Hi,
I’d like to know why Mr. Robot is undervaluing the azerite trait Autumn Leaves for resto druid raid healing? Pretty much every resource (Questionably Epic, Icy Veins, Wowhead) says it’s pretty much invaluable in raids. This of course means that haste becomes that much more important. Yet Mr. Robot suggest some lower tier traits and stacking versatility for my character. Do you have a specific reason for this, or is the gearing strategy still WiP?
Thanks in advance.
We use a unique method for evaluating healing gear: Simulation. Right now the Raid Healing gearing strategy is based off of the Vectus encounter in Uldir. We simulate and account for many more variables than you can without a simulator: Some examples are: real damage patterns, the other healers in the raid, the damage reduction that you get from Versatility (that’s free healing!), etc. This often leads to significantly different advice than what you see from other places that are using a less complex model of the game.
Here is a 4 part blog series on our methodology: Healer simulations (Part 1) – Factors that need to be accounted for – Ask Mr. Robot
Regarding Autumn Leaves in particular: For that trait to be considered the best trait, it would require a significant alteration to play style in raids. I will take a closer look at it and see if altering your play to leverage it more can end up with it ranking higher. It really kind of works against mastery to some degree though… which limits the power of it. Also, I’m highly suspect of stacking three of one trait when you have a trait like Waking Dream available. The portion of that trait which lowers the interval to 4 sec is strong and doesn’t stack. Having one of that trait is going to be very worthwhile, just as an example.
I did an update last night that re-ranks Autumn Leaves. I double-checked our implementation and cleaned it up a bit - I had it lumped in with Rejuvenation instead of showing up as its own line in the simulation reports, which was making it hard to debug.
I also changed the rotation to make specific use of it if you have 2+ of the power. I’m still not seeing it as the strongest power, but at least now it will rank more competitively with other powers.
It changes the play style by a lot. Keep in mind that you can’t use Spring blossoms, germination or even the inner ring trait that puts a hot (Concentrated Mending)
I found that using Wild Growth isn’t even really good to do if you are going for a 3x Autumn Leaves build.
I found that too while playing the spec. I must admit, I don’t like the playstyle that much.