On Monday Ghostcrawler announced that Blizzard has both Circle of Healing and Wild Growth on their nerf-dar:

Circle of Healing and Wild Growth are definitely on our radar. This would be a good time to discuss them.

Our concern is that they are turning two classes with a large arsenal of healing spells into single-button healers. Meanwhile, ironically, the other two healing classes have fewer heals to use in the first place.

We have seen raid parses where 75 to 90% of a priest’s healing is through CoH. It’s a good spell, useful in a variety of situations. But I think you can understand our concern.

A Priest said to us the other day "Please nerf Circle of Healing so I can push another button!" He’s even thinking of going Disc.

This statement comes quickly on the heels of a statement Ghostcrawler made the day before that:

We decided rather than try to make CH a bad spell, we’d just leave in those new talents to get you to cast other spells once in awhile. The difference is we think you’ll still cast CH 90% of the time or whatever, but maybe that remaining 10% will require you to think a little differently about what to cast (and at least it’s not 100%).

I’m at a loss as to why it’s considered acceptable for one healer to be based 90% around a spell that requires an extraordinarily low amount of cognitive awareness but Druids were considered to be too dependent first upon Lifebloom (subsequently beaten soundly with the nerf bat), then potentially Regrowth (/mourn [Glyph of Regrowth]), and now upon Wild Growth. Blizzard clearly wants to encourage a diversity of spell selection among Priests and Druids and will nerf our various spells until they’re all equally handicapped!

The development team is apparently contemplating limiting the spell’s use by applying a 6-second cooldown:

Based on feedback from this forum, elsewhere and our own brainstorming, what we are thinking about right now is something like a 6 sec cooldown for Circle of Healing and Wild Growth.

We’re less concerned about Chain Heal, in part because it’s not instant, prevents movement, falls off with multiple targets, and is the spell that shamans are supposed to be hitting, while priests and druids have many other spells.

(In contrast to Lifebloom which must be consciously targeted, heals one person at a time, carries a heavy penalty if allowed to lapse, and must be maintained even if the target is at full health, leading to a large amount of overheal. Clearly, this spell needed to be nerfed!)

At 6 seconds, you would still want to use CoH/WG in the right situations (though hopefully not *every* time they are up), but you’d also want to use other spells during the cooldown. To be fair, a lot of priests and druids are asking to push other buttons.

This sounds like a potentially scary change because it has a lot of ramifications — one of the reasons we are mentioning it so early is to get feedback. We don’t want Resto shammies to push other healers out of raids. We would change some of the encounters knowing that CoH spam was no longer possible.

Druids asking to “push more buttons” have termites for brains. Asking to push more buttons is what got Lifebloom nerfed to begin with, and while I concede that maintaining a Lifebloom rotation on 3 or more targets was not my personal definition of fun, I have long advocated for focusing on mana regeneration so that Regrowth could be used more liberally. Not only was this more effective, but it was less tedious and, therefore, more fun.

Ghostcrawler goes on to discuss a few other nerfs that were considered:

We don’t like the stacking mana cost solution in this case, though we did talk about it a lot. We suspect that would actually lead us to the land of priests saying their mana regen sucks because they have to spam CoH to be competitive, and I’m not sure we can count on all you guys to be around to explain the logic when that happens.

We don’t want to just nerf the healing throughput on the spell because then it won’t be able to do its job. CoH was in this state before when Holy just ignored it.

A cast time might work, but the instant nature of both spells is part of what makes them so useful in emergencies.

We’re not crazy about reverting the smart heal aspect, though that is still on the table. Having too many spells that favor party over raid forces you back to having to worry a lot about your raid composition. "Oh, sorry hunter, we can’t bring you because we need another melee for our melee group or else CoH won’t reach you." PoH isn’t as big an issue, because honestly it’s just not such a big contribution to total healing. Though we could consider pushing it raid wide.

Cooldowns are a reality of a lot of damage rotations and they generally work as long as the system isn’t too complicated. You typically have the spell you really want to use in a given situation and then the others you fall back on when the favored spell is on cooldown.

I’m glad they eschewed these potential nerfs in favor of a cooldown. The idea of adding a cooldown or cast time to Wild Growth is amusing in the context of the recent change to Gift of the Earthmother so that it affects Wild Growth, allowing the spell to be “cast on more people faster.” I wonder if they will revert this change. (P.S. The cooldown on WG would make GotEM even less useful. Elune is apparently a person who takes her gifts back.)

Though to be honest, because of the nature of Wild Growth (an AoE HoT that tapers off over seven seconds), this nerf will affect us less than the same change to Circle of Healing, because while we could spam Wild Growth for the initially stronger ticks, it was considerably less efficient since it would frequently target the same people, overwriting the spell and invalidating the later ticks. This isn’t to say that I’m happy about the change, especially given the recent trend of nerfing every spell in our retinue to make them all similarly weak, but I’m less upset than I would be if I were a Priest.

Additional Reading

• Lume the Mad: Now is not the time to evaluate CoH and WG
  Includes an encounter-by-encounter look at which spell(s) excel. Especially helpful for people who haven’t seen the dynamics of Black Temple or Sunwell Plateau (myself included).
• Tree Bark Jacket: AoE Heals under Fire
  Kheeva warns against CoH and WG to Chain Heal based on currently skewed Sunwell Plateau parses.
• The Nyxes: Druids’ Moment in the Sun
  Nyxilyn laments the fun that she feels will be lost if a 6-second cooldown is applied to Wild Growth.

Related Posts

• Blue: Nourish may be Affected by Wild Growth
• Wild Growth … Grows a Pair *
• Nourish to Benefit from Moonglow and Wild Growth HoT (and Blues)

Reader Vreenash of Dragonblight (US) reports this evening:

Not sure if anyone has picked on this yet, but Thorns has been changed to include about 6.5% of your spell power as bonus damage. The amount of damage that is done can fluctuate during a fight due to spell power procs and such (idols, trinkets etc.).

I have 1097 spell power at the moment, and it’s putting out about 102 damage, as seen in the screenshot. Offhand hits seem to lessen that amount by 10%, once again as seen in screenshot as 92 damage. When I use [Essence of the Martyr] (which increases spell power by 158) it adds 10 damage to Thorns.

I’m headed out to a party (I respecced Feral and am going as a Cat!), but I wanted to share this with anyone whose sitting around waiting for trick-or-treaters. Let’s hope it’s a treat and not a trick!

Edit: It appears that the damage scaling is based upon the recipient’s spell damage and not the caster’s. In other words, a Restoration Druid would be more prickly than a Feral Druid because the Restoration Druid stacks spell power. This caveat makes me suspect this may, in fact, be a bug, but I’ll take any kind of bonus to my Thorn Bush leveling spec I can get!

Related Posts

• Don’t Poke Fun at Thorns (They Hurt)
• Nordrassil Raiment and Regrowth
• Mystery No More: +Healing Explained

I’ve received several e-mails asking me about the best way to level in Wrath of the Lich King. Some Trees despair at the idea of abandoning their Healing roots for the kind that entangle while others seem to want to roll up their bark and don the feathered suit of a DOOMkin to pew pew all the way to Arthas! With as much variation as there is among readers and their playstyles, it’s safe to say that there is no clear ONE AND ONLY spec that you should use for leveling. So instead of linking you a talent build, I’m going to help you make the decisions that will determine which talents you should choose then show a couple of different specs that include them to – what I feel – is best effect! Let’s begin:

Question #1: How much do you want to heal?

This is a simple question that’s related to how much healing ability you are willing to sacrifice for the sake of improving your damage output. This assumes that the dual spec system won’t be immediately available after the release of Wrath and that you’re a cheapskate like me who is unwilling to respec to run instances. I’ve created a sliding scale of possible choices:

Question #2: How do you like to kill things?

Are you an “in your face” type of player that doesn’t mind getting her foliage mussed or are you more of a delicate flower who prefers the safety of killing things that can’t fight back?

Since the “lolwut” response to Question 2 isn’t actually a valid one (I love symmetry), there are six possible combinations that we can create. Here are six builds I would recommend to you, based on those preferences:

Build #1: The Pokey Peep, a.k.a. the Panzerkin

This type of build is heavy (HAHA) on the damage because it’s based on Moonkin, initially eschewing many of the trappings of Restoration in favor of many fun and powerful abilities at the bottom of the Balance tree. You’ll start at level 70 with a 55/0/6 build. This build focuses on many of the abilities that allow you to take a beating while you machine gun Wrath the mobs to death. Key abilities include:

• Brambles: Let the mobs munch on your thorny exterior while you gleefully blast them with Wrath, Moonfire, and Insect Swarm. You’ll pick this up instead of Nature’s Reach since root-and-nuke isn’t your goal.
• Insect Swarm: Insect Swarm is a cheap DoT that essentially costs the Global Cooldown to cast. It’s also uninterruptible. I opted to skip over Improved Insect Swarm because there are better options further down the tree.
• Moonglow, Lunar Guidance, and Dreamstate: These are pretty much staples for any caster dipping into the Balance tree, and you’d have feathers for brains if you skipped them.
• Moonkin Form / Improved Moonkin Form: Pretty obvious benefits. This gives you a lot of armor to stand in the face of your enemies. Not to mention an awesome dance.
• Owlkin Frenzy: What could be better than actually deriving a benefit from things hitting you in Moonkin Form? You’d opt to skip this 3-point talent if you were using root-and-nuke techniques.
• Typhoon and Force of Nature: It’s hard to pass up two 1-point talents as fun as these.
• Earth and Moon: Sounds like the name of a ballad-writing 80s band, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not. This ability provides a big boost to your damage output.
• Wrath of Cenarius: Another expensive talent at 5 points. Provides a bonus to spell damage for Starfire and Wrath.
• Starfall: This spell is pretty mana efficient, even for single-target DPS.

As you continue to level up to 79 (because you ARE going to switch back to deep Restoration the moment you hit 80, RIGHT?), you’ll continue investing points in the Restoration tree, picking up such abilities as Omen of Clarity, Intensity, Natural Shapeshifter, Master Shapeshifter, and Furor. A level 79 version of this build ends up being 55/0/15 .

Build #2: The Marshmallow Peep

Unlike her Pokey brethren, the Marshmallow Peep cringes at the idea of having her feathers ruffled and prefers to keep her opponents at a distance. As a result, she will skip over talents like Brambles and Owlkin Frenzy, picking up Nature’s Reach instead. This build starts out at 70 as 52/0/9 ; as you may notice, our lower investment in tanking frees up more points for us in Restoration. We’ll start with three points in Furor, three in Nature’s Focus, Natural Shapeshifter and continue investing until we have all the Balance-oriented Restoration goodies, including Intensity, Omen of Clarity, and Master Shapeshifter. We end up with a free point at 79 to place in a Balance talent of choice. I’d probably opt for a point of Improved Insect Swarm. This build ends up being 53/0/17 .

Build #3: Hybrid Close-Combat

If you’re planning to level up with a mixture of solo-questing and instancing with guildmates (but are too cheap to pay for respec costs), a hybrid build might be just what you’re looking for. I’ve started this build with Moonkin Form, one point away from nabbing Swiftmend, but there’s nothing to say you couldn’t do it the other way around if you want. This build begins at level 70 as 31/0/30 . Because we don’t have the points needed to bolster Regrowth, we’ll instead focus on Healing Touch, picking up Naturalist and Empowered Touch. Key abilities from the Balance tree include:

• Brambles: This is a staple in any “tanking” build.
• Insect Swarm: Once again, Insect Swarm is a really cheap form of damage that only costs 1 point to acquire.
• Moonglow and Lunar Guidance, and Dreamstate: We won’t initially have the points we need to pick up Dreamstate, but it’s a priority for talent point expenditures between 70 and 80.
• Moonkin Form: This is the reason we start with 31 points. We’ll pick up 3/3 Improved Moonkin Form as we level, though the points aren’t available at the start.

As you level up to 79, you’ll want to pick up Dreamstate, Owlkin Frenzy, and 2 points in Improved Moonkin Form (though you could opt to substitute points in Wrath of Cenarius for IMF). This build ends up being 39/0/31 at level 79.

Build #4: The Confused Cannon

This is the root-and-nuke variation Build 3, Hybrid Close-Combat. It also begins as 31/0/30, though again you can choose to start with Swiftmend and pick up Moonkin Form at 71 if you prefer. We’ll drop Brambles in favor of Nature’s Reach + Nature’s Splendor. As you level up with this build, you’ll similarly pick up Dreamstate and Improved Moonkin Form, though with no need for Owlkin Frenzy, you’ll make the choice to pick up Wrath of Cenarius. This build ends up being 39/0/31 at level 79.

Build #5: The Thorn Bush

This build is perhaps the least efficient in terms of suitability to tank since it doesn’t pick up Moonkin Form at any point and even the armored Tree of Life can’t cast Balance spells. Nonetheless, its strong HoTs may make this a feasible option for the player who wants to stay as true as possible to her Restoration “roots” but still pack a bit of firepower. In terms of Balance abilities, I’ve selected Starlight Wrath, Moonglow, Nature’s Majesty, Nature’s Grace, Nature’s Splendor, and Brambles. The 17/0/44 build at 70 is comprised of most of the “core” Restoration abilities up to and including Tree of Life but eschews Naturalist, Tranquil Spirit, and Empowered Touch, instead emphasizing Regrowth. Improved Tranquility is also omitted, though you may wish to consider it if you plan to do a lot of instancing.

Leveling up with this build, you have three options:

• Spend your points in Balance to boost your firepower with 5/5 Vengeance and Insect Swarm. Spend the remaining three points on additional spell power from Lunar Guidance. An example of this build is 26/0/47 .
• Spend your points in Balance to boost your healing with 5/5 Genesis and Insect Swarm. Spend the remaining three points on additional spell power from Lunar Guidance. An example of this build is 26/0/47 .
• Spend your points in Restoration to acquire Wild Growth. Definitely pick up Improved Tree of Life for its aura improvement and Spirit –> healing power conversion. Other talents that I recommend you consider include: Improved Tranquility and Empowered Touch. Spend any remaining points in Genesis once you have Wild Growth. An example of this build is 19/0/51 .

Build #6: The Conscientious Objector

You are a delicate flower. You cringe at the idea that something should actually hit you. It might be carrying a Tree-eating parasite, after all. In any case, this build is quite similar to the Thorn Bush. You might even opt to include a point or three in Brambles as a damage shield for your adoring tanks. Should you not, your starting build would look something like 16/0/45 . You can choose to follow any one of the three approaches outlined under Build #5: The Thorn Bush above to help you decide where to spend your remaining points as you level to 79.

Final Notes

Keep in mind that these are suggested builds that you should feel free to adapt to your own preferences and playstyle. These are also recommendations from a Restoration Druid. Should you choose to pursue one of the more deeply Balance-specced builds, I can’t recommend Graylo’s articles over at Gray Matter highly enough. Read up over there, too, so you don’t look like a n00bkin.

So which (potentially modified) playstyle will you be trying out? (And don’t say “Feral” or I shall beat you about the shoulders with my branches.)

Related Posts

• Leveraging Insect Swarm as a Healer
• Balance Tree … Uprooted and Transplanted
• Shake My (Talent) Tree

*Sniff*

I love you, too, Blizzard.

XOXO,
Phae

 

Related Posts

• Wild Growth … Grows a Pair *
• Speculation: Revitalize and Wild Growth
• Rebirth Bugged (or Nerfed)

You may have heard about the new out of combat resurrection spell finally being given to Druids in Wrath of the Lich King:

Apparently not everyone drank the Kool-aid. Beta Tester Presarius of Northrend (US) objects to the addition of Revive, claiming the resurrection spell is “unbalanced” and “unfair”:

It kind of irks me now that Druid’s have an out-of-combat rez (Revive). You see, everything was well-balanced around the fact that Druid’s have the game’s only in-combat rez, and everyone was cool with that. Seeing as how they didn’t have have an in-combat rez, it was all balanced, and nobody had a problem with it. But, now that Druids get Revive, it throws everything off, including balance.

Now, where are all the other healers’ in-combat rez to compensate?

I’ve been pretty vocal about this issue in the past. To summarize, though, an ability that has no effect on combat cannot affect game balance. Rezzers who begrudge Druids this one core ability do so because they want us to be arbitrarily less desirable than they are because of the inconvenience we cause the people who choose us as their healer. Alternatively, they want us to be forced to build our group around the inclusion of a Retribution/Protection Paladin, Shadow Priest, or Elemental/Enhancement Shaman, classes which provide no notable forms of crowd control and make these groups disadvantaged in harder instances like Heroics.

Revive is perhaps THE ability I am most looking forward to in the expansion because it represents the end of an era where Druids were relegated to sub-par healers because otherwise “there would be no reason to play with other healing classes at all” (Vaneras, June 2008). Clearly, giving us an out of combat rez has brought us one step closer to “morphing all classes into one big green blob that all have the same skills” (Bornakk, April 2008) I don’t know about you, but I prefer my uniqueness to be related to my abilities, not my disabilities. Thankfully, it seems that Blizzard developers have been brought around to our way of thinking since Developer Ghostcrawler responded to Presarius’ concerns with the following:

We don’t think an out of combat rez for druids is a balance problem. We did it to make druids more attractive healers for 5-player dungeons. It was frustrating for someone to die and have to run back nearly every time with a druid healing.

The only possible balance issue that comes to mind is the druid who stealths into an instance and brings back the whole group to get around respawns. But really, that seems like such a minor concern compared to he major hassle of not being able to rez fallen comrades more often than once every 10 min, that we thought it was worth just making the change.

Presarius later admits that the motivation behind his original post was a desire for a 20-minute cooldown on the Shaman’s ability, Reincarnate, to mirror the 20-minute cooldown on Rebirth (Reincarnate is currently limited to a one hour cooldown). I don’t have a particular objection to such a change, but wanting a buff to one’s own abilities is no reason to demean a long-awaited and needed change to another healing class.

And because I’m not sure if I’ve said it yet, THANK YOU, BLIZZARD! <3

Related Posts

• Vaneras: Standard Rez Unlikely
• Rebirth Cooldown to Be Reduced to 20 Minutes
• Bornakk: Druids Not to be "Big Green Blobs"