Help me respec my druid

[TheDragoon]

This is one case where I don't think a min/max works best.

Another thing I thought of while posting about Rejuvenation vs. Regrowth was that it often seem that Rejuvenation isn't as useful for raid healing if you've just got the main tank to target. In those cases, other people tend to spam flash heals or other heals like it and fill up the tank's life, thus making all of Rejuventation overhealing. However, for 5-man instances I always find that I use renew vastly more than other heals, with Silverflail, and I would imagine it to be the same sort of thing with a Druid using Rejuvenation.

Also, I can definitely understand the problem with Regrowth's mana efficiency - that is the one thing that would make me cringe if I end up with a Druid spec for the end-game that is focused on healing but didn't have a large number of points in Improved Regrowth. :)

Keep in mind druids get less benefit from spirit than priests do. So 15% of my spirit counting for regen is more like a priest having 8-10% their spirit counting does it seem as worthwile now?

This was the main thing I wanted to focus on with this post. :)

I've done some searching around and came up with the following expression to detail priestly spirit regeneration:

Priest Mana Regeneration (per tick) = Spirit / 4 + 13

Druids use a similar equation, as shown below:

Druid Mana Regeneration (per tick) = Spirit / 5 + 15

Why Reflection can beat out Meditation

In terms of overall power, assuming one of the two above options is correct, it seems obvious that Meditation should beat out Reflection. Both talents give 15% regeneration while casting and during the 5 seconds of no regeneration. Thus, given a comparable gear build for the Druid and Priest (that is, similar spirit), the Druid will get less out of the fully specc'd talent than a priest:

To make things easier, I'll assume that the Druid and Priest builds have the same spirit. This is an ok first approximation though Druid items tend to have slightly slower spirit than Priest items. However, there are so many different combinations of gear, that some decision has to be made here. Since it's close, I'll assume they're the same to make things easy.

- Assume 300 spirit

Druid regeneration = (300/5 + 15)*0.15 = (75)*0.15 = 11.25 mana per tick
Priest regeneration = (300/4 + 13)*0.15 = (88)*0.15 = 13.2 mana per tick

However, now take a look at the talent trees and note that Meditation takes 5 talent points to get to 15% while Reflection takes only 3. So let's check out the effect, per talent point, for these cases:

Druid regeneration per point = 11.25/3 = 3.75 mana per tick per point
Priest regeneration per point = 13.2/5 = 2.64 mana per tick per point

This shows that, for an equal amount of spirit, a point spent in the Druid talent is actually MORE effective than each point placed in the Priest talent. Add in the fact that the main Druid HoT, Rejuvenation, has a shorter duration than the Priest HoT, Renew, and it would seem that Druids who make liberal use of the efficient HoT's would spend more time in the casting period or 5 second rule and so make good use of this talent.

So my response would be, yes, the points spent in Reflection do seem worthwhile. :)

I'm not saying it's a necessity, but rather than the talent points seem like they would get better return with a Druid than with a Priest in many cases. Thus, since I really like the Meditation talent on my priest, Silverflail, I think I would also like the Reflection talent on a Druid.

In 40 man with all the priests and paladins around interrupting your heals anyway the regen isn't that big a deal either because you never get the 3 second cast off so you are full regen anyway. smile.gif

This is, of course, a big reason why Reflection might not be as effective for parts of 40-person raiding, however even with Silverflail I find that I can often make use of spamming renew around the raid without too much overhealing, so I'm sure a Druid could do the same with Rejuvenation. Whether that happens enough to warrent picking up Reflection in a raiding-oriented build is up to the player. :)

EDIT: I did a couple quick tests now that the realms are up and figured out the Druid spirit-based mana regeneration equation. :)