Kirbie44

Current changes, requests, etc. that I am working on can be found in the 2nd post of this page here Tree Healing Guide (IN PROGRESS)

If you haven't read the FAQ posts, please refer back to it here. Or more specifically where it says "Please note this post is not for general discussion about Restoration. It is being critiqued to become a Think Tank article. Please limit responses to the actual content of the first post, anything remotely derailing from the critique will receive an infraction."

I put this together a little while ago and posted it on my guild website. I pulled a lot of information off the Moonkin TTT article written by Arawethion, as I couldn't think of a better base outline. I have taken what a lot of people have commented on these forums, as well as other forums, and made a general outline of Tree Healing. I am looking to update this, get a better picture of what needs to be added, taken out, and get more facts and statistics based on math, rather than me just saying "this is bad".

The general Idea of how I play a Restoration Druid was said best a few months ago by one of my trial members:
With that, This thread is going to go over mechanics (or anything else that I (or we) feel that need to be added) of a general "Raid Blanketing" healing style.

Druid Abbreviations and Terminology that you will run into quite often:

In resto druid discussion, you hear a lot about 5x1 healing. What this simply means is the druid is going to cast 5 Rejuvenations, followed by a Wild Growth. Then repeat that, as they heal accross the raid (or in most of our cases, Grid). This style of healing is called blanketing, and it usually allows us to cover 3 groups at a time, with some very strong healing.


[Swiftmend] - SM
[Celestial Focus] - CF
[Living Seed] - LS
[Nature's Swiftness] - NS
[Healing Touch] - HT
[Nature's Grace] - NG
[Wild Growth] - WG
[Gift of the Earthmother] - GotEM
[Tree of Life] - ToL
[Empowered Touch] - ET
[Natural Perfection] - NP
[Lifebloom] - LB



Talent Points:
The core of the spec will include the following talents:

[Will be updating this section shortly]

18/0/53

This spec is focused on a full powered Rejuvenation/Wild Growth for a raid healing druid. It skips Living Seed and Empowered Touch, making Nourish a weaker spell, allowing room for Regrowth to be our "go to Flash Heal". Regrowth can benefit from CF, NG, and the full 10% of GotEM, and it doesn't need the 2 points in Empowered Touch, allowing us to keep Revitalize and pick up CF.

There also comes a point where you will no longer need Celestial Focus; aka, when you reach the soft haste cap (see below). Then it comes to choosing a talent spec with "extra" talents.
11/0/60. We basically eliminated the extra points in Balance we used to pick up CF. That gives us 7 points to use in the restoration tree. Talents to pick up quickly will be ET (for Nourish), and LS (for Nourish and Regrowth). 2/3 NP or 2/2 Improved Barkskin is your choice of where to spend the last 2 points. I personally choose 2/2 Imp. Barkskin for 10% extra damage reduction. Algalon Stars, Twins Vortex, as well as many other encounters this talent CAN become very useful. However, you may also never use it. Now when talking about the use of Regrowth over Nourish more often, I think at this point, putting our 7 points back in resto, mainly buffing Nourish, making it our go-to spell once again, if a HoT is present.

These talent choices are based on my play style and personal preference. A lot of druids do not pick up revitalize, as they feel giving this "minor" benefit to other healers and the DPS isn't a big deal, or isn't their job. This is one of the biggest debates/discussions around. Jula's post with a combat log is one good example of how Revitalize can help your raid.


The Glyphs:

[For a more detailed look into the glyphs, see the Glyph Discussion thread to determine what glyphs may be best for you. Link will be provided once the overhaul of our Resto threads is done.]

[Glyph of Nourish] - A strong buff to Nourish, used well with tank healing.
[Glyph of Lifebloom] - Useful for rolling on tanks while tank healing.
[Glyph of Wild Growth] - 20% increase to one of your primary spells.
[Glyph of Innervate] - 43.70 MP5 If used every 3 minutes.
[Glyph of Swiftmend] - A must have if you use this spell a couple time per fight.
[Glyph of Rebirth] - Not a bad choice for progression. It was nice for the Tank in IC Hardmode.
[Glyph of Regrowth] - An alternative to glyph of Nourish, can be used well for tank healing.
[Glyph of Healing Touch] - Used for a quick sub 1.0 second heal. See's very little use in standard raid healing builds.
[Glyph of Rejuvenation] - One of the better progression glyphs. Anub'Arak, and AoE Damage fights. It is most useful when learning and gearing up to an encounter.
[Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation] - New glyph added in 3.3. Great for non 25 man content, and still good if there is more than 1 Tree in the raid or it fits your personal healing style.

Rejuve, Wild Growth, and Swiftmend are my standard Glyphs. 3.3 allows us to weave in Rapid Rejuvenation, most replace the original Rejuvenation glyph. Personal Preference will take place, based on your role/healing style. Again, see the Glyph Guide for more information on these glyphs.



The Stats:
Your core healing stats consist of the following:

Intellect - Provides 0.00612% to crit per point, along with 15.3 mana per point. (0.006732% crit and 17.16 mana with Blessing of Kings). Raid buffed, each point of intellect provides 0.210 MP5 through replenishment alone.

Spirit - Provides 0.15 spellpower per point with Improved ToL. With Blessing of Kings, Living Spirit, and Improved Mark of the Wild, it provides 0.19+ spellpower.

Haste - 32.79 haste rating gives 1% spell haste. There is a threshold at which haste loses some value; this occurs when the GCD hits 1.0s. Below this cap, all of our spells feel the full value of haste. Above it, Nourish and instants no longer benefit from haste, but all other spells still benefit fully. Haste is a very valuable stat under the cap.

Critical - 45.9 critical strike rating gives 1% to crit.

The mana regeneration formula used:
ManaRegen(SPI, INT) = (0.001+SPI*0.003345*(INT^0.5))*5
This means that Spirit and Intellect both effect eachother. 1 point of Spirit does not have a static MP5, as its MP5 gain is based on how much Intellect you have, and same goes the other way.

My stat priority will almost always run in the following order:
W/O 4T9 set bonus = Haste to cap > Spellpower > Spirit > Intellect > Haste rating > Critical.
With 4T9 set bonus = Haste to cap > Spellpower > Critical > Spirit > Intellect > Haste.

For exact numerical comparisons, plug your setup into Tree Calcs

Spellpower & Coefficients

This portion was directly taken from Nofair's Restoration Itemization

Spellpower increases the healing of each spell differently. In the table below the number in the "no talents" columns are how they scale without any talents. The full talents column is the coefficient if you have Master Shapeshifter, Gift of Nature, Improved Rejuvenation, Empowered Touch, Empowered Rejuvenation, Genesis and Tree of Life active. After some testing Nofair concluded the following:

• Gift of Nature and Genesis stack. They increase HoTs by 15% (1.15 coefficient) instead of 10% and 5% seperately (1.155 coefficient). They also stack with improved Rejuvenation (making the coefficient for this spell 1.3).
• Empowered Rejuvenation affects both the final Lifebloom ticks as the initial Regrowth heal. Genesis does not affect these.
• Master Shapeshifter, Tree of Life aura and Gift of Nature with Genesis are all multiplicative. This means: healing * 1.15 (GoN + Genesis) * 1.06 (ToL aura) * 1.04 (Master Shapeshifter).
• Wild Growth's extra bonus healing is divided equally over the ticks, in contrast to the base healing which heals less each tick.

The numbers in brackets are the coefficients per tick (these are more important as Nature's Splendor uses these coefficients for each tick).



Haste Rating:

When people talk about a "haste cap" on spells, they mean reducing 1.5 second cast time spells, such as Nourish and instant casts, to a 1.0 second cast time spell. The following requirements are needed to obtain 1.0 second cast on Nourish and GCD's without the use of NG, but also factoring in GotEM:

With [Improved Moonkin Form]or[Swift Retribution] + [Wrath of Air Totem] (8%)
NO [Celestial Focus] [Lifebloom]: 449 haste rating. All other spells: 856
[Celestial Focus] [Lifebloom]: 339 haste rating. All other spells: 735

[Wrath of Air Totem] Alone (5%)
NO [Celestial Focus] [Lifebloom]: 563 haste rating. All other spells: 980
[Celestial Focus] [Lifebloom]: 449 haste rating. All other spells: 856

[Improved Moonkin Form]or[Swift Retribution] Alone (3%)
NO [Celestial Focus] [Lifebloom]: 638 haste rating. All other spells: 1063
[Celestial Focus] [Lifebloom]: 523 haste rating. All other spells: 936

With no haste buffs (0%)
NO [Celestial Focus] [Lifebloom]: 757 haste rating. All other spells: 1193
[Celestial Focus] [Lifebloom]: 638 haste rating. All other spells: 1063


Set Bonuses:
If you can't get an abundance of frost badges, get 4PC T9. It is easy to get with the new dungeon system.

Item - Druid T9 Restoration 2P Bonus = 5% crit to a spell that makes up for less than 10% of your healing with over a 50% chance to crit before this bonus.

Item - Druid T9 Restoration 4P Bonus (Rejuvenation) = Allows one of our HoT's and our primary healing spell to crit, rendering critical rating useful.

Item - Druid T10 Restoration 2P Bonus = Weaker than it reads. 30% less decay adds less than 5% healing to this spell. Use the tree calcs spread sheet to determine how much it will effect your WG.

Item - Druid T10 Restoration 4P Bonus (Rejuvenation) = Still has a lot of unknown effects and data. Best case scenario, it will be nearly a 15% increase to rejuvenation healing. This bonus has the ability to become very strong, or very weak.

It is not recommended by me that you break your 4PC T9 to pick up this 2PC T10. However, some do. Check in the Treecalcs spread sheet or Rawr for any HPS confirmations.


Gems:

I have always been a fan of socket bonuses. I have had the standard of running this setup:

Red: [Runed Cardinal Ruby]
Blue: [Purified Dreadstone]
Yellow: [Reckless Ametrine] - to haste cap [Luminous Ametrine] - after haste cap
Meta: [Insightful Earthsiege Diamond] - Ember Skyflare is an alternative, but should only be done with proper stat weight/gemming/trinketing. This is the last place you should drop regen.


Idols - Pretty simple really:
[Idol of Flaring Growth] - Easy to obtain with Triumph.
[Idol of the Black Willow] - 22 SP upgrade from Flaring Growth. Nothing better in the game.


Trinkets:

Things to look at in trinkets are usually a static spellpower gain, along with another effect such as MP5, or a proc/use of the sort. Most of your proc's on healing trinkets would be MP5 [Sif's Remembrance], or mana return of the sort. Outside of mana gain, trinket proc's that increase our spellpower and other stats are often not very well utilized when it comes to healing. Static gains of mana or just static trinkets, like [Illustration of the Dragon Soul] are generally what you would look for.

The worse proc for us is haste. Remember that even if you're under the soft cap, haste rating that's applied in a short burst (such as the[Embrace of the Spider] effect) will be mostly over the softcap. Don't make the mistake of averaging out the haste value from a trinket and then applying it all at a sub-softcap value. If you have control over the haste effect [Scale of Fates], you can mitigate this somewhat by activating the trinket only at the beginning of possible Regrowth spam, or hasted rejuvenation needs, and maybe a needed tranquility. In the end, haste proc trinkets are the worse trinkets we can find, as past the soft cap, they don't speed up any of our GCD's or 1.5 second spells.

Finally, the [Solace of the Defeated] both heroic and non equip is extremely strong. The two versions of it are the two best available trinkets before ICC, by a wide margin. Even then, if regen is slightly even needed, will most likely remain the best.


Consumables:

[Flask of the Frost Wyrm] will remain the best, unless HP is needed, then Stoneblood is good there.
[Potion of Wild Magic] are best for healing, especially with 4PC T9. If you have mana issues, [Runic Mana Potion] is clearly your choice.[Crazy Alchemist's Potion] is ideal of you are an alchemist.


Enchants:

Excluding profession bonuses.

* Head: 30 spellpower/20 crit (Kirin Tor revered)
* Shoulders: 24 spellpower/15 crit (Sons of Hodir exalted)
* Back - 23 haste
* Chest - 10 stats. 8 stats is cheaper option at a tiny stat loss.
* Wrists - 30 spellpower
* Gloves - 28 spellpower
* Leggings - 50 spellpower/20 spirit. 50 spellpower/30 stamina is another option if you want more HP.
* Boots - Run speed/15 stam.
* Weapon - 63 spellpower to a 1H, or 81 spellpower to a staff.

Note: If mana is an issue, or your missing 4PC T9, then the MP5 version of the Helm/Shoulder enchants can be a good alternative.


Professions:

Tailoring gives a strong HPS benefit. Lightweave Embroidery - Spell - World of Warcraft gives 295 spellpower for 15 seconds, 35% proc on spellcast, 60 second cooldown. It can proc off HoT ticks, making the average proc time around 2 seconds. 70 spellpower is a decent estimate of the average benefit, minus the 23 haste you'd normally have on your cloak, so the total benefit here is worth roughly 55 spellpower (A bit less if you're below the haste softcap, potentially slightly weaker than the other professions). Amusingly, the enchant also gives 1 Spirit for some reason. However, as a healer, and as a resto druid, it is harder to weigh the proc. Not a bad profession if you decide to pick it up.

Darkglow Embroidery - Spell - World of Warcraft offers you a gain of approximately 33 MP5

A minor bonus of Tailoring is that one [Eternium Thread], you can swap your leg enchant between 20 Spirit and 30 Stamina for encounters where extra HP can be beneficial.

Alchemy: With either [Flask of the North] or Mixology (with your [Flask of the Frost Wyrm]) will give you 47 spellpower.
Allowing: [Endless Mana Potion], [Crazy Alchemist's Potion], double-duration Flasks, and the ability to transmute a gem once a day.

Blacksmithing: An extra socket each in your wrists and gloves, each with a [Runed Cardinal Ruby], gives 46 spellpower. An alternative to this with and being under haste is socketing with [Reckless Ametrine] for a little more haste.

Enchanting: 23 spellpower to each ring gives 46 spellpower.

Inscription: 70 spellpower/15 crit to shoulders in place of the Sons of Hodir enchant gives 46 spellpower.

Jewelcrafting: 3 [Runed Dragon's Eye] in place of 3 [Runed Cardinal Ruby] gives 48 spellpower.

Leatherworking: 76 spellpower to bracers in place of the usual 30 spellpower gives 46 spellpower.

Engineering and Skinning are weaker, both giving less benefit than the 46 spellpower.

Engineering gives Hyperspeed Accelerators (340 haste for 12s every minute) and 27 spellpower to cloak. You are losing 23 static haste from your back piece to gain 27 spellpower. Like the trinkets, haste uses/proc's are not very appetizing. Rocketboots however, can be fun, and very useful in some encounters.

Skinning gives 40 crit rating.

Mining and Herbalism provide minor survivability benefits, but no HPS gain.


Gear selection:

End game caster gear have Intellect, Stamina, Spellpower, and 2 out of the following: crit rating, hit rating, haste rating, or Spirit. When determining the value of any piece, these are a few things to look for:

• Higher-ilvl gear is stronger. Spellpower increases very regularly with ilvl, so it is a predictable gain.
• More sockets are better (since they allow us to stack more spellpower, or haste when needed).
• Crit rating effects Regrowth, Swiftmend, Nourish, Healing Touch, and the bloom of Lifebloom, seeing less than 15% of our total healing on average. 4PC T9 allows it to effect Rejuvenation.
• Haste rating is very important, until you hit your soft haste cap.

Your tier pieces since T8 run 2x Spirit/Haste and 3x Spirit/Critical. With haste being so important to us now, I recommend to run 2xHaste and 2xCritical, bringing in that 5th piece from a non Tier item with haste. In T9 your legs and shoulders have haste, and T10 your Gloves and Legs have haste. In T9 or 10, running 4PC with the a Haste chest slot is your prime choice. However, any haste piece that replaces a Tier crit piece will do.

Useful Macros:

[Will be adding a little bit more. Addons & UI, Macros, and possibly tips on certain bosses, like Anub'Arak or Faction Champions]

Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity.

 

Kirbie44

[AS OF 01/07/2010 AT 10:47 AM]

• Currently re-writing the talent section to include a base/core build - then detailing the talents to choose. I will try to keep this as unbiased as I can, as I am a huge Revitalize advocate. 11/0/50 Taking out the point in Empowered Touch for your basic 50 restoration points. Elaborating on Natural Perfection, Living Seed, Revitalize, Empowered Touch, Nature's Grace, and Celestial Focus.

• Looked at the Idols, and it was too "opinionated" or whatever you would call it. Changed it... and most likely should add the Duck for mid fight mana swapping.

I am currently looking for some UI suggestions. I use Grid + GridStatusHots + GridRaidIcons. I can go in briefly on these, but no other mod I use is Restoration Druid specific. AKA Dominos/AGU/etc. I understand a balance and organized UI is important to healing, so it deserves a good look at. Thinking inside the box is a good article that I will link in this section for sure.

Also for useful macros. I have basic mouse overs. I can show how to make one, but are their other macro's that would prove useful? NS/HT obviously too. Shadowmeld+Flightform

And again, looking for maybe a parse from a druid with Trauma, on say Twins + 1 other fight like NRB. Prefer Heroic versions. Along the lines with the legendary and a parse where you are the only one with it. No big deal, as it is outdated and most likely not being sought out by many anymore.

Last note: Trauma discussion should stick to the other threads. As well as most others. Room for LS/Revitalize/talents etc will be reviewed in other threads now as well. I said I was changing the talents to try to make it less controversial. Try to keep replies from straying too far away from suggestions/errors/details about the guide. Nobody has gone far off at all, and again, I thank everyone for their time and suggestions, you are all doing a good job helping me so far, in this thread and in tells.

Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity.

 

Tebasile

Thanks for putting all the work in! Just a minor note:

Shoulder and Legs for T9, Hands and Legs for T10

 

Kirbie44

/facepalm

I also have to add living spirit (15%) into the stats, and how it affects spellpower there, as well as many other things. But your eye is a good start, thanks.

Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity.

 

Nihlo

yes thanks a lot ! it was about time to have some kind of tree-guide in here again.

My comments:

1.
you already mentioned some things. For Raidsupport, I personally choose 1 Point in the Thorns instead of Starlight Wrath, but that's not that important.

But I would recommend using 1 Point in Tranquil Spirit and just 2 in Subtlety, the aggro-times are over and most druids skilled it just for Algalon.

I also suggest to spend 2 Points in Empowered Touch and just 3 in Nature's Bounty, 20% more healing is better than 20% more crit (just try it in rawr).

Than imho (and I think lot's of druides think the same way) Living Seed > Revitalize. Living Seed is real healing (about 2-5% depends of your healing-style and situation) while Revitalize doesn't event count as a Replenishment.

So in the end it's something like this.


2.
Think most Druides used Wild Growth, Swiftmend and either Rejuv or Nourish as a third Glyphe (we had a lot of discussions here which should be the third one).
But now we are in 3.3, why should we talk about former times ? In my eyes the new Rapid Rejuv Glyph ends the discussion about the third Glyph. Wild Growth, Swiftmend and Rapid Reju should be the best Glyphes for most encounters (I switch from Rapid Reju to Reju for Anub 25 hero, but that's just one encounter which most Druids out there will never see).

3.
here we should link to Allinone's Lootranks and mention Rawr.

4.
I'm a fan of Socketbonues too and the gems you mentioned are perfectly all right. But we both should know that we should socket 23 SP, if the Socketbonuses is lower than about 7 SP^^

Imho we should discuss about Metas once more. We reach itemlevels in which 2% more int is far more than 21 int (32 buffed I think) and 25 SP could be more interesting than the regen (don't see any mana-probs until Hardmodes for icc arrive).

5.
Well, it provides a little bit more SP but the difference is little and you only got the advantage if you've got all stacks up (and don't tell me you always think about spamming reju before the fight to start with all stacks^^). Probably the Glyph is a little bit better and probably I gonna get it. But there are so much nicer things to get for your eblems right now (even if you don't want to wear a single piece of t10).

6.
good that you mentioned the old [Illustration of the Dragon Soul] (still hunting for it) and Solace is certainly one of the best trinkets (I use the hero one myself constantly) but does really anybody need two reggen trinkets ? I didn't take a second Solace, most of the fights I use a reggen trinket (Solace hero) and a Spellpower trinket ([Pandora's Plea] in my case since I don't have a [Illustration of the Dragon Soul]) and there a lot of interesting new trinkets like [Althor's Abacus].

7.
A copy from the Moonkins ? Think you really should use the SP/reg enchants and probably most Druids in PvE does.
And I really recommend using [Scroll of Enchant Boots - Greater Spirit] on the Feet instead of a little bit running Speed (interesting for Owls maybe but not for trees imho).

8.
Maybe we should really warn using t10 with the current set bonuses and little haste. At least if you're able to get t9,25 or even t9,5.


again thank's a lot! It could become a very nice TTT.


edit: links make posts nicer

 

intrepidos

enjoyed it, was interesting to find out rapid rejuv isn't really viable for 25 mans.

Elamalaka - 80 Druid // Mosey - 80 Paladin // Ladygag - 80 Priest // Spiros - 80 Hunter // Retomalaka - 80 DK

 

Kirbie44

Don't get off too fast on discarding this glyph. It has its shining moments. This is made based of my healing style, so it just doesn't work well for me. For someone else, it could be the best thing since Tree Form!

Nihlo, I'll go in order with you.

1. Thorns damage is only you. It is "your" thorns. If you put it on a tank, it doesn't increase that thorns damage. Also, I suggest Sublety. It helps on Algalon like you said, but also zero (or even 4) Yogg, Freya, and Anub especially. If your tanks are just amazing, then sure, drop it, but the little mana problems I have, and the little amount I use nourish, I find 2% mana reduction is lackluster. As far as ET over 10% crit, I am using Regrowth as my "spot" heal now, over Nourish. I wrote about this as well. But if I nourished more, then 2/2 ET would definitely be it. And Revitalize is a big deal. Not just for healer mana, but for physical DPS too, and some caster mana. There is a LOT of heated debate on this talent, and I would never go without it as a raid healer.

Not "shutting you down", your suggestions may fit you well. I just have a lot of time and thought, and my reasoning for each thing you pointed out.

2. I made this for my guild a little bit ago, and Nourish is a great glyph if you use nourish. I am talking about a mainly 5x1 healstyle, with the occasional SM or Nourish. SM>Nourish as well. And I also made this post pre-3.3 (on my guild forums). I will change the 3.3 comment.

3. I have never been a fan of Rawr, but that shouldn't stop me from putting it in there. If anyone has suggestions on how to implement it, I am all ears. As far as Restoration Itemization , I think I should implement it right in to a certain point. After we have access to all the gear, I can link his BiS list, or even come up with one. I do agree that checking with some sort of developer like chardev or treecalcs/rawr is a good way to help determine loot upgrades. But this portion is mostly for "Int gives you this, Spirit gives you this..." etc.

4. If you are looking for the most direct SP upgrade there is. Gaining 6 Spellpower over 10 spirit is shady in my view. The mana base regain. 10*1.2903=12.903 spirit from 1 "true spirit". 12.903*.15(ToL)= a little less than 2 SP. 4 Spellpower gain overall, losing 10 spirit in regen. Now, to some people it is worth it and makes sense, and to some it does not. I will add the math, and tell them they can decide, also using Treecalcs/Rawr for all confirmations. And on the topic of meta's, I went with IED as it is pretty standard. Math can choose 25SP+2%Int if you do not want the regen, and the druids that can do this and choose to do this properly don't need this guide at all . However, I do not use my own innervate, and often find myself having SOME mana problems on longer encounters. We also don't get the meta for the 21 or the 2% int, but more for the other effect. At this ilvl, we are likely getting about 25 intellect for 2%. It does have room for me to throw in math and equations, if necessary.

5. I am a little OCD with my character. When the ready check goes up b4 a pull, I have a "checklist" to say. I check GotW, Thorns on tanks, my flask and food buff, my Solace stacks as well as my trinket procs. I roll rejuves on tanks and depending no the fight, the raid before the pull. I usually use my endless mana potions seconds before the pull. Some may not do this, but that is me

However, to each their own with choosing what to buy. I think that this is the best purchase. I could upgrade my trinket, but I have a chance to get IDS, Solace, Abacus, etc.

6. I should elaborate more. I am not making this section to post BiS trinkets, but how to judge what may be good and may not be good. How to figure out average value of MP5 from trinkets, or possible the effect from the Abacus after I learn more about it. Which leads me to making a section for Val'anyr and Trauma.

7. I think the MP5 could be better if you don't have 4PC T9, personal stat wieghts and Rawr/Treecalcs can solve this for you. It is a guild policy to have runspeed of some form. You don't see the use much on ToC, or the early bosses of ICC, but running out of DnD and away from blood beasts, around Gunship battle faster, etc. are some great uses for it. I can use it as an alternative, but any fight where you HAVE to run somewhere, I believe getting out of the way faster is important.

8. I don't really understand what you are saying here. T9 232 is easy to get for anyone with the new heroic system.

Thanks for the feedback. I know I need to add quite a bit more detail on some subjects. This was a basic outline that I drew up, so more critique is definitely needed. Will be updating shortly.

Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity.

 

Diba

I'd say it's completely otherwise. Revitalize is way better than Living Seed, and most of druids seem to agree. After seeing logs where paladins, mages, warlocks have gained 4k-6k mana in a four minute fight, I'd say it's really good. And then you take in all the melee's energy, runic power and rage (?) gain.

 

• wukkar

The title says mechanics yet you list things like consumables and macros. If its not just mechanics and is going to be a catch-all guide, you must talk about UIs. In fact, given how vital a UI is for a healer, that would have to be half the post: setting up Grid's corner texts, DBM, Clique, etc. Or just link to Resto4Life� Blog Archive � Grid: Thinking within the Box(es) and Tree Bark Jacket: How-to Grid: HoT tracking.

To give you an idea, here is the priest guide WotLK Healing Compendium v3.3: Arthas' downfall!.

 

Kirbie44

I should add a section about UI, but I think elaborating too deeply isn't for this thread. My UI is very basic. I can/could get away with a simple Grid and it's addons, and DVE, or DBM for most of you. But I do agree that UI is important, and we have our own thread for deeper discussion of the matter. I think a Helpful Addon's section, with maybe some detail on Grid Text for HoT status's should be sufficient for this post.

Who knows, it may lead into some giant post in the end, which isn't what I am really looking for. I shall change the title to maybe "Tree Healing Guide".

Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity.

 

warhameur

Very nice job! Even if i'm not using the same spec. I think that a Add on section would be a great idea too as macro (hope to see a lot of mouseover)

Ps : You must have forgot 7 pts in your 11-0-60 spec it seems to be a 11-0-53

 

intrepidos

[Idol of the Black Willow] will probably be the last badge item i get. the ramp up time alone is very unattractive.

Elamalaka - 80 Druid // Mosey - 80 Paladin // Ladygag - 80 Priest // Spiros - 80 Hunter // Retomalaka - 80 DK

 

jula

In the section "The Stats:" you evaluate stats such as INT and SPI, but you do not include the mana regen portion of those stats - should be added.
I recommend you add how much mana regen each stat grants, with/without replenish, with/without talents which effect it, and at least mention the INT-SPI relationship.
Don't forget the extra mana gained from int can be translated to mp5 (that 17.16 mana gained you listed) by measuring its effect on replenish and by diving the mana gained by fight length.

 

Krag

Even though I don't plan on buying mine for a while (mostly because I have other bigger upgrades to get) I don't really see the ramp up time to be any kind of issue. There will be very few fights ever where you don't have any rejuv ticks in a 15 second period and you can easily get it stacked before any important encounters start.

 

Erdluf

Do you have a source for that? I haven't specced Brambles since the coefficient was nerfed back in May, but at that time Brambles was increasing the tank's thorn damage.

 

Deku

I also have tested this some time ago with a pvp spec I had and iirc it does effect everyone who you buff thorns on not just yourself.

 

• Arawethion

This (and other) talent debates are the main reason I hadn't written a guide yet. I think that our response to the 3.3 changes isn't totally clear (see my long posts about talents up in the Resto thread).

I have no problem with someone else trying to put up something else of their own, of course. But this post, which is largely based on my own previously written content puts me in a potentially weird place, where I feel pre-empted out of using my own content to write a guide soon because it will look largely the same as this one. You did credit me in the opening, but it's still a stretch to get your own thread going where more than half the post is a C&P from my posts on EJ and elsewhere (e.g. What’s up with 3.3 Resto druids? Changes explained | Restokin ).

I think the best solution, if you want to keep this thread going and have a class guide megathread of your own, is to add a substantial amount of your own content very soon. Otherwise I might ask you to leave the task of compiling a compendium of my posts to me (which I'd do sooner rather than later, despite above reservation, if people think it's really important to have a thread like this soon).

Read before asking questions:
Moonkin guide/spreadsheet, http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-d...dated_3_3_5_a/
Resto guide/spreadsheet, http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t88239-r...al_discussion/

 

Kirbie44

And this is the big thing I was worried about. But what you say in a lot of you posts and threads are worded better than what I could. I can change a lot of it, or even let you post yours, and make mine inactive/delete. People were just asking, and I figured I would throw this out there for now. A lot of changes will come in this thread shortly, as it was just put up. I'll send you a PM.

Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity.

 

• Arawethion

If you are just keeping a compendium of my posts until I (or you or anyone) actually write a full guide, that's fine. I don't want to make too big a deal about it, I just don't want it to remain in this state indefinitely.

Read before asking questions:
Moonkin guide/spreadsheet, http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-d...dated_3_3_5_a/
Resto guide/spreadsheet, http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t88239-r...al_discussion/

 

Kirbie44

This spec isn't about to buff Regrowth. It is about full powered Wild Growth/Rejuvenation. Leaving us with Nourish/Regrowth (same as pre 3.3) for direct heals. Nourish will still hit harder, but Regrowth leaves a long HoT buffer. The difference is, Haste (which we not have plenty of) has more benifit to Regrowth, especially past the soft cap.

Maybe I should change that wording quite a bit, because this is a Rejuve/WG build, not a Nourish or Regrowth or anything else build.

Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity.

 

• Titanstrider

I had started to compile a resto druid guide for the Think Tank just prior to 3.3 coming out, but honestly having seen the amount of effort Arawethion has put into the forums on the subject, I've not tried to reinvent that wheel until everything has settled as I would pretty much be copying and pasting much of his work which didn't feel right. It's reaching that point now where we know the effective mechanics of 3.3, and I think it would be fair to let Hamlet compile his work into a definitive guide, but it's great that you made an effort to get things going Kirbie.

Some of the beaten to death horses like revitalize versus LS shouldn't be brought up yet again here. Just because recount doesn't pad the druid's effective healing meter, revitalize is considered sub-par. It is in fact one of the best raids buffs in the game, as many parses posted in these forums have shown. Hamlet's aware of these issues, and I think would be best suited for explaining the common pros-cons of the options we have.

 

MegaVolt

I know about the Revitalize issue and I know of a lot of theorycrafting behind it (which I don't find really convincing since in the end only Rogues, feral Druids and to a limited extend DKs have an actual benefit from it, mana and rage users don't tend to care at all) but I am not aware of an analysis of combat parses that shows Revitalize to be a major raid dps contribution. Could you please point me in the right direction there?
Having such a link in a resto guide would also be very beneficial imo.

Generally I feel the most important part in a finished 3.3 tree guide will probably be the talent discussion. As Arawethion pointed out there still is much unclear and as I see it now there won't be any clear cookie cutter spec, no real "must have" build and a lot of room for personal preference. Having detailed information about all those optional talents (like Revitalize) and their impact on the raid is vital.

Oh and a minor thing: Isn't the haste cap with CF 735 instead of 736?

Another thing I'd improve is the badge section. The problem we face right now is that we won't upgrade from 4t9 until at least 4t10 (if it turns out to be good ... and if it doesn't turn out to be good enough then blizz will either buff it or nerf t9 jus like they did when we didn't want to upgrade from 4t8 to 4t9). Buying the emblem or a trinket or anything will delay your 4t10 purchase, there is just no way around it. There should be a line in there somewhere mentioning the very solid option to just sit on your emblems, collect trophies if possible and get the ilvl 264 4t10 instantly once enough emblems have been collected. That's what I'm planning to do at least, I don't want to delay the t10 purchase for a week or two just to get an insignificant idol upgrade that's irrelevant right now anyway since there are no challening hard modes available yet. Generally with the way content is released and the lack of any kind of challenging encounters (no hard modes) I think "sit back, relax and wait" is the best advice in terms of gear right now.

I don't think using a Rejuv/WG healing style and just replacing Nourish with RG for spot healing is really all that viable.
The problem is that RG will only be a good replacement for Nourish if the NG proc is active. Without NG it casts way too slow so that even an untalented Nourish would be better. So for RG to be a good replacement for Nourish we have to make sure NG is active most of the time - which means we have to use RG quite often. It has to become our new main spell or at least one of our main spells, cast about as often as Rejuv to get an acceptable NG uptime. This is fine since RG and Rejuv have quite similar base HPS (if you take Living Seed into account which can't be skipped for that reason).
If you just use RG occasionally you end up completely wasting those 3 points in NG. It will just never be up, never do anything. So in the end getting CF costs you 7 talent points without any other beneficial effects, sacrificing your awesome 1s spot heal in order to gain a weaker 1.4s spot heal with a small HoT on it and that uneasy tension between Revitalize and Living Seed.
If you start using RG a lot you gain a front loaded heal (which actually is pretty awesome and very useful in ICC for me so far) but lose out on Revitalize (RG doesn't proc it) and you get serious mana issues.

One thing to think about when chosing a RG centered build is that it will benefit from haste far over the cap, meaning that it would be possible to ignore 4t10 and take 3 off pieces with haste on them (and ofc the 2 haste set pieces). Disregarding the mana issues for a moment it might just be that the better RG scaling with haste past the gcd cap makes up for the loss of the Rejuv set bonus (e.g. if it happens to consume the initial Rejuv on the jump).

Without really going all out RG I don't thing that spell is a valid replacement for Nourish. 1s or 1.4s cast time is a huge difference and the harder hitting Nourish might just make the difference in spot healing. The CF build is a good one if you never ever cast any spell besides Rejuv and WG but let's be honest ... do you really do that? Do you never have to help out on the tank for a few seconds during guild progression or pick that dude up that was standing in the fire a bit too long? 7 talent points only to get 121 haste seems a bit much when we have to sacrifice so much versatility for it.
Having a RG centered healing style on the other hand doesn't really have to be that bad. Losing Revitalize hurts, mana is an issue but front loaded spells are easy to handle and usually quite efficient. It might turn out to be viable in full 264 gear (so that we can go past the gcd haste cap quite a bit and get enough spirit/int to be able to sustain RG).