Eternal Flame, Sacred Shield or Selfless Healer [Holy] 5.4

[Ramned 0]

Hello. 

 

This is my first post here in Icy veins forum. I Love your guides all of them.

 

With 5.4 now live, Now the raiding starts again. I am one of the main healers in my group but still I have doubts which talent is better for 10 man

 

Actually i think the eternal flame is not a nice talent since the nerf but im not sure.

 

Im not a healing theorycrafter (dps only).

 

The issue here which one is better talent for raiding 10 man.

 

Im Using Sacred shield right now. I think it is a nice talent cause the 3 charges. Im SS and LoD spam to keep IH shield. But i read in a lot of forums that eternal flame still better than SS and SH. I want to know why and whats the playstyle cause i dont know if eternal flame blanketing is the way (my opinion).

 

Please help to know which one use and what is the playstyle now

 

Thanks in advance

 

PD: An apology for my English is not my native language

Edited September 13, 2013 by Ramned

[Darkkonan 13]

My understanding is that Sacred Shield was nerfed by 30% and the HoT from Eternal Flame was buffed by 40%.  Also, the target of Beacon of Light can take advantage of the HoT from Eternal Flame on multiple applications.  So I guess how that works would be to hit many targets with Eternal Flame, then pop Beacon of Light for a steady stream of heals from the HoTs?  I'm not actually a Holy Pally, but I do have one in my 10man who is experimenting with the changes with some good success.  On my Prot Pally I'm also seeing some of the advantages to using EF over SS in conjunction with the tier 15 2-piece set bonus.  

Another thing to consider would be whether you're tank healing or raid healing, since Sacred Shield may be better in some situations on your Tank.  In the end, since it's just a matter of changing a talent on the fly... I would recommend trying out both and seeing how it works with your group or playstyle.

Hope this helped out, although some input from an actual Holy specced pally may be more insightful.

Edited September 14, 2013 by Darkkonan

[Jeolstam 0]

Hello!

 

I've read your post Ramned and thought I should give you my input on the topic. I'm a 100% holypaladin player and haven't really been playing anything else since early Cataclysm and I raid in a progressive enviroment.

 

The talents EF and SH are both very strong, but you must know that they are used for different situations. SH is the junk in the trunk if you're put into healing the tanks, a role that holydins are decent at performing. It is also very nice for small parties, such as dungeons or challenge modes due to that you can keep the shield up on 60% of your party at all times very easily.

 

EF however is the ability that is the strongest where holypaladins shine, dealing with heavy raid-wide damage. If your raidleader is knowledgeable then he/she will put you into this role because this is where holypaladins excel. Using EF to it's maximum potential will counter many mechanics (especially in SoO) on bosses and keep your party alive during any situation. You blanket the raid with EFs cast at 3 HP, prioritizing the tanks first. If there's no need to blanket the whole raid (in case of random damage that doesn't apply to every player) just use EF as you would with word of glory. You'll notice that EF will heal your targets for more than divine light, which is your strongest mana-based heal, and then I'm not even mentioning the HoT. 

 

Selfless healer shouldn't be used since you have to use too many global CDs to make use of it effectively, however with the talent holy avenger you will be able to pool holypower very quickly thanks to judgement giving you 1 holypower, thus making it an extremely potent cooldown if paired with selfless healer.

 

In the end it all comes down to what your role in the raid or instance is. Are you going to heal the tanks? Are you the raid-healer? Will there be alot of damage dealt to everyone? All these questions decide what talent you should use, but in the long run you can become a master with any build as long as you learn how to use it to 100% potential. And don't forget to swap talents between fights in order to give you the best output for that encounter =)

 

I hoped this helped you out!

 

Yours sincerely

 

Jeolstam

[Krazyito 521]

As an aside to Jeolstams post. (sorry I may be off topic here but I enjoy talking about healers in general )

In my opinion you can't really say "Holy paladins shine in the raid healing role" because, so do every other healer. More people = more possible damage = more HPS

If you look at the toolkit of other healers, say monk or druid for example, and compare the most similar spells, you will see that monks and druids have more spells ideally centered on raid healing than a paladin.

Just being able to put one HoT the raid doesn't (again in my opinion) mean that the raid leader should assign you to that role. I don't mean to sound rude, but any knowledgeable raid leader will first ask a paladin to be the primary tank healer if the need arises. Next, would be a priest, then druid, then shaman, and lastly monks.

I again don't want to really pick at you, but your wording and argument for EF kinda strikes me (as a healing raid leader) in a way where if I was told this, I would automatically assign them to watch the tanks.

Now, on to how what healing really is. In both 10 and 25, the role of healers since the start of cataclysm has shifted to a more homogenized style. Every and all healers have a way to deal with any type of damage. Be it spell usage or cool downs. Theoretically any healer can tank heal and any healer can raid heal. Obviously as I mentioned before all healers "excel" at raid healing because there's more to heal, but that's not the point of his half of my post. The point is that all healers have a toolkit to do both jobs, but some have a selection that suits one role better than other healers.

Healing has also more turned into a style where 90% of the time all healers are raid healing while the other 10% is spent on tank healing/upkeep. Healers don't need to be assigned to the tanks any more. It's more of a team effort to "heal everyone". When the tanks need more special attention I look to the paladins first to watch them because of their arsenal of single target heals (which also greatly includes their mastery).

A mastery specced paladin can easily do more healing/absorbs to a single tank than a mastery specced disc priest (or any other healer for that matter).

I know you mentioned the above at the end of your post, which is more in-line with my thinking, but before that all I could think of when tank healing was a problem was "paladin != raid healers".

I suppose in this post, that I went off topic on and am sorry for, I wanted express that just because blizzard gives someone a new toy, doesn't mean it makes them the best at that specific role.

Again, this is wholly my opinion from personally playing every healer and having to manage each type as a 25 man healing lead for the better part of 2 years now. I picked on this post because when reading it I felt it being very specific and I have seen a few similar posts saying the same thing, when to me it feels like people on general just want their numbers boosted and the rest of the unknowing population doesn't get the full picture because they do that know enough about healers.

Feel free to disagree with anything I said and I am sorry of you felt this was very directed at you for a small comment you made, because I wrote this more as a general observation that I have recently seen.

[Felmiril 0]

So i have been holy paladin healing for a while(throughtout cata, missed some of MoP) and currently our 10man group is on Juggernaut. Ive been trying out all three talents throughout the past two weeks, and honestly i feel EF is no good anymore. As said above, the ticks are being wasted and are just contributing to overhealing. Especially if ur are 3 healing most fights like us. A Majority of the EF ticks arent even being used on tanks; everyone is usually topped. During heavy aoe damage phases its jsut better to use LoD anyways. Selfess healer is the way to go now.

 

I have yet to mess around with Holy Avenger yet. Seems a lot better for SoO, as most fights have predictable heavy aoe raid damage, and if u dont get the procs from Divine purpose during those phases then not much use. any more info on the 75 talents would be helpful

[Mamovisk 0]

So guys, straight talking, is there a measure of the priority change on the stats if you spec for Selfless Healer right? Someone did that math already right? Sorry, i'm not very good at numbers.

Thanks everyone in advance for your contribution.
Best regards!

[oavil 0]

From my experience in 25 man SoO normals, sacred shield is coming out on top with a few exceptions, i.e malkorok .  We have 3 holy paladins and they were all using SS most of the time. 

[Urgsta 0]

From my expirience in SoO (Blackfuse, 10man) SS is by far my favorite. Advantages are:

-3! charges

-Very little mana cost

-NO Holy Power cost

-Cast and forget for 30sec

 

Why i dont like Eternal Flame:

-Consumes all your holy power to be remotely effective

-Insane amounts of gcd use needed to come up with 3 holy power

-Most of the heals go to overhealing

 

Why i dont like Selfless healer:

-One single target heal for 3 gcd of a dps spell (wtf i dont get it)

 

 

If you know the encounter you know which players are going to receive constant damage:

Tanks of course, or victims of dots like in the Nazgrim encount for example. Just use sacred shield on when the dots are applied and the whole damage is nullified. My gear is at around ilvl 540 and my shields tick for 45k which is quite alot if you consider that this ticks on 3 raid members simultaniously for virtualy no cost.

By the way: It is much more useful to shield the raid so the dont drop low in first place. If some aoe effect deals dmg to the whole raid. All the other healers top of the raid within 1 or 2 casts and EF ticks go straight to overheal.

 

Just think about casting one 3hp light of dawn VS one 3hp EF ! Its just no comparison. It tops of the raid and creates mastery shields on top. (EF ticks no longer do that)

 

my 2 cents, bye

[Cassey 0]

I know I am one of the few rocking SS talent but I am not fond of the EF playstyle. I get decent numbers out of SS. Is it worth reforging to the 5335 haste breakpoint for the 7th tick? I would have to drop 1700 mastery. I am at 43% mastery raid buffed so sparing some would not hurt I think. I am just not sure the math on SS, so if I get 7 ticks instead of 6 that is 16% more healing from SS? SS is usually around 17% of my overall healing.

[Tarazet 144]

The IV current guide for Holy recommends using Crusader Strike in melee with the boss, because this is hugely beneficial for the EF playstyle. It's easy enough to do with a mouseover macro, and since it's available every 6 seconds, it lines up perfectly with Holy Shock. When you don't need to use Divine Light on the Beacon target or Holy Radiance, it doubles your Holy Power generation to include Crusader Strike.

 

You can use this technique together with Divine Purpose - which makes each HS and CS generate 3 HP - to blanket the whole raid in Eternal Flames very quickly, particularly when everyone is spread out and can't benefit from the Paladin's stacked healing ability.

[Fouton 266]

You can use this technique together with Divine Purpose - which makes each HS and CS generate 3 HP - to blanket the whole raid in Eternal Flames very quickly, particularly when everyone is spread out and can't benefit from the Paladin's stacked healing ability.

 

Do you mean Divine Purpose or Holy Avenger?

[Tarazet 144]

Do you mean Divine Purpose or Holy Avenger?

Holy Avenger. I was going by heart and didn't double-check my work. Oopsie.