Mastery > Int?

[Baelrah81]

I'm going to use the crafted 496 chest as an example. It has two blue gem slots and according to the guide posted it's best to use the int/spirit gem. But why wouldn't we use the mastery/spirit gem. We're still getting the +120int socket bonus. Yes, we lose out on 160int but gain 320 mastery. The gain to spirit remains the same.

I guess basically what I want to know is at what point does "x" amount of Mastery out weigh "x" amount of int, or is there not a point at which this would happen? Is 320 mastery > 160int?

I would link the chest and gems but have no idea how to do so.

[Dracodraco]

For boomkin or resto :s.
Assuming resto, as else you'd probably be wanting crit+spirit gems if you even wanted to unlock that bonus... On the other hand, if you're resto, you'd want pure spirit gems instead of a mixture. Uh. Not really sure what I'm dealing with here.
Regardless, for resto, int and mastery is pretty much the same, except int provides spellpower, which has a scaling component with most spells, while mastery is a flat modifier - int also adds a tiny amount of crit. Usually, you can go by the rule of thumb that mastery:int is 3:1 in terms of power (so 3 mastery is equal to 1 int). This means that in a socket where you'd have the choise between mastery and int, you'd always pick int, as they only come in a 2:1 ratio (60 int for 120 mastery, instead of 60 int for 180 mastery).
But if you're resto, you REALLY want to put pure spirit gems in there.

[Foto]

For boomy I'd say intellect over mastery in that situation. I do most of my reforges myself and generally try and keep mastery to a minimum and where possible reforging out of it to crit

[Dendrek]

Draco, I disagree with the straight spirit comment. There is no point at which spirit > int.

[Dracodraco]

Draco, I disagree with the straight spirit comment. There is no point at which spirit > int.

For a resto druid? You have to be joking, right <.<? Boomkin, that's kind of obvious. But for resto...??? You're disagreeing with me and literally every other druid in the top 20 that still actually gets to raid as resto. Just saying. Are you confident that the entire top 20 is doing it wrong, while you have it right?
---snip---

Please do not name and shame. If someone wants to reveal their armory, they'll post it.

[Dendrek]

[edit]Welp, Cairhiin tossed a wrench into my math… (Figured I take this time to edit out some of my douchebaggary.)

How much do you think that spirit gives you? Honestly, how much? You throw out the "top 20" number to shoot me down, which is convenient. But have you actually done the math? Let's consider 1000 Spirit for the sake of argument. 1000 Spirit gives you 564.35 mp5. Let's say you use all of that regen on Rejuv, which realistically should be the case. I suppose you could use it on Regrowth, but then that makes matters worse. And you can't argue you're using it on WG or SM, as both are expected parts of your rotation.

1000 Spirit allows you to cast 1 extra Rejuv every 76.5 seconds (with 2piece tier), which is a grand total of 4.7 extra Rejuvs over a 6 minute fight. Is 4.7 Rejuvs going to save your raid? Even then, you'd have to be ending every fight at 0 mana to even argue that regen was necessary. What about 1000 Int then? Is Int really that much better? Let's say you're at 22,000 Int Raid buffed (or about 23,000 SP + 8,000 from weap = 31,000). An extra 1000 Int = 1102.5 Int buffed (Mark and Leather) = 1157.6 SP. That's a 4% increase in SP. That's about a 3% increase in healing done across the board. So would you argue that 4.7 extra Rejuvs over a 6 minute fight accounts for more than 3% of your healing done on that fight? The numbers become even more skewed in favor of Int at lower gear levels. The number is actually 1.5%, not 3%. At that point I guess it would be hard to say if 4.7 Rejuvs over a 6 minute fight would beat 1.5% extra healing across the board.

[Cairhiin]

Your math is off as 1000 Spirit would be equal to 500 Int in terms of item budget, and not 1000 Int. Apart from that I have no clue about Resto Druids.

[Dendrek]

You're right. Forgot about the double budget given to spirit.

[Alahondor]

You want to be condescending? Ok. Tell you what. Let's be condescending:

How much do you think that spirit gives you? Honestly, how much? You throw out the "top 20" number to shoot me down, which is convenient. But have you actually done the math? Let's consider 1000 Spirit for the sake of argument. 1000 Spirit gives you 564.35 mp5. Let's say you use all of that regen on Rejuv, which realistically should be the case. I suppose you could use it on Regrowth, but then that makes matters worse. And you can't argue you're using it on WG or SM, as both are expected parts of your rotation.

1000 Spirit allows you to cast 1 extra Rejuv every 76.5 seconds (with 2piece tier), which is a grand total of 4.7 extra Rejuvs over a 6 minute fight. Is 4.7 Rejuvs going to save your raid? Even then, you'd have to be ending every fight at 0 mana to even argue that regen was necessary. What about 1000 Int then? Is Int really that much better? Let's say you're at 22,000 Int Raid buffed (or about 23,000 SP + 8,000 from weap = 31,000). An extra 1000 Int = 1102.5 Int buffed (Mark and Leather) = 1157.6 SP. That's a 4% increase in SP. That's about a 3% increase in healing done across the board. So would you argue that 4.7 extra Rejuvs over a 6 minute fight accounts for more than 3% of your healing done on that fight? The numbers become even more skewed in favor of Int at lower gear levels.

You can argue experience if you like, but experience does not make up for a lack of understanding.

You'd be receiving 500 intellect instead.

Also, that whole trip about being condescending really does seem rude and disrespectful. I'm not saying his was any better, but at his information wasn't inaccurate. He is talking from experience, and what makes you think those druids in the top 20 haven't done the math?

Chill out.

[Drefan]

For boomkin or resto :s.
Assuming resto, as else you'd probably be wanting crit+spirit gems if you even wanted to unlock that bonus... On the other hand, if you're resto, you'd want pure spirit gems instead of a mixture. Uh. Not really sure what I'm dealing with here.
Regardless, for resto, int and mastery is pretty much the same, except int provides spellpower, which has a scaling component with most spells, while mastery is a flat modifier - int also adds a tiny amount of crit. Usually, you can go by the rule of thumb that mastery:int is 3:1 in terms of power (so 3 mastery is equal to 1 int). This means that in a socket where you'd have the choise between mastery and int, you'd always pick int, as they only come in a 2:1 ratio (60 int for 120 mastery, instead of 60 int for 180 mastery).
But if you're resto, you REALLY want to put pure spirit gems in there.

I would not go "all out" on Spirit Gems. When you get to a certain gear level I think it's not worth getting spritit over Mastery and Int. Why? well seeing as I hardly go oom and It's more an issue of me not being able to keep people up due lack of globals rather then me going oom. However I raid 10man, not sure if you raid 10 or 25. But I assume you would gem more towards spirit and be that reju rolling druid in 25 than in 10man.

I usally gem like this.
Always getting pure int gems in the red and prismatic sockets, for Blue / yellow / green amd orange getting a +Mastery / Int and 180 spirit gem to get the set bonuses. Sure Spirit is not bad, but I would not chase it in everysocket. I hope you get my point. And to save you the trouble of looking me up: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...bloom/advanced

Not a full HC druid yet, but hopefully getting there soon

[Dracodraco]

As Cair says. It's 500 int for 1000 spirit.
And yes, the extra rejuvs (or healing touches, or regrowths), are stronger than having slightly bigger heals. Considering that the playstyle at the moment greatly emphasizes the importance of snap healing and absorbtion, the chances that your spells will ever NOT overheal, is very, very low. Which means that the int you add, to the power of your spells, will just result in more overhealing - while more casts will result in less overhealing (as you can pick a target that has lost HP to cast on).
To be condescending, as you said (and I was in no way condescending - trust me, you haven't looked through my posting history if you think I was):
You have a total of 1000K healing.
You can chose to either cast 10 times to get that healing out, for a total of 100K per heal (spirit).
Or you can cast 8 times, for a total of 125K per heal (Int).
The numbers are, of course, greatly exaggerated.
You'll get more healing out of casting 10 times on targets that has lost HP, than overhealing on 8 targets that has not lost enough HP to make use of the int. That's for a direct heal. It gets even worse with a HoT, as other healers can then snipe the ticks from your hot before it even falls off, making int even worse compared to just casting more.
But yea. Sure. Go ahead and argue for int. Be a special snowflake. It doesn't matter in normal modes anyway.

[Grumash]

Just wanted to chime in that all the good healers (meaning they do heroic modes) are gemming for spirit unless socket bonuses are good enough to merit anything else. And at that point its int/mastery gems from what i have seen (and yes my guild runs a resto druid, we are 12/16H). EG: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...killy/advanced

id guesstimate that 470 is the min average item level to clear MSV heroic, and like 480-495 to clear HoF and ToES. Seeing as how you are sitting at 490, you probably have enough spirit without gemming it or chanting your wep to survive easily in the NORMALS. Dont begin to tell someone you know what you are talking about when you cant even clear ToES on NORMAL.

Pisses me off to see you go off on some guy for pointing out things that you could use to improve yourself and your guilds progress

[Dendrek]

I'll concede to a few points you've made:
- If you're overhealing, then extra throughput isn't likely to make a difference.
- Extra casts can be extremely useful when you're trying to eek out every bit that you can from your mana.
- And I've already conceded to the fact that spirit gets twice the item budget of int. That was a stupid thing to overlook.

But I'm very suspicious of some of your points.
- When you say that very few of your spells aren't overhealing, I'm forced to wonder, in situations where your healing matters, is that true of your Wild Growth, Efflorescence and Regrowths? Of course it's often going to be true of Rejuv, but that hardly counts. And of course it's going to be true when there's not much healing needed on the raid (or when the damage is mostly burst), but when you're having to recover from constant or heavy aoe damage, I find it difficult to believe that the majority of your spells aren't getting their maximum potential.
- Are you oom at the end of most fights (or at least close to oom)? Or do you come dangerously close to being oom at some point during most fights? It's nice to have excess regen, but that regen literally does nothing if it never comes into play. Alternatively, if it can be argued that you would be oom before the end of a fight without your excess regen, then certainly I'd agree that it was worth having. But to have that regen because you think it could come in handy or because "that's what every other good player has" really isn't an argument.

[Migraine]

I also disagree with the solid spirit gemming, especially offering it as blanket advise to people. I don't use any 320 spirit gems in my gear and with raid cool downs I generally do not have any mana problems, even doing 10 mans over our Christmas break with less mana cool downs I found that I didn't have mana problems. My progress is a little behind some of the top guilds I hope that doesn't make my point of view invalid.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...orous/advanced

[Dendrek]

Pisses me off to see you go off on some guy for pointing out things that you could use to improve yourself and your guilds progress

I had just changed a piece of gear and hadn't changed reforges yet to account for that. I don't need help with progress. The reason my progress is bad is because I JUST came back to the game a few weeks ago. That I'm not in HMs doesn't mean I'm clueless about resto theorycrafting. Pisses me off when people think that because they're doing harder content that makes them better players.

[Dracodraco]

Realisticly, because WG and Effloresence are smart-heals, their overhealing are going to be much lower (although WG less than efflo, as it picks the lowest-hp target to heal, and every other healer is going to race to get their snapheals off on them, which means that they're often going to waste a few ticks).
Regrowth depends how good you are at using it - it's still a significant heal, which means that overhealing is easy (you'd still want to use a 100K heal on a target that's lost 80K hp, rather than try to push 2x 40K heals out, if the raid damage is intense).
On the point of heavy AOE damage that the raid has to recover from, you shouldn't be using your singletarget heals such as RG, but rather, rejuv - if the raid has taken that much damage, it means that every healer is going to be busy, allowing your hots to actually tick for near full duration (and rejuv is like, THE most efficient spell for HPM).

As for going OOM, your argument is correct, but on the other hand, different fights requires different amounts of healing - some are easy, requiring almost no healing done at all (spirit kings), while others have constant ticking raid damage, requiring you to be constantly putting out decent amount of heals (WOTE's aura ticks for 170K damage per second in 10 man before passive mitigations, and that's before tank damage/raid damage from adds etc).
Unless you feel like regemming every single boss, obviously, you'd gear around the most mana intensive fight, and then drop spirit after you are comfortable in that encounter.
It could also be said for int - is there any fight where that 1.5% more healing is going to save the raid, over being able to cast a few times more? EG, if you cast 4 rejuvs, and they heal for 25K a tick for 150K healing total per 4 players, would it be better to cast 5 rejuvs that heals for 20K a tick on 5 players? Usually, the answer would be yes, as it gets the raid stable, more so than the extra healing does.

[Grumash]

I had just changed a piece of gear and hadn't changed reforges yet to account for that. I don't need help with progress. The reason my progress is bad is because I JUST came back to the game a few weeks ago. That I'm not in HMs doesn't mean I'm clueless about resto theorycrafting. Pisses me off when people think that because they're doing harder content that makes them better players.

What other standard would you use? Actions speak louder than words, this is an age old saying for a reason.

[Dendrek]

Then it seems we've come to a standstill. Your original advice was "gem spirit" — it's circumstantial and can be good advice, but it's not an absolute. Although I don't want to get caught up on the implied condescension between us earlier (because honestly I'm over it), you called me a special snowflake and suggested that what top 20 resto druids are doing is the correct and only way to go and that I was wrong to disagree. Keeping in mind that the 1.5% I said in my second reply (the edited reply) was for HM gear, would you still argue that spirit is the way to go?

Also, it's worth noting that when a player is first starting to gear up, spirit looks incredibly attractive. So much so that they will often flask and food buff for it. But 1000 Int (or 500, in the case of gemming) for an under geared player is worth A LOT MORE than 4.7 (and it's actually 4.2 without 2p tier) casts of Rejuv over a 6 minute fight.

---------- Post added 2013-01-07 at 09:11 AM ----------

What other standard would you use? Actions speak louder than words, this is an age old saying for a reason.

Math speaks pretty loudly where I'm concerned.

[Dracodraco]

Then it seems we've come to a standstill. Your original advice was "gem spirit" — it's circumstantial and can be good advice, but it's not an absolute. Although I don't want to get caught up on the implied condescension between us earlier (because honestly I'm over it), you called me a special snowflake and suggested that what top 20 resto druids are doing is the correct and only way to go. Keeping in mind that the 1.5% I said in my second reply (the edited reply) was for HM gear, would you still argue that spirit is the way to go?

Also, it's worth noting that when a player is first starting to gear up, spirit looks incredibly attractive. So much so that they will often flask and food buff for it. But 1000 Int (or 500, in the case of gemming) for an under geared player is worth A LOT MORE than 4.7 (and it's actually 4.2 without 2p tier) casts of Rejuv over a 6 minute fight.

---------- Post added 2013-01-07 at 09:11 AM ----------



Math speaks pretty loudly where I'm concerned.

I went for the snowflake retort after you had blamed me for being condescending . Why not go all the way if you're already there?

Irregardless, yes, I would argue for spirit in all cases, even hardmode gear - the main thing here is, that the fights gets progressively more and more intense to heal. As I've already argued, more heals > bigger heals when the damage gets more intense, for a druid atleast (as hots are more effective the more you spread them out).
Let's take the most healing intensive encounter this tier, Shekzeer, and one of those resto druids I argue are "doing it right", Owld from method:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/k...28&e=3366#Owld
Now, numbers are ~, not 100% accurate, but enough to give an idea.
As you can see, over a 14 minute fight, he casts 130 rejuvenations for an average of 114K healing per (or 19K per tick).
He's obviously got the set bonus, so every 5 minutes, 1K spirit will give him another 4.7 rejuvs, making for a total of ~13-14 rejuvenations more over the entire fight, with 1K spirit over 500 int.
13 rejuvenations is 1.5M healing.
Adding 1.5% healing to his current healing done (60.5M) adds 900K healing.
As you can see, spirit is *far* superior.

Also, while flask and food is obviously the first thing you'd want to drop (it's a 1:1 int:spirit conversion instead of 1:2, and thus your 3% healing from int vs 1k spirit would be suitable for the argument of flasks), I still don't see how, for a "new" player in low-end gear, that int would be better than spirit. Int requires a significantly higher amount of foresight (when to use what heal, is a hot worth it here, where should I drop my effloresence to make sure I don't waste ticks on overhealing, etc) because it makes you more prone to waste your mana by overhealing, while spirit provides a buffer that allows you to make mistakes and keep on healing.

[Maxvla]

Just wanted to chime in that all the good healers (meaning they do heroic modes) are gemming for spirit unless socket bonuses are good enough to merit anything else. And at that point its int/mastery gems from what i have seen (and yes my guild runs a resto druid, we are 12/16H).

We can play this game all day. My druid is 12/16H as well and never gems any spirit except purified in blue slots. My gear level is 492 and I run about 7500 spirit. On most fights I'm giving away my innervate even. What on earth are you people doing with all this spirit???