Resto Druid - Legion Talents

[Deleted]

Maybe Germination is the reason why they can't make Power of the Archdruid a guaranteed thing? Double Rejuvs on a stacked raid with Flourish and Dreamwalker would seem pretty ridiculous in a heavy raid damage situation. Another reason why I think it should be guaranteed proc but target capped.

[Pyrianis]

Another reason why I think it should be guaranteed proc but target capped.

Realistically, it's going to be target-capped anyway. I highly doubt they would make it a 100% proc without nerfing Wild Growth itself, but perhaps they could provide some interactions, like:

* Proc chance bonus if you're inside Efflorescence.
* Proc chance bonus based on your Dreamwalker cycle; if you aren't close to gaining Dreamwalker, you're more likely to gain Archdruid.

Cenarion Ward

By the way, both CW and Prayer of Mending proc off of any damage, right? Has there been any mention of why Living Seed still doesn't work like that? That new Seeds of Life thing is possibly slated to be a set bonus or something; I want to hope they'll finally straighten out this decrepit relic of the spec...

[stormgust]

The more I look at Cenarion Ward, the more I think that it might well end up being the default talent selection over Germination. It's never taken now, because it just can't compete with the passive (and mana and GCD free) throughput from Ysera's Gift. However, competing with Germination that only allows the second Rejuv (no extension to the HoT duration), I think CW could come out on top.

Ysera's Gift is GCD/Mana free, but it's healing most often is not really effective (too little too spaced too far apart), yet hardly anyone picked CW over that. Sure it has nice numbers, but its reactive nature paired with it being a HoT turns most of it's throughput into overheal, even more so with all those additional emergency tools healer have at their disposal in legion (as core spells).

Basically, how often is it really optimal to cast multiple Rejuvs on a single target vs spreading them around to multiple targets? I'd say it's rarely the best strategy, and I am not all that convinced that the extra mastery stacks with the new Harmony design will actually make doubling up Rejuv targets suddenly become the default.

You'll want to spread them first (stacking them more often than not will be a huge efficiency loss, as they'll snipe eachother - a mastery stack is not worth that), the problem though is, that our top end throughput will have to be balanced around the possibility to stack up on it (including germination). You cannot reasonable tune other stats around that (do you choose other stats ~= 1x hotstac, or other stats ~ = full stacks at base, or other stats ~= full hot stacks including germination). Foregoing mastery only works in the last case (>=10% performance jumps per stack).

Since CW apparently interacts with Persistence, we will get a 4 second duration increase from 3/3 Persistence to 10 seconds instead of 6 seconds, putting it up to 1470% of SP.

I'd say 3 seconds should be the correct value for 3/3 persistence, and wowdb just uses the wrong base version of the trait in it's calc. As for it being affected at all, only wowhead currently shows that, wowdb doesn't - so we need confirmation for that first.

Basically, CW is going to be incredibly efficient and effective, and over 4 times as strong as a Rejuv.

My guess will be, it's going to be mostly overheal given the single target tools available across all healing classes.

and if mana is constrained to the point that we can't spam Rejuv with every filler GCD, it isn't like we will be able to afford doing 2 x Rejuv on too many targets in the first place.

If they want mana to be that much of a constraint, they should not design a mastery which comes with an inherent efficiency loss.

All Rejuv does is just allow doubling up on one target for Mastery, but that's actually not that strong. How many targets realistically are going to be so HoT stacked in the first place?

Depending on how they tune mastery/overall throughput, we may actually end up being required to stack on HoTs.

Keep in mind by double stacking a HoT with Germination, it's not actually doing anything - it just means another target goes without a HoT (and Mastery bonus) somewhere else to compensate.

Two Reju's with a 20% bonus heal for more than two reju's with a 10% bonus, it doesn't quite compensate. Not a problem most of the time when they'd snipe that bonus off eachother anyway, definitely a problem (tuning wise at high mastery values - those 10% likely were entry level gear), if they don't.

[Ogion]

My guess will be, it's going to be mostly overheal given the single target tools available across all healing classes.

It's so easy to make CW really useful tool. It should heal every 1 sec (down from 2) over 4 sec (down from 6).

[Tiberria]

So Holy Paladins now have a PASSIVE aura (from an artifact trait) that gives +5% haste to everyone within 10 yards of them. Meanwhile, Mark of the Wild our supposed "raid utility" can only be put on 1 player at a time. Considering that we lost Stampeding Roar to get this steaming pile of horse shit they call raid utility, shouldn't Holy Paladins lose BoP, Freedom, Lay on Hands, etc., etc. to account for their receiving even MORE utility over and above their already ridiculous utility toolkit? Not to mention the fact that the utility their artifact trait brings is several magnitudes better than Mark of the Wild, because even in a worst case scenario, it's highly likely you will get at least 5 people within 10 yards of you, and could have most of the raid in the range of that aura for several fights.

[Isheria]

Aura of the silver hand also increases crit, versatility and mastery as well to everyone within 40y when you pop aura mastery since aura mastery increases aura radius by 300%.

In other more interesting news here's a good write-up how artifact levelling currently works:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20042844995

TLDR of the above link for the lazy ones:
No Artifact power weekly or total cap.
Artifact Ranks start at 100 artifact power and each subsequent one costs 100 more. This includes the entire tree and is not trait specific.
Example: 1st rank you unlock in the tree costs 100, the 10th rank you unlock costs 1000 and so on.
You must fully max out a trait (if it has multiple ranks) before progressing further. No getting 1/3 on one trait and moving further shenanigans.
Relics increase the ilvl of your weapon and provide 1 rank on a specific trait so you need to find the correct relic for the specific trait you want further ranks. Functionality is similar to gems pretty much.
You can respec your artifact anytime at the class hall, it costs no gold to do so but all artifact power that you spent on learned traits is not refunded.

[Deleted]

Really considering going resto druid in legion after 11 years of playing rogue!

[Hypasonic]

So Holy Paladins now have a PASSIVE aura (from an artifact trait) that gives +5% haste to everyone within 10 yards of them. Meanwhile, Mark of the Wild our supposed "raid utility" can only be put on 1 player at a time. Considering that we lost Stampeding Roar to get this steaming pile of horse shit they call raid utility, shouldn't Holy Paladins lose BoP, Freedom, Lay on Hands, etc., etc. to account for their receiving even MORE utility over and above their already ridiculous utility toolkit? Not to mention the fact that the utility their artifact trait brings is several magnitudes better than Mark of the Wild, because even in a worst case scenario, it's highly likely you will get at least 5 people within 10 yards of you, and could have most of the raid in the range of that aura for several fights.

Holy paladin's are blizzards little pet, I wouldn't mind them having so many tools at their disposal at the expense of healing output but it remains to be seen whether or not they will be balanced around that. I mean, discs are getting reworked to be a semi healer semi dps, so a holy pala could be a semi healer semi utility class. I dunno, would be nice to have druid/shaman/monk as the 3 "pure" healing classes (similar to rogue/lock/mage/hunter respectively) and have the other classes/specs as offering capable healing but not as much with something "extra" on the side.

Who knows, long time to go until legion so I'm sure many things will change.

[Tiberria]

Holy paladin's are blizzards little pet, I wouldn't mind them having so many tools at their disposal at the expense of healing output but it remains to be seen whether or not they will be balanced around that. I mean, discs are getting reworked to be a semi healer semi dps, so a holy pala could be a semi healer semi utility class. I dunno, would be nice to have druid/shaman/monk as the 3 "pure" healing classes (similar to rogue/lock/mage/hunter respectively) and have the other classes/specs as offering capable healing but not as much with something "extra" on the side.

Who knows, long time to go until legion so I'm sure man things will change.

They are not, and never will be balanced around that. They have already all but admitted on several occasions that they effectively try to tune healing like it's DPS and bring effective HPS across specs within a reasonable range across all specs. That's all fine and good, but that model only works if the effective value that each healer brings to the raid over and above what shows up on HPS meters is somewhere close to equal. It's nowhere near equal in WoD, and that's a huge reason why the default healing comp has become Disc/HPally/RShaman/any filler for 4th spot. Not only have they apparently not learned a damned thing from the terrible job they did with healing balance in WoD, they are actually actively making the utility delta even larger in Legion.

Have you read the Holy Paladin forums lately, or like ever? There is no way that community would stand for being even 1% below Druids, Mistweavers or any other utility challenged healing spec in effective throughput. I think a large part of why they are always tuned over the top is because of the militancy of their community (i.e. they whine a lot more than Druids/Monks/Shaman). Druids have too many people that try to shout down any criticism of class design, which ultimately leads to the spec ending up under tuned too often.

[Hypasonic]

Yeah, I mean I used to main a holy paladin in MoP and they were decent then, they got nerfed somewhat pre SoO but still remained the solid choice along with discs. I remember blizz trying to "break" the holy pala/disc mould in 10m (Don't start a debate :P) healing comps as that was by far the superior setup all pre SoO and remained so even in SoO.

To me it just feels as though holy paladins are the "standard" healing character, and should be optimal in every situation regardless, which is completely incorrect but just my feelings atleast. But yeah, I remember when blizz nerfed the holy paladin mastery there was quite the outcry (Or was probably the EF thing atleast) but then came the selfless healer build that became the whack-a-mole healing model of just spamming shields on everyone, what a heaing model that was! /sarcasm.

I do feel like paladins get treated differently than us druids though, almost like they get preferential treatment, but that's probably just in my head as the community would not stand for that right? ......Right?

[xArchAngelAlienx]

Can't wait to try out Resto in Legion

[stormgust]

Druids have too many people that try to shout down any criticism of class design, which ultimately leads to the spec ending up under tuned too often.

It's not so much trying to shut down, but rather a "wait for things to be more fleshed out" approach taken to the extreme, i.e. usually they tell you to wait "till tuning happened". Problem here is, that tuning happens too late in developement to actually fix design shortcomings (e.g. lack of utility, or mechanics which were obviously part of the "cannot possibly be tuned" category), we'll be stuck with garbage mechanics at that point (e.g. rampant growth, or it's Legion equivalent called Prosperity).

edit:
As for the lack of utility - it really comes down to how they plan to tune affinity. If it can be tuned adequately it certainly can fill in the utility void, though I've my doubts wether that can be achieved. To me there really only two tuning states to affinity: necessary, if it trivializes an encounter mechanic by a role switch (in fight) vs. not needed at all (whenever it does not, as it then won't contribute anything).

[Tiberria]

Does anyone else think they should bring back TBC/WoTLK style Tree of Life form (obviously with updated visuals) as a core gameplay mechanic/combat stance?

With them wanting to go back to the "core fantasy" of classes/specs, the core fantasy of a Resto Druid has always been as "The Tree" and the core fantasy of the Druid class has always been as a shapeshifter first and foremost. Resto Druids don't ever even become trees anymore unless we take Incarnation (and there's no guarantee that that talent will continue to be balanced to be the default choice). Resto Druids also rarely to never (Displacer Beast excluded) shapeshift at all in the course of their core gameplay. The removal of Dash and Stampeding Roar will provide even fewer situational shapeshift scenarios.

I just think they should put Resto back in line with the other Druid specs and give it a core Tree stance that does something like +20% healing and possibly restricts spells like Wild Growth, Lifebloom and Tranq to being only usable in Tree form. That concept will also fit in well with the new Affinity talents for other specs. It's going to be wierd that taking Balance affinity lets you go Boomkin and cast Boomkin spells, Guardian and Feral affinity will have you going Cat/Bear form, while Resto affinity will just have you standing around in caster form. I think it would be much more uniform in overall class design and core fantasy to actually have a real tree form again.

- - - Updated - - -

edit:
As for the lack of utility - it really comes down to how they plan to tune affinity. If it can be tuned adequately it certainly can fill in the utility void, though I've my doubts wether that can be achieved. To me there really only two tuning states to affinity: necessary, if it trivializes an encounter mechanic by a role switch (in fight) vs. not needed at all (whenever it does not, as it then won't contribute anything).

I strongly suspect that affinity will have to be tuned in such a way that it's basically a talent row where you take the talent for the corresponding passive range increase/damage reduction/movement speed buff that you want.
- If Guardian affinity actually lets you viably tank a raid boss for more than a couple seconds, it has the potential to completely eliminate the need for a second (or third in some cases) tank on some fights. They aren't going to allow it to be tuned in such a way that it makes an entire raid role redundant. If you can't viably tank a boss for say ~30 seconds (in case a tank dies without a brezz or something), that capability is useless in a raid environment, and you are taking it for 10% damage reduction.
- Unless Feral affinity gives you melee immunity while in Cat Form, it's going to be unusable on most fights for Resto/Balance. Unless it lets you do significantly more damage than you would as Guardian, there's no reason a tank would ever use it. If it lets you do more than tank level damage, it would be completely overpowered for Resto on fights where the melee immunity thing isn't an issue.
- Balance affinity will similarly be totally useless for Guardian unless it surpasses tank level damage (never mind Feral), and completely overpowered for Resto if it does surpass tank damage.

Realistically, the only hope for affinity in terms of fixing our utility problem is that Balance affinity's DPS is balanced in such a way that we can smash the damage output that all other healers are capable of doing. That would be extremely powerful on fights where say you need 3.5 or 4.5 healers, because you could just be there to heal your ass off during Tranq/Incarnation and otherwise be DPSing. I also really can't see that situation every being viable because (1) other healers would complain that it's unfair there is such a discrepancy in damage output (2) it would step on the new Disc Priest 70/30% healer/dps niche they are trying to carve out too much. Disc won't have the option of being a 100% throughput healer, so if we are balanced around being able to do anything close to their level of DPS while still being able to switch back and forth and heal as a 100% healing spec whenever we want, it could well make the entire Disc spec irrelevant. They won't risk that, since they need this new Disc model to work out (they can't afford to put them back to shield spamming for the health of the entire healing game).

I strongly, strongly suspect they are just using affinities as a glorified row of passive buffs that you select and as a pretense to cutting down on spellbook clutter. The Druid class has way more spellbook stuff than other classes, because of all the form specific abilities. The affinity stuff lets them delete a lot of that.

[Deleted]

I much prefer being a caster over a tree. Blizzard have never managed to make the living trees of WoW not look completely retarded so I'd rather not be forced into it. I like my tier 3 transmog tyvm.

Also, I don't agree that trees are the "core fantasy". I've never seen Cenarius, Malfurion or Hamuul Runetotem be a tree, so I'm not sure where it comes from. They weren't trees in Vanilla, and the introduction of treeform in TBC was a complete surprise. It was funny at first because it had a silly dance but I got tired of it fast.

[Kaeth]

With them wanting to go back to the "core fantasy" of classes/specs, the core fantasy of a Resto Druid has always been as "The Tree" and the core fantasy of the Druid class has always been as a shapeshifter first and foremost.

The core fantasy of the resto druid has not always been "The Tree." That was a rather odd gimmick tacked on in TBC, and it only served to weaken our healing role until it was removed/altered (at the time it included a perma-self-snare and could not dispel until patch 2.3 or cast Healing Touch until the Wrath pre-patch).

The original tree form was a horrible mistake, and druids have gotten better as we've moved away from it. I for one don't want to go back.

Shapeshifting itself has also never been "first and foremost" the "core fantasy" of the entire class. It's the "core fantasy" of ferals and guardians (the latter originally also considered "ferals" prior to 5.0). Moonkin form has little or no basis in the game lore and was slapped onto druids in TBC -- similarly to Tree of Life form -- as a handicap mechanic to weaken the hybrid role of druids and guarantee adherence to a specialized -- not hybrid -- role in raiding. That one, for a number of reasons, managed to last a lot longer than its healing-spec cousin.

The "core fantasy" is command over nature. We use it to heal, we use it -- along with celestial power -- to nuke. We assume animal forms to strike at our enemies or shield our allies from harm. We don't need to turn into walking logs or chubby chickens to wield the power of nature to heal or nuke, and prior to TBC, we never did.

[Pyrianis]

Does anyone else think they should bring back TBC/WoTLK style Tree of Life form (obviously with updated visuals) as a core gameplay mechanic/combat stance?

If it came with something unique like the Cat speed or Moonkin armor, why not. As a restriction only? Nope. Though, I'd love to somehow get in on those new tree-related visuals they've been churning out -- particularly the various Draenor Ancients and the Val'sharah Archdruid.

Disc won't have the option of being a 100% throughput healer

I wouldn't count on it. Many Disc players are convinced that the 70/30% thing simply indicates how they'll be spending their time to do 100% healing. Considering the history of Disc tuning, as well as how robust their new toolkit looks, that will probably end up being true.

On another note, having watched how the boomkins struggle to kill quest mobs in the alpha, I'm filled with trepidation about leveling as Resto-chicken. Maybe Feral Affinity will be preferable for that? Thorns better be godly!

[stormgust]

With them wanting to go back to the "core fantasy" of classes/specs, the core fantasy of a Resto Druid has always been as "The Tree" and the core fantasy of the Druid class has always been as a shapeshifter first and foremost. Resto Druids don't ever even become trees anymore unless we take Incarnation (and there's no guarantee that that talent will continue to be balanced to be the default choice). Resto Druids also rarely to never (Displacer Beast excluded) shapeshift at all in the course of their core gameplay. The removal of Dash and Stampeding Roar will provide even fewer situational shapeshift scenarios.

They removed treeform, because it simply was a restriction on our toolkit and it turned into purely cosmetics in the end. Well, they also needed that mechanic for chakra, and for that one it only took them three expansions to figure out, that it just does not work out, because you'll just stick to one form permanently and it's but a restriction on your toolkit.

I strongly suspect that affinity will have to be tuned in such a way that it's basically a talent row where you take the talent for the corresponding passive range increase/damage reduction/movement speed buff that you want.

Yeah, that's my expectation as well - it's not going to be any different from HotW.

I strongly, strongly suspect they are just using affinities as a glorified row of passive buffs that you select and as a pretense to cutting down on spellbook clutter. The Druid class has way more spellbook stuff than other classes, because of all the form specific abilities. The affinity stuff lets them delete a lot of that.

More like PvP pruning for druids.

[Tiberria]

If it came with something unique like the Cat speed or Moonkin armor, why not. As a restriction only? Nope. Though, I'd love to somehow get in on those new tree-related visuals they've been churning out -- particularly the various Draenor Ancients and the Val'sharah Archdruid.



I wouldn't count on it. Many Disc players are convinced that the 70/30% thing simply indicates how they'll be spending their time to do 100% healing. Considering the history of Disc tuning, as well as how robust their new toolkit looks, that will probably end up being true.

On another note, having watched how the boomkins struggle to kill quest mobs in the alpha, I'm filled with trepidation about leveling as Resto-chicken. Maybe Feral Affinity will be preferable for that? Thorns better be godly!

Old TBC/WoTLK tree form came with the same armor increase that Moonkin form has today. It also came with a (20% IIRC) movement speed decrease that they decided was idiotic and removed in WoTLK. However, I don't see what is so unique about Moonkin form that couldn't be repeated with a Tree form. It's just 10% extra damage and some added armor. Cat/Bear form sure, because they have a completely different set of abilities, but there's no gameplay really in Moonkin form.

Unless they want to repeat the same mistake with Disc tuning that they have made for the last 3 expansions, they absolutely can not let a spec that adds 30% of the damage of a DPS also do just as much healing as every other healer too. That will just make it flat out BETTER than every other healer that can't add that extra damage. On top of that, Disc is keeping all of its current utility. I am not even exaggerating - if Disc is going to have the same throughput balance as every other healer and retain all of it's current utility AND do ~30% of the damage of every DPS, there is no reason to even play a Mistweaver, Resto Druid or Holy Priest. All 3 specs will be redundant/non viable due to their lack of utility if that happens. There won't be any reason to take anything but Disc Priests and Holy Paladins - just take 2 Holy Paladins - one to give the aura haste buff to melee, another to give it to ranged, and 2 Disc Priests to give you an extra 60% of a DPS, plus the same healing of every other healer. It would be even worse than it is on live - at least Weakened Soul locks you out of really using multiple Disc Priests - that is gone in Legion. Absorbs are toned down, but the ability to use PWS - and even spam it for short durations with a cooldown - is still there - and still has the potential to make the spec mandatory given the power of absorbs vs effective healing.

Either one of two things is going to happen.
1. They don't have a god damned clue what they are doing with healing and are completely oblivious the the massive problems that discrepancies in utility have in spec viability and raid comp decision making.
2. They are actively planning to have a discrepancy between throughput healers and support/utility healers. Mistweavers, Resto Druids, and to a slightly lesser extent Holy Priests will have minimal raid utility over and above their actual healing, but will be tuned around smashing the other specs in terms of effective throughput. Holy Paladins and Disc Priests will bring a huge amount of raid support/raid utility but will take a huge tax in effective healing output to compensate for it. Resto Shaman would probably be somewhere in the middle of the 2 extremes. Instituting that paradigm is the reason for piling on additional Paladin utility.

I really hope that it's (2), but would not be at all surprised if it's (1), and they have just given up caring about class balance altogether for healers, since they have failed so badly at ever getting it right.

- - - Updated - - -

Another thought is - the artifact passives are not really bonuses. Virtually every other class/spec has an artifact trait that reduces damage by 10% (or does something like increasing the damage reduction of Molten Armor, etc.) We do not have this, but have to take Guardian affinity to get it. Outgoing raid damage/survivability in raids is probably going to be balanced around having that 10% damage reduction, so Guardian Affinity might well be mandatory. The only thing those affinity passives really gives us is the flexibility to take movement speed or 5 yards spell range instead in situations where the damage reduction isn't needed.

[Anastacy]

I believe the 70/30 thing for Disc Priests has seriously been taken out of context, mostly due to Blizzard's lack of clarity. As more and more details are being released, it seems™ they meant it to mean "70% time spent casting healing-only spells/30% time spent casting DPS-only spells"), which results in a full (100% [give or take due to balancing]) effective healer who's "raid utility" is damage.

[Tiberria]

I believe the 70/30 thing for Disc Priests has seriously been taken out of context, mostly due to Blizzard's lack of clarity. As more and more details are being released, it seems™ they meant it to mean "70% time spent casting healing-only spells/30% time spent casting DPS-only spells"), which results in a full (100% [give or take due to balancing]) effective healer who's "raid utility" is damage.

Except it's bullshit that "their raid utility is damage", because they also have a major raid cooldown that's over and above their throughput, the best (from a % reduction anyway) tank cooldown in the game, and still have some absorbs (and the value those have over and above raw healing) that can be cast (and spammed with Rapture at key times). It isn't like Disc is remotely lacking in utility on live - they already blow Druids on live out in that category, are not losing any of that current utility, plus are getting a significant damage contribution on top of that. Meanwhile, Resto Druids are losing their primary raid utility for Mark of the Wild - that is garbage in both concept, execution and real value, and will have far less utility in Legion than they do on live.

If HPally/Disc are going to have the same effective throughput as Druids/Mistweavers/Holy Priests, we are going to be in an awful spot.