Holy Pally Oh S*** buttons and situations

Post by RottweilerCP

I recently picked up my Holy off spec and I'm loving it. But I would like to know what are all of our Oh S*** buttons? I asked my wife who's been playing Holy for a long time now and she said, "I don't know." I said, "What do you do when S*** goes crazy?" and she responded, "Heal more."

I know I have the following:
1. Lay on Hands
2. Divine Favor + Holy Shock macro followed by Instant FoL
3. Wings and Trinkets which I have macro'd together
4. Hand of Salvation or Hand of Protection for DPS w/o Omen
5. Divine Sacrifice or Hand of Sacrafice with Bubble
6. Divine Illumination for when you have to start spamming Holy Light

OK, so I guess I know a lot, but my bigger problem is knowing when to use them. Personally I'm not a fan of using my Bubble because A) it prevents me from popping Wings for 30s and since I'll almost always use DiSac as well B) it uses 2 GCDs where you're not healing.

So along with what other Oh S*** buttons are there I'd also like to know what combo is better for what situations. I know healing is a lot about thinking on your feet, but I still feel like certain situations should have certain responses. I'm only doing heroics for now, but here are some situations I've seen, please add your own.

A) Tank takes a big spike of damage and is sitting at 20% health. I would assume #1 or #2 would help a lot here. #1 if you think he'll take another big hit soon and #2 if you think he has a couple seconds.
B) The whole group takes a hit and everyone is sitting under 50% health. Usually this won't be followed by lots more aoe so maybe #3 followed by FoL's around with a Beaconed tank to fill everyone up quickly.
C) One or two DPS won't get out of fire or for some reason are taking more damage than the tank. Letting them die is of course an option. Or #3 and heal them with a beaconed tank, or HoP them if the beacons warn off or HoSac+Bubble and heal them.

Please provide your input on what I've said as well as other Oh S*** situations and solutions.

Thanks

Post by pezz

In A) you're right. You can also count on your raid healers if you're sure the big spike was a one-off (decimate) and just Holy light him. Your other option is pre-casting if you know it's coming (decimate). Time it so a HL hits about .2 seconds after the AoE. Even if you don't know it's coming, if you have nothing else to do and don't need mana and you're on a fight where you suspect that can happen, just keep pre-casting HL on the offtank and cancelling the cast at the last split second.

B) To deal with this effectively as a holy paladin you NEED to see it coming ahead of time. Put Aura Mastery up if that'll help, Divine Sacrifice/bubble if it won't. Pre-cast one one tank (or squishiest DPS in five mans) and have beacon on the MT. If for whatever reason you don't see it coming, do what your wife said and heal more. Triage is your friend here. Pre-cast a HL if you can, prioritize HS on the first person you see in extreme danger of dying, then switch to the spam on whoever happens to be lowest. Leave getting people back to 100% to raid healers, just make sure no one dies before they can manage it. But anticipate above all. Aura Mastery or Divine Guardian used well is basically a free Barkskin for your entire raid at no to almost no mana cost to you. No other healer can do that.

C) For heroics, just heal more. For raids, yell at them in vent and heal more. You should ALWAYS have beacon up on the MT. Clip it if you don't think you'll get a chance to reapply when it's actually going to fall off, so you'll be spamming the tank at this point.

Post by 191097

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Post by pezz

Hand of Sac + Hand of Protection (no need to waste our bubble right?)

You're still going to trigger forbearance whatever you do, and Hand of Protection can be ridiculously useful when used on other players. May as well use Divine Protection (50%. Since saying 'bubble' or 'that one spell with divine in it' are both hilariously inadequate for this class) and take advantage of delicious delicious beacon by healing yourself.

One use of Hand of Protection is to force a bleed or other physical affect off of someone. There aren't too many cases where this will come in handy, but you might want to ask your tanks to make /cancelaura macros and start spamming them if they get an MS effect at a bad time, or that ridiculous 14k DTPS bleed that stacks before the one frost badge pinata in ICC. Much safer to let a 30k hp plate DPS eat a hit or two than try to heal a tank through a DoT like that.

For mana troubles, there's a slightly risky way to kind of sort of be healing one target at 100% with DP up. Beacon whoever you want to heal while you're regenerating mana, and use hand of sacrifice on the same target. If your FoL usually hits at around 5k, it'll hit for 2.5k on your and 2.5k on your main target with DP up, and all of the damage you're taking is actually the beaconed target's damage, so your FoL is basically hitting for 5k still as long as you don't kill yourself.

And of course: Divine intervention deaths and bubble hearth don't come with gear penalties. Just because everyone else has to hold up a raid to get repairs doesn't mean you need to!

Post by Brique

Holy Paladins can pretty much handle anything with just well timed Holy Lights. Most of our CDs are used to keep mana up instead of save raids. Our raid-wide damage reductions are pretty nice to have, but they probably won't be available for every piece of raid damage.

Post by frmorrison

Divine Sac (20% less damage to raid) and Aura Mastery (extra 130 SR) are very powerful for Heroic Lich King (where there is lots of raid-wide shadow damage at known points. In fact, every guild that has beat it has had 4 pallies or more.

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Post by svirve

LoH with divine favor is also good.

I'm going to go ahead and assume you're sarcastic.

DF+Cons is better for oh-!@#$ moments imo.

Post by Poptart

My personal fav is throwing Hand of Protection on someone who's about to die (Melee only of course) then giving them Hand of Freedom so they can start attacking again.

Post by 299264

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Post by RottweilerCP

Your wife is right ;)

I learned that some time ago. :)

Thanks for all the info. I look forward to healing more although so far when I queue as heals and tank I get chosen for tank. I queued as only heals a couple times and was chosen just as quickly, almost instant.

I think my biggest problem is that I have to think about what to do when these situations arise. Unlike tanking where it's so ingrained I know exactly how to handle everything. I'm sure time and practice will help.

Post by skribs

I'm going to comment first on each of the spells:

1. I probably should use this more, but I honestly don't use it much in raids. With a 20 minute CD, it falls into the problem where it's so long there's a good chance it won't be back up if you need it more later, which is then an ever-procastinated CD (Blizzard has noticed this in that they're realizing 2-3 min CDs tend to get used a lot more often than a 6 minute CD; more than they would have just with the extra availability). The way I see it is my HL's crit for 20-21k, so there's no real reason for me to need LoH in most situations anyway.
2. I use mousebinds to heal, so all I do is click the unit frame with the proper button (or modifier) equipped. So I just use DF and cast holy shock on the target. I generally prefer to use the proc on an HL though. Instant FoL has a GCD that is the same as casted FoL, so you get no extra throughput (just a bit faster on the second hit). Extra crit chance on HL is incredible.
4-5. Depends on the situation. Hand of Protection will temporarily drop aggro, but they still have the same threat, and when it wears off the tank better have caught up. Salv takes a few seconds. In both situations, "heal more" is a good idea.
HoSac + self-heal or a macro to cast Divine Sacrifice and remove it (the 20% shield wall will remain, you just won't take damage from your party members) can do these without causing forbearance for later on when you may want bubble. You also may not be able to bubble if you've just used AW.
6. You should already be spamming HL, if you're on difficult content anyway. DI simply makes it easier. It is also a very powerful CD (almost twice as powerful as wings) when you get the 2PT10 bonus.

A) Is this heroics or raid? In a raid, if a tank drops to 20%, you've got other healers who are likely helping. In a heroic, he either has low max HP (so you don't need a CD) or a simple holy shock will buffer him enough to take a bigger heal. I generally use Divine Favor as a mobility tool, rather than an HPS tool - when you need to cast on the move your combo of DF+HS+Inst FoL is going to give 2 GCDs of mobile healing.

B) Pezz is right - your biggest tools are AM or DS for these. Otherwise, instead of wings+FoL, I'd just continue HL spam. Chances are you have 3 healing classes doing AoE heals, so people will get hit. Also, HL spam is better for AoE than FoL - you go from a 1.0 sec cast to a 1.33 sec cast (assuming haste cap and proper talents), which means you still basically have a flash heal. However, with GoHL, you get a lot of AoE healing in with HL. I've sustained 14k HPS on Stinky even with switching beacon every time tanks swap, just by spamming HL and judging every 10 sec.

C) Beacon should always be active. So yes, "heal more" works in this case too.

Holy Pally Oh S*** buttons and situations

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