hey all i’m struggling to find a rhythm on how to heal in raiding situations as an hpal. im used to my ramp as a disc priest so i could really use some help on what are our priorities and what we are doing. I just feel like im not accomplishing anything
There should be a spell in your spell list called “Holy Shock.”
Press that one as much as possible.
That’s all.
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Talents are all over the place
Highest output is generally virtue with focus on melee talents and less infusion centric talents.
Whatever you end up picking you’ll generally holy shock as much as possible
Spend holy power on wog while in conversation for the bonus heal power (talent in the class tree)
Light of Dawn of also decent when there is spread damage.
You’ll always virtue before divine toll. Unless you are under a lot of healing stress and you can keep up, you’ll hold virtue to make sure it’s available when divine toll comes off cool down
If you use the talents that buff flash of light and infusion things, you’ll still prio holy shock but flash and holy light can be used when you don’t have holy shock or you are stepping back from melee mechanics
To play holy paladin well, the play style is all gas no breaks. It’s equal parts preparing as it is responding (making sure your pressing ability in an order that ensures the slightly stronger spells are available during the more intense moments)
Also, check out wow analyzer. I added a feature on the timeline module to show enemy abilities. This is particularly helpful for healers as you can compare higher parsing logs to see what abilities they cast before and after different boss abilities in raid.
Also works for NPC abilities in mythic Plus too!!
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a lot of the guides I read suggested double beacon. I wondered if virtue would make more sense but I don’t get control over who it is applied to correct? it feels very whack a mole. according to wow analysis it suggests flash of light more. I was under the impression this was not the smart heal choice. a few of the fights said I parsed purple and i’m honestly not sure how when I was having the lowest hps. I felt very underwhelming and lacking. I did switch to virtue for a period but I couldn’t see a difference in my hps vs double beacon. so is there no ramp stage? just waiting till I know big dps is about to go out and just hold cds? I guess I was adding a layer to it unnecessarily. overthinking is my specialty. I appreciate your help. it’s giving me insight
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Hey no worries I’m an overthinker as well. took me some effort to get to where I am 
So there’s a talent that gives 5% damage reduction to targets that have beacon, so when you play with virtue there’s two ways to use it, you can either cast it right before a damage event so that five players have 5% damage reduction
The downside of that approach is that if the damage is not applied to the entire raid group then it’s more likely to apply a beacon to someone that doesn’t take damage compared to the second option
You can cast weekend of virtue after the damage event goes out, and it will prioritize allies that are not at 100% health. Now it’s not smart so it could go on the one person with 99% health but that’s just something you risk.
Generally you want to use your cooldowns as early in the fight as possible while also maximizing the value that they’ll bring.
So don’t cast Divine toll immediately, hold it for the first damage event where you’ll get the most value using it then continue to use it as soon as possible off cooldown for damage events that are useful.
That one’s kind of hard to explain without looking at logs to show what I mean by that but I’ll get into that in a second.
As for flash of light and holy light, those spells can be hit or miss. The problem they introduced is an inability to dodge mechanics and a high likelihood of your heels getting sniped.
I haven’t looked at logs in a while to see what most people are running since I like my play style and my parses are fine but here’s some suggestions of how to look at logs
First pick the boss you want to work on, and examine the talents that it shows the top hundred using for that boss. The distribution of players that take a given talent is usually pretty one-sided but sometimes there is talents that are in the middle.
If you are undecided on what talents you want to pick, then just examine the top log as whatever they’re running produced to the highest HPS and will likely be more successful for you.
Now if you really enjoy a specific talent you can filter the logs to show parses with players that were using whatever talent you’re interested in keeping
Once you get past the talents and which log you want to analyze, there’s a few things to look at in the log
First of all you can check their casts per minute. That just represents how quickly they’re pressing their buttons.
I think it’s either above 40 or 50 CPM that generally all of the highest parses manage. Now in order to get that many casts per minute, you’ll generally find yourself lacking during heavy mechanical moments in the fight when you have to dodge things and such. To up your CPM you just need more practice adhering to your rotation while also dealing with mechanics in a given fight.
If you find yourself having trouble with a specific mechanic you can look at what spells the other holy paladin is casting within that time frame to give you an idea of how they’re managing their rotation while also dealing with the mechanics
I really helpful tool for analyzing for that specific suggestion is to load the log into WoW analyzer and look at the timeline component. There is a feature (that I added, shameless self promotion xD) that lets you see the enemy abilities on the timeline as well which is really helpful for seeing what spells the boss is casting so you can cross reference that with what spells the player is casting at that same time
Stats generally aren’t too big of a deal and you can have success with a wide variety of stat balances but if you’re really concerned, you can shoot for having a similar stat distribution to match whatever player you’ve analyzed and their talents you might be trying to copy.
Again I think wow analyzer for the timeline component can be pretty helpful for seeing the order that they’re casting their spells in, not just for fixing your casts per minute in high mechanical moments but more so for knowing what cooldowns they might be using in response to the boss’s abilities
On top of looking at their casts per minute you can also look at their individual cast quantities, which can help give you an idea of how many times they’re casting a given spell.
Fight lengths generally differ so one thing you could do is compare a kill of your own on the boss against that of another holy paladin with a higher Parse.
Let’s say both fights take exactly 3 minutes just to make it easy, and you’re both using the same talents, you might see the higher parsing paladin casting holy shock more than you or you might see them casting more flash of lights with infusion over holy light with infusion, those type of comparisons in regards to cast quantity of different spells can help give you an idea of which spells you may need to focus on casting more to potentially increase your overall HPS
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