Resto Druid - Legion Talents

[Tiberria]

Spring Blossoms is a bit better than it's showing on the meters. It automatically makes your Efflo heal with plus one Mastery stack at all times if there's no SB hot on the target, plus Efflo will start prefering targets without SB as opposed to randomly picking injured players

This is not actually 100% true. They confirmed in the theorycrafting thread last week that Efflo ticks do not benefit from the Spring Blossoms HoT tick that is applied from the Efflo tick. It will only benefit from subsequent Efflo ticks on the same target. Therefore, in situations where you only have a handful of people in your Efflo, everything except the initial ticks should get the automatic mastery gain to Efflo. In a situation where you have the entire raid stacked in Efflo, it's likely that a lot of ticks will be adding new Spring Blossoms applications instead of refreshing existing ones, and you get a lower mastery gain.

Of course, you're compensated in the stacked healing situation by getting more healing from the HoT, so this mechanic basically levels off the power of the talent on stacked vs spread healing really.

[theburned]

Is there anyone that could link any logs from raid testing, we keep getting buffed and I do not understand why, I've felt strong since I started raid testing at the beginning of april, and just feel like are getting more and more buffs, so could I please get some other sources to analyze and see how resto druids are doing. Please state stat prio, and skill level.

Now ofc it wouldn't be fair to ask other to do this and not show anything myself so:
Been a part of every alpha testing showed in these logs since (and including) april 3rd. https://www.warcraftlogs.com/guilds/1031
stat prio, Current mastery heavy around 25-30%, 15-20% haste/crit. ursoc -> jc nerf, haste around 22% crit 35-40%, mastery 30-35%. Pre ursoc I cant remember what stats I went for.

[Torty]

You can check the exact stats if you select the player and then click summary. You will be even able to see all talents, artifact traits and every item with gems and enchants. It's a new feature in Legion logging.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/guilds/201 These are mine. A lot shittier numbers than yours and I'm generally not at the top.

This is your Chromatic Anomaly kill. And this is our 3 min longer wipe. Your fourth healer is doing roughly the same hps as our priest who is #1. You had 20m, 5 healers. We had 18m, 4 healers. I died at some point, so let's say we cut it to the same duration as your kill link.

Most the difference is from me playing rather poorly. No artifact uses, no flourish, no innervate. You had 24680 total secondary stats and I had 18991. I assume that's from 3 gems of 1200 stats each and neck giving 1000 vers. You had much higher CPM, although I probably was trying to pace my mana around our kill time and you around yours (can't remember wtf I did there quite frankly) and I guess 2 Innervates contributed heavily. You had 22% more rejuv ticks and almost 35% more Cultivation ticks.

I think the take from our logs is that you are probably playing more efficiently with spreading Rejuvs around while I'm trying to funnel hots into certain people and that's not really working. Although my Germination overhealing is lower than Rejuv overhealing (which is currently an indicator of properly using it), my Cultivation numbers are much lower. Even with Mastery stacking it appears that current way of playing where you don't really want to double Rejuv unless it's absolutely needed (debuffs, tanks, etc) might be the better way to play.

Also Devs finally confirmed how WG with Flourish is supposed to work: "Any extension or refresh of Wild Growth resets the decay; it's essentially a freshly-applied Wild Growth (but with whatever duration it now has)." I just tested on Alpha and from the 4 uses of doing both in the end and in the start it appears that there's literally no difference when to do it. If you are doing in the start, it decays for less. If you are doing in the end, it decays faster, then gets refreshed and decays fast again. Can anyone confirm this?

This is not actually 100% true.

Not sure where I got that, but I'm certain I was testing it before. Either I did something wrong during testing or they fixed it. Alright. This actually makes evaluating the talent's strength much easier.

[theburned]

You can check the exact stats if you select the player and then click summary. You will be even able to see all talents, artifact traits and every item with gems and enchants. It's a new feature in Legion logging.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/guilds/201 These are mine. A lot shittier numbers than yours and I'm generally not at the top.

This is your Chromatic Anomaly kill. And this is our 3 min longer wipe. Your fourth healer is doing roughly the same hps as our priest who is #1. You had 20m, 5 healers. We had 18m, 4 healers. I died at some point, so let's say we cut it to the same duration as your kill link.

Most the difference is from me playing rather poorly. No artifact uses, no flourish, no innervate. You had 24680 total secondary stats and I had 18991. I assume that's from 3 gems of 1200 stats each and neck giving 1000 vers. You had much higher CPM, although I probably was trying to pace my mana around our kill time and you around yours (can't remember wtf I did there quite frankly) and I guess 2 Innervates contributed heavily. You had 22% more rejuv ticks and almost 35% more Cultivation ticks.

I think the take from our logs is that you are probably playing more efficiently with spreading Rejuvs around while I'm trying to funnel hots into certain people and that's not really working. Although my Germination overhealing is lower than Rejuv overhealing (which is currently an indicator of properly using it), my Cultivation numbers are much lower. Even with Mastery stacking it appears that current way of playing where you don't really want to double Rejuv unless it's absolutely needed (debuffs, tanks, etc) might be the better way to play.

Also Devs finally confirmed how WG with Flourish is supposed to work: "Any extension or refresh of Wild Growth resets the decay; it's essentially a freshly-applied Wild Growth (but with whatever duration it now has)." I just tested on Alpha and from the 4 uses of doing both in the end and in the start it appears that there's literally no difference when to do it. If you are doing in the start, it decays for less. If you are doing in the end, it decays faster, then gets refreshed and decays fast again. Can anyone confirm this?

Not sure where I got that, but I'm certain I was testing it before. Either I did something wrong during testing or they fixed it. Alright. This actually makes evaluating the talent's strength much easier.

As far as wild growth goes, its not exactly like you cast a new wild growth, but yes it goes back to the initial value and ticks down rapidly again. But snapshotted buffs like SotF will also apply to the flourished WG.

Thanks for the logs, from what I can see its fairly hard to compare though, due to the massive differences in amount of overhealing/stats/healers, and a lack of ease of checking hots stacked onto specific persons, like wild growth + rejuv, etc. Yes you can find it, but its very tedious.

[Torty]

Yeah, it's almost impossible to do that, which makes it kinda annoying. The only realistic way is to fraps it and watch side by side.

[theburned]

I think the take from our logs is that you are probably playing more efficiently with spreading Rejuvs around while I'm trying to funnel hots into certain people and that's not really working. Although my Germination overhealing is lower than Rejuv overhealing (which is currently an indicator of properly using it), my Cultivation numbers are much lower. Even with Mastery stacking it appears that current way of playing where you don't really want to double Rejuv unless it's absolutely needed (debuffs, tanks, etc) might be the better way to play.

From what I understand you seem to focus towards rejuving already rejuved targets for germination, for me its more about rejuving wild growthed targets, just checking the first 3 wild growths all 6 had rejuv at some point during the duration for the 2 first, 4 for the last one. Cultivation numbers is different because there is a massive difference in damage taken, did not really check why. I doubt any focus on rejuv stacking will be worth it in a general situation.

As for why I snipe wild growths:
Generally when you cast wild growths its when the raid takes lots of damage, the ability will find the 6 people with lowest hp, get them up slightly, while also boosting and being boosted by the 2 hots (rejuv + cult) in most cases they will be under 60% because its a situation you would want to cast wild growth. So while we are both playing around our mastery, but as mentioned by tibby, cultivation and germination dont really act very well together in spread healing, while they work very well together on focused healing.

In regards to your flourish usage, I was using stonebark so doesnt really enhance my healing too much, in hindsight the better choice feels like MoC, I really dont like how flourish feels combined with cultivation.

[Grinia]

Off topic, slightly, but what legendaries are people looking at as their first? Of course, drops dictate it initially, but provided we obtain multiple, what then? Shoulder? Ring?

[stormgust]

Quoting Sigma in his recent post on Holy Paladins:

After all the recent changes, Holy has 2 medium-cooldown rotation spells baseline, up to 6-7 with talents. This is fine and generally intended with 7.0 talents. In fact, it was a problem when Holy couldn't add enough rotational complexity during alpha, which was part of the reason for recent talent changes.

Prior to sigma posting that, I didn't actually check, but (just looking at throughput tiers) we're the only spec without ANY talent in the <20s category (that's what I'd consider "rotational"), one of the specs with the least amount of active talents across the board (tied with Assassination), when the average of active abilites available on throughput tiers seems to be around 6. But hey, at least we have this row of glorified passives, which to this date they didn't even bother to tune at all...

[Torty]

In regards to your flourish usage, I was using stonebark so doesnt really enhance my healing too much, in hindsight the better choice feels like MoC, I really dont like how flourish feels combined with cultivation.

My Flourish (and other CDs for that matter) usage tends to get a huge hit at 2 am ;p

Off topic, slightly, but what legendaries are people looking at as their first? Of course, drops dictate it initially, but provided we obtain multiple, what then? Shoulder? Ring?

They haven't even implemented them in game yet. I assume there will be a lot of tuning in weeks to come, so it's probably better to reserve judgement till the time you are actually able to test them out in real world.

[Grinia]

They haven't even implemented them in game yet. I assume there will be a lot of tuning in weeks to come, so it's probably better to reserve judgement till the time you are actually able to test them out in real world.

Oh. I thought, they'd made legendaries available from a vendor in Orgrimmar/Stormwind/Dalaran. At least, according to http://blizz.ly/1NpMgL6

Not on Alpha, so I could be severely mistaken.

[Torty]

There were no raid tests after this was implemented, so all the feedback is based on reading the tooltips. You can do it just as well as anybody else. As you can see in this thread, nearly all of us were super hyped about Flourish and it ended up kinda overrated. Until you are able to test it in the raid environment, you won't be able to judge them properly.

[Tiberria]

I think there are a few things that may be skewing Druid power in alpha raid testing to look stronger than it realistically is.

1. Our 4 piece bonus is pretty poor, and I suspect other healers will get a more significant throughput gain from the 4 piece than we will. It's pretty clear that Germination and either Incarnation or Cultivation will most likely be the strongest throughput raid healing build. However, with that build, you gain very little from the 4 piece. Casting more Swiftmends in place of Rejuvs is a fairly minor throughput increase. For the 4 piece to really shine, you really need to run a Prosperity/Soul of the Forest build (and even 2 piece scales significantly with that build). It remains to be seen if the set bonus synergy is strong enough to push us to that talent selection when we get 4 piece. If it doesn't our set bonus gain is trivial at best. Even if it does, the set bonus gain is only the delta between running the Germination/Cultivation build baseline vs the Prosperity/SoTF build with the set bonuses. In either case, I am betting that we have one of the worst healing set bonuses.

2. Similarly, I think we have fairly mediocre legendaries. These are the options that we have.
- +50% gain to Ysera's Gift plus whatever other affinity passive we have - ~1% throughput increase at best.
- 200% increase to Lifebloom's bloom healing - also pretty mediocre - the bloom portion is 1-2% of our output in raid testing from logs I've reviewed.
- 20% chance for people healed by WG to gain Rejuv. This may not be working properly, but on Alpha, the extra Rejuvs currently only proc on the initial Wild Growth application. They do NOT have a chance to proc on every WG tick. Therefore, you are looking at 1.2 random Rejuvs going out per WG cast, or just under 5/minute if you are casting WG an average of every 15 seconds. Not bad I guess, but not amazing.
- Swiftmend extends the duration of all HoTs on the target by 10 seconds - Pretty limited value given the long cooldown of Swiftmend. Will save a few GCDs a minute.
- Tranq heals <50% HP targets for 50% more. - Depends on damage patterns. However, even if all of your Tranq healing is on sub 50% HP targets, you're looking at maybe +5% throughput, and it's realistically probably more like a 2-3% gain.
- Rejuv on full health targets resets its duration until the target takes damage or 10 seconds is elapsed. This lets you cast Rejuv on full HP targets and lets you pre-HoT and have the HoTs last up to 27-30 seconds. It may play well on some fights where you want to be able to pre-hot most of the raid before a damage burst, but I think the effect will break to outgoing raid damage on most fights, and the mana cost of doing this is likely prohibitive.

I suspect that either the Tranq or the Wild Growth legendaries are the best, but I don't think either is more than a 2%-3% throughput gain. I suspect other classes have crazier legendaries.

Therefore, Druid power relative to other healers is likely to be less once we get set bonuses and once legendaries are usable in Mythic, so it might not be the worst thing in the world that we are looking strong throughput wise on raid testing before those are usable. Plus, raid testing typically exaggerates the power of HoT healers and other high throughput/high overheal healers, because strats are not obvious and because they have us raid test at lower ilvl than most people will be at by the time they actually reach the fight. This factor inflates Druid numbers in raid testing relative to live.

I would be careful about being too concerned about throughput numbers given these factors. Also, remember that there was endless complaining (from other classes) all of WoD beta about how Druids were totally overpowered, etc, and when tuning was actually done and it went live, we were middle of the pack or so at best. Granted, their terrible tone deaf approach to our BRF 4 piece was part of that, but a lot of the same issues may be repeating themselves.

[tein]

May I ask a question? Why are you so negative about Sotf? Ok, I understand thoughts about burst healing and so on, but... I remember enjoying Sotf with 4 pieces in ToT, I really like this talent. I tried it even in Highmaul at the beginning of WoD on Mythic Twins in raid with other druid running ToL and Germ and we had similar results, but of course I've ended up with ToL myself because not smart WG was really not that good. I think that's not bad - to play at first in the new addon with one set of talents (sinergy with 4 pieces and all), and then in the next tier use another set. Diversity is good. So what's the problem? We have tier set focused on Sotf and WG - so let's use it!

[Nevcairiel]

The problem is that SotF has been nerfed indirectly by Swiftmend cooldown being doubled. Having it every 15s in WoD was pretty good, and many/most druid healers used it in HM/BRF, it was only replaced by ToL in HFC for most players. Doubling the cooldown of SotF (indirectly) and doubling its value is mathematically equal (even though its not true, the WG part is only 75% now and not 100%), but it takes flexibility out and any missed or badly used SotF hurts twice as much.

On a 30s CD, SotF is too much of a burst instead of a baseline rotational abilitiy as it was on 15s, at least IMHO. A 30s CD burst like that just feels slightly odd to me, as you feel like you are wasting things by not using it right away. Wasting a weaker 15s CD wasn't as bad, as its back up faster again.

Especially with Cultivation on the same row which adds baseline throughput, or in fights where burst is needed with ToL, those two options appeal more to me.

[theburned]

May I ask a question? Why are you so negative about Sotf? Ok, I understand thoughts about burst healing and so on, but... I remember enjoying Sotf with 4 pieces in ToT, I really like this talent. I tried it even in Highmaul at the beginning of WoD on Mythic Twins in raid with other druid running ToL and Germ and we had similar results, but of course I've ended up with ToL myself because not smart WG was really not that good. I think that's not bad - to play at first in the new addon with one set of talents (sinergy with 4 pieces and all), and then in the next tier use another set. Diversity is good. So what's the problem? We have tier set focused on Sotf and WG - so let's use it!

This discussion was done on page 38 aswell post #743 should explain it fairly well.

Though I dont believe any of the concerns here are really about SotF, its about 4p either forcing us into that talent or that we just flat out skip 4p because it doesnt really do anything towards other talents. It is the most impactful talent tier, so we would like to actually have a choice in it..

Personally I will play around it, but I will most likely let dps/tanks get their 4p before I start grabbing pieces, and unless sotf gets very strong getting mythic pieces over heroic pieces will be better.

The problem is that SotF has been nerfed indirectly by Swiftmend cooldown being doubled. Having it every 15s in WoD was pretty good, and many/most druid healers used it in HM/BRF, it was only replaced by ToL in HFC for most players. Doubling the cooldown of SotF (indirectly) and doubling its value is mathematically equal (even though its not true, the WG part is only 75% now and not 100%), but it takes flexibility out and any missed or badly used SotF hurts twice as much.

On a 30s CD, SotF is too much of a burst instead of a baseline rotational abilitiy as it was on 15s, at least IMHO. A 30s CD burst like that just feels slightly odd to me, as you feel like you are wasting things by not using it right away. Wasting a weaker 15s CD wasn't as bad, as its back up faster again.

Especially with Cultivation on the same row which adds baseline throughput, or in fights where burst is needed with ToL, those two options appeal more to me.

I dont see any reasoning against sotf taking flourish into account, and his a huge arguement FOR SotF. People also seem to forget that it being nerfed to 75% is a tuning issue, I think we can also expect closer to 20 seconds on average for swiftmend and with 2 charges with the tier bonus, so I don't believe that is a major issue. But it removes any talent flexibility.

[stormgust]

May I ask a question? Why are you so negative about Sotf?

It's only partially about Sotf, but more about the set bonus being entirely bad without two talents supporting it.

I think that's not bad - to play at first in the new addon with one set of talents (sinergy with 4 pieces and all), and then in the next tier use another set. Diversity is good. So what's the problem? We have tier set focused on Sotf and WG - so let's use it!

It's completely nonsensical to first design talents precisely to allow for diversity, then throw that over the board by having a set bonus taking four talents out of the picture - at least if the set bonus is tuned to be more than just bad.

[tein]

Well, I see the point in your words. The argument about 30s cd is not really strong because of Prosperity, but remark about set that defines the choice of 2 talents make sense. Although to be honest I still don't see drama here. It's always been so that tier bonus pushes some talents over others. And they didn't throw anything over as I think. You are tend to form opinion based on raids, and what about other encounters? Are other talents out of picture here? Nope. And if we are talking about raiding... Well, not to wear tier set is a choice too. I believe I can remeber a few raid tiers when some other healing classes didn't have benefit from set and prefer things with nice stats. By the way, in perspective there is still a choice - if we will look at all addon and not only on one tier.
Do not be offended, but it seems to me that you want way too much. Blizz are not magicians or something. Expecting that they will give us choice and balance in all encounters and in all directions of talent table: horizontal, vertical, diagonally; in using tier set, artifact - and all of this at the same time... well, it's too much hipe. Just forget about complaining and let's focus on the development of different builds so that everybody can pick what is close to heart!

[theburned]

Well, I see the point in your words. The argument about 30s cd is not really strong because of Prosperity, but remark about set that defines the choice of 2 talents make sense. Although to be honest I still don't see drama here. It's always been so that tier bonus pushes some talents over others. And they didn't throw anything over as I think. You are tend to form opinion based on raids, and what about other encounters? Are other talents out of picture here? Nope. And if we are talking about raiding... Well, not to wear tier set is a choice too. I believe I can remeber a few raid tiers when some other healing classes didn't have benefit from set and prefer things with nice stats. By the way, in perspective there is still a choice - if we will look at all addon and not only on one tier.
Do not be offended, but it seems to me that you want way too much. Blizz are not magicians or something. Expecting that they will give us choice and balance in all encounters and in all directions of talent table: horizontal, vertical, diagonally; in using tier set, artifact - and all of this at the same time... well, it's too much hipe. Just forget about complaining and let's focus on the development of different builds so that everybody can pick what is close to heart!

Yes, its been lots of times where tier pieces werent used by healers, remember tier 17 RESTO DRUIDS didnt want their 4p because it literally gave us nothing
Remember tier 16 RESTO DRUIDS had 2 weak tier pieces to the point where 4 wf pieces > 4 tier pieces.
tier 18 was great because all healers got super strong tier pieces.

I see a trend here, resto druids are not supposed to get tier pieces.

Its a big difference between tier bonuses pushing some talents above the others, being a massive boost to one talent and close to nothing towards the 2 others, not so much. Lets see the previous tier 19 4p "swiftmend resets the cooldown of wild growth" this would allow for 3 wild growths 2 of them sotf buffed, then you also have 2 extra wild growths in ToL, and overall more wild growths for the 3rd talent, in all cases you'd want the tier bonus. Issue though was that WG + flourish bombing made the set bonus too strong though, while also making properity good, but not mandatory.

It's genuine concerns, not baseless complaints. The talents on their own are looking very good atm to the point where you only need some tuning, "if it ain't broke, don't break it." This is exactly what the tier bonus does.

Also we're on the alpha to provide feedback and test bugs, not to gather information for the community.

[tein]

if it ain't broke, don't break it." This is exactly what the tier bonus does.

That is the problem: I don't see it in that way, so why your opinion is better than mine? I believe in fact that this tier bonus is the only chance to play Sotf confidently again since ToT and I don't want this opportunity gone. Tell me honestly: if there was no tier bonus at all - would you take Sotf over ToL and Cultivation? ToL provides burst while Cultivation provides sustained healing, so where is the place here for Sotf?

Also we're on the alpha to provide feedback and test bugs, not to gather information for the community.

Right, right. But your feedbacks did not work while there was alpha, and now it's beta already. And I really don't think that "there is no choice here" is a proper feedback, usually it is called "whine", sorry. This thread is called "Resto Druid Legion Talents" so I'am also sorry if I wrongly decided that it is a proper place to discuss legion builds for future.

[Nevcairiel]

That is the problem: I don't see it in that way, so why your opinion is better than mine? I believe in fact that this tier bonus is the only chance to play Sotf confidently again since ToT and I don't want this opportunity gone. Tell me honestly: if there was no tier bonus at all - would you take Sotf over ToL and Cultivation? ToL provides burst while Cultivation provides sustained healing, so where is the place here for Sotf?

Isn't that rather the key problem they should solve? Why do we have a talent that needs some set bonus and interaction with like 3 other spells to even be worth using? Why can't it be adjusted in tuning to be competitive on its own?

The problem with the set bonus is that if SotF is competitive on its own, then the interaction with the set bonus makes it far stronger then the other choices. So right now SotF is weaker than the others, without set. Wouldn't it be nice to have a set bonus that works with any talent choice?

Thats really the main concern most here try to express. Having so many spells and talents practically dictated to even make use of this set bonus properly is just extremely static, and people that want to use ToL or Cultivation get screwed out of such an advantage. You may like SotF and are happy that the set bonus buffs it, but if it was ToL that it favors, you would be equally unhappy.

PS:
Using SotF was perfectly fine in HM and BRF, only T18 made ToL stronger since it favored spamming rejuvs (Phylactry mostly).