These last few post are straying off the threads topic of "Restoration Itemization" and more into discussion of how to heal/spec for TotGC. I understand that on NRB in P1 you heal the tanks. However, I also feel healing the tanks in this phase is a "waste". I am not spamming nourish during this phase, but I am keeping rolling hots on the tanks. The reason I do not spam nourish is because of our healers who are actually assigned to healing the tanks. My buffer throws off their healing (not the HoT buffer, but my nourish spam). When I pull off the tanks after doing so, it is an unexpected change to the incoming damage of the tank.

I know the healers should "adjust" to this and it should not be a problem, but to keep your healing assignment and not "steal" the tank healers job isn't hurting. It isn't bad to nourish a tank if he needs it. I just feel that I shouldn't do so much healing to a tank where it may alter the tank healers rotation and healing style, because at the point where I can't tank heal during that phase for whatever reason, incoming damage/healing changes.

I have my 4PC T9 (5PC actually), and its numbers are great. The stats it brings are also nice as well. Keeping close to the soft haste cap of 359 is the goal I am trying to achieve (staying above it), and them itemizing with gear that brings up my crit rating. I spec into 3/3 NP for the rejuvenation crit rating. I would take this over the Nature's Grace talent. I also fill out 2/2 Improved HT for the Nourish boost when I do need to use nourish. I do find that Living Seed does a fair amount of healing, and most of it is effective healing, but at the rate I use nourish or Regrowth filling my healing assignment, it would account for a little amount of healing where my other healing spells or co-healers would make up for.

I do have my own BiS list, but I am not going to wait around to get that gear. I take all the gear I can (I am our only casting druid as of right now, so I get all the leather intellect gear), and work it into my set by keeping the general idea of staying over 359 haste rating.

One thing I have noticed is that I seem to be in need of providing that quick burst heal more often in ToC than I ever was in Ulduar and I've been looking for ways to address that. I started out thinking about haste but it's not really buying me a ton of additional speed (better measured in hundreths of seconds rather than tenths). Assuming I could swap a perfect 180 crit for 180 haste, this is buying me ~4% crit. Even factoring in 4 pc T9 effects, 4% crit is not buying me a ton of overall effective throughput. Depending on composition of heals, maybe 1% if I'm being generous. The mental calculation I've been making due to ToC damage profile is weighing that 1% effective throughput vs a quicker landing burst heal when I need it. That said, the additional 180 haste past 359 isn't buying me a ton of value either.

So, while not directly tied to itemization, I've kept my haste close to 360-range but switched to a 14/0/57 build from 11/0/60 because (unlike Ulduar) the occasions where I back-to-back(-to-back) Nourish are frequent enough in our current progression through ToC to give value to a NG spec. It could be I'm having to take these measures to compensate while this is progression content and people aren't avoiding the avoidable damage, etc. But right now, I am definitely finding speed of burst to be very valuable.

From a broader more theoretical perspective outside of my own practical application, if someone at 14/0/57 spec with 541 haste instead replaced 180 haste with 180 crit and went with an 11/0/60 build that included 3/3 Natural Perfection, they could squeeze an additional ~7% crit into their setup and maybe start getting effective throughput gained from the additional crit rating and talents into the 2% range. At that point, we weigh 2% additional effective throughput versus the additional functionality of quicker sustained burst healing (for the occasions that merit it).

My gut on this is that, while the fights are progression, the value of NG spec for the situations that require it can better help get the raid over the hump than the 1-2% additional throughput. It has enabled me to get the life-savers down to compensate for people not doing the right things while learning the content. So, my personal compromise has been to gear for crit past 359 but spec for the additional burst of NG. I can change spec alot quicker than I can change gearing and quite frankly the NG proc is buying me more functionality than the additional haste would anyway. Once the content is on farm and the raid is generally better at avoiding the avoidable, I'll probably spec back to 11/0/60 that includes 3/3 Natural Perfection. But at that point, does the min/maxing really matter?

It may be too mana expensive for you, especially since you seem to forego regen on gear a lot. I don't have any issues spamming nourish.
What world do you live in where druids are not the best MT healers? I'm always number 1 on, if not all three, at least 2 of the MTs and we have a holy paladin and a disc priest. If you are having mana issues you may need better mana support from your other healers and fellow druids; ie Tide, Hymn, feral/moonkin innervates.

Also, check MMO champion, in 3.3 they are making HoTs(in the beginning only rejuv) scale with haste. Meaning the more haste the quicker the ticks come and the quicker the spell expires(hello MT/Twins healing). So think about that when you are trying to decide whether or not you want to "just" meet haste soft cap and for which rank of GotEM you are capping for.

"We are trying to make haste a slightly more attractive stat for classes that utilize a lot of damage or healing over time spells, specifically Shadow priests, warlocks (though especially Affliction) and Resto druids. We realize other classes use hots and dots too, but I think we can all agree that it's a bigger problem for the ones I mentioned.

I'm going to share with you an idea that the class and item designers came up with for 3.3. This is a work in progress so it's possible we'll end up going a different way after we see how it plays. However I also wanted to explain our logic here in case it wasn't obvious.

We have new tech that will allow specific hots and dots to tick faster -- the time between ticks would decrease. This means more damage or healing per time but also having to refresh those spells more often. Since there is a trade-off, we're not sure the change is a no-brainer, especially in the healing case.

Because of this, we are planning on introducing the concept through glyphs. Glyphs represent a great test bed for new ideas because they are easier to change (and easier on the players when we do change them) compared to core spell functions or even talents. If we like the way it feels and players like the way it feels and the glyphs prove popular or fun, then this may be the kind of thing that shifts from glyphs over time -- not unlike the way some favorite set bonuses eventually become talents.

For 3.3 we are talking about introducing three new glyphs for Shadow Word: Pain, Corruption and Rejuvenation that would allow these spells to tick faster with the more haste you have. There are glyphs of Corruption and Rejuv already, and we're not sure how we're going to resolve those yet. For Shadow Word: Pain, we are likely to rename the current glyph to Glyph of Mind Flay, remove the old Glyph of Mind Flay, and increase Mind Flay by 10 yards in the base spell.

Again, these are not promises (nor ponies). For a variety of reasons, you may see these changes on the PTR or you may not. If you do see any or all of the three glyphs implemented however, we wanted you to have some idea of what we were trying to do. Feedback is certainly appreciated, especially if you get to try them out."

That change is straight up listed as experimental. Furthermore since it will reduce the base length of your rejuv tick in most cases it will result in more overheal than you're already doing. It will be situational at best. That is not a reason to make poor choices now.

In short, until they make haste affect rejuv to the extent that it makes it tick faster and does not reduce the duration - aka more healing overall, this change will bring nothing to the table other than to have a secondary set of gear still gemmed for SP but with more passive haste in the event that you put the glyph in for a certain fight.

Edit: Linking the post so that people who have not seen it can see that the change is not even guaranteed to go in. It is merely an idea they are floating at present.

Yes, losing that 10mp5 or so from not getting socket bonuses sure is hurting my regen.
If you are beating paladins on a fight like NRB on the tank healing, you have terrible paladins.
Sucking up innervates from other druids is ok, but it's hardly something to assume everyone has access to.
Nourish spam, coupled with the other hots, is like 2750-3000 mp5. It will burn your mana and achieve barely what a holy pally can do on 2 tanks with a lot more longevity.

You have 992 spirit, 1141 intellect, and 303 mp5 while casting. Whereas I have 1216 spirit, 1207 intellect, and 353 mp5 while casting. Your "BiS" compilation puts you at 1035 spirit, 1255 intellect and 334 mp5. While mine puts me at 1212 spirit, 1269 intellect and 389 mp5. Yes the extra 50* mp5(14%) is a big deal.

We have Swiftmend(which is much better than 1 tick of penance, or holy shock) and NS HT(which is the poor man's version of LoH which is available every 3 min).

None of the druid's tools actually do anything to reduce incoming damage on our targets. The only spell we do have that does such a thing is mark of the wild with it's armor bonus; we are the least defensive of any healing class. Comparing quick response heals to abilities that reduce damage taken is pointless if the damage taken isn't healable (or healable efficiently ala Vezax).

Getting back to itemization I have to wonder if there isn't some happy medium where a druid could gear (haste) for part of (if not all) of the bonus of nature's grace, while being able to spec for the crit and crit bonuses. I'm not in the position with my druid to be even attempting a BiS gear list, but I see these arguments going back and forth and think there has to be another option.

First one--even when we see the correct number, probably not great. Small buff to WG--usual lackluster 2pc for Resto.
Second one--awesome.

Well at least the 2pc bonus is actually on a spell we cast with more frequency. I figured we were due for a HT bonus this time around!

The 4piece looks completely incredible.

That 4 piece has to get nerfed or blanket RJ makes it's return in a big way. I could see it being semi balanced if it was on the last tick of the RJ, but on every effective tick? Fights like Twins could see 1 druid with 20+ RJ's active, granted the chance is small, but there.

The 4 pc is another reason to stack more haste, with Rejuv scaling with haste, the faster it will tick the more you can get jumping at once.

No, it's the same mean HPET regardless of haste, just like it will be without the set bonus.

it has a 2% chance to jump to a new target at full duration.

jump means copy to the new target ? then its great.

if its like the priest Prayer of Mending it sucks. hot the tank -> jump on other target, hot gone on tank ...

Unless I've screwed the maths up (entirely possible, it's been toooo long since Probability 101), 4t10 gives, per cast of Rejuvenation,

5 * (0.02 * 0.98^4) ~= 9.2% chance for 1 proc copy
10 * (0.02^2 * 0.98^3) ~= 0.38% chance for 2 proc copies

and a vanishingly small chance for any more procs than that. Depending on how it is coded, the copy Rejuvenation could also proc a copy (which could in turn proc a copy etc.), but intuitively the probability of this is low and my maths skills aren't up to modelling it, so I'm going to ignore it.

So we have roughly a 9% chance for 100% more throughput, and a 0.4% chance for 200% more throughput, or an average of 9% + 0.8% additional throughput per Rejuv cast i.e. less than 10% total.

Additionally this throughput is random and will in many cases be 100% overheal.

So personally I'm not seeing how awesome 4t10 is compared to pre-nerf 4t8/4t9, unless the proc-from-a-proc effect that I'm ignoring is more significant than intuition suggests.

The real benefit I see from the 4 piece is saving global cooldowns. Sure, the jump may be 100% overheal, but isn't a majority of RJ healing overheal? When I'm blanketting a raid with RJ I would sure love to see a random RJ show up on my raid frames ahead of my mouse movement so I can skip it and save myself a global cooldown. No matter how much haste you have you can't skip global cooldowns.

If the jump is smart like PoM or Chain Heal the bonus becomes even better.

It could always be worse. The priest bonuses are pretty lackluster.

A little bit of sleep and reflection on this has changed my perspective. They essentially are removing 3 targets from our simultaneous RJ blanket strategy by removing a tick of RJ and then adding in our ability to reacquire some of these simultaneous targets via a random proc.

So, while the 3.3 RJ nerf is somewhat mitigated by a 4 pc T10 bonus, the sum of the parts post 3.3 is still less than what we have currently in 3.2 without the pre-requisite of 4 pieces of tier gear. Currently, on a RJ heavy fight like IC HM or Twins (and I'm sure there will be at least one version of this profile encounter in IC, probably more), we can keep RJ up on ~15 simultaneous targets allowing for some WGs on cooldown. Post 3.3, we can keep RJ up on ~12 simultaneous targets with the average addition of ~1 more target that is not of our choosing or timing (and that may be wasted as a partial overwrite of an existing RJ with a frequency that is dependent on both the "smartness" of the proc as well as where the person it procs on is currently located) . . . all for the low, low price of 4 pieces of T10.

The 2% is obviously a pre-release percentage but, imho, that percentage either needs to be increased or the entire bonus rethought. Yeah, crazy RNG may get RJ up on 20 simultaneous targets this one time and those that thrive on these things would try to paint that incredibly rare occurrence as representative of the bonus in general. But, in a large enough sample size, we're talking ~13 targets on average WITH the 4 pc bonus which is less than we have today. If this is a "smart" proc and won't overwrite a target that currently has rejuv if a target without rejuv is in range, we could say we acquired those additional targets without the expense of a GCD and that does have value but my guess is that, in practice, we will get limited value from this bonus in it's current state even on the most friendly RJ encounters.

4t10 will be exceptionally weak for 10-man (and 5-man) content. Praise Elune! Now I can Swiftmend that Treant!!!

I suppose they could make the "free" Rejuv stack with the "casted" Rejuv. That would be better, but still weaker than 4t9.

If it would stack, and also make a smart jump (lowest health% target in range), it would be quite attractive.

Self-Edit: my bad, started talking about glyphs, and this is the itemization thread.

Based on Allinone's latest calculations (here) I put together a character sheet for what seems to be the current BiS for 3.2. I did leave out BoP tradeskill equipment and gems and such, but that shouldn't change much and where it does is easily remedied. Surely I have missed something though, so critique is very welcome thank you

potentially good character sheet?

585 haste rating? And you're going out of your way with haste cloth to do it.

And this to some extent goes to the reason why BiS lists tend to be a silly endeavor anyway, but planning on 5pc T9.258 isn't useful for anyone. You're not going to get that before the next zone, and if you do get it, something is wrong with your loot system. Better to decide which are the best potential offset pieces to go with 4T9, and plan around those for your haste cap.

Oh hey cool I'm glad you saw this so quick. Yeah the haste is high and the 5 piece is overkill, true. I was trying to do 4/5 GotEM and the malfurion items are so good anyways stat-wise, but i think you're right, the boots are the weak link. the rest of what you're referring to is cloth with haste but the alternatives are also +haste it seems. there I'll update the sheet. I'm glad at least the talents were okay yes?

Updated yay!


P.S. I think you're the guy I want to ask about moonkin spec. Is there a stat value or loot ranking site similar to the one for resto here?