Shonassir

You can get a crit off a Swiftmend, which I often do. And the times I need to cast Regrowth (which can be alot depending on the boss fight) used in conjunction with the Improved Regrowth talent, also procs NG. I was talking with a Dreamstate druid who I was co-healing with in Karazhan for a 9 man boss run. He says he likes it because he never runs out of mana, but we tested our heals and he does nearly 200 less per 3 stacks of lifebloom than I do. His was 580 and mine ranges upward to 760ish. Our + healing isn't that far apart, only about 50. He loses the Swiftmend talent, which I can't seem to understand because that is a class defining talent imo. His only saving grace is Nature's Swiftness, and really without a 4 piece T4, (which isn't that good a bonus), seems to be the only thing that can make him worthwhile. He says he never runs out of mana, but I tried to explain to him since 2.4 the way they've buffed spirit he gets more MP5 than he does with Dreamstate. He had I think 203 mp5 while casting with MoTW and AI, while I sat at 217 while casting. He does have some versatility to put out DPS (and the moonkin aura for casters), but it seems to me he is truly ineffective trying to be either. Any thoughts?

 

lairpie

Ok, something new to discuss other than specs that offer no raid benefits and very clear out of raid benefits, which a person can easily weigh for themselves.

Purified Shadowsong Amethyst!!!! (11 healing/5 spirit)
Assuming you're in a tanking group most of the time, that almost always should go in a blue socket with a +healing bonus such as [Rejuvenating Bracers] or [Thunderheart Gloves] or [Thunderheart Helmet] even for people with mana overflowing. While there's simply no math to support using [item]sparkling empyrean sapphire[item]s even in most single blue slots as 10 spirit and ~5 healing (rough guess on a potential socket bonus) just is not better than 22 healing if you don't need the mana, 5 spirit, and ~16 healing often may be better than 22 healing. Also, if in doubt, freeing up spinnels for other people, since they're the best for tons of people, is good. I'm not sure I'll go back and regem things until we're sitting on a ton of extra gems, but I'll probably gem new things with a mix of these and teardrops. Hmm... t6 helm socket bonus is really nice, I would have done that as royal if it weren't for the since changed meta requirement. I think I'll changed that one as soon as the patch hits.

They hit the ZG priest and druid trinkets with possibly the biggest nerf to an item ever, at least off the top of my head. 400 haste on use down to 70. Haha. Guess I'll have another nexus crystal soon.

 

◊ Noressa

Depending on how easy it is to keep 250+ haste, I would probably use those as my blue gem of choice, though I'm using the Forceful Seaspray Emerald for that now. The stat of choice for me is currently running Haste > Healing > Regen. Since some of the gear coming up has less haste then what I have equipped currently, I'm willing fairly confident I'll still be using the Emeralds to bring my haste back up and meet my IED requirement before re-socketing spinels. The gem vendor will make it easier to re-gem, thankfully, without needing your guild bank to be swimming in gems.

 

Zidders

Random enchantment question.

Vitality Vs Boar's Speed.

Would the movement speed and stam outweigh 4 mp5? o_O;

Gogo zoom tree? :O

 

Fieryeel

Another question, one I am sure that have been asked alot, but time has changed, and I want to confirm it again now.

Is 9 healing or 4 spirit better?

It's always a matter of fully gemming up with +18/22 red gems regardless of sockets, or people like me who go by socket bonuses(unless they are crap) and go for a mix.

So for blue gems, I always go 11 heal/2 mp5, or 9 heal/4 spirit. But ignoring socket bonuses, how is 9 healing comparing with 4 spirit?

 

• Playered

There will be an 11 healing/5 spirit gem in 2.4.2.

For blue sockets where the bonus is +healing then it wont be such a bad gem to take unless you are still wanting to exclusivly stack healing.

 

snowsoccer

Pretty much 22 Healing is the choice in most cases, unless the socket bonus is realy good such as the T6 Helm which you get 2 MP5 at the cost of only 2 healing. In EJ we don't really have quite enough for me to go full Red but when the Badge vendor opens up here on Mal'Ganis trust me I will be.

Since 2.4 mana has become a mute point, I never have a Shadow Priest and I have yet In the 4 Bosses in the Sunwell had even the slightest of mana issues, I don't really see this changing considering how powerful Innervate is with T6.

 

lairpie

Yeah, our new way to pass the time in that shadow prison thing on Illidan is everyone watches my mana bar shoot up because I equip my [Rod of the Blazing Light] (with 20 spirit enchant and 10 spirit x3 gems) right before it hits. Being oofsr now feels like innervate used to feel.

All in all, 9 healing is definitely better than 4 spirit in any fight if you aren't short on mana. Generally I put spirit and +healing about even if you're in the tank group. Some fights, your party doesn't take enough damage to make it worth that, but if you figure ~4 healers healing your party, giving them each 10 healing or giving you 40 healing are about the same. Yeah, living spirit and kings and such, but we get more from +healing than most classes so I figure talents kinda cancel out. So, when its close, things like 4 spirit vs 5 healing, you have to try and figure out what portion of the raid's healing is going into your party, which isn't the same for every fight. But always take the bigger number if they're not close. This is assuming you're in a tank group and not often short on mana.

 

Uldreth

Everyday, all day and twice on Sundays.

Boar's is an essential raid enchant. Mana replenishment is something you can make up in countless other slots. You can't get run speed anywhere else, besides a meta that isn't practical or even very good at all.

 

Relinor

I assume the +haste sweetspot for druids is that which allows a 5 gcd rotation. Any less and you are still restricted to 3 casts and a refresh of a targets LB stack - any more and you are not going above 4 casts and a refresh.

I've kept up with most of this thread as its been written, and just spent 50 minutes rereading through it - but have not seen the suggested amount of +haste required to hit a 5 gcd rotation (assuming a realistic amount of lag like 100ms). Can anyone make a suggestion?

 

lairpie

The amount of haste needed to consistently make a 5 gcd rotation varies greatly with how perfect of a button pusher you are and with your latency fluctuation. People have been throwing around numbers between 150 and 250 as what they found made it doable for them with their connection.

As a note, like 50 haste is also fairly amazing at making a 4 GCD cycle from something you tell yourself you're getting because you know you should, despite the fact that its easily shown that you slip up here and there, into actually having a consistent 4 gcd rotation. The more your guild relies on your lifeblooms being always always there, the more important it is to really never screw up, and a small bit of haste helps that a lot.

 

◊ Noressa

I need between 250 and 300 haste to get a "good feeling" 5gcd cycle going, and I still miss cycles. I run from 150-300 latency on average, though it's the fluctuations of latency which affect it more then anything.

 

• giansm

Sure there's a breakpoint at which you unlock 5 GCD cycles, but I don't think that haste is always useless below that. If you find yourself raid healing a lot, or splitting your attention between a tank and the raid, any amount of haste is helpful since it lets you push out raid healing faster. Small amounts of haste will make it much more likely that you get back to the tank in time to refresh your lifebloom, let you hit regrowths sooner, and give you a faster swiftmend response time due to shorter GCD.

If you are just healing tanks, however, small amounts of haste are probably not that useful compared to just stacking +healing, since the majority of our tank healing is from hots that we cannot force to tick more often.

 

Sheshonk

I feel it necessary to remind (or educate) people that Regrowth stacks best with spell haste. Lifebloom will never reach the point with current itemization (Max Heal is 2700 /w sunwell gear unbuffed) where stacking spell haste is better than +Heal for HPS.


Now for my opinion...

Yes, I realize with a certain amount of haste you can put out 5 lifeblooms instead of 4, which spreads out raid healing, but I beg you to consider this: a Tree's role in raids is to heal tanks. Keeping this as your top priority, having spell haste gives little benefit to your true role (Only benefit is opening up the option for Swiftmend/NS more often). Raid healing is just icing on the cake and should be treated as such, don't mess up your role in raids by itemization choices. Stack +Heal, don't worry about spell haste. Raid healing for a druid is like trying to ram a square peg in a round hole: .5s longer quick heal that is horribly inefficient, hots that are overwritten which have a true overheal of roughly 75%. Leave maximizing raid healing to the people with CoH and Brain Heal, spend your itemization on what tree's do best: tank healing.


Back to the facts...

As we are all aware spell haste gains greater effectiveness with the more +Heal you have, but at what point does spell haste increase your HPS more than +Heal? Lets get some givens...

+Heal to Spell Haste iLvl Ratio can be found by comparing gems...
[Teardrop Crimson Spinel] vs [Quick Lionseye]
2.2Heal = 1Spell Haste

Druids have the following talents...
When you take into account talents the base heal for top rank spells are...
When you take into account talents the heal coefficients for top rank spells are...
With the above facts we can begin to compare spell haste vs +Heal. To have 1% Spell Haste requires 15.76 rating. The equivalent amount of +Heal is 15.76*2.2 = 34.67. So, what is better for HPS? 15.76 haste or 34.67 +heal? It depends on the spell...

Upon taking into account the HPS formula, +Heal coefficient, and spell haste you get this handy dandy formula, which I will plug in for triple stack lifebloom...
Amount of +Heal for Spell Haste to be better for all druid spells...
Take note that Regrowth's direct heal is a negative number. That means stacking spell haste is better for Regrowth's direct heal with 0 +Heal!


My sincerest apologies if my opinions have offended anyone, that was not my intent. I felt there was a lack of factual comparison between +Heal and Spell Haste.

 

lairpie

But if you actually look at the gear, the choice is more often between mana regen and haste rather than +healing and haste.

Also, doing your comparison is really only valid if you did the same thing with the comparison between little to no haste and the hps of cycles you can do with that, vs a few different cast cycles that are possible with more haste. Direct comparisons of a single spell aren't really helpful. Actually, comparing output in the same manner you have done, but using various discreet stat setups based on actual gear and the kind of casting patterns achievable with that gear would be amazingly helpful.

As an example, doing much the same thing you did, but comparing the healing output of a:
lbx3 and rejuv all on 3 tanks, and 1 free gcd spent on say a random raid lifebloom with the gear you would need to actually do that
and
lbx3 on 3 tanks, and rejuv on 2 with an actual gear set.

I haven't done the breakdown on that, but have found that in looking at actual gear setups available that picking up haste was just going to come at the expense of regen mostly, and very little +healing, and I have the regen to spare.


One other note, I've found that with the 65 haste I'm wearing most of the time (at the expense of 0 +healing, just regen) that lifebloom refresh, rejuv refresh, regrowth, regrowth, repeat, is actually a pretty nice cycle for anytime there's a lot of raid damage, and where the burst part of regrowth heals now, but the ticks are quite likely to have at least a few of them tick later. While you can say that in theory you can do that with 0 haste, I'm not going to keep from laughing ay anyone claiming they can actually fit 7 seconds of casting into 7 seconds perfectly, consistently without lifebloom dropping. It keeps the incredibly important hp stabilizing lifebloom stack on the tank, and allows me to really crank through that bloated mana pool. If you have a pretty decent feel for the other healers in your raid, you can intentionally choose the people that the shaman are less likely to chain heal. This also bathes the raid in regrowth hots, making a good portion of the raid swiftmendable. This is obviously best for trash, or fights with a ton of raid damage, but in those fights it's amazing. Oh, you can obviously do 2 lifebloom stacks intead of a rejuv with that.

 

• Melador

I think people are massively overestimating the importance of 4-vs-5gcd with haste gear. IMO, haste is good for reliably getting your 4gcd rotation going, as well as being able to throw a regrowth comfortably into a 3-cast rotation. But mostly it's just about being nimble and responsive, not crossing some magical 5gcd threshold.

Standing still and rolling 5 casts over and over on the same targets just isn't something that I find myself doing very often. I typically have 2 targets (3 at most) that I'm really interested in rolling stuff on, and I almost never can just stand still and concentrate on keeping my rotations flawless.

All the min-maxing of haste vs healing is ignoring the fact that healing isn't dpsing and can't be mix-maxed the same way. Yeah, maybe it's mathematically better for my casts to wear more +healing than wear my haste gear. But the fact of the matter is that I consistently feel like I'm more useful to the raid if I'm wearing enough haste that I can react to the fight and keep my LBs rolling, or land a clutch regrowth in time, or rejuv-swiftmend someone just when they need it, or NS+HT a split second before someone dies.

 

Relinor

I realise and agree that a druids main strength is providing a huge amount of consistent healing on one or more main tanks - and this is why I have completed my +heal set - I am at a stage where I have claimed all the gear I need/can get (We are a 5/5, 8/9 guild). The two final items I require would be the Illidan trinket and the damn 1st chest ZA belt which has not dropped ever. Currently I sit at 2290+heal unbuffed - which is respectable.

Which is why I have asked about +haste. I am now looking at building up an alternative set of gear, one built for speed. I am told that a good amount of haste will be very useful as we get into Sunwell, an example being for some fast decursing on Kalegos. I also would like to test out a +haste set on Gurtogg to get out some more casts on the Bloodboil targets. And ofc any other situation that requires speedy casting.

Lairpie - which items provide you +haste with no +heal loss? These are the kind of items I would like

 

• Playered

Almost all of the Sunwell gear has a rough set amount of healing, and then generally a mix of 2 from [Haste, Spirit, MP5], there are a few exceptions like the Legs however.
You can use the Leather Chest pieces [Sunglow Vest] and [Leather Chestguard of the Sun] as an example of this.

You trade off 33 Spirit for 33 Haste... I believe its common to have an assortment of blue sockets on the gear with Haste (due to lacking regeneration) and a near complete set of red sockets on gear without, but thats only from the top of my head (please visit Wowhead: Thrall-tested, Jaina-approved. or similar for specifics).


I highly doubt you would need Haste gear for Bloodboil, a 5 man roll is nice and everything but a single lb on each and letting it drop will completly cover the damage by itself, with alot less stress of panicing if you loose a LB stack on one of them, I could be mistaken if your attempting to do this while also rolling on the MT or something however.

 

Benita

1. Head
   [Cowl of Light's Purity] - not really easy to obtain, but the only healing head item with spellhaste
2. Neck
   [Amulet of Flowing Life] - JC craft
   [Brooch of Nature's Mercy] - ZA eagle boss
   [Brooch of the Highborne] - Felmyst
3. Shoulders
   [Spaulders of Reclamation] - Twins
   [Shoulderpads of Renewed Life] - BT LW bop craft
4. Back
   [Shroud of the Highborne] - Illidan
   [Cloak of Ancient Rituals] - ZA hexlord
   [Cloak of Swift Reprieve] - badge pvp
5. Chest
   [Robes of Faltered Light] - Muru (currency for best non tailor cloth dps chest)
   [Robe of Eternal Light] - SWP Tailor bop craft
   [Sunglow Vest] - Muru
6. Wrist
   [Thunderheart Bracers] - Kalecgos
   [Swiftheal Wraps] - BT boe craft
   [Bracers of Renewed Life] - BT boe craft
7. Hands
   [Leather Gauntlets of the Sun] - SWP boe craft
   [Handguards of the Dawn] - Kil'jaeden?
   [Botanist's Gloves of Growth] - Teron
8. Waist
   [Thunderheart Belt] - Brutallus
   [Angelista's Sash] - Kaz'rogal
   [Belt of Primal Majesty] - Gurtogg
9. Feet
   [Thunderheart Boots] - Felmyst
10. Finger
    [Ring of Flowing Life] - SWP boe craft
    [Blessed Band of Karabor] - BT trash drop
    [Band of Lucent Beams] - Kalecgos
    [Signet of the Quiet Forest] - ZA timed run
    [Kharmaa's Ring of Fate] - Kael Mgt Normal
11. Weapon
    [Dark Blessing]
12. Off-Hand
    [Book of Highborne Hymns] - Twins
    

ZA neck, ZA cloak, BT bracers, Teron gloves, Gurtogg belt, 2 BT trash rings and ZA healing mace are the items that are easier to obtain, very good and get you to exactly 250 haste. If you miss one of the items you can use haste gems, which is also not so bad for the IED requirements.

And haste is just an amazing stat, 250 rating for up to 25% more healing is just too good to skip. So far all boss fights are short and intense, mana should never be a problem and more regen is pretty hard to avoid on SWP gear.

I'm starting to pull away even from shamans on chain heal friendly fights on effective healing done, which is of course saying nothing about the quality of the heals, but shows how big the output potential is.

Wow Web Stats

 

clavarnway

Are 3 [Royal Shadowsong Amethyst] and 3x [Teardrop Crimson Spinel] both acceptable gemming combinations for [Leggings of Eternity] (depending if the Druid healer needs more mp5 or not)? I'm in charge of sending out gems for people and as long as the Spinels are a ok choice it's cool, but Spinels are so damned popular I just want to make sure it's the right call.

http://sigs.guildlaunch.net/sig.php/1424974uXyta.png

 

Norfair

Yes. You get 24 +healing for 6 mp5, which is 4 +healing per mp5 lost. That's more than the usual socket bonuses, so it's definitely worth gemming it with full +healing despite the 'good' socket bonus, especially now mana has become a non-issue for druids.

As for gems, in a few weeks everyone is able to get their own red gems due to the Sunwell badge vendor, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

GG Blizz!