Lifebloom, Regrowth, Rejuvination. Which are the best to use regularly? Which are the most mana-efficient when overheal is considered?
Here's my dilema: Our raid currently hosts from 2-3 ToL druids on the norm. I long held to the seeminly common mindset that HoTs weren't very viable at all in a serious raiding environment (and thus was dreamstate specced until a few months ago). Now, after quite a damn bit of testing and properly gearing (mp5/spirit/heal balanced), I've found nearly the exact opposite. While a dreamstate/HT spec is certainly viable for heavy-duty MT cancel-healing, it's not fun at all to play with 3 second casts.
Right now, with multiple trees running around in the raid, we've tried to allocate our playstyles to the best effect. Typically, you'll see me spamming Regrowth. Our other full-time ToL sticks with LB, and the last (when present) does a mix of the two. This way, we're not stepping on each others' toes, etc. Well, contrary to what I expected, I'm destroying healing charts. I've learned my limits enough to make my mana pool last (with or without a shadow priest) and it's allowed me to compete with our single chain-healing shaman.
Although not able to cast HTs in-form, ToL-Regrowth spamming has given me the small-burst topping ability of a paladin without being disabled by movement like paladins are. In ToL, I can cast on the go and then return to full-force topping afterwards. Swiftmend is also a priceless tool here.
So, I'm curious: How are ToL druids being used in other guilds? What spells are you guys using and how effective have you found them to be?
We usually have one or two, and they are most often maintaining full stacks of hots on tanks as their method for healing. I find as a raid leader that using at least one druid maintaining a full stack of lifeblooms and rejuvs/regrowth when needed takes a considerable edge off MT healing for mobs that hit particularly hard. Combined with something like earth shield, a tank will get healed for close to 2k immediately after getting hit, for just about every hit, which makes for an invaluable buffer. We were having issues with tanks eating it on Tidewalker, but swapped one of the druids to maintaining full hots on the tank and rarely ever have a tank die now. The tank was getting so much healing from the hots, that even if I was cast-cancelling max rank HW and waiting for the tank to eat a 5k hit, by the time I could let the heal go off it would be at best 50% overhealing.
The other situation I noticed that a druid really shined on, although not in ToL (Stupid restrictions on curing poison....) was Vashj. People are generally way too spread out for reliable chain healing, yet there is plenty of damage flying around that is perfect for lifeblooming. We had one druid that would have been well out in front on healing, had he not been insta-gibbed by the very last strider that spawned in stage two.
After getting the idol off Hydross last kill, I was bummed that it appeared on the surface to be pretty bad, but I'd never really given a Regrowth heavy technique much thought. Lifebloom + Rejuv is just so efficient.
However, Regrowth + the Hydross Idol + Mystical Skyfire (1.0 sec. Regrowths save asses. It's nothing you can bank on, obviously, but it has come in super handy) is something I may be willing to investigate, as I do run with another tree.
Lifebloom, to me, is the number one tool a healing druid has. I'm the only healing druid in our guild (when I'm heal spec), and my own heal cycle tends to be Lifebloom stack on the tank and anyone else taking constant damage, keep a rejuve on the tank at 50% duration or more for swiftmend emergency healing, regrowth to spot heal.
On any fight where more than one person takes constant damage, you should be at/near the top of the healing charts, only shamans (or CoL priests on a couple fights) should come close. Stack those lifeblooms up and regrowth away. I don't think there's really any need to worry about stepping on each others toes when doing healing assignments. HoTs stack, and regrowth isn't entirely wasted even when you overheal. From your charts, it looks like you have a good handle on the class, its possible your other druids need to step up some.
Lifebloom, to me, is the number one tool a healing druid has. I'm the only healing druid in our guild (when I'm heal spec), and my own heal cycle tends to be Lifebloom stack on the tank and anyone else taking constant damage, keep a rejuve on the tank at 50% duration or more for swiftmend emergency healing, regrowth to spot heal.
My biggest issue with LB is that it's a global cooldown. While that may not sound like a big deal, a GCD every ~6 seconds is a good chunk of your healing time spent recasting an instant spell. I'll do it if I have to, but it's very tiresome on the mana-pool seeing as your ALWAYS going to be within the 5-second-rule AND chain-casting spells.
If you check the parses, Lilume (one of the other druids) swears by LB. I believe him, but because of the GCD he's almost spending the same amount of casting-time on it and LB is MUCH more likely to get healed over. I tend to think that the reason he comes in lower on a lot of the charts is because LB's "bloom" isn't counted towards his healing. Different styles of play, I guess.
Well if you do indeed have 3 trees in the raid, you can pretty much chalk up MT healing good and done for the vast majority of fights... keeping lifebloom stacks rolling on your MT with decent t4+ levels of +heal is going to going to net him 2000+ hp every second.
For healing in tree, lifebloom is the spell I consider to be our largest asset, especially as our gear improves. A typical heal trash cycle for me will consist of growing 3x lb on the main tank (or tank I'm responsible for) as quickly as possible (I lose some efficiency here for not letting it tick out, then refreshing the tanks stack while I LB anyone taking periphery damage. Once the LB stacks are going, then I'll toss in a rejuv. If the tank takes too much damage, then he gets regrow, followed by a rejuv. If the combined HOT effects of those 3 aren't enough, then I'll use swiftmend and re-apply the HOT that was consumed by SM. I'll also throw in a regrow after a rejuv expires then re-apply rejuv afterwards if I feel the need for extra healing.
Boss fights are the same for the most part, except that I'll usually focus a bit more on just the tank(s)/key players and throw out a LB if I have a GCD to spare. Keeping all 3 HOT's on the targets that are taking the most damage is greater then the raid, which should be getting chain heals from shamans, assuming they aren't spread out too far. (I should note, I'm rarely assigned to raid heal, I'm usually on tanks)
There is no reason that I can think of, outside of just light raid healing that a druid would only use 1 of the HOT's. With just rejuv and lb going at the same time, we'll typically be obtaining 1000+ hp/s averaged out. Right now, our guild uses 3 TOL, however one rarely goes into tree preferring cast/cancel HT and the occasional LB. The other does a lb single application, bloom, re-apply method, mixing in swiftmend, rejuv and regrow.
It's okay to use regrowth as long as you have the mana for it. It heals a huge amount for a two second cast. In multitank situations it's the best way to keep them all up and stable. You'll naturally want to supplement it with lots of lifebloom though
Currently (thanks to flash healers) im using regrowth alot more often, and rarely have mana issues with R8.
I'ld say its normally 50/50 RG/LB on my healing and generally im always in the top 3 on healing meters with using it.
The idol from hydross (-33mana on cast), assuming I cast it about 15x per min is about 40mp5, godly on fights llike Naj'entus where I use it alot more.
I rarely use rejuvenation except on tanks as its cost is not far off my regrowths ^^
At the stage of raiding I'm at (Kara/Gruul and beginning SSC/TK soonish), I use Lifebloom pretty much .. too much. Often ~70% of my healing done.
Fights which really only hit the MT (example: Attumen p0/p2, Prince p1-p2), he gets 3 lifeblooms (refreshed every 6 sec). After refreshing it I start casting max rank regrowth, if it's looking like a big overheal I cancel and wait for the next lifebloom refresh (getting one tick of spirit regen in the process). Otherwise it goes through and he also gets rejuv.
Fights where I'm on multiple MTs (example: Attumen p1, Romeo/Juliet), all get lifebloom stacked up slowly. Rejuv on the tank getting the most damage if I got any time left. No time for Regrowth usually.
Fights with lots of raid dmg (example: Curator, Moroes with lots of garrotes up, Gruul for 10 secs after a Shatter), the MT gets 3 lifeblooms and everyone taking < 2.5k dmg gets lifebloom, any higher gets rejuv. I'll try and refresh it on the MT but it'll also bloom a few times in these fights. Once that happens he gets a rejuv as replacement and lifebloom gets built up slowly again.
Short of pissing paladins off, I can't really think of a use for Regrowth as a raid heal. Most of the time either the initial heal or the HoT is wasted, making it mana inefficent. If your targets are being flashed with a HoT on them in fights where mana is any bit of a concern (the game of "Top the healing meters, no matter what!" is fun on trivial content though), get better healers or tell them to get better raidframes.
I prefer to keep Swiftmend for emergency healing over using it for finishing up HoTs. The only time I really use it to "finish up HoTs" is if Rejuv running out within 3 secs, Regrowth is on the target for a good 10+ seconds and there's 3k HP or more missing which needs to be healed soon-ish or the target has a chance of dying (where soon-ish is not an emergency but closer to "4k pyroblast of doom being cast on <target with 3k hp left> in 5 secs"). This actually isn't as uncommon of a thing as it sounds though, raid boss hits minus HoT ticks right after it are often ~3k.
Downranking seems pointless to me, other than using Rejuv 12 instead of 13 (which is only 80 healing less in total for me while saving 30 mana - trade-off I'm willing to make). Any place where I'd downrank any further Lifebloom is just as good but a little bit cheaper and heals faster as well.
I have to admit, this style of healing doesn't work at all until you get ~1200 +healing. Numbers are too low, people die unless you spam Regrowth (just drop tree and HT if this is needed) and your little blue bar runs low.
Druid as raid healer always seemed like a relic of pre-LB buff days, where druid lacked a clear spot in 25 man content. It also seems efficient only in an ideal raid where other healers have the discipline to not flash over HoTs.
Currently, druids can keep a consistent 800 hps on up to four targets with attentive play at relatively low mana cost (over 25 healing per mana in ToL).
As such, for anything tank&spank, I'd have as many trees as possible keep LB triple stacked (trinketed if possible) on a tank or two plus regrowth every 3rd or 4th cycle to keep swiftmend available. Swiftmend (+ the potential to /cancelform NS HT) greatly reduces the potential for death due to burst damage. The druids should also have a few globals free to help out w raid heals where needed.
This may result in more overhealing than other setups, but the tremendous efficiency makes that A-ok in my book.
Try putting two of your druids on the tanks, along with an inspiration-proccing shaman/priest and let the paladins/shaman/priests raid heal, depending on how the damage is distributed. See if it works for you!
I use Lifebloom most of the time. I think as a druid you should always have a full stack of LB on the MT. It does not take a lot of time (1.5s every 6s), it is very cheap (176m in ToL) and it really helps other healers keeping the MT alive. Also Lifebloom stacks scales best with +Healing gear.
I think one of the strong points of druids is, that they can adapt very well to different encounters. Far better than Shamans and Paladins.
You can crossheal very well if you have enough time (Gruul for example). You can heal multiple tanks with your Lifebloom stacks. Or you can heal a single target with Lifebloom, Regrowth and Swiftmend.
The downside of having a HoT-favoring playstyle is, that you may not top the healmeters if paladins and shamans go for it.
Now to your initial question:
I think Lifebloom is best to use regularly, because it scales so incredibly well with gear. But, as a downside, it unfolds its full potential only, if you stack it. Also, in general, you should never ever let it wear out, unless you are really forced to do so. The reason is, that, even though you get a slight boost in hps, you got to spent 3 GCD to stack it up again.
If you don't care to let your Lifebloom stack up and your single Lifeblooms just take too much time to heal the target using Regrowth is a viable alternative. It may not be as mana efficient as Lifebloom, but with the 20% mana cost reduction gained from ToL, it is efficient enough to use it regularly.
I do not consider Rejuvination usefull on a regular basis. It is only usefull if you just want to boost your healing output a little bit. But it is far too expensive to spam it like Lifebloom. I only use it regularly on the MT in combination with the Moonglade(2) set bonus, if the 2% dodge for the MT compensate the reduced healing output.
I tend to top the healing charts in our raid group and we're in BT/Hyjal now.
My rotation is usually Lifebloom to 3 stack, Rejuv, wait til lifebloom is down to a second left and then roll the stack, Regrowth, lifebloom, wait for rejuv to tick off then reapply, then lifebloom again.
Here's the deal...letting lifebloom bloom is very inefficient as it costs nearly 550 mana to get the 3 stack back up. Reapplying lifebloom is always my first priority. Regrowth is my "oh crap" for swiftmend, as well as my secondary flash heal if other instant casts are on coold down.
Rejuv's are good if you let them go for their full duration. If you're reapplying early and not letting your 800+ tick go off, then you're doing yourself a disservice. Think of it this way. Warlocks don't reapply their dots have way through the duration of the dot. Super inefficient. You shouldn't either. The only aside would be lifebloom as letting it bloom only increases the cost of its reapplication.
I tend to top the healing charts in our raid group and we're in BT/Hyjal now.
My rotation is usually Lifebloom to 3 stack, Rejuv, wait til lifebloom is down to a second left and then roll the stack, Regrowth, lifebloom, wait for rejuv to tick off then reapply, then lifebloom again.
Here's the deal...letting lifebloom bloom is very inefficient as it costs nearly 550 mana to get the 3 stack back up. Reapplying lifebloom is always my first priority. Regrowth is my "oh crap" for swiftmend, as well as my secondary flash heal if other instant casts are on coold down.
Rejuv's are good if you let them go for their full duration. If you're reapplying early and not letting your 800+ tick go off, then you're doing yourself a disservice. Think of it this way. Warlocks don't reapply their dots have way through the duration of the dot. Super inefficient. You shouldn't either. The only aside would be lifebloom as letting it bloom only increases the cost of its reapplication.
This is pretty much what I do, and I'm at the top (or near the top - damn you chain heal!) on most encounters because I can keep HoT's up on the tank and spare GCD's to raid heal. We've also got paladins and priests that are pretty good about sticking to their assignments on boss fights and not healing over hots when I'm raid healing. But, usually I'm the only ToL druid in the raid. With multiple druids I think we'd need some form of assignments or specialization of heals like the OP described.
The main thing is to keep that 3 stack of LB going whenever possible. It's stupid efficient, for less than 200 mana you can keep 600+hp/s up on a single target and stay outside the FSR. Even if I'm completely oom, I could theoretically keep LB going on the MT forever.
I will say that I use regrowth the least. If I'm not single tank healing, I only use it when I really need a good chunk heal and swiftmend is down. Though I should work on getting myself out of the habit of using rejuv + swiftmend instead of hitting regrowth now that I have the idol from hydross.
Here's the deal...letting lifebloom bloom is very inefficient as it costs nearly 550 mana to get the 3 stack back up. Reapplying lifebloom is always my first priority. Regrowth is my "oh crap" for swiftmend, as well as my secondary flash heal if other instant casts are on coold down.
Not to mention that you might lose a trinketed bloom stack, which really sucks. You then have spend mana restacking a much smaller lifebloom, and when your trinket is back up you have to let it bomb again and restack for a second time. This makes encounters where you can't really keep the stack going all the time a bit frustrating, but then again healers that have to rely on cast times probably take an even bigger hit to their healing in those situations.
One advantage of rejuv over regrowth is that it makes for a bigger swiftmend. When a tank drops really low, swiftmending off a regrowth might not be enough to save him -- it's often in the 2k range, whereas rejuv is always over 3k for me, and I've seen crits as high as 6k.
Try putting two of your druids on the tanks, along with an inspiration-proccing shaman/priest and let the paladins/shaman/priests raid heal, depending on how the damage is distributed. See if it works for you!
We did this and it was literally like adding an extra healer to all of our raids. With 2 ToLs on tank healing we freed up at least 1 tank healer and often 2 for raid healing. Rather than struggling with flash heals overwriting our hots, we just let the priests and pallies heal the raid with the shaman while the druids do the heavy lifting on MT healing.
I clung to my love of dreamstate for a long time so Naj'entus was the first fight where we played with 2 ToLs on MT healing and we found that the 2 of us were more that sufficient to heal the MT which freed up 2 other healers for raid healing or whatever other assignment we had for them. Everything just seemed to go a lot more smoothly after that.
One of our priests specced disc for pvp but was raiding with that spec tonight. She would PI me about a minute before the pull and I'd pop all my trinkets, set up a lifebloom stack on the MT and then switch to regen trinkets. I was keeping up with even the CHing shaman on Gorefiend tonight with that.
I didn't realize PI'd lifebloom stacks retained the benefit... thanks!
One good turn deserves another, so I'll mention that you can use amplify magic to pump up the bloom even higher.
What are the optimal trinkets to activate in conjunction for lifebloom stacking?
I don't know about optimal trinkets but I was using Essence of the Martyr and Icon of the Silver Crescent because I don't have a second "on use" type healing trinket. I've dragged some guild mates out to kill Ysondre for Hibernation Crystal - Items - World of Warcraft and the on use from the Hakkar trinket is pretty good. I think the Sapphiron trinket (Eye of the Dead - Items - World of Warcraft) is probably the best but so far my guild has been shockingly reluctant to farm Naxx to get me one.
I don't know about optimal trinkets but I was using Essence of the Martyr and Icon of the Silver Crescent because I don't have a second "on use" type healing trinket. I've dragged some guild mates out to kill Ysondre for Hibernation Crystal - Items - World of Warcraft and the on use from the Hakkar trinket is pretty good. I think the Sapphiron trinket (Eye of the Dead - Items - World of Warcraft) is probably the best but so far my guild has been shockingly reluctant to farm Naxx to get me one.
Good call on Eye of the Dead, it rates as the best trinket possible:
Eye of the Dead (450+70 = 520)
Essence of the Martyr (297+84 = 381)
Zandalarian Hero Charm (374 average over 3 casts)
Hibernation Crystal (350)
Talisman of Ascendance (350 average over last 3 casts)
Xi'ri's Gift (280)
Icon of the Silver Crescent (155+43=198)
Power infusion = 20%
Imp Amp Magic = 360
Spirit stacked tree = ~ 200
Ribbon of Sacrifice = 150
Imp DS = ~50
Elixir of Healing Power = 50
Golden Fish Stick = 44
Warlock Atiesh = 33
Using the best available gear in the game I'm getting (err theorycrafting) 1710 lifebloom ticks on a warrior target. You should be able to hit 1170 ticks with universally attainable (Karazhan level + pvp) gear.
It is possible, in theory, to stack 4 trees in the group with the main tank and each of their auras will apply the bonus. I know the aura buffs stack, I don't know for sure if the actual +heal from them stacks. Of course, chances are nobody is going to stack multiple tree druids in one group.
07/19/07, 4:37 PM
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