@Emee: If nothing else, I think the fast-casting Healing Touch will help us stand up to Arena teams whose DKs make using HoTs a death sentence.

@Ermengol: Me too!

@Tiagantar: It’s back to 8-seconds. Return to face-pwnage.

@Oni: I definitely think bears should be able to fish by hopping into pools. And Cat Form should get a “VERY UNHAPPY debuff while swimming. ^_^

@Cisko: All these changes and new spells makes me wonder what kind of a gamepad I’m going to need when the next expansion is released. I’m already having a hard time fitting everything I want onto my action bars, even with an alt key.

And the feral fishing would actually be pretty easy to implement. There’s a quest in the Draenei starting area where you have to swim into a pool and use a net to catch fish. I imagine bears could do the same thing sans net. And maybe instead of fishing lures, bears could rub themselves with some stinky stuff to help attract fish!

@Ools: I’m afraid that I’m not an Engineer to test that, but I’ll ask my guildmates to see if any of them know. Good question!

@Hokuto: The chance to GotEM is pretty disheartening. I guess they decided that the combined effect was too powerful, even for a 5-point talent that’s nearly at the bottom of the tree. *Sad panda*

@Ermengol: I’m guessing there must be a reason for all these direct “raid” heals being made available to us. I’m expecting them to be useful in some regard.

@Arielore: Thank you for sharing your results; that’s very interesting! You should put that modified stopwatch addon up. It sounds really useful to theorycrafters.

I did alot of testing on the gcd of the fast HT. It is still 1.5s without haste. But at those casting speeds latency really chews into the rate of casts you can sustain without using a stopcasting macro.

I was experiencing wildly variable server latency between 92 and 332ms while testing using the below procedure. I was so annoyed I actually wrote an addon borrowing quartz methods to give real numbers with high precision. In fact the gcd was easy to find using the wowAPI.

GCD test procedure;
Use this macro once and then spam your normal HT button. But try and avoid getting the spell isn’t ready message by watching the the cooldown on the button.

/script Stopwatch_Play();
/sw 20
/cast healing touch

checking the results;
A GCD of 1.5 will result in 13.3 casts of HT
(QUARTZ showed a latency that was between 92 and 332ms)

my runs with 12.93% haste, 8.19%CRIT
1CG11111111111C==>15casts
111111CG11111==>13CASTS
1111111111111==>13CASTS
11CG111111111==>13CASTS
1111111111CG1==>13CASTS
11111111111111==>14CASTS

my runs with 1.45% haste, 13.64%CRIT
CGC(GC)G11CG1CG1<==13CASTS (SWEET GRACE PROCS TOO!)
111111111111<==12casts
CG11CGCG1111<==12casts
111CG1111111<==12casts

Key
C=crit
G=Natures Grace
(GC)=A natures grace cast that crit

Anyway, with so many good talents around, I still don’t see Healing Touch in the picture.. There are just too many choices before Naturalist, and I feel really comfortable with HoTs. Maybe it’ll be great for 5 and 10-man instances, but in 25, where there are many direct-heal experts, I’d rather keep my distinctive style

Also, what do you think about the new, nerfed “Gift of the Earthmother”? I was loving the idea about a 1s GCD… Oh well.

“# Gift of the Earthmother (Tier 10) changed to – Reduces the base global cooldown of your Rejuvenation and Lifebloom spells by 2/4/6/8/10%, and causes your Healing Touch and Nourish spells to refund 1/2/3/4/5% of their base cost for each healing over time effect on the target.”

I can only hope that we’ll have so much haste gear around that it’ll get inevitably to 1s anyway.

I would give a lot for bears to be able to fish like this. Or even better, to be able to fish in Aquatic form… how cool would THAT be? I don’t know how that mechanic would work… but the thought is so cool that I don’t care! Maybe a new Fishing ability: Feral Fishing. Trained from any fishing trainer – or even requires completion of a quest. Can be used in any feral form. Requires the same cast time as regular fishing. Operates at melee range, so to fish a spawn point you go stand in the pool. Doesn’t require a fishing pole — but you probably still want one to take advantage of +fishing lures and lines.

Won’t happen I’m sure. But I can dream!

ciskos last blog post..Druid items – from Healing to Tanking

Emees last blog post..Why I love Healing