Patch 5.4 PTR's Level 45 Talents for Holy Paladins

The Changes:
Blizzard recently updated the Public Test Realm patch notes for World of Warcraft's 5.4 patch, which includes significant changes to the level 45 talent tier for Paladins. The relevant patch notes are as follows:

Talents

• Eternal Flame's initial healing has been reduced by 30%. 

• Sacred Shield (Old) has been renamed to Holy Shield and is no longer a talent. Holy Shield is a Protection Paladin ability learned at level 85. 

• Sacred Shield (New)
• Holy: When the Paladin or their Beacon of Light target falls below 30% health, that target gains a Sacred Shield absorbing damage equal to 30% of their maximum health. Sacred Shield can only occur once every 2 minutes. 

• Protection, Retribution: When the Paladin falls below 30% health, they gain a Sacred Shield absorbing damage equal to 30% of their maximum health. Sacred Shield can only occur once every 2 minutes. 

• Selfless Healer stacks now also work on Divine Light in addition to Flash of Light.
• Bastion of Glory will now apply Selfless Healer's bonus to healing to the casting Paladin as well as other targets and consume all stacks of Bastion of Glory in the process.

Holy

• Mastery: Illuminated Healing no longer activates from periodic healing effects.

Don't panic, though! Community Manager Rygarius clarified some of the changes and the intentions behind them in this forum post. I'm not going to go over everything, but here are the salient points:

• Selfless Healer was intended to be a viable option for Holy Paladins who happen to enjoy a playstyle that involves frequent usage of Judgment. Blizzard recognizes that not everybody enjoys this playstyle, so it's not meant to be an attractive talent for everybody.
• Eternal Flame was used far too frequently by Holy Paladins, so Blizzard is trying to figure out how to nerf it so Selfless Healer and Sacred Shield become viable choices. The 30% nerf to Eternal Flame's initial heal will probably be reverted, but the change to make it no longer stack Holy's Illuminated Healing mastery is here to stay.
• Sacred Shield's changes listed above are all pretty much going to be scrapped, because it buffs Protection too much and because the new Sacred Shield is unattractive for Holy and Retribution. Blizzard is looking for a way to make the currently existing talent more attractive to Holy and Retribution, but they haven't decided what exactly to do quite yet.

That means the level 45 talent changes for Holy Paladins at the moment amount to the much more easily manageable:

Talents

• Selfless Healer stacks now also work on Divine Light in addition to Flash of Light.

Holy

• Mastery: Illuminated Healing no longer activates from periodic healing effects.

My Thoughts:
I am actually somewhat intrigued by the Selfless Healer changes. At level 90 and with 26,000 spellpower (roughly normal tier 15-geared), a 3-stack of Selfless Healer grants you the approximate healing power of a Divine Light plus a Holy Light for the mana cost of a Holy Light and 4 nonconsecutive global cooldowns. The big question I have, though, is how does it interact with Infusion of Light procs? If the instant Divine Light consumes the proc, then it loses much of its appeal, but if it leaves the proc untouched (or better yet, allows the instant Divine Light to bypass triggering the global cooldown in exchange for consuming the proc), then it might be worthwhile to give this talent a second look.

However, Selfless Healer still has one fundamental flaw: Judgment just isn't really a Holy spell. Protection and Retribution both have effects that make it something worth casting relatively frequently, but Holy has no real reason to cast it except for this talent. Without some additional base effect for Holy, spending global cooldowns on Judgment will always be seen as a detriment, and I think Selfless Healer will remain unpopular.

As for Eternal Flame and Sacred Shield, the former's HoT ticks refreshing the Illuminated Healing mastery is a blatantly overpowered mechanic, and so many Holy Paladins choose this talent that I can see why Blizzard wants to tone it down, however the biggest reason why I chose Eternal Flame over Sacred Shield (even though I had tried Sacred Shield first and prefer it conceptually over Eternal Flame) is that Eternal Flame benefits from haste, critical strike, mastery, and transfers over Beacon of Light, whereas Sacred Shield only benefits from haste. Unless Blizzard allows Sacred Shield to benefit from Holy's strengths as well as Eternal Flame does, I'm not sure it will ever be as attractive.

On the Rivalry of Mastery and Beacon

Holy Paladins have traditionally been known through World of Warcraft's history for being the healing class with the smallest healing toolkit. Over time and expansions, our tools have grown more numerous and eventually Blizzard standardized healing abilities to some degree in Cataclysm, but generally speaking our toolkit has rarely had an excess of abilities that performed the same basic task. The current Holy Paladin mastery—Illuminated Healing—and one of the tree's defining activated abilities—Beacon of Light—seem to me to be the new exception.

As things currently stand, both Illuminated Healing and Beacon of Light are two tools that essentially share the same primary function: to act as a health buffer for tank healing. However, the two act in such conflicting ways that they feel like rivals competing for a single job rather than two distinct utility abilities that each have their place in our toolbox. The way Beacon of Light is designed makes it less appealing, even with Tower of Radiance, to cast directly on the buffed tank unless absolutely necessary, but the Illuminated Healing mastery makes it more appealing to cast directly on the tank and thereby bypass Beacon of Light's whole purpose. Since both Beacon of Light and Illuminated Healing are wasted on targets that are not consistently taking damage, the only time the two effectively work together are when multiple tanks are taking damage simultaneously and for prolonged periods of time, which only happens in raids, and even then not on every fight.

The problem is made worse by the rules governing the Holy Radiance ability in patch 4.3. Even though the ability is being redesigned as an active heal rather than a passive one, it still won't be allowed to transfer through Beacon of Light, unlike our other AoE healing ability, Light of Dawn, and our other primary Holy Power generator, Holy Shock. However, it will be allowed to benefit from the Illuminated Healing mastery, which makes it feel like it should be used on or near tanks in order to not risk making the tank's health less stable.

I hope Blizzard doesn't leave the situation as-is, especially as design moves forward for the upcoming Mists of Pandaria expansion. To some degree, it feels to me that if the two abilities can't (or won't) be made to play nicely with each other, then either one should be altered to fit a more distinct role or the two should be rolled into a single ability.

Beacon of Light: Backwards?

As you may know, Beacon of Light is the new 51 point talent for the Paladin Holy tree. It's designed to allow the Paladin to better handle healing situations in which multiple targets are taking damage—a scenario in which Paladins were very ill-equipped to handle prior to patch 3.0.

Now, this post isn't so much about the talent's effectiveness or what I think about it (but if you must know, I'm not really a fan). It's about the divergence between the talent's design and name.

Generally speaking, Blizzard does a phenomenal job of making sure that spells and abilities fit well with the names they're given. Rohan, of Blessing of Kings, discusses this in the post Ability Names. Beacon of Light, in my opinion, is one exception. When I look at the nomenclature of Beacon of Light, I tend to divide it into two parts: "Beacon" and "of Light". The latter part is pretty self-explanitory, and I have no quarrel with it. My problem lies with the useage of the word "Beacon".

Think about it: a beacon is something which emits energy, usually in the form of light. However, Beacon of Light does not turn its target into something which emits the Light—it turns the target into something which mirrors the healing received by other targets. As a result, I always feel that the effect is somewhat backwards every time I use it.

So, what happened? Why did Blizzard's normally high standards of nomenclature break down in the case of Beacon of Light? I believe the primary reason for this is that the Beacon of Light which exists today is a completely redesigned spell from the original one (the one that properly fit the name). The Beacon of Light which first debuted in the Wrath of the Lich King beta was an area of effect heal over time spell, which read as follows:

Beacon of Light
Requires 50 points in Holy
The target becomes a Beacon of Light, healing all party or raid members within 10 yards for 2000 over 15 sec.

As you can probably guess, I think the old version fits the name much better than its successor. What do you think?