Fallenangel

It was pretty clear the talent-calculator tooltip of Nature's Splendor has a typo, since Lifebloom was listed separately from the other hots while giving (allegedly) the same bonus. At least a 2 second buff is better than 1. Still, a 10 second lasting glyhped bloom with a close to 1 second gcd does allow for much greater healing in between. Assuming a 2 tank situation lifebloom still provides 2k hps while leaving us 80% free for more tank and / or raid healing. In single tank situation, between long bloom, wild growth and OoC procs one can hopefully reliably get a few full spirit ticks. This can be a big edge for spirit based healers compared to mp5 ones, considering blizzard's stated goal of caring about mana.
In general I feel the mechanics for druid healing look very solid in WotLK. Our arsenal is versatile and a druid can successfully fill a lot of healing roles (usually at the same time). While the numbers may be a bit off, tweaking numbers is a lot easier than changing classes - see the state of holy paladins as of late.

 

Moofireragnaros

Nature's splendor is changed, it now only costs 1 talent point and it increases the duration of Lifebloom and Rejuvenation by 3 seconds and regrowth by 6 seconds. Nature's grace now costs 3 TP's, but I doubt many players will take this talent.

I notice Blizzard is fooling around with this talent a lot. I hope it is a stayer because it greatly increases our mana efficiency. The only downside is that the manacost of Lifebloom is probably increased because of this talent. Imagine how insane the HPM would be with 11 seconds during lifebloom and the low cost it currently has.

 

Anaram

Assuming nature's splendor giving only 2 ticks to lifebloom isn't a bug, that means it'll be 10 seconds glyphed - has time to heal 9 times before being refreshed.

With 1300 spell power lifebloom ticks for 810 fully stacked & talented which means 7300 potential healing for 391 mana. Given how constricted mana is, it might be better to just skip lifebloom on tanks in some situations since cast-cancel with healing touch or nourish might allow dipping outside of 5SR. Depending on fight the actual healing might turn out to be about 1500 or 6000. In the former situation you'd probably just skip lifebloom if there are other reasonable options to use the mana.

Either way, I'd say it's no longer clear that the best solution is to just roll lifebloom on the tank(s) and as such it's not really obvious that the lifebloom glyph should be picked up. I'd say currently it depends on profile of incoming damage quite much.

 

grutak

Even with LB, you can dip outside the 5SR. 9 seconds between recast means you can LB and cast another 2 second cast spell, and then still have time to drop outside the 5SR. Add in a good amount of haste and/or GotEM to squeeze off .5 to bring a 3 spell rotation down to <4 seconds, and you'll still be dropping outside the 5SR.

 

Anaram

Even in such a rotation lifebloom is very much controlling when you can heal. The gains are also very small: if you had 1000 spirit regen per 5 seconds this rotation would give just about ~1200 extra mana per minute (excluding OoC etc.)

 

grutak

~1200 mana per minute. Or 100mp5. Thats more than 1/4th my total regen(raid buffed) at 70. What will it be at 80, with new spirit numbers? 1/5? 1/6th? Thats by no means "small".

 

Anaram

Quick math:

300 mp/5 from spirit at this point, 100 mp/5 from BoW, 100'ish from mana spring, water elemental etc. combined
perhaps 200 MP/5 from replenishment effect for a total regen of about 700/mp5 so pretty close to 1/6th.

Just remember, however, that the only way you are actually going to get this much mana as a result of the strategy which involves casting 3 spells per 10 seconds and at times which are determined by lifebloom rather than your preference. I don't think such rotations will be very feasible outside first tier of raiding at most. If you want to leave yourself, say, 200 ms of buffer before refreshing lifebloom then you'll get less mana of course. I don't think all these restrictions make such strategies very feasible considering how small the gains ultimately are.

The single biggest effective mana cost is the lifebloom. If the other healer can reasonably well keep the tank up alone, it's just another way of saying "overheal". Skip the lifebloom from the rotation and you can heal exactly when the encounter demands and still occasionally get out of the 5-second rule, probably less often but for longer periods at a time.

---

Either way, the biggest difference healing nax-10 now compared to Sunwell is that in the Sunwell you can't afford *not to heal* when someone's dipped below 100% - in nax you can't afford to heal just because someone's dipped below 100%. I just wait for them to go reasonably low so that hots won't overheal as much. It's an entry level raid and getting all gear upgrades from there and half from nax-25 and enchants, new consumables etc. would of course provide much more mana for the "real raiding".

WG isn't really very good if mana is an issue because too much of the healing potential often gets wasted either by overwriting my existing hots (or someone else's existing hots) or applying on targets which don't need the full healing amount or applying on targets which are just about to get targeted with CoH/chain/whatnot.

When I do use WG in 10-mans I almost never click it again until the previous application has run it's full course: once again too much risk of not getting it hit 5 "good" targets. A 10-man raid with 2 tanks really has only 8 targets that WG will generally pick (except if tanks happen to go quite low exactly when casting). The ratio is just too bad for applying more than one cast a time even if you were lucky enough to hit all the 8 non-tanks.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

I've also noticed in naxx that a lot of times people won't get topped off due to time/mana constraints on the part of the healers. I think this will increase the value of things like the Blood healing aura, and improved leader of the pack, and even bloodthirst on fury warriors.

As for the five second rule, omen of clarity gives good opportunities for that, and there's also a trinket with a 1ppm proc that makes your next heal cost 800 less mana, so free for many spells. It's quite nice for that as well.

 

Anaram

Personally I think a big part of the perceived problem is that the early tiers of healing gear have haste. Haste isn't a particularly good healer stat if you are having mana problems while it's a quite decent cure to the problem of healers having "unlimited" mana (or for any caster, really). Those who really do want haste can socket for it anyway. Also replacing haste with regeneration might have a more significant impact on how the healing *feels* - afterall there are now raid haste tools (and haste talents) which will help mitigate the gap in haste from Sunwell to Naxxramas.

That said I think the secondary healing abilities can be useful if the profile of incoming damage is such that there's no immediate threat. These health regeneration mechanics would have been useful in the original Naxxramas - they might not be worth huge amounts but they'll still be worth something. Assuming a proc every 7 seconds, improved leader of the pack would with current Naxxramas gearing levels have ~1/3 the HPS of Wild Growth. Personally, I don't think they should be "useful" in raids sadly - all healing should have an opportunity cost and not just come "tacked on". It's almost impossible to balance such things going from one encounter to the next.

I find myself too slow to react to OoC most of the time, if I get out of 5SR with it, that's just luck.

 

mek

Well, I respecced a HT build for Patchwerk and ended up running all of Naxx with it, and I really have no intention of going back to deep Resto as it stands. 28/0/43 is a pretty well-rounded build, your HoTs are basically the same, and you actually take advantage of all the haste on your gear, and can spend a lot more time outside the 5SR.

The problem is simply that past Imp ToL, there are zero talents that actually improve healing. Replenishment, Living Seed, and Gift of the Earthmother are all of very dubious value, and none of them significantly improve healing throughput or efficiency. If and when the regrowth glyph is nerfed, this build simply gets even better comparatively speaking. And it's a little more fun than just rolling lifeblooms...

 

Anaram

Indeed, going all the way down to dreamstate does seem fairly appealing in the present state of things. You can get very nice scaling from both int & spirit to get at least some decent mana to play around with. 12% of int to spell power and 10% of spirit to spell power and 10% int as mana regen (or you can convert regen to 15% of spirit as spell power if you want). You should have enough spell power that you can direct all your sockets towards mana regen and you'll get brambles to help the tank.

Still, I think I'd probably just pick some other healing class if the only new ability I got in the expansion was Nourish.

 

Darian_TruBlade

So would you say that the problem isn't Wild Growth, but the talents leading up to it? Or would you say that Wild Growth contributes to or compounds the issue?

 

Fallenangel

Looking at current itemization, there aren't a lot of items that have both spirit and mp5 (Items - World of Warcraft). As such, druid healing items will have 3 stats - +spellpower, a regen stat (spirit OR mp5) and a throughput stat (crit or haste). Since crit has little effect on our throughput, the conclusion is that haste is still a stat to gear for and that items with it will be desired.
I haven't played on the beta / ptr but I'm not sure why GotEM is dismissed as useless so quickly. It provides a haste bonus that is close to the haste an ideal level 70 gear has on live, on 2 of our hots. This is well worth 5 talent points in my book. Granted with 10 seconds bloom instead of 7 the value of haste might have diminished somewhat, but unless mana is a real issue, more throughput will beat regen. Another benefit of haste is allowing you to leave the 5SR more often and for longer periods of time.

 

Pyxis

It's being largely dismissed because druids aren't being able to sustain the mana for rolling LB on more than 2 maybe 3 people for the duration of a fight. I'm finding myself using regrowth / rejuv almost exclusively with occasionally LB on 1 or 2 tanks. If you're not rolling LB, the haste on the GCD is fairly weak. I would have liked it for Sapphiron where I was spamming rejuv on half the raid but other than that I'm not really using my instants all that much. The talent also wasn't stacking with haste gear on the latest beta patch.

 

Ends Fire

Pyxis could you link the talent spec you were using for a regrowth/rejuv spam build.

I was thinking something like this, but not sure:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...20000000000000

 

Pyxis

I was using something like this: (last 2 points could go anywhere you want)

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...00000000000000

If you're using regrowth you need living seed in my opinion, it's landing for 3k+ on crit regrowths, and I took replenish because while I think it's underpowered the effects should add up if you're using rejuvenation a lot. I also take Imp. Tranquility because I think it's underrated. The talent lowers the cooldown to 4 minutes which makes it available pretty much every pull in raid instances and it's really nice to use on the pull when there are a lot of mobs up and lots of incoming damage. You do a TON of healing and it's all threat free so you're not stressing the tanks.

On the other hand, this build:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...20000000000000

Looks pretty nice to me as well.


Edit: oops wrong link

 

Anaram

It's now Wild Growth :>

I'd say the problem is that every time I use WG is I feel like a "bad healer." There are multiple reasons for me to use it, just none of them is very good.

I use WG because my beta unit frames make targeting pets a bit difficult
I use WG because I'm too lazy to heal multiple people separately or because I just feel like it's "neat" to keep people topped even if I don't think they are in any risk of dying
I use WG because I like the sounds and animation
I use WG because I'm not really sure who to heal (aggro alert is a bit broken in grid I think)

Most of all, I use WG because I've extra mana to throw around (on trash and the easier bosses). I don't use it because I think it's good, I use it because I'd like to think it's good.

Wild Growth like gotem is something that would be fantastic in Sunwell when you need to use every cooldown and when the mana can sustain using every cooldown. Blizzard has stated they intend mana to be a more significant mechanic and it probably will be in the more engaging encounter. The amount of regeneration to get significant use out of these talents seems unattainable for the moment.

 

Anaram

Something from GC (WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Resto feedback (long, blue please read)

I'm not really sure if GC was trying to say that Wild Growth (or Nourish?) is good for Loatheb or if he was referring to other healers on both count. Would be encouraging (or discouraging) to hear some situation where he envisions Wild Growth is useful.

Personally I think resto druids had fine tools for 5-man instances in TBC; they really only had one big problem: threat (which should now be solved anyway). At least this is true enough after the heroic nerfs - some fights were really harsh for *all* healers before then (and with pre-heroic gear).

 

Darian_TruBlade

I may be misreading what Ghostcrawler is trying to say about competing with Chain Heal, but it seems odd if not bad design for a 51 pt talent to be inferior to a baseline skill. It's not particularly fun or compelling to know that you can spec out of your shiny new 51 pt talent if you have a Resto Shaman or Holy Priest who consistently raids.

As for 5 mans the one tool I wished I had was a decent AoE heal outside of Tranquility. Magister's Terrace really highlighted that weakness for me more than any other 5 man. You can throw HoTs predictively to deal with a lot of the damage that gets thrown around there, but if you aren't rocking T5+ gear it's very easy to get overwhelmed.

 

gardenborn

I've been following this post for a couple of weeks now, and by now want to share my thoughts. I was raiding BC into Sunwell with a Dwarfen CoH Priest and will reroll Tauren Resto Druid for WotLK. I am playing beta, though with a Draenei shaman and a Orc warrior and not with the druid, as I want to wait for final skill tweaks before I get too used to it. Plus I wouldn't be bringing her to 80 anyways as intense leveling on beta seems to much of a waste of time for me. I do keep contact to all the guildies leveling though. But if you feel this disqualifies my thoughts, then so be it.

However, concerning the ongoing debate, these things come to my mind:

1. Flourish/WG. From my priest experience there are only very few bosses where CoH is actually worth spaming, when it comes to both throughput and time. Most of the time I just use it to top people off, while flashing more severe single damage. Given that I use it singularly most of the time I do think that a comparison of flourish/CoH is somewhat flawed, as Flourish allows you to lay a background of healing so to speak, while dealing with single targets individually, but having the difference that flourish is still ticking while not requireing neither additional attention nor time. CoH uses its gcd and thats it then. So I am pretty sure that they'll both have their space.

2. Mana issues
When it comes to mana issues, two tendencies seem to become appearent, not only in this thread:
a) More mana concerns will make the often debated HoT-overhealing less intense. This will maybe not count for flourish due to the also debated targeting mechanism, but will definitely apply for Rejuv/Regrowth.
b) The other thing is that Naxx gear is still very low in WotLK. I believe that you should not expect to keep on healing all the fight through without running oom given that both you and the people you heal are 'in gear'. I remember Kara being quite challenging initially pre-nerfed and everyone in almost all-blue. I would expect to be able to heal Naxx through without any kind of mana issues... in t7+fullish, at least, if not more. But not in the beginning. So I don't know if you should expect that kind of performance at that raid gear level already.

3. Healing touch
I do share the concern that especially in 10s it will be difficult to come around HT. As priest I used GH in 10s a lot, way more than in 25s. Of course you can always argue that your co-healer(s) should be more appropriate to take care of the direct healing business, but not speccing into the 0.5s seems pretty negligent to me when you know you'll be using it. But giving up WG? Here I definitely lack the experience.

4. Replenish. So far it seems to me that this is among the most underrated. Especially runic power, energy and rage translate directly into dps/aggro, which in my opinion is among the most direct and valuable kinds of support you can have. I agree though that 1% base mana is a) not a lot and b) needs to be converted into dps first by casting, making it a lot less valuable. However, maybe not in the beginning, but progressing along I am quite sure that most restos will want to have that talent to get that extra threat/dps.

/discuss^^

 

mek

The serious problem I have with Replenish is it basically contradicts with Wild Growth. This talent encourages you to predictively keep Rejuvenation up on anyone you expect to be taking regular damage, especially when combined with Gift of the Earthmother, you can keep Rejuv ticking on a LOT of people, while rolling a few lifeblooms... which leaves me wondering where and why I need a reactive AOE heal with much less HPS than the spells I'm already casting. I can't afford to cast this spell, just so people are topped up a second earlier, nor do any fights in WotLK require me to. Ultimately it just contradicts with the current playstyle. Ironically, I could use Wild Growth occasionally when playing HT-style, as my focus is less on keeping people topped up.

I agree that if we were dealing with Sunwell fights and Sunwell regeneration, deep resto would be far more useful, and you will find it so at 70 in 3.0. But once you hit 80, it's a very different story, as mana management is your main concern again.

 

Pyxis

I have yet to find a use for WG in it's current state. I mean I cast it and watch intently as health bars go nowhere at all.

There's a certain minimum hps that a spell needs to have before it's worth using a GCD for. WG and even LB arguably don't cut it at this point.

 

lairpie

Hmm... maybe going deep enough into balance to get a few nice talents like lunar guidance, moonglow, and maybe dreamstate when mana is a big concern initially and hots just aren't packing enough punch yet, then swapping to more deep resto with gear improvements... sounds familiar.

Brewmaster of WBC

 

Norfair

I don't think it's bad design. We all know that Chain Heal is the shaman's bread and butter. It would be "unfair" if resto druids get something equal or even better if they spec... resto, and then still have all the other tools that we have now. It would end up giving druids a HUGE boost. They could do the same for shamans of course, but if I recall correctly, Blizzard does not want to have a "you NEED to take the 51 pt talent otherwise you fail at your role" scenario. The fact that some people are already considering to skip it (for now) and pick up some nice Balance talents instead is exactly what they want, for you to have options.

About the mana issues, I don't think anything will change. At each new level cap the same will happen. You start in "crappy" gear (blues) and in order to make encounters interesting you should give healers enough mana to have them do something. However, as gear gets better, the better your mana-regen becomes, giving you more mana per encounter and also to cast more spells in the same time. In the end you will hit a "wall"; you practically get more mana than you can spend, because you can only cast X spells in Y time. Haste can change this a bit, but not so much. This is something which we have already seen in Sunwell. You just keep casting no matter what and you still don't run oom. They say they want to change this, but unless they are going to have mana-regen scale badly or just don't put as much spirit or mp5 on the later tiers, we will eventually see the same thing happening. Because "end of WotLK gear" will have two times as much mana regen as "starting in Naxx gear" (if they follow TBC values), and you sure as hell don't want healers in Naxx to just stand there doing nothing 50% of the time (I think back at start of TBC my ManaRegenFU said I was in the 5SR about 80-90% of the time, as opposed to 100% now). As mana becomes more a non-issue, the less appealing Dreamstate will look and the more tempting it will be to take WG "because it really pwns at encounter X". I can remember CoH had a similar issue at the start of TBC, being weak and seemed useless. In the end it proved to be one of the most powerful healing spells in the game. Needless to say I do not worry about WG being useless (yet).

Keep f**king that chicken.

 

Fallenangel

It's really unclear to me why Blizzard want to re-introduce mana as a concern. I don't consider mana conservation to be a sign of good play, especially considering the reactive healing style of druids. Trying to gouge who's likely to take damage in the next few seconds and pre-hotting them sounds a lot more like player skill to me than avoiding casting until the last second trying to squeeze in a 100% spirit regen tick. Sunwell is a prime example of that, having 0 mana issues and still being a very challenging place to heal through.
Regarding 51 points talent, they tend to be a hit-or-miss, since they tend to compete directly with the 21 point talents in a secondary tree. For a big miss, see the shadowfury-DS debacle. So if both the 51 and 21 end up as dps talents (for a dps class), it's either the 51 talent wins and everybody take it, or it's a toss and then what's the point of having a tier 11 talent be as good a 5th tier one?
On the other hand, 3 of the 4 healing classes have a single healing tree. As such, not wanting to take the 51 points talent in that tree indicates that it's too weak. Having choice is nice up to a point, and 20 points in an off-tree offer a lot of it, but I do expect the deep resto tree talents to be ALWAYS worth taking. I think that this is the case right now, since living seed (aka improved improved regrowth) and GotEM both seem strong enough to warrant points, and at that point getting WG seems like a no brainer. Again, I say this from the perspective of SW:P healing, where throughput is everything.
Looking at dreamstate and lunar guidance, a SW:P geared druid gains about 70 spelldamage and 70mp5 from them. The mp5 is a larger % boost compared to base values - ~1400 spellpower and 350 mp5 - but mana regen tends to have more buffs that show up on the char screen (spriest, mana tide, innervate, potting etc.). Having a 5% spellpower boost isn't negligible - it's equivalent to around 130 healig on live - but is it worth a whole new ability? Dreamstate also comes at the cost of living seed, which should be a major boon for regrowth spammers.