Apoktenio's questions
1) Playing a holy paladin in WotLK is a lot different from playing one in BC. What are some of the key differences between the spells you used to get the job done in BC and the tools you use now?
The first difference that should be readily visible is that there is no more downranking. In BC you could spam rank 7 HL, pulling rank 11 out when you were really in trouble. Holy Shock wasn't a part of a regular rotation, and the nerf to Illumination meant you couldn't actually go up in mana while casting.
In WotLK my healing rotation depends largely on the encounter and my assignment. Typically I use BoL on an OT, SS on the MT, and spam FoL until my finger breaks. Most encounters will give you some type of warning that massive raid or tank damage is about to occur. During that time I will switch back to HL spam to cover the damage. Keeping Light's Grace up is also important, so threading in HL with the FoL spam is a good tactic.
2) Along the same lines, the stats that are valuable to a holy paladin have changed some with this expansion. List these stats in order of most important to least important: mp5, spell power, crit, haste, int. What benefits do you gain from each stat? Is there a certain number or percentage of each stat you are aiming for?
Intellect is still the best 'all around' stat for a Paladin. Taken from Elitist Jerks, you can see the following effects of Intellect on the Paladin.
- 126.5 Intellect, with BoK and Divine Intellect
- 1897 Mana at the start of the fight
- 39.5mp5 from Divine Plea, if its used on CD.
- 21.3mp5 from Replenishment, with 90% uptime.
- 4.7mp5 from Arcane Torrent, if you are a Blood Elf.
- 25.3 Spell Power
- 0.759% Spell Crit
3) There is a whole lot of debate about different builds and healing styles right now. Some paladins use a 51/20/0 build and primarily heal with FoL while others spec 51/0/20 and throw out a lot more HLs and rarely use FoL. What do you think are the strengths and weaknesses of both builds and both healing styles? What types of encounters (type of incoming tank/raid dmg) would be ideal for each spec? Also, are there any other specs you’ve considered using?
I traditionally run the 51/0/20 build, and consider that to be the 'cookie cutter' Holy build. I've been toying with 51/20/0 a lot though, as it's my PvP build as well. We also don't always have a prot paladin in the raid, so someone with Improved Devotion Aura is nice to have.
I can definately feel the difference between the two builds, especially on my mana bar as I use the Glyph of Light in my 51/20/0 build. I've played with a few 'gimmick' specs like Sheathadin and ProtHeal, but I don't feel that they are ready for prime time in raids - though they do have a place in certain encounters.
4) What is the way you regen the majority of your mana during boss encounters?
I use a combination of Divine Plea and whacking a mob when there is a moment of down time. It takes time, but it seems that every encounter has a moment where you can safely Divine Plea without suffering too greatly from the imposed debuff. It's all about situational awareness and knowing when your tank/raid is about to take a significant ammount of damage. As a bonus, after the next mini-patch, Innervate will be a viable mana return tool in an emergency.
5) What addons do you use to heal? Is it important for you (as a healer) to have an addon like recount?
Grid is my bread and butter heal mod. I have it set to show beacon targets, people with Sacred Shield on, dispellable debuffs, etc. Recount is useful for the Grim Reaper function - letting me see the last 15 seconds before someone died.
6) What criteria do you use to determine who to beacon and when to beacon them?
I set the healing assignments in S-a-S, so I assign OT/MT beacon/healing assignments, or let them beacon themselves if the encounter doesn't have an OT in range. Basically we're looking for who is going to be taking sustained or unpredictable damage. I beacon myself on Throim when I stay in the arena, simply because I have RF up to draw the mobs in.
7) What judgement do you judge during boss fights?
With the change in distance to Justice, Holy paladins should judge Wisdom. Ret paladins will see much larger returns on Light, and if we have a Prot paladin he can judge Justice without fear of it being overwritten by another paladin.
8) If you were called on to salv a dps, bubble/sac a tank, or beacon/SS a different tank mid-fight, how would you do this and how long would it take you?
Click thier name on Grid and hit the appropriate hot key. I've been toying with Clique, but I'm not comfortable with it yet. The hardest part is knowing who someone is if I'm in a PuG. Hopefully though my Omen will show me who is at the top of the threat meter for Salv, and Grid will let me know if someone has agro.
9) What glyphs do you use and why? Consumeables?
On my 51/0/20 build I use Glyph of Holy Light, Glyph of Flash of Light, and Glyph of Wisdom. The splash heals from HL are great, FoL crit is never bad, and 5% reduced mana cost is also nice. When I run 51/20/0 I swap Wisdom for Light, giving that build 10% more healing to offset the loss in crit. I will occasionaly swap out Divinity or Holy Shock, depending on the encounter.
For consumables I generally go with a Fish Feast and Flask of the Frost Wyrm. If I need to get a specific buff I will go for crit, but the spellpower is enough.
10) In your mind, what is the difference between a good healer and an exceptional one?
A good healer can do an assigned task, stay out of the fire, and manage thier mana effectively. An exceptional healer is almost proactive in nature, anticipating needs before they happen. As a paladin this means putting Salvation out before they pull agro, Protection on your tank to assist with tank swaps, and using your cooldowns to maximum effect. It also means being able to triage effectively, and know that letting one person die is often times necessary to let the raid survive. Oh, and an exceptional healer will recognize the incrased DPS that pets do in fact bring, and will heal them.
Those are my responses. Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments below.
great responses, adga. even included downranking, which i managed to forget somehow. i'm at work right now and don't have the doc with me, but i'll put up my own answers when i get back home. i apologize in advance for the gigantic wall of text. i probably over-analyze my class! = P
ReplyDelete1) Playing a holy paladin in WotLK is a lot different from playing one in BC. What are some of the key differences between the spells you used to get the job done in BC and the tools you use now?
ReplyDeleteFor the majority of BC, paladin healing was pretty monotonous. Seal, judgment, HL (rank 8 or 9), FoL x 8, then HL again to refresh Light's Grace. Repeat. If things got messy there was always Divine Illumination/HL spam or LoH. If the ret paladin died, keeping both the tanks and my judgments up would make things a little interesting. By the time Sunwell came out and the gear was a little better, the healing style had changed from primarily FoL to a combination of down-ranked HLs and FoLs as needed. Throughout BC I was almost exclusively a tank healer.
While WotLK hasn't changed the type of healers paladins are, it has changed the tools I use to keep my tanks up and help the raid group. First, Blizz has finally fixed Holy Shock and made it a viable heal. I find myself casting HS anywhere from 3-6 times per minute during most encounters. It's a great tool to have when a raid member takes a big burst of raid damage and is on the brink of dying or when I have to move but still need to hit my tank with a heal. The “nerf” to Infusion of Light hurts a little bit, but a crit shock plus instant FoL still proves to be useful.
Secondly, I've found that Beacon of Light is a solid spell when it is used correctly. On quite a few Ulduar encounters, BoL plus the HL glyph allows me to help out with the raid healing while keeping my tank up at the same time. There is, of course, the danger having the tank drop low because of people being out of BoL range or getting capped before my heal lands. Simply being aware of where people are located, knowing if they are getting regular raid heals, and not losing track of the tanks' health solves this problem, though.
Another fairly big difference between BC and WotLK healing is the ability to use Divine Plea. 25% of a 30k mana pool every minute goes a long way. With the 50% healing debuff, it's a little more difficult to use this spell on CD than it originally was. However, knowing the various fights well and being able to gage the incoming damage on the tanks allows me to plea at least once every 1.5-2 minutes. If I'm not saving the CD, bubble/sac on my tank helps me get through DP. Also, I do have a macro to cancel the spell immediately should something go wrong.
There are a also few minor differences: keeping sacred shield up on my tank at all times, being able to use Avenging Wrath to increase healing, aura mastery to help mitigate a burst of raid-wide fire damage, and making sure I'm judging at least once a minute (or about every 12 seconds depending on what I'm judging). These are the differences I've seen as far as the spells I use to get the job done. I'll talk specifically about my heal style a little later.
2) Along the same lines, the stats that are valuable to a holy paladin have changed some with this expansion. List these stats in order of most important to least important: mp5, spell power, crit, haste, int. What benefits do you gain from each stat? Is there a certain number or percentage of each stat you are aiming for?
critical strike/intellect>spell power>>haste>>>>mp5
Critical strike rating: Approximately 46.1 crit rating will give me 1% to crit. It's important to realize that this stat gets increasingly better the more of it I have. At 0% crit, 1% crit will only make 1 out of 100 heals crit; at 50% crit, 1% crit will make 1 out of 50 heals crit. I think that at this point in the game, crit is (arguably) the most valuable stat a paladin has because of the amount of mana I receive through Illumination. 50% more healing is just the icing on the cake. A high % of crit is only this useful when the vast majority of my healing is coming from HL. If the fight calls for a steady stream of FoLs, crit loses a lot of its bang. On most boss fights in Ulduar, I've found that the mana I get back through critical heals is roughly the same amount of mana I regen through Diving Plea and Replenishment combined. Ideally I would like to be sitting at about 50% crit raid buffed.
Intellect: Intellect either ties with crit or comes in a very close 2nd in my book. After BoK and Divine Intellect, it takes 52.7 intellect to increase a holy paladin's mana pool by 1000 mana. From this 52.7 intellect I will also get .4% crit and 10.54 spell power. The 1k addition to my mana pool will also regen 12.5 mp5 through replenishment and 15.63 mp5 if I plea every 80 seconds. Ideally I would like to have a raid-buffed 30k mana pool (1581 intellect before BoK and DI). From this I would gain 12% crit, 316.2 spell power, and roughly 10,125 mana per minute.
Spell power: This is an important stat, although not one I worry about as much simply because of the amount of overhealing I do. Spell power increases the amount my heals hit for. Each heal has different spell power coefficient, of course. Holy Light: 166%. Flash of Light: 100%. Holy Shock: 81%. Also, the amount of damage my Sacred Shield absorbs is increased by 75% of your spell power (on top of the base 500). Fully raid buffed (excluding totems), I like to have about 2400-2500 spell power.
Haste: In my opinion this is an often under-valued stat. Haste decreases my casting speed and lowers the global cooldown. This effectively increases my raw hps- something that is definitely needed for a number of bosses in Ulduar. At level 80, roughly 32.8 haste will gives 1% haste rating. A simple formula for calculating how much haste effects spells is: old casting speed/(1.% haste)= new casting speed. It's important to keep in mind that Light's Grace decreases the base cast time of HL to 2.0 seconds. Also, the 15% haste of Judgments of the Pure is calculated into the base cast time of the spell (as does Wrath of Air and Swift Retribution). After everything is said and done, without raid buffs the base cast time of Holy Light is ~1.74 seconds and the base cast time of Flash of Light is ~1.30 seconds. Also, the more haste I have the less effect additional haste will have on my cast time: 10% haste from 0-10% decreases my HL by .158 seconds; 10% from 10-20% decreases my HL by .132, and 10% haste from 20-30% only decreases the cast time of HL by .1112 seconds. Raid buffed, haste soft caps at about 687 haste, although it naturally continues to decrease the casting time of HL. I would like to get my HL cast time down to 1.45 or 1.5 seconds. I'm aiming for anywhere between 360-400 haste.
MP5: Amazing in BC; terrible in WotLK. I avoid this stat as much as possible.
3) There is a whole lot of debate about different builds and healing styles right now. Some paladins use a 51/20/0 build and primarily heal with FoL while others spec 51/0/20 and throw out a lot more HLs and rarely use FoL. What do you think are the strengths and weaknesses of both builds and both healing styles? What types of encounters (type of incoming tank/raid dmg) would be ideal for each spec? Also, are there any other specs you’ve considered using?
51/0/20 or 51/2/18- I strongly believe either of these two specs are best for a holy paladin right now. On the vast majority of Ulduar encounters, HL is my spell of choice. A 8k crit FoL is great but when the tanks are taking ~25k every 2 seconds, FoL just doesn't cut it. Any holy paladin that is using as many FoLs as HLs is not maximizing his healing ability. Period. A holy paladin that tells me they are able to keep there tank up primarily through FoLs doesn't realized they are getting carried by another healer in their raid. Don't get me wrong, FoL does have its place in my heal style. I use it when my tank is capped and no raid member in my range is missing more then 8k health. I generally cast about 12 HLs per minute on any given boss fight but only 3-4 FoLs. With HLs costing 1044 mana per cast, the mana output is pretty heavy. Because of this I do everything I can to increase my crit and int. 8% crit (~ 370 crit rating) is just too good to pass up. It increases my overall healing but much more importantly it allows me to maintain an extremely mana-intensive healing style. 2 points in PoJ also increases my mobility and allows me to put Icewalker on my boots. 2 points in Divinity isn't a bad choice for the 2 left-over points, though.
51/20/0- While this spec isn't as strong as the other one, it does have a niche. If there are no ret or prot paladins or resto druids (much more common in 10 man raids), this spec brings Improved Devotion Aura and Bubble/Sac to the table. If you have a tree or prot pally, the improved aura becomes worthless unless it is a highly mobile fight. Also, having a ret paladin bubble/sac when needed is a much better solution to a holy paladin speccing 20 points into prot. Obviously this spec would still give the raid one more CD, but if I need multiple paladins blowing bubble/sac it's probably an issue with our raid heals or the way we are doing the encounter. As far as divinity goes... On the majority of the fights anywhere from 30-40% of it's benefit is going to show up in overhealing. Would the 5% increased healing help for the remaining 60-70% of my heals? Sure. But being familiar with the encounter and being able to anticipate the incoming damage of my tanks generally puts me in a position where I don't have to rely on my heal hitting for a little more to keep them up. Basically if I use HL often (= overheals) and keep my tank capped, this talent looses a lot of its luster. It's definitely not worthless, but it isn't worth losing 3% crit over in my opinion. The only exception to this are encounters where tank damage is fairly low and steady. Also, this spec is a good choice for General Vezax.
51/5/15- This spec a little bit of a compromise, although it's probably more balanced and well-rounded. At this point, I would still rather have 3% crit over 5% increased healing, although once I get some better gear I can see myself using this spec a lot more.
4) What is the way you regen the majority of your mana during boss encounters?
Usually the majority of my mana regen on any given encounter comes from Illumination. This is mainly because of the way I heal for most encounters. Divine plea will probably be about 75% or illumination and replenishment may be 60% or so. It all just depends on the fight. After that it's a toss up. On some fights like XT or Razorscale, I have the opportunity to judge wisdom and melee a target. On other encounters like Mimiron there are lulls between phases where I can use Divine Plea and use a Nightmare Potion. I don't do it often, but I have even LoH'd myself for the additional mana after getting battle rez.
5) What addons do you use to heal? Is it important for you (as a healer) to have an addon like recount?
The main healing addon I use is healbot. I used grid/clique for a while and I tried pitbull a time or two. I’ve even played around with VuhDo some. Healbot is my favorite, though, for a couple reasons. It's incredibly easy to use, it keeps track of my SS and BoL for me, it shows who has agro, and it lets me see incoming heals on raid members. Also, from healbot I can cast 10 different spells on anyone in range- instantly. While healing I also use pallypower, omen, grimreaper, and recount. I think that an addon like recount is incredibly important for me to have as a healer because it allows me to analyze several different aspects of the fight: what spells did I use most, how often did they crit, what heals did I overheal with most, who did most of my heals go to, how did I regen mana that fight, etc.
6) What criteria do you use to determine who to beacon and when to beacon them?
Like I said before, BoL can be an incredibly effective tool or a waste of 1300 mana depending on how it is used. The key factors I consider as I use my beacon are the type of damage the tanks take, the location of the tanks throughout the fight in relationship to each other and the raid, and the type of damage the raid takes during the encounter. This information is important in order to maximize the healing I get out of BoL.
Here are some examples of scenarios:
* Ignis: high raid/tank dmg- tanks usually in range of raid beacon the tank I’m healing
* Kolo: medium raid/tank dmg- tanks are in range but take turns tanking beacon myself (as I’m usually on the right side by myself)
* Yog (phase 1): medium raid/tank dmg- tanks are on different adds and are often out of range of raid beacon myself
* Mimiron (phase 2): high raid damage- no tanks beacon self or a raid member with low HP
* Freya: medium/high dmg on tanks and fairly low raid dmg- tanks are generally in range of each other beacon the tank I’m not healing
The key to using beacon successfully isn’t just knowing who to beacon. It is also imperative to keep track of the health of my tank. Just because I beacon him doesn’t mean I don’t have to actively watch him. Sometimes my heals don’t transfer to him because he is further away than I anticipate or because a large portion of my heal overhealed. Like I said before, simply being aware of where people are located, knowing if they are getting regular raid heals, and not losing track of my tanks' health solves this perceived problem. No matter what happens, though, no one should have to pick up my slack and heal my tank. That thought shouldn’t even cross their mind.
7) What judgement do you judge during boss fights?
I usually judge wisdom during encounters, because a ret paladin’s or a prot paladin’s JoL will heal for more than mine. If there isn’t one in the raid (which hasn’t happened yet) and there is considereable raid damage, I would probably judge light. Generally I judge every 10-12 seconds or so in order to compensate for misses. I never judge justice, even if there is a prot paladin judging wisdom. Justice doesn’t benefit the raid and over-writing someone else's JoW doesn’t make a difference in mana regen. If there is someone else judging wisdom, though, I only judge every minute or so.
8) If you were called on to salv a dps, bubble/sac a tank, or beacon/SS a different tank mid-fight, how would you do this and how long would it take you?
Every spell I have that can be cast on a raid member (with the exception of BoF) is bound to healbot and can be used instantly if the person is in range. I don’t have to fumble around targeting the person or finding the right mouse-over macro to use.
9) What glyphs do you use and why? Consumables?
Glyph of Holy Light- ~1.1k splash to 5 raid members within 8 yards is pretty nice even if the effect doesn’t smart heal and can no longer crit
Glyph of Seal of Wisdom- 5% off the mana cost of HL adds up; on a longer fight I will save upwards of 5k mana from this glyph alone
Glyph of Beacon of Light- adding 30 seconds to the length of my beacon ends up saving some mana, especially during longer fights
Glyph of Lay on Hands- this is the only minor glyph that’s valuable for PVE; 5 minutes off LoH is nice, although probably not game-changing
Glyph of Flash of Light- I simply don’t use this heal enough to justify using it
Glyph of Seal of Light- useful in a few select encounters, although it will show up in my overhealing some; I may switch this glyph in for Seal of Wisdom once my gear gets a little better
Glyph of Holy Shock- 1 second off the 6 second CD just isn’t worth it for PVE
As far as consumables go, I have been using Flask of the Frost Wyrm and Tender Shoveltusk Steaks in Ulduar for the extra spell power boost. Elixir of Deadly Strikes combined with Elixir of Mighty Thoughts is a solid combination too, though, depending on the stats I have and the fight. Also Spicy Blue Nettlefish is nice if I need some extra crit.
10) In your mind, what is the difference between a good holy paladin and an exceptional one?
Situational awareness and preemptive (as opposed to reactive) healing.
*this was part of my apps to a pretty good guild. got the invite = P but didn't go ='(