Design1stCode2nd

I'm gearing up and find I sometimes need to cast some HT's which is due to gear I'm sure, something like 800+ healing. Also depends on the tank. Was healing a paly tanks (very good aggro control or teh dps was good at controling tehirs) with only about 8k health and some points when we had 4 mobs on him or a boss I found it hard to keep him up, luckily the group was paly, paly, spriest, lock and me so there was never any issue with the tank dropping.

I think I need to preload a LB or two before the fight sometimes but was worried that might casue some aggro problems early. I think with 12k health on the tank and of course better gear for me then my Hots would have had more time to build up.

 

grutak

I healed my first heroic Saturday. Steamvaults, with 1600 healing and a bear tank. The only time I had to come out of treeform(20/0/41 spec) was for the bog lords(actually, I stayed caster form for the Warlord, so I could MF/Wrath the tanks), which for them, I would stack my hots, and preload HT's and cancel if they weren't needed.

 

Kanotaur

I can already feel the flames coming for this question, but its info I need, and I haven't found it anywhere else on the forums yet...

I'm nearing completion on leveling a druid alt that I plan to raid with as a tree, but because of our low server population, and the hours that I normally play (I'm a soldier stationed in Korea, so 12-15 hour time difference), we end up needing a tank almost as often as we need a healer to fill out 5-man heroics in guild.

I've seen mention in several places on the forums of resto-druids popping into feral form to off-tank during raids, but haven't seen any in-depth analysis of its effectiveness.

Can I expect to have any chance of main-tanking 5-man heroics or off-tanking when needed in a raid effectively as a resto-druid? Am I smoking crack thinking this is possible even if I do collect up a set of uber-tanking gear to use?

 

Pyros

It probably depends on the level of gear, but I'd say tanking heroics without lotp/mangle/survival of the fittest/heart of the wild would be really painful. Your threat generation would be simply too low, so unless you know you'll run them with a paladin(for salv), you probably won't be able to tank heroics unless you respec, at least I wouldn't want to try it. If it's full guild's heroics tho, you could probably explain to your guildmates that you're not generating as much as usual tanks, and manage to do just fine. It's not impossible, but it's pretty much like having a fury war tanking, if people don't know you, they won't take you to tank, even if you're an awesome player and have shiny epics.

For offtanking, it depends on what you mean by that. If you mean tanking trash, and maybe an add on a boss, should be possible. If you mean offtanking the boss for aggro switch or secondary tank attacks(hateful strike for example), I'd say it's a bad idea. Again, the lack of lotp/mangle for threat, and heart of the wild/survival of the fittest for mitigation would probably hurt quite a lot.

While it is possible, you should probably try to choose early what you'll focus on, feral tanks are very good for a lot of situations, but in my experience, much easier to find, than resto druids. And again from my experience, resto druids are really awesome for maintank healing so while they're both good, because ferals are usually easier to find, I'd advise going resto. If you have some time and do dailies every now and then, you can easily respec on weekends or whenever you don't raid, to do heroics and whatnot, and spec back. I usually do some dailies everyday, and respec feral when I feel like doing the daily heroic, or during weekends if I want to farm.

 

notthatnerfed

i was druid with SM in resto and HOTW in feral and i was used to heal in raid and tank in heroics, ive tanked every heroic without any problem, and the first versions with cleave 360 and bogs that 3-shotted my 30k armor, did the naaru trial and SH was really a pain in the ass

its surely a bit more hard since most ppl are used to druid threat exploding cause of mangle but still if they hold the usual 2 seconds its ok, still druid>>>> warrior

 

DariusMDeV

I know this is anecdotal, but I was called once to heal a non-heroic Arcatraz pug by another druid who was tanking. I went, and the run went great for a pug. There were a couple of hairy moments, where the tank lost aggro, but I thought nothing of it, because in terms of a pug, it went fine, a few hiccups were expected. She recovered lost aggro very quickly, there were no wipes. Then we get to the final boss, at some point between killing a clone and aggro getting lost and not knowing which was a clone and communication only being in text, things broke down a little, and I was getting pounded on and about to go down, next thing, I see my tank, drop bear form and NS-HTs, Rejuv/Swifmends me. This does 2 things, stops me from dying, and all that burst healing put the aggro back on her. We finish, we kill the boss, then it hits me Natures Swiftness, Swiftmend, Rage when she went back to bear form. My tank that I just did one of the top 5 pug runs in my life with was a friggin tree! Had the Clefthoof set and the Earthwarden, and tanked non-heroic Arca just fine. Turns out her Oh-Shit macro also swapped out EW for the Shard of Virtuous when she healed me up too, but that's just some added color.

 

Lear

With a decent tanking set your mitigation/health should be fine for instancing, but your TPS will be terrible without mangle (And the talents leading up to it). Non heroics are easy to tank if you don't mind how much you'll be throttling your dps - though that might not even be an issue with most pug dps. You can probably tank all the heroics resto spec'd, as well, but I'm not sure why you'd put yourself through that.

Personally, I can't be bothered to resto tank anymore. I've ran a few instances that way, but I'd rather just respec and not be constantly frustrated at how crap my threat is.

 

ClobberGirl

Here's a question regarding pre-Hyjal gem selection post-Patch 2.3: Are Purified Shadow Pearls as viable now for tree druids as Royal Nightseyes?

Before patch 2.3, I used pure +healing gems for my red sockets, +heal/+mp5 combo gems for my blue sockets, and +heal/+int gems for my yellow sockets. With the changes to Intensity in 2.3, I decided to try out +heal/+spirit combo gems in my blue sockets just to experiment with it. Currently this means I'm using 5 Purified Shadow Pearls (+9 healing & +4 spirit) and one Imperial Tanzanite (+9 healing & +5 spirit) where I would be using 6 Royal Nightseyes (+9 healing & +2 mp5). So before talents and buffs I'm getting 25 spirit in those sockets instead of 12 mp5.

Gianism provided some math on the Raiding as a Tree - Page 1 thread concerning spirit calculations when factoring in Blessing of Kings, Intensity, Living Spirit and assuming one innervate in the average 8-minute encounter:

Assuming Blessing of Kings, Intensity, Living Spirit and an innervate, if 10 spirit = 3.48 mp5, my 25 spirit = 8.7 mp5, versus the 12 mp5 I would get with Royal Nightseyes instead. That's also assuming I spend no time outside the FSR. I'm not sure of the math if I factor in time spent outside the FSR, but I imagine the number gets pretty close to the 12 mp5 I'd be getting with the Nightseyes instead.

As for other benefits, I get an extra 8 healing to my Tree of Life aura and 3 healing to my +heal from Improved Prayer of Spirit, which is pretty small but together worth about the +heal component of a combo gem. Kind of like a free half-gem I guess?

Obviously once you get to Hyjal, +heal/+mp5 combo gems are superior since there is an epic +11 healing/+2 mp5 gem and no epic +healing/+spirit gems beyond the unique-equipped Imperial Tanzanite from heroic Botannica.

Does anybody else see Purified Shadow Pearls as a viable choice for druids pre-Hyjal? Or have I totally messed up something on my calculations somewhere?

I apologize in advance if I have missed a thorough discussion of this topic elsewhere; I searched the entire "Raiding as a Tree" thread and this thread and could only find pre-Patch 2.3 discussion of it or passing mention of it.

 

Orin

I have a spreadsheet I created to calculate the Spirit vs MP5 numbers for me. Royal Nightseye still is slightly better than Purified Shadow Pearls. Even if you stack the Bangle, PMC set, talents, kings, innervate, etc. :/

The only way I've been able to make the numbers work to favor the Purified Shadow Pearl is if you are able to double-innervate yourself during a boss fight. This rarely works though, I can never seem to burn enough mana to justify using Innervate in the first couple minutes of a fight so that the cooldown is up later in the fight before the boss goes down.

 

Ten

I've been following this thread for a while and finally mustered up the energy to stop being lazy and register. My guild is done with content, and I'm currently running ~2300/190 unbuffed (although if you check my armory you'll see something different because I got bored). My lifebloom in caster form usually ticks for about 275 and blooms for 1700/2600. There's a few points I'd like to make, speaking from the perspective of a tree who has tried many things.

1) I may be hallucinating, but I also believe I have noticed a slight decay in my lifebloom ticks since 2.3, although it is most noticeable when I'm fully buffed and trinketed (~3000 +healing). I'm not in the habit of recording my lifeblooms on a monthly basis or anything so I have no proof, but I do think there may have been a small nerf, perhaps some sort of diminishing return at high levels of +healing. I could be wrong. Regardless, it's inconsequential.

2) You do NOT need tree form to heal exclusively through HoTs, although I certainly recommend it. I got bored the other day and went 34/0/27 (the number of the devil, I know) to kill brain cells, and I healed a bunch of 5mans, Archimonde, and a full TK clear easily. Would I recommend this spec? No. I have 330 mp5 and can never run out of mana no matter how hard I try, but I lack the control that swiftmend gives, and my heals tick for a little less. The only real plus to this spec is that I can do a small amount of dps to kill adds. Essentially, trying to heal with this spec gives you the freedom to spam whatever spell you want and always have full mana.

2.5) Gem choice, assuming you have >120-130 mp5, should always be red +healing. Always.

3) The difficulty in solo healing small (10man or less) groups in tree form scales inversely with gear. If you are somewhat undergeared (<1400 +healing), you will likely find it more difficult to stick it out in tree without spamming some hard heals. At my current level of healing, if someone gets a rejuv, they know they've fucked up. If they get swiftmended, they're a mage.
The #1 thing to remember in small groups is that tree healing is OVER TIME. This means if you try to heal reactively, you are already too late. You must anticipate the damage and preemptively heal that person in order to be a truly effective tree.

4) Healing in raids is a matter of perspective. If you want to top meters in every fight, make four macros which go something like

/cast [target=x] lifebloom

and make x any four people who are likely to take damage in the fight. Trinket at the start and use these macros sequentially for the entire fight without stopping. This is the highest possible healing output that a tree can do.
Recently, as the other resto druids in my guild have begun to gear up, I've stopped trying to top meters and started healing selectively. This means I'll keep a stack on the MT/OT and then use rejuv/lifebloom on anyone who takes damage, swiftmending anyone who takes burst damage (2 piece t6 helps). The result? Fewer people die to random damage (Illidan, Supremus, Azgalor, Archimonde, Al'ar, Vashj, Leotheras, Karathress come to mind) and more people bitch at me for not healing them when they do. The downside of this is that I only top meters in a few fights where meter spamming (what I call using macros) is the best way to heal to assure success. These fights include Naj'entus, Bloodboil, Council, Anetheron, Illidan (phase 2 only), and Hydross.



If you've actually made it through this without falling asleep, I'm impressed. Additionally, you've probably noticed a pattern here. The best way for a tree druid to heal, where best is maximizing healing output, is basically to become a machine and maintain four trinketed lifebloom stacks. It is not uncommon for me to autorun in a large circle (to avoid aoe) during most fights while watching movies/tv or just generally not paying attention. This sucks and it's boring. That's probably my biggest concern with being a tree in the future.

The only other concern I have is itemization. As long as you have ~200 mp5 raid buffed, you'll have enough regen for even the longest fights. As you may or may not have read previously, I have about that much regen unbuffed. This means whatever I gain from raid buffs/consumables is superfluous and unnecessary, which should not be the case. Instead, it would be much more helpful to see some of the mp5/spirit on druid gear converted into more +healing, or perhaps for the socket colors to be all red and the bonuses to also be +healing. Additionally, set bonuses (except for 2piece t4 and 2piece t6) suck pretty hard. Furthermore, almost all non-set leather healing gear blows. Check out [Veil of Turning Leaves] if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Oh, and what's with the gimmicky move speed reduction on tree form? Does that make sense to anyone?

 

• giansm

So for 25 spirit to be better than 12 mp5 in terms of mana regeneration, you need 10 spirit to be better than 4.8 mp5. There's a chart in the Raiding as a Tree thread that shows spirit to mp5 equivalencies, from 80% to 100% FSR time and with zero, one, or two innervates.

Reading off the chart, you can see that if you spend 100% of your time in the FSR, 10 spirit > 4.8 mp5 corresponds roughly to receiving one innervate in a fight that lasts up to four minutes, or two innervates in a fight between four and eight minutes in length, or three innervates in a fight between eight and twelve minutes in length (and so on). If you spend 80% of your time in the FSR, you'd need to receive one innervate in a fight lasting up to 6m15s, or two in a fight lasting between 6m15s and 12m30s.

These numbers will look a little better for spirit if you have any spirit-based bonuses (for example a Bangle, Blue Dragon card, etc) but I doubt those can push the purified shadow pearls over the top, since they're so far behind, especially in the 100% FSR case.

 

ClobberGirl

Lately I have been thinking about this more and more. I usually spec 16/0/45 and have about 161 mp5 unbuffed, and it seems like, with full raid buffs, I never run into danger of running out of mana. Half the time I give my innervate out to someone else, and if I get paired with a shadow priest, it becomes a joke. Does anyone else concur that 130 mp5 unbuffed / 200 mp5 raid buffed is enough?

Thank you for the feedback Gianism (and Orin). I use a LCPB / EotM combo at the moment which I like a lot, and double innervate during a fight? Not gonna count on that. So yes, it seems that I'd be better off switching back to Royal Nightseyes if I don't socket for more +healing--though, still seems that Purified Shadow Pearl isn't a horrible choice if you're a spirit freak. It's certainly much better than it was pre-2.3.

 

Norfair

This has been bothering me as well. You gotta ask yourself, what makes someone a good resto druid, or a healer in general. Is it to top the healing meters? Because I don't think so. Using Lifebloom macros it becomes insanely easy to top healing meters, at least on fights where there is more than 1 person taking damage. For fun, I popped both trinkets on Hyal trash and rolled Lifebloom on all of our four tanks; I did 34% of all the effective healing. However, rolling Lifebloom only tends to get extremely boring, I only do it when I feel like slacking without anyone noticing.

So, to keep things fun for me, I spam Regrowth most of the time. Yes, it's mana inefficient, but who cares? As long as you got the mana it doesn't really matter anyway. For this getting more mp5 is actually useful, so I do socket with purple gems if that means I can get a socket bonus. Ofcourse, I keep a Lifebloom rolling on the side for additional healing, a lot of fights require only 1 tank at the time anyway. By using Regrowth it at least feels like I'm healing again, instead of just watching DoTimer to make sure all my hots are rolling on people. I need to see someone's hp get back to full again, that's the fun for me in healing at least.

I don't really care actually, but they obviously thought it would be too overpowered otherwise (lol). Thing I hate the most about ToL is not being able to cast MotW/GotW. It gets really tiring to get out of ToL everytime someone dies. And don't even get me started about the looks of the damn form.

Keep f**king that chicken.

 

• Playered

I decided once to use R10 Regrowth almost exclusively one MH run (sans the bosses Azgalor and Archimonde, not being silly there), I had 2 SP's in my group and had atleast 2 peoples Innervates exclusively mine. I had around 35-45% of the healing done most of the time but I was still completly drained after every wave. The funny thing was that a Paladin with no SP decided to rise to this as a challenge and he was #2 on this run not that far away from me on the meters from about half way in to the end of it.

On IC we have one Druid doing LB rolling on 3 tanks, and me who does spot-MT healing (atleast RJ up for a SM on spikes) and a fair chunk of raid healing. I can never really compete with the first druid on healing done but I know I do my job well, im around #3rd on that fight under a shaman (also raid healing) normally.

You really cant just go by meters unless its a comparative and equal role assigned (and group setup).

 

galzohar

I can't see why you *won't* roll lifeblooms on multiple tanks taking damage. While the fact it tops healing meters doesn't automatically make it better, topping healing meters is rarely a bad thing (you basically need to intentionally do bad things that are not easy to do in order to top meters while actually not doing your job perfectly). Giving consistent healing to all the tanks that are taking damage is probably the best thing to do as a resto druid. I really don't see how you find regrowth spamming more useful, no matter how much mana you have, especially when the result is less healing done and less consistent healing on the tanks.

 

Kamileon

Agreed. Everyone can heal people. Spamming Regrowth is like direct-healing with a gimmick that it can be swiftmended later, but for Regrowth's HoT capabilities, it's about half a rejuv and roughly 1/4 of a lifebloom stack. It's not nothing, but it's nothing to write home about.

However, Resto Druids can provide one thing that no one else can, amazing amounts of effective healing and tank health insurance, and it's the most mana-efficient way we can heal. So why besides boredom should we be using HT or Regrowth spam? It's like trying to shove a square peg into a round hole. There's better people than us to direct heal people, and we're better than the other healing classes at what we do. There's nothing stopping you, but it's far from our best use.

Perhaps if rolling Lifeblooms was a more interesting way to heal, people wouldn't be trying so hard to justify other ways of healing.

 

Norfair

Yes, I read my post now and it might suggest some wrong things. Of course if there are multiple tanks taking damage I keep Lifebloom rolling on all, but on a lot of boss encounters there is only 1 tank taking damage. Only exception for me is Council, I tried putting Lifebloom on all the tanks there, it works, I look 'pr0' on healing meters, but it felt a lot more useful to save people from nearly dying if you can, instead of keeping the hots rolling and thinking "not my problem" and watching them die. For trash Lifebloom is probably the most useful, as it reduces healing done on the tanks by a lot and gives other healers much more room to focus on other people. But yes, maybe I should reroll to a different healer class, as I find direct healing more fun.

Keep f**king that chicken.

 

Multani

My issue with switching off a fairly direct tank rotation is that I feel my hots are so useless with chain heals topping off the raid a few seconds later. In a few really damage intense encounters (IE Najentus) with really unpredictable damage, I found this useful, but on something like Anetheron where I can only heal the tank, melee, and other healers, I really can't do much more then re-apply my lifebloom every 6 seconds.

On the topic of itemization, I'm curious on what stats druids choose to stack. Personally I'm unable to download the spreadsheet but I'm fairly certain the priority is something like healing>spirit/mp5>useless stats like stam/int. What I concluded was best for my stat prioritization before reaching t6 instances was basically to stack healing and as much spirit as possible. I used the 9 heal/4 spir gems in nearly every socket (18 heals on certain set bonuses) and got upwards of 700 spirit raid buffed before we first downed Kael. I really like the spirit route because coupled with the other resto druid in our guild, we add about 400 healing to the MT. Considering a direct healing vs spirit comparison of what gives more healing, 1 point of healing will give more then 1 point of spirit unless there are at least 4 healers on the main tank, and spirit is substantially less impressive in multi-tank fights where some tanks arn't even in your group. Currently I just stack spirit and healing, but especially with the addition of Hyjal gems that have no 9heal/4spirit meaning I'm just going to be taking 22 heals except for socketing, the possibility of ignoring spirit as a stat on items does occur.

My general feeling is that the mp5 and healing benefit of Spirit outways the possibility of gaining slightly more healing if I were to change the gear I aim to pick up. The only non-spirit items I currently have are my trinkets, and top the healing meters as much as I would expect from a druid. Unfortunately spirit itemization is fairly shitty, under what I described, my best boots are off Karathress, and almost my entire non-tier ideal gear is cloth as well. This isn't an issue of concern for me, but it surprises me that I've seen so little concern about not only that cloth is generally ideal under this stat prioritization, but that the ideal weapon to use is Illidan's mace with Archimonde's off-hand purely because they have more healing, the stats are completely useless other then the spirit on Arch's o-hand, and the mace is definitely more useful to basically every other healing class.

This must mean either my stat prioritization is wrong, or everyone else is incorrectly prioritizing gear. Taking the more likely route, what stat would you stack other then healing? Any stat at all? Why is that stat better then spirit?

 

Norfair

Think we already figured out that mp5 > spirit for socketing. Also, buffing your aura is nice, but in the end you'll get a fair amount of spirit anyway, even if you don't focus on it at all. Therefore, instead of saying "my aura gives 200 +healing" it would be better to say "my aura gives 50 +healing more".

But "prioritizing" stats is of course a bit vague. I mean, you can say you prioritize healing over spirit, but where do you draw the line? There should be some X +heal = Y spirit = Z mp5 equation, but even that can't always be correct as the more +healing you get, the less of an upgrade 1 +healing will be. Not to mention that at several encounters mana isn't an issue at all so then basically mp5 / spirit priority should be extremely low, while on others it's harder to keep your mana and the priority of those stats should be higher. Same goes for stamina actually.

Keep f**king that chicken.

 

• Playered

The worth of Spirit really depends on if you also get an Innervate yourself, however if your guild really does use Trees in tank groups and you work for the overall healing benefit of Spi in terms of bonus healing for more than yourself... then well theres nothing really wrong with it [aslong as you dont ignore MP5..or gimp your +Healing], most people talk from a purely selfish method of healing that ignores the benefits of ToL aura on tanks etc..

 

Anaram

I wouldn't call stamina useless. You gotta get your stamina from somewhere even if it isn't the most important stat for all fights. Intellect isn't that great, but if you didn't have intellect on your gear, you couldn't properly fit in an innervate (and definitely would have poor control over when to use it).

 

Dkei

hi i m a resto druid 1910 healing and i m in a guild that goes mh4/5 and bt 4/9
i want to discuss about one prob that i have in raids
well i m using regroth lifebloom x3 and rejun.on tanks mostly and on others in raids only lifebloom to recover their health but when raid is end and the healing meter is shown in our guild web i see that i m not in a good place and i m in the 5 or 6 place of our 7 healers that we use for raids.can u answer with any helpfull reply how to be better at my healing?

 

Sproutie

Most likely other people are 'overhealing' ur HoT's ticking on raidmembers, so u dont get any raid-healing out of it, simply because others heal 'it up earlier'.

Healing-meters have this problem, if ur assigned to raid-healing u will always get more healing done, assuming everyone keeps up to his assignment.

Topping healing-meters on WWS is a matter of spamming Regrowth on anyone in the raid taking damage. Quite mana-inefficient and most likely not needed, but it puts you on top.

I'm a feral at heart, but sometimes I help healing, with approx 1980+ healing and feral-spec. It's very easy to 'top healingmeters' that way. It just shows that healing-meters alone are not very reliable, not without knowing the assignments.

 

Dkei

if i spam regroth only ity will be better?

 

Twizzilight

I don't think spamming regrowth is the way to go. I have resto experience up to Brutallus in sunwell, and I think the best way to approach the top of healing meters is to find 4 steady sources of damage, and roll lifeblooms on those 4 targets. Occasionally, you'll have to drop a stack to throw some extra hots on the tanks, or to top off random damage. But for the most part, it applies to fights like RoS and Najentus, where several people in the raid are constantly taking damage. Wow Web Stats
The healing meter on that one shows roughly what a resto druid can do in terms of healing meters, but there are some fights where you cannot top healing.