Are Holy Paladins versatile healers?
I’m sorry for the large amount of “paladins can raid heal” posts I’ve been doing lately, but I’m still seeing tons of paladins on the WOW forums and elsewhere insisting that the only thing that Paladins can do is tank heal with Holy Light. They say our other spells are useless and we are limited to only one job in a raid, whether we like it or not. Here are direct quotes from the official forums of the kind of things I’m seeing. Keep in mind, these comments are not directed toward people doing Sartharion with 3 drakes. These comments are responses to brand new Holy Paladins looking to respec or reroll. And sadly, these quotes are in the majority.
“On raid damage fights without heavy hitting bosses, we are not very equipped to help”
“Sadly, the only choices for healing pallies is you will either heal X tank, or Y tank.”
“A Paladin can effectively raid heal a group of 5 people indefinitely through pretty much the most intimidating raid damage in Ulduar. Of course, the way they do it is by brute force Holy Light spam and not being bad. Paladins have the best Cure-all, one hit wonder spell, but outside of that they are pretty limited in what they can do.”
“Tank heal or get the @@@* out of the way.”
“Paladins as healers have one role. Single target healing. 2 targets with bacon. If you want to heal more than 2, you will be very disappointed.”
“Paladins aren’t all that versatile. Sure I get some fun toys like HoP or HoS+Bubble, but really my entire job is to target my tank and press 3 over and over. Sometimes 2. Very rarely, I’ll target someone else and flash with 1. ”
“Are Paladins Versatile Healers? NO!!!111!!! Tank Heal or GTFO. We bring the strongest single target heals and Blessing of Kings.”
If “versatile” means we have a large number of different healing spells, then no, we are not versatile. However, if versatile means that we can handle any situation, then yes, I would argue that Holy Paladins are very versatile.
No, I will not GTFO…
Holy Paladins only have three healing spells. We also have a shield and a buff that can double our healing output. Our heals are very quick, very powerful, and very mana-efficient, especially considering our large mana pools. A Holy Paladin can top the effective healing meters raid healing in 25-mans relatively easily because of our very quick, powerful heals that can be targeted directly on the person who needs it most. All our heals also get replicated on the tank, doubling our healing. We are the best healer at handling emergency burst damage and keeping people alive who mess up and quickly lose most of their health.
Most Holy paladins should not need to raid heal solely with Holy Light. The main reason I can tell that people do that is because they can (their mana pools support it). Damage is rarely so high that raid healing soley with Holy Light is necessary, especially in Naxxramas. Holy Shock and Flash of Light are both very quick, powerful, and mana-efficient heals (especially at higher levels of Spell Power) that have great synergy together that, along with the use of Holy Lights as necessary, do a great job keeping up an entire raid. Considering how powerful our heals are, we don’t need HoTs or AoE heals. HoTs take time to tick and AoE heals are comparably weak and cost a lot of mana. Direct healing is what keeps people who are low on health alive and that tops off those who only need a small heal.
I raid heal on my paladin and do a great job at it. It requires a good UI setup and fast reaction times, but its definitely possible and very effective. Don’t listen to people who tell you that all you can do is spam Holy Light on the tank. Paladins are very good at tank healing, but we can also be great raid healers.
Should Holy Paladins solo tank heal?
I personally don’t believe that having your Holy Paladin solo tank heal is the most efficient use of your healing team. Of course, it depends on your healing team and the skills of your players (maybe your Holy Paladin does suck at raid healing). But, in my opinion, the most efficient healing team will have a number of healers on both the tank and the raid.
Your main tank should be receiving heals from all of the following sources and more:
- Druid HoTs
- Priest shields
- Shaman’s Chain Heal
- Other AoE Heals
- Beacon of Light
- Direct Heals as needed
With all of these sources of healing, your Holy Paladin should not need to spam Holy Light on the tank to keep him alive. In fact, your tank’s health should remain fairly constant, compared to what it will be with a single Holy Light spammer healing him. There are a number of advantages to this:
- Tank health is more stable. Burst damage is softened by shields, HoTs, and various other sources of healing.
- If one healer dies (the Holy Paladin), the raid doesn’t necessarily wipe.
- Practically every one of your Holy Paladin’s raid heals will be effectively doubled on the tank. You’ll have very little Beacon overhealing and more efficient healing overall.
- The Holy Paladin has the freedom to Holy Shock and Flash of Light the people in the raid who are at the highest risk of dying immediately, as well as topping off those who are still a bit low after an AoE heal.
- Your AoE healers can focus on their AoE heals, while your Holy Paladin takes care of the emergencies, since Holy Paladins have the most efficient and powerful single-target heals.
- Flash of Light is used more often, which is a more mana-efficient way to heal. Holy Paladins can focus their gear more on getting stronger, faster heals, rather than having larger mana pools, creating more consistent healing over time and less bursty healing.
- Your Holy Paladin will have less overhealing with all of his spells, since healing is more reactive and can be more targeted, using whichever spell will do the job most efficiently.
- Healing mistakes are less fatal since everyone is watching the tank and covering each other’s backs.
- Your Holy Paladin will have more mobility and an easier time avoiding environment affects. There is less risk of the tank dying because the healer had to move or was otherwise incapacitated.
Now, I realize this is just my opinion and that it isn’t very popular. However, this is what I’ve personally found from my experiences in Heroic Naxxramas and 10-man Ulduar and it works very well for us so far. Does this mean I think you can bring seven Holy Paladins to a raid? No, of course not. All the healing classes work very well together, each performing their own role to keep the entire raid alive. I think that limiting your tank healing to the Holy Paladin alone actually removes most of that synergy the different healing classes have when they heal the same targets together.
I know this strategy sounds scary. It is obviously less organized than a nice, well-setup raid with clear assignments. It’s much more difficult to pin-point where your problems are with this setup (although theoretically there will be less problems to have to pin-point) . Its also much more difficult for your Holy Paladin than just “pressing 3 over and over” (but its also much more fun). If you want, you could also try a hybrid strategy, where every healer watches everyone, however each healer has a specific target whom he gives healing priority. This is especially good the more tanks you have. I’m assuming this is probably what most raids do today already.
This type of strategy is obviously not for everyone. However, re-read the benefits I’ve posted above and consider how this might help your raid. Check out my other tips on how to raid heal as a Holy Paladin if you’re still feeling uneasy.
My main is a hunter, but on the side I’ve been raiding on a holy pally whom I just love. Before I started healing everyone told me that pallys were “faceroll” healers and all you did was spam one button.
I tried that, went OOM all the time, sucked at pally healing.
Then I learned to use all of the tools in the toolbox (Beacon, sacred shield, Hand spells, etc.), as well as setup mouseover macros and an effective healing UI. I’ve been able to raid heal Naxx10/25, a Naxx Dedicated Few run when I was relatively undergeared, Malygos and even Sarth 2D. Over the weekend I ran Naxx10 with another holy pally as the only other healer and we breezed through it. Not once in those raids has the assignment been “just spam heal the tank.”
To those that oversimplify a holy pallys role in and ability at healing, those are the same people that don’t make good pally raid healers. Usually people denigrate a class because they couldn’t play it affectively.
Thanks for setting it straight a bit on holy pallys. I dig the other healers, but wearing plate rules.
I understand what your saying but I would have to respectfully disagree. There is no doubt in my mind that Free for all healing can be successful in some of the easier encounters but as a permanent healing set up I think it would only lead to heal sniping, overheals and therefore dead tanks.
As a Holy Paladin and the healing officer for my 25 man guild, I feel the strength of good healing team is not individually talented healers, but solid teamwork and trust. If I can set an assignment and trust that my fellow healers will follow those instructions and keep their assigned targets alive, we are more likely to be successful in the encounter than if we constantly try to snipe heals and pad the healing meters.
What’s the good of bacon (yes I call beacon of light, bacon, as all paladins should) if the priest or shaman heal your target first. Bacon doesn’t work on overheals. Relying on reactive healing is a much more inefficient method of healing. With preassigned healing targets the healers are able to be proactive, time their heals and cancel them when not needed, saving mana, and preventing overhealing.
This is not me saying that the tank healer shouldn’t cast a quick heal on the raid nor a raid healer roll some dots or shield the tank. As stated trust is the most important thing in a healing team, I also trust each team and every team member to use their own judgement and help each other out when they can. In most cases this is the raid healers helping out on the tank.
“It’s much more difficult to pin-point where you’re problems are with this setup”
I honestly cant see the benefit of using a ffa system if it makes identifying problems more difficult.
If we constantly wipe I can quickly identify what the problem was (confer them to the Raid leader) and make some changes to rectify them. For this I look to the healing meters, but I don’t place much value on the raw numbers, instead I spend more time looking at who healed who. We recently had a Holy paladin in our guild who when assigned to heal the MT would only bacon him and then raid heal… after scratching my head and wondering why the tank died, I saw what he was doing, and corrected the problem.
Ultimately each and every healing class can successfully fulfil any role when healing. However in a high end 25 man raiding guild, when facing much more difficult encounters it is extremely important to set solid assignments in order to utilise the individual strengths of each class.
Kilborn
Great post! This is something my Guild Leader and I have been talking about for a bit now. A lot of Paladins, I was for a bit also, are still set in the mind set of only MT healing. Not realizing their full capabilities. With the introduction of Bacon, it opens so many doors for Paladins.
Right now our Holy Paladin if usually on the MT, and since Ulduar we have run into more often then not her having to move and Boom Tank Death!!! While this can happen with every class, if the Pally backs up with Bacon and the Priest covers with faster casts and their instants, and Druids with HoTs.
There are a few things I disagree with though. I really don’t think you need to gear for FoL to raid heal. Most top end guilds still successfully gear for HL, and still largely use HL for the Glyph of HL capabilities. That Glyph is just to nice to not take full advantage of. Don’t forget FoL on Infusion procs though.
Also just because you have everyone helping a little on the tank doesn’t mean that you can’t have clean clear cut assignments. Put the Priest there full-time, Druid rolling HoTs on tanks, and of course Shaman Chain Heal bounces. Can even assign someone to raid healing and spotting on the tank if needed. I don’t think there’s ever a time that there shouldn’t be assignments given.
Again great post, and glad to see there are others that think the same.
As a former healing lead and a current guild lead, I think there are some valid point in here, but not all of it should be taken to heart. As Kilborn says, you need clean, clear cut assignments to rectify problems. You should never have FFA healing going on.
However, we’ve had the problem several times where if we have Holy Pallies on the MT, they move for any random fire, and its tank death. I’m a big fan of having the holy paladin beacon the tank, heal raid emergencies with HOLY LIGHT (not flash, Glyph of HL is too good, and their mana can support it) and help out with raid healing as necessary. Chain Heal is good, but it only hits 3 targets with any effectiveness, the glyphed 4th target gets virtually nothing. The pally can make up the difference, especially if its in a grouped up people (melee). The druid can roll HoTs on multiple tanks and help spot with WGs here and there, Priests can keep shields up and do the heavy lifting on the tanks (.7 Second Pennances, Divine Aegis and PWS is much better mobile HPS).
Overall, I think the post makes a good point that pallies are often made do one thing, when they can in fact raid heal which heals the tank at the same time. This helps cover up their biggest weakness, mobility. Not to mention, there is often large damage put on random raid members these days (Stone Grip, Napalm Shell, Light Bomb, Slag Pot, the list goes on) that the pally can take care of by themselves and not have to worry about someone sniping to make ‘bacon’ less effective.
In the end, good post, but use HL instead of FoL and keep to clear assignments.
Thanks guys, you all make great points. I just have a couple comments.
I’ve found the Glyph of Holy Light isn’t as powerful now as it used to be, considering the amount of moving and spreading out that happens in Ulduar. Its still great on melee, but its range is really not that large to be able to rely on it for AoE healing, depending on the fight.
A Holy Paladin raid healing with Holy Light has to worry about the possibility of getting his Holy Light mostly or completely sniped by another’s heal, which wastes both the Holy Light and the Beacon heal. The same isn’t true for Holy Shock or Flash of Light. Those two spells are almost never sniped and the Beacon would always get the full benefit (assuming the Beacon’s health is low).
Using Flash of Light also provides more mobility and faster heals. Of course, you’re sacrificing some power and HPS, so it is a trade-off, I’ll admit. But there’s no reason you can’t still use Holy Light where appropriate (if there’s a ton of damage coming in).
I definitely agree with the comments about assignments. Just because the Holy Paladin isn’t spamming Holy Light on the tank doesn’t mean there should be no assignments.
Yesterday I topped the meters on our Razorscale-kill (Ulduar 25). Lots of raid-damage, but not as a constant debuff on all members (like Saphiron) but as spikes of damage on random members of the raid.
So I kept beacon up on one of the tanks, the one I was assigned to. Then I sniped away at everyone in range (as we were told to do, btw).
*This* is where a paladin healer shines the most. Quick, precise and situational healing. I even smoked our guild’s chief-of-healers who’s normally way ahead of everyone else with his priest.
As to everyone saying that beacon is no good because someone will land a heal on that random other player before your heal comes through - why, of course. If all you do is gem for int and use holy light, someone is bound to be faster than you. My haste is around 20%, depending on wich gear I use for the fight. I have glyphed for holy shock cooldown reduce. I’m rarely snipered. On said kill, I am virtually tied for overheal with the chief-of-healers (me 53%, him 52%). All other healers had more overheal than me.
Of course there are fights (boring ones), where the tank takes so much damage that I’m mostly spamming holy light on him. But they’re the exception just as they should be.
I think my clear problem with beaconing a tank and raid healing is how healing ineffectual your healing options are. You can choose between flash of light that is low HPS, holy shock which is mana inefficient, and holy light that is high HPS. In a fight where you need to heal the tank little flashes aren’t going to cut it tanks need high HP5ing spells.
That’s why you’re not the only one healing the tank, Troubl. If you are the only one healing the tank, you should use Holy Light and Beacon someone else (depending on the fight). Although, I’ve actually found many fights where I can actually keep up the tank with Beacon alone. It depends on your tank and the fight.
I play a Holy Paladin too, and just begin to alter raid healing with a Resto Druid I just leveled 80. Although my guild doesn’t try much in Ulduar (just some attemps on bugged Ingis last week), we rush Naxx10 and 25 every week, with mainly pick up healers (’coz we’re low on healers ¬¬). As the other guild healer refuses to organize I am assigned to the task of organizing healers.
Both in 10 and 25, I always assign a MT healer, at least, more in 25. It depends on the boss, but I assign nearly always the other healers to raid AND MT healing. What I mean by that assignment is that those healers maintain their HoTs, shields and bacons on the MT and then raid heal. I doesn’t mean the MT healers cannot raid heal, more like the exact opposite, it gives the MT healers the chance to to something more fun by helping some bit over the raid. I have to mention that my pally is always on MT healing (I am ahouted at if not XP) and it works really fine. I won’t say we never wipe, but I can say it’s quite always because of moving errors (yes, picking up people for Thaddius 25 is a BIG error).
On the other hand, I can compare my capacities to raid healing with my pally and my tree, and, besides the gear huge difference it’s tons more efficient to top 5 persons with 5 quick and big direct heals than with some WG, rejuv and small direct heals.
I’ve read in one of the comments that Holy shock is mana inefficient. I totally disagree: first, consider your holy crit percentage. I personnaly love criting and because of that, have a 40% holy crit. But I think I have overdone it and will try getting more sp instead, lowering to 35%. The you have your T7 crit bonus: 45%. But don’t forget your talents! 6% more crit on HL and shock. So we get a total of 51% crit. So half your shocks are absolutely amazing direct heals: 7-8-9ks for ridiculous cost (284), and of course, instant. Not forgetting the other half, healing 4-5ks and costing 711 mana (on my pally). I always give a look at my recount healing stats after boss encounters and always get crit statistics similar to the probabilities, and after doing some math over these probabilities, I get a cost of mana of ~500. Wich is not so far from the healing per mana point of the FoL, wich is super mana efficient. It may not be the most mana efficient healing skill in the game, but IT IS mana efficient.
I, like the admin, am a fan of holy shock, and I can’t really understand pallies saying it’s unuseful.
I think I’ve written a lot for my first commentary in here, so I’ll get going.
I visit your blog twice a day, I think it’s nice and useful, keep going!
Sorry for my english, if there’re errors, it’s because of me being spanish
Good bye ^^
i play both a paladin and a mage my mage is 80 my paladin is not… but i work with the healers and dps in my guild one thing that i cant stand is when people say a healer should just dps… the metters dont count dont look at them unless its to see what move ur using. i see alot of the time people use there hots and small healers MT and OT healers use there greater heals… i no theres better ways of doing this so i started a healer i had the most question about. PALADIN. gosh this class drives me nuts. i went around and read almost very fourm and found out that paladins are the best in the healing class as long as there spec and geared (compared to other healers there dont have to be as well as geared) i have also come across alot of questions and u have answered them very well
Flame 80 mage
I have no doubt that paladins can raid heal. The question in my mind, however, is whether or not they should raid heal if there are other options.
I think I found my soulmate!
I recently switched raiding guilds, am mainly raiding Ulduar 25 with 5-6 other healers, I was told Id be MT healing spamming HL- I was like “ahh crap” I have a play style exactly as discribed in this post. The idea of HL spamming MT made me cringe, but I was prepared to have to make that switch and I happily redesigned my play style. I changed some gear and gems and enchants, built my mana pool up to 25k and brought my sp down from 2450 to 2100. I was bored. I was overhealing 70%. I was watching dps die when I knew I could have got them safe enough for raid healers to fill back up. I was not be utilized to my potential. I have since gone back to my 21k mana pool ( I have never ever been oom because I manage my mana efficently and heal intelligently.)2400sp and am once again a happy and effective “I can save him!” healer. I did find that 2 Holy pallys on a tank - one a happy HL spammer the other a beacon loving FL spamming holy shock junkie make an excellent MT healing team. The FL spammer can also throw out some quick life saving heals to the raid while still staying focused mainly on the tank.
Now the rare occasion I am the only Holy Paladin and MT healing, I will need to HL spam, I swich out librams and trinkets and switch flask’s to wisdom and Im able to chill out and press one button that fight.
I am so thrilled that there is another holy pally out there who thinks the way that I do. Its so good to not be alone
Now..theory crafting tools for gear.. found any that dont concentrate on the HL spamathon we have these days?
holy shock which is mana inefficient
In many cases, Holy Shock will actually be free!
If you are standing near a mob and are autoattacking it, and you have SoW on, a fast weapon, and some haste buffs, your swing timer will advance during the GCD after the Holy Shock and you will get a whack in. This will regen 4% of your total mana if SoW procs, which will more than pay for a Holy Shock’s expected cost (after illumination and meta gem returns.) SoW procs can occur once every four seconds, so if you are otherwise constantly healing you will get a proc for every HS cast (since they are at least 5 seconds apart).
I’ve not done many PvE raid yet, but I have healed in many many Wintergrasp raid groups. And the raid wide damage does not come more spread out than that. Never had a problem keeping mulitiple targets up, you just need a good UI to keep track of things.
Started to hit naxx now and healing multiple targets is not much of an issue, you just need to corordinate with the other healers (linked healing UI) so you don’t overheal the same target and waste mana, only times I’ve had an issue is where healing is thought of as competitive and people try to top the meters. Meters have no place in healing, leave that for the dps. Its more important to do a smaller amount of correctly targeted healing, than snipe a few heals to top the charts.
I enjoy your post and website, thank you because it has helped me clear many questions.
When I see post about Holy Paladins unable to raid heal I honestly Laugh Out Loud. I can tell you from my own experience I can easily heal a raid without a problem and the fun part is I come mainly first on meters; I used to pay close attention to meters not to be the best but to ensure I was offering the best possible heals to my group.
I love my Holy Paladin because it is fun for me and I try to to listen what others say, after all I am the one playing it
I do believe there is no such a thing has this character is better than this, it is mostly what you feel is better for you and enjoy playing it.
Thank you again for the great posts
Crazy Holy Paladin
Hi Blood elf Holy Paladin Exodar realm.
I would just like to say I agree 100%. I am always top heals very rarely am I not. My philosophy to healing as a pali Is beacon my tank and heal everyone else. It’s quite simply and when I am doing that I seem to be able to heal the raid fine There is always support with the raid druid or shamen, but for the most part I do over 30-40% of the heals in raids. The only time another class can keep up with me is a really good druid healer. And almost never in a 10 man do they compete only in a 25man when there HoTing 25 people up. But I would say 2 good paladins could easily heal toc 10 man with realatively no problems except for maybe the faction champion fight. That is all I wanted to say ty for the post it’s awesome to see other holy pali’s can raid heal and think we are a very versitle class.