A New Day! Reprioritizing Lifebloom
It’s patch day! I hope everyone is as excited as I am to try out all of the goodies in 3.1 tonight. My plan is to log on as soon as I get home so that the patch downloads, hopefully not sit forever in a queue, visit my trainer to get dual specs, throw up my new resto build and my new boomkin build, then head out to Ulduar with my guild to try our hand at Flame Leviathan. Yipee! The one thing about the patch that has given me the most to be nervous about, of course, is the Great Lifebloom Nerf 2009. /sigh. To prepare, I’ve been trying out some new healing styles lately when raiding. Here’s the good news… the results were excellent!
One thing I’ve tried to do is to raise my awareness of Nourish and incorporate it more frequentlly. I’ve had several runs lately where I put this at the top of my priorities, with pretty strong results, which will be much stronger now that I can talent into a 25% increased chance for this spell to crit. Unfortunately, my most successful attempts at this were on nights that our raid leader didn’t log the raid for WWS, so I don’t have the stats to show you, but I was pleased with an increased healing percentage both in Nourish and in Living Seed, both of which will surely improve much more when using this spell in 3.1.
I do have some stats to show you, however, based upon my attempts to favor Rejuvenation over Lifebloom on a Naxx run this weekend, wherein we downed 4 Horsemen, Sapphiron, and Kel (we had 3 attempts on Sapph and 2 on Kel I think). Here are some stats from a raid in mid-March in which I was basically just doing a pretty standard tank healing rotation, with no changes to my regular lifebloom cycle. On both nights I was assigned to tank heals.
And here are some stats from the run I tried out this weekend on which I was conscientiously favoring Rejuvenate over Lifebloom, and Nourish over Regrowth. I don’t necessarily recommend this balance of spells. I was pretty conscientiously trying to replicate the heals of the first night, changing only my favoring of Rejuv and Nourish over LB and Regrowth.
As you can see, on both nights I came in third on heals and, more importantly, my total amount healed is almost identical, 5,100,000 and change. But the spells I used to get it done are drastically different. On Night 1, 45% of my healing was accomplished with Lifebloom, while only 11% was Rejuvenation. On Night 2, 39% of my healing was Rejuvenation, while only 19% was Lifebloom. Regrowth made up 15% of my heals on Night 1, with Nourish making up only 5%. Nourish hit 12% on Night 2, with Regrowth only accounting for 1% (part of this low number on Regrowth is a reassignment of this spell to a somewhat awkward key binding with Clique. I’m still working out the kinks in my new Clique/Grid UI). I also was trying to de-emphasize my Regrowth use because the talented crit rate on Regrowth will be cut in half in patch 3.1. Basically, by swapping my preference from 2 spells that have been strong pre 3.1 to spells that will be strengthened in 3.1, I was still able to produce the same amount of healing, before those spells were even buffed. Nice, huh?
Now, if we look at my total healing with Nourish on Night 2, 755847, and speculate about this number based upon the added 25% crit chance coming for this spell in 3.1, nice things start to happen. 25% additional crit chance for this spell would have raised my critical strikes using this spell to 50%, producing approximately an extra 86,233 in healing from Nourish alone, assuming that none of that extra healing was overhealing (and my math is right, which I think it is). It also would have produced approximately 26 more critical strikes, which would have resulted in 26 more Living Seeds, which would have had the potential to heal 30% of each critical strike Nourish, including any amount overhealed by those critical strikes, so long as the target took more damage within 15 seconds of the critical strike. Now, imagine if I had the Nourish Glyph. My Nourish healing would have increased by 6% for every HoT currently on my target.
This analysis is so encouraging for me! It indicates that:
1) even without the buffs that are coming, I was able to heal nearly as competitively while favoring Rejuv over Lifebloom and Nourish over Regrowth.
2) Once the patch comes, particularly with the Nourish Glyph, Nourish is going to be a powerhouse heal for us that will more than compensate for the changes to Lifebloom. This will hold up even after I lose my 4pc T7 bonus to Nourish, as the T7 adds 5% bonus to Nourish per HoT, whereas the glyph will add 6%.
3) Rejuv can be competitive with Lifebloom currently, and will be even more attractive with the T8 set bonus, which will add an instant tic to this HoT.
Feel free to poke holes in my assessment here if you see any. I’m something of a fledgling theory crafter, but I think I got this right. Even if my numbers are somewhat off, though, in terms of the amount of healing that would be added with the increased crit chance for Nourish, it is very clear that this spell and Rejuv held their own against LB and Regrowth in my little experiment, and Nourish would have performed much more strongly post 3.1. It seems pretty clear to me that, much as I still lament the LB changes, it is a crutch that I can let go of and actually outperform my old healing styles. So the patch? Bring it on!
There are 11 Comments to "A New Day! Reprioritizing Lifebloom"
I will love Nourish.
I will love Nourish.
I will love Nourish.
I will love Nourish.
I will love Nourish.
Just reminding myself!
Great post Sylly!
Beruthiel’s last blog post..What to do with Val’anyr?
lolz Ber!
Nourish will love you back.
Nourish will love you back.
Nourish will love you back.
Nourish will love you back.
Nourish will love you back.
=)
Great post as always, Syll. I am struggling with the same questions as you are as I’m sure most resto Druids are. Nourish is about to become our staple spell, but we can’t forget regrowth since it’s HoT increases nourish’s effectiveness. My question to you is this: how necessary do you see living seed as being? I posted a few months ago that it was close to being useless given it’s current incarnation and Druid itemization. Will that still be the case post 3.1?
Running Elk’s last blog post..Hunters 101 – part I: Threat
@ Elk, I actually think that Living Seed is going to improve much in the patch for 2 reasons. 1) the addition of crit% to Nourish, causing Living Seed to proc more often as we rely more heavily on that spell, and 2) the fact that the 30% healing that Living Seed will bring will include any overhealing from the spell that critted, making Living Seed stronger in manycases. I’m not going to say that it will be perfectly wonderful, but I think it will definitely be strengthened. I’m definitely adding it to my talent build, but will be watching my WWS reports pretty closely to see how much of an improvement it turns out to be in terms of raw numbers. Also, some of the boss fights in Ulduar have just massive tank damage attached to them. Having Living Seed proccing often will provide a type of a shield somewhat akin to what Disc priests can bring to a fight.
You CAN always heal without nourish if you really want to. You’d likely end up having to roll lifeblooms on ONE tank, and then wild growth + rejuv on the raid.
For primary tank healing… you will learn to love Nourish + Hots. Nourish by it’s self still sucks. However, nourish + HOTs = WIN at tank healing in 3.1
Lissanna’s last blog post..Patch 3.1 resources for all druid specs
agreed on all counts, Lissanna!
Don’t Cry for Lifebloom (Argentina)…
Today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic Lifebloom is mugged with the nerf bat in Europe, just like it has been in the US. I have cared about ze nerf of ze Lifebloom in the past. But zis……
What a nice write-up. It gives me hope that our healing style will still remain strongly proactive, with a change in emphasis on Rejuv and Regrowth.
I’ve also been trying to love Nourish. I healed a Heroic run and struggled to keep the tank up with all my HoTs running. I then remembered Nourish and thought I should probably start using it. It made quite a huge difference, so I’ve been trying to use it more when I need to be more reactive.
I may even consider the Nourish glyph…. Scary stuff
Tiniane’s last blog post..The Leaves are Back
LOL Tiniane! keep me posted how it goes!
[...] a nice write-up on the Rolling HoTs blog with some testing that Sylly has done by changing her rotation before the patch hit. This gives me [...]
Thaaank you for the article.