I wouldn't use those stat weights. I believe they grossly overweight haste and crit as a result of hots not scaling properly with spellpower in the resto spreadsheet. From the spell distribution he entered, about 15% of healing (nourish and regrowth direct) benefit from haste, which they do just as much as they benefit from SP. If everything scaled with spell power the same way as nourish, that would put haste at 0.15 SP (since they are 15% of healing), but it's worse than that, since rejuv and WG scale much better with SP than nourish. I would actually put haste no higher than 0.1 SP, possibly lower. If you don't have 4pT9, crit is lower than haste, otherwise i'd put it at about 0.25 SP.

I'm currently working on getting hard numbers for these stats, which I will post when I am finished.

That'd be really cool! I wonder why his numbers are off so much... A lot of people seem to agree with his thinking.

You missed his other point. You should NOT assume you're going to get 5 pieces of the ilvl.258 Tier pieces. I'd be surprised if anyone in the world besides a (main) tank got it.

A better assumption would be one piece of ilvl.258 T9 and at most two pieces. Most likely if you do get ilvl.258 T9, you should be using it for either the helm or the shoulders, as there are other more accessible ilvl.258 gear for chest, legs and hands.

I may be a regular lurker here and generally don't speak, but doesn't having [Solace of the Fallen] AND [Solace of the Defeated] kinda roger your plan since one is Alliance and one is Horde?

Yes I do see what you are saying, but the purpose of a BiS list is to, well, have a list of the best items in each slot. Regardless of how long it would take or hard it would be to get the items. They simply give the best stats, and this reflects on how Blizzard thinks a druid should be geared.

You mentioned other chest, leg, and hand items would work instead of the t9.258, but I'm only seeing items that would replace the crit with more haste. And that wouldn't be a better choice at the amount of haste total, correct? If I am wrong please suggest replacements that maybe I overlooked.

@Elorael: Yeah my mistake, I replaced the one with a 245 item I think rounds out the mp5cast nicely, as the only other 258 caster trinkets i can see do damage (ugh!)

The point remains that BiS lists are on the whole worthless.

If you have access to 258 tokens (you're clearing Anub), chances are hopefully likely that you are in a guild of non-lootwhores and that you are not one yourself. Worst case you at least have a raid leader with half a brain. I'd expect most guilds are rotating on the pieces (i.e. once you win one you wait until everyone else has one and then everyone goes in for their 2nd piece, etc).

We mention the other items because they do work, are quite good, and in a land of RNG loot drops they are extremely viable substitutes. On the whole people are placing far too much value into crit. Yes, for this tier of gear it's great - but until Blizzard says we're carrying over the crit chance on rejuv as a permanent part of the spell -- it will return to being mostly useless as we pick up ICC gear. Being like 0.75% crit lower because you had to take an extra haste piece is not remotely problematic.

Healing is not like DPS. Sure we can aim to get our HPS as high as possible, but at the end of the day if your guild is killing a boss handily and you're not experiencing a ton of raid deaths then your gear does not matter much and on the whole doesn't need to be min/maxed to the fullest extent possible (which may also be to the detriment of your raid if you are taking gear from DPS classes that could make a sizable difference with it). Generally speaking you wouldn't drop the number of healers you bring, so once you hit a certain point of stability DPS gear is more important because it makes the fight go faster.

Specifically with regard to your BiS list. You picked items that you feel to be BiS. I wouldn't agree with some of your choices, some others may or may not. The point is your BiS may differ from someone else's depending on the role you provide to your raid vs. the role they provide to their's. This is why a few people have already intimated that your list is a waste of time and I'll add to that in agreement.

By now, most guilds can clear regular AC, and if an individual is this concerned about their itemization, I am sure they are working on some encounter in Heroic version. With that being said, Icecrown isn't going to be out for a while. We are already DEing leather caster gear. I have [Moonshadow Armguards][Bracers of the Autumn Willow] both, but use the crit ones for now because crit is the better modifier. I am also wearing [Malfurion's Robe of Triumph] over [Vestments of the Shattered Fellowship] because of the crit again, but I have both of those "offset" haste pieces. By the time IC opens up, you and your guild should have farmed regular ToC to have every piece of leather gear with Intellect on it. It is good to keep this gear in check for when some game mechanic changes, like losing 4P T9 and picking up the new Rejuve glyph. Just because it is not a direct upgrade in this set of tier/mechanics doesn't mean you shouldn't get it. I won't let my guild DE something that I "have the slightest chance of using".

I often pass my loot 7/8 times to a DPS class, if it is a decent upgrade for them. Even though enrage timers aren't that much of an issue since the NRB nerf, a lower combat time is less time for stupid to happen. Legion flame all over the melee, a 5th special ability on Twins, 15 extra seconds of phase 3 on Anub. BiS lists are going to be preferences and never the same for almost any healer. Obviously tank healing/assigned healing is going to have different stats preferred over general raid healing etc. BiS lists are good for an individual, but unlike DPS classes, they will vary a lot based on roles and play style.

Source

So if my math is correct that will leave us with a haste softcap of 856 (0/3 CF) and 735 (3/3 CF).
Though it won't be very hard to achieve with ICC gear I think it kind of takes us the option to gear for crit at all. Speccing out of GotEM shouldn't be a real choice anymore since now it affects all of our heals. All in all I think it's a good make-over of one of our best but strangest talents... What do you think about it?

I have been socketing spirit instead of int ever since 3.1 came out. I know this isn't very helpful in an encounter such as general vezax, but what about just in general? I figure since you get 15% SP from your total spirit then it would be helpful to socket because you get the mana regen as well as the minor amount of spellpower. But what about the new gear that blizz is giving resto druids. all i see are yellow sockets. is intellect the new thing to socket now instead of spirit? whats the difference between having a huge mana pool and regenerating your mana quickly? wont they both do the same thing? especially since you have a 3 min innervate CD when you get down to aobut 55% mana you just hit innervate and keep casting and your at full mana again. so i guess my question ends up being this. is the crit bonus from intellect better or is the spell power bonus from spirit better?

Well, to answer your question, spirit is better than the intellect, mostly due to the fact that it takes 166 intellect to get 1% crit, which is a pretty cruddy stat for resto at the moment. However, it's generally bad practice to gem anything other than SP or hybrid gems for socket bonuses that are SP. If you are having mana problems it's usually better to switch in regen trinkets like SoH, or more preferably use an insightful earthstorm meta gem. If after that you still need regen, then you gem for int, which is significantly better than spirit for regen. The consensus way of gearing is to A. get enough regen so that you don't run oom and then B. go pure throughput past the "enough regen" threshold.

In response to the Gift of the Earthmother change, ... [Removed for math fail]

Edit: Haste stacks multiplicatively by source so I'm very, very wrong.

Edit: beaten.

I'm not sure if this has been talked about already or not but i cant find it in the thread. Is the T9 4 piece set bonus worth it or should i go for other gear that gives better stats and keep the 2 piece set bonus

Depends on your play style and role. Basically yes. With the new changes coming to druids, don't be afraid to take haste gear that isn't tier to keep around. You are going to need it after 3.3. I wouldn't let it get DE'd for the greater good.

How are you planning on gemming in early patch 3.3?

It is likely that I won't be reaching the haste cap based on gear alone unless I decide to forfeit my T9 4 set bonus, because of this I am debating on switching my SP gems to Haste until I hit the cap.

As I see it haste will scale very well in blanket hotting situations, and will also be better in reduced target situations in which I plan on equipping the new rejuv glyph. Does this seem like a reasonable plan of action?

If 3/3 Celestial Focus is needed to reach the haste cap, then would the best CF build avoid Nature's Grace entirely to avoid Nourish clipping? If that is the case, it would mean that the last point removed (when haste gets high enough) from CF would also free up the four other points added to the Balance tree to get to the fourth tier in the first place. I'm not intuitively convinced that last point (four points) is really worth 1% haste.

Revitalizing Skyflare Diamond - Spell - World of Warcraft

Treecalcs let this do your math for you It is really nice.

Edit: Revitalizing seems to look promising in the spreadsheet.

I'm pretty sure Chaotic boosts only damage, not heals. Revitalizing is the one you'll want for throughput with Rejuv crits.

Well, without NG, Nourish will have the same haste cap as Rejuv (856 without CF, 735 with). So if you're at 735 from gear, I suppose you could make a case for taking CF and not NG. But, there's nothing else useful in the Balance tree to put points into, and NG will help Regrowth, so there's still no reason not to take it. Also, if you're planning to use both Nourish and Rejuv heavily, you want both Living Seed and Revitalize, which makes it hard to get CF anyway.

This is why my leaning is towards emphasizing Regrowth over Nourish for raid healing. The point in NG are quite accessible, and Regrowth benefits from them greatly while still sharing the gains from haste that you get for Rejuv.

There's an annoying antisynergy here between haste gear and Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation. Let me try to describe:
1) Haste and spellpower both provide comparable amounts of throughput after 3.3, with haste providing slightly more. The difference is that spellpower makes our Rejuv stronger while leaving the number of targets constant, while haste adds targets. So gemming for haste is better for "spread" healing, but gemming for spellpower is better for "focused" healing.
2) Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation, however, causes you to heal fewer targets (more "focus"). Moreover, it eliminates the "spreading" effect of each additional point of haste (because the reduced duration exactly cancels the reduced cast time).

So if you're healing a fight where you want to achieve max HPS spread out over many targets in a raid, you'll stack haste and avoid the Glyph. Where you're interested in Rejuvs that tick more powerfully, haste vs. spellpower is a wash--they both leave the numbers of targets you can simultaneously HoT constant while increasing Rejuv's HPS while ticking. I think there's some awkwardness here in the way the Glyph causes haste to scale.

If this all remains the way it is though, I'll probably be inclined to gem haste up to cap, and then swap the Glyph in or out depending on how much I want to spread my healing at a particular fight.

Ok, so my spreadsheet is mostly done. I will post it when I finish it up and figure out how to do that...
With these unbuffed stats:

SP 2894
Int 1163
Spirit 1166
Haste 421
Crit 413
MP5 207 (from gear)
MP5 872 (not casting)
MP5 539 (while casting)

Talents include assume all of the core talent, with no NG or Living Seed (working on it) and Natural Perfection (done but not included)

And this spell usage

45% Rejuv
25% WG
15% LB
10% Nourish
5% Regrowth

I get these stat weights for 3.2:
MP5: 1
SP: 0.9
Int: 0.586 (0.643 with 4pT9)
Spirit: 0.577
Haste: 0.111
Crit: 0.041 (0.223 with 4pT9)

And these stat weights for 3.3:
MP5: 1
SP: 0.9
Int: 0.586 (0.643 with 4pT9)
Spirit: 0.577
Haste: 0.965
Crit: 0.041 (0.223 with 4pT9)

My model assumes a 6 minute fight, fully buffed. It currently does not model living seed, Nature's Grace, or the negative impact of haste on mana regen. The first will probably have negligible effects, the second will slightly increase the value of crit (you shouldn't have any anyways) and slightly decrease the value of haste (nourish GCD clipping), and the third will will only slightly lower the value of haste. It also ignores the fact that 1 % haste will not increase your healing by 1% due to a cooldown on WG, which has the highest healing/sec cast time.

Conclusion: Start trying to pick up all the haste gear you can. The more you get, the smaller this nerf becomes.
Spirit/Haste > MP5/Haste > Haste/Crit > Spirit/Crit > Mp5/Crit
It surpasses spirit, Mp5, and int as secondary stats, and is comparable to SP. We will probably want to use the Reckless (SP/haste) gems in yellow sockets for a socket bonus of SP,Int,Spirit, or Haste.

This also assumes that we will have the same healing percentages. If we use Rejuv less because of the nerf, the value of haste will only go up, since relative to haste, rejuv scales better with SP than any other spell. As a side note, these numbers are much more sensitive to spell distribution than to actual stats. We will also probably be using Regrowth more and nourish less (except tank healing)

I'm not sure how you are evaluating haste's effect on our throughput. I assume this is due to the glyph, but still it depends on the number of targets. The HPCT of rejuv is the same with or without the glyph. It's more of a focused vs spread approach like Halmet said.
The major awkwardness I see with the glyph would be the /cancelaura Bloodlust button I'll probably add to my bars. Changing our haste midfight from BL or procs isn't gonna be fun.

In other news:
Rejuvenation: The base duration on all ranks of this spell is now 15 seconds.

That's good. As I said above, leaving in the GOTEM nerf and reverting the Rejuv one seems like a good solution all around.

Among other things, it doesn't upheave our playstyle quite so much, but should make Regrowth a nice option to add in for more common usage.