[Resto] Mists of Pandaria 5.3 - Page 6

• Hamlet · 10/08/12, 7:07 PM

I felt similarly about RG vs. Nourish and HT. I said something similar somewhere in a recent post. Maybe not go so far as never have it available, but I'm quickly sliding into the habit of having RG be the general-purpose direct heal. Aside: if I were getting together Resto feedback right now, I'd probably say that RG should come down a bit and Nourish should be made a lot more efficient. I want to see how things shake out for a little longer, and this is also all really subtle number shifting so it's probably not a big priority.

Getting used to heavy use of RG also has some other effects on gear. One, it really means we can use crit as a dump stat, which is fine I think, even makes gearing a little more straightforward. Two, it makes Revitalizing/Burning meta somewhat handy, where otherwise all our metas (those two and Ember) are extremely underwhelming.

TreeCalcs doesn't show these things right now since it doesn't use RG much, so crit looks okay and Revit meta looks bad, but those will both change a lot when I tweak it for more up-to-date spell usage.

Akusei · 10/08/12, 7:59 PM

Originally Posted by Hamlet

I felt similarly about RG vs. Nourish and HT. I said something similar somewhere in a recent post.

Yeah, I was riding your coattails on that but wanted to see about numeric data supporting this theory.

You make a strong point on those meta gems; I hadn't even considered the +Crit effect when thinking of RG.

I'm not a big fan of "nerfs" but some tweaking is probably needed between RG, HT, and Nourish. At their current mana costs/throughput/casting speeds RG is just better. I don't think it's too good necessarily, just that HT and Nourish might need mana cost reductions, output increases, casting speed decreases, or some combination thereof to bring them back into the toolbox.

I didn't play this character in Cata but when I played it in Wrath, I enjoyed that Nourish was a cheap, spammable, fast casting direct heal. It was a nice filler in my opinion.

But like you said, those are low in priority and for the time being, I'll enjoy the simpler tool kit needed as I reacclimate myself with my druid and healing.

Payday · 10/08/12, 8:45 PM

Have to admit I was bitten by the Spirit bug you discussed, Hamlet, at least on my first night. Gemmed, flasked, ate spirit, and felt powerless. Some of this was due to it being the first raid night at 90, but after my second and third raid nights I believe it was also due to spirit stacking. My second night I kept my gear the same, but went int food and flask and it seemed to be better. My third night (working on and ultimately killing Elegon) I regemmed every bit of spirit to int and ended up nearly 2000 spirit less. I felt much better about my healing going full intellect, though it did mean I had to be a better healer.

Speaking of Elegon, this is a fight where spirit stacking can actually hurt you. Even with only 7100 spirit, I was always at 100% mana when the orbs spawned, the first time, and usually very close to 100% the second time.

Last night I also started thinking about NS as a mana cooldown since it's free of charge. Any thoughts on that? 1 min cd makes it attractive to use often.

magiama9 · 10/09/12, 8:12 AM

As for the spirit vs. int debate, I absolutely agree that the spirit mania has gone a little too far. However, what I would be really interested to see is at what each say 1000 intellect and 1000 spirit actually does for your healing by the numbers. You mentioned at some point that the spirit flask is worth a grand total of 2 more rejuvs, but how much healing does the int provide? I would imagine that 1000 spellpower applied to all your heals would be worth a great deal more healing, effective and otherwise. Showing that in concrete terms might sway some of the snake oil aka spirit fanatics.

Edit: I read your article where you noted that 1000 int made your heals overall 10% stronger. Some tidbit in the header directly comparing the two, even to a greater extent than saying don't take spirit over int 1:1, could be useful.

♦ Earen · 10/09/12, 11:46 AM

I added in a note in the consumables section regarding the Spirit vs Int discussion, as well as strengthened the language encouraging folks to opt for intellect consumables.

• Hamlet · 10/09/12, 12:08 PM

Yeah, I saw your email--I think what you have there is fine.

As far as other stuff--the only real note on mana efficiency we had in the other thread is that WM:B, for all its problems, it at least cheap. So if you're A) not doing anything else important, and B) reasonably confident that a clump of people isn't going to be moving anytime soon (this probably has little application outside of 25-man), you can plant WMs. Then when they take some damage you can pop the Bloom and save a Rejuv cast or two or maybe even a WG (technically some extra burst healing too since it's GCD-free). It's kind of a lot of work though for a small benefit.

The other significant change might be reworking the descriptions of Nourish/RG/HT slightly to account for RG have much more favorable efficiency numbers now--not far below the other two. This may also manifest itself in some small stat/gem changes after updating TreeCalcs a bit.

e: I'd probably also discourage SotF a little more based on what we're seeing. Might change still, but if I were writing it right now I'd probably have Incarnation recommended, SotF situational, and FoN with question mark or something since I don't know if anyone has any real idea about that one.

Vinexia · 10/09/12, 1:28 PM

Back on the topic of Hamlet's blog of spirit vs. int.
Something to consider is in gems we choose between Int and Spirit.
In reforging we choose between Spirit and Mastery.

While Mastery and Int are both throughput increases its of note that Int receives multiple buffs, such as Leather Spec, MOTW, and finally after all that gives you spellpower the SP is amplified by 10% increases for Arcane Brill or Dark Intent etc.

Seems like this weights finding throughput in gems and regen in the reforge with food/flasks always being Int.
Other thoughts?

♦ Earen · 10/09/12, 5:31 PM

Keep in mind that gems are 1:2 in secondary stats, so you get twice the value of your secondary stat than you do your primary stat when gemming, which makes the trade off different (and not as harsh) since you are getting twice as much of the secondary stat than you are with something that is 1:1 (such as food and flasks).

♦ Earen · 10/09/12, 5:43 PM

The other significant change might be reworking the descriptions of Nourish/RG/HT slightly to account for RG have much more favorable efficiency numbers now--not far below the other two. This may also manifest itself in some small stat/gem changes after updating TreeCalcs a bit.

I will work on this over the next day or two.

I'd probably also discourage SotF a little more based on what we're seeing. Might change still, but if I were writing it right now I'd probably have Incarnation recommended, SotF situational, and FoN with question mark or something since I don't know if anyone has any real idea about that one.

Done - added a note to SotF to indicate the loss of flexibility being a downside as well.

Akusei · 10/09/12, 6:33 PM

I saw a post earlier discussing the viability of using Nourish on a target with Rejuvenation but it seems to have disappeared. I did a little excel math and came up with these numbers for healing per mana usage. These are Average Expected Values taking into account crit but no meta where it's an average of your output.

For 13,000 Spell Power and 7.41% Crit:

Heal/Mana Base + Living Seed/mana
Nourish 2.567923881 2.851373332
Nourish w/rej 3.081508657 3.421647998
RG 2.456427034 3.838672489
RG+glyph 2.563131313 4.613636364

For 20,000 Spell Power and 7.41% Crit:

Heal/Mana Base + LS/mana
Nourish 3.322250972 3.688963639
Nourish w/rej 3.986701167 4.426756367
RG 3.13442814 4.922555938
RG+glyph 3.315768799 5.968383838

For 13,000 Spell Power and 17.41% Crit:

Heal/Mana Base + LS/mana
Nourish 2.807000678 3.472973005
Nourish w/rej 3.368400814 4.167567606
RG 2.603158235 4.190454195
RG+glyph 2.563131313 4.613636364

For 20,000 Spell Power and 17.41% Crit:

Heal/Mana Base + LS/mana
Nourish 3.631556528 4.493158083
Nourish w/rej 4.357867833 5.3917897
RG 3.321658779 5.375048081
RG+glyph 3.315768799 5.968383838

Based on my numbers it looks like if you have Rejuvenation on a target and won't get very much benefit out of a Living Seed, Nourish is competitive from a healing per mana usage standpoint. However, once you factor in the potential benefits of LS and the faster casting speed, a glyphed RG overtakes Nourish. Furthermore, RG being an instant cast while using Incarnation (if you choose that talent) and being able to benefit from Clearcasting makes it even stronger in more circumstances.

Once we start getting higher amounts of crit, Nourish on a Rejuv target starts to catch up to the glyphed RG. But that probably won't happen until we get around 20% crit. Regardless, there's something to be said for consistency and knowing your target will be granted LS.

Another point to note is that RG will never gain any benefit from crit while it's glyphed. Eventually, it may be worth not glyphing RG but that is some time down the line.

Dummy · 10/10/12, 8:44 AM

Why would Regrowth never benefit from Crit?
The Glyph just gives RG 40% more Crit, i would say it is the other way around, it profits more than other spells.
Since the base value is higher

apostolis · 10/10/12, 10:12 AM

My topic has been removed since it was viewed that the stat question has been answered in the guide and it was just a moaning (the part of shaman's healing and the question about the state of resto druid with gear) .

I respect the moderator's action but i felt it should't be removed since it raise questions about our druid healing in mop which is also based on healing balance of all classes but as mentioned i respect moderator's decision to do so. Also i dont think the stats describe in guide are too spefic . I would like to know if mastery or crit is affecting the hot compement of swiftmend and which has highest value. I havent spot that in the guide. If i am wrong and havent seen it i apologise in advance.

Back to the question i raise the topic of nourish in combination for rejuv and akusei was really nice to produce some results. Is it possible to explain how much is the difference in living seed since i cant quite understand the maths .

Also is the difference in living seeds that much different to make nourish cast with rejuv on target a bad choice over a regrowth (with and without the crit glyph)

• Hamlet · 10/10/12, 10:28 AM

TreeCalcs, at the very least, assumes the 20% bonus for Nourish always, so that's what we've been basing on the whole time.

Once you know now it works you can easily see the average heal/HPM values of your spells at whatever stat value. Might just save people some work doing it out by hand like above.

--------

Random--I was really curious how Demonic Circle works since you only get one button with Symbiosis. Turns out all you can do is port to that Warlock's circle. Probably very impractical outside of very specifically pre-planned usages in boss fights.

Akusei · 10/10/12, 12:44 PM

Originally Posted by Dummy

Why would Regrowth never benefit from Crit?
The Glyph just gives RG 40% more Crit, i would say it is the other way around, it profits more than other spells.
Since the base value is higher

Because the base spell already has a bonus 60% crit rate. So the glyph boosts it by 40%, up to 100%. Well, once you hit 100%, you're crit capped with that spell. If you add the 7 or 10% crit you get from gear, you get up over 100%, which is all useless since you either crit or don't. It's not like Chaos Bolt for warlocks which specifically states it always crits and gets additional benefit from bonus crit.

@ Apostolis:

For the additional healing provided by LS, I based it off of the base spell's average non crit heal, doubled it (to account for how much it heals when it crits), then "averaged it out" by multiplying it by the crit chance, and finally accounted for how much LS's worth would be by multiplying it by .3 (30% of the heal).

From cast to cast, the numbers will vary significantly but over thousands upon thousands of casts it will average out to an expected value of what I included earlier.

The thing about a glyphed RG is that it will ALWAYS trigger LS. So mathematically it looks like this:

Nourish: [Base Heal + 20% Rejuv bonus (if applicable)] X 2 x .0741 (crit chance) X .3
RG: Base Heal X 2 X 1 (crit chance) X .3

The crit chance for this makes a huge difference in whether or not you trigger LS, which has a large numerical impact on the expected value (the average) of the total healing available.

All of this being said, I found myself casting Nourish a bit more than I thought I would last night in raid. As I described earlier, when the tank is very close to max health and you are simply maintaining his health, Nourish made more sense. Once the tank was below 80%, I switched back to RG since the healing from LS was much more likely not to over heal, or at least significantly reduce the chance that it would over heal. Ultimately, Nourish felt like a Rejuv tick and wasn't great at bringing the health of the tank back up once he started getting trucked.

@Hamlet, I really need to get my hands dirty with your spreadsheet.

And on the topic of Warlock/Symbiosis, in a PVE environment, it is very niche. It's nice when you're in a fight where everyone is going to stack at a preset spot and the warlock is putting their Demonic Circle there. I'm sure there will be other creative ways to use it. While playing a warlock, I was always looking for ways to make it useful. Back in Naxx, you could use the portal on Gothik right where the gate is. It allows you to port and pick which side to go to in order to have higher dps uptime when he ports back and forth. Is it huge? No, but it's things like this we can look for when considering Symbiosis targets.

In PVP, that kind of coordinated movement is pretty neat. For example, on WSG, a resto druid could be healing a warlock holding the flag. If things get rough on top, you drop down--all of you! They'd have to chase you down since there's nothing to do up top. They then have to make the decision to split their forces or all drop down. Having both the healer and warlock being able to port back up significantly delays their assault.

Payday · 10/10/12, 1:32 PM

Looking through wowprogress and armory, every healer in guilds with heroic kills I look at has max spirit gemmed. Do they know something we don't? I regemmed full int and am doing better than ever.