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After further consideration as a consequence of some coefficient testing, I am revising my original opinion on this comparison, originally published in February, 2008.
Leighbra of Sentinels (US) wrote in with this question:
At the moment, I have 494 Spirit unbuffed. I’m at about 675 fully raid buffed. I don’t have any idea how I ended up with so much Spirit and have been looking at what I can do with my enchants to play with that number, but I’m cheap and don’t like to re-enchant things… I have the [Idol of the Emerald Queen] equipped, and of course Lifebloom is my most commonly cast spell. So, from my Tree of Life aura, in raids, that means about 135ish additional +Healing for the people in my group.
I’m trying to figure out if it would be more beneficial to the guild/raid (not just my healing numbers) for me to be in a group with our tanks and to equip that often discarded [Idol of the Raven Goddess], especially after it gets buffed, than me having the [Idol of the Emerald Queen] equipped. Especially on Gruul, when after 8 growths we tell our DPS to heal themselves, and have all 8/9 healers focus on our two tanks.
Most people consider the [Idol of the Emerald Queen] to be one of the best healing idols available. This misperception is likely based on a misunderstanding of how its tooltip reads:
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While the above tooltip seems to imply that we will get 88 +Healing from this idol, we can employ the technique outlined in Method: Coefficient Testing to determine its actual +Healing value. To start with, I parsed the values for the total +Healing to the HoT portion of Lifebloom under varying conditions:
- No Idol, Tree of Life: 1624
- Emerald Queen, Tree of Life: 1670
- Raven Goddess, Tree of Life: 1654
- Naked (0 +Healing): 316
To find the amount of +Healing actually afforded by each, we can use the following formula:
From the above formula, we can determine that the [Idol of the Emerald Queen] affords 67 +Healing and the [Idol of the Raven Goddess] affords 44 +Healing. Taken at face value, you might think the Emerald Queen superior, but remember that the Raven Goddess affects not only all your spells (Regrowth, Rejuvenation, Swiftmend) but all the spells of healers healing members within your group. With the exception of fights where you will roll Lifebloom stacks on 3-4 tanks you’re not grouped with, the [Idol of the Raven Goddess] is the superior choice. Outside of such a unique circumstance, you’re choosing between 24 +Healing to your Lifebloom vs. 44 +Healing to all of your other spells and the spells of other healers in your raid. Of course, if given the option and assuming you make frequent use of the spell Regrowth, the [Idol of the Crescent Goddess] is the one I would recommend as it affords nearly a 10% mana cost reduction to Regrowth.
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Awesome! I need to stop using [Idol of the Raven Goddess] and use [Idol of the Emerald Queen] !!! >.> <.< Raven Goddess just helps other people beat me on the meters.
Seriously though, I guess I’ll have to get my [Idol of the Emerald Queen] back out of the bank for times when I’m not in the tank group.
If you’re just comparing those two, I would imagine it’s going to be situational on a person to person basis for how often they find themselves in a tank group during raids.
From my experience, I’m rarely in the tank group. Since we have a warrior tank, a feral tank, and a paladin tank they’re usually all in the same group for shouts, improved leader of the pack, and auras. Add to that a warlock for blood pact and a shaman for totems and I do not find myself in the tank group a vast majority of times. Of course, the extra healing received for your group without tanks is not really needed – those heals will hit the raid members, and they will overheal. In the case a resto might be put in the tank group, you then have to consider whether or not you’re the only resto in the raid.
Perhaps other restos have different experiences, but based on how often I’m actually in the tank group, there’s hardly any reason for me to use the raven goddess. There are also occasional fights where I’m popping in and out of tree, which only adds to that, but they’re not very common yet (yay curses).
I like to macro my idols to my spells, such that I’m always using Idol of the Emerald Queen, Idol of the Crescent Goddess, and Idol of the Avian Heart. An idol swap invokes the global cooldown, but there’s a workaround. If the spell has a cast time, make a macro with line 1: /cast Regrowth and line 2:/equip Idol of the Crescent Goddess. No extra GCD occurs. With an instant, your idol won’t be effective until the second spell–not a problem with lifebloom, because by the time I hit the second one in a row, the idol is in place. I do not recommend macro-ing Harold’s Rejuvenating Brooch to Rejuvenation because I think we druids are less likely to cast two or more of those in a row. I find this idol swapping technique to be very effective, and I noticed a particularly significant difference once I had the Regrowth idol. It does not quite make up for the wand slot priests get, but I like to squeeze every possible advantage out of what we do have.
Whoops, forgot something Phae – feel free to delete this after reading it since it’s not relevant to the post. I’ve been having problems with my email, but I sent a response earlier to your question. If you didn’t get it let me know
as already stated, the idols are very situational. if im in the main tank group on a hard-hitting boss like Gurtogg Bloodboil then i’ll use the raven idol. However once my raid gets a boss on farm status then i get a little selfish and use the emerald idol, hehe. seriously though, isn’t it sad that our best idols for resto druids is of blue quality?
Interesting.
In Table 3 of http://www.resto4life.com/2008/04/19/24-mana-regeneration-part-3-valuing-healing/ you posted an estimate that over the course of a fight, 1 +heal for you increased your
Lb HoT healing by 139
Total healing by 187
Combining with your numbers from this article:
IotEQ = 67 * 139 = 9313
IotRG = 44 * 187 = 8228 (assumes everything you healed was in your group and was while you were in ToL).
The IotEQ number is about 13% higher. I think the implication is that if, on average, more than 1.13 healers are “aimed” at your group, IotRG is better. (Obviously this will be a very rough estimate).
I don’t see where the +24 in your last paragraph came from. Should that be +67, or am I missing something?
I agree with Nilianil – it really depends on whether you’re in the MT group.
We run with two or three resto druids in the raid, and I’m very rarely the one in the tank group which means that I’m better off with Emerald Queen equipped most of the time. It might also be situationally better in some other circumstances – e.g. on Gurtogg when you’re in a Bloodboil group. Since Raven Goddess has been buffed it is at least worth keeping in your bag
From a practical standpoint, the Emerald Queen is still the best one you will have as resto in a good long while .. if for no other reason than that it drops in Shadow Labyrinth, from the first boss, and can be farmed in regular mode. My druid was my third one to get to 70, and the Raven Goddess is basically 5000g to get, lol .. Same for the other one, you need to get lucky on a T5 raid boss, and not everyone has that luxury
But hey, it’s theorycrafting, what am I whining about
@Korryna: Yeah .. and don’t tell everyone how I often don’t use Tree of Life because I’m not as pretty! This is about “optimal” choices, not “actual” ones, amirite? =D
@Nilianil: I’m surprised you don’t frequently find yourself in the tank group. I frequently find myself there and switch out for another Druid because I don’t want to be stuck in ToL the whole time. ^_^ Or we’ll have a multi-tank fight where we create two tank groups so all four can benefit from ToL aura, Imp, and/or Devotion Aura. You’re right though – outside the tank group, it would be kind of silly to use the Raven Goddess idol.
@Sydera: Srlsy? What a great tip. I’ll try this out at our next raid and see how I like it. Thank you!!
@Jazzy: It is really sad. What’s up with that? I can only hope they take our Idol itemization in a better direction come WotLK.
@Erdluf: Great way of looking at it. Thanks for that analysis. =) The 24 in the last paragraph is the +Healing from Emerald Queen – the +Healing from the Raven Goddess (since you get the RG’s +Healing on all your spells, including Lifebloom).
@Treibh: If you’re doing Bloodboil, do you have the Crescent Goddess, yet? If so, do you use it?
@Sindarina: That’s an excellent point and something I don’t mention in the article above. Oddly enough, with as many times as we’ve killed Hydross, I’ve only seen the Regrowth idol drop once.
/cry, please stop mentioning the idol from hydross, I (and all the droods in my guild) passed on it about 4-5 times when we were doing SSC
, needed the dkp for the T5 pants that never dropped…. so yeah i’m not passing on loot anymore for the sake of dkp farming.
I am very marginal, i use…… Harold’s rejuvenating brooch…… when im not in the MT group, and use the raven one when im in the Mt group.
I have the emerald queen one but i tend to use rejuv and regrowth more then lifebloom so…
I attempted using Macros for switching between lb and rg idols but got really angry at it. While it doesn’t cause a “true” gcd it sorta causes one than another… If you’re like me and often make snap decisions switching who you’re going to heal this will bother you as there’s a slight delay if you change targets quickly.
Something I learned way back in Pre-BC days was if some piece of loot is so incredibly terrible you’d never use it, keep hold of it cause there’s a huge change it’l get buffed… Looks like the Year+ I kept crescent goddess returned in spades ’cause now it’s awesome.
I have alternate buttons I use for my macros. I switch them out a lot mid-fight.
Raven goddess I have used sparingly. If you happen to be in a MT group of a particularly hard hitting boss you could argue it’d alright… But I don’t know.
Something I didn’t see in the post or comments as I scanned is that the raven goddess is only +heal to your group and lifebloom is to all lifebloom targets. that little bit of extra +heal can be multiplied by the amount of lbs you have out on the raid (In Sunwell I’ve found throwin single lbs out and letting them do their thing is a really effective raid heal method between healing tanks/specific people.) and the emerald queen really gets better with each lb you have out.
I’d rate Crescent Goddess and Emerald Queen about equal. Given the situation each can really shine.
Also loot never drops when it’s good. For example we got the cloak off Kael and Gurtogg and Illidan nearly every week. Suddenly once they made 30% of healing go to spell damage, making the Illidan cloak sick for casters it stopped. Also, once the spirit buff was announced the Kael nd Gurtogg cloaks stopped dropping.
We also got the hydross idol every week from about march of last year until we stopped doing SSC, we still get the supremus idol about every other week.
First of all thank you very much for bringing up the raven idol, I banked mine back before it was buffed and completely forgot about it. I have been bitter about ToL aura for a long time now (bring back the old version!). ToL aura could be so much more, but just falls short. Anyways, something that has been touched on a bit, but not expanded on is heal coefficients. This is very important when considering how much benefit raven actually gives to tank healing.
Please take this with a grain of salt since its highly variable, but should give a general idea of which idol to use when. I’m only focusing in on tank healing because thats my assignment, any raid healing I do is icing on the cake, but not my true focus. Common assignments on the tank are myself and 2 Pali’s, but I included Priests since they are the swiss army knives of healers. Some general rotation % as well…
Coefficients (with talents included)…
Druid (85% Triple Stack Lifebloom 10% Rejuv 3.5% Regrowth DH 1.5% Regrowth HoT)
Triple Stack (HoT) = 2.025
Rejuvenation = 1.16
Regrowth (DH) = 0.3188
Regrowth (HoT) = 0.918
Pali (85% FoL 15% HL)
Flash of Light = 0.479
Holy Light = 0.800
Priest (75% Gheal r1 10% Gheal r7 15% Renew)
Greater Heal r7 = 1.114
Greater Heal r1 = 0.811
Renew = 1.25
Shaman (100% Earth Shield)
Earth Shield = 2.178
It’s been established that queen is 67heal (thank you buggy idol) and raven is 44heal. Plug that in to find avg heal bonus and you come out with…
Queen = 115.3
Druid = 115.3
Pali = 0
Priest = 0
Shaman = 0
Raven = 271.98 (using Druid, 2 Pali, Earth Shield)
Druid = 81.49
Pali = 46.08
Priest = 48.58
Shaman = 95.83
At first glance, it seems like a no brainer to go for raven, but take a closer look. Shaman gets the biggest bonus? This isn’t accounting for the actual heal throughput (effective + overheal) on the tank. Another variable that is up in the air is hot overheal, from the tracking I’ve done I value it around 50%. So generally you get something like this breakdown on a tank…
Druid =42%
Pali =28%
Priest = 28%
Shaman = 1%
Account for this you end up with…
Queen = 48.4
Druid = 48.4
Pali = 0
Priest = 0
Shaman = 0
Raven = 60.92 (using Druid, 2 Pali, Earth Shield)
Druid = 34.22
Pali = 12.90
Priest = 13.6
Shaman = 0.96
Please note that if your assignment is the tank and you only have 1 pali/priest you have about the same benefit, so at that point you’d probably want to go with queen to boost raid healing with your extra gcd’s. Thanks again for this post Phae, I’ve been blindly using Queen when in the tank group.
Personally, for our bloodboil we run with 3 tanks. We usually run with 8 healers, but could probably do this with 7 (don’t get to experiment with sunwell out qq). I assign 3 shaman/coh priests to bloodboil groups, 3 people to heal whoever has aggro (be that tank or fel enrage). I triple stack each of the tanks (and run rejuv when needed, lifebloom raid, or lifebloom fel enraged) if the tank gets more than 10 acidic armor’s they have to call it out on vent. This is where the 8th healer comes in, they start helping me out with those tanks, but most of the time just heal whoever has aggro. For the way we do it queen is better, but I could see raven being pretty handy if you used a pali/priest on each tank.
The Idol of the Ravan Goddes went to my bank a few minutes after I got it and has been touched only to dust it off and put it back in.
I’ve been using the Idol of the Emerald Queen almost exclusively and encouraged my fellow druids to go farm it and use it. To me it appears vastly superior to any other idol in terms of buffing my +healing. Sure, if one gets put into a group with multiple tanks that take a lot of damage the Ravan Goddes will probably be superior overall as more people benefit from it. Your average one-tank-fight doesn’t really require this, does it? We also never had much trouble with tanks dieing on us, but rather with other people screwing up, so personally I’d trade a bit more healing on our tank(s) against a bit more healing for the rest of the raid. They’ll need it, too.
Now that I think of it the Ravan Goddes would be great in Black Temple to support the CoH spamming Priests as they’ll need every bit of +heal they can get. For this to work the tree Druid would have to be in a group that takes AOE damage and stands closes together though. That might work on some fights.
However I’ve been known to appear to raids with one free bag slot out of 90 (or something), which I really wouldn’t want to block with yet another idol
My first 1000 arena points were spent on the Idol of Tenacity, I always figured that this idol together with the 4/5 T5 bonus would be awesome for raid healing (S3 Idol = 131; 4/5 T5 = 150; makes 281 +heal should they stack and count with the value listed in their tooltip). Unfortunately I never got to try it out as my fourth piece of T5 never dropped :/
I’ve been carrying the Emerald Queen and Idol of Tenacity with me at all times and switched them out depending on what kind of healing I’d be tasked with. If I had to raid heal a lot, I’d be using the tenacity one as I figured the +healing value on the final bloom to be worth more than a bit more healing done on the tick. My favourite example: Hex Lord Malacrass’ AOE Shadow Bolts. I’d keep one group up by rotating single lifeblooms on all 5 people and only having to rely on Tranquility in the last wave or so. Having the chance to crit on the final bloom (and the bloom basically never going into overheal in this situation!) make more +heal pretty good.
@Tlop: “Something I didn’t see in the post or comments as I scanned is that the raven goddess is only +heal to your group and lifebloom is to all lifebloom targets. that little bit of extra +heal can be multiplied by the amount of lbs you have out on the raid (In Sunwell I’ve found throwin single lbs out and letting them do their thing is a really effective raid heal method between healing tanks/specific people.) and the emerald queen really gets better with each lb you have out.”
^^ Good point, though if you’re raid healing with Regrowth (I use a mixture), it’s much less significant. Also, the Emerald Queen is best on a stacked Lifebloom, which you wouldn’t use for raid healing. And it also doesn’t affect the bloom portion (though there are PvP-based idols that do). And we’ve only seen the Crescent Goddess idol drop once in our guild, despite the number of times we’ve killed Hydross. It’s a shame because I’d like to see ALL of our Druids pick it up.
@Sheshonk: This is a very good analysis, but as you say, pretty variable. The healing spell composition by class, the percent healing done to a tank by each class, and the number of each class present at a raid are going to be so variable that it’s probably not possible to find a solid estimate. One thing I didn’t follow – where did you get the last set of numbers (for the Raven) in your post?
@Kuhbi: Have you tried casting your LB with and without the Idol of the Emerald Queen? The difference is so small that I just don’t think it’s the end-all, be-all of idols. I’d personally opt for an idol that provides me more utility and options … or at least improves the ones I do have. Great call on the Idol of Tenacity. That’s actually one I’ve never considered. Maybe I should pick it up though as I have about 3200 Arena points just sitting on Phaelia. Thanks for the tip. =)
I’d like a post on the proper use of Idols, as far as dynamically during a fight. I understand how to assess a situation to choose the best idol for a fight with the assumption that it is never being swapped. But what I don’t know is how/when/if we should be idol swapping mid-fight.
@Trowamdev: Well, unfortunately the Idol swapping is going to become less viable than it used to be with the changes in 2.4.3 that will make changing them interrupt any spell being cast. I’m not sure if that’s going to affect instant-cast spells like Rejuvenation and Lifebloom, but it would make swapping in our Regrowth idol pretty counter-productive. I think they’re aiming to ensure you stick with the same idol for the whole fight. I.e., they don’t consider macroing a different idol to each spell as “proper use.”