There are three things anyone who’s read this blog for any length of time knows about me:
1) I hate 10-man raids.
2) I’m a pretty decent holy paladin who is very familiar with the changes to the class, given time on beta and such.
3) I’m pretty damn well-geared. (Bear in mind that chardev isn’t all the way up to date, but at least the gear I’m wearing there is what I’m wearing on live.)
Tonight, a certain priest was asking in guild if anyone was up for TOGC10. I didn’t say anything. I purposely didn’t say anything. Until like, the third time she asked and I was like, well, crap.
So I sighed and let her know that if she desperately needed me, I’d heal. But I had a few things to do first — update a website, take a phone call… it would be 15 minutes at least, probably closer to 20. Ended up being about 30, but anyways.
It was mostly a guild group. 2 tanks (both paladins), two healers (me and O), then a hunter, an ele shammy, a warlock and an enhancement shaman all from our guild, with a ret paladin and a DPS warrior as pugs, rounding out the group.
I don’t know what anyone else was assuming about it, but I assumed the following:
People aren’t going to know what to do and this is going to be painful.
By and large, I was right. I wasn’t horribly frustrated by that. I expected it. I did not expect 7 wipes on heroic beasts. Nor did I expect a Jaraxxus one-shot.
This isn’t a blog post about how my guildies and I (well, mostly my guildies) got Tribute to Skill or got the TOGC 10 achievement. (I’d never done it all the way before.) It’s not even a blog post about how I still hate the warlock and felhound on Faction Champs or the pain that Light Vortex can bring. Nor is it about how we didn’t even actually get a burrow on our first Anub attempt.
It’s about my experience healing.
Fuck that place.
It dawned on me, perhaps on our fourth wipe on heroic beasts, that we are at that stupid time of the expansion where:
a) we are not tuned in our abilities,
b) the environment has not changed so that our abilities have even a SEMBLANCE of being tuned.
You can get away with this in ICC with 30% more health, more damage, more healing and more absorption.
It is very much a different story when attempting to do content that is a little more challenging than your average dungeon without a buff.
O and I are good healers and both very experienced in TOGC. We’re both 4/5 TOGC 25 (stupid Anub…) and, between us, we have 33 kills of heroic beasts on 25-man. Granted, she had those kills on her druid instead of her priest, but hey. Experience, you know? It matters.
So while I anticipated some problems, I was, in no way, prepared for the amount of problems we had.
First of all, I kept losing my tank on Northrend Beasts.
I didn’t know why. I STILL don’t know why, except for two attempts.
Seriously, I’m looking at the logs right now.
Barring attempts where I got Paralytic Toxin on the worms… and barring the attempt where someone got trampled and so Icehowl enraged (and no tranq shot was cast!)…
So attempt 1: Paralytic Toxin, which means running, which means not casting.
Attempt 2, Trample/enrage.
Attempt 3, not sure why, but my tank (as opposed to my brother, who was also tanking) ended up with both Molten Spew AND Acid Spit. Ow.
Attempt 4, ah yes, there I was standing around, casting, minding my own goddamn business and someone runs past me with a Snobold on their head. No, they didn’t run past me. They ran right next to me. So that the Snobold was actually IN RANGE of me.
[22:04:52.365] Madrana begins to cast Divine Light
[22:04:52.365] Snobold Vassal casts Batter on Madrana
[22:04:52.365] Snobold Vassal’s Batter interrupts Madrana’s Divine Light
[22:04:52.469] Snobold Vassal Batter Madrana 992 (O: -1)
[22:04:52.771] Madrana Retribution Aura Snobold Vassal 284 (O: -1)
[22:04:53.971] Gormok the Impaler Impale PallyTank 7046 (O: -1)
[22:04:54.377] Gormok the Impaler hits PallyTank 7474 (O: 7941)
[22:04:54.785] PallyTank dies
Dead tank.
Attempt 5, Paralytic Toxin.
Attempt 6, I tried to squeeze a heal out to a DPS who had stood in the fire just a touch too long and then got caught with the long cast time on Divine Light. Even with over 1000 haste, it’s just SUCH a long cast. My instincts definitely betrayed me here. Divine Light may be the spell the most similar to the old Holy Light and it may even have the same Clique bind as my old faithful HL… but the cast time ALONE needs to set it far, far apart from Holy Light. 2.5 second talented base cast time. That’s crap is what it is. In this world of content where your tank can and WILL die within 1-2 GCDs, that’s a death sentence.
Attempt 7, at least it wasn’t my tank who died. O got a Head Crack from a Snobold and couldn’t adequately cast, so Fog went down.
It’s not all bad RNG, but it looks like a lot of it was. If only I hadn’t been silenced. If only O hadn’t been silenced. If only Icehowl hadn’t trampled someone. If only…
We one-shotted Jaraxxus, though, mostly because hi, it’s a healing fight and O and I could probably both heal our way through that fight in our sleep, having a combined 29 kills on 25-man heroic Jaraxxus.
We wiped twice on Faction Champs before O had to go (she hadn’t anticipated taking so long with the issues we’d had on the beasts) and we pulled in my favourite BC-era priest, E.
Faction Champs down on the first try. At least this fight hasn’t changed much. I still hate Unstable Affliction.
Also, the Horde (or, I guess, Alliance, if you’re Horde) druid is still in perma-tree form. FYI.
On to Twin Valks!
This was the suck. Mostly because it felt like I couldn’t do anything EXCEPT spam Divine Light in order to keep up the tank. We’d gone with a one tank setup wherein the DPS all get dark aura and burn the crap out of the white Valk, leaving the tank to just use passive AOE and such to hold aggro on the black Valk. It was fine… unless I wanted to judge or something. So I judged on the pull on the third attempt and spammed Divine Light, so that it was more than half my healing done and I had pathetic use of the other spells in my arsenal.
Now, while this is somewhat an unorthodox method of doing it (I would have been much more comfortable with Fog and the pally tank on one mob each) it’s still ridiculous that due to the insanely high cast time (at least, relatively speaking), I can’t even afford to judge once a minute on that fight and have to use my other instants very sparingly.
Holy paladins are very broken here and I would submit that Holy Light should have a medium cast time. When they talked about a three-heal system, here’s what I thought:
FoL: Short cast, very expensive, average throughput
HL: Medium cast, medium cost, average throughput
DL: Long cast, expensive cost (not very, but higher than medium), huge throughput
Instead, we have:
FoL: Short cast, very expensive, average throughput
HL: Long cast, very cheap cost, less than average throughput
DL: Long cast, expensive cost, huge throughput
There HAS to be a step between FoL and HL/DL. That’s what we’re really missing. A two-second (talented) cast time on a casted spell. Like the old HL with Light’s Grace up.
Anyways. Anub’arak went smoothly, surprisingly, despite poor positioning. We had one wipe but we learned that, with hero, we could push him into P2 without a burrow.
Naturally, we pulled him a second time without first checking to make sure hero was up. Whoops.
We kited him around in the burrow phase without issue and then burned him down. Props to E for being a kick-ass healer, as per usual.
So that was most of my evening. I hate that instance. I never, ever, EVER want to do it again, not on normal 10 or 25 and certainly not on heroic 10 or 25. It’s just not meant to work with our current abilities and talents.
After getting down to a 1.3s Holy Light, having Sacred Shield and things like Divine Sacrifice/Divine Guardian and running TOC/TOGC with those tools and that speedy cast, I could do anything. Running it tonight (well, technically last night) was a painful reminder that I am gimped far beyond what I recognize and that I am nowhere near as good a healer as I was three weeks ago.
What sucks is that it’s not that I’m not a good healer. It’s that my mechanics make me a worse healer than I was. I could reliably do my job, three weeks ago. This raid picked away at some of my confidence.
See, I KNEW that I could do what was required of me in there. Or I thought I could. Now, I’m not so sure. And I’m not so sure it’s even that I’m not making the right decisions, because I think I AM making the right decisions, just about all of the time.
The mechanics, especially when matched against that particular instance on that particular difficulty, are just flat-out going to lose against TOGC10. Did we get the achievement and finish the instance? Yes. But would it have gone about 10 times more smoothly back in the world of 3.3.x? Hell yes. I wouldn’t have had any problems. None. I know my capabilities.
And what I saw in TOGC10 really hit me hard.
We have an ICC 25 coming up on Tuesday and perhaps one on Thursday. Guild runs, predominently. I was feeling pretty good about maybe flipping the switch to heroic Marrowgar and maybe BQL and maybe even Dreamwalker.
After the TOGC run? Not so much.
I’ll post more pally stuff soon, btw. I’ve been lax, I know. Guild stuff is always beckoning!
(By the way, still recruiting for Cataclysm!)
Ouch, that sounds shit. And that makes me even less likely to want to attempt ToGC… Some people in the guild wanted it, but I still remember the way we wiped ~2 months ago (without fucked up talents).
I’m glad I’m not the only one feeling that I’ve been horribly nerfed.
We tried Halion 10 Heroic last week, and honestly I felt completely useless.
The ability to spam raid while also healing the tank at the same time has been taken away – now I have to concentrate on just spamming the tank with DL and FoL to keep them up, as beacon isn’t cutting it any more. That means I’m even more of a single target healer than before, but a lot less effective.
I also blew through my mana of 42k in no time. There was talk about having another go this week, but I’m going to have to drop out – I have no confidence in my healing.
You are so right about slow cast times. It’s painful watching the cast bar right now. Even in some Heroic Dungeons I’m feeling HL is way too slow.
I’m rather glad I don’t have any healing experience outside of 5-mans, and that I didn’t even hit heroics until after the patch. It means, I think, that I feel distinctly less gimped than a lot of pallys seem to be feeling. Mostly because I’ve never experienced anything else at this level.
I’ve gotta be honest, I’m not entirely sure what Blizz is wanting us to do anymore – everything I’ve heard is “well, even in the beta, we’re worse at tank healing, but still not meant for raid healing”. In Wrath, we knew we were pretty much kickass at single-target healing, and could probably keep two up with beacon, depending on the fight. Maybe it got boring sometimes, but we were GOOD at it. Now, I’m just… not sure. Which is the problem most of us are having, if what I’m seeing around the internet is any indication.
/siiiigh
I’m sorry that run went so utterly painfully, boss. :/
It’s funny that you mention this (and that it’s totally my fault), because Dawn Moore just wrote a holy priest post on WoW.com that basically states that for all the talk Blizzard did about not wanting holy priests to fall into a certain rotation and a niche, with the new changes to Chakra, we’re right back to being in Renew/CoH spam. She brought up some really good points and it seems like there is a sub-sect of priests that were really happy with the idea of a complicated mechanic, but we couldn’t outscream the people that thought Chakra was too “hard” and now it’s been simplified to please the masses.
So it’s interesting that the idea of keeping things fresh for all the healing classes may not be the idea anymore.
Thank you for giving me some morning laughs, though – I really need them!
:)
Jen – In a sense, it’s ALMOST a precursor to the way things will work in Cataclysm. If a DPS takes damage that’s avoidable, they may just die because healers really, REALLY have to look out for the tanks. Cataclysm will make mana matter, so we won’t be able to top off everyone all of the time, which is fine. But TOGC right now is such that they won’t get healed up promptly (or they will… at the cost of tank health!) and can easily die due to the nutso damage flying around everywhere.
Basically, in Cata, you can’t heal the DPS for fear of mana issues and right now in TOGC, you can’t heal the DPS for fear of losing the tank. Both are triage situations — whoever’s role is more important for the raid is going to get the heal.
My group had some “undergeared” folks in it, but that’s only in comparison to me, not the instance. We had some people in a couple pieces of T9 (232 version), but that’s what you ought to be geared in when attempting TOGC10, right? The loot is ilvl 245. If everyone in your raid group is 264+ and knows the instance extremely well, you should give it a shot, but it’s certainly not something you can faceroll through. I’d also recommend 3 healers for 10m and 6-7 for 25m.
AlliPally – The slow casts are somewhat alleviated by Speed of Light and especially Infusion of Light for HL. I have to recommend against FoL unless you desperately need that heal to get there in the next second and Holy Shock is on cooldown. It’s way, way too mana-intensive to use on any fight except Dreamwalker in ICC.
Having said that, I have zero experience with heroic Halion, so I don’t really know what to expect apart from lots of fire and double cutters!
I agree with you, by the way, in terms of being even more of a single-target healer now and being less effective. Kind of ridiculous, isn’t it? :/
Apple – you really are the lucky one here, having your holy paladin hit 80 so late in the expansion. While you’re logically aware of what we could do, you have no real sense of what you could do with your gear, only to see those instincts betray you.
I think holy paladins will continue to be a single-target healer in Cataclysm, but with more “oh CRAP!” buttons for AOE damage. Holy Radiance is pretty much awesome and Light of Dawn is already proving to be situationally useful (LK Infest healing), but, by and large, I think we’ll always be single-target healers. We’re just not going to be kickass at it anymore. Sad panda.
I never felt holy paladin healing was boring in Wrath. There was all kinds of stuff to juggle:
– Sacred Shield (RIP!)
– Beacon
– Judgement debuff on the boss
– Judgements of the Pure
– Not standing in bad
– Appropriate raid cooldowns (Divine Sacrifice (RIP!), Aura Mastery)
– Appropriate tank cooldowns (Hand of Sacrifice, Lay on Hands generally)
Now… Beacon goes up. I judge. Heal for 58 seconds. Judge again. Heal for 58 seconds…
Sigh.
Thanks for the commiserations, btw. I think I’d have had a better time if I hadn’t spent days of my life in that shithole doing my job to the very best of my ability. Then maybe I wouldn’t feel so gimped. I just find it ridiculous that I could do my job better in T9 than I am in T10 heroic gear. :P
Oestrus – I blame you entirely. :P
That was a neat post by Dawn, too.
I find the healing changes to be awkward, to say the least. I think that Blizzard had done a really good job in tuning all five healing specs to work together. You had the mitigation in the disc priest, the AOE healing in the holy priest and druid… And druids could even double as single-target healers. Shammies could do either, depending on the group makeup, and then pallies were the anchor to any tank healing team.
I really felt that it flowed nicely and evolved beautifully. I think it was in early ICC that I realized just how well we all worked together and had to admire Blizzard for how they’d adjusted the classes to work as a team. And I just don’t even know what that team looks like anymore.
As I currently understand it:
– discs are still mitigation, but also single-target healers (with an element of randomness via Atonement?)
– holy priests are just OP as all get out and will basically live in Chakra: POH (c’mon, who DOESN’T want to cast Holy Word: Sanctuary?!)
– resto druids can maintain heals on the raid, drop Efflorescence on melee and maintain Lifebloom on a tank
– resto shammies are basically the same, though without cleansing hax
– holy paladins… heal tanks. Not because we’re especially great at it, but because we’re terrible at raid healing.
Sad. :P
Glad you enjoyed the laughs, though. One positive after that atrocious run! ;)
I’m not sure I know what the team looks like anymore, either. I’m still trying to isolate what each class of healer is “built” for – as it seems like right now, they’re aiming for a “jack of all trades – master of none” ideal and I’m not really finding a focus for each one.
I was able to tank heal pretty well last night on Fog and I was also able to direct a good bit of attention towards the raid, too when it called for it. I would argue about holy priests being OP right now as we are currently performing quite low on the meters in the Beta and we still have mana issues that we really can’t shake. That could be issues that are being felt across the board, but I’m only seeing it be brought up in the priest circles that I’m running in.
I’m glad I’m keeping you guys on your toes, too. :)
Oestrus – I think Jack of All Trades, Master of None is a pretty apt description.
I’d agree you did pretty well on Fog and the raid combined. I feel like I was a drag on the raid in comparison, even though I know that’s not the case.
Meters shmeters. If you’re keeping your targets up, that’s the important thing. :) On live, I think holy priests are the best off of any spec of healer.
Mana issues are for Cataclysm. We’re still in Wrath. I hate that I’m likely going to be performing about as abysmally and then run into mana issues. :P
By all means, keep us on our toes. Just don’t make me do TOC/TOGC ever again. ;)
Kurn-
I’ve been wondering how you were feeling about the 4.0 healing, pre-Cata. I hadn’t seen a lot of references or personal impression posts.
I’m sorry to hear the raid was so difficult. Unfortunately, I can relate to your story *so* much. For the most part, holy pallies feel like they’ve been relegated to a slightly sub-par, slower, one-target healer.
I also did a ToGC 10man run the week after 4.0 hit and it was so obvious how much harder it is to keep those tanks up. Luckily, my healing partner was a resto druid and they’re basically head and shoulders above us in effective healing output, atm.
I think your point about not having a medium cast-timed direct heal is a good one. I had a couple of ideas on what could help our spec/ class in my Second Look at Holy post, but didn’t think of that.
I’d love to hear how you’re feeling about our healing at level 85 on the beta as compared to now. So many of the arguments I’ve heard is, “Wait until 85. The game isn’t balanced for level 80.” Is this true? Are we more balanced with the other healing classes at level 85? The fundamental problems I’m seeing with this spec/ class right now makes me dubious. I’d love to hear that I’m wrong!
Janyaa – Part of the issue (and, indeed, part of the reason I went on this run) is that I’m not healing regularly in a raid situation right now. Having left my “end of Wrath” guild, I’m back on my home server and working to reform Apotheosis and recruit, etc, so I’m not really raiding right now. (And I’m getting twitchy!) For the most part, I think we can handle most things we previously did in ICC, but I think that’s also heavily reliant on the buff.
I’m sorry you’re feeling the pain, too! If it were JUST me or if it were JUST that we’re not quite tuned yet, I wouldn’t be complaining, but this is an instance where the environment hasn’t changed and is still extremely unforgiving in parts and we just do not have the tools. TOC/TOGC was created with the knowledge of the tools we had at that time and without them, we flounder. By tools, I mean Sacred Shield and a 100% Beacon of Light, in particular.
The abysmally long cast times we’re forced to use often make healing clunky, I find.
00:00 – Holy Shock (6s cooldown) – Infusion of Light Proc, Speed of Light is up
00:01 – Divine Light (to take advantage of Speed of Light)
00:03 – Holy Light (to take advantage of Infusion of Light)
00:04 – … what now?
Holy Shock is on cooldown. We MIGHT, if we’ve been healing our beacon target, have 3 stacks of Holy Power, in which case we WoG. Even if we do WoG, what do we do for that last second before HS comes back up? LoD for fun? Judge, even if we don’t need to? What if someone needs a heal?
I tend to just start casting a Holy or Divine Light. It’s unhasted, but at least it’s going to land and I was doing SOMETHING. A 2-sec (talented) cast would mean that we’d finish casting at the 6s mark and hit our Holy Shock again. It would be so much smoother, IMHO.
I can’t properly answer questions about healing at 85 on the beta except for the fact that if your tank is a moron, you’re going to all die hideously. The last healing experience I had on beta was the other night. I queued up in all heroic dungeon gear (from a premade, ready to raid) and got Throne of the Tides. The tank didn’t wait for the DPS and just charged in to the first pull of four and, while I kept him up during the initial barrage, I ended up with healing aggro (and, sadly, did not have bubble on my premade’s bars!). Eventually, he got them off me, but since we had literally one DPS who was *there*, the damage just got to be too much for too long and the tank died and we wiped.
From GOOD groups that I’ve seen, damage is much more moderate than on live. You have time, you really do have time. It’s an odd concept, but with some self-heals by tanks (18k heal Death Strikes, for instance!) you can take the time to heal up the party and then top off the tank, sometimes.
I should really do more on the beta. I just haven’t had the time to dedicate to it with the whole guild thing.
@ Janyaa: I don’t mean to bogart the thread, since your question was aimed at Kurn, but she does bring up a good point that bears emphasizing. You will notice that the better your group performs, the better performance you will see as a healer. Right now, you can just “feel” when people aren’t doing their jobs. You can tell when the DPS is low and things aren’t dying as fast as they should be. You can tell when something is not being CCed or a tank does not have the aggro they should have. All of those are becoming more instinctual to pick up on as a healer in the Beta and if the stars don’t align properly, you will not have the mana to keep your group up. That synergy has to be there and you will notice a huge difference in your performance and your mana bar when everyone does what they are supposed to.
@ Kurn: I know how you feel about wanting to do more on the Beta and just not being able to do it. The only thing holding me back from it is the PuG scene. I feel like I’m at a point where I can’t bring myself to do things with random people anymore, given the sweeping changes to group mechanics. I’m also unsure of the “schedule” for the Beta testing raids. MMO was good about posting them for a bit and then it stopped. It feels awkward begging in Trade chat for someone to take you into a raid and then if it doesn’t happen, you’re like “What do I do now?” and then you back on Live. It’s an awkward situation.
Ah the joys of being a GM and sometimes having no choice but to do what you don’t want to do. >:( Wish ya luck on the ICC!
Oestrus- Lol, thank you for “bogarting” the thread and giving me some insights about the group mechanics in beta! :D
It sounds very similar to playing in Vanilla, where all the roles were much more interdependent and success was contingent on each section knowing and performing their parts well. I’ll admit, I like that and am looking forward to those challenges again.
The thing I’m most curious about is how are holy paladins stacking up in comparison to the other healers. I understand that running 5mans makes it hard to compare, as there is only one healer in that type of makeup. However, if there are any other readers who have been able to raid in beta, it would be wonderful to hear what their impressions are.
Kurn- As much as I’m sad to hear that you’re not raiding very much, it’s great that you’re starting up your guild again! I know how much time and effort that takes, but it’s also so rewarding and exciting. I wish you well during your recruitment season!
I will admit, there is a (small) part of me that is happy to hear you were having difficulties in togc. If only to show that I’m not alone in my dissatisfaction and struggles. On the other hand, it would be nice to hear from some holy paladins raiding in the post-4.0 world that are loving the new mechanics. That way I could figure out what I’m missing…
I have been feeling utterly hopeless. I knew that in the beginning, I wasn’t the only one who felt lost and upset, but as time passed it seemed that everyone was adjusting and perhaps I was just behind but I haven’t been back in ICC (since the initial week) and I can attest that the buff helps so much having done non-ICC content since.
But I was wondering if you were having any problems with healing two tanks? I know that Beacon of Light was absolutely amazing and now it has been halved and its utility cut by Tower of Radiance (Holy Power), and I find it difficult to keep ONE tank, let alone two as previous, up and I am being called out for it. Some people are building their raids around a supped up Beacon but it isn’t that way any more.
I don’t think those wipes is your fault. And it’s not about new mechanic also. Really. Tanks should survive about 5 seconds without any healing even on hard fights. Tanks have their own CDs for it and they must pay attention on what is happening with their healers. If your dps don’t bother to step out of fire – their death isn’t your fault. Don’t heal them and let them die. Raid is a team work and raiders never can count only on extra-mega-super-healers.
Now about paladins new spells. I play my pala since oct 2006. I always was holy. And I’ve healed all the content of TBC and WotLK, I know what am I talking about. Our pre 4.0 healing was great, but now it’s good too (after the hotfix), and we are more flexible now for sure. HL is a bit silly – mostly serves to get holy power points (should be redesigned imo). But all other spells are really-really nice and our new absorb mechanic > Sacred Shield. What I can’t understand why a lot of pally think their prio spells are only HS and DL (because DL is like our old HL). Agree about HS – its prio, but DL is not equal to previous HL. First of all it gives much higher hps, on most fights about 20% of your every single DL is overheal, and usually (if there are hots on the target or someone else is healing same person) DL overhealing is more than 50%. In fact new FoL is much more looks like old HL – comparable mana cost and output healing. But it is much faster. So I would recommend to use it more often if you are expecting spike damage. FoL+HS (or WoG) = DL, but faster and more controllable.
Overall, at first days after 4.0 I was depressed and feel myself useless for raid. Now direct heals were fixed and I’ve get used to new spells. And today I’m self-confident again. I still can heal tanks as good as I used to, and I can help on raid healing more effective than before. I don’t miss JoL, I wasn’t the person who cast it (our tank did usually) so I never was on any top place on fights like Sindragosa, but now I am. LoD and HS/WoG to the raid helps much more for raid healing then my occasional FoL or even glyphed HL in the past. And there is so less overhealing now.
About ToGC healing. My guild didn’t kill Anub on hard mode before 4.0 (shame on us) but last week we came and kill him really fast. I was surprised but 2 paladins can keep themselves and 3 tanks without any help in P3 (we weren’t able to do it before 4.0 in the same gear). Maybe it’s so much harder in 10man now? I had no chance to try since I’m always saved for 25man everywhere (guild want to do as many achievements before Cata as we can), but I can confirm that in every 25man pala is still good healer. We killed Anub, Algalon, Yogg+0, it looks like next week LK will die on hard mode too. And I can’t say holy paladin acts bad and useless on any fight.
P.S.: sorry for the wall of text, but i just can’t hear any more about “it’s broken and no hope for pala”. We are still good healers! :)
Kurn-
I think I know where the problem is, because I’ve had exactly the same one. Tanks are going down, and DL barely cuts it. You said here:
“FoL: Short cast, very expensive, average throughput”
The secret is that in reality, FoL puts out significantly more HPS than DL does. Seriously. FoL outheals DL so bad it’s not even funny. While FoL and DL heal for similar amounts, you can churn out way more FoLs in the same amount of time
The issue is that FoL obviously drains our mana pool as well. I have been FoL-spamming to get my way through raids, and due to the fact that the mana costs aren’t “quite” balanced yet (and that I’m using the Spark of Hope), I have been fine on every encounter so far. I reforged all of my crit to spirit in order to help out a bit, too.
Here’s a parse from a 25m LK kill this week, where I basically used LoD to handle Infest, and FoL / Holy Shock for everything else…
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/9r5foz52wm2pvcyz/sum/healingDone/?s=7984&e=8788
I still have been keeping to the “new” healing rotation (HS, DL, HL, HL/DL, WoG) and have been out healing FoL Spammers. Heal smarter not harder as our heal lead would say. Before the patch I could heal someone up from 10% to full in no time. Now with the slower spells, I don’t let anyone get that low.
Tanks seem more squishy now, unless they use CD’s and healing abilities. Our Warrior tank who is in mostly 277 gear goes down like a sack of hammers in RS10-H vs an Alt Pally tank in mostly 264 gear can take a dirty beating and is easy as pie to heal. And the only difference I can see between the 2 is the Pally Tank would use WoG on himself, vs the warrior not using what ever they have now for mitigation/healing.
I’m currently healing with a HS -> HL/DL -> 1-2x FoL -> WoG rotation while we’re doing Heroic Lich King. It seems to work well and the mana loss with the double Solace is not really a problem so far (we haven’t killed him yet, but still). DL is too slow to heal anything with LK (or Shamblers) hitting your tanks like a truck.
HH is actually a very powerful tool at 85 and I frankly miss it to round up my rotation during stuff like Infest or LK phase transitions.
Oestrus – feel free to “bogart” the thread. :)
The more people have shown up on Beta, the more diluted the talent pool has gotten. I used to pug and get some GREAT groups in the early days. If I were more organized and less busy, I could bother some of my Skywall guildies to tank and DPS for me, but man, I’m just overwhelmed right now. It was all I could do to login to beta last night and ginvite Pewter to the guild. I was like “… Beta-Apotheosis is LEVEL 16?! When the hell did THAT happen?” haha.
I’d love, love, love to do some beta raids, but I don’t see it happening given my live responsibilities right now. Sad face. :(
Fugara – Thanks, lady. :) Cleared Plagueworks and had a close wipe on Dreamwalker. Not too shabby! And yeah, the whole “having no choice” thing… didn’t miss that at all! ;D
Janyaa – Thanks for the well-wishes! We’re poking our toes into ICC 25 as well, trying to get our feet wet and such, so that’s always fun. I’d love to go kill Halion… so my boots will effing drop. ;)
The reason I talked about the pain in TOGC was exactly for that reason — to show that most everyone is having issues and struggling in adapting.
Tarinae – I was just so disappointed the initial week of 4.0.1, but the hotfix buff they gave us after that first week has helped.
As to two tanks, well, I played it VERY conservatively when we went to ICC 25 (regular) on Tuesday. I rarely assigned cross-beacons (Lady Deathwhisper was an exception) and I was the only one who took care of a mark on regular Saurfang, so in that case, I healed the mark and put a beacon on a tank. I’m probably not making enough use of Word of Glory, so the beacon being on someone else isn’t hindering me too much in those rare situations… but I should really use WoG more often.
For Marrowgar, I gave myself a tank, gave another tank to a holy pally and we both beaconed the third tank. I also had a disc priest spot-healing that third tank as needed. That’s extremely conservative and I PROBABLY could have gotten away with healing my tank and beaconing another and leaving the other pally with her beacon on one tank and then still had the disc spot-heal, but I wasn’t sure that would work out well, particularly if I got spiked.
We can no longer, IMHO, heal two targets reliably without help. It isn’t always a lot of help that we need, but we can’t solo it.
Felomena – Admittedly, this is the first time I’ve raided with one of the tanks for over a year and a half. Some of it has to do with adjusting to playing with each other again and being aware that one of the healers is poisoned, etc.
I’m a fan of letting DPS learn the hard way, but I have a problem with letting them die purposely. I probably should have, but again, my instincts betrayed me. I felt like I could pop a quick HS and get back to tank healing. Alas!
Thanks in part to your comment, I went into ICC on Tuesday and abused Flash of Light quite a bit. Thanks for pointing out that it’s a lot more like the old HL than DL.
Are you glyphed for LoD?
I’m really glad to hear you’re succeeding in 4.0.1. I’ve never given up hope, but TOGC was a painful lesson for me. I really appreciate your comments. And hey. This is my blog. Walls of text are welcome! ;)
Chase – Yeah, between Felomena’s comments, the 25-man I was in a couple weeks ago, Walks’ comments to me in-raid and your comment here, I’ve started using FoL a lot more. Believe it or not, I went oom on regular 25-man Putricide this last Tuesday. I don’t remember the last time that happened!
I love that you’re using Spark of Hope. I actually giggled at that.
How’s your crit now that you’ve reforged to spirit? And what’s your in-combat regen? I’m still using heroic Solace of the Defeated, so I’m reluctant to go in the direction of reforging or gemming at all for spirit.
Thanks for linking your parse, btw, some neat stuff in there.
Palaria – I think it’s important to know when to use which “style” of healing — old style (FoL replacing HL) and new style (HS, DL, HL, HL/DL, WoG). In TOGC, I should have erred on the side of “old” style, since I had trouble with cast times. In ICC, “new style” should be more appropriate if I have decent healers in the raid.
I definitely agree about the squishiness of some tanks! The tank I kept losing was a pally tank, almost as well-geared as my brother’s pally tank, but he just ate so much damage. I’m not sure why he was so squishy, but he was definitely using CDs.
Neara – And there we go, that’s a great hybrid style. Thanks so much for the feedback. I can’t imagine trying HLK in this environment… I’m so glad it seems to be going well for you!
I miss Holy Radiance/Healing Hands too! I keep looking to hit it when I need to move!