I'd really like a HoT that does shitall for healing but lasts 30s or whatever as well. Or a talent that makes all of our heals leave said HoT on the target. Just something so we have a HoT we can use to prep for healing that's not expensive as shit.
The problem is they needed to give druids a fast, fairly big, expensive heal to fit into the 3 direct heals paradigm, and they didn't want to give druids yet another healing spell so they decided Regrowth was the best spell to jam into that mold. But unfortunately, as pointed out by seemingly everyone, druids do not have any reasonable way to regularly take advantage of mastery and the nourish +20% "bonus."
I imagine they're a little bit leery of facing the same issue with a hypothetical new, cheaper HoT that they faced with rejuv (and originally lifebloom): it winds up being too easy to just spam it out all over the place.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I think the idea is that the coefficients for it are set really low, so that even having the HoT ticking on everyone in the raid wouldn't give particularly good throughput. I can imagine other reasons they wouldn't want to add it, though.
Are you reading the thread? Nourish is penalized if the target has no HoT. The 20% just catches us up to the other healers. Not to mention our mastery relies on HoTs. The problem is that we lack cheap HoTs. If you have to use a HoT that is almost the same cost as Healing Touch to make Nourish efficient, then it defeats the purpose of having an efficient heal.
Plus the extra GCD burned if you didn't already have a HoT setup. Druid healing just does not seem set up very well now that the class isn't about spewing out HoTs.
Are you reading the thread? Nourish is penalized if the target has no HoT. The 20% just catches us up to the other healers. Not to mention our mastery relies on HoTs. The problem is that we lack cheap HoTs. If you have to use a HoT that is almost the same cost as Healing Touch to make Nourish efficient, then it defeats the purpose of having an efficient heal.
If the problem is that nourish doesn't heal hard or efficiently enough, then just change nourish. Having to toss out some cheap-but-inefficient (which is what it'd have to be) HoT all over the group/raid just to maintain reliable healing throughput doesn't sound like a particularly great gameplay change to me.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Changing Nourish to just be a normal heal instead of having 20% locked away by HoTs was something brought up during Beta and either ignored or shot down.
If something goes wrong during that extra GCD, you can just let Lifebloom pop on the tank
Unless of course the person you're trying to save isn't the tank. Tank healing is actually pretty solid I think, because a rolling stack of lifebloom makes everything better. The problem here is that Nourish is less effective on targets you haven't pre-HoT'ed, which would be everyone except the tank.
A:My druid just hit 80 and has herb/mining. Should I just fly 'em around and mine, or would it be faster money to quest up to 85 and sell all the bad quest rewards and such, or just have him mine/herb to 85 over a few months?
B: He's feral right now, with an offspec resto. I really enjoy resto, so I was thinking of making the main spec boomkin for the synergy there, is levelling as a boomkin feasible?
A:My druid just hit 80 and has herb/mining. Should I just fly 'em around and mine, or would it be faster money to quest up to 85 and sell all the bad quest rewards and such, or just have him mine/herb to 85 over a few months?
B: He's feral right now, with an offspec resto. I really enjoy resto, so I was thinking of making the main spec boomkin for the synergy there, is levelling as a boomkin feasible?
Boomkin's absolutely feasible.
You, sir, are a genius for leveling the gathering professions on your druid. You should level your druid to 82 if you want to get some big time gathering done. At that point, you can hit Deepholm in addition to Hyjal/Vash. 80-82's also pretty quick.
My treenis envy has led me to rolling a druid who is now level 33. I crave Druid healing. I wake up with fever dreams at night thinking about using Wild Growth to heal unavoidable AoE damage and Nourishing those targets for super efficient healing. Paladin healing just isn't doing it for me, though Druid healing is undoubtedly crappy in the PvPs.
So, when I hit 85 I am thinking about investing in Tanking.
I am already leveling Feral, any suggestions?
Expertise until you hit soft cap is a must. Not getting 6% of your attacks dodged is huge for threat and thus your ability to control mobs.
Gem Stam or Stam/Agi or Dodge/stam (notice a pattern?). Current EJ think is to reforge into Dodge as the most valuable tanking stat, Ideally dropping haste as its the weakest stat by far.
You need infected wounds, thick hide, pulverize, and skull bash(there are to many must-interrupts in heroics for me to consider it optional). Endless carnage helps your rotation and tps out.
Ignore the lack of enchants/reforging and shitty green gems. I haven't started raiding yet and have been getting new drops too fast to spend the money.
edit: Except for the Feet. MS enchants can't be over-rated for tanking.
A druid friend of mine says that tanking bear is really hard this time around, and that you "really" have to work on it, although he started playing in WOTLK so I kind f think that maybe he was spoiled by the tank and spank Heroics.
I've never really tanked much before, so this will be a treat.
A druid friend of mine says that tanking bear is really hard this time around, and that you "really" have to work on it, although he started playing in WOTLK so I kind f think that maybe he was spoiled by the tank and spank Heroics.
I've never really tanked much before, so this will be a treat.
I don't think bears are any better or worse off than other tanks. Maybe slightly worse on the mitigation side because low dodge and low crit at the early end of the gear curve is devaluing Savage Defense (compared to shield block, which is a flat 30%? block rate on all incoming attacks), but that's not exactly a deal breaker.
If something goes wrong during that extra GCD, you can just let Lifebloom pop on the tank
Unless of course the person you're trying to save isn't the tank. Tank healing is actually pretty solid I think, because a rolling stack of lifebloom makes everything better. The problem here is that Nourish is less effective on targets you haven't pre-HoT'ed, which would be everyone except the tank.
If they want Nourish to keep the 20% mechanic, then it needs to be tuned to be 90% of a normal heal without a hot and 110% with one so it averages out to being a normal heal. Right now it's 80% of a normal heal without one and 100% with.
If only the class had one, two, or even three other roles...
I don't even understand what you want now. You have a powerful midheal at the cost of time. It's Nourish with a HoT on the target.
Nourish is pointless if you have to cast an expensive HoT on the target. Lifebloom is our only cheap HoT, but it has a one-person limit.
It's not just Nourish, but our whole class mastery that revolves around HoTs. But, mana-management is the name of game. While a Rejuv and Healing Touch together are a lot of healing because Healing Touch can get +20% extra, I to spend a lot of mana to achieve that. It defeats the purpose of even having Nourish if I have to spend gobs of mana to get where other classes are.
Yes, we can just tweak Nourish, but I have a feeling Blizzard won't let us get any kind of extra bonus from Nourish. They don't want the midheals being too good. So we might be stuck with a penalty.
More flexibility with HoTs is a good thing anyways. Right now it's two HoTs that are around Healing Touch cost and our AoE.
So I haven't been following the changes from wotlk to cata for druids. My 80 druid has both "feral" gear and "spell" gear. Can anyone give me a brief explanation of the differences in leveling with feral versus balance? How has healing and tanking changed for raiding?
I really don't expect a thorough explanation but I'd appreciate any information that might help my decisionmaking, as gear specialization is a bigger deal for hybrid classes like druids/shamans.
Also, you can see minerals and herbs on the minimap simultaneously now? Goddammit. I really don't feel like giving up Grand Master+transmute alchemy on my druid, but the utility of farming herb+mining is just so great. But if I'm making this decision I should make it now, before sinking time into leveling alchemy. Ugh.
Both are perfectly viable. I leveled as balance and has no issues. I didn't even have to drink, opting to use Innervate whenever I hit 50% mana. If anything, Balance might be better due to superior healing and the fact you are in plate all the time. Mobs hit hard now. That said, feral is perfectly fine for leveling. RESTO, however, is god-awful. This is not even a "oh it kinda sucks but you can handle it" deal. Doing dailies once, I forget to swap specs and killing one mob was a time-consuming and cruel process that left me low on HP and mana.
Gear for Balance/Resto is almost the same. Moonkins convert spirit into hit on a 1:1 basis and they have fairly similar value for stats. The only real difference is that Resto may want more spirit than Moonkin needs and, of course, items that specifically trigger off heals or damage.
Feral scales entirely off agility now, and Feral Attack Power is gone. We use the weapon dps now to determine cat/bear dps. So any strength gear you have is diminished in its usefulness.
Tanking hasn't changed dramatically, but the biggest change of note is that AoE tanking isn't as faceroll as it was in Wrath. You'll find tanking multiple mobs annoying until you get Thrash, our AoE bleed, at 81. It's also key to be less conservative with your defensive cooldowns. Don't hesitate to use Barkskin a lot.
And that is because healing has radically changed. Our mana pools are massive along with everybody's health pool. Yet our heals have barely increased in effectiveness. A healing touch may heal a tank for about 10-20% of a tank's HP depending on factors. And heals are expensive now. You will oom if you spam rejuv and healing touch. It's all about careful analyzing the situation and knowing what heal to use when. You do not have to keep everybody at 100% all of the time, and it will not be uncommon to have most of the group hovering at 50-75% HP. There's quite a learning curve here, but it's always very rewarding.
Leveling as feral I found that the quickest thing to do was to mangle, rake and rip at however many combo points I was at and then move on to the next mob. Used barkskin pretty much on cooldown and rarely needed to do more than toss a rejuve up if I fell below 75% (maybe every 5-6 mobs? it varied by zone and level). Haven't played balance, but feral druids are kinda feeling like the new afflication warlocks in some senses.
As far as tanking goes, if you're thinking about trying it I'd suggest waiting until you get to 81 and have thrash. Tanking AoE pulls without it is misery. Other than that, the previous suggestion to more or less keep barkskin on cooldown in the new stuff is a good one. Also, know what CC options your group has and use them heavily. Taking a pull from 4 mobs to 3 will keep you from wiping, taking it down to 2 will be even better.
So, I'm playing a druid for the first time since launch and I can't for the life of me figure this out. I'm at level 23 or so and I finally have ravage. It took that for me to notice that unlike my rogue, when I go into 'stealth' (prowl) I don't get a new hotbar for my 'in stealth' abilities. Is this normal? I always thought that stealth classes got a fresh hotbar for when they were in stealth? It's pretty annoying if not.
Nope, no add ons at all and it still doesn't bring up a new bar. I think it might be because blizzard considers prowl a "spell" and not a "stance" like stealth is for a rogue.
Probably. In which case I strongly recommend something like bartender. With not too much work you should be able to make it look just like the default ui but it can change all the hotbars when you change forms or prowl (although that's a little more work to set up than just the first bar)
Each form for a druid has a different bar and since the game only has so many action bar slots it can give out it ends up so we can't have a stealth bar. Luckily we only have two stealth-only skills so you can just macro them instead of needing a stealth bar.
I found feral to be more bearable (oh ho) in late Cata levelling. Boomkin was taking too long to kill the high HP mobs and I had to either punt them with typhoon a short distance or take it in the face since entangling roots is now an easily breakable CC. With feral I could just stunlock dudes, regularly blow energy cooldowns and occasionally toss out a free heal. Felt a lot easier.
My druid just hit level 10 and got his first talent point, so I shoved it in balance.
Can someone explain the eclipse mechanic? Does it always alternate between lunar and solar? Or am I doing something wrong?
Short version: your spells either provide points towards lunar or solo and the more you are toward one side the harder the other side hits. Best plan seems to be go all the way to one side then work your way back (ie: starfire till you hit eclipse then wrath till you hit the other. rinse, repeat). Not sure if the dots push you one way or the other, might want to check with someone who has played balance for that
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that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
If the problem is that nourish doesn't heal hard or efficiently enough, then just change nourish. Having to toss out some cheap-but-inefficient (which is what it'd have to be) HoT all over the group/raid just to maintain reliable healing throughput doesn't sound like a particularly great gameplay change to me.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Unless of course the person you're trying to save isn't the tank. Tank healing is actually pretty solid I think, because a rolling stack of lifebloom makes everything better. The problem here is that Nourish is less effective on targets you haven't pre-HoT'ed, which would be everyone except the tank.
A:My druid just hit 80 and has herb/mining. Should I just fly 'em around and mine, or would it be faster money to quest up to 85 and sell all the bad quest rewards and such, or just have him mine/herb to 85 over a few months?
B: He's feral right now, with an offspec resto. I really enjoy resto, so I was thinking of making the main spec boomkin for the synergy there, is levelling as a boomkin feasible?
SniperGuyGaming on PSN / SniperGuy710 on Xbone Live
Boomkin's absolutely feasible.
You, sir, are a genius for leveling the gathering professions on your druid. You should level your druid to 82 if you want to get some big time gathering done. At that point, you can hit Deepholm in addition to Hyjal/Vash. 80-82's also pretty quick.
BUT YOU CAN BE A GIANT TREE
I MUST HAVE IT
Expertise until you hit soft cap is a must. Not getting 6% of your attacks dodged is huge for threat and thus your ability to control mobs.
Gem Stam or Stam/Agi or Dodge/stam (notice a pattern?). Current EJ think is to reforge into Dodge as the most valuable tanking stat, Ideally dropping haste as its the weakest stat by far.
You need infected wounds, thick hide, pulverize, and skull bash(there are to many must-interrupts in heroics for me to consider it optional). Endless carnage helps your rotation and tps out.
Keep Demo Roar UP!
This is Me.
Ignore the lack of enchants/reforging and shitty green gems. I haven't started raiding yet and have been getting new drops too fast to spend the money.
edit: Except for the Feet. MS enchants can't be over-rated for tanking.
A druid friend of mine says that tanking bear is really hard this time around, and that you "really" have to work on it, although he started playing in WOTLK so I kind f think that maybe he was spoiled by the tank and spank Heroics.
I've never really tanked much before, so this will be a treat.
I don't think bears are any better or worse off than other tanks. Maybe slightly worse on the mitigation side because low dodge and low crit at the early end of the gear curve is devaluing Savage Defense (compared to shield block, which is a flat 30%? block rate on all incoming attacks), but that's not exactly a deal breaker.
And it's not like the current HoTs don't do anything. I just want a powerful midheal at the cost of time rather than a weak midheal.
I don't even understand what you want now. You have a powerful midheal at the cost of time. It's Nourish with a HoT on the target.
But it is making Druid fresh for me again, which is rather nice. I never seriously played balance in BC or Wrath.
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It's not just Nourish, but our whole class mastery that revolves around HoTs. But, mana-management is the name of game. While a Rejuv and Healing Touch together are a lot of healing because Healing Touch can get +20% extra, I to spend a lot of mana to achieve that. It defeats the purpose of even having Nourish if I have to spend gobs of mana to get where other classes are.
Yes, we can just tweak Nourish, but I have a feeling Blizzard won't let us get any kind of extra bonus from Nourish. They don't want the midheals being too good. So we might be stuck with a penalty.
More flexibility with HoTs is a good thing anyways. Right now it's two HoTs that are around Healing Touch cost and our AoE.
I really don't expect a thorough explanation but I'd appreciate any information that might help my decisionmaking, as gear specialization is a bigger deal for hybrid classes like druids/shamans.
Also, you can see minerals and herbs on the minimap simultaneously now? Goddammit. I really don't feel like giving up Grand Master+transmute alchemy on my druid, but the utility of farming herb+mining is just so great. But if I'm making this decision I should make it now, before sinking time into leveling alchemy. Ugh.
Gear for Balance/Resto is almost the same. Moonkins convert spirit into hit on a 1:1 basis and they have fairly similar value for stats. The only real difference is that Resto may want more spirit than Moonkin needs and, of course, items that specifically trigger off heals or damage.
Feral scales entirely off agility now, and Feral Attack Power is gone. We use the weapon dps now to determine cat/bear dps. So any strength gear you have is diminished in its usefulness.
Tanking hasn't changed dramatically, but the biggest change of note is that AoE tanking isn't as faceroll as it was in Wrath. You'll find tanking multiple mobs annoying until you get Thrash, our AoE bleed, at 81. It's also key to be less conservative with your defensive cooldowns. Don't hesitate to use Barkskin a lot.
And that is because healing has radically changed. Our mana pools are massive along with everybody's health pool. Yet our heals have barely increased in effectiveness. A healing touch may heal a tank for about 10-20% of a tank's HP depending on factors. And heals are expensive now. You will oom if you spam rejuv and healing touch. It's all about careful analyzing the situation and knowing what heal to use when. You do not have to keep everybody at 100% all of the time, and it will not be uncommon to have most of the group hovering at 50-75% HP. There's quite a learning curve here, but it's always very rewarding.
Place them in popular LoS areas in the arena. Ruin or damage opportunities to Bandage/Drink/Channel.
As far as tanking goes, if you're thinking about trying it I'd suggest waiting until you get to 81 and have thrash. Tanking AoE pulls without it is misery. Other than that, the previous suggestion to more or less keep barkskin on cooldown in the new stuff is a good one. Also, know what CC options your group has and use them heavily. Taking a pull from 4 mobs to 3 will keep you from wiping, taking it down to 2 will be even better.
Can someone explain the eclipse mechanic? Does it always alternate between lunar and solar? Or am I doing something wrong?
Next OP is literally going to say "This is the WoW Druid thread." and nothing more.