| Spell | Amount Healed |
|---|---|
| Divine Light | 11733 + 1.15306p |
| Beacon - Divine Light | 5866 + 0.57653p |
| Light of Dawn (Glyphed, 3pt) | 11512 + 2.376p |
| Beacon - Light of Dawn | 5756 + 1.188p |
(Values taken from Elitist Jerks.)
For the on-beacon scenario, healing done = 3 DL + 1 LoD + 1 Beacon_LoD.
For the off-beacon scenario, the extra GCD contributes about 60% of a Divine Light. Healing done = 3 DL + 3 Beacon_DL + 60% * DL + 60% * Beacon_DL
If we remove the common 3 Divine Lights from both scenarios, we end up with the following:
On-beacon healing: 17268 + 3.564p
Off-beacon healing: 28159 + 2.767p
Note that on-beacon healing actually has a higher coefficient. What that means is that there is a point of spellpower such that on-beacon healing will surpass off-beacon healing. That point is around 13700 spell power.
So off-beacon healing still does more healing. But there is a cost. That 60% of a Divine Light costs a fair bit of mana, while the Light of Dawn was free. And on-beacon healing will do more if the last heal in the off-beacon scenario was a Holy Light instead of a Divine Light.
So, unless my math is greatly wrong, on-beacon healing is surprising close to off-beacon healing. It may even supersede it if the off-beacon healer casts Holy Lights sometime during the fight, as the mana saved during the on-beacon rotation can allow you to replace some of the Holy Lights with a Divine Light.
Of course, this doesn't count the practicalities of healing specific fights. Sometimes two tanks are taking the brunt of the damage, weighting towards off-beacon healing. Sometimes only one tank is taking damage, weighting towards on-beacon healing. In a 10-man, Light of Dawn is less likely to hit all 6 targets (though it does hit pets as well).
On the one hand, I really think a holy paladin could get away without TOR regardless of focusing on primarily on or off beacon healing.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I'm not sure you'd get much of a benefit from dropping TOR. I guess you could distribute those three points among Blessed Life, Enlightened Judgments, and Last Word, but in reality the extra holy power from TOR tends to be extremely useful in the clutch, particularly when you're the solo healing a tank on an endboss or heroic mode.
I'd probably drop TOR if it meant I could take Eternal Glory, Improved Judgment, and Pursuit of Justice, but there's that pesky minimum 31 point threshold.
At the end of the day, I sort of think TOR is out of place as a 3 point, tier 6 talent, but then I think about how many times its helped a tank survive a huge burst on Cho'Gall or Nef.