Druid - Tree Concerns and Issues
 

I recently switched my main from a Protection Warrior (OT) to Restoration Druid (Tree!) and I'm absolutely loving it. I'm just looking for some feed-back from the community on a few key issues I'm noticing when healing in a raid setting in TBC and post 2.1 (Last time I healed as a druid was early Naxxramas, I took a break and played a Undead warrior on another server for a couple of months)

My guild is currently on Vashj (first set of attempts last night, 3/4 cores down, making amazing progress so far) as we just killed Leotheras a few nights ago, and 1 shot every boss (minus Morogrim for stupid reason this week. Our progression has really launched forward, and we seem to me "rolling" so to speak.

I haven't healed a lot (3 weeks now on my druid) but I've been doing a ton of reading about tree druids (or lack there of) and I'm just wondering for other tree druids / healers / raid leaders with and without tree druids. How do you go about having them set up in terms of healing and what are their primary healing duties? I'm usually assigned to the MT group (having 661 spirit fully buff is a nice chunk of +healing to our tanks) and here are my main issues right now healing.

1: HOTs - I love HOTs, that's why I love healing on as a tree druid because my HOTs (mainly lifeblood and rejuvenation) cost basically nothing to cast, and heal for an amazing amount. My issue here is, on a fight like Morogrim (where I'm assigned solely to heal our MT) where it basically consists of me keeping regrowth/rejuv/3 stacks of lifebloom up on him at all times (where I swiftmend when he gets crushed, or hit/frost breath and NS/regrowth for emergency situations) and I'm noticing (healing meters anyways) that I'm dead last or close to it on a fight like that. I was looking over my combat log, and realized that around 75% of my HOT ticks weren't ticking at ALL meaning our tank would get hit hard and then be healed to full BEFORE any of my HOTs ticked (maybe 1 tick of life bloom, but thats it)

Now a fight like Fathomlord (where I solo heal our warrior tanking the frost bitch) my healing is so far past everyones it's amazing. Considering every single HOT is ticking for the full amount, the numbers (850 rejuvenation, 400 regrowths, and 620 life blooms) make me realize just how powerful a tree druid can be. I'm wondering, what do you guys do on fights like Morogrim where I'm having trouble getting a lot of healing (I know healing meters aren't perfect, but I enjoy using them as a tool for effort.

2: Healing Touch: I hardly ever use this spell simply because of the cast time is too long. With priests being able to flash heal, and druids (mainly using regrowth, as mana inefficient as it is) casting a healing touch in that time a priest can cast two flash heals. I've tried the always casting / canceling but it just doesn't seem as efficient as keeping the HOTs up.

3: Mana issue: Maybe since I'm not group with a shadow priest, this might be irrelevant if I am, but compared to our other tree druid, I always use my innervate on myself, where he always uses his on a priest.

In closing, maybe it's just the way our raid heals, but does anyone else see any improvements / concerns with the way I heal (or our raid heals) that might be able to improve the efficiency of not just myself, but the rest of the healers as well?

(Our healers consist of 2 restoration druids, 2 holy paladins, 3 holy priests, and 1 restoration shaman)

Edit: Has anyone thought about putting the 9 healing / 4 spirit gems instead of 9 healing / 2mp5 (just for tree benefit?) What are thoughts on that as well?

It seems to me that a Tree is largely wasted on a MT, as are HOTs in general. When one character is basically having heals chained on it the entire fight, with the intention being to keep that character at 100% at all times, it's not surprising that most HOTs fizzle away without really doing anything.

I've never done the fight you're talking about, but maybe some other people are taking period damage? Melee DPS, casters, something like that. You'd probably be more useful healing them. If not, this is a situation where you maybe want to shift out of tree and just start chaining big heals.

Right. On fights where there is AOE damage to melee or the raid is where trees really shine, the problem with shifting out (for me) is its so mana inefficent to chain cast (while canceling) HT, but I guess I could try that next time.

I don't believe you should shift in and out. I'm saying decide before the pull what's more useful:

1. Big resto specced "true" heals
2. Tree form buff and super efficient HOTs.

Then tree it up (or not) accordingly.

edit: I misread your post. You just have to practice. Chain casting heals is basically a prerequisite for raid healing at this point.

On a fight like Morogrim where you are assigned to heal only one tank, you have something like 8+ healers spamming heals on him, HoTs are the least efficient heals you can cast on him. I'd prefer to let Rejuvenation roll for the occasional Swiftmend and either cast/cancel HT on the main tank or do raid healing duty via HoTs.

As a tree druid, your hots provide the MT with an extra guaranteed HP buffer. While you may not top the healing meters on an extreme single tank burst fight, your HoTs can always be counted on to provide the tank with 1000+ hp before the next hit lands, with swiftmend as a guaranteed burst heal when needed. If you have access to them, you may also wish to replace a couple of your blues with 2 piece moonglade, to at least provide the tank with a utility +2% dodge buff.

If you really want to top the healing charts, stack +heal as much as possible. Put +18 heal gems in every socket, and aim for the highest +healing items you can find for every slot. Tree has built in mana efficiency, you don't really need a lot of MP/5 to sustain lifebloom/rejuvenation on a single target. You may actually need to chug mana pots more often if you focus entirely on +heal gear, but this is what will get you to the top of the +heal meter.

As a side note, it looks like you could definitely use some gear upgrades. I'm guessing that coming back to your druid after spending so much time on your warrior, you have fallen behind a bit in gear progression, and are just now catching up by picking up the loot that nobody else wants. I don't know what system your guild uses to distribute loot, but chances are if it is a DKP system of sorts then you are going to be pretty much screwed for a while as you try to catch up to people who have been around since the start of TBC raiding.

Thanks for the advice! :)

Yeah, I had 3/5 t4, and full epics on my warrior (only switched because of lack of healing, and was a little bored with OTing, so I figured I'd switch) We use a officers discretion based looting system, with a "top 5 items you would like" thread on our forums where people post their top 5 items, and why.

I've tried running instance for moonglade (as you can see im in mostly cloth) due to it not dropping, and the priest set WAS dropping :P (was in 4/5 priest set before upgrading chest, and some other items. In terms of +18 healing gems, I wasn't really thinking of doing that, do you down rank your HOTs ever?

Again, thanks for the reply :)

No I don't downrank my HoTs, if the fight is excessively long and mana intensive I may have to chain chug super mana potions after my first innervate, but beyond that I can usually get by with just an innervate for most bosses. If the fight is going to last more than 7-8 minutes, I would strongly suggest not drinking a mana potion until after your first innervate, so that you can get a second innervate out before the end. Unfortunately I don't have any experience in SSC yet, so I can't really give you any specific advice in there.

Also the closest thing to "downranking" that I do is to just use lifebloom when running low on mana. I've only had to do this a couple of times though, it usually isn't an issue unless I have to use regrowth a lot. Keeping a 3 stack lifebloom on the tank is indefinitely sustainable in a low mana situation.

My guild is right where you guys are. The only boss we havn't killed in SSC is Vashj. The only two bosses we havn't killed in TK are Kael'Thas and Solarian.

A few facts: I'm 5/0/56, with around 1650 +healing, 130 mp5 while casting (fully buffed) - or something around there.

I, too, do horribly on Morogrim. That's definately not a fight where HoT druid healing shines. We draw a ton of aggro on the little mobs, so HoTing up the raid right after an earthquake is not a good idea. Our heals are too slow to save more than 2 people on the watery graves.

The only thing we're good at, really, is making sure that the tank survives a spike. I usually just keep up rejuv, in case I need to swiftmend it and cast/stopcast HT10 on the tank. If the tank gets hit for a BIG spike, I'm there with a clutch NS+HT13. If the tank takes a big hit during the earthquake, though, and I'm the one to heal it, I'll get aggro on the murlocs and die. :(

However, the good thing is that Morogrim fights are few. For every other 25-man boss fight, there's a ton of AoE damage getting thrown around that we can heal - or there are multiple tanks up that we can HoT at once.

By the way, I pretty much always use my innervate on myself. Priests have waaay better mana regeneration, assuming they play smart (i.e., use inner focus/clearcasting to stay out of the FSR, intelligently use greater heal) and pop mana potions/use flasks. The only mana regeneration ability the druids have is innervate. Give us clearcasting and I'll start innervating preists :P

I find that MT healing as a tree can work well if you are assigned to heal the MT with ONE other healer. One thing I've noticed recently is that many healers just cross heal anyone who is low and this really kills the effectivness of our HoTs. This was more of a problem before 2.1 because Pallys had almost unlimited mana.

What I generally do is stack my lifeblooms on the tank and then start cross healing DPS that isn't in immediate danger of dying. Often this allows my HoTs to really be used to their full advantage. I count in my head when the MT lifebloom stack is getting close and then throw another one back on him to refresh it and keep it rolling. I find that staying mobile helps too. Even when assigned to MT heal you can run a few paces, throw out some more heals, and quickly (slowly) move back to MT position.

As was mentioned before AoE fights really allow tree druids to shine as they can quickly HoT a bunch of people and have a ton of healing all rolling out at once. Single target, direct damage fights are not as good for us, but hey, you can't be on top of the meters all the time.

That being said, I am often on the top of the meters now that tree form has been fixed and I really do enjoy tree form again.

One last thing though, if the other healers in your raids use the "wack-a-mole" style of healing, where they just heal whoever and not their assigned targets/groups, your HoTs will definately get healed over more. It might just take a quick note by you saying "Hey guys, I got the rogues and mages" and see if that gets you anywhere.

Up until recently my guild has been running with 1 resto druid, who was also ToL and usually assigned to the MT. While I didn't notice any real problems with this it always seemed to me like a ToL druid would be better off raid healing, for the simple fact that HoT's are generally more effective on targets receiving non-periodic damage.

A couple of weeks ago though we took on a new druid, who's specced 27/0/34. In my opinion this is a superior spec to ToL for MT healing. His mana efficiency is almost as good as a paladin and 1.5 second heals aren't something we've found we've needed when it comes to keeping a warrior up. We keep the ToL druid in the MT group anyway most of the time for aura, but have him on raid healing. Both frequently top meters in terms of efficiency and effective healed.

What it comes down to is what other healers you usually run with. Paladins and priests tend to make the best MT healers while Druids and Shamans tend to make the best raid healers. But it also depends alot on who your most competent healers are as you'd really want these assigned to the MT. My advice would be that if you're finding yourself on MT healing most of the time then go with a balance/resto spec and itemise accordingly, particularly if you raid with another ToL druid.

I would strongly recommend downloading DoTimer if you plan on tree healing, this mod is invaluable to keeping track of who you have HoTed and when you need to refresh your lifebloom stack(s).

Edit for linkage: http://www-en.curse-gaming.com/downloads/details/3260/

I think the "HoTs are useless on the MT because 5 other healers are overwriting them" is something of a false perception. The MT is (assuming a non-trivial encounter) in constant danger of dying to a spike and is therefore overhealed. So HoTs are excellent - it's more healing landing at another interval and therefore increases the chance that the tank will receive healing between hits (and thus live). Just as the tank may be topped off and the HoT be wasted, so too might the HoT top the tank off and the holy light be wasted. But overhealing in some form is intended as a safeguard.

HoTs are also obvious good in any encounter where healers might be temporarily incapacitated (hi Gruul).

I would agree that without clear healing assignments any attempted raid healing with HoTs is going to get overridden. With clear assignments this need not be the case, however.

Clear assignments it is =)

Here's a good example of what we are capable of.

Here is our first kill on Al'ar a couple nights ago (hell of a fun fight, now that the charge/1shot bug is fixed should be much easier)

Phase 1 - In was assigned to heal the tanks (as every healer is) in phase 2 I was solo-healing our paladian / warrior who were tanking all the adds.

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...&s=14271-15267

I'm Snow, the most stunning number to me is the amount of overheal (only 14% seems incredibly low)

I've been reading a lot of hate on resto druids, and that we just arn't capable of healing as efficently and effectivly as paladians/shamans and even priests (been reading the holy priest thread, we run 3 holy priests, not 1 :|)

Any comments further on tree issues / concerns?

I don't think a tree druid is useless on fights like Morogrim, where everyone is spamming the MT with flask heals. Yes, your lifebloom will only tick for once or twice everytime the MT gets hit, but that means 1200 healing. Considering Morogrim hits for 4103 on our MT, that means your dot and one or two other healer's heal are gonna be enough to top him off while the other 3 healers are gonna cancel/overheal. That's not bad at all. It ensures constant and reliable healing and that is what we are expecting from a tree druid.

Yes, single tank fights are not where trees excel, you're not gonna get 25% of the total healing done on morogrim as you do on Void Reaver (http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=6agmx1l34m4ro) but you can manage to get the top spot if you play well.

Also, you only really need one druid with massive amount of spirit. If you are 2 druids stacking spirit, one's aura is lost giving +healing to the shadow priest :). I stack mostly +healing since our other tree druid has 650 spirit.

Finally, +healing trinkets like the one from badges are godly for rolling lifeblooms. If you start your trinket, stack 3 lifeblooms and keep them rolling, it'll count as if you have the +300 healing permanently. Hard to do on fight where you have to dodge things but it's still a nice boost you can keep up for 1 min or 2.