Ribeye

I read over this like 5 times cause I honestly couldn't tell if you were arguing with me or agreeing with me. That being said. NS+Regrow followed by a swiftmend is a better overall heal on average then NS+HT. If nothing else, it is equatable. Why waste the mana of switching in and out of tree if you don't have to? And yes, there are times when Swiftmend is down. There are also times when NS is down but I assumed we were working under the theory that they were both up.

This nonsense about hot timers is simply that. I of course make use of my timers and I'm more than happy to crack out a swiftmend just as a rejuve is winding down, but I don't save them for those magical moments. I use mine frequently and as an instant big heal regardless of what my timer says. If someone needs a heal thats just one more tool in my belt to get it done.

Do yourself a favor and stop holding on to the last remnants of your old HT spamming days. And as i stated before, I have had a 6797 Swiftmend which I guarrantee is higher than some non critting HT's.

 

Pyxis

The PvP idol seems like it would be pretty good for PvP which is a little bit of a shocker but overall blue is new the purple for idols. The total lack of a tanking idol upgrade in TBC is just sad.

 

crimsonsentinel

You are comparing the healing value of two spells (regrowth + sm) against the healing power of one spell. That is his argument. It's like saying that auto-attack+whirlwind does more damage than mortal strike, so whirlwind is better at doing damage than mortal strike.

 

lairpie

The lowest imaginable non crit NS-HT13 followed by a swiftmend is more healing than the highest imaginable crit NS-Regrowth followed by a swiftmend and takes the exact same amount of time.

(On the same fight, same target, the same gear, same buffs, with the same spec, plus for 2 talent points that don't really do much anywhere else that HT is even bigger)

 

Lupison

HPS? Healing per second? Detree'ing takes an extra 1.5s, that's an eternity.

 

Ribeye

I guess im just confused on your stance. Swiftmend doesn't exist in a bubble. There has to be a hot on your target to get the swiftmend off.

So to rephrase what I'm saying.

Natures Swiftness
Regrowth
Swiftmend

is equatable to:

Shifting out of tree
Natures swiftness
Healing Touch Rank 13
Shifting back into tree

Seeing as you can't swiftmend a healing touch I did not add that in. I am comparing two fast methods of healing a spiking tank and saying that not leaving tree can provide a comparable method for achieving the same goal for far less mana usage.

So ya, if HT 13 crits you are probably going to end up with a better heal. I admit that and agree with you on it. But far more often Ht 13 does not crit. Regrow does, alot.

In the end its about comfortability, and if your way makes you happy I'm all for it. Perhaps your point of view is affected by your typical job in raids? I am not used as a tank healer and so expecting that there is always a full set of hots on a tank is not part of my thinking process. I see spike, add my own hot and sm it. I Apologize for the combatative nature of my last post.

 

crimsonsentinel

I think a timeline is in order:

Scenario 1
0.0 seconds: MT gets WTFCRUSHINGBLOWED
0.0 seconds (mr. theorycraft druid has godlike reflexes and ping): shift out of tree
0.0 seconds: Press NS+HT macro, heals tank for 6k (I'm using ballpark figures here)

Scenario 2
0.0 seconds: MT gets WTFCRUSHINGBLOWED
0.0 seconds: Press NS+Regrowth macro, MT gets healed for 3k
1.5 seconds: Press swiftmend, MT gets healed for 3k

Shifting out and NS+HT is always worth it if you can spare the mana to shift back into tree.

Shifting back into tree doesn't count since by that time your MT is back up to safe levels of health and so you can take your time twiddling thumbs etc.

 

Playered

I tried the un-tree->NS/HT macro today which failed to cast the HT always, im alot happier with my NS/RG macro.

Not to mention, sometimes you need an instant heal but you dont need a 10k instant heal, the ability to follow it up with another 3-6k SM heal or the choice to save it is better from a personal PoV.

 

Sozar

It probably needs a stop casting

/cancelform
/stopcasting (mabye)
/cast Nature's Swiftness
/stopcasting
/cast Healing Touch

 

lairpie

No. It does not. There is 0 time lost in leaving tree form. its a buff on you. clicking off a buff has 0 time lost. More realistically making the macro
/cancelform
/cast nature's swiftness
/cast healing touch

results in the healing touch going off just as fast as using NS on a regrowth does, as fast as you can hit the button.

@Ribeye
Yeah, I'm pretty much exclusively healing tanks in the 2 tree druid setup that this thread is originally discussing. Any thing i ever want to heal fast enough to use NS on will always have at least 1 swiftmendable hot on it, and usually it will have 2 rejuvs and 1-2 regrowths on it for my swiftmending pleasure. I guess that actually, though we sorta got off track, comes back to the original point of the thread, the power of 1 or even better 2 resto druids as the primary tank healers. For me, its completely assumed that i can swiftmend anyone i'm healing at any time. Even like, on hydross for example, i don't always have a regrowth or a rejuv on every off tank and tank (we use 3 off tanks and the off duty MT to each grab an add and aoe them down right away) but because of the fact we have 2 resto druids doing the majority of the tank healing, swiftmend becomes much more reliable as more people are eligible targets because one of us will have a hot or two on any given tank.

Yeah, I'd seen you make other fairly inteligent posts before, that's why i didn't just ignore you, but couldn't get why you'd think using SM after HT was any harder than using SM after regrowth. Guess i sorta overassumed we were talking in the context of druids just healing the tank(s) with hots like most of the posts had been discussing.

 

lairpie

I don't have the stop casting in my macro. I honestly have no idea if it takes more than 1 button press for it to go off as i'm pretty much always goign to be smashing it when i use it. Also as a note, with what they're doing in an upcoming patch with making shifting smoother, even if you have to hit it twice (with 0 time between) now, you won't have to next patch.

 

thorin5

The macro consisting of just

/cast Nature's Swiftness
/cast Healing Touch (in my case Healing Wave, but same effect)

takes 2 button presses, just 1 activates NS and gives the "Another action is in progress" error.

Adding the /stopcasting between them allows it to happen in just 1 button press the same way that mages macro AP+PoM+Trinkets+Pyro into 1 button press.

 

Playered

Correct, however even with stop-casting inbetween each function it still gives "you are in a form" error when trying to do the NS-HT macro from Tree

However even normally I dont -always- get a 1 click cast NS-RG either with stopcasting so :P

 

Narugh

I'd say your GM is absolutely right. Windfury for your rogues will surpass the buffs he will give your tank. Unless perhaps you have serious aggro issues on all fights, but then I don't think moving the shaman is the solution.

And about healing meters, I'd say that depends on the encounter.

 

◊ Sarutobi

[Totem of Ancestral Guidance] is the only one I can think of offhand. And that's only if mana isn't an issue.

 

lairpie

One thing that I've noticed is that the balance on the healing meters changes drastically from our first kill to later kills. Actually you could almost define "farm status" for our guild as where our top paladin catches up to me on the healing meters. We usually run pretty light on healers for our first kills to try and keep our damage high. Also for obvious reasons the more you kill something the easier it is on the tanks and healers. You take less damage both from better gear, and from having a better idea how to avoid it. You can also do more healing again from both gear, and from knowing who and when you need the healing.

On first kills without our other main resto druid, I'm sometimes as high as double the healing output of the second person. While I feel 2 resto druids as MT healers works way better for keeping people alive, the healing output of a resto druid healing the tanks without too many other hots on them is pretty ridiculous. I've been pretty close to, if not double the healing output of our second healer almost every first kill without our other main tree. When we did alar a couple weeks ago without our other main tree and only 6 healers, 1 of which had never been to TK or SSC before and had a bunch of empty gem sockets, etc, same thing as on a lot of our first kills, I was just short of double the effective healing of our top paly in second.

When our other main tree is there, i'm still always first but he's usually around 90% of my effective healing and the top paly around 80% of me. Some of it is that when we have 2 trees, our palys get to do a lot more raid healing, which pumps them higher than being limited to only getting as much healing on the tanks as they can get in around my hot ticks and swiftmends. Some of it is just that the harder things get the more druid healing on tanks goes through the roof.

Come 4th or 5th time we kill something, usually have a healer more than we did the first time as we need fewer damagers since they don't die as much, our paladins usually catch up or pass me in healing done. Has anyone else seen a similar effect. For reference, we only have 1 resto shaman who is a fairly recent 70 and still just slightly behind in gear and obviously less experienced, but he falls in much the same pattern as palys, unless its a figth like void reaver for instance where any shaman spamming chain heal on grouped up damage taking meleers should be fairly untouchable for healing output.

 

Hrungnir

One thing to remember is that lifebloom stacking isn't useful only to tree druids. It's not as big of a deal for raids, where you'd be crazy to have your feral druids in healing gear any more, but a trinketed rolling lifebloom stack is still one of the most efficient methods of healing for even a feral druid. HT gives more throughput, but in my experience it's actually easier healing with the lifebloom stack because you know the tank will be ok while you deal with the dps. I heal most instances with a rolling lifebloom on the main tank puntuated with HT when necessary, and single lifeblooms on the dps when they need it.

 

Ribeye

@lairpie

I have noticed exactly the same thing and just assumed it was exclusive to my guild. On first attempts and first kills I generally lead the healing meters by a very large amount, along with the other druid I raid with. As we get better with the fight and healing roles become more defined, the other healers "catch up," and often pass us druids.

This leads me to believe that in chaotic situations where noone is quite comfortable, druids offer a buffer of fast steady healing whereas other healers might just be overhealing the wrong targets. I think you definitely have to put this into the definite plus category of having a couple druids along in your raid.

 

Replica

I definitely think this sums up our experiences since a recent Tree joined our guild and then geared his sorry ass up.

Having all those HoTs ticking on the MT plus the option for Swiftmend in clutch situations is like having a thousand Earth Shields on the tank. At least that's how i look at it. It's great for me since it's a step toward removing luck and shortbussing from an encounter. Druids just add a little certainty, and gives other healers more room to breathe.

Prior to getting a tree everyone had to overheal. Sure, people could time their spells better and react or predict incoming dps better, or they could downrank more to be more conservative or whatever. But with some of the DPS being thrown at tanks it's just safer not to be conservative at all. You might get 50% overhealing, but you beat the boss.

Adding a Tree into this is a huge insurance policy. Even if people do stuff up, the Tree can and probably will save you. The presence of the Tree healing the MT, i feel, lightens the load on the rest of the raid immesurably.

I can only imagine what having two trees would be like.

 

redef

I was a lone resto druid on my guild for many months, although now we've picked up a couple more due to gurtogg and other healing-heavy fights.

I'm a big fan of lifebloom, but it seems as though the people here love it more than even I.

Some comments:

1) Group healing can be off and on for lifebloom. Fights like Archimonde, kaelthas (later phases) and lady vashj are ideal because you can be quite certain that your hots will actually heal the target before someone else has (due to healers being busy elsewhere, mostly). Archimonde especially, the second I see a doomfire debuff on someone I'll send them a lifebloom/rejuv and possibly a regrowth. Other fights, like najentus, druid hots are completely useless--they simply arent fast enough.

It was suggested that lifebloom would be great for reliquary of souls, and I'm inclined to disagree. We only bring 6 healers to this fight and it just doesn't make sense to bring a resto druid when a shaman has bloodlust, totems, and chain heal. Chain heal itself will almost certainly be able to heal more than lifebloom. Even if you managed to keep a 3 stack on 4 people (I doubt this would be possible...read next point), each raid healer needs to be able to heal more than 4 people (particularly in phase 3).

2) Keeping lifebloom stacked can be a very difficult, if not impossible, task and this is problematic if you are relying on it for your output. Virtually every encounter these days requires that healers be doing more than simply standing in one spot. This forces attention away from staring at timers. Someone suggested that a druid's healing could be huge if they kept a stack on 4 tanks...I agree it could be, but I would never be able to keep these stacks rolling. Moving attention away for more than 1 second would let your hots drop and break the rotation. This is especially difficult for someone like me who is responsible for organizing healing on our raids (for example, I click macros to call in groups for gurtogg bloodboil, it's impossible to do this AND keep 4 stacks rolling). Something as small as glancing at something on your screen other than your targets/timers will be enough to break the rotation.

Basically, although 3-stacked lifeblooms are insane for efficiency/etc, they're really difficult to use and not practical in most situations. Very rare situations such as Azgalor make it feasible, but just about everywhere (that calls for single-target healing) else I find i'm better off simply keeping up rejuv/regrowth/lifebloom. Rejuv+regrowth Hots (excluding regrowth's direct heal) are approximately equivalent to a double stack of lifebloom. Add an actual lifebloom in there and you have approximately a 3 stack that is MUCH easier to sustain, gives you the ability to swiftmend, and will be ticking rapidly (plus I have a bit of time in between to toss HoTs onto other players).

 

lairpie

Keeping lifebloom stacks rolling becomes a ton easier if you make a coupel extra macros like:

/cast [target=tank1] lifebloom



/cast [target=tank2] lifebloom


etc. I've found i can pretty reliably keep a 3 stack and rejuv up on 3 tanks. Trying to keep a 3 stack up on 4 tanks, the only difficulty is knowing when you're not going to get it. You have to accept that sometimes you'll miss, and not click it anyway, then causing you to miss the lifebloom refresh on the next tank too. Some of this also comes back to the power of dual trees and their ability to work together to keep tanks all hotted up. if you have 4 tanks, in theory you could both triple lifebloom all of them. But then you're giving up swiftmend, rejuv, etc. Try each triple stacking 2 of them, and then each rejuving all 4.

 

Oxylos

Regarding resto druid in Reliquary of Souls, during phase 2 I can easily keep up 4 stacks rolling and do so every week. 3 on mages, 1 on a destuction warlock allowing them to never ever worry about their health as any damage they receive is healed at 2000 hps (2600 in case of the warlock). Knowing this, the other healers can focus on those taking more consistant damage and nobody ever bursts themselves down, or has to hold back in fear of it. In phase 3 I manage two lifeblooms, one on the MT and one on myself, taking the time for a rebirth and a tranquility as well. Its certainly a fine argument that a resto shaman is more effective than myself in phase 3, however i'm definitely second and nothing comes close to my phase 2 healing. If we had two resto druids in phase 2 half of the other healers could afk or wand or what have you.

The absolute key in maintaining lifebloom stacks, at least for me, is macros. I have 4 macros that do nothing but lifebloom a target and edit them each fight to put in the relevant name. This allows me to easily maintain all my stacks with one button press and no mousework while also moving freely with no trouble. RoS phase 2 could really just be done with one sequence macro but I'm comfortable with my 4 so I don't bother.

Also on Naj'entus, I don't know what the stigma is where druids are supposed to be raid healing but me and only me keeping lifebloom and rejuv on the MT is enough healing on the MT the entire fight. Nobody else has to touch him. Ever.

 

Ailetha

By beefing up the small part and totally disregarding the bloom, you're pretty much throwing both of its major advantages out the window. The whole point of it is to be able to heal for:

1. large amount for tiny amount of mana,
2. at no threat cost to the druid.

By trinketing it, and upkeeping it, you're using it completely contrary to its most obvious advantages. Every time you refresh it, the mana efficiency goes down, and obviously 1500+ HPS on three to four targets is going to net you a high amount of threat.

I mean, honestly, do you actually think that Blizzard intended druids to be able to heal for 5000-6000 (or more) HPS indefinitely with ONE click of a trinket over the span of, let's say, five minutes or more? I hardly think so. Being able to refresh the trinketed lifebloom at the trinketed rate indefinitely, even after the trinket has expired, seems...not exactly right, considering there is nothing else now that you can do that with in game, as far as I know. Add to that the fact that many resto druids in Black Temple and Hyjal still use the Emerald Queen idol from NORMAL Shadow Labs, instead of using either the season 1 or 2 arena idol. That in and of itself adds to my point.

Plus, combined with the fact that they changed the similar hunter/scorpid pet mechanic; I am curious to see what will happen when and if they change the lifebloom trinket mechanic. What will all the druids do that geared themselves around it?

I don't know; I am well aware that this point of view is one of, if not THE least popular opinion out there in regards to lifebloom, but I simply can't imagine its current trinket mechanic being the way it was intended. I really doubt they are going to keep it that way.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...ks/Ailetha.png

 

Kazanir

I think we've established that rolling trinketed stacks is part of what makes it so overpowered, and if something is nerfed it will be this.

That said, rolling even non-trinketed stacks is pretty sick and is the best way to use the spell.

'War' is too small a word for what I'm fighting. Like a candle in front of the whole burning Sun. I told you. This is bigger than a war. Now, I am not going to die today. I have other projects, and other options.

You can come with me. I can protect you.

 

Playered

Not the best, but the most useful generally, there are several encounters/occasions where allowing it to bloom is v.useful, one example being Blooboil healing (4200 damage in 7sec, around 3300+ healed in 7sec with the bloom), with 2 druids cycling through the groups.

Just because the final tick doesn't show on the meter for the druid doesn't mean its bad and should never be utilized.