Resto PvE Compendium and General Discussion - Page 3

TheRestorationDruid · 01/21/10, 12:49 AM

Originally Posted by Lightflower

I have found with a 12 second glyphed Rejuv that I can get very close to the 5x1 "model" healing. For the fights in ICC so far though, 5x1 isn't necessary and I am finding that the more reactive nature of RR glyph is excellent for helping out on targeted burst type abilities. That said, I definitely agree that it noticeably lowers my ability to counter mass AoE effects like Deathwhisper's frost bolt blasts.

It just irks me that the result on RR might be "ymmv". Because of that, I lean towards having 2x Trees responsible for 2 groups each with the last group containing mostly tanks. I like to think that my strategy will come to the fore once raid damage meets or exceeds the HPS provided by a non-glyphed rejuvenation.

I have found this glyph to be greatly useful in my 10 man raids, simply because there arn't that many people to heal and I can blanket the entire raid with Rejuvenation even with the reduced duration, thus more heals on entire raid. However when healing in 25 man I saw a drastic reduction in my heals with this. Basically in healing intense fights Resto druids really want to blanket the rejuvenation as well as keep WG up. (I suppose it varies on personal playing type but this is what I have found to be most successful.) So in my 25 man raids I couldn't keep Rejuv on as many people at once and was not healing to my full extent.

Final Decision:
I made two separate healing specs, one for 10 man raids where I did use this glyph and am greatly pleased with it, and one for 25 man raids where I replace this glyph with Glyph of Rejuvenation. there are a few other differences but really the main difference is this glyph and I have had great success

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Arria
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Nordrassil

Visit my website:
www.TheRestoraionDruid.com

• Hamlet · 01/21/10, 1:44 AM

Blood-Queen Lana'thel is a great place to understand the pros and cons of Rapid Rejuv. Ultimately, I think I supports what I've been saying the whole time that it's surprisingly hard to craft a situation where RR is truly helps your raid healing.

The important thing is that it has a heavy raid damage aura (4500/tick) which ticks every 2 seconds. 2 ticks is exactly the tick rate of a Rapid Rejuvation for a haste-capped Druid (50% total haste).

In 10-man, RR is great. It's a 12s HoT, meaning that the timing is rather perfect for straight 5x1 spam. (Bloodlust makes things a bit awkward, though). Ok, so there, we use it, great.

But what about in 25? People will definitely bring 2 Trees. And now you can't cover 25 people if both use RR. You can't even cover 23 non-tanks if you plan to use any other spells. Two Trees in our first raid today (we run two 25-mans) wound up just having one person use the glyph so they could split up 2 groups and 3 groups. On balance, I'd guess that 2 using RR is probably better--but it's not much better. I could easily see changing my mind on this after doing the 25-man fight myself. One of the most dangerous parts of the fight is the fear/movement when she takes off--and as many longer-durations HoT's as possible might be handy for that.

The point to all this is that even when the situation is absolutely perfectly tailored to a 2s HoT--it's very hard to voluntarily cut down on the number of HoT's you can maintain at once, when the whole raid is taking damage. So what if you have two Trees without the Glyph? Overlapping HoT's are still perfectly good. Not as bad as the holes you have if both use the Glyph, at any rate.

RR will shine when there are simply too few targets to heal to make use of spread HoT's (Saurfang). I think these situations where the majority of a 25-man raid are just not taking any damage are rare. And at other times, the Glyph generally has ups and downs, but never makes a convincing case that it's a strong overall winner.

♦ Carebare · 01/21/10, 2:04 AM

Yep, RR was terrible for Queen (for us). We both dumped it and it's basically the first fight where I pretty much textbooked 5x1. We talk about 5x1 a lot, but in practice I don't think people really actually do it as much as they think. The only times I broke off was to innervate myself and to mend if it was necessary. Even then I maintained WG on CD. Depending how many healers you run (we ran 6), I felt that WG to the melee on CD for Revitalize was very important from a damage standpoint. The fight is extremely fun, I am sure you will all enjoy it.

Fallenangel · 01/21/10, 3:56 AM

Well, did only a few pulls on 25 which went sorta OK but not a kill. I don't see the downside of RR on the ground phase (Carebear, if you don't mind elaborating on why you found it counterproductive). Thing is, not all raid heals are created equal and not all raid groups take the same amount of damage. For the 4.5K/2s aura I'll take 4 group coverage with RR + WG over the overlapping hots of 2 non-RR druids. I can see how going 1 with and 1 without would work out since though since it means the melee can get the weaker rejuvs which tends to suffice for them.
To be fair on normal the aura itself isn't really the issue, it's only when you pair it with the added damage of the air phase that makes it meaningful. Was wondering, has anyone tried a PvP trinket to break the fears?

Rijndael · 01/21/10, 4:30 AM

Originally Posted by Arawethion

And at other times, the Glyph generally has ups and downs, but never makes a convincing case that it's a strong overall winner.

I am a big fan of the RR glyph. I slot it in almost every fight (except heroic Anub 25). On average, RR should never lose you HPS in a 25 man raid unless it's a weird fight which punishes faster hots in some way, or you outgear the fight and the extra HPS is going into overhealing.

What you lose is having hots on more people, which I guess can translate into a loss of raid stability (you may not be able to do a clutch swiftmend on someone, or a tick may not save someone). What you gain is more HPS on telegraphed targets. There are a lot of telegraphed targets in raids: tanks, any fight in the Plague wing of IC will have them on raid, etc. You also gain more HPS on targets you do rejuvs on.

I would say the more you know about the targeted damage pattern in advance, the more valuable the RR glyph becomes. If the damage is an aura, you gain nothing, if the damage is unpredictable, RR forces you to commit and the price of a wrong guess is higher (higher variance is bad for stability). As the damage becomes more targeted and/or predictable, RR glyph should win out over unglyphed.

Anaram · 01/21/10, 7:02 AM

I suppose it really depends on how you set up healing. For us it was definitely easier to have two druids going normal rejuvenation on 15 ranged guys (technically only 14 ranged plus one melee) while tossing WG on melee. It's not that rejuvenation wouldn't work on melee also, it's that chain heals, holy light glyphs etc. don't really work on ranged.

I tried 10-man without RR (figuring I'd get a bit more time for other spell casts), the results weren't pretty.

♦ Carebare · 01/21/10, 9:37 AM

Originally Posted by Fallenangel

(Carebear, if you don't mind elaborating on why you found it counterproductive). Thing is, not all raid heals are created equal and not all raid groups take the same amount of damage. For the 4.5K/2s aura I'll take 4 group coverage with RR + WG over the overlapping hots of 2 non-RR druids. I can see how going 1 with and 1 without would work out since though since it means the melee can get the weaker rejuvs which tends to suffice for them.
To be fair on normal the aura itself isn't really the issue, it's only when you pair it with the added damage of the air phase that makes it meaningful. Was wondering, has anyone tried a PvP trinket to break the fears?

Sure.

I think some of it does come down to style but this was how I determined I was displeased with the glyph. (I mentioned to Melador on druid chat "Hey I don't like RR on this" before I could elaborate he had concurred so I didn't get into then.)

1) 4.5k aura every 2 seconds is less than you think it is. I found that splitting with RR those people needed essentially no more healing. This isn't a bad thing, but I think post-Anuburak I have found a healthier view point of keeping people out of danger, but not at full HP. At no point did I find that keeping people on Queen at say 85% was detrimental compared to keeping them at 100%.
2) You cannot really run a perfectly tight 5x1 with RR. You can run a 10x1 obviously, but 5x1 starts putting you behind on globals. (At least it did for me and I sit with a ping around 40-200ms depending on server lag.) Factor in that my mana consumption felt worse for putting out heals on less people (not less HPS to be fair, just less coverage). I definitely needed my own innervate x2 (each cast putting me further behind on maintaining a 5x1 then if someone needed a swiftmend or NS for whatever reason I am even further behind and it's possible there is no RJ on the person I need to swiftmend -- now even further behind or that person might die), a tide, and a mana pot. I could make gear/meta exchanges, but again my question was why? Then I'm lowering my spellpower and still covering less people all in this effort to keep them completely topped.
3) Running 2x normal rejuv added a lot of flexibility. What if I got the Jaraxxus style fire and I had to run out and this put me OOR on any of the 10 people I was maintaining with RR and they were due for it to be refreshed at the time I was OOR? Now I am still yet further behind.
4) Depending on your strat there are various ways to do the fight.
- 5 healers and no one suiciding.
- 6 healers and no one suiciding.
- 5-6 healers with suicides.
We used 6 healers, no suicides. Which means when we killed her in 5:13 (which could have been a tad cleaner execution wise, no doubt) we were strapped. People were starting to get MC'd. So I felt with juggling our healing role, what can I do to help DPS? I can maintain Revitalize on the people who really do see a DPS gain. (Ferals, followed by DKs, followed by Rogues). This pushes me even more to want to use WG on cooldown. For the reasons above with RR I found it nearly impossible to keep a strict 5x1 with other factors -- so if I abandoned the RR application that person is hotless, but if I do it and sacrifice using the WG then we're missing a small (but not entirely negligible) DPS increase to maintain someone at 100% HP and the question remains -- why?
5) The fight lends itself toward a good druid with good ping landing swiftmends in times of need. I wanted the ability to do that without falling behind.
6) Finally, again this goes to your strat. We used 6 healers. Why use 2 people to maintain 20 people at 100% HP thereby theoretically leaving 5 people for the remaining 4 healers? Why keep 20 people nearly full when we can keep 25 absolutely safe (ready for swiftmends if needed, etc) with room to spare on globals/room for other healers to heal as well?

Again, this depends on style, your raid group, your strat. I will not say RR is universally awful for the fight, that would be ridiculous. I just didn't feel like it brought anything significant to the table other than a headache if the rotation fell behind/minor mana issues even when you didn't. I started at Group 1 with normal RJ, Melador at Group 5. For the most part I could RJ group 1/WG centered on our feral, RJ group 2/WG centered on our feral, 3 or so people in group 3 + any 2 people who felt lower than they should be/WG again. I had room to spare if I needed (running out for flames, during the airphase having a ton of RJs up with the ability to mend or Nourish patch with at least one HoT already in place. Coming out of the air phase all of the people I was watching were definitely hotted and unaffected by the fact that I might have gone outside my assignment for a NS/Mend on someone who took a large hit (feared through fire, or anything of that nature).

I hope this was the type of explanation you were looking for. We didn't PVP trinket. We had 3 tremors, the other people dealt without having it.

Fallenangel · 01/21/10, 10:27 AM

This is quite the insight, thank you. I'm not sure the Anub analogy holds, seeing as damage in Anub depends on current HP, and in addition I see a large incentive to keep the raid at 100% or close to it - the air phase.
I'm guessing you falling behind on 5x1 is a result of being over the haste cap. This isn't much of a concern if that's the case, while healing is a bit uneven it's not significantly so. If you're casting non-stop then RR won't increase your mana usage, and I somewhat doubt you were pausing on purpose on this fight

I guess your basic assumption is that RR increases the overhealing you do. You can't ignore the fact that the incoming damage a player takes is higher than unglyphed rejuv's output (or a glyped one, for that matter). Holes can be covered by other healers, no doubt, but this is more of a ffa raid heal assignment, which brings me to...
The idea of putting 2 non-RRed druids on the 15 or so ranged sounds interesting although the excess healing is quite high. I find it appealing for air-phase handling mostly, since the melee classes tend to be more resilient to incoming damage (DPS warriors aside).

Erdluf · 01/21/10, 11:22 AM

I'd expect RR to be about perfect (very little underheal or overheal) for an unbitten person's aura. Say 1800 to 2000 DPS from the aura (after partial resists), and 1500-1800 HPS from Rejuv (before 4t9 procs).

Once a DPS has been bitten, I'd expect their self heals (1500 HPS?) to take care of most of the aura. I'd think you could happily cover them with Regrowth. That gives you even more SM and Nourish+1 opportunities, and you still have RR available as a weaker oh-crap button.

With unglyphed Rejuv and two trees, some people will have two Rejuvs (= overhealing for Aura), and the ones with only one Rejuv will be losing health at a good pace.

Using Regrowth instead of Rejuv on DPS vampires means they don't get Revitalize, but with the amount of movement in the fight, I wouldn't expect any ranged DPS to have mana issues. You'd still use Rj on healers, and WG would more than cover melee's aura damage.

I have not done the fight. It is certainly possible I'm not understanding some mechanic properly.

♦ Carebare · 01/21/10, 11:32 AM

Right we didn't ignore the melee again for Revitalize reasons, so we rolled on 25 rather than 15. Especially if you get a flame creep in the melee that's going to run out and others might take some damage the extra protection was not bad. I certainly wasn't pausing, but could feel a mana difference. I could just be psychotic, that's entirely possible.

Anub was an extreme example and not necessarily appropriate, the fact remains that people need to be safe, but not healed to full consistently (or overhealed as you pointed out). It really does come down to strat/style. Normal RJ simply provides more control on more people and being that I'm a control freak it's just more appealing to me. We didn't find excess healing to be high honestly (Queen kill parse). I mean when you figure I can easily do 60%+ in overheal on RJ in a given fight, 40% seems fine - it is on par with my Twins HPS and overheal and we are mostly in agreement that Twins does not benefit from RR. Twins could theoretically have more of a someone gets gibbed factor compared to Queen as well (in my opinion).

Taringe · 01/21/10, 11:47 AM

I've had similar experiences with RR as carebare, except from a primarily 10-man perspective. There is a lot more crossover, and assignments are generally far less defined, in healing 10s than 25s from my experience. Attempting to 5x1 locks up all of your GCDs and doesn't allow for movement, Swiftmends or spot healing without letting the cycle drop. It felt a lot more natural having the extra duration on the Rejuvs without RR, which gave the extra freedom to drop a heal on a tank on a bad avoidance run or someone who just got biten and not worry about letting Rejuvs fall.

My overall impression of RR has gone from "Manditory" when it released to "Just like the rest" currently. As an aside, I think that it is fantastic that we aren't in a "You're a Resto Druid, use glyphs A, B and C." situation. We're able to pick and choose from A, B, C, D, E and F. And that choice depends on your own personal style and your overall group makeup.

Arentios · 01/21/10, 11:54 AM

Originally Posted by Carebare

Twins could theoretically have more of a someone gets gibbed factor compared to Queen as well (in my opinion).

This seems like a key point on the fight which may not be apparent when reading strats versus doing the fight. There really isn't much spike damage on Blood Queen despite the number of abilities she possesses. Both Pact of the Darkfallen and Swarming Shadows give you a 1.5-3s warning of who they're being targeted on before they start doing damage, with both being on fairly predictable timers, and they do not both come out at the same time (or at least on the same person), that we ever saw, meaning that nobody is going to take more than aura + 10k damage at any given time. There are very few ways for many sources of damage to all converge on one person to gib them unless serious mistakes are made.

• Hamlet · 01/21/10, 12:00 PM

Well, nobody takes dangerous damage at Twins unless they plow orbs in the first place. Those same people will stand in the purple fire or forget to move for Pact at Queen. I'd been thinking of Queen as more dangerous to random raid members overall (but that might only be because it's new).

♦ Carebare · 01/21/10, 12:38 PM

I really think it is the new vs. old factor comparison wise. Twins still has that last element of possible danger when say Light Vortex is coming and people are gunning for a color change and RNG wrecks them with a ton of light orbs floating all around the portal. The largest hurdle for us on Queen was the hey now everyone is unfeared, no really please spread out. The ground phase did not pose a serious threat to anyone at any point. Again, we 6 healed and I'm sure that had something to do with it. We'll probably drop to 5 healers next time I'd imagine, we just try to keep the same people for the full clear to avoid locking people unnecessarily. On normal mode with badges being so needed the content is not difficult enough to warrant rotating people in/out and slicing their badge income.

Feya · 01/21/10, 11:37 PM

Mostly directed at Hamlet... I know theres a discussion ongoing as to the huge impact Revitalize has on raids. Do you know of any math, or have any that could help analyze the quantity of revitalize procs on a druid using Rapid Rejuv versus without?

We were having a debate as to the theoretical maxing of revitalize procs on the Queen fight. Which would maximize the procs in a 25man raid? Two druids with Rapid Rejuv or Two druids without? Would a split of one with, one without be better? Not even quite sure how to phrase the question better, but basically i'm asking if anyones determined the uptime of Revitalize (or quantity of procs whatever) with the two Rejuv approachs?