The following is an e-mail from Nichgoul of Al’Akir (EU) who wrote in to share his impressions of the usefulness of spell haste. As I have little experience using spell haste myself, I’m soliciting opinions from those of you who have been able to put together a haste set, either primarily or situationally.

After healing in our recent night in Mount Hyjal, I was annoyed at the fact that, while there were five tanks all taking damage, I could only Lifebloom four of them. While this is a dream scenario for Resto Druids, I had to leave one tank out. Since the changes in 2.4 (spell haste now reducing the global cooldown to a maximum of one second), I have gone about looking up how much spell haste is needed to reach the super-tree mode of having five global cooldowns per rotation as opposed to four.

How much spell haste do I need? *

In theory, the minimum number of spell haste required is 113, although due to latency this isn’t realistic. To be 100% certain that you will make the 5 GCD target, you’re looking at closer to 180-200 spell haste.

Where can I get spell haste?

First of all, start running ZA. While there is no leather +Healing gear that has spell haste in this instance, there are four Druid-usable items that do:

• [Brooch of Nature’s Mercy]: +33 spell haste rating
• [Cloak of Ancient Rituals]: +25 spell haste rating
• [Dark Blessing]: +30 spell haste rating
• [Signet of the Quiet Forest]: +30 spell haste rating

The four items alone total to 118 spell haste rating. You can also get gems that increase spell haste, the best of which fits a yellow socket and increases spell haste rating by 8.

What does this mean?

This means that with the gear from ZA and 3 or more spell haste gems, you’re looking close to or are reaching the 5GCD per rotation. (The gear from ZA unfortunately doesn’t have sockets, but if you get items drop that don’t need for regular upgrades, you can socket them for spell haste.)

Is it worth all this effort?

In my opinion, yes. Whether you let this gear replace your current healing gear is more of a personal choice, but the extra time while general raid healing is nice as it means that you can get a Rejuvenation + Swiftmend off quicker and generally have more GCDs to play around with. If you carry this gear with you in your bags you can equip it when necessary. For example, when 4/5 tanks pop up that need healing simultaneously then I would highly suggest switching gear. Here’s why:

If your triple-stacked Lifebloom heals a tank for approximately 700 HPS, being able to stack on four tanks will produce 2,800 healing per second (this is already a larger healing per second output then any other healer can sustain). However, you will be locked down to just casting Lifebloom on the tanks. If, however, you have enough spell haste to cast five insta-cast spells, you will have one GCD free to heal yourself, the raid, or to boost a tank with Rejuvenation. Of course, you could now keep five tanks triple-stacked, which would result in 3,500 HPS, way above what any other healer can match over a sustained period of time. These stats also increase with an increase in your +Healing value; if the 700 HPS were increased to a still-plausible 800 HPS, you’d be looking at 3200 HPS without spell haste and 4000 HPS with it.

This extra GCD also opens up additional spell rotations, using Rejuvenation and Regrowth, for example. **

This rotation doesn’t require full spell haste, just a few items to get the Regrowth off in the second rotation. This cycle costs 742 mana every five seconds:

LB 1, LB 2, LB 3, RJ 1
LB 1, LB 2, LB 3, RG 1

A haste-heavy, 5-GCD cycle (requiring around 200 haste rating) can keep up Rejuvenation and Regrowth on two tanks while triple-stacking Lifebloom on all three. This cycle costs 869 mana every five seconds:

LB 1, LB 2, LB 3, RJ 1, RJ 2
LB 1, LB 2, LB 3, RG 1
LB 1, LB 2, LB 3, RJ 1, RJ 2
LB 1, LB 2, LB 3, RG 2

I personally believe that this increase in healing per second and the ability to simultaneously stabilize five tanks’ health (or four tanks with a random spell every seven seconds), definitely gives enough reason to go out and start collecting spell haste as a Resto Druid.

* Information gathered from http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t17783-druid_raiding_tree/
** Information and rotation designs gathered from http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t17783-druid_raiding_tree/

Nichgoul is specifically asking for feedback on the above, and I’d love to hear your thoughts, as well!

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I will kiss him and hug him and love him and call him “Toothy.” I rescued this little fella from the Stormwind canal system. But don’t tell anyone. We wouldn’t want to start a panic.

» View my pet collection (and create your own) at Warcraft Pets

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Below is a snapshot of what Resto4Life looks like in the two most mainstream browsers, Internet Explorer and Firefox. As you can see, the two versions look pretty different with the IE version showing my site contents centered and with a cute little Tree of Life waggling his leafy hand at visitors. The Firefox version is flush against the left side of the screen and does not have the aforementioned cute tree. This is a CSS issue that I’ve spent hours trying to resolve, and I’ve finally decided to throw my hands up and ask for help from visitors.

Internet Explorer	Firefox

If there are any CSS-experienced gurus out there who think they can help, I’d greatly appreciate if you could either respond here or contact me via the site’s contact form or by e-mailing me at resto4life@.com. I have a sandbox version of the site that I can give you access to if you think you can help!

Thanks, everyone!

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MMO Champion has a nice summary of the new information regarding the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. “Nice” but distinctly lacking in Druid-relevance. After poring over everything I could get my leafy hands on and finding essentially no reference to Druids, I decided I’d share with you my own brand of Druid-appropriate WotLK preview!

Druids to be Masters of Crowd Control

With the involvement of … one or more colors of Dragonflight, it only follows that portions of Northrend be swarming with Dragonkin. With the spell “Hibernate,” Boomkin will finally have the CC-based role they’ve been begging for. The spell will actually see an increase in utility as, when cast upon flying targets, it will cause the victim to crash to the ground and take falling damage in proportion to its body mass. Blizzard, however, will have the last laugh as Boomkin can’t cast Hibernate.

Balance and Feral Trees Scrapped

Video scenes seem to imply that Druids will gain access to two new forms: a Fire Tree and a Frost Tree! Correspondingly, our two non-Tree-based talent trees will be replaced with talent trees similar to those of the Mage class: Fire and Frost.

Dire Cat Form

In a bizarre amalgam of the Dire Bear and Cat Forms, Blizzard finally introduces the long-awaited Dire Cat Form for Druids. Shown at left howling at a full moon, we can only assume it will have Ghost Wolf-like speed and accordingly restore Feral Druids to their rightful Arena dominance (though due to susceptibility to Hunter’s Scare Beast, they’ll still spend the majority of Arena matches pillar humping like their Resto brethren).

Improved Mobility

Leafshine writes more about this in his article, New Wrath of the Lich King info - What about Druids?, but I’ve discovered evidence that his hopes might be true, including an image of what can only be the Druid’s new Aquatic Form, an orca! To make up for never giving us Teleport: Cenarion Refuge in the Burning Crusade expansion, we’ll be able to teleport to a strange, hollowed out tree city, making trips to the Auction House and back to Northrend less arduous!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this exclusive (totally fabricated) preview of what we Druids can expect to see in the expansion, and I’ll do my best to keep you posted on new information as it develops!

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In honor of June 1 as Arbor Day … in Cambodia (I missed this year’s U.S. observance), I am issuing a challenge to readers! It will test both skill and dedication! I want PICTURES of your TREE OF LIFE with the following:

• A [Cenarion Expedition Tabard], demonstrating your worthiness to be hugged by that hippiest of factions
• One or more of the following: [Enormous Barbed Gill Trout], [Red Winter Hat] or [Green Winter Hat], [Grayson’s Torch] or [Elune’s Lantern], [Farmer’s Broom] or [Pitchfork], [Crown of the Fire Festival]
• The 2-piece T4, T5, or T6 set bonus OR, alternatively, the chest, helm, and legs from Wildheart, Cenarion, Stormrage, or Dreamwalker sets! Show us your old-school pride!
• 2 stacks of [Heavy Netherweave Bandage] for handing out to those people who still use the annoying “Heal Me!” emote
• A stack of [Lesser Mana Potion] for giving to people who ask for your Innervate
• A pair of gloves enchanted with [Enchant Gloves - Fishing]
• The [Violet Signet of the Grand Restorer], demonstrating unwavering commitment to fixing whatever the heck is wrong in Karazhan
• A [Shiny Red Apple] with which to taunt hungry Ferals
• A [Swashbuckler Shirt] of any color; ‘ARRRRGG!! YE BE A PIRATE TREE!’
• The ability to build a [Basic Campfire] without setting yourself ablaze (actually including the bonfire in your picture is purely optional)
• 20 x [Maple Seed] to use when casting Rebirth out of combat or for planting baby versions of yourself

Submission Requirements

To participate in this challenge, you must send me a screenshot of your Druid meeting the above requirements. In honor of Arbor Day, pictures should be taken while in Tree of Life and should meet the following criteria:

• Nothing should obstruct the full and glorious view of your character you’ve (no inventory screens or character sheets; we just want to see your Tree).
• Include a description of your surroundings or really any sort of flavor text you like.
• Feel free to include your favorite non-combat pet in the picture, particularly if you feel it complements your roleplay backstory.
• Be creative with your backdrops, and feel free to combine entries with your friends. A forest of trees would be great!
• Note that if your Tree of Life is of the … purple variety, I will not include your character server name.

I’ll be compiling all the appropriate entries into a gallery of images for the site and showcasing a few of my favorites. Entries should be in TGA or JPG format and can be sent to me at resto4life@.com. Entries must be submitted no later than Friday, May 30th.

Advertising the Arbor Day Challenge

For other blog authors interested in encouraging participation in this contest, Valenna has created the following *.PNG banners (feel free to create your own):

I hope that many authors from the Restoration branch of the World Tree will opt to play along themselves!

Taking TGA Screenshots in World of Warcraft

If you prefer to take your screenshots in TGA format, use Notepad or another plain text editor to open the config.wtf file found in your WTF directory. Find and change the lines that look like this:

SET screenshotFormat “JPG”
SET screenshotQuality “3″

So that they look like this:

SET screenshotFormat “TGA”
SET screenshotQuality “10″

Save the file and close it. Note that you’ll need to restart WoW for your changes to be effective.

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