The Pre-Expansion Patch Notes have been released and man is there a lot to go through here. This patch is the patch that will be released before the expansion actually drops and includes most of the changes we are going to see. We're going to go over the changes that are most important to Druids and Healing as a whole in this overview.
New Row of Talents Unlocked At Level 100
Pretty obvious that we were going to get another talent to choose from with the new expansion. Things have changed with the new talent row this time around; the choice of talents now change depending on what specialization you are in. These changes do not occur in any of the old talents.
- Moment of Clarity - Omen of Clarity now lasts 5 seconds instead of 1 cast.
- Germination - You can now cast 2 Rejuvenations on a single target.
- Rampant Growth - You Swiftmend consumes Rejuvenation or Regrowth but has no cooldown.
Assuming that healing is going to be the same as it was in Cataclysm and Pandaria in the beginning where all healers are mana hungry until we get some decent gear then Moments of Clarity is going to be the talent we initially pick up as it gives us the Legendary Gem as a passive ability. After that phase is over however, it isn't yet known which of the two abilities will be stronger in terms of throughput. Two Rejuvenations on a target or a non-cooldown Swiftmend. With Efflorescence no longer being tied to Swiftmend I'd like to think that two Rejuvenations will be stronger but they are nerfing HoTs and Instant Cast heals in Draenor so it isn't yet clear.
New Feature: Warlords of Draenor Perks
Blizzard is adding a new feature called Leveling Perks which means every level you gain from 91 to 99 you will receive a random passive perk. Since you will be leveling in a DPS specialization (more than likely) you won't get to see these perks until you hit max level. Here are the healing pertinent ones for Restoration:
- Increases Healing Touch by 20%
- Increases Rejuvenation duration by 3 seconds. This will give Rejuvenation an additional tick.
- Rebirth no longer has a cast time.
- Increases Regrowths periodic healing by 30%
- Ironbark now grants increased healing from your period spells by 20% on the target.
- Living Seed healing increased by 20% of your Critical Heals.
- Healing Touch is increased by 20% on target of your Lifebloom.
Some pretty good perks in there. The instant Rebirth is going to be pretty awesome since this now makes ours unanimously the most powerful combined with the fact we're one of the few that can resurrect someone at full health. Also like the Ironbark perk and the extra tick on Rejuvenation as well.
Garrisons Available
Although Garrisons are in the 6.0 Patch Notes we can assume that since the Garrisons are in Draenor they won't be available until the game launches. However, it seems as though Garrisons are going to be unlocked through an "epic" Quest line. Not exactly sure how I feel about that because if I have to do this quest line for all of my alternate character I will be super demotivated to do it on more than one character unless it's like the farms in Halfhill where I get something out of it that's super important (ie Goldun Lotus) to my main character progression.
Statistic Squish
The long awaited item squish is occurring. Obviously this is going to be put in before the release of the expansion so that people can get used to it. This will also lay to rest the doubts of those we aren't paying attention about whether or not we can still solo older raid bosses with the squish. Obviously, you can, but people will still ask because they're dumb. I'm looking forward to the squish because I'm sick of all of the numbers.
Player Health and Resilience Changes
Basically what happened is that with the gigantic health pools in PvP and Warlocks still one shotting people anyway they wanted to change it so that people didn't take huge chunks of damage at a time in PvP but not changing anything for PvE. So they doubled players Health Pools after the Stat Squish and increased the damage that PvE mobs do. So Players don't chunk as hard without changing how hard PvE mobs hit.
Now, Base Resilience has been removed but Battle Fatigue has been removed as well. This means that the healing reduction is completely gone from PvP which makes me a very happy tree. They've also increased the amount of healing effectiveness by 50% and decreased Healing Critical Hits to 150% of the normal heal in PvP from 200%.
Healing Changes
What was happening before is that Blizzard was pretty much forced to make all damage hard hitting and bursty because healers could heal 1/3rd or more of a health bar the more gear that they received. If someone wasn't at full health then there was always the worry that they could suddenly die. They wanted to make it so that players could spend time not at 100% without making the healers have anxiety attacks over their raid mates suddenly dropping dead. So they are making it so heals are a little less effective but they stay more consistant throughout the expansion. So the healing that we are doing at the end of the first tier won't change much from the amount of healing that we're doing at the end of the expansion because they're going to increase player health and healing output pretty identically.
They're also changing our healing spells a bit. The cheap spells such as Heal and Holy Light are being completely removed. This means Nourish is going. Which I don't mind because I don't think I've used Nourish at all since iLevel 463. Also, the fast expensive spells (Regrowth) and the long cast medium cost spells (Healing Touch) are now going to heal for the same amount. So your Healing Touch is going to cost half as much as your Regrowth but heal for the same amount. This makes it so you choosing your spells is going to be based on how much mana and time before death you have. This seems like a really odd change at first but I like the consolidation of abilities. I never really liked having Flash Heal, Heal and Greater Heal all on my Priest. It also feels nice not to think about having to do two Regrowth to do as much healing as a Healing Touch but doing the same amount in terms of time spent casting (2 Regrowths can be cast during a Healing Touch cast).
Racial Traits
With the removal of so many secondary stats such as Hit, Expertise, Dodge and Parry there needed to be a rebalancing of racial traits.
- Night Elf - 2% Increased Movement Speed and Dodge Rate
1% Haste Rating at Night, 1% Critical Strike Rating During the Day - Troll - Berserking Now Increases Haste by 15%
Increases EXP earned from killing beasts by 20% - Tauren - Increases Critical Strike rating by 2%
Increases Stamina scaling with Character Level
First off, what on Azeroth is up with that Night Elf change? I mean, most people are going to be raiding at night so the 1% Haste will kind of be the raid racial but it just seems so freaking weird. None of the racials are very interesting for Restoration Druids other than the Stamina increase for Tauren to help with staying alive for the first few weeks of progression. I'll be sticking with the Troll for the ease of leveling and then I might change to Tauren but that will be based entirely on the new character models and which one I like better.
Abilities Being Removed
We already talked about Nourish getting removed along with all of the other cheap filler heals. Other Restoration spells getting the axe include Innervate and Symbiosis. I'm really disappointed to see Innervate go because... well I named my character and pretty much all of my other MMO Characters after this spell. When it was revealed in the WoW beta so many years ago I knew that it was something I wanted stuck to me forever. So to see it be taken away is actually really sad for me. Symbiosis being removed doesn't really make me sad at all. It was nothing but a huge mess that was a nightmare for balancing and players alike. For Restoration we only ever put it on two classes to either give Shadow Priests Tranquility or Shamans so we could run and Tranquility.
Crowd Control Changes
Lots of Diminishing Returns and Crowd Controls are being removed or changed. For Druids, Cyclone can now be removed from Immunities such as Divine Shield and dispelled from Mass Dispell. Also, Cyclone cannot be made into an instant cast spell from Nature's Swiftness. Some other good changes are that long duration fears are being reduced to calculate run back time and pet CCs such as Sucubus Sleep is being removed.
Instant Cast Heal Changes
A lot of former Instant Cast spells for healers are now getting cast times. Paladins are getting hit the hardest with this, most of the instant Holy Power consuming abilities are now getting a 1.5 second cast time. With so many instant cast abilities in the Druid Healing arsenal you would think we would get hit hard but Wild Growth is the only one getting a cast time. The cast time is equivalent to a Regrowth so it won't put a big hit on the timings.
Vengeance Changes
Vengeance was a weird ability that always seemed to get changed with each patch. It's getting removed now. It's getting replaced with Resolve which now increases self healing and absorbs from the Tank based on their Stamina and Health pool. This will be good for healers and survivability but will be for us who like to hog healing meters when the tanks start beating us.
Druid Class Changes
- Survival Instrincts is given to all specializations and has been changed to be a 70% damage reduction with a 2 minute cooldown for Restoration. This was given to us because we are going to lose a lot of survivability cooldowns when they take away Symbiosis. I feel like this is a ridiculous cooldown to give us (I mean 70% is A LOT) and I expect it to get nerfed.
- Tranquility is being simplified. It now heals all targets within range every 2 seconds for 8 seconds. No more HoT application like it does now. The healing output hasn't been changed with this.
- Swift Rejuvenation is being removed. So Rejuvenations cooldown is 1 second which is going to seem like an eternity when this goes in after it being 0.5 seconds for so long. They removed this because Rejuvenation blanketing was too strong and was really the only option for Restoration Druids.
- Efflorescence is now attached to Wild Mushroom by default, the glyph is being removed. I'm glad Blizzard is making this change since it was obvious that permanent Efflorescence was really good and instead of nerfing it or taking it away they just decided to give it to us without making us waste a Glyph spot for it.
Lots of information after a bit of a drought. As always, since these are Alpha Patch notes, everything is subject to change anytime after 04/04/2014 when these Patch Notes were released. Interesting changes for Restoration Druids and I'm sure there are more to come! It's good to be back!
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