Well, it was bound to happen. I had to respec and reforge after the big (but really exciting) changes for resto druids. It's cost a lot of gold and staring at a Talent Calculator. I also had to do math (ack!). After a couple nights and bosses, I think I found a good place to be at.
Changes Changes Changes
There were three changes that forced me to respec and reforge my gear.
Mastery: Symbiosis: Increases the potency of your healing spells by 11.6% on targets already affected by one of your heal over time spells. Each point of Mastery increases heal potency by an additional 1.45%.
Wild Growth: Increased by 30% and cooldown decreased to 8 seconds.
Nature's Bounty: Increases the critical strike chance of your regrowth by 20/40/60%
In addition, when you have Rejuvenation active on three or more targets, the cast time of your Nourish spell is reduced by 10/20/30%
First, reforging.
At the time I was sporting a safe 1920 haste, but I was unable to reach the second viable haste break point without dropping a ton of intellect.
Here are the Haste Breakpoints (This is including 5% bonus of a shaman's totems, boomkin, or shadow priest) Thanks to TreeCalc
5th Tick of Rejuvenation: 915 Haste
12th tick of Lifebloom: 1220 Haste
4th tick of Regrowth: 1423 Haste
9th tick of Wild Growth: 2004 Haste
13th tick of Lifebloom: 2440 Haste
14th tick of Lifebloom: 3659 Haste
10th tick of Wild Growth: 3746 Haste
6th tick of Rejuvenation: 3964 Haste
15th tick of Lifebloom: 4879 Haste
On paper, Nature's Bounty looks pretty neat, so I did take it last night, where we downed 4 bosses in Blackwing Descent (Magmaw, Omnitron, Maloriak, Antramedes)
Because I always came out with at least 50% of my mana from these specs, and with the increase to Wild Growth, I decided to drop Furor in favor of Genesis.
Genesis: A second tier in the Balance tree. It increases the healing down by Swiftmend and Periodic spells by 2/4/6%.
Talent Spec One: Dropping Efflorescence and picking up Nature's Bounty
Stats: I dropped a strong amount of haste for Mastery and came up with about 1600, which was enough for Nature's Grace to help me break a 10th tick of Wild Growth when used.
(PS. I wouldn't focus on Nature's Grace break points, but I was just extremely concerned about losing that much Haste)
My healing saw a pretty impressive boost.
Here is my World of Logs from a prepatch Omnitron kill.
Preface: I'm a pretty decent healer. Idk how to really judge the other healers, but I personally think they are both very good. We have a very strong set up, (priest, paladin, druid) and we all work together.
Our priest was undergeared at the time of this kill, which is why his heals might seem really low.
I am usually neck-n-neck with our pally healer in terms of numbers (um. yeah im a closet recount whore...)
I do realize this isn't a very reliable way to figure things out. I realize various factors could have changed the fight. We had a dk tank the first week and a warrior tank the second. I guess one point of this to make myself feel awesome. The other is to take a look at the possible ramifications of dropping certain talents, taking others, and how buffs and nerfs have affected my healing.
Here's our heals for post patch Omnitron with the above spec.
By now our priest is geared and doing some really impressive numbers. I couldn't believe how much my healing had increased though. What isn't surprising is the Wild Growth number. This I expected because of the boost to it. I have to admit, I'm happy about it.
Closer Looks
Pre patch
Post Patch
Things I looked at:
Wild Growth did a much closer amount (although still much higher) to Rejuvenation. Also, it is interesting that I used Rejuvenation about the same each time. It should be noted that Post patch fight I got smacked in the face and died closer to the end. So that could account for a couple missing Rejuvs.
I used Nourish a lot more in the Post patch. Obviously from having Nature's Bounty, which I was conscious of trying to use if I could toss out three Rejuv. What makes me worried about this is the mana cost. Rejuvenation is again 20% mana, which isn't horrible, but feeling forced to keep 3 constant Rejuv's makes me hesitate. Also, considering that Regrowth is by far the most unused spell on my list, I have to wonder if the talent is worth 3.
Other:
The biggest and scariest thing to me was my lower mana. I did not go oom or become dangerously low. I was incredibly aware of using my doll and popping innervate at the correct times. The reason I dropped Furor was because I did realize I ended most fights (unless something went horribly wrong) with at least 1/2, maybe 1/3 of my mana back. I rarely went oom so I felt safe dropping Furor. But it's always been a little security blanket. It increases my pool and increases Revitalize. In reality though, it was a safe drop.
For Next Raiding:
We'll have a half week off from raiding because of some personal trips with a healer and a tank. So I'll probably level my priest and do a lot of school work. :)
Talent Spec Two: I am trying out spec number dos.
I am reinstating Efflorescence, and thus Living Seed, and dropping Nature's Bounty.
Stats: Perhaps adding more harm then good, is that I am also dropping a majority of my Haste for Mastery. I am now much closer to the initial Haste break point of 915. My basic casts are no more slower then they were pre patch, so it shouldn't be a big scary adjustment. I have a nice 20% boost from Mastery. I wanted to try this out with Efflorescence which will add some more Symbiosis opportunities.
Next update will probably be by Thursday or next next Monday :)
No comments:
Post a Comment