malthrin

Yeah, I did Sunwell last night as 5/0/56 and was very unimpressed with Living Seed. I'm quite happy with WG, though. Here's the WWS if anyone is interested (Wow Web Stats). My usual timer mods aren't working so I spent a lot more time refreshing Lifebloom than I probably needed to.

 

Erdluf

The first post is showing a spellpower coefficient (untalented) for the Lifebloom HoT of 11.9% per tick. I'm seeing a number between 9.4% and 9.6%, per tick.

Sample calculation (76-224/7)/465 = 9.46%

 

Currylaksa

I believe it's the other way round.

Nourish's projected role is flash healing where efficiency takes a back seat to immediate survivability. Glyphed, talented HT does that a whole lot better.

neither elitist nor jerk

 

Darian_TruBlade

I'm not sure that's the case. I don't presume the following math is very accurate because it isn't obvious to me how the mana cost reductions play out. I'm assuming multiplicatively. For the sake of simplicity I've ignored Tranquil Spirit as it affects both equally.

Nourish's mana cost is 18% base mana. Healing Touch, with the Glyph and Moonglow, should have a base mana cost of ~24%. Healing Touch's (Glyphed) average base heal is 2045, with a coefficient of 62.9% (Assuming Empowered Touch is halved). Nourish's average base heal without HoTs is 2035 and scales with a coefficient of 42.9%. With HoTs, those values grow to 2442 and 51.5% respectively.

So for 6% more mana, you gain better scaling. However, you lose the following.
[*]Utility in the form of a big heal, including use with Nature's Swiftness.[*]A glyph slot.[*]2 or more talent points.

Given that I can easily think of other, equally useful things to do with the glyph slot or talent points, I don't find it particularly useful to make modest gains in scaling while sacrificing so much.

"A man's IQ, yearly income, sexual prowess, ingenuity, physical appearance and generally every other aspect of his character can be condensed down to four digits: his Arena rating." - Zechsy [70 Rogue - Skullcrusher (EU) - 10/23/2007]

 

Currylaksa

It's not about scaling. We're talking about a spammable 1.0s flash heal that punches at the 1.5s weight class.

It's amazing in so many tight situations, both PvE and PvP. The loss of a big NS every cooldown doesn't compare.

neither elitist nor jerk

 

Olddrippy

The 1 second cast time is sort of nice, but because the global cooldown for healing touch is still 1.5 seconds......it seems like it's not worth putting more than a couple of points in the talent that lowers the cast time of healing touch if you are using the glyph. The extra .3 seconds could save somebody's life i guess but I don't like to think that I cut things that close very often.

 

Kirion

The thing is, you need Glyph and numerous talents to make flash-HT viable. Or you can have Nourish at 80.

42.

 

Daedalix

My first post-patch raid was a ZA w/o working timers and I thought I'd never heal again. I was spec'd for Nature's Splendor and GotEM. Since then I've been doing random achievement-based raids, Heroics, and Vanilla raids with WG and it has made healing fun again. Regardless of if you want to use HT, Nourish, or our other alternatives, we finally have a choice and are not locked down into a rotation. As has been mentioned before about WG, it's even more important for a raid to be clumped into groups with every class having a strong aoe-healing option. Often what I found doing in the ad-hoc raids so far was moving halfway into the fray and casting it on myself to make sure it got on the people I wanted.

Living Seed is hard to see be effective but it's not worth the talent points in its current state. WG isn't immediately effective but once it starts rolling, I don't worry about those folks. At first I found myself LB/RJ right after a WG, but that was an unnecessary knee-jerk.

I might not be so sad if my DK-reroll doesn't work out and I have to stick with my druid. Btw, you can find updated time mods (at least for Grid) back a page or two.

 

Elryse

Until 80, however, going the Healing Touch route seems to work fairly well. Wild Growth basically has the effect of throwing Lifeblooms on everyone in your party (or 5 people in the raid within 15 yds of the person you cast it on) and for a much lower overall mana expenditure. Even at 80, I'd wonder if a glyphed Healing Touch would still be a good option for use on targets other than the main tank (assuming no more than 3 need the healing, in which case, provided no other healer healed them, a Wild Growth might be the better option).

Until they change Living Seed (hopefully it's not working as intended right now, and is supposed to go off AFTER the target takes damage as opposed to before), Regrowth is nice, but isn't the end-all be-all, even glyphed. I still use it, and I'd even use the glyph, but only to benefit from refreshing the Regrowths I have on the tank(s) in my party/raid. Every other time I needed a heal, I'd probably use Healing Touch.

Just from what I've seen thusfar in the changes in my mana conservation, I can see what Blizzard is trying to do: implement the management of healing resources. And while I'm not sure I currently like the idea of no longer being able to just throw HoTs everywhere and be a sort of "buffer" to the raid, I do wonder how this is going to affect how we gem for gear: with the bonuses granted to us by Spirit, I wouldn't be surprised to find myself gemming for it at times, rather than gemming for Spell Power, especially if doing so would grant me bonus effects (such as socket bonuses). I already don't gem straight for Spell Power, opting instead for a little more conservation than some, but this will make me feel a bit better about doing so.

 

malthrin

Miscellaneous thoughts from doing the full range of content this week - Sunwell, ZA, and a bunch of Heroics.

WG - the one issue I have is the limited throughput. On something like Hex Lord, it's not comparable to CoH; the best you can do is refresh it after two ticks (every other GCD), but it's far from spammable. For "aura" damage like Felmyst or Sapphiron, however, it's fantastic. I've also found myself standing between the melee and ranged camps and WGing myself to let it choose targets from both groups.

Gift of the Earthmother - I've seen some people complain that -.2 seconds on hots doesn't seem worth it, but the practical upshot is that it makes a 5-GCD rotation easy if you have minimal spell haste. It's also great for re-stacking Lifebloom if it falls off for whatever reason. I can't see myself ever skipping this talent; it's hard to quantify the benefit of extra time, but when you're crunched for GCDs every .1 counts. Besides, it's hard to not take it if you're getting WG, and you'd be dumb not to get WG.

Glyphed HT vs Nourish vs Regrowth - right now I think that 1.0 HT is comparable to Regrowth. In Lich King, however, I see Regrowth pulling away as a spot heal. From my current 5/0/56 spec to 14/0/x at 80, Regrowth gains a number of buffs: primarily, Nature's Splendor bumps the Regrowth HOT up to 27 seconds. If you're spot healing with Regrowth, you'll have a lot of Regrowth hots around, which not only has decent healing, but allows you to Swiftmend without consuming the HOT (Swiftmend glyph) and buffs any further Regrowth on that target (Regrowth Glyph). You'll have Nature's Grace for throughput if shit hits the fan and you have to spam Regrowths. You may even have Living Seed if they fix it to work correctly.

So, if Regrowth will be the clear winner for a spot heal at 80, where does that leave Nourish and glyphed HT? Tank healing. Tanks will have hots on them, putting Nourish ahead in mana efficiency - but even if they were still neck and neck, HT requires a glyph and some talents to get that functionality, while Nourish is base. No contest.

 

• giansm

I mostly agree with malthrin's assessment except the part that states "right now I think that 1.0 HT is comparable to Regrowth". I'm not really sure what this means, since to me they seem like very different tools. One is swiftmendable, has a long(er) cast time, and has a high chance of proccing Nature's Grace. The other is not swiftmendable, has no heightened crit rate, but casts absurdly fast. Sometimes you do want that fast cast speed, since there will always be times when you know some guy is going to get hurt very soon. At that point, it doesn't matter that Regrowth has a great crit rate, or that it puts a long hot on, since you're praying that it just goes off in time. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

In general, I do agree that Regrowth will be the best for spot healing, mostly because of the hot. It's great to have swiftmendable hots on a large portion of the raid, and you'll be able to get that if you have a couple of druids healing with Nature's Splendor and Regrowth. However, for those situations where you have a very short time to get a heal off there's really only two things that can help: the person must already have a hot on them so that you can swiftmend it, or you need the fastest casting flash heal you can get your hands on. Regrowth can only help here indirectly, since if you don't already have a regrowth hot on that person to swiftmend then you're stuck praying for it to land in time. Ignoring the opportunity cost of glyphing it, Glyphed HT is the clear winner in these particular situations (which, granted, don't come up constantly but when they do it would be nice to have a solution).

However, even though I just made an argument for glyphing HT, I'm not really keen on actually doing it. This is mostly because once you do consider the opportunity costs, they seem pretty severe. NS+HT is pretty big but I think the biggest is the glyph slot; if I wasn't glyphing HT, I'd probably use Swiftmend, Lifebloom, and Regrowth. The Lifebloom glyph is for lengthening the free time between refreshes (of course I'm assuming here that we'll still roll lifeblooms on the MT). It's only a second so maybe it won't be amazing, but it does seem like it would be useful. Then there are the Regrowth and Swiftmend glyphs, which I'm particularly excited about. They have this amazing interaction where you get to keep Regrowth hots on folks without swiftmend consuming them, and if you refresh them you get an extra-strength heal. It also creates a Swiftmend network effect with other druids, since increasing the number of druids will tend to get even more people coated in hots and multiple druids can Swiftmend the same one if necessary. That seems like it would create really great synergy between multiple druids in the same raid, which is something I'm looking forward to if it unfolds the way I imagine it.

If it does work out this way, the healing style you'll see would involve rolling lifebloom and any other hots you have time for on the MT, and then doing almost all of your spot healing with regrowth, rejuvenation, and swiftmend (choosing regrowth or rejuvenation depending mostly on mana constraints and how urgent it is). WG would be used when it's a clear winner but probably not just spammed all the time. Its non-interaction with swiftmend is too much of a negative to use it constantly. Let the priests spam CoH, and just kick in WG to help them out when they need it (which will be in widespread aoe situations).

Anyway, if it does shake out like this, that doesn't leave the HT glyph in a very good place. That makes HT stay pretty much as simply a part of a NS+HT macro, and we'll use Nourish for those urgent situations I talked about earlier.

 

Anaram

Gift of the Earthmother is -0.3 seconds, not -0.2 seconds.

 

grutak

Has anyone tested to see how the changes to [Idol of the Raven Goddess] works now since ToL Aura changed? This came up in a conversation with my boss today. I'm curious because [Idol of the Emerald Queen] is only 47 SP for lifebloom, and if IofRG does anything close to 44 SP for everyone in your ToL aura, then IotRG is much better now.

 

Darian_TruBlade

Definitely the HT glyph is worth having while we make our way to 80. The level 70 raids have been changed such that I haven't encountered many situations where a huge heal is necessary, and I doubt leveling will be any different.

I don't, however, see it being worth keeping at 80 for the purpose you describe. The niche for glyphed HT is extremely small. The conditions where it's significantly better are very restrictive.

First, the target who has been damaged must be a non-tank, as tanks will likely have one of your HoTs on them. Second, they must have been the only person to be damaged or be too far away from other people for Wild Growth to be worthwhile. Third, they can't be in a life threatening situation or Rejuv>Swiftmend or NS>Regrowth will be a better option. Fourth, they can't be likely to take further incidental damage or Regrowth will be better. Lastly, the fight must require that all non-tanks be topped off as quickly as possible or a single Lifebloom/Rejuv will be better.

The niche for using either Nourish or Glyphed HT on someone outside of the tank is already rather small. It's not a big deal for Nourish as it's a baseline skill with uses in tank healing. For HT, however, it doesn't seem worth the glyph slot and talent points required to make it competitive with Nourish.

"A man's IQ, yearly income, sexual prowess, ingenuity, physical appearance and generally every other aspect of his character can be condensed down to four digits: his Arena rating." - Zechsy [70 Rogue - Skullcrusher (EU) - 10/23/2007]

 

Kiku

It's super easy to test. Put one on and cast a lifebloom, then put the other on and cast a lifebloom. Someone said that the IofEQ gets added after the coefficient is taken into account, which doesn't seem right to me, but IofEQ does cause each application of lifebloom to tick for 30+ more than if you used IotRG. Not sure if everything is working as intended or not.

 

halmmar

I don't know if it changed in the patch, but when I modeled Rawr.Tree I had to disable talents modifying scaling (20% HoT scale, 10% heal done) for IotEQ to get accurate numbers (this is why the IotRG was, arguably, better - it scaled with talents).

 

lairpie

Also, with the healing tools other classes have, it must be a situation where a holy shock, or a chain heal bounce or something from a non druid wouldn't get them as well.

Further, the one time where something like this does come up, glyphs are really cheap to change around. I see myself routinely changing glyphs around for progression fights. If there's a Rage winterchill type fight I would definitely go get the HT glyph and naturalist for having the maximum speed substantial heal available. Also, with respeccing free if you have 2 resto specs as your specs, or just even cheaper than it is now due to 50g at 80 being even less than 50g at 70, I'll definitely be changing specs around a lot for different fights. Maxing WG functionality for a felmyst type fight, maxing tank healing for a brutallus type fight, or a balance of tank healing and aoe healing for kalecgos.

Brewmaster of WBC

 

Dantos

A couple questions for you guys.

1) Glyphs. At 80, what glyphs are looking to be the best combo? This is assuming one does not go for glyphed HT. I saw at least one person here say that Regrowth, Lifebloom, and Swiftmend was a strong combo. However, another druid healer friend of mine was questioning if lengthening Lifebloom was worth it, as she still uses the end heal to keep people up at times. So, is it better to go with glyphs for Regrowth, Rejuvenation, and Swiftmend?

2) Rejuvenation. As a follow up to my first question, how worth is this spell? Obviously, you can trigger Swiftmend off it, you can glyph it, and talent it, but the question remains; how good is it, and when is it best to use? Another reason I'm wondering is because another druid healer I know said it was near worthless, which I'm unsure of.

 

Nitz

At 70, Rejuvenation is one of the spells I use most. It seems pretty even with Regrowth and Wild Growth. I mainly use it to be able to trigger Swiftmend or on tanks. For your first question, I'm seriously considering not to take Lifebloom glyph, but I don't know if the Rejuvenation one is worth it.

 

Anaram

In the current state of things I would personally consider skipping Lifebloom glyph since I'm not sure keeping lifebloom up on tank is really the best way to go. Even a 10-second cycle is quite rigid and is very likely to cause significant extra costs due to the 5-second rule. It seems better just to not keep Lifebloom up on tank by default (and rather just look at each encounter and see if it's necessary) or to support the tank healers in other ways (if he needs support).

I'd consider innervate glyph, rejuvenation glyph and swiftmend glyph under the assumption that I can rely on getting an innervate from someone else (while sparing my own for a priest or something). Regrowth glyph is also very high up there to replace either rejuvenation depending on numbers or innervate. If 25-man raids start bringing only one resto druid by default then I'd consider skipping swiftmend glyph also (as I believe one of the benefits of the current one is the ability of two druids to swiftmend tank with only one hot on him - not that important with only one druid). Regrowth and Swiftmend glyph also have some synenergy worth consider (RG+SM+RG).

That said I believe there are many ways to go about this. I'm currently thinking of starting out to socketing fully spirit (or int/spirit for yellows and heal/spirit for reds) and relying largely on rejuvenation with replenishment for the baseline healing (regrowth and wild growth for heavier times). Rejuvenation with tier bonus and idol for -mana cost should be highly spammable. If that doesn't work out, one can always change the strategy relatively easily.

 

Norfair

I'm going with Lifebloom+Regrowth+Swiftmend at first for sure. At the moment I have the Rejuvenation one and I guess I will keep it until all of the previously mentioned glyphs will be available. During that time I'm going to check WWS how often I get "high" Rejuvenation ticks. My feeling is that it hardly ticks on people with low hp: if they are low I don't use Rejuvenation, I use Regrowth. I hardly spam Rejuvenation on people before they take damage, only on "aura" fights like Felmyst and RoS where I can count on them taking damage. Rejuvenation at the moment is mostly a HoT I keep on the main tank for Swiftmend and although a tank will drop below 50% sometimes, most of the time he won't.

Instead, spamming Regrowth on the raid with a 27 sec hot that stays after Swiftmend and increases the next Regrowth by 20% will be highly noticeable. The Lifebloom idol feels very useful as with GotEM I am sitting at a 1 sec gcd, which means that the glyph will give me one more hot to spam if I keep Lifebloom rolling (which I'm not 100% sure of since the recent nerf makes it feel very weak at the moment).

On a different note, soon there will be a new patch (3.0.3), afterwards I will do some testing and theorycrafting and update the numbers in the first post, just in case they sneaky change something.

Keep f**king that chicken.

 

Fallenangel

I'd be very surprised if keeping a stack of lifebloom becomes a thing of the past. That's the most powerful application of it in PvE and if that won't be done the spell will be dead, which I don't think is desired by blizzard. With a 10 second duration and a 1 sec gcd, I don't see how keeping a 1k hot on the tank isn't worth it. 10k healing for 260 mana is a-ok in my book. With WG, which should be the main raid heal, gives ample opportunity to dip outside the 5SR, although I gotta admit that in SWP this week I just spammed it - kid in a candy store, I guess.
Regrowth with its long cast-time feels a bit clunky at the moment, but it will have its place once the current zergfest is over and it gains NG, which is the key to using regrowth I think. Sorta like rolling light's grace.

 

malthrin

Are you really going to take 2 healing specs? That seems to be missing an opportunity to increase the flexibility of your raid. I'm expecting that most healers will take a DPS offspec, assuming that DPS Death Knights/Warriors will have tanking offspecs. I'm particularly looking forward to using dual specs to speed up trash, which typically requires less healing than bosses.

Also, maybe I'm looking backwards with rose-colored vision, but I can't think of any raid spike damage that wasn't healable with Regrowth. What exactly do you expect to need a 1.0 second heal for?


I think that the Regrowth and Swiftmend glyphs are obvious choices. Regrowth is not only going to be our primary spot heal, but it's also our high throughput tank healing option - the Holy Light to Nourish's Flash. Evaluating our options for the last glyph slot:
Glyph of Innervate - Obviously useful only if mana is a problem. This may be a good option when we initially reach 80, but as we upgrade to Naxx gear, I suspect we won't need it. Keep in mind that the stat scaling (intellect and spirit) is not only benefiting our spirit regen, but also increasing the mp5 of Replenishment.
Glyph of Healing Touch - As already discussed, I don't see glyphed HT having a useful niche at 80.
Glyph of Lifebloom - decent. More time between refreshes can allow for some time out of the 5 second rule.
Glyph of Rejuvenation - as Norfair discussed, anyone with a Rejuv on doesn't tend to stay under 50% for long, so I'm not sure I see the utility here.

So really, Lifebloom isn't exceptional, but it's decent and I think it's the best of the remaining bunch. On whether we'll still roll Lifeblooms, yes, we will. Here's a post from 10/1 that has some relevant calculations:
WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Murmur Resto Druid Data (Stats / Numbers)
Rolling a 10 second Lifebloom is over 20 HPM, as is Rejuv. Rolling those on a tank is our baseline of efficient healing, which we'll supplement with the less-efficient Regrowth and Nourish as necessary.

 

Heffro

You may already know this, but what you're looking for is not a high Rejuvenation tick, but rather a separate heal called "Glyph of Rejuvenation". To wit:

Wow Web Stats

My feeling matches your feeling: having played with it a bit I think it's not likely to be useful in a raid setting; I'm thinking it's more of a PvP glyph.

 

Galashin

As an addition to the 10/1 post, here are some numbers from better gear (mix of 10/25man naxx/obsidian, 2027 spellpower, MotW only):

Lifebloom 3stack (with glyph, NS--but no idol, as it's still bugged):
1082 HPS
25 HPM (assuming 9 ticks)
391 mana
~12.7% of casting time to maintain a stack on one target

Rejuv (with glyph, NS, -106 mana cost idol):
598 HPS
29 HPM
371 mana
~6.4% casting time to maintain the HoT on one target

Obviously, this neither counts ramping up lifebloom nor potential overhealing of either spell. However, it does visibly demonstrate, when compared to the link, that lifebloom has worse scaling them rejuv, at least without the idol of lush moss. Already, at naxx/obsidian gear (compared to the premade PvP gear), maintaining rejuvs on each of two targets is more efficient (29 HPM) and greater HPS (1196 to 1082) than a lifebloom stack on one, for the same percentage of cast time. If someone has a model of lifebloom vs rejuv overhealing, this would be a great time to apply it.