[Resto druid] Haste vs. mastery

[fluttershyxd 3]

Hi everyone cute druid out there! This is mostly a help me thread but also abit of a discussion. So i got trial in a guild back in july and been raiding with them since them , sadly enoguh i had been really unlucky with loot and been stuck on 710-712 while other healers have been on 718+, which made me look over my logs and got abit sad since i never have anything to heal (prolly cus we overhealed most of the bosses)

Anyways, i was wondering what you guys think of my logs and what i can do better, aswell as the haste + mastery.. i have seen people start gemming and enchanting mastery now again IN RESTO, is it because people who are well geared are starting to get so much haste on their gear? 

logs: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/character/7316408/latest/#
Armory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/frostmane/Peys/advanced

Thank you for your time :)

[Monday 0]

Hi Fluttershyxd!

    I know the feeling, I'm probably one of the most undergeared healers in my mythic group and I struggle sometimes, however there are fights that I just shine on. I was coming across your logs and was browsing through August 26th, I see that you are their switch healer so I'm judging based on the fights and pulls of which your healing.
Your Assault fight was fine, everything seemed great until I look at Iron Reaver. Personally, Iron Reaver is a fight that I shine and rank 90%+ on. I see your Lifebloom uptime is a tad bit low (but your Mastery is up almost 100%, thats hot) with 4P and Glyph of Blooming makes normally LB one of my top 3 heals, if not first. Why is Regrowth so high on your healing when it is an AOE heavy fight? I also see that Tranquility was popped without any healing increase cd's. Why is that? I always synergize my HoTW & Tranquility, its a way of both padding the healing meters along with ranking. Personally, I never use my Tranquility without either ToL or HoTW up unless the boss is about to die.

My suggestions for you; stack your healing CD's efficiently, save your HoTW for Tranquility (and enjoy the bonus healing after) and use your Tree of Life in times of need for conserving mana and blanket rejuving before or during moderate to high raid damage. Work on striving for a 95%+ Uptime on Lifebloom and see how you play with Glyph of Blooming (A lot of people underestimate this glyph). Also, don't be afraid on putting Lifebloom on other people than tanks. 

The synergy between Mastery & Haste is complex, but I'll put it in simple terms.
Mastery stacking is really only good for mana management and getting off stronger tranqs, however it does tend to make people overheal a bit more. Haste will always be better if you're good at managing your mana, knowing when to conserve, or just have enough spirit. Which one you go for is up to you, personally I stack my Mastery because I often time my Tranq's very well.


 

[Shedim 13]

 I also see that Tranquility was popped without any healing increase cd's. Why is that? I always synergize my HoTW & Tranquility, its a way of both padding the healing meters along with ranking. Personally, I never use my Tranquility without either ToL or HoTW up unless the boss is about to die.

 

I think you're playing the wrong role, it sounds like you're min/maxing a DPS. For Gorefiend for example, you should use Tranquility during the first 20 seconds of the feast, then pop Tree of Life (and/or HotW) for the last 40 seconds, securing you a high average throughput successfully preventing player deaths. If you blow everything at once, you just steal all the healing, blocking the other healers ability to help, and then when you're done showing your amazing healing skills, the raid HPS drops significantly and you risk wiping. Bad idea. A skilled raid leader would see right through this and replace you.

 

Regarding mastery/haste. Haste is a far better baseline stat for resto druids, both in terms of mana efficiency and throughput, this is a fact. But as you start to stack haste, the relative value of your other stats increases, which causes your second best stat, mastery, to become just as good and maybe slightly better than haste. But if you were to add more mastery, you would see this effect diminish with haste becoming better than mastery once again. What this means is that there is an equilibrium between your different stat ratings, however it is far too complex to calculate, as it also depends on other factors like playstyle, type of encounter you're facing as well as the playstyle of the people you heal together with.

 

Using a simplified model, you would with the following stat ratings benefit equally from 1+ of whichever secondary stat you added. Note: these values are just a very very rough estimate based on some simple calculations and some average data from logs. They are meant to give you an idea of the concept.

 

 

Crit: 1200 rating

Haste: 3100 rating

Mastery: 2000 rating

Multistrike: 1800 rating

Versatility: 0 rating

 

So if you added 1+ versatility to your character, you would see the same increase in healing done per mana spent as if you added 1+ mastery. If you instead had 500 versatility rating to begin with, the relative value of versatility compared to the other stats would have diminished enough to make versatility a significantly weaker stat. As a naked character has 0 of each stat, we normally say that versatility is your worst stat, because for it to become best you need enormous amounts of the other stats first.

 

Now this was for the case of mana efficiency. If you want to analyze simply based on which stat yields you the highest HPS, not caring about how much mana you spend, the situation is different. In fact haste is so good, that you need to be gcd (global cooldown) capped before it even starts to diminish in value (gcd cap is at 50% haste). Even while you're above 50% haste, haste remains significantly better than any other stat. Why is that? While mastery for example only increases your healing done by Rejuvenation by an x amount, haste both causes the Rejuvenation to tick faster (increasing the total amount of ticks and thus total healing done as well) and reduces the cast time (gcd) of the ability. You can say Rejuvenation double dips from haste. Note though, that this is not the case for all of your abilities. Regrowth for example doesn't double dip from haste (assuming it is glyphed). 

 

In practice you want to optimize for a good balance between high HPS and mana efficiency. For short fights, especially during farm, you can afford to maximize only your throughput, replacing spirit with other stats and getting haste on every piece of gear.

 

A quick summary, stack as much haste as possible. Once you have around a 1000 more haste rating than mastery rating, mastery becomes somewhat viable because it is just as mana efficient, but haste remains your best stat for throughput purposes, even if you had haste on every single item. Crit, multistrike and versatility aren't bad stats either. Multistrike is slightly better as Regrowth doesn't scale with crit. Versatility is generally behind until Best-in-slot gear, but don't undervalue it's damage reduction component.

 

The reason you probably see a lot of resto druids with mastery is because resto druids often off-spec balance, even more so on farm.

Edited September 18, 2015 by Shedim

[Pandacho 286]

 

 I also see that Tranquility was popped without any healing increase cd's. Why is that? I always synergize my HoTW & Tranquility, its a way of both padding the healing meters along with ranking. Personally, I never use my Tranquility without either ToL or HoTW up unless the boss is about to die.

 

I think you're playing the wrong role, it sounds like you're min/maxing a DPS. For Gorefiend for example, you should use Tranquility during the first 20 seconds of the feast, then pop Tree of Life (and/or HotW) for the last 40 seconds, securing you a high average throughput successfully preventing player deaths. If you blow everything at once, you just steal all the healing, blocking the other healers ability to help, and then when you're done showing your amazing healing skills, the raid HPS drops significantly and you risk wiping. Bad idea. A skilled raid leader would see right through this and replace you.

 

Normally I wouldn't make a post just to agree or disagree with somebody but this one is too important. Shedim is completely right in disapproval of burning raid healing CDs for padding meters. Healing is not about rankings, our work is keeping the raid alive and our great pleasure comes from doing it in even impossible situations.

 

Healing meters are a tool for checking specifics - spell usage, CD usage, incoming damage vs healing done, etc. Being in top of healing meters has almost nothing to do with real play skill but mostly with amount people in raid vs amount of healers vs damage taken.

A person that cares that much about rankings should rather go dps, not a healer.

 

The advice to burn raid CDs all together is bad - you shouldn't do that. Shedim explained why so I wouldn't repeat.

And as a healing lead I would never tolerate this kind of behaviour.