Professional dilemma

A few weeks ago I spoke about Professions and which are good/bad for resto. In that post I also clearly stated that I currently had Alchemy and Herbalism and was sticking to them. Now I am not so sure. Looking again through some of the professions and their perks I am actually tempted to drop herbalism. However, I am not looking at leatherworking or similar, but engineering.

A druid…. with engineering…..WTF?!?!?!?
Yes it does seem rather wrong to me too. However, looking at engineering and the perks it offers it also seems to be a very good profession for me at the moment. Currently I am not really raiding heavily, since Cata I have done 3 Baradin Hold runs and thats it. Otaku has what we call our “Focused Raiding Group” and this time around I decided not to participate but instead run/aid a second “Casual Raiding Group”. This means that I would like to have some better gear to be as good as I can for when I do raid, though the chance of me picking up extra gear may be slim, as we are not going for all out raiding multiple times a week.

So why engineering?
Well, lets look at the perks of Engineering; the primary one is the usual very good helmet, however in Cata the helmet is actually 359 and the addition of these cogwheels they introduced allow to stack 208 in 2 stats. So for resto I get + 208 spirit and +208 haste in addition to 301 intellect and the socket bonus and the meta. Feral gives me +208 dodge and (probably atm) +208 hit, again in addition to stamina, agility, meta and socket bonus.

So for resto, comparing them to similar items what do we get;

• Camouflage Bio-Optic Killshades;  375 intellect, 208 spirit, 208 haste  (with ember meta)
• Druid T11; 385 Intellect, 228 spirit, 188 haste (with ember meta and purified demonseye)

I won’t even consider Helm of the Blind Seer as it doesn’t have haste rating. So, the options above show that the Engi helm gives +20 haste compared to T11 but has 10 less intellect and 20 less spirit. However, to get the T11 helm at the moment you have to clear BWD then hope the token drops, then win it when rolling against other druids, death knights, mages and rogues. The engineering helm needs you to level engi and farm a bit.

Feral is a similar situation, except the chance of me getting anything above 346 for feral is tiny given that i won’t be raid tanking, just helping out in heroics and such, so the engi helm would far outweigh anything I could get at 346.

Now these helms are 359 which is very nice but not the highest iLevel atm and certainly not going to be awesome throughout the whole expansion but they are very good right now.

There is also another bonus to engineers though, the tinkers are quite cool and there are rather good tinkers available for both feral and resto. Additionally, tinkers also now stack with enchants so you don’t even lose your standard enchants. This is also not counting the hidden extras such as repair bots and the like that simply save time.

What about poor herbalism?
When compared to everything engineering has to offer, herbalism looks rather weak with a small haste bonus every 3 minutes. The primary ability of being able to collect herbs is easily negated by either having a herb alt – which is ridiculously easy if you have spare high level characters (which I do) or by having lots of gold to spend in the AH (which I do).

Its easy then! Just pay your gold and switch to engineering!
Hmmmm, thats the trouble, Kat has always been herb/alchemist and it has always seemed “right” for a nelf druid to do that. Switching to an engineer because of pretty toys seems to be almost like selling out just for the sake of epic goodies.  Especially when I have never been one to switch race/prof/etc just to be “better” in raids and such.

So Kat is in a quandry atm; does she stick with what seems “right” but is much less of a bonus, or does she go all out for toys, tinkers, epics and the whole nine yards and switch to engineering?

Thoughts on a postcard please.

Kat

Patch 4.0.6 live this week

According to MMO Champion, patch 4.0.6 will be released this week. In anticipation of this, here is a list of all the changes affecting resto, as well as some potentially good changes to professions, gear etc.

PvP specific Changes

These will only really affect you if you like to PvP and generally won’t have much (or any) effect in PvE

• Barkskin is no longer dispellable.
• Shapeshifts: Entering or leaving a shapeshift no longer cancels root effects. It continues to cancel movement slowing effects.
• Entangling Roots now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.
• Hibernate now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

Minor Changes

These won’t affect high level druids, but are included for completeness

• Healing Touch is now trained at level 78, up from level 3.
• Nourish is now trained at level 8, down from level 78.
• Rejuvenation is now trained at level 3, down from level 8.

Major Changes

These are the changes to spells and abilities that will actually affect some (or most) high level resto druids. Some have already been hotfixed and you may not have even noticed

• Disentanglement (new specialization): Causes shapeshifting to remove roots in addition to snares. No concern really unless you PvP, I don’t think it will have a big impact on PvE playing
• Empowered Touch now also affects Regrowth. In addition, after Tree of Life is no longer active, this talent will only refresh the most recently cast or refreshed Lifebloom, and will not refresh other copies of Lifebloom. This one I am unsure about, atm I don’t use regrowth a lot so I am not that bothered about it being affect by empowered touch, however the lose of multiple lifeblooms could be quite serious. I know a few people used this trick (exploit?) to basically roll LB on multiple targets after using ToL. Now though, that trick is removed as casting HT/nourish/regrowth will only refresh the most recent cast/refresh of LB. Oh well, all good things come to an end.
• Natural Shapeshifter has been reduced to a 3/6-second increase to Tree of Life’s duration, down from 5/10. This is quite serious, especially combined with changes to ToL anyway (noted below), this now means that a fully talented ToL will last just 31 secs instead of 40, Thats nearly a 25% reduction in duration while not buffing it in any way. Hopefully somewhere along the line we will get  some minor buffs that mean we are having to pop ToL less but atm we have lost 25% uptime with no discernible gain.
• Nature’s Bounty no longer affects Swiftmend, but now has a new effect. When the druid has Rejuvenation on 3 or more targets, the cast time of Nourish is reduced by 10/20/30%. Nice in theory, but while nourish is commonly used, it isn’t the greatest of our utility spells, it heals for only a small amount and it mostly used to slightly top up while refreshing LB. Personally I would have preferred a similar thing but applied to HT. This buff though, combined with the cheaper rejuvenation and buffed WG seems to indicate that after changing the mechanics of resto, Blizzard are trying to push us back towards spamming Rejuv and WG as raid healers.
• Symbiosis (Mastery) benefit from mastery increased by approximately 16%. As I have always said something that increases healing for free is no bad thing, and that is exactly what this does. If you are a healer that rates mastery quite highly (I believe the general rule is if more than 30% of your casts use mastery then its good) then this is an immediate bonus. Your spells will be healing for slightly more, which means in the long run you will be using less mana and able to cast more.
• Tree of Life duration has been reduced to 25 seconds, down from 30. See Natural Shapeshifter above for details.
• Wild Growth healing has been increased by 30%, and the cooldown has been reduced to 8 seconds, down from 10. This change I do like, WG is a staple spell for me and since Cata it has seemed a little weak on the AoE healing front and really good for nothing except a bit of a top up, now that its healing has been increased and the CD lower it becomes more viable to chain cast during bad AoEs, especially when the druid is also getting hit so that Tranquility isn’t an option.
• Rejuvenation’s mana cost is now 20% of base mana. This is a good change, a primary HoT having its mana cost reduced. However, as I said above, this change combined with WG and NB changes seem to be pushing us towards pumping out rejuv and WG spam. Still, a good speel made cheaper, so we can’t really complain
• Glyph of Regrowth now causes the heal-over-time effect to refresh itself on targets at or below 50% health, up from 25%. Useful I suppose if you like regrowth and use it a lot, as for fights where you get dragged below 50% regularly it will potentially heal for much longer that 6 secs, but usually those fights require you to get everyone’s health back up ASAP so I think it will have limited use.

Non druid specific changes

Changes that may affect some people depending on professions etc.

• Alchemy - A new alchemists stone based around Intellect and Haste with a +Int Red socket has been added. This is just plain awesome if you are an alchemist. It’s got everything, Intellect and a red socket and a +10 int socket bonus (total potential of 351 intellect atm) and it has haste as the secondary stat. It may lose itemisation to the potion buff but atm it’s probably still one of the best pre-raid trinkets and should see you through a good bit of raiding as well.
• Alchemy – Flasks now require less materials to craft (specifically Flask of the Draconic Mind now needs; Volatile Life x 8, Azshara’s Veil x 8, Twilight Jasmine x 8, Crystal Vial). Not a huge change, but less mats mean more flasks for your grinding and those who are not herbalists should see the prices of these drop.
• Enchanting – A new +50 Intellect bracer enchant has been added. Good if you don’t need the extra haste from the other enchant, more intellect is always good; however this is countered by….
• Enchanting – The Off Hand enchant has had its intellect reduced from 100 to 40. /cry we all knew this was probably a bit OTT and obviously blizzard have decided as well so we lose 60 intellect from the off hands (ouch!). This does however mean that we may have a bigger pool of weapons to choose from as this lessened intellect may well make some staffs appear more attractive now and more viable as a decent weapon.
• Tailoring – Darkglow Embroidery (Rank 2) now increases Spirit instead of restoring a flat amount of mana. Spirit over mana is good as spirit is affected by buffs etc so this actually increases your mana regen very slightly – at the very least you should have MotW if nothing else so it immediately gets a buff
• Mandala of Stirring Patterns (epic trinket from Exalted with Baradin’s Wardens) now increases Intellect instead of mastery rating. Phew, pure intellect is so much better than flat mastery. Even ignoring the brief gains to mana, crit and regen, just look at it as one of the old chance-on-cast increase spellpower proc trinkets and it is already good. Factor in the additional mana, crit and regen and its is very good. If you are not going for BW rep, now is a very good time to start, this should see you through a good bit of raiding unless you are super lucky with drops.

All in all not a bad bunch of changes for us, it is also quite nice for the alchemists/herbalists among us to get a (slight) buff and that the BW trinket has been made better. I will update my guide with appropriate changes once the patch is actually live

Kat

Resto and professions; pros and cons of each

This is applicable as of the current patch (4.0.3) if anything changes in the future, updates will be made to the Resto Druid Guide

Today’s post is a continuation of my resto druid guide, and will cover the various primary professions and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each. Some offer outright buffs and improvements, but others offer something else that maybe isn’t as useful but, and one is even downright useless.

• Alchemy; Bonus: Increased duration  and effect of flasks and elixirs. You gain a bonus to any flask and elixirs you can make. At 85, this means that using Flask of the Draconic Mind will give you a +80 intellect boost as well as lasting twice as long.
• Blacksmithing; Bonus: 2 extra gem sockets. Blacksmithing has one of the most versatile bonus of any profession. The ability to place a prismatic socket on both your gloves and your bracers. This means even if you are not a JC (and thus able to use Chimera’s eye) you can get an instant +80 Intellect (using the best currently available gem). Alternatively, you can use the sockets to buff another stat if you want such as haste or similar without losing any socket bonus, though I would advise the stacking of Intellect.
• Enchanting; Bonus: Ring enchants. Again, this is quite a good bonus, as you have 2 rings, it means you can get double the bonus So a total of +80 intellect (40 per ring) is rather nice for resto.
• Engineering; Bonus: Cogwheels and item enhancement. Given that crafted engineering epics are iLevel 359, and that the stats on the cogwheels are rather amazing, it means that a engi helm with cogwheels will take a lot of replacing, even when raiding, as you get a iLevel 359 helm that can have +208 spirit and +208 haste. As for enhancements, the Synapse Springs are quite good and can give +480 Intellect for 12 seconds per minute.
• Herbalism; Bonus: Lifeblood ability. This isn’t too bad as an additional ability to have when needed, I have mine bound to ToL so I get the +480 haste buff when I need it most. It isn’t the best by a long way but does at least give you some (temporary) buff.
• Inscription; Bonus: Improved shoulder enchants. If you are not into rep grinding then this is a good one. Better enchantments than you can buy from Therazane and no grind to exalted
• Jewelcrafting; Bonus: 3 improved gems. A rather nice one here, the 3 Chimera’s eye gems will each give +67 Intellect (instead of +40) which is a total gain of +81 additional intellect. Combined with BS for the additional sockets, you can gain +161 intellect in total.
• Leatherworking; Bonus: Improved bracer enchant. Similar to that of Inscription and jewelcrafting, you don’t gain anything totally new, but seriously increase an already present buff. Atm this is single best profession, with a boost of +130 intellect compared to the standard enchant of +65 haste.
• Mining; Bonus: Additional stamina. More stamina = more hp, nice for tanking, useless for resto druids.
• Skinning; Bonus: Additional +80 crit rating. Similar to mining, a passive increase to crit, but crit really isn’t a priority stat for us so I would give it a miss.
• Tailoring; Bonus: Improved cloak enchant. Lightweave embroidery is similar to Synapse Springs as it is only up for some of the time, but will increase your crit and spellpower temporarily when it procs.

As with everything else, these are guidelines for determining your optimum professions. I am not suggesting everyone drops stuff to take LW + Engi or anything. Personally I have alchemy and herbalism and am going to keep them as it would be a waste for me to scrap them after levelling them, and would cost a lot of time/money to level 2 new professions.

However, for those of you who wish to know, probably the best combo of professions is LW and either Engineering (for guaranteed Int boost) or Tailoring (for a proc chance boost).

Jewelcrafting, Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Enchanting and Inscription all give approximately equal gains and there is really no choice between them.

Skinning and herbalism give small gains only.

Mining is no good as resto

Kat