Resto druids and ICC 10.

by oshift on Feb.16, 2010, under pve stuff, raiding, theorycrafting

As stated in my previous posts, I am raiding in a 10-man guild. As such, my gear/spec/glyph choices are tailored for that, rather than a more general 25-man raid environment. To help other druids that might be in a similar situation, and to (hopefully) get useful input on whether my choices are good or not, I have decided to explain them in more detail, starting with my spec.

As you can probably notice from my armory, I am running a pretty standard 11/0/60 resto spec. I have decided to spec that for several reasons:

  • my role is mostly raid healing, so I don’t need Living Seed. I took Revitalize instead, as the benefits are quite high in a 10 man group.
  • due to the size of my raiding group, I do not need to reduce my GCD to the extent where I can blanket 15 people with Rejuvenation. As such, I do not need to pick up Celestial Focus in the Balance tree, to up my haste, nor do I need to stack haste to the point where I cap my GCD to 1 second. I have chosen to focus on throughput(especially with the hard modes looming for my guild), and use Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation in order to help deal with the increasing amounts of raid damage that seem to prevail on fights like Sindragosa, Blood Queen, and the Lich King himself.
  • my play style is that I tend to use Nourish for spot healing, and Regrowth for the hot component rather than the direct heal. In other words, I prefer to put Regrowth up pre-emptively on tanks and other raid members that will/are taking damage, and then use Nourish to top them up. This, coupled with the fact that I have a disc priest in the raid most of the time, has made me choose to pick up Tranquil Spirit in my spec.

    • My glyph choices are, I hope, quite obvious. My major glyphs are:

  • Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation – as previously explained, it helps a lot with throughput in cases of high aoe damage.
  • Glyph of Swiftmend – it is both a subjective, and an objective choice. An alternative here would be Glyph of Wild Growth, but due to the positioning in 10 man raids, having a 6th person in range would mean we’re doing something wrong. Also, the fact that I can swiftmend every cooldown and still have hots ticking on the target suits both my play style, and seems like a better choice to me.
  • Glyph of Nourish – again, due to my play style, I end up using this spell quite a lot, to spot heal, and even tank heal. In those cases, the extra healing received from the hots is quite beneficial, since the targets I’m healing are usually at a 6k health deficit or so.My gearing choices and stat priorities are, again, tailored for my guild. Due to the fact that we’re a 10-man raiding guild, I am not stacking as much haste as I should under other circumstances. Don’t get me wrong – I am still preferring haste, but I can afford the luxury to not absolutely need the haste cap. As such, I tend to go with a spell power > haste > crit priority, while of course preferring the spirit pieces over those that don’t have any spirit. One of the things I am still pondering is whether I should pick up the t10 4-set bonus. Due to my raid’s size and the fact that I am easily keeping 10 Rejuvenations up, I feel it would be wasted most of the time, fact that makes me wonder whether I’d not be better off picking off-set pieces with better stats.
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    Say hi to the Lich King!

    by oshift on Feb.16, 2010, under guild stuff, raiding

    Ohai!

    So, we killed Sindragosa tonight. Hopefully the Lich King should die by the end of next week, which means we can get started on the hard modes. Sucks that we’re a bit late, but I couldn’t really help it. Onward, McDuff!

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    A small break, and rerolling.

    by oshift on Feb.11, 2010, under raiding

    I’ve been away for quite some time. It was unexpected – first I had a lot of real life things piling up on top of me, then I had to sort out the new guild, and then my computer died on me right in the middle of ICC progress. I’ve been out of action for two weeks(sorry guys), but now I’m back and it all seems to go quite well.

    I am currently playing a druid. She heals and has a balance offspec, and I am quite surprised at realising I like the playstyle very much. So from now on, I will probably ramble about the issues, quirks and nuances of resto/balance druids. I hope you enjoy it.

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    Starcaller, TOTC hardmodes, Decimation

    by oshift on Sep.04, 2009, under Uncategorized

    Been quite busy lately. We left the 25 man raiding guild, and made our own little 10-man group.

    The advantages are more flexibility with raid times, knowing that if somebody fucks up once they probably won’t do it again, and also knowing that all the people in your raid want to be there and progress. Not to mention raiding without being stressed is fucking fun.

    We got Starcaller down, cleared Trial of the Champion in 10-man heroic mode, and our future goals are Yogg+0 and Tribute to Insanity.

    As a side note…I’ve upgraded some items, and I just don’t get it. The trinkets are itemized terribly: Talisman of Volatile Power compared to Flare of the Heavens or even Dying Curse. It has a higher item level, but it provides less of an upgrade than a trinket 45 item levels lower?
    So in conclusion…I keep upgrading gear, but I end up having the same spell power and losing haste. I like haste. Lots of haste. Yummy pretty awesome haste. Haste haste haste.

    Also, I (or actually we)’ll try and start a series of guides for the Ulduar hard modes, Algalon and TotC hardmodes. Stay tuned.

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