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Patch 6.1 goes live on Tuesday!

Here’s my comparison of the 6.1 updates between live and the PTR. To get the best comparisons, I made sure both my live and PTR toons were wearing the same gear. However, since I’ve upgraded several pieces on live since copying my toon over, I had to remove a lot of mismatched pieces. As a result, their matching gear maxed out at ilvl 589, with no weapons or offhand items, and no buffs. So if the numbers seem low in general, keep in mind they have a low item level for this testing. The difference between the numbers on live and PTR is more important than the amount.

Fix for Wild Mushroom

@WarcraftDevs is tooltip for Glyph’d Wild Mushroom fixed in 6.1? More importantly, is the mana cost for Glyph’d Wild Mushroom fixed?

It is working properly in 6.1, and we’ll investigate the tooltip. Thank you for the heads-up!

This is a pretty big fix!! Currently, if you use Glyph of Wild Mushroom (which lets you place the Mushroom on a location instead of centered on a player) the cost of Wild Mushroom is also increased by about 2,000 mana. During a 10 minute encounter, if you cast your Mushroom on cooldown and use the glyph, you will have spent about about 40,000 more mana on Wild Mushroom than if you hadn’t been using the glyph.

The tooltip has already been fixed on the live servers, but the cost is still about 2k more than it should be. This bug has been stealth fixed in 6.1 (it’s not included in any patch notes!), but after Tuesday we will no longer be unintentionally penalized for using the glyph and we’ll have a pretty significant amount of extra mana throughout a boss fight.

Buff to Force of Nature

Force of Nature’s Treants has been buffed with a 35% increase to their health and spellpower, and an 80% increase to their armor and attack power.

Here are the amounts healed by a single Treant’s Swiftmend and Healing Touch:

LIVE	PTR
Swiftmend: 2376	Swiftmend: 3209
Healing Touch: 2377	Healing Touch: 3210

As you can see, this is a a decent buff to our healing Treants, but still probably not enough to get me to use the talent regularly.

Buff to Dream of Cenarius (via Naturalist Buff)

Naturalist (Restoration) now also increases the damage of Druid spells and abilities by 15%.

I am a recent convert to Dream of Cenarius, so when I saw the buff to Naturalist I got pretty excited. Sure enough, the Naturalist buff also makes healing via DoC stronger, making this talent even more attractive.

LIVE (avg over 6 non-crit hits)	PTR (avg over 6 non-crit hits)
Wrath: 8291	Wrath: 9196
DoC Heal: 12437	DoC Heal: 13793

Other Changes

Talent Changes:

Moment of Clarity (Restoration) now lasts 7 seconds (up from 5 seconds).
Rampant Growth (Restoration) now also increases the healing of Swiftmend by 20%.
Renewal now instantly heals for 30% of max health (up from 22%).
Heart of the Wild (Restoration) now increases spell damage by 150% (down from 200%), and Agility in Cat Form by 75% (down from 110%).
Displacer Beast is now classified as an Arcane School ability and can no longer be used while silenced.

Spell Changes:

Moonfire’s mana cost has been reduced by 55%. (1056 mana to 480 mana)
Genesis no longer requires a target.
Ironbark is no longer usable while silenced.
Nature’s Cure can no longer be cast while in a shapeshift form and is now classified as a Nature School ability.

I don’t have too many thoughts on these changes… Mostly they just seem like minor balance fixes. The decreased mana cost of Moonfire is nice, but since it doesn’t contribute to DoC, I rarely cast it. Slight buffs to Moment of Clarity, Rampant Growth, and Renewal make them more attractive, but I don’t really see myself switching to those talents in most cases.

The fact that Displacer Beast and Nature’s Cure have been added to spell schools means that it is now possible to be locked out of them, if interrupted while casting. But it is basically just another reason to avoid getting locked out of abilities.

Fun Changes!

Cosmetic transformations that alter the character’s appearance now have a higher priority than Druid combat forms. This means Druids can keep a transformation while shapeshifted.

Many Druid shapeshift forms now have attachment points on the head and back for cosmetic toy effects such as Blazing Wings or Pepe. Additional shapeshift forms may receive attachment points in the future.

I wanted to include a screenshot here of my Druid in cat form using Blazing Wings, but for some reason that toy did not survive the copy to the PTR! However, I was able to transform into a Druid of the Flame using Leyara’s Locket while shifting into cat form. These cosmetic changes will be a very nice and fun little quality of life improvement for all Druids.

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Overall, 6.1 looks pretty good for Resto Druids. Buffs to a few spells, fixes for Wild Mushroom, minor balance changes to others, and not really any nerfs. I can’t wait till Tuesday! =D

Heart of the Wild

[WoD] Restoration Druid Updates in 6.1

Gemming Your Resto/Feral Druid, PSA