The amount of incoming damage you are dealing with in YOUR guild isn't the same as it would be for a guild trying the hard-mode version of that fight. That Priest throwing POH/COH after damage can't possibly heal the entire raid up on 3 elder Freya, after a trantrum on XT or toward the end of hard-mode Vezax. The purpose of HOTing people ahead of time is to be ahead, freeing up your GCD when you really need it most. Think of your hots as a "set it and forget it for X seconds" kind of deal. Alot depends on your raid too. I mean, if you raid with TWO holy Priests and both of them are raid healing, of course Rejuv will be less effective. But I'm telling you right now, some of the harder hard modes can't be raid healed by COH/POH (from 1 Priest) by itself. You absolutely need to get ahead with HOTs and have a strategy for blanketing the raid.
This is exactly right - in my opinion.
If I might bring some anecdotal evidence to the discussion - we're working on Freya+3. We had an attempt tonight where I died very early on (I was the only resto druid, and we had 3 holy priests). Nobody died during that, or the next wave of adds. Things were looking good... until you looked at the mana bars of the priests. Without my blanket of hots ticking on the majority of the raid, they were having to use their group heals inefficiently to keep people topped off. They were seriously low on mana (having used their fiends etc I believe) and commented on how much more damage people seemed to be taking.
I think thats the true power of blanket hots - they may not save lives on their own, but they reduce the size of bursts, make small/period damage pretty much ignorable, do the bulk of the healing, and generally make all the other healers' lives easier.
What if PoH didn't land on them so fast? We usually have 2 priests in 25 man raids and one of them is on tanks duty. It's not very likely for a single priest to cover 15-20 people with PoH regularly and timely. Blanket HoT'ing helps a lot in such situation.
In my opinion better to waste some of rejuvs than let someone die before they got PoH or attention from direct healer.
Yeah, even if PoH did land, it's only going to hit for 6k (crit for 9k), and CoH will hit for 3k (crit for 4.5k). An extra tick or two of rejuv will be quite helpful.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing to have a rejuv ticking at all. But I still question the value of spending all your time hot'ing the raid. The scenario that most often comes into play for me, is a group will get rejuv's on them. Shortly thereafter, they receive a certain amount of damage. The rejuv's start to tick in succession, but then a priest's PoH lands on them. The question is, did those rejuvs save the lives of that group? To me, it's just inefficient. I'm as much a believer of high HPS as targeted high HPS.
Edit- Vazu that's much more congruent with my line of thought. Pre-hotting predictable damage on downtime is essential, I agree. But I still disagree that priests make better tank healers. As far as cooldowns go, GS might be a tank saver, but that can be applied regardless of heal assignment.
As far as the council thing goes, it just doesn't seem like it's a big deal for a group to go down to 50% because they will receive a PoH that will take them to full anyways. What's the difference if they receive the PoH at 50% or 60%? Just wasted mana on the priests and gcd's spent for the druid. That's not to say that hot'ing the melee isn't an effective strategy either. I guess the important thing to keep in mind, like Vazu said, is to not only have a strategy, but do it strategically. I still think it's also important to do it in moderation, because I maintain that druids make excellent tank healers.
In theory it seems like a waste. But in practice, priests cannot spam PoH on every group 24/7. There is so much damage incoming on some of the fights, that getting as much hps as possible is not a bad way to go. Blanketing the raid so that each raid member gets ~10% of his hp back every 3 seconds (or more if you got multiple druids or count WG as well), I don't find that laughable at all. It's actually a lifesaver on so many fights, especially as you create options for Swiftmend as well (I find myself using it almost every time it's off cooldown). It's a very valid strategy, but I agree that just spamming RJ+WG and then ignore everything else is bad.
•Mana Regeneration: All items that provide "X mana per five seconds" have had the amount of mana they regenerate increased by approximately 25%.
•Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target's maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment (Vampiric Touch, Judgements of the Wise, Hunting Party, Enduring Winter Frostbolts and Soul Leech
•Innervate: Duration reduced to 10 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 3 minutes. This means each use of Innervate will give half as much mana as before, but it will be available twice as often.
•Lifebloom: The final heal that occurs when this spell blooms has been reduced by 20% on the base and on the spell power coefficient
*Empowered Touch: Now also increases the amount of bonus healing effects for Nourish by 10/20%
Interesting things of note.
MP5 is getting a 25% buff in terms of item budget
Replenishment is getting a 20% nerf. This will slightly devalue Int as a regen stat, however since Replenishment only accounts for approx 1/3 of Ints value, this is NOT a 20% nerf to Int.
Innervating another class will not seem like as much of a chore now. In practice this further aids to our utility to the raid, nothing to complain about here.
The lifebloom change should only have a marginal impact on most resto druids in a PvE situation.
Empowered Touch: I'm unsure of what the wording means. Will nourish receive an additions 20% buff from Spell Power, T7, and Glyph bonuses? Testing on the PTR will likely have to be performed before we get an actual word on this. This could help to make Nourish more useful, but as it stands, few druids take this talent.
I'm curious myself on how Empowered Touch affecting nourish will change things.
Add to that: this comment by GC may point to a 2 minute Nature's Swiftness for Shaman. If it that goes through, I'd have to expect it will for Druids.
And I'll be honest that if this buff to mp5 makes it better than spirit for Druids (and priests) I'll be sad.
GC explicitly said that they wouldn't be lowering the druid NS cooldown, at least in the first iteration of the PTR.
With the itemization designs of Ulduar at least we don't have much choice of spirit versus MP5 outside of our jewelry/filling blue sockets, so the impact on our choices would not be that huge.
There's a definite buff for Nourish there, which boosts our tank/spot healing a bit and might hammer down those last few talent points which tend to float around aimlessly. Surprisingly no nerfs to rejuv (or the supporting cast of items) and the regen changes just don't feel that significant (around 3000-4000 mana less from replenishment at first glance on longer fights). It feels off that they would buff our spot/tank healing while not lowering raid healing. The lifebloom change is situational in PvE and seems mainly aimed at PvP.
The patch notes don't have that much for resto druids all said, but I imagine these patch notes aren't complete (given that an entire class is missing [warriors] and some classes are very very sparse), and we didn't have the problems that Shamans/Paladins had.
GC explicitly said that they wouldn't be lowering the druid NS cooldown, at least in the first iteration of the PTR.
With the itemization designs of Ulduar at least we don't have much choice of spirit versus MP5 outside of our jewelry/filling blue sockets, so the impact on our choices would not be that huge.
I expect that I'll be staying with spirit as long as it also boosts spellpower. I guess I meant more that if druids and priests don't even get an extreme benefit from spirit, than Blizzard failed badly in their goal "to make spirit desirable." So far warlocks probably get the most out of it.
And thanks for the clarification on Nature's Swiftness. I only have started looking at information since the PTR notes were posted, and shaman NS weren't listed there either.
Should be roughly a 10% boost to the healing done by Nourish if you take Empowered Touch but I honestly don't see why it needs more buffs in this way rather than a generic change of the ability.
The only thing really holding it back on raid healing is the requirement of a HoT for the additional 20% and quite honestly you could solve that via a glyph which made the spell always do that bonus 20% healing regardless of a HoT being there or not. I would say that having a reliance on glyphs for it being good for either tank or raid healing and without either being somewhat poor is a bad design though and ideally it would get the current glyph bonus made into a talent instead.
"Empowered Touch: Now also increases the amount of bonus healing effects for Nourish by 10/20%."
This change, as Arentios mentioned, will help to reduce the number of floater points that we have left over after taking all of the really good talents in the Resto tree. After picking up 2/2 Empowered Touch we will have one extra points, which I personally will be putting in Revitalize after the recent discussion about the raid benefits that it brings. The problem I have with this though is that to bring the most benefit to the raid that we can, we ideally want 3/3 Revitalize, but we don't have enough points to get that without stealing from other talents. The easiest place to take out that point from is to just do 4/5 GotEM, unless I'm missing some other talent.
Using the numbers found earlier in this thread for the haste soft cap: Resto (PvE) Healing Discussion which I believe are still current/correct, this would mean that for a normal 25 man raid (Wrath of Air and Moonkin/Ret Auras) we need to have 541 haste rating to stay at the soft cap. This should not only make us start GCD clipping Nourish casts while under the effects of Nature's Grace (Resto (PvE) Healing Discussion) but it also pushes us even more heavily towards a very haste heavy itemization strategy. While I like this change for the buffs to Nourish that it gives (I use Nourish quite a bit) and 541 haste rating is definitely obtainable in Ulduar gear I'm worried that it's pigeonholing us even more into using haste instead of crit on every piece of gear.
Empowered Touch as it is now says "Your Healing Touch spell gains an additional 40% of your bonus healing effects," and the way the talent currently works is that the 40% is added onto the base healing coefficient of the spell. In other words, the coefficient for HT goes from 161.1% to 201.1%; from there, the healing is multiplied by talents and other effects.
Presumably, in 3.2, the talent will read as "Your Healing Touch spell gains an additional 40% and your Nourish gains and additional 20% of your bonus healing effects," which would increase Nourish's coefficient from 67.305% to 87.305%.
Equations I'm using:
((((3000 SP * coefficient) + (Min Base Heal + Max Base Heal)/2)) * (1 + (crit% * (Normal Crit bonus + Living Seed))) * Gift of Nature * Master Shapeshifter * ToL Aura * 20% HoT bonus * 18% HoT bonus from Glyph * 15% HoT bonus from 4pc T7) / Cast Time = Average HPS
(((3000 SP * coefficient) + (Min Base Heal + Max Base Heal)/2)) * Gift of Nature * Master Shapeshifter * ToL Aura * 20% HoT bonus * 18% 3 HoT bonus from Glyph * 15% 3 HoT bonus from 4pc T7 = Average Non-Crit Heal
(((3000 SP * coefficient) + (Min Base Heal + Max Base Heal)/2)) * (1 + (Normal Crit bonus + Living Seed)) * Gift of Nature * Master Shapeshifter * ToL Aura * 20% HoT bonus * 18% HoT bonus from Glyph * 15% HoT bonus from 4pc T7 = Average Crit Heal
The 20% increase to the coefficient is a 14.8% increase overall; Nourish in 3.2 will put out impressive healing on a tank, and will increase Nourish's effectiveness on non-HoTed targets as well.
I was hoping for more good changes, but at least there weren't any serious nerfs. I'm unsure about the Innervate change, however; on short fights it could be a 50% nerf, and on long fights it could be a 150% buff, but I do like the extra flexibility.
The nourish change is excellent, it now gives us 1 direct healing spell that is good both on the tank and on the raid (perhaps too good overall with the crit talent and living seed). Before, glyphed healing touch was better on the raid than nourish in every way, while nourish was better on the tank in every way. It felt silly to glyph 2 direct healing spells on a hot healer.
Does the Warbringer's aura of celerity stack with Nature's Grace? The WoWHead comment says no, but that was before the aura change.
For those of you who didn't know, by mind controlling a Warbringer it gives 20% raid wide haste (in addition to doing roughly 6K DPS). This alters the values of RG to become competitive with RJ while also having the added benefit of half the heal being front loaded. Thorim is all about unpredictable burst damage on the raid, as a raid healer its your top priority to get those folks topped off ASAP. I can't help but feel blanketing RJ is not going to make the difference between those infamous double/triple nuke deaths, while a front loaded hot like RG gets the job done. It actually doesn't come out that far behind depending on if the aura stacks...
In my gear fulling raid buffed:
16,842 = RJ HPC
16,391 = RG /w aura and NG HPC
14,268 = RG /w aura or NG HPC
12,319 = RG
Here's the log of our kill tonight. Unfortunately, I had my heal blinders on and didn't even think to look at the cast time of my RG. My numbers are a bit inflated since I was solo healing the tunnel, but I can't help but feel that this heal strategy worked out. The issue I ran into was that it was an absolute mana hog and I had to steal an innervate from one of our ferals. Overall though, it was much more fun than the snorefest healing has become on most hard fights with RJ spam, however I am becoming rather good at seeing through my tears of boredom to swiftmend when needed .
Does anyone have some experience in resto druid performances at vezax hard mode, as well as how many / what kind of healers should be in the raid?
My guild has only done the hard mode on 10-man, and we've had an off-spec Enhancement Shaman and a Disc Priest. I normally melee the boss for clearcasts, and once Animous spawns, I heal ~90% of my mana... By the time Animos is dead, in essence, General Vezax should be about <10% of health, so the rest of my mana isn't so bad. The off-spec Shaman uses Shamanistic Rage, and another spell I can't quite remember, but basically casts free heals everywhere.
I have well over 520 haste and I"m hardly BIS ulduar. It's easy to drop a point in GOTEM before the next patch. If you need the haste, consider dropping NG.
I laughed when I saw lifebloom nerfed again. I guess the 1300 HPS was too OP! One thing that will surprise me is how they expect t9 to be an upgrade if they don't make the instant rejuv baseline. Tier upgrades were very modest statwise as it was, so unless they have a new clever mechanic I don't want to give up 7-12% extra frontloaded healing.
Equations I'm using:
((((3000 SP * coefficient) + (Min Base Heal + Max Base Heal)/2)) * (1 + (crit% * (Normal Crit bonus + Living Seed))) * Gift of Nature * Master Shapeshifter * ToL Aura * 20% HoT bonus * 18% HoT bonus from Glyph * 15% HoT bonus from 4pc T7) / Cast Time = Average HPS
(((3000 SP * coefficient) + (Min Base Heal + Max Base Heal)/2)) * Gift of Nature * Master Shapeshifter * ToL Aura * 20% HoT bonus * 18% 3 HoT bonus from Glyph * 15% 3 HoT bonus from 4pc T7 = Average Non-Crit Heal
(((3000 SP * coefficient) + (Min Base Heal + Max Base Heal)/2)) * (1 + (Normal Crit bonus + Living Seed)) * Gift of Nature * Master Shapeshifter * ToL Aura * 20% HoT bonus * 18% HoT bonus from Glyph * 15% HoT bonus from 4pc T7 = Average Crit Heal
The 20% increase to the coefficient is a 14.8% increase overall; Nourish in 3.2 will put out impressive healing on a tank, and will increase Nourish's effectiveness on non-HoTed targets as well.
I reran your numbers for those of us who have ditched 4pc T7 in favor of T8:
"Empowered Touch: Now also increases the amount of bonus healing effects for Nourish by 10/20%."
This change, as Arentios mentioned, will help to reduce the number of floater points that we have left over after taking all of the really good talents in the Resto tree. After picking up 2/2 Empowered Touch we will have one extra points, which I personally will be putting in Revitalize after the recent discussion about the raid benefits that it brings. The problem I have with this though is that to bring the most benefit to the raid that we can, we ideally want 3/3 Revitalize, but we don't have enough points to get that without stealing from other talents. The easiest place to take out that point from is to just do 4/5 GotEM, unless I'm missing some other talent.
Using the numbers found earlier in this thread for the haste soft cap: Resto (PvE) Healing Discussion which I believe are still current/correct, this would mean that for a normal 25 man raid (Wrath of Air and Moonkin/Ret Auras) we need to have 541 haste rating to stay at the soft cap. This should not only make us start GCD clipping Nourish casts while under the effects of Nature's Grace (Resto (PvE) Healing Discussion) but it also pushes us even more heavily towards a very haste heavy itemization strategy. While I like this change for the buffs to Nourish that it gives (I use Nourish quite a bit) and 541 haste rating is definitely obtainable in Ulduar gear I'm worried that it's pigeonholing us even more into using haste instead of crit on every piece of gear.
Well, I am not sure that taking points from GoTEM or revitalize is a good idea. Isn't each point in GoTEM worth over 100 haste? Revitalize is just an outstanding talent now and with %20 nerf to replenishment is even more important. I suppose you could take a point out of NG. Is the new ET really something we need to have? I don't really see it changing the current situation. I of course would put my 1 floater point into it, but I don't see taking points from other places to buff something that is a small percentage of my healing. I suppose if you use Nourish alot then maybe it might be worth it.
I'm able to free up one junk point fairly easily (sitting in Tranquility for the sake of being someplace atm) and move it over to a revised Empowered Touch talent. I also wouldn't mind moving a point out of Subtlety but those points are stuck in upper tier talents as pre-req points to get to deeper tiers. I'm not likely to move a point out of deeper talents (Revitalize, GoteM, Living Seed) to get 2/2 in Empowered Touch. I'll likely be 1/2 based on what I see/know now -- subject to change on new information.
Well, for those who care about what these proposed changes will do to our gear, I've taken the liberty of of adjusting my latest loot rankings to reflect the 25% increased to mp5, and the minor nerf to int.
I've simply replaced 1 mp5 with 1.25 mp5 also
I've taken the .210 mp5 that 100% uptime on replenish gives us, multiplied that by .8 (to reflect 80% uptime) and then multiplied it again by .8 (to reflect the upcoming nerf. It ends up being a .0336 reduction in Int as a stat value.
Well, I am not sure that taking points from GoTEM or revitalize is a good idea. Isn't each point in GoTEM worth over 100 haste? Revitalize is just an outstanding talent now and with %20 nerf to replenishment is even more important. I suppose you could take a point out of NG. Is the new ET really something we need to have? I don't really see it changing the current situation. I of course would put my 1 floater point into it, but I don't see taking points from other places to buff something that is a small percentage of my healing. I suppose if you use Nourish alot then maybe it might be worth it.
Unless you're purposefully avoiding haste, and I have no idea why you would, you'll have no problem dropping a point in GOTEM by the time you finish Ulduar. As far as dropping Revitalize, I don't know any other talent that would justify it. You've already got full Living Seed, Nature's Grace (if that's your thing), just no Natural Perfection. Dropping Nature's Grace is most likely a decision one would make to pick up Improved Barkskin for a fight like Freya +3.
I'm personally excited about the nourish buff because like many have said I have the wandering point that ends up in tranquility(which i never use). It also appeals to me because I glyph and use nourish more often than regrowth for spot healing and what not(only use regrowth for the hot). I know alot of people disagree with this tactic (mostly druids that became dependent on regrowth in bc) but if you look at the amount of extra healing that can be done when glyphed with hots and now this bonus in IT I think it will be the undisputed direct affect heal for druids. At least i'm sure thats what blizz is striving for so that their fancy new spell doesn't get overlooked.
I was thinking of getting the second point for Empowered Touch from Nature's Swiftness actually. I know it sounds crazy, but out of all the other stuff I could drop, it sounds the least useful (for a raid healer).
I was thinking of getting the second point for Empowered Touch from Nature's Swiftness actually. I know it sounds crazy, but out of all the other stuff I could drop, it sounds the least useful (for a raid healer).
Curious. Why would you drop NS instead of say... a point in Nature's Grace? Losing 33% chance for a 20% hasted cast seems like a much more reasonable trade off than losing one of our best utility spells-- even for raid healing.
The nice thing about being a pessimistic, is that you're constantly proven right, or pleasantly surprised.
Curious. Why would you drop NS instead of say... a point in Nature's Grace? Losing 33% chance for a 20% hasted cast seems like a much more reasonable trade off than losing one of our best utility spells-- even for raid healing.
Nature's Swiftness isn't as good as it once was. If you use it on cooldown you will maybe use it 2-3 times on a long fight. But people save it for when it's needed which means the vast majority of the time it's used either never or once per fight. The problem is, in the vast majority of cases it's used on the tank, and it is almost never the case that tier 8 boosted swiftmend isn't up for that. Nature's Swiftness is a lot more useful for Shamans than for us (which is why they are getting the cooldown reduction in 3.2).
I mean you give up *something* but to me it's very little. Maybe that means I am not using NS as much as I should. (Of course I was also one of those crazy people who played with glyphed healing touch for a long while).
3/3 Nature's Grace allows you to spam Nourish at about 1 second cast times once you get the first crit. This is why it's a lot more useful than 2/3 Nature's Grace. I would *like* to give up a point in GotEM but as people earlier in the thread pointed out, I would need a bit more haste than I thought. Of course by the time 3.2 rolls around that much haste may be available.
Unless you're purposefully avoiding haste, and I have no idea why you would, you'll have no problem dropping a point in GOTEM by the time you finish Ulduar. As far as dropping Revitalize, I don't know any other talent that would justify it. You've already got full Living Seed, Nature's Grace (if that's your thing), just no Natural Perfection. Dropping Nature's Grace is most likely a decision one would make to pick up Improved Barkskin for a fight like Freya +3.
Well, I was under the impression that with 4/5 gotem you will need 541 haste to maintain your 1 second GCD on hots. At over 510 haste(please correct me if I am wrong) you start clipping Nourish anyway(with NG up). So the extra 4-5% from the second point might not actualy be worth that much. I am no expert, but it seems like hasting up to 510, keeping 5/5 gotem and then going after crit or something might be a better idea. But then again we are talking about something that is only a small percentage of our healing anyway.
Edit-I think this method also has the added benefit of helping to keep your GCD on hots at close to 1 second, if something decides to eat your moonkin, ret or shammy.
06/18/09, 2:41 PM
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