Thread: Beacon of Light

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  1. #1

    Beacon of Light

    I've been pondering this for a while now, and basically I just really need to get this off my chest. I do realize that everything is still in testing and may change. However, just on the off chance that Beacon of Light goes live in its current state, is anyone else totally underwhelmed by this talent?

    In fact, the whole tail end of the holy tree completely unimpresses me. There isn't much there that improves our healing except this new 51 point talent. A 51 point talent that only heals 2k, and heals it over 15 seconds. it heals half as much over twice as long a duration as the new druid 51 point heal. Yes, BoL heals "the whole raid" and the druid one only heals up to 5 targets, but Beacon of Light only has a 10 yard radius. So really it's not going to heal the whole raid at all. In fact, if you put it on the main tank it wouldn't even heal the other melee on any boss with a fairly large model like Void Reaver.

    It just seems like too little healing over too long a time in too small a radius. Especially when I'll get a significantly greater boost to my overall healing by spending points in the Retribution Tree instead of spending those points in the later part of the Holy Tree.

    Is anybody else bothered by this? Does it not seem totally contradictory to get a major boost to healing by spending in Retribution instead of in Holy?

    And just to clarify, I'm not against Retribution Paladins or them getting nifty healing talents. Actually I think the new Retribution tree is a great improvement. It does seem odd to me though that spending 20ish points in Retribution gets me way more than spending those same 20ish points in Holy.

  2. #2

    Re: Beacon of Light

    I agree mostly. take back the mana cost thing here are say the range(still worthwhile for a 5man in current form) but it has potential. If they were to limit the number of targets to 5-10(allowing changes to it), double the range and add it to "Healing Light" I'd be happy.
    What I've suggested isn't radical but remember that Healing Light adds its bonus with spell damage instead of before,allowing the buff to the healing of the spell to scale.
    People weren't happy about CoH either but once people saw its raid potential, even before the buffs it got, there was a dedicated CoH priest in each raid.

  3. #3

    Re: Beacon of Light

    Quote Originally Posted by Happozai
    Beacon of light is fine

    stop complaining and learn how to play your class.
    Learning to play healadin means knowing that critical strike chance (universalized between melee and spells as of WotLK) is your main source of mana regen.
    So if he were going to be complaining about a spell in holy, Beacon would be the one. It doesn't, cannot, crit. Thus, he has plenty of reason to be complaining, as many have done before.

    All that set aside, I'll half-agree with the "underwhelmed bottom tail" part. Infusion of Light looks to be fantastic, especially for arena purposes. Sacred Cleansing is a big help to what's been a semi-working Cleanse. Judgements of the Pure, along with Enlightened Judgements, makes for a fantastic pair that basically equates to a 10% perma-spell haste. Beacon is low now, but once raids see it affecting the tank's aggro as well as healing capabilities (and hopefully a minor buff to its healing done) it could really be great.


    All that aside, my healing spec will still be 48/0/23. Sheath of Light = Perfect Tank Healer
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  4. #4

    Re: Beacon of Light

    Keep in mind, they're currently looking into making some changes to Beacon of Light, to make it fit better with Paladin Healing.

  5. #5

    Re: Beacon of Light

    Beacon of Light's range has been upgraded to 40 yards now. So.

  6. #6

    Re: Beacon of Light

    Quote Originally Posted by Daviid Leethsiah
    Beacon of Light's range has been upgraded to 40 yards now. So.
    Thats the cast range

    And yes its totally awefull in its current shape, they said they will change it to " fit with our kit".

    ATM Theres absolute silence from any blues on beta, UE or US forums since end July, so i guess they're just to busy with other classes and leave the massive changes till later. They will get to us soon..i hope :P


    It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

  7. #7

    Re: Beacon of Light

    I'm not sure if you can talk about efficiency of beacon of light until you see it in a 25 man raid. I'm sure there are going to be some fights that Beacon of Light is going to be the most amazing thing ever, and others where it blows.

    I think it'll be a really awesome spell if you can use it in the right situation.

  8. #8

    Re: Beacon of Light

    Quote Originally Posted by raefe
    I'm not sure if you can talk about efficiency of beacon of light until you see it in a 25 man raid. I'm sure there are going to be some fights that Beacon of Light is going to be the most amazing thing ever, and others where it blows.

    I think it'll be a really awesome spell if you can use it in the right situation.
    Its 1,5 sec cast time,15 sec duration and within 10 yards of the person you cast it on, healing for about 5000 in decent gear total at 80.

    I cant even think of one fight in the any BC instance where this would be good :P Not even Felmyst or Twins, it simply doesnt heal enough in time to make it worth, ppl will be dead from Sear and Encaps before u know it, CoH, CH or Flourish seem much better and safer in most ways, without having to stand on eachother.

    Still it will get changed and everything said here will be a total waste of time ;D


    It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

  9. #9
    thesan
    Guest

    Re: Beacon of Light

    the problem that i've seen develop more and more in WoTLK talents is that they're overhauling Paladin's to the extreme. in the prot tree and non-talent skills, blizzard is trying to make paladins into warrs but somehow still push them into the niche of aoe tanking... i like how awesome it looks but fully dont understand it. with the change of judgements as well as the reworking of talents, ret is now an official battery not just an upkeep of every1's judgements. and i think the same thing is going on here with beacon. yea it heals raid members within a range, but that is a shaman's bread and butter now, so it probably isnt meant to compete with chain heal. it really seems that it pushes paladins into to MT heal niche. you throw this up once every 15 secs, or when you know hits are coming harder/faster, to help with the delays in flashes, but thats what a druid is for so that doesnt seem right either. as for the range... its just a bit bigger than consecrate, so its like the healing version of consecrate, basically. i think, as it stands, it would have been better to throw this into the consecrate, making it a DoT/HoT, because as is the talent is convenient, but not essential.

    what could be done is keep the HoT effect for raid members in the radius, but add a flash-equivalent heal onto the front end. so you get an initial heal that could crit, helping relieve the higher mana cost, and also having the reactive heal and HoT that we've wanted for so long. its expensive enough on mana that spamming it wouldnt be efficient or effective, but adding a chance to crit would help it to be worthwhile once every 15 sec. also, a heal on the front doesnt make it a 3 sec break in heal that it would be now for flash-beacon-flash (unless they assume its going to be flash-beacon-HS-flash/HL, which is possible but not exactly the same). it would make it kind of like a reverse lifebloom of sorts with the heal going to the "beacon" and the HoT going afterwards to those around him... just seems like a better fit to me

  10. #10

    Re: Beacon of Light

    I agree it has potential, and yes in some very specific circumstances it could be quite awesome. I just don't think it's worth a 51 point talent though. I hope all of you are correct in that they will adjust it appropriately to a) be worth 51 points and b) fit in with Paladin synergy a bit better. We could really use another unique heal, preferably AE, and this would be it. But it's no good to us if it's only worth using once in a while in my opinion. Especially when you compare it to adding another 5% spell crit chance (Conviction now improves spell and melee crit) and Sheath of Light.

    Infusion of Light I like. It's a good talent. Sacred Cleansing isn't so hot. 30% chance to increase resistances by 30%? Maybe if that were 100% chance to increase resistance by 30% I might be impressed. I'm not saying it's useless, but it certainly doesn't make me go "WOW!" Enlightened Judgements and Judgements of the pure is an interesting combo, but I have to spend 7 talent points to get them both. Consider on top of that the mana cost to cast a seal and then judge in order to get the 10% haste for 30 seconds. Again, it's nifty but it's not worth 7 talent points when compared to Conviction and Sheath of Light.

    Overall, here's my impressions of the new Paladin Talent Trees: Holy is meh after 48 points, protection got some nice buffs but is still missing some of the stuff a Paladin tank really needs (like an interrupt), and Retribution completely makes me go "WOW!". Retri got some really nice stuff and much better synergy overall. Retri got some serious, and much needed, buffs.

    I'm not really complaining - I'd actually be fairly happy with the Talent Trees as they are right now if they went live. I am saying that the Holy Tree needs another look in my opinion. The talents late in the tree are interesting or nifty, but don't really fit with making us better healers (or aren't worth the points to get them) when compared to the raw healing power increase that a 48/0/23 build provides.

  11. #11

    Re: Beacon of Light

    Not sure why so many people are crying about this talent...it's effectiveness is based on grouping up, which most....scratch that...ALL aoe heals are based on. You can't use circle of healing effectively on a lot of fights, you can't use chain heal effectively on a lot of fights, and flourish won't work on a lot of fights.

    That being said...let's take a look at the amount of fights in Sunwell in which the raid has to stack up.

    Kalecgos (demon phase) - possible
    Brutallus - Check
    Felmyst - Check
    Twins - Check
    M'uru - (melee) check
    Kil'jaeden - (to an extent) check

    All end game raids WILL have situations where it's imperative for the raid to stack, which will make Beacon of Light overpowered as hell. Some fights will require that everyone spreads out, which also reduces the effectiveness of priests and druids (not so much shaman...they'll always be OP). I guess what I'm trying to say is that Blizzard isn't trying to make the paladin into an AOE healer, that's not our forte, we ARE main tank and patch healers, we always will be. What they gave us is a spell that we can cast on bunched up groups, then get back to spamming holy light (yes, rank 7 is the best heal paladins have I don't care what you scrubs spamming flash say) on whoever we wish. It is an ASSISTANCE heal not a new MAIN heal. Get over it...if you want to keep the raid up reroll a shaman.

    Edit: In my opinion Blizzard is trying to spread out the effectiveness of each class to not only one cookie cutter spec (ie mages getting utility buffs, moonkins buffed, etc.) in its current standing, there's really no reason to bring more than one holy/prot paladin and one ret paladin to a 25 man raid. 2 buffs is more than enough... There will most likely be different specs of paladins, like there are different specs of priests. One COH and one GH spammer, one Beacon pally and one Sheath pally. Also...imo there may even be some experimentation with prot pally healers.... "Touched by the Light" anyone? Gem for all crit and spam flash of light for super fast large heals.

  12. #12
    thesan
    Guest

    Re: Beacon of Light

    id agree with you to the point that this talent is circumstantial, but it just seems lacking a bit. yes, awesome an AOE heal and HoT all in one, very cool. But CoH, CH and even holy nova heal a certain amount on cast making them more useful for healing groups instantly for what beacon would do in 9 seconds, if not the full 15. and like you said "we ARE main tank and patch healers, we always will be" that being the case turning ur MT into a lightwell is something you do when you can afford to do so. what is the point of having a 51 point talent you only use situationally? CoH priests should be assigned to maximize the abilities of their spec otherwise its just wasted points. maybe it will be like you say where there will be a variety of very different holy spec's, but i still dont agree that the spell is fine. it doesnt make sense in term of paladin mechanics. maybe the horror stories of holy pallies sitting outside raids solely to buff has made blizzard change everything this drastically. obviously theres some learning to do with the massive mechanics changes to paladins, but as far as holy goes there is little change in store for how you heal. it just seems out of place, i still strongly feel throwing a heal on the front end, even if just for the "beacon: player, or even adding a heal effect to consecrate would align itself better with paladin healing than this does. and keeping the almost 2k in mana cost, its not an ability you can just spam, replacing FoL. it would still be used at discretion and good players know when and when not to use it, only there wouldnt really be such a massive penalty to use it when it really wasnt necessary

    as for blizzard broadening paladins, you may be right in that ive encounter people who wouldnt take me in full t4 to heroics because "paladins suck in 5-mans" i think this could help to fix that stigma, and like you said has its place in raids, its just inadequate at doing something a pair of druids or a priest can do better already. your bottom talent is supposed to be one of your most unique skills, not a compensation for elements and mechanics that your class lacks

  13. #13

    Re: Beacon of Light

    Quote Originally Posted by Chumpp
    Not sure why so many people are crying about this talent...it's effectiveness is based on grouping up, which most....scratch that...ALL aoe heals are based on. You can't use circle of healing effectively on a lot of fights, you can't use chain heal effectively on a lot of fights, and flourish won't work on a lot of fights.

    That being said...let's take a look at the amount of fights in Sunwell in which the raid has to stack up.

    Kalecgos (demon phase) - possible
    Brutallus - Check
    Felmyst - Check
    Twins - Check
    M'uru - (melee) check
    Kil'jaeden - (to an extent) check

    All end game raids WILL have situations where it's imperative for the raid to stack, which will make Beacon of Light overpowered as hell. Some fights will require that everyone spreads out, which also reduces the effectiveness of priests and druids (not so much shaman...they'll always be OP). I guess what I'm trying to say is that Blizzard isn't trying to make the paladin into an AOE healer, that's not our forte, we ARE main tank and patch healers, we always will be. What they gave us is a spell that we can cast on bunched up groups, then get back to spamming holy light (yes, rank 7 is the best heal paladins have I don't care what you scrubs spamming flash say) on whoever we wish. It is an ASSISTANCE heal not a new MAIN heal. Get over it...if you want to keep the raid up reroll a shaman.
    You know it doesnt stack and the range is 10 yards from the target?

    The level 70 version is 1280 healing over 15 seconds, 16,5 if u add in cast time. Its scales for 50% of your +heal (according to EJs). A SWP Holy paladin will have about 2300 +heal, so 2330 healing in total in that time. The problem is aswell that the effect doesnt overlap itself, so casting it on Person 1 then Person 2 next to him wont make it tick double for everyone in their range.


    Kalecgos Demon Phase : Way to slow healing, really 2330? Thats abit more then 1 FoL over 16,5 sec and im HLing my head off there.
    Brutallus : Dunno how you do it but we spread as much as we can to avoid burning eachother, i'd be suprised if it would hit more then 3 ppl at the same time.
    Felmyst : When i first read about Beacon this was the first boss i thought it would be awesome on, couldnt have been more wrong. The Noxios Fumes are hitting your raid for 1000 every 3 seconds, Beacon would restore 2330 in 15 seconds... Then theres Gas Nova and Encap, imagine what would happen if one hits, or encap shortly after Gas Nova
    Twins : we use the tactic that everyone stands on eachother and conflag runs towards the entrance. So about 18 raid members would be within 5 yars of eachother. Beacon should shine here, and it might definetly help abit, but with the sear randomness it wont really do much good and ur still better off with CH/CoH spam, while the paladin sticks to healing his tank.
    M'uru : Can be nice to use on caster group in p1 but still CH would be far better for this. in p2 its useless
    KJ : The raid dmg is insane and ppl are spread to much for the beacon todo much healing, let alone be worth the cast time.


    Then you say its an assitance heal, yes it is, and a very poor one at it. In this state no one with some clue in his cup should ever take this over SoL, not just because of the extremly weak 51 talent but to get there u need to waste to much points.


    Anyways, again it will be changed but secretly im just hoping for a new spell and make concerate heal



    It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

  14. #14

    Re: Beacon of Light

    Blizzard has stated to look for an upcoming change to this spell in a future build (my guess is the next one)

    I'm going to take a guess that it will be affected by illumination (meaning it'll be a direct heal + aoe hot) and that it will be gain more with +heal because of the direct heal effect. I guarantee in the end it will stack as I highly doubt they would gimp a holy pally for it's final tier talent and restrict it to one pally per raid (since it won't stack why would others really need it?)

    I am not complaining about it until the game is shipped out and I know for sure what to expect. I'm in high hopes of this spell though and I know it will be better.

  15. #15

    Re: Beacon of Light

    @Salley

    Did you miss the entire message I was trying to convey? I wasn't implying paladins should be spamming this in any way, shape, or form (In fact...you can't spam it, you put it on one target then get back to your regular rotation). Think about it...if you give paladins a strong aoe heal, who is going to be healing the main tank? Druids have flourish, priests have COH, shamans have chain heal, if you give paladins a way to compete with raid healing the tanks are going to start falling over because no one WANTS to heal them...it's boring. This is an assistance to raid healers just like stacking lifeblooms on a tank is an assistance to holy paladins. It doesn't keep everyone up at all times, it just makes the other healers' jobs a little bit easier. Like I said, if you want to keep the raid up, reroll.

    EDIT: I'm willing to agree this is a fairly weak 51 point talent...but I also stand by my point that not every paladin will have to spec this way. IMO raids will probably bring one Beacon pally and one Sheath pally for healing. Until you see end-game in WOTLK...don't bash this talent yet. For all we know 80% of the raids could require all 25 players to stack directly on top of each other...

  16. #16

    Re: Beacon of Light

    i still see great things with beacon ,CoH ,and chain heals goin off in a raid

  17. #17

    Re: Beacon of Light

    Trying to keep this as TLDR version as possible

    The basic problem I see with the spell is the mechanics of it and how it relates to Paladins type of healing. This spell isn't exactly mana efficient. Paladins, for the most part, bank on crits to keep their mana pool sufficient enough to maintain a boss fight. Now with pot sickness you will not be able to spam your Mana potions or Mad Alchemist Potions (If you have the alch trinket and your smart enough to use these :P) to maintain mana.

    So lets look at all current Paladin healing spells. All current healing spells are capable of criting therefore able to return mana on the crit. Now lets look at Beacon of Light. A HoT that is casted on another player incapable of criting at a seemingly large mana cost, about the same as a max rank Holy Light, for arguably effective healing on the target/s.

    My thoughts on how to fix this that would make this spell unique from all the other AoE HoTs that other classes are getting would be to essentially leave the spell how it is, however give each tick the ability to crit based on the spell crit of the caster, not the target. I have not yet had the chance to play Beta so I do not have any personal experience with the spell nor how it ticks each heal, but looking at the tooltip it looks like it ticks every 3 seconds 5 times to equal the 15 second duration (please correct me if I am wrong). So if each tick was capable of criting and returning 60% mana of each tick being 20% of the mana cost (5 ticks in total making each tick 20%), I do not know the mana cost of the max rank of Beacon of Light costs as I do not know a Paladin's base mana at level 80, but lets just say Beacon of Light costs 2000 mana at level 80 for this case. 20% of 2000 mana would be 400 mana. 60% of 400 mana is 240 mana. So if a tick of Beacon of Light crit it would return 240 mana for each crit and should each tick crit it would return a total of 1200 mana equally exactly 60% of 2000 mana.

    That took a lot more room than I thought it would, sorry for it not being much of a TLDR version. Just my thoughts though.
    I am the interglow that lets you know to call your brother son.


  18. #18

    Re: Beacon of Light

    No thoughts?
    I am the interglow that lets you know to call your brother son.


  19. #19

    Re: Beacon of Light

    Guess its kind a hard to fit in mechanics giving that they just cant make mindflay crit ^^

  20. #20

    Re: Beacon of Light

    Quote Originally Posted by Vertego
    Trying to keep this as TLDR version as possible

    The basic problem I see with the spell is the mechanics of it and how it relates to Paladins type of healing. This spell isn't exactly mana efficient. Paladins, for the most part, bank on crits to keep their mana pool sufficient enough to maintain a boss fight. Now with pot sickness you will not be able to spam your Mana potions or Mad Alchemist Potions (If you have the alch trinket and your smart enough to use these :P) to maintain mana.

    So lets look at all current Paladin healing spells. All current healing spells are capable of criting therefore able to return mana on the crit. Now lets look at Beacon of Light. A HoT that is casted on another player incapable of criting at a seemingly large mana cost, about the same as a max rank Holy Light, for arguably effective healing on the target/s.

    My thoughts on how to fix this that would make this spell unique from all the other AoE HoTs that other classes are getting would be to essentially leave the spell how it is, however give each tick the ability to crit based on the spell crit of the caster, not the target. I have not yet had the chance to play Beta so I do not have any personal experience with the spell nor how it ticks each heal, but looking at the tooltip it looks like it ticks every 3 seconds 5 times to equal the 15 second duration (please correct me if I am wrong). So if each tick was capable of criting and returning 60% mana of each tick being 20% of the mana cost (5 ticks in total making each tick 20%), I do not know the mana cost of the max rank of Beacon of Light costs as I do not know a Paladin's base mana at level 80, but lets just say Beacon of Light costs 2000 mana at level 80 for this case. 20% of 2000 mana would be 400 mana. 60% of 400 mana is 240 mana. So if a tick of Beacon of Light crit it would return 240 mana for each crit and should each tick crit it would return a total of 1200 mana equally exactly 60% of 2000 mana.

    That took a lot more room than I thought it would, sorry for it not being much of a TLDR version. Just my thoughts though.
    The problem with AoE HoT's is they can't *be* mana effecient, because if they are, then when you have group stacking encounters, they become *too* powerful.

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