Resto Druid 6.0 Haste Caps

[Keiyra]

Sorry for the change in topic, but rather than start another thread;

Where do things stand in the beta currently for tier 60? Are SoTF and Incarnation still more or less on par? With sad little FoN in the corner as usual.
Is it still a fight by fight basis? More sustained damage fights go SoTF, need another output CD every 3 mins go tree?

Or do people pick one, and stick with it, tailoring their stats, playstyle and t100 talents to go with it?

[BocahKJ]

Incarnation is going to be strongest in the first tier I believe, just because its such a strong mana cooldown, and thats going to be our biggest concern. Once we're around 700 ilvl, I *expect* to see SOTF become a staple again. Alot also depends on if you use Germination, like most will, or get brave with a Rampant Growth build.

[Hildrande]

* Healing Touch is mostly obsolete outside of set bonuses making it instant (T16/T17).

Another reason is that Regrowth, especially with the glyph is just an incredibly more powerful spell than Healing Touch. I got the math wrong on this one earlier - the Living Seed you get from a crit is not 50% of the non-crit value, but 50% of the full crit heal, meaning Regrowth with the Glyph will heal for three times the tooltip value, seed included. With the crit values we are likely to have (less than 10%) this puts Regrowth on par with Healing Touch in mana efficiency, it even beats Rejuvenation in that regard, even with Germination.

This all depends on getting the Living Seed to trigger. On a tank during a fight it surely will. I'm not sure what type of damage it takes to trigger the seed - if anything goes, or if it will need to be a melee hit. But numbers indicate that if you can learn to place Living Seeds wisely Regrowth will be an absolutely amazing heal.

Edit: Made a coloumn in my spreadsheet for max raid healing for the different stats - one spell stands out triumphantly, Regrowth. With Living Seed it is in a league on its own in terms of throughput potential, at the same time as being more mana efficient than Rejuvenation.

In this perspective Rejuvenation looks like a heal you downgrade to whenever mobility is required, or whenever it's necessary to pre-heal, or to heal people that aren't likely to be attacked the next 15 seconds.

Log example from live on Regrowth use. On Live now high haste values makes Rejuv spamming more powerful compared to Regrowth than we are likely to see the first tiers of WoD.

[Keiyra]

I'm still not a huge fan of the regrowth glyph (especially if you end up going with rampant growth) since the availability of the regrowth hot for swiftmend use in addition to its potential to actually heal if blizzard succeeds at keeping health below 100% - is a lot to give up when Regrowth is going to have 65-70% crit baseline anyway.

As for living seed, its questionable how often it triggers on non tanks...for a while only melee attacks triggered it. (Not sure if it been tested since beta for changes)

Considering the tier bonus might use the glyph of healing touch for more NS usage...dunno

Just my 2cp.

[Tiberria]

The problem with the HT glyph is that the 3 HT casts that you get with Nature's Swiftness do not count towards reducing the NS cooldown, so it's only HT casts over and above that. It might be worth using if you are planning on frequently using HT to get the 4 piece WG bonus even without NS being up; otherwise, it's probably a wasted glyph. Both the Stampeding Roar and Rebirth glyphs add a lot of raid utility that is difficult to justify giving up.

I am also not buying that Regrowth will suddenly be a heavily cast spell. The problems with it are:
- It's way too expensive to use with any frequency outside of OOC procs and Nature's Swiftness/2 piece.
- The glyph scales negatively with gear.
- You don't have room to glyph it unless you drop one of the Stampeding Roar or Rebirth glyphs (WG glyph is obviously mandatory).
- If you use Regrowth instead of HT with the 2 pc/NS casts, you give up the ability to get a reduced cost WG (reducing the HPM value of RG).
- The notion of RG being more efficient than HT is heavily dependent on getting full effective healing out of Living Seed. Historically, Living Seed has always had poor results when it comes to effective healing, and I am not convinced WoD will 100% change that.
-Losing the RG HoT is an efficiency decrease in SoTF or SoTF/Rampant Growth builds, because you lose a Swiftmend target. Having to burn mana on a Rejuv you wouldn't otherwise have wanted to cast because of this greatly reduces any on paper HPM gains from Regrowth.

[Keiyra]

The problem with the HT glyph is that the 3 HT casts that you get with Nature's Swiftness do not count towards reducing the NS cooldown, so it's only HT casts over and above that.

Did not know that, thanks for the heads up. Hmm that 3rd slot seems to be a tough one to fill with something useful then: Rebirth is ok I suppose, but honestly most of the time (except for maybe certain fights that are particularly "bursty") - 60% health should be enough. Will have to play it by ear.

[Tsilyikes]

The tradeoff with spending the 2pc t17 on regrowth is that you get 3 instant and free sotf/ns buffed regrowths that crit for about 90k and then a sotf wg every minute (still haven't gotten any confirmation from blue or bug reports that NS-regrowth should or shouldn't be consuming sotf). it can be pretty situational but it's very strong for what it is. more than a few times i've saved multiple people or a tank from spike damage with one instant mega-buffed regrowth on beta testing. i do agree with the part about having an extra essentially free hot for swiftmend, however. it's worth playing around with.

[Hildrande]

I am also not buying that Regrowth will suddenly be a heavily cast spell. The problems with it are:
- It's way too expensive to use with any frequency outside of OOC procs and Nature's Swiftness/2 piece.

Even if half of the Living Seeds times out glyphed Regrowth matches the mana efficency of 15 sec rejuvs. And heals for much more - now, not in 18 seconds.

- The glyph scales negatively with gear.

More crit than baseline 5% takes Mastery/haste values of over 30% to be effective. It gets weaker with gear, but more gear also brings more mana, and it is so superior in terms of output per GCD that Rejuvenation will not be able to challenge it in raw healing even with 50% haste - as long as the Living Seed goes off.

- The notion of RG being more efficient than HT is heavily dependent on getting full effective healing out of Living Seed. Historically, Living Seed has always had poor results when it comes to effective healing, and I am not convinced WoD will 100% change that.

That's the big if, plus mobility requirements. Healing is changing, encounter design with it and if that means raid takes damage more often, Living Seed might be more useful. There is more time for cast-time spells to not just overheal in the new system, and big heals like Regrowth are less likely to overheal when people are below max health and only recovering slowly, whereas instacast Hots have the advantage in the 5.4 system.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm still not a huge fan of the regrowth glyph (especially if you end up going with rampant growth)

Yup Rampant Growth with glyphed Regrowth is going to be challenging.

Living Seed, if it triggers, is less likely to overheal than the Regrowth HoT.

[Brilynn]

"Nature's Vigil now heals and damages nearby targets for 20% of the healing done (down from 30%), but can now trigger from Multistrikes"

Ouch, my Vigil =(

[Tides is Bloomiz]

Well in terms of progression raiding, you will more than likely be going with HotW or DoC anyway. They provide much more damage over NV and will be very nice for those close kills where you cant drop a healer but need more damage. DoC is also very good now with the buff to the spell and with wrath costing 0 mana. One of the fights it proved very useful for would be Mythic Furnace due to the amount of down time between aoe pulses at the start but needing yhe straight throughput at the end limited by your mana efficiency throughout the fight.

[nightfalls]

Well in terms of progression raiding, you will more than likely be going with HotW or DoC anyway. They provide much more damage over NV and will be very nice for those close kills where you cant drop a healer but need more damage. DoC is also very good now with the buff to the spell and with wrath costing 0 mana. One of the fights it proved very useful for would be Mythic Furnace due to the amount of down time between aoe pulses at the start but needing yhe straight throughput at the end limited by your mana efficiency throughout the fight.

Source on the "more damage" component?

I haven't seen DoC as usable at all, in Mythic. If you have the globals to be chain casting Wrath, might as well just bring a DPS in. I can see HotW as being sometimes useful, if you want burst, but otherwise NV still looks like the default. Keep in mind its damage did not get nerfed, only its bonus healing, which is still better than DoC.

[Tides is Bloomiz]

Well for my example of mythic furnace, the aoe pulse at the start comes 12 seconds apart lining up with Wg each time. You would cast a WG on your side with the pulse then wrath for the remaining time. You would slowly top people off and would contribute to speeding the fight up. You are also spending 0 mana with wrath so you enter the last phase with constant outgoing damage with high mana and pption still available. I tried this fight with all 3 90 choices and DoC worked perfectly. I also stated this was for a fight where you did not require much healing at some points but a lot at others. NV was only beneficial on the final phase and almost worthless for the bulk of the fight.

[Hildrande]

NV will not do much if you rely on casting WG on cooldown. For mobiliy fights with rejuv spam on the other hand, it should be ok.

Heart of the Wild is crap at level 90 in mythic gear, too much mastery and other DPSers secondary stats scaling through the roof. Did some experiments and it seems HotW triples damage.

HotW is also a really strong healing cooldown.

[Brilynn]

NV is a nice short CD that helps in phases with a little more damage going out than I'd like. DoC is nice only in the sense that it doesn't use mana so it's essentially a random free heal. I wouldn't ever rely on it as a serious healing style, but if there's very little damage going out, I can absolutely see spamming wrath instead of Rejuv. I'm not terribly sure how many fights are going to have phases of such shallow damage that it would allow us to really put DoC to use. Vigil is just something I find myself popping a lot in testing (not so much live because lol priests and paladins) when I think the raid needs just a little extra healing, but it doesn't necessarily warrant using a 3 minute raid CD. I would be happy about the proccing from MS now, but to my knowledge we aren't going out of our way to stack MS.

Fights with phases of low damage, I can see DoC. Or if you're really bad at managing your mana, I guess. Otherwise, I would consider Vigil to be my go-to ability in that line.

[Tiberria]

The problem with DOC is that if there is so little healing to be done that you can afford to be spamming Wraths (which is far lower HPET than anything else you can do), the healing that DoC is doing largely doesn't matter. On top of that, you get mana free Wraths as Resto no matter what, so it isn't like not having DoC restricts you from DPSing in down phases. I strongly suspect that the damage portion of Nature's Vigil alone will add more DPS than the 20% extra damage on Wraths for any reasonable amount of Wraths that you will be casting.

On top of that, Nature's Vigil is accounting for a non trivial amount of healing in level 100 testing. It's averaging 7%-10% of total throughput as well as adding as much or more DPS contribution (just from NV) that Disc Priests/Mistweavers are adding. Yes, it was nerfed by about 20% with the hotfix last night, but it's still going to be a non trivial contribution. It's way more healing than you will get from another talent in that row and highly likely to add more total damage as well. I don't see HoTW being a reasonable talent option outside of situations where you want a single huge Tranq and/or Incarnation use. The cooldown is too long and the DPS benefit too situational.

- - - Updated - - -

NV will not do much if you rely on casting WG on cooldown. For mobiliy fights with rejuv spam on the other hand, it should be ok.

Heart of the Wild is crap at level 90 in mythic gear, too much mastery and other DPSers secondary stats scaling through the roof. Did some experiments and it seems HotW triples damage.

HotW is also a really strong healing cooldown.

It's not like any of the other talent options do a lot either outside of a Malkorok type situation where HoTW+Incarnation+Tranq is insanely overpowered. You also have the option of switching to a more Rejuv heavy playstyle when NV is up (even in a WG build), because Rejuv during NV > WG even if you aren't taking Germination, etc.

[Hildrande]

Regarding mana: Did some napkin spreadsheeting, and at ilvl685, with the best spirit gear from Highmaul, spirit weapon enchant and 30% haste, we have 2263 mana to spend per GCD to stay mana neutral. Including the 160k at start and 35k from potion we can spend 2275 per GCD on average during a 6-minute encounter. Rejuvenation costs 3024 mana, which gives 25% downtime with only rejuv-casts. Rejuv, Swiftmend and WG eats almost 10 seconds share of mana - if you only casts rejuv-SwM-WG every 10th second you will oom before the fight is over. For longer fights, it will be even tighter.

Mana economics. It's going to matter.

[theburned]

The problem with DOC is that if there is so little healing to be done that you can afford to be spamming Wraths (which is far lower HPET than anything else you can do), the healing that DoC is doing largely doesn't matter. On top of that, you get mana free Wraths as Resto no matter what, so it isn't like not having DoC restricts you from DPSing in down phases. I strongly suspect that the damage portion of Nature's Vigil alone will add more DPS than the 20% extra damage on Wraths for any reasonable amount of Wraths that you will be casting.

On top of that, Nature's Vigil is accounting for a non trivial amount of healing in level 100 testing. It's averaging 7%-10% of total throughput as well as adding as much or more DPS contribution (just from NV) that Disc Priests/Mistweavers are adding. Yes, it was nerfed by about 20% with the hotfix last night, but it's still going to be a non trivial contribution. It's way more healing than you will get from another talent in that row and highly likely to add more total damage as well. I don't see HoTW being a reasonable talent option outside of situations where you want a single huge Tranq and/or Incarnation use. The cooldown is too long and the DPS benefit too situational.

Can't really speak much for DoC, it will always be quite bad, I still feel its lacking even in spoils like fights, where it should be a good spell...
but really HoTW is not particularly situational, it's great for pretty much every fight where BL is popped early, doubt the other healers have any issue whatsoever covering your healing, and there is nothing saying you can't cast a WG while dpsing if needed. It's lots of extra dps, a bit situational. Also can't see much of a reason to use incarnation on malkorok though, to me it's more like a sustained healing that is important, rather than one burst moment of healing... if you got issues topping of the raid with a single HotW tranq then idk man...though at the same time sotf isnt really strong on malkorok.
Still fights like IJ where you can spend 40 sec dpsing without too much trouble, or use it during that one high damage phase.
sure the healing part of HotW has extremely situational uses, but the dps component is quite important, and also like the furnace boss hotw can be good, now I don't know how long the fight will be, but I expect more than 6 minutes so you can dps some extra in the start, and throw in a few wild growths, and still have a major cd at the end, perhaps with a moonfire prepared before popping HotW.

[Tiberria]

The reasons for using Incarnation on Malkorok.
1. 15% more healing from your Tranq at the start of the fight
2. Once Tranq is over, you get an additional 24 seconds where you can spam 172% throughput Rejuvs as well as get in 2 8 target 115% throughput Wild Growths.
3. Before 6.0 turned Mythic into LFR level difficulty, the fight lasted longer than 3 minutes, and you could have Incarnation up for your second Tranq, and second set of Rejuv spam (well it was LB spam before 6.0) after Blood Rage.

[theburned]

The reasons for using Incarnation on Malkorok.
1. 15% more healing from your Tranq at the start of the fight
2. Once Tranq is over, you get an additional 24 seconds where you can spam 172% throughput Rejuvs as well as get in 2 8 target 115% throughput Wild Growths.
3. Before 6.0 turned Mythic into LFR level difficulty, the fight lasted longer than 3 minutes, and you could have Incarnation up for your second Tranq, and second set of Rejuv spam (well it was LB spam before 6.0) after Blood Rage.

I understand that topping the meters is important now (after patch) due to mythic being tuned as shit, and that you can essentially 2 heal it without issues, and kill the boss is 1 min and 30 sec? (less? more?)
My point is that on the malkorok fight, it's not about doing shit loads of healing at the start of the fight, it's about dealing high amounts of healing over the entire course of the fight. This goes for progression on the boss though, for the ones that didn't just roll it through the first week of hc.
I don't see why you would have any need to use incarnation paired with tranq, while it would do a much better job around 1.5 min into the fight, where it sometimes can get a bit hectic due to a higher amount of orbs.

[Hypasonic]

Yeah, well as you said on progression you probably wouldn't use incarnation on the pull, but since its lolmythic and the boss dies in 1 minute you may aswell.