I did some testing of Efflorescence last night with build 12539; I found out a few things that may be of some interest:

• The tooltip is correct in that it heals every second for 30% of what your Regrowth crit for. So, with a 9k crit, it would heal for 2700 every second for 10 seconds. The amount healed also does not double-dip with any of our talents.
• The amount it heals for is not affected by the number of targets within the 15 yard radius; it will always do 2700 hps to each person/
• It will heal anyone within 15 yards of the Regrowth target, even if they aren't grouped with you.
• The Efflorescence ticks are incapable of critting.
• Multiple Regrowth crits will create multiple layers of Efforescence patches, and they stack. So a person standing on two will receive double the number of Efflorescence ticks for a total of about 5400 hps per person.

Right now, Efflorescence is extremely overpowered, and its certain that its not going to stay the same. Ignoring the healing that Regrowth does, Efflorescence alone would heal a person 27k HP. If there were 10 targets standing on it, thats 270k healing with one cast and only 1223 mana (@ lvl 80 w/o Moonglow), putting its HPM at over 220.

I think Perseverance is a fine talent for raiding.

But yeah, the tree is awkward as far as tiering. I'm pretty sure all the trees are though. To be honest, they don't yet seem to have a solid plan for making 5-point tiers and (mostly) 3-point talents work out really coherently. It's possible that everyone will have to get more used to having points left over here and there.

Emp. Rejuvenation is currently flagged with a [TBR] in-game.

I'm wondering if they will eventually bake Nature's Splendor in to the initial Resto specialization perks considering that talent has been abolished in the beta and currently RJ is sitting at 12 seconds(!) at all ranks at the moment(?). The talent for the most part would be a solid choice for "you are now a Resto Druid and your healing spells are better than a normal Druid" combined with Swiftmend.


It would also be nice if they would implement something like Evangelism & Archangel in the current place of NSS/MSS or at least within the first 3 tiers so that if players decide to level as a healer they are able have some form of boost to their solo/dps ability so they can do ok outside of the dungeon finder. Obviously it needs to be tied in some way to make it unattractive for Balance (such as triggering on SM or hot casts) but considering both Holy Palas and Disc Priests get a core ability which is capable of being used to help soloing it would be nice if they could at least implement something via early talents for us, Shamans and even Holy Priests.

Fury of Stormrage as our 'DPS talent' being so deep in the tree essentially makes it a high level option which is too late for most real purposes (leveling up and/or DPSing when you outgear the dungeon/raid - as you need to spam heal to even get it to proc) and the way it is implemented makes it almost unusable for anything outside of raiding where you would be spamming Nourish/HT.


When you look at the first two tiers of the tree you are left needing 3 points in the first tree and 2 points in the second. The first almost has to be something actually useful for us considering both Feral and Moonkin have their 5 points sorted for them while we are left with only 2 and Furor being pointless for us. The second tier seems the best place to put the DPS talent (Fury of Stormrage in a different iteration) so that players have the choice of 3 (Imp RJ) + 2 points in the survival talent or 2 points in the DPS talent. The issue you then have left to think about is that both Feral and Moonkin only have 5 points in a secondary tree to spend and ideally need another 2 points on that tier that provide them with something attractive enough to make a decision on.

If you kept MSS/NSS there for the hybrids that gives both Feral DPS and Moonkin 9~ points worth investing in as well as a choice for Feral tanks to go either for DPS with MSS/NSS or go for survivability in Perseverance. In the end I would recommend a 3 point talent providing a minor healing boost on the first tier (so that PvP Resto Druids have an option between that and NSS if shifting frequently is still viable for them) and moving Fury of Stormrage to the second tier and iterated in a better way for both leveling as Resto and performing DPS in easy end game content.

To me it's hard to say exactly but while the additional ticks were key factors in the RJ∞ cycle they were hardly the only culprits. Early on in Wrath we did not do this until after they changed the mana system (mostly killing off Regrowth for a couple of tiers) which combined with the previously mediocre [Idol of Awakening] made RJ spamming almost the only way to go. Throw in multiple encounters designed in such a lazy way that they promoted the brainless cycle and you are left with the current situation. Heck even on Sapphiron initially players tended to do better by mixing RG/RJ/WG than just RJ and that was almost the ideal RJ∞ encounter.


You have been left with a lot of psychological issues too where players feel that without placing RJ on as many targets as possible before <insert raid wide damage "Ground Tremor"> happens they won't actually be able to get any healing off before the all the other healers use their direct AoE smart heals to bring everyone back to full within 2-3 seconds - where we would get one WG and perhaps a RG off otherwise?

Without knowing how they have designed the raid content in Cataclysm it is hard to make much of a judgement on how it will effect things. My current concern is that they will overreact (like with LB) with Rejuvenation and essentially neuter it for a large chunk of the expansion and that we will have a raiding game with far too many brainless AoE heals which remove the need for triage and again promote the pre-hotting for any healing culture again.