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11/02/07, 12:07 AM
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Piston Honda
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[Druid] Raiding as a Tree
[top]Introduction and NewsThis post reflects Patch 2.4.1 on live servers. The calculations concerning Spirit in this post all assume that you have Blessing of Kings and the Living Spirit talent. 2.4.2 PTR News Two things so far:
Main Post Updated for 2.4.1 The biggest changes for restoration druids in the most recent major content patch are:
Everything below has been updated to reflect these changes. If you see any errors, please post in this thread or send me a PM. [top]TalentsThere are 42 points of defining Restoration talents:
You may choose to drop 3 points in Nature's Focus to get Natural Shapeshifter (or just get both) but the other talents are pretty standard. If you choose to use your remaining points to get more Restoration talents, the best choices are Empowered Touch for larger NS+HT, Natural Shapeshifter to help with shifting to move or decurse and then shifting back to tree, and Tranquil Spirit to reduce NS+HT mana cost. There's also plenty of room in a good raiding Restoration build for 5/5 Starlight Wrath, which makes soloing much easier and, if you are running SSC, is a huge help when you have to kill your Inner Demon (barkskin and spam wrath). You might notice that this list does not include Naturalist, the talent that reduces Healing Touch cast time from 3.5 to 3 seconds. This is because in nearly all situations, you will only use Healing Touch in conjunction with Nature's Swiftness. It will not be as effective at spot healing as Regrowth (for its speed and ability to be swiftmended) or Lifebloom (for its efficiency). The only real legitimate use is when you really need to put out maximum healing on a single target, which is achieved by casting (with no haste) HT, Lifebloom, HT, Lifebloom. If you have a significant amount of haste you will be able to fit two HTs in between Lifebloom refreshes, however. [top]Five-second RuleThe five-second rule, commonly abbreviated FSR, is a game mechanic that governs whether you are considered to be in your "while casting" period of regeneration or "while not casting" (the two different periods suggested by the Mana Regen tooltip on your character screen). Unfortunately, these periods do not occur "while casting" and "while not casting" at all, but rather follow this rule: "If you have completed a spellcast that cost mana within the past five seconds, you are considered to be in your 'while casting' regeneration period. Otherwise, you are in the 'while not casting' period." This means that if you continually begin to cast and then cancel a spell without completing it, you will never enter the "while casting" period (since you must complete a spellcast). It also means that if you cast a spell more often than every five seconds, you are never in the "while not casting" period. Druid healers are rarely in the "while not casting" period, but luckily we have talents like Intensity to improve our "while casting" regeneration rate. The primary exception to this rule is when you are under the effect of Innervate. While this effect is active, you will always be considered to be "while not casting" even if you are casting spells. People often refer to the "while casting" period as being "in the five second rule." Similarly, the "while not casting" period is often referred to as being "out of the five second rule." [top]StatsThe only really worthwhile stats for a restoration druid are stamina, intellect, spirit, mp5, spell haste, and bonus healing. Spell critical chance is so unimportant that they are essentially worthless. Balancing stats on your gear is a delicate task and should be done with the needs of the particular encounter in mind. It is not uncommon for a healer, druids included, to change gear multiple times per night. [top]StaminaThe amount you need depends on the level of the raids you are doing (for example, you must have 8500 HP minimum for Naj'entus) and your ability to quickly react to things that might hurt you. For the most part, you should be okay with the stamina that comes on your gear, since healing leather tends to have a decent amount of it. If your standard gear has a lot of pieces with no stamina or little stamina on them, you should acquire some stamina pieces to switch in when appropriate. If this is necessary I usually use Arena gear or sometimes alternative raid drops that have less power but more stamina. [top]Bonus healingAn extremely important stat for all healers in TBC, and druids are not an exception. The relative value of bonus healing depends on your assignment. When healing tanks or any other raid member taking consistent long-term damage, the strength of our HoTs is what makes us viable and so bonus healing should be stacked as high as possible. If you are doing a significant amount of raid healing, bonus healing is still a very important stat but it is not the end-all stat that it is in a tank healing situation. Mana regeneration increases in importance as it becomes useful to be "wasteful" with mana by refreshing lifebloom stacks early and using regrowth and swiftmend liberally. Spell haste allows you to deliver healing to more targets than you could otherwise, which can be better than simply delivering more healing to the same number of targets. In a situation where you do a lot of raid healing, it will be up to you to choose an appropriate balance of bonus healing, mana regeneration, and spell haste. [top]Spell hasteFormerly a worthless stat, haste serves a purpose now that it reduces the GCD. It does this using the same formula that it reduces spellcasts with, meaning your GCD will be: 2355 / ( H + 1570 ), where H is your haste rating. There are two primary uses of haste: first, to attempt to stack haste high enough to achieve a 5 GCD cycle, as opposed to the normal 4 GCD cycle (see the section on "Rolling Lifebloom" if you don't know what this means). This allows for some interesting 5 GCD cycles, for example see the "Healing Strategies" section and look for the "hasted" multiple tank cycles. If you are interested in pulling off a 5 GCD hasted cycle, you will need a theoretical minimum of 113 spell haste in order to get a 1.4 second GCD. It is extremely likely that you will need more than this in a real-world situation due to latency effects, and possibly significantly more. Druids later in this thread have reported success in the 180-220 haste range. The second use of haste is to allow us generally deliver healing more quickly by speeding up the GCD. Even if you do not have enough haste to achieve a 5 GCD cycle, a moderate amount of haste will improve the speed of the rejuvenation+swiftmend combo, allow you to deliver healing to a tank in crisis faster, and allow you to spread HoTs around the raid faster. If you intend to use haste in this fashion, it can be very useful when you are splitting your attention between a single tank and the raid. For this reason I believe haste is a useful stat to have on a generalist healing set. [top]Spirit, Intellect, and MP5The mana stats. MP5 is fairly simple to understand: each point bestows you with one point of mana every five seconds, no matter what the situation is. There is another system of regeneration going on in parallel, based on your Spirit and Intellect and using the formula: SpiritIntellectRegen = 5 * 0.00932715221261 * sqrt(Intellect) * Spirit, where sqrt is the square root function and Intellect and Spirit are the values listed on your character screen. The "SpiritIntellectRegen" number you get from this formula is the amount of mana you will get from the spirit/intellect system every 5 seconds "while not casting." You will get 30% of this while casting from Intensity. This is completely separate from the mana you get from the MP5 system. The "Mana Regen" tooltip on your character screen totals up the pure MP5 on your gear, then calculates the mana you get from the spirit/intellect system "while casting" and "while not casting," then adds them together and displays the final result. There are no longer any simple numbers for the value of spirit and intellect, since the value of one depends on the other due to the nature of the new formula. This is further complicated by the fact that the value of spirit is determined solely based on how much intellect you have, while the value of intellect is based both on how much spirit you have and how much intellect you have (due to the square root, intellect has diminishing returns). Some general guidelines follow, with all equivalences stated assuming you are always in the "while casting" period:
Keep in mind that the extra value from Innervate (the numbers like 23.74 / T) does not apply if you have enough spirit already that Innervate fills your entire mana bar. Please check this using the "Innervate" section below. The first list's intellect numbers are before Kings. The base intellect range used in the second list is 600 intellect for the low number and 400 intellect for the high number (since intellect has diminishing returns, more of it is not worth as much at 600 compared to 400). There may be a spreadsheet published here at some point in the future that allows you to see these numbers for your situation without using the lists or formula above. If anyone knows of a good one please let me know. Note: In addition to Intellect's contribution to the spirit/intellect system, it also extends your mana pool by 15 for every one point of intellect. [top]Gear ChoiceMy gearing philosophy has been to maintain enough mana regeneration to get the job done, and then stack +healing after reaching that. When starting out in Karazhan I shot for around "while casting" 100-110 regen, in mid-BT and Hyjal I went for 190-200 or so, and now in 2.4 post-BT I have somewhere in the mid 200s. In general it is best to make gear choices based on your current stats and what is needed for the encounter. This will involve striking a balance between mana regeneration, bonus healing, spell haste, and stamina. If you are interested in a quick answer, the following section has two Lootrank links describe the items you would want for two generalist sets of restoration equipment. [top]Rough Lootrank WeightsPurple set: Loot Rank: Purple. By "purple set" I mean these weights represent a fairly balanced tradeoff between +healing and mana regeneration. The most appropriate gem selection for a purple set would be to gem for +healing bonuses by using pure healing gems in red sockets, combination healing/mp5 (or healing/spirit) gems in purple sockets, and yellow gems only to meet the requirement for an IED meta. If this gem style appeals to you consider using this lootrank. Red set: Loot Rank: Red. A red set focuses on maximizing output. It does not ignore the value of mana regeneration, but devalues it somewhat compared to the purple set. The most appropriate gem selection for a red set would be to usually gem pure +healing (except where other gems are required to meet a meta requirement, which could be either IED or a Bracing gem). About both sets I generally agree with the rankings and gem choices given the stated purpose of each list, especially when the scores are far apart. When the scores are within a hundred or so, it becomes a tougher decision. Loot Rank recommends gems based on a simple examination of the weights, and generally gets the right idea. If you are interested in a more detailed look at restoration druid gemming styles, including a discussion of meta gems, look at the "Gems" section below. A brief word about the weights used in these lists: Intellect, Spirit, MP5, and bonus healing are carefully weighted to correspond to the priorities represented by the purple and red sets; because of this, those values should not need tweaking. Haste is given an small and also arbitrary weight (one haste rating is worth slightly less than half of one point of bonus healing). Feel free to change it, since there is no mathematical basis for choosing that particular value. Stamina is given no weight because healing leather generally has enough to make it a non-issue. If you find yourself lacking stamina, simply pick a piece lower down in the list that has more stamina. These lists do not account for anything but the basic stats. This includes set bonuses and items with on-use effects or procs, and so they are worthless for evaluating trinkets and may give you the wrong idea regarding set items. For more information on those two topics look at the "Set Bonuses" piece directly below this paragraph, and the "Trinkets" section lower on the page. [top]Set BonusesMost restoration druid bonuses on TBC gear are not amazing, and some of them are nearly worthless. Generally you will be fine breaking your set to upgrade an item unless the size of the upgrade is minor. Malorne 2-Piece (Tier 4): Procs the spell Infusion, which shows up on WWS. I'm not sure what the proc rate is, but when I had it I generally observed it to proc once every 1-2 minutes based on WWS. Malorne 4-Piece (Tier 4): 24 seconds off the Nature's Swiftness cooldown. This is nice but not worth seeking out. Nordrassil 2-Piece (Tier 5): 6 seconds added to Regrowth's HoT duration. This does not affect the tick size. It's nice if you are doing a significant amount of raid healing and wish to have HoTs available to swiftmend. Nordrassil 4-Piece (Tier 5): 150 points added to the final heal of Lifebloom. This is not worth seeking out since the final Lifebloom heal tends to either never happen (when it is rolled on purpose) or be massive overhealing if it does. Thunderheart 2-Piece (Tier 6): 2 seconds off the Swiftmend cooldown. There will always be times when your swiftmend has 1-2 seconds left on its cooldown and you wish you could use it, so this is a pretty nice bonus if you are not locked into a rolling lifebloom cycle. Thunderheart 4-Piece (Tier 6): 5% increased healing on Healing Touch. This bonus is borderline worthless, but you will probably end up getting it anyway since Thunderheart is a very good set. [top]Tree of LifeOur 41 point talent. Tree of Life form has a large number of effects, both positive and negative. Even with the negatives, you will probably be in tree form almost always. Tree of Life aura: 25% of your Spirit is granted to your party as bonus healing received. This aura's main competitors are Devotion aura, Shaman totems, and Blood Pact. There's some discussion on Tree Concerns and Issues - Page 6 but the bottom line is that while tank group composition largely comes down to guild preference, two good groups are the single tank group tank/paladin/shaman/warlock/tree or the double tank group tank/tank/paladin/warlock/shaman. If you are short on warlocks or shamans then a tree druid can be an acceptable substitute in the double-tank group. For a boss that does any appreciable amount of physical damage, you want devotion aura if the tank is not a druid at the armor cap. Mana cost reduction: 20% reduction in the mana cost of your spells. This is an extremely effective part of tree form, and is in fact the only useful aspect of it when your aura is not being used in a tank group. As an example, when keeping up lifebloom and rejuvenation on two tanks this is worth 120 mp5 in mana savings. Limited spell selection: You can cast Barkskin, Rejuvenation, Lifebloom, Regrowth, Innervate, Abolish Poison, Nature's Swiftness, Swiftmend, Rebirth, and Tranquility. Notable spells that may not be cast include Healing Touch and Remove Curse. The loss of Healing Touch is not a serious issue since it is merely a large, slow, direct heal like everyone else's and is not part of what restoration druids uniquely bring to a raid. Movement speed decrease: 20% slower base run speed. On some fights this does not matter at all, since little to no movement will be required. Even with this speed decrease, druids are surprisingly mobile healers due to the fact that all spells but one (regrowth) can be cast while on the move. For times when you absolutely must move as fast as possible, shift out of tree form temporarily. You can pick up the Natural Shapeshifter talent to help with this if you want. If you get Boar's Speed on your boots, the 8% movement increase goes a long way to helping tree form's mobility and may reduce the amount of times you feel that you need to shift out. [top]"Rolling" LifebloomWhile browsing forums you will often see references to "rolling lifeblooms". Rolling lifeblooms refers to the practice of building up a 3-stack of lifebloom and re-casting it before the stack expires, thereby keeping up the full 3-stack indefinitely. Between patches 2.1 and 2.3.1, a druid could maintain buffs like [Essence of the Martyr] and Power Infusion indefinitely, but this is no longer the case. Lifebloom ticks every second and so it is the fastest no-cooldown healing spell in the game. Due to its fast tick speed and high average value, it is the most powerful HoT in the game by a long shot (with +1800 healing, a lifebloom will heal for about 2000 over three seconds, the normal tick time of most HoTs). With +1800 healing, you can expect lifebloom to tick for about 660 on people outside your group, and 700 on people in your group. The power of the rolling lifebloom technique lies in the fact that tank spike deaths often happen in a short 2 second window, which lifebloom is guaranteed to tick twice in. Thus in addition to being a significant source of healing, lifebloom stacks will tick every time the tank is spiking low and effectively increase his hp by at least 1300 and maybe more (depending on the burst potential of the boss). Since lifebloom only lasts seven seconds, rolling one or more lifeblooms puts restrictions on how you must use your global cooldowns. When refreshing a rolling lifebloom, you incur a global cooldown of 1.5s, leaving 5.5s to cast other spells before it must be refreshed again. Due to latency effects, which pile up between each instant cast due to the global cooldown, you may only have 4.5-5s. This means that with good latency you can roll lifebloom on a maximum of 4 different targets if you do nothing else, although if your latency is poor it may be risky to attempt rolling more than 3 (if you slip and miss a refresh, the stack falls off and will need to be recast). If you have poor latency, consider wearing spell haste gear, which will provide more leeway in your cycles. When rolling lifeblooms, you may find it useful to make a macro for each tank and bind them to something convenient like shift-1, 2, 3, 4:  /target TankName /cast Lifebloom /target TankName /cast [modifier:shift] Rejuvenation ; [modifier:alt] Regrowth ; Lifebloom If you are rolling four lifebloom stacks and one does happen to fall off, skip ahead two stacks (i.e. 1->3, 2->4, 3->1). It is better to lose one more stack than to lose them all (which will probably happen if you try to stick to your normal order). Mechanics: For those that are interested in calculating lifebloom tick values, its base tick in a Restoration spec is 42.9 and its bonus healing coefficient per tick per stack is 9.81%. For a 3-stack, the base tick is 128.7 and the coefficient is 29.42%. This means that with 1800 +heal, a 3-stack of lifebloom will tick for 128.7 + 29.42% of 1800 = 658. The major exception to this rule is the [Idol of the Emerald Queen], which does not add directly to your bonus healing value since it is not affected by the talents Gift of Nature and Empowered Rejuvenation. Instead, it uses the untalented coefficient of 7.43% per tick per stack, or 22.3% for a 3-stack, meaning it adds 19.6 to the value of a 3-stack. [top]InnervateInnervate multiplies Spirit/Intellect-based regeneration by 5 for 20 seconds and allows it to work while casting. The amount of spirit on gear varies based on personal choice. In general, healing priests and druids will get the most mana back from an innervate. To calculate the net mana returned we can adapt the formula from the Stats section above. The formula is: InnervateMana = 20 * IntensityFactor * 0.00932715221261 * sqrt(Intellect) * Spirit IntensityFactor is 4.7 for druids, priests, or mages that take Intensity, Meditation, or Arcane Meditation. It is 5 for other classes. This accounts for the fact that Intensity-type talents do not apply while under the effect of an innervate. As an example of what you can expect, a restoration druid with 400 spirit and 500 intellect would receive: InnervateMana = 20 * 4.7 * 0.00932715221261 * sqrt(500) * 400 = 7842 mana A shaman with 125 spirit and 500 intellect would receive: InnervateMana = 20 * 5 * 0.00932715221261 * sqrt(500) * 125 = 2607 mana However, with Divine Spirit and Blessing of Kings, the shaman would have 193 spirit and receive 4025 mana, a remarkable improvement. The biggest thing to be careful of with Innervate is checking whether you will max out your mana pool or not when you cast it. Run the InnervateMana number for yourself, and if it is larger than your mana pool then you must ignore anything in this guide that discusses bonuses to innervate (for example, the Bangle use calculation, the Spirit to MP5 equivalence that looks like "If you innervate yourself, add another 21.68 / T mp5," and so on). [top]Who should I heal in a raid?Druids are capable of MT healing, multiple tank healing, and spot healing. Because of this there tends to be some disagreement and confusion about the best role for a tree druid in a given encounter. Much of this comes down to guild preference, but this section will attempt to provide some rules of thumb. The strength of druid multi-tank healing means that in any situation where you have multiple tanks, you will usually want to be healing them. In situations where there is only one main tank, you want to be on him if there is a periodic stun, silence, fear or some other kind of incapacitating effect that can affect the MT healers. Your HoTs will keep the tank stable. If there is no incapacitating effect on MT healers and only one tank, it is your guild's choice whether to put you on the MT, the raid, or both. Generally, you will take a dual assignment (both the tank and the raid) with a primary focus on one of them, depending on where the majority of the damage lies. This decision is usually approached by considering your healing team as a whole, and thinking about what a tree can bring. The unique benefit you bring to MT healing is the fact that lifebloom ticks once per second and stabilizes the MT's health, the ability to instantly swiftmend on spikes, and the ability to continue healing at nearly full strength while on the move. To raid healing, you bring rejuv+swiftmend, which is the largest 1.5 second heal in the game (albeit on a 15 second cooldown) and the ability to charge up lifebloom stacks on arbitrary raid members, healing them through continuous damage they may be experiencing. The raid and MT damage patterns will probably play a role here: does the MT's health seem spiky without a tree (maybe you should heal the MT)? Are you currently on the raid, but other healers are constantly overwriting your HoTs and it feels like you're not getting anything done (maybe there are too many raid healers, and you should heal the MT)? Is the tank fine, but the damage on the raid is not easily cleaned up with chain heal or circle of healing (maybe you should heal the raid, or take a tank/raid dual assignment)? Are certain raid members taking continuous damage for prolonged periods of time (maybe you should help on them using your HoTs)? Your assignment may also change multiple times within the same encounter. For example, on Illidan my assignment is: Phase 1: Single tank (MT only) Phase 2: Multi-tank (heal the two flame tanks) Phase 3: Dual assignment (MT + agonizing flames on the raid) Phase 4: Dual assignment (Warlock tank + flame burst on the raid) Once you have decided on the most useful assignment, look at the section below labeled "Healing Strategies" for details on how to best execute it. [top]Healing Strategies[top]Dual assignmentThe most common dual assignment is to heal both the tank and the raid. In this case, you need to decide if your primary focus will be the tank or the raid. If your primary focus is the raid but you are helping out on the tank, simply maintain a lifebloom stack on the tank while spending the majority of your GCDs on the raid. Refer to the section below labeled "Raid healing" for more details. On the other hand, if your primary focus is the tank, maintain full HoTs on him (lifebloom, rejuvenation, regrowth) and keep an eye on him always for Swiftmend and Nature's Swiftness. You can heal the raid using your spare time in between HoT refreshes. Refer to the section directly below labeled "Single tank" for more details. [top]Single tankYour best bet is to roll lifebloom while keeping up rejuvenation and, if necessary, the regrowth HoT. Tree druids can be effective MT healers on any encounter, but they are most effective when there are times that all healers are briefly incapacitated (for example: Gruul, Anetheron, Azgalor). In general, the benefit of putting a tree on the MT is a strong stabilizing effect on his health due to the fact that lifebloom ticks every second and a spike can be instantly countered with swiftmend. Keeping up lifebloom and rejuvenation on a single tank costs a total of 260 mana every 5 seconds. Keeping up the regrowth HoT adds another 160 mana every 5 seconds. Doing all of this is 420 mana every 5 seconds, easily sustainable for a very long time, especially if you use Innervate on yourself and drink potions. If the tank spikes low, Swiftmend or NS+HT. You can use this macro, which will work from both tree form and caster form: /cancelform /cast Nature's Swiftness /cast Healing Touch(Rank 13) When healing a single tank, you should have some spare time even when keeping up full HoTs (lifebloom, rejuvenation, regrowth). You can use this time to heal the raid, pump more healing into the tank using downranked regrowths (which do not overwrite the max-rank regrowth HoT) or simply conserve your mana. Generally healing the raid is the best of the three choices, but use your judgment. [top]Multiple tanksRoll lifeblooms on all of them and use your judgment to decide what to do with your remaining global cooldowns. You can use these spare cooldowns on raid healing (squeeze out some lifeblooms or regrowths) or you can use them all on your assigned tanks, for example to add rejuvenations. If you want to use all of your GCDs on the tanks, here are some suggested cycles along with their mana costs and haste rating requirements: [top]Two tanks
[top]Three tanks
[top]Four tanks
[top]Five tanks
If you are healing multiple tanks you may find it makes the process much easier if you use macros. I do this in order to be able to watch my field of view and move without having to worry about targeting tanks all the time. See the "Rolling Lifebloom" section above for macro suggestions. Normally I bind four combination Lifebloom/Rejuvenation/Regrowth macros to F1-F4 (push for lifebloom, shift-push for rejuvenation, alt-push for regrowth). [top]Raid healingThe most important thing when healing non-tanks is to get to know the patterns of incoming damage. The biggest questions are: how much damage should you expect, and how fast? How predictable is the damage? Use single Lifebloom on people that need a medium amount of non-time-critical healing. This is incredibly efficient, and will deliver its healing payload over 7 seconds. Use Rejuvenation on people that need slightly more healing but are also non-time-critical. For time-critical spot healing, you have two options: rejuvenation+swiftmend is a very large short-cooldown heal that can be performed in 1.5sec, and regrowth is a slightly smaller heal that puts on a very long HoT. Regrowth is powerful in situations where the raid is taking a decent amount of continuous damage and needs to be topped off all the time (for example: Naj'entus when a shield is imminent). The direct heal is fairly large and the HoT helps to keep people high if they take damage again soon. Furthermore, the HoT is swiftmendable, and so in situations where people need to be topped off quickly you can get a lot of healing done by finishing a regrowth and then immediately swiftmending another regrowth HoT on someone else. If you have been using regrowth to top people off, there will be a lot of people with regrowth HoTs on them to do this to (especially with 2pc T5). If you know that a random person will be taking heavy damage soon (for example: Solarian missiles, Hydross water tomb, Winterchill icebolt, etc) then enable aggro alert in your raid frames and wait for a non-tank to light up red. This means that the boss has decided to use his random secondary targeting system (RSTS) and that person will soon be the target of incoming damage. React accordingly: either begin to pre-emptively cast a regrowth or start to apply HoTs. If you know that a particular person will be taking continuous damage for an extended period of time (for example: the Reliquary of Souls aura in phase 2 and 3, Brutallus's Burn, Illidan's Agonizing Flames) then you are well-suited to counteracting that damage with HoTs. When raid healing, remember that heavy use of full-rank regrowth is a recipe for running out of mana; it's as bad as a priest's flash heal. Consider downranking regrowth when full-rank is not necessary and using lifebloom when time is not critical. You may need to make heavy use of consumables, especially mana potions. If you have the opportunity to take a break, use it: when out of the five-second rule, druids regain a fairly large amount of mana due to a favorable spirit formula and the presence of a lot of spirit on our gear. Working as a team: First, make sure that healing assignments are clear: free-for-all healing is going to lead to massive inefficiencies. I'm not sure how it works in other guilds, but in ours we normally have about 0-10% crosshealing (meaning if a healer's assignment is to heal X and Y, he spends 90-100% of his time doing that and 0-10% of his time helping out off-assignment). If there are other healers assigned to the raid alongside you, encourage them to use raid frames that show the major HoTs: Renew, Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, and Regrowth. The other healers should know about how much healing to expect from these HoTs and know that if the target they are on is not likely to die soon, they will be fine letting the HoT work. If raid healers are stretched thin, awareness of HoTs goes a long way towards more efficient distribution of healing. Don't step on other healers' toes: if a tight group of melee just took a hit at the same time as some ranged folks, you should heal the ranged since a shaman or priest is likely to cover the melee with chain heal or circle of healing. Either explicitly work out with the other healers what you all are going to do, or learn how they heal and work around it: the goal is to get everyone the healing they need without excessive overlap. Lastly, if you find that your HoTs keep being overhealed and nobody is dying and healers are not running out of mana, you are probably not needed on the raid and may want to consider healing the tank. Continuing to heal the MT: Even when raid healing, consider keeping a rolling lifebloom stack on the main tank if you can spare one out of four global cooldowns. If you do this, then depending on how threatening the incoming raid damage is you may not want to always wait until lifebloom is about to expire to refresh the stack; rather, you can refresh it when there is a brief lull in raid healing, as long as you don't let the stacks fall off. This is somewhat more wasteful of mana but it means than you are granted increased flexibility relative to the rigid every-7-second normal method. With 1800 +healing a 3-stack of lifebloom will do about 670 healing per second, a fairly significant amount (equivalent to a Renew or Rejuvenation that ticks for 2000). [top]ConsumablesPotions: Your most powerful consumable. Carry these around even if you use nothing else. If you are not an alchemist, use [Super Mana Potion]. On average, a Super potion returns 2400 mana, which is worth 100 mp5 if you chain-chug them or 60 mp5 if you drink one every three to four minutes. Even at 60 mp5, potions will easily restore more mana than all other consumables put together. If you are an alchemist, use [Mad Alchemist's Potion] unless you are at full health. The Mad Alchemist Potions restore an average of 8% less mana (2200 instead of 2400) but the healing effect is very useful. Flask: [Flask of Mighty Restoration]. Battle Elixir: [Elixir of Healing Power]. Guardian Elixir: [Elixir of Draenic Wisdom]. Since Patch 2.4, this is almost always better than a Mageblood elixir. In fact, it's so good that if you innervate yourself it may be able to compete with a flask depending on your current spirit and intellect. Weapon Oil: Good buffs and very nice for wipe content since they persist through death. The best is [Superior Wizard Oil], which grants +healing despite the suggestion on its tooltip that it does not. If you are concerned about mana, you can use [Superior Mana Oil] instead. [Brilliant Mana Oil] is a nice balanced oil but it is extremely expensive and generally not worth the price of using it over one of the other two. Each oil has five charges that last for an hour each. Food: [Golden Fish Sticks]. They are cooked from Golden Darters, which spawn in Terokkar Forest and can be caught if you have decent fishing skill (320 or so, plus a lure). You can catch them from plain water in the non-flying-mount areas. Do not use [Blackened Sporefish], since the fish sticks will restore more mana in addition to providing the bonus healing. [top]IdolsThere aren't many healing idols, so I will just discuss all of them briefly (except the ones that only improve Healing Touch, which is used rarely if ever in the healing style described by this guide). Idols can be changed while in combat, so you may use more than one idol over the course of an encounter.
[top]TrinketsUseful effects on trinkets fall into four major categories: passive +heal, non-spirit regen, spirit regen, and clickable +heal. Often a single trinket will have two of these effects on it. If you are an alchemist, one of your trinkets should be the [Redeemer's Alchemist Stone], which requires no raid materials and is the best healing trinket currently in the game. Passive +heal: These are the best choice when you are not having mana issues. Popular starting trinkets include the [Essence of the Martyr], [Battlemaster's Perseverance], and [Lower City Prayerbook] (the Prayerbook is also a non-spirit regen trinket, see below). Two of these trinkets are from badges and one is from a reputation vendor, so they are fairly easy to get. There are many other trinkets with +healing on them and rather than giving a list I will just link to a wowhead search: Trinkets. Non-spirit regen: Many of these trinkets also have passive +healing, making them extremely attractive. Two of the best trinkets in the game, the [Redeemer's Alchemist Stone] and [Memento of Tyrande] are trinkets with a combination of passive +healing and non-spirit regen effects. Another popular trinket with a similar combination is the [Lower City Prayerbook], an introductory trinket available from the Lower City reputation vendor. None of these trinkets changes in effectiveness depending on how much Spirit or Intellect you have.
Spirit-based regen: The two most popular trinkets that fall under this category are [Bangle of Endless Blessings] and [Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon]. The value of these trinkets will depend on how much Spirit you have but some examples are worked out below. About 50-60% of the Bangle's mana return is a non-Spirit-dependent and weakly Intellect-dependent bonus to Innervate, while the Card is completely spirit-dependent. The Bangle will be better if you innervate yourself and do not stack spirit. The Card will always be better if you do not innervate yourself, and may be better if you innervate yourself and have high levels of spirit.
Clickable +heal: These effects used to be the best to get, but since the lifebloom change in patch 2.3.2, they are no longer as good. The list remains here for sentimental reasons, and due to the fact that some of these trinkets are still good for the other effects on them (for example, [Essence of the Martyr] is still a good trinket due to the passive +healing).
[top]EnchantsHelm: Glyph of Renewal (+35 healing, 7mp5). Reputation reward from Honor Hold/Thrallmar Revered. Shoulder: Aldor or Scryer enchant. I prefer the Aldor enchants due to the value of +healing for lifebloom. Cloak: No real stand-out enchant. Armor, subtlely, or some sort of resistance are probably your best bets. Chest: Either Major Spirit (15 spirit) or Exceptional Stats (6 stam/int/spirit). Exceptional Stats is only worth it if you are concerned about stamina, otherwise get Major Spirit. Do not get Restore Mana Prime (6mp5). Bracers: Either Superior Healing (+30 healing) or Restore Mana Prime (6mp5). I prefer Superior Healing. Gloves: Major Healing (+35 healing). Legs: Golden Spellthread (+66 healing, 20 stamina). This is made by Aldor Tailors and requires a Primal Nether. Boots: Either Vitality (4mp5) or Boar's Speed (9 stamina, minor speed increase). I prefer Boar's Speed due to the amount of movement required in raid encounters. If you want Vitality but can't afford it, consider a Magister's Armor Kit (3mp5), which is made by Scryer leatherworkers. Rings: Healing Power (+20 healing). Weapon: The only real options are Spellsurge and +81 Healing. The other enchants just don't offer as much benefit as these two do. Due to spellsurge's high proc rate and internal cooldown, it will almost always work out to 9mana/5 for your party, but it appears to have a range of 30 yards which limits its effectiveness on many encounters. Whether you prefer spellsurge or 81 healing will depend on how spread out your group normally is, how many mana users are in your group, and your idea of the relative value of mp5 and +healing. You also have the option of enchanting a secondary weapon with Spellsurge and using a weapon swapping mod or macro (see discussion on Spellsurge - Page 5 - Elitist Jerks). If you only use one, I strongly recommend +81 Healing. [top]GemsThe only two meta gems worth using are the [Insightful Earthstorm Diamond] and [Bracing Earthstorm Diamond]. The proc from the Insightful gem is worth about 25-30 mp5 in most situations, and is worth up to 40 mp5 in continuous-hot situations. Comparing this to the 26 healing on the Bracing leads most druids to go for the Insightful meta. The best gem types in general are Royal (purple, combo healing/mp5) and Teardrop (red, pure healing). There are two main styles of gemming. First is the aggressive full-Teardrop style, which calls for placing as many Teardrop gems as possible to max out your +healing, only using Royal gems in items with one blue socket, the rest of the sockets red, and a decent socket bonus. This involves ignoring +healing socket bonuses on items with more than one yellow or blue socket. This style can be done with an Insightful meta by using two Royal and two Luminous gems, or done with a Bracing gem by just going full red. Since most healing leather has +healing socket bonuses and blue sockets, you will end up aggressively trading mp5 for +healing as you give up the 2mp5 on gems but also some +healing from the bonuses in order to pick up the additional +healing on Teardrops. The other style is the more balanced one that calls for the use of +healing socket bonuses. You would use an Insightful meta, and socket two Luminous gems in yellow slots (if possible) or red slots (if two yellow slots are not available). The general rule to follow here is to socket appropriate colors in items with +healing bonuses and put full reds in items without +healing bonuses. Again, due to the blue sockets and +healing bonuses on most leather gear, you will end up using a lot of Royal gems if you go with this style. If you are trying to match colors for a socket bonus, the best gems are:
[top]AddonsWhich addons you use is largely a matter of personal preference, but the two most important are a good set of raid frames and a HoT tracker. Raid frames: Essential in order to heal effectively since the default Blizzard frames are a disaster. Major features to look out for are HoT indicators, debuff indicators, curse/poison highlighting, range finder, and aggro alert. Popular options include Grid, sRaidFrames, and X-Perl. If you use Grid you may find some helpful information in the thread on the UI board, GRID - Addons and Functionality. HoT tracker: Nice for keeping track of rolling lifeblooms and knowing when to refresh HoTs on the tank(s). These are much more precise than the default Blizzard ones and will also let you keep track of HoTs on more than one person. Popular options include Chronometer, HotCandy, and DoTimer. Others: Nothing else really healer-specific, but as a raider you should invest in boss mods (Deadly Boss Mods or BigWigs) and optionally a threat meter (Omen). If you want to see how much your heals will heal for and how much your HoTs will tick for, get DrDamage. It works pretty well with druid spells and will put the number on the toolbar icon. Last edited by giansm : 05/16/08 at 4:54 PM. Reason: various updates |
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11/02/07, 12:55 AM
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#2 |
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World of Badgecraft Subscriber
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Regarding Lifebloom:
*How the idols work and the effect of +healing on it (people still ask..). *How much regen is required for a 1/2/3 tank roll (which will help people to understand the mass +22 healing gems depending on raid roles) *Which clicky trinkets combinations work together, which are the strongest etc. You might also want to mention about rolling on 4 targets how to survive it when you hit a cascade without loosing all your stacks (just jump one ahead, so 1->3 or 2->4 or 3->1 etc..) because I think most people tend to forget this and try in vain to maintain the order. You should also include if possible the mechanics and comparisons of Spi and MP5: info here, to be frank it could use some dumbing down into a more easily understood statement. Innervate; how much spirit equates into mana exactly from IV (factor kings and/or living spirit, and a scale of 10 is most likely the simplest to use). How to boost your IV's, info here, and weapon sets which provide the highest yield of spirit. ps below, nice call on that macro, hadn't heard about it before and its going to be pretty damned useful  Last edited by Playered : 11/02/07 at 1:11 AM. |
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11/02/07, 1:02 AM
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#3 |
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Is Walking Dead
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Good start!
Once note, in patch 2.3 with the auto unshift on, all you need to do for a big heal is: /cast Nature's Swiftness /cast Healing Touch The game will do the rest, no need for that other stuff. |
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11/02/07, 1:38 AM
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#4 | |
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Glass Joe
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(You never know with some people) Otherwise looks like a great start |
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11/02/07, 2:12 AM
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#5 |
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King Hippo
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I'm not very familiar with playing a healer in a raid setting; should there be a section on interacting with other healer types for various duties? Druids seem more like the type that other (non-HoT) healers play around, canceling directed heals when an HoT applies. Basically, does target selection for raid healing differ depending on what other healers share the responsibility, and how do the presence/absence of other healer types affect MT healing?
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11/02/07, 6:15 AM
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#6 | |
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Piston Honda
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11/02/07, 7:58 AM
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#7 |
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Von Kaiser
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Regarding spirit formula's for priests, mages, druids, etc. Are you sure that is right?
I could have sworn the old formula was 13 + spirit / 4 for priests, and 13 + spirit / 5 for everybody else. At some point that was changed to 13 + spirit / 4 for druids, to make them the second spirit based healer. Also regarding mages, with the changes in 2.3, I don't know how many mages plan on keeping their spirit gear to swap around, because without that they make a rather poor innervate target. It's also worth mentioning that currently, many priests use [Earring of Soulful Meditation] (assuming your guild has progressed so far and it has dropped of course), which makes them prime innervate targets if they use it at the same time. |
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11/02/07, 8:52 AM
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#8 |