healing a paladin tankFollow

Twice recently I've been healing a paladin tank who has asked me not to bubble them to prevent damage. Mainly they were looking to take more damage so as to take more heals and regenerate mana from the healing. I had normally been starting fights by tossing a bubble and a PoM on a paladin tank, then I'd be able to regen my mana completely before having to cast a heal. I also use cancel casting with inner focus in long fights to try to stay out of the five second rule (I have 225 mp5 in combat and about 500 mp5 out of combat). The cancel casting was also annoying the tank because I'd be trying to hit him with a big heal infrequently instead of with a bunch of smaller heals. One of the tanks even asked not to be decursed so he'd take more damage, requiring more healing. That annoys *me* because then I'm working harder and have the chance to OOM and maybe wipe the party.

What should I do about this? Has anyone else run into this before? I don't want to go OOM because I'm inefficient with my heals, but I don't want to be a jerk, either.

Thanks.

I never shield the tank (paladins "bubble," we "shield" ). Paladins don't like it for the reasons you mention, warriors and druids don't like it because of rage generation. I may throw a shield on a DPS who's taking unavoidable damage, but that's about it. This applies to regular 5-mans though, I am not experienced with healing at higher levels and I'm sure there's stuff going on up there that I don't know about.

The rest, meh. Priests depend on cheating the 5 second rule just as much as he depends on heals for mana regeneration. Personally, I think he needs to bring some mana pots and back off telling you how to heal. But again, that's not a very experienced perspective, so maybe somebody else has something wiser to add.

Edited, Jul 21st 2008 12:57pm by teacake

It’s worth noting that Paly tanks no longer get any benefit to their mana from overheals. They only benefit from healing done.

As fluffydragon stated, Paladins do not gain mana from overheals, this means that Paladins gain mana equal to 10% of the damage they are taking, assuming you can heal it all of course. A debuff on a Paladin that reduces healing for example, will not increase the mana they gain from a fixed amount of damage. There is the exception of heals returning the Paladin's mana over his maximum, as emmitsvenson noted (it's like overhealing, I guess you can call it overmanaing :) ).

Knowing that, it's OK to assume that regardless of how you heal the Paladin, he WILL get the same amount of mana from your heals (be it Flash Heal, downranked Greater heal, Prayer of Mending, whatever), again, assuming fixed damage. If you don't dispel a debuff that directly or indirectly increases his damage taken, he will, of course, need more healing and therefore gain more mana (the same way a Druid/Warrior tank would have gained more rage).

Have fun healing,
Yuval.

I'm sure that blocks are determined before PW:S, so his Holy Shield threat shouldn't be affected. And I'm pretty sure that damage absorbed still counts for Retribution Aura, but I've never tested it.

I find barely needing my shield for anything else than the tank in PvE though. When a clothie aggros he either gets 1-shot or left at 20% hp with the boss back hitting the tank... In that last case there's time for a flash heal (or even greater heal) 90% of the time.

Your thoughts intrigue me, I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. I'll have to look into this, though for a Druid of course it's rather moot.

if the PW:shield bubbele is the same as the uther's strength proc, a simple magic shield, then blocks are taken into acount before it. Redoubt, Holyshield can still be procced from hits.

I also noticed that when shielded the enemy was still taking Retib aura damage, this may of bn cos of the amount of mobs i had on me that it got destroyed rite away or that they do actually take damamge as im not immune like a bubble, just absorbing damage, i don't see why absorbing damage would stop reflective damage like being immune would.

http://www.wowwiki.com/5_second_rule



There's a lot more info on the wowwiki page. Basically, priests will stop casting for more than 5 seconds during a fight in order to get the full mana regen rate during the time after the 5 seconds. If you can throw some renews around and a PoM, then stop casting for a bit, you can get back some mana. The more time you spend outside the 5 second rule, the more mana you get back.

This is also why priest like mp5. It continues to return mana even when within the 5 second rule.

This is also why priests love 3/3 Meditation (30% of spirit based regen continues while casting, or inside the 5 second rule). It's also why the 3pc set bonus of the Primal Mooncloth set is nice (5% of spirit based regen continues while casting, bumping it to 35% if 3/3 Meditation). With the Bangle of Many Blessings (drop from Warp-splinter, Botanica) it can hit 50%. All of this is benefited by stacking Spirit (and to a slightly lesser extent - Intellect).

My priest is sitting on 214 mp/5 while casting (unbuffed)(more if the bangle procs and even more if I trigger the bangle's on Use). Of that 214 mp/5, only 79 is based off of pure mp/5 on my gear. My armory's here for perusal. I'm sitting on 456 mp/5 while not casting, so you can see a rather drastic difference between inside and outside of the 5 second rule.

Most theorycrafters, since the changes to spirit based regen in 2.4, are leaning towards Spirit being vastly superior to mp/5 for Priests. My mana regen almost doubled with that change - with no change in gear.

Don't do that, it'll just get you kicked from the grp or your tank will leave.


As a pally tank with Hyjal/BT experience, I actually prefer the big heals less frequently method(or better yet, big heals frequently, until there are only 1-2 mobs left). In heroics I rarely use cc, so small heals generally can't keep up with the dam i take, unless the dps is really good. As to PWS, it's fine prior to pulls, but really shouldn't ever be necessary except on very large pulls. PWS doesn't stop any of a pally tank's threat generation except for the small amount of threat gained by actually gaining mana from the heal that would've been needed in place of the PWS. But if you feel you must cast prior to the pull, throw a renew+prayer of mending instead of a PWS. For really large aoe pulls do all 3.

Best things a pally tank can do if they are having issues with mana:
1) wear more actual pally tank gear(spell dam+int gear = more threat and larger mana pool)
2) swap a couple pieces of gear from their threat set(spell dam trinkets, spell dam shield, spell dam rings/neckpieces) this will increase dam taken and dam done(both increase threat, provided the heals can keep up)
3) make sure dps have appropriate blessings(salvation if the tank is just barely keeping up while blowing through a bunch of mana)
4) use less cc(this is actually one of the problems of pally tanks as we generally don't take enough dam to regenerate the mana used for threat on a solo mob, so killing a grp of 4 one at a time, the pally tank may have 0 mana by the time you get to the 4th mob. And while it may be safer and depending on the gear lvl of the tank, necessary, its highly inefficient for the pally to tank one mob at a time), if cc is necessary make sure the pally tank is using kings or wisdom instead of blessing of sanctuary(more dam taken without BoSanc, larger mana pool with Kings/faster mana regen with Wisdom)

And yes your pally tank could've been just going overboard on the consecrates. He just needs to learn to pace the mana better so he's oom at the end of the pull. I try to go all out every aoe pull, on pulls of 1-2 i generally don't drop consecrate and conserve mana so i can chain pull the next grp. In heroics like bot or shattered halls i can do 800dps for the entire instance with a good healer just by burning through 7k mana on every pull(most are pulls of 4+ mobs at once). End up going through a lot of water, but still clear both those instances in under 45min.

Walked out of a ZF pug, with an alt priest, the other day - precisely because the druid tank was demanding I didnt EVER shield him (as though I didnt know about gaining rage). Set against that, I have a limited mana pool and some scrappy ill-played dps who will get aggro at some point. As it happens, I was letting him get in, build aggro, and only shielding him when the dps started demanding my attention - I try not to shield scrappy dps, it gives them an unwarranted sense of invulnerability.

As far as I'm aware, the shield is just an extra layer of armour - a hit is still a hit, it just holds off the need for a heal for a while, while I deal with what the dps picked up. As I said then, if you cant get anough rage to keep taking aggro back from the dps, chew out the dps, not the healer - a healer has to manage their own mana pool and make decisions on the fly. I certainly wouldn't heal a (pu)group where I'm expected to take orders from the tank. I'd healed another druid tank pug in uldaman earlier that day, same techniques, no problems.

And yes, I will let the dps die to keep the tank alive...but mostly I keep everyone alive.