Restoration Itemization - Page 23

Norfair · 02/26/09, 5:27 PM

Originally Posted by Earen

I did not mean to make you defensive, and that was not my intent. I just think that you focusing on strange stats to rate potential loot. I applaud you for taking the time and effort to put such a resource together as many people, including myself, do not have the time (or patience

) to do so. And I feel that overall it is a good resource.

My comment with regard to perspective on other stats was specifically in regard to your heavy prioritization in your list based on haste/crit (which I felt I was clear on in my previous post, but must not have been). I have highlighted a part of your last comment that I find interesting. If you state that crit is a worthless stat for a druid, why are you placing "crit" gear on your list and prioritizing gear based on "crit"? Why did your original response to my query as to why you left off our best spirit based neck from your list state that you did so because the lifebinder's locket was a better "crit" neck? This is where my concern with your list and the priotization of items arises.

I have conceded that the life binder's locket was a solid neck, and that I may even consider wearing it post 3.1. I also concede that intellect is a powerful stat for a resto druid as well. Hell, I would even go one step further and perhaps concede that I am flat out dead wrong in wearing not wearing it. I don't think either neck is a poor choice, and I do think that people could find justification for using either item.

Where I guess I am having a problem is that so much emphasis has been put on items based on haste/crit, which just about everyone in this thread (including yourself!) have stated are basically wasted itemization for resto druid gear. Let me go one step further to try and clarify my point. Would you honestly wear the Chains of Adoration over the Glittering Chamber if presented the option of just those two necks? I would guess probably not. Yet you have the Chains of Adoration on your list as the only other option (as far as your list is concerned) to the life binder's locket...because it offers haste! /boggle

I am not saying that your list is bad, or that you are not doing a good job, I think you are doing great! I am just requesting that items of equal quality and value are supplied so that people who venture here looking for information can use your list and have a comprehensive selection of items to tailor to their personal preference/playstyle.

Granted...we will probably all be having this same discussion as soon as 3.1 hits and the list will be completely changing as a result of the mana changes and new gear, so maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill!

The reason I put it up like this is because almost *every* item has: stamina, intellect, spirit, spellpower and either crit, mp5 or haste on it. Both haste and crit are not very useful to a druid (as is mp5 as it's more expensive in terms of item budget) as they only affect a minor part of the druid healing arsenal. To illustrate, my last 3-drakes kill not even 20% of my healing was from direct healing. Yes, I did overstate it a bit since it's not *completely* worthless, but it's not like we have a choice between imba spellpower+spirit item or crappy itemized haste/crit item. Almost all items you have to choose between either crappy stat A or crappy stat B and some people like crit more, others like haste more, which is the whole reason I've put the list like this.

Now necklaces, rings and trinkets are often a bit different since they don't a have a big item budget, so the amount of stats on those slots is fewer. Almost every decent resto necklace in the game has either spirit or mp5 on them for regen, not both. Just because the glittering necklace has spirit on it, doesn't make it better than the locket, as I already pointed out. Come to think of it, the int on the locket even gives more crit than the extra crit rating does on the glittering necklace. So the *ONLY* thing you are gaining from the glittering necklace is 5 stamina, but you're losing out on 2 spellpower and quite a bunch of manaregen.

I'm sorry if I was a bit harsh my previous post, but I'm getting tired of people that a) second-guess something as irrelevant as a quick list that prevents new people coming to these forums asking "whott is best itam??" and b) try to prove I'm wrong without "doing the math" first.

And for the record, yes, I would use Chains of Adoration (in fact I still am) as we're very low on shamans in our guild and I'd rather have a bit more haste to lower my gcd whenever he isn't around. The loss of mana regen from the spirit isn't all that big (if there even is any), as there is quite a bunch of intellect on that necklace, in contrast to the glittering necklace.

Edit: I still do not believe it should be listed, since Chains of Adoration is an alternative if you are seeking *haste* and not the "2nd best in slot". If you don't want/need the haste, the best-in-slot is Life-Binder's Locket.

Vrakk · 02/27/09, 11:58 AM

As expected, they buffed [Headpiece of Reconciliation] on the PTR to its proper 226 ilvl.

Orin · 03/04/09, 11:26 AM

Awesome, thanks for the screenshot Vrakk!

+10 Stamina
+9 Intellect
+4 Spirit
+18 Haste Rating
+14 Spell Power

caduber · 03/06/09, 9:56 PM

I apologize if this is discussed elsewhere, but I am rerolling my resto druid as horde and have the opportunity to reevaluate my professions from an itemization/min/maxing standpoint. What would be the optimum profs for a resto druid? My alliance one is LW/enchanting so I had the fur lining and the ring chants. I'm guessing JC is better than either and maybe Alch?

Paininabox · 03/06/09, 10:05 PM

As far as I remember, JC and LW are the greatest benefits.

Najtrok · 03/06/09, 10:36 PM

I did a small comparison some time ago and reagarding those numbers I find here in this chaos it says:
LW: 37 SP gain
Tailor: 20 MP5 gain (since IIRC back enchants rly suck)
JC: 39 SP gain
Enchant: 38 SP gain

Since I already have Inscription I didn't compare that. Now I think I substracted that what I could recieve from not having the professions. In JC I didn't calculate Epic Gems, which would be wort thinking since the JC-Only Gems will then be less of a benefit.
Besides: Do they Epic Gems come with Ulduar or are they delayed further?

uliko · 03/06/09, 11:37 PM

JC benefit depends on what meta gem you're using and how much you gem red. Lowest benefit is obviously red gemming everyhting already. Using the ESD this will give you 39 SP and three socket bonuses which most likely includes atleast one SP bonus. If you're using IED/TSD you'll get 59 SP and one socket bonus, probably not SP, at the cost of 8 int/spi. Once epic gems come into play this will drop to 27 SP and three socket bonuses for the ESD and 49 SP and one socket bonus for the IED/TSD but now at the cost of 10 int/spi. SP bonus and stat loss are higher if you don't red gem everything.

BS is 38 SP now and 46 once epic gems are in.

Min/max professions are JC and BS (or enchanting but only until epic gems.)

madmike253 · 03/07/09, 11:56 PM

Originally Posted by trismegistus

We should all know by now that healing meters are useless for measuring effectiveness, so why keep pushing the same old tired mantra?

I was just looking through these posts and I noticed what trismegistus said here about the healing meters. I've always felt that the healing meters don't show the true abilities of the healers, but when asked by a friend today why I thought that, I had no idea how to explain it. So why is it that the healing meters can't be trusted to determine who the "best" healer is?

The best example I came up with was any instance with a single-target healer. That healer will be much lower on the charts than a raid healer will, but if the single-target healer is healing the MT and he doesn't do his job all the other healers don't matter now anyway if the tank dies.

charminultra · 03/08/09, 8:52 AM

Now, I've skimmed most of this thread and have yet to see [Swarm Bindings] mentioned as being a top candidate for crit on bracers.

I've been favoring crit recently even though I'm not close to the haste cap. Mainly because of the Living Seed/Nature's Grace procs due to anticipation of our coming transition from less HoT-based healing. And the fact that Regrowth is getting a 25% crit nerf (some say 50% but I don't see anything regarding RG beyond Imp. RG talent being changed/nerfed) while Nourish is getting a 25% buff. Crit is also helping to bring out the usefulness of Swiftmend even more when it's critting for as much as my HT crits but for much less mana and instant cast.

However, it's reduced my trinket itemization since I've kept [The Egg of Mortal Essence] coupled with [Forethought Talisman]. But my trinket options are fairly limited right now (due to lack of raiding and drops) - [Darkmoon Card: Illusion], [Embrace of the Spider], [Soul of the Dead], and [Spirit-World Glass]. I was thinking of using soul of the dead in 3.1 due to the regen nerf and crits seemingly becoming more useful from nourish and the like. But it's hard to justify the spell power drop for the proc and crit rating. Any thoughts?

Vanor · 03/08/09, 8:56 AM

Madmike:
A MT healer will have to spamm the tank, depending on the fight, alot. Even if the tank gets a dodge/parry spree the MT healer still has to keep healing high, so their effective healing will be low and overhealing realtively high.

Healing is also about saving lives, just becouse you're high on meters doesn't mean you've saved many lives. Maybe you're just healing some light/timed aoe that could have been healed later on and ignored someone needing healing straightaway (boss "fixate"/dots/throws).

There's also the scenario of "fishing" meters:
Just use your fastest heals (flash/nourish/lesser healing wave) to heal any incomming damage fast but not staying on your task. Or healing over hots that could have safely taken care of the job and you could have healed the tank for example to make it "safer". This sort of fishing also causes others to gain more overheal and "makes you look better on meters"

On trinkets: I'd go with slapping on as much as spellpower as I can find almost, then if I find my mana is the main limiting factor for my healing I'd swap a trinket or two around. If it's a progress fight looking into if people are taking unnessecary(sp?) damage might be an idea, or if the raid dps is too low. Some dps mabye not flasking thus making the fight longer?
While spellpower has the ability to give both mileage&longetivity, if you can get away with "one hot less" by increasing your spellpower you save mana aswell.
I'd use Forethought+dakrmoon card or spider one.

moxy · 03/08/09, 1:25 PM

I'm curious what 3.1 will do to crit. I have always come down crit on the crit vs haste debate. Not to rehash it except to say that I have a lot of crit on my current gear that I need to decide what to do with.

NG change seems like a big crit nerf. The proc is much less likely to get used up in a normal rotation unless you deliberately go out of your way to use it. About the nicest thing I can say about it is that nourish chain-casting, which was already starting to look like a pretty viable tactic, now looks even more useful. You can potentially get 3 hasted nourishes in one proc now instead of one, for a combined .9 sec reduction instead of .5sec. (I'm really not sure how haste would increase or decrease the relative benefit of this change when you figure in the GCD clipping currently). The probability of refreshing the proc at 20% crit would be 70% after 2 casts, 83% after a third. Still not quite as good as RG filler is now, but we were probably not going be using it as filler anyways.

Another thing that's struck me is the benefit of crit blooms now. A triple stack will bloom crit for about 15k + 5k living seed. The potential for tanking healing with high crit using strategic blooms and nourish filler seems formidable.

charminultra · 03/08/09, 1:30 PM

Originally Posted by moxy

Another thing that's struck me is the benefit of crit blooms now. A triple stack will bloom crit for about 15k + 5k living seed. The potential for tanking healing with high crit using strategic blooms and nourish filler seems formidable.

Formidable, yes. Useful and controllable? That's another thread and subject to a lot of debate at the moment. I'm slowly, ever so slowly testing out phasing lifebloom, letting it bloom, and keeping rejuv up and using nourish. With my current gear and crit, it isn't bad with swiftmend in the mix but yeah, this discussion goes elsewhere.

Playered · 03/08/09, 2:16 PM

Bloom does not trigger Living Seed (Living Seed - Spell - World of Warcraft).

The old version of RG scaled better with critical strike than with haste and Nourish used to scale better with haste than critical strike.
Regarding how things change in 3.1 you need to account for the new Nature's Grace and if you intend to take it. If you remove the talent then the most likely guess is that critical strike will end up just being near worthless. With the combined chance of RG/NR being around 45%~ fully raid buffed you will not likely ever be able to push either to the point of it being a more reliable chance of happening either.

Quite honestly I would say with how things are in 3.1 you should just keep avoiding critical strike (and NGrace) and use those parts of the item budget on haste rating and MP5 but it is not really worth spending the effort to theorycraft it all out in the middle of so many "interesting" changes to confirm it yet.

moxy · 03/08/09, 3:07 PM

Originally Posted by charminultra

Formidable, yes. Useful and controllable? That's another thread and subject to a lot of debate at the moment. I'm slowly, ever so slowly testing out phasing lifebloom, letting it bloom, and keeping rejuv up and using nourish. With my current gear and crit, it isn't bad with swiftmend in the mix but yeah, this discussion goes elsewhere.

And it is. But it will bear on the value of crit. It's one of the only things crit has going for it now.

Thanks for the clarification Playered. I hadn't noticed that.

I agree that 45% crit is just about the most useless percentage to have on a healing spell. I was pretty upset that this change and the NG change both seemed to devalue crit. The nicest thing I can say about 45% crit nourishes are that they are so small and fast that the statistical spikiness will even out pretty quickly.

Fallenangel · 03/08/09, 4:31 PM

Actually if you're spamming nourish then haste is capped at 15.58% which is easily attainable, assuming WoA and ret/moonkin. Yes, healing is rarely constant spam, but it does tend to be a series of bursts followed by idle moments. For that crit might prove better than haste. Yes going from 40% to 45% crit might not be a big deal but haste just won't cut it past a certain point for anything besides regrowth.