Arena Healing Tips for Holy Paladins
I’ve been doing arenas quite a lot lately, so I thought I’d post some of the basics to healing arenas that will help you succeed as you first start out. Keep in mind that I normally do 2v2 and 3v3 arenas with melee dps (Arms Warriors, Ret Pallies, Rogues, and Death Knights) and a 49/2/20 spec, but a lot of these tips should apply to a variety of group compositions and talent specs. Check out my post on PvP talents for other good PvP specs. Feel free to add your own tips in the comments below.
What you can expect in Arenas
As a healer, you are a prime target for the opposing team. Unharrased, you can pour heals down non-stop on your teammates, making your team very difficult to kill. For that reason, you will almost never be unharrased by a good team. You’ll be subjected to quick bursts of damage, stuns, cyclones, polymorphs, silences, mana burns and more. Hunter, warlock and death knight pets will almost always be stuck to you. You’ll find that you’ll be spending a large portion of your time just keeping yourself alive, rather than actively helping your teammates to win. This is a good thing. While you’re running around like a madman, you’re buying time for your teammates to do what they do best, which is to kill the opposition. Give them enough time, and eventually you’ll have the win.
Tip #1: Keep Sacred Shield up on someone 100% of the time.
Sacred Shield is a powerful spell. If you’re not sure who your opponent is going for first, cast Sacred Shield on yourself to start the fight off. Its very likely that at least one of your opponents will go straight for you. When the fight starts, watch for who on your team is going to take the first hits. If that person isn’t you, hit them with a quick Holy Shock if necessary, switch your Sacred Shield onto that person, then start spamming your heals. Sacred Shield is an instant cast that can mitigate a huge amount of damage for low mana and only requires one global cooldown to use. Be ready to repeat this process whenever the opponent switches targets and keep SS up on someone 100% of the time.
Tip #2: Use Hand of Sacrifice on your teammates often
Hand of Sacrifice is another powerful spell. The name of the game in arenas is focused burst damage, and Hand of Sacrifice can eliminate a lot of that burst. Splitting the damage between two people is exactly what your opponent is trying to avoid. Using this in combination with Sacred Shield and/or Divine Sacrifice will almost gaurantee that your teammate won’t die from focused fire. Just be sure that you aren’t low on health yourself and that there’s no one on who can quickly switch to burst you down instead. Casting Beacon of Light on yourself beforehand will make this much easier.
Tip #3: Stay away from Melee DPS
Although you are responsible for keeping your entire team alive, your primary responsibility is to yourself. While in a 1v1 situation you can sometimes live quite some time while being beat on, the same isn’t true in an arena. What this means is that if a member of the other team has focused their dps on you, you need to do whatever you can to eliminate this damage from continuing, especially if the damage is coming from a melee dps. Its very hard to heal effectively while a rogue, warrior, or ret pally is beating on you, stunning you, and interrupting your heals. Avoiding this damage is much more effective than trying to heal through it. A Holy Paladin actually has seven or eight different tools at his disposal to get away from melee dps:
- Move - A Holy Paladin that stands in one place will die very quickly. All melee dps can unload a ton of damage very quickly on a stationary target. The simple act of running away will help you avoid a lot of that damage. This is especially true if you have Pursuit of Justice.
- Cleanse - If you find you can’t move, casting cleanse on yourself can sometimes help you regain that freedom. Chains of Ice, Entangling Roots, and Frost Nova are all abilities that you can cleanse out of. This is even more useful because the enemy is often not expecting it, which means you can get quite a few steps ahead, buying yourself a lot of time. Cleanse has no cooldown, so use it liberally.
- Hand of Freedom - Hand of Freedom is another powerful tool to get away from melee dps and functions the same way as cleanse, except it works on any ability that limits movement. Lasting 10 seconds (6 seconds with the new patch) with only a 25 second cooldown, you can be pretty secure knowing it will be off cooldown when you need it. If you have the Divine Purpose talent, it will also remove a stun. If you have Guardian’s Favor your Hand of Freedom will last an extra 4 seconds.
- PvP Trinket - You can use your PvP trinket to remove a stun, allowing you to run away from a stunlocking rogue, for example.
- Hammer of Justice - Hammer of Justice doesn’t have to be used offensively on a healer. It can also be a great tool to buy yourself a ton of time to get away from your pursuer. Its especially useful because it can also be used when you’re facing away from your opponent.
- Divine Shield - the ability of last resort, because of its long cooldown. If you’re about to die, don’t hesitate to bubble. Its always better to bubble than to die. Its usually best to throw a Holy Light on yourself as soon as you bubble. It will take time for the opponent to switch targets anyway and its likely they’ll be ready with a bubble dispell as soon as you cast it, since bubble is one of the most common paladin responses to damage. Don’t assume that you’re safe just because you’ve bubbled. Priests and warrior can both dispel bubbles now.
- Holy Wrath - Holy Wrath only works on some pets, but it can buy you a few seconds away from that felhound or ghoul chewing your butt. Turn Evil also works on these pets, although make sure your teammate doesn’t die while you’re fearing a pet.
- Repentance - depending on your spec, you might also be able to stun with Repentance.
Notice that all of these spells (except Turn Evil) are instant cast. Instant cast spells are infinitely easier to use in Arenas than spells with a cast time (Flash of Light, Holy Light), since you can cast them while moving and they can’t be interrupted. You should be using Holy shock and instant Flash of Lights at every cooldown. Work on getting your Spell Power and Crit as high as you can to increase their power and get librams, glyphs and set bonuses that improve Holy Shock and Flash of Light. To expand on that:
Tip #4 - Be very careful with Holy Light
Holy Light is a dangerous spell to use in arenas for two reasons: (1) Your teammate can die before it goes off and (2) It can be interrupted. Its awesome when you can get one off, but you don’t want to try that very often. Its very tempting when you see your teammate getting low to try to throw a Holy Light on them, but that could be exactly what kills them. That long cast timer under your nameplate is like honey to a bee for interrupts and its never a good idea to stand in one place for too long, allowing the melee dps to catch up to you. If the other team is truly ignoring you, then you can spam a couple Holy Lights with no problem, but don’t expect to be able to do that for very long.
Tip #5 - Only contribute to burst damage if its absolutely safe to do so.
Holy Paladins can actually put out some relatively decent burst damage, especially if you can get the enemy below 20% health. A well placed judgement, followed by a quick Holy Shock and a Hammer of Wrath could be exactly what your team needs to take someone down. But remember that you’re not there for dps. 5 - 6 seconds can be an eternity when you’re in need of a heal only to find Holy Shock is on cooldown. Leave the dps to the professionals unless its absolutely safe to do so. You’ll get an opportunity for burst again later, but if you die, its game over.
On a related note, a good way to coordinate burst damage is using the judgement macro on my macros page. If you target your teammate, it will judge and target your teammate’s target. Just make sure not to use it right after your teammate uses their CC ability or you’ll break the CC. Its also nice because it ensures your judgement is on the target that your teammate is attacking.
Tip #6 - Use Blessing of Wisdom on yourself
Its tempting to use Blessing of Kings on yourself and Kings is sometimes appropriate, especially in the 5v5 setting where games can be very short because of the high burst. However, 2v2 and even 3v3 matches can sometimes last very long and at that point the winner is the one who outlasts his opponent’s mana bar. Running out of mana means game over and Blessing of Wisdom will help you last a little longer and squeeze a few heals in while you wait for Divine Plea to come up. This is especially important against mana drain teams (including priests and warlocks). You’ll want to avoid mana drains by staying out of line of sight as much as possible. Staying out of line of sight is one of the best defenses against any ranged dps.
Tip #7 - Stack Resilience and Stamina
The point of an arena match is to kill the other team. Therefore, the harder you are to kill, the harder it is for the other team to win. This isn’t PvE where you can expect to not take very much damage. You need to sacrifice some Spell Power and other healing stats to stack resilience and stamina. Fill all your gem slots with resilience. If you want to match socket colors, go ahead and use resilience/stamina and resilience/spell power gems. This will lower burst damage, giving you time to heal and time for your cooldowns to come back up. It will also lower the effectiveness of dots and mana burns on you. Read my previous post for a list of Holy Paladin PvP gear and how to get it.
Summary
Fighting in an arena is very different than fighting a boss in PvE. There is a much greater reliance on your utility abilities and talents. You’ll need a good understanding of all the capabilities of your class and, to a lesser extent, every other class as well. You’ll need a great setup for your UI and especially your hotkeys and mouse clicks. However, it can be a ton of fun.
This season is the best time to get into arenas. Blizzard has mostly fixed the system so that you get more points for your wins and lose less points for your losses. There’s still an issue fighting new teams with a high matchmaking rating but a low team rating, meaning you sometimes don’t get many points from a win, even against a good team. But it seems that happens less and less as your matchmaking rating increases. The only real obstacle is the time you want to put into it. There’s no reason to stop at 10 matches per week, especially at the lower levels. If you haven’t tried arenas yet, I encourage you to do so. It’s a lot of fun.
Good luck!
Related Links
- Holy Paladin 3.1 PvP Talent Specs
- Best Holy Paladin PvP 3v3 Spec/Build?
- Holy Paladin PvP Gear - Patch 3.1
Awesome guide! I actually just did my first round of arena with a warrior and ret pally this weekend, so this is especially timely. I actually had a couple questions…
I would get locked out of my spells often, is this just because of casting Holy Light which gives mages/locks enough time to lock me out? And if I need to get off a HL, is there a way to reduce or remove this lock out?
Also, it seems Holy Shock is the most critical spell to use, is it worth gemming for crit to increase your instant FOLs? and besides glyphing to reduce CD, any tips for getting more out of it?
Thanks!
for 2v2 consider 19/52/0 spec. Its great fun and looks like it wont be nerfed:
Ghostcrawler 27.may.2009
It’s slightly silly because I agree those “Protadins” are playing as healers. At the same time, we’re not sure it’s hurting anything and it hasn’t yet become the only way to play a healing paladin. So for now, we’re willing to call it a creative use of game mechanics and not a problem we need to stomp out.
We’ll see where it ends up in a few weeks though. Our answer may be different.
Yeah, mages, rogues and warlocks are definitely a problem with their Counterspell, Kick, and spell lock abilities which can lock you out of all your spells for 5-8 seconds. I don’t believe there is anyway to remove the lock out. The only real defense is to not use spells with a cast time. If you use Flash of Light, they only have about one second to interrupt, which is still plenty of time for them, actually. You can also use Aura Mastery first if you have it and its off cooldown.
For rogues, you can get out of range of them. For warlocks, you could stun or fear (or kill) their pet. For mages, you’d have to stun or CC them or stay out of range. And, of course, only use instant casts if you can. The interrupts do all have a cooldown, although that’s little consolation if your teammate died during it.
The Glyph of Holy Shock is awesome. The PvE 2-piece set bonus is really nice (increases crit of Holy shock by 10%), although the PvP 4-piece bonus is nice too. You could gem for crit, but I think resilience would be better so you can survive even if you’re locked out. There’s the Glyph of Flash of Light which will increase the power of your Flash of Light a bit, as well as the PvP gloves and libram (if you can get to 1250 rating). In general, you just want to get the best PvP gear you can with lots of resilience and stamina and it will get easier.
I’ve never played a healer in areans, but I might have a possible solution for spell lock outs, or atleast helping in dealing with them. As a warrior, I have my own spell interrupts that i frequently use. I often see healers bait me with big heals that I just can’t resist bashing, only to hit them and have nothing happen, leaving them free to cast their big heals while my bash is on cooldown. By starting their big heals, and baiting me to interrupt it, and stopping the cast before my interrupt hits them, they’re turning the tables and locking me out of a spell interrupt. It probably would take a good mod that monitors enemy cool-downs to work well, but it might be a good idea to try this against rogues/etc and see how it works!
@ Lollipop
“Fake casting” is the strategy you’re describing, and it’s a risky proposition.
Some people like to wait until their opponent has nearly finished their cast to interrupt it (thus wasting as much time as possible), some like to interrupt right away.
It’s difficult to judge precisely how long to let a fake cast go before stopping it yourself. Consider that you have to take into account your own lag, and possibly the lag of your opponent.
Of course, Paladins can just slam Aura Mastery and become immune to interrupts if they need to anyways.
Thank you for the guide, especially in terms of gemming gear. I have a holy pvp secondary spec and I’ve been putting in intellect and spellpower. I will change those right away!
Is there a possibilty that you maybe could take a look into the 20/51/0 specc too in the same exellent way as this article?
I tried the 20/51/0 in 2v2 with a retri and lost seven games. Changed to 33/38/0 in three and won these so at least I could indeed need some help :).
Or is it so that the prothealer specc works best with DK alt. Warr who can peel of attacks?
Honestly, a lot of these same principles should apply for a deep Prot spec. Deep Prot will give you some extra buttons like Avenger’s Shield and Holy Shield and you’ll lose some buttons like Beacon of Light and ranged judgements. Other than that, you should have more stamina with deep Prot. I’m not sure how your Spell Power in deep Prot compares to deep Holy, but deep Prot definitely seems like a strong healing spec in PvP. There are a lot of talents that increase your healing, your crit, and your stamina and you get some great defensive talents as well. I’ve seriously considered going for a very deep Prot spec in PvP. The biggest loss is Holy Shock if you go too deep into Prot. I’ll probably try it out some day and give you my results.
In general though, almost all the tips above should apply to deep Prot as well.
You left out Divine Sacrifice. Very useful for when your partner(s) are being tunnel visioned by the opposing DPS.
NVM, didn’t catch that part. My bad!
You talk about gemming resil and stamina. What about enchants? Should they be heavy on resil/stam mix too or would you suggest enchanting spell power and/or crit strike? I am also asking this in terms of pvp as well as arena.
I actually do use stamina and resilience enchants for all of my PvP gear. I’m still using a few pieces of PvE gear though while I earn the rest of my arena points and honor, and the PvE gear is still gemmed/enchanted for PvE. Every time I replace a PvE piece with a PvP piece, my health and resilience go up a lot but my healing stats go down. I think its gotten to the point where my spell power and mana is a little low in PvP, but I really enjoy being pretty much unkillable. The other team almost always goes for one of my teammates because they figure out that they can’t kill me, even without me bubbling.
What you do really depends on how you’re dying in PvP. If you’re often the first one dying, you definitely need to stack more resilience and stamina. But if your teammates are dying first or if you’re running out of mana, you might need a little more spell power and other healing stats.
I would advice that you stack resilience and stamina first and then see how things go. You can change it up to more healing-oriented stats if you need to. But keep in mind first that you have Sacred Shield, Hand of Sacrifice and Divine Sacrifice to keep your teammate alive, and you can Beacon yourself to negate any damage you take from these. Running out of mana is probably the biggest drawback to stacking stamina and resilience. Once you can consistently survive long enough to go OOM, then consider stacking more Intellect, etc.
Thanks for the Great Guide.
However, I would suggest starting the fight with Blessing of Kings and switch to Blessing of Wisdom after a couple minutes into the fight. The reason is because it buys you additional HP and MP at the beginning of the match which typically will be losted or used within the first minute of the fight.
It often happens to me that my teammate dies so quickly in a short burst dmg and i cant keep him alive. Im a holy pala with 1800 SP. What do u suggest i can do when they stuck burst dmg on my mate…i have to mention that im suddenly into sap and then into cyclone fasttttt(for example). I used trinket and faster bubble to keep my partner alive…but i cant…even with hand of prot…he dies by dots quickly.
I’ve found that Hand of Sacrifice, Divine Sacrifice, and Sacred Shield work wonders at stopping them from bringing your partner down. I usually get one Holy Shock off, then do SS, HoS and Divine Shield if I need to then spam my heals. You could also try using Hammer of Justice on one of the dps.
I have teamed up in a 2v2 with a lock and I find that most teams try to burn him down as fast as possible. When I see a mage pop mirror image and go ballistic on him, I usually pop Divine Protection on him so he takes 50% less damage. If he still looses HP fast, I also give him hand of Sacrifice. I of course have BoL on myself. And if really needed, I use Aura Mastery and then Holy Light. A good macro for that one is:
#showtooltip Aura Mastery
/use Aura Mastery
/cast Holy Light
You can also throw in /use Divine Favor in the line above Aura Mastery to make sure you get a crit from it too. And if you don’t think that’s enough, then go all out with this one HL bomb
#showtooltip Aura Mastery
/use Divine Favor
/use Avenging Wrath
/use Aura Mastery
/cast Holy Light
Most holypalas er socking int for som strange reson. I disagree at useing bless of Wisdom, you won’t need it just use this macro:
/cast Divine Plea
/cast Avanging wrath
/cast Divine Illumination
/cast Arcane torrent (if your a belf)
And about the socking i find it more usefull to sock stam/sp then stam/res. Becouse of sacred shiled you don’t need more res then the armore gives ya.
anyway nice guide
Ok First of all not a bad guide i just have one somewhat major disagreement. The gemming portion. First of all if you gem straight resilience you are dumb. Not trying to be rude just how it is. in full pvp set Including weapon you have about 11 gem slots. Lets assume you were slightly smart and got Intel and chance to restore spell pwr on spell cast meta you would need a red blue and yellow. And that you had some cashflow and gemmed epic gems. you would have to have two gem slots with 10 resil and 9 with 20. Leaving you with 200 extra resilience. That leaves you with a 2.12% increase in Crit reduction. What i do agree with is stacking intell. Intell is a magnificent thing as both a holy pally and resto shaman. It brings so much more to the table than any other stat. If you were again gem straight intell disregarding gemslot bonuses you would wind up with 200 extra intellect which would result in 3000 extra mana before talents. It would also increase your crit spell power and mp5. IF you think about it as well divine plea is very very overpowered. It restores 25% of your mana. So the more mana you have the better it is. In the long run that extra 2.12% crit reduction isnt really gunna help you when you have crap mana crit and spell power. As of season 8 you only needed about 1k resil as a holy pally and you were good so why gem for more when even relentless gear…even furious gear at that can give y ou that much resil. So yeah Intell>Resil hands down.
Well, resilience is now twice as valuable as it was before this week, so I’m not sure if any of the below I write is accurate.
Intellect is good, it gives you 3000 mana (and some spellpower and mp5). The epic Int gems will give you the most raw stats, both in PvP and PvE. However, I rarely run out of mana in arenas, especialy with seal of wisdom up. Also, this guide is mostly for people just starting arenas who want to be able to survive longer and maybe get a kill and a win.
Its true that Paladins are probably the class that least needs resilience. You can actually go into arenas with quite a bit of PvE gear and still do well as a Holy Paladin. Spell Power and Crit can make your spells a lot stronger and faster (instant Flashes, etc), and you need strong heals when going against a mortal strike team (which all of them are). However, I don’t think stacking Intellect is ideal.
What you gem really has everything to do with your team and your comp. If you get focused on a lot or your pvp gear is weak, you need more stam and resilience. If you are rarely focused, you need more spellpower and crit. If you have trouble avoiding mana burns or your matches last a long time, you need more Intellect. Gem whatever is most appropriate for you.
Hello,
I just starting Arena, and I have a question. What’s the Resilience Cap of a Holy Paladin?