Hello, my name is Siddin. Welcome to the first of my hopefully many part series of And Now You Know. Today we're looking at Paladin healing.
Paladins only have 3 spells that directly heal people, [
Holy Shock], [
Holy Light], and [
Flash of Light].
Holy Shock is a talent-only heal that, like the same spell in Diablo 2, can either heal an ally or damage an enemy. Being instant and also a damage spell, its mana efficiency is terrible. Couple that with its 15 second cooldown, and it's an extremely rarely used spell. In general, you would only ever use it if you absolutely had to heal someone a little bit while running, such as against the fire boss of Mechanar. If you're standing still, always use Flash of Light instead.
Holy Light is the Paladin large heal. With talents, if you cast Holy Light within 15 seconds of your last Holy Light cast, it only takes 2.0 seconds instead of 2.5, making it a fairly good health/time heal. The advantage of this spell is that it gives you the best health per time output for a Paladin and can be combined with Divine Favor to give you an instant large crit heal for a relatively small amount of mana every couple minutes. If the tank's damage is very spikey, you can downrank to Rank 4-5 Holy Light every few seconds to conserve mana and still be able to pop out a 2.0 second max rank Holy Light at any time (note: I don't use that technique, but I have read guides that suggest it). When the tank and group aren't taking very fast damage though, it's a waste of mana to sit around and cast a Holy Light ever 5-10 seconds.
The correct answer is Flash of Light (I hope you can't read this before voting...).
Flash of Light is the Holy Paladin's bread and butter. Several talents increase its effectiveness, along with gladiator gloves. Flash of Light is unique vs. Priest and Shaman equivalents because Flash of Light actually has a very good health/mana ratio. Flash of Light is a 1.5 second heal for about 1100-1600 non-crit health depending on gear. At only 160 mana, it's a steal. With Kara quality gear and a Shadow Priest in the party, a Paladin can spam Flash of Light continuously though any boss fight without using mana pots. The downside of Flash of Light, which it DOES share with the Priest and Shaman equivalents, is that it doesn't have great health/time output. If your tank is taking more damage per time than spamming Flash of Light can handle, you have to throw in a mix of Holy Lights. Determining the proper ratio of Flash of Light and Holy Light to both keep the tank near full health and use the minimum amount of mana is the factor that separates good Paladin healers from great Paladin healers.
Raid Healing – raid leaders (and wannabes) this is your section too
Paladins are single target healers. Unlike all the other healers, a Paladin can't get a single extra point out by healing multiple people vs. a single person. Because of this, if any healing needs to be assigned, the Paladins should generally be prioritized as the MT healers. In some rare boss fights and with certain class make ups, you may want to have the Paladin(s) focusing on raid healing instead, but that would only be if you have a very bad mix of other healers.
In any case though, healing assignments are for priority, not exclusion. If a healer is assigned to raid healing and the MT is sitting on 10% health, they should throw a heal to the tank. Likewise if a MT healer is taking a nap while the MT is sitting at full health, they can throw some heals to the half dead dpsers. Also, indirect affects such as Blessing of Protection, Abolish Poison, Cleanse, and Innervate, transcend any healing assignments and should always be raid-wide.
Tune in next time for more insight into how another class/spec can live up to its full potential!
Poll
