Sorry Akumai, but this is just bad advise.
Firstly there is no definition you’re providing on what you consider viable, is there stronger ways to play? sure. Is caster paladins still viable, 100% certainly.
For me, if as a 416 geared healer, you’re doing 140k raw HPS+ and can sustain 120-140k for 10minutes (heroic ras) without going OOM, you’re viable as a healer, when it comes to healing output atleast.
Which as a caster holy paladin, i’m doing and i have been cast healing for this whole season.
I haven’t lost any of the utility paladins largely bring to the raid, but also agree there are downsides, i do great healing output but less DPS during any downtimes.
Please feel free to check my warcraft logs: holybarry-ravencrest
To see just how viable caster paladins can be.
For 98% of players, caster paladins is entirely viable, for the top 2% who’re doing high mythic raiding and need to synnergise class strengths, meele builds have overall more viability because they can also contribute more dps and let other pumper healers handle their aspects of the fight.
But if you’re only looking at what professional mythic raiders are doing, for their composition, and not looking at your own raids needs, strengths and weaknesses, you’re going to be hitting other diminishing returns rather quickly.
To say there are no options for caster paladin is outright wrong and misleading.
The strongest way you can play, is to see what your raid needs and see if you can contibute that, if you can, in a meaningful way, you’re viable
to awnser the authors main question - Holy power generation.
To be honest, at this point there is a ton of ways of generating holy power to the point you’ll hardly notice it.
In Season 2 there is even more holy power generation with the 4 set bonus, so it’ll be even less noticable as a resource.
As a caster paladin:
- If you spec fully into infusion of light, flash of light costs less mana, casters faster and does more healing then holy light. I never ever cast holy light.
Affected talents:
Moment of Compassion | Imbued infusions | Inflorescence of the Sunwell | Tower of Radiance | Divine Revelations
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With beacon of virtue you’re beaconing more people, if you’ve specced your talents into Tower of Radiance, when you directly heal a beacon target, you can generate a lot of holy power simply from flash of light casts.
Likewise holy power will generate slowly even without a beacon.
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Infusion of light procs every other holy shock it seems, so you’ll be generating a lot of holy power while using less mana and healing.
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In downtime crusader strike is a great addition to helping with holy power which is more mana efficent, when there is no 1 to heal.
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Bestow faith is great addition to healing with the beacon up and generates holy power
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Tyr’s Deliverance is used not for it’s base healing, but it’s additional buff to flash of light
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Sanctified Wrath for more holy shocks, for more infusions of light, for more cheaper but quick and powerful flash of lights (which will largely give you holy power back)
General healing notes:
- Holy paladin healing is effected by the distance of the target from you.
If you’re in a caster build your raid is ranged heavy, standing in range is going to be more rewarding.
If your meele heavy, going into meele more will show better results.
If its split, stand in meele, but try to face ranged and meele for light of dawn.
I usually find myself going between them depending on which fight and the phase the boss is in.