Raid Rx: Patch 4.3 healing thoughts
by Matt Low 
Sep 30th 2011 at 9:00AM
There are a plethora of healing changes that are about to make their way through in the upcoming 4.3 patch. While shaman, paladins and priests are going to be receiving changes or buffs, druids will be on the business end of a nerf bat. We now have a first look at the tier 13 healing set bonuses. Instead of playing off mana regen similar to tier 12, it'll instead have an effect on spell usage affordability. Speaking of tier bonuses, overall raid survivability goes up with the introduction of tank four-piece bonuses.
Let's examine the upcoming healing changes, shall we?
Resto druids
- Wild Growth healing has been reduced by 20%.
- Glyph of Wild Growth now also increases the cooldown on Wild Growth by 2 seconds.
Holy paladins
- Holy Radiance now has a 3-second cast time, no cooldown and requires a player target. That target is imbued with Holy Radiance, which heals them and all group members within 10 yards instantly and continues to heal them by a smaller amount every second for 3 seconds.
- Seal of Insight, when Judged, no longer returns 15% base mana to the paladin. Judging Seal of Insight still causes damage, and melee attacks will still restore 4% of base mana.
- Clarity of Purpose now also reduces the cast time of Holy Radiance.
- Illuminated Healing (mastery) now also applies to Holy Radiance.
- Infusion of Light now applies its cast time reduction from Holy Shock critical effects to Holy Radiance, in addition to its current effects.
- In addition to providing haste, the effect from Judgements of the Pure now increases mana regeneration from spirit by 10/20/30% for 60 seconds.
- Light of Dawn now affects six targets (base effect), up from five.
- Paragon of Virtue now lowers the cooldown of Divine Protection by 15/30 seconds, up from 10/20 seconds.
- Speed of Light no longer triggers from Holy Radiance and no longer lowers the Holy Radiance cooldown. Speed of Light now only triggers from Divine Protection.
- Tower of Radiance, in addition to its current effects, now also causes Holy Radiance to always generate 1 charge of holy power at all times.
Healing priests
- Divine Hymn now affects five targets, up from three.
- Atonement will now account for the target enemy's combat reach when calculating proper range, enabling it to be used on large creatures such as Ragnaros and Ala'kir.
- State of Mind has been redesigned and is now called Heavenly Voice. Heavenly Voice increases the healing done by Divine Hymn by 50/100% and reduces the cooldown of Divine Hymn by 2.5/5 minutes.
- Glyph of Circle of Healing now also increases the mana cost of Circle of Healing by 20%.
I'm liking the Divine Hymn additions and changes. With this change, I believe we'll see priests switching back to holy for a while (at least, the ones who reluctantly switched to discipline). No actual number changes were made to other healing spells. Guess we're in a good spot for those.
Resto shaman
- Wind Shear now has a 25-second base cooldown, up from 6 seconds.
- Ancestral Healing now also causes shaman heals to increase the target's maximum health by 5/10% of the amount healed, up to a maximum of 10% of the target's maximum health for 15 seconds. The effect does not stack if multiple restoration shaman are present and does not apply to heals from procs.
- Riptide's periodic healing coefficient has been increased by 50%. Initial direct heal is unchanged.
A large increase to Riptide and the additional effect to Ancestral Healing should see resto numbers rise higher. If nothing else, it'll make life easier for them in 10-man raids. This will also amplify the value of shaman in larger raids. I think we'll end up seeing them favored in order to stack Ancestral Healing across multiple players. I'm worried that they'll be viewed as a surefire requirement because of that buff. Tanks with 200k health will have 220k health (which is a fairly decent jump). If it becomes too strong, maybe we'll see a limitation on the amount of applications in a raid setting.
If you play one (or any of these) healing classes, how do you think it will affect your personal play? Any spec changes or style changes in the future for you? For the raid leaders, will you be changing up your healing team as a result?
Need advice on working with the healers in your guild? Raid Rx has you covered. Send your questions about raid healing to mattl@wowinsider.com. For less healer-centric raiding advice, visit Ready Check for advanced tactics and advice for the endgame raider.
Filed under: Raid Rx (Raid Healing)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
glass.304 Sep 30th 2011 9:16AM
I play a holy Priest so I'm happy they buffed Divine Hymn, because that's the healing spell I used the least. Plus with the talent, I'm excited to see what it can do!
Gerbera Sep 30th 2011 9:35AM
Same for me. It was really annoying to not be able to factor DH into a cooldown rotation when learning a boss fight. The horrendous 8 minutes made it so that fast wipes and recoveries had it on cooldown for the next attempt, while my druid and shaman friends were able to use theirs. This happened numerous times on Staghelm especially, since we tried to push the first scorpion phase as high as possible.
Bellajtok Sep 30th 2011 9:22AM
The Resto Druid changes give me a sad. We had a deal, Ghostcrawler! In exchange for no absorbs or mitigations, we would have a high throughput. But now our throughput is getting nerfed. And this glyph change? We don't have any other glyphs to replace it with. We just don't have any other decent healing glyphs. What should I replace it with? Glyph of Thorns? HA.
Arbolamante Sep 30th 2011 9:43AM
That's a good point. Of the remaining major glyphs we aren't already using, most of them we can't use at all because they are specific to feral or balance abilities you have to spec for. That leaves Thorns (reduced cooldowns), Entangling Roots (reduced cast time,) Faerie Fire (extends cast range), Barkskin (reduced chance to take melee crits) and Innervate (10% max mana recovery when cast on others.)
Thorns maybe is the most useful of these. A few folks who have silly good mana regen might get away with Innervate, but otherwise that's a once-in-a-blue moon kind of thing. Barkskin would be of very limited utility. Faerie Fire -- when was the last time you pulled? And emergency casting Entangled Roots? I do that about as often as I pull.
matt Sep 30th 2011 9:58AM
THIS
Wild growth is not the reason that Druids have insane output, the blame for that lies at the feet of our CD , Tranquility. Instead of giving us a proper CD after they announced that they knew we needed one, the dropped the CD on Tranq to 3min. Tranq does an INSANE amount of healing and now I pop it twice a fight. Which tends to leave a big orange stain at the top of the HPS meter.
Blizz, please leave WG alone, you have tried this before and had to change it back (reference druid not being able to raid heal at launch) Push the CD on Tranq back up to 7min and give druids some sort of damage reduction CD.
Arbolamante Sep 30th 2011 10:07AM
My bad, I forgot Hurricane, which adds a slow effect. Useful to Balance druids on the Beth'tilac fight, no doubt. Hey, maybe this can be a new resto druid utility ability! Need to get those EJ folks to do the math.
Bellajtok Sep 30th 2011 10:57AM
Well, no resto Druid should ever be casting Hurricane. I don't want to think about how many heals are lost by casting just one of those. Similarly, if I'm the one keeping up faerie fire, we have some serious problems. Entangling Roots? On pull or with Nature's Grasp, and not any other time. Thorns? ....Sure, why not. It'll help the tank grab threat on adds or something. But I'd rather have, say, "Glyph of Nourish: your Nourish now does 6% more healing per HoT effect on your target, instead of 20% more For any HoT." It would be a nice tank healing option as long as each stack of Lifebloom counted.
Metric Sep 30th 2011 11:22AM
@ Matt
Tranquility x2 each boss fight is not what causes resto druids to top meters. It is less than 10% of my healing on most fights. Life Bloom x3 on tank and Wild Growth make up 50-60% of my healing most fights.
If a resto druid is at the 2005 haste break point and has the 5% spell haste raid buff....and add in the haste proc from the Egg trinket....Wild Growth is insanely OP.
matt Sep 30th 2011 1:25PM
@metric are you routinely more than 10% ahead of the next healer in line? I suppose that you could argue that any spell is "the thing" that pushes us over the top but as our dominance corresponded with the change to tranq that is what I assign blame to.
Arbolamante Sep 30th 2011 4:21PM
Well, of course, I was joking about Hurricane, lol.
Artemisian Sep 30th 2011 6:20PM
I was discussing these changes with our resto druid a few nights ago. He was grumpy about WG being nerfed because, direct quote, it was the only spell he usually bothered casting for raid healing (minus Tranq), as it was so much better. He described it as cast, wait for CD, cast, wait, etc. And as I pointed out, this is why it would be getting nerfed :P
Metric Oct 1st 2011 12:29AM
@ matt
I raid 10man, with another rest druid and holy pally. All three of us are comparably geared. On non gimick three heal fights (Rags, Stags, Ryolith) us druids are within 2-3% of each other and 20% higher than the pally. On two heal fights (other druid goes feral on Alyce, I go balance for Shannox) we out heal the pally by 30-40%.
On Beth I have the lowest heals, because I go up top...the other druid outheals us by 15-20%.
On Baelroc.....the pally owns us.
bilbomoody Oct 4th 2011 2:34PM
@Bellajtok & Arbolamante -
HA! I'm leveling a resto druid now. In top of the line gear and heirlooms, there are many times (in 5 man wrath dungeons) that I've thrown out my 3 lifebloom stacks and a rejuv on the tank and hurricaned my boots off! Especially in the Violet Hold (omg, I hate that place... no more blizz, no more - random is supposed to be random :P).
Seriously though, in raids you'll never use it, but being overgeared makes it fun to use - especially when you see the damage meters showing the healer above the dps. What's even better is on boss fights - to throw out 3 lifebloom stacks, a rejuv followed with a swiftmend on the tank, pop tree of life and spam wrath. I did that in the Violet hold and was 2nd in dps, 1st in overall damage on the Cyan fight. LOL.
Wellsee Sep 30th 2011 9:22AM
As a restro druid, the wild growth change will mean I use rejuv more. There are times now that I can use wild growth and know I have time to use it again to get people back up. With the change I most likely can't rely on WG and patience as much. Which of course means using more mana. I haven't looked at talent changes though, I'll wait until the release is imminent.
Arizor Sep 30th 2011 9:24AM
Um, Matt?
"I think we'll end up seeing [shaman] favored in order to stack Ancestral Healing across multiple players. I'm worried that they'll be viewed as a surefire requirement because of that buff."
When the answer is in the very text patch notes you linked above:
"Ancestral Healing now also causes shaman heals to increase the target's maximum health by 5/10% of the amount healed, up to a maximum of 10% of the target's maximum health for 15 seconds. The effect DOES NOT STACK IF MULTIPLE RESTORATION SHAMAN ARE PRESENT and does not apply to heals from procs."
I'm glad Blizz dodged the bullet on that one.
Arizor Sep 30th 2011 9:28AM
Ah wait, I'm very sorry. I think you might've meant stacking so that more people are affected by the buff, not just a stronger buff as I originally interpreted.
Though still, I wonder if they'll have healing rain grant the effect?
( I'm probably gonna get loads of replies about this now. I make mistakes like this so often :# )
Arbolamante Sep 30th 2011 9:27AM
As a resto druid, I found in Wrath that my HoTs were routinely overwritten by direct heals, which naturally lowered my hps. In Cata, this happens a lot less, so naturally, my hps went up. I'm not convinced that Wild Growth is the "problem."
I for one will be dropping the glyph. It's already useless in 5-mans, and while still of use in 10-mans, I find that in most fights it's more important to have it when I need it, then it is to hit more people.
Lissanna Sep 30th 2011 9:29AM
The only problem with the Wild Growth glyph becoming optional in 10-mans is that Glyph of Thorns is likely the only other viable glyph to replace it with if you primarily innervate yourself. IE. Blizzard forgot to give resto druids more than 3 viable glyphs, so it's just an indirect nerf to Wild Growth because there is no other viable alternative glyph.
matt Sep 30th 2011 10:58AM
yep, I will be running with and EMPTY glyph slot in 4.3. IS that the choice GC was talking about in his blog post? These are the same fools who engineered that brilliant change to lunar shower
Jason Sep 30th 2011 9:30AM
I played with the new Holy Radiance on the PTR in a 5-man. The shorter duration and range will take some getting used to. The judgement change left me with time on my hands as I'm used to judging on cooldown.