Uber-rant; why the paladin heals tanks better then the priest

[Nikodemus]

Have a look at that title. Can you imagine the fuss that would make on the WoW general boards? well, actually it'll probably even make just as much of a fuss here.

People look at the class names and make assumptions - "paladin, that must be a backup healer at best","priest, that must be such an uber healer". I know that's what I did, and that's why I picked the priest. Not that I know it ain't true, I've (as you've probably noticed) started levelling my paladin (level 44 atm).

Anyways; here's my claim:
- a paladin specced and equipped for healing will be able to do the job of keeping the main and off-tanks in a raid alive better then a priest will ever be able to.

How can I possibly say something so outrageous? time to explain :) but first, I'll make sure I have your minds in on the right track here. I'm even going to be cheeky and pop it in bold, to make sure noone misses it.

I'm not talking about a fully plate-decked, 31-retri, seal of command/2-hand weapon type paladin here. I'm talking about a paladin that is first and foremost specced and equipped for the task of healing - just like my priest, where every single of the 51 talent points have been spent with healing in mind, and where every piece of equipment is chosen with healing in mind.


Mana pool
Let's start with the mana pool, since that's what the pallies usually pull out as their first defense

when I'm so rude as to claim that they can heal :)

A level 60 priest with the +10% max mana talent has 3169 base mana.
A level 60 paladin with the +10% max mana talent has 2510 base mana.
Headstart for the priest: 659 points.

1 point of intellect gives a priest 15 points of mana. (or 16.5 with the +10% mana talent).
1 point of intellect gives a paladin 15 points of mana. (or 16.5 with the +10% mana talent).

Priests can wear cloth, daggers, 1h maces, staves and wands.
Paladins can wear cloth, leather, mail, plate, shields, 1h/2h swords, 1h/2h axes, 1h/2h maces and polearms.

So, with the sole exception of the uber-rare sets that only drop in Molten core and off Onyxia, a paladin is capable of wearing every piece of armor that a priest can wear. Go inspect me, Tarlin, Ramiraz or Elwind ingame if you want that confirmed. I can promise you, not a single one of our cloth armor pieces say "priest only". The only two items I have currently that are not useable by a paladin are my class specific trinket and my wand. Oh noes.

So wait, am I saying a healerdin should wear cloth? yes, I am. Or to be more exact; I'm saying that a healerdin should pick whichever piece of equipment for the item slot that gives the best healer stats - be it cloth, leather, mail or plate.

This does mean a loss of potential survivability; but it is simply following the same philosophy as on my priest - get the item with the best healing stats, anything else on it is a nice bonus.

I'm guessing that some of you at this point will be thinking "cloth has all the best caster gear anyways". I wish it was so, but nope. From bloody Sunken Temple you can get both a leather and a mail hat that have better caster stats then my devout crown. Have a look at the chittonous legguards (plate) from strat (pretty common drop from an easily farmable boss as well). I've been looking left and right, browsing all over thottbot etc. and I haven't been able to find a single set of cloth pants that have that good caster stats. They pwn the heck out of magisters, devout, dreadmist and even the (otherwise uber) pants from the beast in UBRS. And they're plate. Go inspect Tilith if you'd like to drool over them. I know I do whenever I get the chance. :P
The 1h sword from the elven prince in Dire Maul. The shield from the tinkerer in maraudon. The list goes on.

Which brings me on to my point:
A paladin gains just as much mana from 1 point of int as a priest, and a paladin has acces to a much bigger variety of gear then a priest. Therefore, a paladin will be able to get just as much (or quite possibly even more) int in his gear then a priest.

Which in the end, with both chars fully decked out in even quality healing gear, leaves the mana pool

difference at the same 659 points in the priest's favor.

That leads me straight on to ...
Spells and mana efficiency
Note that I'm here posting two sets of stats for greater heal. The first set is for fully boosted greater heal (30 talent points), the other is for greater heal without "master healer". This is due to the fact that - for a multitude of reasons - most priests decide to dig deeper into discipline instead of spending the insane number of talents it takes to get the miniscule bonus from "master healer"

Priest
Renew - heal over time.
Instant cast. 328 mana, 1010 points healed over 15 seconds.
Health per mana point: 3.08
Health per second: 67.3
Talents:
mental agility (5 points, tier 3 discipline)
improved renew (5 points, tier 1 holy)
spiritual healing (5 points, tier 2 holy)

Prayer of healing - group heal.
3 second cast. 824 mana. 1033 - 1093 health (1063 avg).
Health per mana point: 3.87 (3 targets), 5.16 (4 targets), 6.45 (5 targets)
Health per second: 354 to each target.
Talents:
spiritual healing (5 points, tier 2 holy)
improved prayer of healing (2 points, tier 5 holy)

Flash heal - direct heal.
1.5 second cast. 380 mana. 911 - 1072 health (991.5 avg).
Health per mana point: 2.61
Health per second: 661
Talents:
spiritual healing (5 points, tier 2 holy)
improved flash heal (2 points, tier 4 holy)

Greater heal - direct heal [with master healer]
3.5 second cast. 818 mana. 2652 - 2958 health (2805 avg).
Health per mana point: 3.43
Health per second: 801
Talents:
spiritual healing (5 points, tier 2 holy)
improved healing (5 points, tier 4 holy)
master healer (5 points, tier 6 holy)

Greater heal - direct heal [without master healer]
4 second cast. 818 mana. 2652 - 2958 health (2805 avg).
Health per mana point: 3.43
Health per second: 701.25
Talents:
spiritual healing (5 points, tier 2 holy)
improved healing (5 points, tier 4 holy)

Power word: shield - damage-absorbing shield
Instant cast. 452 mana. Absorbs 942 points of damage.
4 second cooldown. A target cannot be reshield for 15 seconds.
Health per mana: 2.08
Health per second: n/a
Talents:
improved pw:shield (3 points, tier 2 discipline)
mental agility (5 points, tier 3 discipline)

Take a look at the health per second on renew and you'll see why it's not the biggest deal on a tank.

It has good uses, and I do use it a lot - definitely - I'll get to that later on.

Prayer of healing is obviously awesome at what it does - which is not to keep the tanks alive. Getting to that later as well.

So let's take the big boy first. "Greater heal". The mana efficiency is awesome. The potential health per second when chain-casted is great. But it has a problem - and a big one at that. The simple fact that it's huge. The amount of damage healed is *too high* for a single cast(!), and the casting time is simply just too long.

Let me elaborate:
Mobs in this game don't do steady damage - bosses and elites in particular. Their damage output goes up and down in spikes. A mob can do 2000 damage total to the tank in 15 seconds, then suddenly do a crit followed by a MS and another crit, racking out 3000 damage in 5 seconds. That obviously gives the
problem that letting people drop low on HP is very likely to get them killed if the mob spikes on damage.
That's what gives the biggest problem with the hugeness of GH. Predicting exactly when the tank is going to need a 2900 heal ain't always easy - especially not when it takes 3.5/4 seconds to cast.
Start casting too early, and you give 2900 points to a guy that only needs 2000. That's 900 health worth of mana poof out of the window. Bye bye efficiency. Of course, one could cancel the heal to save the mana ... but then there's no HP for the tank and you have to start the 3.5/4 second cast all over again (hopefully making it in time).
Start casting too late, and all it takes is a bit of bad luck from the tank (no parries/blocks/dodges) and/or a bit of good luck from the mob (a crit or two, a special attack...) and you've got yourself a dead tank.
With faster casting, smaller heals you don't have this problem. You don't have to let the tank lose as much HP before you start casting, nor is there much risk of "overhealing".

Then we have GH crits. GH crits for ~4350 average or so. Yup, that's a huge lump of hitpoints. Letting one's tank drop low enough to actually need such a huge lump of hit points is just asking to get him killed. 9 out of 10 of my GH crits are worthless, simply because the tank "only" needs the ~2900 from
the normal spell, and the crit bonus is over the top. The remaining few that actually hit a tank that needs are nice, certainly, but with my ~7% crit chance on spells, that happens less than once in a hundred casts.

Third problem: non-tanks, squishies in particular. A mage can't wait 3.5/4 secs for a heal. He'll be dead by then. Nor does he need a 2900 point heal - that's like 90% of his bar. It's pretty simple ... the majority of non-tanks don't have good enough damage reduction (from armor, block, parry, dodge
etc.) to wait for a GH, nor do they have big enough health bars to need such a huge heal.

One could of course use lower ranks of GH for lower heal amounts ... but first off all, that doesn't solve the casting time problem - second, the mana efficiency is reduced with each rank down.

And another problem while we're at it. 3.5/4 seconds of casting GH = 3.5/4 seconds of not doing anything else. If I start a GH on the tank, then a moment later notice the mage is taking damage ... well, by the time my GH has finished and I can get to heal the mage, he's probably already splattered across the floor.

You'll see me fooling around with GH when my tank is tougher then the encounter, or when we're zerging something (10-man strat, for example). But when we're fighting something tough I ain't touching it. That's just asking for a wipe.
An example from the other day:
Budmonkey in his top-notch gear tanking King Gordok in Dire Maul. I started a rank 4 GH when Bud was at 85% health. A moment later the king did a MS and followed up with a crit. With 2 seconds to go on my GH, Bud was down to about 10% health. I had to cancel, pw:shield [horribly inefficient], then flash [poor efficiency] twice to get him out of 1-shot danger.

When we're going up against Onyxia there's no way I'll be using greater heal on the main tank. Pushing that button = wiping the raid.

Which leads me on to flash heal. It's fast, which is nice. It heals for a decent amount, which is nice.

The mana efficiency is poor, which is bad.
7000 mana worth of GH = 24.010 hp
7000 mana worth of FH = 18.270 hp
24% less health out of the same mana pool.

Finally there's PW:shield. 950ish points of absorbtion to the target right here, right now. Extremely inefficient. Nice for emergencies, nice to pop on AoE'ing mages, but definitely not nice for the mana pool.

Moving on to the paladin
First, introducing the lovely little thing called "Blessing of light". The paladin can cast a blessing on a target which increases all healing recieved from Holy Light by 400 points, and all healing recieved from Flash of Light by 115.
Note that I'm not including the improved flash of light talent, since it's unlikely one would want to get it, even for an all-out healing build.

Flash of light - direct heal [with blessing of light].
1.5 second cast. 140 mana. 458 - 498 health (478 avg).
Health per mana point: 3.41
Health per second: 318.6
Talents:
spiritual focus (5 points, tier 1 holy)
illumination (5 points, tier 2 holy)

Flash of light - direct heal [without blessing of light].
1.5 second cast. 140 mana. 343 - 383 health (363 avg).
Health per mana point: 2.59
Health per second: 242

Holy light - direct heal. [with blessing of light]
2.5 second cast. 580 mana. 1795 - 1954 health (1874,5 avg).
Health per mana point: 3.23
Health per second: 749,8
Talents:
spiritual focus (5 points, tier 1 holy)
illumination (5 points, tier 2 holy)
improved holy light (3 points, tier 1 holy)

Holy light - direct heal. [without blessing of light]
2.5 second cast. 580 mana. 1396 - 1554 health (1475 avg).
Health per mana point: 2.54
Health per second: 590
Talents:
spiritual focus (5 points, tier 1 holy)
illumination (5 points, tier 2 holy)
improved holy light (3 points, tier 1 holy)

It's easy to see that without blessing of light, both heals are subpar.
But then have a look at the numbers with blessing of light. I personally find it rather annoying that this one blessing gives more of a boost to holy light then 30 points in the holy tree does to greater heal.

And ... well, flash of light has awesome mana efficiency (and that's without the -12% mana cost talent), but it's tiny, and that's about all there is to say about that.

Now have a look at holy light. Nearly as efficient as greater heal and very good heal-per-second while having a MUCH better 2.5 second cast time. This is one of the really big advantages for a paladin healer - to be able to heal a tank with a much more versatile spell that's still very mana-efficient.

And that's it for the paladin - no more healing spells, no HoT or group heal. I'll once again push that a bit further down in the post :P

So, so far on mana pool and efficiency:
- the priest wins out by a measly 650ish points on mana pool
- when healing a tank, the paladin can rely on a much more efficient spell then the priest

More about mana
First of all, the paladin illumination talent (tier 2, holy). With this maxed, the paladin regains all mana everytime he scores a crit with a healing spell. The priest does not have a talent like this.
Base crit spell chance for all classes is roughly 5% + (int/100). In decent gear and raid-buffed, that'll be 8% easy enough. Add a few +spell crit items (dire maul has about half a dozen items with good int and +spell crit) and 10% is easy to reach. Think about that for a second - on average, every
10th spell is not only a crit (+50% effect) but also free. As all other chance-things, it's not exactly reliable, but it's certainly a decent boost in overall efficiency.

Now go 1 single point further into the paladin holy tree. Divine favor. Costs about 30 mana, is uber-instant cast (i.e. instant and no global spellcooldown) and turns the next healing spell into an automatic crit. 2 minute cooldown.
Illumination + divine favor = 1 free crit heal every 2 minutes.

21 points into the priest discipline tree (not the holy tree, mind you), we have inner focus. Zero mana, also uber-instant. Next spell is free and gets a +25% chance to crit. 5 minute cooldown.

Someone explain that to me, pretty please.
Anyways: divine favor can be used more often then inner focus AND has a bigger effect. Another plus to paladin efficiency.

And even more: ways of regaining mana in combat
Priest:
Spirit regen and X mana every 5 sec items. Period.
Skills? none.
Talents? two.
- meditation. 5 points, tier 5 discipline (so it's this OR master healer, can't have both). Allows 15% mana regen to continue while casting.
30 * 0,15 * (14 + (300/4)) = 400 [say if you want an explanation of this calculation]
So, a priest that has 300 spirit (which is bloody hard to get without losing a lot of int) gets 400 points of mana out of this talent over 1 minute of busy fighting.
- divine spirit. +31 spi buff. 1 point, tier 7 discipline. Anyone getting this buff can only get 20 points into holy, thus missing out on improved prayer of fortitude, master healer (and has to make a choice between between 5/5 improved healing, or 3/5 + 2 improved flash heal). These 31 points obviously
help on making meditation useful, but the effect is rather small.

Paladin:
Blessing of wisdom. +30 mana every 5 seconds. A healerdin has no reason to have any other blessing on him (nope, not salvation - getting to that. Also that. Damnit). This is 360 points of mana in a minute of heavy fighting. With no talent points invested. With 5 points in it (tier 3, holy and leading on to
the +10% mana talent) it's 432 points per minute.

Seal of wisdom. If the paladin ain't too busy casting, he can pop this seal on - giving him a pretty nice chance to regain mana by hitting a mob. I'm not sure about the numbers for level 60, but at 44 I regain the seal cost with 4~5 swings. In a short fight this won't mean much, but in long fights the
paladin should be able to regen a decent amount by popping this on and slapping something that's safe to slap (such as a mob someone else is tanking).

Other then that, it's spirit and X mana every 5 sec items like the priest.
On that note: seems Blizzard have realized that spirit is pretty crap, but instead of fixing it they decided to add a load of items with +X mana every 5 secs ... there's plenty in Dire Maul, and as of last patch also quite a few to get in Strat and Scholo.

So ... a priest with a paladin's blessing of wisdom on obviously wins on regen, but other then that it's pretty much even.

Summing up the whole mana thing:
Mana pool - priest wins by a bit.
Heal efficiency - on tanks, paladin wins hands down.
Regen - pretty much the same.

Aggro.
You all know it; even though priests have subtlety (-20% healing aggro) and fade, they pull aggro with their heals. All the time. Loads of it. Probably the biggest challenge for any 5-man instance group is to keep the priest clear through a tough pull. Same thing in the raids. If the main tank gets slaughtered by Drakkisath, who's next on the list? the priest that was healing the MT.

And here's the bit that seems to suprise a lot of people: nope, a paladin in cloth is not screwed because he lacks subtelty and fade. Not at all. This is due to the simple fact that paladins have a ~75% natural aggro reduction on all their heals to prevent tank paladins from "heal-tanking". Think about it for a second ... how many times have you pallys seen a priest pull aggro off you with their healing? reverse it. How many times have you pulled aggro off anyone with healing?
If you don't believe me, I'll demonstrate ingame - very easy to show.

So basically:
Priests have to struggle hard NOT to pull aggro
A paladin healer is not going to get aggro unless he really, really wants it (and then he'll have to pull out the 2-hander and go with seal of fury, or hope for a good SoC proc).

And when they do pull aggro ...:
The priest can fade, usually fixing the problem temporarily, costing 250 mana (hey, more priest mana out the window).
If fade doesn't work / is already on cooldown / whatever, and the priest needs to cast while being beaten on, there's a few tools to assist him.
- improved flash heal talent, 2 points, tier 4 holy. 70% chance not to lose casting time when hit. Note that this works on flash heal only.
- martyrdom talent. 2 points, tier 2 discipline. After beeing the victim of a crit, the priest gains 100% chance not to lose casting time for 4 seconds. It helps, but then again getting critted usually ain't too good for the health bar ...
- focused casting. 1 point, tier 3 discpline. Spell, 30 mana, instant cast to activate, gives the same effect as martyrdom for 8 seconds. 1 minute cooldown. There's this little cute problem with it, though, that it's an instant, not an uber-instant. So in order to not lost casting time, the priest first has to wait out the 1.5 sec global cooldown for firing the instant spell ...
- power word: shield. Instant cast. Full speed casting as long as the 950ish points of absorb last. Problem being that the priest cannot reshield 'till after 15 seconds AND it costs 500 bloody mana. Poof, more mana out the window.

When the paladin pulls aggro ...:
First off, due to the much lower aggro generation, it's going to be a heck of a lot easier for the tank to pull stuff off him again.
Second ... 70% from the first 5 points in holy + 35% concentration aura = 105% chance not to lose casting time when taking damage - for both healing spells.
Third, blessing of protection, divine shield.

No contest. Paladin wins hands down.

Survivability
Just like priests have a bit more natural mana then pallies, pallies have a bit more natural life then priests. 454 points to be exact.
Now let's see ...
Block. Paladin yep, priest no.
Parry. Paladin yep, priest no.
Dodge. In caster gear, both have equally little.
My level 60 priest has ~1750 armor. Tinkerer shield + devotion + cloth armor = already over 3000 armor for the pally. Now replace some cloth items with higher armor stuff with equal casting stats (there's plenty out there), get a better shield (there's several good ones with good int on) ... 4K armor is not hard to reach.

And I think I'll just mention blessing of protection and divine shield again, just for good measure.

Healing roles
I think it should be clear enough by now that when it comes to healing tanks, paladins > priests, plain and simple.
And I don't think I'll need to say much about why priests are better at healing squishies ... flash heal, renew, PW:shield, prayer of healing.
So nope, by point with this thread is not to get all our priests to reroll paladins, it's rather to get some of our pallies to consider gathering int-gear and getting some holy specs. We're doing lots of raiding, and we have a lot of the big stuff coming up. We're going to need more healers, but we really don't need more priests. For UBRS, for example, 1 priest for the squishies and 2 healerdins on the main tanks, for example. For Onyxia when we get there ... we'll need a priest in each whelp group, and probably one on the rogues. But on the main tank? healerdins all the way.

I've probably missed something, but just one last comment ... think back through the thread on the paladin talents I've mentioned.
5/5 - 70% uninterruptable
3/3 - +12% holy light effect
5/5 - crit repay
1/1 - divine favor
5/5 - blessing of wisdom
5/5 - 10% max mana

24 points. That's it. Leaving 27 points ... enough to get most of the good stuff in retri. Apart from boredom with strat/scholo/etc. runs, there's nothing stopping you from having a set of normal paladin gear, *and* a set of healing gear, while having ALL the holy specs you need and a decent retri or prot-setup.

That got pretty long, but well. Mweh :P

[karkus]

brilliantly written, sums it all up so well, and its very tough to argue with it, think u just summed up why there is a lack of priests in game, u should post this in the general forums of blizz if you haven't allready, i have seen alot of priest v pala's discussions but this is the best

[TheIcon]

Im impressed you wrote a rundown of healing on a class vs. class issues that I did not fall asleep to with in the first 4 lines :)

I'm looking forward to seeing some featback from when you get closer to level 60, and has some equipment to top you off with.



Now I can hear this over and over in my head again.

Horde player:

"OMG WTF ... THAT FUCKING SUCKS, NERF IMBALADINS"

[faith]

ummm.....

*gone fishing*

[Tasie]

I guess you were bored, niko:)

Anyways nice post:) I never thought of heals, healing too much:P

Guess I should take that into mind, when spending skill points:)

[Daymare]

I predict a massive Nikodemus banning coming from blizz if he posts this :P

[Freaky]

as a horde priest of lvl 60. i have always know that priest talents and long heal times sucked ass ;)

my healer build was centered totaly arround the flash heal, renew and shield.
i took talents that gave me more crits with holy spells (holy speialization) and talents that gave my healing crits targets a short term buff of 25% more armor.
and with the many points saved for greater heal and holy nova (AHAHAHAH he said holy nova AHAHAH :D ) i could get inner focus and some mana improvements from disc and still have a free(improved) prayer of healing with 25% more crit chance and crit buff every few min.

just to sum it up. yes as a former horde player im tempted to say "IMBALADIN!" but what i really want to say is, (what we all know) priests suck ass compared to other healing classes that are not supposed to be main healers. (druid, pala). mainly because holy spec is SO weak its laughable. i am, and always will be. priest for the sake of healing and keeping my team alive. not to be übber shadow pvp'er. (*prayer to blizz* please make my priest able to be main healer some day. i know you don't want to admit it. but it really is a weak talent tree)

oh and niko. thanks for showing some pala's the light. the true light :rolleyes:
palas are not tanks :p
support for the win :)

[Dojun]

I cant really say i agree with Niko on all (not saying palas suck as healers). Sure we can do some good healing but not as good as a priest. Look at inner sanctum when they are in MC. Last time they were in there they had 7-8 priests and 4 palas. You can also look at the video where they kill ragnaros. I i am not misstaken they have 1 druid+1 priest healing Xark (who was MT i think, best geared warrior ive seen). I am not gonna try to do some maths about mana efficincy and such, i just dont have the head for it.

[Banadan]

It's a nice story, but on the paper. Some points are valid, some not. For example the aggro thing - if the tank is not taunting the mob - some tanks don't, they think that they can do damage to keep mob locked - then I pull the aggro over easily with heals alone. Sure, priest pulls it even more then I do, but no aggro from heals or totally minimum - wrong. This very same Drakki example - I've been killed by him (when we did not have the priest) at times even before the druids were killed in the raid, and all because of my healing aggro only. Basically, all this looks good on paper, but let's be honest - you're not the only one out there who actually can look at some numbers and skills and such. There loads of other people out there too and your ideas, by the way, have been already tested and tried. And in reality they don't work that well.

Gear, yes, there is some good plate and such gear out there, which helps with the healing. Dire Maul, cute. And if I recall, I've been there once, with a random group, which proved yet again that the random groups suck big time. Basically, I am not going into any 'serious' instance with some random hillybilly groups, and in the guild I haven't seen much DM activity after the nobility of the "new place" wore off. As for mail or even cloth pieces.. Thanks but no thanks. I, personally, 'grew' out from those and I envision my char as a 'knight', not the primary tank out there, but still a tank type. Some paladin who envisions his/her char as a healer mostly will go that way, be my guest, but only cloth what I will wear is my shirt, tabard and a hanky in my back pocket :cool:

Talents - I have clear idea for the talents for my char. And these don't match your idea. Yes, I have some talents from the ones you mentioned, any 'real' paladin would take those, like the chance to not get spells interrupted, chance to get mana back on critical heals (by the way, critical heals happen still rarely, because unlike priests, paladins have no talents to give them additional critical chance), ability to make next heal 100% critical. But personally I will not cut off my talents from something else I wanted, planned and took just to get, for example, bigger mana pool. This is not how I see my char and have planned, and the simple fact that we lack primary healers and should actually recruit only them (and cloth casters, too) does not make me go out and 'gimp' my char. I have set my talents so, that my char can stand on his own, but also so that he offers bonuses to the group he is in, for defense and support mostly. Because I am fully aware that I am not a 'real' tank like a warrior, or a DPS like a rogue. Thats why I have 'balanced' choices from all the talent trees, and not focussed only in one. My choices give me good healing, good defense (and to my group, my aura alone adds literally 1k AC) and some in damage area as well.

Basically, what you show here has been tested and yes, a paladin who is fully spec'ed in healing and has such a gear, can do fine in instances. But it also has been tested and this does NOT WORK on high end raids, high end content. There is no one to replace the priest with, or healing spec'ed druid, on high end content raids. Paladins work on those raids as secondary healers, healing the squishies and throwing heals on MT's and main healers as needed, but they will not cut there as a 'wannabe primary healers'. We can do Drakki with just a 'healedins' in the raid, or druids + healedin(s), but Onyxia or MC or such - forget it. No primary healer classes there - no kills of those mobs either. And getting more paladins in means less DPS classes on such runs.

On other theme, let me give you some examples on raiding and healing higher end stuff. No, not in WoW, as the higher end content is small here yet. From EverQuest, where the content is plenty. Higher end tanks in EQ can pack 12-14k HP unbuffed, and with buffs they can add some 3-4k for sure to it. Sounds a lot, but not that much, when you are facing a mob which can do 3000 damage per hit - it is the USUAL, BASE damage of that mob - and can do 4 hits per attack. 12000 HP gone in a single round. And the mob also hits fast, and can Flurry (special attack granting, basically, even more attacks. Of course, mobs in EQ have many more additional attacks they use, many are AoE ones, many are 'cone like', and many are single target one. And some sucky mobs use all of these abilities, almost, at once). Clerics - like priests in WoW - have their biggest heal - Complete Heal (which after the nerfs isn't 'complete' anymore, but heals only 7.5k per pop; can be improved some with AA points (like talents in WoW)) - casting time is 10 (TEN!) seconds. Within these 10 seconds the mob could decimate the MT and quite few others. How you think this is solved? By having FEW primary healers, and a system called "Complete Heal chain". It means that the primary healers, clerics in this case, cast the CH spell in chain - first cleric casts it, second starts after 3 seconds, then third starts 3 seconds after the second one and so on. Sometimes they have to adjust it on the fly and the cleric coordinator announces "1 second CH chain", because there are mobs who pack more damage per hit then 3k, and no high end mob in EQ really does less then 4 attacks per single hit. More then 4 - yes, less - no. Sometimes they adjust to longer duration CH chain, like "5 second CH", depending on the mob. Basically, the KEY to high end content is ENOUGH of primary healers and their coordination. No priest in WoW should be solo heal so that their eyes pop out. There needs to be more then 2-3 primary healers, and they should be coordinated. This allows the big heals land in time (I mean, come on, 4s cast time on big heal is little, especially as it can be reduced, in EQ NOTHING reduces the healing time for CH, for example) and also spreads the aggro, because it's a healer per time. So any tank who has any clue on how to tank and maintain aggro, will keep the mob locked on him/her, while staying fully healed. And of course, there was always the secondary MT ready to step in and if MT happened to go down, secondary MT had enough aggro to step right in and cleric coordinator gave the message "Switch to secondary MT, secondary healers assist" - secondary healers assisted with quick patch heals until CH chain was running on new MT again, also patching the main healer who maybe got wounded during the MT switch.

We need basically a primary healer PER group if we actually want to tackle high end content, and we better get recruiting them if we want to use our Onyxia keys soon. And coordinated primary healer healing system.

[TheIcon]

Hehe you make it sound like its a personal attack on your take on a paladins Banadan ;)

Seeing as I'v never seen the idea in use in highend instances I'd personally would still give the idea a go as it sounds interesting from my point of view on a paladin (not a tank but a life line). But I'll give you a paladin looks better in plate then in cloth any day of the week ;)

And if a tank in a highend instance is not tanking taunting and is MT, it would be fair to say he should be noted down and never get invites to the instance again unless he learned it. Might aswell bring another rogue then a none taunting warrior ^^

For RL DM runs, I'v seen atleast 3 in the guild chat over the last week :)

[Nikodemus]

It's a nice story, but on the paper. Some points are valid, some not. For example the aggro thing - if the tank is not taunting the mob - some tanks don't, they think that they can do damage to keep mob locked - then I pull the aggro over easily with heals alone. Sure, priest pulls it even more then I do, but no aggro from heals or totally minimum - wrong. This very same Drakki example - I've been killed by him (when we did not have the priest) at times even before the druids were killed in the raid, and all because of my healing aggro only. Basically, all this looks good on paper, but let's be honest - you're not the only one out there who actually can look at some numbers and skills and such. There loads of other people out there too and your ideas, by the way, have been already tested and tried. And in reality they don't work that well.
Any tank not tauning obviously has no idea what he's doing (thus won't be spamming sunder either etc.), and then sure you can pull the aggro off him - anything can pull the aggro off him. In either case that should be irrelevant; all the highlevel tanks I've played with in the guild certainly do know what they're doing.
I didn't say "no aggro at all", I said a ~75% reduction. You're still creating aggro, you're just a lot further down the "hate list".
I've seen a few guild who tried using paladins and healers and failed, but they all made the same mistake: they didn't equip their paladins for it. They had them standing around with mediocre manapools in lightforge gear, half of them not even properly specced for the job.


Gear, yes, there is some good plate and such gear out there, which helps with the healing. Dire Maul, cute. And if I recall, I've been there once, with a random group, which proved yet again that the random groups suck big time. Basically, I am not going into any 'serious' instance with some random hillybilly groups, and in the guild I haven't seen much DM activity after the nobility of the "new place" wore off. As for mail or even cloth pieces.. Thanks but no thanks. I, personally, 'grew' out from those and I envision my char as a 'knight', not the primary tank out there, but still a tank type. Some paladin who envisions his/her char as a healer mostly will go that way, be my guest, but only cloth what I will wear is my shirt, tabard and a hanky in my back pocket
Did I say anywhere that all our pallies had to change their chars around to this? =)
That there hasn't been much dire maul activity doesn't mean that it ain't possible to go there. Heck, I've been there twice over the last week, and you might want to have a look at the caster shield Iron got in there just last night. It's as simple as gathering a 5-man group and going there.

Talents - I have clear idea for the talents for my char. And these don't match your idea. Yes, I have some talents from the ones you mentioned, any 'real' paladin would take those, like the chance to not get spells interrupted, chance to get mana back on critical heals (by the way, critical heals happen still rarely, because unlike priests, paladins have no talents to give them additional critical chance), ability to make next heal 100% critical. But personally I will not cut off my talents from something else I wanted, planned and took just to get, for example, bigger mana pool. This is not how I see my char and have planned, and the simple fact that we lack primary healers and should actually recruit only them (and cloth casters, too) does not make me go out and 'gimp' my char. I have set my talents so, that my char can stand on his own, but also so that he offers bonuses to the group he is in, for defense and support mostly. Because I am fully aware that I am not a 'real' tank like a warrior, or a DPS like a rogue. Thats why I have 'balanced' choices from all the talent trees, and not focussed only in one. My choices give me good healing, good defense (and to my group, my aura alone adds literally 1k AC) and some in damage area as well.
Still, I did not say *anywhere* that anyone has to this, I'm saying it's possible to do this.
About the crit chance, as I said in the post:
5 + (int / 100) = base crit chance. No, that's not going to be terribly high, but with good int (which would be the aim for a char built like this) and a few +crit items, 10% is easy enough to get even with the lack of crit boosting talent.
Yes, along the same lines the priest can get those 10% and add another 5% from talents thus get a higher crit chance, but that doesn't change the fact that a crit heal is much more valueable for a paladin then for a priest.

Basically, what you show here has been tested and yes, a paladin who is fully spec'ed in healing and has such a gear, can do fine in instances. But it also has been tested and this does NOT WORK on high end raids, high end content. There is no one to replace the priest with, or healing spec'ed druid, on high end content raids. Paladins work on those raids as secondary healers, healing the squishies and throwing heals on MT's and main healers as needed, but they will not cut there as a 'wannabe primary healers'. We can do Drakki with just a 'healedins' in the raid, or druids + healedin(s), but Onyxia or MC or such - forget it. No primary healer classes there - no kills of those mobs either. And getting more paladins in means less DPS classes on such runs.
Tell me *why* it should not work in raid instances. Show me a link to someone who has tried with properly specced and geared healing paladins and failed because of that.

On other theme, let me give you some examples on raiding and healing higher end stuff. No, not in WoW, as the higher end content is small here yet. From EverQuest, where the content is plenty. Higher end tanks in EQ can pack 12-14k HP unbuffed, and with buffs they can add some 3-4k for sure to it. Sounds a lot, but not that much, when you are facing a mob which can do 3000 damage per hit - it is the USUAL, BASE damage of that mob - and can do 4 hits per attack. 12000 HP gone in a single round. And the mob also hits fast, and can Flurry (special attack granting, basically, even more attacks. Of course, mobs in EQ have many more additional attacks they use, many are AoE ones, many are 'cone like', and many are single target one. And some sucky mobs use all of these abilities, almost, at once). Clerics - like priests in WoW - have their biggest heal - Complete Heal (which after the nerfs isn't 'complete' anymore, but heals only 7.5k per pop; can be improved some with AA points (like talents in WoW)) - casting time is 10 (TEN!) seconds. Within these 10 seconds the mob could decimate the MT and quite few others. How you think this is solved? By having FEW primary healers, and a system called "Complete Heal chain". It means that the primary healers, clerics in this case, cast the CH spell in chain - first cleric casts it, second starts after 3 seconds, then third starts 3 seconds after the second one and so on. Sometimes they have to adjust it on the fly and the cleric coordinator announces "1 second CH chain", because there are mobs who pack more damage per hit then 3k, and no high end mob in EQ really does less then 4 attacks per single hit. More then 4 - yes, less - no. Sometimes they adjust to longer duration CH chain, like "5 second CH", depending on the mob. Basically, the KEY to high end content is ENOUGH of primary healers and their coordination. No priest in WoW should be solo heal so that their eyes pop out. There needs to be more then 2-3 primary healers, and they should be coordinated. This allows the big heals land in time (I mean, come on, 4s cast time on big heal is little, especially as it can be reduced, in EQ NOTHING reduces the healing time for CH, for example) and also spreads the aggro, because it's a healer per time. So any tank who has any clue on how to tank and maintain aggro, will keep the mob locked on him/her, while staying fully healed. And of course, there was always the secondary MT ready to step in and if MT happened to go down, secondary MT had enough aggro to step right in and cleric coordinator gave the message "Switch to secondary MT, secondary healers assist" - secondary healers assisted with quick patch heals until CH chain was running on new MT again, also patching the main healer who maybe got wounded during the MT switch.
Comparing directly to EQ doesn't work properly, since ... well, the games are indeed different. The combat pace is a good deal faster in WoW, hence 1 second means a lot more.
I'm well aware of what a heal chain is - we actually used one (though just with 2 people and then a rotation of 2 other people) on Teremus the couple of times we took him down. Even then, the spikey damage becomes a problem. Say we take 2 priests without master healer casting GH with 2 second overlap, and another 2 priests to rotate with when the first chain is about to go OOM. So the tank is getting a ~2900 heal every 2 seconds. Ought to be enough to keep him alive through anything, certainly, but it also means that whenever he doesn't need that many points (when he's lucky with his defensive abilities, or the mob gets unlucky with a few misses), he's getting loads of healing he doesn't need -> waste of mana.
A chain might work well, or not. The alternative ... have 1 healerdin casting holy light non-stop 'till he's dry (1875ish health every 2.5 secs), then another taking over etc., all the while having another healer ready to chip in whenever the tank drops below 50%.
Hard to say what will work 'till we've seen the beast in action and seen the damage output.

We need basically a primary healer PER group if we actually want to tackle high end content, and we better get recruiting them if we want to use our Onyxia keys soon. And coordinated primary healer healing system.
Excuse me, but do you really think that whenever I see a level 45+ unguilded priest or druid, I do not immediately send an invite? =)
Naked Squad, Sin, Element and MoM are all short on priests/druids as well. Have a look at LFG chat in Ironforge and you'll see 2/3rds of the spam are from people who need a healer before they can get going. I'd like to recruit more - hell yeah - but there are very few, if any at all, to recruit :(
I even know that Grom has tried poking a bit at a few priests and druid from other guilds, but no luck finding anyone willing to abandon their previous guild, heh.

But yep, we do need a bunch of healers for the high end stuff - I just also think we need to use them properly.

[Ramiraz]

well, its only fair to mention, that the succes of keeping agro on the MT is not only the MTs job. Keeping agro on the MT, is as much the mages, priest, warlock, hunter, etc's job, since if they cant control their own agro (something one should be able to as level 60), then the MT will have alot more trouble keeping the mob focused. No amount of taunting will keep the mob on the tank, if the mages unload on the mob within the first 5 sec of the fight, or if the priest starts to chain greater heal....

Always, let your warriors build up rage, and agro before you unload all your little neat tricks, because, if you dont, you are most certainly the next to die...right after the priest who is franticaly spamming heals on you...

[Banadan]

Nah, I don't mean this as a personal attack, or take it. I respect Niko, he's a damn good priest and if he's in group or raid, I always feel confident about the success.

I don't agree with some of his points, simply. What he suggest is what I have already read about on US forums. It has been said and proven, that to some extent it will work, but not in high end instances, where we are aiming to go. This setup, for example, can work with Drakki, or any other runs we're doing so far, if we have no primary healers around. Of course, one such paladin on such run would not cut it. And it would take a paladin who actually plans and plays his/her char like this, and wants to be so-called "healedin". Heck, fine with me, we play the chars like we want to.

I say what I want to say, and directly, but I do not take it like a personal attack against me or mean it like against Niko, no. If it sounds like that, then sorry, that was not the goal, the goal is to give my PERSONAL point of view :) To me the paladin is first and foremost a knight, melee hybrid. I gear him up like that, I set up his talents like that, and I play him like that. I know what I can do, and what I can't. Where I can't do something, I let others do it, others who are better at it. Like DPS classes to lay serious smack on the mob, warriors tank the mob, priests/druids heal.. At the same time I know that when needed, I can step up to tank the mob some, I can heal some, and I can do some smacking too.

And yes, as I wrote above, I have some of the healing talents. Well, most of them actually, because it's something what a soloing paladin usually always takes. I have also some of those "healing armor pieces" Niko listed, simply because I saved them when I got for one single purpose - if I have to at some point focus more on healing, I can pull on those plate legs, the shield I have, the cloak, put on my HP/Mana regen trinket, slap BoWisdom on me and for a while, I can do some fine healing. Not compareable what the priest or druid can do, but it can save some skins in a tight situation. And yeah, there's still the "paladin" armor in DM, the plate piece which also regens mana and has good stats, could also get the mana regen shield from Maraudon..

However, I personally will not go wearing mail, or even cloth, just because it has few more INT points. I'm a melee hybrid class in the end, I got the plate skill for a reason and that's what I use, cloth is for cloth classes :) Also the talents, I like what I chose and use (although, I do admit that I may change it a bit around, switch some talent to other, I am not 100% sure yet) and I wouldn't go and take the talent setup I do not want, neither envision my char use/need. Leroy can go and wear Devout (what he really didn't, but no difference), I wont. It's not my char. And, healedins are not the class which will make the big, high end raids to succeed. It's the priests and druids - and let's face it, priest is aimed to be healing class, while druid isn't aimed, so we can't expect or force all druids go and take their healing talents only (priest shadow line for damage was added so that the priests could solo too, though it made them more powerful then was initially intended, but people were happy so it was left. Thats insider data, btw, the EQ guild I was in, which moved to WoW, the guild leader went to work for EU Blizz, high position, too bad they chose ugly Horde :D ).

So yeah, again, please don't take my post as hostile :) It's said directly and not 'through bushes', but it's not meant as hostile. I agree with some points Niko made, they're viable and correct and also some talent and gear suggestions, but I don't agree with all what he wrote. Oh, and recruit more priests :D

[Shinigami]

The fact is that the Paladins role in high-end raid content like Onyxia and Molten core is not as a tank or damage dealer. They should be in int/sta or int/spi plate/mail and dispelling and healing from a distance. If we lack warriors, we can use some of the combat-geared paladins in a pinch as off-tanks, but most of the time they'd just be a poor excuse for a warrior, or a poor excuse for a rogue/mage/hunter when it comes to DPS. This is not my personal opinion, it's what all the US guilds raiding the high-end content have experienced, go read the 'Raids and Dungeons'-forum on the US site if you doubt what I'm saying.

Most MC raid compositions I've read about on the US forums use an average of 15 healers, and with the number of priests and druids we currently have, guess what we need all you paladins to do? Even in raids that have enough priests and druids, having the paladins in melee is still a waste of mana compared to the damage they can do. They might be contributing damage on some of the trash-mobs, but in the larger trash pulls and on most bosses, having anything but the MT in melee is another target for the healers to worry about. Only rogues can do enough melee damage to justify the extra need for healing, and even then they need to get enough +sta gear to have 4k+ HP unbuffed. Otherwise they'll die too often.

Good post Niko :)

[Nikodemus]

well, its only fair to mention, that the succes of keeping agro on the MT is not only the MTs job. Keeping agro on the MT, is as much the mages, priest, warlock, hunter, etc's job, since if they cant control their own agro (something one should be able to as level 60), then the MT will have alot more trouble keeping the mob focused. No amount of taunting will keep the mob on the tank, if the mages unload on the mob within the first 5 sec of the fight, or if the priest starts to chain greater heal....
One note about Onyxia here:
Nomatter how we set up the groups, who does the healing for the fight etc, I'm hoping we'll start like this:
- people move into position while MT grabs Onyxia, drags her in place and starts building up aggro.
- NOBODY does ANYTHING for the first 30~60 seconds. No damage or debuffs at all, just let the MT build up aggro. During that time, we should let paladins do the brunt of the healing on the MT (regardless of wether they'll be doing it for the rest of the fight or not) due to the lower aggro output.
Once we're absolutely certain the MT has a rock-solid grip on her, it's time to let the DDers loose, and get the normal heal rotation etc. going.
If you want to know why I'm stressing that point, have a look at some of the sites about the fight and the types of AoE she uses if someone in the middle of a group of DDers draw aggro :P

[Yimahura]

Hehe nice post...i realy gonna have to show this to my bro. He has made a heal specced paladin and he kicks good ass + nice healing... as long as he has mana...
On the other hand... they should make priests more worth to play....
Less mana use and better heals. Its quite frustrating when i play my alt and c someones hp going down in no time i have to w8 3.5sec or 2.5sec... they should give priests instant heals...
And yes i can use that shield but as Niko said it sucks waaaay to much mana.
When a fight goes wrong i think priest should be able to keep group alive even if the other players arent very good but i noticed when it goes wrong my mana is always gone in no time...then i am standing there with my wand ... doing 30 dmg :p
Bah what am i blabbing about... just a little frustrated that ppl always think priests are god... but they realy arent :(
So when it goes a paladin could be better afhter all now and then ;)

About high end instance... my brother is paladin and quite heal specced...
He only had to come along to rez ppl in Mc and i think thats was quite a good idea... no mana waiste for priests =)

[Banadan]

Paladins cannot ress in combat. If the raid is in fight and someone dies and paladin resses, he/she gets entered into combat more and that's that, no more resses. Paladins USED to have such a ress too and even in late beta, before the release, but the Blizzard went out and nerfed the crap out of it and allowed only priests to ress in combat (I am talking about the 'usual' ress, not the special ones what shamans or druids have, although I don't know what the shamans really have :) ). We should thank the whiners from the WoW community for this.

As for the claim "Paladins are better healers then priests", let's just finally drop it. There is NO run which gets cancelled if there are no paladins (healedins) - but any run will be cancelled when there's no priest, or at least heal specced druid. If the paladins were such great healers as described here, we'd be wanted all day long on every single run, because there are more runs to instances out there then the paladins, but that's not it. And that even after the same numbers what Niko showed have been introduced to the WOW community. What it will finally accomplish is that people will in the end start to whine on official forums how the paladins are still totally overpowered, because they can heal, imagine that.

[Nikodemus]

There is NO run which gets cancelled if there are no paladins (healedins) - but any run will be cancelled when there's no priest, or at least heal specced druid
That's halfway because we have so few pallies going the all-out-healer route, halfway because people still put way too much emphasis on the name of the class :P

On that note, we had a UBRS run where I was the only priest, lost my connection halfway through, Iron took my place and the run was finished with no problems :P

Edit:
By now, Iron has 5400 mana WITHOUT the 10% mana mana talent.
... while having over 5000 armor.
... and with the exception of 2~3 items, all his gear still needs strat/scholo/dm/brs upgrades.
Bastard. :)

[Banadan]

.. and we had a druids on that run (1 druid at least) and 4 paladins (with Iron). Considering that the place IS meant for a single group, we had overkill anyway (although yeah, a challeging for single group, but done and done by many, on US servers anyway and I am sure that on European servers too). Now I don't recall whether the single groups did Drakkisath, most likely not as that place has too many challenges for the single group, but up to Arena - including Arena - has been done with single groups (I need to find those posts again, to see if they went after The Beast as well). Of course, I imagine that it was a slow going with a single group, as pulls have to be super careful and such, but still.

On that particular run we were covered with heals quite well, even after you went LD due to ISP mess-up: 3 secondary healing paladins (I switched to healing "gear and mode" as soon as it was clear that you can't get back and other paladins healed more then fought too), 1 healedin and 1 heal specced druid. I've participated on Drakki run with 2 paladins and 2 druids as well, quite doable. But, notice that if we didn't have any druids and/or priests with us, there would have been no runs. On that very same run, when we started off, we had 3 paladins and you and we still didn't move on, because no one thought we have enough healing, and we moved on only after we got the druid with us. At the UBRS raid you mentioned, when we got to Drakki, I personally was only healing as did other paladins in that fight. If you would have been still with us, the paladins would have done less healing simply because you as a priest are better at that then we :)

Basically, I agree with you on the fact that the paladins can fill in the role of the secondary healers - with BoLight on target, the paladin can do secondary heals and also "off-heals" of other group members nicely. Even the "healedin", who's only difference is in bigger mana pool and, if they took it, improved Blessing of Wisdom (mana regen, few more mana per tick). And that's that. No better heals, or better or more critical heals. There is some gear out there which will help the paladin to sustain the heal for longer times due to the mana regen bonus and some nice mana (INT) bonus. This will work on lower end small raids, and in instances with single groups (although priest/druid is still more effective). But the 'real' raids what we're aiming for, no paladin is going to save the day if they're the main healers there and we have not enough primary healing classes.

OK, let's talk about something else, this theme is getting stretched out already :D

[Ramiraz]

Banadan, Priests cant rez in combat, for Alliance (since I dont know about shammy rez) its only druids that have the ability to rez in combat

[Daymare]

only druids have that ability in the game, it is why it has a 30 min timer

[Fusion]

Considering that the place IS meant for a single group, we had overkill anyway (although yeah, a challeging for single group, but done and done by many, on US servers anyway and I am sure that on European servers too). Now I don't recall whether the single groups did Drakkisath, most likely not as that place has too many challenges for the single group, but up to Arena - including Arena - has been done with single groups (I need to find those posts again, to see if they went after The Beast as well). Of course, I imagine that it was a slow going with a single group, as pulls have to be super careful and such, but still. If it was meant for a 5-man group, the quests wouldn't be completable in a raid.

[Twen]

First of all, Sin is not lacking priests nor druids. We have 7 druids at 60 and one at 58, and 5 priests at 60, one 57 and 2 60 within a week. ;) We did lack them for a while, but we were patient and waited for the people to lvl up (they started later then the rest of us), so now it's all good. =)

Well, I see what to say Niko, you've told me quite a lot about your project, and it looks good. However, you miss out on some things.

The healdin you talk about is meant for main tanks. I assume you're maintaining the blessing of light on your tank all the way, which of course will need some attention but the routine will be there fast i guess. That means 458 to 498 each 1,5 sec. That's horribly low. You can spam that all you want, you won't keep your main tank alive with it. The mobs you will encounter in end-game hit way harder then that, you can have 4 paladins spamming it and the main tank will still die. So it really isn't an option.

The other heal is very nice of course. However, 2,5 sec is a bit long. With the main tank healing we've found the best, that would either overheal (and cause lots of overuse in mana) or make the tank go too far down in health and probably die. But maybe your main tank healing is different from ours.

About the aggro, as a priest I rarely get aggro, neither in ubrs/strat/scholo and like never ever with raidbosses. My build is a crit-heal/spir build, and I crit a lot. Also, what you don't take into considerations is that as a paladin you will have to use the 2,5 sec heal, and heal for almost 2000 hp. Which means you will generate more threat each heal then if you did a 1000 hp heal like we priests do, so the difference will not be that big.

As for the not loosing casting time while healing, how often is conc aura more useful then the other auras? Only time I found it useful is if we have locks as main aoe'ers, and then we only have it on for that amount of time the aoe is needed. Flash heal is also pretty much the only heal used at tougher mobs as you said yourself, and priests only need 2 talent points to get the 35% reduction (with focused casting that requires some more talent points, think it's 3/fade it's hard to fail), you have 5 talent points for you 70% reduction and no fade. If you're hit, you will have to either have other ppl to heal the main tank or heal you, since a paladin don't have group heals, shield or fade.

There's also one thing you miss about the priests. With 5 points in inspiration you will give the one you heal +25% armor for 15 sec. It may not sound that fantastic, but it really does the trick. 25% for a main tank boosted for tanking onyxia and such helps a lot.

My last comment is the regen. Do you have any idea how important regen is in end-game? It's regen, regen and even more regen. That "pretty much the same" you're talking about save lifes. It's not hard at all to get 300 spir, and it won't go out on your int too much. I have 420 int and 369 spir buffed i think, and my equip is not superduper. As for seal of wisdom, if you're aiming to be a main tank healer (and Im not talking about ubrs and such, you hardly need a main tank healer there), you won't have time to hit a bit with your staff or whatever is best on your healdin. So it doesn't count at all. ;)

[Nikodemus]

The healdin you talk about is meant for main tanks. I assume you're maintaining the blessing of light on your tank all the way, which of course will need some attention but the routine will be there fast i guess. That means 458 to 498 each 1,5 sec. That's horribly low. You can spam that all you want, you won't keep your main tank alive with it. The mobs you will encounter in end-game hit way harder then that, you can have 4 paladins spamming it and the main tank will still die. So it really isn't an option.

The other heal is very nice of course. However, 2,5 sec is a bit long. With the main tank healing we've found the best, that would either overheal (and cause lots of overuse in mana) or make the tank go too far down in health and probably die. But maybe your main tank healing is different from ours.
Deffo' not planning to use flash of light - as I said, it's tiny. Tiny doesn't get the job done =)
On the other hand, I really see holy light as a potentially very nice spell. Yes, the casting time is longer then flash heal - but not that much longer. The healing amount is also higher then flash heal, but not nearly as huge as greater heal.
Personally I see flash heal as being ... well, just a bit too "flash". It's a bit too fast, a bit too small and way too bad on the mana for my likes :)

About the aggro, as a priest I rarely get aggro, neither in ubrs/strat/scholo and like never ever with raidbosses. My build is a crit-heal/spir build, and I crit a lot. Also, what you don't take into considerations is that as a paladin you will have to use the 2,5 sec heal, and heal for almost 2000 hp. Which means you will generate more threat each heal then if you did a 1000 hp heal like we priests do, so the difference will not be that big.
If the paladin heals for 2000 points, and the priest heals for 1000 points, then the priest has still generated twice as much aggro, sadly. Can demonstrate it ingame if you want.
I know it's not that big a deal on the really big bosses - essentially it's a huge single mob fight (well ok there's welp groups on the sides and such, but they have their own healers etc.), and single mob fights are pretty straight forward aggro-wise.

As for the not loosing casting time while healing, how often is conc aura more useful then the other auras? Only time I found it useful is if we have locks as main aoe'ers, and then we only have it on for that amount of time the aoe is needed. Flash heal is also pretty much the only heal used at tougher mobs as you said yourself, and priests only need 2 talent points to get the 35% reduction (with focused casting that requires some more talent points, think it's 3/fade it's hard to fail), you have 5 talent points for you 70% reduction and no fade. If you're hit, you will have to either have other ppl to heal the main tank or heal you, since a paladin don't have group heals, shield or fade.
Yep, a pally pays 5 points for the 70% (on both his heals) where the priest pays 2 for the 70% (for flash only). Few differences:
- paladin still only needs to pay an absolute maximum of 27 talent points to get all the healing stuff. My priest needs 60 points, which I can't even get :(
- 5 points in tier 1 for the pally, 2 in tier 3 for the priest. Priest has to "dig in deeper" in the healing tree.
- fade is a way for the priest to lose mana to get down near pally-level aggro generation, nothing more.
- priest is going to need something to help against casting interruptions a lot more often then paladins due to the whole aggro thing
- paladins can pop on one of their shields when they finally do need it, there'll be one ready in a few mins anyways again
*shrug*

There's also one thing you miss about the priests. With 5 points in inspiration you will give the one you heal +25% armor for 15 sec. It may not sound that fantastic, but it really does the trick. 25% for a main tank boosted for tanking onyxia and such helps a lot.
For the heavy investment compared to the low chance and duration I've always seen this as quite a waste, but it might be time to test it out. In any case that's another 5 points I need, up to 65 now. Wohooo :/

My last comment is the regen. Do you have any idea how important regen is in end-game? It's regen, regen and even more regen. That "pretty much the same" you're talking about save lifes. It's not hard at all to get 300 spir, and it won't go out on your int too much. I have 420 int and 369 spir buffed i think, and my equip is not superduper. As for seal of wisdom, if you're aiming to be a main tank healer (and Im not talking about ubrs and such, you hardly need a main tank healer there), you won't have time to hit a bit with your staff or whatever is best on your healdin. So it doesn't count at all.
My standard instance (5/10/15-man that is) gear is all about intellect, but yep I do have a set of regen gear in the bank. Last I tested it out I'd just exactly passed the 3k regen per minute-mark (while not casting), and have replaced a few pieces since then.
Thing is ... that has nothing to do with class. That's just gear. Gear that both classes can wear.

I might be right, I might be wrong. In any case I'm going to have fun trying it out - mainhealed a few instances with him now, and I can tell you that standing there spamhealing like a maniac without EVER pulling any aggro whatsoever ... damn it feels sweet =)

[Shinigami]

Spamming flash of ligth can be a great buffer on the MT - if you have the priests or druids casting their normal spells and a paladin chaining flash of light it will act as a nice buffer to keep HPs high and reduce the strain on the priests mana, allowing the priest a bit more breathing room on heal-timing.

I've read about US MC paladins going all out +healing gear and having great succes with this method.

Will try to find the thread again...

[Ironman]

Just a small note. A pally also get the Lay on hands. And if I invest 4 points in my talents I'll get it to 40 mins cooldown and it will also give the tank 30% armor buff.

[Shinigami]

Lay on hands is a great way to counter mortal strike crits by bosses as it can be instantly applied and isn't affected by the reduction in healing AFAIK. Crits are what kills tanks since priests are often not able to keep up. Mobs doing steady damage are not hard to heal the tank on, you just need to figure out the right amount of healing (and have the mana for it). Which is why +defense is so great, since it reduces the amount of crits. Reportedly, warriors with upwards of 400 defense almost never get critted, even by MC bosses.

[Twen]

The other heal is very nice of course. However, 2,5 sec is a bit long. With the main tank healing we've found the best, that would either overheal (and cause lots of overuse in mana) or make the tank go too far down in health and probably die. But maybe your main tank healing is different from ours.
On the other hand, I really see holy light as a potentially very nice spell. Yes, the casting time is longer then flash heal - but not that much longer. The healing amount is also higher then flash heal, but not nearly as huge as greater heal.
Personally I see flash heal as being ... well, just a bit too "flash". It's a bit too fast, a bit too small and way too bad on the mana for my likes :)

Well, you said you're aiming for your pal to be a main tank healer. I think maybe it's time to see what that means. Ok, so you can be a maintank-healer in raids in strat/scholo/ubrs. But there you maybe have 2 priests, rarely 3 in ubrs, you can get some help from the secondary tank but let's face it, on Drakkisath you're pretty much on your own healing the main tank who's keeping drakkisath steady. 2,5 sec is slow. So slow that it can kill your main tank, but well, drakkisath isn't exactly that hard so it will prob go ok. But this isn't real main tank healing. So you come to Onyxia or MC. Say you have 3 healers on your main tank. You're all spamming your 2,5 sec heal. Which again will lead to your main tank falling a bit too far down on the hp or that you overheal him, waste your mana. Flash is a bit too flashy in the other places, totally agree, but on the big tank healing it's really nice. It's fast so you can give your main tank a boost in case he drops way down in hp, also the shield is very helpful here, and it's small enough for you all to spam it without overusing mana nor letting him drop dow too often. With CTraidassist prevent from overhealing set on a bit different values, we'll keep our healerhearts from getting a breakdown.

About the aggro, as a priest I rarely get aggro, neither in ubrs/strat/scholo and like never ever with raidbosses. My build is a crit-heal/spir build, and I crit a lot. Also, what you don't take into considerations is that as a paladin you will have to use the 2,5 sec heal, and heal for almost 2000 hp. Which means you will generate more threat each heal then if you did a 1000 hp heal like we priests do, so the difference will not be that big.
If the paladin heals for 2000 points, and the priest heals for 1000 points, then the priest has still generated twice as much aggro, sadly. Can demonstrate it ingame if you want.
I know it's not that big a deal on the really big bosses - essentially it's a huge single mob fight (well ok there's welp groups on the sides and such, but they have their own healers etc.), and single mob fights are pretty straight forward aggro-wise.

The point is still, with right crowd controle, a good tank and some knowings about aggro management you don't get that much aggro. It happens of course, but not often enough to it being a problem. If it is, you're having a lousy group, sorry.


Yep, a pally pays 5 points for the 70% (on both his heals) where the priest pays 2 for the 70% (for flash only). Few differences:
- paladin still only needs to pay an absolute maximum of 27 talent points to get all the healing stuff. My priest needs 60 points, which I can't even get :(
- 5 points in tier 1 for the pally, 2 in tier 3 for the priest. Priest has to "dig in deeper" in the healing tree.
- fade is a way for the priest to lose mana to get down near pally-level aggro generation, nothing more.
- priest is going to need something to help against casting interruptions a lot more often then paladins due to the whole aggro thing
- paladins can pop on one of their shields when they finally do need it, there'll be one ready in a few mins anyways again
*shrug*

How much mana does the shield cost? And when you first have gotten so much aggro that it's needed for a shield, how are you planning on getting them off you? Also the point still is, how much aggro do you really get? And let's keep the big things in mind, shall we? 'Cause when can you have a paladin with you as main healer in the other instances, with no group heal and no way of keeping the mages alive?

There's also one thing you miss about the priests. With 5 points in inspiration you will give the one you heal +25% armor for 15 sec. It may not sound that fantastic, but it really does the trick. 25% for a main tank boosted for tanking onyxia and such helps a lot.
For the heavy investment compared to the low chance and duration I've always seen this as quite a waste, but it might be time to test it out. In any case that's another 5 points I need, up to 65 now. Wohooo :/

Well, first of all with the right gear it's not a low chance-thing. I've seen people say it isn't worth it on the forums all around, but it doesn't matter as long as i can see the effetc. ;) I have used 51 points, 29 in disc and 22 in holy, and Im very happy with it. Of course, everyone always want more points, but I don't feel I deeply need it. Not for now at least.


Thing is ... that has nothing to do with class. That's just gear. Gear that both classes can wear.

The thing is also priests have the mana regen during fights, that's really nice. It's not as big as it should be imo (after all, the bloody mages get 30% without talents), but it helps anyway.

Ironman: How long will the buff be there? And how often can you foresee a crit?

Im not saying it won't work with your healdins. And I wish you all the best of luck 'cause you sure have invested lot of time and effort in it. Im sure a healdin can be great with the priests and druids in the main tank healing, but I do have some sceptic thoughts about them being able to do so all by themselves.

[Nikodemus]

Well, you said you're aiming for your pal to be a main tank healer. I think maybe it's time to see what that means. Ok, so you can be a maintank-healer in raids in strat/scholo/ubrs. But there you maybe have 2 priests, rarely 3 in ubrs, you can get some help from the secondary tank but let's face it, on Drakkisath you're pretty much on your own healing the main tank who's keeping drakkisath steady. 2,5 sec is slow. So slow that it can kill your main tank, but well, drakkisath isn't exactly that hard so it will prob go ok. But this isn't real main tank healing. So you come to Onyxia or MC. Say you have 3 healers on your main tank. You're all spamming your 2,5 sec heal. Which again will lead to your main tank falling a bit too far down on the hp or that you overheal him, waste your mana. Flash is a bit too flashy in the other places, totally agree, but on the big tank healing it's really nice. It's fast so you can give your main tank a boost in case he drops way down in hp, also the shield is very helpful here, and it's small enough for you all to spam it without overusing mana nor letting him drop dow too often. With CTraidassist prevent from overhealing set on a bit different values, we'll keep our healerhearts from getting a breakdown.
Unless I feel like being lazy, I usually do UBRS without using flash heal actually. I'm a GH addict on my priest, admitted. To me, a 2.5 sec heal is a sweet, sweet fast heal, heh.
With a 2900 point GH, yep loads of overhealing problems. But with a 1800 heal I don't see that problem - you don't have to let the tank drop nearly as low as with GH or anything.
Seeing you speak about flash heal and PW:shield just makes me think .. well, ouch, poor mana pool :( ever looked at how much health you get for your mana? terribly little. You're losing way more mana that way then you would be overhealing a bit with holy light :/

The point is still, with right crowd controle, a good tank and some knowings about aggro management you don't get that much aggro. It happens of course, but not often enough to it being a problem. If it is, you're having a lousy group, sorry.
Adds.
Patrols.
Bad pulls.
Big pulls that can't be split.
You must know the situation - when there's simply just too much that needs to be tanked and CC'ed ... it's always the same, a few mobs end up running free, they aggro on your heals, you fade ... and if there's still too much when fade if up, you're meat :(

In any case, you must agree that a 75% aggro reduction is sweet, no? =)

How much mana does the shield cost? And when you first have gotten so much aggro that it's needed for a shield, how are you planning on getting them off you? Also the point still is, how much aggro do you really get? And let's keep the big things in mind, shall we? 'Cause when can you have a paladin with you as main healer in the other instances, with no group heal and no way of keeping the mages alive?
As a pally, I don't get that much aggro, plain and simple. I simply can't create enough for the tank to have trouble pulling them off me, nomatter how hard I try, heh.
Not to mention both the shields instantly drops all aggro off me. Pop the shield on, and they go away, every time. Unlike fade, it can't fail.

The thing is also priests have the mana regen during fights, that's really nice. It's not as big as it should be imo (after all, the bloody mages get 30% without talents), but it helps anyway.
Weee. 300 mana per minute of casting, zero mana per minute of not casting. If you have spent the talent points (and thus lost out on half the holy tree) :/

I really can't see why you want to have your priests healing the tanks. Flash heal is such an awesome squishie-heal, as is renew. Prayer of healing is awesome for groups of DDers or rogues that take AoE at the same time. We just don't have anything that's good on a tank :(

[Twen]

[QUOTE]Well, you said you're aiming for your pal to be a main tank healer. I think maybe it's time to see what that means. Ok, so you can be a maintank-healer in raids in strat/scholo/ubrs. But there you maybe have 2 priests, rarely 3 in ubrs, you can get some help from the secondary tank but let's face it, on Drakkisath you're pretty much on your own healing the main tank who's keeping drakkisath steady. 2,5 sec is slow. So slow that it can kill your main tank, but well, drakkisath isn't exactly that hard so it will prob go ok. But this isn't real main tank healing. So you come to Onyxia or MC. Say you have 3 healers on your main tank. You're all spamming your 2,5 sec heal. Which again will lead to your main tank falling a bit too far down on the hp or that you overheal him, waste your mana. Flash is a bit too flashy in the other places, totally agree, but on the big tank healing it's really nice. It's fast so you can give your main tank a boost in case he drops way down in hp, also the shield is very helpful here, and it's small enough for you all to spam it without overusing mana nor letting him drop dow too often. With CTraidassist prevent from overhealing set on a bit different values, we'll keep our healerhearts from getting a breakdown.
Unless I feel like being lazy, I usually do UBRS without using flash heal actually. I'm a GH addict on my priest, admitted. To me, a 2.5 sec heal is a sweet, sweet fast heal, heh.
With a 2900 point GH, yep loads of overhealing problems. But with a 1800 heal I don't see that problem - you don't have to let the tank drop nearly as low as with GH or anything.
Seeing you speak about flash heal and PW:shield just makes me think .. well, ouch, poor mana pool :( ever looked at how much health you get for your mana? terribly little. You're losing way more mana that way then you would be overhealing a bit with holy light :/

This really doesn't answer anything at all, 'cause you haven't been there, you don't know how it is. Shield is a way of saving the main tank when he suddenly gets much more dmg, the thing is you don't have any "lifesavers" like that. It will happen a lot, believe me, and then your 2,5 sec heal won't stand a chance of saving him. Specially not if you're trying to not overheal with that 2000hp heal. And if your way of healing is mainly greater heal, no wonder you feel you're getting too much aggro. ;)

The point is still, with right crowd controle, a good tank and some knowings about aggro management you don't get that much aggro. It happens of course, but not often enough to it being a problem. If it is, you're having a lousy group, sorry.
Adds.
Patrols.
Bad pulls.
Big pulls that can't be split.
You must know the situation - when there's simply just too much that needs to be tanked and CC'ed ... it's always the same, a few mobs end up running free, they aggro on your heals, you fade ... and if there's still too much when fade if up, you're meat :(

In any case, you must agree that a 75% aggro reduction is sweet, no? =)
Of course the reduction is nice, but for your groups I must again say, maybe about time to find some others? Ok, it happens but it's _very rarely_ that things like that occure. If someone is running free it's sheep/sleep/shackle and off-tank. It's done quick and it's efficient.

How much mana does the shield cost? And when you first have gotten so much aggro that it's needed for a shield, how are you planning on getting them off you? Also the point still is, how much aggro do you really get? And let's keep the big things in mind, shall we? 'Cause when can you have a paladin with you as main healer in the other instances, with no group heal and no way of keeping the mages alive?
As a pally, I don't get that much aggro, plain and simple. I simply can't create enough for the tank to have trouble pulling them off me, nomatter how hard I try, heh.
Not to mention both the shields instantly drops all aggro off me. Pop the shield on, and they go away, every time. Unlike fade, it can't fail.

How often does it happen that your fade fails? Mine hardly ever does, but of course I don't use it much either. But guess we're healing different. And you didn't answer how much your shields cost.

The thing is also priests have the mana regen during fights, that's really nice. It's not as big as it should be imo (after all, the bloody mages get 30% without talents), but it helps anyway.
Weee. 300 mana per minute of casting, zero mana per minute of not casting. If you have spent the talent points (and thus lost out on half the holy tree) :/

I really can't see why you want to have your priests healing the tanks. Flash heal is such an awesome squishie-heal, as is renew. Prayer of healing is awesome for groups of DDers or rogues that take AoE at the same time. We just don't have anything that's good on a tank :(

Im not saying your healdin is useless in any way, Im saying a combination is nice. Maybe 2 priests, a druid and a healdin depending on the situation. I can't see why you absolutely want only healidins on the main tank, you don't have any last resort if he drops a lot in hp and your heals are too slow to save him. And in the end it's all about keeping the main tank alive. As for the regen, how much mana you gain during casting really isn't a set number, it depends on your spirit. Btw, the numbers I said earlier are wrong, I have 415int and 420 spir or so buffed. It may not regen more then one flash or groupheal or so if Im constantly casting, but think a bit about it, 4 priests on the main tank all with 1 extra flash does the trick.

But it's obvious that your vote is for the healdin, mine is for a combination. So won't vaste your time with more answers here. Hurrly lvling him though. ;)