I'm a little concerned about the Regrowth Glyph as it seems superfluous with the introduction of Nourish. Similarly the Healing Touch Glyph seems superfluous as we have both Nourish and Regrowth. The only Glyphs that seem universally appealing to me are the Lifebloom and Swiftmend Glyphs, and the latter of those two can be amazing or eh depending on how time was left on the HoT to be consumed anyway.

I'm rather impressed with the Regrowth one but then again I have been a 'fan' of Regrowth for a very long time and thus am slightly biased towards the spell itself, especially here where it finally unleashes some potential the spell has had for a long time.

Not only does it provide the extra 'oomph' that I feel the spell lacks it provides an incentive to utilize the spell more and maintain a good dosage of the HoT on most of the raid.
This will also allow Nourish to have a much higher chance of using its +20% bonus on non-tank targets where required as not many other HoTs are likely to remain on people long enough to offer stability of it.


Naturally the Lifebloomers will be excited at the Lifebloom one especially combined with GoTEm which will allow so many stronger rotations and offer great assistance against latency in their role.


They seem to provide some allowance of role adaption while not actually changing spec.. providing some much needed deviation from the classic tank & raid healer set assignments if people are truly better at the opposite role.

I still see a fundamental problem here.

Obviously your go to spell when unexpected, non-trivial damage to a single target occurs is Regrowth. In current circumstances this occasionally means throwing Regrowth on someone who is already under the effect of the HoT, in which case the Glyph is useful.

However it's effectively serving the same function as Nourish with the Glyph. It's a heal cast when Regrowth's HoT is already on the target. Granted there are minor differences, one is faster, one perpetuates a HoT, one works on a range of HoTs while the other works on only one, but overall the one is now impinging on the other.

Which leaves us with two possibilities. If Regrowth is significantly better than Nourish in this role using the Glyph, Nourish serves little or no purpose. If, on the other hand, Regrowth is still inferior or at best equal in the role, then the Glyph serves little or no purpose.

There also isn't any nourish glyph yet, or at least, I have not seen one. That could tip the scale in Nourish's favor, depending on the effect.

Based on the lack of Nourish and Flourish glyphs in the preview, and the Healing Touch glyph's considerable similarity to Nourish, I have the feeling that the glyph preview was written before druids entered their current state.

The regrowth glyph is strong enough that it has the potential to create a heal style around it. First, the build is 27/0/41+3 aka Nature's Grace (NG) build. The +3 is because you have the option of Dreamstate or Living Seed, both of which seem to be reasonable options. You give up Flourish, GotEM, Replenish, and the direct heal/tranq talents. The big gain is Nature's Grace (.5s off next spell after crit, lasts 15s) but 9% cheaper Regrowth, 12% int->SP, and the ability to solo efficiently are nice perks.

So how good is Regrowth?

Assumptions

Coefficients from the tree thread-- My guess is that they'll have a fixed conversion for SP->Heal for all classes and keep the coefficients. Correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't done LK heal theorycrafting.

2500 +heal (whatever this works out to be in SP), deliberately low

No haste, which is slightly unrealistic because WoA should be present at minimum.

No overheal.

I'm ignoring the HoT for this discussion and treat it as a direct heal spell.

Regrowth R12
Base Heal: (2494+2234)/2 = 2364
Bonus Heal: .289 * 1.2 (Emp. Rejuv) * 2500 = 867
Non-Crit Heal: (2364 + 867) * 1.14 (Gift of Nature + Master Shapeshifter) = 3683.4
Crit: 10% (base/int) + 50% (Imp. Regrowth) = 60%
Living Seed Crit Multiplier: 1.5+1.5*.3 = 1.95 best case, assuming no overheal on the crit
Crit Heal: 3683.4 * 1.5 = 5525.0
LS Crit Heal: 3683.4 * 1.95 = 7182.5
Expected Heal: 3683.4*.4+5525*.6 = 4788.4
LS Expected Heal: 3683.4*.4+7182.5*.6 = 5782.9
Cast Time: 1.5s * .6+ 2.0s * .4 = 1.7s
Mana: 1040 * .8 (ToL) * .91 (Moonglow) = 757.1 mana
HPS: 2816.7
HPM: 6.395
LS HPS: 3250.0
LS HPM: 7.378

Nourish (assuming full 71 points resto and imp ToL and Lunar Guidance offset each other)
Base Heal: (1883 + 2187) / 2 = 2035
Bonus Heal: (1.5/3.5) * 2500 = 1071.4
Non-Crit Heal: (2035+1071.4) * 1.14 * 1.2 (assuming hot on target) = 4249.6
Crit Heal: 4249.6 * 1.5 = 6374.3
LS Crit Heal: 4249.6 * 1.95 = 8286.6
Expected Heal: 4249.6 * .9 + 6374.3 * .1 = 4462.0
LS Expected Heal: 4249 * .9 + 8286.6 * .1 = 4653.3
Mana: 600 * .9 (Tranquil Spirit) * (1-.05*(4|3|2|1)) (GotEM) = 432 | 459 | 486 | 513
HPS: 2974.7
HPM: 10.33 | 9.72 | 9.18 | 8.70 | 8.26
LS HPS: 3102.2
LS HPM: 10.77 | 10.13 | 9.57 | 9.07 | 8.61
no HoT HPS: 2360.9
no HoT HPM: 6.56

So Nourish is a better direct heal when a target has a hot on it and a worse direct heal when it doesn't. Remember, this is comparing two different builds. A full resto will have a more expensive Regrowth.

So what about that glyphs?

Glyph of Swiftmend - Your Swiftmend ability no longer consumes a Rejuvenation or Regrowth effect from the target.
Glyph of Regrowth - Increases the amount of your initial Regrowth heal by 50% if your Regrowth effect is still active on the target.
Glyph of Rejuvenation- While your rejuvenation targets are below 50% health you will heal them for an additional 50% health.

Regrowth R12+Glyph of Regrowth
Non-Crit Heal: 5525.0
Crit Heal: 8287.5
LS Crit Heal: 10773.8
Expected Heal: 7182.6
LS Expected Heal: 8674.3
HPS: 4225
HPM: 9.49
LS HPS: 5102.6
LS HPM: 11.46

So, with a regrowth on the target and the glyph, Regrowth becomes a better direct heal than Nourish. In fact, the expected heal is close to HT R14, which is 8070 non crit.

My vote for the glyph to pair this with in a NG build is the Glyph of Rejuv. A Regrowth on someone < 50% has a 60% chance of catching a 1.5s 12.4k direct heal, which is a 3.7k seed. A full resto could, of course, put out the same heal, but the value of NG is that the heal has an extremely high chance of landing .5s sooner. It's like a mini Light's Grace. This is fast and (probably, given the TC healing numbers I've seen in other threads) strong enough that you should be able to heal reactively if you've got the buff, especially since you've got a seed and a full HoT stack on the tank. It's anti-spike without cooldowns.

Now whether this will actually work in a raid is questionable and likely to depend on your heal group makeup (you'll need someone to aoe heal at minimum from the look of things), but it looks like a great general purpose/5 man build. Bear in mind that all the numbers above are completely ignoring the HoT, which gets the lion's share of the SP, so the HPM numbers can potentially be much better. Finally, the really low coefficient on the direct portion of Regrowth means this won't scale that well, but it's fun to theorycraft regardless.

I think this will only be a viable method if it returns on full health people. Which according to beta testers, it doesn't seem to. If someone is taking damage, I'd much rather hit them with something that actually heals.

That goes without say. If a player needs healing you use a healing spell that's worth it. But seeing as managing your mana pool will be an important playing factor in WotLK (Potion Sickness etc.) having the option of providing others or yourself with a cheap mana regen buff that has a low impact on your own mana pool would be very beneficial.

ignore this. I had 2 different pieces of gear on lvie than I did when I transferred over. I'm a high functioning retard

I wonder what happens when:

• You have the RJ glyph.
• Your target is below 50%.
• You SM the target.

Will the SM get the benefit of the stronger RJ as it is technically healing 50% more?



The HT glyph needs to be changed though or altered so it does not effect a NS+HT combo, removing our biggest burst heal is not a good investment.

*NOTE* Much of what I am going to say in this post is based on information gleaned from WotLK Wiki, which seems to agree with information I have seen from other sources, but as it is a wiki, may be inaccurate. Links to all information that I reference in my post are provided at the bottom. Although the links to the 2 elixirs are mouseover, I provided the values in case it stops working later since the forums didn't seem to want to play nicely with the WotLK stuff on Wowhead.

On the issue of mana management, I know that many resto Druids (myself included) have taken up Alchemy for the +40% bonus on every single mana potion that we use, however with the Potion Sickness debuff in the Beta, Alchemy is looking to be a less and less attractive option since we will only be able to use one mana potion per fight. From what I have seen so far between MMO Champion and the WotLK Wiki, it seems that Alchemists will be getting a ~20-25% bonus effects from using elixirs/flasks to help compensate for this.

Spellpower Elixir: Increases Spell Power by 58
Elixir of Spirit: Increases Spirit by 50

Applying the 20-25% bonus to these, we have

Modified Spellpower Elixir: 69.6-72.5
Modified Elixir of Spirit: 60-62.5

I don't have a good grasp yet on how Spellpower converts to + Healing currently (Anyone that can help me there?) but I find if hard to believe that the benefit of 10-13 extra spirit will be all that great of a bonus, especially combined with the fact that Inscription will be able to create Scrolls of Spirit, so they should be much easier to obtain then the current method of hoping someone puts them on the AH (At least on my server, where they are bought out quite quickly). When you are also taking into account the expected increase in Spirit that we will see on our healing gear, this bonus seems even more insignificant. Although the +Spirit isn't listed for it yet, WotLK Wiki shows up through Scroll of Spirit VIII, and lists a Scroll of Spirit VI as giving a +40 spirit bonus when used.

*Assuming* that this doesn't change, it would seem like it would be a good idea to think about dropping Alchemy in favor of Inscription, because with access to an additional Glyph (I'm assuming it is a Major Glyph) it would give us an enormous amount of versatility. With spells like Flourish seeming to point to an increased amount of raid damage being taken in encounters, it might even be worthwhile to think about taking the Glyph or Rebirth, to help ensure that when someone is brought back that they don't die again before they can be brought back up.


Edit: I almost forgot to mention, on the idea of casting Rank 1 Rejuv on yourself for the passive mana regen, I don't think that this can be counted on as a viable way to keep up our mana pools, even if it procs off such a low ranked spell. I only have experience healing through Archimonde and Bloodboil, and maybe the rest of BT is different, but I rarely find that I have enough free GCD's open to where I would be able to go around tossing a Rank 1 spell on someone or myself just so that they can get some extra regen. While I realize that with talents it can go down to a 1s GCD, I think that encounters will be adjusted with regards to raid damage to compensate for this and keep us more then busy enough.

LINKS:

WotLK Wiki Inscription:
Inscription - WotlkWiki - Wrath of the Lich King Information

WotLK Wiki Alchemy:
Alchemy - WotlkWiki - Wrath of the Lich King Information

If you allowed the Elixir of Spirit in TBC, some people would still use [Elixir of Draenic Wisdom] since it gives you more mp5, a larger mana-pool and spell crit (int is worth just as much as spirit for trees).

I have one little thought about spirit in WotLK however. The ToL aura still boosts healing done by 25% of your spirit (modified by talents). Does this mean the aura got buffed (since there is only spell power, it would seem the strength of the aura more than doubled).

--

Allowing only 1 potion per encounter seems like the wrong way to balance out people who complain that raiding is too expensive (with [Mad Alchemist's Potion] having a cost of only 1g20s). I spend way more gold on repairs than potions, so I can't really see why they make this change (do I really want to go farm for [Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon] to replace the alchemist's stone - with 1 sec GCD it seems pretty useful).

It's a shame both leatherworking and alchemy get huge nerfs now that the gathering professions get their boosts (passive boosts at that). I would much rather have seen drums being raid-wide so you only need 4 leatherworkers per raid (and potions give an mp5 boost for the full encounter if only 1 is to be used, etc).

It's possible for them to have something only benefit healing, not spellpower as a whole, so they could easily make it 25% of Spirit, or presumably 40% with talents, worth of healing, not spellpower worth of healing. Think of it like Amp Magic. I cannot confirm this since my only beta access is through a friend's account, but this seems incredibly sensical.

The BDC is becoming more and more of an anachronism, a trinket with an infinitely scaling effect and no internal cooldown at all (I've had it proc 8 times on one M'uru attempt). Assuming it isn't nerfed, its exact value is very hard to judge, but it already gives significantly more pure mp5 than any other trinket in the game in the average case, and again, would continue to scale into WotLK.

Tree aura does seem to be much more powerful. I'll see if I can get some specific numbers later, but I'm pretty sure that it does in fact provide full healing spell power from your spirit. This makes improved tree of life even more attractive.

edit: blue dragon will indeed be even better in WLK since you'll be casting more spells due to lower global cooldown from gift of the earthmother. I may have to invest in one.

I don't much like speculating on healing behavior come WotLK, but I do love the BDC so, here goes paper napkin math.

Assuming you cast 110 spells over a 2 minute span in WotLK (I'm doing 90 Lifeblooms/Rejuvs and 20 Nourishes/Flourishes as a completely arbitrary combination), and you hit 1000 modified spirit and 800 modified int, neither of which seems unreasonable given that people already have 800+/650+ modded...

2770 MP return per Blue Dragon Proc.
89% (1-.98^110) chance of having at least one proc per 2 minutes.
.89*2770/24 = 102.9 expected MP5, assuming it can only proc once per two minutes, which currently is not the case (no internal cooldown). Factoring in proc'ing multiple times (as well as the fact that it can proc while it's proc'd, renewing the duration, but restoring less mana than two full duration procs) that number would go up, but my paper napkin cannot hold that much.

Tree of Life influencing healing spellpower instead of just raw healing would significantly influence the valuation of spirit. Given Tree of Life affecting everyone in the raid (ignoring the range restriction here), it becomes a lot easier to equate spirit to +healing in general. 40% of spirit turned into spellpower would mean that, assuming 7 healers (so 280% of spirit as +healing overall), what is now a 10 spirit blue gem would be worth 4 spellpower in terms of healing to all healers in the raid, for 28 total spellpower. In terms of total raid benefit, this is more than two teardrop crimson spinels.

Edit: (All my math might be off, I'll confirm once I get home from work)

Edit2: It all seems accurate.

There's an inscription currently in game that adds 1 second to Lifebloom, if it hasn't already been mentioned. What with GotEM, looks like 7 or 8 stack LBs will be doable with Haste.

I've got one, but it procs so rarely as to almost be worthless

Blue dragon is a flat 2% chance to proc per spellcast. In t6-ish priest gear as a priest I think it tends to work out to 40-60 mp5, but it's extremely variable - every time it procs you get a lot of mana, so if you get lucky and get several procs you can end up swimming in mana whereas if you don't get lucky you can easily go a whole fight with zero to one procs.

Due to the random nature of the proc, you can get it at 98% mana or at the very end of a boss fight, making it worthless. I dunno, I really liked the idea of the card and I do use it sometimes but it's so unreliable (in practice) that it's not worth the trinket slot

Not to mention the 119 +healing you miss from equipping a different trinket. Although the mana regen may be nice, I think there are more "balanced" ways to get the same amount of mana regen without sacrificing that much +healing.

Blue dragon is "good on average", but the problem is you'll also have those fights where it doesn't proc a single time. If it's farm content, you might be okay using blue dragon and making up with a potion when it doesn't proc, but otherwise you are probably better off using something reliable. Unreliable mana tends to force you to dynamically focus on mana management (instead of just learning how draining an encounter is an adjusting your style to that).

The trinket isn't useless if it procs at the start of a fight, as you're still expending mana at that point. The problems occur when it procs before another proc has ended, or if it procs at the end of a fight.

I tend to like it and don't mind the dynamic mana management aspect. It's also nice in that I'll be able to use it throughout WotLK until I can get my hands on whatever shiny trinket toys await us there. I'm sure at higher ends of progression, however, better options avail themselves.