Unique Snowflake: Saying No to Cookie Cutter Specs
So you may be familiar with the term “cookie cutter specs”. These specs are the ones that toons flock and gravitate and emulate their way into until they seem to be ubiquitous. There are now websites like Talentchic that help you to find the cookie cutter specs for your class and class role with the greatest of ease. I, however, am not a cookie. I am a special and unique snowflake, just ask my mom. =) Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing at all wrong with going cookie… under the right circumstances. But sometimes it is much better to break out of the pack, so long as you do it advisedly and for reasons that make sense for you, your healing style, and your raid composition. Sometimes you need to break the mold and be your own special self.
Here is the current cookie cutter spec for Restoration Druids. Isn’t it lovely? Doesn’t it just pull you in like a magnet? Ok, maybe not. We’ll see. Let’s take a look at the cookie cutter spec vs. my current Resto spec. Differences in the numbers are highlighted.
Restoration Talents
| Talent |
Cookie Cutter Spec |
Sylly’s Spec |
| Improved Mark of the Wild |
2 |
2 |
| Nature’s Focus |
3 |
3 |
| Subtlety |
3 |
2 |
| Natural Shapeshifter |
3 |
3 |
| Intensity |
3 |
3 |
| Omen of Clarity |
1 |
1 |
| Tranquil Spirit |
0 |
5 |
| Master Shapeshifter |
2 |
2 |
| Improved Rejuvenation |
3 |
3 |
| Nature’s Swiftness |
1 |
1 |
| Gift of Nature |
5 |
5 |
| Nature’s Bounty |
5 |
5 |
| Living Spirit |
3 |
3 |
| Swiftmend |
1 |
1 |
| Natural Perfection |
1 |
3 |
| Empowered Rejuvenation |
5 |
5 |
| Living Seed |
3 |
3 |
| Revitalize |
3 |
0 |
| Tree of Life |
1 |
1 |
| Improved Tree of Life |
3 |
3 |
| Gift of the Earth Mother |
5 |
5 |
| Wild Growth |
1 |
1 |
Balance Talents
| Genesis |
5 |
5 |
| Moonglow |
3 |
3 |
| Nature’s Majesty |
2 |
2 |
| Nature’s Grace |
3 |
0 |
| Nature’s Splendor |
1 |
1 |
Now, here are the reasons I made different choices.
Subtlety: I don’t pug anymore and it’s pretty rare that I run instances. When I’m in my Resto spec I am almost always raiding. I know my tanks very well, and I know that they are more than equipped to handle me having an additional 10% of threat from healing. I do not PVP, so the dispell mechanics are meaningless to me.
Tranquil Spirit: I put 5 points here, whereas the cookie cutter spec has none. My decision was largely based upon the different mana regen mechanics of patch 3.1 and my desire to conserve mana, in addition to my intentions (which I have followed through on) of significantly increasing my use of Nourish in 3.1. I am considering lessening my talents here if not eliminating them all at this point, however, for 3 reasons. Mana regen has not proven to be the problem that I feared it would be post patch. I just got a new weapon last night that is a significant upgrade for me and increased my mana pool and spell power, further decreasing mana regen concerns. Finally, I’m not a huge fan of talents that buff only one spell. Now, Tranquil Spirit buffs three spells, but I only use one of them with any frequency at all while raiding, Nourish. There are many, many raid nights that I don’t use Healing Touch or Tranquility at all. Therefore, this difference between my spec and the cookie cutter may melt away in the near future. However, when I made my spec, mana regen was a real concern for me, so this was a good decision at the time.
Natural Perfection: I like this talent. Druids are Crit-tastic. I get lots of crits. Their big green numbers flying up my screen make me happy. Period.
Revitalize: I passed this up for my own greedy mana regen needs when I built my spec. This is where talent points I take out of Tranquil Spirit will go if I decide to make the change. Actually, I’m pretty convinced I will. 3 points out of Tranquil Spirit transferred to Revitalize next respec. /nod
Nature’s Grace: Ok this one I seriously considered. The increased spell casting speed is a nice thing to have. But I am not certain that I would use it to good advantage. Watching for this proc and making decisions about casting for the next 3 seconds based upon whether it’s up or not seems just too cumbersome for me. I did read recently in Graylo’s blog that this talent also reduces the global cooldown, which makes it more attractive to me than it was when I originally specced (edit: I read about this in Dreambound. Got blogcrossed. Sorry Kae!). I may put a point or two here in the future, but I believe my haste currently has my GCD very near the 1 second limit as it is, so I wouldn’t stand to gain much in that respect with my current gear.
The point of this little tiptoe through my talent tree is to point out that my talent spec is certainly not the cookie cutter spec. In fact, according to Talentchic, my spec is the 11th most popular spec currently for Restoration Druids. However, I made intentional decisions at every step of the way to build the spec I have. I fully understood every talent, and made my own choices based upon my gear, my playstyle, my self knowledge, and my group compositions.
Talentchic and sites like it are great learning tools, and I recommend that anyone interested in improving their spec take a look there to see what choices the majority have made. If you don’t understand why many people are packing on a talent that you have dismissed, research the talent more. Talk to people who have chosen it to get some insight. Knowing what the cookie cutter spec is is also helpful if you do not know your current class role well, for example if you recently dual specced or decided to see if the grass was greener in another talent tree. Be open minded about your own spec and be willing to make changes as the contributing factors for choosing certain talents change. But I don’t ever think it’s a good idea to choose a cookie cutter spec just blindly assuming that the masses must have chosen it for all the right reasons for you. You will be a much better healer if you truly take the time to evaluate each and every talent in your tree and tailor your spec around your unique needs. Knowing what the cookie cutter spec is is a great place to start, but customize for yourself to make the most of the tools available to you.
There are 10 Comments to "Unique Snowflake: Saying No to Cookie Cutter Specs"
Speaking of cookie cutter specs, mine is almost identical to yours. hehehe…
I completely agree! Even though cookies are quite tasty…I’d rather not be just the same as the next one!
I have also been thinking about speccing into Nature’s Grace, but I am conflicted about 1) where I would pull the points from, and 2) if it would give me that much of a boost over my current spec.
My first few specs I skipped Subtlety, but I have moved back into it. Apparently I am a threat monster
It was actually so bad that one of our paladins made a macro – /target Beruthiel, /cast Hand of Protection. Single target bosses were usually never a problem, but I did find that I died much less on trash pulls, and on encounters where there are mobs that spawn out and need to be picked up once I went back into it. Our warriors still vigilance me on multi mob boss fights…while it DOES make me feel special, I’m not sure it’s in a good way 
I currently have 3/3 in Revitalize. I’ve been really looking at our WWS trying to determine how much Revitalize is actually contributing to our raids, and then making a decision on if these talent points would be better spent elsewhere. Once I have time, I intend to put up the numbers over on my blog =)
Like you, I also favor putting points into Natural Perfection. However, if I decide to give Nature’s Grace a whirl the two points I’ve got there will probably go.
Gah! So many options, so few talent points! =)
Beruthiel’s last blog post..My Secret Life as a Newbie…Hunter!
I agree.
While cookie-cutter specs are great for giving you a basis of where your talents should go (especially if you’re new to the class/spec – as may happen more often with dual specs), it is also important to actually go through yourself.
If you actually dedicate the time to reading through your talents, seeing what you personally are lacking, or don’t need, you’ll end up with a spec that suits your play style (e.g. rolling HoTs or nourish spamming, casual pugs or hardcore raids), and will truly be better off for it.
Just like anything else, if you invest time in your character, you -will- reap the benefits of your time and effort.
I love revitalize, and my guilds’ recent wws’s have backed it up. The kitties, DKs, rogues, bears, and warriors have had revitalize be their #1 or #2 source of power refreshment… it’s just not something you can really take for yourself and expect it to be as great as the other sources of mana.
RE: Nature’s Grace, I’m not a fan of procced haste for insta-casts just from experience trying to work with the egg of mortal essence. It’s hard to speed up your spell-casting on the fly, then readjust to the slower cooldown afterwards; you also have to keep a constant eye out for the proc itself. I just can’t ignore that the proc could be used that way (for sake of versatility), and there are definitely times when I’m wishing my GCD was just that tiny bit faster so I could pump out more heals. I do use NG procs just to speed up Nourish and Regrowth when the tank needs extra heals, so I personally use NG in my spec regardless of its effect on the GCD for HoTs, but it is still an interesting side-effect to consider.
Here here. I got a comment from a guy a few days ago (who apparently use to be the number 2 Discipline Priest on the server): You have a strange spec…very strange. I would have like to have told him to shove it, but that would be nice, and I knew he just didn’t understand. His emphasis on being Discipline lead me to think that he didn’t think there was a gray area between Holy and Discipline.
“You’re special…just like everyone else.”
Resto is my second spec, so I’m just learning this stuff.
My spec matches yours except for
+2 Imp Tranq
+3 Revitalize
-2 Tranquil Spirit
-3 Natural Perfection
I’m happy with it so far. Managed to get Emalon as resto (not yet as Moonkin).
Imp Tranq was nice when I got behind on consecutive bosses in H VH.
Wait does anything I wrote make sense? I think I need some ‘not’ and ‘no’ in there.
[...] over at Rolling Hots has a good post from a druid perspective on how the cookie cutter build is not always the best for [...]
Hey Love the spec
Nice to know there are other non-cookie cutters out there.
Makes you proud that ther are other true resto trees who have earned there leafs over the years and know there gear and cast styles well.
Nice blog
Thank you for the tree reminder:
I am resto have always been levelled that way and will always be a Healing Tree.
Duel spec is fun but Tree is Me.
It perplexes me when people stick their noses up at “cookie cutter specs”. I, myself, do not use a cookie cutter spec, but I understand that one of the primary reasons for their existence is because many people have theory-crafted the maximized spec for whatever role you’re attempting to fill. So when a lot of people attempt to make themselves a special little snow flake, often times they end up hurting their ability to maximize their usefulness to their raid.
Luckily, we Druids have a little more flexibility than most in what we can spec and how, but a lot of classes don’t. Even so, I don’t have Revitalize because I think it’s a waste of three talent points. I’ve gone over the WWS logs from our 25-man Ulduar runs and I am just entirely unimpressed and disappointed. The return for three talent points is just not worth it in my eyes when I can get Nature’s Grace instead.
Depending on the role you fill as a healing Druid (be it tank healer or raid healer), I find it useful. Yes, it was nerfed. Yes, it only lasts three seconds. In three seconds, I can cast three Nourish spells if I need to.. And on some of these fights, I need to. Hard-mode Hodir comes to mind, when we only have three healers and I’m the only one dedicated solely to the tank. It can get rough.
But, I’m happy with my spec. It allows me to do everything and offers me both flexibility and versatility as a resto druid.