Monday, March 31, 2008

looking at a new build

Now that I've got all of this dope balance gear, I'm thinking about respeccing a little. While I love (love) boomkining around, my guild really seems to need heals. In fact, our Kara run on Saturday didn't happen for want of another healer.

I know the obvious answer is to respec to Tree (tree is 4 fite!), but 'dwen is my only serious source of money and materials and I'm afraid it'll be too tough to farm without balance talents. When I tried Tree before I could hardly kill the Skettis birds without having to eat and drink after every. Single. One. And that was no fun at all.

So how about a Restokin 34/0/27 build? While eating breakfast this morning I read about two specs on WoWWiki, one based on healing touch and the other based on HoTs. I'm inclined to try the HoT-based build, since that's what I'd be doing if/when I go fully to tree. Hmmm...

EDITED TO ADD: Hawesome resto druid Llanion has suggested his flavor of Restokin build, which I'm seriously leaning towards, primarily because it lets me pick up Subtlety. Wara w/o Subtlety = aggro magnet. Srsly.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

The HoT based build is shiny and I can guarantee it'd be fun... my personal flavor of that would be something more like this:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0xcrzfIsMuhZZxxctzs

(This was the build I was running when you first joined the Kara run; I dropped it due to mana efficiency concerns but A: that was during a fight I was combo nuking and trying to main-heal as well and B: That was pre-2.4, and my mana
regen has jumped sharply since)

(Yes, I wish I still had that build)

Differences between that and the HoT-Based build you linked-

You lose: 3/3 Natural Shapeshifter
Honestly I'm not sure why this talent was in the build to begin with. As far as I could tell, one of three things will happen; Either you're healing the fight (Start in caster form, stay in caster form) or you're nuking the fight (start in Moonkin form with full mana, stay there), or you're starting out nuking and things go south (so you have to shift out, which takes no time and costs no mana).

You lose: Nature's Focus 1/5
Um... 14% chance is pitiful, and during raids you just plain are not going to get hit (and, if you /are/ getting melee'd, the proper response is not to heal yourself; it's to cast Cyclone with 3/3 Control of Nature and go "aiee, help, need a tank" over Vent)

You are reduced to: 1/3 Improved Rejuvenation
It's a 10% cut in Rejuvenation. There's lots of math I could get into here, but the upshot of it is that at your level of +healing, you lose roughly 50 health per three seconds if you're healing someone in a Tree group.

You are reduced to: 3/5 Gift of Nature
I'll admit, this one hurts a bit. Gift of Nature is FUN, and a 4% reduction on my healing spells makes me grumble. But worry not, for we're about to discuss what you gain!

YOU GAIN: 5/5 Subtlety
This one is HUGE. Dispel resistance in PVP makes priests and shaman gnash their teeth. More than that, the 20% threat cut is brilliant. You and I both know that a Boomkin is basically a threat magnet, and 5/5 Subtlety is the easiest and definitely most effective way to keep from making many new 'friends'.

Also, druids without subtlety make the tanks whimper.

You gain: 3/3 Improved Faerie Fire
The only thing I touched in the Balance tree, as that side of the fence at least is well built. I realize that the talent does almost nothing for you, but if you keep it up on raid bosses you will be covered with glee and joy from our more physically-minded counterparts.

See, again without going too deep on math, a boomkin with this talent who keeps it on a raid boss can expect to improve the overall DPS of the physical raiders by about 3%. Each. And, since it's a debuff on the boss rather than some sort of group aura, everyone gets it. It also means more solid threat for the tanks (who cannot afford to gem for +hit most of the time). Dual-wielders have basically no hope of reaching the Hit Cap, and even single-wielders typically eat +hit food (The Spicy Hot Talbuk everyone seems to love).

3% seems small here, but we are talking about, oh, four or five players who have, oh, a couple hundred thousand damage each over a boss fight. 180k damage as a minimum (even if it doesn't end up attributed to you) over a boss fight is something I'd be happy to spend three talent points on.

Wow, that was verbose of me. I'll sum up:

Whatever variation you take, Restokin are shiny. SHINY. I want to be one again, but I've got at least two respecs in my future for the panzerkin experiment, plus I need to keep my tree aura to help train new healers. /cry.

Anonymous said...

*cough* 18k. I math good. Still worth the talent points in my opinion, but your milage may vary.

Arne said...

Oh, nice! I saw that Subtlety was missing in the HoT build and was going to figure out how I could get it -- I was such an aggro magnet when I didn't have it before -- but now I don't have to do all that work! Thanks! :-D

I haven't thought much with Faerie Fire, so your points on ImpFF and its usefulness to the rest of the group are well-received. Your other points are most excellent, too. Thanks for the advice!

I'm looking forward to your panzerkin experiment, too. That looks like a lot of fun. One of the things I really like about being a moonkin (versus a "pure" caster, like a mage) is that I can actually take a hit or two. I don't have to constantly be kiting and worrying about getting too close to that group of ogres over there, or the dragon swooping low in the sky, or...well, you get the idea. And as a Panzerkin, you could (theoretically) stand there and wrath Prince in the face, taking the damage he deals you. Pretty cool.

Unknown said...

I would hate being a healer without Swiftmend. If your main role in the group is going to be healing, then I would say that, to be able to do that job to the best of your ability, I'd suggest sacrificing Moonkin form (but still keeping as many DPS talents as you can from that tree) to get to the other 31-point talent.

Though a little bit more healing-oriented, this was the hybrid build I used when I went that way. Techincally you could tweak it to a 30/31 build and have full Moonfury, in addition to Swiftmend. Without Moonkin form, you'd just have to use roots a little more to kite mobs when necessary, as opposed to letting them beat on you.

However, if you simply can't live without Moonkin form, the recent change to make Regrowth more mana-efficient could be a sufficient "quick heal" to take the place of Swiftmend. Not instant, but more on par with the Flash Heal/Flash of Light our other healing bretheren have at their disposal. I haven't played my druid since the patch, but I know lots of tree druids were excited about being able to use that spell more often.

Unknown said...

I was just fiddling around with the talent calculator, and this was the most damage-oriented 30/31 build I could come up with. As I said, you might not need Swiftmend, but if you wanted to get it, this would still give you a nice bit of soloability, just without the armored feathers of Moonkin form.

Arne said...

@ Nas

Thanks! I guess I don't quite "get" Swiftmend, which is probably due to my only real healing experience being at level 20-ish. It's for quick heals when the guy's about to die, right? You'd hit him with a Rejuv then cast Swiftmend? Or is it better to use Nature's Swiftness and max-rank Healing Touch?

So much to learn, so much to learn...

Unknown said...

(Sorry so late, I totally didn't see this until your new post today.)

Yes, Nature's Swiftness/Healing Touch is a great emergency button. But, NS has a 3-minute cooldown, so it's nice to have a backup.

Swiftmend will consume either a Rejuvenation or Regrowth on your target, and instantly heal them for the full amount. So, you could either throw up the Rejuv and then hit Swiftmend right away, or just always try to keep a Rejuv up, along with your 3-stack of Lifebloom.

It's certainly possible to heal without it, especially in a raid situation where there's other healers to cover those moments. But I like having an "oh crap" button I can use more often than once every 3 minutes.