Druid Heal!

compendium |kəmˈpendēəm|noun ( pl. -diums or -dia |-dēə|) a collection of concise but detailed information about a particular subject, esp. in a book or other publication.
• a collection of things, esp. one systematically gathered : the program is a compendium of outtakes from our archives.

Sooooo, more Cataclysm! Now the dust has settled over the Druid preview and the loss of our precious Tree form (in its current state) I started looking into stuff. I will collect all the info and put it in my compendium, for all of you to read back! More to come later today/tomorrow!

Cheers,

Raaff.

Here are the changes notable for restoration druids in Patch 3.1 (remember NOT FINAL):

Glyphs

• Glyph of Rebirth – Players resurrected by Rebirth are returned to life with 100% health. (Old: Increases the amount of health on a character brought back to life via Rebirth by 100%.);
• Glyph of Wild Growth  – Wild Growth now affects up to 6 targets;
• Glyph of Nourish  – Your Nourish heals an additional 6% for each of your heal over time effects present on the target;
• Glyph of Barkskin – Reduces the chance you’ll be critically hit by melee attacks by 1 to 0% while Barkskin is active.

Skills

• Abolish Poison now ticks every 3 secs for 12 secs. (Previously ticked every 2 secs for 8 secs).

Talents

• Improved Mark of the Wild (Tier 1) now also increases all of your total attributes by 1/2%.
• Intensity (Tier 3) now allows 17/33/50% of mana regeneration to continue while casting. (Previously 10/20/30%)
• Improved Regrowth (Tier 6) renamed Nature’s Bounty. Increases the critical effect chance of your Regrowth and Nourish spells by 5/10/15/20/25%. (Previously increased just regrowth crit by 10/20/30/40/50%)
• Replenish (Tier 9) renamed Revitalize;
• New Talent* Improved Barkskin, Tier 10, 2 point talent – Increases the damage reduction granted by your Barkskin spell by 5/10%, and increases resistance to Dispel mechanics by 30/60% while under the effect of Barkskin.

The notable changes are the buffs to Nourish! The new Talent Nature’s Bounty Nourish becomes a very good heal although the same talent is nerfed for Regrowth (from 50% crit to 25% crit). But it should mean that nourish will crit for about the same values as regrowth only without the HoT, which gives us a cheaper spell then a full (glyphed) regrowth! So instead of renewing regrowths will most likely cast Nourish when Regrowth is up. Another buff is the Glyph of Nourish: +6% for every HoT present, which is Imba with the T7 4 set bonus + 5% per HoT, effectively making +11% per HoT! Which could mean a max of +44% to Nourish (Regrowth, Lifebloom, Rejuvenation and Wild Growth). More crit and more healing to Nourish, 3.1 is the Nourish Patch for us Druids…

The other changes were already known (revitalize, intensity) or aren’t notable (sorry people, this is a PvE blog). I will update this post when there’s more to tell!

Want to compare stats of your old gear with the gear in patch 3.1? Or do you want to know how the changes to mana regen will affect your druid? See my mana regen calculator / gear compare calculator!

Update: I have Raaff on the PTR (Raaffie on Brill test realm), and the calculators seems correct with my values of Spirit/Intellect and MP5!.

Which spells are we going to use in WotLK? What will be my main spell? What will be the difference between raids and other dungeons?

Ghostcrawler (a Blizzard Developer) wrote an interesting note on the beta forums:

In our minds, your go-to spells when healing anything bigger than a 5-player group are Rejuv, Regrowth and Lifebloom. You are probably not benefiting your raid the most if you are chaining Healing Touch on the tank while the paladin is trying to keep everyone up with Beacon of Light.

Healing Touch, Swiftmend and Wild Growth are all very useful spells. But they are intended to be used in smaller group or when something unusual happens in a raid. If the entire group takes a lot of damage at once, that’s a good time for Wild Growth. If a melee dps class is very wounded and you don’t have time for the bloom and Swiftmend is on cooldown, go for the Healing Touch.

If any class is the “fill in the gap” healer, it’s the Holy priest. Their strength is in versatility — they have single-target heals, group heals, instant heals and hots. The standard (but by no means only) way to heal a raid is to have a Holy paladin on the tank along with a Resto druid, have a Resto shammy AE heal the group, and then put the Holy priest wherever you need them. We are also trying to get the Disc priest into a role similar to the paladin, but based more around damage avoidance than efficient, quick heals.

Nourish is supposed to be a Flash Heal — fast but expensive. It may be too fine a line for a class that already has Swiftmend and a (much improved) Regrowth.