By now, you’ve almost certainly heard about the change to itemization whereby the +Healing and +Spell Damage stats are being retired for the less specialized Spell Power stat. What, exactly does this mean, though, and what can you expect at the release of Patch 3.0?
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| Crab on a Tricycle by Malakuko |
Watch your step this morning as there’s blue goo everywhere. Ghostcrawler made several post in the Druid forums yesterday, and it’s likely that he’s “making the rounds” after the developers’ recent in-depth look at Retribution and Holy Paladins. As usual, here’s a summary of what was discussed and my thoughts on each point.
Quick Links
- Druids are not “Fill in the Gap” Healers
- Druids Need a Fair Chance at Visual Improvement
- Ghostcrawler Responds to Feral Concerns
- On the Subject of Balance DPS QQ
- Infected Wounds’ Snare Effect Can be Resisted
Druids are not “Fill in the Gap” Healers
Beta tester Flynx of Murmur quotes Ghostcrawler for having said that:
Druids have better single-target and AE heals now, but the single-target spells aren’t as good as the paladin ones and the AE isn’t as good as a shaman or priest. They are just there to fill in the gaps. Paladins got Beacon of Light, Holy Shock and things like Infusion of Light to also fill those gaps. The question asked was what if those aren’t sufficient, and my reply was we will buff them or add new spells.
He understandably wanted to know if the developers’ intention is truly for Restoration Druids to simply “fill in the gaps” left by other healers. There is some hemming and hawing about whether the quote has been taken out of context, but fortunately Ghostcrawler himself chimed in on the thread to clarify what he was trying to say:
In our minds, your go-to spells when healing anything bigger than a 5-player group are Rejuvenation, Regrowth and Lifebloom. You are probably not benefiting your raid the most if you are chaining Healing Touch on the tank while the Paladin is trying to keep everyone up with Beacon of Light.
Healing Touch, Swiftmend and Wild Growth are all very useful spells. But they are intended to be used in smaller group or when something unusual happens in a raid. If the entire group takes a lot of damage at once, that’s a good time for Wild Growth. If a melee DPS class is very wounded, and you don’t have time for the bloom and Swiftmend is on cooldown, go for the Healing Touch.
If any class is the “fill in the gap” healer, it’s the Holy Priest. Their strength is in versatility – they have single-target heals, group heals, instant heals and HoTs. The standard (but by no means only) way to heal a raid is to have a Holy Paladin on the tank along with a Resto Druid, have a Resto Shammy AE heal the group, and then put the Holy Priest wherever you need them. We are also trying to get the Disc Priest into a role similar to the Paladin, but based more around damage avoidance than efficient, quick heals.
That’s comforting to know, though I’d be hesitant to classify Priests as “fill in the gaps” healers unless it was in the most positive light possible. In other words, Priests can fill in any gap because they can essentially do everything, almost as well or better than any other healer. Of course, the strength of Circle of Healing is such that you do lose out on a bit of flexibility in terms of assigning them a task other than AE healing on any fight where there’s a considerable amount of splash damage.
Interestingly, Ghostcrawler doesn’t even mention our new level 80 spell, Nourish, a fact that’s seized upon by Arenis of Lich King (US) who inquires, “Is there any acknowledgment among the Devs [that] it is a pretty redundant heal? I mean why does any class need 3 direct heals that heal for basically the same amount with basically the same cast times?” Ghostcrawler graciously responds to Arenis’ question:
Nourish is supposed to be a Flash Heal – fast but expensive. It may be too fine a line for a class that already has Swiftmend and a (much improved) Regrowth.
This is something that has been said repeatedly, both by players and developers, almost as soon as the initial period of “well, what does THIS do?” wore off. So why is it still there? I don’t know how you feel, but I’m personally not looking forward to choosing between two direct heals and a third direct heal plus HoT. The spell made some kind of sense when Healing Touch was still disallowed in Tree of Life (giving us some kind of direct heal), but even then it’s HPS and HPM were pretty divergent from that of an unglyphed Healing Touch. Many Restoration and Balance Druids would like to see the spell scrapped in exchange for a new Balance ability, something that would benefit both specs. As time goes on, however, this looks less and less likely.
Druids Need a Fair Chance at Visual Improvement
Responding to a beta tester’s complaint that Druids are tired of the same old form visuals, Ghostcrawler chimes in with a very hopeful response:
New art for forms, customization per form, and even the possibility of showing some gear in a form is all stuff we are talking about. When we have a firm plan we’re ready to unveil, I’m sure you’ll hear about it.
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| Bubble Crab Meat by Sanja |
Great news, of course, but Feral Druids aren’t the only ones who need a visual revamp. Trees also use a model that was in the game at release. You can find it in the model viewer under “Rotten Broccoli.” Left up to me, I’d request new art for forms with optional customization based on the cumulative item levels of your gear. Basically, aesthetic points that you could spend on buying new features. Of course, this begs the question of what happens when you take all your armor off or happen to downgrade an item in terms of item level, but that’s why Blizzard gets my $15/month – to figure out answers to pressing questions like these!
I actually wrote pretty extensively about this topic in Too Sexy for my Bark, and Big Bear Butt also recently shared his desire for some customization.
Ghostcrawler Responds to Feral Concerns
And how. Ghostcrawler took the time to respond to a numbered list of Feral concerns put forth by beta tester Xaamau of Lich King (US):
Q: Feral Mana Pools are very limited, is there a planned fix for this?
A: It’s something we are still looking at. The way mana regens now when you’re in a form feels like it’s enough to let you occasionally use that mana for something. We think you will probably still go dry quickly if you’re healing a lot (which ultimately isn’t something we want Feral to do a lot) or if you’re chain shapeshifting (which is also something we don’t want you ideally doing a lot, but recognize sometimes you need to – dealing with a Frost mage perhaps).
So essentially, only Restoration and Balance Druids are able to shapeshift a lot because they have the larger mana pools to sustain it. Of course, their functionality (re: their ability to heal or DPS) draws on the same limited resource, so there is a tradeoff. Nonetheless, the flexibility of being able to change roles (CC, high armor, stealth, healing, DPS) is one of the things that has made Resto PvP so strong. I can see why they’re hesitant to give Ferals the same advantages.
Q: Protector of the Pack limitation mechanic – not very fun, what was the thinking behind this and can the limitation be removed?
A: I’ve avoided this debate for a long time because it seems to really, really upset people that they can’t do something they really, really want to do in a very niche case. Bear isn’t designed to be something you run around solo to kill things in, and even if you want to do so anyway, your damage reduction shouldn’t be a big deal. It’s designed as a tanking talent and “solo tanking” is sort of nonsensical. Bear itself works fine without it, and in fact you can even tank just fine without it as long as you aren’t doing progression raiding. (If it affected your DPS or something, I’d be a lot more convinced.)[…]
My take on it is that the people who hate the limitation on the talent just hate the idea of the limitation, not for how it actually limits them (which is still a totally valid way to feel). It would be similar if the talent said “You gain damage reduction but only while wearing a ridiculous green hat.” It is in there just for flavor, but it has been controversial enough that we have talked about removing it. I’m not sure if we will yet, but I believe we understand your concerns.
The concern here might be that a Feral would have too much armor in small-scale Arenas (they’ll still get the bonus in 5s, though, and it doesn’t drop as group members are killed). Runycat provides a more detailed write up regarding this limitation in her latest article, Latest Blue Talks Druid Tanks: Not So Homo(genized).
Q: Feral talent point usage in Resto tree means we have to focus too many points on a non-Feral tree, also very difficult to get all the “tanking” talents offered, no room for PvP choices in a tanking build – is this intended?
We designed the new Feral tree with Omen [of Clarity] as a trade-off. If we ever moved Omen around, we would also juggle Feral talents. We don’t want you to be able to get all Feral talents and OoC. You can be a good Bear, good Cat, get good PvP talents or get Omen. But you can’t do it all with one build.
That seems like way too many tradeoffs to have to make. You can either be good at Bear, Cat, PvP, or get Omen of Clarity but no two of the above?
Q: Swipe / Thorns combo (360′) Aoe. Is it possible to get a 360′ upgrade to our bear form AoE ability?
We don’t think too many Druids are having trouble using Swipe in its new form. A little difference among class abilities that are otherwise very similar is probably good for the game.
Ferals have recently complained that all tanks other than Druids have access to a 360-degree AoE ability, while Swipe remains a frontal cone. We wouldn’t be Druids anymore if we got something awesome that didn’t have an arbitrary limitation to make it worse than our counterparts, right? Expect it to become 360 degrees in the Emerald Dream expansion.
Q: Feral Itemization issue 1: Too much Armor on some earlier tanking weapons compared to 25-man Naxx gear is this intended?
Do you mean you’re going to keep using the older weapon instead of the Naxx bear staff?Q: Feral Itemization issue 2: Not enough "Armor" trinkets in game making them invaluable to Druids, basically once you have these trinkets you will not grab anything else unless you reach armor cap. Can more armor trinkets be added, with different usage stats?
My suspicion is you are still over-valuing armor compared to other defensive stats. I realize you don’t want block or parry but that doesn’t mean it’s armor or nothing.Q: Feral Itemization issue 3: Tanking gear – PVP gear seems to be better for tanking, more Stamina, why is this the case?
PvP gear pays a lot more of its item budget on resilience than it did in BC so you’re going to be giving up something else (like Agi) to use it. Also make sure you are comparing PvP gear to PvE gear of the same item level.
I’ve heard many complaints that the PvP gear is better for Ferals than the equivalent PvE gear because it still has green armor. It seems obvious that, if PvP is the way to get the highest armor values in PvE, Druids are going to PvP to pursue it. It almost sounds like they’re arbitrarily punishing Druids who do this, though, with more expensive Resilience (which no longer grants any benefit in PvE) and lower auxiliary stats as a result. The major contributor to the decision to eliminate bonus Armor was probably the desire to streamline gear between Druids and Rogues (who would complain if itemization points that could have otherwise been applied toward DPS stats were instead spent on augmenting Armor values). Later in the same thread, Ghostcrawler comments about a player-proposed gear comparison between the [Hateful Gladiator’s Dragonhide Robes] and the [Heroes’ Dreamwalker Raiments], both item level 200:
Okay, yes I have seen these examples before. If you are willing to give up 42 AP and 35 Exp (which is a nominal mitigation stat), then you can increase your health by 130 (plus modifiers). I don’t predict many tanks will take that trade, but we’ll see. I am sure there are other situations in which you could take an even lower item level that grants you more Stam than that. You are giving up an awful lot of threat stats though. If we start getting a lot of reports about how bears can’t hold aggro, I’m going to immediately look to see if they are wearing Resilience gear.
So essentially, Ghostcrawler is re-emphasizing the idea that Druids are expected to avoid PvP gear or see their threat generation take a noticeable hit. This seems to be confirmed Kalon of ThinkTank’s recent post, Rumors of My Bad Threat may have been Greatly Exagerrated.
Q: Kitty AoE – Kitty form basically has no AoE ability, which limits damage output in multiple mob situations – we would have to switch to bear / caster which would mean taking a chance on pulling aggro or doing minimal damage with hurricane. Are there plans to add kitty form AoE?
Hurricane and Swipe do pretty good AE, certainly better than rogues have (on which cat was modeled).
It’s easy to say that neither Rogues or Cats should be doing “good” AoE damage and that they should have better single-target damage to compensate. However, in practice, this philosophy is flawed since most boss encounters end up being single-target damage fests. If Rogues and Cats were that much better single-target DPS, you’d end up stacking your raid with melee DPS. On the other hand, without any AoE to speak of, Rogues and Cats will find it difficult to remain competitive on many trash fights and even a few boss encounters where AoE can be helpful. It’s a delicate balancing act, and I don’t envy Blizzard for having to manage it.
Q. Cat charge being linked to Bear charge. – Why is this the intended mechanic for these two attacks?
We think this would encourage quickly shifting from one form to another, which is something we have actually taken pains to discourage (RIP powershifting).
Ghostcrawler goes on to elaborate on this point by responding to complaints about being forced to remain in the same form for extended periods of time:
No, that’s not exactly it. Using cat in short bursts is awesome. Shifting out of feral to Innervate or Rebirth is cool, even if you immediately go feral again. Where it starts to cross the line is being a bear, going cat to hit a button, then going back to bear to benefit from the cat button. Doing feral charge bear, shifting and doing feral charge cat is not what we want. Anything that starts to feel like the old powershifting (changing just to generate mana) is what we’re trying to avoid.
If it helps, think about it this way: shifting once in a small window is cool. Shifting several times in a small window is less cool.
RIP powershifting, indeed. Anything that discourages shapeshifting into different roles is going to cost Druids some of the versatility that would make them strong in PvP. I’d personally love to see a talent or talent addition that affords Ferals an additional mana discount for shapeshifting directly from Bear to Cat or Cat to Bear, but I suspect that by more or less tying you to one form or the other, they feel it’s safer to make each individual form more potent than they could otherwise. They are, in effect, de-hybridizing us in an effort to ensure we remain competitive.
Q. Berserk – The current version of Berserk feels weak now that the immunity to all snares has been removed, and its cooldown is too long. – Is there any way the snares functionality of berserk can be restored?
We thought it was too good if it broke all snares and granted such a great DPS increase.Q. Savage Roar – Is it possible to have it persist through shifting?
Same answer. We don’t want to add anything else to the class that encourages you to say go cat, use an ability, then go back to bear. Changing forms is cool. Changing forms to buff yourself in one form then going to another isn’t what we’re going for. If you’re a cat and shift to humanoid to heal or decurse or bear to survive when being attacked – that’s cool and what the Feral design is all about. It’s when you start to chain several shifts together that we get uncomfortable.
I don’t really feel qualified to speak to this topic as I’ve never PvPed as a Feral, but it seems like Ferals would like to include a snare break on Berserk to avoid having to spend the mana to shift and break snares. I can understand wanting to discourage shifting into a form for a specific ability and then shifting back to the form you’re using 95% of the time. This was one of the problems with Restoration PvP and Feral Charge and is the reason the ability was moved so much further down the Feral tree.
The whole idea of Druids losing some of their hybrid nature so that we’re more effective in whatever role we choose is really enforced by a comment that Ghostcrawler goes on to make:
We considered a model where the Druid was the jack of all trades and master of all, but decided that might cause problems.
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| A Crab in the Beach by Malakuko |
In a world (of Warcraft) where players have access to 71 talent points with which to specialize their characters, there is an ever-growing risk that a “jack of all trades” will constantly be eschewed for specialist classes instead. This is less of a concern in 10-man raid instances where Druids will undoubtedly shine, and dual-specs will practically make everyone hybrids to some degree, but I’m not surprised to see an increased emphasis on choosing your role carefully. Yes, Ferals have lost the ability to switch between Bear and Cat in the middle of an encounter and perform at similar levels of effectiveness, but the dual spec should still allow them to switch between the two on an encounter basis, and with a lessened (but not eliminated) need to maintain two independent sets of gear. This can be seen in direct parallel to Restoration/Balance dual-speccers who can also function reasonably well in their off spec by using the gear associated with their main spec.
For a Feral’s perspective of the above quotes, check out Big Bear Butt’s recent post, Ghostcrawler Shares Some Shifty Thoughts.
On the Subject of Balance DPS QQ
Respected beta tester Lisana of Northrend (US) posted an articulate and intelligent response to the recent QQ that’s been going on about Moonkin PvE DPS. At the risk of over-simplifying her lengthy post, she states that
- Measurements of Balance DPS will vary widely due to the variability of the Eclipse talent.
- While some meters show Moonkin dominating other players in terms of DPS output, there are many that do not.
- Performing well as a Moonkin requires considerable skill and – in some cases – the use of addons to help manage Eclipse procs.
- Moonkin are not overpowered in level 80 PvP, partially because shifting out to access healing costs them a great deal of survivability and other Moonkin-specific benefits (armor, spell casting interruption prevention, spell haste procs, higher crit chance).
Ghostcrawler responds to Lisana’s post with an explanation of how Blizzard tries to objectively measure a class’s DPS output:
I’m not sure which quote you’re referring to, but we measure DPS at a point in time and over the course of several minutes (and even longer if it looks like a caster might run out of mana). For PvP we obviously focus a lot more on the short-term DPS.
Moonkin DPSdoes seem to be pretty high right now on Live, but we believe that is partially an artifact of so many groups AE’ing their way through the nerfed raid content (and Hurricane doing serious damage now). We’ll have to see what the Starfire + Wrath numbers look like at 80 compared to our own testing.
So it sounds like they aren’t allowing themselves to be overwhelmed by player QQ and that Moonkin are actually benefitting from the same thing that’s hurting Restoration Druids: content that’s too easy and allows for the use of abilities that would otherwise be too inefficient or risky. While Restoration Druids are seeing their HoTs overwritten by massive and expensive AoE heal spam, Moonkin are using massive and expensive AoE Hurricane spam they might otherwise avoid. Interesting!
Infected Wounds’ Snare Effect Can be Resisted
Beta tester Zargantor of Murmur (US) asks, “I have noticed infected wounds missing when the attack itself lands. It seems like they land as separate attacks with separate chances to hit versus automatically applying with the attacks they are suppose to hit with. Has anyone else noticed this?” Ghostcrawler responds to confirm that this is, in fact, intended as:
Infected Wounds is a disease, so it can fail, which shows up as a miss in combat logs. Stacking hit should fix the problem if it seems to happen a lot. Poisons have the same issue.
So PvPers shouldn’t discount +Hit! (Not that you were going to anyway, right?)
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I think another important point about the Balance DPS QQing going on is that we are currently at Level 70. Blizzard has said that they haven’t done much balancing for level 70 toons and that most of their effort is focused on level 80.
Mages and Warlocks and such may be a bit behind us now, but testers on the Beta are showing that Moonkin are behind the “Pure” DPS classes by 500 – 700 DPS. I may be rocking the meters right now but a lot of things are going to change in 10 levels.
The second thing most people forget is that balance has two nerfs incoming in patch 3.0.3. First, the personal DPS increase that is a part of Earth and Moon is being reduced from 5% to 3%. The second thing is that the Starfire Glyph will increase Moonfire’s duration by a maximum of 9 seconds. Both of these things will bring Moonkin DPS quite a bit.
I really thing most of the QQing comes from Locks and Mages being so used to dominating the charts and not liking the fact taht they now have more competition.
Graylos last blog post..Gray Matter is Branching Out
I take a lot of issue with what Ghostcrawler is saying about resto healing, specifically in regards as to the direction of it. He insists that lifebloom, rejuvenation, and regrowth are still our bread and butter heals. Quite frankly, I think any raiding resto druid post 3.0 will tell you that is absolutely false. Do lifebloom, rejuv, and regrowth still help? Absolutely. Are they anything near as effective as they were given the other changes to healing classes? Definitely not. Granted, part of this disparity might be coming from experiencing level 70 end game content versus what we will see at level 80.
First, I would highly argue that rejuv has never been that efficient of a heal anyway except in conjunction with swiftmend as its abysmally short duration vs long tick time means it usually doesn’t equate to more than about 8 or 10% of healing pre 3.0. However, at the moment, there is no real room for HoTs to tick like they used to. If you stack up lifeblooms, regrowth and rejuvenation like we used to and do nothing else, you are probably going to be the most worthless healer in a raid at the moment. For the same reason that Ghostcrawler says we should avoid these new found heals such as glyphed HT, Wild Growth, etc. in regards to other classes getting new types of healing, I would in fact argue that makes the use of these new abilities all the more important in order to remain viable. It is only through the use of heals like Wild Growth and fast heals such as a glyphed HT or regrowth (for those of you that still use it and maybe Phae will explain one day why I’ve strayed away from it =D) that we are able to sneak our heals in over all of the other types of heals flying around from the other classes. For sure we’ve been given more utility with AoE heals and direct heals, but to say those are secondary to our old HoTs (which apparently are what we’re supposed to still be relying on) when it has been expressly stated by Blizz that they want to push us out of our HoT comfort zone with direct heals is rather counter to what they have said.
As for Nourish, I would again argue that it IS in fact completely redundant. With a glyphed HT using 5/5 Tranquil Spirit and Moonglow, HT actually costs less mana (at least at level 70) than Regrowth while in Tree Form. If this is the case, why would we use a more expensive mana flash heal in the form of Nourish when it has the same cast time as a glyphed HT when it will most likely cost less mana? Go figure that one out and I will give you a cookie =)
When BC launched, despite having spent the previous year raiding as a druid healer, I refused to spend the point for tree form. Yes, the slowness was part of the issue. But my other issue is…it made me angry that they recycled the Dire Maul trees. I love being a caster. It seemed silly to me that I would have to punch out heals, since that was their casting animation.
You would think in almost 2 years time they could have given us a more graceful form.
A few notes:
- HT/Nourish redundancy
My first question when I heard of Nourish was “what for?”. Then I learned about glyphs and got even more confused. Maybe any of these two options are better than regrowth at some point, but even in that case it’s obviously we won’t need one of them. It’s not as if we had a thousand good major glyphs to choose from anyway
- 360º swipe
Not only I find it ridiculous, but totally unnecessary. I agree that bears should have similar functionality to the rest of the tanks, but copying everything at 100% is not needed, and makes choices a bit boring. Besides, how hard is to step back a bit and turn to face all mobs?
- AoE kitty
Rogues are single target dps and they seem happy with that. I wouldn’t call Blade Flurry AoE exactly, and it’s just for combat rogues anyway. Maybe a little cooldown looking like Zul’jin’s lynx attack, I don’t know, but not much more. Come on, cats are single-target predators..
- Moonkin DPS
- 0 resilience target was AMAZING), but unlike paladins or other classes they have to stay still while they shoot, and hope someone doesn’t interrupt them. They’re also very vulnerable because shifting out removes a lot of their potential (many key talents affect only moonkin form), when constant self-HoTting used to be a solid strategy against casters.
Most complaints about it being too high come from PvP, because they do have quite a kick now (I’ve tried it and have to say getting 7.2k starfire in pure healing gear on a -poor
For sustained DPS figures can be misleading. Thanks to new talents and PvE nerfs, most guilds just AoE themselves through raid instances where they used to carefully set crowd control on every trash pull.
I have written something in the world of raids comments about that blue post for restos. I am seeing this from a BC end-game raiding perspective since I m not on the beta yet, so please excuse any statements that do not apply to WotLK.
To be honest, I think that Ghostcrawler does not have a clue about resto healing.
“In our minds, your go-to spells when healing anything bigger than a 5-player group are Rejuvenation, Regrowth and Lifebloom. You are probably not benefiting your raid the most if you are chaining Healing Touch on the tank while the Paladin is trying to keep everyone up with Beacon of Light.”
If this is true (which is not), then thanks for bringing nothing new to role.
“Healing Touch, Swiftmend and Wild Growth are all very useful spells. But they are intended to be used in smaller group or when something unusual happens in a raid.”
OK this is the most stupid sentence I have ever read… I will not say anything for HT since I have not seen it glyphed yet. About Swiftmend, it is very usefull and stupid not to use it while keeping HoTs to a tank to even out spikes. Especially with the glyph that allows you to use it on CD and still keep the HoT up.
As for WildGrowth, so far in SWP, it is the single most awesome spell I can use. In a 5man it would be very slow with similar damage amounts incoming to the party, but in the raid, We can cast in on all 5 groups and see the healing output go out the roof (for example in Felmyst).
“If a melee DPS class is very wounded, and you don’t have time for the bloom and Swiftmend is on cooldown, go for the Healing Touch.”
As I said I don t know about glyphed HT, but in TBC, of course this statement is absolutely stupid.
“If any class is the “fill in the gap” healer, it’s the Holy Priest. Their strength is in versatility – they have single-target heals, group heals, instant heals and HoTs. The standard (but by no means only) way to heal a raid is to have a Holy Paladin on the tank along with a Resto Druid, have a Resto Shammy AE heal the group, and then put the Holy Priest wherever you need them. We are also trying to get the Disc Priest into a role similar to the Paladin, but based more around damage avoidance than efficient, quick heals.”
To be honest, so far with the new changes I think Paladins are far more superior in healing tanks. HoTs are nice ofc for those moments where some healer might have some trouble, but still the healing output is ridiculously low comparatively. I don t know if our spells will scale better with gear stats on lvl 80 but so far in SWP, I feel that I am more of a liability healing the tank. I find myself more useful healing the raid, unless I leave wild regrowth out to get more ticks on lifebloom and get some more room to spam regrowth.
(Again everything at level 70) with more points around, things would be different though…
As for priests, they are the main healer that can do anything, not the gap-filling healer…
You can raid anything you want with priests only….
I’m actually looking forward to Nourish. Why? I’m not resto. I won’t have Swiftmend, and I won’t be using either the Regrowth or Healing Touch glyphs. My Regrowths won’t have +50% crit.
When I do thow a heal for PvP, solo, or small-group content, Nourish looks a lot better than HT or overwriting an existing Regrowth. It will be my go-to spell after my HoTs are up.
No question, though, for a new level-80 spell, it just isn’t very sexy. Our level 70 spell also gets very little end-game use. It still managed to have a huge impact on our non-raid playstyle. Nourish won’t be nearly so visible.
So our high-level trainable spells are a new kitty closer, and a new heal for non-resto’s. That sounds pretty bleh. However we did get a few other nice tidbits (Spellpower, Revive, nice new talents in all three trees, stronger Bears, Cats (could probably still use some work), and Moonkin, …).
It should make for interesting play at 80. I don’t know how well the class balancing will work out. Just crossing my fingers for now.
So is it crab bashing time?
Mmmm steamed crab legs maybe some crab salad on the side?
When I read his post yesterday I just rolled my eyes. Every healer now can fill in each others roll some maybe more versatile at it then others. Being a unique snowflake maybe a thing of the past and gray mush looks like the future. Is the light at the end of the tunnel 80 or maybe that just the bus coming form the other direction.
The more Ive been using the new talents the more I realize our bread and butter is the middle of the resto tree. Things below tree of life are missing sparkly goodness but I may just be clueless.
I wish they would just mesh Living seed effect and replenish together since living seed kind of sucks at the moment. Healing before damage is done and just being wasted when raid healing.
living seed 1/3
* 33% 66% 100% chance on crit heals to plant a living seed. living seed last 4 sec and restos 2 energy 1 rage 0.25 mana and 4 runic power every second.
Other problem is wasted ticks
New Talent
Photosynthesis 1/3 : When your target is at 100% health your rejuvenation ticks will be paused for 2sec it will continue if the target drops below 4% of their max hp. Up to 2/4/6 sec in total can be paused then the heal will continue as normal for the remaining duration.
Now I’m not sure if this would help. It could reduce the wasted tick on rejuvenation and also make it so you don’t have to re apply it as often. This could also allow some pre-healing to be done and some post-healing. I don’t know how it would play out but it make rejuvenation like prayer of mending but no bounce. Any thoughts?
Nourish hmm wish it Nourishing something. Make it a buff single target buff that feeds our hots making them stronger on that target
“As for priests, they are the main healer that can do anything, not the gap-filling healer…
You can raid anything you want with priests only….”
^^This.
Now that I’ve seen wws, I’m going to spec out of living seed and into something else, Replenish if I have to. In an SWP raid my living seed did a total of about 8,000 healing for the whole evening–and I was healing tanks on Kalecgos. That’s just not enough for three points. I assumed it was much more like earth shield than it actually is. Since it’s just based on effective healing, the seeds are really not blooming for much.
@ Sydera ..thats strange, last night my guild finished up Illidan, then went and farmed Hyjal for the rest of the evening. My Living Seed did 82k of healing per our wws.
http://wowwebstats.com/gmcbpnwj3y3h1?a=x45cf47
(i would be the only druid)
I normally get assigned to MT/Lock Tank on Illidan, Barrage target on P2, and I throw out Wild Growths to partys that get the AoE on P2.
For Hyjal… ya, ok, im not gonna lie. i totally spam-hurricaned all the trash >D
I think that charts, be it damage or healing, are the bane of WoW. At least that’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it.
That said, personally, I’m a rah-raher in terms of the state of Druid healing. Frankly, I don’t mind being good at everything instead of being great at one thing. Why? Because I can switch on the fly between healing styles depending on the situation. I become a hybrid healer.
I find Living Seed to be great. Why? I only really cast Regrowth on the target when either they’re at critical damage for raid healing, or my HoTs are lagging behind tank incoming damage. In both cases, the Living Seed is being applied at its full potential. (Although in the first case, it rarely actually gets a chance to bloom)
Maybe I’m just a n00b. I mean, I only really have T4 with a bit of T5 and T6 experience since the patch. But I dunno. A lot of what I hear seems to have less to do with keeping your raid members alive and downing bosses and more to do with “winning” the healing charts.
Gidget – 61% of living seed was over healing meaning 32020 healing was done. Its not bad for being a “free” heals but look at it this way. It takes 38 talent points for get living seed. Wild Growth only did 4% over healing so 424910 and cost 51 talents points. Wild Growth is the Obama-bomb of the resto tree, time for change?
For its spot in the tree it seems weak. The way it blooms before damage is calculated makes it less raid friendly this may be a bug. I’m more curious in how Inspiration or rapture and divine aegis compares to living seed. With regrowths high crit chance it works great with living seed but I’m guessing if it wasn’t for recap you wouldn’t have noticed living seed at all and I’m sure your tank didn’t notice it much either. Its just meh, I think we just want it to have more balls.
Karmakin – its not about winning the charts its about over healing for me really. You dont see dps being wasted because the mob has low health. You only see waste when it come to healing and it makes me sad.
The Blue response is intriguing to me as most Beta reports have druids leaning heavily on WG, especially in raid content. WWS from those 25 mans has druids far out-healing the other classes.
And from a theory-craft perspective I believe that druids are going to have more problems in 5 mans then raiding. The risks in raiding boil down to either a player not having enough STA/mit to survive a bosses uber-attack, or being gibbed directly after that big attack.
In BC raids that normally made direct heals so much more powerful, and perception-wise hurt the druid. The HoT’s gave the priest/paladin time to get off their heals, but players tend to notice the 7,000 crit on them and not the two ticks of 400 that saved their butt.
In Wrath it looks like so many of us, especially priests (where I think Disc will outnumber Holy) are going to provide saves that will allow the HoTs to take care of it. The Disc shields, the Holy 51 point, the shaman soul link are going to be way more powerful then the direct heal. Just more time for your HotS to tick.
At some point in the past, the devs stated that the key factor to WOTLK raids would be managing healer mana. At the moment I see people just spamming heals (CoH) and enjoying the massive mana returns they’re getting.
Possibly once Wrath raiding hits we’ll see an entirely new, optimal, use of the different healers and their specs. And we all know that HoTs are far superior to all else, right?
We do seem to have too many options, but I’m looking for some nice Resto4Life theorycrafting to guide us in our choices, and the numbers still haven’t been finalised.
I do like healing small content post-patch, and I really like Wild Growth, it has HoT goodness, it’s “quickly at first” nature means it’ll heal more before being overwritten by CoH/CH, and it helps the problem (when you’re solo healing) of “oh dear, everyone’s taking damage, who do I heal first, can I use HoTs or do I have to use Regrowth?”.
How good is glyphed HT? I’m still unsure about it, and I like my NS+HT macro.
Comparing level 80 Nourish and level 79 Flash Heal is interesting:
Both cost 18% base mana for 1.5 second cast, Nourish heals 1883-2187 (+20% bonus), and FH 1887-2193.
@Phae: you’re wanted on the WoWInsider podcast
I’m heartened to hear about the forms changes, being an aesthetic person this would please me the most out of the news above.
I have to say I am a little jealous of tauren druids with those low set moonkin horns (yes I respecced for solo daily content, I’m sorry!), my NE ones look like they might snap off. Something a bit more solid and powerful looking rather than a prancing reindeer would be right up my alley.
Be interesting to see what they do for the feral forms but I am more excited about tree of life and moonkin as I feel there is more potential for customistation with those two. Will await screen shots with much anticipation…
Wise Foxs last blog post..A healing rant
PLEASE! Make Tauren Catform Druids close their mouths.
Thanks
Beathoovens last blog post..[Pics] 7000 words on Druids
”
The Blue response is intriguing to me as most Beta reports have druids leaning heavily on WG, especially in raid content. WWS from those 25 mans has druids far out-healing the other classes.
”
As I said above, I have experienced this first-hand, so I m quoting this for truth.
I just wish those blue posting dudes really had a clue about what they are saying…
http://wowwebstats.com/zic3pddfnfn4s?s=118860-150406
http://wowwebstats.com/zic3pddfnfn4s?s=118860-150406
I have heard many complaints by taurens about their cat form and that they think the NE one is so much better. I like the whole lion with horns thing, though I have heard the face of the tauren cat described as a defmormed bat. So whats wrong with your form taurens, what would you like to see apart from a jaw thats not fused open?
Wise Foxs last blog post..A healing rant
A lion, not a wyvern….thing.
Keevas last blog post..Blizzard announce three new "role" forums: Tanking, Healing, Damage Dealing
I think it looks pretty lionish (note I don’t play a Tauren) what exactly is wrong with the lion with horns and what would players like to see added/changed?
Wise Foxs last blog post..A healing rant
For me the mouth is the key part. If they closed them at times it’d make it seem a lot less silly.
And they do look a lot like Windriders with horns (and no wings). I just think the panther looks awesome, get really jealous when I see sleek black kitties, but don’t have enough imagination to say what could be changed. Just: CHANGE!
Beathoovens last blog post..Spanking Heroic MgT and Target Dummies
“- 360º swipe: Not only I find it ridiculous, but totally unnecessary. I agree that bears should have similar functionality to the rest of the tanks, but copying everything at 100% is not needed, and makes choices a bit boring. Besides, how hard is to step back a bit and turn to face all mobs?”
Do you actually tank? There are numerous situations where mobs will be in front & behind you. If your healer hits you with a heal & pulls agro straight up before you can get enough threat on all, what is your choice? The mob has run to the healer & may well 2 shot him. Do you charge after the offending mob, thereby dragging the remaining mobs with you which you AREN’T continuing to gain threat on whilst you do this, & as a wonderful byproduct take the remaining mobs (who may have some sort of AOE damage as well) to the healer & thereby run the gauntlet that you are in fact gonna save the situation? Or do you let him fend for himself and hope a DPS class can get the mob off him in time??
A lot of 5 man / 10 man wipes happen because of this.
True 360 degree tanking does not have this problem. So why give it to 3 other classes but leave 1 class out?
@Briancoen: Please try to be respectful of the differing opinions on this matter. I understand it’s a charged issue that affects you personally, but a little more moderation would be appreciated. =) Thanks!
@Phaelia: @Briancoen: Please try to be respectful of the differing opinions on this matter. I understand it’s a charged issue that affects you personally, but a little more moderation would be appreciated. =) Thanks!
Huh?
Please explain in that passage where i have failed to use moderation? I asked whether he tanked… then i explained my reasons for asking such question by giving direct examples of where problems occur. I never abused / defamed / disrespected …
was just pointing out things that do happen in situations. My apologies for trying to bring this fact to the attention of those that may not be familiar with these types of situations. If i have offended anyone then i apologise and i shall crawl back into my hole of silence 
And no it doesn’t affect me personally, i’m just DPS so very little affects me. I like the idea of BALANCE & EQUALITY & CHOICE amongst tanks
When WOW first started it was attempting to emulate other MMO’s that went before it, but obviously with it’s own flavour. They couldn’t bring a game to market that was perfect or no other game would ever sell. In the start we had a game that i referred to as “warrior & friends”. If you didn’t have a warrior then nothing got raided & you had to think hard about group quests, period. Not an ideal situation. So for me having several classes all endowed with similar abilities, albeit with different names & icons, was where i think all MMO’s should aim, as we see now a lot are. Blizz has gone down the road of AOE tanking in a lot of areas, so to see a disparity like this that could be easily fixed is just not right. We want choices, & equal choices at that. I don’t want to have to say no to 5 mans / 10 mans that AOE trash tank if they have Druid tanks & we are gonna incur mobs going astray or avoidable wipes happening.
Lets just LEVEL the playing field to give more options is all i’m for
@Brian: It was moreso the “LOL! Do you actually tank?” I’ve since removed the “LOL.” I hope you won’t feel as though you have to be silent by any means; I simply strive to set good boundaries so that discussions remain constructive and unaggressive. It’s obvious that it wasn’t your intention to be mean, but I could see how it could be misinterpreted.
@Phaelia: After rereading my passage & trying to throw different connotations on it, i guess if you think i’m upset to start with then the rest may look like i’m fuming while i pound the keys lol
NP – all good here. Just like people to contribute in a positive & constructive way rather than making off the cuff remarks without thinking them through as it shows you do to
@Brian: Thank you for being understanding. I appreciate it and all of your contributions here!