Restoration Druid - Versality > Mastery since 7.1.5 ?

[Soleija]

Hi Restoration Druids,

I hava a question about whats better for a resoration druid. Versality or MAstery? For me, it looks like you need less versality to heal 1% more than mastery.

An example:

My stats:
Int: 40.748
Haste: 10119 (=26.98%)
Mastery: 8705 (= 17.86%)
Versality: 0 (= 0%)

Healing with (no crit):

• Rejuvenation per hit: 36520
• Lifebloom per hit: 13233

Changing stats:
Int: 40.748
Haste: 10.216 (=27.24%)
Mastery: 7663 (=16.29%) (1042 less than before)
Versality: 946 (=1.99%)

Healing with (no crit):

• Rejuvenation per hit: 36755 (+235)
• Lifebloom per hit: 13318 (+85)

Stat priority for raids is:
Int > Haste > Crit > Mastery > Versality

Stat priority for mythic+ is:
Int > Haste > Mastery > Crit > versality

BUT if I take this simple test into account, it should be:

Stat priority for raids is:
Int > Haste > Crit > Versality > Mastery

Stat priority for mythic+ is:
Int > Haste > Versality > Mastery > Crit


Any suggestions if that makes sense? Nevery heard before, that a restoration druid should go on versality > mastery ...

Thanks for your thoughts,
Soleija

[Kaeth]

Except that the value of Mastery is per HoT on the target. Which is why Mastery's theoretical value climbs as your party size decreases (amazing in 5-mans, decent but not great in raids).

If your logic held true, why would you not also list Versatility above Crit for the raid priority? If you're going to drop points from Mastery, why not pick up more Crit (or Haste!) instead of dumping them into Versatility?

[Tiberria]

It's very difficult to precisely pinpoint what the value of mastery is, because while it's more expensive to get to 1% rating than other points, it also stacks up on targets with multiple HoT effects, and it's difficult to accurately quantify the actual throughput gains from mastery. Plus, some of your healing (Efflo and Tranq ticks on 0 HoT targets) gains 0 value from mastery. It's also dependent on what legendaries you have and what talents you take. If you have Tearstone of Elune and/or the Swiftmend bracers, mastery goes up in value because those legendaries push more of your throughput into targets that will have multiple HoT effects on them. Taking Cultivation (I think this is generally the standard talent in 90% of situations even in raids) and/or Spring Blossoms increases the value of mastery. Taking a talent other than Cultivation on that row or taking Inner Peace reduces the value of mastery (a lot of Tranq's healing is on 0 HoT targets).

In general, I would say:

For raiding, with the most common Cenarion Ward/Cultivation/Inner Peace build:

Haste >= Crit > Mastery >= Vers

For Cenarion Ward/Cultivation/Spring Blossoms:

Haste > Crit > Mastery > Vers

For Prosperity/Soul of the Forest/Inner Peace:

Crit >= Haste > Vers > Mastery

In 5 mans (almost everyone will run CW/Cultivation/Germination), if you only care about healing throughput/have limited to no time to contribute DPS:

Mastery > Haste > Crit > Vers

In 5 mans if you have a lot of downtime to contribute DPS, Mastery is a whole lot weaker because it adds 0 DPS:

Haste > Crit > Vers > Mastery

[ryklin]

Kaeth got most of op's questions in 1 sentence, but responding to tiber

"For Cenarion Ward/Cultivation/Spring Blossoms:

Haste > Crit > Mastery > Vers"

mastery blows by other stats past 2 hots, despite being worse than others at 1, with that build mastery is going to be far beyond others, and with that build you're likely to have 1-4 hots on any person in efflo

cultivation has already really proven itself on progression for this xpac and is enough reason to be okay with mastery when you get it, even with inner peace as that's still better value on people that do need more healing

I'd adjust according to cult uptimes during progress and try and keep a good balance of mixed stats and ilvl, maybe dropping some mastery for other stuff when you're running inner peace instead of germ or blossoms (which is pretty often really) or people aren't dropping into cult range too often

yeah though if the only people you'll ever have multiple hots on are WG targets, your LB target, no cultivations, and a few regrowth procs though because you're running inner peace sotf or something, mastery is going to likely provide less healing per stat point than versatility, crit, or haste


and in mythic+, there's a bit of feelcraft for haste over theory craft as there's still a time window for getting your hots out reasonably fast, but most the time in m+ you'll have 3-5 hots on people you want to do healing to and mastery just is like twice as good as any other stat in there:

mastery (starts at 4.8% or about 3200 rating) 666-ish per 1% halved for each hot on the target and also somewhat decreasing in value due to large percentage gains, and your first percent increase to healing done for 1 hot is closer to 700
haste (starts at 0%, doesnt affect direct heals like tranq or regrowth): 375 for 1%, so it's not only well a strong stat for hots in all situations, but it's face value per rating is what you get early on
crit (starts at 5% or 2000 rating, you may also have kara cape increasing crit benefit, has a weak effect regrowth): 400 per 1%, and meaning that your first % of crit is closer to 420 rating for a 1% increase to healing
vers (starts at 0 or 3.16ish from 1500 rating with vantus rune): 475 for 1%

crit and mastery have slightly lower values because we have a base amount of them, and in similar ways every stat loses value relative to others as you get more (around 20-30% crit, vers becomes really competetive with it actually)

and in situations where you have 1 or 2 hots on people tops, mastery is pretty shitty, but with 2, it's competitive with haste and crit, at least with cultivation meaning that the person is low and in danger which is also a bigger deal even if you do less healing because of trying to gear to pick up these people that are at lower health, and if you're at 3+ like in M+ it becomes stupid

the ideal amount of stats is both a balancing act and somewhat choosing stats that would be good for a fight, whether it involve taking more or less mastery, or even ignoring secondary stats for ilvl so your character doesn't die and ideally getting crit+haste+vers all at the right levels that you don't get too much of one stat, and to some extents just things like judging how much you'll regrowth

[Deleted]

Pretty sure the value of mastery climbs once you have Tearstone of Elune, and Aman'thuls Wisdom shoulders. The longer you can have consistent hots up on many targets, the more the value of mastery increases. Also the new four set bonus will be ridiculous for mastery effect with Tearstone and Aman'thul.

But honestly it comes up to personal opinion and legendaries what is worth it for you.

[mahesvara]

Pretty sure the value of mastery climbs once you have Tearstone of Elune, and Aman'thuls Wisdom shoulders. The longer you can have consistent hots up on many targets, the more the value of mastery increases. Also the new four set bonus will be ridiculous for mastery effect with Tearstone and Aman'thul.

But honestly it comes up to personal opinion and legendaries what is worth it for you.

The value of mastery depends on a lot of things if we're talking about a raid setting. cult/IP it's meh because the only time you'll ever really have more than 1 hot on people is if they have rejuv while below 60% for cult & get hit by WG. While with cult/SB it's considerably more valuable because you'll be able to meet the 2 hot point easier.

[oddmyth]

In general, I would say:

For raiding, with the most common Cenarion Ward/Cultivation/Inner Peace build:

Haste >= Crit > Mastery >= Vers

Disagree and so does the math, the weakaura and the spreadsheet. Crit should always be higher than haste. In the last two months of raiding with 17-20% haste, never has there been any indication through mathematical inquiry that haste is better than Crit, Even at 27-31% Crit.

For Cenarion Ward/Cultivation/Spring Blossoms:

Haste > Crit > Mastery > Vers

Same as above, haste is not above Crit here, and most of my parses with this build have haste = mastery.

For Prosperity/Soul of the Forest/Inner Peace:

Crit >= Haste > Vers > Mastery

Disagree on Vers > Mastery with this build. You will be stacking HoTs (rejuv/wg) if you are doing this properly (ie. trying to proc Dreamwalker). Crit > Haste > Mastery > Vers.

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The value of mastery depends on a lot of things if we're talking about a raid setting. cult/IP it's meh because the only time you'll ever really have more than 1 hot on people is if they have rejuv while below 60% for cult & get hit by WG. While with cult/SB it's considerably more valuable because you'll be able to meet the 2 hot point easier.

If you spec Culti, you rejuv a target below 60% health and cast Wild growth on them, then they will have 3 mastery stacks (Rejuv, Culti, WG) which apply to all 3 of the HoTs.

Generally I agree with your argument, but mastery is still quite useful beyond SB: Proc Dreamwalker by casting WG on Rejuv'ed targets, CW+LB+Rejuv+WG on tanks. Taking Cultivation alone on a fight that has big damage can make mastery very useful.

[Emerald Archer]

Stat priority for raids is:
Int > Haste > Crit > Mastery > Versality


Stat priority for raids is:
Int > Haste > Crit > Versality > Mastery

Like others have said, the mastery value is per hot, that's where the value comes from.

But a comment on your stat priorities, they're wrong. Resto druids want a balance of stats, but if you were to stack something or favour it, for hard prog it would be Mastery.

Mastery, is pretty much Rdruids #1 stat if you're pushing end game content hard, cutting edge progression. A big reason everyone goes on about Haste>Crit, is because on farm content, Haste and crit is better. But on progression (What actually matters) For the majority of fights, Mastery is king.

End of the day, ignore this guys stat priority, really wrong, even ignoring the mastery stacking, my stat priority is Crit>Vers>Mastery>Haste, because I have a lot of Haste, make use of mastery a lot, have only slightly above average crit, and very little vers.

But I go Mastery>>Crit>Vers>Haste. Because I don't care for log padding after the content is on farm, I want to get the progression kills asap.

( https://www.dropbox.com/s/fj1ghvacal...v1.5.xlsx?dl=0 ) this is how you work out your stat priority, but also consider masterys higher value if you're making use of multiple hots on players, (Mainly also Cultivation value)

[Myztikrice]

Can you explain why instead of just saying he's wrong?

[Tiberria]

Mastery, is pretty much Rdruids #1 stat if you're pushing end game content hard, cutting edge progression. A big reason everyone goes on about Haste>Crit, is because on farm content, Haste and crit is better. But on progression (What actually matters) For the majority of fights, Mastery is king.

This is not at all true, because whether mastery is the strongest stat for progression or not is going to depend on the fight, the rest of your healing comp and your healing role/typical assignment. Mastery shines if you can heavily focus a small handful of players that are taking predictable damage or if you want to focus tank heal or something. You are not going to get the most out of it if the damage that you need to heal is heavily spread out across multiple targets or is bursty/unpredictable in nature, because you just won't be able to reliably to layer HoTs in a way to take advantage of that mastery. Similarly, if Tranq is your #1 healing source, you get very little gain from Mastery on Tranq, because you will have less than 1.0 average HoT effects on targets up during a Tranq. It all 100% depends on the situation, and if you are primarily responsible for AoE/raid healing (what you typically would expect a RDruid to do if you already have 1-2 HPallies), there's no way Mastery is your #1 stat in a raid environment.

Similarly, if you're pushing high level mythic+, chances are there are DPS checks on bosses or trash pulls where you are contributing DPS, and mastery gives you 0 added DPS, so you probably wouldn't ideally want to stack mastery for top end mythic+.

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Disagree and so does the math, the weakaura and the spreadsheet. Crit should always be higher than haste. In the last two months of raiding with 17-20% haste, never has there been any indication through mathematical inquiry that haste is better than Crit, Even at 27-31% Crit.

The problem is that sim models and spreadsheets, etc. is not and never will be the end all and be all when it comes to healing. There are too many subjective variables that you can't "theorycraft". On the topic of haste vs crit in particular, if you try and math out the gains of X% haste vs X% crit, you aren't taking into account the subjective value that haste gives you of being able to burst X more GCDs/spell casts into a specific high damage phase of a fight. That very well could be the difference between not only more total throughput but also more ability to keep people alive. It isn't DPS - fights have a finite amount of healing to do, and that healing isn't linear throughout the fight. One stat giving you more theoretical HPS on a spreadsheet isn't relevant if another stat gives you more HPS when it is actually most important to downing the encounter. If you don't factor in some level of subjective value for the extra burst from Haste, the model is flawed.

Also, mathematical models of Haste tend to unduly penalize the fact that Haste adds 0 throughput to Tranq. That deflates its value, especially when Tranq can easily push 20-25% of our healing. However, when you really think about it and look at the overhealing numbers, Tranq typically generates higher overhealing than the rest of our spells, meaning that while adding more Crit to Tranq to theoretically scale up that 15-25% of our throughput looks good on paper, it's probably disproportionately adding more overhealing than effective healing.

[Emerald Archer]

This is not at all true, because whether mastery is the strongest stat for progression or not is going to depend on the fight, the rest of your healing comp and your healing role/typical assignment. Mastery shines if you can heavily focus a small handful of players that are taking predictable damage or if you want to focus tank heal or something. You are not going to get the most out of it if the damage that you need to heal is heavily spread out across multiple targets or is bursty/unpredictable in nature, because you just won't be able to reliably to layer HoTs in a way to take advantage of that mastery. Similarly, if Tranq is your #1 healing source, you get very little gain from Mastery on Tranq, because you will have less than 1.0 average HoT effects on targets up during a Tranq. It all 100% depends on the situation, and if you are primarily responsible for AoE/raid healing (what you typically would expect a RDruid to do if you already have 1-2 HPallies), there's no way Mastery is your #1 stat in a raid environment.

Similarly, if you're pushing high level mythic+, chances are there are DPS checks on bosses or trash pulls where you are contributing DPS, and mastery gives you 0 added DPS, so you probably wouldn't ideally want to stack mastery for top end mythic+.

The issue with haste is if you're going oom, it's not as good, often on prog you will go oom. And the reason Mastery is so good is not because you're focusing specific players, that kinda shows that you don't really get what mastery does. With 2 hots on a target, mastery is your strongest stat. On hard prog, cultivation is your talent on the majority of fights, on hard fights, people need their healing most when they're low on hp, aka under 60%, where cult will proc, and during that time Mastery is very strong. Then you add on Spring blossoms for most fights where people are semi-stacked, adding another hot onto anyone low, and you'll have 3 hots on anyone dipping under 60%.

Most of the community severely undervalues mastery, because they consider the parts of fights where not a lot of damage is going out, but that doesn't matter, because you can heal that up very well without having to change all your stats to build around that. What part matters is when people are taking damage that risks them dying.

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This is not at all true, because whether mastery is the strongest stat for progression or not is going to depend on the fight

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking...est#metric=hps

There you go, check his talents, you can find a place for it on the majority of fights. 21.6% Mastery.

KW is a damn god, he's the person I found out about the Spring Blossoms addition from.

[Weissrolf]

The problem with Spring Blossoms is that it does a lot of overhealing (over 50% every time I try it), which makes it look less attractive than having a shorter Tranquility CD or even taking Germination in small raids. Our raid is 10-12 members and our other resto healer keeps spamming Rejuvs + Germination all around quite successfully (which I see as a game design flaw).

[thunderbuff]

Well, Int is still the most important stat, so most of the time, you don't really have a choice which sec stat you want to have, as you most likely need to use the piece with the highest ilvls.

The only consideration here would be jewelry and enchantments and the best way to determine what gives you the best bang for buck for each fight would be to use Torty's spreadsheet to figure out what your stat weights are, after you have filled in the highest ilvls in the other non-jewelry slots.

[Alltat]

The problem with Spring Blossoms is that it does a lot of overhealing (over 50% every time I try it), which makes it look less attractive than having a shorter Tranquility CD or even taking Germination in small raids. Our raid is 10-12 members and our other resto healer keeps spamming Rejuvs + Germination all around quite successfully (which I see as a game design flaw).

Spring Blossom's value depends a lot on raid size. It would overheal less in a 20 man raid, due to having twice as many targets to choose from. It does still provide a mastery stack, though.

[Weissrolf]

Overall the whole discussion is a bit academical for small raids, because with its current design Resto druids can just spam Rejuvs all over the raid and get away with it. Here our other Resto did 78% performance (89% iLevel) while doing little more than Rejuv + Germination spamming. Rejuvenation accounted for 46% of her total healing. This even is a small number for her, as she had 50-60% in the past (lately she started learning to push some other buttons like CW and her own Renewal).

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ling&source=17

I really despise this design choice. Going OOM is the only thing that keeps it in check, but once you shift from progression to farming it all becomes "whatever".

[Tiberria]

The issue with haste is if you're going oom, it's not as good, often on prog you will go oom. And the reason Mastery is so good is not because you're focusing specific players, that kinda shows that you don't really get what mastery does. With 2 hots on a target, mastery is your strongest stat. On hard prog, cultivation is your talent on the majority of fights, on hard fights, people need their healing most when they're low on hp, aka under 60%, where cult will proc, and during that time Mastery is very strong. Then you add on Spring blossoms for most fights where people are semi-stacked, adding another hot onto anyone low, and you'll have 3 hots on anyone dipping under 60%.

Most of the community severely undervalues mastery, because they consider the parts of fights where not a lot of damage is going out, but that doesn't matter, because you can heal that up very well without having to change all your stats to build around that. What part matters is when people are taking damage that risks them dying.

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https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking...est#metric=hps

There you go, check his talents, you can find a place for it on the majority of fights. 21.6% Mastery.

KW is a damn god, he's the person I found out about the Spring Blossoms addition from.

Even if you ignore the ability to get extra casts off with haste, Haste adds more healing to Rejuv, Wild Growth, Efflo, Lifebloom and Cenarion Ward - essentially the core elements of our healing toolkit, because 1% haste costs less than 1% crit and adds +1% healing to every HoT. The reason why Crit mathematically pulls ahead is because Tranq and Swiftmend gain no benefit from haste. You have to decide for yourself how important more mathematical throughput on Tranq is compared to getting more throughput on your baseline rotational spells - especially given the overhealing delta. Plus, even if you will go OOM if you cast 20% more Rejuvs because you have +20% haste, there's still a non trivial amount of value to being able to cast 20% more Rejuvs during those 30 second windows where healing is at its most tenuous, and that value isn't going to be reflected in any type of theorycrafting model.

As far as those logs - I can't take logs/rankings seriously from someone who is being fed not only his own Innervates but also Innervates from TWO Boomkins. For one thing, Resto Druids should not be getting external Innervates in the first place, because we are the single worst healing spec in terms of getting the best benefit from Innervate. Sure, you can make mastery work for you with maximum HPS if you control exactly what your priority healing targets are and what the other healers in the raid are doing and if you expect/can get every one else to revolve around you. It's not a realistic situation for most people, nor something that is going to be best for the overall raid in general. It's why looking at the very top healing logs can lead you to all kinds of incorrect conclusions.

[oddmyth]

The problem with Spring Blossoms is that it does a lot of overhealing (over 50% every time I try it), which makes it look less attractive than having a shorter Tranquility CD or even taking Germination in small raids. Our raid is 10-12 members and our other resto healer keeps spamming Rejuvs + Germination all around quite successfully (which I see as a game design flaw).

This is not a game design flaw, this is your healer being smart enough to know that in a 12 man raid, Germination is a good talent.

SB does a lot of healing, but the point of SB is less the heal and more the mastery stack which makes the rest of your heals better. Put another way, what if I told you you could spend 66k mana and get 20% more healing on 3 or more targets constantly with SB for 30 seconds. Alternatively you can spend 22k mana per target and get the same bonus + more healing for 12 seconds with Germination. In summary Germination is good when you can use alot of GCDs and mana to pump up your healing, whereas SB is good for less GCDs and less mana used to achieve slightly less healing.

SB overheal is also attributed to it's fire and forget nature. It's down for 30 seconds so yes it will contribute alot to overheal, but given it's >10% of healing contribution that's fine.

[Grenor]

While SB offers hots for small mana cost, they come at a price -> Flexibility. To get those 3 hots you must target stacked people. And those players must be the players you need the mastery stacks on. Added to this you are limited to the bonus stack on 3 players while germination allows for more.
This might look like a great mana sucker, but the legendary ring and the power of the archdruid trait help alot on this.
This doesn't mean SB sucks, but there are more points to consider than you mentioned.

[oddmyth]

This is not at all true, because whether mastery is the strongest stat for progression or not is going to depend on the fight, the rest of your healing comp and your healing role/typical assignment. Mastery shines if you can heavily focus a small handful of players that are taking predictable damage or if you want to focus tank heal or something.

Or if you use talents like Culti and SB that provide mastery stacks, or if you get extra Rejuvs from Tearstone, or if you have 4 pc, or if you actually cast WG on targets with HoTs already on them, etc. etc. Also, what unpredictable damage? We have timers for every dangerous phase or transition, we can (and should) be anticipating damage instead of reacting to it.

You are not going to get the most out of it if the damage that you need to heal is heavily spread out across multiple targets or is bursty/unpredictable in nature, because you just won't be able to reliably to layer HoTs in a way to take advantage of that mastery. Similarly, if Tranq is your #1 healing source, you get very little gain from Mastery on Tranq, because you will have less than 1.0 average HoT effects on targets up during a Tranq.

That's why talents like almost passive talents like SB and Culti exist, so you can get mastery stacks easily on targets and heal through. Again if you actually take time to anticipate your Tranq, you will do your best to HoT up as many people as possible and again Culti/SB also play a large part in getting those stacks up.

subjective value that haste gives you of being able to burst X more GCDs/spell casts into a specific high damage phase of a fight.

Here's where I really take issue with what you are saying. You are saying our most subjective stat Haste, is the one we should prioritize the most for raiding, because you need to burst within a set number of GCDs of 'unpredictable' damage. First, as stated above, there is very little, if any, unpredictable damage that we need to burst through, because we can predict every high damage period and we have several tools to help save the lives who would be put in danger of this unpredictable damage. There is very little pressure to being GCD bound because we are a mostly instant healing class and we can anticipate damage and provide small burst when necessary.

As for what Haste adds to HoTs ticking faster, it easily gets outshined by Crit applying to all spells and mastery stacks applying to all heals. Haste is also 60 stat points per percentage point more expensive than Crit, and lastly doesn't offer any synergy with Drape of Shame.

Also, mathematical models of Haste tend to unduly penalize the fact that Haste adds 0 throughput to Tranq. That deflates its value, especially when Tranq can easily push 20-25% of our healing. However, when you really think about it and look at the overhealing numbers, Tranq typically generates higher overhealing than the rest of our spells, meaning that while adding more Crit to Tranq to theoretically scale up that 15-25% of our throughput looks good on paper, it's probably disproportionately adding more overhealing than effective healing.

Doesn't matter, Tranq provides a massive amount of effective healing regardless of overheal. Also Efflo and SB will push more overheal than Tranq, so we shouldn't use those talents? If your Tranq is doing more overheal than those two, then you are stacking CDs or your healers aren't backing down during Tranq, both of which are behavioural fixes. You are arguing yourself into a corner, if you are trying to make your tranq heal as much as it can (which we all should be doing regardless of overheal), then you would stack secondaries that would help tranq.

Ultimately there is no model in which Haste is our top stat priority for raiding, unless you are running a small group, then you should stat like an M+.

[Cheze]

the RDSW weakaura has pretty consistently had vers valued higher than mastery for me when healing a ~25 person heroic raid, but my vers is pretty low so it makes sense that'd be inflated a bit. In general I'd encourage people to actually run the weakaura and see how your weights look on fights in real time.

most of our stats are pretty close and precise weights depend a lot on talents (inner peace pushes you toward crit, spring blossoms tends toward mastery/haste, etc.)

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also I don't really buy the idea that mastery is a priority stat on 'progression' (whatever you consider that to mean.) I don't think there's any kind of record of high-performing rdruids stacking mastery in mythic EN; mastery has strong positive interactions with spring blossoms and cultivation obviously, but cult's uptime (and therefore mastery stack) isn't really that high on most fights and in a well-optimized raid you probably are coordinating around using inner peace rather than spring blossoms.