symbiosis:resto mastery discussion

[Lawlerade]

Looks like well be stacking mastery after all.

Biggest thing is u have to let a hot fall off then reapply before the other hots on the target fall off. But with a good stack of mastery thats a TON of bonus healing across the board.

i would like to hear everyone else's thoughts.




Mastery: Symbiosis (Revamped) - Increases the potency of your healing spells by 10% on targets already affected by one of your heal over time spells. Each point of Mastery increases heal potency by an additional 1.25%



-Roflade. Now known as lawlerade. wtb my old name back.

[gunner_recall]

I like it. It's definitely better for resto druids than deep healing. Changes in healing done based on health for a class that uses mostly hots is a silly idea.

And the mana cost reduction to rejuvenation should make it a little easier to maintain.

[Beetlejuice]

IMHO it still sucks. With lifebloom restricted to one target we do not have that much hots to stack anymore anyway, so it is mostly a tank healing tool. At least the other mastery supported what we are supposed to do, hoting and raid healing. The problem with the old mastery wasn't so much the deep healing mechanic, that is actually something that is quite awesome to have as a healer. The problem was that it was so comparable to the shaman deep heal, and deep heal on direct heals is so much more powerful than on hots.

What they imho should have done is fix the existing mastery. Make the health cap for max effect higher (around 40% should be fine) to account for the fact that hots on a target at 20% is usually a very bad choice or make it adjust the +heal on a tick basis and make the scaling steeper (though this might cause some unwanted server load).

Again, the old mastery itself was not the problem. The problem was that it was to comparable to shaman mastery and with the exactly same numbers just inherently inferior. Deep healing on direct heals is a no brainer, its by definition awesome all the time. On direct heals you choose when to heal, you can harness the bonus as much as you like and if you just top one off then you dont need it anyway. On hots its still a nice bonus, you just will loose so much more of the effect because of lack of control when the healing will happen and the fact that on exactly those occasions where you would get the most out of it you are pretty much guaranteed to get heal sniped and hots are not the smartest choice in such a situation anyway.

What bugs me about the new bonus is that you can actually raidheal all day long without ever triggering the bonus a single time. And the best way to actually trigger it for raidhealing, stacking a lifebloom on top of a rejuvenation, is no option any longer.

[krebul]

That was a good point Beetle. They reduced Regrowth HoT to 6 seconds. Lifebloom can only be on one target. Wildgrowth cooldown was increased. If you are raid healing, the only HoT you can reliably have up is Rejuv. You have to deliberately overwrite your rejuv before it expires to leverage all the mastery on your gear.

If you are tank healing or PvPing, this likely wont be a problem out fine. But it seems limiting to a druid's ability to take advantage of all the mastery stats budgeted into their gear if they are in a raid healing role.

[Deleted]

That was a good point Beetle. They reduced Regrowth HoT to 6 seconds. Lifebloom can only be on one target. Wildgrowth cooldown was increased. If you are raid healing, the only HoT you can reliably have up is Rejuv. You have to deliberately overwrite your rejuv before it expires to leverage all the mastery on your gear.

If you are tank healing or PvPing, this likely wont be a problem out fine. But it seems limiting to a druid's ability to take advantage of all the mastery stats budgeted into their gear if they are in a raid healing role.

I think you misunderstood the mastery, if you meant something else, do correct me. Recasting rejuvenation on the same target will not grant the bonus from the mastery, it needs to be a different spell.

Overall while I think the concept is good, the realisation feels clunky. Take the current Nourish mechanic (what the mastery is effectively imitating. To get the most out of nourish it needs to be cast on a target who currently has a HoT on them. While this is great for tank healing, it is somewhat lost on raid healing. Casting rejuvenation followed by Nourish usually takes too long to simply "top someone up" and often results in overhealing. Casting Nourish by itself, isn't really enough as its kind of weak, while rejuvenation by itself gives enough healing, but over a prolonged period of time, in which dps can take another few ticks and die.

And so the mastery is actually going to be utilised about 20% of the time (very very rough estimate) unless we are tank healing. As in my experience you usually do with one heal on a target and rarely 2 in raid environment. By the time they second comes about, or starts ticking, target us usually topped up by others.

[Garrim]

Rejuv to get the mastery bonus to trigger and then Swiftmend for 10% increased damage? I typically only use Swiftmend when a target is around 50% on HP atm in cata I could see myself waiting til they get lower to get the full effect of that out on someone. I don't know the numbers yet but I see Rej+SM as a major way to heal a tank.

WG and Nourish will probably be the only way to reliable raid heal AND trigger the mastery effect. It does seem to be a weird form of mastery though.

I think though the mastery only triggers from a 'Direct Healing' spell when a 'Healing over Time' is on. That's my understanding. So casting Rejuv+LB doesn't trigger the mastery.

[Koumaru]

When Symbiosis was first announced, I was fairly excited because I assumed (quite reasonably, I'd like to think) that the base % value of the Mastery would start off closer to 20% and scale at 2.5% per point or better. A clunky mechanic, but quite significant when you can take advantage of it.

Given the arguments above and in other threads, 10% and 1.25% per point has to be a goddamned joke.

Looks like well be stacking mastery after all.

Only the dedicated tank healers. I'm guessing most resto druids will actually be reforging mastery off their gear if this albatross goes live with this pathetic scaling.

[krebul]

The mastery seemed exciting at the first glance, but after further examination it seems to not be as good. The problem with the mastery is that it has conditions that are hard to meet when you are not spamming heals on the same person, but instead, you are spreading your heals across a raid. In the raid healing capacity, the Mastery is not going to be leveraged as much, due to Rejuv being the only HoT lasting longer than 7 seconds. If Efflorescence is considered a HoT, this won't be *too* bad.

The problem I see with this is we're getting only conditional bonuses from our mastery stat. The ilvl on the gear will be budgeted such that it takes Mastery into account, but the use we get from our mastery is only situational.

Compare it to a rogue, for example, who gets 100% passive bonus from Mastery stat:

Assassination
Poison damage

Combat
Harder-hitting combo-point generators

Subtlety
Harder-hitting finishers

The rogue's mastery stat is being used at all time. Ok, Apples to Oranges? Let's look at Holy Paladin:

Critical Healing Effect: When the paladin gets a crit on a heal, it will heal for more.

The paladin's mastery stat is always a passive increase.

Druid mastery stat is something you have to consciously adjust your rotation to leverage. And for now at least, there seems to be situations (raid healing) where you will be hard pressed to leverage it all-together.

Don't interpret this post as a whine. I am just pointing out what seems to be a slight flaw in the design of the mastery in resto druid. Granted, I am not in beta so take my post with a grain of salt.

[Cerelli]

i very much prefer the old mastery to this one. with the old one it worked when you needed it the most. when your targets are at high health you are going to be overhealing anyway so who cares if it doesn't work then, the mastery bonus would have been wasted anyway.

the only thing that i didn't like about the old mastery was that the bonus effect was calculated when the spell was cast, not continuously updated as the target's health changed. if they would have changed that little mechanic then i'd be 100% behind the old mastery bonus.

[Garrim]

To Krebul

I don't think that's right. With paladins and with druid healers, you can choose one stat or mastery. For resto druids I think we'll like crit but would rather have haste and then mastery for raid healing. Getting in more WG ticks and HoT ticks is huge. Paladins will have more crit then mastery for tank healing or crit and haste for raid healing.

Depending on crit rating of paladins you won't see it work all the time, however druids can dip into their mastery at a higher rate if we want to. The problem is, how often can we do that w/o going OOM? I think the druid play style will really show off great healing skills compared to a paladin (while they look like they need a fair bit of skill too) we will have to consider if the mana to healing done will be worth it to trigger our mastery. Paladins and shamans don't have to make this choice, but will trigger their benefit through no real control of their own.

Ex. DPS is at 50% and no forseeable AE DPS spikes for a while, ok just do 3xLB. Ok now DPS is at 40% and AE DPS is going to be coming out soon or is. Ok Rejuv+SM on lowest HP target, WG+Nourish as needed on other DPS. Tank is dipping low, Rej+SM+LB+Nourish+2xLB. Doing that last order like that lets me tigger my mastery twice in one healing sequence to pull a tank from 30% or so back up to 90% or so. I think this mastery will reward smart players.

[krebul]

Garrim, at the raiding level, I don't think Mastery will be something we can avoid. There may be pieces that don't have it, but I would expect almost all set items to have it, and many many off-set items will have it. Of course, this is all speculation, but I seriously doubt Blizzard would go through the trouble of making a new mechanic, and then allowing you to excel by avoiding it. You will want mastery.

My only problem with the design is that our go-to raid healing spell will rarely benefit from it due to no other hots being up at the time. If raid damage is predictable, you can pre-rejuv but when the damage comes in none of that pre-hotting will benefit from all the mastery you have on your gear. Only the heals that you toss out afterwards will benefit. By that point, you are already competing with the other healers who are unconditionally getting mastery bonus from all their spells.

If the raid damage is unpredictable, you are in an even worse postion as your initial reaction is going to be unempowered by mastery. This can be dealt with by AoE heals which we will be very strong at, but the ability to do this will vary from encounter to encounter. AoE healing requires clumped up raid members which you can't expect on all encounters. There is definately the possibility that on some encounters, unexpected raid damage could cause the great majority of your heals to be unempowered, which will be extremely problematic considering that your gear is budgeted assuming you will be getting those bonuses.

[Azyoulike]

If you are raid healing, the only HoT you can reliably have up is Rejuv.

You can't even keep rejuv up on that many targets given the reduced run-time. This mastery is actually pretty horrible.

[Garrim]

@ Krebul
Oh I figure we'll want mastery a lot, from initial looks it seems like haste will be above it in most cases. However my point was that I think this mastery is in place to get us to not use HoTs to do nothing but raid heal, I think they would like something like WG+Nourish being thrown out on a raid. In an emergency type situation, a DPS doesn't move, Rejuv+SM for the mastery bonus plus some decent burst healing. I think that's what they are aiming for, or it appears that way to me.

Tank healing will be a lot different I think but I'm just trying to give examples of how I believe it's intended to work for raid healing. WG to get a hot thrown out followed by Noursh on a few targets, and as WG falls off others, go with Rejuv+SM/Nourish or even maybe 2xLB with Nourish.

Like I said in this manner we're able to basically 'trigger' the mastery effect on the follow up heal of a HoT and not depend on them entirely to do 90%+ of our healing. This is something I think a lot of druids will struggle with after WotLK.

Edit: Think of it like a priest or shaman. A priest will cast PW:S to trigger their haste effect allowing them to put out a greater HPS in a smaller gap of time, the two work together to accomplish this. Shamans will cast RT to trigger faster HW or stronger LHW/CH. So think of a hot as our version of a buff to a follow up heal. Those heals (PW:S and RT) are not meant to do all the healing needed themselves, they're used to allow our main heal(s) do a better job at healing. HoTs are there to suppliment our healing in Cata, not be our healing.

Remember in Cata they don't want us pre-HoTing or pre-Shielding to basically negate all incoming damage to the group/raid so all we're ever doing is cycling through raid members pushing one button, they want healing to be reactive in terms of raid/group and proactive in terms of tank healing. It seems this is the model they're aiming for.

[kooz]

with this type of mastery it makes sense for druids to be more focusing on tank healing, why not.

[Dendrek]

I think there's a problem with a basic assumption that a lot of people against this mastery are making: You expect that as a raid healer you will have to top off raid members as quickly as possible.

Many of you are arguing from a mentality that fast heals are essential to success with raid healing. With the size of health pools, it's not only unlikely that you could top someone off in 1 GCD if they get low, but it's also unlikely you'd need to. Although I'm sure some boss encounters will introduce a mechanic that can kill raid members very quickly, in most cases I suspect it will take several seconds for a raid member to die with normal incoming damage.

If you're assigned to raid healing, more likely than not your primary goal will be to keep people above 50%, not above 90% as was the normal for the past expansions. This leaves a lot of room for you to triage your heals across the raid, and strategies which involve taking advantage of Symbiosis are likely to be successful and smart methods of healing.

[Sunscorn]

If it works with wild growth I am down with mastery.
Start with wild growth, then every heal (except nourish) will continue the effect.

It will be one of those stats that you don't look for on gear, don't gem for...
But wont really complain about if its on an upgrade.

[Myrrar]

If it works with wild growth I am down with mastery.
Start with wild growth, then every heal (except nourish) will continue the effect.

It will be one of those stats that you don't look for on gear, don't gem for...
But wont really complain about if its on an upgrade.

WG is so much mana now you wont be using it everytime it's off CD. This is why this mastery is so underwhelming and why they dropped RJs mana. The amount we should be using hots(as of Cata theory) the RG hot nurf, the WG nurf, and LB only being on one tank makes this mastery just not make sense at all.

[Lawlerade]

you really will be jumping back n forth on a target with rejuv and regrowth


itll be like this:

rejuv,(3second cast) regrowth1applied, regrowth1ends,regrowth2applied,rejuv(1)ends,rejuv reapplied, regrowth2ends,regrowth 3 applied. ETC ETC


thats for raid healing. Sucks youll have to cast but rejuv comes in at a speed better than other heals (besides a FOL pally.)


also, reapplying rejuv when it is already on the target will not cause the symbiosis to proc on the second rejuv.



with all of this being said, i do agree its a lackluster mastery even when compared to the other two druid masteries.

[Golkonda]

You have to stop thinking of how you'll heal in Cata raids the same as you heal currently. People will have much larger health pools, and theoretically you can hot them and leave them alone. Yes saying 'But I cant spam rejuve on everyone anymore' is correct you wont have to. It's going to be a lot like old world at least in theory where you don't have all the DPS at 100%, 100% of the time. Unlike now where you strive to have everyone at 100% all the time.

I do admit for just throwing a hot on someone the mastery is wasted,(remember the lower they are in health the more the are healed for(unless that was changed)) but I'll take extra 10%+ on healing. Such as a damage that is expected, you can throw some hots up and then nourish or regrowth. Also don't forget that Gift of the earth mother now makes Rejuve heal 15% of the total hot. We're hardly out of options.

[Lawlerade]

If you do some of the bosses on the PTR youll start to see it, i mean granted i outgeared it but when i healed the princess with a pali tank(tanks her and both adds) and i was on a pvp geared druid i actually was paying attention and having to work to keep everyone alive.


i never though healing touch would move into a more easier in reach hotkey..... but it did.