Revitalize Use (and WWS)

Contents:

• Finding Revitalize in WWS Parses
• Energy Gains per Class - Vortex Raid 7/21/09
• Comparisons
• Variation Factors
• Conclusions
• Who to Revitalize?

Rambly Intro

Last night (July 21, 2009) was a good raid. DPS was overall spot-on, and we did Hodir hardmode with 15 seconds left on the clock, not to mention finally bursting through Thorim hardmode without a bloodlust. Kitarha (DK) was trying out a new frost spec (he's normally blood), and I had to pull out my Enchanted Broom to mop up the puddles of drool left by the ret pally and feral druid once they realized that they had imp icy talons.

I also haven't caught up on all the sleep I missed out on last week while helping run the camp, so I was a little loopy. I vaguely remember having a dance party at some point, running into Hodir with an army of Giant Sewer Rats, the prot pally and priest throwing cascades of flower petals at each other, a group of us giggling with the alliance players of Factum non Lacuna, having a Roflwolf look-alike contest (Roflwolf is our hunter's pet), and putting Abolish Poison on a couple people to reassure them that my cooking (the Fish Feast) wouldn't poison them.

Anyway...

It's been a while since I last looked at my numbers for revitalize, so I pulled up the wws report from last night and took a peek through.


Revitalize 3.1 and Log Parses

Revitalize is now much more difficult to numerically look at in a per-cast breakdown, if reverse-engineering from collected raid data. It can proc off of both Rejuvenation and Wild Growth, which are not recorded in the combat log as "casts," but as "gains" of the HoT: and with Wild Growth, any given cast may hit between 1 and 6 players (if glyphed)... as well as pets, summoned minions, mind controls, and even some few "vehicles" such as the trash to Mimiron.

The best sources we can go on to find revitalize's worth are to look at the raw data from combat logs, organized by sources such as WoWwebstats. If your raid has a webstats report up, you can find this data by browsing Abilities -> Energy -> Revitalize to see the full, consolidated list of how much total energy every player in your raid received from the procs. In the case of shapeshifting druids who collect energy, rage, and mana, you can go to their individual page and look at their Energies & Dispells tab to see the full breakdown of what they received.

Remember that the larger your raid, the more your casts will be spread out among the group; in turn, the more druids in your raid that have revitalize, the more raiders will benefit. Thus, the percent breakdowns you may find for each individual player in your raid will vary based on group makeup, size, and additional talents or abilities your group may have, as well as how often your group feels the need to cast things like innervate, mana pots, mana tide, arcane torrent, and hymn of hope.

That said, let's take a look at my ten-man raid from last night.


Energy Gains Per Class

(Click to view fullsize)

The revitalize sections are colored in bright blue.



Comparisons

>25%: Revitalize is a large part of the (non-natural) energy gains for Cat Druids, DKs (even those with Butchery!), and Warriors, making at least a quarter or more of their power gains. This will, in turn, increase their dps and (for the prot warrior) threat. We can assume that rogues will receive a similar benefit as cat druids do, a safe assumption since I have looked at a rogue in our ten-man before (just didn't document it on the blog).

>9%: Revitalize did make up a significant chunk of the mana regen for the resto druid (myself) and the mage. The mage did not use arcane torrent as often as our priest, however. As for myself, lifebloom blooms were the vast majority of my mana regen, followed closely by replenishment; overall, revitalize does make up a great majority of my own passive mana regen. Granted, I did not have to cast innervate on myself much last night; those druids that are having mana difficulties will most likely find their innervate use outstrips their percent returns from revitalize.

<9%: I suspect the reason why it did not make up more of the priest's mana regen was because our priest regularly used Arcane Torrent to return mana to herself; the warlock in turn had lifetap. As for the hunter, ret pally, and prot pally, each had several more significant sources of mana return ranging from judgement of wisdom, spiritual attunement, arcane torrent, divine plea, viper, etc.


Percents vs Raw Numbers:
Looking at the raw mana numbers, I saw that similar amounts of mana were returned to the lock, mage, priest, and prot pally by revitalize; the hunter and ret pally received less raw mana off of revitalize over the night than those players. It is also important to note that revitalize will return a percent of the players' base mana: those with larger mana pools will recieve more mana per proc than those with smaller mana pools (such as hunters, enh shaman, and ret pallies).

The prot pally was our MT, so she was rarely without rejuv proccing away at her mana; thus, despite her relatively small mana pool, she recieved more mana overall than did the hunter or ret pally.


Variation in the revitalize procs and percent of total power regen is based on:

• How often I heal them
• In turn, how often they take damage that makes me heal them
• Size of target's mana pool
• Target's usual distance from the rest of the group (in range to catch WG splashes?)
• Proportion of resto druids in the raid with revitalize, compared to raid size
• How bored I get (and thus start throwing moonfire & hurricane rather than rejuv & WG)
• Whether the player has and uses Arcane Torrent
• What other tools that class/spec has to regen their power, and how often they use them
  
• Other mana sources available in the raid

Ultimately the question really is: who needs the procs the most?


Conclusions

Revitalize provides a nice background power regen for a raid with druids who make regular use of rejuvenation and wild growth in their healing. It often matches the power returns of Judgement of Wisdom and Mana Tide totems, though each raid and individual player will vary in how much it seems in comparison to their other power regeneration abilities. There are fewer abilities to restore rage, energy, and runic power, however, so to those classes without mana, revitalize is a particular blessing!

Your raid will benefit from the procs gained just through your normal healing. However, if you find your raid is not taking much damage and you have plenty of time and mana to spare, you can select individuals of your raid to cast on specifically to grant them revitalizes' power procs, effectively converting your mana (and a small mana cost at that, if you have Spark of Hope and Idol of Awakening) into power for your dps classes.

I have habit of making sure that non-mana users get rejuvs when I have plenty of mana and GCDs to spare, because it will increase their overall dps by giving them more energy/rage/runic power to play with. Mana users, on the other hand, vary greatly in whether or not they really need your rejuvs, and should be handled on a case-by-case basis.

Things to keep in mind when giving out spare revitalize-proccing rejuvs:

• Is the target actively using their energy? If any player is sitting with a full bar of power already, extra procs of power won't likely be used.
• Is the group not in combat yet? Warriors and DKs and bears start with zero, and can use the procs for power in gaining threat or getting off early attacks/interrupts. Cats and rogues start with full energy, so there's little reason to give them a rejuv before combat starts.
• Most mana users have plenty of other alternatives to replenish their mana, so they will rarely need your gift of 1% mana procs. You are more likely to give an innervate than rely on revitalize procs to regen an OoM friend if you're at a point where the raid's not taking much damage, since it means that your own mana is probably quite safe and you don't need to hoard your innervate for yourself.
• Prot pallies who aren't taking much damage are not, in turn, regenning much mana through their Spiritual Attunement. If they are tanking, they should have a rejuv on them regardless, imo, but do keep in mind that your rejuvs and WGs can proc them back some mana even if it's not healing damage!