Resto Feedback

As I've mentioned before, occasionally I sent feedback via e-mail to devs at Blizzard. I'd been a bit quiet on WoW issues for a few weeks, but I finally put together a full summary of my current thoughts on Resto. Here's what I wrote today:

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Finally got to do some raiding on the beta since the last Resto changes. In brief I'd say things are bit better than I thought, but the main issue I outlined in the last email (Rejuv and mechanics that rely on it having an awkward role) is still salient. The other major issue is that the talent tree doesn't flow well in terms of the choices presented and the way the tiers progress. I'm trying to stay off of overall balance issues compared to other healers because you watch that anyway, and I think Resto will move back up a bit if you fix some of the internal issues.

First, a few things working well:
1) Mana. The mana management minigame is a bit more coherent now. I'd commented before (maybe on the BB actually) that nerfing Revitalize and unlinking Malfurion's Gift from Fury of Stormrage to make it more accessible would help, and I think that's been borne out. Also, Clearcasting not being consuming by Nourish is a big improvement. Basically, instead of relying on a somewhat overpowered passive Revitalize talent for our only sustenance, Clearcasting is more central. It procs frequently and you can usually use it to cast an expensive RG or HT without the really awkward step of canceling a Nourish, so it's become something to pay attention to while playing (which it virtually never was in the past).

Allowing Clearcasting to affect Rejuv might be something to consider, to slightly open up the choice of expensive spells to cast when it procs. This has to do with how you ultimately decide to handle Rejuv, below.

2) Tree of Life. I'd complained about the ToL bonuses in the past, but the Malfurion's Gift talent really ties them together now. Maybe this wasn't intended (ToL play consisting entirely of LB spam and frequent free instant Regrowths), but time spent in Tree finally feels different from time spent out of Tree, and that's pretty important for the idea to work. Admittedly, the only recent change here is people are finally taking Malfurion's Gift more, but that ties into the talent tree issues below.

3) Tank healing. This has been true for most of beta so I won't spend too much time on it. Lifebloom has a nice amount of strength, the Empowered Touch auto-refresh works a lot better with HT included, and the whole package clicks nicely with Symbiosis and the Nourish bonus.

On to problems.
1) Rejuvenation and the role of HoT's. This is still the big one. More or less, everything I said last time is still true. To summarize, some significant aspects of the class (most importantly, both the signature spell Swiftmend and the mastery Symbiosis) rely on Rejuv presence on the target. But since Rejuv has been completely reconceptualized from its WLK role as a raid-blanketing HoT to a very selectively-used (due to mana cost) and shorter-duration spell, it's average uptime is very low.

So, Swiftmend/Efflorescence is effectively a 2-gcd spell (Rejuv+Swiftmend used in succession on one target), where the Rejuv part is often wasted anyway and just serves as a clumsy time/mana cost tacked on to Swiftmend. And Symbiosis generally serves a "+X% to tank healing" bonus, which is not that interesting.

Just to attach some brief numbers to give this all some context:
Say you spend around 1/5 of your time casting Rejuv (so one Rejuv every 5 seconds or so while using other heals in between), which exhausts your mana in 3-4 minutes in early raid gear. Roughly half of those are on the tank if you're trying to maintain it on him. So you can afford to put Rejuv on a raid member once every 10 seconds or slightly more. Since it only lasts 12 seconds, Rejuv is typically up on an average of around 1 player in your 25-man group at any given time. Mechanics that rely on it being up have virtually no impact.

I've been slightly putting aside Wild Growth, which does have decent presence at least in a 10-man raid. It does help the Symbiosis issue somewhat (i.e. if you Wild Growth on cooldown, some amount of your heals will wind up benefitting from Symbiosis based on that alone). But that doesn't incorporate any player choice of how to use HoT's to take advantage of these effects, doesn't enable Swiftmend, and generally isn't that compelling in terms of gameplay.

I was pushing in the past for Rejuv to supplant or at least share the "auto-attack heal" role with Nourish. Basically, if Rejuv is cheap and long duration (and weak, to balance out the other two factors), everything seems to fall into place:
--Average HoT uptime around the raid is non-negligible again, so we can take advantage of things like SM/Symbiosis/Nourish.
--There's still a selection of two expensive direct heals for targets who need current healing, mirroring the Flash Heal/long heal setup of other classes.
--Having two cheap/autoattack heals instead of one (one direct/one HoT) would be a pretty interesting addition for gameplay.
--It also fits better with the theme of the class. If the "HoT-using healer idea" has any weight, there has to be some HoT you can cast with reasonable frequency.

I see this as the natural role of Rejuvenation in our toolbox, and I see changes like the recent Rejuv mana cost increase as fighting against the inclination of players to use Rejuv in the way that's encouraged by the class mechanics. If you don't like the idea of sliding Rejuv to the Nourish end of the scale or finding some other way to have it used more often, then Swiftmend and Symbiosis probably have to be tinkered with in some way.


2) Efflorescence. It's been hit with two nerfs simultaneously--50% healing reduction and AoE heal cap. My impression is that former was put in because it was doing too much healing at some fights, and then later on, you decided that all healing was too AoE focused and nerfed them for all classes. The first change should probably have been reverted when the second was put in. On fights that are pretty favorable now due to clumping, it's hard to make Efflo do more than a few % of total healing, barely justifying the talent point investment.

Basically, a heal which is by its nature situational should, I think, be below average in some cases (which is definitely is) and above average in others. By "average" I mean, doing an amount of healing commensurate with the talent points and cost (keep in mind that the talent cost is basically 6 since Living Seed is so weak, and the mana cost for all intents and purposes includes a full Rejuvenation). Right now, it's at best a mediocre heal, which feels weak when you consider that it's entirely worthless at some fights (due to positioning requirements).


3) The talent tree. I'd been leaving this alone for a while since things change so much during beta, but now as we get closer to release the problems with it are more pressing.

The biggest issue is having too few points to go around. I know this is a judgement call, since the idea of "required" talents is more fuzzy for healers than it is for DPS. i.e. with DPS (basing this somewhat on Ion H.'s comments at the class panel) you want players to exhaust their required talents for min/maxing purposes and have a few points left over for optional/utility effects, but with healing it's not so clear what the difference is. Still, right now Resto specs are choosing which basic healing effects to abandon (which is why it's especially relevant that, say, Efflorescence is so weak). Something in the healing toolbox has to be left out since there aren't enough points, so you either go without Efflorescence, or else you can do without Nature's Bounty or the Gift of the Earthmother proc, or some other thing. The things that are supposed to be optional additions like Fury of Stormrage, Perseverance, or Nature's Ward, aren't on the table at all. It's the "false choice," to use his words from Blizzcon.

Other things are just quirky, like having 11 desired points in Balance (2 3-point talents with obvious Resto intentions in tier 2), leading to forced partial talent acquisitions--not sure if that bothers you. In general, Moonglow is practically a required Resto ability but you have to go through the much less important Nature's Majesty and Nature's Grace points to get it. Moonglow in tier 1 of Balance would at least allow you to pick up the basic mana sustenance needs from outside Resto (Moonglow and Furor) for 6 points, leaving the option to spend the other 4 in the Resto tree or on more situational needs like Nature's Grace.

Some things are still too underpowered to justify their own existence:
--The Swiftmend cooldown reduction on Nature's Bounty is one. It may as well not exist; all it does is occasionally reduce the 15s cooldown to 14.5s (remember how low crit rates are now, especially since crit is not an emphasized stat choice for Resto). Having it proc off of all Nourish/HT hits wouldn't even be overpowered--effectively maybe a 2s cooldown reduction on SM.
--Glyph of Healing Touch is another; I can't see a reason that anyone would ever use it.
--Actually, on this note, Nature's Swiftness itself is really pretty questionable. Blasphemy I know, but a single instant Healing Touch is not the big healing bomb that it was back in 2006 (it's less than 15% of a tank's max HP now). I think the only reason anyone spends the point in it is habit. Maybe a much shorter cooldown for NS (or perhaps, a large healing boost on the single affected spell, something like 200%).
--Natural Shapeshifter. I'll note this here even though you fixed it for Resto--for the other two specs it's just a blank talent that serves as a prereq for Master Shapeshifter. That's pretty glaring.
--Blessing of the Grove I guess is supposed to be pure filler for all 3 specs. Maybe it's even good enough to serve that role for Resto, but since are there are no extra points to go around, we look at in comparison to "real" talents and it looks like of terrible.


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Finally, list of bugs:
--Swiftmend is not affected by Gift of Nature. (Yes yes, I know you can only have Swiftmend if you have Gift of Nature, so how can I tell? But based on the numbers you can tell there's no 25% bonus hidden in there, and also, a Swiftmend is equally sized to 4 ticks of Rejuv without the bonus).
--The new Rebirth lockout sometimes prevents you from casting even if no Rebirth or Soulstone has been used yet. I don't have a repro for this yet though.
--You've ironed out most of the wrinkles that arise from patching together the two different Lifebloom spells, but there are still some minor ones. For example, if you have two 3-stack Lifeblooms during ToL and one falls off, you sometimes lose your T11 4-piece bonus. I have to go back and check whether Replenishment now procs correctly on all possible configurations of Lifeblooms, ToL Lifeblooms and Empowered Touch refreshes.

--The Gift of the Earthmother instant heal itself has three or four errors:
--It's not affected by Glyph of Rejuvenation.
--It's affected by the talent Improved Rejuvenation in a way that makes no kind of sense. The first point of Imp. Rejuv does nothing, the second point increases the proc size by 14%, and the third point reduces that bonus down to 7% (additive with Gift of Nature and Blessing of the Grove).
--It attempts to account for the varying number of Rejuv ticks based on haste, but does so incorrectly. Rejuvenation itself gains a fifth tick at 12.5% total haste, and a sixth tick at 37.5%. The GotEM proc gains its fifth "tick" (for purposes of computation) the moment you get above 0 haste, and the sixth tick at 25% haste.
--It is not affected by Symbiosis.


Okay, think that's everything for now . A lot of these are impressions I'd built up over a quite while, I just hadn't gotten around to writing. I'll try to stay on top of feedback as we get close to release.