So I've been using holy radiance in my 10man runs very frequently even outside of aoe situations, and I wondered if what I was doing is as stupid as it should be - I shouldn't be spamming an aoe heal outside of situations that require it, after all - and if it is, how am I still doing pretty well? I decided to sit down and try to compare the alternatives.
Now, as healers we're faced with lots of different situations that require different tactics, and obviously this doesn't apply to all of them, but I was interested in seeing how holy radiance measures up to divine light, a spell I'm convinced is a terrible waste of mana and casting time in nearly all situations. It's horribly mana inefficient compared to casting holy light in situations where more than one person has taken damage (and barely any more HPS, if at all, thanks to HL's 100% beacon transfer), it does less HPS than flash of light spam in situations where you don't care about mana efficiency, and it takes far too long to cast in situations where you need on-demand healing right now. It really does everything poorly.
The only situation where I can imagine using it is where I need more non-aoe HPS than holy light can provide, but I also don't need so much of it, or need it so fast, that I want to cast flash of light, and in this niche I believe that it in fact competes directly with holy radiance most of the time, and is an inferior alternative in nearly every situation. Why? Because of Daybreak, which doubles the non-beaconed healing of the next holy shock.
Essentially, I believe that in any situation where you might want to cast DL, HR is a better choice if you can follow it up with a HS before the next HR cast.
The alternatives compared:
DL+HS costs 31200 mana, while HR+HS costs 29440 mana, making HR+HS surprisingly cheaper.
The time it takes to cast HR and DL is the same, so we'll ignore that.
Stats used, based loosely on my character, assuming 33% mastery:
HS: 40k + mastery, with 25% bonus crit; 50% beacon
DB: Same as HS; no beacon, but works with mastery
DL: 70k + mastery; 50% beacon
HR: 30k single, 15k secondary + mastery; 15% beacon
Caveat: I'm not good enough with math to figure out off the top of my head what relative increase 25% crit adds to spells after considering every spell's crit chance, so I just assume that a 25% increased chance to crit means 25% more healing, when it's actually less, but eh this is just napkin math so it's okay right?
Anyway...
Healing a single beaconed target:
DL+HS heals ~159,6k, for ~5,12 HPM, and generates 2 HP
HR+HS heals ~172,9k, for ~5,87 HPM, and generates 2 HP - Winner!
Looks pretty weird... but HR is a better heal to cast on the beacon than DL is, if you follow it up with a HS. DL for 70k at 33% mastery is 93,1k, while a HS in the same situation is 66,5k, and HR is 39,9k. I lose 53,2k from using HR on the single target, but double the heal of the HS, gaining 66,5k, resulting in a small net gain... and this is the best possible situation for DL; it only gets worse from here.
Healing a target more than 10yd from beacon:
DL+HS heals ~219,6k, for ~7,04 HPM, and generates 1 HP
HR+HS heals ~202,4k, for ~6,86 HPM, and generates 2 HP - Winner!
In this situation DL+HS would win, if not for the added HP gain from HR+HS, which I haven't bothered to put a value on, but is easily above 60k with EF, not counting DP procs, making HR+HS by far the best alternative; no contest at all.
If the target is within 10yd of beacon; HR cast on beacon:
HR+HS heals ~222.1k, for ~7,54 HPM, and generates 2 HP
2 targets within 10yd, HR doesn't hit the beacon:
HR+HS heals ~224,6k, for ~7,63 HPM, and generates 2 HP
3 targets within 10yd, HR doesn't hit the beacon:
HR+HS heals ~246,8k, for ~8,38 HPM, and generates 2 HP
etc...
The values are slightly skewed in favour of HR+HS thanks to the crit thing I mentioned, but I think that this demonstrates my point well enough already. Even in the worst case situation, even when healing a single beaconed target, you'd still get more healing out of HR+HS than DL+HS, and even in 10m there are practically always two ranged, or melee, standing close enough to each other, allowing for some aoe healing; usually there are more.
Unless I'm is missing something obvious, I see very little reason to ever cast DL, unless you would not be able to fit in a HS before casting your second HR, which currently means that as long as you have either the current PvE (for lower CD) or PvP (more HP means more time spent casting EF in between other spells, making it more likely you won't have to cast DL at those times) set bonuses, I don't see myself ever casting DL. The only exception might be if I desperately need to single target heal only one player, who is stacked up on top of someone so that daybreak's healing would turn into overhealing (though even then, DB still applies its mastery shield and refreshes existing shields, which is often useful).
Am I wrong? I'm leaning towards the likelyhood that I am, because I'm just so bad at math that it seems very unlikely to me that I would be able to notice this when much more adept people apparently haven't (at least I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere).
Hopefully I'm not missing something so super obvious that it being pointed out will fill me with such shame that I'll dread posting here again
Please point out where I'm wrong if I am, as is very likely. Right now I just don't even cast DL in raids (or at all) anymore, outside of situations so extremely rare that the only time where I really end up using it anymore is with GoAK, and even that guy I tend to use with EF instead (to extend the haste buff). I cast maybe 3-4 DLs in total the last raid I did, and I want to make sure that what I'm doing isn't in fact totally retarded. In fact, thinking about the value of holy power right now, I'd say it's probably even better to cast HR on single targets even without making use of daybreak.
thanks for reading through all that stuff