Wednesday, February 25, 2009

New 3.1 glyphs for druids

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So the 3.1 patch notes were recently released (you can find them in full at mmo-champion here) and it looks like we've got some new glyphs to look at! =O

Glyph of Barkskin -- Reduces the chance you'll be critically hit by melee attacks by 1 to 0% while Barkskin is active.

Lol, PvP.

Moving on!

Glyph of Wild Growth: Wild Growth now affects up to 6 targets.

Is this any good?

There are a couple problems with this that I see right off the bat. First, WG isn't a 100% given - it doesn't always hit up to 5 people, so there's no guarantee that it will hit all 6 people, either. If everyone is lumped together in a group, and 6 people have taken damage, you know it's going to work. But I personally would rather have my glyphs not be "situational." The Glyph of Rejuvenation, for instance, is very situational - it will only work if the tank is below half health. So that means that if the tank never gets below half health, you have a glyph that's just *sitting* there. Useless. Glyph of Swiftmend, however - you KNOW that every single time you hit a swiftmend on someone, it's going to keep that Rejuv or Regrowth ticking. There's no chance involved, no situation where it won't work. It's one of the reasons why it's such a great glyph.

But let's take those examples where you DO hit all 6 people, and let's say that your Wild Growth ticks to it's full potential. You're basically buffing your WG by 20%, by healing an extra person who otherwise wouldn't get any heals from that GCD you just used. That ain't bad. But again, it's situational.

Let's actually crunch these numbers. We'll compare the Glyph of Regrowth with the new Glyph of Wild Growth. We'll assume that all these spells are hitting players for 100% effective healing. We'll also assume that the average WG tick is 650 for 7 seconds on each person.

So, 650*7 = an extra 4,550 healing on that 6th person.

For a Regrowth, let's assume that it initially hits for 5,000, and ticks for 1,000 every 3 seconds for 21 seconds. So with the glyph, it would hit for 6,000 (the +20% of 5,000) and then tick for 1,200 (the +20% of 1,000 per tick) every 3 seconds for 21 seconds. That's an increase of a 1,000 for the healing hit, and a 1,400 total tick. So... 2,400 over roughly 21 seconds.

Let's also assume that you put up a new WG 3 times in a row, every 7 seconds, and it hits 6 people who need it each time. It would be an increase of 4,550 healing * 3 = 13,650 over roughly 21 seconds.

2,400 extra healing done (regrowth glyph over 21 seconds) vs. 13,650 extra healing done (WG glyph over 21 seconds)

You would need to toss out 5.6 glyphed Regrowths in 21 seconds to surpass the bonus healing of 3 glyphed Wild Growths in 21 seconds.

And keep in mind that those 5.6 glyphed Regrowths only work when you *already* have a Regrowth on those targets.

(Which would use 93.4% more base mana.)

(And 11.2 seconds of that 21 seconds would be spent casting.)

(Which actually means that you would need more than 5.6 regrowths in 21 seconds, because with all that casting time, the last few Regrowths don't have time to tick all the way.)

(Am I making any sense?)


Ok, I'll chill with the bolding. =P

However, WG isn't 100% reliable, whereas with Regrowth, as long as you get it on the target in time, you can just let it tick and not worry about it again for another 18+ seconds.

Let's say that WG hits a sixth target only two times out of that 3. Maybe people are too spread out, or whatever. That's still an extra 9,100 healing done, as opposed to 2,400. So let's say you have 3 people with a glyphed Regrowth on them. That's still only 7,200. And I never use Regrowth that much, ever.

(I'm not going to get into what is more likely to be an overheal, because both of these can be ineffective healing at one point or another).

After doing that math, it seems, well... kind of awesome, especially for someone who doesn't use Regrowth very much at all, and uses WG almost always.

Long story short: I'll consider this glyph, simply because I use WG a LOT, and after looking into the numbers more, it seems to do more effective healing on face value that the Regrowth Glyph, but it's not 100% guaranteed, and I would have to consider which of my current glyphs to give up (although after typing all of the above, I'm thinking it'd be the Regrowth one...).

Glyph of Nourish -- Your Nourish heals an additional 6% for each of your heal over time effects present on the target.

(Important: all of this could change come 3.1, and I'm just assuming here that Glyph of Nourish will stack with the 4 piece bonus. All of these are assumptions... and like Keeva at Tree Bark Jacket says, take them with a grain of salt!)

This, in additon to the four piece t7/7.5 bonus: Your Nourish heals an additional 5% for each of your heal over time effects present on the target.... might be worth it.

The way I'm reading this, "additional 6%" means on top of the 5% 4 piece bonus. So that's 11% MORE HEAL (this is assuming that the set bonus and the glyph stack, and it's assuming that the percentages are additive. Perhaps the 6% would apply to the already set-bonus-buffed heals - in which case, these numbers would be even higher!)

So, if I'm understanding this correctly, if you have a Rejuv, LB, WG, and Regrowth ticking on a tank, you could hit them with a Nourish that's 44% more heal than a regular Nourish. So if your Nourish typically hits for say, 5,500, it would land for 7,920 (with 4 HoTs on the target). Wow. That's a lot of healing for a near one second cast time. And that's without a crit.

I think this makes Nourish pretty viable, especially on tanks, who have a lot of HoTs on them at one point, and who are taking a lot of damage. I mean, it's just silly. Or think about melee - you throw a WG on them and then spam Nourish - they'd be topped off in seconds (obviously it would only be one HoT, but an 11% increase still is pretty good).

If you don't have the 4 piece bonus (edit: OR, if they don't stack like I'm assuming they do - which, the more I read, the more it seems that this may be the case) is this glyph good enough to use? I personally don't think so. I think that the combination of the glyph and the tier bonus could be good enough to rock out, but one on their own just isn't good enough to shut out a LB glyph, or swiftmend, or even Regrowth (especially if you're a Regrowth type of healer). I suppose if you find yourself using Nourish as one of your top heals (which personally, I don't think is the best way to heal as a druid, ahem) then buffing it with the glyph, regardless of the piece bonus, could be considered.

The question is, for both of these new glyphs, what current glyph would I replace? The Swiftmend one I would definitely keep. I have the Glyph of Regrowth, and, like I said before, I really don't use Regrowth very often, even though I told myself I'd use it more after getting the glyph. I just can't seem to get into that style of healing. So even though the WG glyph is situational, it still actually looks better than my Regrowth glyph, which I rarely put into use. I also have the Lifebloom glyph, which I could potentially get rid of. I always thought that the LB glyph was a must have, because you'd be casting LB less overall (meaning more mana saved), but I have the 2 piece tier 7.5 bonus, and the more I think about it, the more it seems to not be a necessity. The amount of mana saved would be negligible with a 10 second stack rather than an 9 second one, and I typically refresh my LB stacks early anyway. The LB glyph is good to have in, say, a Patchwerk fight, when your rotation is key and you want as many GCDs as possible in between refreshing stacks. But other than that, I don't think it's a complete 100% must-have.

Also, did I do my math right? This is like the first time ever I'm channeling Phaelia here. /nervous


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16 remarks:

Anonymous said...

I plan on trying these glyphs. Nourish sounds Amazing for my healing, and after looking at your maths, WG looks like it could be viable, but again, situational. WG is only a viable heal if people are clumped up. The glyph is useless for anything smaller than a 10-man, and even then, when are the melee, tanks and casters all going to stand close enough together other than Thaddius and Loatheb?

Nourish looks like it might take Swiftmend's spot in my glyphs, but I've been working on using both more often anyway, perhaps I'll miss the swiftmend glyph more. I'll have to test on the PTR quite a bit before making a decision.

Anonymous said...

Sorry my english

Nourish = situacional spell = 0-5 % total heal to me
GW = spam spell = 30 or 40% total heal to me

Sincerely, I think you dont use GW correctly. This Glyph is the way to top the recounts. A druid in 25 raid healing with nourish/regrowt/ht like fist heal is a waste.

Sorry my english again, only my opinion, no a absolute true

Averna said...

@ Maerdred: I rely on that Swiftmend glyph a lot, and don't see myself replacing it. But you're right, for players who do a lot of 5 mans, and don't raid in bigger raids - the WG glyph is completely useless. I hadn't thought about that =)

@Anonymous: The Nourish glyph I wouldn't consider a situational glyph, because you know that every single time you use it, it's going to do exactly what it says it does. With the WG glyph, it's not guaranteed, so I would call that "situational".

The Nourish spell in itself might be considered situational, which seems to be more what you're talking about, in the sense that you shouldn't be spamming Nourish left and right every second.

A few entries ago, and in this entry as well, I wrote about how I'm using WG a LOT, and how it's accounting for my top healing spell. So I'm not sure what you mean about me not using WG correctly, since it seems that you're saying I *should* be using WG that much. I definitely don't use Nourish/regrowth/HT as my top spells.

Also, topping recount isn't always the best way to heal ;) Keeping the raid alive is the best way. Sometimes not coming on top on recount, but coordinating with other healers to get the job done is the best way to do it.

And don't worry, your english was fine, I understood what you were saying =D

Unknown said...

Phylus here:

@Anon- I very rarely use nourish on live, however it looks like nourish is going to be a staple spell.

Fore-note: Everthing stated below assumes you are using WG frequently and effectively.

Ok, first of all we have to take into account of how you are healing currently. Everything I'm stating is in relation to 25 man raiding.

As it stands on live right now your wild growth should not be your #1 heal on boss fights for most boss fights. Regrowth should trump WG in almost every fight by a significant margin. If your wild growth effective healing is > regrowth then you simply aren't casting enough heals, considering there's a 6 second CD on WG. Maybe this is not the case for you if you toss a lot more rejuvs instead of regrowths, but I have found regrowth use to be far superior to rejuv in most cases.

Now, the 3.1 changes. With only a 25% crit chance to regrowth talent regrowth has been hurt, and hurt a lot. Raid healing via regrowth takes a huge hit from this due to not being able to proc natures grace in rapid succession. If regrowth remained at 50% I believe the most effective raid healing would still be with rapid cast regrowths and whenever any remaining healing is needed to be done nourish/swiftmend. If movement is an issue then obviously use rejuv. However, with regrowth not critting as often in 3.1 I don't think this is an entirely viable way of healing, not to mention it will eat up a bunch of mana we won't be able to regen as easily. I'm thinking that our raid healing style will switch to a heavy emphasis on using rejuv, both before and after damage is taken, followed by patch heals of nourish and swiftmend.

As far as glyphs are concerned, the glyph of regrowth will be worthless. Any application where regrowth is on the target a nourish will always be better then regrowth after the changes.

Glyph of Nourish - We will be frequently using nourish in ulduar. If this stacks with 4 piece t7 than I don't see how you can not take this glyph, if it doesn't than the glyph is worthless while you have t7. However, with the nerf to lifebloom mana efficiency I'm not sure if I'm ever going to use lifebloom again, so that's one hot that may not be on the tank at all times, we'll see. But rejuv and regrowth will always be on the tanks, so that's +12% healed. If WG is up on him from healing melee with it that's an addition +6%, we're now up to 18%. This glyph will also effect raid healing. In most cases nourish, when used as a raid heal, will most likely be targeting a player with WG, rejuv and/or regrowth on them. Again we see the bonus output. Not to mention any increase of healing by a nourish will likewise create a larger living seed upon crit.

Glyph of Innervate- With oo5sr being 60% of what it used to be this glyph is severely gimped. While we may very well need all the mana we can get, this glyph simply doesn't seem worth it. Especially since we might be switching to int over spirit on gemming, I'm not sure that will be the case. Going to do some browsing of mana regen theorycraft on EJ and get it up to date for 3.1

Glyph of Wild Growth- Potential big increase in effective healing in particular scenarios. I believe we can't make an accurate judge of this glyph until we see the Ulduar encounters. If there's a bunch of fights like Saph, or encounters with large AoE areas this glyph will certainly help. Also, when using WG on the melee with the extra person hit you are increasing the chance of the WG to stick on the tank, increasing the efficacy of nourish. You also now have an extra player nourishable for patch raid heals. Revitalize, now working with WG, will also be a factor. I'm not sure if we can fit that into our new specs though.

Glyph of Swiftmend - Honestly, I don't see myself ever giving up this glyph.

Glyph of Lifebloom - Terrible after 3.1 lifebloom nerf.

So, to me, it's looking like glyph of nourish, swiftmend and wild growth. I really hope I don't need to take glyph of innervate at the early stages of Ulduar gear progression :(.

Averna said...

@Phylus - awesome wall of text, thank you for so much input!

For me, Regrowth is just too long of a cast time. I don't have much haste at all, and it's 1.9 seconds for each person I'm healing. It just isn't viable for me to raid heal like that when I have 5 other healers throwing heals around as well that will hit before my Regrowth does. I'd much rather throw up a WG or some rejuvs (I use rejuv a LOT) and LBs, and keep my regrowths focused on the tank.

In 3.1, with nourish crit-buffed, and regrowth crit-nerfed, it seems that you're right - Nourish will be a better spell to use in almost all situations. The HoT that regrowth provides can be good in fights where there's constant damage to everyone, or, say, on a tank. But in terms of heal per second, or heal per mana, Nourish will take the cake.

About the glyph of innervate - even if we do need all the mana we can get, I don't see this glyph taking the place of something else, unless it becomes clear that you absolutely NEED it to survive Ulduar. Hopefully that won't be the case.

Unknown said...

Phylus here:

Yeah 1.9 seconds is a bit long. Raid buffed my regrowth takes 1.75 secs, and 1.25 secs with natures grace. Depending on the fight I'll start casting it on raid members who's aggro indicators are on but haven't even gotten hit yet, :P. But regrowth right now is serious business, donno if my guild would want me to post a WWS report here though.

Averna said...

@Phylus - yeah, I understand about the WWS, no worries. It's interesting, because I usually top WWS with my WG being about 30% of my overall heal, and we have some really decent healers in my guild. There's another resto druid in the guild who uses Regrowth as his main heal, and he's consistently 4th or 5th on the list of healers - which isn't bad at all, mind you, it's just that it's given me the impression that Regrowth healing isn't all it's cracked up to be. Then again, he hasn't been on as many raids as I have, in general, so I think that there's a gear difference there as well.

Regardless, it's interesting to hear the Regrowth side of the story... honestly, if I had more haste, I'd look into using it more. I get antsy looking at a 1.9 second cast bar though =P

Do you typically use it for the tick, or for the initial heal? I would assume for the initial heal, and then the tick is just kind of a bonus afterwards? Or does it just depend on the situation for you?

Unknown said...

I use it for the initial heal knowing that the HoT may heal for a ton. The HoT portion heals more than the direct portion on average :P. The HoT can be swiftmended as an added bonus. Best of all worlds.

Averna said...

@Phylus: Indeed - the fact that it can also be swiftmended does make it an awesome heal all around. I guess my problem with it is, the other healers are getting off that initial burst heal, in a quicker time than I would be, so why not just put a rejuv on them instead of overhealing with a regrowth? Honestly, if I ever need a burst heal, I always go with Nourish because it's a quicker heal.

I don't know if it's just me getting really antsy with the cast time, or what. I do recognize that it's a powerful healing spell; I'm certainly not saying it's not a good spell... but I just can't seem to get into using it much more than I already do.

Anonymous said...

Hi all, first time reader, first time poster :P

In our raids I generally end up with ranks 1 to 4:

Regrowth
Rejuv
WG
Lifebloom

Regrowth and Rejuv add up too 60-70%, WG being at <15% or so.

I have almost completely stopped using lifebloom, being on raid-healing almost constantly. I drop the occasional 3-stack on tanks, but my healing consists of getting the DPS and healers topped. Normally I run with all flavours in a raid: shamans, priests and paladins.

I use glyphs:

1) Swiftmend
2) Regrowth
3) Innervate

ad 1) no-brainer
ad 2) given my role in the raids, a 21-second HoT healing while boosting my next heal is blizz, uhm, bliss!
ad 3) My current level of regen (460mp5+ raid-buffed while casting, no proccs) in combination with this glyph allows me to hand out innervates to others and still benefit from it myself! Given the fact that I don't like LB that much anymore, and will like it even less after 3.1.0, this seemed like a solid choice.

My nourish on the other hand, is at the bottom of the charts, 98% of the raids it's <1% of the healed total.

I love Regrowth, especially with Living Seed... With the insane amount of crit on it, and only needing a previous Regrowth to be boosted, and even better, refreshing the HoT and thus guaranteeing another boost in the next 21 seconds, I GRANDLY favour it over Nourish, that requires Lifebloom AND regrowth AND rejuvenation to come close? Not too mention the fact that Nourish is somewhat "meh" in regards to the GCD in a nature's grace build like mine...

Now, after these changes will hit "live", I will probably see a somewhat dramatic change in my way of healing, dropping Nature's Grace again in favour of Revitalize (Replenish), as WG is now affected too, and switching from Regrowth to Nourish indeed.

Time will tell, time will tell...

Thanks for your patience and your excellent post!

Natuu

P.S. In regards to the other healers getting their heals of faster I tell you this: My kung-fu is stronger than theirs...

Averna said...

@Natuu - Hai, and welcome; thanks for the comment! I noticed on your wowarmory as well that you have as little haste as I do... out of curiosity, how much of your Regrowth is an overheal at the end of a raid night?

Anonymous said...

cold hard figures I don't have, we don't run WWS. However I know I am pretty high on healing, pretty low on overhealing.

I hope to raid Naxx25 tomorrow, I'll try to give you some exact figures.

Unknown said...

@Averna:

I know you didn't ask my but I figured I'd give you my info. From my last 25 Naxx(lol we did the achievement last time) about 52% of my regrowth was overhealing. This is a lot, but a good portion of it is due to tanks not really taking much damage. If things were left the same on live then when we enter Ulduar that number would go down. Despite the high overheal the effective healing is also large.

When looking at overheal however, you have to think: what if that member did happen to take a huge hit, could that have saved their life? In the case of a rejuv without swiftmend available or WG these spells don't have the life saving potential as regrowth. This is why you like to have a paladin on the tank, if a big spike in damage comes through that holy light will be crucial. Plus, they get mana returned for overheal :P.

I'd like to add that 90% of the time I'm #1 on WWS for effective healing, the other 10% of the time is the other resto druid :P. Healers in guild are in mostly best in slot or comparable gear.

Anonymous said...

Promised some data. Here it is, layout might be fubar though.

This data is from today's Naxx25, Plague/Construct + Sapph + KT:

HEALING

1. Regrowth 2629 4640700 (46%)
2. Rejuvenation 1498 2352110 (23%)
3. Wild Growth 2270 1398866 (14%)
4. Lifebloom 688 730248 (7%)

HEALING REGROWTH

1. Tick 2113 (80%) (Min: 4 Avg: 1014 Max: 4630)
2. Crit 372 (14%) (Min: 39 Avg: 5134 Max: 8846)
3. Hit 144 (5%) (Min: 5 Avg: 4088 Max: 5919

OVERHEALING

1. Regrowth 885 2164451 (65%)
2. Rejuvenation 568 611580 (18%)
3. Lifebloom 148 213003 (6%)
4. Wild Growth 477 162332 (5%)

OVERHEALING REGROWTH

1. Tick 478 (54%) (Min: 1 Avg: 550 Max: 4518)
2. Crit 323 (36%) (Min: 77 Avg: 4983 Max: 8947)
3. Hit 84 (9%) (Min: 82 Avg: 3474 Max: 5782

in comparison a lot of overhealing from the crits, the ticks are allright.

Averna said...

@Dan and Natuu: Thanks for the data! Dan - absolutely, a WG or a Rejuv is never going to save a tanks life is they're really going down, but in those situations I typically use Nourish because it's faster. It's a much weaker heal, but it's quick and the point is to just keep the tank from totally dying. I've had a couple times where I cast a Regrowth and I'm like, cmon cmon gogogogo and then the tank dies RIGHT before it hits.

Overheal in general is overrated, I think, in the sense that people put too much weight in it. Yes, technically it means that your heals were "wasted", but if you try and get 100% effective heal, everyone's going to die. When I asked what the overheal numbers were, I just wanted to get a sense of where it fell - 40%? 80%? 50% isn't so bad. It's just a little concerning, because with the mana regen nerf bat we're getting, and the LB nerf, I think we're going to need to be more efficient in our healing so as not to eat up mana. I guess we'll have to see in Ulduar. =)

Sarah said...

With 3.1 I made a few changes to my healing style for which WG is the perfect glyph. On a pull the tank of course gets the usual full HoTs, if they get hit hard I'll nourish a couple times till priest/pallys catch up, of course I include a WG for any melee who have taken a bit of ae damage or just pulled a little agro and didn't die before tank got settled, I find WG a nice /focus on tank first then top up melee helper.

Then after we're down into the fight I keep my HoTs on the MT, nourish as needed, occassional swiftmend though I prefer to save the cd on that for other members or OT's who need a quick pickmeup, but thats where I made the major change in my healing strat, before I was using a self cast macro for rejuv to deal with any ae damage, chance at restoring mana and starter for a swiftmend in case we got an add who thought I might be tastier than the tank, I was also Rejuving more or less randomly or not so randomly in fights like saph on other casters/ranged. Now in between looking after MT and melee I self cast that rejuv still, but also add a WG and in fights where its possible try to stand with the other casters/healers so they get hit, simply because it now has a chance to proc mana regen like rejuv. Of course melee still get their occassional WG, but not as part of my tank healing rotation. So glyph of WG, not so much in 10 person, but in 25 its awesome! Only fights I don't use it on myself and sorrounding casters are the ones where we need to spread out like Kel and XT. And for anyone who thinks my style is kinda weird I usually get top heals in our 25's with very little overhealing :)

I will admit though my lack of spamming regrowth on every single person hurts when raiding with inexperienced priests/pallys/shammy's, mainly because it rely's not so much on big heals to keep the MT up and running but keeping the entire raid standing, though even after spirit nerfs I never run out of mana, as in never, so if the other healers are down I always have that little extra to keep the tank and some dps up. I never try to compete with the big healers like pallys, usually in the time I cast a regrowth on anyone but the MT or OT they've already critted them with a 10k heal so I've not only wasted mana but precious time in casting that I could have used to HoT at last 3 others and swiftmend one of them, just need to trust the big healers to be awake and know your supporting them, not solo healing.