Juking
Another important skill for healers is faking a heal. This is perhaps more important to Paladins than any other healing class because getting interrupted while casting locks the Paladin out from doing anything at all. For this reason alone I still employ the obsolete /stopcasting macro which cancels my current heal instead of putting it in the queue. This is more efficient than breaking heals with movement, which costs precious split seconds.
It is imperative to get an AddOn that helps you track spell cooldowns, such as the essential Afflicted. This is probably one of my favorite AddOns in PvP, giving me an idea of my window to cast spells. It also helps to understand what classes can interrupt and lock you out of a school. For example, if a Shaman is waiting for my heals I don’t worry too much because Earth Shock is a mere 2 second school lockout (GCD is already at 1.5) whereas Pummel, Kick, and Counterspell all have longer lockouts at 4, 5, and what feels-like-forever 8 seconds respectively. There’s also the Shadow Priest’s Silence and Felhunter’s Spell Lock, although Silence is on a 45 second timer and many Warlocks usually, naively, leave Spell Lock on auto-cast.
While humping should probably be your first option to avoid interruption, juking is a close second when the match requires you to be in the thick of things. Some good players will have you set as their Focus, making it easy to Counterspell or otherwise interrupt you even in the middle of DPSing. Juking is essentially the pump fake of PvP and you can throw 1 or 2 fake heals in order to bait an interrupt. Having Afflicted allows you to monitor your window and give you latitude (or courage) to heal like a madman. Because there’s so much damage being dealt in Arena matches, it happens often that you’ll need to throw out your biggest, longest cast heal so you’ll need as much leeway as you can get.
Of course, having a Rogue on you is a different matter altogether as they simply have too many options to completely shut down a healer. From Kick to stuns to Gouge to Blind — and even an offensive Sap used when you’re casting out of combat — a Rogue can effectively impair healing completely. Although this can gimp their DPS, some teams will take the tradeoff in order to remove a healer from play. In situations like these, the only thing you’ll need to watch is Kick, as it’s the only spell with a school lockout. You can also trinket your way out of a stun or Blind, so the best thing to do is take it on the chin and hope your teammates can peel the Rogue off your butt.
