For The Wynn

So, if you are reading this, you are probably interested in learning how to heal on a Paladin. Also, it could be that you are just up at 2AM and bored as hell. This guide will take you through the various aspects of Pally healing, from rotation to gear.

My exposure to Paladins started back when I began playing vanilla World of Warcraft. We did not have any fancy Outland or Northrend instances, and we sure as heck didn’t have mana pools that were over ten thousand. Paladin healing in this time and age was all about mana conservation. Lower ranks of spells cost respectively lower amounts of mana, so if your tank was short 300 health, you would throw out a Rank 4 Flash of Light to heal him up. Note: Underranking heals does not conserve mana anymore.

Build
Multiple variations of build exist for Pally healing, and any spec from elitistjerks will work. You can check out my spec. Main things to grab are Holy Shock, Divine Illumination, Beacon of Light, and ones decreasing the mana cost of heals.

Rotation
In general, there is no rotation for Pally healing. When running heroics, I simply Flash of Light the tank when needed. For raids, I use Flash of Light for raid healing and Holy Light for the tanks (at least on boss fights).

Despite the aforementioned, you should always try to fit in a Holy Shock often. For one, when it crits you can get an instant Flash of Light; secondly, the 254 Libram gives you a decent amount of Spell Power for 15 seconds after the cast (this does stack). I use a macro to easily cast Beacon of Light on the tank and keep it up; this and Sacred Shield are a necessity in raiding.

/target focus
/cast Beacon of Light
/cast Sacred Shield
/targetlasttarget

Aura Mastery should be used on all fights, especially when they do a bulk amount of damage from one school of magic. For example, I keep Shadow Resistance Aura up on the Festergut fight and use Aura Mastery at the very beginning when the whole raid is taking Shadow damage.

Gear
When it comes to gear, there are no specific pieces that are a “requirement” per se to heal. However, you should be looking for gear with intellect, spell power, crit, and mana per 5. Some Paladins like to stack haste; personally, I believe large amounts of it is a waste. That said, a little never hurt the buttermilk. Mail is okay in moderation, and one piece of cloth can be forgiven if it is in a secondary slot (bracers, foot, etc).

You want to aim for intellect in your gems, no doubt. To meet meta requirements, mana per 5 and crit can be thrown into the mix and maybe even a little haste. Things you do not want to gem for include spirit, agility, and strength when healing.

Glyphs
There are a few glyphs that are necessary. Glyph of Holy Light, Seal of Wisdom (or Light), and Flash of Light are all major glyphs direly important. Your healing per second isn’t really affected by minor ones (but a cool one I recommend is Glyph of Lay on Hands).

Add-ons
For effective raid healing, some sort if add-on is pretty much required. Two good healing add-ons are Healbot and Grid. Healbot is easy to use and working right out of the box. Grid takes alot more time to get ready to use and is very customizable. Personally, I use Healbot, but I say use whichever you find yourself more comfortable with. Deadly Boss Mods is really helpful in a raiding setting; guildies should already have this installed.

General Expectations
Do not expect to be superman. Your dps will be null compared to the level 19 rogue twink in your heroic group. You have the beef of the heals, whereas the Priests and Druids are the mashed potatoes and gravy heals. They sprinkle things on people while you give big chunks of health back. For PvP settings, you can survive a long time, especially with some resilience gear. Again, do not expect to be one shotting anyone.

Rolling a holy Paladin gives you a large amount of power. Expect to dominate charts on fights where there is a lot of damage to tanks but not necessarily on large splash damage fights. Congrats on choosing the best class in the game!

This entry was posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 11:51 am and is filed under Emannradio. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.