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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Light and How to Swing It: Synergizing with priests
by Chase Christian 
Sep 11th 2011 at 8:00PM
Holy paladins can't do it all. While we might be the best-dressed spec in the game, we occasionally need for other healers to give us a hand. The developers have done a great job giving each healer a niche for them to fill. A holy paladin must know the strengths and weaknesses of the other healing classes in order to be able to work alongside them.
While all healers are somewhat normalized by Cataclysm's introduction of the three heal model, it's each class's unique spells that give them flavor. We all start with the same base, and then our signature heals and cooldowns allow us to differentiate ourselves. Holy paladins can adjust their healing style and strategy to complement their partner healers instead of competing with them.
Discipline Priests: Protecting their targets
Discipline priests, our first study, are the masters of preventive healing. While our own Illuminated Healing mastery allows us to put absorption bubbles on our healing targets, we are actually stealing the mechanic from discipline's Divine Aegis. Divine Aegis' potency far outshines our own Illuminated Healing, allowing discipline priests to raise the survivability of their targets significantly. The downside to absorption bubbles is that they're wasted if they go unused, which makes discipline priests great for handling burst damage but poor for handling DOTs and protracted damage.
Due to their absorption-based healing and their powerful Penance spell, discipline priests make great tank healers. Disc priests also have access to Pain Suppression, one of the best damage reduction cooldowns in the game. Between Hand of Sacrifice and Pain Suppression, a disc priest/holy paladin can cut a tank's incoming damage for 20 seconds. Our combination of powerful single-target healing and damage-reducing cooldowns can keep a tank alive through just about anything.
A disc priest's biggest weakness is AOE healing. Disc's Power Word: Barrier allows them to prevent a lot of incoming AOE damage, but it doesn't actually heal anyone, which means we'll need to use Holy Radiance to assist with raid healing. While I've seen disc priests negate a huge chunk of an AOE attack's damage via Power Word: Shield spam, it's going to fall to us to top everyone off. Beacon of Light allows holy paladins to be excellent spot healers, and so we'll be healing the raid while the disc priest keeps the tank stable.
If there's going to be lots of AOE damage, discipline priests will have us stacking up underneath their Power Word: Barrier. If they're using the Glyph of Power Word: Barrier, then we should to try to dole out as much healing as possible during the Barrier's duration to maximize our healing done. A PW:B and Holy Radiance combination is incredibly effective at handling any sort of AOE burst. We can clean up any remaining wounded players with our cheap heals like Holy Shock and Word of Glory, as disc priests aren't specialized spot healers.
Holy Priests: AOE machines
Holy priests are the antonyms of their discipline brethren. The holy tree specializes in AOE healing and HOTs, with almost no preventive healing or tank healing capacity to speak of. All of holy's signature spells revolve around raid healing. Holy Word: Sanctuary and Renew allow a holy priest to apply powerful HOTs to their targets, while Circle of Healing and Prayer of Healing are amazing at quickly getting a raid group back to full life. Lightwell is an amazing raid heal when used properly, as it only costs the priest a single cast yet can heal over a dozen targets. Prayer of Mending is a smart heal that hops from target to target, healing with each bounce. Even a holy priest's regular heals apply a HOT effect via their mastery bonus.
With their powerful AOE healing and HOTs, holy priests are a great ally to the holy paladin. Our Holy Radiance is quite potent, but it's only effective if our group can stack up, and we can only have it active 50% of the time. When paired with a holy priest, you'll typically be focusing on the tank while they'll be handling most of the raid healing. We can always sneak in some spot healing via Holy Light or one of our instant-cast heals to help out, but it will fall on us to keep the tanks alive.
Holy priests themselves aren't great tank healers, but they can save a tank's life with Guardian Spirit. While Guardian Spirit is active, the tank will receive 40% more healing, which is a huge bonus for our large heals. In addition, if the tank receives a blow that would've killed him during Guardian Spirit, he instantly regains 50% of his maximum life and doesn't die. Guardian Spirit is an incredibly potent tank cooldown, so you'll want to coordinate with the holy priests in your raid to time them properly.
Prayer of Healing is a rather unique heal, as it will only heal players in the party of the targeted player. In a 10-man raid, for example, Prayer of Healing will only heal group 1 or group 2, depending on who the target of the spell is. You can work with the priests in your raid to assign groups for AOE healing, as this allows the priest to focus their Prayer of Healing onto one party while you use your direct heals to top off the other group. Prayer of Healing is the only spell that I know of that has a party-based restriction, but a bit of communication ahead of time will have everyone prepared.
A tale of two hymns
Holy and discipline priests have access to two powerful hymn spells, Hymn of Hope and Divine Hymn. Both hymns are channeled spells that require the priest to stand still for the duration, so be sure to adjust your healing strategy while they're incapacitated by the hymn. Hymn of Hope is a mana restoration hymn, and it also increases our maximum mana while active. You can use Divine Plea during the Hymn of Hope for some bonus mana, since DP is based on your maximum mana. Be careful though, as you'll only be healing at 50% capacity while your priest won't be healing at all, so save this technique for only the safest moments in an encounter.
Divine Hymn
The Light and How to Swing It: Holy helps holy paladins become the powerful healers we're destined to be. Find out just how masterful mastery healing can be, gear up with the latest gear, and learn how to PVP as a holy paladin.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
Chase Christian Sep 12th 2011 8:30PM
My understanding is that PoM bounces to the lowest HP target, is that no longer the case?
BB Crisp Sep 13th 2011 4:04PM
To my knowledge, it's always been random. At least, that's been the case since TBC. It simply jumps to a random raid member within 20 yards after the player with the current charge takes damage. It's still an amazing spell that should be glyphed and used on cooldown. It's just not smart.
Juvenate Sep 11th 2011 11:18PM
Good article overall, but just a small clarification about Divine Hymn. The word "powerful" should be used very loosely with that spell. It hardly moves any health bars. In fact the main reason to even think about using it would be for the increased healing effect. Other than that, Holy really doesn't offer any type of "raid wall" in comparison to other healers.
Holy is fine overall for output. But a good Disc Priest can match and even exceed a Holy Priest in raid healing and actually bring a valuable raid wall as well. It's not that Holy is bad, it's just that some other classes might be "too good." *looks at Druids*
Minstrel Sep 12th 2011 12:41AM
The one thing that should be noted about Divine Hymn, which helps it close the gap on Prayer of Healing, is that it's a smart heal that isn't group-specific. It's a great triage heal during pulsing AoE damage, if you're trying to ensure people don't die in the next few seconds (like near the end of the phase or with the boss close to death). Each heal will hit exactly the people who need it most. And, of course, it also increases the potency of other healers' output during that time...and a bit of your own healing later, as the eight-second buff on the last couple of ticks extend beyond the end of the channel (though this will be a rather minor effect).
It's not super-powerful, but it has some notable advantages that make it a worthwhile utility heal. It's also quite mana efficient.
Redielin Sep 12th 2011 1:38AM
the only time you use DH anymore is to time it with tranquility or another throughput cooldown. It is better in pretty much every situation to use POH, or another heal entirely. If somone is too far out of range that you need DH on a 10 min CD to reach him, there's a problem.
Repeat after me. Holy Priests can tank heal. Yes, they can. They are actually pretty good at it. I've tank healed several HM fights as Holy on my Priest, while being undergeared. A Priest's direct heals are actually more powerful than a Druid's, perhaps even a Shaman's (I'd have to check), and Serendipity turns an emergency heal (flash heal) into a decently efficient tool as long as it is used sparingly. HW:Serenity is a nice throughput buff on your healing target too. Disc is probably more efficient than Holy, thanks to Penance and PW:S, but only just, and Holy is better at healing up burst after the fact (whereas disc is obviously better at preventing damage up front).
Chase Christian Sep 12th 2011 3:11AM
Thanks! I will pass this info onto my holy priest that claims he's worthless when healing the tank. :)
Nospoon Sep 12th 2011 1:51AM
What about Holy Pally with Resto Druid or Resto Shaman? I will be starting to raid heal soon with these two as my compatriots. If I missed something let me know.
Chase Christian Sep 12th 2011 1:52AM
Next week!
Nospoon Sep 12th 2011 2:58AM
Thank you, Chase! This really makes my day! So next week is technically today, right? :D
Ghoti Sep 12th 2011 2:02AM
Fantastic. As a disc priest, I heal on my 10-man with a shammy and a pally.
However, the shaman and pally are both tank healers. And yes, I am disc AoE healing. Prayer of healing is fantastic for the garunteed DA's, but it's even better if it crits (I'm currently at 25% crit with a bear tank! :D ). Prayer of healing stabalises alot of the "Puny player, I will respirate you with smoldering sweat!" Burn pulses we've been seeing alot in firelands.
Still, Prayer of healing is best saved for these constant AoE phases. For example, ragnaros's magma trap 80K raid damage, is better handled by 1-2 pre shields and slow healing through single target healing.
But, I've gone off topic again.
Excellent article. And I hope it could be repeated for so many other class combo's.
I read every single one of your articles, even though my care for pallys if lifting up they're dress to check they're tan line - the light must double as a flash of sunbathing, right?
Ineedamedic Sep 12th 2011 9:25AM
I agree with Redielin on this one. While disc is obviously better at single target healing, there exists the benefit of holy word: serenity over sanctuary, where a combination of prayer of mending -> Serenity -> gHeal has the potential of pumping out over 75k healing in 3 global cooldowns, 100k if in surge of light.
Adding talents + guardian spirit to the mix and you get 52% increased healing if the tank is below 50% health. In periods of low incoming damage of the tank, the holy priest, like the disc priest, has the option of using heal instead of gheal, an extremely efficient spell that lands for anywhere between 10k to 20k (depending on gear level) with less than a 1% reduction in mana.
Whether in BC, Wrath, or Cata, a good holy priest can be an excellent tank healer.
The Lesser Evil Sep 12th 2011 4:06AM
Are there buffs to Prayer of Mending in the Holy tree that I'm unaware of, making it more effective for Holy Priests than for Discipline Priests? I couldn't find one, but the fact that Chase mentioned it for Holy but not for Disc makes me think I missed something...
Doug Sep 12th 2011 4:33PM
The buff is in the Chakra tooltip for Sanctuary:
Increases the healing done by your area of effect spells and Renew by 15% and reduces the cooldown of Circle of Healing by 2sec.
Fletcher Sep 12th 2011 4:58AM
I've recently picked my disc priest up again after quite a while - I made her back after 4.0 but before Cataclysm dropped. Got her to 68 and left her after doing all the Mag'har quests and rapidly growing despondent at how annoying it was to smite spam ogres to grind Mag'har rep.
Anyway, Disc feels really weird now that PW:S is shorter than the Weakened Soul debuff. I don't even know if I'm doing it right at all. It's quite aggravating!
jesskid21 Sep 12th 2011 6:24AM
@ Fletcher: I beleive the PW:S being shorter than weakened soul was removed, they both last 15 seconds.
I did enjoy this article, and the comments. I play Disc main spec, and do disagree that disc isn't viable AOE wise. I am able to keep up with almost every healing class/combo on aoe fights, except for druids. Mana wise, I find that people who complain that disc are mana drains are wrong. Utilising Inner Focus every time you cast a PoH means it's a free cast, every 40-odd seconds. Add that to if you are atonement specced and recieve 5% of your mana every 30 seconds and rapture, if disc is played properly, they can aoe heal and still have plenty of mana.
But good article =)
Fletcher Sep 12th 2011 6:44AM
Could swear it's a second or so longer than the shield (and that's with the talents in disc to shorten the CD and whatnot). In any case I miss the days when it lasted 30 seconds. Why'd Blizzard change it anyway?
roald.nieuw Sep 12th 2011 8:01AM
Strange, I've played both Discipline and Holy in the past two tiers, and ever since the Meditation nerf, Discipline has just performed better. At the start of T11, Holy was one of the strongest healers due to the mana regeneration provided by Meditation pre-nerf. In a raid tier that required us to stack massive amounts of Mana regeneration, Holy was king. Throughput came second to being able to keep healing until your gear outleveled the encounter.
Sadly, after the nerf to Holy's mana regeneration and the subsequent release of Firelands which provided barely any gear for the spec, I've dropped it for Discipline. From the few fights I healed as Holy compared to doing them again as Discipline, I have to say Discipline is much better suited to Firelands (you can probably read more about it on the priest official forums, were we've been debating the issue for ages now). The raid cooldown and single target capabilities as well was the ability to be more effective at raid healing than Holy (most of Holy's healing goes into Overhealing at the moment), I'd say Discipline is much more viable than Holy.
I'll admit I'm not the best priest healer out there, but I do think you mixed up the Holy vs Discipline's AoE healing part. Discipline's AoE healing burst is not as massive as Holy, but the Divine Aegis that stacks and procs on each hit as well as crits makes more than up for it. As it stands at the moment, Dicsipline outheals Holy on every encounter except Majordomo (and that's mostly because Bubble doesn't actually absorb damage and thus can't be counted in any meters, you can only check the damage taken ones to see the effect. I'm unsure if this has been fixed or not.), and I'll go as far as saying that on some encounters, Holy Priests are not viable at all. Alysrazor for example, is terrible as a Holy Priest.
Enough ranting from my side :P this is, after all, an article about Palanabs, right?
Danner Sep 12th 2011 8:09AM
Yeah, as other people have already said, disc priests are pretty powerful when it comes to AoE healing, especially if the Divine Aegis shields are allowed to be consumed.
Don't discount disc for AoE healing!
Holypriests are better tank healers than disc priests these days. But not by a huge margin. Holy does offer superior throughput, but cannot sustain such a throughput for a very long time. So at the end of the day, Disc still wins due to reliability. A holypriest can however always hold back a little, but if doing so will risk the tank's welfare, and lacks the "catchup tools" like penance and a powerful shield.
So the Holypriest will still want to be primarily focusing on AoE healing. At this role, the Holypriest is... actually pretty good. Primarily a burst healer, the holypriest will be the best option for countering heavy aoe burst damage like seen on Chimaeron. Unfortunately, no such damage pattern exist in the firelands, making the holypriests virtually without a forte these days. But they can still do AoE healing pretty well, and in many ways complement a paladin beautifully.
Main issue is as always that while a holypriest (or shaman for that matter) can do the job "pretty well", a disc priest can do the job just as well, and a druid is a living wrecking ball of aoe healing.
Which is why there are very few holypriests remaining in raids these days.
Danner Sep 12th 2011 8:16AM
Oh. And also:
Divine Hymn is a HPS loss to use for both holy and disc. You primarily cast this spell if you need mana, as it allows you to regenerate mana unhindered for 8 seconds, and in doing so will gain more mana back than the initial hymn cost. Think of it as a divine plea - when you use it, you lose throughput. ;)
Hymn of Hope is a long-standing joke, barely offering enough mana to throw out a single Divine Light. But I admit it was remotely useful on General Vezax, as it increases the max manapool for 8 seconds, allowing all healers to throw out a few more heals. Other than that, this is a desperation move, and whenever a priest use it because they need it, your raid is in real trouble. It's usually used in conjunction with the shadowfiend, as it will increase the gains from the shadowfiend by 10%.
shadou Sep 12th 2011 9:29AM
I just thought I would point out that disc, overall in my mind, is much stronger than holy. Tank healing or raid healing. We currently run 2-3 disc priests on our roster... and 1 holy.
First of all, discipline priests have by far the strongest raid cooldown of any of the healers. 40% reduced damage + 10% increased healing is a godsend. Heroic Beth, Heroic Domo, Heroic Rhyo... having those bubbles makes healing tremendously easier. Pain Suppression isn't the "oh crap" button Guardian Spirit is, but it's a strong tank CD nonetheless (or a CD for orb soakers, Baleroc; broodling tanks on Beth?).
Most of the fights in Firelands are predictable, burst damage. What better way to combat that by mitigating a large portion of it? 2 disc priests can cover most of a 25man raid with divine aegis before every scythe on regular Staghelm. They can prevent a good amount of damage and raw healing for Beth, Rhyo, and Alys. They can save a tank gib with a bubble to eat a large part of Shannox's arcing slash.
Holy is still strong in my mind, but it comes with less CDs and more "whew, the hard part's over, now let's catch up". GS is great. Body and Soul can trivialize some things. But I think overall it's just begun to pale in comparsion to the feats a good disc priest can pull.