3.3 Rejuv buzz: hasted HoTs
Rejuv is the buzz in druidland these days, after Blizzard announced that in 3.3, the final tick of Rank 15 of the spell would be shaved off, bringing it back down to 12 seconds (15 with Splendor), in line with the other ranks. This was apparently “a bug” that they “let slide” for a while (a while being a year). Oopsie.
But I won’t go into that too much, it’s already been covered by many people, we just have to accept it and adapt. I’m hoping it won’t have much of an effect on my raiding anyway – only doing 10 man raids, I don’t need to worry about trying to keep Rejuv on 15 people at once. But losing that last tick of healing will have some kind of impact on me if people are taking steady damage all the way to the end of the HoT duration. Hopefully, though, it won’t be a big deal for me.
Onto current Rejuv news though – and I’m sure the Druid blogosphere switchboard is going to be lit up like a Christmas tree pretty shortly on this one – Blizz are considering making haste affect HoTs, which is something that has been kicked around by players for years.
We have new tech that will allow specific hots and dots to tick faster — the time between ticks would decrease. This means more damage or healing per time but also having to refresh those spells more often.
Having hasted HoTs would be fantastic for some encounters, and terrible for others. On some fights, it would be amazing to have your HoT tick nice and speedily to get all that healing out ASAP. Mimiron P2, for example – where I wish my HoTs were stronger to keep people up. On other fights, you don’t want your HoTs ticking faster – you want them on there as long as possible, giving a nice, steady flow of healing. This is great for aura damage fights like Sapphiron (and I’m assuming Twins – but I haven’t done that on hard mode yet). On these fights, you want Rejuv slowly ticking away on as many people as possible.
So on some fights – super awesome happy times if you have speedy HoTs. That is VERY exciting.
On other fights – TERRIBLE. Sometimes you want your Rejuv to stay up as long as possible, and be able to have it on as many people as you can. Speeding it up (and making it drop off faster) would be awful on some fights.
So, you can understand that if this was out of our hands – if our HoTs just changed whenever our haste numbers went up – it would be very bad. So Blizzard is trying to come up with ideas to allow us to control things a little better.
On the table: Glyph of PEWPEW speedy Rejuv
The idea at this stage for 3.3, is to introduce new glyphs for the key HoTs and DoTs out there – Rejuv, Corruption, and Shadow Word: Pain. The glyphs would be the ones that change things so that your Rejuv ticks faster with the more haste you have. Whether or not this will replace the current Rejuv glyph, or add a new glyph, hasn’t been decided.
So what would this mean?
For fights where the damage comes in fast, and faster-ticking hots would be valuable, a haste gear set and the glyph would probably be the way to go. I would probably change my dual specs to be raid healing (slow) and raid healing (fast). Unless of course the new glyph is quickly learned by my scribe alt, in which case I may just opt to carry a stack around with me and change for specific fights.
It means that haste is no longer as undesirable to “stack” past the haste cap. We may see people putting points into CF and having a “haste spec” with haste gear and the glyph (although, haste is so easy to get, I do not realy think CF is a good idea, considering you are basically wasting points in Balance to get to it).
For druids with only one resto spec, particularly in 25mans where you are attempting to heal more people (unlike 10 mans, where you’re capped at 10, obviously), this could be a frustrating change.
If you’re not keen on respeccing every day (or even more frequently, depending on your current content), it means you’ll have to choose between hasted and non-hasted rejuvs, semi-permanently (you’re not locked in, but you know what I mean). Do you commit to fast or slow Rejuvs?
Fast means more healing and stabilising people quickly on high-damage encounters; but it also means having to refresh more often, meaning fewer people can have your Rejuv at any given time, and you’ll also be chewing through your mana faster. Slow means steady, predictable damage on encounters with constant aura ticks of damage, and being able to have your Rejuv on more people at once, but on some fights a lot of the ticks may be lost to overhealing, or the slow ticks may not save people in time.
For single-spec restos, it may be necessary to work together with your other tree/s to decide who will go fast and who will go slow (so that all of your bases are covered); or it may simply mean having to carry around a stack of Rejuv glyphs to re-glyph for fights where fast-ticking Rejuvs would be highly valuable. Reglyphing for specific fights in this way would probably be the best way to go if you like to min/max for each fight.
Certainly I know that if I could reglyph for Mimiron for faster Rejuvs right now.. I would definitely do it!
One likely concern we’ll hear is that on fast-damage fights, we’ll be pushed even further into the “Rejuv x 5, WG” rotation, because our Rejuvs will be dropping off faster (especially after losing the last tick on R15), and we’ll be using every available GCD to Rejuv/WG and little else.
Personally, I don’t mind that on a few fights here and there – I really quite enjoy the occasional blanket-fest! As long as it’s not *every* fight, though. But I suppose that problem will be one for 3.3 and beyond – when we see what the damage signatures for the new encounters will be.
This is a really interesting idea. I’m looking forward to hearing more about it, and hearing what other people think about it.
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This entry was posted by Keeva on October 8, 2009 at 12:06 PM, and is filed under Changes, Druid healing, Raiding. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. Comment Policy - Comments are welcome! I don't mind at all if you disagree with what I have to say here, provided that a) you are civil about it, and b) you do not try to dictate what I should or shouldn't be writing on my blog. This is my corner of the web, and I reserve the right to edit or delete comments that I deem to be offensive. |



My name is Emma and I live in Australia. I’ve been gaming on and off since I was about 11. I won’t tell you exactly how long ago that was, let’s just say long enough.
about 2 years ago
I’m really not sure if I like it or not.
I think I’d rather have it effect regrowth so that we’d do more than just spam wild growth & rejuv all day long…
lissanna´s last blog ..Conspiracy LFM: Priest, paladin, or shaman healers
about 2 years ago
As I said, I think for 10 man raiders, it will be less of a problem – we’re usually forced to use all of our tools (and for that I am glad). But 25man druids are often relegated to hot-bot duty, and faster-expiring rejuvs may mean you are forced even more into rejuv/WG GCD lock.
We’ll see, I suppose..
about 2 years ago
Also, it’s worth noting that things are still REALLY up in the air, they’re just tossing ideas around at this stage. Honestly, with all the focus on Rejuv this expac, I wonder if they will (as you said) just go with Regrowth or something.
I wouldn’t worry about Renew at this point or any other over-time spell. We’re not even 100% sure we’re going to offer it for Rejuv or if will even greatly benefit Rejuv or if you’ll lose too many GCDs on Rejuv (or whether that will be okay). It just feels a little premature to worry about classes potentially getting left out.
So clearly the issue of being even further locked into the Rejuv spam cycle is something that they’re already aware of and maybe concerned about.
about 2 years ago
I actually don’t think it’ll be a good idea for rejuvs due to the GCD issue you mentioned here. Also lets not forget that everyone is gearing for crit right now and keeping their haste around the 359 mark.
You have to remember that current rejuv is balanced based on the fact that it can’t be hasted, and so the ticks are probably higher than they would be because of that. What will happen is that they introduce hasted rejuvs, only to then find that rejuv is really healing far too much in a given time and so they have to nerf the tick pretty quickly down the line.
So a few months into this change you just end up with having to stack a lot of haste just in order to do the same healing per second that you did previously with reduced ticks.
And the same goes for shadowpriests and affliction locks who suddenly think this will be gods gift to their dots. While it makes a lot more sense for dps than it does for hps – they’re still just going to balance those dot ticks downward after a few months (if that) so you’re back at square one in the interests of balance.
There is no way that they’d bring in hasted dots for an estimated 10-15% dps increase from these class/specs and then not have to decrease their dps by at least nearly that to compensate.
Cows´s last blog ..Resto tier 10 set bonuses
about 2 years ago
For DPS, the trade-off of faster ticks is having to blow GCDs more often to refresh them (thus losing the ability to cast other spells in that time). So, the trade-off should prevent it from being that huge of a DPS increase.
lissanna´s last blog ..Does hasted HOTs favor smaller group sizes?