SotF and Resto Druids haste caps

[Foogyjenkins]

Hello, I have been recently talking to a friend who plays a Resto Druid with SotF. He insists that because of the talent he needs to reach no haste caps and I don't think that is true. He also uses tranquility with SotF and I am unsure about that too.
Question 1: does he need to hit some sort of haste cap? If so what?
Question 2: are you suppose to use SotF with tranquility?
Thank you.

[Bluetarragon]

There are very specific break points. Totemspot has everything you need for current and next patch.

http://www.totemspot.com/vb/entry.php?b=41

[Deleted]

Hello, I have been recently talking to a friend who plays a Resto Druid with SotF. He insists that because of the talent he needs to reach no haste caps and I don't think that is true. He also uses tranquility with SotF and I am unsure about that too.
Question 1: does he need to hit some sort of haste cap? If so what?
Question 2: are you suppose to use SotF with tranquility?
Thank you.

You should go for 3043 no matter what, because at 12.5% haste you get an additional tick of both Rejuvenation and Tranquility (in the process of reaching this cap, you also get an additional tick of Lifebloom (at 5% haste) and of Wild Growth (at 7.1% haste)).

You should use SotF mainly for WG. I'd rather use SotF+WG and cast Tranq afterwards for heavy AoE healing instead of using WG and then cast SotF+Tranq. The thing to mention is: the increased haste only works for the tick of the Tranquility-HOT, you don't get an additional TICK of the Tranq-Healing itself! At current gear scaling, you shouldn't sacrifice much for that haste cap anyway.

Without 4piece t14 SotF is still the strongest throughput talent we can chose, tho if you need a raid-cd ToL is better and FoN also provides a stable 9-12k HPS for every fight. Remember also that with the additional tick for Rejuvenation you can overcharge your mushrooms faster (if it's overheal).

[Rucati]

3043 Haste with or without SotF, always. The other two Haste breakpoints (6658 and 13360 or something like that, don't go for them personally so I don't know offhand) are optional and not really recommended without full ToT gear.

As for SotF with Tranq, it depends. There are some fights, like Mageara or however you spell that, where you don't want to SotF Tranq because the Rampage damage is spread out over a long period, so it's good to do it like that. If you're on say, Durumu and someone messed up and makes the raid explode for 300k damage, then using SotF Tranq is probably good to get everybody back up as soon as possible so nobody dies. Basically, if there's damage for ~5-10+ seconds (Jin'rokh, for example) then just use SotF -> Wild Growth -> Tranq. If everybody takes a ton of damage and needs to be healed up really fast or it's a wipe, then use SotF Tranq.

[Deleted]

3043 Haste with or without SotF, always. The other two Haste breakpoints (6658 and 13360 or something like that, don't go for them personally so I don't know offhand) are optional and not really recommended without full ToT gear.

As for SotF with Tranq, it depends. There are some fights, like Mageara or however you spell that, where you don't want to SotF Tranq because the Rampage damage is spread out over a long period, so it's good to do it like that. If you're on say, Durumu and someone messed up and makes the raid explode for 300k damage, then using SotF Tranq is probably good to get everybody back up as soon as possible so nobody dies. Basically, if there's damage for ~5-10+ seconds (Jin'rokh, for example) then just use SotF -> Wild Growth -> Tranq. If everybody takes a ton of damage and needs to be healed up really fast or it's a wipe, then use SotF Tranq.

The Tranq-HOT is not that strong, a SotF+WG is quicker/stronger.

[Thalur]

The Tranq-HOT is not that strong, a SotF+WG is quicker/stronger.

It's not about the extra ticks, it's about the channel time being halved by SotF and thus putting out most of the healing in a very short time. SotF-Tranq is not a lot of extra HPM, but it is a lot of extra HPET.
Also for movement fights (e.g. Tortos) when you don't have SWG-Symbiosis, it's nice to have a fast-channeling Tranq.
But in most situations, SotF-WG and then Tranq is the right way to go.

@OP: Don't go for SotF haste breakpoints. 3043 or 13,163 are the ones you really benefit from.

[Deleted]

It's not about the extra ticks, it's about the channel time being halved by SotF and thus putting out most of the healing in a very short time. SotF-Tranq is not a lot of extra HPM, but it is a lot of extra HPET.
Also for movement fights (e.g. Tortos) when you don't have SWG-Symbiosis, it's nice to have a fast-channeling Tranq.
But in most situations, SotF-WG and then Tranq is the right way to go.

@OP: Don't go for SotF haste breakpoints. 3043 or 13,163 are the ones you really benefit from.

13,163 is not worth is compared to the mastery you could gain imho.
Regarding the faster channel: your argument is true, but there are not much situations where you can make profit imho... like Quills or Rampage align very nicely with a standard Tranq casttime.

[Foogyjenkins]

Ty all for replies

[bclumas]

13,163 is not worth is compared to the mastery you could gain imho.
Regarding the faster channel: your argument is true, but there are not much situations where you can make profit imho... like Quills or Rampage align very nicely with a standard Tranq casttime.

This is extremely misleading and incorrect. The 13163 haste breakpoint CAN be good for you depending on your gear level. If your item level is 535, then you'd be looking at dumping loads of Mastery, Intellect, and Spirit in order to get to that breakpoint. While at this breakpoint you will be casting more frequently due to lowered GCD times and benefits via increased HoT ticks. Jumping to that level WOULD be a net throughput loss.

On the other hand, if your item level is greater than 540 (and more realistically, around 545), then dropping Intellect, Mastery, and Spirit in order to reach the 13163 haste breakpoint is actually a throughput gain. This has been displayed countless numbers of times, and has been calculated by Hamlet on the EJ forums. You gain more ticks of your primary spell (Rejuvenation), lower GCDs, increased number of RPPM procs, and increased number of Clearcasting procs. This does not even count the amount of mana you can regen while selecting OUT of SotF and into a different ability such as Incarnation.

Again, only attempt to go for the 13163 breakpoint at a high gear level with a certain mixture of gear. If you find that you can reach this reasonably, SotF is no longer the best choice in that tier, and FoN or Incarnation become viable tools.

[Old]

This is extremely misleading and incorrect. The 13163 haste breakpoint CAN be good for you depending on your gear level. If your item level is 535, then you'd be looking at dumping loads of Mastery, Intellect, and Spirit in order to get to that breakpoint. While at this breakpoint you will be casting more frequently due to lowered GCD times and benefits via increased HoT ticks. Jumping to that level WOULD be a net throughput loss.

On the other hand, if your item level is greater than 540 (and more realistically, around 545), then dropping Intellect, Mastery, and Spirit in order to reach the 13163 haste breakpoint is actually a throughput gain. This has been displayed countless numbers of times, and has been calculated by Hamlet on the EJ forums. You gain more ticks of your primary spell (Rejuvenation), lower GCDs, increased number of RPPM procs, and increased number of Clearcasting procs. This does not even count the amount of mana you can regen while selecting OUT of SotF and into a different ability such as Incarnation.

Again, only attempt to go for the 13163 breakpoint at a high gear level with a certain mixture of gear. If you find that you can reach this reasonably, SotF is no longer the best choice in that tier, and FoN or Incarnation become viable tools.

This is actually really misleading. I've never been a fan of haste caps and I'm even less now. This may have been "calculated" on paper (would like to see such calculations actually), but theory in this game is very far from reality.

Currently in 550 ilvl you still need to gem for haste, reforge your spirit out and loose a shitload of mastery and intellect to get to 13k+ haste. You may be fine clearing tot normal mode or doing some boss in half the time and twice the gear they are designed for, but you should always look out for the challenges that are ahead of you, not months behind.

With 16k spirit, a shaman and Horridon's tf trinket, I can go oom in less than 3min on Tortos. When I see people running around with 11k spirit, this is just not working whether you are in 10man or 25man. Sure you can think you are doing a decent job and bosses still go down, but this is misleading. You have to aim at potential. What's gonna give you the most in the worst situations ?

I strongly dislike sotf cause it's a complete lockdown to your gameplay and force you into planning, giving new constrains on top of the ones we already have. Sadly tho, they are buffing it in 5.4 and it's becoming a no-brainer. I'm pretty sure I'll still be running Incarnation on some bosses.

[Migraine]

I ran with the 13163 haste cap on Wednesday and on damage intensive fights it felt superior to the 3043 haste cap I have been running previously, I'm at about 11k spirit after switching and on Tortos I managed to rank high twenties without cheesing any mechanics, we six healed and the other healers were pulling their weight. While I was out healing some of my previous efforts on other fights its hard to tell, we were running with six healers and over healing the content, it will be interesting to try it on Ra-den p2 later in the week.

[Thalur]

This is actually really misleading. I've never been a fan of haste caps and I'm even less now. This may have been "calculated" on paper (would like to see such calculations actually), but theory in this game is very far from reality.

Then why don't you listen to all those that tested it in game? Everyone I see posting about trying out the breakpoint has given extremely positive feedback (including myself), so why should anyone give a damn about your "feeling" when actual testing supports it?
And if you don't believe the theorycrafting on this, maybe you should say where you think they're wrong instead of just bashing on it. It's right in the resto druid thread Post 828 and following pages.

Currently in 550 ilvl you still need to gem for haste, reforge your spirit out and loose a shitload of mastery and intellect to get to 13k+ haste. You may be fine clearing tot normal mode or doing some boss in half the time and twice the gear they are designed for, but you should always look out for the challenges that are ahead of you, not months behind.

Unless you were gemming for pure spirit before, you don't lose spirit as there are no items where I would reforge spirit to haste. Spirit/Haste items can't be reforged to haste and Spirit/Mastery is reforged Mastery -> Haste. You're also not losing Int unless you have to cut socket bonuses (which indicates that your gear is not good enough for the breakpoint - at 540, I only skip one socket bonus worth 60 int).

In my gear, it was not possible to reforge down to 3k haste any more, so I was sitting at 6k anyway before the change. That means I lost about 7k mastery for haste, and the 13k breakpoint is >>>>> than 7k mastery.

With 16k spirit, a shaman and Horridon's tf trinket, I can go oom in less than 3min on Tortos. When I see people running around with 11k spirit, this is just not working whether you are in 10man or 25man. Sure you can think you are doing a decent job and bosses still go down, but this is misleading. You have to aim at potential. What's gonna give you the most in the worst situations ?

I don't know about 25 man, but in 10 heroic 12k spirit is more than enough for everything. If it was enough to not go oom on a 6 min Tortos hc sustaining 200k HPS (and that was in much worse gear than today), I don't see where it would be a problem. Plus, going from throughput stats to spirit actually reduces your healing potential, as most people agree by now (see Hamlet's TC on this).

[Deleted]

I run now 11/13hc in 10man with 9k spirit 436ilvl and 13163 haste, and I feel mana is not a big problem. If you can afford this breakpoint without loosing too much stats (read only mastery/crit and excess spirit), this is the biggest thoughput increase to go atm.

[Glorels]

12/13 25 man druid here i'm running somewhere around 10k spirit 13k mastery 18% crit and the 6652 haste breakpoint i've found that i can keep up with our disc on almost any fight and with a resto shaman i haven't had any mana problems.

[Sprucelee]

This is actually really misleading. I've never been a fan of haste caps and I'm even less now. This may have been "calculated" on paper (would like to see such calculations actually), but theory in this game is very far from reality.

Currently in 550 ilvl you still need to gem for haste, reforge your spirit out and loose a shitload of mastery and intellect to get to 13k+ haste. You may be fine clearing tot normal mode or doing some boss in half the time and twice the gear they are designed for, but you should always look out for the challenges that are ahead of you, not months behind.

With 16k spirit, a shaman and Horridon's tf trinket, I can go oom in less than 3min on Tortos. When I see people running around with 11k spirit, this is just not working whether you are in 10man or 25man. Sure you can think you are doing a decent job and bosses still go down, but this is misleading. You have to aim at potential. What's gonna give you the most in the worst situations ?

I strongly dislike sotf cause it's a complete lockdown to your gameplay and force you into planning, giving new constrains on top of the ones we already have. Sadly tho, they are buffing it in 5.4 and it's becoming a no-brainer. I'm pretty sure I'll still be running Incarnation on some bosses.

100% agree with Owld.

Spirit stacking is the way to go.

[Aoroc]

100% agree with Owld.

Spirit stacking is the way to go.

There does become a point where regen would outpace mathematical output capabilities due to the GCD, in which case spirit would be of no more use, since you wouldn't ever be able to outpace the regen.

I'd assume the fastest way to OOM would be to spam Regrowth, but you'd obviously never do that. I guess you'd prefer more spirit if you just literally never let your GCD or casting stop ever, and I can see the logic in that, but I think it's better to speak in terms of what's realistic, and it's clearly possible to run lower spirit builds.

I personally do not feel comfortable with less than 12k spirit due to the "worst case scenario" theory you and Old talk about, but I think that anything more than 16k spirit is absurd, at that point (and I've ran 16k+ spirit before, so I'm speaking from experience) you have to actually make an effort to use the majority of your mana on a single fight, the way I did that was by RJing people who currently didn't need it in hopes they would take damage to benefit, and I decided at that point more mastery/crit would more beneficial for the people I actually did need to heal, rather than have more mana to spend on people who either didn't need, or just for the possibility that they might take damage and I could use that mana.

I feel like I started rambling so I hope that last paragraph makes sense. Essentially, I think you're very wrong to say Spirit STACKING is the way to go, but I can at least see your point in wanting more spirit for the sake of higher theoretical throughput in a worst case scenario.

[Deleted]

I go with 8k mastery, 3k haste BP, 1.7k crit, 12.5k spirit and we're 7/13 hc. If there is a hymn and/or a manatide, I have way too much spirit, but in general I end a fight with trinket/innervate used 2-3 times and still be <20% mana.

I personally think that the 13k BP is worth it, but it depends on your equipment (which other stats you waste) and raid composition/tactics. I don't think you can say that "13k BP is always better than 3k BP", because it depends on many other things as well. If you run with 3 healers most of the time and just have 2-3 ppl not evading stuff they should evade, it may be handy to have either higher spirit or more mastery for better emergency heals with SM/HT&NS. If you burn council in 4 mins anyway with 2 healers, it's another story.

The conclusion is: play with as much spirit you need in your raid with your ppl and your cooldowns so you end with everything on cooldown and little mana left. Then go for whichever breakpoint you can hit (3k or 13k) without forcing that BP to happen (e.g. don't put 320 haste in every slot just to reach it). Never played with the 6k BP tho... reading all the 10+/13 hc druids here, I might try the 13k BP~

[Sprucelee]

you have to actually make an effort to use the majority of your mana on a single fight, the way I did that was by RJing people who currently didn't need it in hopes they would take damage to benefit

This is exactly what I do. I aim to end every fight at 0 mana. But it is far less random than you make it sound. With experience and an understanding of fights, even "random" damage is predictable to a large extent. Certain mechanics will hit melee more, some range, sometimes it may be only 50% gamble, but it more than just hoping.

Other fights it is about having zero limitation on getting a full 10-12 rejuvenation on the raid before a large raid wide mechanic, and maintaining it through the duration withstanding WG, SM and refreshing LB etc.

Anyway, looking forward, I can tell you that 5.4 will really reward spirit stacking. Just did flex on the first 4 bosses and 12k felt really weak. I don't see even attempting 13K haste until deep into the tier.

- - - Updated - - -

reading all the 10+/13 hc druids here, I might try the 13k BP~

I think you will find only a scattered few 13/13H Druids are testing it out. I might even this week for kicks. But that is completely over-geared farm runs... Progression will push everyone back to spirit/mastery.

[Migraine]

While I disagree with you on the amount of spirit I understand your opinion, what I don't understand is saying that people will move away from the haste and go back to mastery, if it proves to be a throughput increase then we can run with the haste cap and then just go with whatever spirit we desire. Unless your point is that you can't get to 13k haste and run with a desirable amount of spirit? For me I dropped 1k spirit and the rest came from other stats, I've only reforged for it this week and as you rightly said its all about testing but going forward into SoO 3043 haste is going to be harder to stick too and is going to make the switch to 13163 come at the expense of less secondary stats and more 'excess' haste.

[Sprucelee]

While I disagree with you on the amount of spirit I understand your opinion, what I don't understand is saying that people will move away from the haste and go back to mastery, if it proves to be a throughput increase then we can run with the haste cap and then just go with whatever spirit we desire. Unless your point is that you can't get to 13k haste and run with a desirable amount of spirit? For me I dropped 1k spirit and the rest came from other stats, I've only reforged for it this week and as you rightly said its all about testing but going forward into SoO 3043 haste is going to be harder to stick too and is going to make the switch to 13163 come at the expense of less secondary stats and more 'excess' haste.

#1 It has not been shown to be a TP increase. My recollection is that some people at EJ showed it may be roughly equal on paper (unlike 6652), and a few anecdotal statements have been made that it feels strong. Honestly, there is very little information on how it fares.. But what we do know is that it makes a Druid heavily reliant on Rejuv and WG for their throughout. Also, haste stacking over mastery reduces the strength of tranquility, direct heals, and even efflo if the glyph is restored, mastery increases ALL heals except mushrooms uniformly. This is an important thing to keep in mind, you will lose effectiveness in some areas.

#2 You can't get the spirit you need IMO. At 550 you get reduced to around 12K spirit, even in BIS gear. That is 4-5k lost spirit and under what I consider to be comfortable for 25H at without stacking extra healers (which many do, and cloud the issue).

#3 I am hoping to get to the 13K BP at some point, when it feels right. But I think it will be deep into 5.4, not at the start. But even then, T16 gear currently has only 2 pieces that have haste, and if there is equally hard to come by haste gear in SoS, it may be very difficult even late in the teir...