Learn the basics of planning, creating, and growing a blog of your very own and join the flourishing and friendly WoW blogosphere. If we can do it, so can you! 
Direct Healing in Wrath
Published on December 15, 2008 by Phaelia 
Analysis, Lunar Guidance 
103 Comments
If the post title seems familiar, it’s because I already wrote this post once during the WotLK beta, using the then-applicable values for +Healing, coefficients, talents, and Glyphs. A lot has changed since then (for the worse, unfortunately) so we’re due for a second look at the various direct heals in Wrath, their relative efficiency, and relative effectiveness. Today we’re going to look at the following spells:
Regrowth without the [Glyph of Regrowth] used as a raid heal and cast on a target without Regrowth - Regrowth with the [Glyph of Regrowth] used as a tank heal and cast on a target with Regrowth already
- Nourish used as a raid heal and cast on a target without Rejuvenation, Regrowth, or Lifebloom
- Nourish used as a tank heal and cast on a target with Rejuvenation, Regrowth, or Lifebloom
- Nourish used as a tank heal and cast on a target with Rejuvenation, Regrowth, AND Lifebloom with the 4-piece T7 set bonus
- Healing Touch
- Healing Touch with the [Glyph of Healing Touch]
Since our goal is to compare the maximized version of each of these spells, we’re going to assume the following talents have been taken:
- Regrowth: Improved Regrowth, Empowered Rejuvenation, Moonglow
- Nourish: Tranquil Spirit, Moonglow
- Healing Touch: Naturalist, Empowered Touch, Tranquil Spirit, Moonglow
All spells will be assumed to have been cast in Tree of Life form, and all benefit from Gift of Nature and Master Shapeshifter.
Quick Links
Because I think most readers are most interested in the results, I’m going to include them at the top of the article. Feel free to check out the bottom of the article for the methods used.
- HPS Comparison
- HPM Comparison
- Significant Observations
- Method: HPS
- Method: HPM
- Method: Spell Power Coefficients
- Method: Average Amount Healed
- Final Notes
HPS Comparison
HPS is a measure of throughput. A spell with a high throughput is preferred in a situation where a target takes sudden, unexpected bursts of damage. These spells are typically more expensive and require a focus on mana regeneration to sustain. At values of spell power ranging from 1000 to 3000 and with a base spell crit chance of 10%, we can create the following HPS comparisons:
HPM Comparison
HPM is a measure of efficiency. A spell with a high efficiency is preferred in a situation where one or more targets take steady, predictable damage for long periods of time. These spells are typically less expensive and often benefit from increased HPS from adding spell power. At values of spell power ranging from 1000 to 3000 and with a base spell crit chance of 10%, we can create the following HP1%M comparisons:
Significant Observations
- Unglyphed Healing Touch is graphed in gray because I consider it too slow by default to leverage effectively. There is a possible build which would stack tremendous amounts of haste and use unglyphed Healing Touch exclusively. At 819.75 spell haste rating and Naturalist, the casting time of Healing Touch would reach 2.0 seconds, the same as an unhasted Regrowth. If you could achieve this much spell haste, the stat point equivalent is around 975 spell power, a considerable sacrifice that would cripple our other spells. But at 1500 spell power and 820 spell haste, unglyphed Healing Touch is substantially more efficient and effective than Regrowth as a raid heal while matching its HPS as a tank heal and only slightly underperforming its HPM as a tank heal. Unfortunately, the loss of a remotely effective HoT stack likely makes this strategy unviable. Is this the strategy we can expect to pursue at T10/11? I hope not. If I wanted to play a Paladin, I would wear more pink. Still, it would be interesting to see if this type of build becomes more viable as we travel along the gear curve.
- Nourish is an efficient (high HPM) heal when cast on a target who current has one or more our HoTs. It is however, considerably less effective (low HPS) than Regrowth and requires an investment in 5/5 Tranquil Spirit to reach the aforementioned level of efficiency, a seldom-taken talent that benefits only Nourish and Healing Touch.It is tremendously boosted by the acquisition of the 4-piece T7 set bonus where it suddenly becomes the most efficient choice for a tank heal (highest HPM), assuming you keep at least 3 HoTs on the target. Unfortunately, this set bonus may make graduating from T7 more difficult than it should be.
With the release of Patch 3.08, Nourish now benefits from the presence of Wild Growth, making it a viable tactic to supplement the healing from Wild Growth with strategic casts of Nourish.
- Glyphed Healing Touch has the highest throughput of any of these spells when used as a raid heal (and is correspondingly inefficient). It’s a great choice for dealing with a surprise spike of damage on a non-tank since it doesn’t require any HoTs to preset up. However, this tool comes at the expense of a 3-minute Nature’s Swiftness + Healing Touch. Any Druid who glyphs Healing Touch will want to create a macro that ties Nature’s Swiftness to Regrowth and Swiftmend. Such a macro would look like this:
#showtooltip
/cast Nature’s Swiftness/castsequence reset=target Regrowth, Swiftmend
-
To modify this to account for mouseover healing:
#showtooltip
/cast Nature’s Swiftness/castsequence reset=27 [target=mouseover,exists,help][target=target,help][target=player]Regrowth, [target=mouseover,exists,help][target=target,help][target=player]Swiftmend
- Regrowth seems to be the Renaissance Man of direct heals with good HPS and competitive HPM. This is in addition to its 21-27 second heal over time that allows for a Swiftmend. This will likely continue to be my “go to” direct heal of choice, a selection that will encourage me to eschew spell crit and not completely thumb my tree nose at spell haste.
- In terms of tank heals, Regrowth has the highest throughput and is the best choice to “catch up” when things go awry. It’s HPM is also fantastic, only trumped by that of a Nourish with 4-piece T7.
- The burst healing of a glyphed Healing Touch with less than a 1-second cast time will likely go a long way to overcome the difficulties that Death Knights present Restoration Druids in Arena. We’ve been spoiled by heals without casting times in the past, but we may have to put down roots at some point.
- There was a point in TBC where we had more mana than we could spend – you might remember me encouraging the increased use of Regrowth. Should that point be reachable in Wrath, glyphed Healing Touch spam will have all Paladins speccing Ret (and likely two-shotting us in revenge).
The strong performance by Regrowth is unsurprising given the number of talents with which it has synergy. At the same time, Nourish is quite underwhelming because it benefits from so few of our talents. I suspect it was intended as a tool for Balance and Feral Druids since the difference between a Resto Druid’s Nourish and a non-Resto Druid’s Nourish is minimal.
Method: Spell Power Coefficients
HPM/HPS analyses performed at increasing levels of spell power rely upon the spell power coefficient for each spell and condition. Credit for several of these calculations goes to Ridley of Grim Batol (EU) on his Restoration Itemization post at Elitist Jerks:
Coefficient Regrowth = Base Coefficient * Gift of Nature * Empowered Rejuvenation * Tree of Life Aura * Master Shapeshifter
= 0.537 * 1.1 * 1.2 * 1.06 * 1.04 = 0.781
Coefficient Regrowth w/Glyph = Base Coefficient * Gift of Nature * Empowered Rejuvenation * Tree of Life Aura * Master Shapeshifter * Glyph of Regrowth
= 0.537 * 1.1 * 1.2 * 1.06 * 1.04 * 1.2 = 0.938
Coefficient Nourish = Base Coefficient * Gift of Nature * Tree of Life Aura * Master Shapeshifter
= 0.671 * 1.1 * 1.06 * 1.04 = 0.814
Coefficient Nourish w/HoT = Base Coefficient * Gift of Nature * Tree of Life Aura * Master Shapeshifter * 20% HoT Bonus
= 0.671 * 1.1 * 1.06 * 1.04 * 1.2 = 0.976
Coefficient Healing Touch = (Base Coefficient + Empowered Touch) * Gift of Nature * Tree of Life Aura * Master Shapeshifter
= (1.611 + 0.4) * 1.1 * 1.06 * 1.4 * 1.04 = 2.439
Coefficient Healing Touch w/Glyph = ((Base Coefficient + Empowered Touch) * Glyph Multiplier) * Gift of Nature * Tree of Life Aura * Master Shapeshifter
= ((1.611 + 0.4) * 0.563) * 1.1 * 1.06 * 1.4 * 1.04 = 1.374
In addition to the spell power coefficients for each of these spells, we need to know the base amount healed. With the exception of Healing Touch and Glyphed Healing Touch, these numbers are calculated as follows. The values for Healing Touch and Glyphed Healing Touch are based upon testing:
Base Healed Regrowth = (2494 + 2234) / 2 * 1.1 * 1.06 * 1.04 = 2866.68
Base Healed Regrowth w/Glyph = (2494 + 2234) / 2 * 1.1 * 1.06 * 1.04 * 1.2 = 3440.02
Base Healed Nourish = (2187 + 1883) / 2 * 1.1 * 1.06 * 1.04 = 2467.72
Base Healed Nourish w/HoT = (2187 + 1883) / 2 * 1.1 * 1.06 * 1.04 * 1.2 = 2961.27
Base Healed HT = 5021
Base Healed HT w/Glyph = 2676.74
To summarize these results:
| Spell | Spell Power Coefficient | Base Amt. Healed* |
| Regrowth, Direct Heal (raid heal) | 0.781 | 2866.68 |
| Regrowth, Direct Heal with [Glyph of Regrowth] (tank heal) | 0.938 | 3440.02 |
| Nourish (raid heal) | 0.814 | 2467.72 |
| Nourish with HoT (tank heal) | 0.976 | 2961.27 |
| Healing Touch | 2.439 | 5021 |
| Healing Touch with [Glyph of Healing Touch] | 1.374 | 2676.74 |
Method: Average Amount Healed
We can use the Base Amount Healed to determine the average amount healed at different levels of spell power and spell crit.
Avg Healed = (Coefficient * Spell Power + Base Healed) * (1 + Crit Chance * 0.5)
For our Regrowth build, we’ll want to factor in the value of Improved Regrowth which adds another 50% to your chance to crit. Therefore, our average healed formula for Regrowth will look like this:
Avg Healed Regrowth = (Coefficient * Spell Power + Base Healed) * (1 + (0.5 + Crit Chance) * 0.5)
Nourish and Healing Touch aren’t affected by Improved Regrowth. Their formula for average healed will look like this:
Avg Healed Nourish, HT = (Coefficient * Spell Power + Base Healed) * (1 + Crit Chance * 0.5)
Avg Healed Nourish w/4-piece T7 = (Coefficient * Spell Power + Base Healed) * (1 + Crit Chance * 0.5) * 1.15
Living Seed is a difficult talent to factor into this analysis due to its high variance (30% of effective healing done by a spell crit that may possibly have gone to overhealing). WoWHead poster Foobear stated that a predominantly Regrowth-based fight yielded approximately 3% of effective healing done by Living Seed. If Living Seed were to hit for the full value every time, it would increase your extra healing on a spell crit from 0.5 to 0.95 (1.5 * 1.3). At a 60% crit rate, the average healing from factoring in crit would be 157% of the amount healed without crit (versus 130% without Living Seed). If Living Seed were getting its full value, it would account for 17% of effective healing. However, since it’s only doing 3%, we can estimate that Living Seed is only getting about 1/6 of its stated value. So instead of Living Seed giving a 0.45 bonus to crit, we’ll treat it as if it were giving a bonus of 0.08. This modifies our formulas as follows:
Avg Healed Regrowth = (Coefficient * Spell Power + Base Healed) * (1 + (0.5 + Crit Chance) * (0.5 + 0.08) * 1.1)
Avg Healed Healing Touch, Nourish = (Coefficient * Spell Power + Base Healed) * (1 + Crit Chance * (0.5 + 0.08) * 1.1)
Avg Healed Nourish w/4-piece T7 = (Coefficient * Spell Power + Base Healed) * (1 + Crit Chance * (0.5 + 0.08) * 1.1) * 1.15
Method: HPS
The formula for finding the HPS of a spell is simply:
HPS = Amount Healed / Cast Time
The “Amount Healed” value can be found using the formulas for Average Amount Healed and will change based on our spell power and spell crit values. At 0 spell haste, the cast time for Nourish is 1.5. The cast time for Healing Touch is 3.0 with Naturalist. The cast time for Healing Touch with the [Glyph of Healing Touch] and Naturalist is 1.0. However, the time to heal for all spells becomes more complicated with the introduction of Nature’s Grace:
Time to Cast = % NG Proc * (Cast Time – 0.5) + (1 – %NG Proc) * Cast Time
The % NG Proc above is based off your spell crit and, for our initial analysis, will be assumed to be 60% for Regrowth and 10% for other spells.
Method: HPM
The formula for finding the HPM of a spell is simply:
HPM = Amount Healed / Cost
With the change where all spell ranks will cost the same percentage of base mana, the cost to heal can be expressed as amount healed per 1% base mana or HP1%M. The base mana costs for the spell we’re looking at can be determined as follows:
Base Cost Regrowth = Base Mana Cost * Moonglow * ToL
= 0.29 * (1 – 0.09) * (1 – 0.2) = 0.211
Base Cost Nourish = Base Mana Cost * Tranquil Spirit * Moonglow
= 0.18 * (1 – 0.1) * (1 – 0.09) = 0.147
Base Cost HT = Base Mana Cost * Tranquil Spirit * Moonglow
= 0.33 * (1 – 0.1) * (1 – 0.09) = 0.270
Base Cost HT w/Glyph = Base Mana Cost * Tranquil Spirit * Moonglow * Glyph
= 0.33 * (1 – 0.1) * (1 – 0.09) * (1 – 0.25) = 0.203
Final Notes
A future addendum to this article will be to determine how each of these spells benefit from spell haste and spell crit.
Thanks to Ridley of Grim Batol (EU) for determining and sharing his findings on spell power coefficients and to Mr. Phae for all his mathematical and analytical assistance.
Related Posts
103 Comments
Trackbacks
- Restoration Glyphs - Page 4 - Elitist Jerks
- Druid: Simple Questions/Simple Answers - Page 11 - Elitist Jerks
- Resto (PvE) Healing Discussion - Page 7 - Elitist Jerks
- Spreadsheets « Nykhaos’s Blog
- Tools « Nykhaos’s Blog
- Links « Nykhaos’s Blog
- Links « Quot3Druid
- Tools « Quot3Druid
- Quot3Druid
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Brilliant post! You have single-handedly clarified most questions I had about resto healing at 80. I now know what heals to use for which situation with mathematics to back me up. Thanks so much.
(Glyph of Regrowth – will you be analysing the effect of this glyph on Regrowth’s HPS and HPM?)
@Marc: I’m really glad you found it helpful! As for the [Glyph of Regrowth], it’s very simply a 20% bonus to the HPM and HPS of the spell since it increases the HP output of a Regrowth (the numerator of both stats) by 20%. This, of course, assumes the recipient already has a Regrowth on them, so it won’t increase the efficiency or effectiveness of Regrowth as a raid heal.
Just one note: you use Spell Power in formulas, but +Healing on charts. Thanks for doing the math for us anyway!
Wow… I had no idea thought Nourish was this bad, I guess I’m gonna put Regrowth back where it belongs in my healing rotation…
I can confirm that the effect of Living Seed is around 3%.
One thing you’re not taking into account here is the extremely high crit chance of a talented and raid buffed Regrowth combined with nature’s grace procs, this shortens the average cast time of the spell considerably and increases the hps further. It does however rely on rng, so it is possible to not get a crit for an extended period of time, strongly reducing your output. This has yet to happen to me though.
Looking at WWS Regrowth does around 50-55% of my healing these days, with the rest coming from lifebloom (15-25%, depending on the number of tanks), living seed, wild growth and rejuv.
Thanks so much Phae, this post and others have helped me figure out just what to do with all the healing tools available to us!
Could you clarify the cast times you used for your HPS numbers? I am particularly wondering about…
Regrowth — A 60% crit chance gives this an average cast time of 1.7 seconds. You seem to have taken this into account, but I’m not totally sure.
Glyphed Healing Touch — The heal lands in 1.0 seconds, but the spell still takes up 1.5 seconds of your time due to the global cooldown, correct? (Not even taking into account the latency issues which I understand this brings up.) Which number was used for this spell’s HPS?
As you might guess, I am still trying to figure out whether I want my HT glyphed or unglyphed. I’ve tried both, and while the one-second HT _feels_ so much faster than Regrowth, it seems the difference is largely illusory.
@Tarqon. Just to support the above assumptions about Living Seed, in my case it does about 1-1.5% of total healing whereas regrowth goes somewhere between 20% and 30%, so it seems reasonable to me as well.
However Nature’s Grace has already been considered when calculating the HPS figures (or so says Phaelia
)
I got a few questions regarding the graphics.
Like Wyrmrider I’m wondering if the GCD has been considered with glyphed HT. It looks faster in the graphs than it is out there.
Also I’m almost sure Nature’s Grace still doesn’t reduce the GCD (hard to tell when I don’t use Nourish ^^), so it wouldn’t affect Nourish or Glyphed HT for the same reason. Has this been taking into account as well?
Does “regrowth as a raid heal” include the HoT? The difference with Nourish seems a bit tight in the charts. Maybe it’s worth an additional curve?
Finally, I see no mention to Nature’s Majesty. It really has no serious effect on the conclussions, but some people still “think” the extra crit on Nourish makes any difference.
Thanks for a really good job. I had written some of this in my guild’s forum just to explain how regrowth spam could actually be a better idea in single-target healing and why Nourish is such a bad spell, but this article goes totally beyond that, also bringing some answers I was unable to give myself (while colored thingies are always nicer than raw numbers). Thumbs up!
Great job!
One more thing: if someone plans to be dreamstate-regrowth healer, maybe 4/5 PvP gear can be considered for the -0.2secs cast time.
Pvp gear will really gimp you mana pool and regen though. Also keep in mind that haste rating is incredibly easy to come by. Right now I’m running with 265 haste in my spellpower/regen set, and I can bring that up to 600 easily by swapping out a couple gear pieces. Casting fast is not an issue.
I must say that the t7 set bonuses for druids do suck though, especially compared to priests’, and the chest is very unimpressive as well.
Maths are back! Yay, I love it.
Thanks for your brilliant work. I knew Nourish is a bad spell but I didn’t know it was this bad. I would like to resell it to the trainer who tought it to me. Satisfaction or money back!
My experience in early 10/25 raiding is that mana is no big issue. Given that you were able to pick some reasonable gear in Naxxramas and have all the mana restoring raid buffs up there is no problem at all in throwing some less mana efficient spells without regretting it at the end of the fight.
Why does 20% increased healing done not affect Nourish tank-HPS?
Great article, thanks to all three of you.
I’ll be kinda of a devil’s advocate here.
While I agree Nourish have no synergy with talents and looks plain, I like to think on it as a downranked Regrowth, for situations where a) I don’t need a 7k heal, b) I don’t need a HoT on the target because I know he won’t take further/burst dmg – therefore I won’t need to swiftmend later -, and/or c) I’d like to keep the tank topped up without generating excessive overhealing. Regrowth definitely have a better HPM, but that’s considering a “clean heal”.
But maybe I should glyph HT and use it instead…
@Hokuto, the main problem I is Nourish isn’t even considerably cheaper. Untalented (anybody uses Tranquil Spirit?) it costs 629 mana against 719 of regrowth. Even if I don’t need swiftmend, the HoT ticking for half a minute covers for some future, low-intensity damage, which makes me always use regrowth. On the other side, if you know your target won’t take any serious damage soon, rejuvenation is a better option.
You mention keeping the tank topped off without overhealing. If damage is low, HoTs should take care of that. If regrowth were to overheal, you could just let the tank’s health drop a bit lower before using it (which would be more efficient than your “downranking”). There’s also Living Seed. And if your target’s getting serious, unpredictable damage (Patchwerk?), you should always start casting that regrowth because you cannot guess how bad it’ll be by the time your spell lands.
It feels bad to ignore a spell that one suspects should be useful, but right now we have practically no reasons to use Nourish.
And about glyphed HT.. Why? It’s worse in every way: weaker and more expensive. Its only advantage is it can become slightly more responsive if you spend talent points on it, so you would be wasting 1 major glyph and 1-5 talent points in making a spell just comparable to another one (Nourish) that’s already in trouble against a third (Regrowth)
@LX: Oh … the values of spell power on the graphs are correct. The axis is simply mislabeled. Sorry for the confusion.
@Tarqon: Nature’s Grace is taken into account and, in this example, reduces the casting time of Regrowth to an average of 1.7. You can see this described under Method: HPS.
I’m relieved to know that the 3% estimate from Living Seed wasn’t unreasonable.
@Wyrmrider: Here are the cast times originally used (included in the spreadsheet): RG – 1.7, Nourish – 1.45, HT – 2.45, Glyphed HT – 0.95
I was initially under the impression that they’d fixed Nature’s Grace so that it would effectively reduce the GCD of a spell cast, but it appears that this may only affect Wrath in this way. Could someone confirm whether this is the case? This makes me a very angry tree since it FURTHER devalues spell crit and it’s being practically shoved down my throat. I’ll go ahead and adjust the casting time of glyphed HT to 1.0 (I believe that Glyphed HT does have it’s GCD reduced by Naturalist as it’s something I fiddled with a lot in beta) sec and Nourish to 1.5 .
@Aelinna: Actually, the 20% additional heal on the base portion of Nourish is also taken into account. It’s base heal is 2961.27 while the raid heal is only 2467.72. The 20% as a tank heal is also included in its spell power coefficient, so I believe this is accurate.
@Hokuto: Nourish won’t be off my bars completely, but it’s definitely going to be an “alt” ability of a key that I use all the time. If nothing else, it’s useful when attacked by an OP DK! I think Ermengol makes some excellent points about the relative cost of a Regrowth and a Nourish and the fact that RG includes the HoT. In PvE, at least, I am having a hard time seeing a use for Nourish.
@Ermengol: Don’t deride glyphed Healing Touch too much. It has by far the best HPS, making it amazing for PvP. In cases where you’d spam Regrowth to “catch up”, you’d be better off spamming glyphed Healing Touch. However, as you note, it requires 5 talent points and a Glyph to get it to this point and comes at the cost of a potent NS + HT macro.
Great post.
I do think that for the reader, HPM is more useful than HP1%M. My mana bar show my mana, not that I have 497% of my base mana. My in-game (and armory) character screen shows MP5, not 1%MP5.
It is slightly more work for you (Base Mana Cost) becomes (Base Mana Cost * Base Mana@80), but I’ll be glad to chip in for a calculator
Nice post.
I’ve made a resto druid spreadsheet (see http://www.enomdarsattic.com) that will calculate these values and more with your character’s own stats and talents plugged in.
@Erdluf: I think it unimportant to change HP1%M to HPM since the idea of the comparison is to see how they perform relative to one another and specific mana costs are irrelevant (and level based). Anyone can look at their tooltip to determine the individual mana costs if they are so inclined.
@Enomdar: Wow, cool! Thank you for doing that! Your site looks extremely helpful. /bookmarks
Thank you Phae! I love these posts from you.
I love glyphed Healing Touch, and I only glyphed it at the suggestion of a resto druid who was outperforming me in the same gear. My current level of spellpower/regen (geared in a motley mix of ten and 25-man stuff) supports extensive use of the spell. It can be about the only thing that gets through in an environment where most healing is overhealing. I don’t have naturalist, but I may drop gift of the earthmother for it. Probably not.
I still have my Nature’s swiftness/Healing Touch macro. I’m not using it to save anyone anymore–just to top someone off quickly. It has, however, saved people on Kel’Thuzad. However, I find now that nature’s swiftness makes less of a difference, I use it every time it’s up, probably increasing my overall effective healing more than it used to. It’s the equivalent of slaving one’s trinkets to lifebloom (which, by the way, I still use).
You know there has been some back and forth on my guild forums about just this subject. I’ve argued the points you’ve made but its awesome to have such a well written post (with pretty graphs and pictures to boot!) to simply link when elucidating certain numbers. Thanks so much phae!
I was a restoration shaman for over a year on both factions, and I learned about your blog months ago from Zaira, Posts like this really help me understand you tree types, and it helped me collaborate with the trees in our raids, and they’re always a fun read on the side!
I’m very grateful now that I’m a guild leader that your brilliant posts continue.
Keep up the great work!
@Sydera
The reason the NS -> HT macro isn’t used by people who glyph HT is because Regrowth out heals a glyphed HT for nearly the same mana cost with a 21-27sec HoT that you can Swiftmend if necessary. This is why HT glyph’ers make their macro NS -> Regrowth. Same mana, more heal.
Also, be weary about using your NS macro whenever NS becomes available. Try to use NS only when it’s needed. It’d be a shame to have your MT die because NS was on CD from when you used it when he was at 85%, hehe.
Oratur from Shadow Council
I tried the glyphed healing touch and absolutely hated it it seemed to do very little healing so removed it now when I’m healing a tank and it already has all of the hots runing on him I start to cancel cast the regular healing touch.
no dmg cancel the cast decent+ amount of damage let it go.
hots runing out re-apply swiftmend if needed and start casting the next big heal.
In the current content, I don’t think any of the tanks are in any danger
Too many numbers hurt my brain! But that’s some very impressive analysis there.
In 5-man heroics, regrowth is my bread and butter on tanks (along with rejuv, lifebloom, and the occasional swiftmend) and wild growth is used on the rest. In 10 or 25 man raids, I focus on the instant casts, since other healers can take care of the big heals. Really, that’s little different from BC healing, except that the addition of Wild Growth makes it a LOT easier to heal heroics.
@Ermengol Nataure’s Grace does not affect the GCD.
@Phaelia Does your analysis on Nourish take into account it’s latent 5% increase if the target has one of your HoTs on it? This also stacks with the 4/5 t7 bonus, making it’s output multiplier 1.25, not just 1.2. Also, is there any information as to whether the HoT produced by Living Seed counts as an additional HoT on the target? This would potentially increase the modifier to 1.3. Admittedly though, you would have to spend time in between refreshing your HoTs, especially the shorter ones. You should probably be doing that anyway though.
@Sydera: I agree with Random. Using a potentially lifesaving ability on a 3-minute cooldown to boost effective healing doesn’t seem like the most optimal way to leverage it. I’d strongly recommend switching that over to a Regrowth + Swiftmend macro. Nature’s Swiftness is AWESOME but far too infrequently available to be used as a tool to increase your effective healing.
@Zaira: Awesome! I think I’ve noticed a few incoming links from various guild forums. Thanks for sharing!
@Mokrov: That is very kind of you to say, Mokrov, and I appreciate you taking the time to comment about it! Best of luck to you, your healing corps, and your guild!
@Gus: I’ve also had glyphed Healing Touch a few different times, but I don’t really like the way it “feels” even if it is high HPS. I may switch back to it to give it another shot once I no longer need my Glyph of Innervate (Glyph of Regrowth and Swiftmend are MUST HAVEs for me, leaving only one slot free).
@Riverrun: Your healing style sounds similar to mine though I’m never shy about dropping a Regrowth on a groupmate if they’ve taken a large spike of damage. Wild Growth is a great tool for light AoE but sometimes a larger heal is needed.
@Homitu: You have brought my attention to the fact that I misunderstood the 4-piece T7 bonus, (I misread it as a 5% mana discount per HoT). I’ve modified the post, spreadsheet, and graphs. Thank you so much!
Amazing article. Thank you so much for that analysis. I was thinking that using Regrowth for a direct tank heal as wasteful of mana, since it overwrites the HoT. It seems I was mistaken. I’m very disappointed in Blizz at the poor HPS and HPM of Nourish without 4 piece T7.
Thanks Phae for taking the time to do the maths.
I have had the same headache of figuring the usage of Nourish with many of the tree-forum poster.
I am not a big fan of Nourish, but I find it is useful in situation where Nourish’s slightly faster cast time compared to Regrowth means a lot.
For example, I prefer Nourish over Regrowth on Patchwerk. I normally will keep, if time allows, rejuvenation on tank, keep the regrowth HOTs ticking, and spam Nourish to handle the spike. Due to the mechanic of Patch’s hateful strike on highest health player, healers have to bring the tanks back to or close to full as fast as we can, this is where I find Nourish faster cast time helps.
In most other situation for spot heal, I still prefer Regrowth due to the HOTs component.
I loves it. Thank you for doing all the maths and graphs I only wish I had time to do.
Thank you also for confirming what I have been noticing/feeling in my roots during raids. Intuition is nice – but numbers are better.
I’m also seeing about 0.5% – 1% of my healing coming from Living Seed and I cast about 20% Regrowth.
Aertimuss last blog post..My New Favorite Item
While I agree that Nourish isn’t that good, I totally disagree with conception of it being useless.
In ‘oh crap, tank is dying’ situations I don’t like to rely on huge crits of regrowth and reduced casting time even if I know the crit chance is really high. Sometimes you just get several casts without any crit at all and this way Regrowth has less both HPM and HPS. Surely I will use swiftmend, NS+HT combo first, but if tank still dies I will spam Nourish on him instead of relying on Regrowth crits. Healing is just not about RNG.
Well, that’s my 2 cents.
@Siobhann: Don’t feel too bad about underestimating Regrowth. For a long time, it was really inefficient and clunky to use. Now, it’s my fav-or-ite, though, and I’m happily glyphed for Regrowth and Swiftmend.
@JKong: Interesting. I haven’t done Patchwerk yet, but I’ll keep your use of Nourish in mind, thank you!
@Aertimus: It’s good to hear that the 3% estimate for the usefulness of Living Seed wasn’t especially inaccurate. What a terrible talent! =(
@Badma: Assuming 1500 spell power, at 1.5 sec, you could heal with Nourish for 4425 HP. At 2.0 sec, you could heal with Regrowth for 4847 HP. In the 40% of cases (60% crit on RG) where 0.5 seconds matters and Swiftmend is on cooldown AND you don’t have glyphed Healing Touch AND Nature’s Swiftness is also down AND you don’t have a Nature’s Grace proc from your last Regrowth (60% chance), then yes, Nourish is better.
my 2c:
1) my observation from the graphs is that Nourish is actually only minimally inferior to Regrowth as tank heal. I would never consider using it for raid heal when you have WG and all other tools. However, and especially with T7 bonus, and stacking up some crit that inevitably comes with WOTLK purples, I think Nourish is a valid situational heal. With some crit/haste and Nature’s Grace, you can cast Nourish every 1 sec. and this provides exceptional burst heal, much quicker than Regrowth spam. It really “feels” quicker when you’re spamming it and can save the tank while the pallies are AFK’ing on Patchwerk.
2) I really don’t see how anyone could reasonably spend 15 talent points on buffing up their Healing Touch. I am not willing to give up Nature’s Grace nor, actually, Nature’s Splendor. Nor, actually, WG, even after the nerf. So for PVE purposes I would have a really hard time justifying a sacrifice of a glyph slot for glyphed HT. I really only use it for NS/oh-shit, and occasionally when Nature’s Grace procs (especially if the badge trinket procs too). And on that Razuvius fight where tanks have 125K HP and you can yawn and spam HT and enjoy your 15K crits.
3) I actually think that with GOTEM minimizing the effect of haste for most HOTs and the amount of crit stacking on resto gear, Nature’s Growth becomes a “resto Eclipse”. Watching for it and squeezing ultra-quick Nourish, fairly-quick Regrowth or pretty-quick supercritting HT makes play very exciting and active. After months of rotating lifeblooms in TBC, we actually have to swing the branches in the fraction of the second to decide what is more important: a quick small fix, a huge fix in 2 seconds, or a moderate fix with a HOT. At the same time – we gotta be on the look out for OOC for a better mana management.
4) I agree that Regrowth is the most versatile direct heal we have, but Nourish and Swiftmend are right next to it on my bar and not going anywhere and “situational” (meaning, taking into consideration multiple factors of raid, tank HPs as well as all the procs) describes now all the spells we have.
Which is good!
The one problem that I can see with these comparisons is our limited amount of talent points. At this time, it is not feasible to keep all the talents that are good for all of these spells – so while buffing one, you may nerf another.
Another talent that I didn’t see mentioned is Nature’s Grace, which gives -0.5 casting time, 100% of the time, on a critical spell cast. I find this talent to push Regrowth into being far more appealing in some cases.
Now, if we consider a build including Nature’s Grace, which is a very useful talent when combined with Regrowth, while buffing as many hots as realistically possible, we end up with a build that looks somewhat like this:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/druid/talents.html?tal=05320031000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000023003331203150253105001351
Which does not include living seed or replenish with 5 points left over.
Removing Living Seed will negatively effect the overall healing of Regrowth, but would give us the option of picking up Tranquil Spirit or Naturalist. However, I think that it would be impossible to pick up both without drastically effecting other aspects of our healing arsenal.
@Phae – yup go try out single healing 1 tank on Patchwerk; its fun!!! I run 10man Naxx with only 2 healers. So I am on 1 tank and the other healer on the other. Serious s DPS fight as a healer can go OOM easy, this is one fight where I innervate myself.
One thing to note, I do not have Nature Grace spec-ed. A bit out of topic, but does instant cast (RJ/LB/WG) consume Nature’s Grace proc?
@Badma – I think our heal style is similar. Without fail, everytime I see my tanks suddenly dropped 20K hp, I will throw RJ then spam Nourish until they are patched (of course with Swiftmend and NS used). My nourish heals for 4K+ non crits and 7k+ crits – only have 2T7 now darn it!
@FIORD – Glyphed HT is a no-go for me too. I find NS+HT is a oh-shit button that I use often due to the spike damage nature of WOTLK heroics/raids. Unglyphed HT is also good for fights where tank take gradual damage – nowadays in heroics, sometimes I get lazy and let the tank take beating on thrash and do a unglyphed HT. It can almost always top the tank back to either full or 90%. I only have 1.6k+healing unbuff.
@Jkong – Nature’s Grace’s proc is only consumed by direct heals.
You needn’t stop using HoTs because of DKs in PVP. I wrote about it in my article here: http://healerenvy.blogspot.com/2008/12/die-death-knight-no-wait-die-again.html
Short version: Plague Strike, which applies Blood Plauge, has a 100% chance of removing a HoT. However, it does abysmal damage compared to a DKs other attacks, and costs 1 unholy rune, of which a DK usually only have 2 in a 10 sec window. That rune expended also can’t be used for more damaging attacks. The Blood Plague disease has a 25% chance on removing a HoT every tick, which is every 3 sec. With the possibility of 6 HoTs (3xLifebloom, Rejuvenation, Regrowth and possibly Wild Growth), the DK is unable to reliably remove all your HoTs. In fact, it’s much easier to keep up HoTs against a DK than a purging shammy (but you get the lifebloom-dispel effect when getting purged, but nothing when a DK removes them). Thus, don’t stop using HoTs against DKs in PVP.
Ayebas last blog post..Observations, experiences, notes and thoughts on 60-70
@Phaelia: If I have Nature’s Grace proc from last critted Regrowth Nourish’s HPS will be even better
@Phae:
I’ve just glyphed Healing Touch again to test the timing, and I can confirm that its 1.5-second GCD is unaffected by either Naturalist or Nature’s Grace.
The first heal lands in 1 second of course, but then there’s a 0.5-second window where you have to wait for the GCD to catch up. The next heal is the same unless you got a Nature’s Grace proc, in which case it lands in 0.5 seconds and you wait a full 1 second for the GCD. Saying I “spammed” glyphed HT for this test seems like a misnomer considering it was worse than 2/3 actual casting and 1/3 enforced downtime.
Assuming you want to cast something else immediately after your glyphed HT (and when would that NOT be the case?), it actually takes up 1.5 seconds of your time. In this context its HPS drops into the middle of the pack.
I’m forced to conclude that the ONLY thing to recommend glyphed Healing Touch is that it’s great for emergencies. But that’s just exchanging one “oh $&*%!” button for another, and spending a lot of talent points and a valuable glyph slot to do it.
@Badma:
Not really. Nature’s Grace doesn’t seem to play nicely with Nourish either. Our level 80 spell… words fail me.
Excellent read
I have been experimenting lately with alot of glyphs and builds, and personally I prefer glyphed HT over the other direct heals. Still ALOT faster than nourish, especially if there is heavy group damage going on. It does however get extremely mana ineficcient if you have to keep it up for longer than a few seconds…but still the best “oh @#$%” soloution i have, except of course for tranquility
This is mostly relevant in 5man heroics and maybe 10man’s though, in a raid setting where you are on the tank alone and a spammy pally or priest can do the raid heals, I suppose you can take a few seconds and cast a regrowth instead of healing touch. Regrowth beats nourish as it adds a HoT and u can swiftmend off it. Glyph of swiftmend is awesome too
Only negative of glyphed HT is the fact that it’s heal is halved…
At the moment I am working on some gear with crit, to get the most out of my HT(I took points out of useless talents like replenish and seed of life and specced for 100% HT efficiency) …if it means boomkin gear then that’s OK, a respec is only a gank away
A good exaple of gear I got for it is the Shoulders of the Monstrosity or something that drops in naxx, which gives stam, spirit, int, spellpwer and crit. For 40 heroic badges you can get a nice belt too with these stats. Wowhead item search kicks out alot of gear with these stats.
EDIT: I didn’t see that someone beat me to the punch. Nature’s Grace is not consumed by instant cast spells.
@kitsu, what Glyphs are you using then?
Sadly, I’m new to it all, but appear to be using a similar talent build. It doesn’t have any of the Healing Touch type talents… No idea why I went with it to be honest.
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/druid/talents.html?tal=05320031000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000023003331243150053105301351
Thanks for the correction on the GCD of Glyphed Healing Touch + Naturalist. (I could have SWORN this was something I tested in beta, but I’ll believe you guys!) I’ve corrected the cast time to 1.5 seconds and edited the graphs above to reflect this change.
A thing to note for using Nourish as raid heal is that a lot of the raid target might not have a HOTs effect on them (especially in 25s) and hence Nourish heals 20% less.
With the amount of haste on the gears we use nowadays Regrowth cast relatively quick. My regrowth casts in 1.84seconds with zero buffs/effect/proc in my current gear.
I think the argument against a Glyphed HT is that it uses 1 Major Glyph slot, 5 talents on Naturalist, 2 talents in empowered touch to increase its hps, and another few in Tranquil spirit to reduce its mana cost… all these investment, for a very situational usage? And where another spell (Nourish/Regrowth) can do the job, and with Regrowth having a 21-27secs HOT component as a bonus?
And so far, I still find the oh-really-deep-shit button where I would put unglyphed NS-HT, RG-SM combos too good to give up.
If forced to tank heal with direct healing spells then I have this feeling that Regrowth/ht rotation would work really well. with 189 haste nature’s grace proc reduces the cast time of my HT to 1.9 seconds.
In the end I feel the HoT spells trump the rest though for most situations. The only time I’ve found myself really falling into the direct healing role has been in the absence of a paladin healing in a 25 man raid.
Hi, After doing some maths myself and reading this blog I have decided to try out a dreamstate build (28/43 or 27/44 if i can find sufficient mp5 gear). In light of this I have been trying to find some suitable spreadsheet/calculations on how to value gear and gear upgrades similar to shadowpanther. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.
Of course I am aware of the resources linked to this blog, which is my main reason for posting. There appears to be an error in de coding of v1.21L of the Resto Spreadsheet. Filling in Lunar Guidance by 1/3 seems to boost spelldamage on the Gear/Talent tab by an incredible amount. Any consequetive (sp?) points (2/3, 3/3) in this talent increase the spelldamage normally. (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0VGcu0IkhZZf0IubuxVuV0R)
Keep up the good work.
You might like to update the ‘Significant Observations’, eg re: Nourish “the saving grace is to acquire 4pc T7… this has no effect on its appalling HPS”.
And RG now has the best tank HPS (besides unglyphed HT), not glyphed HT.
I tried out RG spam on Malygos last night and loved it, full HOTs on tank ofc. It’s been promoted to rclick and I’ve unbound HT apart from NSHT. I think I might unbind nourish too so I only need alt to cure/decurse.
@Aelinna: Thanks for the tip – I’ve modified the significant observations quite a bit to take into account these changes.
New druid reads topic.
New druid’s respecs Feral.
Information overload.
Phaelia,
What about Rejuvenation? Lifebloom? I’m a new to 80 resto druid. In the past I just had 3 stacks of LB and a rejuv, and that was fine. Now it’s not.
Should we still be doing 3x LB on tanks and other heals?
Gibbies last blog post..Big 80
I’m absolutely loving the thread on the WoW forums. I get a special warm feeling whenever I see someone spouting stuff about everyone else not understanding, then having themselves largely disproved by cold, unbiased math.
I don’t think I have much to contribute to the post, here. What can I say? “I agree?” That’s about it, really
Just an interesting tidbit from my parses that I’m sure you’ve seen before, but with all the regrowth ‘spamming’ that’s going on, a lot are trying to say the HoT becomes worthless. Overwritten. Not allowed to tick. All sorts of things like that.
In all of the parses I’ve looked at, with Regrowth being my main spell, the direct healing only accounts for around 25% of the spell. The rest comes from the HoT effect. It’s telling me that despite Regrowth being my go-to heal as well, the overall spell is amazingly effective. It’s a little funny that I started out the game when Regrowth was looked at as worthless and horrible in terms of efficiency, and now it really has become my favorite spell (and for good reason).
Keep it up, Phae
@Dorgol: Well, I’m sorry you feel that way! I understand there’s quite a bit of analytical optimization available for Ferals, too, though.
@Gibbie: HoTs are a very different animal from direct heals since they aren’t mutually-exclusive. Someone with a Lifebloom can also benefit from a Rejuvenation and the HoT portion of a Regrowth. You should still be stacking Lifebloom on your 1-2 tanks along with Rejuvenation (with or without the Replenish effect). Regardless of your choice of direct heals, you should keep a Regrowth on them, too, because it provides a 27-second Swiftmend window. I focus on RG as my direct heal, so I use Swiftmend to handle a spike and hit them with another Regrowth if SM is on cooldown. The only exception to this rule is it my Regrowth is about to expire and I think the tank is safe enough to take 2.0 seconds to refresh Regrowth before it can. In this way, I am able to save my Swiftmend for more urgent matters.
@Nilianil: I didn’t realize how obnoxious that person was being until his last statements about QQ and Lifebloom rolling. That’s probably fortunate because I would likely have taken a different tact from the beginning if I had!
P.S. Viva la Regrowth!
Thanks for doing this analysis – I’d seen the math on EJ for a while, but the graphs (and the posting on this blog) make it THAT much easier for the community to see. As always, you’re making Resto Druid mechanics more understandable for the community at large
On a related note, thanks for taking such a strong role in the Nourish topic on the healing forums – I’d hardly call it a QQ topic, and GC responded with a direct, simple, and heartening response. Here’s to hoping we can all keep giving positive, constructive feedback
Hi Phae,
First-time poster, long-time reader here. Thanks again for the excellent analysis.
I am wondering if you are missing something looking at heals in isolation when raid-healing.
Being often assigned to raid healing (in 10s – ie more or less only raidhealer) I generally proactively cast rejuves, then spot heal with SM and glyphed HT if urgently required, or regrowth if not.
Any thoughts as to the cost/benefits vs using different combinations?
For example using regrowth instead of rejuv (regrowth has a longer durantion, low tick, similar SM), different spot heals (longer cast times vs more mana efficiency vs regrowth extending the hot on average 50%).
I don’t know if this can be calculated, but something like:
1. Mana required of keeping hots on X players.
2. Casting time required to keep hots on X players.
3. Y spot heals required every 10s.
4. Costs in terms of mana and cast times for Y-1 different spot heals (assume 1 spot heal is a swiftmend).
Then use these to compare:
1. Mana used per minute.
2. Time left over to do other stuff.
3. Size of spot heal
4. Spot heal casting times.
In particluar I have doubts as to the appropriateness of using HPM and HPS to assess such combinations. Especially since proactive hots aren’t doing much for 90% of the time, but during the 10% they may be preventing wipes.
Damn… this reply got longer than I had planned.
I guess my question is: what are the ‘best’ combinations of heals for raid-healing in 10s.
DTINT, the problem is healing depends so much on the fight you can’t set “rotations” beforehand like DPS classes do. If you fight in a different setup, or a tank with different gear, etc, the healing demands will change a lot.
The only we can do is to set some priorities such as keep lifebloom+rejuvenation on tank(s), pre-cast rejuvenation on party members when certain AoE attack is going to show up, use any HoTs whenever healing speed is not a priority and, in general, adjust the intensity of the heals to the damage.
Having a general idea of the efficiency of every spell is really useful, but we need to be flexible under the different circumstances.
Oh lord.. Phae, you’ve done it again. I’ve been struggling to find a use for Nourish, now I can wait till I get a few more T7.
This post helped alot, and spurred some good discussions on the EU druid board.
“@Dorgol: Well, I’m sorry you feel that way! I understand there’s quite a bit of analytical optimization available for Ferals, too, though.”
Well, I’m not seriously going to stick to Feral, but this is really too much info for me. I’ll just stick to healing in such away that people don’t die, even if I might be doing so in an inefficient / sub-optimal way! =D
With the new, longer LB durations, I’ve found myself with more time to use HT. I know its slow even when talented, but it has an amazing HPS/HPM if you can pull it off. I’ve been using it to fill up our 30k hp guild bear when he drops below 50% hp. Load LBx3, rejuv, regrowth, then fire off a HT if necessary.
Granted I’m only starting to muck around in heroics and 10-mans. Does anyone use HT later?
@Treebrother
Healing Touch is supported by the graphs, but as Phae said, it’s gray for a reason. Between refreshing HoTs when I need to, I can’t really cancel cast Healing Touch very well in 25 mans. With other healers around I’m not able to get much use out of it, especially when there’s other raid healing to be done via spreading out some HoTs.
I’m not talented for it, so it’s quite slower for me, but the only time I cast HT without NS is when I press my NS HT key but NS isn’t up…and by the time I realize is HT is already 1 second into the cast :p
In a pure tank healing situation like what you mentioned, I’d be more likely to swiftmend and/or WG (that might change with the cooldown) the tank before I’d try to use healing touch. Good chance I’d end up with Regrowth on him to try and proc a Living Seed, which would pretty much boost it to HT’s level if it’s not overheal, cost a little less (with my spec), and be quicker…but it’s still crit dependant, so yeah, won’t always go my way ^^;
I have resorted to HT before, but the situations are just extremely rare.
Eep, someone at my door – gotta go!
This data makes me feel lame for liking Glyphed HT so much. I know it’s not efficient but getting those heals off quick is quite nice. As far as pure numbers go, it also heals for as much as a Buffed Nourish, making that spell pretty much pointless, though I do use it if a HoT is up since it’s a cheaper mana cost.
I guess it all depends on play style, but I’ve adopted HT in my healing rotation, even though I used to never ever cast it pre-glyph (NSHT notwithstanding… and with the new glyphs, NS-RG-SM seems a better use of NS). I’m not sure about the GCD though. Maybe I’m a bit slow, but I seem to be able to spam 0.95 second HT easily enough without clicking too soon (which tends to happen to me with Lifebloom sometimes)
TL;DR for Dorgol, my own views, not necessarily agreed with by Phaelia.
Stack 3*LB + RJ + RG on tanks. Spam regrowth on everyone else and if one of the tanks drops low. SM/NSHT for emergencies, WG for group.
Glyphs: swiftmend, lifebloom, regrowth.
“People not dying” is fine for the ‘heroics’ we have now. When you try Sartharion with drakes or Malygos, you’ll be glad to know which heals have your back and which are just going to drink your mana and pass out under the table
@Aelinna:
My druid was my 5th 70 and the jury is out whether it will be my 2nd or 3rd 80. I’ll be lucky if I heal anything OTHER THAN heroics.
But thanks for the shortened version. Apparently I was “doing it right” without knowing it.
Thanks for doing this again. I missed it the first time.
I didn’t see this directly mentioned (although DTINT came close).
If you spam Regrowth on a tank, you end up losing HoT ticks. If you use Nourish (or glyphed HT) you are likely to pick up a regrowth tick that would have otherwise been overwritten. That is a boost to your overall HPS and HPM (ironically that boost will be credited to Regrowth, the spell you decided to not cast).
Ok I really want to build a HT bomb build but I understand the arguments against it. I think this would be an ok build for 10 mans but not so sure you would be ok for 25 mans since your gonna be a busy bee throwing out hots to your raid.
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/druid/talents.html?tal=05320331003300000000000000000000000000000000000000000000023053331250150203105001300
would more than likly be my build if I can pull this off (puts on flame resistance suite)
my gear I would shoot for spirit/int mp5 and crit in that order Spell power is on most the gear later anyways.
Any thoughts on build or suggestions???
Living Seed “will bloom when the target is next attacked”
I am less impressed than if this bloomed when the target next took damage, as the bloom could be lost in overheal if the target is at full health with everybody’s heals.
Say for instance the warrior tank blocked or the bear dodged when “next attacked” the the bloom’s proc would be completely wasted.
Nourish doesn’t do anything special or unique, I never cast it. They should make it a Direct heal that buffs our HoTs instead of vice-versa, then it wouldn’t be compared to HT, Regrowth, or even swiftmend as it did something that was actually unique. I.E.:
Nourish Rank 1
18% of base mana 40 yd range
1.5 sec cast
Heals a friendly target for 1883 to 2187. Places the ‘Nourished’ effect on the target, Increasing the healing done by your next 3 periodic sources to the target by 20%, effect lasts 6 seconds.
@GT: I’m really happy with the constructive posting on that topic and with GC’s interaction, even if it was more limited than I would like.
@DTint: A target with a full stack of HoTs can’t benefit from the addition of more HoTs. However, he can benefit from a direct heal (your only option in such a situation). You’re describing something that would have to be simulated, not something that could be worked out on paper and even then, would require so many assumptions I’d be hesistant to make changes to my healing style based on the results.
Ermengol has a great response, too.
@Geren: I’m really glad to hear it! I was pleasantly surprised to see a number of new readers and commenters brought here by this post having been shared on the official forums, EU and otherwise.
@Treebrother: Stopcasting Healing Touch still feels too tedious to me. Nilianil really addresses this point very well below your inquiry.
@Aelinna: My “rotation” is similar to yours, though I’m currently using the Innervate glyph over Lifebloom glyph while my mana regeneration catches up. I’ll probably switch later on when I’m stronger in that area.
@Erdluf: That’s a good point about RG ticks. However, the point of this analysis completely ignores the HoT component of the spell so it’s going to trump Nourish even if you never get ANY effect from its HoT ticks (though it is a shame that it effectively resets the counter).
@Furr: I wasn’t aware that it blooms on attack and not an actual hit.
That’s really lame!
@Agburanar: That’s a neat and original effect for Nourish. Gimmeh!
Observation:
The fact that Regrowth has a 50% more crit than Nourish or HT means that the graphs leave MUCH to be desired for calculating HPS and HPM. Especially when a glyphed Regrowth crits on a target with the Regrowth HoT on it for 20% more crit (and a 50% more likely chance to increase your HPS by -.5sec).
Nice charts, but leaves much to be desired, since the 50% crit talent is not calculated, nor the fact that Nature’s Grace procs 50% more often, giving you even more HPS.
@Peter: Actually, the graphs do take into account a 60% crit chance on Regrowth (along with a 10% crit chance on HT and Nourish) as well as the effect of Nature’s Grace. This is described in the methods section.
First at all sorry for my bad english. I am a little bit confused about the post on EJ (Quote: “This suddenly makes RG one of the worst tank healing spells.”). Is there really a “wrong” and “right”? I am asking because I like to optimize my healing and want to know what is really effective. Thanks for answers and explanations.
@Zauberfee: I’m not familiar with the context of that quote so I can’t really address what the person was trying to convey. Untalented and unglyphed, Regrowth isn’t as potent as it is otherwise, but fully talented and glyphed, it’s fantastic.
Thank you for your answer! The quote is from your trackback No.2. Some druids prefer RG some people I know are very happy with Healing Touch (unglyphed) combined with >600 Haste Rating/>1800 SP. Is that really an alternative? (Your observation: “But at 1500 spell power and 820 spell haste, unglyphed Healing Touch is substantially more efficient and effective than Regrowth as a raid heal while matching its HPS as a tank heal and only slightly underperforming its HPM as a tank heal.”) Or is it just a question of different healing styles?
Is the Improved Regrowth talent working correctly at the moment? I’ve been checking my healing stats with recount over the last couple of days, and the crit rate is as if I don’t have those talents (i.e. at my base crit level of 9%, not the 50%+ I’d expected).
Wondering if the talent is bugged or if my recently added Regrowth glyph is breaking it.
Anelfs last blog post..Death Knight Quest Rewards – Hellfire Peninsula (and leveling mining)
Why do you only count lifebloom, rejuv and regrowth on mt healing ?
Imo wild grow should be included with 4-piece T7
@AnElf: I haven’t noticed any trouble with my Regrowth crit, but that isn’t to say that you aren’t. =/
@Lora: I didn’t include Wild Growth because I’m not going to necessarily hit the tank with Wild Growth every 6 seconds, whereas I should have Rejuv + Lifebloom + Regrowth on him at all times.
It’s an interesting read to see how the direct heals from druids are doing compaired to each other but in my honest opinion it’s also an analysis that’s really beside the point of today’s druid healing.
For resto druids anno 2009 it’s all about the HoTs. Lifebloom and Rejuvenation are two awesome instant heals. Regrowth has come a long way as well from classic WoW to the powerhorse that it is today. And with Wild Growth druids just got another incredible HoT as well. Finally a multi-target HoT that is also smart enough to spread to the targets that need healing the most. And on top of that it ticks fast, doesn’t cost much mana and it’s insta cast.
WOTLK brought a lot of talents and glyphs that further improve the power of HoTs as well. Genesis, Nature’s Splendor, Gift of the Earthmother, the Glyphs for Swiftmend, Lifebloom, Regrowth and Rejuvenation are all very nice.
Your task as a resto druid is quite obvious in a raid environment. Your focus should be healing multiple targets, preferraby in encounters where the entire raid suffers from damage. Also knowing the boss encounters is of a high importance since casting preemptive HoTs is also something druids really shine at. Expect a big burst of damage coming in? Then make sure your tanks and offtanks all have 3-4 HoTs ticking on them. That will very often make the difference between a success or a wipe.
Direct healing focussed on a single target is something of the old downranked HT4 days and not something for today’s druid, there are healing classes out there which are far better in it than we are. So why even bother? And as far as raid healing goes, the HoTs are far superior there as well. I don’t think any smart druid would start throwing direct heals into a raid without using HoTs.
I’ve clear Naxx 25, Maly 25 and Sarth 25 plenty of times in my guild and my data after a raid evening is always very typical. Wild Growth makes up for 40-60% of my healing done and always comes out on top, with Lifebloom and Rejuv fighting over spots 2 & 3. Regrowth is my main direct heal in case I need one and fills the 4th spot. Everything after that is really very minor. With a modest focus on haste gear you can easily get Regrowth towards a 1.7-1.5s casting time *before* Nature’s Grace. As for instant ‘ooh crap’ buttons there is always still my NS+HT macro or a very nifty Swiftmend (Glyphed) so that it doesn’t eat my HoTs.
HT I only use with the NS macro, never for any other situation. Nourish I barely use at all (I tried it on 4 HoTs with 4x T7 and it was still VERY underwhelming compaired to regrowth with all its affected talents). The only situation I sometimes use it on is patchwerk, but I might just as well use regrowths as well there.
Damn short edit timer.
About what I said earlier : “Regrowth is my main direct heal in case I need one and fills the 4th spot.”
=> What I also wanted to add there is to clarify that those situations where I use regrowth as a direct heal are not all that common. The vast majority of the reasons I cast regrowth is still for the HoT effect.
Also, while the HPS or HPM of regrowth might not be as good as other direct heals, keep in mind that thanks to Nature’s Grace and Improved Regrowth, it is also the fastest and most efficient direct heal (+ not an unsignificant HoT trail) to quickly cast on multiple targets. For example if you see a pull going wrong or people screwing up positioning and taking a high amount of damage my reaction is always to first throw around some (for 3.0.8: one
) WGs around until all those targets have the effect (easily to see with Grid) and from then on start spamming a series of regrowths on various targets, depending on how low on HP they are and how important they are (tanks and offtanks have prio). While I understand HT gives more HPS due to its incredable spellpower scaling, you just can’t throw HTs around on multiple targets as fast as you can with regrowth. And also, you are not the only healer out there! All those paladins and shamans are eagerly looking for single target heal targets as well. I often feel quite useful just throwing regrowths fast around on multiple targets that took damage as an extra buffer until the direct healing classes fill them up to full health. When let’s say 5 people suddenly take a big damage spike, I rather hit Wild Growth on them and then throw 5 regrowths around fast to buy some time (counting on other healers to heal em back up to full), instead of healing them all back to full myself, but at a slower speed so that the last ones might die because I was still healing the first ones.
That is also what I ment earlier when I said regrowth is a powerhorse. The high crit chance with Imp Regrowth, the long HoT trail with Nature’s Splendor, all those HoT improving talents from the resto and balance tree, the superb Glyph (augmented by Nature’s Splendor), the superb synergy between Imp Regrowth and Nature’s Grace, the availability of Swiftmend (Regrowth + Swiftmend (Glyphed) is a great combination as well) etc, all those together really makes it a very fun and powerful heal to use, whether you cast it for it’s HoT or as a fast castable direct heal. Maybe I should mention Living Seed here as well but when I look at my stats after raids that talent really leaves me underwhelmed. I’m even considering dropping it and climb to Celestial Focus in the balance tree just to get another extra 3% haste (mainly for regrowth since that’s about the only non-instant heal I use in raids).
Ok this is the last post I promise.
One thing I liked about Nourish BTW (to find at least SOMETHING useful about the spell
) was that when I was levelling as a feral druid in WOTLK it seemed like a very efficient heal (in combination with rejuv ofc). When I needed a big heal I would just hit rejuv + nourish on myself and that healed a large chunk of my HPs, if not all. It seemed to be way better than for example using rejuv and a single lifebloom (that’s what I usually did before I had Nourish).
So while nourish is rather underwhelming for us resto druids, I think for ferals (and probably also balance druids) it’s quite a good heal if you don’t have the resto talents.
In 3.0.8 Moonglow will also affect Nourish BTW. So if you take that talent together with that Tranquility talent you save quite some mana on it. Add the 4 T7 bonus to it and maybe it could be a potential decent flash heal. But I don’t think that many druids would want to spend 5 points in the talent for it. Also because flash healing just isn’t our style.
@Zipporah: I don’t agree that an evaluation of direct healing is inappropriate. HoTs, while wonderful for buffering tank health, still need to be supplemented by direct healing at times. Knowing which direct heal presents the best balance of efficiency and effectiveness makes those situations easier to deal with. Yes, we gained some talents that improve our HoTs, but Lifebloom ticks for no more than it did in TBC (even with improved gear) and costs more mana. Nature’s Splendor is WONDERFUL but seems intended to give us more time to use OTHER tools beside heals over time in between maintaining tank HoTs (likewise with the GCD reduction on GotEM). The Glyph of Swiftmend boosts your direct healing without forcing you to sacrifice HoT healing, the Glyph of Regrowth is obviously a boost to direct healing, and the Glyph of Rejuvenation is generally only relevant to tanks … who of course will have Rejuvenation on them.
Obviously Wild Growth is not the end-all, be-all solution to raidwide splash damage. It cannot be since it’s now on a 6-second cooldown. I’d rather know what heal to use to prevent someone from dying than obstinately insist that my HoTs will do the job … eventually … assuming they don’t take any more damage. This isn’t to say that you can’t heal without ever using direct heals… but you’re unnecessarily handicapping yourself if you refuse to consider them when they are appropriate.
I guess it’s just the way you look at it I suppose.
“HoTs, while wonderful for buffering tank health, still need to be supplemented by direct healing at times.”
=> I agree, but that’s also what other classes are better at than us. We provide the HoTs to give extra HP buffer to people, other healers who are oriented more towards direct heals can then further fill them up. I don’t see myself as a single target healer at all, much more a raid healer. And I find raid healing to be far most effective with dropping insta HoTs on multiple targets, most of the time WG, RJ and LB.
“Lifebloom ticks for no more than it did in TBC (even with improved gear) and costs more mana.”
=> It also lasts up to 10 seconds now instead of 7, thats 3 extra ticks “for free”. Keeping a tripple stack of Lifeblooms up on a tank or offtank is still a very mana efficient thing to do. And a tripple stack ticks for about 1100-1200 HP / sec now. Add to that the fact that the 2 T7 set bonus will be changed to lower the lifebloom mana cost by 5% instead of rejuv and the spell still remains very interesting (in combination with the heroic badge idol if you like, which I’m now wearing already anyway).
“Nature’s Splendor is WONDERFUL but seems intended to give us more time to use OTHER tools beside heals over time in between maintaining tank HoTs (likewise with the GCD reduction on GotEM).”
=> Again I look at it differently. Just because the 1s GCD cap is so easy to reach now and HoTs last longer, I find it even more efficient to throw HoTs around on lots of people. A fight like Sapphiron is the perfect example. During the air phase people need to spread out so throwing around rejuvs is extremely efficient. When people hide together behind an ice block that’s the perfect time to throw a WG towards every ice block. Another example is the Malygos fight where the raid also takes huge damage. That is really where druids shine IMO, throw HoTs around like there is no tomorrow and keep all those HP bars filled. Let the paladins and shamans worry about healing the MT, they are far better at it than us (of course, throw some HoTs on the MT as well!)
“the Glyph of Regrowth is obviously a boost to direct healing”
=> Well that’s also how you look at it. Yes it makes regrowth a very nice spammable direct heal and I sure have this glyph equipped as well and use this whenever I need more direct healing. But this glyph is not all about the direct healing part, in a way you could also look at it as being a reverse lifebloom heal with a stack of 2. You cast 1 regrowth and the HoT starts ticking. When you “refresh” your regrowth just before it nears completion, the HoT part gets overwritten and also receives 20% more healing (at least I assume so, I haven’t actually tested it). So on MTs and OTs I always try to have a regroth HoT on them and refresh it before it runs out (to receive the 20% bonus). What I like so much about regrowth as a HoT is that with Nature’s Splendor the duration is now close to 30 seconds, you don’t need to watch it so close as let’s say a 10s lifebloom.
” Glyph of Rejuvenation is generally only relevant to tanks … who of course will have Rejuvenation on them.”
=> Agree and that’s also why I didn’t glyph for it. It’s a bit too restricted for my taste. And also because I like the Swiftmend, Regrowth and Lifebloom glyphs so much.
“Obviously Wild Growth is not the end-all, be-all solution to raidwide splash damage. It cannot be since it’s now on a 6-second cooldown. I’d rather know what heal to use to prevent someone from dying than obstinately insist that my HoTs will do the job … eventually … assuming they don’t take any more damage. This isn’t to say that you can’t heal without ever using direct heals… but you’re unnecessarily handicapping yourself if you refuse to consider them when they are appropriate.”
=> Well I am already avoiding to spam WG since in 3.0.8 it won’t be possible anymore anyway. But in regards to that solution to raidwide splash damage, my initial heal is always a WG though, especially if you see melee classes take sudden damage because you know, they will be in range of each other so the WG will spread to multiple targets. After that I always throw around rejuvs and lifeblooms the most. And if it looks like someone will die, there is always Swiftmend and the NS+HT macro as well. Of course if too many health bars drop to critical levels at the same time then I swap to regrowth spam as well, but in the way like I wrote in my previous post (spamming them fast on multiple targets and counting on other healers to do their portion as well).
@Zipporah: While other classes might be better direct healers, the difference is not so large that we should opt not to use a direct heal when it looks like it’s needed. Because Regrowth takes longer to cast, it gives us plenty of time to cancel if someone happens to heal our target first (there are also addons to let you know when someone has an incoming heal, too).
“I don’t see myself as a single target healer at all, much more a raid healer.” < I’m not sure how these two roles necessarily conflict. We don’t have a spammable AoE heal (or won’t for much longer). The only way to heal a raid once WG has been used is to choose individual targets. Whether you do so with a HoT that’s likely to get overwritten by any number of smart or targetted heals or do the direct healing yourself, is a matter of personal preference. I’d much rather opt for something I know won’t risk obsolescence.
I stand by the idea that Lifebloom is not a single-stack healing tool with the exception of a few situations (like the fight in Naxx where you have a 3-second window of healing and can time 2 to bloom during that time). I’m really happy about the change to the 2-piece T7 set bonus, though.
I haven’t really done Sapphiron, yet, so I can’t speak to the effectiveness of the strategy you describe, but it certainly sounds like a good one. Nonetheless, particular fight quirks don’t make a spell or strategy necessarily viable in most other situations. Throwing Rejuvenation around your raid isn’t always (or even generally) a good idea.
Re: Glyph of Regrowth being a boost to direct healing and “Well that’s also how you look at it. ” I’m not really sure how you can look at it another way. It’s a boost to the direct heal by 20% (along with the HoT ticks), making RG an incredibly potent direct heal and encouraging you to refresh it before it elapses.
With the talent change to increase Nourish’s mana efficiency, and with the Tier 7 4-peice bonus (using the DruidHeal spreadsheet I made linked earlier in this thread) and with my personal stats/talents, I now show Nourish (used on a target with 1 or more HoTs) as being both more sustained HPS and more efficient than Regrowth with glyph of regrowth and a regrowth focused talent build. I have not attempted to graph this relationship out over a range of spellpowers or other stats.
Enomdars last blog post..DruidHeal 1.3 – Updated for 3.0.8
Very nice post. I play an afflock but am just getting my druid alt up to start raiding. As per your numbers, HT seems to have by far the best scaling in terms of both HPM and HPS. Now 3K spell power is pretty easy to accomplish for a lock, do you think that druids will start migrating to a HT build in the next tier or so due to scaling? Or is 3k+ spellpower just too far off on the horizon?
@Blacob,
I am not sure with the current itemization 3K spell power unbuff is achievable. I might be wrong.
If you are talking about buff + trinkets, yeah maybe.
I am few pieces away from completing my sets, but I only sit 2.2k unbuff in Tree/2K in cow. I don’t think if I complete my target restore set I can sit at 3k SP. ….
Here is my armory,
Oncelot Armory Link
Phae – I’d like to direct your attention to a thread on the WoW forums that has some different results regarding Nourish:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14697302983&sid=1&pageNo=1
I can’t view your spreadsheet on this computer for some reason, but Trellan says it seems you didn’t account for Nature’s Grace procs on Nourish, and I don’t think he took Living Seed into account.
I’m curious about your professional opinion, as without it I sure don’t feel comfortable with two spreadsheets out there with different results.
Just thought I’d bring it up
@Nilianil: The spreadsheet attached her is actually out of date (doesn’t include Moonglow or WG’s bonus to Nourish), but I’ll upload the updated one tonight. I believe that I did include NG procs on all spells, but I’ll take another look to make sure.
Thanks Phae – I’ll check it out later tonight, then
@Nilianil: Sorry for the delay. Another iteration of the spreadsheet has been uploaded. This one takes into account a 15% base crit rating, the 4% crit on HT and Nourish from Nature’s Majesty, and 505 Haste Rating (enough to reach a 1.5 sec GCD with 5/5 GotEM). I’ve also updated the images above as a result but haven’t had time to see if observations should change.
well nourish aint that bad as you see it need alot more mana reg to use regrowth so you will prob need some spirit gems to insted of spellpower gems, or a bad spec where you use to many talent points to get more mana reg, that means you will lose alot of spellpower so with the extra spellpower nourish will still be the best. (ofc it needs the T7 4/5 set bonus)
My guild has recently appointed Class/Spec leaders. The resto CLs playstyle is completely different than mine, as is her spec, opinions etc. Now my GL and other officers are starting to question why my spec/opinions/etc are what they are. They have faith in my healing and know that I am a good healer, but still question. The CL is fully specced and glyphed for HT and believes it is the absolute best heal for raids, as a tank heal and a raid heal. We were also discussing the nerf to spirit the other day and she stated that spirit doesn’t do much for mana regen as it is anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. She believes that mp5 is all around much better for regen than spirit. Have I been doing things all wrong or is her playstyle just radically different than mine?
@Bri: Your class leader is using a non-traditional spec that would only be complemented by a more traditional, HoTs-focused spec such as it sounds you employ. They shouldn’t be pressuring you to switch, especially if the recommendation is coming from a Resto Druid who values MP5 more highly than Spirit, at least prior to the 3.1 changes. ^_^
Is anyone planning to try and pick this up?
Ok, just found this post, and it’s long and interesting, quick dumb question tho, the numbers for nourish with hots, is that the healing both by the nourish alone or also the hots that are running?
I used to use regrowth and now use nourish, debate is whether to switch back. I also am specced into tranquil spirit – am guessing thats weird comapred to this info!
@Otta: This article is out of date and no longer relevant. I understand Nourish is now the preferred choice over Regrowth, though you should keep a RG on your tank for its HoT component.
As the methods for finding this information are explained, someone should be able to apply them along with the new values to create an updated comparison. I, however, am not that person.