Gallun

LOL Allinone, I've been a frequent reader of EJ and find the collected information here invaluable. This post however seems to be the MOST timely, as I came here looking to see if anyone was pondering new values for lootrank and/or Pawn. Thanks for this then and a few questions in return.

My assumptions are:
Haste softcap is 359 which should push me to 1 sec GCD for Rejuv, LB, and WG (with 5/5 GotEM, Wrath of Air Tot, Imp Moonkin)

Nourish with 359 haste (10.95%) + 8% from WoTA and ImpMK should be a 1.21 sec cast

Haste over this level only benefits Nourish, HT, & Regrowth (impossible to push GCD for below 1sec, unless with a NG proc)


Given this above being true, it seems Haste valuation after 359 would be much lower or crit much higher. Could we use this information ahead of time to select that perfect blend of haste and crit, many of the discussions on BIS gear seem to push haste way above this 359 level, myself I have 434 already and have been focusing on crit or MP5 gear but it proves difficult without a up front plan for gear (my experience so far anyways).

From the comments directly before mine it seems like many are asking the same questions. Just trying to get some discussion and see if I can get to some ratings to use.

Comments are welcome and appreciated.

 

◊ Lrigatonmai

Why are you guys weighting MP5 higher than spell power? Do you actually need more regen at your gear level?

Note: The statement above is probably a lie.

 

Smartiepants

As far as the rating goes, yes, I would take 100 MP5 over 100 spell power, but the itemization cost is such that I could never make that trade.

A more realistic trade would be trinket example, of 43 mp5 vs 110 sp, both I and the weighting would take the 110 SP.

 

malthrin

Yes, the 2350 weapons ([Furious Gladiator's Light Staff] and [Furious Gladiator's Salvation]) are ilvl 239, which is the same as Ulduar hard modes and Val'anyr. They're definitely valid alternatives if you can obtain them.

In fact, the Furious set pieces are ilvl 232, which is higher than drops from normal mode Ulduar (ilvl 226). Due to our preference for spellpower and relative indifference to other stats, several of these are viable alternatives to non-hardmode drops.

 

◊ Lrigatonmai

This still seems odd to me. If you're at the point where you realistically can't burn your all of your mana during a fight then throughput stat weighting (SP, and to a lesser extent SPI) should approach one while pure regen stat rating (MP5) should approach zero. In short, unless I was at a point where mana was an issue (and couldn't be fixed by potion use/iinnervate/regemming/reenchanting) I would always choose the higher spell power items at the higher gear levels since those pieces always have some regen stats anyway.

Note: The statement above is probably a lie.

 

Fallenangel

Why did you match the socket on your gloves? Int is pure regen, and 4 spirit don't really stand up to 10SP for throughput.
Why did you enchant your chest with 8mp5? 10 stats gives more throughput (and, well, more regen too...).
It's nice to say "I don't have mana problems with this gear", but:
1. Druids can always convert mana to extra healing. People who don't have any mana problems aren't casting every gcd (and they should, at least more).
2. Mana requirements vary greatly from fight to fight,
3. If you're cutting your mana so fine you end up on 0, you open yourself and your raid to wipes if things don't go as planned. 25SP isn't gonna save any wipe; 4K mana might.

In the case of the meta gem in particular, and especially if you use yellow/blue gems (or are a JC), the insightful one is just so much more powerful that no matter how much you disregard regen, you should get it.

 

Allinone

@ Lrigatonmai

The stat weights are made in a such a way to compare different levels of gear. When deriving a mathematical stat weight for Mana regen purposes, it is only natural to compare values that will differ in effectiveness (spirit, Int) to one that will stay the same (such as mp5). In my listing it is purely a mathematical fact that 1 point of Int will grant you approx 0.52 mp5. This portion of the list is based on fairly solid numbers and fact, and not on feeling. The entire purpose of a gear loot ranking scale is to objectively look at a piece of gear and get an see its total benefit to you, it is up to you to accept those recommendations or not.

I did list my values for Healing Throughput (Spellpower, Haste, Crit) in a separate column, this was done on purpose. First, these values are based on less solid numbers, and a general approximation of their benefit based off my healing style. Secondly, I listed them seperately so an individual could easily scale them based on the importance they would place on Spell Power over Regen. Perhaps you've cleared all of the hardmodes that the game has to offer and mana regeneration still is not a problem to you? Simply change the scaling to make Spell Power more important, check and see what this does to your loot ranks. I reserve the right to be wrong. I'll again repeat this, the throughput numbers could use some work, and input is greatly appreciated. I haven't made this list to prove that I'm smarter than other resto druids, or even that I am more knowledgeable. My goal was to provide a solid reference and help the resto druid community as a whole. Any constructive input would be appreciated.

Now about the actual scaling. I know it looks odd to place mp5 as our (apparent) most desired stat, but that is not what this list is saying. What this is telling us is that I would rather have 1 mp5 than 1 int, simply because it gives us more benefit, that is mathematical. Now, you might feel that 1 Spell Power is worth more than 1 mp5. That’s okay, and fine and great. I'm not going to tell you that at your level of gear you are wrong, you may in fact be correct. Change the scaling, and look to see how that changes the loot ranking. I'm not going to swear by the .8 number as fact, I will say that most people who have looked at this list have commented that it is a reasonable assumption (Per item budget).

@ Gallun

You Speak truth about the haste cap, although many druids will start taking points out of GotEM as they get more haste than the 359 soft cap. Stacking above 359 will make haste effect your other spells while allowing you to use your talent points in different ways. Stacking haste above 359 will be a huge boon to your direct heals (Regrowth, Nourish, Healing Touch). By stacking more Haste and taking points out of GotEM it will allow you to spread those points to different talents. In your particular case it would allow you to put some points into Nature's Grace or perhaps Tranquil Spirit, which would help make you a more complete healer (better at single target healing) by increasing the speed and reducing the mana costs of your single target heals. These talent points would lead to MUCH higher HPS than the extra crit from your gear could possibly hope to net. Crit (depending on play style) simply is not a very strong throughput stat. It has great synergy with our spells now due to living seed and Nature's Grace, but through talents and Int we should be sitting at around 50% crit (for Regrowth and Nourish). If I were you I would keep stacking Haste and move points from GotEM.

@ Cathie

I also get giddy when I see huge Lifebloom crits, sadly they are wasted. I've been slow rolling Lifeblooms since 3.1 hit, hardly ever refreshing a 3 stack. Generally Lifebloom crits make up 1-2% of the total healing done by lifebloom (check your recount) non crits only count for 4% generally. This is not my total healing, but the total healing done by lifebloom, which is considerably smaller. Stacking crit leads to fun numbers, but its total benefit is simply to limited.

 

◊ Lrigatonmai

Did you miss this line?

Gems, enchants, innervates, certain trinkets, using a mana pot, etc are all fixes for mana problems. I (and the weighting we're commenting on, fwiw) rate the insightful meta below the Ember Skyflare. So I'm not sure what you're talking about there.

@Allinone

That's reasonable. Placing mp5 as the most desired stat does seem odd, that's why I asked.

Note: The statement above is probably a lie.

 

Paininabox

While I could see the argument that once you get the required regen for all fights any more is a waste, there's also another argument that could be made for regen gear/gems even after that point. Some pieces of gear are really just the most efficient use of a slot, regardless of what stats you need/don't need. For instance, I could see an argument being made that one should always use the Spark of Hope because it equates to ~100-150 mp5, which is a huge amount of power on one piece of gear. Thus, using the SoH would allow one to free up other slots so you can gear/gem hugely in favor of throughput, aka offset pieces without spirit but more SP, etc.

Applying this idea to Ember vs. Insightful isn't nearly so easy to see, as the insightful is ~30 mp5 and ember is 25 SP and ~6 or so mp5. From a more general perspective, I don't think there's quite so solid a line between having "enough" regen and "too much".

Level 80 Restoration Druid Spreadsheet here.
(v1.41)

 

• uliko

If you're not using the IED the last place to look for more mana is changing non-meta gems, enchants or gear. The tradeoff you're making with the meta is 60mp5 vs 25sp while to get that much regen from any other source would require a much greater sacrifice of spellpower then the 25 from the meta gem.

Also statements such as "enough regen" and "I never run oom" are stupid because there is always the option to heal for more and when a simple sacrifice of 25sp gives you thousands of mana then that translates to way more healing then the spellpower ever would.

Why hit food is bad
"You have to spend 10 seconds to apply it, you have to fish it and you cant use the feast."

 

◊ Lrigatonmai

First: The poster above you says that meta is worth 30mp5.

Second: You are assuming two things:

1) There is an infinite amount of damage to heal
2) You aren't already GCD locked

1 is always false. 2 is unnecessary in many (arguably most) situations.

Note: The statement above is probably a lie.

 

Paininabox

I looked into this, and it turns out I'm wrong, it is about 60 mp5, not 30. "The proc is approximately 70mp5, varying on your ratio of HL to FoL. This is the best meta you can use." Source: The Holy Paladin Guide for WotLK. Also, the fact that he and I put out different numbers does not mean he is automatically wrong. I find it curious that you grasp at the lower number to further your argument.

As to your two points:

1. The fact that damage is finite is also an upper bound on throughput, as well as mana regen. In other words, this is as much restrictive on going all-out SP, in that once your heals can fill up the health bar to full, anything past that is complete waste. For example, having a 100k heal is useless if tank HP pools are only 50k.

2. Even if you're already GCD locked, you can still increase mana expenditure by changing the mix of spells you use. While the mix is partially locked in because of healing mechanics and "combo" setups, to some degree they are limited based on preserving mana. If after reaching the GCD lock you see that you have extra mana, you can use more inefficient/higher HPS spells to use up the excess.

Level 80 Restoration Druid Spreadsheet here.
(v1.41)

 

◊ Lrigatonmai

If it were worth half the mp5 then it would change his reasoning for choosing the gem (frees up other enchant/gem slots). I'll gladly admit I'm wrong if the gem is really giving that much mp5 because his reason for using it is sound. I didn't know it was that powerful.

1. That's true, however, more throughput is useful as a HoT-based healer because it will allow us to provide bigger buffers on tanks. I'd argue that it's more useful than more MP5 if we're talking about stacking one over the other.

2. Also true, but most cases where you're GCD locked it's because you're spamming rejuv on the raid. I'm not sure that swapping some of those for RG or nourish is going to be truly more effective. Especially with T8 set bonuses. It might be looking into but I doubt it.

Note: The statement above is probably a lie.

 

• uliko

60mp5 was the number pulled from our raids logs on several different fights and it was the average. It could go down to maybe 40 when unlucky and it was around 100 on IC when spamming rejuvenation constantly.

True there is not infinite amounts of damage to heal but I'm fairly sure you can't cover all of the damage yourself thus giving you more mana leading to more spells cast leads to more healing done. If there are several periods where you have nothing to heal leading to "unlimited mana" or whatever reason you don't want more regen maybe you're simply bringing too many healers to the content you're doing.

If you're GCD locked thus casting spells every second the meta gem is worth 100mp5, you can't seriously be arguing that we should pick 25sp over 100mp5 just because some made up stat weightings say so? Common sense must have its place. Even if you can't put all that extra mana to good use what happens when you have to combat rez and buff someone? A process that costs 2796 mana. Or when your innervate is better used elsewhere which I can see being the case alot more with the upcomming change to it.

Personally I can't think of a single time where I thought "damn, if only I had 25 more spellpower" compared to "if only I had a few thousand more mana".

Why hit food is bad
"You have to spend 10 seconds to apply it, you have to fish it and you cant use the feast."

 

◊ Lrigatonmai

I'm not arguing that at all. I had thought the gem was worth 30mp5. 30mp5 vs 25sp + ~6mp5 is weighted in favor of the 25sp gem in my opinion. The only fight I've recently thought, damn if only I had more mana was Vezax. And this conversation has nothing to do with that. We'll see if my opinion changes once we move to doing more of the hard modes. But I doubt it will change my gear choices as much as it will change my buff choices for the fights that actually stress my mana pool (swapping regen flask/food for the current sp flask/food, regemming a couple pieces for regen, swapping trinkets maybe).

Note: The statement above is probably a lie.

 

Gallun

To Lrigatonmai: In short, Yes, I am OOM constantly in Ulduar. We are working on hard modes and we take far fewer healers than many would, so I am screaming at the incredibly slow GCD as quartz agonizingly rotates it out for me about 90% of the time for encounters. I am a raid healer most of the time, I've gone back to the innervate glyph as it was not returning enough during full on heal spammage. My targets get it all, rejuv, regrowth, a lifebloom, WG when it's up and then a Nourish or 2 if they still need it, as I said before I’m always waiting on the GCD. I am in nearly all BIS gear for resto druids (or at least from the top 3).

To Allinone: I was too narrow in my thinking, I’ve been locked into GOTEM for my resto build and I didn’t even think of losing it. I wonder though if the 20% haste is worth the 910 haste rating points in item budgets. Let's not go full on though as I don't think that was your intention. Let's try to look at one point at a time.

First some assumptions and statements:
My healing percentages are as follows from a normal Ulduar night, Rejuv (24%), WG (25%), Nourish (21%), Lifebloom (15%), Regrowth (10%) and Living Seed (3%) Wow Web Stats;
Assuming the above stats, 69% of my healing is affected by GotEM.

From Norfair's earlier post
<snip>
Wrath of Air and Improved Moonkin Aura/Swift Retribution Aura
0/5 GotEM = ~38.7% Haste = ~1269 Haste Rating
1/5 GotEM = ~33.12% =~1086 Haste Rating
2/5 GotEM = ~27.60% =~905 Haste Rating
3/5 GotEM = ~22.05% =~723 Haste Rating
4/5 GotEM = ~16.50% =~541 Haste Rating
5/5 GotEM = ~10.95% =~359 Haste Rating
</snip>
One point from GOTEM is equal to 182 haste rating.

If I take it out of GOTEM, the most likely place to put it is maybe Natural Perfection (if you don’t have it already), Tranquil Spirit, buffing HT with Naturalist and Empowered Touch.

The Natural Perfection route is 1% crit per point, which is 45.91 crit rating (again from Norfair), so to go this route is a trade of 182 Haste budget points for 45.91 Crit rating budget points. This doesn’t seem like a fair deal? Can anyone help me out here; do these 2 compare 1:1 in budgets for itemization? Is the ration known? The judge is out on this one and I do not think it's looking good because I seem to remember a little more haste than crit but not multiples this would require to be an even trade (plus I think most already have 3/3).

The Tranquil spirit route gives us 2% base mana reduction per point on HT, Nourish, and Tranquility. If we fill it up to 5/5 (from the common 2/5) that leaves 2 point for Naturalist or EmpTouch. Besides the infrequent use of Tranq on Loatheb I can't even remember the last time I cast that spell, and given that I’m critting with 13300 Nourishes, the only fight I ever haul out HT on is Patchwerk when its back to back spam and we can’t take the time to HoT at all. This one becomes marginalized as it's only a benefit to Nourish and potentially a case specific rotation change to introduce the epic cast HT :P . Let's keep going though, what is that 2% given a recent WWS where I was on the MT (let's not go to the druid as a MT healer just now ). My WWS shows Nourish being 46% of my healing, which with my planned rotation of RJ, RG, LBx3, Nour x3 (maybe 4 or WG), repeat may be considered 16 casts per minute. If that number works for folks then on we go ...[tries to do some math] Hmm, OK.. I came up with 1 point in Tranq Spirit is equal to 14 mana per cast. So, using my high use Nourish MT rotation I could approach 16 casts/minute = 224mana saved per minute = 18.6666Mp5. Best case scenario assuming spamming Nourish at my current 434 haste, raid buffed, I believe I'm at 1.21 sec cast would give me 49 casts/min= 686 mana saved per minute = 57.1666mp5. I believe I could only really realize something closer to the 18 2/3 mp5 benefit for each point here. So, this bakes into 182 haste compared to 18 2/3Mp5. Again, can someone help me with the budget comparison here? I think it's easier to get the Mp5 then trade off that much haste.

Going the Empowered Touch route for a 40% buff to HT; Hmm, going to save this one as I don’t even put it on my main bar anymore.


In the end here it seems like I’m really going to shoot for as close to 359, keep the points in GOTEM, plan to stack budget points into spellpower, MP5, spirit (trinks here I come), Int, and crit as a last resort. With those returns (haven't looked at ET yet) I do not think losing the points in GOTEM are viable, unless we can't find items that stack into the other categories without taking haste well above 359, then we'd be forced to right?


And I just ignored tossing points to NG {DOH!} ... what's that worth, anyone? Bueler?? [more to follow for NG then]

 

Paininabox

Taking points out of GotEM is completely viable, and is what one should do provided your haste % is high enough to keep your hots at 1 second GCD. Even after the soft cap, haste is still the best throughput stat after SP, because crit affects few spells depending on your playstyle. For this reason, I wouldn't take NP. Since you're a raid healer, NG probably isn't for you. I would max out TS, because that might give you some more wiggle room in regen to go all-out throughput in your gear.

1. I, too, would take the throughput. I'm just arguing that the "regen ceiling" argument is a double-edged sword on throughput as well, thus it isn't particularly good.

2. I don't think this is necessarily true. I agree that a lot of the GCD lock we experience now is due to the gross power of rejuv, but I think that as Ulduar goes into the "farm content" stage, we'll see rejuv's power decrease in the raid. This isn't necessarily to say that we'll outgear the place and there will be heal sniping going on, which is true. However, it is to say that as people clear the content they will learn patterns of both the encounter mechanics and how their raid raids. Since the popular rejuv-blanketing strategy flourishes on the chaos of new content, I think we'll see its effectiveness decrease once the other healers get a handle on the patterns. We've always been really good with early progression content for this reason; we thrive on chaos.

Level 80 Restoration Druid Spreadsheet here.
(v1.41)

 

moowalk

All ratings cost the same amount of item budget. That's why they have such strange conversions back into 'real' stats.

 

malthrin

You'll definitely find yourself craving more mana on most hard modes. Once you find yourself desiring more regen, let's take a look at the choices you can make to get it:
1. Meta swap: 25 sp vs (conservatively) 60 mp5
2. Trinket: 110ish sp vs 150ish mp5
3. Flask: 125 sp vs 38 mp5
4. Food: 46 sp vs 40 spi / 16 mp5
5. Gem: 19 sp vs 16 spi / 7 mp5

If you're aiming to maximize your stats, the choices are obvious. If your goal is to optimize for easy modes where you don't need more mana and then tweak your stats for additional regen for hard modes, that's frankly dumb - you gear/spec for what's hard and the trivial stuff will be fine either way.

Of course, there is another factor in how much regen you need; how many DPS ferals do you bring along to mooch Innervate off of?

 

◊ Lrigatonmai

Your list appears to reinforce my point. There are multiple options for pumping up mana regen once you start content that requires it. You can add up to ~200mp5 by simply changing consumables and trinkets. I'm doubting you can even get near that via gear choices at this point since pretty much every desirable piece of our gear has at least some regen stats on it (outside of trinkets, obviously, where you do have to make that choice).

Note: The statement above is probably a lie.

 

Paininabox

I don't see it that way. To me, it seems as if the smallest loss in throughput to the biggest gain in regen is obviously the meta gem slot. Changing your flask to regen is really bad; 125 SP is a huge deficit to take in favor of only 38 mp5. Changing food and gems seems reasonable, but not as much as the meta. Changing trinkets is kind of iffy since such large gains in regen might be more than you need. They seem to be on-off switches between throughput and regen, to me. So, I think that if you need more regen, the first step should be going from ember to insightful.

Level 80 Restoration Druid Spreadsheet here.
(v1.41)

 

grimtage

I disagree, having over 609(I think? could be lower or higher, I might not understand exactly how Nature's Grace combines with spell haste) haste will cause our Nourish chain cast to go under 1sec and therefore start causing the same problems that Wrath spam used to have with clipping the GCD. I honestly don't see a way around this, other than dropping NG and stacking haste up to the point that we have 1sec cast without it. So in essence, after our haste hard cap, haste not only doesn't increase our throughput, it decreases it, but crit always will add a tiny bit of throughput.

Of course, you could argue that regrowth still benefits from haste and therefore if you're raid healing you don't care about chain casting Nourish, but you want to get more regrowths out and nourish is only to patch up those who took a knock and therefore going under 1sec is a good thing, not a bad thing. All depends on your healing style.

Good luck doing that 3.1.2 when it regens anyone's mana. I can already hear the <enter least favourite mana using class here> asking for it!

 

Paininabox

Actually, assuming every raid haste buff up and CF and NG uptime of 50%, it caps out at 730 haste. Without CF, 855 haste. Without Imp moonkin aura, 978. Without any raid buffs/NG, it's 1634. So, I'd say in more realistic circumstances where raids don't have perfect composition and getting haste that high is unlikely, the chances of haste-capping nourish are slim. I've found that even assuming no overheal on LS, crit still isn't worth more than haste assuming your spell distribution doesn't heavily lean on crittable heals.

Level 80 Restoration Druid Spreadsheet here.
(v1.41)

 

◊ Lrigatonmai

I agree, I think we're talking past each other to an extent. The way it sounds, insightful is almost always BIS, whether you're using it to free up other options for using throughput items or using it because you actually need the MP5. Let's see how long it is before it's nerfed since 60-100mp5 on one gem is ridiculous, even for a meta. My original question was about the stat weights in the post(s) above. And how it seemed odd to value MP5 above spell power. I didn't mean to imply an order in swapping things out in the previous post. Simply to indicate that those swaps were always going to provide a greater benefit than choosing different gear altogether since the regen gains between items on the top end are comparatively small.

Note: The statement above is probably a lie.

 

malthrin

So you're saying if you decide need another 60mp5 to be comfortable on hard mode Thorim or Freya or XT, it's better to swap flask/food and sacrifice 171 spellpower than swap meta and sacrifice 25? That doesn't make any sense.