Do tanks expect to be spam healed and kept near 100% at all times?

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
102

Paladins benefit from down ranking more than any healer in the game.

Think of it this way:

Blessing of Light adds 563 +healing to Holy Light at a 71% coefficient…even without any other +healing from gear.

Thats a massive amount of +healing that is never overcome by other classes all through Vanilla/Classic.

There is a reason why Illumination was nerfed with TBC and Blessing of Light was removed.

As to the rest some healers are more aware of proc based heal talents now more than ever.

Ancestral Healing for Shaman
Inspiration for Priests
Blessing of Light abuse by Paladins :stuck_out_tongue:

As long as someone isn’t dying and the healer is accounting for Crit spikes I don’t see an issue.

The only issue I see is that Tanks and Healers used to be a team in dungeons…in many cases its now an adversarial relationship :frowning:

103

Ok, You and I are going to have a disagreement here.

That’s fine, but the disagreement goes beyond a specific class, and more about the mentality one should have as a healer.

On this level, we can have a solid discussion because I main heal in other MMOs.

Basically, I totally disagree with this statement:

I wasn’t using the wrong spell because it was perfectly fine for the situation.

Healers should judge the content and play accordingly, shouldn’t they?

Are you arguing you always do the same thing regardless of content?

I totally disagree.

This particular example was from Uldaman, and the group was overlelveled to be frank with you. The tank wasn’t dropping to 50% over and over in a single pull.

The tank was dropping to 50% ONCE every other pull. In other words, the guy only even needed a heal every minute or so.

Thus, rather than reacting like I have OCD to every single bit of damage done, I would just wait till it seemed like a heal was even needed. I spent the vast majority of the time just standing around. I was very tempted to throw in some DPS, but I feared the tank (and people like yourself) would dislike that and prefer I just stand around doing nothing cause there’s so little damage happening.

Basically, the tank overreacted to a situation where we were very much in control and never at any time had any fear of wiping. If you are arguing that even in that situation, I should be spamming to ensure it never drops below 90%, then we have a disagreement.

That’s why I asked “do tanks expect to be spam healed and kept 100% at ALL TIMES?” because this happened during a trash pull, where everything was fine, and the only person even taking damage, slowly, was the tank. Trust healer.

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104

It’s far more efficient to let them get down around 60% or so before tossing out a heal depending on which of your heals is the most efficient mana per heal at your given level.

In the interim, wand, wand, wand, wand, wand…

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105

Gross, I always start heal when Tank is around 50%. Adjust accordingly with heavy damage.

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106

ITT a whole lot of bad healers

107

I don’t usually get nervous until I go under 50%, and then I start thinking about popping a cooldown or pot.

Downranked spells, as I understand it, are not really worth it for healers until endgame when they start building up +healing on their gear.

108

I like to keep a downranked lesser heal around for the squishies when they need a fast heal. That or PWS and a Renew. Sometimes all three.

But the main tank… you have to gauge the pulls and how they’re going, but usually its best to let them get banged up a bit before healing them. PIsses the Mobs off more that way too.

Right now at level 28 on my priest, my big heal (the slow 3 or 3.5 sec cast one) will give a normally geared tank back around 35-45% of his health. So i let the tank take quite a beating before i heal him/her.

On the contrary, if i see a pack of weakling mobs and i know i have a trigger happy mage that likes to AE, he’s getting a bubble, renew and some down ranked lesser heals stat.

109

Paladins benefit from down ranking more than any healer in the game.

Yes and no. Holy Paladins can downrank Holy Light quite effectively. However, they don’t really need to do so because they can already use Flash of Light to cover most of the healing demands you’d use for downranked Holy Light.

Thats a massive amount of +healing that is never overcome by other classes all through Vanilla/Classic.

Keep in mind that Holy Light is much smaller than other heals. Talented, it averages 1504 healing.

Which means that even with Blessing of Light, Holy Light has lower healing than Healing Wave (1929) and Greater Heal (2109) - and it scales far worse with spellpower than those spells.

The reason people like Paladins as healers in raids is because ‘healing test’ raids are relatively rare, so it’s normally better to have healers who can sustain a moderate amount of healing for a long time than it is to have healers who can generate large amounts of healing for a short time. The Paladin approach to spam-healing - with a 1.5 sec cast - also provides more granularity to your healing. This is useful for smoothing damage on a tank or rapidly switching targets when raid healing.

In contrast, neither Shaman nor Priests have a viable fast heal for raid healing because it’s too expensive. Druids do have Regrowth, but it requires a specialized build to make work well.

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110

It’s far more efficient to let them get down around 60% or so before tossing out a heal depending on which of your heals is the most efficient mana per heal at your given level.

This is true for a Priest. Priests and Druids are very FSR-sensitive since they equip a lot of Spirit. As a result, spam-casting heals on their target doesn’t make much sense. They tend to wait until a heal is absolutely necessary and heal at the last moment possible - and often cast-cancel to ensure they can get that heal off in time.

Shaman and Paladins do not play these FSR games. Rather, they tend to spam-heal the tank because they have nothing better to do. In the case of Shaman, it’s also necessary for Healing Way and Ancestral Healing. In the case of Paladins, it’s more a matter of keeping ahead of the healing demands. Because they have no way to deal with multi-target damage and their single target heals are smaller, they have less tolerance for risk than other healers.

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111

The point here, which is why your experience in other MMOs is irrelevant, is that Classic paladins are designed to spam heals.

I was going to write all the math out for you to demonstrate why FoL is your goto heal and Holy Light is your emergency heal, but truthfully you should have already done this yourself.

Paladin heals are designed to be cast quickly and repeatedly. The faster casts heals are more mana efficient, give more chances to proc a crit, and holy tree is designed to refund mana on criticals.

Your gear itemization of mp5 instead of spirit should have clued you into the fact that you should always be casting. This is in contrast to priests, for example, who use spirit instead of mp5 but they have a specific design where they benefit from spirit while casting (something only shared with druids).

Paladins also have talents and abilities that +heal their heals and they have inherently reduced threat for their heals. All of these design decisions underscore the fact that they are designed to throw fast, smaller heals very quickly during a fight.

The answer to your question is that, no, not all healers should behave the same way. Some do not benefit from spamming their heals. You, as a paladin however, do benefit from spamming your heals and in fact are expected to do so at all times. Sometimes you will spam lower ranked heals and sometimes you will spam higher ranked heals, but you should never be sitting out of combat doing nothing…even if you weren’t healing you should have been judging.

I did not say all healers should do this for all tanks during all fights. I did say that you, as a paladin, are designed to spam your smaller heals. You are not designed to sit around reluctantly tossing a big bomb heal on a tank.

The tank was correct in questioning you. As this discussion highlights, you don’t seem clear on how your heals are designed within the game. I will also point out that I’m the one making the argument that you should do what’s best for the situation and not hold to a cookie-cutter model of behavior, the difference is that I’m explaining to you in Classic this is best for the situation. You seem to be the one healing like you’ve healed in all other MMOs and other classes in WoW and approaching this from the perspective of if the tank didn’t die you weren’t wrong.

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112

The thread has definitely diverged into two different themes.

Theme 1 is about how to play Holy Palladins.

Theme 2 is about the mentality of tanks.

I made this thread to discuss theme 2, although I don’t totally mind the technical discussions either.

You are saying the tanks response was appropriate, I am saying it was uncalled.

Thus, while I appreciate your response, I’m going to reduce it to the relevant sections:

[quote=“Brewbeard-grobbulus, post:111, topic:332861, full:true”]
The answer to your question is that, no, not all healers should behave the same way.

I did not say all healers should do this for all tanks during all fights. I did say that you, as a paladin, are designed to spam your smaller heals. You are not designed to sit around reluctantly tossing a big bomb heal on a tank.

The tank was correct in questioning you. [/quote]

That’s where we disagree. I think if you understood the situation better, you would agree with me to be honest. This was Uldaman, and I admit to being a quest completionist, so decided to complete this quest . . . at level 52.

Ignore the avatar, I’m actually level 53 right now.

So, I was about 5-6 levels higher than the rest, and the big emergency heal I was using was a downranked holy light.

Strangely, there were other level 50s there too, so it ended up being a fairly easy affair.

Nevertheless, this was a nervous tank, and never pulled more than three mobs at a time. To tell you I maybe drank like five times the entire way.

Also, the comment didn’t come early, it came after like more than half of Uldaman was done, so by now, considering no one had died or had any issues, you think he would be pleased with the smoothness of the run.

Instead, I got “wtb a heal”

Like, ok, sure, I get you want to discuss all these things related to how to play holy pally. I’m saying I was overleveled for a place, had everything in control, and I was using downranked spells for efficiency too. I simply wasn’t spamming because a FoL from me would have overhealed big time had I done that. Spamming a severely lower FoL just to maintain him above 90%?

I don’t agree with the premise that this tank was upset with my lack of spam healing because I am a holy palladin. I think this tank was simply scared because they consider spam healing a sign they will be allright, and seeing their health dropped just gave the person anxiety even though I knew they would be fine.

I responded with “ur safe”, and the tank didn’t say another word after that.

113

Ummm no

The only time you should EVER be using FOL is when raid spamming a tank taking heavy spike damage, the stabilized HP/sec delivered, or in PvP to recover from Earth Shock or similar mechanic to land a quick heal.

You should have 3 ranks of HL.

Most typically start with Rank 4, Rank 6, and max Rank

FoL only gets 301 +healing from Blessing of Light and it has a lower coefficient.

HL can break a 12 to 1 ratio at Rank 4…no other heal is even close.

Again wrong.

Paladins gain more efficiency from down ranking.

Down rankings purpose is Not to land huge heals but to stabilize healing by casting smaller, more efficient heals.

There isn’t enough +healing in the game to overcome Blessing of Light.

The goal of down ranking is to garner your full value of +healing, with a lower rank spell…making a small heal a moderate more efficient heal.

Even Healing Touch, which is a 100% coefficent, can’t overcome Holy Light + Blessing of Light…because that much +healing doesn’t exist in the game during Vanilla.

If your raid healing with FoL, you are doing it wrong.

HL + Blessing of Light is our most efficient heal when down ranked.

When raid healing time isn’t really an issue.

Just choose the appropriate Rank of HL, balanced between regen sources, output required, etc.

Never us FoL for raid healing.

114

As a tank I expect to not die.

I will look at your mana. I will adjust my pulling to your play style.

But I don’t care how you manage your mana. If you let me down to 10% then heal me : fine, as long as I’m not dying.

You want to spam heal me ? fine, I’ll wait while you drink.

115

To be perfectly honest, after doing more groups since I started this thread, I’ve come to realize that tanks are the least of my worry.

What I really hate now?

Tank + a warlock or a warrior in the group.

OMG, it’s like there are two tanks in the group.

At the beginning of a dungeon run the other day, I couldn’t tell if the paladin or the warrior was the tank - it was the paladin - but the warrior was the one that made more nervous. and then warlocks, omg, some tap too much ok.

116

Cripes. OG EverQuest warrior here. If I’m standing and tanking, you’re doing your job right. If you’re not lying on the floor I’m doing my job right.

THESTEELWARRIOR LIFE.

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117

As a tank I can tell you that if I trust the healer im with I dont hardly look at my health bar, The only time I do is on boss fights and before a pull. Most healers I have been with like to have the tank at 100% before the pull so they dont have to land a heal before the tank has good aggro on the mob. I DO watch the healers mama bar a lot, mostly because most healers we pug are deaf mutes who cant type stop, wait, lom, oom, or anything else for that matter.

118

You don’t need to heal warlocks. They have tools to manage their health. If the warlock is not immediately attacked by a mob, let him life drain.

119

I second that. When I play with a healer I know, I don’t look on my HP bar, I’m tabing to see if I lost agrro of something.
Usually 3-4 trash pulls are enough for me to decide if I should worry about my health or not.

120

Kids these days don’t know what its like. Could you imagine if they had to do CH rotations?

121

One night we were short on healers so they had me jump on a druid friend of mine who wasn’t present. I got to use incomplete heal in the CH chain. I learned a valuable lesson that night.

Clerics can’t count.

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