Question on Druid "Ways" spells....

Discussion in 'Priests' started by Tatanka, Oct 30, 2020.

  1. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    At 98/103/108/113, Druids get a spell labeled "XXXX Ways". It puts a song-buff on everyone in the group which can cast a heal on your target's target, based off of melee hits. The buff has a time limit, and a hit limit, which is 48.

    My question is, since everyone has this buff in their own song window, does the hit counter decrease for each char separately, or are they tied together, making it 48 hits total among all members of the group?

    The reason I ask, I never have used it, since I usually solo/molo, and it occurred to me, if the counters are all separate, that's one heck of a lot of total healing potentially, if you have 6 group members, and then throw in some pets, etc.

    Which just makes me think of another question.... does it land on temporary pets? ;)
  2. Szilent Augur

    Hit counter is individual, each player & pet has their own.

    Healing "potential" is the right word - while efficient, the real healing output is far from spectacular because the hit counter is just hits, not procs. Meleeing off the counters on druid just now, I got 12 procs out of the 48 counters in one trial, and only 5 and 6 and 7 in subsequent runs.

    High hit rate classes (looking in particular at mnk/rog) will use up the hit count in mere seconds, which is a plus for the healing-per-second of Ways, but each proc will hit with only the focus & crit associated with their own AA, which is "not great". Classes with higher innate heal boosting will take much longer to use up their buff, but will invariably take much longer to use up the counters. My hasted druid demonstrates the extreme which will be matched by the four caster classes (all lack Double Attack, etc), taking over a minute and a half each to get the 48 hits against the back of a combat dummy in all trials. This leads to a question over how frequently to re-buff the party.

    It doesn't land on swarm pets. No buffs do, just auras. It does land on actual pets, so mag/enc/nec/shm are qualifying Ways-ers via their summoned buddy even if they aren't meleeing themselves (ambitious ones will be meleeing anyhow).

    A dedicated support-druid may well employ it. For healing a single tank in the group game, it's surely better than a Vida cast one-to-one… you may be familiar with the trope of "damning with faint praise"
  3. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    Thanks! Didn't realize that "hits" meant hits-whether-it-procs-or-not. I thought it meant procs :(
    minimind likes this.
  4. Drencrom Beimeith's Supervisor

    I don't understand what you're saying here. Does it heal on every hit, does it only heal on procs, or both? Does every hit use up a counter, or do only procs use up a counter?

    "Classes with higher innate heal boosting will take much longer to use up their buff, but will invariably take much longer to use up the counters."
    - What? How does innate heal boosting affect how long it takes to "use up their buff", and isn't using up the counters the same thing as using up the buff?

    And are you really suggesting that casters should be meleeing in between casts, standing in melee range (losing casting time from repositioning), every fight?

    Sorry for the tone but I am flabbergasted that zero questions got answered and several were created.
  5. Szilent Augur

    Every hit uses up a counter. Not every hit produces a heal proc.

    This was poorly written, I meant to say that their procs will have higher value per proc.

    The relationship is not causal, it's correlated. Classes that have high crit rates for their heals (priests, knights) are not the same classes that hit very fast (monks, rogues). The druid who casts the buff, for instance, cannot use up the buff's counters any faster than 1.5 minutes. The heal procs will be stronger when the druid gets them, but the druid can't get them fast. So there's a push & pull - you lose "efficiency" by recasting before everyone uses up their counters, but ... well, I guess there's no other half if you're not even using yours. It just does what it does based on the melee class procs.

    Yes caster classes should absolutely be doing all their casting from melee range. Having attack on for procs between spells is free damage. If Ways is on, having attack on is free healing. There's an unavoidable 1.5s gap between spells (up to 2s for folks with bad internet, or playing from overseas). In that time, you're either a lump on a log, or you're scooting up to maybe get a proc. If you're losing tons of cast time just getting next to mobs then -- I dunno, man. This is just good play.
    minimind and Duder like this.
  6. Ninelder Augur

    The real answer is: It depends... Whether or not to melee. There is no real reason to use "Ways." If the mob isn't being pushed all over the place and doesn't AE ramp or have close range AEs to worry about, why wouldn't you? Your melee damage is risible, unless a beastlord is in group, at which point its possibly upgraded to pathetic. But all the procs from your weapon are good to go, priest weapon procs often have a substantial proc mod on them as well, and many of them are set up to work on spell and melee. Swing away!

    The self procs you get from "ways" are only worthwhile if you have enough melee group-mates to make it worthwhile, your contribution to that proc number is also at best pathetic, especially if you are a dedicated healer, druids have to rely on switching targets and single target healing; they cant rely on stacking recourse and multiple HoTs on their group to carry most if not all of the healing burden like a shaman can. Your one group heal is also unfortunately pathetic, so switching targets and "triage healing" is your only option no matter what scenario you have. You have the least chance to melee of any class in game. In a raid setting you are only going to be in a melee or tank group if your raid is short on shaman. Even if they made "ways" ten times more powerful than it is now and fixed all its problems, your group and raid leader would still wish you were a shaman.

    Casters are a different story for meleeing but still not suitable for "ways." One of the best wizards and one of the best mages I know always melee when they can for DPS. The wizard is more successful at it, possibly due to mage spell cast times. Their spell cast times are historically as bad as druids. Most casters don't try to melee anyway. Probably due to laziness, but that's just my supposition. Not in cases of AE ramp and close range AEs, Not only would AE ramp disrupt their casting, but in a raid setting their only healer has triage limitations. Since most casters don't melee, and have their own complications if they do; "ways" is not something to do for caster groups on raids. Pets have a low proc rate, so even your pet casters are not worth loading the spell. It doesn't proc at all by mercs, so its useless on them as well.

    You can load "ways" and just target a melee or tank group and cast it on them, I have done that in raid settings before but there are much, much better ways to enhance healing; if you need more healing.This would be the only conceivably useful way to use the spell, but its like option D in your playbook, the only way this would come up is if your raid had no shaman or clerics in it, and you were completely missing multiple other spells. Maybe if they designed a raid where for some reason spell cast healing wasn't possible but proc healing worked... LOL talk about a situational spell.

    All in all, with the funky way "ways" procs it is not worth your time to use it; it would have to be "fixed" to work way, way better. All things considered, until they put some actual consideration into the spell to make it much more useful, I would not consider it a tool in your spell toolkit. Its crap.
  7. Nylrem Augur

    Unless they changed it, Ways is worse than horrible. Used when boxing 5 mages and 1 druid, then checking heal parse, it would get on average ONE, 1 single proc, from 1 pet, in it's duration, which lasted ~12 seconds, per pet. Should be 60 procs, from the pets alone, but, alas, not even close.

    It should be amazing in a full group, if counters were for actual procs, and it actually procced at a decent rate. Even if it wasn't able to be focused or crit by anyone.

    Haven't tested in quite a while, but if hasn't changed, is pretty horrible, but, should be amazing.
  8. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    Yeah, I never posted a follow-up, but I did use it for a couple days, and after parsing, confirmed it wasn't worth keeping on my spell bar. Not even close.
    Szilent likes this.
  9. Ninelder Augur

    I forgot one the one time ways was useful. When we could TB it right before a raid event started. It was useful for casting then as one druid could hit the entire raid. But they nerfed that, so back to trash....

    Now that would be an easy way to get some use out of the spell. Just make it an always, AE raid hitting spell, like splash. One druid casting one ways would effect every tank, melee, and pet in the raid. Even with the woefully laughable effect it has now, it might just get some use. But then again they could just make it work like a heal version of the shaman panther line(that is what it was originally advertised to be.) If they did either of those things, I would call it a win.

    Its such a shame too. Druid got nothing in CoV, Ways is crap, the mushroom pet would be crap but its buggy so it doesn't rate high enough to be crap. Alliance is never used since it has 1/16th the Area of Effect of the shaman one. The new dicho nuke has to long a recast so I don't know of anyone who has even bothered testing it. That leaves the upgrade to the heal from taking spell damage buff, which I personally cast once before raid events, but no other druid I know bothers with it. Nothing.
  10. Szilent Augur

    that's effin' wild. the dru progressive spell is as fabulous as it ever was

    also what's to "test"? it's the same thing just with bigger numbers
  11. Ninelder Augur

    Half your spells go to heals, 3 to debuffs/twincast/reptile/growth(depending on what duties you are assigned,) 1 for the annoying 5min aura, that leaves 3 nukes, all of which have their own recast limitations, You don't want to replace one of them with an even longer recast. The only way you can afford to load up extra nukes is if you have no raid duties. How often do you raid with spare druids?
  12. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    I'm confused. The new dicho nuke has the same recast time as all the old dicho nukes. So why the complaint now?
  13. Szilent Augur

    this is the arrangement I've cobbled together:
    1. Twin
    2. NFW
    3. Horde
    4. Suns
    5. Composite
    6. Remote
    7. Winter's Wildcombonuke
    8. …(usually Roar. Reptile or Growth if in full-on support mode)
    9. …(most common swaps slots: aura, manabear, frost, reptile all have 1-spell /mems here, each, for quick but not constant access. Sometimes these are Luna, or Sunray, or Summer/Icerend single element nukes for farming GoMs, or second Roar for burning, or 7-10 are the top two AEs on fire & cold, or a cure. realllly have to get arm-twisted to load Vida.)
    10. Rejuv
    11. Adrenaline
    12. Survival
    Basically I only want to ever be casting good spells. On any class, not just druid. For druids, there's just a couple good heals, but that doesn't indicate to me that druids should be loading bad spells, unless there's some extremis of slim healing. The few good heals stay loaded, they're for rescuing group mates who haven't heard "keep on Shield of Order, stay under the shm rains" enough. For contributing to tank heals I slip lots of Blessing of Ro between good (damage) spells, including the Composite & Remotes basically on-cooldown.
  14. Rolaque Ancient

    The basic guide for any druid is to always (as in always) have your 5 heals loaded - the 3 single target, and the 2 group heals. Leaving out any one constitutes a blunder of epic proportion.

    Remotes aren't really 'heal' spells, they're end of the line dps with a healing component. You include them when you can't figure out what else to put in the dd spell order, and you figure you should at least heal the tank (or if soloing, yourself) now and then.
  15. Szilent Augur

    strong disagree. 17488 heal on Remotes is barely weaker than Rejuv & Vida, and Remote casts faster than Adrenaline & Vida, nearly as fast as Rejuv, and Remote doesn't take retargeting while you're in the middle of casting your good debuffs & great damage spells. Remote is target limited, it can only hit the tank! But that's basically the only way it's not the Best heal.

    Take a hint from the class-leading druids that got Remote hastening focus put on the druid BP - it's a core thing, bread and butter spell. Four times a minute, five probably in the minute that you clicked Force Rejuv.
  16. Rolaque Ancient

    Your description of its attributes is spot on. And granted, the bp focus is a critical improvement, and makes it more useable. But to call it a core thing, (a) bread and butter spell, means we're in deep trouble. Now it we got reflected heals from say NFW, then that would begin to define what our core is.
  17. Darchon_Xegony Augur

    As a Druid who boxes a warrior, I find that my biggest frustration for the class is the large number of spells I feel like I have to cast every few minutes only once.

    Frost Aura - 6 Min duration
    Reptile - 10 Min duration
    Growth - 7 Min duration
    Alliance - 5 Min duration
    Mana Bear Pet - 5 Min reuse

    My typical spell setup is:

    Summer
    Winter
    Horde DoT
    Adrenaline
    Rejuv
    Luna Group Heal
    Survival Group Heal
    Dicho
    Remote
    Natures DoT
    Sun DoT
    Growth
    Twincast

    I’m constantly swapping out the Horde and Sun DoT spells for the 3 Tank buffs, 1 proc aura and 1 pet summon. There are a couple great options they could do to fix this. Add an AA for casting the pet summon. Add a unity short term buff for casting Growth, Reptile and Alliance together would be great. Even just a Growth + Reptile unity buff would be good. Also for the love of all things holy, make our aura last 30 minutes. There’s no reason it should be a 6min duration. Do the same for the chanter Mana proc aura too.

    While I’m gripping about druid issue... make our AE Fire Debuff and our Single Fire Debuff identical in power. It is very annoying that the AE one blocks the single one from landing and reflecting its heal. Also make the power of our group and single wolf form AAs the same. It is extremely annoying to cast your group wolf form a second too early and have it bounce on yourself wasting it.

    Oh and ways is awful. I’d prefer the spell line be scrapped and replaced with a Druid proc aura similar to our frost proc aura, but instead of proccing an extra nuke when casting detrimental spells I’d like to see it proc an extra heal on casting beneficial spells. If they’re determined to keep this spell, I’d say make the proc counter count procs not hit attempts.
    Rolaque, Ninelder, Barton and 2 others like this.
  18. Szilent Augur

    absolutely to these, 100%
    Rondor and Duder like this.
  19. Whasajiggawho New Member

    I agree that it's annoying and should be fixed. Personally, I work around it for the wolf line at least with a macro.

    For group wolf:
    Code:
    /block add me 41358
    /block remove me 41358
    /alt activate 1480
    /alt activate 10397
    /timer 4500
    For single:
    Code:
    /block add me 38182
    /block remove me 38182
    /alt activate 1092
    /timer 4500
    The "/block add" and "/block remove" lines pretty quickly remove the other version of the buff so when the new one is cast it'll always land. I've been using it for a while and I haven't seen any noticeable lag (granted, I don't raid so that might exacerbate things).
    Duder likes this.
  20. Ninelder Augur

    I won't claim to be the best DPS druid, at least one other druid in my guild beats me almost constantly. But like Rolaque above I never unmem my heals. They are on every spell set, because as soon as you do, that's when you need them.

    Likewise i don't switch spellsets either, aura always has a place on my spellset. Sure enough as soon as you unmem it, you need to recast it. Or as so so often happens, as soon as a burn is called and I hit burns, that's when my aura goes out.... Most classes have 75min auras, they just gave shaman a permanent(until death,) zonewide(even in frontier mountains,) aura that does way more than growth does(which they also have.) Our aura being 5min duration is total BS. I would gladly pay obscene amounts of AA, a third or fourth child or even Szilent's soul for a better aura.

    I am usually on debuff duty so at least two spells go there. That leaves one spell set between heals and debuffs which is normally where reptile or growth goes.

    That leaves three spells for nukes. For obvious reasons that's Winters, wrath, and less obvious remote. I know its screws my cast time but its also our second fastest heal(I have always prioritized healing.)

    If i don't make room for twincast, I won't make room for dicho. I do see why others would especially if they don't worry about healing duties.
    Rolaque likes this.