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The Light and How to Swing It: Healing against Alysrazor
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like why paladins are so awesome. My 10-man raid team has three healers, but none of us has an off-spec. Once we mastered the fight, Alysrazor feels like an encounter that only really requires two healers. We loved having three healers while learning, but now that it's on farm, I decided to try out a shockadin hybrid build for this encounter. I actually spent the majority of my time spamming Exorcism on the adds and Rebuking their casts. The reason that I'm able to be in melee range of the casters is Beacon of Light's massive 60-yard range, which allows me to heal a tank even when I'm way past any other healer's effective range. When you first engage Alysrazor, your entire raid is knocked back and blasted with fire damage. I immediately assumed that the encounter was going to revolve around heavy AOE damage, and I readied myself to use Holy Radiance on cooldown while bracing myself for a good crying session once it was over. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Alysrazor actually doesn't require that much AOE healing outside of her final phase. For the majority of this fight, holy paladins get to focus on what we do best: single-target healing. I like to use a Divine Favored Holy Radiance to counter the opening AOE blast, as Divine Favor will be up again for the AOE phase later on.
The Light and How to Swing It: Holy paladins and holy power
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like why paladins are so awesome. When discussing the major changes that paladins saw in Cataclysm, holy power is always at the top of the list. While hunters received their pseudo-energy resource called focus and death knights had their rune system revamped, holy power was easily the most interesting mechanic that was introduced. There's no way to play a holy paladin efficiently without completely adopting holy power. The two holy power releases are both free and flexible. They only cost holy power to use, and they give us a strong instant heal and the only instant AoE heal in our toolbox. We receive a relatively fixed amount of holy power every minute, with the biggest contributor being Holy Shock. We can only use Holy Shock about 10 times a minute, although a few of our talents help augment that number. The key concept is that holy power is a fixed resource, which means that deciding between Light of Dawn and Word of Glory becomes an important choice.
