It was difficult at first to tell if there was a benefit to the heals. After I first set up the glyphs, I went to grind some reputation and see if I could discern the effects of the glyphs. For solo play it worked out real nice. I would grab three or four mobs (being cautious at first) and wear them down, much the same way pali tanks like to aoe grind. I would pop a flash of light and get a nice heal coming back over time. I soon found myself popping it before I begun the fight and found that the damage I was taking was insignifigant; however, grinding mobs and healing raids are two completly different things.
A little while passed and some guild
mates logged on and wanted to run the daily heroic for some badges. It is not the best way to farm for badges, but hey when everything is locked up till reset day, why not? Plus it helps the guild in the long run, not to mention allows me to check out the glyphs in a somewhat safe way. Although I do not know if I would call a heroic run a great time to change the entire mechanics of how one heals. So we headed in, and at first I have to admit I pretty much hated it. I was use to popping 2500+ flash of light and now it was cut in half? I was thinking what did I do to myself; however, talking it out with my tank, we were not wiping and he did not notice much of a difference as far as how he needed to play, so I kept the glyph set up. I soon found out the best way to use this configuration actually works well for a five man set up. I would start off cast the flash of light on the tank, giving him a good ten seconds of additional heals. If the damage incoming to him was mounting I would then cast Holy Light (which often time I never use because of the mana drain), which also popped small heals to the guild members who were in close fighting. This was proving to be somewhat effective, seeings as Blizz does not wish to give us a strong/legitinate heal over time spell or an effective area of effect heal.
This method was progressing well, but our ranged DPS would still take a pretty heavy hit and the smaller flash of light was not nearly effective for them. I then decided to play around again and cast my Beacon of Light on the highest DPS so that when I healed others in the area they would benefit as well. This seemed to prove effective for the rest of the run. I was able to heal the ranged DPS using Flash of Light and Beacon of Light, and the tank received solid heals from the combination of Flash of Light and Holy Light. The thing I found most interesting was that it allowed me to be much more mana effecient and not overheal, which if you ask any Holy Pali, that is always an issue. The real test will come when we try our luck with a raid. I think I may try to organize a Kara run for fun (and as a way of saying goodbye to an old friend, seeings as they nerfed down everything) to see how the healing set up works in raid situations. Usually when I take my Pali into a raid, it is healing a MT or OT, because that was about all that I could really focus on, unless we had more than two healers for ten man raids (which really slow downs the progression in my opinion). If anything interesting comes from it, I will report back in here; however, I think I will at least hold the current configuration until I hit 80 simply because it is a better set up for grinding and questing.
This post was originally published on November 10, 2008, on the original Holy Shock blog site.