[Legion] Question about Restoration Druid Mastery

[Deleted]

So, I watched that video about the Legion Resto Drood and the changes coming. I found the Mastery change to be very interesting, but a terrible reality soon dawned on me and I HOPE I'm wrong.


In Final Boss' video about the Resto Druid, Mastery: Harmony now give 10% increased healing if you have a second HoT on the same target. They buff each other, basically, and it keeps adding up with each new HoT you apply, correct? Now, this SOUNDS rewarding as hell if you consider the possibilities. Good gameplay should be rewarded, right? Unfortunately in WoW to date, Blizzard doesn't really agree with this and instead punish players for reaching higher by not making said move worth the effort.

I'm really REALLY worried that this whole HoT stacking will be a MUST to heal people properly, rather than something for really good players to experiment with. Do you get what I'm saying?


If I didn't make myself clear, please ask me to clarify. For now I don't want to repeat myself in case you understand exactly what I'm saying. xP

What do you guys think will be the case? I've not done much research so far, so...

[Deleted]

Aparently our new mastery will help us heal tanks, thing is... stops there...
We really need some nice inputs about the values of mastery, its a ongoing discussion in another topics as well because as resto druids we are currently stacking haste and mastery, haste will mostly continue into legion but mastery will be something that might not.

in legion we might end up having some decent single target heal with the amount of hots we can put on a target but that's it. if we do AoE healing ( like our class ever done) we will ignore the mastery effect and keep doing what we do

depending on the % of rating, mastery can be super broken or extremely useless. I call useless, but on the other hand, crit past a small value is useless and is never reliable ( specially with RG changes) and mustistrike removed, we have either spirit or mastery to stack after haste so...

from the 1st day our mastery has been announced its been called rubbish... we had it before and it was scrapped in favor of our current mastery because of the same problem, if we AOE heal we don't get mastery bonus so any mastery rating is zero output, or we stack hots and overheal... making it a waste...

as U say, blizz is punishing good play

[Deleted]

in legion we might end up having some decent single target heal with the amount of hots we can put on a target but that's it. if we do AoE healing ( like our class ever done) we will ignore the mastery effect and keep doing what we do

But if we have more than 1 HoT on people (countless people, example Wild Growth+Tranq) won't that be great if that's possible? Or during a HUGE raid CD moment where we can put Rejuv on most people, Wild Growth, Regrowth while in Tree Form + Tranq? I mean. I'm just thinking here. That sounds like a fuck ton of healing...

[Deleted]

indeed... but if you play resto on live, how many times does Tranq need support if well cast to keep the raid up (and even so, how much of it goes into OH anyway)
unless you are doing cutting edge progress tranq will always overheal ( in legion it gets way weaker though)
WG+Tranq+few well spoted RJ is a good call for stacking mastery, yet you are just saying that we are putting 2 hots (maybe 3 with a nice efflorecence) (maybe 3-4 passives with talent choice[fourish/ power of the archdruid procc and outside of dreamwalker] plus tranquility has a cast time back into it, so, no more casting during tranq like in the previous pass) so... assuming mastery is about 10% (more than that and it gets into a broken state(imho) and you get 20-30% extra heal (below live but still substancial) in your best case scenario.
and you are channeling all your arsenal in a well timed window...
on the other hand... tanks get efflorecence, 2x RJ(or rj+ CW) LB, and some IB/RG... that would amount to "on a regular situation" 4 hots baseline + 2 "10% uptime"... (if you take flourish instead of stonebark) else is +20% from IB

so... 4hots@ 10% increases your healing by 30% - up to 50% increase healing with either IB or RG... and that does not count any HT/SM/RG you *might* end up casting on tank (that could be buffed by 40-60% from mastery and 9% from artifact) (yeah, RG/HT/SM 50% stronger, criting into a Living seed. its a bloody LoH...

and this with only 10% mastery... imagine 15... or 20... or 40% (as I get with some average mythic gear in HFC)
and this is the problem with mastery... gives near zero output on AOE situations without perfect alignment and starts scaling like crazy when we tank heal

now... druids never been tank heals, we provide some support but no efficient way to keep the tank alive at all times... this solves the problem but its extremely costly as we need to cast 4-5 GCD all the time on tanks and no focus on AOE the raid...
Its a nice change of pace, but we need extra data from legion.

[stormgust]

I'm really REALLY worried that this whole HoT stacking will be a MUST to heal people properly, rather than something for really good players to experiment with. Do you get what I'm saying?

That's what's going to happen, but not for the reasons you stated, but merely for balancing purposes. As there is plenty of content (smaller groups, foremost PvP), where stacking HoTs is trivial (at least two: Reju/WG - three if you pick Germination), it needs to be tuned to perform on par with other stats at precisely those two (I'd argue even three) stacks, and thus fall behind whenever you cannot achieve those stack consistently (i.e. in raids). That is, you just don't bother with mastery for raids.

For scaling purposes, it would be required that other stats thus be raised in value, and then you're already in the spot of never considering mastery to begin with.

[Deleted]

Thank you guys for your input. It has put some stuff in perspective, and made me feel less grumpy about it. I'd still like a Mastery that makes AoE healing more rewarding, because that is what we excel at. Please, Blizz. :<

[Tiberria]

But if we have more than 1 HoT on people (countless people, example Wild Growth+Tranq) won't that be great if that's possible? Or during a HUGE raid CD moment where we can put Rejuv on most people, Wild Growth, Regrowth while in Tree Form + Tranq? I mean. I'm just thinking here. That sounds like a fuck ton of healing...

You're not going to have Rejuv on anything close to most of a 20 man raid. Even with 20% haste and mashing every GCD, it would take 24 seconds to cast 20 Rejuvs, and of course, some of them would fall off by the time you get 20 out. The theoretical maximum number of Rejuvs you can have out at once is 15, and even that is not realistic, because you still need to cast WG, keep LB up, keep Efflo down, use OOC procs, etc, etc. The realistic number is closer to like 8-10 at most.

Tranq is not a HoT, and doesn't add a mastery stack or give a mastery stack. It basically gains no value from mastery outside of targets with HoT stacks already on them. Probably 75%+ of your Tranq ticks will be on targets without any HoTs on them (you won't have them on everything and some will wear off during Tranq's channel). A good amount of your Efflo ticks will be on targets without any mastery gain/HoTs on them too, because of the random nature of it. You can counter that by taking Spring Blossoms so that repeat Efflo ticks will have a mastery gain, but that burns a talent selection and prevents you from taking 2 minute Tranq. Wild Growth also has random injured target selection, so there is no guarantee that it will go on targets that have a lot of HoTs on them. Yes, it will benefit from a single mastery stack always, but any more than that is pretty random.

The other problem with current tuning is that our mastery is weaker than every other stat (including Vers) except on targets with 3+ HoTs. You basically need 3 HoTs to be better than break even/gain anything from stacking/having mastery. We don't have all that many HoT effects. We have Rejuv (and it's looking like Germination will not be a default talent selection), we have Wild Growth (random target selection), we have Lifebloom (limited to 1 target), we have the Regrowth HoT (expensive as hell and not something you will cast just for the HoT effect), and we have Cultivation or Spring Blossoms if we end up taking those talents. Other than that, the only other way to get mastery stacks is taking Cenarion Ward (30 second CD, 1 talent) or use Ironbark on a target (90 sec CD).

The reality is, we don't have the ability to spam HoTs all over the place at anything close to the level that some people perceive we do. On non tank targets, it's basically just Rejuv most of the time, and then WG if they get targeted randomly by it. It's an exceedingly poor mastery when you actually sit down and think about it, because unless it is balanced around 1 mastery stack being on par with other stats, the amount of healing that doesn't gain anything from it guarantees that it will be the worst stat for raid healing by a wide margin. We also need 2-3 HoT stacks before our mastery healing is on par with other healer masteries for the most part. Point blank, this is by far the worst healing mastery in the game in Legion and I wish Resto Druids would stop defending it.

[Deleted]

You're not going to have Rejuv on anything close to most of a 20 man raid. Even with 20% haste and mashing every GCD, it would take 24 seconds to cast 20 Rejuvs, and of course, some of them would fall off by the time you get 20 out. The theoretical maximum number of Rejuvs you can have out at once is 15, and even that is not realistic, because you still need to cast WG, keep LB up, keep Efflo down, use OOC procs, etc, etc. The realistic number is closer to like 8-10 at most.

Tranq is not a HoT, and doesn't add a mastery stack or give a mastery stack. It basically gains no value from mastery outside of targets with HoT stacks already on them. Probably 75%+ of your Tranq ticks will be on targets without any HoTs on them (you won't have them on everything and some will wear off during Tranq's channel). A good amount of your Efflo ticks will be on targets without any mastery gain/HoTs on them too, because of the random nature of it. You can counter that by taking Spring Blossoms so that repeat Efflo ticks will have a mastery gain, but that burns a talent selection and prevents you from taking 2 minute Tranq. Wild Growth also has random injured target selection, so there is no guarantee that it will go on targets that have a lot of HoTs on them. Yes, it will benefit from a single mastery stack always, but any more than that is pretty random.

The other problem with current tuning is that our mastery is weaker than every other stat (including Vers) except on targets with 3+ HoTs. You basically need 3 HoTs to be better than break even/gain anything from stacking/having mastery. We don't have all that many HoT effects. We have Rejuv (and it's looking like Germination will not be a default talent selection), we have Wild Growth (random target selection), we have Lifebloom (limited to 1 target), we have the Regrowth HoT (expensive as hell and not something you will cast just for the HoT effect), and we have Cultivation or Spring Blossoms if we end up taking those talents. Other than that, the only other way to get mastery stacks is taking Cenarion Ward (30 second CD, 1 talent) or use Ironbark on a target (90 sec CD).

The reality is, we don't have the ability to spam HoTs all over the place at anything close to the level that some people perceive we do. On non tank targets, it's basically just Rejuv most of the time, and then WG if they get targeted randomly by it. It's an exceedingly poor mastery when you actually sit down and think about it, because unless it is balanced around 1 mastery stack being on par with other stats, the amount of healing that doesn't gain anything from it guarantees that it will be the worst stat for raid healing by a wide margin. We also need 2-3 HoT stacks before our mastery healing is on par with other healer masteries for the most part. Point blank, this is by far the worst healing mastery in the game in Legion and I wish Resto Druids would stop defending it.

I never stated how large the raid was. When I said "on most people" I obviously meant within reasonable means.

And only one Rejuv? Why, that depends on how much the others are healing. Sometimes double Rejuv is needed, with a WG on top. That's 3 HoTs on perhaps, 4-5 people. Tranq on that and that's another. I haven't tried the R-Druid yet as I don't have access, so my OP was just speculation with what I know so far.

Thanks for clearing some of the stuff out. It's a shame you don't think it sounds as great as I do, but if you're right I indeed hope they give us something better.

[Cheze]

I suspect higher-end rdruids will keep some mastery pieces around for use if/when they need to be a tank healer; apparently tank healing is gonna be more necessary in Legion and paladins' new mastery might kinda displace them from doing that full time.

It's pretty hard to tune mastery in a way that makes it appealing for raid healing though; if it's good enough to want it at one stack it'll be overwhelming for tank/ST healing, and if it isn't that good we don't want it at all.

Hopefully they redesign it; I always though that an effect similar to prosperity would be a good resto druid mastery (some sort of buff to ST heals based on how many active HoTs you have.)

[Tiberria]

I never stated how large the raid was. When I said "on most people" I obviously meant within reasonable means.

And only one Rejuv? Why, that depends on how much the others are healing. Sometimes double Rejuv is needed, with a WG on top. That's 3 HoTs on perhaps, 4-5 people. Tranq on that and that's another. I haven't tried the R-Druid yet as I don't have access, so my OP was just speculation with what I know so far.

Thanks for clearing some of the stuff out. It's a shame you don't think it sounds as great as I do, but if you're right I indeed hope they give us something better.

No guarantee that we are going to end up taking Germination as a talent in Legion. It no longer adds 3 seconds to Rejuv, so the talent adds 0 throughput, whereas Cenarion Ward adds a significant amount of throughput. Germination will not be the default talent selection it is on live, so chances are we won't be able to have 2 Rejuvs on a target. Tranq is NOT a HoT effect and hasn't been since they removed the HoT component in 6.0. It does not give any mastery gain.

[stormgust]

I never stated how large the raid was. When I said "on most people" I obviously meant within reasonable means.

It's 20 in mythic, and you cannot cover a reasonable fraction of that with more than one HoT, I'd guess 1.5 would be a good average on active HoTs - though then how do you balance it, if a stat performs subpar on some targets, and above the usually value on others? Healing needs to be reliable, and also be tuned in such away, that it doesn't trivialize damage (i.e. cannot be to high).

And only one Rejuv? Why, that depends on how much the others are healing. Sometimes double Rejuv is needed, with a WG on top. That's 3 HoTs on perhaps, 4-5 people.

As tiberria said, you may not neccesarily pick germination, or as it currently stands, you'd always pick Prosperity once you got the Dreamwalker trait, which by the way, also highly favors spreading HoTs instead of layering them. Though similar can be said for any mechanic which increased HoT throughput (e.g. Flourish, Essence of G'hanir), as then any additional HoT will more likely just increase overheal, thus stack benefit of mastery (and then it get's horribly in tuning, how due you account for those HoT's sniping the benefit off eachother by increased overheal, thus possibly a loss in efficiency, while simultaneously accounting for the fact, that this occasionally doesn't occur, i.e. when the target has lost sufficiently HP).

I can see how someone could like it gameplay wise, but it's rather obvious that this mastery cannot be tuned, which by itself is a reason to scrap it.

[Deleted]

I think I know what you mean. I don't agree with the concept of skill in this contex though. Let me explain why:

The concept of the mastery rewards single target healing - with huge ramp-up - which I already don't like. At all.
Plus I fear to game the mechanic you will spend too much time looking at raid frames to be considered fun.
Plus they seem to have (pvp) talents whose main purpose it seems to be to count as an extra hot for mastery purposes. Sounds mindblowingly cool in a geeky way at first, but I already know that I will hate how it feels ingame: a huge UI clutter for what could be achieved more easily.
Which btw is mutually exclusive design with what I would like them to try out: Capping the bonus at like 3 hots or so.

On the number's side there's two big parts: the baseline healing with only one hot active and the mastery-factor for stacking hots. And it all comes down to Blizz' balancing.
Depending on how much strength is in the stacking mechanic there's really only one correct playstyle. Blizz will try and balance around the most successful playstyle. Every deviation from this playstyle will hurt your performance.
If most of the strength is in the stacking we will be preemptive single target healers (also late-expansion scaling will be inherently broken, similar to pvp chaos bolt right now -> huge stacked non-rng multipliers). If most of the strength is in the base heals with low mastery/hot-stacking scaling then we will not care about the mastery and just go by health deficit or whatever metric seems appropriate.
I like the mastery for what it could be: a triage'y mastery that keeps single targets from dying by rewarding stacking hot, which you usually do to low-HP targets. I just have zero faith that this transitions well into actual formulas/numbers/math, for aforementioned reasons.

Of course it's a little more complicated than that. Say the base mastery% is low, but has a very good mastery points conversion rate; in which case we would transition from one playstyle to another over the course of the expansion. My main point stands: it's a mathy/UI nightmare of a mastery.


To be fair: it does match with the resto druid pre-hotting concept, so maybe resto druid is just not the class for me going forward.

If I were to design resto druids around this mastery I would give them strong aoe heals on short'ish cooldowns, weak baseline single target heals and very very good bonuses for stacking hots. That way you can aoe heal by default, but if you HAVE to single target heal you can sacrifice a few GCDs to stack hots to make your single target healing count.
* default aoe healer
* rewards skillful pre-hotting by weaving your hots between your low-cd aoe heals
* can single-target heal somewhat reactionally, but has to sacrifice lots of overall healing to do so
Also I would quit the class instantly because that's just too UI-based of a playstyle for me.


/edit: wow, i just found that i said the same thing as the other posters in this thread. also this might be the first time in a resto druid thread that i see all of us agree instead of backhandedly implying everyone except ourselves is an undereducated moron xD

[Cynep]

I see an echo chamber here; emotional people will hate my post, I'll address only rational people.

WoD shadow priest mastery is worthless for multidotting right? But it's good for single target. Similarly, Legion resto druid mastery is subpar for HoT blanketing, but it is the best scaling stat for tank healing, across all healing specs in the game, hands down. So, you want to raid heal? Stack haste and crit. You want to tank heal? Stack mastery. And, while it's too early to say before the numbers tuning pass, it's quite probable that druids will be the tank healers in Legion.

I can't answer Tiberria's posts on alpha forums as I can't post there, can I receive a rational response here please?

[stormgust]

And, while it's too early to say before the numbers tuning pass, it's quite probable that druids will be the tank healers in Legion.

This essentially shows that you do not understand what the main arguments against the mastery are. Reread this thread, reread the other 27 pages. Really, this "magical tuning where it's a good tank healing stat" DOES NOT EXIST. That's the entire argument we're doing.

[Tiberria]

I see an echo chamber here; emotional people will hate my post, I'll address only rational people.

WoD shadow priest mastery is worthless for multidotting right? But it's good for single target. Similarly, Legion resto druid mastery is subpar for HoT blanketing, but it is the best scaling stat for tank healing, across all healing specs in the game, hands down. So, you want to raid heal? Stack haste and crit. You want to tank heal? Stack mastery. And, while it's too early to say before the numbers tuning pass, it's quite probable that druids will be the tank healers in Legion.

I can't answer Tiberria's posts on alpha forums as I can't post there, can I receive a rational response here please?

You're pretty much wrong on this on both counts.

1. Take a look at the base spell power co-efficients of Healing Touch and Regrowth compared to the comparable spells of other healers. They are 30% - 50% weaker, because our single target spells are already taxed by the existence of this mastery. With mastery on half of my gear at level 108 (gear itemization on levelling gear is really bad), I have 10% mastery rating. That means that I need 3-5 HoT effects on a target before my tank healing/single target spells are even as good as every one else has base line. Plus, Regrowth is prohibitively expensive (barring OOC procs), and Healing Touch is far too slow (and we don't have a mechanic like Tidal Waves or Infusion of Light to make it faster). We don't have the spells to even take advantage of high mastery layering. So, no, mastery doesn't make us superior tank healers, it makes us about on par with other healers at tank healing if we need to do it.
2. As far as Druids being THE tank healer in Legion, it's also not going to happen. For one thing, Holy Paladins have virtually no AoE healing still. There is absolutely no way they will let another spec be tuned to be superior tank healers, because if so, you may as well forget about them being worthwhile in a raid. For another, you have to look at the entirety of our toolkit, and not just the mastery design. When you look at major throughput traits/talents/bonuses like Dreamwalker, Flourish, Power of the Archdruid, Soul of the Forest/Tree Form, 4 piece, etc, etc, it's pretty clear that most of our toolkit is built around raid healing and significant raid wide HoT coverage. The mastery design is really the only part of our entire Legion design that points towards tank healing.

Basically, our entire toolkit is primarily suited/designed towards raid healing, yet we have a mastery design that actively works against that, and seems to have the only purpose of making our tank healing on par with other healers. Sorry, but it is god awful design to have a mastery that is actively bad for the primary role of the spec. No other healer has this, and it is guaranteed to put our scaling behind other healers when our raid healing scales off 3 secondaries while theirs scales off 4.

[Nythiz]

I see an echo chamber here; emotional people will hate my post, I'll address only rational people.

WoD shadow priest mastery is worthless for multidotting right? But it's good for single target. Similarly, Legion resto druid mastery is subpar for HoT blanketing, but it is the best scaling stat for tank healing, across all healing specs in the game, hands down. So, you want to raid heal? Stack haste and crit. You want to tank heal? Stack mastery. And, while it's too early to say before the numbers tuning pass, it's quite probable that druids will be the tank healers in Legion.

I can't answer Tiberria's posts on alpha forums as I can't post there, can I receive a rational response here please?

This is true.

But that poses a problem in itself. How do you balance such a stat that can be either godlike in scenario A and absolutely rubbish in scenario B.
I know how they'll balance it, they balance the whole resto druid class around scenario A. Which means that in situations where you are NOT tank healing (blizz has been saying for the past 2 expansions that tank healing is going to be a thing now, but so far it hasn't), we will fall behind.

If I'm balanced (relative to other healers) around a raid encounter where I stack Haste / Crit / Versatility; how will this mastery not make me overpowered for 5 man content, for arena gameplay, for Challange modes, etc?
Or vice versa. If we are balanced for 5 man content early on, how do we not fall behind once we get into raids. Trying to avoid mastery for raids is an option, but it means that we have 1 less stat to scale on, meaning that even if all is good and square in the first tier, we're very likely to fall further behind later on.

It's not that we (or me at least) doesn't like the idea behind this mastery.
What We/I dislike about this mastery is that in the current format it seems very hard to balance between the game modes due to it's binary feature. In 5 mans / pvp where it's easy to keep 2-3 hots rolling on every target. Vs a raid where you might only have 10-15 HoTs rolling per 20 players.

And maybe we will end up being tank healers. Maybe the removal of Resolve will put a lot of the tank healing duties back on multiple healers.
The problem is still that other healers have a pretty ffing A+ grade toolkit for that.

It's not unlikely that Paladins will be picking up Beacon of the Lightbringer making them "passively" heal tanks for a shit ton.
Disc priests will passively heal the tanks because of the new attonement.
Other healers will have similar semi-passive effects rolling on the tanks.

I think just keeping HoTs on the tank will in a lot of cases suffice. And when it doesn't, other healers tend to have better single target direct heals than druids. Even with several HoTs our single target heals are barely catching up.

I don't think we have the perfect answer for how mastery should be. And maybe this one will work out, maybe we'll just be a bit stronger than some other healers in small content; or maybe those other healers will have their own strong side for smaller content.
So far this mastery raises red flags, and nothing so far has shown blizzard to understand this fear.

[Cynep]

(Sorry for the delay, busy week.) So, your worry is that mastery is tuned too weak. For those words to have any useful meaning, mastery is tuned too weak in current alpha numbers. Correct? Let's talk some numbers then.

According to what I can see in Internet,
250 rating = 1 mastery,
295 rating = 1% versatility,
227 rating = 1% haste,
250 rating = 1% crit.

Haste only increases HPS, not HPM, so it's tuned more generously; versatility has 3-in-1 benefits so it's tuned lower. Mastery and crit have equal ratings.

8 mastery gives 5% increased healing per HoT, so .625 per 1 mastery per HoT. This means that on a target with 0 HoTs mastery gives 0 benefit, on a target with 1 HoT mastery gives .625 HPS benefit compared to crit, with 2 HoTs mastery gives 1.25 HPS benefit compared to crit, with 3 HoTs mastery gives 1.875 HPS benefit compared to crit and so on.

Now, player's skill as a Resto Druid lies not in mindlessly spamming Rejuvs on random targets, but casting correct HoTs on correct targets, do we agree? Even at 2 HoTs mastery outstrips all other stats, you need less than 2 for it to become weaker. Returning to tank healing, if you're good enough to even discuss stat tuning, you would have no problem keeping 4 HoT effects on the tank, usually even more. So, on a tank with 4 HoTs, 1000 crit gives you 4% increased healing, 1000 haste gives 4.4% for higher mana cost, and 1000 mastery gives you 10% increased healing... and you complain?


P.S. It was funny to read that exchange on alpha forums "you can't tune around 1.7 HoTs" - "we actually tune around similar numbers"... Mastery becomes equal to crit at 1/.625 = 1.6 HoTs on target, and is stronger at 2+.

[stormgust]

Now, player's skill as a Resto Druid lies not in mindlessly spamming Rejuvs on random targets, but casting correct HoTs on correct targets, do we agree? Even at 2 HoTs mastery outstrips all other stats, you need less than 2 for it to become weaker. Returning to tank healing, if you're good enough to even discuss stat tuning, you would have no problem keeping 4 HoT effects on the tank, usually even more.

Actually it's two (LB+Reju), resp just one (Reju) - unless you opt for the corresponding talents, which you likely won't do, due to the other options providing substantial raid healing benefits - nothing that meager mastery bonus can ever compare to.

So, on a tank with 4 HoTs, 1000 crit gives you 4% increased healing, 1000 haste gives 4.4% for higher mana cost, and 1000 mastery gives you 10% increased healing... and you complain?

2/3*1.1 is still less than one, and that's what you get once you factor in our direct heals performing at merely 2/3 60% of other classes direct heals.

P.S. It was funny to read that exchange on alpha forums "you can't tune around 1.7 HoTs" - "we actually tune around similar numbers"... Mastery becomes equal to crit at 1/.625 = 1.6 HoTs on target, and is stronger at 2+.

Because quite frankly, a raid average is NOT what matters for survivability, it's a player average, and at any moment in time, our mastery is either considerably above the average, or substantially below it [read: you don't reach that average on any fight EVER, you are above it, or you are below it - as simple as that]. Sigma is using a metric totally unsuited for judging how this mastery performs and tune it using this rather nonsensical metric, and in process we are left with the mess we currently have: it'll perform well below average in raid healing (as the average there is consistently not reached), while performing significantly above average on tanks (as you pull well above that average, consistently - and thats mostly countered by our direct heals performing well below class average, by a large fraction).

[Keiyra]

Haste only increases HPS, not HPM, so it's tuned more generously; .

That is only correct for direct heals.

Haste is an HPS AND HPM increase for hots (not only does it tick faster and shorter GCD (hps increases) it also gains additional ticks (hpm increase)) - one of the reasons why haste is such a strong stat for resto druid.

[Tiberria]

(Sorry for the delay, busy week.) So, your worry is that mastery is tuned too weak. For those words to have any useful meaning, mastery is tuned too weak in current alpha numbers. Correct? Let's talk some numbers then.

According to what I can see in Internet,
250 rating = 1 mastery,
295 rating = 1% versatility,
227 rating = 1% haste,
250 rating = 1% crit.

Haste only increases HPS, not HPM, so it's tuned more generously; versatility has 3-in-1 benefits so it's tuned lower. Mastery and crit have equal ratings.

8 mastery gives 5% increased healing per HoT, so .625 per 1 mastery per HoT. This means that on a target with 0 HoTs mastery gives 0 benefit, on a target with 1 HoT mastery gives .625 HPS benefit compared to crit, with 2 HoTs mastery gives 1.25 HPS benefit compared to crit, with 3 HoTs mastery gives 1.875 HPS benefit compared to crit and so on.

Now, player's skill as a Resto Druid lies not in mindlessly spamming Rejuvs on random targets, but casting correct HoTs on correct targets, do we agree? Even at 2 HoTs mastery outstrips all other stats, you need less than 2 for it to become weaker. Returning to tank healing, if you're good enough to even discuss stat tuning, you would have no problem keeping 4 HoT effects on the tank, usually even more. So, on a tank with 4 HoTs, 1000 crit gives you 4% increased healing, 1000 haste gives 4.4% for higher mana cost, and 1000 mastery gives you 10% increased healing... and you complain?


P.S. It was funny to read that exchange on alpha forums "you can't tune around 1.7 HoTs" - "we actually tune around similar numbers"... Mastery becomes equal to crit at 1/.625 = 1.6 HoTs on target, and is stronger at 2+.

You actually would absolutely have an issue keeping 4 HoTs on the tank. You have Lifebloom, Rejuv, and arguably the Regrowth HoT. Wild Growth has no guarantee to hit the tank (even if you target him with it) and has <100% uptime, and other HoT effect options are talents that you may not even take (Germination, Cultivation, Spring Blossoms).

The issue with your argument is having multiple HoTs on a few targets is only a functional healing style when there are only a few targets taking damage. For widespread/raid wide damage, there are lots of "correct targets" at a time, and it's more effective to heal several targets for a little than a few targets for a lot, especially with how AoE healing of other classes works (there are still a lot of spells without smart heal protection). You also have to look at the reality of the 2+ HoT argument. You have Lifebloom that will almost invariably stay on the tank, you have Rejuv, and you have Wild Growth targets 7/10 seconds. Outside of tanks and targets that have Rejuv + WG, where do you think we are actually generating these 2+ HoT targets. Germination is probably weaker than the other 2 talents, and even if you take it, it's a huge GCD and mana drain to multi Rejuv non tank targets. Spring Blossoms and Cultivation are probably inferior to Inner Peace for progression - especially if running with a lot of mastery gear is suboptimal. Realistically, we don't have 2+ HoT targets most of the time excluding tanks. Therefore, we don't get anywhere near our full balanced mastery value on the majority of our output.

Then, we have Efflo and Tranq that get very little mastery gain in most situations, and we have any direct heals that we need to cast on 0 HoT targets. On top of all the other problems with mastery 20-25% of our healing gains nothing from it, but you completely ignored that.