healing raidsFollow

im new to healing and im having trouble healing in raids as pally. maybe its my haste but most of the time when i go to heal someone they get healed by someone else. im not sure if its because im a pally or what. what should my strategy be when i go to into boss's fights. i know most of the fights maybe its just because im new to healing?

Healbot if you are new, set keybinds for FoL, HL, HS, Beacon and Sacred Shield. Once you get comfortable make sure you add hand of Salv and Protection to that list. Grid and Clique is better /dodge fire but healbot is definitely friendly for healers who are new to it. Healbot is what i used when I started and I didn't switch till grid till after we had Vashj down.

Haste, try to get it 500+ asap. Don't gem for it though, at this point I would say don't say no to haste + mp5 gear cause in 3.2 its what you will want.

Pay attention when you are healing, damage tends to happen in predictable ways. Some fights you can raid heal, some if you take your eye off the tank for a second he is dead. For fights with splash damage on the raid put beacon on yourself (this will change in 3.2) Try to get comfortable with keeping your tank up while topping off any sudden spike damage in the raid with a Holy Shock or quick fol.

What Bodhi said is, of course, all good advice. Some things I'd add:

Judge once a minute, at least. You should have Judgements of the Pure, which gives your haste a kick in the pants. It matters little /what/ you judge currently (exception: don't judge light if you have a Ret pally in the raid, since she'll be doing that and it's much better than yours). And it really won't matter at all with 3.2. Also with 3.2, you'll get a mana return if Wisdom has been judged on your target.

As for getting sniped, how is the raid set up? Do you have an explicit assignment, or is it free-for-all? Are you assigned to (a) tank, or are you another raid healer? If you're watching the raid, for whatever reason, you'll get beaten a lot. You have one instant heal, on a six second cooldown. You have no smart heals. You have no HoTs. You have one multi-target spell - if you're glyphed for it - and it's very limited. If there is a priest or tree around, then by the time you notice a health bar dropping, the person is already being healed via HoT, or there's a smart heal already jumping to them.

Basically, you shouldn't be racing to heal raid damage, for whatever reason. Ideally, as Bodhi said, you should be focused on the single target taking the most damage - i.e. the main tank (with 3.2, plus possibly a second target, presumably an offtank). Your strength is efficient healing of massive amounts of damage, for a long time. Each fight has a rhythm to it, ebbs and flows of damage (until you get to hardmodes, where I hear that it basically just flows). Work on learning the rhythms and using that to dictate your strategy moment to moment.

If the tank lives, you did your job. Then you can start adding wrinkles: throwing HS around to help with raid damage, using Beacon on the tank at safe times so that a FoL or HL on the raid does double duty, using your Hand spells when someone slips and draws too much attention, using Divine Sacrifice/Guardian to best shield the raid as a whole.

With 3.2 up make sure you keep beacon on the tank and heal the raid, use a class timer such as Elkano's to keep track of uptime (I have it set on grid to show when it is up).