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So far, with an average gear score of 331, I've had one hell of a time keeping people alive in heroics. I can't for the life of me figure out my rotation, since it seems everything either takes too long to cast, heals instantly but for not nearly enough with a long cooldown, or is too expensive to bring the tank back from the brink.

So I ask you forum peoples, how do you do it? Is there a rotation I should be lookin for? Is there a particular stat I should now be enchanting and gemming? Is my gear score too low to attempt the heroics at this current juncture? Lend me your aid!

OMG LOLOLOL PALLY CNAT HEELZ!!!!!

Seriously though, I have no idea. I heard healing was a pain in the sack with Cataclysm. I also don't heal on my Paladin (only tanking) so I wouldn't know where to begin to offer advice. :P

Someone help this guy out! We can't have older CC members falling down!

Firstly, if you don't have it yet, I highly recommend the Heartsong weapon enchant.

Secondly, I'll let you know what I've been doing. I rarely have issues with mana anymore in heroics, unless the DPS is just low or people are being stupid and standing in the AOE crap. I use holy shock as often as possible, and use WoG once I have 3. I generally use Holy Light as a filler between the two unless the tank is taking a hell of an amount of damage in which I will throw in Divine Light / FoL. I rarely will use DL / FoL though, as I've been running with some geared tanks and the CC has been fine.

I also reforged a lot of crit into haste, but I didn't really see an improvement over my mana. Also, if you can, there is a trinket in Halls of Origination, Blood of Isiset, that is pretty nice as well.

I've been gemming intellect, but any type of INt/spirit gem should do.

While I am not the most adept healer in the world, I will note that it's as much the responsibility of DPS to keep themselves alive as it is for you to heal them (i.e. hopping out of AE, crowd controlling mobs).

No comment regarding the tanks.

The first thing you really need to remember is we now have to use Holy Light as sort of an "auto attack" type heal. It doesn't heal for much I know, but it is enough to keep an edge off of on coming damage. I generally, after making sure my judgement is up, lead with holy shock, and hit holy shock when ever I have a Daybreak proc, and use holy light in between, I rarely fall to far behind, but in case I do I will throw in emergency Flashes mixed in with Divine Lights in heavy damage moments, only with the haste proc.

Now with the recent nerf, you really only gain holy power through holy shock, and your expensive heals on your beacon. If only the tank is taking damage using that for word of glory is an ok choice, however I typically end up going for Light of Dawn. I make sure I am very aware of my positioning and try to get it to get the whole group. Those heals also transfer through beacon, so it becomes a rather strong tank heal as well. For trinkets, I would actually not go with the one Ara linked. Mastery is great, but not something I would be stacking until I got my regen/haste/crit where I needed it to be efficient. Tear of Blood or it's non heroic version would actually be my preference. I typically reforge gear to make sure it has spirit and haste on it. Reforging out crit and mastery.

12/17/2010 1:57 PMPosted by Araceli

Firstly, if you don't have it yet, I highly recommend the Heartsong weapon enchant.

This. Heartsong is a ton of spirit. You are missing a LOT of gems and enchants, and while each one individually seems small, together it makes a huge difference in your effectiveness. For example, unless the armory is screwing up, you are at 507 enchanting yet neglect to use your profession bonus. That's another 80 int, which is a nice chunk of both mana and throughput.

As far as the actual playstyle stuffs, I don't have a Paladin so I can't comment really. I do think that a lot of it depends on your group, and if you're pugging through LFD you can't expect much of a success rate.

excellent feedback, I was using my Divine Light whenever I fell behind on tank healing, using it 2x in a row brought him back from 30% to around 60% where I could go back to 3 point WoG and holy shock spam, but at 7k per spell, i drained myself fast. I'll try some of these new suggestions, gem up, and enchant my stuff, see how that helps, i'm sure it'll be a night and day improvement.

Thank you Paranitis for your feedback I appreciate the kind words.

Thank you everyone!

I have Heartsong if you need it. Need points anyway. :P

If you ever fall behind on healing, I suggest using Guardian. :-) I know I can fall behind when DPS just take a crap ton of damage from AOE they aren't supposed to be in, and using Guardian has helped with that. :-)

When there's a lul in combat, Judge on every CD when possible, free mana is free and I think the heal from Enlightened Judgements will transfer to the beacon target(it was doing it in 4.0.3a when i was healing!). Though in heroics that's not always the case...

Besides, a lot of healing problems aren't always with the healer, but with people being stupid and not using CC. We're back to BC-level difficulty instances, you can't change in and Rambo tank everything anymore until you overgear the instance something fierce. This may be contributing to your problems as well.

ok, after much trial and error, here's what I've come up with, as far as a decent rotation, or something to look towards...

I took Divine Light clear off my list, I hardly ever use it, it isn't efficient in both mana, and time, except for procs, that'd be the only time you'd wanna use it.

Always holy shock on cooldown, and spam holy light in between, to keep things on an even keel. flash of light is great for spike damage, but try not to use it more than twice in close succession otherwise you'll burn through your mana. Judging is extremely important, judge as often as possible, you'll get 4% of your mana back every time, assuming you hit.

I found that beaconing a target other than the tank worked well in fights with a kiter, if you glyph it, it'll be free, the 5 min duration really helps now. I seem to only pop my Divine Favor in conjunction with Holy Radiance, it seems to work well for me.

Let me know if anyone else has any feedback, feel free to try out what i'm doing if you'd like and see if it works well, otherwise i'm still open to suggestions!