The only way to describe that is with a single word and that word is “overkill”.  All in all it wasn’t exactly a stellar use of cooldowns but I lived so who cares, right?  Well you can bet your ass that the entire raid did about a  minute or so later when I took another huge string of damage and died because everyone was out of OH SHIT buttons to use on me.

Normally communication between our healers and tanks is very good but this is one of those times when it broke down and the entire raid suffered for it.  It is hugely important that the tanks build a good rapport with the healers.  Communication needs to be instantaneous whether it’s through raid warnings, class channels or over Vent.  If someone uses a cooldown I need to know about it and so does everyone else so that situations like what I described above are as limited as possible.

Be good to yourself, be good to your raid and above all, be good to your healers.  You’ll thank me later.

Polgera says: I’d like to just say the best thing you can do for your healer is to communicate well. My personal pet peeve is when a tank goes down and the tank who then picks it up doesn’t call it out. Sometimes a taunt war ensues and healers are left in the dark as to who is actually going to be tanking the boss. Please call it out on vent it prevents wipes and I guarnetee it will lower your healer’s blood pressure.

Generally as a Paladin you deal with two kinds of damage on your tanks.  The first is big spike damage which requires a mixture of Holy Lights and Flash of Lights.  With this type of damage you must keep your Light’s Grace buff up at all times.  The other type of damage you can see is a steady predictable flow.  Once you’ve learned the encounter you should be able to predict how much damage the tank will be taking and you can then spam that heal on your tank. Most fights have a mixture of these two types of damage requiring you to switch back and forth between these healing styles instantly.

My style: I’m all about the 9k crits baby, I prefer Holy Light which is our big expensive slow heal.  Haste and crit are the best stats to maximize the performance of this heal. The crit on Holy Light is higher then on your Flash of Light spell, making crit the better way to regain the large mana cost and increase the amount of effective heal  Holy Light requires you to precast continuously because it’s slow, that means if you see waves of trash coming down on your tank it might be good to start the heal. Precasting goes hand in hand with “stopcasting”. You should have some sort of mod that allows you to see the incoming heals that your target will receive. If you see that your heal will and to late and end up as overheal you can stopcast by pressing the Escape button. Stopcasting by jumping is slower and less effective, this only really comes into play if you are having to manage your mana extensively. Usually I let all my heals cast even if it ends in overheal, unless I’m worried that I’ll run out of mana.

Other styles include the Flash of Light spammer.  Mp5 and +heal are the stats you want to stack if you prefer to heal using primarily this spell. Flash of light is cheap and fast it receives a smaller coefficient from your +Heal then your Holy Light does.

Holy Shock… yeeeeeah.  I so rarely use this when I’m raiding that it’s not really worth mentioning. If you think you can save someone from death with it go ahead. Otherwise it’s pretty much a waste of mana.