[Resto-6.0] How to Itemize and Analyze your Resto Druid

[Krazyito 521]

I'm going to update my old guide on itemization and and analysis for Warlords of Draenor. Here is a link to the old guide for comment archives. Please feel free to comment with any feedback or help you may have.

Skip to the Analysis.
THIS IS UPDATED FOR PATCH 6.0 HIGHMAUL / BLACKROCK FOUNDRY.

With the removal of reforging and sockets being a more rare occurrence in gear, we have little options in our stat customization to use Ask Mr. Robot for. The best thing Mr. Robot can do for you now is make sure you're gemming and enchanting properly, as well as using his 'Best in Bag' feature to guarantee you're using the best itemized piece of gear that you have. I highly recommend this feature if you're not entirely sure on what piece you should wear
 
For a resto druid, the weights they currently have work just fine. You can still edit your weights the way you want by clicking on the 'edit weights button. (NOTE: You have to first hit 'OPTIMIZE' before the 'Edit weights' button will appear.)

To edit weights open up your AMR profile and click the 'Edit weights" button.


You should always prefer pieces with Haste/Mastery (or Spirit/Haste or Spirit/Mastery on non-armor pieces). The only difference that Mr Robot will see is if your items in your bag / gems and enchants match your stat weights. Mr. Robot is very good at picking the best gear for you now that reforging is gone, its as simple as putting in the value of the stats and multiplying it by the stat weight to see what gives the best value.
 
I'm not gonna give custom weights now, becasue the way stats work right now is just so basic, all you really need to do is make sure the stats are ranked in the order that you prefer. If you really despise a stat you can just lower the weight of it to make sure it doesn't get much value and other pieces may start to rank ahead of it.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

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How to Analyze

I will now begin a template for analyzing a restoration druid and what you should be looking for in your logs. If you feel like I missed something please comment so I may improve this guide.

If you want help with your logs please make a new thread and give all the information required.

NOTE: This is to be used with Warcraft logs. In the future when I get more accustomed to Ask Mr. Robot, I will include it in here as well, but for the BEST feedback, Warcraft logs has everything.


Uptimes
 
Everything you need for uptimes can be found in the 'Buffs' tab. Make sure you click in 'cast by friendly' to filter out other peoples buffs on you.

• Harmony - (100%)
• Lifebloom - (97+%)
• Rejuv (and germination) (95+%)
• Tank Rejuv (and/or germination) (if tanks are dying) - click on Rejuvenation spell and check uptimes on players

Rotational Spells

Soul of the Forest Analysis
 
With the new healing model, I can't really tell you how many swiftmends you should or should not be casting. Basic rule is you should probably be using it on CD, but mana isn't always going to permit that. So the meat an potatoes, is going to be what spell you used it on. For the most part, Wild Growth is going to be the best choice, but you don't want it to overheal.

• Swiftmend usage is based on talent selection and user discretion. Don't run oom because you're casting Swiftmend on CD.
• Go to advanced analysis to check for proper usage.

All other talents

• Go to "Casts" tab.
• If you're using Cenarion Ward take fight length in seconds and divide by 30. You should be casting this relatively on cooldown since it has such a low mana cost.
• If Incarnation take fight length divided by 180 (3m CD) - Find places to use this.
• If Natures Vigil take fight length and divide by 90 (1.5m CD) - Find places to use this.
• If DoC, check wrath healing and see if they actually used it.
• If Force of Nature, take fight length and divide by 15 and add 3 to the total. Make sure they are using it at least and then tell them to stop it and use SotF or Tree of life because they are better.
• If Moment of Clarity, Lifebloom uptime is very important. Make sure its up 100% to have the chance to proc. Check Advanced OoC (Omen of clarity, Clearcasting) usage. - The other two talents are generally better.
• If Germination, make sure theres a high uptime on it (70% or higher is good, but there should always be two on a tank)
• If Rampart Growth you're going to have to check the Soul of the Forest Analysis

Other Minor Cooldown Usage

In the "Casts" tab:

• Check for Barkskin usage (45s CD)
• Check for IronBark usage (an on who, 60s CD)
• Check for Berserking usage (Troll only, 180s CD)
• Check for Nature's Swiftness usage (60s~ CD. Is reduced with glyph)
• Situational: Check for dispel usage (Nature's Cure)

Other Advanced Analysis

• Check Advanced Effloresence healing
• Check Advanced OoC (Omen of clarity, Clearcasting) usage.
• Check Advanced Lifebloom Analysis

 
Advanced Soul of the Forest Analysis.
 
This section falls under "Throughput Management". Fixing these issues will increase your throughput.
This will be a very detailed guide on how to see if Soul of the Forest is being used correctly. Don't fret if this goes over your head, but I will try to be as clear as possible.

If you get lost or don't understand, just read each line one at a time and try to look at the picture to see what is happening and try to replicate it with your own logs. If you can't we're always here to help.

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First, go to the "Buffs" tab and click the '+' sign next to Soul of the Forest. You now get a new event at the top of the graph showing where Soul of the Forest was applied. you now want to click the word "Separate" it will turn into "Off", click it again and it will turn into "Main"



Go into the "Casts" tab in WCL. You will see something similar to this. Simply click on Rejuv (in the space marked with a red dot) to clear the spell from the graph.


Next you should have a clear graph. Now each time you come back to this tab, it might fill up with Rejuv. Just click on Rejuv again to get rid of it until we need it.

 

 

Now you should have a somewhat empty graph like this:

 

 

Since the change to how Soul of the Forest works and the way haste works. There really is no wrong way to use it other than on Healing Touch.  The best way to really determine if you're using Soul of the Forest correctly is to zoom into the section that it was used on, figure out what spell was used to consume the buff and then find the healing done by that spell within the duration of that buff. If you used it on a Rejuv/regrowth, you're going to have to figure out what player you casted it on and see how much it overhealed.

 

*PLACEHOLDER* SotF is kinda bugged atm where it wont consume the buff correctly, so its kind of looking weird in logs. Go here if you want to see the old way of analyzing SotF until I update this if/when its fixed.

 

example if SotF being broken:

 

You can see that Wild Growth has been casted inside of a Soul of the Forest buff, but not consumed until the rejuv.

 

Advanced Efflorescence Analysis
 
This section falls under "Throughput Management". Fixing these issues will increase your throughput.
First we want to go to the "Casts" tab and click on the "Wild Mushroom" pins (by pressing the '+' button). Then click "Separate" and "Off" on both, to change it to "Main".


Now go to the "Healing" tab and click the "Wild Mushroom" name. This should show all healing done with Wild Mushroom. For the pins, everytime there is a line it means we placed the mushroom down.

You can see the valleys and peaks of healing each time i placed down the mushroom. It has a 30 second duration, so if the healing is low after you placed it down, then that means it wasn't needed or you placed it in the wrong area.  Wild Mushroom has a fairly significant mana cost, so putting it down and getting the most out of the healing is meaningful.


Advanced Clearcasting Analysis
 
This section falls under "Mana management".  Fixing these issues can help you manage mana better.

We are going to do something similar to Soul of the Forest where we make a pin. Go to "Buffs". Click the '+' next to Clearcasting. Click Separate and Off to change it to "Main". Then go to "Casts" tab and make sure its empty.


Now, Clearcasting is only consumed by Regrowth

If you notice some bars are shorter than others, this is just the relative cast time. The shorter the bar, the quicker the cast. Notice that the very first clearcasting was not consumed. and each orange bar is a regrowth, which consumes the green clearcasting bar. There were 2 clearcastings that I did not consume, I should have tried to pay more attention.

 

Regrowth is a very useful spell right now, its not wrong to cast it outside of clearcasting, but it will run you OOM faster than any other direct heal. Use it for clearcasting as much as possible to refresh lifeboom / save mana as well as in emergency situations to heal a tank.
 

Advanced Lifebloom Analysis
(Thanks to Druidboii for pointing out this section for me to look into)
 
This section falls under "Mana management".  Fixing these issues can help you manage mana better.
 
Lifebloom uptime is only a small part of what a resto druid should be doing with the spell.  The longer this spell is up, the more chances you have of proccing "Clearcasting" to help you save mana.  Hence, why uptime is valued.
 
Letting the spell fall off is not as bad as it use to be because, now lifebloom only has 1 stack and not 3. Before when it would fall off it would take 3 GCD's to stack it back up to full. Now you can just refresh it.  Keeping it up all the time is still important though for Clearcasting. Refreshing is a much lesser issue if Harmony is 100%, but if harmony is a problem, then refreshing with a direct heal will help fix both these problems.
 
Now in WCL there are 2 different lifebloom spells.  One has an uptime, while the other does not. The spell with the uptime indicates the HoT portion of the spell while the one without an uptime is the "bloom" effect.
 

 
As you can see, the bloom effect had a lot of overheal, so it was not being used properly at all.
 
 
Now, to see how many times Lifebloom was cast, we will go to our friendly tab "Casts".  Turn off the rejuv bars as before and only show the lifebloom casts.
 

 
 
Now, lets check how long It took me to reapply it when it fell. Go back to the "Buff" tab and click "cast by friendly".  Click the "+" for lifebloom, Click "Separate", then "Off", until it becomes "Main".  go back to the "casts" tab and lets take a look.

 
Here shows the times i casted lifebloom against the uptime of the spell. You can see that it fell off briefly at one point but I re-casted it instantly. I also have a tendancy to refresh Lifebloom with itself instead of with a direct heal. The optimal way of keeping lifeblom up with with a direct heal, but most times the tank doesnt need that direct heal and its cheaper to just cast lifebloom again.  The reason we stress tto refresh lifebloom with a direct heal though is mainly because of Harmony uptimes. If your harmony is bad, then that is what you need to focus on.
 
Now lets compare Lifebloom uptime in relation to Harmony uptimes.  In my opinion, If you allow lifebloom to fall, its becasue you're more worried about pumping more healing, and so long as you're keeping harmony in check, its ok.
 
Lets go back to the "Buffs" tab and add Harmony to the list.  Except this time only have Harmony "Separate". Then go back to the casts tab to see the casts.
 

 
As you can see harmony was not active for the very beginning of the fight, but was maintained save for one section where it was applied again. Having it as close to 100% is optimal, but this is very close as well.
 
Now if i see poor Lifeboom uptimes AND bad harmony uptimes, I would urge the druid to to keep both up.  Until they learn to keep harmony up more than anything, they can't make the decision to let lifebloom fall.
 
 
To conclude this section, Lifebloom is meant for tank and mana stabilization.  Its very easy to keep up and thus should.  Reapplying the spell with itself is OK only if your Harmony uptime does not drop because of it, but do not refresh too often when a tank would benefit from the direct heal more.  Having low uptime on lifeboom will in turn cause you to have more mana problems than usual.  
Conclusion

I hope this guide was informational and helpful. Please let me know if there is something I can improve upon, since I am always looking to make these better. Laslty, once WoD is underway, I'll try to get an updated guide out once I fully understand how the healing mechanics work and how the spec is meant to be played.

Thank you for reading and if you have any questions about the guide, feel free to comment. If you want help analyzing your logs please start a new thread for us to help you.

[Krazyito 521]

Took the old guide as a template, and updated this for WoD. leave feedback with what you would want to see or if you need more help.

[Shedim 13]

Very useful. I don't remember Lifebloom having stacks though.

[Krazyito 521]

I kinda glazed over that part since it was basically the same except that it has no stacks now.

I'll make small adjustments tonight.

 

edit: updated the lifebloom section because I got less lazy. Thanks!

[Ruudo 0]

Tried doing this on my logs, but apparently i "broke" warcraft logs... Everytime i select Wild Mushroom like you said, and select the "main" option, it just sits there saying "Loading Data". Any idea what's happening?

[Krazyito 521]

The site is currently down. Give it some time get rid of its load for the night.

[Ruudo 0]

Still can't do this analysis cause WL still sits there loading data every time i go to wild mushroom and select the "main" option...

Can you try and do it yourself on my logs and see if the problem is somehow on my end?

 

Here are the logs:

 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/yxmMgVc4nfTN1vH3

[Krazyito 521]

Took a couple seconds for me but it worked: 

 

 

Wasn't sure which druid was you though.

 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/yxmMgVc4nfTN1vH3#type=healing&source=2&pins=0%24Main%24%23f50525%24casts%240%240.0.0.Any%24126806960.0.0.Druid%24true%240.0.0.Any%24false%24147349&ability=81269

[Ruudo 0]

That isn't my druid, but i just tried again, and it sits there loading data... Tried on 3 different computers and on 2 different internet connections... no idea what's wrong...

[zydd 0]

Hello,

 

I have a question about LB uptime. How really important is maxing it these days and why? I remember there was a very good reason to keep up LB stacks when it used to help regen mana. Lets say I run a 20m with disc and hpaly, why would I prioritize LB refresh/recast over other tasks/spells within limited GCDs I have? 

[Krazyito 521]

You wouldn't.  I have plenty of times where i let lifebloom fall off.

 

The reason I make this a point though is for people looking to improve as a whole. If they can't make the decisions to know when ot let it fall or heal correctly.  Or they don't know how to manage their mana on a fight, they need to go back to the basics. Get the core mechanics of the class and learn how to adapt to the situations, which really only come with practice and experience.

 

Once you have the practice and experience, then you can start making those inefficient choices, or breaking some rules of the class, because you can recover / know its absolutely needed.

 

 

Its not a matter of "its the rules, you have to follow the rules!" but more of a guideline to fall back on when you're having trouble.

 

 

Of course, having it up 100% of the time is the most 'optimal' but you're limited by the damage you're forced to pay attention to.  The higher uptime you have on Lifebloom, the more chances for clearcasting proc you will have, which will help the longevity of your mana as well as your overall healing.  

 

Using the clearcasting procs on other people and then manually refreshing Lifebloom is a common thing I do, the heal is usually best placed else where and as long as my Harmony buff isn't suffering, its not a big deal.

 

To directly answer your question, its only as important as your mana allows.  If you can handle the tank not being stabilized for that duration and not want / need clearcasting procs its fine. Though, when you're having mana / tank death issues, this is one of the first places to look.

[Luvlockdown 0]

Hey,

 

I was wondering if the Trinkets on the Druid guide page don't need to be updated? Or are Everburning and Hourglass still bis? Because the trinkets from Darmac look pretty strong too or even a bit stronger?

 

Kind regards.

[Krazyito 521]

Ever burning and Darmac trinkets are probably the best ones to use TBH.

[Stardreamer 0]

this looks good, will definitely check it out when I get home tonight thanks for all your work

[Beerun 0]

nice post...thanks for the info!