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Resto druid - what to use LW for?

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Post by mikar

Greetings,

I read in the guide that LW is of the most benifit to resto druids of all professions - yet I cannot seem to figure out why. Maybe someone would be kind enough to point me towards the items of great use that I may eventually make with LW - and even better also the items of use that I may make along the way.

Post by DraconisAerius

It's not the items. It's the bracer enchants. Pre-4.0.6 they were massively better than anything an enchanter could do for you, but that has been fixed so they are roughly equal with other profs now. imo you are better off getting Alchemy for the +301 Int trinket.

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Post by oberondreaming

Combind that with either Tyrande's Favorite Doll (Night Elf Archaeology) or Mandala of Stirring Patterns (125 Tol Barad Commendation) and you have a very nice combination and you can still get the crafting profession bonus items.

Neither of those is significantly better than the alchemy trinket.

In fact, Mandala is notably worse. Spirit isn't an outstanding stat for Resto druids and throughput procs are unreliable.

In fact, you could fairly easily argue that the alchemy trinket is better than all three trinkets you listed. It gives 351 intellect, 30 more than any of the other trinkets, when intellect is pretty much the single most important stat. It gives a significant chunk of haste, when haste is the best secondary stat, plus it gives 8800 extra mana when you use a Potion of Concentration.

DMC:Tsunami, which is a great trinket is basically 321 Intellect and 200 Spirit. The alchemy trinket is 351 Intellect and 194 Spirit.

The only way any of those other trinkets outweighs it is if you really really need more mana to get through fights. The alchemy trinket is definitely a throughput trinket, but it's pretty much the best one in the game.

And even if you do need a bit more regen, just reforge some of the haste to spirit. The alchemy trinket is just flat-out amazing for Resto.

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Post by oberondreaming

the trinket is not better then one of the trinkets I listed plus the bonus from one of the other crafting professions.

It doesn't have to be. Alchemists still get 80 extra intellect from flasks, just like anyone else gets 80 intellect for their profession. The trinket is alchemy's version of cheap leg enchants for Tailors or Leatherworkers, or not having to worry about Therazane rep for Scribes. It's a perk entirely separate from the stat bonus you get for having the profession.

And the alchemy trinket is better for throughput than DMC. It's better than anything else for throughput. Because there are no other purely throughput epic trinkets in the game right now.

And if you don't "need" more haste, then you're doing it wrong.

Potion of Concentration is nice and better when used with the Alchemy trinket but there are not a lot of times one gets a chance to stand still for 10 secs.

I have found time to use one in every single fight in BoT. Do you not find time to cast Tranquility? It's not that much longer, time-wise. But that's kind of an aside. The main point of the alchemy trinket is throughput. The little bit of extra mana from whatever potion you use is just gravy.

Post by mikar

Thanks for the replies.

I am probably just missing something - but sofar (at level 65) I dont seem to have gotten much use from LW. Sure, I have used the AC enchants for 4 slots but thats it. The gear I can make simply dont seem to stack up against what I am otherwise getting. If I compare this to being able to making gems or enchants - which I could use - LW just seems lackluster. Mind, this is my first char so gold isnt something I have in spades.

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Post by mikar

Thanks for the reply Giry,

Unfortunately, you know so much about the game that you may have forgotten how it is to not know and hence mention things I dont even know what are. For example - 15 orbs - what are those? Also, the items you mention I am guessing are level 85 - and I am only level 65.

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Post by MegaVolt

I read in the guide that LW is of the most benifit to resto druids of all professions

It's not. If the guide really says that then the guide is wrong and you should disregard it.

All crafting professions are pretty much exactly equal. There is no most beneficial one. Take any combination you want.

LW generally sucks because it is a huge pain to level, it's insanely expensive.

Post by oberondreaming

This may be a sort of off the cuff statement but I am curious as to what you mean by this. My impression was that; since 4.0.6, mastery was more valuable than haste after the 916 haste break point. After the patch (well, after I made my new alch trinket) I moved a lot of my excess haste to mastery based on this thinking. was I out of my mind?

The value you get out of mastery is very healing-style dependent. It's also going to depend on the size of the group you're healing. If you're in a 5 man, mastery is a bigger bonus than it is in a 10-man and it will be more use in a 10 man than in a 25-man. If you're in a raid with strict healing assignments ("you cover group 4"), then mastery is better than if you're just generally raid healing. And of course if you're tank healing (and therefore literally only really healing 2-3 people) then it's a pretty significant bonus. But it varies a lot depending on your situation.

Since druids have so many HoTs there's almost always a HoT breakpoint you can be working towards (which also depend on your raid set-up, specifically the 5% bonus). But once you've hit the extra rejuv tick, you can easily be working toward the extra wild growth tick or the extra regrowth tick (not to mention that if you're rolling LB, haste is always increasing the HPS of that). Again, the value of haste depends on what you're doing. A tank healer, can favor mastery over haste and get a throughput bonus without the increased mana-per-second used, while haste gets them better throughput on their casted spells, but at the cost of more mana-per-second used.

I guess to maximize your throughput, you probably want to watch where you are regarding breakpoints, and throw points into mastery when you can't actually reach the next one. But any time you get new gear you ought to check to see if you can hit a new breakpoint.

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Post by MegaVolt

This may be true now, but not soon. BS gets 2 extra sockets for 40 int each, enchanter gets 2 ring enchants for 40 int, 80 more int from flasks for alch ect. however when we get epic gems, those 2 sockets are going to be worth more than the 80 int most other professions get.

I doubt they'll add better flasks, so in the long term those extra sockets will give you the biggest return.

That's exactly what they did in WotLK. With the introduction of epic gems all profession bonuses were increased to match that of BS with the new gems.
I'd be very, very surprised if they didn't do exactly the same thing again.

Professions are meant to be equal in their bonus. Blizzard does not want a superior or inferior profession. They want it to be a players choice. If one profession is in some way superior or inferior it gets patched reasonably fast to bring it on par with the others.
That's what happened to LW (Enchanting got new bracer enchants so that the LW enchant was not better than other profession bonuses anymore, indirectly nerfing LW) and Engineering (the special Engineering glove enchant got a buff so that it now provides int, agil or str instead of only int, making it useful for every class, not only casters) and that's what will happen when epic gems are introduced.

Again: All crafting professions are pretty much exactly equal in terms of stat gains (JC has 1 stat more than others because 80 can't be divided by 3 which is completely negligible, some professions have a proc based stat boost compared to a static one but in the end it really doesn't matter at all), the stat boost should not factor in the decision which profession to chose at all.

The valid reasons for a profession are: Gimmicks you like having from it (comfort because you can enchant your own gear and don't have to ask a guild mate every time, the nice Alchemy trinket that saves you DKP in a raid, the useful Engineering parachute that will keep you from dying all the time because you keep pressing the dismount button mid-air, the BS lockpicks because you hate looking for Rogues to open your lockboxes and so on), roleplaying (that fragile Undead Mage loves reading old scrolls, he is the perfect candidate for Inscription, Blacksmithing probably wouldn't really fit ... the mighty Orc brute on the other hand would probably be much more comfortable with it) and ease / cost of leveling (all crafting professions can be leveled very fast and easy with the AH but it will cost thousands of gold, Tailoring / Enchanting are pretty easy to level up while leveling a character, Blacksmithing / Leatherworking / Engineering are probably the worst and insanely expensive, don't even think about picking those money sinks up unless you have a dedicated farm character with mining / skinning or very, very much gold).

By the way:
All my new characters take Enchanting + Tailoring as professions for exactly that reason: Cheap to level, provides the same bonus as everything else. Least effort required to keep them at a reasonable level, least money required to max them out if the character ever gets to 85.
Exceptions are only made for roleplaying reasons (e.g. my Worgen Hunter, he has Skinning + Leatherworking since it just fits the theme of a feral wolf wearing the armor made from his prey, I know that the Skinning stat boost is inferior to the one crafting professions offer but I don't really care since it's only an alt and he won't ever do hard mode raiding anyway).

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