Healadin 3.0.3

The other day I respecced Avierra to Holy from Protection - maybe not the best idea I've had, but it made sense at the time to try out the new talents, especially the much-talked-about Bacon of Light... excuse me, I mean Beacon.

To be honest... it confused me. I guess I'm not going to be Holy this expansion.

For starters, let's describe how I used to heal:

Up to 3.0.1 Avierra was a healbot. She stood in one place and spammed heals and Cleanse. Occasionally she would throw out a Lay on Hands, Blessing of Protection, Blessing of Freedom or Divine Intervention. That's it. I used to bind keys 1-4 for heals: FOL 3 on 1 (free heals for when I ran out of mana), FOL MAX on 2, HL 5 on 3 (later upgraded to HL 6) and HL MAX on 4. And Cleanse on Q. Key 5 used to be another heal, but I later changed it to Judgement.

I used to have to remember how much each button healed for (1 - 600-1000, 2 - 1300-2000, 3 - 2000-3000, 4 - 4000-6000). Then when someone was low, I'd click on them and throw the appropriate heal.

That's it. No Seals, except in the rare raid when I'd be on melee duty as well. No Judgements. No Holy Shock.

Patch 3.0 changed all that. Now there's constant pressure to cast Holy Shock (to trigger Infusion of Light). And to Judge from a distance (to trigger Judgements of the Pure). So that's two abilities I have to work into my casting cycle.

Beacon of Light is the third.

It's a lovely spell, really. It forks heals so that your heals on Player X are duplicated on Player Y - usually the tank. It makes sense for battles with a lot of splash damage. I've considered putting the Beacon on the DPS most likely to take damage, but that didn't make a lot of sense in 25-main raids, so on the tank it went.

Other than that, it's fairly straightforward. It would be even better if it affected everyone's heals, but it's caster-only; Amihan's heals won't trigger it.

Now I'm just confused as to what to do as a healadin.

I used to start simple: two quick Flash of Lights to keep the tank up while he gains aggro, then a downranked Holy Light to get the Light's Grace buff. But downranking got nerfed, so no more cheap Light's Grace. At least I have Divine Favor macro'd so I get 60% of my initial heal cost back if I want Light's Grace up.

I'll tell you what I like about the straight-up Holy build: with ranged Judgements and Holy Shock I'm farming much more easily. But I've also messed up with Judgements, breaking CC in 25-mans twice on trash pulls due to poorly timed Judging.

Also, Holy has great potential for being a farming build, with Consecration benefiting from the overall buff to spellpower. I wouldn't be unhappy farming in Holy; it's just that I don't think I can raid in it. The Beacon build is clearly not for me.

So I respecced to Ret/Holy... and again to Protection... and that's where I'll be for the foreseeable future.