Assuming it is balanced right anything that replaces 50~ haste and crit while giving any form of more healing will be a flat out better weapon for anyone no matter how small the numbers are (within reason). Keep in mind healers aren't like DPSers and the loss of 2 tertiary stats on a weapon (one which is close to useless for us regardless) doesn't impact us nearly as much as it does them.

Right now it seems that only with the best class in the best suited encounter the proc manages to live up to the intention and if their desire is for weapons to move more into proc effects then this is a style they cannot follow. You also have another issue to worry about which DPS does not and that is overhealing - something you cannot easily estimate or balance procs around for so many different healing styles/roles/classes/encounters.


That said it doesn't change the point that currently the proc would be better adjusted with a higher proc chance and a small ICD to provide a regulation for classes with less AoE healing and to fights which don't require it either. Since the Snowflake they have realized a simple way to regulate procs better so the disparity between hot classes and direct isn't -that- obscene but I would say due to the nature of how the game works procs will be incredibly hard to balance or even create with a useful function for healers compared to DPS and as a result Blizzard need to spend more time into the thought processes of it.

For a comparison if you look at trinkets you can see there is a lot of useful deviation between DPS trinkets from base stats, many styles of conditional procs to use effects. When you then look at healers (and even tanks) a lot of those methods simply do not correlate well as a proc of 800 SP for a DPS caster is obviously much more useful and desirable for them than a random proc of 800 SP for a healer.

Until they have decided how things will work in Cataclysm (and I'm assuming there will be some modifications to healing and maybe finally some use from crit for us) I doubt we will see anything even remotely useful that doesn't involve: mana restore on use, mana restore proc, heal on use and smart heal proc.

I definitely agree that it will be BiS bar Val'anyr, it is just at this gear level loosing that huge chunk of haste from our MH makes it a good deal harder to reach the soft-cap. Making so many gear alterations to be able to use Trauma without dropping haste to a horribly low level made it seem like it was a lot of work for little gain, but with a few more haste items from ICC it will become much easier.

I guess it is just temporary and if it is looking a little low for a druid, I have no doubt that they will alter the proc reasonably quickly as it should be even worse for other classes.

I think that this was the general expectation, that it would provide such numbers and in a consistent basis. Right now it's too rng dependent. Getting good results from this proc seems as likely as winning the lottery.

As Mayfax was saying though it is much harder to judge 'results' from a healing stand point than not. I can see Trauma doing very well on things like Twins, Putricide, Sindragosa for example because everyone is clumped up. On Saurfang, it might as well not be equiped until you're tank healing, because nothing other than melee is within 10 yards of each other (or should be atleast) I would still much rather that proc than a +SP one though.

I think the main problem with Trauma, if anything, is the 10 yard range limit. The fact that almost every "spread out" fight has abilities that will chain in 10 yards makes it mutually exclusive. It looks good on paper but if it procs on a ranged dps on 90% of fights where they spread out, you're looking at it only hitting 2-3 people at most. Tack on the 50% overheal rule of thumb and you're looking at about 2-4k healing per proc depending if ranged or melee. The 23% uptime (pulled from vdubs WOL) is attractive, but like any of our gimmicky toys, it will really range in its usefulness. I still think it will prevail in heroic modes with more raid-wide damage as overhealing % goes down. Best case scenario is proccing off stacked melee/tank from wild growth spam, which is quite realistic.

I think if any buff is made it should be a 15 yard range, to compensate for the 10/12 yard spread-out fights.

Anaram grats on your W1st, keep em comin!

[Trauma] Dropped on wednesday and I got it as the only resto druid. I was planning on posting some parses for you all, but the person who does our wol has been failing this week > Anyway here are my thoughts real quick. First off the obvious, I had [Mag'hari Chieftain's Staff] So while gaining 109 sp (using [Chalice of Searing Light] atm) I lost 136 haste. Ouch. 4.15% I replaced my crit boots for [Pattern: Blessed Cenarion Boots] and used 2.5 haste gems to make cap again, but once i get a haste offhand (going for the one in HOR as a placeholder) I'll be at cap wiout gemming for haste. (using cf)

That is the point for me. The reason Blizzard is putting these interesting procs in the game, is because some classes are getting stat capped and don't really need more. When we break t9 for the 264 or 277 t10, crit will be garbage again, I'll trade 100 crit for 25 sp. Haste is almost useless past the cap. So an interesting proc or useless stats? And from studying my own logs, I'd say it averages under 2% healing, but thats with most fights I'm not using wild growth off cd, which is where most of the procs come from, I only use it if a group takes damage or is about to. On heavy raid damage fights, with a 5x1 style its 3.5-4% of my healing. And as to the range issue, I always priotize the melee for wild growth for sure, and usually my rejuvs too, because in most fights they take the most damage, as well as revitalize helps them more.

I'm kinda new to these forums... It linked the heroic versions, I obviously had the 264 trauma, and the 251 staff, and the 245 offhand

That's true, but I'm not convinced 4t10 will be worth getting over 4t9, unless for some reason you have no access to the 258 t9 but can get the 277 t10. Keeping Chots™ around means crit > spirit for throughput purposes by a wide margin, and the go-to gear becomes the same crit/haste gear caster DPS are after.

Here are the gains, comparing 258 5t9 to 258 5t10 (taken from wowhead compare)

103 Int
103 Sta
120 Spi
174 Armor
38 Crit (0.83%)
16 Haste (0.49%)
157 Spell Power

I have to see actually 4t10 parses to verify that the stat gain is worth giving up Chots for a 2% bounce proc. I think the 4t10 will be very underwhelming at first and will eventually see a buff, but then again maybe not because trees just had two incredibly powerful 4-set bonuses. Worst case scenario is them nerfing 4t9 like they did t8, which would prompt me to buy a plane ticket and personally kick GC in the balls.

Ergo I am buying set pieces last (or winning them from VOA) and focusing on the other goodies. I bought [Meteor Chaser's Raiment] and [Belt of Petrified Ivy] already. If t9 does win out I plan on swapping that chest for [Sanctified Lasherweave Vestment]. The rest of my gear defaults to haste/crit pieces, and nets me 850 haste (cap), 30% crit tooltip and just under 4000 bonus healing with idol/IDS fully stacked. See for yourself:
Profiler - Wowhead

I'm sure there's plenty of undiscovered loot as well + Arthas' table, it won't be hard to reach the haste cap regardless of your gear plan.

Regarding Trauma, here's a log from tonight. We took Festergut down first and then Rotface so it only will show on attempts for Putricide. Not a perfect or large sample but overall for all Putricide pulls, averaged 2.3% of overall effective healing with 30.5% uptime. These were ugly pulls so I didn't keep a perfect coverage model but RJ was fairly wide across raid and WG as well. More data next week as I take it through the paces across both wings in ICC, ToC, etc.

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Those Trauma results seem similar to one of our resto druids last night on our raid2 Putricide testing attempts. Averaged across the 6 attempts for Putricide, it was 2.3% of his effective healing which seems consistent with the 2-3% that most people seem to be getting on current fights.

Of course it will be dependent on the situation, but Trauma should be quite good in the type of fights where resto druids really shine, at least enough to be an upgrade over the Heroic Suffering's End, unlike the Frozen Bonespike which is rather underwhelming. Its a pity that none of those attempts made it into P3, as it would've been interesting to see how the results would've differed with the different raid healing required.

I have been getting a good number of PM's with Trauma parses, as I tend to make a conclusion in my healing guide with them. I also have been taking parses from guilds who 1 shot Twins on Heroic Version, and using that fight by someone who uses a 5x1 spread. This is as close as we will get to a Best Case Scenario for the proc on the mace. At most, I had a parse with 5.1% of their healing done, saying the used the door strategy. The door strategy consists of everyone in the entrance door, and 2-3 people out collecting all opposite color orbs. 22 people dark, 3 light (usually hunters for deterrence vortex). 22 people withing range of fountain of light, and it had about 50% over heal. 5% direct heals from the mace + the SP upgrade. Not a great proc, and it may not be worth losing that much haste over [Dying Light], but definitely BiS for us right now, even over 258 mace off Anub.

I will personally go for [Dying Light], as I have a better weapon than a few other healers, and I have yet to wager the value of the extra points back in resto vs this proc. By this I mean I have CF to get to haste cap, and the staff would allow me to drop 7 points in balance for resto.

EDIT for 4T10: I often run with Regrowth on both tanks, with a Rejuvenation as well. I (mostly in 10, but on non big damage 25 fights) refresh rejuvenation given no raid priority healing with 19 seconds left on regrowth, in order to let them run out respectively, and me (or the other druid) able to swift mend the Rejuvenation and not the Regrowth. When you SM a target, it takes off the HoT with the least amount of time left in order to gain the most effective heal (pre-glyphing). With the glyph, it doesn't change the mechanic of SM in which HoT it "consumes". I was curious to find out if it overrode our current Rejuvenation, "refreshing" the current timer on the hot.

Really small nit-picky thing about 4T10, but just something to look out for. I assume with it's 20 yard range, chances are it will prioritize a target that doesn't have YOUR Rejuvenation on it.

Going by the non-heroic versions of [Trauma], [Sundial of Eternal Dusk] and [Dying Light], the tradeoff is 42 SP and the proc for 61 haste, 61 spirit and 34 int. There's no way that the added stats are worth anything close to 2% healing. In addition, in its current ICD-free incarnation this weapon is better for a resto druid than any other healer class. The only thing that doesn't make it a clear-cut druid weapon is the awful itemization holy paladins have for weapons - basically maces and +hit swords.