[Resto] Ready For Raiding?

[zakalwei]

Due to our guild being short on healers, I've decided to help out by trying to get my druid alt up to speed so that I can fill in for 10 mans if needed.

The stickies here and the blogs listed have been great in helping me out with the basics but I had a couple of specific questions before I take the plunge. I'd like to be an asset to the team so I'm after advice on how to maximise my current potential! Ideally I would like to be able to handle the first few bosses of all instances. Other healers would most likely be priest, pally, me or pally, druid, me.

Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...seriy/advanced

Spec: Initially because I was very worried about mana this was the recommended choice. Don't think I need to change this? Only thing I could think of is 1/3 Efflo --> 3/3 NB?

Reforging: I'm in no mans land with haste atm and here are biggest questions I have:
1) Would it be more beneficial for me to reforge haste away to mastery? (as long as I don't go below 916 rating, right?)
2) Is there a particular mastery value to aim for at which point...
3) Can I reforge to spirit instead so that I don't go OOM (really paranoid about this!)

Gear: Plan on grabbing a DMK: Tsunami this week and was thinking of the boots for my first VP purchase? I think I've got my gemming right...could I be chanting differently taking into account the haste issue?

Thanks in advance guys Anything I have missed or advice lemme know....getting really fond of this girl....healing is quite the challenge!

[Mmpie]

Honestly I think for just starting out, everything looks good. The only suggestion I have is to try to get in a BH run before trying out anything else. The mechanics are not hard at all but it'll give you a chance to test your mana regen.

I dont think I could get up to the WG haste breakpoint until I had a few epics. Do you know if you'll be raid or tank healing? I'd say stack haste until the lower breakpoints and then reforge to mastery. If you find argaloth gives your mana a problem, change it to spirit.

It is nice to see someone properly gem and enchant before they ask for advice good luck!

[Deleted]

Your gear seems fine. Go for shitloads of spirit as it will be less punishing for you to throw regrowths. Your spec and glyphs are good.

As Mmpie said, you should go BH10 to see how your mana will manage

[jackdurkalik]

To start here's my armory : http(: ) //us (.) battle (.) net/wow/en/character/crushridge/talark/simple

Concerning your gear, it looks like you're good to start raiding, and yes u will be oom after the fight but that's normal since you're just starting. To help with the mana i suggest you and the other druid trade your innervate. For your first VP gear i would choose a set piece since they are often our BiS and since you already have an heroic chest, the glove or the leg would be great.After you get your 2 piece bonus get what ever gear would be the best upgrade.

Your spec looks good but personally i find Nature's Cure useless since there's other healers with dispel and often the dispeller is always the same person so if it's not you you could drop the point. I also find nature's bounty useless because if 3 target need rejuv it probably mean that more than that require healing so i would rejuv the other instead of using nourish. In fact i almost never used nourish except to refresh my LB on the tank on the start of some fight to snipe the healing. I would put these point in Blessing of the grove because during a fight rejuv is usually around 30%+ of my healing and 4% bonus to this spell doesn't hurt.

Reforging haste to mastery to be just above 916 is minor, i've tryed it before i hitted 2005 haste rating and it didn't seems to make a difference but I'm raiding in 25 man i would think that in a 10 man raid it would have a bigger impact. Since you're not going to hit 2005 haste soon you could always try to reforge your haste into mastery/spirit depending on your situation. If you find yourself healing the tank more reforge into mastery since it's one of it's main application. Personally i don't think druid should be main tank healer since we lack tank cooldown and our strength is to stabilize the raid first with our HOT, often by the time we've put on everybody who received damage other healer have topped them. Mastery doesn't have breakpoint like haste does so just get has much as you can without loosing a haste breakpoints or getting oom before the end of the fight.

If you find yourself running oom too soon here are some things to do before reforging into spirit:
Never use regrowth if you don't have a OoC(it use so much mana and heal for almost nothing)
Trade innervate everytime it is up
Use Barkskin often, it will reduce the dmg you take so it will save you mana
Use Tree of Life every time it is up, you get a healing buff so people will be topped faster and this will save you mana
Tell your dps to move out of the fire, if they stay in it don't heal them. In raid dps paying attention to the encounter will affect the healer mana alot.

If after all this you still find yourself getting oom really fast (i don't think it will be the case) then you can reforge into spirit but even when i started raiding i didn't had to do it.

By the way, between raid continue to do random heroic so you can get a 346 weapon, boots and cloak and remember Cata raid are like the heroic but in more unforgiving, if you try to ignore the mechanics you will die, really fast. So while you guys learn encounter tell your dps to stop looking at the meters and stay alive. If you can hit the enrage timer then it's a good sign because that means you guys know the fight and can execute it well. Only when you can execute the fight almost perfectly you can start worrying about dps.

(sorry for the wall of text xD)

[Azutael]

Adding my druid's armory, ready for butchery aswell. Havent even done heroics yet with it, and wondering If I could simply start off with BH with my current setup.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...troot/advanced

I know my gemming is a bit off, I havent bothered swapping them around after I got some new gear.
I had alot more haste before, but I reforged alot of it to mastery instead, keeping the 916 haste "cap". I mostly do 5 mans and the added mastery felt superior to the haste.

Also have 2 PvP items (chest and relic) but honestly, the little ammount of secondary stats I lose from that are minimal. And the added primary stats are always nice.
Have acces to ring of the boy emperor and staff of sorceror thane thaurassian aswell, but havent checked if they are uppgrades. And I think I would lose too much regen, when I allready have a little low regen (in combat).

[Minaah]

you definitely want to be aiming for more spirit. I prefer 2k + or 2200 ish before I start doing boss fights as resto / heal spec w/any of my healer capable classes. If you'll be mostly healing 10m raids, reforge to mastery over haste and if you end up doing 25ms, swap that-- reforge to haste, then mastery.

[jackdurkalik]

you definitely want to be aiming for more spirit. I prefer 2k + or 2200 ish before I start doing boss fights as resto / heal spec w/any of my healer capable classes. If you'll be mostly healing 10m raids, reforge to mastery over haste and if you end up doing 25ms, swap that-- reforge to haste, then mastery.

I'm just over 2k (2021) on spirit and i have absolutely no problem with my mana (8/13H) so 2200 might be abit exaggerated. Around 1.8k combat regen full raid buff will be plenty to start raiding and he should aim at 2k+ mana regen while buffed when he gets more epic. Since druid get almost (rly rly rly close) the same regen from int than from spirit the draconic flask + int food will help him alot by making his heal hit for more and gaining more mana from innervate and replenishment.

---------- Post added 2011-04-05 at 11:57 AM ----------

Adding my druid's armory, ready for butchery aswell. Havent even done heroics yet with it, and wondering If I could simply start off with BH with my current setup.

I know my gemming is a bit off, I havent bothered swapping them around after I got some new gear.
I had alot more haste before, but I reforged alot of it to mastery instead, keeping the 916 haste "cap". I mostly do 5 mans and the added mastery felt superior to the haste.

Also have 2 PvP items (chest and relic) but honestly, the little ammount of secondary stats I lose from that are minimal. And the added primary stats are always nice.
Have acces to ring of the boy emperor and staff of sorceror thane thaurassian aswell, but havent checked if they are uppgrades. And I think I would lose too much regen, when I allready have a little low regen (in combat).

I would suggest you farm abit more heroic to get 346 in every piece, the boy emperor ring is awsome i suggest you get it and if you get the epic staff use it until you can get an epic dagger since dagger/mace + off-hand is better for caster. Also, your gemming isn't that off, you could change your glove gem but other than that it's pretty good.

[Meejum]

Due to our guild being short on healers, I've decided to help out by trying to get my druid alt up to speed so that I can fill in for 10 mans if needed.

The stickies here and the blogs listed have been great in helping me out with the basics but I had a couple of specific questions before I take the plunge. I'd like to be an asset to the team so I'm after advice on how to maximise my current potential! Ideally I would like to be able to handle the first few bosses of all instances. Other healers would most likely be priest, pally, me or pally, druid, me.

Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...seriy/advanced

Spec: Initially because I was very worried about mana this was the recommended choice. Don't think I need to change this? Only thing I could think of is 1/3 Efflo --> 3/3 NB?

Reforging: I'm in no mans land with haste atm and here are biggest questions I have:
1) Would it be more beneficial for me to reforge haste away to mastery? (as long as I don't go below 916 rating, right?)
2) Is there a particular mastery value to aim for at which point...
3) Can I reforge to spirit instead so that I don't go OOM (really paranoid about this!)

Gear: Plan on grabbing a DMK: Tsunami this week and was thinking of the boots for my first VP purchase? I think I've got my gemming right...could I be chanting differently taking into account the haste issue?

Thanks in advance guys Anything I have missed or advice lemme know....getting really fond of this girl....healing is quite the challenge!

Your spirit is "low", but quite honestly, if you are 3 healing normals, it shouldn't be a problem. You will get quite a lot of mana return from innervate, revitalize and replenishment, all of which is affected by your base mana, and therefore INT. Keep LBx3 rolling on a tank the entire time, for constant replenish and some revitalize procs, and make sure to innervate as often as you can. Most boss fights will have space for at least 2, if not 3, uses of innervate as long as you use one early in the fight, when you are around 85%-ish mana, and then use when its ready again. Spirit is nice to have, but I only really look for it on gear and prefer not to reforge to it. The DMC will help with mana a bit also.

Gear-wise, the boots are an excellent choice, seeing as you will most not likely replace them this tier. The tier gloves are also quite nice as a stand alone. The resto 2-piece bonus is very underwhelming, while the 4 piece is very nice, so until you are killing nef or cho-gall I would not prioritize the 2-piece bonus. The boomkin legs are actually VERY well itemized for resto, so consider grabbing those when you get enough VP. Make getting a 346, or above, mainhand or staff a priority, though. There are a number of 346 healer maces that are not very hard to get, and the staff from earthrager ptah in HoO is very well itemized for resto.

Your spec is fine, you could move some talents around in the resto tree, but that would be dictated by your healing style, and not huge differences at the end of the day. I think having points in furor will serve you well as you get into the demands and mana usage of raids, but look to move those into genesis as you gear up and familiarize yourself with healing in raids.

---------- Post added 2011-04-05 at 05:03 PM ----------

Adding my druid's armory, ready for butchery aswell. Havent even done heroics yet with it, and wondering If I could simply start off with BH with my current setup.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...troot/advanced

I know my gemming is a bit off, I havent bothered swapping them around after I got some new gear.
I had alot more haste before, but I reforged alot of it to mastery instead, keeping the 916 haste "cap". I mostly do 5 mans and the added mastery felt superior to the haste.

Also have 2 PvP items (chest and relic) but honestly, the little ammount of secondary stats I lose from that are minimal. And the added primary stats are always nice.
Have acces to ring of the boy emperor and staff of sorceror thane thaurassian aswell, but havent checked if they are uppgrades. And I think I would lose too much regen, when I allready have a little low regen (in combat).

1800 spirit is plenty to raid with, especially considering you have the two best trinkets outside of heroic raids. I would use the other archeology items you mentioned due to the raw INT and SP ups they will be.

As a rule of thumb, dont gem for spirit, its not nearly as useful as gemming straight INT, unless there is a +20Int, or more, socket bonus.

Your spec is fine, though I don't take Blessing of the Grove in favor of Nature's Bounty as I find that talent to be more useful. If you find yourself using Rejuv a ton, and regrowth or nourish very little, then sticking with BotG is fine.

[Myrrar]

Telling him to put points into BotG instead of NB is bad advice. 1st, since BotG is all buggy you don't actually get 4% healing to RJ, not even close. BotG is by far one of our worst talents in the resto tree right now with 2/2. 1/2 probably scles correctly but should really only be taken if you have no mana problems, which you wont see for a long time. Dropping 60% from NB when our crit is low isn't needed unless you are really stretching your points, which you wont need to. Every ToL that 60% adds up and most of the time, if your RG crits it's better to use than HT on people taking a lot of dmg since it's quick and easy unless they will die without a HT.

Mastery is leaps and bounds above haste between breakpoints. You say you don't direct heal at all besides to refresh LB on tanks yet you saw no real difference between haste and mastery? You don't know how to use mastery since that extra haste was a 0 used stat.

OP: Really study the sticky, stats and reforging and things like that will become a lot easier to understand. Yes, haste after 916 and before the next breakpoint is useless. If you don't spi on gear don't be afraid to reforge extra haste to that. You want to reforge all your crit, so if you have a crit/haste piece and am over cap, you will want to do that crit 1st. So, reforge all your crit 1st than your haste, and go spi or mastery, whichever you are more comfortable with. There isn't really any 'mastery cap' so don't worry about that. Just practice and learn how to proc it and you'll find mastery being amazing in 10s.

Your spec will depend on who you heal with. You may not need cure since other healers heal when they cleanse, in my alt 10(8/13) I have never once needed to cure, so I speced out of it. In my 25s(my main) I haven't either but that's just because we have a lot more cleansers. If you do switch out of cure, I would add that point to NB. Having extra crit on RG for tough situation or especially when poping ToL is amazing. I actually went from 3 to 2 in NB the other week and had to go back. Not critting in ToL was killing me.

DMC:T is amazing. VP boots will be BiS but can be bought on the AH. Besides that you just have to look at what bosses you are working on and what loot you may see in the near future.

[Meejum]

Without seeing logs or knowing the healing style of the poster, advocating BoTG over NB or vice versa is guesswork. For someone who hasnt even "done heroics" its impossible to know if the poster actually uses Regrowth enough for it to be worthwhile, or falls back on RJ spam when things get iffy. If the only desire is to be able to heal Argaloth, then he may be better served with BoTG, even if it sucks by comparison, because of how RJ+WG friendly that fight is. I've certainly healed it using very few RGs, even why I try to snipe guildies.

[Master Guns]

Gonna say yeah, you're ready. I'd keep your mastery up and haste down, as you are, for 10 mans. But I might snag another haste breakpoint if you were to jump to 25 mans.

[Myrrar]

It's not based on how much you use RG, it's based on the fact that BotG is a bugged spell and stacks additively. 2/2 BotG only gives 2.67% healing to RJ instead of 4%. Not worth wasting two points compared to other places, even if you only use RG for ToL.

[Deleted]

Plan on grabbing a DMK: Tsunami this week and was thinking of the boots for my first VP purchase?

If you have enough money to be splashing out on DMC Tsunami, then you should also consider buying the VP boots with actual cash. On most servers they're under 10k now. This would save you a lot of Valor Points which are tough to come by when gearing up.

[jackdurkalik]

Telling him to put points into BotG instead of NB is bad advice. 1st, since BotG is all buggy you don't actually get 4% healing to RJ, not even close. BotG is by far one of our worst talents in the resto tree right now with 2/2. 1/2 probably scles correctly but should really only be taken if you have no mana problems, which you wont see for a long time. Dropping 60% from NB when our crit is low isn't needed unless you are really stretching your points, which you wont need to. Every ToL that 60% adds up and most of the time, if your RG crits it's better to use than HT on people taking a lot of dmg since it's quick and easy unless they will die without a HT.

Mastery is leaps and bounds above haste between breakpoints. You say you don't direct heal at all besides to refresh LB on tanks yet you saw no real difference between haste and mastery? You don't know how to use mastery since that extra haste was a 0 used stat.

Regrowth use so much mana that i don't find it usefull even in ToL since i found out that WG+RJ+HT will heal for alot more for a fraction of the mana. If you use instant RG in ToL to save somebody imo you're wasting mana since other class have more efficient CD that should be used in these moment. I would be interested in parse showing the use of RG as an important part of your healing because i never used it since i started raiding and i'm usually in top 3 healing done. So even if BotG is bugged and the bonus is less than 4% the benefit will be higher than NB since 20% crit on a spell that i don't use is still 0% increased healing.

I didn't said i never use direct heal i said i never use Nourish since it has the same casting time as HT and even by using HT i didn't saw any difference with stacking mastery or haste below 2005 rating. At 2005 i saw a big improvement of my healing.

All these thing are debated in depth on EJ and it depend mostly on your play style. If the OP is doing like me that mean WG+RJ poeple who receive dmg then use HT when everybody is covered, BotG will be better since he will rarely use RG. On the otherside, if the OP use RG often and manage to not run oom then NB will be better.

[Myrrar]

Since you blanket in ToL you will have CC up every few seconds, making RG instant cast and no mana while ToL does nothing for HT.


I would test: http://theincbear.com/living-seed-replacement/

Just because you don't use RG on CC in ToL doesn't mean that's the right way to play. Free instant cast heals? Probably not something you want to skip. If you are completely ignoring RG you aren't playing your druid to it's max, even if you only use RG in ToL alone. 2/2 BotG is one of those things that isn't debated anymore, it's a waste of a point.

Look at any endgame druid logs, topping meters means absolutely nothing, getting the max out of your druid does. I would also suggest either testing Treecalcs or Tang's resto spreadhseet.

You also need to remember, he's in 10 mans, you are not. I heal drastically different in my mains 25s than my alts 10s, both druids.

[Astrobandaid]

don't go boots first save and buy them. Go for your tier pieces first.

[zakalwei]

wow thanks for the in depth replies!

in regards to my spirit being low, it was actually up at around 1800 with a couple other pieces of gear however i "upgraded" them yesterday (gloves and ring) hence the drop. the upgrades have more int which i believe is more beneficial overall?

thanks for the clarification on the haste breakpoint. i cant honestly see me hitting the next one without some gear upgrades as to do so in my current gear i'd have to be reforging out of mastery which would be a no-no i imagine? i always prioritise reforging crit first as from what i've read its quite underwhelming especially in 10's

spec wise all i have done is 5 mans so my setup is for that. never healed before so i wanted utility and something that would make the learning curve easier. wouldnt i need the cleanse for argaloth anyway?

actually now you mention it it probably is better for me to purchase the boots if i can....will probably send me broke but it'll be worth it

my rotation atm is LB - RJ - LB - LB - SM for my tank. Depending on damage I'll throw WG out on party members and then nourish to refresh LB. If the tank is taking more damage than I think normal I'll replace nourish with HT.

the main thing i'm working on now is not to panic in those oh shit moments! its probably lack of experience but i get quite flustered...so i've been working on just popping tree, tranq and then trying to LB people....does that sound right?

i have powa aura's setup to alert me when i hit 80% mana and have innervate bound to a key within easy reach to fire off! been learning to pop barkskin and roots when there is adds and run screaming to the tank

should get a BH in tonite so ill see how that goes and keep you posted!!

[tangedyn]

It's not based on how much you use RG, it's based on the fact that BotG is a bugged spell and stacks additively. 2/2 BotG only gives 2.67% healing to RJ instead of 4%. Not worth wasting two points compared to other places, even if you only use RG for ToL.

Unfortunately, this is more likely to be "working as intended" than a bug, since the additive stacking is true for every single one of our talents and glyphs out there, with the sole exception of Master Shapeshifter. Also, I believe this has been reported to the bugs forum before and was ignored.

[yurano]

Try to get the Vicious Arena hammer and swap out your boots. Other than that, you should be able to hit 14k HPS on Heroic Halfus at i350.

I personally spec http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0hrhZZrfzhdcrzkuo since Efflorescence is currently garbage (Swiftmend is primarily used on the tank, 5 other people do not stand next to the tank).

One thing to note is that if you feel comfortable with your mana pool, Genesis is a viable alternative to Furor. I'm surprised that almost no one has noticed this talent (4% boost to ~80% of your healing).

If the tank is taking more damage than I think normal I'll replace nourish with HT.

Nature's Bounty is exceptionally useful in clutch situations. How many times do you find yourself 'semi' blanket Rejuving everyone after some fat AoE damage. Suddenly your assigned tank takes some spike damage. Nourish at ~1.5 sec cast coupled with pre-applied LB and Rejuv is exceptionally powerful at floating your tank's HP for several seconds until other healers can pop a Holy Light/Rejuv/Riptide to bring the tank back from the brink of doom. Spamming Regrowth under this situation does not do much more healing (HPS) but consumes three times the mana (HPM).

[zakalwei]

so i did BH last night with a full guild group and we 2 healed it, myself and a pally.

i need to configure my dispell properly in vuhdo as it didn't seem to be working...even though i have it set up for smart cast i believe? i was clicking the icon and nothing was happening...must look into that

overall it went ok, pretty hectic and i ended on about 40% mana i think. pally was probably carrying me a bit but it was fun