Resto Druid - Legion Talents

[stormgust]

Uhg, I seriously need alpha access to shut down this Kriellya guy, it's getting more and more ridiculous how he's defending that garbage of a mastery, and he's just showing how he's actually got no clue whatsoever how this thing actually works, just is fixated some some absurd "feeling" he has (and even that does in no way hold up to reality in terms of "ease" of being rewarded). Just to quote him:

Additionally, going numerical for a bit, if it is balanced around 1.7 HoT's, that means we need 2 HoT's to exceed mean value. That is such an easy amount to achieve that if necessary we can get there on ~6 specific targets at once. And that's before we account for WG, talents, or artifact traits

I may be missing something, but isn't he implying here, that he intends to use regrowth to get more than one HoT going on those targets? If so, that more or less show that he's slightly misjudgding how easily one can stack HoTs on more than two targets (and probably not even considering, how easy one can stack to the absurd 6-7 HoTs on one or two targets)

[Zerxes]

Only reason I'd want alpha is to test the healing spec but I wouldnt want to spoil anything else. That and also helping Tib shut down Kriellya. Feel like that person is a blizzard agent or something.

The legion forum now has more druids agreeing with Tib on the mastery yet my money is on blizz take the 1 person defending it over the like 6+ saying its shit and change it.

[Grinia]

And now there's Koor who doesn't realize the difference between mana/GCD expenditure for mastery gain and positioning/target's health percentage for mastery gain.

[stormgust]

Koor also seems to be totally ignorant of what the issues with the rdruid mastery are, and also draws some more than questionable comparison. Outside of one rather rare case (absorb mechanics), rshaman mastery yields above average performance on all targets when needed, whereas rdruid mastery, due to the stacking mechanic, will yield above average performance on non-predictable focused damage only with a heavy delay (one has to stack HoTs first), perform mostly subpar on all raidwide damage (1 HoT unless wildgrowth), and only yield values significantly above average on the tanks (small caveat: you need talents for our direct heals to even be able to be able to reach more than just pulling equal, as they're tuned to be at 70% of other classes direct heals. But at least it's going to be about +75% to our HoTs in entry gear, likely reaching 150% or so at the end of the exp ...)

edit:
Also, what I don't get, Kriellya has no trouble to agree that Abundance is just pure garbage, yet most of the arguments for abundance failing miserable can be easily transfered to mastery failing. Essentially the only difference tuning wise is, that Abundance is tuned for an average of 7.5 (just imagine it actually buffing regrowth/ht throughput directly, otherwise it hardcaps too fast) HoT, while they opted for the low end on our Mastery.

[nightfalls]

A couple of things that might help with Mastery (no spreadsheets anymore or much to elaborate, sorry!)

1) Perhaps cap the maximum effect to something like 3 or 5. This will avoid the "top end" of healing being so absurd and can allow balancing with the "low end" being relatively stronger.

2) Add a talent or ability that, at the cost of a CD and/or mana, will give a burst of direct healing that automatically benefits from the maximum effect (perhaps NS/Swiftmend). It's in a way similar to the PvP talent (maybe removed?) that puts every HoT on a target - it automatically gives burst mastery, but at a CD.

I do think it's obvious they don't want druids to be a strong burst healer, rather instead have strong steady proactive raid and tank healing. But that doesn't mean they cannot have a burst heal ability (at long CD/cost) since burst healing is quite important.

[stormgust]

A couple of things that might help with Mastery (no spreadsheets anymore or much to elaborate, sorry!)

1) Perhaps cap the maximum effect to something like 3 or 5. This will avoid the "top end" of healing being so absurd and can allow balancing with the "low end" being relatively stronger.

A "high" (five) cap does not stop excessive scaling (at least end of expansion), so it's just a bandaid and not fixing the underlying problems. As for a low cap, the problem there is mostly psychological:
"Will the gain at maximal stacks be actually worth the loss of performance when I cannot stack" [Sure, you could move the assumed average to one, but then you're back to excessive scaling at the end of expac]
"Isn't any GCD spent past the cap on a fixed - as I can no longer use different HoTs - effectively reducing the average number of HoTs I've going out, i.e. my mastery uptime" [This one is actually also interesting form a balancing point of view, because you would have to assume a slightly lower average HoT count in process, but then are just the more likely to focus on a handful of targets, in turn further reducing the average]

[Nythiz]

The only way to make the scaling of this mastery a bit more controllable is to make it consist of 2 values instead of 1.

So the current one is:

Your healing is increased by X% for each of your Restoration heal over time effects on the target.

A somewhat easier to balance option would be:

Your healing is increased by X% and another Y% for each of your Restoration heal over time effects on the target.

X and Y could be different values or could be the same. But at least you'll cut the extensive scaling that HoTs have currently by half.
It's still not a "proper mastery" in my eyes, as it still somewhat inhibits/conflicts with a resto druid from spreading his HoTs around.

Another alternative might be something, that's a compromise between spreading HoTs and stacking HoTs, such as:

Your healing is increased by X% for each of your Restoration heal over time effects active, this bonus is doubled if you're healing a target with at least 2 heal over time effects active.

It's a bit overcomplex maybe, and maybe way off the charts balance wise; but it's about the concept. And the thought is that spreading HoTs is nearly as effective as stacking HoTs, but still gives that multiplier bonus if you smart heal over just spamming rejuv around.

------

Either way. I don't see any option how this current mastery will execute properly without at least some minor tweaking to the mechanic of the whole mastery system. Not number tweaking, but actual mechanical changes.
Becasue without it; I see us becoming either heroes of 5 man/PvP healing (which will eventually result in a series of nerfs, maybe even in the wrong areas), and/or we simply become an inferior pick for certain raid encounters or maybe even for raids all together.
Hell, if it turns out that we need to gather 2 sets, just to be effective at every raid encounter, that by itself might be basis enough to bench a druid.

[Nevcairiel]

They could also use inverse exponential scaling, tuned so that for a total power of X (100%), at 1 stack you get around 60%, at 2 around 80%, and at 3 >90%, that way it wouldn't scale excessively high (in fact its capped to 100% of X), and you get the majority of the benefit at one stack already. But thats probably too complex to understand for players.

Could probably word it somewhat innocently hiding the complex math, listing the baseline at 1 stack and the maximum with some fancy "up to" wording.

[stormgust]

A somewhat easier to balance option would be:

Your healing is increased by X% and another Y% for each of your Restoration heal over time effects on the target.

For which k do you choose X+k*Y <= 1 and for which k, X+k*Y>=1 (normed to performance of other stats)? It's really not any easier to tune, and the only balanced outcome is Y=0 and X~= 1. For X<<1 you either end up with excessive scaling if you choose Y large, or for small Y you end up with a disproportional gain for the work involved (i.e. X+k*Y is only slightly above one), so it isn't worth the average "loss" you're going to face over other stats. Using Y somewhere in the middle just means gear progression will have you at either case somewhere during the course of the expansion.

If you choose X>1, you'd pick mastery over other stats anyway, and Y>0 would then merely would yield other stats being tuned back down (possible to "negligible" performance) to keep overall scaling in check (and again, how do you choose k when balancing this?)


Anyone, unrelated to that, what would you guys think about dreamwalker being triggered by rejuvenation itself, i.e. something along the lines of:
"Your rejuvenation has a chance to instantly heal Y (most injured?) targets afflicted by Rejuvenation for X".

[Kaeth]

Your healing is increased by X% for each of your Restoration heal over time effects active

This is the mastery I've been wanting for a while. It rewards active play, whether you're tank healing or spreading HoTs, scales identically in raids and 5-mans, and it's easy to tune. Maybe we could convince Blizzard to try something like this out by pointing out the synergy with their beloved Abundance talent.

It would have a few issues -- with Wild Growth and Spring Blossoms, it would have to have a scaling cap for these effects (awkward) or perhaps scale with only Lifebloom and Rejuvenation (including Germination), period.

[otterfluff]

This is the mastery I've been wanting for a while. It rewards active play, whether you're tank healing or spreading HoTs, scales identically in raids and 5-mans, and it's easy to tune. Maybe we could convince Blizzard to try something like this out by pointing out the synergy with their beloved Abundance talent.

It would have a few issues -- with Wild Growth and Spring Blossoms, it would have to have a scaling cap for these effects (awkward) or perhaps scale with only Lifebloom and Rejuvenation (including Germination), period.

This has the potential to be quite strong with enough spamming and mastery, so the reins would need to be held back slightly at the start of the xpac. Other than that, I would actually enjoy this in a raid setting. It follows the idea of druids spreading their hots and being rewarded for it. It doesn't force us to stuff our fluff down one target's throat and then get sniped and/or drown them in more overhealing than they're already receive. 9/10 would recommend!

[Nythiz]

For which k do you choose X+k*Y <= 1 and for which k, X+k*Y>=1 (normed to performance of other stats)? It's really not any easier to tune, and the only balanced outcome is Y=0 and X~= 1. For X<<1 you either end up with excessive scaling if you choose Y large, or for small Y you end up with a disproportional gain for the work involved (i.e. X+k*Y is only slightly above one), so it isn't worth the average "loss" you're going to face over other stats. Using Y somewhere in the middle just means gear progression will have you at either case somewhere during the course of the expansion.

If you choose X>1, you'd pick mastery over other stats anyway, and Y>0 would then merely would yield other stats being tuned back down (possible to "negligible" performance) to keep overall scaling in check (and again, how do you choose k when balancing this?)

I'm understanding your point. I think it's a bit too black and white (You either take mastery or you don't !), seeing as sometimes you don't have a choice. If the choice is between Haste/Mastery gloves or Crit/Vers gloves, you might wanna go with the former even if you don't like mastery.
Even with mastery being a "worse stat", the actual item with mastery on it could still be superior.

I'm not saying the nX%+Y% approach is perfect; I'd rather see a whole new mastery mechanic implemented as well; but working from the hypothetical (and likely) situation that that is not going to happen, maybe a compromise that gives a bit more tuning knobs would be a better idea.

At least you can balance this system slightly better without it scaling out of control to ridiculous extends.

Hypothetical example of a 5 man vs a raid with 15% mastery:
In a 5 man you can (between rejuv / LB / Spring Blossom and WG) pretty effectively put up about 3 HoTs per player being healed. That's roughly a 45% increase in healing done, simply because you can stack those HoTs through mastery.
In a raid setting in a scenario where you need to heal a lot of people you can maybe on average get 1.5 HoTs per player you're healing. Spring Blossom might not be an option with Inner Peace right next to it, you can only rejuv so many players. That means that you're only rocking a 15-30% bonus per player being healed, so on average your mastery gives you 22.5% extra healing in this situation.

With the nX%+Y% (where n is the number of HoTs) system you could have n*5% + 20% system. In this case you would on average in the above situation get 35% extra healing on average in that 5 man (10% less than before) and 25-30% extra healing in that raid on average (+2.5%-7.5%).

These are just arbitrary and completely random, probably even unrealistic numbers.

Don't get me wrong. I fully get your point. Mastery relative to other stats is simply unable to be balanced properly. But at least this system cuts slightly into the enormous scaling discrepancy.
Instead of being awful at < n stacks and superb at > n stacks; maybe they can tune it a bit better to be slightly worse at < n and slightly better at > n.

Anyone, unrelated to that, what would you guys think about dreamwalker being triggered by rejuvenation itself, i.e. something along the lines of:
"Your rejuvenation has a chance to instantly heal Y (most injured?) targets afflicted by Rejuvenation for X".

Dunno. I'm still not a huge fan of those procs. At this point I'm starting to miss Genesis, and I didn't even use it that much.

This is the mastery I've been wanting for a while. It rewards active play, whether you're tank healing or spreading HoTs, scales identically in raids and 5-mans, and it's easy to tune. Maybe we could convince Blizzard to try something like this out by pointing out the synergy with their beloved Abundance talent.

It would have a few issues -- with Wild Growth and Spring Blossoms, it would have to have a scaling cap for these effects (awkward) or perhaps scale with only Lifebloom and Rejuvenation (including Germination), period.

This would be the ideal from the point of view of a lot on this forum. But I doubt blizz would go for that. It would be nearly as "passive" as the old mastery was, which they clearly were against. Which is odd seeing the new MW mastery simply being a +X healing done for it's main spells.

On top of that I don't see a huge issue with it being 'passive'. A lot of classes have rather passive mastery systems and there is little wrong with that. There is practically no difference between a BM hunter's: "Mastery increases pet damage by x%" and a Resto druid getting "Mastery increases healing done by X% for each HoT effect active". Both of these are practically passives, both of these are easy tuning knobs (unlike current resto legion implementation) and both of these tie in strongly with the specs feel and lore.

I wouldn't mind a more interactive mastery either, but I don't see the current one being it.

[stormgust]

Well, at least they upped Lifebloom duration, but in the process nerfed it's HPS... Otherwise, not a single of our concerns adressed, and given that most of them have been standing since alpha started, it's probably save to assume that what we have now is what we're going live with...

[Torty]

It's unbelievable. We got nerfed. What in the actual fuck?

And yeah, you can forget about changing this mastery. It's too late into the process by this point and it doesn't look like they give a shit about us past the number tuning.

[Deleted]

It's unbelievable. We got nerfed. What in the actual fuck?

And yeah, you can forget about changing this mastery. It's too late into the process by this point and it doesn't look like they give a shit about us past the number tuning.

Calm down dear, its just a single patch.

No really, look through the things hardly anyone got any changes at all. They just implemented a bunch of grind/dump artifact things mostly.

This didn't strike me as a great re-balancing patch.

[stormgust]

That stat progression change may actually act in our favor to show how ridiculous the mastery is, because now you get those +150% (at 8 HoT stacks) in just dungeons blues, instead of waiting for gear progression to kick in.

Calm down dear, its just a single patch.

So it's been "just a single patch" for since the alpha started? The amount of changes based on our feedback is probably up to one: the Lifebloom change. Everything else is as it was back in december.

[Deleted]

Look mate, I'm a Bear main. They did nothing for Bears except do a heavy nerf on them. But I know better and realize that they have much more to iterate on and this will likely not be the end of it.

You can't expect every patch to address your needs.

This patch seems to add in more base starter options and PvP stuff as well as changes to backend stuff on stats. Its not just about you.

[stormgust]

Look mate, I'm a Bear main. They did nothing for Bears except do a heavy nerf on them. But I know better and realize that they have much more to iterate on and this will likely not be the end of it.

You can't expect every patch to address your needs.

It's not expecting every patch, it's to get at least one patch. There's been no noteworthy change at all in four months, and the only developer comment we have so far heavily implies that they have no planned changes to begin with.

[Tiberria]

Well, we did get Dash back :P.

I don't think the Lifebloom thing is really a nerf. Being able to use 20% less GCDs on refreshing it probably makes the reduced HPS an effective wash. I don't like the Rejuv change (+20% output +17% mana cost), because the spec is going to play horribly if we can't afford to use Rejuv as our primary filler. The WG change (-15% throughput, -10% mana cost) was probably driven by all of the WG synergies (4 piece, SoTF, Prosperity, Arch Druid) making our 60 second CD burst too ridiculous. It's the wrong direction to go. We need to be able to afford at least 3-4 WGs a minute, and we need to be able to afford Rejuv spam between those WGs at minimum. If we can't do that, not only does the spec feel slow and mana starved as hell, it also makes our mastery even more god awful.

As far as the mastery, please don't give up on pushing for it to be changed until you at least post feedback on the US forums (and help shout Kriellya down). Even if you have EU alpha access, you can post on US alpha forums by creating a trial account (see these instructions). People with alpha really need to put in the effort to post and express your opinions. Throwing your hands up in the air and giving up guarantees a negative result.

http://www.wowinterface.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=49735

- - - Updated - - -

For an idea of how weak Tranq is - on the level 110 templates, Tranq with the entire artifact tree filled out heals for 8.7% of the template character's health pool (1.93 million). It makes me question how strong Inner Peace will actually end up being with raid cooldowns that weak.

Innervate is off the GCD this build. Dreamwalker is still scaling off attack power not spell power.

[stormgust]

I don't like the Rejuv change (+20% output +17% mana cost), because the spec is going to play horribly if we can't afford to use Rejuv as our primary filler.

On one side, this has reju less affordable for raidhealing, increases chance to overheal when layered (i.e. reduced efficiency), thus nerfs our mastery even more in the case it was already underperforming. On the other side, this is a significant buff to when you actually can stack mastery already. Does not make sense whatsoever, but well, could you hop onto the PvP realm and check how much reju/lb/CW actually tick for on full mastery stacks (including stonebark).

The WG change (-15% throughput, -10% mana cost) was probably driven by all of the WG synergies (4 piece, SoTF, Prosperity, Arch Druid) making our 60 second CD burst too ridiculous.

Yeah, seems like one of those nerfs, and the net effect of that actually is, that you're just the more inclined to cast WG when youa ctually can stack it up with those mechanics.

For an idea of how weak Tranq is - on the level 110 templates, Tranq with the entire artifact tree filled out heals for 8.7% of the template character's health pool (1.93 million). It makes me question how strong Inner Peace will actually end up being with raid cooldowns that weak.

We've always known that Inner Peace is going to be one of those "either you pick it always, or not at all" talents, depending solely on how strong Tranquility turns out. And the way you describe it, the later is currently the case. Really, this talent has to go for being essentially binary in it's value.