Thursday (7 Oct) - Time for a Change

Thursday (7 Oct) - Time for a Change

Wild has an i366 gear score and I believe is a good healer. He knows his class, keeps up with changes, and generally follows talent and stat gearing guidelines. Wild is a conservative healer, though, weighting +spirit as a higher priority than other druid healers might because I never want to run out of mana if I can help it. Wild also puts a high priority on +intelligence, which is another way of saying that I generally go for the highest ilevel piece I can get, as that guarantees the highest +int, even if the other secondary stats aren't as good.

One important factor about druid healing is to maximize the number of tics of our heal over time (HoT) spells. The more +haste you have, at certain breakpoints, the more HoT tics you have, which is more healing. Haste also speeds up spell casting, which is never a bad thing. However, the bad thing about +haste is that any extra haste over a breakpoint but short of the next breakpoint is wasted and should be exchanged/reforged for better secondary stats (usually mastery).

The point of this is that Wild's gear choices have given him a large mana pool, high mana regen, and significant spell power. Wild used to have a pretty good base of haste, too, even though he never attempted to reach the highest breakpoint. According to my log Wild at one time had 1741 haste rating, but that eroded during Cata to the point that Wild only held enough haste to meet the first breakpoint at 916. That's the rule of thumb - if you can't make the next breakpoint don't add haste until you can. The nirvana of haste breakpoints is 2005 haste, when a 9th tic of Wild Growth is added. That number was completely out of reach, so I never really considered it. Wild focused mostly on mastery (which buffs heals) as his primary secondary stat.

Those gear choices affected how Wild healed, of course. With my haste at 916, Wild's longer cast spells took a long time to cast. That meant that Wild tended to use Regrowth (mana expensive) even without clearcasting in many situations as longer cast Healing Touch just wouldn't get there in time. The use of the long cast Nourish to maintain Harmony (essential to Wild's mana regen and a help to the raid in general) was difficult to work into the rotation and Wild often had to make the decision to let Harmony lapse to get in a faster heal, or take the risk of someone dying while waiting for Nourish to finish.

The battles with Beth'tilac finally convinced me that all that extra mana (int), mana regen (spi) and buffed healing (mastery) was being burned up by the inefficient healing driven by the lack of haste. In other words, I couldn't heal fast enough to use my most efficient heals effectively.

If Wild's guild was raiding regularly and we were making progress, Wild would not be thinking about making any radical changes to his gear. But now seems to be a good time to make a big change.

I went through all of Wild's gear, both his current set and the set of older hand me downs that I always keep around. I wanted to know if it was even possible to achieve that magic haste number of 2005, and what I would have to give up to get there.

The bottom line is that with some hardship Wild can get to 1882 (short by 123). "Hardship" means not only massacring mastery, it means re-gemming some sockets and changing some enchants, reducing +int. It also means going with lower ilevel gear (with more haste) in five slots, reducing all stats except haste, including +int and +stamina (which reduces Wild's survivability).

Right now Wild can't bridge that 123 haste gap to get to 2005 without really serious consequences. Wild can make the breakpoint prior to 2005, which is 1779. If it works, Wild will be able to heal much faster, allowing Wild to cast more efficient spells and reducing mana use. The HoTs will tic faster, and Wild will get extra tics as well. I've looked at what Wild will lose in int, mastery, spi, and sta. It's worth giving it a shot.

Wild is going to do it.

Friday Afternoon - It's done. Wild now has a haste based gear set with a haste rating of 1799 (up from 988). The biggest loss was -133 int, which is a loss of about 2000 mana, not to mention all the other effects from int. As for secondary stats, mastery of course took the biggest hit, dropping from 14.38% to 11.14%. Wild did manage to keep his spirit over 2k, and his 2236 combat mana regen is still good. Spell power dropped by over a 100 as well, but Wild is well stocked there. Wild's i366 gear score went down to i362, which won't keep Wild out of any dungeons or raids. All in all, it doesn't look nearly as bad as I feared it might. The real test will be in a raid, and I'm getting excited about trying it out. We have guests coming over tonight, though, so not even any PUG raiding until the weekend.