This is prety much Bang on.

People really miss the point of using HOT's on the MT.

They tick when they are needed most (when a tank gets low). They are for creating a safety net on the main tank and as such they can not be measured against the direct healing other classes do.

Main tank healing is entirely outcome based, if the tank lives the healers were sucesfull, the amount of effective healing that the Druid does really isnt relivent, whats important is that he keeps all the HOT's up all of the time.

My guild is just now starting BT and I'm a bit disappointed to see so much Leather heal gear with haste rating. I'm a tree druid - the only full time in my guild. We have one other resto druid who is sometimes tree, sometimes moonkin/HT depending on the encounter we're learning or what dance she thinks is cooler that week I guess.

Anyway, to me tree seems extremely powerful, especially for raid healing or as a secondary healer on the MT and if you're gonna be full resto, it seems that you might as well put 60 points in it unless you're gonna be a moonkin hybrid. So as a tree, all I'm casting are instacast spells which obviously get absolutely no benefit from + haste. I would think that most full resto druids looking for upgrades in BT are in the same position - mainly using instacasts.

Tree druids already got shafted in SSC/TK by not getting any craftable patterns - the TK trash gloves are worse than T4, and now there's even more "bad" gear from BT with all this wasted item level on haste rating.

So why does blizz make the tree form and then waste haste rating on all the leather healing gear...it makes no sense. I understand the argument that stacking haste gear may get HT down to the 2.5 second range but at the same time...the pally's, shaman, and priests are all going to be getting haste gear as well so druids will still have the slowest casts.

I'm just wondering if I'm missing something about how to play a resto druid here but if blizz wants to give druids the option of speccing HT, then they should put in haste gems or something and not dominate stat allocation with it on the only items that are available.

I trust you will find this post from the WoW EU Druid forums as interesting and informative as I did:http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...10537225&sid=1

As an aside, I both offtank and main tank for my guild. As a druid tank, spike damage is my biggest problem. If I don't get overhealed, I don't survive the 'big hit' bosses like Gruul and Maulgar, or it becomes a crap-shoot' at best. I don't have a resto Druid to stack HoT's in my guild 10 man group so fights like Prince (phase two) become much less 'certain' when the group composition requires me to MT. A Tree spamming Hot's like lifebloom/rejuv with high +heal would go along way toward those times when 3-4 crusing blows and a hit or two in rapid fire succession eat away a full stack of hp. If I don't get overhealed in these fights we don't stand a chance of winning the encounters.

Really?

As a druid, spike damage should be the least of your worries. Damage should be more regular and less spikey, albeit that you require more healing over time, than an equivalently geared warrior. Are you emphasising dodge at the expense of armour?

Well I'm a bit dissapointed with Tree of Life form. I was using whole ssc, tk moonglow build. Success for me is to keep assigned tank or group of ppl alive, not to be happy from some HPS or healed amount. I'm really confused what to use for further content of raid instanceS such as BT or hyjal.

Let's show example for ToL build:
Solarian, perfect situation to heal 2 arcane resist geared tank with Lifebloom, rejuw etc. for good amount of HPS, they have all the time hp up except situation when solarian aims them with missiles. Healing touch would be almost impossible in this situation to keep them alive, even for priests it's really hard to keep them up. But now i ask myself, is tol really necessary, is it such a boost as i would be moonglow ? I had never no problem with mana (180mp5 unbuffed, alchemist's stone) so mana cheaper hots are not so big boost for me. There are bigger heal ticks in tol build than moonglow one. But again, there is no need to have tol to be successful in this healing situation. My hots will tick for 900~ HPS instead of 1200~ HPS, for critical situation i can swifmend rejuw and in next hot spam cycle put it again on tanks.

I see no point to be tol to keep hots on MT, i'm keeping it also with moonglow build + casting healing touch. There is no problem for solohealing (water graves, some assigned tank etc.)

Several times I had to switch out from tree form and use healing touch. (insane mana cost in tol build) then i could get back and again spam my slacking hot heals. I consider Tol like a lazy version of healing druids, i can just cast hot on several targets and staring what to do next. With other build i have to pre-cast ht which can save much more then some HPS. When boss, mobs hit quickly for high amount of dmg, there is no chance how to keep ppl alive with ToL, one swifmend, and then just regrow spam which is not really mana effective as healing touch and +2200~ or +3700 with crit per 2 seconds it has still too far for 6000 or nearly 10000 crit healing touch per 3 seconds.

I would really like to hear anyone how to deal with those situations in tol build, because i had no problem to heal till hyjal with moonglow. Then i specced to tol, when i saw all pages with theories about insane HPS but personally i don't think it is so sweet as everyone published.

Anyway most of time when hots are up, it's overheal beyond 100% hp which is not counted to heal meters. I will not care if i have 200% or 20% overheal but i will care if i have in 5 minute fight just great healing in middle or top tank's life and when tank gets life on lower level as 5% i just stare helplessly with spamming regrow, swifmending and it's still not enough. Just one or two healing touchs would deal with this.

Perhaps you will answer me that i'm healing wrong targets or i'm there only for good HPS/aura to keep tank alive in low hp.
Then i can say, swich me with paly or priest, it is wasted slot for such a healer as i described above.

Ok, spam on 2 targets i can produce pretty nice HPS together but again i'm not able to keep anyone of them alive by myself, i need next healer = 3 healers (me + 1 on each tank) or if i won't need next healer, then i can heal it in moonglow aswell

Well, pls correct me what's wrong but i see moonglow still more hps effective then tol for one target. I can control pre-casts to produce more heal in one moment then some healing over time which is almost uncontrolable. In situation where i'm spaming ht and tank is still slowly loosing hp i can say, "add next healer", but in tol build i can say "damn i'm useless for this target, next time i wanna spam raid for HPS"

( hope it is not so whiny post as i feel it ;p )

Thanks for Linking Oxylos' thread Ulfgar - it's the best thesis on ToL I've read. To comment on the above poster - we use two ToL druids on the two Solarian tanks after about 40% or so and use the rolling lifebloom technique. It's incredibly effective and Oxylos' post explains it in complete detail.

I honestly have been a little hesitant to switch to full time tank healing but our BT raid tonight completely changed my mind. Our first couple Najentus pulls I had some trouble keeping my mage group alive using typical HoT's in tree form. Then on like our 7th pull we decided to switch our two tree druids to MT healing and use the rolling LB. It was absolutely incredible how smoothly the tank stayed up. Not only were we able to MT heal with just two druids, but we also were able to toss out LB's in b/w cycles on the raid. Next was Supremus and we used basically the same strat - but this time we were able to keep up the MT and the Hateful Strike taking Tank with just two healers.

All of this still drives my original point home - Why put the haste rating on all the Druid gear in BT? It's terrible stat allocation.

It is possible to maintain 4 lifebloom stacks at a time, and let me tell you it is incredibly easy to blow everyone else out of the water on trash pulls that require multiple tanks. You have to be constantly spamming lifebloom and selecting your next target on the fly, but if you are really lazy you could come up with a single cast sequence macro (not sure if this is possible), or multiple "/target Tank X; /cast Lifebloom" macros that you activate in succession, to automatically do the targeting for you.

There are also a number of boss encounters where keeping multiple lifebloom stacks rolling is handy at some point of the fight. You may not be saving any tank individually, but the sheer amount of HPS you put out really takes a lot of the strain off the other healers.

I went to Hyjal for the first time yesterday and I've never been more thankful that I'm tree specced. Keeping up three tanks at a time with regrowths and lifeblooms is awesome and quite effecient

Just want to chime in to say two things in addition to thanks for appreciating my post. First, while I suppose I can't blame the assumption, my post is on the US forums not the EU forums. And secondly yes, healing optimally as a tree IS difficult, you are spinning plates as it were all night long, and hey if you don't have confidence in yourself or simply lack the ability then so be it. The end result is if you can succeed in it your results will be visible and you will be a great asset to your raid instead of a liability. If you're working you're way through higher end instances "its too hard" simply isn't an excuse.

Though yes, latency is an issue. A poster pointed out that its possible to keep up 4 lifebloom stacks and this is true...if your ping is below 250ms. If its not, then you simply don't have the time. I wrote the article without that edge in mind as I know some people unfortunately do have lag to contend with, but naturally theres extremes that can take it further.

Thanks again for the plug.

The gear in BT and Hyjal has been disappointing for me. You have what, 5 pieces of leather, that are not Tier 6 or Haste rating drops/crafted? One is equiv to T5 chest with spirit gems and no set bonus, the boots are nice but just Orca with more stam really, and the bracers are nice.

The rest is big mana/5 gear which I love to keep slotted in via Royal Nighteyes and Tier gear with mixed spirit and mana/5, but after a point I really don't need a ton with an alchemist stone and the tree form bonus. After a while I just want to start loading +healing and +spirit and items like the Guise of the Tidal Lurker just start to lose their appeal a bit when its basically T5 without the annoying yellow slot and mana/5 for no spirit. The kilt looks interesting, but moreso for the possible 172 healing.

Donno, this is a change for me to. When I was healing with HT, a mix was nice because you could stop cast if the tank ended up not needing it and take small breaks to regen from spirit. With Reg+Rej healing, its nice but the ticks are so long you often end up working Reg alot harder than you would like and Mana/5 is more important. With bloom healing although your constantly within the 5sec rule your also are using a very cheap to cast spell and not having to throw mana out the window with Regrowth as much.

The result is that while I don't go all in on spirit like some, I still like to build it on all my pieces and push harder on healing where I can. I like to take advantage of mana/5 where I can, but I'm much less addicted to it than I once was and so these pieces just don't excite me much. Anyone else in a similar boat?

Personally I love being a druid healer. The potential of your HoTs is sensational. Like many others have mentioned, 3 stacks of lifebloom on three tanks (along with other heals you are casting) is a ridiculous amount of effective healing. My lifebloom ticks for 697 fully stacked so that's 2091 hps with a base mana cost of 176 per cast. Insane potential for healing and for durability - with a decent amount of mp5 gear/buffs, you can keep that up for a very long time.

Great places to see this in action is on Magtheridon trash, or the trash on the Lurker platforms. If you're not topping the meters as a druid in those situations then you're doing something wrong.

For actual boss encounters however the situation is different. As stated earlier in the thread, HoTs are fairly ineffective on the MT, and are generally used as a 'buffer' for other healers, if used at all. In my guild the druids are almost always assigned to heal the raid and the pallies are put on the tanks.
Good example - tonight at Archimonde we had 3 Pally healers constantly spamming the MT whilst the rest of the healers were pretty much at liberty to heal the MT or the people around them. Now since Archimonde hits like a train, myself and the other resto druid in the raid were keeping HoTs on the MT, to give the Pallies a bit of breathing space; but my primary concern at least was hotting the people receiving damage over time debuffs.
HoTs are SO good in those situations. Whack 2 HoTs on em and move on. Simple as that. A Pally or Shaman wanting to effectively heal a 12 second DoT that deals, say, 6000 damage is either gonna have to wait until the DoT has done enough damage for them to heal up, or spam low rank heals on the targets - Both of which are more dangerous/time consuming/mana inefficient than what a druid can do.

So I am slightly confused why you are assigned to MT heal. Sure you can do the job, but a Priest or a Paladin would be better suited in terms of efficiency. Druids and Shamans rock for raid healing (Chain heal on melee ftw), and that is what I feel most comfortable (and most effective) doing. And by looking at the healing meters I'm benefitting the raid, even if I'm not healing the most important target.

The one thing that infuriates me about ToL is the fact we cant decurse/cleanse. Sure Blizzard, give us an improved Barkskin we can now use as a tree, but remove our second most important role as raid healers. Thankyou. It bugs the hell out of me having to shift in and out, especially when decursing, because let's face it, mages suck at that ^^

In my opinion, stay in ToL form and HoT to your heart's content. If you're good at it, you will be very effective and quite often top the healing meters. As for enchants and gems, mp5 is the way to go. The gear that drops in tier 5/6 instances has decent all round stats on it for the most part. +healing and mp5 gems are the best, +int and mp5 gems are also decent. Or the +4mp5 gems once you get to Black Temple/Hyjal. Yum!
Dont waste your time on 9 healing/4 spirit gems, you get enough spirit from the druid leather - your gems are far better spent on mp5.

Haste rating is a luxury. Don't go spending dkp on it; since there's only 2 resto druids in your raid you'll get it sooner or later regardless.

Hope this helped, good luck on Vashj/Solarian

I've been considering respeccing my feral druid alt to resto with the change to lifebloom in 2.1, and was looking into how to rate gear. So far, my searching has proven insufficient to find a healing spreadsheet. I don't mind doing a little math myself, but its always more accurate with communal input to catch errors and debate accuracy. Plus, stat value shifts as gear changes so a spreadsheet to reflect that would be ideal. Before I take the plunge and pit my meager math and excel skills at something for an alt, does this exist somewhere already that I can't find?

it's not +50; well; it's not if your tree druid is stacking spirit at least a decent amount like they should be. i get +600 spirit fully buffed in raids and that means, if they put me with the MT, all the MT healers get +150 bonus healing.

So; I don't know: it's a judgement call, i suppose.

i'd love to find a post-tbc w/ tbc raid gear healing spreadsheet. i'd make one but i wouldn't even know where to start.


My biggest issue in raids is priests and pallys not letting my HoTs tick; what most of them don't realize is how much my HoTs actually tick; heh. It's really frustrating because alot of times, to heal effectively, i have to play a bit like priest or pally; our priests and pallys always override my HoTs.

I get to the top of the efficiency meters and it seems like they just start healing people (full or not) just to make it look like theyre doing something. i end up with 5-10% OH and the pallys end up with 70%+ (yes, plus) OH, which, from my raid experience, seems pretty terrible in and of itself. Although that could be the norm for holy pallys and i wouldn't realize it. I have never played one so these are just my impressions.

This is true and while my guild is definitely not on the cutting edge of progression and therefore not facing the really rough and tough stuff - I have noticed that my HoTs take the edge off the heavy hitters (learning Maulgar for example). This 'buffer healing' is, in my opinion, the one big reason to take a ToL druid to your raids. It is a (relatively) unique asset the druids bring and the more I think about it the more I start to think it justifies a raid spot - although I'm probably not quite yet sold.

There isnt really anyway to fully evaluate how 'good' a healer truly is as it will totally depend on what job they've been given. A raid healing healer should always top out the heal meters and generally I find myself often putting some of our worst geared healers on raid healing because I cant trust that they'll always have mana when the MT needs it. Therefore saying that I top the healing meters (which I have done, go me) doesnt really prove anything. So therefore, whenever I think of the theorycraft behind how healing classes work I'm assuming that the players are all equally geared and skilled, and all equally capable of topping healing meters should they be given the right assignments. It comes down to what unique skills a healer brings.

Yes, druids bring this 'buffer' healing and they probably also add +120-200 healing received to two MTs. They also bring a combat rez - and I'm assuming they'll use the innervate on themselves so I'll ignore that. Do they bring any other unique skills? MotW maybe - but I'm assuming you have at least one feral / oomkin druid to do that if need be. Essentially the 'buffer healing' is the one big tick in the druid portfolio. However, it is a pretty big and worthwhile tick to have.

But now think of what the negatives are. It *is* difficult to keep two fully stacked lifeblooms (with your +heal trinkets being used) and heal another person. It is definitely possible but that tree is going to be sweating by the end of it. Perhaps with a >100ms ping you could fit in two extra spells outside of your lifeblooms, but having never had a ping below 400ms (Ostraylia mayte) I cant really imagine what that would be like. Not only this, but as a tree we cant decurse which for me hasnt been a massive problem but I'm assuming encounters down the line will need some decursing. As well as this, we have a runspeed debuff (because the ToLs in PvP were overpowered I guess?). Us tree's are also suprisingly squishy. We're more saplings, really.

At the end of the day, yes, trees can be great healers. If you are a great player, with good gear and know how to play - you can excel at healing and do your job well. But then again, thats much the same for any class isnt it? Ret pallys / oomkins / ele shammys etc etc can all be raid assets if played by decent people. But what I think is the most important point is that a ToL player is working HARDER to be giving out the same performance as the pally / shammy / priest (perhaps not priests, but there's another thread about that) next to them. To me, that fact says there's something wrong with the ToL druid. This isnt a whine post, or at least not intended to be because my EJ posting experience is generally whinging about druids and I dont want to be 'that guy' - but while ToL druids can great I really think that is indicative more of the player than the class.

[Druid] Healing Spellsheet

I have to say that I was one of those people who was very disappointed with ToL originally, so much so that I went Dreamstate and was really impressed with it. Lately though we've been experimenting with shaking up raid healing roles a bit as we venture into Black Temple. I think the combination of 2 trees working together on a fight is where the real power of the spec becomes evident. 1 ToL is a healing buffer on an MT and generally it's a buffer we can live without, 2 ToLs on the other hand are completely capable of keeping up to 3 MTs fully healed on most fights.

We've basically reversed our standard healing assignments in terms of our ToLs. We used to use ToLs for general raid healing and throwing the occasional HoTs on the tanks and had our paladins generally focused on MT healing. For the first 2 bosses in BT we switched things up and had our two ToL druids as the only MT healers and put the rest of the healers on raid healing. We found that for Naj'entus we had no trouble at all keeping up the MT with dual lifebloom stacks and the occasional rejuv / swiftmend. What that means is that being conservative in terms of latency I could lifebloom the MT then lifebloom 2 people in the raid and have plenty of time to get back to the MT and refresh the lifebloom stack. Since I'm still using about 2/3 of my GCDs on raid healing I'm effectively able to do 2/3 of the healing I was doing on the raid while still keeping the MT up.

Our ToLs were already dominating the effective healing meters on most fights but in BT so far we've been a mile ahead. The only person close on Naj'entus was a PoHing priest. I do have to agree with Lunch here though, the gear with lots of +heal and +mp5 out of BT is looking very nice indeed but the spell haste gear seems like it will be completely wasted for us.

Okay I've officially decided that hots are godly in Hyjal. Got my first #1 in effective healing. Disclaimer: I had a shadow priest, I wouldn't have been able to get #1 without a shadow priest.

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=d1ytbqrckdjhu

Run was start through a few tries at Archimonde.


I definitely agree that +healing is the best stat for us, though I think going for socket bonuses is the best strategy overall instead of just throwing rubies in everything.


Regrowth isn't nearly as ineffecient as many make it out to be. It gets me around 8.5 health per mana with my current gear while buffed in tree. This includes the hot which is often a lot of overheal but overheal is the name of the game these days. 8.5 health per mana is pretty comparable to holy light, greater heal, and healing touch. It's a lot better than flash heal and lesser healing wave.

It's only inefficient compared to the ridiculous 16+ health per mana on lifebloom

I completely agree with you about regrowth. With the current burst-centered boss fights blizzard has put out for us to do in BC overheal, and, thusly, regrowth, is definitely a raid-friendly heal; i use it in my rotations every fight for 3 reasons:

1.) honestly the innital heal is nice to have. It may not be big but with a target at low health the innitial chunk is definitely nice; gives the hots a head start

2.) longest duration hot, aka swiftmend garuntee. Especially if you are assigned multiple targets regrowth basically ensures there is something to swiftmend off at all times

3.) 60% crit rate-this is where regrowth shines. In ToL it is cheap and hits like a truck when compared to other spells with a similar casting time. The crit allows me personally to downrank and still get a large heal off with the hot as a bonus

Depends on the situation in my view, and what your meta is. Point for point I love Royal Nighteyes. They blow everything else away, and with the way most of our gear sockets combined with large nice +heal socket bonus. But when you have to socket yellow for 3 piece bonus like Kilt of Immortal Nature, or Thunderheart Tunic? I'm a bigger fan of 18 healing than 4mana/5 and some int, and the gap is quite large if your using BT drop stones 33 healing vs 4mana/5 & 5 int.

Atm my preference is to pick up balanced stated pieces, then socket leaning more towards healing were the bonus sucks or yellow gems are required. It's not even an issue of Meta gems with how bad some of the requirements are, or questionable the gains.

Its just to bad though we don't have an improved Reflection/Intensity that would push spirit as more of a viable stat for us. Atm is decent, and not bad for tank and spank encounters were most of your healers are all piling on the aura'ed tank, but in a lot of these multial tank fights or raid damage fights the aura doesn't carry much weight for me to go as heavy as I seen some go. And 15% regen in combat is nice but not quite enough to warrant some of these all spirit/healing drops we saw all through SSC/Eye and now Hyjal.

I dont have the best healing gear available as im not fulltime resto specced (or rather hardly ever), i guess thats why i make less use of NS and swiftmend
I would agree on +healing being the better choice than +mp5, but then again you never compare the +18 healing gem to the +3mp5 gem, but to the +9 healing +2mp5. Not all fights are a mana drain, but if you dont want to keep 2 kinds of healing gear to switch out mana regen parts if necessary, the multicolor gem is the better choice, even on red sockets.

This is me on our first Archimonde kill.
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...4406-4810&a=16

I also kept IS and decurses going, i could have taken a bigger bite of total healing needed, but mostly to the disadvantage of other healers rather than a bigger failsafe (healing meter<raid progress). No spriest, just chain using pots and innervating myself once.

Still, what is majorly broken is ToL restrictions. You either can heal very efficient or you can play a full healer.
In fights with alot of aoe dmg, it mostly means they are dynamic, means you cant use ToL. Or theres depoisoning/decursing, then you cant use it either. Also it disables the possibility of keeping up IS as a healer on MT healing heavy fights (or ff if theres no feral/balance druid around).

In the end you can use the 41 talent in maybe 60-70% of the fights and in half of it, it just saves you some mana pots. If the 35-40 points talent wouldnt be what it is, we would see 90% of the healing druids without ToL but as balance/resto with natures grace and maybe even dreamstate.

If you are concerned winning the meters, then go roll a DPS class.

Healing is about enabling the team as a whole to win.

If your team mates are using mana inefficient fast heals just to top the meters, then the raid leader needs to adjust some attitudes. This is especially for tree druids assigned to general raid healing. The whole team should understand the nature of druid HOTs and learn to stick to their own assignments.

If you are assigned to HOT the main tank, then your job is not to do MOST of the healing. It's to do the MOST IMPORTANT healing. I sometimes find myself praying that a HOT will tick when the tank is down to 20% health and my priest is two seconds away from landing a greater heal. Sure, 90% of the ticks are wasted. But that other 10% of the ticks are golden because they land reliably when the tank needs them most.


The cruel irony of healing meter competitions is that not all heals are created equal. It's about applying the right amount of healing in the right place at the right time without sacrificing efficiency.

Don't get me wrong: tools like SW Stats are great for diagnosing issues in your healing strategy. I wouldn't think of getting rid of them. But it's a tool, not a scorecard.

Actually we've changed things up in terms of healing assignments lately. Most of the time we raid with 2 ToL druids and when we're both there, we are the primary MT healers usually with a single paladin as backup. Generally we've freed up 1-2 MT healers per fight and reassigned them to raid healing making everything just seem a lot smoother. We obviously own up the charts doing this which, as you've stated before, is singularly unimportant but when you have 2 people doing a combined 1800 or so hps on the MT you've covered the damage output of the vast majority of bosses we've fought.

The real kicker is that for about 1 out of every 2 GCDs, on average, we're still able to throw a lifebloom on the raid. So with our MT healers also throwing out raid healing we find we're just getting more healing out of the same, or less, healers. I'd be interested to see how many other guilds are using their druids this way and if they are finding success with it.