Dioneirra

Taking a look at the datamined Druid Restoration Set from Naxx 10 shows a somewhat interesting development in itemization. While Set Boni are missing right now (as usual), there is quite some haste and spellcrit present on this set, even in socket boni. This will surely lead to conflicts with Gift of the Earthmother, if they keep the GCD at 1 sec minimum.

Could someone in the beta provide the new stats for the changed Healing Touch please? I only see the notice about reduced cost and base healing, but no numbers for now.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

Rank 15 Healing Touch, untalented 1153 mana. Heals for 3761 - 4440. With 1430 spellpower heals for about 6400 health.

Fully talented it's 938 mana. Heals for an average of 8100 health.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

I got 8748 healed over 10 sec for 726 mana at 1432 spellpower. You were really close.

And yes, flourish is ridiculous currently. It's far too effective, especially for the mana cost.

 

Liar

Maybe I am thinking too simple about this but what exactly would speak against making Haste have an additional effect on HoTs and DoTs apart from the GCD reduction? Like increasing the effective HPS/DPS by X% where X is the amount of Haste you have. That way it never caps out.

Unexpected TankPoints error Clearly someone doesn't understand how EH works. That, or upgrading from T8 to T9 is optional in beating Arthas. Clearly.

 

Njial

Blizzard doesn't seem opposed to that kind of idea. They are working on something similar with crit and affliction locks.

Duty is heavier than a mountain, Death is lighter than a feather.

 

• Playered

Haste as a mechanic is fine normally - GoTE causes problems and should be adjusted to stop doing it.

Crit just requires something extra in order to allow it to prosper.

 

thethain

GoTE is just too much to be honest. It Removes haste from the two spells spammed most often by druids. (altho if flourish makes it in as is, It will probably be equal in healing if not times cast due to it affecting 5 at once)

Gift of the Earthmother - If your target has less than 2 of your lifeblooms, your lifebloom has a 33[100]% chance to apply an additional lifebloom on the target but have an additional cooldown.

Cooldown is = your Global cooldown. IE it casts both lifeblooms for you, so unless your just an idiot you can cast something else between the lifeblooms. Would be no doubt more powerful and would eliminate 1 button spamming in raids.

Mana refund can be put in a 2pt talent beside it.

Abundance - Your Healing Touch and Nourish spells refund 2[4]% of their base cost for each healing over time effect on the target.

For crit I would say revise Replenish to be affected by crit

Replenish - Your Rejuvenation has a chance equal to 50[150]% of your spell critical strike chance to restore Energy/Rage/Runic Power/Mana each time it heals your target.

Alternately - Could add a different form of usage of crit or both
Wild Growth - When your healing over time effect heals a target theres is chance equal to your spell critical strike chance that it will heal an additional nearby target for 33[100]% of the amount healed.

 

Anaram

I think we can say with a fair degree of certainty that restoration spell mana costs will be revisited.

That said, any ideas on what's going on with mark of the wild? They first included the old 35% improved motw bonus in base values of old ranks and then still kept the +40% talent.

 

Maax

Nature's Splendor has been adjusted in the latest patch to add a flat 1/2/3 seconds to all HoTs/DoTs. The last 2 ranks are bugged and say 2%/3%, but they are also adding 1 second each.

So compared to the 10%/20%/30% version:

Lifebloom at 11 seconds (glyphed), how many 3 stacks can be maintained now?

Devs: Our nerfs will block out the sun!
Druids: Then we will tank in the shade.

 

Anaram

In theory 10, accounting for lag probably 8-9.

This requires about 1100mp/5 (lvl80) at maximum theoretical speed, which should be fairly acquirable. Best Sunwell gear with level 70 raid buffs gives about 400mp/5 while a mana battery would give an additional 300mp/5 with that gear. That is 400 mp/5 short of breaking even but given innervate should be sufficient for about 6 minutes. Of course, given level 80 raid buffs & gear, it probably breaks about even.

There should be some mechanism making it detrimental to have lifeblooms just rolling on "too many" people at once - it's just not very much fun to play like that. If it turns out to be the best way to heal then it certainly isn't much fun.

 

Darian_TruBlade

It's been noted in this thread before that Lifebloom has had its healing slightly reduced, and other heals have been buffed to the point where it simply isn't worth stacking Lifebloom on any target that isn't taking constant damage. Even where it is stacked, it isn't by itself sufficient.

The only situation I can think of where one would be required to constantly Lifebloom all over the place is one where there is near constant but not overpowering AoE damage to the entire raid, except that Flourish already has that problem under control.

 

Anaram

I'm not sure I can fully agree with that. While lifebloom coefficient has been nerfed, it still has vastly superior scaling to florish. Unlike florish lifebloom also doesn't jump to pets nor blood worms. I'll agree things are quite close but I'm also a bit worried still.

 

• Playered

The Blood Worms etc are no doubt bugs in the mechanic - I wouldn't count on it being intended, pets however should be viable targets provided they need it.

Flourish hopefully will get nerfed slightly on its base values and enhanced on its scaling but really its hard to say.. right now it is very much worth the GCD spent on it though even for one target.

 

Ogemaniac

In TBC, it really killed us that we had little haste and crit scaling. If this is not fixed in WotLK, it is highly likely that we will again fall behind other healers as we gear up. You are absolutely correct about GotEM. While it obviously is a powerful skill, it actually reduces our scaling with respect to haste. That is a serious problem.


Here is my suggestion for fixing the problem

1: Change Genesis from a flat bonus to one that scales with crit (ala Pandemic)

2: Change Nature's Splendor from a flat bous to one that scales with haste (ie, more haste = longer HoT/DoTs)

3: Nerf GotEM to .3 or .25 second reduction. This would cause the first ~250-300 haste (in TBC terms) to continue to improve our GCD

It is critical that we have talents that scale. If not, we will be "balanced" around our powers in level 80 quest blues and then fall behind again.

 

Anaram

This is probably true. However flourish has been there since first talents were published in F&F alpha and nothing has been changed with the targeting since it was changed from affecting whole raid to only affecting 5 targets.

Here's a question: based on what logic should flourish choose targets to produce optimal (and predictible) results?

 

Darian_TruBlade

I find several flaws in your thinking, assuming I have my facts straight.

1) Lifebloom only scales better than Flourish on individual targets. Flourish scales better over all 5 targets it reaches.

2) Lifebloom requires three to ten times as much of the healer's time to accomplish effectively the same thing.

Even I'm wrong on point #1 and the two are even/Lifebloom is actually better Flourish will still take precedence for the simple fact that it takes less time to cast. Despite the fact that Greater Heal is far more mana efficient than Flash Heal, Priests often cast more of the latter than the former simply because of timeliness.

I can't speak to T6 and SWP raiding, but I can count on one hand the number of fights T4/T5/ZA that might have warranted stacking Lifebloom on 10-20 people. Obviously LK's raid may not follow the patterns known previously, but I find it doubtful that raid damage will be constant and consistent enough to warrant having any Druid spend nearly 100% of their time casting Lifebloom over their other powerful heals.

As for Flourish's targeting I don't think it needs to be too complicated. Proc creatures like Blood Worms should be entirely ignored, as should people currently at maximum health. Next it should prioritize based on who is not currently affected by that Druid's Flourish and lastly on who has the least time left on their Flourish. There's not much reason to try to do anything fancy about pets/demons as they should be taking less AoE/DD damage anyway.

 

Anaram

This is pretty close to the truth. Lifebloom has something like 3 times the scaling of flourish on individual targets when stacked 3 times but over 5 targets flourish does pull ahead. Flourish has significantly higher base values, however, such that around Naxxramas gear level it has very similar HPS to triple lifebloom stack. Flourish can only be used when targets are close enough to each other and you must know where to target it to hit the people you want to hit.

Additionally almost any conceivable flourish targeting mechanic makes it impossible to focus pre-emptive healing on the targets you want - it can really only be done by placing thew entire raid in groups of 5 or by tweaking raid HP values to your liking.

I'm not saying things won't work out alright but I'm afraid that they will get left unfinished (which was essentially what happened with lifebloom in TBC). I'd like Blizzard to really think through how they will implement flourish, because it seems like a really easy thing to go wrong with.

 

Darian_TruBlade

Flourish isn't meant to be preemptive. Between the front loaded healing and the auto-targeting that's self-evident. If you need preemptive healing Flourish is never going to do the job for you.

We already have very good preemptive heals including but not limited to Lifebloom. While we have Swiftmend and Nature's Swiftness for reactive heals, Flourish fleshes out that half of our healing rather nicely.

That said, I agree that they need to nail it's targeting down before release. Last thing we need is another Lifebloom situation.

 

Anaram

You are probably right there. However, hots as a general rule are best use pre-emptively and there will probably be situation where you will still want to flourish pre-emptively (Kazzak for example).

Additionally: any "smart" targeting mechanic when used in conjunction with a hot has some inherent problems: if you were to cast flourish on a group (say ranged group) and someone were to instantly follow with a CoH/flourish/chain heal, they would both heal the exact same people (except first hit of chain heal which hits the actual target). This problem doesn't apply when combining multiple CoHs - the instant nature guarantees that the next "smart" heal hits different targets. This is hardly gamebreaking but just highlights the problems Blizzard faces when deciding on how flourish etc. should pick their targets.

 

Pyxis

Just a quick note about the insanity that is regrowth now. With the regrowth glyph and all of the appropriate talents in the balance and resto trees, my regrowth is hitting a target with the regrowth HoT for around 5500-6000 and critting for right around 9k. The fact that I can then swiftmend without removing the HoT means that my throughput with regrowth is pretty crazy. The mana cost (somewhere under 600 mana) meant it was pretty sustainable as well. Honestly it's pushing both Nourish and HT further and further down my bars, I wasn't even rolling LB on the MT a lot of the time.

So far in Naxx 10 I've been largely using a combination of flourish and regrowth with some LB here and there. Over time I imagine that LB will make a bit more of a comeback into my standard rotation of spells but for now I'm revelling in the fact that I don't have to use it .

The only fight in Naxx 10, so far, where I didn't feel completely in control was Loatheb which we were doing with just myself and a resto shaman healing and we were struggling with group healing (and a lack of dps but that's another story). Obviously priests just own this fight right now but I think with a bit of work I'll be able to time Flourish to get 3 ticks in during the healing window which will help.

 

Darian_TruBlade

The problem you hit on is the problem Druid HoTs have always dealt with. Whether used reactively or preemptively they are often nullified by direct heals from other healers. Proper healing assignments can go a long way toward preventing wasted mana.

In a Kazzak situation we will now have options both preventative and reactive. Before the Shadow Bolt Volleys we can place Lifebloom, Rejuvenation or even Regrowth (situation depending) on those least likely to survive, switching over to Flourish once the attack begins. Casting a couple Flourishes beforehand is also an option even if it is suboptimal. I highly doubt the spell will avoid healthy players if there are no other options, and if there are there shouldn't be much complaint topping people off before the major damage occurs.

Again, it's not a universally ideal heal, but very few healing spells are. That's the point that Blizzard appears to be aiming for in this expansion, making all healers use a variety of healing spells situationally over finding the single best heal and using that primarily.

 

Anaram

True enough, though additionally flourish has the problem with being "smart" - you can't choose where to put it any more than CoHs and chains can choose where they jump. You can force the targets by positioning but excessively splitting up the raid would probably end up hurting chain heal (and CoH to a lesser extent) in the process.

edit: I'll give a simple example of Flourish problems from Naxxramas 10 yesterday, with Patchwerk. We had 2 tanks, 1 DK and one rogue. The death knight had a ghoul. This means that as long as rest of the raid stands far enough back from patchwerk, there's 5 targets in melee range and it's possible to trivially force flourish to stay on tanks. Anyone steps too close and flourish no longer hits one of the tanks. Any healer tries to go in melee to get some JoW procs and you can no longer use flourish on tanks. Or if you simply bring too many melee with you, the tanks can't be hit with flourish. This is, of course, unless you go to extreme lengths with positioning and put tanks in place such that there's someone within 15 yards of them but outside 15 yards from anyone else. Then you can still roll flourish on the them.

This doesn't break flourish but it makes it extremely difficult to balance. It can provide extreme amounts of healing (possibly too high in comparison to other healers), but it can also be very restrictive to strategy and positioning. Making a spell like that balanced while still keeping it even reasonably intuitive is no easy feat.

 

Norfair

The question is if you want to have Flourish specifically on the tanks. So what if it jumps to someone else during a cycle? That person will get healed from Flourish and the amount of healing is not wasted (granted it doesn't get overhealed by others, but then again that would probably happen also when it is applied on a tank). Unfortunately I can't check out Flourish myself because of lacking a beta key, but I wouldn't really care if Flourish would heal someone who needed it more than a tank. This seems equivalent to me as why sometimes you have to let a Lifebloom roll fall of in order to heal someone more in need, which is far more annoying because re-applying a triple stack takes more time. Sure, I can understand that it can be clumsy not being able to control who Flourish will heal, but I can't really think of any different "targeting mechanic" other than range-based or party-based, both being worse alternatives in my opinion as those will restrict positioning and/or group composition.

Looking for guild with healthy raidtimes for Icecrown.

 

Darian_TruBlade

I definitely agree that right now it sounds as though Flourish has major problems due to its targeting. If I recall, there were complaints that Blood Worms made it absolutely useless as they would constantly soak up the Flourish. The bottom line is that if Blizzard fixes Flourish's "smart" targeting it should be fine if tricky at times, and if they don't it will be somewhat nightmarish.

It's a bigger problem for 25 mans than for 10 mans though. In the latter setting up the kind of positioning you mention is comparatively trivial.

 

Anaram

Unfortunately flourish doesn't pick targets based on need, it picks targets based on HP. Tanks got high HP so flourish will almost never pick them out when there are other valid targets in range. New CoH(?) & Flourish are only healing spells in game where you can't select even a single "guaranteed" target for it.

I used Patchwerk example because it highlights the targeting problems reasonably well: nobody except tanks (and warlocks possibly) should ever need healing in this particular fight. There's no easy solution to the problem and it's definitely not the only heal where smartness can cause problems.

Recent iterations of flourish heal for ridiculously high amounts for the mana cost (raid buffed in 10-man naxxramas it went up to about 5x10k healing for 800 mana) - it seems like Blizzard either accidentially overshot the healing values or they are trying to compensate for the potential problems by boosting them. On the other hand if Blizzard chooses to significantly lower flourish efficiency, you might end up paying 2000 mana just to see flourish sink on completely wrong targets. Either way, it sounds like it's spectacularly difficult to balance a spell which requires such a specific situation to work right, but which still works extremely well in those situations.

EDIT: anyway, I guess I'm just worried because Blizzard's now tweaking the healing values of the spell before addressing the targeting issues.