25H SoO Holy Pally - Help me not suck please?

[Emsy 1]

Hi guys.

 

I've recently (this is my 2nd week) started healing heroic SoO 25man with an experienced guild. I am copping huge flak from the RL for underperforming. I really want to improve, and I'm looking for some advice.

 

First of all - about me.

 

Am a cata baby, holy pally was my 1st toon and main. (My main alt is a spriest.) Have been healing ever since, but only raid healing since MoP. This is my first experience with heroic anything.

 

This is my toon http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/nagrand/Anykey/advanced

 

and here's logs from last night

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/QwFB1Zgypm6NaqHv

 

Healing team makeup:

These guys have just put 2 13/14H 10man groups together. The other healers are:

 

2   580+ druids (not quite sure ilvl)

1   584 shaman

1   579 disc priest

1   575 druid

1   569 holy pally (me)

1   568 druid (my bf)

 

Some of these get rotated in and out but last week in a couple bosses we were playing with 7 healers.

 

Some of my questions:

 

Which CDs do you use on cooldown and which do you save for "oh shit" moments? Is there any way of macroing them to, say, judgement or something?

 

Is it even possible for me to do comparable healing with these guys at this stage?

 

I feel that between the overhealing druids and the disc priest with his zorbs I'm not getting heals in - is this how it works or am I just sucky and using it as an excuse? It seems to me that the more healers we have, the less heals I do. 

 

I've tried EF and with the 25man it just doesn't seem to do as much for me. Shuttle suggested to me on Twitter to try stacking mastery and go SH which I have been. Looking at maybe dropping a bit of spirit to get to 11050 haste or thereabouts. 

 

I know meters are not what you judge a pally by, but that's what the RL goes by. He used to raid with a HPal that went to join blood legion, so he expects awesomeness from me too.

 

So - how can I not suck, please? I very much appreciate any help!

 

[Fouton 266]

You can go as low as you possibly can on Selfless Healer and be okay, it's played by most at around 9-10k. It's a fairly rotational spec, but it really pushes the healing to a maximum with absorbs, the spec is kinda based around raid-wide mastery bubbles. The biggest issue I can see is that you seem to be using all your spells to generate holy power and pump out Light of Dawns, but you're hardly using Holy Radiance. You can often just rotate through the rotation of Judge > Holy Shock > Holy Radiance > Light of Dawn, or even hold onto LoD for a bit to pop double in a row when big stuff is coming (5 HP, LoD, HR, LoD).

(How I can see that: http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/QwFB1Zgypm6NaqHv#type=casts&source=15)

 

It also looks like you're being too conservative, your CDs aren't even popped in some of these fights. Fights like Spoils are very repetitive. You have two 3 minute rooms, so this means you can pop Wings and Divine Favor on each side, so using one with the first big mob, and one with the second, meaning you can do the same on the next side. That wil also leave GoAK to be a safety CD when you need it, though the later you pop it in 1 room means you have to wait that long to pop it on the next room. You've also got Holy Avenger, and this is where it becomes silly because you can see how theres infinite CDs at your disposal, so just picking mechanics that hit hard and assigning CDs to them personally is a good step to handling other, less straight forward fights. I personally like to hold onto GoAK, but that's mainly because I play a Prot Paladin main and it's my savior as Prot, so Geoda would be able to break down CDs better than I can.

 

Also, your Prot Paladin is TERRIBLE. He doesn't use Shield of the Righteous AT ALL. Seriously bring this up to your raid leader RIGHT AWAY. I dont want to turn this into an attack on him, but he doesn't use CS/HotR  compared to most other spells (most important spell in his rotation), he casts Eternal Flame spamming it (so it has 0 stacks of Bastion of Glory), and doesnt put up his active mitigation. You will not get far with this guy.

 

There's probably more to talk about in terms of your heals, but thats as much as I can see.

[Emsy 1]

Thanks for that, Fouton. More HR you reckon! So far most people have said I need to use my CDs more. I'll have to stop being afraid of wasting them and just use them. 

 

Re the prot pally... he's the top pally tank in our server and he hardly ever dies but he does heal sometimes more than me. In the fight you linked, SotR was his 2nd most used ability, how do you figure that's not good?

[Fouton 266]

I guess I'm looking at a 3rd tank, I mean Missnofun. What they're doing is... just no.

 

I guess they were a carry alt or something.

[Geoda 253]

Hey! This will be a quick little post before my drive to work.. but wanted to spark some discussion.

 

Based solely on your post and foutons reply (I haven't looked at logs yet), you may want to first understand the 'rotation' of SH. Like Fouton pointed out, you can kind of just use the same spells over and over and do fairly well. I suggest switching Holy Shock and Holy Radiance and use the 'rotation' of Judgment, Holy Radiance, Holy Shock, Light of Dawn, repeat. Switching HS and HR will allow your Daybreak proc to splash heal a few people to give some free heals.

 

On to CD's. This, in my opinion, is what really distinguishes the HPS and skill of a Holy Paladin. Since most of our spells are mediocore at best, we need a way to really ramp up our numbers. This is where our CD's come into play. We have probably one of the best CD's of all the healing classes. Increasing our mastery, haste and total heals by X% is a huge boost, and if used properly can leave the other healers in the dust! ;)

 

It's very hard to tell people when to use CD's since healing is a very reactionary position. But if you break down a progression fight to timers, it may open up your mind and ability to know when to use your CD's. Let's break down a made up boss to help take away any bias' towards certain CD rotations:

 

- Let's say a boss has an 8 min enrage timer and with all your progression pulls, you realize that the only way you're going to kill this guy is if you get lucky and kill him 1 sec before he enrages.

- That said, you have 8 minutes to play around with your CD's. Let's look at what CD's you have and how I feel they are best used:

• Avenging Wrath: 3 Min CD = This is your all out best CD that increases your heals by 20%. Use this when there's heavy damage.
• Holy Avenger: 2 min CD = This is your HP generating CD. Use this when you want to really get some strong bubbles on the raid. Use a rotation like.. Judgement, LoD, HS, LoD, HR, LoD, repeat
• GotAK: 3 min CD = More or less your Holy Shit CD. But still, with a 3 min CD you can be relaxed with it and use it whenever you need some strong single target/stacked heals.
• Divine Favor: 2 min CD (with 4 pc) = With a 4 pc, this is an amazing CD to use with Holy Avenger (And I say this as a person that hates stacking CD's). But if used properly you can really ramp up your HR casts and build up some bubbles on the raid.

Okay, so now looking at your CD's you can use them:

• AW = 3 times total in an 8 min fight
• HA = 4 times total in an 8 min fight
• GotAK = 3 times total in an 8 min fight
• DF = 4 times total in an 8 min fight

- Wow. You can use a total of 14 CD's within an 8 min fight?! That's amazing. Yup, yup it is. Now the tricky part is knowing when to use them. During a progression fight you start to see the same type of damage taken and damage spikes over the course of the fight. You may then start gauging when to use your CD's at what time. But knowing you always have a CD in your back pocket, maybe start to use them more frequently when you see high damage or know when damage is going to be going out. 

 

I can go into further detail on when I personally use my CD's if you'd like, or you can learn on your own. My signature has some old parses (I haven't raided in like 5 weeks and lost a lot of rankings ): ) but I feel I did a pretty good job with my CD rotations and knowing when to use them.

 

Welp, time to drive to work I'll be on the forums in like 45 min :D

[Boltt 28]

That cooldown breakdown was really helpful, now that my prot and ret sets are nearly complete I've been getting a lot of holy gear, once I've got a full set I wanna run through SoO normal as holy for fun. Already done it on my resto shammy alt so I know when the damage is high and the type of damage to anticipate, working out which cooldown is suitable for what is really useful.

[Lothrandir 12]

BTW: you are gemming for mastery. I would opt (and do myself) for gemming intellect to the max to increase your raw spell power, which in turns also boosts your mastery. This is true for both EF and SH build imo, since spirit is a non-issue in the latter, and pretty much also in the former (altho your 'cap' should probably be higher). One point of intellect is generally considered worth more than two points of mastery.

 

So all those artful's in red sockets should be pure int aso.

 

And two small things:

#1 a non-blue hybrid in a blue socket is just weird (as in, there's always one stat that you gem for, so if not getting a socket bonus, you should gem that stat purely and not hybrid). 

#2 unless trying to reach haste breakpoints (which you don't as you're at least currently built with SH), you should generally have the same type of hybrids, but you have one reckless and 13 artful orange gems for no apparent reason?

 

I know this was mostly about CDs, but couldn't help looking ...

[Emsy 1]

I tried to post this last night but mustn't have actually posted.

 

 

 

Geoda! Thank you man. Wish i had time to reply right now - but it's past midnight we've just finished raid and i've got work in the morning.

 

I felt that I'd improved tonight. http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/thXWB4gMDYQTVJKp#type=summary&fight=7

 

however the RL mustn't have agreed cos he swapped me out to my priest.

 

I will not give up the good fight! Holy Pallies forever! 

 

I will log on tomorrow and chat to you bout stuff still - just cos I'm out of that team doesn't mean i don't wanna learn!

 

[Emsy 1]

 I suggest switching Holy Shock and Holy Radiance and use the 'rotation' of Judgment, Holy Radiance, Holy Shock, Light of Dawn, repeat. Switching HS and HR will allow your Daybreak proc to splash heal a few people to give some free heals.

 

 

Yep, this is what i've been doing. Just feels like the most efficient way to use all the procs / buffs etc.

 

As for CDs... as I was learning how the fights worked I was figuring out the best time to use them. I also have Engi on that toon, extra 1k int on demand doesn't suck.

 

 

Guess I should have learned to unsuck faster. Still - as I said - I shan't give up! 

[Emsy 1]

BTW: you are gemming for mastery. I would opt (and do myself) for gemming intellect to the max to increase your raw spell power, which in turns also boosts your mastery. This is true for both EF and SH build imo, since spirit is a non-issue in the latter, and pretty much also in the former (altho your 'cap' should probably be higher). One point of intellect is generally considered worth more than two points of mastery.

 

So all those artful's in red sockets should be pure int aso.

 

 

I had pure int gems in most of my gear when I first went in, but soon found that nothing much was happening. With that healing team, the best I can do is try and chuck some shields and bubbles on people... so I went with the all mastery build.

 

Were it 10 man, i'd go with a lot more int and an EF build. That blue gem doe... idk man, must have escaped me :P Thank you for the feedback (and this is not just about CDs it's about improving in general, so everything helps and I'll take every little bit.)

[Emsy 1]

Hi Guys! It's me again...  You were so wonderfully helpful last time, thought I'd try again.

 

So everything was going fine until BRF, what the hell is happening to me I went from doing well to sucking again. My illuminated healing is 4th or 5th half the time, is it because of the PSW spam from disc priest, or because of 2nd stats, or? 

 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/CjxPrck6YzKpnNF1#type=healing&fight=6&source=9

 

Hope someone sees this... Cheers guys <3

 

(I posted this in EJ but got no replies after at least a week so I deleted that post.)

[Elarion 6]

First of all - 13 min fight its omg. Our guild killed them at ~9.30min with lot of dead dps after 100 boss energy. Smth wrong with  your raid-dps.

Try to use AW more often, you start use it after ~6 min of fight. Shock on cd, i have a bit lower count, but fight was 3min less

 

Your mastery 0, its okay it's on 4-5th place. Probably against Kromog or grull it will be  2-3, but maidens do spike raid dmg, and when it hit next time, your shield from mastery fades, and absorb nothing. But again, mastery not good stat for hpal, your passive 10% is already good buff for heal, better stack crit/haste/multistrike.

[Emsy 1]

Thanks Elarion. I wasn't healing until a few min into the fight because nobody was taking damage, and since the previous attempts were so long I was aiming to conserve mana for the end of fight which is more intense, and the other guys are usually OOM by then because some of them will spam shit to pad meters even tho there's very little damage going out. (As an example, for Furnace we split in two, my side is me and the shaman, we heal maybe 12-13k each and everyone is on full health until p2. On the other side the druid and the priest are healing 40K each and people are on half health. Idk what that's about.)

Thanks for the reassurance re mastery. I have been trying to stack crit but the gear is what it is and I can't reforge

 

Do you have logs for your guild? I'm curious to see what sort of deeps you guys are doing compared to ours, to get a much faster kill. :)

Edited February 23, 2015 by Emsy

[Elarion 6]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/FjmVgyYDGt8kh3TL#fight=13&type=damage-done

Our guild have a higher itmlvl, but it's not shoud be 3 min difference. Also our adk,fire-mage and combat rogue played bad this fight, their dmg very low(bit higher than pally-tank). And even so, i think with this gear 50% of our raid dd coud do more(+5-7k dps).

 

Your damage dealers shoud read some guides(or check logs), couse they using wrong specs for this fight - mages, warriors. Elem-sham using wrong rotation, bdk seems don't know smth, couse our 680 did 40+ and he 24 with 679. And other stuff, i dont know about other clases, but probably they coud do better too.

 

Also i do not reccomend using HolyRadiance, its rly bad thing =) 7casts ~ 80к mana for 50k(+50*0.15 for beacon) heal kinda too high(holy light healing ~30+15+15 from beacons for 3k). I use it only with AW and HolyShock proc and when raid got hit hard, and even so, HolyLight will be better for most cases(couse with AW you got proc every shock, and shoc cast every 3 sec or even less).

Edited February 23, 2015 by Elarion