[Resto] Druid Guide & Discussion (6.0.3)

[nightfalls]

Execution > gear > rotation > talent choice?

Good raid CD assignment > bad group execution > bad co-healers > your good execution > gear > rotation > talent choice.

[ryklin]

yeah as it is right now, with lifebloom being one stack it's a great idea hps wise to replace one rejuv every 15s, now that it has the same gcd and doesnt take stacks, but it seems generally fine, but his log seems to just be 6 min of rejuv spamming back to back, another big thing was he didn't bother to keep shroom out for periods of low dmg

and yeah doc is fine, it's just people often want more healing when they need it rather than a heal for bridging through low healing phases with more efficiency, but both work quite well

[Phaelon]

Good day,

In all the thoughts put out during this thread, I've come to a question regarding haste break points. I know there are no technical points as we get partial ticks. My question, though, is when it comes to LB and OOC procs, can they be triggered on partial ticks? Or does it only proc when the "full" ticks go off? Am I understanding the partial tick only coming after the last full tick correctly?

Reason I ask is the partial tick past a certain full tick really wouldn't account for much when it comes to LB and gaining more OOC procs and we could aim for a certain point to stop stacking haste when it comes to LB. This might help others when deciding when there's enough haste and when to switch to mastery stacking.

Feel free to say Im way off base with this thought and just move on. probably me trying to over-analyze anyway, lol.

[Thalur]

In all the thoughts put out during this thread, I've come to a question regarding haste break points. I know there are no technical points as we get partial ticks. My question, though, is when it comes to LB and OOC procs, can they be triggered on partial ticks? Or does it only proc when the "full" ticks go off? Am I understanding the partial tick only coming after the last full tick correctly?

Reason I ask is the partial tick past a certain full tick really wouldn't account for much when it comes to LB and gaining more OOC procs and we could aim for a certain point to stop stacking haste when it comes to LB. This might help others when deciding when there's enough haste and when to switch to mastery stacking.

Under normal conditions, this shouldn't matter at all, because you would rarely let lifebloom bloom anyway (and there are no partial ticks if it gets refreshed). So, for OOC procs, the more haste you get, the more procs you will get (although probably not really noticeable).

However, as Wild Growth currently does have haste breakpoints, the value of haste beyond 890 is currently diminished, so the best option at the moment is to get ~900 haste and then value mastery higher.

[Phaelon]

Under normal conditions, this shouldn't matter at all, because you would rarely let lifebloom bloom anyway (and there are no partial ticks if it gets refreshed). So, for OOC procs, the more haste you get, the more procs you will get (although probably not really noticeable).

However, as Wild Growth currently does have haste breakpoints, the value of haste beyond 890 is currently diminished, so the best option at the moment is to get ~900 haste and then value mastery higher.

Ahh, yes, that makes sense. Didnt even think about the fact that I dont let LB bloom so the last tick wouldnt matter.

Thanks for the response. Been just over 900 haste for WG was more wondering if there was some reason to go beyond that but currently it doesnt seem so.

[Hildrande]

Haste makes Tranquility tick faster, but does not affect the healing value of each tick, nor does it add partial ticks, it will just make the cast finish earlier. That's also something to keep in mind when valuating Haste.

[theburned]

Are there stat weights floating around? Please tell me I don't have to use Mr. Robot. On a related note, I really hope they fix the secondary stats. Simming hassles aside, it's really frustrating getting a +10 ilevel upgrade...but...it has the wrong secondary stats so it goes in the garbage.

at my gear lvl every stat except versatility is at 1-4% value difference haste >multistrike > mastery > crit. where as crit is around 4% behind. Though this goes for additional points in each stat and gets slightly different depending on playstyle and talents.

[Deleted]

Just because DoC doesn't serve you in damage heavy situations it's still relevant to heal as much as you can during low damage periods since you don't want that chip dmg to pile up before nuke. And you wanna get through it with as mana efficient as possible which DoC most certainly is.
HotW was great on Imperator; I could help A LOT at the second intermission. Other than that you really need to squeeze out that value which could be problematic for healing tbh.
Maybe I'm using NV wrong, but can't seem to get much out of it. On Kargath I went to heal the chain grp so I basically had the cd everytime we went up. I though it'd be insane but it yielded like 3% of my 21k-ish hps. Maybe it just doesn't show off on meters but actually helps out a lot, idk.

[nightfalls]

Maybe I'm using NV wrong, but can't seem to get much out of it. On Kargath I went to heal the chain grp so I basically had the cd everytime we went up. I though it'd be insane but it yielded like 3% of my 21k-ish hps. Maybe it just doesn't show off on meters but actually helps out a lot, idk.

IMO NV is best for the damage, not so much the healing. What I end up liking about NV is that it is relatively constant and dependable with 1/3 uptime. It's also, in a sense, the most "passive" of the talents. You just heal like normal, with possibly (for DPS mindset) putting Moonfire up and casting a few Wraths if you are free, and NV gives you extra healing and damage on top. And yes, given how low the actual healing contribution looks, I have had to think about this for some time.

Heart of the Wild is nice indeed, but it is a 6 minute CD and requires you to sacrifice healing for damage, or damage for healing throughput. It is probably the best for parsing or for extreme burst requirements (for both damage and healing), but for progression value especially on long fights? I'm not so sure.

DoC as the passive is probably up the most, but the issue I take with it is that you need to modify what you do, basically cast Wrath all day. It doesn't scale with Mastery or Multistrike at all, so 2 of your better stats are pointless. The healing you get from DoC is unlikely to make much of a difference, maybe increase other healers' overhealing. You're basically "just" a Tranquility at that point, might as well bring in a DPS otherwise.

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If NV is doing 4-5% of your healing done, it's similar to what you'd anticipate Heart of the Wild is on average. Of course HotW will, in reality, be more than 4-5% if you line it up with burst, but now you're sacrificing stable output for a "big burst" every 6 minutes. Yes it will make your Tranquility god tier, but how much of that will be going to overheal anyway?

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On another side note, several factors this expansion have given me DPS mindset that I think all healers should be having more than before, and one that I do think I see here with the DoC discussions. Hence my heavy consideration of the damage aspect of the 90 talents along with the healing aspect, and one that I at least believe I see echoed here.

[Deleted]

The healing you get from DoC is unlikely to make much of a difference, maybe increase other healers' overhealing

Well the difference is that you are healing chip dmg for absolutely no mana. If we can agree that it is important to heal that kind of dmg before the heavy "nuke" too, then why should you be relying on the other's heal and not the other way around when it saves mana for them and gives extra heal potential when it matters. Okay since it's a talent if you can get good value out of the either HotW or NV then you probably should pick that. I can see making that argument especially since other healers have ways to effectively heal low dmg probably. But it's definitely a worthy discussion in my opinion and basically saying it's meaningless heal is a strech.

[theburned]

IMO NV is best for the damage, not so much the healing. What I end up liking about NV is that it is relatively constant and dependable with 1/3 uptime. It's also, in a sense, the most "passive" of the talents. You just heal like normal, with possibly (for DPS mindset) putting Moonfire up and casting a few Wraths if you are free, and NV gives you extra healing and damage on top. And yes, given how low the actual healing contribution looks, I have had to think about this for some time.

Heart of the Wild is nice indeed, but it is a 6 minute CD and requires you to sacrifice healing for damage, or damage for healing throughput. It is probably the best for parsing or for extreme burst requirements (for both damage and healing), but for progression value especially on long fights? I'm not so sure.

DoC as the passive is probably up the most, but the issue I take with it is that you need to modify what you do, basically cast Wrath all day. It doesn't scale with Mastery or Multistrike at all, so 2 of your better stats are pointless. The healing you get from DoC is unlikely to make much of a difference, maybe increase other healers' overhealing. You're basically "just" a Tranquility at that point, might as well bring in a DPS otherwise.

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If NV is doing 4-5% of your healing done, it's similar to what you'd anticipate Heart of the Wild is on average. Of course HotW will, in reality, be more than 4-5% if you line it up with burst, but now you're sacrificing stable output for a "big burst" every 6 minutes. Yes it will make your Tranquility god tier, but how much of that will be going to overheal anyway?

---

On another side note, several factors this expansion have given me DPS mindset that I think all healers should be having more than before, and one that I do think I see here with the DoC discussions. Hence my heavy consideration of the damage aspect of the 90 talents along with the healing aspect, and one that I at least believe I see echoed here.

NV is only doing 20% of your single target healing with a 30 sec duration and 1.5 min cd its up for 1/3. Depending on your usage of single target heals during and after the NV this talent can easily dimish down to around 3-4% of your total healing, while HotW will give you roughly 4.4% or more, in most cases more, if used purely as a healing cd. It is also your strongest damage talent (avoiding things like DoC nothing but wrath spam) if used at start during BL when other healers can cover you without restraining them on mana later in the fight.) NV on the other hand is a good dps option anywhere else in the fight and is very useful due to this, a very competitive dps and healing talent and is mediocre at both with practically no loses.
DoC is a free heal talent, I at least find myself having moments where I do nothing, taking my time watching who actually needs heals, during this time casting a wrath with both some weak, but free healing and some damage on top of that, it's great. Also I find myself doing some healing in low damage phases, if I could spend that time regenerating mana instead of throwing out weak insignificant heals that would be better right? I am not even sure I should be doing any healing in exactly those phases unless I have that talent, because other healers are better at it, but with DoC you are practically the best at just those moments.
Even tried this our on imperator margok did around 17% if not more of my healing with DoC, I managed to pull around 4.7k dps, I also felt like I was helping out the raid in terms of dpsing all of the adds, thus reducing some of the damage. I pulled around 32k hps that fight (same as the other resto druid), while I probably could've pulled a little higher without spamming that much wrath it would not be worth the dps that DoC added, with HotW I could've done quite a lot in the start where dps isn't really needed, then second one would be used with tranq, while NV sure the dps would've been there, but not 4.7k, and would've been a lot harder on my mana, with this I was full until 1st intermission was over, and didnt struggle through the entire fight with mana.

Also this was without perfecting my play with DoC, already it was quite competitive, learning to play it flawlessly, would make a good difference, being able to play around with more mana is quite valuable at this moment, especially as a resto druid.

[Hildrande]

if I get serious about DoC usage I'll try macro it to something like "/cast [@target,harm,nodead][@boss1,nodead][@boss2,nodead][@focustarget,harm,nodead] wrath" to be able to cast it without having to bother with targeting.

[qtzirl]

Ive read about every guide out there and I dont think I have found one that talks about Harmony and it's importance on being up. It usually gets lumped into the mastery explanation but never in rotation. Pretty important to keep it up.

[Drefan]

Reading these posts about DoC it comes of as heavily overrated.
I don't see the point of healing chip dmg with wrath, that dmg is easily healed up by other classes as well as just keeping your LB up with x2 Rejuv. The only nice thing about DoC is the argument that you can save mana with it. Which I in my eyes is a bit misleading. You don't need the doc to keep the tanks up efficiently and when the raid actually takes dmg you can't heal it with DoC. It's only good when there is close to no dmg done to the raid or incase that you've run oom.
Atleast this is how I look at it.

And that DoC does good dmg is misleading too, If you keep LB up with x2 rejuv up on the tank that's taking dmg and you're spamming wrath as a filler instead of standing still you'll do 20% less dmg than DoC wrath but combined with NV dmg will give you more if used correctly.

I think the biggest problem is that people are macroing NV to TOL and only using them together. Seeing as you could use it before ToL if you know ToL wont be used for 1.5min and always get one use off after its been used with ToL.

[Deleted]

Reading these posts about DoC it comes of as heavily overrated.
I don't see the point of healing chip dmg with wrath, that dmg is easily healed up by other classes as well as just keeping your LB up with x2 Rejuv. The only nice thing about DoC is the argument that you can save mana with it. Which I in my eyes is a bit misleading. You don't need the doc to keep the tanks up efficiently and when the raid actually takes dmg you can't heal it with DoC. It's only good when there is close to no dmg done to the raid or incase that you've run oom.
Atleast this is how I look at it.

Maybe the other two talents are overrated? you can go either with the over-the-top 6 min cd which is way too situational or NV which healing contribution is really minimal. This "healed up by other classes" argument is so vague and empty; I guess why bother wasting a single point of mana on tank healing when disc and hpala do it so much better. Maybe other classes should let the free heal do the work that otherwise would cost them?
It looks like I'm a DoC fan but I don't think it's that strong really, but what misleading is saying its healing is worthless.

[emni]

I think we all need a step back and realize that the whole point of the discussion was to point out that there are some situations when DoC can shine, just like there are some situations when NV and HotW can shine. The point was never to argue that one talent is best, but rather that DoC isn't as useless as people seem to assume (but neither is it the optimal option for every fight).

[Jordaen]

Ive read about every guide out there and I dont think I have found one that talks about Harmony and it's importance on being up. It usually gets lumped into the mastery explanation but never in rotation. Pretty important to keep it up.

It's generally advised to use Swiftmend on CD (unless you're using SotF) and to use clear casting procs ASAP on regrowth, both of which are more than enough to keep up harmony without much thought, so explicitly saying "It's super duper important to keep this up all the time!!" would be redundant. It is very important, but the "rotation" for resto druids is enough to keep a decent up time for those that might not be aware of it's importance.

[Aleks0410]

Apparently SM is not very mana efficient (I think it used to be in the past). So unless you need a heal on the move or run with SoTF, why use SM on CD?

[Jordaen]

Apparently SM is not very mana efficient (I think it used to be in the past). So unless you need a heal on the move or run with SoTF, why use SM on CD?

I can't think of any fight except Kargath where I couldn't use a swiftmend on a tank or a dps when it was off cooldown. It's 1k mana more than a rejuv, and on my druid with self buffs it heals for about 21k instantly. It's about 800 mana more than a healing touch and heals for about 200 less. If I'm in a position where a tank or dps needs a direct heal (Not needed to save a life (otherwise regrowth or NS+RG), but could still use more than a rejuv) I would totally pick swiftmend over healing touch nearly every single time. This is in a raid setting, not 5 mans. This is also in a pug for heroic content or harder, though I'd probably still even use SM over HT for a guild run as well.

Old habits die hard.

[theburned]

swiftmend though is a cheap way to keep up harmony, the spell isn't super effective but it's easier to get off than healing touch, while doing more HPCT (not 100% sure about this, but should be right) SM is not very good to cast on cd unless you use SotF though due to higher mana cost and about same healing as rejuv, so only to be used for harmony buff or whenever you feel a target needs that quick boost from healing. Using OoC proccs or healing touch is preferred at most times for the harmony buff.

it's not a major loss eitherway, but its quite a lot more expensive than rejuvenation in terms of mana, and the healing output is higher from a rejuv.

that said though, the easiest way to keep 100% uptime on harmony is to get it in your fingers to keep SM on CD.