So we all know by now about the mana regen nerfs in 3.1. Aside from the players who did extensive raiding on the PTR, we don't really know how intensive the Ulduar fights will be, or how scarce mana will be.
It's best to be prepared for every scenario going into Ulduar - you want various food buffs, flasks, trinkets, etc. so that you can switch things around if a certain flask of food buff isn't working out. There are a lot of different combinations of buffs you can use, and the trick is finding what's best for you. As always, spell power is pretty much king, but we may a couple more mana buffs here and there.
So what should you have in your bags?
Food buffs
Right now I use Tender Shoveltusk Steak. It's the best spell power food out there. There's also a fish version, Firecracker Salmon, but I don't make those because my fishing is abysmal, and plus, AoEing those shoveltusks is really, really satisfying. Barkskin, Hurricane, ???, profit. So good.
There are two other options you can use: Cuttlesteak, which is the best boost to spirit you'll get from a food buff (there's no meat equivalent for this, unfortunately). There's also Mighty Rhino Dogs and the fish equivalent, Spicy Fried Herring, which both boost your mp5. If you're going to use one of these, I'd skip the mp5 food and go with the spirit.
There's nothing yet in WotLK which will boost your spell power *and* your spirit. However, if you want the best of both worlds, you could go with the TBC food Golden Fish Sticks. However, don't disregard the loss of stamina if you take this buff - you might end up needing a little extra in Ulduar.
Flasks
You have two that you should be looking at: Flask of the Frost Wyrm, or Flask of Pure Mojo. If at ALL possible, you want to keep the Frost Wyrm flask. This is your biggest, baddest spell power buff: 125 spell power (162 spell power for alchemists). If you're going to give up some sort of spell power buff in favor of a mana regen buff, try not to give up this one! It's too good to replace.
Trinkets
There are a multitude of spell power and mana regen trinkets. Let's look at the spell power ones first.
- The Egg of Mortal Essence: Purchasable with 40 emblems of heroism.
- Embrace of the Spider: Essentially the same exact trinket as the Egg. Drops from either Maexxna or Gluth in 10 man Naxx.
- Darkmoon Card: Illusion: Made from the Darkmoon Prisms deck.
- Forethought Talisman: Drops off of various bosses in 25 man Naxx. The HoT procs only from direct heals, so it may be better suited for a Paladin healer - however, if you can get your hands on this, it's a good chunk of spell power, and after 3.1 we'll be casting more direct heals anyway.
- Illustration of the Dragon Soul: The best spell power trinket out there. Essentially it gives you +200 spell power. Drops off of 25 man Sarth.
There are also a good number of mana regen trinkets out there (I'll focus on the spirit ones):
- Darkmoon Card: Greatness (the spirit one): Made from the Darkmoon Nobles deck.
- Majestic Dragon Figurine: Essentially a +180 spirit trinket. Drops from 10 man Sarth.
- Spirit-World Glass: drops from Gothik in 10 man Naxx. This trinket would be fantastic to macro with your Innervate.
/use Spirit-World Glass
I tested it out on the PTR and it works like a charm. An Innervate alone gave me 9.5k mana back (without casting anything). Hitting the SWG right before the Innervate gave me 14.5k mana. Sweet!
/use Innervate - Je'Tze's Bell: The best of both worlds. It's a random BoE, so look for it on the AH!
Glyphs
You could technically get the Glyph of Innervate and use it on yourself to really boost your mana regen. You can check out how much mana you'd potentially get back here (I checked it out on the PTR).
Gems and Enchants
You may want to shift out some Runed Scarlet Rubies for Luminous Monarch Topaz or Purified Twilight Opal. This way you keep some of your spell power throughput, but buff your mana regen at the same time. As for enchants, make sure you have the +18 spirit to boots.
My point of this post is that there are many, many ways to make sure you don't run out of mana come 3.1. The trick is choosing buffs that will keep your mana regen in the green, while also maintaining your spell power and overall raw healing.
So what will I be doing? When we first step foot into Ulduar, I'm keeping all of my spell power buffs. Shoveltusk food buff, Flask of the Frost Wyrm, spell power gems. However, I'll have a Flask of Pure Mojo and a bunch of Cuttlesteak in my bags. If I find I'm running out of mana, I'll switch out to the Cuttlesteak food buff - and then if I'm STILL running out of mana, I'll take the Mojo flask.
After that first run, we should all have a better idea of where we're at in terms of our mana. I'm hoping that I'll be able to just regem a couple pieces of gear and use a spirit food buff to get my mana back in working condition. Changing out glyphs, trinkets, and flasks all devoted to straight spell power can really make your throughput plummet.
So what's your plan? Have any specific mana regen items you're planning on using? I'd love to hear ideas!
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19 remarks:
To note- the Embrace of the Spider is not the same trinket as the Egg of Mortal Essence. Egg works on healing spells only- Embrace works on all spells (and is, thus, the single best trinket in the game for moonkin [and certain other DPS casters]).
@ Llanion: It's essentially the same trinket for healers. Note that this *is* a resto druid blog =D
/snark off (I'm just joking with you ^^)
In all seriousness, thanks for bringing that to my attention; I hadn't even seen the difference in wording!
That just means it's extra-delicious for restos who might moonlight (see wut I did thar?) as Balance. (;
Although, is a haste proc really all that wonderful for a resto?
I've done some pretty extensive raiding on PTR. In my opinion, druid's aren't getting hit as hard as most people think we are (with the exception of lifebloom). For the regen, the nerf really only affects out of FSR regen. Personally, I'm using the majority of the available GCDs and am rarely out of FSR.
The only real hit is from the reduced mana gained from Innervate. However, with the glyph and Spirit World Glass, I was still able to get all of my mana back.
If you have already begun to modify your lifebloom usage in current raids, the going OOM is still a rather hard thing to do. Thus, my personal opinion is to keep stacking the Spell Power.
I've fished up plenty borean Man-o-Wars to make the new Black Jelly recipe to help speed up down time in between pulls/when soloing. =)
I'm going to be following the same suck it and see principle for the first few nights, and modify as I go along. I might change some gems to include spirit and mp5 to make sure I have all my socket bonuses given the increased potential of crit.
My guild was trying for Sarth 3d the last few nights and nothing beats MT healing whilst staying on full mana. I highly recommend the spirit trinket from Sarth 10, it is literally up all the time!
Love the blog!
Just a comment i think someone did the comparison in EJ (i think) between the Darkmoon card: +90 Int vs Darkmoon card: +90 Spirit version it turn out that the int version gave a better return on mana. Just my 2 cent : )
Oh yeah I forgot to mention about Greatness, what anon said appears to be correct, the effect should still be ocurring on spirit as that's your highest stat.
The maths was on EJ and I read it somewhere else as well, I forget where.
I got the bell yesterday right in time for Ulduar hit! :) A guildy was soo nice to buy it for a cheap price and sell it to me without profit. I'm rlly exited how it works out. I also use Blue Dragon card btw for manaregen (its not too bad).
Don't know if this is obvious or not, but I have innervate in a macro which includes equipping the spare, high spirit weapon I keep in my bags. As soon as the innervate is over, you just have to remember to re-equip your high spellpower weapon.
"Don't know if this is obvious or not, but I have innervate in a macro which includes equipping the spare, high spirit weapon I keep in my bags."
I do this in addition to using a macro to use the sprit world glass with innervate if it is equipped (it is also macro'd to me :D),but what I also do is use outfitter which automatically re-equips your mace and off hand when innervate finishes.neat eh! I use a staff with high spirit with the spirit enchant on it.
I enjoyed the post, hope you update or make another post similiar after you test Ulduar out. :)
The Talisman of Forethought is for direct healing correct but you would be suprised how often it procs, even pre3.1 when our direct heals were not the focus. So please do not pass up on this opportunity. Swiftmend and bloom both count as direct heals as well as the obvious ones.
(Be wary of the Greatness Card, that procs for your highest stat)
Just thought I would mention those. :)
Also no mention on revitalise? Any reason? This is a talent that frustrates me, 3 points for 1% mana returned to the raid compared to the counterparts such as Rage? Not to mention how it procs and works.
Some 4 hour raids I note to only receive 3k back, priests receive the best benefit from this by far hitting 15k, though i wonder if their shadow fiend was hit with the amount of mana returned as our innervate was.
10/25 man content, I have felt a difference in regeneration also how I make our tanks slow their pace now as I no longer tick for over 1k ooc, so sad :P
still struggling to get into a habit of letting lb bloom so often :P
lastly and I know this is a long comment, I cant find a home for druid blogging lately so I apologize, is haste worth it? I nosied at the first guild to clear Ulduar and their druid was stacking it...I have felt its a pretty useless stat to us.
Then (and woot youre in the last yard of questions and things) what would you say is the best number for spirit to hit? Further from that would you aim to stack Int above Spi?
I stopped stacking SP, am I making a mistake?
Thank you for the advice! I was looking around for these and so far yours is the best I've read ;3 *subscribes*
Went into ulduar first time last weekend, and I was pretty nervous to see what it all brought.
I didn't really notice any difference concerning regen during fights, apart from the nerf on innervate. I am really pleased with that :D
Gonna keep Smartteaus company, and prioritize spellpower for now, but try to keep regen in the same order of ratio.
Infact the Egg of Mortal Essence is alot better if you really are gagging for the haste proc from it.
The Egg of Mortal Essence is able to proc of ticks of any of your hots -as well as- casting any healing spells. How ever the Embrace of the Spider only procs are casts so you would still get the effect if you casted a HoT but not from the ticks of it! :) I don't mind too much to be honest i use the spider mixed with Illustration of the dragon soul, haste is nice but i'm too lazy to save up 40 badges just so i have more of a chance to make my nourish speed up.
Anyway great post, i replaced alot of my gems to what you said and it helped i was suprised that having bigger mana pool really works in the form of Sp/int gems.
Am I the only one that uses Lifebloom only when I get clearcasting? Thus getting 490, basically for free when it blooms?
@Drood: Nope, I think most people do that. I know I do.
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