Restoration Itemization

Norfair · 11/27/08, 11:19 AM

This topic is about resto druid gearing. As trinkets are somewhat different compared to usual gearing, there is a seperate trinket topic: Restoration Trinkets. In this first post the value of each type of stat is discussed.

Spellpower

Spellpower increases the healing of each spell differently. In the table below the number in the "no talents" columns are how they scale without any talents. The full talents column is the coefficient if you have Master Shapeshifter, Gift of Nature, Improved Rejuvenation, Empowered Touch, Empowered Rejuvenation, Genesis and Tree of Life active. After some testing I concluded the following:

Gift of Nature and Genesis stack. They increase HoTs by 15% (1.15 coefficient) instead of 10% and 5% seperately (1.155 coefficient). They also stack with improved Rejuvenation (making the coefficient for this spell 1.3).
Empowered Rejuvenation affects both the final Lifebloom ticks as the initial Regrowth heal. Genesis does not affect these.
Master Shapeshifter, Tree of Life aura and Gift of Nature with Genesis are all multiplicative. This means: healing * 1.15 (GoN + Genesis) * 1.06 (ToL aura) * 1.04 (Master Shapeshifter).
Wild Growth's extra bonus healing is divided equally over the ticks, in contrast to the base healing which heals less each tick.

SPELL			NO TALENTS		FULL TALENTS
Lifebloom HoT		0.666 [0.095]		1.013 [0.145]
Lifebloom Bloom		0.645			0.939
Rejuvenation		1.88  [0.376]		3.233 [0.647]
Regrowth Initial	0.537			0.781
Regrowth HoT		1.316 [0.188]		2.002 [0.286]
Nourish w/o HoT		0.671			0.814
Nourish with HoT	0.806			0.977
Healing Touch		1.611			2.439
Wild Growth		n/a			1.225 [0.175]

The numbers in brackets are the coefficients per tick (these are more important as Nature's Splendor uses these coefficients for each tick).

Intellect
1 intellect provides the following:

1 intellect increases mana pool with 15 mana. On a typical 8 minute fight with Kings and IMotW this can be converted to 0.175 mp5
Assuming 1200 intellect and 1200 spirit, 1 intellect increases your main mana regeneration with 0.325 mp5 out of the five second rule or 0.162 mp5 in the five second rule (with Kings, IMotW and Intensity).
Since Replenish works off the size of your mana pool, 16.83 (Kings and IMotW) extra mana means 0.210 mp5 more through Replenishment.
1 intellect also increases the chance you critically hit with spells by 0.00676% (this is with Kings and IMotW).

This sums up to 0.547 mp5 (0.560 with the meta gem) and a little bit of crit chance. However, this number can change a lot based on your intellect, spirit, Replenishment uptime, duration of the encounter and time spent in the five second rule.

Spirit
1 spirit provides the following (assuming Living Spirit, Intensity, Kings and Improved Mark of the Wild):

Assuming 1200 intellect and 1200 spirit, 1 spirit increases your main mana regeneration with 0.748 mp5 out of the five second rule or 0.374 mp5 in the five second rule.
If you have improved Tree of Life, 1 spirit also increases your spellpower with 0.194.

For a more elaborate table of values, see uliko's post.

Haste rating
32.79 haste rating increases your haste by 1%. If you have Gift of the Earthmother, you need around 35% haste to get to a 1 second global cooldown, or 1148 haste rating. Wrath of Air totem provides 5% haste and improved Moonkin aura provides 3% haste. Here is a list of the amount of haste rating you need with these buffs:

Wrath of Air and Improved Moonkin Aura/Swift Retribution Aura (with 3/3 Celestial Focus)
0/5 GotE = ~34.66% Haste = ~1137 Haste Rating
1/5 GotE = ~32.02% = ~1050 Haste Rating
2/5 GotE = ~29.48% = ~967 Haste Rating
3/5 GotE = ~27.03% = ~887 Haste Rating
4/5 GotE = ~24.68% = ~810 Haste Rating
5/5 GotE = ~22.42% = ~735 Haste Rating

Wrath of Air only (with 3/3 Celestial Focus)
0/5 GotE = ~38.70% Haste = ~1269 Haste Rating
1/5 GotE = ~35.98% = ~1180 Haste Rating
2/5 GotE = ~33.36% = ~1094 Haste Rating
3/5 GotE = ~30.85% = ~1012 Haste Rating
4/5 GotE = ~28.42% = ~932 Haste Rating
5/5 GotE = ~26.09% = ~856 Haste Rating

Improved Moonkin Aura/Swift Retribution Aura only (with 3/3 Celestial Focus)
0/5 GotE = ~41.39% Haste = ~1358 Haste Rating
1/5 GotE = ~38.62% = ~1267 Haste Rating
2/5 GotE = ~35.95% = ~1179 Haste Rating
3/5 GotE = ~33.39% = ~1095 Haste Rating
4/5 GotE = ~30.92% = ~1014 Haste Rating
5/5 GotE = ~28.54% = ~936 Haste Rating

No outside buffs at all (only 3/3 Celestial Focus)
0/5 GotE = ~45.63% Haste = ~1497 Haste Rating
1/5 GotE = ~42.78% = ~1403 Haste Rating
2/5 GotE = ~40.03% = ~1313 Haste Rating
3/5 GotE = ~37.39% = ~1226 Haste Rating
4/5 GotE = ~34.84% = ~1143 Haste Rating
5/5 GotE = ~32.39% = ~1063 Haste Rating

Wrath of Air and Improved Moonkin Aura/Swift Retribution Aura Only (no Celestial Focus)
0/5 GotE = ~38.70% Haste = ~1269 Haste Rating
1/5 GotE = ~35.98% = ~1180 Haste Rating
2/5 GotE = ~33.36% = ~1094 Haste Rating
3/5 GotE = ~30.85% = ~1012 Haste Rating
4/5 GotE = ~28.42% = ~932 Haste Rating
5/5 GotE = ~26.10% = ~856 Haste Rating

Thanks to uliko, itecho84 and Zoltair's post for finding the mechanics and numbers.

Thanks to cuddlekin for finding the numbers for 3.3. See his post for a more elaborate list of haste numbers.

Critical strike rating
45.91 critical strike rating increases your chance your spells critically hit by 1%.

The mana regeneration formula used:
ManaRegen(SPI, INT) = (0.001+SPI*0.003345*(INT^0.5))*5

Gear list
People often come here and ask what is best in slot for resto druids. For druids this isn't always very clear since every player has different preferences. Almost all druid gear has the following stats: stamina, intellect, spellpower, a manaregen stat (mp5 or spirit) and an additional stat (often haste or crit). Usually the spirit-based items are better as they give more mana per itembudget point and also provide more spellpower (through improved ToL talent) compared to a mp5-item of the same itemlevel. Since spellpower is the best way to increase output for a druid, it is still best to find items with the most spellpower on them.

Further it is advised to stack haste until you have at least reached the softcap so that your global cooldowns will be 1 second within a usual raid setting. After that it becomes a lot of personal preference, as then both haste and crit will only affect your direct heals (save for the "bloom" and Swiftmend as they can crit) which you will be using a lot less compared to your instant hots. Crit has the benefit of making your heals more mana efficient and has synergy with the Nature's Grace and Living Seed talents, while haste is cheaper on itembudget level and is more reliable compared to crit.

For a pre-Ulduar list, you can go see this post: http://elitistjerks.com/1113202-post373.html.
An early Ulduar BiS list by Goomp: Restoration Itemization

Updated on December 20th to reflect 3.3 changes.

Norfair · 11/27/08, 11:20 AM

As I wrote in the first post, mana is now more of a problem because of three things:

Spirit / intellect increase mana regen not as much as before, because we are now higher level and therefore the coefficient in the mana regeneration formula has changed.
The new ranks of the spells cost more.
There is no more chain potting.

This increases the need to gear more towards mana regeneration.

On the other hand, previously other important stats have decreased in value. With Gift of the Earthmother, the global cooldown is already a lot lower than it used to be. Add in the fact that Lifebloom cycles now last longer due to Nature’s Splendor and the Lifebloom glyph, it becomes much easier to use different spells before having to refresh a Lifebloom stack again. Although haste is still nice, the power of it compared to pre-3.0 has decreased a lot in my opinion. To illustrate, I lost about 100 haste rating since I started replacing my Sunwell gear. Also, haste rating now gives half as much haste as it did before (going from 18%ish to 9%ish when I reached 80) and I still don’t feel like my heals are too slow. I think Nourish plays a big part in this as well, as it’s half a second faster than Regrowth.

Another thing I have noticed is the enormous amount of critical strike rating on the gear available. Even on our tier pieces there is critical strike rating. Looking at some WWS from the raids in the past two-three weeks, I noticed that less than 30% of my healing comes from spells that can crit. This makes it a very poor stat for druids, even though it has synergy with Living Seed and Nature’s Grace.

Therefore, my philosophy to enchanting, gemming, etc is that I will focus somewhat more on mana regeneration stats instead of pure spellpower/haste as in pre-3.0. I am sure that as we get closer to the end of the expansion, this will change (again) as the mana regen that comes with the best gear is ‘enough’, but until then choices have to be made.

I am interested in your views on how things have changed and whether I missed something, because at the moment I am still not sure about everything. These are at least my thoughts on this topic. Any corrections on the first post are welcome as well.

Fallenangel · 11/27/08, 12:00 PM

The mana situation depends a lot on group composition which is mostly an issue for 10-mens. Having a ret pally that provides replenishment and BoW is worth 280MP5, assuming a 15k mana pool. This is more regen that your paperdoll regen when you hit 80, so it's pretty big. In a 25 men raid with all the buffs, I haven't found mana to be a real issue. My blue pieces are more tuned towards regen (spi+SP) than throughput (haste). The good naxx pieces have both so not a lot of choice there.
30% crittable heals sounds like a lot to me. Between lifebloom rolls and WG, I don't find myself using our direct heals much. The exception is glyphed regrowth, for which crit isn't that beneficial due to innate crit-rate of regrowth. Couple that with its high cost and unpredictable nature, and you get a stat that's very subpar. I've been playing dodge-the-items-with-crit game for a few raids now and it's getting a bit tiring and annoying. Crit on our tier gear feels forced, as if it's meant to mark the success of the caster-healer gear merge.

ithecho84 · 11/27/08, 12:26 PM

I'm a fan of consistency, so crit is definitely something I will not be gearing for, nor spending talent points for. It's all about SP -> Spirit for me. Depending on how much haste I get, it could free up some points from Gift of the Earthmother though. But that seems unlikely and very far off if practical.

Playered · 11/27/08, 12:35 PM

Well once you have the Haste softcap you are going to be left with either Crit or Haste - both of which now only effect the spells outside of your normal rotation... oh and MP5 of course.
You're then at the typical differences between Haste and Crit but with Nature's Grace lurking about it should tend to favor Crit slightly more as it also ends up resulting in bonus Haste~(?).

Niallest · 11/27/08, 1:17 PM

It's times like these, I wish we had logged our naxx runs this week...

I'm not terribly well geared, still using 2pc T6, about half a dozen northrend epics, and the rest filled out with heroic/dungeon blues.

In naxx10, healing in a team with shammy/pally, I'm well ahead of them in effective healing, never came close to having mana problems in the 3 wings we cleared the first night. (second week there, we aren't superstars or anything!) I used innervate once on a mage just to see if helped them now. Apparently this mage didn't start stacking spirit yet, but i digress! Never needed it for myself. Popped a potion on about half the boss fights.

I've stacked spirit pretty heavily, to the tune of 1130 buffed, which is giving me some pretty decent MP/5 on top of 1950 spellpower (flasked, obviously).

As for crit, I'm certainly not avoiding it, running about 10% unbuffed, never noticed how much it might have gone up in the raid. I do find it nice when spamming a few nourishes to top up the tank that's already full of HOTs, and they crit with nature's grace, so i get 6-8k nourish, then a 0.8 second nourish in there. There are also those times where you start stacking the tank with HOTs, something like a LB, rejuv, LB, LB, regrowth. If the tank starts dropping during that regrowth cast, you've got a pretty damn high chance of getting that 0.8 second nourish right afterward that i'm sure saved his life at least once in naxx. The extra crit chance on top of the default regrowth crit helps, IMO.

running about 200 haste, just because it came by default i guess. i'll take some more please!

Maybe it's just me still getting used to new rotations and stuff, trying to find fun in casting all my available spells whereever they might be appropriate, but i like just about every stat now. Perhaps my spirit stacking is a bit overboard and i could focus on something else, but i think if the game was designed for us to get every damn stat in the world on our tier pieces, there must be some advantage to having a good amount of each.

Sorry for all the anecdotal evidence, wish I had some links to back it up...

Norfair · 11/27/08, 1:31 PM

Well it might be my current gear, but I really can't spam freely anymore. Especially on the longer fights like Malygos I have to hold back. Is there anyway to check Replenishment uptime on WWS?

Lightflower · 11/27/08, 7:10 PM

Originally Posted by Norfair

Well it might be my current gear, but I really can't spam freely anymore. Especially on the longer fights like Malygos I have to hold back. Is there anyway to check Replenishment uptime on WWS?

On the Gains, Buffs & Debuffs tab in WWS you can check the total amount of mana you got from various sources. Replenishment is the buff you are looking for. To my knowledge you can't directly see the uptime but you could indirectly generate it by comparing the number of ticks you have obtained vs the number of Replenishment-proccing abilities the various classes used.

Whïspur · 11/27/08, 8:30 PM

Norfair, thank you for the insightful comments. Your knowledge-sharing skills are very valuable to the resto druids seeking to do their best in this game. I was particularly intrigued by how intellect offers more mana regen than spirit (w/in 5 second rule). Hadn't quite realized how powerful of a stat it was.

Pre-wotlk I used two loot ranks I found on EJ. One favored spell power and the other leaned more towards mana regen. Since I care a lot more about mana regen now than before, I am currently using this mana regen loot rank:

Loot Rank for WOLTK

Which assigns the following values:
mp5 - 100
Spell Power - 46.99
Spirit - 45
Intellect - 30
Crit - 0
Haste - 0

Do you have any comments about how much value to give to each particular stat? I think the current loot rank undervalues Intellect, and should at least give some weight to Crit and Haste.

Thank you for your help!

Anaram · 11/28/08, 3:27 AM

First thing I did with wotlk was to ensure that I've enough spirit available such that innervate is a full mana pool. Second thing was to do whatever I can to make that mana pool as big as possible while not losing any important socket bonuses. With gear progression (and longer fights) I'll eventually favour spirit over intellect, but in a ~5-minute fight having starting mana pool and innervate mana pool should on average make intellect pull ahead (up the point where additional mana is redundant, of course). I also hope to just stack regeneration until I no longer need my own innervate.

I don't rank spell power all that high - my experience is that the value (not necessarily place in healing charts) of hots is dictated more by how many ticks you get than how big the ticks are. In vanilla spell power allowed downranking, in TBC mana regeneration wasn't an issue so only spellpower helped. Now mana matters and downranking is out.

Most importantly, though, regen buys you the opportunity to not think about your mana so much. While getting used to a fight I'll take that over some extra spell power.

Thrinde · 11/28/08, 4:55 AM

Originally Posted by Norfair

[*] Empowered Touch affects both the final Lifebloom ticks as the initial Regrowth heal.

Is this a mistake on your side, or am I missing something serious, as the Empowered Touch tooltip says it affects only HT.

Norfair · 11/28/08, 5:53 AM

Originally Posted by Whïspur

Norfair, thank you for the insightful comments. Your knowledge-sharing skills are very valuable to the resto druids seeking to do their best in this game. I was particularly intrigued by how intellect offers more mana regen than spirit (w/in 5 second rule). Hadn't quite realized how powerful of a stat it was.

Pre-wotlk I used two loot ranks I found on EJ. One favored spell power and the other leaned more towards mana regen. Since I care a lot more about mana regen now than before, I am currently using this mana regen loot rank:

Loot Rank for WOLTK

Which assigns the following values:
mp5 - 100
Spell Power - 46.99
Spirit - 45
Intellect - 30
Crit - 0
Haste - 0

Do you have any comments about how much value to give to each particular stat? I think the current loot rank undervalues Intellect, and should at least give some weight to Crit and Haste.

Thank you for your help!

I find it hard to compare spellpower, haste and mana-regen stats as well. I often take gems as a rough measurement, e.g. I can get 20 int in a socket or 20 haste (eventually when epic gems will be in the game). Even though they are equal, I'd still prefer the mana regen over the haste, so I would value haste a bit lower. How much lower I can't say, it's a lot of personal preference. I don't think you can theorycraft that. Crit I almost valued 0, but of course I would take 1% crit over 3 spellpower or something obvious like that.

Originally Posted by Thrinde

Is this a mistake on your side, or am I missing something serious, as the Empowered Touch tooltip says it affects only HT.

A mistake from my part, I meant Empowered Rejuvenation. Damn talents all sound the same.

I corrected it in the first post.

Jalhar · 11/28/08, 8:39 AM

Thanks for sharing your work Norfair, I've been asking myself a lot of questions since the start of wotlk and this thread is surely helpful to take decisions.

I've been focusing on SP and spirit lately, as the only mana problems I had were 10-men Sapphiron & KT w/o replenish (and w/o much frost resist as well). Whole Naxx-25 with 6-7 healers and 2 replenishers was a breeze (except Patchwerk, I haven't found an efficient way to heal that as a druid yet, rolling lifebloom on tanks + throwing random rejuv / SM / nourish / regrowth atm, but it doesn't feel very useful even with direct heals spam :/). Most of the time I'm even able to give innervate to a priest. I'm playing a lot with F5R lately though to maximize spirit efficiency, what I didn't do pre3.0. I didn't try Malygos yet as well.

I really don't know what Blizz did with our current itemisation. I don't even try to stack haste and I'm already way above the soft cap (356, with one trinket adding 505 haste when it procs), and crit doesn't sound like a very useful stat to me. Nourish and swiftmend rarely crits anyway, regrowth is our main provider of nature's grace / living seed. I wish there would be more SP / spirit / int / mp5 items like our T7.25 head.

Nienkei · 11/28/08, 10:44 AM

I have also noticed, while leveling, the push of haste gear on itemization makes for other stats to become more highly valued. A browsing over the choice of gear from both Naxx 10 and 25 will show a lot of leather that is itemized for haste off the bat. This doesn't always mesh well for me (as I tend to find the necessity for haste really unnecessary with my current rotation, and spell choices.)

Personally I find that, and while I know this is a thread specifically on itemization, a lot of your itemization will tend to go with what glyphs you choose.

For the purpose of healing I've picked up:

Glyph of Innervate -- Many of the fights so far my Mana hasn't been too much of an issue (with obvious exceptions like Patchwerk, or Sapphiron), so I like to share it out while still maintaining a solid mana pool. With myself being semi-undergeared right now I still find this puts me at around 900mana/5 while casting while giving someone else (usually another healer) a full mana pool. If no other healer needs it my own Innervate gives me 500% mana return. This is easily a full bar while still spam casting.

Glyph of Swiftmend -- Swiftmending on cooldown, without removing a HoT, is amazing. Thats really all that can be said about this glyph, other than the fact Swiftmend is affected by crit. Little things that up my crit rate increase the glyph's effectiveness. While it doesn't mean I tune myself towards itemizing for crit, it means I won't shun it and may often times take it over haste.

Glyph of Regrowth -- I love this glyph. Granted Regrowth isn't the most amazing heal (and relatively mana intensive) this puts a spell thats at an already high crit rate, and makes it 20% more effective. My average regrowth crit heal (with low spell power, mind you) is around 85-8800. This is about a thousand or more over a Nourish, and is nearly guaranteed to crit. This also makes my next one cast in approximately .8-.9 seconds. If a tank needs furious healing for the last few % of the boss there's a large chance you'll see me innervate myself and just spam the heck out of Regrowth for chain 9k crits in under 1 second cast time ;P

Now if I swapped Glyphs around and choose, say, the Lifebloom glyph I'd probably look towards things other than crit more often, because crit would only really effect my swiftmend glyph alone. But as it is now, crit works for two of my glyphs, whereas haste affects none.

Playered · 11/28/08, 11:09 AM

Raid loot is all pretty much the same, you either have Crit or Haste on your gear and the rest of the stats are close.
Gloves (213) you have the choice of:
[Gloves of Peaceful Death]
[Gloves of the Dancing Bear]
[Valorous Dreamwalker Handguards]

If a tier item has haste, you will almost certainly find a non tier item of the same slot with crit and vice-versa.
So beyond wanting the T7 bonus its really up to you whichever you want.

You could just go down to being anal on the Spell Power + Stats to go by which is best if you cannot decide between Haste or Crit but honestly no choice is going to horribly effect you.