Holydin - PvE 4.2

So I need some advice for holy paladin in LFR.

So far, I pretty much treat it the same as in a 10 man - we have holy priests, druids, and resto shamans? I'll focus more on tank healing, and not bother spamming Holy Radiance until OOM. Apparently, this is Unacceptable.

Mostly, what do the other holy paladins do, other than spam HR, and hope someone else picks up tank healing?

(Really frustrated, and can't quite put into words what I'm asking, I guess)

I'm not sure what you mean by "unacceptable". Are people calling you out for being low on the meters? They're completely irrelevant for LFR because there's not enough healing required to keep all 6 healers busy.

Here's what I do in LFR:

Morchok - Help soak bubbles because dps don't want to. HR after stomp and use WoG to top up a tank every now and then.
Zon'ozz - Beacon tank, heal the bubble bouncer, HR spam during dark phase
Yor'sahj - Heal tank a bit, then use Speed of Light to chase said tank half way across the map when he takes off after a slime with massive debuff stacks. Spam HR during black phase and red phase, except if blue is up, in which case follow the void until someone remembers to kill it.
Haggara - Use glyphed DP to soak up some ice shards. Heal up "that guy" who miraculously survives ice walls with 1% health
Ultraxion - Spam HR, use LoD and maybe a DL to heal the tank up after Hour of Twilight
Gunship - Use HR on the melee who all got themselves debuffed by the cleave, spot heal the raid with HL.
Spine - /dance, taunt bloods off people who are trying to kill them too far from the amalgamation, exo spam on the tendon
Madness - This one I actually dedicate some attention to keeping the tanks alive by watching DBM for incoming Impale. Once corruptions are down, just spam HR when the bloods and tentacles come out. Use DP while changing platforms.

rodos wrote:I'm not sure what you mean by "unacceptable". Are people calling you out for being low on the meters? They're completely irrelevant for LFR because there's not enough healing required to keep all 6 healers busy.

So pretty much what I do. In this case, a dumbass dk called for me and a priest to be vote kicked for "low healing" except the reason that 8 people fell over dead on Kalec's platform was AoE on the blistering tentacles. The tanks told them it was dps issue, not healing issue.

Pretty much what I do on Ami is beacon one tank, focus on the other, except for obvious idiots.

Morchok: Heal tanks, heal dps near me during the crystals, heal up the raiders smart enough to get out of blood
Zon'ozz: Beacon bubble chaser, heal tank, spam HR and LoD during transitions
Yor'sahj: Beacon tank, melee Yor during blood to regain mana (I've never had a tank take off after the bloods)
Hagara: HR on melee, heal the tank who didn't get out of FA, melee adds/totems
Ultraxion: Heal tanks, HR/LoD after Hour, use the goddamn purple button when I need to
Ship: Heal tanks, HR/LoD when needed
Spine: same as above
Madness: Beacon one tank, heal the other, HR melee, LoD ranged, AM bolts, HR spam bloods, melee/DP the wing/arm/whatever

Just wasn't sure if there was some other obvious thing I'm missing

Tanks don't take damage in LFR. No really, they take only marginally more damage than the rest of the raid does from the AoE mechanics in most fights in that mode. I can't believe I'm saying this but just meter pad with holy radiance. Damage is so low that you should be able to melee frequently and use DP whenever needed for mana as well as judging once a minute.

ITT: Levie encouraging bad habits lol

Will do, as it appears my only mistake was actually tank healing

I had a priest heals zone in on Gunship last week in shadow form and stay that way the whole fight. She topped the dps meter. Nobody complained.

I wasn't joking about the /dance on Spine. In LFR there is almost zero damage on that fight, outside a few seconds when an amalg is at 9 stacks.

What little damage there is can likely be healed with shaman totems and spriest vampiric embrace.

The problem I come across is running out of mana if I try to "spam" to top the meters. Not sure if I'm doing it wrong, or I just need more spirit (see: Aleks in my sig.)

For LFR, I change a couple of little things with how I heal vs my normal 10-man:

#1: Change out the LoD glyph; 6 targets is better than 4 targets in 25-man.

#2: Change out of the Beacon glyph; there are so few tank swaps that your Beacon on the "MT" will almost always heal damage.

#3: Alternate Holy Radiance with LoD. Doing well on LFR healing meters is about healing "now" so it registers rather than healing "lots" because your heals will be sniped all the time. In AoE, I cast "HR-LoD-HR-LoD-HR-LoD" which is both much "quicker" to get healing pumpued out and is more mana-friendly than the traditional "HR-HR-HR-LoD" or "HR-HR-HS-LoD" cycle.

#4: I fully replace Divine Light with Flash of Light when needing to cast a single target cast time heal. Again, quick registers the heal, big just gets added to overhealing.

#5: I still end up doing those jobs that don't show well on healing meters (keep the ball bouncer alive on Zoz, focus heal the Focused Assault tank on Hargara, run and DPS slimes on Yor'shaj, soak up purple swirls on gunship) but I am still typically pretty competitive on healing done vs other LFR healers.

If your meter addon does not show absorbs along with healing, then you may also be getting a distorted picture of your output. With Skada, you can show "aborbs and healing" together and that often raises me from 3rd or 4th place if you look at pure healing to 1st or 2nd place when you add in absorbs.

Poptart

Okay, what Haste level are people shooting for?

To frame the question, I devalue Crit to the point where I am refusing to equip any DS gear with Crit on it. The only exception to that rule is the Vagaries of Time that I won during week one of DS since there is not a good alternative to it (however, if the LFR Maw ever drops for me, I will equip that instead of the 397 Vagaries). However, I am not purchasing any VP gear with Crit on it and I am not equipping any drop that has crit on it; it is going to the off-spec Holy Paladin.

So, I am at about 3100 Spirit, 2400 Haste and around 800 Mastery rating. I am trying to decide where I want my Haste to be. I don't think there are any reliable breakpoints around that Haste level and I could not get to the 3,000 haste breakpoint even if I wanted to. I am trying to see if I want to drop 400-600 rating from Haste into Mastery to boost my shields if that would work or not. Cast times would only rise by 0.1 sec or around there.

Throughts? What are other people doing for gearing? Strict 10-man reg healer that is two healing some fights but three healing most fights.

Poptart

poptart wrote:focus heal the Focused Assault tank on Hargara

The number of LFR tanks that haven't worked out that you can walk out of Focused Assault astounds me.

poptart wrote:what Haste level are people shooting for

I'm still gearing for haste as my top secondary stat. The breakpoints aren't so meaningful any more, but I just like being able to get heals off quicker when I need to. It's probably doesn't make a real difference - 100ms here or there - but it's hard to make a break psychologically.

I agree that dropping some haste into mastery is probably a good idea. There's a few situations in DS where being able to drop a little more shielding could be handy, e.g. drop a DL on the tank before Hour of Twilight on Ultraxion or Impale on Madness. The question is, what balance point to choose? I'm tempted to go for an even 2.0s cast time on HL/DL/HR with raid buffs and then move into mastery. I'm just not really motivated to do it right now though, because our raid team fell apart :-/