Alternative Medicine pt. 2 – Paladins
Yesterday I started a series examining the healing abilities and styles of non-Druids in order to educate myself and others as to how our raidmates are accomplishing their healing assignments. Shamans were covered already. Still to come are Holy Priests and Discipline Priests. For today, I look at Paladins.
Armor type: Pallies can equip plate, mail, leather, or cloth items, though I’d like to see the priests’ faces in a raid if a pally rolled on cloth. Heh.
Stats: Intellect is a hugely important stat for Holy Pallies, building their mana pool, their mana regen, their crit percentage and their spell power. Paladins also benefit greatly from building their critical strike rating, particularly at higher gear levels because this stat scales so well for them. Not only do their critical strikes heal for 50% more, they cost 60% less mana if the Paladin takes the Illumination talent. Nice, huh? Haste is as useful for Pallies as it is for any other healer, basically. Mp5 is ok for them, but Int is much more useful. Spirit is not a stat that pallies stack.
Utility: Paladins can offer various auras to nearby party members, including Devotion Aura, Concentration Aura, Shadow Resistance Aura, Frost Resistance Aura, and Fire Resistance Aura. Devotion Aura adds additional armor to nearby party members. Concentration Aura reduces the chance that players near the Paladin will have their spell casting interrupted by damage. Holy Pallies also have Blessings available to them, which they can cast on raid members. Included are Might, which increases attack power; and Wisdom, which restores mana. They also bring the infamous “bubble,” or Hand of Protection, which shields a party member from all physical damage for a period of time, but also keeps that party member from doing any damage while activated. Hand of Freedom is another Paladin utility spell, which removes all movement impairing effects from the target for 10 minutes. With Purification, Pallies can remove one poison and one disease effect from a target; Cleanse does the same but also removes a magic effect. They can also offer a form of crowd control for undead with Turn Undead which makes their target flee, and Turn Evil which also works for demons. They can resurrect dead members of the raid once combat has ended.
Healing Style: Holy Lightis a straightforward, large, direct heal somewhat similar to Healing Touch. As with Healing Touch this spell’s long cast time can be talented down. Flash of Lightis a smaller, faster heal in their repetoire. Interestingly, in contrast to Shamans, Paladin’s large direct heal, Holy Light, is less mana efficient than their smaller heal, Flash of Light. For instant cast healing, Pallies can turn to Holy Shock, which is a large direct heal. The trade off for this spell being instant cast is in mana efficiency, which is less for this spell than for Holy Light. Paladins can talent into Divine Favor, which when activated gives their next Holy Light, Flash of Light, or Holy Shock spell a 100% chance to crit. For mana conservation Paladins are able to cast Divine Illumniation, which cuts the mana cost of their spells by 50% for 15 seconds. The 51 point talent for Holy Pallies is Beacon of Light, which when cast on a target will for one minute heal that target for 100% of the amount of healing done for any other raid member within 40 yards of the target. Overhealing does not apply to the second target. Man does THAT ever sound nifty! =) The closest thing Paladins have to a HoT spell is Judgement of Light, which is cast on a mob. For 20 seconds, melee and ranged attacks on the mob will have a chance of healing the attacker by an amount based upon the Paladin’s level. (Thanks to my GM Fierabras for pointing this one out to me!) In terms of mitigation, Pallies can cast Sacred Shield on a target. This 30 second shield absorbs 500 damage each time the target is hit, as well as providing a a 50% increased chance that Flash of Light will be a crit for 6 seconds following each hit. Another mitigation spell for Pallies is Hand of Salvation, which reduces threat on a target by 2% every one second for 10 seconds. In a tight pinch, Paladins can use Lay on Hands, which heals their target for the amount of the Paladin’s maximum health. this spell has a 20 minute cooldown.
As you can see, Paladin healing is very different from Druid healing in many ways. Most significantly, they do not have any HoTs at all in their spell rotation, which renders all of their healing reactive with the exception of Sacred Shield. The closest thing they have to a group heal is Beacon of Light, but this ability will only effect two targets for any one heal. However, unlike both our Tranqulity and Wild Growth spells, this spell has only a global cooldown. Additionally, they have far fewer spells to choose from than Druids do. In fact, we have as many HoTs as they have healing spells! They are further limited in the amount of instant healing options they have. Because of their healing style, Paladins are expected to have far more overhealing in an encounter than other healing classes. They bring a good variety of raid utility to the table, and shine as tank or off tank healers. Raid healing assignments present more of a challenge for them because of their lack of group heals and HoTs. However, their direct heals are strong, and a druid/pally healing combination would seem to cover a lot of bases because of how complimentary our healing styles are.
Thanks to Nibuca in the Blog Azeroth chat channel for helping to straighten out some of this pally stuff for me!
Other posts in this series:
Alternative Medicine pt. 1 – Shamans
Alternative Medicine pt. 3 – Holy Priests
Alternative Medicine pt. 4 – Discipline Priests
There are 13 Comments to "Alternative Medicine pt. 2 – Paladins"
[...] Other posts in this series: Alternative Medicine pt. 2 – Paladins [...]
All in all a very good summation of paladin basics. There is one ability that is often overlooked though, judgement of light. On heavy AoE fights (Saphirron in example) it accounts for a tremendous amount of healing. With equivalent gear though this spell is maintained first by a retribution paladin (has the strongest coefficients)followed by holy and then protection.
ooo, thanks, Fier! I will do a little due dilligence on this and add it to the post. Thanks so much for the input and for coming by! /hug
Great post. Pally’s also have Seals. The primary one for the Holy Pally is Seal of Wisdom which gives a chance on hit to restore 4% of the Paladin’s maximum mana (which we use to cast Judgment of Light). The seals are Pally specific buffs, but can be used for a secondary damage effect on mobs by using them to cast judgments.
Also, Flash of Light is considered to be one of the most mana efficient healing spells in the game (one of the fastest non-instant cast time spells, too). During certain fights, Pally’s can spam FoL heals on the tank to increase survivability.
aaah good stuff. Somehow I thought that seals had been removed from the game or combined with judgements or something. Drrrrrrr look at the silly tree talk about Pallies! lol! I”ll update the post soon adding the Seal of Wisdom. Thanks for coming by, Denwar! =) /hug
[...] Alternative Medicine pt. 1 – Shamans Alternative Medicine pt. 2 – Paladins [...]
I see I see. All this time I thought pally healing was easy peasy. I can see what unique position they’re put in compared to other classes.
Now I know why our pally healer has an 73% over-heal rate. Thanks for the great info!
Yea, I was kind of snotty a while ago about the overhealing of some pallies until I learned that it is just par for the course for their class. Knowledge is a good thing lol!
[...] Medicine pt. 1 – Shamans Alternative Medicine pt. 2 – Paladins Alternative Medicine pt. 3 – Holy Priests Tags: discipline priest, priest, priest healing Post a [...]
Here’s a few additional comments about Paladin healing, like ShamanSnake’s about Shamans on the part 1. Yes, this is a little bit late, but I think this series is of tremendous value to all healers and leaders, and want to make the information as complete and accurate as possible. My background is not as authoritative as I’d like, so anything I get wrong, feel free to correct me on. My Pally leveled as Ret, switched to Holy at 70. Has been 80 for about a month, and have done several of heroic and regular versions of all raids prior to 3.1 content.
Armor: I would never roll on cloth, myself. I wear almost exclusively plate, and will roll on mail only if it’s a pretty nice upgrade. One of the reasons I chose a Healadin in the first place is that if the tank screws up, I can heal myself through a beating, instead of getting one-shotted. But only if I’m actually wearing (mostly) plate.
Utility: The only combat aura you didn’t mention was Retribution. It is like thorns, but for everyone in the party. It also stacks with thorns. This can be used if the tank is having a problem generating threat. Each time a mob hits the tank, it hits for about 150 (IIRC) which generates threat for the tank.
Blessings: I know this was written pre 3.1, but I don’t feel bad including this 3.1-specific update: Kings is now also a core class buff. Therefore, I put Kings on the tank, Might on all other melee, and Wisdom on all casters, unless there’s a melee that keeps pulling aggro and taking dmg, in which case I’ll give him Kings too.
Healing Style: There’s another spell that plays a key role in our rotation / style: Divine Plea. It restores 25% of our total mana over 15 seconds, on a one minute cooldown. The catch is that the power of our three staple spells (HL, FoL, HS) are cut in half for the duration. This can be a tremendous source of mana during long boss fights. In order to use it however, I make sure we’re at a point where I know the tank won’t be taking any gigantic spike damage, and I make sure another healer knows to help keep the tank up for a bit. Ideally, I don’t like to cast at all for those 15 seconds.
Seals: Denwar pointed out in the comments the Paladin’s use of seals as a secondary source of damage, but I’d like to expand on what Seal of Wisdom (SoW) means for me. Holy Paladins’ judgements are talented from 10 yd range to 40, same as our other heals, so we can sit in the back and never use SoW as anything more than the prereq to getting our 15% haste buff every minute. However, SoW also makes it so melee attacks we deal have a (pretty good) chance to restore 4% of our total mana pool. Being a plate wearer, I don’t fear mobs, or the back sides of bosses. If the chance presents itself, I will position myself near a mob, or a boss’ backside with auto-attack on for that chance of free mana during any instant in which I’m not casting. Don’t be surprised if you see Holy Paladins in the thick of things while the other 3 healing classes are standing in the back wondering where we are.
Jzar, excellent! Thank you so much for the extended comment about paladin healing. There is all kinds of great information there and I really appreciate you taking the time!
[...] Rolling Hots has some great write-ups on the healing methods of each healing class: Shaman, Paladin, Holy Priest, and Discipline Priest. His blog of course is a great source of information to learn [...]