Resto Druid - Legion Talents

[stormgust]

The entire reason why thisthread is dumb is because we don't even have access to artifact talents or perks yet.

Those would act on our core spells, and not on a specific talents, and whence are not needed to be known prior to giving feedback on talents.

the fuck down for a second, and focus on the actual gameplay of the class.

And that's what tiberria actually does, once you look behind all his numbers: Profusion is a bad mechanic, Cenarion Ward lost most of it's value with with the change to swiftmend, a talent not standing on it's own, but requiring (several) other talents is far from ideal, as it severely restricts choice.

Tuning a spec is easy

Going by overall throughput, yes. Tuning individual mechanics on the other hand is not. Take Inner Peace for example. It's has two states: it provides an additional Tranq worth of healing, when the CD's align with encounter length, it provides zero benefit, whenever it doesn't. To keep class balance in line, overall throughput will have to be tuned for the first case (i.e. you get the additional tranq - but it does not exceed other classey by far doing to), which then neccesarily forces the other two talent options to provide similar amounts of healing to that of an tranquility.

And this is still by far the easiest "tuning" problem, because it is not affected by cross row balance: Flourish increases SotF's performance by up to ~70%, so either you tune SotF for pairing it up with Flourish (in which case it falls behind the entire T75 whenever you don't), or you don't (then it pulls ahead of the reminder of T75 whenever you do pair them). They did not manage balancing this for RaGr/SotF, yet they're now trying it for: Prosp/SotF/Germ/Flourish (basically that's a factor >= 10 to reju single/spot heal performance)

making a spec rewarding and fun is not.

People tend to ignore the tuning early in beta, and then always are left wondering why some mechanics still underperform even after the tuning pass. The reason is usually quite similar to the above: the values to not underperform would fall outside of a "reasonable" (e.g. not to bursty) range (either indivudally, or when interacting with other mechanics)

[Alroxas]

<snip>

MoC with Verdant Growth might be a good fix for smaller group content like dungeons where being the only healer, a more direct heal approach is necessary. While the alternative (Germination + either Stonebark or Flourish) seems better in larger group content where a HoT healer can shine (provided that their heals aren't being sniped).

As for the "row of passives", it does provide flexibility a few specific scenarios. In particular, this seems to fulfill the dev comment on how healers should be able to quest (as DPS) while staying in healer spec. Reason being that this allows artifact progression for healers to stay as a healer during leveling process instead of switching to an off spec.

Do we know the duration of switching to another affinity from your main spec? Regardless of duration, I assume there's some sort of stat switching to make Int swap with Agi and Spell Power swap with Attack Power. It's still ineffective because of trinket, secondary stats and artifact traits that don't affect the affinity spec.

- - - Updated - - -

Wild Growth - 280% of SP (10 sec CD)
Holy Word Sanctify - 600% of SP (6 targets -1 min CD but CD reduced by 6-8 secs per PoH cast)

The problem between this specific comparison is that the cost of PoH to reduce HW:Sanctify is very high. 3 casts of WG at 10s CD is maybe 22~23% mana whereas a priest countering with HW:S/PoH combo would consume over 50% mana to get 2 HW:S casts off.

[Deleted]

basically. druids are becoming shit or have i missed something? i have just been skimming the thread

[Keiyra]

When it comes to some of the minor tuning issues, I just can't get too concerned. Something like lifebloom's CD and refresh could easily end up being part of our artifact. The unimaginative Tranq talent could easily just go away for something else.

Emphasis mine. Sure those concerns COULD be addressed, but they also might not. So my take is on what the have shown us - not what they MIGHT show us down the road - and yes, it's taken with a grain of salt that they are not done and there is more to come. But better to point out concerns as we see them now, so they CAN fix them down the road. (we hope)

[Hoticehunter]

basically. druids are becoming shit or have i missed something? i have just been skimming the thread

It's just a bunch of people claiming that the sky is falling based on extraordinarilly preliminary data. Things will come to together, it just needs time. Honestly, looking over the spells and talents at this point is just a waste of time.

[stormgust]

It's just a bunch of people claiming that the sky is falling based on extraordinarilly preliminary data. Things will come to together, it just needs time. Honestly, looking over the spells and talents at this point is just a waste of time.

That specific argument always fails at a crucial point: We will never know which things are to stay unless it get's released to live, so the only reasonable assumption is, that everything is to stay (and get it changed). It's really as simple as that. Honestly, extending your argument actually reads "Feedback does not matter".

[Sprucelee]

Emphasis mine. Sure those concerns COULD be addressed, but they also might not. So my take is on what the have shown us - not what they MIGHT show us down the road - and yes, it's taken with a grain of salt that they are not done and there is more to come. But better to point out concerns as we see them now, so they CAN fix them down the road. (we hope)

Most definately. Those issues, among others, I have already expressed concern about. I am certainly not saying people shouldn't provide feedback, or that people should just have blind faith...

It is the hyperbole and other stuff I do not find helpful, which I think gets in the way of productive discussion. People already telling people to re-roll, or "ranking" healers (and, of course, putting Druids last..), and other stuff that really does not advance any useful conversation.

Anyway, hopefully people do give feedback on mechanics (i.e. making LB more clunky) or areas that will obvious be hard to balance (i.e. mastery across group sizes), and do so in the right spots. Well aimed tweets, the BNET forums, as well as here (which they have mentioned they do read).

[stormgust]

MoC with Verdant Growth might be a good fix for smaller group content like dungeons where being the only healer, a more direct heal approach is necessary. While the alternative (Germination + either Stonebark or Flourish) seems better in larger group content where a HoT healer can shine (provided that their heals aren't being sniped).

It's really nowhere close to the Flourish, as that one free's up GCD's to make use of affinity (50% of a dps is still a lot in 5mans), and you wouldn't really need to bother about healing: you have up to 200% boosted Reju for the tank (SotF/Prosp/Germ), several normal rejus and could also go 100% boosted WG (ticking for 17s).

[Tiberria]

The problem between this specific comparison is that the cost of PoH to reduce HW:Sanctify is very high. 3 casts of WG at 10s CD is maybe 22~23% mana whereas a priest countering with HW:S/PoH combo would consume over 50% mana to get 2 HW:S casts off.

The issue with that argument is:

Wild Growth - 6 targets x 280% of SP = 1680% of SP total - 7.5% of mana
Prayer of Healing - 5 targets x 300% of SP = 1500% of SP total - 8.0% of mana

Essentially, WG and PoH are very comparable in terms of mana efficiency and throughput. WG does more raw throughput, but you could argue that the effective throughput is likely to be nearly identical, because PoH is a direct heal and WG is a 7 second HoT (meaning it's likely to have a higher percentage of overheal). At any rate, both spells are close to equivalent.

That argument would make sense if PoH was a weak spell to cast in its own right and you were only really casting it as a mana dump to get the cooldown reduction. That clearly isn't the case. PoH is an equivalent spell in relative power to WG. On top of that, there is no cooldown limitation, so you can use it as much as your mana will allow. Meanwhile, not only are Druids limited to a 10 second CD on Wild Growth, they also don't have a huge payoff spell at least every 60 seconds to layer on top of that. I think some combination of these needs to happen to make this more reasonable.

1. Get rid of the WG cooldown. Why does WG need a CD when PoH, CH, and Essence Font are spammable AOE spells of a similar power level? Why can't a Druid have the option of wheeling off several WG in a row to handle burst healing requirements with a mana dump?
2. Make WG a pure smart heal. If it is going to have a 10 second CD limitation and a HoT effect limitation, it should at least target lowest health targets to give some kind of upside to the disadvantages of the spell.
3. Tune WG to be significantly stronger than AoE heals that are spammable to make the 10 second cooldown meaningful. Something like PoH should probably be 30-50% weaker than WG given the cooldown reduction effect plus the flexibility in its' use.

- - - Updated - - -

Some of them are, but he is blowing everything out of proportion (which is often what Floopa does). The entire reason why thisthread is dumb is because we don't even have access to artifact talents or perks yet. So trying to speculate any type of class balance is inherently useless. We would be foolish to assume that Artifacts will not make or break a class. Also, this is literally the first fucking patch of beta. To go on a huge rant about how a class is going to suck on the first stage of testing (actually nothing has been tested yet) is ludicrous. Calm the fuck down for a second, and focus on the actual gameplay of the class. Tuning a spec is easy, making a spec rewarding and fun is not.

Also the change to SotF is essentially negligible beacuse of the CD increase of Swiftmend. I guess it's better burst though! I'm not saying everything is perfectly fine, but saying the sky is falling on the first beta patch is dumb.

1. They have already said that Artifact talents are not expected to be game/play style changing. They are expected to be basically +healing and +damage modifiers to specific spells. Every example they gave of them at Blizzcon falls within that niche. They are going to put playstyle/toolkit defining stuff in talents and the baseline kit. There's no reason to think that Artifact talent trees will change the current perspective of what we have available.

2. There are plenty of concerns that have been brought up with the gameplay of the class and the gameplay design. Here are just a few.

- The new mastery is horribly limiting. It feels like it locks the full strength of your toolkit away behind having X stacks of HoTs on a target that you want to heal. The current mastery is boring, but at least I know that as long as I maintain uptime on it, I can cast whatever spell I want for what is appropriate for the situation and gain the full benefit of mastery. Holy Priests know that they get the full benefit of their mastery on every direct spell (basically everything but Renew) that they cast. Shaman know that they always have the full benefit of their mastery scaling on targets based on their health. Paladins know that as long as they manage their positioning effectively, they can use whatever spell they want whenever they want and gain a reliable mastery gain, etc, etc. Why are Druids bottlenecked behind HoT stacks? If a player drops to low health randomly and needs immediate healing, why can't we cast a direct Regrowth on that player and benefit from our mastery instead of being penalized by not having pre-HoTs on that target? Why should we feel conflicted between building HoT stacks first vs using the right tool for the job when it's most appropriate to use it? It's a play style limitation that is going to play out horribly.

- They promised that the new talent structure would be game and play style changing. It's anything but for Resto Druids. For one thing, we lose Nature's Swiftness from our kit with nothing to replace it. We lose the Nature's Vigil/Heart of the Wild talent option from our kit with nothing to really replace it. The only talent tiers that provide real playstyle options are the L100 tier and the Incarnation vs SoTF talent options (which we already have on live). Everything else is either likely to be a cookie cutter talent, or provides no real depth to the play style.

- With Divine Hymn no longer being a channel, Tranq is now the only raid cooldown that requires standing still and channeling. Why is that a reasonable restriction? If it's not a reasonable restriction for DH, why is it a reasonable restriction for Tranq? Given that they appear to be balancing us even more around Tranq (i.e. 2 minute Tranqs), why should we have this type of limitation on use of something that will become so integrally important to our performance? It doesn't make any sense at all.

- - - Updated - - -

Some math on how GCD capped we are likely to be/how many active Rejuvs are are going to be able to have at a time.
- Rejuv is a 15 second duration (Germination's 3 second increase is removed).
- I am assuming that maintaining Lifebloom, using OOC procs, using Wild Growth on cooldown, Swiftmend on cooldown, and casting Efflo every 30 seconds is worth it.
- Assuming that we have a 1.3 second GCD after haste.

Within the 15 second duration of a Rejuv, we have the following GCDs/GCD time locked in.

- 1.95 seconds / 15 seconds spent on Lifebloom GCDs (10 second duration - 1.3 x 1.5).
- 0.43 seconds spent on Efflo GCDs
- 0.43 seconds spent on Swiftmend GCDs.
- 1.95 seconds/ 15 seconds spent casting Wild Growth every 10 seconds.
- 0.52 seconds/15 seconds spent casting OOC Regrowths (@2.4 ppm)

That is 5.3 seconds out of every 15 seconds locked into "rotational spells), and 9.7 seconds remaining for fillers/Rejuv casts. That means that - assuming we use every GCD, and have the mana regen to be able to cast Rejuv with every spare GCD, we are looking at being capable of having 7-8 active Rejuvs at a time maximum.

Another thing is - I don't necessarily think Flourish will be as amazing/default as some people do the more I think about it. For one thing, getting the most out of Flourish potentially requires a huge mana expenditure that may not necessarily pay off (targets with HoTs on them could easily be topped before you can get ~25 seconds of HoT duration from them. For another, I don't see how they could make Flourish work properly with Wild Growth, because of WG's design of being a front loaded HoT. Does that mean if you cast a WG and Flourish immediately afterward, you will get a 17 second duration WG, which should scale ticks up such that 17 seconds remaining is over twice as strong as 7 seconds remaining? I think it's likely they just exclude WG from Flourish.

If mana constraints are at all a thing (i.e. we can't afford to maintain everything plus spam Rejuv with every spare GCD), I could easily see Moment of Clarity actually being the default talent. A Regrowth is essentially superior to a Rejuv in terms of total healing, and the talent would give us an average of 7.2 free Regrowths per minute. That maths out as reducing our GCDs spent on mana consuming spells by ~15%. That could be a huge longevity boost. Plus, being able to use the 3 charges whenever instead of having a set duration is much more flexible than the current talent. The only problem with that strategy is you would not get any mastery gain from Regrowths on targets without other HoTs on them. They really should make the direct heal from Regrowth benefit from the mastery stack that it's own HoT applies on cast.

[stormgust]

Within the 15 second duration of a Rejuv

Knowing blizzard, one of the first passives on G'hanir is going to be: "Increases the duration of your Rejuvenation by 3s". Lifebloom duration is also a good candidate for a passive. So it won't be as but, but still, some GCD restrictions apply and whence the "stacking HoTs" is unlikely to work out.

Does that mean if you cast a WG and Flourish immediately afterward, you will get a 17 second duration WG, which should scale ticks up such that 17 seconds remaining is over twice as strong as 7 seconds remaining?

Yeah, the decay mechanic certainly has to be altered for that to work out. Excluding WG from flourish though, is not a reasonable optiongood option. It's going to be like excluding WG from OoC)

I think it's likely they just exclude WG from Flourish.

Most of it's value comes from WG freeing up a huge amount of GCD's by contributing significant healing to 6 targets, which is also going to save you a relatively large amount of mana (though it depends on how much of that additional time will contribute to effective healing).

If mana constraints are at all a thing (i.e. we can't afford to maintain everything plus spam Rejuv with every spare GCD),

That's a design problem I've seen on several healer tree's. Some have those isolated mana regen talents, which are either required if mana is a constraint, and are useless otherwise. They really either should design an entire tier around mana saving/regen (emphasizing different parts of the toolkit), or do away with them. Something half mana/half throughput isn't really going to work out well.

Also, if mana is indeed that much of a concern, I don't see much hope for the stacking mechanic of our mastery: In raids you'd spread out HoTs first, that's simply the most efficient thing you can do. It simply wouldn't be there anymore for anyone but the tank, and the new harmony would just be the old, minus it affecting direct heals. Also, the tuning issues would still be there: mastery has to be tuned on the assumption "one HoT on all but one player" for raids, yet this assumption will never be met in situations, where mana is not a concern ("smaller groups"). Using "on average mastery rating on gear" as stated in the blogs, that's going to be 10/20/30 additional healing small groups - and there simply is no spell to remove that healing from (our toolkit is "too small", we use all spells to their fullest in all situations)

[nightfalls]

So a few thoughts (mostly independent of the discussion thus far, sorry for any overlaps).

1. Tiberria may be a little overdramatic, but he's essentially correct with his criticisms. I agree it's not much use looking at tuning yet, especially since those are going to change possibly dramatically and a lot of numbers could be placeholders.

With that out of the way...

2. Tranquility's channeling limitation needs to go especially if Hymn's channel is confirmed to go (I don't think it is but could be wrong). Literally if Hymn's channel goes away, Holy Priest just becomes a better Druid. Also compare to no other CD's requiring channels anymore (even Paladin gets Aura Mastery + Aura of Mercy). A compromise could be replacing the 2 minute Tranq talent with a talent that removes the channel, but I feel that will just leave a bad taste in players' mouths. Better remove the channel and the talent altogether.

3. Wild Growth could lose the cast time, CD, or Mana Cost. I think the cast time is the best thing to go. Right now it just has too many limitations especially for an ability with little immediate impact (even Hamlet has tried to argue that the impact isn't immediate, during MOP Beta phase).

4. I sort of like the new Mastery, surprisingly, but I'm sort of worried about how poor the actual abilities and talents are. With LB having a shorter duration, WG being as limited as it is and Rejuv having no spread, it feels like it's going to be literally constant GCD capped HoT spam with no room to pause or do anything else. So WG could use what I said above, Rejuv could use a spreading mechanic. Tranq could be improved, because it's annoying if they want Druid to be a 1-trick-Tranq class but have it be the only channel-limited CD, where other classes just have admittedly weaker (but likely still sufficient), non-channeled CD's and a better base toolkit that more than compensates.

5. I like Affinities but I'm wondering if Feral Affinity is even usable (it needs to give immunity to melee in cat form). Also see above, if you're GCD capped keeping up HoTs for Mastery you're just taking that row for the passive, nothing more. End of story.

[Tiberria]

Divine Hymn's channel limitation indeed appears to be gone.

Live tooltip:
Heals all party or raid members within 40 yards for [(140% of Spell power) * 4] over 8 sec, and increases healing done to them by 10% for 8 sec. The Priest must channel to maintain the spell.

Legion tooltip:
Heals all party or raid members within 40 yards for [(200% of Spell power) * 4] over 8 sec, and increases healing done to them by 10% for 8 sec. Healing increased 100% when not in a raid.

They explicitly removed the "must channel to maintain the spell" text from it. Tranq now has the most limiting mechanics of any raid cooldown in the game, yet we are likely to be the most taxed/dependent on our raid cooldown of any healer (i.e. balancing around the 2 minute Tranq talent). It's a bad combination, that will likely lead to the spec being close to non-viable on any fight where the limitations of Tranq prevent it from being effectively used against the most dangerous raid damage mechanics.

And, I really hate the idea of putting a talent that removes the channeling requirement of Tranq on the same row as throughput talents, because it eesentially still means you won't do competitive output unless you don't need to take that talent.

[nightfalls]

Tranq doesn't have the text either though. But I believe Blizzard mentioned (at Blizzcon) they wanted Tranq to still be channeled for some bone-headed reason.

Edit: Never mind, new tooltips confirm Hymn isn't channeled but Tranq still is. Yeah, that's not good.

[Ogion]

I don't think blizzards will ever read this thread. But I really want them to know all bad things we discussed. Maybe we should create thread on official forum and whine there to get their attention?

[stormgust]

I don't think blizzards will ever read this thread. But I really want them to know all bad things we discussed. Maybe we should create thread on official forum and whine there to get their attention?

There are threads on the official forum, but as activity over there is usually low, you're better of discussing on unofficial sites, because contrary to your assumption, blizzard actually reads those.

[Sydny]

I have just skimmed the changes and I am very concerned that we are becoming a Rejuv spamming bot. Why? And even without Genesis to help with the slow ticking HoTs to become effective during periods when burst healing is needed? Where is the burst heal? Extend the life of HoTs? They are already sniped by direct AoEs and become overheals, at least Genesis would help with making those slow ticking Rejuvs become effective heals rather than overheals.

Rejuv spamming and OVERHEALS, OVERHEALS AND MORE OVERHEALS??

Monks already snipe tranqs with their Revival that is instant. Now the hpriest gets an instant Hymn?

I have stuck with the rdruid through all its ups and downs, but this seems like the worst changes in all the xpacs. Is there someone new at Blizzard that absolutely hates druids? I am glad I have not pre-purchased Legion. I think it's time to say good-bye to the game.

[CloudedInSanity]

I have just skimmed the changes and I am very concerned that we are becoming a Rejuv spamming bot. Why? And even without Genesis to help with the slow ticking HoTs to become effective during periods when burst healing is needed? Where is the burst heal? Extend the life of HoTs? They are already sniped by direct AoEs and become overheals, at least Genesis would help with making those slow ticking Rejuvs become effective heals rather than overheals.

Rejuv spamming and OVERHEALS, OVERHEALS AND MORE OVERHEALS??

Monks already snipe tranqs with their Revival that is instant. Now the hpriest gets an instant Hymn?

I have stuck with the rdruid through all its ups and downs, but this seems like the worst changes in all the xpacs. Is there someone new at Blizzard that absolutely hates druids? I am glad I have not pre-purchased Legion. I think it's time to say good-bye to the game.

You're... not a Rejuv spamming bot now? I'm so confused.

[Isheria]

Tranquil Mind (Rank 1) - Tranquility no longer requires you to channel for its duration. For until cancelled after activating Tranquility, all cast time spells are instant cast.

Guess you won't have to channel tranq after all then.

[Hyve]

I hope this is a joke. So what they said on blizzcon was BS. Hundread of new talents and a lot of rows to choose from... And here we have only 2 rows??? Really?? I thought we will have at least 4 rows of talents. Hmm looking forward for more info on this

I know this is a few days old this post, but I just wanted to correct this.

Blizzard meant that over all the classes, and including Artifacts & PvP Talents that there are hundreds of new talents to choose. Not that each class will have them specifically.

[EliWallach]

What they need to do is shorten the Rejuv tick to 1.5 seconds. Same total output, twice the frequency.