[WoW] Baradin Hold ... or Holy Pally Heaven

Baradin Hold

Baradin hold currently only has one boss ( A'la Vault of Archavon when it first came out). Just like Archavon, the first boss Argaloth is pretty straight forward. The mechanics to the fight lend very well to Paladin healing. Another paladin and I were able to 2-heal this in 10-man normal. The tank mechanic is normal 2-tank swap. Its really a DPS race. The enrage timer is 5 minutes, with his health being roughly 21Million, all DPS need to average 10k DPS at least to be able to get him down in time.

The strategy for the boss is available in better detail on other sites so I won't go into here. Summary is, the raid splits into 2 equal groups. One tank, 3 DPS and a healer on each side. The boss does a meteor slash that is shared between everyone that gets hit and puts a fire damage debuff. The tanks taunt of each other after so that only half the raid gets hit and the debuff doesn't stack. At 66% and 33% the boss casts Fel Firestorm, it leaves fire on the ground that everyone has runaway from. This goes on for a bit, everyone running and DPS as best they can. Afterwards you go back to original positions and repeat.

Pally Love

This style encounter is great for paladins. All our healing targets are stacked together, with predictable damage patterns. This makes our Holy Radiance and Light of Dawn especially effective. All this healing gets funneled to our Beaconed Tank, so they're getting constantly healed. As an added bonus, because we get to stand in Melee range, we can Crusader Strike the boss to build Holy Power. That gives us free Light of Dawn healing goodness. Heck if you position yourself correctly you might be able to heal your group and the other group as well.

Even during the Fel Firestorm phase, our Holy Radiance gives us the increased run speed, making sure we can both get out of the bad, and reach injured teammates quickly. I like to spot heal with Holy Shock + Light of Dawn partway through the Fel Firestorm, and then when returning to positions hit Holy Radiance. That ensures I'm there quickly, and that I'm healing everyone plus the tank as they get in range. There's also a debuff that we can cleanse that the boss puts onto random people.

This dungeon almost seems tailored made for the Pally healing style. I've yet to try healing this on another class, or with another class. I'm not sure if its because of the synergy between the fight mechanics and pally heal style, but 2 pallies were able to heal this dungeon in ilvl avg 340 gear. Thats technically high enough for heroics, but I certainly wouldn't try any of the entry level raids with it.

Enjoy.

[WoW] Holy Cooldowns... use them!

Holy Paladin Healing Cooldowns

Recently I've noticed that I don't make near enough use of my
cooldowns while healing. Making good use of cooldowns is very
important to performing at the top of your game. If you're not using a
cooldown that gives you +20% haste for 15 seconds every 2 minutes, why
bother worrying about that extra +10 Haste you got from upgrading
gear?

Paladins have 6 major healing related cooldowns available to us. There
are also "Hand" spells that could help with healing, or preventing
damage as well. I'll go over both and hopefully give suggestions on
when and how to use them.

Cooldowns

Avenging Wrath

This is probably the most iconic paladin ability ( next to the bubble). "Wings", this provides 20% more damage and healing done for 20 seconds. This is on a 3 minutes ( 2 mins with talents) cooldown.

This can be used pretty often. Some people ( me included) tend to "save" it until healing gets intense. Unfortunately this means it doesn't get near the amount of use it should. I personally tend to try to save it so much that I end up rarely using it. That's 20% less
healing i'm doing every 2 minutes.

People have suggested that it should be macro'd to something like Holy Radiance or even Divine Light, the justification being that if you're casting either of those spells, then you'll probably be casting more in the near future. I partially agree, at least for my usage. I really only hit Holy Radiance when 1.) I need massive tank heals, 2.) Everyone is taking damage and I need to pile on the healing. Both of these situations would do well with Avenging
Wrath.

On the other hand, my usage of Divine Light is a bit different. I mainly use it when it would cost too much mana to do multiple Holy Lights or Flash of Lights. In fact with Cata-level health pools, Holy Light does almost nothing at this point. I may or may not be in a furious healing state.

Divine Favor

According to ElitistJerks, Divine Favor is actually more useful or powerful in many situations than Avenging Wrath. This adds 20% more haste and crit for 20 seconds ( +10 with the glyph) every 3 minutes.

With such a short cooldown, I would macro this with heals as well. Holy Radiance is a good candidate, for the same reasons as above. Plus since its basically a mobile HOT, more haste means more ticks and more crit means each tick has more chance to crit. I definitely need to make more use of this cooldown.

Aura Mastery

This is more of a damage prevention talent. "It will give you 6 seconds of "enhanced" auras every 2 minutes. 4076 extra armor, double damage retribution aura, silence and interrupt immunity, 195 extra fire/frost/shadow resistance or extra mount speed" - ElitistJerks thread. Personally I'd recommend the 195 resistance. This is a major boon on fights where you know that a boss is about to hit everyone for major damage. 6 seconds is just enough time to mitigate that one big hit.

Lay on Hands

This is the BIG heal on a LONG cooldown. It will heal the target equal to the max HP of the casting paladin. It will also return 10% of the heal to the paladin as mana. Note: If cast on yourself, it will trigger forberance. Cooldown is 10 minutes ( 7 with the glyph). Very useful for when the tank is going down, and you can't keep him up. This is instant "oh-shit" button. Gives you a bit of mana to boot. The cooldown is long enough that its one use per fight, probably saved for boss fights only.

Guardian of Ancient Kings

This spawns our newest tool, a angel looking pet. It will duplicate all heals done by the paladin. The heals go to the same target the paladin healed. It will also splash heal all targets within 10 yards for 10% of the amount healed. Lasts 30 seconds or after 5 heals. Cooldown is 5 minutes, 3 with prot talents, but that doesn't apply to us.

Some people like to macro this to Avenging Wrath, to power up the heals done by the Guardian. That seems like a good idea to me. I'd be hesitant trying to macro this to other, heals though. The cooldown is just long enough that I wouldn't want to "waste" it. Plus my usual "oh-shit" button Holy Radiance, isn't duplicated by the Guardian.

I personally macro'd this up with Avenging Wrath, and left it as them as something I can press when I need that extra oomph.

Divine Plea

When mana is as much of an issue as it is in Cataclysm, any kind of mana-regen abilities will be used. This ability returns 10% ( +5% with the glyph) of total mana over 15 seconds. Penalty is that it reduces healing by 50%. Cooldown is 2 minutes. Definitely useful for times when damage isn't so intense. But be careful, if you have to do more heals to make up for the healing penalty, then the 15% mana returned will do no good. With the cooldown at 2 minutes, its possible this could be used more than once in a boss fight.

I personally like to hit this in between fights on trash, instead of drinking. I also hit it at the movement portions of some fights (such as during Firestorm in Baradin Hold).

Divine Shield

I'm including this because, while it doesn't raise healing throughput, it reduces the number of players that need healing by one, the holy pally. This helps immensely when shiet hits the fan, so you're not worrying about running around, or getting interrupted because of damage.

Hands

Hands are very short term buffs than can go a long way towards making the target's life easier.

Hand of Sacrifice

Think of this as a bubble with teeth. When cast on a friendly it transfers 30% of all damage done TO the target to the paladin, up to 100% of the Paladin's HP. This lasts 12 seconds or until total damage transfered equals 100% of the paladin's HP. Cooldown is 2 minutes.

A good hand to use on a tank when a boss enrages. With the 100% limit, plus Tower of Radiance talent, as long as the healer is still healing other targets then the healer shouldn't have to worry about dying. This coupled with Divine Shield would mitigate the entire 30% damage.

Hand of Protection

This is the poor man's bubble. You bubble a team member. All damage is prevented, but they cannot attack or use physical abilities. 5 minute cooldown, causes forberance on the target.

This is useful if a DPS, or even another healer's health is dropping way too fast to get a big heal, or taking so much damage that a Holy Shock+WoG can't keep them alive. It also helps DPS that are standing in fire.

I've also used this to calm over-active DPS. If they pull aggro, you HoP them and the boss will go to the next person in line on their aggro table (hopefully is the tank). Hand of Salvation is really designed for this, but sometimes its not enough. Plus this has the added benefit that it cannot be ignored, and their DPS takes a nose-dive. This is bad in a DPS race type fight, but handy to wake up auto-piloting DPS.

Hand of Salvation

Reduces threat of the target by 2% every second for 10 seconds. So after 10 seconds, they've lost 20% of their threat, if they stopped attacking. This is useful if the DPS out-gears the tank and the tank is having trouble staying ahead of the DPS in aggro. 2 minute cooldown.

Hand of Freedom

More of a PVP talent, removes all snares and slowing spells on the target. Useful for the tank if they're having trouble moving. Also useful for dps who might be slowed or snared during movement heavy fights.


Hopefully this little run-through of our major cooldowns has helped someone out there. I've personally macro'd quite a few of the cooldowns to my "big" heals, Flash of Light and Divine Light. Reasoning being that if I'm casting either of those mana-intensive spells then major healing is probably called for. If not, the cooldowns are short enough that they'll come up again.

Even if I do end up wasting the cooldowns half the time, thats still 50% more usage I'm getting out of it than I normally would. Now off to try it out in some dungeons.

Cheers.

[WoW] Cataclysm Heroics: Halls of Origination

Just ran this HEROIC with the guild. Yesterday I got enough upgrades from normal dungeons to qualify for Heroics ( iLvl 329 average). I barely squeaked by. I didn't consider myself at all ready to actually heal heroics. Today some guys from the guild asked if I'd heal a heroic for them. I told them that I just got to 329 and that I probably wasn't geared for it yet, but said I'd give it a shot anyway. We ended up in Halls of Origination, which I hadn't even run on normal yet!

It went very well. We one-shot all bosses. In fact our only wipe was 3 trash pulls into the instance. I lagged or had a brain fart and tried to keep a dying DPS up. The tank got an extra mob on him and started dropping fast. A dps and the tank dropped, while we had 2 mobs still up. We ping-ponged one of the mobs between DPS until it was dead ( it was pretty close already), then the mage polymorphed the other mob. We were then able to wait until the tank and 2 dps were able to run back in. Guess technically we didn't wipe, but other than that it was groovy.

Impressions

My first impressions of heroics? They're SOO much harder than Wrath heroics. To be honest Wrath heroics were hard at first, but these are at the level of Wrath raids. I truely felt like I was in a raid ( and not just cause it took 2+ hours to do the heroic). The trash pulls had to be CC'd, and I was on my toes the whole time.

Interrupts are crucial. In one of the fights (Temple Guardian Anhuur) its absolutely required that there be an interrupt capable DPS to do the fight well. We happed to get a compitent PUG DK with us. He did very well and stayed up on the platform on his own. He was even able to keep himself up with Death Strikes until the ground phase was done and I could sprint back to heal him up. To Riakk of Wyrmrest Accord, you were awesome. He did very well considering that was also his very first heroic.

A lot of fights required more twitch healing than I thought it would. A few times I absolutely had to use Flash of Light because anything other than a Holy Shock + 3HP Word of Glory wouldn't have been quick enough and hit for hard enough to make it.

Mana

Mana was a much bigger issue in Heroics than in Normals. With casting Judgement on every CD, and heavily favoring my mana-efficient spells, I was able to heal pretty well. I'd have around 30% of my mana left at the end of a fight. But if ever started to neglect casting Judgement my mana would plummet and I would be OOM very quickly.

Also, if I ever let the tank get too far down, it takes an extraordinary amount of mana to catch up. I had to do it a few times and it wasn't fun. Good choice in healing spells was important as well. Sometimes everyone is just taking so much damage that you NEED to use your AOE heals. Being a pally healer having AOE heals is new to me and as such under stress I go back to the furious whack-a-mole style healing that's ingrained in my muscle memory. In some situations this was simply not an option. Holy Radiance was very very useful. When everyone was getting low and I just absolutely needed to do a crazy amount of healing, there's nothing popping Guardian of Ancient Kings, Avenging Wrath, Holy Radiance, then a 3HP Light of Dawn towards a melee heavy group. The entire screen lights up with green number and the little green bars shoot up like jack's beanstalk. Its a sight to see. Of course you hope this is towards the end of the fight because its difficult to regen enough mana to be useful much longer.

All in all it was a good experience, and I gained some upgrades. There really is nothing than a trial by fire to hone your skills and see how you do. If Heroics are already so epic-ally raid like, how are the raids going to be?

[WoW] Healing thoughts

Miss Medicina made a comment on her come-back post that got me thinking. Here's the original post She's Alive.

The comment was that she was having to re-adjust to healing again from the hiatus from WoW. Specifically she remarked that "I throw heals on people and it is the perfect example of a drop in an ocean." I couldn't agree more. I've really started to notice this when I'm healing the new dungeons ( still on normal as I haven't reached 85 yet). The health pools are quite massive, even at pre-85. A guildie tank at 82 had 70k health, an 84 DK DPS had 85k+. With healthpools that massive, even our big heals won't make a dent if the target is <40% health.

I think this is one of the big causes of healers feeling very underpowered. Personally, when I heal the big green crits are nice, but they're not my main focus. My main focus is how much of that little green bar filled up after my heal. So even though we're healing for huge amounts, since the bars aren't refilling near as quickly as they used to, it FEELS like we're weak.

This also contributes to the feeling of OOM that many healers have complained about in the forums. What do you do when your last heal didn't bring the green bar up high enough? You cast it again and again until the bar is comfortably full.

Don't let it fall

The way I've handled this is actually opposite of what Blizzard was telling us we would be doing in Cataclysm. I'm topping off more than normal. More specifically, I'm using my smallest and/or most efficient heal, and topping everyone off as soon as I see that the heal won't just be 80% overheal. For pallies this is Holy Shock/Word of Glory on cooldown, or Holy Light if needed. In a perfect setup I would time the perfect heal, with the perfect cast time, to do as little overheal as possible. But since we're all still learning these fights I'm giving up some overhealing in order to keep the healthpools up in the 80-90% range.

This keeps me used to seeing smaller changes in the healthpool, and reduces the frantic heal spam when someone's health is in the 30% range. Once I get into heroics I'm sure I'll have to alter my strategy a bit, but for now this seems to work well. This is especially useful in pugs where, to be honest, I don't trust the DPS or even the tank to blow defensive cooldowns when they're in trouble. I'll be more adventurous in a guild run, but any group from the DF means I'm on my guard.

Mana regen

Since the server transfer, I haven't had a chance to go back to my old server and try healing on my shaman, so I can really only comment on Paladin, and to a lesser extent, lowbie Priest healing. But Blizzard seems to have built an offensive mechanic to allow healers to regen some mana. Priests have their Smite + Archangel combo, but I have yet to see real gains from it. My priest is stuck at around level 50, so I can't comment on how well this regen works.

For Paladins, being a hybrid class, there seems to be some intended, and possibly unintended synergy between our offensive abilities and mana regen/conservation.

1. Judgements: Judging restores 15% of base mana. Thats a lot considering the cooldown and cost of our judgement spell. Not only are we doing a small bit of damage to the boss, refreshing our Haste buff, but we're also getting mana back. At 83, with a mix of t10 and cata quest blues/greens I'm getting back about 6% of my mana per judgement.

2. Divine Plea: Our old mana regen. Blizzard nerfed it like crazy, but it does still give back some mana. Watch out for the healing debuff though. I usually cast it more in the beginning of the fight, when damage hasn't ramped up yet. Also useful for trash pulls, instead of drinking.

3. Crusader Strike: Yes, it requires being in melee range, something no other healer would dare. But we're paladins, wearing plate, with more defensive cooldowns than some tanks ( sorry warriors ). CS won't actually return you mana, but it will gurantee a holy power charge. If you can position yourself in a semi-safe area where you can melee on a mob ( I personally go behind a caster mob, or slightly back of the melee hitting the boss), you can CS on cooldown significantly increasing the rate at which you can Word of Glory or Light of Dawn. Even a single CS gives you a free heal.

Also, this works well with Holy Radiance. Most pally healers would probably use Holy Radiance by sitting next to the casters. They can cast holy radiance to heal the casters, and use Light of Dawn to AOE the melee. I turned this backwards. I sit next to the melee, and Light of Dawn the casters. Since the casters tend to like to spread out, this fits with the cone targeting of Light of Dawn.

Obviously this won't work for every boss, and in some bosses it would be bad news. For these normal dungeons its working well, as long as the boss doesn't have a stomp or anything. I'll keep you guys posted if and when this thing backfires on me.

Happy Healing.

WoW Update

Heroic burnout is upon me. I've run so many heroics the past week that I literally cannot stand to be in heroics again for a while. This has lead me to trying to level my Priest ( lv 31 ) and my new baby lock ( lvl 10 ) so that I have something new to do.

Hooff - Retribution
The reason for all this heroic running was to get better gear for Hooff. Hooff now has 4pcT10 for his Retribution set. Unfortunately even with 4pcT10, Hit and Exp capped, he's still only pulling 5k DPS max on the target dummy. That hurts considering that Bob can pull almost 5k DPS in 4pcT9. Both Melee DPS and more specifically Retribution DPS has been crap lately.

I've started to get pretty comfortable with the new Ret rotation. Its more complicated than the previous priority system, but its not super complex. I do still sometimes TV at 2 instead of 3 stacks, or do CS when I have a full 3 stacks of holy power, but its not as common as it used to be.

Looking at Hooff's DPS gear, there are a few things I really need to work on. The non-tier gear is pretty low level, most are from Naxx or OS. This is of course because that was when Hooff was hardcore raiding. A big contributor to the low DPS is probably my weapon. As with most melee classes, the weapon makes a huge difference in DPS, mostly because a lot of the abilities are based on weapon damage. Some classes, such as kitties are based on AP, which weapons seem to have a lot of also. Currently Hooff has the Tyrannical Beheader from Pit of Saron, Scourgelord Tyrannus. Its a good weapon as weapons go, certainly better than any other 2-hander from 5-mans. I'm hoping that maybe there's a PVP option I can grab to raise my DPS.

Pre 4.0.1, ret solo DPS wasn't too great, but it was usually helped with having DS in our rotation. With DS, we had a built in AOE that helped with trash mobs and such. I know DPS on trash doesn't really count for anything, but its still nice to have something to help.

Hooff - Holy

So far I've decided NOT to upgrade Hooff's 4pcT9 set with the t10. I didn't put too much thought into this, it was more of a helper reason for upgrading the Retribution set first. The T10 bonuses are pretty lack luster, especially the 4pc bonus. Because of the way the names of spells have been mixed up, the t9 2pc bonus is actually pretty good. The 4pc T9 bonus is +10% more healing with Flash of Light. Pre-4.0.1 this was to help make flash of light not so weak. Because of the 4.0.1 changes, this effectively boosts our Big+Fast+Expensive heal even higher. With the almost infinite mana pre-cataclysim I use this spell more than almost any other ( Holy Shock + Word of Glory being the other two).

I'm sure that the stats differences between 4pc T9 and 4pc T10 more than make up for this +10% healing but I haven't done that math yet.

Solinari

Solinari just got Shadowform. That plus devouring plague has really stepped up the DPS. I'm able to kill mobs quite a bit faster. Unfortunately I also go OOM much much quicker now as well. This is especially true in dungeons. After a few pulls I'm completely tapped. Also, since a lot of Shadow priest damage is DOTs based, I do very crappy damage on recount. Overall, DPS on this priest has been lackluster. I'm hoping it picks up soon.

Healing on the other hand is pretty fun. There's elements of mitigation ( Power Word:Shield), HOTs ( Renew ) and direct healing ( Flash Heal). Even when I'm almost completely OOM, I can still keep the tank up, because of the synergy between PW:S and Renew. PW:S is really nice, especially when someone's health is dropping like a rock.

Nuiitari

I tried leveling another baby lock. I guess I just can't get away from having a Warlock. It was my first toon, and I just love having one. It took some getting used to having a "guardian" instead of a "minion". For the first few levels your demons are guardians, meaning you don't give them commands. They just attack anything that you attack, or attacks you. It was disconcerting, I kept thinking it was some addons that were malfunctioning.

Over all its harder than I thought to relevel another toon. There's none of the wonder of a new toon, just reminders of how you did this already but are doing it again. I'm planning to level demonology, just so its something different ( leveled Affliction then Destrution previous).

Lunitari

My mage is still the banking alt. I want to level her but the thought of going through the belf starting area AGAIN makes me want to shoot myself. I figure she can wait until after 4.0.3a, so that it'll be new quests and such.