Sunday, March 15, 2009

Glyph of Nourish: Does it stack?

.

This is going to get a little technical, so as Sammy L Jackson says in Jpark: "Hold onto yer butts."

Does the Glyph of Nourish stack with our 4 piece T7 bonus?

Yes. Yes, it does.

But if you stop reading now, I'ma kick you in the shins, because I spent HOURS testing this damn thing out on the PTR, and taking notes, and if you know what's best for you, you'll read through all my math - and you'll like it, too!!!

Ok, ok, you can just skim it, I suppose.



/collects self

Ok!

Step 1: Obtain a Glyph of Nourish.

Step 1 proved to be quite a challenge. Those darn glyph vendors were down ALL night. I don't think they came up once. And then when I asked in trade to see if someone had the glyph I needed, I get some lecture IN TRADE from some homeboy about being prepared, and how I should have bought them yesterday. Thanks, Homeboy. That really helps me out. Next time I'll use my powers of SEEING INTO THE FUTURE.

Thankfully I was able to snag one from the auction house, which totally wiped out the rest of the gold I had.

Nevertheless, I had my Glyph! So I pranced on over to the lexicon and equipped it.

Step 2: Cast many, many, many Nourishes.

Math coming up here. Steel yourself! =O

(Note: when testing out these averages, I cast Nourish 100 times. Yeah, that's right, 100 times. For *each* average tested. I didn't count crits, because I didn't want those to skew the percentages. I used Regrowth as my one HoT, because it ticks for the longest period of time.)

When I cast Nourish *without* a HoT on me (with no glyph, no tier bonus, no nuttin'), it hits for an average of 3635.

When I cast Nourish *with* a HoT on me, it hits for an average of 4365. Which is (as the Nourish tool tip states) 20% more than the original.

So with JUST the glyph (and one HoT on me), my Nourish should land for 26% more than that original. Right? 20% for the HoT, and 6% for the glyph.

So, a 26% boost to the original (3635) should make it 4580. After casting 100 Nourishes, I had, on average, 4575. Pretty close!!

Now - The real question is, will it blend??

Er.

Wait.

I meant to say, does it stack?? (there we go.)

If you have the glyph, AND the tier bonus, AND assuming it stacks - we should have a total of a 31% increase. 20% from the HoT, 6% from the glyph, and 5% from the tier bonus.

When we boost the original (3637) by 31%, we *should* get 4764.

My average numbers, by casting Nourish 100 times with one HoT on me, the glyph, AND the tier bonus: 4721.

Close enough? You decide. I wish they matched up better, but I'm certainly not going to fudge numbers to try and "fix" it. I don't know if it's a math problem, or if I just have too small of a sample size? 100 casts seemed to be big enough... and dear lord, I dont think I could sit around and cast more than that again.

But think of it like this. If you had just the glyph on, and one HoT - it would be a 26% increase, like we said before. If the glyph and tier bonus did NOT stack, then adding the tier bonus wouldn't change a thing. The 6% increase from the glyph would override the 5% increase from the tier bonus.

But it DOES change, it increases it by quite a lot.

Conclusion: Glyph of Nourish and the T7 bonus stack!

....and as always, please let me know if you find any obvious holes in my math. =)

So what does this mean for us?


Should we hold onto our 4 piece T7? Should we use Glyph of Nourish? In the beginning of Ulduar, sure, try it out! See how it feels having Nourish land for like, 30 million when you have 4 HoTs on the target (disclaimer: your Nourish will not land for 30 million). However, I think that once you eventually break that 4 piece set, (and you really should break it - the upgrades in T8.5 are going to be too good to warrant hanging onto four pieces of T7.5 gear), you should look at switching out the Nourish Glyph - unless you're a HUGE Nourish user, perhaps. I think that Blizzard made this glyph for those people who use Nourish a lot, who will really miss that T7 bonus. It's also a way to make Nourish more appealing for people who don't use it that often.

So what am *I* going to do? I'm going to replace my Glyph of Lifebloom with the Glyph of Wild Growth, and take out the Glyph of Regrowth and put in the Glyph of Nourish. Depending on how much or little I like that, I might swap the regrowth glyph back in - we'll just have to see how it goes.

What do you guys think in terms of holding onto that four piece bonus?

.

13 remarks:

Unknown said...

I thought they should stack, 'cause obtaining a 4-piece bonus is not that easy, but anyone can just go and buy the gliff. Overriding a hard earned equipment bonus with something that easy to obtain.. I tink Blizzard will never allow that kind of thing.
But still, knowing for sure is much better than guessing. Thanks for your research!

Averna said...

@Roman: Agreed, it would be silly to have the glyph override it. I would have had even more of a question in my mind about it if the T7 bonus was a higher percentage than the glyph - then I'd be wondering, does the set bonus override the glyph bonus? Which would be more plausible than the other way around.

Unknown said...

Agreed, too)
Btw sorry for my mistakes and awkward sentences and so on. Tenses in Russian are simplier and often I'm just confused about which one to use.(

Keeva said...

Thanks Averna, I tried all day but the vendors were down the whole time.

Last night I finally picked up my helm, meaning I have 4pc ready to go for Ulduar :)

I think what I'll end up doing is wearing my "best in slot" gear for fights where I am not healing the tank *really* heavily, and the T7 4pc for heavy tank-healing fights.

Averna said...

@Keeva: that healing plan sounds about right to me =) I've never been a big Nourish user, but that might change if I have the 4 piece and the glyph.

Keeva said...

I'm still looking forward to the tank rotation that I always wanted:

HoT up the tank, Nourish in the gaps, refresh HoTs, Nourish in the gaps.

Add in WG/RJ on the raid as necessary.

Yummy.



I just couldn't do it before because Nourish was so... mediocre. The changes to the Imp Regrowth talent plus the new glyph will make it very nice for tank healing.

I just hope there are plenty of fights with enough damage on the tank to warrant that.

Anonymous said...

I had some numbers on it that I posted on my blog, that came to the same conclusion. With both the glyph and the 4-piece bonus, we should be able to handle tank healing in Ulduar with nourish, along with 3 HOTs (rejuv, regrowith, & slow-rolled lifeblooms).

They made our T8 4-piece bonus just appealing enough that we'll still want to upgrade our gear.

Anonymous said...

Wow, good stuff, Averna! I just finished up my 4pc set bonus last night on Gluth. Woohoo! It's nice to have this bit of info to stash away when I'm making gearing and glyphing decisions for 3.1. Muchos gracias for the hard, probably mind-numbing, work!

Corgii said...

Holy Nourish, Averna! Thanks for your dedication!!!

I started out Wrath with that BC Tree druid mind-set...

"FACEROLL LIFEBLOOM TO VICTORY!!!"

So, for a very long time, I never really used Wild Growth. Well, after slapping some sense into myself I started using Wild Growth and it ended up being 40% of my healing done. After that, I did something similar with Nourish. My heals are typically 40% WG, 30-40% Nourish, and then typically LB or Rejuv coming in after that.

That said, this glyph stacking with the 4 set is drool-worthy! I'm so excited! Since I already use Nourish quite a bit this change is great for me 8D Thanks for doing all that testing!!!

Peli said...

Corgii,
How in the world do you get 30-40% of your total heal as Nourish?!?! In Averna's and my guild, any nourishes are almost entirely overheal on the tanks because the other healers fight for effective healing so much, especially so on boss fights. Not only that, but it's hard to squeeze in Nourishes in between your HoT rotation if you're healing 2 or more tanks...

-Peli

Anonymous said...

A lot of the time, I think my regrowth HOT manages to do like 40% of my healing done in most raids, because I use regrowth as a heal for all situations, which I can't do when it will spam me OOM.

I've been doing my best to find alternative healing strategies, and I think "using hots to buff nourish" should work for MT healing situations & HOTs for raid healing.

Corgii said...

@Peli:
I think my percentages might be off (I could be exaggerating a bit). But they do tend to average out between 20 and 30%. I tend to pretend I'm a holy pally at times and throw out Nourishes like they're Flashes of Light XD

Smartteaus said...

While Nourish is a good heal to have in 5/10 man situations, I don't see many heroic raiding druids even using nourish except for certain fight(eg. Patchwerk) Even with wild growth counting towards the 5% bonus in 3.1, I still don't see nourish as that great of a raid heal.

Additionally, with the strength of the T8/8.5 bonuses combined with the relative ease of Ulduar, I see the majority of the druid raiding community breaking the 4 piece bonus the first week of release (If they haven't already in favor of current ilevel 226 gear).