Since the news came out about the changes to Gift of the Earthmother in patch 3.3, which will put a much higher premium on haste for us and blow our current haste soft cap right out of the water, I’ve been on the hop trying to pick up haste where ever I could find it.  I always rode the soft cap as closely as possible before, so I was starting out with just 342 haste when I learned I was going to need to more than double that amount to have the same 1 second cast times for spells like Rejuv.  My haste is now at 593, a big improvement, but I’ve got a ways to go.  A lot of the changes I made were in gemming, favoring Reckless Ametrine over pure spell power gems in many cases.  However, I’ve also been on the hunt for many specific loot drops that offer haste.  Since I doubt I’m alone in working over time to improve my haste stats, I decided to make a sort of best in slot list for druids looking to maximize haste for 3.3.  This is not a complete list of resto gear with haste.  I have tried to focus on the highest level gear available that will improve your haste rating.  Enjoy!

Neck

Freya’s Choker of Warding - This is the neck that I’m currently sporting.  It has 39 haste on it and can be picked up from Flame Leviathan in Ulduar, so it’s a pretty easily obtainable drop.
Charm of Meticulous Timing – Drops from Hard Mode XT-002 in Ulduar with 40 haste on it.  The mp5 on this necklace is not ideal for us, but blue socket with a +5 spell power bonus is nice.
Cry of the Val’kyr – Drops from the twin Val’kyrs in TOC 25.  Has 43 haste on it.  The version from heroic 25 TOC also has a yellow socket, which is great for a reckless ametrine, but wow armory shows no socket bonus on this.  Wowhead on the other hand, shows a +5 spell power bonus.  Can that be right?

Head

Helm of Abundant Growth – You can buy this helm from the Emblem of Triumph Quartermaster for 75 Emblems of Triumph.  You’ll get 74 Haste for your trouble, plus a yellow socket for a reckless ametrine if you want to add 10 more haste.
Stormrage Crown – I just picked this up recently from Onyxia 25 man.  Aside from the fact that I get to look like a moose (and that is just hawt! =P), I get 84 haste and a yellow socket on this bad boy.  Sweet!

Shoulders

Malfurion/Runetotem’s Spaulders of Triumph are your best bet here.  The regular 25 man version will give you 67 haste, whereas if you are leet enough to grab some from heroic 25, you’ll have 76 haste on your shoulders.  Either way, if you’re working on your haste and still want to hold onto the T9 4 piece set bonus, your shoulders won’t be the slot to skip.  The 10 man version, the Spaulders of Conquest, will yield 60 haste.

Back

Bolvar’s Devotion/Lady Liadrin’s Conviction – If you’re among the best of the best, you can pick up one of these cloaks with 57 haste on them from a tribute chest for completing heroic 25 TOC with 50 attempts remaining.  So… yea.  lol.  Moving right along.
Shawl of the Refreshing Winds – A regular version of this drops from Icehowl in 25 TOC with 50 haste, while a beefed up version drops from him in Heroic 25 TOC giving only 49 haste but adding a yellow socket bonus, perfect for a gem with haste on it.
Shawl of the Devout Crusader - drops from the tribute chest in 10 man hard mode TOC with 49 haste.

Chest

The most haste you can currently get is on the Robes/Vestments of the Shattered Fellowship, which drops from the Faction Champions in 25 TOC.  74 haste is on this item, but you’ll have to weigh that against losing the 4 pc t9 set bonus.  I felt it was a better option to give up the head slot for Stormrage Crown and keep the other 4 tier pieces, as the Stormrage Crown gives me 10 more haste than this chest would, plus a yellow socket.  Seemed like the more solid choice to me.  The herioc version gives 3 more haste and a yellow socket, making it a tougher call.

Wrists

Best in slot here is going to be the Bracers/Bindings of the Autumn Willow.  These drop from Lord Jaraxxus in TOC 25.  The regular version has 50 haste on it, while the heroic drop gives 57.

Weapon

One Handed Weapon

Misery/Suffering’s End – Drops off Anub in 25 TOC.  The regular version will bring you 58 haste, while 66 haste comes with the heroic version.
If you’re up for hard modes ending in tribute chests, you can find Heartsmasher/Heartcrusher in the tribute chest for heroic 10 man TOC.

Two Handed Weapon

Cold Convergence – Dropping from Anub’arak in 10 TOC, the regular staff has 116 haste and a yellow socket.  The Heroic version haste is 128 and maintains the yellow socket found on the regular version.

Enlightenment – Drops from the Twin Val’kyrs in 20 man TOC.   On regular, this staff has 108 haste, a yellow socket, and a +6 haste socket bonus.  The heroic version has 2 yellow sockets, a +8 haste socket bonus, and 117 haste!  

Off Hand

There are currently no Off Hand items in the highest loot tiers that have haste bonuses on them.

Rings

Ring/Circle of the Darkmender – This is the best in slot ring for a resto druid looking to maximize haste, no doubt about it.  Dropping from Lord Jaraxxus, the regular version has 50 haste on it, while the heroic iteration has 49 haste plus a yellow socket.
Band of the Invoker- also has 50 haste to offer, and can be purchased from the Emblem of Triumph Quartermaster for 35 emblems.

Feet

Blizzard has not seen fit to put haste on foot slot items.  Sorry, Charlie.  =)

Legs

Runetotem’s/Malfurion’s Leggings of Triumph – Once again, your 25 TOC tier pants are going to be your best bet for getting haste on your legs, with one exception below.  The regular version adds 82 haste, whereas heroic britches will give you 94 haste.
Legwraps of the Awakening are an alternative, dropping from Anub in 25 TOC with 90 haste on the regular version and 94 plus a yellow socket on the heroic pants.  As always, however, you’ll have to weigh the benefit of the extra haste against breaking up your set bonus.

Waist

Belt/Cord of Pale Thorns – Drops from the Twin Val’kyrs on 25 TOC.  There’s 59 haste plus a yellow socket on the regular version, and 60 haste plus a yellow socket on the heroic belt (with an added red socket).

Hands

No haste on TOC level resto gloves.  Boomkins get haste.  We get crit.  /sad face.

So there’s the list!  What are you waiting for?  Hurry up!  Go get some!  =P

Treebeard says no way, Jose!

One of the important decisions Resto Druids are going to have to make when patch 3.2 goes live is whether or not to re-talent to pick up Empowered Touch.  Currently, Empowered Touch (mouseover to see current talent description) is pretty universally a throw away talent, other than for the minority group of druids who choose to buff up Healing Touch to the teeth and chain cast it, as talents that buff only one spell for us pretty much fail.  The 3.2 version of Empowered Touch (mouseover to see 3.2 talent description), however, throws in a nice 20% boost to Nourish, making it a much more viable choice for us.  I, for one, am going to start the patch by picking up this talent and see where it gets me.

Here’s my current Resto spec.  And here is the spec I think I’ll go with when 3.2 hits.  In order to pick up the 2 points in Empowered Touch I gave up one point in Nature’s Grace (I’ve gotten a good bump in spell haste in recent drops that should help compensate), and one point in Natural Perfection (one percent drop in Critical Strike chance is also easily compensated for by gear choices).

The reason I am leaning in this direction is because, in looking over my WWS reports for my recent raiding, Nourish is consistently hovering at around 20% of my heals.  That number remains fairly constant regardless of shifting healing assignments, and maintains that level even though I’ve currently lost the T7 4pc set bonus to Nourish and haven’t yet picked up the T8 2pc set bonus to Nourish.  Blizzard has buffed this spell to the point that it has become a very solid tool in my healing arsenal.  Giving it an additional 20% buff regardless of number of HoTs, critical strike chance, etc. almost seems a no-brainer for me at this point.

In addition, while I currently use Healing Touch… pretty much never because of the other options in my arsenal (the exception being a Nature’s Swiftness + Healing Touch when the tank needs insta heals), adding 40% healing to this spell will certainly bump up the NS+HT in my priority of spells (usually I’ll hit a swiftmend if I need a quick healing bump), and will actually make me also consider using Healing Touch without Nature’s Swiftness on occassion, as an additional 40% healing might make that long cast time seem a more worthwhile investment.

As always, I plan to keep a close eye on my stats and healing reports when the patch goes live to determine whether this shift in talents is worth the talent points I will sacrifice.  But for now, I’m cautiously optimistic about picking up this new talent that up until now was an auto-skip when building a talent spec for me.

edit: I didn’t expect the link from wow.com today and all the attention this post is getting.  Thanks to the folks at wow.com for linking here.  I appreciate the comments people have made and would like to add the following to the post:

1) Yes, Nature’s Grace is a great talent.  Yes, many prefer it over Natural Perfection.  I’m currently playing around with the balance between these two talents and working out which is most beneficial to my own playstyle and healing assignments.  Natural Perfection has more points at the moment.  To those who disagree with this choice, my decision to place points in Natural Perfection for the time being doesn’t mean I’m ignorant.  I am simply exploring the virtue of higher crit over haste.  I may come to the same conclusion that you have.  I am not suggesting that people take my spec and that it is the perfect spec.  I just put it out there to show where I am and where I’m thinking of going for the patch.

2)  I didn’t mention it in the post, but have explained in later comments that my current assignments are largely tank heals.  If and when this changes, I will make decisions accordingly and my spec will change in response.  If I were not asked to heal my tanks with some frequency, I might think better of adding Empowered Touch.  I might still change my mind about it after taking it for a test drive on the PTR.  Or I might like it and keep it in.

Ever see Monty Python’s Life of Brian?  Remember when all the people are coming to Brian (a Jesus figure) with their afflictions and one says “I am afflicted by a bald patch, Oh Lord!”  Well, dear readers, I am afflicted by a bald patch this morning.  Self inflicted.  I’ve been pulling out my hair.  I’ve gotten some nice upgrades from Ulduar 25  in the past couple of weeks (woot!) including a new T8 helm and some nice new gloves.  I sat down and tried to figure out if it was worth it to give up my T7.5 4pc bonus to equip them both or not.  I mean, I tried really hard.  I had all kinds of calculations going about Nourish and co-efficients and number of HoTs and percentage of Nourish use in last night’s raid.  Of course, I came to nothing because a) I’m not tremendously good at math, b) there were too many variables for me to have any hope of tracking, and c) it’s time to take my daughter to swimming lessons.

And then I thought about writing a post about how healers need crash test dummies like the practice targets DPS get to bang away at.  I really thought about this.  If you see what’s coming, don’t give up on me.  Just love me for the flawed but special little snowflake that I am.

Because, of course, I could have just done some testing on myself with both gear options.  Just cast Nourish and other heals on myself 8 billion times and find averages in each gear set and make a choice.

I could still do that.  I might.  Or I might just go with the new gear because a) the other option still involves math, b) I’ve exhausted and exasperated myself past all healthy levels, and c) the T8 helm is the first helm since T4 that I’ve had that I’ve actually wanted to show instead of hide on my toon.

But I still can’t get over how much work I put into an insolvable equation only to arrive at a conclusion that made me feel like SUCH an idiot.  /facepalm

Maybe I needed some coffee before trying to figure this out.  That was then.  This is now.  Now I need a drink.

It’s time for tree mail! Woot woot! Tree Mail is the section of the blog here that I devote to answering reader questions.  Today’s question has to do with keeping up mana and comes from Naomi, a druid who is new to healing and who has just hit level 70.

Yesterday once I hit Northrend I started healing an instance here or there, ya know Nexus and UK.  Man….

The combination of me not really knowing the best, most mana efficient way to keep my group up combined with the tanks, being in level 70 greens was tough.  Being that I don’t have nourish yet, what’s your advice for me to be sucessful in 5 mans?  I found myself needing to drink after every single pull, and the boss fights (specifically the lady that splits into 3 adds in Nexus) to be really really challenging for me.  I’ll tell you what I was doing, that may help:

I was rolling lifebloom on the tank, along with rejuv and keeping regrowth up (he was taking alot of damage lol) and then occasionally even had to use HT, even when NS was down >.>   AND…of course the group was taking lots of damgage, so for them I’d use Wild Growth and lifeblooms and rejuvs here and there.

Naomi, thanks so much for the question!  Since I don’t have access to your armory to look at everything you’ve got going on, I’m going to give out some general advice here and hopefully a combination of some suggestions I make will help you out.

1)  Spells

Ok, first let’s take a look at the spells you say you were using to heal the instances.  First, you say you were rolling Lifeblooms on the tank.  This used to be standard practice for Restos in every situation, and still provides a nice way to keep a steady stream of healing on your tank.  However, patch 3.1 made this a much more expensive spell to cast in terms of mana usage, while increasing the heal the spell does when blooming.  In addition, allowing the spell to bloom also gives mana back!  This doesn’t mean that you should let it bloom every time before stacking it up again, nor does it mean that you should stick with rolling it.  What it does mean is that, as you level up, practice watching this spell as it gets closer to the bloom and make a decision about what you want to have happen next.  If the tank is low enough on health that a biggish heal would not be wasted, let the spell bloom.  You’ll get a nice topper on the tank and be refunded some of the mana you spent to build up the Lifebloom stack in the first place.  If the tank is topped up as the Lifebloom winds down, it might be a better choice to cast again, rolling the HoT.

You were right to keep Rejuv and Regrowth on the tank as buffers, although it is always preferrable to wait for the tank’s health to drop a bit to refresh the Regrowth on the tank if you can, so that the large front loaded direct heal portion of the spell does not go to waste.

I would probably wait for the tank to go down to about 75% health, cast Regrowth, then add a Rejuvenate.  If he is taking steady damage that those two HoTs are not covering, I’d add Lifebloom, stacking as needed.  Decide whether or not to let it bloom.  The bloom is great for handling timely damage, but you have to watch this carefully and decide.  Handle spike damage with Swiftmend whenever it is up.  You can also refresh Regrowth to cover a spike if that spell is nearing completion.  NS +HT is another option. 

Your choices for raid heals are good ones.  Rejuv is probably our most mana efficient spell at the moment.  Wild Growth is also nice, but if you are struggling with mana, think twice about keeping it up constantly, as it can be a big ol’ mana hog to do that.  Don’t cast Wild Growth to top off 2 people if mana is a concern.  Use it judiciously.

2) Glyphs

I don’t know what Glyphs you are currently using, but you might want to consider looking to Glyphs to help you with Mana Conservation.  Glyph of Swiftmend might make all kinds of sense for you, as it will deliver a Swiftmend for spike heals without consuming any HoTs and forcing you to recast them.

Lifebloom might be another good option, as it extends the HoT of this spell, making it more mana efficient to use because it ticks longer.

Glyph of Regrowth will make that spell more powerful if you are able to refresh it before it expires, again making it more mana efficient.

3) Talents

There are many talents built into the Restoration and Balance trees that you might consider using, as they are primarily designed to conserve mana, or have that effect.

Tranquil Spirit is a talent you might consider if you use Healing Touch with frequency, as it lowers the mana cost for this spell, as well as for tranquility.

Living Spirit is a great buff to your spirit, which is the primary stat for Druid mana regeneration.

Omen of Clarity is a talent all restos should take as, when it procs, the next spell cast is a mana freebie.  woot!  =)

You should not only take Tree of Life, but make sure that you are always healing in tree form.  If you are having trouble maintaining mana for healing, don’t be popping out of tree to help DPS, etc. etc.

Moonglow in the balance tree reduces the mana for casting Healing Touch, Rejuv and Regrowth for you (plus Nourish once you get that spell).

Nature’s Splendor in the balance tree extends Rejuv, Regrowth, and Lifebloom, making them more mana efficient.

4) Enchants and Buffs

Many times people do not bother to enchant their gear unless it is gear that they have farmed, that they intend to keep for a long stretch of time, that will not soon be replaced.  There is a good deal of logic to this, especially when discussing the high end enchants.  Mats are extremely expensive, so it makes little sense to pour money into gear that you will be shedding in a level or two. 

However, if you are struggling to maintain mana, consider putting not the best enchants on your current gear, but some of the mid or lower range enchants.  The mats are much, much cheaper, and the enchants will still provide benefit to you.

Mana enchants, for example, are available for chest and bracers.  Spirit can be added to bracers, boots, or weapons.  Add Intellect to weapons, bracers.  Consider adding spell power to other slots, as stronger heals require fewer heals overall.

You can also consider purchasing buff food and potions/elixirs to help.  Again, don’t go for the high end goodies unless your purse runneth over.  But going for some of the Burning Crusade level buff foods and potions can help tremendously.  Look for buff consumables that are affordable to you and buff spirit for higher mana regen or Int for a larger mana pool.

Also, make sure that you are familiar with the buffs each class can give you, so that you can be sure that all of the members of your current group have cast the most beneficial buffs on you for each instance.

5) Addons

It might seem a little silly to suggest that an addon could help you with mana conservation, but hear me out.  Adding a HoT timer such as Hot Candy might, indeed, help.  Here’s why.  These HoT timers provide a very accurate picture of where your HoTs are in terms of the time that they have left.  If you practice renewing them at the last moment, you will save mana.  You will cast less frequency if you are casting only as needed, right?

6) Speak up

You said in your email that your whole group was taking lots of damage.  Sometimes that’s just the way of it.  Lots of AOE damage = very busy healer.  However, sometimes the reason people are taking lots of damage is that they are not playing well.  The tank is not tanking well and is dropping aggro.  The DPS are aggro monkeys and are stealing aggro because they’re stupid.  Someone is standing in fire.  People aren’t doing what they need to do to remove curses or debuffs.  The point is, if you see lots of people taking damage, if you take the time to learn the fight and know what the mechanics are, you can and should point out if they are doing something that is making your job much harder than it needs to be.  I recently did a series of posts where I interviewed lots of tanks about what they do and asked them for some advice for healers.  A healthy number of them said that the best advice they could give was to speak up if something was going wrong and the healer had some constructive advice to throw into the mix.

You will find that as you level up and gear up (and gain practice) that mana issues become less and less of a concern for you in 5 man content.  In the meantime, however, I hope that these suggestions provide you with some compass in terms of where to go to fix your current concerns!

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.

It’s been a while coming, but in patch 3.2 epic gems will arrive on the WOLK scene.  Jewelcrafters can find the mats by mining titanium ore and buy patterns with their Dalaran Jewelcrafter’s Totems.  In addition, players can buy uncut epic gems from the Emblem of Heroism Quartermasters in Dalaran for 15 EoH each.  Gem quality will represent a 25-33% increase over the current rare gems that are available to us.  Let’s take a quick look at the gems the trees of the world will be clamoring to get our… branches… on.

Red Gems

 Runed Cardinal Ruby – +23 Spell Power?  Om nom nom nom nom!!!! Stand aside!  Sylly’s hungry!!!

Blue Gems

Sparkling Majestic Zircon – +20 Spirit for the druid who really, really, really wishes to keep on casting despite Blizzard’s best efforts to nerf our mana regen.

Yellow Gems

Brilliant King’s Amber – The +20 Intellect on this gem lets you go for a swim in the deep end of the mana pool.

 Smooth King’s Amber – +20 Critical Strike Rating.  Critastic.

Quick King’s Amber – +20 Haste.  Um… so you can be hasty.  Don’t tell  Treebeard.

Purple Gems

Purified Dreadstone – +12 Spell Power and +10 Spirit for when you need a little variety in your day.

Orange Gems

Luminous Flawless Ametrine - +12 Spell Power and +10 Intellect makes you smarter while increasing your power.  I wish they sold these wholesale in Washington, D.C.

Potent Flawless Ametrine – +12 Spell Power and +10 Critical Strike Rating.  Makes your heals bigger and gives you more crits of the bigger heals leading to… uber crits!  What’s not to love?

Green Gems

Misty Eye of Zul – +10 Critical Strike Rating and +10 Spirit.  Do you think Zul knows we have its eye?  Should Sigourney Weaver be warned?

Intricate Eye of Zul – +10 Haste Rating and +10 Spirit.  For the druid who wants more mana and wants to go through it in a flash.

Seer’s Eye of Zul – +10 Intellect and +10 Spirit helps you have a bigger glass and fill it up faster.  The local chapter of AA meets in the Booty Bay inn on the second floor each Wednesday.  Come in costume, as local pirates don’t take kindly to those who don’t swill grog.  Aaaaargh!

So that’s the rundown of the new shinies coming for the trees!  Start saving up your emblems now.  It will give you something more productive to do than shouting TIMBER and “accidentally” falling on gnome rogues.  Go on, now.  Behave yourselves.  =P

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.

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.

Edit:  This post needed an overhaul because… shock of shocks… I messed up the math.  Thanks so much to Mythology to pointing out my misstep so that I could get this post back on track.  Be sure to read the comments here for more insight.

In a comment to a recent post I did about stat stacking for restoration Druids, Viiryen observed the following:

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.

To be honest, I had never considered stacking Int as a response to Replenishment in my raid.  This comment has had the creaky wheels in my brain turning ever since.  I decided to do some research into Replenishment.

The Basics

Replenishment is an umbrella term that actually refers to an effect given by three different spells available to toons specced into specific trees of their class.  Retribution Paladins have Judgements of the Wise, Shadow Priests use Vampiric Touch, and Survival Hunters bring Hunting Party.  Edit:  thanks Nibuca for pointing out that Mages and Destro Locks also provide their own form of Replenishment.  Although they achieve the replenishment effect in class specific ways, each of these abilities procs Replenishment, which gives up to 10 party or raid members .25% of their maximum mana per second for 15 seconds. 

Ghostcrawler has gone on the record saying that, as far as Blizzard is concerned, Replenishment is mandatory for raiding, in that they design their raid encounters around the assumption that a raid will have Replenishment available to it by bringing one of the Replenishment classes.  Let’s take a look at how this might effect Druid stat stacking.

Mana Regen mechanics of Int and Spirit

Both Intellect and Spirit contribute to mana regeneration for Restoration Druids.  The amount of contribution is dependent upon factors such as level and gear.  The formula for working these values out is, admittedly, over this English major’s head.  I’ve been looking at them from various sources for over an hour trying to come up with a coherent and basic description of how that works for this post, but I’m afraid I’m just going to have to toss this one out to the theory crafters and take their word for it.  Thankfully, others have gone to the trouble to work out the differences for me.

The following information is quoted directly from Ridley on the Restoration Itemization post on the Elitest Jerks forums outlining the mp5 value of one point of intellect vs. one point of spirit on gear for a Resto Druid with 1200 Int and 1200 Spirit.  The post was most recently updated on May 11, 2009.

Intellect
1 intellect provides the following:

• 1 intellect increases mana pool with 15 mana. On a typical 8 minute fight with Kings and IMotW this can be converted to 0.175 mp5
• Assuming 1200 intellect and 1200 spirit, 1 intellect increases your main mana regeneration with 0.325 mp5 out of the five second rule or 0.162 mp5 in the five second rule (with Kings, IMotW and Intensity).
• Since Replenish works off the size of your mana pool, 16.83 (Kings and IMotW) extra mana means 0.210 mp5 more through Replenishment.
• 1 intellect also increases the chance you critically hit with spells by 0.00676% (this is with Kings and IMotW).

This sums up to 0.547 mp5 (0.560 with the meta gem) and a little bit of crit chance. However, this number can change a lot based on your intellect, spirit, Replenishment uptime, duration of the encounter and time spent in the five second rule.

Spirit
1 spirit provides the following (assuming Living Spirit, Intensity, Kings and Improved Mark of the Wild):  

• Assuming 1200 intellect and 1200 spirit, 1 spirit increases your main mana regeneration with 0.748 mp5 out of the five second rule or 0.374 mp5 in the five second rule.
• If you have improved Tree of Life, 1 spirit also increases your spellpower with 0.194.

 Now, as I admitted already, I’m not as good at the maths as some other geniuses out there (/jealous!), however, I think I can add this up.  One point of Int (based on the assumed stats of 1200 Int and 1200 Spirit) gives 0.547 mp5 with Replenishment up.  One point of Spirit gives 0.375 mp5 during casting, Replenishment or not.  We can’t assume that Replenishment will be up, neccessarily.  The abilities apply the Replenishment effect on up to 10 players.  If you have one source of Replenishment in a 25 man raid full of mana users… well… even I can do those maths!

Long and the short of it

This is an edited version of the conclusion here, and I owe some thanks to Mythology for sorting me out… 

It seems that when Replenishment is active during combat, a point of Int on gear is a clear upgrade for mana replenishment over a point of Spirit.   Out of combat, Spirit has a clear advantage over Int in terms of mana regeneration, as it seems to for 5 man dungeons without a Replenishment class, raiding without Replenishment or when Replenishment is not up, or soloing. 

Thus, it seems that a raiding druid would need to do some analysis looking at how often Replenishment is up for them during raiding and, perhaps, turn to Int as a favored stat over Spirit if they are looking to increase their mana regeneration.  I’m going to be interested to see if I can parse out the positive effects for me personally during our raiding using WWS.  If I can find some numbers of interest, I’ll be sure to put them up here.

In addition, I’d like to thank Viiryen for the comment that led to this post.  I absolutely appreciate that Viiryen took the time to comment here on the blog and led me to learn quite a bit more about the mechanics of Replenishment, an effect about which I had heretofore been quite uneducated. 

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.