Berinna is currently levelling to 80 and asked:
What stats do resto druids look for?
Make sure you have enough regen so that you don’t go OOM, enough haste to be at or near the softcap, then wallow around in spellpower like a pig in muck.
- Am I struggling for mana? If so, swap in some more hybrid gems (Spellpower/Int and Spellpower/Spi), grab regen trinkets, use a mana restore meta gem, etc. As a last resort, use regen consumables.
- Do I have adequate haste from gear? If not, consider talents, a haste to cloak enchant, and examine gear that you have access to that has more haste. As a last resort I would use haste consumables or hybrid haste gems.
- If yes to both of the above – start stacking spellpower (including regemming to pure spellpower if appropriate).
My personal stat preference goes like this (your mileage may vary):
Spellpower > Haste > Spi/Int > Mp5 > Crit
Regen
People often ask, “How much regen do I need for (raid dungeon)?” and they’re usually chasing a static number – XYZ unbuffed or XYZ raid buffed.
I’ll be perfectly honest – I wouldn’t have a clue what my current regen stats are without looking. I could probably tell you that my Int and Spirit are about ~1000, but my in-combat regen – no idea. Because it’s not really about a number; it’s about whether you have enough regen for what
you are doing.
I realise it’s a little frustrating to ask “how much do I need” and get an answer that amounts to, “you need as much as you need”. Duh! Just give me a number to aim for!
Really though, there are so many factors that will determine how much you need:
- Raid size, difficulty, and damage – how hard are you going to have to heal?
- Raid make up – do you have replenishment? Wisdom?
- Talents – eg, do you have Revitalize?
- Number of healers
- Your assignment
- Your gear level
- Your tank/healing targets’ gear level
- Your items – eg, do you have proc/use items that grant mana or reduce the cost of your spells? This includes trinkets, idols, cloak enchant, meta gems, etc.
- Do you save your innervate for yourself, or do you have a mana-hungry hunter whining at you every 5 minutes on vent? (not mentioning any names..)
Haste is another stat that depends heavily on your talents and especially on your group size and composition. Another vague answer for you, I’m afraid – but in this case we can calculate various levels of haste needed, taking into account your talents and the raid’s make up. Phew!
Haste affects our healing in two ways:
- by reducing the cast time on our direct heals, allowing us to cast our big heals faster; and
- by reducing our GCD, allowing us to cast more instant spells within a particular period of time, without twiddling our thumbs waiting for the GCD to be up.
So by increasing our haste, we can fire off our direct heals faster (great for saving the day!), and as raid healers we can toss out more instant heals and cover more of the raid.
- Spec: Talents such as Gift of the Earth Mother (GotEM) and Celestial Focus give you passive bonuses to increase your haste and reduce your GCD. If you have GotEM and Celestial Focus, you will need less haste than someone who does not take these talents.
- Note 1: Nature’s Grace also gives you temporary bursts of haste after you crit, but it is not a passive bonus with 100% uptime, and will depend heavily on how much direct healing you do.
- Note 2: Opinion is divided on whether resto druids should take CF; I’ve merely included it as an option.
- Group composition: Who you have in your raid will impact on your haste:
Note: The haste bonuses from Swift Retribution and Improved Moonkin do not stack.
There’s really not much to say, here; spellpower makes our heals land for more, and our HoT ticks larger. This increases our HPS (heals per second) because we’re able to heal for more over the same period of time. And, importantly, it means that your heals will land for more,
but for the same mana cost.
When you have enough regen and haste to be comfortable, it’s time to build on your spellpower.
- gives us a bigger mana pool
- increases our regen
- increases our chance to crit
- gives greater returns from Replenishment and meta gems
- scales with buffs
Spirit:
- increases our spellpower through ToL
- increases our regen
- scales with talents (eg Living Spirit)
- scales with buffs
- Note: Innervate no longer scales with spirit; there is no need to “stack” spirit for bigger innervates.
Most of your gear will come with intellect and spirit on it (some may come with mp5). You should accrue enough and shouldn’t need to “stack” them by using pure intellect or pure spirit gems. Basically: they are valuable stats, but you will get enough just by picking up normal gear, and you shouldn’t have to worry about them too much.
Mp5 isn’t a bad stat to take, but spirit scales with raid buffs and our Living Spirit talent, and boosts our healing in Tree form. Mp5 only increases your Mp5, and is not affected by buffs such as Blessing of Kings. Mp5 is also usually more expensive in terms of stat allocation on gear (so you’re often losing out on other stats in exchange for high values of mp5).
I wouldn’t actively stack either stat, nor would I shun Mp5 entirely, but I would generally prefer to take spirit over Mp5.
Crit benefits our direct healing spells, and can also affect Rejuv ticks if you have
4pc Tier 9. However, it is generally regarded as a sub-par resto druid stat because the majority of our healing does not come from direct healing, and larger Rejuv ticks can often simply go to overheal.
Some people choose to stack crit, particularly if they are assigned to healing tanks; but we already have a decent amount of crit on Nourish and Regrowth through talents, and you’ll likely pick up a fair amount of crit from gear, without trying.
If you’d like to read more about stats and how druids value them, here are a few sites that may help – particularly for haste and crit.
Falling Leaves & Wings
Earth Shields & HoTs
Nerf this Druid
Druid Heal
Restoration Druid
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