The heart of almost every decision a healer makes–whether about gear choice, gem choice, talent build, or spell selection—comes down to a simple question: throughput or longevity?

For paladins especially, this question defines almost every aspect of our playstyle. Because our class is built on extremes (more on that later) there is a tendency to say that there are two ways to play a paladin healer in PVE, which sync up fairly exactly with our two core healing spells, Flash of Light (small, efficient) and Holy Light (big, costly.) This leads to a lot of myths: that we only spam Holy Light, that we only want Intellect, that all we do is overheal so spellpower is useless, and the biggest one of all: that Flash of Light and Holy Light are incompatible.

I suspect this post may be a little controversial, because it seeks to question precisely that long-standing dichotomy. Believe it or not, there is a middle ground… even for paladins.

When I said that our class is built on extremes, what I meant is that many of our options fall on the far ends of the throughput vs. longevity spectrum, and there’s almost no room in between. Let’s look at some examples.

Holy Light vs. Flash of Light

This is the big one. Flash of Light has an extremely low base healing value but also an extremely low base cost. What this means is that when you are using primarily Flash of Light, you won’t really need to worry about longevity—the low cost is mostly taken care of by baseline Replenishment, mp5 buffs, etc. On the other hand, you’ll absolutely have to worry about throughput. FoL actually has a decent spellpower coefficient, 100%; it’s better than other spells of its cast time in part because the old fossil Blessing of Light was “folded into” our spells in Wrath of the Lich King.

Holy Light, on the other hand, has massive base healing and a hefty mana cost. If you use primarily Holy Light, throughput will not be much of an issue, but longevity will become paramount. In tiers 7 and 8, common practice was to do absolutely everything you can do to maximize longevity so that you can “spam” Holy Light as much as possible. With the nerf to Illumination in 3.2, some of us are rethinking this strategy. But more on that later.

Glyph of Seal of Wisdom vs. Glyph of Seal of Light

On the surface, this is a pretty straightforward case of throughput vs. longevity. Do you want to heal for 5% more, or do you want to save 5% mana off the cost of each heal? Unfortunately, there’s more involved in this decision than shows up in those tooltips, and Glyph of Seal of Wisdom cheats. This makes it very difficult to choose Light with a clear conscience. Using GoSoL means that you cannot have Seal of Wisdom up, which means you cannot melee for mana and you won’t get mana back when you judge. Instead, you would be healing yourself when meleeing or judging, which isn’t a bad thing but it isn’t an especially helpful thing either. When the decision is between “longevity for all your healing” or “extra healing… on yourself but no one else” it’s not much of a decision. That said, I’d still switch between the two sometimes if it could be done in combat…

Avenging Wrath vs. Divine Illumination

This is my favorite pairing, mostly because it took me forever to realize how parallel these spells have become. Both three minute cooldowns, one that increases longevity and one that increases throughput. The great thing about them, however, is that they pair with one of our main spells to do the exact opposite: Avenging Wrath can be a longevity cooldown if you use Flash of Light during it, since AW will compensate for FoL’s throughput, but the bonus to longevity will remain. Likewise, Holy Light during Divine Illumination will fix HL’s heavy mana cost penalty while providing the throughput advantage that’s built in to HL.

This is the kind of balancing act that we can do all the time, not just when these cooldowns are up. A lot of people on the forums clamor for a “middle” healing spell, between FoL and HL. Other think we need a talent like the moonkin’s Eclipse, to encourage us to use both spells.

Both of those things may be true, and I certainly wouldn’t say no to either. But for the time being, I think the principle challenge of holy paladin healing is to work with what we’ve got, to learn when we can use Flash to conserve mana (my bar actually goes up while I spam FoL) and when we need to bite the bullet and spam HL to keep a tank alive.

 Of course, there are several common objections:

“BUT FLASH ISN’T BIG ENOUGH, MY TANK WILL DIE.”

There are not many encounters in the game where this is true. Assembly of Iron hardmode requires spamming HL for the burn at the end of the fight, but this is a very short window of time compared to the fight as a whole, and balancing our spells prior to that final burn phase means we can start it at nearly full mana. Thorim’s hardmode is another case like this, as he gains a high number of stacks towards the end of phase 2, his melee swings become ridiculously strong. Flash of Light will not sustain a tank through this. But are you noticing a trend? In both of these cases, the period of time for which you’ll need to go all out with throughput is fairly short, and for the rest of the fight the usual balancing act is perfectly viable. The only fight right now that requires maximum throughput throughout the entire fight is Algalon. And it so happens that Ghostcrawler has said several times now that fights like Algalon were balanced around Holy Light spam. It’s a model they want to get away from, because it’s a bad model. And it’s not a necessary one.

 What makes me say it’s unnecessary? Discipline priests. Discipline priests have healed every encounter in the game, and if they could spam nothing but Penance, I’m sure that’s what they’d do. But they can’t because of its cooldown. So they use other spells, like Flash Heal, to cover the gaps. Holy Light has no cooldown, so its restriction is its mana cost. The world will not end if we use Flash of Light occasionally, especially now that it applies a heal-over-time effect.

 “BUT YOU CAN’T USE FLASH IF YOU GEAR FOR HOLY LIGHT.”

 This is patently untrue. I gear mostly for Holy Light, and my Flash of Light’s average value according to a World of Logs report on a fight earlier this week was 4,856. Average crit, 7,285. This is slightly less than Lilitharien’s average Flash Heal on the same fight, but my FoL casts faster. (Hers also procs Divine Aegis shields on crits, so it’s something of a toss-up, but the point is that it’s not apples and oranges. At worst, red apples and green apples.)

 A corollary to this objection is the idea that “spellpower is useless because it only increases overhealing.” This had a little more weight back in T7, when Illumination was twice as strong, we stacked crit, and damage was lower overall. Nowadays, that spellpower doesn’t just boost Flash of Light. With increased tank damage and lower crit rates (from switching to mp5 gear), Holy Light will often not overheal. And the funny thing? The times it does overheal are times you probably could have used Flash of Light safely. In a recent forum debate about the Algalon encounter, with many parses posted, the one in which the paladin did the highest effective health per second was one in which he was using Flash of Light. (Admittedly he was using a Touched by the Light build, but I think it’s still noteworthy, especially because TbtL does zilch on non-crits.)

 There’s also the fact that spellpower boosts our Sacred Shield, which is one of our best means of reducing incoming tank damage, as well as Holy Shock… an inefficient spell, the throughput of which comes in the form of speed rather than value. But it can save lives if it’s big enough.

 “BUT IF I STACK ENOUGH INTELLECT AND MAYBE GET INNERVATES I CAN STILL SPAM HL.”

Sure, so can I. But if there’s something we should learn from the 3.2 nerfs, it’s that the developers don’t want us to be able to spam Holy Light with impunity. I think there’s a substantial advantage to adopting a more balanced playstyle, as you never know when the numerical values you rely on will change.

 So, to close, I just want to stress that I’m not saying it’s wrong to gear/spec/glyph/play for more Holy Light or more Flash of Light—as I said, I myself prefer to gear for longevity. I’m not suggesting that 50% Flash 50% HL is the answer; I’m using the word “balance” far more loosely than that. Some fights will require more of one than the other. But it’s worth being able to shift your balance as the requirements change—whether between fights, phases, patches, or expansions. This is also why I love items that embrace a balance between throughput and longevity in themselves… AKA: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Solace of the Fallen.

Tagged as Flash of Light, Holy Light, Holy Paladin, Spells + Categorized as Paladin