Why exactly is Beacon of Faith a good talent

[anon85393888]

I have been testing out different talents and in order to pick Beacon of Faith you need to sacrifice some really good ones, which to me doesn’t seem worth it. However when I look at other Holy Paladins it seems that to them Beacon of Faith is like an absolute necessity, which is something I don’t really understand. So I would like to understand why exactly Beacon of Faith is such a good talent. I’m asking this specifically for PvP, so I’m not interested in anything PvE related.

Here are some reasons I can think of why Beacon is good, from what I can feel when I play:

• Along with Saved by the Light, it allows you to put a safety net on 2 different people, so if some i.e. RMP comp does a random switch, they have to get through an additional shield before killing someone.
• It allows self casting and casting on a primary target to constantly generate holy power with Tower of Radiance on two different people.
• Throughout the course of the arena it saves you a couple of GCPs, when you don’t need to cast beacon on a target before flashing them or keep swapping beacons as much.
• Sometimes in a critial moment during burst you might not have the time to spend that extra global cooldown to beacon someone.

There are very good reasons why I also like Beacon of Faith, being able to just slap it on someone and forget about them, hardly ever swap it and just focus on other things. However here are some reasons why taking it doesn’t necessarily seem that good:

• It reduces the amount each target receives to 30% instead of 50%. So on 100k heal you are effectively getting a 10k heal increase on it, essentially it doesn’t really heal more, it just splits it. This can be a really bad thing if you actually only needed to heal 2 targets.
• In arena it most often happens that 1 or two of us is taking damage, it incredibly rarely happens that all 3 of us is taking damage at the same time, so most of the time that 30% heal is completely wasted on overheals. Against some very specific comps like afflic it works well, but I’m way more scared of a warr/ret bursting my partner than any afflic and against those comps it never happens that they burst 3 different targets.
• Very often if I need to heal 2 targets healing for only 30% instead of 50% is a really big disadvantage. My partner is on 50%, my other partner is on 90%, I’m on 80%, in such a scenario, having beacon on me and healing my partner who’s on 50% is significantly better than wasting Faith overheals on the 3rd partner and topping the 2 of us that really need it up much faster.
• If we are playing an arena and we’re losing so much cc and control of the match that my partner is actually getting down to 30% hp and triggering that Saved by the Light, most often the shield won’t save them anyways. It does happen that sometimes that shield is all you needed to keep them alive, but very often it doesn’t really make a difference. If my positioning was off and I end up getting badly cc’ed, again the shield isn’t really going to make much of a difference.
• Using RMP as an example, which in my mind is one of the worst comps where Saved by the Light really can help, even then they have so much control and burst that even if by some little chance that shield did save your partner, it’s a 1 min cooldown and they just reset in 30 seconds and next time you aren’t so lucky. Most of the times it doesn’t really make a significant difference on top of your other cooldowns like sac.
• As a heal I am incredibly rarely the target in 3s, in 2s sometimes but also rarely, so most of the time it’s pretty useless to have beacon on myself. And often it’s quite easy to tell who the target is going to be. It can happen that they suddenly swap to another partner or me, but in such an event it’s not critical that you have to spend a GCP on beacon and you can just ignore it because it’s not like you’re going to get a flash heal off anyways with them swapping to you.
• Previously I would have said it’s fine to take, but right now I have to sacrifice Divine Toll or Glimmer of Light or Blessing of Summer or Empyrean Legacy for it and to me it just doesn’t seem worth it at all to sacrifice any of those for Faith.

So I feel a bit uncertain, because on the one hand I also want to just slap a beacon on someone and be mentally lazy and just forget it exists, on the other hand I feel like it isn’t worth it to take it. So I was hoping someone could help me understand why exactly is it such a good talent or where exactly in arena is it really valuable to have or in which circumstances, or what am I not thinking about?

[Dejarous-draenor (Dejarous)]

First off, are you “copying” pve builds? A lot on wowhead and the main sites will be pve oriented builds.

The next thing is that people might be taking it because paladonks have had 2 beacons in recent memory so they are just trying to duplicate recent experience for “comfort”.

Finally, its good to question what you lose and what you gain to take a path. I don’t have the answer to your question but you’re approaching it logically. Some people used to take the view “I’m not a sheep!” and then go with a trash load out to prove a point.
I don’t think we’re at the point yet where we can say things are objectively bad or not, situation and preference look quite important in this tree meaning that there may be no “optimal” tree the community coalesces around.

I don’t have a holy example atm but the prot one for mythic plus is ALL about doing damage. Theres an excellent talent there thats a 25% damage reduction on a 1 min CD. I’d take that in a heartbeat and forgo a little damage.

tl;dr play it a bit and see if lived experience works with your theorycrafting.

[anon85393888]

Thank you for your thoughts.

I have not copied PvE builds no, I was looking at the ranked ladders for the top 10 Holy Paladins in 2v2 and 3v3 on US and EU servers and looking at the talents they took.

I also believe many are taking it just because it’s “been the way” even though it might not be the best right now to take.

What you say is also true. When I look at what the top 40 ranked paladins are taking, it really doesn’t seem that there is any “best” way to go, they all take relatively different things that fit their own playstyle, some taking caster build, some melee build, some Tyr’s Deliverance, some not, etc. And I guess also that a lot more testing has to be done before we can really know what will end up being the best or more consistently win arenas.

What I noticed yesterday night after researching more (after making my initial post) is that while roughly 80% of the top paladins did take Beacon of Faith, about 20% of them also didn’t take it and opted for completely leaving it in favour of taking Divine Toll or Tyr’s Deliverance. Which to me at least validates that I’m not alone in thinking that it’s not as useful compared to some of the other talents you need to sacrifice.

As for PvE, I’m by no means an expert in PvE but even in PvE I’m not sure it’s even that good to take any more, especially with higher mythic pushes and more controlled groups with tanks swapping etc. It would make more sense to have a 50% heal on the main tank instead of a 20% reduction on their heals, or wasting heals on an offtank that isn’t necessarily taking damage.

However if I don’t take Faith I too will miss just being able to put it on someone and forget about it, it certainly will take more mental energy to keep track of who has beacon and to keep swapping it and to predict swaps to spend that GCP in time to have beacon on the main heal target, but the more I experiment and see what people are doing I think this is the way.