Which Way is Progress? WOLK Resto Tier Set Progression

When I first took a look at the Resto Druid T9 set that is up on the PTR for 3.2, my first thought was to write a post saying,  “oh… lookie.  The set bonuses buff Rejuv and Nourish… what a shocker!!!”  I then planned to hold forth on how it appears that Blizzard is not ready to let up on pushing these two spells harder than any other in our arsenal.  I actually, in fact, started writing that post.  But as I was writing it, I found myself mulling over the WOLK tier sets as a whole and looking at the changes over time and thinking about what the evolution said about where Blizzard wanted the game to go for Resto Druids.  I found that to be a much more interesting puzzle to piece together, so I scrapped the original post and now, for your reading enjoyment, I present…. take 2.

Let’s start with a table I put together showing what each tier set has to offer.

And now… deep thoughts with Sylly.

Int and Spirit

As I look at the progression of Int and Spirit on these tier sets, two things stand out hugely to me.  First, in Tier 8 we were given 4 fewer points in Spirit than in Tier 7, while in Tier 9 we only gain 2 of those points back.  That’s right.  With a full T9.5 set we will have 2 fewer points in Spirit than we had in full T 7.5.  The other change that stands out to me, so much that I added a row to the table for Int to Spirit ratio, is that the ratio of Int to Spirit keeps rising.  Although it was long held that it was ideal to try to balance these two stats, Blizzard is going out of their way to stack Int over Spirit on our tier gear.  Why?

As Ulduar rolled out, theory crafters pointed out that with the Replenishment buffs being available in most every raid, Int became a stat that would rival Spirit for mana regeneration for us, making the 14% bump in Int on our T8 gear over our T7 look very welcome.  Now we are getting an additional 6% Int from T8 to T9.  Good? On the surface, sure.  But let’s not forget that in patch 3.2 replenishment will be taking a hit to the tune of 20% less mana returned.

Let’s do a little math.

1 point of intellect yields 15 points additional mana.  That means that the 386 Int of the T8.5 set gave druids 5790 mana.  With replenishment working as it currently does, it would return .25% max mana per second for 5 seconds, for a total returned from this gear by replenishment of  72.375.  The 412 Int of the T9.5 gear gives 6180 mana.  Under the new replenishment structure which returns 1% max mana over 5 seconds, the mana returned is… yea.  61.8.

Therefore, even with gear a full tier higher, druids will gain 2 points of spirit from the A stats.  Fat lotta good that should do us.  We will start each fight with 390 more mana because of the increase of Int on the T9 set, but with the new replenishment structure we will gain about 10 points of mana less from this gear per replenishment than was returned to us wearing our T8 gear pre 3.2.

Socket Bonuses

The mana regen hijinx do not stop there, though.  No, not at all.  On our T7.5 set if we made our socket bonuses then we had access to an additional 10 points of spirit and 2 Mp5.  T8.5 saw this change to an available 12 spirit.  T9.5?  None.  Nada.  Zip.  every socket bonus on the gear is devoted to spell power.  Don’t get me wrong.  Spell power is a great stat and I’m always happy to get some.  I’m just pointing out here another subtle change that shows Blizzard’s guns aimed at our mana regeneration. 

Gem Slots

There is a bit of compensation for this change in the available gem slots on T9 gear.  While 7.5 offered us 3 blue slots that could be gemmed for Spirit and 2 yellow slots that could be gemmed for Int, T8.5 took one of each of those slots away, offering 4 red slots instead which, for us, are all about the spell power.  T9.5 swaps one of those red slots for an additional blue, allowing us to add a bit more spirit to the gear.

B Stats

In T7.5 the haste to crit ratio on our tier set was a straight up 1:1 ratio.  In 8.5 this shifted to 1:1.4.  In T9.5 this goes up to 1:1.5.  This I see as something that is probably helpful to us in the long run.  Haste is not a number that we want to see stack indefinitely.  We have a softcap for haste at which point our global cooldown is reduced to its lowest possible point, one second.  We can continue to stack haste to reduce cast times on some of our spells, but at some point the usefulness of this stat becomes exhausted.  Therefore, it makes sense that as our gear improves overall, crit becomes more available to us than haste.  Crit gained was 28% from T7 to T8, with an additional 25% from T8 to T9.

We saw a 14% increase in spell power from T7 to T8 gear, with only a 4% increase from T8 to T9, but don’t forget the additional 14 points of spell power that will be available to us from the socket bonuses, bringing that percentage up to about 7%.

Set Bonuses

It is difficult at this point for me to wrap my noggin around all of the implications of the T9 set bonuses, in large part because there is no indication anywhere on the 4pc set bonus exactly what chance Rejuvenation will have to crit.  Obviously, much will be dependent upon this, and I look forward to seeing information soon from PTR testers and/or Blizzard giving a better idea of what this means.  However, it does not surprise me at all to see these two spells back in the tier bonus.  It seems as though Blizzard is the local school yard drug pusher when it comes to Nourish.  “Everybody’s using it!  It’ll make you feeeeeel goooood!”  Every iteration of resto druid since WOLK has pushed this spell.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love Nourish.  Use it all the time.  But it surprises me not at all to see it yet again in the T9 set bonus.  And I suspect that Rejuv shows up there on the 2pc. bonus as a sort of Methodone to wean druids down from the Heroin of the T8 4pc. bonus. 

TL:DR

Looking over the progression of the WOLK sets reveals that Blizzard is still just not pleased with druid mana regeneration and is looking for ways to put it in check outside of the nerfs made to spirit based regen and to spells like Lifebloom that have come before patch 3.2.  The T9 set has less Spirit than the T7.  The Int added to T9 won’t compensate for the mana lost in long fights from the nerf to Replenishment.  More mana regen has been shaved off in socket bonuses, gem slots, and b stats from T7 to T9.  The stats that are receiving some love are crit and spell power, always welcome stats so long as you have the mana to keep casting and the results are not eaten up as overhealing.  In all, I’d say that the step up from T8 to T9 is a smaller step for us than was T7 to T8.  I’ve been seeing around plenty of QQ about how OP we trees are.  Based on what I see in our T9 set, Blizzard is listening.

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