Hysterical Druid Pun:
A Resto PvP Guide.
Hey all! Tangster here with a Resto Druid PvP guide for 5.0.4! Just a couple of quick things:
1) I don’t claim to be the best resto druid out there; I don’t even claim to be close. But after talking to many different people on many different forums and experimenting for myself, the following is what I’ve come up with.
2) This guide is about gearing, glyphing and spec. There will be no playstyle tips in here.
3) Don’t take my word as law. This is a compilation of my experiences so far and is a long way from complete. I’m always open to constructive criticism and intelligent discussion.
Contents:
Quick Reference
Stats
Gear
Gems
Glyphs
Talents
Quick Reference:
(This is so you don’t have to look through the whole guide for basics, if you want an explanation to these, read the section)
5-6% hit (Mighty bash only) > PvP Power >= Intellect > PvP Resilience > Haste (up to 12.5%) > Spirit > Haste = Mastery = Crit
Red Sockets: Brilliant Primordial Ruby
Blue Sockets: Storm River’s Heart
Yellow Sockets: Mystic Sun’s Radiance
Reforge: Crit -> Haste (up to 12.5%)
Major: Blooming, Lifebloom, Barkskin, Fae Silence, Nature’s Grasp
Minor: Really doesn’t matter
Stats:
Priority first, then an explanation:
5-6% hit (Mighty bash only) > PvP Power >= Intellect > PvP Resilience > Haste (up to 12.5%) > Haste = Mastery = Spirit > Crit
Hit
A very important change to healers in MoP is all our spells have 100% chance to hit reguardless. So no more stacking hit to get our cyclones to land. HOWEVER the talent Mighty Bash still requires hit to land, so if you have 0 hit this will be missing a LOT. Gear for hit IF AND ONLY IF you use Mighty Bash, if not skip hit.
PvP Power
Straight up healing/damage increase to players. Can’t go wrong. I haven’t been able to determine how it scales though, but at least for the first season, stacking this will probably be a good idea.
Intellect
More or less the same as PvP power, except healing and damage across the board as opposed to just BGs and Arena. Might want to stack this over Power if you like WPvP. So far it seems a good balance between int and Power is the way to go as opposed to stacking one or the other. But I need more maths to back it up.
PvP Resilience
Can’t have too much and we won’t be hitting a cap anytime soon as we are still early in the season. Plenty of it comes on gear. Add more if you feel you’re to squishy (can’t hurt considering the burst that’s out there right now)
Haste
When you hit 12.5% haste you get an extra tick on your hots. Obviously this is huge for resto druids as hots are the vast majority of our healing. I’ve been prioritizing this up to the 12.5% haste plateau and while I haven’t hit 12.5% on my gear yet, I notice a distinct difference in snapping hots off because of a lower GCD.
Spirit
With a perma mana cap we now have to completely rely on our regen as opposed to mana pools. So far I’ve yet to hit a 2s or 3s match that lasts long enough or requires enough healing to make me wish I had more spirit. I’m doing fine with the spirit that comes on the PvP honor gear and not using a regen trinket atm. Your milage may very but I suggest leaving this as it is on your gear. Just pop innervate at 80% mana or so and you’ll be fine. But if you find yourself having mana issues you may want to toss a bit more of this in. (Don’t gem for it, reforge)
Mastery
RDruid mastery is pretty shit for us in pvp as we don’t stop to hardcast very often. It increases our direct heals and gives us a 20 sec bonus to hots. Obviously the 20 sec bonus is huge (and makes NS even better because a NS -> HT not only heals like goddamn morphine but gives us the mastery bonus for 20 sec after) but hard to keep up in pvp. This is a personal choice how you want to prio this.
Crit
Too much RNG to actually rely on imo. And if the RNG gods hate you passionately like they do me, you’ll be wasting stats. Besides, regrowth has a baseline of like 60% crit or something crazy and since that’s usually the only heal we hardcast, crit isn’t worth taking for hot crits alone. Reforge away from this to something better.
Gear
Gear is pretty straight forward atm. Grab a PvP Contender’s set asap then start the honor grind. Grab the Brewfest trinket if you can. It has a low proc rate but the intel is really nice to start with. As for weapons our choices are limited because there are no honor weapons this season. If you HATE PvE and don’t run heroics, your best bet is to do the new Crucible of Carnage. It’s a Scenario called The Arena of Annihilation. The quest in there rewards a pretty solid blue staff. Other options include:
Gustwalker Staff (H Siege of Niuzao Temple)
Amber Scythe of Klaxxi’vess (Klaxxi Revered)
Je’lyu, Spirit of the Serpent (H Temple of the Jade Serpent, 1H epic mace, low drop rate)
The easiest is obviously the AoA one. 100% drop rate, 10 minutes tops. As for other gear, go straight pvp. Here is the order I suggest:
PvP trinket (if you don’t have the cata one)
Gloves
3 of: Chest, Shoulders, Legs, Head (for epic 4 set bonus)
Spellpower trinket (Get the proc one, not the on use one)
Bracers, Boots, Belt
PvP Trinket Upgrade (If you had the cata one)
Jewelry
Gems
Should come as no surprise if you read the “Stats” section. We’re gonna straight gem our 3 best stats:
Red Sockets: Brilliant Primordial Ruby
Blue Sockets: Storm River’s Heart
Yellow Sockets: Mystic Sun’s Radiance
At this time I highly recommend going for socket bonuses. None of those stats are significantly better than the other to justify stacking one losing out on the socket bonus.
For Blacksmiths, put PvP Power in your extra sockets
For Jewelcrafters use your JC gems for Intellect.
Glyphs
There are three clear cut winners here in my opinion, but the best part about this expac is we’re getting farther and farther away from cookie cutter builds. So make your own judgment.
Glyph of Blooming: Decreases duration of LB by 5 sections and increases the bloom heal by 50%. LB is no longer refreshed by hardcasted heals.
Amazing for pvp as LB Bloom is fantastic burst healing. Without this glyph LB feels like it takes too long to bloom imo. And all those blooms going off after tree form spreading them? Forget about it! Take IMO
Glyph of Lifebloom: Casting Lifebloom on a new target grants that target as many applications as the old target had.
Hands down the best glyph for any resto druid. 1 GCD vs 3? No brainer. Even more incentive to keep LB rolling, as if clearcasting wasn’t enough. This is the only glyph I will call completely mandatory.
Glyph of Barkskin: Reduces the chance you will be hit with a critical strike while Barkskin is active by 25%.
Makes our #1 defensive CD even better. With 25% chance reduced crit there’s no way anyone but a frost mage or feral druid is critting you. (ele sham nonwithstanding). An absolute must for double melee teams and anything with a frost mage.
Glyph of Cyclone: Increases the range of Cyclone by 5 yards
Meh, ok at best. If this was 10 yards then we could talk, but for just 5 yards this seems like a waste of a spot to me.
Glyph of Regrowth: Increases your chance of a critical strike with Regrowth by 40% but removes the HoT portion.
IMO stay away from this. It sounds great on paper but consider this. Regrowth has a baseline chance to crit of 60%. In a combination of honor gear and crafted blues I have ~12% crit unbuffed. That’s 72% chance for regrowth to crit already. Not bad. In addition, that hot porition lets you blast off a Regrowth -> Swiftmend for a big ass heal in 2 seconds. With this glyph you’d have to have a rejuv rolling already, not something I’m willing to count on with all the cc flying around.
Glyph of Fae Silence: Your Faerie Fire spell silences the target for 3 seconds when cast in bear form.
Situational if you ask me. This could be great for protecting a cyclone or hibernate cast, but 1 global to get into bear form + 1 to cast it seems like too long to me and not good for much. It might turn out to be useful vs caster teams though, just seems like too much time not healing to me.
Glyph of Nature’s Grasp: Reduces the CD on Nature’s Grasp by 30 seconds
Not too bad if you’re having trouble vs melee, but since NG only has 1 charge now this glyph isn’t nearly as great as it could be. Personal preference.
Glyph of Stampede: Stampeding Roar can now be cast in any form
Barely worth mentioning. Not worth a major glyph slot, especially now that SR will automatically shift you on use.
Talents:
Tier 1:
Feline Swiftness: 15% speed increase across the board. Not too shabby, great for kiting and random BG flag running.
Displacer Beast: A Vanish that doesn’t drop combat on a 30 second CD? Pretty cool idea, but if you have dots on you you’re coming right back out. Good for dropping focus target and dodging CC in arena. Moojerk also pointed out you can use it to vanish around pillars to escape melee. So even though you pop right out, you've dropped focus target AND are now out of LoS.
Wild Charge: My personal choice for this tier, a huge mobility talent on a 15 second CD. Fly to an ally in caster form (25 yards) or jump 20 yards forward in travel. Not a HUGE distance, but that 15 sec CD makes it very much worth it
Tier 2:
Nature’s Swiftness: An old favorite, now with more flare! Makes your next spell instant cast with 50% more damage/healing/duration. And on a 1min CD to boot! Yeah insta cast HTs are solid, but I will be taking this for the CC choices. Insta cast cyclone/hibernate? Yes please. (Note: Does not increase cyclone/hibernate duration in pvp).
Renewal: A solid self CD on a 2 minute cooldown. Heals 30% of your health instantly. Pretty solid choice. Only problem is it’s a self CD, no good for partners.
Cenarion Ward: An extra hot on a 30 sec CD. Ticks pretty hard every sec for 6 seconds. Personally the CD feels a bit long to me for just a 6 second hot. It’s a strong HoT, but NS is just to appealing to choose this over it
Tier 3:
Faerie Swarm: Replaces Faerie Fire. Reduces target movement speed by 50%. Meh, ok at best. Last I checked it COULD be cast in travel form which makes it not too shabby for kiting. But with so many other slows out there, there is a good chance whoever is chasing you is slowed already. Your call
Mass Entanglement: roots up to 5 targets. 2 min CD. Very meh imo. May be situational in Random BGs when going for a ninja cap but a 2 min CD seems to long for a weak spell like this
Typhoon: Aw yeah! It’s not just boomchickens that get to have fun at LM now! 30 sec CD, 3 sec daze, castable in any form. Great for peeling, griefing and being awesome. Typhoon melee off you to get room to pop a regrowth off. My personal choice.
Tier 4:
Soul of the Forest: Passive. 50% haste on the next spell after casting swiftmend. Not bad at all! Makes Regrowth almost impossible to interrupt, HT cast like regrowth and rejuv tick like it’s had too much caffeine. It’s a tossup between this and the other choices
Incarnation: Good ol cata tree of life form. 15% healing 120% armor insta cast regrowth etc etc. 3 min CD. My personal choice
Force of Nature: Summons 3 treants for 15 sec on a 1 min CD. The short CD here is nice, but the trees don’t really heal for all that much and they only get off about 4-5 casts each. Less of a defensive CD and more of a “I’m getting slightly behind on heals or could be CC’d soon” button. Again, it’s a tossup =\
Tier 5:
Disorienting Roar: AoE disorient that breaks on damage. 30 sec CD. A real solid talent here! Great to peel more then 1 melee off you, interrupting spell casts and getting distance to drop a cyclone or heal. The 30 sec CD is short as hell and as an added bonus you don’t need to gear for hit like Mighty Bash. I like this in RBGs but have yet to try it in 3s.
Ursol’s Vortex: Reduces speed of players in 8 yards by 50%, pulls the first person to try and leave back into the vortex, lasts 10 sec 1 min CD. Fun in BGs, so far I haven’t found a super good use for it in arena. I suppose if you dropped it in LoS of your ranged partners you could blow something up pretty quick, but imo the other two are better options.
Mighty Bash: 5 sec stun 1 min CD. Only downside to this is you have to gem to 5-6% hit to get it reliable, otherwise you’ll miss A LOT. But a 5 sec stun is damn nice for setting up cc chains. Not nearly as good if you run with a rogue or warrior tho as it will DR them. Choose it based on your comp and gear.
Tier 6:
Heart of the Wild: Passive buff to stam agil and intel by 6%, on activation 45 seconds of playing every spec. You can use it as a defensive CD and hop in bear form, but I wouldn’t. Hop in cat form or spam wraths for mad deeps to help get a kill. The 6 min CD is kinda long but my wraths were hitting about 35k noncrit and 45 seconds is a decent amount of time to land a kill. Just make sure to keep healing
Dream of Cenarius: Cast time damaging spells and melee abilities increase next heal by 3, cast time heals increase damage of moonfire and melee abilities. Honestly not that great for resto imo. You won’t be hard casting damaging spells for a heal buff, and moonfire still hits like a wet noodle even with the buff. Too much other burst flying around to be going this offensive. Meh
Nature’s Vigil: Straight up 20% damage and healing increase on a 3 min CD for 30 sec. Direct heals hurt nearby enemies and spell casts heal allies. Worth taking for the 20% healing increase alone, but the shortish 3 min CD and damage to enemies is just icing on the cake. Haven’t been able to confirm if it breaks CC yet, but I don’t think it does. I like this for BGs and HotW for arena
Well that’s all I got for now! If I made a mistake please let me know and as always, I’m very open to discussion on all of these points! Happy Healing!
EDIT: Fixed some weirdness
EDIT2: You can now find this link in the PvP Guides Sticky of the Druid forum!