4.3 Resto druids, any chance to recover with gear?

[Apos]

Good morning,everyone. I am one of the druids who feel urgently disturbed and frightened by the impact 4.3 will have on my performance. I've been on the PTR and it was close to impossible to keep up with priests of both speccs and holy paladins. (holy priests were ok-ish until the point they use their insanely buffed DH)

Now,of course I've posted about it on the wow-europe forums,but there is so much "hate" about resto druids,mostly from holy priests,claiming that we deserved it,etc etc. Among one of the replies was a person who said that since druids do not need spirit that much,we will scale off with gear and get over the nerf eventually.

Now,that's something that I highly doubt and would like to discuss. I'll take some WoL rankings for example,I know my examples can't be exactly accurate,but it should be at least close.

Now,if we take a pure output fight like Beth for example:

The second druid on the rankings has a total of 37.8K hps with a fight of 5:53 minutes. (i had to use the second one due to the first renaming and not being able to be found on armory)
The first holy priest on the rankings has a total of 32K hps with a fight of 7:19 minutes.

Throughout the fight they were pretty close together,so the only reason the priest falls so far behind is the time it took,but looking at their armory:

The priest has 10.22% haste,16 mastery and 12.74% crit unbuffed.
The druid has 15.88% haste, 19.69 mastery and 19.48% crit unbuffed. (and also does have a SoW)

So,taking in account that the druid has 3.66% more haste, 4.61% stronger healing from mastery and 6.74% more crit and they did pretty much very close HPS throughout the fight. Is druid scaling any good at all when talking about output? (because we all know we scale really well on mana efficiency)

Is there any chance for druids to overcome the nerf through 4.3 gear? Because personally I doubt it and I got a feeling that chances are I won't be able to remain as competitive a healer as I would like to be next patch. And it's gonna be awful wiping and knowing that normally I should have 2-3K more HPS.

And generally,what's your opinion on the double WG nerf? Was it justified? Did we "deserve" it like everyone implies?

Edit: Forgot to point out that I'm talking about 25 man raiding here.

[MyCelarAD]

Just let me point out that hps doesent mean squat in Firelands, atm. It all depends on if people stand in shit, and if someone is ''sniping'' the heals, which is easy in FL nowdays when its outgeared so hard/nerfed.

There is so much dead time where if all you care about is being number 1 on logs, its just to stand in shit and ask your healers to only heal if its needed to save someone.

[Apos]

I'm aware of that,but I have also done some 25 raids on the PTR (not LFR,normal 25 mode) and I had a really hard time keeping up with 2 of our priests and our paladin.

Of course lag was a problem,since it would affect me much more compared to the pally just refreshing holy radiance,but it is still kind of unpleasant of it being even possible for a holy paladin to do more AoE healing than a resto druid.

Firelands might not be the case,that's why I gave Beth for example,since the last phase is heavy on AoE damage,but most bosses in DS are heavy in AoE damage as well. (in fact,even the deathwing encounter itself as far as I've seen)

Overall I would find one slight nerf ok,but double nerfing WG and then giving new toys to other healers just creates a big gap that I sense we won't be able to overcome.

[DiamondTear]

Druids seem to be relatively fine on the PTR.

[Apos]

viewtopic.php?f=29&t=2800

That's a bit contradicting though isn't it?

And in anyway,isn't "relatively still some way away of just plain "fine"? Paladins getting potentially close to resto druids on AoE healing is normal?

Additionally,I've read some calculations and priests' divine hymn can vary from 700K to up to 1.3M healing in one go,depending on the haste the priest has at that point. And increases healing received on top of that and that's on a same cooldown with tranquility which does 400-500K. (more if used with ToL,but using 2 cooldowns in order to get close to 1 just shows how broken DH is getting)

If anything,it feels like resto druids lose their primary roles next patch and can be easily replaced with other classes, without getting the slightest of compensation on other fields in return,like for example,single target healing.

Not trying to force my opinion,but relatively fine is barely close to being actually competitive. Even shamans could be called "relatively fine".

If anything,it seems that druids are being overnerfed for no actual reason other than to satisfy those who thought that we were overpowered.

[Spiritrain]

The reason some many resto druids are complaining is because they are simply not the most powerful healers anymore. While i cant speak for how strong they are on the PTR, as I'm not on there myself, after being overpowered in pve for a while it simply may be 'shock' from having to play smart to compete with other healers.

[Apos]

To be honest I believe that "we will have to play smart to beat other healers" is just an excuse to soothe yourself about the nerf.

Practically we already played smarter than most healers. Sure,~32-35% of our healing came from a smart heal,but the rest did not. And it might not be hard,but it's at least harder to keep track of rejuvs and be careful of who will we lifebloom on fights where people are not stacked up so that our efflorescence drops on a good spot.

And instead of that what do other healers get? Paladins will get a smart heal that they only need to renew when it's about to expire and priests will get an "iwin" button. That's not exactly "outsmarting" us now,is it?

And after all,if I don't waste global cooldowns and utilize pretty much all of my spells as needed and then they nerf one of them,there's not much that can be done to use it in any smarter way. It still won't be more effective than a single rejuv,so it's not like it can be replaced with anything on how important it is.

Well,obviously it doesn't seem that there is much that can be done about it and personally I doubt that gear scaling will help at all. I just hope that they realize it and hotfix it instead of letting us be like this until MoP comes out.

[arx]

Druids seem to be relatively fine on the PTR.

To be fair, I don't think you appreciate just how oom I was during all of those 70% wipes, trying to squeeze healing in :D

I'll have to say first that the PTR conditions aren't a clear indicator of what will ultimately happen on live. People play with half-assed UIs, possibly with unoptimized specs, and most certainly with an unoptimized raid setup. The data simply won't say what comp you should be running with when push comes to shove, and you have to drop down to 5 healers.

That said, here are some thoughts on the matter:

- Napkin math: ~15% total healing nerf
- Modified TreeCalcs: 5-12% total healing nerf, 7-9% scaling hit (depending on healing behavior)
- Gut feeling on PTR: have to conserve a lot of mana, 15% upwards is probably the reality, considering overhealing and human error

To give some perspective how much 15% is in terms of scaling (napkin math disclaimer): you need about 1000 intellect worth of stats to overcome it. That's about the same as a bump to mixed 410/397 gear with mostly heroic items. Considering that the new set bonuses are much worse than the current ones, we'll be roughly at or slightly above current levels of power when wearing a mostly BiS set in 4.3.

That might sound very doom & gloom, but the reality is that without any changes to healer balance, druids would have been overpowered in the next tier.

Since we're ultimately interested in what healer comp you should be running with, consider the most important changes to healers in 4.3 and how they compare:

- Druids get a ~15% hit
- Holy gets its Tranquility+ and a slight CoH nerf
- Disc unchanged
- Paladins get a powerful spammable AoE heal
- Shamans are still extremely dependent on positioning (read: 80% useless)

Holy priests and druids have very similar healing niches, so the choice is mostly just a matter of numbers. Divine Hymn seemed to outperform Tranquility by a considerable margin from the very small data set I managed to gather on the PTR, which is hardly surprising, since it seems better on paper as well. I really can't say beforehand which will come out on top, but the difference probably won't be too big; i.e. I assume it won't matter much for anyone outside, say... top 20, or so (compared to other improvable stuff than swapping a druid with a priest).

If the encounter allows the healers to stand still and doesn't force players to spread, paladin healing seemed to kick a hole in the roof. Even with a very, very strong gut feeling, I'm not confident enough to state this as an absolute truth without going through the fights with a real comp, but in the optimal scenario paladins in 4.3 will most likely heal more than druids do on live right now. The downside is that the shift to more beacon-less healing, and raid healing in general, can really be felt (or perhaps the bosses simply hit like a truck), requiring more attention on the tank from other healers. Paladins are still very slightly edged out in pure healing by druids and priests if there's a lot of movement and spread.

Shaman sample size is too small to say anything, but the lack of major changes suggests that they still suck, unless you can stand in the pool with less than half health. The max hit point buff might be worth bringing though.

What to take home from this? Paladins, and a druid or a priest (for color) for some encounters. A balanced pink/orange/white healing setup for others. It shouldn't be as bad as T11 healer balance, but don't expect to be more than a mediocre healer this time around.

Note that a lot of this reasoning just goes to the trash bin if you're running 10-man raids. Druids should still be very powerful there, just not as overpowered as right now.

[arx]

Well that ended up being a wall.

To avoid cluttering the post even more: as the basis for analysis, I usually use a modified TreeCalcs with a fixed fight length of 360 / 600 seconds, comparing overall healing output. Among other things missing, it doesn't have an overhealing model, which would be hard to do properly anyway.

[Apos]

Thanks for the detailed reply arx. It's at least nice to see that my fears are not unjustified to say the least. Maybe I'm becoming a bit melodramatic on this one,but I find paladins becoming #1 in anything a bit annoying and disturbing to say the least.If anything I could accept losing our spotlight to holy priests.

It shouldn't be as bad as T11 healer balance, but don't expect to be more than a mediocre healer this time around.

Note that a lot of this reasoning just goes to the trash bin if you're running 10-man raids. Druids should still be very powerful there, just not as overpowered as right now.

I'm running 25 man raids actually,which is why I'm concerned. I've done a couple of raids myself on the PTR (not LFR raids,normal mode) and I saw a big chunk of my output going down the drain. In fact it was impossible to keep up with our priests (extremely skilled players though) and our paladin. Of course I had half my UI and if anything the PTR lag would affect a druid's gameplay the most,but it was a big hit for me.

Personally I admit we were a bit powerful on T12,but double nerfing WG and boosting other healers on top of that seems to be creating a gap between them and druids that won't be easy to overcome.

PS: It's also encouraging that my own theorycrafting doesn't seem to be completely off. I had calculated that it would be an over ~12.5-13% nerf if we take WG as an average of 35% of overall healing. :)
(that's with removing the WG glyph)

Speaking of which: Will you be removing the glyph of wild growth next patch? If my calculations are correct then the glyph in fact nerfs the spell,doesn't it?