Ariaanda

I would have to agree with this, with other classes abilities being affected by the haste in a manner other than GCD you'd think that we would get a benefit of it as well. And yes, most definitely, it's all about the HoT's, whether it be in tree form or otherwise. I do appreciate that they will be allowing us to cast HT while in Tree form, regardless of the fact that we're not going to get the major healing pro's from being in Tree form, just the fact that we don't have to jump in and out of tree form now will help conserve mana a large amount.

 

lairpie

I really don't understand people's obsession with scaling well with every stat on every ability. As long as the abilities that don't scale well with one stat scale better than other abilities for druids or other classes with another stat, ok. If each point of +healing boosts hots (druid or otherwise) more than direct spells (druid or otherwise) and each point of haste and crit boosts them less, hots and other spells could still be scaling at the exact same rate.

Brewmaster of WBC

 

Darian_TruBlade

I have a few questions for Tree Druids in the beta.

1) Is the Tree Form aura working properly? On the PTR I get the Polymorph Immunity and the Master Shapeshifter buffs, but not the 3% healing buff (this is true with or without Master Shapeshifter).
1b) Actually, there have been times where the 3% healing buff mysteriously appeared, but I was completely unable to figure out what caused it to do so, and why it left again shortly thereafter.
1c) While I had the 3% buff my healing was increased by ~250%. Lifeblooms which normally ticked for 600 were ticking for over 1.4k.

2) On the PTR different ranks of Flourish stack. That is to say you can have both Rank 1 and Rank 2 of Flourish ticking on the same people. Is this true in the beta?

I've also made a couple observations.

1) The Wild Growth herbalism perk is completely unaffected by our talents. Not a big surprise.

2) It's difficult to get any benefit from the mana return effect of GotEM without Nature's Splendor.

And lastly, I sincerely hope we get minor glyphs for our Tree Form. I'd very much like to look like an Ancient of Lore.

 

Heffro

Agreed, though I'd settle for birch, and I've always sort of assumed they'd somehow come up with a festive holiday tree form even before they announced gylphs. That said, it seems as though glyphs have gone away from cosmetic changes and towards useful buffs, which makes me suspect that the more serious players will end up avoiding the fun form change glyphs in favor of improving their abilities.

 

• giansm

1) My spec includes Master Shapeshifter. When I shift into tree form, Tree of Life (Polymorph Immunity) and Master Shapeshifter appear. Out of form: Rejuv tick for 1074, Lifebloom tick for 264, Swiftmend for 4298. With tree form: Rejuv tick for 1117, Lifebloom tick for 275, Swiftmend for 4470. All 4% increases, which are attributable to Master Shapeshifter. I tried this solo and on a party member. Also, I tried speccing out of Master Shapeshifter and then I got the lower values both in and out of form.

2) Yes, this is possible on beta. I'm not sure if they both tick but you can definitely apply both buffs.

 

Alerian

I noticed that iToL Aura has been changed on MMO Champion's talent calculators for tonight's beta patch to this:
You can see it at: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?druid

 

Blackpatch

Healing Touch and Nourish mana return has been removed from Gift of the Earthmother.

Flourish has been renamed Wild Growth. Wild Growth Rank 4 at 80 is:

Heals up to 5 friendly party or raid members within 15 yards of the target for 1085 over 7 sec. The amount healed is applied quickly at first, and slows down as the Wild Growth reaches its full duration.
35% of base mana, 40 yd range, Instant cast

CONSERVE YOUR RAGE AND LUST

 

Anaram

Also, the effect on lifebloom/rejuvenation has been doubled. The 1.0 sec minimum global cooldown barrier is once again fairly close to reach.

Additionally improved tree of life now gives 15% of spirit -> healing spell power instead of a mana cost discount.

Nature's Splendor does not affect Wild Growth (and now has 33/66/100% chance to give 3 sec increase instead of 1/2/3 sec increase).

 

• Playered

Well, Flourish getting nerfed now is good.. hopefully the scaling is much better than before with that heavy a base reduction - not to mention removing it from Splendor helps keep it in check, it was really incredibly good with that synergy even though it acted messy in implementation of the ticks.

Lifebloom getting a further nerf.. uncertain if it scales better now too.. hopefully it has because that's rather nasty to throw another reduction in power with an increase in cost.

The change to Improved Tree of Life is welcome, finally a scalular from Spirit again.


Hopefully they are leaving out some additions to Nourish etc because it still needs help and it technically lost some.

 

Anaram

I'm quite sceptical about druid direct heals reaching a level where they are consistently worth the use. So far in beta there has been very minor improvements to direct healing but overall they are just too much weaker than for other classes. Situation is better with wotlk than it was in TBC, though. Direct healing duties (such as tank duty) just don't go very well with maintaining hots - if you have to refresh lifebloom or reapply rejuvenation just when the tank takes a spike it tends to mean trouble.

 

• Playered

Call me unhappy, Flourish & Lifebloom have gone to the complete opposite end of the spectrum.

I'm unable to log on and test for my own values but the reported figures are around (for max rank):
Flourish (70%~ reduction) 450 max tick from around 1200 previously.
Lifebloom less than 900 per sec on a 3 stack.

I could understand that Flourish was too strong (even with the bugged targeting) which could acceptably be reduced 25-30% or even made so the difference between ticks were larger in order to keep it competitive at the start but generally not so overpowered.


Hopefully this is just one of those uneducated changes that we don't need to worry about as they get fixed but.. gosh.
It's understandable that they don't want HoTs to be too good due to Arena concerns where the typical 'lost ticks' don't exist as often as they do in PvE, but this level of potency is a really abstract change if it is intended to bolster the use of direct heals.

Removal of IToL bonus, slight increase in cost on LB are fine, further reducing the power of it as well?

 

dukes

I think the Flourish (Wild Growth) change is due to the comparison Priests have been making with CoH. CoH requires a lot of global cooldowns to do a very similar amount of healing, at a lot more mana cost. I should think the comparison of HPM and HPS is much closer now, although Wild Growth should still be better.

Wild Growth: 1085 for 35% base mana, can't crit. +10% healed, +20% bonus healing, -20% cost (Gift of Nature, Empowered Rejuve, ToL).
compared to
CoH: ~700 for 21% base mana, can crit. +20% healed, +5% crit (Divine Providence, Spiritual Healing, Holy Spec).

They seem pretty similar, it will just depend on the scaling, but I think it's been nerfed slightly too hard (especially when you consider it's a HoT vs a direct heal). The crit part of CoH is pretty important in synergy with Surge of Light aswell though - it seems Crit is a really important stat for priests now.

 

Anaram

Much depends on how Wild Growth scaling eventually settles. If it goes with standard HoT duration (7/15 = 47%) it won't line up very favourably against CoH (1.5/3.5 = 43%).

With some basic scalings (104% is from master shapeshifter):

Wild Growth: 47% * 120% * 110% * 104%= 64%
CoH: 43% * 110% = 51%

Note: all numbers are for "old" healing values, multiply by two when dealing with spell power to get the actual healing gained by the spell.

Wild growth seems quite low. Given ~25% crit for priests they'll just about break even while having their healing applied immediately. Of course, crit is a bit less reliable than static numbers and the base healing is a bit more behind than the scaling.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

Yeah it's pretty clear that when compared to circle of healing, wild growth should be somewhat more efficient, provide more total healing, but take more time to do so. It needs to be tweaked a bit in the other direction.

 

Anaram

There seems to be something very funky going on with OoC. The three spells which increased in price: lifebloom, rejuvenation and wild growth have what seems to be about 50% chance to trigger clearcasting.

I only did test runs with 20 casts for now:

20x nourish: 1 proc
20x lifebloom: 12 procs
Rejuvenation: about 50% (had some trouble testing because rejuvenation reports that a more powerful spell is already in effect)
20x regrowth: 2 procs
20x wild growth: 20 procs - I never failed to proc ooc on wild growth - spamming it just gets one out of 5 second rule... More data: now that I'm standing alone and not in a party this doesn't seem to proc nearly as often (50% perhaps).

1x tranquility: 1 proc (takes some time to test, will get back to this)

So far there's a clear trend: pure hots proc ooc a lot. Perhaps this is a mechanic which is planned to replace the old discount that was a part of gotm. The numbers are probably out of whack still, of course..

 

• Playered

Currently Flourish is healing 20% more on both single target and all 5 targets (assuming 1 crits and that has been averaged for the single target), while also costing 20% more mana over 4x the amount of time.

This is with equal spell power and assuming the Priest gets our 6% aura as well.

I wonder how much has to be changed to equal things out more smoothly.

 

Anaram

Few bugs (or features) with new nature's splendor (3/3).

Firstly the +3 second duration does not apply to lifebloom when refreshing that. So triple stacked lifebloom is at 7 sec rolling speed.

Secondly rejuvenation duration is 15 seconds on spell bar but 18 sec when actually cast on someone (at 100% chance). This means that replacing a rejuvenation is not possible before it ticks down to 15 seconds (Because replacing 16 sec rejuvenation with a 15 second one is not possible, no matter that there's 100% chance the new rejuvenation would actually turn out to have 18 sec duration). This, of course, doesn't really hurt druids...

 

Nitz

I'm currently a bit worried about the restoration tree PvP ability. Taking in account design changes and not final numbers (i.e. lifebloom nerf, additional armor removed and usable casted heals introduced), we very well might be the squishiest healing class (we have less armor with the ilvl200 S5 gear than we have at level 70 with S3 gear for example). We also have no talent diminishing CC durations. What I see is us having to use non-instant spells to heal and CC, worrying about spell lockout and the odd Intercept stun because we just came in sight. I do agree that this playstyle was the bane of every other healer in the 2s and 3s bracket, but I really feel like we're gonna be left behind this Xpac (and even more in 5s).

 

Darian_TruBlade

I'm not particularly worried about our PvP viability. Resto Druid popularity will definitely take a plunge but only because we'll be even with other healing classes. We'll have to actually rely on our teammates to protect us, but that's been the norm for all the other healers from the outset.

Yes, we'll have to use non-instant spells to heal. Like every other healing class we'll have to learn to deal with that. It feels like the world is crashing down because it is. The proper PvP playstyle for healing Druids will be almost unrecognizable, and ultimately if this allows us to be viable across the board rather than simply being the bane of 2s and 3s it's a good thing.

In the end Blizzard hasn't finished PvE balance, and they've clearly stated that they need that done before they can tweak PvP balance. There'll be more changes down the road.

 

Amaren

Also, another thing is the ability to cast Healing Touch in ToL form, and the armor bonus I think is to make ToL more pvp useful even though you can be banished.

 

taytay

I've read multiple comments about haste being kinda useless due to Gift of the Earth Mother filling its role. I know that GotEM was nerfed, which in turn added some of haste's value back... BUT HOW about this idea. I have a feeling its been suggested before but I couldn't find anything on it...

What if haste increased the rate at which our hots ticked? Like for a rejuv and regrowth, you lowered the amount of time it took in between ticks. If so, should the duration be reduced? Should rejuv still take 12 seconds, just with faster ticks?

If you think this is a bad idea, what about a new spell entirely...

Photosynthesis
x% base mana
Instant Cast

Increases the rate at which your healing over time spells tick by x% for 15 seconds

BASICALLY I personally think a spell like this should replace nourish... I like our healing over time niche
OOOr, make nourish have a different effect on our hots, such as renew the duration on something, I don't know.

 

• Playered

Its bizarre, I'm unable to correctly articulate my thoughts about it because things seem so messed up and illogical.
This is even ignoring the 51pt vs 41pt argument people throw around.

WG costs 20% more than CoH.
WG heals roughly 25% more than CoH (if you ignore crit) in total.
WG requires 7 seconds to complete, and 5 seconds to roughly break even with CoH.
CoH heals at time 0.0 and incurs the GCD after healing.


The key areas to change in order to not make this spell silly are:
1) Reduce the duration.
- Somewhere in the region of 4-5 seconds would be more appropriate if it cannot heavily out value CoH.
Leaving the duration so long provides weaker numbers in general and leaving the spell more vulnerable to sniping at heavy losses for doing so.

2) Include the initial tick on the application of the spell (similar to Penance).
- Gives us a higher chance to get more of our healing out before it can be sniped.
Also allows us to reduce the time of the spell by 1 second without giving glaringly strong ticks.

3) Cost...
If it is going to be between 100-200% of the healing done by CoH (ignoring crit) then it needs to be cheaper than CoH unquestionably.

4) Provide larger increments.
- HoTs get overhealed period.
Frontloading the spell more heavily (used to be 120 difference, now 26) enables us to get the bulk of the spell done quickly while the latter half balances it out for the spell overall.



For example, I was going over some values where the spell lasted 6 ticks and healed around 1.6x the amount of CoH, this version style would require slightly higher cost than CoH:

CoH equal to 1800~

The first two ticks equal to 1400 (750/650)
The second two ticks equal to 1000 (550/450)
The last two ticks equal to 600 (350/250)

By the third tick you have just beaten the amount of CoH (1950 vs 1800) at around 1.08x.
If you have an initial tick then this is done over 2 seconds, else it is done over 3 seconds - vs 0.0 with a 1.0-1.5 second cooldown.

The 4th, 5th, and 6th tick come out at 0.58x CoH and come out roughly half of what the first 3 ticks provide.
These will be the most vulnerable to being overwritten but they are such a small amount that you do not miss out as much.


Honestly though having a 20% higher cost, a 7 second duration vs an instant, no ability to crit... these things justify far more than a 25% higher amount of healing, the 50% Koraa mentioned is still not really enough to compensate for these shortfalls it has. I'm refusing the bring the 51/41 argument on this as it is not needed as we are already at a significant enough loss.


All HoTs are taking a rather severe beating:
Flourish(WG) - as has been discussed.
Rejuvenation - diluted by having an extra tick added on base.
Lifebloom - a further round of cost increases and power reductions.
Regrowth cannot escape having an equally painful change too because of the conflicts it causes with Nourish right now, that's ignoring the Glyph as well.

I'm rather certain that RJ & LB will not get boosted back up, Flourish(WG) hopefully will get changed into something sensible.
This then leaves us with Healing Touch & Nourish to compensate for all of this and that can only result in them evolving us into almost a Priest style of healing (HT=GH, Nourish=FH , RJ=Renew) but with Circle of Healovertiming instead of CoH, RG instead of PoM/BH and LB instead of PW:S on tanks.
In this aspect we will not be able to compete with Priests because our equivalents are roughly on par with TBC versions of said Priest spells where they now have WoTLK talents enhancing them further.

I'm really hoping that I am wrong about the Priest route because I've done that style of healing before and it was dull.

 

Xavias

Wild Growth is unusable in this state, mostly due to CoH/CH destroying it in viability.

Lifebloom took a massive hit, I shed just under 200 healing from a 3-stack Bloom @ level 80 with premade gear. (from 950 Healing to 765).
It also costs ~35% more mana. Its HPM is reduced by approx ~45%

Basically at this point, you'd be a moron to use HoT's over Regrowth in any sense in PvE.

 

Anaram

Lifebloom still does heal for about 750 hp/s when stacked 3 times and rejuvenation heals for quite a good chunk too. As long as you've got 50% chance to proc ooc for a healing touch, nourish or regrowth there isn't much wrong with using those I think. It just needs a bit of getting used to.

EDIT: that said I can't really think of a single fight in Sunwell where CoH / Chain would "destroy" Wild Growth. They'll probably do better on average but wild growth is still a fairly decent heal and if you factor in OoC it's very cheap too.

Of course they might change ooc proc rates but they might also change regrowth mana costs, wild growth healing amounts and CoH. There'll probably be some glyphs to involve also. Things are still changing extremely fast from one end of the spectrum to the other so wouldn't expect this to be the final word.

 

Currylaksa

Although CoH is somewhat similar in functionality to Wild Growth, we are still comparing apples and oranges. We have to take into context the abilities of the healing priest as a whole.

It makes as much sense as comparing Focused Will with Natural Perfection and saying that druids have it worse than priests in arena PvP.

neither elitist nor jerk