[Restoration] How good (or bad) is Germination

[Laurathansal]

Dear druid team,

I'm at 845 ilvl, with good amounts of haste and other stats, but prioritising haste.

I am using Germination, but see that most do not consider it the best talent of its tier, preferring to use Inner Peace or Spring Blossoms.

What I already understand:
- Germination gives the player more freedom in where to apply an extra HoT (as opposed to Spring blossoms), because you can simply target and heal someone in need. THe downside is more mana spent and an extra GCD per each germination.
- Spring blossoms (together with the fact that Efflorescence heals 3 people) will work well when it's healing 3 people. So applying an extra HoT without spending extra mana is great. However, people move so much in a raid environment that this talent will not be easy to manage, when compared to germination, but it is better in the long run for mana conservation.
- Inner Peace really just makes a powerful cooldown even more powerful.

Now, I raided only once since Emerald Nightmare came out, was #1 on the healing meter (just to say, I didn't suck) and Germination was #3 on my total healing done by spells.

This was a 14 men raid by the way. I felt like I could manage germinations well, and that I wasn't going out of mana so easily that I was in dire need of a talent change.

So now the question: Is this talent tier a pure player choice, depending on each one's playstyle, or am I missing on a big healing boost by not switching to another talent? And if the latter, which talent do you recommend?

Cheers

[Deleted]

I ran germination (mostly because I am used to it) and it healed for.... 2.29% of my total healing on HC Nythendra while Efflorescence was for 11%. %-wise germination also had more overhealing done so I will be swapping to spring blossems for tonights raid.

I still have doubts about swapping SotF for germination, people tend to drop pretty low which makes germination look like a pretty solid choice.

[thilicen]

Spring blossoms sure works well on certain fights, inner peace is also a massive talent for fights with predictable raid damage (ursoc charge / roars). Germination is very weak compared to these two as it stands.

[Wild]

Germination is top talent for mythic+. Couldnt tell which one is best for raid.

[MegaVolti]

Not trying to be too negative here but if you were #1 on the healing meters and Germination was #3 of your spells then either your whole healing team wasn't very good or there was barely any damage to heal.

What does Germination really do for you? You can place a Rejuv on a dude who already has a Rejuv. You might as well place it on someone who does not have it already. Germination is only really useful when you run out of good people to place Rejuvenation on - which mostly happens in small groups. Raids tend to have plenty of potential Rejuvenation targets so Germination is wasted.

Plus as you say yourself you give up FREE healing for it. When placing Efflo correctly it will do a TON of healing and that is further increased by the talent. More Tranquility is also absolutely insane in terms of healing it gives you if it nets you an additional Tranq for the encounter. Yes, both need more planning, but the effects are HUGE and just way, way, WAY better than Germination.

You want to prioritise Wild Growth over Rejuvenation anyway, spamming Rejuv is bad to begin with. Except of course when running a Cultivation build, then you do want to spam Rejuvs, but then you want to spread them across the raid as much as possible and not cluster them on single people. So either way, Germination is just a waste of a talent (for raids).

And yes, in 5mans it's nice - but even there I don't get why people would actually want it. Spring Blossoms is still better in all aspects. It provides free healing and it keeps an additional HoT on the whole group which triggers the mastery, just as Germination would (right?) - without the downside of costing mana or GCDs.

I just don't see any scenario where Germination would win apart from very spread fights with ranged only where it's absolutely impossible for 2-3 people to stand in the Efflo zone - which is a very fringe case.

[Alltat]

I tried it for an evening in EN and found that it is completely and utterly useless in raids. You might as well leave that tier empty. It feels good, but it doesn't really do anything and you're missing out on a lot of free healing from the flower talent.

In five man dungeons, Germination is far better.

Now, I raided only once since Emerald Nightmare came out, was #1 on the healing meter (just to say, I didn't suck) and Germination was #3 on my total healing done by spells.

Then the other healers sucked, no offense. You shouldn't be able to top any healing meter if you have Rejuvenation twice in your top three, because it means you didn't get much mileage out of Tranquility or Wild Growth. And if you're not using both Rejuvenation, Wild Growth, and Tranquility to their full potential, other healers should easily overtake you.

[Laurathansal]

MegaVolti, I appreciate the honesty. I'm not sure how good (or bad) my guild's healers are, as I'm new to the guild and the guild itself is new. I think the reason why Germination healed a lot is due to the fact that I always keep it rolling on the tanks.

Guess I'll try spring blossoms and monitor healing done. Then I'll come back here to provide results

Cheers

But yours and other people's comments do make it clear that Germination "looks" good in paper, but in reality it isn't.

- - - Updated - - -

Alltat, seems to be the case indeed. I consider myself a good healer, but I skipped WoD so I have good healing instinct, coupled with bad knowledge of the class Guess I need to re-learn it a bit.

[MegaVolti]

But why is it amazing in 5mans? What does it do in 5mans that Spring Blossoms doesn't do better?
It still costs GCDs and mana in 5mans and I still get the same mastery buff from having Spring Blossoms permanently on the tank that I would get with Germination on the tank. Sure, the additional Rejuvenation heals for a bit more than Spring Blossoms - but it costs mana and GCDs, I might as well take the free Spring Blossom healing and use the GCD / mana on other spells instead. With one Rejuvenation and Spring Blossoms on the tank even Healing Touch isn't so bad

[Keiyra]

But why is it amazing in 5mans? What does it do in 5mans that Spring Blossoms doesn't do better?
It still costs GCDs and mana in 5mans and I still get the same mastery buff from having Spring Blossoms permanently on the tank that I would get with Germination on the tank. Sure, the additional Rejuvenation heals for a bit more than Spring Blossoms - but it costs mana and GCDs, I might as well take the free Spring Blossom healing and use the GCD / mana on other spells instead. With one Rejuvenation and Spring Blossoms on the tank even Healing Touch isn't so bad

Have you done many mythic+ dungeons? When you do, you'll see the 2 rejuvs on all the dps is NEEDED healing, not just nice to have for the mastery stack (which is what SB is). What other spells would you be using? WG, LB, and SM are already used more or less on CD - that leaves you with casting RG or HT in place of Germination...neither of which are particularly great (especially when you are moving a lot - which certain affixes will make you do).

So, being useful healing, on top of the same mastery stack as SB would give AND works regardless of whether you are in Efflo or not. In the end its just far better for mythic+ healing than the other 2 alternatives.

[MegaVolti]

I want LB, Rejuv and RG on the tank, SotF WG on cooldown. I just don't have the GCDs to spare to keep double Rejuv on all party members. Instead of 5 extra Rejuvs I can just cast a SotF WG.

Currently my group is at lvl 5 in Vault of the Wardens. We messed up the second boss and deplated the keystone, but apart from that the run was a cakewalk. I don't know whether that qualifies as having done many mythic+ but so far I found Germination to be completely pointless. But we are talking it rather casual and only did a single evening on this.

Don't underestimate the healing Spring Blossoms do. They heal for a holy crapton and all in a single GCD. I'd rather have Spring Blossoms tick for free on my group of 5 and occasionally cast a crappy Healing Touch than having to cast my awesome Rejuvs but missing out on Spring Blossoms. Yes, Rejuv is much better than HT, but Rejuv is not better than HT + Spring Blossoms (I think, if someone could math that out it would be greatly appreciated ).

[Nythiz]

But why is it amazing in 5mans? What does it do in 5mans that Spring Blossoms doesn't do better?

For two reasons mostly:

1) Germination provides ZERO extra healing throughput if you could have just put another rejuv on someone.

This is the main reason germination is worse in raids. Sure you can spend a GCD and put a 2nd rejuv on player A, but you could also have put a rejuv on person B. The nett result is the same healing done.
Maybe player A needed it more, but that is generally where your other healers jump in anyway. Germination often does a lot of overhealing due to targets receiving more direct heals)

In 5 mans germination is MUCH more effective because there are less targets (so a higher chance of already having rejuv rolling on players); there are no other healers to snipe away your heals and you need the extra mastery throughput.

2) Another reason that germination is good in 5 mans is that both Spring Blossoms and Inner Peace are worse in 5 mans.
SB can never really reach full potential with the smaller group and higher mobility.
IP is generally not needed more than once per 3 min.

------

Basically: Germination in 5 mans provide an almost certain throughput increase and flows well with mastery, which you're stacking.
In raids germination mostly just provides increased flexibility, hardly any throughput increase. Targets that are in need of double rejuv healing are usually handeled by healers with good spothealing (shamans / paladins).

[haniburr]

Germination is sexy for 4 things; Tank healing(any situation), 5 mans(mythic+ included), Small Raids (smaller the better), and healing yourself out in the world. Beyond that I wouldn't bring it into raids with a lot of people, your 14 man raid I would even consider too big unless you are doing most of the tank healing. It just doesn't leave enough time with our GCD to get that many out is the problem.. say your running Germination and SoTF, rejuve lasts what 15 seconds(maybe 21 i dunno i usually drink while i heal >.>) but say it's heavy AOE damage but not enuff for Tranq..Your going to swiftmend into a WG then your popping 2 rejuves Per tank and a lifebloom then if you pop 1 rejuve on every other person WG would be up twice before you cover everyone once. and your first few rejuves would be dropping off. Gives you better tank healing abilities but you would have gotten better healing and mana usage if you dropped a effloresence and spot healed people who might get into danger and let WG do it's thing. I find myself doing most of my healing from WG and efflo so naturally pumping efflo to have an extra hot on it makes sense.

I personally hate Effloresence and how they changed it(like 12 times since i started playing.) But the HoT you can spec into makes it a bit better. If it worked like Healing Rain (or like it did back in Wrath) where it would heal everyone for a little bit I would prefer it much more. Or if they went back to the Mushroom Bloom that would be awesome too with some tuning(maybe have it only store X ammount of overheals over X ammount of time). We feel in a weird place from how I remember Resto being in past expansions. Still great for 5mans but I feel like a raid gains nothing from me being there and feels like I do nothing. That being said.... did get through all but Xavius on normal with a 29-30 person raid and was first or second on healing (depending what our godly monk healer who always beat me in past 2 xpacs anyways, did)

That all being said, I find little to no useage to Germination in such a large raid. Sure Germination might be one of your higher healing spells, but that is either due to placing rejuves badly or a good chunk of that is on tanks. And if you find you are doing a good chunk of the tank healing Germination might be the way to go.

[Wild]

And yes, in 5mans it's nice - but even there I don't get why people would actually want it. Spring Blossoms is still better in all aspects. It provides free healing and it keeps an additional HoT on the whole group which triggers the mastery, just as Germination would (right?) - without the downside of costing mana or GCDs.

I just don't see any scenario where Germination would win apart from very spread fights with ranged only where it's absolutely impossible for 2-3 people to stand in the Efflo zone - which is a very fringe case.

As u said: germination is "just" another rejuv.
-Now what is a rejuv? Rejuv heals 300% spell power over 15 sec
-Now what is spring blossom: heals 60% over 6secs, that would be about 140% over 15 sec

-> talking mana: spring blossom kicks ass no doubt
-> talking heal output: germination kicks ass no doubt

Me doing 5 man, I dont care about mana, I have never oom'd myself in order to not be able to heal anymore and letting my people die.
Remember in raids, u are not the only one who heals, so other healers will always cover for u.
Remember in 5man, u are the only healer, so no one else will cover for u.

So having 2 "rejuvs" up on one target heals it for 600% spell power over 15 secs, that is HUGE.
Trust me, I tried spring blossom in 5man, and the heal is awful and so not worth it, IMO! However if u are low on haste or mana, slow at ur fingers and reactions u might want to take spring blossom, cos its passive and u dont have to do shit and need no GCD and no mana.

[Deleted]

It should be obvious that Spring Blossoms (or Inner Peace) is the superior talent in a raid setup. As the size of your raid increases both Efflorescence and Tranquility only become more powerful and more efficient. When you have 10+ injured allies, what use is Germination? It would take long enough to cast single Rejuvs on each of them, which you shouldn't be doing anyway, then consider what good it would be to do that twice? They'd be topped of by other healers by the time you've finished casting your 3rd or 4th Rejuv. Same goes for single target use, any missing health that a second Rejuvation would cover would just be sniped by another healer.

Also consider that with SB, anyone standing (or that recently stood) in your Efflorescence will receive a +x% Mastery healing bonus from all your spells. That means a SotF'ed WG gets a small boost, but so does your Tranquility, and any other spell, which is pretty helpful. Then again, Spring Blossoms can be useless in fights where you can't stand close to anyone or can't stack up (e.g. Nythendra HC). Even then, Inner Peace would be the go-to talent, not Germination.

MegaVolti
But why is it amazing in 5mans? What does it do in 5mans that Spring Blossoms doesn't do better?
It still costs GCDs and mana in 5mans and I still get the same mastery buff from having Spring Blossoms permanently on the tank that I would get with Germination on the tank. Sure, the additional Rejuvenation heals for a bit more than Spring Blossoms - but it costs mana and GCDs, I might as well take the free Spring Blossom healing and use the GCD / mana on other spells instead. With one Rejuvenation and Spring Blossoms on the tank even Healing Touch isn't so bad

To be fair, I haven't tried SB in a dungeon setup, but I'll try to explain why I think Germination is the better talent:

+Efflorescence quickly becomes useless in movement heavy fights. For example, every boss except the first in EoA requires you to spread out or move around.

+Germination works very well in movement-heavy fights, or fights where you might not always be in range of your allies. If you are constantly on the move and two ranged DPS allies are each missing 450k health, what are you going to do? There's no guarantee that they're going to stand in your Efflo, they might not even be able to. Casting a Rejuv/HT on each? That takes 4 seconds of cast time + 2 GCDs and requires you to stand still. Or a Rejuv on each and some RGs, but that is very inefficient. Certainly WG for 2 allies is wasteful. So casting two Rejuvs on each makes sure that they'll be topped off, even though it might take some time. Secondly, that second Rejuv will empower the first and itself with your Mastery bonus. Third, should any other allies get injured you can cast a Wild Growth that will be extra powerful on your double Rejuv'ed allies. Last, though not very important, having more Rejuvination uptime makes your Dreamwalker artifact trait more useful.

+There's no guarantee that allies will always stack on your Efflorescence. Definitely not your ranged team members, sometimes not even your tank, God knows why.

+It has great synergy with Essence of Ghanir.

+When combined with SotF (and Prosperity) you can cast two 200% boosted Rejuvinations on a single ally. At 17% Mastery, with one Lifebloom and one Rejuvination up on a tank, my SotF'ed Germination will tick for 105k. That's pretty powerful.

+In moments where you need to pre-HoT an ally, two Rejuvs is better.

[Keiyra]

I want LB, Rejuv and RG on the tank, SotF WG on cooldown. I just don't have the GCDs to spare to keep double Rejuv on all party members. Instead of 5 extra Rejuvs I can just cast a SotF WG.

You are missing the point - you would never do 5 rejuvs instead of Sotf WG - you are doing 5 more rejuvs ON TOP of using WG. And sure you don't need double rejuv on EVERY party member all the time, but being able to put 2 on everyone when needed, and to keep 2 running on some members throughout the whole fight is a strong benefit. You are also missing out on rejuvx2 for tank healing.

Don't underestimate the healing Spring Blossoms do. They heal for a holy crapton and all in a single GCD.

60% in 6 secs is NOT a crapton(sic).

Yes, Rejuv is much better than HT, but Rejuv is not better than HT + Spring Blossoms (I think, if someone could math that out it would be greatly appreciated ).

Again, missing the point, its not Rejuv vs HT+SB, its Rejuv x2 vs HT+SB. Rejuv x2 is mathematically stronger (and as for mana...who cares, you can drink after any pull when u need to)

You also seem to be under the assumption that your whole 5 man is always standing in efflo - that is certainly not the case in most mythic+ - whether its kiting or mechanics you will be spreading around and losing some uptime on SB - germination doesn't have to worry bout placement, movement or spreading.

Give it a shot and see what we mean. - In the end though, its a game, do what ever works best for you.

[MegaVolti]

60% in 6 secs is NOT a crapton(sic).

Yes it is. You get that with every tick of Efflo on 3 people. That's half of a Rejuvs throughput, completely for free, on every Efflo tick. It's awesome.

[quote]Again, missing the point, its not Rejuv vs HT+SB, its Rejuv x2 vs HT+SB. Rejuv x2 is mathematically stronger (and as for mana...who cares, you can drink after any pull when u need to)]/quote]
No. At least keep the comparison fair.
It's either HT+SB vs Rejuv or it's HT+SB+Rejuv vs double Rejuv. Well, to be absolutely fair it would be part of HT scaled down to the GCD because that's the cast time "saved" by not doing Germination. More details below.

You also seem to be under the assumption that your whole 5 man is always standing in efflo - that is certainly not the case in most mythic+ - whether its kiting or mechanics you will be spreading around and losing some uptime on SB - germination doesn't have to worry bout placement, movement or spreading.

Correct, if during a fight people will be out of Efflo for the majority of the duration then Germination becomes indeed viable. And yes, there are some encounters like that.
But keep in mind that for SB to work well it's enough if the group members simply run through the Efflo zone once in a while. They only need to pick up the HoT one after another. That works often enough, even in 5mans.

As u said: germination is "just" another rejuv.
-Now what is a rejuv? Rejuv heals 300% spell power over 15 sec
-Now what is spring blossom: heals 60% over 6secs, that would be about 140% over 15 sec

-> talking mana: spring blossom kicks ass no doubt
-> talking heal output: germination kicks ass no doubt

You have to take into account the GCDs that are freed up. You are putting down Efflo anyway so SB gives throughput for free.
Germination on the other hand does not only use mana, it also uses up GCDs that would be spent casting other things instead.

So to stay with your comparison (single target, one tank only standing in Efflo, not even taking account the 2 other players that can potentially benefit from it):
Germination costs 1 GCD and gives me a 300% SP heal over 15 sec.
Efflo passivly provides 140% SP over these 15 secs. But it also frees up one GCD to be used on other stuff.
If mana totally doesn't matter at all then I am free to use that GCD on Regrowth. Bam, 270% (with HoT) or 215% (without HoT) heal not even taking the extra crit chance into account, which (in combination with the 140% from SB) is already better than the Rejuv.
But even using Healing Touch brings it over Germination: HT gives 400% SP on 2.5 secs. Scaled down to the GCD time that's 1.5 / 2.5 * 400% = 240%. Add the 140% from SB and you get 370%, still better than Rejuvenation.
And again, that's only assuming a single guy is standing in Efflo. With more people in it SB gets even better.

I still don't see the argument for Germination.
If mana is a concern then nothing beats free healing from SB.
If mana is not a concern then overall throughput is still better when adding the free SB healing to the "bad" spells we can cast instead of the Germination Rejuv.

[tratra]

Dear druid team,

I'm at 845 ilvl, with good amounts of haste and other stats, but prioritising haste.

I am using Germination, but see that most do not consider it the best talent of its tier, preferring to use Inner Peace or Spring Blossoms.

What I already understand:
- Germination gives the player more freedom in where to apply an extra HoT (as opposed to Spring blossoms), because you can simply target and heal someone in need. THe downside is more mana spent and an extra GCD per each germination.
- Spring blossoms (together with the fact that Efflorescence heals 3 people) will work well when it's healing 3 people. So applying an extra HoT without spending extra mana is great. However, people move so much in a raid environment that this talent will not be easy to manage, when compared to germination, but it is better in the long run for mana conservation.
- Inner Peace really just makes a powerful cooldown even more powerful.

Now, I raided only once since Emerald Nightmare came out, was #1 on the healing meter (just to say, I didn't suck) and Germination was #3 on my total healing done by spells.

This was a 14 men raid by the way. I felt like I could manage germinations well, and that I wasn't going out of mana so easily that I was in dire need of a talent change.

So now the question: Is this talent tier a pure player choice, depending on each one's playstyle, or am I missing on a big healing boost by not switching to another talent? And if the latter, which talent do you recommend?

Cheers

its good for some fights some other fights i dont use efflorecence at all cause its not efficient at all tbh.

[Tiberria]

The reason why Germination is strong for 5 mans (at least Mythic+) despite Spring Blossoms being theoretically better are

(1) Mana usage doesn't matter as much in a 5 man; you can generally sneak drinks in as needed, so Germination not adding more single target HPM isn't as big of a deal.
(2) The throughput difference between the SB HoT and Germination HoT is often something you actually need to keep targets alive during high burst damage.
(3) It's entirely possible your entire party won't/can't be an Efflo. It's equally possible that you're moving around so much that it isn't worth redropping it. Germination gives you that extra flexibility, and de-emphasizes the need to re-drop Efflos of questionable value.
(4) You should be trying to weave in (Feral Affinity) DPS as much as possible in mythic+ and only spending time healing when needed. Germination gives you more on demand single target burst when you pop out to heal.

Yes, in raids - Germination is pretty much garbage. Mana efficiency is a far bigger constraint, and it adds nothing extra other than the extra mastery healing. You also probably don't want to run high mastery levels in raid gear, so that mastery benefit is fairly trivial. When I go from a raid to a 5 man build, I immediately swap Prosperity for CW, Spring Blossoms/Inner Peace for Germination and sometimes SoTF for Cultivation. It's just kind of the way our talent builds work now.

[Drekor]

So very generally speaking.

Open world - Why are you in resto spec? Get out.
Dungeons - Germination is by far the best option as you can easily sustain the mana and GCD's to double rejuv and it provides much better throughput overall.
Raids (Tank Healing) - Why are you tank healing? Get out! Germination is acceptable here although your being largely wasted as a tank healer.
Raids (Raid Healing) - Germination is typically a poor choice. You likely won't have the mana or GCD's to double rejuv.

There is a caveat here that some encounters have high enough mobility requirements that efflorescence(and by extension spring blossoms) are just not used, in which case germination may be better.

Inner peace is useful only in situations where it allows you to get an additional and useful tranq off in a single encounter. Which depends heavily on your raids DPS, ability to deal with mechanics and the encounter itself. So... it's never a default choice.

[Anguirel]

Missing note for non-raid environments: Germination counts for Abundance. 10 Rejuvs (5 Rejuvs + 5 Germinations) means you get instant HT. This is pretty powerful on its own (for a non-raid environment - in a raid, you'll probably be able to have enough Rejuvs up anyway). Swiftmend simply isn't up often enough, even with Prosperity. Now instead of SotF, tack on Cultivation and then Flourish and you can have some serious sustained healing on your entire dungeon group even while moving.

Extra bonus: In PvP, Nourish Honor Talent makes HT also apply Rejuv. This becomes a self-sustaining method of getting lots of low-cost large burst + HoT heals out on a 5-person PvP group (fairly common size to end up near for capture-point maps) with no cast bar to interrupt.

Legendary to extend Rejuv by 10 seconds on full health targets might also change the calculus for where Germination is of value, even in Raids.