Has it been stated how much the increase for the WG cooldown was? Currently, you can have two WGs running at the same time. Bumping the CD up to 8 or even 9 seconds won't impact the spell that much, but will remove much of the blanketing going on.
Ignorance can be solved with a book. Stupidity requires a shotgun and a shovel.
The latest blue posts say that tank healing will primarily be done with Lifebloom, Nourish, and HT, so I'm assuming that Nourish will indeed become the 2 heal spell, and not Regrowth. Actually, that may not be completely accurate. Given the nature of Regrowth, it's very possible that Regrowth is a second 2 heal spell, specifically meant for raid healing.
This is just pure speculation now, but it may be that Rejuv, Regrowth, and WG become the 1,2 and 3 heals respectively of raid healing. The fact that WG is instant does go against the idea, but an increase to the mana cost would balance it out.
It's not been explicitly stated, but I suspect something between 15 seconds and 30 seconds for Wild Growth is an acceptable Cooldown given our innately incredible multi-targeted healing potential, but as I've said before I'm not really big on the healing scene. Call it a gut feeling, if you would.
The thing about Regrowth that seems to fit the 2-heal spot so well for me is that it is almost perfect for it. With a base cast time of 2 seconds, it's not super slow, but it's not the fastest spell either. It is easy to make it mana efficient. You use it when someone is taking damage, but is not life threatening (needing a quick heal) or particularly large (needing a bigger heal). If someone requires more healing on top of Regrowth, you can either use Rejuv or Lifebloom and depending on the situation blow Swiftmend as well (or even Nourish, if the synergy remains there to allow it). It just makes sense and is the balance between all of our spells. But what do you do with Rejuv then? If anything, I think that Regrowth and Rejuv together will make up a quasi-"3-heal" when used together. Separately though, I expect both to act similar to 2-heal, which is why I'm curious as to how it will end up working.
Like I said before, Druids just do not fit into the 1-heal, 2-heal, 3-heal setup very well if they are intended to be a HoT-based class. At least, not nearly as easily as Paladins and Priests do.
I'm not sure how increasing the CD on WG to 15s will make it less of a use-on-cd ability. A group hot that won't save lives but serve as an hp cushion will not be saved because it's not the same as SM - an emergency ability. You don't use SM on CD because it doesn't make sense doing so - if the tank is on 90% you can just cast a normal heal. WG on the other hand is just a super rejuv and is you're not really forfeiting anything by using it.
I would imagine that any cooldown-limited healing spell will not fit into the 1,2,3 heal format, simply because they have an added 'resource' limitation besides mana and caster time (the CD of the spell itself). Lengthening the CD of spells tend to make it more acceptable to wait for the ideal moment to use it, which seems to be what Blizzard wants (e.g. current 6s WG versus Heroism, for an extreme example).
The purpose of distinguishing the 1-, 2-, 3- heal is to establish where the heal is in the mana/(caster) time efficiency hierarchy. Assuming the spells do not have a CD and are thus spammable to an arbitrary degree, this trade-off is virtually the only distinguishing factor between the heals. The other primary attribute is cast time (which is NOT the same as time-efficiency), but barring extraordinary cast times or odd combat mechanics, cast time does not impact healing either in terms of throughput or total healing done.
In particular, in order for the 'spammable' heals to be interesting, the following relationships have to hold:
1) 1-heal HpS > 2-heal HpS > 3-heal HpS > ...
and
2) 1-heal HpM < 2-heal HpM < 3-heal HpM < ...
and
3) the graph of HpS/HpM is concave down
where we define the 1-heal as the most time efficient heal, 2-heal as the most time efficient heal except 1-heal, etc. If these relationships do not hold (note the first is by definition), then there are heals which are strictly inferior to a combination of other heals. Analyzing the requirements for direct heals is relatively straightforward. Based on what Blizzard has said about tank healing as a druid, it sounds like Nourish will be the 3-heal equivalent (high HpM, low HpS) while Healing Touch will be the 2-heal or the 1-heal.
The problem with HoTs (in this context; neglecting e.g. haste scaling) is that they exhibit a mixture of behavior based on the situation. In a situation with sufficient number of targets, HoTs effectively fit into the 1-2-3 format as they are essentially arbitrarily spammable. If there are not enough targets, HoTs are essentially CD limited. In the first situation, HoTs need to follow the same scaling as no-CD direct heals or they completely replace direct heals (which based on what Blizzard has said may not be desirable). In the second situation, HoTs have to be better than direct heals or there's no point in using them.
There are a couple of possibilities here, assuming Blizzard's objectives are being interpreted correctly and are met. The first is for HoTs to fit into the 1-2-3 format. In order to follow 'not spamming the raid' limitation, it requires that there be a direct heal which is higher HpM and a direct heal with higher HpS, limiting it to the 2-heal position (or something between the 1-heal and the lowest HpS heal). This would imply that the HoT is something you would mix with either the 1-heal or the 3-heal (though not typically both) depending on the specific amount of incoming damage and the number of targets that require healing.
The second possibility is for HoTs to be target capped, so that they always operate as a CD-limited spell. For example, if Lifebloom only could be applied to a single target at a time, then it doesn't have to fit into the 1-2-3 paradigm for it to be interesting (since it is not spammable).
Some combination of the first and second are possible, too, given the number of HoTs druids have. I would imagine that Regrowth (if it exists in a form similar to now) will have to fit into the 1-2-3 paradigm (it would be odd if the HoT component of a direct heal were target limited). Lifebloom almost makes more sense to be target limited given the stacking nature, while Rejuv could make sense either way.
Personally what makes the most sense to me, assuming spells work roughly as they do now:
1-heal: Healing Touch
2-heal: Rejuv, Regrowth
3-heal: 'powered up' Nourish (i.e. Nourish on a target with HoTs)
4-heal: Nourish without HoTs (most mana efficient since you do not need to maintain the expensive HoTs)
Lifebloom: limited to one or two targets, better HpM/HpS than Rejuv. Maybe trying to add LB to an extra target would cancel the first LB and cause a bloom, which could add more interesting interaction. Limited targets fit using LB as a tank healing spell pretty well.
WG: Likely 15s CD to match the new pally/shaman AE heals. The problem is preventing it from being still used on CD in AE situations without making it useless. Options would be smaller radius or interaction with some state that changes relatively frequently. Another possibility would be to make the WG heal less frontloaded and longer than the CD.
GC equated Regrowth with Flash Heal. Without completely removing the HoT, the only way I can imagine is turning Regrowth into an expensive Penance. Instant cast, 1 instant tick, and then 1 tick every 2 seconds for 4 seconds? That still feels like Regrowth but gives it a defined role.
Actually, after looking back, he may have just typo'd... Nourish as Flash Heal and Regrowth as Heal makes more sense.
What do you guys think the general cast times will be?
Flash Heal 1.5s
Heal 3.0s - can't be too fast or it risks replacing Flash Heal after enough haste
Greater Heal 5.0s - slightly better than 2x Heal
The problem with Regrowth as the go-to heal is that you're going to be using it a lot on the tanks at least in theory. That's going to mean overwriting the hot portion quite frequently. That does not sound like good mana efficiency as the hot portion is estimated in the mana cost. It's that or you wait until damage is at a point where HT can work. Then, you have to hope that one of the other healers doesn't already have a heal winding up on the tank.
Regrowth makes more sense as your quick flash heal. It's not something you're going to cast a lot, thus making the hot portion more beneficial and less likely that you'll stamp it out. Nourish, since it benefits from lots of hots and has no hot component of its own, can fit the Heal analogy better.
I'm not sure how increasing the CD on WG to 15s will make it less of a use-on-cd ability.
I haven't read the blue post as stating that they want to make you not use Wild Growth on cooldown. Merely that they want to open up the space in between Wild Growths, giving you some breathing room to actually cast something in between other than a few HoTs.
With the abovementioned 15 seconds (which sounds reasonable enough), that's a lot of leeway to actually get in some spells with a cast time, without losing out a lot otherwise.
Ignorance can be solved with a book. Stupidity requires a shotgun and a shovel.
Blessing of the Grove - increases Rejuv by 4% (replaces Imp MotW) Improved Rejuvenation - now also increases healing by Swiftmend in addition to Rejuv by 15% Improved Tranquility - instead of reducing cooldown "reduces the damage you take while channeling Tranquility by 50%" Nature's Bounty - Increases the critical effect chance of Regrowth by 50% when the target is below 25% HP and you have a 100% chance when you critically hit with Nourish or Healing Touch to reduce the remaining cooldown on Swiftmend by 0.5 sec (not sure if the 0.5 sec CD reduction is increased with ranks 2-5) Nature's Swiftness - requires 5/5 Naturalist Fury of Stormrage - 6% chance Nourish makes your next Wrath instant and casting Moonfire on a target <=25% hp makes your next Starfire instant. lasts 8 sec. (crazy for pvp?) Empowered Touch - HT heals for 10% more on targets below 25% hp and Nourish has 100% chance to refresh Lifebloom Efflorescence - Regrowth crits heal everyone within 15 yards of the target for 30% of the crit every 1 sec for 7 sec (30% every tick or total?). requires 3/3 Living Seed Revitalize - Regrowth and Lifebloom HoT crits restore 3% of your (the Druid's) base mana Tree of Life - +15% HoT healing, +200% armor, -30% movement speed, and "some spells temporarily enhanced". 45 sec duration, 5 min cooldown Improved Tree of Life - 90 sec off cooldown and "increases your damage done by 15% while in Tree of Life form" (typo? damaging in tree sounds strange) Gift of the Earthmother - +20% Tranquility healing on targets below 25% hp, +10% healing done by Lifebloom's bloom, and your Rejuvenation instantly heals for 15% of the total periodic effect Wild Growth - 10 sec cooldown Nature's Splendor - requires 15 points in Balance and is now 3 ranks. 33/66/100% chance when you cast MF/IS/RJ/RG/LBto increase it's duration by 3 sec. (interesting... worse for Regrowth and better for Lifebloom) Genesis - also increases Swiftmend's healing by 5%
Amazing. 15% is basically the same as T8 4P... Imagine it in Cata's damage environment?
Last edited by ttyl : 05/06/10 at 4:52 AM.
Reason: Credits to Mr. Inevitable
Quite a lot of talents seem to be based on a relative health level of 25%. This is somewhat interesting, because compared to todays average health levels this is a really low breakpoint. Today the next [raid]damage would simply kill of such a unlucky fellow, but in Cata it seems to be not that dangerous anymore (just judging from the way the alpha talents are designed), of course. So either the focus moves away from raidwide, regular damage so we actually get to heal someone without mindlessly spamming a spell over the whole raid, or the damage will be more a nuissance than an actual threat.
The new version of Empowered Touch would make Lifebloom viable again even in it's actual, somewhat sad state (i may be wrong, but didn't they test such a talent before and skipped it fast afterwards?). Most of the other changes will only show it's influence, after we actually get to experience the way cata raiding will be like. Tree of Life really sounds like a ripoff from Demon Form right now, and tranquility could still need some additional love.
Improved Rejuvenation - now also increases healing by Swiftmend in addition to Rejuv by 15% Nature's Bounty [NYI] - Increases the critical effect chance of Regrowth by 50% when the target is below 25% HP and you have a 100% chance when you critically hit with Nourish or Healing Touch to reduce the remaining cooldown on Swiftmend by 0.5 sec (not sure if the 0.5 sec CD reduction is increased with ranks 2-5)
With 3 talents that increase healing when the target is under 25% HP, I have to wonder how often such an occurrence would be in Cataclysm. Fortunately, each of those talents also have other useful enhancements, so there's little chance of the talent points being wasted if some/most encounters don't have raid members dropping below 25% hp generally.
(a) an inspiration effect (Maybe lifebloom stacks are meant to be our version of inspiration? But they won't scale to hard hits).
(b) a tank cooldown
(c) burst aoe of any kind
Priest's chakra talent, by comparison, is very interesting. It allows holy priests to "morph" into a resto druid (strong renew with a lowered renew gcd), a tank healer (stronger heal that refreshes renew while retaining inspiration), or a burst aoe healer.
Cata's rejuvenation is as strong as we could possibly have hoped for: scales with crit and haste, has a frontloaded instant tick like 4pc t8, and retains a duration increase talent. If Blizzard is intending to get us to cast more spells for raid healing, I am really not seeing what would tempt us away from Rejuv spam -- Wild Growth is getting an increased cooldown, Regrowth will only proc an aoe living seed on a crit and it will only crit reliably on low hp targets, and we have no other real aoe options.
Given the information currently available, holy priests seem significantly more flexible (although the tree form spells are a bit of a wild card). In other words, holy priests will probably fake a resto druid with chakra reasonably well, while a resto druid will have a hard time coming anywhere close to holy priest burst options with Cata tools that have been revealed so far.
Moonkin changes: Resto: Blessing of the Grove: Increases the direct damage of your Moonfire by 6% Balance: Solar Beam: Summons a beam of light. 3 second disorient and 10 second silence while in the beam of light. (Pvp) Lunar Justice: Summons a ray of light when you kill a target that grants experience or honor. Grants 6% base mana to the first friendly person to stand under it. (Pvp/leveling) Celestial Focus: Only spell pushback reduction. No spell haste. Nature's Splendor: 100% chance when you cast Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Rejuvenation, Regrowth or Lifebloom to increase it's duration by 3 seconds. (Same for Moonfire, an extra second for Insect Swarm?) Starsurge: Fuses the power of the moon and the sun launching a devastating blast at the target. Causes 1025 to 1027 Spellstorm damage and knocking them down. 2 sec cast 15 sec cooldown. Lunar Guidance: Increases the radius of Solar Beam by 6 yds. Starsurge also instantly generates 15 Lunar or Solar Energy. Balance of Power: Increases chance to hit by 4% and increases your spell hit rating by an additional amount equal to 100% of your spirit. Moonkin Form: Only provides armor by 370% and prevents healing and resurrection spells from being cast. As well as polymorph immunity. Imp Moonkin Form: 6% raidwide spell crit aura. Wrath of Cenarius: While moving, the direct damage of your Moonfire is increase by 5% and it's mana cost is reduced by 10% for 3 seconds. Stacks up to 3 times and last 3 seconds. Refreshed as long as you're moving. Earth and Moon: Debuff is 8% Fungal Growth: Spawns a Fungal Growth where treants die or mushrooms are activated slowing enemies within 8 yds by 70%.
Removed Improved Faerie Fire.
Looks like a lot of PvP utility is being added. The extra damage on Moonfire seems interesting too. No signs in this build of any Nature's Grace changes.
Feral Changes: Resto tree: Blessing of the Grove: Increases damage done by Mangle by 4% Perseverance: Reduces spell damage taken by 10% Feral tree: Survival of the Fittest: No longer increases attributes. Primal Precision: Only increases expertise by 10. No energy refund.
Last edited by spiritryu : 05/06/10 at 5:48 AM.
Reason: Added feral changes I missed
Naturalist moved to tier 3 in Resto tree, meaning that cats will probably use 18 points in resto tree...
We have the same in the balance tree and my best assumption is that it is so people feel obligated to make choices in their talent trees not just to pick everything up at once.
While the trees are obviously work in progress our Resto one seems to be one of the furthest developed at the moment however spell costs and upgrades don't seem to be on the database yet so a large part of our changes are hard to note.
Swiftmend has finally been included in talents and it has also been reworked to remove either RJ/RG and heal for a fixed amount rather than a variable one which further helps make RG feel psychologically less weak for the player too.
Tree of Life being a 45sec duration (5-3:30 cooldown) seems very powerful if it does indeed included the stronger hots et all but I'm not sure how often reducing the cooldown will be worth it.
Critical strike seems to be tied in much better this time and it will certainly make Regrowth a very powerful tool when the raid is <25% HP (+50% crit and LS/Efflorescence when it does). I'm slightly concerned that we have 3 talents tied to that level of health but mostly the RG one seems slightly out of place (Tranq/HT being fine) and I would rather see it at say a 40/50% threshold while reducing the effect to 25/35% accordingly but that's something we'll see in practice.
While juggling a little bit with the first balance tree changes i wonder if there will be a major redesign of the moonfire glyph. Three talents explicitly mention the direct damage part of this spell, which is not worth mentioning if using the glyph. While Wrath of Cenarius could be a PvP orientated talent (even though we still don't know, how much time we will spend walking around in raids), the other two seem to be there as logical choice for a DPS-option (be it caster-form healer or moonkin both).
I'm seeing Nature's Splendor giving the current "live" numbers (i.e. 6s Regrowth). Possibly an edit since the posts above.
Wild Growth is much more expensive (37% of base mana, vs. the current 23%). On live you need about four targets for WG to be more mana efficient than Rj. 37% would push that to eight targets (not currently possible).
Improved Moonfire: Was 10% MF damage and crit. Is now just 10% MF direct damage. (1/3 WoC, and the replacement talent for IMotW also boost MF direct damage). The return of MF spam.
Is something like Intensity going baseline for all mana users? Intensity is missing entirely, and Moonkin no longer get mana restored on crits. However, Dreamstate is still there. If SP turns into int (even at a 2->1 conversion), Dreamstate could be very significant.
Debuff from E&M is down to 8% (13% on live).
Moonfury is gone.
Typhoon is a pre-req for Starfall
Owlkin Frenzy loses its mana regen.
Wrath of Cenarious is weird:
1/3: While moving MF direct damage is increased 5%, and mana cost is reduced 10%. Stacks up to three times. Refreshed while moving. 3s duration.
2/3: 8%/4% extra spell damage to SF/Wrath.
3/3: 12%/6% extra spell damage to SF/Wrath.
PvP note for Remove Corruption: Unstable Affliction now "protects" Curses and Poisons (unless we also retain Remove Curse and Remove Poison in our spell book).
Penalty for being out of Moonkin Form is much less.
Edit:
Dionerra,
I'd expect MF talents to be additive (and the MF glyph is subtractive). If untalented, glyphed MF does 2000 direct damage, the glyph takes away 1800. Those talents can add 31% (15% WoC, 10% IMF, 6% Blessing of the Grove) or 610 damage. The 610 "extra" damage from the talents doesn't change, whether or not you have the glyph.
The "value" of the MF direct-damage talents depends on how often you cast MF. It is the SF glyph (and Nature's Splendor) that encourage us to not cast MF very often if we aren't moving.
For turret DPS, Blessing of the Grove and Improved Moonfire would be very poor choices by current standards. Absolute best case (pure MF spam while haste capped), they'd give you something around 300 DPS (total, four talent points). For a normal boss fight (one MF every 25s), you'd be looking at less than 20 DPS total, from four talent points.
Last edited by Erdluf : 05/06/10 at 8:57 AM.
Reason: MF discussion
Mastery - Druid Balance Masteries
Increases the damage done by your spells by a percentage.
Grants a percentage of spell haste.
The damage done by your Wrath is increased when you reach 100 Solar Power, and the damage done by your Starfire is increased when you reach 100 Lunar Power. Effect will last for 15 sec. Mastery increases the damage done by your Wrath and Starfire when you gain Eclipse.
Mastery - Druid Restoration Masteries
Increases all your healing spells by a percentage.
Grants a percentage of your out of combat mana regeneration from Spirit while in combat.
Increases the potency of your heal over time spells by up to a percentage, based on the current health level of your target.
Mastery - Druid Feral Cat Masteries
Requires Cat Form
Increases all physical damage you deal by a percentage.
Increases melee critical strike chance by a percentage.
Increases the damage done by your bleed abilities by a percentage.
The Feral and Resto ones are quite straight forward, and includes the mana regen answer for Resto.
The Balance one that increases damage with "Power" and increases the damage effect through eclipse is weird, as it sounds like it has an outdated part (the Eclipse section) which is going to be replaced by the Power system, as backed up by the talent (replaced at rank 1 by an increase in Power generation from Wrath/Starfire, even if rank 2 and 3 are as they are on live at the moment). It'll be interesting to see how things pan out with how the new eclipse style mechanic is going to work.
Edit: Oh and they've removed the mana regen from Moonkin form, so I don't know if Dreamstate will be a staple talent from now on.
Edit2: Should've said this earlier, but as much speculation as there can be on talents and things, it looks like there'll be a LOT of changes to every tree, and a lot of interation on the numbers for each tree. It depends on what they're focusing on more for the Alpha, it may be that the world/quests are more of a priority right now than the classes/talent trees. In any case, don't rage out because something gets changed!
Mastery - Druid Feral Bear Masteries
Requires Dire Bear Form, Bear Form
Reduces damage taken by a percentage.
Each time you take damage, you gain a percentage of the damage taken as attack power, up to a maximum of twice your Vengeance percentage of your Stamina.
Increases the damage absorbed by your Savage Defense ability by a percentage.
For turret DPS, Blessing of the Grove and Improved Moonfire would be very poor choices by current standards. Absolute best case (pure MF spam while haste capped), they'd give you something around 300 DPS (total, four talent points). For a normal boss fight (one MF every 25s), you'd be looking at less than 20 DPS total, from four talent points.
I reached a similiar conclussion. That's why i suspect that either the Glyph might be redesigned (which would profit quite a little bit from then standard haste/crit mechanic on DoTs) or we are seeing right now only a part of the talent (a single effect, while blizz is planing to supply some additional one in lower tiers, like already shown in the resto tree). Still, it is the first time i can remember, that talents do explicitly differentiate between the direct part of a spell and the continued part of a spell.
A plausible behavior for Lunar/Solar power based on what we've seen:
Meter runs from 100 Lunar to 100 Solar (and looks like an EotS capture meter).
Casting Nature spells shift the meter towards Lunar (Wrath = 20 shift)
Casting Arcane spells shift the meter towards Solar (SF = 35)
If the meter reaches 100L or 100S, you get an eclipse effect (extra Arcane damage for 100L, extra Nature damage for 100S). The effect lasts for 15s, and is larger with Balance Mastery.
If you were able to just nuke for those 15s, you will have managed to move the meter all (or most) of the way to the other extreme, and be ready to take advantage of the other Eclipse. If you were only able to use one or two casts for some reason, the meter will still be near 100 on the current side, and it won't be too hard to restore it to 100.
It may be that the meter will decay towards zero over time (like Rage) when out of combat, so that you can't easily start a fight with Eclipse.
Wild Mushroom: Looks fun, but current numbers may be OP. Instant cast. Up to five can be placed. Base damage 2000. 11% of base mana to place a mushroom, or to cause all mushrooms to detonate (they also detonate when they take damage). Five mushrooms and a detonate are 66% of base mana and do 10000 base damage (AoE). At most 6 GCD's (plus extra time for ground targeting).
By comparison (at 80 on live):
Hurricane: 81% of base mana, 4510 base damage, channeled over 10s.
Wrath*6: 66% of base mana over 6 GCD's. 3552 base damage to a single target.
The effects on rejuvenation, the bloom effect of lifebloom and also the tranquillity effect are only increase with the first talent point invested in gift of the earth mother, whereas all subsequent talent points give you just reduction of lifebloom cooldown and spell haste. Could this be just a mistake in the talent calculator or do you think this is intended?
05/02/10, 6:55 PM
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