"New" resto druid mastery... it didn't work the first time, why again?

[Tiberria]

Because the glyph system is slated to become purely cosmetic, making room for more talents and artifact powers.



No, because you can see that Healing Touch / Healing Wave / Heal are on par. Every other healer preview lists abilities ranging from minor/moderate to large/strong/massive as expected. The glaring lack of the latter in the resto druid preview has alarming implications about how they're tuning the new mastery. Again, the language is certainly not haphazard; they've tweeted as much.

I suppose I'm mostly bitter that Renewing Mist gets to be the ultimate HoT in the game, rather than Lifebloom, and it's smart-every-tick to boot.
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The shaman class preview also has no spells listed as stronger than moderate - but every other healer has an abundance of high throughput options. The description of Wild Growth is really telling. Our only true AoE heal already has a 10 second CD (when every other healing spec except Paladin has a spammable AoE), and is already limited by being a HOT. retains the same high mana cost it has on live (more overhealing) and also has a cast time, and isn't a true smart heal (like Renewing Mist/Chain Heal). Given all of those limitations, how is WG considered only a "moderate" power heal? It should be significantly stronger. The strength of WG on live (plus the power of Tranq) is the only thing propping the Resto Druid spec up this expansion. Rejuv already hits like a wet noodle. Drop WG to a moderate AoE heal instead of the HPM/HPS monster that it currently is and spec is Holy Priest level.

The other alarming thing that this suggests in terms of balance is that they are going to have to buff the living bejesus out of Tranq to make Druid numbers look in line with other healers. That's something that I already feared would happen with their refusal to allow a mechanic for Tranq while moving. Realistically, to justify Tranq having a channel time, plus the need to remain stationary for 8 seconds, the healing that it does should blow stuff like HTT and Revival out of the water. It clearly doesn't on live, but I could see them being justified in tuning it that way for Legion to emphasize the value of the niche/mechanics differences. Of course, that's a horrible idea, because would you really want to be tuned around something like 40% of your output coming from a 3 minute CD that can be fairly limited in its use for some mechanics and on some fights? There's a very real danger that they are headed in that direction or will be forced to tune in that direction to compensate for the mediocrity of the rest of our kit.

[EyelessCrow]

I've felt like this about a lot of the changes for Legion, I don't view them as bad...but it's not new.

[Torty]

There's OoC+RG, there's NS+HT, then for intense healing phases you certainly prefer swiftmend. Sure you end up casting HT, but either when you're running incredible low on mana, solely focus on tank (and no large spikes there), or simply you have nothing else to do.

Do I understand you right, you are casting a lower HPCT spell during intense healing phases instead of spells that also have a cast time of global cooldown and have better numbers? Rejuv has higher HPCT and HPM than SM. Regrowth has higher HPCT and roughly the same HPM, literally better than Swiftmend at everything except being cast on the move.

You can't even do math in the current content with all the info available and already aim for something that is not released. This is too good. Here's the tip: next time you try to become a math guru, make sure you know basic stuff.

[Kuniku]

With the mastery suggesting being strong for tank healing perhaps I can go back to my preferred tank healing instead of raid healing xD

[Alroxas]

Something funky is going on.

So the Mastery as reported on b.net is different from the writeup that wowhead has.

Wowhead has listed this text for Resto's Mastery:

Your healing is increased by 10% for each of your Restoration heal over time effects on the target.

Which seems inline with this twitter conversation between Bearded Tree (@djnifos) and WarcraftDevs.

@WarcraftDevs Resto Druid Harmony applies to all healing done by the druid, including Tranq? Rejuv have regular GCD?

@djnifos All of these guesses are correct!

This then makes our mastery a bit more interesting as direct heals (along with Tranq) could be super charged with HoTs.

So I guess in an emergency AoE heal, you would have pre-Rejuved several people, use WG followed by Flourish then Tranq?

[Keiyra]

So I guess in an emergency AoE heal, you would have pre-Rejuved several people, use WG followed by Flourish then Tranq?

That's not much of an emergency if you have that much set up time now is it?

You certainly could do all that for a scripted use of Tranq to counter X ability (which is how we use tranq 99% of the time) and in a 20 man raid you'll be getting +12.5% healing on your tranq ticks on 12 out of 20 people or so. That's something to be excited about?

[stormgust]

So I guess in an emergency AoE heal, you would have pre-Rejuved several people, use WG followed by Flourish then Tranq?

Unless those targets who drop into an emergency take periodic damage, pre-rejuving them is a complete waste off mana. If they have no reju, and an emergency occur, you won't have time to get those HoTs rolling.

That mastery is good for exactly one thing: get high(er) numbers on (predictable) single target damage (resp. small groups). Otherwise it's underperforming (as it's tuned for "full" benefit at two stacks), encouraging you to waste mana (get that second HoT for the additional mastery stack, so that they can snipe eachothers healing is absurd), and causing several scaling issues in our basetoolkit, as well across talent tiers (remember: 4-5 throughput tiers now, and druid theme is "HoT healer").

[vulena]

Hmm... except the first time a variation of this mastery was implemented, absorbs were not strong at all. In fact, it was holy priests and paladins who were the kings of healing at that time. Absorbs have nothing to do with any of this.

Oh, right, because the last two xpacs didn't happen.

Are you serious? Absorbs are hurting the CURRENT healing meta. The old healing meta is irrelevant. When rebalanced around a lack of absorbs, HoTs will reign supreme, and can only get better when they are literally designed to be better the more you throw on. When absorbs don't exist, HoTs keep people closer to full health at all times than straight heals do.

If you think absorbs aren't part of this, maybe Balance is more your speed.

[Pyrianis]

So the Mastery as reported on b.net is different from the writeup that wowhead has.

Where's the difference?

HoTs will reign supreme

Quite a random claim. They will not; nor should they be allowed to.

If you think absorbs aren't part of this, maybe Balance is more your speed.

Lack of absorbs would benefit the current mastery at least as much as it will the new mastery, so no, absorbs have nothing to do with this. For once.

[Hoticehunter]

Something funky is going on.

So the Mastery as reported on b.net is different from the writeup that wowhead has.

Wowhead has listed this text for Resto's Mastery:



Which seems inline with this twitter conversation between Bearded Tree (@djnifos) and WarcraftDevs.




This then makes our mastery a bit more interesting as direct heals (along with Tranq) could be super charged with HoTs.

So I guess in an emergency AoE heal, you would have pre-Rejuved several people, use WG followed by Flourish then Tranq?

From how I interpreted that dev reply, they misunderstood the person asking the question because the dev auto-interpreted the question to how he understands the question. Let me break it down like this.

Q: Does the mastery affect all healing?
A: Yes.
This is a vague answer. We already know that it affects all healing, because that's what the mastery says. What's vague about this answer is it almost makes it sound like the mastery is a variable buff on yourself that affects how strong your heals are depending on how many hots you have on people throughout the raid. I feel like the dev answered the way he did because he's so used to how it works, he wouldn't really stop to think that maybe the questioner means something different.
Based on the wording of the mastery as it stands now, I feel like the exchange should have gone more like this:
Q: Does the mastery affect all healing?
A: Well yes and no. Yes on a per target basis. But casting say, Healing Touch on a target with no hots won't get you any benefit. Casting Healing Touch on a target with Rejuv and Regrowth on them will be 20% stronger.

[Alroxas]

Where's the difference?

Compare this:

• Mastery: Harmony
• Your healing is increased by 12% (with Mastery from typical gear) for each of your Restoration heal over time effects on the target.

To this (or this):

• Mastery: Harmony
• Your healing is increased by 10% for each of your Restoration heal over time effects on the target.

I've asked around the folks at wowhead and blizzardwatch to see where they are getting the revised mastery text, waiting on an update.

Q: Does the mastery affect all healing?
A: Yes.
This is a vague answer. We already know that it affects all healing, because that's what the mastery says.

Not quite. The original one says that the mastery only affects your "Restoration heal over time effects" which indicates only HoTs get buffed by the mastery. HT, the direct heal portion of Regrowth, Swiftmend, etc. wouldn't be affected as those are not heal over time effects.

The "revised" one works as you stated. A HT alone would not do extra healing but if there's a HoT on the person then each HoT buffs all healing (direct and HoTs) by 10%.

That's not much of an emergency if you have that much set up time now is it?...That's something to be excited about?

Let me restate it then. A resto druid would pre-HoT incoming damage like a Disc priest would pre-shield people for incoming damage (a proactive rather than reactive playstyle) then pop their emergency button (Tranq) to get additional benefit because of existing HoTs (which were probably overhealing) to get more output. Granted this just makes Druids more a Tranq wonderboytree... no argument there.

[stormgust]

Not quite. The original one says that the mastery only affects your "Restoration heal over time effects" which indicates only HoTs get buffed by the mastery. HT, the direct heal portion of Regrowth, Swiftmend, etc. wouldn't be affected as those are not heal over time effects.

The "revised" one works as you stated. A HT alone would not do extra healing but if there's a HoT on the person then each HoT buffs all healing (direct and HoTs) by 10%.

The only difference is, that they replaced "12% (with Mastery from typical gear)" with "10%", which is likely just an oversight of having to add everything manually. That doesn't change anything on how the mechanic is understood though.

Let me restate it then. A resto druid would pre-HoT incoming damage like a Disc priest would pre-shield people for incoming damage (a proactive rather than reactive playstyle) then pop their emergency button (Tranq) to get additional benefit because of existing HoTs (which were probably overhealing) to get more output. Granted this just makes Druids more a Tranq wonderboytree... no argument there.

Just that the disc priest was fully effective, and the druid "wasted" (i.e. forced HoT overheal) mana just to buff a tranquility.

[Alroxas]

That doesn't change anything on how the mechanic is understood though.

Ah apparently, I misunderstood the mechanic as previous pages seem to indicate that the bonus was only good on additional HoT effects versus all healing (as long as HoT was applied first).

[Pyrianis]

For what it's worth, the %12 (from gear) is more recent than the 10% (minimum). They updated it shortly after the Wowhead post.

[Manhands]

Here, I disagree. I think their goal for Mastery is that it is:

- very easy to understand, even for a casual player
- you gain its benefit by just following the basic rotation/doing your thing
- is somehow thematically tied to the spec

Thus, they keep it simple. Mastery is just a stat. Do you expect crit to be innovative and interesting? Haste - is it boring, or not?

They have many better tools to introduce complexity into a spec's rotations, these are: talents (blah blah, I feel like a Blizz parrot repeating it again, but that doesn't make it any less true), tier bonuses (which can shift playstyles a bit), specific trinkets (like the HFC class trink), and in Legion - the Artifact, which will give you 2-3 active abilities and a lot of passives on its own.

The masteries they propose do their jobs in general. Cats, who are bleed-based, get +bleed. Affli locks get +dot damage. Tanks get +block or +healing received or +dodge or whatever they arbitrarily chose to be the "gimmick" for each spec. It is easy, can be explained to a new player in one sentence and fullfills the above mentioned goals. The only thing is that it might be a bit underwhelming, but what if you get some way to rapidly blanket the raid with a weak hot to just proc mastery? E.g. your shroom explosion leaves a hot, or you get a hot 2min cooldown that basically just Rejuvs the whole raid? You don't know, you won't know (until we get a playable beta with at least an early lineup of talents and Artifact powers put in).

An example from my class: Affliction locks seem to get a burst aoe attack from their weapon, on a medium cd. Neat! And it changes things quite a bit as far as the spec is concerned...

I love posts like this, swinging that pendulum of rabble-rousing back towards sanity.

I think the OP's question/statement was a good one, though: 'We've seen this before, it wasn't good, and they changed it for solid reasons [insert blue quote!]. So what has changed?'

And the answer is that we'll need to see the talents. What if there was a talent "Mastery bonus applies to any target below 50% health"?
Or "Wild Growth automatically applies a [weak] HoT"? Or, as someone mentioned, an aoe hot on a cd? Or maybe Wild Growth will be buffed by 10%, so it would still be very effective without it landing on HoTs.

But if none of the above happen, and they are suggesting from the Mastery that druids need to prepare the raid with hots before using Wild Growth, meanwhile either Rejuv is fairly weak (forcing us to depend on WG to catch up and playing the RNG "hope my WG lands on a Rejuv" game) or Rejuv's mana cost is too high to blanket effectively, we'll have a BIG problem....the same problem we had before.

[stormgust]

And the answer is that we'll need to see the talents. What if there was a talent "Mastery bonus applies to any target below 50% health"?
Or "Wild Growth automatically applies a [weak] HoT"? Or, as someone mentioned, an aoe hot on a cd? Or maybe Wild Growth will be buffed by 10%, so it would still be very effective without it landing on HoTs.

Having talents fix the underlying problems of the mastery is by itself a problem.

[Nevcairiel]

I could totally see an additional talent that buffs up the raid AoE healing potential. Many classes get talents to favor strong single/small group vs. raid usage, so maybe thats just information we don't have yet. Sure would like to know right now, though!

Having talents fix the underlying problems of the mastery is by itself a problem.

Not necessarily. The mastery right now works fine in small groups, and if one talent exists to make it competitive in large groups as well, then I don't see a problem there. Not every player raids, in fact, the majority does not (discounting LFR), so smaller group content may be a much broader target to hit.

[flooressence]

Oh, right, because the last two xpacs didn't happen.

Are you serious? Absorbs are hurting the CURRENT healing meta. The old healing meta is irrelevant. When rebalanced around a lack of absorbs, HoTs will reign supreme, and can only get better when they are literally designed to be better the more you throw on. When absorbs don't exist, HoTs keep people closer to full health at all times than straight heals do.

If you think absorbs aren't part of this, maybe Balance is more your speed.

Dude read his post properly and don't reply with BS, what emni said is 100% accurate. During early T11, absorbs were not dominant at all. Every priest primarily played Holy, the hpally mastery was the most undertuned mastery in the game. Our mastery was still shit then when absorbs were a very small part of the game