Glub, glub, glub! Improve your piscatorial pursuits with this handy macro that will handle equipping your fishing pole, equipping a lure, and casting your line — all in one button! Fish will FEAR you!
Balance Tree … Uprooted and Transplanted
Published on August 29, 2008 by Phaelia 
Spells and Talents 
33 Comments
Incredible, shocking, awe-inspiring changes to the Balance Tree. The changes summarized below were derived from a comparison of the recently updated official talent calculator to the not-yet-updated WoWHead calculator for WotLK.
- Tier 1
- Nature’s Grasp is being made a base ability for all Druids. « Source »
- Nature’s Grasp been replaced with Genesis:
Genesis (5-point talent)
Increases the damage and healing done by your periodic spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.
- Tier 2
- Control of Nature is being rolled into Nature’s Focus. « Source »
- Control of Nature has been replaced with Moonglow.
- Focused Starlight has been removed from the game and has been replaced with Nature’s Mastery:
Nature’s Mastery (2-point talent)
Increases the critical strike chance of your Wrath, Starfire, Starfall, Nourish, and Healing Touch spells by 2/4%. - Nature’s Mastery, is now the pre-requisite for Nature’s Grace and Nature’s Splendor.
- Tier 3
- Nature’s Grace and Insect Swarm have swapped Tiers. Nature’s Grace is now in Tier 3; Insect Swarm is now in Tier 5.
- Nature’s Spendor has been added to Tier 3:
Nature’s Splendor (3-point talent)
Increases the duration of your Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Rejuvenation, Regrowth, Lifebloom, and Flourish spells by 10/20/30%.
- Tier 4: Celestial Focus no longer reduces casting time lost while when damaged but instead grants 3% spell haste.
- Tier 5
- Insect Swarm and Nature’s Grace have swapped Tiers. Insect Swarm is now in Tier 5; Nature’s Grace is now in Tier 3.
- Moonglow has been replaced with Improved Insect Swarm:
Improved Insect Swarm (3-point talent)
Increases your damage done by your Wrath spell to targets afflicted by your Insect Swarm by 1/2/3%, and increases the critical strike chance of your Starfire spell by 1/2/3% on targets afflicted with your Moonfire spell
- Tier 6: No discernible changes
- Tier 7: No discernible changes; change so that Improved Faerie Fire only affects spells not yet made to talent calculator
- Tier 8: No discernible changes
- Tier 9: Typhoon base damage increased from 400 to 516-517.
- Tier 10: No discernible changes; change so that Earth and Moon grants 13% additional damage for all schools of magic not yet made to talent calculator
- Tier 11: No discernible changes
I’ll leave the primarily Balance-focused changes to authors like Graylo to explore in depth. It’s shockingly apparent to me, however, that I’m actually going to have to make some tough decisions about how I will spec for Restoration. Insect Swarm has been moved entirely out of my reach, and Nature’s Grasp has been made a base class skill at 100%. I can’t possibly pass up the benefits from Genesis, Moonglow, Nature’s Mastery, or Nature’s Splendor. Nature’s Grace, formerly a talent that required a complete paradigm shift in your healing style, is now a perfectly attainable talent, requiring a mere 11-point talent investment. All told, Phaelia’s Balance investment will likely total 14 points:
- 5/5 Genesis
Increases the damage and healing done by your periodic spells by 1/2/3/4/5%. - 2/2 Nature’s Mastery
Increases the critical strike chance of your Wrath, Starfire, Starfall, Nourish, and Healing Touch spells by 2/4%. - 3/3 Moonglow
Reduces the mana cost of your Moonfire, Starfire, Starfall, Wrath, Healing Touch, Regrowth, and Rejuvenation spells by 9%. - 1/1 Nature’s Grace
All spell criticals grace you with a blessing of nature, reducing the casting time of your next spell by 0.5 seconds. - 3/3 Nature’s Splendor
Increases the duration of your Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Rejuvenation, Regrowth, Lifebloom, and Flourish spells by 10/20/30%.
This forgoes the 3% spell haste from the revised version of Celestial Focus which is something I’m not sure I want to do. All in all, a very interesting dilemma!
Related Posts
33 Comments
Trackbacks
Comments RSS Feed TrackBack URL
I am excited that BRK is back, though!
/cry I love you, ty for everything.
Whoa! This really changes how I’ll spec for Wrath. I’m definitely going with the 14 pts in balance. I really want that boost to the HoTs in Tier 1, so any build I do would have that.
What do you think about Improved Regrowth in Wrath? I’m thinking of either dropping that or not fully talenting it so I can pick up Living Seed. I’m on the fence between 4 pts in Regrowth v. 2 in Tranquility and 2 . . . somewhere else.
I think all Resto druids will have to invest 14 points in Balance to get Nature’s Splendor. That plus Gift of the Earthmother will be the biggest boosts to druid raid healing in WOTLK–greater even than our new chain heal and out of combat rez.
Oh my! Resto is no bloated (as opposed to having 15 points to spend on nothing.) I’m not really sure what to spend in resto spec….some of the items seem super useful (regrowth crit, tranquility timer, empowered touch, tranquil spirit) but i want those 14 points! Hopefully a final version will be announced so i can debate for hours on which spec to use.
Hmm does anyone have anything to comment re: deep balance? I know this is a resto blog (sorry phae), but it still seems rather bloated – everything just seems too good! Also nice to see the bear-focused talents in feral; it makes speccing a bit easier when there is clear differentiation between talent roles. I’m struggling to fit anything in the other trees when I’m speccing balance atm!
MMO Champion Talent Calculator
Mmo-champion has a new ‘Improved Tree of Life’ talent. The +15 to the aura has been removed (making our aura the same as the paladins aura). And they added :
Something pretty insane : Reduces the mana cost of your heal over time spells by an additional 5/10/15 percent
Now this could be a fix for the reduced mana-battery mechanics, but anyway you look at it..
20% tree of life : hots
15% improved tree of life : hots
9% moonglow (rejuv + regrowth)
Pretty mana efficient hots casting
Wow. Just wow. Got my current build, 14/0/57 as I imagine most would initially think of looking at that. It saddens me that I’ll have to drop Naturalist, as I always liked having that 3 second Healing Touch, but quite honestly it has no chance anymore.
This is what I’m looking at right now for speccing. Speccing into talents I really wanted to keep left me with two points leftover, which I put into replenish for the time being.
@Syderia – I think with this change, points in improved regrowth are even more desriable. If things stay as they are and Regrowth doesn’t revert to being a horrible mana drain, you can almost guarantee -0.5 seconds off your next spell. Although, in picking it up I’m losing Tranquil Spirit, which I don’t like. I suppose it’ll end coming down to whether we use Nourish or Regrowth more, but I’m seeing those 5 points as easily swappable at the moment. With Living Seed I think Regrowth might win out for me at the moment just because I think I’d like to have a spell I can count on to proc the seed, but again, we’ll just have to see how things go. Improved Tranquility I just can’t see as being worth passing up for reducing the cooldown so much, at least from a raiding perspective – it’ll be nice having it available for every attempt, even if you burn it at the end of a wipe.
Wow – big changes today. As others have said, this means we will actually have to make some choices before. Until this rev, you could get everysingle hot-related talent with points to spare, no longer… (especially if nourish/healing touch are worth casting)
These are some awesome changes. Phaelia, you sure you’re still staying resto in Wrath? ;p
Can someone explain to me the effect of Nature’s Splendor on actual healing done please? If my spell does X healing over Y seconds, does 3/3 Nature’s Splendor increase Y, but keep X and spread the healing X over the new timeframe or does it increase both X and Y?
Thanks
For the most part, anything that increases the duration of a DoT/HoT increases the total damage/healing proportionally. If Moonfire gets extended an extra 3 seconds for example, you get a full extra tic of damage. If lifebloom is extended by 2 seconds, you should get 2 extra tics of healing.
I’m playing with it now, and it’s weird, seeing a 9.1 second lifebloom.
Juggling lifebloom stacks just got incredibly easier, especially with the haste additions.
Fiordhraois last blog post..On Calligraphy
Holy Awesomeness Batman! I love it! I was kinda disappointed that we were going to still be this ho hum no imagination 71 point resto spec but i love these new changes! Now I actually need 4 more points to get everything i want! Damnit! >.<
@Nilianil I still don’t know about a 4 min CD on Tranq. It still doesn’t sound all that earth shattering especially since it’s still so far as i know a group heal. I might be wrong though since the change to buffs/debuffs but i have yet to see anything that mentions Tranq benefiting from these changes so i will assume it is staying a group heal only. I like your build except for the not maxing Replenish out. I would say maxing that out is better than maxing Imp. Tranq out.
Edit: i checked MMO-Champion and the blue post again. It’s still marked as a party heal and Tranq is never mentioned in the blue post. The blue keeps saying ‘Many changes’ which does not mean all so i think they are going to be keeping Tranq the way it is.
I noticed that they don’t include Nourish to Moonglow and Regrowth to Nature Mastery. No talent stacking i guess. Would have loved to have those stack with Imp. Regrowth and Tranq Spirit. With this build i actually lose 3% crit to Regrowth because the loss of Natural Perfection in my build but i would rather have these talents! ^_^
I think the 14/57 build is mandatory IMO. Those 14 points are just too good. Myself, when calculating it I took it out of all the Healing Touch related talents.
9 second lifeblooms with 1 second GCD? Yikes. Yeah. That’s stack 8 easy, and maybe 9 with low lag. Although, IMO I think the druids job is going to be to roll HoTs on the tanks and do top up duty with Nourish or Glyphed Regrowth in between. (Nourish for Raid, Glyphed Regrowth for Tanks.)
@Zackoria – Right, I suppose I should say I can get every talent I want with 4 points left over, the 2 I put in Replenish and the 2 in Improved Tranq. Personally, Tranquility is a spell of mine I really like and I feel is underappreciated. It can do a lot in certain fights, and I’m particularly thinking of RoS, or even Bloodboil, where a few druids popping it can really bolster the raid. Given that we’re getting flourish, tranquility might be downplayed even more (and rightfully so, depending on how good flourish ends up being). I’m at least going to experiment with the cooldown reduction, though 7 minutes would probably be fine, too. Like Innervate, there might be some fights where having Tranquility on a lower cooldown would let you pop it twice, which I enjoy the thought of, at least in theory
My current problem with replenish is that, to me, the 2% mana return is the biggest thing going for it (and possibly runic power), as rage and energy aren’t nearly as limited as mana is – Arena has shown us this. In my mind, since HoTs don’t tick on targets that are full, the chance of a rejuv even ticking on a target other than the tank is pretty slim, and then you’ve got a 15% chance of replenish kicking in. Even with the talents extending Rejuv to a 15 second duration, you’re pretty much going to get one tick of replenish from each Rejuv, assumming each tick actually heals the target. The more people you have in a raid, the more likely those HoTs aren’t doing their full thing. Let’s just say I’m hesitant to see how much one actually ends up getting out of replenish. If they code it so a target at full HP can still get the restorative effect from it, that would be a very positive thing and would encourage me to pick up all points in the talent.
It’s going to be one of those things I’ll want to play with before I see what I’m doing with it – both with Replenish and Improved Tranq.
Edit: And yeah, I lose my 3% extra crit for regrowth, too! I am saddened! D:
Double Edit: Whenever I put in a smiley I have to an extra line break in. Wonder why that is, hehe.
Has anyone looked at the numbers for Living Seed? I was testing it out on the Beta, and my regrowth crits gave me a Living Seed that healed for 75-200 (usually on the low end really)… I was pretty dissapointed with those numbers, I hope they change that, otherwise that’s the talent I’m dropping to squeeze in points elswhere.
To my knowledge, the kinks aren’t worked out of Living Seed. It says right there on the talent, it’s supposed to heal for 30% of the amount that the crit heal did, so a 3000 Regrowth should be putting a 900 seed on the target.
Perhaps it doesn’t include any overhealing you’ve done, but still, according to the talent you should be seeing much bigger numbers. If they don’t fix it … I’m not gonna’ bother with something that heals for the amount of one lifebloom tick.
Ah I didnt consider overheals… I wasn’t taking much damage from the mob that was hitting me…well nothing my regrowth ticks couldnt handle, so I did a lot of overhealing with each regrowth crit… I’ll do some more testing on that and report back!
Okay, you were right about the overhealing. This time around, with most of my regrowth crits healing myself (and a smaller % going to overheal), my Living Seed granted from 750 to 1000+ health. Much better numbers!
Darn, here I was thinking I had three easy extra points to spend elsewhere. =)
Oh, good, it is working
It’s nice to know that it only works for effective healing done to a target. I’m sure the info is out there somewhere, but I didn’t know it, hehe.
Oh. My. God.
I think most healing builds will have this as a solid base:
4 points left.. were do they go
4/5 tranquil spirit : Less mana-use on nourish (doubt we use HT much)
2/2 improved tranqility : Mostly a panic button in my eyes
3/3 natural perfection : 3% extra crit
3/3 replenish : i mostly use it on tanks, i don’t think they will go out of their mind if they don’t get +5 rage every 20 seconds.
3/3 Celestial Focus : 3% spellhaste on all spells. Reducing casttime and global cooldown time on all spells.
Can’t make up my mind on whats best yet.
I think replenish is being under estimated here. Of course it will depend allot on whether they count ticks that go through or not but it has the potential to be an incredibly powerful spell. I know what your saying about being more concentrated on the tanks but there is a very big reason it is only 15% max. The rogues talent Combat Potency is the one talent that i would say separates other rogues in damage. You ask any rogue and look at energy gained meters, this is the major difference in damage. More energy and rage for rogues and wars converts directly into added damage. Of course Replenish is allot less powerful as a talent than Combat Potency (20% proc of 15 energy and depending on off hand swing time but it would be really OP if Replenish was just as powerful)but for a heal to be able to out put that kind of potential dps and tps increase is phenomenal. This depfinetly makes Rejuv awesome for tanks, and slow raid splash damage. I can just imagine dps yelling at the other healers to stop healing them and let the druids tick their rejuvs on them. HAHAHA! ^_^
@Tildir In response to where to put those last 4 points, there are definetly going to be some talents that are going to shine more than others you have mentioned.
Celestial Focus may be 3 points but you have to put another point somewhere to get that tier so it should be 4/3 points in reality. With Nature’s Grace this makes this talent and haste in general lack luster since with Nature’s Grace Nourish can’t get any faster and Regrowth can’t go much farther ether; and Gift of The Earthmother negates wanting this for GCD reduction all together. Very lack luster for 4 points really. You really don’t want to go any farther than 14 balance points.
Natural Perfection is nice for 3% crit for all spells but there’s just better options honestly.
The 3 talents that would be up for serious discussion are Replenish, Imp. Tranq, and Tranq Spirit. These all have pros and cons. I have already discussed imp. Tranq and Replenish has been covered as well. The thing about Tranq Spirit is that you are spending 4 points on a talent that reduces the mana of one spell in our arsenal (that we will be using, i’m not counting HT). This talent will depend allot on how much we actually use this spell in our rotations/play styles. From just looking at it i think of it this way. This is a 5 point talent (maxed) to reduce the mana of one spell we will use (out of 5/6 spells) by 10% (8% for 4 points). Now just by this kind of thinking i don’t plan on taking this talent at the moment. As Ive said, allot of these things depends on how things work themselves out in live.
I’m not quite sure, if most Resto-Druids will put 14 talent points into the Balance-Tree. I for myself am thinking about dropping Nature’s Grace. The only interesting spells it affects for me are Regrowth and Nourish, so I will maybe max out Natural Perfection instead. Something like this build.
The 14 points in balance are a must imho. I will go for a built like this.
I got four points to spare, so I put 2 Natural Perfection and 2 in Replenish. The value of Replenish will have to be seen in game, if its imba 1 point more goes to Replenish, if not 1 more point to Natural Perfection.
It will all depend on how good Nourish will be, I might even consider 4 points in Tranquil Spirit. Since we got crit from Nature’s Majesty and Replenish is imho a bonus.
To test Replenish to see if you like it you have to put all 3 points in. Just putting 2 points in and then seeing if you like it is a waste of time.
Leiyan’s Future Spec
I have to agree with the comments against Nature’s Grace. I dont see myself using HT often, and even though Nourish and Regrowth would benefit, it would not be enough for a ponit there. Instead I’d rather max out Replenish and Imp. Tranq. I’ve always been a fan of a 0-threat Tranquility, and now that it reduces the CD to 4 minutes, I cant see myself passing that talent up!
13/0/58 for this tree.
Why is nobody talking about living spirit? 15% more spirit… Spirit is used for what? no buff of tree of life.. buff on mp5. is mp5 a problem… we are talking about 3 points!
[quote]
20% tree of life : hots
15% improved tree of life : hots
9% moonglow (rejuv + regrowth+ HT)
Pretty mana efficient hots casting
[/quote]
@Sydera: Dropping Improved Regrowth is an option, though I won’t try it until I’ve picked up Nourish. I’m personally inclined to keep it and Glyph it with the Glyph of Regrowth. I found RG spam quite helpful in the few instance runs I’ve done so far. But again, it depends on how I feel like Nourish can replace it.
@Riverrun: Nature’s Splendor is AMAZING. At three points, I get Lifeblooms that tick NINE time before expiring. It pretty much removes any doubt about Lifebloom being used as a raid heal, however, as you can’t afford to wait 9 seconds for a bloom effect. Still, with that and GotEM, it’s a lot lot LOT more fun to roll LB on your tank (though it’s really thrown off my rhythm and is going to take some adjustment).
@Mike D: I agree – it’s going to be difficult to nab everything we want. Maybe it’s a good thing we can have an alternate spec.
@Lovemace: Graylo wrote an article about the Balance changes, too. You can read it here. Here’s a snippet from his summary: “The new talents have made the Bloat issue a whole lot worse [...] To make matters worse, blizzard eliminated several of the useless talents in the Balance tree and replaced them with decent talents. I could easily spec in to 86 talents, but I will have only 71 points. That means I will have to skip 15 good talents.”
@Tildir: It is COMPLETELY insane. But let’s be careful how loudly we announce it. Healing in the Nexus, I only rarely had mana issues — and only when I forgot which of my buttons did what and spammed the wrong spells. Druids are going to have tremendous longevity in the expansion which is going to be a big plus in our desirability column.
@Nilianil: Your build looks very similar to what I will end up with, though I’m considering moving the 2/2 Improved Tranquility and 2/3 Replenish into Tranquil Spirit for its mana reduction on Nourish. Again though, it depends on how much I like Nourish. It could be a great melee heal because of its synergy with Flourish.
@Shika: I never thought I’d hope a spell would be worthless, but I’m really rooting to be able to discard Healing Touch altogether.
@Horns: These ARE some awesome changes … for Resto. ^^ The stuff for Balance is really nice, too, though and I’ve enjoyed my brief stints as a Boomkin, (aside from the horror that is the form) so I may decide to use a Balance spec as my “off spec” for when my raid has too many healers.
@Kuhbi: It actually adds new ticks to a HoT, rounding to the nearest second. So for instance, with 1 point in NS, I got 8 ticks on LB; at 2 points, I still got 8 ticks (though I’d probably get an additional tick from one of the other HoTs); at three points, I got 9 ticks. See Fiord’s response.
He helped me test it on beta!
@Zackoria: I’m in agreement with you on the Tranquility talents. They’re nice, but not as nice as some of the other options, especially for a raider.
Re: Replenish – Honestly, I’ll be really sad if I’m viewed as an Energy battery for the Rogues. That sounds completely anti-fun to me.
@Karmakin: I agree that Druids won’t be running more than 2 or 3 stacks of Lifebloom in the expansion (at least I hope not). It would drain our mana too quickly for a role that could be just as easily fulfilled by a well-placed Flourish and a few Nourish casts. Gone are the days of staring at my Grid addon and rocking back and forth so I don’t screw up my Lifebloom rotation. Thank, Elune!!
@fl3x: In my opinion, Nature’s Grace is just too much fun for the single point required. And if raids are anything like instances are now, we’ll actually be making fair use of direct heals — Nourish/RG — so it can actually be pretty useful!
@Raaff: I like your build, though I think I’d rather have points in Tranquil Spirit than Replenish. It will depend on how useful the Rage regeneration is vs. how often I cast Nourish, though.
@Thalosar: Living Spirit is still phenomenal, despite the change to ToL’s aura. Most of our regeneration comes from Intellect/Spirit + Intensity. That’s definitely not a talent I’m willing to consider dropping.
I still wonder why furor is in the resto tree, it provides no benefit to a resto druid.
@Phaelia: If I look now at level 70, I don’t have any mana problems anymore with Living Spirit (Int/Spi + Intensity). I don’t know how much MP5 (in combat) I will lose by not selecting Living Spirit, but the 3 points I will put then in Moonglow. For HT / Rejuv / Regrowth it will cost 9% less mana.
Let’s say that you only cast regrowth.. (Regrowth 675 mana and 2 sec to cast).
A. Living spirit + intensity (300 mp5 in combat and you start with 10k mana).
I think then you get oom after 34 secs (17 casts) (still got 625 man left).
B. intensity + moonglow (lets say then: 250 mp5 // 10k mana // 608 mana regrowth) I think then you get oom after 38 secs (19 casts) (still got 198 left ).
You can see that for Regrowth you can drop Living Spirit to get Moonglow. (with 3.0 patch) But this is not valid for all spells (LB), and I don’t know how important MP5 will be at level 80 raiding. I know we can get both Living Spirit and Moonglow. I see the comment about getting more points. I just want to point out that maybe 3 points is less important.
(I think i will keep Living Spirit also. MP5 stays always important).
Wow @ the changes. I don’t think I can go without those 14 points in Balance now. Pretty sweet. It’ll be tough to pick where to shave points off of though. WTB more talent points!
I’ve never made much use of Tranquility since lvl 40 or so, which apparently makes me odd. I never liked a spell that rooted me in place (pun intended) for such a long span of time, particularly with a party or raid spread out in a room. It just never seemed to work too well. Imp. Tranquility is still a waste of talent points, to me.
I’m considering actually dropping Natural and Master Shapeshifter talents. Natural Perfection may also go out the window. Tranquil Spirit and Naturalist are both very iffy. If I don’t take Naturalist at all, Empowered Touch is also a waste.
Also, something to consider, last I checked (its been quite a while) Nature’s Grace had no effect on GCD, so a spell reduced to 1 second from 1.5 (i.e. Nourish) will still leave the player unable to cast again for another .5 seconds, assuming they have no Haste.
@Lotha: I admit that there seemed to be little reason for Furor to be in the Restoration Tree prior to its change, but now that it benefits both Balance and Feral, it makes more sense to place it in the Restoration tree (which has always been viewed by Blizzard as the “catch-all” tree to avoid Boomkin having to take Feral abilities or vice versa).
@Thalosar: I’m personally planning to pick up both Living Spirit and Moonglow. I suspect with the changes to chain-potting, any advantage we can get in terms of mana regeneration will be welcome.
I’ve also had my share of OOMing from Regrowth spam in the first instance, but that may be alleviated at 80 with Nourish
@Emee: If you find a seller, let me know.
@Yggdrasil: I used Tranquility last night in Nexus but only once. Flourish is so good at preventing you from getting into a situation where you would need to use Tranquility that I think it makes those points even more obsolete than before. Not to mention the extended tick duration of Lifebloom makes it a lot easier to maintain HoTs on your tank while simultaenously throwing Lifebloom around your group. I was under the impression that Nature’s Grace had been changed to lower the global cooldown to 1.0 to avoid it being useless for Wrath spam…?
Hey there. Thanks for the great report on these changes. It’s pretty surprising (and exciting!) to have such big Resto news totally sneak up on us, under cover of the Balance tree! I picture these crafty talents walking into the room, all hiding behind Groucho Marx masks…
The 14 points you focus on are pretty amazing all around! I love seeing new options, especially since these talents also give Balance Druids a strong boost to their healing. They’re even enough to make a Feral jealous ( /daydream …I would *love* longer HoT stacks and extra crit/damage/threat on spell pulls! It would go well with all that spell crit we’ll have from our Rogue gear!
)
I almost wonder if Nature’s Splendor is the end result of what they’d originally conceived of as individual Druid glyphs. Extending the duration of HoTs and DoTs feels very glyphy to me, especially given the change it could have on play style.
Supercool!