Patch 4.0 : Adding Some Clarifications

You can find the Resto Druid Review for Patch 4.0 there.

After my first raid tonight, I have to admit that I'm pretty happy with the current state of the Restoration Druid. Efflorescence is very good in a 25, Mastery works fine, Crit on hot is nice and Haste is still very good. But the gameplay didn't change much. From my first experience, here is what I can say :

• We still blanket the raid with Rejuvenation but we give priority to players with Wild Growth already.
• Wild Growth seems to target players already affected by Rejuvenation if they are full HP.
• As planned, mana regeneration is quite insane with an average 277 gear.
• If you keep Lifebloom on the tank you will almost never have any mana issues.
• I always use Swiftmend to proc Efflorescence. In 25m raid, a well positioned Efflorescence heals a lot.
• ToL is very nice in tricky situations. Spamming Regrowth while keeping Wild Growth and Efflorescence on cooldown is incredibly effective.
• I never used Innervate and never dropped under 50%. I play with the Glyph and I have the opportunity to throw my Innervate on someone else.
• After the raid I reforged all my spirit for Crit and Haste. I strongly recommend to do something like that. See below.

The current gameplay is definitely very different from the Cataclysm one. Actually, our gameplay looks a lot like before the patch. In Cataclysm we will no longer blanket the raid with Rejuvenation, at least not as much as we can do now. Thus, you currently don't need to reforge for Mastery since you benefit from it to a lesser extent compared to Cataclysm. In Cataclysm you will have more time to choose and less room to spam. You will pay attention to hotted target a lot more than now.

Regarding gems and meta, I have kept my previous optimization with full 20 intellect and some 10 int + 10 haste. Obviously all 23sp gems have been replaced by 20 int gem, which now fills a red socket. I have also dropped all my cloth gear to get the Leater Specialisation (+5% intellect when you wear only leather). I equipped my boomkin chest and everything is fine. The little trick come from the meta. I changed it to the 22 spirit + 3% increase critical heals, which now gives quite a good throughtput improvement.

On a side note, you can use Spell+Crit enchant instead of Spell+Spirit on Head and Shoulder.

Reading forums, it seems that Nature's Ward is bugged and has no internal cd. Along with  the GotEM talent, some players might be able to solo heroics.