The wowhead guide says to use virtue. However, murlok and mplus subcreation both show the top guys all running beacon of faith. Does anyone have any insight to why they would use faith instead of virtue for m+?
Preference, mostly. I’d rather have two beacons all the time than 5 beacons some of the time. Could also be dependent on your comp/raid/dungeon when there’s lots of AoE damage.
Who do you put your two beacons on? tank and a ranged?
Yes. Tank and usually the weakest ranged in the group or a Hunter (Cause they’re made of paper.)
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I’m going to copy/paste a reply I put on another thread with some minor edits.
BOV is quite bad, providing up to 5 players with a 35% beacon whereas BOF constantly provides two people with 35% beacon.
Once it is understood that the beacon transfer strength of BOF and BOV are the same, we can begin to think through this.
In the context of M+, where BOF used to shine, it only proivdes 4 players with a beacon. The reason for this is when only 5 players are present and all 5 have beacon, then only 4 can possibly benefit because you are healing the 5th (who will not get the beacon benefit). We will not consider a scenario where you’re healing a pet because quite frankly its not realistic.
So it comes down to always 2 beacons or sometimes 4? Well what is the uptime of 4 beacons? It’s less than 50% when considering GCD. Beacon is 8 second duration with a 15 second CD but you incur a gcd so in reality the uptime is less than 50%.
Take into consideration that this is basically your best case scenario where you use BOV on CD, in reality you don’t and therefore the uptime is less than 50%. Resulting in overall lower throughput than BOF.
Further, consider that BOF is constantly up on two people. Therefore maximizing the new Beacon of the Lightbringer talent. There are now 3 different positions from which mastery is measured, yourself and the two BOF targets. Again another win for BOF.
Then we move over to mana. While our mana situation is definatley better, constantly casting BOV is a drain on mana relative to BOF which is mostly casted once, then again upon death.
If we consider raid content where you could theoretically get max value from BOV, that is casting BOV on 5 people and healing a 6th (in a raid environment you would have atleast 10 people) that’s where BOV would produce a theoretically higher throughput. But I would still argue this is worse because you don’t really control which targets receive the BOV, it could just so happen to be 5 less ideal targets.
With the increase in holy power, everyone is feeling the ability to cast more abilities and be gcd locked. No one wants to spend an additional gcd every 15 seconds to get BOV out there just for the theoretical gain in a strictly raid environment.
The options for AOE healing are also increased with Rising Daylight, shortened (45 sec) Divine Toll (this was always available but this season CDR DT is taken over Divine Resonance) and Holy Prism (targetting enemy, assuming you have tier, which you should), glimmers providing DR and absorb shield.
My end take on this (and I would love to hear people who disagree with me and their reasoning) is that BOV was over nerfed and effectively is a dead ability/talent now.
For reference I’m 3.1k IO and play in M24 keys, these are my feelings.
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Preference, really.
I find that damage patterns for the most part are more favorable to BoV. Sure, you can have an extra Beacon up permanently with Faith, but you don’t actually need the healing all of the time. There are plenty of times where there is little group damage going out and Faith is just overhealing, so I like to have full-group healing on demand. For context, I PuG mid keys on my Paladin. I’ve found that tanks are in general self-reliant enough that I don’t miss having a beacon on them constantly, and with a 1-min Sac, it’s rare that I have to pump heals onto a squishy tank much.
Question: the tank generally takes consistent damage and is thus an obvious target for one of the beacons. However, in AoE heal checks, the tank is usually the group member that requires the least attention. Do you find yourself switching a beacon to another DPS for group damage events much, or do you mostly set and forget them?
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Pugging I like to take BoV, but honestly its just boils down to personal preference.
But keep in mind this is from someone that just does mid keys
Why is this exactly? Divine Toll lines up well with daybreak. Am I not supposed to use these together? For healing/mana I’d divine toll into daybreak. For damage, I’d get a few regular glimmers out, daybreak into divine toll.
In the context of M+ you do not need to pair DT/Daybreak together. In fact it’s typically better to maximize uses of DT (every 45 sec where it’s not a complete waste).
Daybreak on it’s own is still very powerful assuming you’re keeping glimmers going on a good number of targets.
I was watching an Ellesmere stream the other day. He had beacons on the squishier dps while the tank (guardian, go figure they don’t need the beacon trickle heal) is left to either their own self sustain or direct heals.
In a world where Tyr’s and Daybreak exists, BoV feels like its overkill now.
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It’s entirely dependent on what’s going on the moment but for the majority of the time it’s set and forget it. I may switch my Beacon Of Faith around to other members as needed but a beacon always stays on the tank.
The best advise I can give you is to go check Ellesmere’s guide, he explains all of those concepts regarding BoV vs BoF and also Daybreak and Divine Toll usage…
He recently released this guide:
He also has a written guide at wingsisup.com
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It’s easier to have two permanent beacons up (especially with Beacon of the Lightbringer) than it is to micromanage a GCD + mana cost every 15 seconds, so part of it is just ease of use.
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After our rework, we have waaaay more tools than we used to have for dealing with AOE damage, and Virtue just isn’t as necessary as it used to be, when it was one of our only good tools for that.
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I’ve heard the “damage pattern” and “don’t need faith” arguments before. They’re reasonable arguments but I don’t agree with them.
- “damage pattern” only favors BOV if its spikey and/or unpredictable. Rot based BOF wins out and unexpected BOF wins as you don’t need to incur the extra gcd. So that leaves spikey as tbh nothing should be unpredictable unless its mistakes (which while reaslitic) should be handled through other means such as less errors. Either way for both cases Tyrs Deliverance → Hand of Divinity → 2x instant Holy Light on different targets (neither with BOF) with their splash heal (Resplendent Light) is going to make BOV look like a joke. BOV style game play was dependent on empowered WOGs and EL, neither of which are used anymore. The new tools (barrier of faith, day break, 2 charge holy shock + chance to refund charge, tyrs deliverance) have effectively made on demand group healing simple.
In addition, if you have not tried Holy Prism you NEED to try it. The major (MAJOR) change from 10.1.5 is that the heal range has been extended to 30 yards and this has put the ability light years ahead of Lights Hammer. This is yet another way to handle AOE group healing now.
- In regards to “not needing” BOF to heal. My response would be that any constant tool which makes healing easier and faster to top the party back to 100% means we can now spend more gcd and holy power (which we’re abundant in now) on damage. Our damage is now very good. So if BOF allows an extra 1-2 gcd into damage rotations I’ll take it and unlike previously our damage is actually good.
I was a bit doubtful using faith. After trying it out, it feels overall easier vs using virtue. For one, saving that gcd is huge. When that aoe pop happens, your first gcd is getting health bars back up vs waiting til after you press virtue. Faith is just constant and it is always working without needing the gcds.
Hi. For the recent season 4, do you still feel the same way?
I was a virtue doubter all last season, but after using it this season it feels so much better. Especially on bosses like the third in HoI where needing 300k+ hps is easy. Faith i can see use in low key carries but once standing in fire one shots having a heal everyone button for actual unavoidable mechanics feels great. Also tanks dont need trickle healing anymore, i swear its either all the healing or none.
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