Tree Mail: I need to stack what???
It’s time for tree mail! Woot woot! Tree mail is the section of the blog here that I devote to answering reader questions. My question today comes from kc, who asks:
I’m having trouble finding information regarding the best spell stats for resto
druids. Should I focus first on sp, crit, sprit, haste, mana regen? Which order
and how much do you recommend?
First, you should remember that the way you stack stats is very dependent upon what playstyle you engage in. The answer would be different for a PVP druid and a PVE druid, a druid who mainly runs heroics vs. a druid who is raiding or one who intends to push the bleeding edge of content. However, since my own focus on my blog is mainly toward raiding
restoration druids, I’ll answer the question here with that focus in mind.
Spirit, although it has taken some hits in terms of mana regeneration out of combat recently, and is no longer a determinant in the power of our Innervate spell since patch 3.1, is still very important for restoration druids to stack. Spirit is our largest source of mana regeneration, and provides more actual mp5 for us than mp5 does relative to their budget costs on gear. It is arguably our most important stat, and certainly is the most important “A” level stat on our gear.
While Spirit improves your mana regeneration, Intellect makes your mana pool larger, and stacking it can be viewed as another means to remain viable and healing throughout the course of an encounter. However, it is not preferable to stack Int over Spirit. It is not better to have a large mana pool that only refills with lackluster pace over a smaller mana pool with a constant refreshing stream of mana.
Spellpower is the next most important stat for druids to stack after mana regeneration considerations are under control. If you are having trouble maintaining mana for the game content you are pursuing, by all means do more to stack mana regeneration stats. I would recommend spirit, intellect, and mp5 in that order (mp5 as a last resort if a piece of gear is a clear upgrade. I would never recommend gemming or enchanting for mp5 unless there are simply no other viable regen options for that slot). However, once mana is rolling plentifully for you, the next best stat for you to consider is Spellpower, as this stat gives us the best throughput of all remaining stats. The more spellpower we stack, the stronger our heals become and the higher our heals per second.
Haste is an important stat for resto druids up to a point. 359 haste on your gear will reduce your global cooldowns on your main HoT spells to one second, the lowest that they can go (down from the “out of the box” GCD of 1.5 seconds). This is commonly referred to as the “soft cap” for haste for us. Going above that soft cap in haste is a choice that some druids make, as it will still lower the cast time of our three direct healing spells, Nourish, Healing Touch, and Regrowth. Therefore, some druids with very high gear levels will make the choice to continue stacking haste past the softcap in order to begin to take talent points out of Gift of the Earth Mother so that they can spend them in other ways and strengthen their healing in other areas. According to a post on Elitist Jerks I just reviewed, one point in Gift of the Earth Mother can be sacrificed for every extra 182 points of haste over the soft cap to yield the same results.
However, if you are just gearing up in raids and not making choices as to how to gem out your full best in slot gear, you may want to focus your choices more upon making sure your mana regen is up to par for the content you are running and that you have enough spell power that your heals pack the whallop you need them to before worrying about stacking haste over the soft cap in my opinion.
Crit also has some impact for restoration druids and can be valuable to stack, but only after other considerations such as mana regeneration, spell power, and meeting the haste soft cap (or the goal over soft cap that you have set for yourself if you are looking to free up talent points currently invested in Gift of the Earth Mother). Nourish, Healing Touch, the initial heal of Regrowth, and the bloom of Lifebloom all have potential to crit for us. The value of stacking crit is largely dependent upon your reliance upon these spells and their weight in your spell rotation. I personally enjoy stacking crit and seeing my spells crit. I have talented into Living Seed to take full advantage of crits when I am healing, and have taken all talents which contribute to crits. However, we do not all heal the same. If these spells are not heavy in your rotation, it makes no sense to stack crit. Among the stats that benefit us, crit arguably has one of the lowest throughputs, although this is, again, dependent upon your healing style.
Discussion on the topic of the best stats for restos to stack and the level to which they stack them is never fully hashed out even amongst the best of the best theory crafters. In large part this is because we druids have so many choices as to how to heal, what to heal, and what spells we will use to heal in any given situation. I think it makes great sense in large part to set individual goals for yourself and stack your stats accordingly. Want to breeze through Naxx with mana to spare? Look to stacking your spirit to regenerate mana and Int to grow your mana pool. Want your heals to pack a whallop when you are looking after the tank? Think about stacking up spell power. Stack haste if you are wanting to increase the number of heals you can get out on your raid in a short period of time. Once you have a clear picture of where it is you want your healing to go, your choices about what stats to stack should become much clearer for you, leaving you ready to go after the gear you need to enhance the healer that you already are.
If you are interested in having a question answered in Tree Mail, please contact me using the contact form here on the blog. Please indicate if you would (or would not!) like to have your email featured on the blog. I’ll be happy to respond either way.
There are 11 Comments to "Tree Mail: I need to stack what???"
Just as an addendum on haste: 359 is the cap with a Shaman dropping Wrath of Air totem AND either a moonkin or paladin providing a haste aura. While this is often true in heroic raids, 10-man raids and heroics very commonly won’t have both of these haste buffs for you.
Depending on what you’re doing, it is still useful to raise haste over the fully-buffed softcap. With just an Aura but no Wrath of Air totem, the HoT haste cap is 541. With just a totem but no Aura, the haste cap is 468. I recommend using as few crit-budget pieces as possible, opting for haste-budget pieces whenever feasible.
Jurik, another great point. My assumptions were based upon a heroic raid with the requisite buffs, but that calculation does not always hold up in every raid composition. Thanks for the added information!
After the mana regen nerf, and since regen depends on both spirit and int now, something odd has happened.
Say I’m fighting a six and a half minute fight, and spend about 10% of it outside the Five Second Rule, raid-buffed and in my current SPI-stacked gear.
Then one INT point gives me mana at the start plus extra mana regen during the fight and actually yields me *more* mana for that fight than a SPI point(!)
So I think it’s no longer safe to say that SPI beats INT, it depends on the length of the fight and your current amounts of SPI and INT.
excellent point, Shynda. Thanks for adding to the conversation here!
Really nice post as an introduction to newer druids for stats! We know there is so much behind “very dependent upon what playstyle you engage in” that you can’t go into all of it in one post. I really like how you started with mana regen stats until you are good on mana regen instead of the overly simplistic “stack spellpower” answer.
Also, good to have you back! Sorry to hear your first raid healing assigning was Naxx. That place moves at a breakneck speed. I actually have found it easier to assign on harder content because the trash moves slower.
Aertimus’s last blog post..Need Input: Assumed Some Numbers for Mana Regen Calculations – Did I Pick Good Numbers?
I’ve always treated spellpower as the druid’s first priority. Its the thing that effects HoTs the most and has a very direct impact on how much you can heal which is also part of efficiency.
In general, if you grab the healing items from heroics (with spellpower and spirit, cloth or leather) your regen will be good enough for you to progress. Especially if you can count on using your Innervate on yourself.
I usually go something like SP > SPI > Haste and I almost always gem for spellpower regardless of the bonus unless the bonus is really, really good.
The one thing that I’m finding in Ulduar is that haste is pretty useful. There are some fights where I just need to get off a bunch of heals in a short amount of time (XT-002 for example).
Great overview for saplings. Perhaps it is the way I read it however, I just want to clarify that while LB can and does crit, it cannot proc a Living Seed (I disagree with the devs decision about it but unfortunately it’s not my decision to make) whereas RG, HT, and Nourish all can give us Living Seeds.
I certainly feel a difference in my off-spec Boomkin gear where I have had to focus more on hit than SP or haste. I miss my healing 1s GCD haste when I’m dpsing, not to mention the haste as how it would effect starfire. /sigh Ah well, when I want that feeling I just get back in the driver’s seat of healing. =)
good point about Living Seed, Beltain! Thanks for adding that to the conversation. I definitely can relate to your feelings over your dps gear stats. I feel your pain there…
This is an excellent post for those new Tree Druids. It’s laid out in simplistic yet helpful terms, props to you for writing it.
The only thing I see that is incorrect is the assumption that Spirit > Int in terms of mana regen. This largely varies when you consider both how much Spirit you have in comparison to Int and, most importantly, your enviroment.
Due to Replenishment, Int stacking yields more actual mana than any other stat because Replenishment is percentage based. A Resto Druid with 15K Mana will gain FAR less than a Resto Druid with 20K mana from Replenishment. That is, of course, assuming a high Replenishment uptime and not making much use of the 5SR.
Viiryen, that’s a really interesting point and actually brings up a mechanic with which I was totally unfamiliar. I didn’t realize that this is how replenishment works. Thanks so much for pointing it out to me. I see a new post coming soon in which I educate myself on replenishment! lol! Thanks so much!
Stats, stats, stats…
Want an advice?
Go for straight +spell power, ignore others stats as much as you can and go for +sp…
The logic is simple, the more sp you have, more your HoTs will tick and the less you got cast! OMG!
Saving mana? Saving haste (because you don’t need to low your GCD)? Saving crit (HoTs don’t need to crit, if they do… AWESOME!)? Saving mana per 5?
Well besides that go for spirit, they help you get spell power AND mana regen… But don’t forget the spell power should be your main goal…
Please correct me if I am wrong