Resto - What is the point of Soul of the Forest without Prosperity?

[GotNoRice]

Prosperity - "Swiftmend now has 2 charges, and its cooldown is reduced by 3 sec."

Soul of the Forest - "When you cast Swiftmend, you gain Soul of the Forest, increasing the healing of your next Regrowth or Rejuvenation by 200%, or increasing the healing of your next Wild Growth by 75%."


There is obviously a lot of synergy between these two talents. Soul of the Forest seems pointless unless you also take Prosperity. Without prosperity, you are able to cast Swiftmend less than half as often, and only once every 25 seconds. Prosperity brought that cooldown down to 22 seconds, and since it gave you two charges, you could cast it twice within the span of a few seconds if you wanted. That made it far less punishing when you have to decide to use Swiftmend for the Soul of the Forest buff, or save it as an emergency heal. With Prosperity, you could use it for the Soul of the Forest buff and still have one charge left to use as an emergency heal.

In Shadowlands, Prosperity has been removed. Replaced by Nourish. I don't mind seeing Nourish come back, but what is the point of Soul of the Forest without Prosperity? Why would they remove Prosperity but leave Soul of the Forest? I know the Prosperity + Soul of the Forest build was not popular with everyone, but I made it work pretty well for myself.

[Stoy]

Swiftmend's cooldown was reduced to 15 seconds. However, I was never a fan of the prosperity soul build. It forces you to use your oh crap button basically on cooldown to buff another heal, usually wild growth.

[GotNoRice]

Yeah I get that it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I feel like I got good results with it. Having two swiftmend charges was extremely helpful because you could use one to get SOTF and still have another ready for emergencies. Also, the SOTF buff lasts a while, during which time you can still cast other heals such as lifebloom and efflorescence, as those don't use up the SOTF buff. So just because you use swiftmend as an emergency heal doesn't mean you have to waste the SOTF buff. There is some flexibility.

There is/was also the Grove Tending azerite trait, which put a 9 second HoT on whoever you hit with swiftmend. That extra HoT helped toward the mastery bonus, even more so with 2 swiftmend charges.

But yeah, I think most people didn't like the prosperity + SOTF build, because you do have to tailor your healing around it to an extent. But since they have now gutted it (by removing prosperity) to the point where even people like me who did enjoy SOTF are wondering what purpose it serves now, who exactly do they expect to actually use it now going forward? What the point of gutting an already unpopular talent?

I have not played much on beta, but maybe there will be some kind of borrowed-power azerite-trait style talent that gives back some of what was lost when they removed prosperity.

[Undrion]

Without prosperity, you are able to cast Swiftmend less than half as often <...>

That is wrong, since the CD on Swiftmend is reduced to 22s from 25s, you get very little "more" casts of Swiftmend off -- every 9th cast is free because of the talent. The two charges don't really matter, because if you use it -on cooldown you won't have more than one charge.

And yes, Swiftmend is our only "oh shit" button for a large instant heal, but in a good group, you use to it to top up tank and go back to catweaving, especially with Grove Tending, which is widely taken.

As the above poster says, SL will change Swiftmend CD dramatically anyway, adding more value than the talent does now in BfA. Although by default in SL Swiftmend will consume one HoT on the target, the legendary that removes this behavior seems to be a very good fit for the Soul of the Forest build that you enjoy.

[Davaca]

Swiftmend's cooldown was reduced to 15 seconds. However, I was never a fan of the prosperity soul build. It forces you to use your oh crap button basically on cooldown to buff another heal, usually wild growth.

That has more to do with Soul of the Forest than with Prosperity. As long as you are spending a talent to be able to buff other spells with Swiftmend, you're going to cast it as often as possible in order to not waste that talent slot.

[Hoticehunter]

That is wrong, since the CD on Swiftmend is reduced to 22s from 25s, you get very little "more" casts of Swiftmend off -- every 9th cast is free because of the talent. The two charges don't really matter, because if you use it -on cooldown you won't have more than one charge.

And yes, Swiftmend is our only "oh shit" button for a large instant heal, but in a good group, you use to it to top up tank and go back to catweaving, especially with Grove Tending, which is widely taken.

As the above poster says, SL will change Swiftmend CD dramatically anyway, adding more value than the talent does now in BfA. Although by default in SL Swiftmend will consume one HoT on the target, the legendary that removes this behavior seems to be a very good fit for the Soul of the Forest build that you enjoy.

It's kind of a moot point now that servers are down, but having charges makes the CD usage much more efficient so you should be getting quite a few more casts out than just the 3 second decrease would imply.

[Asrialol]

Prosperity + Soul wasn't popular? It's been the go-to setup for all of S4 for m+, in almost every situation (when running Vers, as you should).

The CD of swiftmend will be 15 seconds now, instead of 25, so it's not like it's going to be a worthless talent. Will probably be taken over cultivation in the beginning until your mastery makes cultivation worth it, or some dungeons require Tree.

[octapusx]

Its a new expansions and right now you are playing the most overpowered healing class there is!

Enjoy! Stop whining about your old talents!

[GotNoRice]

Just because the combo is better, doesn't mean Soul becomes entirely useless without the combo.

It just increases the difficulty and convolution required in order to make it work well. With SOTF, Swiftmend serves a dual role as both an emergency heal and as a buff to other spells. Either you use Swiftmend because you NEED an emergency heal immediately, and perhaps toss out an SOTF-enchanced HoT afterward as a bonus, OR, you mostly waste swiftmend because you NEED a stronger Wild Growth (or perhaps a stronger Regrowth). Prosperity considerably lessened the penalty for doing either of those things, because you could cast two Swiftmend spells within seconds of each other if you really needed to. Now if you "waste" swiftmend just to buff Wild Growth, you just forfeited your ability to use Swiftmend as an emergency heal for 15 seconds. It allows for much less flexibility.

I still use SOTF now in Shadowlands, but even at 185 ilvl, damage in mythics is very spiky right now, mostly monopolizing my swiftmend usage as an emergency heal. Unsurprisingly, Wild Growth went from almost always being one of my top 3 spells to often not even being in the top 5.

But also keep in mind that this post is months old now. Someone apparently bumped the thread. In BfA hardly anyone used SOTF, so for blizzard to make a talent change that in many ways made SOTF worse seemed... odd... You would think that the lesser-used talents would be the ones that get buffed, not the other way around. Either way I've committed to trying to make it work at least until I see how it performs in a raid. I guess we'll see next week.

[Nyel]

I loved my SotF and Prosperity build. Right now I still like SotF but Swiftmend now requiring and consuming a hot plus only having one charge gives me a hard time to figure out when to use it best. The thing is, the other talent options in that row seem quite week to me as well. I don't need a strong cooldown and that tiny HoT on targets below 60% health is just useful for more mastery (which I already have enough)...

[GotNoRice]

You being unable to use it as often doesn't increase the difficulty in using it, nor the 'convulsion.' (I presume you meant convolution, but either way, neither are true.) You use swiftmend for an instant heal, and your next heal is worth more. That's it. It's no more difficult or convoluted than it was before. It's just usable less often.

I thought I was clear, but apparently not clear enough. Right now you get to use swiftmend once every 15 seconds. Before, with prosperity, you could use it twice in a much shorter period than that. You could use it once for one purpose, and then again, for another purpose, essentially back to back. Now you can't.

If you just use SOTF as a passive bonus, healing like normal without putting any extra thought into what SOTF is doing in the background, then I guess it doesn't really matter. If you are actually trying to maximize the benefit you get from SOTF to the point of using swiftmend to intentionally buff the spell you need, then it does.

[S2H]

Soul of the Forest is just a "take away a R/R/WG to make your next R/R/WG 3 times stronger"

[octapusx]

What is that bullshit about being able to use sw more often in 8.3?

The correct wording would be: able to use sw in quick succesion, but having a much much longer downtime.

In the current patch you can use swiftmend more than you could ever use it. (15 second cooldown instead of 25 or 23 seconds if talented) for emergencys you have an entire plethora of spells. SW if it is up, nature swiftness macro, convoke, just a basic regrowth. Truth to be told almost all damage can be seen and reacted to from miles away.

SW soul has been buffed, yet some people still find ways to whine because they have to adjust their playstyle. And then there are the people that whine because resto barely changed.

Next to maining restodruid i also have a holy paladin and let me tell you. We are in a gooooood place right now.

[Valendra]

What is that bullshit about being able to use sw more often in 8.3?

The correct wording would be: able to use sw in quick succesion, but having a much much longer downtime.

In the current patch you can use swiftmend more than you could ever use it. (15 second cooldown instead of 25 or 23 seconds if talented) for emergencys you have an entire plethora of spells. SW if it is up, nature swiftness macro, convoke, just a basic regrowth. Truth to be told almost all damage can be seen and reacted to from miles away.

SW soul has been buffed, yet some people still find ways to whine because they have to adjust their playstyle. And then there are the people that whine because resto barely changed.

Next to maining restodruid i also have a holy paladin and let me tell you. We are in a gooooood place right now.

Literally this... have leveled warlock then hunter then druid to 60 so far... always been a healer but never got into druids, paladin was my home for a long time. Couldn't stand being a pure on either lock or hunter, the druid as boomie/resto is AMAZING.. i've never had more fun in WoW and the resto spec is stupidly strong, i am healing +7s-+10s in my offspec with no legendary better than most main spec healers i've had the pleasure of doing lower keys with.

Soul is crazy good now, tank will always take some damage, use swiftmend on the tank at start of a pack, get that buffed Wild growth up to pre-empt the group damage that will inevitably come... it's called playing the game! The point of soul of the forest is it is by far and away our best talent to use in M+ high keys... OP enjoy being stuck in the past.

[Biglog]

I like the build using both and played a lot that way, it's very efficient. But it does take a little bit of getting used to in order to get the feel for lining up your SMs and WGs, and you really end up kind of doing a cooldown dance. But it does work well.

It is worth it to experiment and see what works for you. You'll sometimes find a setup that is good even if it isn't the fotm Icy Veins min-max build that everyone is "supposed" to be using.