HotW versus NV?

[Ctee]

Which one overall does more healing?

Does it come down to whether you spec into SotF or ToL?

Does it come down to the boss fight or just preferred playstyle?

I guess my confusion comes from realizing that other druids switch talents before boss fights.

[Keiyra]

HotW increase your overall healing by 4.375% over the course of its CD, but its all focused in a short time frame.

NV usually does about 3%-4% of your total healing, and a free 300-350k damage in a 6 min fight, and is up far more often.

So it really comes down to WHEN do you need the extra healing?
A fight like butcher where its most intense during the last minute? HOTW
A fight like Twins where NV can be up for every single Quake(fire) phase? NV

Both have their uses, and which one you use should vary depending on the boss fight.

(HoTW also can be used solely for its dps portion, where you stop healing for 45 secs and just dps the boss - usefulness of that varies based on raid/tactics etc)

[Ctee]

HotW increase your overall healing by 4.375% over the course of its CD, but its all focused in a short time frame.

NV usually does about 3%-4% of your total healing, and a free 300-350k damage in a 6 min fight, and is up far more often.

So it really comes down to WHEN do you need the extra healing?
A fight like butcher where its most intense during the last minute? HOTW
A fight like Twins where NV can be up for every single Quake(fire) phase? NV

Both have their uses, and which one you use should vary depending on the boss fight.

(HoTW also can be used solely for its dps portion, where you stop healing for 45 secs and just dps the boss - usefulness of that varies based on raid/tactics etc)

Thank you for this. How about HotW/NV and the synergies with ToL/SotF?

[Whydrood]

Which one overall does more healing?

Does it come down to whether you spec into SotF or ToL?

Does it come down to the boss fight or just preferred playstyle?

I guess my confusion comes from realizing that other druids switch talents before boss fights.

It really depends on the fight. There are a number of fights where HoTW is the clear choice, but to be honest, I haven't been all that impressed with NV on any fight this tier so far considering they removed the healing increase from it and it is pretty much useless at the moment.

Kargath = DoC. There really isn't much healing to do on this fight, even in mythic. DoC saves you the mana with free heals for every wrath you would otherwise spend using NV or HoTW. While progressing this fight on mythic I would stick with HoTW because there is going to be more damage while you learn the fight, otherwise go with DoC.

Butcher = HoTW. Lets be honest, there is only 1 hard part to healing this fight (I've only done it on heroic), and that's ensuring you have enough mana to last the soft enrage from 30%-0. Considering this portion of the fight lasts ~1 to 2 minutes, having HoTW here for 45 seconds is a must.

Brackenspore = HoTW. Honestly - the only real winner here is HoTW. The reason is 2 fold. That one rejuv mushroom during infesting spores where you have no living mushroom. You can pretty much help keep the rejuv shroom alive with HoTs empowered by HoTW, and have a HoTW tranq at 9-10 stacks of infesting spores and heal your entire raid to full. That one part of the fight where healing is an issue becomes a non-issue with HoTW. This usually happens early in the fight as well, so assuming you have an 8 minute fight, you can use HoTW twice, once on that first shroom, and once on the last 10% of the boss where your RL says ignore everything else and kill the boss. NV just can't compete with that.

Tectus I am still in the air about. DoC would seem like it would be better here because of the fight length and the lack of unavoidable damage in this fight (aside from the tanks, ALL damage in this fight except for Upheaval is avoidable). I guess it would heavily depend on your specific raid. If they need the extra healing to live through tectonic, I would go with HoTW. Otherwise I would stick with DoC. Haven't done this on mythic yet.

Twin Ogron = HoTW. This fight has high amount of unavoidable damage and that damage comes rather frequently. This fight is also short - extremely short (less than 5 minutes on average). With NV - your results may vary, but you will be able to use it ~3 times within 5 minutes for a minute and a half of uptime. Problem is, most of that time you are dodging fire/pulverize to benefit fully from NV. You are better off using HoTW later in the fight where the abilities start to run together or whenever your raid needs the most healing.

Ko'ragh = HoTW. Haven't done this on mythic yet. Again - this is a fight that has a high amount of unavoidable damage. This damage also ramps up the longer the fight lasts. You also have to deal with Expel Magic: Shadow - which requires you to heal each raid member 140-190k before the shadow dissipates. This debuff can also be up when Overflowing energy and Expel Magic: Fire are out. Meaning you need to get rid of Expel Magic: Shadow as quick as possible. Best way to do that is with an HoTW empowered tranq. NV's damage is going to be absorbed by the bosses shield, as is DoC - meaning neither are going to return ANY healing from the damage you deal while they are up.

Imperator: See Kargath. I have not done this fight in mythic and I am not even going to bother guessing how to heal this fight without seeing it for myself (lets just say it looks a bit more healing intensive on mythic). In normal and heroic the name of the game is, survive to P4 with as much mana as possible. Aside from the aberrations and force nova's, there is no sustained unavoidable damage in this fight. This means that in the first 3 phases of the fight - as long as your raid kills the adds reasonably quickly, and knows how to run through force nova - you can easily heal that damage with WM and SoTF/WG. This means you spend 75% of the fight (which normally lasts ~10 minutes, so essentially 8 minutes) with nothing to heal. This makes DoC the clear winner. Free heals for days, and you spend 8 minutes of the fight DPSing while regenning mana you spent healing through the add damage or healing through the force nova's.

It's just - NV doesn't fit into any of these fights that I can see. That might be due to my raid comp, but so far these are the talents I have gone with for each fight.

Thank you for this. How about HotW/NV and the synergies with ToL/SotF?

My talent choices for each fight (I Use DB, YG, Typhoon, Ursols, and Germ for the other talent choices) :
Kargath: DoC+SoTF
Butcher: HoTW+SoTF
Brackenspore: HoTW+Inc (Still progressing Mythic)
Tectus: HoTW+SoTF (as I explained earlier - DoC might be better here depending on your raid)
Twins: HoTW+SoTF
Ko'ragh: HoTW+SoTF
Imp: DoC+SoTF

To clarify, on fights where there isn't much damage to heal - DoC outperforms NV in every respect. On fights where there is a lot to heal and throughput cool downs are needed - HoTW wins. In almost every case SoTF is better than Inc or Trees. The only time Inc becomes better is when you need an additional 3 min healing CD to use when tranq is on CD (like brackenspore or twins - but again I found SoTF was just better on Twins once we learned the fight)

[Brilynn]

My talent choices for each fight (I Use DB, YG, Typhoon, Ursols, and Germ for the other talent choices) :
Kargath: DoC+SoTF
Butcher: HoTW+SoTF
Brackenspore: HoTW+Inc (Still progressing Mythic)
Tectus: HoTW+SoTF (as I explained earlier - DoC might be better here depending on your raid)
Twins: HoTW+SoTF
Ko'ragh: HoTW+SoTF
Imp: DoC+SoTF

See, it's funny, because our talent choices as Resto Druid entirely depend on individuals raids and personal play style. I only used HoTW on 2 fights during progression, and that was to help dps for the butcher check, and to clear my designated shadow on Ko'ragh. Everything else I used Vigil (or DoC for Imp), and Incarnation. I don't think I used SotF for a single progression fight this tier. The Rejuv cost reduction from Incarn is just so pro paired with Vigil. Some druids like HoTW and SotF, which is FINE if it works for their raid. It totally depends on your strats, co-healers, and designation within the raid. Kargath I would absolutely use DoC if I wasn't the healer going up into the stands. It just depends... there's not a RIGHT answer to which talents are best per fight imo.

[Skyfall]

It really depends on the fight. There are a number of fights where HoTW is the clear choice, but to be honest, I haven't been all that impressed with NV on any fight this tier so far considering they removed the healing increase from it and it is pretty much useless at the moment.

I would hardly say its useless... For instance in our Mythic Margok kill last night it did 2 million healing for me with less than 10% overheal. I strictly used it when large adds were alive (and once in Cho'Galls Phase), so that 2 million healing was at least as meaningful if not more than just about any other healing i did during that fight. Its extremely powerful with Incarnation (esp with Caustic Healing active and Berserking) and allows a ton of throughput in a pinch. I don't really know why people under-value it so much. Decent healing, very good overheal protection, 30%-ish uptime, decent sync'ing with most boss mechanics and other CDs, etc...

Kargath = DoC. There really isn't much healing to do on this fight, even in mythic. DoC saves you the mana with free heals for every wrath you would otherwise spend using NV or HoTW. While progressing this fight on mythic I would stick with HoTW because there is going to be more damage while you learn the fight, otherwise go with DoC.

If there isn't much healing to do why are you concerned with saving mana? If theres nothing to heal you can do a lot more damage with a hotw burst at the beginning, and NV syncs up nicely with going into the stands. I would choose one of the two depending on if you're going up or not.

Butcher = HoTW. Lets be honest, there is only 1 hard part to healing this fight (I've only done it on heroic), and that's ensuring you have enough mana to last the soft enrage from 30%-0. Considering this portion of the fight lasts ~1 to 2 minutes, having HoTW here for 45 seconds is a must.

Agree, whether you use it for healing sub 30% or dps at the start is up in the air, but HotW is the clear choice

Brackenspore = HoTW. Honestly - the only real winner here is HoTW. The reason is 2 fold. That one rejuv mushroom during infesting spores where you have no living mushroom. You can pretty much help keep the rejuv shroom alive with HoTs empowered by HoTW, and have a HoTW tranq at 9-10 stacks of infesting spores and heal your entire raid to full. That one part of the fight where healing is an issue becomes a non-issue with HoTW. This usually happens early in the fight as well, so assuming you have an 8 minute fight, you can use HoTW twice, once on that first shroom, and once on the last 10% of the boss where your RL says ignore everything else and kill the boss. NV just can't compete with that.

Personally I use NV during infesting as much as possible, if you prefer to hotw dps the start and use it as a healing cd later im not sure it would make a difference, but theres not really a lot to heal on that fight in general (i guess unless you're assigned to the mushrooms), a tranq is more than enough to cover any infesting damage unless you have a ton of spore shooters up or something.

Tectus I am still in the air about. DoC would seem like it would be better here because of the fight length and the lack of unavoidable damage in this fight (aside from the tanks, ALL damage in this fight except for Upheaval is avoidable). I guess it would heavily depend on your specific raid. If they need the extra healing to live through tectonic, I would go with HoTW. Otherwise I would stick with DoC. Haven't done this on mythic yet.

HotW, pop it before you tranq on the second upheaval, and it should last almost the rest of the fight for you to spam the tanks when all 8 little guys are up (Incarnation helps here as well, to bomb regrowths on the tanks, who should be the only ones taking damage at that point). Im not sure what you mean when you say the fight length lends itself to DoC, this is an incredibly short fight...

Twin Ogron = HoTW. This fight has high amount of unavoidable damage and that damage comes rather frequently. This fight is also short - extremely short (less than 5 minutes on average). With NV - your results may vary, but you will be able to use it ~3 times within 5 minutes for a minute and a half of uptime. Problem is, most of that time you are dodging fire/pulverize to benefit fully from NV. You are better off using HoTW later in the fight where the abilities start to run together or whenever your raid needs the most healing.

NV lines up very nicely with quake. Also NV benefits primarily from Rejuv (instant cast), so dodging things should have zero effect on its usefulness, since movement shouldn't mean you're doing any less healing with rejuv. In fact it makes NV stronger, since WG is the one thing that doesn't benefit from it (and mushroom obv) and WG is the thing most impaired by constant movement.

Ko'ragh = HoTW. Haven't done this on mythic yet. Again - this is a fight that has a high amount of unavoidable damage. This damage also ramps up the longer the fight lasts. You also have to deal with Expel Magic: Shadow - which requires you to heal each raid member 140-190k before the shadow dissipates. This debuff can also be up when Overflowing energy and Expel Magic: Fire are out. Meaning you need to get rid of Expel Magic: Shadow as quick as possible. Best way to do that is with an HoTW empowered tranq. NV's damage is going to be absorbed by the bosses shield, as is DoC - meaning neither are going to return ANY healing from the damage you deal while they are up.

I use NV again, we use Tranq/Hymn/Tide to cover shadow depending on healer comp, so no additional CDs are needed, use NV to line up with Inc during heavy healing phases (frosts, 3rd fire especially). Saving HotW for the end when people are spread out and some are mind controlled and people start to die could be worth it, or for the last burn if he goes to the middle an extra time to dps during progression would be decent choices though. I dont understand why the shield effects NV? I mean sure the damage it deals may not be worth much in that case, but HotW does no damage anyway if you use it for healing CD, so that doesn't seem terribly relevant as a comparison. You would choose it for the healing it does, the damage is kind of a bonus.

Imperator: See Kargath. I have not done this fight in mythic and I am not even going to bother guessing how to heal this fight without seeing it for myself (lets just say it looks a bit more healing intensive on mythic). In normal and heroic the name of the game is, survive to P4 with as much mana as possible. Aside from the aberrations and force nova's, there is no sustained unavoidable damage in this fight. This means that in the first 3 phases of the fight - as long as your raid kills the adds reasonably quickly, and knows how to run through force nova - you can easily heal that damage with WM and SoTF/WG. This means you spend 75% of the fight (which normally lasts ~10 minutes, so essentially 8 minutes) with nothing to heal. This makes DoC the clear winner. Free heals for days, and you spend 8 minutes of the fight DPSing while regenning mana you spent healing through the add damage or healing through the force nova's.

DoC is great if you are struggling with mana, but as I said earlier, NV is a way more powerful CD than you are giving it credit for. Those adds do a TON of damage, especially in p3 when you are dealing with the fortified replicated novas, all those mines, two arcane wraths, etc all while you cannot be stacked up half the time as the novas go out. Ideally the add dies before the novas, but it doesn't always work that way, and you can be low going into them even if it does. It gets hectic fast, and DoC isn't going to help you there.

It's just - NV doesn't fit into any of these fights that I can see. That might be due to my raid comp, but so far these are the talents I have gone with for each fight.



My talent choices for each fight (I Use DB, YG, Typhoon, Ursols, and Germ for the other talent choices) :
Kargath: DoC+SoTF
Butcher: HoTW+SoTF
Brackenspore: HoTW+Inc (Still progressing Mythic)
Tectus: HoTW+SoTF (as I explained earlier - DoC might be better here depending on your raid)
Twins: HoTW+SoTF
Ko'ragh: HoTW+SoTF
Imp: DoC+SoTF

To clarify, on fights where there isn't much damage to heal - DoC outperforms NV in every respect. On fights where there is a lot to heal and throughput cool downs are needed - HoTW wins. In almost every case SoTF is better than Inc or Trees. The only time Inc becomes better is when you need an additional 3 min healing CD to use when tranq is on CD (like brackenspore or twins - but again I found SoTF was just better on Twins once we learned the fight)

Incarnation is extremely powerful both as a mana cooldown and as a throughput CD, even moreso with NV. I use it on every fight regardless of l90 talent. A RG/SoTF/DoC playstyle is interesting, but somewhat impractical still, in large part due to the fact that WG no longer is a smart heal, and unless everyone is pretty low, it gives you no control with regards to overhealing, or healing the people who are near death, so I prefer to avoid it, although well see if any fights in BRF lend themselves to that more than Highmaul ones do

[alibaba]

i came up with SotF / DoC / Moment of Clarity.. i use it just everywhere (except HotW for M Butcher). for my playstyle this is way more mana friendly and my output is just fine. sometimes you struggle with MoC Procs but i never found this as a cause for wipes.
i even end up DoC'ing in mythic imperator p3, usually entering at around 50% mana (without having used a mana pot)

[Whydrood]

I would hardly say its useless... For instance in our Mythic Margok kill last night it did 2 million healing for me with less than 10% overheal. I strictly used it when large adds were alive (and once in Cho'Galls Phase), so that 2 million healing was at least as meaningful if not more than just about any other healing i did during that fight. Its extremely powerful with Incarnation (esp with Caustic Healing active and Berserking) and allows a ton of throughput in a pinch. I don't really know why people under-value it so much. Decent healing, very good overheal protection, 30%-ish uptime, decent sync'ing with most boss mechanics and other CDs, etc...

I am not sure about Mythic Imp as I stated in my post - but if it only did 2 mil healing on mythic it doesn't seem like it is as strong as DoC would be in that situation.

For
1. DoC is completely free healing.
2. DoC is going to heal for a ton more, and do a ton more damage over the course of the fight.

Examples:
I pulled the current top 2 resto druids from WCL - Sonie and Elu both parsed at 682 ilvl - it just so happened Elu used NV, and Sonie used DoC - here are the results from those 2 logs

First Sonie with DoC: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ling&source=26
2.97M healing with DoC. 2.5m damage done with Wrath = total contribution to the raid, 5.47m

Next Elu with NV: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ling&source=12
1.85m healing from NV. 2.02 million damage done from NV = total contribution to the raid, 3.87m.

Here is a comparison of the 2 fights showing Sonie's DoC in red, and Elu's NV in yellow:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...g&source=26,12

For the NV numbers I only counted the NV damage as wrath was only cast when NV was on CD. With wrath added in the total is 4.84m with NV. Again, these are just 2 random logs and the numbers are extremely close - but it goes to my point that NV really doesn't seem to fit anywhere this tier as the other choices seem stronger overall (the DoC healing is more consistent throughout the fight - and again, it is completely free healing).

If there isn't much healing to do why are you concerned with saving mana? If theres nothing to heal you can do a lot more damage with a hotw burst at the beginning, and NV syncs up nicely with going into the stands. I would choose one of the two depending on if you're going up or not.

To put it simply - because people are morons and they screw up - and that usually means you need to spend a lot of mana getting them out of the mess they got themselves into (if you don't understand what I mean, run a pug Heroic Imp). People get hit by bombs on kargath mythic which is also a drain on mana, they are also pelted from the bleachers which requires mana, chain hurl group being topped off before they are thrown requires mana - this is why saving mana is a concern. I can do as much damage throughout the kargath fight with DoC as I can with HoTW in the first 45 seconds - the difference is, with DoC I am also getting the benefit of the heal.

Personally I use NV during infesting as much as possible, if you prefer to hotw dps the start and use it as a healing cd later im not sure it would make a difference, but theres not really a lot to heal on that fight in general (i guess unless you're assigned to the mushrooms), a tranq is more than enough to cover any infesting damage unless you have a ton of spore shooters up or something.

I am assigned to shrooms - and to tranq the 2nd infesting spores which is why HoTW makes sense for me. I can use it early and it will be up towards the end of the fight.

HotW, pop it before you tranq on the second upheaval, and it should last almost the rest of the fight for you to spam the tanks when all 8 little guys are up (Incarnation helps here as well, to bomb regrowths on the tanks, who should be the only ones taking damage at that point). Im not sure what you mean when you say the fight length lends itself to DoC, this is an incredibly short fight...

I have not done this fight on mythic - on heroic we do Tectus -> Shard 1 > Motes > Shard 2 > Motes - so the fight is usually pretty long.

NV lines up very nicely with quake. Also NV benefits primarily from Rejuv (instant cast), so dodging things should have zero effect on its usefulness, since movement shouldn't mean you're doing any less healing with rejuv. In fact it makes NV stronger, since WG is the one thing that doesn't benefit from it (and mushroom obv) and WG is the thing most impaired by constant movement.

Yes, but rejuv spam is very mana inefficient. Even though the fight is short - if you are still progressing through mythic you are going to run into issues with mana if you decide to rejuv spam/NV for every quake. You won't even make it past the 2nd quake without having to pot.

I use NV again, we use Tranq/Hymn/Tide to cover shadow depending on healer comp, so no additional CDs are needed, use NV to line up with Inc during heavy healing phases (frosts, 3rd fire especially). Saving HotW for the end when people are spread out and some are mind controlled and people start to die could be worth it, or for the last burn if he goes to the middle an extra time to dps during progression would be decent choices though. I dont understand why the shield effects NV? I mean sure the damage it deals may not be worth much in that case, but HotW does no damage anyway if you use it for healing CD, so that doesn't seem terribly relevant as a comparison. You would choose it for the healing it does, the damage is kind of a bonus.

If you are chosing it for the healing it does, then how can you possibly think NV is better than HoTW. With HoTW you get 35% extra healing for 45 seconds every 6 minutes. The top parsing Druid on Koragh used NV - it did a whopping 622k healing and used it 3 times.

The next highest parsing druid used HoTW:
While HoTW was active: did 115k HPS which was nearly double his HPS for the remainder of the fight. He did 5.26 million heals while it was up. I zoomed into the next tranq he did without HoTW and included 45 seconds so I could compare the healing he did without HoTW. He managed 3.13 million heals during that 45 seconds. Meaning HoTW netted him an additional 2.13 million heals in 45 seconds - compare that to the 622k NV did. Again - NV just doesn't seem to be worth using after looking at the numbers.

DoC is great if you are struggling with mana, but as I said earlier, NV is a way more powerful CD than you are giving it credit for. Those adds do a TON of damage, especially in p3 when you are dealing with the fortified replicated novas, all those mines, two arcane wraths, etc all while you cannot be stacked up half the time as the novas go out. Ideally the add dies before the novas, but it doesn't always work that way, and you can be low going into them even if it does. It gets hectic fast, and DoC isn't going to help you there.

I am by no means saying that NV doesn't have a place - I am just saying that the other talents just by looking at the numbers - are much stronger and much more efficient.

Incarnation is extremely powerful both as a mana cooldown and as a throughput CD, even moreso with NV. I use it on every fight regardless of l90 talent. A RG/SoTF/DoC playstyle is interesting, but somewhat impractical still, in large part due to the fact that WG no longer is a smart heal, and unless everyone is pretty low, it gives you no control with regards to overhealing, or healing the people who are near death, so I prefer to avoid it, although well see if any fights in BRF lend themselves to that more than Highmaul ones do

I don't see how Incarnation is a mana cooldown anymore. If you don't understand where I am coming from - pop incarnation when you are sitting at 0 mana. Either way you go (SoTF or Incarnation) you get an increase in healing. What makes me choose incarnation is when I need to spam instant regrowths on multiple targets. Honestly saving 900 mana per rejuv cast means a free rejuv every 4 rejuv cast. Casting 10 rejuv's with Incarnation up will cost me 21k mana. Casting 10 rejuvs up without Inc will cost me 30k, so the more you cast, the more mana you save. Problem is - I haven't seen a fight where it makes sense to blow 20k mana blanket rejuv'ing the raid. There hasn't been a fight where maintaining rejuvenation's on more than 4-5 people makes sense - Except of course the Brackenspore fight. Here is why this fight is different: Rejuvenating shrooms. You can safely spam regrowth and rejuvenations on as many people as you want without worrying about your mana because you get more mana back than you can spend. This is the ONLY fight where blanket rejuvs and regrowth spamming makes sense. Even on Koragh you will get more out of a SoTF/WG over the course of a fight then you will blanket rejuving (again speaking specifically about heroic - haven't done mythic yet).

Maybe the other talents will get better once 6.1 drops, but as of now - HoTW, SoTF and DoC are clear winners for the majority of the fights.

[nightfalls]

Maybe the other talents will get better once 6.1 drops, but as of now - HoTW, SoTF and DoC are clear winners for the majority of the fights.

I wouldn't say that, not even close. The default build, in general, in my opinion should be Incarnation and NV in fact. It gives you the most burst and flexibility, with NV being only a 1.5 min CD. It also works well with heavy haste builds because both abilities are amazing with Rejuv blanketing. It is easily what I would recommend for all Heroic fights, Kargath being a wash, but since I did stands NV/Incarnation is the clear winner there (even if, then too, it's kind of a wash and doesn't really matter what you pick or if you leave the rows blank by mistake).

For Imperator, the reason you use SotF is because the damage patterns work best with constant, pulsing damage, and even here my impression is that the damage is more constant/pulsing in Mythic than in Heroic even, in Heroic the damage is actually more burst type. If you take SotF, you generally are going to be going WG heavy, and Rejuv light, so you don't take NV because NV requires heavy rejuv usage to be effective, pure and simple.

TL/DR: For "super burst" and "super tranq" go with Heart of the Wild, for general usage (Rejuv reliant) go with NV, for SotF/WG builds, go with DoC or HotW.

[Thalur]

I have not done this fight on mythic - on heroic we do Tectus -> Shard 1 > Motes > Shard 2 > Motes - so the fight is usually pretty long.

Tectus on mythic is a very different fight. If you have a Clarity of Will disc priest, he can heal the boss alone except for the Upheaval and the last 30s of the fight. Except for tanks, there is no damage coming in for the rest of the fight (when done right), and there is no hard enrage timer, so using HotW for healing the last phase is the clear choice here. (Tectus log)

Concerning the talent choices for the other bosses, the discussion is pretty moot for most of the bosses because once you have them on farm, every talent can work for every boss with the exception of Butcher and Imperator. All other fights are neither healing nor dps checks, so you don't need to go down to 3 healers (except Tectus) and with 4 healers, they are very easy to heal once your raid gets the execution right.

So that leaves Butcher - HotW is clear winner here, and both SotF and Inc work well. The choice is basically between more healing for the whole fight vs. another CD. Since we usually have too many CDs for the sub-30% phase in our raid, I mostly use SotF to get most of the healing during the non-CD phase, but Inc works just as well.

The right talents for Imperator depend on play style. All of the combinations can be seen used for kills (SotF+HotW, Inc+NV, either+DoC). As the only mana-limited fight this tier, there are several ways to cope with that. With DoC, you give up throughput during CDs for healing during the slow phases, both are free and give about the same amount of healing. So it also depends on what your raid needs, at which points you're struggling to keep the healing up without running out of mana. I tried out several options during progression and couldn't make out a clear winner.

[Aleks0410]

HotW increase your overall healing by 4.375% over the course of its CD

I don't understand this.

[Thalur]

I don't understand this.

It's the worst case assumption for using it with averagely distributed healing over a fight of length that is exactly a multiple of the CD. In reality, it's much better though (when used exclusively for the healing buff).

1. Fight lengths are not exactly 6 or 12 minutes. In a 4 minutes fight, your average healing increase is 6.56%. In a 7 minutes fight (using HotW twice), it's 7.5%.
2. Since you use HotW in phases where you need the healing (i.e. high throughput phase), the actual effect is much more than what the average tells. Especially if you count Tranqulity healing (which is only useful on some fights), the benefit increases a lot.

Realistically, HotW increases healing by about 10%. Some fights much more (like Butcher), some fights less. In most scenarios, it's currently much stronger than NV.

[Keiyra]

@ Aleks0410

Thalurs response above is dead on (when the healing boost is used will greatly affect how good HOTW actually is)

The number I gave was just the unweighted average to give the OP a general idea
(35% bonus*45 sec duration/360 sec cd = 4.375%) - in case it was how i got the number that you didn't understand.

[Aleks0410]

I think you both answered my question. Unless my following question is completely off the mark: is it a safe assumtion that HoTW is a 30% increase to your healing within the 45 sec duration?

[Ctee]

If I told you my healing team consists of

Resto Druid
Resto Shaman
Holy Paladin
Disc Priest

Is there more of a clear cut build for me?

[Skyfall]

I am not sure about Mythic Imp as I stated in my post - but if it only did 2 mil healing on mythic it doesn't seem like it is as strong as DoC would be in that situation.

For
1. DoC is completely free healing.
2. DoC is going to heal for a ton more, and do a ton more damage over the course of the fight.

Examples:
I pulled the current top 2 resto druids from WCL - Sonie and Elu both parsed at 682 ilvl - it just so happened Elu used NV, and Sonie used DoC - here are the results from those 2 logs

First Sonie with DoC: reports/Zxc3apP2FWk7dmAr#fight=29&type=healing&source=26
2.97M healing with DoC. 2.5m damage done with Wrath = total contribution to the raid, 5.47m

Next Elu with NV: reports/w8Xg4ZmFrAdvhQ2T#fight=41&type=healing&source=12
1.85m healing from NV. 2.02 million damage done from NV = total contribution to the raid, 3.87m.

Here is a comparison of the 2 fights showing Sonie's DoC in red, and Elu's NV in yellow:
reports/compare/Zxc3apP2FWk7dmAr/w8Xg4ZmFrAdvhQ2T#type=healing&source=26,12

For the NV numbers I only counted the NV damage as wrath was only cast when NV was on CD. With wrath added in the total is 4.84m with NV. Again, these are just 2 random logs and the numbers are extremely close - but it goes to my point that NV really doesn't seem to fit anywhere this tier as the other choices seem stronger overall (the DoC healing is more consistent throughout the fight - and again, it is completely free healing).

But its not just overall healing and damage that matter, on that fight especially its WHEN you are doing the damage and healing that is important. Theres a lot of alternating burst and downtime for both healing and damage. Simply put, DoC is healing when theres not a lot to heal, NV heals when there is. They are both mana-free smart(ish) heals, but one is a cooldown to use in high damage phases, and one is just used to conserve mana when theres really nothing to do. The times in that fight when damage really matters, you wont be sitting there casting DoC, because people will also be dying. DoC has its place if you are simply struggling to make it through the fight with all your mana, but on that fight you can just cast non-DoC wraths during downtime to regen mana anyway, and let mushroom and other more passive heals do their work, DoC is just sniping healing from passive heals. Sure maybe in the end it can help you top meters, but that shouldn't be what matters.

To put it simply - because people are morons and they screw up - and that usually means you need to spend a lot of mana getting them out of the mess they got themselves into (if you don't understand what I mean, run a pug Heroic Imp). People get hit by bombs on kargath mythic which is also a drain on mana, they are also pelted from the bleachers which requires mana, chain hurl group being topped off before they are thrown requires mana - this is why saving mana is a concern. I can do as much damage throughout the kargath fight with DoC as I can with HoTW in the first 45 seconds - the difference is, with DoC I am also getting the benefit of the heal.

Aside from the fact that people should not be screwing up on kargath, especially nearly 2 months into the tier, i dont think you can really go oom in a fight that short (for reference, I finished our first kill of that boss with over 50% mana using HotW, around ilvl 650 when it was still a nearly 6 minute fight). DoC is a mana saver, but if you use it and finish a fight with lots of spare mana, it would have been better to take either of the other talents really. I would also bet HotW has higher dps potential than DoC on that fight (unless you stop dpsing as soon as it ends, and you have a really long kill time). Either way its a pointless debate here, since you could go in with no talents at all to that fight and it would still be fine.

If you are chosing it for the healing it does, then how can you possibly think NV is better than HoTW. With HoTW you get 35% extra healing for 45 seconds every 6 minutes. reports/QjKgGyNT64pac1HL#fight=26&type=healing&source=10 The top parsing Druid on Koragh used NV - it did a whopping 622k healing and used it 3 times.

The next highest parsing druid used HoTW:
While HoTW was active: reports/Yzmndb1GAywc7v9g#fight=21&type=healing&pins=0%24Main%24%23244F4B%24auras-gained%240%240.0.0.Any%240.0.0.Any%24true%24130619716.0.0.Druid%24false%24108294&source=4& translate=true&start=9773275&end=9819243 did 115k HPS which was nearly double his HPS for the remainder of the fight. He did 5.26 million heals while it was up. reports/Yzmndb1GAywc7v9g#fight=21&type=healing&pins=0%24Separate%24%23244F4B%24auras-gained%240%240.0.0.Any%240.0.0.Any%24true%24130619716.0.0.Druid%24false%24108294&translate =true&source=4&start=9951316&end=9996961 I zoomed into the next tranq he did without HoTW and included 45 seconds so I could compare the healing he did without HoTW. He managed 3.13 million heals during that 45 seconds. Meaning HoTW netted him an additional 2.13 million heals in 45 seconds - compare that to the 622k NV did. Again - NV just doesn't seem to be worth using after looking at the numbers.

Way too many other factors going on there to say that HotW was the reason for the disparity. At the very least i think its safe to say it did not increase the healing done by nearly 70%. For instance, in the first one, his tranq was less than 40% overheal, in the second window it was over 60%, thats a big difference there, and if he switched to using HotW in the second one instead of the first, the first tranq still would have likely done more healing. Plus he had 4 WG casts the first time and only used it twice the second time. A lot going on that is non-HotW related.

I am by no means saying that NV doesn't have a place - I am just saying that the other talents just by looking at the numbers - are much stronger and much more efficient.

And i'm saying thats just not true. They are all very close and very situational, on the whole our our three real throughput tiers (not really counting CW/YG) this one is by far the weakest. NV and HotW are BOTH very viable, and they all depend on the situation.

I don't see how Incarnation is a mana cooldown anymore. If you don't understand where I am coming from - pop incarnation when you are sitting at 0 mana.

That makes no sense. Reducing the mana cost of your primary ability IS a mana cooldown. You can argue its not a strong one, and we would just disagree on that, but you can't say its not a mana cooldown. It is. It saves you mana.

[Brilynn]

If I told you my healing team consists of

Resto Druid
Resto Shaman
Holy Paladin
Disc Priest

Is there more of a clear cut build for me?

It's not just your healing team classes, it's how you handle different phases of the fight. Use what works for you. If you have a phase of more intense healing every once in a while (like Twin Ogron) use NV. If you are dedicated to healing the raid in one really big damage phase (clearing shadow on Ko'ragh, or the last 30% of butcher), take HoTW. If there's hardly any healing to be done, take DoC (really only if you're not doing stands on Kargath, and for mana conservation on Imp for the first few phases) If you're having mana trouble, or it works out better with other CDs (Brackenspore mushrooms when it isn't time for tranq yet, and you have maybe a weaker CD out to cover damage), take Incarnation. If you feel more comfortable using SotF, take that instead! It's entirely dependent upon what you're comfortable using and what works best for you and your raids rotation of healing CDs per encounter.