Questions & Feedback #17:
The feedback and questions have been coming hard and fast lately. I love it. Keep it all coming. Every Friday we're going to post Questions and Feedback!
All about: Flash of light style, crit and the 2 piece T10 bonus, Holy Ret vs. Holy Prot, On why gemming Intellect is a big mistake, about registration and gold sellers, solo healing accomplishments, healing meters again, going over the 676 soft haste cap, another FOL or HL style question, Glyph of the Undead and Glyph of Holy Shock, the differences between fol and hl styles and some feedback about the flash of light article.
Feedback: I know that the FoL style isn't your specialty, and I saw the recent article written by someone who is - which was awesome. I was wondering if you could add to this article now that the 2 set on the T10 immensely helps out the FoL spammers when using Divine Illumination everytime it's up for the extra 35% heal boost. What I'm looking for are numbers as to what that increases a crit heal to while that is activated.
Since you first posted the info on how FoL spammers should be gemming - I've changed my gems, but now am taking a lot of flack for it. Just trying to get more numbers to back up what I'm doing.
Any help you can provide is muchly appreciated!
Response: The math isn’t that hard to work out: Crit increases your heals on average of half your crit percent. If you’re working it out from increase to crit and there’s an increase of 5% (FOL Glyph) then your boost to heals is 2.5% on average. All you then have to do it multiply all the numbers together. 1.0 (your base heal) * 1.35 (Divine Illumination with T10 set) * 1.025 (5% crit).
However I do have bad news for you, the FOL spam numbers don’t quite add up. Holy Light spam is superior to FOL spam when it comes to ICC. Of course I’d be curious on how the gemming choice would go Valithria Dreamwalker when used with Holy Light.
Feedback: Holy Ret vs. Holy Prot:
I decided to have both of them as my dual specs. It allows me to use them both when needed. I have found that 25 putricide is a good one for holy/prot. When the green slime gets close to his target, I hit Divine Sac/Guardian macro. Keeps the raid from getting too much damage. We rotate that b/w me, and the pally tank, and we good to go. It lowers my spot on the meters a little, but who cares...that fight isn't good for pally healer on meters anyway with all the running around.
Feedback: Gemming all slot in the gears with + intellect is a big mistake. Gems with +spell and + mp5 should also be used.
Alot of pally healers just rush to spam holy light so that they will appear in the top of healer chart is just not right.
If the target hp is just down 20-30% , a flash of light will do , doing a HL is just over kills and wasting mana.
Being a old timer pally healer , years ago we used to downgrade the skill level of our HL , just to save mana.
In a raid , pally healer must not waste the mana by overhealing. Always remember there are also other healers throwing heals on your target too. It is better if we do some ranged dps on the mobs with the extra mana then to waste it in overhealing.
Response: I remember the good old days where we used to down rank our healing spells to be able to spam a larger heal. Unfortunately the days of the old republic are gone (yes, I’m a nerd and watched Star Wars lately).
If you’re talking heroics or content that you’re easily, then you’d be correct that Holy Light would be over kill. For tougher content where the tanks can take 25k (and bigger) hits Flash of Light isn’t going to cut it. You’re going to need to use Holy Light on harder things.
The thing about stacking intellect is that you’re able to not worry about mana and still be able to cast your expensive healing spell.
Of course this is all irrelevant if you’re using the Flash of Light healing style. If you are, then I wish you the very best with it.
I was talking with another Holy Paladin about this and he basically said, “hmm, maybe the hundreds of other paladins with lots of end game experience and hours upon hours of math and theory crafting are wrong and this guy has figured it out.” … You just never know.
Feedback: I understand that this site costs money, so whether I care for it or not, your choice to host gold seller adds is yours to make.
What is my choice is whether I would ever be dumb enough to supply any personal information to a site that will most likely hand it over to their advertisers, of which some of yours are the slimey and corrupt gold sellers. I'll never register.
[Of course he supplied a false email address]
Response: Oh snap. You’re harsh! Whether you choose to register is your choice. There will always be good quality content that you’ll miss out on if you don’t register but as I said that is your choice.
We have it as part of our Privacy policy (http://www.theholypaladin.com/privacy-policy.php) that you can find at the bottom of every page that we don’t sell your details to gold sellers, other advertisers, other mailing lists etc. Have a read through if you’re concerned and feel free to ask any further questions.
Those adverts are served by google and from what I understand have something to do with your region more than anything. While the google adverts are easy to set up and they’re supposed to rotate through their adverts and I’m supposed to have some control over who can advertise, to be honest, I don’t know how to change it or filter the adverts. I rarely get to see the google adverts that the majority of my readers see since I’m in another country to most of you. As for the other adverts slots for sale, no one has bought any… kind of makes me sad.
Feedback: No one talks about solo healing accomplishments. You can watch a million videos on "ret paladin solos old school Onyxia" or "DK solos Kara" or something, but you never see anything like that for a healer. Where I'm coming from is this--I was healing the Razorscale weekly in a pug. It was me and a disc priest. Disc priest took MT and I took everyone else. I was thinking during the fight that I could probably solo heal this thing. Granted, someone solo healing a 10 man raid boss (albeit soft content) requires everyone else to agree to wipe at least once just to see if something is doable. Maybe wipe another time to almost get it right and work out the details. Then the third time maybe it works out. Some fights would be much more difficult for paladins than others (dots and aoes would be very hard to deal with), but it would be a lot of fun to see what is solo healable and what isn't. My guild would be more amenable to it because we usually roll with a resto/ele shammy who could bail me out if things were crashing. Anyway, it's a thought.
Second is coping with shifting away from holy. Well, not completely away. if the job is getting done then everyone wins. I was recently asked to go to ret from holy because we got a new holy pally. My ret set has always been pretty good--just under the quality of my holy set. My guild leader asked me to go ret to fill a melee hole and, him being a RL friend, said that he actually prefers me healing but he's trying to make things fit. Sounds good to me. Raid wins. Ego intact. So in ICC I'm getting all the plate DPS drops (we're on Putricide and no other plate dpsers), but I can't help but be a tiny bit jealous when I see our new holy pally get a new weapon or new belt or whatever. Now to top it off my ret set is clearly the better of my two sets. How would you get your mind around organically moving away from holy? I organically moved into holy back in early ulduar. I'm still asked to heal on specific encounters (Saurfang because our shammy goes ele to bounce beasts) but i'm a little sad on the inside sometimes.
Response: Organically moving away from holy. Blasphemy! Wash your mouth out with soap! I have no idea, I’ve been holy all the way through. I did ret for a couple of levels from 70 to 72 and for a couple of days at 80 but never really enjoyed it.
Doing the solo healing used to be good to beat DPS timers for some achievements when we weren’t in awesome gear. I’ve done it a few times and there needs to be specific fights for it to work.
Feedback: Thank you for posting the comments from other healers who are running ICC. It's nice to know that I'm not alone in having to justify my position on the healing meters.
Reading the conversation about the other pally in the NoDrama guild sounded all too familiar.
I run with a great guild and there's no real grief, but there have been discussions about certain progression fights and having your site to lean on has helped me speak intelligently about my class mechanics.
Question: There is a small war going on in the undercurrents of the Holy Paladin community. It is hard to find any definitive answers for either side though. I was wondering on your thoughts on it.
Should a Holy Light paladin continue to stack haste as much as possible past 676? Or after the soft cap, should the paladin focus on mana regeneration, MP5 and Crit?
Answer: Yes and no, kinda, maybe…
There’s no real problem with going over 676 but not too far. Read the article about haste not being linear and you’ll see that you’ll need to stack more and more haste to get the same benefit.
I’d suggest stacking crit/mp5 once you get to about 800 or even push 900 haste. This all assumes that you’re using the Holy Light style.
Going beyond 676 lets to heal with holy light faster. This isn’t a bad thing.
Feedback: I'm strictly running 5 mans and the occasional raid weekly. My gear is a mix/match of Frost /triumph and IIC 5 man (average 242 overall).
Would you recommend using a FoL build of a HoL build. So far, I've been running with a HoL build, but I find myself casting HoL rarely, as FoL does the job perfectly (unless the tank or dps start screwing around).
I'd also be interesting in changing my second spec from ret to a "holy-dps" build if there's any existing. This build would see its use when I happen to get an overgeared group on an easy heroic. I feel I could help with DPS a little more when this occurs.
Response: For heroics and occasional Raid weekly (so long as its easy) it doesn’t really matter what healing style you use. Most people are going to out gear it so you’re probably going to be able to use Sacred Shield and Judgment of Light to keep everyone up… Well maybe not quite, but you get my point?
If you’re doing the harder ones, I’d stick to the holy light style.
Feedback: I find [Glyph of Sense Undead]to be an awesome part of my healing kit for ICC. You are always judging anyways. And on trash Holy Wrath helps ease the healing burden. I can pull 1.3k dps on boss fights just doing things to keep my mana up.
RE: http://www.theholypaladin.com/healing-in-3.3-best-glyphs.php
Response: You know I never really thought of it, but that’s not too bad an option.
Question: Oh. What about glyph of holy shock with 4 pieces of T10?
RE: http://www.theholypaladin.com/healing-in-3.3-best-glyphs.php
Answer: What about it? It’s more of a PVP Glyph than anything else.
I can see where you’re going with the 4 piece Tier 10 bonus but I personally don’t think it comes even close enough to be worth it. In my opinion Holy Shock is more of a situational thing than a spell that you should be adding into your rotation. If you do, you’ll be giving up too much HPS for it to be worth it.
Maybe that’s just me.
Feedback: You never know who's on the other end of the keyboard posting articles on a website like this and I find your articles helpful, supportive and insightful, but ones like this also serve to reinforce the validity of your knowledge and give a mature perspective to the discussions. In other words, it reassures us that your posts are well thought out and worthy of consideration even where we might disagree - all too often its easy to dismiss someone as a noob, or a kid, when we disagree with them - this negates that argument/supposition.
I think you've mentioned it before in other articles, but it might have been nice to restate in a post specifically about burnout is that switching to a non-healing class for a while can make the game enjoyable again and relieve the burnout.
Sometimes I'll log onto my main toons just enough to get the Triumphs or Frosts for the day and go do other things - I feel like I've done something to advance in a game I enjoy, but I also take that time away and don't raid sign up for any raids that day.
RE: http://www.theholypaladin.com/healing-lesson-raiding-while-fatigued.php
Response: Thanks for the positive feedback. You bring up an excellent point about dismissing someone as a noob if you disagree with them. Sometimes this removes a great opportunity to theory craft.
I look over new applications all the time as the GM doesn’t understand them too well. If they’ve done something odd, I ask them for their reasons for their choice. It’s easy to fix faulty application of knowledge or misunderstanding, but it’s not worth fixing laziness or the CBF’d attitude.
There is an article specifically for Healer burnout in the healing lessons area: http://www.theholypaladin.com/healing-lesson-healer-burnout.php.
Feedback: What are the build differences between the HoL and FoL spec?
Answer: One casts Holy Light mainly and the other casts mainly Flash of Light?
But seriously, the differences are spell choices and gemming choices. There’s a little bit of gearing differences, but they’re a little more subtle.
If you’re actually talking spec? The spec doesn’t really matter, it depends on whether you need the utility or not. Flash of Light spec normally takes 5 points in divinity regardless…. So I’d they often look specs similar to 51/5/15 and 54/17/0.
Feedback: Excellent article. I would only slightly disagree with one point.
"I am going to add that this build is quite gear intensive, so if you just hit 80; I would stay away from it. However if you feel that you geared enough, give it a shot, done correctly you should be able to still maintain your assignments and be a better raid healer."
I would submit that there are two basic healing styles played by most holy paladins. FOL style and HL style. The Holy Light build requires an amount of intellect that a fresh 80 is simply not going to have imo. Im pushing 40k mana raid buffed now, and I still feel like I just barely squeek by sometimes.
Ergo, for the fresh 80, I would say the FOL build is best for early Naxx, Sarth, Maly content because trying to gem and gear for HL build is going to be near impossible imo until geared in at minimum tier 9.
That being said, a fresh 80 wouldn't be waltzing right in to an ICC battle either if the raid leader is any good. I just think it's almost a half circle, so to speak, that one might find easier to make going from FOL build (as best one can) at fresh 80, and trying to gear and gem toward the ability to spam HL. Then, once the gear is acquired from the higher end content, switching back to an uber-spellpowered FOL build for ICC.
I could be wrong and have been before. Just my thoughts. Oh and you probably already know this, but if you have a good disc priest with you on Saurfang, you can down him without one mark of the fallen even going out. Shields prevent the marks from elevating.
RE: http://www.theholypaladin.com/healing-in-3.3-flash-of-light-spec.php
Response: Hey, thanks for the feedback. This is a guest post article, but I’ll throw in a response.
I actually disagree with you on this one. Flash of Light style is more than just what spell you’re casting… it has a lot to do with how you gem and how you play.
While when you’re early on, I totally agree that you’re not going to be able to spam Holy Light continually however, you should still be casting Holy Light and Divine Plea and gemming for intellect/Insightful Earthsiege Diamond. This is the core of the Holy Light spam style and suits newer paladins better.
In the first few weeks of WoTLK, I pretty much spammed Flash of Light with the occasional Holy Light and didn’t use Divine Plea on cool down and gem intellect. It took a while to work out that I’d increase my performance if I just changed styles.
Something that Irixa didn’t say in his article is that we both believe that the Flash of Light style is an inferior healing style when it comes to Icecrown.
But I do agree with Irixa totally, it’s a high gear style. If you have low gear, you’re much better going to the Holy Light spam style.
PS: I think they changed something for Suarfang just to stop that abuse… Don’t quote me though.
Question: I've a question related to this one:
# Fel Armor triggers separately when you heal a warlock. The trigger does not get copied.
As Fel Armor's a skill, I'm wondering if a healing-done-increasing TALENT will increase the amount to be copied over.
For an example,
Let's assume there's two Assassinate Rogues A and B, who spec'd to receive increased healing by 20%/10% respectively.
Now that I drop the beacon on B and heals A with a HL that "should have" done 10000, which turned out to be 12000 as the outcome of that talent, how much healing will B receives?
- 10000? (i.e. only the original amount gets copied over)
- 11000? (i.e. B's talent works)
- 12000? (i.e. A's healed amount copied to B)
- 13000? (i.e. A&B's talent adds up)
- 13200? (i.e. A's healed amount copied to B then enlarged by B's talent again)
And what happens if B come w/ the Mortal Strike?
RE: http://www.theholypaladin.com/healing-in-3.3-beacon-of-light.php
Response: All good theoretical questions. The Warlock question comes up more since Warlocks tank casters in some boss fights, which made it more important to find out.
I don’t know rogues too well but could not find this talent. I’d presume it would work similar to how it would work with Warlocks.
The Mortal Strike question is interesting and I don’t know the answer to it. I don’t have a warrior to test it all out on (which is how most of this testing is done). I’d predict that the healing is reduced to the warrior and the beacon amount copies the original full amount.
I’d be interested in how your testing comes goes and let us know what your answers are.
Feedback: Personally I don't use a healing meter (been holy since i was first asked to heal in mc lol), the reason being focus. If I start focusing on a heal meter then well it influences my game play, i start doing things to boost that meter.
I leave such things to other people; I can always tell you if I’m playing like a bull. If I feel like I’ve pushed beyond what I thought I was capable off doing
RE: http://www.theholypaladin.com/questions-and-feedback-part-014.php
Feedback: Some interesting stuff, but i always use Divine plea at the same time with Avenging Wrath and Divine Illumination at the same time so i use 50% less mana and only heal 25% less, this way i can keep healing and gain a decent amount of mana, i of course only use this during an encounter. might be something worth trying.
Response: This is always an option of what to do.
Epilogue:
Keep the feedback and questions coming. Believe it or not, it makes me go out and research some things. Sometimes the results surprise me and we'll all learn something new together!
Be sure to send them in, if you're asking the question, others are going to be asking too.
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