WoW Rest Stop

I just looked at the changes in the resto tree and my mind is blown.  In my opinion, the current baseline druid build is this.  This level 80 build leaves 2 pts that most put into either Sublety, Tranquil Spirit, Improved Tranquility or Improved Barkskin.  

There has been massive changes to the talent tree in Cataclysm.  You can see the current tree  here.


The biggest changes I've noticed so far:

• Resto Druids are going to need to put at least 16 pts into Balance to get Nature's Splendor.  The issue is the third tier where there isn't an obvious choice after the 3 pts in Nature's Grace.  Most druids have gone away from this talent in WotLK.  This takes 5 pts from our most common build today.
• With the exception of Nature's Grace it looks like all haste related talents are going away (most notably the haste from GotEM).
• Naturalist has moved from the 2nd tier to the 3rd tier and replaced by Perserverence a 5 pt spell damage reduction talent (2% per level).  I'm guessing most druids will skip this and put 5 points into Sublety/Natural Shapeshift instead.
• 3 pt Intensity is gone in the 3rd level and replace by the 5 pt Naturalist.  While most druids skip the Naturalist talent today they won't be able to do this as it is the prerequist to Nature's Swiftness.  This takes 2 pts from our most common build today.
• Tier 4's Improved rejuvenation doesn't change it's 15% increase on Rejuvenation but adds the increase to Swiftmend as well.
• Tier 5's 2 pt Improved Tranquility loses the reduced cooldown but gains a 25% damage reduction per pt while casting.
• Tier 5's 5pt Gift of Nature (2% increase to healing per pt) has been removed meaning you will need to spend pts in earlier tiers to get to Tier 6.
• Living Seed has been moved to Tier 6. 
• Empowered Touch has been moved from Tier 6 to Tier 7 and has changed from an effect on bonus healing for Healing Touch (40%) and Nourish (20%) to a 10% improvement in healing for Healing Touch on targets under 25%.  The other change is 2 points in this talent will cause Nourish will refresh Lifebloom (!!!!).
• Tier 7's 3 Pt Living Spirit has been removed from the game.
• Tier 7's Natural Perfection has been moved to Tier 8.  It also appears that the increased crit chance has been removed but the damage reduction has been doubled.  PvP talent.
• Tier 8 adds a 3 pt Efflorescence which heals people within 15 yds of the target for 10% per point of your Regrowth over 7 seconds.
• Tier 9's 3 pt Revitalize now only effects the casts and restores 1% per point for regrowth or lifebloom crits.
• Tier 9's Tree of Life is now a periodic form for 45 seconds with a 5 minute cooldown.  It has lost the 6% healing buff to the raid and the 20% reduction to mana cost but now the buffs formerly in Improved Treeform are included (200% armor and 15% increased healing).
• Tier 9's 3 pt Improved Tree of Life reduces the cooldown on Tree of Life by 30 seconds and increases damage by 5% for every point.  
• Tier 10's 2 pt Improved Barkskin is unchanged with the exception of losing the 35% per point dispel reduction.
• Tier 10's 5 pt Gift of the Earthmother loses its impact on spell haste.  The improvements per point are a 4% increase in Tranquility on targets less than 25% health, 2%  increase in Lifebloom's bloom effect, and a 3% instant heal of the total periodic heal for rejuvenation.
• Tier 11's Wild Growth is now has a 10 seconds cooldown vs the 6 seconds it had previously.  The heal portion appears to be about 40% of the former affect (686 vs 1442).

So what does this all mean?

• Rejuvenation and Wild Growth got the biggest nerf with the change to GotEM and Wild Growth.  I've heard they are going to increase the mana cost for both to reduce spamming.  Moving Revitalize to Regrowth/Lifebloom from Rejuv/Wild Growth won't help mana either.
• The loss of Intensity/Living Spirit takes away our mana regen talents.  This is going to have to come from gear as revitalize won't be enough.  Mana reduction talents like Tranquil Spirit are probably going to be necessary.
• The change so that Nourish refreshes Lifebloom is huge.  With druids having a reduced capacity for AoE heals I can see the return of assigned heals by party.
• Lifebloom/Regrowth/Nourish/Swiftmend  is going to be a big time tank/melee combination from healing with Wild Growth thrown in every 10 seconds.
• Will Tree of Life become an enrage/spike heal?  Speccing into Improved Tree of Life will depend on how much they use the spike damage mechanic in the middle of fights.   The only benefit is being able to go tree every 3.5 minutes vs 5.  It really depends on the length of boss fights.
• Will the improvement to tranquility heals under 25% for GotEM mean that druids will be put into the tank group and the common mechanic for an enrage is to hero, pop trinkets, pop tree and tranquility?  If so the threat/damage reduction in Improved Tranquility may be a useful addition.
• What is the point of Fury of Stormrage?  It seems like a PvP talent but I wonder if they are they planning to change healing so that we will be needed to dps in Cataclysm.  I'd really like a good dps spell at the bottom of the resto tree but I know it will never happen as it would possibly unbalance PvP.
• Healing Touch still sucks.  With these talents the only real buff is forcing us to take Naturalist to reduce cast time to 3 seconds.  That is too long for effective healing in an emergency.  The only way I can see them saving this spell at this point is if they increase the mana efficiency or burst damage.  Even then problem will be similar to Vanilla/BC when it was continually sniped by a paladin casting Holy Light causing over heal.  The slowness will also cause deaths unless they change the burstiness of damage (which they have said they were planning).  Until I see more, I think Healing Touch will remain off our cast bars.

This is my current thought for the level 85 talent spec (16/0/56). 

It gives all the spells I think are useful and leaves 4 points for things like Improved Tree of Life, Improved Tranquility, Improved Barkskin or Fury of Stormrage.  I don't see any points in any other tree that interest me for a pure healing build.

An interesting dps/healing hybrid would be this.  I mainly did this for a healing Dreamstate build as it looks like they are really making mana regen difficult in the expansion.  The problem is there is no way to do this without losing at least 1 point in Revitalize (as well as GotEM and Wild Growth).  I'd need to do some math to see the difference and I'm not going to do right now.  I do like the idea of getting 4/5 Starlight Wrath and 5/5 in Vengence for the ability to do some real damage as a resto.

That's all my thoughts for now and I'm sure some of my thoughts are off.  Blizzard will change half of this before Cataclysm goes live but it is interesting to see where they are going.  I am sad to see Wild Growth and Rejuvenation get nerfed as bad as they did but I am really excited about the improvements to Regrowth and Nourish in conjunction with Lifebloom.

I'd write more but I'm off to buy a 20 button mouse.