So, I have had my Paladin since WotLK. I have worked hard in understanding the ins and outs of both retribution, and protection. However, I have never been able to fully grasp how to properly use Holy. Don’t get me wrong, I keep adding to it and even make sure to build the talents as I level up, but in total I probably use it about 3-5% of my overall gametime.
I was wondering if there are any veteran users of the Holy spec that can help me get a better idea of how to properly utilize it. At first, I thought it was built like a battle healer, since you heal more the closer you are to your target. Much like most healers in FF14, I figured you had to balance between keeping allies health up and attacking enemies. Is this close to the concept, or am I way off?
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your attribute choice can dictate which playstyle or how effective u can play holy at certain level/difficulty.
you can play your holy paladin as a holy priest.
it is always your choice:
- you can heal at range and be fully caster build that uses judgment with veneration instead of crusader strike, and spam flash of light (holy light), flash of light no longer exist. u have the old holy light and divine light right now.
- you can be melee (battlehealer) avenging crusader with full shock utilization and wod.
- or you can have 1/2 melee 1/2 caster
- or the panel build, the boring build, crusader focus + shock + wod spam. after wrath our aoe heal have been the weakest of all classes and that’ll never change. (unless they* bring back Illuminated healing
)
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Puts on big boi typing skillz lol
Well to start, I’m more of a casual and newer to Holy Paladin in Retail
but from what I gather is that the name of the game is spamming Holy Shocks as much as you can.
To avoid using your MP for heals, you use Holy Shock in spending your Holy Power into Word of Glory or Dawn of Light.
Should really never have issues with mana here.
As for Casters vs. Melee: Do not be fooled here with those builds lol. It’s like a 1-2 talent difference and the melee has the Crusader Strike (Might talent) that gives Holy Shock a 2 second cooldown. You want more Holy Shocks.
Use MP heals if need be for Infusion of Light procs.
So yeah, what I do is go up there, spam CS, spam HS, and if I don’t need healing I just expend my HP into Shield of Righteousness. There are no spenders for range build unless I am missing it and it just doesn’t feel right playing full caster because you’re often just sitting on HP anyway which we get a lot of anyway and of course use my cool downs but that’s just kinda the basic stuff I’m saying here lol.
Is this still a thing? I feel like it was in Shadowlands but I barely remeber it…
I do know (or feel lol) you are not penalized for needing to step back if you need
to be out of melee range. So you CAN heal in range best for only for a breather.
on bosses i put some eternal flames around , is just nothing burger heals tbh , but shield hits for so low 
Ya im in the same boat as you, mostly pvp with it but melee wings feels very clunky. But its apparently the better choice so i do it. I do top heals in both solo shuffle and rated bgs so im guessing my.healing rotation is fine since its pretty simple. Just gotta get used to the new cooldowns and using utility more aince i habe two charges of bop which i usually forget as a ret main.
Yeah, your typical hpal build focus’s on being in melee range to generate as much holy power as you can and then you spend it. You do NOT want to sit on holy power or over-cap unless a big damage event is coming in. If there is not much healing to go around you use shield of the righteousness.
As from a healing standpoint; we are a healer that operates in windows and cooldowns. All healers need to understand the damage profile but we REALLY need to know it. A lot of our healing comes from preventing it, be it from greater judgment (reduces damage the target deals) or beacon of virtue (5% dr for all affected) so you need to put that beacon up before damage happens. Target yourself for the first wog (25% increased effect on yourself) and let it splash the team then spot heal (holy shock) the lowest and wog the next, followed by divine toll if still hurting (this will refill your holy power at this point since you’re at 0).
When you use holy prism your next 2 holy spenders will place dawnlights on the targets, this is pretty much the only time you’ll ever use light of dawn in 5 mans (3 holy power cone spender) as it will place dawnlights on most of your squad, except for that hunter in the corner. Wings will make beams go between you and your dawnlight and will add massive healing so make sure to combine wings with holy prism whenever possible (This includes the one you get for spending 15 holy spender abilities followed by a judgment).
Always try to keep consecration down and stand in it, blessing of sacrifice + bubble on the tank during very brutal pulls (5 pack at the end of some mists mazes, some nasty pulls in grim batol). Blessing of sacrifice is also something you should be utilizing on brutal single target abilities (contagion(?) from the big adds in the last pulls in grim batol are a great example of this, you should also probably do this on ret =P).
I kind’ve rambled on and wrote way more then I intended, definitely didn’t cover everything here. But might be a good starting point for some healers.
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I never put it together to use light of dawn as a spreader of dawn lights after the prism.,. That’s pretty eye opening. I always just figured two of you are getting dawn lights with two eternal flames. I’m around 2400 io and still learning new stuff ha.
Attacking enemies to attack enemies doesn’t matter much, since your damage is so low as a healer. Never hurts to do more damage, but it’s not a huge focus. As it relates to healing,
Judgement is a very important ability that you probably want to use on cooldown. Does damage and, if talented (you should be) it will also debuff the enemy to absorb the next X amount of damage they do, like a preemptive heal. It will also drop a Consecration on the ground a percentage of the time, which is good for passive AOE damage and a smidgen of AOE healing.
Crusader Strike is less important. It becomes valuable to use during Wings if you have Avenging Crusader. I might be the only person who loves Avenging Crusader though. It’s only real value outside of that is to generate Holy Power with an instant ability that you don’t have to stand still to cast, just filling the gaps between people needing healing.
Holy Shock and Holy Prism are both multifunctional abilities that heal or damage in various ways depending on who you use them on. They don’t do a lot of damage compared to their healing, but their value is being able to do any damage at all without having to put a whole extra button on your hotbars for some other ability.
Just try to always bank Holy Power if possible. Spend at 5 rather than at 3 unless you really need it. Big healing, without Toll/Wings, is always the combo of Beacon of Virtue into Holy Prism into double Word of Glory and/or a turbocharged Holy Light/Flash of Light from talents.
Just an FYI, that’s not how that works. After casting Prism, LoD just applies 1 dawnlight per cast.