Resto druid - few quick questions :)

[vpywow]

My main is a DK who I got bored with now.
I have a lvl 90 druid who i have been using mainly for farming herbs/ores.
I am currently thinking of trying my hands at healing for a change of pace.
I need some pointers with resto healing.

a) Is their healing style complex ?. (This is totally subjective I understand so your personal opinions are welcome )
b) How good are they healing in raids ?.
c) Since I will be doing dailies also, I guess the OS for resto druid would be balance.Is it easy to do the dailies as balance ?.Or should I have to retain my feral set ?.
d) Also as I already mentioned this is my farming toon and as such I have only Herb/Mining on her.Will it seriously gimp my healing because of this prof combo?.

[Deleted]

I've never played a resto druid as my main but I'd still like to think that I'm quite good at it having healed everything from ToGC insanity runs and full ICC heroics to current normal mode content so I'm going to weigh in just a little bit;

a) Druid healing, as pretty much all healing, is all about predicting what is to come and when to use your cooldowns. As a druid this used to mean hotting the whole raid before shit happens but now, especially if your gear is bad this isn't an option. Druid healing is by far the most fun I've ever had healing things though, it is challenging because you don't have any panic buttons other than Nature's Swiftness (and possibly treeform for instant regrowth spam, although this is VERY mana consuming and I usually use the form for stronger hots)

b) Druids fit any raid setup very well and I'm not currently having issues with outhealing any other class except maybe priests in 25mans.

c) It's easy to do them as balance, you can just pull a ton of mobs and dot them all up and aoe them down while keeping yourself alive with rejuv/NS healing touch, since you can cast heals in boomkin form with the glyph.

d) No profession combos will affect your healing THAT majorly. Having "proper", non gathering professions on your main is required in most raiding guilds though so if you enjoy druid healing I'd consider putting the time into leveling other professions.

[MedikalllyInept]

I'd say Seabert pretty much nailed it.

Personally, I'd put Druids at the middle of the pack of healing classes. They're not bad, they're not amazing. We shine on certain fights (most notably Stone Guards with Jade in the combo if 10-man, Elegon, and Will of the Emperor just to name MSV bosses). Also an opinion, I'd say Resto Druids require a more active mind throughout the fight to properly heal and excel. Wasting a Rejuvenation cast or three at low Spirit levels can really screw you over later on (Wild Growth hitting too few targets consistently also comes to mind).

It is worth noting that when you 3-heal fights in a 10-man situation with a Resto Druid, we are most likely going to underperform relative to the other two simply because of our HoTs getting topped off more frequently (I cannot speak for 25-mans currently).

As for the last two questions you had, Balance is the better of the two for dailies. You've got more targets to multi-DoT and get Starsurge procs off of, as well as the aforementioned heals. And on the topic of professions, no it will not hold you back unless you are truly trying to min max.

[manamonster]

Most resto druids are bad. Even the ones in good guilds play it improperly. Reducing overheal is the biggest challenge when playing resto druid. Managing when to hot vs when to direct heal is the biggest thing about druids. And a common theme among all healers is proper CD usage. Depending on your class / racials / talent choices you will have either a few or a lot of CDs as a resto druid. Proper mana conservation (as with all healers) will also separate you as a resto druid. Resto druid, moreso than other classes, is about using your full Druid arsenal properly.

Basically - if you don't really enjoy resto druid it's hard to be good at it. It's not for everyone and it's a fairly different healing style than all the other healers.

[asharia]

a) no
b) we're fine. just as good as any other healer
c) balance, since you will have better gear for it. i keep a feral set anyway, even though i don't use it.
d) no. sounds like you're not doing anything super hardcore, so it won't really matter.

[Dracodraco]

Most resto druids are bad. Even the ones in good guilds play it improperly. Reducing overheal is the biggest challenge when playing resto druid. Managing when to hot vs when to direct heal is the biggest thing about druids. And a common theme among all healers is proper CD usage. Depending on your class / racials / talent choices you will have either a few or a lot of CDs as a resto druid. Proper mana conservation (as with all healers) will also separate you as a resto druid. Resto druid, moreso than other classes, is about using your full Druid arsenal properly.

Basically - if you don't really enjoy resto druid it's hard to be good at it. It's not for everyone and it's a fairly different healing style than all the other healers.

Actually, most people in top-end guilds just play with healers that are as skilled as they are, and they play classes that instantly bomb people up rather than rely on hots. It is not dependant on the druid to reduce overheal - that is dependant on the other healers. If a druid has a rejuv on a target with 75% hp, and nothing is able to kill the person anytime soon, the OTHER healers are responsible for not hitting that target with a direct heal, to save their own mana. It is not up to the druid to save his mana by not casting a rejuv.
Realisticly, as a druid, the only direct heal you should be casting on a non-tank target would be swiftmend, OOC proc'd regrowths, or nature's swiftness HT's.
Anything else is a big waste of your mana and time - a healing touch costs almost twice as much as a rejuvenation, and heals for about 80% of what a rejuv does. A rejuv also only costs 1 second in GBC, while a HT with the 3043 breakpoint is about 2.2 seconds.


This is why disc priests and holy paladins shine over druids atm, though - no one gives a flying giraffe's ass about what hots other people has on targets, and just bomb them up. However, due to paladin's mastery and disc priests absorb mechanics, it means that they never really overheal to the same extent - they just block the damage that'll come, instead of heal the damage that has been done.

[manamonster]

Actually, most people in top-end guilds just play with healers that are as skilled as they are, and they play classes that instantly bomb people up rather than rely on hots. It is not dependant on the druid to reduce overheal - that is dependant on the other healers. If a druid has a rejuv on a target with 75% hp, and nothing is able to kill the person anytime soon, the OTHER healers are responsible for not hitting that target with a direct heal, to save their own mana. It is not up to the druid to save his mana by not casting a rejuv.

At the risk of starting a war here, this probably the worst piece of resto druid related information I've ever heard. It's up to every single healer, in my opinion, to reduce overheal and conserve mana. Throwing a hot on someone at 75% hp, with no future incoming damage, would be absolutely silly.

Realisticly, as a druid, the only direct heal you should be casting on a non-tank target would be swiftmend, OOC proc'd regrowths, or nature's swiftness HT's.
Anything else is a big waste of your mana and time - a healing touch costs almost twice as much as a rejuvenation, and heals for about 80% of what a rejuv does. A rejuv also only costs 1 second in GBC, while a HT with the 3043 breakpoint is about 2.2 seconds.

Except you're forgetting Nourish and Living Seed. Not to mention the potential for Rejuv to go to overheal is incredibly high. In addition, the mana cost of rejuv in significantly limiting even as you gain additional gear. Throwing out a random rejuv to "top someone up" is a waste of mana and will almost definitely result in a large amount of overhealing. Notable exception would be on fights like Garalon or any other constant pulsing fight. Attempting to follow Blizzard's idea of "small fast expensive", "slow big expensive", and "slow small cheap" really works. Completely forgetting you have Living Seed or Nourish is a massive mistake any resto druid can make. Blindly mashing Wild Growth and spamming Efflo when it isn't necessary is the mark of bad players in my opinion.

This is why disc priests and holy paladins shine over druids atm, though - no one gives a flying giraffe's ass about what hots other people has on targets, and just bomb them up. However, due to paladin's mastery and disc priests absorb mechanics, it means that they never really overheal to the same extent - they just block the damage that'll come, instead of heal the damage that has been done.

While I agree that disc priests and holy paladins are very strong, I disagree that this means they "shine over druids". Absorbs and heals compliment each other. On a 2 heal fight I'd rather have a disc priest + resto druid or holy paladin + resto druid than just a holy paladin + disc priest together. But we'll probably disagree all day about that

[stormgust]

At the risk of starting a war here, this probably the worst piece of resto druid related information I've ever heard. It's up to every single healer, in my opinion, to reduce overheal and conserve mana. Throwing a hot on someone at 75% hp, with no future incoming damage, would be absolutely silly.

Once you look at the absolute values of health missing, vs. healing done, were closer to 95% rather than 75% hp for it to become silly. Also, sooner or later you'd need to heal those 25% anyway, that is to say, there's no reason not to let your HoTs do the jobs, when there's time for them to do so.

Except you're forgetting Nourish

Assuming 2 T14, for just 2.5k mana more, you get the same healing as nourish in a 0.4 second longer time interval (assuming no HoT on the target). Obviously if there's a HoT on the target, you'll get about 20% healing more out of nourish. Though honestly, if you want to directly heal a hotted target it is during a phase of intense damage, i.e. nourish most likely won't cut it anyway. Also - just for 2.5k mana more - rejuvenation will provide four additional ticks, which equals to the healing of 2 unhotted (slightly more actually) nourish cast. That is to say, if you can guarantee that the 2nd reju tick won't overheal, nourish looses on HPM (and as i'm to lazy to do the math, it probably looses on HPS as well)

and Living Seed.

Well, excluding the tanks, you'd probably see close to no healing out of it anyway. As for tanks, I better hope you have LB/Reju rolling on them and use regrowth for burst damage.

Not to mention the potential for Rejuv to go to overheal is incredibly high.

I already mentioned that you merely need the 2nd tick of rejuvenation not to overheal for rejuvenation to beat nourish in terms of HPM. Usually it is reasonable to assume, that one can look ahead about 5 seconds in terms of incoming damage.

In addition, the mana cost of rejuv in significantly limiting even as you gain additional gear. Throwing out a random rejuv to "top someone up" is a waste of mana and will almost definitely result in a large amount of overhealing.

What do you suggest to do otherwise? Clearly Nourish isn't what you're supposed to do.

Notable exception would be on fights like Garalon or any other constant pulsing fight. Attempting to follow Blizzard's idea of "small fast expensive", "slow big expensive", and "slow small cheap" really works.

Nourish never was more than a "I've nothing to do, so instead of standing around doing nothing, I'll just use this one" kind of spell.

Blindly mashing Wild Growth and spamming Efflo when it isn't necessary is the mark of bad players in my opinion.

And a good druid will know, that holding onto efflorescence if you won't be needing it within it's cooldown length is equally bad.
Usually you have a Rejuvenation on either of the tanks, that is to say, it is a superior choice to - you guessed it - nourish.

[Deleted]

a) At it's heart druid healing is very simple but executing it well takes a bit of getting used to.
basically keep lifebloom up 100%
use swiftmend and wild growth close to cd.
use glyphed regrowth for omen of clarity procs.
rest of the time use rejuev and in emergencies regrowth not during proc.

If you just stick to that you will be better than most resto druids out there.
Mushrooms, nourish and healing touch have almost no place in our healing although there are some fights where they become useful. (Not nourish though that spell is never useful either for HPS or HPM).

b)They are currently the worst healers for 25 man mainly due to disc and paladin absorbs and lack of burst aoe healing to large numbers of targets
IN 10 mans we rock as wild growth especially with SoTF really shines. The only healers to beat me in 10 man (apart from occaisional one off's) for about a year now were pre nerf monks.

c) if you pull quest mobs one by one feral is far superior.
Once you learn to pull 8 or so at a time Balance is much faster. Dot, kite, instant starsurge on procs.
d) crafting professions do help as they provide a decent intellect bonus but you will get much better benefits form learning the playstyle well and getting good use from effluessence. VuhDo is a fantastic healing addon and woudl be the one i would recommend.

[Dracodraco]

At the risk of starting a war here, this probably the worst piece of resto druid related information I've ever heard. It's up to every single healer, in my opinion, to reduce overheal and conserve mana. Throwing a hot on someone at 75% hp, with no future incoming damage, would be absolutely silly.

And how exactly do you propose a druid does that, then? If a resto druid plants a rejuvenation, it is up to the other healers to gauge if that person will need additional healing within 15 seconds, or if they should leave the target alone to be healed up by the stray HoT. You're also saying that healing anyone above 75% hp is silly, as using healing touch or nourish is even more silly than rejuving him.

Except you're forgetting Nourish and Living Seed. Not to mention the potential for Rejuv to go to overheal is incredibly high. In addition, the mana cost of rejuv in significantly limiting even as you gain additional gear. Throwing out a random rejuv to "top someone up" is a waste of mana and will almost definitely result in a large amount of overhealing. Notable exception would be on fights like Garalon or any other constant pulsing fight. Attempting to follow Blizzard's idea of "small fast expensive", "slow big expensive", and "slow small cheap" really works. Completely forgetting you have Living Seed or Nourish is a massive mistake any resto druid can make. Blindly mashing Wild Growth and spamming Efflo when it isn't necessary is the mark of bad players in my opinion.

I might very well be wrong, but I'm sure that living seed only used to proc off of actual targetted attacks - which makes it very largely useless on almost every single fight on anything but a tank. Logs from myself and our main raids' resto druid seems to agree - the only persons who ever gets healed more than 100K by living seed, is the tanks.
Regardless, let's look at it for a bit:
Nourish - 6.2K mana.
Rejuv - 9.6K mana.
So nourish costs about 64% of what a rejuv does. Or one third, just to make it easy.

With raid buffs, you'll have about 20% chance to crit, and thus plant living seeds.
My nourish hits for 25K, and my rejuv hits for 16K*6 without crits.
It's safe to assume that one tick out of the 6 will be a crit with a 20% crit chance. Thus we get 5*16=80+32=112K healing from 9.6K mana from a rejuv,
We get 25K, and one living seed every 5 casts adding 30%, so 25*0.30=7.5k divided on the 5 total casts you need for one crit, making nourish heal for an average of 26.5K (assuming living seed procs off of everything).
You heal one person instantly with the first tick of rejuv, and then again 2.5 seconds later - your nourish will heal after 2.2 seconds. Realisticly, this means that Rejuv also has better HPS than Nourish, along with not needing you to stand still and cast.
Clearly, nourish is shit for anything but spamming on the tanks when there's no damage going out. It should only ever be used in the case that:
Your target has less than 10% hp that needs to be healed up.
Absolutly no damage is going out (no point in heroics where this happens in this tier).
If you use nourish twice, you spend more mana for less healing than a rejuv would do - and if you have two set, you better believe you'll smack rejuv on the target with 75% hp.

Also, with the cooldowns and healing tied into effloresence and wild growth, any druid worth his or her salt should know that you want to mash them on cooldown - there's simply no reason NOT to. Wild Growth lasts for 7 seconds, which means that there's literally only 3 seconds of downtime on it - not hitting it on CD would be a giant waste, as long as there's any damage out that it can heal.
The same goes for Swiftmend, more so with 4 set than without, I guess. Effloresence lasts 8 seconds base, and swiftmend has a 15 sec CD, along with being our absolute cheapest heal, instant, and significantly stronger than nourish. 53K initial heal and 6750 on 3 targets 8 times after, for a potential of 215K healing for 5100 mana. You want to use that bad boy, and you want to use him ASAP so you can do it again.

While I agree that disc priests and holy paladins are very strong, I disagree that this means they "shine over druids". Absorbs and heals compliment each other. On a 2 heal fight I'd rather have a disc priest + resto druid or holy paladin + resto druid than just a holy paladin + disc priest together. But we'll probably disagree all day about that

They don't really compliment each other. Like. At all. Absorbs just always absorbs healing - it really doesn't matter if the entire raid is sitting at 75% hp (missing 100K health, basicly), if the priest has spirit shells on everyone for 200K - you don't NEED to top them off before the priest starts doing "normal" healing again, because realisticly, they've still got their normal health pool AND 100K on top of that from the absorbs. There's absolutly no scenario, EVER, where normal healing beats absorbs.
I get what you mean though - if they absorb, it means you can heal normally to top people off, without them taking damage. What I'm saying is, you don't benefit from doing that, more than you would from absorbing twice. A druid+paladin is better than a druid+monk because the style for both players is "aoe heal the crap out of everything with hots and smart-targetted heals", but a disc+paladin is just as good if not better, because you'll have double the absorbs <.<.

[manamonster]

Assuming 2 T14, for just 2.5k mana more, you get the same healing as nourish in a 0.4 second longer time interval (assuming no HoT on the target). Obviously if there's a HoT on the target, you'll get about 20% healing more out of nourish. Though honestly, if you want to directly heal a hotted target it is during a phase of intense damage, i.e. nourish most likely won't cut it anyway. Also - just for 2.5k mana more - rejuvenation will provide four additional ticks, which equals to the healing of 2 unhotted (slightly more actually) nourish cast. That is to say, if you can guarantee that the 2nd reju tick won't overheal, nourish looses on HPM (and as i'm to lazy to do the math, it probably looses on HPS as well)

If you have 2pc T14 I think your logic is fairly safe. Only thing I'm hazy on is whether it's 2.5k more mana. My argument is that you don't need to waste time rejuving a target at 75% health when you could spend that time putting a Living Seed on the tank or getting a WG buffed Nourish on a raid member. When considering that you're healing (in 10 man) with 2-3 other healers who also throw their AOE / whatever else ... 15% hp is hardly anything to makeup and by the time you throw out WG and cast a rejuv they could very well already be topped before that 2nd tick. My entire point was that trying to follow Blizzard's theoretical model works well (in my opinion). Maybe I'm wrong though.

[Deleted]

Dracodraco explained it very well but a short summary is in order.
Don't cast nourish.
Ever.

[Keiyra]

Nourish is just too slow, too weak and with insufficiently high HPM to be worthwhile. The time you spent casting it would be better spent on pretty much anything else. Sadly the way blizzard ran the numbers this expac they basically killed the need to cast nourish and seriously maimed the need to cast HT.

Considering that most encounters this tier have a fair amount of random raid damage going out even a rejuv that starts overhealing on its second tick is providing cushion if that player takes damage in the next 9 secs or so, and odds are they will. I'm not saying go willy nilly and rejuv all the time the whole raid, but really its going to be the best bang for you buck for when you don't have a CC proc to cast RG.

LB on tank, SM on CD, WG often (based on damage profile), CC cast RG, NS+HT, use CD's as appropriate is a basic how to of druid healing.