Be nice with your healers.

A short post today, I'm swamped by work and don't have enough time to finish my big post about healing in Cataclysm. It will have to wait a little bit more.

Until then I wanted to say one thing to all the tanks and dpsers around here (that I sometimes am on some of my chars).

Be nice with your healers.

Seriously people, healing in cataclysm isn't the piece of cake that it was before, now you can really say that The cake is a lie! (ok bad pun)
Mana quickly becomes a serious issue for all healers (with level 83 very often you feel the bite even with ICC gear). But more than only mana, sometimes we just don't have the time to get everyone up, esp. when some people stay in poisonous pools or other fiery areas ...

I once had a player complain I let him die while he was standing in a green poisonous ground that a mob put under him ... I healed him ... he stayed ... after 10s he died. I could have saved him, spending all my mana and 50% of my gcds, that should have been used on the tank.

Please everyone, don't be silly, be nice to your healers and help them. Just ...

Don't stand in the fire.

Until later, Peace, and have fun :)

A Change of Heart

Lich King has been a very stressful time for me as a healer. I sincerely think that it was the worst time since the beginning of the game for all healers. The reason is relatively simple, mana was nearly infinite as soon as you got your first epics. The developpers had to provide us with a challenge and as mana management wasn't one anymore, they enforced more damage spikes into the game.
Before this last expension damage was more controlled, a tank wasn't going to die in a 2s interval and none was going to die in one shot if not at full hp. People were dying when the healers were out of mana, not before, unless they made major blunders.

Wrath of the Lich King changed that and unless you're not doing what you should (and I mean by that doing content according to your gear level which means for most of us doing ICC hard mode considering how was most people gear before the launch of Cataclysm), you surely got this stressful feeling that even 1s of lag can turn your tank into a dead man and your raid to wipe.

I don't like this stress, this mandatory super fast reactive play in response to spiky strong damage. And I was having a lot of hopes for Cataclysm to bring back the "old style" when thinking was more effective than spamming and you had time to chose the right heal for the right time instead of pressing your strongest and fastest heal button as fast as you could.

It seems that it is the direction we're going to, and I'm happy of that. But Holy Paladins changed a lot too with the introduction of patch 4.0 and further. We lost a lot of our core abilities (Judgement heal, Holy Shield, Holy shield hot, several benedictions and others). We gained Holy Power and our new rotation style of play. It is fun and a lot of change from before and it surely makes the Holy paladin a very unique experience to play compared to other healers.
But sadly I don't like it.

What I want is for my choices to matter and not only for my talent spec. A rotation play is fixed, the best way to play is already written, follow your rotation, any diverging is a loss. My view on our new playstyle is that your only choice is who you heal, and even for that there is optimum and sub-optimum. I could be a bit reductive and paint it darker than it is, but that's what I feel. I don't really think that this concept of Holy Power allows for managing your mana by making the right choices, it is just a tool to allow you by using Word of Glory to duplicate very differently what paladins have always done since the beginning: being power batteries that run out after everyone else to keep up the tank as long as possible. Before we were using mana feedbacks with tools like Illumination, now were are using free heals obtained through Holy Power.

Even though it is fun to play, I like to think. So I'm going to leave my paladin behind, even if still fondly attached to her and her frostwyrm. I'm going to start Cataclysm as a Resto shaman, as I already wrote about before.
I'll still be a healer, and I'll continue to post about healing in instances, and later raids, but I will not provide specific paladins inputs anymore as I don't like to talk without facts. I'm sorry for my fellow paladins that like the blog, I promise I'll try to give you general healing inputs that can be of use to you as any other healer, like the Heling Through series that will hopefuly continue into Cataclysm.

I wish you all good times into Cataclysm, and as always, have fun. I hope to see you here again soon. And congratulations for surviving this deadly wall of text attack.

Healing Balance Discussion - Part 1

A new build hit the beta servers yesterday: Cataclysm Beta - Build 13221. You can read the details on MMO Champion, as always thx Boubouille.

I'm here going to discuss the major healing balance changes for all classes:

Druids - not affected yet, but GC already announced that they think druids use too much Rejuvenation and will probably see their mana regen nerfed to limit this.

Priests - mostly small buffs, priests are a little lower on raid recounts (even if Blizzard say you should look at them, they obviously do :p)

Shaman - Chain Heal now costs 20% of base mana, up from 17% of base mana. This is a mana nerf supposed limiting the use of chain heal by shamans.

Paladin - ok here comes the big stuff:

• Holy Radiance's effectiveness now diminish on targets farther than x yards away.

Global nerf to our big aoe heal, this was announced because it was too strong as it can clearly be seen on the beta raid logs, holy paladin healing is crap until there is a mass aoe damage and they use this skill cleverly, then they start topping the healing meters.

• Lay on Hands no longer restores mana.
• Beacon of Light now lasts 5 min, up from 1 min.

Not having to re-beacon every minute is nice, it is also a slight mana gain. Not regaining mana with Lay on Hands is on the other hand a strong mana loss (especially if using the glyph of Divinity).

• Divine Light base healing has been increased by 30%. From 8538-9512 to 11100-12366
• Flash of Light base healing has been increased by 30%. From 5313-5961 to 6907-7750.
• Holy Light base healing has been increased by 30%. From 3202-3567 to 4162-4637.
• Holy Shock base healing has been increased by 30%. From 3033-3285 to 3943-4271.

Basic buff to our heals, this is supposed to balance the nerf to Holy Radiance, we'll discuss that later on.

• Mastery: Illuminated Healing now absorbs 10% of the amount healed, up from 8%. Now lasts 8 sec, up from 6 sec. Each point of mastery increases the absorb amount by an additional 1.25%, up from 1%.

I'm still not convinced by our mastery, even though it's very close to the disc priest Divine Aegis which I know for being effective. It's a strong component pushing us to become raid healers, because if you're healing only one person (aka your tank) you're always "overwriting" the mastery shields.

A Global View on the Changes

If you look at all the changes on a global scale, most aoe healing is nerfed, either directly or by mana limitation (as for chain heal). Analyzing the first raid logs clearly shows that there are some massive raid damage and that aoe heals were very strong, if not dominant, because of that.
Balance seems to be the issue though as Holy Priests still are getting buffs when they already have strong group/raid healing abilities.

What about Holy Paladins ?

In our specific case, our big aoe heal Holy Radiance is nerfed, probably strongly enough for it to get more in par with other classes aoe heals, the priests being what is considered the "good balanced" reference right now.
My concern is that, looking at logs Holy Paladins healing is crap but for Holy Radiance. Our Beacon isn't strong enough, or our direct heals aren't, but clearly we're not on line with other healers on the direct heals side.

Now I'm complaining about something which as already been addressed, as you can read before all our direct heals are getting a 30% base healing buff. My question is: is this enough? My second question is: will it still be enough in tier 13 gear?

A Little Bit of Healing Theorycrafting

I'm going to explain these two questions here, and will probably do a dedicated post about healing theorycrafting later.
A heal strength can only be compared by using HPS: healing per second, which means the healing output a spell gives you per second if you're spamming it. If I take a regular direct heal, it's healing can be obtained by this formula:

base healing + (spell coefficient * spellpower) = global spell healing

You then divide that by its casting time and you get the spell HPS.

We got a buff to the base healing, which means a 30% buff to the first part of the equation. Now, if your gear improves, the only thing that makes your heals stronger is that your spellpower increases. What that means is that with better gear what you consider to decide of the strength of a heal is the spell coefficient and not the base healing.

Now you see where I want to go. Buffing the base healing is perhaps enough to get us in line with the other healers at 85 in blues, even with the nerf to Holy Radiance. But if the spell coefficients are not changed, we will again be lower when gear improves. On the other hand, the Holy Radiance nerf will affect it as strongly at high gear level than in blues, because it affects the global hps and not only the base coefficient.

Conclusion

I can understand that aoe healing could looks mindless and unskilled. And I can understand that Blizzard wants to see more dedicated healers having to target people to heal them. I have nothing against that.
My fear is that the nerf to Holy Radiance will put the paladins back down where they are right now in ICC at lvl 80. And even if I don't really like the idea that most of our hps is a single spell on a 30s cooldown, it's never fun to always be the lowest on the charts.
My second concern is that the direct heal buffs that are supposed to balance that aoe nerf are probably not right. Increasing only the base spell healing could be enough right now, but it won't last as I explained.

I understand that some could not be familiar with theorycrafting, and I'm not posting too often about it, most of the time only giving you my conclusions.
But an educated healer can better understand the problems of spell balance, and how nerfs/buffs affect it, so I will try to write a complete and more detailed / easy to understand post about spell balance later.

On a side note, my resto shaman is close to 70 now :P

Healing 5-Man after patch 4.0.1.

I have already commented enough of my views about Holy in raids since patch, but I've not said much about 5-Man. And as it seems some are struggling with them, I'll try to give a few hints about how to handle a rushing instance group. And trust me, my guildies are not stopping for more than bosses ... and most of our dpsers seem to be completely suicidal to me lately, so healing 5-Man can be intense :P

First, you should have the right spec. I advise you to read my earlier posts:
Patch 4.0.1 is going live. You are not prepared!
First impressions on 4.0.1
You should have a 31/2/3 spec with an emphasis on Holy Shock and Word of Glory. The reason for that is that they will be your main tools for any 5-Man.

The ToR style is perfect for instances, it is very rare that your tank will need more than the Beacon influx added to the occasional direct heal used to get Holy Power. Perhaps more will be need if your tank is slightly low geared or if you're into heroic HoR, but on a regular basis you'll be perfectly fine with a regular ToR build.

That means that you will be doing that, with that rough priority order:
1. Beacon of Light on your tank;
2. Use Word of Glory when you have 3 Holy Power stacks (and only 3 !), repeat if you get an Eternal Glory proc;
3. Use Holy Shock on cooldown, if only your tank is hurt, use it on him, if anyone in the group is hit, and unless your tank is in critical, heal the group member (+1 Holy Power);
4. Direct heal your tank with a Holy Light if you're not in a hurry, with a Flash of Light if you're in a hurry, with a Divine Light if he's very badly hurt (+1 Holy Power);
5. Direct heal one of the group members if your HS is on cooldown and you don't have 3 stacks of Holy Power and it's urgent.

Now if you have enough crit/haste your HS/WoG + Beacon will handle 75% of your healing. I don't think you should have any mana issues with this "rotation" as WoG is free, can sometimes be used like 3 times in a row thx to Eternal Glory, and because HS is our most efficient heal per mana skill.
If your mana is going down, use Divine Plea while running between pulls, but that should really not be an issue. Don't forget to judge for speed and a bit of mana too.

If you are still not at ease, I suggest that you test this "rotation" on yourself for a little while, it's easy to maintain once you get used to it, as any dps "rotation" (yes several paladins are saying we are now pew pew dpsers ;p).

Have fun and if you ever encounter issues, don't hesitate to comment here :)

Healing Through: Icecrown Citadel - Deathbringer Saurfang

This one was already nearly finished, so I'll post it before I move. Have fun in ICC everyone.

Deathbringer Saurfang is the fourth boss of Icecrown Citadel and the end of the entrance part. It was considered as the second test of Icecrown, the first being the purely gear check of Marrowgar. Saurfang is a healing and dps check, if you can finish him, you should be able to try the inner halls.
For a guild at least partly in T10+ items and with the new buff Saurfang should not be a problem anymore. Your raid should still know what to expect, or you can be sure of a raid wipe.


Deathbringer Saurfang: Trash Mobs

This will be a short section, the reason being that there is not a single mob between the gunship battle and the fourth boss of Icecrown. The only opponent you'll have is waiting for npcs to finish their speech (especially if you're horde).


Boss Description

Saurfang has relatively few abilities, but they have all to be mastered by your raid to kill him.
The first mechanic is Blood Power, this will increase Saurfang damage through the fight. When his Blood Power is low, his damage will be light and healing the tanks will be easy, but it gets harder with his blood power increasing, at 100% Blood Power he hits twice as hard. You should understand that every damage taken by your raid during the encounter give Blood Power to Saurfang, hence one key of the encounter is to reduce damage and shorten the encounter as much as you can.
Pro-tip: All damage prevention abilities are extremely effective during that encounter, a discipline priest is nearly overpowered with his shields that can reduce Saurfang Blood Power influx by more than 50% in 10-Man. If you have any damage prevention ability, use it as much as you can.

The second main ability is Mark of the Fallen Champion. This ability is used each time Saurfang Blood Power reaches 100%, and resets it to 0. The target of the mark will take damage each time Saurfang hits the tank (around 4K each 2s). You have to understand that this additional damage will also give Blood Power to Saurfang, hence with each Mark he will gain more Blood Power, and will cast the next Mark faster. This ability is Saurfang "time limit" mechanism. It adds up to his enrage at 30% health which makes him hit faster, hence producing more Blood Power, especially if several Marks have already hit.
Pro-tip: Oh last thing, if anyone hit by a mark dies, never ever battle rez him, as the mark sticks through death.

Saurfang has two other abilities that will generate Blood Power for each character hit. The first is Boiling Blood and the second Blood Nova.
Blood Nova is only cast on members at range and hits the target and anyone in 12 meters. It is the reason why your raid ranged and healers should be all 12 meters apart (in 10-Man) or positioned in groups of 2 or 3 characters each 12 meters apart (in 25-Man).
Boiling Blood is a dot, you'll have to heal it nothing else to say.
Pro-tip: Boiling Blood will generate Blood Power with each tick, if you can shield the target that is a must, if you can Hand of Protection the target that will remove the dot, preventing 8 Blood Power for Saurfang, do it fast. What you should know is that Boiling Blood can be cast on the target of a Mark of the Fallen Champion. This is one of the main reasons for losing a Mark target and could be a good reason to keep your Hand of Protection.

Rune of Blood is the reason you need two tanks during the encounter. They should switch as soon as this debuff is cast on the current tank. Nothing else to say.

The last ability of Saurfang (did I say he had few abilities ... he does have some but most of them only impact healers) is Call Blood Beast. This calls for 2 beasts in 10-Man and 5 in 25-Man. These beasts need to be dpsed quickly and most of all they should *not hit anyone*. Anyone hit by a Blood Beast will give Blood Power to Saurfang. The best is to use all what you can to prevent them from reaching your dps, hunters Frost Traps are one of the best tools for that.
Pro-tip: All melee, the tanks included, should avoid any sort of aoe damage when the Blood Beasts pop. If they don't, the beasts will stay hitting them and Saurfang will gain a big amount of blood very quickly, which can cause a raid wipe a few minutes later when the marks are too numerous for the healers to endure.

If you want more details you can find very good info on Bosskillers or Tankspot.


Raid Composition

Both in 10-Man and 25-Man you need 2 tanks. This encounter being a dps-race, you need to take as few healers as you can, usually 2 in 10-Man and 5 in 25-Man.
This will put a lot of pressure on your healers, and they will need a very good mana sustainability to finish the fight.
Pro-tip: Though spellpower is obviously important for healers, this will be more an endurance fight. If you have any source of mana replenishment in your raid you should save it for your healers in this fight if they need it, an oom healer during the last 30s of the fight will seal your fate.

The rest of the raid should be dpsers, both melee (they will be 100% of the fight on Saurfang and the main source of damage to him) and ranged (they will spend a large portion of the fight dealing with the blood beasts). Don't forget the ccers for the beasts that can be slowed, rooted ... anything but completely cced (no fear, mc or anything).
If you have a shaman, keep the Heroism/Bloodlust for the last 30% of Saurfang, you can call for it as soon as he enrages.


Healing Build

As I said, expect this fight to be very very mana consuming and put a lot of stress on your shoulders. Especially until all members of your raid master it. The more blunders there will be (blood beasts staying on the melee, tanks not switching fast enough ...) the more marks you will have to deal with at the end of the fight, and the harder it will be.
Remember you'll have to heal the tank and a few raid damage at all time (nova, dot, beasts). Each time a mark is cast, that will need at least half a healer attention to keep the target alive.

The last thing that I didn't say in the boss description is that for any death in the raid, Saurfang will regain 5% health ... this obviously means that you have to keep everyone alive as much as you can, Saurfang is not a boss you can finish at the very last moment with only 2 raid members alive.

In 10-Man you won't be able to endure more than 2 marks for every long, and most probably not more than 1 death.
In 25-Man if your healers are good you can manage up to 4 or 5 marks depending on your raid composition, and you can probably win with 2 deaths. More will probably lengthen the fight too much.

Whatever your class is, aim for fast "small" heals, as much damage prevention as you can, and the best sustainability you can get.
Use your mana cds as soon as you can get the full benefit of them, and if you can't use them during a strong healing phase, before the first mark is cast.


Paladin Healing tips

Holy Paladins are among the best healers for this fight, with Discipline Priests, but for very different reasons.
A Discipline Priest can greatly reduce the amount of Blood Power gained by Saurfang through the use of Shields.
A Holy Paladin can use his Beacon of Light to heal the target of a Mark of the Fallen Champion and continue to heal the raid. He can even heal both the first and second marks by himself.

Until the first mark is cast, the healing is light. But, as a paladin, you will have much more job as soon as a mark is cast. In a 10-Man raid you will most probably be the only Holy Paladin, and the two first marks will be your job. In a 25-Man raid Holy Paladins should share between them the first marks, 2 per paladin.
Once your first designed mark is cast you'll need to cast your Beacon on it (and remember to refresh it, use your focus frame or an add-on for that) and start cast continuous heals on the raid.
Pro-tip: You can never stop healing for much more than one gcd or your beacon target will die especially if it's a clothy (mark damage is physical and reduced by armor). Remember to recast your beacon/judgement when your Holy Shock is up in case you need the speed-up healing boost.
Once your second designed mark is cast you'll need to keep your Beacon on your first target and heal the second mark regularly, keeping both alive.
Pro-tip: As soon as your mark is cast you will not be able to stop healing, or use a Divine Plea because the healing reduction will be too strong. Try to use it before your assigned mark is cast (use Deadly Boss Mod to check Saurfang Blood Power), you should be full mana when you start healing a mark.

Remember to recast your Jugement of Light on Saurfang, both to increase your casting speed, and to heal your raid.

Keep in mind that your Hand of Protection removes the Boiling Blood dot, it is your choice to use it as soon as you can in the encounter, and have the opportunity to use it again later at the end of the fight. Or to keep it to protect someone being "double hit" by a mark and the dot (this can be very hard to keep up with healing wise).

Good luck and have fun, though very chaotic at first this is a quite fun encounter once your raid will master it.

Why I like to heal "undergeared" tanks in 5-Man!

Slightly ranty post about my views on healing in "modern" random heroics 5-Man dungeons.

Today I was taking some time to read one of my favorite blogs writer Larisa from The Pink Pigtail Inn. She is a gnome mage (best combo class in the game!) and is currently leveling a druid and had her first shots at healing in LK.
She talks about a recent topic surfacing in several blogs around arguing about more rewards for tanks & healers in random 5-Men.
My view is that more reward isn't what we need to tank or heal for you (which is what I do in this game 90% of my time), it is exactly what Larisa says:

As we separated after UK, as I had to leave for real life stuff, the leader said: “I’m sure you’ll make a fine healer at lvl 80”. It may not sound as anything special, but I tell you, for the terrified newbie healer, it meant more than any drop Gordon could have brought me. I was exhausted from the tension and strain, but my healing heart was glowing with pride.

My simple conclusion is: All you need is love.

Give me a cheer and a hug and I’ll heal my arse off for you in any instance you like. Regardless of what awards it offers.

I'm not attracted by loot, it is useful, I like when it's nice, but I don't mind at all where I am on the meters as long as I do my job right.
I think a lot of "true heart" healers and tanks are the same, we do that because we like it, not because we want more "rewards". There is some pride in the tank & healer role, and that is enough for us ... as long as other players aknowledge we're doing our best with the gear we have and that tanking or healing isn't always a happy funny time.
There is a much direct penalty for an under-performing tank or healer, lack of heals or effectiveness as a tank (survival or threat generation) shows much more than a low dps on the meters. It directly impacts the other members and can cause wipes which cost gold. That is were you can see these roles as more stressful.

That's where I'm going ... ungrateful players.
Larisa cited a post from Calli from Pew Pew Lazers tiled Angry Priest is Angry. Seeing it cited by Larisa, and the author being a discipline priest (like that :p) I went to read it.
Even if it's a bit too ranty probably to convince most, I completely agree with Calli on her point:
People asking for a vote kick of a tank not in 4 pieces T9 in a random heroic dungeon (not Halls of Reflection !) are just pure lazy bums that I don't want to play with.
When LK started tanks were at most around 24K unbuffed and healers were having a much lower spell power. I was there healing, it was harder, and all in all, it was much more fun!

So yes, I'm proud to say that "I love to heal undergeared tanks in 5-Men" !
When I say undergeared it's according to the idea people have that a tank for heroics has to have more than 40K health nowadays ... silly snobs. I've healed a warrior tank friend with my priest, in all random heroics (before 3.3) when he was still all in blues, and we were perfectly fine, he's a good player and a good tank, and if he was a bit short in life my, then T8 geared, priest was more than enough to secure him and the group 100% of the time.
Healing a slightly less geared tank is a bit more work, but it wakes me up, it's fun because there is a little challenge where most random 5-Men are not anymore. And that's what I miss now ... the fun of the challenge in 5-Man.

My pride, and what I'm happy of when I finish an instance, is a 0 death clean ride. When people die I'm not happy, even if it's completely their fault, I still feel like I failed somehow. (Yes you the dps standing in the fire, you can ruin my fun by just being silly. Not because we didn't drop loot, because you died, you idiot!)
If the tank or the group is slightly less geared, and I'm working more, it's even more fun.
I remember of my first runs of Naxramass with my priest, it was with a small guild (her guild raiding ulduar 25 at that time) whose tanks were still half in blues, and the others raid members too, me included. It was a real challenge, yes Naxramass was a challenge ... for the sole reason that we were doing it at the right level of gear.

All in all my view is that overgearing content is nice for fast runs, but tend to really turn players into snobs that don't remember what fun challenge can be, if they ever knew what challenge is.

Edit:
As sidenotes on this new LFG system, you could find some interest in reading these posts, also ranty in other ways, about what I'd consider as the way of "running with anonymous players" given to us by the cross-server LFG tool:
Dechion on WTF! Group Ninja?
Gnomeaggedon on If you’re THAT 1337, GTFO of my Random Dungeon!
TyphoonAndrew on LGD Perspectives
You could find them interesting, as I did.

Healing Through: Icecrown Citadel - Gunship Battle

Healing Through: Icecrown Citadel - Gunship Battle
My 25-Man alliance raid got some motivation last Friday and we downed the 3 first bosses of Icecrown (yet again, nothing to brag about but we're a semi-casual guild with a lot of far from optimum players that we still like to play with and bring into raid :P).
So I'm going to talk today about the third "boss" that is more an event than a boss. You got it, it is the Gunship Battle.

Gunship Battle: Trash Mobs.

There are 2 alliance (or horde if you're on the wrong side) groups and one dracolich that you have to fight before reaching the ship. They probably repop at some point but don't worry the ship will be down before they do.

As a fun note, if you ever do this encounter on both sides (horde/alliance) you will fight on the other part of the balcony that you can see when fighting the dracolich. In fact if you kill the undead trash after the dracolich, you'll reach this other side, quite funny :P

Boss Description

As I said before this is not really a "boss". The Gunship Battle is a fight between your ship and the other faction ship via the gunship cannons.
You have to man your canons (2 in 10-Man, 3 in 25-Man) and fire on the deck of the other ship. The canons are easy to use, first ability makes your heat meter go up, when it's near full (without ever reaching full) you can use your second ability for max damage. The first targets for your canons are the opposing "canons" that are rocket launchers on the other side of the ship you battle (Kor'kron Rocketeer / Skybreaker Mortar Soldier). If they still have time when these are down, the second targets are the Rifemen /Axethrowers.
Each 25% of life of the opposing ship, a frost mage will be called to freeze your canons. You then have to board the opposing ship and kill the mage.
Pro-tip: To go on the opponent ship you need to get and equip rocket-packs from your own ship (the npc giving them is nearby your ship captain). But the players assigned to the ship can also take them as they can be used to avoid/kite a mob which would aggro you on the ship.

Send in half your dpsers and one high life tank. The dpsers will *only* target the frost mage and come back as soon as he is dead. The tank will only tank the opponent captain (dwarf/orc depending on your side).
The captain tank should take care that the captain gains 25% haste each time he hits, so kiting is better if possible.
Pro-tip: Take care that firemen shoot at flying targets so kiting by using your jet-pack, which is the best option can be dangerous if you take a hit before launching and then get hit by the firemen. Be cautious also that changing ship reset aggro. If you leave your ship with aggro, healers will die, if you leave the opposing ship before anyone else, he will die.

Raid composition

For 10-Man you need 2 tanks, 3 healers and 5 dpsers. One of the tank and one of the healers will go into the canons and only be active during the frozen canons phase when your team has to board the opposing ship.
In 25-Man you still only need 2 tanks. You can go with 6 to 7 healers, depending if you put one or two in the canons with the boarding tank. Rest should be dpsers, it doesn't matter much if they are melee or ranged, this isn't a very hard encounter.

Advised Build

It all depend on your assignment.
If you're the boarding tank healer (assigning 2 healers on him is more secure), you will mostly only spam big heals (Holy Lights for paladins) on him during the time he's tanking/kiting the opposing ship captain, and you'll probably mana regen in a canon when you're not boarding. Obviously a Holy Light build is better for that.
If you're on raid healing, go for a quick healing build (Flash of Light build for paladins). Your ship tank will take a lot of fast damage, but much smaller than the boarding tank. And the aggro on the adds tend to be tricky which can result in short (hopefully) spikes on the healers.

Paladin Healing Tips

Paladins in this fight are better used as healers for the opposing captain tank, three good reasons for that:

• Holy Light spam is the strongest single target heal stream any healer can do;
• using Divine Plea when in the canon will allow the Holy Paladin to Holy Light Spam the whole boarding phases of the encounter;
• using Beacon of Light on the boarding tank will allow the paladin to *stay on your ship* and still healing the boarding tank.

This last point can seem tricky, but it works wonder, at least as Beacon of Light works in patch 3.3. Here is the reason:
The Beacon of Light target will receive in full any heal casted by the paladin on any raid member no further than 16 meters away from the beaconed tank. The Holy Paladin stays on your ship, on the border near the canons, he will target any ranged dpser boarding the opposing ship and dpsing the frost mage (this ranged dpser needs to stay on the other ship border too so that he's in range for your heals). And all the heals incoming to this ranged dpser will hit the tank (unless he's more than 60 meters away which is highly unlikely).
This allows you to not have to board the ship, not get aggro from most of the ship mobs despite your huge heals, spam heals on your boarding tank even when he's flying towards the opposing ship or back to your ship, avoid any hit on your while flying because you can't cast anything during that time it's considered casting while moving.
Pro-tip: Don't miss to cast Beacon of Light on the boarding tank before he launches to the other ship, he could be too far away for that a few seconds later. The duration of the Beacon will be more than enough for your raid to kill the frost mage and the tank to come back. Talk with your tank to be sure he doesn't leave without it :)

And that's all, congratulations for the loot, this is mostly a "Have fun with rocket packs and get some nearly free loot" reward for having downed the two first bosses.
Enjoy it because serious fights start with Deathbringer Saurfang!

I hope this small guide was useful, see you soon for the 4th boss of Icecrown and the last from the entrance section: Deathbringer Saurfang.

Raid Healing for Holy Paladins post 3.2

This post ended being much much longer than I thought at first when I started it. But I was always adding new views and after a few hours it got quite gigantic. I organized the ideas so that you can pick up what you're interested in or find back some points more easily after reading the whole thing. I'll try to post better inputs on some parts of it later in separate posts if I can find some time for that.
Now let's start with the beast.

It is no news that patch 3.2 changed a lot for Holy Paladins. I have already written several posts on the topic: Patch 3.2 will change just everything ...
You can also find very good analysis of the changes on: Banana Shoulders and Holypaladin.net.

Now what did it changed for me after a few weeks of raiding? Though my experience is limited to Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader 10-Man, I think it is enough to see the big changes that 3.2 brought us.
At first I was very worried with the mana regen nerfs, and for a good reason, I was right. But in the end patch 3.2 gave us so much that I'm not complaining at all, as long as you can adapt to a new style. Let me explain my views, and then talk about gameplay changes.

What changed with 3.2 and how does it impact us?

First big mana & mana regen nerf, Divine Intellect was nerfed from 15 to 10% (about 5% total mana loss) and Illumination was nerfed from 60% to 30% regained from the mana cost of the spell that crits (second nerf it was 100% before WotLK). You can also add the small nerf to Replenishment affecting all mana users. On paper a severe nerf to our mana and regen, and in the game too. Depending on how you played, it will affect you more than others. I had an intellect & crit build so it had a strong impact on my regen and I use Holy Lights much more carefully now while I was sometimes "splash raid healing" with the glyph before, which was an obvious overshot but affordable.

Second change of Beacon of Light and addition of a hot to Sacred Shield, Beacon of Light now works with overhealing and has a 60m range, and if you cast a Flash Light on the target of your Sacred Shield it will gain a hot. The Sacred Shield hot is fine, it is not strong, but it is free, doesn't really cost you any global cooldown (though you have to recast a direct Flash Light on your tank here and there) and helps with maintaining a constant healing influx to your tank (the obvious target of your Sacred Shield). Now the real big boy here is the change to Beacon of Light. It was useful before, and helped you to do a bit of raid healing while still covering your tank. It is now very powerful and allows you to become a full (or nearly) raid healer while at the same time being as reactive as before on your tank and able to land one of these life-saving healing bombs at all time. I'm explaining more clearly that in the next paragraph.

Beacon of Light is your new best friend.

The job of a main tank healer is to always be able to react quickly and do his best to save his tank if a damage spike occurs, which you all know is very common in WotLK. Beacon of Light was created to allow you to do some healing on other members of your raid while still healing your tank, *but* you had to retarget your tank in case of damage spike as any overhealing done was not sent to the Beacon (and hence there was no way to heal your tank for 15K but to target him, unless another member of the raid was also injured for at least 15K, and in a 30m range from your tank). This meant some heavy macro building, using right click to target your focused main tank for example. Or some target change delay, and delay is bad when it's an urgency.
Now all overhealing is also transferred and the range is 60m. You don't have to retarget your tank anymore for this 15K healing bomb, and you can even do it while being too far to even be able to target him, by targeting a member of your raid between you and him.
This is such a strong change that I'd say I'm enjoying raid healing again, it's not any more complex than before (even probably easier if you're following the tips I'm giving later on) but you have much more freedom in who you heal, and it's much less frustrating in the sense you don't have to make this Cornelian dilemma of keeping the strong heals on your mt rolling or trying to help with raid healing.

New Beacon require a new gameplay.

Mostly you have to maintain 4 effects at all time now. Before patch 3.2, depending on who you were healing, the Beacon was not always mandatory, and the Sacred Shield hot didn't exist. So mostly it was only Sacred Shield on your tank & Judgement of Light/Wisdom for your raid. Now a Holy Paladin not using Beacon of Light at *all* times is just a dreadful dumb monkey :P It is just too strong to not be used at all times, unless, perhaps, you're completely sure that only the mt will take damage as in some old vanilla boss fights.

So what do you have to maintain? Beacon of Light (B) on your tank, Judgement of Light/Wisdom (J) on the main raid target (if possible each 20s for the raid heal), Sacred Shield (S) on your main healing target (not necessarily the main tank, I will give an example of that), and the Flash of Light hot (F) on your Sacred Shield target. It requires more attention than before and I strongly advise you to use an add-on to track these 4 mandatory effects that I will name the BSFJ effects.

Gameplay by examples.

As nothing is better than examples, I'll give you what I see as the two gameplay configurations we have now, depending on the boss encounter. As you could guess, I assume that as a Holy Paladin you are assigned to tank healing.
So let's take these examples, the two first beasts of the Northern Beasts trio from Trial of the Crusader.

Gormok the Impaler
This is what I call a single tank situation, it can still require tank switching but at any given time there is only one tank.
Focus you tank (use a focus macro with a shortcut to help if there is some tank switching) and keep at all time Beacon of Light and Sacred Shield on him. When the Flash of Light hot goes down, recast a Flash of Light on the tank. Keep the Jugement of Light/Wisdom up on the boss. And now all you have to do is heal the raid and keep the BSFJ effects up.

The two Jormungars
This is what I consider as a 2 tanks situation (if more than 2 tanks are required, you'll need another Paladin buddy to cover the 3rd tank and helps you on the MT), at any given time at least 2 tanks are taking strong damage, one being the MT usually taking more damage.
The idea is to heal both tanks at the same time, using the Beacon. It was possible before, but it's way more effective now. Cast the beacon on the one you are not assigned to as main healer, and the Sacred Shield on the one you will be targeting most of the time (to maximize the Flash of Light hot uptime). Then cast Judgement of Light/Wisdom on the boss and maintain a regular influx of Flash of Light on your target (with the occasional Holy Light if him or your BoL target needs it).
You're set for double tank healing, and with some training and getting used to it you can mostly heal the two tanks from this encounter alone in 10-Man.

But what about mana regen now?

If you follow the gameplay guidelines I've given earlier, you will see that your tank (which should be your main target during a raid) is receiving a strong and regular flux of healing even if you're mostly casting only Flash of Light on the raid. This is a strong change from before, and means that you should be using less Holy Lights (at least in 10-Man, the boss damage being lower).
But even with a more sporadic use of Holy Light you'll see your mana going down, especially as you should be recasting Beacon of Light for sure each 30s now (I'll have to do the math on the BoL glyph as concerning mana efficiency).
As for myself I went back to the Glyph of Seal of Wisdom (5% healing cost reduction) instead of the Glyph of Seal of Light, and I'm using strong mana regen trinkets and meta-gem. I'm still using my int/crit gear and spec, and it still do the job, I have to use mana potions much more often though, and Divine Plea for these 25% mana as often as I can.
My observation from raiding is that we still have a good lasting power, but we need to be much more cautious with our mana. With my two trinkets () and meta-gem (Insightful Earthsiege Diamond) I can regain more than 2000 mana each 50s (du to the trinkets hidden 45s cooldowns), to which I can probably add about 3000 mana each minute (?) from Divine Plea (I rarely can use it for its full duration but I try to use it each time it's out of cooldown). That's about 5 to 6K mana/minute, not bad without counting any mp5 or spirit (haha).

Minimum Mana Use and Healing Lasting Power

Let us give a look to mana costs now. Just to maintain your BSFJ effects during a minute, you have to cast (with a base mana of 4394 for a lvl 80 paladin):
2 Beacon of Light (35% of base mana),
2 Sacred Shield (12% of base mana),
5 Flash of Light (8% of base mana),
and 3 Judgement of Light (5% of base mana)
That gives you a minimum mana cost of about 6240 mana with 2 Flash of Light counted as a critical (40% crit).
So, just to keep up with the spells you need up at all time you will have a MMU per minute of 6240. Divide your total mana by that and you know how much you can last at the theoric maximum (don't be frightened but now you can see how much mana regen we need).
Now to maintain a regular Flash of Light casting, with 40% critical and 1.5s casting time you'll need to cast 20 Flash of Light per minute, which would cost you about 20 * (3/5*1+2/5*0.7) *352 = 6196 mana per minute.
Add this MMU to the FoL spam cost and you have a rough idea of your mana cost in a raid boss fight. Now calculate your mana regen as I did before, and add in your mp5 (and replenishement if you are sure to have it). Reduce your mana cost by your mana regen each minute, and divide your total mana by that. You will have a rough idea of your mana durability in a boss fight.
Ok this is not easy calculus and you don't really have to do it, but keep in mind that you'll use around 12.5K mana per minute probably half your mana if you have an average gear. Yes mana regen will hurt and you'll have to take it into account much more than before.

And for next time

In my next post I will discuss about healing macros and how they can really change your raiding experience as a Holy Paladin. Being more reactive, keeping up your multiple effects more regularly, avoiding wrong targeting when recasting Beacon of Light (which can be really deadly now) ... all of these can strongly change with macros.
Stay tuned.

If you want more inputs on healing post patch 3.2, you can read the guide on Holypaladin.net, it is full of gear & gemming information.

Holy spec: did you try Holy + Prot already?

As my series on leveling is finished I'm back to talk about healing, gear and specs for patch 3.2. I'm writing an article about general gameplay in raids (that will be way too big ...) but I wanted to point you towards that article from Banana Shoulders: Bubble Spec: the New Hotness.
It's about the "new" Holy & Prot spec based on using Divine Sacrifice. Siha calls it a Bubble Spec and I like the name, it links it to Disc priests shields (and it is damage prevention), and it uses the paladin bubble to save ourselves when we use it.

Clearly, anyone can see uses for this huge raid damage prevention on bosses like XT-002, YS, Anub ... but as crit strength has gone down since patch 3.2 my previous preferred spec (51/2/15+3) has lost some of its punch, pushing the Bubble spec to our attention.

This is not news and several guilds have been using that spec already, but if you've not yet give it a try and see if it'll be the 3.2 spec for you.

Grid & Healbot are good for you

If you're considering healing seriously and don't use an alternate unit frame to the Blizzard basic UI, then rush read this post by Keeva on Tree Bark Jacket. It's an illustrated (a lot, and I mean lot of screen captures) comparison between Healbot and Grid, the two most used healers UI replacement frames.
I personally use Grid on both my paladin and priest, and I really like it. I've recently discovered all the options that you can use to check your buffs on the raid, it's really a huge help to maintain your shields & hots and other short duration buffs up. If you need help with grid configuration, I like this post by Kae on Dreambound.

In case you don't know where to find them, give a look to the curse add-on website.

Much thanks to the druid blogging community that is so active.

Patch 3.2 will change just everything ...

I've told you before I was going to say what I think about the changes awaited in patch 3.2, here it is. I have waited to see if they were final, and they seem to be as they've not been changed for a few PTR updates now.

Let's rewrite here the main changes for us:

• Beacon of Light: The healing amount on the Beacon of Light target is now based on the total healing done (including over-healing) instead of the effective healing done. Radius increased to 60 yards. Multiple Paladins can now have this active on the same target. Buff indicating a player is within range of the Beacon target is no longer displayed.
• Divine Intellect: This talent now gives 2/4/6/8/10% increased intellect instead of 3/6/9/12/15%.
• Illumination: This talent now returns 30% of the mana cost of the spell instead of 60%.

The changes to Divine Intellect & Illumination will strongly hurt our mana. It won't be possible to spam Holy Light and probably hard to outmana other healers and be this mana battery that can spam heal the tank during the last % of a boss (Patchwrek before nerfs & increase in gear comes to mind as the classic example of that).
This will be compensated by the changes to Beacon of Light that clearly turns this skill as something so strong that it will be a mandatory talent that you will have to use it at all times.

Why do I think some change is necessary ?
I've already talked about that in a previous post. Paladins generate too much overhealing, they have mostly timed casts, which result in a lot of our heals being sniped by other healers (which is, I agree, very frustrating). That result is a bad "score" on the healing meters (I have already said how much I hate the weight these have in a player "efficiency" evaluation). That is often strenghtened by our main role as tank healers.

What is our role right now, and why ?
Overall we are mostly tank healers, as we have the ability to spam Flash Light on them nearly undefinitely, what no other healer can really do. That allows for a constant flow of heals at the costs of a large overhealing. But that sort of play protects your tank from rng damage spikes and as you are giving him a lot of attention (like all your attention) you can react fast to spikes with an addition Holy Shock or switching to Holy Light.
Though this role will result in a lower score on the healing meters (that is true for any class assigned to tank healing), it is a necessary role, one healer will have to pay real strong care to the tank, or he/she will die. This is simply due to the nature of the challenge that blizzard is giving us about tank healing, that challenge being mostly rng spike damage.

Is Beacon of Light used before 3.2 ?
My answer is yes, I've already discussed it in this post. At the moment, Beacon of Light has for me 2 main possible uses: used on you, it will ensure your survival and avoid you wasting cooldowns to heal yourself; used on your tank, it will allow you to do some raid healing at the expense of some speed reaction to heal your tank (though this is absolutely necessary in some cases).

What will change ?
I have concluded earlier, and I think everyone will agree. BoL will be mandatory to use, and use on your tank as the one and only use for it. Taking that as a premice, paladins will not be tank healers anymore, simply because they won't be the most effective that way.
We are going to be raid healers, with support to the tank through BoL. Our role on the tank will be to lower the impact of the rng, by providing a "free" regular healing stream, while we are healing the raid (that makes me think that we can expect even more raid damage in the next content).

So we are going to endure a 180 degrees change in our gameplay, we're changing from tank healers with long mana survavibility to raid healers with tank support.

What I don't really like about that is that: I like to tank heal, I won't be able to react as fast on the tank if I'm asked to, just because my attention will be on the raid (as I have experienced when I am raid healing with BoL at the moment).
These changes are not the ones I hoped for, and the gameplay changes that they imply are not ones I want to play with. Hence I'm rerolling priest ...

As always, comments are welcome.

Healing Ulduar - XT-002 Deconstructor

And the guides/tips for healing Ulduar as a Holy Paladin continue. You can find the first two ones here:
Healing Ulduar - Flame Leviathan & Razorscale
Healing Ulduar - Ignis The Furnace Master
And as a reminder, I also wrote some more general articles about healing in Ulduar before:
Ulduar paladin healing guides
Ulduar Paladin Healing Tips (update)

Today I'll talk about ...

XT-002 Deconstructor

You can find details about the boss on its Wowhead page, I won't detail strategies here and only focus on the healer role in this fight.
There are 2 small groups of trash mobs that were put back into the instance after the first two weeks (they were buggy at first). You can find them on the left and right side of the boss courtyard, take care to not pull the boss before having dealt with them (you will see the boss but not the trash mobs when you approach).

Now about XT, the first thing you should know is that he has been severely nerfed since the first weeks of live. The biggest nerf being his Tympanic Tantrum.The version on wowhead on this day is still the old one, when it was inflicting damage equal to 120% of their life to each raid member. You can easily guess that, if raiders were not healed, they will die. Combine that to the potential simultaneous Searing Lights and Gravity Bombs and you had regular deaths during the Tantrums. Now damage was reduced to 80% total life, which means that, if there is no external damage, none will die from a Tantrum. Light/Dark bombs can still be deadly, but it will be much easier to cope with the amount of damage today, this is why most raiders have found as the biggest nerf to XT. He's the one guarding the entrance to the core of Ulduar, and Blizzard wanted to be sure most guilds could go there.

Now that I've ranted a bit about the nerf of XT, and that I've pointed its biggest threat for healers, let see how the fight goes.
You will have 2 tanks, one main tank on XT, and one off-tank for the biggest adds that will not be dpsed. The stress on the off-tank will grow with time, having only one add is a joke, having 4 starts to be much more healing stress, he should keep his cooldowns for the end of the fight, to help with healing.

The main aspect of the fight is its two phases. Each 25% of his life, XT enters phase 2 when he goes inactive and exposes his heart. Phase 2 is also when adds pop. The main aspect is that this is a relatively low damage phase (compared to boss + Tantrums + light/dark bombs). You will be able to use cooldowns like Divine Plea without any risk during that phase, and you should regain a large amount of mana in 30s (Phase 2 lasts for 30s whatever happens, unless you break XT heart but I won't talk about the hard mode).

The MT will take heavy damage, be ready to toss some big heals from time to time, and don't worry too much about your mana if you're the MT healer. You'll have time to get some mana back during phases 2. As always, keep your Sacred Shield up on the main tank, keep your Judgement on XT (Light or Wisdom).
After a phase 2, take care when XT resumes damage on the MT, as you were probably helping with bombs damage or even dpsing (yes, dpsing :p) during phase 2.

If you are healing the off-tank, don't get lazy during the first or even second add phase, he will only have one or two adds and that could seem easy, phase 3 will be harder, and if you are in 25-Man, you'll even need 2 off-tanks as 2 big robots pop each add-phase.

Now, depending on the other healers of your raid, you could need to help during the tantrums (even if you know it was nerfed hard :p). Then simply put your Beacon on your healing target (MT/OT) and raid heal, the usual. If you're healign the MT pay attention though, damage spikes can happen.

Usually I keep my Beacon of Light on me during that fight, so that I don't have to heal me during tantrums, or on a Light/Dark bomb. I can keep a regular and steady healing stream on the main tank and I'm fealing much more secure on his survival that way.

Have fun, next week Kologarn and the Iron Council (that some people are calling the Assembly of Iron, how weird).

A simple question for you.

While I'm writing my healing guides for Ulduar and raid at the same time, as I don't like to talk about things I don't know and experience first hand, I wonder if there is a specific topic you'd like to see covered here ?

So I leave it to you, readers :)
If there is a specific topic that you'd like me to talk about, please post it in the comments for this post. I won't write about something I don't know, so it will have to be limited to paladin healing or general healing/raiding.

Not really that I lack topics to talk about. It will take me a good bit of time to finish my Ulduar healing guides, and hopefully my raid will advance at the same time, giving me more writing material. I'll perhaps try to steal a week spot in our main 10-Man raid if I can't advance enough in mine, they are on Yogg-Saron 10 now. So no worries.
But I wanted to give you the chance to tell me if you wanted something else discussed here.

It's your opportunity, have fun :)

Healing Ulduar - Ignis The Furnace Master

The sequel of my first Healing Ulduar - Flame Leviathan & Razorscale tips post, today I'll talk about Ignis The Furnace Master.

As always, Holy Paladin point of view on these fights, mostly from a 10-Man raid perspective.
About 10-Man, I don't think they are harder than 25-Man, as they were for Naxx at least at the beginning. Clearly some fights like Kologarn are much easier in 10-Man than 25-Man. But being a paladin, I do feel paladin healing being more and more pushed back to the single MT healing niche (and we are really good at that). Most Ulduar fights are really mobile, and require positioning and movement through the whole fight. You can also combine to that the amount of raid damage that can be pretty high on some bosses (XT, Kologarn, ...). From my point of view that makes a paladin the worst healer class for 10-Man, but that's still the raids I do, so you'll probably have to endure a few rants here and there, 'cause you do know I like to say when I don't like things :P

Anyway, enough with the talk, here is the Ignis guide.

On the way to Ignis, Furnace trash mobs

Your first challenge will be the trash mobs to Ignis. Don't take them lightly or you will wipe a lot on them, even though the flame tornadoes have been strongly nerfed since day one of the live.
The two giants have a stomp/silence unlimited distance aoe. If your healer are silenced, you'll wipe. So position your tanks at the limit of the pillars, and keep 2 tank healers out of line of sight from the giants. It is that simple, but don't do that and you'll never kill them.
Then you have pairs of mobs patrolling.
The constructs are fairly simple, they have a small frontal fire breath attack (turn them away from your raid), and they have a charge (it's more a glide animation which is fairly ridiculous) that will randomly hit someone for about 4-5K.
The fire elementals regularly create flame tornadoes that will target someone and push him back in the air. If you are pushed back, you will take a large amount of fire damage about 5 or 6 hits for 3K, if you were not at full life, or if you're hit by two tornadoes (or the first one send you into the second one) you will die. Only instant casts can be used while in the air, but if you have health stones, or instant heals, use them. The best here is to have as much distance as you can between the 2 elementals (pull them back to the ramp for space) to avoid double tornadoe hits, and when you see a tornado going your way, just run (or blink, or warlock circle teleport ...). As a healer, keep your instant heals for tornado victims (you if needed ;p) and still keep a close look on your tank.

Ignis the Furnace Master

For a description of Ignis abilities, you can check wowhead. I won't comment on the strat, everyone guild has sort of its own views on Ignis positioning. But one thing never change, you'll have one MT (moving Ignis around) and one OT for the adds (running between add pops and waterpools).

If you are healing the main tank, the damage is fairly regular, if you have more and avoidance tank though, when he's moving Ignis (or moving around him) after a scorch is put on the ground damage can spike a little, take care. Keep your cds for the moment several adds are up. If your add team ever miss a shatter, Ignis damage could reach +45% for a short time, which will hurt the tank. Usually when Ignis reach 10% guilds stop killing the adds too to burn him down. As he gains +15% damage for each add up, be ready for pumping out heals on the MT during these last % of Ignis.

If you are healing the off-tank, try to discuss with him and chose one pool, it will be his shatter pool to which he will bring all adds. Then find your spot so that you can always heal the OT, be out of the scorch flames, and have the least amount of movement to do (especially if you're a paladin ;p). The OT won't take too much damage at first, but he will when the add is melting (fire aoe) and if our "add buster" dps even shatter the add too soon, the OT will take the 15K explosion damage. To avoid a wipe on that losy move, always have your OT life capped when he brings the add to the water pool. Healing the OT on Ignis means switching to him at the right time to have him life capped when it can be necessary. You will be helping with slag-pot heal and potential raid damage the rest of the time.

Whole raid damage is low during this fight. But there will be slag-pot victims. Ignis will regularly take one character from the raid, never the MT, and not the OT (*if* he is hit by a non stunned or cced add at this moment). This character will be put into Ignis slag-pot and will endure 5K fire damage per second for 10s. Obviously they will require healing, quick and fast healing. A paladin is perfect for healing slag-pot targets. You also should know that you can cast spells when into the pot, you just can't target Ignis. Any class that can cast heals should heal themselves when in the slag-pot.

As a paladin, I usually use Beacon of Light on myself during this fight, I'm most of the time healing the OT & the slag-pot victim. If I ever end into the slag-pot I can just OT/MT/raid heal and that will heal myself too. I'm also always at full life in case I get add aggro when they pop, or have to move through a scorch to reach my target (the OT has to move a lot in this fight). I try to keep Sacred Shield up at all times (as always). And keep Judgement of Wisdom/Light on Ignis (not on the adds ;p) as much as I can.

XT is next in line for these small guides. I wish you fun in Ulduar, even though nerfs have really toned down everything up to the watchers, it's still much more enjoyable than Naxx.

Healing Ulduar - Flame Leviathan & Razorscale

I had this idea for some time now, but needed more raid experience to really start it. First of all, most of my experience comes from 10-Man. Guild stability is an issue lately, with the "post Naxxramass apathy" that fell upon the game, and we're having difficulties to get a regular 25-Man roster.

The idea here is to give a few tips for each boss (and the trash before sometimes). Tips will be for healers, and from my point of view, hence a healing paladin view of them. I hope they can be useful for other healers, but obviously paladins will probably find more info here :)

Most of these guides won't detail the fight themselves, and they'll be easier to read if you've already experienced the fights. But comments are here to collect any question.

So enough with the talk and here start the guides with the 2 first bosses of Ulduar.

Flame Leviathan

This is a semi-joke as most players won't have anything to do in this fight that is linked to their characters. Most of us stay in vehicles and don't even push a heal or dps button for the whole fight.
This is a sure fact for tanks, though 2 (4 in 25-Man) players will be sent on FL to shut down the towers and stun it for a little bit about 2 times during the fight. In 10-Man you'll most of the time send 2 dpsers, in 25-Man you often send 1 healer with 3 dpsers (and the healer can be you).
You have to clearly know who's going to be sent on the Leviathan, and they should be fully buffed (BoK is mandatory !). They could have to endure heavy damage is they stand on the ground a little too long after the Leviathan global shut-down, and before they are picked-up by motorcycles (motorcycle pilots can heal their passenger before giving it back to the Demolishers). Hence, the more health they have, the best chance they have to survive, and you don't want to lose them.

To sum it up, buff the people being sent on the Leviathan, heal if you are part of them.

Razorscale

From a healer point of view there are 3 different "phases" in this fight.
Phase 1 is when Razorscale is flighing.
There will be adds that your tanks will pick-up. Keep your tanks up, and watch the raid that will take heavy damage with whirlwinds and chain lightnings. You also have to watch for Razorscale Fireball and Devouring Flame. I hope for you that people won't stay too much in the blue devouring flame patches on the ground or keeping them alive could start to be difficult.
In this phase depending on raid healers I often keep my Beacon of Light on myself and heals the MT in charge of the Sentinels (one of our tanks take both Sentinels to avoid them whirlwinding the raid). That way I don't really have to watch my health and can keep my MT targeted at all times, and sometimes send Holy Shock here and there in the raid.
Flash of Light and Holy Shock should be your main tools in this phase.
Phase 2 is when Razorscale is on the ground for 30s.
If there are still adds, let them live, and heal the tanks. The whole raid should concentrate on Razorscale. When she will take flight again, she will do two things. She will flamebreath in front of her, probably killing the remaining adds and doing heavy damage to your tanks. And she will Wing Buffet, aoe knock-back interrupting your heals. The wing buffet happens a few seconds after the breath, be ready to have your tank fully healed in these few seconds. There should be very little raid damage during this part. If you have two tanks, put your Beacon on one, heal the other.
Flash of Light and Holy Shock should be your main tools in this phase, with an occasional Holy Light on a tank if too many adds were left alive.
Phase 3 is from 50% life of Razorscale to its death, when she's definitely on the ground.
Two tanks switching on Razorscale regularly, heavy damage on the tank, a bit of raid damage mostly avoidable (the Fireballs and Devouring Flames or phase 1 are back). These are the characteristics of this phase, mostly a burn-her-down and hope you make the timer (which shouldn't be too hard now ^^).
It's probably not very usefull to heal "both tanks" at the same time as only one will take damage at some time. Once again, chose how you use your beacon depending on your raid (if you're helping with raid healing or purely tank healing mostly). I often use it on myself if I'm confident in our healing, just to ensure I don't die stupidly on a double fireball while I'm casting Holy Lights on the tank. If there is need of me on raid healing, then Beacon on my tank is the way to go.
You'll most probably use Holy Light much more in this phase than the two first ones. Use your Divin Plea whenever you can during the fight to try being full mana when you start this phase. Having a Light's Grace buff stacked during this phase can help you a lot to react quickly to Razorscale tank changes.

For all fights
As always, keep Sacred Shield up at all times on your tank, and Judge often (Wisdom, or Light if you're the only paladin) to keep your Judgements of the Pure up at least (each 20s should eb your aim when you can to maintain the debuff up).

That's it for today. Ignis soon, and you can expect at least up to Freya next week. I'll keep all the posts linked in the upcoming ones.

Ulduar Raid Healing, part 3

I have already discussed healing in Ulduar and what we need to change from our Naxx routines in two previous articles:
Ulduar Paladin Healing Guides
Ulduar Paladin Healing Tips

After a few raiding nights, and advancing a little more in Ulduar myself (up to Thorim), I'll try to update my views. You can probably expect a "trash healing guide" I'll write during the weekend, as I find sometimes trash more surprising than bosses :P

I've said earlier to use Beacon of Light on yourself. That's still very valid for most bosses I've seen. On Ignis, Razorscale, XT, Kologarn surely, on other bosses (Iron Council, Auriaya) that is more of a discussion and that can depend on your assignment.
Now I've really seen trashs where Beacon should be on you or not, these are the trash mobs before Kologarn (antechamber) and before Auriaya.

When you pass XT, you'll be in front of packs of 3 sorts of mobs, sheep and ban can really help you a lot but expect to take some damage spikes on you (there are chain lightnings), while if your raid does good cc, and if your tank for the giants don't stand on charged punches, there should be only one tank (2 in heroic) tanks taking damage. This is a perfect time to use Beacon on you to ensure your survavibility while keeping a constant focus on your tank for reactivity on damage spikes.

Once you've down Kologarn, you're going to face the iron giants duos on Auriaya ring. These guys can output huge damage spikes on your tanks, while the rest of the raid should take very minor damage. That's the perfect set to have your beacon on the tank that you're not healing (they require a tank on heal infusion on each of them). That will allow you to heal both of the tanks at the same time, and help a lot with these bad and dealy damage spikes while your raid takes care of the lightning orbs and giants.

Clearly, these two settings are very different, and that's what I like the most in Ulduar. Bosses, but even trash mobs have very different strategies, require cc, require different healer assignments ...etc
Adaptability is a real raiding strength and knowledge, something you don't just get with loot. That is what I like in raids that push you to play a little better than just heal/damage spams.

I surely wish to see more of Ulduar soon, the deeper I go, the better it becomes. Please don't nerf the third part of it too soon, Blizzard :P

Ulduar Paladin Healing Tips (update)

Pallymar took the time to write an answer to my previous healing post on his blog, you can read the complete version on Pallymar's Take.
I'm going to discuss here the three previous points I mentioned and try to answer Pallymar with a little more Ulduar experience for myself.
I did Ignis 10, Council of Iron 10 and XT-002 25 this weekend, they are strongly different fights in term of healing. I think that one very interesting thing in Ulduar is that you have to be very adaptable, and change your healing startegy with each boss.

On the use of the Beacon of Light

Beacon of Light: The target becomes a Beacon of Light to all targets within a 40 yard radius. Any heals you cast on those targets will also heal the Beacon for 100% of the amount healed. Only one target can be the Beacon of Light at a time. Lasts 1 min.

Simply said this skill duplicates all your heals to a specific target on which you have put your beacon.
Previous to Ulduar, I've already used it on the MT, or OT, depending on who I was assigned to heal and depending on the raid damage. If I expected to raid heal from time to time, it was on my main target (MT or OT). If raid damage was low enough to not need me, I'll put it on the MT or OT that was not my main target, to help its assigned healer.
The tip I got from the two guides I mentioned in my previous post was saying to use the Beacon on yourself, I found that change worth mentioning, as it was a strong change of style from pre-Ulduar. Pallymar disagreed with that tip, advocating a more classical use of the beacon (in the line of the ones I just talked about). I should say that, from my experience before Ulduar, that was really the thing to do ... now ...

In all my 3 boss fights (10 and 25 Man) I tried to use Beacon of Light differently, tried to see it's effectiveness, and how were other healers going. After several tries, I find putting it on you the most effective use, even though it'll make it generate about 60-80% overhealing ... (hopefully you are taking much less damade than the tank you are assigned to).
That defense of this strange and hps ineffective use could sound very weird to you, I don't doubt that. Please try it in Ulduar and tell me what you think of it. I'll illustrate why I think it's a good idea in a lot of fights with a few examples:
Ignis, if you ever end in the slag pot, you can continue to heal the MT without problem, and survive the pot, as you'll get a lot of heals on yourself with the beacon.
Iron Counsil, during most of this fight, raid damage is relatively low, and you won't have to think about it as a paladin, besides keeping your tank or off-tank up will be a challenge, burst damage in this three bosses encounter is extremely high, and triple chains of Holy Light are sometimes required. You should never untarget your tank, and having the beacon on yourself allows you to not bother about healing yourself, always be full life, and not die stupidly to an aoe burst (wether it is an arcane buble explosion or a green patch of death).
XT-002, this can depend on your assignment and your raid strategy, but once again, using the Beacon on yourself will guaranty that you're always full life, which prevents you from dying on unlucky damage procs, I have seen too many healers dying because they were mid-life when hit by a Light Bomb for example. An exception to that could be Tympanic Tantrum, if you need to raid heal (that depends on your raid) using the beacon on your assigned tank (probably the MT) could allow you to raid heal and keep him up at the same time. Though, take care, this is not Naxramass and if you happen to overheal on raid healing (overhealing is not duplicated by the beacon) that could mean his death, as XT-002 damage is not to be taken lightly.

To sum-up, it all depends on the fight, and I think that:
if your life is safe (considering the amount of raid damage in Ulduar that means that your raid healers are on their top),
if you can have a good target for your beacon, like healing two tanks at the same time,
then don't use the beacon on yourself.
In all other situations, use it for your own good, that will ensure two things:
you'll stay alive in most situations, which means you'll maintain the heals on your tank (a dead healer heals not much),
you'll keep your tank on target, which means faster reaction when these deadly damage bursts happen.

Sacred Shield is your MT friend

Sacred Shield: Each time the target takes damage they gain a Sacred Shield, absorbing 500 damage and increasing the paladin's chance to critically hit with Flash of Light by 50% for up to 6 sec. They cannot gain this effect more than once every 6 sec. Lasts 30 sec. This spell cannot be on more than one target at any one time.

This spell was strongly nerfed in 3.1 with the addition of the last sentence. The reason was that "it was too strong" on a raid mitigation point of view. In fact, that was our real raid healign ability. So is it still worth it ? Oh yes, it is ! Keep it up at all times on your assigned target, or perhaps the MT if your target is not receiving constant damage (which would be a surprising assignment for a paladin).
Pallymar agrees with that statement. Considering Sacred Shield efficiency has not changed, and it scales very good with your spell power, keep it up at all times.

What should you do with this weapon in your hand ?

Judgement of Wisdom should be up on the raid boss at all time, with the mana regen nerfs (spirit, blessing of wisdom/mana tide totem) it is a clear statement. The only reason for it to not be up is that you're ponly having one paladin in the raid and Judgement of Light is prefered for that encounter.
So hitting the boss a few times with your weapon will give you a few mana procs, for free as you'll swing between your casts, without any sort of slow down on your casting.
Pallymar disagrees with that statement, saying that it is mostly worthless, and should not be necessary.
With a bit more raid experience, I would not say it is wortless. I was having real issues with mana on the Iron Council, keeping the off-tank (tanking the 2 "small" dwarves while the raid kills Ironbreaker) by myself. But if you need these mana procs, that probably means, as Pallymar says, that you or your raid is not up to the task.
I will add to that point that going up to melee can also be very dangerous, there are a lot of point blanck aoe damage, and the time you need to run to melee and run back to healing position can be too much as we mostly can't heal while moving.
To conclude on that, if you feel like you have the time, and don't really need to heal for a little, hit your Divine Plea and go melee for a little. As Pallymar mentioned XT-002 Tympanic Tantrum is a good example of such moments. But whenever you are not sure of the situation, stay far from aoe damage and don't take any risk for so little mana regen.

I'll try to put more healing advices here when I'll have more Ulduar experience and perhaps some boss healing guides. Thanks to Pallymar for adding some good insight to my previous post.

Ulduar paladin healing guides

And back to the blog after a few days out of town and far from the game. How are you all doing in Ulduar ? Having fun, I hope.
I've not raided this week so I won't give my own view of Ulduar, but I've read two really good healing guides and I'm inviting you to read them too:

Healing Guide to Ulduar, on the Munch Land
Paladin Healing in Heroic Hulduar, on World of Matticus

Both are 25-Man (aka heroic) views about healing, but they are still good pointers about Ulduar, for both 25-Man and 10-Man.
As for paladins, well, aoe damage and mobile healing isn't our forte, as you know. So expect to be "reduced" to tank healing again.

Now a few first basic advices, that you can find examples of in the guides I've linked.

Especially in 10-Man, use Beacon of Light on yourself to stay alive.That point could be the strongest change from "Nax style" healing. As being non mobile healers, we have to stand in the fire sometimes to toss that heal, and we're confronted to the choice of moving & surviving, or staying & dying. And in such cases, the first choice which is the obvious one, can mean the death of the character we are assigned to heal. That's were the bacon will save you and your assignement. Aoe damage and mobility in Nax were much less an issue, you will feel they are in Ulduar.

Keep up that Sacred Shield. Mitigation is the new deus of healing. Spikes are very common and very strong in Ulduar, Razorscale blue fire patches and fireballs will probably be the first ones you encouter. Disc priests obviously have the edge on mitigation and shielding, but even if it has been strongly nerfed, keep your Sacred Shield up on the player in danger of spikes (if you ues a fireball "tank" on Razorscale it will be him for example).

My last advice, try to hit that boss a few times with your mace/sword/stick to get some mana back. With judgement of wisdom on it, you should be able to get some good mana regen even if with only a few hits during the whole fight. Most bosses have phases in Ulduar, and some of them are less healing intensive and will give you the opportunity to do that. Learn your bosses and try to find the right times to get these mana regen hits.

A Post for Raiding Healers

Another link post, to invite you to read interesting blogs about healing and raiding.

First, a fine post by Kestrel on Kestrel's Aerie about sites to visit and read when you're a raiding healer.
He points you towards World of Matticus and Plus Heal, that are very large and good resources for healers. But also to less obvious sites about loot and raid bosses videos.
As a healer, knowing how to heal, how to use your skills, is an obvious first. But then, if you want to raid, any raider arriving on a new boss should know the upgrades he wants, and know the strats. Healers are no exception to this rule :P

And then, a fine post by Kyrilean on Casual Hardcore about DKP. I'm not a big fan of DKP myself, but I can't see a serious raiding guild going without it. I found his post and the description of the DKP system of his guild interesting, perhaps you will too.

Raid Healing Analysis & Dual-spec for Healers

I'll start with a very good post from Khaeli on Shadow Weaving. It is about analysing a WWS parse report. I guess all experienced raiders should know how to do that. But in case you're still a bit confused with the amount of information in these logs, Khaeli gives us a lot of very meaningfull advices from a healing point of view.

Ambrosyne from i like bubbles wrote a post about dual-spec. How will you use dual-spec as a raiding healing paladin ? Ambrosyne tries to answer this question, considering also the side of a disc priest. For me it'll be prot most probably, just in case we're short a tank as my guild is sort of low on tanks, as we don't want to have to make them sit aside during r25 nights.

As a side note, small good news for retribution paladins on WoW insider, the bug about Sheath of Light not contributing to Sacred Shield should be corrected soon. Not huge but he, in these times a buff is a buff.