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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