Archive for October, 2009

Rejuvenation, part 4

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October 14, 2009
by Lume in , ,

To be honest, we may revert the Rejuv nerf. This isn’t 100% finalized yet, so please don’t say we promised anything.

We definitely wanted to nerf Rejuv. However we also wanted to fix Gift of the Earth Mother. That change wasn’t necessarily aimed at further nerfing druids, even though that was the outcome. It was aimed at not making haste such a wonky stat for Resto.

In short, we think the GotEM change both nerfed druids and fixed the haste scaling problem so the Rejuv duration nerf may not be necessary. Stay tuned.

Good news. I don’t have anything to say about this possibility, yet, however, as I’d have to number crunch the scalability of all three raid healers. Which is something I’m sure Blizzard will do in assessing the issue, but I may do it myself if I can find the time between recruitment and midterms (but that’s unlikely).

Rejuvenation, part 3

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October 13, 2009
by Lume in , ,

Gift of the Earthmother now increases your total spell haste by 2/4/6/8/10%

From the PTR patch notes. Nourish already clips the GCD with Nature’s Grace active. This will benefit mainly healing touch and regrowth, both of which are extremely niched to begin with. The removal of a tick of rejuvenation is already a substantial nerf. This will nerf our general raid healing further beyond substantial. The addition of the glyph is only a situational buff (as already discussed in this article).

Alone in the Darkness

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October 8, 2009
by Lume in

The guild finally got Yogg0 down earlier tonight. I should have perhaps put more emphasis on the kill a long time ago, as we could have potentially placed better than we did. But 86th in the U.S. is not bad. I thought the ranking was going to be poor, given how long it has been since the nerf, so I was surprised to see where we ranked.

The fight is pretty decent on the whole. I think it’s a little odd that you have to rely on the mechanics of targeting macros to succeed in a fight, however. The rogue interruption nerf definitely made it somewhat of a challenge, too.

I think we have a decent shot at heroic Anub this week, as well. That would be quite awesome to get along with this kill.

Rejuvenation, part 2

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October 7, 2009
by Lume in , ,

We are trying to make haste a slightly more attractive stat for classes that utilize a lot of damage or healing over time spells, specifically Shadow priests, warlocks (though especially Affliction) and Resto druids. We realize other classes use hots and dots too, but I think we can all agree that it’s a bigger problem for the ones I mentioned.

So after my post, the blues are planning to address the way haste scales with HoT and DoT classes. Which is a good start, but I think they run the risk of making druids scale too well in early content (which was one of my points in the earlier post). Then again, with the nerf to rejuvenation’s base duration, the two changes may balance each other out.

We have new tech that will allow specific hots and dots to tick faster — the time between ticks would decrease. This means more damage or healing per time but also having to refresh those spells more often. Since there is a trade-off, we’re not sure the change is a no-brainer, especially in the healing case.

They are correct in assessing the problems of the change. By making the HoT tick faster, and lowering the duration of the HoT as a consequence, they will remove some of the utility of HoTs in dealing with damage. One of the strengths of rejuvenation right now is that I can stack it 18 seconds before incoming damage and the ticks will heal as many people as possible given my haste value. This is a huge boon on Algalon and XT, where merely one tick can save someone from almost certain death by extraneous damage (constellations on Algalon, and light bomb on XT).

Because of this, we are planning on introducing the concept through glyphs. Glyphs represent a great test bed for new ideas because they are easier to change (and easier on the players when we do change them) compared to core spell functions or even talents. If we like the way it feels and players like the way it feels and the glyphs prove popular or fun, then this may be the kind of thing that shifts from glyphs over time — not unlike the way some favorite set bonuses eventually become talents.

This is a great way to potentially deal with the problem. It will be great for dealing with isolated damage, as well as tank damage. For example, the faster ticks would likely be beneficial for raid healing on fights where the healing is more reactive or not as predictable, like normal Freya, Faction Champs, Yogg, etc.

But they should keep it as a glyph, not a talent, because there are times when faster HoTs are detrimental. For example, a faster rejuvenation on Iron Council hard mode could cause the HoT to heal at a faster rate than his aura deals damage (particularly if all your raid healers have the talent or glyph). So we’d have to either set our dual specs to counter that, or pay 50 gold every time we don’t want it. I would easily sacrifice my current rejuvenation glyph (or nourish glyph, depending on the situation) for the faster ticks in situations where it would be better, instead of sacrificing my moonkin spec or paying 50 gold.

For 3.3 we are talking about introducing three new glyphs for Shadow Word: Pain, Corruption and Rejuvenation that would allow these spells to tick faster with the more haste you have. There are glyphs of Corruption and Rejuv already, and we’re not sure how we’re going to resolve those yet.

Different names. Some classes already have glyphs for the same ability that just have different names. For example, Glyph of Typhoon and Glyph of Monsoon both affect typhoon.

In any case, this is a good way to address some of the concerns I mentioned in my previous entry.

An alternative I would suggest is frontloading HoT ticks, rather than backloading them. Decrease the duration by one tick, and put a tick at the front. Such is why druid T8 was extremely good (and still is in a lot of situations). Of course, that would cause issues with riptide losing its niche. So that might not be a way to go.

The Rejuv Nerf, or: Situations Determine the Spells You Use

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October 4, 2009
by Lume in ,

We don’t want rank 15 to have that extra tick. It is technically a bug in that we didn’t intend for it to have that behavior, but obviously we sat on the change for awhile. However since the popular Resto style has now become Rejuv on as many people as possible, we thought the extra tick had become problematic. Frankly we think druids can absorb the small nerf without hurting their overall healing much.

We’re not trying to hide a nerf, and we can certainly change the patch note to not say bug fix if that makes it go down any easier.

We’ll look into any discrepancy in numbers between rank 14 and 15 and make sure things are working as intended.

This is a quote from Ghostcrawler. I’m about to pick it apart, because I really feel the druid community is being done a disservice by this nerf.

We Need That Extra Tick, Otherwise We Lose Our Biggest Niche and Drop Below Other Healers in Competition and Available Healing Tools

Consider the ramifications of losing that extra tick. Did you know renew is roughly comparable to rejuvenation? Raid buffed, glyphed and talented, it’s only slightly worse than rejuvenation (but also with that heal on application that mimics our 4PT8 bonus). On Anub’arak hard, my priest partner and I were each putting a HoT on targets of penetrating cold. My rejuv was ticking on average for 3000 non-crit. His renew, meanwhile, is ticking for about 2500. But his gear is worse than mine; I have three ilvl 258 piece and four pieces of T9, and only two pieces of gear otherwise that aren’t ilvl 245. Remove the tier bonus on me and level out our gear and I’m only slightly ahead of him. If not for the extra tick, the percentage difference would be miniscule.

Now, consider the spell coefficient is going to change if they nerf rejuvenation’s base duration to 12. You get the full benefit of spell power when a spell is 15 seconds. Nerf it to 12, and not only do we lose an extra tick, we lose some benefit of our spell power. So the nerf (when talented) is not 26%. It’s more than that, unless you have absolutely 0 spell power. That would actually drop its effectiveness to at least the level of renew, if not below it.

So tell me why I should continue playing a druid and not reroll a priest? They have so many different tools compared to me. PoH. PoM. Renew. CoH. Shields. Hymn of Hope. Holy Hymn. Shadowfiend. Offensive dispels. Mass dispel. The ability to respec and become a damn good tank healer. I’m tempted to drop out of constructive argument and simple ask, “What the fuck?”

The only thing that gives me pause about switching is the fact that some damage is best healed by multiple HoTs, especially when there’s only two people with that sort of damage coming in on them. For example, Brutallus’ Burn was best dealt with by a druid keeping HoTs rolling on the burn victims. One person got burn, I could stack HoTs on them. Then when the next person got burn, I could switch off the previous burn target to stack HoTs on them, without risking the first person dying. We’re also good compliments to the DPS downstairs on Yogg0, because retadins can’t decurse and shifting out to decurse for a feral is technical decrease in the DPS you need for decent stuns. Oh, and I like playing moonkin, but we’re talking about healing here.

These non-raid healing situations where we are extremely strong, however, are so few and far between, I could probably just keep my druid geared w/ badges and come in when the situation calls for it and it’d do just as well. Otherwise, other classes have similar or better tools to bring. To elaborate:

  • One person takes spike damage while running around? Just riptide/PoM/shield them. These spells are comparable to swiftmend, and better if that person doesn’t already have rejuvenation running on them and the healing needs to be immediate.
  • Clumped up and moving while taking heavy raid damage? CoH + PoM + Renew. And PW:S if someone is about to die and needs preventative healing while PoM is not active and on CD.
  • General HPS on stationary fights? We’re definitively going to fall behind priests with this nerf. I already have to struggle with good priests to keep up with them on fights with constant raid damage. And shamans are already catching up with CH as they get more and more haste and crit.
  • Tank healing? Don’t get me started. We’re terrible tank healers. And the generic resto spec, we have to spend so many GCD’s refreshing HoTs just to make us viable with nourish. If we spec HT, we’re no better than paladins or shamans (and paladins are better, because they can heal two tanks at once, or someone in the raid while they heal the tank). We also provide no inspiration buff, so we’re not complimentary to paladins in most situations and make the tank healing actually more difficult in general if you need just two tank healers.

The Heals Used Are Not Determined by The General Strength of a Spell, but by the Situation

Why is Blizzard seeing such a high percentage of rejuvenation by druids? It’s not because rejuvenation is so overpowered. It’s because our other spells either have a cooldown, or they are generally weak in dealing with the majority of the style of damage you see today.

With the introduction of metric fuckloads of raid damage, increased because of spells like WG, CoH, targetabble PoH, and the fact that pallies can now also heal other people along with the tank at the same time, Blizzard has compensated in most fights by simply increasing the raid damage. Regrowth, in dungeon blues and greens, was the best for dealing with this damage early on. But once you got enough mana regen, rejuv took its place. By this point, rejuv is far and away the best in terms of HPS for spells without a cooldown.

If the idea is to get us to not put so much emphasis on rejuvenation, which is the vibe I get from Ghostcrawler’s post, they need to realize the emphasis is there largely because our other tools suck for general HPS output. It’s why shamans cast mostly CH for general HPS. Why priests cast most PoH for general HPS when full groups take damage. Why they cast PoM whenever it’s off CD, too. Etc.

Think about the encounters that all have massive raid damage that is delivered either predictably or in a straightforward manner. XT. Kologarn. HM IC. Hodir. HM Thorim. HM Freya. Mimiron. HM Vezax. Twin Valks.

On XT, as soon as my BigWigs timer tells me tantrum is going to happen in less than 18 seconds, I start spamming rejuvenation around like crazy, because he’s likely going to tantrum when those 18 seconds are up, and I’ll have rejuv ticking on people. Even before then, when I have free time, I tend to spam rejuvenation, because people are going to take damage from people with light bomb during the second or two before they get far enough from the raid. WG has a CD, so I can’t spam that all the time, even it is better in terms of total HPS. And lifebloom doesn’t do as much healing per cast as rejuv (on top of its issue with making your mana drop extremely low before you get the return value, effectively decreasing your mana pool while a bunch is active). Regrowth is too slow, though I might cast it when tantrum has between 18 and 27 seconds left. But, otherwise, what the hell else would I cast?

It’s a similar situation given all the encounters listed. It’s not because it’s overpowered in general. It’s because it’s our best spell to use between WG’s for the style of damage being used in the encounters.

To further pick apart the problems with our other spells (in a raid environment):

  • Regrowth:
    • It’s too slow. The reason its healing per time spend casting is so low, is because it has a base of two seconds. For this reason, rejuvnation has more HPS potential at mid and upper levels of gear.
    • It’s also not instant. Can’t cast it while running.
    • And its HoT is too small for predictive healing situations. It wouldn’t top people fast enough on Algalon, for example.
  • Lifebloom:
    • As it currently stands, lifebloom’s healing isn’t enough to raid heal with it. My rejuvenation currently heals for about 18K per cast, disregarding tier bonus (w/ T8 and T9, this number is 20K or above). At one stack, currently, my lifebloom only ticks for roughly 600. Even if I were to overestimate and claim 650, to cover for the fact that my parses might be a little off, the HoT portion would heal for 5850, meaning the end-heal would need to heal for 12150 to match rejuvenation’s healing potential. At one stack, LB’s bloom doesn’t even come close to that.
    • It’s backend heal is also very difficult to time, if not impossible, in most situations. It either gets stomped by other heals, or the timing doesn’t coincide with a boss ability because it doesn’t happen at rigid intervals.
    • Lifebloom also has a problem in the sense that it lowers you mana temporarily before you get the mana back from the blooms. If you have like 2000 mana left, for example, you will likely get to 0 mana after only three or four casts (depending on what mana you get back in the time it takes to apply three or four), and then you’ll sit at 0 mana for a while. You’ll get some mana back as they begin to bloom, but if you’re going to hit 0 mana during that time, it creates staggering issues, which also decreases its effectiveness in that situation.
  • Wild Growth:
    • It has a cooldown. When it’s on CD, you can’t cast it. So rejuvenation is the best substitute.
    • It requires people to be clumped. If multiple people are taking damage, but they are farther than the jumping distance of WG, rejuvenation is our best option.
    • It requires three or more people to be taking damage. If only one or two people take damage, rejuvenation will generally do more healing per cast.
  • Nourish:
    • Its heal per cast is really low. Simply put, on fights where your raids needs to put out a lot of HPS in general, any time you cast nourish, you waste the time you spent casting it that you could have spent casting a rejuv or WG. Both rejuv and WG have far better healing per time spent casting. So the more nourishes you cast, the less raid healing you do, the more your raid falls behind, the worse off you are in the long-term.

We really need rejuvenation to be strong for us to be effective. Because it’s really the only spell that allows us to compete in general HPS (which has become an important stat, given the number of raid damage-heavy encounters). And I don’t know if Blizzard has noticed, but other classes have either caught up to us in HPS potential, or are passing us. Priests already do more HPS than I do in situations where the raid damage is reactive and people are clumped. CoH and PoH are better reactive raid heals, and PoM supplements their healing such that they can have high HPS output (and, oh yeah, renew is not half bad in situations where they can talent/glyph it without losing heals for other situations). Even in predictable situations, a priest can compete and outheal me.

And CH is catching up for stationary fights, given that shamans’ haste and crit are increasing with each tier level (whereas druids don’t get as much benefit from haste due to haste stacking being multiplicative, and our base haste for rejuv starting at 20%). On some fights, our top shaman now matches my healing, whereas previously he used to be only capable of doing 60% of the amount (using primarily CH).

If not for four-piece T9 allowing rejuv to crit, the scaling comparison would be even worse.

What Blizzard should do is fix the scaling issues. Rejuv does really well early on because of GotEM. But at the later stages, it slows down. So a nerf seems necessary for Naxx and early Ulduar (and for the fact that bad druids can put out a lot of healing in general because it’s a simple concept spamming rejuv), but unnecessary for when people are decked in ToC and IC gear and for when you’re comparing good druids with good priests or shamans.

But what do I know. I only have been raiding with a druid since Molten Core. =)

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