Does anyone know why everyone is stacking vers and haste? Every single top druid is stacking this? I’m personally doing mastery cuz I heard its best for healing… is vers beating it in healing? Idc about damage I just wanna do insane healing as much as possible… 
Top Druids stack versatility because it offers defense and offense as well as increased healing.
When you’re doing the level of content they’re doing you need as much damage as you can get and any passive defense means less healing. Meaning more time for dpsing.
So if the highest I do is + 21 and mythic content but not like super crazy and want insane healing stick to mastery?
If it’s working for you than go for it. As long as you’re timing your runs then it shouldn’t be a problem.
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Yea im saving around 9 mins for 19 20 keys but i want more healing. I try to dps but everyone takes alot of dmg :0.
Sounds like you are living the pug life.
Well you only go haste so far till the DR hits hard and its no longer worthwhile. After that verse then madtery become your friends.
Mastery is amazing because it’s the only stat where the benefits stack. If you have 20% Mastery and you have 5 HoTs on your target, that target is getting 100% healing bonus. Keep in mind this includes very minor HoTs such as Grove Tending (from Swiftmend) and Spring Blossoms (from efflorescence), which don’t do much healing on their own, but take on a whole new life when each one is adding an extra 20%+ healing to that target.
Versatility is very nice for increasing your survivability. As you do higher keys, many mechanics begin to become one-shot mechanics. Stamina and Versatility are your best bets at increasing that threshold. But usually it’s not that big of a deal to just do the mechanics correctly.
You also have a huge percentage of people who have gone all-in with the idea that a healer should be doing as much damage as possible, to the point of expecting healers to equip DPS trinkets, use more DPS-oriented talents, etc. You get ZERO dps from mastery, so it’s pretty obvious why those people don’t like mastery…
You should consider whether or not these “top druids” represent what you want out of this game. There is nothing past +20 (+18 in most cases) that actually increases player power. The people trying to push ultra high keys are just doing it so that they can brag about their IO score, and maybe get some random achievements and cosmetic rewards. Is that why you play?
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Versatility itself also straight increases damage output while mastery does not.
Yes, mastery will give you more healing output than versatility.
Everything you said here is correct, but there is a nuance that I think is important for this discussion that you didn’t cover. Healing output is hard capped. You can only heal the damage your group takes, and a single point of healing beyond that (with the exception of a couple talents and/or any items that interact with overhealing) provides no value.
This statement proportionally affects mastery for similar reasons. If we consider the healing received as a function of mastery, mastery will also have a cap. Once you’ve reached the point where you have enough mastery to keep your group healthy, more mastery falls significantly in value. It’s not a hard cap like with the healing you output because having harder hitting heals will give you a larger margin for error and possibly open up more globals for damage, but there does still reach a point where more mastery provides a theoretical benefit but not much of a practical one. At that point versatility makes more sense because you get damage output, healing output, and defensive value all from that stat compared to the one trick pony of mastery.
I do acknowledge this is getting very deep in the weeds of druid minutiae. I also acknowledge there are many druids especially in Pugland that will never reach a practical limit on their healing possibilities due to never being able to predict the amount of damage their group mates will take. For them, moar mastery very well might always be moar better. But I did think it was worth pointing out that there can be resto druids far below the absolute top of keys who reach a practical limit on how much healing they need for the keys they are running who would also benefit from versatility, even if they aren’t running keys at a level where max damage output is required.
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I get what you are trying to say, but that assumes that you have full knowledge of who will take damage and when. When I heal, I’m not hoping for the best, I’m planning for the worst. I begin to pre-HoT the group the moment the 10 second timer starts at the beginning of the dungeon. Waiting until people have a health deficit to begin putting one or two slow weak HoTs on them is not really an option. I want them to already have at least 2, preferably 3+ HoTs on them before they even take their first tick of damage. So yeah, you can heal damage that your group hasn’t taken yet (pre-HoT), because the alternative is racing to catch up afterward. Overhealing is just part of being a Resto Druid.
I think that a huge part of the issue is the massive disconnect between the people who are always playing with the same coordinated group of people over and over, while also using voice chat, etc, compared to the people who pug. With a coordinated group, you can absolutely get to the point where you can predict what will happen to the other group members, get a feel for how they play, and where and when they will take damage. There would certainly be nothing wrong with a Versatility build or even an overall DPS focused build in that scenario if that is what you prefer.
But at the same time, that is a recipe for disaster when pugging, semi-pugging, or really any situation where you’re not playing with the same people over and over and/or not using voice chat. That is why for most people, simply trying to copy what the “top druids” are doing is not actually the best way to go.
In the vast majority of groups, the best way to contribute DPS is to keep the DPS players alive, dispelled, and at full health.
That wasn’t the point I was trying to make. I’m not saying you sit back on your hands (err paws? roots?) and wait on damage, surely you still need to druid it up to be successful.
What I’m saying is that if you reach the point where you can pretty accurately predict the damage your group will take, you can predict how many HoTs it will take to heal up each person during each damage event before the next. If it takes you 16 seconds to heal up a player from a damage event with wild growth, regrowth, and rejuventation on them and the next damage event will occur in 20 seconds, adding more mastery to knock that healing time down to 14 seconds doesn’t really buy you anything extra, just adds to your overhealing on the back end. Yes it does give you more cushion for unpredictable damage to occur, which can be valuable, but the only tangible benefit you would see is if that extra mastery allows you to skip a GCD entirely (say you now only need wild growth and rejuventation to beat that 20 second damage event).
Oh for sure, especially in Dragonflight. And that’s why I mentioned getting pretty deep into the weeds. I fully recognize I’m getting into a level of optimization that’s hard to pull off in a PUG with the current state of healing. I just wanted to highlight that there does exist another use case beyond just “healer goes brrrrrr because that’s what the streamer I watched does” where versatility is the correct play.
In Dragonflight, this is definitely true. But that hasn’t always been the case, which is part of the motivation for me going down this rabbit hole in the first place. I healed most of my higher level keys in SL and it actually was possible for a straight PUG to offer fairly predictable damage events. By the time we were getting into S3 and definitely S4, I was prioritizing versatility slightly ahead of mastery behind haste. I certainly still wanted some mastery for the healing oomph, but I found that I didn’t really need help with keeping groups alive from the mastery and having more damage and personal defensive capabilities gave me significantly more value.
100%, and that always has been the case unless you were a venthyr holy paladin in SL S1 and S2. It’s just that for anyone who reaches a point where they are comfortable with the healing requirements of the kinds of groups they are running, it’s worth considering starting to mix in some more versatility because it isn’t a one-trick pony like mastery. Anyone who even remotely might need some added healing oomph to keep the group alive should continue on that mastery train without a doubt.
Vers and haste are great stats and if you decide to tank you dont need to change gear
Ty everyone! I will continue stacking mastery as that is what I need for the content I do. I’m not trying to do hard edge of the world content, appreciate it!!
I wouldn’t say mastery does no damage… if you are healing more, you have more globals to spend dpsing or will feel more comfortable with your hps output so you will at least try dpsing more. I want to add that tanks will generally know how your healing is after the first pull, and if they see your healing is amazing that might convince them to pull bigger. Bigger pulls that you keep people alive through let the four other players in the group do much more dps than you lose by not being number 1 fake feral or whatever.
In raid, you want more HPS, so you prioritize Haste then Mastery. Mastery is the second strongest HPS stat, but it provides you with (essentially) zero damage.
In keys, you don’t need the HPS, and you can contribute more by adding damage to your group. So in high keys, most druids shed as much mastery as possible and instead focus on stats that make you do damage, such as crit and vers.
Main stat > haste > verse = mastery = crit.
Changing a bunch of stats from mastery to verse or vice versa won’t have that much of an impact, if any. Mastery used to be very strong, but it saw many nerfs after BfA. The stats are close enough that item level will almost always be the deciding factor.
I am stacking verse because it will help
me in tyrannical keys to avoid certain one shots when I start to push.
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There are a few unavoidable mechanics where extra vers can help, even if you’re generally good at avoiding M+ swirlies. Starting around 16 or 17, at the end of Black Rook Hold, there is a shadow volley that hits before you get an environment buff. It can one shot people if they dont have enough stam/vers or they dont use a defensive cooldown. Save all 3 treants for that one!
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Verdancy can usual handle it, but yeah. Those trees are nuts, it’s a great way to top the group quickly. Idk if I’d drop all 3, though, but I pretty much poop one out every time a mechanic happens.
Personally I prefer Vers over Mastery.
Why?
First, with haste/vers, I don’t have to farm a second set for healing, I can use my tanking gear for the most part.
But second, its how I like to play. with 30% vers, every heal, with or without a HoT on the target gets a 30% increase over baseline. So if I’m doing catweaving, and someone needs just a quick regrowth, pop out, heal it, back to what I was doing. I don’t have to try to maintenance HOT all the time just to try to max the use of mastery.
In a pug, I can never predict which person is going to stand in the bad. but spending 6-8 globals every 20s to keep maintenance buffs up (which is why they really are at that point) is not a compelling playstyle to me. We have enough maintenance buffs to deal with with CW, LB, & AS.
Vers just always works, no matter the situation.
Also, stat scaling for Vers over Mastery is way better, you get more %Vers per point than %mastery, by a pretty significant margin. I did some math a few months back, and given same points, Mastery could never pull ahead of the overall healing from Vers until I hit 3 HoTs on a target. It was actually like 2.25 or something like that, but that’s still 3 HOTS that have to be rolling before mastery provided more HPS to a target overall. When I moved to more vers, I found I had more fun as I wasn’t trying to prehot everything. Sure, big damage (like the soul bomb thing in BRH) I may prehot even with my low mastery, to get as much healing as I can ready. Essentially having high vers lets you shift a bit more to reactionary healing instead of maintenance buff healing.
Now if Mastery benefitted from the tree’s HOTs, sure…story would change pretty quick. But the lack of interaction between trees and the druid’s talents/mastery just seems like an oversight.
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