Ok, thought I'd start a new thread to hash this out.

It sounds like some people are prefering +healing, even when you have a lot of +healing, over the other stats. I think I can understand why... mana really isn't an issue for us for most boss fights. Sometimes I have to innervate when a boss hits 20% or so but I've never really run out of mana on a boss fight in ages.

However, isn't +heal kind of a diminishing return on lifebloom?

Heh! I might just go regem everything now that I think about it.

No diminishing returns. Stack as much as you can. I recently regemmed everything and got new boots. I went from 1996+heal to 2104+heal and its a big difference.

If you only have to hit your innervate when the boss is as 20% health you have more than enough mp5/spirit. You could probably drop some.

Even after regemming and loosing a lot of spirit/mp5 I still never go oom casting LB or Rejuj on every GCD during a fight. I always chug a Mad Alchemist Potion as soon as it makes sense then on every cooldown on tougher fights. About 80% of the time my Innervate is free for some other healer, or someone I battle rez.

I haven't healed on my druid in a while, but I always tried to use my CDs early and often. Last healing on my shaman, I'd pot on every cooldown, manatide early in hopes of having it up again before the fight was over ( on long fights, not Kara :D )

Superior Mana Oil and Flasks of Mighty Restoration provide a quick fix to my mana problems so that I can focus on getting my +healing up to that of Grynyr's (impressive btw), for example.

Unbuffed, I'm at +1704 Healing and 451 Mana Regen. There's plenty of room for improvement for both, but I prefer to work on the healing over the regen.

TBH, I think both are equally important, but I have to say I get a lot more "What's your +healing?" whispers than "What's your Mana Regen?" ;)

There is also a relationship between +heal and the number of casts necessary in a given fight. I've noticed that on trash fights I no longer always need to cast Rejuv to keep the tanks topped off, and on boss fights it takes fewer casts to patch the raid. I'm at 1794 heals and ~ 180 mp5 while casting unbuffed.

And I agree with Magellan. The only people that ever ask me my mp5 are other druids. :thumbsup:

Temporary hijack: I respecced feral for a change of pace to do some solo questing. I never really played feral once it became viable not to as I was levelling. I went and bought the Dragonhide rep gear and some green quality gems and O M G is it fun! Shredding mobs in kitty, tanking four and five pulls like a demon in bear, I literally lol every few minutes. I may have to become raid viable in all three specs!

Please resume normal thread discussion now.

Oiy

Consider making different sets of gear. I do, and it's really helpful on special fights.

I got to around 2000 +healing and started gemming for regen and spirit, but I think I'll try to go back to all +heal and see how it works.

In my opinion building different sets is the way to go IF it's an option as Poysonivy reccomended. So yeah Strength of Item.. I started focusing on this when I got Kilt of Immortal Nature. 3 sockets along with 118 healing.. well I tossed 3 teardrops in it. Healing was obviously the strength on that item. I tend to like switching out trinkets/rings/neck for changes in regen vs healing if I can. There are a great many choices in those slots for each that are quite easily obtainable.


I'm actually working more on spell haste at the moment. Lowering that gcd makes keeping up 4 stacks very doable and will let you sneak in all the rejuvs you need on 3 target stacking. I've heard the mark to hit is something like 115 spell haste for optimal rotations. It's actually a pretty difficult stat to hit without sacrificing a good bit of other helpful stats. I think I'm sitting at like 72 haste atm.

I would recommend however hitting a mark of something like 2k healing and 300 mp5 unbuffed while casting if you can before working on haste.


Oh, I'm now Seerion on Blackhand.. darn name changes. Well gl folks!

I would recommend however hitting a mark of something like 2k healing and 300 mp5 unbuffed while casting if you can before working on haste.



300 mp5 is a lot while casting. I'm 4/4 MH and 4/9 BT and am sitting at 2k +heal and 240 mp5. So can i reach the mark of 300 even before sunwell items?

Sirion: I assume you meant "Lowering that gcd makes keeping up 5 stacks very doable" since I have no problems with 4 stacks even with my little bit of haste from the ZA neck off Akil'zon.

Sergio: It's kinda hard to get 2k +heal and 300mp5 while casting before Sunwell.

---
Its all tradeoffs. You can get your haste up enough for 5 GCDs per Lifebloom cycle, but you need to loose a little bit of +heal and mp5. But, if you are already using all of your GCDs on fights, haste can be a way to increase the total amount healed, even after loosing that extra +heal.

Currently (at ~2100+heal) my LB stack does 820/sec IIRC form last night. Keeping that up on 4 people gives ~3280/sec.

When I was at ~2000+heal, I believe my LB stack was at ~780/sec. I could get enough haste to get off 5 GCDs by sacrificing 100+heal I believe (its been a while since I researched it, but I think that's right). Keeping that LB stack on 5 people would give ~3900/sec.

That's an increase of ~620health/sec. That's a good increase, but really, at my progression level (5/6SSC, 3/4TK, 1/5MH) how many times will I get the chance to stack LB on 5 people? Not many.

-----------
Edit regarding regen: At 228mp5 while casting unbuffed, I have plenty of mana regen to cast LB on every GCD during every fight while using Innervate on myself and using Mad Alchemists Potions. I'd have to bump that number up quite a bit if I was casting 5 LB every cycle instead of just 4.

Sergio: It's kinda hard to get 2k +heal and 300mp5 while casting before Sunwell.
I was going to say... 300 mp5? I can just barely get over 200 mp5 (in 5sr) now in my ZA/TK/MH/Badge gear.

I was going to say... 300 mp5? I can just barely get over 200 mp5 (in 5sr) now in my ZA/TK/MH/Badge gear.

:grin:
It's doable. In my manareg-equip i hit 287 mp5 but have only 1920 +heal.
In my + heal equip im at about 2100 +heal and 240 mp5.
But i dont see any improvement until i have some more T6-Gear.

I say pure +healing.
Spirit and mp5 will come anyway.
I skip set bonuses and put red gems everywhere unless the set bonus has enough +healing to counter the choice of another gem.

What fights do you find yourself equipping the mana-regen gear?

Kaz'rogal 3rd boss in Hyjal regen gear is very helpful

Just drop into bear during Kaz'rogal's mana drain thing.

Just drop into bear during Kaz'rogal's mana drain thing.

Agreed. You'll be wearing some SR gear, so sacrificing even more healing for regen is not all that ideal. I just pop a potion or two and Innervate towards the end of the fight if necessary.

Just drop into bear during Kaz'rogal's mana drain thing.
Ah! Very clever.

We've been 1 shotting him forever without any of us wearing SR gear. Prayer of shadow protection should be plenty from my experience. All about SUPER fast all out dps on this fight.

I guess it wouldn't hurt to throw on the BT attune SR neck.

/shrug

I wear the BT neck and the crafted cloak, and I still get the mana drain every single time ... so it's never made that big of a difference for me.

On the other hand, I hear people saying that they resist almost every single mana drain when wearing the BT neck, the crafted cloak, and a single piece of green SR gear bought off of the AH.

I guess it depends on your raid. As druids, we have a really effective way of combatting the mana drain, so as long as you are able to stop healing for 5 seconds every couple of seconds ... don't sweat the mana drains.

I don't ever worry about it either on my lock. I'm the malediction / shadow embrace bitch (actually a lot more fun keeping all my dots up than just spamming SB non-stop, though the dps isn't as high) so I have dark pact. Never even come close to running out of mana.

Druids will have a really easy time on this as well as long as you have DBM or something and can see when the mana thing is inc so that you can refresh your hots and drop into bear.

About the only classes that ever explode on us are mages and pallies, occasionally enhance shamans, but that's not too often.

We just downed RoS last night, and everyone is getting their SR gear together. So far I have boots bracers back and neck and some random green SR helm from the AH. I'm thinking of equipping neck back and bracers for the fight just to see how many I resist next time were in hyjal, but I don't want to gimp my dps. meh

Our DPS tends to be a tad slow, so I'd better have shadow resist.

^^ I've never actually considered pre-emptively dropping into bear ... that might be something to think about. Usually I'll wait to see if I resist or not, eat a tick, and then drop into bear when necessary (which, as stated, is almost every single time, lol).

Just drop into bear during Kaz'rogal's mana drain thing.Does that work? Last two nights in Kara I noticed during the Netherspite fight that if I stand in the green (healing/mana draining beam) while in cat form, I'm unable to shift into bear for the next phase (red beam dance). But, maybe, this particular mana drain affect doesn't work against feral forms, whereas the Netherspite green beam does?

Though I guess the green beam isn't really a mana drain, but instead reduces your max mana pool.

^^ I've never actually considered pre-emptively dropping into bear ... that might be something to think about. Usually I'll wait to see if I resist or not, eat a tick, and then drop into bear when necessary (which, as stated, is almost every single time, lol).

I never actually thought about dropping into bear O.o
I'm in treeform all the time and i'm usually ok with one manapot during the fight. But i will definitly try the bear-thing the next time we down him :biggrin:

I always go for healing, because mana seems to become less of an issue the higher you go.

I know sometimes with 1600 healing the only hot I have on a tank is LB for 650 per second.... and i think is this really as hard as this mob is hitting him/her.

The other thing is I have found the longer boss fights usually include 9 or 24 other party members, and more flasks/elixrs/mana oil. Which means more buffs.... ie

blessing of wisdom... 41mp5
Priest spirit buff... how ever much that is
shadow priest vampiric embrace

I know that unbuffed i think m at 161 mp5 but during gruuls runs i am usually over 300 mp5

+healing helps tremendously, especially during some of the boss silences.... its always nice to see about 1200 HPS going on when your silenced.

I too gem for +heals because my regen is enough for me to be able to gem that way, as with most resto druids. It really all depends on your play style. If you want to top the heal charts, or at least give the resto shamans and holy priests a run for their money, along with keeping up LB stacks on the tanks, rejuv+SM at every opportunity, as well as regrowths. You have to have fast reflexes and pre-emptive healing has alot to do with it, but get it down and peoples jaws will drop to the ground when they see you fighting better geared shamans, priest and pallies for that extra 1% or 2% to get top spot on the meters. >>

its all about the +heal and spell haste imo

edit: deleted..missed some posts :-D