We nerfed Lifebloom because it was just too good. It just healed for incredible amounts at good mana efficiency that other healers would have had trouble matching. It's much more fun to buff spells than to nerf them, so we try not to let any of them get out of control. But sometimes it happens.
Nourish and Wild Growth are both situational. We actually tried hard not to hand out new healing spells that needed to be put into a normal rotation. Nourish is good to use when healing a tank, either in a 5-man or a raid. It seemed less effective than Regrowth probably because the Regrowth glyph was too generous. Sometimes you can't wait for that Regrowth tick.
Wild Growth isn't intended to make you an awesome group healer. Shamans and Priests are awesome group healers, but can't hot the way a druid can. What Wild Growth is intended to do is let you heal a group when you are the only healer, or heal a group in fights (usually boss fights) where you don't have an opportunity to distribute hots to everyone. Without going into a lot of detail on new bosses in case you'd spoiler averse, there are bosses in Naxx and then the Malygos raid itself where you periodically can't get a bunch of heals up and yet the raid is still taking damage. Wild Growth is really helpful in those situations.
We think mana effeciency for Resto duids isn't too bad at the moment. You'll struggle in situations where you have to throw out a ton of heals quickly (as you should) but recharge when you can afford to take a break. Having someone with Replenishment greatly helps. Remember, we do want you to run out of mana. If we didn't want mana management to be part of the game, we'd just cut the cost of all your healing spells and call it a day.
What we don't want is A) your healing to be worse than other healing classes because you run out of mana too fast, or B) the fights to dish out more damage than you could ever have enough mana to heal. If either of those starts to feel like a problem, please speak up. But just running out of mana is going to happen. We aren't trying to prevent that.
The design is you should not need Replenishment to heal a 5-player, even a heroic.
I'd like to hear from any other Resto druids who are going OOM when healing small groups. Hots, single-target heals like Healing Touch and Nourish, and the occasional group heal should be all you need, even in green gear for normal instances or blues for heroics.
Hots are your niche. Nothing has changed. We just want to expand your portfoilio a bit, because hots won't work in every situation. You're about hots -- not just throwing them out, but using them to set up "combos" like Nourish, Replenish and Swiftmend.
If you are really struggling to heal 25-player raids, or really getting clobbered by other healing specs, let us know. That is not what we have been seeing and hearing.
Paladin niche is tank healing while priests and shamans got raid healing. Druids got hots. I must admit this doesn't imbue me with confidence.
Particularly: "there are bosses in Naxx and then the Malygos raid itself where you periodically can't get a bunch of heals up and yet the raid is still taking damage" makes me worried. Having played through entire Naxxramas (10-man) I still can't figure what GC is referring to (unless he means Loatheb in which case he's just plain wrong).
Druid niche, on live anyway and I see no reason for it to change, isn't hots per se, but the ability to heal multiple targets at the same time. Paladins may be able to heal a single tank, but add another tank and they're screwed (no beacon isn't useful for that). Same goes for raid damage. This stems mostly from the hot healing style, of course. Most naxx fights have multiple tanks and/or raid damage going around.
About the pure utility of hots (and WG in particular), I can think of a few useful situations : prehotting the raid before the webspray stun on maexnna or tossing hots around before leaving a corner on 4h.
Druid niche, on live anyway and I see no reason for it to change, isn't hots per se, but the ability to heal multiple targets at the same time. Paladins may be able to heal a single tank, but add another tank and they're screwed (no beacon isn't useful for that). Same goes for raid damage. This stems mostly from the hot healing style, of course. Most naxx fights have multiple tanks and/or raid damage going around.
About the pure utility of hots (and WG in particular), I can think of a few useful situations : prehotting the raid before the webspray stun on maexnna or tossing hots around before leaving a corner on 4h.
Why would you hot the raid before web spray? There should be absolutely no reason for the raid to need healing during it, only the tank. Also it's not actually possible to "hot up the raid" (only parts of the raid) unless you've specifically set your spreading to support that (and didn't bring pets etc).
I can understand hotting up before leaving a corner on the 4H, but why use wild growth instead of rejuvenation which lasts longer and provides better HPM&HPS?
Why would you hot the raid before web spray? There should be absolutely no reason for the raid to need healing during it, only the tank. Also it's not actually possible to "hot up the raid" (only parts of the raid) unless you've specifically set your spreading to support that (and didn't bring pets etc).
I can understand hotting up before leaving a corner on the 4H, but why use wild growth instead of rejuvenation which lasts longer and provides better HPM&HPS?
Why not both? There is only a limited amount of Rejuvenations you can throw around. An extra WG will add a hot to an additional 5 people instead of only just 1. Surely WG on 5 players will heal more than 1 Rejuv on 1 player.
Why not both? There is only a limited amount of Rejuvenations you can throw around. An extra WG will add a hot to an additional 5 people instead of only just 1. Surely WG on 5 players will heal more than 1 Rejuv on 1 player.
You've got a choice between rejuvenation which heals for 8500 (19 HPM) on a target you choose (and over 18 seconds has 90% chance to proc replenishment) and wild growth which heals for 2400 (12 HPM) on 5 targets it chooses (these are numbers with ~1500 spell power).
Yes, if everyone's taken so little damage that rejuvenation would be overhealing (and there's no risk of future damage within the window) then you might use wild growth (if you think you've got the mana - a good option might be to just not heal at all). If everyone's taken so much damage that you would need to use both rejuvenation *and* wild growth (or they are likely to take damage in the future) then the best option might be regrowth though I suppose you could throw rejuvenations & wild growths in instead. I just don't see how wild growth gives reasonable benefits over more straightforward and controllable approaches.
Just to throw some more numbers in here: fully talented wild growth scales at around 69% of healing spell power per target over 7 seconds (~345% on 5 targets), rejuvenation scales at ~387% of healing spell power per target over 18 seconds and can be supported with a glyph and/or an idol.
I'm not sure if you've got firsthand experience with Wild Growth but personally I just find myself gritting my teeth whenever I try to use it. I often see 5 people in raid who have taken some minor damage, throw WG and see it land on 3 of those 5 and the other 2 stacks just go wasted on someone with full HP.
Could you put the spellpower coefficients (untalented) on the first post? I found one post where you had done some computations, but it looks to me as if that was done before the Lifebloom nerf (it is showing 14%/tick).
I haven't been able to find a comprehensive list of LK coefficients, and that makes TC difficult.
I'd assume that after accounting for the healing->spellpower conversion we'd see
Regrowth/Rejuv coefficients unchanged.
HT coef reduced, based on reduced cast time.
Nourish, appropriate value based on 1.5s cast (possibly reduced due to the bonus healing effect).
Lifebloom Bloom unchanged.
Lifebloom HoT 20% below BC value.
but I'd prefer to know the "generally accepted" values.
Why would you hot the raid before web spray? There should be absolutely no reason for the raid to need healing during it, only the tank. Also it's not actually possible to "hot up the raid" (only parts of the raid) unless you've specifically set your spreading to support that (and didn't bring pets etc).
I can understand hotting up before leaving a corner on the 4H, but why use wild growth instead of rejuvenation which lasts longer and provides better HPM&HPS?
Webspray does aoe damage (2k at level 60 iirc), hence it helps to pre-hot the raid. Rejuv would cause a lot of overhealing and take up a lot of gcds. Yes doing it with WG at its current incarnation is clunky targetting-wise, and I still hope it will be changed to a "dumb" heal that is group based. In general I was suggesting cases where hots are useful as a result of their delayed nature which is what GC was hinting at.
edit: of course on maexxna hotting the tank is a big benefit as well
Webspray does aoe damage (2k at level 60 iirc), hence it helps to pre-hot the raid.
Yes, you could do that. I'll have to argue that it's just plain bad strategy, though.
The only really important thing is to have hots on tank and have him be topped up before web spray - the raid will not die during web spray if they don't die at the start of it. Using mana and global cooldowns on the raid would merely subtracts from tank healing and make it more likely that the tank starts web spray under 100% health or without maximum durations on hots left.
If that's the main use for WG, why is it a multi-target HoT?
I wouldn't complain about another HoT for the tank (given Lifebloom's nerf), but WG is obviously designed to fill the AoE healing gap. If we are seriously at the point where "one more HoT on the tank" is the niche that WG is filling, then WG is beyond flawed.
What I lack in intelligence I make up for in verbosity.
Yes, you could do that. I'll have to argue that it's just plain bad strategy, though.
The only really important thing is to have hots on tank and have him be topped up before web spray - the raid will not die during web spray if they don't die at the start of it. Using mana and global cooldowns on the raid would merely subtracts from tank healing and make it more likely that the tank starts web spray under 100% health or without maximum durations on hots left.
That's just not how druid healing works. If you can't spare a single, 1.2 sec at max gcd from tank healing, either you're doing something wrong or your other healers are.
Not to mention that yes, webspray damage healing is important (or was at naxx40 anyway) because you want people topped off before a wall port.
I meant, in a fairly ironic manner, that for that encounter, the tank healing was so much more important for websprays than dps healing, that even our aoe heal was best used on the tank.
If a dev just said "oh, sorry, we forgot to mention, since druids have a much more constant mana need between teirs of content than other healers, we figure you'll all go down to dreamstate at first, then once you don't need it, then go into deep resto" I'd feel a bit better. That's what I and many people did at 70, it is something we'd understand, even if some didn't like it.
The deep resto talents other than WG just don't seem useful at all for early content. Living seed won't do much till you happen to accidentally get a bunch of crit on your gear. You won't have enough mana to make use of GotEM at first. As a talent providing a small dps boost, replenish just isn't going to be worth it for 5 mans with their much less strict dps requirements, and the idea of throwing out a rejuv just hoping to boost dps a bit is quite silly when you're still rather constrained on mana.
Also, there's obviously more need to be able to solo as a new 80 healer than as an established 80 healer that usually has a dps alt as well to farm with and completed all the quests you wanted to long ago, not to mention a good set of feral gear that no one wanted. The DS-Tree build allows for full nature's grace, 4/5 starlight wrath, IS, some crit, or redo a few points for reach or imp MF. That, with the gear changes, should be a miracle in terms of the ease of completing quests or farming as a new 80.
Two things however indicate to me that isn't intended:
1. Wild growth is stated to be most useful in 5 mans where the targeting is a non issue, mana is generally less tight, and there is no chain heal or coh to outshine it. But you can't get WG in what seems to be the "make up for not having good gear yet" spec.
2. You can't max imp tree and dreamstate. I realize that's not exactly crippling the spec, but it does certainly cast a bit of doubt on whether that's really intended.
A big fix to this would be to let WG play better with some of the other deep resto talents. Allowing it to proc replenish would increase the viability of both talents. The biggest problem I have with WG is the biggest problem I have with CoH right now: for most fights, if there's enough damage to make CoH/WG a really good idea, there's probably also enough damage that someone really needs a PWS or in our case a RJ-SM combo or nourish. Let that become a WG-SM combo by allowing wild growth to be swiftmended for comparable healing on that target to a RJ-SM. That would make WG a valuable raid tool as the crown of a good raid spec. Right now it is, by blizzard's admission, mostly a 5 man spell, but you can't really afford to spec for it if you still need a lot of 5 man gear.
I missed that you were being ironical, but I think my statements still ring true.
I don't agree with your assessment regarding CoH/WG versus PW:S/RJ-SM. When you encounter the kind of raid damage you describe some healers will be healing the raid en masse and some healers will be propping up those in the danger zone. Otherwise we're talking about a situation where everyone's taken minor damage and one or two people happened to be nailed with something else to put them in the red. The problem WG faces is not just that it's remarkably inferior to CoH and Chain Heal, but also that Druids are extremely good at emergency heals. As a result, any competent raid leader will look to us to help in shoring up the weak while Priests and Shaman bring everyone back up to speed.
What I lack in intelligence I make up for in verbosity.
Priests also posses the best tools of any healer for healing non tanks at dangerously low HP. Flash of light doesn't do nearly as much as hp as flash heal and the mana cost is inconsequential next to the value of saving someone truly in danger. Other than once per 3 minutes, priests are by far the best healers at saving someone truly in need of it. Even CoH itself isn't a terrible spell for keeping someone alive long enough to get some other heals as its the only way to instantly deliver healing more than once a 3 minutes. While the overuse of CoH compared to other tools isn't a class limitation, I'd say the issue is comparable.
Either way, that doesn't really change the fact that for many of the "best" times to use WG in a raid, a druid should actually be to busy either watching a tank since the other healers will be distracted or using NS, SM, regrowth on the people that really need it the most, while coh and ch do the mass healing.
That's just not how druid healing works. If you can't spare a single, 1.2 sec at max gcd from tank healing, either you're doing something wrong or your other healers are.
Not to mention that yes, webspray damage healing is important (or was at naxx40 anyway) because you want people topped off before a wall port.
Nax-10 is not Nax-40.
In my experience it's easy to claim that the other healer(s) aren't doing their job but it's a lot more successful to just have a good strategy and to focus your effort on what can actually wipe you instead of trying to find uses for Wild Growth.
I disagree on the Priests. Beacon of Light + Infusion of Light puts Paladins in an excellent position for emergency heals on non-tanks and tanks alike. It is, however, largely a moot point as I agree with you completely that WG is far from good enough to warrant us using it over shoring up those in the danger zone. Even if it was equivalent to CoH and Chain Heal we'd likely be relegated to this task. Because of this, I definitely agree that being able to Swiftmend WG would be extremely helpful.
What I lack in intelligence I make up for in verbosity.
Wild Growth, at this stage, is a design change predicated off of Druid's weaknesses. Blizzard has a penchant for making 51-point talents as "cross-over" talents which give you an ability that you otherwise lacked severely (Shaman crowd control, rogue multi-target damage, warlock stun, mage pet). WG, from a design perspective, fills that gap and allows them to design content around it. Now, 5-mans can become more interesting and "raid-like" rather than everything be a max-CC and then tank/spank.
They've simply failed to implement it fully and lack anything better to give us. From a min-max perspective it's only going to be situational as long as it has no synergies, but it'll make the life of that guy who just does heroics all day that much easier. Based on the blue posts, they seem to think we have the least mana issues of any of the healers. Your mileage may vary.
I would compare it to warrior's Shockwave. It's not Consecrate, but it at least gives us the ability to cope in situations we were previously under-equipped for.
On the point of it being mana inefficient, I would argue that it better allows us to stay out of the 5SR in cases of moderate party-wide damage (as opposed to LB/RJ the entire group). Or allows another healer to stay out of the 5SR...
I like the ideas lairpie had about making it both Swiftmendable and capable of a Replenish. Because of the limitations of those two particular abilities, it wouldn't be overpowered (except maybe stacking RJ+WG?) and would be on-par with a quality 51-pointer.
Could you put the spellpower coefficients (untalented) on the first post? I found one post where you had done some computations, but it looks to me as if that was done before the Lifebloom nerf (it is showing 14%/tick).
I haven't been able to find a comprehensive list of LK coefficients, and that makes TC difficult.
I'd assume that after accounting for the healing->spellpower conversion we'd see
Regrowth/Rejuv coefficients unchanged.
HT coef reduced, based on reduced cast time.
Nourish, appropriate value based on 1.5s cast (possibly reduced due to the bonus healing effect).
Lifebloom Bloom unchanged.
Lifebloom HoT 20% below BC value.
but I'd prefer to know the "generally accepted" values.
Thanks
Those are indeed the pre-nerf values and since I don't have any beta or PTR char at the moment, I don't have any way to figure out the new numbers myself.
Flourish used to be on Replenishment in the very first talent tree revision but was quickly removed from it.
Regrowth glyph was also changed, quoting from mmo-champion:
# Glyph of Regrowth - Increases the healing of your Regrowth spell by 20% if your Regrowth effect is still active on the target. (Old - Increases the amount of your initial Regrowth heal by 50% if your Regrowth effect is still active on the target.)
If this is accurate, that means there's a bonus to both initial and over-time components on the second cast instead of only the initial healing.
By the way, I was playing around with the talent calculator and found out that the Dreamstate build is actually pretty poor. You get Dreamstate, which is nice, but the other talents are wasted. I don't think 60 mp5 (lvl 70 values) is worth losing that many other talent points. Lunar Guidance gives you extra spellpower, but it is less than improved ToL will give you. You could spec both, but then you only get 2/3 Dreamstate.
In addition, the haste you get from Celestial Focus is in my opinion not comparable to GotEM. Instead you have to 'waste' talents on Brambles and Nature's Grace. Therefore any "good" build, as it stands now, will only have 11 points in Balance and the other 60 in Restoration.
It heavily boils down to your playstyle. If you don't use a whole lot Lifebloom and Rejuvenation, and if speccing out of Wild Growth doesn't bother you — I know it won't bother me at all in the early raids, DS is a whole lot better than a classic 11/0/60 (which I'd probably transform in a 14/0/57).
It heavily boils down to your playstyle. If you don't use a whole lot Lifebloom and Rejuvenation, and if speccing out of Wild Growth doesn't bother you — I know it won't bother me at all in the early raids, DS is a whole lot better than a classic 11/0/60 (which I'd probably transform in a 14/0/57).
A whole lot better? I disagree. If you take Dreamstate, you will end up with at least a build comparable to this:
The imp Moonfire talent is required to get to DS. You could put it in any (useless for healing) talent that you see fit. The tier 2 talents in Resto are personal flavor, but I guess if you don't use hots that much you want a shorter HT (the point is that you need to put 5 points there somewhere to move to the next tier, so might as well be that).
Now, I took all the talents that are more or less mandatory for a Resto druid, leaving open 2 points. What do you get with this build compared to a "classic" 11/0/60?
- Nature's Grace
- 3% haste on all spells
- 12% int converted to spellpower
- 10% int converted to mp5
- 2 points left to put somewhere in Resto where you see fit
If you put those last 2 points in improved ToL, you don't get full Tranquil Spirit. This is kind of conflicting with the "I need mana" paradigm that comes from a DS build. If you "spam" a lot of Nourish with a base mana cost of 835, you miss out on 50 mana per cast or on HT 75 mana per cast. That gets awfully close to what DS will give you.
You could put those 2 points in Tranquil Spirit of course, but then you miss out on the extra spellpower, making Lunar Guidance not a real benefit compared to 11/0/60. So basically, you only get 3% haste and one of those two benefits.
What will 11/0/60 give you?
- GotEM
- additional 6% mana cost reduction on HT and Nourish
- 15% of spirit converted to spellpower
- Living Seed
- Empowered Touch
- 3 points left for either Nature's Grace, Wild Growth, imp Tranquility, Replenish or Natural Perfection.
You can say what you want but the DS build is not "a whole lot" better. In fact it's pretty inferior to anyone who does not spam Regrowth 24/7 (and even then you'd have to value 3% haste and ~80 spellpower over Living Seed, where the latter problably is extremely imba combined with Regrowth's high crit chance).
09/29/08, 2:38 PM
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