[Resto] regrowth vs healing touch for nature's swiftness

[Maxvla]

but a tank surely will

Don't know about you, but tanks only get my NS about 50% of the time.

[Raugnaut]

Yea, I can see what you mean there. A crit Regrowth will always heal more then a non-crit Healing Touch. If you can manage to get 40% crit, non-glyphed Regrowth will pretty much beat out Healing Touch, due to the 50% increase duration HoT effect, that will also crit. So, its pretty much, do you feel lucky?

Next patch, it will be a moot point- all resto druids will probably take Cenarion Ward. More healing, Lower CD, and we will be able to handle the increased manage usage.

---------- Post added 2013-01-04 at 10:31 AM ----------

You can only add the living seed if you know your target will be taking a physical hit within the buff time. Basically any non-tank will typically not proc this.

Im pretty certain LS is proced by ANY damage taken now.

[Maxvla]

Well we're both wrong. It procs when you are attacked. This means any non targeted damage will not proc the seed. If you take indirect aoe damage, say Empress field explosions, you will not be healed by living seeds. You must have a damaging spell cast at you specifically, or be struck in melee while being targeted. Cleaves and indirect aoe will not proc it. In any case, the amount of heals proc'd will be very low compared to the number of seeds put on players you heal.

As for Cenarion Ward, it will be situational. Any fight where there is constant damage that you simply maintain between healing cooldowns (Garalon, WotE heroic to some extent) where there is no chance of overheal this will be better. Almost all other fights will still favor Nature's Swiftness.

[Soullord]

Cenarion Ward looks great I just wish it didn't come at the cost of nature's swiftness looking at our tooltip we have a good amount of hot healing and not enough burst healing that nature's swiftness provides.

[Kezotar]

Soullord, table does work. Formatting is key to getting it working, though.

using 19997 as example for spellpower

spell	bottom heal	top heal	sp of spell	heal with sp	swiftness low	crit low	swiftness high	crit high
Healing touch	18460	21800	1.86	37194.42	83481.63	166963.26	88491.63	176983.26
Regrowth	9813	10954	0.958	19157.13	43455.19	86910.38	45166.689	90333.38

---------- Post added 2013-01-02 at 10:59 PM ----------

Also, assuming a 20% crit chance, your average heal from NS+HT, based on the numbers from your last post would be:

88,491.63*.8+230,077*.2 = 116808.7

And as you pointed out, the healing from NS+glyphed RG = 117,432. Notice that on average, both heal for the same (assuming a 20% crit rating - even if you don't have 20% you're still pretty much guaranteed at least 15% from int+raid buff, putting the average healing of NS+HT at 109,729.4). Even then it's still only slightly worse than NS+RG. Really, the difference between the two options is a guaranteed 117k, or a fluctuating between low to high heal amount that averages to about 117k.

the avearge heal on an ability with cd is hard. ns has 1-2 min cd? that means out of 10 min the chance has been there for a crit.

[Dendrek]

That comes down to personal preference. Do you want something that's consistent or something that has huge potential? Whether we're talking about something that's used once every second or once every minute doesn't change the nature of the decision.

On the discussion of consistent vs potential:
If I had to choose between a spell that could heal anywhere from 1 hp to 200k (with equal statistical probability for all values between those), or a heal that always did 100k, I'd pick the 100k every time. The variance there is just too great and the lower end too crappy to even be worth considering *for me* (again, personal preference). But what we're talking about in the case of Nature's Swiftness is more complex than the example I just gave. We're effectively considering whether it's better to use a heal that ranges from [90k] to [180k plus a potential additional 50k] (where the upper end is 1/4 as likely to occur as the lower end) vs a heal that's guaranteed to heal for [90k plus a potential additional 30k]. Living Seed is nice and it shouldn't be ignored, but it's also not guaranteed.

In this case, the lower end for HT is 30k lower than the upper end of RG, but the upper end of HT is 110k higher than the upper end of RG. In other words, the lower end for HT isn't terrible and the upper end is amazing. I think these two facts make HT a worthwhile alternative to RG. It's probably better to take your own skill in using NS effectively when deciding which spell to use with it than to choose or dismiss one simply based on the RNG component.

[Edit] I realize I seemed to suggest that NS+HT requires more skill than NS+RG. Not only does that sound condescending, but that's not at all what I meant to imply. I mostly meant that if you don't often use NS effectively (such as using it on high-HP targets, or on people who aren't taking direct damage) than the potential for NS+HT is wasted. I should also add that your own stats (how much raid-buffed crit you have), and whether you have RG glyphed or not, should also be considered.

[Soullord]

Agreed now if only we had a cooldown that guaranteed that our next spell would crit there would be no question at all as we would always use NS+HT

since we don't our choices are

NS+HT pros: Highest heal and highest Living seed Cons: average lower heals depends on non desired stat - crit
NS+RG(glyphed) pros: Consistent Higher average heals especially on tanks due to living seed cons: lower possible heals than HT
NS+RG pros:chance of bigger heals than glyphed RG due to the effect of crit on the hot cons: average lowest heals of the 3 choices