Paladin healing: The very basics
Paladin healing can be a confusing experience for newcomers; the mechanics of healing are quite unique, and as such getting started can be tricky. Here are few tips to get started:
1) Panzar has no health bars
Unlike in many other games, characters do not carry with them a health bar. Figuring out what state your friends and enemies are in is important part of reading the fight. However, there are some exceptions. When the paladin selects his Heal-ability, he will see an overlay on all of his teammates in range of his heal. These characters will light up according to their health, starting from Blue at full health, going to green to yellow to red as they get damaged more:
In the image above, the team is doing pretty good. No character is critical (red) and no one is in imminent danger. Heal all of them in order of your preference with normal Heal to gather some class points.To heal, aim your screen at your teammate and hold down left mouse button. After a while you'll see the color changing as the hit points rise. Once you learn Restoration-ability, you can also use your right mouse button for a more powerful and mana-consuming heal.
Note that when you sprint, your heal mode goes inactive, and with that, the status layout as well. After sprint finishes, you can again see the character's health colors normally.
2) Gaining experience
Paladins gain their experience mostly in the form of Support points. Whenever you heal someone who gains points himself, you also gain points for supporting him. E.g. running after and healing a Berserker who beats his way through the enemy team is a very efficient way of getting points. Note however, that healing characters who do not gain points themselves by damaging or killing the enemy players will not earn you any points. This is still beneficial to the team, but focus should be on supporting the characters that are in the toughest fights.
3) Self-healing (Healing Power)
The tooltips for Heal and Restoration mention they also heal the Paladin. However, this is a bit unclear, as by default, the do not heal the Paladin himself. Instead, the tooltip refers to the amount healed when another ability, Healing Powder, is active. Healing Powder is an important ability to learn early on, as it not only heals everyone nearby constantly when it's active, it also allows Paladin to gain health himself from his heals.
Hopefully this clarifies the very basics of Paladin healing. Now, let's get some more Paladins to the field, while weak by themselves, they are invaluable in teamplay!