Mailbag: 4.0.1 Resto Druid Questions

I’ve had several people ask me what I did for 4.0.1 with regards to gemming, specing, reforging on Beru. I will do a more in depth post later, but I did want to go ahead and answer some of the more common questions that I have been asked and/or seen asked elsewhere.  Hopefully the answers provided will be helpful – and as always, I’m always open for discussion/polite debate on the answers that I’ve provided.

How Did You Spec?

First and foremost, let me state that I am still raiding, so I have tried to opt for a spec that will let me continue to complete the 25 man ICC Hard Modes.  That being said I went with, what is looking to be a fairly standard, 2/0/34 spec for level 80.  Here is the exact spec I took: http://wowtal.com/#k=qCNdiOZC.a67.druid.

To answer some of the reasoning for my choices:

• Why 2/2 Swift Rejuvenation?  Because the talent is currently bugged – and if you only take 1/2 then you actually are losing the benefit of the haste from your gear and it is being overwritten by the talent, ultimately causing a slower GCD.  Once it’s fixed, 1/2 will be fine in this talent.  Until it’s fixed you want 2/2 or 0/2 – but 2/2 will give you a slight (very minor) bump up in your GCD.
• Why Nature’s Cure?  Well – why not?  Where else are you going to put that one point?  There is no downside to picking it up, and I figured I may as well get used to having the ability to cleanse magic now, so it’s second hand come Cataclysm.
• Why Empowered Touch?  I’m going to be honest here – I’m still not using a whole lot of nourish or HT in ICC.  However, I do know that it’s something that I’m going to need to do come Cataclysm, and there are times that I do use the spells.  Additionally – I have had it in my spec for a very long time.  I see no reason to remove it now – there is nowhere else to put those two points at the moment even if I did.
• Why no Malfurion’s Gift?  I wanted to grab this talent.  I really, really did.  I know that in Cataclysm I’m going to be taking it without a doubt.  My PTR spec had Malfurion’s give in it, even.  That being said, I just couldn’t justify the two points into, the still terrible, Fury of Stormrage to get there at level 80.  I will likely toy around with it some between now and Cataclysm and get myself down there to get a feel for it – but for now I’ve opted to do a few raids without it.  Having said that, in my raid last night I couldn’t run myself out of mana if I wanted.  I think I used all of one innervate for the entirety of the evening.

What Glyphs Did You Use?

• Prime: Rejuv, Lifebloom, Swiftmend
• Major: Rebirth, Wild Growth, Thorns
• Minor: Mark of the Wild, Aquatic Form, Unburdened Rebirth

Did You Reforge Anything?

Yes.  I reforged exactly two pieces.

• Set Helm
• Set Shoulders

Both of these items had only crit on them.  As such I reforged what I could of the crit to haste.  All of my other items already had haste.

Did You Reforge Excess Spirit to Mastery?

Not yet.  I am just not comfortable enough with the numbers to know how much, if any, of my spirit I want to change over into mastery, or at what point mastery becomes better than spirit for throughput and longevity.  As the number crunchers start to get into this more I will follow their thoughts on it.  I think part of the reason that I have yet to see anything definitive on it is that nobody is sure how good our mastery is going to be for us.  The early speculation is that it we will want it, and it will give us some benefit.

You Converted Crit to Haste, Why?

Yes, I was haste capped pre 4.0.1.  But guess what!  There are new haste numbers!  That means that you now want to get to 1016 haste – as opposed to your previous 856.

What will 1016 Haste do?

This patch changed the way haste affects HoTs.  Your HoTs are now always a set duration, however you can have more ticks in that time as a result of haste.  In order to get a 6th tick out of rejuv, you will require 1016 haste – assuming a WoA totem.

Did You Change Any of Your Gear?

Yes.  I change back to my Vestments of Spruce and Fir as my breastplate so that I received the leather specialization bonus.  This has the added benefit of my clothes all matching again – making me a happy tree!  Er…druid.

Did you Re-Gem or Re-Enchant?

Yes – I added 4 Reckless Ametrines to reach the 1016 haste cap.  I added them into slots where I could get a spell power bonus for using a yellow gem.  I would have gained 2 more spell power by changing both gems in my boots, as opposed to doing one in my boots and one in my bracers – but I am using my bracers for moonkin as well and the haste gem did a lot of me there.  As such, I figured I would probably be OK without the 2 spellpower.

What Did You Do With Your Moonkin Spec?

First, I flailed.  Then I went and followed Hamlet’s advice, that you can find over in the Balance Druid Think Tank.

Have You Raided Yet?  How Did It Feel?

Yes – we raided last night and cleared out 9/12 HM in ICC.  It was different getting to use some new spells, and I honestly had a lot of fun trying to find optimal times to weave in Swiftmend/Efflorescence.  You are welcome to review my parse from last night if you’d like.  A lot of the healing was the same, because of what ICC requires.  But I do think that I got a little bit of opportunity to play around with some of the new toys that we have.

I found that ToL is really hax during Marrowgar’s whirl phase and phase 3 Putricide – but I don’t think I used it as liberally as I could have throughout the evening.  I really liked playing around with Efflorescence on Festergut and BQL, as well as other encounters.  It was fun to try and maximize the output it offered, and looking for optimal opportunities to utilize it!  I do find that I am looking forward to seeing exactly how Cataclysm healing plays out.  I am truly hoping it’s more on the fun/challenging side of things rather than the miserable side of things.

What Raid Frames Did You Use?

Grid.

I tracked my HoTs using good old fashioned Vanilla “dots” in the corners where I usually had HoT timers.  It was efficient enough for me to muddle through last night.  The only issue that I had was tracking Lifebloom.  Grid was not recognizing the spell at all – and would not show when it was active.  However, it does seem to be resolved as of the time of this post.

Grid is continuing to be updated multiple times a day, and the plugin devs are also busy at work.  Grid Status Hots has been updated – and our beloved Corner Text dev posted today that there should be an update soon.

Did You Do Anything Special to Keep Track of Lifebloom?

Because my lifebloom is now replenish, and we tend to run low on replenish classes in our raid, I want to make sure that I have it going 100% of the time.  As such, I created a simple Power Aura setting for it that will tell me when my lifebloom is not active on any member of my party or raid.  Here is the code for it, if you’d like to use it as well:

Version:4.4; icon:INV_Misc_Herb_Felblossom; buffname:Lifebloom; x:-116; alpha:1; owntex:true; mine:true; spec2:false; groupOrSelf:true; size:0.12; y:-22; texmode:2; inverse:true

Are You Bothering With Thorns?

Yes.  The way I see it is that it’s extra threat to our tanking brethren who are struggling to learn new threat mechanics.  My thorns are quite powerful, hitting for 1991 with only mark.  Raid buffed they were somewhere around 2100 if I recall correctly.  I used them on cool down on my tanks.  To help me remember to use them, I created a power auras to pop up when they are off of cool down.  Here is the code for it, if you’d like to use it as well:

Version:3.0.0W; icon:Spell_Nature_Thorns; buffname:Thorns; x:-150; bufftype:15; alpha:1; owntex:true; size:0.1; y:-39; texmode:2

Have more questions?  Curious as to why I made the choices that I did?

Please don’t hesitate to ask me either via email or in the comments below!  My only request is that if you disagree with a decision that I have made, you are respectful in your dissent.