Holy Paladin Healing Guide
Note: This post has been updated slightly for Patch 3.2 and the new Beacon.
Although I’ve always been planning to do it, I have yet to write a general guide to Holy Paladin healing. So, here it is.
How I Heal 99% of the time
I personally think I have a very unique (bad?) healing strategy, but it works very well for me. I stack Spell Power and Crit instead of Intellect, I don’t spam Holy Light, and I always do a ton of raid healing. Keep that in mind while you read and decide whether this strategy is right for you. Also, keep in mind my UI setup and macros.
On 99% of boss fights, including 5-mans and 25-mans, this is what I do:
- I cast Sacred Shield on the person who will take the most damage - the main tank or possibly an off-tank. Sometimes the off-tank actually takes more damage due to adds or because they’re undergeared.
- I cast Beacon on that same person.
- I always try to stay on top of the tank on the pull until he is almost in position. That way the tank never gets out of range (although this is less important now with the new 60 yard Beacon).
- I use a judgement on the main target of the dps (usually the tank’s target).
- I throw a Holy Shock on the off-tank to heal the burst damage that always happens on the pull.
Healing Tips
That’s my opener. Here’s what I do from there.
- At this point, I start healing like mad. My healing is usually very reactive and I almost never stop healing.
- I tend to use Holy Shock on almost every cooldown, unless I know that its unnecessary (damage is coming in relatively slowly). In that case, I’ll use Flash of Light. I really love Holy Shock and its synergy with the other two heals. I almost always use Holy Shock on anyone who goes under 50% if its off cooldown. You save many lives that way.
- If everyone is at full health, I might take a little break or possibly throw a Flash of Light or two on someone just in case the tank gets hit before its done casting. I may start a Holy Light if I know the damage is coming in hard.
- If someone (including the tank) is above 50% health and the incoming damage is reasonable, I’ll use Flash of Light. This is what I tend to do the most, especially as content gets easier.
- If Holy Shock is on cooldown and someone is below 50%, or I think they will be soon, I’ll boot up a Holy Light on them.
- If Holy Shock is on cooldown and someone is below 10%, I’ll flail like mad and pray to God he doesn’t die. Realistically, I may use Flash of Light or Holy Light, depending on how long I think the person will live and how good the other healers are. If the healers are bad, I use Holy Light, since Flash won’t usually be enough to save him anyway. If the other healers are good I’ll use Flash to keep him from dying and hope the other healers will cover the rest. Holy shock is preferred, followed by a Flash of Light or Holy Light, depending on how much more healing they need. If its a tank, it will almost always be Holy Light.
- I use Holy Light less if I have a good heal team. The worse my fellow healers are, the more I use Holy Light mainly because I just need to pump out more healing since I’m getting less help.
- I use Divine Plea every cooldown no matter what, and I hardly even notice it.
- I keep Sacred Shield up 100%.
- I keep Beacon of Light up 100%. This is very important.
- I try to keep my Flash HoT up 100% on anyone with Sacred Shield on them.
- I usually judge every 10 seconds.
- It depends on the tank’s health, my target’s health, my other healers, and the situation, but I will almost always heal someone else before I heal the tank, since the heal gets Beaconed onto the tank anyway. This effectively doubles my healing. Obviously, you have to be careful with this and know its limitations. You’re usually safe with Holy Shock and even Flash of Light. Its a bit risky with Holy Light, but gives you the greatest rewards if it works and the greatest failure if it doesn’t.
- I never ever heal the tank directly except to apply the Flash of Light HoT.
- I’ll bubble quickly if there’s any chance I might die.
- If I find the tank (or anyone) is taking a ton of damage, I’ll start spamming Holy Light. Usually after a few spams other healers have started spamming him too or the damage has stopped and I can lay off a little.
- I use Hand of Sacrifice on the tank and bubble during any boss enrage.
- If I start to run low on mana (which is rare) or find my mana going down very quickly, I’ll lay off a bit and make sure to only use Flash of Light while I wait out the Divine Plea cooldown. Usually once Divine Plea is back up, I can go back to my regular healing and before long the fight is done.
- In general, I just heal the person with the lowest green bar.
- A lot of healing is about getting a “feel” for the damage. A lot of it is instinct and very quick reaction time. You have to pick the right heal on the right person within a split second. The instinct comes in by knowing what the other healers will do and how the damage will come in in the next few seconds. Just keep practicing and you’ll get better.
And that’s everything. Our raids don’t usually use any healing assignments more complex than that on most fights (so far). There are exceptions, of course. I let my Beacon take care of most of the tank heals and throw direct heals on the tank as needed. I use Holy Light more as the damage increases and people’s health get low. I use Holy Shock often and Divine Plea every cooldown.
I like not being the only healer on the main Tank. I think having multiple healers on the main tank gives us a lot of advantages. Priest and Druid shields and HoTs help to even out burst damage on the tank and Shamans can use chain heal on the tank to heal up all the melee. With everyone helping heal the tank, it gives me the opportunity to help heal both the raid and the tank (with Beacon), which I’m very good at. Having multiple people taking care of everyone means that one person’s mistake won’t necessarily kill someone and we can all watch each other’s backs. Maybe its just because content is relatively easy, but this strategy has worked for us all through 25-man Naxx and its at least much more fun for me than spamming Holy Light on one person all night. This strategy has now become the only viable strategy as of Patch 3.2.
Good strategy. Usually exactly what I do.
It’s more fun anyway than HL-HL-HL-HL-… the paladin’s who say being holy is boring just need to mix it up some.
This is similar to what I do on single-tank fights with little to no raid damage.
For multi-tank fights, I Sacred Shield my tank, Beacon the other tank, and spam Flash of Light on my tank to keep them both topped off. If anyone in the raid gets low, I throw them a Holy Shock. If one of the tanks starts to dip below about 70%, I fire off a Holy Light before resuming FoL spam. If I know big damage is coming, I try to queue up a forced-crit Holy Light and may follow it up with a Holy Shock to top the tank off.
For fights with a lot of raid damage, I beacon myself. Self beacon means I don’t have to run from Blizzards on Sapph, don’t have to dodge flame walls on Sarth, and can generally devote myself to constant healing unless an environmental effect will outright kill me or chain to other people. Typically, Sarth with drakes ends up being the only encounter I have to be extremely aware of my position on, due to my beacon sitting on the add tank.
Minimizing movement means minimizing the problems that forced movement causes - clipped heals, out of range of tank, chaining frost tomb while dodging shadow fissures, getting clipped by a molten construct as it’s kited by, etc. I don’t play sloppy, but I do enjoy having a powerful safety net.
whats wrong with over healing as you no im a noob to the paladin class… and this is geart info so far!
Nothing is wrong with overhealing if you don’t run out of mana and people don’t die. However, depending on how you do it, reducing overhealing can save you mana and allows you to pump out more heals in a shorter amount of time since less of your heals are wasted.
For example, if you have Beacon on the tank and you are healing the raid with every heal, almost all of your heals will be replicated on the tank. This means you’re keeping up people in the raid and contributing a great deal of healing on the tank at the same time.
On the other hand, if you have Beacon on yourself and you’re healing the tank, most of your Beacon heals are wasted on overheals. You’re doing about half as much healing as you would the other way, assuming you’re using the same spells as the same rate.
The problem is that overheals don’t help anyone at all. If you can somehow convert those into effective heals, you’ll be healing much more efficiently.
ok so say i overheal a bit. Im on raid heals should i pop jol or jow ok the boss or current mob fight…also were are you standing during the fights.
I’m going to be creating some more guides on where specifically you stand on each fight and what abilities you should use at what time. I have a few of those up already that you can get to from the navigation on the right. You should usually use your judgement on whichever target most of the dps is on. Which judgement you use depends on which other paladins are in the group and what they’re using. There’s a discussion of that here:
http://www.holypaladin.net/index.php/paladin-judgements-in-patch-31
Hi there, I’m a fellow protection paladin who has specced holy as dual.
I haven’t got a lot of chances so far to heal, only when my guild needs desperately a healer and has got a proper OT who can handle the job.
I gemmed in all red and yellow slots SP and crit, and sticked to INT + MP/5 on blue ones, got me some SP + crit enchants and after reading your guide to gearing up I’m quite glad I did so.
I have been told like many that holy paladins only do good on tank healing. Although I’ve never healed a lot in WoW, I’ve been a dedicated healer on some MMO’s and I do like healing a lot, especially healing everyone. Your guide has given me the hope and trust I needed on raid healing, because I found myself trying to heal everyone as well while keeping the beacon on the tank. I haven’t got used to all the skills so far, but getting better on saving lives with Holy Shock and instant FoL.
Keep up the great site and nice, inspiring guides out there!
Pallanen @ Grim Batol (EU)
Great read, thank you very much.
I’ve been looking for a post like this one for a couple of months. Hugely informative. Thank you.
First of all right now you gem int. I don’t know what you guys are rading but for Ulduar you need mana. You dont use flash of light because it sucks.
My holy light has a 1.7 second cast when the buffs are rolling. casting flash of light is a waste of a global cooldown. 18k crit compared to 6k.(yours might be higher i stack int). Anyway after the patch were going to have to use flash of light for sure. but right now mana is not an issue and i can spam holy light through most fights with no mana issues at all.
I think this is why they are nerfing mana regen and mana. I looked at the mana gained on recount and im usually 10 times higher than anyone else. So currently your best bet is to stack int and spam holy light and use your holy shocks.(i got 2 pc t8 so i get a hot with my shock to). I usually outheal everyone except resto druids on some fights and all of nax.(tanks take no damage).
After the patch i think i will use spellpower gems, alot of the plate gear in ulduar has alot of mp5 already so hopefully the nerfs arent to bad. I agree that beacon has become much more powerfull.
I actually thought it was useless because overhealing doesent count and palys do alot of overhealing. I am happy about this change.
Hi, thank you for your guide.
One thing I don’t understand is the permanent use of divine plea.
When using this spell, our heal from flash, holy light und shock is only the half. maybe it’s my equip (2k spellpower buffed), but with divine plea up all the time my heals won’t be high enough I guess.
So is my spellpower to low to user divine plea up all the time?
thank you for any comment.
Judgment of Light = Anyone who attacks that target has a chance to be healed. it is a big help in healing even though its a minor 600..trust me it helps alos..
Guji Korgath US!
To full Regarding DP. what i do is i Divine Illumination to cut spell mana in half then divine plead. so you can mad spam holy lights blah blah to bring you up to about 70% of your mana. consider fights that you get breaks. * EoE-Naxx-Sath * alot of those times theres open spots that you can break out divine plead without having to heal a single person! Seal of wisdom is also a must with the glyph…im 23k Base mana un buffed. but my crit is only 35%. but i never run out of mana no matter what. Also keeping Mana Regen Potions/food etc is a good thing. for me ill have over 720 Mp5 just being fully buffed, thats two flash of lights in 5 seconds = gain a 100+ mana benefit. what ever floats your boat with Divine plead. its either weather your capable of holding down heals and not being a pussy about it, or thinking our strategically. <3 guji
You won’t have Divine Plea up all the time, it only lasts 15 seconds of every minute so at most it will be up 25% of the time and even then its not likely you’ll hit it the second the cooldown is up every time. Almost every fight has moments where it is more appropriate to use it than others.
If you’re the only healer on the tank, then using Divine Plea might not be realistic. But with healers helping each other out, it shouldn’t be an issue to have a little less healing for 15 seconds, and its well worth the mana return. If you need to, ask one of your other healers to temporarily help out with the tank. They really should be doing that anyway.
ok, I see. I have to test your healing guide.
Thank you both for the quick response
I just dual speced holy to try it out. I’m lvl 80 and tried my hand at healing a lvl 73 party. Running out of mana was a constant problem for me. I’m using divine plea and divine illumination when i think i’m running low but it doesnt seem to be doing the trick. I’m geared in Ornate Saronite full set (which I realize is PVP gear). Any thoughts as to why i’m having a mana problem? Or am I just a crappy healer?
Without getting new gear, you can try to use Flash of Light and Divine Plea more often. Use Divine Plea at 70% mana if you can. Check out my PvE spec guides to make sure your talents are good. A good healing add-on will help you to see everyone’s health levels better so you can know when a FoL might be more appropriate instead of just using Holy Light every time. Try to avoid overhealing.
But yeah, the Ornate Saronite set is a PvP set, and not a good one either. Try to get some new gear from reputations and quests and those low level dungeons. Maybe you can use your primary spec to help you get some nice Holy gear from raids or heroics. Focus on getting more Intellect. Enchants and gems will help too.
Besides that, if you can carry around some Runic Mana Potions and even some buff food, that will help as well.
Great guides! I just have 1 comment about this bullet point that I think should be mentioned:
“If Holy Shock is on cooldown and someone is below 10%…”
Lets not forget about LoH. Granted it a huge cooldown, and depends on the person it would be used on, but an instant heal for the amount of your health, plus mana return if the target is a mana user shouldn’t be overlooked in an emergency. My very first char when WoW came out was a paladin and back then, the most useful thing we could do was heal. I would use LoH every now and then and back then, it used up 100% of ur mana. Alot of times i would use it as my mana was running low (nearly gone) so the 100% was very little, then pop a potion.
Obviously, if your doing well and the other healers are good, then you shouldn’t HAVE to use LoH, but it still should be mentioned as the “OH S!$?” button, especially now that it doesn’t use any of our mana anymore.
My experience ranges all the way to yogg in 10m uld, and to mim in 25.
Couple things I say, and wish to mention;
If you can anticipate a boss enrage, or a large dmg flux, not only HoS, but pop AW. You shouldn’t need to bubble, and getting an extra ~4k per holy light crit (from 18k-22k) can easily save the tank, or make it easier. And it only has a 2 or 3 minute cd.
If you can anticipate raid wide dmg, divine illumination.
You can save LoH, especially if you get the minor glyph, and spec into it, for a mana potion equivilant every 9 minutes. (Use it on yourself for an extra 3k mana)
You can also save AW for a divine plea, to cut your losses while it’s up. I have around 21k mana, depending on different pieces I change in and out depending on fight, (unbuffed) and get like 1300 or 1400 mana per tick. I find myself with like a 6-10 second break from time to time, and hit dp, and cut it after a few ticks, once I need to start healing.
Last thing, until patch 3.2, if you SS your target, and beacon OT, you’ll be cutting OT healing while ss shield is up, due to less effective healing goin his way. I would suggest beacon whomever is taking least dmg, and shield same target. Fights like Auriaya, for the first few moments, while OT has the adds, is where that strat would prevail. The shield on the MT isn’t enuf to make too much of a difference directly, but it is definately worth putting on tank taking auriaya, because if you have to switch targets and spend a gcd or two on that tank, the one on adds might just die.
Other than that….. good guide =)
Peace.
Hey there, after I saw your article, it’s pretty much what I do, but I have a problem, I noticed I always ranked low in the healing meters, and people tend to mock me for that, Even I swear I heal like crazy, using grid and clique I don’t mainly focus on Main tankers, I go for People losing HP Due to Boss AoE or something, But thing is I tend to use more Flash of Light and Holy Shock, During raids I have like 30k mana, and 2.200-2.500 SP and like 30-44% crit chance, STILL I can’t do effective healing even more than some people with gear not as good as mine, What I’m doing wrong?
It doesn’t sound like you’re doing anything wrong, HolyLight. You’re probably just running with really good healers. As long as no one is dying, you’re fine. Your job as a raid healer is not necessarily to do the most healing but to keep people alive. You’re the last line of defense for those people who get blasted with damage and are about to die.
I’m curious - you don’t make much mention of your other Hands.
I try to fit in the damage/threat reduction hands where I can. I have spare gcds to do so, possibly because I’m still in heroics. Is there a reason that you don’t mention them? Do I stop having time/mana for these in later levels?
I rarely use Hand of Salvation, mainly because its rare for anyone to pull aggro off the tank. There’s no reason not to use it though. It is useful on some fights like Malygos where your dps can pump out of a ton of threat. Hand of Protection is also very useful if a caster draws aggro from a melee mob and you can get it off before they die. Hand of Freedom isn’t so useful in PvE, but very useful in PvP. I mentioned Hand of Sacrifice in the post.
i may not get a response to this considering this was an older post, but i’ve been trying to have a discussion with someone about the use of Beacon and Sacred Shield. Most people I know use Beacon on the tank as well as Sacred Shield and use the FoL hot to generally keep the tank up. I personnally feel like I’m wasting the FoL HoT and Sacred Shield by doing that. i prefer to Sacred Shield and FoL the tank (say 5 man here) and FoL immediately a second time at pull for any spike damage. I’ll put beacon on the off tank (10 man) or another melee dps (most likely to take the most damage for 5 mans). that means i can micro manage my tank and not worry about whether he’s getting the vicarious Beacon heals, and i’ve made it so i never have to worry about one raid/5 man member. in a 5 man then i only have to worry about 3 people and keeping up beacon and SS.
is the tank micro-manage technique too cumbersome? am i causing myself more problems than i should be? do i need to just take the leap and stack all my good tools on the main tank? if i go with the more common method i feel like i’m wasting what few tools i have by putting SS, Beacon, and the FoL hot on the tank.
Yeh you’re a real hero mate… it was a great deal of help and a brilliant read; especially to get another person view on the class,
thank you.
Jeremiah, I actually have a previous post that answers a very similiar question:
http://www.holypaladin.net/index.php/who-should-we-use-sacred-shield-on-in-patch-32
In summary, putting all 3 on one person can be overkill or wasted healing in many cases. However, since the tank is the most important person in the group, I like to do everything possible to ensure he is the one who stays alive at all times. If a healer dies, the tank can possibly live long enough to down the mob, but if the tank dies it is almost always an instant wipe. Putting Beacon on a non-tank usually results in a lot more wasted heals than putting it on a tank, since the tank takes the most damage and every heal you do on anyone will help heal that damage up.
In response to Holylight posting of July 25th.
I’m just a begginer as far as healer goes and was recommended the addon “recount” it can show you Over Heals.
I too never come up as top Healer or super strong healer in multiple player instances, however my Overheals are always low and been told by more experience healers that it what counts.
Waste not and keep the group alive. Keep overheals range at below 20%.
P.S. Thank you for the awsome posting of tips all I go out and try almost everything see what fit my style and helps me perform which makes it so enjoyable…
Thanks for all the info. About to ding 68 and going Holy base on this great information.
With Divine Plea, does the 50% decrease on heals not considered a high risk skill? Maybe I dont have enough +healing gear but I never use it for that reason and I don’t ussually run out of mana too much. I rather use a pot than use Divine Plea.
PS- Awesome guide, well done.
very nice read although im used to tankin on my dk i wanted to have a pally and holy interests me coz i dont have a healer class yet im still kinda confused on what i should use/ really how to do it effectively granted i havent actully healed anything yet being lvl 67 but reading all the comments has given me alot of ideas
very nice guide
Divine Plea is a really nice ability. You can avoid the 50% decrease in healing a few ways. You can use trinkets or Avenging Wrath during the duration. You can also pop it during lulls in the fight, transitions between phases, or anytime between major abilities. Lastly, you can ask for a little more help from another healer while its up if you need to. I can usually find a good time to use it where it doesn’t hurt my healing too much. It regenerates a ton of mana. If you don’t need the mana then you don’t have to use it but you’ll usually need the mana on those really challenging encounters.
Regarding Divine Plea, I’ve resorted back to the Darkmoon Card: Greatness and use Divine Plea only when it procs - fully raid buffed, my proc mana is at 40k, so that’s a nice chunk. Of course that’s still some way from someone in a high end raid guild that has 40k mana raid buffed WITHOUT the proc.
Also, I’ve observed that Paladins in the top guilds on our server really don’t stack SP that much, they are all hovering around 2600, letting int, raid buffs and those sexy Shaman totems do their thing.
I don’t know if you’re still looking at the comments on these old posts, but I figured this was the best place to question/comment.
First, let me say thank you. It’s no coincidence that after I read your post on addons (specifically Healbot) I was suddenly able to raid, and WoW became a lot more fun. So thank you for that, and all the other hard work you put into this site.
Secondly, I find Divine Plea to be a bit of a catch-22. On the fights where I’ll need the extra mana, there aren’t any good times to cut my healing in half. In fights where it’s possible to do little healing for 15 seconds, I don’t need the extra mana.
Thirdly (first question), I was wondering how Glyph of Holy Light interacts with Beacon of Light. For example, say I beacon the tank. I cast Holy light on the rogue (stupid rogue took too much damage). 10,000 healing to the rogue, with another 1000 to everyone else in the party. Would the Tank get 11,000 healing (beaconed heal plus his part of the glyph) or 14,000 healing (beaconed heal plus his part of the glyph plus the beaconed heals of other people’s part of the glyph)?
And lastly (second question). I’m a good healer, but not great. I can handle TotC 10 man normal if the rest of the group is good as well, but I doubt I can do anything harder. I’m finding the way to get better gear is through the emblems, which partly come through the daily heroics. Which are way to easy. Shouldn’t there be something to bump up the difficulty, even after heroic? I was yawning through DTK, and hardly have the best gear. What can Blizzard do about keeping dungeons fun for people that need them for the dailys?
Not much can or should be done to bump up the difficulty of 5-man instances. They are the domain of the “fresh” level 80’s.
Blizzard is adding a few new ones that are slightly harder (like ToC5 and the upcoming IC instances), but even those should be rather easy for raid-geared players.
To answer the question about the Glyph of Holy Light. The extra healing from the Glyph does not go to your Beacon target. Only the original Holy Light heal would get Beaconed (and the originaly glyph heal to the tank). So, in your example, the tank would take 11,000 healing, not 14,000.
What about the FoL HoT? will it beacon to the tank? and if the beacon is LoS from the player your healing will it still go to the beacon?
No, the Flash HoT does not go to the Beacon. Also, from what I’ve seen, the Beacon target has to be in line of sight of both you and the heal target in order to receive the heal.
Я практически никогда не сомневался в Ваших интеллектуальных способностях, но поймите, не все такие как Вы.
i heard you use avenging wrath wen u use divine plea at around 50%. also it seems using divine illumination would help here also. im not sure just started pally healing but if i pop these i notice my mana goes back up fast +im a BE pally so we have a racial wich gives 6% mana =P
A very good guide. i aslo wanted to stress that in larger raids, say 10 and 25s youcang effectivly not need to do any healeng. all you have to do it plop a Judgment of light on the creep/boss taking hte most damage forom the raid and then you put your beacon of light on anf unfortunat person. the raid then heals your becon target faster than any oter healer out there. heres how it works. your judgment of light makes everyone heal themselvs for a samll ammount, say 500, this is qualified as YOUR healing so your beacon will get 500 hp from EVERY raid member hitting the creature.
you can effectivly heal 10k a second and your becon target. and if your in the mood spread it around on other targets!
i find this works great for marrowgar in icc and i am often the highest healer in the raid(only beaten by a priest or shamy spamming aoe). hope this helps
Its like you read my mind! You appear to know a lot about this, like you wrote the book in it or something. I think that you could do with a few pics to drive the message home a bit, but instead of that, this is fantastic blog. A fantastic read. I’ll certainly be back.
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