Alright, I’m expecting 3.3 to hit next week (8/9th of Dec) so I thought I’d write up a quick outline of the changes that affect Resto Druids and what that means.

Spell Changes

Rebirth: The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 20 minutes down to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

This will be a cool little change, means that if you are working on progression you’re looking at having Rebirth up every 2nd attempt or so if needed Stack Druids in raids imo

Rejuvenation: The base duration on all ranks of this spell is now 15 seconds.

This is painted as a bug fix but makes its way into the Spell Changes. In a nut shell Rejuvenation’s losing a tick. While it seems like a nerf on the outside, math-wise Rejuvenation will still be healing for the same base amount per tick, but you’ll need to apply more often. This will impact on druid healing numbers overal and is even more of an issue with the the new glyph in that ticks will be determined by haste. I’ll talk about that more later.

Tranquility: The cooldown on this spell has been reduced to 8 minutes, down from 10 minutes.

Meh, I probably dont use this spell enough but reality is my group is usually the other healers, and they take minimal damage. Being a ‘group only’ spell minimises it’s use in raids. 5mans its cool but meh. If they were to nerf the actual heal and make it 40yards and raid wide then it would be cool.

Talents

Gift of the Earthmother: Redesigned. This talent now increases spell haste by 2/4/6/8/10% and reduces the base global cooldown of Lifebloom by 2/4/6/8/10% instead of its previous effects.

Pros and Cons on this, it now affects haste directly (pro) but means that we will need to stack more haste to get the results we currently get with the ability (on WG/Rejuv). I’m already sitting well above the soft cap so I’m not too concerned and with new gear coming from ICC will get us up quickly enough

Glyphs

Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation: This glyph allows for the druid’s haste to reduce the time between the periodic healing effects of Rejuvenation.

Oook, this is Blizzards test for Haste and Hots really, they have talked about doing this in the past and it’s good to see it in 3.3. Basically what this means is you will have the same number or ticks, the same healing per tick however the time between ticks will be reduced based on Haste.

Quoting from Perrin on plusheal.com

Wrath of Air and Improved Moonkin Aura/Swift Retribution Aura Only
0/5 GotE = ~38.70% Haste = ~1269 Haste Rating
1/5 GotE = ~35.98% Haste = ~1180 Haste Rating (33.257%, 1091 Rating)
2/5 GotE = ~33.36% Haste = ~1094 Haste Rating (28.027%, 919 Rating)
3/5 GotE = ~30.85% Haste = ~1012 Haste Rating (22.994%, 754 Rating)
4/5 GotE = ~28.42% Haste = ~932 Haste Rating (18.148%, 595 Rating)
5/5 GotE = ~26.10% Haste = ~856 Haste Rating (13.478%, 442 Rating)

Lifebloom gains an extra reduction in GCD at the same rate as the main haste complonent of GotEM (2%/4%/6%/8%/10%) and these calculations are the listed rating in brackets.

What this really means is that as druids we now need to make a judgement call, do we want quicker ticks (and in theory more HPS) and then have the added expense of refreshing rejuv on a target OR do we want slow ticks for less HPS. This could also differ based on your role. As a tank healer you would be rolling your hots on less targets so the more frequent refresh may not be an issue however on raid heals (and with the lessened cast time) your rejuv may be dropping off quicker.

It really comes down to personal preference, do you want;

1. Shorter Cast Time but more HPS and do you have the Mana to cover this change
2. Longer Cast Time but less HPS

In fights where we are expecting large raid wide damage you may choose to roll without the glyph as you can hot up more people in preparation for the damage OR you may choose to roll with it so you get more healing done when you need it.

Bug Fixes

Rejuvenation: Druids will no longer get a more powerful spell error message when attempting to overwrite a Rejuvenation they cast.

This is a nice little fix, I think this happens when you have a proc that increases your spell power as you apply rejuv, then when you cast again it flags it as being less powerful and throws this error /grrr