PVP Sentinel Healing Guide

[Ironrose]

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Contents:
- Introduction
- Positives/Negatives
- Build
- Buffs
- Things to keep in mind
- Playstyle
- Important Spells
- Macros and Brief Explanation
- Notes

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Introduction:
Sentinel’s are the clerics staple healing spec, they specialise in single target healing and left unchecked can be a huge annoyance to the other team. Sentinel’s are also incredibly hard to kill and can survive sustained incoming burst better than most healing classes.

Positives:
+ They excel in ST heals
+ They can reset their cooldowns once every 2 minutes
+ High survivability with heals
Negatives:
- Lack of mobility
- can be forced to be OOM fast
- lack of AOE heals

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Build:
61 Sentinel/10 Purifier/5 Justicar
Since this is build is primarily focused for PVP you put 5 points into Justicar for extra health, that little extra can make all the difference as you’re no good to the team dead. Alternatively you can mix around where you put the 10 points in Puri whether you want more 10% Wisdom/5% Crit chance for spells/5% increase to healing and absorption. The only thing you miss from this build is the talent Flashover which makes your next heal 100% chance to crit.

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Buffs:
Light of Redemption; Faith Rewarded; Healer’s Blessing; Heroic Resolve; Wisdom of the Ages; Marked by the Light; Sign of Wrath(optional).
I don’t apply Sign of Wrath myself as it can nullify my Flash of Radiance(explained below).

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Things to keep in mind:

Valor is a thing:
Valor may reduces damage taken but it also reduces your healing by 62%.

Positioning is key:
Since majority of your healing is coming from casted heals you need to be aware of where you are, where your team and enemy is. It is important to be in LOS of your teammates and at the same time be able to move around to LOS your enemies.

Gear makes a difference:
When starting out in freelancer gear it’s easy to get bursted down fast. Even with perfect CD timing and bolstering you’re not going to last long against someone in superior gear. With that said as you start getting into Warlord and higher you start noticing it gets better.

Key binding and Macro’s are your best friend:
If you are clicking to cast spells you are at a serious disadvantage and it can effect you’re overall performance in PVP. For example I have my A,S,D button keybound along with Alt+A/S/D and SHFT+A/S/D

Manage the GCD:
The GCD for most spells will be 1.5s with that in mind you can’t just spam 1 button and expect it to solve all your problems you have to understand the opportunity cost of casting a spell as you won’t be able to cast another one until the GCD is done.

Learn other Healing specs:
Cleric is versatile with healing specs and while Sentinel can hold its own it is not the be all end all spec. Depending on whether its WF/CQ/WPVP don’t put all your eggs into one basket. Learn Warden for AOE heals or Defiler for its damage reduction. When you enter a WF look at the amount of Healers and what specs would compliment them.

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Playstyle:

Subtle vs Healing vs Crucial Invocations:

Sentinel healing is focused on Invocations, a lot of the talents higher on in the tree add to invocation benefits. However you do not want to be spamming Crucial Invocations willy nilly as you will run OOM very fast. So the trick to invocations is knowing which one to cast at which time.
After awhile you will start knowing what invocations to cast on people/yourself but as a general rule of thumb I cast
Subtle Invocations when they are between 75% - 100%
Healing Invocations when they are between 50% - 100%
Crucial Invocations when they fall below 40%(usually at this point I'm using my Panic button macro).

Why Invocations?

Aside form the boost in spell power and reduce of cast time talents, another thing to be aware of are the talents that have an effect when you cast Invocs.
Light of Redemption: When this buff is active on someone it heals them slightly whenever you cast an Invocation
Echoes of Altruism: Causes a small HoT to based off 12% of the healing done
Gathering of the Light: Reduces CD of Touch the light CD by 3s
Word of Life: Not specifically related to invocations but whenever this procs it reduces the GCD of your Healing Breath to 0 which means the next spell after Healing Breath can be cast almost instantly. I use this in between Invocation casts ie Subtle Invoc > Healing Breath > Subtle Invoc

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Important Spells:

Light of redemption:
This I find is underappreciated. its off the GCD and can be quickly applied before casting an Invoc to increase that heal. it can also spread healing if you cast it on someone then cast an invoc on someone else. TBH it is very little splash healing and is best used when you know you are going to spam invocs on your target

Healing Breath:
Used as a top up heal and can be macro'd with Healing Flare to spam(see macros). This heal can be used while escaping from burst but truly shines when Word of Life procs. This reduces the GCD of healing breath to 0 and can be followed up with another spell almost instantly after.

Renewed Altruism:
This resets all your Sentinel cooldowns. Don’t be afraid of popping this when you can. I've seen some healers who save it for the last moment and can completely miss the opportunity and die. I recommend getting the Karuul's Alerting system Addon to keep track of its CD

Fullness of Life:
With Valor its healing is reduced by 62% unfortunately. Like Renewed Altruism, you should not be afraid to use this. When I use this, I know that in the next couple of seconds I’m going to be using Renewed Altruism so I can reset its CD and pop it again.

Flash of Radiance:
This spell is key to surviving burst. It's an AOE pacify that prevents any harmful spell to be cast, it can however be nullified by any damage received to the pacified target. Which is why I don't apply Sign of wrath as it can break the pacification. Its got 2 important uses for me.
1) I pop it the moment a rogue opens up on me so they're initial start up gets minimized OR it forces them to use their break free which means in 30 secs once it comes off cd they are eating the full 8 secs which leads me to the next usage.
2) After forcing the break free from the rogue and keeping myself up using my panic button macro in most cases good rogues will have you OOM so I pop this then immediately cast Reverent Supplication and laugh as they watch me channel my Mana for a 5 seconds.

Liberty of Thought:
This is essentially a 2nd Break Free on a 60 second CD, I alternate between this and the actual Break Free spell. One thing to keep in mind is Sentinels effectively have 3 Break Frees because you can cast Renewed Altruism resets its CD.

Urgency:
This can be used to catch up to your healing target when he starts going out of LOS or as an escape while you are popping your Panic button Macro.

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Macros and Brief explanation

Spam Heal Macro:

#show Healing breath
suppressmacrofailures
cast Healing Breath
cast Healing Flare

This is your simple insta-cast spell macro, if Healing Breath is on CD it will cast Healing flare instead. This should only be used if you are running around or in between Invocations when Enraptured Breath pops.

Cleanse Macro:

#show Empowering Light
suppressmacrofailures
cast Empowering Light
cast Cleansing Prayer

Empowered light 1st cleanses party, then Cleansing Prayer will single target cleanse until empowering light comes off cd. With Merciful appeal your GCD for both spells is reduced by .5s and heals the target slightly.

****ty Team Heal:

#show Divine call
suppressmacrofailures
cast Divine Call
cast Healing Communion

This is a small AOE heal to top up to raid. As a sentinel you want to focus more towards single target

Fast Heals Macro:

#show Healing invocation
suppressmacrofailures
cast Healer's Haste
cast Healing Invocation

I use Healer’s Hast specifically with Healing Invocation as it is a quick way to heal while alternating between people.

Panic Button Macro:

#show Healer's Blessing
suppressmacrofailures
cast Symbol of the Torch
cast Healer's Covenant
cast Touch the Light
cast Crucial Invocation
cast Vigilance
cast Nyol's Hope

SoT puts a shield on them > Healers covenant reduces damage by 40% > ToL makes next heal insta cast > Crucial invocation is the largest cast heal > Vigilance makes it so if the fall below 20% health they get healed 3k, and Nyols hope increases next 5 healing spells by 50%. after all the cds are popped the macro will keep casting Crucial Invocation.

I also have the same macro to cast @self with the addition of Overload for when i start getting focused. This enables me to heal myself without losing my main healing target

#show Healer's haste
suppressmacrofailures
cast @self Symbol of the Torch
cast @self Overload
cast @self Healer's Covenant
cast @self Touch the Light
cast @self Crucial Invocation
cast @self Vigilance
cast @self Nyol's Hope

Focus Macros:
I set my focus usually to the other healer in the raid. This allows me to give them a quick off heal without losing my main healing target. Don’t worry too much on focus heals until you get the basics of Sentinel down

Focus Light of Redemption:

#show Light of Redemption
suppressmacrofailures
cast @focus Light of Redemption

Off GCD buff that gives heals my focus every time I cast an Invoc

Focus Subtle Invoc

#show Subtle invocation
suppressmacrofailures
cast @focus Subtle Invocation

Casts a quick Subtle invocation to my Focus target.

Focus Healing Invoc

#show Healing invocation 
suppressmacrofailures 
cast @focus Healing Invocation

Casts a Healing Invocation to my Focus Target.

Those are my only 3, as if they are getting bursted more than those focus heals, I’ll end up switching to them anyway.

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Notes:
If you have anything to add please post and I will update.

[Tsynful]

As far as I see, your panic macro won't cast anything past crucial invocation.

Pretty solid guide, organized write-up filled with useful information

[Adastra]

As far as I see, your panic macro won't cast anything past crucial invocation.

Pretty solid guide, organized write-up filled with useful information

The abilities below it are oGCD so it will fire off. I personally wouldn't use that macro only because I want a little more control on the cooldowns used.

[Ophelya99]

Overall, the guide is a good intro to pvp Sentinel healing. Here are a few caveats I have:

-I have nothing against using Justicar as a subsoul, but you might as well go 11 Puri/4 Justi, as Flashover is a pretty handy emergency button when paired with Touch the Light. Well worth sacrificing the small amount of Endurance from 1 point in Justi.

-You should place more emphasis on cleansing as a Sentinel. Sentinels, if nothing else, are cleanse-machines due to the reduced GCD + healing that's done with cleansing. I'd even go so far as to say a Sentinel should be cleansing 1st, then tossing out heals. You really don't want your Purifiers or Defilers using their GCDs on cleanses (and while Chloros can heal with their cleanses, too, those cleanses are on a 1.5 sec GCD) if you could be cleansing as a Sent.

Just my $.02.

[Ironrose]

As far as I see, your panic macro won't cast anything past crucial invocation.

Pretty solid guide, organized write-up filled with useful information

Thanks buddy, yup as Adastra mentioned, it will continue to cast Crucial Invocation when the other spells are on cooldown.

The abilities below it are oGCD so it will fire off. I personally wouldn't use that macro only because I want a little more control on the cooldowns used.

Good point, I have written a new section of the guide dedicated to managing those different cooldowns. will change it soon

Overall, the guide is a good intro to pvp Sentinel healing. Here are a few caveats I have:

-I have nothing against using Justicar as a subsoul, but you might as well go 11 Puri/4 Justi, as Flashover is a pretty handy emergency button when paired with Touch the Light. Well worth sacrificing the small amount of Endurance from 1 point in Justi.

-You should place more emphasis on cleansing as a Sentinel. Sentinels, if nothing else, are cleanse-machines due to the reduced GCD + healing that's done with cleansing. I'd even go so far as to say a Sentinel should be cleansing 1st, then tossing out heals. You really don't want your Purifiers or Defilers using their GCDs on cleanses (and while Chloros can heal with their cleanses, too, those cleanses are on a 1.5 sec GCD) if you could be cleansing as a Sent.

Just my $.02.

Very good point, I'll add a specific section dedicated to cleansing and its importance along with adding that other spec

[Seasonsheart]

Thanks so much for this post! I watch you do your thing in PVP and you rock! I try to do heals and support with my Bard and I just feel like a target waiting for the slaughter. I have been using my cleric for crafting but now I would like to play her. So this is really going to help me tons. I see lots of grinding in my future. I can see im going to get a lot of troll hate tell I learn how to use her lol.