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Shifting Perspectives: Gearing a new restoration druid at 80
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we are proud to welcome a new generation of trees whatever we're going to be in Cataclysm. Before I do anything else, I want to draw some attention to a guide on restoration healing recently published by Tree Bark Jacket that is an incredibly impressive work. It's comprehensive and fun to read, and for anyone who's getting started with the spec, I highly recommend heading both there and to Lissanna's guide to restoration healing in patch 3.3. We're continuing our updated and expanded series on how to gear a new druid at 80, and this week we're going to tackle restoration druids. Frankly, a lot of the desirability for the listed pieces depends on your spec and current level of +haste (if you're wondering why that is, you'll find an explanation in our Restoration 101 post). If you are planning to raid on your resto druid, this is a bare-bones guide to what you need to look for: If you have 3/3 Celestial Focus and are below 735 haste, prioritize haste. Look for +haste pieces and gem Reckless Ametrines. If you have 3/3 Celestial Focus and are at or above 735 haste, you can either prioritize/gem spellpower or (much better) move points into more throughput talents in the restoration tree. If you don't have 3/3 Celestial Focus and are below 856 haste, prioritize haste. If you don't have 3/3 Celestial Focus and are at or above 856 haste, prioritize/gem spellpower. As you get new pieces, it may be necessary to gem or regem to stay around the haste cap.
The single greatest thing that has ever happened in this game
And I think it's gonna be a long long time 'Til touch-down brings me round again to find I'm not the bare they think I am at home Oh, no no no I'm a ROCKET BARE Rocket bare! Bottom full of boom out here alone! Hats off to Tree Bark Jacket for capturing this utterly magnificent video from Icecrown's gunship battle encounter, and a plea to any and all developers reading this; you can never go wrong combining lolbares with explosives. Or rocket launchers. Or laser gun-sights with auto-lock targeting on the rogue who just stole our new tanking belt.
Are there bad talents?
Tree Bark Jacket, a resto-druid-themed blog that was new to me, has an interesting post up about whether there is such a thing as an entirely bad talent. The author's argument is that no, there is not, the reason being that even talents that are regularly dismissed are still useful sometimes; they're just situational. For instance, Improved Tranquility, while certainly sub-par in 25-man raids, shines in heroics, and Living Seed is nice for healing tanks through chunky damage. On a broader scope, Keeva makes the important point that you can't make all your talent decisions based on Recount or on people's advice from Elitist Jerks (etc.). Everyone's playstyle and raid makeup is different, and every raid encounter is different.
