which CD? Is there heavier damage 30 seconds later that you may need another CD? These are things to think about. Have an idea of what your CD's are and the length of them. Sometimes it's better to use a 2 min CD early in the fight just because you know 2 minutes later there is going to be heavy damage and you can use it again.

I could go on forever about CD rotation and this is discussions I have with my healer team often. We coordinate CD's and what we can do to keep the raid alive, because at the end of the day, if the boss dies (ESPECIALLY) during progression, that's why we're all here!

Why raid as a Holy Paladin? Because we're awesome! No, but seriously, there's a number of reasons and they are as follow:

We have Hand of Sacrifice. Glyphed is 2. That's 2 solid CD's on a tank or someone taking damage that can be used every 2 minutes.
We have Devotion Aura. This reduces magic damage by a solid amount. Plus, on fights like Thok this will allow spell casters to keep casting during the interrupting stomp.
We have our "Hand" spells. Hand of Protection can null all physical damage for a whole 10 seconds! That's amazing. If someone has a debuff, sometimes Hand of Protection can even drop it (Looking at protectors). You can also put it on a caster or yourself to allow them to stand and cast for 10 whole seconds during a physical damage moment without worry.
Hand of Salvation can save a heavy hitting DPS'rs life
Lay on Hands.. probably the most OP spell in the game. When used correctly can not only regen 10% mana instantly, but instantly save a tanks life (or yourself or any raid member). I personally don't glyph into it, but it should be used every fight and if someone dips below 10-15% and on the verge of taking another swing of damage, use it. I have friendly competitions with my fellow paladins to see who can LoH a player fastest lol.

These are just a few. Also remember that Holy Paladins can be very solid tank healers. A lot of healers can tank heal but I believe that with the right talent choice, a Holy Paladin can be one of the strongest due to their great burst healing and Holy Power build up with Beacon.

Edit: I haven't proof read this so hopefully I didn't spell anything wrong or say anything that didn't make sense.

Khrormorgi · June 20, 2014

I'm still working on my gear. Do you use simcraft calculate stat weights, then use mr robot to weight and optimize gear? I downloaded simcraft and am going to use it this weekend, but some guildies were telling me it is more applicable to dps than healing. What's your perpsective?

Also, is there a haste cap for SH rotation? I know EF has one and I have it. However, I see you stack mastery and haste and no crit. Do you just stack haste as this point for lower GCD?

Edited June 20, 2014 by Khrormorgi

Geoda · June 20, 2014

Correct simcraft is more for DPS. A lot of your stat weights will be on preference. I stacked Mastery and Haste since I believe Haste is more consistent than crit. I do not have spirit issues so the faster casts will give overall higher HPS and reliability. Crit, with the gear my raid has and the randomness, has a better chance of going towards overheal than anything.

With gear and stat weights, it's best to just play around with what you feel comfortable. Since I use EF on some fights I want to make sure I hit the breakpoints. Other than that it's just Mastery.

Khrormorgi · June 21, 2014

I've been tinkering with my gear, and I think I'm starting to understand the gearing process.

For clarification: there is a certain amount of data that is objective (haste break points, superiority of one stat over another,etc.) but there is also an amount of subjective assumption that is both healer and raid specific. The objective data may be that being between haste break points will give you less throughput than either dropping to the first or reforging to the second. The subjective data relates to 'softer' concepts. You had mentioned the reason that you chose haste over crit for your group composition and farm status. But for me, crit may be more valuable as some members are taking heavy damage and the crit could save a life or at least not be all overheals.

Also, the amount of spirit needed will vary depending the length of the fight, and the raid dps can determine that. As my group progresses, I need less spirit beacuse my goal is to end with 0 mana. The question then becomes how to use the reforged spirit, and it can be use toward an objective gain or tailored subjectively to my raid's needs. I also see that in progression you are gearing for your current fight, and you may have to drastically change once you reach the next level of progression. In other words, you don't gear for SoO in general, you gear for the fight upon which you are currently progressing. It seems simple once I write it, but it finally clicks.

Now that I understand that some of theorycrafting (for heals) is both pragmatic and subjective, I am excited to hypothesize and experiment by raiding. Do you simply tweak the gear, raid, and then adjust based upon results? I have made some small changes and dropped my sprit from 11.5k to 10k and had no problems. I have changed it to 9.5k and will try the protectors as the litmus.

Thanks so much for your input! I will rephrase my understanding of stat weights later to make sure I understand them as well.

P.S I finally got a 10-man Garrosh kill last night from a pug. It would not have happened without the advice from this forum!

Geoda · June 22, 2014

Very awesome stuff man! You'll find out that going through progression can get a little expensive. Many players that are big on min-maxing will spend thousands of gold to squeeze out as much from their gear as possible. This is what drives a lot of high-end players.. being able to pull as much as they can with what little they have.

Good luck dude and keep us updated!

Khrormorgi · June 25, 2014

More Questions:

1. I restructured my gear and dropped 1.5-2k to 9.5k spriit and put most into crit as I was haste capped and couldn't reforge into mastery. I focused on finishing close to 0 mana on fights. What is my metric for being mana depleted? Is it my current progression and/or my most mana intensive fight? I was close to oom on protectors and out for the last 5-10 secs of norushen and iron jug. I was able to selfless healer cycle with crusader strike replacing radiance. Should I add some more spirit? Any quick tips for being oom near the end?

2. I'm starting to compare logs to understand my performance better. My healing went up, but I don't understand why. I did the gear restructure of switching approximatley 1.6k to crit, and I upgraded Prismatic Prison of Pride to 4/4, moving my amplification from 7% to 8%. My healing went from 77k to 91k on Immerseus, 161k to 195k for Protectors, and 228k to 281k for Norushen. The logs are here: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-vf04sax8mscf5hb7/ and http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-zt8izsf7a3qaer3j/. Would restructuring my gear and the upgrade allow that much improvement?

Geoda · June 25, 2014

I think now you are just more cognizant on your healing now. Increasing your stats/upgrades may help, but it all comes down to the actual player. In the past your cooldowns were minimal, it seems like you are aware of when to use them now.

As far as being oom at the end of the fight, it's a very difficult thing to measure. For me, I try to sit around 30% mana towards the last 10-15% of the fight. I can then gauge and start spamming spells and blowing all CD's at that portion. Also, the more you play and get a feel for everything, you can then start tracking procs such as Infusion of Light, Daybreak, along with trinket and weapon procs.

I know I'm throwing a lot of information but it appears you can handle it.

Khrormorgi · June 26, 2014

Thanks for all the info! I appreciate your knowledge of the WoW, healing, and paladins in specific. it's fantastic to have a reference rather than scouring the internet for information. And as we all know, if it's on the internet, it has to be true.

You are correct that managing game information is a great area of improvement for me. I'm assuming this leads to ui add-ons. I have avoided it for the same reasons avoided min-maxing. Honestly, mix-maxing was somewhat fun. i went old school pen and paper and took my time, and it's probably only 80% efficient. I almost grabbed a D20 for the stat sheet . I hope I have the same experience with the you ui.

As I've browsed videos and twitch feeds, I see that you and may high level raiders have a similar interface. I think my main issue at this point is having the information localized. I have stock ui with skada and dbm. Most of my time is spent toggling between raid frames and my character/action bars. I rarely view the top right and far right side of the screen for my procs and statuses. I have died to poison during Thok b/c I never saw it. I either need to be more aware of it or get the data in the same place. I saw Icy Veins has a recommded UI setup and I'll follow it. I did see you had mentioned weak auras for tracking metagem procs. If you have any tips that won't be covered, please elaborate.

I found a good article on what I should be studying on my logs: http://intplate.com/what-are-these-logs-of-which-you-speak/. I think this will help me focus on the important things. Any tips for keeping me from becoming a Meter Whore? I find myself starting to look at the meters more that I should. I'm planning on keeping it closed until after the fight, and if I keep doing it, I'm killing it. My team can't afford me missing dispels, stuns, and hands to enchance my e-peen .

I have been trying to understand what is a 'good' and 'bad' fight for a holy paladin. It seems Immerseus and Malkorok are 'bad' for me but Protectors and Nuroshen seem 'good.' From my research, we are incredibly versatile and our weakness is more lack of niche than any particular.problem. What are your thoughts?

I think the populist opinion of 'good' and 'bad' translates to 'I'm high on the meters.' However, some good players have told me that certain fights favor certain classes. So what mechanic allows me to hang or just beat out a 578 monk on some fight, but do 1/2 the amount on others? If you could, please use examples from SoO so I have a frame of reference.

This relates relates to the previous question indirectly, but what healing is being measured? The amount I generate numerically when I heal or the amount healed? I know you have a thread regarding disc absorbs an priority of spells. This makes me question what, how, and why. I'd like to know more than just I should try to have the highest bar.

This is probably covered somewhere, but how does efficiency and throughput interact? What I'm asking is when I should conserve mana and when I should go for broke. We have discussed that I should try to end each fight with 0 mana. Is efficiency only an issue when my mana runs out.? For example, our regular Protectrs fight is 4-5 minutes. I can heal like a madman all fight and end around 0 mana. I've browsed other's logs, and heroic protectors is 7-8 mnutes. When I start progressing on Proctectors, do I go like crazy until I oom, try be as efficent as possible, or a combination? My guess is it is trial and error like the cooldown usage we discussed earlier. I don't want to create bad habits late in the xpac that will need unlearned come WoD.

P.S. Sorry for all the questions, but inquiring minds need to know!

Geoda · June 26, 2014

Personally, I think UI is one of the most important parts of the game that I like. Having a UI set up the way you want it allows you to find procs, buffs, debuffs and boss abilities with ease. While someone may find it easier to track boss cooldowns on the left hand side of the screen, another person may find it easier on the right. This is something that you can test and will help your game play a lot.

WeakAuras are probably the 2nd best addon I have, besides Vuhdo. There are loads of players in the IV community that can help with setting them up. Unfortunately I am not one of them. :P

For what is 'good' and 'bad' fights for a holy paladin, this is up to the raid comp. Some healing classes don't mix well since they compete for heals rather than flow smoothly. Malkorok historically has been a tough fight for me to heal along with Thok (25-man). While other fights are a lot easier such as Iron Juggernaut and Dark Shamans. But you are absolutely correct, and should be something every player should believe in: that it's not the arrow, it's the indian. Every fight a class can exceed in, they just have to understand what their class can do. For example, Thok is a terrible fight for Eternal Flame, but great for Selfless Healer.

The biggest thing on trying to put up big numbers is to check Skada on who is taking the most damage and start focusing them. You also should remember that Paladins can do more than just throughput, they're great for damage mitigation.

Warcraft logs is great because it shows the amount healed and the amount absorbed. At the moment our Mastery (Illuminated Healing) is going to be our #1 heal by a long stretch. Plus this heal has very low overhealing, which is why I believe stacking Mastery is the way to go in a 25-man environment. However, since direct heals are more important in 10-man, I have decided to go more on a Int/Mastery gem/reforge.

To answer the last question, and hopefully I answered all of them for you, is how to tell if you're being efficient? Looking at overhealing is also a good place to check at the end of the night. It'll help you understand if you're using a particular spell too often or at the wrong time. During progression, our healing team would be a lot more liberal with our healing. We believed that we wanted to keep the raid alive as long as possible to help them learn mechanics quicker. Once we started understanding mechanics, we then started looking at ways to manage our mana and CD's better. All this is done during progression when the whole raid team is learning the fight.

I hope this helps and don't be afraid to ask more questions if I missed some.

Khrormorgi · June 26, 2014

I know I'll have more questions, but I think the biggest encouragement I received was just solidarity about the 'bad' an 'good' fights. I felt like I have an A+ night on the first 7 bosses. Then last night was Malk and Thok. I understand why Immerseus and Malk are not good pally fights, and I am content with my performance. However, Thok totally demoralizes me. The ele shammy can off-spec heals, spam 2 buttons and outheal me. I feel like my rotation is actually tighter than the previous night, but the bars keep dropping. Just hearing a great player like you share your experience makes all the difference. I know managing expectations is key to satisfaction in my performance. i want to make sure I am doing my best, but if some fights are not great, that's okay. I'll just bop the other healers, dispel the poisons, and try to have Thok fixate on me .

Geoda · June 26, 2014

Without knowing how many stacks you're pushing for each phase in Thok, I can't quite give you an exact rotation. But here are my logs for 10m H Thok. But when I was doing 25m, Paladins are TERRIBLE. Don't beat yourself up, Paladins are just there for the Devo's and BoP's ;P

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/L3k1Fgaf8xCdJhHT#type=healing&source=11

Khrormorgi · June 30, 2014

Sign In

Holy pally preparing for Heroics needs help

Recommended Posts

Khrormorgi 10

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Fouton 266

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Geoda 253

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Geoda 253

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Khrormorgi 10

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Geoda 253

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Khrormorgi 10

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Geoda 253

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Khrormorgi 10

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Geoda 253

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Khrormorgi 10

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Geoda 253

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Khrormorgi 10

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Geoda 253

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Khrormorgi 10

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Geoda 253

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Khrormorgi 10

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Geoda 253

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Khrormorgi 10

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Geoda 253