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.

My opinions on this boss encounter are somewhat skewed because of the circumstances under which I fought him. On 10-man, he was an absolute breeze, and I found myself seriously questioning the rumors that I’d heard about it being a “healing-intensive” encounter. My second run-in with the big red guy was on 25-man, and it was a nightmare. I’ve since realized, though, that this was less about Jaraxxus and more about the raid. First, we didn’t know about dispelling Nether Power. We thought his Fel Lightning was one-shotting people because it must chain the way Thorim’s does. But in fact it does not. Even after we figured that out, we had a sort of off-raid that night, which meant that we had only two mages to dispel the aforementioned Nether Power, and we had NO REPLENISHMENT. It was rough.

Happily, with proper raid buffs and dispellers, Jaraxxus is not bad at all. On with the show!

Jaraxxus has a variety of abilities that have minimal bearing on a holy paladin’s routine. He buffs himself with Nether Power, which must be dispelled. He casts Fel Fireball, which must be interrupted. He summons two types of add: Infernals and Mistresses of Pain, which must be tanked. But there are still a number of his abilities that we can do something about.

The first and simplest is Touch of Jaraxxus. It’s a magic debuff that seems (in my experience, anyway) to only be placed on his primary aggro target. We just need to dispel it as soon as possible, so it doesn’t spread too many curses.

The second ability to watch for is Incinerate Flesh. This will be cast on a random raid member throughout the fight. I would strongly recommend that you add this debuff to your list of tracked debuffs, whether on Grid, Healbot, or specific tracking add-on. It works like an absorption bubble that absorbs healing instead of damage. The amount that it can absorb fluctuates based on the difficulty setting of the encounter (30k on 10-man normal, 40k on 10-man heroic, 60k on 25-man normal, and a whopping 85k on 25-man heroic.) Once you’ve thrown enough healing its way, the “bubble” will pop harmlessly and the target will resume doing full damage. If, however, you do not pop the bubble by doing the requisite amount of healing after 12 seconds, the target will explode and deal pulses of damage to the raid. You want to avoid this whenever possible.

The nasty thing about this particular debuff is that, as holy paladins, we’re a great option for healing it. Our “big heal” is spammable (unlike Penance, for example), and we tend to gear and spec to maximize our ability to spam it. Why is this nasty? Because the heals are “Absorbed,” which means they don’t transfer via Beacon of Light. It’s a pain, but Jaraxxus’ tank damage is generally not so severe that we can’t afford to Holy Light the Incinerated Flesh a couple times, even without Beacon transfer.

Legion Flame is another debuff to be aware of, as you’ll probably catch it at least once or twice during the encounter. The debuff lasts six seconds and spawns fire under you. However, in my very limited experience, it seems to behave strangely. Whether due to graphical latency or design, the fire doesn’t spawn immediately, and if you spend all six seconds running to the back of the arena, your whole trail will light up with fire when the debuff expires. The important thing is that you do not stand still, and that you do not run the fire through other people.

Finally, there’s Fel Lightning. Your raid should spread out in the usual fashion for dealing with Chain Lightning-style abilities, but as I mentioned in the into, this is not Thorim’s lightning. It doesn’t grow stronger with each jump. It’s very manageable damage, so long as Jaraxxus doesn’t have too many stacks of Nether Power up when he casts it.

And that’s pretty much it for Jaraxxus. Except… his adds have a few tricks of their own.

Mistress’ Kiss is an ability that should worry any holy paladin that reads its description. I certainly was. Unlike every other healing class, we only have access to a single spell school (holy.) If we get this debuff, our only options are to rely on instant spells for the duration, bubble out of it, pop Aura Mastery with Concentration Aura, or just suck it up and eat the interrupt. Unfortunately, I can’t give any first-hand advice as to which of these is the best choice, since I never got the debuff, in 10- or 25-man. And the weird thing? Neither did any of the other healers I talked to. I’ve got nothin’.

Spinning Pain Spike does damage equal to a percentage of the target’s health. That percentage fluctuates with difficulty setting, but on all settings, it’s pretty serious. This, along with Incinerate Flesh above, is something you’ll want to track, because massive damage will follow the three-second “You’re being targeted!” debuff. Power Word: Shield is really the ace in the hole for dealing with this ability, but we can still prime a heal to help with the damage that gets through.

The only other thing of note won’t affect you directly, but you still need to know about it: Shivan Slash. This will keep the damage on the Mistress’ offtank even higher and spikier than the damage on Jaraxxus’ tank. Something to be aware of, both in selecting your spells and your healing assignments.

Fel Inferno is the only thing to really worry about with regard to the Infernals that Jaraxxus will spawn. All it means is that you should always try to be 15 yards away from them.

Now let’s talk about our cooldowns. There’s a lot of raid damage, but it’s all very spiky and hard to predict. This means mitigation cooldowns like Aura Mastery (you’ll notice that most of the damage is Fire, so rock the FR aura if you can) and Divine Sacrifice don’t have an easy “USE ME NOW” moment. If you find yourself forced to bubble, say due to Mistress’ Kiss, then go ahead and use Divine Sacrifice then, while the bubble is up anyway. If infernals start AOEing the raid due to poor placement, it’s another good time to pop something.

Damage will be highest while a Mistress of Pain is active, so if you’re being conservative with Divine Plea, wait until one of them has just died. Based on my limited testing (in a replenishment-free post-battlerez environment of pure chaos) it is mostly safe to melee Jaraxxus for Seal of Wisdom procs. His Fel Lightning seems to always prioritize ranged targets before melee targets. The only time it’s not safe is if Infernals are in range, or if a portal is opening (they cause AOE damage as well.)

Aaand… that’s about it for Big Red. Looking forward to playing with the Faction Champions this coming week, which you’ll be able to read all about in the third installment of this series.

This post will lay out the key mechanics of the new bosses for a holy paladin. This is not meant to be a full write-up or Bosskillers-style strategy guide… Instead, I look at each encounter in terms of potential holy paladin opportunities: when is it safe to use Divine Plea? Can you melee this boss for mana? When is the best time for Divine Sacrifice or Aura Mastery? There will undoubtedly be things that I do not cover (like the need for Jaraxxus’ buffs to be dispelled or his Fel Fireballs to be interrupted) because they have no real bearing on holy paladins.

I hope this will prove useful not only to my fellow holy paladins, but also raid leaders and healing leaders who want to assign their paladins optimally in the new instance.

All that said, let’s look at the new bosses!

Our first encounter is the “Northrend Beasts”–three of them. Well, four of them. Well, four and some snobolds. Are snobolds beasts?

The encounter is a series of bosses, with no out-of-combat time between bosses. Essentially it’s one boss with three very disparate phases. Unlike Mimiron, these phase changes are so quick that there’s not even really time for a Divine Plea between them. The first phase is a fight against:

Gormok is probably the most straightforward of the three (or four) beasts you’ll be fighting. Here’s the scoop:

Gormok is an absolutely perfect fight for Beacon of Light. He places a stacking DoT called Impale on his primary aggro target. Due to the stacking bleed effect, two tanks will alternate taunting him so that neither of them gain more stacks than can be reasonably healed through. This means that in 10-man, both of your tanks will be taking simultaneous damage for pretty much the entire fight. In 25-man, your raid will have to decide how many tanks to rotate through, but anywhere from 2-4 would be reasonable. This means that we can easily maintain a steady flow of HPS on two tanks at all times. Raid damage is minimal, so you’ll likely find yourself healing your Beacon target through a second tank.

Gormok will also create patches of resistable fire on the ground, so depending on your raid composition and other auras and resistance buffs available, you may want to turn on Fire Resistance Aura to help raid members as they move out of the fire. The fire is a fairly static feature, so there’s no particular moment that popping Aura Mastery will do the most good–just use your best judgement. In addition, Gormok will toss Snobolds onto the backs of random raid members. DPS will need to kill these, unless you’re going for a particularly hilarious achievement, but the damage they do is very minor–no real need to help out on raid healing, especially since you have the ideal two-tank setup already in place for Beacon.

In terms of mana, if you use Seal of Wisdom, all of your procs will have to come from Judgement on Gormok. His Staggering Stomp ability will interrupt (and lock out) spellcasting for eight seconds to all targets within 15 yards, which means we cannot safely melee him for mana without risking interruption. Unlike Freya’s Ground Tremor or Ignis’ Flame Jets, there is not enough time to ensure that you can stop casting before the interrupt goes off. So, just stay at range. As long as your tanks are good at swapping at a reasonable number of stacks, the damage on this fight is not especially difficult to heal, and it should not really tax your mana pool. Do note, however, that Impale will continue to tick even after Gormok is dead, all the way into the next phase. So you’ll need to keep the heals flowing all the way into the next encounter.

Phase two of the fight is what makes three phases equal four beasts: that’s right, not one but two Jormungar worms.

As there are two worms, so too must there be two tanks. Yep, that’s right, another fight right up Beacon’s alley. When Ghostcrawler referred to us as “exceptional dual-target healers,” he may have had this place in mind. Acidmaw is, for convenient shorthand, the poison one. Dreadscale, on the other hand, is the fire one. The worms will occasionally burrow into the ground and re-emerge elsewhere. Each time this happens, they will alternate: one will be rooted into the ground, and the other will be mobile. When Acidmaw is mobile, he’ll drop Slime Pools, very similar to the ones from Grobbulus back in Naxx. Because of this, the tank will be moving him around constantly. This means that the two tanks will often be varying distances from each other. Fortunately the new range on Beacon of Light means that you’ll be able to reliably heal them both throughout the duration of the encounter. This is definitely a fight where you want your assignment to be “the tanks, both of them.”

Raid damage will come primarily from the debuffs placed on random raid members, Burning Bile from Dreadscale and Paralytic Toxin from Acidmaw. Burning Bile will deal periodic damage, and Paralytic Toxin will paralyze you after a short time, causing a highly-damaging long-duration stun that will prevent you from doing anything, let alone healing the tanks. Happily, the bile can be used to cancel out the toxin. So if you are at risk of being paralyzed, you need only move near someone with Burning Bile to remove the debuff, or have them move to you (the toxin will snare you. Hand of Freedom didn’t seem to help.) Nonetheless, fire damage will be happening no matter what, so Fire Resistance Aura remains an excellent choice.

Unlike Gormok, we can safely melee the rooted worm, just so long as we avoid any poison clouds and stay behind them (they both deal constant damage at a very rapid rate to any target in front of them.) This is good, because if your mana will start aching at any point during the Northrend Beasts encounter, now is as likely as ever.

When the first worm is killed, the second enters a soft enrage. Now is a good time to use either Divine Sacrifice or Hand of Sacrifice while bubbled, to alleviate the tank damage during the enrage. That said, the enrage is not particularly rough, and you may wish to save Divine Sacrifice for the next phase.

Icehowl is the last boss you’ll face in the Northrend Beasts encounter, and I have to say: at least on normal difficulty, he’s the easiest.

Icehowl requires a single tank, so Beacon will be slightly less useful here. There’s still some sporadic raid damage you can toss a Holy Light or three on though, so it’s not useless by a long shot. Occasionally he’ll spin around and use his Arctic Breath on a portion of the raid, freezing them solid and dealing a decent amount of damage. Switching to Frost Resistance Aura is a sound move, and popping Aura Mastery during the breath will help. If you’re unfrozen, now’s the time to heal the raid and let Beacon take care of the tank. The damage will not kill anyone on its own, assuming a basic level of gearedness, but they’ll need to be topped off so that they aren’t killed by his big move: Massive Crash.

Massive Crash is what the fight is all about. He hops to the center of the arena and stuns everyone, flinging them against the walls. It does a lot of damage, so when you see him start to leap, it’s a great time to pop Divine Sacrifice (while bubbled, of course) and mitigate 40% of it. Once everyone is stunned and flung against walls, he’ll turn towards a raid member (with a nice easily-visibile yellow text warning as to whom he’s targeting) and then rush towards them. Everyone in the area needs to bolt like lightning out of the way as soon as the stun wears off.

After that, it’s all about whether or not you got out of the way in time. If you didn’t, whoever was hit will almost certainly be dead. In addition (as if that wasn’t punitive enough) Icehow will go into a Frothing Rage, increasing his damage and attack speed by 50-100%, depending on difficulty setting–it’s pretty serious. You’ll need to spam big heals, tanks will need to pop cooldowns, and if the tank should die, a new one will need to pick Icehowl up. It’s bad times for everyone.

If you did get out of the way, he becomes stunned and takes increased damage. Do this reliably and he becomes the biggest cuddliest loot pinata ever. Much like XT’s heart or a stunned tentacle on Yogg, you should take this opportunity to whack him for Seal of Wisdom procs. No damage will be happening, and you might as well. Even without SoW-melee, mana should not be an issue here. Even if your raid fails at dodging his charge, the damage only comes in short, predictable bursts followed by long, long lulls. There’s a lot of time to regen, whether through Divine Plea or just mp5. If you do need the mana, however, make sure to wait until he’s stunned to melee him. Otherwise you’ll likely catch one of his Whirls, which can make healing a little difficult.

And that’s it! Beasts defeated, loot collected, and on to Lord Jaraxxus. Which is where I’ll be picking up this weekend with Part 2 of this little series. Hope it was helpful.

As you may know, in 3.2 paladins were given the gift we didn’t know we wanted (and some of us still aren’t sure): a HoT attached to our Flash of Light spell. In the legalese fine-print style that has become common of so many of our spells (have you read Hand of Protection‘s tooltip recently? void where prohibited) it will only apply if we cast Flash of Light on someone who is currently affected by Sacred Shield—the buff itself, not the proc.

Personally, I’ve wanted a tank-healing HoT ever since Azgalor, but I’ll save discussion of the merits of the HoT for another post. This one is all about tracking the darned thing. Since 3.2 was released, I’ve tried a lot of different add-ons for this, and I thought I’d share the options I’ve found in a brief rundown.

The Contenders:

Power Auras: Classic

This is one of my favorite add-ons. Its versatility is unparalleled in terms of the way you can display cooldowns, used abilities, buff or debuff durations, procs, and more. I’ve had some trouble getting it to read my focus target’s buffs, but I’m told that it is capable of tracking the FoL HoT on your focus target, even if I fail at getting it to do so. I still use it for things like Judgements of the Pure, Light’s Grace, Divine Plea duration, trinket procs, and notably Art of War procs in my ret offspec.

Advantages: Multiple ways of displaying information, much more varied than your standard bars and timers.
Disadvantages: Some problems displaying Focus target information.
3.2 Compatible?: Mostly yes, even though the add-on itself hasn’t been updated in some time.

ClassTimer

This is a new find for me, but it’s one that I ultimately decided had earned a permanent spot on my UI. It’s a fairly standard timer mod, with options for every class and virtually every ability you can imagine. At the time of this writing, you have to add the spell “Flash of Light” manually, but after doing so it worked like a charm. You could very easily use this to track all of your buffs, debuffs, and cooldowns, but since I was already using Power Auras, I limited (by painstakingly unchecking about 4,000 things) my monitoring to Beacon of Light, Sacred Shield, and Flash of Light.

But here’s the big reason I like ClassTimer:

See how there are two Sacred Shield buffs? ClassTimer tracks and displays both the buff itself as well as the proc. They (annoyingly) share the same name, which causes problems for a lot of add-ons.

The reason this is great is because there’s a little skill minigame involved in maximizing your FoL HoT. Many forumites have declared the way Sacred Shield works and the way Flash of Light works to be contradictory: surely the 50% crit means you want to spam FoL on the target, but the HoT means you only want to apply it every 12 seconds. In practice, there’s synergy there, you just have to look at it without our pre-3.2-conceived notions of what SS+FoL is for. Even having dropped a boatload of crit for mp5 in 3.2, with raid buffs and the Sacred Shield proc up, my FoL crit chance is very nearly 90%. That’s an almost guaranteed crit, meaning a HoT worth 150% more. With an addon that lets you track your proc, which tank avoidance will help stay up for the one second you need, you can time your refreshes to ensure that your FoL will crit, meaning maximum HoT coverage.

I also love that it uses the Shared Media library, so I can plaster my frilly Glamour textures on it and make it match my Pitbull frames. >.>

Advantages: Simple, easy to configure, wide-range of uses, tracks SS buff AND proc, Shared Media library!
Disadvantages: As with most of these mods, you’ll need to make your SS target your focus target to track these buffs.
3.2 Compatible?: Yes.

DoTimer

This is another tracking mod very similar to ClassTimer. The configuration is more complicated and it doesn’t use the Shared Media library, but it’ll track Flash of Light and anything else you need tracked.

Advantages: Solid all-purposed tracking mod.
Disadvantages: No pretty glamour textures. QQ.
3.2 Compatible?: Yes.

HealMinder

Here’s one you probably haven’t heard of. It was made by a paladin specifically to track the new Flash of Light HoT, and I have to say: it’s absolutely perfect for what it does. It also displays the information in a way that none of the other mods do: it shows the health value remaining on the HoT, which ticks down in real time. This is useful because it lets you know the strength of the applied HoT. It does not show the duration. As such, I think it’s the perfect complement to one of the timer mods. Configuration is a snap, it’s very lightweight, and it can alert you with text and/or sound when your HoT expires. And best of all? It doesn’t require your Flash target to be your focus target. It’ll even work on random un-grouped bystanders in Dalaran.

Advantages: One of its kind in terms of display, easy config, easy legibility, lightweight.
Disadvantages: Only shows the duration in terms of health value, not time. It’s also a very limited mod, but hey that’s what we’re here for.
3.2 Compatible?: Duh!

GridStatusHoTs

This is a plug-in for the popular raidframe, Grid. It tracks HoTs and buffs like Sacred Shield and Beacon of Light. It can track the FoL HoT just fine. My only problem is that it cannot tell Sacred Shield (buff) from Sacred Shield (proc) and so if you set it to flash or change colors when Sacred Shield is about to expire, it will read the proc before the buff, which is always about to expire. It’s a bit maddening–so much so that I ended up going back to Healbot for a lightweight click-to-heal mod.

Advantages: Tracks the FoL HoT and similar trackable buffs.
Disadvantages: Confounded by Sacred Shield.
3.2 Compatible?: I know Grid has a 3.2 update, but GridStatusHoTs does not. I believe it still functions though.

Aaand, that’s my HoT-tracking roundup. This is by no means an exhaustive list of add-ons capable of tracking our new HoT, but it’s certainly a good place to start. Honorable mentions that did not make this particular list include CLCBPT and TellMeWhen; I haven’t personally used either of them, but I’m told they’re both very good. So do check them out if none of the above float your boat.