[Healadin] HL or FoL?

[Shoju]

Even if you spam FoL all day long, you should NEVER EVER EVER have a ret sub spec. On our last kill of BPC, we 2 tanked it and I was healing. Holy with prot subspec. I'm sitting over 750 haste, and 30% holy crit in this build. The entire fight was refresh SS, Beacon, FoL Spam, Judge, FoL Spam, Refresh, FoL Spam. I cast 6 holy lights total during the fight, but on the other hand, I cast almost 250 Flash of Lights on the tank who was 2 tanking. At 80% crit rate, and 1.0 second FoL's I only fell behind when the ranged moved on my rear during the shock vortex. and had to Blow Holy Light 4 times to get caught back up. My Flash was hitting for 7-8k crits every second that I wasn't refreshing my SS or Beacon, and I'm sub specc'd ret, with SoW glyph, and full int gearing. There is absolutely NO REASON to use a ret subspec anymore, even as a FoL paladin.

[Joanadark]

1) NEVER should you be speced sub-ret, regardless of playstyle. I don't know how much simpler that can be stated.

2)

a FoL and a HL paladin have pretty good synergy together as the HL hit hard and the FoL stabalizes til the big heal gets there.

Myth. Holy Light scales FAR better with haste than Flash of Light because haste is applied towards the pre-Light's Grace cast time. At t10 gear level the difference in cast time between HL and FoL is like 0.2 seconds.

3) Good tank healers stagger their casts with each other.

4)FoL spam has no HPS advantage, despite being gemmed for pure SP.
Even if you feel like a machine gun bombing 8k Flash of Lights every second, it's an illusion, because you could be bombing 16-20k Holy Lights every 1.2 seconds. The only actual tank survivability advantage the FoL playstyle brings is a stronger absorption bubble from Sacred Shield, for situations where absorption matters more for tank survivability than actual HPS throughput (the only example of this I can think of would be General Vezax hard mode).

5) Yes, FoL spam had a niche. That niche was add-tank healing on Anub'arak Heroic 25-man when using a 2-add tank strat while wearing 4-peice t9, using 7 healers instead of 6 because your raid found PC healing difficult which resulted in having 1 less DPS, and while the content was new and all the DPS were also wearing t9 causing the third phase to last a fairly long time.
The reasons for this were:
-High HPS on the add tanks was BAD due to the unique mechanic of Leeching Swarm that no other fight replicates.
-The t9 4-piece holy paladin set bonus which increased the frequency with which the Sacred Shield absorption bubble could proc synergized extremely well with the FoL-spam gearing style and thus was very helpful for the survivability of the MT.
-Insta-gibs on the MT by a Freezing Slash/melee/leeching swarm tick combo were very frequent, and this increased the value of EH and absorption for the MT considerably more than normally the case.

So yes, it had a niche. A VERY VERY small niche.
Claiming FoL-spam is competitive is like saying Mage Tanking is competitive just because it was good for one encounter.

[Shoju]

I will say, that while I agree that gearing for FoL spam is not a good idea, I find myself being more of a FoL 'spammer' in 10 mans than most of my 25 man holy paladin counterparts.

There are still times that you need to drop the big holy lights fast and furious, but more and more Holy Light is just massive overheal in 10man.

Don't take this as me advocating a FoLadin build. if you check me out on WoW-heroes for my healing spec, I'm still gemmed, geared, and enchanted like a HoL paladin. The genious of that is, I can still FoL at an 80% crit rate on the tank when healing isn't intense, and swap to dropping HL bombs when I need to.

[Flex]

I'll go prot subspec when Pursuit of Justice goes Prot. Zoom zoom.

[Shoju]

I'll go prot subspec when Pursuit of Justice goes Prot. Zoom zoom.

Stop being a slacker and get 40 engineering. Who needs speed boosts when you have NITRO BOOSTS BABY

[kysu]

HL all the way, overhealing works with beacon and mana is endless no reason not to atm. Heal the melee with HL and the gyplh. FoL is for when nothing is going on and you just want to hit a button.

Cast times are ~ the same with mabye .1 to .2 diff at MAX

[Flex]

I'll go prot subspec when Pursuit of Justice goes Prot. Zoom zoom.

Stop being a slacker and get 40 engineering. Who needs speed boosts when you have NITRO BOOSTS BABY

My Holy Paladin is an engineer with nitro boots. It is all the running around outside of instance that I miss run speed boosts =(

[Shoju]

I'll go prot subspec when Pursuit of Justice goes Prot. Zoom zoom.

Stop being a slacker and get 40 engineering. Who needs speed boosts when you have NITRO BOOSTS BABY

My Holy Paladin is an engineer with nitro boots. It is all the running around outside of instance that I miss run speed boosts =(

you do things that aren't standing in dal and queuing? If I'm not standing in dal for ~30 seconds while I queue, I'm either leveling mining on my priest or picking flowers with my hunter, both of which are mounted things.

I've been meaning to get back to loremaster on Sunetra, but man.... I'm having WAY too much fun healing on my priest right now. It makes me realize why everyone cries about paladin healing. it is downright drab.

[Flex]

Screw priests. I deleted mine last week. Had less than 5 hours of actual play time at 80 and was taking up character space.

[Shoju]

The real reason that you deleted the priest was because it would never be as hot as mine

Seriously though, why delete it? Do you like paladin healing? Man, even now that I'm overgeared for most heroics, the healing on a priest is still more engaging than paladin healing.

I'm just REALLY bored with the paladin model I guess. SS target. Bacon Target. Judge something. Flash of light. I mean, that's it in heroics (unless I can get a guildy tank and we do crazy stuff) and most of ICC. I find myself HLing less and less as my gear gets better. Now I'm sure that would be different in hard modes, but wel.... I'm not there yet.

At least as Disc, I can shield the group, run Renew, holy nova AoE dps, or something. I don't know, after healing as a priest I just don't care for the paladin healing model.

[Joanadark]

Holy stopped being as fun for me when Beacon started counting overhealing.

[sherck]

Holy stopped being as fun for me when Beacon started counting overhealing.

I actually agree with you 100%. Getting 100% throughput on the tank regardless of how injured or not injured the raid member is took just about all thought out of Paladin healing.

And I just cannot see where Cata Pally healing is going to be increased fun again. Sure, we get 2 new spells in GHL and Healing Hands but one of our spells gets made into a 30 minute buff (Sacred Shield) so we are only netting one "new" button to push.

And I am really concerned with the possible Beacon change to only work with FoL which will become our fast, inefficient heal.

If it continues to be the model that Beacon is expensive to cast and is intended to stay for its duration on a single target, then it will continue to be a tank healing tool that also allows you to take some time off the tank and heal someone else and still have the tank get some throughput during that GCD.

If they make it cost almost no mana to cast, then I see it being a bit more dynamic in that you will be moving it around a ton to an injured player and then casting FoL on the tank to get the double heal. This, however, only works if it comes off the GCD. If it stays on the GCD, and assuming it will cost you double the mana to replicate the heal, you might be better off just casting FoL on one GCD on the injured raid member and then casting one FoL back on the tank in the next GCD.

And the concept for Healing Hands? I hate the concept that I have zero ability to direct its healing except to physically move my toon. It is a dumb heal and takes just about all choice away from the Paladin. The only choice now is to either mash the button if the hopeful healing output (that can only be measured by visually looking on the screen to see who is near while at the same time eyeing your raid U/I to see if those members are injured) outweights the mana cost or opportunity time cost within the next 15 seconds. Fire and forget for the next 15 seconds. I just don't understand why Blizzard is refusing to give us a real, throwable AoE heal. Every other class has at least two (WG and Tranq) (Chain Heal and Healing Rain) (PoH, Divine Hymn [Power Word: Barrier] [Circle of Healing]) and the only one we get is player based. I just don't get it.

Anyway, I will probably level my Paladin first in Cata because it is the class I fell in love with my first day in WoW and I will continue to heal because I am a healer at heart. But I wish that Blizzard had a clear idea of what they wanted the Paladin healers to be.

Cheers,

[Joanadark]

Never thought I'd say this, but I miss whack-a-mole.

[Sarutankah]

I have always been a ret/holy guy and use that spec most of the time.

I have to say - it's 100% because it's different - Beacon feels too much like cheating and my current SS build is a bit meh overall.

I still get pissy when I think about the old Flash of Light Glyph - that was so sweet, mini regrowth and hot to compliment the Holylights flying around.


Sigh.


Anyway - Ret/Holy is pretty fun - especially in the icc heroics, Whackamole is there if you want it - just disable all the cheating parts of paladin healing

My main healing character is my Druid: Nourish is a 1-1.2 sec cast that crits for 12-13k, Holy pally should stick to Holy Light, if you need a fol style healer for some reason a druid does it better (and heals every other mofo at the same time).

[Epimer]

Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, but PuG healing on my resto shaman is making me very anti-FoL paladin. Not through jealousy, but in a free-for-all environment with no healing assignments you really *feel* the lack of throughput on the tank if those Holy Lights aren't there. Maybe it feels like a more efficient, effective playstyle for the guy spamming FoL (because you're seeing less overheal and it feels like every FoL counts, I suppose) but from the point of view of someone who has to make up the difference when the throughput is lacking... not a fan.