Seeing how Anduin's [[Pursued by Grace]] has just been buffed (by 6%) I thought it was worth opening the discussion again about how [[Bold Strategy]] is and has been the only option for Anduin at level 1 ever since his release.
First of all I'd like to note that the recent buff is also a buff for Bold Strategy as should be obvious. Second, Bold Strategy already was the most picked and highest winrate talent of three and I'd like to look at why.
Baseline, Anduin heals for 260 on a 4s cooldown, rooting himself in place for 0.75s and spending 25 mana. That means, if he uses the ability on cooldown, his healing is 65/s, he is rooted 18.75% of the time and he spends 6.25 mana/s. If he doesn't use it on cooldown, the healing decreases but so do the amount of time rooted and the mana spend.
This is important because of how Bold Strategy works.
[[Renew]] increases healing per second by 32.5 and that's all that it does. There's two caveats to this: you need to basic attack at least once every 4 seconds (which may or may not be possible) and if you heal the same target twice in a row, it only heals for an additional 104 instead of 130 (because the duration is over 5 seconds). This would result in only 26 additional healing per second.
Pursued by Grace, if you deal damage at least once a second is better. It becomes worse if you deal damage once every 1.1s or less (or 1.4s if you assume the heal over time for Renew misses its 5th tick).
Bold Strategy gains every benefit of Pursued by Grace, no downsides. It also gains the benefits of Renew, without the two caveats I mentioned earlier (it's way more likely to basic attack every 6s rather than 4).
On top of that, by default, using it on cooldown uses only 4.2 mana/s and roots you only 12.5% of the time without losing healing (you lose baseline healing but the healing over time covers the same amount you lose)
If you don't use Flash Heal on cooldown with Renew/Pursued, you spend indeed less mana and are rooted less, but you lose healing. If you use it every 6 seconds, Bold Strategy laughs. If you use it less often than that, at this point you're simply not pulling your weight as a healer.
My idea for a solution?
Simply put, I think Bold Strategy needs to bring a disadvantage that the other two talents don't have. As such, I would change the cast time of Flash Heal baseline to 0.5s and would have Bold Strategy also increase the cast time by 0.25s. This means BS Anduin is exactly the same as he is now (same winrate) while Renew and PbG Anduins are stronger and swifter.
