Vazu

In all honesty, at higher levels of play, 5/5 GoTEM and maxed haste (whatever it is.. 368?) is fine. There's really not a whole lot of talents in resto or balance worth taking a point out of GoTEM for. Make sense? Like, if there was some clear cut obvious place to put a point and it would make some massive difference, I would care. But it just doesn't matter that much. If you look at my spec, where would I put the point? Nourish is at best, like 5-10% of my total healing. That's why I dumped Nature's Grace, because I just don't direct heal enough for it to be worthwhile.

So if Rejuv/WG are like 90% or more of my effective HPS and all I care about is a 1 second GCD, it's kind of silly to stack haste. Trying to gain 150 more haste to drop 1 talent point is a little extreme I think. I'd rather just have more crit (Living Seed), lots more spellpower or stats. Sure, at some point you'll just hit 510 naturally through some of the best Ulduar gear. But I'm getting the impression that some players are going out of their way to wear questionable gear, just to get to 510 so they can spec 4/5 GoTEM. I'm just not sure that's really a worthwhile endeavor.

Here, I'll play a little game with talents to show what I mean. Here are the common talents most resto Druids take.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

That leaves me with 7 talent points or 8 if I specc'd 4/5 GoTEM. Let's take it a step further and just take more talents common to higher end Druid builds.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Now I still have 5/5 GoTEM with 2 talent points left, or 3 if I specc'd GoTEM. I submit that with those 2 remaining points, I'm just going to put them in Empowered Touch. They are in Imp Tranquility now, but those points will swap come 3.2. Now after all of that, let's say I take a point out of GoTEM. What am I going to do, spec 1/3 Brambles? Is trying to get 510 haste worth 1/3 Brambles? Or 1/3 Nature's Grace? Again, I know I'm sort of appealing to Druids who spec for hard modes, but I think this applies across the board. I just don't see a reason to go out of your way to get enough haste for 4/5 GoTEM. Look for more spellpower, stats and crit probably in that order if you can. If your haste reaches 510 at some point by accident, great. But don't wear odd mis-matched gear just to make 4/5 GoTEM work.

 

Allinone

Obviously we should still stack Spell Power, but if you are doing 90% or more of your healing with pure HoTs anyway crit has almost no place in your gearing. The same spells that wont be affected by the extra haste wont be affected by your extra crit. The benefit LS provides (while great) simply doesnt warrent targeting crit above haste. Haste will still be a better output stat

 

Arentios

The argument is that it well...doesn't matter. Resto druids have essentially reached a point where we're basically min-maxing on the head of a pin. The marginal value of haste/crit or talent points beyond the 'core' talents are low enough that they'll nearly never make a meaningful impact in reality. I'll actually take it further than Vazu: if you're primarily using instant casts, even soft capping out haste is meaningless. A simple 200 haste (assuming full raid buffs) gives you somewhere in the 1.04-1.05 GCD range. How many druids can honestly say they're managing to hit a button the split instant their GCD is up each time to take advantage of that extra 0.04-0.05 seconds?

Better is a relative term, and we've reached the point where the benefits gained from exact min-maxing of gear/spec do not outweigh spending that time improving playstyle.

 

• Arawethion

Moonkin keep making this argument too, but it's a bad one. If your reflexes/timing are such that you hit the next spell X seconds after the GCD ends, then haste is the difference between (1.00 + X) and (1.05 + X) effective cast time. It's just as valuable if X is greater than 0.05.

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

Vazu

No negative argueing this time, I promise.

I agree. All I'm implying is that at some point a resto Druid has to ask himself. Would my raid really benefit if I could cast Nourish .2-.3 seconds faster? How many times have I saved a tank in my raid when that little extra time made a big difference? Wait, why am I direct healing the tank at all? This again goes back to theory vs. reality. The reality is that while math supports haste as a throughput stat, you actually have to cast something with a casting time for that to apply. Spreadsheets are no substitute for experience. If I literally never help tank heal (and I don't with anything but HOTs), why does having crazy fast Nourish casts matter? I donno. I guess again it comes down to your raid and what your guild needs from you. I won't imply people are wrong for stacking haste. But I guess I just think that in the end, it doesn't make that big of a difference right now.

If I have to cast Nourish, it's almost always because a tank healer died or I'm healing someone with damage debuff like Napalm on Mim or Slag Pot on Ignis, etc etc. But literally not one single time have I ever thought "Damn.. if I only had more haste that Nourish would have prevented so-and-so from dying." Sadly I think some guilded healers help cover for medicore players by doing things like casting spells which don't benefit the raid. Nourish can't proc Revitalize, etc. Just from an efficiency standpoint, my role is to raid heal. Haste doesn't help me do that much better right now unless something goes wrong with one of our direct healers. When that situation does arise, we usually adjust our strategy, not have resto Druids stack haste to make up for poor play. I donno. I just don't buy that haste is this super amazing stat for us in practice.

 

Arentios

Obviously, but human reflexes do not scale with haste. Let's say I hit a button every 1.08 seconds, then all haste that takes the GCD beyond that is wasted.

If you're waiting for the GCD indicator to light up before button pressing, then it matters, but given standard human reaction times, if you're waiting to take in that information and process it, you're already losing quite a chunk of time.

Now, the reverse argument is that if I'm just hitting buttons in a rhythm, why not just get that rhythm down to 1.0 seconds. I'd love to do that, but getting timing that precise is very hard to do as a human, and hitting the button .04s early has a much greater negative effect than hitting it .04s late.

 

Toadfoot

I don't think anybody is saying that haste is some super amazing stat. once you are soft-capped. I think the point is that you have to take some stat. and haste seems like the best choice.

 

• Arawethion

Are you really just casting in a rhythm with no feedback when your haste value changes? I don't know how you cast instants, but I keep a very prominent GCD bar right next to my cast bar, and cast instants in roughly the same way that I cast other spells: watch the bar fill and time the next press with the end of it. I see no reason that I wouldn't get the full value of any incremental haste change.

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

Arentios

When the haste value of my gear changes noticably I relearn my rhythm, yes. My argument is that there's a point where the reaction time between the bar filling and the speed with which you can push your button is such that the marginal benefit of haste goes to 0, and that it's before you're haste capped.

Natural human reaction time says that waiting for the bar to fill, then reacting to that and pressing the button is an effective haste loss (I've never heard of a voluntary reaction occuring that fast anyway) and so you're better off hitting a rhythm; how tight you can tune that rhythm is impacted by haste, but are you telling me you can notice the difference between 1.00 seconds and 1.01 seconds, or even 1.02 seconds well enough to hit a button in that difference consistently? That would be incredibly impressive, but I know I cannot.

E: I think we're arguing pointless stuff over an offhand comment I made.

 

Mahalo

Couple of questions then (and I guess assumptions based on the conversation here)

1. All other things equal, at soft haste cap, assuming you are casting 90%+ HoTs (as I am), and assuming that SP is what we should be stacking in the first place, we should look to pick up spirit (since it translates to SP) then haste then crit? I'm pining for The Lifebinder but just picked up Rapture and am wondering, since I'm at or around the haste cap (and will be there once I get my Spellslinger's Slippers, I think) if the added spirit on Rapture is the way to go (previously I had the Plasma Foil MH and Ironmender OH).

2. At the moment my only GCD timing mechanism is the "countdown" spinner on my action buttons. Is there a preferred addon to be used? (probably better suited for the UI thread but figured I'd smush two posts into one - any tips appreciated)

 

Gristlehorn

1. If you are good on haste, Spirit is a fine stat. Not just for the spellpower, but rolling lifeblooms are still extremely effective, but the mana burden hurts.

2. Quartz has an option for a GCD cooldown. But in my experience, mashing the button is the only way to approximate the 1sec GCD in spite of lag.

 

Allinone

All things being equal, in a battle between haste/crit/and spirit, spirit does win out, especially if you are past the haste cap. As noted, not only will spirit be the only throughput stat out of the 3 that directly helps your HoTs, the extra mana regen isnt a bad thing either.

In very few places do we have a spirit/haste/crit decision that makes sense. Off the top of my head the cloak enchant is the only one that actually comes to mind. Doing a direct comparrison between the two isnt very fair. Haste vs Crit however are often see competing for the same item budget on gear, which is why spirit isnt a major player in this conversation. After raid buffs a point of spirit will give you just under .2 SP which is nice, but it will take nearly 5 points of spirit to give you 1 spell power.

That being said, for all the reasons meantioned...there are some benefits to stacking haste. Faster cast times, even on the occasional cast direct healing spell just make healing easier. Some times in a 10 man group you may have trouble finding the right raid buffs, or perhaps something has gone wrong, and your shaman, Ret paladin, or moonkin has died. In any of these scenarios stacking extra haste past 359 will now have benefit, but the extra crit will not.

I'm not a pessimist, but these things do happen. I'm not saying that we should gear around our Ret paladins standing in the fire, but raid deaths are a real scenario, one that could rob you of a haste buff.

 

Anaram

Let's not forget that not all spells you cast will be healing spells. In some fights (Yogg-Saron) a significant portion will be abolish poisons and decurses both of which are really only affected by haste. You'll probably also engage in doing some damage which (mana permitting) favors haste. On a similar note: you won't always be in range to that retribution paladin or moonkin for aura even when they aren't dead.

 

goodolarchie

Haste is good, always. Even after Nourish Clipping. I don't know about you, but I hate those moments when you need to move, you don't have SM or NS up to land an emergency heal, so you're forced to stop and get a quick regrowth or nourish off. It happens a lot, particularly on firefighter, yogg, and hodir. My regrowth sits just below 1.6s with all haste buffs. It's very, very seldom that during these times I'll have a nature's grace running, and I might be out of range of the totem, etc so I can only count on haste from gear. The same goes for other various casts and instants. Those seconds are crucial. Crit? Not really.

If you're actually using nourishes to heal the tank, having an extra 2-3% crit isn't even important.

 

Funkychicken

I think this post and others in the recent discussion on the value of the changes to Empowered Touch and the value of haste over the soft cap place undue value on maximizing HPS with not enough regard to the pivotal role of the healer, namely keeping the raid, and yourself, alive.

The theorycrafted HPS of nourish is clearly buffed by the change Empowered Touch, but I anticipate skipping that talent post 3.2 essentially because of how bad nourish is in comparison to other HoT's and the relative value of Improved Barkskin for mitigating AoE damage and reducing personal healing needed. The emprical value of nourish in a 25 man hardmode setting is nearly insignificant, accounting for an average of less than 5% of my healing, sometimes dipping into the sub 2% range. The total effective healing values of the four piece tier 8 bonus on rejuvination and often even of swiftmend eclipse the EHPS of Nourish.

That said, the on demand damage mitigation of barkskin is hugely useful in reducing healing load on yourself and other raid healers, and the increased damage reduction provided by 2/2 Improved Barkskin more than makes up for any potential HPS buff to nourish provided by the change to Empowered Touch in my opinion. On XT hard, Steelbreaker last, Freya x3, Firefighter, Hodir, Yogg, Algalon, and various other easier fights a well timed barkskin can be the difference between life and death, and although I do not have any mathematical values available, my gut tells me that the additional 10% mitigation, when you need it most, is more valuable than the buff to nourish through Empowered Touch.

This is the spec I have found to be the most successful for healing hardmodes in a 25 man setting, and barring additional patch notes I intend to use it going into 3.2:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

It focuses on all the necessary buffs to HoTs while skipping all the direct heal talents aside from Nature's Bounty. It also includes both 3/3 Revitalize and 2/2 Improved Barkskin. Keep in mind that at lower gear levels 5/5 GoTEM is mandatory, I would probably remove one point from Nature's Grace to pick that up. Also, bear in mind that for 10 man hardmodes the value of direct heals is increased and points in the new Empowered Touch and possibly Tranquil Spirit will be more beneficial in that setting.

 

Vazu

Yeah, that will be my build as well with a few minor changes. I'd like to comment on Nourish though and perhaps give you a different perspective.

Let's use Iron Council hard mode as an example.

You just started P3 with Steelbreaker being the only add left alive. Your tank is now getting hit for a TON of damage. I always leave at LEAST a Rejuvenation up on tanks. Primarily because (in addition to being Swiftmendable) if he/she dips below 50%, my glyph kicks in for another 1200-1300 healing. Your tank suddenly takes a huge hit and you want to throw a quick Nourish on them. What are the odds you're going to stand there and spam Nourish? If you aren't spamming it, why take Nature's Grace? You wouldn't get the full effect of that talent unless you are direct healing a ton. Isn't that something you want to avoid? So in terms of speccing for the "lesser of two evils" if all you do is raid heal, Empowered Touch I think will be better in 3.2. I want that single spot heal I throw on a tank to hit for 20% more. I care much less that if it crits suddenly my NEXT Nourish has a reduced casting time. I shouldn't have to spam it. That's why we have Priests and Paladins. I'm just "helping" them. So, if you won't be spamming Nourish, wouldn't you want your spot heals to be 20% more effective?

Again as I've said before, this decision depends on your raid. If you really DO need to use Nourish a lot, Nature's Grace is amazing. But if your WWS logs show Nourish at < 5%, Nature's Grace is really underwhelming.

 

ttyl

From mmo-champion:
Interesting... Mathematically, wouldn't t9 4P be only a bit more healing done, on average, then t8 4P? Napkin math: 6x 2000 RJ ticks w/ 20% chance to crit = 14400 healing done on average versus 6x 2000 RJ ticks + 1500 insta tick = 13500 healing done. 900 more uncontrollable healing? :\ At least Relic will be awesome for some fights.

 

Arentios

Your math is assuming that the set bonus heals are 100% crits, while all other heals in the game are 50% crits (excluding Prot Paladins). You'd be looking at 13200 expected healing in that case.

It's also a question of front loaded and controllable versus random chance, which spread out over 18 seconds is somewhat significant.

 

Toadfoot

Yeah these bonuses seem like they stink. I would much prefer the insta tick than the chance for crit I think. The 2 piece bonus seems like the really bad one. I use SM all the time and was pretty happy with that bonus, but the 5% crit bonus to Nourish?? Sure seems like they are trying like hell to get us to us Nourish. Maybe the new instance will give us a reason to do that.

 

Grizabella

I feel like the T8 4pc bonus is the kind of thing you shouldn't take away once you've let druids get addicted to it.

I'm hoping they'll make a glyph out of it or change the current RJ glyph. I mean, being able to say "my hots crit!" is cool and all, but being able to prioritize your RJ targets to the ones with at least a little less than 100% health is much more controlled.

We'll probably still be a little OP with the T9 bonus, so I doubt my wishes will come true, but I know I'll be clinging on to my 4pc for a while.

And yes, it does seem they are trying to validate the existence of Nourish more and more, but crit isn't the answer. They should just put a small HoT or speed increase on it. Of course then gHT would be obsolete.

 

• uliko

You have to factor in how many ticks you actually get from a rejuvenation cast to get an idea of how good/bad 4t9 is. Using Freya +3 as an example there were 202 rejuvenations cast and as expected 202 4t8 procs averaging ~20% overheal while there were only 502 ticks out of a possible 1320 leading to ~2,50 ticks/cast. Math assumes 3272sp and 18% crit at which point you'll have 2600 ticks and 2000 4t8 procs.

So given that a rejuvenation cast with 4t8 only ticks 2,50 times you could argue that 4t8 "steals" some of the tick healing, probably true, so I'll give 4t9 3 ticks to work with.

4t8 gives an extra 1600 healing/cast with overhealing factored in and rejuvenation itself gives 2,50*2600=6500 healing, a boost of 24,6%. Again, some might be "stolen" from the ticks but being instant and frontloaded outweighs that in my opinion.

4t9 is assumed to crit at 150% like all other healing spells. So we get an extra 1300 healing 18% of the time on ticks. Now on 3 ticks we'll get 3*0,18 procs or 0,54 procs/cast meaning 702 extra healing per cast or 6,4%.

Freya may not be a fair comparison due to the spikyness of damage so lets look at Council instead where it's more sustained.

207 casts and 907 ticks gives 4,40 ticks/cast. 4t8 overhealing has increased to 30%.

4t8 now gives 1400 healing/cast while the ticks itself gives 2600*4,40=11400 healing reducing the benefit down to 12,3%.

4t9 gets no extra ticks in this scenario since the damage is so frequent that it is unlikely that 4t8 instant heal takes away a significant portion. 18%*4,40=0,79 procs/cast for a total benefit of 1029 or 9%.

While this shows 4t9 as being pretty weak remember my sample size is extremely small, only two fights. It also disregards the stat gain from using t9 instead of t8 as well as the nature of the fights in the Coliseum. However 4t8 is always there and reliable while 4t9 is random and unless we start seeing spi/crit/haste pieces in t9 it will be hard to push crit to ~25% or higher.

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."

 

Jurik

I think an important component is whether crit ticks will proc Nature's Grace. With ~4-5 rejuvenations active and ticking, this could lead to uptimes of ~80% or more of the 20% spell haste buff.

 

Kreoss

Glyphed Healing Touch will never be obsolete because it's on of the best combos to level till 80 (healing that is...) till you get Nourish.

If you check all other classes 4Pieces bonus most of them increases Spell X Critical Strike by Z% Crit, so we can assume that at least part of them are placeholders.

The List of new glyphs (if there is going to be any) is yet to know, one can only hope that a T84P RJ bonus is coming to a Glyph, since the bonus changed quite a bit the way we use one of our core spells. They did it with Nourish, but then Nourish has been a bit "pushed" into us, rejuvenation had already a strong position on our spell arsenal before T8 came into play.

 

Omen

I'm not sure if GC is talking about the PvP set bonuses or T8 (I don't know anything about PvP), but if he's referring to the T8 bonuses then we probably won't see the RJ bonus turned into a glyph/talent any time soon.

With the new RJ Idol, I do hope that there is no ICD -- especially not 45s like most other items -- because that would make it incredibly weak compared to Harold's Rejuvenating Broach. On long fights with intense periodic damage, it would also be hard to justify trading up to 375mp5 from Idol of Awakening with the extra sp. However, for fights where mana is not an issue, I do like that we'll potentially have a new throughput idol.

Can someone calculate the probabilities of getting various amounts of crits per cast and the average bonus health per cast for 4T9? (I'm horrible at stats.) I'm interested in how 4T9 average compares to the 1900+ hits we're seeing from 4T8. It would be awesome if the crits procced LS, but I'm highly doubting it.

Edit: Stat deltas using Legs, Shoulders, Gloves, and Helm from 226 T8 to x iLevel T9 should anyone be interested.

T8-232: 20 Int | -2 Spi | 17 SP | -13 Cri | 24 Has
T8-245: 60 Int | 32 Spi | 79 SP | 4 Cri | 41 Has
T8-258: 104 Int | 74 Spi | 149 SP | 25 Cri | 62 Has
Sockets: 1 Red | -1 Blue
Socket Bonuses: -12 Spi | 14 SP

 

Rijndael

You don't need to do any of that. Here's what you do:

(a) Record a typical fight with any mod that differentiates healing done by Rejuv itself from healing done by the Rejuv tier 8 bonus (I use EHFS).

(b) Consider your critical strike percentage with raid buffs, and multiply Rejuv healing done by that number (discounting by the 150% value of crit). In other words, if you do 75% healing with Rejuv (without the tier 8 bonus), and you have 20% crit chance, you will do: 75% * (0.2 * 1.5 + 0.8 * 1) = 82.5%, for an increase of 7.5%. (This is an approximation because Rejuv crits will increase Rejuv overhealing so the real number would be a little smaller).

You can compare the number you got in (b) with the tier 8 bonus healing number and decide which is better for what fights. I think Rejuv needs to crit at 200% for the tier 9 bonus to be better than the tier 8 bonus. Perhaps if Living Seed affected Rejuv crits things would be ok.