The Restoration Itemization Thread for 3.3 - Page 19

Mjoedgaard · 03/09/10, 6:21 PM

Agree with Arythorn, even for a 10 man raiders point of view RR just put to much stress on keeping a perfect 5x1 rotation without room to do anything else. Without RR, I can rejuv all 10 man, regrowth both tanks, WG, nourish, Swiftmend and rejuv wont fall off anyone. I even have time to LB the tanks if thats needed.

OnyxShadow · 03/09/10, 10:18 PM

Rapid Rejuv for my money is always worth it in 10-man. Some trees think people will blow up if rejuv falls off or if they don't keep a flawless 5x1 rotation. I do a fair bit of tank/spot healing so I don't keep rejuv perfectly on the whole raid. However, even if you average having it on only 8-9 people, that's still fine. Those 1-2 people that don't have it at this precise moment will have it in a moment. And I've found that especially in 10-man heroics dumping as much healing on the raid as you can is what works best (at least for me).

Rapid rejuv is good for the first wing of ICC-25, Rotface, Blood Princes, and Valithria just because hot coverage isn't imperative and focus on targets that are getting hammered is.

BlueWire · 03/11/10, 4:48 PM

I'm curious about what the other healers, especially the AoE healers (druid, holy priest, shammy) think about the proc off of [Trauma]. In particular, when in the course of gear progression does the proc outweigh the loss of stats?

Here is one thoughtful analysis 2010 March 08 | Restoration Druid ... han-stats/

EJ consensus that I've been able to glean from these forums is that Trauma (with druid resto 4T10 free rejuv procs - see [Lasherweave Robes]) can = 10% effective healing.

But, it costs a huge amount of stats to go from MH/OH (ie. [Frozen Bonespike]/[Shadow Silk Spindle]) or a Staff ([Mag'hari Chieftain's Staff]/[Dying Light]) to [Trauma]. Plus, the BiS 264 pieces ([Leather of Stitched Scourge Parts] [Shoulders of Frost-Tipped Thorns]) are so good that it doesn't make sense to goto 4T10(251) [feel free to argue that assumption thought]. You'd need at least 2 of those pieces at 264 to be worthwhile.

So ... when does Trauma become worthwhile, if at all?
1) now (without 2T10 and BiS264)
2) later (with 4T10 264)
3) never

• Hamlet · 03/11/10, 5:10 PM

We've talked about Trauma a good deal on this thread and it's prior incarnation. Long story short, since the recent buff, I don't see why you'd ever take it off. There are edge cases where you might have like 264 Trauma and a 284 Arthas weapon or something, but other than that, it's pretty solidly BIS.

Saurfang is the stock example of a fight where there's no actual raid healing, so 4T9 is good, RR is good, etc., and I guess Trauma isn't very useful there. But, unless you happen to have another weapon with higher spellpower, I doubt it's worth worrying about. And at other fights, basically, use it.

Drunal · 03/12/10, 2:22 AM

I basicly agree with Arawethion, but I like to add my thoughts about replacing Trauma for specific fights.

I'm currently carrying two equip sets with me:
- T9 (245) with [Mag'hari Chieftain's Staff]:

That is for fights, where focused healing is more important than raid-dmg. Saufang, Valithria and (to some degree) Gunship are possible examples. I'm using the staff, because raiddmg is not an issue and getting all that haste, allows me to swap in quite a bit of moonkin equip, containing crit. This way I'm able to push my crit by 5-10% (I don't have accurate numbers in my head).

- T10 (251 mainly) with [Trauma]:

Because of the missing T9 bonus, crit does not add much to my throughput, so I prefer taking the haste from somewhere else, and let the proc do some work. As already stated, the proc is really nice in raid-wide damage situations.

Withoutrival · 03/12/10, 4:53 AM

Originally Posted by OnyxShadow

Some trees think people will blow up if rejuv falls off or if they don't keep a flawless 5x1 rotation.

I agree completely. I just don't see the widespread usage of 4T10, to be brutally honest. I can definitely see at least 2 maybe 3 fights where it would be fantastic; those being Blood Queen, Sindragosa, and maybe Lich King. Other than that, are there really other times where most of the raid is taking such a significant amount of damage that careful timing and correct placement of 4T9'd rejuvs would be insufficient?

Take Heroic Marrowgar for example. Bone Storm is on a timer, tanks are taking heavy damage and the raid will be taking damage soon. I think that ~16 rejuvs that could crit and save someone's life are better suited to the situation if timed correctly.

Now about the smart jumping of the 4T10 rejuv- if it jumps to the person with the lowest health by percentage, that person still won't be healed for another 3 seconds and has probably already been taken care of (in theory, humor me). For fights like Blood Queen and Sindragosa where regardless of who that person is they're going to continue to take damage, it's probably going to have its full efficiency (again, in theory). However, on fights like Marrowgar, the damage is predictable and based on the positions of your raiders you can judge relatively who is going to take the heavier damage.

On paper and in numbers, the T10 looks amazing but in practice it loses its appeal on non-aura fights.

Originally Posted by ttyl

2.3% effective healing vs 194 sp & 316 mp5

It does seem very hard to effectively model the difference between the two. However, the numbers aren't everything but you did leave Moonkin Aura/Elemental Oath out of the equation, which is infinitely more useful to a T9 user than to a T10 user.

Ogbar · 03/12/10, 9:35 AM

I'm still not understanding the t10 is not good discussion that keeps cropping back up. Here's a list of the ICC fightst:

Marrogar: Mostly likley to jump to - Recently bonespeared or stood in cold flame target... Is having a hot on that person useful, yes.
Death whisper: Most likely to jump to - Some one that ate a frost bolt, stood in DnD, or ate a cleave or damage reflect. Is having a hot on that person useful, yes.
Gunship - who cares.
Saurfang - Most likely to jump to - Some one that got blood nova or blood boil. Is having a hot on that person useful, yes.
Festergut - Most likely to jump to - the lowest health from aura, someone with gas. Useful, yes.
Rotface - Most likely - some one infected or with a slime chasing them, or that ate slime spray. Useful, yes.
Putricide - Most likely - slime targets, recently hurt by slime, to dumb to avoid gas or goo. Useful, yes.
Princes - Most likely - Anyone after empowered vortex, the flame sphere target, some one with glittering sparks. Useful, yes.
Blood queen - Most likely - Anyone without a rejuv, a swarming shadows target, a recently bit target, a linked player, a just blood novad player. Useful yes.
Valithria - Most likely target - A tank. Useful, yes. (Admittedly I don't personally believe the bonus is worth it on this fight)
Sindragosa - Most likely target - a melee with a high stacked debuff, a caster that just ate a large unstable stack, those with the highest buffet stacks.
Lich King - I can't speak to this fight.

If your argument is always "a direct heal will hit them first so rejuvenation doesn't matter" I don't think your argument holds water. Even on non-aura fights Rejuv is a druid's top healing spell so it must be useful right? On all the fights listed above would you or wouldn't you place a rejuv on the target I mentioned? If the answer is you would then the tier bonus is good.

On another note, I use a naturalist spec and a raw haste set with [Nevermelting Ice Crystal] for dreamwalker. My healing touch is a 1.7 cast and ~1.35 with NG proceed. During bloodlust it hits about 1.05s with NG proced, and with the trinket activated I can generally maintain NG for the the duration of BL. I've played with alternating nourish and HT outside of bloodlust and keeping rejuv up. However I find that simply chain spamming HT and keeping rejuv up works better. From the math I should get more from alternating HT and nourish, but straight HT spam appears to work better for me, best guess being because I can better take advantage of spell queuing and am thus am less impacted by latency. If folks are interested in this I'll record my exact unbuffed stats in my haste set (currently work posting).

Here are some logs of me and that approach:
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

ttyl · 03/12/10, 10:10 AM

Originally Posted by Withoutrival

Other than that, are there really other times where most of the raid is taking such a significant amount of damage that careful timing and correct placement of 4T9'd rejuvs would be insufficient?

Take Heroic Marrowgar for example. Bone Storm is on a timer, tanks are taking heavy damage and the raid will be taking damage soon. I think that ~16 rejuvs that could crit and save someone's life are better suited to the situation if timed correctly.

In heroic: Festergut and Phase 3 Putricide have high, consistent aura damage.

4t9 vs 4t10 is just another focus vs spread question. You say t9 "could crit to save someone". Well, using RR "could tick earlier enough to save someone". In all of the 25man ICC encounters, it makes no sense to be in between focus and spread, which is what t9 without RR is. If t9 + RR fits your guild's raid healing strategy or the damage profile (only Saurfang/Dreamwalker) better, use it. A 4t9 oriented gear set is not significantly more raw healing.

However, with that said, I think 4t9/RR has muddied our raid healing role. In 25man, we are damage cushions. Besides the occasional Swiftmend/NS, we do not directly "save lives". That does not mean we're extraneous, but I feel like people that are continually pushing 4t9/RR on all encounters are not comfortable with a Resto Druid's general/current role.

Also, you're right about t9 valuing 5% crit aura more, but the comparison you quoted does include it.

Jurik · 03/12/10, 10:46 AM

Originally Posted by Ogbar

On another note, I use a naturalist spec and a raw haste set with [Nevermelting Ice Crystal] for dreamwalker. My healing touch is a 1.7 cast and ~1.35 with NG proceed. During bloodlust it hits about 1.05s with NG proced, and with the trinket activated I can generally maintain NG for the the duration of BL. I've played with alternating nourish and HT outside of bloodlust and keeping rejuv up. However I find that simply chain spamming HT and keeping rejuv up works better. From the math I should get more from alternating HT and nourish, but straight HT spam appears to work better for me, best guess being because I can better take advantage of spell queuing and am thus am less impacted by latency. If folks are interested in this I'll record my exact unbuffed stats in my haste set (currently work posting).

Here are some logs of me and that approach:
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

While this is obviously a valid strategy which gives good results, I'm unconvinced that it is a downright superior approach. Your logs show 10.5-11.7k ehps if we select only pre-heroism data. That's about the same numbers I get pre-heroism, and I'll be the first to admit that I'm pretty bad at running a rotation on the dragon and generally conservative on popping orbs in the dream phase. (I'd rather put up reasonable, but not fantastic numbers and one shot the fight regardless, rather than be "that guy who wiped the raid" because I screwed up stacking the buff in search of personal glory.)

It does, however, fix the huge issue with using druids for dragon healing: using a typical hot-and-nourish approach, we simply don't scale with heroism/bloodlust at all, as Nourish clips like crazy. From those logs, the performance gain is very noticeable during heroism: you're seeing 30k+ ehps compared to my ~18-19k. Overall you are about 1k ehps higher, despite having very similar ehps for the first 4.5 minutes of the fight.

I'm currently a fan of letting druids handle the raid healing on this fight due to the heroism scaling thing, and because it's hard to argue with 100k ehps during heroism

Rijndael · 03/14/10, 12:13 AM

Originally Posted by Jurik

It does, however, fix the huge issue with using druids for dragon healing: using a typical hot-and-nourish approach, we simply don't scale with heroism/bloodlust at all, as Nourish clips like crazy.

So don't use Nourish! Running full hots makes sense from the HPET perspective, but then just substitute Healing Touch for Nourish with this spec, for example, during Heroism.

I do agree that druids make excellent stay-outside healers due to their efficiency and ability to cover both tanks and raid while moving around dodging hazards. The only problem is they can't cure diseases on tanks.

pragmata · 03/14/10, 9:43 PM

I'd have to agree with Jurik's point as well I've found nourish to be much better for dreamwalker, here's our parse a couple weeks ago

World of Logs

we did not have a shaman to lust on that kill (he dc'd from memory), was also using 2T9. Due to limited amount of time spent outside to heal dreamwalker I find it crucial to get natures grace up as often as possible even if we get serious clipping issues with nourish, it's better than getting a string of unlucky casts with HT.

zang1983 · 03/15/10, 1:18 AM

I see a lot of T9 vs T10 discussion here, but how would solid 264 spirit/haste gear compare to getting either of the 4-set bonuses? Basically, I'm boomer main spec, and only healing every now and then, so wondering if I should stick to my T9 (features one 258, three 245), or go for the 264 off-set items. I might add that with the 264-gear I'm like 200 haste over the haste cap, but I can re-gem some pieces and equip some crit gear to dump some of the haste. Looking at the bonuses comparison, maybe there's some indication of how much they might be worth in spellpower, for comparison.

Ogbar · 03/16/10, 8:40 AM

Originally Posted by pragmata

I'd have to agree with Jurik's point as well I've found nourish to be much better for dreamwalker, here's our parse a couple weeks ago

World of Logs

we did not have a shaman to lust on that kill (he dc'd from memory), was also using 2T9. Due to limited amount of time spent outside to heal dreamwalker I find it crucial to get natures grace up as often as possible even if we get serious clipping issues with nourish, it's better than getting a string of unlucky casts with HT.

Could you elaborate? I do not see how natures grace matters in a strict nourish rotation.

And Rjind is correct regardless of your overall tactic/spec when bloodlust hits you should use HT. I believe the top druids on this forums have brought that up a few times.

pragmata · 03/16/10, 9:41 PM

Sorry if i was unclear, i meant only regarding the discussion surrounding HT vs nourish spam outside of bloodlust. I don't see HT being a viable option especially due to longer cast time given you only have 20seconds or so between every portal the chances of chaining HT with NG up is 5% lower than nourish given 2T9 bonus, in addition to the cast time deficit.

Daisil · 03/21/10, 1:22 PM

Outside of Bloodlust HT really isn't viable simply due to the longer duration. During bloodlust? HT is the way to go.

Now assuming you have pallies/shaman healers in the raid, a druid should be the last one going into portals anyways as we simply do not accel at the direct heals like that. We can pull decent numbers, but won't get quite as good HPS as a pally or shaman healer in the portals.