Bellwether of Dark Iron (US) writes in with this great question:

I often run with a Protection-specced Paladin tank, and he recently asked me a question I don't know how to answer. It was a question of Blessings, and he didn't know if it would be better to give me Blessing of Wisdom (mp5) or to increase my Spirit through Blessing of Kings. I was unsure which would be better. I do most of my healing in Tree Form with constantly refreshing Lifebloom stacks. Would this make BoK more appropriate overall then?

Bellwether sent me this question in October, and I originally intuited the answer from my own experience and personal preference for mana regeneration. However, dusting off Excel for the recent Thorns post inspired me to do a little math to flesh out my response so that I could share it. Like most stat/gear/spell comparisons, it's helpful to convert them so that they speak as close to the same language as possible. Since Blessing of Wisdom grants pure mana regeneration, I converted the Spirit component of Blessing of Kings into the equivalent MP5 it would grant. This, of course, ignores its auxillary benefits (additional HP from 10% more Stamina, additional mana from 10% more Intellect, and any additional +Healing if you use it while in Tree of Life), but it does give us a good starting point.

MP5 from Blessing of Wisdom

The MP5 value for BoW is pretty straightforward:

Blessing of Wisdom Rank 7 150 Mana 30 yd range Instant cast Places a Blessing on the friendly target, restoring 41 mana every 5 seconds for 10 min.  Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

Paladins can also pick up a 2-point talent from their Holy tree called Improved Blessing of Wisdom. This talent increases the MP5 from BoW by an additional 20%, from 41 MP5 to 49.2 MP5. Since this Blessing grants pure MP5 it is unaffected by Spirit or percent time inside the Five Second Rule, thus making our lives a great deal less complicated.

MP5 from Blessing of Kings

To find the MP5 value of BoK, I'm assuming 3/3 Intensity (30% mana regeneration while casting). We don't need to take Living Spirit into account since BoK is multiplicative; we need only look at the "base" Spirit on our character sheet. We can then modify the formula from the earlier Spirit vs. MP5 article to derive its corollary, the formula for determining how much MP5 is required to match the value of 1 Spirit:

Mp5 required to match 1 Spirit =

Using this formula, we can determine the MP5 contribution of Blessing of Kings, assuming we know the following information:

• Base Spirit (SPI)
• % Time in the 5SR
• Casting Regen (assume 30% from Intensity)

Blessing of Kings vs. Blessing of Wisdom

I've calculated and graphed the MP5 contribution of Blessing of Kings at 50%, 75%, 90%, and 100% inside the FSR:

Then I performed the same calculation as above assuming that I used Innervate once every six minutes:

Note: For those who are curious, I can factor in Innervate by assuming that I'm under its effects (regenerating at a rate of 500%) 5.6% of the time and outside of its effects (regenerating at my normal rate) 94.4% of the time. For simplicity's sake, this assumes it's used once every six minutes. This should be considered a conservative estimate since it can sometimes be used at one minute into a fight and again at seven minutes — or once at one minute into a shorter fight (3 minutes).

From the above graphs, note the following:

• Because BoK gives Spirit, its MP5 equivalent decreases as the amount of time spent in the 5SR increases.
• Because BoK is percentage-based, its MP5 equivalent increases as the amount of base Spirit increases.
• Without considering Innervate, even at extremely high values of Spirit (700+) and at 50% of the time in the 5SR, the MP5 contribution of Blessing of Kings is less than half that of Improved Blessing of Wisdom.
• Once you take Innervate into account, however, a very conservative FSR percentage of 90% yields approximately half the value of MP5 from an Improved Blessing of Wisdom at very high values of Spirit.

Comparison and Conclusions

Clearly, Blessing of Wisdom is going to grant much greater mana regeneration than Blessing of Kings since Kings spends a portion of its "spell budget" on other effects (increasing your Intellect and Stamina along with other stats which are mostly worthless to a Restoration Druid). Given my preference for mana regeneration, I'd almost invariably choose Wisdom over Kings unless the encounter was really Stamina-dependent (in which case, I'd be more likely to put on a few pieces of PvP gear). In general, my order of preference for Blessing requests is as follows:

• Trash Fights: Salvation, Wisdom, Kings
• Boss Fights: Wisdom, Kings, Light *

* Of course if the boss fight is an aggro-sensitive one, you might interpose Salvation before or after Wisdom.

Related Posts

• 2.4 Mana Regen: Paladin Blessings
• Revaluing Spirit
• Arrrghhh!!! Trinkets!!!

After Mark of the Wild, the Druid damage shield Thorns is probably one of the spells most often complained about:

Thorns Rank 7 400 Mana 30 yd range Instant cast Thorns sprout from the friendly target causing 25 Nature damage to attackers when hit.  Lasts 10 min.

Let’s take an inventory of all the perceived issues with this spell:

• It doesn’t do enough damage. Some have suggested making it scale with spell damage.
• There’s no group buff version, making it inconvenient to cast. (The idea of making it a group buff is terribad. You’ll see why below.)
• The duration is too short at only 10 minutes, one third the duration of our single-target Mark of the Wild spell.
• It can’t be cast while in Tree of Life.

Optionally, a Druid willing to invest thirteen or more points in the Balance tree can pick up the 3/3 Brambles talent, a talent which increase the damage taken by 75%:

Brambles Rank 3 Increases damage caused by your Thorns and Entangling Roots spells by 75%.

With 3/3 Brambles, that would increase the damage per hit by Thorns to 47. One has to admit that doesn’t sound like a lot when you consider mobs hitting cloth for 4k in some Heroics.

Thorns as AoE Aggro

One often overlooked fact about Thorns is that the aggro generated is on a per mob basis. That means that the total threat per second is multiplied for every mob that’s beating on (but not casting spells upon) a thorned target. Larger pulls means more aggro from Thorns, assuming your tank is able to maintain their attention. At the same time, the threat generated by healing is considered “global threat” or spread among all the mobs on your hate list. I want to reiterate that point since it’s a really important one that many people miss: Threat from healing is distributed evenly among all targets on your hate list. So for every additional mob in your group pull, you’re getting more threat from Thorns and less threat from healing done.

Determining Thorns Threat

To determine the threat of Thorns, both with and without 3/3 Brambles, I’m going to make the following assumptions:

• The mobs attacking the tank hit at a speed of 2.0 or once every two seconds.
• The tank is a Protection-specced Warrior using Defensive Stance and having 3/3 Defiance for a total threat modification of +45%.
• The tank has a combined 35% rate of Dodge + Parry + miss.

The threat per second of Thorns without 3/3 Brambles can therefore be expressed as:

TPS of Thorns_{w/o Brambles} = Threat Multiplier * Thorns DPS * (1 – % Time Thorns Ineffective)
OR 1.45 * (25 dmg/2 sec) * (1 – 0.35) = 11.78 TPS

To calculate this value with the Brambles talent, we simply adjust the damage output per hit of Thorns:

TPS of Thorns_w/Brambles = 1.45 * (43.75 dmg/2 sec) * (1 – 0.35) = 20.62 TPS

Not coincidentally, the TPS increase from picking up Brambles is 75%, the same increase to the amount of damage done by each hit.

Notably, a Warrior using chain Thunder Clap will generate around 350 threat every 4 seconds per mob on up to four mobs (discussion via WoWWiki.com). With Thorns + Brambles, you’d be granting him an additional 24% threat on top of that. And don’t forget that the threat generated by Thorns applies to all mobs, not only four.

Determining Lifebloom Threat

Lifebloom is one of our largest and most efficient sources of healing output, and the threat generated from it is both steady and periodic, making it a great source of comparison against the threat generated by Thorns. To determine the threat per second of a triple stack of Lifebloom, I’m going to make the following assumptions:

• None of the healing done is overheal (which does not generate threat).
• The healer has 5/5 Subtlety (-20% threat), 5/5 Empowered Rejuvenation (+15% bonus to the HoT portion), and 5/5 Gift of Nature (+10% to all healing spells).
• The healer has 1650 +Healing.

To easily and quickly determine the scaling of Lifebloom per stack and with the appropriate talents, I compared the total healed per tick with my gear on and without my gear. Both times, I made sure to remove my [Idol of the Emerald Queen] since it affects the periodic healing of Lifebloom. From these two values, I was able to determine the scaling of Lifebloom with talents to be approximately 58.9%:

Healing per Tick_{0 +Healing} = 42.67
Healing per Tick_{1595 +Healing} = 199
Amount Healed from Bonus Healing = +Healing * Coefficient
Coefficient = Amount Healed from Bonus Healing / +Healing
(199 – 43) * 6 / 1595 = 58.9%

From this coefficient, we can determine the total amount healed by the HoT portion of a single Lifebloom application for our assumed 1650 +Healing:

Total Healed by Lifebloom HoT = Base Heal from Lifebloom HoT + (Coefficient * +Healing) = 273 + (0.589 * 1650) = 1246.5

If we divide the total healed by 6 (for the number of times Lifebloom ticks before being refreshed), we find that Lifebloom will heal for 207.8 HP per second:

Healed per Tick = 1246.5 / 6 = 207.8

Since each point of healing is worth half a point of threat, we find that a single application of Lifebloom generates 103.9 Threat per second at our assumed 1650 +Healing. Since we’re assuming the healer is specced for Subtlety, we multiply this value by 80% to get 83.1 TPS per application. Three applications (rolling Lifebloom) means that we multiply this value by 3 to arrive at our final value, 249.3 TPS:

TPS of Lifebloom x 1 = Total Healing Done / 2 = 103.9 TPS
TPS of Lifebloom x 1_Subtlety = 103.9 * 0.8 = 83.1
TPS of Lifebloom x 3_Subtlety = 83.1 * 3 = 249.3 TPS

Once again, this number assumes that none of the healing done is overhealing. It represents the threat generated each second that is evenly distributed among however many targets are on the healer’s hate list.

TPS of Thorns vs. TPS of Lifebloom x 3

To determine how much of your Lifebloom threat is effectively mitigated by casting Thorns, we can plot these values against the total number of mobs present and affected by Thorns:

From the above graph, note the following:

• At four mobs, casting Thorns and having 3/3 Brambles would effectively “eat” 34% of the threat being generated by a rolling stack of Lifebloom. Without Brambles, it’s only 19%. That’s a 14.2% increase to the amount of threat countered from Brambles alone.
• At five mobs, the amount of threat countered by Thorns + Brambles jumps to 41%. Without Brambles, it’s only 24%. That’s a 17.7% increase to the amount of threat countered from Brambles alone.

Note: While this graph assumes that no mobs present are crowd controlled and therefore all are being affected by Thorns you can determine the adjusted TPS being generated by Thorns by sliding to the left along the x-axis a number of units equal to the number of mobs being crowd controlled. Healing aggro, unfortunately, remains the same.

Conclusion

Thorns is not worthless. For 400 mana spent outside of combat, you effectively give your tank a cushion for aggro, allowing him to continue building threat on mobs he isn’t even focused on. And if you’re going to be spending the points in the Balance tree to pick up Insect Swarm anyway, you should consider the value of Brambles, especially if you frequently run instances (multi-mob pulls are less of an issue in raids). And no, you don’t want a group version of Thorns. Except maybe for Arenas. And only if it didn’t consume another costly reagent.

P.S. For a bit of fun, I went ahead and extrapolated the number of mobs necessary to counteract all of the TPS generated by a triple-stack of Lifebloom. It’s 12 with Brambles and 21 without. So feel free to link this article the next time you accidentally aggro say … 2-4 additional groups!

Related Posts

• Method: Coefficient Testing
• Nordrassil Raiment and Regrowth
• 2.4 Mana Regen: Valuing +Healing

Realm History, a site which aggregates a variety of population data for all realms in the US and EU, is providing a breakdown of Arena team population by class, aggregating by bracket and by teams ranked 1850+ and 2200+. Surprisingly, Druids are doing very poorly so far, even in the 2v2 bracket in which we have generally excelled. It’s likely that these numbers will shift around as different team compositions “settle out” into their more-or-less predestined ranges (since everyone’s been thrown into the same pool, so to speak, Druid teams facing problem matchups may see their progress halted until those teams move out of their range). Definitely a set of statistics worth watching over the coming weeks and months.

Related Posts

• Population of Top-Rated Arena Teams by Class
• Hafu and Kasumi in 2v3 Arenas
• Mmmm … Bacon …

By popular request, I’ve created a graph that compares the valuation of Spirit relative to MP5 with Blessing of Kings, using the 2.3 value for Intensity (30% mana regeneration while casting). Non-BoK values are graphed in a lighter color than their BoK values and, as one might expect, the 1.1 factor on total Spirit causes each plot to shift slightly down:

I’ll also be updating my Revaluing Spirit post with this additional graph so that I don’t need to link three posts on the topic under the Lunar Guidance section.

Related Posts

• Revaluing Spirit
• MP5 vs. Healing
• MP5 vs. Intellect

Don’t hate me because I represent only a minor efficiency increase to an already marginalized spell.

Because apparently some of you care if the math I present is accurate, I’ve been forced to delve a little deeper into the effects of the Nordrassil Raiment on the efficiency of Regrowth. (Although it was much easier when I just pulled numbers at random out of my boot.) To set it up, I’m making the following assumptions:

• 1750 +Healing (not unrealistic when considering access to Tier 5)
• 60% crit chance on Regrowth from 5/5 Improved Regrowth and an additional 10% from Intellect
• Caster has Empowered Rejuvenation (+20% to +Healing on HoTs) and Gift of Nature (+10% to all heals)

I’m using the scaling values listed for Regrowth on WoWWiki’s article on Spell Damage Coefficients which shows that the direct portion scales at 16.6% (ouch) and the HoT portion scales at a rate of 99.4% or 14.2% per tick. I’ll break down the HoT portion into ticks since that will make it easier to find the value of adding two more. Here are the base stats for Rank 10 of Regrowth:

Regrowth Rank 10 845 Mana 40 yd range 2 sec cast Heals a friendly target for 1215 to 1355 and another 1274 over 21 sec.

Click here for the TLDWTRTM version. (too long, didn’t want to read the math)

Direct Heal

To find the average value of the up front heal without factoring in any talents, crit chance, or scaling from +Healing, we simply average the low and high values listed for the spell:

Avg. Heal_{direct, no crit} = (1215 + 1355)/2 = 1285

With a 60% crit rating, we’ll be getting a bonus 150% healed 60% of the time and our usual 100% healed 40% of the time:

Avg. Heal_{direct, crit} = (0.60 * 1.5 * 1285) + (0.40 * 1.0 * 1285) = 1670.5

The direct portion doesn’t benefit from Empowered Rejuvenation since it’s not a heal over time so calculating the bonus from +Healing is just a matter of factoring in the stated scaling value of 16.6%:

Bonus +Healing_{direct, crit} = 1750 * 16.6% = 290.5

Avg. Direct Heal_{direct, crit, scaling} = 290.5 + 1670.5 = 1961

Now we can apply the 10% to Heal bonus from Gift of Nature (which applies to both HoTs and direct heals):

Avg. Direct Heal_{direct, crit, scaling, GoN} = 1961 * 1.1 = 2157.1

Heal over Time

Since the set bonus of the Nordrassil Raiment increases the number of ticks on Regrowth from 7 to 9, I’ll calculate the healing per tick and then find the value of adding two more. First, we divide the total listed HoT by 7 to determine the base value per tick:

Tick = 1274 / 7 = 182

Heals over time can’t crit, so we don’t need to factor our 60% crit rate in. Each tick scales at a rate of 14.2% so we apply this value to our 1750 +Healing. To factor in the benefit from Empowered Rejuvenation, we multiply this value by 20%:

Bonus +Healing per Tick = 1750 * 14.2% * 1.2 = 298.2

Add this value to our base value per tick:

Tick_scaling = 298.2 + 182 = 480.2

Factor in the 10% boost from Gift of Nature:

Tick _{scaling, GoN} = 480.2 * 1.1 = 528.22

Multiplying this tick value by 7, we find the total amount healed by the HoT portion of Regrowth is 3697.54. Wearing two pieces of the Nordrassil Raiment gives us two extra ticks for a value of 4753.98.

HoT_{No Set Bonus} = 7 * 528.22 = 3697.54

HoT_{Set Bonus} = 9 * 528.22 = 4753.98

Total Heal

Now we sum these individual totals with the total average of the direct heal to get the total average heal from a talented Regrowth with 1750 +Healing, both with and without the Nordrassil Raiment set bonus:

Avg. Regrowth_{No Set Bonus} = 3697.54 + 2157.1 = 5854.64

Avg. Regrowth_{Set Bonus} = 4753.98 + 2157.1 = 6911.08

Efficiency

Now we divide these average total healed values by the mana cost of Regrowth (845) to find the spell’s efficiency (HPM):

HPM_{No Set Bonus} = 5854.64 / 854 = 6.93

HPM_{Set Bonus} = 6911.08 / 854 = 8.11

For fun, let’s use the discounted mana value provided by Tree of Life (although I’m not factoring in any +Healing bonus from SPI; we’ll just assume you’re healing someone outside your group):

HPM_{No Set Bonus, ToL} = 5854.64 / (0.8 * 854) = 8.57

HPM_{Set Bonus, ToL} = 6911.08 / (0.8 * 854) = 10.12

Efficiency Increase

And finally, to find the average efficiency increase of having the set bonus…

HPM Increase_{No ToL} = (8.11 – 6.93) / 6.93 = 17%

HPM Increase_ToL = (10.12 – 8.57) / 8.57 = 18%

Well that was a decidedly lengthy calculation. Does anyone see any corrections that should be made?

Related Posts

• Method: Coefficient Testing
• Mystery No More: +Healing Explained
• Tier 5 Set Bonus and Saving for Season 3