Archive for the ‘Restoration Healing Trees’ Category

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Mar
09
2010

Should healers have to deal with mana management?

So, the healing forums have been having a pretty big discussion lately (over the last few weeks) about how much mana management should matter in Cataclysm, and how spell choice plays into managing mana.

As someone who survived healing from the early days through now, I remember having to make more… intelligent decisions about what heals to use when mana was a limited resource.

I remember the days of using down-ranked Healing Touches weaved between other spells. In Burning Crusade, we didn’t really make that many choices about spells (my resto druid spammed rolling lifeblooms, and my shaman spammed chain heal). I remember the days of actually having a macro to cancel my long cast spells, though. Even at the beginning of WotLK, mana seemed like something that was a slightly more limited resource.

The problem right now, though, is that you have to use your fastest heals at the expense of everything else. This encourages people to heal with less efficient, more expensive spells (which is why Glyphed Healing Touch is seeing a resurgence, and why HOT raid healing even works). There doesn’t seem to be a way to tell good healers from bad healers. Meters just reward healing “first”, and people don’t really judge healers any other way. Since you can’t run OOM, you may as well just spam your fastest and least efficient heals all the time.

In Cataclysm, the goal seems to be a desire to return to the original game’s style of healing, where you need a team of healers to manage their mana and heal “smart” instead of healing first. Where you will have to actually spend time choosing what sized heals you want (maybe unglyphed HT’s long cast time will make it back as a useful tool?). I think that there would also have to be less AOE raid constant damage, as it is the AOE healing that really tends to be the most spammy and the least mana efficient a lot of the time (with the most limited healing tools). For single-target healing, most of the classes have those small, medium, big options. For raid healing, none of the classes have much variety in tools (and for paladins, they just have nothin at all). So, perhaps raid healing is a place where the developers should look at the tools that the healing classes have, to see if they want to give us more choices in what spells we use for AOE healing.

Mana management can be an interesting part of the healers’ game.  I hope that it leads to interesting changes in Cataclysm, and that it makes the game more fun instead of more frustrating. So, I think that healing spell variety has to be interesting and meaningful if mana management is going to be part of the healers’ job in Cataclysm once again. If one or two spells are obviously just better than the rest, then we’ll just spam ourselves OOM and get frustrated, so there has the be the right mix of tools and the right balance. Can we achieve all of this next expansion? Only time will tell. I personally think that mana management can work as an interesting part of the game, because it has been in the past. However, I think there is also a lot of risk.

Posted in Cataclysm, Restoration Healing Trees, Uncategorized | 16 Comments »

Mar
02
2010

Cataclysm Gear changes for druids

So, they announced more details about their plan for Cataclysm gear, which has set off a posting frenzy across the WOW community.

Most of it was stuff we already knew. The summary is that they expect bear & cats to share gear, while they expect resto & moonkin to share gear. This sounds great in theory, but is likely going to cause problems in the long run, and it’s going to take months of Beta testing everything to get all the “nobs” tweaked right to pull this off.

However, please keep in mind that we have multiple months to get everything working right, and that there will be some variety & customization for our gear, and that the sky is definitely not falling (well, except for moonkin who can make stars fall out of the sky on demand).

Overall, they seem to be simplifying gear to a great extent. First, please realize that this is only a plan, and that some things will change between this post & Cataclysm being released. Here’s a rough summary and analysis, rather than a copy/paste of that thread. If you want to see what exactly they said, then go read the original thread. Below combines some of the knowledge from earlier posting, along with what was released today. In all cases, the existing stats on gear are going to change. However, you should wait until we know what individual pieces will look like before you start stocking up on additional gear. There will be several months to get things all straightened out before things go live. Cata is still a long time away.

For cats & bears, stats on leather armor will include:

  • Cat & bear gear will have roughly the same amount of stamina, which will be high like the other classes (so bear won’t need as much additional scaling for stam).
  • Leather gear for cats/bears will likely have a mix of: stam, agility, crit, haste, mastery, hit, & expertise.
  • Bears may need to gear for STR accessories for more tanking-related stats shared with other tanking classes (though bears still can’t block/parry), but this point still isn’t entirely clear. Dodge rating would probably only be on the STR items.
  • Resilience will still be good for PvP.
  • Haste will be a more attractive state for melee specs.
  • Reforging will help with getting your bear & cat sets to have the right combination of stats. However, reforging won’t be perfect (IE. you won’t be able to convert all of that yucky parry/block into dodge at a 1 to 1 conversion rate).

For Resto & Moonkin

  • We’re expected to gear basically the same between resto & moonkin (they said that before WotLK; we’ll see how well that actually works out).
  • Leather caster gear will have a mix of: Int, stam, spirit, haste, crit, & mastery.
  • Resto druids will be happy, and not much is changing for them in terms of gear stats, and everything is happy in tree-land.
  • Moonkin (and elemental shaman) won’t have hit rating itemized on their leather/mail. Instead, we’ll have talents that convert spirit to hit rating. We can still use DPS caster accessories with or without hit on them as needed.
  • It is likely that there will be some leather caster gear without spirit on it (I really hope so). If moonkin ends up with too much spirit (ie. hit rating) from gear, we can either complain to get more non-spirit items, or we can suck it up and reforge (and take the 50% stat penalty) to convert spirit to another more useful stat. However, until we see what happens to the gear, we just have to trust that in most cases, gear will be itemized in a way that makes sense. Also, if other casters end up with too much +hit rating gear, they will have to do the same thing, so it should balance out in the end.
  • My bet is that we’ll end up needing to reforge a couple pieces of gear to get a decent set, but I’m hoping that reforging works out right in the end.
  • We lose mastery if we pick up cloth instead of leather.
  • Spell penetration & resilience will be available for PvP gear.
  • It should be harder for moonkin to reach the hit/haste/crit caps in Cataclysm compared to now.

More About Reforging (ie. what people should be concerned about right now):

Reforging is really what all of druids dreams for the future are tied up in. Bears will need reforging to turn Warrior tanking items into druid tanking items, or to turn rogue leather into tanking leather. Moonkin still won’t have gear perfectly itemized for them, and will need reforging to turn healing gear into moonkin gear (especially for balancing around the spirit/hit cap). For bear druids, there needs to be some way to turn STR accessories into better things for bears without losing itemization points along the way, since bears are likely going to be expected to use them (ie. parry & block rating need 1 to 1 conversions to dodge for bears, or bears will be more limited in the gear they can tank in).

In conclusion:

This isn’t really anything super new or shocking. We have had huge changes to our stats every expansion, and we have survived every time in the past. Cataclysm will bring new and exiting changes, and nothing marked for Cataclysm is set in stone yet. They could make it through part of testing and realize something just isn’t working right, and completely change it to something different. That’s just part of the game, and we’ll adapt just like we always do.

Posted in Cataclysm, Druid - General, Feral Bear tanking, Feral DPS Cat, Moonkin Balance DPS, Restoration Healing Trees | 6 Comments »

Feb
26
2010

Recap of Twitter answers for druids

There were 2 questions relevant to druids in the latest twitter #blizzchat.

  • Q. Is there any ETA on tree / moonkin form graphical update?
    A. Moonkin is hard because Moonkin players are so in love with that form. It’s tough to change it at all. We currently hope to do a new tree form for Cataclysm, but no promises.

I think what moonkin would like more than a complete revamp is just color customizations of the already existing forms. A quick re-color (tied to our hair colors) would be a lot of fun, even if the basic forms weren’t changed for moonkin. Color customization is more important for trees & moonkin, really. More colors, please!

Also, moonkin & tree form (and ALL the forms) need to look different for Worgen & Trolls compared to their NE & Tauren counterparts. Since we won’t likely be able to fight outside of forms as druids, the new races need very distinctly different forms so that the new races can be fun.

  • Q. Has there been any thought of changing Eclipse to charges so that Moonkin dps doesn’t suffer so much from moving?
    A. Yes. Expect a major overhaul in Cataclysm that keeps the same basic idea (alternating from Arcane to Nature) but in a way that is more core to the class. Like everything though, there is the risk that we may decide this idea sucks once we see it in action.

This is something I’m super excited to see. I can pretty much promise you that the moonkin players will give you great feedback on anything that you tinker with during Cataclysm testing. We can’t wait to see what the developers ideas are for making moonkin a more fun spec to play! If their first idea for the Eclipse mechanic comes out funky, we’ll do whatever we can to help it work out in the end.  I think moonkin need to see a lot of revamp & change to bring us into a better place in Cataclysm, but that’s what expansion talent revamps are really all about.

I’m glad that they are at least willing to consider fundamentally changing how Eclipse works, which gives me hope that maybe they’ll make the changes necessary to moonkin so that we don’t feel like we’re always an expansion behind everyone else and just trying to play catch-up all the time. I’m really excited to see what may be coming for moonkin in the future. This next expansion will be really fun for moonkin (yes, I can still sound hopeful from time to time).

Posted in Cataclysm, Moonkin Balance DPS, Patch 3.3 WotLK, Patches, Restoration Healing Trees | 11 Comments »

Feb
06
2010

Cataclysm Gearing: Is reforging something to look forward to?

Okay, so my moonkin is having a terrible time trying to gear up in ICC. I’m having a hard time finding things like belts & bracers out of the 25-man instance that would be worthwhile, and I had to pick up a crit/spirit dagger off Morrow (paired with an off-hand I had from the ICC 5-mans). All the upgrades I really want are either in the 10-man or from badges.

All my gearing frustration, however, just makes me want Cataclysm to come sooner. So, lets take a look at what has me so excited about gearing my moonkin in Cataclysm.

Here’s a quote from my post at the Blizzcon Class pannel:

Reforging – Customizing gear. Relatively cheap. Given to blacksmiths, leatherworkers, tailors, Jewelcrafters, & Engineers. Reduce one stat for more of another (some restrictions apply).

Now, there are tons of items right now where I go: That would be great except that it has X stat instead of Y stat. We could turn a spirit-heavy resto item into a spirit-light moonkin item (since we were told no spirit for moonkin).

So, I did some digging around, and here’s is some info I’ve been able to dig up on reforging:

It’s too early to go into a lot of detail on the new features, but the basic idea here was to make an undesirable drop possibly more desirable. It still shouldn’t compete with gear that is actually itemized for you.

As an example, letting someone turn stamina into a dps stat is something we’d be unlikely to do (or at least impose a lot of restrictions) since that lets you turn an undesirable stat for most characters into something good.

Think of reforging more as a consolation prize or as a way to work around things like hit caps, and not the kind of thing that clever players are going to be able to use to vastly min max their character power.

Along with this one here:

Imagine reforging could work like enchanting, where there are specific recipes that everyone knows. Example: “Converts Spirit into 50% equivalent hit rating on gloves.” I’m not saying it would work like this, but something along those lines would be pretty comparable to existing features.

I still think that being able to turn spirit into a DPS-friendly stat, or changing hit rating into another stat (OR adding hit rating to an item if needed) could be a very powerful use fo this feature. I would like to think that they would design Reforging so that hybrids like moonkin (who they never really want to design specialized gear for) will benefit a lot from this kind of change. We don’t really need to change stamina into damage dealing stats, but we will benefit from being able to turn healer gear into DPS gear.

What stats moonkin should want in cataclysm:

What stats resto should want in cataclysm:

  • Int (will give SP), spirit, haste crit, & the new mastery stat.

So, the theory would be that moonkin could potentially take the healing gear with spirit and turn it into something worthwhile for us, and resto could take something without spirit to turn it into something with spirit.

But there’s always a catch. Here are the Potential Problems:

  • It may only remove half of the unwanted stat, leaving gear with half the unwanted stat (ie. hit or spirit for caster leather). So, that gear really would be sub-optimal and perhaps make the reforging system not actually all happy like I first thought it might be.  This would leave Blizzard still having to make leather without spirit on it for moonkin, as we wouldn’t be able to remove all the spirit from healing leather.
  • EDIT: It may also potentially be designed take more than it gives back, IE. taking all the spirit but only giving you half the value back in another stat, which would mean the item ends up not really being a replacement for well-itemized gear for that slot. If you have to do this for half your gear for end-game raiding, suddenly you are losing out on an awful lot of stats you could have had with better itemized gear in the first place.
  • If Blizzard has further incentives for classes to use their highest armor type (in this case, leather for druids), moonkin may be more prohibited from wearing cloth than we already are, and the reforging system may have raid leaders being more reluctant to let moonkin take cloth drops. Add to that the fact we can’t roll “need” on cloth from 5-man dungeons, and things may still be tricky for moonkin to gear up in Cataclysm.
  • Blizzard has a long history of not wanting to make item drops that only one spec of one class will want to wear. Since Moonkin & elemental shaman are niche-specs that tend to not be super abundant in raid groups, I’m betting that these two specs will still have a hard time gearing up in Cataclysm raid dungeons, since Blizzard may see reforging as the best way to let us turn healing gear into DPS gear, which could potentially leave moonkin with really still sub-optimal gear and no way to turn all the junk stats into stats we want.

Conclusions:

Reforging has the potential to be a great opportunity for Blizzard to deal with specs like moonkin & elemental shaman that can’t just DPS in healing gear (and shouldn’t heal in hit rating gear), but don’t otherwise share gear with anyone else.

However, the only way for reforging to fill this role is if ALL of spirit or hit rating can be removed from an item and converted into a wanted stat for other specs that share the gear. Otherwise, Reforging is never going to let casters and healers share gear, and will leave us with the same problems with gearing that we have right now. It also needs to give back enough of the wanted stat so that you aren’t losing huge chunks of stats if you are forced to reforge rather than be given good options for your gear. These may also be the only two stats where removing all of it from an item should need to be an option. I’m sure melee classes would benefit from being able to remove all the hit from an item, so that they could turn hit-rating pieces into something useful for them after they reach the hit-cap. In this case, everyone could win.

Posted in Cataclysm, Druid - General, Moonkin Balance DPS, Restoration Healing Trees, Shaman | 19 Comments »

Jan
18
2010

Resto/Moonkin loot in ICC’s Crimson Halls

So, the Crimson Halls opens up this week. As I did for the last wing, I wanted to highlight some of the good resto & moonkin gear from the new wing’s loot table. The two new bosses are: Blood Princes and Blood Queen Lana’Thel.

Also, please note that you don’t have to defeat the Plagueworks to gain access to the Crimson Halls.  This means that people struggling on Putricide (or the other Plague bosses) can still make attempts on the Blood Princes & such. MMO-champion actually posted a good spreadsheet talking about how things will work in the dungeon (the gating, limited attempts, & instance design). So, I won’t spend a lot of time talking about what you can learn more easily from the graphic display.

Okay, so with 2 bosses worth of loot, lets look at the haste/spirit gear (more resto-oriented):

  • Shoulders of Frost-Tipped Thorns - From Blood Princes 25-man. Since the set shoulders have crit, these are a good haste option for resto if you aren’t going for set bonuses.
  • Shoulderpads of the Searing Kiss - From Blood Queen Lana’thel 10-man (pretty similar to the 25-man shoulders).
  • Heartsick Mender’s Cape - From blood Princes 10-man. This cape is great for resto. It could work for moonkin, but a crit cape would be better (though there aren’t many options for cloaks in general for casters)
  • Dying Light – Staff from Blood Queen Lana’thel 25-man

Both haste & Crit: Would be good for either resto or moonkin (but slightly favoring moonkin, since resto should still need regen stats):

  • Shadow Silk Spindle - Off-hand item from Blood Princes 25-man. For moonkin, this would pair great with the dagger from Morrowgar. For resto druids, you could use this with a haste one-hander (though I recommended using staves in my resto weapon itemization piece).
  • Cerise Coiled Ring - From Blood Princes 10-man. This ring is a good choice for people running 10-mans, for either resto or moonkin – especially with the red socket on it.
  • Blood Queen’s Crimson Choker - From Blood Queen Lana’thel 25-man.

Crit Pieces (more moonkin-oriented):

  • Incarnadine Band of Mending – Ring from Blood Princes 25-man. This probably isn’t the best option of ring for us in the instance, however it has crit on it, so this could work as one of your gearing options. This is going to be better for moonkin than Valanar’s Other Signet Ring, unless you need the hit rating.
  • Set piece tokens? This wing is light on leather, and crit leather pieces are few & far between in ICC. Moonkin will be fighting with the other casters for crit/haste accessories in this wing. If you are having a hard time filling out your moonkin set, cloth is an acceptable alternative for things like belts & bracers. Haste is okay for some pieces, but try to pick up haste/crit over haste/spirit when you can.

Posted in Druid - General, Moonkin Balance DPS, Patch 3.3 WotLK, Restoration Healing Trees | 5 Comments »

Jan
06
2010

Rawr for Resto Druids explained

Rawr is a tool that a lot of WoW players use for figuring out optimal gearing for their character. You can download the program free from their website. First, I want to remind you that programs like Rawr are a tool, but that no tool is better than understanding your class mechanics and using your best judgement about what the right gear setup is for you. This uses math & theoretical calculations to come up with their optimization. Even if you customize it perfectly, there is going to be a difference between what it says and reality – just based on factors out of the creators’ control. It is still, however, a really useful tool, since it can help you see what upgrades are available compared to your gear. I spent some time talking to the person who edits the resto druid version of Rawr, and after learning some stuff from him, I wanted to discuss this tool a little.

Rawr is a customizable tool. Here is what the main page looks like for my druid’s template after I’ve finished setting up all my settings. I uploaded my profile from the armory, so it has all my current gear.

To be honest, I use Rawr more often for my DPS set than for my healing set – this is mostly because I struggle a lot more with figuring out how to optimize my DPS set. However, the resto one is also much less “plug and play” than the moonkin one. The resto version of Rawr has a TON of customizable options, and it takes a long time to set up to approximate your particular healing style.

Healers are like unique snowflakes, and Rawr is able to calculate stat values based on what YOU want it to do. Below, I’m just going to cover some of the basics about the customizable features that you should think about setting up before comparing gear items. There are a lot of things I won’t cover. Rawr’s main page has an instructional video you can watch if you want more help for the basics of how the tool works.

You get to decide what gems go in the gear. This applies to any spec you use the tool for, as the default settings may be different than what you actually use. You can edit the gem template & choose what gems you want it to display in the gear. If you don’t like the options they have, you can customize your own gem template. I select it to show 2 gem types (instead of 3). I also only choose all red, or a red/orange/purple template. I don’t like the Seer’s (int/spirit) gems, as I value spell power more.  So, I unselect anything that uses a green or yellow gem in their template. The more spell power, the better! At the very bottom of the menu, you can create your own gem template and insert what gems you usually put in the gear. If you only want it to gem with that template, you can just unselect everything else and only have it use your own personal template.

Choose your own Adventure tabs! The tabs in the middle of your gear aren’t just to display stats. They are there to help you customize your options. The default display shows the stats tab. The talents tab should be filled out based on your armory spec, OR you can manually change it to a different spec. The third is the buffs tab, and the fourth is options. For moonkin, there aren’t a lot of options to choose. However, resto has a LOT of customizable options under the fourth tab.

The third tab is the Buffs tab. You have to select what buffs you want it to assume that you have in the calculations. This picture has a couple of the buffs (ie. imp moonkin form, replenishment sources, etc). All of the buffs in the game are able to be selected and customized. It even lets you choose what kind of flask to use These buffs matter for the calculations, and you have to take the time to set it up. These are not chosen for you by default. Everyone of every spec has to select what buffs they want displayed.

For restoration druids, the options tab has several other tabs: Stats, Sustained Fight, Mana, & Module notes. This is a lot more involved than the moonkin options tab that doesn’t have many customization options in comparison.

On the stats option tab, it lets you select “single Target Maximum Healing Spell Mix” options. There is a huge drop-down menu that lets you pick spells. This is important to select the spell setup you use. There is also a “sustained spell profile” that allows you to select between 4 options: tank healing; tank healing (no lifebloom); Raid healing (only WG/RJ); Raid Healing (RJ/LB/SM/WG/N).

Special effects lets you ignore Nature’s Grace and haste procs from trinkets in the calculations. This will change the value of crit & haste (along with the value of those trinkets). The problem with these items is that it is hard to accurately model them in the calculations. I like being able to have these turned off, but remember that they are still possibly valuable in practice – even if they are hard to model in the software. This is one place where your best judgment is better than what the tool can tell you.

The “sustaned fight” tab has a ton of options. You’ll have to learn this tab just by adjusting options. It does have default settings that you can leave if you aren’t as comfortable with the tool. However, customizing this to your healing will make the calculations more accurate.

Some of the options here include: Maintained heals over time – You can choose how many rejuvs, regrowths, & lifeblooms you “keep active during the fight”. I usually have more maintained rejuvs than regrowth or lifebloom. However, I usually have regrowth & lifebloom on at least one target.

You can choose how you want your lifeblooms to stack: Slow build & bloom; fast build & bloom; rolling no bloom, etc. Cooldown Usage lets you choose how many wild growths & swiftmends you cast in one minute.

Healing Spell Usage: how do you spend your time outside of maintaining the HOTs from the first menu selection? A lot of people will likely have rejuv higher, but this would be where you include how much time you spend casting regrowth, LB, & Nourish, too! For nourish, you should estimate how much it’s landing on people with HOTs on them. “Time strategy” allows you to select how much time you would spend not casting. You can also select your estimated living seed effectiveness.

The last tab with customizable options is the mana tab. Here you get to select options for: replenishment, revitalize, & innervate. The last tab is module notes, but it doesn’t have customizable options.

Final thoughts & conclusions: For gear upgrades, item level matters a lot – so Rawr is going to recommend gear that may not fit your personal gearing goals. For example, if your goal is to hit a certain % of haste, Rawr isn’t going to necessarily keep that in mind when it is doing the calculations. If you only want a belt with haste, but Rawr is saying that this crit belt would be better – go with the haste belt.  Also, customizing all these options do matter, but even once you customize it, it’s up to you to decide what is going to work best for you (based on gear availability, and what you see in practice). Some people have commented that it is valuing crit over haste for them. So, this would be one situation where personal decisions matter. Rawr is a great tool to aid you in your gearing decisions, but the final decision is YOURS, and it’s always bad to blindly follow the advice given to you by any tool (including the advice on my blog).I think I’ve said this several times, but it’s important – it is up to you (in the end) to figure out what works best for you.

Posted in Restoration Healing Trees | 8 Comments »

Jan
04
2010

New ICC wing (Plagueworks) unlocks this week!

So, now that the holidays have finally come to an end (I’m flying back today – Monday the 4th), it is time to focus on Icecrown Citadel raiding again.

With the end of the holidays comes a new set of bosses. The total number of bosses in ICC is being increased by 3, as the Plagueworks wing opens “soon”! MMO-champion has a description of boss abilities, and loot lists for the new wing, with Rotface, Festergut, & Professor Putricide.

There are a couple resto pieces, and a couple moonkin pieces. How do you tell the difference? Well, moonkin pieces have crit, and the resto pieces have haste. However, moonkin may need some haste pieces, and once resto hits the haste cap, they can pick up crit pieces.

Now, if you are a resto druid that is really attached to one-hand weapons, there is a haste 1-hand mace (Lockjaw) that drops from 10-man Rotface…. so stop taking the moonkin crit weapon off Marrowgar! There is also  Trauma, a neat healing weapon with an interesting looking proc (but no crit OR haste), that comes from 25-man Rotface. There are haste pants that drop from Festergut 25-man which are good for resto druids. Rotface 10-man also has a haste necklace for resto druids. Putricide has a haste belt which should be a good upgrade for resto druids. At this point, my resto set is above the haste cap for resto druids, though I could definitely use some spellpower upgrades for some of my weaker pieces.

For moonkin, the leather drops from Rotface are both crit pieces (head & chest), though you would want to keep your T9 or T10 set bonuses if you can. This wing is definitely more exciting for resto than for moonkin – though there may will also be some good cloth +hit pieces that would be worthwhile, too. Moonkin could probably also use Putricide’s haste belt or one of the other haste pieces just to keep at (or above) the 400 haste rating soft-cap. There may also be other goodies that I missed in my scan of the loot lists. Graylo hasn’t yet posted his “best in slot” loot list yet. It’s likely that you’ll still need some stuff off the first wing of bosses still.

My guild had a slow couple weeks because of the holidays, but I’m ready to have some fun conquering content once things get back to normal this week! Good luck everyone!

Posted in Moonkin Balance DPS, Patch 3.3 WotLK, Restoration Healing Trees | 2 Comments »

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