Wild Growth and Tranquility: The Problems
Everyone rushed into a frenzy yesterday at the news of a WG nerf. And to be fair I did a bit of ranting on twitter myself, but I decided that I wanted to sleep on it and gather my thoughts a little bit before putting them together to share. While my initial gut reaction was to fly off the handle, I needed to take a step and remind myself that it is day one of the PTR and many things will likely change. So let’s take a look at the nerf, shall we?
- Wild Growth healing value has been reduced by 20%.
In conjunction with this change, we also need to review the change to the Glyph of Wild Growth as well.
- Glyph of Wild Growth now also increases the cooldown on Wild Growth by 2 seconds.
So what do those two combined changes achieve? Well, they pretty much put Wild Growth back to exactly where it was when Cataclysm launched before it was buffed in 4.0.6 to where it is today. I’m struggling with this a little bit. Frist, WG is pretty powerful. That cannot be denied. And honestly, anyone who wasn’t expecting some sort of nerf was probably sticking their head in the sand.
However, there were reasons that WG was buffed. Druids fell seriously behind on having the ability to deal with the burst raid damage that we’ve seen in every raid instance since launch. Rejuv was too expensive to utilize freely, and WG didn’t heal for enough to effectively handle the damage. These two factors combined left druids in a very bad spot when compared to the other healers. As a result the devs made the change to WG to try and fix this discrepancy. It wasn’t the most elegant solution, but it was a simple one that got the job done.
So my question now is simply to ask “what has changed?”. If we needed those boosts to be competitive previously, what has changed that would mean that we no longer need those boosts to remain competitive? I understand that as our gear increases, we scale very well with Intellect. I understand that we can now make more liberal use of Rejuv. But are those things enough to offset such a large nerf to Wild Growth? When push comes to shove, I think that is the question that needs to be answered.
The next set of concerns that I have revolves around the thought that druidsr are putting out too much healing. Excuse me, we are throughput healers, you all but said so yourself. We were told that we were given a 3 minutes tranquility and that it would be powerful, but that our throughput is where we shine. Supposedly this is why we didn’t see any shiny new “cooldowns” when Shaman got theirs. It was my understanding that druids were meant to heal all of the things. And it was to be understood that this would give us somewhat disproportionately higher numbers when compared to the other healers. We accepted this.
But while we were assured these things were understood, when it came into practice, that was not the case. As druid numbers skyrocketed, we started hearing the complaints that every druid knew would come. And here we are, being told that our numbers aren’t in line with the other healers, after being handed yet more throughput that was supposed to “keep us in line with other healers” in terms of cooldowns.
So now, to try to adjust druids to be “equal”, we are getting a nerf to something that was offered as a solution to a different set of problems. My concern with this is that by effectively reverting the “solution” we are going to find we still have the same problems that required the buff to begin with.
It is my hope that these concerns are ferreted out on the PTR and we see a little more balancing in the changes that make it live. While I agree that WG is a little too powerful, I’m not sure that reverting it all the way back to launch numbers is the solution. Perhaps a more subtle change to the spell will be a good middle ground to keeping our output in line with where the devs would like to see it without completely gutting the reason they had to buff it in the first place.
In the end I’m optimistic that we will come out of the PTR in a good place and will remain competitive and viable when compared to other healers. I only hope that optimism isn’t misplaced.
Oh! Before I forget! I think I would probably be remiss not to mention (complain) that if priests are getting tranquility it’s only fair to give druids that mitigation cooldown that they’ve wanted (begged) for so long. It seems only fair, since you are giving away our unique snowflake. 🙂
Tier 13 Set Bonuses
Let’s change gears a little now, and look at our upcoming proposed T13 set bonuses.
- Restoration, 2P– After using Innervate, the mana cost of your healing spells is reduced by 25% for 15 sec.
- Restoration, 4P– Your Rejuvenation and Regrowth spells have a 10% chance to Timeslip and have double the normal duration.
The two piece bonus is…interesting. I’m not really sure how I feel about it as yet. On the one hand part of me is screaming THANK GOD IT’S NOT A LB BONUS! But part of me also thinks that it’s somewhat situational. If you have the luxury of innervating during a heavy damage phase of an encounter, you are going to get decent mileage from this bonus. However, if your innervate comes off of cooldown during a low damage phase you really aren’t going to get much benefit from the bonus.
I can’t decide if they are trying to get us to not using innervate on cooldown with this bonus, and trying to encourage us to make more “interesting” choices about when to innervate. While that might seem nifty in theory, to me it just isn’t going to work well in practice. I just can’t see any amount of lower cost healing spells, even during burst damage periods, outweighing needing to keep innervate on CD.
The four piece bonus is lackluster. While it may be nice, I’m not sure that I see much benefit to a 24 second rejuv outside of just increasing our overheal numbers. Additionally, if it’s like our T10 set bonus, it’s likely to be plagued with problems in how it plays with our other spells and abilities (not affected by rejuv boosting talents, not swiftmendable). At first glance, I just feel sort of “meh”. It could prove to be more powerful than I’m giving it credit for, but I’d be surprised if that was the case.
TL; DR
The WG nerf has some fundamental problems that need to be addressed on the PTR. I suspect that there will be some changes to the nerf before 4.3 goes live. At first glance both the two and four piece set bonuses seem somewhat lackluster, and their benefits will be situational at best. The sky isn’t falling (yet), and there is still a lot of time to see changes come out of the PTR.
Falling Leaves and Wings 
Am I the only one that read ghostcrawler’s comments about “druids asked for more glyph choices” so we just decided to give them the choice to not glyph as a rather sinister / be careful what you wish for statement?
I had the same reaction. What are they expecting us to use as glyphs? Thorns? Innervate (which is a joke at this point)? Entangling Roots? Come on GC, Get a clue.
I actually didn’t read it that way. I’m not sure if he’d be that catty about it.
I’m in then same place you are. I can see why they nerfed WG but I kind of feel betrayed by this. Discussing it with my husband and friends, they don’t ‘get’ why I find this nerf insulting. We have 4 choices for resto glyphs. And now the balancing people are like “Everyone uses the Wild Growth glyph, so lets force them to decide if they want to make the cooldown longer or just choose to not have a glyph there”. What? How does this even make sense?
I do think that WG needs an adjustment. But I think if they take it all the way back to where it was at launch druids are going to see the same problems that caused Blizzard to buff it in the first place arise again. I truly hope that they use the PTR to balance in a way that doesn’t cripple our healing too much.
I’m reading the 2pc bonus as just a simple buff. Assuming we still use innervate on CD, over the course of a fight, it means we’ll use less mana. How much less depends on how damage patterns align with the CD of course; a bit like OoC in that sometimes it’s wasted but I’m still happy to have it. It looks to me like an aggressive tree could gear for less spirit and more int at the risk of going OOM if the 2pc isn’t timed well.
The 4pc bonus looks like it was designed by a warlock.
Eh, I still think they are both kind of “meh” 🙂
Glyphing Thorns will be the way to go. Not only is the glyph a strict reduction in HPS for WG even in the ideal case, the “6th target” bonus is only effective if you have 6 targets to hit. When you only have a couple of people damaged, it is of no use. Glyphing Innervate is still useless, so hooray for 25s thorns when damage is low.
If they don’t somehow rein in the buff to holy, it will be the new OP healer. Tranquility-equivalent + zero cooldown PoH + wings + inspiration + CoH + lightwell…way too many effective tools. Everything a druid can do, a 4.3 holy priest can do better.
That is what I will likely do, as I started Thorning my tank to increase his damage on the Drone in the Beth fight and the Hatchlings in the Alys fight. It benefits him, and is only a instant cast for me. It helped my pally tank to equal our DK tank’s damage output on that fight. Helping my tank is more than just healing him now, it seems. I like it, but while learning a fight, it’s more stress and another spell to fit in… ::chuckle::
Thorns. Well, just because I glyph it doesn’t mean that I’ll find the GCD to use it with consistency. In all honesty, if that is what ends up happening I could almost just leave that glyph spot open!
@Jurik – I think Blizzard has struggled with druids a bit this expansion. They didn’t fit well with Blizzard’s initial attempts at “triage” healing. They didn’t fit well after they buffed tranquility (at least as compared to the raw output of other healers). It seems to me that they just can’t decide how we should play into their healing paradigm. It’s something that really should have been fixed pre-cataclysm, but seemed to never have quite gotten there.
It is quite a strong buff they’ve given to holy. I think it’s too strong personally – I don’t think they needed to do two buffs to it, one or other of them would have been plenty. I’m sure it’ll be reduced again before it goes live.
I’m surprised they changed Wild Growth to be honest, when they seem to have either left alone or buffed the other healing classes. It would seem to me that buffing the other healers would balance things just fine – add in a nerf to the previous top healer and you have an imbalance again.
Regarding having too many effective tools, I don’t know about that. Yes priests have a lot of healing spells. Disc priests gets some extras and Holy priests get some extras, via talents. But given that 2/3 of our talent trees are devoted to healing, you would expect about 2/3 of our spells to be healing related.
This is slightly off topic, and I in no way mean anything bad by this… But the comment about 4.3 holy preist doing everything better than a druid brought back up in my mind something I keep having to squash deep down inside. It’s just a subject that I wish got more serious conversation, and that’s the notion that all classes have to be equal in all their rolls.
I sit in the back and just watch as things are said and ideas are eroded, but more and more I wonder what it is about this game that makes people think that all healing classes have to be the best healers and all tanking classes have to be the best tanks… etc. If Holy Priests are the best healers and have all the best healing toys, and you want to be the best healer then be a Holy Priest. But, if you like playing a class that has the ability to be *every* role in the game, then maybe you accept the fact that with that amazing versatility comes the problem that you don’t get all the best toys for every role. I’ve played every class in the game for some length of time or another and I fell in love with Druids the moment I realized how powerful it was to be able to change form at the drop of a hat and assume any role that the situation calls for. I can fly away while other are still conjuring their mounts, and drop out of the sky as a cat and shred a target then change to a bear and hold off many enemies at once, then heal myself and anyone else who needs when I’m done… without changing my spec.
I’m ok with druids not being able to out-math everyone else in the game at all times, because we can do enough, and others drool when they watch us instantly fly.
“I’ve played every class in the game for some length of time”
By the tone of your post, I think druid is at least one class you’d not played if you seriously believe what you posted.
All classes need to be competitive or else raiders won’t play them, what classes do on their off hours does not factor into the equation. And in a game where its just as easy to gear and maintain alts as it is alternate specs, every player is an all roles hybrid.
The stuff you’re highlighting re: versatility doesn’t really matter that much in the context of a 10 or 25 man raid, which is the focus of the discussion here. There’s undoubtedly lots of interesting and controversial things to say about those stupid goddamned druids grabbing my herbs from the sky, but that’s a very different facet of the game.
10 and 25 man raiding (progression or not) rewards specialization. If you make one class objectively and significantly more effective in a raid role than another, you marginalize other classes and by extension other players. This is pretty straightforward stuff.
@Charon
I suspect that you don’t raid on a druid in a competitive healing environment, and have not experienced the frustrations that druids had in a raid setting at the start of this expansion. No one is saying they have to be “just like” other healing classes. But they need to be competitive in their own right to remain a viable in a raid setting.
A “hybrid tax” is an idea that was rightfully discarded long ago.
Thank you for a well laid out and thoughtful reply… that’s just what I was looking for when I used the words ‘serious conversation’.
Also, your arrogant use of the word “rightly” is why people call you a jerk behind your back.
Charon –
Please be respectful here. The above comment adds nothing to the conversation that you are looking for, and frankly I don’t care to tolerate name calling. Whether you care for the poster or not, his point regarding a hybrid tax remains valid.
I might appeal to you to remember the words of Eleanor Roosevelt – “Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.”
It’s great that Holy Priests finally get a viable raid CD, and thT they have finally made it more powerful for Holy than for Disc. It used to be this way in the past due to a talent, but they took that away from us. And when they buffed tranquility to a 3 min CD they forgot about Holy Priests again.
Maybe Druids should get a mitigation CD, but not because holy priests finally get a viable raid CD. When you get your mitigation CD, should all the other healers get a tree form? Do all healers really have to have exactly the same tricks in their books?? Uniqueness is fast disappearing.
“Maybe Druids should get a mitigation CD, but not because holy priests finally get a viable raid CD. When you get your mitigation CD, should all the other healers get a tree form? Do all healers really have to have exactly the same tricks in their books?? Uniqueness is fast disappearing.”
If you believe this, then why do you feel that Holy priests needed a viable raid cooldown to begin with? Just some food for thought 🙂
Well two reasons – 1. we had a stronger Divine Hymn than Disc priests before (with the talent)… no idea why they took it away from us, but we have sorely missed it as we are still primarily raid healers, and 2. we are often told by raid leaders that we should go disc because “disc have a raid cd and you don’t”, which gets tiresome.
Good to know we are getting nerfed I guess it’s time to shelf the Druid and start gearing the holy paladin
About the 2 pc bonus: I do not mind this, as I am usually healing when I pop Innervate, so this is welcomed. We would just need to keep in mind that to make the most use out of it, we should simply be actively healing. We can simply pop it as a heavy damage phase comes on. I don’t see how some people believe this is problematic. This is a means to get mana back- you either lose the 2 pc bonus if you aren’t actively healing and get the regular innervate, or you gain a little more mana with healing spells being cheaper after being innervated during heavy healing. 25% cheaper heals for 15 seconds is too substantial to ignore, and it’s up to you how you want to make use out of it.
As for the 4pc- well. Yes, our rejuves would go to overheal, but during a heavy damage phase, this could be useful by not having to refresh rejuves, and we would also be able to Swiftmend the timeslipped rejuves at least twice (I hope this will be the case). This could allow us a bit more leeway to concentrate on other people who aren’t being healed with this. I hear raid damage is going to be epic with Deathwing. Not totally OP, but could possibly be useful.
The WG nerf? I’m not sure about this either- I feel fine with the spell currently. Yes, it scales very well with intellect, but we are forgetting people who are trying to level druids, and gear them. With this nerf, this may hurt them, and not so much people on the higher end of the raiding spectrum. It seems Blizzard has worked themselves into a pickle. I’m of the opinion that it should just be left alone- I may end up getting rid of the glyph as I do not want to get stuck with a longer CD on WG (nerfed or not).
My thought on the 2pc bonus. I’m intentionally ignoring a lot of extra details Rejuv at 85 is ~3.7k mana, and a 1s gcd. Innervate is 20% of your maximum mana pool. Beru has (unbuffed: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/Llane/Beruthiel/advanced) 122k mana now, so lets round up to 150k mana (raid buffs + some T13).
So innervate on cd is 30k mana on a 3min cooldown, or 10k/min == 833Mp5.
If you are doing rejuv spam on cd for the 15 seconds, that is 15 casts, so 3700*.25*15 = 13,875 mana, or about 45% of the raw mana from an innervate.
If we round up, that means roughly that you can delay casting innervate for almost 90s if you know that you are going into Rejuv spam mode. Now, you would still be casting something during the 15s even if you weren’t spamming, so not quite fair. But also, if you are going to spam, you’ll probably weave in Wild Growth which is 5k mana. And maybe a Regrowth to keep up Harmony, which is 6.5k mana.
If you assume you maximize the 15s, and do something like Regrowth to trigger Nature’s Grace and Harmony (for the haste), Innervate, Wild Growth, Rejuv x 6, Regrowth (harmony), WG, Rejuv x 6, within the 15 seconds. That is a raw cost of 5*2+3.7*12+6.5 = 61k mana. With Innervate up, you save 15k mana. (You can probably even use the Regrowth on your LB target so you don’t have to refresh LB during this time.)
So a best-case scenario, the 2T13 bonus is equal to a 50% stronger Innervate during a spam fest.
With ‘light’ healing, you probably use less than half that mana, so saving your innervate for damage spikes is still a 50% increase in its value, or a 25% total mana savings.
So clearly, delaying innervate by say 30s to correspond with a damage spike is worthwhile, waiting 1min is iffy. The extra 7k-15k mana is 2-4 extra casts of Rejuv every 3 minutes that you cast ‘for free’, because of the 2T13.
I won’t say that it is a ‘wow’ bonus, but it is pretty decent.
I’m not much for theory crafting, but you pretty much nailed what I was trying to say. Thanks for the napkin math 🙂
I have no idea whether the nerf goes too far or not, however I think it was generally agreed that something had to be done to level the playing field between the healers. Perhaps the buffs to the other healers is enough, perhaps a smaller nerf to Druids would be enough, or maybe this nerd is just right. Hopefully we’ll find out in the PTR.
I have a couple questions for you regarding shamans and priests. You mentioned that shammies got a shiny new cooldown last patch, holy will have a similar cooldown to tranq this coming patch, and therefor Druids are unfairly lacking in some regard. (apologies if I am not paraphrasing you correctly). My questions are:
If you could swap Rejuv for Renew and the holy tank cooldown, would you make th trade?
If you could trade WG (nerf included) and tranq for Healing Rain and Spirit Link Totem, would you make the trade?
Obviously, I am coming from a place where I don’t think you have legitimate gripes, that the grass on the other side may not be as green as you think, and that the Druid tool set is more than fine. But I’m interested in seeing what you think. (apologies for spelling and format – posting on the iPhone is a challenge for me)
From my point of view as a druid healer, what we lack the most is single target stabilization and the ability to dump mana to heal a group. The first has been well documented and when I’m tank healing I do feel its quite missed, for example during the rag fight in phase 2 seed transitions the whole raid is moving and the tanks are taking some serious damage, I have nothing really other than swiftmend (which I lose effllorencense because we’re moving) and nature’s swiftness which is not really very effective. Yes, I would love GS, etc. to instantly stabilize the tank and buy me the time to get to where I need to stop running and dump mana into him. The 2nd point (burst group healing) my only tool here is the strength of WG and rejuvs, once I do that I can not do anything to keep a group up other than long cast single target spells. I remember when the troll heroics first came out and people were just dying left and right and I was sitting there with all the mana in the world but nothing I could do, because none of my group tools are spamable. I can’t just keep casting PoH or Chain heal, yes my group healing throughput is amazing on paper, but I don’t have tools outside of tranq to keeps groups alive outside the strength of a single WG cast and there are plenty of places where you don’t have the time to let hots get refreshed, you only have that single window to get the job done or its a wipe. So the one tool I have for my 2nd deficiency or problem area as a druid just got cobra kai-ed, “put it in a body bag!” 🙂
Maybe in the 25 man world its a different story where there’s a lot more overlap and the ability to synergize strengths vs situations but in 10 man raiding I’m often all there is at a given moment, and in a world of binary death unless health levels are at a certain point (domo scorp, alys phase 3 explosion, etc.) simple HPS output just doesn’t mean squat if there’s not enough seconds to get the slow healing done. The ol’ truism “the dead don’t DPS”, well the dead don’t get healed either…
@WeWhoEat:
I’d like you to clarify a bit more on how we lack on single target stabilization. Like any other class, we also have to stop casting something to move, thus we use rejuve, regrowth and swiftmend when we are on the move. This is what makes druids great for mobility, especially with our ability to float LB on tanks. I play a holy paladin as my other healer, and paladins don’t get that, other than holy shock and WoG. In this sense, paladins are more limited than druids are when it comes to healing on the move and we get to be more creative with our spells. I can’t speak for other classes as I haven’t played priests or shamans at the max level.
On your next point about burst group healing, I feel we are stronger in this area than you make it out to be. WG work really well with Efflorescence, and you can nourish following up on your hotted targets. You also forget about ToL, this is also great for dealing with group healing. I am not sure what more we can really ask for to fix the problems you have presented here. Yes, we have long casting heals, but so do other classes. Take paladins for example, they have Holy Radiance, Beacon of Light for the tanks, and then the rest, they have to cast direct heals just like we also have to after casting WG/Swiftmend to bring a group back up without using any healing CD’s. I’m sure it’s the same thing for other classes, they’d have to use their aoe heals and then, follow up using single target heals.
I don’t mean to blow the discussion off tangent but I wanted to comment on this.
Just my 2 cents 🙂
What I mean by single target stabilization are mitigation cooldowns, when something bad happens I don’t have a tool that will buy me the time to get the tank stabilized again. No hand of sacrifice from your point of view, something that buys me time to get to work before the tank dies. I have to always stay ahead of the damage, I don’t have the tools to react to a bad spike and when on the move my only two options (swiftmend which loses efflorence while moving) and NS-Healing Touch are really not that useful in that situation. I think you really underestimate the value of mitigation, the ability to know that someone is about to die and being able to instantly prevent that death is worth at least 5x its weight in healing. All the healing throughput in the would does you no good if that person isn’t alive to receive the heals. While raid healing yeah, I can pretty much do whatever I want while moving but tank healing its quite a different story. Its interesting you brought up LB on tanks, Paladins have that covered and more with beacon, and you can switch it and apply it on a whim with a single GCD and no mana cost
My issue with burst healing is that I cast wild growth and put some rejuves up and that’s it, I have to sit there and wait for them to tick out before I can output anymore healing unless I start casting long single target spells that in many cases in the past I didn’t have any time for before people started dying. Do I put out a lot of HPS, oh yeah, the other classes can’t compete purely on that statistic but very ofter those targets won’t be alive to receive that healing. I couldn’t dump all the extra mana I was sitting on into something like prayer of healing or chain heal when the situation necessitated it and these are fights where the damage comes in faster than using tranq or ToL will allow for. I saw this in ZA, I see it in Domo when healers are going out for seeds I have all this mana and people are dying because I can’t convert it fast enough. I rely on a heavy hitting WG because its the only thing I can do and that’s really a big part of this nerf talk. Ghostcrawler said that WG does too much healing for how easy it is to use, I can’t argue with that point. The problem is that its the only tool I have to choose from in many situations so what am I supposed to do? Nerf WG, but then give me a PoH type spell that I can sacrifice a bunch of my mana for when the damage comes in so quickly.
So, druids kick butt on the healing meters and what does that mean? We’re the kings of farm content, but when it comes to progression content in 10man where I have no back up other than tranq I don’t have encounter saving tools, things that will allow you to survive those wipe points. pallies, disc priests and shamen have more useful raid cooldowns and well holy is in a pickle, but they’re getting tranq now. At least Holy priest have a group mana burn as well as disc priests and shamen. When it comes to tank healing, I just can’t compete. I can do the job, I can make it work, but I’m not the man for the job (all other things being equal) and no guild is going to be heavily recruiting me for a tank heal spot for progression content unless they have no choice. But speaking of choice, did you hear about the cool now druid healing glyph the devs are going to give us? Its called the “Glyph of the empty slot” 🙂
It entirely possible that my point of view is just completely formed by my narrow view of how I play wow. I’m in a 10 man raid with friends that I have been playing this game with since vanilla, I also love this character and the druid style of healing and I really enjoy tanking too. I have a lot of achievements and history build up with this toon. I raid healed in T11, and now in T12 I tank heal because we lost a tank healer and the new healer that started who runs a holy priest really likes raid healing so cool, just put me where there’s a need. We’re not a top ranked super progression guild, but when we raid its serious and we’re always working on the next encounter, we don’t farm around.
Am I able to do my job, yes. But I can’t help feel that I would be far more beneficial to my guild if I started tank healing with my pally or priest alt. And now if I go back to raid healing I question whether I’d even be a good choice for that in 4.3 because in 4.2 right now while I do feel I have an advantage in fights that we have on farm, I feel I’m no more capable of pushing my raid past those wipe points than any other healer when its me and only me pumping heals into 8 or our 10 raiders. So I see my class as substandard in tank healing and ok in group healing in my world of always progressing, and I can’t give farm content any weight in my calculations because that’s like balancing classes based on how well they solo Molten Core. So that’s 4.2 and now I look to do even poorer than poor at tank and ok at raid in 4.3.
But no, I refuse to switch my main, I enjoy playing this game the most as a druid and I don’t want to re-earn all those achievements but I guess as a 10 man progressive raider I do a disservice to my friends because of that. In the end Blizzard will get it right, they always do, but I just don’t follow the logic in taking us back to a place where they themselves stated we were broken. Maybe the quick response raid healing situations won’t be in t13 content and it will be all ok, but I’m still waiting on equality in the tank healing arena, I’ve been on hold on that call for a nice long while now.
Well I don’t know how to reply to specific comments, so I’ll just leave all my thoughts here and you guys can sort it out.
@Miilika: Yes, I agree that with 2 different healing specs, priest should have plenty of healing tricks. But, like druids, once the fight starts you are locked into one spec and your off-spec toys should be weak / borderline unusable. I will draw your attention that in commenting on how Holy’s toolbox is overflowing, I mentioned only Holy-specific tools. I didn’t mention the many tricks that Disc priests have at their disposal. And I don’t think because priest is “less” of a hybrid than druid is a good reason to make them superior to any other healers in endgame.
Also, if you think it’s annoying when RLs ask you to respec because Holy doesn’t have a necessary tool for the fight at hand, imagine how annoying it is when a RL asks you to reroll a different healing class or sit out because Rdruid doesn’t have a necessary tool for the fight at hand.
@Beru: I totally agree with your hypothesis that druid never fit into their Cata-era healing paradigm, and that’s why we’ve been all over the map with nerfs and buffs here and there.
And I think part of the reason we’re strong in T12 and weak in T11 isn’t even that our healing has gotten that much stronger, but rather the fights in Firelands dictate that efficient, slow AoE healing is acceptable on most fights. If we needed burst AoE healing a la Chimaeron or tank cooldowns a la Nef, there would be a totally different story. But since so many fights are favorable to our healing tools this tier, plus the fact that our main raid CD shows up on healing meters…we’re getting a nerf.
The real question of course is what kind of healing will be required for the roadblock fights in T13. If they make fights where WG is pretty useless then this whole thing is a nonissue.
There’s a “Reply” link near the bottom of each comment just above the poster’s avatar. Replies can only be nested to a certain depth, hence some comments won’t have reply links. It’s usual to just reply to the comment above so that subsequent comments show up in order at the same depth.
(had the same problem at one stage :P)
On topic… Tranquility during Feud phases made druid healers pretty awesome on Chimaeron. High throughput makes druids the single best choice to pair up with any other class, and that seems to actually be the niche that blizzard had in mind. You may never heal a raid with only druids, but at the moment not taking any at all puts the raid at a disadvantage on a pure throughput footing.
Aha, found it. Thanks!
In re: tranquility for chim feud, tranquility isn’t really better than PW:B (~100k? damage mitigated per spit x 3 in 10man, 250k? damage mitigated per spit x3 in 25) or aura mastery (slightly less, but close). You have to keep in mind that since it is channeled, the druid is locked out of casting useful spells for ~6.5 seconds, which is maybe 90k healing lost.
It certainly wasn’t a bad cooldown, but it’s no better than the cooldowns that other classes bring, (and poor Holy has PoH to fall back on, until 4.3 when they get a Tranquility of their own). The key thing that made druids weak for the fight was their lackluster single-target healing for spits (until you had a shitload of SP, nourish was flat-out insufficient) and their ongoing lack of single-target mitigation abilities, which was key for heroic. And of course, back when we were progressing on the fight, Tranq was an 8 minute cooldown.
What people are saying is that without a clear edge in the throughput department or design tweaks to make them attractive in other ways, druids will find themselves on the sidelines in cutting-edge raid situations.
When I first did it, tranq was 3m. Design marches on. Since then we’ve seen a fair bit of rebalancing. I suspect that while the WG nerf will have an effect, druids will likely still have a throughput edge. That said, I fully expect rebalancing on another ability.
What seems to be primarily bothering the design team is that WG is too easy to use. You make a good point with Tranq being channeled and having to make the trade-off to use it. Look for a buff to an ability with a significant downside – perhaps effloresence, with its set area.
What I’d do (disclaimer: I’m insane) is to create a new glyph that reduces the cooldown of Wild Growth whenever Swiftmend is cast. Adds a new glyph choice, improves WG again, and makes druids tear their fur out because it ties their lower cooldown to a long CD ability that they might have used to stabilise a tank or similar earlier.
Nice post man, keep them coming in! 🙂
Pingback: Buffs and Nerfs: I’m on a rollercoaster | WTS Heals
Pingback: The Great Wild Growth Nerf of PTR 4.3 - Ysera's Daughter