With the release of Wrath of the Lich King looming on the “soon” horizon, many players find themselves looking for ways to keep themselves busy. Here are 12 steps to ensure you’re as prepared as possible for stepping foot on the shores of Northrend. (Hint: buy warm boots)
It would appear that the previously “leaked” patch notes were, in fact, faked. Here are the changes officially announced just this evening:
- Empowered Rejuvenation: This talent now properly affects the final heal from Lifebloom.
- Gift of Nature: This talent now properly affects the healing from Tranquility.
- Insect Swarm: Casting lower ranks of this spell is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.
- Lacerate: This ability now deals additional damage based on the attack power of the Druid.
- Mangle (Bear) now properly triggers a 1.5 second global cooldown, increased from 1.0.
- Natural Perfection: This ability will no longer be triggered by taking critical strikes while sitting. In addition, it is now affected by the Subtlety talent.
- When a Druid in cat form casts Pounce it will now properly animate.
A couple of buffs to Restoration, although I’m not sure I understand the change to Empowered Rejuvenation. Was this spell improperly affecting the bloom effect of Lifebloom and will no longer do so? ER reads like it should have only affected the heal over time portion of Lifebloom. The Gift of Nature change is a nice increase to a rarely used spell.
There were two other changes of note affecting all casters, one of which we already knew about, but the other which is a complete (and welcome) surprise:
- Spell Haste: Spell haste now reduces the global cooldown on spells, down to a minimum of 1 second. This change does not apply to melee and ranged abilities.
- Spirit-Based Mana Regeneration: This system has been adjusted so that as your Intellect rises, you will regenerate more mana per point of spirit.
Now that is interesting, especially since it will constitute a need to rewrite several of the analysis pieces here. Additionally, the following idols will be adjusted:
- [Idol of the Crescent Goddess]: The mana discount on Regrowth has been increased.
- [Idol of Feral Shadows]: The bonus damage to Rip has been increased.
- [Idol of the Raven Goddess]: The bonus healing, critical strike rating, and spell critical strike rating from this item have been increased. In addition, it no longer sometimes fails to apply the healing bonus.
- Idol of the Unseen Moon]: The cooldown added in a previous patch has been removed.
- [Idol of Ursoc]: The bonus damage to Lacerate has been increased and the tooltip clarified to indicate it applies to both initial and periodic damage.
- [Idol of the White Stag]: Duration increased.
And the Masquerade Gown has apparently not been appropriately affecting the Tree of Life aura:
[Masquerade Gown]: The Spirit bonus from this item will now properly trigger all benefits from the Tree of Life talent.
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Regarding switching back to Resto, I think you’ll be fine with your SD/Crit (SD?) gear. Naxx is supposedly really easy and should give you ample opportunity to switch back to more healy-oriented gear. @Wise Fox: If “Alt + Z” doesn’t work (as Marc kindly recommends), try just “V” or even “Ctrl +...
>>>Spirit-Based Mana Regeneration: This system has been adjusted so that as your Intellect rises, you will regenerate more mana per point of spirit.
While this is a nice change, it’s going to make it a bit harder to compare spirit and mp5.
The change to spirit looks to be a buff for my mage and I’m sure Phaelia will do a great job of comparing spirit to mp5 post 2.4
Can’t wait to see your future post on the *new* spirit vs mp5 debate!!!
Anyway these are all fine. I think there will be more coming up. I HOPE they change that worthless melee for mana ability moonkin has into a mana back on crit, or something of the sort.
Restos have it good <3
Really liking the changes so far. I have a feeling the spirit change will finally put it over mp5 as the regen of choice for us.
Idol changes are pretty great, I look forward to seeing how the Raven Goddess is buffed. Nice to see Unseen Moon un-nerfed as well.
Most excited about the attunement and Vashj/Kael changes, since we recently hit the keying wall and I really hate managing the logistics of it.
I had thought the deal with ER is that because the Lifebloom bloom “procs” off the target and not us, it wasn’t properly getting credited with the caster having ER.
But after Lifeblooming myself and some random shaman in Shat, there is no difference in bloom size. And the math for ER not applying checks out.
According to wowwiki, the DH coeff. is 42.86%
At 1983 +heal, my blooms were 1596, caster form w/ no buffs.
(.4286*1983 = 849.9138) + 600 base heal = 1449.9138 Plus the 10% from Gift of Nature, and we’re at 1594.90518
If we calculate for ER:
(.6286*1983 = 1246.5138) + 600 base heal = 1846.538*.10 = 2031.1918
I’m definitely not getting blooms that big.
With 0 healing, it blooms for 660, which is the base 600 + Gift of Nature.
I guess they’re going to make it apply to the bloom now!
Whew! I for one was relieved when I read these changes. My only question is whether we’re going to want to stack intellect now. I suppose I can get out the Pendant of the Violet Eye from Aran. . .
The possibly nerf to lifebloom literally caused me to lose sleep, and I hope Blizzard understands that trees don’t WANT to cast healing touch. We’ve learned to work with our form’s limitations.
I dont think that this change will make you want to stack int, more like stacking spirit over mp5. Though it will make me actually consider INT as a REAL stat instead of just “yea…i never run out of mana, why do i want MORE mana?”
For the unseen moon change a fellow guildy said it best
“Got to love that back-peddling…”
My dress got more beautiful! And I am more in love.
Mmm Love Struck buff.
ooooooooooh great…
Where are the enhancements of feral tree :’(
In my humble opinion, and in a pvp point of view, I just see an improvement of the resto druid, despite the natural perfection thing…
Feral druid as to wait *again* to see a viability in arena…
Let’s cry 2 months again \o/
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/02/11
Saw this and had to share with other druids.
The new formula will see mana regen increase by about 30 mp/5 but I believe the stat will scale better with raid buffs (DS/Kings/AB).
The formula discerned by EJ is:
(0.001 + (spirit* 0.009327 * (intellect^0.5))) * 5
On the one hand, doing the math for the new mana regen values is going to be a pain, with it depending directly on both int and spirit.
On the other, if the exact values stay the way they are now, the spirit vs. mp5 article could basically be a picture of a tree holding a sign reading “spirit is better!”
In Kara-ish gear, self-buffed only (459 int, 427 spirit, 53 mp5 from gear), I have 180 mp5 while casting on the PTR. Down an elixir of draenic wisdom (+30 int, +30 spirit, and another 4.5 spirit from Living Spirit: 489 int, 462 spirit total), that goes up to 195 mp5 while casting.
If you’d prefer a example with just spirit, I popped the bangle of endless blessings instead (still 459 int, but 577 spirit: +150 total)… 225 mp5 while casting, an increase of 45 mp5. If this were in terms of always-on stats from gear, it’d be a choice between 130 spirit or 52 mp5. Taking into account the difference in not-casting regen (629 vs. 479, a difference of 150), you’d have to be under the 5-second rule.. 93% of the time? before the mp5 is still better. And that’s without counting the gains from innervate (an extra 2996 mana every 6 minutes.. roughly 25 mp5?), which I believe puts us firmly into the “lifebloom forever, and spirit’s still better” area.
Basically, I don’t see how they can keep this the way it is, and so theorycrafting too heavily based on it seems a bit silly. http://elitistjerks.com/634066-post56.html seems to have the full, gory details, though, if someone really wants to crunch numbers
While the official patch notes do make the “fake” changes improbable, they did mention that there would be class adjustments throughout the PTR. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some significant nerf to resto druids, from an arena standpoint, before 2.4 is live. If nothing else, then maybe a nerf to night elves and shadowmeld drinking.
It will be interesting to see if they test any of the fake changes. If they do, it will give a bit more validity to the theory that Blizzard is thinking about those modifications.
I just noticed they did nerf arena drinking a bit. Seems you will get very little regen initially but the longer you drink the faster the regen.
Also as a side note some druids are stating that the balance talent Natures Grace does indeed lower the GCD now. It seems that currently the GCD will stay at 1 for instant cast spells for the duration of the buff. I imagine this will be tweaked but this could be pretty nice for us hybrids healers who have this talent.
Oh shoot…
Okay, so when I just finished writing my WoW Insider article on patch changes, I didn’t see this… I’m sorry, it’s been a crazy week, and I haven’t been keeping up with my favorite blogs like I should. I plead sick kids and too many commitments… when what I need is just to be committed. To an institution.
I’m sorry.
I’ll make sure and put a post up on my blog that you have an awesome take on the patch changes going on here, and a very nice community discussion about it too.
Mea culpa! damn it, I try and stay up on who is talking about what, and then blow it.
have any of you noticed that all the gear from SSC up until BT including the new Za gear does not have any spirit on it or very little, so my point is they are increasing it because most leather gear doesnt have spirit… its like they are trying to slowly make us switch to a resto/balance spec…
@Everyone excited about a new theorycraft article: Brelaine from HealerLFG has beaten me to it! I’ll be posting a response to her great post shortly, though it’s a bit light on the theorycraft and more about mana regeneration and how it’s affected post-TBC content. As for my slackertude, after failing to copy my character for a full day, I sort of gave up and decided to wait for some numbers. It never occurred to me to look at ElitistJerks. ^_^
@Saba: It would sure be a nice change to have more than one Idol to choose from. As it is, I can’t imagine using anything but the Idol of the Emerald Queen which is a non-heroic BLUE drop. /sigh More choice is ALWAYS welcome. I’m so glad to hear that your guild will be able to benefit from the attunement changes. IMO, if your guild is able to beat Vashj/Kael, you’ve more than earned the “right” to enter BT!
@Kaera: That’s so awesome! I’m still surprised, but I’ll happily take any buffs that are thrown our way. While many Druids would likely claim that a buff to the bloom portion is mostly ineffectual, it will still be tremendously helpful for throwing Lifeblooms to help with raid healing. Thanks for the math!
@Sydera: I’ll be reconsidering the Pendant, too! This also makes all those items that favor Spirit/Intellect/Stamina stat allocation with some +Healing more favorable than those that that are more purely +Healing.
@Zackoria: I’m relieved at the Idol of the Unseen Moon change. That was moronic in the first place.
@Hikilune: This Tree supports Feral buffs, particularly in PvP. After all, many Ferals picked their spec based on a desire to PvP!
@Lapyx: Hey, thanks! I love it. Though Ireth totally deserved what he got for asking for a heal! Harumph! =)
@Sorayn: Thanks! /copies and pastes for later use
@Adremma: So Spirit is becoming even better than MP5. It won’t be long until people are crying over MP5 being overvalued, at least for Druids and Priests. Of course, having different priorities in terms of gear selection isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I know Shamans and Paladins still love MP5 and avoid Spirit like the plague.
@Simon: The nerf to drinking was good prediction. It should soundly reduce Druid standings in 2v2, while naturally doing nothing to address the disparity in 5v5.
@Bullar: Great info on Nature’s Grace. I’ve never been able to bring myself to try out that talent, but it’s a lot more attractive now that it affects the GCD. I just can’t imagine getting enough crit in healing gear to make much use of it. Even with the +50% crit to Regrowth, I don’t cast that spell enough to really benefit from the synergy (and you sacrifice a LOT to pick up both). Still, it’s something to consider …
@Big Bear Butt: Don’t worry about it! You’ve done so much for Resto4Life in terms of WI exposure that I could never ever fault you for missing me on a particular topic! I hope your kids get better soon! =)
@Falina: I hadn’t noticed that. A quick filter on WoWHead for just Healing items yields: 4 Heroic Badge Rewards, and 4 Zul’Aman drops, and 3 items from Mount Hyjal. All of these items have Spirit on them. But if we filter for Black Temple rewards, 4 out of 6 of those items are missing Spirit altogether, 3 of which seem to have spent those stat points on spell haste. Nonetheless, it looks like there’s still a fair amount of Spirit to be had, as long as you aren’t looking to pick up a ton of spell haste.