Living Seed: Should I spec into it?

Given the changes coming in patch 3.1 and the increase in the value of critical heals for restoration druids, I thought it might be time to talk about this little talent buried deep down in the restoration tree.

As you can see, it takes 35 talent points in the restoration tree to open up the possibility of putting any points into Living Seed. That's a fairly sizable investment of points and indicates a dedication of the character to healing virtually full time. So, like so many others on this blog, this is a post dedicated to restoration druids.

In the last few weeks, I have read a couple of druid bloggers that have mentioned it and debated its merits and flaws. One supported it and one decided it was not worth their time. Unfortunately, I don't remember where I found those opinions. If someone can point me back to them, please let me know as I would really like to link to them in this post.

What follows is a rough analysis of how I feel about Living Seed. During an average raid of Naxxramas, Living Seed generally accounts for between 0.7% and 1.4% of my total healing done.

The stats above came from our latest foray into the Dread Citadel and include all the boss fights for the plague, construct and death knight wings. As you can see, Living seed is responsible for almost exactly 1% of the healing I did on that fight. This much is obvious to the casual observer.

Another thing that is important to note is how low overhealing is for Living Seed. Only 6% of the total healing by it was lost to overhealing. This is important because the heal is actually triggered by damage. So, if it is ticking on a character and they take damage, some (or all) of that damage is immediately restored.

Digging down into the numbers, we can see that it came into play twenty-six times and healed for an average of 1,879 with a maximum of 2,839. The interesting thing comes when comparing that to the number of crits that I had over the same time span. Regrowth crit 58 times for an average of 7,402 while Swiftmend crit 3 times for an average of 11,268. Nourish never crit and I didn't use Healing Touch.

Wait a minute... I crit sixty-one times on heals that qualify for Living Seed and only saw twenty six instances of Living Seed actually healing someone? Yes. And it makes sense if we think about it for a moment. The buff gained by the target when one of our healing spells crits on them lasts only fifteen seconds. If they do not take any damage in those fifteen seconds, the buff fades and the potential healing is lost. Still, only 42% of potential healing happened. Is this good? Well, your mileage may vary. On the particular run we are discussing, I was mostly assigned to raid healing. A druid principally assigned to heal tanks would have a much higher percentage of their crits converted into efficacious Seeds.

Another thing to notice is that the size of the Living Seed heals does not seem to jive with the size of the crits. An average Swiftmend of 11,268 would account for a Living Seed of 3,380. But the data shows that the largest heal I got from a living seed is 2,839. Why is that? It's not overhealing. That would have been reported as such. Well, one of the hidden aspects of the talent is that Living Seed only gets 30% of the amount of the heal that lands and nothing to account for overhealing. Frankly, I think this is unfair, as many crit heals are going to be partially overhealing anyway.

And then I noticed a little note, hidden deep inside the 3.1 patch notes:

So, this problem will no longer rear its ugly head once patch 3.1 goes live. Good!

What does all this mean to us restoration druids? I can't answer that. It depends on individual playstyles and individual conceptions of druid healing. Here is what it tells me: Living Seed is currently a marginal choice for three talent points. When patch 3.1 goes live, it will become slightly stronger, slightly more useful, especially to tank healers, a little less so to raid healers. Crititcal strike rating is still not going to be something that a restoration druid will want to stack, just an incidental marginal benefit from the gear that we choose to get our mainstays: spirit, spell power and mana per 5. Averna had an exceptional post on her blog comparing haste to crit and their value to resto druids. You can find that here.

So what do you all think? Is Living Seed worth it? Why? Why not?

Blog Aesthetics

I have spent a long time in the last few weeks looking over other blogs and taking in a lot of the information that they have to offer. There are some amazing blogs out there that have managed to balance great information with an amusing tone that keeps me coming back.

One thing is consistent though: all the best blogs look great! They all have their own unique flavor and flair that caters to their subject matter, but they are all very pleasing to look at. I'd like to give my little corner of the Internet a face-lift to try to catch up to some of that, but I have no idea where to start. I don't want to start messing with HTML and coding of the templates that I am using, since I don't know the first thing about that, and easy customization options are kinda limited (i.e. not infinite) on blogspot.

So I don't even know where to start. Does anyone have any ideas?

The great Lifebloom nerf of 3.1

Please take this post with a grain of salt. I think I may be overanalyzing things that may or may not translate into the live realms.

So what are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to heal? Tell us Blizz! Every time we think we have it figured out you turn us on our noses and tell us we are doing it wrong.

Single stacks of Lifebloom were a PvP tool. The one that made the resto druid the most feared creature in pre-wrath arenas. No matter what you did, that bloom was going to heal your target and there was nothing you could do about it, short of bursting him/her down or switching to another target.

Triple stacks were the purview of tree druids in PvE. Stack them on the tank and keep them rolling. Do not let them bloom. Do not collect $200. It provided a good amount of HPS (healing per second) and an amazing amount of HPM (healing per mana) giving us both throughput and efficiency. when WotLK hit and we all levelled our healers to 80, we found that higher ranks of lifebloom were not quite as efficient, but still provided both benefits they had enjoyed before. Coupled with a newly useful Regrowth and a recently nerfed, but still useful Wild Growth we learned to respond to burst damage and group damage in raids as well as only bufferring against it.

Enter the great lifebloom nerf of 3.1, stage left. Suddenly, our most efficient heal becomes our least efficient one. Suddenly, the dreaded bloom - the very thing we conditioned ourselves to avoid at all costs - becomes another tool in an already complex arsenal of healing tools. Suddenly, lifebloom in PvP gains a new life and becomes three times more powerful, at the significant cost of its efficiency.

So, I ask again: how are we supposed to heal? Obviously, the Blizzard game developers have something in mind for the druid. But what is it? We are no longer the rolling tank healer that we used to be. The 6-second cooldown on Wild Growth suggests we aren't supposed to be a full-time AoE raid healer. Rejuvenation ticks way too slowly to be an effective response to damage with any kind of burst potential, but can be used, in conjunction with other HoTs as the buffer it has always been thought of. Unglyphed Healing Touch is too slow and too expensive to use continuously and Nourish without a 4-pice Tier 7 set bonus is mediocre both in throughput and efficiency, as Phaele showed in her excellent breakdown a few months ago.

The answer, I think, lies in a combination of all the spells we currently have access to. Will we be the powerhouses of old? No, probably not. We can, if we so choose, continue to roll lifeblooms on tanks, but will face the prospect of spending the second half of any boss fight staring at an empty mana bar. No. Stacking lifebloom will no longer be the answer. Throw single lifebloom stacks around in the raid in a sort of fire-and-forget manner may be more forgiving since their ultimate blooms (whether they heal or overheal) will restore a portion of our mana.

I think the ultimate winners from this nerf will be restoration druids that heavily favor PvP. Their healing is going to see a jump in an arena where efficiency, though still important, takes a back seat to throughput. For the rest of us, Lifebloom in conjunction with a newly crit-friendly Nourish and Rejuvenation, as well as the occasional Regrowth, will characterize our new reactive style of healing and contrast sharply with the proactive approach we were always known for. Time will tell.

Great run through Naxx last night!

This post is just a shoutout to the great group of raiders in the 10-man Naxx I fill in for on occasion. They brought Doomdark along last night and I was fortunate enough to pick up five pieces of gear, including three T7 pieces. WoWWebStats tells us that Doomdark came in last on DPS, just above the tanks, but that was expected. I at least did better than the last time I was there, averaging around 1850dps. Next time will be even better. I think I am going to tweak his build a little bit.

A complete clear of Naxx in just under 3 hours, is a nice achievement. Almost had the Undying too. Had 2 deaths up to Sapphiron, but the bone dragon only had three people up when he died.

So a GREAT BIG thank you to Hyce, Depaul, Sisterlily, Solaerl, Ritavu, Tahkoda, Hodegue, Teimhnean and Daeloan.

Elk/Doomdark

Loken is toast!

I owed him. Last time I went to heroic Halls of Lightning the bastard made me look bad. But revenge, as they say, is a dish best savored cold.

Lets get a bit of background on this. As far as lore goes, Loken is one of the titans (i.e. creators of all the world) and leader of the Iron Dwarves in Northrend. At some point, he bacame disillusioned with the pantheon and was swayed by Yogg-Saron, one of the old gods. He is a big part of the troubles that have brewed in Storm Peaks and one of the reasons the earth giants there (Vanir, also known as Sons of Hodir) are at war with the Storm Giants (Aesir

In game terms, he is the last boss in Halls of Lightning, the higher level of the two five-man instances in Ulduar. He is also responsible for killing more players than any other boss, even those in Naxx - Patchwerk makes #6 on the list. So what does he do that makes him so lethal?

Well, a couple of things. Three actually:

1. His first ability is called Lightning Arc. It is a stacking debuff that does damage to the target and has a chance to apply the debuff to any other characters within a short range.
2. Then there is Pulsing Shockwave. This is a damage wave thatpulses every three seconds and does more and more damage the further one wanders from the boss.
3. His last ability is his most lethal one: Lightning Nova. Every thirty seconds, he will start casting this spell. Once he is finished, everything within a 15 (or maybe 20?) yard range of him is generally annihilated.

So all these abilities combined mean you shouldn't stay close to him and yet you shouldn't get too far away from him either. Of his three abilities, Lightning Nova is easily the most devastating. Anyone caught in it will be lucky if they are left with anything more than a sliver of health and will need immediate, blow-every-cooldown healing to stay alive long enough to get back to where they are supposed to be because of the Pulsing Shockwave.

The strategy I have found works the best is this: ignore the Lightning Arc. That's right. Ignore it. Stack on top of each other. The other characters are your friends. The healer is your BEST friend! Most healers will be able to use multi-target heals (chain heal, circle of healing, wild growth) to keep everyone alive through the damage done by the Lightning Arc. While he channels Lightning Nova everyone needs to move TOGETHER in the same direction to get out of it. If one person goes in a different direction, they will likely die to the Pulsing Shockwave. Staying together accomplishes a couple of things. Everyone stays in range of multi-target heals and it minimizes the time spent in range of the Pulsing Shockwave since, upon finishing his casting, the boss runs to the tank just as the tank runs to him. Rinse and repeat until Loken bites the dust.

Other than encounters where sheer damage output absolutely crushes gear level (Lady Vashj, anyone?) this is, hands down, the most difficult encounter to heal that I have encoutnered in the game. I imagine it would be even more challenging for a healer that cannot heal on the run (the way tree druids can) like a restoration shaman or a holy paladin.

Restoration druid itemization

I'm not sure if I'm back yet. I was looking at some spreads in Wowhead trying to decide what items held the most value for me as a restoration druid as we progress through 10-man Naxxramas and stumbled across an oddity in the itemization for druids.

There seems to be an issue here: there are exactly 3 items at level 200 (item level that drops in 10-man Naxxramas) that do not have wasted stats on them for a resto druid. Only one of them is leather: the tier 7 helm that can be exchanged for the token that drops for Kel'thuzad. The other two are cloth (one priest-only).

What am I calling wasted stats? Haste, crit and hit rating are wasted stats, in my opinion. Haste and crit are not *truly* wasted since they do modify our stats, but their value is minimal when compared to mp5, spirit and spell power. And it seems that the vast majority of items, whether meant for dps casters or healers sports *either* spirit *or* mp5. Not both, except in the very rare occasions I mentioned. Instead, copious amounts of +haste, +crit and +hit are applied to items: in the same subset of items (ilvl 200 items) there are 19 that sport spell power, spirit and haste and 26 that have spell power spirit and critical strike rating.

This isn't a post whining about druid itemization. The point I am trying to make is that Blizzard obviously thinks we should be stacking something on our gear *other* than what I had thought we needed to be stacking. But what? What is our playstyle supposed to be? A session in Naxx last night showed me that we will be spending very little time outside the 5 second rule. And given that our spells cost more, there is no more chain potting, mana becomes an issue that it never was in BC.

Perhaps what we are supposed to do is separate our spirit from our mp5. There are 16 items that have spell power and mp5 without spirit (including a fair amount of duplication: 3 rings, 3 cloaks, 2 helmets and 2 chestpieces) but fewer than that are not more appropriate to other classes than healing druids and priests (and lets be realistic: no raid is going to look kindly upon looting an item with +hit (for example) to a healer when a dpser can use it, and for good reason).

There is a large number of items that have spirit and spell power so stacking spirit is not going to be a problem. But since we will be spending less time outside the 5 second rule, spirit becomes less important for mana regeneration (though still valuable for spell power since tree form adds a percentage of it to our healing power).

How do you guys see it? How should we look to gear ourselves as we get further into the raiding scene? This question is also valid for the other healing classes, though shamans and paladins probably have more choices available to them in mail and plate and I know +crit is a lot more valuable to them than to restoration druids. But I think the question is also valid for priests, since they also tended to stack more spirit on their gear pre-Wrath.

So long for now...

There is too much going on and I have been neglecting my blog. Work is chewing me up and spitting me out on a daily basis and family concerns mean that my home time is spent with them, so, effective immediately, I'm afraid I am going to have to suspend this blog indefinitely.

Thanks for coming by and reading what I had to say and even more thanks to those of you that left messages. It's been a blast while it lasted. See you on the flip side.

Elk