Resto Druid Haste Breakpoints

[Kiqjaq]

I've been toying around with Berserking a bit lately, since I've always been a strong believer that being able to keep up when things get rough is vastly more important than having a small amount more throughput for the entire fight. That said, I'm a Blood DK in raids; I hardly ever get a chance to raid with my Resto Druid.

But anyways, at the suggested 3043 haste rating, I'm only a couple of % away from additional Tranquility, Lifebloom, Wild Growth, Efflorescence, Rejuvenation, and Moonfire ticks with Berserking up. A lot happens going from 35% (12.52% + Berserking) to 37.6%, and I'm considering capitalizing on the effectively empowered Incarnation, Tranq, HotW, and just general Rejuv/WG spam if that's your thing.
At the moment the racial is practically wasted, giving only one Wild Growth/Efflo tick and a Lifebloom tick. I'll pop it if I want to spam Regrowth or Wrath harder usually.

If my math is right, I can get all this by getting to 3886 Haste. So that's effectively a cost of 843 Mastery, or 2%ish healing.

Those that raid: do you think this would be a worthwhile endeavor? I mean that as a general thing. If you're a troll at the 3043 breakpoint, are you willing to move up for this bonus, or is it too weak and situational to throw points into?

[Keiyra]

Hmm the cost is small but so is the benefit. It feels like a toss up to me.

On a fight that has repeated burst phases, like maybe Megaera or Durumu (light beam phase) - then the 10 secs of extra hot ticks might be worth it... i dunno 10 sec every 2 mins of a some hots getting +1 tick, versus 1.75% healing all the time from mastery. It so close as to be within the range of RNG. Try it out and see how it feels for you. If you make sure to make the most out of those 10 secs (WG+several rejuvs) might tip the scales in ur favor.

tl/dr 6 of one, half a dozen of the other. Try it out and see how it performs.

[Deleted]

I wouldnt say so, but without doing the maths I wouldnt like to say for certain. There again im more of a sustained healing sort of guy the idea of relying on something that you can only use every x minutes has never been my thing :P Losing 843 mastery is really going to be noticeable though.

[Kiqjaq]

Try it out and see how it performs.

It's not too noticeable in 5mans, and when my guild goes raiding I'm pretty much always a tank since only 1 other person in the guild can tank properly. Which is why I'm kind of just throwing it out there, so if anyone sees use in it they can go for it. This is all academic to me

But I'm not sure it is quite so minor... think of what "an extra tick" means for spells like Tranquility and Rejuv. They default to 4 ticks, though 5 is expected with any amount of haste. Pushing another tick on them is basically a 20% increase, which is what I would actually expect from a +20% haste cooldown. That's almost a proper HPS/DPS cooldown right there, and RDruids get virtually none of that benefit unless they put in the extra bit of stats.

Just a tank's thoughts on how healers should gear.

I wouldnt say so, but without doing the maths I wouldnt like to say for certain. There again im more of a sustained healing sort of guy the idea of relying on something that you can only use every x minutes has never been my thing :P Losing 843 mastery is really going to be noticeable though.

Eh, it's not a question math can answer really. It can tell you there's x benefit, but healing is more of an art than dps or tanking, so it won't tell you whether x benefit would be best for you.

[Deleted]

Still say losing 843 mastery is gonna hurt :P for something very situational... nah not for me.

[Keiyra]

But I'm not sure it is quite so minor... think of what "an extra tick" means for spells like Tranquility and Rejuv. They default to 4 ticks, though 5 is expected with any amount of haste. Pushing another tick on them is basically a 20% increase, which is what I would actually expect from a +20% haste cooldown. That's almost a proper HPS/DPS cooldown right there, and RDruids get virtually none of that benefit unless they put in the extra bit of stats.

Keep in mind Tranquility does not receive additional direct heals from haste, only the HoT it applies can receive additional ticks based on haste. So both the tranq hot portion and Rejuv would be going from 5 ticks, to 6. That may seem like a 20% increase, but especially with all the shields going around today, unless its during a high damage phase, a good portion of our hots go to overhealing, so its more like a 10-15% increase to say 8 Rejuvs...over 2 mins.

Taking a look at an log, our druid cast 65 rejuvs in 6 min fight. Rejuv overheal was around 50% (disc and pally, prolly should 2 healed it) but it was still the #1 heal.
Lets say you get to use bezerk 3 times and used it on 8 rejuvs each time (which is not normally what you would cast in a 10 man - 8 rejuvs in a row like that). 24/65

37% of your rejuvs would be lets say 10% more healing (20% more, with 50% overheal) - so 3.7% overall more rejuv. Which going my the log's numbers would be an total healing increase of 1.34% - That's pretty close to the 1.75% you'd get from mastery.

Had that fight been 2 healed, with less overheal and figure in WG usage too, mightve cranked out more... I think its a close call either way. Some fights may favor it, others may not. Something like Rampage on Maegara where i could see popping it and casting WG +8 rejuvs...yeah that might help. But few fights are so binary in their damage patterns.

Still think its a toss up, try it out. - I'd definitely pair it with Incarnation if you still use that. I don't know if it passes down to the Treants from FoN like normal haste, cause the 5.3 FoN may be worthwhile. Zerk+3 hasted treants might be nice if it works.

I'm on alliance so we don't have to worry about OP horde racials :P

[ythemaster]

Mastery is shit, go for the 6652 haste cap and Soul of the Forest, use swiftmend then wild growth. I'm head to head healing with disc priest. Try it.

[insanedruid]

Mastery is shit, go for the 6652 haste cap and Soul of the Forest, use swiftmend then wild growth. I'm head to head healing with disc priest. Try it.

It's like a 10% increase to one spell(WG) VS a 5.5% increase to all spell.
5.5% increase to all spell seems more attractive to me so I'll stick with 3043 haste.

[Monkeyofcode]

Mastery is shit, go for the 6652 haste cap and Soul of the Forest, use swiftmend then wild growth. I'm head to head healing with disc priest. Try it.

Mastery is far from "shit" it is our best stat once we get to 3043 Haste.

[ythemaster]

It's like a 10% increase to one spell(WG) VS a 5.5% increase to all spell.
5.5% increase to all spell seems more attractive to me so I'll stick with 3043 haste.

Mastery is far from "shit" it is our best stat once we get to 3043 Haste.

You guys not even tried 6652 haste, and talking about it like bad. Try it, its far more better than mastery.

Edit: Also WG is one of the primary heal of druid, dont mention it just "one spell"

[insanedruid]

You guys not even tried 6652 haste, and talking about it like bad. Try it, its far more better than mastery.

Edit: Also WG is one of the primary heal of druid, dont mention it just "one spell"

WG is *one* of the primary heal of druid so it's still just one spell.

I don't even need to try it to know if the 2nd breakpoint is good.
And even if you tried it how do you know it's actually better? Any math behind it?

For me my WG is less than 20% of me total heal. The 2nd breakpoint gives on one more tick on WG, which is from 8 to 9, a 12.5% increase.
for total heal it's 20%*12.5% = 2.5%
Lifebloom is ~ 15% of my healing, buffing it by 5% = 0.75%
So getting 6652 instead of 3043 = 3.25% healing increase.

On the other hand you lose 3,609 points of stat. For mastery it would be 7.5%.
Let's say you have 30% mastery losing the 7.5 % will be a 5.7% lost in total healing.
And if you assume 1 crit = 0.9 mastery, losing 3,609 crit is still a 5% healing lost.
That's without SotF.

With SotF your average number of tick per WG cast is even higher(ave of 12 ticks per cast),
which makes the extra tick provided by the 2nd breakpoint less appealing.(8.3% increase in WG)

I don't know if my calculation is correct but at least I try to provide something to support my claim.

[Kiqjaq]

I don't know if my calculation is correct but at least I try to provide something to support my claim.

I can always admire that.

The problem with your support though is that it holds up only if you're trying to top the scoreboard, not if you're trying to keep the raid alive. You're thinking like a dps, in terms of raw healing output, rather than the demands of the role.
Obviously, more healing is going to assist with your role, and I'd never turn down an advantage. But if you have to make a choice, then things can get more complex.


For example, let's consider this cost. For one thing, haste isn't worthless for anything but ticks. It gives you faster casts and a faster GCD on all but Rejuv. Your HoTs tick faster as well. Getting the entirety of your Rejuv into a crippled body quickly might make the difference.

For another, you have to consider *where* you want your buffs. All healers have what's considered "rotational" healing that's generally quite low mana cost for good effect, but it's limited by cooldowns or other resources. For us it's Lifebloom, Wild Growth, Swiftmend, and OoC procs. Any more than that is when you have to start dipping into your mana pool, to start spam Rejuving people and hardcasting Regrowth. The more power your rotational healing has, the less mana you need to start throwing at people for menial damage.

Is that worth it? It's not really something that you can math out all too well, it's a stylistic thing.

[insanedruid]

I can always admire that.

The problem with your support though is that it holds up only if you're trying to top the scoreboard, not if you're trying to keep the raid alive. You're thinking like a dps, in terms of raw healing output, rather than the demands of the role.
Obviously, more healing is going to assist with your role, and I'd never turn down an advantage. But if you have to make a choice, then things can get more complex.


For example, let's consider this cost. For one thing, haste isn't worthless for anything but ticks. It gives you faster casts and a faster GCD on all but Rejuv. Your HoTs tick faster as well. Getting the entirety of your Rejuv into a crippled body quickly might make the difference.

For another, you have to consider *where* you want your buffs. All healers have what's considered "rotational" healing that's generally quite low mana cost for good effect, but it's limited by cooldowns or other resources. For us it's Lifebloom, Wild Growth, Swiftmend, and OoC procs. Any more than that is when you have to start dipping into your mana pool, to start spam Rejuving people and hardcasting Regrowth. The more power your rotational healing has, the less mana you need to start throwing at people for menial damage.

Is that worth it? It's not really something that you can math out all too well, it's a stylistic thing.

How does faster cast gcd really matters? Of course the shorter the better, but healing more is also better. So does dot ticking faster. But when did a 5% faster tick save a life? If it doesn't say a life, why would you still like 5% faster tick instead of 5% more healing?
Without analysis you can't really tell mastery of haste is better.

Maybe you can give some examples that the 12.5% more healing to WG is better then 5.7% more healing to all spells?

Any situation that WG matters, rejuv matters more. Why do you think that 12.5% more healing to WG will save more mana than 5.7% to all spells?

[AvatarM]

Kind of Ressing the topic, cause I need help and opinions if it is really worth for me to take the 6652 haste breakpoint.
In my current gear (ilvl 539 atm), I can't reforge out more then 3920 haste and I can't reforge out crit from some pieces of gear, like my chest and the ilvl 608 cloak, cause I need to reforge out haste. So, I am stucked with 877 more haste from the 3043 haste breakpoint.

Armory:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../Avatar/simple

Stats:

2nd haste breakpoint
11,887 spirit
10,780 mastery
6652 haste
984 crit
(I could keep my mastery more then 12k, if run just with 10.4k spirit, but i think its too low)

1st haste breakpoint
12,687 spirit
11,915 mastery
3920 haste
1779 crit

I like to keep something close to 12k spirit, since I raid 10 man heroic and I don't have HoH or Mana tide in my raid (Rdruid/MWmonk). I can manage the range from my spirit/mastery through gemming (changing yellow/prismatic sockets to pure mastery or 160 spirit/160 mastery, both stats can vary by 1440 for example). What you guys would do in my place?

[vow1152]

If you link me logs from an entire night of raiding I can tell you if it's worth it or not. Even if it does turn out to be not worth the BP we're talking about a <1% difference in throughput.

For anyone who wants, you can either reply here with your stats and I can tell you if it's worth getting the next haste BP or just reforging entirely our of haste.

What info I need to do this is: Spell Power, Mastery, and Crit%(not value) while reforged into the haste BP and while reforged completely out of haste and World of logs from a night where you killed ~10 bosses in 1 night. Similar to what AvatarM did.

[AvatarM]

I decided to use 1st haste breakpoint as a default build. In fights where Mana is really not a problem for progression (like durumu), I will switch my reforge to trade spirit to haste without losing mastery. Fights like Tortos and Primordius, i like to run with a bit more spirit.

[vow1152]

Even if trading for spirit you would most likely gain much more from picking up mastery compared to haste.

[AvatarM]

I know but this spirit to haste is from reforge. I can't reforge Mastery/Spirit pieces to more mastery, but I can reforge their spirit to haste. I can achieve the 2nd haste breakpoint just reforging some spirit to haste from spirit/mastery items and keep 10,400 spirit, compared to 12,400 that i can keep with the first breakpoint. To achive the 2nd breakpoint i lose 2k spirit and 700 crit.

My current gemming and reforge is all way to mastery, can't gain more without losing bonus from gems.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../Avatar/simple

[vow1152]

I would suggest putting a straight mastery gem in your Durumu's Captive Eyeball ring. the 60 spirit isn't worth going for imo.

[napalm007]

I would suggest putting a straight mastery gem in your Durumu's Captive Eyeball ring. the 60 spirit isn't worth going for imo.

1 int usually ends up equaling about 1.9 mastery. Of course, this will vary slightly depending on your gear, but 2 mastery will almost always be better than 1 intellect. This is why it's recommended to gem full mastery in yellow sockets. However, since 2 mastery is only slightly better than 1 intellect, you should still go for socket bonuses regardless of what they offer.