Resto Druid Guide - Updated for 3.3

[det]

Love this guide and been looking at it from time to time for advice.

I am mostly decked out in ilv 232 gear which certainly is enough to heal some ICC normal modes as I found out when I joined a group this friday. Now...suddenly I have 54 frosties in my possesion but I am not sure if I will really make it to 120 for a quick and dirty 2 x T10 upgrade gloves and shoulders.

What is a recommended item for the occasional alt raider and resto drood n00b with only 60 badges

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...=Kill+Them+All (in balance specc, dont mind that..wearing my resto gear is all that counts)

Thanks for any hints (That gear was gathered over the last week, the pvp pieces were purchsed with surplus shards from my other toons and replaced really inferior blues...wouldn't normally consider raiding in pvp gear)

[Cambria]

If you think you will play him a lot in 25s, enough to where you will eventually get your 4piece and keep raiding afterwards, it's overly worth it. 4 piece is pretty much necessary as a 25 raider.

After looking through all the posts and you don't think the 4 piece will be obtainable in a good amount of time or effort, I would take the offset BP 1st. It will help you catch up on haste cap. The belt, idol, and trinket would all be ups too, but haste cap should be the 1st thing you are trying to get. With him being your alt I wouldn't strive for non-CF 856, but at least get to 736 with CF.

If you do decide to get your 2, which isn't really worth it if you're only in 10s, get the gloves and pants 1st. Though your pants have a high ilvl, the stats are useless to us. Switching them out to 251 haste pants(the set) will give you more output. The same for your belt. The trinket will be a good up from either or those trinkets since bell is so low and sliver is terrible for restos, I'd probably take that as soon as you hit 736 haste, however you have to get it.

[det]

Thanks a million here.

Was considering shoulders and gloves due to them being only 120 emblems. But indeed I see this guy only in 10 mans...so I will shoot for the stuff you mentioned as prio for 10 man: Offset BP (breastplate I assume), belt, trinket.

Have to respecc anyhow, still running in what seemed like a good idea when levelling....

Frost emblem math: 21 per week if no raids = 15 weeks to full T10...yikes. (and who needs T10 when not raiding anyhow)

[zotta]

omg.. 100% faceroll, its time to nerf this class!

[Squishie]

Ok I think it's time to ask the mmo champ community for some advice

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...ng&cn=Theangus

I am currently sitting on 2 days played time at 80 so have been quite lucky with gear but I am struggling a little with tier gear choices. I have 2x trophy of the crusade to purchase 245 tier 9 gear and 60 emblems of frost. Which pieces should I upgrade to 245 and which should be my first purchase of tier 10.

I have been just hemming SP should I concentrate more on haste capping at 1 second gcd and less on SP throughput?

Those are the two main questions I currently face. As of right now I have mana for about 90% of most fights and access to saurfang on both 10 and 25 man pugs permitting but not much more than this.

Thanks in advance for any advice

[Cerelli]

usually you would want to get the T10 gloves and legs first, but you already have decent gloves. So pick up the T10 pants right now. If you want to get the most ideal T10 set up, you will eventually want to drop your current gloves in favor of the tier ones.

As far as T9 goes, get the shoulders and chest. And pick up the emblem of triumph leather haste helmet.

Eventually, you will want to be wearing the T10 gloves, legs, hat, and shoulders with the vestments of spruce and fir chest piece. But this close to the expansion, honestly, i'd stick with 2 pieces of T10/T9 and call it good. you will outgrow all of that gear within 2-3 levels anyway.

With patch 4.0 coming pretty soon, haste wont be worth as much so you can get away with grabbing items with crit rating on them. i'd get the T10 helmet, i suppose.

[funkymusic]

well if this thread gets updated for 4.0 that would be great.

cerelli i cant disagree with you more on this. while the gloves legs tier choice is fine. not wearing your 4 set to finish out the rest of wotlk i cant see for fights like bql bpc sindy fester PP. the rest sure swap it out.

haste is actually going to again be a very important stat vs crit again. haste increases our ticks for our hots. this is not the rapid rejuv glyph effect that you see now this means that rejuv for example while at a 12 sec tick will tick more often during the full 12 sec duration rather than reducing the rejuv timer. this is why every resto cata thread is going crazy crunching the numbers for cap.

another reason to hold onto your 4 set if you do not have a viable replacement is to reforge crit for haste.

[Cambria]

You wont be stacking haste. People are trying to understand what cap is going to be, but crit is going to be close to haste in importance. Hots crit now, critting procs LS, HT/nourish crits take time off SM, which you will pretty much be using every CD in raids. Crit is very important.

Everything you know about healing from Wrath, forget.

And the reason he said not to waste time on getting the 4 piece is because the most Squishie will be seeing is Suar 10/25 reg. For reg modes, the amount of time and effort you would have to put into getting 2 more pieces of T10 isn't worth it when you aren't in HMs and Cata is this close.

[funkymusic]

first off i never said to stack haste.

im discussing raiding from now until dec 7th.

haste cap at 1015. why? we lost GotEM. why is cap still important? mana will not be an issue until we begin to level again (aka dec 7th) so we still are going to want a 1 sec gcd on rejuv.

i agree throw wrath healing out the door but some of it will stick around for a few months.

as far as the crit>haste issue for 85 goes. i still doubt crit will be as useful as intel gemming wise. and until the numbers are in for 85 raids. we wont know for sure which is better but i dont see crit being that "stat i gotta stack on my gear" maybe for once we will want a balance of crit haste gear instead of this stat is the best stack it.

[Cerelli]

well if this thread gets updated for 4.0 that would be great.

cerelli i cant disagree with you more on this. while the gloves legs tier choice is fine. not wearing your 4 set to finish out the rest of wotlk i cant see for fights like bql bpc sindy fester PP. the rest sure swap it out.

haste is actually going to again be a very important stat vs crit again. haste increases our ticks for our hots. this is not the rapid rejuv glyph effect that you see now this means that rejuv for example while at a 12 sec tick will tick more often during the full 12 sec duration rather than reducing the rejuv timer. this is why every resto cata thread is going crazy crunching the numbers for cap.

another reason to hold onto your 4 set if you do not have a viable replacement is to reforge crit for haste.

I didn't suggest the 4 piece for a few reasons.

1) his progression doesn't necessitate the use of it
2) time spent grinding badges vs actual use he would get out of the items is going to be small
3) haste took a drastic drop in relative value. 1k+ haste rating (even with reforging) is very hard to achieve for most people unless you are in BIS gear, or chose to drop the T10 set bonus.
4) crit is arguably almost as good a haste, especially at level 85.
5) like I said earlier, even if they are level 277 items, nothing you have on your toon or in your bags right now is going to survive the grind to 85 except for trinkets and idols.

[funkymusic]

I didn't suggest the 4 piece for a few reasons.

1) his progression doesn't necessitate the use of it
2) time spent grinding badges vs actual use he would get out of the items is going to be small
3) haste took a drastic drop in relative value. 1k+ haste rating (even with reforging) is very hard to achieve for most people unless you are in BIS gear, or chose to drop the T10 set bonus.
4) crit is arguably almost as good a haste, especially at level 85.
5) like I said earlier, even if they are level 277 items, nothing you have on your toon or in your bags right now is going to survive the grind to 85 except for trinkets and idols.

most of that is true. but forget all the T10 discussion. haste vs crit is the main focus im getting at.

keep in mind with reforging available hitting 1015 cap for anyone is possible. the only difference is fewer gem slots.

i dont doubt that 277 items will be replaced quickly like items were in BC. as we have seen with the huge stat gains just off 333 level gear. i just dont want people to think from now until cata haste is going to be something useless bc its still actually our best stat (besides intel now) to have. also a reminder more haste =more tics from hots. this is not the rapid rejuv effect it simply means if rejuv for ex. last 12 seconds more haste = more ticks in those 12 seconds.

again im not worried about lvl 85 healing atm im talking about now till finishing out the xpack.

[Cerelli]

i'm fully aware of how haste effects rejuv.

if you are haste capped with your gear now, then yeah you will be able to reforge your spirit away and stay haste capped. if you aren't haste capped or in the person in question, reforging crit and spirit away wont be as easy to do. if he were to reforge every item he is currently wearing on his armor with spirit/crit over to haste he would still be short of the 1015 haste cap.

dropping 40% of your spirit especially at lower gear levels could very well end up being a disaster, even with the near endless mana supplies people are reporting on the PTR.

[Cambria]

I did not say you will taking crit>haste. It will all be about balance at 80, for all our stats.

But, even healing at 80 you aren't crit starving yourself or you will see a lot of effective healing chance go out the window. There is a reason we all kept T9 so long. Hots critting is much better than dropping crit and spi to get to haste cap.

"but crit is going to be close to haste in importance." You seem to have looked right over that which is the whole basis of your discussion. No one said you aren't going to use haste or that crit is more important. I actually said the opposite.

[funkymusic]

"but crit is going to be close to haste in importance." You seem to have looked right over that which is the whole basis of your discussion. No one said you aren't going to use haste or that crit is more important. I actually said the opposite.

ya lost me with this.

my objective throughout this whole discussion has been mainly haste still being important as we continue to raid icc until dec 7th.

you have stated that we want "a balance of crit and haste" and "crit is very important" when its not to finish out wotlk. which has been my point all along. getting more rejuvs off with the 1 sec gcd beats out crit anyday to finish this xpack off. my point was not for new druids to gem or gear a certain way my point is for those who are thinking haste is junk after todays patch are wrong.

[Cambria]

ya lost me with this.

my objective throughout this whole discussion has been mainly haste still being important as we continue to raid icc until dec 7th.

you have stated that we want "a balance of crit and haste" and "crit is very important" when its not to finish out wotlk. which has been my point all along. getting more rejuvs off with the 1 sec gcd beats out crit anyday to finish this xpack off. my point was not for new druids to gem or gear a certain way my point is for those who are thinking haste is junk after todays patch are wrong.

And as I said, I never said haste was bad. In 25s you should still hit cap. But people are discussing dropping all their crit through reforging to haste and regamming pure int while instead, they forget hots crit now. Instead of getting to cap and leaving the rest of their crit alone, they want to replace it all to only haste-spi-and int.

On 25HM fights I will probably look towards the crit over int. Not a ton, but not 0.

[Dendrek]

ya lost me with this.

my objective throughout this whole discussion has been mainly haste still being important as we continue to raid icc until dec 7th.

you have stated that we want "a balance of crit and haste" and "crit is very important" when its not to finish out wotlk. which has been my point all along. getting more rejuvs off with the 1 sec gcd beats out crit anyday to finish this xpack off. my point was not for new druids to gem or gear a certain way my point is for those who are thinking haste is junk after todays patch are wrong.

Haste cap has a different meaning today than it did yesterday. If your goal is to cap Rejuv, you can do that with your spec alone. In that case, the haste cap is 0. If you want to get your GCD down to 1 second - that's a different discussion entirely. However, I don't think that cap is necessary right now (this is opinion, mind you), and it's certainly not worth ignoring other stats for that cap.

Both haste and crit are extremely valuable right now, with haste coming out a little ahead. Stat priorities pre-4.0 were SP >= Haste (to cap) >> Crit. Stat priorities now are more likely Int > Haste >= Crit.

None of this is meant to counter your arguments about haste. I just wanted to state my own position.

----------------------------------------

With that said, I must regretfully admit that I am currently taking a break from the game (I'd love to continue to play, but I don't have time for it). Chances are this break will extend into early Cata. So I will not be able to update this guide for 4.0. I hope a skilled raider and knowledgeable theorycrafter will take up the task of writing the next Resto Druid Guide (and I'd be happy to help edit that guide if asked).

I enjoyed playing my Druid - it has always been my favorite class. Hopefully I'll be able to get back to it in the future, but real life comes before this game. I'll still be around on the forums, I just can't be on much in game.

Good luck in Cata, guys!

[iLive]

Haste cap has a different meaning today than it did yesterday. If your goal is to cap Rejuv, you can do that with your spec alone. In that case, the haste cap is 0. If you want to get your GCD down to 1 second - that's a different discussion entirely. However, I don't think that cap is necessary right now (this is opinion, mind you), and it's certainly not worth ignoring other stats for that cap.

Both haste and crit are extremely valuable right now, with haste coming out a little ahead. Stat priorities pre-4.0 were SP >= Haste (to cap) >> Crit. Stat priorities now are more likely Int > Haste >= Crit.

None of this is meant to counter your arguments about haste. I just wanted to state my own position.

----------------------------------------

With that said, I must regretfully admit that I am currently taking a break from the game (I'd love to continue to play, but I don't have time for it). Chances are this break will extend into early Cata. So I will not be able to update this guide for 4.0. I hope a skilled raider and knowledgeable theorycrafter will take up the task of writing the next Resto Druid Guide (and I'd be happy to help edit that guide if asked).

I enjoyed playing my Druid - it has always been my favorite class. Hopefully I'll be able to get back to it in the future, but real life comes before this game. I'll still be around on the forums, I just can't be on much in game.

Good luck in Cata, guys!

We'll be waiting for you.

[Cambria]

With that said, I must regretfully admit that I am currently taking a break from the game (I'd love to continue to play, but I don't have time for it). Chances are this break will extend into early Cata. So I will not be able to update this guide for 4.0. I hope a skilled raider and knowledgeable theorycrafter will take up the task of writing the next Resto Druid Guide (and I'd be happy to help edit that guide if asked).

I enjoyed playing my Druid - it has always been my favorite class. Hopefully I'll be able to get back to it in the future, but real life comes before this game. I'll still be around on the forums, I just can't be on much in game.

Good luck in Cata, guys!

=( incoming 1000 terrible druid guides. Hope you can make it back for Cata!