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Living Seed, Replenish, and Gift of the Earthmother
Published on January 5, 2009 by Phaelia 
Analysis, Lunar Guidance, Spells and Talents 
51 Comments
Wrath of the Lich King included many changes to the Druid class, including some very positive changes to the Restoration and Balance trees. Talents such as Nature’s Focus and Improved Mark of the Wild were reduced from a cost of 5-points to 3 and 2 points respectively, and fun abilities such as Omen of Clarity, Nature’s Grace, and Nature’s Grasp were made a lot more accessible. In particular, I consider the 14 points in Balance for Genesis, Moonglow, Nature’s Majesty, Nature’s Grace, and Nature’s Splendor to be staples of the healing Druid’s specialization.
In addition to the obvious care and attention that was given to “pruning” our early talent trees, we were given 4 new abilities at the bottom of the Restoration tree to give us something to spend points on leading up to our 51-point talent, Wild Growth. Today, I’d like to take a look at three of these abilities: Living Seed, Revitalize, and Gift of the Earthmother.
Quick Links
Living Seed
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Living Seed gives critical heals a chance (100% at 3-points) to temporarily store 30% of the critical heal’s effective healing. This means that if your critical heal heals for 6000 hit points, the effect of the Living Seed would be 1800 HP. However, if of that 6000 HP, only 1000 was “effective” (non-overheal), the value of the Living Seed would only be 300 HP.
In practical terms, healers often choose their heals based on what will bring their target to full life. A tank whose health is maintained at 90-100% is much less susceptible to death-by-RNG than one allowed to fluctuate between 50 and 70%. This is especially true with the elimination of downranking, a practice whereby healers would often use lower ranked spells to conserve their own mana, deal more precisely with incoming damage, and guard against too many healers applying large heals to a target simultaneously. As a result, the direct heals that are typically applied now are heavy-hitters.
A Druid who focuses on Regrowth as her direct heal of choice will also employ the [Glyph of Regrowth], a glyph that increases the strength of the spell’s initial heal by 20% when used on a target who already has Regrowth. At an approximately 60% spell crit, Regrowth hits hard and crits often, proccing Living Seed more times than not. Even if used on a tank who suddenly finds himself low on health (likely giving the maximum value for the seed), this situation often leads to the tank being bombarded with large heals from other healers frantically trying to prevent a raid wipe. These healers cannot (and should not) depend on a Living Seed to keep the tank alive. However, it is worth considering that when is effective, it has the potential to be a life-saver.
From what I have read and experienced, it is not unreasonable to see the contribution of Living Seed at 1-3% of your total healing, with Regrowth users more likely to see the 3% value. A general rule of thumb is that 1 talent point yielding a 1% increase in effectiveness is a talent point well spent. At 3 points, this talent is worth taking for Regrowth casters, assuming it contributes 3% or more of effective healing. It is not recommended for those who focus on Nourish or glyphed Healing Touch who are considerably less likely to see such a contribution.
Revitalize
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Formerly known as Replenish, Revitalize is a 3-point Restoration talent that has a chance (15% at 3 points) to restore Mana, Rage, Energy, or Runic Power with each tick of Rejuvenation. This includes ticks when the target is at full health. Untalented, Rejuvenation ticks 5 times, giving Revitalize an average of 0.75 procs per cast. With 1 point in the Balance talent Nature’s Splendor, Rejuvenation increases to 6 ticks, giving Revitalize an average of 0.9 procs per cast. Let’s look at the expected yield for Revitalize and Nature’s Splendor for each target:
Mana cost per Rejuvenation Cast = 446
Rejuvenation Casts per Target per Minute = 60 / 18 = 3.33
Avg. PPM per Target = 3.33 * 0.9 = 3
Mana Cost per Target per Minute = 446 * 3.33 = 1486.67
Death Knights
Avg. Return per Minute DK = 3 * 16 = 48 Runic Power/Minute
One way to gauge the value of this return is to compare it to the 2-point Blood Talent, Butchery which reads “Whenever you kill an enemy that grants experience or honor, you generate up to 20 runic power. In addition, you generate 2 runic power per 5 sec while in combat.” The runic power regeneration portion is equivalent to 24 Runic Power per minute. By chaining Rejuvenation on a DK tank, you’re tripling the automatic Runic Power regeneration he would normally see with this talent (though perhaps more value is attributed to the RP from kills mechanic).
According to Krythia of Scarlet Crusade (US):
Revitalize does very little for a Death Knight. Ones that are tank spec usually take the talents and use a rotation that gives them enough RP to do what they need. Beyond that, I still find myself generating plenty of RP to do what I need. In the next patch, I will need even less RP as an Unholy specced Death Knight as Unholy Blight, an ability I only use once every 20 seconds, is getting its RP cost reduced by 20.
For a Frost specced Death Knight, it is much more valuable. Frost strike is a great aggro ability for them and it costs 40 RP. The attack cannot be dodged, parried, or blocked. I noticed that when I played as Frost spec that I would become RP starved from time to time.
It is useless on a Blood spec DK as they have no abilites that are necessary for them to succeed that use RP. That, and they have a chance at casting Death Coil (40 RP cost) for free anyway.
Warriors and Bears
Avg. Return per Minute Warrior = 3 * 4 = 12 Rage/Minute
Similar to what we looked at for DKs, we can compare this return to the Arms talent, Anger Management which “Generates 1 rage per 3 seconds.” This works out to 20 Rage per minute which is nearly double the return from Revitalize. Warriors and Bears also aren’t generally rage-starved on encounters, making the contribution from Revitalize both negligible and superfluous.
Paladins and other Mana Users
The calculation for Paladins (and other mana users, including ourselves) is a little more complicated since it’s based upon total mana pool. Using the formula above, we can create a graph of average MP5 return by cost based on recipient’s total mana.
Avg. Return per Minute Paladin = 3 * 0.01 * MANA POOL
It is worth noting that Protection Paladin-appropriate gear does not typically include Intellect, so the average Prot-Paladin will have a very small mana pool, somewhere between 5 and 6k from my observation. This means that a constant stream of Rejuvenation with Revitalize is worth between 12 and 12.5 MP5. To contrast, the Paladin trained ability Blessing of Wisdom is worth 91 MP5. At 446 mana to cast, it would cost a Druid It currently costs a Druid 124 MP5 to maintain Rejuvenation in this fashion. Your target would need a mana pool of nearly 50k to make this a positive transfer of mana (the talent is obviously not intended to be used this way).
However, there is another, better way to look at the practical application of this talent for mana users. With its mana return, it can be seen to be reducing the mana cost of Rejuvenation, albeit retroactively. If 90% of the time, Revitalize procs from Rejuvenation and the target has a mana pool of 15,000, it will restore 150 mana or 135 mana on average. You only get the benefit when casting the spell on yourself, otherwise you’re passing the savings onto the spell’s recipient. This mana refund can be seen as modifying the HPM of the spell. Assuming full talents, a 15k mana pool, and 1500 spell power:
Rejuvenation @ 1500 Spell Power
Coefficient per Tick = 0.647
Untalented Number of Ticks = 15 / 3 = 5
Number of Ticks = Number of Ticks + 1 = 6Untalented Base Healed = 1690 HP
Base Healed = Untalented Base Healed * (Gift of Nature + Genesis) * Tree of Life * Master Shapeshifter = 1690 * (1.05 + 1.10) * 1.06 * 1.04 = 2463.89 HP
Base Healed per Tick = Base Healed / # Ticks = 2463.89 / 5 = 492.78 HP/tick
HP/tick from Spell Power = Spell Power * Coefficient per Tick = 1500 * 0.647 = 970.5 HP/tick
Total Healing per Tick = Base Healed per Tick + HP/Tick from Spell Power = 492.78 + 970.5 = 1463.28 HP/tickHPS = Total Healed per Tick / # seconds in one tick = 1463.28 / 3 = 487.76
HPM = Total Healing per Tick * Total Ticks / Mana Cost = 1463.28 * 6 / 446 = 19.69
HPM with Revitalize = Total Healed per Tick * Total Ticks / (Mana Cost – Proc Chance Revitalize * 0.01 * 15000) = 26.52
% Increase in HPM = (26.33 – 19.69) / 19.69 = 34.7%
This works out to a 34.7% increase in the HPM of Rejuvenation when cast at 1500 spell power and on someone with a mana pool of 15k. Revitalize makes Rejuvenation insanely efficient when you think of it as passing on your mana savings to the recipient and makes it a wonderful self heal. In fact, my next analytical article will evaluate the use of Rejuvenation as an alternative to other methods of raid healing.
Rogues and Feral Druids
While tanks are the most likely beneficiaries of Rejuvenation – and therefore Revitalize – the restorative effect also includes Energy. This means that Rogues and Feral Druids in Cat Form can also benefit. We’ll calculate the potential value of this effect for a single Rejuvenation effect since they aren’t likely to be chained on DPS:
Avg. Return per Cast Rogue = (0.9 *
= 7.2 Energy per Cast
Rogues and Cats naturally regenerate Energy at a rate of 10/second or 600/minute. The 7.2 Energy every 18 seconds from Revitalize works out to 24 Energy per minute. This is a 4% increase over the natural regeneration that a Rogue normally experiences. Increasing Energy regeneration should approximately represent the same % increase in damage from yellow attacks. Druids tend to have a larger percent of total damage from yellow attacks than do Rogues, so this is slightly more beneficial to them. And all Trees know that every time you heal a Rogue, a kitten dies so heal Feral Druids first!
Gift of the Earthmother
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Gift of the Earthmother is a five-point talent that reduces the global cooldown of Rejuvenation, Lifebloom, and Wild Growth by a certain percentage. It can be difficult to place a value on this talent since its contribution directly depends on the number of times you typically cast the relevant spells each minute. If, for instance, you cast nothing but Rejuvenation and Lifebloom and assuming 0 spell haste, it would represent a 20% increase in throughput (though not necessarily effective healing since this much healing could be unnecessary). Obviously, this is an unrealistic and unsustainable situation. A more accurate estimate would be to assume that the Druid will maintain two Lifebloom stacks, two instances of Rejuvenation, and will cast Wild Growth every so many seconds. In this case, I’m going to assume a Wild Growth cast every 10 seconds:
Total Lifebloom Casts = 2 * (60 / 9) = 13.33
Total Rejuvenation Casts = 2 * (60 / 18) = 6.67
Total Wild Growth Casts = 60 / 10 = 6
Total GotEM Applications = 13.33 + 6.67 + 6 = 26
Healing Throughput Increase = (26 * 0.3)/60 = 13%
Obviously, this is a very rough estimate based on some pretty arbitrary assumptions. If you use Rejuvenation more often as a raid heal (or cast Wild Growth more often), you will place a higher value on this talent.
Haste and Gift of the Earthmother
Unlike other talents that affect casting speed, the reductions from spell haste and GotEM are additive; both values are calculated off a 1.5 second global cooldown and are not applied in any particular order. This means it actually scales better than it would otherwise and, contrary to popular belief, does not scale inversely with haste. Nonetheless, plan to drop one or more points out of this talent as your haste increases.
Updated with Patch 3.08: The global cooldown reduction of Gift of the Earthmother is now percentage-based. This represents a significant nerf to its effectiveness. We can adapt the formula provided by Zoltair of Korialstrasz (US) via Elitist Jerks to solve for the amount of haste needed to reach a 1.0 sec GCD at different points in GotEM:
Haste from Gear = (1.5 * (1 – GotEM%) / ((1 + WoAT%) * (1 + Aura%) * (1 + CF%))) – 1
You can use the following JavaScript-driven calculator to determine the necessary haste rating to reach a 1.0 second GCD based on the number of points you have invested in Gift of the Earthmother (and how useful your raidmates are):
At level 80, 32.79 haste rating is equivalent to 1% haste. With 5/5 Gift of the Earthmother, you’ll need 20% haste or 655 haste rating to obtain a 1 second global cooldown.
Summary
I hope that the above looks into these three somewhat ephemeral talents has helped you evaluate the potential value they present to your playstyle. Unlike many of our simpler talents, so much of their value depends on how you heal. Nonetheless, here are a few summarized bits of advice:
Living Seed should really only be taken in conjunction with Improved Regrowth in a build that emphasizes Regrowth as the direct heal of choice. All other direct heals do not have the potential to “proc” this ability due to their considerably lower crit rates. In a Regrowth build, you should expect to see approximately 3% of your effective healing to come from this ability. If you do not, consider moving those points elsewhere.
Revitalize is bad for Paladin, Warrior, and Bear Tanks and good for mana users with sizeable mana pools. Its value is questionable to Death Knights with the possible exception of those who are Frost-specced. Its benefits would be decent for Rogues and Cats, but damage isn’t often such that Rejuvenation would need to be chain cast on either of them. Should you take this talent, it should always be in conjunction with the [Glyph of Swiftmend] since a Swiftmended Rejuvenation cannot proc Revitalize. This talent is most useful in 5-man and 10-man instances where you can more often afford to group heal using Rejuvenation with less risk of your HoT being overwritten by a direct heal from another healer. A Druid with this talent should heal herself using Rejuvenation whenever it is safe to do so since it is an incredibly efficient (high HPM) spell once you factor in the potential mana return.
Because Gift of the Earthmother affects the global cooldown of Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, and Wild Growth, you will derive greater benefit from it the more you use any of these spells. Some have asserted that GotEM is losing 1/3 of its effectiveness with the impending addition of a 6-second cooldown to Wild Growth. Assuming, however, that Blizzard allows Nourish to gain it’s 20% throughput bonus from Wild Growth’s HoT and makes the spell more competitive with Regrowth, GotEM’s reduction of the Wild Growth GCD will continue to be valuable. Once you have around 750 haste rating, plan to drop a point in Gift of the Earthmother.
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I am excited that BRK is back, though!
/cry I love you, ty for everything.
Phae,
As always, excellent article. Somebody should post a link in the Class Roles > Healing forum as the definitive explanation why Replenishment needs a complete overhaul.
For the sake of completeness, I would direct your readers to visit the ‘Druid Itemization’ post as Elitist Jerks.
http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t37578-restoration_itemization/
This post shows how GotEM, Wrath of Air Totem & Moonkin/Swift Retribution Aura stack to reduce the GCD haste cap. With all three, a rating of only 220 is required to hit the cap, which is easily attainable from Heroic & Naxx gear.
Keep up the good work!
- Flynx -
Thanks for the post Phae, my tree is 64 and working her way up through Outlands instances and it’s good to see some analysis on those talents. I’m glad to see I seemed to pick right, having taken Living Seed and not Replenish– as just a young sapling in five-mans my Regrowth usage is quite heavy, and I definitely see the Living Seeds a lot.
Pikes last blog post..*knocks on wood*
Very excellent article. I don’t have anything really to add, but as a new-conversion to resto (my feral druid got changed to balance-resto due to my new Death Knight’s ability to tank and DPS), I’m loving the depth and detail you’ve put into these posts.
While my inclination would be to deride this talent because of it’s annoying mechanic of applying the heal before incoming damage (increasing the chances that its value would go entirely to overhealing
Living Seed has been applying the heal after incoming damage for awhile, now. While it used to be bugged like you said, when I tested it about three weeks ago it was performing as expected.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=13129073467&postId=131286935622&sid=1#21
I dislike viewing Replenish as a mana transfer or mana reduction for rejuvenation. It’s certainly true, but I look forward to your article on rejuvenation as an alternative raid heal. The only encounters it’s been more viable than Regrowth on for me have been Sapphiron and Malygos. While it can be viewed as a mana transfer, I can’t expect people to cast the spell on the raid member who just took burst damage – they’ll be direct healed up (and they should be) unless healers have coordinated to let HoTs do the work (Malygos’ targeted nuke thing on 10-man, for instance), but that’s very hard to do in a 25-man setting. Replenish shouldn’t be a reason to eschew other heals in favor of Rejuvenation. The spell itself needs to warrant casting, which either requires movement on a fight or enough sporadic damage that the spell will be pretty effective. CoH and WG cooldowns will likely make rejuvenation much better, but we’ll have to see.
While it can make rejuvenation very efficient if you think of it like that, it’s still not a ‘guaranteed’ effect. People aren’t expecting it at any point in an encounter, save tanks.
Also, at the moment, the only people I’ve seen having any mana issues are priests. Holy Paladins are still Holy Paladins, and my friend calculated his shaman as effectively receiving 1100 mp5 while casting. I only end up with low mana if a fight drags on way too long and my innervate went towards one of the priests. I don’t think I’ve seen a DPS really run dry, yet. That’s part of what makes me not really care too much about the mana returns on Replenish.
When they changed energy to be a constant regeneration instead of 20/2 seconds, Replenish lost some of its usefulness, too :/
I like Replenish, but for three talent points we all know it’s pretty lackluster at the moment. Until the day comes where Rejuvenation is one of the go-to raid healing spells, Replenish just doesn’t end up so hot. Idol of Awakening would definitely help, but it never drops. Again, looking forward to your rejuvenation article as I really like the spell.
Don’t have anything to really say about GotEM, hehe.
The edit key doesn’t exist for my previous post
Oh well – I guess I tested living seed over a month ago, looking at the date of that post on the WoW forums~
Like you said, though, I see a lot more gains from Replenish in 5 and 10 man settings.
As a budding Resto, I’ve been trying to figure out the value of those talents. Thanks so much for the information!!
One talent I’m not so sure about is Nature’s Grace. It seems like a DPS talent (Moonkin), not a healing talent. Sure it might provide some accidental benefit to a regrowth. But, as a healer, can you really “react” to the proc?
Replenish does very little for a Death Knight. Ones that are tank spec usually take the talents and use a rotation that gives them enough RP to do what they need. Beyond that, I still find myself generating plenty of RP to do what I need. In the next patch, I will need even less RP as an Unholy specced Death Knight as Unholy Blight, an ability I only use once every 20 seconds, is getting its RP cost reduced by 20.
For a Frost specced Death Knight, it is must more valuable. Frost strike is a great aggro ability for them and it costs 40 RP. The attack cannot be dodged, parried, or blocked. I noticed that when I played as Frost spec that I would become RP starved from time to time.
It is useless on a Blood spec DK as they have no abilites that are necessary for them to succeed that use RP. That, and they have a chance at casting Death Coil (40 RP cost) for free anyway.
@Felkan (me): Looking at Nature’s Grace a bit more, I have to assume that the 15 second Nature’s Grace buff is *not* consumed by casting one of our “instant” spells, correct? Which means I don’t have to “react” to the Nature’s Grace proc, as I would assume I’d cast regrowth, nourish, etc. at least once within that 15s window, correct? That means I’d most likely benefit from the buff without taking extra measures to gain the benefit, correct?
If my assumptions are true, I can understand its value to a tree.
@Flynx: Thanks for the link – I’ve added it above to help flesh out the section about GotEM and spell haste! And I’m never sure whether information like this would be better suited to the Healing role forum or the Druid forum. >.< @Pike: I’m glad to hear that you’re still leveling your Druid. I imagine there is a lot of overlap between Hunter fans and Druid fans! (After all, as a Druid, you’re your own pet!)
@Pfooti: Thank you! I’m glad you found it helpful.
@Nilianil: Thank you for the correction! I’ve edited the section on Living Seed to remove that consideration. I understand your reluctance to view Living Seed that way. It certainly isn’t a guaranteed discount, but it is viable in 5-man instances and could potentially be viably used that way in a 10-man. I agree that it would be nigh-impossible to use Rejuvenation as a raid heal in 25-man raids (which is one of the many reasons I feel Druids will excel in 10-man). You make an excellent point about mana being a non-issue for most players.
@Felkan: Nature’s Grace can be treated as a casting speed reduction to Regrowth, Healing Touch, and Nourish that’s related directly to the spell crit associated with each of those spells. Obviously, Regrowth is the primary beneficiary of this talent since it has a much higher spell crit. As for whether you can react to the proc, the associated buff lasts for 15 seconds. Since MANY of our spell casts will be for insta-cast spells like Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, and Wild Growth — these will not consume the NG effect. You should easily be able to save it for when you need to cast Regrowth, HT, or Nourish again. Any type of addon that raises your awareness of when it’s gone off would likely be helpful in this regard.
@Krythia: Thanks very much for weighing in on the value of Replenish’s Runic Power restoration to Death Knights. I was hoping that you would!
@Felkan (again): Yes, that’s exactly right.
Phae,
One thing that needs to be pointed out clearly to everyone is the misconception about “After spell haste” and the tooltip for GotEM.
GotEM removes 0.3 seconds from your GCD. It doesn’t matter if its applied after or before spell haste, because its a factor of the 1.5 BASE GCD. Spell Haste is also a factor of the 1.5 BASE GCD. Therefore they don’t affect each other. The tooltip says 20%, but unlike the usual use of % based talents, the reduction is additive and both values are calculated off a 1.5 GCD, not after one or the other adjusts the GCD. Saying that it is applied “after spell haste” is inaccurate, they’re applied independently to the GCD, then the reductions are added together.
Full Math: http://www.plusheal.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1019
I really like Replenish, personally. I find myself with far more mana regen than I need in most boss fights, so mana conservation isn’t much of an issue for me. I don’t even know why I carry mana potions if I never use them, and I’m far more likely to be innervating the priests than myself.
I often treat rejuv-swiftmend as a near-instant 8k heal on a 15 second cooldown. It isn’t cheap, but it can bring someone back from the brink of death in a little over a second when my NS-HT is on cooldown. Or sometimes in 5 and 10-mans I’ll be putting rejuvs on the raid preemptively when I know they’re going to be taking a lot of damage soon, just so that I can Swiftmend them when it does happen. This tends to save lives in situations like Kel’thuzad or with stupid PuG people in Obsidian Sanctum, when you often only have a few seconds to react before someone dies to some debuff. Glyph of Swiftmend is pure awesome, I wish I had this kind of power back when I healed as a priest.
Replenish makes it so that the extra rejuv ticks aren’t entirely wasted when I use it this way. I’m only putting two points into it right now, but planning to move a third over when I get more spell haste and can move a point out of GotEM. I don’t really see what else I would put those two points into that would help my healing, as I’m taking all three of these talents already, the only talents I skip are buffing HT and nourish which I never use anyway.
Hi Phae, long time no talk.
I want to point out that I’m 0/0/71 and I love it. I don’t really find the talents in the balance tree to be that useful for my needs. I’m in a raiding guild as I’m sure you know and the three talents you spoke about suit my needs so well. My rogues, DK’s and our feral druid love me when I keep a rejuv on them for replenish.
I’ve joined pugs and people look at my spec and make silly jokes and I don’t know why, especially when I tear them apart on the healing meters (not that I like pointing that out but I get defensive about my full resto specc). Some people just don’t understand how good and worthy the entire resto tree is.
Thanks for going into detail about these talents.
Kalfurions last blog post..Something, Something and then Some.
I don’t think viewing living seed as a % of total healing is really the best way to look at it.
It’s great for helping a player that is at very low health get back up to very high health and do so quickly.
You don’t look at nature’s swiftness as a percentage of overall healing. I don’t think it makes that much sense here either.
It’s also a talent that is better when the content is hard, when you have less overhealing.
There’s also something very satisfying about landing a 10k crit swiftmend in pvp on someone that had 2000 health left and seeing them get full very quickly
Even though Replenish gives utility to Rejuvenation, my job is healing and I won’t put talent points in something that doesn’t explicitly contribute to healing.
The only time I use Rejuvenation in a raid setting is when I need to Swiftmend someone who doesn’t already have a HoT on them. It simply is too slow and weak to be of use before another healer tops up the player.
@Perrin: Thank you for the clarification. Your description of the interaction between the two is very succinct and easy to understand so I’ve adopted your wording above. I hope that’s okay.
@Kiryn: Have you considered the fact that Rejuvenation + Swiftmend is a 1.5 second cast while Regrowth is only 2? I know that you aren’t having trouble with mana, but a Regrowth will hit harder and provide more potential benefits (crit = Nature’s Grace and possibly Living Seed if talented for it). I, too, am guilty of Rejuvenation + Swiftmend at times, but it’s a habit I’m still trying to break
@Kalfurion: 71 points in Resto? To do that, you’d have to talent for Healing Touch AND Regrowth, something that doesn’t really work well together. You’d also be sacrificing a 5% bonus to your HoT-based healing (Genesis) and 9% mana savings on Regrowth and Rejuvenation. Nature’s Majesty is pooey for a healer, of course, but Nature’s Splendor is simply a MUST have. It boosts the HPM of your HoTs significantly and makes them easier to manage. I would seriously recommend dropping points from Healing Touch talents (or some of the end-of-tree Resto talents) and shifting more points into Balance. Balance is NOT just for PEWPEW anymore and insistence on purity will only handicap you. You might be doing fine on the healing meters, but there’s no reason to believe you wouldn’t be doing better by taking these easy-to-acquire staples.
@Werebeef: You’re definitely right that it’s hard to quantify the life-saving benefits of Living Seed in terms of pure effective healing increase. However, it is true that only a Regrowth-healer should pick it up. It’s simply too unreliable at the lower levels of crit we see for our other direct heals.
@Kloro: Keep in mind that additional utility is one of the reasons that Shamans and Paladins have traditionally been so stackable (Blessings and Totems). I’m not saying that Replenish is on par with some of these more powerful abilities, but I wouldn’t necessarily shy away from something because it didn’t explicity increase my healing output.
All good except for the first line in the paragraph:
“Because Gift of the Earthmother provides a percentage bonus and not a pre-determined amount, this talent loses value as your gear improves to include more spell haste.”
GotEM is a pre-determined amount (# of Points * 0.06), and like Hit rating, when your gear gives you more than the cap requires, you can lower the number of points in the talent as you gain rating.
Having 50% haste vs having 10% haste, 5/5 GotEM gives 0.3s reduction in the GCD, however the GCD cannot be less than 1.0.
I can see your points all too clearly now. I think I was leaning on healing touch too much as an “Oh snap” ability since lately the few healers we have are being carried through raids and I’m finding myself covering all kinds of healing angles, including the large sexy heals.
Thanks for not making fun of me for being full resto. Hehe
Kalfurions last blog post..Something, Something and then Some.
I don’t know how to say this other than, thank you! Gift of the Earthmother, has confused me since day 1. I’ve never quite understood if it was beneficial to me, and thereby essential to my spec. Thank you for making this clearer. As a side note, apparently it’s not as essential, since I’m one of those regrowth users.
Thank you!
On Living Seed:
I dropped this talent before Wrath came out because it contributed about 5000 total healing during a week of Sunwell raids.
What I’ve seen from healers with it in Wrath is that it can contribute 1-3% on some fights (Patchwerk) and nothing or nearly nothing on others. I would say that, right now, it’s my least favorite of the three talents.
I do use Gift of the Earthmother, and I really thought your chart for when to drop points was awesome. When I am able to pull some points out of it, they will be going into Improved Tranquility. Just when looking at effective healing done, tranquility is surprisingly good, and I’d like to have it available more often. For example, I used it to great effect last night while doing a Saphhiron kill with no frost resist on the group. I cast it when I was hiding behind an iceblock–absolutely brilliant for helping my group out. I think they were all in range even.
@Perrin: Oh, whoops. Thank you again. It’s a big relief that the talent doesn’t, in fact, get worse with haste (just requires fewer points). I appreciate you taking the time to clarify things for me!
@Kalfurion: I’m really glad to hear you’re willing to consider altering your spec. I hope you find that you like the new toys.
@Upia: I’m really glad you found this helpful! And who knows — maybe the upcoming changes to Nourish will make it more attractive to those of us who currently prefer Regrowth.
@Sydera: Note that you may actually want to drop a point in GotEM as you near the relevant amount of haste required. As you get closer and closer, that last point in GotEM provides less benefit. I’m actually also enjoying Improved Tranquility though admittedly, I’ve only leveraged in a raid once or twice so far.
I feel my input is not very critical due to my limitations on talents, stats, and spells. Either way, I’ll post my thoughts on the talent that I do pick up in my level 49 resto twink build: Living Seed.
First off I guess I’ll give a little description of my talents. I glyph for HT and also pick up Empowered Touch, and even still pick up Improved Regrowth. The speed of a 1.5sec HT opposed to a 2.0sec Regrowth is incredile when my target is getting focused by another twink or a lot of nons, has low health, or is the FC and I need to spend my time keeping him up and keeping up with him.
I notice the effect of Living Seed the most in a situation similar to the following: Player A grabs enemy flag and runs down the tunnel with three guys on him. Makes it to the bottom of the tunnel with about 10% health where I hit him with a HT to put him around 30-40% (very dependant in twinking). Immediately after I spend the extra time to regrowth. By the time it hits, my target is usually around 20% and it heals to 100%. This makes the effective healing quite considerable, and Living Seed procs accommodate for many game winning battles.
I am unable to determine the effectiveness of Living Seed in any way, shape, or form beyond the 40-49 battlegroup.
Lastly, I noticed a minute typo in your post.
“This mana refund can be seen as modifying the HPM of the spell. Assuming full talents, a 15k mana pool, and 15k spell power:” – 15k spell power would change numbers quite a bit
Phae-
This post was perfectly timed for me! I have been experimenting with my talents lately to see if Gift of the Earth Mother and Replenish were worth the talent points to get them. I primarily focus on healing with Regrowth and Rejvenation (with Lifebloom, of course), but I do find myself taking advantage of my other heals in certain situations.
I hardly ever use Nourish, so I shy away from talents increasing the effectiveness of that one. Instead, I took the two points in Improved Tranquility, and the two points in Empowered Touch. I use Living Seed, and see it proc all the time, so I was really glad to have taken it. Replenish procs surprisingly frequently for me, so I was rather impressed with this talent, when so many comments on other sites discourage taking it. That’s what I get for using other sites, I guess. LOL
Overall, all three talents have contrtibuted to my effective healing. Of course, it also means I ran out of talent points for the balance tree before taking Nature’s Grace, but I am still playing around with that one! Thanks for posting another great article. I look forward to reading your posts every week!
First target I ever tried out replenishment on was a rogue, actually. But one with combat potency. (5-point talent, combat tree: Succesful offhand melee attacks have 20% chance to generate 15 energy)
It really didn’t do a thing, combat potency returned far far more energy than replenishment did. So you may toss combat potent rogues in the same bucket with the warriors and paladins, I think.
(And save another kitten?)
I have a talent question of Brambles vs. Living seed. These two talents are the only two that are different between your talent tree and mine. Do you feel the added points in brambles (used when you cast thorns on the tank I assume) is worth giving up Living Seed? I certaily do not count on my ’seed for healing, but it’s nice to have.
Also, at the break neck pace that heroics get run at, constantly casting thorns on the tank means the cost of two shape shifts and thorns. And that is time when I’m most likley trying to steal a quick drink so the group never has to slow down for me. Just wondering.
Copey, I believe that Brambles (at least for now) only affects Thorns that you cast on yourself; it doesn’t help the tank out at all. Not sure if this is a bug or intended.
Interesting. Having been a feral tank, and gotten the glyph of “always forgetting to cast thorns on myself” I just assumed that most resto druids cast it on thier tanks, and that brambles would help. I’m finding it hard to remember every 10 minutes though, and have noticed it doesn’t seem to mean much if I forget, so I basically have stopped in order to save myself the mana.
Now I’m really confused.
@Random49RestoTwink: First of all, it’s good to finally know the origin of your name. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner.
Thank you for a BG-twink’s perspective on Living Seed. I found it very interesting. And thank you for the typo correction! 15,000 spell power sure would change things. ^_^
@Don: I am still not sure I would recommend Replenish … it’s pretty expensive for the returns you get. Of course, it MIGHT be more viable in a 5-man instance but really … when do we have mana problems in 5-mans? ^_^
@Shynda: I considered using Combat Potency as a gauge for Energy return, but I thought it would be too complex to model (figuring out offhand attack speed). But I appreciate the input!
@Copey: I just happen to like Brambles. I’m probably going to respec again soon. Whether I’ll keep Brambles or not, I haven’t decided. It’s a nice utility for soloing and it actually affects tanks, too.
@Alamein: Are you sure you aren’t confusing the effect of Brambles with the fact that Thorns benefits from the recipient’s spell damage? This means that the caster will get higher damage from Thorns (regardless of whether they have Brambles) than the tank they cast it on. Apparently Blizzard listened and made the spell scale with spell power, albeit only the target’s and not very potently.
Two additional things that make the Replenish effect even less useful for protadins are Blessing of Sanctuary and Spiritual Attunement.
BoS gives 2% of max mana every time the player dodges, parries, or blocks. For a tank, it should trigger at least every three seconds. So that’s twice as effective as Replenish.
Spiritual Attunement converts 10% of (non-over) healing into mana. Your example gives 2464 hp every 18 seconds. That works out to better than 68 mp5. Unless 80% of your Rejuvenation is overhealing, the protadin won’t even notice the Replenish effect.
So, if you run with a protadin, don’t even give this talent a second look for them.
Also, Blessing of Sanctuary should give equivalent or better rage/runic power returns than Replenish for any tank. So if that blessing’s in the raid, the usefulness of this talent is greatly diminished.
I hate to be the one to point out mistakes, but your Avg. PPM on Replenish is wrong. Also, it doesn’t have a .75 chance to proc at 5 ticks, and a .9 to proc at 6 ticks.
the percentages do not add together, so it does not accumulate a +15% chance with each tick.
basically the math would be:
x = 1 – .85^5
x = ~.556 (for 5 ticks)
x = 1 – .85^6
x = ~.623 (for 6 ticks)
where x is the chance to proc
This change effects the avg. PPM, which is now
~.556 * 3.33 = ~1.852 (for 5 ticks)
~.623 * 3.33 = ~2.075 (for 6 ticks)
This mistake is made quite frequently; just thought I would add the correct information
@Jared: Thank you for the informed feedback about the usefulness to a Protadin!
@Kaliska: The expected number of procs is 0.75 for 5 ticks and 0.9 for 6 ticks. Your calculation is the probability of at least one proc in a given minute, which is typically used to evaluate talents or procs with a duration and/or internal cooldown. In this case, we’re interested in the average procs per minute, so our calculation only requires the expected or average PPM. This expectation is based on a probability distribution of between 0 and 6 ticks, but this complexity can be ignored when you are only interested in the average.
To illustrate, in the five proc case, there is a 39.2% chance of 1 proc, a 13.9% chance of 2 procs, a 2.4% chance of 3 procs, a 0.22% chance of 4 procs, and a 0.008% chance of 5 procs. However, on average for any given cast, you can expect 0.75 procs. You can get this value either by summing these numbers together or, since each tick is independent, you can just add the expected chance for each tick (0.15 * 5).
Re: Brambles, it is very possible that I’m confused.
There is a reference to this in the Wowhead comments (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=16840#comments:id=451662). I was certain I had read about this somewhere else (EJ forums or something) but I can’t find any other reference now.
As far as Living Seed, I checked my parses from a Naxx run and an Obsidian Sanctum PUG. On the Naxx run it was about 2.7% of my healing, in OS it was a bit over 4%. I probably have more crit on my gear than I should, though.
Regrowth ftw! With it’s talented crit rating + spell crit (mine’s 60% total) it feels like it’s critting all the time. Add Nature’s Grace and Glyph of Regrowth and it’s a no brainer as the default heal spell. This makes Living Seed a must imo as it will add 30% additional healing per Regrowth crit, with my 1400hb, that’s currently working out at about a 10k heal. What’s not to love?
I’m experimenting using it on tanks pre pull, like a Prayer of Mending, so the seed is active as the tank goes into battle. Does anyone know if tank or healer gets the heal agro from the seed?
To update what you said in the article:
“Some have asserted that GotEM is losing 1/3 of its effectiveness with the impending addition of a 6-second cooldown to Wild Growth. Assuming, however, that Blizzard allows Nourish to gain it’s 20% throughput bonus from Wild Growth’s HoT and makes the spell more competitive with Regrowth, GotEM’s reduction of the Wild Growth GCD will continue to be valuable.”
From the latest PTR patch notes (just released):
“Nourish: Wild Growth applied to a target now increases the healing done by this spell by 20% like other heal over time effects. ”
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=7536073945&sid=1
@Glass: The patch notes also say that Moonglow will benefit Nourish. That should help some too. Between the WG/Nourish synergy and an additional 9% mana cost reduction, Nourish should start to look fairly decent.
I’m using Nourish more than I expected, usually on gravely wounded toons. I’ll start with a Regrowth but then follow with a Nourish or two. The shorter cast time gets me quicker results and more flexibility (in case I have to go heal someone else).
This analysis was super helpful – thanks so much!
Part of the problem of Living Seed is that back to back crits will overwrite one another. For example:
EpicMeatShield has taken 70k damage (and lived, because he’s epic). Phaelia casts Regrowth and (because she’s awesome) it crits for 69k, proccing a massive 23k Living Seed. Anticipating another 70k hit, Phaelia casts another Regrowth, which again crits. EpicMeatShield, however, dodged the incoming attack and took no additional damage. Phaelia’s crit Regrowth only healed 1k (effective) and *overwrites* the 23k Living Seed with a mere 0.3k one.
Until this behavior is correct, perhaps like a Warrior’s Deep Wounds, Living Seed isn’t really in the cards for me.
Also, and important bit from the patch notes:
-Moonglow: This talent now also benefits Nourish.
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I kind of thought about what I wrote/typed at work today, and realized what I posted was wrong. Regardless, thank you for a constructive response.
I use this kind of data to determine proper choices for talents, and you did a fine job with your data. Although I didn’t mention this in my first post, I appreciate the time and effort you spent gathering the information and computing the formulas.
Thank you and keep up the good work
Hi phae,
I really liked this post as I have been scratching my head looking at replenish since beta, it helps alot to see real numbers.
Now people rejecting rejuvenation as a 25 man raid heal is going a bit far though. In T7 content and gear, if you are not using rejuve on at least your focus target you are probably failing. Indeed the [idol of awakening] and the T7 two piece bonus signifiicantly lower the cost of rejuve to 345mana in tree of life, talented. Its a cheap, fast to cast spell and it adds another 5% of nuke to your nourish spell with the T7 set. One caveat to using rejuvenation is that refreshing it before it finishes will waste tick number six.
HPM = Total Healing per Tick * Total Ticks / Mana Cost
HPM_Rejuve = 1463.28 * 6 / 446 = 19.69 —-> 1463.28 * 6 / 345 = 25.44
HPM_Lifebloomx3 = 1025 * 8 / 391 = 20.9
Also in T7 content I think that glyph of rejuvenation is underated. It deserves a second look once your gear makes rejuve’s HPM better than lifebloom’s. With this glyph rejuve ticks at 1.5s intervals during clutch heals rather than 3s. I don’t think its wise to try and use it on purpose. But its just gravy during wierd scripted “oh no where did everyones health go!?” situations and fights like gluth. It also does a nice job of mitigating light damage that would kill a low health player, till a big heal can be applied.
Hi again hope this fits the topic,
When healing heavy constant hits rejuvenation is definitly not able to do the job by itself, for this role one should gear for direct healing. I have been equiping the cresent Goddess idol from SSC, four T7 pieces and Forthought Talisman for this role. Regrowth crits are so frequent and cheap with the idol that natures grace is basically up after every (every=80%+) Regrowth cast and it gets cast often.
It seems a waste if you are in T7 4-piece not to use these grace procs to cast the nourish spell. Natures grace makes nourish a nine-tenths of a second cast in genaric T7 level gear. This combination is going to provide a druids best spike hps outside of fully talenting Healing touch with nature’s swiftness, but it can be repeated consistantly every three seconds. Specifically you will with a lead time of two seconds, cast two rather large heals within one second of each other (see notes A). The nourish actually goes off so fast it looks like a lifebloom cast on the animation.
I actually would propose that putting points into gift of the earthmother and exchanging a fair bit of spirit+haste for the spirit+crit gear that would possibly let one achieve a crit rating of 43% raid buffed. This will make Regrowth a 100% crit spell and give nourish a respectable chance to crit on its own. Crit chaining nourish at this gear level and using regrowth if you miss a crit with nourish, is HOT! Indeed, you will actually get your hot ticks from regrowth during the nourish part of the rotatation. The value of the talent living seed will also be improved tremendously by this rotation and gearing style (note C, attempts to quantify it).
Regrowth+Nourish chaining is an Extreme-Super-Uber nuke healing method, use it! In fact the maximizing gear choices will mean that many a boomkin will feel VERY comfortable doing it when they get tired of wiping blood and molten fat off their feathers, this rotation is very closly anologous to the classic moonfire+IS+wrath^3+ rotations (Note B). There is no earth and moon for restoration, its role is firmly held at this time by the T7 set bonus. Now, if they just copy eclipse and make living seed give a chance to increase the crit chance of your next Nourish cast on the affected player, if this happens we will be bitching when players actually get hit after we plant one. /evilgrin
All I can say is that regrowth+Nourish will make you into a healing monster. And like our feathered dps monster cousins who find it kind of embarrasing to see someone spamming moonfire exclusivly. I feel the same way about Regrowth, right now a max buffed hot is being refreshed (WASTED!) before it can even tick one time, millions of times during the time it took you to read this! So please, please! mix your spells up a bit! Constantly spamming one spell as a Druid is not likely to give you the best results, its just going to give you an ulser someday when someone with lower gear quality consistanly out heals you.
Cheers!
Arielore of Malfurion
————————————————————-
KEY
————-
Lifebloom=L
Rejuvenation=RJ
Nourish=N
Regrowth=RG
Swiftmend=SM
Wild Growth=WG
———————————————————————
A
Ripping off base healing numbers from the direct heal post;
(Casting (Regrowth)+(Nourish), with T7 bonus, and low bonus heals @1500)
target no hots=(2867+1171)+(2961+1464)=8463
target has RJ or LB=(2867+1171)+(3258+1464)=8764
target has RJ and LB=(2867+1171)+(3406+1464)=8908
target has RJ, LB, RG=(3440+1171)+(3406+1464)=9481
If W.growth will count as a “HOT” for T7 bonus (beg Ghostcrawler for this!)
target has RJ, LB & WG=(2867+1171)+(3576+1464)=9078
target has RJ, LB, RG & WG=(3440+1171)+(3576+1464)=9651
*****Since the premise is that Regrowth will crit around 80% in a raid and Nourish crits fairly often itself, these numers are rather… conservative.
——————————
B
———Am I crazy?———-
Glyphed Moonfire=Regrowth (not glyphed)
Wrath=Nourish
IS=Rejuvenation+Lifebloom
Starfire=Healing Touch
Starfall=Tranquility (with a cooldown)
Typhoon~=Wild growth
Hurricane=Tranquility (with no cooldown /cry)
———————————————————-
C
Sample sustainable Heroic patchwerk rotation;(RJ,RG,N,RG,N,L,RG,N,RG,N,RG,L,SM)
(if nourish crits replace the followon RG with an N, to get RG ticks)
5 regrowth casts
4 nourish casts
1 swiftmend
30% crit buffed+gear
Living seed average procs per second casting this rotation;
.32=(5*(RG*(crit+57%)+(4N+1SW)*crit)/19sec
average crit all spells;
5900
Living seed hps; (if all pop!)
5900*.7*.32=1792hp/s_casting
YUM YUM, GRAVY!
**** This is a very difficult thing to model. It seems that it can only be evaluated for sustained rotations, but the rotation will vary wildly in the actual game. Every crit makes the rotation looser under the gcd and would often allow more casts that can crit to fit in. But it seems the variation tends to increase the quantity of the seeds being placed more often then it decreases. A perfect excuse to learn how to model in Scilab
——————————————————
Thank you for this analysis Phaelia. I’d been thinking about respeccing out of Replenish for a while, so this article is the final push I need. My reservation was that I really couldn’t see anything that special to use the points in instead. Having now used glyphed Regrowth for a while, I can see the usefulness of Nature’s Grace.
I plan to keep Living Seed, as I often find myself casting Regrowth because the tank’s health is dropping (not because I want to keep it rolling), so I see this as a free heal when I need it most.
I see you’re currently specced with Brambles, and would be interested to know if there’s a particular reason for this. (Or were you mostly just looking for a home for your last few talent points?)
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I recently respecced out of living seed, for the same reason as everyone else – wws parses showed that it sucked while raiding.
My before and after experience has been that living seed is basically a huge mana conservation tool during heroics.
I literally went from never drinking during a heroic to having to carry a stack of water with me. Granted, I’m only taking about 5 drinks per heroic, but that’s 5 more drinks than I used to take.
I got so annoyed with this that I got off my butt, grinded out venture coins for the Arcane Revitalizer (200 mana per kill, 10 sec cooldown), and started working on my Oracles rep for the Oracle Talisman of Ablution (5% mana per kill, no cooldown). Just so that I could regen mana during trash pulls, and thus, reduce my drinking during heroics.
Just a small question if i may pls:
How are these talents and WG worth (counting the 6sec CD) in compare with the haste+spellpower+regen i get from the balance tree?
i find them very weak and only fillers to get WG. (personal oppinion ofc)
i only heal 5 man and 10 man raids and im resto till improved tree of life.
best regards Milkfarm
Hello from a resto that does 10-mans
Being a moonkin in whole TBC but some months before the expansion hit the shelves, I’d say that my experience isn’t that great but that’s my 2 cents:
As i said, being in a 10man with only one more healer (resto shammy) makes me have multiple roles, being raid healing (loatheb) or be it main healing (patchwerk).Out of the 3 talents i decided to take the Gift (I have about 250haste rating so it still is worth 5/5) and the Living Seed.
I have to admit that I am a regrowth user and i’ve seen the seed proc for rly nice amounts. What the deal here is (and i don’t know if anyone commented about that), that in 10-man situations you feel more safe leaving the tank with your hots after a good (effective) regrowth.
You have lbx3,Rej,Regrowth + the Seed so you have even more time to spend out of the 5SR and/or to attend to the fight and rest of the Raid.
Lastly, I tried to get feedback from my raid members but they weren’t too enthusiastic about the Replenish (used to have that as well in the past). So i decided to drop it and innervate a mana-starved mage , and/or leave the shammy to drop a mana-tide.
PS : I use the swiftmend glyph , the regrowth and the innervate ones, and i have balance up to Nature’s Grace + Splendor (http://armorylite.com/eu/dunemaul/thirion/t)
PS2: Keep up the good work Phaelia!!!
I just pulled up this excellent article again to see how much haste rating I needed to get my global cooldown to one second with gift of the earthmother, when I noticed this:
0 1640 50%
You are saying that without gift of the earthmother I need 50% haste to go from a 1.5 second GCD to a 1 second GCD? (a 33% reduction) Am I misunderstanding the way haste works here or is this incorrect?
Basically, what I am saying is, 50% haste does not speed up my casts by half? I had assumed that it did, and that is very confusing.
@Tarqon
http://www.wowwiki.com/Casting_speed
Haste is a bit tricky when you first look at it. As wierd as it may seem one fifty percent haste rating makes a 1.5s spell cast .5s shorter. If the math doesn’t look right to you just follow the formula and try not to think about it.
1.5-[(1.5/(1+50%)]=.5s
[(1.5/1.3)-1]=15.38%
So with GOTEM you only need to get your gcd down to 1.3s and let GOTEM take care of the last bit. You will need 15.38% haste from gear or spec to get to gcd. So with a few extra points in balance your total minimum haste to gcd cap is 406 without raid buffs.
@Arielore: Without any raid buffs, you need 505 haste rating to reach 1.5 sec GCD, not 406 since = 15.4 * 32.78998947 = 505.
GotEM has changed since 3.0.8. You now need ~655 Haste Rating or ~19.98% to reach a 1 sec GCD without other buffs or talents. Please read the following links to update the above information.
http://elitistjerks.com/1079250-post270.html
http://elitistjerks.com/1079687-post272.html
@Zoltiar: Thanks so much for the heads up! I’ve updated the above article and posted about this change.
“Updated with Patch 3.08: The global cooldown reduction of Gift of the Earthmother is no longer percentage-based but instead a flat 0.06/0.12/0.18/0.24/0.3 second reduction. This represents a significant nerf to its effectiveness.”
Hi Phaelia,
You wrote it correctly in the formula, but you kind of have the change backwards. It used to subtract 0.06/0.12/0.18/0.24/0.3 second off the end cast time after haste, but now in 3.0.8 it ‘IS’ percentage-based. Sorry if my EJ post was confusing. The goal was to show the change. Regardless, it is a bit of a nerf and your spreadsheet appears correct. You probably didn’t even realize you explained it in reverse.
Also you mention at the end of the summary that Gift of the Earthmother scales better with haste which isn’t really true anymore since it it percentage based.
@Zoltair: Doh … thank you. I’m just going to refrain from trying to explain this mechanic and leave it to the experts (like you)! Thanks for all your hard work and for taking the time to comment with a correction.