Is it still worth using? I haven’t tested all the holy paladin changes yet on my pally but I found that change to be surprising.
25 percent still seems good and feels more in line with beacon of faith now but I feel like beacon of faith looks better.
Also has anyone tested out merciful auras? I enjoy the blessings quite a bit but mindless passive healing is fun too at certain times.
Virtue does heal 5 player now which is really good. Also its a tooltip bug I does 35% like regular beacon not 25%
yes it is in heavy aoe damage taken fight and raid.
Ah, good to know.
Ty ty
I have seen lots of players using it in Dawn of the infinite and recommending it for m+. True, Beacon of the lightbringer well kind of work better with Faith, however managed to do a +20 quick before m+ was disabled and used Virtue instead of Faith, and felt pretty much the same to me. Need definitely more testing but hope it remains viable, since playing m+ would feel weird without it and might be some time to get use to it for me
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.
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 nearly 3k IO and play in M23 keys, these are my feelings.
How are fights now that are AOE healing intensive? Let’s say forgemaster, naraxas, all rot fights like the last one on UR, dragon boss on VP and third boss On HOI.
Have never really used Faith in m+ before and still havent played since yesterday. Also, its been a couple of weeks while since I touched a 23 and dont feel confident going in there with Faith instead of virtue yet
Gameplan is similar but instead of BOV we now have Daybreak, much higher HP generation for more WOGs on demand. We also have Tyr’s Deliverance which is another AOE heal + constant ticking heal and heal buff.
The practical difference is really only 2 targets, one of which should be the tank. With BOV previously you healed the whole group by healing the one without BOV.
Now two people are permanent BOF’ed and you heal the 3rd. This leaves 2 people unaccounted for. One should be the tank who is the most resilient to AOE based attacks which non-tanks are more vulnerable two. The other can be shored up with the increase in spot healing capabilities we have.
For any constant ROT fight BOF will win out over BOV for the reasons I listed. It’s constant ticking damage (as opposed to a burst of AOE requirement) where overall throughput matters more.
Doesn’t BoF have a 30% penalty? Not in game to look, but that’s the tooltip on Wowhead. So, constant 24.5%?
I don’t disagree with the premise btw.
It’s that the case it’s kind of interesting they took paladin in m+ in that direction, since now the talent is not likely to be used in neither m+ or raid at this point
This is very bad reasoning.
Can you explain why??.. From my perspective all of his post was very logical and makes a lot of sense… And it’s also pretty much the same thing Ellesmere said in his stream.
It’s a great explanation for single target heals but doesn’t account for AOE heals interaction with BoV.
LoD 83% SP
WoG 315% SP
BoV on 5 with LoD 5 targets: 83+4x0.35x83 = 199 per player. 996 SP
BoV on 5 with LoD 4 targets: 83+3x0.35x83 = 170 per player. 850 SP
BoV on 5 with WoG: 315+4x0.35x315 = 756 SP
…
BoV on 4 with LoD 4 targets: 83+3x0.35x83 = 170 per player. 680 SP
BoV on 4 with WoG: 315+ 3x0.35x315 = 645 SP
While technically correct that the effect of each heal to a single player is only being amplified by 4 beacons, Seeing it as only 4 beacons in entirety is overly simplistic and assumes only single target heals. With BoV LoD is a much better group heal if it can hit everyone and still better as long as it hits 4 targets. Further any healing that would hit more than 1 player is similarly amplified.
There is more that can be discussed about the rest of your statements but considering only 4 beacons is overly simplistic to your detriment. I don’t have the time to discuss further tonight.
The flaw with the logic of measuring uptime, at least in M+, is the assumption of a constant need of throughput.
Generally, damage patterns in M+ (outside of some rot fights) don’t require constant healing on two predetermined players- mobs get stunned/silenced for a while, group damage intake can go down at the end of a pull when there’s only one mob remaining, BoV can finish its cooldown while you’re running to the next area, tanks are largely pretty self-sufficient, etc- meaning that BoF’s constant uptime is less of a benefit and BoV’s lower uptime is less of a drawback than basic math would indicate.
Basically put, Faith can spend a lot of time on the target but not be actively needed for various chunks of time, particularly if you aren’t frequently micro-managing it. Virtue gives full-group healing specifically when it’s needed so while its uptime may be lower, it is much less likely to have its healing be wasted/not needed.
Not to answer for @Malcvi but from my view his logic regarding Faith vs Virtue is fine in the context of a rot fight, but breaks down when you consider the damage patterns that are more common in M+. That said, Virtue hasn’t always been the play in M+, and I think there are strong arguments for either, but measuring uptime isn’t exactly the strongest overall imo.
Agreed with people’s thoughts on purely BOF versus BOV uptime from a burst perspective. Note that there are other short comings to BOV such as requiring additional gcds. Of course a familiar player will always anticipate the incoming damage spike and pre-empt the BOV, that doesn’t change the fact that the gcd could have instead been spent on something else. With the amount of holy power we generate now, there are many things we can do with an extra gcd.
Additionally the increased mana upkeep of repeatedly spending on BOV and the fact that during moments when BOV would be down (where BOF is constantly up) the player is receiving more benefit on average from holy paladin mastery.
BOF is currently only transferring 25% of healing. Was the same in the PTR. This is with the talent that increases the amount transferred by 10%.
BoF without the beacon increase talent would be doing 30% less of 25%, with the talent it’ll be doing 30% less of 35%.
Virtue does 35% with the talent while Faith does 25% after the reduction.
Beacon of Virtue is a dead talent now. amid all of our new capabilities and globals we need even in 5 man content I am now using beacon of faith. I could see maybe finding use for it on a bursting week maybe ? idk.
I am using Ellismere’s builds and they are the most effective I’ve tried.
few.
It can be. We have lots of different tools for our AOE healing now, and BoV is one of them. But I don’t think there is any scenario where we need all of them. Personally, I’ve always found BoV clunky, even when it was at its strongest, because I don’t like how it takes a GCD every time you cast it before you can do any healing. I much prefer Faith, though. Usually I’ll use my two permanent beacons on two ranged party members, and I can heal myself, the tank and one melee dps extremely easily from up close without having to put much thought into positioning or range. This has been the first expansion ever where I rarely choose to beacon the tank, since many of them are so good at surviving and self-healing. If I feel like my tank needs a little extra help, Barrier of Faith works extremely well as a sort of third beacon for tanks specifically, since the shield is usually more helpful than a heal (especially if you run with a lot of demon hunter or death knight or paladin tanks).