Preliminary Resto Druid 3.1 Changes (PvE and PvP)

I wish I could analyze everything about every class and every spec, but since I can't here are my thoughts about Resto Druids and the proposed changes that are coming in 3.1 that will affect them. I plan on doing a look at other class' changes and their effects on PvP Restos as well as a 'Bwuh?!' look at some of the more ludicrous changes sometime in the near future. There may be a Priest post as well, but I'm not entirely sure about that since I haven't focused on my Priest in a while.

I'll try to keep this updated as more notes come up, and you'll notice that non Resto impacting abilities will be listed in a smaller font. Keep in mind that this analysis is for both PvE AND PvP, so while you may never swap to Cat form in PvE, you can bet that PvP Restos are using Maim.

Here's the list:

All

• Faerie Fire now decreases armor by 5% (Previously decreased armor by a set amount) This is a pretty minor change for both PvE and PvP. For PvE, your raid should have a non Resto Druid providing this debuff. Coming out of Tree form to FF is pretty mana intensive. For PvP, FF is usually used to either cover other debuffs to prevent them from being easily dispelled or to prevent Rogue/Druid restealthing. The armor reduction is pretty minor and won't likely be the reason a game is won.

Glyphs

• Glyph of Rebirth - Players resurrected by Rebirth are returned to life with 100% health. (Old: Increases the amount of health on a character brought back to life via Rebirth by 100%) PvE: It's hard to conceive of someone using this as a Major Glyph and Rebirth'd players usually get bombed with heals the moment they come up anyways so I can't see this glyph becoming more popular. PvP: Rebirth isn't usable in the Arenas.
• Glyph of Starfall - Reduces the cooldown of Starfall by 90 sec. (Old: Increases the duration of Starfall by 2 sec.)
• Glyph of Berserk *new* - Increases the duration of Berserk by 5 sec.
• Glyph of Wild Growth *new* - Wild Growth now affects up to 6 targets. PvE: Same as the Glyph of Circle of Healing. This will likely be a very popular Glyph, especially if raid healing becomes more strenuous in Ulduar. PvP: Great for when they implement 6v6 arenas (/sarcasm)
• Glyph of Nourish *new* - Your Nourish heals an additional 6% for each of your heal of time effects present on the target. PvE: Stronger than the T7 4p set bonus, which if stacked, would give an additional 11%, leading to some really strong bomb heals. It's likely that the T8 set will have a different 4p set bonus from the T7, so this could see a lot more popularity over the Glyph of Regrowth, especially considering the Improved Regrowth/Nature's Bounty change below. PvP: I don't see this being a go-to glyph for PvP simply because there are others that increase our efficiency without exposing our Nature tree to lockout.
• Glyph of Savage Roar *new* - Your Savage Roar ability grants an additional 6% bonus damage done
• Glyph of Typhoon *new* - Reduces the cooldown of your Typhoon spell by 3 sec.
• Glyph of Barkskin *new* - Reduces the chance you'll be critically hit by melee attacks by 1 to 0% while Barkskin is active. PvE: Probably won't be used in PvE. PvP: Probably won't be used in PvP either. Restos typically pre-hot when they sense a swap coming over, so while it's unlikely that they'll be gibbed anyways, there's a good chance that this glyph won't be needed.

Balance

• Owlkin Frenzy (Tier 8) now procs off physical melee and ranged attacks. (Previously was triggered by all attacks)

Feral

• Savage Roar changed to increase physical damage done by 30%. (Previously increased attack power by 40%)
• Maim now stuns the target instead of incapacitate. PvE: Probably never used by raiding Restos. PvP: Definitely a nerf. By making it a stun, it will likely share DR with other stuns, will allow Mages and Paladins to use abilities to get out of it and be affected by talents that reduce stun duration.
• *New Spell* Savage Defense, 1 rank, level 40 - Each time you deal a melee critical strike, you gain Savage Defense, reducing the damage taken from the next physical attack that strikes you by 25% of your attack power. PvE: Probably will never be a factor. PvP: Also, won't be much of a factor as Resto AP is quite low, but if you happen to Maul in Bear form while you are tanking damage, it might show up.
• Survival of the Fittest (Tier 6) now increases your armor contribution from cloth and leather items in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by 11/22/33%. (Previously was 22/44/66%) PvE: Never seen a PvE Resto spec this far down the Feral tree. PvP: there are some successful hybrid Feral/Resto's out there and this would be a nerf for those who chose to play that spec.
• Predatory Strikes (Tier 4) now includes Moonkin Form in its effect
• *New Talent* Primal Gore, Tier 10, 1 point talent - Grants the periodic damage from your Rake Lacerate and Rip abilities the ability to critical hit. (Holy Shit! Ferals just got a huge buff in PvP!)

Restoration

• Abolish Poison now ticks every 3 secs. for 12 secs. (Previously ticked every 2 secs. for 8 secs.) PvE: I have kind of mixed thoughts about this as its nice to be able to pre-Abolish more people or have a greater window to heal when expecting alot of Poisons, but the longer delay allows the poison a better chance to apply its effect for a longer period of time. PvP: I'd classify this as a nerf as the myriad of poisons (Wound, Crippling, Mind Numbing, Wyvern) that you want to remove, you want gone right now and an extra second on the dispel is pretty huge. It is pretty nice that it will now last to the end of a CS > KS, but I have a feeling that Abolish/Cure macros will come back.
• Replenish (Tier 9) renamed Revitalize. Sure.
• Improved Regrowth (Tier 6) renamed Nature's Bounty. Increases the critical effect chance of your Regrowth and Nourish spells by 5/10/15/20/25%. (Previously increased just Regrowth crit by 10/20/30/40/50%) PvE: 50% crit was pretty overpowered as it was guaranteed to proc Nature's Grace. This change should allow Restos to value crit a little bit more to keep the Nature's Grace procs rolling in. Combined with the new Glyph of Nourish and the T7 4p set bonus, we could see some pretty scary huge Nourishes. PvP: Mixed. A 2 second cast for Regrowth was always really hard to cast, with juking, Nature's Focus, and pushback. However, there have been some teams that have allowed me to chain cast Regrowths (thus proccing Living Seed) on my teammates from behind a pillar, thus saving them. I expect that better teams won't let me do this. I also like to proc a crit Regrowth for Living Seed if I'm starting a match in ToL and waiting for a Rogue to start on me and as such, I'm pretty mixed about this.
• Intensity (Tier 3) now allows 17/33/50% of mana regeneration to continue while casting. (Previously 10/20/30%) Blues have been talking about the nerf to the base mana regen and this is the change to regen while casting to keep the 'while casting' mana regen the same as it is now. There are a whole bunch of unknowns as to whether or not MP5 will be more valuable than Spirit/Intellect with the upcoming changes, but we'll see what the numbers are later.
• Improved Mark of the Wild (Tier 1) now also increases all of your total attributes by 1/2%. Cool. Free stats.
• *New Talent* Improved Barkskin, Tier 10, 2 point talent - Increases the damage reduction granted by your Barkskin Spell by 5/10%, and increases resistance to dispel mechanics by 30/60% while under the effects of Barkskin. PvE: Not applicable. PvP: This makes Barkskin very much like a self cast only mini Pain Suppression, except that it lasts longer and has a much shorter cooldown. I expect the damage reduction bonus to be additive to the existing Barkskin reduction of 20%. This should give us better survivability on swaps against offensive dispellers.
• Tree of Life: You can now use Nature's Grasp and Thorns while within this form. Cool. I hate blowing mana to form swap back to ToL vs. melee trains.
• Living Seed: This talent now accounts for your ineffective healing, rather than effective. There are two ways to interpret this wording. The first interpretation makes this change seem like a nerf, making the Seed value based off of the overhealing amount rather than actual heal amount. If this is truly the case, I'm sad because it encourages massive overhealing to get a decent sized Seed. Remember, its 30% of the (over)heal amount. The other interpretation is that this new version of the talent counts all healing, then its a massive buff, but sadly, I don't think that this is the case unless they missed the word 'just' between 'than' and 'effective'.

PS: Plague Strike got nerfed: No more HoT removal effect. Cry those tears, DK's and enjoy getting Cycloned now that we have a spare 12978391873974 GCD's to CC instead of reapplying our HoTs.