Can we talk about Flash of Light?

[Sevas]

I am a new paladin healer and have a few questions about Flash of Light and when to use it. Short and simple: I understand the pros of Divine Light spam versus Flash of Light spam, and frankly never reach for Flash of Light in any situation (except perhaps Chimaeron when I feel like I won't be graced with an Infusion of Light proc and/or Word of Glory fails me, and then it is most certainly not a FoL spam). Currently I am only working on regular content, not heroic modes. I feel like with my haste where it is and with how often Infusion of Light procs, there is never any reason whatsoever to throw mana down the drain with a Flash of Light, especially since I'm very careful about my mana conservation (and admittedly sometimes too careful, but I don't see how that's a bad thing, especially for a first time healer).

Are there situations where healadins and their tanks/dps benefit more from Flash of Light than Divine Light? Ever? In any tier?

[Ciah]

You NEVER "spam" Flash of Light. In general, its only purpose is to quickly get someone out of the danger zone long enough to land a Divine Light/Holy Light. The situation you describe on Chimaeron is a good example of when you need that fast emergency heal before a Massacre comes in or something.

The only situation I can see where you really use Flash of Light a lot is a situation with infinite mana, such as Valithria Dreamwalker, or Halazzi in ZA with his mana returning totems.
Even at Sinestra, where you have infinite mana as well, it is better to use Divine Light because the haste buff brings DL's cast time down so much, whereas FoL's cast time is now below the GCD.

[Angrod]

speaking as a 10man raider, i think i used it in normal and heroic mode of bosses like 10 times in a raid since the release of cataclysm?

there are so many tools that u can use that u just dont need flash of light

1. if someone is really going to die in a second and he has to live -> Lay on Hands (you want to use it every fight because of managain glyphed)
2. a lot of the times you have 3 HP WoG or 2 HP + Holy shock + WoG or HS + 0,8s Divine light (as i said 10man raiding)
3. if you know the mechanic of the boss you pre cast things as a paladin (as a healer in general) anyways maloriak hc, feud / doubleattack chimaeron cast while chim casts massacre etc.
4. other healers have instant casts too

so i wont say get rid of the spell

and like ciah said -> Spam is no option cause spamming divine light is more HPS anyways

[Deleted]

twilight realm on valiona if a spacker stands on an orb. thats about it.

[Malkhor]

You NEVER "spam" Flash of Light. In general, its only purpose is to quickly get someone out of the danger zone long enough to land a Divine Light/Holy Light. The situation you describe on Chimaeron is a good example of when you need that fast emergency heal before a Massacre comes in or something.

The only situation I can see where you really use Flash of Light a lot is a situation with infinite mana, such as Valithria Dreamwalker, or Halazzi in ZA with his mana returning totems.
Even at Sinestra, where you have infinite mana as well, it is better to use Divine Light because the haste buff brings DL's cast time down so much, whereas FoL's cast time is now below the GCD.

About the second part of your post.

If you had Infinite mana you wouldn't spam FoL, you'd spam DL. At about 5000-6000 SP DL becomes more HPS than FoL.

[Dayn9]

In PvE unless you don't have 3 holy power or a IoL proc when your tank is low HP, then it is a good spell (casting a DL without IoL may be too long, he's likely to die).

Apart from that, it's not worth using it.

In PvP though, you're often forced to spam it more or less (whenever you don't have 3 holy power or a IoL proc and when you need some "burst healing" (yes " " because its healing power is rather disappointing, healing for less than shaman's and priest's flash, but costing more mana), you're forced to use it at least 2 times in a row depending on a couple of things such as whether or not your beacon is being spam dispelled and therefore no holy power generation, blah blah.

I hope this spell will change in the very near future (4.2 would be sweet), just like WoG (which is disappointing, it doesn't seem to scale well with gear).

[Simca]

About the second part of your post.

If you had Infinite mana you wouldn't spam FoL, you'd spam DL. At about 5000-6000 SP DL becomes more HPS than FoL.

I'm actually not sure of the math on that. My gut instinct was that Flash of Light will always be SLIGHTLY superior to Divine Light in infinite mana situations.

[gymrat2005]

All im going to say about FoL is that I never use it only on chim.

[kenn9530]

You NEVER "spam" Flash of Light. In general, its only purpose is to quickly get someone out of the danger zone long enough to land a Divine Light/Holy Light. The situation you describe on Chimaeron is a good example of when you need that fast emergency heal before a Massacre comes in or something.

The only situation I can see where you really use Flash of Light a lot is a situation with infinite mana, such as Valithria Dreamwalker, or Halazzi in ZA with his mana returning totems.
Even at Sinestra, where you have infinite mana as well, it is better to use Divine Light because the haste buff brings DL's cast time down so much, whereas FoL's cast time is now below the GCD.

On any fight with infinite mana DL, should be your goto spell as it is onlt a lil bit slower cast but heals alot more.

on sinestra the cast time on my DL is 0.8 secs with the buff, flash of light should never be used really apart from maybe chim if you were abit slow and need to heal last person fast but thats about it.

DL is always better to use as 9 times out of ten you will have time to get a DL cast off and it heals more than FoL.

[Howard Moon]

I'm actually not sure of the math on that. My gut instinct was that Flash of Light will always be SLIGHTLY superior to Divine Light in infinite mana situations.

DL has more HpS than FoL, doesn't it?

[TickTickTick]

FoL is emergency heal as the tooltip says. If you know that your focus target is going to die before you can cast DL (and that FoL will make the target survive), it's that moment when it's useful. For example Nefarian phase 2 and unfortunate RNG. Or on Cho'gall and adds phase, when the other healer is mc'ed and my tank is really low on hp because of Fire Elemental empower.

Some people say it's never worth to use FoL - better let the tank / raid wipe instead of casting this 'rubbish' spell. I disagree. If it can make the raid survive and at the end make the encounter successful, than I can throw even 3 FoL's in a row. Mana? There are always potions / innervates / DP.

[Simca]

DL has more HpS than FoL, doesn't it?

Usually? No.

It has a few more HPS, but costs like double the MPS. It's a trade that is almost never worth making unless you -literally- have infinite mana.

[Howard Moon]

Usually? No.

It has a few more HPS, but costs like double the MPS. It's a trade that is almost never worth making unless you -literally- have infinite mana.

Well yeah, I thought we were talking about infinite mana situations. So we both agree that DL has more HpS?

On a normal scenario I pretty much never use FoL. If a tank is about to die, I LoH them.

[Simca]

Well yeah, I thought we were talking about infinite mana situations. So we both agree that DL has more HpS?

On a normal scenario I pretty much never use FoL. If a tank is about to die, I LoH them.

Again, I'm not 100% sure.

Before Malkhor mentioned the 5k-6k SP thing, I THOUGHT it went like this in terms of Raw HPS in Infinite Mana situations:
Divine Light (with IoL proc) > Flash of Light > Divine Light (normal)

[Guts]

In infinite Mana situation I'd prefer FoL since it hits faster, so less overhealing imo.
Big spike but your DL just overheal? Oh, gotta wait 2s till next one hits, FoL hits more often and has less "deadtime"
Just my opinion
Otherwise I never used FoL in normals or hardmodes (7/13) and can't really think of the last time I did.
Chimaeron I'm usually just the Tankhealer so DL works just fine

[Deleted]

It seems like people are under the impression that DL is more HPS than FoL. I was pretty convinced based on gut feeling that this isn't true, so I went and took out my napkin math cape.

based on dataz from the EJ holy paladin compendium:

DL: 11733 base; 1,15306 coeff
FoL: 7328 base; 0,8632 coeff.

DL is more HPS than FoL, where x is spellpower, if:
((11733+1,15306x)/2,5)*1,16) > ((7328+0,8632x)/1,5)*1,16)
(4693,2 + 0,461224x)*1,16 > (4855,3 + 0,575x)*1,16
5444,228 + 0,5350x > 5632,148 + 0,667x
-0,132x > 187,92
x < -1423,6

In other words, when one has over -1423,6 SP (reasonably common, I'd say) FoL yields more HPS than DL. Which makes sense, considering the huge mana cost. Unless I made a mistake, which is certainly not the first or last time, this should be pretty conclusive results.

As for actual content use of FoL, the above posters have pretty much covered what you can do with FoL. It's high HPS that lands fast, but it's far too expensive to use often. This being the first tier of raiding we can reasonably expect the ability to be more practical in later content, albeit only through gear or through changes to the spell.

E: corrected for scaling factors Walk in the Light and Divinity, I'm pretty sure they stack additively?

[Simca]

Thanks for the math, NotAddicted.

That's exactly what I thought myself.

E: corrected for scaling factors Walk in the Light and Divinity, I'm pretty sure they stack additively?

Multiplicatively surprisingly enough.

[Deleted]

Thank you for that NotAddicted. Shame on all of you spreading misinformation about HPS.

That said, the small difference in HPS isn't worth the giant different in MPS. However once you go into heroics you can get away with quite a few Flashes in a boss fight and still not Oom. Like the Acquiring Target attack on H Omnotron, toping the tank off on H Atra if you had to get out of range of him for a second and he got spiked. Chimaeron, etc.

[Deleted]

Why are you guys saying never spam flash of light? I'm in a top 100 guild worldwide and all I do is spam FoL with the occasional judgement and lay on hands and always get over 13k hps... I think you need to look at your statistics more closely. Flash of light is by far the best paladin spell, and really - if you need to make a thread to ask whether or not you should be using such an insanely over powered and frankly friggin' incredible spell I think you should just stick with the boring old DL spam.

[Deleted]

Unless you're Megan Fox with a lot of horny boy druids in your guild I'm calling shenanigans. Feel free to link logs where you actually do a decent amount of healing with FoL as your top, or even near top, heal though.

Multiplicatively surprisingly enough.

Hm, strange. The tooltip numbers add up almost perfectly when I calculate them additively, not nearly so much when multiplicatively. Any reason to believe tooltips are wrong or did I just mess it up? I can post numbers after my raid.