Cenarion Ward vs Ysera's Gift

[Nasigoring]

Ysera's Gift
100 yd range
Requires Druid
Requires level 30
Heals you for 4% of your maximum health every 5 sec. If you are at full health, a random nearby injured ally will be healed instead.

That's how it heals the raid. I'm inclined to agree with the YG crowd. It's free, constant healing and it's relatively smart with 3x the throughput. The Druid toolkit is sufficient enough to do anything that CW might help you with.

[jahoosuphat]

Ysera's Gift
100 yd range
Requires Druid
Requires level 30
Heals you for 4% of your maximum health every 5 sec. If you are at full health, a random nearby injured ally will be healed instead.

That's how it heals the raid. I'm inclined to agree with the YG crowd. It's free, constant healing and it's relatively smart with 3x the throughput. The Druid toolkit is sufficient enough to do anything that CW might help you with.

I can see this argument for Maidens, Flamebender, and p1 and maybe the beginning of p2 in Blast Furnace. Every other fight has substantial raid-wide AOE which relegates YG to a self heal. Not saying that's a bad thing or wrong, just that over half your YG healing in the other 7 encounters will be on yourself as you'll find in most logs. If you're looking for 500-700k extra smart heals on yourself then it's definitely the talent for you.

[Mrbleedinggums]

Bring up logs (if your guild runs them. If not, they're not anything serious about raiding and shouldn't bother worrying about your choice of talents in the first place.) and show on the attempts just how much YG actually (doesn't) heal the raid versus heals you due to constant raid-wide damage. Now if you were running Renewal, I could see people being upset. CW is a lower hp but higher focus heal for spikes, while YG is more of a buffer to help lessen healing on yourself (say Blackhand p3) or fights where it'll heal others because you're not constantly being hit (Thogar)

[Tiberria]

I can see this argument for Maidens, Flamebender, and p1 and maybe the beginning of p2 in Blast Furnace. Every other fight has substantial raid-wide AOE which relegates YG to a self heal. Not saying that's a bad thing or wrong, just that over half your YG healing in the other 7 encounters will be on yourself as you'll find in most logs. If you're looking for 500-700k extra smart heals on yourself then it's definitely the talent for you.

You act as if it acting as a self heal is somehow bad or undesirable. Ultimately, even if 70% of the healing from YG is healing yourself, that is still mana and GCDs and healing that you and other healers don't need to be doing that adds up over the course of the fight. On top of that, Resto Druids have some of the weakest personal survivability cooldowns/abilities of any spec (just a 20% damage reduction when most specs have higher damage reductions or immunities against at least some mechanics). Having that extra passive self healing when you're one of the "squishier" specs in the raid isn't necessarily a negative - especially when we have multiple other components in our toolkit that can fill a similar role to CW without the throughput cost.

[jahoosuphat]

You act as if it acting as a self heal is somehow bad or undesirable. Ultimately, even if 70% of the healing from YG is healing yourself, that is still mana and GCDs and healing that you and other healers don't need to be doing that adds up over the course of the fight. On top of that, Resto Druids have some of the weakest personal survivability cooldowns/abilities of any spec (just a 20% damage reduction when most specs have higher damage reductions or immunities against at least some mechanics). Having that extra passive self healing when you're one of the "squishier" specs in the raid isn't necessarily a negative - especially when we have multiple other components in our toolkit that can fill a similar role to CW without the throughput cost.

I can see this argument for Maidens, Flamebender, and p1 and maybe the beginning of p2 in Blast Furnace. Every other fight has substantial raid-wide AOE which relegates YG to a self heal.Not saying that's a bad thing or wrong, just that over half your YG healing in the other 7 encounters will be on yourself as you'll find in most logs. If you're looking for 500-700k extra smart heals on yourself then it's definitely the talent for you.

As I think we've established it's definitely a personal choice and situational to boot.

[Deleted]

I love CW as a guardian.

[Deleted]

Ysera is a lot more throughput than CW is, that being said CW is targetable and provides higher healing when needed.

[Kojiyama]

I think the overhealing argument against Ysera's Gift is a bit of a red herring.

In general, I actually think Cenarion Ward is more likely to overheal than Ysera's Gift. You are essentially putting all your eggs in the basket of a proc-based reactive HoT that could easily end up being negated by another healer's quick healing.

Ysera's Gift is only going to have high overhealing values when there is nothing to heal, which is basically irrelevant to CW as well. On any fight with a lot of damage--e.g. Mythic Kromog--you are not going to have a ton of overhealing from Ysera's Gift. On my last Kromog parse, for instance, Ysera's gift only had 2.3% overhealing. On my Heroic Blackhand kill the other day it had 5% overhealing. Even when it does have overhealing, on most fights it is not significantly higher than any other heal. On Mythic Kromog, it is essentially 1m free healing that requires no action or mana. That's pretty good.

CW's HPCT is really good, but it still needs to be compared with other things you could be doing with your globals. e.g. if CW does 95kHPCT and Regrowth does 59kHPCT, you are still only gaining a net advantage of 36kHPCT for that global. (Numbers from HealerCalcs spreadsheet.) The mana efficiency essentially makes this extra healing 'free' roughly. Essentially, it basically like netting 1 free Rejuv global worth of HPCT every 30 seconds. It's not bad at all, but maybe not as good as it actually looks.

You are basically netting something like 1.5kHPS compared to using the global on a Regrowth. However, Ysera's Gift is 2.9kHPS extra. It seems really hard to justify CW unless there is a very, very specific need for it.

Banking on one having more or less overheal than the other is really barking up the wrong tree unless you are specifically tunneling one target at the expense of not caring about any raid healing at all.

[Kaolin]

I love CW as a guardian.

It works differently as a Guardian because of Resolve where it heals like 150k lol. I think this is a Resto discussion though.

[Aleks0410]

I think the overhealing argument against Ysera's Gift is a bit of a red herring.
In general, I actually think Cenarion Ward is more likely to overheal than Ysera's Gift. You are essentially putting all your eggs in the basket of a proc-based reactive HoT that could easily end up being negated by another healer's quick healing.

The argument is (still) not that YG overheals. The argument is that YG makes other spells overheal, because you'll never notice or react differently to a healing situation just because YG is ticking (other than on Skada/Recount).

[nightfalls]

The argument is (still) not that YG overheals. The argument is that YG makes other spells overheal, because you'll never notice or react differently to a healing situation just because YG is ticking (other than on Skada/Recount).

The same thing can be said about any HoT, including CW. Considering YG ticks for a small amount every 5 seconds constantly and prioritizes the druid, it's far less likely. By not prioritizing HoTs on druids running YG, you're way less likely to create OH with YG than with CW.

[Aleks0410]

The same thing can be said about any HoT,

I disagree, because every other HoT isn't random, you control where it goes and where. If it was *only* on yourself, then it'd have a meaningful purpose. Self healing. It wouldn't be a bad choise to have something like a rejuv tick on you throughout the entire fight. But the fact that it jumps around like that and heals one person for, what 12k, then to the next target. You'll never notice that and you honestly can't compare that to placing a rejuv on someone.

[Kojiyama]

That just seems like speculation without data to back it up, though. I don't think there is any way that YG is any more likely to 'cause' overhealing than Wild Mushroom, Chain Heal, multistrike procs, Renewing Mists, or any other semi-smart heal.

Just because you control the target does not really change the dynamic of potential overhealing. Potential overhealing is mostly going to be due to the actions of your fellow healers that cannot read your mind and therefore are just as in the dark about where you are going to put your Rejuv as where the game is going to put your YG.

Also, functionally, it is 'only' on yourself for as much as that would actually matter. If you are missing health it is only on yourself. The fact that it heals others when you don't need healing is irrelevant. Nobody is going to try to heal a target at 100% health and therefore YG going on a different target at that time makes no difference to the self-healing functionality of the talent. YG is always the highest source of healing on myself from any target/ability and therefore serves that capacity very well.

I would still argue that the fact that CW is a reactive proc makes it very likely to get wasted. Even the duration seems logically very long for its purpose. It is pretty rare that a tank will actually not be topped off before the 6 second HoT runs its course. In fact, on most fights it is pretty rare for tanks to not be topped back up within 3 seconds of a major spike from most logs I have looked at recently--even if you were able to predict the actual damage spike.

[Aleks0410]

I'm not saying other heals don't overheal. I'm saying YG is so small and random that you'll never do anything differently than you already did. At the end of the fight, you will have spent just as much mana as without it and likely never have saved a raiders life.

Your point about YG on self healing is a good one.

I'm also not saying CW is a gamechanger. But IMO more so than YG. I guess this is all subjective like someone suggested I still lean towards CW.

[Kojiyama]

I'm not so sure about that reasoning, as the same argument could be made about adding 1% more Mastery to your gear or any random tick from any random heal.

The heal from YG is roughly the same as 3 Rejuvenation ticks. Rejuv does about 1.9k HPS in most of the logs I see for myself and YG does 2.9k HPS. It's effectively like having a super-powered Rejuv on you at all times for free. That seems pretty reasonable to me.

It basically means that on any case where you would normally put a Rejuv on someone else but the damage happens to be on you, you would not need to do it. And any time this is not the case, it just bounces around being a free smart heal.

I think CW would have to be significantly stronger to really be better in the general case on the majority of fights.

[Aleks0410]

Its not at all times though and the big thing here is that you can't control that. Also, you're forgetting how often YG might heal you at 95% when someone else is lower.

The "CW is too slow" argument can be used for YG as well. How long would it take YG to heal you up? From say 70% to full.
If you look at what the spells can deliver in a 6 second window, clearly CW wins out minus the global cookdown.

1% more mastery also likely won't save anyones life. But at least its not random. You gear up to gradually be able to handle fights easier. Gear is something we get along the way, not something we have to choose over something else, so its a weird conparison. If i had the choise of a moderate tank heal / CD vs a 1% mastery gain I'd consider the heal / CD.

[Deleted]

there is no encounter in this game where you will either succed or fail if you have YG or CW.

so why the hazzle

stick to what ever you prefer.

[Cannibalus]

- CW as tank in PvE / PvP; feral, resto, boomie in PvP.
- YG as resto, boomie, feral PvE.
- the other dunno wtf it's called is shit so never use it.

[Kojiyama]

Its not at all times though and the big thing here is that you can't control that. Also, you're forgetting how often YG might heal you at 95% when someone else is lower.

The "CW is too slow" argument can be used for YG as well. How long would it take YG to heal you up? From say 70% to full.
If you look at what the spells can deliver in a 6 second window, clearly CW wins out minus the global cookdown.

Well, the logs clearly show that YG does not actually have a huge amount of overheal on the majority of fights that I actually care about efficiency on. Again, the OH thing of YG is a bit of a red herring because it is not nearly as high as one might think in any situation where it actually matters. It actually happens pretty infrequently.

When I say that CW is 'too slow', I talk about wasted potential due to the particular timing of the mechanic.

YG calculates its target when it fires off, not before. CW has a 6s heal 'stuck' on a target as soon as it procs. That is very different. CW target gets hit for 200k, CW procs and give them a 6s HoT, all the healers heal him to full in 3s, half of CW is wasted. Since YG is a smart heal it will always go to targets that actually need healing, which is a lot less likely to be wasted than relying on the full duration of a 6s reactive proc to play out.

I think CW can be useful in a few applications, but I think YG wins out in nearly every case.

CW for tanks is a totally different issue because of how big the heal is and how it gets buffed by Resolve. It becomes part of Guardian's active mitigation toolkit, which is more important especially since they are not having to weigh its value compared to other heals.

[nightfalls]

If you look at what the spells can deliver in a 6 second window, clearly CW wins out minus the global cookdown.

Well, of course, if CW were just a free off-GCD spell, the comparison would be different, and that's a huge part of why people take YG. Literally the "CW defenders" (or whatever you'd call them) are falling back on either making false comparisons, or trying to just say "well, it's a personal choice" when it's obvious their points are just not falling in favor of CW.