Beacon of Light concern

[Paladin885]

I was very excited to see a change for better with paladins when this holy talent was introduced on the PTR. But after that moment I becan to check it out on a talent calc. and scratched my head of its true purpose.


Beacon of Light: anyone within 40yrds of the beacon can benefit from its effect. Those targets who get healed will also allow the beacon'd target to get healed for 100% of the amount healed. Lasted 1min.


Ok, this is nice 'n all but what purpose would it have in raids? ok, maybe there are what, a couple of bosses currently where the MT or OT could have it and I could heal the other allowing them both to be healed since that boss requires 2 tanks to share the threat. (Use Gruuls for example since its the best I can think of seeing its early and im still half asleep :3)

Doesnt this look more pvp'ish or is it just me? This could be a very good talent for arena's and maybe even good enough to allow holy paladin usage in 2v2's. Beacon yourself and spam flash the warrior/whatever and have at it....now you're as good/better than a resto druid (for 1min).

Thats my concern as its current usage and now here is my concern to make it better imo.

Would it make sense to have this talent spell changed from allowing the beacon'd target to be healed if I heal someone else within 40yrds to allow the healing done to the beacon'd target to heal anyone within 20yrds.
Now that seems a bit much as everyone would be close and holy pallies healing would be AoE for 1min, but here is an alternative idea:

-what about allowing it to only heal a maximum number of players within a 20yard range
or
-what about allowing the beacon to heal everyone within 20yrds of the beacon(being healed) to recieve like 20-40% of the heal for 1min.

I think that second idea would be good to add to my beacon change because that would make 5v5's awesome and raiding for melee awesome too. But it might be a bit much for the resto shaman's job...but then again I keep heaering they are pvp healers now.

debatable or not?

[kaitliac]

Anything's debateable =P

Rather than go into BoL changes into splash healing, I can maybe help you better understand how to use the current version effectively.

You don't need to look at it just in terms of tanks. In fact, personally, I wouldn't. Depending on the fight (and there are plenty where more than one tank is taking damage), even when more than one tank is taking damage, you'll often have intervals where the one with beacon is full but the other (or others) needs heals, or vice versa.

Where Beacon shines is not really, imo, tank and spank. It's heavy raid healing, or fast damage across multiple tanks. There are two main ways I use beacon. One is to apply it to the tank I'm focusing on, when I know that there will be enough damage on other targets (raid AoE, or multiple tanks on trash, or group bosses like Illidari council) that I can chain cast across them without too much worry of getting caught repeatedly in coss heals, and toss the odd extra heal on my focus during lulls. That is, when I'm reasonably sure that I will have enough throughput elsewhere to leave the tank with BoL in little to no danger. The other is to toss it on another healer's focus or offtank when I know the tank I'm focusing on will be taking reasonably consistent damage. It helps with keeping the offtank up when they do take damage and is less chancy on having situations where there's perhaps not enough healing needed to give decent BoL throughput.

I don't always cast BoL. For instance, there's no reason to on a standard tank and spank (or during a tank and spank phase of a multiphase fight).


At the same time, the main risk to using beacon this way, or relying on beacon in any way really, is cross healing. All it takes is someone else landing a heal a tenth of a second sooner, and your resultant complete overheal means beacon heals for nothing. I do wish they would at least consider allowing beacon to heal for the entirety of any heal cast, not just the end healing done. I think the base concept is actually pretty solid and an interesting departure from what other classes have available; if it has a fatal flaw, I feel this is more the issue.