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  1. #1

    Resto Druids - Healing Guide

    Wrote this up for some guildies and happened to have it in mind when I saw some folks posting about it. Hopefully some of you find it useful. Also, I just wrote this off the cuff so some of my math/numbers might be off, but it should all be pretty close.


    Gear

    Generally you should prioritize something like this:

    Spellpower
    Spirit/Int
    Haste/Crit/MP5
    Stam (Note: You really do want about 20k hp raid buffed though)

    With all other stats being worthless. Spellpower is probably your highest priority because it helps make those hots so much more effective.

    Spirit vs Int is more interesting now. 3.0 I would have told you go to for Spirit always, but after the nerf and the focus on replenishment, I see them as more or less equal. Realistically your gear is going to have a mix anyway and 99% of your enchants are going to be Spellpower.

    Haste vs Crit is more difficult to quantify. Living Seed has made crit a very interesting stat for us. It helps solve the problem of crit heals generally being overheal by putting up a damage shield = to 30% of your crit heal. This will often be 3k-4k worth of healing on a reasonably well set up Nourish (Triple Lifebloom blooms have hit well into 20k heal on a crit but it unfortunately doesn't play with Living Seed.) Haste is tempting because of the lowered global cooldown and speeding up those Nourish Spams. Right now I'm leaning towards Crit when given the choice between two equal sets of gear (common in Heroic/Naxx level items). Uld stuff seems to lean towards Crit. Haste cap w/ GotEM is 359 for a reference point. (Celestial Focus 3% spell haste talent = 253). MP5 is useful, but really doesn't benefit from our talents. Don't run away screaming from it, but it's sorta "Meh".

    There are no specific "minimums" to shoot for. You either have the mana to finish boss fights or you don't. You either are surviving the tantrums or you are not. The only two numbers I tend to look at as being targets are:

    Hitpoints - 20k, with more being better (Buffed)
    Mana Regen - 400-500 mp5, with more sometimes being better, but usually is overkill (Buffed)

    Everything else is preference, really.

    Gems

    Red = Runed Scarlet Ruby (+19 Spell Power)
    Yellow = Luminous Monarch Topaz (+8 Int +9 Spell Power)
    Blue = Purified Twilight Opal (+8 Spirit +9 Spellpower)

    For the Meta-Gem I've really, really gotten to like the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond. It's 600 mana a proc and has a 5% chance to pop per cast, which means it's proccing all the time.Ozmethod puts the numbers at "30 Casts per minute, or one every 2 seconds, IED gives 75 mp5. At 40 cpm, or every 1.5 seconds, it gives 100 mp5. At 60 CPM, which would be a haste-GCD capped druid spamming nonstop, 150 mp5." I've worked on the assumption it provides about 80 mp5. I probably over-value mana regen, but it brings a smile to my face when the other healers are winded and I'm able to keep on chugging.


    Leather vs Cloth

    I my opinion, try to stay with leather if at all possible. Early in your gearing cloth is perfectly acceptable, but Tree of Life now grants an armor bonus similar to bear form so it's relevant. You're looking at about 45% damage reduction on physical damage which places us right near Shaman for squishiness - i.e. not bad. And yes, even good tanks sometimes can't catch an add in time. If you don't think 1% damage reduction makes a difference, think of how many times you've seen somebody survive with 12 - 200 hp.

    Additionally, you can buy a very good healing set off of the AH or craft it extremely cheaply. Druids are lucky this way. Between cloth and leather and the various jewelries, our hardest slot to fill is the trinket, but there are many +SP trinkets and some +MP5 ones that you can get from quests that fit the bill nicely.

    For emphasis, I do not believe that you should roll on cloth against a priest/mage/warlock. I would also not let good cloth get sharded if it was an upgrade. A fresh 80 will almost certainly be wearing a few pieces of cloth. An experienced 80 may have a piece here and there. If you're trying to min/max you may find you have to rely on cloth for Best in Slot gear.

    Glyphs

    Lots of argument on the glyphs in the druid community. Part of it will depend on your play style and part of it your gear level. Generally the used glyphs are:

    Innervate
    Swiftmend
    Nourish
    Wild Growth
    Lifebloom (Drifting towards obsolete, I'd need to see math that makes it worthwhile)
    Regrowth (Obsolete)
    Healing Touch (Obsolete)

    In my opinion the only one set in stone is Swiftmend (And not everybody feels this way). It's simply too mana efficient and convenient to not get. One of the most common moves you'll pull is to throw a Rejuv on a butchered dps followed by an immediate SM. The SM will knock them up out of the danger zone and the Rejuv will continue ticking to top them off.

    I'm also using the Wild Growth and Nourish Glyphs. WG accounts for a tremendous amount of healing. It's also instant cast and will generally heal affected members for about 2k before your other spells even have a chance to land (it ticks every second). The glyph is more useful as a 25 man tool than a 10 though, as even in 25 it can be tough to hit the full 6 targets.

    Nourish vs Healing Touch was a 3.0 debate. I liked the 3.0 HT glyph myself. With the recent changes to Nourish it's very difficult to justify going back to HT in 3.1. Nourish is simply more efficient.

    I would recommend that a Druid with fresher gear look at the Innervate glyph. A healer without mana is worthless, no matter what else can be said. Upcoming changes are going to make Innervate a set amount of mana regenned (15k, give or take) so it will be a much more flexible tool for casting on other people (Prior to this it was either cast on a druid or a priest, and that was it). I'm considering swapping out to this glyph myself in place of Nourish or Wild Growth, although the jury is still out yet.

    The Rejuvination glyph looks good on paper and is actually pretty good for 5 mans. It generally sucks for 10 and 25's though, as anybody who has health low enough to benefit from the proc is almost certainly being targetted by other raid healers.

    Talents/Specs

    Degrador put together a very nice write-up for druid specs. I've copied it here to keep things condensed into one package. I've also made some very minor editting adjustments to integrate it more naturally into this post and fix some very, very rare typos.

    "IMO the base line Resto PvE spec looks like this:

    http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?druid=05320001000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000002300233121315005310500130 31&glyph=000000000000&version=9868

    From here you have 11 points to spend, with your options as follows:

    Balance:

    Nature's Grace: Nature's Grace is primarily a boomkin talent, however it can also be quite useful for tank healing resto druids. The best healing output for tank healing as a resto druid is to have 3xLB plus all other HoTs rolling on the tank whilst spamming Nourish in between. With Nature's Bounty, Nourish has a ~50% chance to crit when raid buffed, and Nature's Grace puts the cast time down to ~1s, so you should have Nature's Grace up almost 100% of the time. That's a huge increase for 3 measily talent points. If you're not tank healing though, the benefit is nowhere near as good. It still can be useful if you're spamming Regrowths on the raid, but otherwise it's pretty useless for HoTs.

    1xBrambles + 3xCelestial Focus: This used to be a popular choice pre-3.1 due to the lack of better options in the resto tree, but since then this option just isn't as attractive. The 3% haste from Celestial Focus can help you reach the GCD cap for HoTs a lot easier (cap is 253 with 3xCelestial Focus, and 359 without it), but you basically have to give up either Tranquil Spirit or Revitalise to do it, and IMO both of those are much more useful.

    Resto:

    Naturalist: Naturalist is only worth considering if you are going for the HT spec, but with the 3.1 changes to Nourish that spec just isn't as viable anymore. As such there really isn't much point in spending points here.

    Tranquil Spirit: As before, the HT spec isn't viable anymore, so the only benefit here is to Nourish. Having said that, it's quite a large benefit to your mana efficiency, and given that it's a reduction in cost rather than actual regen it means it's useful in fights where regen is gimped (General Vezax). Whether or not you need to take this strongly depends on your gear and your healing style. If you're well geared or you don't use Nourish much, then there really isn't much point getting this talent. Otherwise, it can certainly be worth it. The only way to know for sure is to try with & without it to see how you cope mana wise.

    Improved Tranquility: Tranquility is a very powerful healing spell. It provides ~2k HPS to every person in your party for a channeled time of 10s. Unfortunately the long CD basically only makes it useful for 1 cast per boss fight, however this talent reduces it to a 4 min CD easily giving you two, possibly three casts in a fight. I can see this being quite useful in a 10 man raid as that party wide heal is for half the raid, however in 25 mans you're much less likely to get the full benefit of this - it's unlikely everyone in your party will need the healing, especially given there are a lot of other healers who will likely heal your party, so IMO it's not really worth 2 talent points for what is still ultimately a panic button.

    Natural Perfection: Primarily a PvP talent, Natural Perferction is still useful in PvE for the 3% crit chance. Again, the usefulness of this talent depends on your healing style (tank vs raid healing), but personally I think that even for tank healing there are more useful talents to go for than the 3% crit. Note that it does have some synergy with Living Seed and Nature's Grace, but even still crit is not the most useful stat to resto druids.

    Living Seed: Pre 3.1 this talent was a marginal one and often debated amongst resto druids as to the effectiveness of it. Since then, however, it's mostly accepted as being a core resto druid talent. Pre 3.1 it only used to apply to the effective healing done (overheals were ignored), however it now applies to the total healing, and with the buffs to Nourish (particularly Nature's Bounty) you'll likely find Living Seed contributing to 5+% of your healing done, which is quite a lot for 3 talent points. One key thing to remember about the seed is that it still acts as a heal after the damage, rather than a shield to prevent it. That means that if you've got a seed for 3k on someone with 2k health, and they take 3k damage, they will still die before the seed procs to heal them.

    Revitalize: The usefulness of this talent is still debatable. Basically there is a 15% chance per Rejuv tick, or 3% chance per WG tick (per person, regardless of glyph or not), to provide the benefit as listed (16 Runic Power, 8 Energy, 4 Rage, or 1% Mana). If you do the math on this assuming you cast WG on the caster group every single CD, it provides ~150 MP5 to the raid (assuming 5 caster targets every CD), and even more if you're casting Rejuv on the raid as well. Personally I think it's quite a lot to get from 3 talent points, especially given it stacks with all other regen. Of course, it again depends on healing style and assignment, and YMMV.

    Gift of the Earthmother: I only included 3 points in GOTEM in the 'core' spec as not everyone chooses to max out this talent. It could be due to having Celestial Focus and not needing as much from this, or it could be a choice to get other talents instead of saving that 0.1s (or whatever) for the HoTs. Again, you'll have to decide this one for yourself, but personally I think every resto druid (regardless of gear & assignment) should have 5/5 points in this.


    From the above options, there are a few typical specs you'll see around:

    The tank healer:

    http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?druid=05320031000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000002300233125315005310530130 51&glyph=162711060704&version=9889
    Focuses primarily on Nourish spamming with HoTs on the MT, along with WG being cast on him + melee.

    The raid healer:

    http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?druid=05320001000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000002300233122315005313533130 51&glyph=162709060704&version=9889
    Focuses on improving HoTs & random raid heals, along with a bit of utility (Glyph of Innervate).

    CF tank healer:

    http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?druid=05320131003000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000002300233121315005310530130 51&glyph=162711060704&version=9889
    Swaps points in Tranquil Spirit for Brambles + CF, but you'd really need a lot of mana regen on your gear for this to be viable.

    The HT spec:

    http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?druid=05320031000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000002305033125315020310530130 51&glyph=072711060704&version=9889

    Don't do this. You have to sacrifice so much in order to get HT up to Nourish spam sort of output, and the benefits really aren't worth it.
    "

    To add my two cents:

    I use the "Raid Spec" exactly as Degrador has posted it, for reference. I think the other two specs are a fair representation of viable alternatives, although I personally would try to find points in the "Tank Heal" build for Natural Perfection to try to maximize Living Seed. Most likely I would harvest them from Brambles and/or Tranquil Spirit.

    Improved Tranquility is a weak talent for raiding, but you can get a good deal of mileage from it doing heroics. Nothing wrong with speccing into it if you find yourself doing a lot of heroics in your early gearing. It's tolerable in 10 mans, but given that it only hits people that are in your 5 man party, you may find it missing some vital heals. Clearcasting into a Tranquility can provide you a nice period of regen time out of the 5 second rule, although I'd say this is more of a novelty rather than a core strategy.

    If you read Degrador's descriptions carefully, you'll find there's a lot of "Meh" talents in the Druid trees. It's our cross to bear, unfortunately. After the "base talents" that Degrador posted, everything else is really just flavor. Any of the specs posted are perfectly fine for any raiding job and you can pick up and change jobs mid-fight without batting an eye. Even speccing into Nature's Grace for tank healing is not required by any means due to is more or less only being useful in a spamming situation due to its short duration. There simply aren't a lot of fights where that's required for more than a few seconds.

    I would like to see somebody crunch the math on Celestial Focus vs Natural Perfection if they're so inclined. It seems like you are usually choosing between a piece of gear with either Haste or Crit on it. Celestial Focus gives the equivalent of 103 haste if I'm reading correctly. What does 3% crit work out to be?

    Ok, I'm in an instance, now what?

    Back in Molten Core, priests were king healers. In order to be effective as a druid, you had to rely on two things. One, you rejuvinated the crap out of the raid and hoped it would tick and pick up some healing. Two, you started casting your 3.5 second Healing Touch big heal (Yeah, yeah, Rank 4 was faster. Still glacial by today's standards) and either cancelled it when the priest sniped your heal or you prayed it would finish in time and heal for a crapload. Regrowth was ok for an absolute emergency but it was not to be relied on because it cost so much mana.

    What was true then holds remarkably true now, to a degree. When you are raiding with a druid, you have full life ALWAYS. You are NOT 200 hp down because something sneezed in your direction. A good druid will see ANY change in life and immediately throw a hot. Hit Points ain't gonna regen by themselves, so you may as well put a HoT on and let them heal up. I've grouped with MANY healing druids that were perfectly content to let the dps be 10% or 20% down on life between pulls. There's no reason for this. Heck, you can toss the hot while you're moving between pulls. Druids are the most mobile healing class, take advantage of that.

    Tanks should have HoTs rolling always. Before the pull, during the pull, heck, even after if they need to be topped off. Even if the tank is at full life, a rejuvination will pick up incidental damage they might be taking. It also leaves you open to Swiftmend if they take a damage spike. Rolling a 3 stack of lifeblooms on the MT is still common practice, although generally it's considered mana-prohibitive to do it for more than one target. Generally you'd expect the tank to have Rejuv, Regrowth, and a Lifebloom or 3 all ticking away for the vast majority of the fight.

    We do very little cancelling of spells nowadays. It's sort of a shame, but healing is simply too fast usually. The idea of predicting the target to be healed it is still solid though. Because our heals used to take so long, we would try to guess who would be taking the next big hit and start to cast on them, even if they were full life. If the hit never came, we'd cancel and reassess. Being able to predict damage is still very valuable. I will very often put a HoT on a clothy before an AoE pull if I know they tend to pull aggro. That puts me into a position where I can blast a Swiftmend without waiting for a global cooldown (seconds count!). Predict who will be taking damage and cast accordingly.

    Your 3 top healing spells will probably be Rejuvination, Wild Growth, and Lifebloom. Druid use almost all spells in their arsenal though. If you're tank healing for one reason or another, Nourish will probably take over for that fight, but really it's all about your hots.

    Rejuvination is our workhorse. See damage? Throw a rejuv. Most of your global cooldowns will be on this spell. Last I checked it's our most mana-efficient spell for healing (assuming all ticks count, which is rare).

    Wild Growth is our raid hot. It has some advantages over Rejuv. It hits multiple targets, immediatly starts healing, and is "Smart", targetting the players with lowest life. Generally you can use WG whenever you can use a Rejuv for more or less the same purpose. It does cost more, however, and is on a cooldown. It also doesn't last nearly as long, meaning you'll have to pay attention to the affected member that much sooner. The best use for WG tends to be when lots of people are taking damage (Derf Derf). Most of the time Melee groups are ideal for this because they're forced to clump together, but sometimes you can see a group of casters close enough to benefit. One trick to improving your results is to physically run yourself into a scattering of people an use yourself as a "Pivot". The range is 15 yards so you get a pretty good feel of where you need to be to land the WG on maximum numbers.

    Lifebloom has changed roles with 3.1. Druids used to "Roll" lifeblooms on multiple targets, stacking the HoT up to 3 and never letting it expire. This provided about 1100ish hp per second per target and could be reliabley done on 2-3 folks, 4 if you were stretching. More than 2 was hard on the mana, but not unreasonable. Now they've changed the mechanics of Lifebloom. Its cost was doubled and it now refunds 1/2 on bloom. You get credit for each stack. This makes rolling blooms very mana intensive and impractical for any stamina-oriented fight unless the tank needs absolute maximum heals. The spell is not worthless, however. The Mana Refund does NOT take into account any discounts you happen to be having. That means single blooms are cheaper. This makes it a perfectly reasonable spell to use for "Touching Up" the raid. It may quite possibley be the cheapest/most efficient heal in our arsenal now (I'm sure elitistjerks have the numbers on this vs Rejuv somewhere). Casting Lifebloom off of a clearcast proc is very nearly a free mini-mana potion. Also note that Lifebloom is a very tactical spell. If there is regular, heavy damage that takes place periodically, you can "Seed" the raid with lifeblooms, trying to land the Bloom after the big hit. It's a great tool despite its naysayers. (Note: Because you generally want the Lifebloom to expire, the LB glyph is pretty much horrid now).

    To clarify, it's not at all uncommon for the MT to have 3 Lifeblooms rolling and not blooming if you are the MT healer or if the tank is taking incredible amounts of damage. During 3.0 it was considered a "Best Practice" to keep 3 LBs up at ALL times on the tank, and most likely the OT and a few other folks too. During 3.1 rolling lifeblooms isn't as attractive as it was, although it is still effective and relatively efficient. It's perfectly legitimate, but I would maintain it's slipped from "Mandatory". I generally keep one bloom on the tank anyway for the Nourish benefits, and refresh or bloom as the situation warrants.

    Regrowth has a very big following. I hate it. Well, I don't care for it. It's expensive and cumbersome. The main reason I use it is not so much for the initial heal, but for the nearly 30 second Swiftmendable HoT it places on the target. Generally, only tanks or people that are going to be doing a lot of kiting (and thus getting range issues) ever get Regrowth from me. Some folks argue that glyphed regrowth is king of the hill (The HoT WILL get the 20% increase), but I found it encouraged poor habits for me personally. Your mileage may vary. It's been generally accepted that Nourish is a superior direct heal for spamming.

    Again, for clarification, regrowth is a legitimate healing spell. It has the longest running HoT you can get and heals for a reasonable amount initially, making it a fine heal for both tanks and the raid. I just find myself using it sparingly - mostly to keep the HoT up on the tank. Most often I can accomplish what I need with a Rejuv/WG or Rejuv + Swiftmend for raid healing. It's a preference, not a mandate.

    Nourish is good, but not as much of a workhorse as you'd think. You really need at minimum one hot for it to be remotely efficient. Generally tanks get Nourish spam if they're taking heavy damage. Nourish is also an acceptable flash heal for things like Kel ice blocks. With the right gear/glyphs/talents, you can get some very, very high nourish crits. Generally used as a tank healing spell. Full T7 with Glyph makes for some powerful heals, but I worry what will happen as you change to Uld gear.

    Tranquility is actually pretty good and shouldn't languish in your spellbook unused. It makes a great "Oh Shit" button if your group just took a ton of AOE or a whilrwind. You'll use it somewhat regularly in 5 mans. It can be expected to heal 4-5k every couple of seconds which is generally enough to pull a bad situation into a salvagable one. If you're doing a lot of heroics, putting hte 2 points into improved tranq isn't a terrible idea, as it allows you the option of an emergency button every pull.

    Healing Touch is nearly dead now. It's used almost exclusively with Nature's Swiftness, and even then you'll find you want the NS to fire off an instant Battle Rez more often. Switfmend will generally do everything you need this to do.

    Innervate needs to be seen as a heal for mana. I usually use it on myself if things have gone very, very badly. Sometimes I cast it on undergeared healers to keep them up and going, sometimes I don't use it at all. There's simply too many variables to tell you when to use this spell. Recent changes make it no longer regen based on spirit so now it's much more diverse. When in doubt, you can always ask on vent what to with it.


    Mods

    You really shouldn't need a mod to heal. Some folks swear by them and I know there is a segment of folks that think good healers will be even better with them. I'm skeptical.

    Generally speaking, Blizz has implemented MOST of the UI stuff that mods used to provide. I have no problem healing vanilla. Additionally, I don't run into the problem of "My mod is broke, now what". I know Healbot gets used sometimes. I am half looking for a more efficient way of keeping track of hots, but I didn't care for Lifebloomer and haven't seen much else come down the pipe.

    Recount is nifty for keeping track of what spells you're using most. Keep in mind that healing meters are not the end-all-be-all of healer quality (although it's gratifying to see your name up there every once in a while).

    Degrador has put together a nice list of mods he finds useful.

    "I'm fairly certain you'll find all of the resto druids who actually give mods a fair go will never go back to without them. Yes, you can heal with Blizzard's UI, but there is just so much you're giving up by doing so that you really are quite silly not to take advantage of them.

    As for which ones you use, that's a personal preference. The most popular ones are:
    Grid + Clique
    Healbot
    Xperl (+ possibly Clique)

    Personally I use Grid + Clique. It's got full tracking of all your HoTs on the entire raid (including indicators for when they're about to expire), and if you've got a 5+ button mouse you can easily map every healing spell you need to it saving your left hand for movement (+ modifiers for mouse clicks).

    I believe Healbot can do most of this, but when I first used it I found it rather clunky and not as customisable as Grid. Some people may prefer not to go through such an in-depth configuration as Grid though, so it might be the better option to go for.

    Xperl is extremely popular as a general unit frames addon, however personally I've found it rather lacking when it comes to healing via raid frames. If you just want your addon to look pretty, Xperl is very good at that, but for actually improving your effectiveness as a healer, I'd look to Grid or Healbot first.
    "

    Nuwalla also has posted some information on page 3 that expands on her experience with mods. It's definitely worth taking a peek at to see one example of a healing druid's UI.

    Many people swear by and rely on mods. There's certainly no shame in using them. Try them out and see what you think. Just make sure you realize that they aren't absolutely necessary and you have a gameplan if they start to act up.


    Other

    I feel that in order to be the best healer you can, you have to get used to using both the keyboard and the mouse together. I bind my Rejuv and Lifebloom spells to the Q and E keys, and then a few more spells (Like barkskin) to my 5-button mouse. The mouse I use to select targets. This gives you the fastest response time. Think about all the time you waste mousing over your target and then your action button. It's hard to adjust to if you're a clicker, but the results are well worth it and I can no longer imagine healing any other way. I do have a few spells that I have to click, but generally they're the longer cast ones, have cooldowns, or are just rarely cast.

    Mana is your lifeblood. Do not run out of it, ever. When your gear is fresh, spend the money and get the mana potions and mana regen food. You won't have to rely on it forever, but often the person folks are most grateful to at the end of a boss is the healer that had enough mana to bull through the fight and keep the important people standing.

    Learn to priortize your heals. Figure out who you NEED to spend your time on and who's...living by your good graces. The general rule of thumb is - Tank first, then Healer, then DPS.

    Figure out your raid buddy. Basically, figure out who you're always healing with and get a feel for their style. Some long-term guildies have been healing together so long that we can nearly read each others minds. You get a feel for the other healers' styles and priorities. I know I can rely on certain peeps to keep a good eye on the tank, so I can concentrate on raid healing, stuff like that. Once you get a feel for each other's styles you'll notice things going much more smoothly. Look for where they position themselves. Do they cast group heals or single heals? What's their mana use curve look like? If I see this person out of mana in 2 minutes do I throw them an innervate or are they going to mana fiend in a second? Stuff like that.

    Druid Role

    We're in something of a golden age at the moment for Druid healing. Put simply, we're capable of either raid healing or tank healing, and we can really do both with one spec and one set of gear. In my opinion, we're slightly better raid healers simply due to our mobility and hots, but you'll end up doing plenty of both tank and raid healing any given night.

    I have the mentality of being the "Fixer" for healing. I *can* provide fast emergency heals for spikey damage, but I really shine at keeping HPs up from the incidental garbage damage a raid always seems to pick up. My HoTs alone generally aren't enough to keep a tank up (That would require at least some attention direct healing), but they help smooth out the damage and buy time to make decisions. Most of my healing decisions center around how I can make other healers' lives easier. Raid taking splash damage? HoT 10 of them and focus heal on the ones who got brutalized. Tank life acting swingy? HoT them up and move into a range where you can put more direct heals as necessary. Kiter having trouble staying near his healers? Put a few long-running HoTs on them and hope they'll supplement enough until they're back in range of something big. Or you can always just heal the crap outta somebody that just ate a beatdown. We're flexible like that.

    EDIT: Multiple times for various grammar and clarity issues. Proofreading is win :P


  2. #2

    Re: Druid Healing Guide - The Basics

    nice, thanks for taking the time to make this!

    also, i cant stress this enough

    when you have bad gear.
    and you get a omen proc.
    use it on lifebloom. atleast, train yourself to use it on a omen proc.
    It will refund mana, while doing its job.

    Edit,
    please sticky.


    but you'll end up doing plenty of both tank and raid healing any given night.
    Originally Posted by Zarhym (Blue Tracker)

    I'm honestly frightened by what is taking place on the BlizzCon forum.

  3. #3

    Re: Druid Healing Guide - The Basics

    I disagree.
    While using omen proc on lifebloom will return a flat amount of mana it's not THE spell for procs. Spirit regen was vastly reduced but is still superior to casting regen, omen procs can still as they always have buy you extra regen ticks out of casting if you're efficient with them and not healing pressed at the time.
    Also the return of casting lifebloom isn't efficient without being able to use the healing of the cast, the bloom in most cases isn't a predictably useful heal.

    More often that not you're best off using regrowth in a useful directed heal and catching a tick or 2 regen outside of 5 second rule at the same time.

    Healing isn't all about mana, it's about spending mana on useful healing, gaining mana at the cost of the proc if for example you're going to need to cast a regrowth in a useful heal straight after is a waste of the proc potential.

    In the days of mana being an issue good use of out of casting regen and procs made a large difference, if you don't rely on natures swiftness as an "ohh shit!" button you can also use it alongside omen procs to buy longer out of casting regen time, just like a priest always used to use inner focus alongside clearcasting procs.

    Also tranquility and hurricane are stupidly expensive spells if you're going to be using them they're great with omen, if you're grouped right tranq can be used as an omen regen break while still outputting good healing.

  4. #4

    Re: Druid Healing Guide - The Basics

    Looks very helpful for druids who need help with healing.

    Its good to show druids that even tho we have regrowth,nourish and healing touch. Wild Growth and Rejuv are the most powerful heal you have.

    Not just any spartan; John Halo Spartan.

  5. #5

    Re: Druid Healing Guide - The Basics

    Quote Originally Posted by axxey
    I disagree.
    While using omen proc on lifebloom will return a flat amount of mana it's not THE spell for procs. Spirit regen was vastly reduced but is still superior to casting regen, omen procs can still as they always have buy you extra regen ticks out of casting if you're efficient with them and not healing pressed at the time.
    Also the return of casting lifebloom isn't efficient without being able to use the healing of the cast, the bloom in most cases isn't a predictably useful heal.

    More often that not you're best off using regrowth in a useful directed heal and catching a tick or 2 regen outside of 5 second rule at the same time.

    Healing isn't all about mana, it's about spending mana on useful healing, gaining mana at the cost of the proc if for example you're going to need to cast a regrowth in a useful heal straight after is a waste of the proc potential.

    In the days of mana being an issue good use of out of casting regen and procs made a large difference, if you don't rely on natures swiftness as an "ohh shit!" button you can also use it alongside omen procs to buy longer out of casting regen time, just like a priest always used to use inner focus alongside clearcasting procs.

    Also tranquility and hurricane are stupidly expensive spells if you're going to be using them they're great with omen, if you're grouped right tranq can be used as an omen regen break while still outputting good healing.
    So for a druid who is just starting to heal,

    - he wont have mana problems
    - he will be doing heroics, and on a omen proc its not usefull to just cast a LB on a tank ? it needs to be there anyway and this refunds mana.
    -ofcourse tranq is great for a omen proc - but this is more in a raid setting.
    -hurricane for a resto omen proc ? ???

    -Ofcourse, when you have upgeared - you can use omen procs on diffrent things. but if you are crap geared, and if you have problems on keeping the tank alive while spamming ( byebye 5 second rule ) my bet is on LB 480 mana refund free. (given you dont have 3 stacks on the tank --- or you do and pro-long it.)

    understood?
    Originally Posted by Zarhym (Blue Tracker)

    I'm honestly frightened by what is taking place on the BlizzCon forum.

  6. #6

    Re: Druid Healing Guide - The Basics

    Best to train good habits rather than easy habits early

    Understanding class and game mechanics and how to work them with bad gear stands you in good stead for when you get good gear :-*

  7. #7
    Herald of the Titans arel00's Avatar
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    Re: Druid Healing Guide - The Basics

    Druid's second sticky, WOHOO!

    Now let's have someone post a Cat and a LazorChicken thread.
    Quote Originally Posted by Qieth
    I don't do math, blind assumptions work so much better for me.

  8. #8

    Re: Druid Healing Guide - The Basics

    Firstly, nice work on the effort put into the post.

    Having said that, I think there's some misleading information here that a lot of resto druids would disagree with.

    Quote Originally Posted by Grimmhorn
    Living Seed has made crit a very interesting stat for us. It helps solve the problem of crit heals generally being overheal by putting up a damage shield = to 25% of your crit heal.
    Small change - Living Seed gives 30% of the total heal.

    Triple Lifebloom blooms have hit well into 20k heal on a crit, but I'm not sure if it plays with Living Seed or not as it's a relatively uncommon occurance
    From the tooltip, Living Seed only applies to Swiftmend, Regrowth, Nourish and Healing Touch.

    Haste cap w/ GotEM is 359 for a reference point. Don't know what it is if you spec all the way into Celestial Focus (3% spell haste talent).
    It's 253 with 3/3 Celestial Focus.

    Red = Scarlet Ruby (+19 Spell Power)
    Yellow = Monarch Topaz (+9 Int +9 Spell Power)
    Blue = Twilight Opal (+9 Spirit +9 Spellpower)
    I'd just add to that that it's not always worth going for the socket bonus. Depending on your gear, more regen may be useless, so if the socket bonus is only Int/Spr/MP5, then just ignore the socket colour and put a Scarlet Ruby in it.

    For the Meta-Gem I've really, really gotten to like the Earthsiege Diamond that has a chance to give mana on cast.
    Insightful Earthsiege Diamond is the one you're referring to.

    Another very popular Meta gem is the Ember Skyflare Diamond. This one also has a much easier activation requirement of just 3 red gems, allowing you to socket nothing but SP in all slots and still activate the meta.

    Leather vs Cloth
    Try to stay with leather if at all possible. Early in your gearing cloth is perfectly acceptable, but Tree of Life now grants an armor bonus similar to bear form so it's relevant. You're looking at about 45% damage reduction on physical damage which places us right near Shaman for squishiness - i.e. not bad. And yes, even good tanks sometimes can't catch an add in time. If you don't think 1% damage reduction makes a difference, think of how many times you've seen somebody survive with 12 - 200 hp.
    I'd disagree with this - the armor class of an item for PvE is completely irrelevant. You mention that tanks sometimes miss an add, but there are very few fights I can think of where it's both difficult to pick up all of the adds, and missing one will likely cause you to die. If you get 1-2 shotted by an add that a tank missed, it's pure and simply the tank's fault, and gearing yourself in case of that happening is just making it worse for your primary role. Simply put, you should focus on doing your job to the best of your abilities. If you die to an add, then it's the tank that needs to change what he's doing, not you.

    There is only one reason IMO to focus on getting leather - the fact that mages/locks/priests can't wear it. By taking cloth, you're likely depriving someone else of an upgrade where they don't have access to the same gear that you do. Now if it's a PuG, then personally I wouldn't care, but for guild runs I would recommend being nice to your clothies and only rolling on leather.

    Yeah, yeah, Rank 4 was faster. Still glacial by today's standards
    Not really important but even with MC gear level you were able to get enough regen such that you could spam rank 4 HT indefinitely and get very good output from it allowing you to save Innervate for the priests.

    Your 3 top healing spells will probably be Rejuvination, Wild Growth, and Lifebloom. Druid use almost all spells in their arsenal though. If you're tank healing for one reason or another, Nourish will probably take over for that fight, but really it's all about your hots.

    Rejuvination is our workhorse. See damage? Throw a rejuv. Most of your global cooldowns will be on this spell. Last I checked it's our most mana-efficient spell for healing (assuming all ticks count, which is rare).
    All of this really does depend on your healing assignment. Personally I'm usually assigned to tank healing, or at least both tank & raid healing. As such my top 3 heals are almost always Regrowth, Nourish and Wild Growth. Rejuv rarely makes it into my top 3.

    Regrowth has a very big following. I hate it. Well, I don't care for it. It's expensive and cumbersome. The main reason I use it is not so much for the initial heal, but for the nearly 30 second Swiftmendable HoT it places on the target. Generally, only tanks or people that are going to be doing a lot of kiting (and thus getting range issues) ever get Regrowth from me. Some folks argue that glyphed regrowth is king of the hill (The HoT WILL get the 20% increase), but I found it encouraged poor habits for me personally. Your mileage may vary. It's been generally accepted that Nourish is a superior direct heal.
    Nourish is certainly a better direct heal, but IMO Regrowth should always (ALWAYS) be your first go-to spell for raid healing. There are extremely few fights which just have slow steady raid damage where Rejuv is superior (such as Sapphiron). Most of them are cases where there'll be spike raid damage, where someone is randomly targeted with a direct damage spell, or sometimes a very potent DoT is placed on them. In both of these cases there will usually be up to a second of reaction time for you to start healing, after which it's quite possible either they might be hit again (often 2-shotting them) or the DoT has done quite a bit of damage. As such casting Regrowth on them will take care of most of the current damage via the DH (direct heal), has a 50% chance to crit including putting the Living Seed shield on them, and it gives them a very long lasting HoT to take care of any subsequent damage also allowing you to swiftmend if they do get hit a second time and are in danger of dying.

    Regrowth is an extremely useful heal for both tank & raid healing and certainly should not be avoided.

    As for the glyph, well that was generally only used for turning Regrowth into a better DH than Nourish, and with the 3.1 changes that simply won't happen anymore, nor do you need it to. Unless you never do any tank healing, stick with Glyph of Nourish.

    It may quite possibley be the cheapest/most efficient heal in our arsenal now (I'm sure elitistjerks have the numbers on this vs Rejuv somewhere).
    Fairly certain that would actually be Nourish with 4T7, glyph and 4 hots on the target, but again not really relevant

    (Note: Because you generally want the Lifebloom to expire, the LB glyph is pretty much horrid now).
    Again, depends on your role. For tank healers, you'll still want to use 3xLB on the MT. Yes, it's expensive, but not so prohibitively expensive that it's impossible to do it. If you are doing this, then glyph of LB is still very good.

    You really shouldn't need a mod to heal. Some folks swear by them and I know there is a segment of folks that think good healers will be even better with them. I'm skeptical.

    Generally speaking, Blizz has implemented MOST of the UI stuff that mods used to provide. I have no problem healing vanilla. Additionally, I don't run into the problem of "My mod is broke, now what". I know Healbot gets used sometimes. I am half looking for a more efficient way of keeping track of hots, but I didn't care for Lifebloomer and haven't seen much else come down the pipe.
    I'm fairly certain you'll find all of the resto druids who actually give mods a fair go will never go back to without them. Yes, you can heal with Blizzard's UI, but there is just so much you're giving up by doing so that you really are quite silly not to take advantage of them.

    As for which ones you use, that's a personal preference. The most popular ones are:
    Grid + Clique
    Healbot
    Xperl (+ possibly Clique)

    Personally I use Grid + Clique. It's got full tracking of all your HoTs on the entire raid (including indicators for when they're about to expire), and if you've got a 5+ button mouse you can easily map every healing spell you need to it saving your left hand for movement (+ modifiers for mouse clicks).

    I believe Healbot can do most of this, but when I first used it I found it rather clunky and not as customisable as Grid. Some people may prefer not to go through such an in-depth configuration as Grid though, so it might be the better option to go for.

    Xperl is extremely popular as a general unit frames addon, however personally I've found it rather lacking when it comes to healing via raid frames. If you just want your addon to look pretty, Xperl is very good at that, but for actually improving your effectiveness as a healer, I'd look to Grid or Healbot first.

    I feel that in order to be the best healer you can, you have to get used to using both the keyboard and the mouse together. I bind my Rejuv and Lifebloom spells to the Q and E keys, and then a few more spells (Like barkskin) to my 5-button mouse. The mouse I use to select targets. This gives you the fastest response time. Think about all the time you waste mousing over your target and then your action button.
    Not wanting to go on about it too much, but you mention using the mouse to select targets then keyboard for casting the spells, whereas if you use Grid+Clique for instance that's all taken care of with a single mouse button - the fewer actions it takes to do what you need, the faster your reaction times and the better healer you'll be.

    It's hard to adjust to if you're a clicker, but the results are well worth it and I can no longer imagine healing any other way. I do have a few spells that I have to click, but generally they're the longer cast ones or have cooldowns.
    IMO clicking action buttons should never be used EVER. Even without a 5 button mouse there are plenty of options for modifiers to allow you to control everything via the keyboard.


    One thing I noticed absent was to mention different Resto specs.

    IMO the base line Resto PvE spec looks like this: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...0&version=9868 (this is an impossible spec as it requires more points in resto tree for WG, but where you spend them is debatable)

    From here you have 12 points to spend, with your options as follows:

    Balance:
    3xNature's Grace:

    1xBrambles + 3xCelestial Focus:

    Resto:
    5xNaturalist:

    4xTranquil Spirit:

    3xNatural Perfection:

    3xLiving Seed:

    3xRevitalise:

    2xGift of the Earthmother:


    Haven't got the time atm but I'll come back and fill out some info about these options.

    Quote Originally Posted by Chronalis
    in soviet russia, mods troll you!

  9. #9

    Re: Druid Healing Guide - The Basics

    Thank you for the kind replies.

    I have a suspicion that there are Regrowth druids and non-Regrowth druids and that's just the way of it. I certainly have no problems with folks using the spell, I just found myself fretting too much over it. Between that and old habits (it used to be expensive as hell) I just usually end up using it for its HoT.

    You are probably right about the mods. Again, a lot of this is old habit ingrained in me. When Blizz broke emergency meters and a few other mods I had to relearn a lot about healing. Between that and folks not being able to raid when their mods break, I just have avoided them. My father taught me to drink my coffee black, not for the taste, but because cream and sugar won't always be available.

    Fixed some of the numbers and info based on suggestions. Apologies if there are errors, I'm editting between pulls. Did this at work and from memory so my access to info was somewhat limited, so I appreciate the corrections.

    As far as cloth vs leather, sometimes the extra bit of mitgation lets you survive 3 hits compared with 2. /shrug, it's another preference thing. I woudn't turn down good cloth, but it's a beast to compete with the clothies and there's usually comparable leather.

  10. #10

    Re: Druid Healing Guide - The Basics

    Quote Originally Posted by Grimmhorn
    I have a suspicion that there are Regrowth druids and non-Regrowth druids and that's just the way of it.
    Ehh, to be honest I think there are very few druids who don't regularly use Regrowth. The combined power of the DH + HoT, along with being relatively efficient, just makes it too useful not to use.

    You are probably right about the mods. Again, a lot of this is old habit ingrained in me. When Blizz broke emergency meters and a few other mods I had to relearn a lot about healing. Between that and folks not being able to raid when they're mods break, I just have avoided them. My father taught me to drink my coffee black, not for the taste, but because cream and sugar won't always be available.
    Yeah, that's fair enough - if you don't want to use them then that's up to you. However if we're making a sticky out of this thread to be referred to for anyone looking for information then I really think we should get information in there that applies to the 'typical' Resto druid. You can copy the brief stuff I mentioned in my last post if you want, or we could work on it a bit more and come up with a more complete explanation of available mods out there.

    This is also why I think we shouldn't mislead people about Regrowth - if you don't use it, that's fine, but the general consensus really is that it's an excellent spell and should be used at all levels of PvE.

    As far as cloth vs leather, sometimes the extra bit of mitgation lets you survive 3 hits compared with 2. /shrug, it's another preference thing. I woudn't turn down good cloth, but it's a beast to compete with the clothies and there's usually comparable leather.
    Yeah, but the way I see it is that if you're wearing cloth, then you're still doing a hell of a lot better (due to ToL) than say a priest, so if you die wearing cloth, then there's no doubt the priest would've died had he pulled aggro instead of you. As such, it really is more important that your tank sorts out his threat issues than you adjusting your gear to suit.

    As I mentioned though, competing against clothies is a good reason to stick to leather. If you're gearing up for raiding though (via heroics), then there really isn't anywhere near as much caster leather as there is caster cloth, so don't hesitate for a moment for instance to take that rep faction epic cloth over your current blue leather, or even epic leather if the cloth's stats are better for you.

    Quote Originally Posted by Chronalis
    in soviet russia, mods troll you!

  11. #11

    Re: Druid Healing Guide - The Basics

    If there is regular, heavy damage that takes place periodically, you can "Seed" the raid with lifeblooms, trying to land the Bloom after the big hit. It's a great tool despite its naysayers. (Note: Because you generally want the Lifebloom to expire, the LB glyph is pretty much horrid now).
    For MT Healing, Lifebloom still is the way to go. And to be comparable efficient, it needs to be glyphed. Usually I am MT healing, together with a paladin. If there are too many damage spikes (like Steelbreaker), another Paladin or priest will be assigned to the MT, too. This is really a very nice combo, I'm hotting the tank and make smaller heals with nourish to bridge some spike, whereas the paladin casts his greater 20k heals that fill up its health bar.
    Lifebloom is your major single target heal, with hps over 1400 and ticking every second. Glyphed and skilled its with ~14000 heal/782mana a moderate manadrainer, not as efficient as rejuv or regrowth, yet it contributes to the efficentness of nourish.
    Seed still won't proc from lifebloom crits, so lifeblooming the raid is only useful in encounters where you can exactly tell the moment the raid will need heal (ie Loatheb), in every other raiddamage situation you will want to go for rejuv, as it heals quicker (in the first 9s) and you can swiftmend the target. Yet lifebloom still is quite usefull as second hot on a target, allthough nourish should be your choice then (after WG and probably rejuv) if you can expect more damage in short time.
    And yes, lifebloom still is a nice manaboost if used on clearcasts, and then it doesn't matter that much if your waiting 9s or 10s for your mana return.

    So imho, lifebloom glyph still is a very nice glyph, and a mandatory one if you're MT healing.


  12. #12

    Re: Druid Healing Guide - The Basics

    Will upload a section on spec options sometime this weekend. Will also tack in Degrador's information about mods (Though if he thinks I'm recommending people take Naturalist he can make his own guide ;D).

    Rolling lifeblooms is fine on the MT, I'm just not sure they're worth the glyph since generally it was used to free up a GCD for, well, more rolling Lifebloom targets. If you really wanted to maximize MT healing it seems like you would go for something closer to Nourish/Regrowth/Swiftmend for maximum output/efficiency. It's mostly academic because you don't really "spec into" tank healing vs raid healing, you just decide where you're going to focus your attention.

    I can't recall who to give credit, but I've also read that "Staggering" your blooms is more effecient now - in other words, if the tank can use the bump, let the 1 LB bloom, otherwise refresh to 2 stacks and allow to tick. If they need the bloom when those expire, let them, otherwise stack to 3. Always allow 3 to bloom. It sounded like an interesting idea but it would take a heck of a lot of attention to get right.

  13. #13

    Re: Druid Healing Guide - The Basics

    tbh id prefer to give rough numbers in this thread, instead of saying whats better or worse. there are many ways to play resto druid, some of them value certain stats or spells more than others. i could disagree myself with many choices made by OP in first post, and many other druids would disagree both with OP and me. so i think it would be better to just limit information in this topic to facts. for example calcs for spirit / int regen, haste soft caps for different specs, mana efficiency of spells etc.

    just tell ppl what kind of tools druids have and how they CAN be used, not how they HAVE to be used.
    I have enough of EA ruining great franchises and studios, forcing DRM and Origin on their games, releasing incomplete games only to sell day-1 DLCs or spill dozens of DLCs, and then saying it, and microtransactions, is what players want, stopping players from giving EA games poor reviews, as well as deflecting complaints with cheap PR tricks.

    I'm not going to buy any game by EA as long as they continue those practices.

  14. #14

    Re: Resto Druids - Healing Guide

    lifebloom is still very powerful for tank healing. Personally i never let my stacks bloom unless I'm forced to babysit another raider taking damage. LB still accounts for the majority of my healing done in raids and i never have mana issues.

    I usually toss LB around in combination with rejuv for raid healing (and WG of course). The mana refund when they expire makes this appealing to me. with the 2(3) hots ticking I have a few options for prolonged incoming damage. I can swiftmend, go straight to nourish, add another LB to the stack, or hit them with a regrowth. It all depends on the situation; slow periodic damage, spike damage, heavy periodic damage ect...

    Also using the regrowth and nourish glyphs at the same time is a waste of a glyph slot. They are both designed to provide the same benefit so there isn't really a reason to use them both. After the initial direct heal from regrowth, you are much better off switching to nourish until the HoT expires.

    Chain casting regrowth essentially negates the power of its HoT. Every time it lands on your target, you are resetting the tick timer. This effectively kills the power of the HoT component. As such, nourishing while the regrowth HoT is active is the better choice and making the nourish glyph the one you would want to use out of the two.

  15. #15

    Re: Resto Druids - Healing Guide

    Try to beat my hps 10.3k hps new world record as resto druid?
    there is screenshoot proving

    http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/822...1009222829.jpg

  16. #16

    Re: Resto Druids - Healing Guide

    Quote Originally Posted by Trexxuss
    Try to beat my hps 10.3k hps new world record as resto druid?
    there is screenshoot proving

    http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/822...1009222829.jpg
    good for you?

  17. #17

    Re: Resto Druids - Healing Guide

    ofc it was full raid buffed man , abolish poison i have binded on my keyboard, like many other things, and what i want to say, even with full raid buffs, try to do that big hps

  18. #18

    Re: Resto Druids - Healing Guide

    The fact that there was enough damage going around to make it possible for you to do 10k hps seems suspect. Unless raid healers died early on in whatever fight this came from, I can only assume people in your raid were standing in stuff they shouldn't have been. Also, there's no fight in Ulduar that I'm aware of which requires 25k combined hps from all healers (even if people are stupid enough to take damage they shouldn't be). So, again, I have to assume it wasn't 25k sustained hps from all healers throughout the fight and that at least some of the healers didn't survive the whole fight.

    If you wouldn't mind, give us a little more information about the fight that came from. Which boss was it? What were people in the raid doing that required so much healing?

  19. #19

    Re: Resto Druids - Healing Guide

    as well as recount's data on damage taken by raid, your most used spells, most healed targets, duration of fight, details from healing done - which spells, how many casts / ticks etc
    I have enough of EA ruining great franchises and studios, forcing DRM and Origin on their games, releasing incomplete games only to sell day-1 DLCs or spill dozens of DLCs, and then saying it, and microtransactions, is what players want, stopping players from giving EA games poor reviews, as well as deflecting complaints with cheap PR tricks.

    I'm not going to buy any game by EA as long as they continue those practices.

  20. #20

    Re: Resto Druids - Healing Guide

    I would suggest that for PVE Leather vs Cloth - armor is insignificant. Anything that can 1 shot you in cloth will do so in leather. Therefore, if the stats are better for you with cloth, go for the cloth. Plus, your casters will love you for it. ;-) For PVP - leather always, imo.

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