Resto (PvE) Healing Discussion - Page 41

Allinone · 03/03/09, 10:38 PM

Hey, not a problem Paininabox. At very least it made me go back and check my math.

And you will not get an argument from me Erdluf. Slow Stacking will be by far the most mana efficient method. However, the higher variance and the average loss of 1/3rd of the healing throughput will make this a hard pill to swallow for many.

As far as the GCD loss, currently 1 our of 9 GCDs are used to refresh Lifebloom, We are then looking to be using 3 out of 12 to Fast Stack (or 1/4th of our GCDs) (alternatively 4/36 currently and 9/36 for ease of comparison). Over a course of a fight this means that we will use 2.25 times the amount of GCDs to 'maintain' Lifeblooms on a target.

Alternatively, in practical application, we are looking at the time frame loss of a single Regrowth cast per 12 second cycle. Largely this comes into play while figuring out a pure min/max scenario. If the tank really needed that extra Regrowth cast, it is likely that the 9k+ hit from a bloom would have negated it, allowing you to stack Lifeblooms as normal. In a worst case scenario, that cast could have been used to throw a raid heal. This being said, these is no hard and fast rule stating that you MUST stack 3 Lifeblooms as fast as possible. Lifebloom still remains fluid. It’s not as if they are changing Lifebloom to a 3 second cast timer with a 12 second duration. You can still heal the raid member if you like.

Lightflower · 03/03/09, 11:04 PM

I know the front page post specifically warns against this and I do apologise for raising the issue. I shall edit this out if people would prefer:

If the Lifebloom change goes life as is coupled with the mana regen changes, can we really afford to immediately discount the ~100 MP5 and 120 SP from a Dreamstate build (based on 1k INT). These both scale very well into new tiers of gear with Dreamstate/Lunar Guidance.

Based on Playered's post of a few pages back, that would bump our available mana reserves up by ~5.9% on a 5 minute fight with proportionately greater returns as the fight lengthens. Napkin maths gives me 1 Spir = 0.528 MP5 vs 1 INT = 0.5515 MP5 before factoring in INT's contribution on mana pool (which decreases with fight length). So, to me, the real question is what are we losing?

GCD time:

For a caster at the current soft cap of haste we'd have a 1.2sec GCD on instant HoTs. In a slow stacking scenario that penalises us by 0.2 sec every 9 or 2.2% (as opposed to 5/5 GotEM) per target we put LB on. Hypothetical RJ on each target incurs 0.2sec every 18 penalty for an additional 1.1%. So for three tanks we'd be wasting 10% of our GCD time due to the loss of GotEM.

Living seed/Replenishment/WG:

We pretty much can't access these talents in a Dreamstate build but the overall loss is minor when considering rolling HoTs on multiple tanks but ranging to quite severe when thinking of raid healing.

Summary:

Dreamstate might be worth investigating for Druids who are still tasked with rolling multiple LB stacks on tanks but the GCD pressure coupled with the loss of WG will make them unsuitable for raid healing.

tattonca · 03/04/09, 2:19 AM

Lifebloom changes suck , but wouldn't it be beneficial toward the use with every Omen of Clarity proc? A little tough to watch for each Omen of Clarity proc , but the plus side is about 450 free mana

Archaniel · 03/04/09, 6:18 AM

watching for OoC procs is a bit tricky but I believe there is some addon that yells "OMEN READY".
Though not sure if it's such a big nerf, sure you can't *roll* it nonstop, but then, why the spell wasnt just called "Life" before?

)

I welcome the changes, along with the changes to nourish via Nature's Bounty + glyph how it will turn out.

kywirelessguy · 03/04/09, 8:47 AM

7 seconds is a long time to wait on a heal. With all the other wack-a-mole micromanagement I just am not looking forward to having to time my blooms as well. As it is now I don't use LB on anyone but tanks because the bloom is overheal. I always kind of viewed the bloom part of the spell a pvp thing for dispells, in my experience its absolutely useless in pve except for Loatheb. I understand they are trying to give us more options, but I don't know why. I was under the impression GC wanted to move away from the wack-a-mole model of healing, as well as making it so anyone can heal using the default blizzard UI, but I feel like this change moves us away from both of these.

This change doesn't feel like its going to make druid healing any more fun, its just going to give me more stuff to think about in the middle of a boss fight. So now I'm going to be watching Grid even more intently than before and still have to stay out of the fire.

Playered · 03/04/09, 8:58 AM

They should perhaps look into Nature's Splendor and the Lifebloom glyph and remove both of their duration increase instead because not only does it naturally lower the HPM and make it less efficient it also makes multi rolling the spell much more consuming to maintain as 3-4 seconds out of every 7 would be used to keep it up which puts a further limit on doing other things while tank healing.

I really dislike their method for the Lifebloom change because it feels so awkward, like a cop out means of "fixing" the problem where just like for Assassination Rogues they made the last talent just give more % damage boost to solve their lacking DPS instead of sorting the problems which cause the lower damage.

[e] Dreamstate is still bad for a reason and if at any point it becomes viable I will remove the "restriction" from the opening post of the thread.

Allinone · 03/04/09, 12:53 PM

Originally Posted by Playered
They should perhaps look into Nature's Splendor and the Lifebloom glyph and remove both of their duration increase instead because not only does it naturally lower the HPM and make it less efficient it also makes multi rolling the spell much more consuming to maintain as 3-4 seconds out of every 7 would be used to keep it up which puts a further limit on doing other things while tank healing.

I'm not sure if I'm following your logic and math correctly? How would giving Lifebloom a shorter duration increase its efficency and allow us more time to heal others? Further explaination is needed?

Playered · 03/04/09, 1:37 PM

Originally Posted by Allinone

I'm not sure if I'm following your logic and math correctly? How would giving Lifebloom a shorter duration increase its efficency and allow us more time to heal others? Further explaination is needed?

That was the opposite of my logic.

If we are tied down to rolling 3x LB on 3 tanks (and RJ) then we are GCD limited from doing anything else pretty much.
If LB only lasts 7 seconds per cast instead of 10 seconds then it is healing 3 ticks less per cast = less efficient.
If we double roll LB/RJ there is very little time available to do more raid healing beyond a WG and perhaps a Nourish every so often.
If we do only a single LB roll (+RJ) on the MT then we have much more accessible time to raid heal because we have more GCDs spare to use.

Not to forget that mana is still going to be much harder to throw around recklessly so even a 3 tank roll will most likely end up draining us at a substantial pace.

It also gives more chances of the bloom happening in PvP, but generally it just seems like a more acceptable means of doing exactly what they want without violating Lifebloom in bad ways.

Eilt · 03/04/09, 3:04 PM

Just to clarify a little more (please correct me if I am misunderstanding you Playered):

Rolling LB on 3 tanks (and RJ) and still having free GCDs to raid heal/regrowth/nourish is an issue for the developers. To combat this they are making LB cost way more mana, when they could just reduce the time LB lasts, if LB has a shorter duration you will not have as much time to cast other things aside from your LB stacks.

Seems a legitimate concern, at this point all they are doing is making us value regen more, so at a certain level of spellpower you would start focusing on regen so that you could maintain enough mana to keep your rotation enough. In essence they are just creating a wall between the rotation druids want to use and what we can do, and at some point there will be a breach in the wall that will let us have enough regen and Spellpower to keep doing what we do.

Now, if they reduced the LB length you are back to being limited to a certain number of GCDs that will cap out relatively low (easy enough to reach the 1sec GCD with haste from gear).

Kreoss · 03/04/09, 3:58 PM

I started a post on WoWhead forums (Druid Forums) about the Lifebloom change. I wrote there suggesting one of 3 things being done to current PTR Lifebloom to make it a bit more useful:

1. Let us control the Bloom in some way.
2. Reduce the Bloom to around how it was before, or a bit more but increase the ticks of the LB Hot.
3. Give us a way to get something back from the Overhealing of the Lifebloom (thinking a percentage of Mana)

I think option number 3 would be the most fun/different from what we currently have while still retaining the intended nerf: Not being able to ROLL lifebloom on several targets, this would still lock us several GCDs to be able to "mimick" the roll of lifebloom like it is on live now.

This is not wishful thinking, this is just a suggestion on something I think might improve lifebloom while not making it overpowered.

Rijndael · 03/05/09, 3:16 AM

Originally Posted by Playered

They should perhaps look into Nature's Splendor and the Lifebloom glyph and remove both of their duration increase instead because not only does it naturally lower the HPM and make it less efficient it also makes multi rolling the spell much more consuming to maintain as 3-4 seconds out of every 7 would be used to keep it up which puts a further limit on doing other things while tank healing.

I really agree with this, it would have been a much more elegant change (especially since that's how lifebloom was originally designed). Perhaps Blizzard has a bias against reverting talent design changes -- in which case an alternative is to make Nature's Splendor increase the mana cost along with increasing duration (so at least druids have a choice of paying the mana for flexibility of tank healing + doing other things by speccing appropriately).

Lemanakmelo · 03/05/09, 4:31 AM

Originally Posted by Rijndael

I really agree with this, it would have been a much more elegant change (especially since that's how lifebloom was originally designed). Perhaps Blizzard has a bias against reverting talent design changes -- in which case an alternative is to make Nature's Splendor increase the mana cost along with increasing duration (so at least druids have a choice of paying the mana for flexibility of tank healing + doing other things by speccing appropriately).

I kind of like this mana cost and duration increase idea for the glyph and talent. In BC you could keep up max 3-4 lifebloom stacks due to gcd, and when they gave of GotEM and 3 potential more seconds, that increased the potential to 7-9stacks, which is 2-3 times as many potential stacks, along with decreasing how often you have to refresh. An increase in the duration and mana cost would be like a trade off.

In fact, this makes me think differently about the change to Lifebloom cost in 3.1. In BC you could roll lifebloom on 1-3 tanks generally. If you rolled on 3 that was about all you could do(depending on your latency), or you could roll lifebloom and rejuv on 2 tanks and get a couple spot heals with your spare gcds, or you could roll on one tank and spot heal or put extra heals on the main tank.

So basically, I think if we could roll lifebloom on 3 tanks and nothing else with the changes, I would be okay with that. And I think Blizzard should be also. They were unhappy with how powerful lifebloom was in BC, but lifebloom went from healing over 1K hps in BC, to around 1500 in our best gear now, which is a much lower percentage of our tanks' health and the incoming damage. And of course I don't mean I only want to roll 3 lifeblooms, I mean if a maximum of 3 rolls was obtainable that would be acceptable to me.

Kreoss · 03/05/09, 8:11 AM

While removing Lifebloom from the Glyph and Nature's Splendor would be a closer result to what we have Lifebloom now, it would result in locking Druids in what we were used to do: Roll LBs on 3 Tanks and do nothing else... There would be no free GCDs to do anything else, and you know that would happen.

So while I do agree with it I don't think it's the best way to go. Although I don't think the current changes to Lifebloom without any additional alteration is the ideal change also. We will have to wait and be patient since they only implemented the LB change on the PTRs in last patch.

zyzzyr · 03/05/09, 9:04 AM

Originally Posted by Kreoss

While removing Lifebloom from the Glyph and Nature's Splendor would be a closer result to what we have Lifebloom now, it would result in locking Druids in what we were used to do: Roll LBs on 3 Tanks and do nothing else... There would be no free GCDs to do anything else, and you know that would happen.

So while I do agree with it I don't think it's the best way to go. Although I don't think the current changes to Lifebloom without any additional alteration is the ideal change also. We will have to wait and be patient since they only implemented the LB change on the PTRs in last patch.

I just don't see that rolling LBs on 3 tanks to the exclusion of all else as a effective healing strategy. I don't have experience in 25 man, so perhaps it might be there, where there's a bit more room to play with personnel and roles, but in my experience, in 10 mans, I don't see it working.

I very much like the idea of removing lifebloom from Glyph and NatSpl. The GCD would then be my limiter so I'd only be able to roll it on a single tank. Alternatively, having mana cost coupled to duration is also a good idea. I'd like to see NatSpl changed to extend LB by 1s, and the glyph to 2s but 50% more mana. Or something like that.

Eilt · 03/05/09, 9:22 AM

Originally Posted by Kreoss

While removing Lifebloom from the Glyph and Nature's Splendor would be a closer result to what we have Lifebloom now, it would result in locking Druids in what we were used to do: Roll LBs on 3 Tanks and do nothing else... There would be no free GCDs to do anything else, and you know that would happen.

So while I do agree with it I don't think it's the best way to go. Although I don't think the current changes to Lifebloom without any additional alteration is the ideal change also. We will have to wait and be patient since they only implemented the LB change on the PTRs in last patch.

This is exactly what should be happening. If there are 3 tanks you have to make a decisions.

1. Will all three tanks be taking damage on a regular basis to warrant me using my limited time to just Lifebloom/Rejuv?
2. Would it be better to just roll 3 LBs on the MT and let a single rejuv help on the OTs and focus on keeping regrowth/nourish going on the MT?

See, right now you can do #1 and #2 because LB lasts so long, all Blizzard wants is for you to have to choose between the two, which is totally fair. I just don't think increasing mana costs is the right way to make us choose. as I stated previously all this is doing is forcing us to focus more on spirit/mp5 so that we can continue to do both of the above without running oom.