ImARestoDruid

also, has anyone else noticed that the end of Lifebloom for WWS actually is actually attributed to the target and not the druid that casted the heal? Assuming you're just laying on 1 lifebloom stack for raid healing and letting it take it's course then dropping a 1-2k heal at the end, the final heals are actually not being added up to your totals, so WWS is somewhat off if your druid ever raid heals for a fight.

 

Apate

I think this is common knowledge. WWS Shows the lifebloom payload as a heal cast on yourself, just like PoM and ES.

See you, auntie.

 

DecimusGarona

If anyone gets the short end of the stick on this, it is the holy priests... prayer of mending and power word shield - both very powerful spells, but both don't count for anything on the heal meters.

 

Amaren

ToL is absolute garbage for heroics, unless the tank for the heroic is kicking around t5 gear and basically not taking damage at all. Most entry level heroic druids choose Dreamstate for the massive amount of mp5 you get unbuffed because you have to spam Healing Touches the whole time in there due to tank getting crushed by damage.

ToL is great for a lot of instances, but I still think they should never have changed the way the buff worked though.

HoTs on an MT are never useless. My guild isn't way up high in terms of progression like some of yall's guilds are, but the ToL druid in our raid out heals the shaman or paladin when assigned to the Main Tank. He gets his fair share of spikes but he can usually heal for 500 hp/2 with lifebloom stack, and then 1k / 3s with Regrowth and Rejuv. The tank takes damage and spikes, but the druid has no problem keeping him up alone or with just one off healer using just HoTs.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying HoTs are the end to all healing problems, but they certainly solve a lot of problems if kept up correctly.

 

Ailetha

I run heroics with a pally tank, a warlock, a mage, and usually either an spriest or another caster dps.

Heroic instances haven't been an issue since before I started Karazhan in blues. Granted, it was alot harder then, but we weren't wiping either.

The whole idea of 'TOL is garbage' or 'TOL is garbage for 5 mans' confuses me; I've never run into this being an issue. Like any spec, it truly is 95% dependant on the player.

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

 

Blackpatch

ignore

CONSERVE YOUR RAGE AND LUST

 

Akomos

I actually find that ToL absolutely stomps on DS for heroics...but a big part of that is that I can't stand the DS healing style whereas I really dig being a tree.

Somebody mathed it up in the official boards, as I recall, and the 20% reduction in tree comes out to nearly as much or more effective mana regen than DS does anyway.

Raidhealing as a tree bites, though, compared to how hax-tastic chainheal is.

 

◊ Noressa

Honestly, at the point that you are a dedicated tree healer, raid healing should be the lowest of your priorities. We can (and I often do) raid heal fairly effectively. That said, if the raid is taking bursts of damage a shamans chain heal, priest aoe healing, coupled with the faster casts priests, shamans and pallies have all will do a better job of healing back to full faster. Where a TOL has the best chance to shine is when we're assigned a set target group and allowed to keep/maintain our HOT's on them, helping raid heal as our GCD and available mana allow.

If your trying to maximize your raid healers hp/s, a TOL is absolutely the choice over a DS druid. The HT advantage of a Balance/Resto hybrid is something that can be replaced with another paladin or priest. My personal opinion on the matter, at any rate. If you don't care about maximizing for efficiency, then spec is less important.

 

Kazastankas

I would argue for the Dreamstate build myself, just because ToL is so contradictory in its stat focus (Spirit) as compared to what it actually does (spamming HoTs and rarely coming out of the 5-sec rule). Being 27/0/34 (aka. not Dreamstate to keep Swiftmend, but not tree - instead, I get -19% mana cost on Healing Touch), I can still HoT people up - each Lifebloom is still a instant-cast spell that grants over 2k healing as far as spotting AE damage is concerned (this is an important boon that does not require having a select number of people for a druid to look after - and also one that only the Shaman Chain Heal can beat) - and be able to have TWO savior heals (NS HT13 and Swiftmend, which still can crit for 4k without Empowered Rejuvenation) that are more powerful than the Tree's (NS Regrowth is not as nearly as powerful, and often has to be accompanied with a Swiftmend if the recipient's health remains low). Even with just a -19% mana cost to my big heals and 9% to my HoTs, I rarely run out of mana and rarely use Innervate on myself unless I was made to do hardcore raid healing and had to pop a Battle Res or multiple savior heals. This, of course, is still without the 60 mp5 I would get from Dreamstate, though I would lose Swiftmend.

Remember that the DS healing style doesn't disallow HoTing at all. In fact, the additional mp5 you get (and are able to itemize towards over Spirit) more than offsets the reduction in cost that Trees get as a part of their bonus. Again, this is a part of the contradiction provided by the needed focus - but limited usefulness - of Spirit by Tree druids.

Our 'slow' heals are the most powerful savior heals around. Maybe I'm biased because I carry around Nature's Grace and Mystical Skyfire Diamond (I don't use the Scarab simply because the Alchemist's Stone is far more powerful), and the capability to put the largest heal in the game out as fast as other classes' Flash Heals and Greater Heals makes the usefulness of our large heals skyrocket on the surface. However, I see truth in the fact that in most fights where you'll be dealing with tank spikes, you'll be pre-healing anyways. Cast time becomes quite a bit less of a problem in those situations.

 

◊ Noressa

The argument is simply this:
If you're healing with healing touch as your large heals, paladins and priests can do it faster. If you're healing with HOT's either as your main form, or to supplement it, a TOL druid will heal for more. By mixing swiftmend in, and using our most powerful HOT's, the need for our largest "savior" heal becomes smaller.

 

• Playered

While Tree spec is ment to have spirit, doesn't mean you should agree with it.
Unless your ultimate goal is to be in the MT group every single week and your focus is only MT healing, then you should just keep enough for innervate.

Your personal benefit from ToL spec is:
*20% cheaper spells
*Each +1 Healing = +1.2 Healing on HoTs [1600 Healing = +320 Healing]
*Each +1 Spirit = +1.15 Spirit [450 Spirit = +68 Spirit, roughly 8MP5]
*Regrowth will crit more often than not


Compared to Dreamstate:
*9% cheaper spells
*Each +1 Int = 0.1 MP5 [500 Int = +50 MP5]
*Each +1 Int = 0.25 Healing [500 Int = +125 Healing]
*Each +1 Healing = +1.2 Healing on HT [1600 Healing = +320 Healing]

Early on in raiding Dreamstate is quite good, however the further you progress the more raid healing is needed and thats where ToL shines due to the slow speeds of HT and the greater benefit on your HoTs.

 

Mochiloc

The later fights in BT really, really favor Tree Druids. This is from Illidan attempts last night: (12% ffff)

Wow Web Stats

I wasn't there for probably the first 6-7 attempts, which is why my overall healing is so low in comparison. I basically just keep 3x Lifebloom stacks on all of the tanks plus Rejuv, and then later on in the fight I spot heal (Improved Regrowth is crazy when people take ~3.3k damage and need to be topped off very quickly).

Anyways, I always had a Healing Touch build throughout SSC/TK and early BT, but after I respecced I'm beginning to wonder why I didn't go Tree earlier.

This post is kind of pointless, just letting you all know that there is no reason for concern, and that a lot of the fights in Hyjal and BT are designed to allow Tree Druids to really show their stuff and shine.

 

Kazastankas

Actually, note that with Moonglow and Tranquil Spirit (in Resto), Dreamstate Druids have 19% cheaper for Healing Touch.

Anyway, I don't have anything against Tree druids, because they do provide great buffers against neglected heals and the second most effective spot healing - just not as well against real spikes of damage (killing strings, for example, that span over less than 1.5-2 seconds). Though their HPS is strong, it's still a 'flowing' effect, meaning that it still takes a while for a tick to land. For any boss powerful enough to put a damage spike on a tank that's concerning (deep in the red, for example), I'd believe that it'd be more often the heal that actually landed before the next hit than the double 700 Lifebloom tick that prevented the tank from going from 15% to 0%.

As far as I can see in later raid fights, numbers like 3.3k will be the kind of AE damage the raid takes on a normal basis - and using Regrowth to cover that is very much a waste of mana. In most of raid healing cases, since Chain Heal and PoM are both covering heals much faster than yours, it will matter precious little whether a druid's Lifebloom ends up leaving someone 1500 HP short or a tree's Lifebloom ends up leaving someone 800 HP short. Because of this, I take less heed in the praise in Tree Spec's 20% improved HoTs. It'll get healed over anyway.

Though I cannot argue against the fact that Tree will give out the most raw HPS, it's not the best way to regard healing (though it is a good way to regard healing meters, if that's your slice of pie). Remember that the role is to keep raid members alive above healing them a lot - and in most cases, spells like Chain Heal and PoM are going to be healing over your Lifeblooms whether you like it or not - it's a spell that gives the health later where the Shamans and Priests see the need for health now. However, these same raid healing spells won't be able to respond as well to spike damage sustained by any given boss's single-target spells (say, Rage's Icebolt), especially when the boss also puts out AE damage in his attack cycle. These kind of situations (which actually happen rather often) are the ones where the DS druid's capability to pull out the large save heals and allow the area raid healers to continue are invaluable. In a way, you could say that it is a rather big luck buffer vs those damage chains that might kill in less than a space of a second or two, where the kind of MT buffer described above is really more of a buffer against neglected heals.

Anyway, just my opinion in stating that DS druids shouldn't be regarded as completely inferior to Tree druids. Remember that Priests and Paladins can't instant heal, and the Shaman's Healing Waves tend to be a good 33% weaker than our Healing Touches (and they're attached to Chain Heal, anyway! )

 

Xantcha

You totally neglect to mention swiftmend in your post. This is probably the single reason why I feel Dreamstate druids are lacking.


Swiftmend solves your issues with tree druids letting tanks get bursted down, whereas a HT druid only has NS. The "flowing effect" of guaranteed heals is more effective and reliable than a dowranked HT which may or may not land (whereas the other three healing classes with faster heals will land before you anyway).


A heavy resto spec will not only have 20% more effective + healing over your lifebloom but most importantly 20% reduced costs. Chain-heal as amazing as it shows up on healing meters, will often not top its targets due to how it's secondary bounces are fairly weak. Lifebloom works fairly well here in conjunction with lifebloom/flash of light to top off those targets.
(Not sure why you mentioned PoM as remotely viable aoe healing spell.)

Honestly, Paladin/Priests/Shamans "big heals" are faster, more mana effecient and will often put out more HPS then HT. Speccing heavy resto brings something totally unique that other healers cant replicate.

 

Krelly

HoTs are best used on Morogrim to heal graved people IMO.
Other fights where it's very useful are ones where the entire raid gets CC'd, like Gruul and Maiden. HoTs heal while the healers are CC'd.

Also great for feeding warlocks ;D

 

Benita

I have to agree on that, the amount of heals that druid output when its most needed shines best and can hardly be argued with. IF the druid knows when its going to be needed and spams hots on the priority targets right before it (any kind of silence->MT hots, raid dmg spikes on melees, throwing a hot on a archimonde air burst target before he flies away).
You can win healing meters, more importantly your heals are just there when it gets nasty which is what its all about.

Was thinking about a massive healing output specc and came up with this:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Now the idea behind this one would be to spam regrowth, possibly with the regrowth idol, 2set t5, 2set t6 and being in a spriest group or chain drinking mana pots or both
Still need some gear for that, but in theory this looks very decent with almost as good hots as ToL and a big amount of more max healing output for 11% more mana spent. Plus ofc no usual tree restrictions, but no aura bonus.
Could also switch the 3 points from Moonglow to Empowered Rejuv, but thats overdoing it alot i guess (but theoretically even more healing output).

 

Benhoof

I really wonder, if your build is viable for raids.

Even with heavy potting, spamming regrowth will get you into trouble regarding mana.

Also, if you plan to spam regrowth on a single target, the influence of the HoT can be neglected, since it will hardly ever tick.

Sure you will hav a big healing output, considereing Nature's Grace and Improved Regrowth, but you will only be able to heal for a very short time.

 

• Playered

I've tried a similar spec before, however remove the points from Natural Perfection and put them in Lunar Guidance as that effects the initial cast of Regrowth aswell as the power of Swiftmend iirc. Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Its a nice build, with the Focus meta gem you can pump out alot of healing quickly however it will drain your mana even with the Hydross idol and downranking which is why Tree is inevitably better for spamming Regrowth.

 

Benita

Well i was trying to get the extra +healing on hots since thats what you do while theres not alot of raid dmg spikes, but yeah i guess lunar guidance brings more to the table than that effect.

Dont get me wrong here, i wasnt planning on 24/7 regrowth spamming, theres simply no reason to heal efficiently in alot of encounters. I can name alot of encounters where you need the spike healing rather than effective longterm raidhealing and with spriest group, innervate and pots you can hold out on spamming regrowth quiet long (after all its only 11% more mana cost not 20%) while providing massive healing output when its needed. Illidan would be the best encounter to demonstrate this, even the phase that needs the most healing is spikey in itself too and on top of that the healing gets alot easier after 2mins or so.
On the other hand in the most encounters where you can heal efficiently, after a kill or two you end up doing it but you simply dont use pots anymore. Nice side effect but thats not what speccs are about for endgame raiding.

And ofc thats not a specc to keep a MT up, but thats not the right use of a druid imho anyway. Paladins just shine on it and more importantly they are way worse on any other kind of healing which means the versatile healer (druids priests) has to take over the job thats not always there. Same for shamans just on the other end really.

 

Pyxis

I really disagree with that statement. From my experience druids are absolutely superior MT healers, I'd even go so far as to say that paladins are better at raid healing than druids are. Druids who raid heal are generally spamming lifebloom on everyone in sight. About 1/2 second after they do that, some priest or shaman is going to flash heal or CH them back to full and there goes the HoT. Yes, you do a fair bit of effective healing but your overheal (if it were reported) would be spectacular.

I really think that HoTs just shine on MTs. They take damage often meaning that each individual tick of a HoT has a much better chance of actually doing healing. I can tell because my overhealing goes up when I'm healing an MT meaning my HoTs are at least doing partial healing more.

Our healing stability really seemed to increase when we swapped the paladin / ToL roles in a raid. Our pallies can FoL all day long on a raid just as well as they can on a tank, and our tanks health isn't nearly as spiky with ToL HoTs on them. When we had 2 trees, we covered all of the tank healing for most of the fights. Now, we're usually just using 1 tree + 1 paladin on MT healing, depending on the fight obviously.

Even with just me, my effective healing when on tanks is through the roof. Here's a WWS from last night's raid with me assigned to heal Iorek, our MT, all night. Just for reference, Eir is a prot. pally, Magna is an enhancement shaman, and Mortra and Sintez are our shadow priests. The rest are heal specced healers.

Wow Web Stats

 

tenten

The reason that Trees are so effective on Morogrim comes in the fact that if several healers get graved, the main tank will still be getting healed.

 

◊ Noressa

Pyxis, thanks for sharing your WWS. I thought you had another tree druid you worked with, though?

 

Sheshonk

I don't agree with this statement. Trees take a severe hit to healing on Morogrim when tombed since their lifebloom stack expires. Depending on your trinket cooldowns you may not be able to double trinket before starting a new lifebloom stack, which means losing 200ish extra healing on a triple stack lifebloom tick.

Effective Healing is a competition between other healers in the raid. Trees, if on tank duty, will always beat other healers due to the fact that lifebloom ticks every second and beats everyone else to the punch. I've been playing around with tree recently and my effective heal has gone up dramatically, but what it doesn't show is a tree's inability to perform in "clutch" situations. Sure, with a consistant lifebloom stack going on the tank these situations should be rarer, but a 3.5K swiftmend only buys enough time for another healer to do the job. The days where I NS HT crit the main tank for 9K and receive golfclaps from the raid are gone. Yes, I could break treeform, but then why do I want to go so deep in the resto tree with juicy tier 5 balance talents in reach?

My true issue with tree is flexibility. Its enough that hybrids can only do one role at higher levels due to gear/talent constraints, treeform limits those even more. Tree gives you a very specific task, hot cycles. Damage intake on the tank does not matter, you have a cycle of hots you keep up, every now and then you swiftmend...the end. I miss determining a rank of HT, cast canceling, pretending insect swarm is useful, and depoisoining/decursing. I feel braindead in treeform.

 

Zure

This is just insane!

1) HoTs are amazing burst protection.

A) Superior healing throughput during a spike window:

During a 2 second window you are *guaranteed* two 1k ticks of LB, plus a swiftmend. Compare this to the 2/3 chance you have to land a Healing touch (pre-casting, accounting for the fact that you may have cancelled immediately before the burst) and it's no competition. As you can see, the shorter the window to heal during burst the better deep resto becomes, since LB healing and the probability of an HT landing go down in lockstep, but swiftmend remains static as it is an instant cast. This might inflect at some point due to the possibility of being in a global cooldown, but surprise 100-0 deaths in < 1.5 seconds are truly rare.

B) Guaranteed character

Tanks often die due to healers being incapacitated or distracted (e.g., person X yells for healing in vent, all the healers momentarily switch to him). HoTs continue ticking even if you start casting a heal on someone else.

2) The raw healing throughput of druid HoTs outrageous.

With optimal gear and buffs it is possible to sustain an 1600+ tick lifebloom stack on a warrior. No other class can even conceive of sustained aggregate 5k hps. While in practice, the number will be considerably lower, the potential is still mind boggling.

All this healing matters -- With more healing done by fewer raid members: extra healing can be devoted to the non-tanks; extra dps can be subbed in; other healers can sustain their mana longer, both because they heal less and because they can use more mana efficient spells; other healers can focus more intently on their non-healing roles (e.g., keeping inspiration/ancesstral fort up, dispelling, maintaining proper positioning).

3) HoTs fill a niche in healing that no other class can duplicate.

A) HT is non-unique
HT healing is very similar to priest GH, but the druid lacks:

Inspiration, a dramatic reduction in spike damage and overall healing needed;
vastly superior spirit regen during 5SR management due to 4 spi v 4.5 spi per tick, lack of Inner focus + clearcast chains, and 5% extra spirit for the priest;
quicker reaction time (2.5 sec GHeal v 3 sec HT)

B) HoTs instant cast nature grants less tangible benefits

A druid is completely mobile while casting LB, Rejuv, Swiftmend (admittedly at a bit slower of a pace). They can also not be spell locked. Knockbacks or interrupts will not cancel a heal mid-cast.

C) Extra time in spell rotations

Due to the cycle HoT spell rotations, on many fights deep resto druids will have a global cooldown or two free every 6 seconds. This gives time to spot heal, rez, etc. while losing no healing output on your main target(s). Admittedly this is a double edged sword as LB requires an ironclad use of one global per 6 seconds per target. I would count this flexibility in an HT builds favor net, but the better one is at anticipation (e.g., innervate a target before they call for it, preemptively abolish, rejuv a target while you see them being targetted but before they take dmg), the more favorable deep resto becomes.

4) HoTs allow for greater control of your mana pool

A) LB is amazingly efficient

Tree druids can put out the most healing of any class given the same amount of mana, lifebloom has ridiculous HPM. As a side note, this also means that a druid can maintain a 1000+ HPS trinketed lifebloom on the main tank even if they are completely out of mana, simply by refreshing lifebloom every 6.5 seconds. Every other healer is rendered almost completely useless if they run out of mana and don't have a potion cooldown / shadowfiend / mana tide / whatever to get some mana back.

B) Mana efficient base spell rotation gives added flexibility


Druids thus have an incredibly efficient base healing spell, and can choose to use other, less efficient spells as needed. This gives them control over their mana pool while still allowing them to do their central job unabated. Other classes (FoL spam is closest) don't have this same level of control. This has many benefits, such as

*Group composition: Since druids can heal more or less indefinitely when using just LB or LBx2, they can be put into groups that don't provide them regen (like the tank group), freeing up a slot for vamp touch/mana tide.
*Mana transfer: druids are the only class that has the ability to controllably transfer excess mana to another class, through innervate.
*HPS: Druids marginal heals (regrowth/HT during a LBx1 cycle for example) are some of the least efficient in the raid game, but by using every second, druids can match/exceed every other classes single target HPS. I'd compare them to arcane mages in this respect -- the class can dps forever with a conservative rotation (AB AM, scorch--> AM on CC), or can burn through all of their mana very quickly (AB spam) when dps, or in this case hps, burst is needed.

 

Pyxis

Sadly he left us, we're trying to replace him now.

He'll be back though, they always are.