Shifting Perspectives: Healers, selfishness and trouble ahead, part 2
by Allison Robert 
Aug 31st 2010 at 5:00PM
I don't expect (or want) to be handed other classes' buffs, and I have no idea what our mana efficiency is going to look like at 85. I will be the happiest druid in the game if it turns out I've written this article for nothing. But everything that Blizzard's done so far has convinced me that it wants the druid to remain a healer whose sole contribution to raid survivability is high throughput, and if that's correct, I don't understand why most of our heals are so frustratingly expensive (and the cheap ones frustratingly ineffective). We are literally designed to do something for which we are subsequently punished when we inevitably land a group that's not note-perfect.
I'll discuss more specific examples concerning our mastery bonus, Efflorescence, and what I anticipate of player behavior next week. For now, a quick observation on mastery:
- Our current mastery is the subject of much debate: I've provided a list of all five healing specs' current mastery bonuses below for comparison and also tossed my character off some cliffs in the beta to see how they're working. To give you an idea of how this works now, a Rejuvenation that heals for 3,275 at 100 percent health was healing for 3,820 at 23 percent and 3,815 at 60 percent. I've heard differing accounts on whether mastery is supposed to "update" as the HoT ticks, but right now it's not. The instant Rejuvenation hit (from Gift of the Earthmother) is not affected by mastery, by the way. I tend to agree with other players that a severely wounded player is a high-priority target for direct heals, and I'm wary of the mastery stat's being troublesome for us as a result.
While all of this is subject to change, these are the spec-specific mastery bonuses for all five healing specs as of beta build 12803:
- Holy priest Your direct heals add a small heal-over-time component to the target.
- Discipline priest Improves the strength of shields such as Power Word: Shield, Divine Aegis and Power Word: Barrier.
- Holy paladin Your healing spells also place an absorb shield on your target for X% of the amount healed, lasting for six seconds. Absorb increased further by mastery rating.
- Restoration shaman Increases the potency of your direct healing spells by up to X%, based on the current health level of your target (lower health targets are healed for more). Health increased further by mastery rating.
- Restoration druid Increases the potency of your heal over time spells by up to X%, based on the current health level of your target (lower health targets are healed for more). Each point of mastery increases heal potency by up to an additional 2.5%.
Every week, Shifting Perspectives treks across Azeroth in pursuit of truth, beauty and insight concerning the druid class. Sometimes it finds the latter, or something good enough for government work. Whether you're a bear, cat, moonkin, tree or stuck in caster form, you'll find the skinny on druid changes in patch 3.3, a look at the disappearance of the bear tank, and thoughts on why you should be playing the class (or why not).Filed under: Druid, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
gjet Aug 31st 2010 5:12PM
So...what I gather is that we just heal and heal and heal our way through Cataclysm content? Like in WOTLK? Instead, mana is going to be a bit more of a problem? I may have read wrong...but anyway, are they trying to give us some offensive potency as well? Wrath and the like are boosted while in TOL form...can we cast those while in TOL form? Or will we have to shift out like we do now?
I gotta say though...that mastery is pretty nice. Having increased potency to our HOT ticks the closer the person is to death will help healing a LOT...unless Masteries are not going to be very powerful - kinda like a side-dish to your healing (if you get what I mean).
Wild Colors Aug 31st 2010 5:51PM
The druid resto mastery is a bit self defeating though. The time when your HOT does the most healing (i.e. when the target is closest to death) is the time when a HOT is least desirable and you're more likely to go with a direct heal. The Shaman resto mastery is a bit better in this regard. The other healer masteries are helpful in nearly all situations (not limited to near death experiences).
The latest build is particularly worrisome, with the removal of the majority of the HOT effect of Regrowth. Blizz is apparently frightened that HOTs will be overpowered in Cata, where they won't get overridden by direct heals as often due to mana concerns. However, given the mana costs of Rejuv (not Regrowth, any long, since Rejuv is now our only long term HOT), we're not going to be able to keep it rolling on a raid, so I'm not clear where the overpowered aspect would come into play.
I also cry a little every time I see us lose a HOT, since it really is our trademark. If the current build lasts, I foresee a depressing scenario where the holy priest mastery allows their flash heals to have a greater HOT component than does our Regrowth.
Everything is still in flux, so we'll see where things go from here. Now that Regrowth heals for significantly less and has a shorter tail, along with the massive reduction to Efflorescence's radius and healing, I'm concerned it may be a bit understrength (given that mana isn't noted to have gone down). But we'll have to wait to try it out.
ZeroCool Aug 31st 2010 6:24PM
Disclaimer: Cataclysm has not dropped yet, so this is all speculation. Still:
Raid damage is meant to be less spiky than in WOTLK, health bars are supposed to never be at 100%, and mana will be a greater concern. With WOTLK, if a health bar is low, it needs to be healed asap, and the druid mastery bonus indeed is not ideal for that. In Cataclysm, though, with the huge stamina boosts, low health may not be an emergency situation, especially not for tanks, and so the mastery bonus will both come into play with more frequency, and also be a true boost to healing. I'm not worried.
Wild Colors Aug 31st 2010 6:32PM
ZeroCool, definitely agreed that Blizz is still doing massive balancing. That said, my impression of the beta healing so far is somewhere between Wrath healing and what you describe. It's true that getting everyone up to 100% health is no longer as much of a concern, and that, most of the time, health pools drop slower than in Wrath. That said, in my experience someone under 50% is still at imminent risk of death, and someone under 30% really needs a direct heal, and quickly. Also, the tanks are still taking a bit of damage, and a bit of bursty damage at that. Not as much as in a lot of Wrath encounters, but more than I had expected going into it, given Blizz's stated design philosophy for Cata.
*shrug* Still lots of balancing and retooling on the way before the release, but that's my two cents about the current state of things.
Zaros Aug 31st 2010 7:14PM
I think the point of the mastery is to be able to hold a tanks stable enough that yuo can focus on the raid.
Lets say that you apply HoT's that heal for say, 1200 HPS but the tank is taking 2000 DPS. Once the tank reaches 50% health he is still taking 2000 DPS but your healing effects are healing for 2400 HPS thanks to the mastery. A few seconds later the tank is at 75% health thanks to your mastery bonus and still taking 2000 DPS but your mastery is weaker now so he is only taking 1800 HPS. He goes down again then up again... etc. The tank is now holding his health at an average of 60% health so you can apply a rejuvenation to most of the raid and refresh other HoT's while he just survives at ~60%. After the raid is stable you can refocus on the tank by applying a nourish to refresh lifebloom and etc....
Do you get my point? The idea of the mastery is so that you can focus your attention elsewhere and not have to worry too much about the tank.
We wont have to worry too much about efficiency but Shamans will want to keep their tank at 10% health all the time for maximum HPS. That is why I think our mastery is better then the Shaman version of the mastery.
I apologize for any typos / grammatical errors beforehand.
Anye Aug 31st 2010 7:15PM
I've gotta agree with Wild Colors... the Mastery is self-defeating. If they want to do something based on target health, it'd be better to do it more like...
Your heal over time spells also cause a direct heal that heals for up to X% of the total heal, based on the current health level of your target (lower health targets are healed for more). Each point of mastery increases potency of this heal by up to an additional ___%.
brian Aug 31st 2010 9:55PM
Given the relationship between Resto and hots, I've always thought that Holy's "heals place hots on the target" would've been a better choice for Druids.
While Holy may have hots, it doesn't make as much sense for them to get that as their main theme. Something that would've made a lot more sense, in my eyes, would be for their heals to place something like a non-bouncing Prayer of Mending on the target, fitting with their theme of "reversing damage."
Cyrus Sep 1st 2010 9:14AM
"The druid resto mastery is a bit self defeating though. The time when your HOT does the most healing (i.e. when the target is closest to death) is the time when a HOT is least desirable and you're more likely to go with a direct heal."
Yes... if it only applies to new HoTs. If it applies to HoTs that are already ticking away on the target, on the other hand, it is very cool. Suppose you have a Rejuvenation on someone and he's at 100 percent health. Then he misses a cooldown or stands in the fire too long or something and gets hit for a full half his HP. Then the next tick of your Rejuvenation would heal for 150 percent of the usual value (or whatever the coefficient is). That's as soon as the next tick, without even waiting precious centiseconds for a global cooldown to be up. Now consider the same thing with three HoTs ticking away on that same person, or with an attack that brought him down even lower in life. This rewards a Cataclysm resto druid even more than we already are for keeping everyone HOTted up (forces you, basically).
I have no idea if this mastery will work like that, but if it does, it doesn't look that bad at all.
Armill3 Sep 1st 2010 9:49AM
It would be very cool, for certain, if mastery was "smart" with regard to ticking HoTs. That's the only way though that it would ever be worth putting points into it. We've all had those moments where we're watching a party member's health start dropping super rapidly, down to just a thin line while we're casting our regrowth or nourish, and wonder whether our heal will drop before that toon. If our mastery applies to that rejuv already on target, hooray! If not, well, time to reforge.
@Allison, might this not be the experience for all healers across the board in Cataclysm? I know that the other healers have a lot of cool bells and whistles that resto druids don't, but at the end of the day, barring mechanics like infest, we're all healing. Stupid players will be stupid players. The big question I think we need to look at is: is play based around mana efficiency more fun than healing throughput?
To be sure, the former permits more opportunity for creativity and skill to shine though; the latter has always been heavily gear-centric. I suppose this is where resto druids' lack of bells and whistles takes its toll.
I *am* happy to be getting a throughput cooldown, though.
Heilig Sep 1st 2010 10:55AM
The real issue with the Druid mastery is how poorly it compares to the Shaman mastery and how they are implemented. The Shaman mastery is simple: Health is low, heals hit harder. It happens 100% of the time, and the extra healing % applies to the entire healing done for the mana spent on that cast. There are two ways to implement the Druid mastery, though, and neither are ideal. If the HoT's recalculate at every tick, which seems intuitive, then you will only get a portion of your mastery bonus for the mana spent on the HoT. If it doesn't recalculate, but rather gets applied at cast time, it is even worse, because the bonus is to HoT's at a time when you really want a direct heal.
In a raid setting, they are not much better. In the first situation, the shaman will still get 100% of his mastery bonus and will likely snipe your mastery bonus when his boosted heal takes the target out of the danger zone in the time your boosted Hot gets to tick once. In the second situation, you will either be ignoring HoT's in favor of OMG HEAL HIM HE'S GONNA DIE or it will end up forcing Druids back into a Wrath paradigm of rolling Rejuv's just to maximize the benefit of your mastery.
TL;DR Druid mastery doesn't play nice with the rest of the raid and is counterintuitive to what a healer wants for his group. it needs to be changed.
Columhcille Sep 1st 2010 2:41PM
"Wild Colors Aug 31st 2010 5:51PM
The druid resto mastery is a bit self defeating though. The time when your HOT does the most healing (i.e. when the target is closest to death) is the time when a HOT is least desirable and you're more likely to go with a direct heal."
I wouldn't completely agree on this. in BC there were some hard hitting bosses that required druids for the sole fact that if you didn't have drood hots on a tank, other healers wouldn't have time to get their longer cast bigger heals off. Drood hots allowed other heals to do their job without a tank dying. That wasn't on every boss necissarily but at low hp was when those hots were needed MOST not least. Those couple of ticks of a drood hot were what kept that tank alive long enough for another heal to get a cast-time heal off that'd bring him outta the red.
woshiernog Sep 1st 2010 2:09PM
@Wild Colors I would agree that putting a hot on someone isn't going to be your first response. However, if they already have a hot on them, the net damage they receive will continue to decrease giving you more time for throwing them a direct heal or giving them a better chance at surviving a damage spike or am I totally missing something?
This is coming from someone who has done 0 raid healing experience and only plays a druid for the moonkin, but wants to try a resto offspec come cataclysm.
Twílit Aug 31st 2010 5:19PM
So cataclysm resto is going the same way feral tanking did in BC? Only sought after when gear, stats on gear and the Druid resynergizes with the raid?
If what your saying is true and that makes it to live we could see the short death of resto as we know it.
Shame really
niko Aug 31st 2010 5:20PM
Great take on the current state of affairs for our tree-shapeshifting avatars...
I am hoping you're right Amanda, and that this entire article is completely moot/incorrect by the time we all see 85... otherwise, i'm ashamed to say (and I am) I'll be taking my healing over to the holy paladin side of things or even to shaman... but i'll reserve judgment til then i guess.
niko Aug 31st 2010 5:20PM
grr, i TOTALLY meant Allison! lol
sorry :(
Minos Aug 31st 2010 5:56PM
"I'll be taking my healing over to the holy paladin side" ... "I'll reserve judgment til then"
*groan*
niko Aug 31st 2010 6:31PM
@Minos
lol, nice catch, totally unintentional!
I'm still reeling from the loss of the ToL and was hoping to find new life in the spec, but as DoubleCrit mentions below, Resto Shaman has got a lot of what initially drew me to the Druid: versatility!
I still love mah little durid Zoofreak, though, and still consider him to be my persona in the game, so I'm hoping for a turn-around before it gets too late in the game.
Heri'theron Aug 31st 2010 6:34PM
Paladins, Vindicators, and Blood Knights just had a world conference. We are way too full and have decided to not let anymore into our ranks. 85% of Blood Knights will be transformed into Sunwalkers. Thank you for your interest.
Dan828 Aug 31st 2010 5:26PM
To be fair, they've said that the goal is to make all healers basically mana starved, so as to require you to dole out your heals both tactically and strategically. Now to me, fighting the mana bar is my least favorite part of being a healer. Ultimately, I think it'll make for fewer people wanting to heal as a main spec, so we'll have more "you have to heal or we can't raid" moments.
nelk Aug 31st 2010 5:38PM
Yes, all healers are supposed to be 'mana starved'. This article is pointing out, however, that druids currently (and by 'currently', I mean both on live and in the current beta build) differ from other healers in that we bring nothing else to the raid except for a large amount of healing. All of the other healing classes have other things they bring to the table that will not be effected by the reduced mana efficiency. Thus, having less mana hurts druids more in that it effects 100% of what we do, with nothing else to fall back on and nothing else to add value to the raid.