European Spring
12 hours ago
Showing posts with label paladin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paladin. Show all posts
I wanted to get one of my fiance's toons through the ICC5 man questline, so several of us in our guild decided to run through the three ICC dungeons on heroic. Unfortunately, I'd already run the first two on heroic, so I was saved on my priest. You know what comes next.
I had no choice but to bring out the RETPALLYOFDOOM. Our resident shammy did the healing, and we pugged the fifth slot.
To the hunter who joined us, thank you for your patience. You must have thought we were awful. Of course, the four of us were chatting in guild chat and vent, but our pugged fifth had no idea we were all talking. At some point in the beginning of the run, I noticed the hunter was inspecting me, and I figured "oh here comes the schpeel." But she never said a thing.
And five minutes later, I looked at my own gear, and noticed I was wearing my holy set, not my ret set.
As per my typical Pally rotation (Judge -> Divine Storm -> Die) i spent a lot of time facedown on the floor. No, I did not get out of whirlwinds. Whenever there was bad stuff on the floor, I was most likely standing in it. Also, I was never attacking the right guy. Again, I just flailed my axe around wildly, thankful that Gordin is a Dwarf and therefore short, and hoping I hit something that was unfriendly. (Part of the reason why I'm so awful at melee is that I just can't make any sense of stuff that's happening right on top of me, i.e. in melee range - I need to be at a distance from it. That's my excuse anyway)
But the hunter never said a critical word. Her DPS was three times as high as mine, and I also kept forgetting to give her the proper Might buff, because I hadn't loaded PallyPower.
In fact, she even joined us in the next heroic, Pit of Saron. She wasn't especially talkative (but of course, neither were we in party chat, since we were talking in vent), but whenever she spoke, she was very friendly and polite.
The whole time I failed miserably, I wanted to shriek "No really! I'm not an awful player! I have a priest, and I swear she's really good! IM NOT A TOTAL FAILURE I SWEAR", but I resisted the urge.
We parted ways after the second instance so that I could jump on my priest, and we could do some other group changes, since GordinDwarfTank had to leave.
And as the hunter left the party, I thought to myself, "What a great pug." She likely had run through these heroics multiple times at a much higher speed, with much fewer deaths. She was possibly very frustrated with my failness. But she never said a critical word, and instead just went cheerfully about her business. Maybe somewhere right now she's writing a blog post about this truly awful ret pally she met in a pug the other day... and I wouldn't blame her.
So let me just take a moment to thank our Shammy who was healing, and hopefully laughing at my utter failure, and not cursing me. And also to you, anonymous pugged hunter. Thanks for your patience, and for not pointing out how much I suck. I will never forget your kindness - and I have no doubt you will earn your "The Patient" title!
I had no choice but to bring out the RETPALLYOFDOOM. Our resident shammy did the healing, and we pugged the fifth slot.
To the hunter who joined us, thank you for your patience. You must have thought we were awful. Of course, the four of us were chatting in guild chat and vent, but our pugged fifth had no idea we were all talking. At some point in the beginning of the run, I noticed the hunter was inspecting me, and I figured "oh here comes the schpeel." But she never said a thing.
And five minutes later, I looked at my own gear, and noticed I was wearing my holy set, not my ret set.
As per my typical Pally rotation (Judge -> Divine Storm -> Die) i spent a lot of time facedown on the floor. No, I did not get out of whirlwinds. Whenever there was bad stuff on the floor, I was most likely standing in it. Also, I was never attacking the right guy. Again, I just flailed my axe around wildly, thankful that Gordin is a Dwarf and therefore short, and hoping I hit something that was unfriendly. (Part of the reason why I'm so awful at melee is that I just can't make any sense of stuff that's happening right on top of me, i.e. in melee range - I need to be at a distance from it. That's my excuse anyway)
But the hunter never said a critical word. Her DPS was three times as high as mine, and I also kept forgetting to give her the proper Might buff, because I hadn't loaded PallyPower.
In fact, she even joined us in the next heroic, Pit of Saron. She wasn't especially talkative (but of course, neither were we in party chat, since we were talking in vent), but whenever she spoke, she was very friendly and polite.
The whole time I failed miserably, I wanted to shriek "No really! I'm not an awful player! I have a priest, and I swear she's really good! IM NOT A TOTAL FAILURE I SWEAR", but I resisted the urge.
We parted ways after the second instance so that I could jump on my priest, and we could do some other group changes, since GordinDwarfTank had to leave.
And as the hunter left the party, I thought to myself, "What a great pug." She likely had run through these heroics multiple times at a much higher speed, with much fewer deaths. She was possibly very frustrated with my failness. But she never said a critical word, and instead just went cheerfully about her business. Maybe somewhere right now she's writing a blog post about this truly awful ret pally she met in a pug the other day... and I wouldn't blame her.
So let me just take a moment to thank our Shammy who was healing, and hopefully laughing at my utter failure, and not cursing me. And also to you, anonymous pugged hunter. Thanks for your patience, and for not pointing out how much I suck. I will never forget your kindness - and I have no doubt you will earn your "The Patient" title!
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Stories of Fail
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You know how this blog was really supposed to focus on priests and pallies?
Well, see, the way that actually works is that I try to give helpful advice about priests, and present to you my stories of utter fail with my pally. And so, today I would like to showcase a tale of holy pally craptacular goodness.
It was VoA. Voa is a cake walk, I run it every week. Actually, that was part of the problem - because I run it every week on my priest via PuGs, I was saved, and after our little Sunday night 10 man group finished up Naxx, we thought we'd give VoA a try, since we had plenty of time left on Wintergrasp. So, in utter trepidation, I hopped onto my Paladin, with the intent to DPS.
We started with the easiest boss first, and Archavon went down without a hitch. Then we moved towards Emalon.
Our gear and experience on our alts wasn't enough to quite cut it on Emalon, and as I felt somewhat useless flailing about wildly with my giant mace and usually just facing the wrong way anyway (OH HAI WALL), I offered to switch over to heals so we would have three healers.
What followed was a successful takedown of Emalon, sure, but there was a lot of yelling going on in the basement of my home. The druid healer in the raid was my fiance. And he gave the healing assignment, which I did not like (helloooo? that's MY JOB mister. BACK OFF), because when he's leading he just barks out orders and takes control of everything (control freak!) so he put the disc priest, Abigora, on the add tank (aka Ful!), the druid on the MT, and me on the add tank with Abigora. He said he would handle raid heals as well. lolwut. Fine, fine. You look cute in black, so I'll shut up and let you have your way. As a side note, I wonder if there was as much yelling going on over at the Fuus' place as there was at ours? Hmm.
And then the real yelling began. "If you're going to have two MT healers on one tank honey then STOP PUTTING YOUR HOTS ON MY TARGET" to which he yelled that he wasn't paying attention to names, just health. Every time I saw a HoT, I yelled at him, and then he'd yell back insisting it wasn't him, and I remembered that Disc Priests DO have Renew. Whoops.
Not much later, he's yelling "Who the hell is healing the main tank with me? His health keeps jumping up!!!" me-> "LAWL PWNED BY BEACON OF LIGHT BITCH"
And so on, and so forth. No one expects a Beacon of Light heal. nomnomnom.
So yeah, yeah, that all sounds well and good, but then we get to fire dude. No, I don't remember his name. This time I glared angrily at my tree fiance and insisted I do the healing assignments. He rolled his eyes and agreed, so I told Abigora to focus on the MT and OT with me, and let the druid take care of the raid.
First, we didn't have much time, and my Treedude was having problems with Healbot, which he was sure could be fixed by running in and out of the instance... repeatedly. He glared at me when I suggested he simply type /reloadui, and then proceeded to run in and out even more.
Finally we get started, and proceeded to wipe three tmes. Each time was more fabulous than the last, let me assure you.
The thing is, if you've never played a holy pally before, you may have the following misconceptions:
So, so, so wrong.
Granted, maybe a pally that doesn't suck as badly as me doesn't run out of mana, but I am all badness. Also, I am awful at keeping track of my cooldowns. Sacredshieldwut? LOLJUDGE. I can't tell you how many times I would finally remember to judge, and then be like "Ooooo this is nice and speedy. I should really do that more often..." I probably cast Beacon of Light every 30 seconds, even though I also have the glyph. Oh and Sacred Shield every 2 minutes. Sigh.
My mana would get low and I'd just hit every magic proc buff button I have - Divine Favor, Divine Plea, Mana Pot, Avenging Wrath... you name it, I would just hit it. I have no idea what I'm doing here.
And let's not even get me started on hands. What? Hand of what? HOW CAN I POSSIBLY HAVE THAT MANY APPENDAGES?!?!?! Should I tie all these thingies to hotkeys or something? My current strategy is just to completely ignore that row of buttons and pretend they don't exist. Lalalala I can't seeeeeeeee you! Again, I have no idea what I'm doing here.
I mean, I probably could try to learn but... what would I post about then? FailPally is way more fun and entertaining, don't you think?
... Anyone?
Well, see, the way that actually works is that I try to give helpful advice about priests, and present to you my stories of utter fail with my pally. And so, today I would like to showcase a tale of holy pally craptacular goodness.
It was VoA. Voa is a cake walk, I run it every week. Actually, that was part of the problem - because I run it every week on my priest via PuGs, I was saved, and after our little Sunday night 10 man group finished up Naxx, we thought we'd give VoA a try, since we had plenty of time left on Wintergrasp. So, in utter trepidation, I hopped onto my Paladin, with the intent to DPS.
We started with the easiest boss first, and Archavon went down without a hitch. Then we moved towards Emalon.
Our gear and experience on our alts wasn't enough to quite cut it on Emalon, and as I felt somewhat useless flailing about wildly with my giant mace and usually just facing the wrong way anyway (OH HAI WALL), I offered to switch over to heals so we would have three healers.
What followed was a successful takedown of Emalon, sure, but there was a lot of yelling going on in the basement of my home. The druid healer in the raid was my fiance. And he gave the healing assignment, which I did not like (helloooo? that's MY JOB mister. BACK OFF), because when he's leading he just barks out orders and takes control of everything (control freak!) so he put the disc priest, Abigora, on the add tank (aka Ful!), the druid on the MT, and me on the add tank with Abigora. He said he would handle raid heals as well. lolwut. Fine, fine. You look cute in black, so I'll shut up and let you have your way. As a side note, I wonder if there was as much yelling going on over at the Fuus' place as there was at ours? Hmm.
And then the real yelling began. "If you're going to have two MT healers on one tank honey then STOP PUTTING YOUR HOTS ON MY TARGET" to which he yelled that he wasn't paying attention to names, just health. Every time I saw a HoT, I yelled at him, and then he'd yell back insisting it wasn't him, and I remembered that Disc Priests DO have Renew. Whoops.
Not much later, he's yelling "Who the hell is healing the main tank with me? His health keeps jumping up!!!" me-> "LAWL PWNED BY BEACON OF LIGHT BITCH"
And so on, and so forth. No one expects a Beacon of Light heal. nomnomnom.
So yeah, yeah, that all sounds well and good, but then we get to fire dude. No, I don't remember his name. This time I glared angrily at my tree fiance and insisted I do the healing assignments. He rolled his eyes and agreed, so I told Abigora to focus on the MT and OT with me, and let the druid take care of the raid.
First, we didn't have much time, and my Treedude was having problems with Healbot, which he was sure could be fixed by running in and out of the instance... repeatedly. He glared at me when I suggested he simply type /reloadui, and then proceeded to run in and out even more.
Finally we get started, and proceeded to wipe three tmes. Each time was more fabulous than the last, let me assure you.
The thing is, if you've never played a holy pally before, you may have the following misconceptions:
- That pallies don't run out of mana and
- that they only have three spells.
So, so, so wrong.
Granted, maybe a pally that doesn't suck as badly as me doesn't run out of mana, but I am all badness. Also, I am awful at keeping track of my cooldowns. Sacredshieldwut? LOLJUDGE. I can't tell you how many times I would finally remember to judge, and then be like "Ooooo this is nice and speedy. I should really do that more often..." I probably cast Beacon of Light every 30 seconds, even though I also have the glyph. Oh and Sacred Shield every 2 minutes. Sigh.
My mana would get low and I'd just hit every magic proc buff button I have - Divine Favor, Divine Plea, Mana Pot, Avenging Wrath... you name it, I would just hit it. I have no idea what I'm doing here.
And let's not even get me started on hands. What? Hand of what? HOW CAN I POSSIBLY HAVE THAT MANY APPENDAGES?!?!?! Should I tie all these thingies to hotkeys or something? My current strategy is just to completely ignore that row of buttons and pretend they don't exist. Lalalala I can't seeeeeeeee you! Again, I have no idea what I'm doing here.
I mean, I probably could try to learn but... what would I post about then? FailPally is way more fun and entertaining, don't you think?
... Anyone?
If you are participating in the non-memey Healer Questionnaire, you may want to bookmark this post, as this is where I will be keeping track of people who have responded and posted their own answers. Consider it like a Chain Heal... it started with me and went to someone else who will hopefully send it to someone else, and so forth. My hope is that no matter how far out that chain heal extends, I can maintain a list of all the responders here! (See what I did there Zigi? That was for you!) Hopefully the survey will experience some Wild Growth. Ha ha I'm so full of funny. Okay, bad puns aside....
If you know of someone who has responded who is not included on this list, please let me know via comment! Also, if you do post a questionnaire response, it would be great if you linked back to this post so that others can also see who all has answered.
Once this post was linked from WoW Insider, the amount of traffic quickly surpassed my ability to keep up with all the responses (not that I'm complaining!). That having been said, I will continue to try and keep track of the people who have responded on their blogs, as long as you comment and leave me a link! There are also a lot of people who have left their responses in the comments section below, so be sure to check it out.
ETA: Hey look! Koriel at What is Boom started a Circle of Tanks!
ETA: If you are looking for responses in French, pop on over to wowfrostmage, where the generous proprietor has assembled a list - merci!
Holy Priests (Most of us roll Bubbly on occasion):
Disc Priests:
Resto Druids:
Holy Paladin
Overachievers who have too many healers:
Some time this weekend I am going to totally geek out and... /cue dramatic music.. ANALYZE TEH DATAZ
Stay tuned! I'm trying to keep this updated as quickly as possible! If you notice someone is missing, and it's been more than 24 hours since they posted, please shoot me an email to let me know -> elimeny at gmail dot com.
Thanks!
If you know of someone who has responded who is not included on this list, please let me know via comment! Also, if you do post a questionnaire response, it would be great if you linked back to this post so that others can also see who all has answered.
Once this post was linked from WoW Insider, the amount of traffic quickly surpassed my ability to keep up with all the responses (not that I'm complaining!). That having been said, I will continue to try and keep track of the people who have responded on their blogs, as long as you comment and leave me a link! There are also a lot of people who have left their responses in the comments section below, so be sure to check it out.
ETA: Hey look! Koriel at What is Boom started a Circle of Tanks!
ETA: If you are looking for responses in French, pop on over to wowfrostmage, where the generous proprietor has assembled a list - merci!
Holy Priests (Most of us roll Bubbly on occasion):
- Miss Medicina – Jessabelle
- Christine - Amerence
- Righteous Orbs - Yay Tamarind joined the party! I was feeling like the only Holy Priest on teh interwebs!
- Theatre of the Absurd - Tiis
- Artisan Level - Maegwen
- Holy Nova NOW! - Bati (it's a swinging i as i like to call it, but i fail at putting in different characters...)
- Priest with a Cause - Shintar
- Rainbow MMO - Bloodsun
- Harpy's Nest - Erinys
- Empowered Healing - Andracon
- Strictly Heals - Suvixon
- Peripeteia - Sabely (btw Sabely, your site is beautiful!)
- SpriestBlog! - Spazmoosifer (lol epic)
- Misadventures of a Priest - Elisse
- Balance of Power: Earth and Moon - Presaya
- The Unconventional Priest - Fuyuko
- She Plays Wow - Caste
- Priest Punditry - Mads
Disc Priests:
- Killing 'Em Slowly - Abigora
- I Like Bubbles finally got harassed into joining (thanks everyone for helping with the pointy pokes) - Lyrandre
- Anathema - Sinespe (well, normally Shadow, but shh)
- Penance Priest - Paolo
- Save the Lightwell - Mongrr
- A Klockwerk Luka - Klockwerk
- Hybrid Love - Amharach
- World of Matticus - Matticus was very sad that no one tagged him earlier. We musn't forget to invite the big famous guys to the party as well!
- Mind Blast - Kaelea
- Divine Aegis - Lilitharien
- Duct Tape and a Prayer - Theande
- BobTurkey - Turkelife
- WoWGrrl - Shrimproll
- Troll Bouquet - Grindall
- Rez the Weak - Xeonio
- Pain Suppression - Sheqeri
- Runcible Trout - Runcible
- Twenty-Five Boxes – Zigi
- DKDeathGoddess - Hinenuitepo (It's a DK blog, but one can't resist a NON-MEME!
- Planet of the Hats - Chayah
- Unreal Realities - Serevok - Two thumbs up for using the proper plural of Shaman! My OCD side just twitched a little in happiness!
- Cat Tales - Ezza
- Tank 2 Heals - Airdrigh
- Shamantics - Exelus
- Shaman on Ramen - Elam
- Altadin - Liluye
- Sham's Life - Khaelie
- A Shaman's Journey - Nimayne
- Healing Way - Llyra
- Cabboose - Cabbini (with another swinging i!)
- Blueberry Totem - Rahana
- Life in Group 5 - Vixsin
- Monstarkin - Kelmaa
- Kattastrophe
- Elemental Healing - Selacia
- Kamalia et alia - Kamalia
Resto Druids:
- Sheep It – Kailanii
- Kotakh (not a blogger, but responded in a comment)
- Kungaloosh AKA Shadow Word: Blog - Sammich
- Dreambound - Kaelynn
- The Angry Healers - Aanthe (You have to check this site out - the banner alone made me guffaw in ways that should not be done at 8:30 in the morning)
- HoTs & DoTs - Lathere
- Rejuvo - Verile
- Sushi-Cookie was sad to not get tagged - but I could have SWORN i saw some sushi tagging somewhere - or maybe it was something i thought about but forgot to do, so now I shall make you pie.. PIE! - Sersokhi
- RamblingDwarf's responses cracked me up - Kochi - Dwarf Warrior.. oh wait, I mean Resto Druid!
- DoTs & HoTs (I giggled) - Tatia
- Unreal Realities - Isla - The Tree of the group chimes in!
- Dysmorphia at LiveJournal
- Tree of Doom - Hermia
- DorkArt on Livejournal - this is a PvP resto druid, which is really interesting to read, since I don't PvP much! Great info if you do :)
- Tree Healz - almost missed your comment, Firewood (ps i LOVE your name) - sorry for the delay!
- 4 Haelz - Bellwether
- Restokin - Lissanna
- Forrestump - Forrestump (yet another name I love)
- Evian Tree Bear - Wingood
- Elsen
- French Version posted on WowFrostMage - Killh
- Divine Aegis - Oestrus
- Buel's World - Buel
- Wild Growth - Tazha
- Druid Tree - Innoue
- Nerf This Druid - Averna
- Resto-Melee - Mikata (Sorry I missed this earlier!)
- Cannot be Tamed - Jasyla
- Monstarkin - Rebella
Holy Paladin
- The Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon (YES A SPOON) - Rykga
- MoarHPS - Uruz
- The *urnaks - Turnak
- HolyPaladin.net
- Divine Plea - Amathalanea
- I Sheep Things - Myrhani
- Non-Squishy Heals - Saunder
- Unreal Realities - Nazaniel - There are several healers over at UR, the resident Pally pipes in to clear up some pally-confusion!
- The Secret of Being Numb - Beladin
- Holy Shock - Ruhtra
- Lux Legis - Almaster
- Lintuperspektiivi - Kyer - OMG it's in Finnish! I tried to read it anyway. I was only really able to make out name and class, but baby steps, right? Thanks so much for taking the time to translate it Lintup... Kyer!
- Altoholic Anonymous - Anonymous preserves his anonyminity... anoninnymini... secretness.
- Kurn's Corner - Madrana(h)
- Flash of Moonfire - Gillien
- Resto Nation - Koramoor
- World of Warcraft Wanderings - Akromah
- Snottydin is totally a girl IRL - like, DUH - Snottydin (best response EVAR)
- A Touch of Arcane - Shazalyn
- Holy Ret - Tomkr
- A Healadin's Tear - Tarinae
Overachievers who have too many healers:
- LFM: Need Healer PLZ - K & D - Disc Priest & Resto Shammy, respectively
- Casual Hardcore - Kyrileanthos, Erdkrieg, Maedchen, Selfreya - Holly Pally, Resto Shammy, Holy Priest, and Resto Druid respectively
- Thoughts of a Discipline Priestess - Nymarie - Disc Priest
- There's a thread over at CafeMom for WoW moms for this questionnaire too!
- Falling Leaves and Twigs - Beru (Resto Druid), Dannie (Holy Pally), and Mynn (Resto Shammy)
- Green Bar Spec - Resto Druid, Disc Priest, and Resto Shammy
- Gnome Warrior is an Oxymoron - Druid, Priest, and Shammy
- Light & Leafy - Druid, Priest, and Shammy
Some time this weekend I am going to totally geek out and... /cue dramatic music.. ANALYZE TEH DATAZ
Stay tuned! I'm trying to keep this updated as quickly as possible! If you notice someone is missing, and it's been more than 24 hours since they posted, please shoot me an email to let me know -> elimeny at gmail dot com.
Thanks!
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When your raids are populated via sign-ups as opposed to being hand selected by officers, you start to notice some pretty interesting trends. A few months ago, we had more druids than we could handle. Then all of a sudden they all disappeared, and we had no druid healers.
We haven't had a shortage of healers in general as of late, but our mix of healers has been less than ideal. One week, of our 6 healers, 4 were paladins. This has repeatedly been a source of some strain for me.
I like to come up with new words, so therefore I have now coined the term "Overpallyfication" - the overabundance of single target healers within your raid makeup, with Pallies being the best example.
It's not exactly new information that "all healers are not created equal". And perhaps I am a little OCD about healer makeup. But, 7 healers (4 of which are pallies) is better than 5 healers at this stage of the raiding game for us. I have actually had to turn healers down because of overpallyfication, but I don't want to continue to do this. At least with the 3.2 pally changes, it will be a lot easier to justify extra pallies, due to the changes in Beacon of Light.
Too Many -insert healer type here-
So what do you do when you have an overabundance of a single type of healer? Interestingly enough, there are some healer types that don't really present too many problems if you have too many. Holy priests are the perfect example of this - because they are the jack of all trades amongst healers, they can handle single target or raid healing without any trouble. If you had 7 holy priests, while it wouldn't be ideal, it would probably not be too much of a problem either.
This is not the case with Discipline priests. Bring 7 Discipline priests, and there is going to be a lot of frustration amongst them. Disc priests are all about teh bubblez, and you can only have one bubble on you at a time. Whereas with other healers, you can get two heals from two different healers at the same time without a problem, you can't have two bubbles from two different disc priests. In addition, disc priests' strength is in the special bonuses they get from healing someone who has a bubble on them. Matticus actually wrote a somewhat interesting article about multiple disc priests on wow.com the other day, but he focused more on whining priests than the actual potential problems of multiple disc priests. I don't think there's a problem with having two disc priests, but once you get more than that, it's going to be a struggle. If you do have multiple disc priests, you need to be very careful to give each priest their "territory" per se. If they don't have healing assignments, they are going to overlap - and bubbles do NOT overlap, so there is going to be a lot of time wasted between the two of them.
With Druids, you can handle a lot more healing druids in a raid than say, Discipline priests. However, like disc priests, Druids have a very interesting healing mechanic - the HoT. The thing about interesting healing mechanics is that they are a really great addition, though in a tight spot you can do without them, and an entire raid based on those "interesting mechanics" will likely not go well. I have no problem with having 2, 3, maybe even 4 druids. If half of my healing team is druids, I don't find that to be a problem - however, more than that and it will be difficult to deal with burst damage.
Of all the healing classes, I will be the first to admit that the one I understand least is the Shaman. This lack of knowledge on my part means that I tend to underestimate the shammy healer. This is partly because we only have one regular shammy healer in our alliance. There's no question that he is a fantastic healer, but I really don't have as much experience with shammies, though I'm working on that. That having been said, like priests, Shammies are good overall healers. They can handle the raid and they can take on single targets. The biggest problem I actually see with too many healing shammies is that the awesomeness of their totems can quickly go to waste due to lack of stacking. This is the only reason why, even if given the opportunity, I would shy away from having more than a handful of Shammies in my healing makeup.
And now we come down to the Pally. A really strong pally can seemingly heal forever, drop spam bombs like nobody's business, and overheal without too much concern anyway. However, with all the raid damage going over in Ulduar, it is tough to have too many pallies, because let's face it - they aren't strong raid healers. Even with Beacon of Light, and even with the incoming buffs to Beacon of Light, it will still be difficult to justify more than 2 or 3 pally healers in a 25 man raid. The good thing is that the various fights in Ulduar seem to require multiple tanking roles, unlike what we saw in Naxx. In Naxx, two tanks and you were pretty much set. In Ulduar, three tanks is cutting it close, in case one dies. Therefore, I give each of my pally healers one single healing target - one of our tanks. In the past I've left their BoL target up to them - with all the raid damage, it's not a bad idea to have themselves set as BoL - and this also helps if you have a shortage of raid healers. However, if you're going to have a handful of Pally healers, they need to be on the ball. They need to be literally spamming their heals, because a tank going 6 seconds without a heal very quickly becomes a dead tank. In addition, if you're going to give each of the tanks only one dedicated healer, those healers should be similarly capable of handling the incoming damage.
Focus on the strengths! /flex
So, in summary, what do you do when you have an overpallyfication problem, with too many single target healers? With pallies, I give each tank a dedicated pally healer, and it's really important to get across to these healers that they need to be only healing their target - don't try to raid heal, or the tanks will die. If I had fewer single target healers, I would double up the dedicated tank healing assignments. Even with dedicated heals, we still need druids and priests to HoT and bubble the tanks regularly. With too many disc priests, you again need to emphasize specific healing assignments. Give each tank a dedicated healer, and if you still have extra single target healers after that, with priests you can let them focus on bubbling specific raid groups, and using Prayer of Healing during phases that include XT's tantrum, or Ignis' flame jets. Disc priests and holy pallies can also handle certain "bomb emergency" aspects as well, such as Slag Pot, Searing Light, and Gravity Bomb. Between Holy Shock for pallies, and BubblyBubble for Disc Priests, even these single target healers have strong mechanics for healing "bomb emergency" mechanincs - as long as their reflexes are strong, and they are paying attention.
We haven't had a shortage of healers in general as of late, but our mix of healers has been less than ideal. One week, of our 6 healers, 4 were paladins. This has repeatedly been a source of some strain for me.
I like to come up with new words, so therefore I have now coined the term "Overpallyfication" - the overabundance of single target healers within your raid makeup, with Pallies being the best example.
It's not exactly new information that "all healers are not created equal". And perhaps I am a little OCD about healer makeup. But, 7 healers (4 of which are pallies) is better than 5 healers at this stage of the raiding game for us. I have actually had to turn healers down because of overpallyfication, but I don't want to continue to do this. At least with the 3.2 pally changes, it will be a lot easier to justify extra pallies, due to the changes in Beacon of Light.
Too Many -insert healer type here-
So what do you do when you have an overabundance of a single type of healer? Interestingly enough, there are some healer types that don't really present too many problems if you have too many. Holy priests are the perfect example of this - because they are the jack of all trades amongst healers, they can handle single target or raid healing without any trouble. If you had 7 holy priests, while it wouldn't be ideal, it would probably not be too much of a problem either.
This is not the case with Discipline priests. Bring 7 Discipline priests, and there is going to be a lot of frustration amongst them. Disc priests are all about teh bubblez, and you can only have one bubble on you at a time. Whereas with other healers, you can get two heals from two different healers at the same time without a problem, you can't have two bubbles from two different disc priests. In addition, disc priests' strength is in the special bonuses they get from healing someone who has a bubble on them. Matticus actually wrote a somewhat interesting article about multiple disc priests on wow.com the other day, but he focused more on whining priests than the actual potential problems of multiple disc priests. I don't think there's a problem with having two disc priests, but once you get more than that, it's going to be a struggle. If you do have multiple disc priests, you need to be very careful to give each priest their "territory" per se. If they don't have healing assignments, they are going to overlap - and bubbles do NOT overlap, so there is going to be a lot of time wasted between the two of them.
With Druids, you can handle a lot more healing druids in a raid than say, Discipline priests. However, like disc priests, Druids have a very interesting healing mechanic - the HoT. The thing about interesting healing mechanics is that they are a really great addition, though in a tight spot you can do without them, and an entire raid based on those "interesting mechanics" will likely not go well. I have no problem with having 2, 3, maybe even 4 druids. If half of my healing team is druids, I don't find that to be a problem - however, more than that and it will be difficult to deal with burst damage.
Of all the healing classes, I will be the first to admit that the one I understand least is the Shaman. This lack of knowledge on my part means that I tend to underestimate the shammy healer. This is partly because we only have one regular shammy healer in our alliance. There's no question that he is a fantastic healer, but I really don't have as much experience with shammies, though I'm working on that. That having been said, like priests, Shammies are good overall healers. They can handle the raid and they can take on single targets. The biggest problem I actually see with too many healing shammies is that the awesomeness of their totems can quickly go to waste due to lack of stacking. This is the only reason why, even if given the opportunity, I would shy away from having more than a handful of Shammies in my healing makeup.
And now we come down to the Pally. A really strong pally can seemingly heal forever, drop spam bombs like nobody's business, and overheal without too much concern anyway. However, with all the raid damage going over in Ulduar, it is tough to have too many pallies, because let's face it - they aren't strong raid healers. Even with Beacon of Light, and even with the incoming buffs to Beacon of Light, it will still be difficult to justify more than 2 or 3 pally healers in a 25 man raid. The good thing is that the various fights in Ulduar seem to require multiple tanking roles, unlike what we saw in Naxx. In Naxx, two tanks and you were pretty much set. In Ulduar, three tanks is cutting it close, in case one dies. Therefore, I give each of my pally healers one single healing target - one of our tanks. In the past I've left their BoL target up to them - with all the raid damage, it's not a bad idea to have themselves set as BoL - and this also helps if you have a shortage of raid healers. However, if you're going to have a handful of Pally healers, they need to be on the ball. They need to be literally spamming their heals, because a tank going 6 seconds without a heal very quickly becomes a dead tank. In addition, if you're going to give each of the tanks only one dedicated healer, those healers should be similarly capable of handling the incoming damage.
Focus on the strengths! /flex
So, in summary, what do you do when you have an overpallyfication problem, with too many single target healers? With pallies, I give each tank a dedicated pally healer, and it's really important to get across to these healers that they need to be only healing their target - don't try to raid heal, or the tanks will die. If I had fewer single target healers, I would double up the dedicated tank healing assignments. Even with dedicated heals, we still need druids and priests to HoT and bubble the tanks regularly. With too many disc priests, you again need to emphasize specific healing assignments. Give each tank a dedicated healer, and if you still have extra single target healers after that, with priests you can let them focus on bubbling specific raid groups, and using Prayer of Healing during phases that include XT's tantrum, or Ignis' flame jets. Disc priests and holy pallies can also handle certain "bomb emergency" aspects as well, such as Slag Pot, Searing Light, and Gravity Bomb. Between Holy Shock for pallies, and BubblyBubble for Disc Priests, even these single target healers have strong mechanics for healing "bomb emergency" mechanincs - as long as their reflexes are strong, and they are paying attention.
I'm going to start by listing the changes that will affect Holy Pallies (aside from what I mentioned yesterday) as currently stated over in the PTR patch notes.
- Judgement of Light: Now heals for 2% of the attacker's maximum health instead of a variable amount based on the spell power and attack power of the judging paladin.
- Lay on Hands: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 10/20% instead of increasing the target's armor.
- Sacred Shield: When a paladin casts Flash of Light on a target with this buff, they also now place a heal-over-time effect on the target, healing that target for 100% of the Flash of Light amount over 12 seconds
- Beacon of Light: The healing amount on the Beacon of Light target is now based on the total healing done (including over-healing) instead of the effective healing done. Radius increased to 60 yards. Multiple Paladins can now have this active on the same target. Buff indicating a player is within range of the Beacon target is no longer displayed.
- Divine Intellect: This talent now gives 2/4/6/8/10% increased intellect instead of 3/6/9/12/15%.
- Illumination: This talent now returns 30% of the mana cost of the spell instead of 60%.
Well, the changes to Illumination we’ve been “promised” for some time now are finally incoming. There are quite a few changes in store for Holy Pallies, and the nerfs and buffs are intended to balance one another, according to developers. Below is a blue explanation from Eyonix (I have cut out irrelevant portions of the quote – to see the original in full, you can go here).
"We are making far fewer changes to class mechanics overall in 3.2, but paladins in particular have some issues we feel are in need of being addressed[…]
We like that Holy paladins have a niche as single-target healers. The problem is we think this niche is a little too narrow at the moment. Furthermore, paladins don’t have a wide arsenal of healing spells so it’s important that all of them are being used.
First, we are changing Flash of Light so that it places a heal-over-time effect on any target with Sacred Shield on them (the effect will be similar to Sheathe of Light). This should make Flash see a little more use.
Second, and more importantly, we are changing the way Beacon of Light works. Currently, it does not count over-healing on the target. We are changing that. In other words, if you place Holy Light on a rogue who is already at full health, it will still have the full effect on a tank with Beacon of Light on them. This is a huge buff, particularly when you consider the Holy Light glyph which allows for a small amount of “splash” healing. This effect isn’t common when you use Holy Light on a tank because the tank is often standing alone. But if you heal the melee, you are likely to get a lot more total healing from this effect (while still healing the tank through Beacon of Light). We are also going to try to allow a target to have more than one beacon (i.e. from different paladins) on them.
[…]With the Beacon of Light change, the paladin can provide a lot more raid or party healing. To adjust for this, we are going to reduce the amount of mana returned by Illumination…”
This “official” explanation from Blizz frames the changes in a perspective intended to convince us all that Pallies have been given some major buffs, and the teeny tiny little nerfs that go along with it are simply meant to keep them from being OP. I won’t bother contesting that. I suppose it all depends on how you look at it. Please keep in mind that the exact numbers in the changes may be different once the patch goes to live servers, but rest assured that these changes are inevitable.
This patch is going to seriously alter the way Holy Pallies heal. While we won’t exactly be AoE/Raid healers, we are moving more in the direction of being, at least, dual target healers.
Let’s take it from the top, shall we? First off, the Judgement of Light change needed to happen. With two pallies in a raid, too many were confused on what pally should be using which judgment. Since Light is currently based off of some magical mathematical combination of spellpower + attack power, it is much more beneficial for a ret or prot pally to judge it currently, since holy pallies have no need for silly attack power, pshaw. But, because we are in a healing mindset, we always want to judge holy to heal. The tooltip and function is now much clearer. If I am understanding the change correctly, it doesn't really matter which pally uses this judgement. The return on it will individually vary based on the different people attacking that target - not on the Pally who initially judged it. This is a good change, IMO. (edit - thanks to Fuubaar for forcing me to look at this change again!)
Lay on Hands change is in line with the Inspiration change for priests. I think it’s intended to be a PvP buff, to counteract recent armor penetration changes. Sacred Shield – zomg pally HoT? Say it ain’t so! This is a pretty awesome change, and encourages us not to abandon Flash of Light simply because of the changes to overhealing via Holy Light and Beacon of Light.
The Beacon of Light change is the most important buff of all. Since pallies have historically been stacking crit and int as our main regen stats, we have a serious problem with overhealing. Now, we don’t need to worry about it nearly as much. In fact, there’s little need to actually purposely heal the tank for the most part. Throw on a Beacon of Light, and heal someone else somewhat nearby, and even if that person takes no damage, even if your entire heal on them is pure overheal, the target of your BoL (usually the tank) gets the FULL benefit of your overheal. Totally win. Not to mention the huge increase in radius range. Not to mention that now multiple pallies will be able to have the same target of light. Rock.
And then… we have the changes to Illumination and Divine Intellect talents. Of course we couldn’t simply have an awesome change to BoL without a negative factor to balance it out. Can’t have everything, folks. You can still stack crit and int for even the reduced returns on Illumination, because at least you don’t have to be as concerned about crit heals doing wasteful overhealing via BoL.
I’m very interested to see how these changes, coupled with the Mp5 and Replenishment modifications noted yesterday, will affect Pally mana regen. I personally think it’s a pretty awesome change to healing methods for Pallies, and I can’t wait to try it out.
I was going to include a guide on how this will change the way we heal, but there’s no need. Someone else much smarter than myself has already done it, and I highly encourage all the holy pallies to go give it a quick read. Holypaladin.net lists and describes how to modify your healing style, so go there, but if you can’t access it from work, here’s a super quick barebones outline of what is explained in much better detail there.
1. No more solo tank healing – you’ll need a little help from your fellow healers.
2. Only do a direct heal on the tank every 12 seconds or so with Flash of Light to keep up the HoT.
3. Be prepared to use Holy Shock and Holy Light a lot less often.
All in all, I’m surprisingly pleased with the changes coming in. I try to keep an open mind about how developers change mechanics, and I think the pally changes are fairly well balanced. I will hold my final judgment until I get a chance to try it via PTR though. There are also quite a few interesting changes incoming for other Pally specs, and when I'm done with my 3.2 healing series, I may revisit some of them.
I have enlisted the aid of two fellow alliance members to help with explanation and discussion regarding 3.2 changes for druids and shammies. My plan is to provide posts from these two lovely folks beginning of next week, so stay tuned!
