I was excited to play the new Holy rework, and on the whole I enjoy it conceptually. I’ve gotten to level 20 and started healing in dungeons and I’m having a really hard time keeping up with healing though. It doesn’t feel like I have enough time to keep everyone up. Everyone gets bursted down so fast and I genuinely don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing different. I’ve been going Holy shock > Crusader Strike > Judgement > Consecration > Holy shock > Word of Glory for my opener, then using Flash of Light with Holy Shocks and Crusader Strikes peppered in to build Holy Power for more Words of Glory but everyone goes down so FAST.
I’m used to healing. I played all through Legion and BFA on a Resto Shaman and I don’t mind bragging I’m pretty great at it. But for some reason I’m having major problems getting this to work.
So My question is the problem:
I’m doing something wrong, and I need to change my approach
I’m missing some key component to the spec since I’m only level 20 that’s preventing me from healing properly
Leveling a healer is currently a nightmare because leveling balance is totally screwed (much like the last stat crunch)
The spec really, truly is unbalanced and nothing I can do will make it workable
I havent played it in lower level dungeons since revamp. But I think it’s a combo of all of those things you listed. Am I missing something why are you using consecration and judgement? you should be hardcasting more heals i would think… you also dont have glimmer yet right? so really you should be using the 5 sec delay heal i think while leveling.
I’ve just been using those as filler while everyone is topped off at full health. I’m in melee anyway and its free damage. Mostly at the beginning of a fight but also any time there’s a lull and everyone’s full. And yeah I can see needing to use the delayed heal. It seems good, it just also seems really hard to use.
ok, hmm i would definitley suggest taking bestow faith and using it off cooldown on tank all the time, also ofc dont forget to use beacon. it was pretty hard low levels in some dungeons to keep everyone up before revamp and now with the squish and everything it may be even harder. a lot of it also depends on people not doing what they are supposed to as well. i found in a lot of cases while leveling wipes werent actually my fault.
^^^^ This
You need Beacon of Virute and your group is probably all excited and going faster than they should be. Spam Flash of Light and keep Bestow faith on someone IMHO. maybe even Hammer heals since your so low, i have not used it personally but it heals semi good amount over 14 seconds.
I’ve found healing while leveling is particularly challenging, and in some cases downright impossible and not your fault.
While I’ve been able to make it work, it will always be an uphill battle for any healer.
A few reasons:
Tanks are often undergeared, too aggressive, and haven’t yet learned their active mitigation and defensive rotations yet.
Being inexperienced and too focused on damage output, DPS don’t do interrupts or mechanics well at ALL, leaving you to heal much more damage than you’re supposed to. Not to mention, they almost never use their own defensives or self-heals. Again, this makes your job so much harder than it needs to be. Sloppy group play always makes the healer’s job harder.
Lack of dungeon familiarity. Linked to the first two, because so many people level so quickly through dungeons, they are usually playing a lot of these dungeons for the first time, don’t know the mechanics, take way too much damage, complete it, then move on to another dungeon. It’s not unusual to play 15-20 different dungeons while leveling, leaving players no time to master any dungeons. Therefore, again, you’re stuck healing through their lack of dungeon knowledge.
Of course, DPS and tanks aren’t always to blame. I’m sure we healers have plenty to improve upon. But there’s also a lot more we have to deal with when other people don’t do their jobs. But, be encouraged, you’re in good company!
So much of this. I haven’t had any issues healing M15s, but I also play with people who know their classes / specs; dungeons; mechanics. As much as I enjoyed Ineffable Truth, spamming cool downs & HS never really felt like healing.
We don’t really have AoE healing while we are leveling and that makes some situations hard. I have no issues keeping tanks up but the DPS taking easily avoidable damage and not interrupting is what makes healing hard for me.
I have been doing BFA dungeons where there are plenty of mobs that need to be interrupted but outside of the Prot Pally in UR, I don’t think anyone has used a single interrupt.
I really like what the holy power adds to the rotation, making the spec more melee-y while (hypothetically) still healing properly.
In my estimation, it should ultimately come down to ‘output’ regardless: does weaving in the Crusader Strikes hurt your overall healing output, or stay at the very least on par with otherwise? If it’s the former, I think it’d be a real design problem. I think ideally it should be a bit higher output because of the melee requirement, and additional effort. Will it be, at fully-tuned level? It’d really better.
But yeah, you can only attribute so much meaning to mid-level performance, can’t really say much at that point imo. For what it’s worth, I have an ‘ok’ time leveling in dungeons. I definitely struggle somewhat but that’s within my expectations. There were some unspeakably god-awful rough patches in the 120 leveling process. Flashbacks intensify
The more I think on it, the more I attest it to it being, specifically, Atal’Dazar. For 5 man content standards its an extremely mechanics intensive dungeon. Rezan and Vol’kaal in particular require a lot of positioning and paying attention to that the average group just can’t handle and, at least at my current level, Devour is a one shot that I just can’t heal someone through unless I’ve got Lay on Hands ready which does nothing in the event of a second devour. I think it was a mistake on Blizzard’s part to stick new players in this dungeon compared to Ragefire Chasm or Deadmines, the actual training dungeons.
I started playing healers during Everquest’s first week, when I began to suspect that healers could be useful, but didn’t learn the “You can’t heal stupid” lesson until City of Heroes.
By the time WoW was released, my guild (formed in Diablo, carried over into EQ, Anarchy Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Dark Ages of Camelot, City of Heroes, etc.) and was pretty much done with MMO’s when WoW was released, but we decided to give it a try, only because it was Blizzard. Since then, I’ve left and returned to WoW numerous times.
I returned to WoW a couple of days before the last patch after about a three year break (got revered with all factions in Legion, then got bored). Due to Covid and being in a high risk category, I got bored with all other games that I like plus SL being imminent, I gave WoW another try.
Upon my return, none of my old rotations were relevant anymore, so thought it best to create a new dps toon. I started queuing for random dungeons as soon as I was eligible, on the assumption that I’d get low level dungeons, but wasn’t aware of the level agnostic zone changes nor that it applied to dungeons too.
Plus I had recently built a new PC, and had not installed any addons knowing that a patch was imminent, which usually broke addons back in my day.
It was all I could to do keep up with tanks (fortunately my assist focus macro still worked), much less interrupt.
So I was then one of those stupid people (and still am :/) and it’s not your fault if you can’t keep me alive. Perhaps not stupid, but rather no longer remember the dungeon mechanics nor how to play my characters. I just use the phrase as a catch all.
I do remember that my primary job as dps (from my EQ days) is to protect the healers (and enchanters, which sadly I have never seen the like since EQ, probably because stupid people make them useless) when the tank can’t or won’t and to hell with the parse. I almost never die if I have the opportunity to do that.
Yeah no-one should be getting devoured they are supposed to run away. In any case you can also use BOP to negate all the damage, then LOH for the next and might be able to handle it, but yeah in general they should run away from it.
Well now I’m just totally baffled. I ran with another group, same dungeon, and the tank just very clearly did not know what they were doing (they were very new, I’m not talking smack, it’s okay not to know when you’re new) but we got through it fine. No wipes at all. I have no idea what went different this time. People still got devoured but they didn’t instantly combust, it only did about 1/2 their health. I’m glad it worked out this time though. This game’s weird lol.
I am noticing little changes like this too. It seems like its blizzard doing " on the fly" tuning TBH. Im taking on more mobs and becoming more fluid in new rotation etc. its all gonna work out.
What was the “New” tank in the 2nd group? Just out of curiosity…
My wife mains a BloodDK so shes my pocket tank, and even before Pre-Patch she could be a real roller coaster to heal. But then at the end of the Dungeon She’d have more healing output than I would use to keep the rest of the group up.
And like said above, you can use BoP on Devour if the DPS are too lazy to run…or let em die.
Cant out heal lazy/stupid/standing in crap
Bit of a bump, for anyone emotionally invested in this I wanted to give an update. I don’t know what he’s doing wrong, but the problem wasn’t Holy Paladin, nor was it me. It was that tank. Outside of that one tank I’ve never had any issues healing a group on Holy Paladin, in fact I quite love it.
But the real kicker was when I started leveling a Resto druid. I didn’t have any problem healing any groups…except that one Death Knight. Which is presenting an issue as he’s a good friend of my girlfriend’s, so I’m not really sure how to approach that issue, but that’s beyond the scope of this forum. I just wanted to let everyone know I really enjoy Holy Paladin, I got her to 50 and she’s an absolute delight to quest with or heal in dungeons.
The quality of the tank makes a huge difference in how successful a healer feels to play, I find.
I approached pre-patch Holy Pally with trepidation, due to the Holy Power system. After a dungeon I felt like I got a pretty solid grip on it, and found I enjoyed it. I do think there’s some issues with mana costs of Crusader Strike, but I found it was still super fun to play.
Perhaps I wasn’t playing it effectively, but I found alternating Wings/Avenger when cooldowns were needed to be a better use of my toolkit. I haven’t yet tried Divine Purpose, which is something I’m meaning to do this week.
