The Weekly Innervate - World of Warcraft: Patch 5.4: Siege of Orgrimmar - How Your Leaves Have Changed (Restoration Druid Changes)

Welcome back to an article about Restoration Druids (we haven't seen one of these in a while!). And for good reason as we haven't really seen any new content in quite a while. But Blizzard is about to change that with a super mega awesomely huge content patch that has a little something for everyone! It personally has made me resub to the game (as I generally do once new content comes out) with a lot of excitement! So here's how this is going to work; I am going to first go over the general changes to the game that will effect the general player base from an old hardcore raider/casual players point of view. Then we'll dig into the Restoration Druid specific changes. Then, in a separate article later on this week (probably between Friday-Sunday) I will cover the Resto Druid T16 best in slot gear list. So let's get started!

Siege of Orgimmar (Raid Instance) and Raid Release Schedule

The Siege of Orgrimmar is definitely the crowning jewel of the patch as raids usually are. This new raid instance will contain fourteen new boss encounters (one of the largest instances we've seen in multiple expansions) on four different difficulties. Twenty-eight bosses for guilds to work on (if guilds work to kill everything on Heroic Mode) gives Blizzard plenty of time before they'll have to release the next expansion, which for the record I am slating for May/June 2014. I haven't completed any of the content myself so I cannot specifically comment on the difficulty of the encounters themselves but new content is never something I will turn away.

As with every tier of content since the inception of the Raid Finder (and even before that with ICC) the different wings will be separated and will be released gradually across several weeks. This time around they chose a model that is quite generous with their time in between wings for the Raid Finder/Flex Raid difficulties.

• Looking For Raid - The first wing will be available on September 17th, a week after the patch has released. Wing two will be released the week after and then wing three and four will have to wait two weeks finally ending on October 22nd, over a month after the first wings release.
• Flex Raid - The first wing will be available September 10th, the day of the patch release. Wing two will be released the week after and the final two wings will be released in two week intervals with the final wing opening on October 15th. 

I honestly can't think of why they would space the content out so much and release Flex and LFR difficulty wings on different dates since the two don't care a difficulty and I'm not even sure the same players would be participating in both. If I can get into a Flex Raid I probably won't do LFR as well in the same week as I have no need to burn myself out on the content so fast so having them be separate just seems like an extended forced gated system that isn't necessary.

Flexible Raid Difficulty

Flexible Raid Difficulty is the fourth raid level difficulty being introduced to World of Warcraft. It is an easier difficulty, harder than LFR but easier than Normal mode and is designed for players who are more casual and aren't able to keep to a strict schedule. The biggest thing about this difficulty is not about how easy or difficult it is, however, it is big because of how the raid is set up. You can have anywhere between 10 and 25 people inside of this raid difficulty so you do not have to have exactly 25 people to do a raid, the raid instance itself will scale based on how many people you have inside of the instance. I honestly kind of wish they had made it so that it would have lowered as low as 7 players because it is sometimes difficult to get 10 friends on at the same time but we assume that this difficulty will be easily puggable as it is easier than Normal Modes.

Arena Team Changes

Arenas are seeing a big change this patch. The Arena team is essentially completely disappating and Arena Rating is going to be unique to the person who is playing. Previously, you had to join and unjoin (or put everyone) a team if you were pugging or playing with multiple friends based on who was on at the team. Then there would be a team MMR and a team Arena Rating that everyone would share as long as they had played some games with the team. So if you were doing 2v2s with a friend, logged off and he started playing with a PuG and lost a bunch of games you would be screwed because you shared the same rating. Now the rating is attached to the account so you can play with as many or as few different players as you want and your Arena Rating will only be reflected on you. The match making system will take all of the participants ratings and average them together to determine the type of teams you will playing against.

Proving Grounds

Proving Grounds is a new feature that a lot of players have been asking for for a long time now that leveling has become such an easy feat. Proving Grounds is a solo instance, similar to how some Scenarios are, that will give you tasks based on the role you wish to practice. It will put you into a party as if you were in a party with other players (so your unit frames will retain for healers) and groups of mobs will spawn in waves. There is a soulwell, reforger and drink vendor inside. The challenge was pretty similar for how real encounters would be with raid damage, effects on the ground that needed to be moved from (and DPS NPCs who didnt move out right away for added realism) and even dispelling. This gives players who want to try out a new role such as tanking or healing that they haven't done a lot of at max level a chance to see if they can stack up against what they would face in a PvE environment with other players. It also gives pure DPS classes the chance to try out new specs or new reforging to compare their numbers against something a little better than a training dummy. There are four different modes, Bronze, Silver, Gold and Endless and there is currently no ranking system or public scoreboard but there is a Score presented at the end of the Proving Grounds that you can compare to other players. This will be a good way for high end players or bloggers to present a score on how they do in a Proving Grounds so others can see if they are getting close to where they might want to be in terms of their specific role.

Legendary Quest Finale

The Legendary Quest line that most of us have been working on since the beginning of the expansion will finally come to a close during Patch 5.4. The quest involves Wrathion instructing you to go to the newly uncovered island called Timeless Isle and kill the Four Celestial world bosses. After this occurs, he will ask you to collect 5,000 coins by searching chests and completing quests along the Isle. 5,000 sounds like a lot but if you're lucky with chest spawns it can take as little as 10 minutes to get all of the coins you need. A few more quests later and you've completed your Legendary cloak which now includes an amazing spell effect when the ability procs.

General Game Changes

There aren't a lot of general class changes that will be affecting everyone this patch however, the changes that are going into affect are important as tanks are getting some love.

• Taunts - All taunt abilities now generate 200% threat on that target while the Taunt is active. This gives tanks not only a jump on threat but it also makes it so their abilities do twice as much threat than anyone else. This will make tank swapping with certain classes a tiny bit easier in raid encounters when tank swapping is crucial to survival. This will also help tanks who have trouble pulling things back in dungeons when an overly geared Warlock decides to pop all of his cooldowns on a trash pack to boost his numbers.
• Vengeance - Vengeance is getting quite a few changes this patch. Vengeance has been something that since it's implementation has been changed over and over and can't seem to be gotten right by the developers. First off, tank specializationed specced players will now generate 40% more threat (because apparently the 300% increase they got a while ago just wasn't enough). Vengeance now grants 1.5% attach power equal to the amount of damage taken, this was a .3% nerf. Vengeance from Critical Hits have been reduced by 50%. Honestly, not sure how this would even be possible as from what I understood tanks now automatically couldn't be critically hit by being a tank spec. There are also diminishing returns on pulls that have multiple targets such as multi-boss encounters and trash packs.
• Knockback Diminishing Returns - Knock backs now have diminishing returns, within their own catagory, once you have been knocked back you are then immune to being knocked back again for 10 seconds. This is a PvP change that will help with players who were lucky enough to not get knocked off of Lumbermill to not be able to be knocked off again.

Druids

Now for the best part of the patch, the Druid changes! And we've gotten quite a few of them!

• Bear Form now increases Stamina contribution from cloth and leather items by 40%. This is a big change for both tanks and PvP Resto Druids. We're essentially receiving a 20% increase to our health pools.
• Innervate now restores mana based on the Druid's Spirit. This is a buff to Restoration Druids and a nerf to Balance Druids. Before, Innervate would restore a flat 10% of your mana and since everyone's mana pool was normalized with Mists of Pandaria it would only restore around 30,000 mana. With the new changes, it restores mana based on 50% of your Spirit amount per second for 10 seconds. Most Resto Druids have anywhere between 10,000 and 15,000 spirit depending on gear level. which means your Innervate will now restore anywhere between 50,000 to 75,000 mana. This is nearly a 200% buff on Innervate for Restoration Druids.
• Wild Mushroom has gone through a huge change. Now, Wild Mushroom only casts one Mushroom and on the targets location so it no longer has to be pointed and placed on the ground. Instead of a GCD for Wild Mushroom Cast and 9 second cooldown for Wild Mushroom: Bloom they now both share a 3 second cooldown period making the time it takes to use it by nearly 1/4th. This is a significant buff and may finally make us Druids use it.
• Genesis is a new spell all Restoration Druids level 88 or above recieve. Genesis targets all party/raid members within 60 yards and if they are affected Rejuvenation it will tick and heal at a 400% increased rate and costs the same amount of mana as Rejuvenation (8,700 mana at max level). This will be a great burst heal for fights where you must quickly blanket the group in hots and will increase our healing output during large AoE damage encounters.
• Living Seed can now stack, up to 50% of the Druid's maximum health, and will no longer be triggered if the target is at full health. Another buff as anything that prevents unnecessary overhealing is always great, especially for a HoT class that has a lot of built in over-healing.
• Swiftmend's AoE effect is now called Efflorescence. By far the most important change in Patch 5.4. I have no idea why on Earth they ever changed this in the first place. In all honesty, this will just make it easier to see in logs the difference between the healing of Swiftmend and the healing of Efflorescence.
• Dream of Cenarius for Restoration Druids now causes Wrath to deal 20% more damage (for a total for 30% since there was a separate 10% damage buff) and the damage will heal a nearby ally for 100% of the damage done. Wrath's mana was increased by 50% (now 5,300 which is still less than the cost of one Rejuv) so I'm not exactly sure how useful this will actually be. It eventually gives us Priest Attunement capabilities and could be useful on fights that have low damage burn phases.
• Heart of the Wild now gives 25% increased healing during it's duration when activated along side it's other abilities for Restoration Druids only. The increased healing ability will be a reason to pick this talent up for fights where you need an extra cooldown.
• Nature's Swiftness has been removed as a talent and is now an ability that can be learned by Resto and Balance Druids at level 30. This is essentially reverting the ability back to the way it was before the new talent system was introduced. No other changes to the ability itself have been made. NS has been replaced with Ysera's Gift.
• Ysera's Gift is a level 30 talent that heals either the Druid or a nearby ally (if the Druid is at full HP) for 5% of the Druids maximum health. Depending on your health (mine is 450k at 525 ilevel) this will heal for 27,000 or so every 5 seconds. This will have the highest healing output of the three talents due to the 30 second cooldown on Cenarion Ward.
• Nature's Vigil now grants a healing increase by 12% (from 10%) and also heals another ally for 25% of the direct heal's worth ontop of the 25% damage done to an enemy. With the new changes to Heart of the Wild and Dream of Cenarius I still think this spell is still lacking since the DPS is minimal at best.
• Soul of the Forest now causes the Druid to gain 100% Haste on their next spell after casting Swiftmend. Still not a very useful spell in my eyes while comparing it to the other options we have.
• Glyph of Efflorescence is a new glyph that puts Efflorescence on Wild Mushroom and increases Swiftmend's healing by 20%. This essensially makes your Efflorescence permanent as the Efflo effect will remain as long as you don't bloom the Mushroom. Essentially, you can set down the mushroom in melee range, have a permanent AoE Heal and when a large burst of damage comes, bloom the Mushroom for a burst of healing and then replace the Efflorescense in 3 seconds. From what I've seen, this has boosted Resto Druid healing by quite a large amount and will not be surprised if this gets nerfed soon.
• Glyph of One with Nature is a new minor glyph that randomly teleports you to a random spot in the world with no cooldown and a 2.6 second cooldown. I haven't been able to confirm/deny if this works inside of instances like dungeons and raids but if it does we just got a buffed Bubble-Hearth and it sounds like it could be incredibly useful getting out of dungeon/LFR wipes without a repair bill.

Miscellaneous Game Changes

The first eight bosses in Siege of Orgrimmar have a chance to drop Sigils of Power, Sigils of Wisdom, Secrets of the Emperor and Titan Runestones. This gives you 8 additional chances a week to get a piece of whatever phase of the legendary cloak you are on!

Loot drop chances from both bosses and bonus rolls have increased on LFR difficulty (Normal Mode has received the bonus roll loot buff only). Throne of Thunder bosses have all received a 20% health and damage debuff.

Base Resilience now reduces damage taken from players by 72% (a 7% increase). Not sure that this honestly needed a buff, I'm of a firm belief that players without any PvP gear should be at a disadvantage until they get some gear or else there's no real point in even having PvP gear at all.

All in all, a lot of really good content changes for WoW. I'm really excited for the new raid instance (the Druid tier looks pretty AWESOME) as well as all of the new Resto Druid buffs that we have recieved. You thought that we were powerful AoE healers now, just wait and see what we bring to the table now... I think we're finally going to dethrone the Priests from their number 1 healing status.