Incredible, shocking, awe-inspiring changes to the Balance Tree. The changes summarized below were derived from a comparison of the recently updated official talent calculator to the not-yet-updated WoWHead calculator for WotLK.

• Tier 1
  • Nature’s Grasp is being made a base ability for all Druids. « Source »
  • Nature’s Grasp been replaced with Genesis:
    Genesis (5-point talent)
    Increases the damage and healing done by your periodic spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.
• Tier 2
  • Control of Nature is being rolled into Nature’s Focus. « Source » 
  • Control of Nature has been replaced with Moonglow.
  • Focused Starlight has been removed from the game and has been replaced with Nature’s Mastery:
    Nature’s Mastery (2-point talent)
    Increases the critical strike chance of your Wrath, Starfire, Starfall, Nourish, and Healing Touch spells by 2/4%.
  • Nature’s Mastery, is now the pre-requisite for Nature’s Grace and Nature’s Splendor.
• Tier 3
  • Nature’s Grace and Insect Swarm have swapped Tiers. Nature’s Grace is now in Tier 3; Insect Swarm is now in Tier 5.
  • Nature’s Spendor has been added to Tier 3:
    Nature’s Splendor (3-point talent)
    Increases the duration of your Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Rejuvenation, Regrowth, Lifebloom, and Flourish spells by 10/20/30%.
• Tier 4: Celestial Focus no longer reduces casting time lost while when damaged but instead grants 3% spell haste.
• Tier 5
  • Insect Swarm and Nature’s Grace have swapped Tiers. Insect Swarm is now in Tier 5; Nature’s Grace is now in Tier 3.
  • Moonglow has been replaced with Improved Insect Swarm:
    Improved Insect Swarm (3-point talent)
    Increases your damage done by your Wrath spell to targets afflicted by your Insect Swarm by 1/2/3%, and increases the critical strike chance of your Starfire spell by 1/2/3% on targets afflicted with your Moonfire spell
• Tier 6: No discernible changes
• Tier 7: No discernible changes; change so that Improved Faerie Fire only affects spells not yet made to talent calculator
• Tier 8: No discernible changes
• Tier 9: Typhoon base damage increased from 400 to 516-517.
• Tier 10: No discernible changes; change so that Earth and Moon grants 13% additional damage for all schools of magic not yet made to talent calculator
• Tier 11: No discernible changes

I’ll leave the primarily Balance-focused changes to authors like Graylo to explore in depth. It’s shockingly apparent to me, however, that I’m actually going to have to make some tough decisions about how I will spec for Restoration. Insect Swarm has been moved entirely out of my reach, and Nature’s Grasp has been made a base class skill at 100%. I can’t possibly pass up the benefits from Genesis, Moonglow, Nature’s Mastery, or Nature’s Splendor. Nature’s Grace, formerly a talent that required a complete paradigm shift in your healing style, is now a perfectly attainable talent, requiring a mere 11-point talent investment. All told, Phaelia’s Balance investment will likely total 14 points:

• 5/5 Genesis
  Increases the damage and healing done by your periodic spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.
• 2/2 Nature’s Mastery
  Increases the critical strike chance of your Wrath, Starfire, Starfall, Nourish, and Healing Touch spells by 2/4%.
• 3/3 Moonglow
  Reduces the mana cost of your Moonfire, Starfire, Starfall, Wrath, Healing Touch, Regrowth, and Rejuvenation spells by 9%.
• 1/1 Nature’s Grace
  All spell criticals grace you with a blessing of nature, reducing the casting time of your next spell by 0.5 seconds.
• 3/3 Nature’s Splendor
  Increases the duration of your Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Rejuvenation, Regrowth, Lifebloom, and Flourish spells by 10/20/30%.

This forgoes the 3% spell haste from the revised version of Celestial Focus which is something I’m not sure I want to do. All in all, a very interesting dilemma!

Related Posts

• Leveraging Insect Swarm as a Healer
• Talent Spec: Leveling Restoration/Balance
• Moonfire Spamming Your Way to 80 in Wrath

I haven’t been documenting the recent commentary and Blue posts related to powershifting, so to catch you up to speed, here is a quick summary:

1. Powershifting was an unintentional game mechanic whereby a Feral Druid at 0 Energy would shift out of Cat Form and back in to gain the 40 Energy from Furor. The ability to do this was limited by the Feral Druid’s mana pool, of course, but it was a common tactic in both PvE and, to a limited extent, PvP. « Source »
2. The change to Energy so that it refills “smoothly” rather than in ticks eliminated the ability to gain an occasional extra “free” tick of Energy depending upon when you triggered a skill.
3. A change was made to allow Energy to continue regenerating while outside of Cat Form. The original intention was for the amount of Energy to cap out at 40 with 5/5 Furor, but as a result of a bug, it capped out at 100. This explains Runycat’s comments last night about being able to shift into Cat Form with full Energy. « Source »
4. Furor has subsequently been changed to have the following effect:

Gives you 100% chance to gain 10 Rage when you shapeshift into Bear and Dire Bear Form, and you keep up to 100 of your Energy when you shapeshift into Cat Form, and increases your total Intellect while in Moonkin form by 10%.

This means that with 5/5 Furor you will no longer lose Energy from leaving Cat Form and will continue to regenerate Energy as if you had remained in form. « Source » I asked well-known artist and Feral Druid Andrige for his thoughts on this change:

With this change Ferals will no longer have to count on the fairly unreliable and unintended mechanic of the design of Furor. Instead, Ferals suddenly got a boost when it comes to versatility between forms at the loss of the “powershifting” mechanic. This change comes at the cost of PvE where this mechanic was a lifesaver (all Ferals who play seriously should know that), but I believe tweaking the proc rate of Omen of Clarity and the cooldown of Tiger’s Fury could make up for it.

Some Druids have clamored that this change will be a substantial nerf to their PvE viability, including Beta Tester Odz who writes:

Furor was always a PvP talent that a PvE Feral could make use of through powershifting. Moonkins complained that there was nothing for them in the first tier of Resto to get as they worked their way toward Omen of Clarity so now you’ve changed Furor to help them but left PvE ferals out in the cold because there is NOTHING in the first tier I would take. Devs just seem to band-aid everything and create more problems as they go along instead of fixing the main issue which Feral and Balance Druids having to invest ANY points at all into the Resto tree to be viable.

Let’s see what this talent has now become shall we:

1. It’s now mainly a Moonkin talent as they get the most benefit from it.
2. This slightly fixes the fact that Devs broke the talent and what [Ferals] end up with now is a consolation prize which will greatly reduce PvP burst potential as Energy is no longer on-demand below 40 Energy.
3. A PvE feral druid who wants OoC and Master Shapeshifter will have nothing in T1 of Restoration to take –only Naturalist in T2 – but will be forced to take Natural Shapeshifter, a talent which could have been justified if powershifting were still in the game but is now dead weight just to get to Master Shapshifter.

I don’t see this getting any better as long as you don’t address the core problems inherent with having to invest any points in Resto to begin with.

I’d love to hear from Feral readers (and anyone else, of course) about how you feel this change will affect you, both in PvE and PvP.

Balance Druids are celebrating this change as it provides a much more attractive way to spend five points in Tier 1 of Restoration. Of course, this means that buffing Gift of the Wild will more than likely fall solely upon the shoulders (boughs?) of Restoration Druids, but let’s try to look on the bright side. Apparently, it’s possible to pick up Omen of Clarity without spending five points in T2 of Restoration, so Balance Druids can continue to help us buff. My mistake!

For another Dyed-in-the-Fur Feral’s opinion of the removal of powershifting, I encourage you to read Alas Poor Powershifting, I Knew Thee Well by Tigerfeet of Secret Agent Cat.

Related Posts

• Omen of Clarity
• Balance Tree … Uprooted and Transplanted
• Guest Post: Moonkin Mana Regeneration

Note: As the Tree of Life aura was subsequently increased to a 6% bonus, this post is no longer relevant.

As briefly mentioned and discussed in my previous post, Blue: Changes to Buffs and Debuffs, a significant change is being made to the way that Tree of Life aura will function in Wrath of the Lich King. It will no longer afford benefit based on the Druid’s total Spirit but instead will function in the same was as a Paladin’s Improved Devotion Aura, providing a flat 3% increased healing to the raid. Although it was stated that the values listed were considered maximally-talented, it remains unclear whether 3/3 Improved Tree of Life will be required to meet the 3% bonus or whether it will afford an additional .45% bonus. Either way, this change will affect all spells based on their +Healing coefficient (or their corresponding spell power coefficients).

The TBC Tree of Life aura was a flat +Healing bonus that scaled with Spirit. It’s value decreased as +Healing increased, assuming Spirit stayed constant. Assuming they increased at the same rate, the value stayed the same. The WotLK aura is a multiplicative bonus that will instead scale with +Healing.

To help better explain the significance of this change, let’s consider two spells called DirectHealage and Hawtness. At your current +healing, DirectHealage derives 25% of its total amount healed from +Healing while Hawtness derives 75%. If you were to boost your +Healing by 8%, DirectHealage would get a 25%*8% = 2% total boost. Hawtness, on the other hand, would get a 75%*8%=6% total boost. With the new aura, both spells would simply get 3%.

This means that spells with high coefficients (Lifebloom, Chain Heal) will be nerfed by this change while spells with lower coefficients (Nourish, Regrowth) will be buffed. We can use the following formula to determine how much Spirit would be required under the current Tree of Life aura  (25% of Spirit converted to +Healing) to match the new aura’s bonus:

Spirit = 4 *(((+Healing * +Healing coefficient) + base healed) * aura bonus) / +Healing coefficient

By applying this formula to the 3% and possibly 3.45% auras and using numbers previously determined in Direct Heals in Wrath, we can graph these values of Spirit at increasing values of +Healing.

Assuming you have somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 Spirit and 2000 +Healing at the conclusion of TBC, this change represents a nerf to triple-stacked Lifebloom and Chain Heal – two spells with the highest +Healing coefficients – and a buff to both Nourish and Regrowth. Although the base amount healed is also a determining factor, you can generally expect heals with higher coefficients to have been reduced in effectiveness by this change while those with lower coefficients to have been increased.

Related Posts

• Direct Healing in Wrath
• MP5 vs. Healing
• Nordrassil Raiment and Regrowth

Most of you are probably already familiar with the sexiness that is our current 51 point talent, Flourish:

But did you know that it looks as good as it sounds? Reader and beta-tester Kaera sends in the following screenshot of her casting Flourish on herself and three groupmates (click for the full version):

Now we Resto-types have something else to look forward to in the expansion. Thanks for sharing, Kaera!

Related Posts

• Omen of Clarity
• Ghostcrawler: Healers not to be Interchangeable
• WotLK to Redress Druid Shortcomings

Many Restoration Druids probably remember speccing into Omen of Clarity at one point or another while leveling (unless you happened to read about how worthless it was). It has traditionally been considered an ability that’s more useful to Ferals who rely on melee than to Moonkin or Resto Druids. However, with the recent changes in the beta for Wrath of the Lich King, this may all be changing:

As you can see, Omen of Clarity will now equally benefit Druids of all specs who opt to drop a point into it. It’s so good, in fact, that I suspect it will become a core ability to all three specs. Interestingly, they’re doubling the proc rate from 3% to 6% but simultaneously adding a 10 second internal cooldown. As long as your casting frequency is greater than 1/sec, this is at minimum a 0.75% increase in proc frequency.

Expected Proc Rate

We know that the formula for the proc rate of something with an internal cooldown can be expressed as:

PPM = 60 / ((casting frequency/proc rate) + internal cooldown)

Applying this to the new values for Omen of Clarity, our formula will look like this:

PPM = 60 / ((casting frequency/0.06) + 10)

Applying this formula across a wide range of reasonable cast speeds, we find the following PPM:

* A cast speed of 1.0 is only possible while chain-casting Lifebloom with 5/5 Gift of the Earthmother and 0 latency. It’s really just included to make the table look pretty.

MP5 Value

As we would expect, Omen of Clarity will proc fewer times per minute as we cast fewer spells that can cause it to proc. Logically, it makes sense to use these “free” spell casts on one of our most expensive spells. Although Healing Touch (Rank 15) costs 1400 Mana, a more convenient and useful choice will probably be Flourish:

At 1125 mana and a seven 7 duration, Flourish appears tailor-made to fit into our Lifebloom rotation. If we assume it’s used while in Tree of Life (and there will be virtually no reason not to use Tree of Life anymore), it costs 900 mana. We can use this number to determine the average MP5 value of Omen of Clarity using the following formula:

MP5 = (PPM * Mana Cost) / 12

If you were to cast a Flourish every time Omen of Clarity procs, OOC would be worth the following MP5:

If, however, instead of using a Flourish (which may not always make sense given the dynamics of an encounter) and instead substituted a Rank 15 Healing Touch, the MP5 values would look like this:

Obviously, what you use will depend on your circumstances (and sometimes you won’t be able to allow it to disrupt your Lifebloom rotation), but I wanted to show just how much potential Omen of Clarity has just in case some Restos weren’t sure how good it is.

Additional Notes

Druids aren’t the only class to have some form of clearcasting. Shamans, Mages, and Priests do, as well. However, the frequent use of instant-cast spells like Rejuvenation and Lifebloom make clearcasting even more desirable for Druids. Clearcasting procs are determined server side, so it can take more than half a second to find out that your next spell will be free once you’re spell has finished casting. If you were casting a spell with cast time, it’s usually not worth it to cancel and cast another spell that costs more mana instead.  If, however, you’ve cast an insta-cast spell that procs Omen of Clarity, you’ll probably notice the proc while waiting for the global cooldown to expire. Gift of the Earthmother, a 5-point talent that reduces the GCD associated with Lifebloom and Rejuvenation to 1.0 seconds, will make these procs more difficult to catch and adjust to, but it should still be possible, especially since there’s an audible sound when OOC procs.

Finally, it’s worth noting that since casing a spell under clearcasting doesn’t use mana, it also doesn’t contribute towards keeping you inside the 5SR. Druids already spend most of their time inside the 5SR, so it’s less significant for us, but consider a situation wherein a Lifebloom cast procs clearcasting, and you switch to casting a spell with a casting time (ex. Healing Touch, Nourish, or Regrowth). Casting that spell won’t put you back inside the 5SR. If you then cast another non-instant spell, you wouldn’t return to the 5SR until after it completes, giving you a 50-75% chance of getting a tick of mana regeneration outside of the 5SR, depending on spell haste, latency, and spell selection. Obviously, encounters where this is plausible will probably be uncommon, but it could be useful in 5-man instances where you generally only have to maintain a triple-stack of Lifebloom on one person.

Omen of Clarity as a non-Restoration Druid

So that’s the good news regarding the changes to Omen of Clarity. The bad news? Unfortunately, it’s still not 100% accessible to Balance Druids; they’ll almost certainly have to spend a couple of “dump” points if they want to get down to the third tier where it resides: 2/2 Improved Mark of the Wild and 3/3 Nature’s Focus (Tier 1), 3/3 Natural Shapeshifter and either 2 points in healing threat reduction via Subtlety or 0.2 seconds off the cast time of Healing Touch via Naturalist.

Luckily, Feral Druids still benefit from 5/5 Furor (Tier 1) and 5/5 Naturalist as well as 3/3 Master Shapeshifter (Tier 2) , making Omen of Clarity an easily-acquired addition to their Restoration investment.

Related Posts

• Guest Post: Moonkin Mana Regeneration
• Arrrghhh!!! Trinkets!!!
• Balance Tree … Uprooted and Transplanted