◊ Noressa

According to the undocumented changes thread, the range for the vial has been increased to 40 yards.

 

• giansm

Yeah I intend to update the first post for 2.4 probably over the weekend, I don't have time right now. However, I did already write down many of the changes: look at the list of "2.4 PTR Information" at the top of the first post, which should link to four other posts elsewhere in the thread. This includes two updated lootranks (one purple and one red) that take the new spirit/intellect formula into account. Another one of the linked posts discusses the effect of the new spirit/intellect formula on consumable, enchant, and gem choice, and these recommendations should find their way into the real post shortly. The haste/GCD post I'm not really 100% sure on and I actually think is probably wrong based on information posted later in the thread. The lifebloom nerf post appears no longer relevant since it seems that did not occur, although I didn't personally test it on live yet.

By the way, haste is still rated as zero in those new lootranks I just mentioned, because at the time I made them I was still of the mindset that its only purpose would be to try for 5 GCDs. My attitude at the time was that if you wanted 5 GCDs you should just pick items lower down in the list that had haste until you had enough, and if you didn't you should forget about haste. Since then I've started to think that haste is a good general stat, for exactly the reasons you've mentioned (being able to get healing out more quickly) and the only time it is really worth nothing is when you only want 4 GCDs and you are using a 4 GCD cycle. The final lootrank that makes it into the real post will probably put haste rating at some non zero amount, but you can look at the ones I just mentioned for the updated spirit/intellect numbers.

 

swills

Has anyone yet given thought to using [Sparkling Empyrean Sapphire]s over [Royal Shadowsong Amethyst]s for those occasional blue sockets? It seems to me that our only relevant stats now are Spirit and +Heal but I haven't worked out yet if +13 Spirit (from Living Spirit & BoK) is better than +11 Heal on average? I'd be tempted by [Purified Shadow Pearl]s if they weren't running at ~180-200g each on my AH. Sucks that there is no epic version of that gem.

How highly are people valuing Spirit now in comparison to +Heal?

 

Kalaghan

I don't think you can do a precise comparison. They serve different functions as one's throughput and the other is endurance. The same general rule applies: Get enough mana regen to last the fight, and stack +heal thereafter. Try to have a couple optional pieces so you can vary this distribution by fight.

It's debatable whether innervate should be included in this, since high int classes can benefit from it now too and we can stack regen so easily. Also, no one can tell you the exact ratio because it depends heavily on your assignments and healing style.

 

◊ Noressa

Has anyone had any decent play time with spell haste yet? My current outfit has 222 spellhaste and due to my inability to click keys just right, I haven't made lbx5 work out yet. However, I have managed to do 3 lifeblooms and regrow/rejuv combos on tanks. I'm curious to see other spell rotations that have played themselves out. One issue I have noticed is how used to the 1.5 seconds I've become. I know at least a small part of my inability to keep 5 maintained is simply not timing the lifebloom perfectly with the lowered cooldown.

 

techotter

Hello all, long time reader, first time poster. I'm now at a point in my druid's career when I've finished earning most of the gear I planned for myself (In addition to being able to RP a Tauren Priest in raid gear), and I'm now trying to plan a new set of gear to work towards; my main questions to you all are similar to that of previous posters, regarding haste - the effectiveness of large amounts of spell haste, and its effect on multiple lifebloom stacks.

First, a little bit about my druid so you have context for my questions. My guild is finishing up BT currently, and we usually either have 1 or 2 druids in our raids (about 50/50). The druids are usually assigned to standard resto druid roles, i.e. normalizing damage through hot stacking.

Here's the gear I'm usually wearing in raids:Moonmaster <Sublime> Lightninghoof (probably going to be regemming/reenchanting this a little, putting in spirit enchants and some more Crimson Spinels)
and heres a sample WWS log, to give you an impression of my heal style: Wow Web Stats

A note on the WWS, the other druid has about 100 more healing than myself, which I believe accounts for most of his higher healing statistics.

Now, the first thing I wanted to bring up is a trinket I've had lying in my bank for a few months now: [Scarab of the Infinite Cycle]. Originally, I had thought it was pretty nifty when BC first came out, but when spell haste was nerfed, I banked it eternally in favor of other options. Currently, my trinkets are [Essence of the Martyr] and [Tome of Diabolic Remedy], although I will be swapping out the tome for a [Redeemer's Alchemist Stone], once I have the reputation/mats. Other notable trinkets I have on hand are [Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon] and [Bangle of Endless Blessings].

Spell haste seems like it could make a big difference for us now that it affects GCD, and this trinket puts a lot of spell haste on its proc. So my first question is, how useful might scarab prove in fights with large amounts of HoTs (bloodboil, RoS come to mind) - enough to give it a place for certain fights, to speed up HoT casting past my base haste (see more on haste below)? Im leaning towards other trinkets with higher heal values, but I wanted to hear others opinions on it as well, since it hasn't been mentioned much in this thread.

The second question is the same as other people's: how much haste is needed/effective, (for druids, the definition of "effective" seems to be the ability to keep 5 HoTs rolling, although I'm surprised with the regrowth changes people arent really discussing the reduction in regrowth cast time) to make a difference in raids? In addition to my question, however, I plan on being the actual guinea pig here and trying to get some numbers together to see how connection, and haste numbers, really affect druid healing.

Here's the set I have planned, gemmed and enchanted: 70 Tauren Druid
A few corrections to note: there's a +12 hit gem in the gloves, this will become a +10 spell haste, but that gem is not in Warcrafter as of yet, so I'm just using the yellow gem as filler. Similarly, [Memento of Tyrande] is equipped in a trinket slot, that will actually end up being [Redeemer's Alchemist Stone], which also is not in Warcrafter yet. EDIT: I also forgot to replace the neck; the correct neck will be the Vindicator's Pendant of Reprieve.

This set is all based off gear which I can get relatively quickly - barely any of it comes from SP (none from the later bosses), and some of the pieces I already have. The main thing I see is a decent drop in Spirit, and a huge drop in MP5 - something that I'm hoping will be made up by the new changes to Spirit, Innervate, and druid regen in general this patch. Im a potion chugger, and I usually come out of fights with a decent amount of mana, so I have a little regen room to work with.

This post is basically looking for hypotheses and opinions on the set, or ways to improve/change it - I'm aiming for 240 haste, as that's been a number mentioned more than once in druid haste threads around the internet. Once I get some more of the pieces, I'll start putting some data up, so we can figure out the right numbers for druid haste - I'm really betting on haste being the underdog stat, because otherwise I'm going to have lost a lot of DKP and money for some sub-par healing gear :P

Oh, and I almost forgot - my connection is very stable, it usually sits between 50 and 90ms latency; however, once I get this set I will be testing different latency caps, so that I can give some answers on spell haste and latency's affect on it. Personally, I think its ludicrous that Blizzard would be pushing a stat so hard, which relies on an out-of-game factor (connection speed/distance) for its effectiveness; I hope that as much effort as possible has been put into making latency a negligible factor in this equation.

Looking forward to seeing more opinions on spell haste; based on the route Blizzard is taking, it seems like spell haste could be The Next Big Thing for healers, and I'd love to get some more data on it put forth, so we can have an idea of what stats we're going to be dealing with for LK!

 

Diegles

Hello, I've been searching this thread to help one of my resto druids answering his question, but i find nothing about the "exact" question of his.

The question was "What's your opinion on me going for haste gear, casting regrowth?"

He said he required 340ish haste rating to get a 1.75second cast on Regrowth, so I'm wondering is there anything calculated on this subject? or is Lifebloom just that powerful, making Regrowth not worth it at all?

Currently we have a tree druid, a dreamstate druid and a tree druid wanting to be Dreamstate or tree(not entierly sure what he was thinking)?, casting regrowth as the question refers too.

any links that could help me answer him would be much appreciated.

 

Clockwise

I am just starting to raid full time on my tree, though I have been playing it off and on for over a year. I find Regrowth, with the spirit changes and the greatly reduced mana cost, to be the raid-healing spell of choice. It's 540 mana for a 2 sec, 4000ish heal when it crits, which for me is about 63-64% of the time. The hot component is just gravy, doing wonders to stabilize the raid's health in the long term, especially in T6 fights where there is a ton of raid-wide splash damage. There is very little pressure on my mana, since my raid buffed mp5 jumped to 360ish in 2.4.

My current strategy is to 3x bloom/rejuve my tank assignment, then raid heal almost exclusively with Regrowth. This comes with the caveat that my guild rarely organizes healing -- my hots would frequently be overwritten by other direct heals. Now, with Regrowth I feel like I'm getting things done as far as raid healing goes, while still providing the MT health stabilization they bring me for.

 

Phoe

Certainly Regrowth is a lot more viable to use now with the reduced mana cost; but you should have been using it before 2.4 anyway. A Regrowth is going to do more healing from the first cast in 2 seconds than any other spell you have, excluding NS + HT. What I mean to say is, that altho 2 LB ticks in the same time is arguably more healing, you cannot apply them in the time it takes to cast that Regrowth. Bearing that in mind, Regrowth is lovely for when the raid is taking massive damage and other HoTs can't keep up, or when the tank needs that fast heal. You should be critting 60% of the time with it anyway, so is rather nice.

In terms of haste gear, druids will receive a certain amount of haste anyway - it's all over the new tier6 pieces and on Sunwell loot in general. If you're wanting to roll 5 LB stacks you will need around 250 haste depending on your latency, and unless you are aiming for that I wouldn't prioritise haste over +healing, mp5 or spirit; the slight gain to GCD/Regrowth just isn't worth it.

 

◊ Noressa

I'm getting 1.75 regrow casts (according to my spellbook) with my current haste set. I'm not sure where the 340 number he has is from. Lifebloom is good if you think they have 7 seconds. The low cost for the high healing done is still an "idealized" heal, from my perspective. Trash it doesn't matter as much, and fights where you're expecting more then what LB will heal through in 7 seconds, it's not a good option. I still wouldn't want to cast regrow out of tree, for whatever that's worth.

For trash, it's absolutely a great spell to use now, though. The new regen changes and the fact it gives you more swiftmend fodder makes it my new favorite trash heal spell.

 

Bigtoy

Does [Flask of Distilled Wisdom] deserve a second look?

Paper napkin theorycraft: I'm at 471 int and 544 spirit unbuffed. With buffs let's say 520 int and 670 spirit. Referring to the second table here it roughly assigns a value of 40 mana for each point of int given an 8 minute fight (and a whole host of other assumptions). For those eight minutes you'd get 2400 mana from Mighty Resto, 2600 equivalence from D Wisdom. Lots of slop here (not counting innervate bonus, who-knows-what priest buffs) but it's enough to make me go hmmm. Especially given cheap mats on my server and bonus crit rate for Regrowth I might start using this on learning nights rather than blow through my elixirs at a ferocious rate.

The flask is probably more of a slam dunk for priests and paladins, but it doesn't look bad for us.

Thoughts?

 

Morakk

At those buffed numbers, I get ~15.2 mp5 while casting, assuming kings. Again assuming kings, you get 1073 mana from that intellect. The break even point with Mighty Resto, assuming 100% while casting, is a 536 second fight, or essentially 9 minutes. That number will go up every time you do catch a tick of oo5sr regen, although I honestly don't know how often that should happen for a tree.

But it does seem that for trees with moderately high spirit, that Distilled Wisdom won't be worse than Mighty Resto anyway; whether the gold savings is worth the loss from not using elixirs is a personal decision.

 

Clockwise

I suppose it all depends on which you think is pressured more in "learning nights" or whatever you call them. I personally think that your healing output, particularly that which you get from rolling hots on the tank or tanks, is primarily important. The hots you roll are something that no other class can do, and the hots don't get more beneficial as you stack regen, but as you stack healing. Raid healing effectiveness has gone up since we can more efficiently and more frequently cast Regrowth, but other classes, especially shaman and circle of healing priests, can still do it better. And even so, my gear is far from best-in-slot everywhere, but I still have a hard time even using mana pots at all now, let alone needing to stack maximum regen consumables. I mean, with best-in-slot gear, pots and raid buffs, you could probably chain cast Regrowth as much as you want and still not hit zero mana.

I would say maximum consumables for me looks like Draenic Wisdom, Healing Power elixirs with Golden Fishsticks.

 

• giansm

Honestly there's not much reason to use flasks from what I've seen of 2.4 so far. Draenic Wisdom is very close to a flask just by itself, and you get to use Healing Power too. If you are really concerned about gold, I would recommend just using a mana oil and Healing Power elixir, and skip the guardian elixir. Those two consumables are both very cheap and very effective, especially mana oils, which persist through death and can get you through one or two nights for each set of 5 charges. When the "full consumables" call is made (if your raid has something like that) add a Draenic Wisdom elixir and Fish Sticks, which are both somewhat more expensive but are part of the overall best setup.

 

Ruby Moon

Unfortunately the [Brilliant Mana Oil] is still better than the TBC equivalent, needing to farm old stuff to get it. At least the Healing power is really cheap.

It's fun to think that spirit was such an underdog stat, but now it gives us insane mana regen. I'm not needing to mana pot most of the fights and if I use an Innervate i get like 1.5 mana bars back.

 

Bigtoy

Good points all, didn't even think to straight up compare against the everyday Healing Power/Draenic Wisdom. When DW has 30 int/spi, that alone is better than 65 int. Coupled with getting additional precious precious +heal from HP, it's not even close.

I just always forget to reapply especially after a brutal stream of wipes. I'd love to flask and forget like everybody else.

 

lairpie

Lately I've been using the [Superior Wizard Oil], which at least according to my character sheet does add +healing as well. I didn't actually test it by comparing a lifebloom with and without though. If you're short on mana, the old [Brilliant Mana Oil] is by far the way to go, but post 2.4, for most fights I'd rather have a bit more healing than a bit more mana. I carry both and figure it's an easy way to swap between a bit more healing and a bit more mana.

Fishsticks, healing power, and draenic wisdom are pretty untouchable, but I have plenty of those marks of the illidari if I ever change my mind.

Also, as someone who is about as "just stack +healing (and spirit if you're in the tank group, though not where it costs you more +healing than it's worth) and put hots on the tank" as they get, even I still do and always have used regrowth a lot as a raid heal. Regrowth has never been useless or bad, its not even that mana inefficient, especially now, provided you use it in a way where both the hot and the burst are useful. Is stacking lifebloom, rejuv on tanks better? Yes, at least in my opinion, with my raid setup etc. What percent of the time can I really find a useful hot to stack on a tank every GCD? Maybe 25% of the time? Knowing that you can maintain your full stream of healing on the tank while also burning off extra mana and GCDs doing raid healing is incredibly useful in many situations and no other class/spec can do that.

For instance on Azgalor I keep the regrowth hot up on our 1-3 shadow priests that are running in and out of the RoF range and sometimes a lifeboom shortly before the silence, knowing that even if all the healers are silenced, that 1-2 ticks of regrowth is enough to keep the SPs alive through a RoF and a lifebloom will take them a good ways back to full. The catch is that's all useless unless your raid has a bit of discipline and faith in each other. Unless the rest of your healers trust your hots to keep the SPs alive, they're going to swap to heal them, which especially right after a silence can be a pretty big problem. My way of doing things isn't very mana efficient, but with only 1 tank in range to keep hots on, I've got the mana to spare. Its one of those times where the 'keeping people alive' part of healing outweighs the mana efficiency game. Anything other than a druid doing that role would have to lower their healing output on the tank to help the SPs out.

Brewmaster of WBC

 

lairpie

From a pure healing output, adding 10*1.1*1.15/4=3.2 healing to your aura is better for the raid overall than 11 healing for yourself if the tank is taking the majority of the damage, or more accurately if your group is taking the majority of the healing. This will vary widely. If for example you're doing gorefiend where i looked and our party 1 takes about 1/3 of the raid's damage, For us that would put about 2-3 of our healers on the tank. 3.2 healing for 3 healers is not better than 11 healing for you. If you were fighting, say, illidan for all but phase 2, almost all of the healing is on 1 party. Even in phase 2, there's still for us 3-4 healers just healing people in my party. For that fight, yeah, 3.2 healing for everyone is probably better than 11 healing for me. In an ideal world you'd probably want to have a high spirit set, and a high personal healing set, with neither set completely ignoring the other stat.

Brewmaster of WBC

 

Kamileon

I am having a really hard time feeling relevant in raids recently. It used to be fine, especially when we were working on new content, but later on in BT and in Sunwell/Sunwell Trash I feel like I'm just the token tree being brought along, because such an extremely small portion of my healing is actually translating into effective healing.

With a raid comp of 2 Resto Shaman, 3 Holy Pallies, and a CoH priest, I am finding that HoTs get stomped on, and Regrowth is too slow to not be overheal by the time it lands. Since we've gotten more T6 level gear (Though we've only killed Archi 3x and Illidan twice) raid damage is healed up extraordinarily fast, and people are racing each other to heal people who have taken damage. Where HoTing the tanks used to contribute a large amount of effective healing, now our tanks are still taking constant direct heals leaving HoTs little room to tick.

Looking at recount numbers, my attempts to raid heal with Regrowth are about 70-80% overheal. The HoT gets some use, but accounts to very little effective healing.

I've spoken to my healing lead about what I can do more effectively in our raids, and been told to "just HoT the tanks and let the rest of us deal with the damage." Yet, with people still also healing the MT, HoTs aren't going to great use there, and with just a single druid's HoTs, direct healers cannot NOT heal the tanks, either.

It's making it frustrating to raid, because I don't feel like a contributor, just the token tree that let's the big kids do the real healing, and I guess while it's A-OK with the healing lead that I HoT up the tanks and nothing else, it's not okay with me on a personal level to feel like I'm not "pulling my weight" so to speak.

We've only been wiping to Kalecgos since 2.4 hit, so I could only point to a WWS of that with my attempts to Regrowth more -- beyond that my tactic is to roll LB/Rejuv on anyone tanking, and chuck Lifeblooms on the raid during my free time and hope it matters.

I guess I'm looking for any ideas on how to contribute more in a fast-raid-healing heavy composition as a single tree in the tank group. I don't have any haste gear to try out, it all went to our shaman.

I don't want to just assume that this is a situation where effective healing meters are completely meaningless and I should assure myself on a philosophical level that I am properly contributing to the raid and not using objective measures to back that up, or that being a Tree is meaningless and I'm just stuck with this situation.

Should I continue primarily HoTing tanks and ignore effective healing metrics? Roll HoTs on tanks, and Regrowth raid members wherever I can (and SM where applicable) and ignore both effective and overhealing metrics? If I do that, what should I be looking at to edify myself and try to improve?
Should I just stack spirit and turn into a tank buffbot if my heals themselves aren't going to be significant? Is there something else I can try?
If there are good ideas for larger strategy changes for the healing team as a whole I will make the suggestions, but I think they are happy with the status quo, and suggestions are unlikely to get much traction. Thus, I'd like to find something I can change about how I heal first.

 

Sylvannae

With the new changes to spirit regeneration, us restoration druids are essentially swimming in mana. Simultaneously, we are hurting in the pure HPS department for raid healing. Here's an interesting thought I had:

What if, instead of the standard resto build that has essentially 15 wasted talent points, we used this one:

WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Druid -> Talent Calculator

Here are my thoughts and justifications:

The primary purpose of Tree form is mana efficiency. The aura is week, though not useless. With the new changes to spirit, our mana situation is very nice. In poor, Kara and T5 level gear, I can attain 350 mp5 while casting quite easily (fully raid buffed). Innervate becomes a full 10-11k mana bar every 6 minutes even without a spirit-switch staff. Clearly, lifebloom's low cost does not fully take advantage of such huge mana reserves.

As such, losing tree is not deadly to our healing potential. 5% spirit is painful. The +20% coefficient is very hurtful to lose, directly effecting healing throughput, but hear me out.

In exchange for these two factors, the above build gains a 25% of intellect to healing. This is easily a +150 healing bonus, which, while not fully remedying the loss of the 20% bonus, is a huge mitigating factor essentially halving the loss of the extra 20%.

Furthermore, the build has a 9% mana reduction in the cost of regrowth and rejuv, as well as healing touch. This, again, offsets the loss of Tree form by around half. Now, the big kicker is the Nature's Grace talent, reducing the cast time of regrowth (Or healing touch) by 0.5 seconds after a critical hit. Since Improved Regrowth allows an easy 60% chance to crit, 1.5 second regrowths at zero haste rating will become very common.

Of note is the ability to decurse on the fly, as well as losing the 500 mana penalty for NS/HT.

Now, the advantage to this hybrid build is situational, but I think deserves some looking at. The Najentus fight, for example: There is only one tank, so only one lifebloom stack will be operational. The rest of the raid requires fast, strong heals at common intervals. I was healing this fight today, and a LB*4 rotation was in my opinion too weak. I switched to an LB*1, Regrowth*2 rotation. This was horribly inefficient, taking exactly 5.5 seconds to cast and as such JUST not letting me cast another instant heal. REGARDLESS, When I switched to the regrowth method, my effective healing jumped by at least 30%.

Now, if my regrowth critical hits took 0.5 off the next regrowth, an LB*1, Regrowth*3 rotation would have become easy. In fact, haste rating can easily allow an LB*1, Regrowth*4 rotation assuming lucky crits. Surprisingly, this 5 spell rotation will be easier to acquire, from a haste set perspective, than a normal instant-cast rotation due to the fact that the haste will be 33% more effective on regrowth than on lifebloom. Though grace brings regrowth to a 1.5 second cast, the haste multiplier applies to the 2 second number, thereby reducing the haste requirement of a 5 spell rotation when compared to simply instant casts (of course assuming all critical hits).

Regrowth is not as mana inefficient as it first appears, and the T52P bonus is very beneficial. As well, it allows a SM on many raid members, something no one healing class can do.

 

MaeltneWindrunner

Long time reader first time poster. I was just wondering if anyone knows if lifebloom credits the person who cast it now or if it still credits the target. Just here in the past few weeks I've been getting flak from people who don't know how heals work. I just wanted to make sure that it still works like that before I spread misinformation. Thanks for any help and keep up with this great thread.

 

• athanyel

Mael, Lifebloom has two components: the traditional HOT portion and the final heal (aka "the bloom"). The HOT generates threat for the caster and is credited in the combat log to the caster. The bloom will be credited in the combat log to the person healed by the bloom. The threat from any healing done by the bloom will also be accrued by the person healed.

 

MOO

The bloom generates no threat. I once thought so too, but it has been tested. The info is somewhere on this forum.

 

MaeltneWindrunner

Great thank you for the info.

 

Kalaghan

So, I just posted the following on the suggestion forums as a possibility for a new (or much needed fix) to our 4-piece T6 set bonus. I'm curious what people think. Could it work? I didn't think it was worth it's own thread, although it may be slightly off topic within the context of existing raid mechanics, but feel free to give me your opinions (even if via a private message).

Issue:
So right now, I think most resto druids would agree the 4-piece T6 set bonus is broken at worst and weak at best. Healing touch is rarely used more than once per 3 minutes (i.e . along with Nature's Swiftness), as it's simply too slow and there are other classes who spam/pre-cast big heals better .

Also, with the recent mana efficiency and regrowth changes it seems Blizzard is trying to make us less 1-dimensional. Unfortunately, although regrowth is no longer as mana inefficient, the larger issue with it is its increased use rarely results in increased healing throughput (from my experience). If every regrowth landed, sure it'd be worth using it, but the reality is many regrowths are cancelled casts because chain heals, or the faster FoL and Flash Heals land first.

Alternative/Suggestion:
So, the question becomes how do you make regrowth improve healing throughput, since right now, the direct heal portion is of little use (imo) and it's best function is really just as Swiftmend fodder. I would propose a set bonus something along the lines of:

Each regrowth has a 5% chance to increase your +healing by 150 for the next 10seconds.

Obviously the italicized numbers would need to be tuned for balance, or you could even tie it to crits instead of regrowth specifically (LB blooms could trigger it to then, helping buff our raid healing capabilities). I think that the above set bonus would be effective because it doesn't change the fundamentals of regrowth. It's still not a replacement for the faster raid heal spells . However, it certainly adds the opportunity for more diverse cast cycles and rewards druids who work the existing regrowth into their current healing patterns in an effective manner.

Edited to remove the lol/rofl/etc. comments added by the Blizz forums for April Fools (on the 2nd?).