Gearing your dual-spec Resto-moonkin

By Lissanna | Published: January 6, 2012

So, in my guild’s 25-man raids, I end up being a true Restokin, where I DPS the majority of the time but also have to fill in for when healers are absent or for fights where we need more healing. One day, I may DPS every fight, the next day I may heal every fight. Most raids for both Firelands and Dragonsoul, I’ve ended up healing one or two of the bosses pretty consistently and being DPS the rest of the raid.

I switch between my moonkin spec and my healing spec frequently enough that I end up having to maintain gear for both. This requires me to juggle two things: My moonkin hit rating cap of 17%, and my Restoration haste rating breakpoint (2005). In an ideal world, I would have two completely different sets of gear. In the actual world, I tend to see half of my gear pieces shared between the two specs. I have eight pieces shared between my moonkin and healing sets right now, with the other half being different between the two specs (though I get to spend several hours this weekend re-working my healing set so I can use the new healing mace that dropped from LFR last night). So, how do you survive the frustration of having to deal with shared gear pieces for your caster hybrid? Here are some considerations and hints to keep in mind when trying to fill in for moonkin and healing on the same character.

Pick one main spec and one off-spec for gearing purposes, and stick with it! This main gear set for me ends up being my Moonkin set because I found it very hard to keep up with the required DPS if I was doing DPS in primary resto gear, whereas I could keep up healing even if I favored my DPS gear. This gives me access to DPS trinkets and accessories in raids, and means that I pick up my moonkin set pieces first. I use Graylo’s moonkin loot list as a general guide for thinking about what items I want to use for my moonkin set. If you primarily heal (with occasional DPS), you may want your main spec to still be healing.

You will still need to pick up some off-set pieces (either through points, LFR, or picking up off-set things from your normal raiding) to keep some pieces that are not shared between the two sets. This may mean that you have a couple lower ilevel pieces for one set, but try not to let your off-set fall too far behind your main set. You should read both moonkin & healing guides to know what your gearing priorities are, but you can’t just rely on some reforging addon to make both sets work out. Instead, you have to be very careful about how your gearing for one set impacts your pieces of gear that are shared between the two specs and know how much non-shared loot you need to keep everything in balance.

Resto Gearing Stat Considerations:

  • Restoration druids use the same stats as moonkin, so most pieces can be shared between the two specs. Intellect is the gearing priority shared for both specs, where sometimes higher ilevel moonkin set pieces can end up being better than lower ilevel off-set pieces for restoration druids. The one stat that isn’t shared is HIT rating which may be found on weapons and accessories.
  • Restoration druids want to be above 2005 haste rating. Most haste above this break-point will be a wasted stat, but you generally never want to fall below 2005 haste rating. This is the first thing I check on my resto set when I’m upgrading gear & reforging.
  • After 2005 haste rating, the other stat priorities are to get as much mastery and spirit as possible. You may want to pick up some Spirit/Mastery pieces that are not shared with your moonkin set, as moonkin will have a cap on how much spirit is useful to them, and they still value haste over mastery past the 2005 resto-specific break point. Crit is the least desirable stat for both specs. I will end up with higher spirit and mastery in my resto set compared to my moonkin set.
  • If you can’t get access to the Tier 13 set pieces for your resto set right away, then your two piece T12 set bonus is very important for you to keep as you gear up (and is easily attainable from the Justice Point vendors if necessary).

Moonkin Gearing Stat Considerations:

  • Like restoration druids, INT, spirit, haste and mastery are important for moonkin.
  • Unlike restoration druids, moonkin can benefit from Hit rating on gear (though I prefer picking up spirit instead when possible, since Spirit gives your moonkin hit rating). They don’t make leather with hit rating, as they expect you to use Spirit instead. However, moonkin have a cap of 17% hit (1742 hit rating) where you stop benefiting from spirit/hit. So, you want to be as close to 17% as possible. You never want to fall below 17%, and you don’t ever want to be above ~17.5% hit. This is the most important number I watch when gearing my moonkin set. In my healing set, my spirit ends up giving me way more hit rating than that, even with some of the shared pieces between the two sets having spirit reforged into haste or mastery.
  • Moonkin value haste rating past the 2005 breakpoint. I will pick up a few pieces with more haste rating on them for my moonkin set. For moonkin, Haste is more valuable than mastery and mastery is more valuable than crit, so that I can try to sit a couple hundred haste rating higher for my moonkin set and have slightly lower mastery and spirit as a result.
  • The moonkin 4-piece Tier 12 set is very powerful. Your moonkin set should hold onto the 4-piece T12 (if possible) until you can get the 2-piece T13 normal-mode or heroic-mode (don’t use the LFR set pieces if you have access to the T12 4-piece bonus for either moonkin or resto). With the 4-piece buff for moonkin T13 on the PTR, you will eventually want to upgrade everything to get the 4-piece normal or heroic T13 by the time the next patch hits if possible (after the patch, it may be possible for the moonkin T13 LFR pieces to be worthwhile, and you’ll want to pick up T13 LFR if you don’t have access to the T12 4-piece).

Additional Points for sharing pieces between moonkin & resto:

  • Moonkin and resto druids can share the exact same gems and enchants, keeping the above stat points in mind, though I will sometimes end up with less desirable gemming in some situations. For example, moonkin and resto specs can share a helm if you use the Burning Shadowspirit Diamond (as of the changes in 4.3, the burning shadowspirit diamond impacts both healing & DPS crits). Otherwise, gems tend to be: Int red gems, Int/Haste orange, and Int/Spirit purple.
  • The best trinkets available will usually NOT be shared between the two specs. Make sure you read trinket descriptions to make sure that Equip or Use effects are not being wasted by wearing a damage ability trinket in your healing spec (or vice versa). I almost never share trinkets between my two specs.
  •  With Dragonsoul, weapons with healing or damage-spell based casting procs, you won’t want to share those particular weapons between your gear sets, either. If you get something with pure stats on them, they can be shared between your sets.
  • Set pieces will often provide a lot of stat differentiation between your two sets. So, getting set pieces for both sets will help a lot with balancing your slightly different stat priorities between the two sets.
  • You will have to reforge gear for both sets every time you get a new upgrade that will be shared between the two sets. This can get pretty expensive, as I usually have to resort to trial-and-error for figuring out how to make the two sets work out right.
  • You want a different talent spec for healing and DPS (with different glyphs), since healing in moonkin spec or DPS in a healing spec sucks a lot. There is no such thing as a restokin talent spec, unlike feral right now that share a DPS and tanking spec.

The very most important thing to remember is to save your two gear sets in the equipment manager (either the base Blizzard UI feature or with the help of another addon), and make sure that you swap your gear at the same time as you swap your specs. Healing or DPS’ing in the wrong spec will hurt your output numbers, as I have proven over and over again.After 4.3, I transmog some of the gear pieces into different looking sets as much as I can to hopefully tell them apart visually.

Posted in Cataclysm, Moonkin Balance DPS, Restoration Healing Trees, Written by Lissanna | 16 Comments

Resto druids in 4.3: It’s a utility problem

By Lissanna | Published: January 1, 2012

So, my poll measuring how people feel about druid healing has ended at this point. I wanted to briefly go over some good news and some bad news as it relates to the data I’ve collected through the poll.

For the below poll results, I’m going to exclude the data for the people who don’t raid each raid size when reporting percentages of participants. The total number of people responding to my poll who had raided the content sizes are: LFR (454), 10-man Normal (365), 25-man Normal (152), 10-man heroic (130), 25-man Heroic (57).

As you can see, the LFR raid size is the most popular raid size, with 10-man normal coming in second. The other three raid sizes have much fewer participants. I likely got a pretty representative sample of players here, as fewer people usually raid heroics or 25-mans. The LFR is going to be run by people participating in all the other raid sizes in addition to people who don’t raid the other raid sizes, since people could vote in more than one poll.

Results for LFR & normal-mode raids

The good news is that the most common response for LFR and 10-man normal-mode raiders was largely that we were fine (48% and 38% respectively). However, by the time we hit 25-man normal, perspectives have started shifting such that only 27% of respondents think we’re fine.

For people who thought we had a problem, the overwhelming response was largely one of having a utility problem, with our healing being fine (25% to 30% of responses across the three polls). Only around 10% of people from each poll said that our utility was fine but our healing was lacking. The rest of the people are largely detecting that we are having both healing & utility problems for normal-mode raids. The 25-man normal-mode raids are much more likely than 10-man normal-mode raids to say we have a healing and utility problem.

Results for the Heroic-mode raids

These heroic-mode polls are harder to interpret upon inspection because the vast majority of people haven’t raided that content size. So, lets see the numbers when excluding non-raiders, and collapsing across raid size, since my sample of 25-man HM raiders is so low. This gives us a total of 187 votes (keeping in mind that a handful of people may have voted in each of the 2 polls).

  • Utility only lacking: 64 responses (34%)
  • Both Healing & Utility lacking: 58 (31%)
  • We’re fine: 31 (17%)
  • Benched or rerolled: 23 (12%)
  • Healing only lacking: 11 (6%)

So, for heroic modes, only 17% of responses say that we are doing okay, which is a large jump down from the look we got from LFR and 10-man normal-mode raiding. The vast majority of responses indicate that our utility is lacking for heroic-modes, with or without having a healing output issue for this raid content difficulty. There is definitely an indication that healing output could also be a problem for some healers in heroic-mode content.

Putting it together: It’s a utility problem, especially for HM raids

I did each of the polls separately because I expected to see that larger raid sizes and harder content would end up showing our weaknesses more than just looking at how we’re doing overall. I also knew that we couldn’t measure utility problems just by looking at WoL, since WoL doesn’t have a utility meter and doesn’t measure damage prevention cooldowns.

This poll is confirming WoL reports of our healing output being fine across most of the raid content sizes. The polls indicate that healing difficulties are happening in 25-man normal and both heroic raid sizes, which is likely due to not having good enough burst AOE healing. For 25-man healing, our HOT-blanketing doesn’t usually cover enough of the raid and we don’t have much in the way of burst healing to get people back up after they take a big hit. The other problem is that paladin healing output with HR spam still hasn’t been toned down to bring them in line with other healers, so they are out-shining druids. A nerf to paladin HR spam would probably help take care of the healing weakness resto druids are feeling in Heroic Modes compared to other healers.

Across all the raid sizes, the results also point to a problem with our Utility that we bring to the raid for pretty much every raid size (even LFR).

What does this raid utility problem mean?

For pretty much all of Cataclysm, when we have talked about our utility issues, we have talked about the lack of ability to reduce the amount of damage other people are taking. Bringing people’s health bars back up is fine, except when the hits they are taking are so big that your target dies before you can heal them.

With a lack of damage reduction tools, all we can do is rely on other people to throw out the damage reduction cooldowns, absorption effects, or death prevention cooldowns of some sort  (that all other healers have) and hope for the best. Especially in heroic-modes for Dragonsoul in 4.3, the damage reduction cooldowns are things that are being heavily relied upon, which leaves resto druids in a really awkward position of feeling like we lack important tools that everyone else brings to the table even when we come out fine on healing output meters.

MoP will fix it: We know that we are getting Ironbark (a damage reduction cooldown usable on other people) in Mists of Pandaria. We also know that we are getting a burst AOE healing ability (wild mushrooms). We also know we are getting other new tools through the new talent system. So, we know they already have a long-term solution to our major problems. Thus, the good news is that resto druids are going to be really awesome in Mists of Pandaria when we finally have a complete toolset for the first time.

However, the developers need to take a long, hard look at resto druids and decide if we need to be fixed before Mists of Pandaria. Also, it’s not enough to just look at healing output done, but to think about how the resto druid toolset is interacting with encounter design in Dragonsoul. In particular, we need to be looking at utility problems that don’t show up in any of the tracking tools we currently have for looking at healing output, since the problem is NOT just about HPS. It’s too soon to write off Cataclysm completely and Dragonsoul doesn’t seem to be that druid-friendly at the moment, especially for Heroic Mode raiders. Class balance still needs to be a concern in the tail end of Cataclysm, especially as more and more raiders complete normal-modes and start to hit Heroic-Mode content.

Disclaimer: To the resto druids -With the future outlook being good in MoP, it’s worth hanging in there for now, especially if we see more balancing fix patches in 4.3. Don’t panic!

Posted in Patch 4.3, Patches, Restoration Healing Trees, Written by Lissanna | Comments closed

Bearcat Madness

By Garnaph | Published: December 22, 2011

OK, so I (Garnaph) know this is a Resto/Boomkin blog, but it’s about time I posted something that’s pretty hardcore Feral. Blizzard is soon going to split Feral into two separate trees, and what I’m about to say is the reason why. Also, with this being the last tier in which I’ll be able to pull off this trick, this is the perfect time to blog about it.

My raiding team got into P2 madness this week on 10 man normal, in spite of the fact that most of my top raiders are away, and I had to grab guys from the other team (which is also having attendance issues), alts, basically whatever I could find to get a group together. It’s not a kill, but progression is progression, and this was a pretty big deal for us.

Our success came down to a few things. Naturally, the team worked together well, but I’d like to think I pushed everything I could out of my Druid. Arielle and Reesi talk a lot about Bearcatting. Here is why it’s the most OP crap in Wow right now.

That’s me, tanking tentacles when my Pally tank gets an impale, but otherwise staying in cat as much as possible. My gear is optimised for cat, with reforges into stats that are good for both (Mastery, then Crit), with Mastery and Agi enchants, DPS leg enchant, and Assassin’s Step on boots, because I just can’t live without the speed increase in Bear. Oh, and the DPS meta.

Then, I have a spec that’s as pure cat as I can get it, with the vital Bear talents thrown in : Thick Hide, Natural Reaction, and Pulverize. When I shift bear, everyting works as intended. I had to make sure I took Stampede for Kitty 4pc, and Blood in the Water for 2pc. With 4pc, the kitty rotation is a joke. About to drop Rip? Either 1+CP Bite at under 60%, or pop Tiger’s Fury, get a free Ravage and 2 Shreds with the energy you just got, and you’re good to go for a 5CP Rip. If your target is over 80% health, Ravage is basically a Guaranteed 2CP.

Speaking of tier bonuses, I make sure I’m in bear when we’re on the 4th platform (we do Blue last, so we eat the shard on the last platform), which means my FR 4pc is up as the raid takes the mental burst. 15% health + 30% healing taken (make sure to have the FR major glyph). I also stay in bear when we’re killing the shard, since I don’t want to strain my healers any more than they already are.

So basically, rather than sitting around being useless when I’m not needed as a tank, I push DPS as good as the next guy, which helps to get over the fairly rough DPS check on later platforms, where you start losing haste, dmg done, while having to deal with adds that are increasingly hard to kill, especially once Alexstrasza decides to take a nap.

In spite of the emphasis on cat dps, remember there are times that a bear can push nice AOE. When bloods are about to spawn, I shift bear, autoattack the limb to get some rage, then as they move in range, I pop enrage (15% dmg anyone?), and Swipe-Thrash-Swipe. With the Spellweaver splash damage, plus the Vengeance that you quickly get, this is some intense burst AOE.

Oh, one final tip. Since cats really suffer on target switches, ask your raid leader really nicely if you can stay on limbs, and not have to switch to take down Blistering Tentacles. It makes your life a lot easier, and you push way more DPS, which in the end is good for the raid. Alternatively, just don’t switch, and see if anyone notices :P Being a raid leader myself, I get away with murder sometimes…

Druids are the only class in game with 2 specs in one. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Posted in Druid - General, Feral Bear tanking, Feral DPS Cat, Written by Garnaph | Comments closed

How is your resto druid doing in 4.3?

By Lissanna | Published: December 19, 2011

So, now that we’ve had several weeks of raiding in 4.3 Dragonsoul raids. I wanted to check on how raids of various types are doing, so I’m creating a series of polls to ask about how people feel they are doing in 4.3. While it’s not a great way to test out actual numbers (world of logs is a better source for that), it does get at some of the psychological effects of the patch and how people feel. This also has the neat effect of seeing what kind of content my readers are doing. :)

Please only rate your healing & utility for content you have raided in. Polls will be open until January 1st.

For the purposes of the poll, “Healing Output” is defined in terms of things like: overall healing output compared to other raid members, HPS, and being able to keep up with the incoming damage for whatever role in the raid you are assigned to. If you don’t feel your healing output is keeping up, then you would consider your healing output to be low. Just coming in 2nd instead of 1st on meters doesn’t count as having low healing output – your healing output has to be impacting your raiding group in some way.

For the purposes of the poll, “utility” is defined as things like: burst healing from tranquility, battle res, and replenishment – compared to the utility of other classes. If you feel like your missing of tools is effecting your raid group’s ability to kill bosses, then you would say that we don’t have sufficient utility. Just wanting tools other people have don’t count as having low utility – that lack of utility has to be impacting your raid group negatively in some way.

The first poll asks about druid healing in the looking for raid version of Dragonsoul.

How is druid healing in Dragonsoul Looking For Raid? (LFR)

  • I feel my healing output and utility are sufficient (43%, 211 Votes)
  • I feel my healing output is fine, but my utility is lacking (23%, 113 Votes)
  • I feel that both my healing output and utility are lacking (14%, 70 Votes)
  • I haven't raided on LFR (10%, 50 Votes)
  • I feel my healing output is low, but my utility is fine (10%, 50 Votes)

Total Voters: 494

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The second poll asks about druid healing in the 10-man Normal version of Dragonsoul.

How is druid healing in 10M normal dragonsoul?

  • I feel my healing output and utility are sufficient (33%, 141 Votes)
  • I feel my healing output is fine, but my utility is lacking (26%, 110 Votes)
  • I haven't raided on 10-man normal (13%, 56 Votes)
  • I feel that both my healing output and utility are lacking (13%, 53 Votes)
  • I feel my healing output is low, but my utility is fine (11%, 48 Votes)
  • I got benched or re-rolled for my 10-man team (4%, 13 Votes)

Total Voters: 421

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The third poll asks about druid healing in the 25-man Normal version of Dragonsoul.

How is druid healing in 25M normal dragonsoul?

  • I haven't raided on 25-man Normal (58%, 209 Votes)
  • I feel my healing output is fine, but my utility is lacking (12%, 44 Votes)
  • I feel my healing output and utility are sufficient (12%, 42 Votes)
  • I feel that both my healing output and utility are lacking (10%, 35 Votes)
  • I got benched or re-rolled for my 25-man N team (5%, 18 Votes)
  • I feel my healing output is low, but my utility is fine (3%, 13 Votes)

Total Voters: 361

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The fourth poll asks about druid healing in the 10-man Heroic version of Dragonsoul.

How is druid healing in 10M Heroic dragonsoul?

  • I haven't raided on 10-man Heroic (61%, 204 Votes)
  • I feel my healing output is fine, but my utility is lacking (14%, 47 Votes)
  • I feel that both my healing output and utility are lacking (11%, 38 Votes)
  • I feel my healing output and utility are sufficient (7%, 22 Votes)
  • I got benched or re-rolled for my 10-man H team (4%, 12 Votes)
  • I feel my healing output is low, but my utility is fine (3%, 11 Votes)

Total Voters: 334

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The fifth poll asks about druid healing in the 25-man Heroic version of Dragonsoul

How is druid healing in 25M Heroic dragonsoul?

  • I haven't raided on 25-man Heroic (82%, 256 Votes)
  • I feel that both my healing output and utility are lacking (6%, 20 Votes)
  • I feel my healing output is fine, but my utility is lacking (5%, 17 Votes)
  • I got benched or re-rolled for my 25-man H team (4%, 11 Votes)
  • I feel my healing output and utility are sufficient (3%, 9 Votes)
  • I feel my healing output is low, but my utility is fine (0%, 0 Votes)

Total Voters: 313

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Disclaimers: Thank you for submitting your opinions. You can add any additional comments you want in the comments section. Keep in mind that the above shouldn’t really be used when asking for buffs or nerfs, as the polls here aren’t going to have a representative sample of the entire class, and reflect opinions rather than actual hard data. It does, however, give us some idea of how the 4.3 changes & healing in Dragonsoul feel in various raid sizes and difficulties if the sample sizes are large enough. This is more for seeing differences of identifying where possible problems could be for looking into the content further and satisfying my own curiosities.

Posted in Patch 4.3, Restoration Healing Trees, Written by Lissanna | Comments closed

Tis the Season

By Lissanna | Published: December 16, 2011

So, the feast of Winter’s Veil is upon us! It’s a time for merriment, of reduced raiding schedules, and relaxation! Sorry I’ve been somewhat absent from the blog lately. I had some unexpected deadlines come up related to my finishing up of Grad School next semester. I hope you guys have enjoyed the posts from Garnaff and Shakk. I plan to continue having additional writers help out the blog, as I really like having some flexibility in making sure you guys still get the highest quality posts on a fairly regular basis, even when I’m not available to write. Having help from various community members is really what keeps this site going year after year! We are working on improvements for the blog theme, to be released in the next few months, to hopefully better reflect the more collaborative nature of this site.

Also, tonight (December 16th) is the One Year Anniversary of the Team Waffle Podcast! Make sure you tune in For our Live show, Tonight at 8:00 pm PST (11 pm EST). Click here for the link to the live podcast!

In the spirit of the holidays, remember to take your Moonkin Hatchlings to visit Greatfather Winter so that all their little hatchling dreams will come true!

Posted in Achievements, Written by Lissanna | Comments closed