More follow-up from Blizzard Poster Ghostcrawler on Feral itemization concerns:

Armor is one of the most important stats a tank can have. We aren’t trying to keep bears from getting it.

The change to itemization was done solely to avoid having so much diversity in the items we could drop. It’s lame when you’re leveling up to keep seeing quest rewards that are itemized for your spec (which TBH is still a problem we haven’t solved for Feral weapons and idols). It’s lame when your raid kills a boss and he drops say elemental mail, healing leather, and a spellpower mace, none of which your group can use. Having bears, cats and rogues all desire the same leather drops isn’t a panacea — it helps some problems, but it creates others. Having bears run around with as much armor as a rogue would be a big, big problem.

Fortunately there are plenty of ways to give bears the armor they need — through talents (like the crit resistance one) or through Dire Bear form itself for example. Even if another tanking class ends up having slightly more armor than a druid, the differences should be so minor that neither of you is at a significant disadvantage on a boss.

I am glad someone mentioned the hunter example. I am really hoping you guys have the same reaction when you see the next pass on druid talents.

Further confirmation that we won’t see any leather items with green armor on them in WotLK. Which is odd because Druids have been forced to pick up less than optimal pieces of what would have previously been considered Rogue armor in the past. Why shouldn’t Rogues conversely see a couple hundred extra armor in “wasted” stats on occasion? They seem to imply that Dire Bear Form may get an armor boost, which I imagine would likely be talented to avoid giving it to Restos, too (which means it would need to be deeper than Thick Hide is currently).

Finally, it sounds like we’ll see another iteration to our talents – possibly Restoration and Balance included. I’m guessing we’ll see those changes “soon” otherwise Ghostcrawler might not be so optimistic about how he thinks we’ll feel.

Developer Koraa responded to concerns that the downranking change would unfairly prevent Shamans from using a cheap, Rank 1 Earthshock:

We’re working on a rank-1 Earth Shock equivalent spell. Not sure when it will be in, though.

Okay, but where is my Rank 1 Moonfire equivalent? I use that in PvP to knock people off the flag, keep people in combat so they can’t drink in Arenas, and kill Shaman totems. Priests, Mages, and Warlocks can use a Wand; Druids cannot. Wands don’t put their users back into the 5SR; Moonfire does. What is the point of the downranking nerf if not to stop people from using Rank 1 spells – like Earthshock – to accomplish something significant without a significant mana investment? Was the whole point just to buff Shamans relative to everyone else? We should all have access to a cheap, Rank 1 version of our abilities.

Related Posts

• Armor Values on PvP Gear
• Berries and Cream: Tasty Tidbits
• Wrath Recap

One of the most fun things about the impending release of Wrath of the Lich King — aside from planning my new hairstyle, fluffy achievements, vanity pets, and super dance party, of course — is daydreaming about all the different possible healing specs that will be available with the additions and adjustments to our talent trees. As previously mentioned, the Druid style of healing may be changing in Wrath, and all bets are off in terms of what the best investment of talents might be. Today I’d like to look at three possible talent specs for a Restoration Druid and their respective direct heals:

1. Mixed Restoration/Balance Regrowth Build
   Focuses on healing through a synergy between Improved Regrowth, Empowered Rejuvenation, Living Seed, Moonglow, Nature’s Grace, and the [Glyph of Regrowth]. This is an adaptation of the current Improved Regrowth + Nature’s Grace talent spec, but without having to sacrifice Tree of Life or other HoTs-augmenting talents. « Example »
2. “Full” Resto Build
   A more traditional, deeper Restoration spec that gains Flourish and Gift of the Earthmother at the cost of the aforementioned Balance talents, Nature’s Grace and Moonglow.  « Example » This talent build could optionally choose to augment Healing Touch through the addition of Naturalist and Empowered Touch or forego Healing Touch altogether and free up those seven talent points for use in Balance. Worth noting is that unlike TBC, a “HT build” will forego the previously associated talents of Moonglow, Lunar Guidance, and Dreamstate to instead acquire Gift of the Earthmother, Flourish, Tree of Life, and the beneficial talents associated with Tree of Life. « Example »

Both of these builds would maintain Lifebloom rotations. They generally have equally powerful HoTs, though the HT version of the deep Resto build won’t elect to pick up 5/5 Improved Regrowth, and the first build would include a 9% mana cost reduction on Rejuvenation (on top of the mana cost reduction of ToL). The second build would include a 1.0 second Global Cooldown for both Lifebloom and Rejuvenation. The primary difference between these builds, however, is which direct heal is the primary one. The first build would use Regrowth, the second Nourish and optionally an unglyphed Healing Touch. To compare these builds, I’m going to look at the strength and efficiency of their direct heals.

Table of Contents

• Base Coefficients, Base Amount Healed
• Average Amount Healed
• HPS Comparisons
• HPM (HP1%M) Comparisons
• Significant Observations
• +Healing vs. Spell Crit
• Final Notes

Base Coefficients, Base Amount Healed

The following are calculated in terms of current +Healing and do not take into account the changes coming with spell power:

Coefficient_Regrowth = Base Coefficient * Gift of Nature * Empowered Rejuvenation * [Glyph of Regrowth] * Master Shapeshifter
= 0.36 * 1.1 * 1.2 * 1.5 * 1.04 = 0.74

Coefficient_Nourish = Base Coefficient * Gift of Nature * Bonus from Active HoT * Master Shapeshifter
= 0.43 * 1.1 * 1.2 * 1.04 = 0.59

Coefficient_{Healing Touch} = Base Coefficient * Gift of Nature * Empowered Touch * Master Shapeshifter
= 1.0 * 1.1 * 1.2 * 1.04 = 1.3728

And the formulas for determining the base amount healed by each are:

Base Healed_Regrowth = (2494 + 2234) / 2 * 1.1 * 1.5 = 3900.6

Base Healed_Nourish = (2187 + 1883) / 2 * 1.1 * 1.2 = 2686.2

Base Healed_HT = (5165 + 4375) / 2 * 1.1 = 5247

* Note that the 1.2 from Empowered Touch and 1.04 from Master Shapeshifter only affects the +Healing coefficient, not the base amount healed. Empowered Rejuvenation only affects HoTs.

The formulas for Regrowth and Nourish make an important assumption: they are being used as a “tank heal.” For Regrowth that means we’re assuming that the target already has a Regrowth effect and so will benefit from the 50% up front bonus from the [Glyph of Regrowth]. For Nourish, we’re assuming that the target already has one of your heal over time effects, be it Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Regrowth (Flourish doesn’t count). We’ll also want to compare the two as “raid heals” where neither would get the aforementioned benefits. Factoring those two bonuses out, we get the following modified coefficients and base amounts healed:

Notice right away how much stronger our tank healing will be than our raid healing. More on this later.

Average Amount Healed

These Base Healed formulas can be used to determine the average amount healed at different levels of +Healing (or the equivalent spell power) and spell crit.

Avg Healed = ((Coefficient * +Healing) + Base Healed) * (1 + (Crit Chance * 0.5))

For our Regrowth build, we’ll want to factor in the value of Improved Regrowth and Living Seed. Improved Regrowth adds another 50% to your chance to crit. Living Seed modifies the 0.5 at the end of the formula, which represents the bonus amount healed when you crit. It looks like this:

Crit Bonus_{Living Seed} = Normal Bonus from Spell Crit + (Living Seed Proc Chance * (1 + Normal Bonus from Spell Crit))
= 0.5 + (0.3 * (1 + 0.5)) = 0.95

Therefore, our average healed formula for Regrowth will look like this:

Avg Healed_Regrowth = ((Coefficient * +Healing) + Base Healed) * (1 + ((0.5 + Crit Chance) * 0.95))

Nourish doesn’t have a talent equivalent to Improved Regrowth but is affected by Living Seed. It’s formula for average healed will look like this:

Avg Healed_Nourish = ((Coefficient * +Healing) + Base Healed) * (1 + (Crit Chance * 0.95))

Healing Touch is also affected by Living Seed. It’s formula looks just like that of Nourish:

Avg Healed_HT = ((Coefficient * +Healing) + Base Healed) * (1 + (Crit Chance * 0.95))

HPS Comparisons

HPS is a measure of throughput. A spell with a high throughput is preferred in a situation where a target takes sudden, unexpected bursts of damage. These spells are typically more expensive and require a focus on mana regeneration to sustain. The formula for finding the HPS of a spell is simply:

HPS = Amount Healed / Time to Heal

The “Amount Healed” value can be found using the formulas for Average Amount Healed and will change based on our +Healing and spell crit values. The time to heal for Nourish is simply 1.5. The time to heal for Healing Touch is 3.0 with 5/5 Naturalist. However, the time to heal is a little more complicated with the introduction of Nature’s Grace in our talent build that focuses on Regrowth (a talent we’d opt to forego in the Nourish build):

Time to Cast_Regrowth = % NG Proc * 1.5 + (1 - %NG Proc) * 2.0

Nature’s Grace procs off spell crits so its chance to proc would simply be your crit chance plus 0.5 from Improved Regrowth:

Time to Cast_Regrowth = (0.5 + Spell Crit) * 1.5 + (1 – (0.5 + Spell Crit)) * 2.0

Applying our “Average Amount Healed” formulas at values of +Healing ranging from 2000 to 4000 and with a base spell crit chance of 10%, we can create the following HPS comparisons:

HPM (HP1%M) Comparisons

HPM is a measure of efficiency. A spell with a high efficiency is preferred in a situation where one or more targets take steady, predictable damage for long periods of time. These spells are typically less expensive and often benefit from increased HPS from adding +Healing. The formula for finding the HPM of a spell is simply:

HPM = Amount Healed / Cost to Heal

With the change where all spell ranks will cost the same percentage of base mana, the cost to heal can be expressed as amount healed per 1% base mana or HP1%M. The base mana cost of Nourish is 0.09. It benefits from 5/5 Tranquil Spirit which represents a 10% cost reduction. When used as a raid heal, we’re going to assume that the recipient doesn’t have any HoTs at the time it’s cast. If, however, used on a tank, both Nourish and Healing Touch benefit from a 5% cost reduction (in the form of mana refunded) for every HoT on the target. For my purposes, I’m going to assume the tank has three heals over time in any combination of Rejuvenation, Lifebloom, Regrowth, or Flourish. I’m assuming that this spell will change so that it only benefits from my own HoTs, but if I’m MT healing, I’m going to want to have at least 3/4 of these heals running whenever possible. Therefore, the mana cost of Nourish and Healing Touch can be expressed as:

Mana Cost_{Nourish (Raid)} = Base Mana Cost * (1 – Tranquil Spirit Reduction)
= 0.09 * (1 – 0.1) = 0.081
Mana Cost_{Nourish (Tank)} = Base Mana Cost * (1 – Tranquil Spirit Reduction) * (1 – (Number of HoTs * HoT Reduction))
= 0.09 * (1 – (3 * 0.15)) = 0.06885

Mana Cost_{HT (Raid)} = Base Mana Cost * (1 – Tranquil Spirit Reduction)
= 0.39 * (1 – 0.1) = 0.351
Mana Cost_{HT (Tank)} = Base Mana Cost * (1 – Tranquil Spirit Reduction) * (1 – (Number of HoTs * HoT Reduction))
= 0.39 * (1 – (3 * 0.15)) = 0.29835

Regrowth’s mana cost benefits both from Tree of Life and the 9% discount from Moonglow:

Mana Cost_Regrowth = Base Mana Cost * (1 - ToL Reduction) * (1 - Moonglow Reduction)
= 0.29 * 0.8 * 0.91 = 0.21112

Applying our “Average Amount Healed” formulas at values of +Healing ranging from 2000 to 4000 and with a base spell crit chance of 10%, we can create the following HP1%M comparisons:

Significant Observations

From the above analysis and assuming the conditions outlined, observe the following:

• There is no reason to ever use Healing Touch unless it is paired with a Nature’s Swiftness. In fact, HT is now so unremarkable that I’d like to say “Thanks, Blizzard! You rock for finally giving us access to this terribad spell in Tree of Life!” Of course, it’s only “terribad” because of the addition of Nourish, so I guess I really do owe them thanks!
• Spell haste would affect the cast time of both Regrowth and Nourish proportionately (before considering Nature’s Grace).
• The Regrowth build loses out on Flourish and has less flexibility for raid healing, but its probably among the highest single-target HPS spells in the game right now. It might be desirable to have one Druid of this spec as a tank healer in all raids if mana regeneration is sufficient to support the approximate 33% loss in efficiency.
• The Regrowth build has the flexibility to have both respectable DPS and healing and could be a “switch hitter” on encounters that need less healing. It will likely excel in a 10-man raiding guild where flexibility is at a premium.
• It’s fairly obvious to me from the above that Druids are going to excel at tank healing. We simply have too many talents that provide excellent benefits when concentrating on the same 1-2 targets over time.
• Neither build has a particularly good single-target raid heal. Your choice is between a more efficient Nourish or a stronger Regrowth, but both are significantly eclipsed by their tank heal equivalents. However, the Nourish build picks up Flourish, and while it may be difficult to quantify the value of this spell at this point, Flourish looks to be a staple of Druid raid healing and may become the new Brain Heal (except you know, with a less condescending moniker since it would be ours).
• On the other hand, given the prevalence of raid-based healing from other healers (including a new raid heal from Paladins), it may be worth dropping Flourish to excel at high throughput tank-healing, a role where we have the potential to shine.
• I haven’t included an analysis of the [Glyph of Healing Touch] version of Healing Touch because my initial impression is that it’s pretty horrible, but I will write a follow-up that explores this direct healing option in greater detail.
• Currently, Lifebloom is sometimes used as a raid heal. It’s situational,and you have to have healers that for one reason or another, will allow your Lifebloom to bloom without overwriting it (WTB these type of healers!!). Under this scenario, a Lifebloom + Nourish combo would be a very effective raid heal. I personally have my doubts that this will be something we can use often, but a Tree can dream.

+Healing vs. Spell Crit

The above analysis assumes a constant level of 10% spell crit. Intuitively, all direct heals will benefit from additional spell crit. Prior to WotLK, spell crit for Druids has been heavily derided. With the introduction of Living Seed, however, our effective benefit from crit when direct healing increases from 50% to 95%. This will make the hybridized spell power/spell crit/Tree/Boomkin leather we find in WotLK more palatable than it would have been otherwise, but I don’t think many will gear specifically for +crit. Given the current formulas, you will always be better off going for more +Healing.

By looking at the TBC-level epic gems and assuming that relative item values will remain the same, we find that Blizzard currently values 1% spell crit as equal to 101.2 +Healing. We can use these values to determine the marginal value of adding an additional 1% spell crit or an additional 101.2 +Healing to show which increases our output by a larger amount. The math behind these calculations is included as part of the spreadsheet available for download at the bottom of this article.

As you can see, the marginal value of the equivalent amount of +Healing is greater than the value of spell crit at all values of +Healing less than 4000. In fact, you would have to have more than 10,000 +Healing before the two would come close to being equal. None of which takes into the account the fact that none of our heals over time benefit from the addition of spell crit.

Final Notes

Thanks to reader Tildir of Moonglade (EU) for writing in on this topic, giving me the kick in the pants I needed to take the time to perform a detailed analysis!

Related Posts

• Method: Coefficient Testing
• Nordrassil Raiment and Regrowth
• 2.4 Mana Regen: Regrowth as the New Raid Heal?

Apparently all four people in the world who play female Dwarves united to give me hairy-legged hell for not getting the Female Dwarf hairstyles from Andrige. They’re previewed below. I was personally expecting more facial hair options myself.

…

Please don’t hurt me.

Related Posts

• Wrath of the Lich King Female Hairstyles Preview!
• 5 Things Learned … Sorta
• Druid News from the Worldwide Invitational

Sorry things have been quiet around here lately. I’ve been absolutely swamped at work the past couple of weeks which is where I do most of my blogging and blog-related activity (like answering e-mails). Here’s a wrap up of the changes affecting Druids over the past week, along with some of my impressions.

• Koraa Follows up on Lifebloom Change
• Downranking No Longer Possible
• Spell Pushback Changes
• Feral Summary

Koraa Follows up on Lifebloom Change

Developer Koraa went on to respond to further questions about the previously reported coefficient reduction of Lifebloom, asserting that Blizzard rarely nerfs an ability for the purpose of PvP balance if it effects PvE, confirming that this is an intentional PvE nerf. She goes on to explain that Flourish, Nourish, and talents like Living Seed are intended to help compensate. It appears that she did, in fact, misspeak in her earlier post about the intention for Druids to be high throughput healers, which is comforting.

I’ve noticed many players use the "PvP excuse" as a way to dismiss that abilities or spells are too good in PvE. For example, Illumination… that wasn’t nerfed for PvP reasons (like many believe).

Whenever we change abilities we always consider the outcomes for all aspects of the game, very rarely will we change an ability that will reduce it’s effectiveness in PvE or PvP for the sake of the other. And if we do, it’s intended.

In the case of Lifebloom, it’s too good in both aspects of the game. Again, it’s not our intention to merely just reduce the effectiveness of Lifebloom, but to also introduce new healing mechanics (Flourish, Nourish, talents like Living Seed and the improvements to Tree of Life) to compensate.

HoTs are intended to be effective in HPS and efficient, but have the drawback of requiring time to heal. The issue today is that you’ll HoT a player who got hit by a big AOE, and some other class will use a downrank direct heal and cause you HoT to be ineffective. This is being addressed through downrank penalties. We want other classes to say "Hey, I could heal that guy back up who just got hit by that AOE, but I’ll let the Druid do it instead and preserve my mana." Note that I’m not saying random AOE damage is not what HoTs are only intended to be for, I’m just using that as an example.

Of particular interest is the quote, “The issue today is that you’ll HoT a player who got hit by a big AOE, and some other class will use a downrank direct heal and cause you HoT to be ineffective.” which speaks directly to another important change coming down the pipeline …

Downranking No Longer Possible

Developer Wryxia explained a significant change to the game’s spellcasting system that’s coming in Wrath of the Lich King:

As you may have noticed, in this latest build we have updated spells and abilities using mana. These no longer cost a fixed amount and instead they’re a percentage of your base mana, not including any mana increase from Intellect. For the most part this should mean mana-based spells and abilities are costing roughly the same amount as they do in the live game, though there might be some slight changes either up or down. But we have tried to keep them as close as possible to the same mana cost for a level 70 as they are now in the live game.

What will change though is that lower rank spells will lose their appeal. We have made this mana cost change purely to prevent downranking, which is an unintended technique that we were not at ease with. We’ve previously tried ways to discourage it, but have decided that we’d rather find a solution than continue to find ways to penalize those who choose to downrank. The solution we chose was to make downranking obsolete, encouraging people to always use their highest rank of each spell and nothing else.The highest rank of a mana-based spell or ability will now remain the most powerful effect, but at the same mana cost as earlier ranks.

We’re certain that for some people this will cause a period of readjustment. Hopefully removing a few more of the extra buttons you’ve been pressing will eventually be seen as a good thing; it might also be easier for some people to do their role without having to learn to downrank. We are anticipating such a big change may have some teething problems, perhaps causing balance issues, and we’re all set to deal with them as they arise. In the meantime, we appreciate any comments and feedback related to this change.

Another Blizzard poster by the name of Zarhym commented on this change, as well:

In the latest WotLK beta push, we made a large change to the mana cost of spells. All player spells now cost a percentage of base mana rather than a fixed cost. Base mana is a special value determined by the player’s level and class, regardless of any effects or items that increase intellect. It is the size of a player’s mana pool if the player has zero intellect.

This change was made primarily to prevent downranking, as it’s a technique that was never quite intended. Rather than continue to find ways to penalize players for casting low-rank spells, we decided to essentially make doing so obsolete. If rank 5 and rank 6 of a spell cost the same amount of mana, but rank 6 does more damage/healing, then there is no reason to consider casting rank 5.

So, each spell line (eg. Frostbolt, Shadowbolt, Greater Heal, Rejuvenation, etc.) has a fixed percentage of base mana that it costs for most of its ranks. That means each time a player gains a level the cost will go up some. The percentages were picked to attempt to keep the costs relatively similar to what they are currently in World of Warcraft. For most spells, that percentage will drop some when the player receives their highest-rank spell in existing Burning Crusade content. This was done to better fit the existing cost curve, and to keep the mana cost for level 70 players as close as possible to existing costs. Level 70 characters will see most of their maximum rank spells change in cost slightly up or down, but not by significant amounts.

We anticipate there being some balance concerns due to this change, and our development staff will be ready to implement new spells, abilities, or talents to resolve those issues as the testing process continues.

This is a significant change to those healing classes who rely on having multiple ranks of their largest heal available to them, adjusting their selection based on their target’s current health, most notably Priests who frequently downrank Greater Heal. Healing Touch-based Druids would also be affected by this change, but I suspect that HT-based builds may be going the way of the dodo in Wrath with the introduction of Nourish and improvements to Regrowth. What this will effect is the downranking of Lifebloom. While in live we only have one rank to work with, Wrath will introduce two new ranks of Lifebloom. While mana costs aren’t yet set in stone, our third rank of Lifebloom is projected to cost about twice the mana as our first, representing a significant increase in the cost to maintain a stack. This combined with the reduction to its heal over time coefficient will likely go a long way toward bringing Lifebloom down a couple of steps in terms of efficiency.

According to an earlier quote by Koraa, Blizzard was concerned about HoTs being overwritten by downranked spells. It seems that Blizzard’s intention is for HoTs to see a greater percentage of effective healing done. An admirable goal, but the main reduction to effective healing from our HoTs is not because Priests, Paladins, and Shamans are actively downranking single target heals but instead because of AoE and multi-target heals like Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending, and Chain Heal. With the addition of the Paladin AoE heal, Beacon of Light, and Flourish, these “fire and forget” group heals are going to be even more prevalent in Wrath.

Lifebloom is currently cheap enough to throw on a target on the chance that something else doesn’t “overwrite” the HoT. Nonetheless, Regrowth is already often a better choice for raid healing.This will exacerbate the difference, and this makes using a slow-acting Rejuvenation and the HoT-portion of Regrowth less viable for raid healing. While the stated intention is to allow heals over time to be used for raid healing, the combined effects of increased mana cost, a decreased HoT coefficient, and more widespread group healing will have the reverse effect.

This change will make using an addon that displays incoming heals practically essential, and I hope that we’ll see something built into the UI that makes this process smoother and less resource intensive. Non-Druid healers may also want to consider configuring their raid frames so that heals over time — even those they didn’t cast themselves — are displayed since mana conservation is going to be a much larger concern. Of course, this would have been helpful to the raid as a whole before the downranking change, and it’s certainly not a widespread technique. Healers are often too concerned with not handicapping their own stats.

Finally, the elimination of downranking will have a significant effect on one of our deep Restoration talents, Replenish since it will no longer be possible to derive its benefits by casting a 20 Mana (assuming Tree of Life) Rank 1 Rejuvenation.

However, lest you deride the 3/3 talent mercilessly, consider the fact that assuming assuming a 20k mana pool in Wrath of the Lich King, we can use a Rejuvenation to gain an average return of 120 mana:

Mana /Tick = 0.15 * (0.02 * Total Mana)

In Tree of Life, Rejuvenation is projected to cost around 516 mana. This change will make a Rejuvenation effectively cost 120 less mana when cast upon oneself, which is a 23% mana cost reduction. This mana is effectively “transferred” to someone else if you cast it on them. However, this gets back to the basic problem that Rejuvenation is too slow acting to not get overwritten by another healer. Even if a healer opts not to overwrite the Rejuvenation that’s been cast on her, another healer almost certainly will, at least in a 25-man raid.

Of course, the obvious solution to this problem is to modify the talent such that it reads, “Makes the target immune to group heals.” Heck, I’d just settle for making them immune to Brain Heal.

Spell Pushback Changes

A change with tremendous PvP-implications is that being made to the way that spell pushback works. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, spell pushback refers to the delay incurred while being hit and casting a spell. To quote the current description at WoWWiki:

The first attack will set your casting time back by 1 sec. Any [subsequent] attack will set it back by a lower amount. The amount decreases by 0.2 sec with every attack, down to a minimum of 0.2 sec per attack. However, no attack will actually increase the casting time. For example if you cast only 0.2 sec. of a spell, it would only be set back by that amount.

This means that three successful hits could delay your spell’s casting time by 2.4 seconds; four would delay it by 2.8 seconds. In Wrath of the Lich King, this dynamic is being changed:

• When casting a spell:
  • The first and second hit will add .5 secs each to the cast time.
  • All hits after the second will have no effect.
• When channeling a spell:
  • The first and second hit reduces current duration by 25% of total duration each.
  • All hits after the second will have no effect.

This means that the maximum pushback for any number of hits will be 1.0 seconds, making it much easier to deal with fast-hitting pets, Rogues, Feral Druids (sorry, guys), and a group of melee whose interrupts all happen to be on cooldown. While this may initially seem like a buff to healers and spellcasting DPS of all sorts, keep in mind that one of the strengths of a Restoration Druid is their ability to use insta-cast HoTs, both to “heal on the run” and to guard against spell interruption and pushback. This change will be make Priests, Paladins, and Shamans more competitive relative to Druids. Despite this, I view it as a positive change that will make healing less tedious and frustrating in PvP.

For a Warlock’s view on this change, I invite you to visit Horns’ post, Spell Pushback Gone.

Feral Summary

There are way, way too many posts regarding Feral tanking for me to post on a blog labeled “Resto4Life", and this post is already growing like the opposite of a shriveled up, rotten broccoli-looking Tree of Life, so I’ll try to summarize what I’ve read so far:

• Bears will become more viable MTs at the expense of some of their OT ability. It will still be possible to OT if that is your desire.
• With the addition of a new tanking class and improvements being made to Bears and Paladins, a Protection Warrior will no longer be required for a raid to be successful.
• Bears will not see the high armor values they saw in TBC due to the desire to streamline the items dropped in raids.
• Ferals they will get potions and weapon procs and are intended to be able to perform better than in TBC.
• Blizzard does not consider the "convenience" of a hybrid tank/melee DPS to be a compelling enough reason to bring Feral Druids to a raid. By forcing a Feral to choose between a primarily tanking spec or primarily cat spec, they hope to make each character more desirable overall.
• "We will be really disappointed if there aren’t bears main tanking Naxx and later raids, and cats that, if not consistently as high as Rogues, are at least a lot closer than they are now. "
• Druids are not yet considered "finished" and are due for a review before ship. "We’re not done with Ferals" is stated about 4-5 times.
• Blizzard does not intend for "talent bloat" (among existing talents) to be the way to force Druids to choose between Cat and Bear, but instead wants to introduce new talents that will strengthen one role or the other.
• Feral tanks need more attention to bring them up to par with Paladins and Warriors.
• Ferals may see an increase in utility to make them more viable, though no concrete information is available.
• Bears will have larger health pools and Warriors will have higher mitigation.

Finally, kitties can rejoice in their newfound faster feet with Feral Swiftness now active indoors. Just be careful as I’ve known a few cats to have difficulty avoiding walls indoors!

Related Posts

• Talent Updates from Alpha
• Direct Heals in Wrath
• Beta Patch Changes (Build 8681)

So with the announcement that WotLK will likely be released in Q4 of this year, the countdown to shiny new levels begins and with it, an increase in not only speculation but in Blue posts discussing what’s to come, what to expect, and why. Today, an interesting Blue post landed and along with the changes we’ve already seen or heard discussed, drops a lot of excitement and worry onto our fuzzy little heads. First, a few notes: Ferals are now known to be sharing the majority of our armor with Rogues. This means that the absolute armor available to us will be going down as high armor pieces in leather may be unknown as we know them today. Survival of the Fittest, when maxxed, will reduce the chance we’ll be critted by 6%, more than enough for a raid boss as it stands today. The implication is that we will not need Defense on our armor and perhaps not even on our jewelry. This further strengthens the case we’ll be sharing gear with Rogues. We are also getting some apparently significant buffs to our DPS capabilities in Cat Form via improved Feral AP, a new finisher, and refined talents. Warriors and Paladins look to have their AoE tanking improved. I don’t see anything being done to improve Bear tanking with the exception of the reduced timer on Challenging Roar… which doesn’t cut it. Taunts != Threat-building tools, they’re just emergency buttons. Well, here we go:

The changes made to things like armor were done mostly to solve itemization problems. We didn’t make them to nerf Ferals (or anyone). We did them because we started to consider bosses who needed to drop 30 different pieces of armor (or tokens to trade for them or whatever) because classes and even specs were heading off into distinct niches. You’ll get something to make up for it. No, you aren’t there yet.

Hopeful. Very hopeful. One one hand, I’m not keen to look like a Rogue with a staff, but we all know how much that affects our Robert Smith costume, while on the other, I do enjoy that this could reduce frustration at farming a given piece quite a bit. The vague promise of more to come is tantalizing, but the cynic in me thinks that the implication is juicier than the reality.

We’re not entirely happy with the way the Feral ended up in BC. The idea was that you could be a decent tank and a decent melee DPS class, so Ferals were something you wanted to bring if you weren’t the kind of guild that swapped different people out for every boss. But I don’t think "convenience factor" is ultimately a great value to bring to a raid. The problem was we were kind of stuck because if we made Ferals end-game tanks and amazing melee, then the rogues were screwed, because they couldn’t go respec to tank or heal.

Interesting. Not entirely happy. It’s nice to see that they’ve noticed the vaunted versatility of the hybrid classes was never a reality in BC. Given the general difficulty of instanced encounters, specialization was and is highly encouraged, such that I still don’t consider Druids to be Hybrids in the commonly accepted sense of the term. Spec-dependent specialist, perhaps. What is disheartening, though, is to see the tired refrain that Rogues can’t do this or that so we shouldn’t compete. Warriors, for instance, are frequently seen to perform as well as Rogues on the meters, yet they can respec to be phenomenal tanks. Is it our extra role, the healing? No, it’s that we can do much of our tanking and DPS with the same spec. Still, the comparison is weak. I don’t intend to get into ground I’ve covered before but we’re talking about a difference of scope and function, and the two classes just aren’t comparable, regardless of surface similarities.

But now we have a chance to add some new talents, and we’d like for some of them to be the kind that let a druid declare that she is more of a cat or more of a bear. It doesn’t have to be shoehorning two whole talent trees into one, but even offering a few choices would go a long way.

Druids are unique in that they “ought” to have 4 talent trees if the intent is to separate tanking and DPS talents, but as that’s not likely an option I do think we’ll continue to have a mixed tanking/DPS feral build with the real separation of spec coming in PvE and PvP flavors when it all shakes out. I am inclined to say that because they keep talking about improved DPS for both Protection specs, among others, which minimizes complaints about Druids being simultaneously tanks and DPS.

I didn’t mean to sound condescending. The pot example was to offer that we haven’t forgotten about bears. My point was NOT: hey, you lost armor but gee you got health stones, so why all the QQing? It was cool to see those big armor numbers on bears, and we have some plans for how to replace them (and not just with pots).

Okay. Interesting. So our armor won’t be great big, but with the rumors that Crushing Blows are going away, the actual need for the huge armor is lessened. Sure it’s not nearly as much fun and given all the other tools they have it’ll be disheartening to see a Warrior or Paladin potentially sporting more of it, but I don’t think this is the end of bears. The thing is, healthstones are nice, but they’re something we should have had all along. We never should have had to write a macro cheat to use them. So…whatever else you have on tap better be good.

The DK gets a lot of attention because it has a lot of catching up to do. There were no DKs in UBRS or MC or TK or even Arathi Basin. Nobody knows how their abilities and power system are going to work so we feel like we have to cover a lot of the ground that was explored literally years ago for some of these other classes.

There is some speculation that it is the complaints of Death Knights that is in part, causing us grief. I don’t read the beta boards nearly enough to say whether this is true. What I do know is that the implementation of a new class is likely very time-consuming from a balance standpoint. I’m willing to bet the biggest post WotLK nerfs won’t be for us, y’know? That said, I’m GLAD they’re trying to avoid that.

We will be really disappointed if there aren’t bears main tanking Naxx and later raids, and cats that if not consistently as high as rouges are at least a lot closer than they are now.

Well, it’s nice to see that even Blizzard likes their ruddy powder. Oh wait, that’s not what they were talking about, was it? So, we’re already great tanks, often limited in the player base’s minds merely by the fact that Crushing Blows aren’t something we can realistically avoid (so we mitigate with incredibly high armor). It’s obvious we’re getting help in the Cat arena but I’m a bit apprehensive about the actual role Bears will play in the tanking sphere. The above assertions are nice, but platitudes are just that, and in an election season we are all too aware of how hollow that can be. I don’t think Druids will realistically be able to move away from an essentially combined Cat/Bear spec, nor do I think they should. Moves to make other classes share a tank spec with some damage output are better spent. Improvements to the class are always welcome, though, and I’m excited to see where we end up. As with all things, changes are unnerving and not always easy to deal with. So for DPS, I’m fairly optimistic and excited; for tanking, I think I’m still hanging outside the polling booth trying to figure out who to vote for.

For more on this topic, I invite you to read one or more of the following:

• Think Tank: What a Feral Wants from WotLK
• Leader of the Pack: Feral in the Future

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