I ended up breaking my 4 piece Tier 14 set fairly early on in order to clean up my leg slot (and get spirit) but found myself still using Soul of the Forest for certain encounters. Because of this I wanted to do another round-up of Soul of the Forest (and the many ways it can be used) in order to evaluate what we really end up getting out of it. All of this math is based upon a theoretical situation where each wild growth will find a sufficient number of targets that are in need of its full healing potential.
I understand that that there are situations where less than 6 (or 5) people are wounded and that does change the math considerably. I’ll try to address that to some degree here.
First let’s get the math out of the way before everyone’s eyes glaze over permanently! This is perfectly world stuff though and does not accurately simulate actual boss battle damage models.
Wild Growth potential throughput on paper
With my current test setup my wild growth healed a single person (8 ticks) for 49,989 health. I am running slightly above the 3043 break point.
With Glyph: hits 6 people and can be cast approximately 6 times per minute. This will heal for roughly 6 x 6 x 49,989 = 1,799,604 health per minute.
Costs 13,740 mana each time for a total of 82,440 mana, an overall HPM of 21.83
Without Glyph: hits 5 people and can be case approximately 7.5 times per minute. This will heal for roughly 7.5 x 5 x 49,989 = 1,874,587 health per minute.
Costs 103,050 mana per minute, an overall HPM of 18.19
Wild Growth with the Glyph and Soul of the Forest
With my current test setup my wild growth healed a single person (14 ticks) for 87,589 health, or roughly 75% more than a non SotF Wild Growth as we expected.
This spell will be cast approximately 4 times a minute healing for 6 x 4 x 87,589 for a total of 2,102,150 health per minute. This is roughly 302K more healing than without SotF talented.
Costs 54,960 mana per minute, an overall HPM of 38.25. You save 27,480 mana per minute which is approximately raw 2,290 mp/5.
Wild Growth without the Glyph and Soul of the Forest
With this setup you will be casting 7.5 Wild Growths per minute. I will say we average out to 3.75 non SotF casts and 3.75 SotF casts. It doesn’t line up evenly with the minute marker so that is just a crude breakdown.
Non-SotF Wild Growths will heal for 3.75 x 5 x 49,989 = 937,304 health per minute
SotF Wild Growths will heal for 3.75 x 5 x 87,589 = 1,642,304 health per minute.
Your total healing done per minute with this scenario is 2,579,609 health per minute. Costs 103,050 mana per minute, an overall HPM of 25.033
So here are the totals for all of the conditions we have investigated:
Regular Wild Growth /w Glyph
- Health per minute: 1,799,604 baseline
- HPM: 21.83
- MP/5 difference: Baseline, 0
Regular Wild Growth w/o Glyph
- Health per minute: 1,874,587 (+75K)
- HPM: 18.19
- MP/5 difference: -1,717 mp/5
SotF Wild Growth /w Glyph
- Health per minute: 2,102,150 (+302K)
- HPM: 38.25
- MP/5 difference: +2,290 mp/5
SotF Wild Growth w/o Glyph (alternating)
- Health per minute: 2,579,609 (+780K)
- HPM: 25.033
- MP/5 difference: -1,717 mp/5
Take this with a grain of salt
We know firsthand that not EVERY cast of your wild growth is going to heal 6 people when glyphed rendering the glyph less optimal for that moment in time. We know that raid damage isn’t even going to warrant the spell being cast for periods of time. That aside these numbers still provide useful information.
Comparing this ability to Tree of Life is quite difficult to say the least. Using the most common example of SotF /w Glyph, you would have a theoretical healing gain of 906K every three minutes with a mp/5 gain of 2,290 constant. I can’t really model the mana savings from Incarnation’s clearcasting (though that is a legitimate usage of the spell to begin with) but in order for it to be comparable throughput wise, 20% of your healing done over 30 seconds would need to equal 906K. For that to happen you’d need to be putting out somewhere in the realm of ~200,000 HPS. The thing is, for periods of insanely intense damage that is NOT easily done but you will get up fairly high. You just need to tailor your usage of the spell to get the best mileage you can really.
While it seems like this post is an ad for Soul of the Forest be advised that it is not the case. Soul of the Forest is a nice passive style benefit that gives you mana back and boosts your throughput by a sizeable amount. Its effect averaged out through the course of an encounter is very strictly controlled by how the fight plays out and how closely you are able to adhere to the theoretical numbers above. Depending on how periodic the damage is you may find yourself going for stretches without having an opportunity to fully 100% benefit from your wild growth. Tree of Life has the advantage of being something you can plan and tailor your use to maximize its benefit on a per encounter basis. The catch is that sometimes there’s no one moment where Tree would be substantially beneficial and then it turns into a mana saving temporary boost cooldown.
You will more than likely find yourself waffling between these two abilities as you progress through normal or heroic mode encounters. I know for a fact I carry plenty of tomes of me in order to swap the talent on the fly.
Disclaimer: This is very napkin math-y. If you are one of those other math loving folks out there and you spot an error in my numbers please let me know so that I may address it as soon as possible.
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