You will find that the majority of players that whine about not being at 100% health all the time, are usually players that are bad. Ignore them and move on. Knowledgeable players know how to be mana efficient.
They don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.
Spamming anything as a healer is bad.
See: 5 second rule.
If damage is steady you can easily gauge what % of the health bar your various spells will fill and go from there. If it’s spiky you have to be more careful OR the tank isn’t using his tools.
Unless we wipe a few times due to a healing issue, or the group is slowed down due to a mana management issue, I don’t care. They should just let you play your style imo.
I start to get nervous when I’m at 1/4 health or less, but I generally trust that the healer knows what they are doing.
Tanks that say that don’t understand core game mechanics like the mana regen 5s rule. Feel free to ignore those comments. Although, obviously, don’t let them die.
If they’re Tanks from Retail who never played in Vanilla, they’re likely not at all accustomed to being allowed to dip for long periods of time while you time an efficient heal. The fact that I can go 15-20 sec into a pull without a single direct heal and be at around 40-50% health is normal for Classic, but that’s going to be very odd to anyone who doesn’t get how incoming damage typically goes in Vanilla, or who doesn’t get how Healers work while leveling or at low levels of gear.
You also have the fact that once Paladins get to 60 and get a bit of decent gear, they can actually spam small heals nonstop without much issue with a Tank chain pulling packs. It looks way different than when I have a Priest with me who waits until I’m low to finally cast a single big heal.
Finally, some of us have also seen Priests and Paladins wait TOO long to get us caught up and the DoTs start stacking too high or something else goes wrong and suddenly we’re dead. I slow way down with PuG healers if they regularly let me sit sub 40% and don’t react very quickly to changes in a pull.
You’ll just have to be patient with the Tanks and be on-the-spot with your Healing to get them to trust you.
Thanks for the various replies, could have responded to various ones.
I’ll use this one as my reaction post:
That was basically my thinking - the 5 second rule and being efficient.
I had figured out relatively quickly exactly when I needed to do a holy light rank 5 to bring him back to full (which was around 50%), and there wasn’t much group damage, so I kinda just sat and watched for the bar to hit the point where I knew I needed a heal - which was around 50%.
I think he got scared seeing this over and over, and said “wtb a heal”, but I saw no issue, so just responded with “ur safe” - and he was, there were no deaths.
I admit I’ve made this mistake, probably all healers have at one point.
That’s what I like about healing, it’s a lot of thinking and reacting, and yes, we do sometimes react a little too slowly . . . give criticism when it’s due and appropo
I can usually let a tank drop down to 1/3 or even 1/2 their HP before dropping a healing wave on them.
Especially with Healing Way active, and my healing waves get progressively more powerful.
Though, if your tanks under leveled and taking crushing blows from enemies, I could see why they might get paranoid if an enemy mob enrages and starts throwing the tank around like a ragdoll.
But then your tank should either have some +defense gear, or be higher level to be tanking the instance… so…
This tank has it mostly right. 2 key differences between classic and retail:
you can downrank spells in Classic, so you can spam smaller, cheaper heals to keep a smooth inflow of heals incoming.
Bosses can crit tanks in classic, leading to hits double what you might normally be expecting. It’s much easier for a tank to get splattered unexpectedly when the boss can fluke a double-sized hit on the tank.
Not saying you are doing it wrong, but tanks have more reason to be worried about remaining at low health in classic.
Generally speaking, lower rank heals are more mana efficient once you have a decent amount of +Healing.
Before then, the higher ranked, slower heals are more mana efficient. Depending on your gear, you should either be letting them get to 30% then just blasting them with a massive heal, or constantly casting tiny, super high HPM heals.
The people talking about the 5 second rule are not considering that you are a Paladin. You are not a class whose mana management involves high amounts of spirit and not casting. Your playstyle is that of constant non-stop mana efficient healing with a high mana pool and crits restoring base mana cost.
As for the tanks telling you to heal them to full, there’s a number of reasons for this.
First is the wrongful assumption they’re going to suddenly take the remainder of their HP with a single swing and just die, so they assume they need to be topped off or they aren’t safe. This is more the case in raids, but still not quite accurate.
Second reason would be a poor understanding of their mitigation and your healing output. This is probably the most likely, as it’s going to vary from person to person, dungeon to dungeon, group to group. Sometimes you’ll have no problems, other times you’re constantly low health.
Last reason is that they’re used to retail where the game is designed around tanks using active mitigation and needing full HP to survive mechanics, e.g. some boss ability that deals 500 billion damage, but with Shield Wall only does 20k.
I don’t mind keeping them near 100%, just use a heal that gets their health to just under 100 so you aren’t over healing. Better to keep them above 75% then let them get to 40 and be unable to keep up with the damage if they have a string of high incoming damage.
Unless its a zoomer AOE group who thinks since he is at 100% he can pull another 20 mobs while you have 20% mana, then do as you wish.
I rarley tank, but i’m more worried about going to fast and pulling to much and the healer cant keep up or pulling to little, going to slow and everyone gets bores. Anyone who expects to be 100%, 100% of the time has never ran a heal role or has unrealistic expectations
