Karmen

The crafted LW chest is the best healing chest in the game post 2.4 IMO.

Late Night Raiding www.skeletoncrew.org

 

Ailetha

The primal mooncloth set is total garbage for anything past SSC/TK. You should have replaced it by the time you walk into BT/HS. I'm not an officer or anything of the sort in my guild, but in my past experience; people who have applied to our guild in the PMC set have been laughed at. You couldn't be an effective healer whatsoever on Illidari Council, Mother, Gurtogg, or others, with such low stats. If you don't have 8500 health on Najentus; you will die; no matter 'how quick' you are on healthstone popping, healing yourself, etc. And good game, since you have under 10k, you can't even take any extra hits whatsoever without keeling over. Possibly even including most of the fights in Hyjal. I mean, even on a fight as easy as Rage Winterchill, if you take an Icebolt, even your quickest reaction healers aren't going to be able to get a heal off or barely in time. Come on, with that low of hp provided with the PMC set, you won't be doing anything BUT healing yourself, heh. Good luck being the sole (or geez, even one of two) tank healer on Council in a full PMC set...


HPS doesn't mean a thing if you can't last through the fight long enough to:

A. Stay alive, and
B. Not run out of mana the entire time.


So I would say that PMC set is a huge no-no if you are going to be healing anything in BT or Hyjal whatsoever. Stay away from it like the plague.

Plus, say most of your items don't drop or whatever before PTR goes live. Are you really going to walk into Sunwell in Primal Mooncloth? Any raid leader who's done a minor bit of research would force you to give up your raid spot until you weren't wearing that stuff. You couldn't take 12-14 stacks of Arcane Blasts, probably not even 9. At least in my gear, I can take up to 14 (We got Kalecgos down to 1%/2% that time and he despawned...Man, what a sad day, lol.).

You don't want to purposely stack it, but purposely going with out it is just as bad.

edited for grammar.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...ks/Ailetha.png

 

Pyros

PMC Shoulders healing:92
Tier 5 shoulders healing:77 +2x18gems=113

PMC Robe healing:121+ 2*18=157
Tier 5 chest:103+ 3*18=157

PMC belt:81 +2*18=117
Life-Step Belt:75+ 2*18=111

Total healing lost over the best preT6 gear: 15.

All the other stats are total non factors for a resto druid. You can get 8500hps while using PMC without any trouble at all. You can break PMC for the ONE fight in T6 content that REQUIRES you to have 8500. I have 2250 healing with my "crappy" PMC, and I have no trouble outhealing a lot of people besides CoH spamming priest on any given encounter. It's fine if you value your stamina very high, but it only helps you with bad reflexes, just like mp5/spirit only helps you with not chugging potions.


Edit: Since I checked your armory, it seems you're a tank group spirit druid. Your priorities may vary, since I'm never in tank group, I'm valuing +heal over any other stats, and I actually don't care about any other stats. But even then, stamina has no more value(and probably less because of commanding shout) in a tank group. It's a worthless stat, that's nice to have on your gear, but that you shouldn't actively seek.

You also talk about 2.4, I fail to see how what will be patched in 1+month has anything to do with the gear you can get when you start doing T6 content. It's not like your guild will magically get more T6 drops if you don't use PMC, or get full gear before 2.4 is live and not have to do T6 anymore. The only thing is, come 2.4, PMC will become obsolete because the new craftables are straight out better. The discussion then will not be valid anymore, simply because getting LW instead of tailoring gives much better results. In the current game though, if you're respecing to resto in a T6 guild, or rerolling a tree druid, PMC is the easiest and best option to gear yourself with fast and be efficient in raids.


As a side note, I alreayd had this discussion a few months ago when I started playing wow again, in the attunement thread. I was saying that my gear, which was mostly PMC, Whitemend and S3 jewelry, was good enough for T6 content and that I shouldn't have to farm crappy T5 content to get the vials if I didn't need the gear. Someone came and told me the same thing, bla bla stamina bla bla PMC sucks. A few days after, I got a cross server invite, transferred, and went straight into T6. Since then, I've NEVER felt the NEED to gear on stamina. Not a single time. I never thought, wow I wish I had more hps. When I die, I die to my own stupidity(not moving fast enough, not click healthstone fast enough, being focused on healing others on the last ticks of my agonizing flame). This does not happen often. I believe if I can do it, anyone can, and this is why I always say PMC is a good choice when you can't afford wasting time farming T5. If you have T5, I'm not saying eh PMC is better, but not everyone wants to farm kael and whatever drops the shoulders. Actually, not a single guild I know want to kill kael more than 2-3times for attunements, then they go to T6 content.

 

Ailetha

The problem is, you're sacrificing 4k health for...200 healing. It's not one fight either; you pretty much just ignored the points you couldn't argue with.

I'm not really sure I understand the second statement; that's assuming that you will never have to use any more than your initial mana pool + pots. That is just simply not true.

I suppose though, if you have a shadow priest all the time, then ya, mp5 does only save you pots. I use a shadow priest for 20% of Mother and for 8-10% of Council and for nothing else in the game, so mp5 is practically required for me, even with chain chugging mana potions.

Outhealing is not the issue whatsoever. You should be doing your assignment, not worrying about hitting #1, or even top 3, on the meters.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...ks/Ailetha.png

 

Vayeate

Not to jump offtopic, and thanks Ailetha, opened my eyes to the PMC, I'll probably forget about it but someone else has sparked my interest.

I popped open your armor and your riding 911 spirit and still missing a few buffs, mainly divine spirit. I've never seen a T6 druid boosting spirit over mp5/+healing. Are you playing with this for 2.4 int/spirit conversion or do you actually raid as such. If your big on spirit hows that working for you? Notice you have the alchy stone so you pop a lot of pots, are you MT/OT buff grp?

I'm interested, epic spirit gems..

 

Pyros

Erm 4k health? You're losing 820hps over what I listed, which is T5 and life-step. I doubt you'll find much better at that level, unless you gear on S3, and even then I doubt you lose more than 1.3k. I discarded all the other fights because there's nothing there that can kill you in one hit, so stamina has no value at all. It's not like having 1k more hp will make you so great that you don't have to heal yourself when you get hit by a flamestrike/blizzard/bloodboil. It only means after the first hit, you'll have more hps than you would with PMC. If you heal fast enough, there's no worry about it though.

I never have to use more than my initial mana pool, oil and chain potions. I do get a SP most of the time, but they tend to die rather fast on most fights they'd need to live. The difference here is spell usage, seeing your relic and your spec, you use Healing touch, which means for some reason, you're not in treeform? Hell healing touch itself is a pretty crappy spell for mana efficiency.

And PMC also gives 5% of your passive regen, which usually offsets any mp5 difference on the gear. From the gear comparison I did, you get pretty much the same mana regen. It's not a factor for me, but if it is for you, PMC is still the same as what you compared, the only difference being int and stamina. The int difference is rather small too.


It seems to me what you're arguing about is that PMC sucks because it's cloth, and because it's crafted, even tho numbers don't show that at all.


P.S.: Forgot the outhealing thing, it was in response to you pointing out that with PMC, you couldn't be useful in a T6 raid, because it sucked. I was pointing out that on any given fight, whatever my assignment is, I can top healing meters, which shows I'm not totally worthless in terms of healing done. I top them but by a small margin, we have very good healers, and we all get roughly the same % of healing done at the end of the fight.

 

Ailetha

I NEVER have an spriest. I pop pots at -4300 mana whether there are 10 minutes of the fight left over or 10 seconds; regardless or whether it looks like a wipe or not; just because that's my rotation and you never know when something bad is going to go wrong. You just have to be as adaptable as you can. I have geared myself purposely not considering the amount of mana I have left over after a fight; because I can't tell you how many times some DPS has killed a few people in the raid and added an extra couple minutes to a fight.

Just the other night someone missed heal interrupts on council...a <10 minute fight got stretched into 12 and change; and I ended up being the sole tank healer left alive on Council. Thank GOD for 2pc Swiftmend bonus, heh. So, while I normally would have had a bunch of extra mana left over, I used my innervate both times they came up and ended the fight with less than 2k mana.

Plus being pots spec makes them really cheap.

So it is not uncommon for me to go through 25 in a 4-6 hour time period. One night back when we were still working on Illidan, we worked on him for an entire raid period and I had brought 50 pots; I actually ran out and had to borrow some from a pally. We did timed run ZA last night and I went through 15.

Ya, I have 949 with a Scroll of Spirit V and no DS (we have no divine spirit priest unfortunately). With a DS priest instead, I think it would put me up to 969?

I spend, with exception of Archimonde, all my time in the MT group, healing the MT/OT in my own group. So, I would say, if we got another resto druid for example, they wouldn't get anything out of stacking spirit until 2.4 really, because they wouldn't be in the MT group. If you have one in your guild, then there really isn't any reason to have another spirit stacker.


I have orgasms on the PTR - 452mp5 is hot, hot, hot, hehe.

EDIT: I had to add this cause I didn't realize I logged out with it. I used that Healing Touch idol for Zul'jin tornadoes phase - I don't ever use it in raids except for that one phase.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...ks/Ailetha.png

 

Vayeate

While casting? Thats insane.

 

Ailetha

Yap, around 1100-1200 while not casting. IDK what experience others had, but like, I need every bit of it in Sunwell. My HPS and mana usage both have gone up in that instance; I definitely use it. I don't use as many mana pots but I do use more mana. Innervate ticks for 1600 per tick on the PTR. Right now the whole thing fills my mana bar and then some on live(aka alot less, hehe).

You can get this same amount by using less Spirit and more Intellect as well, as far as I've read. You don't specifically have to stack Spirit to get those numbers.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...ks/Ailetha.png

 

Vayeate

But anyway you look at it our regen is getting a huuge buff. I know it's rhetorical since your a buffer druid and I ask this for complete lack of any druids I know playing with the PTR but, are spirit/int pretty much wreaking mp5/+healing druids on the PTR?

 

Pyros

Can't compare spirit/int vs mp5/heal. You want heal whatever your build is anyway. However spirit/int seems to be better, or at least equal depending on your innervate, your trinkets, your group setup and so on, to mp5. You might want to maximize spirit over healing if you're tank tree(well if your guild uses one), but if you're not you should probably max healing first, then get enough regen to last thru the fights.

As someone said before, each druids mana usage will vary greatly depending on a lot of guild factors, so each one should find his own way to deal with it. I max healing over everything else because I never run out of mana. My regen is a tad better on PTR than on live(the while casting regen, the OO5SR regen isn't really important since I never stop casting pretty much), like +40mp5 or so.

 

Orin

I agree 100% with Pyros regarding the PMC set. I have used it very well through all of SSC/TK and most of Hyjal/BT by swapping in a couple PvP items in specific encounters like Naj'entus.

On the other hand though, some players simply die a lot. They aren't good at staying out of AoE and watching the fight and adapting to their surroundings. These people should definitely not wear PMC. They need stamina. I've seen priests in the same situation.

 

lairpie

I'd be curious to see a couple wws links for the druids that are rocking massively more mana regen (whether spirit or mp5) than average to see what they're doing to use so much mana, and more to the point what the other healers in their raids aren't doing. Outside of extensive use of regrowth, there's simply no way as a druid to use the kind of mana regen that some people are sporting (assuming you're using potions frequently) and innervating yourself. I guess with a decent chunk more mana regen i could innervate someone else more often, but to get enough regen to have that be true, I'd have to have quite a bit of spirit, and not using your own innervate when you're stacking spirit has obvious downsides. I guess my question, ideally with an answer and a wws link for an example, is what are people doing to burn so much more mana than I am.

Things i can come up with:

1, a guild where for whatever reason other healers mostly focus on tanks, while druids use regrowth, rejuv, swiftmend extensively for healing random raid damage

2, keeping hots on a tank, but then using regrowth a lot on random raid damage

3, innervating someone else, though, I'd definitely question the wisdom of not innervating yourself on a character with enough spirit to not need to innervate. It's a bit of a catch 22 that sorta creates a cap in spirit's effectiveness for druids.

4, letting lifebloom drop a lot more and therefore needing to restack it. though that really shouldn't affect mana usage in multi tank fights since you're using every gcd anyway, and lol at being oom if there's only 1 tank to heal.

5, using swiftmend a lot more than i do (i really don't swiftmend too often, we run 2 druids and on any given oshit moment I nsht, and he swiftmends and watches my ns cd to know if we need to reverse next time).

6, using regrowth even when the hot's already up just to add a bit more healing. I do this once in a while when i'm full mana and nothing else to do to burn off more mana.

7, Dropping form to use HT?

8, just strait up not using the amount of regen they have but stacking spirit to boost their aura, almost certainly not boosting other people's healing by as much as their gimping their own. (ie, it takes like an entire raid worth of healers doing nothing but healing people in your group for spirit gems to even be close to as beneficial as pure healing gems. How many fights are there really where all of the healing actually goes purely into the tank group?)


I guess I probably sound sarcastic, but i really am trying to see what people are using sometimes 100-200 more mp5 than i am if they're actually using their mana, and potting, and innervating and have tons more regen on their gear. Partially, I'm just curious if they're doing something stupid, doing something that is just not relevant with my healer setup compared to theirs, or doing something useful that I could work into my routine when i have another 60 or so mp5 in 2.4.

Brewmaster of WBC

 

grutak

This is where I fall in. Though, based on a person's progression(I'm at 2/6 SSC and 2/4 TK), it could be any of what you listed.

But in my case, in single tank encounters(Lurker, Mag phase 2) where I stack hots on 1 tank, and then raid heal with my left over GCDs(usually lifebloom, since I know a FH/FoL/CH/CoH is about to land and I just want to make sure they are topped), the extra regen will be welcome, but not something I cant live without.

Where the extra regen is really going to help for me is during new encounters. My guild has a habit(bad habit) of getting the first kill of a boss during enrage(VR, Dragon hawk, Hydross). I am always burning every cool down I have(pot, innervate, drum). The extra couple thousand mana will be great to have then.

 

Relative

General Question for Resto Druids:

I'm a feral druid. I have no intention of specing Resto. I tank for my guild and am happy doing that. There is "one" fight that I have run into where I am required to heal. This is the dragonhawk fight in ZA. On this fight we have our warrior tank the boss, our holy pally consecrate tank the dragonhawks and I switch to healing to make up for the loss of our pally. I have an "ok" healing set (+1500 healing, 380mp5 outside of cast 150mp5 inside) I've been doing ok keeping up pally and the other melee/aoe taking damage from the dragonhawks but I feel like I could be doing a better job.

Due to the lack of restoration talents, should I be using lifeblook at all? My 3 stack seems to tick for so little (even with the idol) and I'm wondering if a well timed downranked HT with the HT idol would be a better option for healing the pally/lock/mage during that fight.

Currently I use a 3 stack of LB on the pally, with rejuv on the pally, lock and mage and regrowth the 3 as they get low.

I do not have a spriest in my group for the fight and generally use my innervate on myself and have to use 2-3 pots. Anyway I can improve the way I heal this fight?

Thanks in advance.

 

• Playered

What setup requires you to have +1 healers on him? just because your Paladin is tanking some adds occasionally doesn't really require an additional healer to be used for the encounter, your better off also helping to tank adds/dps than be another healer to be fair.

Regarding your question however, Lifebloom is still going to be far cheaper, provide a decent buffer and a 3 roll combined with a Rejuvenation is really the most optimal thing you can do there for him.

 

Pyros

Well if they run with only 2healers counting that holy pally, while the fight isn't terribly intensive on the tank, it's hard to solo heal because of all the side damage due to the fire breath. I know I'd have a lot of trouble keeping the whole raid up alone on this fight, maybe a priest could do it.

And yeah I'll second the heal spell comment, while lifebloom doesn't heal for a lot with feral spec, your HT doesn't heal for more comparatively either. LB is very mana efficient and if it's enough to keep the holy paladin alive you don't really need more. Also HT suffers on major flaw on this fight, it's very long to cast so it'll often get interupted when you get ported for fire bombs, and that could be pretty bad for your paladin. You also probably don't have interuption talent, should you get breathed on, it'll delay it and stuff, not a good choice imo.

 

Ribeye

http://wowwebstats.com/6mid1lonosdmy

Here is our last Full Hyjal Raid. Just another farm raid, not the best, not the worst. If you check out our other raid druid you can see a little difference in our healing style, and for that matter, the healing jobs we get. For the record, I do plan on prioritizing healing in 2.4, but having tested out the first 3 bosses in Sunwell, I can say with some authority that despite our new regen rates, there is plenty of use for it. I don't think I have ever healed as hard as I have on the PTR.

 

Pyros

Bah only have Archimonde to compare, our WWS all fuck up lately, but that's a totally different healing style(well not on archi for obvious reasons), and the healing figures are also totally different.
http://wowwebstats.com/adcz2ov3xa215?s=13240-13704&m

We also take a fuck ton more damage, but I guess we have many people running into doomfires every try. For info, we killed illidan less than a month ago, so archimonde nights still requires a few tries to get people focused.

 

• Playered

Agreed, I could dice out my mana very quickly using my normal spells (RG8) and still need my IV and using Bangle aswell, I thought I would be able to go up to using RG9 in general over RG8 but im not so sure.
I was most likely being somewhat more sloppy than usual and overhealing more than I would on live but... yeah I can see pushing the new IV to just fill my mana bar from near-empty if needed - instead of it giving me an extra 8k surplus.

 

Norfair

To be fair, that's not really "focussing" on regen, you just socketed for bonus, which will give you some +healing in return through socket bonuses. I think most druid do this, at least I see them do it, also because red gems are hard to come by. I think Lairpie was refering to people like Ailetha who have put almost spirit gems everywhere, sacrificing almost 500 +healing for a few hundred spirit. But ye, if that counts here my latest Archi kill as well: Wow Web Stats , I use a lot more Regrowth since mana is really a non-issue there.

Keep f**king that chicken.

 

Ribeye

Fair enough. But I could have far more plus healing if I wanted at the expense of my regen. The point being, I make use of every bit of regen I have.

 

Benita

2, 3 (spriest), 5, 6

Especially with 2 resto druids in 2t5+2t6 Regrowth and Swiftmend own spike raidhealing. Keeping LB on 1-2 tanks leaves time for 2-3 regrowth/swiftmend and while 4 LB on 4 damage targets can lead to some crazy numbers (link), its still a huge help on spike raidhealing if you use regrowth/swiftmend occasionaly.

Also druids have tools that are situational and should be used then. An example is 27 seconds regrowth vs doomfire and 3k from lifebloom in 7 seconds for air burst targets. Both always kept me #1 on Archimonde, even in feral spec. This is not only massive amount of healing to win healing meters (its still nice for the occasional "LOL I WON" for boring farmstuff), its also very effective raidhealing that avoids spike damage and uses the big advantage hots have. Someone with doomfire, gets airbursted and uses his trinket too early receiving an extra 3k falling damage. Your combinded regrowth and lifebloom will heal for about 4k while he is out of range for possibly every other healer, plus the chance to run to him in travel form and decurse/swiftmend him for more healing. I know i prevented a couple of wipes this way and this encounter plays to the very strong utility a resto druid brings to the raid which does not involve LB on tank. It is however mana intense because it also is not a tree form friendly encounter.

I could go through all the encounters in BT/Hyjal, but adapting as a resto druid through multi phase fights might be more effective than LB spam, i never did exact math on it though, we just set things up to the strength and weaknesses of players.

I will make good use of the new regen in sunwell. I didnt do the math on some new possibilities yet either. 4 part arena, 2t5, rest spirit stacked and all blue sockets with spirit as a regrowth spamming raidhealer with the newly buffed idol. Revival of the Dreamstate maybe?
Just a wild idea, but it would include innervating yourself and still is not a huge nurf to keeping LB on a single target. Also i got no info on how NG and 4 part arena bonus work together with the new gcd haste reduction. The healing output of this should be insane.
How viable this or any other healing setup is on sunwell encounters depends on the length and nature of the fights.

Oh and on a sidenote, time to get the [Bangle of Endless Blessings] from the bank again or refarm it. Its uptime is about 1/4, the passive effect means 20-30mp5 already without massive spirit stacking. The use effect adds a fair amount to that (especially when used during the proc or innervate). A no-brainer really if you got means to increase your healing by more mana output.

 

fuzzynavel

This is an item question but it pertains to the new druid LW chest. I am currently alchy/herb on live. I cannot drop alchy bc I have all the recipes available and I make the guilds flasks. I want to pick up LW for the new chest, then go back to herbs. The new chest does not have a "requires LW" to use, therefore I am thinking I should be able to do this.

Has anyone had any experience crafting a BOP item, then dropping said profession, and still being able to use the item? I cannot think why it wont work, but I d o not want to have to plvl LW twice if I am wrong. Any input is appreciated.

 

Benita

Yes, this works and is commonly used by some. Only items with the "requires ..." in the tolltip needs the profession to wear it. Except for some rare recipes you only loose 500-1k gold per profession relearning, nothing for gathering relearning.

However if you are planning longterm, leveling a gathering and/or alchemy alt seems reasonable as theres no raid benefit from these and this wont change till WotLK it seems.