How do you heal?

This question was posed to our heal core by one of our (now ex) tanks.

I was curious what the most used spells are from each of the healing classes. I noticed a weird (from my point of view) change since BC and classic wow healing...I'm curious what abilities people use because back in the day people used big spells, like druids would use their weird half balance half resto specs and use healing touch, and priests would use greater heals and pallies would use whatever their big heal is.

But now it seems people use their 1.5 or faster spells to heal. I don't think i've ever seen anyone cast a greater heal on someone except to heal a rezed person after a wype.

It was a pretty valid question, though my guess is that it stemmed from his dying a few times the night before on trash or 'farm' bosses.

Unfortunately this question has no clear cut answer. There's no optimized rotation for any of the healing classes, as every boss/trash/5man is different. As a Paladin tank I knew going into a pull that unless something went really wonky, I'd run a 9/6/9 rotation and take a nap. On my warrior it's a priority system, I think DKs have a rotation, and druids are like warriors (I think).

A lot depends on the enouter in question, and the party/raid makeup. Is it my 10 man with a disc priest and a tree? 5 man with no healing stream totem or ret pally JoL? Hard mode encounter? Is my paladin partner there? There's too many variables to give a straight answer.

FoL vs HL - Round 1

I'll admit it - I'm a FoL spammer still. 5-6k crits, 1 second cast times, and endless mana - this makes for a great buffer. Now, there are those out there that will flame this style of healing, saying it's dead and gone, and that any paladin who isn't spamming HL is being carried. To them I say...maybe.

When I say I'm a FoL spammer, that doesn't mean I'm stupid about it. It takes knowing the encounter and knowing your team to plan your healing. When the tank starts to get a lot of Kologarn debuffs, or Mimiron does his Plasma Blast - you bet, I'm on HL. Regular Ignis hits? FoL.

What I've found is that while I 'can' sit on HL nukes all night, the deficit is being picked up by our priests and druids. While I'm winding up the bomb, they've sniped all the healing. If I use FoL instead, it slides in nicely and keeps us all from wasting our heals. As fights dip into the intensity bucket however (more stacks on Thorim, hard modes, Frozen Blows, etc), my healing picks up as well. If I've been managing my CDs and mana properly, I can dip into the HL well and start cranking them out.

Communication

This is the real key between your healers, well, communication plus trust. Trust that your raid mates are doing their assigned roles, and communicate when things start going sideways. Announce your HoS or Pain Suppression so multiple CDs don't get blown on the same save. Let people know when you're out of tricks to get mana back and that you're sucking on the fumes of Replenishment.

Good communication lets you work through a double trash pull with a faceless one on Vezack. Poor communication lets you work it out on the corpse run.

***Edit - it seems I have more than one blog, and I accidentally posted this yesterday to my personal blog (which I'd forgotten I had). So there will be a double post today.

Hard mode shenanigans

Last night my 10 man group attempted a few hard mode encounters in Ulduar. Some were met with success, others...well, less so.

Flame Leviathan

This was the 2nd week we did FL with a tower up (I missed the first one), so it's no surprise that we rolled over him with nary a loss. What does shock me though is that our 25 man fails with great fanfare doing the exact same thing.

We left the blue tower up (Thorim?), and I had my first shot at driving a Siege Engine on this encounter. Normally I'm part of the assault team that flies through the air, but I wanted to see just how difficult it actually was to kite and stay out of the blue beam.

I failed. Epicly. With fanfare, and much applause. I failed to get agro (I think) and he went after a demolisher. I thought that the mechanics were such that he went after the closest Siege (I was) and we'd take it from there. Oops.

I also got frozen, but in my defense it was my first time. Once I figured out what was up, no more issues. Save enough energy to Steam Rush when it gets close, and you're home free. It was pretty straight forward.

Razerscale

No hard mode, but we did get the achievement and had no shaman for heroism. Let's hear it for Holy Paladin and Disc priest DPS (the tree just shook his leaves).

XT

Oh. My. God. Are you serious? I wish I had recorded vent for this. We made the call to push him to hard mode on a whim. It took some push of Holy DPS (I'm sure it was my last HS/HoW that got it), but we kicked him over. Then the world exploded.

Void zones? WTF is that? Life Spark? Quick, shove it into Megatron's chest! It was Benny Hill redux Ulduar. I was laughing as we wiped.

Kologarm

Got this achievement (both arms) by complete accident. It was pretty funny though. The right arm was going down fairly quickly due to splash damage and DoTs (I may have consecrated), and we were caught by surprise.

Cat Lady

AHAHAHAHAHA - that's all I can say for this. At like 10% someone (not me, nooooo) called all DPS off so we could kill all the defenders. We had plenty of time, and who knew? So everyone stopped DPS (even the tank) and we just stood there. 5 seconds later the raid was 80% dead. I can't even tell you what happened. She cast something we hadn't seen (I think it was the shock you have to interrupt) and BAM! It's the disc priest and the tank left standing. She had <2k when the tank died.

My sides hurt 20 minutes later we were laughing so hard.

Iron Council

Through generous use of battle rezes (3 druids - one of each flavor) we got him right as the 2nd tank died to ,the buff. Once again, no Heroism. We did it by having the feral tank take the first buff, run to the corner to die, and then get a BR from the brocolli/chicken. The DK taunted, and off we went.

We did discover two neat tricks though. First, he doesn't stay on the person with the buff. So the Pally could Bubble/Taunt to get the buff, and then have the DK taunt it back to tank it. Same with the feral druid. Have him long enough to get the buff, DK taunts off, bear goes cat for incresed DPS.

Conclusion

I think these really showed that a lot of the exclusive buffs aren't needed for the encounters. We didn't have Heroism, any Int buffs, no lock or warrior...In fact our team was a complete hodgepodge. Hunter (Survival), 2xSpriest, Disc/Holy Priest, Holy Paladin, Doomchicken of Love, Tree, DK, Rogue, and a Feral Druid. Definately not the best mix for buffs - but we work well together and that's important.

I also got it reinforced that wiping can be good times too. Especially when you turn around and knock the boss silly on the next attempt/regular mode.

Getting called up

This week we added a slew of new recruits to S-a-S, not the least of which was a pair of shamans (not one, but TWO, TWO HA HA HA) of the elemental and resto variety. Over the course of the raid our mewmewkitty started getting lag issues and one of our hunters was having her hair held back by her rogue bf. I do have to give them props though, they were still both doing great DPS.

As we were sitting on Freya (two guardians left to pull) I whip up the guild roster and look for DPS...ahh, ret pally and the new elemental shaman. The retadin was sitting outside, and had called ahead to let us know he'd probably be late, but the shaman was in Naxx. Naxx! On a progression night, as a new recruit no less.

I decided right there it was time to initiate guild readiness test #1. I let him know he was being called up to the majors and it was time to knock off the AA ball. He probably had a clue, but if he'd turned us down he'd of been hitting the bricks soon after. Like a trooper though he dumped his Naxx* (see note at the end) and was in Ulduar by the time we'd finished clearing the trash.

Time for test #2. "Is Telroc on vent", and yes, yes he was. Quick brief of the fight, and away we went. I double checked, and sure enough, flasked and well fed. I love it when recruits meet some nomal minimums.

Over the night our two shamans did well, a few extraneous deaths, dps that was a touch low...but overall for being tossed head first into the deep-end, I was pretty pleased.

Conclusion

These guys did everything right on their first night of raiding with us. On time, ready to go, and fully set on consumables. No complaining or turning down of a raid spot because they were Pugging with friends...yeah. They even both scored some loot, which is always a bonus.

*Note - when Telroc dumped his raid, I'm really hoping that there was the "Hey guys, my guild needs me for 25 man Ulduar" - and that he'd warned them before hand that he might get pulled. We don't replace a member willy nilly from the raid, but when we do it's nice to have someone ready to go at the drop of the hat.

Sharing the buff love

The other day WoWInsider had an interesting article about Heroism and the homogenization of buffs in Wrath. Very few raid buffs were missed, and I'm torn on how I feel about this. On one hand, we have a lot more flexibility in the overall raid makeup. No longer is a spriest required for mana regen, or a boomchicken for crit. On the other hand, some very powerful buffs are still limited to a single class, and in the case of my guild - a class that's very under-represented.

What's not shared

Blessing of Kings is arguably one of the single most powerful (long lasting) buffs in the game. Giving a flat 10% increase to all stats not only scales, it scales extremely well when coupled with Trushot Aura or Shamanistic Rage. In 3.1 this was made a baseline spell for all paladins, and if your runs are like mine, you've got more of them than you can shake a stick at. With only four buffs (maximum) that can be passed out, getting BoK on your raid should be fairly straight forward.

Fortitude is still a priest only spell, and it stacks with Blood Pact and Commanding Shout, giving the raid a healthy bump in Stamina - 215 (ok, 214.5) if it's talented. It's all that more impressive (like every other stat buff) in that it recieves that extra 10% when BoK is on the raid. That's a serious chunk to miss if you don't have a priest available.

Mark of the Wild is another single class buff. Talented it hands out 51 points to all stats, as well as a sizable chunk of armor and resistance. Scaling with BoK, MotW is not a buff that is missed lightly. Even the resist gives a touch of extra if your other resist providers are slow on the ball.

Heroism. Good golly Miss. Molly, talk about one insanely powerful buff. 30% increased speed for 40 seconds is so powerful that guilds in BC would stack this across the raid. Even now, we finally got the achievment "A Close Shave" because for the first time, we had a shaman available. With the ammount of DPS needed for many of the hard mode encounters, Heroism is a game changer.

Mana Tide shouldn't be discounted either. Returning 24% of max mana, this is an extra Divine Plea for the Paladins, without the pesky heal reduction. No matter which mana using group gets this totem, it's a big buff to throughput. It's only limitation is range, so you have to gather up to really benifit.

Debuffs

Scorch brings a 10% Spell Crit Debuff to the fight, and can only be applied by mages. I haven't seen this in action yet, as I think all our mages are Arcane, but I know our Doomchicken would love it. Now that we have an elemental shaman in our guild, we might see this pop up again.

What's left?

Every other debuff or buff is represented by multiple classes, even though it may not be even.

For example, Sanctuary lost some of it's luster when it was changed to only provide mana back to the tank; as opposed to mana/rage/runic power. The 3% damage reduction is nice, but a discipline priest does a good job of keeping that buff up on the raid as well. The improved healing from Improved Devotion aura is nice, but it doesn't stack with your resto druid.

A warlock's Fel Hunter can provide both Sprit and Intellect, but with a 20 yard radius and a smaller base value, Arcane Intellect and Divine Spirit are preferre

What it means

None of the buffs listed as being class only are, in my opinion, REQUIRED buffs for completing the current content in a normal/heroic mode. Sure, we've had some 1% wipes where heroism would have potentially pushed us over the top, but tightening up our gameplay did the same thing. In all honesty this type of thing is fine for those guild and server firsts, but on a regular basis, this type of buff shouldn't be necessary.

Hard mode attempts are supposed to be exactly that - hard. Blizzard has stated that only the top guilds will be completing them, and even then it's going to require raid stacking. Last night we did Hodir in six minuts - twice the alloted time for hard mode. We had three tanks and seven healers however, and an elemental shaman who'd never seen the fight and was only cranking about 2,500 DPS (we just picked him up, so I'm cutting him some slack while we evaluate him). This fight obviously will require fewer tanks and healers, and a lot more DPS to crack that three minute mark.

Conclusion

I'm glad Blizzard has left some buffs with specfic classes. Sure, it'd be nice to see another DPS class with Heroism for raid purposes, but they have an entire game to balance. I'd also like a smart AoE heal while they're at it. And a pony. Oh, and to shoot lazor heals from my eyes (that really should have been a bonus for the T7/7.5 helm).

In short I think the game is very close to being well rounded. We're not required to min/max raid stacks for normal bosses (keyword: normal), and more buffs are covered by a wide variety of plaerys than ever was before. Here's to keeping some individuality in the classes. If you want to play with just three classes, I think Dungeon Siege is still free.

*note about Dungeon Siege - the gnome that picked up your loot and then shat out piles of gold and epics was a genius idea.

Utilizing your dual spec

Now that we've had a few weeks of raiding with dual specs under our belts, we're still wrestling with some of what this brings to our raids.

Official Policy

Our official stance on dual specs is that they aren't required, and the player's off spec is theirs to do with as they wish. We decided that we recruited someone to fill a specific role, and just because they can switch on the fly, doesn't mean we should require it.

We also wanted to avoid situations where say, a healer, could switch to DPS for a fight, preventing a dedicated DPS from getting in and having a shot at the loot. Of course, this also brings up situations like General Vezak where only one tank is needed in normal mode. Should we swap out one of the tanks we needed for Freya? What about dropping healers so we have DPS for hard modes?

Recent incident

Last night we had an incident where a shadow preist decided that we needed more healing and changed specs while we were working on Mimiron. Now he didn't ask anyone, he just swapped specs and started healing instead. So now we've got some faulty info, and there are some who think we seven healed it instead of eight.

Should we have swapped him out for the tree or shaman that were sitting outside? Is it fair to sit a guy who's busted his hump for the past two days for a main spec'd healer? Is it fair to the other healer?

I think this is where the line between friend/family guilds and 'raid' guilds gets drawn a little finer. Our goal is to get the content done, and are currently neck and neck in the race for our server first kills. While we can't go pissing off our members (because they can leave and then where are we), we've also been raiding with some of the same folks for four years.

It's a tough challenge, and one that I'm sure will cause more drama in my guild than the distribution of the legendary mace shards has in other guilds.

Apoktenio's Questions

Apokatenio posted a great response the other day when we were talking about new applicants to a guild, and how we investigate and vett them. In his comment there were 10 questions he asks, and I liked them so much I thought I'd turn them into a post - with my own answers of course.

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

Crit is still my second favorite stat. Divine Illumination is a big part of my mana return, and while I don't gem for it, I do take crit over anything besides Intellect. Spellpower is another stat that you just can't get enough of. Haste is a nice stat, however with Infusion of Light and the 15% haste buff from Judgements of the Pure, my FoL are already getting close to clipping the 1 sec GCD mark. Mp5 is only slightly greater than Spirit in my opinion. Yes, having a flat mana regen during combat is nice, but it takes too much to see any real benifit.


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.

Ret and Sacred Shield

I'll be the first one to admit that my experience with a paladin has been primarily limited to Holy and Protection builds. I played with Ret a bit when dual specs came out, or when I was running Sheathadin (I've even raided as ret once or twice) - but it's certainly not my bread and butter build.

One thing I really enjoyed was being able to pop SS on myself, and then get crit FoLs off on myself when Art of War procd. It may be that it was due to my healing background, but I didn't see any issue with spending 1 GCD to hit myself with a quick heal while in a party or raid. Granted, my DPS may have suffered occasionally, but it took a touch of strain off the healers and a dead Ret pally's DPS is zero.

Am I Alone?

My question though is, why do I never see Ret pallies casting Sacred Shield on themselves? Looking at the spell, it absorbs a base 500 damage (plus .75 of your spellpower) after you've been struck to actually proc the shield. In patch 3.1 they changed it to benifit from Sheath of Light spellpower, so a Ret paladin with 1000 spellpower will have a shield to absorb 1250 points. Granted, that's not going to help you if Ignis suddenly decides that you're much tastier than the tank, but it will help in the slag pot (or Mimiron phase 2/4).

Is the Ret DPS cycle so tight, or mana such an issue, that using this ability once every 30 seconds is a game breaker? I understand that we all have our roles in the fight; tank, DPS, heal - but come on. Using SS is the equivalent of a preventative Health Pot and Healthstone, without using your potion cooldown. Add in an Art of War instant FoL, which should crit with SS up, and now you've got a Sheath of Light HOT as well.

If I'm wrong, certainly hope someone will let me know, but this seems pretty basic to me. There are certainly enough moments in the fights where you're moving and have a free GCD to refresh the shield.