Tree Mail: Gear for mid-level restos

It’s time for tree mail! Woot woot! Tree mail is the section of the blog here that I devote to answering reader questions. I got an email from Mirubea today posing what I think is a great question about gear stats for mid-level druids:

I’ve recently begun leveling my druid again who had been sitting sadly at level 31 with a botched Balance/Feral spec from when I had her on the WoW trial.
Now…I’ve gone resto (duel specced at 40 Resto/Feral) and I’m simply loving healing. Unfortunately, I’ve never rolled a healer before so I’ve got some questions concerning mana regen and spellpower; especially with the choice of pre-outlands gear.

As a leveling druid (Heading into Outlands), how important is spellpower? I’ve found that when the whole group is taking damage (AoEs mostly) I go OOM pretty quickly, so I thought I needed to stack more intellect and spirit, that’s helped a bit, but my spellpower is now suffering because of that.

What’ confused me the most, however, is the pre-outlands gear which used to be pre-raid for pre TBC. I mean the crafted and the drops from BRD/LBRS etc. I’m seeing a heck of a lot of spirit but little to no Spellpower on a lot of the leather gear that drops and I’m confused as to what I should ideally be stacking and in what priority.

I have some ideas about how to answer this question, but my greatest depth of knowledge is really focused on where I am at in the game, which is level 80 raiding. I’m hoping that if anyone has some insight to add to this discussion, they will do so the comments on this post to help out the up and coming druids.

True Confessions

Here’s the honest, if embarrassing truth, Mirubea. I am not sure at what level I discovered that the best gear for me wasn’t the gear that had the most armor on it (survivability ftw! /facepalm), but it was far later in the game than I care to admit now. I am quite certain that at level 40 I did not have the wherewithall to make the best gear choices. I know that I had done some investigation into WOW outside of the game at that point, but am pretty certain that it was limited to Thottbotting quests and finding out what spells I was going to get when I dinged the next even level. Oh… and MOUNTS! I remember being way psyched about getting a mount at lvl. 40 (back in the day!).

The reason I tell this story now is just to point out that, although I had no clue what I was doing, I still came out ok. I was specced haphazardly into whatever I thought looked cool in the resto tree, slapped on whatever passed for an upgrade in my uninitiated, split second evaluation of gear drops, and made it up as I went along, but I came out ok. The point is that, especially now when xp comes twice as fast as it used to at level 40, you will grow out of your gear faster than you might imagine. There’s not too much need to overthink it. I certainly did not, and I was a passable healer despite all my woeful noobishness.

That public service announcement aside, let’s dig a bit more into the question.

Hard levels are hard

I think that many players would agree with me that levels 40-50 are just plain tough. They’re tough levels on every toon I’ve leveled and the Druid was no exception. It could be because, as you point out, the stats on the gear out there aren’t exactly optimal. It might be an issue with the available content at those levels (I thought I might bleed out the eyes if I had to look at Stranglethorn Vale much longer). Maybe it’s just the mid leveling doldrums… 40 down, 40 to go. Perhaps it has something to do with the abilities that are available at these levels. Probably it’s a combination of factors. But these levels are tough, regardless. At least they prove to be so for me.

Let’s take an example. At level 40 you say that you are struggling to maintain mana when there was AOE damage going on for your party. At level 40, the healing spells you have at your disposal are Healing Touch (a mana sponge spell), Regrowth (also takes a lot of mana, particularly if you are casting on multiple targets), Rejuvenation, and Tranquility. (You also have a couple of utility spells to speed up your heals, Swiftmend and Nature’s Swiftness, and can cure poison and curses). Tranquility is at this level the only group heal you can rely on in the case of heavy damage, but has a long cooldown and is a mana hog if I ever saw one. So… your group is taking AOE damange, health bars are plummeting. You cast Tranquility and that’s it for group heals for the encounter because of the long cooldown. Your choices are now restricted to a big, mana heavy direct heal; a big, mana heavy, frontloaded HoT, and a slow ticking HoT that doesn’t begin its effect for 3 seconds. If you have Regrowth and Rejuv up on your tank, every time the tank takes spike damage your only options are to Swiftmend, consuming a HoT and necessitating that you recast it ASAP to mitigate damage, or to cast one of those big mana heavy heals. So, although from your email it looks like Blizz is throwing AOE damage at you quite a bit at level 40, they certainly don’t seem to have loaded up your healing toolbox to handle that damage with a great deal of mana efficiency.

The point here is that if you are struggling for mana, it may be an issue with game design at that level, and not with you or your gear choices. If your heals aren’t packing a whallop, it may have very little to do with you. I think that we often forget that Blizzard balances around toons that are at level cap, largely letting the chips fall where they may at lower levels. Sure, if there’s a huge problem and outcry, they will revisit the lower levels and older content with a critical eye. But 5 years out, the great majority of their player base is level capped on one or more toons, and that is the crowd with whom their greatest concern lies. They don’t forget very often who pays the rent for them. The good news here is, again, they’ve made adjustments to let you blaze through the old content at a really fast clip, so just as you will quickly leave gear behind, so will you leave behind content and, quite possibly, imbalances in your toon’s abilities.

So answer the question, already!

Putting aside the above, let’s now look at the question about what stats are good for mid-level resto druids. I may be wrong, and hope readers will point out if I am, but everything I’ve read about druids has always seemed to back up the idea that good stats are good stats. They remain consistent from beginning to end game. Of course, at level 40 you won’t need to worry about some of the b-level stats that show up on end game gear like crit and haste so much. But I would give the same advice to you as I would to a level 80 druid. First and foremost, make sure that you have mana. If you run out of mana, it doesn’t make a bit of difference if you have the potential to cast ridiculously huge heals because of your impressive spell power stat. An OOM resto druid can only help an encounter by punching away at mobs until the blue bar creeps up into the realm of useful. You can increase your mana pool by adding Int to your gear, and increase your mana regen rate by adding spirit. Spirit is the most important stat for you to have in place at your level. Everything else follows.

Once your mana is in place and reliable you can start to think about spell power. Think of it as icing on the cake. Certainly, you want some when you can get it, and the more the merrier at any level. If you are not seeing it show up on the gear at your level, here are some things you can consider doing to improve the magnitude of your heals.

1) Enchant – hit up your enchanter friends for a one handed weapon spell power enchant if you can find one. If you cannot find an enchant for spell power, specifically, it is possible that you might have some gear drop that would force you to give up some spirit or int to gain spell power. If you are not fully enchanted, remember that you can add mana to your chest, Int to a 2H weapon, spirit to boots, and so forth with enchants to even out whatever regen stat you might lose by gaining spell power with the new gear.

2) consumables – right at level 40 you have access mostly to food that will buff your Spirit and Stamina. However, spell power food is right around the corner. At level 45 you will gain access to Juicy Bear Burgers, which bump up your spell power by 14. You do have access at level 4o to Arcane Elixir, which provides 20 spell power. At level 47 you can increase spell power gained to 35 with Greater Arcane Elixir.

3) buffs – make sure to keep Mark of the Wild on yourself at all times to improve your performance. Also ask for appropriate buffs from your party members.

4) glyphs – evaluate your healing style and the heals that you use most frequently, then make sure that you have glyphs in place to maximize their power and/or efficiency. The glyphs that are available to a level 40 resto druid are Healing Touch, Regrowth, Rejuvenation, and Swiftmend.

5) spell choices – another way to maximize your efficiency, allowing you greater room to stack spell power (if and when you can find it) over mana regen is to closely examine the mechanics of the spells that are available to you and work to make your healing style as tight and efficient as possible. Don’t cast a Regrowth when a Rejuvenation will do. Don’t try to keep an aggro monkey DPS on his feet at the expense of having enough mana to see the tank and yourself through to the end of the fight. Look over reports from Recount or a similar addon at the end of an instance and try to educate yourself as to where you might be wasting mana or not delivering enough power in your heals.

Finally, don’t worry. You already have your eye on Outland. Once you get there, gear level is a whole new ball game. There is a huge leap between the gear at level 58 from old Azeroth and the bright shinies that await you once you cross through the Dark Portal. You will certainly see there, if not before, gear coming to you with mana regen AND spell power in sensible quantities to get you through the Burning Crusade content.

Thanks very much for the question, and best of luck!

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.

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