[Resto] Mushrooms & Living Seed

[Renchy]

This is my very first post as I thought it was about time to have some input to this mmo community about my beloved druid.

This (hopefully) isnt going to be a QQ thread about how druid healers are lacking behind others because we all know that its true, how ever from personal experience when we are pushing heroic progression fights where the other healers (shaman, disc priest) and when we are duo (disc and myself) I top the meters hands down. However as we start to get these boss's on farm the disc priest just over takes me hands down, cant keep up with him. Even raided with a decent pally the other day to find that even now he is beating me!! Its not even like its close tbh, the disc priest once they know the fight can bubble spirit shell blah blah blah stuff so no one takes any damage, the pally whilst this is going on, is building his own lil bubble up on people using his mastery, may not be a huge one, but that is still a heal
So......,
What I have been trying to do is think of ways that druids can compete in farm content with these damage preventer healers, honestly fights are so boring to heal when we have them on farm as i can barely do anything productive apart from throw down some really bad dps
So I was think maybe a change to the way in Living Seed and the mushrooms work, i personally would love to see a bit more burst healing from druids and if possible maybe an absorb somewhere along those lines, I quite like the way in which pallys mastery works in terms of heal and they get a shield, so was wondering maybe living seed could work as an absorb, but it doesnt stack like a pally's would?? Or even to incorporate wild mushroom bloom into living seed, so for example 4 people have had a living seed on them for lets say 25k, we use bloom and those with the living seed bloom and are instantly healed for that 25k.
Thus allowing us to have a bit more burst healing on the raid, and if we combine both so living seed is an absorb and can still bloom it means that a living seedd can either bloom at 25k or it can bloom with 1k, would be quite fun to see how that would work out
what do you lot think? if i have made any sense what so ever

Sorry for the long post
had to get it off my chest

[craigp100]

I like the idea of living seed being an absorb shield where a 'stronger' seed overwrites a weaker one. Thus, preventing the seed absorb stacking like the pally mastery and it would feel like the seed is actually a worthwhile spell as I feel that it's not particularly great on how it procs off direct crit heals and then heals when the target takes more damage because it results in overhealing a lot of the time.

I don't think Blizzard are aiming to make Wild Mushroom: Bloom rotationally as stated by a blue in the past. Hence, the reason the ability is mediocre imo because of the use of 3 globals to simply set it up in an area, pray a target remains there when they take damage and then being able to detonate them on time when the damage comes in. I'm not sure how useful the Bloom proccing living seed as a heal would be either as most of the time I don't think that you'll have a large amount (3-4+) of living seeds on targets at any one point in a fight but if it did then we would probably begin to rely heavily on this method of AoE healing as opposed to rejuv. blanketing, but I do like the idea of having an alternative way to AoE heal using the mushrooms beyond the rejuv. blanket/wild growth/ swiftmend efflorescence.

As for my input on mushrooms, the concept is great on paper and I loved the announcement during Beta of them but it's not very practical (imo) and I would prefer that they worked similar to the lightspring / monk healing spheres where you could place a mushroom or 3 in an area then when an ally within 40yds takes damage the mushroom would bloom of it's own accord and heal that player, but until they I can't see myself using mushrooms very much which is a bit of a shame.

Relating to your fellow healers, the living seed suggestion would help us 'counter' these damage prevention classes a bit (discs/ palas) which would be nice touch, not so sure about the mushrooms though and it might even slightly shift our reforging into a bit of crit to proc these living seeds which could be interesting.

[Juvenate]

I've never been an advocate for Druids to receive absorbs because that's not our niche. I think our problem is that shielding is a bit out of control. Spirit Shell in particular (if timed correctly) can prevent as much damage as a 3 min raid CD and it is accessible 3x as much. It is supposedly receiving a nerf in 5.2.

I've always liked Living Seed. Back in Cataclysm it was one of the worst choices for talents (granted most of our "optional" talents weren't very good). This tier I've seen Living Seed do a lot more healing. I'm not sure if that's because glyphed Regrowth gives it more uptime or not. However, I think Living Seed's biggest issue is that it doesn't proc on all damage. In fact the damage it does proc off of is extremely inconsistent. Sometimes it will proc off of magical damage, sometimes it won't.

Living Seed actually wouldn't be a bad Mastery to have instead of Harmony (since Harmony no longer requires any type of maintenance). You could have it proc off of HoT crits as well as direct heals, have it proc off of all damage, and make LS stackable. You would just increase the healing % to make up for it's inferiority to absorbs. In this case LS would be great against burst damage since it would proc immediately after the damage was dealt.

In regards to its current standing, Living Seed is getting a bug fix in 5.2. Smaller LS procs will no longer override larger ones. It's a small step, I just wish they would make it stack-able up to a certain % of the players health a la Divine Aegis.

[Renchy]

For my first post I'm actually happy that you two have taken the time to read and reply
I know that an absorb is not in our niche but sometimes when you are raid healing in tree of life form you will be mainly using regrowth with the amount of clearcasting process, if you have glyphed regrowth these living seeds mainly go to waste which is a shame which is why having them as an absorb or even having control of when they heal would be a nice bonus and allow us to compete with these other healers

[craigp100]

I agree with Juvenate on the shielding matter, it is quite ridiculous how much Discs/ paladins can shield and I quite like the idea of having living seed as our mastery. The main issue with the talent I have is the amount of overhealing it can sometimes result in with the talent proccing from our direct heal crits though.

Playing on the mastery idea for a bit, any direct heals (crits or otherwise) accumulates a living seed on the target which procs on damage, like the talent behaves atm, and is only stack-able as Juvenate suggested (up to a % of player's health like Divine Aegis). However, any overhealing caused by the seed procs simply helps to building up a 'stronger' seed on the target. For example, Player A has a seed on them for 50k and they take 30k damage which procs the seed bloom. However, 20k from the seed is recycled into a new seed instead of proccing 50k and wasting it.

This would act similar to a shield while remaining within the Resto Druids niche imo, but I'm not sure how I feel about proccing seeds from HoTs myself.

[Renchy]

If we were to proc the seeds via our hots, that would take some major structure, because the devs would have to take into account how much our hots are healing for plus the PPM of the seeds, then how much they would bloom for, and how much they can stack up, to me that just sounds like alot of work, where as turning our seeds into either an absorb or as craigp100 has said, it being sort of like a smart heal in terms of player a has a 50k seed gets hit for 20k, and then is instantly healed for that 20k from our seed leaving a 30kseed behind, now two options remains to try and force another proc of the seed to get this seed back up to 50k or to leave it on 30k,

And a much earlier comment, allowing us to build seeds up on people to bloom manually when a burst phase comes into play, does allow another form of druid builds, which would be a mastery crit build, allowing a bigger seed to be made and more seeds to be created as well, would be very interesting, would stop the general, reach this breakpoint then stack mastery. Would be very interesting to see how people would balance their resto

[iadamson]

or bring back insect swarm and make it an absorb spell for resto.

[Beastest]

There is something about druids that doesn't go with absorbs in my mind. Absorbs in my head are a priest/pally mechanic and over homogenized mechanics are something they have been stepping away from in the past few xpacs.

Nothing against your idea those are just my thoughts.

My thought on how to make our overhealing more effective would while keeping with druids as a class would be some sort of bloom mechanic triggered either on a certain amount of overhealing or maybe just on a certain number of hot ticks(after the targets health was full) that would either heal upon the target taking a certain amount of damage(not counting absorbs) or maybe blooming to heal nearby raid members kind of a reverse seed of corruption.

As for Mushrooms they already kind of read like shaman totems on the UI I think they would do nicely as a low yield healing tick based on proximity. I might even say greatly lower their duration to a minute or even 30 seconds but make the healing multiplicative of the number of mushrooms out up to 3. It would give us a bit more burst/preburst healing to compete with the absorbs priest get and the cooldowns a shaman can throw down.

+ I have always found something really tacky about the detonate button on mushrooms for whatever reason. Even trap launcher last xpac was only 1 globals and a placement mechanic this is 3 placement mechanics with 3 globals and a detonate on top of it. I only ever use mushrooms anymore as a prepull when i know we are gonna take some burst. Pretty much Will and Kings if memorey serves maybe bladelord.

[Beastest]

There is something about druids that doesn't go with absorbs in my mind. Absorbs in my head are a priest/pally mechanic and over homogenized mechanics are something they have been stepping away from in the past few xpacs.

Nothing against your idea those are just my thoughts.

My thought on how to make our overhealing more effective would while keeping with druids as a class would be some sort of bloom mechanic triggered either on a certain amount of overhealing or maybe just on a certain number of hot ticks(after the targets health was full) that would either heal upon the target taking a certain amount of damage(not counting absorbs) or maybe blooming to heal nearby raid members kind of a reverse seed of corruption.

As for Mushrooms they already kind of read like shaman totems on the UI I think they would do nicely as a low yield healing tick based on proximity. I might even say greatly lower their duration to a minute or even 30 seconds but make the healing multiplicative of the number of mushrooms out up to 3. It would give us a bit more burst/preburst healing to compete with the absorbs priest get and the cooldowns a shaman can throw down.

+ I have always found something really tacky about the detonate button on mushrooms for whatever reason. Even trap launcher last xpac was only 1 globals and a placement mechanic this is 3 placement mechanics with 3 globals and a detonate on top of it. I only ever use mushrooms anymore as a prepull when i know we are gonna take some burst. Pretty much Will and Kings if memorey serves maybe bladelord.

[Dendrek]

I like some of the ideas I see here. Living Seed becoming our new Mastery is particularly compelling. But I'm afraid most of these suggestions, while potentially buffing druids and/or changing stat priorities, won't really change anything about our healing style. As others on these forums have pointed out, there isn't much complexity to the druid healing style. We have to be aware of several things, but we don't really have many abilities that require careful planning or proper timing. Basically, most of the heals we cast can be cast on CD or if damage/mana are permitting. I'd welcome more abilities that require intelligent usage.

I'm not saying I'd reject the changes being suggested here if they came to us. I'm just hoping what ever fix Blizz comes up with makes our class more engaging and expands our toolkit to make us more versatile.

[Raugnaut]

In terms of absorbs, Living Seeds work as a kind of "Reverse Absorb". Rather then absorbing the amount, the target is damaged and then the seed blooms, healing the target. Of course, for low periods/high seeds, it tends to go to overheal.

Having Blooms proc seeds would be an interesting change, IF combined with stacking seeds, and preventing the seeds from blooming normally. Something like "bloom current mushrooms, healing for x each and procing all living seeds. Mushrooms procing the same seeds increase healing of seed by y%" Thus, you can get a decent, 80k seed while tank healing, plant a shroom under the tank, then bloom the seed.

Even if they dont change it to be like that, 2 changes would make both spells significantly more useful- Seeds stacking up to a % of druids health, akin to Aegis/paladin mastery, and Shrooms having a .5 GCD on them, allowing quicker placement (Or even a .75 GCD). ATM, Shrooms is essentially an AoE Nourish.

[shiq]

For every Living Seed you get 1 Mushroom. (up to three)
U can blow them up every X second.

[craigp100]

or maybe blooming to heal nearby raid members kind of a reverse seed of corruption.

I much prefer your reverse seed of corruption idea as some kind of additional AoE healing (could maybe counter the whole rejuv. blanketing scenario which I'm not to keen on atm) and having the seed bloom after a certain % of damage taken by a target should have just been there in the first place imo. Incorporating the living seed as our mastery and having the seed bloom for minor AoE healing seems like a nice change, but then it requires little to no 'intelligent' input from the druid so our playstyle wouldn't change much. Although, our stat priority could change to value crit more so than mastery to proc seeds and potentially 'buff' druids.

As for Mushrooms they already kind of read like shaman totems on the UI I think they would do nicely as a low yield healing tick based on proximity. I might even say greatly lower their duration to a minute or even 30 seconds but make the healing multiplicative of the number of mushrooms out up to 3. It would give us a bit more burst/preburst healing to compete with the absorbs priest get and the cooldowns a shaman can throw down.

Not sure that I'm too fond of this. It almost seems like we'd be 'stealing' the shamans healing stream totem mechanic and applying it to our mushrooms, whereas I'd like to see something different come out of them. Something new and fresh, but the idea is still good.

I'd welcome more abilities that require intelligent usage. I'm not saying I'd reject the changes being suggested here if they came to us. I'm just hoping what ever fix Blizz comes up with makes our class more engaging and expands our toolkit to make us more versatile.

Agreed, I'd also like some new 'intelligent' spells for the toolkit, not sure of how to go about this though. One idea the thread comes back on is how to use our mushrooms with living seeds to detonate the seeds for burst healing.

Going back to living seed for a moment, If we took the Harmony mastery as baseline (~ 10% increased direct healing and ~10% increased periodic healing - idealogical figures), then changed our mastery to something like:
Mastery (Living Seed): When you critically heal a target with the direct healing portion of Swiftmend, Regrowth, Nourish, or Healing Touch you plant a Living Seed on the target. When the target suffers more than % of maxHP or 5 seconds have expired, the Living Seed will bloom and heal for (30+x)% of the initial amount healed shared between the target and up to 4 closest allies within 40yds prioritising those with the lowest HP.
Mastery points increase the value of x (the amount the seed heals for) the 30% is what the seed currently blooms for on live.

The idea is that living seed retains most of its original functionality, but acts as more of an AoE heailng (suggested by Beastest)
and the seed is 'not' wasted as it expires within 5 seconds regardless if the target with the seed takes damage. Also, the seed prioritises up to 4 lower HP allies, so if the seed expires and we have 5 players grouped up and player A has a seed. In the group, players A and B on max HP while players C, D & E are not then when the seed blooms it will only heal C,D & E and spread the seed bloom between these 3 players.
Of course, there is still the chance the healing may translate to overhealing again but the seed could still gain some usefulness if it even heals 1 of the 5 targets.

[Tricksterjim]

I have a different idea for mushrooms. Each mushrooms does no burst healing, but when it explodes it creates the usual circular field. When a player stands in it, they take some small % less damage. Like 5-10%. Max 5 people can receive the buff from each zone at a time. Have the mushrooms regen 1 at a time, slowly. Similar to a DK rune regeneration system and stack to a max of 3. Have the zones not be able to stack either (ie no %15 if all three explode in same place).

I think we would be surprised how much this would help us. We could keep it rotated on a tank(s) . OR we could save it for group AOE dmg phases. Have the regen rate slow enough that you can't use one at a time consistently, but fast enough that you can use it when needed. Like 1 mushroom per minute or 45 sec and the zone lasts for 8-10 sec. Plus, timing the explosion would have some leniency since the buff lasts a few second. So one something like blade lord you can explode before the damage actually comes.

This would also still require a certain level of skill to use since it would require proper placement and attention to strategy, but would reward players who are skilled.

[NightZero88]

Honestly and not to sound negative but I doubt Blizz is going to do anything with mushrooms. They've been a clunky mechanic for ages now. They still heal for pitiful amounts and I don't see it changing because a blue (GC maybe?) posted about how they don't want them to be part of our rotation. Because of that I see no changes coming to them which is a shame. I love my druid and I'll never play another class because of how much I've put into him but I sometimes wish I rolled another. Druid healers have always been mediocre in my mind. Additionally I feel like Blizz has no clue what to do with us. We originally rejuv blanketed. Then they took that away and now they're giving it back (reduced mana cost on rejuv from tier and reduced mana cost on rejuv next patch).

[Soullord]

they gave paladins a shield so don't see a reason why druids couldn't get one as well but rather than shields I would like to see some burst healing added to the druid arsenal

[Deleted]

If an absorb.. the swarm actually seems a good idea, but im also not being a fan of absorbs on a druid. Rather the swarm could be a sort of new either CD or passive, that applies and gives a dmg received reduction. I also think that Living Seed needs an upgrade, that would fix a ton of problems.. fixing it also is good, but it would be one way of getting druid healing a bit up to give it a slight upgrade, maybe ability to stack for x amounts and having an internal cd of like 2sec..
Also, one thing that is very problematic in my mind, is our swiftmend, it is a good aoe ability, but it triggering on hoted targets, makes it mandatory to apply a rejuv in most cases to trigger it. And in a lot of cases u even spend mana to apply a rejuv on a target that doesnt really need the healing (will be healed up by a pally in the next 1sec from an instant heal or something like that anyway.. ), so making it kinda slow, tricky, overcomplicated to trigger the swiftmend aoe ability. Not to mention swift ment it self, that is a huge heal. So i personally would either have swiftmend so that it can be used when ever, doesn't have to be a hot on the target, or make the aoe from swiftmend a seperate heal ability.

[mikoslav]

I have a different idea for mushrooms. Each mushrooms does no burst healing, but when it explodes it creates the usual circular field. When a player stands in it, they take some small % less damage. Like 5-10%. Max 5 people can receive the buff from each zone at a time. Have the mushrooms regen 1 at a time, slowly. Similar to a DK rune regeneration system and stack to a max of 3. Have the zones not be able to stack either (ie no %15 if all three explode in same place).

I think we would be surprised how much this would help us. We could keep it rotated on a tank(s) . OR we could save it for group AOE dmg phases. Have the regen rate slow enough that you can't use one at a time consistently, but fast enough that you can use it when needed. Like 1 mushroom per minute or 45 sec and the zone lasts for 8-10 sec. Plus, timing the explosion would have some leniency since the buff lasts a few second. So one something like blade lord you can explode before the damage actually comes.

This would also still require a certain level of skill to use since it would require proper placement and attention to strategy, but would reward players who are skilled.

or make it like each shroombloom creates a little cloud that heals just a little bit (like it is working now) but add also a feature that:
for 5 secs makes your hots (just hots) tick 1.5 times normal amount of tick healing on a target who stands in it (in the bloomed shroom cloud - could look like the same circle on the ground). Maybe make bloom on 20 secs CD (from now 10secs) This would again add more fun to druid healing. And more thinking, and more globals used to cast place shrooms.
No stacking 3 shrooms in 1 spot ever again. Raid stack - you cast 1 and bloom, raid spread you place them in 3 diff spots, expecting some more teamwork to make it work.

Just a little buff to shrooms, to make em worth to be cast.

[iadamson]

Turning mushrooms into healing stream totems, I approve.

OR..

Mushroom: Spore
Select up to 3 party/ raid members to hold a spore buff. (This buff lasts until canceled.)

Mushroom: Bloom
Bloom the spore buffs on the party/ raid members, causing a mushroom to sprout within a 5 yard radius of of each party/ raid member holding the spore buff. The mushroom heals for x amount. X long cooldown. (Activating bloom does not expend or cancel the spore buff)

ALSO

Turning Cenarion Ward into Earth Shield.

that is all.

[Deleted]

Turning mushrooms into healing stream totems, I approve.

OR..

Mushroom: Spore
Select up to 3 party/ raid members to hold a spore buff. (This buff lasts until canceled.)

Mushroom: Bloom
Bloom the spore buffs on the party/ raid members, causing a mushroom to sprout within a 5 yard radius of of each party/ raid member holding the spore buff. The mushroom heals for x amount. X long cooldown. (Activating bloom does not expend or cancel the spore buff)

ALSO

Turning Cenarion Ward into Earth Shield.

that is all.

Nice idea.
But afterall that wouldnt push the druids in 25 men raids.
The most time i played the druid he was a real raid heal similar to the holy Priest. Now u play the resto only in 10 men raids cause there he is still strong.

They have to Push all aoe heals and also the shrooms and living seed.
Something like critting with any spell would let a seed on player and it could be stackable.

The idea with the shrooms i like very much but as an healing stream totem i wouldnt like it ^^
More like an heal over time, like healing rain. that would be cool including the living seed crit proc from a hot on player would be awesome.