Wrath of the Lich King made a number of fundamental changes to the game, many of which went through so many iterations that it can be difficult to get the facts. You can find a summary of these changes as related to the Restoration Druid in this extensive FAQ!
Sorry things have been quiet around here lately. I’ve been absolutely swamped at work the past couple of weeks which is where I do most of my blogging and blog-related activity (like answering e-mails). Here’s a wrap up of the changes affecting Druids over the past week, along with some of my impressions.
- Koraa Follows up on Lifebloom Change
- Downranking No Longer Possible
- Spell Pushback Changes
- Feral Summary
Koraa Follows up on Lifebloom Change
Developer Koraa went on to respond to further questions about the previously reported coefficient reduction of Lifebloom, asserting that Blizzard rarely nerfs an ability for the purpose of PvP balance if it effects PvE, confirming that this is an intentional PvE nerf. She goes on to explain that Flourish, Nourish, and talents like Living Seed are intended to help compensate. It appears that she did, in fact, misspeak in her earlier post about the intention for Druids to be high throughput healers, which is comforting.
I’ve noticed many players use the "PvP excuse" as a way to dismiss that abilities or spells are too good in PvE. For example, Illumination… that wasn’t nerfed for PvP reasons (like many believe).
Whenever we change abilities we always consider the outcomes for all aspects of the game, very rarely will we change an ability that will reduce it’s effectiveness in PvE or PvP for the sake of the other. And if we do, it’s intended.
In the case of Lifebloom, it’s too good in both aspects of the game. Again, it’s not our intention to merely just reduce the effectiveness of Lifebloom, but to also introduce new healing mechanics (Flourish, Nourish, talents like Living Seed and the improvements to Tree of Life) to compensate.
HoTs are intended to be effective in HPS and efficient, but have the drawback of requiring time to heal. The issue today is that you’ll HoT a player who got hit by a big AOE, and some other class will use a downrank direct heal and cause you HoT to be ineffective. This is being addressed through downrank penalties. We want other classes to say "Hey, I could heal that guy back up who just got hit by that AOE, but I’ll let the Druid do it instead and preserve my mana." Note that I’m not saying random AOE damage is not what HoTs are only intended to be for, I’m just using that as an example.
Of particular interest is the quote, “The issue today is that you’ll HoT a player who got hit by a big AOE, and some other class will use a downrank direct heal and cause you HoT to be ineffective.” which speaks directly to another important change coming down the pipeline …
Downranking No Longer Possible
Developer Wryxia explained a significant change to the game’s spellcasting system that’s coming in Wrath of the Lich King:
As you may have noticed, in this latest build we have updated spells and abilities using mana. These no longer cost a fixed amount and instead they’re a percentage of your base mana, not including any mana increase from Intellect. For the most part this should mean mana-based spells and abilities are costing roughly the same amount as they do in the live game, though there might be some slight changes either up or down. But we have tried to keep them as close as possible to the same mana cost for a level 70 as they are now in the live game.
What will change though is that lower rank spells will lose their appeal. We have made this mana cost change purely to prevent downranking, which is an unintended technique that we were not at ease with. We’ve previously tried ways to discourage it, but have decided that we’d rather find a solution than continue to find ways to penalize those who choose to downrank. The solution we chose was to make downranking obsolete, encouraging people to always use their highest rank of each spell and nothing else.The highest rank of a mana-based spell or ability will now remain the most powerful effect, but at the same mana cost as earlier ranks.
We’re certain that for some people this will cause a period of readjustment. Hopefully removing a few more of the extra buttons you’ve been pressing will eventually be seen as a good thing; it might also be easier for some people to do their role without having to learn to downrank. We are anticipating such a big change may have some teething problems, perhaps causing balance issues, and we’re all set to deal with them as they arise. In the meantime, we appreciate any comments and feedback related to this change.
Another Blizzard poster by the name of Zarhym commented on this change, as well:
In the latest WotLK beta push, we made a large change to the mana cost of spells. All player spells now cost a percentage of base mana rather than a fixed cost. Base mana is a special value determined by the player’s level and class, regardless of any effects or items that increase intellect. It is the size of a player’s mana pool if the player has zero intellect.
This change was made primarily to prevent downranking, as it’s a technique that was never quite intended. Rather than continue to find ways to penalize players for casting low-rank spells, we decided to essentially make doing so obsolete. If rank 5 and rank 6 of a spell cost the same amount of mana, but rank 6 does more damage/healing, then there is no reason to consider casting rank 5.
So, each spell line (eg. Frostbolt, Shadowbolt, Greater Heal, Rejuvenation, etc.) has a fixed percentage of base mana that it costs for most of its ranks. That means each time a player gains a level the cost will go up some. The percentages were picked to attempt to keep the costs relatively similar to what they are currently in World of Warcraft. For most spells, that percentage will drop some when the player receives their highest-rank spell in existing Burning Crusade content. This was done to better fit the existing cost curve, and to keep the mana cost for level 70 players as close as possible to existing costs. Level 70 characters will see most of their maximum rank spells change in cost slightly up or down, but not by significant amounts.
We anticipate there being some balance concerns due to this change, and our development staff will be ready to implement new spells, abilities, or talents to resolve those issues as the testing process continues.
This is a significant change to those healing classes who rely on having multiple ranks of their largest heal available to them, adjusting their selection based on their target’s current health, most notably Priests who frequently downrank Greater Heal. Healing Touch-based Druids would also be affected by this change, but I suspect that HT-based builds may be going the way of the dodo in Wrath with the introduction of Nourish and improvements to Regrowth. What this will effect is the downranking of Lifebloom. While in live we only have one rank to work with, Wrath will introduce two new ranks of Lifebloom. While mana costs aren’t yet set in stone, our third rank of Lifebloom is projected to cost about twice the mana as our first, representing a significant increase in the cost to maintain a stack. This combined with the reduction to its heal over time coefficient will likely go a long way toward bringing Lifebloom down a couple of steps in terms of efficiency.
According to an earlier quote by Koraa, Blizzard was concerned about HoTs being overwritten by downranked spells. It seems that Blizzard’s intention is for HoTs to see a greater percentage of effective healing done. An admirable goal, but the main reduction to effective healing from our HoTs is not because Priests, Paladins, and Shamans are actively downranking single target heals but instead because of AoE and multi-target heals like Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending, and Chain Heal. With the addition of the Paladin AoE heal, Beacon of Light, and Flourish, these “fire and forget” group heals are going to be even more prevalent in Wrath.
Lifebloom is currently cheap enough to throw on a target on the chance that something else doesn’t “overwrite” the HoT. Nonetheless, Regrowth is already often a better choice for raid healing.This will exacerbate the difference, and this makes using a slow-acting Rejuvenation and the HoT-portion of Regrowth less viable for raid healing. While the stated intention is to allow heals over time to be used for raid healing, the combined effects of increased mana cost, a decreased HoT coefficient, and more widespread group healing will have the reverse effect.
This change will make using an addon that displays incoming heals practically essential, and I hope that we’ll see something built into the UI that makes this process smoother and less resource intensive. Non-Druid healers may also want to consider configuring their raid frames so that heals over time — even those they didn’t cast themselves — are displayed since mana conservation is going to be a much larger concern. Of course, this would have been helpful to the raid as a whole before the downranking change, and it’s certainly not a widespread technique. Healers are often too concerned with not handicapping their own stats.
Finally, the elimination of downranking will have a significant effect on one of our deep Restoration talents, Replenish since it will no longer be possible to derive its benefits by casting a 20 Mana (assuming Tree of Life) Rank 1 Rejuvenation.
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However, lest you deride the 3/3 talent mercilessly, consider the fact that assuming assuming a 20k mana pool in Wrath of the Lich King, we can use a Rejuvenation to gain an average return of 120 mana:
Mana /Tick = 0.15 * (0.02 * Total Mana)
In Tree of Life, Rejuvenation is projected to cost around 516 mana. This change will make a Rejuvenation effectively cost 120 less mana when cast upon oneself, which is a 23% mana cost reduction. This mana is effectively “transferred” to someone else if you cast it on them. However, this gets back to the basic problem that Rejuvenation is too slow acting to not get overwritten by another healer. Even if a healer opts not to overwrite the Rejuvenation that’s been cast on her, another healer almost certainly will, at least in a 25-man raid.
Of course, the obvious solution to this problem is to modify the talent such that it reads, “Makes the target immune to group heals.” Heck, I’d just settle for making them immune to Brain Heal.
Spell Pushback Changes
A change with tremendous PvP-implications is that being made to the way that spell pushback works. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, spell pushback refers to the delay incurred while being hit and casting a spell. To quote the current description at WoWWiki:
The first attack will set your casting time back by 1 sec. Any [subsequent] attack will set it back by a lower amount. The amount decreases by 0.2 sec with every attack, down to a minimum of 0.2 sec per attack. However, no attack will actually increase the casting time. For example if you cast only 0.2 sec. of a spell, it would only be set back by that amount.
This means that three successful hits could delay your spell’s casting time by 2.4 seconds; four would delay it by 2.8 seconds. In Wrath of the Lich King, this dynamic is being changed:
- When casting a spell:
- The first and second hit will add .5 secs each to the cast time.
- All hits after the second will have no effect.
- When channeling a spell:
- The first and second hit reduces current duration by 25% of total duration each.
- All hits after the second will have no effect.
This means that the maximum pushback for any number of hits will be 1.0 seconds, making it much easier to deal with fast-hitting pets, Rogues, Feral Druids (sorry, guys), and a group of melee whose interrupts all happen to be on cooldown. While this may initially seem like a buff to healers and spellcasting DPS of all sorts, keep in mind that one of the strengths of a Restoration Druid is their ability to use insta-cast HoTs, both to “heal on the run” and to guard against spell interruption and pushback. This change will be make Priests, Paladins, and Shamans more competitive relative to Druids. Despite this, I view it as a positive change that will make healing less tedious and frustrating in PvP.
For a Warlock’s view on this change, I invite you to visit Horns’ post, Spell Pushback Gone.
Feral Summary
There are way, way too many posts regarding Feral tanking for me to post on a blog labeled “Resto4Life", and this post is already growing like the opposite of a shriveled up, rotten broccoli-looking Tree of Life, so I’ll try to summarize what I’ve read so far:
- Bears will become more viable MTs at the expense of some of their OT ability. It will still be possible to OT if that is your desire.
- With the addition of a new tanking class and improvements being made to Bears and Paladins, a Protection Warrior will no longer be required for a raid to be successful.
- Bears will not see the high armor values they saw in TBC due to the desire to streamline the items dropped in raids.
- Ferals they will get potions and weapon procs and are intended to be able to perform better than in TBC.
- Blizzard does not consider the "convenience" of a hybrid tank/melee DPS to be a compelling enough reason to bring Feral Druids to a raid. By forcing a Feral to choose between a primarily tanking spec or primarily cat spec, they hope to make each character more desirable overall.
- "We will be really disappointed if there aren’t bears main tanking Naxx and later raids, and cats that, if not consistently as high as Rogues, are at least a lot closer than they are now. "
- Druids are not yet considered "finished" and are due for a review before ship. "We’re not done with Ferals" is stated about 4-5 times.
- Blizzard does not intend for "talent bloat" (among existing talents) to be the way to force Druids to choose between Cat and Bear, but instead wants to introduce new talents that will strengthen one role or the other.
- Feral tanks need more attention to bring them up to par with Paladins and Warriors.
- Ferals may see an increase in utility to make them more viable, though no concrete information is available.
- Bears will have larger health pools and Warriors will have higher mitigation.
Finally, kitties can rejoice in their newfound faster feet with Feral Swiftness now active indoors. Just be careful as I’ve known a few cats to have difficulty avoiding walls indoors!
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@Kiryn: Have you considered the fact that Rejuvenation + Swiftmend is a 1.5 second cast while Regrowth is only 2? I know that you aren’t having trouble with mana, but a Regrowth will hit harder and provide more potential benefits (crit = Nature’s Grace and possibly Living...
I’ve been thinking (dangerous, I know). I heard that they were changing health/mana/energy regen mechanics so that instead of ticking once every 5 seconds or so (in the case of mana) to regen a chunk of resource, the “tick” would be shortened to provide a smoother curve of regeneration. Mana bars will restore bits of mana once every second or so, providing a Diablo II-like quality to the HP and MP bars (look at it zoom back to full!)
What if HoT’s all ticked every second? It would provide a much more visible visual cue to other healers that “this target is receiving HP back, as the next tic of a current live HoT could be as many as 3 seconds away, which is an eternity. A paladin with proper haste could get 3 Flash of Lights off in that time.
What’dya think, Phae? What if Blizz changed the tic on all HoT’s to 1 second and normalized their tic sizes around that timer?
Josh, that was my first thought too… although I understand it to be a continuous filling, rather than even a one-second ‘tick’. I agree, it would be very interesting if HoTs worked the same way. I don’t know whether the client-server tech is up to the job, but if it was I’d love to at least give it a try.
Another reason I’d like this. When I was leveling as a little kitty I became accustomed to timing my Pounce to the ’spark’ (in Pitbull) that showed the next tick, since it got me a free 20 energy. But it’s kind of a silly mechanism and WotLK cats won’t need it.
I do the same thing with timing a Swiftmend to catch the last tick of a Rejuv — but that’s silly in the same ways. If ticks went away, you might still wait as long as possible to Swiftmend but it wouldn’t matter so much exactly when you did it. And that feels better.
As for the other changes they all feel good. I am cautiously optimistic on the elimination of downranking, but I think it’ll take a good bit of playtesting. The one thing I’ll miss is using Rank 1 Moonfire to kill totems… but honestly I’d often forget and use max-rank anyway. It does seem like there should be a way to kill totems that doesn’t eat so much mana. But in the big picture this isn’t a game-breaker.
The Spell Push-back change is a pretty big change for PvE raiding also. I don’t have experiance with all of them but a lot of the BT and SWP encounters are very heavy on Raid wide damage. Some of that damage happens every second, causing a ton of push-back.
Considering all of the new AoE/multi-target heals they are handing out in addition to the old ones, it looks like this raid wide damage tactic may continue into WotLK. In which case this push back change is huge for PvE Caster DPS also.
Mmmm no downranking…. I can imagine some PvP frost mages complaining soon, if they haven’t started yet (frostbolt rank 1, anyone? ^^)
@Josh: You know, that would be a really nice change — if instead of “ticking”, HoTs increased the rate at which you smoothly regenerate health. I would have thought that such a change would have been resource intensive, but I can’t see why it’s not possible since they’re changing Energy and Mana. And to keep talents like Replenish functioning in the same way, they could modify it so that it still only has a chance to proc once every three seconds that the spell is active. Wonderful, wonderful idea.
@Cisko: I’d often wondered what Ferals meant about the Energy change “costing” them free ticks of energy before. Thanks for the explanation. And yeah. Bye bye Rank 1 Moonfire for totem killing, knocking people off the flags at graveyards, keeping people in combat, killing critters … T_T
@Graylo: Interesting. I hadn’t considered raid wide damage and its pushback effects, though I am guessing it’s going to trivialize the Hexx Lord Malacrass encounter.
@Ermengol: OOo … poor Mages! No more Rank 1 Earthshock either, though! Mwahahaa!
One can only hope that replenish can be triggered even by a overhealing rejuv tick. Who knows, seems to me that the tooltip could be slightly different if it only applied to effective ticks.
From a feral perspective, I don’t like seeing them state that druid tanking viability will be based solely on a large health pool. Lower mitigation, lack of block and parry, less dodge (with the agility change) and no magic damage reduction could lead to bears being less mana-efficient to heal compared to the other tanking classes, and thus less desirable in the long run.
The “convenience” of bringing a hybrid tank/melee DPS is currently a very compelling reason to bring Feral Druids to a raid only due to Blizzard dungeon design and the demands for very specific raid composition. Guilds are always going to optimize comp to increase their chances for success. Yet it’s a pain (and often unfair to players) to swap people in and out of a raid when you go from needing 3 tanks for one boss, and 1 tank on the next. To eliminate the “convenience” of a role-switching class they need to either change dungeon design or give everyone role-switching ability, which they may be doing with the rumored ability to toggle between two talent specs. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how it all works out.
I agree about the Loss of Dodge affecting druid tanks badly…Right now with my HP 16k unbuffed I am solely worried about my dodge. And I think with my high dodge rating ( running at about 60% on an average heroic with necklace, trinket procs/ my idol) is the reason why i am easy to heal…I don’t take a whole lot of dmg and that is what I want to do. I hope this doesn’t effect us too badly!
HAHA mages won’t be affected by some of these changes. Instead of spaming rank 1 Arcane explosions I’ll just cast ice lance or the high ranked Arcane Explosion to get flag cappers off (the most fun part of AB for a mage…..oh to see the horde’s angry faces). Now ill continue to ice lance totems (oh grounding totem how i loathe thee as a pom/pyro mage). Only bad thing is no more rank 1 frostbolts :(….thats ok we will have the freeze talent instead
Oh and they could nerf lifebloom a whole lot more than they did (and hopefully they don’t….I just got my resto druid to level 70 just 3 days ago).
Thanks for all the tips btw Phae. Your blog is the reason why I decided to roll a druid and he will be my main in wotlk.
im glad they are nerfing the pushback mechanic, mages are useless against a pet, while a lock can run around tossing dots, sure it benefitsd locks, but toa lesser degree
The idea of HoTs ticking faster would be a great talent deep in the Restoration tree. What we try to do in order to prevent healing over a druid’s HoT is have people in the guild all use the same addons. It definitely falls into Blizzard’s responsability to make HoTs more visible. Now the question is how you’re going to prevent a Chain Heal, Prayer of Healing or maybe a Tranquility to waste our Lifebloom. Of course with the current cost I rarely care that much if another healer casts over me. What’s quite difficult to determine is how the new spells and new ranks of existing spells will affect our healing patterns. Even with what I understand from the changes to Lifebloom, chances are we’re still going to spend a good chunk of our time maintaining our stacks. There will be added variety with Replenish and Nourish. I think that Nourish will most definitely rank among our most useful spells, but only right after Lifebloom. As for Healing Touch I still don’t see us using it but situationally. It’s most probably dungeon and encounter designs that will encourage the use of it even if it’s usable in Tree form. Currently casting it feels inadequate both because of the mana cost (without even factoring in the shifting cost) and the casting time. I have yet to see anything that adresses it in WotLK. Being able to NS+HT without leaving Tree form will be nice but just nice. It will save lives no doubt about it, but it already does.
Finally, in addition to the changes to the spells themselves, it is inscription that may adress some of our raid healing issues. Imagine this one: Your Lifebloom spell has a chance to heal the party of your target for 50% of its effect. Yes it’s overpowered as hell but there will be Greater Inscriptions that do affect how we can heal very significantly. There’s already one affecting Lifebloom’s duration after all.
I must be missing something… They’re eliminating downranking by making all ranks of spells cost the same amount of mana yet you say the higher ranks of Lifebloom in Wrath cost up to twice as much mana as the lower rank one. Erm… I’m confused! They can’t both be true.
@Icyslush: Rank 3 of LB cost 415ish mana before the change. Rank 1 was still available at its normal cost. With the elimination of downranking, Rank 1 now also costs 415, double what it does now.
From what I have heard the T3 2-set bonus, which has the (relatively) same effect as Replenish did give mana/rage/energy back even on “ineffective” ticks which will hopefully mean that Replenish will do the same.
Secondly looking at mmo-champion it seems as though LB will cost 10% of base mana making it use the second least amount of mana next to Nourish which supposedly uses 9%. (Can’t be completely positive on those numbers but from what I have read that is currently what they are)
@Phaelia: Thanks, that makes sense. Sometimes I have to tilt my head just so for my brain to fall back into the little hole and get everything working again.
So the issue is really is the increase in cost of LB going to be offset enough by increase in mana pool and in effectiveness. While I like being OP’d :), it does seem rather too much that I can keep casting LB at a medium pace pretty much forever and not run out of mana.
While Replenish kinda loses its luster in terms of regenning mana (in my opinion), I like the idea of it regenerating energy and rage. Its effectively up to 100 additional rage, or 200 additional energy per minute (assuming that the HoT is perfectly maintained over the course of a minute, and tics count whether any healing occurs or not). The extra rage/mana isn’t a huge deal for the MT of a raid, but its huge for someone who is “shadowtanking” (trying to remain 2nd on threat, to absorb boss abilities). Also huge for Rogues and DPS Warriors (I’m thinking more for Warriors than Rogues).
@Padwar: It sounds like they’re aware that Ferals aren’t where they want them to be, probably because of all the things you listed. I haven’t a clue what they could do to bring them closer to Warriors. Allowing them to parry would be nice. I’ve been parried by things that don’t even have ARMS when leveling my Feral Druid. Srsly.
@Mike D: Mr. Phae (who plays a Mage) suggested that Mages may still want to map and use a Rank 1 Frostbolt for situations where they need a fast snare. It will just be more expensive to do so. I’m so glad that you’ve decided to switch to your Druid in WotLK. I hope that you enjoy it as much as I do!
@James: Overall, it’s a good change and for the reasons you mentioned. Pushback has been so bad against players who have to stand there and take it.
@Zamir: My only concern about HoTs being changed into a form of regeneration would be the ability to associate the healing done with the Druid who cast it. Blizzard has frequently demonstrated difficulty with this (Lifebloom blooms not being associated with the Druid, for instance). I also wouldn’t get your hopes up too much for Druids and raid healing. It’s looking more and more like they want us to primarily focus on tanks with a lot of talents and a couple of Glyphs that make casting HoTs or direct heals on someone who already has one or more of our HoTs substantially better than casting them on someone who doesn’t. This is okay with me since it’s a very important role.
@Arrowen: Yeah, it’s my suspicion that even ineffective ticks should have the potential to trigger the proc. Otherwise, it’s really a waste of 3 talent points.
@Icyslush: Given the increased cost, I think we’re probably going to be forced to scale back our Lifebloom to no more than 2 3-stacks over the course of the fight. Hopefully there weren’t be many more 4-tank fights in WotLK.
@Yggdrasil: I’m tentatively hopeful about Replenish’s Energy, Rage, and Runic Power regeneration. I hope that it’s better than its mana regeneration. And you make an excellent point about its usefulness for the “shadowtank.”
Thanks for gathering together all these recent developments and sharing your impressions. In regard to the feral notes, I hope they don’t go too far with this desire to give cats and bears different “career paths.”
I can’t speak for everyone, but I know that I myself have no desire to be a “cat druid” or “bear druid”… I want to be a “feral druid!” There’s a dynamic between the two that makes the spec unique and endearing. Without it, I think I’d feel like we were just lamer versions of warriors and rogues. 
Being able to do the same level of raid DPS as a rogue wouldn’t make me feel any less lame.
@Tone: I agree, and I really worry about the viability of a “Cat Druid.” Rogues really struggle to justify their raid spots these days due to the superiority of ranged damage. How can a Druid compete if, as they’ve indicated, they still do less damage than a Rogue even when specialized?
this sucks so bad……my main is a mage and when im pvp-ing im already at a loss when it comes to rogues..not only can they get the jump on me but crippling poison shadowstep cloak of shadows tear me up to the point where ice armor isnt cuttin it anymore…downranking wiht arcane explosion was one of the few means of detecting them that i had *sigh*..another thing is frost nova i kno it doesnt cost much mana anyways but the highest rank doesnt freeze them in place for any longer than rank 1 and in tight pinches it helps alot…i can understand if it was a lock using hellfire rank1 to activate a *prayer of mending* or *earthen shield* at its highest rank but for example using rank1 soul drain to get a shard since the damage is horrible on the highest rank why not use to lowest for more mana efficient reasons? if i’m spending the gold to learn these abilities then i should be able to use them the whole time in my opinion…