Restoration WotLK Talent Preview / Discussion
 

With more information about Wrath of the Lich King becoming available and an opt-in beta coming soon, I figured it would be time to start a Restoration WotLK druid topic. Please note that this topic is not a "druid in WotLK in general" topic, but for Restoration druids only. For moonkin and feral talent discussion, please resort to http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t26204-d...ew_discussion/ and http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t26297-d...ew_discussion/ respectively. Therefore, only the Restoration talents and abilities are discussed in this post. The projected changes for these talents and abilities as they are now are as follows:



Changes to the current druid Restoration spells

* Omen of Clarity: Now a passive effect instead of a self-cast buff. Now also works on all spells (healing and damage). Roughly 6% procrate on a 10 sec internal cooldown.



Changes to the current druid Restoration talents

* Improved Mark of the Wild: Now requires two talent points and gives 40% improvement at max rank (as opposed to 5 points for 35% improvement currently).

* Nature's Focus: Moved up a tier and now requires only 3 points for 23/46/70% pushback resistance. Now also includes Nourish, Wrath, Entangling Roots and Cyclone.

* Subtlety: Moved up a tier and now requires only 3 points for 10/20/30% reduced threat and 10/20/30% resistance to dispels. Threat reduction now only applicable to Restoration spells.

* Tranquil Spirit: Now also includes Nourish.

* Improved Tranquility: Now also reduces cooldown by 30/60%.

* Empowered Touch: Increased effect to 20/40% (as opposed to 10/20% currently).

* Tree of Life: Aura now affects everyone in the raid within 45 yards (as opposed to group restricted) and now increased healing by a flat 6% instead of spirit based. In addition, all Restoration spells and Barkskin are now castable in Tree of Life form, but only HoT spells receive a 20% mana reduction. Movement snare removed.



New druid Restoration spells

* Nourish: Heals a friendly target for 1883 to 2187. Heals for an additional 20% if Rejuvenation, Regrowth or Lifebloom is on the target. 1.5 sec cast. 22% of base mana.

* Revive: Returns the spirit to the body, restoring a dead target to life with 1800 health and 1365 mana. Cannot be cast when in combat. 10 sec cast. 72% of base mana.



New druid Restoration talents

* Master Shapeshifter: Grants an effect which lasts while the Druid is within the respective shapeshift form.
Bear form - Increases physical damage by 2/4%.
Cat form - Increases critical strike chance by 2/4%
Moonkin form - Increases spell damage by 2/4%.
Tree form - Increases healing by 2/4%.

* Living Seed: When you gain a critical effect from your Swiftmend, Regrowth, Nourish or Healing Touch spell you have a 33/66/100% chance to plant a Living Seed on the target for 30% of the amount healed. The Living Seed will bloom when the target is next attacked. Lasts 15 seconds.

* Replenish: Your Rejuvenation spell has a 5/10/15% chance to restore 8 Energy, 4 Rage, 1% Mana or 16 Runic Power per tick.

* Improved Tree of Life: Increases your Armor while in Tree of Life Form by 33/66/100%, and increases your spellpower by 5/10/15% of your spirit.

* Gift of the Earthmother: Reduces the global cooldown of your Rejuvenation and Lifebloom spells by 4/8/12/16/20%.

* Wild Growth: Heals 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. Costs 35% of base mana.



Changed and new Balance talents

* Genesis: Increases the damage and healing done by your periodic damage and healing effects by 1/2/3/4/5%.

* Nature's Majesty: Increases the critical strike chance of your Wrath, Starfire, Starfall, Nourish and Healing Touch spells by 2/4%

* Moonglow: Moved up to tier 2.

* Nature's Grace: Moved up to tier3 and is now 3 talent points for 33/66/100% chance on 0.5 sec reduction on crit.

* Nature's Splendor: Increases the duration of your Moonfire, Insect Swarm and Rejuvenation spells by 3 sec, your Regrowth spell by 6 sec and your Lifebloom spell by 3 (?) sec.

* Celestial Focus: Now also increases spell haste by 1/2/3%.

* Lunar Guidance: Reduces to 4/8/12% of your int to spellpower.

* Dream State: Moved up to tier 6.



Coefficients

The current beta coefficients are based on numbers from the official WoW boards ([url=http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10532280581&sid=2000]link[/ur]). The spellpower coefficents are times 17/9 conversion rate. Note that WG already includes the Empowered Rejuvenation talent, while all other coefficients are base coefficients. This will be updated when 3.0 is live.

*People give different numbers for Regrowth's initial heal, the numbers in this table are based on the rule that Regrowth's direct heal gets 50% coefficient of a standard 2 sec cast and Regrowth's hot 50% of a 21 sec hot.

** The 0.960 coefficient is based on Anaram's numbers. The lower coefficient was probably assessed before WG got buffed.


Source: Druid WotLK talent calculator.

Please keep in mind that the spells and talents are constantly subject to change.

Update 30 September: Used the information of beta build 8982 and added the Balance talents as they have synergy with Restoration talents as well.
Update 6 October: Added beta coefficients.

In reference to Nourish and Gift of the Earthmother, do we know if a 3-stack of lifebloom will count as one or three "healing over time effect(s) on the target"?

"It's worded funny right now, but my guess is that the proc chance will be independent on each tick.

Regardless it's a significant amount of mana. At 15% per 3 seconds = 1/4 proc per 5 seconds, Rejuv will give 50 MP5 to a target with 10000 mana."

from the other thread.

50 MP/5 is nothing to sneeze at... and even though it requires raidwide dmg, that doesn't seem to be much of an issue as nearly all fights these days seem to have raidwide dmg.

I am just wondering whether this talent alone makes it prudent to assign trees to particular groups? The tree buff is now raidwide and no longer groupwide, and the rage regen is prob not going to be used by MTs. A resto druid could be giving out mini innervates.

Do we know the cast time of Nourish?

Replenish just sounds like recycled 2T3. Not really new, but certainly potentially exciting, especially for Horde Ret Paladins, combining the mana gained from getting healed with the mana gained from the ticks of Rejuv with Seal/Judgment of Blood. Every Horde Retadin will be begging for a constant Rejuv.

The skills and talents here make it seem like druids will be even more versatile in WotLK. A new direct single-target heal that gets better with each HoT on the target will make tank healing/heroic healing even stronger, though it will create an interesting challenge of deciding based on encounter and group/raid makeup whether any given fight is a tree form fight or a cast form fight.

An additional bit to Nut's question, however, regarding Noursh and Gift of the Earthmother: For Nourish, it specifies that the HoTs have to cast by you, but GotEM seems to read as "all HoTs on the target". Is this simply early-alpha text being misleading, or is there actually a difference between the two? If you have two druids keeping up Lifebloom and Rejuv and a couple priests keeping up Renew, Nourish will be 30% (or 50%, if a 3-stack of Lifebloom counts as 3 HoT effects) cheaper. That will amount to be a pretty significant efficiency difference from raid to raid if so.

Also, extremely excited about Flourish. Yay for a one-button multi-target heal.

Does anyone else think it odd that the imp tree form has an armor bonus? I can't imagine how this could be considered useful.

It's absolutely useful. Is it necessary? Not really. One example of a useful situation is Zul'jin, where he'll randomly charge someone and do ~16,000 physical, mitigatable, damage over 6 seconds. The current solution, if he Claw Rages a tree, is to shift to bear and have the other healer or two keep you up, so you don't waste a BoP that would be better used on a priest. In the Imp Tree Form version, you just stay in tree form, heal yourself, and move on with your life. Saves the mana of a couple form changes, and doesn't force you to lose your lifebloom stack on the tank.

So, situationally useful on gimmicky fights in raids, or fairly useful in heroics when the occasional mob gets loose. Being a non-squishy healer is never a bad thing, it's just not really necessary.

Of course, that's the PvE answer. There's obviously major use for it in PvP.

Remember, spell damage and healing on gear are being merged into a single unified Spellpower statistic, with the difference being made up for by higher coefficients. The change in Empowered healing talents is most likely a response to that mechanic rather than a straight buff. You do not get double the amount of healing as you do from damage, so this is still somewhat of a buff, but more on the order of 25%-ish, not 100%.

It's 1.5 seconds, I'll update first post. Only noticed now that it doesn't say in the tooltip that it can't be cast in ToL. That means indeed we might actually have to heal in caster form on several encounters.

What I myself find particularly interesting is that Gift of the Earthmother reduces the value of haste rating significantly, depending on the Lifebloom cycle (e.g. lot of use of Regrowth / Nourish / Swiftmend). Also, Rejuvenation + Swiftmend combo becomes a lot better.

And about Flourish, this spell and CoH will both be raid-wide instead of restricted to group members only. While instant heals (CoH) are almost always 'better', the strength of Flourish seems that it has a much greater HPM value. It heals for almost the same base amount, but CoH costs 730 mana versus 450 mana of Flourish (I'm guessing this is excluding the 20% mana reduction from ToL). Also I'm curious which of the two spells will scale better with spell power.

Personally, I think the biggest change there is Gift of the Earthmother's effect on Rejuvenation and Lifebloom. Spell Haste will, again, cease to be a useful stat for Druids, but I'm not complaining. With 1 second Lifeblooms we can potentially keep 6 people fully stacked, mana permitting.

Replenish just doesn't strike me as that amazing. Rejuvenation will only tick if the person is at less than maximum health. That's great for Warlocks, Ret Paladins and Tanks, but no one else is consistently below maximum health enough to really benefit. On most fights where they will be, Flourish will probably be cast over Rejuvenation.

Edit: Bah, beat to the punch on my first paragraph.

It's a bit curious that resto druids will now scale relatively poorly with spell haste, and will of course still scale poorly with spell crit despite the new crit enhancing talent. This seems to conflict with Blizzard's desire to homogenize gear.

Didn't the T3 2 piece bonus proc even if the heal didn't go through? If it's like that, rejuv will be a bit more useful, especially with Gift of the Earthmother.

Rejuvenation will be amazing used on Felmyst type raid damage in combination with Gift of the Earthmother and Replenish. 12 people out of 25 perma-hotted will be a great health buffer. ToL also seems to be allowed to dispel curses from what I see of the talent description.

Seems like a potentially useful talent to pick up while leveling from 70-80 in a quasi-Prot Paladin fashion. Perhaps put enough points in balance for Brambles and a new rank of Thorns. Tagging as many melee mobs as possible, and rolling lifeblooms. Might be viable if there is any good packs of melee mobs in Northrend.

In terms of PvE, while it doesn't sound terribly useful right now, save for one or two fights, keep in mind that the nature of encounters may change in WotLK as well. Pure speculation at this point, but instead of having many encounters where raid damage is magical in nature, it could just as well be physical damage that is prevalent in the future. Blizzard has been known to make these kinds of shifts in encounter design from time to time.

MOTW is not substantially more powerful. It has increased just as much as everything else is (ie: PW Fort is 153 stam now, FF is 1200 armor pen).

Looks as if ToL was changed in a later build but the changes weren't pushed to the front page:

Tree of Life: "Shapeshift into the Tree of Life. While in this form your movement speed is reduced by 20% and you can only cast Swiftmend, Innervate, Nature's Swiftness, Rebirth, Barkskin, Nourish, poison removing and healing over time spells, but the mana cost of these spells is reduced by 20%. Your heals also grant friendly targets your Bark's Blessing, increasing healing done to them by 25% of your total Spirit. Bark's Blessing lasts 8 sec." (Restoration) [Changed in 3.0.1.8303]

This confirms that Nourish is usable in ToL form, which means druids now have a fairly strong flash heal for their tank target and an equivalent flash for everyone else. Win situation from my point of view.
The Bark's Blessing is a change to the ToL aura mechanic. Instead of an aura, it's a selective temporary buff which unlinks the tree from the tank group and could mean say for Council, a tree providing its 'buff' to all four tanks while those tanks are in their own optimised groups.

IMHO, Nourish has the capability to eliminate the need for a dedicated 'flash' healer on tanks, and just have the tree + direct chunk healer. It also eliminates a weakness in druid healing and that's quick, direct targeted heals. It's stepping on the toes of paladins and priests methinks especially seeing how CoH has a cool down attached to it now and Flourish has the capability to do something really disgusting. My napkin maths are indicating to me that a single tree with rank 1 Flourish (level 60) could possibly solo heal all three boil groups on Bloodboil O_o

Yes, I don't have numbers to back up my thoughts yet, but I'll write them up once I get the chance to.


As for the itemisation homogenisation (try saying that when you're drunk), I don't think that's in just yet. These talent details are in the same patch as distinct +heal/damage enchants and items. I suspect Blizzard may be working out the ability details before they fudge the numbers for homogenisation using talents and coefficient changes.


Item homogenisation has other problems though. Let's take a look at caster stats:

'Spell Power'
Int
Haste
Hit
Crit
Penetration
Spirit
MP5

Of those, the first 3 stats are universally welcome. The next three (hit, crit, pen) are useful only for DPS casters and penetration is further holed in as being generally more useful for pvp than pve. Holy Paladins are teh exception for crit since they can stack crit to ludicrous (for healer) amounts. The last two are regen stats, with Spirit being useful only to three classes and one of those classes (mage) only for a sub-build. mp5 is a generic stat but for pve holy priests and resto druids, they'd rather have spirit.

This will have some major impacts in how well Blizzard can homogenise items. A common line of thought would be to have the cross-class items focus mainly on the first three stats, and shove a bunch of sockets to tweak it out. This is an idea, but sockets only really nudge in one direction rather than provide a bulk amount of a stat and unless Blizzard wants DPS casters to have minuscule crit and hit rates, perfection is not all that possible with this system IMHO.

Then we have weapons.
Daggers
Swords
(1H) Maces
Staves

Daggers are used by all potential healer/caster except Paladins.
Swords are not usable by Shamans, Priests and Druids
Maces aren't usable by Mages or Warlocks
and Staves can't be used by Paladins.

Blizzard has typically used this to their advantage by loading the daggers with DPS caster stats, maces with mp5 based regen and healing stats, and staves are generally stat/stam rich to partially cover survivability needs for the squishies without a shield. With itemisation homogenisation, what happens here?

While I admire the desire to homogenise the spell damage and healing stats, it does leave quite a fair few tricky questions with how to deal with some stats and how far they want to go with this plan.