Hopefully this post will help players such as that realise the reasons behind certain important numbers and how to enhance their gear correctly to maintain those numbers without losing out on other important numbers. I will be directing any new resto druids in my guild to this post as well, so I will be writing it on the assumption that the reader has no idea what gemming, enchanting etc is (i.e. they have just it 85 on their first character). If you already know what gems you are looking for, what enchants etc and how to reforge, then you can jump to the second half of the post: The Art of Item Enhancement.
TO BEGIN WITH: STAT PRIORITY
This is something many new players are actually unaware of; each class (and spec within a class) has a certain number of attributes that it gains benefit from and others that it does not. Some are obvious - a Mage needs Intellect but not Strength. However, even once you know which attributes you need to look for, you also need to realise that they are not all equally useful. This is where the stat priority comes in.
Basically the stat priority is the list of your useful stats in order of importance. I won't explain the "whys" here, for a full discussion of stats prio for resto druid check out my guide. For here it is sufficient to simply say what our stat prio is with a brief explanation.
* Intellect: Intellect is your most basic stat. It gives you mana, spellpower and increases your crit chance with spells.
* Spirit: Spirit affects the rate at which you regenerate your mana pool.
* Haste: Haste decreases the cast time of spells as well as increasing the number of times your heal-over-time spells will heal within their duration.
* Mastery: This directly increases the amount of healing each of your spells does.
* Crit: Crit increases the chance of gaining a critical heal. A crit heal heals for double the amount of a standard heal.
Outside of that list is "Spellpower", this only appears on weapons and basically more is better.
That is it as far as useful stats go for resto druids. If you do not see it on that list assume it is worthless. Now I will move onto gear enhancement.
GEAR ENHANCEMENT AND ALTERATION
Broadly speaking there are three separate ways to alter or enhance your gear. They are:
Gemming Some equipment has sockets for gems. The sockets are different colours - red, yellow and blue. Gems come in six colours; 3 primary - red, yellow and blue, and 3 secondary - purple, orange and green. Any gem can be fitted into a socket but there will also be a "socket bonus", this is a bonus you gain for using the correct gem colour in the socket, for example a piece with 2 red sockets would have its bonus activated if you socketed 2 red gems, but not if you socketed a yellow and a red.
Secondary gems are considered to be equivalent to the 2 colours that mix to make them, so purple is red/blue, orange is red/yellow and green is yellow/blue. So in the above example of 2 red sockets you could use an orange and a purple gem in the red sockets and still gain the bonus.
Primary gems will give you a single large amount of one stat e.g. +40 intellect, while a secondary will split the value between two stats e.g. +20 intellect and +20 haste.
Helms also have a slot for a unique gem - a meta gem. This gives a special bonus that is not a stat increase. Examples are +3% crit damage, +2% mana and so on. These however need activating. Each meta requires a certain combo of other gems in your gear e.g. 2 reds and 1 blue. Once these gems are in your gear in their correct slots your meta will activate and you gain the bonus.
Gems are good for tweaking your stats around a little to gain a bit more of whatever you need, especially as you can split the amount gained between 2 different stats if needed.
The main gems for resto druids are considered to be:
* RED: Brilliant XXXXX (+x Intellect)
* ORANGE: Reckless XXXXX (+x Intellect/+x haste), Artful XXXXX (+x Intellect/+x Mastery)
* PURPLE: Purified XXXXX (+x Intellect/+x Spirit)
* Meta: Ember Shadowspirit Diamond (+54 Intellect and 2% increased mana)
If you are a Jewelcrafter, then make sure you use the Brilliant Chimera's Eye. If you are a Blacksmith remember to put your additional socket onto your bracers and gloves and socket them with a Brilliant gem.
The "XXXXX" represents the actual gem name, this changes depending on the quality of the gem, however the prefix remains the same i.e. a "brilliant" gem will always add Intellect, though the amount will vary depending on the quality of the gem.
Gear Enhancements (enchants etc) There are a number of different enhancements available for your gear. Some are player made and others are bought from NPC Quartermasters once you have reached a certain level of reputation. There are multiple options for each piece of gear, but usually one enhancement will be considered "best" for that piece. Listed below are the best enhancements for each gear piece for resto druids.
* HEAD - Arcanum of Hyjal (purchased from Guardians of Hyjal QM)
* SHOULDERS - Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone (purchased from Therazane QM), Felfire Inscription (SCRIBE ONLY)
* CLOAK - Greater Intellect (crafted by enchanter), Lightweave Embroidery (TAILOR ONLY)
* CHEST - Peerless Stats (crafted by enchanter
* BRACERS - Mighty Intellect (crafted by enchanter), Draconic Embossment - Intellect (LEATHERWORKER ONLY)
* GLOVES - Greater Mastery (crafted by enchanter), Synapse Springs (ENGINEER ONLY)
* BELT - Ebonsteel belt buckle (crafted by blacksmith)
* LEGS - Powerful Ghostly Spellthread (crafted by tailor),
* BOOTS - Lavawalker (crafted by enchanter)
* RINGS - Intellect (ENCHANTER ONLY)
* WEAPON - Power Torrent (crafted by enchanter)
* OFF-HAND - Superior Intellect (crafted by enchanter)
As always though, look at what you need and balance it with you have. If you are 47 haste short of 2005 and have regemmed and reforged everything, don't put +65 mastery on your gloves, go for haste instead. Remember to check options for each item before you spend gold or mats enchanting it, gloves, boots and bracers especially have a variety of enchants that can help you reach your haste break points.
A note regarding other professions; you will notice that under gemming and enchanting I mention blacksmithing, jewelcrafting, leatherworking, engineering, tailoring, inscription and enchanting, but what about herbalism, alchemy, skinning and mining? The last four do not have bonus's that affect your gear, the bonus is still useful and comparable to the other professions but it does not allow you to alter your gear at all. A more in depth discussion of professions and resto druids can be found here.
Reforging Stormwind and Orgrimmar both have an Arcane Reforger. This npc will allow you to switch around certain stats on your gear for other stats. There are some rules regarding reforging though;
* Fixed amount: you can only reforge away 40% of the undesirable stat.
* Resilience/Spell Penetration: you cannot reforge resilience or spell penetration (either to gain or reduce) so no buying crafted PvP gear or the like and reforging the nasty PvP stats away
* Cannot buff a present stat: You can only add a stat that is not already present on the item. This means that you cannot take something with 100 each of haste and mastery and change it to 140 haste to 60 mastery.
That is really all there is to say about reforging. You will have to pay per item reforged, but ultimately it is not too expensive.
THE ART OF ITEM ENHANCEMENT
So now you know what different stats you are looking for and how to alter those stats through gemming, enchanting and reforging. Some of these stats have certain levels that it is either advisable to reach, or very important to reach. The numbers (if any) for each are as follows:
* Intellect: No specific value to reach for, simply more is better.
* Spirit: Initially simply take everything you can with spirit and aim as high as possible (maybe 2500), as you and you gear gets better this can drop to around 2000.
* Haste: Two very important numbers here: 917 haste is the first and 2005 is the second. It is so important you can afford to lose around 360 intellect to reach 2005 haste rating and you will still see a throughput increase.
* Mastery: Nothing specific.
* Crit: Nothing specific.
Now this is where it starts to get a little complicated and the actual skill comes into play.
As you gear your character, your own personal stat priority will change depending on what gear you have and how to can jiggle your numbers around. This means that it actually takes a bit of thought to optimise your gear correctly. The wrong thing to do is simply look at the lists above and blindly follow them. You have to engage the grey matter and look at how your various numbers stand.
"Example": You have just looted some shiny new boots with mastery and spirit instead of haste and spirit. This drops your haste value down to 1987. What do you do? The wrong thing to do is just go and buy the Lavawalker enchant "because thats the best". In this case it isn't the best option as your 2005 breakpoint for haste is very important and dropping below that will see a reduction in your healing throughput. Now there are a number of options to remedy this problem:
* Gemming: This is the simplest and probably cheapest. You are 18 haste below the level you need, this is nearly the value of a single haste/intellect (20/20) gem or the difference in haste between a haste/int (20/20) and pure haste gem (40). Look at the rest of your gear, do you have a yellow socket with a Reckless (haste/int) gem in it? If so swap it to a Quick (pure haste) gem, voil`a you now have 2007 haste. Personally I would go for this option as you do not gain too much excess haste (only 2 points above the breakpoint) for the loss of only 20 intellect.
* Reforging: The boots have mastery, and also spirit. Choose whichever you can afford to lose and reforge it to haste. The disadvantage of this is that, depending on how much mastery/spirit there is on the boots, 40% might push you well above the haste breakpoint and therefore the extra haste is worth less than the extra mastery/spirit would have been.
* Enchanting: Looking at the list of possible boots enchants, we see there is a +50 haste enchant as well as Lavawalker. If you get the haste enchant, it pushes your haste up to 2037. Similarly to reforging though, this has some "wasted" haste i.e. haste above the breakpoint that is worth less than another stat would be.
Now, of those 3 options, I would go with the regemming as that would result in the least amount of "wasted" haste. However, before anyone jumps on me for saying it's "wasted", I will clarify what I mean by that. By wasted, I mean that the XXX points of haste are worth less in terms of throughput than the same amount of points in another stat. The extra haste rating will decrease your cast time still by a tiny fraction of a second, but that will not increase your healing as much as the same amount of mastery or intellect.
As you can see, once you delve a little deeper into enhancing your gear, things are not so black and white as "EJ says XXX is best enchant for XXX item and you must always reforge into spirit".
The key point with balancing your item enhancement is to THINK. Do not just follow blindly a list of enchantments, gems etc without checking that you are following the best course. Also, while every item that can be gemmed and enchanted should be, it is not the same with reforging. An item that already has nice stats on it doesn't always have to be reforged, again check it first.
A NOTE REGARDING REFORGING/OPTIMISATION WEBSITES AND ADDONS
There are many addons and sites on the web that claim to be able to optimise your character's gems, reforging etc just by entering in you name and realm and pressing a button. These are useful, but ultimately just a tool. Some of them have given ridiculous results in the past - two examples are I was told to reforge, regem etc in order to get 1850 haste rating and I know a enhancement shaman that was told to reforge all his crit to spirit.
However, they do have a place. If you know what you are looking for, and know what would be right and wrong, these addons and sites can help you do the maths behind the enhancements so you don't have to. Run your character through and see what it comes out with. In the case of a resto druid check that you are not stuck between breakpoints (these days there is no real reason to not be able to reach 2005 haste), make sure it isn't trying to reforge everything to spirit if you feel your regen is ok and so on. All it can do is maths, you know how your character plays and "feels", if you are good with 1700 spirit then don't reforge everything into spirit.
SO, FINALLY.
If all the stats, names, options etc in this post have left you confused, then make sure you take away just one lesson from reading this - make sure you know WHAT and WHY you are doing things to your gear. Don't just automatically do what's "best" without understanding why you have to do it - it may not be the best for you.
Kat
Origin: spellscasting.blogspot.com
