It’s twice the entendre for half the price as Runycat from 
I’m super busy this week, so this will be a quick post reviewing Ghostcrawler’s responses to Resto-related questions from Arenis of Bonechewer (US).
1. Is any attention being given to how bad many Druids perceived Replenish? Maybe uping the returns of mana at the very least?
Yes, it is dreadful. Totally agree.
Replenish is pretty lackluster and doesn’t justify its 3-point expense. The returns are either negligible or unnecessary and Rejuvenation is an awkward healing spell to leverage in anything but a 5-man instance where you’re guaranteed to be the only healer. It also doesn’t have any hope of comparing to the awesomeness of Replenishment. Not that it necessarily should, but the effects are similar enough that the comparison will be drawn. » More on Replenish
2. Is any attention being given to how bad many Druids perceive Living Seed? Living Seed is very low on overall healing for 3 talent points mostly because it is based off crits, which outside Regrowth aren’t a Druid’s strong stat, it is over-heal the majority of the time.
I don’t think Seed is nearly as bad as Replenishment. We get caught in this cycle sometimes where a class says "I don’t want X stat" so we give them a talent that uses it and then the response is "now you are making me want a stat I don’t want." That’s overly pithy to describe the situation, but it does come up a lot.
That’s definitely overly pithy. Resto doesn’t value crit because our primary method of healing, heals over time, do not benefit from it. What crit we DO benefit from is easily achievable through Improved Regrowth, making stacking crit for our other direct heal(s) kind of silly.
3. Is any attention being give to how bad our PvP survivability is? We can’t stay in Tree if a warlock is around. We can’t CC if we are in Tree. If we aren’t in Tree we lose our armor and melee tear through us faster than if we are in it. Lifeblooms that cost about 1500 mana to stack to 3 are being wisped away by DKs without so much as a thought or bloom. The regen in what PvP gear is accessible to losing teams is terrible. The numbers show Resto Druids are the worst Healers in arena atm. Yes even worse than priests.
PvP survivability is not something we want to address on a class by class basis at this point. A lot of players feel they are dying too quickly. Going through all the talent trees to offer survivability doesn’t get at the root of this concern. As an aside, non-tanks often skip survivability talents anyway unless they are borderline OP in PvP. We are trying to bundle more of them with offensive effects.
Resto is definitely paying for its dominance in S2-S4 right now. I spend more time in Wisp Form than Elf Form in battlegrounds these days. If they buff Holy Paladins with Resto Druids and Holy and/or Discipline Priests, I’m going to be peeved.
4. Haste and Crit on our gear is pretty useless to us after a certain point. Once we reach the Haste softcap for raids, which is pretty low, we don’t need that anymore. Crit is also pretty situational as it will only really affect Nourish and we don’t get enough Crit on our gear for it to be a substantional boost to the spell. Perhaps Haste affecting Hot Ticks. Perhaps Crit affecting Hots – yeah i am dreaming on that one, but can u tell us why not?
Honestly, there is a technical limitation that prevents hots (and dots) from being able to crit. We are removing that limitation though, so who knows.
Haste and armor pen are things we put on lower level gear to make it lower level gear. Higher level gear will be more suitablly optimized.
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I did not say your hots will just start critting in the next patch. I said we had the technology to do that if we think it is necessary. We would certainly have to nerf Resto in other ways to compensate for those higher healing numbers.
Critting HoTs is potentially promising though I have to disagree with the idea that we would need to be nerfed to make up for such a change. Tanks are the primary beneficiaries of our HoT ticks, and much of that healing is already overhealing (regardless of whether it displays as such on the meters). Providing a more sporadically beneficial health buffer shouldn’t necessitate a reduction of throughput in other areas.
5. Poor Idol choices. Currently there is 1 for lifebloom and 1 for rejuv. Any hopes of getting more for other spells or perhaps less specific idols?
We will try and add more. Typically these need to go on vendors (though not always) since they are so spec specific (and therefore prone to causing frustration when they drop).
The idol choices in Wrath really, really stink. As Arenis points out, they only benefit Lifebloom (nerfed so badly that it’s only useful triple-stacked) or Rejuvenation (generally reserved for tanks). I’m worried that if they only put these items on token-based vendors, that we won’t get anything as cool as the [Idol of the Crescent Goddess] was in TBC. There’s a certain something extra special that can be given to items that are acquired from individual bosses that you don’t typically see from items that are token-purchased. Qwezar of Zangarmarsh (US) made a really good suggestion that these idols could be acquired through a token system similar to the tier tokens. This would allow one item to drop that was possibly redeemable by a Protection Paladin, Elemental Shaman, or Restoration Druid.
6. Why can’t we cast thorns in Tree Form?
We want druids to be shapeshifters so we constantly struggle with how much to allow them to do without shifting. Feral and Balance have a lot of the same questions.
This is another silly limitation. Expect to see Thorns duration increased to 30 minutes or Tree of Life able to cast it … in the Emerald Dream expansion.
7. We can’t Trees cast Barkskin while silences. Trees do have bark afterall.
If you have bark, then why do you need more?
This would be a nice change but won’t affect me a ton since I currently have no plans to participate in Arenas.
8. Having more than 1 Tree in a Raid usually only happens if there is a lack of other healers. Any input on what can be done about Trees stacking better with eachother? Like a boost to Hots if another tree has one up on a target?
I am not finding this is a general rule (one tree per raid) except for groups that just tended to keep the same players they had in BC. Except for paladins with their weird buff stacking mechanics (something we are looking at) I do see plenty of concerns from all classes that there isn’t enough reason to bring more than one of them. Yet, that was kind of the point. All things being equal, we would prefer you to bring a diverse group (to avoid raid stacking and get everyone into the raids) but we don’t want to overly penalize you if you cannot for whatever reason.
I also haven’t experienced this personally. Given, my guild isn’t the type that necessarily min/maxxes its raid composition (nor is WotLK raid content such that this is necessary so far), but I don’t really feel any less effective if there’s a second Druid on board.
Overall, it was really nice to see some responses in the healer forum to something other than Priest whining, and I’m encouraged by the acknowledgement that Replenish is “dreadful.”
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/cry I love you, ty for everything.
I’m really glad they’re aware of how useless/subpar Replenish is. Not so glad about Living Seed being ok on their book… I know it’d be a repetitive mechanic but I wish it’d be changed to an armor boost or protective shield, to avoid overhealing or depend on *effective* healing.
About the idols, thank God I got the Crescent Goddess back then raiding SSC. Not only every idol sucks right now (and I heartily laugh every time that awful awful Rejuv idol drops), but we might get the same luck DKs got: lots of new sigils, just to be sold by a PvP currency obtained at Grizzly Hills.
Please don’t give incentives to bring more than one Resto Druid on a raid. I like that every time Healer leather drops, I get it
. It compensates slightly for having to share rings, trinkets and weapons with the DPS hoi polloi.
Anelfs last blog post..Holding aggro with your pet
=] Hi Phae! I’m a long-time lurker, first time commentor, so I wanted to start with how much I enjoy reading your blog. Your theorycrafting dazzles me. I’ve been very impressed with the developer’s (namely Ghostcrawler’s) attention to healers recently. I have this feeling in the pit of my priesty gut that all of us will be seeing good things in 3.1.
Myssidias last blog post..Naxx 25
I’m often the only resto druid in our raids unless we’re short – because we almost always take only 6 healers. The standard template is 2 priests, 2 shamans, 1 pally, and me.. there’s just no “room” for another druid unless one of the other guys is missing.
I’m hoping that Ulduar will require more than the bare minimum number of healers.
Keevas last blog post..More flagrant self-grats
We ran a very successful Naxx-10 recently with all three healers being resto druids. It’s quite powerful already.
Karthiss last blog post..Druid Tanking: Overview (WotLK)
I do not agree with your opinion of rejuv. I found it to be very powerfull. Especially on fights where can’t use wild growth because people are spread. With the reduced mana cost on rejuve it becomes a great raidheal, you just need to know your raid a little, tanks take dmg, some dps will, some ranged: you will see that it concerns mostly the same ppl. Precast is the thing, i use rejuv a lot and my overhealing hasn’t gone up.
Raaffs last blog post..What do you want?
Idols are pretty bad right now for Moonkin as well. Excluding the PvP idols we only have to. They do focus on our two main nukes but there are a couple of issues. First the Starfire idol appears to be bugged and behaves just like Starfire idol from BC. Second, the best idol for Moonkin raiding is the Idol of the Raven Goddess from BC. An extra 20 crit rating isn’t much but know that it is spread over the entire raid it is definately better then a bugged idol on our primary spell and a good idol on our secondary nuke.
Unfortunately I’ve seen reports that say the Idol of the Raven Goddess is bugged for Trees. Anyway, I hope this is an idol they update in the next content patch.
graylos last blog post..GC: "I was wrong" – Imp FF works with any FF
How you can say “and Rejuvenation is an awkward healing spell to leverage in anything but a 5-man instance where you’re guaranteed to be the only healer.” with a straight face makes me puzzled. It is an amazing spell in raiding even with the current CoH climate – it won’t do massive amounts of your healing on fights like Patchwerk but it is now a really solid (and cheap/efficient) spell to throw around and a very useful spell on AoE damage encounters even before the WG cooldown.
We’ve cleared the back half of Naxx 10 with 2 resto druids. Was a bit rough, and took some retries, but we managed to finish it up. We had to adjust our healing style a little to compensate. So we’re certainly not being excluded because druids aren’t viable, it’s more habbit perhaps.
Regarding living seed. There used to be the ‘early proc’ bug, where if you healed someone to full or near full, the heal went off first, overhealed uselessly, then they took the damage. I understand that’s been fixed at the moment. If it turned into a shield it would be way too powerful at current percentages. I’ve also seen the ‘about 3%-4% of healing’ analysis a lot, which suggests it’s not all that great for the points.
What I think the analysis of living seed is missing is that the skill is powerful when you get the full effects, and would be OP if they always applied (in whatever way). What it provides is a boost to healing when your target it down. That’s when I need healing most. It’s not an efficiency talent, it’s a targeted talent. The metric isn’t HPS or HPM. It’s ‘did the tank fall over?’. I like that living seed provides a larger buffer on targets that are low. That’s when I need the extra healing most. It’s the regrowth on a tank that’s at 30% and falling providing that extra buffer that lets you get them back to full. For me, the talent converts wipes to wins. Not every time of course, but I’ll take all the buffer there I can get.
Nice breakdown on the QA Phae. Your work helps keep the dialog between the community and Blizzard open. Keep it up!
Reading this post and also the one comparing spell efficiencies, I get the impression that you are kind of looking for ‘the one’ spell to cast. However, I think that this is the wrong strategy.
A tree’s arsenal has a large number of diverse spells: Wild Growth, Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Regrowth, Swiftmend, Nourish, Healing Touch, and even Natures Swiftness. The trick is not to find the one that performs best on average and then stick to it, but rather choose the most efficient one depending on the situation. Of course, the latter is more complex. You not only have to choose who to heal, but also what spell to use. And since situations can chance quite quickly, you have to repeat this about every 1.5 seconds the whole fight long – maybe the reason that people are still looking for the ‘one’. On the other hand, this opens the gap between good and not so good players. It requires experience and a lot of exercise to get this right – I am also still learning.
Hence, like some of the previous posters, I don’t agree at all with the general statements that Nourish is a terrible spell, and that Lifebloom and Rejuvenation are nerfed badly and awkward. Sure, there are situations when they are not the right choice, but there are others where they outperform everything else.
In my opinion, the same holds for the question whether to choose spell crit or haste – again, it depends – and both can be very useful. And even more, the same also holds for a number of talents.
I think it is important to become aware that there are now a lot of more options you can choose from where none of them is always superior to the others. I at least enjoy the diversity that there is neither the ‘one’ build, the ‘one’ stat, nor the ‘one’ spell. It seems that the designers have almost reached their goal here.
I can’t decide if haste on hots would be the best thing ever or a pain in the stump. More regular RJ and RG ticks would smooth tank health better, but LB is already pretty fast and might just overheal more.
Overall I think it’d be nice, providing we didn’t take a nerf elsewhere to compensate. I’m assuming haste would shorten the HOT duration but retain the same number of ticks.
Crit on hots – definitely would need a coeff nerf to balance. You can make the same “oh it’d only overheal” argument about spellpower, but you don’t see anyone turning that down. I prefer smooth to ribbed so, no crit on hots for me please.
Might make a neat talent; actually the resto tree would be more interesting if you could choose a hotcrit+LB stream or a hothaste+HT stream.
What is that haste cap? I’m not seeking Haste, but if there is a topped-out amount, I’d sure like to know what it is. the most haste I have right now is about 155, depending on my available gear.
@Hokuto: The shield effect would be wonderful, but it would likely have to be rebalanced if they changed it to that type of mechanic. I think switching it from 30% to 29% sounds about right!
@Anelf: Haha … well, in TBC my guild had about 10 MEELION Druids, several of whom were Resto. Luckily, many of them have found a new FOTM to play, but it’s no fun to lose your raid spot to someone new because there’s only one to be had.
@Myssidia: I’ve also been really pleased with the amount of feedback that we’ve gotten from developers lately, though I think they’re getting irritated with the frustration of PvPers and it’s starting to come through in their posts. Thank you for reading, the kind words, and for taking a moment to comment!
@Keeva: Just think of all those DPSers cajoled into playing healers in TBC only to discover they loved it and are now being forced to switch back to DPS to get into the raid. Oh, the humanity!
@Karthis: I don’t think Naxx is so challenging that healer balance has to be perfect. I think most people are worried about the more difficult content that’s sure to come. I sure would have liked to have been in that raid with 3 Resto Druids, though. Swiftmend city!
@Raaff: Rejuvenation is an excellent tank healing spell. However, it’s generally overwritten by smart heals or Paladin heals when used as a raid heal. If, in the situation you describe, the tank takes damage and you know the melee will too, there’s no reason not to use a 1 GCD Wild Growth instead of 5 GCD Rejuvenations. Precasting, however, might make the spell more useful. It’s something I’ll try. =)
@Graylo: It really seems like the new idols (for all specs) were more or less an afterthought. Essentially “just take these and make them a little better.” Which doesn’t make for very fun or entertaining upgrades.
@Mayfax: I’m a Tree of Life. I have a very crooked face, thank you. ^_^ I imagine that Rejuvenation could be very useful in the rare cases when you can predict who will be taking damage, know that the damage will be over an extended period of time (so the HoT can tick a few times), know they aren’t going to be grouped up together (otherwise, you’d just use Wild Growth), and all your other healers are fast asleep or passed out drunk (it still takes 3 seconds to do anything). I still love Rejuvenation as a tank heal, but it’s kinda bleh in my other experiences.
@Kelerain: 3-4% effective healing is actually really good. If I were seeing those numbers every time, I’d be hopping up and down! After all, Living Seed is not a new spell designed to comprise 20+% of your healing (a la Wild Growth) but a talent that augments an existing spell. You make a great point about how it’s REALLY useful when it does activate, and that’s definitely value that’s difficult to quantify.
@Kohana: I’m sorry that you got the impression that I’m looking for the “one” spell to cast. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even in TBC when many Druids were Lifebloom fiends, I was trying to mix as much Regrowth into my rotation as I could. Evaluating direct heals against one another does not mean that you would eschew rolling HoTs on your tanks. It simply means that, when it’s appropriate, you would know which of our direct heals is most effective or efficient. Knowing ahead of time which is better under which conditions makes split-second decision making that much easier.
@Aelinna: I’m in the same boat. In Wrath, one of the nicest things is longer-lasting HoTs for decreased tank maintenance (Rejuvenation and Regrowth both got 6 more seconds; Lifebloom got up to 3). The freedom to do other things has been wonderful, and I’m not sure I’d want to give that up for increased HPS.
@Kayeri: Most Druids base their haste goal on how much haste it will take to reach a 1.0 sec GCD with GotEM. I actually discuss this at varying numbers of points in the talent over here: http://www.resto4life.com/2009/01/05/living-seed-replenish-and-gift-of-the-earthmother/#gotem
@ Raaff & anyone else who can answer this – do HoTs, like rejuv, show up on overheal meters? (That might be a REALLY dumb question.) I’ve never really paid attention to overheal meters for resto druids since they never really showed up on them.
Regarding NOT stacking resto druids… We brought FOUR to Naxx 25 man this week and didn’t notice. I think the content is all so easy at this point, synergy hardly matters. We may be screwed come the next tier since we have so many druids, but right now I can’t wrap my head around people complaining about lack of ToL synergy.
@Kelerain: I am seeing living seed taking up a larger % of my healing too, especially on the MT. I no longer feel like it is completely worthless, but you still won’t see me stacking anything but spellpower and spirit. And since it had the proc bug in the beginning, I will ALWAYS call it “Seed of Suck”
@Mayfax and Phae: We have one druid in our guild who can top the healing meters with over 30% of his healing coming from rejuv. I don’t know how he does it, but it is his spell of choice and he makes it work. I on the other hand am still very LB heavy despite the nerfs.
Aertimuss last blog post..Why We Do the Thing We Do
Rejuv is an awesome heal if done right (ie. other healers let it tick), the rejuv idol is amazing, allowing you to essentially drop a HoT for less than your mp5, once every second.
Rejuv does show up on my overhealing meter for sure.
I actually think that for 10-mans (especially if your 2nd healer is pally or shadow priest) Rejuvenation is an excellent raid heal – and let’s not forget the incoming WG/COH cooldown which means it will be overwritten less. As an example, see this parse from Sapphiron:
http://wowwebstats.com/2oe66bmfvj5xu?a=x1e960f4
I wish that Ashtongue trinket would scale better, I would have put it on for that fight!
Hey
I totally agree to your optinion except the one with only one resto is needed in raids. Our raid cleared everything incl. Sartharion 3D and in our setup are always 2 Restos and if we need more healer even 3 in 25 man raids.
They are just better than other healer in so many ways. We got innervate for others or us and we got battlerezzes and normally the restos are on top of every healmeter. So I really don’t know why so many raids have only one resto druid in their whole team.
Quick note – we’ve also done 10 man Naxx with 2 druid healers, and it was surprisingly AWESOME. We did have to use some hybrid paladins for the Four Horsemen, but overall, 2 druids worked just dandy. Going into it I thought it would be epic fail… but we rocked it
HoTs that crit would drastically change the way we view gear… if we could crit on each tick, resto druids would clamor for crit rating like it was the only stat that mattered in game. I doubt they’ll implement it any time soon, but it’s just interesting that Blizz is potentially toying with the idea.
Also – another interesting note about Living Seed… I have 3/3 talent points in it, and last run in Naxx 25, the total amount of my living seed counted for less than .5% of my overall healing. I’m wondering if I should take the three points I have there and put them in Imp. Regrowth for more crit with that… I don’t use the Glyph of Regrowth (If I did, I would have 5/5 Imp Regrowth – right now I have 0/5). I’m wondering if the extra healing due to more regrowth crits would do more effective healing than the little bit that I get with living seed. Besides, I’ve never healed a tank and then said to myself, “Self, I’m so glad you put those talent points there, because without Living Seed, this tank would be going down!” Yeah. No, not so much. However, I have sometimes thought “Man, I’m really glad that Regrowth just crit.”
Avernas last blog post..Naxxramas