Raiding as a Tree - Page 102

Currylaksa · 11/09/08, 12:24 AM

The problem is a lot more complicated than initially thought. That's because they have to avoid the same problem of shaman-stacking in SWP while still not hurting their AOE healing "flavor". It's a delicate balance already without the extra complication of discipline priests and holy paladins.

Only reduce the number of AOE splash encounters, and you see a lesser raid role for resto shamans. Only weaken AOE healing in general, and you still see a lesser raid role for resto shamans. Only weaken CoH and WG, and you might see the return of SWP-style resto shaman stacking. They are probably still looking for that sweet spot.

Playered · 11/09/08, 10:14 AM

You also have the issue beyond AoE fights though, on trash or fights where you might get accidental damage but most of it is on one person, people still end up spamming AoE healing in the hopes they will hit those extra people.

Look at all the other heals you can use for it, and still you will have WG, CH & CoH all being spammed mindlessly instead flash or quick heals on individuals.

Its a lazy mentality and because the cost is not much different and with the bonus of smart healing...
Quite honestly I would strongly go for a generic cost rise on those spells by 75%+ and the removal of smart healing on CoH/WG.

If you look at costs in themselves, we should have a penalty for being able to heal so many people in one cast, but instead we get rewarded:
LB x5 = 6~ seconds casting for 3900 healing per target over 7-13 seconds for 1320 mana.
RJ x5 = 6~ seconds casting for 4600 healing per target over 12-18 seconds for 1510 mana.
WG x1 = 1~ second casting for 2850 healing per target over 7 seconds for 436 mana.

Shouldn't we be paying a premium for WG being able to basically replicate LB being cast 5 times in one cast for roughly 75% healing and it being done faster (in most cases)?
We hit the issue even if our AoE spells only land on two people needing it, it's still be worth the mana cost spent on it let alone the saving of GCDs. This ignores the fact in almost all cases it will be applied to 3 others who might need it.

In the end I think something like 50% base mana would be more appropriate, 1184 in Caster, 947 in Tree.

The numbing down of healing focus by virtue of cheap & smart AoE healing instead is annoying and silly and will continue to be used primarily while it sits like this. Being a 41/51 point ability shouldn't give it the right to be stupid.

[n] All values based on my gear and level 70, only ment to show relationships with each other not precise assumed values.

Unseen · 11/09/08, 9:17 PM

Originally Posted by Playered

You also have the issue beyond AoE fights though, on trash or fights where you might get accidental damage but most of it is on one person, people still end up spamming AoE healing in the hopes they will hit those extra people.

This works well in the current situation where mana is not an issue, but will probably not be an issue in most encounters at 80 due to wasting so much mana. Also, i assume you didnt count the final ticks for lifebloom, as the final heal alone heals for more than your listed value atleast for me.

Currylaksa · 11/09/08, 9:46 PM

I suspect that as with TBC, mana will not suffice as a deterrent. Gear will improve to the point where mana becomes a non-issue. This is unless Blizzard, for each higher raid tier of gear, puts more ilvl budget into haste and raw spellpower. Even then, raiders can still prioritize for regen off-pieces, get regen trinkets, and gem into spi/mp5/int.

As for nerfing WG, the last time Blizzard weakened the throughput there was a massive uproar in beta.

George · 11/09/08, 10:02 PM

Originally Posted by Anaram

I somewhat disagree with this. I'd say rejuvenation (with replenishment talent) is pretty much on par with WG for raid damage healing in situations where your WG has possibility of wasting some healing. Talking level 80 here, of course. WG has potential for waste if you aren't guaranteed 5 fresh targets which can happen quite often due to previous WG casts or raid spreading.

The big issue with raid healing with rejuvenation is that it takes 3 seconds after application to heal and only ticks every 3 seconds.

This poses a major problems in my eyes. Other heals will land before rejuv ticks and between ticks. You can always argue that the other healers shouldn't be healing over HoTs but the nature of smart heals are that they don't check for HoT spells they just land on the lowest targets. Rejuv only has 4 chances to heal while wild growth has 7 (35 total on a single cast).

The AoE smart heals to me seem to be designed to apply fast healing to multiple targets when they need it. WG achieves this by ticking 1 second after landing and every second thereafter. While rejuv can be kept up on many targets it doesn't deliver healing nearly as quickly.

Clearly Rejuv has applications but I don't think it can be considered on par with Wild Growth or interchangeable with WG on damage that WG currently excels at.

Playered · 11/09/08, 10:27 PM

Originally Posted by Unseen

This works well in the current situation where mana is not an issue, but will probably not be an issue in most encounters at 80 due to wasting so much mana. Also, i assume you didnt count the final ticks for lifebloom, as the final heal alone heals for more than your listed value atleast for me.

Your Lifebloom bloom heals for nearly 4000 at level 70? I am impressed by your level of gear then.
I did not include crit on them however so it should err slightly higher but generally bloom healed for around 1.8k if I recall correctly when I did that.

The mana thing is irrelevant at 80 due to costs being base mana related, if 2 people need healing it is cheaper, faster and less GCD consuming to use WG than to use 2 of any other spell - and you get 3 other applications bonus too (normally).

Smart healing WG is great if you are the only one raid healing, having more than us doing it and the people who get WG will get the CH or CoH ticks as well though which is the bad part.

The difference between nerfing WG previously was the fact it was nerfing only WG and nothing else, doing similar nerfs to all forms of popular AoE healing should be less of an issue (although not from a WoW forum whine point).

Unseen · 11/10/08, 8:03 AM

Originally Posted by Playered

Your Lifebloom bloom heals for nearly 4000 at level 70? I am impressed by your level of gear then.
I did not include crit on them however so it should err slightly higher but generally bloom healed for around 1.8k if I recall correctly when I did that.

My apologies, misread your post.

While i do agree on WG being too mana efficient at the moment, it needs to be more cost effective than CoH and CH, or else it will be strictly inferior due to being a hot.

It's a tough spot blizzard is in at the moment, trying to balance out different healing classes to be able to perform the same role. Chain heal has been the defining ability of resto shamans trough all of TBC, and nerfing it too hard leaves shamans with very little. At the same time, CoH and WG need to be able to compete so that shaman stacking won't be necessary. In the end, i feel it can be tuned from either spell or encounter balance, assuming the spells are in relative balance to each other.

I think that a good balancing point for the aoe heals would be them being worth using if they hit atleast 3 targets that need healing. Currently for 2 targets (with Playereds values) we are looking at:
WG: 5700healing for 436mana or 13,07 HPM
RJ: 9200healing for 604mana or 15,23 HPM
LB: 7800healing for 528mana or 14,77 HPM

Now, the current difference is indeed very small, but it still favours lb and rj in more ways than 1; they heal for more on each target and rj has the additional advantage of being swiftmendable if needed. At 3 targets this obviously tips in WG:s favour as the other spells' stay at the same HPM while WG gains 50% more mana efficiency.

WG currently feels very strong; in our last sunwell raid i did 59% of my healing with WG on average over the 3 first bosses. But i'd argue that it's mostly a question of encounter design making aoe heals the answer to everything but tank healing, and not the heals themselves.

Amijay3 · 11/10/08, 7:22 PM

Originally Posted by Currylaksa

I suspect that as with TBC, mana will not suffice as a deterrent. Gear will improve to the point where mana becomes a non-issue. This is unless Blizzard, for each higher raid tier of gear, puts more ilvl budget into haste and raw spellpower. Even then, raiders can still prioritize for regen off-pieces, get regen trinkets, and gem into spi/mp5/int.

As for nerfing WG, the last time Blizzard weakened the throughput there was a massive uproar in beta.

Which is why i firmly believe they waited until beta was down to announce this. It may sound very consiracy theory, but they opened themselves up to that. Seriously, something this huge should have been thrown around in beta, not packaged as set in stone 8 days before release. Bad Form IMHO.

As for WG let us look what it takes to even get there:

GoTM - Already bad. It is supporting a 3 second ticking Hot, a very nerfed LB which I maintain is only decent if you are rolling it on 2 tanks, and WG. If WG is off the list this talent is a big waste of points.

Replenish - Tested on beta and still testing on live. IMHO this "talent" should have just become an addition to the spell itself and then replace that talent space with a talent that lessens the time between ticks of Rejuv. As it stands now, so bad. So So So So bad.

Living Seed - When I had it, it accounted for about 1.6% of my healing. Too much RNG / luck for this talent to be truly useful. IF you get a Crit, IF you land a nice effective heal, IF it isn't overheal. I like things I can depend on, this can't be depended on.

Now you get to choose between these 3 stunningly terrible talents to reach WG as it is now. I can bite my tongue and bear it to get to WG now. I can't see myself being able to bear it if there is a CD on WG.

If i were better at math I would start peering into Dreamstate. As it stands now i will have to trial and error my way until they come to their senses.

Fallenangel · 11/11/08, 4:50 AM

GotEM gives the equivalent of ~80 haste rating per point at level 70, on 3 of our 4 main healing spells, as well as the rejuv+mend combo. Also, maintaining a 1k hps hot is worth it on 1 or 3 tanks as well.
Replenish is a tad weak, yes. Personally I don't think I'll think it at 80, opting for naturalist instead.
Living seed is weak because regrowth is weak, since it's missing its glyph and a key talent, NG. It is also overshadowed by WG. Working off effective healing is fine, if regrowth has overhealed then your target doesn't need a damage shield and had just gained a 27-sec hot. Other healing classes have similar mechanics.

Overall deep resto and especially GotEM are throughput-boosting talents. Yes, that may not be what you need at entry-level raids, where gear is bad and longetivity is more important. But as raids progress, throughput and speed become critical as illustrated in SWP, and I think the resto tree stands up to the challange in that area.

Anaram · 11/11/08, 12:50 PM

Personally I'm quite content with replenishment as a talent.

Just doing some simple calculations: if rogues have about 33%:67% yellow to white damage ratio then and a full length rejuvenation (18 sec) restores on average 9 energy which is about equal to what a rogue would gain perhaps 0.75 seconds. 33% * 0.75 would mean that one cast of rejuvenation on rogue adds damage approximately equal to what they do in 0.25 seconds or a 25% increase for 1 second. If you were to cast a single rejuvenation on a rogue once per 25 seconds then this talent would be in the correct "value" range of a typical DPS talent (1% boost per talent point).

Above numbers can be quite much incorrect since I've not very carefully followed how rogue yellow to white has developed and I don't really know at what ratio extra energy would convert to damage. Modeling mana users would also be quite a bit more complicated and rage as well as runic power pose their own problems. I think it does give some decent directions, however. If you were to look at replenishment from raid mana point of view then you would probably notice that rejuvenation is spectacularly cheap for the amount of mana it actually consumes when cast on mana users.

I'm inclined to argue that insofar as you do actually use rejuvenation, the replenishment talent can be quite handy even if the effect isn't easy to notice. If you don't use rejuvenation then obviously the talent doesn't have much merit.

apsod · 11/11/08, 2:29 PM

Originally Posted by Anaram

Personally I'm quite content with replenishment as a talent.

Just doing some simple calculations: if rogues have about 33%:67% yellow to white damage ratio then and a full length rejuvenation (18 sec) restores on average 9 energy which is about equal to what a rogue would gain perhaps 0.75 seconds. 33% * 0.75 would mean that one cast of rejuvenation on rogue adds damage approximately equal to what they do in 0.25 seconds or a 25% increase for 1 second. If you were to cast a single rejuvenation on a rogue once per 25 seconds then this talent would be in the correct "value" range of a typical DPS talent (1% boost per talent point).

How did you get 9 energy exactly?
Talent desc:
Procs 15% per tick for 8 Energy.
Rejuv should have 6 ticks (18 secs / 3secs/tick)
6 * 15 = 90% * 8 = 6.4 energy / 18 secs

Now, take an encounter that lasts 5mins (300 secs). Assuming you keep rogueX always hotted with rejuv and never miss a beat, he would get:
300secs / 18secs = 16.6 rejuvs casted on him.
16.6 rejuvs * 6.4 energy/rejuv = 105.94 energy
That's quite a bit generous (16.6 should be 16 really and there is no way you'd maintain it 100% of the time on that one rogue unless it was your specific task, so let's say for now 16 * 6.4 = 99 energy over a 5mins encounter).

Now, I actually don't know anything about rogues really, not even anything about ferals, but I'm assuming this means ~2.5 'fully energised' abilities they could cast (assuming a 40energy cost, but really, I have no idea what rogues use) over 5mins.

Looking at our top rogue on our last MS kill (something that's pretty straightforward bashing, hence no energy should be 'wasted' sitting there unused), he got 35 moves out (28 sinister strike, 2 eviscerate, 5 killing spree) over a 2min kill. I'm assuming those all use energy, but who knows.

Simple interpolation gives us 35moves * 5min/2min = 87.5 (87) moves. Let's say full rejuv nets him the energy for 3 more moves.
From that simple MS kill, he's getting ~33% of his dps from energy moves and the rest from 'other things' (mainly 'swings').

3moves/87moves * 33%dps = 1.122% potential increase in dps

Now, most of this is based on 1 parse and actual numbers could wildly vary.
Anyways, I'm assuming 0.8% is probably the best you'd get on 1 rogue out of rejuv (assuming you can't keep it up 100% of the time), but that is really only a big approximation ^^

Anaram · 11/11/08, 3:26 PM

My bad on the energy calculations, I somehow convinced myself that it was 10 energy instead of 8 energy per proc.

This said, you also messed up on the 90% * 8 = 6.4 energy / 18 secs part since actually 90% * 8 = 7.2 energy.

Anyway if we just use the 1% as a number to show much someone's DPS increases when rejuvenation is up then maintaining on average 3 rejuvenations would give DPS value of about 1% per talent point, give or take as you see fit. I cast rejuvenations much more than once per 6 seconds myself so I think this talent is quite worth it for me. It doesn't do much when cast on hunters, retadins or melee shamans (or pets) of course but on average I don't think these are the worst talent points I'm picking up either.

Fallenangel · 11/12/08, 3:01 AM

Whether rejuv boosts a rogue's dps by 1% or 2% isn't really the point. A healer's job in a raid isn't to give some extremely minor dps boost, or shamans would be shocking on CD. Assuming a base of 14 points in balance and maxed-out Living seed and GoteM, it's a choice between having a workable HT via Naturalist and Emp touch or replenish. Personally I prefer boosting my main role in a raid and seeing as replenish is so narrow, I'm going to skip it.

Nitz · 11/12/08, 3:33 AM

The good thing about Replenish is that it is all about play style. I will take it because I heavily use Rejuvenation and will never ever use Healing Touch past the NS+HT macro at 80. Different people make different choices and I see it as a good thing, even if Replenish is not a oh-my-god-I-want-it talent.

Anaram · 11/12/08, 5:06 AM

Originally Posted by Fallenangel

Whether rejuv boosts a rogue's dps by 1% or 2% isn't really the point. A healer's job in a raid isn't to give some extremely minor dps boost, or shamans would be shocking on CD. Assuming a base of 14 points in balance and maxed-out Living seed and GoteM, it's a choice between having a workable HT via Naturalist and Emp touch or replenish. Personally I prefer boosting my main role in a raid and seeing as replenish is so narrow, I'm going to skip it.

Raid roles are really just a simplification. Some dps classes provide minor healing benefits (shadow priests, retadins) while some healing classes provide minor dps benefits (holy palas using judgements and potentially holy priests using SoL smites).