Holy Paladin Mastery, is it really that bad?

I know that for my holy paladin that I go for Intellect> Spirit> Haste> Critical> Mastery. That set up seems to be the accepted best way to go, but I like to think about other options. Could Mastery end up being our best stat (if we're able to get a ton of it?).

What does it do?
Our Mastery is Illuminated Healing. At level 80 our direct healing spells will give a shield that absorbs damage. It lasts for 15 seconds (as of Patch 4.1), it starts at absorbing 10% of the heal, and increases at 1.5% per point of mastery (also as of Patch 4.1). Essentially this replaced Sacred Sheild for holy paladins, and I find it to be an interesting mastery compared to other healers.

Why is it so bad for us?
There are a few reasons. First, the sheild isn't terribly powerful. Absorbing for 10% of a 7k heal is only 700 damage absorbed, and that's pretty lackluster. Second, in comparison to Haste, Mastery appears to be very weak. To give you an idea, If I have a Shadow Priest, Boomkin, or Elemental Shaman in my heroic group I am sitting around 30% haste. That's right around where my haste was at in Icecrown. Heals are faster, the global cooldown is smaller, and Holy Radiance ticks more often. A lot of positives going on, all at once. Mastery isn't really keeping up.

What to do now?
The buffs to Mastery in 4.1 are going to help it out. Currently it is pretty even with Critical, so I would gague the buff to push it behind haste. I want to see if it can pass haste, and maybe even spriit. If the shields can become powerful enough to prevent us from casting as many heals, then we won't need the mana regen from spirit because we aren't casting as often.

So, I plan to head over to the Public Test Realms. While Blizzard is still testing for patch 4.2, I'm going to copy my paladin, and make a premade one to see how powerful Mastery can be. I'm going to gem exclusively for it, gear and reforge for it, and test my skills as healing with it. I'll be sure to record my numbers on recount, and I'll report my results as soon as I am finished.

Hypothesis
Everything is better when you have a ton of it. I hope to find that with a ton of Mastery you can be completely viable. If I am wrong, well it wouldn't be the first time.

Holy Paladin Healing,

As my guild has gotten closer to leveling to 25, my girlfriend and I have jumped back into running guild heroics. This has allowed me to heal heroics again, and I have really enjoyed it. So, I wanted to share my strategies for healing heroics, and healing in general. 

Holy Powah....err Power

Holy Power is your friend. You want to generate Holy Power as much as you can, so you'll want to use Holy Shock as much as you can. Being able to generate Holy Power often, allows you to use Word of Glory more often. More Word of Glory means more free heals, and that is always good. You can also use Light of Dawn with your Holy Power, but unless you're going to heal at least three of your group members with it the output isn't as good. I compare Light of Dawn to my priest's Circle of Healing, only it's a lot less useful. 

Beacon of Light is a must 

Always, always, always put this spell on someone who is going to take high amounts of consistent damage. Typically this target will be your tank, and you will be so glad that it is. I remember when this spell went live near the end of Burning Crusade, and it was a lifesaver when I was healing heroics then. While it will provide the majority of your overhealing, if have the glyph all of that healing is free. Even without the glyph since it lasts for 5 minutes if you cast it before a fight the mana cost won't really be an issue. Use it, use it, use it, you'll forget about it when it is up, and notice your tank dying when it's not. 

Holy Light is your friend.

Holy Light is your least expensive heal, and it will be your most used spell after every run. If my target is above 40% health, I'm going to use Holy Light (unless I can use Holy Shock of course). I also won't heal my target unless they've lost 10 thousand health. Even though Holy Light is cheap, I still want to reduce my overhealing whenever I can. 

Divine Light

Divine Light is our biggest heal. I use this whenever the tank is getting below 50% health, and whenever Holy Light won't be enough for one of the dps. Be careful not to rely on its potency unless you need to, it is very easy to spam in a pinch, but if you're not careful you will run out of mana before you know it. 

An added bonus to Divine Light is its ability to grant a charge of Holy Power when you heal a target who has Beacon of Light. This is very helpful for charging up your Holy Power, and really helps you pile on the Word of Glory. 

Flash of Light 

Flash of Light  is our fastest heal, and should only be used when you target is going to die. When Holy Light and Divine Light aren't fast enough, Flash of Light is a must. Like Divine Light, you will need to limit your use of this spell. It is very expensive, and will run your mana into the ground if you're not careful. 

When you need to bring someone back from the brink of death Flash of Light is great. Don't forget about Holy Shock and Word of Glory, though. Holy Shock may not do much healing, but Word of Glory is and they are both really cheap and instant. Sometime 1.5 seconds still isn't fast enough, and if you can send a Word of Glory instead it could mean the difference between life and death. 

We can raid heal now right?

With the addition of Light of Dawn and Holy Radiance combined with Beacon of Light, our ability to heal multiple targets has tripled in strength. Holy Radiance is a must have for certain fights, and while it won't do all of your healing it will serve as a much needed health buffer while you're casting your heals. I like to use this with my cooldowns whenever possible. Making the healing from this spell more powerful really helps when the boss is dealing massive damage to your whole group. Don't be afraid to use it on trash, and combine it with Light of Dawn whenever you can. Don't use it on cooldown though, it has a hefty mana cost and a 30 second cooldown. If you use it at a time when you don't really need it, you're going to miss it when people start dying. 

Using Cooldowns 

I try to save all of our cooldowns for boss fights. We have so many to choose from that it is always best to have a lot of options when we need to keep people alive. Whether you're increasing your haste and crit, increasing your healing done, or summoning a shiny winged guy with a sword to help you heal we have three tools to help us heal more. On top of that we can reduce the damage that we take, reduce the amount of damage someone else takes, protect someone from physical damage, and protect ourselves from all damage . And if you choose to you can increase the power of your auras. So many ways to save people on top of our healing spells. Do not use them lightly, but don't be afraid to save a life when you can. Too often I forget to use a lot of these, and at the end of a fight I think about how much easier it could have been if I could have remember to press the button. 

I think that about covers everything that I wanted to mention, and I hope it is helpful. The best way to heal, is always the way that you find to be most useful, and never forget it. 

Healing Dunegons as a Holy Priest

Jumping back into talking about some healing. Yesterday I was dpsing with a guildie who is new to healing as holy, and as we went through he reminded me that finding the right balance of spells to use is not easy by any means. This is not meant to limit your spell usage only to those I have mentioned. The key to effective healing is always through trial and error. Learn what your spells do and evaluate how you can best use them. This is meant to be a starting point for anyone unsure about what to do.

Chakra, learn it, live it, love it
So to start off, for most dungeons you'll spend a lot of time in Chakra:Serenity. For the excetion of trash and bosses with heavy groupwide damage, your main healing spell will be Heal, and being in Serenity just makes the most sense.

Lightwell is your Friend
Before I jump into spell usage, I want to add that casting Lightwell before every boss fight is important. Even if no one else uses it, if the only healing doe to you is through the Lightwell, it has saved you from casting heals on yourself, which is totally worth it.

PoM
After a few nights of running dungeons I was able to see just how much of my healing is coming from my spells. The winner by far is Prayer of Mending. I use it every chance I get always on the tank, and it is by far my leader in healing done. Always use Prayer of Mending!

Healing slow with Heal
Next up is Heal. I use this whenever my targets have 50% or more health, and only if they have taken enough damage (normally around 7,000) first. I like to try to keep Renew on the tank as much as I can. This isn't too hard as long as I'm in Serenity as the Heals refresh its durration.

Emergency use only
I only use Flash Heal if someone is in danger of dying, or if I have a Surge of Light pop up. It is an expensive heal, and while it grants Serendipity, it's not really needed outside of emergencies. Typically if someone needs a big heal Greater Heal will have enough time to land, so casting Flash of Light outside of Surge of Light to maintain Serendipity isn't needed.

Group Healing at its Finest
If atleast 4 members of the group have taken significant damage, I use Prayer of Healing and Circle of Healing. If I have to use these spells often, I should be in Chakra: Sanctuary so their potency is buffed. The same goes for Holy Word: Sanctuary, I try to only use this when the group is stacked up so that it is healing to its fullest. These three spells can cause the most overheal, so don't waste them if you don't have to.

Renew and PW:S
There are times when Renew is really awesome and great to spam on the group, but there aren't many of these times. I've found it's most use to come on the tank. The same goes for Power Word: Shield. With its steep mana cost I try to only use it to give someone the Body and Soul speed boost.

Wraping up
In general try to reduce your overhealing as much as you can. Ideally you should be able to stay below 10% overhealing. Remeber Prayer of Mending, and don't forget about your Chakra and the Lightwell.

Abandon Ship

After recently changing this blogs focus, I've decided to just start a new blog. My new blog, Wasting Time Wowing, will be about my experiences playing the game, while this blog will return to its original focus. Once I jump back into healing on a more regular basis I'll post more about that here. I'm going to leave the older (and outdated) posts in case you're feeling nostalgic.

Returning back to normal here, and if you're looking for some hot screenshots of my dwarf with his hammer, check them out here.

Itching for some PVP

I know that I said last time, that I would be posting when I had the hammer. Well I have all of the materials for it, but I didn't have anyone online to make the Sulfuron Hammer for me. So I'll have to wait another day or two, but the important thing is that I have all of the mats I need. 

So onto the topic. Lately I have been very interested in PVPing. On a hunter, a rogue, a warrior, or on my shiny pally  I have really enjoyed running battlegrounds. The problem is, that most of the characters that I have been pvping on are on different realms from my main realm. This means no heirlooms, no guild perks, and no gold. So I'm pretty much stuck with the gear that I have, and whatever upgrades I can get through Dungeons and honor. I don't really mind working to get better gear as I level, but I just want to pvp, I don't want to deal with the time it takes to get the gear on a character that isn't even on my main realm. 

So, I'm going to have to just bite the bullet, and suck it up. I might server swap the shiny pally, but my other toons can stay put. I'll just have to find a way to pvp on my main realm. Until then I shall continue to get my fix. 

Zul'Aman, and Not Making Progress

Last Friday my guild ran Zul'Aman. Since it won't be around in its current form once patch 4.1 hits we decided to take the opportunity at getting some guildies their achievements before it went bye bye. We managed to get the Guild Achievement for it aswell, and over all the run went very well.

Over the past few weeks we've been scheduling lower level raids for a couple of reasons. One, so that we are doing things as a guild, always nice. And two, so that we can help our less experienced guild members get used to what raiding means. We have a lot of new players, and a lot of players new to end game raiding. If they want to raid current content as a guild, we figure they need to show that they can raid trivial content as a guild also. We started in Molten Core, went on to Karazhan, and Zul'Aman. Next week we're moving on to Naxxramas. We'll see how it goes, and eventually we'll move into the later tiers of both previous expansions.

No new progress on crafting the legendary. I'm only two Blood of the Mountains away still. This week I'm going to farm my butt off to get that hammer. Wish me luck, and happy belated April Fools!

The next time that I post I hope to have Sulfuras in my possession.