Nourishing Nourish: how to buff the go-to spell of 3.1

If you take a little meander about the official forums, you’ll certainly find many a resto druid lamenting the changes to come in Patch 3.1 to our lovely little Lifebloom, and casting aspersions upon Nourish, which has received multiple buffs since its inception as Blizzard works to make it more and more attractive.  Whether you love it or hate it, though, ignore it in 3.1 to the likely detriment of your best possible healing.  So… how do you make the most of it?

Before I move into the explanation of the various ways to buff Nourish, I’d like to note that I am in no way suggesting that a player focus every decision about their build, gear, and playing style to buff this one spell.  One of the beauties of playing a Restoration Druid is having such a rich aresenal of healing spells and capabilities on which to draw.  It would be ludicrous to buff one to the detriment of all others.  My intent here is to provide a comprehensive list of all of the possible ways that one CAN buff Nourish, hoping that others will then be able to pick and choose wisely from this list the ways in which they, personally, will work to strengthen this spell if doing so is important to them.

Disclaimer out of the way.  On with the post.

Stats

Almost all of the stats that show up on Resto gear will affect Nourish in one way or another.  Some, obviously, are of more importance than others.   However, let’s give them all a once over to better understand their relationship to this spell.  Knowing how your gear choices specifically affect this spell will help you to make good decisions in terms of how best to buff it.

Spirit – Spirit for us Trees is most significantly tied to our mana regeneration, which affects Nourish only insomuch as it may increase the number of times you are able to cast it without going out of mana.  However, if you have talented fully into Improved Tree of Life, your spell power will be buffed by 15% of your spirit,  making the healing of all of your spells, including Nourish, stronger.

Intellect – Intellect makes our mana pool larger, again just increasing the number of spells, including Nourish, that we can cast before running out of mana.  In addition, however, one point of Intellect improves our chance for our heals to critically strike by .006%.  Nourish is one of our spells that is capable of critically striking.

Spell Power – Spell power increases the effect of spells, so that the more spell power on your gear, the greater your heals, including Nourish, will be.  Nourish, when cast by a Druid with no talents to improve it, has a Spell Power co-efficient of .671, whereas with Master Shapeshifter, Gift of Nature, Improved Rejuvenation, Empowered Touch, Empowered Rejuvenation, Genesis and Tree of Life active, the coefficient climbs to .814 (see section on talents).

Critical Strike – Nourish is one of the Resto spells that is capable of a critical strike.  Spell critical strikes increase the healing of an untalented Nourish by 150%.  45.91 critical strike rating increases your chance your spells critically hit by 1%.  Therefore, stacking critical strike rating will improve the chance that your Nourish heals for 150%, rather than 100%.

Note:  In addition to the increased healing of Nourish itself, a critical striking Nourish, if a Druid has specced into Living Seed, has between a 33% and 100% chance of proccing a Living Seed based upon how many points are spent on the Living Seed talent.  The Living Seed will deliver healing equal to 30% of the critical strike Nourish the next time the target takes damage within 15 seconds.  In 3.1, this 30% will include any amount overhealed by the critically striking Nourish.

Haste – Spell Haste on gear acts in two ways.  First, it reduces the global cooldown between casting spells from the standard 1.5 seconds to a minimum of 1 second.  In addition, it reduces the cast time of spells.  Druids who have 5/5 points in Gift of the Earth Mother currently need 655 haste rating, or 19.98%, to reduce their global cooldown on certain instant cast spells to 1 second.   Once Druids have reached this “soft cap” of haste to where their global cooldown is reduced to one second, the stat does not scale well, so it is agreed that they generally should not stack haste past this point.  This whole explanation is to say that Nourish can be cast more quickly and more often the closer a Tree gets to reaching the Haste soft cap.

Talents

I am not including a full discussion of each talent here, just noting how each listed talent will buff Nourish.

Restoration Talents:

Improved Mark of the Wild - Improving all your attributes by 1-2% when buffed with MOW or GOW will have obvious positive effects on all of your spells, including Nourish.

Nature’s Focus – Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Nourish by 23/46/70%.  Basically, this makes it easier to get your Nourish cast off while taking damage.

Subtlety – Reduces the threat generated by Nourish and other Resto spells by 10/20/30%.  Not a huge buff, as healer aggro is largely a thing of the past in WOLK, but a buff just the same.

Master Shapeshifter – Increases all of your healing by 2/4%.

Tranquil Spirit – Reduces the mana cost of Nourish by 2/4/6/8/10%.

Improved Rejuvenation – this talent actually does not buff Nourish in any way.  However, it is a prerequisite for Nature’s Bounty, which does.

Nature’s Swiftness – can turn a Nourish into an instant cast spell in an emergency.  3 minute cooldown.

Gift of Nature – increases healing of all spells by 2/4/6/8/10%.

Nature’s Bounty – increases the critical strike chance of Nourish by 5/10/15/20/25%.

Natural Perfection – increases the critical strike chance of Nourish by 1/2/3%.

Living Seed – gives a Nourish critical strike a 33/66/100% chance to plant a living seed on the target, which will heal for 30% of the critical strike Nourish the next time the target is hit within 15 seconds.

Empowered Rejuvenation – Does not buff Nourish, but is a prerequisite for Tree of Life form and Improved Tree of Life form, which do.

Tree of Life form – Improves healing received by your self/party/raid by 6%, including when healed with, you guessed it, Nourish.

Improved Tree of Life form – Increases your healing spell power by 5/10/15%.

Balance Talents:

Moonglow – Reduces the mana cost of Nourish by 3/6/9%.

Nature’s Majesty – Increases the critical strike chance of Nourish by 2/4%.

Nature’s Grace – Nourish critical strikes will have a 33/66/100% chance of increasing your spell casting speed by 20% for 3 seconds.

Gear

Gear that buffs Nourish should, obviously, be buit around the stats previously discussed in this post.  Stat stacking for Nourish could follow a number of hierarchies depending in which way you want to buff the spell (i.e. mana regen, healing power, critical strike chance, spell casting time).  In my own estimation, were I stacking stats to buff Nourish, I would probably follow the hierarchy of:

5) spirit
4) haste
3) intellect
4) crit
5) spell power.

That hierarcy is, of course, debatable.  There is one gear attribute currently available in the game outside of the regular stats that can be found on gear that offers a buff to Nourish.  The 4 piece T7 set bonus offers a 5% bonus to the healing of Nourish for every HoT that is currently up on the target.  Because of this bonus, my recommendation is to pick up all five pieces of T7 or T7.5 gear if you can get them, so that you can swap out items with upgrades from Ulduar while still holding onto this bonus as long as possible if your goal is to fully buff Nourish.

Glyphs

In 3.1 the Glyph of Nourish will become available.  This Glyph will heal an additional 6% for each HoT currently on the target.  Stacking this Glyph with the T7 4pc. bonus will make Nourish an incredibly efficient spell for you as you work on replacing your T7 gear with T8 gear.  Once you’ve gotten your T8 set, you can still rely on this Glyph to make your Nourish spell work incredibly well in tandem with your HoTs.

Enchants

Your best bets for improving Nourish in terms of your enchants are to find enchants that increase spell power and crit rating.  It may not be in your best interests to use your enchant slots in this way in terms of other considerations that will become more important in 3.1, however, such as mana regen and conservation.  However, should you have these other areas under control, you might turn to the following, which represent the best chance per slot to buff Nourish with enchants:

*List excludes profession specific enchants

Head -

Arcanum of Burning Mysteries – Kirin Tor (revered) – +30 spell power, +20 critical strike rating
Arcanum of Blissful Mending – Kirin Tor (revered) – +30 spell power, +8 mp5

Shoulders -

Greater Inscription of the Storm – Hodir (revered) – +24 spell power, +15 critical strike rating
Greater Inscription of the Crag – Hodir (revered) – +24 spell power, +6 mp5

Chest -

Powerful Stats – +10 to all stats

Bracers -

Greater Stats – +6 to all stats

Gloves -

Exceptional Spellpower – +28 spell power

Legs -

Brilliant Spellthread – +50 spell power, +20 spirit

Feet -

Icewalker – +12 critical strike rating, +12 hit rating (yes, the +hit is a total waste here.  However, this is the only boot enchant that includes an attribute that would buff the performance of Nourish, so I included it, anyway.)

Weapon -

Mighty Spellpower – +63 spell power

Gems

The gems that can best help to improve Nourish’s performance are as follows:

Runed red gems – +spell power
Smooth yellow gems – +crit
Quick yellow gems – +haste
Reckless orange gems – +spell power and haste
Potent orange gems – spell power and crit
Royal purple gems – +spell power and mp5
Purified purple gems – +spell power and spirit
Sundered green gems – +crit and mp5
Misty green gems – +crit and spirit

Consumables

You can also buff Nourish temporarily with consumables.  Although improving your critical strike chance would buff Nourish, and thus I’ve included those foods here, I’d caution against choosing crit over spell power buff foods, as crit will buff a limited number of your spells, whereas spell power will buff all of them.

Spellpower Foods
Firecracker Salmon+46 Spell Power, +40 Stamina
Fish Feast +80 AP, +46 Spell Power, +40 Stamina
Great Feast +60 AP, +35 Spell Power, +40 Stamina
Shoveltusk Seak +35 Spell Power, +30 Stamina
Smoked Salmon +35 Spell Power, +40 Stamina
Tender Shoveltusk Steak +46 Spell Power, +40 Stamina

Critical Strike Food
Poached Nettlefish +30 Critical Strike Rating, +40 Stamina 
Spiced Wyrm Burger +40 Critical Strike Rating, +40 Stamina
Spicy Blue Nettlefish +40 Critical Strike Rating, +40 Stamina
Succulent Orca Stew +30 Critical Strike Rating, +30 Stamina
Wyrm Delight +30 Critical Strike Rating, +30 Stamina

Flasks
Flask of the Frost Wyrm – 125 spellpower

Elixirs
Spellpower Elixir – 58 spellpower (battle elixir)

Healing Style

Arguably, the strongest means by which you can buff your Nourish spell post patch 3.1 is with your playing style.  The spell, unbuffed or talented, automatically heals for 20% more if there is any HoT active on the target.  Keep this in mind as you heal now, and practice when you can incorporating this knowledge into your playstyle.  If someone has taken damage, and there is a possibility that they will take more, try throwing out a one stack Lifebloom on them followed up by a Nourish, rather than just going straight to the Nourish spell.  If you have or intend to have the T7 4pc set bonus and/or the Nourish Glyph post 3.1, try stacking up an array of HoTs on your tank now and polishing him off with a Nourish when you see spike damage.  You will not yet get the full benefits of doing so, but working on the playstyle now will only make you stronger when 3.1 comes. 

You can also do things to make Nourish more accessible.  Move it to a prime place on your casting bar so that you remember it.  Assign it to one of your primary mouse keys if you use Grid or Healbot (I recently switched Healing Touch from right click to shift+right click, and moved Nourish from shift +right click to right click to make it an easier spell to cast).

Consider topping off raid members with a Nourish rather than a HoT if time permits.

Do whatever you can now to move this spell forward in your rotation and in your consciousness so that the learning curve will be less steep in terms of incorporating it once it becomes the new go-to spell in 3.1.

I’llclose by again saying that I am certainly not advocating every possible buff for Nourish, even though I’ve tried to list them all inclusively here.  What I’d recommend, instead, is careful consideration of the improved weight and attraction of this spell, and judicious choices amongst these many possibilities for strengthening it in order to help it strike a healthy balance in your new iteration as of 3.1.

Similar Posts:

• A New Day! Reprioritizing Lifebloom
• Jewel Studded: Resto Gems in Patch 3.2
• Field Report: First Analysis of Druid Healing post-3.1
• Spoils of Conquest – Badge Gear for 3.1
• Embracing Empowered Touch for 3.2