Zalor's Holy Pally Comments

[zalor]

This is how I made my Holy Pally. Zalor was meant to be my take a chill pill throw away character. Somehow he ended up as my main.

Part of that is that the level 80 Saronite Blacksmithed gear that Glokk (my old main) made for him was an excellent gear set for starting off level 80. Part of it is that as Glokk (warrior MT), I was never good at maintaining aggro (a problem that has since gotten worse), and that at the time with Bokanti, I had not checked out elitistjerks.com and thus had horrible dps numbers. So apparently I played Zalor and healed quite a bit (I got the gear from SOMEWHERE!).

On a practical note, I am almost 50 years old, and healing is much easier on my eyes. I can almost completely ignore all the flashy colors on the screen and focus entirely on healing bars and my mana bar. As tank, to me, seeing targets in front of me (much less to the side of me or behind me) is tough, especially when DKs do their red spell, and some times I can't even see any targets AT ALL with all the gook on the screen.

So healer it is for me, with Bokanti hanging in there as an ok dps. Here is how I play my Pally.

[zalor]

Talents.

Here are the talents I selected.

Protection Tree: (5)

5 in Divinity (Increases all healing done by you by 5%,
and all healing effects on you by 5%).

My assumption is that when I heal myself, I get both effects for a 10% total gain. But even it its only 5% total I would take this talent.

Retribution: (15)

The goal of this tree is to get 5 in Conviction, increasing my chance to get a critical hit with all spells and attacks by 5%.

Along the way I put 5 in Benediction (Mana cost of all instant spells is reduced by 10%), 3 in Heart of the Crusader (judgement spells increase the critical strike chance of all attacks made against that target by 3%), and 2 in Improved Blessing of Might.

Benediction helps very little since most of my healing is Holy Light and Flash of Light. Improved Blessing of Might is sometimes useful to a party or raid, and Heart of the Crusader is marginally useful.

In a raid setting, I hit D (assist main tank) then W (Judgement of Light) to cast a judgement on the target of the main tank whenever possible. This accomplishes the following:

For 20 seconds the target is judged. This means that attacks against that target provide healing to the attacker. This provides additional healing to the main tank, as well as to others attacking that same target.

Judgements of the Pure means my spell haste increases by 15%, reducing the casting time on Holy Light and Flash of Light. This is the main motivation for casting judgements in the first place.

And now because of Heart of the Crusader, all attacks made against that target also have an extra 3% chance to crit.

[zalor]

Talents (Holy Tree)

Spiritual Focus (5) - reduces the pushback suffered while casting Flash of Light and Holy Light by 70%. This is a no brainer since the only other competing talent on the first level of Holy is dps increasing talent.

Healing Light (3) - Increases the effectiveness of Holy Light, Flash of Light, and Holy Shock by 12%.

Divine Intellect - Increases intellect by 10%.

Illumination (5) - After getting a healing crit from Holy Light, Flash of Light, or Holy Shock, 30% of the base cost of the spell is refunded. This is the motivation for going after the talent Conviction.

Improved Lay of Hands (2) - Grants the target of Lay of Hands 20% reduced physical damage for 15 seconds, and reduces the cooldown of Lay of Hands by 4 minutes .

I use Glyph of Lay on Hands, a minor glyph that reduces the cooldown of Lay on Hands by 5 minutes, so my cooldown on LOH is 11 minutes.

I use it quite often, and at 11 minutes cooldown I can reasonably rely on it to be up when needed.

Improved Blessing of Wisdom - Increases the effects of Blessing of Wisdom by 20%.

Divine Favor (1) - every 2 minutes I can guarantee a critical for Holy Light, Flash of Light, or Holy Shock.

Sanctified Light (3) - Increases the critical effect chance of Holy Light and Holy Shock by 6%.

Holy Power (5) - Increases the critical effect chance of Holy Spells by 5%.

Light's Grace (3) - Holy LIght spells reduce the casting time of the next Holy Light spell by 0.5 seconds if its done in 15 seconds. Very important for intensive MT healing.

Holy Shock (1) - Instant Heal (or damage if target is a foe).

Holy Guidance (5) - Increases your spell power by 20% of your total intellect. Intellect is quite important for Holy Pallies!

Divine Illumination (1) - Reduces the mana cost of all spells by 50% for 15 seconds (3 minute cooldown). Quite important in long mana-intensive battles.

Judgements of the Pure (5) - As above, judgement spells cause spell haste.

Infusion of Light (2) - Holy Shock criticals cause the next Flash of Light to be instant cast, or the next Holy Light to have a 20% extra chance of a critical hit.

When combined with Divine Favor, Holy Shock can be guaranteed to hit critically, triggering this talent. Though it sounds good in theory, in practice I am underwhelmed by its usefulness.

Enlightened Judgements (2) - Increases judgement range by 30 yards and chance to hit by 4%. I have this primarily for the range addition, though the extra chance of having the judgement hit is a nice bonus. I often do not have time to see if the judgement lands or not, just hit my DW combination (as described above) and hope it hit. If not - retry!

Beacon of Light (1) - Makes a target friend a Beacon of Light. Heals cast on other people also heal the Beacon of Light. A VERY important talent.

[zalor]

Major Glyphs:

Beacon of Light - Increases the duration of Beacon of Light from 1.5 minutes to 2 minutes. 2 minutes is too short as it is as I always fear that the beacon will drop at a really bad time, so the person that had the beacon dies as I am healing someone else, expecting the beacon to kick in.

Beacon of Light costs 1383 mana (I take back what I said about Benediction - Beacon of Light is an instant spell, and has its mana reduced by 10% due to Benediction).

So Beacon of Light is an expensive spell to cast too many times, and I always have to cast it early to make sure its always up. This is a VERY useful glyph.

Holy Light - Grants 10% of its heal amount to up to 5 nearby targets (range is 8 yards). This is also very useful for its AoE healing effect.

Flash of Light - Flash of Light has a 5% addition critical strike chance. This is ok, and definitely the weakest of the three major glyphs.

Minor Glyphs:

Glyph of Lay on Hands - Reduces the cooldown of Lay on Hands by 5 minutes. This is minor? This is an incredibly useful glyph.

Glyph of Blessing of Wisdom - Increases the duration of Blessing of Wisdom by 20 minutes when cast on yourself Quite handy, allowing me to cast other 30 minute blessings on other Pallies while keeping 30 minute Blessing of Wisdom on myself.

One slot is empty (I should fix that).

[zalor]

Gear Considerations:

When raiding, I have Blessing of Wisdom, and Blessing of Kings as a second choice.

My food items are either 40 crit chance/40 sta or 46 sp/40 sta.

I use Flask of the Frost Wyrm (+125 sp) for anything remotely challenging.

My current gear, completely unbuffed, puts me at 2024 bonus healing, 28.56% crit chance for healing, 313 haste or 9.55% faster heals (2.28 second Holy Light, and 1.37 second Flash of Light), 161 MP5 while casting, 228 while not casting, and 17,734 total mana.

The results I have noticed are:

I tend not to run out of mana.
My heals are powerful enough for pretty much anything through the first 5 bosses of Ulduar.

[zalor]

Healing Considerations:

The single biggest issue I face in healing is making sure I do not die. Dead healers are very ineffective at healing.

The second issue is Beacon of Light management. Make sure the correct toon has Beacon of Light on him, and make sure it never drops. It is too expensive to just cast over and over, so it needs to be never too far out of mind.

I have found several effective uses of Beacon of Light. Keeping it up on me is a good way to pretty much guarantee I don't die. Then I can heal anyone as needed, with the ability to maximize the AoE benefits of the Glyph of Holy Light.

If I am healing OT, then I put the beacon on the MT whenever the MT and OT are in range. This allows me to keep up the OT and help out the MT healer at the same time. If I am healing OT, and the raid healer needs my help more than the MT healer, then I can put beacon on the OT and heal members of the raid (again taking care to get good use of the AoE Holy Light Glyph).

When healing MT I can put beacon on the MT and heal either OT or raid members. The one thing to be wary of: When I cast a heal on someone, the beacon takes a half second or a second before the beacon heal kicks in. Don't want someone to die because of that delayed in the beacon part of the heal!

The third issue is Lay on Hands and Divine Shield. Divine Shield protects me (5 minute cooldown) from all damage for 12 seconds, while Lay on Hands is a very nice instant spell (plus 1950 mana as well). If the MT has beacon on him, and I cast LOH on myself, the MT gets the healing benefit of the LOH spell.

These are two spells that go hand in hand to deal with situations where me and others are very close to dieing. Divine Protection keeps me allive for 12 seconds (enough time to cast 2 Holy Lights on others and get another Holy Light on myself and save myself). Lay on Hands saves someone else, or saves me, or just plain restores 1950 mana to myself if need be.

One question I have not figured out yet: which Hands would be useful for others? Hand of Protection seems too restrictive, and the others not really suited for a healer.

Mana Management:

For the most part mana is not so much a problem. Here are my tools for mana management.

Divine Plea: Every minute, I can get 25% of my mana over 15 seconds refreshed, but during that time my healing is reduced in half. This sounds AWFUL to me, however when I have no mana, half heals are better than no heals. I often use this time to refresh Beacon of Light and any judgements if possible.

This is a much better spell than it sounds. I work hard to cast Divine Plea when it will have little if no adverse effects due to the 50% healing reduction.

Arcane Torrent restores 6% of all mana once every 2 minutes, and Divine Illumination reduces the cost of all spells by half for 15 seconds every 3 minutes. These get cast as often as possible during mana intensive battles.

Runic Mana Potion: I keep 20+ of these at all times. If I know a battle will be mana intensive I will drink one early on in the battle if I have a second to think about it.

Judgement Management:

I try to keep a judgement up all the time (at least once a minute to keep haste up, every 20 seconds to keep health flowing to all attacking the main target? Not likely!)

Keeping people alive:

I cast flash heals on people that are low on life. This of couse is dependant on mana, range, and time considerations.

[zalor]

*Reserved in case I need another page*

Any improvements or suggestions are appreciated.