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Blue: Mana Regen Complexity and Restoration Scaling
Published on December 2, 2008 by Phaelia 
Blue 
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There are a couple of recent blue posts I’d like to draw attention to this morning. The first post was made in response to complaints by Nightshroud of Aleria (US) that mana regeneration is simply too complex a stat to deal with, making gear comparisons tedious and more difficult than they should be. In summary, she says:
- MP5 is the most straightforward of mana regeneration stats.
- Spirit is complicated since it scales based on your level and its return is affected by the square root of Intellect.
- Intellect also plays into Spirit/Intellect-based mana regeneration and is now also affected by the raid-wide Replenishment effect.
- Many classes have additional effects to consider like mana regenerated from spell crit.
For the record, the current mana regeneration formula looks like this:
Base Mana RegenInt, Spi, Level = (0.001 + SPI * Base_Regen(Level) * √I) * 5
Was it really necessary to make things THAT complicated? Developer Ghostcrawler seems to question whether it was:
This is something that is totally on our radar. Mana regen requires looking at a lot of different numbers and we’d like to simplify it, without losing any of the interesting gear options that players have.
Simplified mana regeneration would definitely be a welcome change. Or at the very least, increased transparency of how a given stat will affect you. There’s a certain amount of fun in determining whether an item is an upgrade, but I reach my limit at about 30 seconds of thought and often end up picking between two similar items based on which is prettier (a decision made more difficult by the fact that armor designers apparently made ONE texture/mesh for all pre-raid armor in Wrath). With the radical changes that were made to so many ratings systems in the expansion, I really think that they should have scrapped their current formula in favor of something less complex on day 1.
On the perhaps alarmist post entitled "The Druid Dilemma: Worst Healers Post-Naxx", Dimachaeri of Tichondrius (US) laments Druid-unfriendly itemization with many items laden with spell crit and/or spell haste. This is an issue for a number of reasons:
- Our HoTs do not benefit from spell crit as they cannot crit.
- Our HoTs benefit VERY little from spell haste. In fact, haste actually devalues Gift of the Earthmother, the 5-point talent at the bottom of the Restoration tree that reduces the GCD of Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, and Wild Growth by a percentage of its base cast time.
- The benefit to Regrowth from spell crit is extremely marginal. If you’re using Regrowth any considerable amount, chances are you’ll have 5/5 Improved Regrowth, making an additional 1% spell crit practically worthless.
- The benefit to Healing Touch from spell haste is also very small. The 0.5 second reduction in Wrath combined with a Glyph of Healing Touch and 5/5 Naturalist means that haste has no effect on sustained HPS.
A few random thoughts:
- When you talk about scaling, you have to separate a few different issues:
- Does the class / talent / spell scale?
- Does it scale well once it has good gear?
- Does that gear actually exist?
- Is it readily available or is it hard to get?
- Some classes complain about having too many stats and others about not having enough stats. They are just different class styles. There are advantages and disadvantages to both.
- Our goal is not that every stat is useful for you.
- Our goal is not that only stats which are useful for you appear on your gear.
- One of the interesting things about resto seems to be that there is some player preference involved in how you heal. Some use Regrowth a lot now, others use Healing Touch, and others stick with rolling blooms. While it may end up that someone can prove one of those strategies sufficiently trumps the others, for now it is cool to see the experimentation.
- That said, we do worry if Nourish’s niche is too narrow. We’ll see. It is getting compared to heals with very good glyphs affecting them.
If the idea that it’s okay for one class to benefit from fewer stats than another that fills the same role seems familiar, it’s because it mirrors the paradigm of Druid tanking gear. Bears needn’t stack parry or block since they don’t benefit from those stats. This difference means they can more readily equip what would ordinarily be considered "Rogue gear." Meanwhile, the differences between a DPS Warrior set and a tanking Warrior set are far more pronounced. This paradigm relies upon the "simpler" class getting MORE out of their limited stats than the classes who benefit from a more diverse set of stats. This means that Druids should expect to scale better from adding spell power, Spirit, and Intellect since we derive little benefit from haste or spell crit. Whether or not we will remains to be seen.
Looking for information about recent Feral changes? Check out impressions on the armor reduction from Karthis and Kalon (which should totally be a police drama, by the way).
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I am excited that BRK is back, though!
/cry I love you, ty for everything.
“[W]hich should totally be a police drama, by the way“.
LOL! Thanks, Phae.
Druid “tanking” gear is just as odd as druid “healing” gear it sounds like…. it seems to feature an awful lot of crit, AP, and other such stats that don’t do very much for us.
Druids: Blizzard still doesn’t know what to do with us after three major releases.
Karthiss last blog post..Rake – First or Second?
Right now I feel as if my mana regen is seriously lacking. I hit 80 over the Thanksgiving weekend and I’ve tried running a few heroics since. I’m still wearing most of the gear I earned raiding in BT, only having traded out a few trinkets and rings, and of course I picked up the Chilly Slobberknocker (I really hate that name).
I can’t seem to keep up mana or healing wise and the groups I’m in are wiping a lot. I’m consistently running out of mana at the worst times. I can’t believe it but I feel really undergeared in my T6, I’ve been overwhelmed by what seems to be really spiky damage, and I’m feeling totally inadequate in my role.
I’ve been playing for 4 years now and I love being a resto druid but if I can’t support my groups I run out of reasons to play.
Amradorns last blog post..Feeling Totally Inadequate
I hate to say it, but when I have a druid healing my death knight in heroics I feel less safe than I do with a priest or shaman. No matter the skill of the player, the mana regen and dealing with spike damage is a huge problem right now. Also, AOE damage far outweighs the amount of AOE healing that druids can do. Maybe it’s design flaw, or maybe most druids need a change in strategy, but it seems to be mostly a gear problem. I think the main solution to this problem is to allow HoTs to crit. That would make all the crit found on the leather spell power gear worthwhile to druids. It would also help keep our HP up during damage spikes.
@Krythia: I’ve successfully healed all the heroics I’ve attempted except one where it reset when we got to the final boss and one where the tank was woefully undergeared. I have never run out of mana on a boss fight.
Also, I don’t think allowing HoTs to crit would help against AoE damage. Relying on crits to help heal is a flawed strategy, they’re unreliable and healing is all about consistency, to me.
To the original post: I don’t like having haste or crit on my gear because I value them less than mp5 or spirit. It feels silly to have stats on my gear that I don’t want or that aren’t useful to me, and it makes me nervous that Ghostcrawler thinks that’s alright.
edit: and hmm… can’t seem to get this CommentLuv thing to work.
@Phae: Thanks, I was hoping you’d comment on this.
@Shopshopshop: “Relying on crits to help heal is a flawed strategy, they’re unreliable and healing is all about consistency, to me.”
This is exactly how I feel. I’d rather have a controllable throughput opposed to hoping to get a string of crits in order to keep the tank alive.
I guess we’ll just have to see what they intend for us.
One problem I see is people getting locked into I need to max the 0/5 talents. Yes the more haste you have on gear will make gotem worthless if you keep it at 5/5. So once you get that haste drop it to 4/5 maybe pick up improved healing touch or imp tranquility?
You could look at it the other way You don’t have a crit talent and haste talents anymore. You now need spirit, int, stam, mp5, crit, haste and spell power On everything in massive amounts.
@Fobbers and Shop
I agree as well, I really don’t feel comfortable relying on unpredictable crits to get me through.
Right now however I’m not succeeding in my healing and I’m having a hard time figuring out what I’m doing wrong.
What spell rotations are you using Fobbers?
Amradorns last blog post..Feeling Totally Inadequate
@Amradorn: Your spell power and mana regen (I peeked at your armory) are fairly low for heroic standards, I think. Maybe that’s part of the problem?
“Our goal is not that only stats which are useful to you appear on your gear.”
A very troubling sentiment, and a little tongue in cheek.
After all, how often is it that Strength, Agility, or Attack Power appear on cloth items beyond level 60? Druids are required to have Haste and Crit, but Warlocks, Priests, and Mages all can get by without absorbing the wasted itemization for stats that benefit them in almost no way? How many plate quest rewards/drops after level 60 feature Spirit?
Granted, this isn’t entirely a fair comparison, but the point remains valid.
In truth, I don’t think that Druids gain *no* benefit from Haste or Crit, but they should be marginal stats, additional flavor, not the primary feature of the majority of gear from level 70 onward (which they are), particularly when they come at the expense of stats that are genuinely beneficial (which they do).
If Blizzard wants Restoration Druids to value Haste at all, they have to change GotEM (which is a slot filler talent if ever there was 1) completely. Frankly, Restoration Druids will never have a high premium on Crit, unless the class is turned completely on its head in terms of spells and talents.
I, too, have noticed that I use up a lot more mana now healing 5-mans. Specced all the way to Wild Growth, encounters usually leave me at around 40-60% of my mana pool. This hasn’t been a serious problem yet since I have yet to run heroics, but I’m worried if I’ll be able to handle them.
I believe there is an article on Matticus’ site about trying a Dreamstate-Tree build to deal with the mana regen issues. It seems the best you can get is 2 points in Improved Tree Form if you take the minimum points to get to a fully talented Dreamstate. Has anyone else tried such a build? I won’t get to try it for a while myself, since I have a few levels before hitting 80.
@Shop
You would think an almost full suit of T6 would be good for starting heroics but that is something I’m working on. Should have the Earthgiving boots and legs crafted in a few days as a start.
Amradorns last blog post..Feeling Totally Inadequate
I’ve healed almost all the Heroic Instances so far and while I had a few issues related to mana and fight mechanics early on, I’ve found that I can pretty much ignore my mana now. A few fights still test me, but with a timely pot or an innervate, I’ve had little or no issues with mana after getting geared up. My biggest issue so far has been planning ahead, pre-casting in many cases, and just overall awareness of the fight mechanics and how to effectely heal through them. I have yet to step foot in any of the Raids so I do not know how I will hold up there, but I’m pretty happy with my instance blues so far.
I also have had the chance to run a few heroics with groups who have Naxx gear and can sustain 2.5k and above dps and that certainly makes life easier on a healer in terms of mana as the boss fights are much much shorter. I think that as everyone else gets geared up, the healing burden we are all dealing with will be lessened.
@Amradorn: I can’t say I have a specific rotation because sometimes it’s all situational.. I usually open on the tank with LB, Rejuv, Regrowth, LB, LB, and then either relax and maintain HoTs on the Pally tank (yay), or panic and start healing the DPS (boo). I just try getting all my HoTs on the tank as soon as I can, keep them up, and react to any spike or DPS damage as appropriate. Oh, and try not to stand in fire/ice/spikes/pancakes at the same time.
Looking at your armory, I’m reminded of something that I’ve not been able to find an answer for. I read a while back that with the changes to the Tree of Life aura, the Idol of the Raven Goddess was bugged and didn’t work worth a dang anymore. Has anyone else seen that? I haven’t really looked into it because I don’t use that idol anymore.
I had my first real experience healing Naxx last night and I found myself consistently mana-starved. Sadly, the only way I managed to even halfway perform was by swapping out almost all of my ‘upgrade’ gear (all of which had more spell power than my previous gear, but with supplemental stats of haste or crit instead of mp5 or spirit) and going back to my pre-wrath epics.
I still had huge mana issues and was starved even with innervate and a pot, but it was slightly more sustainable. But it feels really sad to have to pretty much disregard my new gear.
I do think part of the issue is in a raid setting, I still want to roll lifeblooms on the tank and use a lifebloom to spot heal the raid and I don’t think that that’s a viable or cost-efficient healing technique any longer. I’ve moved lifebloom from it’s regular place to see if I can break myself of the habit.
My actual healing feels adequate, but my regen is awful. I’m going to have to investigate where I can find any spirit/mp5 upgrades but I’m feeling a bit discouraged.
@Heike: There’s gear out there with spirit. I have simply avoided gearing for spell power if I have to sacrifice a lot of mana regen to get it.
@Fobbers: I heard that about the Raven Goddess Idol as well, but never did much to test it. I switched to the epic LB idol now anyways.
I have run heroics for about a week now and have no problems with mana regen. I have found lots of spirit and mp5 gear (though most of it is cloth, sadly) from really lucky drops (like the mace from heroic Nexus), crafting, and rep rewards (along with the usual enchants and sockets). I currently stand at around 300 mp5 w/ MOTW. [Luckily, I'm grouping with plate-wearing pallys, warriors, and death knights, so grabbing the cloth stuff is not a problem, in case you were wondering.]
I’ve healed our death knight tank through Halls of Lightning and other heroics without having to pot or even innervate (except on a few occasions). The only time I had a problem with mana was during the gauntlet run in heroic Utgarde Pinnacle (but that was due more to my inexperience in that instance than anything else).
While our Lifebloom is more expensive now than it used to be, it lasts much longer and I have a ton more mana to work with (about 15k, which seems to be average). That plus Wild Growth and Nourish can keep a tank topped off for all but the heaviest blows. Oh, and get the Swiftmend glyph–the 1-2 combo Regrowth/Swiftmend can easily heal a tank 10k or more in a pinch.
Now, I haven’t had a chance to raid in Naxx yet, so my experience is still limited to heroics–but so far, I’m feeling pretty good about my abilities to maintain my mana pool in even the toughest instances.
Ironically, the fact that I got to 80 in my mostly Kara-level gear meant that I was ready and eager to find upgrades (which I’d had for over a year). Perhaps those in t6 just need to bite the bullet and grab those blues.
I’m Riverrun on Silvermoon server, in case anyone is interested.
I’ve run every heroic in the game now (most of them multiple times), and its not all that bad. Swiftmend glyph is amazing, as is the regrowth glyph. Despite having T7.5 shoulders, I’m still wearing T6 helm/T6 shoulders in heroics for the setbonus.
Just to give you a bit of perspective, tho: I was in Naxx within 48 hours of level 80, we cleared it within 48 hours, in pure level 70 gear, as nobody’d even been in a heroic yet as not levelled in time. Heroic naxx was cleared a week later, altho admittedly in a bit better gear (chain heroics are fun). Currently farming 10 and 25-man naxx, and working on malygos 25 (Hi, enrage timer).
Running heroics with a guild group, esp if I manage to nab our MT (pretty much full naxx gear now) is a breeze…. time to level mace skill or something. Heroics with a PUG in level 80 blues, or one of the more recently levelled tanks who hasnt got more than one or two pieces from naxx, are still pretty easy, the main thing I notice is when the dps are bad (aka all those dps checks). I’m not super geared, either – lolholypallyplate – good source of abyss crystals, is half of the drops, the other part being dps warrior/ret paladin/dk dps plate – all of which are either away on holiday or nonexistant, in raids anyway. I was crazy enough to run every heroic in the game in one day, with the same group – and then repeated that the next day, minus H oculus as we ran out of time (I had raid, lol)
Never had mana problems in a heroic, and mostly am fine keeping the tank up. Some fights were a bit of a problem to heal, but part of that was buggy encounters that got fixed very quickly, and never had a problem again. Achievements can be a bit suicidal, pulling adds or similar especially, but thats to be expected.
The hardest fights I’ve found so far for mana – 10 man sapphiron (not 25) if you’ve got a bad setup for mana regen buffs, eg. no wisdom, kings, replenish, etc, will be a pain for mana at the expected gear level. The enrage timer is healer mana on that one, and it hurts. I think our 2nd try ever was a 2% wipe…. with all the healers (3) OOM – and not one person was hit by blizzard the whole encounter, that was purely his aura. In the 25-man we had a shadowpriest and wisdom and kings and bla bla and it was far easier.
25-patchwerk was also mean. He hit the hateful tanks for 24 – 28k depending on which tank (after mitigation). Every 1.2s. And we were running with 6 healers as we’re short on healers. Anyone say ouch? I discovered that in a 25-man, pure regrowth spam on a 1.2s cast is quite boring, but its a lot of HPS, and is sustainable with raidbuffs for the whole patchwerk fight. I believe we had over 2 minutes left on enrage timer when we killed him, tho, so suggested you bring more healers than we did. Plus, make sure your offtanks have enough level 80 gear to not be onehit by a hateful mmk?
In terms of sub-optimal stats on Gear such as Haste and Crit, what do you think would be the best solution in order to make it useful? Would you reitemise gear such that Crit and other sub-optimal stats such as Haste etc. don’t appear on it, or implement new Talents to exploit these stats in unconventional ways?
There are a couple of classes that I could name off the top of my head which suffer similar stat problems. Where do you guys stand on the topic?
If you’re having mana problems, definitely try out a dreamstate resto spec (28/0/43), with a glyph of regrowth (and preferably swiftmend as well). In my opinion this is currently the best spec for healing heroics and 10 mans. (sample build: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0yG0u0IohZZf0IubuxVuV0R)
What Blizzard should do in my opinion is to have half the effect of empowered touch affect nourish and replace replenish with a shadowform-like talent that increases the healing values of your HoT’s by your crit chance. I’d also like to see Gift of the Earthmother replaced by something else altogether, as talents that scale negatively with gear are no fun.
I’m surprised to see people complaining about Mana. While I’m not 80 yet (just hit 74), I’m shocked as how little mana I do use. Well, rather, shocked how quickly I regain mana back. It could be I just hadn’t seen the demand for level 80 healing. But, I have yet needed to drink in any instance runs, no matter how bad the tank was.
I’m currently setting at 594 spirit and ~550 int. My mana regent is ~549 with ~1140 spell power (over 1210 healing while in tree form).
My stats are up to date (although the level is off) on the armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Lightbringer&n=Akia
My armor isn’t even BT gear. It’s T6 Badge gear and one drop from Hyjal.
——
The haste rating discussion is interesting. I pretty much saw the same thing as well. It’s not much use given our talent. It works for Balance, but no so much Resto. I really ignore it over all. I have noticed a lot of “healing” based items have haste rating on it .. while it’s no much use for us, you can’t forget about paladins, shamans and priests who would love some extra haste for their spells. It’s when I see spell haste on +spirit *leather* gear I raise a brow.
Please let me tell you all as an experienced druid…your concerns are void. Druid healing is awesome. So awesome inf act that i fear someone will discover it and hit us with the nerf bat.
We got it all now. We got by far the most and best HoTs in the game. We got a “flash” heal spell. We got group heal (and don’t forget to just put a hot on everyone rejuvenation for example while wild growth works. Our HoTs are faster thanks to the talent “Gift of the earthmother” and they do a lot more especially if you use the right idol with them.
Naturally there needs to be less equip for restodruids with spirit on. Only 2 classes really love that stat. Druids and Priests. And even with priests there are talent builds which make the stat not so extremely appealing. But mp5, spellhaste and spellcrit is loved by paladins and shamans. And priests like it a lot too.
Search for gear with spirit on at wowhead and you will be a happy druid. I have mostly blue heroic gear (itemlevel 200) and about 2-3 10raid/hero badges epics. And i have a whopping almost 1000 mp5 outside the 5 second rule. Its almost embarassing how much mana i can regen.
You need to manage your time inside the 5 second rule though. Try to hot up your targets and then not heal for 10 seconds. That also works well with keep starting the long cast+high heal healing touch on yoru tank for example. Often you can stop the cast and gain more time outside the 5 second rule with full manaregen because the tank parries, dodges or doesn’t get heavy damage for other reasons. And when he does you do not need to cast 2,3 seconds (which is how long my ht casts) but without very bad luck you are already at some way through your castbar. Just this time you don’t stop the cast but let it run through. That huge heal gives you the time afterward to fully rehot and possibly noursih the tank.
Also crit and spellhaste is not a wasted stat for druids at all. Espceially with the talent “Nature’s Grace” from the balance tree its huge. And in my opinion EVERY healing druid should have 14 points in the balance tree. Its really great if you struggle to keep your tank from dying with noursih when you suddenly can cast a much faster ht or even a regrowth with the cast time of a global cooldown.
Every % of crit is great there.
Spellhaste doesn’t seem do do much for some spells we have especially with the talent “Gift of the Earthmother”. But think about it more closely. When at 1,2 seconds global cooldown you can put continuosly rejuvenation on up to 12 targets. (runs 15 seconds 12×1,2 seconds=14,4 seconds with 0,6 seconds to spare^^)
If it gets down to 1,1 seconds you can keep it up on almost 14 targets (where each target has no rejuvenation on them for 0,4 seconds before the next one is applied). That increases your overall healing per second potential a lot. Not to mention that in emergency situation you can react much faster on more targets.
Mârus, I’m sorry but I don’t share your enthusiasm.
I’m still figuring out how useful Nourish is (I just leveled 80), but I can tell already Healing Touch is gone from my action bars again (except for the NS macro) and I’ll probably think of Nourish once I’ve already used Regrowth on my target only. Among a vast majority of HoTs, crit rating is gonna be wasted; or, if not totally wasted, at least way less efficient than any other stat.
Haste suffers the same problem. It is an incredibly useful stat for DPS classes for a simple reason: they’re doing stuff 100% of the time, one ability/spell after another to deal as much damage as possible. We don’t. If it’s useful for healers that’s only because once healing is needed, we want to deliver it as quickly as possible, but that’s not what druids do either. Sure now we have a lot more of that (more powerful regrowths, nourish, nerfed lifeblooms), but we work around HoTs. We stack HoTs. If we need more HPS, we use regrowth and swiftmend. And only if that’s not enough either we rely now on HT and/or Nourish on top of that (I’m guessing just Nourish though), which is quite a limited situation to take advantage of haste.
Sometimes multiple targets need healing, but then we spread HoTs. First, why would I want to keep rejuvenation on 12-14 targets? Second, if haste is just saving me one or two talent points.. where should I put them? I don’t feel like I need them.
Haste isn’t that great there either. And if high HPS is needed on several targets at the same time (perfect situation to spam direct heals and finally take advantage of that haste), we’re just the wrong class to do so.
We’ll probably be good healers with this gear, but this is far from optimum. “We don’t want every stat to be useful for you” is just a lame excuse to justify this whole “item unification” business. We don’t need haste or crit, just like rogues don’t need the absurd amounts of stamina they’re getting. The purpose was reasonable, but it has been poorly handled. Maybe “this gear will do”, but it’s a bad design. Holy paladins don’t have this problem because they have specific gear, while “putting +hit in spellpower leather feels wrong because it would be moonkin-specific”. They’ve messed everything up.
One thing that would help druid healing scale with crit would be to make it similar to how shadow priest dots scale with it:
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=15473
Pay attention to the part saying “Your Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, and Vampiric Touch abilities deal increased percentage damage equal to your spell critical strike chance.”
That means if I have 15% crit chanche all the dots tick for 15% more damage. Of course in addition to what is on my tooltip I also benefit from whatever debuffs the target has, usually that means I’m having around 35-40% crit against bosses raid-buffed.
The original post has a good point, if we resort to addons to calculate mana regen down to a single number then we are supposedly missing out on all the “fun” of guessing which raid member will get the biggest upgrade from an item. This “fun” of missing a guess and not using an item another member could definitely benefit from, is also what leads to wasted items, guild grudges and fights when the next item drops – not fun.
A possible solution would be showing the character stats along side the Dressing Room, so as I equip an item for looks, I could see (and make a case for) whether or not it would be an upgrade. But stats alone are no longer what makes up mana regen, so it looks like we’ll have an element of guessing for a long time.
On our server healers and tanks were at a premium so after levelling as a Moonkin I returned to Treeform to help the guild. I’ve been very disappointed with the direction the Devs have gone with this spec (based on what I saw at 70 and what was being reported from the PTR) but it is a challenge to revamp my healing ‘philosophy/style’. I regarded my roll as a buffer in raids. I wasn’t afraid of ‘overhealing’ always feeling that the ‘ticks’ were there for when the ‘hole appeared’ in the wall. I can no longer heal successfully that way without major help with mana regen.
I’ve been very lucky with drops in both Heroics and Naxx 10 man. In Treeform I have over 1600 spell power and 900 spirit. I can get almost 280mp5 while casting self buffed yet I always pot and innervate whenever it is up. I am specced heavily into Treeform but have 15 points in the Psuedo-balance talents. I speced to use the Healing Touch glyph and use the Swiftmend and Innervate or Regrowth glyphs (I prefer the regrowth but the innervate glyph helps other casters and I won’t drop the Swiftmend…not decided on the HT). 4.5-7k .95sec HT has saved the tank often in Heroics where spike damage is often brutal. It was also quite useful in 10 man Naxx. I don’t find my Hots keeping ahead of the auras and spike damage by themselves. I probably use Wild Growth too often as a ‘quick’ remedy.
I think there’s a number of reasons for these things happening. Despite CC being improved for many classes people are loathe to use it, preferring to ‘zerg’ through in quick march fashion. Pally and Death Knight tanks (even the good ones) seem most prone to this. My spell selection and willingness to use the O5SR need to get better on many levels. Most druids I talk with as well as what I read on EJ forums and other venues seem to indicate the majority of Trees aren’t complaining about mana. Maybe I need to watch those health bars drop a little further before I start spamming heals but on the Heroic level, at least, I see too many go from 75%-dead before I can get a heal off for me to be comfortable with that style.
Phaelia thanks for all your hard work. Are there any plans for you to update your mana regen guides for WOTLK?
“I can get almost 280mp5 while casting self buffed yet I always pot and innervate whenever it is up.”
Thats the whole point. You don’t even talk about your mana regen when NOT casting. it’s only 5 seconds. it’s not like you have to stand around doing nothing for hours.
Also why should fights which are challenging in your current equip not require you to use innervate (a mere 6 minute cooldown) and one mana potion per fight (more isn’t possible now anyway)?
My mana regen (and i get up to 1200 spirit and 800 int raidbuffed) is at over 1000 mana per 5 seconds outside the 5 second rule.
Also haste rating helps staying outside the 5 second rule longer. Since you can heal faster when it becomes unavoidable.
To the poster who put healing touch from his bars. Thats just a big mistake. As i described. Just start a cast of healing touch on a target which is going to get damage. Like your tank. You let it run throuch to lets say 0,5 seconds. Most ist 0,2 seconds since then the cast will go through by default no matter what you do. And if your targets health is not low enough to fully take a critical healing touch (should be about 12000 or somewhat more healing) you just stop the cast and immediately start a new one.
All this time you are considered NOT casting. Which means you are outside the 5 second rule. And when your tank gets damage you are most of the time almost done with a 8000 to 12000 heal and also when the heal goes off you have no global cooldown and thus can hit another instant like swiftmend. Since even lifebloom now can tick for up to 10 seconds (talent +2 seconds, glyph +1 seconds) even if you keep ALL your HoTs (besides wild growth maybe) on your tank you still get outside the 5 second rule often. And then your mana regen is at least 3x what it usally is. The more spirit/int you stack the higher the ratio.
Also consider that the talent natures swiftness is now off the global cooldown. You can use it while being in a global cooldwon and directly after the end of the gcd hit with an instant healing touch every 3 minutes. Which makes this “dangerous” kind of healing a lot more controllable too.
P.S.: The HT glyph in my view is for PvP perhaps. Why use healing touch when you can use noursih? With that glyph. And it also makes ns worthless since that healing touch is halved in healing too. Keep HT as your big heal. The HT glyph is for PvP, perhaps for ferals who don’t always have a hot on them when they need a fast heal.
I said it pre-3.0 and I’ll do it again, 0.5 seconds less haven’t made much difference. Healing Touch is still too slow to be used efficiently; it overheals, if not by itself, due to other casters with faster heals. It’s a good spell for 5-man instances, bad for more. I don’t wanna spend boss fights standing still and “almost casting” spells when I’m supposed to be the most mobile healer in the raid
On the other hand, I’d rather cast Nourish twice than a single Healing Touch just for the better control on healing done. When the difference between a crit and a non-crit means several k hp, it’s really easy to overheal. Accurate timing brings less overhealing, and in turn similar, if not greater, efficiency.
About the glyph, I totally agree. I’ve never understood its purpose at 80 when we have Nourish (before 80 it may be “ok”). The only thing I can think of is feral druids in PvP, who always take 5/5 naturalist anyway, but even them may have better glyph choices.
Mârus is right on a few things, although I don’t see eye to eye with the haste rating. In my opinion, it’s almost useless. Resto druids have so many instant options available plus our talent that reduces the global cooldown, the minute chances you actually use that haste rating doesn’t outbalance the need for spirit and int. I’m sure Mârus agrees with this, too, but his posts gives is a bit of a “get haste!” feel.
That said, don’t forget a lot of misc pieces for healers will have haste simply because priests, paladins and shamans will be wanting these pieces, too, and they benefit more from haste than us. Now, when a *leather* piece has haste, I lift a brow.
As for healing troubles; I don’t understand why. Maybe it’s because I’m not 80 yet (currently only 74, although armory still shows 73). However, like Mârus has pointed out, out of combat regen is insaine. I’ve never needed to drink, even after boss fights, in all my dungeon runs since the changes to int/spirit in the 3.x patch. It’s awesome. You just need to time your heals right, try to get outside the 5 sec rule as often as possible, and your mana regen worries are over.
Stat wise, I think Armadron is a bit low, too. I’m only holding one piece from Hyjal, and everything else is badge based (tops) and I’m racking almost 600 spirit, unbuffed, giving me over 550 mana regen outside of combat. It’s awesome! I just stand there and I’m FM within a minute (I have over 10k mana). Only times I’ve had any near issue with mana/healing is 1) when I forget about the 5sec rule and just go crazy and 2) when the tank is WAY undergeared (at 74, with my gear, I’ve been able to compensate for semi-poor gear tanks).
Mârus speaks the truth.
Druids are now more than just one-dimensional HOT specialists. In fact, with the lifebloom mana increase and potion sickness – always rolling lifeblooms+rejuv (especially in long fights that strain your mana pool) is not a good idea.
Like Marus said you actually want to take make a few trips outside of the 5 second rule during encounters to benefit from the beastly mana regen we are capable of getting from just being outside the 5 second rule.
In short – we still have the best HoTs of all healers but its not the only or the most effective way to heal anymore.
@Karthis: I actually wasn’t aware that there were SO MANY stats that aren’t helping Druid tanks. That has to be incredibly frustrating. I understand that Rogues are pretty unhappy with all the itemization points being “wasted” on Stamina, too.
@Amradorn: I’ve been pleasantly surprised with Phaelia’s mana regeneration in Wrath, though I’m not yet level 80 and so have no experience in Heroics. One thing that helps is using an addon that makes your Omen of Clarity procs much more visible. An Omen of Clarity proc means I cast a Regrowth or a Wild Growth. I often start my HoTs on the MT with Lifebloom + Rejuve + Lifebloom + Lifebloom. If any of those spells procs an OOC, I’ll throw up a Regrowth and then resume.
@Krythia: At the risk of getting egg on my face in my own comments, you’ve never died with me as a healer, right? Assuming you were tanking of course and that Anti didn’t pull three groups onto us.
I just can’t believe you would feel less safe with a Druid! I feel stronger than ever, though admittedly that could have something to do with the fact I have Revive now!
@ShopShopShop: While I think that critting HoTs would lead to greater overhealing, a HoT only works when someone is below max health. A double tick is just that much more likely to top them off. I think it could actually work.
@Eggo: You make an excellent point about the 5/5 talents. That’s definitely something to consider.
@Yggdrasil: I think you’re onto something with those gear comparisons! Apparently, Holy Paladins have it made in the shade in terms of itemization. I swear if I see one more piece of worthless spell damage plate drop I’m going to spontaneously combust.
@Hepzibah: The biggest drawback of any Dreamstate build is going to be sacrificing Wild Growth. In my experience (and probably yours, too, I’d guess), WG is pretty phenomenal for 5-man healing. There are so many boss encounters where it’s a lifesaver to not have to worry about topping everyone off or precasting a ton of Lifeblooms to accomplish the same thing. I’d personally rather focus on improving my mana regeneration than to drop Wild Growth for Dreamstate.
@Arktouros: You make an excellent point about the level of gear your tank has (and probably how good your groupmates are at not taking unnecessary damage). No doubt everything will get easier as our companions grow into level 80.
@Heike: YIKES! That sounds incredibly frustrating. It’s been bad enough finding so few upgrades on my way to level 80 (I’m sure it doesn’t help that we’ve done levels 70-78 in HF, BT, GH, and Dragonspine only). I would be very sad to have to replace one of the few upgrades I’ve found because my mana couldn’t keep up. =/
@Riverrun: I think many people miss the connection between Lifebloom’s increased mana cost and (potentially) increased duration. Really, the HPM is not that much lower than it was (though its HPS took a considerable hit, requiring you to bolster it with other spells).
@Ayl: Swiftmend and Regrowth glyphs — a Tree after my own heart.
Those are my two favorites, as well.
@Suicidal Zebra: In lieu of affecting the GCD, I’d like to see haste increase the speed at which HoTs tick, much as they increase the speed of channelled spells like Tranquility. In other words, at a certain level of haste, you could expect to get seven ticks of Regrowth in 20 seconds instead of 21.This might require a “smoothing” of health returned from HoTs similar to what they’ve done with mana, but it would definitely make haste a more desirable stat for Restos.
The problem with spell crit could be solved by replacing any one of our terribad endgame Restoration talents (GoETM, Living Seed, or Replenish) with a talent that allowed HoT ticks to crit.
@Tarqon: I agree that Nourish needs more talents that provide synergy. Right now there just aren’t enough ways to improve the spell (unlike Regrowth).
@Mârus: I have to disagree with the idea that Druids should be striving to get — and stay — outside of the five second rule. The nature of a heal over time is that it is cheap because so much of it is often wasted. It should be there as a safety net or a buffer that doesn’t drain your mana to maintain (leaving you more mana to heal proactively). Because Lifebloom is a stacking HoT, you are going to be refreshing it on at least one target, sometimes two. With Nature’s Splendor and one tank, you have a possible maximum of 3 seconds outside the 5SR (9 sec LB = 8 sec refresh), assuming you can afford to twiddle your branches and cast nothing else.
You are describing the technique of “precasting” often associated with Priests and Greater Heal. The moment we start being primarily direct healers is the moment a reroll a Priest; after all, they’re always going to be better at it than we are. For me, I’ll keep my HoTs rolling (if on fewer targets) and bolster my mana regeneration to make that possible.
@Ermengol: I don’t really have anything specific to comment on except that I agree with everything you’ve written.
@Hoho: Any change like that would be most welcome. I think that Blizzard intended to make crit more attractive with the addition of Living Seed but it functioning as a percentage of effective healing makes it essentially worthless.
@Enth: I hadn’t even considered how much “fun” it will be trying to determine for whom an item is a bigger upgrade. I still look a bit askance at Warlocks rolling on “my” Spirit gear.
@Calaziar: The disinterest in using crowd control seems to be endemic of Wrath instances. I can only hope that CC becomes more important and useful in hte heroic versions of the instances we’re blowing through now. After all, Restos can Root and Hibernate! I’d love the opportunity to do so! P.S. Yes, I would like to update the MRC, though I admit I’m a bit nervous since they’re talking about simplfying the formula.
@Afterdream: As I said above, I’m not especially optimistic about my ability to get outside of the 5SR as long as I’m rolling one stack of Lifebloom (something that’s still expected). We aren’t Priests, and our spells shouldn’t be so expensive that we can’t afford to maintain them on at least one tank while performing other tasks.
Once you pick up some naxx gear, regen goes up dramatically. I already feel like I’m back up to sunwell levels of mana management, and I’m not even done getting naxx gear.
Also I picked up the Trinket Spirit-World Glass, which has 86 spirit and a click effect for 300ish more for 20 seconds.
Now innervate on myself with the glyph gives me 28,000 mana.
Resto druid itemization is a mess in Naxx. I just made a post on my own blog (Journeys in Azeroth) about how we Blizz is probably expecting us to do something different than we had been up to now (stacking spirit and mp5) since there are only 3 items that have spell power, spirit and mp5 at ilvl 200 in the game.
Crazy.
Elk
Lorangriels last blog post..Restoration druid itemization
For those druids that seem to look at Nourish as opposed to the glyphed HT. Currently the mana and healing done mechanics are as follows:
Glyphed Regrowth >> Regrowth > Glyphed HT > Nourish.
Meaning that our new spell at 80 is both less efficient, and less healing than its counterparts. Yes NS+HT is a big combo. But NS+RG+Swiftmend is equally if not more effective sometimes.
Nourish is a great spell … If you aren’t resto, or have points in talents that make any of your other resto spells better. I use it all the time as a moonkin or feral. Quite simply nourish doesn’t get enough out of our talents and without a glyph its lackluster and shouldn’t be used. The cast-cancel mechanic on HT was used in the 60 days and has long since been dropped for our quicker and more effective heals.
Not saying the spell is completely useless, just for those that are looking to optimize their efficiency/stats there are better options.
I think that ‘druids are the worst healer period’ style posts are somewhat alarmist. They have severe issue with spike damage, and can’t do heavy throughput but I have heard my guild healers complain that I’m no longer sporting bark. I don’t think the issue is that druid healers cannot heal (they clearly can), I think the problem is that they don’t bring anything important or unique (shields on loatheb), and are outshined by other classes in every category but damage soaking (and its arguable that discipline priests have us there too).
Resto gear is severely lacking however. I’m confused why blues cannot see the hypocrisy in some of their statements. Often they’ll laud something (shaman using chain-heal 90% of the time) yet chastise us for doing something similar (using lifebloom 90% of the time). Similarly they’ll make caster plate for paladins (+heal, +mp5, +crit) and then stick us with haste and other similarly worthless stats (I maintain that +crit is moonkin leather rather than caster most of the time).
The game still feels drastically unfinished however. We’ll just have to see what new gear, craftables and glyphs come to us with 3.1 before we get a more ‘complete’ picture of what we’re supposed to do.
Hi, I’ve been lurking here for a while now, picking up tips on how to play the resto druid I’ve specifically levelled up for Wrath. What surprises me is that people are having problems. I have yet to step into Naxx, but have had zero mana problems healing heroics. I’ve yet to touch a mana potion since stepping into Northrend, and hardly ever touch innervate.
My armory is here: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Moon+Guard&n=Nimiel
My glyphs are: Lifebloom, Swiftmend and Rejuv (which I’ve yet to find a Regrowth one to replace).
I start with rejuv (big swirly thing is a signal to tank that I’m ready), and stack 3 Lifeblooms, and keep those up. If the tank health drops a enough, I give him a Regrowth. Drops more, I give him a swiftmend. Drops more, I cast healing touches in between lifeblooms. Meanwhile, I hand out single LBs and rejuvs to other party members like candy, occasionally a regrowth or swiftmend or NS/HT if they need a boost. Nourish is not on my bars as I’ve never had any use of it. Wild Growth typically only to counter AoE damage. Both trinkets are macroed to my Lifebloom button.
A simple rejuv+3xLB can be maintained indefinitely at full-mana. The most trying of fights take me down to maybe 30% at worst (rolling LBs on the whole party and dumping stuff on the tank). I don’t know what’s different, but I’ve basically just been following all the advice I see here.
@NIMEL -
I went to your armory, frankly either the group that you are with is exceptionally good in T7/T7.5 gears OR you have off healer like a friendly elemental shaman or discipline priest OR you CC every 2 of every 4 mob pull OR you only been doing H UK.
If none of the above is true, there is absolutely no way you can survive healing lvl 80 heroics without mana pot or innervate.
Sorry I just don’t see it is possible.
As for the rest of the readers who newly dinged 80 in 70 T6/T6.5 heal set, my only advice is get WOTLK gears (blue ones are fine) and replace it. My mana shot from 12K to 16K unbuff, and I am not done replacing yet…… once you have geared up in WOTLK blues, mana will be less of an issue.
Humm,
Well, nobody has T7 gear other than badge ones, as we’re holding off on Naxx till January while the rest of the guildies catch up. Feel free to armory the guild tanks, whom I run with. No, there’s no off-healer, except the one time we PUGed a ret pally and he liked to heal himself rather than waiting for HoTs to tick. Since we stepped into heroics last week, we’ve done UK, Nexus, Strat, and VH, so I guess those might be the easier ones. And no, we don’t CC anything.
We got the “Defeat Zuramat the Obliterator in The Violet Hold without killing any void sentries” achievement last night. That was the time I was rolling lifeblooms on the full group and ended with a tranquility. It was quite exhilerating.
However, we do run almost exclusively within the guild, so there are no idiots and everybody excels in their role. And that’s about it. I don’t know what to say… Something must be different.
I just did my first Naxx yesterday (yay!) while still wearing 90% of my BT/SWP stuff (my second day as 80 /blush; when guild needs healers, guild needs healers!) and my first impressions so far: first, just as suspected HoT stacking on tanks is not only useful but more entertaining now as I have plenty of time (10s-lifeblooms, 18s-rejuvenations) to do much more meanwhile (I’ve never been a pure LB roller myself and this feels even better). The main difference is lifebloom heals a less significant portion of health that it used to in TBC, so it’s less of a buffer, yet still quite valuable.
On our best try on Patchwerk I did 17% of overall healing (2nd was a heroic-geared priest with 12%) by focusing heals on all tanks, probably a perfect fight for druids. This meant LB/rejuv rolling on 3-4 targets with intensive use of WG and regrowth. About 65% of it was “pure” HoTs, and practically the rest regrowth, swiftmend and NS+HT. I think I used nourish only a dozen times during the whole raid, yet I did fine.
And in case anyone’s wondering, yeah, mana was a huge problem, even though I was second last in overhealing (it went perfect through the spider wing, but I ran oom on every try at Patchwerk). Hopefully this will change soon enough by improving gear.
@Zaira: about “Glyphed Regrowth >> Regrowth > Glyphed HT > Nourish”, not exactly. Nourish is more efficient than glyphed HT even if you have 2/2 Empowered Touch and your target doesn’t have an HoT. The speed difference isn’t worth the loss of mana, talent points and a glyph slot. Nourish is also better than regrowth if your target already has it (although like I said, regrowth is my first choice, and depending on how many HoT ticks are left I’ll re-cast it or not)
To sum up: so far I don’t need crit or haste, thanks
Hi, somewhat new reader of resto4life, how come I never heard of this!
Anyway, Geren from The Sha’tar(EU) saying Hi!
As to the whole regen issues, I personally don’t feel them that much. My first timers in heroics was hectic yea, but once I knew what was going on, and could “predict” damage spikes, everything was no problem at all. Felt much like the old days in BC where drinking wasnt needed (aah, the days you didnt drag around 2 bags of water).
When in heroics I generally tend to stack rejuv on partymembers if AOE is incoming. This makes nourish wonderful for spothealing around. WG helps aswell here of course, and the tank is the standard 3xLB, rejuv, regrowth if needed, and if that isnt enough, nourish. (yes, I use it alot, and yes I love it.)
Glyphing for HT is something I would never even consider.. regrowth, swiftmend and ninervate are my glyphs of choice.
Crit/Haste, hrum, I guess I can see the concerns some druids have, and I think copying the ideas from SPs like someone suggested would be neat and loveable. If you are hastecapped, I guess you can always skip some points in GOTEM. I know I plan to if I ever reach it, and start dumping the points in Natures Grace.
Ugh, it ended up long. TLDR: I love my druid, I feel better than ever, specially with WG and Nourish, its just about learning/getting the feel for the new druidstyle and stop headrolling lifeblooms all over the place in my opinion.
Keep the blog coming Phae, its a great read on a cloudy danish thursday morning
Yep, it’s a true mess…. Hit 80 after tanking my way through WoTLK (our raidguild had 8 tanks and 25 healers, go figure…), respecced back to resto, and my first heroic (Azjol) was going to be a blast. After all tanking it in BT/SWP gear was easymode…WRONG !!! I lacked mana after 1 minute, couldn’t possibly keep up with some of the AoE damage because I had 3 melee with me and on top of it all I was as rusty as a Eastern European car during the cold war.
So started to redo all my gear. Throwing out all mana/5 and replacing it with huge amounts of spirit and int. If the mana doesn’t want to regen, I will just have to stack more of it ? Did some Naxx 25 in the meantime and the guild zerged through there like nothing (like all WoTLK content) but must say that I am very unhappy to see how some healer classes are doing a job very easy and how much we struggle to even keep enough mana. On the other hand, it does provide us with a challenge in content which is very easy (but very nice, Wrathgate event ftw !).
As to Nourish: I use it quite a lot. 3x Lifebloom, Rejuve, Regrowth and while regenerating mana I use a Nourish at those occasions when my tank has more than 6k damage. It is rather cheap compared to the other spells and is pretty okay for tactical healing. WG was a blast at the start, but the mana cost is not worth using it too much. Unfortunately, I liked the idea of our own CoH.
I picked up the Earthgiving boots and legs and that has helped some. I’m currently working on getting mats for the Wispcloak. I’m going to keep trying, all though I have been tempted to go Moonkin for a while and collect badges for some badge gear upgrades and then head back into healing.
Amradorns last blog post..Feeling Totally Inadequate
(I do not know why, but NONE of my comments are making it through .. will this one? Third attempt at a reply, of some sorts).
@Gofurr: “WG was a blast at the start, but the mana cost is not worth using it too much.”
WG has its place. For me, right now, at 74, healing basic dungeons, it’s when every I’m too lazy to heal the whole group with Lifebloom. I ran my first VH instance last night, with a level 73 tank. It was a breeze! Literally. I had zero problems healing him or the group (Mage, DK, Fury Warrior, Prot warrior and myself – DK was 75, everybody else was 72/73). When ever Omen popped, I just targeted myself, ran into the mobs and hit WG. That talent, imo, it totally worth it.
As for the mana regen discussions .. my past two replies never made it through: take advantage of our HoTs and our ability to get outside of the 5 second rule. I have over 550 mana regen/200 in combat with sole buff. I can add potions which throw me well over 600 in/250 out. I had zero mana issues. I ended the last boss at 50+% mana.
@Phaelia
I think the reason I didn’t die was more because I was running a level 76 dungeon at level 80. I’d have felt safe with a ret pally healing me there.
Once we run some heroics we will see how that changes.
@Gofurr
Azjol’Nerub is one of the hardest heroic instances. Definitely not one you should step into after just hitting 80. In fact, I ran it with a few people that had gotten a few heroic drops and we still couldn’t get the last boss down. The place is a pain, and not for the weak of gear.
I’d just like to say that I hit 80 and literally 5 seconds after hitting 80 was invited to heal Naxx 10man. I was full T6 I’d replaced a weapon, offhand ring and that was about it. Trying to heal through Patchwerk was pure hell, even from just rolling hots I was out of mana and using innervate by 75%. Right there that slapped me in the face and I started stacking spirit. If I can gem for spirit I do, if I can enchant for spirit I do. since this, and I started to get more Naxx and heroic gear. I’m now running about 1500 spirit in raid, approximately 530 mp5 while casting and my mana troubles are roughly gone. In a 10 man situation I’ve found resto druids to be 40-50% of the healing given 3 healers with 5-10% overhealing. In 25-man situations, resto druids appear to be 5-10% higher than everyone else with 10-15% overhealing. It almost seems now that us druids are the strongest healers in the game.
When it comes to 5-man healing I find myself using nourish a lot and that if the tank ever takes burst damage that spamming nourish 2 or 3 times usually completely nullifies that especially when you get a nature’s grace proc combined with the glyph of Rejuv proc if a tank ever dips bellow 50% health they aren’t there long. After a few Heroic gear pieces I have no problem with any fights on the worste of bosses I use innervate and a mana pot and I’m fine.
As for haste and crit they are just icing on the cake truely, in my experience haste allows you to throw your hots up there and then have more time to sit and regen a bit. There always seems to be a moment in many boss fights where you can just roll hots and have a chance to get your non-casting regen. For example on Thaddius in Naxx I can blow my full mana pool on the first two undead and then regen to full before the tank engages Thaddius.
I had my doubts at the start of the xpac if I would be able to keep up my competitive healing nature as a resto druid and now those doubts are washed away, without a doubt imo druid are the strongest healers in the game atm.
Ive always loved resto as a druid and since i hit 80 ive hit the ground running with heroics i have not seen a problem in my healing abilities unless tank is undergeared or dps is lacking (dps means alot in lvl 80 heriocs) I have found that i almost always have to use Innervate during herioc boss battles but this does not bother me due to the innervate glpyh (which is a must have for raiding druids) and i just figure its a necessity that blizzard intended. Nourish is a necessary filler when all my HoTs are active and i use wayyy more then i thought i would. I just believe that blizzard wanted use to use more spells and fillers along with our swiftmend which i also use quite often. Either or i have not experienced a problem and have been given multiple kudos on not letting players get below 50% of there hp and healing clothies and leathers 75% with one regrowth.
To be clear, so my intent isn’t mistaken, I was not saying Druids are bad healers now. They aren’t.
The problem is inappropriate itemization. Haste and Crit are roughly as beneficial to Restoration Druids as Agility is to a Holy Priest (hooray for lucky dodges and more armor!), and should never have come at the expense of Spirit, which, if nothing else, Balance Druids find more use for than we do for Haste and Crit. I’m okay with SOME Haste and Crit being found on our gear, but the amounts that are featured are positively obscene.
And yes, Phae, I too have noted the…profound…amount of gear clearly meant for for Holy Paladins. The implied purpose of the change to spellpower is that it would improve the likelihood of players finding gear they could use, and reducing the frustration of constantly disenchanting loot that might have been nice for someone if they’d have been present.
Why they chose to invest so many items toward 1 spec of 1 class, which is literally either useless to anyone else who can wear it, or not available to use because of the armor class, is totally beyond me, and basically defeats part of the purpose of the change. I’d have seen far more reason in an overwhelming amount of cloth caster gear, since every caster/healer at least CAN use that.
Just to update – I did heal my first heroic and found that much, much easier than Naxx. And that was with a ret pally who’d spec’ed prot and scrounged up random gear as the tank. No mana issues at all – I’d use innervate on boss fights but never had to pot and didn’t really worry.
So it looks like my route is definitely to go that way until I can find some more upgrades with spirit or mp5 on it.
My healing on my Naxx trip was absolutely fine, it was a purely mana issue I do agree that resto druids are extremely strong healers. I was having and I really wish there were more pieces sensitive to that.
Part of my problem is that – I hate wearing cloth. Absolutely, positively hate it. Part of that is I don’t want to take a gear upgrade from a class that can only wear cloth and part of it is simply how I see the druid – and I think not itemizing for resto druids with assumption they can pick up cloth pieces is sort of a cop-out. Although I am glad balance druids are really getting some love now.
@Phaelia: Indeed, (tongue in cheek) rolling on an item screaming “it’s healing/warlock/moonkin gear” is surely not what the original posters had in mind with their discussion about how to learn what is an upgrade and what is not.
Also, this post about figuring out mana regen itemization has this strong sub-theme of “my mana regen is/was fine/sucky”. Who else here feels that the intent of the original Lifebloom/WG mana nerfs have turned out to be just what blizzard has intended? To quote Phae quoting GC from September: http://www.resto4life.com/2008/09/30/9014-nerfs-and-ghostcrawler-responds-to-resto-concerns/
“Remember, we do want you to run out of mana. If we didn’t want mana management to be part of the game, we’d just cut the cost of all your healing spells and call it a day.”
I welcome and really enjoy the current mana constraints. It is forcing me to make harder choices of what and when I cast, considering the duration of the encounter, OOC procs, Replenishment procs, Innervate cooldown, Potion use, the five second rule, and what our other healers are doing. It’s forcing me to communicate more with the other healers and as a result we’re working more as a team. Yay for teamwork!
Us trees now have loads of burst potential. And as a result, in heroics, I’m healing with a completely different style than in raids. I will often HoT up the tank, and cast-cancel unglyphed/untalented healing touches. A big spike comes in, and I’m let the healing touch land, then start with a nourish and I still have time to refresh the lifebloom.
Wow, the double whammy regrowth+switfmend combos, the crits! (with nature’s guidance), the haste for those juicy pally heals, our lovely lovely dependable HoTs, the super-mobile waddling tree butt… and life/death snap choices triaging heals. My play style has transformed from squeezing everything I can into 7 seconds, into a plethora of responses depending on the type of incoming damage, who I’m with and some mysterious mana regen formula. (I’m even *not* casting for 5 seconds. Who heard of a druid *not* casting?!?) I’m having more fun than ever! Guessing at mana regen doesn’t hurt my fun much, because I control more of what I’m spending my mana on. What about you?
The main trouble I’m having in Wrath is not keeping up, per se, but knowing what gear is for me. Resto druids in my Naxx 25 are basically waiting behind everyone else, because everything out there is “better” for moonkin or priest. I’d like my own niche gear with the combo of mp5, spirit, and spellpower that I like so much. With my guild’s loot council system, it’s really hard to know when to allocate anything but a tier piece to a druid.
I must say, the general opinion of healing druids disappoints me, greatly. I hit level 80 four and a half days after the release of Wrath and was in heroic Obsidian Sanctum and Naxxramas that same evening. I will say that I won’t take gear that lacks in spirit, but I will say also that I’m not all that disappointed with having haste and crit, either. The haste on gear will mean I can eventually spec out of GotEM and take other talents in the Balance or Resto tree. Crit also means I am more likely to keep Living Seed up on a target when I do need to cast heals with cast times (I’m thinking of Nourish here, primarily, not just Regrowth which does still benefit from having crit chance).
I healed my very first heroics right before the raid. Occulus and Pinnacle in my level 70 raiding gear (which was a mix of QD badge gear, MH and BT gear, with only two pieces of T7). My mana regen was through the floor. I had to drink after every single fight, even trash, and for the first week of raiding, I had to innervate myself constantly. After three weeks, I am loving it. I almost never go OOM anymore and my style of healing competes decently with our very talented raid CoH healers. Healing heroics now is laughable and I have found that Nourish is an excellent spell if a stack of full HoTs (LBx3, Rejuv, Regrowth & WG) isn’t quite topping off a tank that may be undergeared. After all, people are still getting gear, so not every tank is going to be optimal for heroics. That’s why we help them get there.
All in all, I’m pretty comfortable right now with where my healing stands in comparison to other classes. Culling of Strat is currently my favorite heroic just because of how absolutely resto Druid friendly the instance is in terms of mobile healing and the bosses. I suppose, ultimately, that time will tell how well our healing scales in comparison to other healing classes, but for now, I’m happy. And for people who say WG isn’t all that great… What? Really? You’re doing it wrong. And if you really feel it isn’t healing enough, do what I do. Consider the damage your party is taking, and once the tank is smothered in HoTs, drop a WG on your party followed up with individual LBs or rejuvs dependent on the amount of damage they may be receiving.
Maybe I’m just spoiled because I no longer really have mana problems, but I’m certainly living it up right now.
-Rensaelys of Dark Iron
Ok, finally my first nite out at Naxx. We downed 9 bosses in 4 hours; considering a lot of us were first-time in Naxx thats respectable.
We ran with 2 healers, both TREES!! yay us. Unbuffed I have 15xx+ healing with 7xx (247mp5). Both trees shared the healing 50/50 throughout the raid which is great stuff.
But I had to innervate myself in boss fights, sadly, I find mana regeneration is still the problem in my current build/gears.
I lament on Blizzard’s poor choice of gear itemization for druid. I mean do you realise there is ZERO MP5 leather gears in Naxx (normal), and for the 29 pieces of gears with spirit, 6 items are with hit rating?
I am in a dillema what to get, MP5 (which means I wear cloth) or spirit (means I will be making enemy with a lot of warlocks). sigh whine whine whine.
Am I alone here feeling as such? Blizzard truly screwed resto gears badly this time around imo.
Since the last post in these comments was “only” 3 days ago i guess i can still add one.^^
Well my mana regen is now at something like 1200 and i think 400 or 500 raid buffed. Thats insane. Getting outside the 5 second rule is mandatory. especially since our HoTs run longer now and manaregen is not ticking anymore but running in “real time”.
And i mean rolling liveblooms on 5 or now even more targets for a full fight wasn’t exactly what the developers intended i guess. I mean you could practically guarantee no one is dying by having 1000 hps on everybody all the time.^^
But i share your view on equip. Haste is not the statt we desire yet there is no alternative. Everything with spirit on it has either haste or crit. Or hit rating…which obviously isn’t really helpfull for healers.^^
But…don’t our HoTs benefit from haste rating? Don’t they tick faster? Thats whats supposed to happen to DoTs, isn’t it? Only there were a few bugs. Mindflay for example.
If they could find a way of haste rating making our HoTs tick through faster…that might make sense. More HPS. Probably it needs to be toned down by a factor because otherwise it would be to strong.
I am still gonna post too.
I don’t understand a lot of the QQ about healers. I understand that everyone has has different game playing styles and that’s OK. But I don’t think its realistic for Bliz to accommodate them all.
(1) I don’t agree that healing is all about consistency. To me, one of the great joys of playing a druid is that *luck* plays a significant role in what we do. I like that.
(2) If the party wipes, it wipes. Players shouldn’t win all the time. If they do, where’s the challenge? It just seems like masturbation to me.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with Druid healing. I just think there is a lot of unrealistic expectations out there.
@ Akia: Mana regen is fine at level 74. What you don’t seem to realize is, that every level higher you get, the cost of _all_ your spells increases, and at the same time your mp5 as well as spirit based regen decreases. My resto druid had about 250 mp5 at level 73 or so. By level 79, that was down to barely 170 mp5 (even with gear upgrades). That’s just due to the fact that you need more spirit per point of mana regen the higher your level. At the same time, the cost of all your healing spells increases, since your base mana increases. That comfortable mana regen you had at level 74 with ~600 spirit is going to take 1000 spirit to achieve at level 80. If you intend to heal heroics with your BT/Badge/T6 gear at 80 without any new level 80 blues/epics, you’re going to be in for a rude shock.
@Werebeef: OMNOMNOMNOM I must have that trinket!
@Lorangiel: Druids really shouldn’t have been “stacking” MP5 in TBC, especially after the mana regeneration changes in Patch 2.4. Spirit and Intellect were just so much cheaper for a much better return.
@Zaira: I agree with your prioritization of spells and evaluation of Nourish.
@Nimiel: I haven’t had many problems in 5-man instances (even Heroics) with the exception of a couple of close calls or near wipes where I couldn’t sustain a large HPS throughput on my tank while keeping myself alive (the first boss in Heroic Strat). However, I definitely noticed the strain in 10-man Naxx. Then again, I remember having similar difficulty when I first entered Karazhan. I’m sure we’ll eventually grow into that level of play.
@JKong: Whenever someone says they can handle fights without running OOM, I don’t necessarily take that to mean “without Innervate.” I probably need my Innervate on about 50% of Heroic boss fights and am unashamed to use it! Maybe Nimiel does as well.
@Ermengol: I do suspect (hope?) that the undergeared entrance into Naxx was the source of your mana regen problems on Patchwerk. I’ve yet to step foot in Naxx, yet, but I don’t necessarily feel my gear is up to snuff as it should be, either. Must … level … leatherworking … erk!
@Geren: Welcome and thank you for commenting! Sorry I’ve been so late to respond to all of these. Moving points out of GotEM as your haste increase (involuntarily or otherwise) is not a bad idea. The problem is, I’m just not seeing anything I want and have only picked up GotEM to access Wild Growth. =/
@Gofurr: I’ve tried to like Nourish. If my tank is in trouble and taking too much steady damage, spamming Regrowth seems about twice as effective and gives me a decent chance to “catch up.” Whereas Nourish hardly makes a dent. Phooey, I say!
@Amradorn: Grats on your two Earthgiving pieces. I’m sort of holding out on buying them because I know I can eventually craft them for skillups.
@Akia: Sorry about the commenting trouble. Hopefully it’s cleared up now!
@Krythia: *Ahem*
@Aureai: It sounds like you may be overvaluing Spirit relative to Intellect. Remember that the addition of Replenishment has shifted the scales more toward Int again. So, while you should pick up the gear option that includes Spirit (these generally also come with Intellect), try not to gem/enchant PURELY for Spirit. Pick up a few of the +16 Intellect blue gems, too!
@Jtmaxis: I’ve just recently acquired the Innervate glyph and so far really like it. It’s a very “passive” effect, though: much less flashy than glyphs that increase the duration of Lifebloom or boost your Regrowth direct heal. Still, I think it will be a must-have for introductory raiding while our mana regeneration is still catching up.
@Heike: Avoid Mp5. Stick with Intellect and Spirit. You should still get more bang for your buck.
@Enth: I am not entirely opposed to mana conservation being a core issue for healing. I agree that it does make things more interesting than simply who can AoE heal the quickest (OOC procs, as you mention, are particularly engaging). I just hope that some of the mana shortages I’ve heard about are the result of undergearing and not an endemic problem with increased costs and reduced mana regen. It’s certainly no fun to twiddle your thumbs waiting for enough mana to Lifebloom. ^^
@Sydera: That’s definitely a downside of a loot council I wouldn’t have normally considered. At least with DKP, you can determine for yourself if it’s worth spending your efforts on! I imagine that waiting behind everyone else would get very frustrating very quickly.
@Rensaelys: I’m relieved to hear that you were able to overcome your initial struggles with mana. Maybe that’s something we can all look forward to!
@JKong: 9 bosses in 4 hours is awesome! Well, I’m quite impressed anyway. Grats!
I’m not sure why everyone keeps saying they want MP5? I was under the impression that Spirit/Intellect are still better, but I guess I need to crunch the numbers to make sure I’m not crazy. ^^
@Mârus: I agree that rolling LB on 4-5 targets was not only unintended but really, really sucked. My butt cheeks got numb from rocking back and forth trying to keep the rhythm going. Which was probably more than you needed to know, but …
No, HoTs don’t tick faster with haste. The only effect haste has is to reduce the GCD on our insta-cast HoTs and to make Regrowth cast faster. I would love if haste affected HoTs by increasing their HPS as you describe.
@Daniel: Players shouldn’t win all the time, but *I* should! Ha! Just kidding … mostly.
@Enq: Good explanation of mana regeneration scaling. Thank you.
it’s pretty obvious that blizzard wants us to use the crit/haste gear… why not use regrowth? the glyphs out there make it very good. 9k regrowth crits anyone?
@marus the reason mindflay scales with haste is because it’s channeled with a cast time.
@enq i healed the lower heroics just fine with my bt gear
@daniel i don’t think u should be healing
@Rensaelys when i started out doing the heroics i had to drink nearly every mob also, but the gear you get from heroics and raids makes it very easy. i only have to drink about twice in heroics now depending on how heavy a pull is
@Krythia azjol nerub was the first heroic i did with all my bt gear on… 0 deaths… easy instance
@jkong don’t be afraid to wear cloth
That’s also probably due to group makeup and the heroic you ran. Mana regen in BT gear when healing a heroic with a ret pally/surv hunter/spriest is probably enough. Try healing a PuG heroic Loken when the group decides to try the tactic of burning him down while standing at his feet and eating every single Lightning Nova, with no replenishment, and you’ll realize BT gear is woefully inadequate. That’s an extreme example though, but that was the first thing I did when I dinged 80, hence my experience says that BT gear isn’t enough for heroics, at least not all of them. I needed one of the dps to offheal before we downed him.
It also depends on the other players. If you PuG, and the tank has less than 20k HP and the dps doesn’t know how to move out of fire, you’ll be oom after every pull. My personal goal as a healer is to be able to heal any heroic, regardless of how bad the other players are. Yours may be different, perhaps you only care about running heroics with your guild of naxx 25 geared people. In that case BT gear might probably be sufficient for heroics. I PuG’ed _normal_ Azjol Nerub at 77 where the tank had barely 14k health, the dps didn’t know to move out of poison, focus fire or LOS the casters. I was oom after every boss, and completely oom after the last boss (innervated, potted etc). And my gear was high end BT gear.
@Enq: “My personal goal as a healer is to be able to heal any heroic, regardless of how bad the other players are.” An admirable (if potentially stressful) goal.