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Q u o t e:



i don't know nourish? regrowth? NS HT? I don't think you understand what the purpose of crit is for healing... it is to heal MORE with less mana. the more crit you have the less you have to reply on spamming nourish twice to top someone of because 1 just wasn't quiet enough. All these spells are situational and I can guarantee you that crit will make your life a lot easier.

spellpower, sure its fine, but you can already accumulate a boatload of it. spirit, as it is I have rediculous regen, why would i want more? Mp5, no thanks! With kings spirit is increased ten fold. intellect, tell me why i need more mana when i never run out? It is useful, i am not disagreeing, i mean more spellpower from int is nice but overload on int? there is not reason.

You people dont look at the big picture. Why not be the best at everything instead of being good at just one thing? why take ALL that spellpower when you can have average spell power and heal for twice as much with crit? You know why rogues and mages are so good? you think it is there HUGE spellpower/dmg on weapons? no, it is their CRIT!

Also, didnt you ever think about the fact that now because both mookin and resto have to roll on the same gear that crit might be for them, and some viability for resto?

Edit: this might just be them leaning more toward gear being 2 spec viable (rumor that it is going in) and making it so you dont have to swap out gear.

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You're crazy, crit is one of the worst stats that druids can get. After healing half of Naxx, both 10 man and 25 man, the average healing done per spell, according to my recount, says that regrowth is, at best, about 25% of my heals, including the HoT. The rest is split up between rejuv (doesn't crit) wild growth (doesn't crit) and lifebloom (shouldn't crit). This is while topping the meters in most fights in Naxx.

Saying things like "Regrowth will be your top heal" just goes to show that you've probably never raided with a druid. Saying things like "heal twice as much with crit" just goes to show that you've probably never even healed, healers only get 50% more healing on crit. Spirit increased "tenfold" by Kings? It's 10%, multiplied by 15%, equaling 11.5% more spirit. If you have more than enough mana regen, you should be focusing on SPELLPOWER.

And to suggest that we should take crit because it's on our gear anyway is sheer idiocy. Don't you remember when Ret pallies had int on their gear? Spellpower on melee weapons? It's not like it would be the first time Blizzard screwed up itemization.

Personally I don't mind the crit and the haste that comes on the gear. It's never a bad thing to have a little haste and crit. What I personally won't be doing is getting more of either than my gear already has. All my enchants will be either 1. Spellpower 2. Spirit 3. Int and if there are some funky socket requirements I'll go for Stam last.

As far as crit not affecting Hots, no it doesnt affect ticks, but the only spells in our arsenal that have zero benefit from crit are Rejuv and WG. LB can crit if you allow it to bloom, and at times its been a nice alternative to allow the LB to bloom and use swiftmend if a tank is low rather than blowing NS/HT. Also, a Dreamstate Resto spec would absolutely LOVE crit I am sure.

Personally I specced my Druid for Hots and also for HT, so I am not exactly seeking out crit, I'd rather have Spellpower/Spirit. I think it's the great thing about the Druid class ATM, even within the guise of a Resto spec we have many different options and choices.

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Q u o t e:

-- Our goal is not that only stats which are useful for you appear on your gear.

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Is your goal that gear of higher item level be favored by players? If so, this is a subset of that.

GC, love ya, but you just contributed to our society's gross misuse of the word "random." /cry

The problem is in itemization GC. Look at my gear, I have done my best to get spirit/spellpower gear, yet it is completely unavoidable to pick up both Haste AND Crit.

One not-so-fantastic stat on gear is fine.

Two of these kind of stats that are completely unavoidable is not.

There are a lot of people mentioning that warlock DoTs now have the ability to crit, however, that is not necessarily true.

While Pandemic was added as a talent, and it applies a warlocks crit bonus to his or her DoTs, it cannot be said that DoTs now have the ability to crit because:
1. It is a deep affliction talent that many builds will not have access to.
2. It only applies to two spells, Unstable Affliction and Corruption. While these two spells are a large part of an afflic locks damage, he still will be casting haunt, CoA, immolate, and siphon life, all of which have no chance to crit.

I think the most obvious change here would be to let all HoTs and DoTs crit as a baseline ability. As itemization becomes more mixed and gear is not available with only +spellpower or other specific stats, it seems like a fair change that will allow DoTs and HoTs to scale with other direct damage abilities.

I think Ghostcrawler mentioned in another thread that this was a possibility (although he said nothing about whether it had actually been talked about).

Ghostcrawler, has there been any discussion on this topic?

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A few random thoughts:

-- When you talk about scaling, you have to separate a few different issues:
1) Does the class / talent / spell scale?
2) Does it scale well once it has good gear?
3) Does that gear actually exist?
4) Is it readily available or is it hard to get?
-- Some classes complain about having too many stats and others about not having enough stats. They are just different class styles. There are advantages and disadvantages to both.
-- Our goal is not that every stat is useful for you.
-- Our goal is not that only stats which are useful for you appear on your gear.
-- One of the interesting things about resto seems to be that there is some player preference involved in how you heal. Some use Regrowth a lot now, others use Healing Touch, and others stick with rolling blooms. While it may end up that someone can prove one of those strategies sufficiently trumps the others, for now it is cool to see the experimentation.
-- That said, we do worry if Nourish's niche is too narrow. We'll see. It is getting compared to heals with very good glyphs affecting them.

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It's important to note that as GC has sort of pointed out, we can only worry about gear that actually exists (point 3 above). Most players can dream up items that are perfectly itemized for their spec/class while probably being very subpar for anyone else. This leads to so called '1/30' items such as feral staves/spellpower plate, which Blizzard is trying to move away from. A few of these items do exist for resto druids, but the belt off Heroic Malygos is the only one that is not a tier piece that is acquired through raiding.

That being said, the main problems lie in GCs point #2, and a mix of the misc points thrown out.

Gift of the Earthmother does not scale. It actually scales in reverse if anything. With 5/5 it's insanely easy to hit the first haste cap (Rejuv, Lifebloom, Wild Growth all at 1s GCD). I'm in a mix of 10 and 25 man T7 epics and am well past that cap assuming Wrath of Air (which can be assumed in a 25 man), and if you assume Imp Moonkin Aura or Swift Retribution I go significantly beyond cap. As my gear improves, I can take more and more points out of the talent, similar to how Beast Mastery Hunters only take 4/5 Frenzy, and many are looking into 3/5. Assuming the spells affected by GotEM are at 1 GCD, any further points in the talent are completely wasted. I project out that using current itemization that I'll be able to drop to 3/5 once I acquire Ulduar epics, assuming these are ilevels 226-239 for the 25 man.

As for the misc points, having two stats that are very suboptimal, but heavily present in current itemization, leads to the problem that those few pieces that ARE perfectly itemized for a resto druid (again, Belt off Heroic Malygos) become incredibly highly prized, and may well be hung onto over pieces from higher level raids, which is similar to a problem found in Feral Druids with armor trinkets/rings which was considered a serious problem and is to be addressed in the next major patch.

There is also the problem that we possess a large toolbox of abilities, with some benefiting quite a bit more from different stats, and we use differing tools depending not just on the encounter, but on the size of the group. I use Nourish (which takes both haste and crit well) quite a bit in 5 mans, a decent bit in 10 mans, and almost not at all in 25 mans. This is due to the increase in number of players (and thus healers) allowing me to play off of the strengths and weaknesses of my fellow healers to utilize my abilities that complement their specialties. Similarly I use Lifebloom, which realistically benefits from neither, lighter in small groups, and more heavily in large groups as more tanks are added.

Due to the loot unification theory that is currently being practiced, this makes no sense. There are several solutions to this.

1) Make Haste or Crit (not necessarily both) desirable to spells that are used in larger raids.
2) On the flip side, make MP5 desirable to Balance druids so that spirit+mp5 leather pieces are no 1/30 loot.
3) Change Gift of the Earthmother (the only truly non-scaling talent we have, assuming we don't hit 60+% base crit) to include some scaling portion, or allow it to lower the GCD below 1s, which is probably broken.
4) Make Nourish more viable in larger group situations where a diverse selection of healing classes are present. Healing Touch falls into this, but has its own other problems that are out of scope of this discussion.

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Q u o t e:
A few random thoughts:

-- When you talk about scaling, you have to separate a few different issues:
1) Does the class / talent / spell scale?
2) Does it scale well once it has good gear?
3) Does that gear actually exist?
4) Is it readily available or is it hard to get?
-- Some classes complain about having too many stats and others about not having enough stats. They are just different class styles. There are advantages and disadvantages to both.
-- Our goal is not that every stat is useful for you.
-- Our goal is not that only stats which are useful for you appear on your gear.
-- One of the interesting things about resto seems to be that there is some player preference involved in how you heal. Some use Regrowth a lot now, others use Healing Touch, and others stick with rolling blooms. While it may end up that someone can prove one of those strategies sufficiently trumps the others, for now it is cool to see the experimentation.
-- That said, we do worry if Nourish's niche is too narrow. We'll see. It is getting compared to heals with very good glyphs affecting them.

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GC, my main complain is that with crit being the worst stat for druids, and with haste being a close second, that druids will not benefit as much from higher tier gear as the other healers will.

Druids right now are fine because there isn't a whole lot of haste and crit, and it's possible to minimize the damage of having such terrible itemization. I would MUCH rather have HoTs nerfed but benefit from crit, so that when my druid upgrades his gear, I actually feel he is a stronger healer.

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Q u o t e:
-- Our goal is not that every stat is useful for you.
-- Our goal is not that only stats which are useful for you appear on your gear.

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This is fine.

I am jealous of locks and shadow priests with their DoTs that scale with crit. I am concerned that at high gear levels HoTs will be of decreased importance due to less effective scaling with any gear that isn't pure spellpower. I like casting HoTs, I want casting HoTs to be the best way to play my druid.

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Q u o t e:
-- That said, we do worry if Nourish's niche is too narrow. We'll see. It is getting compared to heals with very good glyphs affecting them.

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Don't nerf my regrowth, bro! =)

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Due to the loot unification theory that is currently being practiced, this makes no sense. There are several solutions to this.

1) Make Haste or Crit (not necessarily both) desirable to spells that are used in larger raids.
2) On the flip side, make MP5 desirable to Balance druids so that spirit+mp5 leather pieces are no 1/30 loot.
3) Change Gift of the Earthmother (the only truly non-scaling talent we have, assuming we don't hit 60+% base crit) to include some scaling portion, or allow it to lower the GCD below 1s, which is probably broken.
4) Make Nourish more viable in larger group situations where a diverse selection of healing classes are present. Healing Touch falls into this, but has its own other problems that are out of scope of this discussion.

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1) Haste and crit are useful. My guild is running 25-man naxx pretty successfully, and I'm the only RestoKing in the guild. I have to say, I'm LOVING Nourish. I'm also still using Lifebloom. My usage of Lifebloom has changed, and I'm fine with that- whereas I used to keep it rolling on tanks, I now purposefully let it bloom when the tank needs a heal. As was mentioned in a previous post, Lifebloom + Swifmend (glyph of swifmend is a godsend and a must-have; I love it. LOVE it.) can be a very nice burst of healing at a respectable mana cost. Especially if it crits.

Crit is useful. :-)

2) I don't see a logical need for this.

3) Meh. Haste isn't so bad. It's not something I'm trying, and certainly isn't as important to me as SP, Spirit, Int, but it's not bad. Spellcrit and spellhaste are not my biggest priorities, but I'm not balking at them.

4) Nourish is fine, don't touch it. Druids need to learn how to use it, that's all.



When I look at recount summaries of my healing in raids, it's about 23% rejuv, 23% lifebloom, 22% regrowth, and the rest is split up between nourish and wild growth. I very very rarely cast Healing Touch, and even then, if I'm casting HT, I've hit nature's swiftness beforehand. I'm considering speccing out of the HT talents altogether now, since I'm discovering that I use it so rarely. I enjoy weaving my Regrowths and Nourishes with Lifeblooms and Swiftmends. I use swiftmend a LOT more now that I have the glyph for it.


EDIT: Wow, the armory has NOT updated my profile in a long time. Heheh.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Kil%27jaeden&n=Faadi

Also: I'm loving my mana regen right now. I can break 1300 spirit in a raid with raid buffs and my trinket stacked up.

@Faadi

Just because you use Nourish, does not mean it's a good spell. If you were actually the type of player that loved knowing the mechanics of your class, you'd understand that glyphed regrowth is better than nourish in almost every way imaginable.

Some of us actually spend a lot of time and effort to determine the best way to heal. You, on the other hand, just press the buttons that cast the spells that look pretty. You overrate nourish, crit, and haste, but worst of all, you spread your ignorance. How about putting some math behind your claims next time?

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Q u o t e:
Just because you use Nourish, does not mean it's a good spell. If you were actually the type of player that loved knowing the mechanics of your class, you'd understand that glyphed regrowth is better than nourish in almost every way imaginable.

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The scary thing is that nourish is a pretty good button. It's basically improved flash heal. It just can't come close to competing with regrowth.

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Also, why is nourish only casted in 1 percent of situations? with enough haste this should be used around 20% of the time. With Crit, that makes this spell even more effective because spell power doesnt give the full effect.

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I use nourish a lot. Maybe not 20% of the time, but I use it a lot.

However, I ONLY use nourish if all my other hots are up.

I put up Regrowth (26 second duration on the hot portion = sooo good, even though it ticks for crap), then rejuv, then lifebloom, then nourish. After that, I just watch it. Swiftmend when the hots aren't keeping up with incomin damage. If regrowth is up and the target needs a heal, I usually hit nourish. If, however, the HoT on Regrowth is down to 2-3 seconds left on its duration, I just refresh regrowth (I have the glyph that increases healing done by regrowth if the target already is affected by the spell).

Honestly, I've healed on Priests, Druids, and Paladins. My druid has been my main since WOW came out 4 years ago. All through TBC, I felt like priests were most fun for healing, because they had more abilities and felt more interactive. I felt like "being good" at healing as a priest was something that you had to work at. I don't like healing as a paladin because I feel like I have 2 or 3 abilities that I spam.

But now...wow. I'm so happy to be with Faadi as a resto druid; timing lifeblooms and regrowths, weaving in Swiftmends and NSHT's...this is a lot more fun.


My BIGGEST frustration with restokinging at this point is itemization of LEATHER items. I'm a leather-wearing class, I want to wear leather spellpower gear that has spirit and int and spellpower. Right now if you armory me, I'm in my healing gear and it's almost exclusively cloth.


WHY?

Do you see resto shamans in cloth or leather? No. Holy pallies in cloth? No. Druids are the only 'hybrid' caster class that doesn't get to wear armor that drops in instances and from quest rewards that matches our armor proficiency. I've heard arguments that "cloth armor = more item points toward useful stats" but I think that's bunk. IMO, we're balanced around wearing leather armor, and should be able to do so. Just like shammies always get mail and pallies always get plate. I shouldn't be competing with the holy priest in my raid for armor, just like the resto shaman and holy pally in my raid aren't competing with me for armor.

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Q u o t e:
@Faadi

Just because you use Nourish, does not mean it's a good spell. If you were actually the type of player that loved knowing the mechanics of your class, you'd understand that glyphed regrowth is better than nourish in almost every way imaginable.

Some of us actually spend a lot of time and effort to determine the best way to heal. You, on the other hand, just press the buttons that cast the spells that look pretty. You overrate nourish, crit, and haste, but worst of all, you spread your ignorance. How about putting some math behind your claims next time?

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Thanks, that was really constructive.

My playstyle is about having fun. I'm happy with my style, I have great sustainability, and so far, I've been pretty successful at healing just about any situation that arises. I'll thank you not to make assumptions about why I heal how I heal, or that I cast spells that "look pretty."

I don't overrate crit or haste. I said very clearly in an earlier post that those stats are among the last I look for. Look at my gear on armory, you'll see that I'm not stacking haste OR crit. I'm focusing on spellpower and sustainability. Also, as I've said, Nourish is not my main heal. I really like it, I do think it has uses when an undergeared tank is taking spikes of damage and my NSHT is on cooldown. But I'm not spamming it like a paladin.

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The scary thing is that nourish is a pretty good button. It's basically improved flash heal. It just can't come close to competing with regrowth.

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Improved flash heal is leagues better than nourish because flash heal has a lot of synergy with various talents while nourish is very impoverished in this area.

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Q u o t e:
Improved flash heal is leagues better than nourish because flash heal has a lot of synergy with various talents while nourish is very impoverished in this area.

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It's true. I just mean that if you compare the nourish tooltip to the flash heal tooltip, you go "hey, this button looks pretty good".

It takes a lot of work to realize what's actually going on with the spell.

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4) Nourish is fine, don't touch it. Druids need to learn how to use it, that's all.

When I look at recount summaries of my healing in raids, it's about 23% rejuv, 23% lifebloom, 22% regrowth, and the rest is split up between nourish and wild growth. I very very rarely cast Healing Touch, and even then, if I'm casting HT, I've hit nature's swiftness beforehand. I'm considering speccing out of the HT talents altogether now, since I'm discovering that I use it so rarely. I enjoy weaving my Regrowths and Nourishes with Lifeblooms and Swiftmends. I use swiftmend a LOT more now that I have the glyph for it.

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I agree whole-heartedly with you. My guild is only in Naxx10 right now. I heal alongside a paladin. My effective healing is near double his and my overhealing is a fraction of it. I rely less on regrowth than you do by about 4-5%, the excess going to rejuv.

As for nourish, I agree. Druids need to learn how to use it. The only time I use nourish is when all of my hots are rolling on a tank, NS and swiftmend are burnt, and the tank has low health. (Occasionally I'll use it on a non-tank if I have a HoT on them.

I can honestly say I'm extremely happy with the changes. The spell haste is just a nice stat for flavor really. I don't mean to have as much as I do, I just go for Spellpower/spirit gear and it's on there. I would still use the same gear if all of the spell haste was removed.

As for crit, I think that people are thinking into it too much. There are plenty of times now where crit comes in to play. Regrowth, lifebloom, swiftmend (glyphed makes you use it all the time), nourish, NS HT. Couple all of the crit possibilities with Living Seed and you pack a lot of power. Who needs to crit for 20k on a holy light, when you can crit for 8-10k on a swiftmend and still have the Hot's ticking away?

In summary, great job Blizzard, I'm loving resto more than ever now!

I did not mean to say that haste/crit are entirely useless. I pointed this out in the body of my post, but my concluding points seemed to have exaggerated things. Haste simply has significant diminishing returns beyond the Gift of the Earthmother cap.

I find it interesting that the abilities that benefit from haste beyond that cap are all of the abilities that also benefit from crit, so that at present the value of haste and crit are both entirely based on how much a given druid utilizes those abilities versus the GotEM abilities.

It's hard for me to find a 'typical' fight in Heroic Naxx given the diversity in there, but using Kel'thuzad, an encounter that involves both tank and raid healing, I'm looking at 37% lifebloom, 26% wildgrowth, 17% rejuv, 15% regrowth, 3% swiftmend, 2% nourish. At the same time, our tanks are overgeared due to us being overly lucky with tank drops (and them running 50000 heroics), which means the only time I'm using Swiftmend on that fight is on frozen targets.

On a fight like Patchwerk, which emphasizes tank healing, I have 42% lifebloom, 24% rejuv, 28% regrowth, 6% swiftmend. I do not utilize Nourish on this fight due to our healing set-up, with 2 paladins, 2 resto druid, 2 holy priests. 2 holy paladins on OT #1 laying greasy bacon on the MT, 1 priest on MT, 1 priest on OT #2, with druids using HoTs on all 3.

It might be due to our specific healing matrix, but I do not find myself placed in many Nourish situations. When I'm assigned to dedicated tank healing I do utilize Nourish, but Regrowth still makes up a significantly higher percentage of my healing.

(The only way I could see to make MP5 viable for moonkins is to push intensity down in the resto tree to keep balance druids from taking it, which is fairly heavyhanded and silly, and it was just included as a possibility for completeness)

Healing Touch is very heavily flawed at present. For an increasingly niche ability, it just takes too many points to improve. Nourish doesn't need Tranquil Spirit OR Naturalist to do the tank healing job just fine due to being unaffected by naturalist entirely and being more mana efficient than healing touch right out of the gate. Healing Touch absolutely requires Naturalist (5 points) and is a mana hog in today's environment so that Tranquil Spirit is fairly important for it (let's average out and say 3 points). So you're looking at 8-10 points to make a niche ability strong for anything other than NS use.

I very rarely use nourish except occasionally while doing trash mobs. My healing for a raid is about
40% Wild growth, 30% Lifebloom, 25% Regrowth/rejuv, and maybe 5% nourish/ HT. With glyphed swiftmend and glyphed regrowth I just have no use for nourish. I honestly don't see why we have the spell at all. I find that I am a very effective healer. I have very high effective heal and the lowest overheal and I am usually running with a resto shammy and a COH priest.

I have a difficult time understanding the role of the druid now in raids as a healer. Are we supposed to be mainly hot based are we supposed to be spamming nourish? Most of our spells are hot based but our tier gear seems to be designed for dirrect heals. IMO blizzard is sending us mixed messages. Our bag of tricks contains mostly hots but our gear contains mostly dirrect heal stats...