[Resto] Druid Guide - 5.0+

[Hippytreehug]

In a nutshell, the correct stat priority is *generally* (EDITED):
Haste to breakpoint > Int > Spirit (if otherwise OOM) > Mastery > Spirit (if not otherwise OOM) ?= Crit > Haste (after breakpoint)

This literally made me lol. Thanks for making my afternoon. Haste to breakpoint > Int?? Orly? Sure you could gem/reforge/enchant straight up haste and hit breakpoints....that doesn't make it right. I can see sacrificing a small SMALL amount of Int if you're close to breakpoint (i.e. haste enchant on bracers instead of intellect) but I would never put that first.

Spirit is by far our weakest throughput stat. You need enough to make sure you don't go oom, that's it. After that it is completely wasted. If you're ending boss fights with mana to spare you're wasting throughput. Perhaps if you're really prioritizing Haste over Int as you suggested, you might need extra Spirit, but "Spirit (if not otherwise OOM)" is just dumb...sorry but it is. Crit is definitely higher on stat priority than extra Spirit. Really I would say Mastery ~ Crit at this point. As has already been stated, RJ still one of our top spells benefits more from Crit than Mastery so putting Crit at the bottom of priority is beyond me. I'd like to see your math here.

[Dendrek]

Also, just open the latest version of TreeCalcs and look at the scaling values in the Main tab (with default gear)

The scaling you link is based on having Focus Magic (which I never do), devaluing Crit, and on WG not being affected by Gift of Nature (which it is). He has some odd values for LB and Tranquility. I'm going to have to do some in-game testing to see if they're accurate. But with the WG value being wrong, the overall scaling is definitely not accurate.

[Deleted]

No, Mastery should be usually better for Wild Growth.

The formula for healing is:
(1.25 + A + Harmony + 1.25 * ExtraMastery) * (1 + Crit + ExtraCrit) * S

Adding one unit of crit adds:
1.25 + A + Harmony

Adding one unit of mastery adds:
1.25 * (1 + Crit)

So Mastery is better provided that
1.25 * (1 + Crit) > 1.25 + A + Harmony
1.25 * Crit > A + Harmony

A < 1.25 * Crit - Harmony

The default gear in TreeCalcs has 25.98% Harmony and 28% Crit.

So with that gear set Mastery is better for spells that have:
A < 1.25 * 0.28 - 0.2598 = 0.0902

For Wild Growth the maximum A is 0.06 with 3/3 Genesis, so Mastery is slightly better for Wild Growth in that case.


As already said, you need a fight with no significant tank healing, and with people spread during heavy raid damage to consider Crit better than Mastery.

Now the thing is that the normal modes are as follows:
- Shannox: mostly tank healing
- Beth'tilac: mostly raid healing, people stacked
- Alysrazor: mostly tank healing in air phase, mostly raid healing with people stacked in ground phase
- Rhyolith: mostly raid healing, people stacked
- Baleroc: all single-target healing, you likely want the reliability of Mastery
- Majordomo: mostly raid healing, people stacked
- Ragnaros: tank healing, raid healing with people stacked (molten seed explosions), some raid healing with people semi-spread in p1 and p3

Ragnaros is the only one that even has components favoring Crit, but there mana regeneration tends to be more useful (the fight is long and healers might well die), having reliable tank healing can better, so I still doubt Crit is better here.

Where do you see all this raid healing with people not stacked?

---------- Post added 2011-07-14 at 01:10 AM ----------

The scaling you link is based on having Focus Magic (which I never do), devaluing Crit, and on WG not being affected by Gift of Nature (which it is). He has some odd values for LB and Tranquility. I'm going to have to do some in-game testing to see if they're accurate. But with the WG value being wrong, the overall scaling is definitely not accurate.

Indeed the sheet makes the stupid decision of enabling Focus Magic by default.
The latest versions are fixed to include 0.25 for Wild Growth.

Disabling Focus Magic it becomes:
Rejuv 1.614413132 1.555301039
Regrowth 0.79199296 1.150262601
Nourish 0.276542109 0.268421658
HT 0.837646365 0.813049509
Swiftmend (Direct) 3.528937447 2.072484184
Swiftmend (Efflor.) 4.402559338 9.507733974
Swiftmend (Combined) 7.931496785 11.58021816
WG 5.197686337 5.240377275
Lifebloom, single cast 0.954464417 1.039286432
Lifebloom, slowroll x3 1.487533371 1.619728533
Lifebloom, rolling 1.521209453 1.656397364
Tranquility 4.201955168 4.236467718

[Dendrek]

You've presented an argument in the first case that says WG favors Mastery while basing that argument on the fact that you start out with more Crit than Mastery. Of course WG will favor Mastery if you have more Crit. It's dead even, however, if you have equal amounts of both. If your starting values are biased, be careful to acknowledge that in your conclusion.

And as for the argument that Crit is bad when tank healing: you still haven't provided any credible evidence to support that conclusion. It's fine if you believe that: it's a personal preference. But I don't. I think which ever stat provides the most benefit is the one worth taking, and they both provide nearly equal benefit when tank healing, so neither is favored in that case.

My point above still stands.

I will say, however, that it's important to awknowledge the slight starting bonuses we have in both stats, as that does impact the balancing act between them:

For Crit we have Nature's Majesty (+4%), a raid buff from several different sources (+5%), and of course what we gain from Int (which tends to be a lot). Whereas for Mastery we start out with a 10% base bonus. So if we're striving for nearly balanced values in both stats, which we probably should be, then these values are important to keep in mind.

[Deleted]

You've presented an argument in the first case that says WG favors Mastery while basing that argument on the fact that you start out with more Crit than Mastery

No, that's a gear set with as little crit as possible as far as I can tell.
The value is higher because as you say there is crit from int and a lot of crit bonuses in the game.

And as for the argument that Crit is bad when tank healing: you still haven't provided any credible evidence to support that conclusion

Well, it's bad because it doesn't improve the worst case healing at all, it just makes the best case (a crit) happen more often.

This is acceptable if it all averages out like it happens with HoT ticks, but with tank healing using a direct heal every 2 seconds, that's kind of a serious problem, especially because the average throughput gain is going to be minimal even if Crit happens to be better.

Unless you can cap crit to 100% or close, of course, but that's not the case unless you are using Regrowth.
It might possible to use a Regrowth-only spec and try to get 40% crit to get it capped with +60% and then tank heal with that, but I'm not sure how possible or viable that is (and it's a very niche build of course).

At any rate, note that overhealing will devalue Crit on direct heals, since they are more likely to overheal (or make the hots already on the target overheal).

And yes, in general you do need to balance Crit and Mastery but it looks like the balance point usually needs more mastery than is reachable in current gear while also going for 2005 Haste.

[Dendrek]

No, that's a gear set with as little crit as possible as far as I can tell.
The value is higher because as you say there is crit from int and a lot of crit bonuses in the game.

No, it's that way because he has Focus Magic set as TRUE.

Well, it's bad because it doesn't improve the worst case healing at all, it just makes the best case (a crit) happen more often.

What about the fact that Mastery only increases healing by 1% per point? Is that 1% going to be so much better than getting 2 heals for one cast (in the case of a crit)? No.

At any rate, note that overhealing will devalue Crit on direct heals, since they are more likely to overheal (or make the hots already on the target overheal).

If you're overhealing, then the tank is already high on health and not in danger of dieing. Overhealing is not something you should be worried about in current content. Unlike Wrath, where spells healed for huge amounts and tanks were topped off every GCD, in Cata we have more time to heal up tanks. Since it usually takes more than one heal to top a tank off, getting two heals for the cast time of one (in the case of a crit) is definitely a good thing and is not something you should try to avoid.

And yes, in general you do need to balance Crit and Mastery but it looks like the balance point usually needs more mastery than is reachable in current gear while also going for 2005 Haste.

The value of both stats are way to close for this to be a valid argument. Although it depends on your healing breakdown, the balance point between the two stats is essentially when you have equal amounts of each.

[Deleted]

If you're overhealing, then the tank is already high on health and not in danger of dieing. Overhealing is not something you should be worried about in current content. Unlike Wrath, where spells healed for huge amounts and tanks were topped off every GCD, in Cata we have more time to heal up tanks. Since it usually takes more than one heal to top a tank off, getting two heals for the cast time of one (in the case of a crit) is definitely a good thing and is not something you should try to avoid.

Well, not really, there are (heroic mode) bosses where the tank just needs to be topped off as soon as possible to avoid a possible instagib since the bosses hit really hard, especially in the limited amount of tank gear during relatively early progression.

Also (in 25-man), you usually have multiple tank healers, which tends to result in overhealing.

Well, anyway, whatever.

No idea where the fashion of favoring Crit by default here comes from though.

If it is from the fact the Crit doubled its value in 4.2, then I have some news for you: the biggest amount of healing usually comes from Wild Growth and at a significant distance Rejuvenation.
Symbiosis affected Wild Growth minimally and Rejuvenation partially, while the new one affects them fully, which combined with the double dipping on Efflorescence resulted in Mastery also more than doubling its value compared to 4.1.

[Dendrek]

You seem to be putting words into my mouth. No one has said Crit is superior to Mastery, only that it's a slight favorite (unless you have high Efflorescence uptime). I've been very consistent on that point. The second half of that post is arguing against a straw man. And the first half is an argument we'll have to agree to disagree on.

[Myrrar]

Because it's been proven by multiple tests. They are almost equal with in most normal situations. People here don't just favor crit=mastery because it sounds really awesome to have to redo all their gear.

Your top 3 spells, almost always, are going to be WG, RJ, and LB, normally in that order. Rj, majorly favors crit. LB, right in the middle. Wg, right in the middle. So, that would mean, if you just use those 3 spells, crit is obviously superior. Then you have to consider all your other spells.

SM, which everyone should be using on CD, crit.
Efflor, which probably has a good 50% usefulness depending on boss mechanics, but on average when raid healing, majorly favors mastery.
All direct heals, right in the middle.
LS if you take it, obviously crit because it's based of crits.
Tranq, even. Rest of the direct heals, even.

This is why, as the guide says, it's up to you and how you play if you want to favor one or the other. But in general, they are about equal.

You said:
Haste to breakpoint > Int > Spirit (if otherwise OOM) > Mastery > Spirit (if not otherwise OOM) > Crit > Haste (after breakpoint)

Everything about that is wrong:

Yes, you can drop a good amount of int for 2005, but Int is still our best stat by far. Spi, is pretty much our most useless stat right now. Saying more spi than you need to complete a fight is over crit is a joke. So again, as the guide says and even ej supports though they put spi in general as last:

Int > haste breakpoint > spi(as much as you need) > crit = mastery > haste after breakpoint
And as the guide says, crit vs mastery is based on how you personally heal, what spells you take, and so on with crit favored on a lot of ights with a normal playstyle.

[Dendrek]

I've been in communication with Hamlet on EJ. Regarding mastery vs crit, he made a good point that I feel silly for not having considered.

When you're balancing the two stats, keep the following in mind: When we look at our mastery on our character sheet, we're usually looking at the percent value. (The arguments I've been making on this an other threads were in regards to the rating, not the the percent.) The percent for mastery we see is 1.25 times what it's actually worth. In other words, if you see 10% mastery, it's actually only worth 8% healing. That also means 10% mastery is worth 8% crit. So if you assume both stats have equal value per rating point, then you want your mastery percent to be 1.25* higher than your crit percent. <-- That's the balancing act we need to focus on when reforging our stats.

Again, the above assumes you think both stats have equal value per rating point. I'll try to come up with some concrete values worth considering with that information in mind.

[Deleted]

Myrrar, what spec are you using?=) because I dont know if I shall remove those 2 points in LS and place one 1 in BotG and the other one in NS, or keep the 2 points in there so I dont have NS or BotGx1.

By the way you were right about NB. =)
Thank you!

[Skelly]

I've been in communication with Hamlet on EJ. Regarding mastery vs crit, he made a good point that I feel silly for not having considered.

When you're balancing the two stats, keep the following in mind: When we look at our mastery on our character sheet, we're usually looking at the percent value. (The arguments I've been making on this an other threads were in regards to the rating, not the the percent.) The percent for mastery we see is 1.25 times what it's actually worth. In other words, if you see 10% mastery, it's actually only worth 8% healing. That also means 10% mastery is worth 8% crit. So if you assume both stats have equal value per rating point, then you want your mastery percent to be 1.25* higher than your crit percent. <-- That's the balancing act we need to focus on when reforging our stats.

You're making a good point, but you've simplified it too much. The percent you see for mastery is at least (bar efflo) 1.25 times what its actually worth. Additive talents affect this as we've previously discussed. This pushes the balance a little more in the favor for crit. But like you said, a little more concrete math needs to be done.

I'm going to steal a bit from Lolisa in post #846 to try and illustrate how to solve this dilemma.

If you follow the math a little bit (which accounts for GoN btw) you'll find that the perfect balance is achieved when

Crit = (A + Harmony)/1.25 Where A is the total additive talents for a particular spell, given as a decimal. And Harmony is your %Harmony in your char sheet.
So you can easily see that for A=0, the balance is achieved when Harmony =1.25*Crit as you described in your post.

From this, we could weight all of our spells by the percentage of our total healing they do in a given fight, and input each spell's A value.

I don't know if that explanation is super clear.. I've got an idea in my head, I just need some free time to work it out. Probably this weekend

[Dendrek]

So if you assume both stats have equal value per rating point, then you want your mastery percent to be 1.25* higher than your crit percent. <-- That's the balancing act we need to focus on when reforging our stats.

Notice the blue text. I did simplify it mostly to make the bolded point. I was afraid providing more information than I did would over complicate the point I was trying to make. I still lean towards the opinion that crit rating should have a slightly higher value than mastery rating, but what that means in terms of percents I'm not sure yet.

[Skelly]

I was afraid providing more information than I did would over complicate the point I was trying to make.

Yeah I see what you were trying to do. I just don't like to simplify at the potential cost of accuracy. The statement I would make is that "You want your mastery percent to be absolutely no higher than 1.25 times your crit percent". That statement is 100% true, and (might?) be applicable to mastery stackers or people without the 5% crit raid buff.

[Myrrar]

Myrrar, what spec are you using?=) because I dont know if I shall remove those 2 points in LS and place one 1 in BotG and the other one in NS, or keep the 2 points in there so I dont have NS or BotGx1.

By the way you were right about NB. =)
Thank you!

For my 25s right now I use:
http://wowtal.com/#k=gCXqhezrT.b0w.druid.
Some fights I switch to more regen talents. I'm also testing LS right now, may drop that for pers, not 100% sure.

In my 10s I use the same spec but I need all my regen talents and 1 point from LS into NS. I may switch the LS point into pers too, not sure.

Now that Tang updated his LS calc, I'm going to test it next raid to see what's best. That calc is amazing, I always suggest everyone to use it =)


But yeah, I would love a way to explain to people how exactly to balance mastery and crit in an easy way with the values being all screwy. I think it's why a lot of people get confused. On optimizors and and spreadsheets it shows they are pretty much equal leaning towards crit, but then push towards a higher mastery value.

Just not sure how to put it that wont be super confusing =/

[Dendrek]

My initial estimations are these:

When raid buffed, our crit will likely be between 20 to 23%.

• 4% from Nature's Majesty (Tier 1 Balance talent)
• 5% from Leader of the Pack (Feral Druid), Rampage (Fury Warrior) or Elemental Oath (Elemental Shaman)
• ~11% from Intellect when raid buffed (give or take 0.5%) regardless of gear level
• +whatever percent you get from crit rating

Because our crit starts out at 20% and our mastery starts out at 10%, it will take a lot of mastery to even match our base amount of crit. Based on the idea that you need a maximum of 1.25* as much mastery as you do crit, you'd need a maximum of 25% mastery if you have 20% crit for the two stats to be balanced. We aren't likely to reach 25% mastery in current gear unless we reforge nearly all of it to that stat.

For that reason, I recommend stacking mastery. However, all other relevant stat weights still apply:
Haste (within 300 to cap) > Int > Spirit (to not oom) > Mastery > Crit > Spirit (excess) > Haste (beyond caps)

I regret not having done this analysis sooner.

[Myrrar]

So the guide is accurate for everyone:
will it be safe to say for pretty much everyone, it's ok to stack mastery.

Or will it be better to state: 'Look at what % you will have with your raid buffs then make your decision'.
As in, if for some reason they didn't have 5%, didn't have 2-4% from Nat Majesty for whatever reason, or just have 0 crit on their gear the difference will be pretty much minimal that the base crit will make up for it?

People like to nit pick every little thing, as seen above, so I'm just going to cover everything to stop the bitching.

[Dendrek]

If you're in a group that's unfortunate enough to not have a Fury Warrior, Feral Druid, or Elemental Shaman, then the minimum amount of crit you'll have is 15%. In that case, the break-even point where Mastery = Crit is when you have 18.75% mastery if you have 15% crit. Even if you favor crit, you probably shouldn't have less an equal percent of mastery. So with 15% crit, you should aim for 15% Mastery as the minimum. For most players that still requires reforging to mastery.

So in general (and I think there are very few/almost no exceptions to this rule) resto druids should be reforging to mastery.

The argument that crit is slightly better than mastery is correct, but the fact that we start out with so much crit just reduces its relative value to mastery. There's almost no way any druid's mastery is high enough to justify stacking more crit than they already have.

[Edit] To simplify my suggestion:

If you have Nature's Majesty (4% crit balance talent)

• And the 5% Crit buff*: Stack mastery until you have between 22% to 25% mastery.
• Without the 5% Crit buff: Stack mastery until you have between 17% to 19% mastery.

If you don't have Nature's Majesty: Stop being bad and get it.

*Note: The 5% Crit buff comes from Leader of the Pack (Feral Druid), Rampage (Fury Warrior) or Elemental Oath (Elemental Shaman)

[Dracodraco]

If you're in a group that's unfortunate enough to not have a Fury Warrior, Feral Druid, or Elemental Shaman, then the minimum amount of crit you'll have is 15%. In that case, the break-even point where Mastery = Crit is when you have 18.75% mastery if you have 15% crit. Even if you favor crit, you probably shouldn't have less an equal percent of mastery. So with 15% crit, you should aim for 15% Mastery as the minimum. For most players that still requires reforging to mastery.

So in general (and I think there are very few/almost no exceptions to this rule) resto druids should be reforging to mastery.

The argument that crit is slightly better than mastery is correct, but the fact that we start out with so much crit just reduces its relative value to mastery. There's almost no way any druid's mastery is high enough to justify stacking more crit than they already have.

[Edit] To simplify my suggestion:

If you have Nature's Majesty (4% crit balance talent)

• And the 5% Crit buff*: Stack mastery until you have between 22% to 25% mastery.
• Without the 5% Crit buff: Stack mastery until you have between 17% to 19% mastery.

If you don't have Nature's Majesty: Stop being bad and get it.

*Note: The 5% Crit buff comes from Leader of the Pack (Feral Druid), Rampage (Fury Warrior) or Elemental Oath (Elemental Shaman)

A hunter with a wolf pet would also be one of the first to supply 5% crit (they favor 550 agil/str>5%crit for selfbuffing, so with a DK or non-ele shaman / tank warrior to pop the str/agil they'd be doing 5% crit to up their own dps the most).

[Deleted]

Just to be sure about mastery : we are speaking about the % stated into the TOOLTIP on your character sheet ? Or about the number directly on the sheet ?