[Resto] Legion Discussion

[Slippykins]

In the interest of facilitating discussion, this thread is for theorycrafting, debating and clarifying useful Resto Druid information and changes. The Balance and Feral threads are highly successful and I hope this can be too.

To start things off: how do you feel about the new Soul of the Forest ring? Do you think it will be a game-changer for the spec, or will it simply be ineffective and outclassed by Velen's/shoulders/boots?

[Elumaria]

I think the ring sounds amazing - especially in conjunction with T20 Bonuses. Getting the increased 400% Efflo heal, a 75% increased Wild Growth AND reduced cooldown on Swiftmend sounds extremely potent. In practice this might become a bit clunky, but we'll see.
(I know we could just specc into SotF directly to get the same effect without the ring, but losing Cultivation/Incarnation might not be worth it)

Has anyone tested the interaction between Prosperity and T20 4pc? I wonder how the bonus is factored in when SM is already on cooldown?

Also regarding Prosperity with T20: Will it be worth using over Cenarion Ward?
Prosp doesn't really do much when you are using SM almost on cooldown. Are the 3s reduced cooldown valuable when the cooldown is already reduced by the setbonus?
On the other hand being able to sit on an SM without wasting anything might help defuse the clunkyness of T20 + SotF-Ring.

[Deleted]

I wonder how the bonus is factored in when SM is already on cooldown?

You will most likely get the reduction on the cooldown of the charge you just spent. Can't imagine them doing it differently, because Guardians get the same bonus on FR and that has 3 charges.

Prosperity also gives you a lot more flexibility. If you want to use the 2pc without it, you basically just have to spam out SM whenever it comes off CD and that might not be the most efficient way of using them. With it you can keep on charge on CD and always have one if you need it, whether you need it for spot healing, triggering 4pc or triggering SotF. So basically what you said last. It all pretty much stands and falls with how strong CW is. If it is a "must take" talent, you will probably not take the SotF ring, because the 2 set makes lining up things pretty difficult, I'd say.

[theburned]

Ok, so on the topic of the sotf ring, I dont believe it will ever become a bis legendary, but will fit somewhere next to our situational legendaries. I dont think its wrong to expect somewhere along the lines of 6-8% throughput, given a fairly useful situation. This talent has fairly decent synergy with both other talents, more so with ToL than cult, but its still better than just sotf alone (or sotf with any other 2nd legendary for that matter.)

As for prosperity I believe this talent is mostly overvalued or undervalued. But in this case, if you are forced into taking prosperity, you are most likely better off using another legendary in the first place. Ofc there is an exception to this if you are taking ToL, and need the massive throughput for 30 seconds, lets say execute phase or w/e.
Being able to buff all 3 of your ToL WG's with 75%, when they are already hitting 8 targets and healing for 15% more, can produce some incredible numbers, off setting one of ToL's weaknesses (throughput downtime) by having filler SotF wgs with flourish/ghanirs, while also having a tranq to cover damage.

Prosperity is a very expensive talent, considering how strong CW is when used, just having it because SM charges, will just not be worth, it needs to have an actual purpose which is worth giving up CW for.

[Tiberria]

On the SoTF ring:
- First of all, we need confirmation if it's really intended to not have secondary stats on it. If that is the case, it won't be worth considering at all, because you would be giving up ~3700 secondary stats.
- Assuming WG is 10% of your throughput and you can use SoTF with every 2nd WG (baseline before T20 2pc), you're looking at +38% WG throughput. Maybe, we can round it to +40% to account for the extra mastery/Flourish interactions. It probably is around ~4% added throughput. That makes it a mid to bottom tier legendary, as you can easily get more than 4% out of Velens, Prydaz, Tearstone, Belt, etc. in most reasonable situations.
- T20 2pc gives you a theoretical maximum CD reduction of 40% to Swiftmend. However, you need to hit someone at 1 HP to get that full CD reduction. In a lot of situations, it will be off CD and you won't even have a <50% HP target to use it on. I don't think that you can reasonably expect more than an average of a 20% CD reduction from T20 pc. With that, you're looking at about a 24 second average CD. If you cast WG every 15 seconds on average, you can expect 4 WG and 2.5 SM per minute. That probably brings your SoTF WG coverage ratio up from ~50% to ~62%, which would take you from +4.0% to +4.6% total throughput at 10% WG healing. That is only really a marginal gain, and still makes it a mediocre legendary.
- If you take Prosperity with the same conditions, you get the CD down to 19 secs on average. That probably puts you up to 79% SoTF coverage on WG casts (although you might end up just casting every 19 secs instead of every 15 secs to get 100% coverage). It's still only +5.9% throughput. Prydaz gives you far more than that when you factor in extra stats + proc. So does the belt, and Tearstone, etc. Plus, it's outright idiotic to take Prosperity because of the 2 piece and the SoTF legendary interaction. That interaction probably adds <0.5% healing, and you're dropping 5%+ healing from not taking CW.

Sure, I could see the ToL interaction being strong in some cases, but there's a reason why Cultivation is almost universally the choice over ToL now, so you'd have to factor in what you would lose from making that swap. It probably would only be a factor on fights where all you care about is an extreme 30 second burst window every 3 minutes. And, given how strong Tranq is (and taking Inner Peace to get more Tranqs would probably be the choice before looking at ToL), and how strong EoG + Velen's is every 90 seconds, I don't think it's all that likely that we will need Tree on top of that over more baseline healing.

[theburned]

On the SoTF ring:
- First of all, we need confirmation if it's really intended to not have secondary stats on it. If that is the case, it won't be worth considering at all, because you would be giving up ~3700 secondary stats.
- Assuming WG is 10% of your throughput and you can use SoTF with every 2nd WG (baseline before T20 2pc), you're looking at +38% WG throughput. Maybe, we can round it to +40% to account for the extra mastery/Flourish interactions. It probably is around ~4% added throughput. That makes it a mid to bottom tier legendary, as you can easily get more than 4% out of Velens, Prydaz, Tearstone, Belt, etc. in most reasonable situations.
- T20 2pc gives you a theoretical maximum CD reduction of 40% to Swiftmend. However, you need to hit someone at 1 HP to get that full CD reduction. In a lot of situations, it will be off CD and you won't even have a <50% HP target to use it on. I don't think that you can reasonably expect more than an average of a 20% CD reduction from T20 pc. With that, you're looking at about a 24 second average CD. If you cast WG every 15 seconds on average, you can expect 4 WG and 2.5 SM per minute. That probably brings your SoTF WG coverage ratio up from ~50% to ~62%, which would take you from +4.0% to +4.6% total throughput at 10% WG healing. That is only really a marginal gain, and still makes it a mediocre legendary.
- If you take Prosperity with the same conditions, you get the CD down to 19 secs on average. That probably puts you up to 79% SoTF coverage on WG casts (although you might end up just casting every 19 secs instead of every 15 secs to get 100% coverage). It's still only +5.9% throughput. Prydaz gives you far more than that when you factor in extra stats + proc. So does the belt, and Tearstone, etc. Plus, it's outright idiotic to take Prosperity because of the 2 piece and the SoTF legendary interaction. That interaction probably adds <0.5% healing, and you're dropping 5%+ healing from not taking CW.

Sure, I could see the ToL interaction being strong in some cases, but there's a reason why Cultivation is almost universally the choice over ToL now, so you'd have to factor in what you would lose from making that swap. It probably would only be a factor on fights where all you care about is an extreme 30 second burst window every 3 minutes. And, given how strong Tranq is (and taking Inner Peace to get more Tranqs would probably be the choice before looking at ToL), and how strong EoG + Velen's is every 90 seconds, I don't think it's all that likely that we will need Tree on top of that over more baseline healing.

Lets start off with saying how ridiculous no stats sounds, there is no need for a confirmation, either it will have secondary stats, which I am 99% sure it will do, or the masses will be pretty damn loud about getting a legendary which in some cases pose as a significant downgrade (guardian druids especially, but we are probably looking at somewhere between 6-10% downgrade just from stats alone if there were to be none on it.)

2nd off, I often see my WG around 15% throughput, thats with shoulders and 4p, I can assure you that percentage will be significantly higher without it. There are ofc cases where this is closer to 10%, but that would just be a case where you just wouldnt use it, that's fine. I've said this in my previous post, but it will be situational.
As for prosperity, your math is wrong, on a side note have you played this specc after 7.1 was released? cause prosperity SM cd is 27 sec, also the reduction would then also be 10% lower, putting it at 21-22 sec cd (can deal with decimals, but quite frankly that seems unecessary considering it can range from 0-40% reduction.) And as I said, and you seem to agree with me, there is no reason to give up CW for prosperity, unless you are pulling off something highly irregular.

Adjusting your math from 10 -> 15+% we are reaching the 6-8% legendary throughput range, this is perfectly acceptable. And for progress you have the benefit of this ring already being 970, which improves its standing as a situational legendary for that purpose (as you will most likely upgrade your most reliable legendaries first (prydaz/velens), over your tearstones/belt(or wrists)/shoulders).

Not to mention its synergies with ToL, not saying it happens too often, but there are definitely cases where ToL is the way to go. Also not saying you should necessarily change your talent from cult to ToL, but as you see cult has been nerfed (not anything very meaningless) so there is a good chance ToL will be the correct choice in many situations, even if only early progress on a fight

[Kluian05]

Why are people believing we won't take Prosperity over CW with T20? Buffing our Eff by 400% with swiftmend seems highly lucrative.

My Eff ticks for ~40k (give or take because of the new 1 point interaction). A swiftmend will bring that to 200k ticks on 3 people.

[notarealwizard]

Why are people believing we won't take Prosperity over CW with T20? Buffing our Eff by 400% with swiftmend seems highly lucrative.

My Eff ticks for ~40k (give or take because of the new 1 point interaction). A swiftmend will bring that to 200k ticks on 3 people.

I can kind of see why people are attached to cenarion ward. You still have swiftmend without taking prosperity-- and prosperity doesn't generate that many extra swiftmends over the course of the encounter. 1 extra charge to start with, plus 1 extra swiftmend every 2.5-4.5 minutes (pending T20 2pc procs).

That said, I'll probably be using prosperity just for the quality-of-life of not being punished for waiting to use swiftmend after it comes off CD.

[Kluian05]

I can kind of see why people are attached to cenarion ward. You still have swiftmend without taking prosperity-- and prosperity doesn't generate that many extra swiftmends over the course of the encounter. 1 extra charge to start with, plus 1 extra swiftmend every 2.5-4.5 minutes (pending T20 2pc procs).

That said, I'll probably be using prosperity just for the quality-of-life of not being punished for waiting to use swiftmend after it comes off CD.

Ah that's true. I actually haven't used this talent in so long I forgot how I worked. The talent would be a lot better if each charge of the CD was it's individual timer. For example, if you used two swiftmends right away, they would both be back up in ~27 seconds.

If you plan on using Swiftmend on CD then the overall use of prosperity is low for raid encounters. The only real benefit of the talent is it would allow you to bank swiftmends, so you could have a higher uptime on a buff Efflor on a high damage phase.

[Tiberria]

My thoughts on the new legendary helm (WG has a chance to proc Incarnation).

Obviously, we need to see some kind of information on both the proc rate and duration of the procced Incarnation to really do any kind of analysis into how good it is.

- By taking a helm slot, it rules out using 4 pc + 2 pc, which increases the power threshold that it would need to have to be desirable as a legendary compared to non tier slot items.
- Incarnation is typically something that you need to properly time and plan the usage of to get the most out of it. I'm not all that sure that something like that randomly proccing without player control will be as strong as raw numbers would indicate, because it could very well proc when it's not needed. That's especially going to be the case if the Incarnation procs last the full 30 seconds of the baseline talent (and if they lasted that long the proc rate would have to be very low). It could well proc right before a 60 second healing lull.
- The duration of the proc probably needs to be at least ~12 seconds. The most powerful part of Incarnation from a throughput perspective is the 8 target WG. Since you are casting WG to proc it, if it doesn't last at least ~12 seconds, you wouldn't get a buffed WG cast off.
- Even if the throughput value of the legendary ends up being sketchy, it's still going to have regen value with the 30% Rejuv cost reduction, and could well be our strongest longevity legendary.

It's probably not as good as the Shaman or Paladin version of the same legendary, at least unless the proc rate is balanced around us using WG less often than every 15 seconds. Riptide and Holy Shock are on a shorter CD and are both used virtually on CD, whereas WG is timed and probably closer to being used every 15-20 seconds on typical fights. Unless the Druid helm has something like 3x the proc rate of the Shaman/Paladin legendaries, it's going to be trash compared to them.

[Kluian05]

The thing I don't like about these new healer legendaries is they are taking a big CD and applying it randomly. It could be good, and it also could be really poor. If this has a long internal CD and it procs during downtime ... well crap.

[theburned]

My thoughts on the new legendary helm (WG has a chance to proc Incarnation).

Obviously, we need to see some kind of information on both the proc rate and duration of the procced Incarnation to really do any kind of analysis into how good it is.

- By taking a helm slot, it rules out using 4 pc + 2 pc, which increases the power threshold that it would need to have to be desirable as a legendary compared to non tier slot items.
- Incarnation is typically something that you need to properly time and plan the usage of to get the most out of it. I'm not all that sure that something like that randomly proccing without player control will be as strong as raw numbers would indicate, because it could very well proc when it's not needed. That's especially going to be the case if the Incarnation procs last the full 30 seconds of the baseline talent (and if they lasted that long the proc rate would have to be very low). It could well proc right before a 60 second healing lull.
- The duration of the proc probably needs to be at least ~12 seconds. The most powerful part of Incarnation from a throughput perspective is the 8 target WG. Since you are casting WG to proc it, if it doesn't last at least ~12 seconds, you wouldn't get a buffed WG cast off.
- Even if the throughput value of the legendary ends up being sketchy, it's still going to have regen value with the 30% Rejuv cost reduction, and could well be our strongest longevity legendary.

It's probably not as good as the Shaman or Paladin version of the same legendary, at least unless the proc rate is balanced around us using WG less often than every 15 seconds. Riptide and Holy Shock are on a shorter CD and are both used virtually on CD, whereas WG is timed and probably closer to being used every 15-20 seconds on typical fights. Unless the Druid helm has something like 3x the proc rate of the Shaman/Paladin legendaries, it's going to be trash compared to them.

Well it procs from WG, you arent really casting WG when there is 0 healing necessary. First it will at least boost that WG by almost 15%, but whats most important to know here is ofc duration, and/or wheter it affects the wg that procced it (doubt it heavily).

the priest helm leads us to believe that its a 5 sec duration at which point its just pointless, 3-4 cheap rejuvs even after every WG (and we would assume there is a proc chance) doesnt sound like anything amazing

the only promising part is amount of stats from an 970 head

[Deleted]

Still depends a lot on the proc chance. If its a 15% bonus healing for 5 seconds after each wg it would be a very good throughput legendary. Even without the cheaper rejuvs taken into account.

That would be pretty boring though. I'd rather have it be less frequent but a bit longer. However procs like this hardly work really well for healing as you might not get any when you really need it.

[gobio]

The new helm :

Paladin get their "free super sayian form" from holy shock, while Shaman get their "free super sayian form" from riptide, both are spells deigned to be spammed on CD with cheap mana cost. Unlike druid with tree of life proc from wild growth, which really isn't as spammable as holy shock / riptide. However, I think tree of life is much better CD than either avenging wrath? or ascension. If the proc rate is reasonable helm would be very good, since tree of life itself offers very high flexibility, if it proc during heavy damage you spam regrowth / wild growth, even if it proc on low damage, you can spam your rejuv cheap even with nerfed shoulder, so it is much better as a random proc than shaman and paladin.

[Cheze]

it doesn't seem very good to me; even leaving aside the 4p/2p opportunity cost and evaluating exclusively vs. other legendaries it seems like you'd rather have trinket/belt and maybe even shoulders.

maybe if the proc had a reliable internal cooldown it'd be useful, since at least then you could plan its usage

[Tiberria]

However, I think tree of life is much better CD than either avenging wrath? or ascension.

Absolutely not. Ascendance duplicates all healing (except totems), so it is essentially something like +80% throughput when it's up. AW is +35% baseline to everything. Incarnation is +15% and then +50% to Rejuv healing (which is probably like 30% of our output). Incarnation is probably close to +30% while it's up - excluding the 8 targets to WG (because we won't get that from the proc anyway unless it lasts 12+ secs) plus the mana reduction. Incarnation is probably about equal to AW, but both are far inferior to Ascendance.

And, there's no way we will be able to use shoulders in conjunction with this legendary in 6.2.5. If you have it, one of your legendary slots is locked to Velen's - period end of discussion. The shoulders are too weak anyway post nerf and without T19 4pc to be competitive with other legendary options, and this legendary isn't good enough to change that. Any legendary that uses a tier slot is going to need to beat the top non tier slot options (like Prydaz and the belt) by a sufficient amount to compensate for the fact that it essentially prevents you from using your T19 2pc along with T20 4pc (~3% throughput). Prydaz for example is worth about +7% throughput, when you factor in the typical healing value of the proc and the extra secondary stats it's propped up with, so unless this new legendary gives close to +10% throughput, it's not a real viable option. The proc would probably need to give Incarnation something in the 25%-33% uptime range before it reaches that viabler range.

[fallenangel-succ]

It was mentioned on discord (can't check myself at the moment) that ToL boosts your existing rejuvs. A lot of the power of the proc will come from that.
The whole 4p+2p thing isn't going to be a big factor because you give up a lot of stats to use the lower ilvl of T19. Sure you can hope for mega titanforge but barring that, I don't see how it's worth keeping the older tier pieces.

[Doogler]

If it only lasts for a few seconds it is possible that it procs before the Wild Growth lands so you can get your boosted WG.

[Tiberria]

The whole 4p+2p thing isn't going to be a big factor because you give up a lot of stats to use the lower ilvl of T19. Sure you can hope for mega titanforge but barring that, I don't see how it's worth keeping the older tier pieces.

This is not really true because
(1) You can have 915-925 ilvl T19 now as is, and you would just have to keep your 2 highest ilvl pieces. High ilvl T19 pieces that you have already will barely be an ilvl loss over new ToS gear - or at least won't be until late into the instance when you get lots of TF T20 level gear.
(2) With the ilvl cap going up, you can go back to Nighthold and farm for T19, which will have the chance to TF up to the new ilvl cap (950 I believe). People will absolutely be doing that.

Not only that, if they don't nerf our T19 bonuses in 7.2.5, the T19 2pc is worth something like +3% throughput. In comparison, Drape of Shame adds like 0.75% on average. While this can vary based on your stats/ilvl, DoS is generally worth wearing over cloaks up to 25-30 ilvl higher. T19 2 pc is roughly 4 times as strong as DoS, and while it uses 2 gear slots, and uses higher itemization gear slots, using something like ilvl 910 T19 in your glove and shoulder slots is probably going to beat having 940 gear in those slots.

As it stands, 2pc+4pc is absolutely going to be a huge factor until very deep into the gearing curve, and absolute will affect the value/invalidate the viability of legendaries that use tier slots.

- - - Updated - - -

If it only lasts for a few seconds it is possible that it procs before the Wild Growth lands so you can get your boosted WG.

Possible but unlikely. It procs off casts (like any similar item), and WG lands immediately when it is cast, so it almost certainly would not give 8 target WG on the cast that procs it.

[Hypasonic]

They could just make it give you a chance of a buff after casting WG that will add the effect the next time you cast WG. (Thereby making it an 8 target WG) But that's probably too much to ask :P