Yuku free message boards

HEALING MACROS

/cast [modifier:alt,target=player] Flash of Light; [target=target,help] Flash of Light; [target=targettarget,help] Flash of Light; [target=player] Flash of Light

In one line of code I have made this handle pretty much all situations.
-The first part says that if I hold down alt and click on the macro, I'll heal myself with FoL.
-The second part checks to see if my current target is a friendly, if so FoL him.
-Third part checks to see if my target's target is a friendly, if so FoL on friendly.
(useful when you can't tell who is tanking a boss - just target him and spam away)
-The last part says when all else fails (ie no target selected) heal thyself.

This macro doesn't ever change your currently selected target. This macro I've found is very useful and highly intuitive to use. Something to note is that I purposely put the [target=target] ahead of the [target=targettarget]. This is because I want to avoid the possibility of my friendly target, who is targeting another friendly and his target ends up with my heals (hope that makes sense).

Also swap Flash of Light with Holy Light and you have your Holy Light macro.

Alternative to the above:

-= The fowling macros needs to be key binded to work correctly =-

Healing macro. If you point on a player or a player frame it casts Holy Light on the one you point. But if you do not point on any one it checks you target and if its friendly it heals your target. At last if no one off the earlier conditions was met it heals your self.
/cast [target=mouseover,exists,help] Holy Light; [help] Holy Light; [target=player] Holy Light

The same as above but Flash of Light
/cast [target=mouseover,exists,help] Flash of Light; [help]Flash of Light; [target=player] Flash of Light

If you want to down rank you can try this one.
/cast [target=mouseover,exists,help] Holy Light(Rank 6); [help] Holy Light(Rank 6); [target=player] Holy Light(Rank 6)

Decursing macro:

/cast [target=mouseover,exists,help] Cleanse; [help] Cleanse; [target=player]Cleanse
/cast [target=mouseover,exists,help] Purify; [help] Purify; [target=player]Purify

New Bandages macro. With this macro you cant cancel bandaging by double clicks.

/use [help,nochanneling:Heavy Netherweave Bandage]Heavy Netherweave Bandage; [target=player,nochanneling:Heavy Netherweave Bandage]Heavy Netherweave Bandage

The paladin as a healer

Paladins can be amazing healers in both PvE and PvP situations. With only two direct healing spells in our spell book, you might think that this is incorrect, however, knowing how to use those spells can really make a difference to your party's survival. The most important thing to remember about Paladin healing is that you are an incredibly durable healer, no matter what your fighting style.

Healing Basics
Paladins have two direct healing spells, Holy Light and Flash of Light. These two spells convey the two basic strategies that a Paladin has when healing others, either spreading the healing over with efficient small heals, or letting someone's health drop and then hitting them with a large heal, healing them to nearly full.
I could post some extensive scedules here that would show you the differance between the 2 healing spells but what it comes down to is that Flash of Light wins in the mana efficiency department, offering a 2.59 Health-per-Mana ratio at its highest rank, and Holy Light wins in the speed department, clocking in at 526.8 health per second. The ramifications of this should be obvious for basic healing strategies. If you want to heal fast, use Holy Light. If you want to heal efficiently, use Flash of Light. This of course does not over shadow the obvious - if you need to heal someone for 1500, you're going to want to use Holy Light. It often helps to have a few ranks of Holy Light hotkeyed if you're going to be the primary healer. Ranks 4-7 can easily cover the gap between Rank 6 Flash and Rank 8 Holy Light. Cast Party, and other healing mods, can also help as they will attempt to automatically select the proper rank for you. This can be a good or bad thing.
To conclude try experimenting with your flash of light healing. Try using lower lvl ranks to save mana and healing faster then normal, so not let his health drop too far down but keep it topped off with the lower lvl heals. Check to see what your mana regen is in combat and cast a flash of light that is just lower in cost then your mana regen. As an example: IF your mana regen is 130 every 5 in combat the rank 5 flash of light costs 115 mana every 3 seconds cast time. Meaning it costs you 192 mana every 5 seconds so you lose 62 mana every 5 seconds. That is if you don't crit on your heals and you are not getting healed yourself because then you regen mana even faster.
And the Rank 5 still heals (with 1500 + to healing) for 912-944health without the advantage of blessing of light. Blizzard has adjusted it so you get a penalty for using a lower rank to heal with then the max one you have. Then penalties are as follows:

For a paladin the downrank % are as follows:

Downrank Penalty

Flash of Light:

Rank--Downrank %

7----100.00%

6----100.00%

5----90.00%

4----78.57%

3----67.14%

2----55.71%

1----44.29%

Holy Light:

Rank--Downrank %

11---100.00%

10---100.00%

9----95.71%

8----92.86%

7----84.29%

6----72.86%

5----61.43%

4----50.00%

3----38.57%

2----27.14%

1----15.71%

The percents listed above are the percent of the spell's NORMAL COEFFICIENT that that particular rank receives.

As listed in the Spell Coefficients section, the normal coefficients for Holy Light and Flash of Light are as follows:

Holy Light - 71.4%
Flash of Light - 42.9%

The percent of a player's total +healing itemization a spell receives is multiplicative with the percentage of that value which is applied for the given rank of that spell.

For Holy Light and Flash of Light, the percentage of your Total +Healing stats gained by each rank consists of:

Effective Coefficients

Flash of Light:

Rank--Downrank %

7----42.90%

6----42.90%

5----38.61%

4----33.71%

3----28.80%

2----23.90%

1----19.00%

Holy Light:

Rank- Downrank %

11---71.40%

10---71.40%

9----68.34%

8----66.30%

7----60.18%

6----52.02%

5----43.86%

4----35.7%

3----27.54%

2----19.38%

1----11.22%

Some Paladins occasionally cast a very low rank of Holy Light in order to keep Lights Grace active. For example, Rank 4 HL only costs 190 mana (10 more mana than highest rank FoL), and only heals for 146 less(356 naturally vs 502). Keeping Lights Grace up can save a tank when they need a large heal, quickly.


Well, on top of everything that you can do with talents and given abilities, you can get armor and gear that has +healing, that is to say, +X to Healing Spells, which is a modifier found most often on higher-end armor. +healing is a little tricky. When an item is said to have +50 healing, it's not going to add 50 points to every heal - it's going to add up to 50, based of how fast the spell casts. The closer to 3.5 second casting time a spell gets, the more benefit of +healing you get. For reference, Holy Light and Flash of Light get the following benefit from +healing items

Holy Light gains 71% of every point of +healing.
Flash of Light gains 43% of every point of +healing.

Crit heals
So every now and then you might notice that your heals will "critically heal", which means they will heal for 150% of normal. The more savvy of you might have noticed the talents Illumination, Divine Favor and Holy Power. These three talents contribute to the power of your heals by making them more efficient (and in Holy Power's case, do more healing), by Illumination's function of returning the mana cost for critical heals.
So what does this mean for your healing? Well, for one, with Divine Favor, every two minutes, you can throw out a guaranteed critical heal for a net 60 mana (the cost of Divine Favor). This also means that if you raise your spell crit rate, your heals are going to become more effective and a bit better. How better? Well assume with the Holy Power talent you have 10% chance to crit on a spell. That means 10% of your spells will be free of charge, reducing your mana cost over time by 10%. Also, 10% of your heals are going to heal for 150%, raising your average healing over time by 5%
As most of you know the talent illumination has been altered so it does not give you 100% of your mana back but only 60% but it's still 5 talent points well spend.


Something that is often forgotten about

Blessing, Seal and Judgment of Light
While not a healing spell in the strictest of definitions, Judgment of Light can be an amazing group (or more importantly, raid) heal over time. When you judge Seal of Light on a target, any melee attack against that creature has a high chance of returning life back to the person that hit it. While this value is small and may only add up to a few hundred hit points on a single target, fast attackers such as rogues and hunter pets get amazing healing over time, which can help against bosses and raid mobs that like to AE. This can help ease the pain of having to heal your DPS classes. Unfortunately, it only works for melee, so casters do not get the benefit of this.

Blessing, Seal and Judgment of Wisdom
Another aspect of Paladin support - the ability to return mana to others is unique to the alliance and quite frankly, one of the most powerful abilities we have in a raid aspect. Blessing of Wisdom is another 5 minute blessing that returns 30 mana (36 if you have improved) every 5 seconds to the subject. Judgment of Wisdom acts just like Judgment of Light, but for mana, and, it will work with any attack, melee or magical, so your casters can wand the target for mana return. Likewise, if you need some mana whilst healing, slap on Seal or Judgment of Wisdom. No other healer can regenerate mana like a Paladin.


4 basic rules
that apply not only to paladins but are worth mentioning:

#1 Use your most mana-efficient spell as your primary spell.

I cannot emphasize this point enough: The healing spell you cast the majority of the time should be your most mana-efficient one. And by mana-efficient, I don't mean it costs the least amount of mana, I mean the spell that has the highest hit points to mana ratio.

For Paladins, this is Flash of Light, the single most mana-efficient spell in the game, which weighs in at around 4 hit points per point of mana spent. For Shamans, its their 3-second Healing Wave, which is around 3 to 1. I'm not certain which ones they are for Druids and Priests, though for the latter I believe it is also their slow cast spell.

There will always be moments when you'll need your non-efficient spells, but in boss battles when maximizing your mana-efficiency is key, you need to know which one is best for you.

#2 Heal Aggressively!

This has sometimes been called healing pro-actively or healing offensively, but it all boils down to the same thing. You can't start casting your healing spell based on where your main tank's life bar is now, you have to start casting your healing spell based on where your main tank's life bar is going to be when you finish casting your spell. Basically, your tank isn't going to stop taking damage while you start casting Healing Wave, so you have to take that into account. This is imperative when you get to later dungeons and bosses have instant attacks and crushing blows that can simply devastate a tank.

Additionally, you should keep your tank's life bar topped off, but avoid over-healing at the same time. Basically, you need to figure out at what point your most mana-efficient spell will max out the tank's life-bar without over-healing him, and keep casting it at that time.

For instance - I'm playing a Shaman and I've realized that when my tank's life bar is a third down, my Healing Wave will fill him to max. This boss's attacks, thankfully enough, aren't spiky enough to make this dangerous, so every time I see my tank's life-bar down a third, but not before, I heal him. If the boss has a special attack that can drop my tank from two thirds of his life-bar to dead, but a normal attack that does a lot less damage, then I'm going to start casting my spell when I think the next normal attack will drop my tank's life bar to two thirds full, hoping to keep my tank from being at a point where the boss's special attack will kill him. Yes, this can result in over-healing, but it's better than a dead tank.

At times, during raids, you may be forced to over-heal just to keep your tank alive. (Magmadar and his enrages are a great example of this.) At those times, over-healing becomes a necessary evil.

#3 The 3.5 to 1.5 seconds spent casting a spell is dead time - Use it!

While you're casting a healing spell, your character can't move, can't drink a potion: basically can't do anything. But what you can do is pick the target for your next heal while casting. This is incredibly important for when multiple players are taking damage at the same time. And since changing your character's target won't change the target of the spell you're currently casting and won't interrupt that spell, you can immediately change targets once you've cast your healing spell.

For instance - I'm fighting a boss that has an area affect damage. My tank is about to die, so I cast a big healing spell on him. During that 2.5 seconds for the spell to finish, I scan my party's life bars, find that my mage is about to die, so I click on her and change my character's target, and cast my healing spell as soon as I'm done casting the first one.

You can practice this during wipe recovery, by choosing and selecting the next person you're going to resurrect before you're done resurrecting the first person.

Incidentally, learning to chain cast (getting the timing down to cast with no time spent idle in-between spells) is useful for this. You can hone this by either playing a mage (the way I did it ) or practice healing yourself in quick succession. Your second spell should begin casting as soon as the bar that shows your first spell completes. It may take some practice, and you'll know you're pressing it too soon if the game tells you another action is already in progress and your 1 second global cooldown on casting activates, stalling your casting.

#4 Lead with your short cooldowns!

While I don't know what talents other classes have, you should always start the fight by using your trinkets and spells that increase mana-efficiency or spell power and have cooldowns three minutes or less. Prime examples of this are the Zandalar Hero Charm, the Vengeance of the Illidari, Divine Favor, and Divine Illumination. Most boss fights will last over three minutes and you'll end up being able to use your mana saving abilities twice, if not three or more times. So if you have the trinkets, don't be shy about using them.