Ok, I assumed the new NG decreases the GCD (by 20%) like it does on live. If it didn't, it'd be completely useless for say wrath. I have been following the moonkin discussions and I'm sure it would have surfaced if it doesn't behave like this.

Maybe you prove me wrong but I was of the opinion, that if I have a 1.0 cast I don't have a 1.5 GCD but a 1.0. Maybe I took sth. completly wrong but thats how I thought it goes.

Cast time and global cooldown are totally separate, except that haste reduces both. It's very possible to have a spell cast in 1.0s or less, but have a global cooldown of 1.5s.

I was under the impression that NG only reduced the GCD of wrath, not any other spells. Is this not the case?

I don't really use nourish on live at all and for regrowth that's not a problem. I do think that if it's just an exception for wrath then it must be extended to also include nourish, for the same reasons. The main selling point of nourish compared to regrowth is the lower casting time but casting a 1s heal when your gcd is 1.25s is hardly beneficial.
I'm also pretty dissapointed with the uludar itemiziation. We are supposed to pursue more regen instead of going for max throughput, yet I haven't seen a single piece with both spirit and mp5. The only customization towards regen one can do is gem for it and that has a pretty limited effect considering the low amount of sockets on gear. The lack of a clear regen stat like int is for pallies also hurts.
They have acknowledged that sitting around doing nothing isn't fun, yet our regen is being targetted without us really being able to affect it. This might make sense in a grander scheme of things, re: healing rehaul that was mentioned, say a move to a more hybrid healer-dpser. For now though, and with a bit of an irony, I think druids will spend more time in O5SR than in 3.0.

I have confirmed 100% on the PTR that the new NG does indeed reduce the GCD of the cast as well as the casting time. So for Nourish they are one in the same.

Thank you Fallenangel for bringing this to our attention. I along with you Red, was under the assumption the mechanics of NG worked the same as live with cast time reduction only.

PTR 3.1.0 - Build 9684

I had to change my shorts after I saw the 4 piece.

The stats on our T8.10 set have been released, presumably the T8.25 will be a similar distribution but just more of each stat.

Courtesy of mmo-champion: http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...spell_heal.jpg

and the 25 man version: http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...druid_heal.jpg

I, personally, am somewhat worried with the direction that Ulduar itemization seems to be heading. There seem to a heavy focus on +crit, with 3/5 of our T8 pieces having crit, and from my very unscientific perusal of the Ulduar leather/cloth caster gear, they seem to be very crit oriented as well. My initial thoughts are that depending on how easy it is to get +haste (or even how many slots will have a good +haste option) we might be forced to continue to spec into 3/3 Celestial Focus (On the other hand though, I don't think it will be that big of a deal since deep resto continues to have few compelling talents for us to decide between, despite the recent Living Seed buff)

edit: Added the 25 man version since it was just posted; I also think the coloring on both is quite nice.

To be honest the stats on both the sets seems weird. I would have thought that in ulduar we would have started to see 2 stats (i.e. crit + haste/crit+mp5/haste + mp5) rather than just more stats.

As far as the colouring goes, I think It's pretty bad, the "green" version is much much better with sharper details, oh well guess I'll stay in tree form

From mmo-champion again

Old version from wowiki:

The more I see from subsequent PTR builds, the more I am convinced our future in 3.1 will be emphasizing Nourish. The talent changes are obviously in favor of Nourish use. A new, good glyph lends itself towards Nourish taking over a lot of Regrowth's territory. Now the idol tells me Blizzard really wants us to use Nourish.

Currently on the PTR the Nourish glyph stacks with 4 piece T7. This has me a bit worried. With such a strong emphasis on Nourish in 3.1 and onward, I do not want to feel stuck towards T7 4 piece bonus. With that in mind, I went and grabbed a little bit of data from PTR to see if that worry is valid.

First off, I am expecting the new general plan of action to be keeping Lifebloom, Rejuv, and Regrowth on the tank at all times. Nourish will be used as heals for the tank beyond that. This can likely be doubled up on a 2nd tank to some degree, depending on mana concerns (most especially the duration you would need to watch a 2nd tank.) Ultimately though, Nourish will consistently benefit from 3 hots on the target. I did not include WG because I can't see it being in any way efficient enough to keep on the tank, though I admit I haven't looked at the numbers there yet. It may very well be viable in fights where the tank is near enough to other melee for it to splash to them, too, especially in melee-heavy 10 mans. But I digress. :p

I looked at numbers for Nourish using two gearsets. Due to difficulties in practical testing, the gearset with the 4 piece bonus ran at 1999 spell power while the gearset without the 4 piece bonus was at 2061 spell power, or a 62 spell power difference. This was in Tree form, with a fairly standard 18/0/53 spec, and no buffs otherwise. I got my averages from a pool of 20 casts each time, separating crit from non-crit. Not the most statistically significant sample size, but it will do for now.

With 4 piece bonus, I got an average non-crit Nourish of 6215 with my average crit at 9509.
Without 4 piece bonus (and again, with 62 more spellpower), I got an average non-crit Nourish of 5740 and an average crit of 8608.

In short, a bit over 9%.

9% doesn't sound like anything exceptional for a set bonus. One need not look far to see 10% to Swiftmend. Nevertheless, my concern is that unlike Swiftmend, 3.1's Nourish appears to be a bread and butter sort of heal, functioning like our stacks of hots will, only in direct heal form. Swiftmend is amazing, don't get me wrong, but it serves an entirely different role than Nourish. If indeed 3.1 sees us using Nourish as often as I'm expecting, a bonus of 9%+ is nothing to sneeze at.

I suppose whether or not concern over being stuck with a 4 piece bonus well into the next tier of content has a lot of other minor factors that weigh in. First off, it's more than just spell power that gets upgraded. Haste, crit, mana regen, and even stamina all go up as you switch out the old tier for the new. For that matter, you get new set bonuses as well. Furthermore, in the case of Nourish and the scenario I suggest for it here, Nourish is only a part of our output to the tank(s). In giving up spell power to keep a big boost to Nourish, you are lowering one part of the equation that results in our total output to the tank.

Still, I do think that all those gains have a lot to make up for in order to balance out a 9-10% boost in Nourish. Probably enough that I can see myself banking a piece of T8 or two, depending on which I get first, until I swap them in for T7 all at once. This is not something I'm looking forward to, though I suppose each person will have their own threshold at which they feel set bonuses should sit.

So ultimately I just figured I'd get some numbers together and throw them out there to see what other people think. The discussion about T8 4 piece set bonus triggered this, as it really seems T7 4 piece will be the strongest one of our WotLK set bonuses in 3.1, yet I rarely see it mentioned amidst the discussion of T8's 4 piece. Personally I have much more concern over T7's, though I admit I don't find it wildly out of balance or anything. I can say, however, that I would find it a lot happier a transition to T8 if the T7 set bonus and the Nourish glyph did not stack.

Thoughts?

You cast Wild Growth on the boss. It hits the tank and the melee that way; even on Sarth.

As far as comparing 4t7 and 4t8, the t8 is a huge winner. Currently nourish accounts for roughly 10% of my totals heals for a raid, up to 15% on fights like patchwerk. So a 20% buff to nourish means a 2% increase in total healing (roughly).

However, the rejuvination bonus which is about 16% additional healing, when added to my current rejuv (which does 40% of my healing) accounts to almost 7% additional healing.

Finally Swiftmend is an additional 10%, since swiftmend only accounts for roughly 10-15% of my heals, it is a 1% increase.

So yea, the 2T8 sucks, but the 4T8 is awesome!!!

I wish they did something like, lowers cooldown on swiftmend by 5 seconds. That would be awesome.

Also

I wouldn't be so quick to write the Nourish bonus off by using the numbers you use on live. Where Nourish was rarely used pre-patch, it will probably spike up to around 20-30%, if not more, depending on the fight and how much you decide to use it. I'm not saying 4t8 isn't awesome, because it is, but 4t7 is nothing to scoff at, particularly after how it's being incorporated into our playstyle more.

Here's my problem with the nourish bonuses.
1. Its basically useless unless the target has a hot. Most of the time by the time you get a hot on someone other than the tank chances are they are already at 100% health.

2. It requires at least 3 hots on the target to be more effective than regrowth. Plus it does not refresh any hots. (Regrowth refreshes the regrowth hot).

3. It takes all 4 pieces of t7 and the new glyph coming out to be really any good.

4. I rolled a druid to roll hots, not flash of light. Currently Nourish is hotkeyed as my #7 spell after Healing touch #6. I have too many spells to be adding another spell that basically is only useful for tanks.

5. I will admit, on patchwerk, if I was solo healing, I might find Nourish useful to save mana and for big hits. Until that happens, I am not a fan.

Do not think that I hate nourish, I'm sure that someone uses it, but I have never been outhealed by another druid in any raid and I rarely use nourish.

1. I just took a random druid's gear and put it into my spreadsheet and I found out that even a glyphed regrowth (only the direct heal portion) has less HPS and HPM than an unglyphed and unhot'ed nourish. It follows, then, that the best way to tank heal is to roll the regrowth hot on the tank while patching up the spaces with nourish.

2. See 1, and regrowth's refreshing the HoT is good and bad. It's good that it refreshes it, but it's bad because most druids will frequently cast regrowth on the tank, regardless of the HoT itself, which refreshes it early and often, thus putting most of it to waste. It was fine, though, because it was the only heal that could fill the tank healing void, but now it appears that nourish has taken the throne.

3. See 1

4. I agree, but I would like to point out that regrowth was pretty much flashing the tank, anyways. Now, with nourish, you gain the benefit of a cheaper heal that does more healing by sacrificing the hot. Fortunately, you can still keep regrowth rolling anyways, so it's a win-win situation.


I don't want to make it seem like regrowth is dead and gone, because it would be superior in raid healing to nourish due to its HoT. However, the beauty of it all is that you can play however you wish to. If you want to use regrowth over nourish, then that's fine, but don't do it because you think it's better, because it's not.

It's actually even better than this rough calculation makes it seem because:

(a) Since the first tick happens immediately, with intelligent use it is far less likely to overheal than subsequent ticks, and

(b) This immediate first tick makes Rejuv usable in situations it wasn't worth casting before.

Overall, I would place it at effective 10-15% healing increase, for a Rejuv heavy strategy. It is a ridiculously good bonus.

Nourish is ridiculously useful when you need the tank healing, sadly I find that other classes are just better at tank healing than we are. Druids at the moment are very good at rolling HoTs on the tank and then helping out with raid damage - Nourish shines here when you're healing melee, simply because of WG. 643 mana to cost WG, on a 1sec GCD - that means you're probably going to hit up most of the melee(cast on the boss to hit tank too) and start spamming Nourish on them (don't need glyph for this) which makes it the most HP/M and HP/S we have. After Blizzard announced that Ulduar will be melee-unfriendly (lots of melee damage) and with the addition of revitalise to WG, this tactic will be immense come 3.1. However, the usefulness of 4t7/nourish glyph will only be in situations where you have all your HoTs up. So patchwerk/brutallus style fights would benefit about 10-15% (WG is still useful on brut) from each thing, up to a total of 33% with both. Personally I prefer the 4t8 and healing touch glyph, because each gives me extra options/flexibility to use over a slight increase in one spell.

I was under the assumption that we were talking about the current patch 3.0.9 when comparing t7 to t8. I'm sorry for that. It does seem that nourish is finding its place in 3.1. But I still believe that the T8 Bonus is way better than having a buffed nourish simply because resto druids are pale in comparison to paladins as far as flash of light type heals are concerned. I believe that we should focus on using the heals that we are best at and fufill a role that other classes cannot. Nourish might may have more uses in 5 or 10 man raids, but in 25 man, paladins will always make our nourish seem underpowered.

I've cast a few Nourishes on PTR bosses, but I honestly could have gotten away without it. We still have to roll lifeblooms, but every fight so far has been single main tank.

Besides a lifebloom on the tank and WGing every time it's appropriate, rolling rejuvs on the raid has always been the most effective healing, especially since we run with 2 trees in most raids. There's no room for anything else/nothing else is effective. Spot healing with a regrowth or a nourish just doesn't work, it doesn't spread enough healing out and cast healing like that can't touch chain heal, prayer or CoH. With 4 peice T8, it'll make rejuv dominate even more of my GCDs.

I feel really confident in my ability to heal a main tank now, more so than in 3.0.9, but we're going to have 1 pally in the raid always for buffs/balance, and that'll be his job. If shit's heavy, a disc priest will be brought in. I'm pretty disappointed overall; the nerf to lifebloom and lack of multi-tank fights has essentially turned us trees into rejuvenation robots.

RJ on the raid only solves the problem if the damage is consistent and on everyone - Sapph for example. If the damage is multi-targeted like Malygos but comes in bursts, you mayswell be peeing on the raid member, it's about as much use. There's a heal for every situation, Malygos happens to work with just WGing the player, but if there's a mechanic that causes a raid member to damage those around them to varying degrees, there's nothing stronger than WGing that person and Nourishing them. If there's a move like KJ's shadow volley but instant and unavoidable, then you're going to want to HT the target, because RJ just won't get their health up fast enough - chain heal won't do the job because you can't assure they're close, PoH won't be much good as you can't ensure they'll be in the same party and CoH will be just as useless for the same reason as CH is useless. These targeted damage spells need Flash of Light, Flash Heal, Lesser Healing Wave or Glyphed Healing Touch - out of all of those spells, ours is the quickest and most HP/S.

My problem with your post isn't that you have stated something wrong, but that your way of considering what gear/spec to use does not consider every situation. Granted my way of looking at it is detached from actual happenings, but I haven't experienced every boss in Ulduar yet, so I preserve my scepticism of a need for such a view until I have.

RJ doesn't require raid-wide steady damage to work well. As long as people aren't in danger of falling over, RJ is a really effective way to heal even for random spike damage like Maly phase 1. The key is to take other healers that don't obsessively keep everyone topped off when it's just not necessary. This is one reason why healing meters are bad, because they reward individual contribution in what is ultimately a team game.

RJ actually works plenty well on Malygos phase 1. A single arcane bolt won't kill someone, and a second one won't kill them either if they've had a few ticks of RJ or lifebloom. If someone gets unlucky and takes 2 bolts in a row, throw a swiftmend or nourish to prop them up, or let another healer flash them. As Vortex approaches, I tend to let the other healers top people off while I throw around pre-HoTs. It's all about teamwork.

HoTs really shine when we can guarantee several ticks of effective healing--this is, I think, what the rolling lifebloom nerf is aimed at, and why this nerf is so hard to swallow, because we really aren't seeing this efficiency in practice yet. Right now, due to plentiful mana and easy encounters, we aren't often being put in a situation where we can really wring out maximum efficiency from our spells.

You'll get no argument from me on that point. 99% of the time I would prefer the T8 armor (and bonuses) to the T7. Instant hitting Rejuv's not only make us better, but also make the world easier for our other healers. Since we arent waiting 3 seconds for Rejuv to tick, there is less of a chance that significant portions of the HoT will be overwritten, improving overall healer mana efficiency. I really really REALLY like this bonus.

I also have a feeling paladins will remain the top FoL style healers, and continue to top the single target healing charts. I have yet to see numbers to back this up, perhaps I will ask paladin friends of mine. However, with the versatility of druids, I was simply trying to surmise what would give Druids the best single target output and efficiency.

As far as comparing the set bonuses in 3.0.9....Why would we? You can't get T8 gear till 3.1 comes out, what would be benefit in comparing the set bonuses using old rules?