So, why are people casting nourish?
As a tank heal - Ok, I can see it as a viable tank heal if you're forced to do it. I find it be the case very rarely, prominent examples being Ignis and a plasma-blasting Mimiron. I guess it's useful for hard-mode Vezax as well with a specific build/glyph/gear set - namely 4t7.
As a raid heal - This is where I stumble. If the target just lost a few K, a rejuv costs less, heals for more and takes less time to cast. If the target is going to take more damage soon, regrowth gives more or less the same amount of upfront heal plus an excellent hot (to the guy above who said regrowth hot is useless, I suggest you install some form of combat parser). And the worst problem is, if the target doesn't have a hot on it, it heals for basically nothing. Nourish is just a big "win-more" spell to me in that regard. People complain about the opportunity cost of GHT when they glyph a spell that accounts for a small fraction of their total heals, a glyph that only helps it in certain situations. I haven't tried GHT myself as I'm a big regrowth fan but I'd certainly go for that over nourish as a raid heal. Tell me regrowth takes more time to cast than nourish and sometimes your target won't last that long? I'll tell you GHT takes even less to cast. I'll also tell you you just healed someone for 4k which is not even 20% of his HP.
My 25-man raid group managed to bring down only the first three Ulduar bosses, so my experience may not be sufficient to come to the conclusion that Blizzard changed resto druid healing mechanics not to the better. Before patch 3.1 we were a class with a somewhat strict lifebloom cycle restricted by the omnipresent global cooldown (which was dull on the long run). Our main job was to stabilize the MT/MTs with three stacks of Lifebloom.
After patch 3.1 we are a class who is most effective hiting the rejuvenation button every global cooldown, interrupted by the occasional Wild Growth. Healing predictable moderate damage is our strength more than ever. Four pieces of T8 will push our healing output so drastically that it would be most unwise to give us any different assignment. I don't think that healing as a resto druid is now more exciting than before. The question I am asking myself now is if healing became even less exciting... I wish they would have changed Regrowth or Lifebloom to a somewhat worthwhile raid heal. I don't see their usefulness in this particular situation.
I said it's not worth the opportunity cost, which is 7 talent points and a glyph slot.
Where would those 7 points go and what glyphs would you use instead? Most likely 5/5 Nature's Bounty and either Nourish or RG glyph. With GHT, there is no reason to use Nourish or Regrowth for direct heals, making 5/5 Nature's Bounty and those glyphs a very small increase in healing.
Originally Posted by Ezarg
Doesn't matter if it goes sub-GCD - it's still better if you can give someone that health sooner.
This is exactly why GHT is good, except you're refering to Nourish in that statement.
EDIT:
Originally Posted by Fallenangel
Tell me regrowth takes more time to cast than nourish and sometimes your target won't last that long? I'll tell you GHT takes even less to cast. I'll also tell you you just healed someone for 4k which is not even 20% of his HP.
Yes, exactly. There is no reason to use Nourish or Regrowth for a direct heal. If you're using either to save someone's life, GHT will do it faster. If you're using either to top people off, that is usually not a good use of our time/mana. I will try to put it as simple as possible:
Ever use a direct heal to save someone (while Swiftmend/NS are on cooldown)? Use GHT.
Ever use a direct heal to top off someone that is not in danger? Let HoTs or "smart" heals eventually do it.
You cast nourish when other healers would be forced to rely on flash heal/lesser healing wave. In other words, if the target needs to be topped off NOW. Examples: Mimiron's napalm. Nourish hits as hard as flash heal, and crits a lot, and leaves a living seed. This is useful for continuous burst damage like napalm.
Is there theorycraft anywhere where you can see the HPM and HPS of all current druid healing spells in one table? I'd be interested in seeing how talenting and glyphing affects the viability of Healing Touch... The fact that you can get HT casting time down to 1.0 seconds - Haste seems very, very fast but I have no idea how good it is (HPM/HPS) when compared to other options.
I see Nourish is just another part of our large healing toolkit, and so it gets used accordingly and when the situation warrants.
I use Rejuv and WG quite a bit of course, but Swiftmend (which I also use quite a lot) is not always available or I don't want to risk not having it up for someone who really needs it later (Hodir-type fight comes to mind). Nourish is a good filler in this situation. You can assume someone is going to top them off, but I personally don't like to. However, it's rare that I'll use Nourish when someone doesn't already have at least a WG or Rejuv on them.
Rejuv: good hot. always been, always will be. Nothing to add.
Regrowth: good spell to use when somebody in the raid took some damage and is about to take more.
LB: dodgy spell. I can say for sure I will use it much much less with 3.1.
Nourish: with some basic haste, it will go down to 1-1.1 sec every time it crits with NG. Crits 40-45% of the time (without stacking crit rating), adding a 3k Living Seed. Rejuv+WG is enough to boost it up to 8-9k crit heal with 4pT7 and Nourish glyph. With all these synergies, I really don't understand people that even compare this to GHT.
Healing strategy: main problem of many resto druids is that they see Nourish as a MT healing tool. Well, it's not. Leave MT healing to paladins/disc priests. Resto druids are raid healers and Nourish is yet another raid healing tool, just like hots. On most of the fights I spam around rejuv/wg and SM/Nourish on anyone that takes nuke damage. Well it obviously varies from fight to fight, but in general it worked really well.
You cast nourish when other healers would be forced to rely on flash heal/lesser healing wave. In other words, if the target needs to be topped off NOW. Examples: Mimiron's napalm. Nourish hits as hard as flash heal, and crits a lot, and leaves a living seed. This is useful for continuous burst damage like napalm.
Either rejuv/SM or regrowth are better for handling naplam. If you know the target is going to take more damage, why not cast a heal that leaves a hot?
I don't know if priests use flash heal or not, but it's not really relevant. We have other tools, namely RJ/RG, which are not available to them, so if they have to use FH doesn't mean we need nourish.
Originally Posted by Inorrri
LB: dodgy spell. I can say for sure I will use it much much less with 3.1.
Nourish: with some basic haste, it will go down to 1-1.1 sec every time it crits with NG. Crits 40-45% of the time (without stacking crit rating), adding a 3k Living Seed. Rejuv+WG is enough to boost it up to 8-9k crit heal with 4pT7 and Nourish glyph. With all these synergies, I really don't understand people that even compare this to GHT.
LB still has the same HPM as HL with a better spread so it overheals for less and is castable on a few targets. Getting an NG proc via a crit nourish is nice and all, but it won't help you unless you're spamming it. The 4t7 bonus is fading out and besides it and the glyph are only useful for tank healing.
I can see nourish being potentinally more powerful in a 10m setting where it's easier to ensure everybody is hotted. It just doesn't cut it in 25s, not as a raid heal.
I can see nourish being potentinally more powerful in a 10m setting where it's easier to ensure everybody is hotted. It just doesn't cut it in 25s, not as a raid heal.
I was talking about 25man. I can keep up to 10 rejuvs and 6 wgs on different people with Nourishes/SMs inbetween.
Worked really well.
But then again that's why I always loved resto druids. There are many healing strategies and all of them can work out for different people.
In a 25 main raid setting, I'm using rejuv as a primary raid heal, throwing it out at anyone taking damage. WG on nearly every cooldown when the raid is taking damage.
On to the topic of nourish: As has allready been said, I am finding it really useful when someone has to be healed FAST, swiftmend is on cooldown and they are taking heavy damage. For example on Kologarn when a couple of clothies are gripped. A swiftmend on one, and then I'm finding the only thing I have time for bar a NS/HT is nourish spam on those being gripped.
I'm not sure if I understand what you mean, or if you understand what I'm trying to say. I was arguing that sneaking in a heal (like Lifebloom) on a target as a raid heal isn't going to save somebody that was dangerously low on health, and that its only real purpose was to snipe (steal) healing from other healers. Driving up your own heal meter, while driving up the over heal of all your other healers, while not REALLY healing any substantial damage. Throwing a meaningful heal at a target whom is dangerously low is the correct thing to do. That is not 'heal sniping' that’s called 'teamwork'. If someone has under 5k health left, I don’t care who's assignment it is, I’m going to try to throw a heal that direction
I think you missed my point. I was challenging the notion that "heal sniping", as you called it, is a bad thing. Not just with Lifebloom - being a backloaded heal, Lifebloom is crap for healing raid damage where the priority is to get squishy DPS out of the danger zone as fast as possible. In general, though, if you're able to do your job and 90% of someone else's, why shouldn't you? To salve their ego? The raid will be better off having that overlap in case either of you is incapacitated, falls asleep at the keyboard, or just plain screws up. Yes, this leads to more overhealing. It also leads to less dead raid members.
I think you missed my point. I was challenging the notion that "heal sniping", as you called it, is a bad thing. Not just with Lifebloom - being a backloaded heal, Lifebloom is crap for healing raid damage where the priority is to get squishy DPS out of the danger zone as fast as possible. In general, though, if you're able to do your job and 90% of someone else's, why shouldn't you? To salve their ego? The raid will be better off having that overlap in case either of you is incapacitated, falls asleep at the keyboard, or just plain screws up. Yes, this leads to more overhealing. It also leads to less dead raid members.
Okay, so we simply werent on the same wave length. I was speaking more to a general use of Lifebloom as a raid heal (which could show up nicely on your meters), or any other spell who's goal it is to sneak in a heal a micro second before a different healers heal landed. No, if you could do the job, without the other healer, by all means do so. I'm talking about a decision (and mindset) that tries to top the meters at any cost. Such a mentality would lead a druid to sneak in a fast heal (Like Glyphed Healing Touch) before the other heal has a time to land, even though a different healer had already started his cast time. In reality, the first incoming heal would have likely healed the total damage, where as the druid simply wasted both his time and mana. He gets 'credit' for the heal on the meters, the other healer simply gets huge amounts of overheal.
@ Kalitari
I would suggest Paininabox's Resto Spreadsheet. While in its current form it isn't perfect, its far and away the best Tool i've come across to date.
I can't figure out how or why people are saying that Druids fail as MT healers. I did some math last night. Ignoring mana concerns, I compute that a druid could fairly easily sustain 8300 HPS (in My Current Spec and Gear) on a single target, (ignoring overheal) Simply by rolling Lifebloom, Rejuv, Regrowth, and Spamming Nourish. This 8300 HPS was sustained over the course of an entire minute, from the start of a rotation, to the end. It peaks at 10296 HPS. These are theory crafting numbers, and only apply to a bursty situation where you can spam nourish. Real life would show a smaller HPS. I dont have numbers for other specs, but I can't imagine that we are that BAD at this roll. I understand that we are also good raid healers, but thats secondary to my arguement.
Does this assumes (close to) perma-NG uptime? While possible in a theory, you would have to spam for it to happen. A paladin can cancel-cast pretty effectively and still maintain his 10K HPS 1.4s HLs. A paladin also doesn't need to stop to refresh hots. If a paladin is spamming a tank, you know what you're getting - a hefty heal every 1.4-1.5s or so. The 3 secs between rejuv and regrowth ticks make them somewhat unreliable as the tank can get hit twice in a row without getting a tick (at least one of them won't tick).
Yes druids can be MT healers. We're no doubt better at this than shamans and their limited toolbox. It's just not how Ulduar fights are built though, where a single holy paladin can cover MT healing for most of the bosses.
I can't figure out how or why people are saying that Druids fail as MT healers. I did some math last night. Ignoring mana concerns, I compute that a druid could fairly easily sustain 8300 HPS (in My Current Spec and Gear) on a single target, (ignoring overheal) Simply by rolling Lifebloom, Rejuv, Regrowth, and Spamming Nourish. This 8300 HPS was sustained over the course of an entire minute, from the start of a rotation, to the end. It peaks at 10296 HPS. These are theory crafting numbers, and only apply to a bursty situation where you can spam nourish. Real life would show a smaller HPS. I dont have numbers for other specs, but I can't imagine that we are that BAD at this roll. I understand that we are also good raid healers, but thats secondary to my arguement.
I completely agree, and I think a good resto druid can fill any role effectively. In fact, any healing class can heal a tank well these days (perhaps shamans fall a little behind).
Raid healing on the other hand is a name for a number of wildly different roles. Razorscale has horrible random spiky damage that was better handled by our paladins/shamans/priests, while I kept the tanks alive. Ignis has fairly predictable aoe that makes all AoE heals great options, and leaves the paladins out a bit - but luckily there're some tanks for them to heal. Mimiron P2 has constant and heavy raid-wide aoe damage that makes Rejuvenation an amazing spell, as I get pretty much 100% out of every cast, yielding (theoretically) over 12,000 HPS. Point being - "bla bla is better at raid healing" is very rarely a useful statement. It depends very much on what KIND of raid healing you're dealing with.
I completely agree, and I think a good resto druid can fill any role effectively. In fact, any healing class can heal a tank well these days (perhaps shamans fall a little behind).
-snip-
Shamans have pretty good synergy between lesser healing wave and earth shield actually so they can MT heal if needed.
And paladins do pretty solid raid healing in certain circumstances. Don't underestimate glyph of holy light. The healers are pretty well homogenized now.
Shamans have pretty good synergy between lesser healing wave and earth shield actually so they can MT heal if needed.
And paladins do pretty solid raid healing in certain circumstances. Don't underestimate glyph of holy light. The healers are pretty well homogenized now.
All the more reason for druids to focus on raid healing. Our ability to counter predictable incoming raid damage by pre-hotting is a unique trait and useful on many fights. The same goes for healing DoTs.
More and more lifebloom has become my "mana bank" spell when I get an OOC proc, I toss a LB on someone who will take some damage just so I get the free mana back when it blooms. Other than that I found myself hardly if ever using it last night other than on the MT during really spike damage times (xt002 tantrum for example)
I think all of these new terms are confusing... "Heal Sniping", as I would imagine it, is a bad thing. I tend to do my version of "sniping" on easy fights, when I know there will be no problem with heals. I wait to see a healer's cast coming on someone, and nail SM on their target with the sole intent of driving THEIR numbers down, and I forget whoever else needs healing. It is a running joke all of us do to each other in non-dangerous situations; a humorous thing to do which we wouldn't do on a progression type fight. So, not to put words in Allinone's mouth, I understood his original comment on sniping to parallel my understanding of "sniping". Here's an example: Web Stats
Just wondering with the 4PC T8 bonus and the glyph of rejuvination is the direct healing portion of the spell affected by the below 50% rule or just the HOT - Im guessing the HOT but would be nice to OP this even further....
Healing strategy: main problem of many resto druids is that they see Nourish as a MT healing tool. Well, it's not. Leave MT healing to paladins/disc priests. Resto druids are raid healers and Nourish is yet another raid healing tool, just like hots. On most of the fights I spam around rejuv/wg and SM/Nourish on anyone that takes nuke damage. Well it obviously varies from fight to fight, but in general it worked really well.
I have a problem with this statement. Druids provide damage mitigation (much like disc priests) to MT's rolling 3 hots + living seed. Couple that with the fact that with 4T7 + Nourish glyph and your nourish will heal for 33% more. We got up to Mimiron25 in the first 4 days with two resto druids predominantly healing the MT and weaving raid healing in between. With DBM in it's infant stages, the big tank dips are unpredictable on several fights. SM is a blessing in these circumstances. On other fights, you may just have to look for an emote or a boss animation.
For XT-002, we were assigned to the MT + melee. For Ignis, we were assigned to the MT + Slag Pot. Dual druid synergy is great with each other being able to SM each others' hots. Also, for Hodir & Freya where the tanks are constantly on the move resto druids really shine in a MT healing role.
Even if you are assigned to raid healing (which we also shine in), you should still roll the MT for stability
Either rejuv/SM or regrowth are better for handling naplam. If you know the target is going to take more damage, why not cast a heal that leaves a hot?
Because in this content, it matters how quickly your heals get there. Tomorrow is not promised. Napalm deals 9,425 to 10,575 Fire damage to targets within 5 yards of the impact point and leaves an aura that deals 6000 Fire damage per second for 8 seconds at that location. Nourish heals for 6k (60% of dmg taken) and is always faster than RG. SM is not guaranteed to be off cooldown. The rotation I prefer is Nourish->Regrowth.
Please people stop arguing about Nourish vs RG in terms of raid healing. They are different spells and they will always have their own niche. To me, using one is as irresponsible as using one tanking class for every boss in Ulduar.
Either rejuv/SM or regrowth are better for handling naplam. If you know the target is going to take more damage, why not cast a heal that leaves a hot?
I don't know if priests use flash heal or not, but it's not really relevant. We have other tools, namely RJ/RG, which are not available to them, so if they have to use FH doesn't mean we need nourish.
(a) I had people die to Napalm because Regrowth was too slow and other healers didn't land their stuff in time. It does happen. If it doesn't happen for you on Napalm, I am sure you can think of another Ulduar encounter where 0.5 seconds makes a difference. By no means does it ALWAYS happen, and I do prefer Regrowth if I can get away with casting it. I think this is sort of raid and healer setup dependant, every healer has to learn what they can get away with in their raid, and what will cause people to die.
(b) In 25 man, multiple people get hit with Napalm sometimes. In this case, Rejuv/SM will not be up on everyone, and will be a waste of a GCD anyways -- I got better results hitting WG and spamming Nourish.
Nourish is actually not a bad spell for continuing damage as long as that damage stops in a few seconds (exactly the case with Napalm). This is because it's cheap, and often leaves a living seed which increases its throughput by about 10-15%.
I, too, wonder if anyone has worked out the 3.1 HPS/HPM values for druid spells a la Resto4Life.
2) The target has taken a good amount of damage (10k), and is unlikely to take any more damage: 3) The target has taken a good amount of damage (10k), and is likely to take more damage:
Maybe it's just the group I run with, but I almost never see #2. There are really two big things that make DPS take 10K hits to their health - game mechanics and player behavior. Mechanics are things like a rogue on a boss with AoE damage or any DPS on a boss with a random aggro mechanic. Player stuff comes down to variations on "people who never seem to remember to get out of a void zone". In both cases, they're going to keep taking damage. I almost always assume that anyone who takes 10K damage will continue to take reasonably heavy damage. I Rejuv, then Regrowth and let it tick out. If they take more damage before it all ticks off, I keep the Rejuv up. If I'm the only healer, I keep regrowth on them too, otherwise I let the other healers do the direct healing and just mitigate with RJ.
I did my first 10-man run last night since the patch. I'm honestly finding that my mana efficiency is better then it was pre-patch, because it's forcing me into making better decisions about what heals to use. Instead of throwing RJ/LB over half the raid because I can, I'm trusting the other healers more. I'm still using LB on the tank, but I'm making a conscious decision about when to let it bloom and when to roll it, instead of just rolling it because I can. Yes, it means that for the first time since I started healing 10-mans, I wasn't top of the heal meter, but I also ended boss fights at >50% mana, sometimes without having used Innervate, giving me a lot of buffer for the times when things went wrong. I hate to admit it, but I think the changes are going to make me a better healer in the long run.
Why all the GHT/Nou threads? Is it just resistance to change? All I know is that Nou fits the most common spec and not only did it get big buffs, it also boosted the 3 talent points in Seed and made Tranquil Spirit more valuable.
In my guild I end up with 3 different tasks:
Heal the MT and support raid healing
Heal the raid
Heal a portion of the raid
1 For MT healing I'm hotting up the mt (slow rolling LB) and mixing in WG/SM/Nou
2 For general raid healing whack-a-mole RJ/WG with the occasional LB/Nou/SM
3 For healing a portion of the raid RJ/RG/WG with supporting LB/Nou/SM
Where I can't see the argument for GHT is that every scenario I find myself in, using Nourish is better due to the talent synergy. It's a low priority heal on targets that are missing hots, and it becomes a high priority heal on targets that have hots.
GHT never changes value, it doesn't gain or lose anything regardless of context. The only scenario where I could see it having some value is 2, but if they don't have a hot, RG is a better choice anyway for the HOT it leaves.
I can't find any spots where a heal with a lower chance to crit (GHT) and similar cast time will keep someone alive when Nourish won't. In all the GHT chanting I have yet to see anything better than vague references about what situations it's being used in or why the spell with a 25% bonus to crit and leave a living seed isn't better.
Because sometimes they need the heal NOW. RG is too slow and too costly. We have multiple tools in our toolbox, why use just 1. There are circumstances/situations that demand each tool or more than one.
This discussion has boiled down to opinions. "I want the RIGID Hammer! I want the Black and Decker!" They are both hammers. They pretty much cost the same. They pretty much do the same job.
04/21/09, 5:14 AM
