Offspec Gear

(The UI post is coming along. I'll try to keep it from getting too out of control...)

Over the weekend we ran a heroic Utgarde Keep and the [Sharp-Barbed Leather Belt] dropped. Mattoo (our Bear tank) already had it (or better, I forget) and nobody else could wear it, so they offered it to me for my tanking offset.

Back at the bank, that led to Mattoo and me discussing my tanking gear set. He was interested to see if I could tank sometime, more for the novelty than anything. That's when I mentioned that had a pretty good tanking weapon: the [Staff of the Plague Beast]. That's one of the best Druid tanking weapons in the game. And, as it turns out, it's far better than what Mattoo has. Hm, jealous much? :)

I don't remember the details, but it was a PuG (10-man) and there was nobody around who wanted it. It's the kind of thing that I would never have considered, but the loot master sort of shoved it in my direction. Better than sharding it, at any rate.

The major irony is that it's far better than my current healing weapon. I'm currently rocking the [Gavel of the Brewing Storm]. Now, for a blue rep reward, it's an excellent mace, and I've paired it with the [Handbook of Obscure Remedies] which is darn good too. Still, there are a decent number of drops that are better; I've just not been lucky enough to get them. I haven't seen that many drops to be honest, and I've just lost rolls on those I have seen. At some point, I'll buy the [Titansteel Guardian] if nothing else drops, but for now I'll continue to hope.

But the irony continues. The next night, Mattoo was running a Naxx PuG and whispered that he'd receieved [Noth's Curse] as an offset drop. Well, of course that beats what I'm using; my [Battlemap Hide Helm] isn't bad but it's long overdue for an upgrade. So the irony returns; my tanking staff is better than the tank's, but his healing helm is better than mine.

That's life when you're PuGging raids. Progression is very much at the whim of whatever group you're in at the time. If Mattoo and I were running the same raids together, those pieces would go to the 'right' players. The good news is that I'm not feeling too limited by the gaps in my gear. Overall my stuff is solid, and for the most part I'm able to heal anything I go into. Better gear would help in challenging situations — clueless raids, poorly geared tanks, and so forth — but most of the time it's not an issue.

Still, I'll keep dreaming for a good drop. You know, dreaming [The Impossible Dream]...

T8 set bonuses

I know Lifebloom, regen changes, and dual specs have occupied my attention with patch 3.1. But there's a ton of other stuff going on and some is very interesting. I saw the T8 set bonuses today on MMO-Champion and they're pretty sweet.

DISCLAIMER: All subject to change of course! So don't assume this stuff will really happen. But it's cool enough to think about anyway.

Tier 8 of course will be the new sets that come from Heroic Ulduar. They have an iLvl of 226, compared to 213 for heroic Naxx/OS and normal Ulduar, or 200 for normal Naxx/OS. But the set bonuses are exciting:

T8 Feral Druid

2 pieces: The periodic damage dealt by your Rake, Rip, and Lacerate abilites has a chance to cause you to enter a Clearcasting state.
4 pieces: Increases the duration of Savage Roar and Survival Instinct by 8 sec.

I don't know feral well enough to give a full analysis here. But the Clearcasting proc seems like it could be fairly powerful, depending on how often it procs. Free abilities are pretty cool. The 4pc duration increase isn't sexy but it has punch. For Savage Roar, it depends on how long a combo point cycle takes. If it allows you one more 5-pt finishing move before you have to reapply Savage Roar, that will be a sizeable buff for cats. For bears, adding 40% duration to Survival Instinct sounds like a big enhancement for a major panic button.

T8 Balance Druid

2 pieces: Increases the bonus granted by Eclipse for Starfire and Wrath by 6%.
4 pieces: Each time your Insect Swarm deals damage, you have a chance to make your next Starfire cast within until cancelled instant.

As of WotLK, a big question for Moonkin is how to manage your Eclipse procs. Do it well, and your DPS goes way up. The 2pc bonus really rewards skilled Moonkin with a 6% buff to the talent, which is great. The 4pc bonus could really multiply that even further, depending on the proc chance. If you get a few instant-cast Starfires in your rotation, that's huge. If you can work in 1-2 extra instant Starfires while under Eclipse, that's immense. It also sounds like a fun mechanic to work with. I hope it has a distinctive sound and/or a nice visual effect when it procs.

T8 Restoration Druid

2 pieces: Increases the healing done by your Swiftmend spell by 10%.
4 pieces: Your Rejuvenation spell also instantly heals your target for its periodic healing amount.

The 2pc bonus here is both boring and useful. I have to admit that I'm not great at using Swiftmend, and I need to do more to work it into my rotation. But it's a great spell, and buffing it by a straight 10% is fairly big. Now, the 4pc bonus is slightly vague to me, but it really sounds like it gives Rejuv an instant heal in addition to its HoT component. Really? Because that would be amazing! If Rejuv becomes an instant-cast mini-Regrowth, then you've got a damn powerful tool at your hands. It could be useful for tank healing, but it would make Rejuv the hands-down best option for raid healing, no question.

Edit: Tree Bark Jacket confirms this as an instant heal for a single tick of Rejuv. That makes a lot of sense but not a "mini-Regrowth". That's still a fairly powerful ability however; Rejuv ticks are sizeable and usually the first one is 3s away.

The only thing depressing about these set bonuses is how difficult they'll be to acquire. I haven't looked yet but it's clear that some tokens are going to drop from some difficult bosses. So, getting to your 4 piece bonus won't be trivial. Of course you want great gear to be hard to get, there's nothing wrong with that. But some of these bonuses — Resto, in particular — can really change the way you play. It seems odd to give game-changing abilities to such a small percentage of Druids.

Emblems and Badges

I've struggled some with posting, mostly because I'm still not sure how to react to the Lifebloom nerf. It's pretty clear that it will be a major change to Druid healing in raids, if it goes through. On one hand, we've had a well-defined niche for a long time now, so I'm not sure how it will land to move to something different. On the other hand, rolling 3+ sets of Lifebloom gets to be both stressful and boring. Lag in particular starts to be a real pain in the butt, and forces earlier LB refreshing.

On the gripping hand, 3.1 is still on the PTR and subject to a lot of change. So no point in worrying about it a lot yet. I think I'll go ahead with the Raid Heals chapter anyway, since that's not going to be a Lifebloom-centric thing anyway.

As we contemplate this (on the Tree of Woe), we can consider some other changes that are incoming. One that I wanted to mention a bit is the upcoming addition of the [Emblem of Conquest]. Basically this adds a new tier to the boss emblem system, as follows:

• Emblem of Heroism: heroic 5-man dungeons and normal (10-man) Naxx/OS/Arch/EoE; gives iLvl 200 items
  
• Emblem of Valor: heroic (25-man) Naxx/OS/Arch/EoE and normal (10-man) Ulduar; gives iLvl 213 items
  
• Emblem of Conquest: heroic (25-man) Ulduar; gives iLvl 226 items

The Emblem of Conquest approach is consistent with the method taken by Blizz with the first WotLK emblems. However, I have a good deal of concern, mostly centered around heroic 5-man dungeons.

In short, I think this change is going to render them obsolete. There will be little desire to run heroics any more. Even the daily Heroic is a lot of work for the gold reward involved; the only advantage it really provides extra badges.

In Burning Crusade, there was a lot of desire to run heroic 5-mans, because you could get some great gear with Badges of Justice. Gear started out at iLvl 110 and kept adding up to iLvl 146. There were almost 250 different items you could buy for your badges. The [Grovewalker's Leggings] I eventually bought cost 100 badges, and were close to the best healing Druid legs in the game.

The result was a lot of incentive to run heroic 5-man instances. Raiders would do this in their off time, while more casual players had incentive to keep going back too. Even the most maxxed-out raider would still get value from a few badges; if nothing else, more high-quality badge gear would show up with the next patch.

This led to mixing players in some good ways. It provided rewards for the raiders who helped out others. You could PUG a heroic and find high-level raiders mixed with newer or more casual players. It gave raiders some variety too. Meanwhile, casual players could gear up well enough to prepare for raiding, if they wanted to, through running 5-man content. If nothing else, they knew they always had more and better gear to get to at some point.

In WotLK, it's different. The tier system means that the gear available for any given badge is limited. I already don't have much that I can get with EoH that's useful, except for PvP gear, and I'm not all that dedicated. What's more, with this system, I'll never get better gear for those EoH. They're going to stagnate, just like the few leftover BoJ I still have.

That's me. What about casual players? They'll soon lose any motivation to play 5-man content too. Why bother? They can't get any better gear. The best chance to upgrade will be to run daily quests and build up gold, with the hope of buying high-level Bind on Equip gear that the raiders — eventually — put up for auction.

I firmly believe that the 5-man game is key for a majority of players. It's vastly easier to get 5 players together together than 10, let alone 25. Start with you and a friend, and you're 40% of the way to a 5-man group. Try that for 10-mans and you'll still need 8 more players, including at least a tank and/or a couple healers. Besides that, there are 12 5-man instances available in WotLK. That's a lot of good content, and it would be nice to have some reason for running it.

I worry that this direction is going to turn off a lot of more casual players, and open wider gaps between the 'casuals' and 'hardcore'. And I throw those quotes in for a reason. Many of those 'casual' players are quite skilled and very good at what they do; they just don't have the time or inclination to work at raiding, either because of the time commitment, the detailed organization involved, or the drama that can come with high-pressure content.

There's nothing wrong with giving better gear to the raiders; that's as it should be. But there's nothing wrong with helping the more casual players move along that same path, even if it's at a reduced pace. In the end, they also need to have something to look forward to.

Switching to Balance: Stacking Hit

Last time out I posted about key Balance stats, and in particular hit rating. If you've read that, you know why Hit is important.

Suppose you're a resto druid who's decided to switch to Balance. Maybe you've got Naxx on farm now, so you need fewer healers. Or maybe patch 3.1 has arrived and you want Balance as a second spec. Either way, your Resto gear in general will do pretty well for Balance. The exception is Hit Rating. You'll want to stack up some hit to do good DPS as a Moonkin.

To stack up some hit, take a look at your weakest current gear pieces. Try to replace those with some easy-to-find gear with hit rating on it. There's quite a bit out there that you can get rather quickly.

Balance gear: pieces with Hit Rating and Spellpower
Purchasable, quest reward, or 5-man drops; 187 <= iLvl <= 200

Slot	Name	Source	Cost	Hit Rating
Head	Hat of Wintry Doom	Crafted	~300g	44
Head	Titan-forged Leather Helm of Dominance	Wintergrasp MoH	40	44
Neck	Necklace of Taldaram	Drop - OK (H)		43
Neck	Chain of Latent Energies	AH - BoE drop (Naxx)	~3000g	34
Neck	Hateful Gladiator's Pendant of Ascendancy	PvP - honor	38000	34
Neck	Encircling Burnished Gold Chains	EoH	25	25
Back	Hateful Gladiator's Cloak of Ascendancy	PvP - honor	38000	34
Back	Dark Solider Cape	Rep: Revered - Ebon Blade		29
Back	Cape of Seething Steam	Drop - HoL (N)		29
Back	Shroud of Akali	Quest - Gundrak (N)		24
Chest	Ebonweave Robe	Crafted	~1500g	68
Chest	Water-Drenched Robe	Drop - VH (H)		62
Chest	Robes of Lightning	Quest - HoL		55
Hands	Ebonweave Gloves	Crafted	~750g	51
Hands	Lava Burn Gloves	Quest - VH (N)		36
Waist	Girdle of Bane	Drop - UP (H)		48
Waist	Belt of Unified Souls	Drop - CoS (H)		42
Waist	Sash of the Wizened Wyrm	Rep: Honored - Wyrmrest		40
Waist	Plush Sash of Guzbah	EoH	40	33
Waist	Flowing Sash of Order	Drop - HoL (H)		31
Feet	Titan-forged Boots of Dominance	Wintergrasp MoH	15	36
Finger	Ring of Northern Tears	Crafted	~300g	31
Finger	Voodoo Signet	Quest - Gundrak		24
1H Wep	Flameheart Spell Scalpel	Rep: Revered - Kirin Tor		34
2H Wep	Grand Staff of Jordan	Stone Keepers Shard	325	68
2H Wep	Chilly Slobberknocker	Quest - ZD		50
Offhand	Telestra's Journal	Drop - Nexus (H)		39
Offhand	Ward of the Violet Citadel	EoH	25	38

Note: The [Deadly Gladiator's Focus Staff] also has hit, but it's a fairly difficult arena item (1930 rating required). Wowhead also lists Hateful and Savage versions of the Focus Staff, but I can't find any other reference that they exist in-game.

Don't be afraid to lose some Spellpower or other stats in favor of hit. A spell that misses does 0 damage regardless of how much SP you're stacking. And how much Hit will you need? Check out the WoWWiki article for a full breakdown. Assuming you have 2/2 points in Balance of Power and no other buffs:

• Heroics: 53 Hit (0 with IFF up)
  
• Raids: 342 Hit (263 with IFF up)

For raids in particular, it's unlikely that you'll have no other buffs, so 342 is probably more hit rating than you'll need in most situations.

Balance gear weights, revisited

This is another followup to my post on stat weights for trees and Moonkin. Last time out I dug deeper into Resto stats, and I wanted to do the same for Balance.

Here are my current Balance weights:

Balance weights:
Spellpower:   12.1
Hit:          11.3
MP5:          10.0
Crit:          6.3
Haste:         5.7
Intellect:     3.8
Spirit:        1.5
Socket-Red:  230.0
Socket-Yel:  140.0
Socket-Blue: 140.0
Socket-Meta: 360.0

Most of the stats are similar to what Resto needs, so I'm not going to revisit everything I talked about last time.

Hit Rating
The one big addition is Hit Rating. This used to be "spell hit" but this was merged with melee hit along with all the other stat normailzation that came with 3.0.2. It's a confusing stat. The WoWWiki article has a comprehensive definition. But the stat stems from the fact that there is a static % chance for your spells to miss, based on the level difference between you and the boss you're fighting, as follows:

Boss type  Level  Base % chance to miss
Heroic      82           6%
Raid        83          17%

To look at it another way, without hit rating, your DPS will go down 6% against Heroic bosses and 17% against raid bosses. That's huge!

This miss chance is reduced by talents and debuffs. Moonkin should always take 2 points in Balance of Power, which cuts that miss chance by 4%. Furthermore, Improved Faerie Fire will increase your hit chance by 3%. (There are buffs from other classes that help with this too.)

Even with those in effect, your miss chance on raid bosses is still 10%. That's why you need Hit Rating. The goal is to reduce your miss chance to 0%. >WoWWiki has a complete analysis, but generally the magic number for a Druid with Balance of Power and IFF will be 263 hit rating.

Hit rating has a hard cap: once you have enough to reduce your miss chance to 0%, more hit has zero benefit. That's why it's a funny stat to weight: it's hugely important until you hit your cap, but more is worthless. But adding Hit can increase your DPS by 10%, with no other improvements; that's a huge benefit.

Other Stats
Otherwise, your Balance stats are very similar to Resto. In general, MP5 and Spirit are worth less, because mana regen is somewhat less important. DPS can stop casting for a few seconds if necessary, in order for mana to regen. Healers generally don't have that option. Intellect also adds Spellpower through Lunar Guidance, raising the overall importance of Intellect.

Crit Rating and Haste are much more important for Moonkin. Every damage spell you cast, except Insect Swarm, has a chance to crit. That's a huge increase to your damage, so you want a good bit of Crit on your gear. Crits also have knock-on effects: they will speed your cast times through Nature's Grace, and to regen mana through Moonkin form. (Increased crit chance also adds to the value of Intellect for Moonkin.)

Unlike Resto, most of your spells (notably Wrath and Starfire) have significant cast times. Haste helps with that. Haste also reduces the time for a full channel of Hurricane, landing its full damage over a shorter time. So Haste Rating will increase your DPS quite a bit.

So to summarize: Moonkin need Hit Rating, probably up to 263 total. They want more Intellect, Haste, and Crit than the trees do, but less Spirit. MP5 is also not as important.

But having said that, your Resto gear is not bad balance gear at all. If you respec from Resto to Balance, you can start with your Resto gear and you'll do OK. The most important thing when you switch is to look for Hit Rating. I'll add a post soon with easy sources of Hit Rating gear.

Resto gear weights, revisited

I wrote a post last week with stat weights for both trees and Moonkin. Today I wanted to go into the qualitative reasoning behind the numbers.

Here were the weights I had for Resto:

Resto weights:
MP5:          10.0
Spellpower:    9.4
Intellect:     5.8
Spirit:        5.1
Haste:         2.9
Crit:          2.0
Socket-Red:  180.0
Socket-Yel:  130.0
Socket-Blue: 110.0
Socket-Meta: 320.0

I'll look at primary, secondary, and tertiary stats. I'll skip the gems today, but in essence they're based on looking at stat values for the best blue-quality gems of a given color.

Primary Stats: MP5 and Spellpower

It is just about impossible to overstate the importance of Spellpower (SP). It is the fastest way to increase the size of your heals. This benefits you in all kinds of ways. Beyond having more powerful heals, you'll also have to cast fewer heals, which will save your mana. Spellpower always has been and always will be a key stat for any caster class. There will never come a time when you say "No thanks, I've got enough."

Mana per 5 sec (MP5) provides the opposite side of the equation — more mana. Specifically, it boosts your mana recovery rate. This works on both sides of the 5 second rule (5SR), but its most important when you're casting.

The value of MP5 is much less clear-cut than Spellpower. If you're not running out of mana, you have either enough or too much MP5. As mana regen isn't really a problem for many players, you'll see statements that "MP5 is overvalued". If two items are otherwise similar, but one has MP5 while the other has more SP, most players will prefer the SP item.

When you're evaluating gear with MP5, consider whether you ever go OOM. Don't think about the easy stuff you do; think about when you're really working. (You want to gear for the most challenging situations, right?) If your mana bar is mostly full, give MP5 a lower weight. But don't drop it entirely; you never know when new content will start drinking your mana again.

And also, be prepared for this to change; the developers have clearly stated that they want to look at mana regen. No info yet on whether this will be a tweaking of the numbers, or a complete change to the way the stats work.

Secondary stats: Intellect and Spirit

I only call these 'secondary stats' because they're weighted about half of SP and MP5. But Spirit and Intellect are important.

Intellect (Int) does a few related things for you:

• Increases your mana pool
  
• Improves your mana regeneration
  
• Increases your spell crit chance

Our main concerns are the mana implications. A bigger mana pool is helpful in a lot of ways. The 'mandatory' raid buff Replenishment returns a percentage of your maximum mana, so a bigger pool works well with this.

Intellect is also key for Moonkin who have the Lunar Guidance and Dreamstate talents. But we're talking Resto here!

Spirit (Spi) is primarily about mana regen. By default it affects your MP5 only when you're out of the 5SR, but Intensity allows 30% of that to carry over while you're casting too. Spirit directly affects this regen ability, but it's also modified by the square root of Intellect. So Spirit has a much stronger effect on mana regen, but since Intellect also increase your mana pool, it has overall the bigger impact.

Your regen outside the 5SR is also important because of Innervate. Pure MP5 has no effect on Innervate; it's based completely on your Spirit-based regen. A common rule of thumb is that "you need enough spirit to regen a full mana bar within one Innervate." That's a good target but it's neither a firm requirement nor a hard cap on Spirit.

Spirit also affects your Spellpower via the Improved Tree of Life talent. It's a 5/10/15% effect, so 100 Spi adds 15 SP if you have the talent maxed out.

So you'll want both Int and Spi. As it happens, Intellect is found on more pieces of gear, so you'll probably wind up with a good amount without trying. Spirit is less common, so keep an eye for items that have a good bit of spirit on them. If you're close to a 50/50 weight between the two, you're probably in good shape.

Tertiary Stats: Haste and Crit

In the abstract, these are good stats. Crit rating increases your chance for a spell crit, while Haste rating reduces cast times and reduces your GCD. Both these stats used to have spell-specific versions, but in current WoW they are shared with their melee counterparts.

But both are a bit problematic for Resto druids, for various reasons.

Haste has two significant challenges. For one, our most important spells are instant cast, and see no direct benefit from haste. Regrowth, Nourish, and Healing Touch are all affected, but these are not really staples of the healing rotation.

On the other hand, the GCD reduction is nice. The problem here for Resto is Gift of the Earthmother. It already reduces your GCD by 30%, so you have quite a head start. That puts your GCD at 1.05s, but the GCD can't go below 1s. (Edit: With patch 3.0.8, GotEM now reduces your GCD to a flat 1.2s max.) Phaelia did a complete analysis of the relationship. But the upshot is that your GCD is already pretty fast, and so haste is OK but not crucial.

Crit suffers from the same problem: our best spells don't use it, and our talents make it a bit redundant. Our HoTs don't crit, which removes most of the value of crit right away. You won't cast Nourish or Healing Touch all that often, and you will mostly not let Lifebloom bloom, so you just won't get many crit chances from these spells.

The exception is Regrowth; that's used fairly frequently and crits are quite useful. But here we have Improved Regrowth, giving Regrowth a 50% increased chance to crit. So here Crit is just going to have less impact. A change from 15% to 16% crit is a big improvement; you'll crit about 7% more frequently. But going from 55% to 56% is hardly noticeable — only a 2% increase in crit frequency.

Crit is still useful, mostly for your NS+HT combo and for when you want Lifebloom to expire. But, like haste, you'll never feel like it's a stat that you're actively trying to stack. My experience is that you'll have plenty of both without searching it out. Treat it as a tiebreaker between otherwise similar pieces of gear, with Haste just a bit more important than Crit.

Other stats

The other stats you will consider are defensive stats: armor, Stamina, and resilience. These are crucial for PvP, but for PvE instances they're generally not worth sweating over.

Stamina is probably the most important, as you're sure to take random damage at some point. But most gear carries Stamina anyway so you're not likely to go searching for it.

Armor only matters if you're getting whacked by something. So if all's going smoothly, it should be irrelevant. This is why you should feel OK about wearing some cloth gear, when it's available. (Don't take too many rolls from your priest, mage or warlock friends — they need gear too!) Resilience is even less important for PvE, but it will help a bit.

You will see some caster gear with Hit rating on it. This does absolutely nothing for a healer, but you'll see some good caster gear with hit on it. This is designed for Moonkin (or Mages or Warlocks if it's cloth). Leave it for the DPS casters if they need it, but if not, the gear may still be useful to you despite the irrelevant hit rating.

Otherwise there really aren't any stats that a Resto druid will care about. Spellpower and MP5; Intellect and Spirit; Haste and Crit.

Evaluating Druid Gear - weights for Moonkin and Trees

I wrote up an earlier post on ranking resto and balance gear. I want to talk about the tools I use to rank gear, and also the specific numbers I use for those rankings.

Ranking tools

Easy: Wowhead and Lootrank
The easiest ranking tool is Wowhead. In fact, it's built in. I wrote a whole post on ranking items in Wowhead. Here for example is the list of leather helms ranked by Resto value. I do not agree with the default Wowhead rankings -- they vastly overvalue MP5 and Spirit relative to the other stats. (More on the values in a moment.) But you can edit in your own values — click on Show Details and then enter the values you'd rather use.

The alternative is to use Lootrank. It's similar to Wowhead, but gives you somewhat better filtering options, and the capability to save your weights. I use a combination of both tools.

Detailed: Spreadsheet
The most detailed way to rank gear is with a spreadsheet. You can put items into it and do the math based on your weights to rank the various items. Here's a sample from my spreadsheet, showing the ranks I put on helms:



The spreadsheet is great because you can cut out extraneous items, only listing what you want to see. But it's a lot of work; you'll end up copying data from Wowhead. I do it anyway because I can print out a copy and keep it next to my computer. It's especially great for tracking what BoH items I want to buy, or what Heroic to run for any needed upgrades.

In-game: Pawn
The best way to evaluate gear in-game is the Pawn addon. It will show your relative values directly in item tooltips. This is hugely valuable when gear drops. You can look at what you have and what dropped, compare the two numbers, and get a quick gauge of whether something is an upgrade or not. I definitely recommend using a bit of sense with this too; for example, if the upgrade is minimal, it's probably not worth the expense of adding new enchants and gems. Still, Pawn definitely makes your gear choices easier.

Ranking weights

OK, so those are the tools you use. What are the weights you should use?

I wrote a whole post about this early in WotLK, which took a very rough look at gear evaluation. I've been using that basic approach, but with more refined values.

Resto (Tree) stat weights
For resto I'm still using the weights I ninja'd from this EJ post. I rounded those a bit, and did some adjusting for the gem values, giving me the following:

Resto weights:
MP5:          10.0
Spellpower:    9.4
Intellect:     5.8
Spirit:        5.1
Haste:         2.9
Crit:          2.0
Socket-Red:  180.0
Socket-Yel:  130.0
Socket-Blue: 110.0
Socket-Meta: 320.0

Pawn string:
( Pawn: v1: "Resto PvE": Intellect=5.8, RedSocket=180.0, CritRating=2.0, ColorlessSocket=180.0, MetaSocket=320.0, HasteRating=2.9, BlueSocket=110.0, YellowSocket=130.0, SpellPower=9.4, Spirit=5.1, Mp5=10 )

Balance (Moonkin) stat weights:
I did a bit more research here — mostly because I didn't like the Moonkin values I saw in the EJ thread.

With all specs your weights should really change as your gear changes. That's even more important with a stat like Hit: it's very important until you reach the cap, but after that it's not very valuable. So for Balance I took my values from Rawr. (I would have done the same thing for Resto, but Rawr doesn't give you stat values in its Tree model. Shame, that.)

These values should be good at low to moderate gear levels, but as you get maxxed out your values will change. In particular, you'll weight Hit much less once you reach the cap.

Balance weights:
Spellpower:   12.1
Hit:          11.3
MP5:          10.0
Crit:          6.3
Haste:         5.7
Intellect:     3.8
Spirit:        1.5
Socket-Red:  230.0
Socket-Yel:  140.0
Socket-Blue: 140.0
Socket-Meta: 360.0

Pawn string:
( Pawn: v1: "Balance PvE": Intellect=3.8, RedSocket=230.0, CritRating=6.3, ColorlessSocket=230.0, MetaSocket=360.0, HasteRating=5.7, BlueSocket=140.0, YellowSocket=140.0, SpellPower=12.1, Spirit=1.5, Mp5=10, HitRating=11.3 )

Those numbers should get you started. Use them in Wowhead or Lootrank, in your spreadsheets, or in Pawn. And don't be afraid to change them — if you're going OOM a lot, rank Spirit and MP5 higher, for example.

Still to do: create values for PvP. I have no numbers, but I can provide hints for what I'd look at. PvP weights will add value for Resilience, Armor, and Stamina, but you'll need to decide the weights for survivability vs. damage. And it also adds value for stats like Spell Penetration, and will probably lean towards more bursty stats like Crit.

Evaluating Druid Gear (Resto and Balance)

TLDR version: Being really casual about it, here's a quick-and-dirty way to judge the Resto gear you'll see as you're leveling or running normal instances:

1 Spell Power/MP5 ~ 2 Intellect/Spirit ~ 4 Haste/Crit
1 reg socket ~ 10-13 SP/MP5
1 meta socket ~ 25 SP/MP5

And this probably works well enough if you want to switch to Balance sometimes too — or for a Restokin doing both like yours truly.

OK. Now for the full post.

I've struggled with how to evaluate Druid gear in WotLK. I had a pretty good process worked out for BC, based on a lot of data I'd stolen learned from Resto4Life, the Wowhead rating scales, WoWWiki, and other places. But there hasn't been a solid consensus on stat weighting that I'd found yet for WotLK, so I've been guessing more than I'd like.

So here's my numbers. First, let me say, this is for evaluating leveling gear: stuff you find as quest rewards, normal instance drops, and maybe earlier crafted gear. So there's no need to be super precise about things. You will replace this stuff pretty quickly with Heroic drops, raid drops, badge gear, and/or PvP rewards. So don't sweat it too much: get some good rough comparisons for now, and we'll do some real analysis for the purples later on.

The first question for me is whether I'm grabbing something for Resto or Balance. I switch back and forth a lot, so I want good gear for both specs (and Restokin too). The change to Spellpower from +heal and+spell damage makes "both" a more attractive option. I'm most worried about Resto, so my plan is to take good Resto armor and swap out trinkets and maybe a weapon for my Balance set.

For Resto I did find a good Resto itemization thread on Elitist Jerks. In particular I think I'm going to work from Whïspur's post for now. Rounding off, he comes out with the following relative weights:

• MP5: 100
  
• Spell Power: 94
  
• Intellect: 58
  
• Spirit: 51
  
• Haste: 29
  
• Crit: 20

Like I said, I'm really interested in quick-and-dirty comparisons. So we can simplify the above even further. So a casual comparison could use something like this:

1 Spell Power/MP5 ~ 2 Intellect/Spirit ~ 4 Haste/Crit

I think that is probably a close enough SWAG until you really start looking at purples down the road.

Now this ignores armor, stamina, resilience, and other stats. That makes great sense for high-end raiding but for a more casual player the other stats grow in importance. For example, if you're PUGging a heroic, extra armor and stamina will help you get through fights where aggro is a bit dicey. But if we're talking quick-and-dirty, for me (as a more casual player) this basically means I'll stick to leather armor, and mostly only worry about stamina if everything else is nearly equal.

The other thing to look at is gem sockets Sockets are even more important now because WotLK gems are more powerful — about double the strength of BC gems. The BC Rare-quality +SP gem, [Teardrop Living Ruby] gives +9 SP. The WotLK equivalent, [Runed Scarlet Ruby], gives +19 SP. So what does that mean for evaluating gear?

First, decide if you're looking at early gear (say, available at level 70-75) or later gear that you'll start Heroics with. For early leveling gear, assume that you'll use green-quality gems at best. For the later gear, assume blue-quality gems.

The formula above is way stronger at valuing Spellpower than the formulas Blizzard uses for gems. For example the [Runed Scarlet Ruby] gives +19 SP, but the same-level [Luminous Monarch Topaz] is +9 SP and +8 Int, which in our formula is equivalent to about +13 SP. Because of this, for quick-and-dirty comparisons, I won't use the pure spellpower gems for judging a socket. Choosing the Luminous Monarch Topaz as a baseline gives me a weight like:

1 socket ~ 10 SP/MP5 (green gem/early leveling gear)
1 socket ~ 13 SP/MP5 (blue gem/late leveling gear)
1 meta socket ~ 25 SP/MP5

Now again, if you're looking at purple raiding gear, you'll want to judge by specific sockets, epic gems, whether the socket bonus is worthwhile, etc. But for now I think these numbers to judge whether I'll keep the gear or not.

These are all based on Resto numbers. But how will this work for Balance? I haven't found anyone yet who's theorycrafted out the same kind of comparison for Balance that Whïspur did for Resto. I think — for me! — the above comparison is close enough. A serious Moonkin will value crit, Int, and maybe haste a lot higher, and Spirit and MP5 a good bit lower. But for leveling gear, I think the above numbers are close enough.

I'll spend more time on the detailed numbers after I hit 80 and start raiding and running heroics.

WotLK gear replacement, revisited

This is a post-launch followup to my earlier look at gear replacement. My best guess at that time (late September):

T4 gear doesn't start to get replaced until fairly late in the first zones, and will be relatively decent even into your mid-70s. T5 will last to your late 70s, and T6 won't be replaced until you get into heroics or the new Naxxrimas.

WoW Insider had a post on upgrading to greens, where the poster points out that it's not happening, flirts with complaining about it, but then counsels patience.

So what's the scoop? Blizzard did this on purpose. Flash back to the release of Burning Crusade. There, the design was that pretty much everyone would replace their gear with early quest rewards. Only Naxx raiders held on to their gear beyond even Hellfire, and even that T3 gear was replaced from midlevel quest rewards. For everyone else, their hard-won raid gear was gone by the time they dinged 62 or so.

New gear is cool. But this quick replacement had a few consequences:

• It devalued the hard-won raid gear, leading to a "what was the point?" reaction.
  
• The nicely matched tier gear was replaced with mismatched greens, resulting in the dreaded "clown suit" look.
  
• By amping up the equipment values so quickly, it created an inflation effect where each subsequent level — later quest rewards, dungeon drops, and BC tier gear — had to be more and more overpowered.

The experience wasn't good for players and created headaches for the developers. So they changed it.

Here's my graphic from the last post, showing the relative item values from various types of gear:


There's two big changes. First, the early BC purples are more comparable in value to the midlevel WotLK greens, so you'll hold on to those much longer. And second, the easy access to Badge gear means that even non-raiders will have some good gear that should last for a long time.

You will replace your gear eventually; how quickly depends on what kind of gear you had. Here's a quick summary:

Gear source	Replaced with:
BC quest rewards	early WotLK quest rewards
BC instance drops	early-mid WotLK quest rewards
BC Tier 4 gear	mid-level WotLK quest rewards
BC Tier 5 gear	late WotLK quest rewards, WotLK dungeon drops
BC Tier 6 gear	WotLK Heroic drops or Naxx gear

So what's been my experience? My starting point was a combination of T4-level and BoJ gear. I replaced a ring fairly quickly with a quest reward, but otherwise I wasn't very tempted by any Howling Fjord gear. Last night, I replaced my first decent purple. The [Life Binder Talisman] replaced my [Voodoo Shaker]. That was a bit sad; the Voodoo Shaker was a recent pickup, my last BoJ spent. But it is nice to have some new gear for a change. The two items aren't far apart, and that's probably true for a lot of the rewards I'm starting to see. But something like my [Grovewalker's Leggings], a 100-BoJ pair of pants, will probably last until I start running Heroics.

Have no fear; you'll get upgrades. Just be thankful that the transition is a lot smoother this time around.

Updates

I have a few posts I'd like to follow up on.

Inscription: What will it take?

WotLKWiki now has a good starter Guide to Inscription available. It's more advanced than what I cobbled together, but only goes up through 300 skill right now. Here's the list they came up with:

• 3-5 stacks of Alabaster-giving herbs
  
• 2-4 stacks of Dusky-giving herbs
  
• 6-8 stacks of Golden-giving herbs
  
• 5-7 stacks of Emerald-giving herbs
  
• 5-7 stacks of Violet-giving herbs
  
• 6-8 stacks of Silvery-giving herbs

Based on this, my estimate of 5 stacks looks a bit low but in the right ballpark. Watch the WotLKWiki guide; I'm sure they'll update it fairly quickly as more information is released.

Current WotLK Questions

Most of these are still unanswered. We did get a bit of an update to the Resto Druid questions. So says the ever-communicative Ghostcrawler:

Here are the changes we're making next patch. See how they feel.

Wild Growth: Coefficient and healing increased. Mana cost decreased. Cost should be about the same as Circle of Healing. It doesn't heal instantly, but will heal for about double what CoH does over its duration.

Nourish: Reduced mana cost by somewhere between 15 and 20%. This is supposed to be your Flash Heal, but we recognize that it doesn't have the same versatility -- you can't just drop one on a wounded rogue or something since you need the hot up first. Hence the lower price.

Druids have quite an arsenal of healing spells now, and it can be tricky to find niches for all of them. :)

That's starting to get some usefulness into these spells. I'm provisionally confident that I'll have to find space for them now, which is a good thing.

Wild Growth looks like it will be our best bet for fighting AoE damage. It's both less powerful and less costly (less mana, no cooldown, no time channeled) than Tranquility, so it will be a less-panicky panic button. I see using it for example when a boss Whirlwinds and starts cutting up the melee.

Nourish will be interesting; it's less costly and faster casting than Regrowth. Nourish will do more instant healing but less overall healing compared to the full run of Regrowth. It will probably be best used when a non-tank's been gibbed, quickly pulling him back from death's door with a Rejuv+Nourish or even a naked Nourish. It'll also be potentially useful when the tank is getting low, to get to a more comfortable zone where you can let your HoTs tick.

So I think both spells will prove to be useful; it just remains to see if they're extremely situational or if they become staples of our healing arsenal. The biggest open question is how hard Lifebloom has been nerfed and whether they'll un-nerf it a little bit.

Trinkaholic

After looking at my list of trinkets, I was able to delete 7 of them, as well as a [Cache of Mau'ari] I'd been holding. But I also ended up grabbing two trinkets I had missed: [Airman's Ribbon of Gallantry] and [Skyguard Silver Cross] They're both available at Exalted with the Sha'tari Skyguard. They're both great for solo dailies or leveling, either for casters (ribbon) or for physical DPS (cross). The key is the proc: with every kill (giving honor or exp) there's a 50% chance to get buffed with either +80 spell damage or +140 AP for 30 sec. Not quite as good as most on-use trinket bonuses, but this will be up a lot more often. So I'll use other things for instances but this for solo work. It's a good excuse for me to start running Skyguard dailies with Sali.

Trinkaholic

Lag last night was pretty hellacious for some reason, so I spent some time looking through Alamein's bank. It's completely full — and I have a guilded bank alt who holds a lot of stuff. Some things are obvious problems, though.

I have 21 trinkets.

I can come up with a lot of excuses why. I won four new trinkets from Coren Direbrew in the last week. I have trinkets for just about every spec: boomkin, tree, cat, bear. I have trinkets for different needs: Mp5 vs. healing power, for instance. I have trinkets for PvP and PvE. I have some fun, funky trinkets. I have two different speed trinkets. And so forth.

The full list:
[Balebrew Charm]
[Dark Iron Smoking Pipe]
[Direbrew Hops]
[Empty Mug of Direbrew]
[Stormpike Insignia Rank 6]
[Badge of Tenacity]
[Barov Peasant Caller]
[Charm of Swift Flight]
[Lower City Prayerbook]
[Medallion of the Alliance]
[Riding Crop]
[Scryer's Bloodgem]
[Vengeance of the Illdari]
[Ancient Draenei Arcane Relic]
[Chained Essence of Eranikus]
[Glowing Crystal Insignia]
[Heavenly Inspiration]
[Hypnotist's Watch]
[Mark of Resolution]
[Oshu'gun Relic]
[Prismcharm]


I can safely delete most of these, I'm sure. Now, which ones to choose...

When will I replace my gear?

With Wrath of the Lich King on the horizon, one of the biggest questions we're dealing with is "When will I replace my current equipment?"

The history dates back to the Burning Crusade launch. Experienced raiders found that their epics were quickly surpassed by simple green quest rewards in the early starting zones. The more-powerful gear was cool, of course, yet it was still depressing to replace purple pieces that represented hundreds of hours of raiding.

(Plus, the new greens didn't look as good as the epics.)

So we're all wondering: will the same thing happen in WotLK? The message I've heard from beta testers is that it won't be the same in WotLK. Raiders will hang on to their gear much longer, and even more casual players will see a more gradual transition.

I wanted to track down some quantitative info behind that. Is it really true? That involved getting down and dirty with the numbers. It all begins with this article on Item Values from WoWWiki.

There are a few key concepts in play. The main one is ilvl. This is an overall metric of item quality; Wowhead and many other information sources will show it to you. It's basically a metric that determines how strong the item can be -- how much +agility or +attack power or whatever.

The complication is that ilvl is tied to item quality as well. An ilvl of 115 means different things if the item is green or blue or purple. The relationship isn't a straight modifier — the formulas have scalar and linear components. (There's also a slot value, which doesn't matter right now since we're wondering about replacing helms with helms and so forth.) I dug into this and built some spreadsheets that break it out; I won't share my work because it's pretty boring and I did a good bit of handwaving too. (The formulas have weird results at low ilvls, such that purple items appear to have less Item Value than a blue item of the same level. I fudged a bit to get past that.)

I also went through and compiled information on key items from original, vanilla WoW, Burning Crusade, and what we know of WotLK so far. I looked at ilvls for various types of gear, and normalized those out depending on whether they were greens or blues or purples. To make a long story short (too late!) I came up with this graph.



The bars show the relative power (Item Values) of various types of gear. I broke down quest rewards into early/middle/late, where early gear would be quest rewards from Hellfire Peninsula, for instance, while late stuff would come from Netherstorm/Shadowmoon or from the later group quests. I also broke down the drops into normal/heroic.

So what's in the graph? First, let's look at the launch of Burning Crusade. You can see that the early quest rewards, from Hellfire and Zangarmarsh, beat even Tier 1 and Tier 2 gear. So unless you were raiding Naxxrimas before BC, your gear was getting dropped within the first couple zones. Even the Tier 3 gear was out the door by the time you dinged 70.

But if you look back, it's clear why Blizzard did this. Look at the quest gear from vanilla WoW. It ends right about where the BC quest gear starts. In other words, they designed things so that non-raiders could make a nice steady progression into BC content. If they hadn't, casual players would have hit a huge wall in Hellfire — or would have received huge upgrades right away.

Now, look at the WotLK gear. But a caveat: it's still beta, and this could all change. Tweaking ilvls isn't that hard I believe; they may well do some more before launch.

Having said that, it looks like a smoother transition now. T4 gear doesn't start to get replaced until fairly late in the first zones, and will be relatively decent even into your mid-70s. T5 will last to your late 70s, and T6 won't be replaced until you get into heroics or the new Naxxrimas.

Casuals in quest rewards or instance drops will begin replacing those pretty quickly. But the mitigation this time is BoJ gear. The lesser BoJ stuff — the 20 or 25-badge items — gets replaced early. But the later, 100- or 150-badge items will last you to 80 now. I didn't include PvP gear, but for the most part that will be true as well, depending on how much of a gap there is between your PvP and PvE needs.

This is a bit of a generalization. You'll choose upgrades based on specific stats and specific rewards. My PvP healer pants might be quickly replaced by a quest reward tailored to Boomkin, for instance, even though there might be a big ilvl gap. But overall, you should be able to hold onto gear for a lot longer this time around.

How to find gear upgrades on Wowhead

I had a conversation with DK and Danny yesterday about finding gear improvements. I was a bit surprised that they weren't using Wowhead, which I've found to be the best approach, other than a specific list compiled on a wiki or blog.

There are other tools too. Most notable is of course the Armory, which will tell you improvements for your gear. I don't like their presentation, though. It's too tough to sort through different possibilities, and you never know how they're evaluating what would be an 'improvement'.

Wowhead gives you a lot more control, and it's easier to see why a given item is ranked ahead of another. Let's work through an example. In my tanking gear, I have a green belt, Manimal's Cinch. It's decent, but is there anything better I can find? Let's see what kind of better tanking belts I might track down.

1. Open Wowhead.
   
2. Using the dropdowns, select Database > Items > Armor > Leather > Waist. Wowhead shows you a list of all leather belts.
   
3. Now comes the fun part. Click on Create a Weight Scale. For this question, we'll choose Druid, Feral (Tank), and Rare gems.
   
   
4. Now look at the results. First, note that we're down to 297 results. Wowhead has screened out anything that a) druids can't use, and b) has no value to a druid tank. But that's still a lot of items. Let's rule out low-level stuff. In the first Required Level box, put 68. Now click the Apply Filter button. That limits us to items for level 68 players and up, and we end up with 57 belts. Much better.
   
   (Actually there's a better way to do this, using the Level box. This is tied to an item's iLvl -- an internal stat that tracks how powerful something is. I should write more on that sometime... but we'll keep it simple today.)

So let's look at the list! You'll now see a sorted list, with the best druid tank belts at the top. Manimal's Cinch is about two-thirds down the page — respectable for a green quest reward, but with dozens of improvements above it.

This isn't that different from the Armory list, but there are some very nice features. First, you can scan down the item names and get a good sense for where they come from, whether it's a drop (and from who, what instance, and whether it's Heroic), or PvP, or Arena, or crafting. The Armory tries to do this too, but the names are truncated and there's not as much detail.

Now look at the right-hand column. It shows a numerical score. This is a rating of the item, specific for a feral tank. That gives you a quick metric for judging how much of an improvement it is. Manimal's Cinch lists at 22.02. As an example, the [Bladeangel's Money Belt], which drops in Zul'Aman, is a 24.03 — so you know it's only a slight improvement. (Much better for Cat druids of course, but that's a different rating scale.)

What stands out on this list?

• The best tanking belt in the game is [Belt of Natural Power], with a 36.82 ranking. It's a leatherworker-crafted item... and it's BoE, so you could buy it at auction or have someone make it for you.
  
• The next best belt is the [Guardian's Leather Belt], a PvP reward that requires 17,850 honor and 40 AB marks. That's a good chunk of honor, but it's very grindable in battlegrounds.
  
• The #3 belt is [Waistguard of the Great Beast]. You can buy it from G'eras for 60 BoJ. That's grindable too... but look again at the Belt of Natural Power. The hardest materials are two Nether Vortex, which you can buy from G'eras for 30 BoJ. So if you can find a leatherworker with the pattern, that's really a cheaper use of the badges.

Of course, these rankings are a simplistic way to evaluate gear. It's very much worth looking at specific stats and judging based on that. If you're lacking in agility, for instance, the Guardian's Leather Belt is great with +37 agi. But if you need more armor, you'd probably rather take the [Guardian's Dragonhide Belt] which is much more armorful. So take this ranking with a grain of salt.

(As it happens, you can customize the rating scale to reflect your specific needs. But that will be a post for another day!)

There's plenty to explore from here. You can play with the Filter settings in Wowhead, to (for instance) only show PvP rewards, or to rule out anything with +agi less than 20. Or you could switch from belts to bracers, by switching to the Wrist slot. This is where Wowhead really starts to shine over the Armory, because you can slice and dice the results in so many ways.

The biggest limits in this approach are trinkets and idols. The stats, procs, and Use functions on these are a lot more difficult to compare. So you'll need to use other approaches here. Overall though, this is a great way to evaluate gear, and can be a lot of fun to spend time with.

Spellpower: Choosing pants for WotLK

I mentioned in the last post that I was thinking about taking the [Grovewalker's Leggings] when I get 100 Badges of Justice. I might still take tanking leggings instead, but the more interesting question I considered is whether I should take the [Crystalwind Leggings] instead.

First, some background: I plan to level as either Balance or Balance/Resto (Restokin) in WotLK. Along the way -- and at 80 -- I will probably respec to full Resto more than once to heal through instance runs. From what I've seen, these pants (either way) will probably last me until the high 70s at least and might well last into level 80 heroics. So the choice is fairly significant, not just for now, but also for Wrath.

Today, it's a basic question. Are you a healer or a DPS caster? The answer is more foggy in Wrath of the Lich King with the advent of Spellpower. The distinction between healing and casting items -- between +Spell Damage and +Healing -- fades away and is replaced with utilitarian Spellpower. Both items will have an identical +61 Spellpower. Neither will have more or less raw healing or casting power.

We'll end up with the following (including socket bonuses):

               Grovewalker   Crystalwind     Difference
Stamina        +36           +36               0
Intellect      +42           +40              +2
Spirit         +47           +32             +15
Sockets         B, R         B, Y
Spell Power    +61           +65              -4
Crit            0            +28             -28

So, the 'healer' Grovewalker pants will have greater spirit but reduced healing power and crit. That's an interesting tradeoff in itself, but then I look at the way talents are evolving in the beta. It's pretty clear that the Tree of Life aura will no longer work on Spirit; instead it will be a straight 3% increase to healing received. That already makes the Grovewalker pants less interesting.

But then I start to look at spell rotations. I can't say for sure -- I'm not in the beta -- but it really seems like Blizzard is working hard to deemphasize Lifebloom and instead encourage us to use more Regrowth and Healing Touch in particular. And that suddenly makes Crit a valuable tool for some kinds of healing. Moreover, the Nautre's Grace talent is now more accessible as the 11-point Balance talent, so I might well be able to take it in a resto build. That means that spell crits will now reduce casting time -- making Crit even more important.

The only motivation towards spirit is pretty vague at this point. There have been some forum posts that hint Blizzard is going to emphasize mana regen a bit more, and specifically out-of-combat regen requiring Spirit. I'm not sure that I see how this will work yet though; if I'm in combat then spirit is 70% (Dreamstate) less important; if I'm out of combat then I'll just drink anyway. I believe they're going to try to do what they say, but there's a good chance it will either not work out or that the mechanics may change.

All this leads me to believe that the choice is pretty tough, but that the Crystalwind pants may be the way to go. The Crit will be seriously helpful for a moonkin, and pretty useful for a tree too; on the other hand, the spirit will be probably unimportant for the moonkin and maybe unimportant for the healer.

I won't hit 100 BoJ for a few days at best, so I'll be wathching beta news closely until then. I'm sure things will change. Hopefully we'll know more soon!