4.0.6 Patch Day

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!

Debuffs and uberness

GridStatusetcetc

So I finally broke down and got GridStatusDebuffs this week out of curiosity. I recall having it in Ulduar but it tracked way more things than was worth having (like Hodir effects).

However, it is wonderful in ICC. Another healer asked me if there was anything I could think of to turn off for this and to be honest I couldn't think of anything. Maybe the debuff from the Dark Nuclei on the Princes fight, but it hasn't annoyed me yet.

I would recommend it, especially if you weren't sure about it before.

What the heck do I want to get?

I have been sitting on a fair number of frost emblems recently and every time I go to the vendor, I can't figure out what to get. I use Lootrank and Rawr, but I get stymied looking at my options. I think I looked long and hard at the Purified Lunar Dust, which as I understand is getting a boost soon. I believe this will bump it above Sliver of Pure Ice in both MP5 and Spell Power, which is good news for those who don't have Solace of the Fallen or Arthor's Abacus. In light of this information, I believe I will buy this, as I am a trinket hound.

After stealing the Spindle from the rest of the raid the other night, my haste is now stupidly higher than it was last week which means I can finally start looking at new things. Perhaps, even the tier gear. Crusade aside, I am not seeing the upgrades as fast as I would like, and I am patiently holding out for the Abacus. Why? I get a little narrowly focused when I see an item that calls to me. As a raid healer, I see large potential for it, but I digress.

Going through the list, my choices are rather limited in certain areas like neck and bracers but I do see some potential in other areas. I guess it's another round of gear comparing for me.

I will tree punch you in the face!

Actually, my ranting and subsequent boozing during a raid has lessened quite a bit lately. A large part of that has to do with the fact that I am kept so busy I don't have time to watch what other people are doing. The healing assignments generally go like this:
Priest 1 heal xxx, Pally 1 heal xxx Pally 2 heal xxx... Kir run around like mad and heal everyone.

Yes, we do have another druid healer but some fights call for all three tanks to be active, which means he also gets the fun of single target healing, while I do my best to keep the raid alive. Thankfully, the other healers are rescuers like myself and sometimes toss a heal to someone nearby if there's time, but it often falls on my shoulders. I am not complaining though, I do get enjoyment out of it (Princes is my favorite fight so far). There is a sort of thrill running from one end of the room to the other while avoiding all the bad things. I find myself thinking outloud "White swirly thing, avoid. Crap, New Year's Ball will drop soon, better moonfire it on the way to the melee..." and so forth. It is a thrill for me and I am glad to get the assignment each time.

Alright then, I think I have put off homework long enough. Well, maybe one more look at Lootrank...

Ephemeral Snowflake

Many of you already know about this little trinket and may even be farming HoR for it.

Sure, it got nerfed but it's still very handy as far as mana goes. Reports say that Spark of Hope is still better over the long run, but I found the Snowflake to reap better rewards. In addition, I am not the best math person so I like seeing hard numbers.



Replenished is different from Replenishment. It is the proc from the trinket.

That is from our little Ulduar 10 man clear for Yogg+1. I didn't need the innervate, it was a miscast after battle rezing someone.

Given that the aoe damage on ICC can be intensive as we are learning the fights, I am going to stick with this puppy for a while. At some point, if I am still having mana issues I may switch to Purified Lunar Dust because of the spell power. However, Althor's Abacus seems to be a clear winner as far as output, even if half it if gets overhealed. It's on my wish list anyway.

Long story short, even with the internal cooldown the Snowflake is still a good trinket, especially for those who never got their Spark. Good luck.