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Bepa, a fellow resto druid on my server, got talking with me in whispers about various druidy things, mainly regarding the elusive Dreamstate spec. "Have you tried out the Dreamstate spec? Is it at all viable in WotLK, post 3.1? I'd think it would be great for mana regeneration. What do you think?" she asked.
My thoughts:
1. You have to use 28 talent points in the balance tree to get to 3/3 Dreamstate. That's quite a lot of talents in Balance.
2. You can still make it up to the Tree of Life talent; you can even get 2/3 Improved Tree of Life if you skimp on talents as you go up the Resto tree (yet still take Nature's Swiftness and Swiftmend). But that's where it stops. Therefore, you don't get Wild Growth.
3. 3/3 Dreamstate gives you extra mp5 equal to 10% of your intellect. How much mp5 does this translate into? Well right now I have around 1,000 Intellect, give or take some raid buffs. It's probably a bit more than that, but we'll call it a nice even number. This means I'd regen 100mp5 from my Dreamstate talent. Just for comparison: My regular in combat regen is somewhere around 300mp5 and Replenishment gives me about 235 mp5 when it procs for its 15 second duration.
So you drop 28 points in Balance, lose Wild Growth, and pick up 100 mp5.
Is this worth it?
1. If you're healing in Ulduar: No. Regardless of whether you do 10s or 25s, you need Wild Growth. Seriously. If you don't have Wild Growth, you're going to *severely* stress your other healers when the AoE damage hits the fan.
2. If you're still healing in Naxx: No. Naxx is straight forward enough (I don't want to say *easy*, because some guilds are still working their way through it, and that's totally cool) that you shouldn't be running out of mana. Druid Main points this out quite nicely here. There are many times where you hot up the tank and then just sit and wait, refreshing hots when needed. WG is still useful as well, here.
3. If you're a new 80 and healing in 5 mans: Well, maybe! If you're struggling with mana regen, then I'd say you could give it a go. This would really be the only situation in which I'd use it, though.
4. If you're leveling as resto but don't want it to take 20 minutes to kill something: Absolutely, for a number of reasons. Having 28 points in balance gives you a damage boost (you get insect swarm, for instance), while also being able to still heal yourself and others competently. You also won't have to stop and drink after a few pulls, because your mana regen will be boosted with Dreamstate.
For me, I'm not even going to attempt to spec like this, even just to try it out, for a 25man raid night. The only time I'd do it (and I plan to) is on an off night where I can run a few 5s with some people. I honestly think we would fail in Ulduar. I use Wild Growth so much it's not even funny. There is just SO much raid wide damage going out - it would be a bad idea to gimp myself like that.
The other thing is, not only do you limit yourself with the lack of WG, you also lose a LOT of your talents on the way up to Improved ToL. You have to take the bare minimum to get all the up the resto tree like that.
Long story short: The extra 100mp5 (give or take, depending on your intellect) you get from Dreamstate isn't worth the Wild Growth and other healing talents you'd lose if you're healing in 10 or 25 man groups.
EDIT: At some point soon I'll spec into Dreamstate and find a 5 man run to try it out. I'll let you know how much my healing is nerfed. =)
Also: another edit. What if you're not planning on raid healing? What if you want to take a lot of points in Healing Touch and go Dreamstate and take on the role of a paladin healer, rocking the MT heals? Would that work?
Unfortunately I can't answer these right this second, but later tonight I'll get into them.
Has anyone tried Dreamstate spec who can speak about it from experience?
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Wednesday, April 29, 2009
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4 remarks:
omg) Maybe just use an innervate glyph, uh?^^
I haven't tried Dreamstate, but I've been using a Glyphed HT spec as my secondary spec (with no innervate glyph). That spec gets Wild Growth but no Living Seed or Subtlety (which has surprisingly not caused problems--I thought adds would eat me). There's no mana problems so far, but we've been taking 7 healers in Ulduar. If my mana had to stretch farther I'd probably go with a conventional spec, but for raid healing a quick HT is nice for all the special abilities--Slag Pot, Kologarn's arm, Light Bomb, Gravity Bomb. It's faster and more output that Nourish w/out HoTs but it takes a lot of talents. If I'm tank healing I switch back to the standard 14/0/57. My HT also clips the GCD, but it's a small price to pay. I'm not often spamming it. It's a great thing to hit once.
I'm a raid healer currently going through ulduar with my guild and I have 2 healing specs, dreamstate is a great spec for single target tank healing. Don't forget that on your way up to dreamstate you also get extra spellpower through lunar guidance, it works out to an extra 120 spellpower on top of the mp5. I recommend dreamstate as a second spec or if you are expected to tank heal. Also you can get the talent that improves your thorns to give your tanks a little extra damage.
This spec is definitely one overlooked and under respected in the age of EJ cookie cutter builds and relying on spreadsheet theorycraft rather than real world experience. The spec, when done properly, maximizes druid direct healing spells (Nourish, healing touch, and swiftmend). Unlike a BC dreamstate druid, the extra talent points now let dreamstate druids pick up important talents like omen of clarity, swiftmend and improved tranquility. Living seed, which procs off direct heal crits adds extra healing, and rejuv is used on current target as a bolster. The idea behind dreamstate is healing is powerful direct heals. Nourish crits proc nature’s grace and natures grace makes nourish a 1 sec cast in TOC/ICC 10 gear. Couple that with nature’s bounty talent and your main healing spell has a huge crit chance. Empowered touch gives you even more healing from your sp, and if you stack int you can see mana pools in the 35k+ range in TOC/ICC10 gear and raid buffs. The downside is you don’t have the extra armor of taking tree form. Since the aura is shared with paladins spec’d into improved devo its no real loss. Also if situations were spamming nourish on the raid gets out of hand, specing into improved tranquility gives you a raidwide heal, equivalent to spamming nourish, and only a 3 min CD making it quite useful IF a 1 sec nourish gets outta hand. If you prefer healing style of a holy paladin or a disc priest, dreamstate healing will come naturally to you. If you’re used to hotting then don’t bother with the spec, itll feel strange. It is still very viable in raiding though. A good dreamstate healer can do anything a flash of light paly can do, only better when spec'd properly for it. Keep in mind nourish > glyphed healing touch for this spec. It costs less, heals more when a hot is on the target, and crits a LOT more letting you make use of the crit based talents
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