Tower of Radiance: Bad design Encouraging Bad Play

[ouki]

I very much so disagree with the point that ToR encourages bad play. Think why BoL got the 50% nerf in the first place. Blizzard felt that paladins shouldn't simply ignore their beaconed target and go heal something else like it was throughout all of Wrath. ToR gives the player a benefit for even looking at their beacon target.

Your argument about how Blessed Life overshadows ToR because it gains more HPower is completely illogical. The fundamental flaw is that BL is a passive ability while ToR is not. I could heal my beaconed target for 5 minutes straight and say, "Herp derp, ToR gained more HPower than Blessed Life, so Blessed Life must be a terrible talent." In a typical fight of about eight to ten minutes, I get over four times more ToR HPower gains than Blessed Life.

As for Eternal Glory. In a 25m setting (maybe 10m), This talent is sub-par. LoD on six targets heals the beacon target for more than a crit WoG. So there's your justification for getting PoJ. Yes, Blizzard will eventually get rid of LoD activating BoL, and then maybe we will see the need for Eternal Glory again. Even so, this change reinforces the use of ToR now that your "main" tank healing spell is gone (no it is not WoG, it is LoD).

But Let's say you want to use Eternal Glory in case of an "osht" situation where lots of people are at low HP. LoD is simply still the better choice. You are not the only healer in the raid. Blizzard added in Efflo, Holy Radiance, Healing Rain, and Sanctuary for good reason. Bosses do not dip a large amount of people to low hp, proceed to do it again a second later, and auto-wipe your raid. If such is the case where people die to massive AoE damage, it is because your raid is doing something wrong: not avoiding such a mechanic, taking unwarranted damage, or your raid is not taking appropriate actions with cooldowns such as PW: Barrier, Aura Mastery, or Divine Guardian.

Also, even if you're "raid healing", the fact that you can get HPower on demand for more LoD output far outweighs waiting for BL proc. You may as well taunt the boss every eight seconds to use the talent to its potential. In your WoL, Chimaeron is probably THE worst fight you could've posted. The fight completely ignores traditional healing methods in favor of testing your discipline. How you had more Divine Light than Holy Light casts on that fight is beyond me. It seems to me that you're completely padding the meters to make yourself look good.

[balloonknot]

I run three Holy Paladins in our 25s so it's possible I can afford not to heal the beaconed target since there is probably another Paladin direct-healing him. I understand not everyone has the luxury of being able to trust the rest of their healers, but just throwing this out there...

This is pretty funny.

So your argument is that you can be more efficient with your heals because you rely on others being inefficient to keep your tank alive? And you trust them, but that means you trust them to not follow your advice?

So what happens if all palys decided to be as 'efficient' as your being? Dead tank? I'm confused, are you advocating that you never direct heal your beacon or are you saying that you get to not heal your beacon because you push the tank survival responsibility off onto others and are what? Gloating about this?

Efficiency and HPS aren't the measure of your healing team, keeping tanks and raid members alive is. Your better off being inefficient and keeping your tank alive than you are staying steadfast to not direct healing your beacon when he needs it.

ToR is situational, its probably a bit much at 3 talent points, but i can't really think of any place i'd move the points to (would have to be WoG talents or BL). I hardly ever use WoG (raid 25s) and the fights that favor WoG usage also favor ToR, such as healing the add tank on nef phase 3 (your miles from the rest of the raid). ToR is also very usefully to load up 3 HP on demand for LoD usage in AoE phases and almost all difficult fights heavily favor the usage of LoD so moving points from ToR to WoG skills is rather pointless.

For what its worth Chimaeron is probably the worst fight to pay any attention to healing logs for, its a complete healing gimic fight. I don't really understand how you cast more DL than HL in that fight as 1 HL is all that is needed to break people over 10k and with 2 palys beaconing the double attack tank and 1 beaconing the current main tank all you need to do is HL/HS/1-2 HP WoG most of the fight(feud phase excluded) if your doing anything more than that your just padding the meters.

[Very Tired]

It seems like the OP and everyone is looking at ToR from strictly a Pve standpoint, while its quite useful for pvp purposes. As long as its useful for something, its not enough of a reason for blizzard to change it.

[dementor]

BoL got nerfed to 50% because it was overpowered but necessary for ICC bosses, not because Blizzard felt paladins shouldn't ignore their beacon target. If anything blizzard wants us to ignore tanks more (like that will ever happen) which is why we received some major class changes with the expansion. That's in a blue post. But lets get back to ToR.

The only argument for ToR is on demand holy power generation. That comes from Diamondtear, one of the h pal in paragon. Holy power can be used two ways, tank healing through WoG or raid healing through LoD.

Let's analyze the first, Tank healing through WoG. On encounters requiring a minimum of two tanks, healing the beacon target should happen only in the rarest of occasions when the beacon target is in danger of dying. Beacon should always be put on the tank taking less damage. This is not WotLK, paladins can no longer heal two tanks alone and your other healers should recognize this. They should help with beacons using hots and small heals occasionally as they mainly raid heal. The only time ToR should be beneficial is for single tank fights which I think is only 3 encounters in normal mode. Even then, there is only 1 tank (for approx. 3 healers in 10 or 6 healers in 25), and if your healers aren't sleeping or watching TV, you should be able to keep that tank alive without casting big heals like FoL or DL, again making ToR extremely situational at best.

Now lets look at the second scenario, raid healing through LoD. An encounter may be getting intense and you missed the timer that told you the huge AoE effect is coming in 10 sec, so instead of saving your holy power for a LoD after the aoe, you decided to blow it on a WoG in an effort to save some mana. No big deal right? You have ToR and you can quickly get back to 3 stacks of holy power before that nasty aoe goes off. Best case scenario none of the 3 FoL or DL (whichever you use to stack your holy power) over heal your beacon target. You still did lose 50% of each of those 3 heals because they were cast on the beacon target. Lets do some quick, napkin math. 3 divine lights is about 90k heals and 21k mana. A 6 person LoD is around 45k with no transfers to beacon. So you did 135k healing at the cost of 21k mana and 45k healing (lost because beacon was healed). Chances are though, that bombing divine lights on the tank are closer to 50% or more over heal. That means you are closer to 90k heals at the cost of 21k mana and 45k healing. Simplified down, this gives you a net benefit of 45k healing at the cost of 21k mana.

Alternatively, you could have said, "Oh shucks, I messed up and I wont have LoD for the aoe. LoD doesn't heal individuals for that much anyway, so it shouldn't cause us to wipe." Instead you heal like normal until the aoe. You use the 3 divine lights you would have used on the beacon target on 3 of the most injured players and you do a 1 or 2 holy power LoD to top off the raid. 3 DL is 90k. Beacon is 45k. 1 holy power LoD is 12k, 2 holy power is 24k. Chances are little of these heals are overhealed so you get a benefit of 147k heals done at the cost of 21k mana.

Again it comes down to your playstyle. If ToR somehow works magic for you and you keep everyone alive that is great. I am suggesting that there is a more efficient way of playing which involves healing the beacon target only in emergencies. It works for me raiding, and it makes sense to me theoretically. Good riddance ToR for me.

[Verdris]

Imo, nerf ToR into the ground and give me back my 100% Beacon. 10/15/25% chance to generate an extra HP while at the same time allowing me to focus on the raid seems like a fair trade off.

Also, Blizzard, get rid of that annoying lag that the HP generated from ToR suffers from. 1-2 seconds to wait for an HP that I gave up 3 talent points for is ridiculous.

[dementor]

This is pretty funny.

So what happens if all palys decided to be as 'efficient' as your being? Dead tank? I'm confused, are you advocating that you never direct heal your beacon or are you saying that you get to not heal your beacon because you push the tank survival responsibility off onto others and are what? Gloating about this?

What hes suggesting is that they beacon swap. Pal A beacons Tank B and direct heals Tank A. Pal B beacons Tank A and direct heal Tank B. This is a huge net gain for both H pal. Doesn't take a genius to figure out. Even if you dont have 2 h pal, we arent the only tank healers anymore, other classes should easily be able to help keep up a beaconed target.

---------- Post added 2011-02-14 at 07:52 PM ----------

This is pretty funny.

Efficiency and HPS aren't the measure of your healing team, keeping tanks and raid members alive is. Your better off being inefficient and keeping your tank alive than you are staying steadfast to not direct healing your beacon when he needs it.

Creating a healing strategy that takes advantage of all the healers strengths is the best way to keep the tanks and raid alive. Playing inefficiently is a net loss to the overall HPS of your healing comp and the least effective way of keeping your tanks and raid alive.

[ouki]

Let's analyze the first, Tank healing through WoG. On encounters requiring a minimum of two tanks, healing the beacon target should happen only in the rarest of occasions when the beacon target is in danger of dying. Beacon should always be put on the tank taking less damage. This is not WotLK, paladins can no longer heal two tanks alone and your other healers should recognize this. They should help with beacons using hots and small heals occasionally as they mainly raid heal. The only time ToR should be beneficial is for single tank fights which I think is only 3 encounters in normal mode. Even then, there is only 1 tank (for approx. 3 healers in 10 or 6 healers in 25), and if your healers aren't sleeping or watching TV, you should be able to keep that tank alive without casting big heals like FoL or DL, again making ToR extremely situational at best.

Most fights have a mechanic where the tank IS in immediate danger. Most bosses have some kind of huge, channeled ability or debuff that occur often. As I said in my previous post, WoG is completely useless when compared to LoD. LoD heals for 50k (whether or not it's over healed), thus 25k is transferred to the beacon target. A crit WoG heals for 25k except the fact you have the extra 50k healing the raid from LoD. Until blizzard fixes whatever bug happens with beacon, there should be very little reason to use WoG for tank healing.

Now lets look at the second scenario, raid healing through LoD. An encounter may be getting intense and you missed the timer that told you the huge AoE effect is coming in 10 sec, so instead of saving your holy power for a LoD after the aoe, you decided to blow it on a WoG in an effort to save some mana. No big deal right? You have ToR and you can quickly get back to 3 stacks of holy power before that nasty aoe goes off. Best case scenario none of the 3 FoL or DL (whichever you use to stack your holy power) over heal your beacon target. You still did lose 50% of each of those 3 heals because they were cast on the beacon target. Lets do some quick, napkin math. 3 divine lights is about 90k heals and 21k mana. A 6 person LoD is around 45k with no transfers to beacon. So you did 135k healing at the cost of 21k mana and 45k healing (lost because beacon was healed). Chances are though, that bombing divine lights on the tank are closer to 50% or more over heal. That means you are closer to 90k heals at the cost of 21k mana and 45k healing. Simplified down, this gives you a net benefit of 45k healing at the cost of 21k mana.

Holy Radiance? And why would you "decide to blow HPower"? If it's one or two targets that have low HP, you just have other heal classes heal that while you go hit the boss or something. Your mana is beter used elsewhere especially since we know resto shamans and priests rarely go oom. If you absolutely want to be a meter whore, sure use the WoG, then go use a Crusader Strike and Holy Shock rotation to get that three HPower back in five seconds for almost no mana.

Alternatively, you could have said, "Oh shucks, I messed up and I wont have LoD for the aoe. LoD doesn't heal individuals for that much anyway, so it shouldn't cause us to wipe." Instead you heal like normal until the aoe. You use the 3 divine lights you would have used on the beacon target on 3 of the most injured players and you do a 1 or 2 holy power LoD to top off the raid. 3 DL is 90k. Beacon is 45k. 1 holy power LoD is 12k, 2 holy power is 24k. Chances are little of these heals are overhealed so you get a benefit of 147k heals done at the cost of 21k mana.

Yes, I agree LoD doesn't heal much per individual. But you must realize that it LoD is a smart heal and heals for about 50k plus about 10% due to mastery. Also, if you're healing your three most injured players, it is most certainly not an overheal. If you feel it will be, why are not using Holy Light? Or again, you do your little Crusader Strike, Holy Shock rotation. Not to mention Daybreak may happen during this time.

[dementor]

Most fights have a mechanic where the tank IS in immediate danger. Most bosses have some kind of huge, channeled ability or debuff that occur often. As I said in my previous post, WoG is completely useless when compared to LoD. LoD heals for 50k (whether or not it's over healed), thus 25k is transferred to the beacon target. A crit WoG heals for 25k except the fact you have the extra 50k healing the raid from LoD. Until blizzard fixes whatever bug happens with beacon, there should be very little reason to use WoG for tank healing.

You missed the main point. The beacon target should be getting additional heals from the other healers in the raid whether the beacon is the MT in a single tank fight, or an OT in a multi-tank fight. In a single tank fight, sure you may have to throw a divine light during a Mangle in Magmaw Normal or during a Modulation or Searing Flame for Atramedes to keep the tank alive. During a multi-tank fight, I heal the tank taking the most damage and beacon the tank taking less damage. I NEED my other others to keep the beacon up, the Main tank likely is taking constant and large amounts of damage and needs me to heal him. Like I said, for tank healing, ToR is extremely situational.

Holy Radiance? And why would you "decide to blow HPower"? If it's one or two targets that have low HP, you just have other heal classes heal that while you go hit the boss or something. Your mana is beter used elsewhere especially since we know resto shamans and priests rarely go oom. If you absolutely want to be a meter whore, sure use the WoG, then go use a Crusader Strike and Holy Shock rotation to get that three HPower back in five seconds for almost no mana.

Holy Radiance had nothing to do with my argument. Of course you want to pop it when aoe damage goes out. My example gave a scenario of an inattentive healer that missed a timer for an aoe boss ability. Instead of properly saving the 3 stack for when the aoe came out, it was used at a less convenient time. You "blow through" holy power because sitting on a 3 stack for an extended amount of time is a waste of healing output. It has nothing to do with being a meter whore, it has everything to do with attempting to play your toon to it's fullest potential.

Yes, I agree LoD doesn't heal much per individual. But you must realize that it LoD is a smart heal and heals for about 50k plus about 10% due to mastery. Also, if you're healing your three most injured players, it is most certainly not an overheal. If you feel it will be, why are not using Holy Light? Or again, you do your little Crusader Strike, Holy Shock rotation. Not to mention Daybreak may happen during this time.

Smart healing had nothing to do with my argument either. It is nice that is a smart heal and it lowers the probability that LoD will be an overheal. 10% mastery only matters if the raid continues to take damage. Mastery is 4% of my effective healing so I tend to ignore it. You must have misread, I didn't think over-healing would occur when healing the 3 most injured players in my example. I am rarely in melee, so crusader strike for holy power is also pretty situational. Again you missed my main point of that paragraph. The spells used to stack holy power through ToR to LoD could be used in other places more effectively.

[thoukaia]

A cool trick to increase ToRs effectiveness is to beacon (glyphed) your target before DLing them. In most fights you cant really spare one extra GCD per heal, or afford to not have beacon on the tank, but in these few fights where you can do both ToR shines.

[Kadas]

Ouki -

I could heal my beaconed target for 5 minutes straight

Right, but do you?

BL is a passive ability while ToR is not

This mentality of "I can't completely control it so it's terrible for healing" is the mentality that I am challenging. As many have said before, there is play-style to factor in, though if your claims concerning 4x the HPwr from ToR are true I might suggest re-examining it.

How you had more Divine Light than Holy Light casts on that fight is beyond me. It seems to me that you're completely padding the meters to make yourself look good.

Ouch. Well I can't dispute that it's beyond you at least. Check the log though - pretty clear I spam DL on tanks and during feud. You can check Maloriak if you'd like another example from that raid: 8 BL vs 1 ToR. Or you could check any of my guilds other logs - they are public and my healing style is relatively consistent. i don't know how any of this came off as bragging to you but I'll be the first to admit that I'm not amazing.
You can't fill a cup that's already full though.


balloonknot-

So your argument is that you can be more efficient with your heals because you rely on others being inefficient to keep your tank alive?

This has been spelled out for you by other community members, but if you missed it - no, that's not my argument at all.

Your(sic) better off being inefficient and keeping your tank alive

No, your raid is better off being efficient and keeping everyone alive longer, preferably the entire fight.

thoukaia

beacon (glyphed) your target before DLing them.

I've seen other people suggest this idea but it's probably more effective to Crusader Strike if you really need that last HPwr. It's just a lot of gcds lost....

Shop Ebay -

It seems like the OP and everyone is looking at ToR from strictly a Pve standpoint

Guilty! I don't pvp and and wasn't really considering it when creating the thread. From a PvP prospective please take this conversation with a grain of salt.

[ouki]

You missed the main point. The beacon target should be getting additional heals from the other healers in the raid whether the beacon is the MT in a single tank fight, or an OT in a multi-tank fight. In a single tank fight, sure you may have to throw a divine light during a Mangle in Magmaw Normal or during a Modulation or Searing Flame for Atramedes to keep the tank alive. During a multi-tank fight, I heal the tank taking the most damage and beacon the tank taking less damage. I NEED my other others to keep the beacon up, the Main tank likely is taking constant and large amounts of damage and needs me to heal him. Like I said, for tank healing, ToR is extremely situational.

Yes, I understand we are not an army of one. But I'm fairly certain you have a second holy paladin to beacon the other tank so your beacon will not always be on the "tank that takes the least damage". Let's assume you're tank healing. This means you are NOT healing the raid. Divine Light spread over the raid and hoping to god beacon does good healing is not tank healing. That's a byproduct or extension of raid healing. For the most eHPS for tank healing, Divine Light spam and LoD are used for reasons stated in my previous post.

No one actually full time heals the tank, but when it's needed, ToR comes into play quite remarkably. And even during heavy raid AoE damage times, healing the tank with Divine Light for quick HPower generation for LoD is a near must as the tank is taking the AoE damage and melee hits from the boss while your healer friends are busy with spammable AoE healing spells (which we lack).

My example gave a scenario of an inattentive healer that missed a timer for an aoe boss ability. Instead of properly saving the 3 stack for when the aoe came out, it was used at a less convenient time.

Then that is the fault of the player, not the mechanics of the talent. If he accidentally uses the three HPower, then he rightly so deserves the 21k mana to get it back (of course yes, that may be a bit too punishing, but there is always a chance for Holy Shock and Daybreak somewhere in there). Playing a toon to its full potential means not making mistakes such as a mis-queue.

You "blow through" holy power because sitting on a 3 stack for an extended amount of time is a waste of healing output. It has nothing to do with being a meter whore, it has everything to do with attempting to play your toon to it's fullest potential.

Sitting on a three stack of HPower is like opportunity cost. What do I gain from using this now, but what do I lose? We'll go from your statement saying each charge of HPower is 12k for LoD. We will also assume everything is spent into effective healing because we are using our abilities smartly.

If I use the HPower now, I get a free heal with beacon for 25k+12.5k (heavy assumption that it crits), but I've lost a potential 36k+18k heal later during the AoE damage. If I don't use the HPower, I miss a charge of HPower which is 12k healing.

So in reality, saving the three HPower for LoD later is about 36+18-25-12.5-12=4.5k healing.
(36 LoD, 18 LoD beacon, -25 WoG, -12.5 WoG beacon, -12 1 HPower lost)

If we use it now, we get 25+12-36-18+12=-5k healing.
(25 WoG, 12 WoG beacon, -36 LoD, -18 LoD beacon, +12 1 HPower gained)

At two HPower lost, the math changes a little bit and WoG begins leading. However, my LoD heals for 50k on average over six targets, so the two HPower lost still does not outweigh the loss.

Now if we really want to make it in time for the AoE healing after using our HPower for WoG, we must also consider the mana consumption that comes with it (as you pointed out earlier). Another thing to note is that if we're saving our three HPower for the AoE damage, what are we doing during that time? We most certainly will be healing others (not the tank) with Divine Light or going AFK. Either way, no HPower is gained, so ToR plays no role in the "save now or later" scenario. If we are not saving the HPower and not pushing for the AoE phase, then it's back to opportunity cost mentioned earlier.

[balloonknot]

What hes suggesting is that they beacon swap. Pal A beacons Tank B and direct heals Tank A. Pal B beacons Tank A and direct heal Tank B. This is a huge net gain for both H pal. Doesn't take a genius to figure out. Even if you dont have 2 h pal, we arent the only tank healers anymore, other classes should easily be able to help keep up a beaconed target.

Yes i obviously understand beacon swapping. However its not effective to assign 2 healers to every tank in most encounters and damage spikes are very high, especially in hard modes. You will have to heal your beaconed tank quite often to keep him alive through a particular spike. Saying "meh let someone else do it, its not HPS efficient for me to deal with it" is a sure fire path to dead tanks. Keeping people alive is a lot more important than winning the HPS charts.

Creating a healing strategy that takes advantage of all the healers strengths is the best way to keep the tanks and raid alive. Playing inefficiently is a net loss to the overall HPS of your healing comp and the least effective way of keeping your tanks and raid alive.

Again HPS does not matter much at all, especially in the case of the example fight given.

Look at the logs he posted, they had 10 players die in that kill, 6 prior to the transition to the final phase with raid HPS of 101280.0

Looking are our last normal kill 2 weeks ago we had 3 deaths with raid HPS of 88895.7

[Brashara]

I think its very obvious that some holy paladins rely on this spell and others don't. I also think that this happens at all tiers of play. The problem with this is that its mostly devolved into YOU MADE A MISTAKE THATS WHY YOU NEED ToR, IT MEANS YOU'RE BAD.

1) Its a valid choice to take ToR. All players make mistakes, so taking a talent to help mitigate your mistakes is a good decision for some players.

2) Other players would rather take other talents.

But I don't think its bad. It encourages bad playing like taking sacred cleansing 'encourages' bad playing because you could dispel blackout. Some people use in their healing styles and others don't.

Thats why you can CHOOSE to where to put talent points.

[Wonderboy]

Stopped reading after the first line. FoL is a powerful tool and moments such as Chimeron hc feud it is almost essential for banging some throughput on a target. I tend to play at a rather high level in pretty poor gear (heroic 10 mans in a significant amount of blues) so I don't really have the mana regen for DL anyway. As such it is of relatively little use to me (HL is used more than anything else) as a talent but it's still nice to throw a big heal on the tank and find i can follow up with a WoG straight after.

[Nekovivie]

Without Holy Light proccing Holy Power, it's just too expensive this talent, both in talent points cost, and mana cost to trigger. I'm 3/3 because there isn't anything overwhelming to spend the talent points on instead. Eternal Glory doesn't seem useful as I'm a LoD user mostly.

If only they would realise their fuckup with the HL change and make it 1/1 rather than 3/3.

As for the above poster saying FoL is powerful tool.. I disagree. It just seems too weak for the cost, compared to say Divine Light with a bit of haste behind it. Killed Chimaeron HC many times now and haven't had to resort to flash for any of them I believe. Though saying that, you don't use Divine Light much at all on Chimaeron anyway.

[Shanto94]

I agree.
Only time I find this talent usefull is in pvp in 2v2
Beacon on my partner, if its 2 DPSes then I will have to use a few Divine Lights when the DPSers are nuking, and then the free holy power helps a lot.
Except for that, I dont see any use

[Fiercon]

One thing about ToR that is indeed good to have is it's mana conservation and spell-alteration if you so will.

For me it is not a strategy to use but more a side effect to occur.
When the tank is in immediate need of heavy healing and you would have to heal him with said heavy heals anyway he will produce a free HP for you. If you have successive heals of that proportion on your beaconed target then all of them will at least produce some more HP out of their ridiculous high mana cost. At 3 stacks your next (4th) DL essentialy becomes instant and manafree (or you get to spend an instant manafree AOE heal).

That's the way I think of it - calling situational use a strategy is ... well crap

---------- Post added 2011-02-15 at 11:11 AM ----------

And although it's use comes to shine in the most dire situation and it's value may be more than the "get HP out of heavy heals" to me it's still just not worth 3 points.

[smiiiff]

ToR is kinda useless for our 10 man raid style.
We use a pala/shaman combo where we earth shield and BoL the tank getting the least damage and the pala heals the other tanks and the shaman has 9 persons he raid heals and keeps up the earth shield.
if needed we use a disc priest extra to shield the tanks and help healing.

If the pala needs to cast enough divine lights on the beaconed tank to make ToR usefull we let the priest respec to disc and use three healers. ToR is bad for us. but then it has been ever since they removed HL from the proc list.

[Elessa]

That talent is highly dependant on your setup. If you have 2 holy paladins you can just beacon a tank each and heal the other.
In my group (10 man) I'm the only Holy Paladin and I find this talent VERY useful. Im usually only healing the tank directly if there's only one tank taking damage (which it is quite alot in 10 mans) or when he is low on health. When he is low on health that Holy Power is extra valueable, since he's low on health.

You can't just count the holy power a talent or ability gives and the declare whichever gives more as the better talent. A LoD on a raid that is covered with rejus or renews that would have been healed up anyway, is completely wasted in some situations. Holy power gives to you in situations where you need that holy power (for example the tankis on low HP) is much more valueable.