Noules

If you can have multiple targets with Beacon, I wonder if it would be feasible to have a Lifetap warlock bot to use as a 'focus' for a Holy paladin: Beacons on tanks, warlock does nothing but spam Lifetap with high spirit and the healing buff, paladin gets ridiculous healing throughput. I imagine something will happen that will prevent this scenario...but it would be amusing if you could actually increase your healing output by bringing a lifetapping warlock over another healer. It'd even have a relatively graceful failure mode since even if something happens to the warlock, having Beacon on both tanks means you can still heal both somewhat effectively (or you use another warlock...).

 

Resiana

Personaly, I'm pretty sure the "multiple Beacon of Light" isn't intended and will be limited to one.

I sincerely hope that they reduce a lot the mana cost. Perhaps slightly less costly to that of a Seal.

 

Anedris

I approve this warlock-sacrificing plan. (I doubt multiple beacons will be allowed though - probably when you cast a new one it cancels the old one, or it will have that behaviour by the time it reaches live.)

I generally agree that the new mana mechanics are much less interesting than the previous incarnations.

I'm not so concerned about the death of unique utility. Unique utility is one of the principle things that makes recruiting and maintaining a Sunwell-functional raid a pain, and has resulted in raids that were supposed to be in Sunwell ending up in BT instead because not enough warlocks/shamans/etc. signed up for the night. Yes, they have a mess on their hands to balance it all, but a few things can be kept in mind:

- As long as they don't *really* mess it up, for most people class/spec differences will be almost meaningless in comparison to vast gulfs in player skill. Only the bleeding edge hardcore would actually have the players and characters available to make stacking 17 BM hunters conceivable. For everyone else not only will such a thing be impossible, but the 7% DPS gain it would grant will be completely lost in all the standing in fire and failing to run when conflagged.

- They can do a hack job on the scaling, because they will have careful control over what is "progression content." Due to the staggered release of the dungeons, Blizzard will have a few months to react to each new tier of gear. They can use personal buffs or talents to crudely lop off or add DPS as seems necessary. It wouldn't be elegant, but it would be perfectly workable. (Alternatively they can be clever and manage their balancing act without such blatant intervention, but the blatant is an option because they don't have to try to balance the game for people progressing in t5 while also keeping it balanced for those progressing in t6.)

- People keep saying that this will lead to the minimum number of buffing classes and then stacking combat rogues (or their equivalent). But suppose there is no combat rogue? Suppose there is nothing but buffing classes to choose from? Obviously the min-maxer will pick whatever buffing class brings the most personal DPS, but as long as the gaps are small, I don't think it matters. SK-Gaming can do their thing; it's not like Blizz could possible stop them anyways.

 

Snow

Very curious. Taking 3/3 Shield Spec now changes the tooltip on Shield of the Righteous to say "230% of your block value" rather than 200%.

I did some testing in my ZA block gear.:
159 str
931 total block value on char sheet

with BoK
939 block value on sheet (Shield Spec apparently not working with strength still =( )

931 * 2.00 * 1.05 * 1.15 (templar) = 2248
939 * 2.00 * 1.05 * 1.15 = 2268

The actual shield slams were for 2248 and 2265 respectively. So not only is shield spec not working with strength, the tooltip for shield of the righteousness also becomes incorrect. Also there must be a rounding error somewhere, as I'm doing 3 less damage then I should be after applying kings.

Gonna do some more testing to see if shield spec is working at all.

 

Cathela

That could well be; in fairness a lot of the "new" glyphs for other classes are pretty weak too.

And I did see two glyphs tonight that I hadn't seen before:




That'll change if Replenishment goes live in its current form. In fact, if I'm doing the math correctly, Replenishment will make intellect better than mp5 just as a regen stat.

Here's the math: The itemization cost of mp5 is 2.5 times the cost of intellect, per point. So let's compare 32 mp5 on gear with 80 intellect on gear. (I'm picking these numbers to minimize messy math.)

Well, first of all, BoK makes that 88 intellect. That translates to 1320 additional mana. Replenishment will restore 1/200th of that every second, or 6.6 mana per second. That means every five seconds you'll get 33 mana back, which is more than the 32 mp5 you'd get from spending the itemization points on mp5 instead of intellect. In short: With just Replenishment and BoK, intellect is more efficient mana-regen stat than mp5.

Needless to say, the intellect can also be multiplied through talents for many classes, also increases your spell critrate, also increases your spirit-based regen, also boosts your JoW procs (if they stick with this silly percentage-based system), and also increases your static mana pool.

Basically if Replenishment goes live as it is, mp5 is dead as a raiding stat.


That's Shield of the Templar doing that. Check the tooltip as you fill out your talents and you'll see when it changes.

And dammit, you're right. Strength + Shield Spec is still broken.

Attached Thumbnails

   

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

KnThrak

Comparing Bacon of Light to the Priest's Mark of Divinity, I assume the manacost is what it is to prevent excessive switching. I suspect in each case it is assumed you put the buff on a Tank you won't be healing directly.

In the Paladin's case you then heal another tank, effectively healing both tanks for your full healing power, in the Priest's case you can area/group heal and still have some health buffering going on the tank.

SQUEAK.
-- (The Death of Rats, Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

 

• Aeverius

Mark of Divinity doesn't actually exist, so you can't make any realistic comparisons there.

Improved Lay on Hands is really fucking good:

 

bellator

Can anyone who can connect to the beta server confirm how Beacon of Light works?

Does it still have a 15 second duration or is it like Mark of Divinity and has a 30min duration.

If it's the later then i'm a little shocked by the "meh" responses to it as to me is seems an amazing ability. Being able to heal 2 tanks at once, throw heals on the raid which also hit the tank etc.

Plus For raid damage fights, glyph holy light, hit MT A for 100% of Holy light, the 5 surrounding melee for 10% Holy Light which causes a 150% heal on MT B.

 

teeny

I have a question for beta testers:

When a druid puts Thorns on someone , the damage is considered as coming for the "Thorned" target , not the druid who put it on. Now, let's say i put BoL on myself and heal the tank, is the healing i get back considered as coming from the tank or me?

My point is: do i get the benefit of Spiritual Attunement from the heal?

I hope i maked myself clear , i'm not a native speaker.

 

Prinsesa

I think it was discussed earlier in the thread the Beacon of Light's duplicated heals are credited as being cast by the buffed player, not the casting Paladin.

Testing would still be required though. Correct me if I'm wrong, but both Lifebloom's bloom effect and Prayer of Mending's heal still generate SA when they proc on a Paladin.

With regards to threat, Lifebloom's bloom was recently tested to find that it did not cause any threat at all, while anecdotal evidence from Illidari Council initial pulls indicated that Prayer of Mending not only generates threat credited to the player it procced on, but that it also benefits from Righteous Fury's Holy threat modifier.

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....63815BffMm.png

 

Xequecal

This might be a nitpick here, but on that boss you can have one person take all the Energy Feedback debuffs. So you Beacon them and then just heal the tank. You're fine until 15%.

 

Blutelf

This is not a bad skill per se, but in raids its utility really does diminish greatly. If total heals were transferred, you would be able to keep healing the tank while also helping with spot healing, which would have been great.

How do holy paladins heal in Beta with the downranking changes? Is it mostly FoL and HS with the occasional max HL?

 

Smurrf

Something people are missing when it comes to Beacon of Light, that was tested by GSH:

Having multiple Beacons up will A) cost a lot of mana currently and B) reduce the amount of time your intended targets actually get healed. I was previously working under the thought that it lasted much longer than that...as it stands now, BoL needs a lot more work to be worth going full Holy.

 

flyingtoastr

It lasts for 1 minute. It's getting very "meh" responses because it only works on effective healing, meaning the idea of "throw it on one tank and heal the other for MASSIVE THROUGHPUT™" doesn't work. If the tank you're healing has an avoidance streak you're not getting any effective healing and the other tank either needs to be directly healed by you (defeating the entire purpose of the ability) or splats.

It's just an example... You can take any heavy AoE fight you want and apply the same rule that is still takes 4 single cast cycles to heal group members leading to large downtime between heals, which is why BoL doesn't address our AoE healing problems.

Save Atlantis!

 

bellator

It's still a pretty useful spell when 2 tanks are taking damage. Have one holy pala on each tank and will get some fairly nice transfer of health.

Even with one tank and some raid damage it's not too bad, as holy shocks and infusion of light Holy Lights can be used as spot healing on raid members.

It certainly makes the choice between beacon of light and sheath of light a tougher call.

Edit: Having just seen it has a 1 minute duration. With such a high mana cost my opinion of it has lessened quite a lot. If it has mark of divinity duration that would be fine, and even with it only being effective healing my opinion would be far from the 'meh' responses i'm healing. But with 1 min duration, ouch thats not nice.

Edit2: Ok, this is a weird what if situation. But if you had 2 holy paladins who were being attacked by a lot of enemies, and they put BoL on themselves and the one paladin HS the other paladin, would this cause the healing to continuously bounce between the paladin until they were bot topped?

 

BFG

Regarding new Blessing of Sanctuary:

1. Druid talent Replenish gives 5 rage / 10 runic power / 2% mana
Blessing of Sanctuary gives 10 rage / 20 runic power / 2% mana
An inconsistency here. What is intended - 10 rage / 4% mana for the blessing or 5 rage / 2% mana?

2. Tanks will want both Kings and Sanctuary. Prot Paladin will have both blessings, but will buff Sanctuary, requiring second paladin in the raid to spec Kings. Ret can take it without much pain, but for Holy 11 into Prot means either no BoL or no +5% crit - suboptimal healing spec.

3. Blessings on paladins minigame. Holy wants her own Imp.Wisdom. Ret wants his own Imp.Might. Both want Kings from Prot. Prot wants his own Sanctuary, and Kings and Might from someone else. How do they all get their buffs? Answer: Holy/Ret cast their improved Greater Blessings, Prot casts Greater Kings. After that Prot overwrites his Kings with 10-minute Sanctuary, then Ret replaces Might with 10-minute Kings, then Holy buffs him with 10-minute Might... This may be fun once or twice, but will get old after 100 boss pulls - and 10-minute buffs falling off during trash.

Proposed solution to 2 and 3: Make Sanctuary not standalone Blessing, but a buff attached to Prot's Blessings:

Sanctuary - requires 20 points in Protection talents
Your Blessings also grant Sanctuary, reducing damage taken from all sources by 3%. In addition, when the target blocks, parries or dodges a melee attack the target will gain 10 rage, 20 runic power or 4% of maximum mana.

Regarding new Blessing Glyphs:

As toastr said, reduced cost of Kings does exactly nothing. You buff 9 Greater Blessings, then maybe several lesser ones, then you drink. It didn't matter if Kings cost you 50% less, you drink anyway.

+20 minutes on Wisdom/Might self buffs don't really even save you a reagent. If you don't use group version of the buff, you can easily rebuff self in 10 minutes. These glyphs save you one GCD in 10 minutes.

 

Eligos

They don't stack at all, or they don't stack past 50%? I assume the former, but the latter would allow for Toughness to still be appealing, at least for PvP specs, as Divine Purpose can only get you to a 30% reduction.

 

Worldie

I'd be more interested in Kings baseline honestly or moved from that tree.

Protection and Holy can all grab Improved BoM at the moment, the only "exclusive" blesses are Sanctuary and Improved Wisdom.

The blessing minigame would much more be like
Holy -> Improved Wisdom
Protection -> Improved Might 10 min -> Sanctuary on Self
Retribution -> Kings
Holy -> 10 min Improved Might on the Protection

... or get 4 paladins but this one i don't find a good alternative.

 

bellator

I find it amusing how they removed BoL/BoS to make paladins less needed for blessings, then made everyone want BoM, and upgraded BoSanc, so now hunters/ret etc want 3 blessings, pala tank want 4.

However, personally I would combine might/wisdom into one blessing and make BoK base ability.

With regards the new blessings these are most likely minor glyphs, all of which will do nothing useful and just be silly little changes.

 

Khaelarys

You would think they learned from Zul'Gurub that out of combat mana reductions are a little more than just silly. They're inciting.

Decreasing the mana cost of blessing of wisdom - now that's useful. It give me the ability to reapply it without knowing that it's a mana sink. Making it 0 mana when self-cast would be a decent step in the direction of the beauty that is Water Shield.

Does anyone know if glyphs are unique "equipped", or whatever the correct terminology is? I'd be stoked to get my mount speed down into the 0 casting time range.

Edit: Blessing mini game - wisdom can be replaced by mana spring, but even then we're looking at a Glyphed Imp Might and a Kings/Sanctuary - I guess I'm expecting Warriors to get a similar Glyph to our GBOM. Which leaves two talented blessings, both in the same tree - this reeks to me of just screaming to be "fixed".

 

Fiola

Well, they could have been planning to upgrade BoSanct for a while; and if they hadn't done anything about BoSalv, then that'd be 4/5 blessings "needed". = P


Edit:
I found a post on the official forums that says they stack multiplicatively - someone with both talents received 5 second hamstrings. (hamstring normally lasts 15 seconds)

WoW Forums -> Toughness + Divine Purpose? (WotLK)