Tweaking Beacon of Light

[Quigon]

Greetings,

I am not sure if this idea has been thrown around, but I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of it. I have been specced Holy at 80 for a little over a week now doing heroics. I gotta say, Holy is a lot more interactive now having to heal, apply SS to tank, re-do beacon, keep SoW (glyphed) up, judge. I do think that they could up the duration on SS and beacon of light.

Anyways, on to my idea. I think Beacon of Light is definitely an interesting ability. However, I think one small idea could perhaps solve some of our problems. As we all know, the tank is the beacon and everyone has the BoL aura. Well, I think the beacon should be a true beacon and work both ways. We all know that if you heal the DPS, the tank gets equally healed. But what if you heal the tank directly? What if when you heal the beacon directly, portions of the heal get distributed to the rest of the party? For instance, Each person affected by the aura receives 25% of the direct heal on the beacon.

So to be clearer. Tank is at 75% health. You drop a crit on a low health rogue, tanks health goes up to full. But then massive AoE damage to the party, and the tanks health drops to 50%. What if you start dropping, lets say.. 7-8k heals on the tank or 12k-14k crits. Wouldn't it solve a lot of our problems if these big, necessary tank heals came back as AoE healing (albeit in small chunks).

So, ok, time to play devil's advocate. 1. Working on every heal could become overpowered, so what it it works on crits only on the beacon? Yes, we crit a lot, but not every single crit. Plus, unless its our massive HL crit, we aren't going to be kicking back that much healing.

2. This might make it so the paladin doesn't effectively heal the raid as much and only spams the tank. Well, tanks health pools shouldn't be skipping all over the place ideally, so you should have time to heal the raid as well, and this alleviates a lot of problem areas.

Please leave comments. Feel free to tweak the idea. I think this is possibly the only "Blizzard" way of giving us AoE. Once we can get a solid concept down, I will post on Blizzard forums as well.


PS. Does anyone else think it would be awesome if Infusion of Light/Art of War had a stacking system? Either to stack instant flashes of lights, OR... 2 stacks equal instant HL? You take a chance in PVP waiting for the stacks would you could just heal yourself and be safe. I wish!

[insidelane]

To be perfectly honest when I first saw this talent I thought it was going to be a "you heal beacon; beacon heals people within x range", but I do think this implementation is quite good.

I haven't seen too many posts complaining it's bad, or UP...

[Quigon]

To be perfectly honest when I first saw this talent I thought it was going to be a "you heal beacon; beacon heals people within x range", but I do think this implementation is quite good.

I haven't seen too many posts complaining it's bad, or UP...

Well, it's not that I think it's bad, per se. Rather, we haven't gotten a new heal in 4 years. Blizzard seems adamant about not giving us an AoE heal (lol HL glyph) or a HoT (lol FoL glyph), but they want to address the problem in a creative, Paladin-esque way. Admittedly, Beacon of Light is definitely a unique ability and special. However, I just don't feel like it solves all of our problems moving into the next stage of heroics/10mans/25 mans.

Let me say this, it is a great help, and a very much needed ability. However I think there are some things that could be done to help augment this ability's usefulness. I also think the mana cost should be lowered (1400ish mana at 80) and duration extended (1 min goes by quick.. maybe at least 2 min, to be in line with our seals).

Any ideas? Thoughts? This isn't a BoL bashing thread, but rather, ideas to take it in its current form and use small tweaks to make it even better and help close the gaps in our weaknesses compared to other healers.

[Zyrus]

personally i dont see the problem in letting the duration be 5 minutes, its not like refreshing beacon less often is making it overpowered. slightly more useful in arena i guess, but isnt it still purgeable?

putting away the almost useless part of the HL glyph and put it onto the beacon talent sounds quite good, i know certain places (like loken, or the voidwalker guy in violet hold) are quite annoying to heal as a paladin, and giving people affected by beacon aura a small part of the heal sounds like a good solution (be it capped to 5, smart heal style and maybe not as much as 25%. 15 yard range from the beacon etc).

and personally i would tack the FoL glyph onto a Holy Shock glyph instead, duration fitting well with the CD of the ability.

[roflpot]

what you're saying makes too much sense. it would give paladins a semi group heal whilst still focusing mainly on single target. honestly it just seems so obvious to make bol work both ways that I'm amazed it doesn't and I'm even more amazed that blizzard don't seem to think it should? I've played a holy pala for years now and we always, without fail, get fucked on certain encounters and none of the other healers face this problem, we have an easy fix for it yet they won't implement it!? why?!!?!?

it needs to be also your heals on the beacon will heal nearby party members for 15% of the heal, or something like that. not op but enough to stop people wiping during heavy aoe. because as every paladin knows u pretty much have to prioritize who lives and dies which is shit.

[insidelane]

I do agree with everything said, but tbh I kind of like the idea of big single target, or in this case dual target heals for an encounter.

Haven't played my priest yet in LK but from 3.0 just spamming CoH was boring...

Sure holy paladins may need some assistance in aoe healing situations but Bacon of light is good and the only thing I agree with here is an extended duration.

Not too much to ask I assume?

[Lawurst]

Well, I think the beacon should be a true beacon and work both ways. We all know that if you heal the DPS, the tank gets equally healed. But what if you heal the tank directly? What if when you heal the beacon directly, portions of the heal get distributed to the rest of the party? For instance, Each person affected by the aura receives 25% of the direct heal on the beacon.

Would be really OP. Let's just say you heal for ~6-7 k (which really isn't assuming high end gear) that would end as 6-7 k for the tank and another 1.5k heal for everyone. 24*1.5k = 36k Raid Heal
Only on Crits.. assuming you got 20-30 % crit, which again isn't assuming high end gear, and doing 10k crits that would still be loads of AoE heal. Two Holy paladins could heal through most AoE damage really really easy.

Lasting longer + maybe something like "Heals 5 Targets for 10 % of the healed amount" would probably work out I guess. But I wouldn't get my hopes up to much, I don't think that blizzard will do some big changes on BoL aside from lasting longer.

[Quigon]

Would be really OP. Let's just say you heal for ~6-7 k (which really isn't assuming high end gear) that would end as 6-7 k for the tank and another 1.5k heal for everyone. 24*1.5k = 36k Raid Heal
Only on Crits.. assuming you got 20-30 % crit, which again isn't assuming high end gear, and doing 10k crits that would still be loads of AoE heal. Two Holy paladins could heal through most AoE damage really really easy.

Lasting longer + maybe something like "Heals 5 Targets for 10 % of the healed amount" would probably work out I guess. But I wouldn't get my hopes up to much, I don't think that blizzard will do some big changes on BoL aside from lasting longer.

Well, like I said, it doesn't have to be the entire heal reflected to the party (I guess beacon light extends to the whole raid? I haven't done but the pvp 10 man). I agree with what someone posted.. a 5 man cap smart heal would work out nicely. 10% seems like it could be kinda low, especially as AoE damage gets higher and stamina scales.. 1k heal against a 14k stamina pool is kinda meh. I think 15%(lawlJotW) to 20% would be in the ballpark.

I think working on crit would probably be the way to go to stop PVP QQing. However, even at my gear level, with 30%ish chance to crit with holy (which is low by WOTLK standards), I can go 5-6 heals without a single crit (RNG FTL). Once my gear improves, obviously it will occur more often. But as we gear ourselves, shouldn't our abilities get that much better?

Regarding another poster's comment.. the FoL glyph should be put onto Holy Shock (or talented). HS is awesome now, but HoT on crit just seems like a natural function. HL Glyph really could be extended to at least 10 yards. 5 is all kinds of fail, particularly do to raid boss size.

[Hogarr]

Beacon is 100% wasted on a main tank. As a paladin 99% of the time your RL will ask you to main tank heal, so why use this awesome ability on the target you will be healing anyways. I find that in 5 man dungeons it is msot effective to keep Beacon on yourself and just heal party and tank with no worries about your own HP. In 10 man Nax, I do the same for trash, but for fights like patchwerk, Horsemen, and any other that require multiple tanks on one boss, I just pick a target to heal and keep beacon on the second tank. This seems to work very well. On fights like Saph I use Beacon on myself and just MT heal. This works very very well, since there is constant damage being dealt anyways, and saves me from a FR set when using only 2 healers. I also put it to some use in 5 mans on melee DPS, especially when your tank is teribad at picking up targets quick, when multiple are spawning, ( a good example is in UP, in the gauntlet for the 3rd boss, constant adds, I always throw my beacon on a secondary melee, so that the tank has a little bit of time to grab aggro back and I can effectivly heal both members at once.