Many of you have probably been reading the patch notes (and other information) for a while now regarding the changes to druids.
Some things from the patch that caught my eye:
Symbiosis (Mastery) benefit from mastery increased by approximately 16%.
Coupled with some other changes to our talents, I see they are trying to make mastery a little more than a tank healing talent. I know I have been throwing on pieces that have more mastery on them, and if you look at the Valor Vendor, our gear is rife with it.
Making mastery work well takes some practice for me. I make the mistake of throwing rejuv on targets NOT affected by WG or not throwing WG down before Tranquility is up, etc. This will become easier once the fights have been done more (only a couple bosses are on farm for us, and we have been moving between 25 and 10s during the week).
Rejuvenation is now trained at level 3, down from level 8. In addition, its mana cost is now 20% of base mana.
Sad, but this was needed. You don't want to rejuv spam but at the same time, the change to Nature's Bounty would be moot if the cost was too high.
The instant Rejuvenation heal from Gift of the Earthmother should no longer gain bonus healing from haste too soon, and should now correctly benefit from Symbiosis
Somehow I overlooked this piece of information a few weeks ago. I had dropped to 1 point in GotEM to tweak with things, but if it will work with Mastery then perhaps adding back a point may be worth it.
Glyph of Regrowth now causes the heal-over-time effect to refresh itself on targets at or below 50% health, up from 25%.
This makes me want to take the glyph again. With my current progression, I am still not convinced I would get much use out of it. I mainly heal for 25's, and with our two holy priests, shaman and other resto druid, most folks don't stay at that critical level for very long. Perhaps later on in progression, this may make more sense. For 10s, I could see this getting more use as their are less people to draw from and tighter mana restrictions.
Tree of Life duration has been reduced to 25 seconds, down from 30.
With talents, this will last 31 seconds. There are quite a few people upset by this but I think it will pass.
Omen of Clarity can no longer trigger from helpful spells (aka heals), unless the Restoration talent Malfurion’s Gift is chosen.
If you didn't already have Malfurion's Gift before, this probably affects you a great deal.
Also note:
Mandala of Stirring Patterns now increases Intellect instead of mastery rating.
This sounds great. However, reports on PTR suggest that is is not procing off hots or dots which puts this at a really low priority for me. I know that I saved up tokens to get this but after reading the findings, I will be spending my tokens on stuff for tanking.
The tauren racial trait War Stomp can now be used while shapeshifted.
War Stomp-ing in Bear makes me sqeee! Getting myself to remember I can do that will take getting use to. Hell, some days I forget I can use a pot or healthstone in bear since I haven't actively tanked since early Burning Crusade. At least we will be closer toward Warriors and their shockwave.
What this means for my spec
I thought I had my spec set up nicely so I wouldn't have to worry about changing anything after the patch, but Efflo seems weak even in 25s. GotEM will be stronger, in theory anyway.
This is what I will probably be taking later today. I keep Nature's Cure because I still run a fair number of Heroics for the guild and I don't over gear the content so much that I want to just heal through it all. In addition, if you heal BH without Nature's Cure, you are asking for trouble.
I will drop Efflo. After a couple weeks worth of parses, I find it doesn't seem to be as effective as I wish it could be. And, as most of us know, being linked to Living Seed is just terrible. Even with Nature's Bounty and such, Living Seed still did pitiful healing. For the love of leafy things, unlink the two talents please!
Given that Healing Rain and Sanctuary are already in use for our raids, I find the green circle is not as needed. Our other tree will probably keep it, so it won't disappear from our raids entirely.
Interestingly, I find that it actually hinders me. Knowing that swiftmending will throw down a circle which may or may not be correctly placed means that I hold back quite a bit. Removing that from the equation will probably mean an increased usage of Swiftmend. And, one of our tanks thanked me when I told him I won't have green circles. I do admit that green circles with other nasty green stuff can be confusing for some to interpret (silly tanks).
There's also a ton of changes to ferals (why did you nerf bear threat?) and moonkin which are met with interesting responses on the forums.
Enjoy patch day!
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