Pally healing

Discussion in 'Tanks' started by Livvy_CT, Feb 3, 2021.

  1. shiftie Augur

    When I last raided I kept 3 of the self heals loaded and often was the last alive. A dead paladin is worse than almost any other class due to the utility they can provide or the raid saving abilities. I remember doing sisters in underfoot and we were down to the last sister and it was almost dead and we wiped save me and I kept myself alive long enough for a cleric to get back and then a full rez to the raid and a Zerg till it was dead.

    I can see not loading all 3 these days but the value over burst is evident. That said old habits are hard to break and even if I have the self heals loaded I keep burst up.
    Wulfhere and Szilent like this.
  2. Chaosflux Augur

    Yeh pretty much.

    Wulf as a thought experiment, especially since I ve seen some paladins say they have added burst into their HOTT healing bind, let's say you cast burst everytime its up

    Thats 5 casts in a minute, it took you 18.25s of that minute to just cast burst and deal with the quiet time. That's 30.4% of the time devoted to a single spell

    Let's say they were to bump recast down to 9s and you cast on recast for Karana knows why, that time sink jumps upto 29.2s, or 48.66% of a minute to cast burst 8 times.

    Burst by itself is perfectly fine spell that is an answer for alot of problems especially with Type 51 targetting but there IS a rather large opportunity cost there.

    Obviously no one with any sense is going to cast burst on recast so I am merely illustrating the point on what I view as the downfall of the spell. It has a not insignificant impact on your total output be it heals, aggro, or dps.

    I don't see them reducing the quiet time so I am not even going to address the spell further personally, I'd rather see things like I've mentioned, or other things like Mark getting a casting time that fits better into the playstyle most people have in 2021 (.3s cast mark would be cool, or .5)
  3. Szilent Augur

    The paladin healing change I'd like to see is having Composite just trigger cast Wave instead of its own level 250 heal.

    Like ranger Composite does its whatever, and then casts their Summers nuke.

    Dicho should cast Wave of Grief, Dissident Wave of Expiation, Composite Wave of Propitiation. By trigger casting a real spell instead of its own thing, it naturally wraps in focuses & the pal's +heal mod, etc.
    Wulfhere likes this.
  4. Chaosflux Augur

    That would be pretty cool TBH, and I'd say thats probably the best way to make that spell line relevant in a wider range of content. It would definitely be worth memming on a regular basis then.
  5. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    I don't use the grief line anymore, but I'm not really soloing anymore, unless I'm PLing an alt, in which case I don't need healing anyway.

    Its entirely due to spell gem slot restrictions, and the use of better/necessary spells, and laziness to constantly change spells tbh.

    Like, splash I keep up because its AE healing (honestly, the cure is moot mostly now which is sad), twin splashing during raids where we rely on shaman squall and cleric splash is a valuable thing.

    I keep group wave up, because if something is hitting the fan, its useful to keep the group going (like an ae heavy event and healers eat it). But I actually keep considering to drop it, because clerics and druids get faster group heals, so 99% of the time if I cast it during a raid, the entire group is full right before it lands.

    Our wave heal needs a serious revamp on its cast time. Its 3 second cast time base is a relic of spell haste restrictions and from when other group heals for other classes took even longer to cast.

    We really need this dropped to 1.0 seconds to put us back where it was.

    Burst I mainly use for the MT if they drop real low quickly, or for a group member that needs it.

    Unless you count the nuke/heal or valiant, that's the only heals I use.

    If we are short priests and I am put in a caster group, then I end up loading 3 wave heals, honestly, works better.

    If we had more spell gems I'd love to keep it up, but just don't see room for it atm.
    Wulfhere likes this.
  6. Wulfhere Augur

    I understood and generalized our set of ideas as "cool down" improvement requests. I think we agree on the issues and right now we prefer alternate tradeoffs between Burst and Propitiation. I prefer Burst and do not memorize Propitiation while you prefer the latter and memorize both spells.
  7. Wulfhere Augur

    I don't do that. Like you I mostly self heal with Protective/Valiant/Force of (Healing)/Remonstrate/Preservation/Mark and spell mitigate with Honor/Thwart/Protective. If I have to cast a Burst for myself I activate a tanking disc (because it's an emergency).

    But let's continue ...

    Well the Devs have reduced the Burst quiet time from the original 6 seconds down to the current 3 seconds. So I believe we can succeed in getting it reduced further, either in the spell data or via focus AA. That would be great and I include that in "cool down" improvements to consolidate the two spell lines.

    I agree that a viable Mark spell has seen a great return to relevancy and I would like for it to be a targeted AE as well. It takes too long to mark multiple mobs and gain the compounded benefit by doing so.
  8. Szilent Augur

    The other paladin healing change I'd like to see is removing the cool down timer from Renewing Steel. Too many paladins use this ability thinking it's good, because the description sounds like it does good things. If those paladins could keep the buff on full time, they'd be closer to right.

    Not "reduced" cool down, removed. Steel has a built in version of can't-chain-cast-for-profit, the proc rate & hit counter.
    Warpeace likes this.
  9. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    Wouldn't bother me and would make me consider memming it, but mana cost would need to go up.
  10. Chaosflux Augur

    Yeh I don't generally F with Wave thats where I keep Grief line, for same reason you mentioned, I found by time I cast it to group was already 100% and it was wasted. Certain events I'll load it though, rarely.

    I do occasionally have 2 of them loaded if I am tanking the boss or whatever, my heal teams alot sketchier than yours tho Yep lol. I can't count how many times I've purple clubbed got into the positive from like a shining or preservation proc and griefed my way back to 100% to keep going.

    Viral mark like clerics have or it really needs instant

    A splash without a cure would be cool

    Since you mentioned steely, I thought it would be cool if Fury proc spell, just procced Steely as a buff on us.

    Like the spells pretty weak and so is fury. But it would be nice even if we weren't tankingto produce some passive healing on whoever is.
  11. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    I'll admit, I'm not sure how our healing stacks up against other guilds, I would assume its more than adequate though. Also, I tend to box lazy, paladin, shaman, bard, zerker, and 2 cleric mercs, and the cleric mercs are so strong I don't even have to heal with the shaman. So that probably colors my use of the emergency heal line.

    I will say, if I was going to true solo unstunnable things that hit hard, I'd probably mem 4 of them for heals.
  12. Szilent Augur

    would it have to? I pulled the Steely heals I recorded from a week long log, the max total for any consecutive 8 procs was under 400k, this including "abuse" of a shaman's Synergy proc +21k base heal.

    Finding that in the log was a cute spike in the data, though.
    [Sun May 02 18:48:43 2021] Shadowknight is surrounded by a wind of renewal.
    [Sun May 02 18:48:46 2021] Paladin healed Shadowknight for 158716 (196369) hit points by Steely Renewal III. (Lucky Critical)

    the highest run of 8 (395k healed) was when the Steely was healing the paladin himself with Armor of the Inquisitor on, he was functionally soloing an add off to one side out of shm rain range.

    The average of 123k is an okay total for Steely's current mana cost, but it's not nuts. In particular it's not nuts, imo, considering its nature as a somewhat arbitrarily targeted melee proc.
  13. shiftie Augur

    Since inception steely has been useless outside of boxing so I can tab and get free heals. The cool down is a joke for a spell slot given the return. The proc limit is enough to make it spammable there is no upside to cast before refresh based on proc rate. 100% update time or as suggested added to add he fury line is ideal.
  14. Wulfhere Augur

    My tests of Steely line, posted here a few years ago, show that it effectively functions as a high risk Propitiation/(now Burst) heal. I.e. one might die before it heals that much in 40-60 seconds. I would memorize Propitiation over Steely and I don't mem that even. Steely is a great idea and very paladin-like, but it needs some re-balancing to earn my spell gem.
    Szilent likes this.
  15. Warpeace Augur

    Needs a lot or rebalancing to earn my spell gem.

    The Renewing Steel line needs the same attention our Preservation line received. Increased duration and proc counters would go along way in justifying its 2 minute refresh.
  16. Chaosflux Augur

    Idk preservation (heal component) could prob use alittle boosteroo too, its like most of our spells (and this isn't just paladin problem) its fallen behind in relation to how much damage things put out now.

    Like alot of abilities just feel less powerful at 115 compared to say at level 100 or level 90 which is kind of weird.

    Like the for honor line getting blown off 1 hit, etc just seems like stats have mudflated so fast and mob damage/HP has gone up so much alot of things are just less and the constant spreadsheet 20% increases haven't kept up with the reality of the game.

    Just general complaining not trying to derail focus from healing.
  17. Wulfhere Augur

    I am looking at paladin AA focus tab, and I see a big disparity between what is focused with what spells are actually memorized (by me). The healing ones begin in EoK with:

    Focus: Admonish ......... | spell gem, bought
    Focus: Ardent Cleansing . | obsolete by Force of Ardency, never bought
    Focus: Ardent Touch ..... | rarely used, eventually bought
    Focus: Blessed Life ..... | obsolete by Protective, never bought
    Focus: Burst of Dayspring | spell gem, bought
    Focus: Grief ............ | often used, bought, now obsolete
    Focus: Wave of Grief .... | spell gem, bought

    So 3 of 7 focus lines never (hardly ever) fit into my play style and the hundreds and thousands of AA that goes into them have no value to me. When CoF came out, the auto grant feature gave obsolete ranks of them that still mattered not. I spend AA on dragon glyphs rather then spend towards those foci.

    Meanwhile, the healing spells I actually use instead receive no foci. I want to have:

    Focus: Ardent Healing
    Focus: Protective Proclamation

    The point being that even with all that foci available to them, those spells are not better then the spells I use instead. I'm not asking to remove those AA lines, rather please add the other ones to support all play styles.

    And the we have spells like Valiant that receive no focus tab AA and no gear focus and yet it still earns a spell gem universally.
  18. Nightops Augur


    You make a really weak case against Burst heals imo. "Opportunity cost" is your downside to burst?
    What's the trade off to having some extra blackout time on a spell bar? Casting Sincere Light twice as often, but delivering half the hit points each time? Or casting SL equal to Burst and adding in a few extra nukes per min?

    Bottom line, of the 3 niches in paladin healing; getting more hit points to the target quicker is used every raid event. Preserving DPS within the raid is much more critical then adding dps from a few extra paladin nukes.

    I have used 2 burst heals in my spell bar since, well forever. I credit burst heals with saving people from death several times each raid night. I feel if the target had to wait an additional second for that heal, they would have died. I always load up event sensitive people on my ETW and my burst heals reach them faster 9 outta 10 times. What's the value of saving a mana bar or avoiding the death timer on a melee these days? I'm sure its worth an extra 2 seconds of spell bar blackout per cast.

    Of course, for those paladin players who have a slow reaction time (the time outside of game which can not be measured); then the burst spell does lose some of its value.
  19. aozs Augur


    Sounds like you're talking about different use cases. Burst is good for spot healing as you mention.

    But for a general HToT bind, it's tank healing not spot healing. In today's game keeping up a steady stream of healing is more important than big burst with cooldown, given how spiky damage intake can be. Burst heal leaves a good 5-6s window of no heals which is plenty of time for a tank to die.

    Personally (group, box play) I had to drop burst because of the aforementioned issue and use valiant / remonstrate / protective for the HToT bind.
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  20. Chaosflux Augur

    Aozs already covered what I would have in my rebuttal. Yeh ill use 2 bursts for spikey damage (massive swarms/boss tanking etc) reactive healing, but for my proactive just trucking along healing casting the nukeheal (if debuffed) and valiant with a high frequency prevents those spikes from happening more often then not

    What I was talking about is mashing burst on recast, say someone had a multibind of Burst > Valiant > Nukeheal > Crush or something and just mashes that multibind every couple seconds, thats ineffective and poor use of burst as it currently works and I've seen it suggested in threads on the forums. Thats an improper use of an ability designed for reactive not proactive healing that cripples your ability to proactively cast. It does minimize your throughput

    If you are taking enough spikes to cast 2 bursts on recast, there's a good chance you'd be better served casting more nukeheals proactively to catch rounds as they are happening as opposed to reacting.

    But again I have used a 2 burst setup in some situations I am not saying its out and out trash, but I am saying there's a very specific set o parameters that make it a best use, and it does hinder your throughput on other necessary class abilities if you were to say constantly burst on recast. Especially given overhealing taken into account and cycling of heal boosts and/or layering them to address heal throughput of an individual HOTT heal or optimized usage of twinheal blessing is a thing one can do if they don't mind micromanagement.

    Like if I am filling up the extended target with group trash and we are just going absolutely hard AF during lesson, ill use 2 bursts sometimes just for raw heal throughput, but I am using them as the spikes of 10+ group trash are landing, same concept with boss tanking in raids it works to catch up if heal support is ehhh, or if I am the sole group healer because we are derp mode on alt raids or something that works, but its a reactionary tactic to respond to bursts of spikes, and less i am mashing a multibind with 2 bursts and so.e other spells on it.

    Proportionally in most situations i cast 5x as many HOTT heals as I do bursts, and I am pretty on point keeping armor epic spire gaoti on cooldown or layered to boost the hell out of Those and my passive healing sources (shield proc and aug, lifetap aug in main hand, blessing of life, Healing Light, preservation) so I have less spikes to react to to begin with. Its just more stable and stability and predictability is paramount to tanking.