[WoD] HotW now needs changes for WoD.

[Raugnaut]

With the most recent alpha patch notes, HotW is now significantly underpreforming compared to NV and DoC for all 3 specs.

First all, this is not a complaining about T90 talents. This talent tier functions as a raid-healing throughput tier- NV provides a small but lengthy HPS boost on a short CD for a small period of time for all 4 specs, DoC, for non-restos, allows for better spot-healing through more powerful, instant healing touches, and for resto, allows them to attonement heal, contributing both a small amount of dps and healing. HotW does something similar, except also allows the druid to become an emergency tank for non-guardians.

As it stands, however, HotW will be rarely used next expansion - the only time that it would be worth being used is A) you need a temporary off tank on any fight, B) Resto wants to spend a long amount of time doing high damage/low healing, and C) Feral needs to range a mob out of reach, aka Atramedes. With the removal of many cat-form abilities, HotW will never be used to cat-form dps, and with the removal of Tranq from non-Resto, HotW will never be used to heal.

Now, HotW still provides a 25% healing boost in addition to non-resto healing boosts. However, DoC provides a 20% power boost to Rejuve and HT for Ferals, and causes heals by these 2 abilities to also heal the feral (Thus, the feral can toss out rejuves and insta-healing touches during empty globals that heal both the feral and an ally for a good amount), thus DoC trumps HotW for overall healing boost. For burst-healing, NV is significantly more powerful then HotW, as it allows 16% of dps to be converted into HPS for 30 seconds on a 90 second CD (33% uptime). Thus, HotW is a poorer healing choice for Ferals.

Boomkins, HotW requires a substantial period of time of doing low dps in order to get maximum benefits from the healing capability. DoC, however, gives you more starsurge/starfall usage in exchange for a single global, and NV is, of course, passive healing that requires only a single button push. HotW is again the poorer choice for healing.

For resto, HotW is a 25% extra healing CD for 45 seconds on a 360 second cooldown, for an overall boost of 3.125% healing. But wait! NV is a 16% healing CD for 30 seconds on a 90 second CD, for an overall boost of 5.28 healing! And its less prone to overhealing then HotW is! NV is the default healing choice here.

Guardians? They have to leave form to cast any healing spells. HotW is useless here.



Now, my suggestion is to make HotW a combo active/passive ability, with the affects varying per specs. The active affect has a 3 min CD, 20 second duration.

Feral- Wrath damage is increased 50% and has no mana cost. Rejuvenation and Healing Touch heals for 50% more. Healing Touch can be hard-casted in Cat Form. Can be activated, giving the current Bear buffs, and a 50% healing boost.
Balance- Sunfire/Moonfire tics heal a nearby friendly target for 10% of the damage done. Rejuvenation and Healing Touch heals for 50% more. Same activation as Feral.
Resto- Wrath damage is increased 50% and has no mana cost. Moonfire deals 100% more periodic damage and has a chance to make the next Wrath instant. Can be activated for a 30% healing boost, and current bear bonus.
Guardian- All damage done heals a friendly target for 10% of damage done. Healing Touch is castable in Bear Form, and generates 8 rage. Fairie Fire deals 250% more damage against targets 10 yds or farther away, and has no cooldown. Activation causes Healing Touch to heal ALL friendly targets for 10% of the amount, generate 12 rage instead of 8, and deal 100% of healing as damage.

[Arielle]

Guardians? They have to leave form to cast any healing spells. HotW is useless here.

That's quite an overstatement. It's not "useless" by any stretch of the imagination, since you would never sacrifice the GCDs in Bear form to Rejuvenations anyway. I do however agree that it's less fun which is what really matters. This may be a precursor to more changes.

[Mystikal]

I had been thinking the same sort of thing myself since the latest round of pruning was announced. I still kind of like the Mooncat approach, even if it isn't totally viable, but with the few abilities we will have left in Cat Form as Balance, it just won't be worth speccing for HotW. I begrudgingly accepted that a HotW-Tranq can be a raid-saver as well, but even that's gone now.

As Arielle mentioned, unfortunately, these changes result in "fun being nerfed" for HotW. Hopefully, further changes are afoot to make it an appealing and compelling option for the L90 talent row.

[stormgust]

@Frogpoison How do you figure? They still have healing and feral spells and abilities. HotW likely needs a numbers buff for sure.

We've been there already. They nerfed HotW numbers within one week of MoP Launch. I doubt that numbers, which should should end up well above what we had back then [even less abilities this time, no perks, by the look more dps tied into spec-specific passives/abilities] will work out any differently.

Right now I'd be more than happy if they just scrap HotW. And DoC while they're at it, because I'd doubt that they'll have mostly self-sustained damage dealer go live [imagine all the extra raid DPS you get via an dropped healer! ...]. Honestly, all those planned changes and their effects to DoC/HotW just look to be along the lines of "We tend to ignore the past, there's hardly anything we can learn from it".

[Peacemoon]

HotW is useful for Guardians, it can give us some great DPS when vengeance is lacking and the healing shouldn't be discounted. You can rejuvenate from inside bear form and if you aren't tanking, the healing touches are good too. Plus, even if you don't get a great chance to use it, you still get a passive +6% stamina and agility. So all in all I have always been a big fan of HotW since it suits my play style best. Having said that, with the ability pruning, it may still be a good talent, but you will have nothing to cast whilst under its affects!

[Mystikal]

HotW is useful for Guardians, it can give us some great DPS when vengeance is lacking and the healing shouldn't be discounted. You can rejuvenate from inside bear form and if you aren't tanking, the healing touches are good too. Plus, even if you don't get a great chance to use it, you still get a passive +6% stamina and agility. So all in all I have always been a big fan of HotW since it suits my play style best. Having said that, with the ability pruning, it may still be a good talent, but you will have nothing to cast whilst under its affects!

The 6% stats are gone in WoD. That's why a lot of people - myself included - are struggling to find a good reason to use it with all the ability pruning just announced. I'm sure Resto and Guardians will find a use for it, but for Balance and to a lesser extent Feral, it'll be harder to justify ever taking it in PvE.

[stormgust]

HotW is useful for Guardians, it can give us some great DPS when vengeance is lacking

Tank DPS for WoD is tuned to about 80% of a DD if I remember correctly. So HotW at least needs to provide more than that.

and the healing shouldn't be discounted. You can rejuvenate from inside bear form and if you aren't tanking, the healing touches are good too.

Rejuvenation has been removed. That leaves you with healing touch.

Plus, even if you don't get a great chance to use it, you still get a passive +6% stamina and agility.

That's been removed from the WoD version for quite some time now.

So all in all I have always been a big fan of HotW since it suits my play style best. Having said that, with the ability pruning, it may still be a good talent, but you will have nothing to cast whilst under its affects!

It isn't. It comes down to:
->Bear: Mangle(6sec CD),Taunt (8sec) and FR (1.5s CD by itself, though we lack rage generation anyway). Taunt/SI combination seems to achieve the same goal in a far more accessible way.
->Moonkin: Wrath and (for resto) moonfire, i.e. HotW has to account: Sunfire, Mastery, SS, Lunar empowerment and T60/T100. In case of Feral/Guardian additionally for: moonfire, imp. moonfire and imp. wrath. I currently don't know what spell distribution for moonkins look like, but I've got the gut feeling that we're talking about wrath hitting harder than chaos bolt here.
->Feral: Shred/FB it is. A factor of 1.2 due to lack of perks, a factor of 1.45 due to savage roar, mastery/bleeds missing entirely. At least one hitting mobs from stealth seems like a good possibility now...
-> Resto: For feral DoC/Bloodletting is the same, without a CD and not a full DPS loss. For Guardian it's similar. DoC basically does the same, without a cooldown. As for Moonkins, well, at least you get regrowth sized rejuvenation ticks and a saving grace without the debuff ....

I'd be happy for once if instead of using the "numbers aren't there yet" argument, they'd check wether such numbers exists in a first place.

[Raugnaut]

We've been there already. They nerfed HotW numbers within one week of MoP Launch. I doubt that numbers, which should should end up well above what we had back then [even less abilities this time, no perks, by the look more dps tied into spec-specific passives/abilities] will work out any differently.

Right now I'd be more than happy if they just scrap HotW. And DoC while they're at it, because I'd doubt that they'll have mostly self-sustained damage dealer go live [imagine all the extra raid DPS you get via an dropped healer! ...]. Honestly, all those planned changes and their effects to DoC/HotW just look to be along the lines of "We tend to ignore the past, there's hardly anything we can learn from it".

The HotW numbers change at the start was for dps, as the top-dps for boomkin/feral was to pick up a agi/int weapon, equip it, and go to town for 45 seconds as a moonkin-cat/cat-wrathspammer. With the additional removal of Tranq from non-resto, HotW no longer needs the 6 min CD.

DoC is fine for Boomkin/Resto/Ferals. Good ferals will be tossing out rejuves/healing touchs in pve during their many free globals anyway, DoC significantly buffs that. (NV will most likely be the default talent for ferals, however, as its the ONLY choice of the tier that increases dps for Ferals.) For Guardian, it needs to either be off the GCD, or give 5 rage+deal damage. Boomkins, it allows them to trade 1 global for a starsurge, which has many, many times the DPET of wrath/starfire. NV will provide significantly more healing though, so DoC for a slight dps boost, or NV for healing throughput boost. Resto, DoC for attonement-healing, or NV for healing throughput CD.

DoC is fine for boomkin/resto/feral. NV is fine for all specs. HotW is underpreforming for Resto's case, niche for feral/boomkin, useless for Guardian.

[Kojo]

NV still has the damage component?

[Xyan]

did everyone forget the +6% int hotw gives when looking at it for resto?

this puts hotw and NV much closer to each other, with favorability to hotw in total throughput, but still includes overhealing caused by 6% buff active during low healing moments and the CD usage doing more healing than needed healing. (which is also likely for NV depending on timing of healing vs needed healing and CD uptime affecting it)

[Gemini Soul]

did everyone forget the +6% int hotw gives when looking at it for resto?

this puts hotw and NV much closer to each other, with favorability to hotw in total throughput, but still includes overhealing caused by 6% buff active during low healing moments and the CD usage doing more healing than needed healing. (which is also likely for NV depending on timing of healing vs needed healing and CD uptime affecting it)

They removed the +6%

[Xyan]

They removed the +6%

it is currently in live. it was removed in the alpha. sorry, thanks for the correction.

[Peacemoon]

What is the design reason for removing the passive +6% anyway? It seemed like a good sweetener for HotW. Minor assistance with throughput/survivability, and the option to take on a different role when required.

[timmytompadderham]

What is the design reason for removing the passive +6% anyway? It seemed like a good sweetener for HotW. Minor assistance with throughput/survivability, and the option to take on a different role when required.

You want to be able to choose the best utility and not be torn because one does less dps/hps

[Peacemoon]

You want to be able to choose the best utility and not be torn because one does less dps/hps

In that cause surely Nature's Vigil shouldn't increase healing and damage done?

[timmytompadderham]

In that cause surely Nature's Vigil shouldn't increase healing and damage done?

ofc not. the tooltip is old.

[stormgust]

In that cause surely Nature's Vigil shouldn't increase healing and damage done?

I think they deliberately kept the healing part on mirror part on NV, so it isn't outright useless to resto druids. Wasting mana so you can do a tiny amount of damage doesn't work out when mana is supposed to matter. And for Attonement there is DoC.