[Resto] Druid Guide - 5.0+

[Lysah]

Get more/better tank healers, more/better raid healers or get a tank that dosent eat it with the first hit.

Too late, boss is dead.

[Iamtheway]

Whether or not the boss is dead, its still something worth looking into if a resto druid has been forced to focus on the tank through sheer damage while the raid is also taking damage. go through your combat logs and see what all is going on and how much of a % the other healers are healing on whom.

Streamlining your healing core will go a long way to progression on intense fights and will lead to a tight knit team that is ready for anything. Ive seen it in alot of guilds where it was one-3 healers who were just randomly healing something/anything they could to get their numbers up and the guild was stuck on certain bosses because of tanks dying, healers dying, and other random things not being done correctly. The problem was fixed and soon after all the bosses the guild was having problems with died in the same night.

*edit* streamlining will also allow you to run with less healers, and more dps to down the bosses quicker. there were a couple instances in wrath where we were able to allow 3 or 4 of our healers to switch to dps and down the boss that much faster with only 2 or 3 people healing.*edit*

As to the omen of clarity adjustments, there are several things i think it could be.

Healers not taking the talent thinking it was useless when it was intended by blizzard and they noticed it. It was proccing far too often for moonkins while they had a hot out(one stack of LB on themselves) and the regen numbers of it proccing with their healing spells along with their dps spells was noticeably enough to require fixing.

I think its a minor class adjustment, and am wondering why the community in this forum is focusing on it at all. Im more excited about the reduction to rejuv, the reduced cast time to nourish(yay im an actual raid healer again!) and other things.

[Lysah]

I don't disagree, I am merely stating what was required on my part to keep the kill moving. If it makes you feel better, I also popped tree of life with heroism and spammed that 8k DPS wrath. Considering he died while enraged, every bit helps. Yay for 22 manning a 25 man boss.

[Zeppelin535]

Does anyone have the math on Mandala of Stirring Patterns after the change from mastery to int? Specifically how much regen the trinket gives total at average levels of base int using Innervate during the proc.

I am very curious if it is an upgrade versus Tear of Blood (Heroic).

[syhairis]

I recently got Je'Tze's Sparkling Tiara


it dropped off trash in reg grim. trash
my guild gave it to me to use
I understand i would lose my 5% from leather specialization but so far it seems like it would be BIS for now
should i stick with it or go with something else?

[Myrrar]

I recently got Je'Tze's Sparkling Tiara


it dropped off trash in reg grim. trash
my guild gave it to me to use
I understand i would lose my 5% from leather specialization but so far it seems like it would be BIS for now
should i stick with it or go with something else?

Give it to a clothy. You don't want to break your specialization. That one piece wont make up for 5% int.

[syhairis]

kk thanks for the info and guide!

[Zeppelin535]

I recently got Je'Tze's Sparkling Tiara


it dropped off trash in reg grim. trash
my guild gave it to me to use
I understand i would lose my 5% from leather specialization but so far it seems like it would be BIS for now
should i stick with it or go with something else?

BIS for now =|= BIS

Anyways, as Myrrar said, there is no way one piece could make up for the 5% int loss.

[rsenour]

thank you thank you for this amazing article. really helps one question though, i put in the healing touch macro, but it doesn't work, my char says "you have to target something first" ive double checked it and i typed it right, any ideas?

thanks in advance

[Cerelli]

thank you thank you for this amazing article. really helps one question though, i put in the healing touch macro, but it doesn't work, my char says "you have to target something first" ive double checked it and i typed it right, any ideas?

thanks in advance

If you are using an addon like vuhdo or healbot then you will need to add the mod specific targeting command

/cast [target=vuhdo] Healing Touch

or

/cast [target=hbtarget] Healing Touch

if you aren't using one of those mods then you might try copy/pasting directly from the guide into your macro screen. and make sure you have auto self casting enabled in your interface options.

[Iamtheway]

ALso make sure that the option to cast on your self when no target is selected is checked(bliz options)

and i hate vuhdoo and healbot, ugh

simple HT macro is:

/cast Nature's Swiftness
/cast Healing Touch

Simple, easy, randomly dosent cast NS(and will cast HT if NS is on CD or isnt triggered)

AND

For those of you who actually read through all 11 pages of this thread, and STILL have questions/dont know what else to do to improve your healing or would like to have a resto druid conversation in game, just contact me on my server im almost always on my druid during the day.

[Deleted]

If you're using any kind of grid or similiar, a mouse over macro might be more helpful, in which case it would look like this:

#showtooltip
/cast Nature's Swiftness
/cast [target=mouseover,help] Healing Touch; [help] Healing Touch; Healing Touch

If you need an explanation of what the different things is, have a look here:
[url="http://www.worldofmatticus.com/2009/03/23/a-guide-to-mouseover-macros/">A guide to Mouse over Macros[/url]

[Rakydei]

Erhm, I'm not sure, but wouldnt the change to healing mechanics of druids in the upcoming patch make them retartedly OP in tankhealing in 25mans? The way I see it, you go treeform at the start of the fight, put triple lifeblooms on all 3 tanks, refresh em with nourish during ToL, and after ToL runs out keep 3 rejuvs on the tanks and refresh the LB stacks with nourish. It'd cost quite little mana for the throughput you're getting from it, since each tank would have a rejuv and 3 lifebloom stacks on em, and a nourish every now and then as well

[Thalur]

If tank healing like this was required in 25mans, druids would already be very strong. However, it is not, so healers are judged by their raid healing capacities, which are brought up with the patch.

[Rakydei]

For a boss like halfus (first half) this seems to be very good throughputwise, and manawise you're better off than spamming HT/rejuv as well

[Iamtheway]

Erhm, I'm not sure, but wouldnt the change to healing mechanics of druids in the upcoming patch make them retartedly OP in tankhealing in 25mans? The way I see it, you go treeform at the start of the fight, put triple lifeblooms on all 3 tanks, refresh em with nourish during ToL, and after ToL runs out keep 3 rejuvs on the tanks and refresh the LB stacks with nourish. It'd cost quite little mana for the throughput you're getting from it, since each tank would have a rejuv and 3 lifebloom stacks on em, and a nourish every now and then as well

interesting idea

the problem would be that your overall throughput would be focused on the tanks and maintaining your LB on them for however long you choose to do it while about the only thing you can do to the raid would be to rejuv random ppl. BUT if you are designated as a tank healer, and healing nothing else, it looks pretty sound.

I'm too much of a worry wart when it comes to the raid and my ADD would eventually get to me

[Dewdrops]

I'm new to the forums, however I joined just so I could put my input on this

LB on tank at all times, but instead of using nourish or HT to renew it, another LB suffices if there isn't much damage going on, why waste that extra mana? My LB costs me 1100 mana to refresh, opposed to 3-5k mana to refresh it with a nourish or HT.
Regrowth as tank starts taking damage, I generally see most trash having awesome burst at the beginning of fights....wish our dps had as much lol.
Using that Regrowth, I can use swiftmend twice on the tank before it goes off, and then I regrowth again, not only so it's there to SM off of, but it's usually needed about that time.
I use wild growth whenever it's off cd.
Heroic mobs almost all have a magic to cast on your party. Being able to dispel it.... is a true life saver.

For bosses it's much the same, however depending on the boss, if the tank is the only one taking most of the damage, I'll keep him stacked with LB and then use Regrowth and toss rejuv on him along with sm and wg whenever they are up....That is alot of HOTS adding up right there with the efflor hitting the melee too just in case as well as the wg hitting entire party.

This method is something I had to experiment with, and still am, but for speed casting in places where you shouldn't stand still long, like in Halls Of Origination, I found I have to move at least every 6 seconds to avoid being targetted by the beams. (something I tell every group because I found this out with experimentation as well and works awesome) In that 6 seconds, I can hit 3 people with regrowth if needed and move myself out of harms' way, knowing they got a decent size heal and also a small HOT to work on them until the next time I can have them within range and able to sit still for another 6 seconds. Also in that fight, you HAVE to be able to dispel the magic the boss puts on the tank, or you are sure to wipe.

So, not only is it viable to use mainly RG with your other hots in heroics, for me, it works great. I don't have to sit after every trash pull, or boss either for that matter.

I've only been to a couple Baradin Hold runs on my druid for my raid experience right now, but I find the dispel magic a necessity there too as you only have 2 heals, one for each group of 5, and all the dps have to lay out the dps like no tomorrow, not be bothered with being assigned to a dispel. There is a very potent magic that goes out on the group that MUST be dispelled or they die, period. I've used the same heal technique in those raids as well, but will have to tweak things once I start doing other raids I am sure.

Just wanted to put my .02 in. Hope it helps somebody.

BTW, if you want to look at my spec, my druid is Dewdrops on Icecrown US. ( I have a bit of tweaking to do, as I said, so it may not be the same twice :P also, I logged out in balance doing dailies, however the gear is my resto gear and you can click on the resto spec in armory)

[Rakydei]

You really should rely way less on Regrowth, its one of the least efficient spells, and a real mana drain on top of that. I would suggest using Regrowth as little as possible, since it costs around 6K mana, opposed to for example nourish´s 1.8K mana. On top of that regrowth doesnt refresh lifebloom stacks (although the plan is to let regrowth refresh LB stacks in the next patch).

Rejuvenation might not have a lot of burst healing, but its a lot more efficient than regrowth. For heroics (if you don't feel like running OOM every trashpull) I'd suggest relying on lifebloom and nourish, with Healing Touch on clearcasts/when needed and rejuv as an extra buffer or on heavy movement fights - just dont spam it

For example, in my gear 4 rejuv ticks (plus the talented heal on casting rejuv, forgot the name) give a total of 19548 healing (non-crit) for a mana cost of 4845 mana. This turns out to be 19548/4845=4,03 healing per mana (and obviously has a 1 sec "cast time" because of the talent reducing the gcd on rejuv bij 0.5 secs, so has 19548 HPS)

Regrowth on the other hand crit heals for around 13897 (including the hot which you are overwriting when spamming regrowth, so around 10.8K without the hot part) while costing 6522 mana. This turns out to be 13897/6522 = 2,13 healing per mana and 13897/1.34 (cast time of RG with 1495 haste) = 10370 HPS


Healing Touch heals for 18754 health costing 5590 mana -> 18754/5590 = 3,35 healing per mana with 18754/2.24(cast time of HT with 1495 haste) = 8370 HPS


So the HPS difference between HT and RG is quite small (about 2K HPS) while the healing per mana of said spells is very different: Healing Touch gives you more than 1.5 times as much healing for your mana! Rejuvenation has even better efficiency, and costs less mana than regrowth, and also has higher HPS

this might be an incomplete view (not taking nourish/mastery etc in account), but for this purpose it shows there really almost allways is a better alternative to regrowth

[Myrrar]

text

Nourish is 10% base mana while LB is 7%. If you are correctly gemed, enchanted, geared(etc) you should see as much difference using LB as nourish. If your tank is 100%, you don't need to nourish. If you need to be healing someone else, you don't need to nourish. Your tank isn't 100% and no one else is in need of healing, no reason not to nourish.

There is also no reason to use RG outside of CC procs or if they are going to die without it. Your hots should be more than enough to take care of them + nourish.

If you have enough mana to spam expensive spells but your hots aren't doing enough to keep the group up something is wrong stat wise.

[djpete]

Nourish is 10% base mana while LB is 7%. If you are correctly gemed, enchanted, geared(etc) you should see as much difference using LB as nourish. If your tank is 100%, you don't need to nourish. If you need to be healing someone else, you don't need to nourish. Your tank isn't 100% and no one else is in need of healing, no reason not to nourish.

There is also no reason to use RG outside of CC procs or if they are going to die without it. Your hots should be more than enough to take care of them + nourish.

If you have enough mana to spam expensive spells but your hots aren't doing enough to keep the group up something is wrong stat wise.

Pretty much sums it up right there. Outside of tree form, only use RG when you get omen proc and even then, HT should be used. Because if everyone is topped off, get a free refresh on your LB stack. And if anyone requires a heal, why not "risk" overhealing when it costs 0 mana?

However, Blizz realizes this and is giving us 1) better mastery, 2) a slightly more justified reason to use RG over HT during omen procs. Of course, in tree form, the RG changes are VERY welcomed.