Is 10-man Ulduar difficult for Holy Paladins?
Now that Ulduar is out, we’ve been seeing a ton of QQ, whining and complaining discussion throughout the Internet about the difficulties Holy Paladins are having, especially in 10-man Ulduar. Here is the jist of the complaints:
- There is too much raid damage that we can’t handle.
- There is too much movement required.
- Flash of Light is too weak to be of any use whatsoever.
- The only thing we can do is spam Holy Light on the tank.
In my opinion, and from what I’ve seen, Holy Paladins have all the tools we need to excel in 10-man Ulduar. But if you’re having trouble, you may have to change the way you think about Holy Paladin healing. Here’s why:
You can’t raid heal (as well) if you gear, spec, and play as a Tank healer
Some Holy Paladins have drank the Elitist Jerks Kool-aid a little too much and have decided that the most efficient way for a Holy Paladin to heal all the time is to stack Intellect and to exclusively spam Holy Light. I’m not going to deny that stacking Intellect and spamming Holy Light will give you a ton of Heals per second for a long period of time. But you don’t keep people alive with HPS. Holy Paladins have a number of healing spells that they can use to blast the raid with a downpour of heals right where they’re needed. This is especially true at higher levels of Spell Power. It shouldn’t be surprising that you’re finding Flash of Light to be a bit insufficient if you don’t gear and gem for Spell Power. You’ve built yourself around a Holy Light tank spam build, which won’t always work as well when dealing with a great deal of raid damage and mobility issues.
Are you finding that there’s too much movement required? Use (Spell Power enhanced) Holy Shock and instant or nearly-instant Flash of Lights. Spec and gear for crit (for those instant Flash of Lights) and Spell Power instead of going deep Protection. Consider using Glyph of Seal of Light and using Divine Plea every cooldown along with Avenging Wrath if needed. Consider getting Pursuit of Justice if movement is an issue. Don’t Beacon of Light yourself and then complain when the tank dies. I’ve found you can’t usually realistically raid heal in Ulduar by standing in one place and spamming Holy Light.
I think another reason for some of the QQ is because some people are out of practice on how to play flexibly as a Holy Paladin. Holy Light spam is very popular and some people have never experienced the full power of all of the Holy Paladins spells. They’ve lost (or never had) their twitch healing. This is also the result of the new dual specs, with a lot of Prot and Ret pallies healing for the first time. I think the people who have been pushing for every Holy Paladin to have 26k mana pools have been doing a bit of a disservice to the Holy Paladin community because there are other ways to effectively heal. Holy Light is a very mana-inefficient heal that needs a large mana pool to support. However, generous use of more mana-efficient heals (Flash of Light) allows you to have a lower mana pool, but stronger, quicker heals that can be focus-targeted where they need to go.
If you are in a 25-man raid, and your job is exclusively to tank heal, then stacking Intellect is fine and even necessary. But don’t be surprised if you go into a 10-man raid and find you’re having some trouble. Adjust and evolve to match the role you’re filling and you’ll find a Holy Paladin can excel at any role.
WoW, I find your post pretty insulting.
First of all you are assuming paladins like me are stacking intellect because we are tank healers. Wrong.
In fact despite me stacking intellect and not going for spell power all the way, I consistently raid heal. I can heal the tank along with heal the raid. My mana pool supports me doing whatever the hell I want, meaning I am very flexible.
Intellect stacking is really great for paladins because it increases our SP, crit and mana pool all at the same time so though my SP is not as high as someone that stacks for it, I can switch to FoL, HS or HL at will. It makes me a highly versatile healer. On top of that, it pushes our mana regen through the roof as Replenishment and Divine Plea work off of our total mana pool.
I regularly end fights at 50% mana and I heal the crap out of the raid and the tanks even in so called mana intense fights or paladin-unfriendly fights. The aoe healers have to work for their top spots in the raids when I am in there healing.
I think you’re the one doing a disservice to holy paladins by posing as a resource for holy paladins yet claiming people are wrong to do things a certain way on top of assuming that they are bad healers that only heal the tanks and lazy 1 button wonders. I have never been a 1 button spammer. Yes, paladins don’t have many buttons to heal with but do I use the hell out of ALL my spells.
So if you want to be a resource for other holy paladins, don’t look down on other people for doing things different and assuming that they are not successful.
It’s funny but I’m pretty sure you think you are a good healer but remember there is always someone better and they probably do things differently from you.
PS Good going ignoring the power of haste as well.
I agree With the chap above me. I do great with my huge mana pool. Not in 100 years would I recommend any pali healer to read what you have posted on this site. I easy outdo other healers when it comes to raid healing. if you cant. thats your lack of skill. no one elses. A good player can top the healing charts no matter if they gem mp5, int or sp.
You two are both not the people I’m talking about in this post. If what you say is correct, you’re both very good raid healers who know how to use all your buttons correctly, and who don’t complain that Holy Paladins are terrible healers, and I think that’s awesome.
The people I’m talking about are those who stack Intellect and try to use Holy Light for everything and then complain that they can’t heal 10-mans. Stacking Intellect by itself isn’t a problem. But if you are stacking Intellect and then finding that you can’t raid heal well, this post suggests some possible ways to fix that. I don’t claim that my way of healing is the best way. In fact, in my post before this one, I questioned whether stacking Spell Power was the best way to go. The point is, both ways are valid and serve different functions.
I do think though that stacking Spell Power gives you more flexibility, if we define flexibility as the ability to choose any of your 3 spells. It makes all three of your heals stronger, letting you use whichever one fits the situation best. Stacking Intellect means you don’t have to watch your mana as closely, which gives you a different kind of flexibility. You can use Holy Light more without having to worry about running out of mana. One thing that I agree with many of the people who are “complaining” is that Flash of Light is pretty weak at lower Spell Power levels. But there are things you can do to fix that without just complaining to Blizzard about it.
One more comment, I found it odd, HP, that you are still stacking Intellect even when you “regularly end fights at 50% mana”. Wouldn’t you find healing easier if you had more Spell Power and ended fights at 10% mana?
Also, this post was intentionally written to be a little insulting. I expected a lot of flames ’cause it is a bit of a troll post and definitely goes against the grain. Sometimes I like to stir the pot a bit and create some discussion. =-D
I went back in and toned it down a bit though.
I’ve been gearing for Holy Light spam all the way through Naxx-10 and have gotten used to it being the only tool in my toolbox. My guild’s also gotten used to 2-healing all the ten-man content, and I just think Ulduar is different. We had great success on Razorscale last night with three healers, very stable once we’d learned the fight and two of the healers were DPSing at strategic points during the fight.
I think everyone who’s passed on haste gear because it wasn’t “best in slot” will be having a hard time with Flash of Light spam. I banked all of mine and will be firing up Rawr with a much heavier emphasis on “burst” healing; this will weight haste/spellpower gear a little higher than it previously has. Having a bank full of healing gear with different mixes of stats is actually going to be useful!
Great comments Hiro! I’ve been thinking the same thing about having multiple sets of healing gear. Haste is definitely important with any build, although I would guess its more important with a Holy Light build. Getting to the Haste soft cap for Flash of Light is pretty easy nowadays.
Thanks for the email. I read your 2nd post and I see were you are coming from.
Your question asked “But are you saying in your comment that gear choice doesn’t matter at all?” The answer to that question is yes and no. If you stack int you going to have a bigger mana pool. I set on 29k raid buffed. I get a large amount of mana back from divine plea as well. I’v only ran out of mana once during any fight in ulduar so far. And that was my foolishness. But because I’m, for the most part raid healing with holy light and beacon on my tank. My overhealing sits about 35-40%. Which is of course less desired. Now if you stacked sp you might not have the overhealing problem. I can’t say for sure because I have never tryed it. Not much of a fan. But when I think about with bigger flash of lights you may be able to reduce that over healing. But we wont be able to stop the overhealing dont by holy light glyph/seals/and beacon.
And now for the last gem choice…Mp5. I have seen this a few times on my server. I can’t even start to understand what they are thinking. I think stacking mp5 as a pali is the worst idea, and would prob cause you to be rather low on the healing meters. From what the paladin community knows, crit and haste gear is our prefered stat combo. And mp5 haste gear is a little less desired. Which is a reason for a lot of qq lately. But players need to remember. mp5 may be a bad stat, but it isn’t totally useless. While cirts give you a lot of mana back. It doesn’t give you any mana back when you are not casting. When raid members are not taking much damage. This is the time mp5 jumps in. Mp5 is a satic mana source. more so when your not casting. So it does have its upside. But I wouldn’t gem for it. Because more then likely you will have enough on your gear.
And last is haste. I’ve been hearing this silly rumor about getting your holy lights down to 1 sec, anyone else here this? For all those who think its possible get ready to facepalm. You need around 1600 haste to get a 1 sec holy light cast. Yes, thats right. Haste has a hard hitting diminishing return on it. Once you hit the soft cap(not 100% sure but think its around 28%) haste becomes less and less viable. Not useless. but not as good as we would like it to be. And with 15% haste from your seals. Getting to the soft cap is cake. This is why I think blizzard put so much mp5 crit gear in ulduar. They see that giving us only haste crit gear will only be a nerf to us.
But we will know with time. Knowledge will spread and newer and newer concepts of how the class should be played will come around. As of now. I’m sticking with stacking int, and rolling on crit/haste gear. till i feel safe my holy lights will stay at 1.4 sec casts. Then I will hit up those nice little mp5/crit peices.
Thanks Kamiyadori, that’s a lot of good info. =-) I especially agree with your comments about mp5 and haste. Its too bad Ulduar has so much mp5 gear, but you’re right, its not completely useless. If you’re completely out of mana, Crit and Int aren’t going to help you at all (at least until Divine Plea is off cooldown).
I for one do not agree that mp5 is a bad stat per se, even though I would rather take a piece with either crit or haste anyday.
Am I the only one who does not HL spam? I honestly have no idea why you would do that as a paladin healer, even though the whole community seems to be talking about it. The only situations I’ve been in that requires HL spam is Patchwerk and Sapphiron (and perhaps the Understudies at Razuvious). Every other encounter (at least in Naxx) goes so smooth that if I wait for every raid member to drop 10k health so my Holy Light would not be wasted, or even just 5k, s/he would be picked up by my fellow priest/shammy healers and I would not get my heal off in time.
I think the best use for Holy Light spam is if you are using healing assignments and you are solo healing the tank (which we’re very good at). I’m honestly interested in getting some more input here from people who use Holy Light to heal the raid, because I also find its almost never necessary. Its possible they just do it because they can (their mana pools can support it). To me though, Holy Shock and Flash of Light seem to be a lot more effective in keeping people alive because of the faster cast times and better mana efficiency (especially when you stack Spell Power).
Maybe the content in Naxx is just too easy, but I haven’t found Holy Light spam necessary in raid healing in Ulduar either. In fact, I’ve found it harmful. The heals don’t go off fast enough and it requires you to stand still for too long.
@HP
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t INT offer Paladins a negligble crit ratio of 166 INT:1% crit? Certainly nothing to scoff at, but hardly a game breaker.
holy light spamings fine under a few line ill have someone do it but its not hit the button till the end of the fight its cast when the tanks at 85% life and by the time the heals off his either at full or just below it. if we got to move or were going to get webed we get the tank/s toped off and hoted b4 hand. also i have got 3 paladin healers all with different spec now looking thourgh ur info and the comments hope we can heal better or all agree to a good holy spec…
Flame 80 mage
So, Im a holy paladin on Sargeras and I stack spellpower in all of my sockets and all of my enchants are spell power… I sit at 24k mana 25 man buffed and rarely run out… My flash heals crit for about 7k and my holy lights crit for 17-19k. I have yet to run out of mana on any ulduar fight on 10 or 25 man ulduar. You can efficiently heal the tank and the raid with beacon of course so there really shouldnt be any issues… as to the moving part with ~ 300 haste that shouldnt be too much of an issue… my flash sits at a 1.1 cast. I can pretty much spam whatever heals I want without feeling like im wasting mana. Its all a matter of gear and playstyle… if your group is not moving right and taking additional damage from being stupid then its not your fault if someone dies. (2322 spell power unbuffed)
Edit: the only time I spam holy light is if a boss is enraged or at 10% or so… and I have over 30% mana
I’m one of those retri paladins who went holy when the dualspec came out. Since then I hardly play retri anymore, cause I actually like the healing.
I think there is more then 1 way valid for healing. WoW is a very dynamic game and the way you gear is one thing, but also the composition of the group is important.
We’ve downed 6 bosses in a short evening in Ulduar with a 10 man group with 2 resto druids and me as holy pala.
Usually I heal the MT the most by topping him off when he drops hard, but by beaconing him I do my fare share of raidhealing. Spamming HL isnt going to work all the time with raid healing, especially not with the hots of the druids and some of their fast “bigger” heals. Only when someone drops hard, I’ll throw in a HL. I actually use a lot of FoL, to prevent im overhealing a lot.
I stacked aswell a lot of int by gemming (I’m JC, so that works pretty good) and all enchants are more or less spellpower. I want to maintain a fairly large manapool, but I’m considering of trying some more +crit. My haste is almost 400 and that is enough for me, since there is no shammy in the group atm.
So I think both ways, stacking int and stacking spellpower/crit can be valid, depending on your skill, gear, and groupcomposition (or when you have different compositions all the time).
So I think the post is a good post for making pala’s think of their choses path and maybe to consider a different path when its not working out for them. I can’t believe blizz made a class which have to smash one button.
The idea of keeping different sets of healing gear in the bank sounds good to me. They should make the bank bigger with all those sets of gear since the dualspec :/
Btw, I just got a nice libram (deadly gladiator) which gives FoL 256 extra spellpower. A very good one imo. Especially when you use FoL a lot.
Well, first of all. Having a gear that makes you able to Spamm Holy light during all the fight, on any given fight (excluding General Vezax) makes you able to use any spell you want or need, on any moment. Doesnt mean you will be spamming it, but your gear makes it possible. Having more INT then, its a waste. But there’s other stat more important then SP when you have INT enough, wich is haste.
Been able to hit the injured person faster with a HEAVY heal is the key to improve your healing, im not talking about metters. Haste is nothing or barely important if you’re a flash light kind, since you have 15% from talents plus all the raid buffs.
Been a flash light kind of paladin is the easiest way to play a paladin, you dont need to worry about stats at all, just go and grab the gear with more SP on it for each slot, and you’re done. Beacon the OT sacred shield the MT and spamm flash light on it. If he drops, hit a Holy shock and start the spamm again. Or you can beacon and sacred shield the MT and start to spam FoL on eveyone whos -3k health. You dont even have to worry with most of your CDs.
Been a Holy Light capable spammer, that is the way to master your class. You have to balance EVERY healing stats, excluding MP5 wich is NOTHING, i repeat, NOTHING to us pallys. Even if you’re a SP stacker, you really DONT need mp5 at all. As a holy light kind, you need INT so you’re able to give the best HPS when u need to. You need Haste to hit the injured targets faster and to get your GCD at 1s, you need crit (this not only makes you heal more, it is what keeps your mana on the long run) and of course you need SP makes you heal more, lol.
Now, having it said, if you have a holy light spamm gear, doesnt mean you WILL spamm it and if you do, you’re a noob. Paladins have bunch of ways to master their play on each encounter. You have Bubble sacrifice, you have salvation to use on the top agro dps, you have the bubble + spamm heal during periods when everyone wont be healing. You have the GREAT aura mastery, with works almost on every fight inside Ulduar, and thats not all…
Then, to end it. The basics are, get INT to holy light spamm every fight (you can, but dont have to spamm it), then you go after crit, and make it like 45-50%% raid buffed, get haste soft cap, wich is something around 670-680 + raid buffs, the you get all the SP you can. After that, stop the QQ, if you’re doing bad, its probably your skill. If you have all that, the problem then is you, realize that. The next step would be to master and re think each boss ecounter, and what to do, and when to do, re-think each spell you have and think of something it could be usefell on each boss fight. You have the gear, just need the skills. If you have both, just go and have fun playing wow and downing bosses.
Haha, nice post Dracun. Well said.
My problem with FoL is it doesn’t heal for enough sometimes. Take RS for example. A fight were raid damage is scattered. The avg fireball hits for about 5800. My FoL’s avg for about 4k and avg crit about 6k. My crit is only ~45-50% for Fol. That means that about half the time my FoL will not heal someone to full, and either someone else has to heal them, or I have to heal them again. Which causes me to use 2 FoL or ~2.2s worth of casting. Or I can spend the 1.5s to cast a HL which would heal them to full 100% of the time.
HS is good, but I mostly try to save it for when I have to move. Either to get in range, or out of the blue flames. We typically run 2 healers, 1-2 tanks for 10s and 1-3 tanks, 5-6 healers for 25s.
Generally, if someone needs healing, HL will make sure they won’t need healing again. But yes, there are exceptions like Hodir 10. Trying to keep the tank alive and 5 others during frozen blows can suck. At which point tossing a HS/FoL just to keep people from dying and then HLing when you can, works out quite well.
Rather than make another post I’ll make my comment here on the haste vs crit. Crit is good for longevity of fights, as you’ll get more back through illumination. But haste is good for throughput, which on some fights, is very important. Crit cannot reliably increase HPS. Sure over an 8min fight your HPS will increase, but on something like Mimiron, where the take takes 30k dps for 6 seconds, crit is unreliable, and that is where more haste shines. If you are gearing up, crit > haste. After gearing up Haste > crit. After getting decent ulduar gear (10 (hardmodes)/ 25 (non-hardmode)) you can get 50% haste/crit (buffed) and still have 33k mana and ~2.7k sp.
Just b/c you can cast HL every 1.x seconds doesn’t mean you have too.
I find these post very interesting.
I think there is QQing because Ulduar is so new still.
And I agree that a varied heal set is necessary. I also agree that ulduar is providing a lot of drops with mp5. Personally not a fan. I have heard that this is because the gear is supposed to be more “pvp” friendly and also provide more dynamic with heal gear and to encourage players away from intellect stacking to get mana regen.
I think it is important to note that FoL and HS scale with spell power much more as you get higher.
And the graph for haste is obviously inverse to that.
I think the argument that FoL is not strong enough is rubbish. You dont have enough crit that Holy Shock gives you instant Flash heals.
And beacon the tank and heal the raid, that will keep heals on the tank and the time delay between heals transferred from the beacon will reduce your overhealing. try it. It feels good.
enjoying the read!!
P.S. I only do holy light spam when the shit hits the fan and there is raid damage because of the Area of Effect.
id just like to say ulduar gear makes me sad i passed on all the mp5 holy plate that dropped consistently for the first month becus even tho it was item lvl 226 it was a downgrade in alot of aspects wtb more holy plate with no mp5 so i can choose /cry finally tonite i broke down and took bracers n boots with mp5 that i had passed on b4 /sigh less haste less crit negligible sp increase but hey i was tired of wearin naxx gear
Heya peeps, nice posts all. It’s amazing to see how diverse us palas can be. We in Veritas have yet to crack much further in ulduar than Kologran (continuing on tonight) but it’s an ongoing test and trial
= more fun. Just want to wish all GL.
Now for the real reason I’m posting…. Balancing stats have always been part of a part of lvling and even evolving. Not having enough spell power means that our heals wont be enough, not enough intel means that you wont be able to dish out our vast arsonal of utilities, not enough crit means that one of our primary holy talents becomes useless. Those are just a few things that speaks about who we are.
I dont believe any class has ever been cut and dry. Stack spellpower! no no .. stack intel!! I can’t blame anyone for saying that but that doesn’t mean I need to follow. It’s not my playstyle or even how our guild is.
@Bizurn - Yes I see that as well but on one side there’s +crit/+mp5 gear. By passing you’ve prob. helped your guild or some other people if it was a pug. /cheer
/quote
In my opinion, and from what I’ve seen, Holy Paladins have all the tools we need to excel in 10-man Ulduar. But if you’re having trouble, you may have to change the way you think about Holy Paladin healing.
—- Yea, this is part of adapting and growing …. we have the capability.
The author was getting at a very good point. Some people are reading and believing that all or most of what’s best in theorycrafting is what’s best in practice without going deeper into why. You keep people alive with smart healing choices (and the tools to back it up).
All good points. all good comments. I am not even raiding in ulduar at all at the moment because i prefer the haste/crit combination. I am going to get my greedy hands on the head and shoulder gear at some point that have the crit/haste combination. and when the guild goes to hard mode on XT I will get the Breastplate of the Devoted. But until then eh, I go pvp and level alts.
guess the real issue is whether the umms and wows i get when people see my 26k mana pool unbuffed is worth it when i could be maximising my pathetic 2.1k spell power.
hmm… not yet…
Question. for Divine Sacrifice and Hand of Sacrifice. Do these stack when I cast Bubble, and then both of them. Very applicable to raids and also Arena that I am in a lot now.
From what I’ve heard, they don’t stack Choadbringer. In fact, I believe they don’t even stack with Righeous Fury, Blessing of Sanctuary, or Glyph of Divine Plea. However, Sacred Shield and Power Word: Shield do stack with them since they absorb a fixed amount instead of a percentage.
I have stacked Int and SP to the point where I have about 1100 int and close to 2200 sp.
The guild that I am in, use me constantly as a tank healer with a couple of other imba raid healers on 10 and 25 man raids.
My primary spell for healing is Flash of Light with HL thrown in if the tank takes a pretty heavy hit but I can quite happily sit there and spam FoL for the entire fight healing for between 3.5k (bad) to just over 8k (crit) with things averaging out at around 6k. If I need an instant heal, I can throw a Holy Shock at the tank and if it crits for 7.5k, I can the throw an instant FoL heal somewhere in the range above (11k-15.5k instantly).
I dont usually have a problem healing in Ulduar because I have the backup to go with me in the healing stakes.
i agree with most,
To keep up mana I rotated HS, HL, HL and repeat the cycle.
I just do this because of ‘Infusion of Light’. the only think i have problems with is that i’m currently lowest on healing done.
When we run ulduar 25 man we mostly have 2 resto druid, 1 holy priest, 1 resto shaman and 1 holy paladin. (this isn’t always the set up).
also a great trinket is Darkmoon Card: Greatness.
when you have a big pool of mana this really rocks. if you use divine plea whenever the trinket procs you will never go below 50% mana, the mana returned by divine plea is really insane. it also increase you SP, and crit
The short answer is no. I full cleared it with only two healers, both holy pallies, and did the heartbreaker achievement also with that set up.
And by the way, both of us gem for intellect.
In my opinion, most of these posts here talking about holy light spamming is the only way to heal are the ones that are the healing meter trolls that want to see themselves at the top of the list over those HoC priests. To be honest yes holy light spamming is key to some boss fights like 25 man Iron Council for the tank with the big guy but for those who are the ones that are close minded, you don’t need to do that for every fight and mob. Who cares who’s on top of the healing meter…the question is, “is everyone living in the raids with your ‘LEET’ heals?” If the question is no, well GG on top meter heals doesn’t prove much. My assumptions as being a holy pally myself is that if people would stop focusing on meters for healing and rather the question of, “is everyone in the raid staying alive?” If more people use that then you would see more people stop focusing on HL and seeing that if used correctly FL works just as well for some usual fights.
To sum this all up:
HL spamming doesn’t help you all the time.
You need to rethink your mentality as a Pally healer if you are one of those meter trolls.(I don’t mind being 2nd or 3rd on the healing meter if everyone is still alive and little to no wipes then I think I did my job as a healer)
FL works just as well as HL if you use it correctly and in the right situations. (I find myself usually spamming FL and throwing in the occaisional HL when the tank is suffering from it.)
Recently we have added a Intel stacking Holy pal into our guild and I have ran Uld with him and have even enter the new instance with him. I have seen him jump to the top of the healing and then sky rocket up into the over healing charts. You say you end fights with little over half your mana well a non intel stacker who knows how to play his CDs can also end a fight with half or even full mana. I have gone threw a fight with some none healing gear on and still was healing effective (top of the charts 30%) and little over 3/4 mana. Those who have played holy paladin longer have noticed ways to be efficiant heals and not have huge mana pools and spam holy light. And so what if you can two man heal a boss fight having the whole group alive at the end is more important then downing a boss and having to worry if that one dps who died might cost you the fight, But for my last note those who don’t just cast HL I give you props for not having a one track mind.
my rotation (start with HS then follow with spam flash and HL “IF” tanks needs)