Resto druid needs help.

[Iselia]

Hai fellow resto druids!

I've been a resto druid since I dinged 80 in WotLK. I've managed just fine, but somehow I feel like I suck as a healer. I've searced the forum for help and tips on how to improve, and still every healer I meet seems to outheal me, unless I vastly outgear them.

I would realy appriciate some help on how to improve, so I'll just fill you in with some details.

This is my gear:
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...tus&n=D%C3%A9n

I use Reju, Wild growth and Nourish on a regular basis, with lb if needed. Also the occasional Tranq and NS+HT macro. Never touch Regrowth :s

Our guild has a kinda 'free for all' healing rule, unless something else is specified.

[Cerelli]

Can you give us a WWS parse or something?

first:

stop gemming for straight spirit and intellect. Spell power is our #1 stat so that should be your focus. You should have more than enough MP5 to keep you going through all of your fights as long as you remember to use your innervate correctly.

If the socket bonus is good (eg +6 spell power or greater) then go for Purified dreadstones (SP/spi). otherwise go straight spell power. So, replace the spirit gem in your hat, shoulders, legs, and boots in favor of purified dreadstones.

Replace the int gem in your chest with Luminous Ametrine (Sp/int)

Put 2 Runed Cardinal Rubies in your weapon since the socket bonus isn't that great.

Try to get your hands on 2 new trinkets as well. Sif's Remembrance + Solace of the Fallen is a great combo. Almost any of the healer-type trinkets would be an upgrade for you, TBH (other than the MP5 trinket out of TOC10 which is equally garbage IMO).

Second:

use more regrowth. Even if you aren't assigned to heal the tanks, keep it ticking on them at all times. always. It helps cut down on burst damage, and easily adds up to be a nice amount of healing done. Other than that, your spell use appears to be right on for a raid healer. Feel free to throw it on people in the raid as well if you can spare the cast time. Again, the HoT really adds up.


Third:

your spec needs work. Use this spec instead (or something similar)

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...2VekJMs,,10894

5/5 tranquil spirit is a major waste of talent points since nourish is already pretty cheap, and the talent point cost vs mana reduction is pretty meager. 3/3 subtlety is unnecessary considering that the only time you die from healing aggro is if the tanks aren't doing their jobs (which should be never FYI). and 3 points in nature's grace makes a huge difference for when you have to start nourishing people.

If you are strictly a raid healer, and a raid healer only then not picking up nature's grace is ok. But i'd rather have a little more flexibility than pigeon hole myself into doing one thing well.

Fourth:

do you use any sort of healing mod or macros + unit frames to help you heal? if not, then i suggest you try them out. I personally love Vuhdo, but grid + clique, or healbot work just as well IMO.

cheers

[stillnotking]

What addons are you using? I recommend either Grid, Healbot, or VuhDo (personal preference between the three). You need constant, immediate access to the following information for everyone in the raid:

- Health
- Incoming heals
- Aggro
- Relevant debuffs (all dispellable poisons/curses plus important boss debuffs such as Anub's Penetrating Cold)
- HOTs and remaining duration

Make sure your keybinds are set properly -- every one of your "bread and butter" spells, plus your emergency spells, should be accessible without moving your hand or using shift combos. A mod such as BarTender helps for this. You also need some kind of visual indicator of the global cooldown, plus a castbar mod to show when you can "clip" the next cast and compensate for latency; Quartz can handle both of these functions and is highly recommended. You need DeadlyBossMods, BigWigs, or Deus Vox for raid warnings and timers. A cooldown timer is also helpful; I like ForteXorcist.

UI setup is about 50% of healing. 30% is gear and the other 20% is skill. Gear-wise, make sure you are prioritizing stats correctly. I won't go into that full topic here but the Elitist Jerks forums, as well as this forum and the official WoW forums, have a lot of excellent theorycrafting and advice. Generally speaking, you want to get enough regen to last you through a typical fight, enough haste to reach the soft cap, and stack spell power after that. Trinket and idol swapping can be a good idea for longer fights when you need more regen.

Skill is something that has to be learned, although the basics are not difficult. Roll Rejuv on your assignments (or as much of the raid as you can if you aren't given assignments, prioritizing tanks and healers), use Wild Growth on groups (normally the melee group), Swiftmend or Nourish anyone who gets low. Save your NS/HT for true emergency situations; be liberal with Swiftmend if NS/HT is available but more conservative if it isn't. As time permits, roll as many HOTs on the tanks as you can. Manage your mana and Innervates wisely. If you are tank healing, make sure to keep Rejuv, Regrowth, and Lifebloom on your assignment (stacking LB to 3 stacks and then letting it bloom, for mana efficiency), and direct heal with Nourish.

Hope that helps. Also, check out the resto druid guides on EJ and the WoW forums. It's a lot of fun healing as a resto druid. Remember, healing meters aren't really a measure of healer skill! Whether people live or die is the ultimate test.

Edit: one more thing. If your guild doesn't give out healing assignments, then my number one suggestion would be to find a new guild. It's highly likely that you are not doing much healing because your raids simply have too many healers and a lot of redundant healing is being done.

[Iselia]

Can you give us a WWS parse or something?

Try to get your hands on 2 new trinkets as well. Sif's Remembrance + Solace of the Fallen is a great combo. Almost any of the healer-type trinkets would be an upgrade for you, TBH (other than the MP5 trinket out of TOC10 which is equally garbage IMO.

do you use any sort of healing mod or macros + unit frames to help you heal? if not, then i suggest you try them out. I personally love Vuhdo, but grid + clique, or healbot work just as well IMO.

cheers

I'm, not toally sure what a WWS is, but I googeled it and something combat log ish came up :P

I'll be running for Sif's Remembrance thank you
Altho the trinket from Jaraxxus 25 will be hard to get, seeing as my guild only does 10 man (which is one of the main reasons I'm there).

I use grid and recount mostly :P

[Anduia]

Well, since you mostly raid 10-men dungeons, let me share some tricks to increase your overall healing.

You heal with hots, which means you can't compete with:
- a paladin spamming fast heals on anybody who loses hit points
- a shaman spamming chain heals on the tank
- a priest spamming flash heals and prayer of mending

Instead, your key to succeed is to have as many people as possible with hots, and must be people who will receive damage. Sounds silly, but that's how it is.

Your first problem is that to do so, you constantly cast on different people, and if you need to target them first before casting, you will end stressed and very tired. Make mouseover macros asap.

A mouseover macro looks ilke this:
/cast [target=mouseover, help] rejuvenation; rejuvenation

- If your mouse is over a friendly target (that's what the "help" means), you cast on it.
- If not, you cast on your current target
- If not, you cast on yourself (activate the auto self casting option in interface options)

Put all these macros on good keybindings, so you can strafe while casting. For example 1,2,3,4, and alt 1,2,3,4. Or whatever suits you better, but please, configure key bindings to all your spells.

While you are binding your keys, consider having decurse and cure poison on your mouse wheel down and up, with mouseover macros. You can always move the camera with bindings like ctrl+mouse wheel.

Tips for topping recount with no healing assigns:
1) Always cast Wild Growth when ready (except in patchwerk ofc)
2) have rejuvenation ticking on tanks
3) heal the raid with rejuvenation
4) if somebody loses too much health, forget about nourish, other healers will be faster anyway, use Swiftmend to top him, or find another target
5) if the raid is not getting damage, you can add lifebloom or even regrowth on the tanks

That's because your guild does free for all. Forget those tips if they assign you targets. In that case, you win if they are alive, don't look at recount.

Oh, and a last tip: Don't waste your nature swiftness on a single big heal. Save it for a fast combat res in case a tank/healer dies.

I hope it helps and somebody calls you "pro drood"

[Degrador]

Oh, and a last tip: Don't waste your nature swiftness on a single big heal. Save it for a fast combat res in case a tank/healer dies.

There are a few things about your post I disagree with (not significantly enough to mention), however this I strongly disagree with. Preventing someone from dying with an instant 12-20k+ heal (NS+HT) is FAR more important than bringing them back up 2s faster than normal.

[Anduia]

That's not a tip for a casual raider Degrador. This is not theorycrafting, is a bunch of tips for a 10-men raid with free-for-all healing, which means somebody else will have a shield or another oh-shit button ready for that someone who is about to die. If the druid has Swiftmend for him, that's ok, but if you waste NS for a heal, it means you failed to prevent the damage.

Iselia must know how often she needed to resurrect somebody, and if those 2 seconds were too much or not. Maybe she likes it more to use an instant heal from time to time.

A mouseover macro for NS:
#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast [combat] nature's swiftness
/cast [target=mouseover, help, dead, combat] rebirth; [target=mouseover, help] healing touch

Assuming players don't release their corpse, you can either heal them instantly, or combat res. I use a more complicated version of this macro, and almost never need the big heal.

[Degrador]

That's not a tip for a casual raider Degrador.

Huh? Why not?

This is not theorycrafting, is a bunch of tips for a 10-men raid with free-for-all healing, which means somebody else will have a shield or another oh-shit button ready for that someone who is about to die. If the druid has Swiftmend for him, that's ok, but if you waste NS for a heal, it means you failed to prevent the damage.

And like you say, they're casual raiders which means it's even more likely that someone will 'fail to prevent the damage', and also more likely that the tank or another healer dying will be a wipe regardless of the combat rez. If it's just a DPS that died then those 2s really aren't going to matter that much.

I use a more complicated version of this macro, and almost never need the big heal.

I almost never need the big heal either, but I certainly could use a large instant heal a lot more often than a combat rez that lands 2s faster (remember that you've got a GCD anyway, so there's only 0.5s difference in your capability to cast other heals).

[Malokai]

I almost never need the big heal either, but I certainly could use a large instant heal a lot more often than a combat rez that lands 2s faster (remember that you've got a GCD anyway, so there's only 0.5s difference in your capability to cast other heals).

Personally I think the NS would be better used straight after the BRes with a HT to bring the target up to reasonable health very quickly, all too often I see people click 'accept' on the res only to pop up right before incoming raid damage (...scrubs) and the NS+HT immediately after ressing would work magic here.

[Degrador]

Personally I think the NS would be better used straight after the BRes with a HT to bring the target up to reasonable health very quickly, all too often I see people click 'accept' on the res only to pop up right before incoming raid damage (...scrubs) and the NS+HT immediately after ressing would work magic here.

Yeah, I often end up using mine for that too. It's one of the only times you're certain a swiftmend won't work (ie, we often raid with 2-3 resto druids and it's very rare that someone doesn't have a HoT from at least one of them).

[lukz]

You have to think individually for any situation and react accordingly, there is no right or wrong.

Think + react = healer

Bam.

!!!

[lukz]

On my past note, I wish I had rotations like back in BC (keep up LB on all tanks, maybe a reguv and regrowth cycled on a few, top charts, win!).

Now we think.

I hope thats not bad.

[Anduia]

Personally I think the NS would be better used straight after the BRes with a HT to bring the target up to reasonable health very quickly, all too often I see people click 'accept' on the res only to pop up right before incoming raid damage (...scrubs) and the NS+HT immediately after ressing would work magic here.

That's a good point. Consider getting a Glyph of Rebirth, which can often be more useful than, for example, a +6% heal in nourish or a better innervate.

[Drakeboy]

Are you a raid healer or a tank healer m8?

This is how I heal.
I'm mainly a raid healer. Still I always have regrowth or rejuv and 2x lifebloom up on the tanks. This becuz if they need a fast heal i just use my swiftmend on them. Lifebloom gives u mana back and the bloom is really good. ALWAYS let it bloom´s before u put up a new stack of blooms.
One really important this is to use you Lifebloom everytime the Omen of Clarity proocs. Try get a good addon like Power Aura to help you keep track on it. This gives u free mana back =) I never you the lifebloom on any raid healer or dps. Only on the tanks.

Use ur Wild Growth on every GD. It´s a really good spell. I think you should switch ur Innervate glyph to the Wild Growth one. Also try learn how the Wild Growth works. Many new resto druid really dont know or even read the tooltip tbh.
Never use Nourish if u dont have any hot up on the person. U loose to much of doing that.

Try not to get USE trinkets. I personally think they sucks for a healer.
They get urs hands on Spark of hopes it one of the best trinkets for a druid. High MP5 and the spirit gives alot of good stuff for ya =) I have like 6 trinkets I use for diffrent figths. Mana reg trinkets or alot of SP trinkets. It´s all up to how healing intensive the figth is.

If u ever going to break a socket bonus put in a SP gem. Else gem 12 sp/10 spirit och 12 sp/10 int. The 12 sp/10 int i only use if i want the socket bonus.

I also notice that u have a low Haste. Try get up to 450 - 500 to get down to 1 sec GCD.

Learn the figths! One of the best think you can do. Try predict what will happend if anyone get aggro.
Keep track in the aggro and throw a rejuv on that person and be ready with ur swiftmend.
Try learn how the other classes works. Who is in danger of getting aggro. Still it´s all up to the figth but it have helped me alot.


EDIT:
I forgot one major thing. Never try to top a healing meter. I really doesn´t matter for me. As long as i know im doing a good job i really don´t give a damn if im last or on top. Try focus on the figth instead and keep up the good work =)
Here is a report that i have put up. That might give u an idée on my healing spells prio.
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/c44g3...dfy/details/2/

[akata]

nice post.

interestingly enough I have recently made the switch from moonkin to resto and have some of the same issues. More along the lines of being "beat to the punch" I think than gear issues. I agree and have been told by the more experienced healers that this is the case, my question then is what to do about it.

Here is a pretty good example

http://www.wowmeteronline.com/combat...105#healingout

As you can see, it isn't HPS that is killing me, it's the fact my effective HPS is always getting raked over the proverbial coals. So what can i do to ease the QQ?

:P

Oh yeah I am using xperl and clique, most of the major spells keybound to mouse buttons, other options keybound to the num pad (being I am a leftie)

[Mirda]

That's a good point. Consider getting a Glyph of Rebirth, which can often be more useful than, for example, a +6% heal in nourish or a better innervate.

That seems like a waste of a glyph spot, esp for 10 mans.

I've always found that free-for-all healing in 10 mans is usually a disaster. (More often in pugs obviously) Perhaps suggest in your next run assigning healers at least in a general way. Like who will focus on tanks/raid. With only 2-3 people there's always either not enough to do or you're scrambling to account for someone else's inadequacies.

Echoing the above poster, make some mouseover macros for all of your heavily used abilities, that was the single best decision I made in regards to my setup back in BC.



@ akata

Most likely your problem is planning your spell usage. You should learn the boss mechanics and then react accordingly.
For instance,
P1 of Beasts, rejuv of all the melee, roll hots on the tanks, watch for nubbies standing in fire and rejuv snobold targets for maximum effective hps

[Azyoulike]

I've always found that free-for-all healing in 10 mans is usually a disaster.

I'd say the opposite really, free-for-all healing or heavy cross healing works well in 10s so long as you know your partner(s). Say you had a disc priest as your partner, you could tell the disco to heal the tank while you heal the raid, and they could do those jobs only - but you'd miss so much.

Telling the disco to prioritize the tank, but leaving things looser you'd get the sustained HPS of the druid HoTs on the tank combined with the burst healing of PWS/Penance. You'd get the sustained HPS of rejuvs on the raid combined with the burst healing of PWS/PoH.

Overly tight healing roles is wasted synergy, especially in 10s.

[Mirda]

That's why I said "general roles" :P

Not you only heal tanks, I only heal raid... but "focusing" basically prioritizing, maybe I didnt choose a good word.

When I say "free-for-all" I mean the complete and total lack of a direction. The OP sounded like they were a little lost about what to do to improve, and we have no way of knowing a) that he/she has an established healer group to work with or b) the expertise of either the OP or his/her guildmates. So in this situation, established priority roles helps. Especially when the healer is inexperienced.

[Degrador]

That's a good point. Consider getting a Glyph of Rebirth, which can often be more useful than, for example, a +6% heal in nourish or a better innervate.

Depends where your priorities are. If you're going for a Tribute to Insanity or something then I can imagine that expecting deaths and needing to be able to brez with no chance of them dying straight away is important, but for the majority of raiders (and realise that the majority of raiders don't do heroic ToC) I think having glyphs of Rejuv/Nourish, Wild Growth and Swiftmend would be more important.

[Iselia]

Woaw, nice replys!

I took them all into concideration, and today I kicked some serious healer ass in ToC :P

a) that he/she has an established healer group to work with or b) the expertise of either the OP or his/her guildmates. So in this situation, established priority roles helps. Especially when the healer is inexperienced.

I might have been a bit vague.

I usually heal with a diskopriest and whatever avaible healer who's avaible (If we take 3 healers at all). And as far as the b) goes, I like to think that I (mostly) know what to do.

Thanks for your VERY helpfull replys