Healing as Holy

I have tanked my entire career, when I hit 70 i respecced and stayed prot and all its variations with and without reckoning, PoJ and spell warding, 0/3 precision and maxed and its been fun.

Now I am in this new guild and they are having me go holy. I am actually enjoying it because as holy I can solo better and its nice to mix things up.

But we did Leo tonight and well I was told to heal the warlock tank, I did 90k healing and 60k overheal for the 8 minute fight.

To me I thought I was doing a good job but after hearing those numbers thats horrible... Our top healer did 250k healing with 20k overhealing.

Now I don't even know where to begin, I thought my healing was good and I thought I was an okay healer but it seems to be the opposite. Is there anyone else who is asked to spec holy who has gone through this that maybe could give me some tips for healing T5+ content and what you do. I am not looking to top the meters but 66% overheal and less then 40% healing done next to 1st place is unacceptable to me and I need to improve.

The only addon to assist my healing I was using is Grid, don't know if that helps...

Any tips would be extremely helpful,..
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Donwrank
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I usually spec holy at least once a week depending on who shows up to the raid. My holy gear is mostly ZA/Kara leftovers, with ~26% holy spell crit and ~2000 +healing unbuffed.

Basically what I've noticed is that in our raids a paladin will never be top healing and will usually be high on overheal, and that's because paladins are assigned MT healing, while the priests and shammies are raid healing entire groups at a time with CoH and Chain Heal. Likewise, druids are keeping HoTs on many people simultaneously. Paladin are going to do less total healing because we don't have group heals, and are going to do more overhealing because we have to be proactive in our healing in order to guard against MT damage spikes, whereas raid healer can be more reactive.

Sorry for the rambling, but the punchline is this: Compare yourself to other members of your class, taking into account which healing jobs were assigned. Comparing your healing done on the MT with the raid healing done by a CoH priest on a fight like Bloodboil for instance is just not very informative, and doesn't really have much bearing on the healers' relative skill or gear in general.

All this aside, I knew one holy pally when I was doing T5 content who was downright amazing, and she topped the meters every time. I don't know how she did it, but she did. There may be less fights with vast amounts of raid damage in T5 content vs T6 content, I'm not sure, or perhaps the priests, druids, and shamans just weren't particularly good.
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Speaking as healer. I aim for 2 things when raid healing. First, ive noticed that +Heals are only a good measure for where you stand among other pallys, dont feel bad if a priest or a shammy has much higher. Paladins are very strong SINGLE target healers. You will almost always get assigned a tank to focus on, and if you get put on raid heals (If youre comfortable with healing) mention your strength and ask to be put on one target. So thats the first one, make sure you have an acceptable heal target. And the other...spell crit rating. You get mana back for critical heals. Ive tried stacking mp/5, doesnt work NEARLY as well as crit. When I was sitting at 25% holy crit unbuffed, I stayed in a fight VERY long...when they add in a boomkin for the extra 5%....I could flash of light, with a holy light on the big hits, forever. I've done Gruuls, Mags and even Rage in Hyjal without having to pot once with a boomkin in the group. If you get a spriest in your party (VERY unlikely in a raid, theyll almost always be with caster dps) your set for holy light spamming nearly forever.

Tip - for raid healing, its a timing game. Its all about endurance, you do not want to go OOM. but you cant STOP healing. You eventually learn the fights and WHEN the boss will hit the tank. then you just cast a heal right before, so it lands right after the hit. Its a game within the game, finding out the timings. Yeah spam heal if you dont know the boss that well, but when youre comfortable, you can do really well.

Tip 2 - Personally, I flash of light as often as possible (Wear the pvp gloves for the 2% flash crit) because its a very fast 1600ish heal. but if you see a big chunk missing in your tank, divine favor and holy light. (If you think you have time for the 2.5 sec cast) its usually over 7k heal for me, and its saved the tank more than once. If you DONT have the time, do a fast flash, then divine favor and holy shock, its about 4-5k in ~1.5sec

Last tip - Make a macro or something, if the tank ever gets to 1-5% health, Lay on Hands...regardless of your mana level. The macro should LoH then take a super mana pot right after. Ive know pallys who fear LoH because their mana goes away...but think, would you rather have 1 healer out of 5 oom...or the 1 tank dead. its a good way for an instant 8-9k easy health for the MT. Its your "oh shit" button in the healadin world.

And thats it, those are my tips, coming from a raid healer of a long time. And Im goin prot now, so send me a message of tips if you got anything to say before you respec. Thanks and good luck, most importantly, have fun, hating your job is for the REAL WORLD, not for wow, you dont like what you do, dont do it, its that simple
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If you are assigned to heal a single target (as you should be to take advantage of your healing strengths), the only thing that matters is if the target stayed alive or not. If your target dies, all the healing efficiency and healing done counts for nothing.
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I have little to no raid experience as holy, but one thing I feel should be mentioned...

When you are spamming FoL on your single target, try to throw in a Holy Light every once in a while regardless of his health. Rank 1 will do just fine.
That way, you can keep the Light's Grace buff up, and when he needs a big heal because he takes a crushing or something like that, your Holy Light lands half a second sooner. Trust me, it saves lives.

Downranking just 1 rank on your FoL is far more mana efficient. it's 140 mana instead of 180 for probably only about a 100 hp difference or thereabout.

Good luck, and have fun healing
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The other benefit to doing what Kyrael suggests, whether specced prot or holy, is that throwing in a regular (downranked) Holy Light helps keep the mp5 buff up continually (I think it's called Grace of the Naaru, 22mp5?) from Libram of Mending (badge libram) if you are using it.
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I have considerable experience raiding as Holy, for me, Regen is everything, I only have 1800 + Healing and 20% Holy Spell crit, but I have over 200 MP5 while casting, reducing my overhealing and allowing me to hold out a lot longer on those long fights like well...the whole 2nd 1/2 of SSC....

I would say re-enchant/Re-Gem some more Regen and less +Healing

I was almost ALWAYS #1 Healer for my guild, just because I never had to STOP healing

Besides the spell suggestions here, the biggest boon to raid healing aside from gear can often be mods.

Everyone has their own style, and such different mobs suit their tastes. In either case, the default isnt always enough to keep up with everything you need to be doing/watching.

I would suggest something like Healbot, personally. Its a click-heal window, with lots of options allowing you to be a more effective healer. While I agree with the 'OH is OK as long as the target doesn't die' that doesnt mean it cant be improved.

As a holy raider since I started until now, I easily saw a 30-40% increase in my effective healing when I started using it. I think the biggest boon is it allowed me to see other heals pending for targets, so I could plan accordingly. I still use it even in Prot mode now, in order to manage cleanses.

Otherwise, theres nothing wrong with cancelling heals if they arent needed. Healing should always be reactive, but that doesnt mean every heal needs to finish either. If youre overhealing by 40%, id say youre probably a bit in tank mode still, and casting fully each time, and waiting for the cooldown. As a tank, you should already be familiar with the potential spike damage a target can take, so plan your heal rotation around that knowledge.

PS. I dont downrank, never saw the need to. With an effective crit ratio (25% + for raiding is suggested), and the number of fights I take some damage on, mana is not really an issue. I also tend to use HL more often than most healadins I know, but I weave them in a way to 1) make HL effective (not OH), and 2) keep lights grace up for those 'oh shit' moments. I think a big part of this is knowing the damage potential that people are going to take before starting any given fight.

We have two heals... A crappy quick one, and a crappy long one.

You're going to overheal. That's just the way of things. Paladin healers are meant to be "top-off" healers. That is, when a HoT is on a target, you're spamming FoL or HL to get that target back up to max.

As long as you're critting and getting mana back, overhealing doesn't mean anything for a paladin healer. If a resto druid/shaman or a holy priest is overhealing, something's very... VERY wrong.
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Official thread killer

Healbot is ok, if all you want is a basic healing bar mod
If you want something far more detailed, with more customization, get Grid, and if you like click healing, get Clique to match it.

Both linked:

http://www.wowace.com/wiki/Grid
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info5108-Clique.html

As I've not healed since Hellfire Ramparts (lol?), I'm a bit rusty on healing. Do you have any advice for how you can PRACTICE healing without risking the lives of groupmates? Or do you just go heal instances you overgear/overlevel for a while until you get better at it, and then heal the more-appropriate places?

It'd be neat if Bartender let me have two different complete hotbar/key-assignment layouts for healing and tanking. Then again, if I specced Holy I'd not have holy shield or BoSanctuary on my bars as much (and probably not righteous defense or RF, LOL)... so that clears some space.

Are there any Youtube videos explaining how to set up / use Grid+clique in a way which is useful? I liked that one for PallyPower, 'twas handy.