Toxic WHM Glare spammers

[Enla]

DB, Regen, Swiftcast, Holy/Holy/Holy/Assize. In that time your tank has not taken damage due to the stun. Anything which happens to slip through DB, and is too much for regen will be fixed by the assize. Your offense in large pulls, from the start, is a fantastic mitigation tool. You also happen to assist in knocking down the mobs quite a bit.

This, I don't think people realize how useful that stun on Holy actually is. In the time it takes for the mobs to come out of it, or for my party to knock them out of it, I've already set up HoTs and usually am already healing up any preliminary damage on the tank. In places like Bardam's Mettle that stun was a life saver at level, especially with tanks who pulled wall to wall, because it basically was a soft 'reset' on the start of any encounter. I'd argue that Holy is an essential part of a WHM's HEALING kit when used properly and without fail most of the WHM's I've met that struggled with healing tend to ignore it like the plague.

Hell I wish I had a spell as good as Holy as a SCH. I'd trade the extra damage on Art of War for a stun or silence in a heartbeat.

[Ashemmi]

This, I don't think people realize how useful that stun on Holy actually is.

Many don't, and yes, that stun is definitely 'healing', it translates directly and quickly. When they do, especially tanks, the dynamics of the party changes. Pop Arms length or other mitigation strats *after* the opening Holy gambit, and you have even more time with less duress. That's another discussion all together in how many tanks forget how fantastic AL is. They remember it as knockback, but greatly discount or forget about that 20% slow.

[Kes13a]

Many don't, and yes, that stun is definitely 'healing', it translates directly and quickly. When they do, especially tanks, the dynamics of the party changes. Pop Arms length or other mitigation strats *after* the opening Holy gambit, and you have even more time with less duress. That's another discussion all together in how many tanks forget how fantastic AL is. They remember it as knockback, but greatly discount or forget about that 20% slow.

The stun is exceptionally useful, but then we are also getting into if the tank is competent enough to use their mitigation and never actually SEEN one use AL. the thread is about WHM's which is fine, people can have their opinion and all, but usually if the tank is a moron, cant be bothered to repair their gear responsibly and either does not use mitigation or doesnt even have any on their tool bar... I am too busy to keep from wiping than to worry about tossing out dps. a majority of teh time with rando roulette, its a grab bag of what kind of tank I'll end up with, unless I am running with my friends. If I am, then yes, I'll dps because I know they arent morons

[Ashemmi]

The stun is exceptionally useful, but then we are also getting into if the tank is competent enough to use their mitigation and never actually SEEN one use AL. the thread is about WHM's which is fine, people can have their opinion and all, but usually if the tank is a moron, cant be bothered to repair their gear responsibly and either does not use mitigation or doesnt even have any on their tool bar... I am too busy to keep from wiping than to worry about tossing out dps. a majority of teh time with rando roulette, its a grab bag of what kind of tank I'll end up with, unless I am running with my friends. If I am, then yes, I'll dps because I know they arent morons

I certainly understand, and I was there just yesterday. The buffoon was intent on standing in every AOE, even when stacked. Mitigation was untimely, though to his credit his gear was recent...enough. That said, I still opened with a Holy gambit on his pulls. Why? That eight seconds of guaranteed little to no damage is the absolute best tool in my kit for that window of time. It feels counter-intuitive, and for the longest time, I maintained the same thought process that you have. The thing is, it is in your power to keep the mobs from hitting the idiot and shorten the total amount of time that they can. It's a big win. If they are *that* bad, you can apply your DoT and pull back knowing you just cut the time of that engagement down by 10% or more.

[Packetdancer]

This, I don't think people realize how useful that stun on Holy actually is. In the time it takes for the mobs to come out of it, or for my party to knock them out of it, I've already set up HoTs and usually am already healing up any preliminary damage on the tank.

I joke to the sprouts in my FC that one of a healer's best damage mitigation skills is actually doing damage themselves, but it's only sort of a joke. And when it comes to Holy, it's not a joke at all; the up-to-seven seconds of stun that you can get with Holy can make a breathtaking difference.

I actually ran an early HW dungeon as tank for a sprout WHM several weeks ago, and noticed she wasn't Holy-ing. She said she was nervous and focusing solely on healing because she'd had to struggle in a previous dungeon. So, being a helpful WHM main, I had her try an experiment: we got together a pre-made party (so no worries about upsetting random roulette folks) and ran the dungeon with her just healing. And then we ran the same dungeon with the same people, but where I guided her through doing damage as a healer.... Holy in particular.

She found that the ~7 seconds of Holy stun at the beginning of a pull made a huge difference in how much healing she had to do, dropping Asylum on top of the blob when I gathered them together meant she'd got a HoT in place and could keep doing Holy, and that meant the extra damage killed the pack more quickly. So she didn't have to keep trying to heal and potentially run out of ways to heal as she did.

I knew it would probably the be case, but the difference was far more stark than I'd actually anticipated. In the end, the sprout WHM said she found it far less stressful to heal the same dungeon when doing damage than she had when solely focused on healing, because she actually had to heal less damage when she was DPS'ing as well. Which could seem counter-intuitive on first glance, and evidently wasn't at all what she expected...

But then, that was the point of the experiment in the first place.