The picture above lists our available 1-hand Spirit options (these are 522 ilvl which are Normal-mode versions). In the Throne of Thunder we will have 2 Mace options, 1 Dagger, and for the first time in QUITE a while, a FIST weapon (hooray!).

*Be aware there is a non-Spirit Dagger that is available, but the tooltip for the Normal version is not accurate to the stats of the Heroic and Raid Finder versions. I’ll have to research this at a later date.

The stat weightings I used were:

Intellect- 100

Spellpower- 85

Haste (pre-3043 BP)- 80

Spirit- 75

Mastery- 55

Crit- 50

As you can see Torall, Rod of the Shattered Throne comes out ahead of our other options which are actually all quite even in stat allocation. It has significantly more Intellect while our other options have more secondary stats.

Personally, I think the Fist weapon has the best-looking model with Torall coming in second. The lightning they emit would look great with our T11 gear if you have a set laying around. I’m not really thrilled about the other 2 models.

Restoration
The mushrooms grow larger as they accumulate healing power from 75% of overhealing done by your Rejuvenation, up to a maximum of 100% of your health in bonus healing.

From early PTR testing, overhealing from Rejuvenation is split by 33% per shroom. Rejuv overhealing also has a cap of 100% of your health to prevent overpowered Blooms. As you can see from my screenshot, healing shrooms was bugged at the time and did not have the current health cap in place. This has since been hotfixed. Ghostcrawler recently had a brief explanation of the new idea:

“We’re still iterating on this design for Wild Mushrooms. Currently, they each absorb 25% overheal, up to a max of 33% of the Druid’s max health (total of 75% / 100% with 3 Mushrooms out). This max size isn’t working in build 16446, but we hope to hotfix that soon. Upon blooming, their accumulated healing is split over the targets they heal. Several parts of this aren’t yet working in build 16446, leading them to be massively overpowered (which we also hope to hotfix soon). Feedback, especially in future builds, is appreciated.”

Speaking of feedback, I left my own feedback on the PTR Forums:

Wild Mushroom: Bloom Feedback

I appreciate the changes made to Wild Mushroom: Bloom so far. There are both positives and some negatives about the spell:

Positives:

-The new growing mechanic is very interesting. Turning our overhealing into a meaningful healing mechanic does solve most of that issue.

-The health cap is appropriate as to not encourage deliberate overhealing for OP Blooms.

-In the latest hotfix you applied a “ready” glow when they cap. This is much appreciated.

Negatives:

-If my napkin math is correct, at 31k Spellpower each shroom would heal each player in the neighborhood of 5.5k if said shroom hit all 25 targets and was capped. If you actually manage to hit the same player with all 3 the healing would be 16.5k before Crits. 5.5k to 16.5k just doesn’t seem like very meaningful healing when players have 400k+ health pools.

-The radius of each mushroom is too small right now. The spell is stationary and doesn’t have any visible “radius” like Efflorescence or Healing Rain. Moving the shrooms because of a small radius also penalizes the overhealing mechanic.

Solutions:

The healing, while potentially good in a 10-man setting, is still lackluster for 25′s. Having diminishing returns on our burst ability really hurts the “burst”. I actually think the total healing amount is fine, it’s just how it’s being applied that is the issue. Its current design is more akin to Healing Rain, but it shouldn’t be like Healing Rain because it’s not meant to fill that particular role.

-Consider putting a target cap on each mushroom (possibly 5?) and in turn take away the diminishing returns. With the target cap, make each shroom heal the lowest health raid member within it’s radius. This smart healing is a very fair trade-off considering how clunky and easily nullified healing shrooms currently are by players not paying attention. With a cap of 5 targets each shroom would heal 15 raid members for 28k. This healing is much more meaningful versus having 25 players being healed for 5.5k. For 10-man you can still have the 420k healing split among 10 players, just cap it for 15 targets for 25′s.

-Increase the radius. 8 yards is too small for an ability with no radius indicator for the raid. If you are dead set on keeping the 8 yards, please put in some visual indicator for raiders. A “spore cloud” in a circular form would be a nice touch.

Overall, I do like the idea of our overhealing contributing to the potency of Wild Mushrooms. It gives you more choice on whether you want to blow them immediately, or wait for a “ramp up” to happen. There’s definitely progress being done to make them better, but I believe we still have a few kinks to work out before they become a good addition to our toolkit.

One of my favorite things to do in WoW when I’m not raiding is Pet Battles. I have literally become obsessed with them. The “Gotta catch’em all!” concept is really strong with me as I usually won’t leave a particular area until every single pet (that is obtainable through battling) is caught. Today I want to go over some basic info, some cool Pet Battle Addons, and some of my favorite pets to battle with.

Pet Battling 101

I’m not going to go into specific detail over certain classes of pets and which are strongest against others. Wowhead has an amazing guide with those details. What I will say is that if you’ve ever played Pokémon in your life, Pet Battles are nearly an exact replica sans the abilities, classes, and pets.

Some Basic Info:

• Pet Battles are on a turn-based system, just like Pokémon. If you’ve never played Pokémon and are familiar with the older Final Fantasy games they are no different.
• Pets have “stats” similar to WoW characters, tho not nearly as detailed or complex. They have health, attack power, and speed (which determines which pet goes first). The current max level is 25.
• Each pet is a certain “class” of pet. Each pet may be stronger or weaker against other pets depending on this class. Example: Elemental is strong against Mechanical, is weak against Aquatic, and isn’t very effective against Critter.
• Pets have 3 slots to attack or defend with. You can choose from 2 different abilities per slot. You gain more slots as your pet increases in levels.
• Many abilities are augmented by the Weather or if friendly/enemy pets meet certain conditions. This can increase damage or healing in your favor.

Pet Battle Addons

I primarily use 3 addons for pet battles. People who have played Pokémon will be very familiar with what they do.

• WoWkemon- This addon turns your pet battle frames and stats into the old fashioned Pokémon versions. It also provides Pokémon weather effects and a spectator option so others can view your Pet Battles. It really is a good addon for people who are fans of the old-school Pokémon game.
  
• Pokemon Trainer- This mod is probably my favorite so far and is entirely battle-focused versus just being an aesthetic addon like WoWkemon. This addon gives you full info on active pets such as: Pet Speed (which one will go first), strength, and weakness. It’s nice because all the info is in front of you and you don’t have to constantly look up information. Pokemon Trainer also gives you “Catch Info” when you enter a new zone in the Chat Panel, giving you a complete breakdown of pets you have already captured, their rarity, and one’s you still need to capture. This is extremely helpful for players wanting to truly “Catch’em All!”
• Pet Battle Pokemon Mod- This addon changes the music during pet battles to authentic Pokémon theme songs. It’s a great combination with the WoWkemon addon to give your Pet Battles that authentic Pokémon experience!

My Favorite Battle Pets

• Celestial Dragon- This is probably my #1 favorite. The first 3 abilities you receive are its strongest. Breath does strong damage. Moonfire is even stronger on a short 3 round CD. Ancient Blessing is a strong self heal. Celestial Dragon has Strong attack power and a Fair speed rating.
• Lil’ XT- This pet is also easily becoming one of my favorites. Zap does strong damage. Repair is a very strong self heal. The catch is that you must use is preemptively. I usually use it around 50% health. Repair will also still work if you self-rez under the Mechanical-type Passive ability, restoring you to full health. Don’t take Thrash since Lil’ XT is slower than most other Battle Pets. Lil’ XT has very high attack power and mediocre speed.
• Lil’ KT- This pet is also one of my favorites. His Frost Nova + Howling Blast combo is devastating especially against Mechanical teams. Siphon Life is a great spell for self-healing, although it doesn’t seem to scale very well at higher levels. If you do use FN+HB, be aware that you are trading an attack every turn for a hard-hitting combo for 3 turns.

If you have any great tips of your own or if you would like to share your own favorite pets, please comment below!

*Updated after more evaluation. Cenarion Ward is not affected by Haste.

I was bored today and decided to do some napkin math for the improved Cenarion Ward:

Spellpower= 28,000 (just a little under what I currently run fully-buffed in raids).

Live:

Cenarion Ward- Protects a friendly target, causing any damage taken to heal the target for 6174 (+ 57% of SpellPower) every 2 sec for 6 sec. Gaining the healing effect consumes the Cenarion Ward. Useable in all shapeshift forms. Lasts 30 sec

Mana Cost: 60,000*.148= 8,880 mana per cast
6,174 + (28,000*.57)= 22,134 per tick

3(ticks)*22,134= 66,402 total healing done over 6 seconds
HpM: 66,402/8,880= 7.47

PTR:

Cenarion Ward- Protects a friendly target, causing any damage taken to heal the target for 12349 (+ 104% of SpellPower) every 2 sec for 6 sec. Gaining the healing effect consumes the Cenarion Ward. Useable in all shapeshift forms. Lasts 30 sec.

Mana Cost: 60,000*.148= 8,880 mana per cast
12,349 + (28,000*1.04)= 41,469 per tick

3(ticks)*41,469= 124,407 total healing done over 6 seconds
HpM: 124,407/8,880= 14.0

For other HpM References:

Rejuvenation: 7.9
Healing Touch: 4.06
Wild Growth (no SotF): Between 13.1 and 15.7

So what does this all mean?

Cenarion Ward would become one of the most efficient spells available. The one deterrence for this ability will be its overhealing. But I feel if used smartly (such as on Protectors for Lightning Prison targets) the healing done could outweigh the overhealing. If used on CD this ability will now do double the healing of Nature’s Swiftness, but with a mana cost.

I just received my WordPress Annual Report for 2012. Every year I like to look and see what my stats are for the year. It gives me a good idea of what people are interested in with my blog:

Page Views- 72,000

“19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 72,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.”

I don’t necessarily care for Jay-Z, but I love the way WordPress puts numbers into perspective.

Busiest Day- October 2nd

“The busiest day of the year was October 2nd with 1,043 views. The most popular post that day was 5.0 PvE Resto Druid Gear Guide.”

I appreciate everyone reading and using my gear guide. It took quite a bit of work and time to put together. I’ll be sure to update it when 5.2 gets much closer to launch.

Top Post for 2012- Changes to expect in 5.0

A lot of people were interested with the changes Mists of Pandaria brought. We got a new talent system and many of our spells and abilities were overhauled. We’ll be seeing even more changes when 5.2 is released.

Top Search Words for 2012- resto druid pvp, resto druid pvp 4.3, resto druid pvp guide, resto druid 5.0, and resto druid pvp gear

Surprisingly, PvP is what brought many people to my blog since I offer a Casual PvP Guide based on my own experiences in Random and Premade Battlegrounds. I am by no means an expert PvP player, but I think many appreciate a “basics” guide that can instruct them on how to gear their character and some basic tips for surviving.

Top Referring Sites for 2012:

• restokin.com

I get many referrals from Lissanna who also happens to be an officer in my guild. She funnels a lot of views to many other Druid blogs as well.

• mmo-champion.com

MMO-C has a great Resto Guide. I occasionally use it when I forget the name for some of the new enchants we have. I only recently became a forum member on MMO-C since I found that the forum was sometimes made up of the same cesspool found on the official WoW Forums. I’ve gotten a lot better at dodging trolls.

• twitter.com

Ah Twitter. You are my pride and joy. I would be so bored at work if it wasn’t for the constant discussions about Druids and bacon.

• us.battle.net

The WoW Druid Forum also has a great Resto Guide that is maintained by Lissanna from Restokin.

• totemspot.com

Ah Binkenstein. I’ve gotten quite a few referrals from Bink’s blog ever since I made my Haste Breakpoint chart during MoP Beta. I found the math for deciphering the breakpoints to be quite fun, but unfortunately my end result was still a few numbers off from the true values because of banker’s rounding (I had no idea how to pull that off in Excel). Bink’s numbers were spot on, so credit is to him for the math. Be sure to check out Bink’s other Haste Breakpoint Cards for DPS casters and the other healing classes.

Where did all those views come from?

• US- 30,503
• UK- 5,245
• Canada (eh?)- 5,052
• Australia- 2,937
• Sweden- 2,605
• Germany- 2,525
• France- 1,758

The US is always a given, but I always find it fascinating that my blog reaches out to people all around the world. I mean, I had 2 views from Uzbekistan!

So that’s it! I hope you enjoyed my blog for 2012 and I hope you WILL enjoy it for 2013!

I ask this question because quite frankly I find Harmony to be one of the most boring healer Masteries available now. It requires absolutely no upkeep with its longer duration. It’s just bonus healing and that bonus healing isn’t even interesting to watch or manage.

Back in Cataclysm, Harmony had a good level of involvement from the Druid. We had to maintain the buff by casting a direct heal every 10 seconds. Some could argue that Harmony required “too much” attention, but I liked it because it kept me involved. I knew that by carefully watching and maintaining the buff I would be rewarded with big heals. It was a good relationship.

But now ever since the tail-end of MoP Beta where they changed the duration of Harmony to 20 seconds, maintaining the buff has become extremely trivial and it doesn’t feel nearly as rewarding as it used to. Maintaining Harmony was what separated a good Druid from a mediocre one and now that distinction is gone. A Druid can infinitely keep Harmony up just by casting Swiftmend on cooldown. You don’t even need a buff tracker for it anymore. The maintenance is gone and quite frankly the bonus healing feels like it should just be passive now.

So how do we fix this? Well, I think Harmony needs to be scrapped for something more involving or something that interacts more with the spells we cast. Part of the reason why Harmony’s duration was extended to begin with was because Druids were having trouble keeping up the duration due to being GCD-capped. At that time it was the right move, but at the same time it took away what made Harmony interesting and enjoyable.

I think we need a new Mastery, one that is passive and doesn’t require any maintenance. One that interacts with our healing differently rather than “increases all healing done”. Look at other healer Masteries:

Shield Discipline- It’s not the Mastery that is interesting, but rather Divine Aegis and how it interacts with all the Priest spells.

Echo of Light- EoL is probably the one Mastery that is closest to Harmony except it’s in the form of a HoT rather than upfront healing.

Illuminated Healing- This Mastery makes all healing spells (even HoTs) put a shield on the target. The shield stacks and is capped by a % of the players health.

Deep Healing- Deep Healing’s power depends on the targets health level. Lower health targets will benefit more than higher health ones. This is actually my favorite Mastery in-game right now since it’s reactive depending on player conditions.

Gift of the Serpent- This Mastery seems to be the “Lightwell” of all of them since it requires players to be proactive with using the Healing Spheres. I do know this Mastery is getting tweaked in 5.2 so the Healing Spheres aren’t wasted as much as they are now.

In comparison, Harmony doesn’t seem nearly as interesting as other Masteries. Shield Discipline isn’t very interesting either, but the way Divine Aegis works makes up for it a bit.

So what do I suggest?

I think our Mastery should take a page out of the Discipline Priest book. I’m not saying we should get absorbs, far from it actually. I think our Mastery should increase the healing of a certain passive ability that we actually already have, it’s just really mediocre in its current iteration:

Living Seed

Living Seed use to be an awful passive in Cataclysm. Its proc was extremely inconsistent meaning it would sometimes proc off of damage and sometimes it wouldn’t because for whatever reason it didn’t meet the criteria of being “attacked”.

MoP made it a little better, but it’s far from fantastic. It still only gets applied from direct heals and the proc is still inconsistent. But with glyphed Regrowth we’ve seen its output contribution increase by a decent amount.

So how do we turn this into a full-blown Mastery?

First, we would have to redesign Living Seed to be more reactive and it would have to be applied by more than just direct heals. My suggestion:

Living Seed- When you critically heal a target you plant a Living Seed on the target for 30% of the amount healed. The Living Seed will bloom when the target takes damage. Lasts 15 sec.

What changes:

-Living Seed would be applied on critical heals both from direct heals and all HoTs.

-Living Seed would stack up to a certain % of the casters health (similar to Illuminated Healing and Divine Aegis).

-Living Seed procs from all damage sources, whether the damage is direct or indirect.

The Mastery could be something like:

Mastery: Nature’s Bounty- Increases the healing done by Living Seed by X%.

So why would this be a good Mastery for us?

I think Living Seed is actually a great mechanic for Druids. The ability is reactive to damage and it could help us a little in the burst healing category since it procs after damage is applied. Yes it is inferior to absorption and damage prevention abilities, but all raw healing is inferior to those mechanics. It’s not really any different from what we are having to deal with today. Also, I feel that with these suggestions our secondary stats wouldn’t be so black and white and our healing would be more interesting to watch.

*Updated to reflect official PTR notes.

The 5.2 PTR patch notes have just dropped and we have some updates to numerous Resto Druid abilities:

• Cenarion Ward‘s healing was doubled.

Unfortunately this doesn’t solve CW’s main problem which is overhealing.

• The mana cost of Rejuvenation has been reduced by 9%.

This is something that many Druids have been advocating for on the forums. Rejuv is our workhorse for raid healing, but due to its high mana cost it is very hard to blanket the raid for big damage. Hopefully this lets us cast it on a few more targets for big damage.

• Symbiosis now has a 6 second CD.

So we can’t spam it? We already can’t use it in combat. This change hardly matters.

• Faerie Swarm no longer has a 1 target limit.

PvP funsies?

• Displacer Beast no longer activates Prowl, but instead increases movement speed by 50% for 4 sec.

This is technically a nerf to Resto PvP, mainly in arena. DB was a great escape card that kept you hidden after you dispelled yourself of all Magic effects. The bonus speed is a nice getaway bonus for all specs.

• Mass Entanglement is now on a 30 sec CD, down from 2 min.

YES! It only took 6 months of whining and it worked! What was once a terrible talent for all specs turns into a really good choice for all specs. Go my Druids! Go and root as many Rogues and Warriors as possible!

• Nature’s Vigil is now on a 1.5 min CD, down from 3 min and now increases healing done by 10%, down from 20%. Duration is unchanged.

I think the reason behind this change was that Nature’s Vigil was too much like Incarnation, so much so that many Druids just combined both abilities on CD. This breaks it up a bit giving us an ability that we have access to more often. I really like this change.

• Soul of the Forest now increases Haste by 70%, up from 50%.

Making Soul of the Forest more powerful? That’s a bit risky given how powerful our 4pc bonus is combined with it. I’ll need to run some numbers but it should definitely grant us another tick or 2 of Wild Growth.

• And finally, Force of Nature received a buff to healing.

Or did it? Initial number crunching suggests that Force of Nature’s healing was increased by about 30%. However, I noticed something:

“Each treant will heal a nearby injured ally for 3201 to 3779 (+ 32.3% of SpellPower) every 3 sec.”

Now compare to the current tooltip:

“Heals one of the most injured nearby friendly targets for 2134 to 2519 (+ 21.5% of SpellPower).” Cast time 2.5 sec.

Currently, Treants take a baseline cast (no Haste) of 2.5 seconds to get 1 cast of Healing Touch off. This new build suggests Treants will take .5 seconds longer to get a cast off.

So what about the numbers? Lets get to it:

Lets pull some basic numbers off the armory. I’ll use my own Druid as a reference.

Spellpower: 22893

Haste: 12.52% (lets assume I have the 5% Haste buff present)

On Live

22893*.215= 4922 + 2134 = 7056 per Treant per cast

7056*3= 21168 combined for 3 Treants casting

Now, how many times can the Treants cast during their 15 second duration?

2.5*.1552= .388 off the cast time of 2.5 seconds

2.5-.388= 2.112 cast time

2.112*7=14.784 seconds (just a hair under 15)

Your 3 Treants can cast 7 times (assuming no interruptions) at the 3043 Haste breakpoint.

7*21168= 148,176 healing done every minute

On PTR

22893*.323= 7394 + 3201= 10595 per Treant cast

10595*3= 31785 combined for 3 Treants casting

Now, how many times can the Treants cast during their 15 second duration?

3*.1552= .4656 off the cast time of 3 seconds

3-.4656= 2.5344

2.5344*5= 12.672 seconds (6 times ends up at 15.2064 seconds which could be reduced to 15 seconds with excess Haste.)

Your 3 Treants can cast 5 times (assuming no interruptions) at the 3043 Haste breakpoint.

5*31785= 158,925 healing done every minute

If you can get the Healing Touch cast time below 2.5 seconds you can achieve the 6th “tick” of Healing Touch. The amount of Haste needed is relatively minor (in the neighborhood of 100-200 over 3043). This totals to:

6*31785= 190,710 healing done every minute

Results

Live: 148,146

PTR 5 ticks: 158,925

PTR 6 ticks: 190,710

Sticking with 5 ticks the PTR version of Force of Nature is 7% more powerful than the current one, hardly worth getting excited about. However, with 6 ticks the PTR version is 23% more powerful than the Live version.

Conclusion

With 6 ticks, Force of Nature can do 572,130 every 3 minutes. That’s fairly close to Incarnation. Not only that, Force of Nature has very little overheal since it’s smart and costs no mana. The HpS on the Live version of Force of Nature fully-buffed has averaged out to be around 12k for me for the duration. With 6 ticks this new one will be around a 15-16k HpS increase for the caster.

So what does all this math mean? First off: I don’t recommend Force of Nature with the base 5 ticks at 3043. A 7% increase is paltry and much of the Haste is wasted for trying to hit the 6th tick.

However…

Force of Nature with 6 ticks is powerful and I think it’s finally on par with Incarnation. It’s more accessible, it’s smart, and it’s free. The small 100-200 Mastery/Crit tradeoff for the extra Haste to reach the 6th tick is fairly negligible and the tradeoff is a pretty large boost to FoN’s output.

First off, let me say that I don’t believe we have an overall HpS issue or that we don’t bring meaningful utility. I think we’ve moved past the era where Druids were only brought for their HpS and not their utility.

What I do believe is that we have an issue when it comes to Druids scaling between the 2 raid sizes. Healing in a 10-man vs. a 25-man feels like night and day. Last night when we were 2-healing 10-man Normal Elegon I felt powerful. I felt like I greatly contributed to the raid’s survival. I would consistently outpace our Monk in both HpS and overall healing done. The roles were reversed when we stepped into our 25-man.

In a 25-man raid I am still subject to the same limitations that I have in a 10-man setting, Rejuvenation spam. Let me say that it’s much easier to blanket a 10-man with Rejuv than a 25-man. At 9600 mana, Rejuv is costly to spam so I am limited to the amount of targets I can heal at a time.

While Wild Growth and Swiftmend are on cooldown, our only other option outside of Rejuv spam or Omen of Clarity/Regrowth procs is Wild Mushroom: Bloom. We were given Wild Mushroom: Bloom to help fill a gap in our toolkit: Burst healing. Not only does Wild Mushroom: Bloom fail at it’s main purpose, but it’s frustrating to setup. To put it simply: Wild Mushroom: Bloom completely stinks. The healing it puts out looks decent on paper, but how it’s applied to the raid is extremely underwhelming. In a situation where they would be used (stacked up) each mushroom hits for less than 2k per raider. That’s less than 1-tick of Healing Rain and has a much more clunky set-up time. With 350k+ health that is less than 1% of a raid member’s health pool.

Even if Blizz buffed Wild Mushroom: Bloom (which they have stated multiple times they don’t want it to be rotational), I don’t think it would solve our problem. Our problem lies in the fact that we just don’t have enough options when we add 15 more people to the raid.

Jasyla over at Cannot Be Tamed created a very nice chart that compares all healing spells by class. The gap in the Druid’s toolkit is quite alarming. Every other class/spec of healer has an ability that heals multiple targets with no cooldown attached. All of them have some type of weaker version of Rejuv via baseline/glyph/talent to utilize that makes them decent at spread/movement healing. And while I believe we are still superior in movement/spread fights, other healers now have the added tools to be competent at those types of encounters too. And honestly, I’m happy about this. I know Shaman experienced a painful time in Cataclysm where spread healing was the bane of their existence. Now they have additional tools that help them with those challenges.

Now lets reverse roles: Druids are the only healers who have no access to a healing spell that has no CD and heals multiple targets at once. Once thing I noticed while browsing through the healing forums is that many other healers have taken the attitude that Druids are being “selfish” for wanting a more complete toolkit. Comments like “I didn’t know raids were a solo healing job” really bothered me.

So I ask: Am I being selfish for wanting an ability that makes me decent at burst healing while healing multiple people at the same time? Am I selfish for wanting all healers to have access to a complete set of tools so that no one is completely abysmal at any one thing?

Feel free to answer in the comments below.

The Leveling Experience

Leveling was fun. One of my goals for this expansion was to try to see the majority in every zone. I mostly stayed true to this goal:

-First thing, I didn’t do any Normal dungeons (at least initially).

-I finished just about every quest in Jade Forest (I may have missed one here or there. I have to go back and look) even after I hit 86.

-When I hit Valley of the Four Winds I was about 1/3 of the way to 87. I finished every quest in Valley (save for the Nesingwary quests because the mobs wouldn’t spawn quick enough for everyone on the quest) and it bumped me up to 87. This is also where I started my farm with the Tillers.

-I completely skipped Krasarang Wilds. I realized this was a mistake a bit later on when I was level 89.

-I did most quests in Kun-Lai Summit. My favorite was the Yak Wash.

-When I hit 88 I moved into Townlong Steppes and finished every quest. This easily bumped me to 89.

-I moved to Dread Wastes where I quickly realized the zone was a bit painful to quest in due to the amount of level 90 mobs. I finished every quest and realized I was about 6 bars short of 90. I tried doing a Normal dungeon and it only moved my bar by two. I decided to back-track to Krasarang Wilds and do the intro quests to bump me to 90.

The Daily Life as a Level 90

When I finally hit 90 I  immediately felt overwhelmed. I literally had to get a pen and paper and write down a list of things I needed to accomplish:

-Golden Lotus dailies (mandatory)

-Klaxxi dailies (mandatory)

-Tillers dailies(optional-but I feel like it’s mandatory since cooking has become so complex this expansion)

-Cloud Serpent dailies (optional)

-Anglers dailies (optional)

-Lorewalkers (optional)

-Level professions (mandatory)

-Craft/buy gear to get ilvl up to heroics (mandatory)

-Grind Heroics (mandatory)

I immediately realized that Golden Lotus dailies were annoying to do because of the volume of players doing the exact same dailies. It seemed that everyone was “sniping” each other’s kills and at some point people were camping certain areas for spawns. Most dailies only give 135-137 reputation with them only providing about 6 or so dailies per day so the grind to Honored is a bit slow. Once you hit Honored you get an additional quest hub to access. The same also applies to Revered.

Klaxxi dailies were very painful. The competition was bad enough, but doing them alone seemed to take forever. The more Paragons that you unlocked during your initial questing in Dread Wastes, the more dailies you have access to. You’ll easily have access to 8 or 9 at Honored.

Tillers dailies were a mixed bag. Some were extremely easy and some were painful. Fatty Goatsteak is possibly the worst daily ever to grace this expansion. My initial idea was to pull a whole mob of goats to quickly AoE them down. The competition for the goats is staggering because they only spawn in 5 or so locations and the re-spawn timer is slow. Pulling an entire mob of goats ended with me getting pelted off the mountain to my death.

In the end, I found the optional dailies were more fun and enjoyable than the mandatory ones. So much so that I ended up skipping multiple days of Golden Lotus and Klaxxi in favor of Anglers and Cloud Serpents because I didn’t have the patience for them.

Raiding

My guild is currently 1/6 25-man and 2/6 10-man. We’ve had many sub-5% wipes on Feng in our 25-man. P3 is particularly brutal, especially if your raid is slow at the stack/spread out mechanic.

For talents, I’ve been pretty consistent with the exception of our Tier 4 talents:

Feline Swiftness- I usually take this because the movement speed boost is really helpful for getting to spots quicker or moving out of bad stuff. It also stacks with the boot enchant.

Nature’s Swiftness- My initial thought for Tier 2 was to take Cenarion Ward. Having another spell that could work as a “buffer” seemed really valuable to me. But when I dived into World of Logs I saw that CW had a 70% overheal. I felt that this overhealing is equal to wasted mana since CW is not free and with mana being precious right now it just didn’t seem like a good choice if most of the spell’s benefit overheals. On the other hand, Nature’s Swiftness is free and instant and if used properly has much less overhealing all at the cost of an additional 30 seconds over CW.

Typhoon- I took Typhoon because I’ve always wanted to Treephoon things. You can take whatever you want in Tier 3.

Incarnation- Tier 4 has and will continue to be hard in terms of choices. I have done raids with all three talents, but I’ve found that Incarnation is the most versatile while still giving you a good bang for your buck. It provides a great boost to throughput while saving mana through Lifebloom spam and Omen of Clarity for instant, free Regrowth casts.

When I tried out Soul of the Forest I was really impressed with it’s output when paired with Wild Growth. It can add 3-4 ticks which is a huge increase to Wild Growth’s output. The weakness in the talent lies within it’s synchronization with Wild Growth via Swiftmend. Because of Swiftmend’s 15-second cooldown, it doesn’t sync up very well with Wild Growth’s cooldown, particularly if you are glyphed. I use Glyph of Wild Growth because it increases Wild Growth’s Heal per Mana and my way of using the spell is more “on-demand” versus “using on cooldown.” It also changed how I used Swiftmend in raids. Usually I alter between using Swiftmend as a single target heal or for the Efflorescence effect. Soul of the Forest made me want to save Swiftmend for big raid damage so I could tie it with Wild Growth. I had a habit of saving it specifically for raid healing. Overall, Soul of the Forest seems to provide a larger benefit to Druids who choose to use Wild Growth on cooldown.

My third option is Force of Nature. I tried using this talent for a night and walked away unimpressed. The Treants consistently did only 3-4% of my healing and I used them on cooldown. Incarnation and Soul of the Forest can easily double and possibly triple that output on any encounter. Unless there is a buff to the Treants’ Healing Touch I won’t be recommending that talent to any PvE Resto Druid.

Mighty Bash- I prefer Mighty Bash because I’ve found it fairly useful in PuG Heroic dungeons for interrupting casters. You may find any of the talents in Tier 5 useful in different ways.

Heart of the Wild- I know I know. Not 5 months ago I was blogging about how ridiculous Heart of the Wild was as a talent. Luckily, the talent has been changed to the point where it is a very attractive talent for Resto Druids. The main reason I chose this talent was for the 6% boost to Intellect. It may be boring, but the bump is significant enough to have a noticeable effect on my healing. The utility that comes with it is great for Resto as well because there may be times where healing is low and we may be required to help dps.

Our other “good” option for Tier 6 is Nature’s Vigil. It provides a nice buff to our healing for 30 seconds and also causes our single target heals to damage nearby enemies. The damage caused is pretty negligible so you’ll want to save this cooldown to benefit your own throughput.

Overall I prefer the passive Intellect buff of Heart of the Wild because I don’t really want another cooldown to manage in addition to Incarnation.

Our Toolkit

As a Resto Druid, I am finding I am very competitive in terms of output with other healers. I don’t feel lackluster at all, however, I am finding it a bit of a challenge to keep up with our Mistweaver. From what I’ve seen, Monks have excellent single-target burst healing and very good group burst. They also have adequate (tho a bit unpredictable) spread healing.

In terms of our toolkit, we still suffer from a large issue: burst healing. Wild Mushroom: Bloom hasn’t even come close to solving this problem. I have tried time and again to make them work, but the healing they provide per raider is so negligible that it’s just not worth the work of setting them out. On encounters where I found I could actually use them, the healing benefit they provide is usually less then that of Living Seed for my healing done during an encounter.

So with Wild Mushroom: Bloom not being a great option and Rejuvenation spam being costly on our mana pools, we just don’t have any other options to deal with major raid damage once Swiftmend and Wild Growth are on cooldown.

Overall I think Resto Druids are in a good place right now. We bring good utility through talents and our output is well-placed. However, we still lack viable burst raid healing which could put us at a severe disadvantage against certain encounters.

I’ve tweeted Ghostcrawler about Wild Mushroom: Bloom and his response has always been, “We don’t want them to be used rotationally, but we don’t want them to be useless. We are monitoring them as we move forward.” This gives me a little hope that they may notice Druids not using them and may respond with some type of buff in the future.