Let's talk: Living Seed & RevitalizeFollow

For two deep talents, I've found Living Seed and Revitalize to be a fairly hefty waste of 6 talent points.

After a few weeks of research, I've seen nothing but single digit, < 5% healing return on Living Seed. This is mostly due to the pathetic means of proc on Critical heals (and our HoT's don't crit), IMO. But I wanted to get some more feedback. I'll go over my thought process, and maybe some other Resto Druids can chime in to discuss.

First, let's go over the Resto tree quickly and outline the primary talents that get you to your 51 point talent, and what's enticing/likely in the Balance tree. This is partially opinionated, but heavily common in Resto specs.

Tier 1:

- Imp. MotW: This is a given.
- Nature's Focus: Almost forced and too easy, although not terribly useful in PvE. Great and a required talent for PvP Resto Druids.
- Furor: Worthless in PvE, maybe worth in PvP depending on the build, and playstyle.

The likely outcome is 2/2 into Imp. MotW and 3/3 into Nature's Focus.

Tier 2:

- Naturalist: Definately a good talent, but not terribly required now that we have Nourish. Benefits Ferals due to damage output more than a required Resto talent. Good bonus talent if you're looking to fill 1-3 talents to move a tier without "wasting" the points, so to speak.
- Sublety: Required. Threat reduction is a must in PvE. Not required for PvP builds.
- Natural Shapeshifter: Good, but only because it opens Master Shapeshifter for the Healing bonus.

The one required is 3/3 in Sublety. Points can be spread after that, most likely taking 3/3 in Nat. Shapeshifter to open up the Healing bonus in the next tier.

Tier 3:

- Intensity: Required. Opens Nature's Swiftness and the Mana Regen is a big "duh".
- Omen of Clarity: Great, procs often and contributes to mana efficiency, awesome 1 point talent.
- Master Shapeshifter: Healing bonus is a must, so expect to spend these 2 points as well.

This is a huge tier. Almost every Resto druid will have this entire tier filled, consuming 6 points.

Tier 4:

- Tranquil Spirit: Reduced Mana Cost of HT, Nourish, and Tranquility. If it were Nourish alone, it'd still be a good talent.
- Imp. Rejuvenation: Opens Nature's Bounty, which is a must now that we have Nourish.

3/3 into Imp. Rejuv is required, Tranquil Spirit takes 5, and most likely will be filled before you get to 50 points. Both of these are also great talents.

Tier 5:

- Nature's Swiftness: Required, don't leave home without it. A primary O.S. button with a Rank 13 HT.
- Gift of Nature: Required.
- Imp. Tranquility: Given the narrow scope and us having Wild Growth now, this is negligable and avoidable.

Another 6 point tier.

Tier 6:

- Empowered Touch: Negligable and avoidable due to reduced use of HT with the intro of Nourish. It's only 2 points, however, and another spot where points can go and not be wasted. Also depends on player-specific style and use of HT.
- Nature's Bounty: No doubt, required. 25% crit to Nourish and Regrowth is our primary niche' as Nourish is our equivalent of a Holy Paladin and Disc. Priests Flash Heal. Good stuff!

Nature's Bounty alone fills this tier, 5/5. Emp Touch is avoidable for the most part.

Tier 7:

- Living Spirit: With Imp. ToL and our thirst for Mana Regen while casting, it's 3 points well spent.
- Swiftmend: Duh. O.S. button #2...especially tasty when glyphed!
- Natural Perfection: PvE no. PvP yes.

This is a 4 point tier, with both Living Spirit and Swiftmend being required.

Tier 8:

- Empowered Rejuvenation: Best 5 points a Resto Druid can spend. Two bark-y thumbs up!
- Living Seed: See points at end of talent outline.

Tier 9:

- Revitalize: See points at end of talent outline.
- ToL: Yes.
- Imp. ToL: Yes yes.

Tier 10:

- Imp. Barkskin: Very good PvP talent, but avoidable for PvE. Unless you're tree tanking, which is scary.
- Gift of the Earthmother: This is going to go into my discussion regarding the two talents primarily focused on in this discussion. Is it a good talent? Worthy talent? Could it be if it isn't already?

Tier 11:

- Wild Growth: One of the most powerful heals in the Druid's ********

So all together, a 51 point spec would take all the "required" above, and add extra points to max Tranquil Spirit and let's say 1 point in Empowered Touch. Likely Balance talents taken at this point are:

Tier 1:

- Genesis: 5% boost to periodic healing. Great talent.

Tier 2:

- Moonglow: Great spells cost less!
- Nature's Majesty: 4% crit increase to Nourish!

Tier 3:

- Nature's Splendor: Can be argued, but I always take it. It's a good talent for making your GCD easier to manage during intense healing.

All in all, this leaves 9 unused Talent Points. Revitalize and Living Seed can consume 6 of those, leaving 3. Both Revitalize and Living Seed are deep Resto talents aimed at enhancing healing and raid contribution. But how much do they really do? And in the realm of Haste, GotEM talent, and Crit...I provide this argument.

Let's start with Living Seed. I've seen it rarely contribute over 5% overall healing in an entire raid encounter or raid lockout period. Actually, I've never seen it contribute over 5% at all in my research and experience. When you factor in overheal %, this is the biggest waste of 3 deep-tree talent points. The benefit elsewhere will be discussed.

Next, Revitalize. In my research, while it's helpful, does provide positive returns, and requires no management...it's overall "percentage" returned is fairly low, especially compared to other classes Replenishment and the fact that it's always up. And sure, Replenishment doesn't return Rage or Runic Power (Energy is meh...), but even then the contribution it provides is minimal, since most Warrior or Druid tanks are rarely rage starved and DK's tend to manage Runic Power well enough without it. Another 3 deep-tree talent points that are, well, disappointing.

Now, let's assume the primary focus of itemizing Haste in end-game is to focus on lowering the GCD. GotEM talent alone can reduce the GCD by 20% of the primary spells that benefit from it (Lifebloom, Rejuv, and Wild Growth...all instant cast). So let's assume we can heavily reduce our Haste itemization, and in turn maximize our Crit itemization...taking 3 points in Nature's Grace and now any of our Crit's have a 100% chance of increasing our next casting speed by 20%...effectively taking another huge load of Haste itemization.

I see more Druids (and I have, too) up to now take Living Seed and Revitalize as almost a given. However, the returns just aren't doing much and are avoidable, IMO...whereas alternatives like what I've gone over open more doors to better HPS output without having to rely on Proc's and chance...which is what Healing is all about, the "raw" end of it in terms of output. All things said and done, remove the one point from Empowered Touch, and go 5/5 GotEM and 3/3 in Nature's Grace, you're left with two points to play with. Since Crit is a focus, then going 2/3 in Living Seed can be a "reasonable" choice since you'd itemize for Crit over Haste anyways.

Does this all sound like "sound" logic in terms of weighing the talents discussed herein?

LS is assumed to be over healing because you just cast a spell to heal some one up.

GotEM has always been a nice talent. I have also never seen a parse with a high LS or Rev contribution.

They are filler or a good idea that just ended p being to weak to be effective.

To be honest you can easily spend the points on making Tranq that much cheaper instead of them.

They aren't the same thing. You're confusing the < 5% Overall Healing with 5% Increased Global Healing for all your spells. Same applies to Master Shapeshifter, the % increase is in spell output, not overall healing. That meeans the spells you already use that populate the top 50% of your healing get better with the talents. That is not the same as % overall healing.





That's my point. For 6 points spent in Tier 8/9 of the Resto tree, wth is with them being fodder? And it's arguable that the Resto tree is kind of bloated. I can understand Living Seed in a PvP point of view, but Druids have never been Crit-mongers anyway, even now with Nourish. And Druid's PvP niche is HoT's w/ mobility, which defeats the purpose, because HoT's don't Crit, and a Druid standing there spamming Nourish is a sitting duck.



It's no so-so. It's trash. From a Replenishment vs. Revitalize on a mana basis, Replenishment blows Revitalize out of the water. That's why I mentioned Rage/Runic Power...because those are the only two things that matter because of that fact. And the return on those is negligable and useless because neither class (Warrior/DK respectively) necessarily are having problems with their power generation. What does that mean? Does the Warrior care if he gets @ 8 Rage from one of your Rejuv ticks? No, not at all. In fact, he won't even know the difference.

That was my point, is all, is that for their location/talent consumption, they have no reason to be where they are due to their uselessness. Their part of the "BTPNTC" statement where a few different classes got similar chump abilities to say "look, you can't complain cause you can do it, too". It bloats the tree, and I see a lot of Resto Druid's taking both those talents by default because of this and the lack of anything good past tier 3 on the Balance tree.

The way I see it, there's only 69 points considered 'essential' to raid healing...so why not put the last two somewhere that gives you a nice little 'fire and forget' bonus (Living Seed).

Of course at the same time it could be said "why not put them somewhere that gives you a little offensive boost, like Imp Moonfire, or Imp Barkskin, or Revitalize, or...or...etc.

So really, does it ultimately matter? :P

i love revitalize on my DK and my war, both for tanking and for dps. DK tanks, unlike war tanks, dont get a nearly-limitless amount of resource, so a bit extra every now and then might make the difference between another rune strike thrown out and not. when youre pushing the dps levels that people are now, every bit of threat helps.

for dps wars and DKs the benefit is obvious. id assume for hard mode encounters the benefit on healer mana would be worthwhile too.

as for living seed, it seems very much a pvp talent to me, that largely relies on our usage of regrowth. when you consider that living seed is basically making a regrowth crit for 30% more healing, its a nice damn talent. LS can also crit, which has saved my life and others on more than one occasion.

I'm not too sure that LS can overheal. I was under the impression it was hit for however much, THEN the heal is applied.

I think Ryneguy's issue is that compared to so much other stuff that resto's take in the tree the 2 talents just seem rather lackluster comparatively.