[Holy] Sub-90 Holy Paladin Dungeon Healing Advice

[morganpdx 2]

Hey all - I just came back to the game after being gone for 5 years and found that I had an alt 49 holy paladin.  All I really remember about why I had this guy was that I wanted to try a healer, since I am usually a dps player (mage/rogue).  However so much has changed in 5 years that I have no idea what I'm doing as a healer anymore.  I tried a couple dungeon runs in Zul after reading up on holy spec pally healing that went pretty horrible about halfway through and got yelled at which was unpleasant  So I did some more research.  Problem is, all the healing guides tell you how to heal at 90, not at 50(ish).  Plus, are there macros that would make things easier?  Everything I've read says pallys are single target healers at their best, and I'm not really seeing any AoE healing options other than beacon of light (which isn't *really* AoE, is it?)

 

Any advice you can give would be really appreciated.  Please assume I am a total newb.  Cuz really I am when it comes to pally healing

Edited July 27, 2014 by morganpdx

[Fouton 266]

At your level you will have 0 AoE spells. You'll want to get as much Plate intellect gear as you can, and to use Holy Shock on cooldown as a heal. You'll also likely be spamming Holy Light on everything, and when they need a big heal, Flash of Light. Make sure to keep your beacon on the tank at all times, and thats pretty much lowbie leveling. (Also keep cleansing people when they need it)

 

Now, since it's likely that your UI is causing you some problems, I think a screenshot of it would be helpful to show how you're healing. As a recommendation, I'd suggest using the 'raid' frames that blizzard has put into the game, so to do that go to your interface options, and click "Raid Profiles" On the top right you'll see "Use raid style party frames" which you should select, and then turn on the options "Auto-Activate On: (2,3,5) man group" Now, on the left frames I also recommend turning on "Display Class Colours" so you can see whos who faster, display pets for 5mans is nice for the pet users who are bad at turning off taunts and dont heal their pets (though they should be the lowest priority) and you might want to turn on "Display only dispellable debuffs" so that you'll know what you can dispel quite easily. Past that, it's really up to you how you sort things, or the other options, but those are the recommended settings.

 

Next up is your casting. I hope you're using your numbers 1 to atleast 6 to cast your spells. Putting your commonly used heals on these bars is very recommended. If you've picked selfless healer, I also recommend putting Judgment on your bar as well, since you can deal damage while gaining holy power when that talent is selected. Overall though, Eternal Flame might be the better choice for 5 man leveling. It's entirely up to you how you sort out your bars, but I recommend setting up keybinds beyond the normal 1 to = buttons. Hit 'escape' and go to 'Key Bindings', then scroll to "MultiActionBar Bindings" (8th section of bindings) You'll definitely need a second bar of bound spells, so I recommend using the BottomLeft Action Button # from 1 to 12 and set it up as something like shift+1, shift+2, shift+3, all the way to shift+=. This will make it really easy for you to use 1-6 and shift 1-6 on one hand of casting, while you use your mouse to help you move (right clicking to turn while you strafe/run forward with the qweasd section of your keyboard). Spells on this section are also commonly used spells, but perhaps rarely used stuff, like your cleanse, beacon of light, and stuns.

 

Another thing you might like to have are mouseover macros to heal. This is entirely based on preference since I know many healers who don't use these, but I think it's best to start you off with them early, since you'll probably want to do it later. A mouseover macro is something that causes you to cast your spell onto whoever your mouse is hovering over. This means you dont have to target between each player of your group while you cast spells, and can instead just hit the key, and let it cast. To do this, type "/macro" and it will bring up a new UI screen for you to create commands and spells. There's a small limit to the amount you can make, so I recommend putting these spells into <Name> Specific Macros, since this is for that specific character. Click the 'new' button and put in an abbreviation for your spell. For this example we will use Holy Light. For my Holy Light spell, I put the Macro Name as "HL". Keep the icon as the question mark, and click 'Okay.' From here, you will be brought back to the previous window with a text box you can type in, and in there you can type in the following code:

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

In this case, youd replace <Spell Name> with Holy Light. You have to type everything correctly or the macro wont work, but once youve typed it, you are done. Keep making all your healing spells. Now that you've completed that, you can just pull them onto your bars by dragging them to where you want them to be. Place them where your heals used to be, so that you can just press the keybind, and the heal will go directly to whoever is under your cursor at the time. Note that you can't heal enemies, so if you have Auto Self Cast on, and arent mousing over a specific player, it will heal yourself.

 

Mouseover macros are solely for abilities you can cast without clicking though, so make sure any spell you plan on clicking to use is not a mouse over macro. Youll end up trying to click it, but sine your mouse is on a spell, it wont even cast.

 

If theres anything else you feel you could use some advise on, let us know and we will do what we can to help.

[morganpdx 2]

Thanks Fouton, that is SO helpful!  Especially the raid frames UI info.  It looks like WoW basically took some of the popular add ons from 5 years ago and added them to the base of the game, is that right?  Cuz it sounds something like a raid add-on I remember using with my mage, who was 40-man raid-worthy back in the day.  

 

I went to go add the mouseover macros as toon-specific like you recommended, and found I already had a pally macro from 5 years ago, that I had called SuperPally:

 

/startattack

/castsequence reset=target Seal of Righteousness, Judgement of Light, Seal of Wisdom, Judgement of Light, Seal of Wisdom, Seal of Light

 

Heh.  

 

Let me see if I have the general rotation right.  In a basic 5 man scenario:

 

Start: I've cast beacon of light on the tank, and BoK everyone.  

 

I spam holy shock/holy light on the tank primarily, filling in with holy light/holy shock on secondaries, and if I need a bigger heal, flash of light.  

 

Shit hits the fan, I lay on hands

 

More shit than we can handle, bubble and run for the hills.

 

Does that sum it up?

 

Talents:  I've got pursuit of justice, fist of justice and eternal flame.  Recommendations?

 

I've only got about 90 intellect, so I need to do some shopping

 

Thanks again!!

 

 

Edit:

 

I just realized I think I do have an AoE heal now, Holy Radiance.  Yes?

Edited July 27, 2014 by morganpdx

[morganpdx 2]

Also I didn't realize that if you left a macro with the question mark, it would take the icon of the spell you reference.  Cool! :)

[Fouton 266]

Indeed, holy radiance will be your AoE heal, but in 5mams you might find it weak, either way it generates holy power so you can use when AoE is happening

Your talents are perfect, and you'll find that what heals you need to cast when is something that comes back with comfort, so you'll do fine if you keep practicing.

Your cast sequence reminds me of one I made a long time ago for an 80 prot paladin to solo booty bay people for rep with 1 button. I used it to play halo while I farmed my rep :P

[Geoda 253]

Sorry for the late response but Fouton answered everything I would have. Healing is very different when leveling vs max level. There are some talents and spells that just aren't around. The dungeon design when leveling is really geared toward strictly tank damage with minimal aoe/group damage. It's really a good idea at these lower levels to understand each spell as you get them when leveling because once you hit max level and trying to gear heroic dungeons, you'll find yourself using your entire toolkit to keep the group alive.

 

Also, some of these 2, 3 and 5 min spells.. don't "hold" on to them when doing dungeons. You'd be surprised at how quick 5 min can go by and your spell will be off cooldown again for use. During this process if you do not have any cooldowns before a boss pull.. ask the group to hold on for a minute until your spells are ready.. it's a lot quicker to wait a few minutes for your cooldowns than running back after wiping. 

 

:D

[Fouton 266]

Yeah definitely good advice. Using CDs often since dungeons fly by is important. If you ever learn that a certain part of a dungeon is hard, you can remember that and save them for that moment.

 

Hopefully you're doing well out there :)

[morganpdx 2]

I've gotta say Fouton, your advice has saved the life of a poor unloved holy pally.  He was destined for the delete button soon!  I took a couple of days before I tried another dungeon group, and have to admit I was a bit worried that it would go as horribly, or nearly so, as the first couple of times.  But the combination of those raid frames and the mouseover macros made me go from dreading playing my pally in dungeons to loving it!  Seriously I had a great time.  We ran through Strat in no time flat.  I did tell the group at the outset that I was extremely rusty and to let me know if I was doing anything egregiously awful, and they were pretty cool - much cooler than the first two groups, which probably helped.  But only one death, and that was one of the dps, and only because they were out of range of the heal until near the end, and my heal went off just as they died.  Oh well.  All in all it was a great run and I plan on doing lots more soon.  

 

Great tip on not saving the longer CD heals too...I do find myself doing that sometimes and I should just use what I need when I need it.

 

Thanks again!

[Fouton 266]

Glad you did so well :) I hope your experiences can continue to be like this, its nice to see people enjoying healing

[Lothrandir 12]

What Fouton said is very good advice for where you're at, but I just want to chip in with some healing addons/UIs, that you might find interesting:

 

Lightweight: Clique (or similar) - allows you to bind your heals to mouse clicks for use in raid or party frames. Works well with all raid frames.

 

Medium-weight: Clique and ElvUI - ElvUI is a very nice UI suite which implements a lot of addons you'd probably want to have anyway. Also the raid frames have more utility than the standard frames.

 

Heavyweight: VuhDo. This is a full healing raid-frame replacement (not too bad for non-healers either). It has a very steep learning curve due to it's massive configuration possibilities, but if you get through it the reward is the most informative raid frame in the game (imo ofc).

 

These are the ones I've recently used. There are plenty of other options out there. If you start to really enjoy your healing and plan to do it in end-game content as well, I recommend you taking a look at one of the latter two options. Ofc, there are clickers and 'key-pressers' of which I am the former, so if you're not, they might not work out for you ...

 

[Boltt 28]

Lothrandir, what would you say are the advantages of VuhDo over ElvUI?

[Lothrandir 12]

Especially the debuff and cd displays. It might be possible to get this in ElvUI - haven't really tried, and might just be my laziness, but in VuhDo it comes pretty much right out of the box, and to me as a healer it's valuable knowing when anybody blows some individual (or group-wide) defensives.

 

Example: when we do Nazgrim it's very nice to know specifically who gets targeted by his semi-nasty dot, since this provides me with easy-to-use information on where it makes sense to apply some of the hands.

 

I love ElvUI and am using it on all characters, but I found that for healing, VuhDo serves my purpose better (after admittedly investing quite a bit in trying to figure out how to configure it ).

 

[Geoda 253]

Especially the debuff and cd displays. It might be possible to get this in ElvUI - haven't really tried, and might just be my laziness, but in VuhDo it comes pretty much right out of the box, and to me as a healer it's valuable knowing when anybody blows some individual (or group-wide) defensives.

 

Example: when we do Nazgrim it's very nice to know specifically who gets targeted by his semi-nasty dot, since this provides me with easy-to-use information on where it makes sense to apply some of the hands.

 

I love ElvUI and am using it on all characters, but I found that for healing, VuhDo serves my purpose better (after admittedly investing quite a bit in trying to figure out how to configure it ).

I am a VuhDo fanboy and started using it in Cata and never looked back. The out-of-the-box features launch it well above all other healing add-ons I've ever used.

 

However, VuhDo will no longer be supported come WoD and unless someone decides to take up the challenge of managing the updates of an add-on, VuhDo will be all but history. A few of my healing buddies have started using ElvUI as their primary 'grid' and have been quite pleased with it. With the amount of support that ElvUI has, I don't see their healing add-on to be any less awesome. If you decide to keep healing in the next expansion, I recommend picking another add-on besides VuhDo for the reason above.

 

Btw, how are you enjoying the way of the light?! Have you reached the level cap and done any end content raiding like LFR, Flex or heroic dungeons yet?

[Lothrandir 12]

I did not know that, that's a pity

 

Geoda, might I present you with the same question I got? It seems to me you might have more experience in comparing Elv to VuhDo? And, if so, is there anything in VuhDo which is not possible to also get in Elv?

 

[Krazyito 521]

Vuhdo will be supported for WoD.  It recently got a new developer.

 

As for VuhDo vs ElvUI frames, I say stick with Vuhdo mainly because I can see the stacks and timer on the debuffs easier than the ElvUI ones.

 

On the ElvUI ones it was pretty much impossible for me to see the icon of the debuff and what stacks / timer was left on them.  I don't know why they are so different but this throws me off.

[Geoda 253]

Vuhdo will be supported for WoD.  It recently got a new developer.

Awesome news! Thanks for filling us in Krazy. I've always used VuhDo so I'm happy it's got a new Dev to keep the support up. That add-on along with WeakAuras and VEM are the 3 main ones I couldn't live without.