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#1 Feb 14 2008 at 1:55 PM Rating: Good
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78 posts
How do you all know which is the best mana efficient heal to give that you arent OH all the time? Do you all use mods? How do you all know which rank to use? I can't seem to figure out how to not overheal all the time.
#2 Feb 14 2008 at 2:41 PM Rating: Good
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I'm a newb healer, but I'll give you my answer. Someone more experienced may have better advice.

I think the biggest key is to know how much your two heals are going to hit for, roughly speaking (and if you're using downranked heals, know those also). I use Healbot, which shows me a number for how much damage a player has taken. I use that and try to judge the pace of incoming damage to estimate which heal to use and how quickly to use it.

These are just numbers, but I'll use them just to illustrate. If my Flash of Light (FoL) is going to pop for an average of 1000 then I don't start healing until the heal target is close to -1000 damage. If the incoming damage is small, but consistent, I'll just slowly spam FoL. If the damage starts to overtake my ability to keep up with the FoL spam or there are big spikes, I'll watch to see if it's getting to the range of my Holy Light (HL) average. If so, I'll try to cast HL a little early because of the longer cast time because I don't want the damage to get too far ahead of me. Sometimes, it's a matter of guesstimating the pace of damage and timing a cast to go off when the total damage taken is going to equal the amount of the heal.

Unless I specifically pop Divine Favor, I don't usually make any adjustment for crit heals. If I pop DF, I'm probably not worried about overhealing anyway and need a big heal.

Some of this is dependent on class and how much HP someone has. I tend to be a little quicker on squishies than on a tank that has 15k health, for example. If I'm just spamming FoL, I tend to not worry too much about overhealing because it is so mana efficient.

I guess the only other thing is don't be afraid to not heal for part of a fight. If incoming damage isn't accumulating too quickly and no one is in any real danger, then take the time to just stand still and regenerate mana. NO one says you have to be clicking a heal every second of a fight.

There's my two cents.
#3 Feb 14 2008 at 5:42 PM Rating: Decent
Honestly there are more situations in BC where keeping the tank (whether warrior or warlock/mage tank on certain fights) topped off is more important than worrying about your overhealing. I was worried about my OH at gruul/mag, but I haven't had a chance to be concerned about it since. What content level are you at?
#4 Feb 15 2008 at 1:13 AM Rating: Decent
Downranked spells are not penalized properly, so there is no healing benefit to downranking. For example, you could downrank Holy Light to rank4/rank5 and (especially with the Libram of Souls Redeemed) and heal with a Holy Light spell for about the same cost as a max rank Flash of Light. Some did this because of 2 things:

1) Holy Light recieved a greather benefit from your total bonus healing (now fixed)
2) Holy Light has a greater chance to crit

What this meant was that before the Illumination nerf you could stack crit and spam rank 4/5 Holy Light and get more mana back from crits than what you would with Flash of Light.

These days it's penalized. ~43 % of your bonus healing is added to your FoL, and about ~70 % to your Holy Light (I think it was 70, cba to check atm). This applies to the MAX rank.

To actually answer your question: Don't worry about overhealing (unless it's an absurd amount, like 80 %).

Our heals as paladins are relatively weak in comparison to other classes. Our strength lies in keeping them coming, longer and more consistently than other classes generally can. In a way, you can consider paladins heals as buffer heals. Lets say a tank takes a hit of 4000. Every 1.5 seconds the tank gets +1500 healing from a paladin. If the tank gets the heal right before the hit, it's overheal, if it lands right after the 4k hit, that's suddently reduced to a 2500 hit. In raids the ability to provide lots of small (relatively) heals almost all the time reduces the effect of a lot of incoming damage on the tanks health.

There are some encounters where downranking is useful. One to mention is Morogrim Tidewalker. A lot of damage going about, and the tank is very suspectible to huge bursts of damage (especially with a warrior tank). In such fights you have to keep the heals coming all the time, because if you are all sitting around waiting to heal him until he actually takes damage he's dead before you even get to start casting that heal. Personally I use 3 healing spells on that encounter: Flash of Light (max rank), Holy Light(max rank), and Holy Light (rank 3). The Holy Light (rank 3) is used to keep Light's Grace up all the time, so that I can throw a big heal with Holy Light (max rank) very quickly if the tank's health dips below 100 %.

I am going to have to disagree with Azwing here. Personally I find no reason to wait to start healing the tank. I spam FoL from the getgo, because of 2 reasons:
1) Don't have to play catch up with the tanks health -> will always be buffering incoming damage
2) You only generate threat based on amount healed, so overhealing -> no threat genereated, so nothing to really worry about.

Granted in raids you have a lot of clues to help you heal. To use Gruul as an example. If you are healing the MT there you KNOW when High King Maulgar is doing to do Arcing Smash and Whirlwind, so just time your Holy Light to land a second after it hits and voila, no problem.
#5 Feb 15 2008 at 3:23 AM Rating: Good
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91 posts
azwing wrote:
I guess the only other thing is don't be afraid to not heal for part of a fight.


I tell you, this was one of the hardest things to do when I first started healing for groups. I think it was way back in Scarlet Monastery, and I was afraid to let anyone die. Consequently, everyone died!

For me I'm currently using max FoL, max HL, and a rank 7 HL. I'll use FoL early in the fight, if the tank starts taking bigger damage I'll switch to either of the HL's. The rank 7 HL is also good for tossing heals to non-tanks when they take damage from adds or AoE, etc. That rank 7 will barely make a dent on a tank, but can top off a mage pretty quickly. I also have occasionally stuck a rank 1 HL on the bar, just to start off light's grace (it also came in handy once in SL during a very long fight with Blackheart, when my potions were on cooldown and Blackheart and considerately blown my mana during 'Fun Time')

As for overhealing in general, I'm still only in 5 mans and I think about it a bit, but I don't worry about it too much yet. To me overhealing is really a problem if it leads to going out of mana before the fight is over. As I've gotten better at healing I'm better able to manage my mana through mixing up the heals and using 'tricks' like Divine Illumination and trinkets. No doubt when I move on to Kara and bigger raids, I'll have to worry about it more.
#6 Feb 15 2008 at 11:21 AM Rating: Decent
21 posts
If you are the healer in an instance overheals are only an issue if you run out of mana if you aren't who cares. In a raid overheals are only an issue if more than one healer is assigned to heal the tank and at the end one has a 45% overheal and the other a 5%. In this case they need to work out a rotation they get their overheal to about the same. Once again if you have 25% or more mana left at the end of a long fight overheals are irrelavent.

Edited, Feb 15th 2008 2:22pm by KANGURAN
#7 Feb 16 2008 at 10:24 AM Rating: Decent
21 posts
Also if your overheal is less than your spell crit % there is definatly no problem. When you are planning your heal rotation you are casting for a reg hit not a crit, the crit damage my push you into overheal.
#8 Feb 18 2008 at 8:28 AM Rating: Decent
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212 posts
As a pally, if you are overhealing on FoL, who cares? FoL is so mana efficient that you are better off topping up the tank at 98% and overhealing a little rather than waiting for sufficient dmg before healing. Raid bosses are very unforgiving and often 1 sec can be the difference between life and death.

If you are overhealing on HL then it's slightly more of an issue because of the mana cost. If you are doing this consistently then you will run into mana issues. One method would be to use cancel casting, load up a HL and wait till it's just about to hit. If the tank needs it cast away, if not cancel. I would also recommend using downranked HL in this case. Save the max rank for when the **** really hits the fan.

All in all, if you don't have mana problems then don't worry about it and carry on what you're doing. Remember that with some bosses it's an endurance fight and it's quite natural to have to take a couple mana pots. Main thing is to maximise the use of FoL and save HL for "oh ****!" moments wherever possible.
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