So I tried to heal...

Last week I decided to go and collect a healing set as apart from one item, my tanking gear was as good as I was going to get it. On Friday I completed it as far as I could, rep rewards+BoEs+lucky drops meant I was practically geared for Naxx.

I have 1900 spell power and 36% crit which isn't terrible.. everything is enchanted and gemmed properly, it's all going well.

Then I get the call to heal in a heroic since we had another tank online but no healer.

I respec, get my action bar sorted out in a rush and we go to Violet hold where it becomes apparent that I cannot heal for shit.

I never expected it to be so difficult, everyone was taking damage left right and centre and I couldn't keep up, couldn't get used to my keybinds etc.

I'm pretty sure my gear is more than good enough for a heroic but I was just shockingly bad.

I have to tell you guys though.. being a mainspec pally tank and healing for another pally tank is the worst thing ever for your blood pressure.. I found myself completely bamboozled and shouting at the screen "Why aren't you consecrating before they spawn!?!!?!!?" among other things

I have concluded that at least one of these two statements must be true:

1) I am an epic failure as a healer

2) The tank was making things more difficult than it should've been.

I'm hoping it's more of a 2 than a 1 since I'm down to heal Naxx tonight, it will be... interesting.
_________________

When i've respecced after WOTLK i've noticed good Paly Healers do a lot more than they used to.

In the old days i'd just spam FOL & mix in a few Holy Lights, now you've Got Sacred Shield/Beacon/HS & judgements to add to the mix & it requires you being a lot more proactive, I think in your case just a bit more practise is required, try going into a few BG's & get your reaction times up.
_________________

Did you get Glyph of Holy Light? It´s so good I even have it in my tank-glyphs >.<

Healing is certainly something different. I think it´s a lot of fun, but I never tried it as holy before I already had a stupidly overpowered nax25-man set.

VH does include quite a bit of splash damage. The trick to healing this particular instance is just to spam your heart out. With the stats you mentioned, you should have the resources to use HL 100% of the time and not go oom. Spam spam, mobs die, divine plea + drink. And don´t be afraid to pop wings! They´re there for a reason.

Oh and yeah, got healbot or grid + clique? Use it, love it.
_________________
Paladin
Deathnugget
A priest called Beer

If he was a good a tank you should have only been healing him, other than unavoidable raid/group damage.

Some mobs aoe ect and that can't be helped but anything else. And you don't even need to conc to hold mutli mob agro, i throw shield, judge one shield didn't hit and hammer any other ive missed, i can get this off in 3 seconds and i rarely miss a mob, then i conc to hold them.

If there is an aoe class who i know is guna start up quick then i lay conc first but still make sure all mobs have been hit, by hammer, judgement ect.

When you have aoe that can crit for TONS you don't rely on conc.
_________________

THings I found handy:

Mouseover macros for FoL, HoL, and Shock.
Grid.
A focused target (e.g., the tank).
For AOE, Beacon on the tank.

The hardest things for me were pre-emptively knowing when AOE would be coming, and dealing with AOE. When it's only one or two people getting hurt, it's not quiteso bad. Agreed, though, a good pally healer is doing a lot more than meets the eye (or, maybe i jsut don't look hard).

As a healer at heart, I'll say this. Even though I'm currently playing a Resto Shaman as my main, a good Holy Paladin impresses me 10x more than a good a good healer from another class. The tools they have can get the job done, but at a much higher workload.

I've actually been playing mine today with plans on respeccing back to Holy to give it another go. I'm sure I won't be playing it as as my main anymore, but who knows maybe it has grown on me in my time away from the class. I just really didn't take to the 3.0 changes at the time.

Anyways though, don't get frustrated. Could have been you, could have been the tank, could have been alot of things. Just give it a few more goes and see how it works. Might turn out that you just aren't cut for healing (at least Paladin healing) or it might turn out that you'll figure out what is up and be great at it.
_________________
I had a hook in my back and a light to guide me

Sunwell and pre nerf m'uru killed my view of paladin healing, and that was the last I ever did that. I'll never go back.
_________________

Strangely enough I originally only levelled my paladin to be a healer..
I levelled as holy, and up until level 26 I had no plans to change that.. then while i was on my rogue i saw a paladin pulling like 50 mobs at once and at first I was like "he must be a haxxing!", then I looked up aoe tanking and switched to prot as soon as I got to level 40 (for holy shield etc.) I gathered as much twink plate as possible to give it a go and just went to town on the yetis in feralas.
I levelled to 70 as prot. 70-74 I tried retri because it was imba.. then I started to miss prot so I went back to tanking

I feel I'm a pretty good tank, I always put the effort in to make my character as good as I can, even when I don't have the time to raid..
I have been to naxx once as a tank and got the slayer of the lifeless, that is all. :/
Everything else I've ground the gold to buy or farmed badges, rep or instances. (This goes for holy spec too)
I've made sure I'm properly enchanted and gemmed and up to date on the latest theorycraft.. and by that I don't mean I read the latest post on EJ and copy it
Anyway rant over there, I'm gonna stick at holy and see if I can make some magic happen.

Ah well, onwards and upwards!
_________________

its a bit harder than what it use to be, have to make sure beacon is up on multiple mob pulls (just in case tank cant hold all mobs) making sure sacred shield is up full time, making sure you have a judge down, use holy shock whenever possible (its good now) with your crit you should be getting lots of instant FoL. As mentioned the glyphs help but with your gear you can just spam FoL with no glyphs and be good (at least that's what I do at 1950 sp 31 crit)

I do alot of healing on my Shaman. The 2 biggest things IMO that are super helpful for healing are using Healbot and using the correct glyphs.

I healed for a long time the old fashioned way, using the mouse to select the player and the numbers to select the heal to use. Healbot give you a convient mouseover frame you just click on to heal. It is so much easier and faster, just turning it on improved my healing by 100% and now that I am used to it I don't know why anyone wouldn't use it.

As far as glyphs go, I don't know alot about pally healing glyphs. I am pretty sure that there are some that change spell mechanics pretty significantly, and that can often make for a completley diffrent kind of healing, usually better.

From your statements, I think if you are noticing that the tank was not doing things right, then he is at least partly to blame. On the other hand, a good healer can heal any tank through any managable situation, but it take a lot of practice to be a good healer.
_________________
Salgado - Protection Paladin
Totemjunkie - Elemental Shaman

The greatest pleasure in life is doing what other people say you cannot do...

2 cents from a Full Time Healadin:

- Get a healing addon that works for you. I like Healbot rather than Clique/Grid. I have it configued so I can cast all my helpful spells on raid members using the three mod buttons (no mod, Shift, Ctrl, Alt) and my three mouse buttons. I also have it configured so that I know when a raid member gets aggro (their name lights up) and can get my FoL cast started on them prior to the attack actually landing. It also shows me through color code when someone has been inflicted with an effect (Magic/Disease/Poison) that I can cure. Almost all of my healing needs are consolidated in one part of my screen (I put it right next to my Divine Favor/Divine Illumination/Avenging Wrath/Divine Plea section of my Button Bars.

Spells I cast through Healbot = Flash of Light, Holy Shock, Holy Light, Sacred Shield, Cleanse, Beacon of Light, Hand of Freedom, Hand of Protection, Hand of Salvation, Hand of Sacrifice, Lay on Hands, Redemption.

- Get the addon Classtimer. It has configurable places where it will list out your buffs / debuffs on yourself, your target and your focus. Make your Main Tank your focus (or whoever is tanking the current boss) so that you can see when you Sacred Shield and Beacon are going to fall off him. Use your target one to see when your Judgement debuff / HotC debuff is going to fall off the boss. And your own bar shows you when you get trinket procs or when Infusion of Light is up on you.

- I also heavily use the addon Rangefinder. It gives you the range to your target and your focus. I stay at maximum range when healing in order to minimize some of the boss's AoE casts but also to maximize travel time of the mob to me if I rip aggro from whoever is holding them with a string of Crit heals. This lets the tank realize that they lost aggro and for them to get it back again.

- In 5-man, it is typically Beacon on your tank, Sacred Shield your tank and then FoL spam around the party to keep everyone up. FoL on the tank when no one else is taking damage. If FoL is not enough, move up to Holy Light. If you get behind, just start Holy Light spam until you are out of danger. Between Holy Light gyph, Seal of Wisdom glyph, and Illumination, there is little that you cannot outheal in Heroics.

- In raids, you need to customize your healing to your role. Are you MT healing? Then you may not even need Beacon up and just single-target heal? Are you raid healing? Beacon on MT or yourself in an AoE situation and keep FoL spam up with Judging often to get the Haste buff and do some small DPS. Are you being a ranged tank in the back during 4-horsemen? Beacon on your other ranged tank and then FoL/HS/HL and Judge the new Horseman on the Mark switch. Being the Chow kiter on Gluth ? Fun, fun fun. A good raid leader can do a lot with a good Holy Paladin.

- Sacred Shield is your most efficient form of damage migagation / repair. One cast can prevent around 10.5k damage over a 30 second period. Always keep it up on the tank and don't be afraid to spread it around to party members if they are taking reoccuring damage.

- A good healer is made by at least a compentent tank. If the tank is not getting aggro on EVERY target in a raid, then your first heal is going to pull them and there will be little you can do about it. If I have a bad tank who refuses to use their AoE to get all the targets, I typically let them hit 50% and then start casting a Holy Light in order to delay the building of my aggro for as long as possible. However, if I then Crit that thing (about a 40% chance of doing so), I then rip aggro off them anyway, so...

Cheers,
_________________
------
Thad, Current Toon = Blood Elf Pally Bloodprince on Altar of Storms

Another full time healadin here..

Healing is not something you can instantly be good at, dont expect to be especially if you've never played a healing class before. That said, most of it is experience; as a holy paladin situational awareness is more prevalent than other healers.

As for mods, i only run xperl.
_________________
80 Paladin
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Frostmourne&n=Shougeki

Glyph of holy light is a requirement to heal anything effectively.

After that

1) Keep beacon of light up permanently, this is both good practice and it allows you to deal with unexpected damage much better. Personally I have configured grid to display beacon as a dot in the lower left corner.

2) Keep sacred shield on your tank at all times during combat, I have grid configured to show it as a dot in the lower right corner

3) Unless the damage is very minor you want to rely heavily on Holy Light

4) For emergencies make sure you have a
/cast divine favor
/cast holy shock

Macro keybound so you can guarantee a big heal followed by a very quick Holy Light.

5) Use Holy shock to counter burst damage.

Personally I have it setup so shift+leftclick = flash of light, shift+rightclick = holy light, 1 = holy shock, 2= beacon of light, 3 = sacred shield (So their keybinds are the same as the grid indicator) shift+1 = divine favor holyshock macro.

6) For more advanced healing you want to clique keybind all our utility, like cleanse and hand of X.
_________________

There are 2 addons to make your life easy as a healer. Clique and Grid. Get them if you want to stop pulling your hair out.

Second is to make sure yo are glyphed. Holy light, BoW and FoL seem to be the best chioces. Keep beacon on the MT, and Sacred shield. Holy shock is much improved over what it use to be. Dont forget to judge at least 1 a minute for the haste buff.

Healing can be fun and challenging, but you just need the right tools to not go insane.