Wrath of the Lich King made a number of fundamental changes to the game, many of which went through so many iterations that it can be difficult to get the facts. You can find a summary of these changes as related to the Restoration Druid in this extensive FAQ!
Tier 5 Set Bonus and Saving for Season 3
Published on October 24, 2007 by Phaelia 
Items and Equipment, Mailbag, PvP 
16 Comments
Visitors sometimes e-mail me with specific questions related to Druids. Last night I was lucky enough to get two e-mails with some great questions that I thought I might share. Please feel free to comment with any additional information you think might be helpful!
Bigtoy of Cho’gal asks:
Does the Tier 5 two piece (+6 seconds to Regrowth) fundamentally change the efficiency of Regrowth or not? 27 seconds of ticking is a lot, but is it enough?
Adding two additional ticks to Regrowth will increase the base amount healed by its HoT portion by 2/7 (7 ticks to start off, and we’re adding 2 more). That’s a 29% improvement to the heal over time portion. To calculate the change to efficiency (measured in HPM), we divide the improvement to the amount healed divided by the unchanged mana cost. Since the mana cost is unchanged, it’s simply 29%*. Depending on how often you use Regrowth (and assuming you use it more than for just Swiftmend which is, by the way, unaffected by this set bonus), this might be considered a pretty nice bonus. On the other hand, Regrowth is an expensive spell — albeit less so in Tree of Life. While this is by no means a terrible bonus, it’s important to keep in perspective how often you’re casting Regrowth and whether you’re getting its full value (additional HPS padding on a tank along with a long-running Swiftmend catalyst, for instance).
* Note: As Vacamuerta points out in the comments, the total efficiency change for Regrowth will actually be lower than 29% since the above calculation does not take into consideration the direct heal (which is unaffected by the set bonus). Determining the efficiency change by factoring in both portions of the spell, she finds that the efficiency change is only 14.5%. Thank you for pointing this out and finding the value for us, Vaca! (dead cow?)
Someshta of Frostmane asks a question that’s probably on several people’s minds:
I was also curious whether or not you thought I should spend my honor on the Veteran’s Kodohide Boots, Belt, and Bracers, even though the Vindicator’s stuff is coming out soon. I can’t actually use them until 70, but if I decide to get them then I want to stop at 69 to Honor farm.
Blizzard has stated in the past that they will always give a 2-week notice before beginning a new season. If you find that you’re going to cap out on honor (you can carry no more than 75k each season), I’d buy the boots (my favorite choice). Otherwise, go ahead and save your points. Even if Season 3 isn’t released at the same time as Patch 2.3, it can’t be too far behind since the sets are already viewable on the PTR!
Thanks to both of you for the questions! And on another note, Dan O’Halloran, one of the authors of the Shifting Perspectives column over at WoWInsider and the author of the One Druid, Many Worlds blog was gracious enough to mention Resto4Life in his most recent blog article, “Druid Blogs You Should Be Reading”. The site was fortunate enough to be featured alongside several other of my favorites, including … well, they’re actually all among my favorites so be sure to check them out! And thank you, Dan! The added exposure for my new URL is greatly appreciated!
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lol I feel so special, I got mentioned in one of Phaelia’s posts. Thanks for the Advice BTW ^_^ you’re the coolest!
I got mentioned too but I forgot to give permission that it was Bigtoy of Cho’gall!
And now I’m off to read about the arena recommendations.
Your math on the regrowth doesn’t look quite right, I think. You’re right that the increase in healing in the HOT portion is a straight 29% improvement. The HPM efficiency calculation should be a bit worse though, since the instant heal effect accounts for about half of the total amount healed by regrowth. Regrowth with the set bonus is thus only about 14.5% better in terms of HPM (assuming 2600 total healed without the set bonus and 2977 total healed with the set bonus).
@Somestha and Bigtoy: I’m glad you don’t mind my sharing your questions with everyone; thank you for sending them in!
@Vacamuerta: I didn’t think to consider the direct heal portion of Regrowth and how, as it isn’t affected by the set bonus, it would actually drag the efficiency improvement down by quite a bit. Thank you for pointing that out. I’ve appended my original post and credited you with your contribution! Cute name, by the way. =)
>.>
It’s how I came to start reading Resto4life – from WoWInsider.
I’m a fresh Resto just coming off two years of Feral, and your blog has been wonderful for me to get up to speed.
Keep up the good work!
I’m glad you’ve been able to find some information of value here, Lake. =) Keep reading and I’ll keep writing!
If you add critchance of the directhealeffect, it becomes even less than 14.5. And most will have the 50% crit bonus on regrowth, so
((critchance on regrowth)/100)*14.5 for the right percentage.
– Zhero (or am i thinking wrong?)
Zhero: Ugh. You are right. I’m beginning to see that I didn’t give this question enough thought at all. I’ve written a separate post on it (up above). If you guys don’t mind, would you go through it and make sure it makes sense/seems accurate?
I’ve had a look at the math (well, not really, I’m going to bed in a minute and all I see is dancing numbers right now), and I believe those figures from wowwiki are wrong. I always do a lot of math when choosing gear etc, and I remember I checked it myself a while ago, getting something quite different.
I may be wrong (blame sleep deprivation
) but the instant heal gets about 30% heal and the HoT like 70%. I think they are correct in some other article from wowwiki, I’m not sure, but certainly the instant part gets more than 14%. I wrote down the results of my tests anyway (they must be around.. somewhere), I’ll have a look when I feel like it =_=
I must say I don’t like the bonus set that much anyway. My regrowths are either cast as emergency heals, or often consumed by swiftmend. I love regrowth (5/5 improved regrowth for the win!), but most of my healing (like most resto druids, in my opinion) comes from lifebloom and rejuvenation. It’d be nice to have, but it doesn’t make such a big difference. I’d take tier 4 bonus instead any time
OK, I’ve found neither the “correct” article nor my notes
I’ll run some tests next time I log with my druid.
@Ermengol: Grr … I’ve been misinformed by WoWWiki in the past. If you do parse the numbers and determine the scaling values for each part, please let me know what you find so I can make corrections. =) Thanks!!
Someshta- Don’t forget that in the 2.3 patch you can purchase the Arena season 1 gear for honor points. Alsd, all of the Veteran’s pieces will be at reduced honor as well.
http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?;tpstart=8
For example, in 2.3:
Season 1 Gladiator’s Armor Gauntlets- 10,500 honor, 20 AV tokens
Veteran’s Pendant of Salvation- 11,934 honor, 10 EotS tokens
I know I’ll be saving up lots of honor on my alts for this. =)
Wait, so I can get all of the arena gear without ever actually doing an arena??? Sweet lol, I better start saving.
Thanks Megami ^_^
OK, here’s what I got.
I cast about 50 regrowths and I got a mean instant healing of 2036 (having scaled crits by 1.5).
My current +healing bonus is 1523, and the instant healing portion of a level 70 regrowth heals 1215-1355; I’ll take the mean value of 1285.
All my healing spells receive a +10% bonus from talents, so
2036/1.1 = 1850.9
1850.9 – 1285 = 565.9 healing received from gear
100 * 565.9 / 1523 = 37.16%
I’m not sure if this is the best approach, and maybe I should run more tests to get more accurate values. Another idea would be to take the highest and lowest measured values and assume they are the limits of the interval. In my case the highest and lowest healing values are 2099 and 1974. I’ll compare them with the ones I should get from a basic regrowth (1355 and 1215)
2099/1.1 – 1355 = 553.2 -> 36.32%
1974/1.1 – 1215 = 579.5 -> 38.05%
Now the HoT. Instead of waiting for 7 ticks I just used swiftmend on my recently cast regrowth (yeah, I’m that lazy
), and it healed for 2408.
Without the +10% from talents 2408 / 1.1 = 2189.1
Regrowth heals for 1274 in 21 seconds, and swiftmend heals for the equivalent of 15 so
2189.1 * 21 / 15 = 3064.7
3064.7 – 1274 = 1790.7 from gear
Since empowered rejuvenation gives me a nice +20% extra bonus
100 * (1790.7 / 1.2) / 1523 = 98%
and I just realised why I had 70% in mind. HoTs usually get 100% over 15 seconds, that’s 140% over 21. Since roughly half of the healing is due to the HoT, that’s 70%.
So apparently
1) Instant portion gets +37%
2) HoT gets +98%
I believe my numbers are correct, but talents and/or bonus may have been incorrectly applied, so please feel free to check them yourselves
It would also be nice to run a few more tests with different healing gear to see if everything matches. I’ll do it myself if no one volunteers 
@Erme: I noticed that you calculated your Regrowth crit rate at 50%. I did the same thing the first time I evaluated talented Regrowth but have since realized that the *actual* crit rate I should be using is closer to 60% since I get 50% from the talent and an additional 10% from my Intellect (I think my crit for RG is somewhere around 61-63% in game). Would it be more appropriate for you to adjust for that type of value? Were I parsing, I think I would discard all spell criticals and figure those in after the fact.
No, I did nothing with crit rates
I wrote down the amount healed by every regrowth, and divided those that actually got a critical hit by 1.5 as if they didn’t (since critical spells heal for an extra 50%) so I could calculate just the average “non critical” regrowth.
Just in case, I did it again with only those regrowths that didn’t get a crit, but the results are roughly the same.