A few corrections: [Ring of the Great Whale] is a zone drop from Heroic Throne of the Tides, [Leggings of Consuming Flames] are BoP, [Oasis Bracers] are BoP, and [Mantle of Soft Shadows] just drops from Altairus in normal, not the zone.

Thanks, all fixed up except for Mantle of Soft Shadows - it seems to be a drop from Anraphet and I've marked it as such.

Er, sorry yea, meant Anraphet. :x

One question--you call this "resto" but does it work for Balance as well? The two basically want the same stats (Int and then spirit/haste for the most part). So unless you left out any items that might somehow be different for Balance (maybe just add in trinkets), we can probably use this for both specs.

There are a few items that were skipped because they didn't have spirit on them.

Necks: [Charm of the Muse] from Halls of Origination trash, [Tauntka's Necklace] from High Prophet Barim in Lost City, [Pendant of the Keep] from Baron Silverlaine in SFK, [Pipefish Cord] from Neptulon's Cache in Throne of the Tides, and [String of Beaded Bubbles] from the JP vendor.

Cloaks: [Periwinkle Cloak] from Lady Naz'jar in Throne of the Tides and [Shadow of Perfect Bliss] from Asaad in Vortex Pinnacle.

Rings: [Anthia's Ring] from Mindbender Ghur'sha in Throne of the Tides, [Band of Rays] from Rajh in Halls of Origination, [Spirit Creeper Ring] from General Husam in Lost City, [Lavishly Jeweled Ring] from Admiral Ripsnarl in Deadmines, [Rose Quartz Band] from Slabhide in Stonecore, and [Abandoned Dark Iron Ring] from Grim Batol trash.

These are ilvl 346+ items, not all of them have equivalents of ilvl 333.

With spirit

2-handed weapons:
[Staff of Ammunae] archaeology
[Staff of Isolation] Lord Godfrey in Shadowfang Keep
[Soul Releaser] Earthrager Ptah in Halls of Origination

1-handed weapons:
[Torturer's Mercy] Rom'ogg Bonecrusher in Blackrock Caverns
[Elementium Hammer] crafted
[Shimmering Morningstar] Tol Barad rep, revered
[Scepter of Power] Setesh in Halls of Origination

Offhands:
[Prophet's Scepter] High Priestess Azil in Stonecore
[Divine Companion] crafted
[Apple-Bent Bough] 950 Justice points
[Bioluminescent Lamp] Neptulon's Cache in Throne of the Tides

Relics:
[Book of Dark Prophecies] High Priestess Azil in Stonecore

Without spirit

2-handed weapons:
[Staff of Sorcerer-Thane Thaurissan] archaeology
[Staff of Siphoned Essences] Erudax in Grim Batol
[Emberstone Staff] Foe Reaper 5000 in Deadmines
[Insidious Staff] Tol Barad rep, revered
[Cerith Spire Staff] Commander Ulthok in Throne of the Tides

1-handed weapons:
[Modgud's Blade] General Umbriss in Grim Batol
[Elementium Spellblade] crafted
[Biting Wind] Grand Vizier Ertan in Vortex Pinnacle
[Beak of Julak-Doom] Julak-Doom, outdoor heroic boss

Offhands:
[Dungeoneering Guide] crafted
[Beauty's Favorite Bone] Beauty in Blackrock Caverns
[Hermit's Lamp] 950 Justice points

Relics:
[Tattooed Eyeball] crafted
[Book of the Well Sung Song] Vanessa VanCleef in Deadmines
[Captured Lightning] Asaad in Vortex Pinnacle

e: Yes, cheated and edited in the relics.

A Discussion on Stat Weights

Stat weights as resto are subjective based off circumstances and healing style, and more complex than one might assume. I'll aim to explain these in a way that is easy to understand, yet concise here.

INTELLECT:
Obviously our primary stat. Not only significant throughput, also significant regen. When (if) we get to the point we have too much regen and its wasted, lose spirit. In this scenario Int will only lose value once you've eliminated all spirit and still have more regen than you need. I am doubting this will happen this expansion, but time will tell.

SPIRIT:
Disappointing regen return I thought. Divide the cost of one of your healing spells by 12, then double it. That's how much spirit it takes to cast 1 more of those. In the mana starved first tier, Spirit will probably be the secondary stat anyway as you need mana.

HASTE:
Haste is the most complicated stat for us, its value will depend very much on circumstances, healing style, your current haste level, and how many Haste cooldowns you have and how good you are at utilizing said cooldowns.

Haste effects healing in the following ways:

• Reduces cast times.
  This increases throughput, but the more mana constrained, vs time constrained you are, the less it applys, because you'll stop casting or fill in with Nourish more. So conversely being mana constrained means hpm and regen is more important than hps. Also the vastly increased hp pools of Cata have reduced the value of this portion of haste because reducing one particular cast by fractions of seconds is much less likely to make a difference in saving someones life. If a really fast spot heal is needed, that's what SM and RG are for. They are fast enough.
  
• Reduces the GCD.
  With RJ GCD capped from talents, this aspect is reduced in value as well, though still appreciated with LB/WG/etc.
  
• Adds extra hot ticks at specific breakpoints.
  This is the primary way Haste adds hpm. Getting to the 5th RJ tick is a 25% boost in 40-60% of your total healing. 6th RJ is 20%. While a 9th WG tic is only 12.5% of 10-25%. And the RG hot is generally such a tiny amount of total healing as to be irrevelant. Here is the list of breakpoints, all rounded up, and assuming the 5% haste raid buff.
  
  
• 915 = RJ 5th tic
• 1220 = LB 12th
• 1415 = RG 4th
• 2004 = WG 9th
• 2440 = LB 13th
• 3659 = LB 14th
• 3744 = WG 10th
• 3964 = RJ 6th
  
• Lifebloom scales more linearly as time between hot ticks is reduced (since it will rarely be refreshed between the 2nd to last and last tic), exception is breakpoints come into play when using it for raid heals during TOL. Hardly worth gearing around, in my opinion, but it is a good reason to chain haste cd's while in TOL.
  
• Smart use of CD's can justify stacking more haste if you wish so more of your RJ's can have 6 ticks. 1777 haste gives you 2 extra WG tics and 1 extra RJ 25% of the time, via Nature's Grace, if you use it off cd. (A bit challenging since its basically a minute long internal cd. Some addon help is in order.)
  If you can rely on having Dark Torrent you may choose to gear around having that as well.
  
• Increases Revitalize regen by a small amount. (Some math to get a good mp5 per point or percentage of haste would be appreciated, maybe assuming 1 stack LB and 3 RJ's?)
  
• Also minor boost to clear casts. While RJ might tic faster with more haste, since you will have the same number of tics total, you will have the same amount of chances for clearcasting, outside of breakpoints. However the extra Nourishes Haste can give you, and faster ticking LB's can add some procs.

So, to decide on what Haste is worth for yourself, you'll need to heal a few raid bosses and see:

How mana constrained vs time constrained you are. If you find yourself needing to stop casting or fill in with Nourish a fair amount of time, that greatly reduces the value of the cast time portion.

What your healing breakdown looks like. Figure out what % of your total healing is from cast spells, and what % from gcd's other than RJ.

Decide how actively you want to use and potentially gear around haste cd's. The more you have the more justified it can be.

My understanding is, scaling linearly and disregarding breakpoints for a moment, 1% haste would give you about 1% throughput, if 100% of your casts, and 100% of your gcd's benefited, and mana wasn't an issue. This isn't the case, so check the above and get an idea for how useful it is for you. Then add in the benefit from whatever breakpoints you can reach.
For instance, if you are mana constrained, and RJ is 50-75% of your gcd's, then linear scaling is pretty insignificant, just giving you potentially more (weak) Nourishes, and linearly increasing LB output. In which case, is it worth adding 1089 haste to go from 5th RJ (915) to 9th WG(2004)? That is, I believe adding about 8.5% haste for a 2.5% throughput gain from WG alone. Assuming WG is an average of 20% of your total healing. Add a percent or 2 for extra nourishes and the minor regen gains. Haste is looking hardput to compare with crit in this scenario. Now figure out your haste cd uptime and how well that's utilized. Lets say we do go all the way to 2004. And we manage to maintain a 25% uptime on Nature's grace. While it's up, we gain 20% to our RJ's, and 11.11% to our WG. If RJ is 50% of your healing, and WG is 20%, than you gain an additional 3% throughput from stacking haste to 2004 and using NG off cd. (All pretty rough I know, it could be slightly more since you can actually use WG twice in the 15 seconds its up, but likely less since circumstances aren't likely to permit NG being used strictly off cd.

MASTERY:
Often seems to be underrated, and underutilized. If 100% of your healing is effected by it, it increases throughput (and vitally important, also HPM) by 1.25%. This could be substantially more valuable than haste, but individual mileage may vary.

Regardless of the amount of mastery you have, even with only the base amount, be aware of it. 10% free bonus healing is free healing nonetheless.

If one were to completely ignore mastery and not change your style at all, it could range from effective 80%+ of the time tank healing, to sub 30% 25 man raid healing.

However being mindful of it and healing smart can lead to it being easily effective 60-80%+ of the time. Making it better than crit, and depending on all of the above, possibly better than haste. The fact that every bit of it is a straight boost to HPM, like crit greatly increases its value in the first tier as well.

Again, to determine the weight you want to attach to mastery, pay attention to how you heal, and then check your healing breakdowns.

Rejuvenation:
RJ people with WG or LB first, if hp levels make it worthwhile. In Cata I doubt you can sustain more then 4-7 RJ's per 10 seconds anyway, so it's really quite easy to have RJ effected 80-even 100% of the time. Also a full duration RJ and WG together will probably be only around 25% of someones life, which makes it much easier to heal without overhealing with hots. Guess at what percentage of the RJ's you cast you are able to have benefit from mastery. 70-95+% is possible. Then pay attention to the percentage of total healing from RJ. Probably 20-40% tank healing (depending on how intense it is as you will likely still use WG and SM for eff nearly off cd damage permitting, and toss out the odd raid RJ when the tank is topped. 40-60+% raid healing(depending on your regen and length of fight)

Lifebloom:
If you keep RJ up on whoever you have LB on (refreshing this one after the WG hots fade if practical, since we can clip hots, and have an insta gotem tick, we have around 4 seconds leeway), LB can easily benefit 80-95% of the time. Whether its worth keeping RJ on the tanks will depend on the incoming damage and the other healers. If other healers realize you are keeping 2 hots on the tank and a HT/Nourish every 6-9 seconds regardless of what they are doing, and don't top him up uselessly it won't excessively overheal. If a Pally is spamming tanks with their infernally op mastery damage would have to be extremely high to justify keeping RJ on your LB tanks.

Wild Growth/Tranquility:
Smart heals go where they want, this is the only factor that really scales the benefit of mastery up in smaller groups. I'd say from my wotlk experience it will still get 10-20% benefit. Its more then you think since the damage is rarely strictly evenly spread out, which boosts the chances of the smart heals hopping to someone with a hot already. However with the cd raised on WG you won't likely see it as more than 30% of your total healing, probably closer to 20% or less. Tranquility is OP and I've seen it up to 20% of total healing (in our sub 2 minute icc boss fights), in Cata I'm guessing it can be 5-10% more likely.

Cast heals:
In most cases these will be limited to tanks, and thus all effected by mastery. There are a couple raid mechanics where you might need a spot heal with RG, but that's the exception not the norm. Its too expensive to use on the raid unless absolutely necessary, or if you have an omen proc, tank is topped off and you just refreshed LB. If you mix LB's and RG's to burn clearcasts during TOL it will increase the amount on the raid. Also sometimes there maybe such intense raid damage, or some mechanic requiring burst healing, where you will want to spam RG/HT on the raid. Even in either case, you can use WG and prioritize the lowest hp people WG so kindly targets for you.

Swiftmend/Effloresence:
Obviously Swiftmend is always benefited by Mastery, and hence so is Eff.

So looking at your average healing breakdowns, come up with a number that you guesstimate as the percentage of the time, from your total healing, that mastery benefits you. Then realize it's 1.25% per point. With smart healing I am expecting to benefit from Mastery 50-70% of the time 25 man Raid healing (always LB's on a tank, RJ if justified), and the smaller your group, or the more focus you put on tanks, the more benefit you gain. Up to over 80%, or a point where each point of of mastery is a percentage of throughput and hpm. In which case it is certainly better than crit, probably better than haste.

CRIT:
Each crit increases the critical heal by 50%. And since everything is effected by crit now, 1% crit will equal pretty damn close to 0.5% throughput (and hpm). If you only used healing casts, and every living seed was used, than it would be 0.8%, but that is obviously far from the case, living seeds effectiveness vary's widely, but even tank healing in wotlk with infinite mana, even spamming RG which was Crit capped, Living seed has never been more than 5-10% of healing, unless there is such a stupid amount of overhealing going on that its the only thing that can heal.
Without heavy RG use, even tank healing we'll be lucky if its more than 1-3%. Efflorescence double dips from crit, meaning if the Swiftmend crits, each EFF tic will be 50% larger, but each individual tic can also crit. However in its nerfed form, even in an ideal fight it isn't likely to be more than 7-10% of your healing, in the average fight less to much less.

I would say each 1% of Crit = 0.53-0.57% throughput. However Crit rating converts poorly, without the bonus crit multiplier dps get, it will be hard to imagine a scenario where crit isn't our worst stat.



TO SUMMARIZE:

Our Resto Druid stat weights can seem very complicated, for most of us I would recommend just paying attention to how you heal, and glance at your healing breakdown after each boss fight. Then simply keeping these points in mind you should be able to guesstimate with some basic in your head kinda math what your stat weights will be.

If that's too much trouble, here's what I'll be doing!

Int>Spirit>915 Haste>Mastery>more haste>Crit

Using this formula should make deciding on the proper gems and enchants a cinch. You may end up playing with haste amounts to match with haste cd's and the various breakpoints as you swap out gear, so to simplify matters, probably a good call to use Reckless gems if you decide a yellow bonus is worth picking up, instead of Artful. Can always reforge more haste into mastery if you like. Obviously will be using a majority of Brilliants, and possibly a Purified or 2.

Also since we will aim for the 6th RJ tick when its obtainable, we'll need to watch the bis lists and see when we need to start only taking upgrades with haste. However for the first tier or 2, I believe mastery will flirt around with haste, often being better, sometimes not far behind

You missed trinkets apparently, we are lucky in that we won't need any drops! From what I can see the trinket from Archaeology and the Darkmoon card will be our BIS pre raid, and pretty damn close on the first 359 tier. Not needing to be replaced until the Heroic Shard of Woe, and Fall of Mortality.

With reforging available, it's very easy to get the needed haste. There are about 1850 itemization points available for reforging from ilvl 346 gear using a 1-hand weapon and offhand combination. The minimum haste you need is 318 (reforge everything to haste), and the maximum haste is 1525 (reforge all haste to something else). Don't forget to account for haste enchants.

Assuming haste is not better than mastery for tank healing or better than crit for raid healing, you simply set the value for haste equal to the higher of the two and let reforging work out the rest.

For example:
Int 1.87
Spirit 1.5
Spellpower 1.43
Crit .64
Haste .64
Mastery .44

Once the resto spreadsheet is complete, it will help define the relationship between intellect, spellpower, crit, and mastery.

[Tyrande's Favorite Doll] will be pretty easily outpaced by [Fall of Mortality] once we are able to get access to it, but Tyrande's is absolutely best available pre-Raid gear, and is a good alternative if drop rates on [Fall of Mortality] are unlucky. Some quick math shows the spirit proc on Fall of Mortality to be worth roughly 963 Spirit assuming an uptime of 50% on the buff which should be fairly accurate assuming that the proc rate of 10% remains and there is no ICD on the proc. In ilvl 346 gear this will provide roughly 435 mp/5 compared to 350 mp/5 from Tyrande's Favorite Doll.

You aren't clear when you say its easy to get the "needed" haste. What are you saying is the "needed" first tier haste level, as this is still much in debate.


One scenario I didn't really explore above, was keeping 2-3 stacks of LB active from tol by only refreshing with HT and Nourish. Some mechanics can make it impossible, its a pain in the behind and very limiting, however its the best hpm you can do, and you'll have a lot more clearcasts. I found it easy on Beta to only use HT to refresh, used Wg off cd, and still time for 2-3 RJ's each cycle, and could give my (glyphed of course) Innervates away.

Hard to tell for certain if its intended or not and whether it'll be fixed, might as well use it while you can.

If you are keeping 2-3 LB stacks, and mostly healing tanks, you are getting a lot of omen procs and may find you can cast nonstop a whole fight without casting Nourish. In which case the linear factor of haste is obviously much more appealing, however, that healing style also maximizes the benefit gained from Mastery. Mastery's 1.25% boost > Hastes 1%, if 80% or more of your spells are benefited by it. Either way they would both be more valuable than Crit, and if you are actually assigned to mainly cover tanks and get enough clearcasts to where mana isn't an issue, you can consider losing some spirit as well.

This is not entirely true. Haste also has the benefit of increasing mana returns from revitalize. Sure it's nerfed as a mana return but it's not insignificant. It's the only secondary stat we have outside of spirit that directly increases mana regen.

WG's 9th tick is also very possible, if you're operating under the assumption you get Dark Intent. And don't forget enchants. I see someone above said 1525 but my calculations are showing 1572 so I'm probably doing something wrong, but it's definitely attainable even in blues.

Edit:

Actually if you can get enough haste that you could comfortably squeeze more Nourishes in vs HTs, it would add to the value of haste.

That is true, I added that in my first post, but it does seem like it would be insignificant to me, and not enough to outweigh the solid HPM gains from mastery. But perhaps more math to fix some kind of a mp5 benefit from haste is in order?

Yes squeezing in a few more Nourishes obviously adds some throughput, that's why I said "next to no throughput". Nourish is critically weak, and if that is the primary gain you are getting from haste, then stay at 915.

I think you are underselling haste. The basic gist of your argument is that, since we are mana-limited (i.e. we cannot spam our highest HPET spells through the entire fight), then the total points of healing done over the course of a fight is are not increased by haste (also not totally true, since haste increases rate of Clearcast procs).

This puts aside a few practical points though.
1) This isn't DPS--we don't care about maximizing raw points of healing over the total course of the fight anyway (yes, this is what TreeCalcs does, but that's the whole reason that, unlike WrathCalcs, it's really only useful with sound contextual interpretation of the results).
2) Fights have times when you need more healing and times when you need less. In the past we ignored this and spammed high-HPET heals all the time because there was no reason not to. Now we tailor our casting somewhat more to what's going on, and use low-power heals during safe periods with losing much effective healing. Viewed in this context:
--Adding more haste increasing your healing power during the times when you're using high-HPET heals.
--Adding more mana lets you use the high-HPET heals more often in marginal scenarios where you weren't using them before.
I think I'd often rather have the former, i.e. amping up my throughput when things really matter, rather than using Rejuv more often in situations when I may well be just fine using Nourish.
3) I often end fights with more than 0 mana. This might seem incongruous in light of the idea that we're "mana-limited," but it's not really. Since I know now that mana can be a factor, I play carefully all through a fight rather than spamming a lot. Haste provides a uniform benefit to my healing all the way through, because I have no reason to go out of my way to consciously tailor my healing to spend every point of mana.

I completely agree. I've been trying to explain that to people for a while now and everyone seems to still be stuck in "we only need that if spamming non stop" mode.

All good points I'll grant you, but I don't think they change my conclusion. When healing gets intensive, where is most of our healing coming from? RJ. Since it's gcd capped, it only gains benefit from haste with breakpoints. As I mentioned, stacking to a WG breakpoint doesn't seem worth the investment, its only a 12.5% boost on WG, which might be 10-25% of ehps.

In contrast, Mastery can boost easily 50-80%+ of your healing even in the heavy raid damage scenario. WG jumps to the lowest people, which are the best RJ targets anyway. Even together they heal for a very low % of their total health, if my memory serves, they don't heal more then around a quarter of your average raid member's hp. So following wg hots with RJ and stacking mastery is still the best way to boost throughput in the heavy, bursty raid damage scenario.

Ditto for if damage on tanks is heavy in bursts, Mastery will boost healing more then haste on tanks. Since they boosted hp pools so much, we should be freed from stacking haste so we can land a heal before they die. If HT is too slow we have RG. If your tank is taking so much damage that RJ+LB+915hasted HT's can't keep them up, the tank or the raid or the strat is probably doing something wrong. If you do get the odd spike, that's what RG & SM are for. I can't imagine a scenario with Cata size hp pools where Haste>Mastery for tank healing, in between breakpoints.

Clearcasts are another mana gain from haste, though it also seems fairly insignificant. Only really gets them from bonus Nourishes and slightly more from faster ticking LB's, though hastes contribution can play a bigger role during tol.

If raid damage comes in bursts that boosts the value of the various haste cd's, and less so, but still a boost to stacking to maximize RJ tics during your cd's. This is also highly fight dependent.

So for more constant damage you could chain the cd's, or bursts you can stack them. For instance 1 of the 5 man bosses, I forget the name, had absolutely stupid aoe damage in 10 secondish long bursts. I had to tranquility one, and pop all haste cd's for the next and hope he was dead before the third. Stacking haste cds does make your current haste less relevant, and completely not worth calculating for most of us!

Anyway I don't mean to sell haste short, I am just concerned that people are overrating it, and selling mastery short. We should be healing to maximize our benefit from mastery regardless, its free healing.

I posted a pre cata raid resto druid gear guide here if anyone is interested -

It's mainly focused on 25 man raiding, with gear priority going to haste/spirit items, and then either spirit/crit or crt/haste. I plan to avoid mastery as much as possible. The guide includes zone priority based on these items to give a sense of which instances are more valuable to you while gearing up.

Keep in mind, even if you avoid Mastery, which I'm not sure why you would, every time you RJ somebody with no hots, vs someone with a WG or LB, you are losing 10% throughput. Assuming = or absent overheal naturally, but my experience in Cata was far less overhealing anyway, so in most cases neither choice overhealed. Besides the fact WG is a smart heal, treat it as your "RJ targeting spell" it picks the lowest hp people who need it the most anyway.

I've been practicing and testing this priority system in my Live 25 man raiding since the last changes, and have found it easy, and practical to get 50, even 70% or more benefit from Mastery even as a 25 man raid healer. I'll break it down for the skeptical, using the ideas from my first post, here is what I expect Mastery to benefit in Cata, using a 1, maybe 2 stacks of LB, WG and SM off cd, fill in with RJ's, when damage justifies it approach.

Rejuvenation:
Easily 85-95% benefited by mastery. 45-60% total healing.

Lifebloom:
I expect to keep RJ on my LB targets, its too much of a gain to ignore, other healers can focus other targets moreso, if the RJ/LB is largely going into overheal, its probably because too many other healers are overhealing the tank. But possibly just boss damage is undertuned.
But I expect LB to benefit 70-98% of the time. % of total healing will vary wildly depending how many stacks of LB, and how much tank damage. 10-40%+ potential of total healing.

Wild Growth/Tranquility:
Ah smart heals. They are the only factor that really scales the benefit of mastery up in smaller groups. I'd say from my wotlk experience it will still get 10-25% benefit. Its more then you think since the damage is rarely strictly evenly spread out, which boosts the chances of smart heals hopping to someone with a hot already. Together, depending on fight duration and the amount of raid damage, probably 15-35% of the total.

Cast heals:
In most cases these will be limited to tanks, and thus all effected by mastery. There are a couple raid mechanics where you might need a spot heal with RG, but that's the exception not the norm. Its too expensive to use on the raid unless absolutely necessary, or if you have an omen proc, tank is topped off and you just refreshed LB. If the raid does need burst healing, you can still chase WG hots with your RG/HT. I wouldn't expect all 3 cast heals together to be more than 10-30% healing, but most/all will be benefited by mastery.

Swiftmend/Effloresence:
Obviously Swiftmend is always benefited by Mastery, and hence so is Eff.

So, guesstimating at an all boss fight average, breakdown might look like:

Heal-------% of total----- % Benefited
--------------------------from Mastery
----------------------------------------
RJ:------------ 45----------90%
LB:------------15-----------90%
Smart heals:---25-----------15%
Cast spells:---10------------90%
SM/EFF:--------5 -----------100%
----------------------------------------
Looks like mastery benefits around 75% of total healing, and of course each point of mastery is 1.25%.
Which makes it clearly better then Crit at the least, see my above posts for my thoughts on mastery vs haste. The tighter your healing focus, the better mastery obviously, but just because you are in a 25 man raid doesn't excuse ignoring it. Obviously your mileage may vary.

But ignoring our mastery will be a mistake. If you decide for your healing style it isn't worthwhile to stack, you still have the 10% free healing to keep in mind.

Well I have experience healing 25 man raids on Beta and I don't think the healing style will benefit from mastery. I would see myself having lower throughput using mastery over haste or crit.

Most of my overhealing on beta was from rejuvenation / lifebloom ticks on the tank. So I think you're overvaluing mastery regarding full hot ticks on the tank. I'm not going to cast a rejuv on a target with WG unless I know the rejuv will result in very little if no over healing. (Forcing yourself to only cast rejuv on targets with WG / LB seems odd).

You use Healing Touch a good portion during raid healing. There are plenty of times where if you only cast rejuvs on the targets they could potentially die because they'll get hit with another attack. Or you will make yourself go oom very quickly. At least in the heroic encounters I saw.

In the end it's going to be a personal choice. If you think you're going to value a lot from mastery then feel free. Mastery to me feels like a huge gamble, and forces you to potentially heal differently to benefit from it. At least I know what I'm getting with haste and crit.

I do have a question about this phenomenon for those who were on beta.

When is the mastery increase calculated in terms of refreshing HoTs? I can see several scenarios:

A) LB stack on target, Cast RJ which gains mastery, cast Nourish (gaining mastery bonuses) to refresh stack of LB, LB refresh does not gain mastery.

B) LB stack on target, Cast RJ (mastery bonus), Nourish refresh (mastery bonus), LB refresh gains Mastery bonus due to pre-existing RJ


Under A), we'd want to have RJ on the target before stacking LB so that we could keep a rolling perma-stack of amped LB. Under B) we'd end up being able to roll that same perma-stack of amped LB along with an amped RJ which feed off each other each time they refresh. That would have clear implications for Mastery benefits when tank healing.

Or have I mis-interpreted how it works completely?

When you refresh LB, if a rejuv, regrowth, or wg hot is not present then the LB will not benefit from mastery until you refresh again and a hot is present. It doesn't matter when the hot is present in relation to how many LB stacks were present at the time.

For example -

1) Applying Lbx3, then rejuv, then casting Nourish on the target.

2) Applying LBx1, then rejuv, then 2 more LB stacks, then casting Nourish on the target.

Both of these scenarios will result in a Lbx3 healing for the same amount.

So the scenario B is correct, eventually we'll be able to get a full stack of HoTs on one target that all contribute to each other via mastery. That's going to hugely increase our potential throughput as we narrow our focus down.