I am currently blogging with this song playing in the background.
Anyway, a whole plethora of patch 4.3 stuff about to debut soon. I’m on the PTR again (Anasterian, Matticus, Alliance side) so if you’re bored or want a place to hang out, feel free to look me up.
Patch 4.3 in general
First thing I did when I logged in was look for the Transmog guy. Converted the tier 12 level stuff I was wearing into the Avatar set. The short hand term for Transmogrifying is now apparently known as ‘Mogging. You can find the Ethereals providing this service in the outer ring of the Cathedral Square. 100 gold for me to drop individual cloth items into void storage. Interesting gold sink. Remember to Mog your stuff first before dumping it into storage.
Favourite character ever. Kupo!
Patch 4.3 healing
I feel for the Resto Druids but healing output was a little high. This’ll probably be the first on the list of Druid changes anyway. Didn’t see the glyph change coming though. We’ll have a few weeks to see how that plays out. Resto Shamans and Holy Paladins received a major amount of changes.
Resto Druid
- Wild Growth healing value has been reduced by 20%.
- Glyph of Wild Growth now also increases the cooldown on Wild Growth by 2 seconds.
I can feel every non-Druid healer just pumping their fists. Anyone else have the feeling that there might be more on the way?
Holy Paladins
- Divine Plea now grants a charge of Holy Power.
- Holy Radiance has been revamped – Imbues a friendly target with radiant energy, healing that target and all party or raid members within 10 yards for 50 to 61 and another 683 every 1 sec for 3 sec and grants a charge of Holy Power. 40 yd range, 40% of base mana, 3 sec cast
- Seal of Insight no longer restores the paladin’s mana.
- Clarity of Purpose now also affects Holy Radiance.
- Infusion of Light now also affects Holy Radiance.
- Judgements of the Pure now also increases your mana regeneration from Spirit while in combat by 10/20/30%.
- Light of Dawn now heals up to 6 targets, up from 5.
- Paragon of Virtue now reduces the cooldown of Divine Protection by 15/30 sec, up from 10/20 sec.
- Speed of Light no longer reduces the cooldown of Holy Radiance.
- Tower of Radiance got an extra effect – In addition, casting Holy Radiance will always generate one charge of Holy Power.
- Glyph of Light of Dawn now lowers the number of targets to 4, instead of increasing targets to 6, but increases healing by 25%.
Holy Priests
- Divine Hymn now heals up to 5 targets, up from 3. Maximum of 20 heals, up from 12.
- Atonement will now account for the target enemy’s combat reach when calculating proper range, enabling it to be used on large creatures such as Ragnaros and Ala’kir.
- State of Mind has been replaced with Heavenly Voice Increases the healing done by your Divine Hymn spell by 50/100%, and reduces the cooldown by 2.5/5 minutes.
- Glyph of Circle of Healing now also increases the mana cost of Circle of Healing by 20%.
While I was hoping for another cooldown, I’m cool with a really buffed Divine Hymn. FIVE TARGETS!? Yeesh! Liking the new Heavenly Voice talent. Had to figure out how to retalent a little. I came up with something like this:
But I suppose I should find room for Lightwell with that tier 13 set bonus. Perhaps I’ll axe a point from Surge of Light. I wonder if I need to rethink the Circle of Healing glyph.
Resto Shaman
- Ancestral Healing got an extra effect – heals you cast increase allies’ maximum health by 10% of the amount healed, up to a maximum of 10% of their health.
- Cleansing Waters – The heal effect can only occur once every 6 seconds.
- Riptide healing effect has been increased by 50%, from 3725 to 5585.
- Wind Shear now has a 25 sec cooldown, up from 6 sec.
Won’t be able to count on Resto Shaman interrupts on demand anymore. This looks like it will cripple PvP shamans (and they mentioned it in their explanations post). But a numbers buff to Riptide and the extra effect to Ancestral Healing looks real cool. Have a feeling that this is a better change for 10 man raiding shamans.
Tier 13
Love it! I may not Mog this at all! Helm itself looks pretty stellar. I believe the female Priests have only half of the mask covering their face.
End Time instance
I really hope they’re not done here yet. It seems a little undertuned. We killed one of the bosses in there and Jaina’s Staff dropped. Looks like this place will be dropping 378 items. Nice way to reset the gear floor and get players caught up. I’m going to do a little more runs in there but it just didn’t do anything for me. The instance is still incomplete but so I’m looking for more stuff.
So, how’re you feeling on the changes, the tier, and the new instances?
“I can feel every non-Druid healer just pumping their fists. Anyone else have the feeling that there might be more on the way?”
Really? this is your comment? A little high yes, but this is “to the ground” on the one thing that the devs said was the druid’s flavor; throughput (remember, no mitigation abilities). Druids went from “needing aoe throughput help” (4.0.6 wg changes) and needing a mitigation cooldown as both said by the devs to back before the former and using the reason they didn’t them the cooldown against them. Then having ghost crawler frame the glyph nerf as the expanded choice druids have been looking for in their glyph selection! I mean he’s right, druids running with an empty glyph slot is now a HPS increase 🙂
As with everything lets see how things turn out over the life cycle of the PTR but for now the devs have taken druids back to a state that they just recently said was a problem and made changes because of it.
Haha, it was a completely kneejerk reaction. But yes, I suspect we’ll be seeing more balance on the way. Surely I can’t be the only one that’s been staring at Druid ass the entire time ^^. My bitterness has absolutely nothing to do with that girl who rejected me who happens to play a Resto Druid. Absolutely nothing at all.
I’m more interested in the Paladin and Shaman changes. The stuff looks good in theory, but I wonder how it’s going to play out.
TO be honest i couldnt agree more with that comment , last night our moonkin stepped in to heal a few Hc bosses after our pala lost net access, he’s healed raids before but not since wrath.
He then preceded to stomp all over the other healers throughput , while claiming ” this fights easy” and ending the fight at 40% mana … im all for classes being viable but when he can push 25k hps without much experience of the fights urgh.
~Balance be damnned nerf that druid~
😉
The nerf to druid output is only really justified if you look at raw numbers and don’t consider how the healing actually occurs. The HoTs themselves are strong enough to get large meter numbers but in the grand scheme of things you need either a plethora of hots from multiple druids stacking or a good burst healer or 2 to complement the HoT effect. This just shows Blizzard caving to the e-Peen meter whores that don’t really under stand meters other than the 1 dimensional number that by itself is meaningless.
Question about the Paladin changes? Does the change to seal of light, also mean judging the seal as well? As in, is it no longer neccessary to judge on CD, but instead, Judging only when the haste/regen buff is about to fall off?
yes, you should only need to judge like every 30s now.
Hasn’t the gear floor been raised like 3-4x already in this expansion.. As a more casual player I like this but it seems a little much..
If I did the math right I’ll be losing about 6% total healing which is a bummer but after looking at all the new toys the other healers getting makes me a little jealous.
Last thing its about the healing team and not the meters guys 😛
Want to add that the guy that said his boomkin went resto and was doing 25k hps that’s what the total of my 3 man healing team can put out in firelands so calling BS
Total hps last night in firelands with 3 healers 25,301 avg
I have seen a resto druid pull 25K HPS on heroic Rhyolith 10man alongside a Discipline priest doing 16K HPS. This is not BS at all.
Still seems high for a boomkin that respec resto for the night but I was wrong on heroics with two heals the healing can get that high
Amusing thing about HPS is that it can easily be inflated if the raid team is taking more damage than they should. On a fight like Rhyolith, I could easily tell everyone in the raid to always take a hit from magma flow lines if they’re at 100% health so that my Wild Growth and Rejuv does considerably less over healing and thus more HPSe, leading to a sure fire ranking on WoL.
On the other hand, if a raid team is not getting hit by any magma flows, the tank picks up all adds before they hit anyone, and raid members are using damage mitigation abilities for each stomp (Mana Shield, Deterence, Barkskin, etc.), then the amount to heal is significantly less and thus less HPS.
Its all relative and substantiated if you look at the top rankings in WoL. On the Rhyolith example, the top ranked player (Druid) is ranked on a fight where total damage taken by the raid is just shy of 15% more than what my raid team takes. Statistics can mean a thousand things by not looking at all of the numbers.
“But I suppose I should find room for Lightwell with that tier 13 set bonus. Perhaps I’ll axe a point from Surge of Light”
Anyone with a bit of sense would consider that a forgone conclusion. I can’t even begin to comprehend why you would put a single point into rapid renewal, surge of light, or veiled shadows before getting Lighwell.
Rise the fist to the druid nerfs? So healing meters dont matter except when used as a reason to nerf druids.. Sorry but even if you jest it’s not funny especially since we received no new toys to play with and the other healers continue to receive new stuff
About my only concern with resto druids at the moment is that there’s still no sign of anything being done to improve their lot in pvp. They’ve been in a rough place for a while, so having a bone thrown to them in that regard would be nice.