[Resto] Druid Guide & Discussion (6.0.3)

[Krazyito]

I don't think I've been able to get higher than 23% on my druid. Although that could be my playstyle.

[Arctagon]

I switched NV out with DoC, and now I end fights with almost full mana. I sense I am spending less mana than I should. Especially considering I am not using a weapon enchant due to the weapon being low ilevel. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

[Tiberria]

I switched NV out with DoC, and now I end fights with almost full mana. I sense I am spending less mana than I should. Especially considering I am not using a weapon enchant due to the weapon being low ilevel. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

It's always easy to increase mana consumption. If you are not already using SoTF-WG on near cooldown, you could figure out a way to weave more of those in (at appropriate times). You can also dump mana by casting extra Rejuvs or triaging with Regrowth (outside of NS/OOC procs).

[Teramelle]

I switched NV out with DoC, and now I end fights with almost full mana. I sense I am spending less mana than I should. Especially considering I am not using a weapon enchant due to the weapon being low ilevel. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

I feel the same way sometimes - perhaps you should consider using logs or even just healing meters to track that? I use very little mana (or it feels that way, anyway) and yet, I still end up top on meters and general throughput.

Although, honestly, as a healer, there's no specific rule to how much mana you should be using, or whatever - if you're pulling your weight and you get the kill and there are survivors by the end, you've done your job okay.

[Krazyito]

I'm trying to find the right words to say this without sounding wrong or condescending.

Basically I just don't want people reading to get the wrong idea about DoC. DoC is very useful for low damage phases because as Tiberria has said in other pages, it saves you mana and is more efficient healing (even if mana costs were about the same) because it is smart. It will overheal very rarely while a targeted heal might get sniped.

DoC healing does nothing for high damage phases or points where you need to do some actual healing, though it indirectly gives you more healing in those phases due to having more mana.

In my eyes, 'topping meters' while using DoC is just padding and is meaningless healing. You could achieve the same effect (with less healing on the meters) by sitting on your hands or casting wrath without the talent.

Now, of course the healing you do with it isn't actually meaningless, the healing you do with it is a bit more mana your raid saves as a whole, but the vast majority of it, to me at least, is padding.

Again, this is not to say DoC is a 'meter cheating talent', it isn't. I just want people to realize the value of it is not strictly based on its meter healing.

[Tiberria]

DOC is meter padding to an extent, but it does add useful additional DPS to the raid, and both of the other T90 talents have significant flaws attached to them when it comes to providing more healing when healing is actually needed.

- The value of taking HoTW for a super powered Tranq is fairly dubious. Given how high regular Tranq overheals on almost all practical uses, most of the HoTW Tranq buff tends to add more overheal than effective healing. Even if a HoTW shows higher meter numbers than a regular Tranq, is that extra healing really relevant or needed? I suspect that most of the extra healing it adds just snipes things like ground heals and HoTs that other healers have out to begin with. Taking HoTW to DPS for 45 seconds is perfectly valid, but if you don't have 45 second windows where you can afford to do 0 healing or you actually want a talent that adds value to your primary role, it's kind of a dubious option.
- NV is a very strong talent if you are going with a Rejuv heavy/Incarnation build. However, that build is taking a back seat to the SoTF-WG build for a lot of people (because it just generally performs better on most fights). If you aren't actively heavily spamming Rejuv, NV loses a lot of its value, to the point that you are probably getting as low as 200k healing from it per use. It probably also isn't strong enough on its own/worth the mana cost to start actively spamming Rejuv for 30 seconds when its up either if you are trying to maximize WG usage. While you can time it with high damage phases, you likely aren't getting much real extra healing from it without going with a Rejuv heavy build, making it also a fairly dubious talent.

Personally, if a fight provides barely any down time to be able to spam Wrath enough to get much from DoC, I will take NV. Otherwise, I take DoC. HoTW is kind of limited to fights where you absolutely need a ~4+ million Tranq (and I have yet to see anywhere where that won't be 70% overheal in BRF) or need to contribute 45 seconds of meaningful burst DPS.

[Arctagon]

It's always easy to increase mana consumption. If you are not already using SoTF-WG on near cooldown, you could figure out a way to weave more of those in (at appropriate times). You can also dump mana by casting extra Rejuvs or triaging with Regrowth (outside of NS/OOC procs).

I'm running with Incarnation and Germination.

I feel the same way sometimes - perhaps you should consider using logs or even just healing meters to track that? I use very little mana (or it feels that way, anyway) and yet, I still end up top on meters and general throughput.

Although, honestly, as a healer, there's no specific rule to how much mana you should be using, or whatever - if you're pulling your weight and you get the kill and there are survivors by the end, you've done your job okay.

Thing is, I don't know whether I am performing as well as I should, or how much room for improvement there is. I both log raids and use healing metres, but HPS isn't a very good metric. It has its uses, but healing isn't all about HPS. I do usually land above the 50th percentile for my spec and gear, though.

I'm trying to find the right words to say this without sounding wrong or condescending.

Basically I just don't want people reading to get the wrong idea about DoC. DoC is very useful for low damage phases because as Tiberria has said in other pages, it saves you mana and is more efficient healing (even if mana costs were about the same) because it is smart. It will overheal very rarely while a targeted heal might get sniped.

DoC healing does nothing for high damage phases or points where you need to do some actual healing, though it indirectly gives you more healing in those phases due to having more mana.

In my eyes, 'topping meters' while using DoC is just padding and is meaningless healing. You could achieve the same effect (with less healing on the meters) by sitting on your hands or casting wrath without the talent.

Now, of course the healing you do with it isn't actually meaningless, the healing you do with it is a bit more mana your raid saves as a whole, but the vast majority of it, to me at least, is padding.

Again, this is not to say DoC is a 'meter cheating talent', it isn't. I just want people to realize the value of it is not strictly based on its meter healing.

I'm only using DoC when there are no players in need of more immediate healing, but that tends to be quite often.

[Tiberria]

I'm running with Incarnation and Germination.

Well, you can very easily swap out Incarnation with SoTF and burn off your excess mana weaving in more (SoTF powered) WG casts during periods of burst damage, adding a large amount of throughput.

Incarnation in general tends to be a weak talent past a certain gear level (and especially if you have excess mana). The biggest problem that I have with it is that the 30 second duration is too long; rarely do you have a period of burst healing required for that long of a period (usually it's more like 10-15 seconds), meaining that you waste a good chunk of Incarnation either overhealing (by spamming more Rejuvs) or sitting on it. It really ends up being more of a mana conservation talent than a throughput talent; SoTF in general adds a lot more actual healing in most scenarios/damage patterns. Incarnation would be so much more effective if it were a 90 sec CD/15 sec duration.

[Krazyito]

DOC is meter padding to an extent, but it does add useful additional DPS to the raid, and both of the other T90 talents have significant flaws attached to them when it comes to providing more healing when healing is actually needed.

- The value of taking HoTW for a super powered Tranq is fairly dubious. Given how high regular Tranq overheals on almost all practical uses, most of the HoTW Tranq buff tends to add more overheal than effective healing. Even if a HoTW shows higher meter numbers than a regular Tranq, is that extra healing really relevant or needed? I suspect that most of the extra healing it adds just snipes things like ground heals and HoTs that other healers have out to begin with. Taking HoTW to DPS for 45 seconds is perfectly valid, but if you don't have 45 second windows where you can afford to do 0 healing or you actually want a talent that adds value to your primary role, it's kind of a dubious option.
- NV is a very strong talent if you are going with a Rejuv heavy/Incarnation build. However, that build is taking a back seat to the SoTF-WG build for a lot of people (because it just generally performs better on most fights). If you aren't actively heavily spamming Rejuv, NV loses a lot of its value, to the point that you are probably getting as low as 200k healing from it per use. It probably also isn't strong enough on its own/worth the mana cost to start actively spamming Rejuv for 30 seconds when its up either if you are trying to maximize WG usage. While you can time it with high damage phases, you likely aren't getting much real extra healing from it without going with a Rejuv heavy build, making it also a fairly dubious talent.

Personally, if a fight provides barely any down time to be able to spam Wrath enough to get much from DoC, I will take NV. Otherwise, I take DoC. HoTW is kind of limited to fights where you absolutely need a ~4+ million Tranq (and I have yet to see anywhere where that won't be 70% overheal in BRF) or need to contribute 45 seconds of meaningful burst DPS.

Yea, definitely worth using. I just don't want people to think that the benefit to healing it provides is based on its actual healing amount. The benefit is that damage + the indirect healing from the mana you save.

[Arctagon]

Well, you can very easily swap out Incarnation with SoTF and burn off your excess mana weaving in more (SoTF powered) WG casts during periods of burst damage, adding a large amount of throughput.

Incarnation in general tends to be a weak talent past a certain gear level (and especially if you have excess mana). The biggest problem that I have with it is that the 30 second duration is too long; rarely do you have a period of burst healing required for that long of a period (usually it's more like 10-15 seconds), meaining that you waste a good chunk of Incarnation either overhealing (by spamming more Rejuvs) or sitting on it. It really ends up being more of a mana conservation talent than a throughput talent; SoTF in general adds a lot more actual healing in most scenarios/damage patterns. Incarnation would be so much more effective if it were a 90 sec CD/15 sec duration.

Where does this level of gear sit at? Resto is my off-spec, so the gear isn't very good. The most important pieces are in fact very weak. (http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...tagon/advanced)

[Deleted]

Where does this level of gear sit at? Resto is my off-spec, so the gear isn't very good. The most important pieces are in fact very weak. (http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...tagon/advanced)

I could comfortably switch between incarnation and sotf from around 660 ilvl. Now i only really started raiding at around 650+ilvl, so at that point MY regen exploded more so than is probably true for most.
If you get the spi weapon enchant and even only a 1/4 hourglass instead of your first trinket we are even in regen with a very comparable raid progress. I rank 50th to 99th percentile in pug raids with it, so it works (with no intentional padding, obviously above average raid damage taken).

[Snaige]

Keep in mind that the only healer trinkets that have random throughput procs are Auto Repairing Enclave (which is so over budget overall that it compensates for that) and Shielding Talisman (that has a Multistrike proc, which is a weak stat for us putting the trinket towards the bottom of trinket rankings). Emblem of Caustic Healing is on use, which isn't the same as random throughput, because you can control using it during effective times (and well timed on use throughput effects is often better than static stats). Every other trinket is just static throughput.

I don't personally have a Chew Toy, but I got it from looking at buff uptimes that our HPally is getting with it. The actual RPPM seems to both be significantly higher than the 0.92 tooltip would suggest, as well as have pretty extreme variances on a per fight basis.

For example:
M Flamebinder - 29% uptime https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...uras&source=26
M Hans and Frans - 44% uptime https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...uras&source=26
M Kromog - 23% uptime https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...uras&source=63

The Spirit number that I listed is based on the lowest case (23% uptime). It is definitely significantly higher than 0.92 PPM.

I think Flamebinder and HansandFranz logs are poor examples due to the fights being very short. Short fights are never a good example of a reliable proc rate for healing or dps or anything at all imho. Kromog being a longer fight has more chances to be more accurate example of an average proc rate. I personally had a 19.78% proc uptime on M Beastlord kill and that fight was nearly 12 minutes.

[nightfalls]

Incarnation in general tends to be a weak talent past a certain gear level (and especially if you have excess mana). The biggest problem that I have with it is that the 30 second duration is too long; rarely do you have a period of burst healing required for that long of a period (usually it's more like 10-15 seconds), meaining that you waste a good chunk of Incarnation either overhealing (by spamming more Rejuvs) or sitting on it. It really ends up being more of a mana conservation talent than a throughput talent; SoTF in general adds a lot more actual healing in most scenarios/damage patterns. Incarnation would be so much more effective if it were a 90 sec CD/15 sec duration.

The problem I have with Incarnation is it's really (like NV) only a Rejuv talent. Outside of Rejuv, it's only a 15% base increase every 3 minutes, or ~53% effective to WG (without any mana saving), which isn't even really that good. So the talent really only shines when using heavy Rejuvs which as discussed has been taking a back seat to WG usage.

Compare to SotF which is an always-on 50% effective healing increase to WG, not a 1/6 uptime CD.

[Aleks0410]

DOC is meter padding to an extent, but it does add useful additional DPS to the raid, and both of the other T90 talents have significant flaws attached to them when it comes to providing more healing when healing is actually needed.

- The value of taking HoTW for a super powered Tranq is fairly dubious. Given how high regular Tranq overheals on almost all practical uses, most of the HoTW Tranq buff tends to add more overheal than effective healing. Even if a HoTW shows higher meter numbers than a regular Tranq, is that extra healing really relevant or needed? I suspect that most of the extra healing it adds just snipes things like ground heals and HoTs that other healers have out to begin with. Taking HoTW to DPS for 45 seconds is perfectly valid, but if you don't have 45 second windows where you can afford to do 0 healing or you actually want a talent that adds value to your primary role, it's kind of a dubious option.

Why do you need to use HoTW with Tranq? Surely you can find a phase in a fight where that much increased healing is useful, especially for progress.

And don't almost every fight have 45 sec at the start where it's safe for one healer to DPS? Not that it's that great for damage anymore... What a shame actually.

[Hildrande]

The problem I have with Incarnation is it's really (like NV) only a Rejuv talent.

I view Incarnation more as a cooldown, that becomes strong if you can have it time well with healing requirements. WG during Incarnation is stronger than WG cast with SotF - 8*1.15=9.2, and it can be cast every 10 second.

Used as a strong cooldown rather than a passive mana saver, Incarnation greatly synergises NV's power - both for the 20% smart heal, but also for the damage, that is also triggered from overhealing.

Since few fights are structured to fit into the 30 seconds on - 150 seconds off timing of Incarnation this tier, but instead have healing requirements varying greatly with odd timing throughout the fight, I think Rampant Growth has alot of potential.

[Tiberria]

Why do you need to use HoTW with Tranq? Surely you can find a phase in a fight where that much increased healing is useful, especially for progress.

And don't almost every fight have 45 sec at the start where it's safe for one healer to DPS? Not that it's that great for damage anymore... What a shame actually.

Because if you are just using it as a +healing cooldown, it has the same problems Incarnation does. 45 seconds is way too long of a duration to be effective with most burst healing phases this tier. Most of those phases are 10-15 seconds long. You would get 10-15 seconds of effectiveness out of HoTW and then just a lot of wasted throughput/overheal and the 6 minute cooldown really limits its effectiveness.

[nightfalls]

I view Incarnation more as a cooldown, that becomes strong if you can have it time well with healing requirements. WG during Incarnation is stronger than WG cast with SotF - 8*1.15=9.2, and it can be cast every 10 second.

That's being compared to 6*1.5=9 for SotF though, which is still stronger but only very slightly, and of course only up for 30s every 3m.

[Arctagon]

I tried SotF out for the first time, and boy was my healing raised. I first tried it when I did a heroic, and I immediately liked it a lot, which was rather surprising, since I've somehow always had a feeling it would be more bothersome than anything else. I then did the two first wings of BRF LFR, and managed to keep 40k+ HPS on Kromog until I ran out of mana and died at the end of the fight.

I kept Germination, though. I don't like the idea of Rampant Growth consuming HoTs, and I find I usually don't need an empowered WG more often than every 15 seconds, either. Except, perhaps, on very healing intensive fights.

[wakii]

Hey guys my RL is going to bench me or a holy priest .... What arguments do I have ot bring a Druid? I see not a single one, everything is covered by holy + he doesnt need mana and can spam AoE + (Hymn = Tranq).

[Deleted]

Isn't hymn considerably weaker than tq?