Lots of haste?

[zestyflamingo]

Im fairly new to the game but i know my class well enough to get into a couple successful icc's, but according to some information brought up by another druid i could heal better with 965 haste as apposed to my 478, and use glyph of rapid rejuvenation. So before gemming out all haste, i want to know if anyone knows of this a viable thing to do.

[Bashal]

There's a guide somewhere around here.

I seem to recall your spec and choice of glyphs varies with your role. There are more tank-heal specs and more raid-heal ones. As trees are ridiculously suited to raid heals, thats the way they usually lean. I'd assume that how much haste you stack would also depend on this.

But again... there's a guide... have a look.

[MellvarTank]

You'll want to have a look at gear with haste instead of gemming all haste.

Edit: Oh yeah, and you'll want to spec into the Balance tree farther for the talent that give you 3% more haste until you get close to the cap.

[Cupples]

Basically your goal with haste is to get your GCD on instant spells down to 1 second. There are guides on EJ and other forums that give all the math for this, but simply put, when you spec into 3/3 celestial focus (balance tree) and 5/5 gift of the earthmother you need ~730 haste and full buffs (moonkin aura and wrath of air totem) to achieve this. Once you get more haste with gear, you can shift talent points around if you please. Personally I keep around 760 haste to account for missing buffs in 10 mans and such.

As far as gemming goes, spell power is still your main stat, so don't sacrifice haste for it. I suggest gemming +23sp for red slots, +12sp and +10haste for yellow, and +12sp and +10spirit for blue. If you're really low on haste, it won't hurt to gem +20haste in yellow slots until you get more gear with it on it. If you don't want to gem for the slot bonuses, gem straight sp.

Here is a link to my current spec. You have a few points to play around with after getting the main talents so you can do what you want with them based on your play style.

Also, definitely get glyph of rapid rejuv. My hps increased dramatically when I started using the glyph and getting more haste.

[bling581]

Yes it's definately a good idea to reach the soft cap on haste. I can't recall the exact number but it's close to 840 without 3/3 Celestial Focus. It really depends on your healing assignment but if you're mostly raid healing you'll want to cap haste. Rapid Rejuvention is mostly for 10 man content but there are some uses for it in 25 man and I like to swap it out based on the encounter. On fights that have a raid wide damage aura such as Festergut, Sindragosa and Blood Queen you don't want to use the RR glyph so you can keep as many Rejuvs ticking as possible. At my haste level my Rejuv is 12 seconds so it really limits the amount you can have ticking on the raid. The uses depend also on how many other Resto druids are in the raid. If there's 2 it might be a good idea to have 1 glyph RR and one go without.

[Anaire]

856, with full correct 25 man raid buffs and 0/3 CF in the balance tree. I would copy and paste and make life easy, but I am rushed. So instead I will throw out a few good links.
Druid forums on plus heal: http://www.plusheal.com/viewforum.php?f=5
Haste and the PVE Resto Druid (on plus heal): http://www.plusheal.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4931

Feel free to private message me, I love helping others too! ^.^ Good luck with the druiding.

[Kindralas]

It's my understanding that fights like Festergut and BQL are exactly the situation you would want Rapid Rejuvenation. It's my understanding (and please correct me if I'm wrong, I've been vacillating over this stupid glyph for weeks) that it simply shortens the duration of Rejuvenation, by reducing the time between ticks. Therefore, before you might tick at 2500 every 3 seconds for 18 seconds without it, and 2500 every 2 seconds for 12 seconds with it.

Therefore, it's not reducing the amount of healing Rejuvenation does (it's 15,000 either way in the above example), but increasing its frequency. So the ideal situation for the glyph is one in which the target takes 2500 damage in intervals less than 2 seconds, regardless of how many you can keep active. The slight side effect is that you can't Swiftmend off of it as easily, but in those situations, if you have a higher frequency HoT (one of the reasons Wild Growth and Lifebloom are so good), you will probably have to Swiftmend less anyway, since most consistent damage fights don't generally involve spikes of damage. Of course, BQL is an exception to that, so I think it's more a matter of taste. Festergut is an excellent fight for the glyph, as once it swaps over into tank damage, the faster frequency means a lot more for tank survival.

Ultimately, though, the question is what glyph it replaces. Wild Growth and Swiftmend are pretty much no-brainers, so you choose between Lifebloom and Rapid Rejuvenation. The net effect is actually surprisingly similar, getting a higher frequency HoT active more often. But Lifebloom has other positives (making it easier to roll, if need be, or maintain stacks on multiple targets) whereas Rapid Rejuvenation has downsides (smaller windows for Swiftmend.)

Has anyone seen any tests done at significant haste levels with Rapid Rejuvenation in a semi-tank healing build? Being able to roll Rejuvenations if you can get its ticks down near a second seems like an exceptionally powerful tool.

[bling581]

It's my understanding that fights like Festergut and BQL are exactly the situation you would want Rapid Rejuvenation. It's my understanding (and please correct me if I'm wrong, I've been vacillating over this stupid glyph for weeks) that it simply shortens the duration of Rejuvenation, by reducing the time between ticks. Therefore, before you might tick at 2500 every 3 seconds for 18 seconds without it, and 2500 every 2 seconds for 12 seconds with it.

Therefore, it's not reducing the amount of healing Rejuvenation does (it's 15,000 either way in the above example), but increasing its frequency. So the ideal situation for the glyph is one in which the target takes 2500 damage in intervals less than 2 seconds, regardless of how many you can keep active. The slight side effect is that you can't Swiftmend off of it as easily, but in those situations, if you have a higher frequency HoT (one of the reasons Wild Growth and Lifebloom are so good), you will probably have to Swiftmend less anyway, since most consistent damage fights don't generally involve spikes of damage. Of course, BQL is an exception to that, so I think it's more a matter of taste. Festergut is an excellent fight for the glyph, as once it swaps over into tank damage, the faster frequency means a lot more for tank survival.

If you're the only druid in 25 man, on these bosses you would want to be putting out as many Rejuvs on the raid as possible. Using the RR glyph would cut down on the number of people you could keep Rejuv on by quite a bit. Sure, if your hasted Rejuv is doing minimal overhealing you will see better numbers on fights with damage auras but the idea behind blanket hotting is survivability and not straight up HPS. The 10-12 people would be receiving a lot more healing from your hasted Rejuv, but the rest of the raid would be taking more damage. I'd have to look over some logs but I think it's a fair assumption that on a fight with a damage aura or slow ticking damage a hasted Rejuv would be doing a lot of overhealing. Sometimes healing isn't just about getting the highest numbers but doing what is best to fill your role and keep the raid alive.

If your raid has 2 Resto druids then perhaps you could both glyph RR and each cover your own two groups and overlapping on one. This is just an idea, but perhaps it would still be best to have a non-hasted Rejuv and cover more people.

[Kindralas]

But non-hasted Rejuvenations don't let you cover more people, you're still casting the exact same number of Rejuvenations. The only difference is the uptime on the buff. The question is how often RR will overheal compared to a regular Rejuvenation. And in situations where you're more concerned with single targeting, RR is significantly better, which most people can agree upon. The thing isn't that you're getting better numbers out of it, it's just the somewhat flawed assumption that having greater uptime on Rejuves is a better option than faster ticks on it. I'm not saying it never is, but I think that situation is a lot more specific than people give it credit for.

[Cupples]

I see what bling is getting at. He is right, that if you aren't using the RR glyph, you could essentially have more people blanketed at the same time since each rejuv would be ticking for 18 sec instead about 12 or 13. This is good in someways, especially if there is spike damage going on and you wanna throw a swiftmend out whenever possible, but regrowth could be used the same way.

However, in my opinion, the RR glyph is amazing for fights like BQL, Festergut, and Twins. In 25 mans, even if you are the only druid, you are not the only raid healer. Most raids assign groups to watch over or something of the like. On BQL, what I do is keep watch over two groups, usually mostly range. I use a mouseover macro for rejuv, so I keep a melee targeted while throwing rejuvs on all of my groups. Every time that wild growth is up, I spam it on the melee. This way I can keep my 10 people completely rejuv'd and help out the other raid healers watching melee.

If you're interested in the effectiveness of RR glyph on BQL, here's the meter from the other night.
Note my (oldcrow) over healing was tied for the least done in the raid, and 33.9% of rejuv was overheals. This was our first BQL kill and was done with 5 heals.

[Kindralas]

Well, it's my considered opinion that blanket Rejuving in general is a meter-focused strategy, and part of the reason Druids own on the meters. The fact is that about 60-70% of your Rejuvenation healing, by the meters, is pointless. You're getting heals on people who are in no real threat of dying in the next 10-15 seconds, not to mention people that then catch a CoH, PoH, Chain Heal, or the like.

I don't think there's a question that Rapid Rejuve on fewer targets will result in those targets having increased survivability. The question is whether that amount of survivability is of greater importance than giving a lesser amount to a few more targets. Obviously in 10-mans, it makes sense, since you have the capacity to cover everyone still. In 25-mans, you're almost certain to be raiding with a Shaman, Holy Priest or Druid who can help cover those you're not, assuming a fight where full coverage is a good idea. Since you can pretty easily cover 10 people in either case, if the other raid healer is covering a similar amount, I think you're maximizing your raid healing ability at around 10 people, perhaps a little less if you have multiple other raid healers. More than that, and you're mostly just overhealing over someone else.

Granted, that takes a little communication, if you want to be perfect about it. It can be as simple as "other Druid, you take groups 2 and 3, I'll take 4 and 5, aside from spike damage," or as complex as ignoring melee (because the Shaman should be spamming Chain Heals and your Wild Growth works better there), the tanks (because the tank healers are spamming them), and perhaps a single group (because of PoH.)

In other words, you're not going to be healing in a vacuum, so let the other healers do their job. If you have to cover for them a little, then do so, but there's very little need to blanket 15 Rejuves. And if you don't need that increased uptime on as many people, then Rapid Rejuve is obviously a better choice, since you can blanket the number of targets you need to, as well as get the better tank healing out of the higher frequency.