SexyMap is a fantastic addon that improves the look of your UI by leveraging existing, in-game textures and spell effects to create beautiful map skins. Learn how to create your own, Druid-themed map in this tutorial by Korryna!
Ghostcrawler: Healers not to be Interchangeable
Published on September 25, 2008 by Phaelia 
Blue, Spells and Talents 
51 Comments
Blizzard Developer Ghostcrawler responded at length to the well-articulated concerns of Beta Tester Talruum of Lich King (US). Talruum’s generally PvP-oriented points included:
Druids currently struggle with group-wide damage because we don’t have an accessible group heal (one without a long cooldown) and are limited by our global cooldowns when casting HoTs. Flourish solved that problem but has since been nerfed into uselessness. - In PvP, Druids have difficulty healing themselves and party members through burst damage. This is one of the reasons that Druids are so reliant upon the ability to kite (read: to avoid damage) since it removes them from insta-gib range and gives their heals over time … time to be effective.
- Nourish was clearly intended as the Druid’s answer to Flash Heal, a spell designed to be high HPS, low HPM. Unfortunately, it is usurped quite handily by the superior Regrowth partly because of the design of Nourish and partly because of the amazing [Glyph of Regrowth].
Whether you agree with the points above (given their obvious PvP-slant, I’m sure there will be a number of detractors), Talruum’s post and subsequent player discussion sparked a number of lengthy responses from Blizzard Developer Ghostcrawler, the first of which was:
Would Regrowth >> Nourish without the Regrowth glyph?
The response was generally “yes,” due to the fact that Regrowth benefits from 50% additional crit 5/5 from Improved Regrowth (leading to easily acquirable Nature’s Grace and Living Seed procs) as well as setting the target up for a Swiftmend if necessary. It also benefits from the mana cost reductions of Moonglow and Tree of Life while Nourish does not.
Fearful of an impending nerf to what is regarded by many as “our last good heal,” Beta tester Tauraran of Murmur argues that Regrowth shouldn’t be nerfed in order to improve Nourish, because Nourish simply isn’t “worth saving”:
Please do not feel like you’re required to nerf every spell we have in order to make Nourish work. As it stands, simply removing the glyph really wouldn’t be enough. You’d have to nerf Improved Regrowth and/or Nature’s Grace to ultimately make Regrowth less effective and desirable (in addition to getting rid of a very cool glyph). Then, you’d have to remove the HT glyph, or nerf Empowered Touch, or both, because glyphed HT would still be out performing Nourish.
Nourish is not currently doing something that Resto druids can’t do. It seems like a nice heal for the offensive specs, but we just don’t need it. In the end, it’s just a 1.5 second cast heal. It doesn’t do anything interesting, aside from interact with HoTs in the most bland way possible. It could reset HoT durations, or cause HoTs to jump to nearby targets, or have some sort of RNG chance to do something cool (resto druids are somewhat lacking in the random RNG department >.>), or ANYTHING that Flash of Light cannot currently accomplish… and then it might be worth fighting for.
Beta Tester Nerothyn (US) goes onto to propose an interesting change to the current dynamic of Nourish whereby casting it would actually increase the duration of Regrowth and Rejuvenation by 3 seconds or the duration of Lifebloom by 1 second. I’m personally a little reticent about anything that arbitrarily messes with the duration of my Lifebloom spell since it could end up being confusing when maintaining a rotation (ex. having two Lifeblooms set to expire simultaneously because you cast Nourish), I do like the idea of it boosting the duration of our non-stacking, non-cyclical HoTs. As Nerothyn says, “Even the name makes sense since it’s ‘Nourishing’ your current HoTs to help them live longer.”
In response to fear that Regrowth will be nerfed to make Nourish a more attractive spell, Ghostcrawler goes on to say:
We don’t want to hurt Regrowth, because it is nice to finally see it being used a lot. My fear is that the glyph is making it a lot better than Nourish.
Ideally, and I don’t know if we can get them all to this stage, glyphs should be an option that changes the way you play your character, not just free talent points. In some cases, they are going to feel like buffs. It would be cool, for example, if the Regrowth glyphs let some Resto druids focus more on Regrowth while others used different spells. The Regrowth glyph is just so good, on top of the Regrowth talent, that it may be a non-decision to use which also ends up making Nourish useless.
Ideally you should want to use Regrowth and Nourish on some occasions. Flourish, Rejuv, Swiftmend and Lifebloom already have pretty decent niches. If glyphing for Regrowth makes you lean towards that spell, awesome. I just think the case at the moment is every druid will have that glyph and use Regrowth as a generic heal-all spell.
We’re not going to touch the Regrowth talent or other synergistic talents, at least not to solve this problem.
It’s safe to assume that we should anticipate the removal or adjustment of the currently highly desired [Glyph of Regrowth]. This is depressing given all of the nerfs we’ve been hit with lately. One can only hope improvements will be made in other areas to reduce the sting.
Nerothyn goes on to make the excellent point that Regrowth and Nourish already fulfill so similar a role (a fast-casting, high HP heal) that players will inevitably choose whichever is better and abandon the other. This goes back to his original call for fundamentally changing or replacing the spell we get at level 80: “Bottom-line is that Nourish needs to be changed. And not made into a better direct heal. It needs to be tweaked to make it a compliment to Regrowth instead of a replacement for it.”
The conversation is then more or less taken in a different direction by Beta Tester Arenis of Lich King (US) who asks, “Are healers being designed to be as interchangeable as tanks? Is it not going to matter what healer you bring any more than it matters which tank?” Surprisingly, this prompts the following response from Ghostcrawler:
No, that isn’t the goal. The reason is largely because encounters are designed such that you already want to take more healers on a raid than you have available specs. What I mean is that almost every 25 player will have Holy paladins, Holy priests, Resto shamans and Resto druids. And maybe a Disc priest too. Even a 10 man will have 2-3 healers, and most likely they will be different classes. That’s a different situation than the tank is in. There are very many raid encounters that require one tank while almost none that require one healer. By and large, I think we’ve done a decent job in giving healers niches, but that strategy hasn’t worked for tanks (and won’t really work for dps either).
Now, where we have needed to give healers more tools is in the 5-player case, and possibly PvP. The same tools are useful in unusual encounters, say a Loatheb where you can’t heal often, or a Void Reaver, where the paladin has to run around. A Holy paladin who is great at flashing heals on a MT can’t do that in heroic Nexus and expect to keep everyone alive. A druid can’t just keep rolling Lifeblooms up and keep everyone alive. Wild Growth is great in those situations. It’s probably not going to compete with Chain Heal, but it doesn’t really have to. It just gives you another tool in your box.
The part about it not being necessary to make all healers universally interchangeable more or less makes sense. The part about Wild Growth being “another tool in my box” makes me want to spit acorns, though (PTUI)! Honestly, if my 51-point talent is going to be arbitrarily handicapped to avoid encroaching on another class’s niche (like AoE healing for Shamans and Priests), I’d prefer something that’s a superlative of what I am supposed to be good at instead. Something like a new heal over time, maybe with an interesting dynamic. Something fun and exciting, not something lame and watered down. As it is, Groves of Druids are going to be shying away from dipping too deeply into Restoration, picking up more talents from Balance because what awaits us at the bottom of our primary tree is so lackluster.
Beta Tester Nessis of Lich King (US) challenges Ghostcrawler’s assertion that Druids (along with other healers) should continue to fulfill a distinct niche: “Tell us what those niches are? Efficient heals that take time to heal that will be overwritten? Obviously that’s not the case anymore.”
I’m struggling with this myself. At the start of Wrath, I believed that Druids would become more or less the premier tank healers, a role comprised of the following:
- Maintaining Lifebloom rotations on 1-3 individuals (since nerfed to be both less effective and less efficient) but less tedious than before thanks to a 1.0 GCD from the original Gift of the Earthmother
- Feeding the tank “threat-building” fuel in the form of Rage, Mana, or Runic Power restored from Replenish, giving us a good reason to keep a Rejuvenation on the tank, a prospect made less tedious by the addition of the [Glyph of Swiftmend].
- Nourish: a direct heal with significant efficiency bonuses when cast on someone with one or more heals over time (i.e., tanks of all flavors). If you remember, the original incarnation of Gift of the Earthmother also included the effect, “causes your Healing Touch and Nourish spells to refund 5% of their base cost for each healing over time effect on the target” making this spell an attractive efficiency choice.
- Flourish: a powerful AoE heal over time with a 15-yard radius that would have been ideal for casting on a tank and allowing the “overflow” to heal beleaguered melee.
As of build 8932, Lifebloom has lower throughput, significantly decreasing the HPS buffer it provides. The restoration effect of Replenish has been cut in half. Nourish is no longer affected by Gift of the Earthmother, ostensibly in an effort to make Restoration Druids run out of mana more easily. And Flourish has been gutted and transformed into Devs-Gone-Wild – I mean – Wild Growth, a spell widely regarded as not worth the database column used to store its spellpower coefficient. (Luckily, Wild Growth is now affected by the GCD-reduction from Gift of the Earthmother so we can “get the HoT on more people faster” – LOLOLOLOLOLOL!! I’m not bitter.)
So what’s left? A powerful Regrowth spell benefitting from great synergies among several talents and a Glyph we’re now lead to believe will be nerfed. And a new Restoration ability, Nourish, we don’t even gain access to until level 80 only to discover it’s no better than the spell we acquired at level 12.
Commentary on the Great Lifebloom Nerf (of Build 8962)
No, not the other one we saw earlier in beta. And not the one earlier this year that was subsequently repealed because they recognized that it would spell the end of the raiding Restoration Druid in TBC. The one last week that was even worse. Yeah, that one.
I’ve more or less come to terms with what I believe to be the reasoning behind the Lifebloom nerf. As painful and unfair as it feels, I believe that the decision to reduce its effective healing while simultaneously increasing its mana cost came as a result of the addition of Nature’s Splendor, an easily accessible Balance talent that increases Lifebloom duration by 3 seconds. I believe this talent and the Lifebloom nerf were intended to do several things:
- Make it feel less tedious to maintain rolling Lifebloom on 1-3 tanks while giving Druids increased flexibility to cast spells other than Lifebloom and simultaneously making the spell too expensive to set up rotations of 4 or more people (which many Druids regard as an obnoxiously boring playstyle). By extending its duration and lowering the GCD while simultaneously reducing the amount it ticks for, they’re ensuring it doesn’t become too efficient (unfortunately resulting in an HPS decrease).
- Increasing the duration of Lifebloom would make it easier for the “HoT and hide” style of Arena healing easier and more effective since the Druid could potentially duck out of line of sight for longer stretches of time while her HoTs continued to heal her partner. By reducing the HPS throughput of the spell, a Druid can’t rely as much on “set it and forget it” healing.
- Increasing the duration also makes the spell an (even) less attractive choice for raid healing as the final bloom of the spell only occurs ten seconds after casting the spell, at which point your target is likely already healed to full by one or more of the non-targeted heals (Prayer of Mending, Chain Heal, or Circle of Healing). I think Blizzard wanted to encourage the use of other spells – such as Regrowth or Nourish – for this purpose.
- Increasing the mana cost of Lifebloom has ensured that, while we may not have to cast it as often, we’re still paying the same amount of mana over time to maintain our stacks (42% increase in duration, 40% increase in cost).
An extremely efficient spell that heals for next to nothing has little value (and an extremely inefficient spell that heals for next to nothing – i.e., Wild Growth – has even less).
If things remain as they are now, come Wrath of the Lich King, I will feel like I’ve taken one step forward (hooray Revive and raid-wide Gift of the Wild!) and two steps back with a Lifebloom that costs more and heals for far less than it did before I installed the “expansion.” Instead of feeling like I have something to look forward to – with the notable exceptions of a fabulous new hairdo, some nice healing-oriented additions to my non-healing tree, and a more heavily armored me – I feel like we’ve been told to hop on the treadmill and try to get back to the level of effectiveness we saw in TBC. But hey, at least we’re not snared anymore.
Further Reading
- Resto feedback (long, blue please read) with commentary from Ghostcrawler
- R.I.P Flourish – 17/09/2008 with commentary from Koraa
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I am excited that BRK is back, though!
/cry I love you, ty for everything.
Just wanted to say thank you for putting so much of your spare time into this blog. You have helped me soooo much in being a better resto druid! Thanks!!!
Best blog evar.
I wish we never got the arena and the PVP golden age that came from it. I feel like most of the nerfs are coming out of are 2v2 and 3v3 showing.
wow…having read all our nerfs in various different blogs this one really puts it all in perspective… not sure if I even have hope in enjoying my resto druid in the expansion. :/
I guess there is a reason tree form looks so haggard.
I share your frustration Phae. It feels much more like an “un-expansion” for me at this point. I shouldn’t feel more powerful on my current 70 than I do on my 80 premade. There has been tons of great, objective feedback on all of this in the beta druid forum, and plenty of ideas to find a middle ground. I feel like they’ve mostly fallen on deaf ears so far, but I hope I’m wrong. If druids are as gimped as I feel they will be – come the Xpac – I’m sure they’ll re-balance some of this. Question is… how long will we have to wait?
<3 the blog!
~Aus
All the bad things aside, this post is awesome. Detailed, insightful, educational and nicely covers the woe of resto.
Now we just need the devs to read it and do something about it so we can be happy trees.
As if the acid rain weren’t enough.
Beathoovens last blog post..[Insert clever title here]
Looking at the holy/resto trees on all classes, I might be wrong but seems that healers aren’t getting much love anyway. I mean, I’m obviously glad for things like revive, no more snare, HT on tree form and +healing from spirit on imp. ToL, but none of them are actually surprising – some are just and plain obvious. Shaman’s new top talent is kinda of a joke, paladins seems to be happy (maybe because they get to melee something for a good reason now) and guardian spirit is situational and binded to a fairly long cooldown. All new talents before that are something like “your healing spells heal for more/faster”. Nothing exactly fun.
Nourish and Wild Growth are just gimmicks, not tools. I used to be glad with nourish refunding mana and getting boosted by every HoT on the target, but like you said, a spell acquired at lv12 outperforms it.
I agree with your idea about giving us a talent that improves what we already excel at. For example, warlocks’ 51-pt destruction talent Chaos Bolt: it will be their highest DPS, DPM and DPCT spell that also pierces absorption effects. It’s not their Wild Growth, it’s more like their imp. LB that heals for 200%, which ticks can crit and it’s undispellable. They’re going to use because it’s good enough.
So yeah, why can’t we have such tree-defining talent?
-applauds Phae-
There was a reason why I stopped following WotLK forums and seeing what’s upcoming for us… as ferals, as trees, and even a bit on my hunter and mage. Every time I do stop and look, though, a horrible feeling comes creeping into my stomach: what nerf bat are we going to be hit with this time?
Some of the stuff at the beginning sounded fun, and even enjoyable (our well deserved and long awaited for out-of-combat resurrection, for one), but… with how things are looking, I probably will be able to not play LK until December, and just read the feedback on how it is live before I plunge in and witness the horror myself.
I do hope that *something* will be done about it all though… although, heaven forbid that Blizzard buff us in order to re-fix us.
Lin [EG]s last blog post..I am Perfectly Innocent… and Perfectly Distracted.
I don’t see the end of the world coming just because we got some nerfs. At first we were close to all-powerful in TBC. I don’t play arena (used to 10/week a little), so I focus only on PvE, while it has to be noted that PvP-ers agreed that druids are overpowered. In BG-s, where I farmed some items, I could easily be top of the heals or defended a flag alone agains 2-3 DPS-ers and such.
In PvE if the healing meter was not topped by a druid, it could only mean a very crappy druid, or too many healers in raid who have nothing else to do than overwrite HoT-s. And the only occasions when I had to use innervate on myself were the ones when other healer(s) died, combat res was on CD so I had to spam regrowth.
We were not popular, and didn’t have any really spectacular abilities like Brain heal, or Blessing of Salvation, we saw huge 7000+ numbers jump up maximum once every 3 minutes, while others had a chance ever 2.5 secs. (and the tanks saw the same rolling in green numbers and names) We had to keep up LB on several tanks, and yes our heals were overwritten by redundant paladins and shamans who were stacked for their buffs, not their heals. We were invisible, we rarely got a “thank you” and most people don’t like this.
But the numbers were on our side. No other healer class had anything close to our raw HPS and HPM. No other healing class had combat res. The paladins and us were the only ones who could defend themselves from loose adds, or from being snared. No other healing class had so many “oh shit” options like us. If the tank get crushed to 5%, a priest or paladin could just hope that he dodges until heal reaches. We had not only NS-HT (shamans also had it) but swiftmend in every 15 seconds.
We could have all these powers because they were invisible to others so no one envied us. If we could keep all these AND get something visible, that would be the end of all other healing classes. You may not notice how huge nerfs they got. The totems affect the raid, similar buffs can come form several classes, salva gone. So no more free spots for paladins and shamans. No more “Come buff the raid and do nothing else (=spamming FoL)”. No more “whoa healer priest gear dropped”, but “whoa gear dropped for priest, mages, warlocks, (nonferal)druids, (nonelemental)shamans or holypalas”
Stop seeing the end of the world!
- We have the strongest direct heal and it seems to stay. And we have spirit on healer PvP gear, so we can spam this beauty in 1.3 secs.
- We have the strongest AoE heal, every 4 minutes, no threat
- We are still the only ones with combat res
- We still have the best hots in game, decreased GCD, increased duration, instant cast
- We still have the greatest raid aura in the game and no longer locked into a caster-hating tank group.
- We can still defend ourselves and we no longer has to stop healing while doing so.
- Our gear is safe from mages, locks and priests, and not many shamans and paladins will want spirit.
This is a well thought out; constructive post and I wished I never read it, for I am now depressed. So at the moment, I will be investing $50 for an expansion pack, to use nerfed 3 year old talents and 2 new talents that won’t be moving from my spell book to the hot bar. With more nerf’s to look forward too, I’m excited.
The worst part is, Nourish seems to be the Linchpin to this movement of entropy, maybe this is part of Arthas plan (ya get it.. see what I did there? .. Lich King, Linchpin.. ahhh forget it, you guys are no fun). This entropy may be fun for role-players, giving them extra fuel for the dying visual look of tree from; the rest of us won’t appreciate specking to a Tree-of-Life that has become inert.
Awesome post, Phae. Appreciate the time you put into it. And though I agree a lot with Ghostboci, I’m still pretty bummed. The bad is outweighing the good at this point for me. And giving us a 51-point talent that isn’t worth a darn is full of fail.
/sigh
I know that if we are as weak or things are as unbalanced as they feel, they will eventually fix things. The key word there is eventually. Hopefully it’s sooner than later, or there might be a lot of frustrated trees out there.
I wouldn’t get your hopes up. It took them a year to admit that mage dps wasn’t outperforming everyone else like they said it would and “fix” the damage tax. They’re not renowned for moving quick on stuff like this.
Shinanos last blog post..HEEL BARES DURID!
I can’t help feeling that all healer and tank classes are losing some of their uniqueness. I can understand the reason why Blizzard is changing some of the mechanics but it’s taking some of the fun out of the game for me. The great thing about druids was their ability to cast HOT’s but it seems that now we are being forced to use more direct heals which is disappointing to me.
I don’t really understand why we needed Nourish to begin with, we already have Regrowth which is far superior and with HT being castable in Tree and a 2.5sec cast (with Naturalist talent) it will certainly be more useful to us than in the past.
I can only say that I hope that some of the talents/spells that were nerfed, will be buffed again in the near future, not necessarily to what they were in the original beta build but in a form that will make them more useful.
I agree with Ghostboci – we’re a hybrid class and may not have all the bells and whistles of more specialised classes, yet we still have awesome raw healing power. Being hybrids, we’re a great class to bring along to new content because of our flexibility. Yet we’re also awesome for old content because our heals are even more powerful once we know what’s coming and begin casting earlier.
That’s the trouble with keeping up with beta changes – you get excited about some new ability that’s first implemented as a *concept* and then tweaked through consecutive patches. It’s not a nerf when they finally pin it down to a specific (often) weaker level than the “original” concept, because ultimately all beta stuff is pie in the sky. That’s the point of betas – to see how a new spell plays out and adjust it so it fits to the rest of the other new stuff they put in.
If you can’t handle the “nerfing”, stop reading beta news. Or even better, get yourself a beta key and go test out the stuff yourself and tell Blizzard why it’s such a big nerf.
@Marveen
Many, many druids are doing that very thing – testing it and explaining why it’s a nerf. I’m also puzzled by your statement that as a hybrid, druids are great to bring to new content. Healers – across the board – are pretty much locked into healing on most new content. A hybrid dps class is usually able to do the opposite – a good one will do some emergency healing when things start to hit the fan. But restos (and holys) are usually locked into keeping people alive. It’s actually more the reverse – on older content that’s outgeared, we (well not trees, but other healing specs and classes) can spare the mana and the time to do a little bit of damage.
My biggest issue is I am looking at the current build and realizing that using it, I won’t be as successful or, more importantly, as happy as I was healing in TBC. If this goes live, I just don’t think I’m going to be able to do it again. I was resto from 1-60 and again from 60-70 and I love healing. But this expansion is bringing me no joy and I went from really excited about seeing new content to just – not. I don’t want the patch to hit and when it does, I might have to face not being resto for real.
Hiya Phae,
Looks like you and I have been reading the same forum topics. I posted in reaction to the same ignorant comment from Ghostcrawler about Regrowth over on Matticus (though for his sake I put as happy a spin as possible on the whole thing).
Yes, I feel like the sky is falling (well, it IS), but I just think they’re not done with us yet. I’m expecting, to be quite honest, a nerf to Regrowth or the Regrowth glyph and a buff to either Nourish, Wild Growth, or both before the patch hits (or, a week after).
I think the devs are determined to break Lifebloom, which is a damn shame for people who have been raiding at 70. Our whole spell rotations are based on it. I mapped it to both a key and my mouse wheel so I could hit it with either hand, hit it while turning. Those habits are hard to break. Right now my guild has just killed Illy and Archi (whew!) and we’re going to farm for a while, knowing that it will be nigh-impossible to both adjust to the 3.0whatever mechanics and go on to Sunwell at the same time. What is the Archi fight going to look like with a weak lifebloom? My whole healing strat in that fight is run like hell, be fast and avoid stuff, and get as many hots as possible on the tank AND the melee.
What the devs don’t realize is that restoration druid, with all its current limitations, is quite playable in any environment. I’ve learned to heal 5-mans, though that’s the hardest (and it involves being really quick and a lot of lifeblooms with judicious use of tranquility). The only thing I couldn’t compensate for in 5-mans was the lack of a rez. Now THAT I’m thoroughly happy about. I don’t really need Wild Growth for anything–it seemed fun, but I now I may not spec into it, pretty animation or no. Even the tree snare I don’t mind. I actually LIKE shifting between tree and caster–it adds a level of skill to what we do. Trees also have, of all the healers, the best means of dealing with damage on themselves–lifebloom stacks. I have self-bloom keybound as well, so I can roll them on myself if things look ooky (which…they often do). If I take a bloodboil by mistake, no prob, don’t have to call it out. Doomfire all around Archi? I can run through it to get in range of the MT, knowing that my lifebloom outheals the debuff. I don’t think it will anymore. There’s a totally different playstyle that will come from no longer being snared. What I’ll miss most about trees’ limitations is very simple–I’ll not see my character with all her pretty gear very often. Now I really, really want a nicer-looking tree and for elune’s sake, leaves that change color with the seasons (not hard to do! Shift em with holiday event patches). I want yellow-green for spring, brilliant green for summer, red-orange for fall, and what we’ve got for winter. Is this too much? Or else no leaves and a dusting of snow for winter, but that’s much harder to animate.
Either that, or I want to be a willow rather than a scrubby little oak.
In any case, change is hard, especially for those of us who really love the game right now, as is. I’m sure Vanilla raiders felt this way when 2.0 hit. I didn’t know enough to care at that time. I’m sure I’ll still be able to play, and I’m certain I’ll still be good at it…but, but…no one likes the nerf bat.
I think the root of all our woes here is 2v2. Blizzard wanting them to be an e-sport, and the game is now center around arena. The problem is not every one does do arenas, and if the game becomes to much centered around arenas the PvE’ers might not want to stay around, I fully believe all the nerfs we haver received is because of the arena babies that when they loss they go right to the blizzard suggestion forums and QQ about the classes they lost to and that said class needs nerfs. At this time druids are over represented in 2v2, but that is not a function of druids being over powered, but resiliences making druids viable in arenas, since druids don’t do well with burst damage, and resiliences lowers the chance of burst damage and when said burst damage happens lowers the amount of damage of said burst damage. I remember back in S1 and S2 resto druids were a joke, in S3 they introduced drinking in arenas and S2 gear became buyable with honor, now every one had resiliences druids with no buffs went from being a joke to being over powered.
What really scares me is that reading the druid beta forums, many have said (and there are plenty of posts in the thread you point to, read the first 5 pages and got do depressed to read on) that in PvE druids are having real trouble keeping up as a healer in end game content, and that is what I play for, if end game content is removed as something druids can do because they are not viable in it, I don’t see my future in WoW, I am a healer and the prospect of leveling another class just so I can heal is unappealing, and given I like the druid class to much, so even if I had the will to level another class, I would not enjoy it as much as my druid.
I would like to see something completly different for our 51 point talent. I have mentioned this before,let us throw an apple that causes an interupt for a few seconds and then heals party members within 5 yards or so for a token amount. It would be so deep in the resto tree that is would not be viable for the arena. Too late now, but it would be nice to do something else in tree form.
Just wondering. What are the new Lifebloom coefficients for spellpower->healing on ticks (and if it got changed, on the bloom)?
Erdluf, I can’t say as to what the coefficients are, but things I can say, is I read it does not scale very well to 80. Also I am on the PTR with the same gear I have on live. On live lifebloom ticks for 274, on PTR 211. Both in Tree form. I will admit at level 70 (again I have read it does not scale well to 80) the nerf is not all that bad but it does cost 264 mana in tree form (up from 170 in tree form on live)
So more mana for less healing. You can see my gear at http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Korialstrasz&n=Drun so you can take a look and judge for your self how good or bad my gear is, and my spell power on PTR is 1153.
I know I am not the writer of this blog, but I thought I would give you some numbers I am seeing (if you don’t want my numbers sorry) I did log into both and did a flight form drop and tree form lifebloom for you.
Build on live is
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/druid/talents.html?tal=00000000000000000000000000000000000000000050551351531522531351
Build on PTR is
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?druid=00000000000000000000000000000230533312530522531053013010000000000000000000000000000
@Animalia: I’m so glad. Thanks for the kind words!
@Wynn: Well, I think that PvP is only a part of the source. I think a big reason they’re adding more environmental factors to the new Arena is a way of “balancing” a class that can LoS well without having to obliterate them in PvE.
@Wôden: I’m hopeful that they won’t allow things to stand as they are. Restos were in a similarly difficult position at the start of TBC, making it hard to justify bringing them along on raids. If that happens again, Blizzard will have to bump up their viability. I’m actually more concerned that all healers seem to be getting short shrifted in the expansion. There just doesn’t seem to be as much to look forward to for us as there is for players of other roles.
@Lotha: I figured I just wasn’t drinking enough water.
@Ausry: My biggest hope is that it takes time for them to process the outcry from the latest round of nerfs, and that we’ll be seeing a “booster” build soon, sort of like what they did to Priests (nerf then repair some). Thanks for the kind words.
@Beathoven: Thanks — writing this post was cathartic, helping me clear some of the muck and hopefully making it easier for me to write about more positive things.
@Hokuto: I’ve read similar things. That a lot of healers are upset because they see their DPS specs making leaps and bounds in terms of effectiveness or just general fun factor while we are staying more or less the same. It looks like Blizzard may be reverting to the design philosophy whereby raid encounters are balanced around healer mana and throughput. While the latter can be a fun challenge, it’s NOT fun to feel like you’ve been arbitrarily handicapped just to slow down your guild’s progression. And balancing around limited mana pools is NEVER, EVER fun for any caster.
@Lin: I think you’ll be surprised at just how much of a difference having Revive makes. I’d like to think that people didn’t die very often with me as their healer, but it’s no longer an “OH NO WHY OH WHY DID I CHOOSE DRUID!!!!” when they do now. Instead, you can make jokes at the dead person’s expense since you’re able to bring them back.
@Ghostboci: From what I understand (not having done the content myself), Druids really struggled in endgame content where AoE heals like Circle of Healing and Chain Heal were king. Of course, there were encounters where Resto Druids really shone, but these fights were less common, and I don’t think we were ever the end-all, be-all healers. At the same time, Lifebloom rotations were incredibly tedious to maintain (thankfully, they’re taking steps to help alleviate this).
To respond to your bulleted points:
- We have a great direct heal (not the strongest), but they’ve all but said they’re going to nerf it. I’m thrilled about Spirit on PvP gear, too, though.
- Tranquility is worthless in 25-man raids and not even worth mentioning. Threat from healing in raids is really a non-issue, so I would never spend two points in Imp Tranq. once I’m raiding more than instancing.
- We may be the only ones with combat rez (which is awesome), but Shamans have Reincarnate, and Paladins have Divine Intervention which are also great tools that help make them more desirable.
- We certainly have the best HoTs, but, with the exception of Renew, we also have the ONLY HoTs. I would hope they would be the best!
- Protection Paladins have/can get an aura that’s equivalent to ours for a much smaller talent point investment. I AM thrilled about no longer being locked into the tank group, though.
- I’m not sure what you mean about defending ourselves? We can now cast Roots indoors which is a big help, but doing so does make us stop healing (not that it shouldn’t).
- I agree that we’re better off than many with regard to itemization … assuming they create enough leather gear!
And even if we had been the best healers in TBC (which we weren’t), it wouldn’t justify being brought down below par in the expansion that followed. I was happy with my role as a “support” healer, but I’d like to feel like I’m progressing, too!
@Vreenash: Nice Tree of Life analogy.
@Emee: Yeah, if they’d just give me something fun and interesting for a 51-pointer, it would lessen the sting from other nerfs a great deal.
@Yikes … they did, however, act relatively quickly to correct the issue of applications 2 and 3 of Lifebloom not getting the +Healing coefficient. I still remember telling people “OMG YOU ACTUALLY STACK LIFEBLOOM?!” ^_^
@Moonbreeze: I agree. They should scrap Nourish altogether if it’s intended to replace Regrowth. The two spells are simply too similar to coexist in any meaningful fashion.
@Marveen: Being a “hybrid” class doesn’t really have anything to do with it. All healers are hybrids, having access to one or more non-Healing specs (be it tanking, DPS, or both). I expect to heal on average at 100% of the capacity of any other healer. The “hybrid” mentality has long ago gone the way of the dodo. And I’m not READING beta news. I’m actually IN the beta. Not that I would need to be to understand the idea that my Lifebloom will tick for considerably less on day 1 of the expansion than it does now. Yes, things change in beta, but it doesn’t take a game developer to appreciate the fact that we went from a class with an obviously overpowered (and fun) AoE HoT to one who will avoid their 51-point talent like the plague (and Druids WILL avoid the plague like the plague thanks to DKs!).
@Heike: I’m pretty depressed about the state of Restoration, too (was it that obvious), but I can’t imagine speccing Phaelia any other way. I too went from a feeling of excitement to a feeling of dread. I just hope that 25+ pages of posts about the state of Resto don’t fall on deaf ears.
@Sydera: Oh, thanks for pointing your post on RG out. I actually missed that one (but bookmarked your “Talented Druid” post for an upcoming spotlight). I don’t know why you’re consorting with those Priests (one of them a Hordie!) anyway.
I would LOVE to read your perspective on the 3.0 changes since you’re still raiding. I’m curious how much harder that content will feel for a Restoration Druid with the heavy-handed nerfs to Lifebloom. I’m also a bit depressed to never have to shift in and out of Tree form, mostly because the form is SO UGLY. TBH, in instances and farm content I spent 95% of my time in caster form just because it looked so much better, but that’s not really an option in Wrath because of mana issues and the fact that we no longer need to shift out to move, decurse, or cast HT.
I love your idea of changing Tree skins with the seasons, though I want a new model, too!
It sounds like we’ll see one … eventually.
@Drun: I don’t agree that the game is centered around Arenas. They’ve allowed Restoration Druids to dominate in 2v2/3v3 for too long for me to accuse them of nerfing us for the sake of PvP. Rather, they seem to be making changes to the Arenas themselves to put us at a disadvantage while adding a “counter” class in the DK. That isn’t to say that I don’t believe that SOME of these changes were made to reduce our effectiveness in Arenas, but I imagine their hope was that they could help us in other areas simultaneously so they wouldn’t sting quite so much.
@Lotha: I’ve often thought it would be nice to give Druids some form of “Good Berry”-esque spell. We could activate it to allow raid members to “harvest” a consumable from us, be it healthstone-esque, something that granted a HoT, something that restored Mana/Energy/Rage/Runic Power, or something that cleansed one or more debuffs. In addition to being useful, it seems like it would be fun. It would have to be pretty stellar to be our 51-point talent though! I’d prefer to see something that, when activated, augments all our currently running HoTs for a certain period of time or maybe something that caused any HoT we cast to get cast on a second target. The latter, however, would probably be grossly overpowered in smallscale PvP, so we’re not likely to see it.
@Erdluf: I have been meaning to test that, but I’m embarassed to say that I haven’t taken the time to do so. Maybe someone else can comment on it.
That’s what I call a whiney post!!!!! Whine whine whine, with a bottom line of whine. Why dont you worry about upping your skill and creativity with the game, instead of whining about how blizzard have spoiled your fun and writing long descriptions of your fantasy healing setups that have nothing to do with reality. If you have so many great ideas about class design, why dont you go work for a games company? Of course, you dont know !@#$ about MMO class design. Blizz commented recently: “all classes have changed. You wont like what we’ve done to your class. But you’ll think that the other 9 classes are overpowered”. You fall right into the category of same-old same-old whiner
LOL! You know I’m just messing with ya! I know the blogosphere is awash with posts like yours – endless fantasising about what you’d like, and how/why blizzard dont deliver. You and 6 million other people brother. Everyone has their own ideas about what they’d like, and there IS no concensus.
I thought I’d post a comment like this for a different point of view, rather than enter into arguments with which I feel no traction.
wtf happened to 3min cooldown on tranquility??? i thought that was a change coming in wotlk? guess not!
It really isn’t adding up well in my head, but I’m hoping this is just the tuning process. If you’ve ever tuned a stringed instruement, it sometimes requires you to bracket the correct pitch, by tuning the instrument far too high, and far too low. I’m HOPING that is what is going on here.
Naturally, if this is the state of Restoration when the expansion goes live, my Restoration Druid will be shelved until either the issues are fixed, or perhaps indefinitely. I see no point in playing this class and spec at a new level cap as it currently stands. It will be morbidly underpowered, much the way it was at the launch of TBC, virtually requiring the player to either use it as a somewhat hamstrung Paladin/Disc Priest, or have a “back up” healer in a 5 man. Both scenarios beg the question for a group: Why not just have a healer that can actually perform the way they were designed to?
I’ll feel a little bad for encouraging a friend to level up a resto druid to heal my Warrior tank, if this is what comes to fruition with the class.
@ Kindal: the smiley doesn’t make me like your extraordinarily hostile comments any better. In fact, it makes you look like a total hypocrite!
I mean, why comment on a blog if you don’t think a person should be interested in their subject? And yes, criticism of the status quo is and should be a fundamental part of any type of journalism, even hobby-oriented journalism.
@ Kindal: Thank you for a reply that serves zero purpose, minus making yourself look like a jerk. We all wish to return you the few minutes you spent smashing your face on they keyboard just to insult someone.
Anyway, I don’t think anyone should quit their Druids in fear of the issues. Don’t shelf ‘em yet! Give Blizz a little time to fix it. Because when they do, you will be really sad you retired your Druid! IMO, anyhow. Give it some time, don’t give up that easily!
I’m definitely agreeing with Phae’s thoughts on alot of these issues. I think what bothers me most is that there is no discussion or acknowledgment of our problems. Our feral and feathered brethren get alot of blue time, discussion and attention (which I don’t begrudge them! They need it!). I just wish we could get a simple ‘we hear you. we’ll look into it.’
@Ghostboci: Due to damage ramping, hots are no longer enough to stave off high-end dps in PvP. And endgame healing is very much against druids. I’m in a far-progressed sunwell guild and I have to fight with 3 other tree druids for a single raid slot allotted to us. To contrast we bring 4+ resto shamans (in addition to their dps brethren) whenever we can. So no. Druids aren’t ‘fine’ in endgame (well they have ninja magic on Mu’ru … but aside from that)
Any deep BT and post meters are NOT topped by druids. That spot belongs to priests and shamans. This isn’t because the druid is bad, but because our heal techniques cannot compete with the burst AOE healing presented by the other classes along with cheap-quick-heal support for touch up. Telling druids that they are ‘bad healers’ for not topping the charts when we are competing against virtually mathematical impossibilities is not well researched.
- We do not have the strongest direct heal. That belongs to paladins with Beacon up on their target. They can also insta-cast it after a holy shock crit.
- How do you define ’strongest’ AoE Heal. Tranq is not mana efficient, and over say 4 minutes worth of time every other form of AoE healing (chain heal, CoH) is vastly superior in healing done. Every 4 minutes does not an AoE heal make. Its a hail-mary ability akin to the warrior ’shield wall’.
- We definitely have a combat rez. Still no bubble, self-rez or death-cheat via spell though. So not really ahead there. Also so do moonkin and ferals (who bring other awesome raid-wide buffs and abilities) making resto not solo in the b-rez area.
- We definitely still have the best hots. Overpriced, making us run out of mana now, not-superior-scaling, overwriteable hots. But they are the best.
- Our 41st point raid-aura is duplicated by the 15 point paladin aura, so its clearly not ‘the best’.
@Kindal: I don’t think its so much that we want a fantasy of healing. We’re just not seeing what we’re supposed to do with the reality so much. Saying ’spend your energy on being innovative is fine’. I think many of us have tried and are currently trying. The problem is after spending that energy what if we still have nothing. Then what?
@Phae: What worries me is that Ghostcrawler recently said ‘if you ask us and we don’t have a positive resopnse, you tell us we’re dumb or that you’re quitting. That’s hardly helpful. Its better for us to not respond.’ I’m very frightened and saddened that those 25+ pages of posts on the state of resto are not falling on deaf ears, they are falling on ears that think we’re doing just fine.
@Kindal: How did you know about my soft spot for wine? I thought only my guildmates were aware from my drunken forrays into … well … just about everywhere. ^^
You might just be “messing with me,” but your post isn’t constructive, helpful, or insightful. You might disagree with the above sentiments, but it shouldn’t surprise you to see a Restoration Druid blog commenting unhappily on changes that adversely affect Restoration Druids.
Ironically, I doubt that you yourself could write a blog that wasn’t awash in negativity. Mr. Sunshine and Rainbows, you are!
@Theother: I don’t think I ever saw a 3-minute Tranquility, but it could be something I missed, I suppose.
@Yggdrasil: I hope you’re right, and that they simply dropped the violin in a puddle of water when trying to adjust the pitch of Wild Growth. Maybe we’ll see it replaced with a Stradivarius next patch.
@Sydera: ^_^ Thanks – your response to his comment was the only reason I was aware of the comment!
@Emee: I wouldn’t advise anyone to retire their Druid over this mess. At least play another spec so you’re still earning reputation (and possibly spell power items) on them!
@Zaira: That would make me feel better, too. Honestly, I’m a little appalled at the feedback we got over Wild Growth. It was basically a “Stop whining. It was too much better than Circle of Healing” with no acknowledgement of any of the other well-written, constructive protests, despite the fact that most acknowledged that Flourish was too powerful before.
I doubt it will make you feel much better, Phae, but pallies are in the same place right now. We’ve had no new heal spells since WoW went live – nothing new in TBC, nothing new in Wrath – and to make matters worse, our only niche has been a) encroached-on and b) made less relevant.
Holy paladins are only really good at single target healing. We’re not given _any_ AoE or HoT heals because they’re the niches of other classes, but at the same time druids have outpaced paladins as the premiere tank healers. Holy Paladins in Sunwell are typically sat outside the instance to buff people between boss attempts, because there’s nothing we can do that other classes can’t do better. Hell, in WotLK the premier healing spec involves us spending nearly half our talent points in Ret, simply because deep Holy is so very unappealing.
None of which is intended to say “WAH WAH STOP CRYING PALADINS ARE WORSE-OFF”… just sympathising, ’cause it ain’t all roses over here either.
I think every healing class has that horrible “good god, what the hell are Blizzard THINKING?” feeling, because I know shammies are pretty unhappy as well. Your comment about being gimped to hold back our raid groups is spot on, and very depressing.
Sihas last blog post..That was AWESOME.
Another nerf to both trees and priests is that spirit regen coefficients are being drastically reduced as we level. I haven’t seen it mentioned here. A link from the Holy Priest thread on EJ: http://elitistjerks.com/903368-post1463.html
I also dislike how much haste and crit we are seeing at the moment on our gear, as those stats remain fairly sub par for deep resto, yet are eating item budget.
Things are looking pretty bleak for us all around.
Zaira, Phaelia: No doubt that in endgame raiding there are way too many shamans and paladins, due to their buffs. That’s what’s gone instantly with raid affective totems (leaving no more than 3, maximum 4 shaman spots, and out of them max 2 can be resto, lacking strength and +crit totem). No more blessing of salvation: -1 holypala. Viable retripala: -1 holypala.
As I read the mechanics (I’m not in beta) the AoE will affect not the party but the raid and always those who need it the most. So Tranquility, while won’t be spammable, will be able to hold huge AoE damage, saving the whole raid. And I’m not just talking about “oh shit AoE add on loose, resheep ffs”, but unavoidable AoE like ceiling fall at Maggi 35%. In such fights we will be necessary.
Regrowth is the highest HPS one-target spell currently in game, of course can later be nerfed, but LB can be un-nerfed just as easily. Maybe we are moved from many-tank baseheal, auxilary raidheal to main tank heal. Check for example glyph of rejuv: +50% heal when target is below 50%. Surely meant for tanks. Glyph of swiftmend: save the tank and still have the hot for further heals
Glyph of regrowth: who else can get 2 regrowths than the tank.
I think this will be our new place and I don’t mind it at all.
Priest and shaman nerf: earth shield, PoM make threat for them, no more blessing of salvation. And here comes what I wrote “We can still defend ourselves and we no longer has to stop healing while doing so”. I meant Improved tree of life + barkskin, making us the highest damage reduction healers (yes even beyond the shield-wielder plate wearing paladin). We can heal an AoE tank risking that one of the adds loves us too much.
I’m not saying that we are “nerfed”, but the other healers nerfed much more:
- holy paladins: they used to get 3-4 slots regardless of their healing, just for buffs, changed to 1-2
- shamans: they used to get 3-4 slots regardless of their healing, just for totems, changed to 1-2
- priests: they used to have gear tailored for them (maybe ninjaed by some desperate tree), but now they have shadow priests, affli warlocks, arcane mages looking for the very same gear. We have no direct competition for gear. Others holypalas, restoshamans, moonkins can use our gear but not optimal for them. But hey, they can also ninja priest stuff, and so can nonaffli locks and nonarcane mages. It means that with the same raid attendance we can easily outgear priests and outheal just because of the better gear.
We will shine, don’t worry my dear forestmates!
Firstly, @ Kindal – Wow. Like Phae said, not constructive at all. Like most of her posts, she backs up her comments with hard math – and what I’ve always thought was an objective (even positive) outlook. Well done on looking a little silly.
Phae,
Wunnerful post! After fiddling on the PTR, I became increasingly worried for our spec too. One thing I will ask; anyone played with or ran some numbers for Healing Touch (5/5 Naturalist and with the HT Glyph)? I’m seeing some interesting numbers in Tree with my 1.0 second HT’s…and I feel vaguely dirty. Paladin-like. As expected, it OOM’s me real fast – but feels like it may be a option. I had a quick look see for some previous Phae-math posts, but nothing jumped out.
Again, love the blog, as always – thanks much for the time and effort you put in, lovely!
~ Lake
Looks like I’m not totally crazy for not speccing Gift of the Earth mother and Wild Growth. I didn’t see the talents as useful and I doubt they will be.
On the upside this means I can invest more into Balance. Which means I can either heal or DPS in Wrath. Giving me more versatility. On the PTR I managed to crank out 600 DPS on Dr. Boom with 700 spell damage.
It’s not a great change as a healer obviously but it’ll do.
Wild Growth really is lackluster. Especially compared to my warlock’s Haunt or Metamorphosis (haven’t decided yet on which). What I would have liked to see what either the ability to turn into an ancient for a short period of time for uber mecha heals. Or the ability to summon treants or whisps that go around healing friendlies for a short period of time. Possibly friendles you aren’t targeting right now. Those would be things more in line with being a druid and healing. Without encroaching on niches.
Nismoracks last blog post..WARNING: This could be you!
@Ghostboci:
You’re looking at things skewed again amigo. You’re right the ‘for buff X we bring class Y’ thing is done and over with. But there were a lot of complaints because paladins in live endgame guilds would be forced to sit outside the instance. Hop in. Buff the raid. Then log off. That is also gone. However, the problem remains that the Devs are missing the class A vs class B problem. The reason druids were left out vs. say shamen or priests isn’t because there would be more buffs (although heroism/bloodthirst was a nasty edge). But because COH/Chain Heal was *that much* better. If class A is better than class B you will bring class A. So if (example not fact) a shaman is better than a druid you’ll make sure your holy paladin has the 6% healing increase, and slot a second shaman over that druid.
I am in beta, along with most of my raid guild. And yes, while our (meaning tree AoE) heals do heal ‘who needs it most’ that calculation and mechanic came from – you guessed it – chain heal and CoH. They use the same mechanic. By the time the first tick of Tranquility goes off, there’s been 2-3 CoH’s and the chainheal spam (never ends). Those spells go off faster and simply outdo it. Tranq isn’t useless by any means, but it is completely unrequired, and very very seldom would ’save’ a raid.
The highest HPS spell in game was regrowth. With a glyph. About a half-dozen patches ago. Now that place sits firmly in the hands of Beacon paladins with no glyphs necessary. They use low-mana spells to rip out massive single-target heals and also return massive mana to the raid while remaining pretty mana-efficient with smart group stacking. Are they op or finished? I don’t think so, and I don’t hope so (Siha was right, all the healers are in this boat in one way or another). But we can’t even remotely begin to compete in the HPS arena. The rejuv glyph only works on ticks below 50% (not the whole spell duration) and the swiftmend glyph while very nice, doesn’t account for the regrowth glyph when it eats the hot.
The ‘threat’ nerf is pretty unimportant since threat (especially healer threat) is really very little of an issue in beta atm. Oh. And paladins do that job better because they can bubble to drop aggro on all the adds. While being invulnerable (100% reduction).
Priest gear is largely ’safe’ since they shop for spellpower+spirit, something the dps builds pass on. So no, their ’stuff’ isn’t taken.
Pallies *are* down to 1-2 slots (usually a beacon, and a healing sheath paladin duo) although my GL is a prot-pallie, so we see 3+ often. Shamans are down slots too (although they’re having severe mana issues atm, and are in a similar boat to us). Priests are currently on top in terms of performance and desirability and we’re sort of down near the bottom with our mana-less shaman brethren (we too have severe mana issues now). All this could change in 1-2 patches, its beta. But as it stands now things are grim.
I have to say, your forward gaze and optimistic enthusiasm is refreshing though. Most resto druids (and shamans now that I think about it actually) that I know/play with are pretty depressed and morose about the changes (a severe change from 3-4 patches ago when everyone was bright eyed and excited). But its good to see and remember that not everyone has quite given up.
You know… I troll her very, very often because of how great this blog is. I’m a resto and I know approximately 1/16th of what you do Phae! On the bright side, this post taught me things that I didn’t even know I had. On the down side, it taught me that they’re going away!
I’m wondering how people are feeling about speccing a deep mix of balance and resto. I mostly solo play and instance, dailies, bg etc. and the ability to not have to be full resto or respec just to grind dailies is nice. With these hits to pure resto, I’m feeling like riding the talent tree down to near the end on resto and going as deep as I can into balance might make my life simpler.. until they fix the resto stuff.
@Zaria: The beacon of light is really impressive, also the priests abilities. So you are close to scare me, but just close. However one thing is for sure: since noone has unique auras (not even us, shared with paladins) noone will have sure position in a raid. So if one of the classes underperforms the others, it will have no raid spots at all (It was the case for the Disc priest, Arms warrior, Sub rouge, MM hunter in BC). So there are two possibilities:
* The resto-druids will be a PvP spec, not meant for raiding. The scary thing is that feral charge and improved tree of life aura are reachable at the same time. MM was the main DPS spec for hunters before BC, and with BC, bye-bye! It happened to them, can happen to us. If this is the case, than we are out of luck in the competitive raiding. In casual raiding groups, a GOOD restodruid still can earn spots. If this is the case, I’ll follow the Earth and Moon.
* We will be un-nerfed, or others nerfed to make us viable.
Don’t forget that out of the main game aspects (casual questing – 5 mans, PvP, raiding), the raiding will be fine tuned finally, since everyone must quest first to be 80, and PvP community is bigger then raider. So it’s very probable that raid-related abilities will be finalized in a patch 1-2 months after Wrath was released.
PS: mages got lot of spirit-related abilites, so they will feast on priest gear.
@Ghostboci I sure hope you are right on “We will be un-nerfed, or others nerfed to make us viable.” I am resto, and a raider, I don’t arena, and BG’s are only a way for me to waste time when I am board and nothing to do in RL.
Last night I did a Hyjal pug on the PTR, when they found out I was resto they almost kicked me from the group since resto druids are “worthless” and several of them were druids (resto on live balance on PTR) The kicker is I topped the healing charts assuming the recount numbers were right that they posted, mahaha. But I should not have to do fast talking to be the 1 resto druid in the group (they did not want any resto druids)
(I wish that WWS would let me upload the combat log, but here is the combat log I got from last night http://www.mikeoconnor.net/WoWLogs/WoWCombatLog.txt) Does any one know of any site that can read and parse out the combat log from the PTR/wrath clients.
Sounds like a good time to go moonkin, Phae
jk, Just a suggestion as all this resto nerfing is outrageously.. outrageous!
Anyway, i have a question for you! There has been a *lot* of talk on the forums regarding a “stealth nerf” to Spirit based mana regen. What are your thoughts on this/have you noticed a change?
Always love the site~
-Inwe
@GHOSTBOCI
I wouldn’t worry about Resto becoming a PVP only spec. Finding people that actually want to heal is tough enough as it is. Blizz will make all healers viable, or it will be very difficult for guilds to progress.
This is a must-read blog, Phae. My sincerest appreciation.
Pre-BC: cast downranked Healing Touch, hotbar NS/max-HT for instants, only ever Innervated priests, had one great buff and a possible raid saver with Bres. We were the least played class for a very good reason. Anyone that raided any spec but Resto had a very forgiving guild. But some of us played on (albeit resto spec) because /purring at hunter pets is always amusing.
Sometimes I feel the transparency of the game detracts from the enjoyment. It -is- very important @feedback is given but please don’t be morose about the changes as min/maxing is a temporal aspect to the game that never stays constant.
Optimistists unite!
Ghostcrawler responded to resto changes. Apparently Wild Growth is perfect for what we need it for and our mana complaints are just wrong. All that optimism is out the window.
A choice quote from Ghostcrawler’s response (as mentioned by Zaira):
Let’s review each of these in turn.
Nerfing Lifebloom makes sense, it was far too powerful. The problem is that our other HoTs haven’t been buffed to make up the difference. The only increase we’ve seen for the Rejuvenation and Regrowth HoT effects is a talent in Balance. As a result, we’re forced to make up the difference with direct heals. This is the single largest contributor to the general feeling that we’re being shifted away from what we felt was our style and niche.
Druids don’t mind having situational heals. No one whines that they don’t use Tranquility often, it has a niche and it fills it well. The problem with Nourish and Wild Growth is that “situational” doesn’t begin to describe them. Even without the Regrowth Glyph Nourish is inferior to Regrowth. It heals for less on average, has a roughly equivalent cost after talents (even with HoTs already on the target), doesn’t confer any additional benefits (a Swiftmendabel HoT for example) and runs into GCD issues if you’ve got Nature’s Grace going. The only niche it has left to heal are those situations where the heal absolutely must be .5 seconds faster than Regrowth, which is what NS or Swiftmend are for.
Wild Growth’s niche is obvious, it just fails to fill that niche in any meaningful way. Even in a Heroic its targeting is the cause of consternation and frustration, while its cost and healing barely warrant its use. In raids it’s practically a null factor. Blizzard is assuming you have at least one of each healing class in your raids, which means that you can count on the Priests and Shaman to have AoE heals covered. Wild Growth’s niche is effectively non-existent. It is the single most worthless top-tier talent since Lacerate crowned the Hunter’s Survival Tree.
As we speak Blizzard is bringing in the next build. Hopefully there’ll be a light at the end of the tunnel.
MeanderingMinds last blog post..My Tank is Fight
And finally…
# Glyph of Regrowth – Increases the healing of your Regrowth spell by 20% if your Regrowth effect is still active on the target. (Old – Increases the amount of your initial Regrowth heal by 50% if your Regrowth effect is still active on the target.)
Now I guess 3.0 is close. There’s nothing else left to nerf.
Reading beta notes is depressing, I don’t play beta but every time I look at the notes we’ve been nerfed again
I don’t see it as a nerf… This glyph nerf was predicted even by the most optimistic druid. Also, they’ve given us a lot of OP abilities at the beginning, now they’re tunning them down.
Ok, some are TOO tuned down (Wild Growth, I’m looking at you), but hey, at least none of our main tools are worse than on Live. I guess we could cherish that.
@Siha: I’m kind of abashed to admit that it DOES make me feel better. At least Druids aren’t the only healing class feeling a bit left out in the cold. Are you not looking forward to Beacon of Light at all?
@Saba: Oh yeah … my mana regeneration dropped more than 150 MP5 while not casting just from copying my character over from live to beta. THAT was painful, especially to someone who has always emphasized regen and longevity over +Healing.
@Ghostboci: I haven’t heard that Tranquility will affect those outside of your own group. The tooltip description over on Wotlk.Wowhead.com still reads, “Heals all nearby group members for 3035 every 2 seconds for 8 sec.” Do you recall where you might have seen an indication to the contrary?
@Lake: I want to take a look at Glyphed HT with the new base speed, but I got turned off by the number of changes that invalidated a lot of my testing. I should have something around expansion release (when I’m more sure they won’t pull the rug out from under me). Thank you for the kind words!
@Nismorack: GotEM is a really horrendous 5-point talent at the bottom of the tree. Unless they seriously overhaul it, I don’t see many going for it.
@Zaira: I was under the impression that Blizzard is pushing nearly all spell casters to value Spirit to some degree (well, at least some Mages and Shadow Priests). Is that incorrect?
@Calay: Haha … well I’m glad that you came out of the woodwork (get it?) to post something! A lot of Druids are looking at the possibility of a Dreamstate-based healing build, just like the start of TBC. Perhaps fewer now that WG isn’t quite so terrible, though.
@Drun: “Last night I did a Hyjal pug on the PTR, when they found out I was resto they almost kicked me from the group since resto druids are “worthless” and several of them were druids” < LOLWUT? Where is their cross-spec love? I've always been very supportive of my Moonkin and Feral brethren. Granted, it might have something to do with discouraging them from switching to Restoration and taking all my -- *ahem* -- I'm sure it was because we are all members of the same great class.
@Inwe: Yes, I have noticed a change, and it stinks. I dropped 150 MP5 while not costing. I understand they want mana management to play an important role again, but I really enjoyed my infinite mana after 2.4!
@Mordekai: Interestingly, all healers need not only to be viable but to be roughly equivalent. I remember at the start of the game, Blizzard labeled Priests as "Primary Healers." As you might expect, this label dissuaded players of other classes with heal spells (Shamans, Paladins, and Druids) from speccing to heal. Everyone wants to feel equally viable, especially if they don’t possess a great love for the role and are only playing a healer to help their guildmates.
@Marc: Thank you very much. That’s really nice of you to say! =) And it HAS been really nice to see more Druids around lately, even if I suspect a lot of it has to do with how well we did in S2 and S3 Arenas.
@Meanderingmind: Thank you for the insighful commentary. As you noticed, I recycled it in my followup post to this one!
@Sem: Well, thankfully we did get a little something back with the latest news. Let’s hope for a polish of Gift of the Earthmother to make it a little more useful!
@Hokuto: I do consider Lifebloom to be one of our “main tools”, and it’s getting a pretty big kick in the tuckus. ^_^
Although many of you saw a lot of what we are getting to be crap and worthless, I however have been using (frequently) Nourish and Wild Growth.
I have a slight unconventional way of healing and it has trained me, taught me, and done me well over the past 3 years of my being resto/playing WoW as a druid.
I basically put every hot I have on a tank before bosses and with an easy crit from regrowth I get the living seed planted on him/her as well. This is really mana inefficient but spirit is my life and love so I usually have 1k mp5 (while not casting) easily in a 5-man and as a resto-druid I try not to cast too much.
My unconventional form of healing is… I don’t like lifebloom very much if at all. I use it, somewhat reluctantly. It has been this way since I first trained it in BC. I’m a rejuvination gal and now at level 80 in my blues… my rejuv ticks for 2000 in five mans plus 15% to restore mana, energy, rage, runic power makes it very nice.
There are certain bosses that generally hit hard. For example in Naxx; the boss that does the insect swarm (forgive me for not remembering his name). The tank is supposed to GTFO when he’s getting stacked with the swarm because he’ll take a ton of damage. Ideally he won’t take any damage but sometimes he does and we actually just heal it which makes Nourish very nice because I can get 10k Nourish crits on the tank while having all my hots up which basically keeps him at well enough high health with the other healer paying attention, as well. In the mean time of this fight I can have hots up on people who are taking damage during the fight due to adds, etc. It is quite lovely.
I don’t know. I like Nourish when my hots just aren’t quite enough to keep a tank at 100% health and I like Wild Growth when multiple people will take some damage or are taking some damage because although it starts at 800 and goes down.. it does help quite a bit.
I have one question:
For the Swiftmend Glyph…. even though it does not take a rejuv or regrowth off of the target… does it still “use up” the one that is less on time left to tick. I notice when I swiftmend a rejuv off it usually gets 10k-15k but my regrowth is significantly less. Is it random which one the swiftmend would use without actually taking it or is it still the one with less time left? I am reluctant to get the glyph if my chances are that it will just take a regrowth over and over or just an average of the two.
@ElevenEnemy: While I agree that a single-stack of Lifebloom is nigh-worthless in practically any context, I must protest at your reluctance to use it triple-stacked on tanks. Its HPM/HPS actually reaches respectable levels once you’ve built your stack so there’s no reason not to use both Lifebloom and Rejuvenation (and Regrowth!) HoTs.
With regard to the Swiftmend Glyph, I am afraid I don’t know the answer for certain. My guess is that its prioritization remains the same as it always has been since that would be the simpler way to code for it.