Beacon of Faith in M+

[Tarazet 144]

Through all of Legion and up to now I've taken for granted that Beacon of Virtue was a great talent for 5 mans. The ability to quickly burst heal everyone in the group is great. When you have predictable high AoE damage, like the Bursting affix, I would not want anything else. At the same time, it can be an annoying talent to use for many reasons:

- It builds bursts and lulls into the healing pattern, because there is no permanent Beacon up

- If the tank is taking massive damage, he can easily be left vulnerable when BoV is down, or because of the reduced transfer rate through the Beacon

- If the tank is taking massive damage, your mana gets destroyed (because there is likely no Beacon on him)

- BoV takes mana to apply, albeit not much (2,000)

- This is the killer: the GCD that you're literally not healing anything whatsoever, this can leave you in the dust when SHTF.

After enduring several key runs with the Teeming / Fortified / Quaking combo and feeling frustrated with BoV, I decided to try using Beacon of Faith instead, with one Beacon on myself and one on the tank. I'm not going to say everyone should go out and switch, but I think it made a huge difference on those affixes.

The main thing is that without having to re-cast the Beacon on a regular basis, instead you can instantly react to any situation with a heal, and it will be transferred to the two Beacon targets because it's always up. I didn't find the loss of the AoE capability given by BoV to be a problem.

Give it a shot and you might be surprised how it works. It certainly was more fun and less stressful for me.

Edited September 27, 2018 by Tarazet

[Valks 2,373]

Does using Faith not fall short on things like tick pulls in Underrot? Where there is constant split AoE damage that isn't controlled in how it hits?

I can see you said the lack of AoE doesn't seem to be a problem, but I just can't understand how. Like, the things that really spring to mind are:

• Underrot trash.
• Bursting affix.
• Shrine 2nd boss and trash afterwards.

It just seems like you'd miss that BoV so much. Where did you test Faith? What dungeon?

[Tarazet 144]

Looping back around to this. It seems that fewer and fewer Holy Paladins are using BOV now, which is partially because of the Glimmer of Light build being so strong. The Glimmer of Light build provides a lot of extra low target healing in 5 mans by cycling Holy Shock around to different targets. There are still some situations where Holy Paladin is a little compromised, and BOV performs well with the Bursting, Quaking and Grievous affixes. Even so, I see BOV as a talent you use in those exceptional cases only - otherwise, the benefit of Divine Purpose is better suited to the type of damage intake that groups take in Mythic+. The static beacon on the tank goes a long way towards making dungeons with high tank damage and frequent spikes easier to manage, like Atal'Dazar and King's Rest. Best of all, if your group is not getting pounded, then DP also increases your damage output!