Healing in 3.3: Beacon of Light
Beacon of Light is one of our most important spells tp use effectively. To do this, you must understand the mechanics and manage it properly.
First of all what is Beacon of Light?
Beacon of Light is a buff (you usually cast it on the tank) that duplicates heals to your Beacon of Light. This effectively doubles your healing! It’ll let you heal the tank while healing the raid, or another tank. It's usually the off tank or melee that get healed most often.
Multiple Beacon of Light’s can be active on the same target.
E.g. If you have 2 Holy Paladin’s in the same raid, both can keep Beacon of Light active on the main tank.
If you cast Beacon of Light on another target, the buff falls off your previous target and moves to your new one.
Beacon of Light counts over heals.
E.g. If you cast a Flash of Light on another healer with an active Beacon of Light on your main tank, the total heal will copy to the tank, even if it’s all over healing.
Heals that get copied with Beacon of Light:
Flash of Light
Holy Light
Holy Shock
Lay on Hands
Heals that DO NOT get copied with Beacon of Light:
The Flash of Light heal over time.
The Glyph of Holy Light splash
Judgment of Light
Beacon of Light Healing Delay:
When using Beacon of Light, it's important to also know that there is an approximate delay of half a second from when your heal lands to when the Beacon of light heal is copied.
It's important to be aware of this delay and manage it. Tank healing is all about a constant amount of heals being done to the tank. A delay at the wrong time can be disasterous.
Line of sight:
Beacon of Light requires line of sight. For example: Lets say that you've put Beacon of Light on the tank. You cannot move out of line of sight of the tank and expect the Beacon of Light heals to copy to the tank.
Extra notes:
- If a healing spell crits, the whole amount gets copied.
- Fel Armor triggers separately when you heal a warlock. The trigger does not get copied.
- Tree of Light: There’s no double dipping with this ability. The heal that goes on the initial heal will be the same amount as the heal copied with Beacon.
Beacon of Light in Grid:
It's quite helpful to have Beacon of Light set to show in Grid.
Program into your "Buff" area "Beacon of light" and activate it on your grid to where you want it. I personally prefer it to have a yellow border around your beacon target.
Beacon of Light Mods:
It's actually quite a good improvement over the current interface, especially since Beacon can be up multiple times on the same target. If you want to use the mod option, try BOLT (Beacon of Light Timer)
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info14474-1.35.html
Another mod that I've really liked for paladin timers is called Zomg Buffs. It tracks Sacred Shield, Beacon of Light, Hand of Freedom and Hand of Sacrifice and lets you click on the icon to refresh.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/zomgbuffs.aspx.
A Macro that uses Bigwigs bossmods to keep track of time left:
#showtooltip Beacon of Light
/cast Beacon of Light
/bwlcb 60 Beacon of Light
Macro for Deadly Boss Mods:
#showtooltip Beacon of Light
/cast Beacon of Light
/dbm timer Beacon of Light 60
Or if you don't want to put the extra strain on the mods of add a timer to your boss mod you can use the delay option in chat:
#showtooltip Beacon of Light
/cast Beacon of Light
/in 58 /w [your toon name] Beacon Expires in 2 secs
or an Audio option that works perfectly on patch days:
#showtooltip Beacon of Light
/cast [target=mouseover,help][target=help,nodead][target=targettarget, help,nodead] Beacon of Light
/in 57 /script PlaySoundFile("Interface\\AddOns\\theholypaladin\\beacon.wav")
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
Obviously if you're using Glyph of Beacon of Light, you change the 57 to 87.
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