I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere at all, but Beacon appears to be effected by line of sight now. When pulling Auriaya we noticed that the boss tank was not getting Beacon heals. He was up on the stairs with the boss while the rest of the raid was around the corner out of line of sight killing the cats. He should have been getting a good chunk of heals from the Beacon(s) we had up, but nada. Range was not an issue, was easily within 40 yards (probably closer to 20).

Edit -- Just tested it again in IF, definitely confirmed.

It has been that way in PvP since the inception of the skill. I had always just assumed it was the same in PvE

Take a ten minute scenario (worst case for LoH because you're just barely getting only one use still). Assuming 100% uptime on beacon, you're looking at casting beacon of light 10 times vs 7 times, so really you're looking at saving roughly 4200 mana over the 10 minutes whereas divinity will be 3900 mana. In a worst case scenario here, lay on hands is barely losing in the race. If you try again with a slightly shorter fight length like 8 minutes, you're looking at 2800 mana instead compared to gaining 3900 mana from divinity. If you keep going farther along to shorter fight lengths or to longer ones (12+minutes) divinity easily outpaces beacon of light. Then in terms of wipes, wiping will favor divinity more than beacon of light because the time spent running, ressing and rebuffing is shortening the cooldown on your lay on hands or in other words, giving you more mana back that beacon glyph doesnt provide.

This also isnt accounting for the fact that we might want to switch beacons early, if that is the case then you're losing all of the 'saved' mana on the duration because of the rebuff. If you want some examples, I'll beacon myself during the first deconstructor tantrum but during the second one will keep beacon on an offtank because they're now taking damage from the pummelers while still taking the tantrum. I'll also usually beacon my tank and throw holy shocks around if I can, but then I decide that I want to use hand of sacrifice, generally speaking I still prefer to beacon myself for HoS instead of the tank because I'll be able to keep the tank and myself up solo if Im beaconed, if the tank is beaconed then the tank will still need healing from another healer to survive if its a decent amount of damage.

So...you can find a few very specific scenarios where beacon of light can outperform divinity, but on average will provide less mana than divinity and then less flexibility with your beacon of light if your playstyle supports changing beacon targets.

Edit/TLDR: Exactly what Apollion managed to get in before me :P

Even if you use LoH to save a raid member, unless you do it right at the start of a fight Divinity is still worth 3900 mana. If refreshed on expiry, Glyph of beacon works out at 40 mp5, it takes over 8 minutes for that to reach 3900 mana. This ignores the fact that, while divinity might be worthless on one specific fight, Beacon itself is pretty weak on any fight which uses a tank-switching mechanic. It's either a self survivability mechanic, which should probably be the first thing you drop if you're hitting mana issues anyway, or else you have to swap which tank it's on so often that the glyph does nothing.

That's not to say it's a bad glyph. There are fights where beacon is sufficiently OP that you want to keep it up as much as possible, and in these situations, the reduced number of GCDs to keep it up is arguably as valuable as the mana savings.

Interesting to see your numbers, Pirjo. I've been doing the same thing with Rawr, and here's the numbers I get:

In my current gear (which admittedly has a pair of U25 pieces already) Rawr is showing 4647 Fight and 4634 Burst. Swapping 5/5 T7.5 for 5/5 T8.5 puts me at 4586 Fight and 4748 Burst. I would trade 61 Fight for 114 Burst plus the new set bonus which I'm pretty certain Rawr does not model.

In my opinion, longevity has yet to be a real issue whereas you can always use more burst.

On another topic, here is a screenshot of a tank with two copies of the SS absorb buff up at once:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...309_230757.jpg
Look near the cursor.

It could be a graphical bug, but I doubt it. I find it more likely that SS simply stacks now, probably as compensation for it being made single target with the patch.

Rawr does currently model SS. If you look at healing done by SS, the 4pc boosts that number by ~50%. I think it is only worth modeling 4pcs upgraded, as the issue really is breaking the 4pc. So some of that upgrade from t7.5 to t8.5 is the stat gains from the 5th slot that is irrelevant with respect to breaking t7.5.

To add one more proviso to the Divinity discussion, remember that it allows you to use LoH for more than just an oh-shit button--it gives you an instant Innervate.

Consider, for example, that you're assigned to heal the MT in an encounter and a disc priest is assigned to heal the OT. Your disc priest, for whatever, goes oom and calls it out on vent. The OT's down to 30% and not getting heals. Is it better to LoH the tank (who will still continue to not receive heals, thus delaying the inevitable) or LoH the disc priest healing him so he can keep the tank alive longer?

You've got to use your best judgment, but sometimes being able to Paladinnervate a healer is more useful than keeping a tank alive for 10 more seconds. (And sometimes it's not.) The point is, Divinity gives you that option. Anything that gives you more options to handle more situations is a very big plus.

Made a "possible" BiS taking into consideration pirjo's testing with rawr of t7 4p vs t8 4p (and I suppose you would need to switch straight from 4 of one to 4 of the other to avoid the downgrade).

Head: [Conqueror's Aegis Headpiece]
Neck: [Pendant of the Shallow Grave]
Shoulders: [Conqueror's Aegis Spaulders]
Back: [Pennant Cloak]
Chest: [Breastplate of the Devoted]
Wrists: [Bindings of Winter Gale]
Hands: [Conqueror's Aegis Gloves]
Waist: [Belt of the Fallen Wyrm]
Legs: [Conqueror's Aegis Greaves]
Feet: [Poignant Sabatons]
Rings: [Signet of Manifested Pain], [Pyrelight Circle]
Trinkets: [Pandora's Plea], [Darkmoon Card: Greatness](90 Int)
Main hand: Val'anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings / [Guiding Star]
Off hand: Wisdom's Hold
Libram: [Libram of Renewal]


Neck, waist, feet & trinkets im less than 100% about and would welcome any input. I am assuming that mana continues to be a non-issue if we use CD's correctly so I've tried to avoid mp5 where possible since it adds nothing else unlike int and crit.

looking to see if this build is raid viable: 39/32/0 Spiritual Attunement Build
The World of Warcraft Armory

stack crit, stam, haste, use holy light.

-crit, more mana back, bigger heals
-stam, cornerstone of the build, the more health you can be without risking your death, the more mana you will get back
-haste, if we're getting more mana back than we know what to do with, we need to cast faster to use it

ive already spec'd and tried it but havent crunched the numbers (didnt seem gimp when i tried it), in virtually all raid encounters the raid takes a lot of damage, additionally you can hand of sacrifice a tank to take some damage (with the additional bonus of mitigating the tanks damage).

comments/criticisms are welcome

double post

You will not find anyone here that likes that build. 51/20 DG build is what you want if you like absorbing damage. The deep Holy talents are useful.

Anyway, if you find a gimped Holy spec with SA very useful for yourself use it, but know that your Paladin is not being the best healer he/she can be. Having more Bubbles + DGs combos and more stamina are neat tricks, but not as practical as deep Holy.