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Wild Growth … Grows a Pair *
Published on October 2, 2008 by Phaelia 
Blue, Spells and Talents 
31 Comments
I woke up this morning to several comments and e-mails (thank you!) informing me that Wild Growth is getting some much-needed attention from developers:
We are going to "run the numbers" again on Wild Growth and Nourish. What I mean by that is we’ll do some tests and compare them to similar heals and to other druid spells.
Wild Growth was nerfed pretty hard and I have some confidence that we can bring it up, though probably not as high as it was before. We’ll have to see about Nourish.
We don’t want to mess with Regrowth much more since it is now a button that seems worth pushing. We’re standing by our Lifebloom changes for now. It just felt like the solution to every healing situation that druids encountered. I suspect druids will still use it in its current form, but we’ll see.
Sorry I can’t offer anything more concrete than that. Making promises until I actually see the changes made can be pretty dangerous and just ends up frustrating the community in those situations where we can’t deliver.
And five and a half hours later …
Here are the changes we’re making next patch. See how they feel.
Wild Growth: Coefficient and healing increased. Mana cost decreased. Cost should be about the same as Circle of Healing. It doesn’t heal instantly, but will heal for about double what CoH does over its duration.
Nourish: Reduced mana cost by somewhere between 15 and 20%. This is supposed to be your Flash Heal, but we recognize that it doesn’t have the same versatility — you can’t just drop one on a wounded rogue or something since you need the hot up first. Hence the lower price.
Druids have quite an arsenal of healing spells now, and it can be tricky to find niches for all of them.
First let me say, “NOM NOM NOM!” (and not on crab cakes). This change should make Wild Growth cost about 21% of base mana, a much more palatable expense. How much it heals for will be dependent upon its +Healing coefficient which will be different than Circle of Healing’s since CoH is an insta-cast AoE heal and ours is a heal over time, but we should see considerably higher ticks than we are currently.. Either way, it’s a respectable buff, and the changes to Wild Growth and Nourish made me a happy sappy tree this morning! I’m guessing it will only be a matter of time before Lifebloom is adjusted again to make it a little stronger than where it is now.
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| More credit to the ever-awesome Eggo |
Ghostcrawler also commented on Blizzard’s general healing philosophy in Wrath which I think makes for an interesting read. I won’t copy and paste it all here (lucky you), but you can read the whole thing over at MMO Champion’s fantabulous BlueTracker. If you don’t want to wade through the whole thing, here’s a summary:
- Changes are never made by a single individual but are instead a collaborative effort.
- Blizzard regrets the dominance of AoE heals in TBC.
- The downranking mechanic was removed because of the difficulties it presented in terms of balance when they sought to once again make mana management an issue for healers.
- Blizzard is happy that Spirit is a valued stat for casters.
- Blizzard wants to encourage mana management through reliance on HoTs, limiting overhealing, coordinating targets among healers, and “knowing when a fight is won so you can take a break and start mana regeneration.” The last is included in quotes because I found it so interesting.
- Without requiring mana management by healers, encounters must be balanced around having mobs hit so hard that bad luck can result in your tank dying, strict enrage timers, or overly complicated tactics that take a long time to learn.
I can accept encounters being built around healer mana management if it means I don’t ever have to try to explain fights like Lady Vashj again. (And yes, I know that sounds n00bish, but it’s the most complicated fight I can think of that I’ve actually attempted.)
* Article title dedicated to Runycat of Unbearably HoT. She would be so proud. *Sniff*
Related Posts
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Trackbacks
- Is Lifebloom Obsolete? Another Look at Resto Druids in 3.0 : World of Matticus
- A Glimmer of Hope | Warcraft Field Notes
- The Best of 3.0/WotLK Information : Too Many Annas
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See! Temper tantrums DO work!
Just kidding, I’m glad they are working on this then.
Sent you a picture for this one as well.. My god..Its like when that girl or boy in high school you like slips you a note and you find out he/she likes you back.
All in good time. Lets see where these changes lead and how they reflect on our healing in the upper reaches. But yes. Light. End of tunnel. Finally.
“I can accept encounters being built around healer mana management if it means I don’t ever have to try to explain fights like Lady Vashj again. (And yes, I know that sounds n00bish, but it’s the most complicated fight I can think of that I’ve actually attempted.)”
Hmmmm…. what does encounter complexity have to do with mana mangement???? Personally I find fights like Vashj, Kael, Illidan, etc all to be a tonne of fun BECAUSE they are so complex.
Karthiss last blog post..Incoming Beta Nerf
“Without requiring mana management by healers, encounters must be balanced around having mobs hit so hard that bad luck can result in your tank dying, strict enrage timers, or overly complicated tactics that take a long time to learn.”
So now fights will be simpler, but wipes are the healers fault for not watching their mana. Goodie.
On second thought, I like the change. I’m up for the mana efficiency challenge, a little more than I trust some of the DPSers I know to understand (and execute) complicated fights, and certainly more than I trust a random number generator to not one-shot my tanks.
I can’t say the same for the pally co-healers in my guild. They overheal like a sonomabitch.
I’m still skeptical about Nourish, but Wild Growth now is definitely usable *and* doesn’t feels OP. I’m a happy(er) tree, horray for non-skippable 51-pt talents!
I liked that quote about coordination among healers and “knowing when the fight is won”. I’ve been with at least 3 raiding guilds this year, and I’m yet to see healers trusting each other. We’re always healing outside our assignments, sometimes causing us to neglect our own. I became more efficient when I learned to trust my fellow healers, so I could spend more time playing Bejew… I mean, staying outside the FSR during longer fights
And you’re absolutely right about Vashj. There’s so much space for mistakes, even Illidan is more forgiving (and easier). I wish I had downed her and Kael
I personally enjoyed some of the more complex fights like Vashj and Kael. It makes for something interesting at the end of the raid dungeon. It just makes it incredibly annoying when people don’t listen to their roles. >.<
I got up this morning, went to MMO-Champion and read the news. While it was slightly expected i was pretty ecstatic. I also felt some relief at hearing this as well.
@Hokuto While it is fun to try and creep up to 1st on the healing meter past that silly resto shammy that just won’t stop riding the meters like he’s at some rodeo the most important thing about a raid healing team is being able to trust your fellow healers, that they will be able to do their own jobs. Trying to over stretch yourself not only opens you up to make mistakes your own healing assignments but eventually you will start shouldering more than your fair share and people will come to rely on you too much. Healing isn’t a one man show like all the DPS seem to feel their own roles are… Healing is about team work, not about the all star quarterback.
Helping out your fellow healer that is having some evident trouble when you have a few cycles to spare is all well and good as long as they don’t come to rely on that. It’s just like healers that can’t change their healing output on the MT when the tree goes down and our LBs fall off them. =(
By the way, i just love that picture. It’s so true.
“run the numbers”
Now that is interesting to hear.
If you compare resto druid spells to other classes’ spells using only the theoretical maximum values, or using simulators, you would hope to see that they are on average better than what other classes have.
Not cause you want the druid class to be utterly imba compared to the others, but cause the druid spells are less precisely aimed at where the hurt is. Hots are after all slow, trickling heals. So, given that most trees aren’t psychic, our spells had better be superior in theory, if they are to work equally good as others in practice.
If the devteam, however, is running the numbers and staring at the results, and druid numbers keep looking superior, I can imagine how the gut feeling response to that is nerf nerf nerf. Justified or no.
I was curious if they were planning to make encounters where healers might be rotating in and out to get some mana inbetween, meaning less overall damage but less heals all going out at once. It’s a change I don’t mind. I also like the idea of not jumping and immediately healing whenever someone takes damage, as you’ll have to trust the other healer to have it.
I have zero comment on the Druid stuffs, since my lil wannabe tree isn’t even 60 yet, but I just HAD to comment with love for the picture.
I giggled with delight. True story, my coworkers looked at me funny.
Isisxotics last blog post..Communication Part 2: What I Want from My Leadership
First, I’m really flattered that my comments were highlighted by Phaelia in her previous post. I might just have to make a WoW blog since I feel bad watching her link to the undisciplined, inconsistent firehose that is my blog.
Secondly, I’m tentatively excited about these changes. I don’t mean to curb my enthusiasm too much, but given how much of a roller coaster it’s been so far I’m not going to go out and buy party favors just yet.
Lastly, I agree with Ghostcrawler on the issue of mana management. Without mana management raid damage becomes essential or the healers have nothing to do. Raid encounters are trivial if you never had to heal anyone but the main tank.
But more importantly, the lack of mana management encourages healers to compete rather than cooperate. Healers constantly step out of their assignments not just because of some strange OCD complex, but because they can. As has been noted, this is a bad habit in many situations. I know that I’ve lost tanks before when I saw the opportunity to sneak a heal in on someone else. Having to stick to task will help the teamwork aspect greatly.
MeanderingMinds last blog post..Pet Peeve: Web Pages with "Free" Signups
@hokuto
“I liked that quote about coordination among healers and “knowing when the fight is won”. I’ve been with at least 3 raiding guilds this year, and I’m yet to see healers trusting each other. We’re always healing outside our assignments, sometimes causing us to neglect our own. I became more efficient when I learned to trust my fellow healers, so I could spend more time playing Bejew… I mean, staying outside the FSR during longer fights”
This is so completely true. I am the healer officer in my guild and do the assignments and the wiggle room now for people to just ignore it and play free for all really bothers me, not because we dont have the mana to do it, because we do, but its like mind reading, if they neglect their job doing something else thats when we wipe and they have no excuse! I will be glad to have more of a chance to remind people of their assignments and impress the importance of it, come wotlk, because the strat behind that and the coordination of the raid feels more fun and authentic than us all spamming our iheal buttons. (chain, coh, lb, fol) etc.
so i for one welcome this change and figure my healers will need to adapt and obey, in a sense, or not be a very good healer.
and i agree completely with meanderingmind as well, well said.
I’m not so sure I like the part of “obey your assignment or die.” It’s true that in BC assignments almost became a formality simply because we had the mana to basically throw whatever we wanted to, but it helped form my idea of what a good healer is, and it’s not one that simply does their job and that’s it. Part of being a good healer was knowing when your assignment could suffer a little while you helped pick up someone else’s. In a word, adapability is vitally important. It becomes watching your assignment *and* everyone else’s, knowing how you can best respond to the current situation. To be quite frank, as much as I trust our healers, healing to the best potential for the raid often involves me acting like I don’t trust the other healers, and the big reason for this coming about is the mana abudancy we all have. We’re all spot healing a ton in BC. Although healing is less about being #1 moreso than any other role, it’s not really a reason to perform under the best of one’s ability unless doing so hinders others, and it really doesn’t at the moment. If others come to rely on someone too much, and that someone isn’t there? Well, they’ll either pick up the pace or they won’t, and that’s a factor in how people (in general, too) are evaulated.
While I welcome the change to rely more on mana management, I hope it doesn’t get to the point where you have virtually no leeway for fights and it becomes nothing but 100% focus on one’s assignment. That’s pretty boring, in actuality. I’ve always preferred healing assigments to be guidelines rather than rules.
I hope the changes simply add a new dimension to healing well, and that would be mana management.
Ignoring healing assignments is a good way to get you yelled at by the raid leader.
“no, you keep hots on the tank. that is your job. dont heal the raid. thats my job. res and buff quickly, less sucking this time”
I agree with Werebeef. Even with current mana pools, I like people to keep to the assignments. Ya know, I spent time writing those out for a reason.
I’ve seen us fail miserably when people were trying to spot heal those “in need.” It’s much better to keep to your assignment and trust your fellows. That way, if the strategy is flawed, it becomes obvious, and the raid or healing leader will modify it sooner.
Ignoring assignments is one thing.
Sitting there on your hands when you have 80% mana while you’re waiting for that tank to take damage is something else, especially when that shaman over there is at 20% life and has stagnated there.
What I’m getting at is not having people so focussed on task A that task B gets ignored, and for all raiders to help pick each other up.
You know.
Situational awareness and all that stuff.
Tunnel vision is retarded, period. So is scanning everything so much that you get nothing done, too, but I can’t be an advocate of 100% adherence to tunnel vision. It doesn’t even need to be much – just looking at the whole raid window instead of staring at those two target boxes completely oblivious to everything else is better.
I stand by my assessment that adaptability is an extremely important factor for healers, like during all those encounters where everything doesn’t go perfectly and those three healers die.
I don’t advocate ignoring assignments or not using them. I advocate that assignments be one’s primary focus during a fight. If you’re able to do more than that, based on your mana regen and other factors, then great.
Making the game feel more like an assembly line won’t really get players going.
Yey! I was really happy to read this
Of course, I still have a few fears, but I feel much better now. I do like (or really, prefer) fights that are more complex and require more concentration (as opposed to mindlessly spamming a button) and teamwork. Not sure what is really in store for healers in WotLK, but its starting to sound pretty good to me.
Thanks for your posts, as always, Phae. I troll forums, MMO-Champion, etc… but this is always the place I come first!
I like the idea of a return to mana management as well. I missed overhealing not being penelized in BC it just made things a bit trivial at least and incredible frustrating at most, no we’ll have even more reason to get angry at players that overheal out HoTs =P It also adds another posiible niche for one of the healing classes in terms of efficiency. More love for druids for our innervate incoming.
PS i lold IRL at your cartoon =P <3 Phae/Eggo
Regarding Vashj&family, the more tactical the fights are, the better. Tank&spank fights are booooring, and they look just gear checks.
I’m a bit concerned about the comment on how they introduced enrage timers as a mean to balance fights in which mana regen was not an issue for healers. First I disagree as certain fights have had this problem before (for example Malacrass can be extremely mana consuming without SR gear). Second, look at what happens without timers:
- Let’s do this with N healers
(7 minutes later, boss at 10%)
- Oh, damn, we ran oom
(tank dies)
- Ok, let’s try with N+2 healers this time
(10 minutes later, boss at 10%)
- This is great, keep going
(13 minutes later, boss dies)
Who needs healers with better mana regen or more dps when you can have MORE healers
Bosses with no timers = Onyxia killed by 5 60s
This change will certainly make the decision between wild growth and dreamstate much more interesting, though I’m still leaning towards the latter. I do hope Lifebloom stays nerfed though, that spell made druid healing incredibly boring to me. I quite like the idea of using a single lifebloom (and letting it expire) whenever your HoT stack needs a little more muscle, rather than using it as a primary heal.
@Tarqon
Thing is, for us to keep our importance as a HoT class, we need at least one strong 1 sec tick HoT (or no matter how long of a tick, it just needs to be faster than any other direct healing spell). But I guess we have to wave this thing goodbye. /wave
Didn’t Nourish once have a mana reduction in combination with active hots and Gift of the Earthmother? Now we get it for free? And what are the 0.3 seconds less cd of that tier 10 talent worth if you cannot hot more than 2 tanks because of mana costs? I’am sorry but I get the impression that the devs are bushed.
@Yggdrasil: No wai. If temper tantrums worked, we wouldn’t still look like rotten broccoli!
@Eggo: Thanks again! It was a great addition, especially since I couldn’t think up something myself!
@Zaira: /cheer!
@Karthis: I HATE them, mostly because my guildmates don’t read them like they’re supposed to and then they have to be explained. Soooooo frustrating. I’m all for one or two unique and/or interesting mechanics in a particular fight, but I think Blizzard went a little crazy with their robust scripting system in TBC!!
@Plaidman: Weeeeeeeeeelllll … I’d personally rather wipe the raid because I was irresponsible with my mana than I was standing in the wrong place. ^_^ I’m much more likely to be able to correct the former on the next attempt!
@Hokuto: It seems like healer coordination will be a must in Wrath. I imagine it will be much less of an issue in 10-mans, though. And hey, maybe Lifebloom lasting 9-10 seconds instead of 7 will mean we can get some time outside the 5SR, too!
@Zackoria: “That silly resto shammy that just won’t stop riding the meters like he’s at some rodeo ” < I LOLed. And you make a really good point about healing being more of a team effort with each having to rely on each other. That's something I should apply more myself.
@Shynda: You make an interesting (and well accepted) point about our HoTs needing to be more potent because of the risk of overhealing. I wonder what kind of effect that has in 5-man instances.
@Isisxotic: I loved the picture, too.
@Meanderingmind: You definitely must make a blog! And thank you for the great comments. They really helped shore up this post.
I will also (quietly) admit seeing my assigned target bite the big one because I was too busy "helping" someone else. *Blush*
@FB: If I were still the healing lead in my guild, I'd try to emphasize sticking more to assignments because of mana management issues. I'd also insist on everyone running some sort of HoT indicator so that others didn't accidentally overwrite them with a targeted direct heal.
@Werebeef: I think "Less sucking this time" should be a standard motivational addendum to any post-wipe speech.
@Sydera: Do you use a UI addon when creating your healing assignments? I used HealOrganizer when I was doing it, but it felt sort of clunky, and it never did remember settings the way I'd like. I was wondering if you might have a better suggestion or if you are doing it by hand?
@Nilianil: Are there any encounters where healers rotate in and out right now? I've often considered suggesting it on MH trash, just because it's so obnoxious.
Re: healing other targets, Druids in particular have been known to toss a cheap Lifebloom on another raidmate who appears to be being ignored. This is going to be much less viable with it's higher cost and longer duration, but I agree that 100% tunnel vision makes raiding as a healer pretty boring.
@Emee: I am super-flattered that you say so, Emee! MMO Champion remains my first stop every morning.
@Camel: I'd love to be the super-efficient healers, but it's not looking especially likely. And anyone wanting my Innervate when I'm having mana issues of my own will have to pry it out of my cold, wooden hands!
@Ermengol: You make an excellent point about enrage timers. I hadn't thought about it in quite that way before.
@Tarqon: I worry that my raid leader will insist that I stack Lifebloom, regardless of how mana inefficient it becomes. Therefore, I really would like to see it packing a reasonable punch. >.<
@Jezzabell: /wave
@Kohana: It did, yes, and also applied to Healing Touch. But then they removed it. And they nerfed the GCD reduction on 5/5 GotEM, too. That was lame and makes the talent worthless (in my opinion). I’m happy we’re getting that mana cost reduction for free, though. =)
I might have overlooked this, but… I thought Wild Growth “stacked” (when you cast on multiple targets) when it still was Flourish. Am I wrong?
Apparently they are also working on all mana costs across the board for all classes, so the lifebloom nerf may be partially resvised. We can hope!
On a side note, the new patch notes are up for 9038 and there is a feral armor reduction from 400% to 370% for Dire bear forms. This same reduction is being applied to Boomkins as well. 2 pages of complaints so far, and not ONE boomkin has clued in that the only reason they got an armor nerf is cause they use THE SAME CODE FOR EACH FORMS ARMOR CALCULATOIN… silly birds.
Lots and lots and LOTS of comments in beta forums, but it really doesnt look like a lot is changing. One comment I did like from the links you provided was about raids. It occurs to me taht its pointless to as blizzard what THEY think a resto druids Niche is, what matters is what your RAID LEADER things a resto druids niche is, and if you cant fill that, then you wont raid, regardless of what blizzards developers think. Until they balance around that reality, its all smoke and mirrors.
I dont know if you would have the time, but given your love of math, I was wondering if you could throw up some incoming damage numbers? What are tanks getting hit for right now damage wise, particualry as a percentage of health. The numbers I can read dont make a lot of sense to me without knowing what kind of damage I am expected to heal through. it looks like lifebloom is healing at 80 about the same as it is now at 70. Seeing those numbers doesnt really help me understand the level of this nerf if I dont know what the tanks are getting hit for. If they get hit at 80 as hard as they do at 70 its no nerf ( unlikely though that is ) if they are getting hit 10x harder than at 70, then it makes lifebloom worthless as a heal spell ( that is 1/10 as effective as it is now as a buffer ). The wider the range, the more the nerf. But no one seems to have any concrete numbers.
Now I remember why i generally avoid the forums. I dont like horror movies much either
@Qix:
I suppose the armor reduction for bears considers the extra 6% dodge one can get through talents, and since (they said) rogues and feral druids are supposed to use the same leather in WotLK I’m guessing they’re not getting that much armor anyway. Assuming they won’t need increased (“green”) armor in items, the bonus reduction would have a lesser impact since the lower the armor the smaller the effect of a percentage reduction is.
Anyway, assuming let’s say 30k armor in dire bear (end-game values are close to armor cap), going from +400% to +370% would mean 500%->470% 30000->28200; formula for level 73 is A/(A+11960)
30000/(30000+11960) = 0.715 -> 71.5% mitigation, 28.5% damage taken
28200/(28200+11960) = 0.702 -> 70.22% mitigation, 29.78% damage taken
So we would be taking 29.78 / 28.5 = 1.0449, about 4.5% extra damage.
It doesn’t look that bad, specially considering the simplification I’ve made about how the multiplier affects all armor, which is false. Armor from agility, enchants etc does not apply (a minor component, but still). If you’re tanking you’re probably getting that extra 6% dodge which should balance that out.
About lifebloom healing at 80 as much as at 70, I wouldn’t expect the same scale for damage on tanks, because health pools will be way larger, and then healing would be too easy. They just want us not to rely that much on lifebloom and use other stuff.. which is something I already do anyway, so I don’t quite get it.
So it appears that WG and Nourish were majorly fixed? I think we can live with the newly-nerfed Lifebloom and go for the diversity of the spells. I just wish I had more fingers and keys on the keyboard/mouse, between removing the curse and poison I don’t know how to integrate these spells into my cast bars. I currently have Barkskin on 3, LB on 4, RG on 5, RJ on 6, SW on 7, NS/HT on 8.. the others are hard to reach!
I am quite excited about developing a new play style where you run HOTs and Nourish occasionally and use WG sparingly when needed. I think I’ll pick up the Glyph of Swiftmend for another, cheaper Nourish.
This will be like relearning the healing style with new tools, which is what an expansion should be about right? Almost like a new game. I think if we learn the new style properly – and optimal talent trees should evolve as experience increases – this could be a lot of fun and we should be able to be really great healers.
Or am I too optimistic? (not on beta myself)
Fiord, check out your keybindings menu. Personally I’ve got 1-6, QERT, FG and ZXCV all bound to skills, and I bind them with shift and control as modifier buttons for even more hotkeys (you can do this through macros as well, for instance some people use mod=alt for self healing)! You might also want to look into getting a good bar addon, such as Bartender3.