Glyph Beacon of Light

[claudio528]

I need a little help:}
What is the usefulness of the glyph beacon of light?
I see that most of the pally of the top guild are using it.
some can explain to me how they are using the Beacon with the glyph?

Sorry for the bad English ...

[Simulacrum]

For swapping from one tank to another, depending on who needs healing the most, I guess?

[Screwy Maverick]

Pure efficiency. Every time you need to cast Divine Light or Flash of Light on a target that doesn't already have your Beacon, you're wasting future Word of Glory/Eternal Flame/Light of Dawn healing/mana conservation. Hard casting a GCD'd Beacon before doing so is a waste of time that could be spent healing. Popping a glyphed Beacon and instantly healing someone to get that extra holy power is pretty efficient. I get a huge amount of use with this in PVP, too, where mana conservation/efficiency is just as important as in PVE. (coupled with the power of the Holy 4p PVP set, efficient Beaconing is incredible)

[Pasture]

Pure efficiency. Every time you need to cast Divine Light or Flash of Light on a target that doesn't already have your Beacon, you're wasting future Word of Glory/Eternal Flame/Light of Dawn healing/mana conservation. Hard casting a GCD'd Beacon before doing so is a waste of time that could be spent healing. Popping a glyphed Beacon and instantly healing someone to get that extra holy power is pretty efficient. I get a huge amount of use with this in PVP, too, where mana conservation/efficiency is just as important as in PVE. (coupled with the power of the Holy 4p PVP set, efficient Beaconing is incredible)

But then you're also losing mana efficiency and throughput by not receiving the 50% beacon heal when you would normally heal this other player.

[Deleted]

But then you're also losing mana efficiency and throughput by not receiving the 50% beacon heal when you would normally heal this other player.

you also need to take into account the extra healing you get from the holy power you gain. holy power gain from holy shock is limited to 1 every 6 seconds (5 with 4P T14, 4 after patch with 4PT14). this means you can only get off 1 full power holy power heal every 18/15/12 seconds. with glyphed beacon macro'd into FoL and DL, you gain a lot of extra leeway in how you can spend your HP.

[Very Tired]

There is some complex healing strat that involves that glyph that makes my head just thinking about the ways you should apply it raids. Those pallies are most likely just using it for tank swaps. There aren't really many useful glyphs for holy so saving us a GCD every tank switch is enough to use it.


About the beacon method. Assuming the tank normally has beacon, casting HS/Holy Light/WoG on them is a waste of the 50% beacon effect. Ideally you want to be able to switch beacons targets to another low health raid member with this glyph since theres no mana and no GCD to lose. However you need at least 2 of those spells to fill in the gap until the cd on beacon is up and you can put it back on the tank. You also need to have a fast reaction time putting the beacon on another target then going back to the tank and healing them for the most gain.
It would look something like this:

Have 3 HP WoG and a HS ready to be cast on the beacon target (tank) with low health.
Switch beacon to low health bob and instantly heal the tank with your spells.
Switch beacon back.


The other method being discussed above is switching your beacon to your target before you divine light/FoL them. You have to think about weather healing your beacon target for 50% of that heal or getting a HP is more important. Since your beacon target's health could be changing very rapidly it could be hard to tell if your 50% heal will be overheal anyway. But highly suggested if theres a pause in beacon tank damage. Or just putting beacon of low health raid member B and divine lighting low health raid member A.

[Lucyrotten]

I use the glyph when I don't need another one specifically for some reason because I beacon swap to the active tank and there are a LOT of tank swaps this tier. It's a global I don't have to spend and that's a good thing. I really don't feel like the HP gain from macro'ing it to DL/FoL is worth losing the beacon heal but feel free to show me some maths that prove otherwise.

[plastikmelter]

I think it's one of the best glyphs we have available and I always include it. Like someone else said, the number of tank swaps this tier make it very powerful.

[Simulacrum]

I don't have much faith in the whole 'applying beacon on FL/DL targets before healing them'-thing; unless you know that the beacon heal would be wasted on the tank then it doesn't seem to me like something that would be a good idea, and if you do know that the tank won't be needing the beacon heals then why is beacon on them in the first place, instead of on somebody else?

The HP gain from healing a beaconed target is not worth losing the beacon heal for, so this only ever makes sense to do if beacon would overheal. If you absolutely feel like removing your beacon from the tank is the right thing to do, then it would in almost all encounters make more sense to put it on another player than on the one you're about to heal.

Have 3 HP WoG and a HS ready to be cast on the beacon target (tank) with low health.
Switch beacon to low health bob and instantly heal the tank with your spells.
Switch beacon back.

This is one way I can see it being used to improve healing efficiency and HPS. I personally heal the tank directly so rarely that I haven't put the effort in to teach myself how to do this quickly without thinking while in the middle of a complex encounter, but it seems like a viable way to play, even if its gains are relatively small and the situations when this would be useful relatively rare.

[silverhatred]

Swapping it constantly to the target that needs healing that you aren't currently healing is something that improves healing efficiency significantly and something I have yet to fully master but am already benefiting from.

The macro'd beacon is a pretty lazy and closed minded approach to doing things. I mean its possible to get decent results with it but it is by no means efficient. In the unusual event that its the correct path to do, you can just cast beacon and heal it without even bothering with a macro.

Another thing, if you hit your beacon on someone right after you cast a heal, the beacon will count the heal you just casted due to the glyph. This does not seem to work with the same target for tower of radiance, leading me to think that there is a tiny window in between healing the target and the beacon getting the heal.

[neepz]

Blanket the raid with EF using the 4pt pvp bonus. Keep changing the beacon to the player that need the most. Profit.

[Mooji]

It's an amazing glyph for both pvp and pve. I mostly pvp and it has obvious uses there, but from the pve I've done, such as on garalon, it's nice being able to swap my beacon on the fly without wasting a gcd.

[Deleted]

Say you are casting a Divine Light on X and then also person Y takes damage if you swap BoL onto target Y (thanks to the glyph) he will still receive the BoL heal even though it was swapped onto him after the Divine Light cast was finished.

This is a pretty useful tool, and is why I currently have it glyphed.