Resto (PvE) Healing Discussion - Page 52

kywirelessguy · 03/20/09, 3:59 PM

Originally Posted by Ploppy

While both of those are powerfull tools you can´t count on them all the time either. Natures grace will not always be up when people around you takes spike damage nor can you double swiftmend if one player hurts another with some raidboss mechanic handled the wrong way. The drawback of swiftmend is also that you haveto have a hot on the target and quite simply you won´t always have hots on everyone. Sure, tossing one and then swiftmending is faster... but then again glyphed HT is faster.

I think you're referring to circumstances that don't exist in the game as long as your DPS aren't standing in the fire. We'll see what happens in Ulduar, but as of now there aren't any fights where the raid takes enough fast, imminent death, damage that you'd need more than one swiftmend or a NG proc. You can heal KT Iceblocks with a non-hasted regrowth, thats really the only massive damage I can think of besides Gluth, but Gluth is pretty moot since the raid doesn't take any damage and you can take your sweet ass time topping them off

Playered · 03/20/09, 5:45 PM

There is a new trinket found from Kologarn which is very interesting:

I would easily replace MDF with this due to the nature of our healing meaning we are normally putting two spells out per 5 seconds at least resulting in an 80 MP5 effect with near 160 in spam situations. I quite honestly am really stunned by how amazing it appears to be and slightly question if it will end up being nerfed eventually.

Ploppy · 03/20/09, 6:11 PM

Originally Posted by kywirelessguy

I think you're referring to circumstances that don't exist in the game as long as your DPS aren't standing in the fire. We'll see what happens in Ulduar, but as of now there aren't any fights where the raid takes enough fast, imminent death, damage that you'd need more than one swiftmend or a NG proc. You can heal KT Iceblocks with a non-hasted regrowth, thats really the only massive damage I can think of besides Gluth, but Gluth is pretty moot since the raid doesn't take any damage and you can take your sweet ass time topping them off

I think we see raiding form diferent angles, I am not talking about perfectly executed kills where everyone is behaving like they should. That kind of fight happens when bosses are on farm, they are not hard at all and don´t require top performance from the healers present. What Im refering to is fights where everyone is still learning to execute them. In these fights people do take damage that can be avoided once you know it. But with good healing many wipes don´t haveto be wipes. You´re also right that you don´t need haste to technicaly manage two icetombs, but no healer executes new fights perfectly from scratch either. Glyphed HT is faster and thus lets you handle situations before experience kicks in to make them easy.

Paininabox · 03/20/09, 6:26 PM

Wow, that trinket is amazing.

I've managed to get a quickie version of Resto Spreadsheet completed with some basic changes for 3.1. Please note, however, that since there are going to be playstyle changes in the patch, that my spreadsheet does not take that into account, such as rolling lifeblooms vs. blooming and glyph of nourish, etc. I've also updated that mana regeneration analysis article, as well. Links are:

Mana Regeneration Analysis v1.1

Resto Spreadsheet v1.33

KrinKer · 03/20/09, 6:45 PM

Originally Posted by Playered

There is a new trinket found from Kologarn which is very interesting:

I would easily replace MDF with this due to the nature of our healing meaning we are normally putting two spells out per 5 seconds at least resulting in an 80 MP5 effect with near 160 in spam situations. I quite honestly am really stunned by how amazing it appears to be and slightly question if it will end up being nerfed eventually.

If you are at a 1 sec GCD wouldn't, during spam phase, this trinket be worth 230 mp5 ? ( 5 cast multiplies by the 46 mana it reduces ? ) + the 100 spirit ...

goodolarchie · 03/20/09, 6:56 PM

I really don't see the HT glyph being able to fit into my book for Ulduar. Its a good alternative, but after seeing these fights, its pretty seldom when a flash heal outweighs a rejuv or WG to raid heal. Nourish is definitely a better tank heal, I get higher HPM and HPS out of it.
Now the rejuv glyph I could see being quite useful with the t8 4pc. It might only see a bonus on the instant hot proc, but even then you're looking at a 3.5k normal or 5k crit on it (assuming it does). Either way, that goes a long way in closing the disparity in our ability to raid heal, topping off people quickly. Esp. since WG is not as viable as it is in current content due to the spread-out nature of the new fights.

Playered · 03/20/09, 8:06 PM

Originally Posted by KrinKer

If you are at a 1 sec GCD wouldn't, during spam phase, this trinket be worth 230 mp5 ? ( 5 cast multiplies by the 46 mana it reduces ? ) + the 100 spirit ...

It was a guarded estimate which took latency and reaction speeds into account. Replenishment is never the full effect but more between 70-85% on a per fight basis counting the assumed mana for the duration against the actual amount gained so I tend to try and always devalue the figures slightly to get a more realistic value.

There is also an Intellect trinket (with 108 Int / 850 SP for 10 sec proc) and while the Intellect is naturally stronger the proc is better in the hands of a DPSer and I highly doubt it could be compared to either Spark or IDS.

grimtage · 03/20/09, 9:28 PM

Originally Posted by kywirelessguy

I think the issue with sub 1 second casts is the GCD. No matter how much haste you have you can't get the GCD under 1 second, so spamming a sub 1 second healing touch is the same as spamming a 1 second healing touch, anything under that is wasted.

I'm not dumb, I understood his problem. But I'm just saying you're thinking about it like a dps would. Yes, for a caster going under GCD is just a waste of stat points - but it's not true for a healer, it means the heals get there earlier. The fact of the matter is, if you're constantly on GCD/cast time as a druid now days, you're probably going to run out of mana in moments - pick your time to heal and don't overheal like a paladin.

Originally Posted by kywirelessguy

If I need instant healing I just use nature's swiftness and healing touch or regrowth. Lately I've been using regrowth with my nature's swiftness, just so I can immediately follow it up with a swiftmend if more healing is needed. I have never once since wrath came out spammed nourish on any target. There's never been a need. I realize with 3.1 I'll need to change my approach, but for now I think nourish is a waste. I do use nourish occasionally after a nature's grace proc from regrowth, if the target needs that sub 1 second cast, but that so rarely happens its probably not worth mentioning.

It's very nice that you have nature's swiftness, I agree. However, on such a large cooldown it is not something to be relied upon. You can't know that the target needs a sub-1s cast until after he's dead, in which case it's safer to be sub-1s. The longer someone is on a low amount of health, the more chance they are to die. So you want to get them back up to full health as soon as possible. Having sub-1s cast means the raid member you're healing is going to be in dangerous territory health wise for less time.

Originally Posted by kywirelessguy

I've always viewed druids as the damage mitigator. My goal is to relieve pressure on the direct healers/chain healers with rejuv on as many targets as possible while keeping the tanks hotted up. My hots alone won't heal anyone in the raid, but at the same time it keeps them all from dying. Occasionally the damage will be high enough I start spamming regrowth on the raid, but NG makes this great and with the changes coming in 3.1 this may not be as attractive to me.

Disc priests are damage "mitigators." Druids WERE there to relieve pressure on the direct healers, but now we're one of the strongest direct healers, thus it's our job to do the direct healing and have the others relieve healing on us.

Originally Posted by kywirelessguy

I don't agree with your assesment that you need burst healing over reliable output. I guess its all in how you view your own role in the raid. My goal is to make healing easier on everyone, not snipe heals to make myself look better on a meter.

It's not about sniping heals, if I meant sniping heals, I'd say sniping heals. What I'm saying is: when there's raid damage, we have *the* quickest spell without a cooldown to react to that, so we can heal the raid members up and stop them from dying. We have by far the most solo 10man healing potential. Maybe you're stuck on the TBC druid where we had huge mana efficiency and we had to predict everything - those days have past, let them go.

Originally Posted by kywirelessguy

I think you're referring to circumstances that don't exist in the game as long as your DPS aren't standing in the fire. We'll see what happens in Ulduar, but as of now there aren't any fights where the raid takes enough fast, imminent death, damage that you'd need more than one swiftmend or a NG proc. You can heal KT Iceblocks with a non-hasted regrowth, thats really the only massive damage I can think of besides Gluth, but Gluth is pretty moot since the raid doesn't take any damage and you can take your sweet ass time topping them off

I take it you've never done sarth3drakes? There's plenty of time when there's hard-to-avoid damage that needs to be topped up. People coming out of portals into the lava wave for example - you really need to heal them or they WILL die within a regrowth cast.

I realise that for the past age druids have been really good at mana efficiency and really bad at direct healing, but that doesn't mean we'll be that way forever. We're much better at being asked to HoT up the tank and start healing the raid at the same time. We hardly lend anything more to staying on the tank compared to disc priest/paladin, so why should we waste our time with that when we have such a strong raid heal that we can do whilst keeping up the HoTs?

p.s. Why is a level 63 priest saying anything on these issues? I can only assume that you don't have any experience.

Paininabox · 03/21/09, 1:49 AM

p.s. Why is a level 63 priest saying anything on these issues? I can only assume that you don't have any experience.

What he has set his characters as has nothing to do with his argument. As to this glyped HT vs regrowth debate, I think it is foolish to argue about which is "better", considering that each heal has its pros and cons. I can see using HT in encounters where you are confident that the player will take no further damage, or when death is imminent and you don't want to/can't use swiftmend or nature's swiftness. However, regrowth has its place to shine in situations where the hot is useful and able to be swiftmended. I suppose you can argue either way, but the consensus is that regrowth is for the raid, nourish is for the tank, and healing touch is there to use once every 3 minutes with NS. I don't deny that HT is good in certain situations, but regrowth is likely better in most.

Druids WERE there to relieve pressure on the direct healers, but now we're one of the strongest direct healers

I do not deny that our direct healing ability has improved by leaps and bounds, but as long as our mechanics encourage setting up combos with HoT's, then we will always be a HoT healer and thus more of a shield. I like to think of the healer "niches" not so much as definite categories, but as a continuum. One side is probably disc priests, the other is paladins. We're in between, and probably closer to the disc priest side. Recent changes have probably slid us a bit closer to paladins and away from disc priests, but I still believe we are more like mitigators than we are like direct healers.

I'd also like to point out that as we are healers, there are few absolutes in how one should play like there are with dps. As a dps character, the best spec is always the one that does the most damage, and that will never change. With healers, conditions change so much from encounters, raid composition, and gear that all we really have are rules of thumb. At the end of the day, however, the correct method of play is whatever gets you through the instance. I think you can make a case for glyphed healing touch and probably be effective, but I think there are more pros to regrowth. It would probably take some WWS's to convince me that regrowth might not be as superior as I would think.

goodolarchie · 03/21/09, 7:31 AM

I don't think there is any comparing to be done about regrowth + nourish / HT. Regrowth is a different designed heal that was great pre 3.1 due to the talents and glyph, but that's over. Of course its helpful to keep regrowth on the tank(s), and very mana efficient to do so. As far as a raid heal though, if you're casting HT instead of regrowth or rejuv, I think you may not be seeing where the strength of the class lies. In fact, if you're not careful, HT will leave you behind as a raid healer. Take mimiron's napalm for example. They take 6k a second for 8s seconds, and he throws it to a new player sometimes at 6, meaning 12k damage overlap. If you had just been spamming HT, they have no residual hot left over. If you don't swap to the new guy, he'll die too. If you had used regrowth as the opener then nourish/rj after, you could toss a regrowth to the 2nd person and know they still had some leftover to top them off, or be swiftmended if they got hit again. It just works more reliably for us.
A priest can toss a free flash heal in MT heal downtime, or a shaman can start a chain on a group of people just hit by an aoe, but we are most definitely designed to be the aggregate of healing in between all that, not glyphing and speccing to snipe heals as HT means to do. Its HPM and HPS are outweighed by nourish + seed on the tank, and generally not necessary on raid members, vs rejuv + wild growth. Pre-rejuving / regrowth + nourish makes for excellent and efficient emergency healing.
I understand it scales well with spell power, but the numbers have been crunched and it just doesn't stack up. If you want a flash heal though, to each their own. Different guilds run different healing setups afterall.

Ploppy · 03/21/09, 7:32 AM

Edit: delete please. Was to slow on the ball.

• malthrin · 03/21/09, 7:56 AM

Originally Posted by Dioneirra

The spell is (because of the design, hefty CD and group restriction) indeed not very usable. Situations where i use it are scare and very specific (given that i am in the MT group, and have Imp Tranq skilled):

Accidental or planed pulls of more than 3 trashgroups at once. If i use it at the beginning, the frontload damage on the tanks can be countered quite effectivly, so other healers and the tanks itself can sort things out without mobs running wild due to healing aggro.

Timed severe damage like Decimate on Gluth. Only usable if i stand amongst my group members.

Soft Enrage situations where a regular damage type (like a DoT, or an damage aura) gets boosted instead of a melee or single target attack, and i can provide another few seconds of one group standing.

Re: tranquility on Gluth: why? Only two people in the raid are in any danger after a Decimate. AoE healing is not what's called for. The best use I found for Tranquility was to let the Hunters+pets DPS through Torment on Sarth10.

Re: glyphed HT. Yes, it's the fastest heal on papers, but a Tidal Waved LHW, an Imp Holy Conc Flash Heal, and a Holy Shock/IOL Flash of Light are all just as good in practice. Anticipatory healing is still our unique and rewarding niche.

grimtage · 03/21/09, 8:23 AM

Originally Posted by Paininabox

What he has set his characters as has nothing to do with his argument. As to this glyped HT vs regrowth debate, I think it is foolish to argue about which is "better", considering that each heal has its pros and cons. I can see using HT in encounters where you are confident that the player will take no further damage, or when death is imminent and you don't want to/can't use swiftmend or nature's swiftness. However, regrowth has its place to shine in situations where the hot is useful and able to be swiftmended. I suppose you can argue either way, but the consensus is that regrowth is for the raid, nourish is for the tank, and healing touch is there to use once every 3 minutes with NS. I don't deny that HT is good in certain situations, but regrowth is likely better in most.

It had nothing to do with his argument until his last comment, then it had everything to do with his argument. He wrote about encounters as if he had no experience with them and therefore was merely doing it in theory, rather than actually trying it in practice. I know we call it theorycrafting, but it's more like theoremcrafting - we take facts and draw conclusions, we don't guess when we don't have the facts, we try it out and see - the difference is there. (Physicists use theorys based on 'evidence,' mathematicians use theorems based on facts.)
I have used specs for HT, Regrowth and Nourish extensively, and I can honestly say that I've outperformed myself several fold with the HT spec - I can still do everything that I could in the other specs, but with the HT spec I have that extra healing spell for when the raid is taking random spikes in damage that need to be covered up quick at the cost of mana. I'm only trying to pass on why I think it's a better spec, I don't care if you want to use it or not - it wont effect me. And yes, you can compare direct heals to see which is better, it's the whole point in comparison - so you know what to spec into for the best result.

Originally Posted by goodolarchie

Take mimiron's napalm for example. They take 6k a second for 8s seconds, and he throws it to a new player sometimes at 6, meaning 12k damage overlap. If you had just been spamming HT, they have no residual hot left over. If you don't swap to the new guy, he'll die too. If you had used regrowth as the opener then nourish/rj after, you could toss a regrowth to the 2nd person and know they still had some leftover to top them off, or be swiftmended if they got hit again. It just works more reliably for us.

I agree, lifebloom + nourish or RJ + nourish would be a better choice here. But that's why I have all 3 direct heals on my bar - I'm not saying use HT exclusively, I'm saying glyphing HT is better than glyphing the others. It gives you an extra healing spell whilst the others only help the healing spell a little. Glyphed HT is the fastest healing spell without a cooldown in the game at the moment - how can you think that it's not worthwhile? I'm going to ignore the comment about sniping as I've already addressed this. I could argue that Nourish is sniping too, or Regrowth. Or hell, anything anyone does is sniping. Let's just not heal the raid at all to avoid it, eh?

p.s. I almost feel as if you guys are comparing the spells instead of the relative buffs of the glyphs. Please don't confuse never casting any spell but glyphed HT with glyphing HT, there's a world of difference.

Niliyu · 03/21/09, 9:02 AM

Originally Posted by grimtage

I have used specs for HT, Regrowth and Nourish extensively, and I can honestly say that I've outperformed myself several fold with the HT spec

I think what this boils down to is that this specific healing style works out the best for you, but not necessarily for other druids out there. That's what I love so much about druid healing in this expansion - there are a number of styles and tactics that can do the job perfectly fine. It depends both on your own preferences, how your raid normally looks and on the healing style/skill of your fellow healers.

The HT style is not for everyone as you can see clearly in this discussion. For me it comes down to this question: Am I willing to sacrifice a glyph spot for a heal that is so very similar to what I already have? At the moment I'm not, and with the new interesting glyphs in 3.1 even less so.

Lightweave · 03/25/09, 12:16 PM

Hola!

There was some talk about the new legendary mace (as I am sure there is in most all guilds atm) regarding how useful it is for each class in my guild last night. I decided to try and punch some numbers out to see how it would look for druids. Not sure how useful anyone will find this as these are very rough numbers and there is still no known info on the actual proc % chance of the shield let alone if there is an iGCD on it. I'm hoping that it might be of some use to someone at the very least.

Please keep in mind I am taking an average based on this image for heal totals for druids.

Boss Fight Length: 300s (5min)
Damage Reduction per fight is 100% uptime of that spell on player - IE Spamming Regrowth or Keeping a Rolling LB Tick
Assuming a 30% chance to proc the shield at the end.
Assumed Spec
Does not take into account any types of crits

Rejuvenation

Average: 1800
Ticks: 6
Length of HoT: 18s
15% of 1800: 270
15% of HoT over 18s: 1620
Damage reduction per second: 90d
Damage reduction per fight: 27000d

Wild Growth

Average: 600
Ticks: 7
Length of HoT: 7s
15% of 600: 90
15% of HoT over 7s: 630
Damage reduction per second: 90d
Damage reduction per fight: 27000d

Regrowth

--- BURST PORTION ---
Initial Heal: 6200
Cast Time: 2s
15% of 6200: 930
Damage reduction per second: 465d
Damage reduction per cast: 930d
Damage reduction per fight: 69750d
--- HOT PORTION---
Average: 1600
Ticks: 9
Length of HoT: 27s
15% of 1600: 240
15% of HoT over 27s: 2160
Damage reduction per second: 80d
Damage reduction per fight: 24000d

Lifebloom

--- HOT PORTION (x3 stack) ---
Average: 350
Ticks: 9
Length of HoT: 9s
15% of 350: 52.5
15% of HoT over 9s: 472.5
Damage reduction per second: 52.5d
Damage reduction per fight: 15750d
--- BURST PORTION (x3 stack) ---
Initial Heal: 3100
Cast Time: 9s (9s for HoT expiration)
15% of 3100: 465
Damage reduction per second: 51.6d
Damage reduction per cast: 465d
Damage reduction per fight: 1720d

Nourish

Initial Heal: 4200
Cast Time: 1.8s
15% of 4200: 630d
Damage reduction per second: 350d
Damage reduction per cast: 630d
Damage reduction per fight: 58333d

Healing Touch

---- THIS IS USED WITH NS! (3Min CD) ---
Initial Heal: 9700
Cast Time: Instant
15% of 9700: 1455
Damage reduction per second: 1455d
Damage reduction per cast: 1455d
Damage reduction per fight: 2910d

Swiftmend

--- REJUVENATION ---
Initial Heal: 9000
Cast Time: Instant
15% of 10800: 1350
Damage reduction per second: 1350d
Damage reduction per cast: 1350d
Damage reduction per fight: 27000d
--- REGROWTH ---
Initial Heal: 10800
Cast Time: Instant
15% of 10800: 1620
Damage reduction per second: 1620d
Damage reduction per cast: 1620d
Damage reduction per fight: 32400d

Here is a visual breakdown of my info minus Nourish.

Rows are per second
Assumes you hit proper spell at exactly right time
Assumes a 4min 58sec fight for the spreadsheet

C = Spell to Cast
WG = Wild Growth
HT = Healing Touch + Nature's Swiftness
LB = Lifebloom
RG = Regrowth
RJ = Rejuvenation
SM = Swiftmend
D- = Damage Reduction if shield procced 100% - See end of chart for totals.

If a HoT was not refreshed due to GCD Issues, then there is a leading blank space before first tick for the initial second; also if GCD was down then next cast was used in next available GCD.
Order of spell priority after initial HoT application >> LB > RG > RJ > WG > SM > HT

http://switchstix.net/Book1.html