Glimmer, Beacon or Virtue?

Classes Paladin
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I am currently using Virtue as the AOE healing is so nice from it, But am wondering if Glimmer is actually better or the single beacon and then just moving the beacon around the party when needed??

Coming from playing a DIscipline priest Glimmer feels to me a lot like Atonement healing as you cant do many holy shocks during the glimmer window due to the almost 7 second cooldown timer(Unless lined up with Avenging Wrath + sanctified wrath which reduces it to a 3.5 second cooldown roughly).

Just wondered what everyone would recommend?

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To play Glimmer, you also want Crusader’s Might, get in melee, and start dishing out some crusader strikes to reduce Holy Shock’s cooldown. With that, you can Glimmer the whole party nicely. When you take Beacon of Virtue, you loose access to Beacon of Light, which is incredibly strong: quite a lot of the times, you can just put Beacon on the tank, and heal the party, and let that cleave to the tank, and they’ll be fine. Pretty much free tank healing for 0 mana and GCD cost.

For AoE healing, there’s Divine Toll. If you need to AoE heal more often than that, then you’ll need to spread Glimmer better, or your party needs to stop standing in bad.

I would recommend glancing through Ellesmere’s (#1 M+ healer, holy pally) guide on playing a holy paladin, the playstyle section: https://wingsisup.com/mplus-playstyle, the “AoE healing without Virtue” part, in particular.

From personal experience, I started out with a Virtue build, because I thought I needed it to heal the party. I’m now running Glimmer on my paladin, and faring much better. I pretty much keep it on the tank 99% of the time, there’s little reason to move it around, because if someone’s taking a lot of damage, I’ll just heal them with Holy Shock, WoG, use Blessing of Sacrifice or Protection on them, or otherwise directly heal them. There are very few cases where moving Beacon of Light off the tank makes sense in M+. With Beacon on the tank, whenever I heal someone, half of that cleaves to the tank, and that’s quite massive. To quote Ellesmere:

Basically instead of pressing a button that heals 4 players for 5% of their health, we press a button that heals one person for 20% of their health. The idea with this is that you always prioritize the player most in danger whenever you use a healing ability until everyone is topped.

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I should have said Im playing Venthyr not Kyrian, So dont have access to DT : (

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In that case, Ellesmere’s guide has a Venthyr section too. You will be loosing a lot of sanity though as a Venthyr, unless you’re playing in a fixed team.

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Thank you for this - This is the MVP post

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Overall Glimmer is the best out of the three but there are situations where the other options are better. But overall Glimmer is the way to go.

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After much messing around I have started to use Virtue more and more as I find people in PUG,s either facetank shades a lot and or stand in lots of bad or miss interrupts and the group wide heal seems very good against prides as well (If your DPS is a bit low then I find Glimmer to not be as strong but im probably not playing it right and it becomes a real challenge to keep people up with the trickle healing from glimmer).

Overall I think Glimmer has the potential to be really good but in the keys im runnign 10-13 atm Virtue is more effective for me at least.

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For Glimmer, you’ll want haste, and to be crusader striking as often as possible, to holy shock people and spread Glimmer. Those shocks, and the WoGs, will also heal the tank via Beacon of Light. Pride healing with Glimmer is fairly easy, as long as people aren’t standing in every single projectile: spread glimmer, WoG the lowest person. Divine Toll if it lives too long and you fell behind. Judgement on cooldown to proc Judgement of Light also adds a non-trival amount of healing, making it slightly easier to keep people up.

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Glimmer of Light and Beacon of Virture are both extremely strong talents. Personally, I use both of them depending on the key and affixes of the week. I often tend to use Glimmer of Light on Mythic+ Dungeons that I can comfortably heal but, on higher keys >+15 I tend to use Virtue for the AoE healing on Prideful. On the other hand, if I’m raiding I’ll always go Glimmer of Light as it gives better HPS in a raid setting that any of the other talents in the row.

Seen as your Venthyr and not Kyrian I’d really recommend staying with Virtue for the AoE healing but, you can definately get away with Glimmer of Light if you are good at timing cooldowns and Ashen Hallow. I was Venthyr for a while and struggled with healing higher keys so I switched back to Kyrian as it’s a lot stronger in terms of HPS.

In my opinion it’s all personal preference with these talents. There’s an amazing Holy Paladin streamer called Zmokamok, I really suggest watching some of his Holy Paladin healing videos.

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I’m Venthyr on my paladin, and Glimmer works fine for pride healing even at +19. Pop Holy Avenger when things start to hurt real bad, and you do massive amounts of healing. By going Virtue, you’re missing out on a ton of tank healing, as you’ll no longer be able to WoG others and cleave it on the tank.

If you need Virtue for Pride, then you’re either not timing your CDs well, your group doesn’t kill the pride fast enough (at higher key levels, at least some of them should pop a CD to kill it faster), or you’re at 25+ key levels. Unless you’re at 25+, Glimmer nets you more healing over the dungeon, and is perfectly fine for Pride aswell.

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I didn’t really state this very well in my post:

I often use Glimmer of Light, it’s the main talent that I run. But when I’m pushing a new key like for instance a +17 NW I like to have Beacon of Virtue for AoE healing as I find myself occasionally getting overwhelmed or behind on healing.

Overall I agree, Glimmer of Light does give you better overall HPS in the Dungeon but, in my opinion I find that Virtue can be just as good in certain situations. It’s heavily dependant on the key level and affixes of the week. I’ve found this week that Virtue has come in handy due to Inspiring and Fortified but, it’s completely dependent on the group I’m running with.

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Problem is, that with Virtue, you’re losing a ton of tank healing via baseline Beacon, which only becomes more important as keys go up. Yes, Virtue makes it feel easier to correct mistakes the party makes, but overall, you will spend more time playing catch up, rather than doing damage (which is the strongest point of a paladin healer, really).

I’d rather my team learns not to stand in bad. I can make up for some mistakes, but if they stand in bad long enough to make Virtue necessary, that’s a problem best fixed at its root, rather than working it around with a healer spec change. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Glimmer of light all the way. I play vent at around 19-20 keys. If people take too much damage its their own fault for either standing in stuff or not rotating interrupts. The only problem I have is prides where I will either use the cd that generates 3 holy power instead of one, as well as aura mastery. Important to spread glimmer on all. And have at least one dps pop cds to survive it. You can abuse divine shield and sac some one as well if really needed for a pride. Read Ellesmere guide, it goes through basically everything you need. How to abuse freedom and bop for certain mechanics.

It is stressful as hell to heal as vent. But it’s doable with a good group and good cd management. Make sure you make good use all tools in your box.

Also make sure you abuse divine protection as its only on a 42sec cd.

Edit. Also another thing I’d like to add. Abuse light of the martyr. It’s really underestimated. Looking at Ellesmere logs his forth most used heal is light of the martyr. Good to use in situations where you have no holy power and can’t go into melee to regen holy power from crusader strike because of cleave of other mechanics in melee range you gotta watch for. Just be careful not using it when you’re low and know you’re without danger. It heals really well if it crits or you have wings up, even without that its stronger than a flash of light.

Another thing I learned recently that Ellesmere made a video about is running beacon of faith for really high keys 25-27. He puts onen beacon on himself and one on the tank which leaves him with rally good passive healing for both his tank and himself letting him focus healing on the dps.

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Glimmer is usually the go to in all scenarios, but in PUGS it can be a nightmare talent.

You mentioned that you played Priest? It’s the exact same as with Priest, where Disc is usually considered the best spec, but only with a group that knows what they are doing.

When it comes to PUGs where you risk playing with bad players, Holy Priest is recommended because it better at dealing with a team full of idiots that keep standing in fire. :sweat_smile:

And as with Holy Paladin, Glimmer is good when you have a team of players that knows strats somewhat. But if you play with with a team of idiots that keeps taking avoidable damage, then Virtue is MUCH better.

I personally play with Virtue in lower level PUGs because there are so many “new players” :sweat_smile: And when playing with guildies, higher keys or raids, I go Glimmer. :slightly_smiling_face:

When people blatantly say “Glimmer is ALWAYS better, and if they keep standing in fire, it’s THEIR own fault”, is just a stubborn meta attitude to have :sweat_smile:

You gotta think about your end goal and the content you are doing :slightly_smiling_face: Glimmer is NOT better in lower lvl PUGs most of the time. Unless you wanna get into toxic arguments all the time with your low lvl PUG groups, telling them “what idiots they are for standing in fire” :stuck_out_tongue: Then SUUURE go Glimmer hehe.

I personally just start out with Virtue and save myself the drama :blush: and its multiple times easier to deal with “bad players” when using it.

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Depends on the player

if you wanna do like the competetive bois with the ‘‘but muh deeps’’ over healing then glimmer is always the best option

for beacons it depends if you pug or not, when pugging i always pick virtue because standing in fire is a requirement when queing for group as dps

if i play with THE BOIS ( actually the girls, but for meme purposes ) i pick double bacon

If OP is pugging he wont keep his sanity anyway! :smiley:

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I used to do that too, before switching to Venthyr. Ended up finding it unnecessary, because Divine Toll allowed me to patch people up, and they all had Glimmer on them for a while then, too, if they continued to stand in bad. Glimmer also allows me to have base Beacon on tank, so when I heal the DPS who stand in bad, I also cleave to the tank who doesn’t use defensives.

The major difference between how I play pugs and pre-made, is that in PuGs I aggressively spread glimmer, even if the particular pull doesn’t need it - just so I can cleave heal them anyway. While in a pre-made, I only spread glimmer when the pull needs it, otherwise I holy shock aggressively, rather than defensively.

Keep in mind, that not using defensives as a tank is also a must-have pug trait, and with Virtue, you loose the ability to cleave standing-in-fire DPS healing onto the whats-a-defensive-precious tank.

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To some degree yes, some tanks mindset is just ‘‘its the healers job to keep me alive i need to dps lolololo’’

Ye but thats pretty niche that you can handle without bacon

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I found it quite common in lower-level pugs, tho. Ended up learning to spread Glimmer in advance, and keep cleaving onto the tank. (Always running Glimmer also has the advantage that you get used to it :))

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In lower keys with in random group im using Virtue becuase i don’t know people and how they play mechanics so that spell is very handy for saving a bad players :smiley:
But when im in group of friends or with someone i know and he is with me on DS im using glimmer becuase i can do much more with glimmer :slight_smile:

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