Mana Mana (again)

More mana regen nerfs. They just keep piling up. Spiritual Attunement is the latest victim. And while that isn't a Druid thing, it is nonetheless yet another reflection of the mana destruction we are seeing in WoW.

On the PTR, my Resto mana regen is quite frankly a joke. I am not one to be an alarmist, and yes people are killing the bosses on the PTR with the massive mana regen nerfs in place. But this whole thing seems to really be getting out of hand. And not just a little bit.

I will say it again, not that Blizzard will hear it or get ir if they did hear it, but here goes:

WE ARE NOT OVERPOWERED.

THE CURRENT CONTENT IS UNDERPOWERED.

Please please stop it Blizzard! Healing has been more fun the last few months than ever in this game. At least it has in the opinion of this author who has healed from Molten Core days up until now. With raiders being more bored in WoW than ever before, and more and more people just bailing on the game seemingly every day, putting mana users (and *especially*) healers in mana crunching situations like old days, making it much less fun, is a very bad move.

Now I understand the need for balancing. I really do. many things Blizzard did in the past panned out a lot better than it looked like they would. But this time, their actions indicate (to me at least) that they are not in touch with reality here. Er... actually its a video game... the uh, reality of the virtual reality... ah crap you know what I mean!

I haven't had the guts to wear a Boomkin spec on the PTR yet. I am too afraid of what I will see when open the character pane and check mana regen.

When is Starcrat 2 coming out?

Resto Nerfs INC

NERFS?

In case you have been hiding the last week, there are 2 significant changes queued up for raiding resto Druids. The Druid community is quite up in arms. Its not that often that Resto Druids get all bent out of shape. Our raiding Trees are generally a pretty easy going bunch. But oh they are upset now!

NERF 1: MY MANA!

First let it be known that I am a mana pig. I use it, abuse it, and drool over it. Some mobs hits me for 15k damage? Oh, he hit me. Some mob steals like 3 mana from me? ITS ON!!

We are getting our spirit based mana regen nerfed. To the ground baby! Its really the out of 5 second rule regen that is getting nerfed though. I don't know about you, but I really don't get much time out of 5SR. I could probably take it, but don't really need to. Heck, I have become quite fond of spamming the crap out of Nourish lately. Its pretty inefficient on the ol' hallowed mana bar, but its really fast. Its great for sniping raid heals, I mean for keeping the raid alive. With Replenishment, I don't have to worry about mana very much. Add in a Ret Pally, and I just don't have mana issues. Some mobile fights I will have to think about mana, but very few.

So is this really going to hurt us? Well geared Resto Druids? I don't think so really. If anyone, it is going to hurt people in quest blues just starting heroics. Remember how bad mana was for you back then? I have tried hard to forget. Mana pig, remember?

NERF 2: LIFEBOOM

This is the one that has me scratching my head over here. Basically, Lifebloom costs twice as much mana! But wait, if you let your stack bloom, you get half the mana back. Huh?? Who came up with that one?

So what this means is that if you keep rolling stacks up, you are going to take the mana cost in the shorts. Hard. Well well, mana may become quite an issue after all.

However, there is a possible silver lining here, one that takes quite a change of thinking to get in to. Its Nourish. Its getting buffed. Could even be Godly buffed. You know that spiffy little talent that makes Regrowth crit practically all the time? Its going to affect Nourish as well! The crit chance is actually being lowered some, but still, the "wow" potential is high! If you ahve every done some Nourish spamming, you know how quick those heals start flyng when you get a good crit train going. Now triple that crit chance. YEEEEE HAAW!

BUT WHY?

Why the mana regen nerf? Why the Lifebloom nerf? Blizzard thinks both are too powerful. As they watch raids in Naxx. Think about that one a second... Lets imagine for a moment that we are not going to ignore the elephant in the living room, and step back for a more balanced and subjective perspective. Well that will take about .3 seconds for someone with the IQ of a garden salad to come to an immediate and inescapable conclusion:

Naxx is too easy.

Could that be the real problem with mana regen and lifelboom? Nah... couldn't be that. Don't get me wrong, I don't think these nerfs are going to be nearly as horrendous as the doomsday posts on the WoW forums would lead one to believe. I am however totally convinced that they are based on a very faulty premise, and that the root cause is that Naxx is just way too easy.

Wild Growth Nerf: Aftermath

So it has been a little while since the 6 second cooldown was added to Wild Growth, and we Druid folk have had some time to adjust. How much has it affected our healing?

LOLHAELZ?

Let's go back to the time before the nerf. On some fights, it was very effective to simply run around the raid in circles spamming Wold Growth. It required little more from a player than 1 working finger, one hand to move your character, and a pulse. In some situations, it was remarkably efffective. This was what Blizzard did not like.

Take Sapphiron for example. In 25 man, 2 Druids running circles could put out a tremendous amount of effective healing on a raid. No skill or brain required, just run and spam. On Lootavon, er Archavon, it was pretty much the same deal, even though all that group healing wasn't needed.

There were however, and are, boss encounters where spamming Wild Growth was not such a brainless non-decision, where it was actually a smart and effective healing strategy. Malygos, when the entire raid gets tossed and spun is a very good example. Wild Growth saved a lot of lives.

DOOM INC

The fights we were most concerned about were Sapphiron and Malygos. These fights were where WG made the most contribution, and doing those fights without the WG spam sounded like a bad thing.

On Sapph, there are other options of course. Chain Heals by the Shammys of course could play a much larger role in raid healing. My thinking was that we keep a Pally or two on the MT, maybe with a Priest because they are good at healing anything, and the rest on the raid. Sounds good.

Malygos was an even larger source of worry. How would we keep everyone alive? I guess make sure everyone is topped off, cast what HoTs you can, and hope for the best?

AND WE GO!

On Sapphiron, much to my suprise, the difference was neglible. Hey whaddya know, Druids have other good heals too! SNAP!

On Malygos, I ended up assigning 'preferred groups' to Druids and Priests. Of those in range during the flying fun, stick HoTs on people in the assigned group first, then any others you can hit. I spread the Priests out across as many groups as we had Priests, so they could PoH the group when we land.

Worked like a charm! To my surprise, we seemed to actually have less chance of dying than before! Huh?!?! It may have been due to healers paying closer attention, or being more focused. I did make a big deal on vent out of the challenge we would be facing; that probably helped too.

CONCLUSION:

How bad is the nerf, now that we have had some time to digest it, adjust to it, and use it?

Not even an issue at all. And I thought it was going to be catastrophic!

Quick Off Topic:

Added the spiffy new header a few weeks ago! The background is actually a shot of Moonglade. I was messing around with some blurs, and accidentally put one on the wrong layer, the entire background. Before I hit the undo button, I looked at it and really liked the almost ethereal feel it gave, so stuck with it.

I used WoW Model Viewer for the caps of the forms. I liked having them all looking at you as you are looking at them. The eye contact thing seemed cool. Except for the Boomkin. He is either basking in his power and glory, or very unhappy about the insanely low spell power coefficient on Starfall, not sure which.

New Hero Class Ideas

There was an interesting thread on the WoW forums the other day, speculating about a new hero class. Believe it or not, it was actually a mostly constructive post, with many cool ideas. It got me thinking about what a Her Healer Class could be like, and I came up with some ideads for one.

IT WOULD NEED TO...

Every class in WoW has to be able to solo content, and do respectable damage. This class would be no different.

The playstyle should be highly involving and immersive. Death Knights are the precedent. They are easy to play badly, but quite involved to play extremely well.

It can not be a Frankenstien of existing healing classes. A new class that drops totems, shifts forms, and has a bubble would not work. It has to be something very very different than current healers.

I have no idea what to call this thing. Rumor at one point was that the next hero class would be the ArchDruid. That name won't work, sounds too much like Druid.

GENERAL STUFF

• It would be a melee class. This is not so much for any raid or overall game class balance reason, but for the style of game play. As you read more about it, you may agree that the playstyle would be nicely suited for melee.
  
• It is not a tanking class, and would have no tanking abilities per se. It would be viable for soloing the same as any other non-tanking class/spec. Mages for example can't really tank, but do just fine leveling up.
  
• There would be no 'dps tree', 'healing tree', etc. This is somewhat like Death Knights now. With DKs, although one tree or another may be favored for DPS or tanking, all contain workable DPS and tanking talents. The Hero Heal Class would be simliar in that respect.
  
• All damage done would also do an amount of healing. Perhaps a 1:1 ratio for 'white damage' would work, with specials doing larger amounts of heal per damage.
  
• Play would involve building combo points of a sort, with 'finishing moves', or specials, resulting in larger specific heals. Some would heal over time, sone would be instant direct heals. Some would heal a single target, others would heal multiple targets.
  
• Heals would directed by use of 'Marks'. A single player can be marked, such as a tank, to recieve the full benefit of each heal. Or up to a specific number of players could be marked, perhaps 3, in which case each would recieve 1/3 of the total healing output. Or, if nobofy is marked, either the entire raid or 10 closest players recieve an equal portion of the healing output.

TALENT TREES

Again, none of these talent trees would be a 'heal tree', a 'dps tree', etc. Unfortunately, I have not come up with good descriptive names for each without using terms that already mean something else in WoW. Halp meh!

Restorative Tree

I hate to call this Restoration. That makes it sounds like 'the healing tree' which it would not be. I can't think of a better name for it though.

The idea behind this tree is that everyone in the raid can do more of whatever they are doing as a direct result of the Hero Healer.

• This tree would include talents that restore not health, but other players' mana, runic power, energy, and rage.
  
• There would be a talent giving an ability that temporarily increases the regeneration rate of each, perhaps as a finishing move.
  
• There would be a talent that restores a flat percentage of each, again perhaps as a finishing move, and/or as a static 'aura' type of buff.
  

Buff Tree

Well, Enhancement sure would be a good name for this tree, but that has already been used, and means something else.

The purpose of this tree would be to enhance other players' dps/healing/mitigation, etc.

Permanent passive auras would provide buffs in the same way that other auras do, such as Moonkin aura, etc. These buffs would have to be something new, something we don't already have. Things like spell power, haste, etc, are already in the game. I have not worked out what exactly these buffs would be.

This could be the hardest tree to get creative in designing.

Some buffs would be for specific selected targets. A buff on a tank would increase their threat, where the same buff on another target would decrease it.

Other talents could buff baseline attributes, like giving rogues another 5 max energy for 105 instead of 100, or mana users a flat percentage increase to their mana pool, or rage users another 5 max rage.

Reduction  Tree

This would be a bit like the Priest Discipline Tree. The talents here would generally reduce the effect of bad stuff on the raid, and/or individuals in the raid.

• "Phase Shift" would probably be the big one here. It would phase shift one or more people, making them immune to pretty much everything for a few seconds, whille still able to heal/dps/tank. One version would be used on a tank, as sort of a super bubble. Another version would be used on the 10 closest players. Each would only last a few seconds.
  
• Another talent, "All For One", would cause damage taken by the target to be equally distributed across all players in the raid. Tank takes a 100k hit in a 10 man raid for example. Instead, all 10 players get hit for 10k. This would be on a significant cooldown, and only last maybe 3 seconds.
  

GAME PLAY

Much like the current hero class Death Knights, our new Hero Healer class would operate under a multiple bar/status system. There would not simply be a mana bar, or an energy bar.

In a blatant ripoff of the Death Knight rune system, there would be a crystal system. There would be a number of crystals that discharge with use, and gradually restore themselves with time. There would be perhaps 10-12. Talents would increase the number to maybe 16. These would be required to use many key abilities. They would all be the same, unlike the Blood/Unholy/Frost runes a DK uses. Talents would also increase the regen rate, as well as player stats (like spirit increases many players' mana regen rate).

In what looks like another blatant DK ripoff, but actually isn't, there would be a bar that charges up as other abilities are used. The "Potency Bar". Many abilities would become more powerful at higher levels of potency. This bar would quickly decay when not being recharged, and would have no upper limit (like 100 energy). Perhaps it wouldn't even be a bar, but something like a gauge. The Potency Bar would also not be a direct source for any abilities; there would be no 'Potency dump'. Its sole purpose is to amplify abilities, not to power them.

Our Hero Healer would build combo points. Max points would be much higher than 5, because we are going to get in to some razzle dazzle here. Many abilities would add combo points like a rogue does. However, combo points also decay at a preset rate of perhaps 1 every 2 seconds. Use it or lose it! Combined with the Potency system and it's decay, this would make for a very active, involved playstyle.

STATS AND GEAR

This is where it starts to get weird, and maybe very interesting.

Does WoW need another plate wearing melee class? Probably not.

Does WoW need another cloth wearing mana user? Definitely not. Heck this new class doesn't even have a mana bar.

So then, what type of armor should they be able to wear? Well, it is a hero class. Let's say for now that they can wear any type of armor. Which is the same as saying they wear plate. However, the stats desired by the class would very likely lead to many gear choices that are not plate. Since they can not tank, and have strong heals, they wouldn't *need* plate for anything. ZOMG TEH HEROO ROOLT ON MAH GAERS! Relax.

What stats would be useful to this class? Here is where it gets interesting... Any base stats would provide some type of usefulness! And I don't mean like how Intellect is useful to a rogue if they are leveling a weapon skill, but actually really useful. After all, this is a HERO class we are talking about!

Stamina: Increases hitpoints of course. Also effectiveness increases any health-related abilties, including all healing.

Strength: Increases attack power, which in turn means more healing output. Also enhances some shielding type abilities.

Agility: Increases chance to hit, the hero is more agile thus less likely to miss. Also slightly decreases the global cooldown of some abilities.

Intellect: The hero's increased mental faculties result in slower decay of Potency and Crystals.

Spirit: Increases the chance of abilities that cause gains to Potency or Crystals to 'proc'. Also increases the effectiveness of restorative abilities that grant other players mana/rage/energy/runic power.

Armor: Increases the effectiveness of many damage reducing abilities.

This would make for some interesting and complex gear choices. Lets ignore for a minute the potential drama of other classes getting bent out of shape because someone is rolling against them for 'their' loot. Please.

Random Resto Ramblings

Wild Growth Nerf INC

As you probably know, Wild Growth is going to be on a 6 second cooldown come patch 3.0.8. While I am not thrilled about this, I can definitely see the reasoning behind it.

In its current state, its pretty easy to abuse. For example on Sapphiron, all it takes is a pair of Trees running in circles around the raid, spamming WG, to pretty much counter the entire AOE/Aura mechanic of the fight. I can't see that as being the intention of the encounter designers.

On the other hand, some fights are going to get interesting. Phase 1 Malygos, when the raid gets tossed and whirled, comes to mind. Thats going to get interesting. While that phase isn't hard at the level of say, Sunwell, that specific part of that specific encounter is going to be out of wack with the intended difficulty level. Between the WG nerf and the corresponding CoH nerf, I suspect that the damage done to the raid is going to have to be pulled back a little bit, perhaps 10 or 20 percent.

HT Spam?

After reading the excellent post at Resto4life about current healing values (http://www.resto4life.com/2008/12/15/direct-healing-in-wrath/), I got thinking about the possibility of a HT spam spec. With the tremendous throughput of glyphed HT, it looked to be worth a try.

Before I get in to the specifics, a little history!

I first started raiding on my Druid back in Molten Core. At that point, if you raided on a Druid, you were a healer, period. We had Regrowth, Rejuvination and Healing Touch. Regrowth was horrendously inefficient, so it was pretty much out the window. Rejuv was a bit weak but not too bad. It was a milestone to have your Rejuv tick for 400. As raids progressed in to BWL, it became obvious that the most efficient and effective heal for a Druid was a downranked Healing Touch, specifically HT rank 4.

Druids spammed HT4 through BWL, AQ40 and Naxx. It was a bit boring, but overall pretty good.

Then the pre-BC patch came out, and something drastic happened: Hots stacked! If 2 Druids both put Rejuv on a single person, that person would have 2 Rejuvs ticking away. This was a huge huge change to Druid healing. On Patchwerk for example, instead of complex HT4 spam rotations, smart healing coordinators would have Druids keep up Rejuv on all the tanks.

Then came Burning Crusade and Lifebloom. Nearly all healing Druids went with Lifebloom as their primary heal, using it with other Druids like the Patchwerk healing strategy I described; roll hots across all the tanks. Or, roll hots across the raid.

At this point, there was a second heal spec to consider, which came to be known as the Dreamstate spec. It was actually originally the HT/Mana Battery spec. The goals of the spec were to be able to cast gigantic HTs, and to have ridiculous mana regen. This spec was very, very, very hard to master, but incredibly powerful. Instead of being reactive or preventative, it was as *predictive* based healing style. HT was far too slow to react to incoming damage, you had to accurately predict the damage and wind up your massive heals before the damage happened. Done correctly, it was by far the highest throughput single target healing spec that WoW has ever seen. It was also a very misunderstood and often maligned spec, mostly because very very few knew how to use it correctly. Make no mistake, having one good DS Druid in your raid made a *massive* difference.

Then came Wrath of the Lich King, and the complete destruction of any downranking. The old DS spec was dead.

Or is it? I decided to try out a DS spec again, based around glyphed HT. I was running about 2100 heal, with about a 19k mana pool and 200 haste. Mana regen was about 1100/300, very high. The build was:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0VGfzbIohZZfVouVdxbuq0R

The goals of the build are the same as the old school DS build; maximize HT and mana regen. There are a lot of 'throw-away' points in there, unavoidable to get DS and as deep in to resto as possible.

So I fired up the spec and off we went to Naxx. Patchwerk was on the menu, a perfect chance to try an HT spam spec! Woot!

Keeping in mind that I was not geared specifically for the spec (would want to emphasize int for better mana regen from Replenishment for example), the results are still a good indication of how it can work.

First thing I noticed is that my glyphed HT had a cast time of .85 seconds. You read that correctly, point eight five seconds. Mmmm, this is looking interesting!

Patchwerk inc, let the spam begin!

Pause. I use Quartz. If you don't know what it is, oh are you in for a treat!

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/quartz.aspx

(That link is at Curse.com. Based on past incidents, proceed with caution. It is probably available elsewhere)

So I am in the habit of several quick button clicks at around what my next cast time will be to minimize delays due to server/casting latency. Again, if you don't know what that is about, you are probably missing a ton of your peak possible efficiency. You really do need to get Quartz, or at least understand what it does and why.

The HT cast bar goes, gets to the red, and I start the clicking for the next... what the? Oh snap, HT cast time is shorter than the freaking GCD! This seems like a minor thing, but it seriously screwed me up. I got through the best I could, but old habits can be very hard to break.

After making some marginally effective mental adjustments, the HT spam proceeded. In short, I could not make it as effective as it looked like it should be on paper. My overall throughput was not all that stellar. I really didn't dig the whole thing. I respecced after the fight.

In conclusion, I couldn't make it work. That doesn't mean that it can't work, just that I couldn't make it work. As someone who healed through all the BC instances as DS, I figured I would be more qualified to make a new HT spam spec work than most. Perhaps I will revisit it in the future. I also may revisit it without the HT glyph.

On the State of Regrowth

Good Lord its an efficient heal, at least when it doesn't get stepped on by other heals. However, this post just reached the 12 mile long mark, so I am going to shut up for now, and plan to revist the RG thing some other day.

Mana Mana

Got Mana? When we started heroic 5 mans a few weeks ago, I sure didn't. Had to stop and drink after every... single... pull. It was rare that Innervate was off cooldown for more than a minute or two, unless we were almost at a boss where it would be needed even more. Mana pots? Went through more than I want to remember. 80 Vendor Waters would last *maybe* 2 heroics. This was without a source of Replenishment though.

After a bunch of heroics 5s, the difference was signficant. Now what I really lusted after was more spell power, whether healing or nuking. And I got some. Not tons, but some. The major change in BC gear to new gear though was the basic stats, Stamina, Int and Spirit. And wow, the new gear has a TON of all those.

Once we started raiding 25s, we made a point to have 2 or 3 Replenishments in the raid. That made a massive difference. I still had to drink after a lot of pulls, but it was so much better. As new gear kept coming in, the mana issue got better and better. The thing about Replenishment is that the bigger your mana pool, the more mana you get from it. It gives you a percentage of your mana, so that makes sense.

Last night my Boomkin had over 20k mana for the first time. With 3 Replenishments in the raid, I dare say mana was almost not even a consideration. Burn baby burn! Longer boss fights I still had to drink a pot or use an innervate on occasion, but rarely.

So, got mana issues? Once your gear gets better, you probably won't anymore! Woot!