Arythorn

If you are ooming on xt/freya even with the old idol and spark, then the new idol is a bad idea for YOU. I don't go oom on them even with the new idol and two throughput trinkets equipped so the new idol is a GOOD idea on them for ME.

I'm not going to lie, the new idol makes me have to pay far more attention to my regen, innervate at 60% and on every cooldown thereafter. I'm also riding a much finer line on IC HM for instance (where I have to pot sometime after my 2nd Innervate and am anxiously awaiting my 3rd Innervate just as the fight is ending) -- but I get through these fights pretty much casting on every GCD. The increased throughput is of very strong value so finding a way to manage my regen while keeping the new idol and both throughput trinkets in place was a priority for me.

EDIT: Once RNG is kinder to me and I can replace the throughput trinkets I bought somewhere around 1973 with Solace normal and/or Solace heroic, I'll be hard pressed to think of a fight where I'll need more regen.

 

Erdluf

Just a nit-pick. It looks like you should move Swiftmend to the Nourish/Regrowth camp. At least the GotEM tooltip at Wowhead doesn't mention Swiftmend. Is the GotEM tooltip incomplete?

 

Arythorn

You are correct -- I should move Swiftmend over to the other side and this adds another 1.5% throughput on last night's logs. That's what I get for typing out a post at 2:30 am after raids with a numb mind

Anyway, still less than 5% of throughput that isn't covered by 359 haste number so general theme remains the same despite my late night grogginess.

 

Illyria

You're correct IF hardmode non-tier loot isn't going to be a lot better.
I still don't get why everyone is talking about keeping 4t8 bonus until gaining 4t9 25m heroic. At least if you have let's say 2 pieces of t9 (25m) you could consider wearing 2t9 and Ulduar hardmode loots / Coliseum 25m loots instead. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE 4t8 and I think it really sucks that we can't keep it, but keeping it until Coliseum HM doesn't seem to be a real solution.

 

Fallenangel

Looking at wowhead/mmo-champion, it seems like the hardmode-258 non-tier have 1 more gem socket than their tier counterparts, with a bit less SP/crit/haste to compensate. While it does make these items better, I'm sure getting the 4T9 bonus will outweight having the extra 50-80 SP.
As for using (4)T9 before getting the heroic versions, well, right now getting tier items is a bitch, especially when you need to loot a few of the tokens (without using them) and also rack up the badges. Personally it feels like others can currently use these drops and having them rot in the bank until I get enough isn't really raid-friendly.

 

Arythorn

I think people are saying that is because it's going to take about that much increased itemization to make up the 10+% throughput that the tier 8, 4-piece provides. Honestly, I'm skipping 245 set pieces and likely waiting til 4-piece 258 to swap in as well.

 

Illyria

Yeah I decided not to roll on 245 set pieces and wait for HM loot. Hopefully we will get the opportunity to spend our Emblems of Triumph for the new orbs since there's no alternative besides the new idol and the ring (which is worse than Ulduar HM rings), so I'm sitting on my emblems and don't know how to use them

 

Jurik

I consider the Band of the Invoker to be 2nd BIS, slightly above Fire Orchid Signet. My personal ranking is:
Conductive Seal (Mimiron 25H)
Band of the Invoker (35 Badges of Triumph)
Starshine Circle (Algalon-25 quest reward)
Fire Orchid Signet (Freya 10H)
Other rings below.

I'm curious what 2nd ulduar ring you'd rate above the new ilvl 245 band.

 

• Playered

Provided you are above the haste softcap you have [Shimmering Seal] and [Signet of Soft Lament]. While the former has hit it is also the highest SP ring at around 106 SP (8~ higher than the 245 rings) so when you factor in how little haste/crit are worth it doesn't do badly. Conductive and Signet remain the best combo (but not by a lot) until the hard modes are available and generally the rings with spirit will always be best due to the additional SP you gain compared to the spiritless items with either crit or MP5 on them.

 

aunadruid

Yeah I agree, after 359 haste decreases in value immensely.

Looking at the staffs/maces etc, there is pretty much only one Staff to get from toc.

Sufferance - Items - Sigrie

I'm not sure why but for some reason it doesn't seem that great to me. Any ideas why?

 

Fallenangel

[Band of the Invoker] has 98-99 SP when you factor in ToL, so it's only 7 less SP and provides a lot more regen. This seems on par with the meta-gem tradeoff. Also, keep in mind that once we get 4T9 you'll want to hit the haste cap and then utilize crit, so having haste isn't useless if you can shed it elsewhere. [Fire Orchid Signet] is straight-up inferior to [Band of the Invoker], so not sure how it sneaked into the best combo slot.

 

Jurik

Aha, that would explain the discrepancy. These days, I try to avoid crit as much as I can, as we almost always run without Wrath of Air in 10-man (and frequently in 25-man as well, unfortunately) which pushes up my personal valuation of haste. That explains why I've overlooked the crit ring.

 

shibbytastic

Does anybody know if the crit tics from the 4 piece T9 bonus will proc living seed and nature's grace?

 

OnyxShadow

Unless they change things, from rejuv crits you CAN get nature's grace procs but you CAN'T get living seed procs.

 

• Playered

Considering this was tested on the PTR and neither NG or LS triggered from RJ crits I'm curious how you are so certain that NG works on them now especially when you don't have 4T9 on live to back this up.

[e] Link to post where it was shown/tested here.

 

Arythorn

Speaking of things that can't be verified on live yet, has anyone found a credible and authoritative statement as to whether double Solace (Normal and Heroic) is possible? I'm trying to sort out what amount of DKP I'd be willing to spend on the Normal version and my ability or inability to equip both simultaneously will have a large impact on my decision.

 

Royalite

I am ooming on various fights using the old idol and the spark. I do innervate at 60% and carry mana pots but I was reading your point about you were still casting almost every GCD. I have been skipping GCDs to be more conservative on mana. I was wondering more about your play style that allows you to do this. Are you just revju/WG-ing all the time? Are you using nourish more? Any HOTs on the tank?

I have a bad habit of lifeblooming the raid and I know that is the source of my omming problem. I have been trying to keep it to the tank but I find that during high incoming bust damage to the raid I lose people with just revju/WG especially during XT-Hard mode.

 

Arythorn

On XT hard mode, I am pretty much RJ x 5, WG, RJ x 5 throughout that fight, some Swiftmends. I am NOT LBing the tank or Nourishing spikes.


Here's the most recent XT HM parse -- not particularly proud of it was a bad night and we had some new people completely failing to move for Gravity Bombs, Light Sparks, etc. We wiped twice but frankly there's not much you can do when people have HUA syndrome. I'm linking the third, successful pull anyway:

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Here's last night from Iron Council hard as well which is actually more mana intensive than XT in my opinion. Actually IC HM is the hardest fight I currently face in terms of mana:

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

On XT, we rolled with 2 druid raid healers for foundation, 1 shaman raid healer, and 2 dedicated tank healers. This builds a good synergy where the druids can really roll RJs, WGs, the shaman raid healer can knock out any of the spikes, and 2 tank healers provide all the coverage the tank needs.

I think the pitfall we sometimes fall into is trying to do it all: lay the raid foundation down, catch up any raid spikes, cover the tank, etc. While this feels productive, it ends up not being a good strategy because:

A) It will absolutely oom you.
B) It duplicates effort and more of your mana will translate into overheal instead of effective heal.
C) It doesn't leverage heal team synergy (I guess this is restating B a little more broadly).


The same type of heal team strategy is in effect for IC HM or pretty much any of the other fights you look at in these parses. Sometimes we go up to 6 healers but we often try to drop it to 5 to grab an extra DPS. You will see very, very few Nourish, Regrowth Lifebloom casts in what I am doing. Generally, what I am doing on IC and XT is laying down a foundation of raid heals on 2 1/2 groups (I split the raid with the other druid healer). Rejuv should never fall off the people you are covering in this way, and when Tantrum hits, you can WG into the face of that as well. I will often hold WG a few ticks if I know the Tantrum is incoming to make sure I get full value from it.

If you have coverage like this, everyone on your assignment should generally be topped off with RJs ticking on them going into Tantrum and WG hitting them as well once the tantrum starts. This should more than suffice to keep them up. Additonal 4-piece T8 Rejuv refreshes will also hit some during this as well as glyph of Rejuv. If people aren't near 100% going into tantrum, there is likely some mismanagement of sparks and bombs which will make things very difficult to heal through no matter the strategy.

As a side note, if you do poke around any other fights (you're welcome to) be aware that I DC'd right as Razorscale started and when I came back in, the two binds I have on my mouse thumb buttons (one of which is for RJ unfortunately) would not function correctly (worked about every 10th keypress it seemed). Anyway, I was left with keybinds for Nourish and Wild Growth so don't look at that particular fight as representative of anything I typically do

 

OnyxShadow

For now, I'm going to assume that the proc for NG was bugged on the PTR for the RJ set bonus. Without NG procs from RJ, the T9 set bonus is just all the more disappointing. The tooltip for NG does say ALL crits...we'll see, though.

 

Fallenangel

Yes, a boost of 15% to throughput to our main healing spell isn't good enough, it should also provide perma 20% haste.

 

Anaram

I'd say that a 15% boost is a rather generous estimate for the set bonus (personally I'd need about 10% more crit to reach that raidbuffed). The bonus isn't bad compared to what most classes are getting, it's just bad compared to what we already have. T8 for me tends to parse at about 10% of my total healing done (peeking above 25% increased rejuvenation throughput in some fights).

 

• Playered

As mentioned before 4T8 is a blight on the class for how much it distorts us both in balance and playstyle. We have a cheap preemptive spell which also grants a 2k instant heal on cast which was (too) perfect for sniping healing. We are then left with a cheap reactive spell which is also a cheap preemptive one which also tends to stomp over Regrowths niche and slightly into Nourish too. 3.2 shattered our spell diversity and 4T8 was a key contributer (with mana nerfs and LB ravaging) so stop trying to use it as a basis for how our 4Tx bonuses should be in the future because hopefully Blizzard will never make this mistake again.

4T9 is a fine bonus especially when you consider it more of a test one which allows Blizzard to see how much of a boost hots critting actually gives us in preparation for maybe letting them all do it in future (no doubt at a small cost to the base tick value).

 

Kirbie44

One thing to note on IC hardmode is raid damage increases as the fight moves on. With this we are blessed with the new Idol being a huge SP boost. We are also awesomely blessed with the 213 Idol being a huge MP5 boost. Key part of this post is you can change Idol's in combat. This is how I suggest running various fights:

IC Hardmode - I use the 213 (MP5) Idol for phase 1 and 85% of phase 2. I then equip the 245 (SP) Idol for the rest of the fight. I use this same strat for Mimiron-Freya-Yogg (using SP Idol for the Brain Room). Where fights have times where more aoe damage is going to happen, I equip the SP Idol before doing so. Just some food for thought when it comes to mana intensive fights where you may be questioning which Idol to use.

 

Svartalf

The 4T8 bonus definitely changed my healing style from what I used when I had T7.5. But my healing style has changed every time Blizzard changes the class, the spells, the gear....once upon a time I used to spam HT4, and a Regrowth was only for emergencies.

I'm not convinced that Blizzard views the bonus as a distortion to the class. I was under the impression that it was similar to the Priest Empowered Renew talent, which gives an initial heal as part of their renew, (and allows that initial heal of the renew to crit, as well as making the renew ticks stronger).

 

• Playered

Blizzard have mentioned they think 4T8 might be too strong (hence not fixing it to work properly with the modifiers) but have left it alone for whatever reason.

Renew is significantly weaker than Rejuvenation and it is then only a minor aspect of the healing done by Holy Priests if any at all. You may look at the talent and think "wow that is so amazing I wish I had it" but in comparison it would be like giving a 10% initial heal on the application of Lifebloom or so for us, not Rejuvenation. You shouldn't really try and correlate things between classes so directly because we are not the same and we heal differently.