I've been offtanking in Karazhan with more gear upgrades maintanking would be no issue. Currently my armor and defense is a little lower than I like (armor could be boosted more easily if I wasn't concerned mainly about the defense at the moment which is imo the first important part). I have a couple videos of me offtanking on a few additional bosses in Live I can post if people are interested.
Oh and btw what I found is HOT healing doesn't cut it in Karazhan since most damage in Karazhan is burst damage that needs to be instahealed back. Only place where I really use HOTs is on Netherspite and I'm tanking him 1/3 to 1/2 the time during that fight.
Edit: I should clarify the HOT healing was on another persons druid for Resto spec felt like cutting my wrists after forcing myself to try to use treeform for everything.
Feral Druids are abolutely amazing now. The only thing they really had going against them before was that their itemization sucked and couldn't get enough defense to be crit immune. We are definitely going to field 1 Feral druid per raid who will double as dps and 3rd tank (sorry for the offtopic comment, but was responding to ruro).
That being said we're likely also going to look at a full resto tree HoT druid as well as a 36/0/25 for Imp Faerie fire. I know this means you can't get the 2/2 improved healing touch, but the 3% raid hit is a huge dps buff that really shouldn't be overlooked. It will affect the MT and at least 8-9 other players in the raid. I think 1 of each type of those types of druids will be a very strong raiding combination. The Imp Faerie fire druid will be our 'big heal' healer, the Full Resto tree druid our 'HoT' healer and a feral druid who has the highest threat output next to a thunderfury wielding prot warrior with a 5% crit buff to the 2 rogues, fury warrior and enhancement shaman in their group.
As for the actual mechanics of druid heals, I am no expert, but I would think that the druid that can pop in and out of form and play their entire class and all aspects of it will be the strongest druid regardless of spec. Even the lolcrit Feral druid is going to have to pop out once in a while and toss a quick regrowth+Rejuv somewhere then pop back into form.
Our guild alliance is fairly loose about such things, we've let druids tank in AQ40, though not in a primary role, it's mainly a criteria of who's around and who's better at tanking. If we have enough protection warriors who want to tank in a raid, it's better, in my thinking, that the feral druids go to DPS. If we're short healing, we really can't draft warriors to bandage people, so the druids have to pick up the slack.
I've been playing with lifebloom and rejuvenation in healing. I just don't feel that these are efficient uses of my mana regen/healing - too often the ticks are wasted because they're at full health anyway. I'd much rather spend time outside the 5-second window and throw a healing touch that heals the tank from half to full.
Edit: Addenda: here's my build. It's 28 feral, 33 resto. I'm at level 66, so close to being done; my levelling up is going into the feral side of the equation. I find that with my current gearing, I put out very competitive DPS, around 360 or so when someone else is tanking, and I still heal well for instances.
I've actually been working on a spreadsheet for druid healing mechanics and checking it against the live realms. I should really look at posting that and getting some other numbers from more druids.
Where does Gift of Nature fit in?
...and lo, did 2.0 production FINALLY make Gift of Nature apply after everything. Thanks to Boevis for pointing this out. I've adjusted the math below to address the way Gift of Nature works.
What about my 8/8 Stormrage and Rejuvenation's healing co-efficient?
The rule of thumb is that coefficients are determined by the spell's cast time or duration if you were naked and untalented. Hence why Naturalist doesn't reduce the +healing applied to Healing Touch. In the same vein, 8/8 Stormrage doesn't increase the +healing applied to Rejuvenation. While less of a concern, it also means that 5/8 Stormrage doesn't reduce the already low +healing on the direct heal of Regrowth.
Quickie math:
Total healed by Rejuvenation with Gift of Nature, Improved Rejuv and Empowered Rejuvenation
(RJ+(healing*1.2)*0.8)*1.25
Healing Touch with Gift of Nature and Empowered Healing Touch:
(HT+healing*1.2)*1.1
Some thoughts of my own...
Now, here's something interesting. I've always understood that the +healing applied to Regrowth was divided equally to the HOT and the direct heal (DH). After the split, the casting time bonuses and penalties were applied. The math has always supported this when I've run the numbers. According to WoWWiki, I've been wrong...but their math doesn't result in my healing numbers...it's slightly off. My numbers, btw, are generated by standing around untalented and then varying my +healing via gear.
For Regrowth, WoWWiki says the +healing coefficient of the HOT is: +healing * [ (21/15) / ( (21/15) + (2/3.5) ) ]. With 822 +healing, this is 265.4 healed/tick. My understanding was that the +healing coefficient was: (+healing/2) * (21/15). This results in 264.2 healed/tick. In game, I get 264-265 healed/tick...so, it's close but I'd side with the number that would round up or down to the numbers generated in game (i.e. my math).
For Lifebloom, WoWWiki's got it spot on with the HOT. Mulitple passes with different +healing amounts results in the expected values. With the DH, the Regrowth math seems to apply: (+healing/2)*(1.5/3.5).
Anyone else run into this or done the math on Lifebloom and Regrowth for something semi-authoritative?
Where does Gift of Nature fit in?
During the last week of beta, I re-checked my numbers with Gift of Nature and, sadly, it still applies pre +healing. Unless the talent explicitly states that it applies to the bonus healing (aka, your +healing) it improves the base spell's healing (as if you were wearing no +healing gear).
Re-check, beta doesn't mean much when it's been after +healing since 2.0 on live.
Yes, all this did i find in this link. from wowwiki. :) My question is more whta's not in your answer :P setbonuses that prolongs the HoT does Not effect the coefficent?
I'l try to be clearer in my question. Gift of Nature, Emp. Rejuvenation and imp rej. have different texts, so i pressume they work different.
I think it all starts with: Healing base +(Healing bonus*coefficent) = healing done
Emp. Rej/Touch increases the bonus healing effect with 20% => +healing *1.20? Gift of N. Increases the effect of all healing effects with 10% => (healing base +bonus healing)*1.1?? Imp Rej Increases the effect of your rejuvenation spells by 15% => works the same as gift of nature?
The reason why I ask is that I want to make a PvP healer and want to balance +healing with other stats.
Well, technically the 8/8 Stormrage set bonus does effect the coefficient, just depends on how you look at it.
Rejuv has a coef of 80% because it's 12sec/15. Because it gets split evenly between the 4 tics, you're looking at 20% per tic. No matter if you look at the 8/8 bonus as adding "another tic" or "3 more seconds" the end result is the exact same - 20% of your +healing per tic (before modifiers like Imp Rejuv, Emp Rejuv, or Gift of Nature which modify evenly)
There are some hard choices in such a build. Living spirit versus improved rejuvenation, and do you pick up nature's focus? I personally hate playing without nature's focus. If barkskin didn't have a global cooldown I could see living without it maybe.
This is pretty much identical to what I've just specced, except that I took 5/5 Subtlety rather than 5/5 Nature's Focus. From my experience so far, I'm far more likely to pull aggro and eat a couple 5k+ hits in places like Karazhan than I am to be locked up due to lots of smaller hits on me. And if I'm really getting pounded on by something that isn't twoshotting me, I can always Rejuv->SM->NS->HT->Bear or somesuch.
So far, it feels like a nice well-rounded build. It's got some efficiency from the Balance tree (as well as the ability to solo/quest/pvp a bit), nice big HTs, and retains the ability to HoT and Swiftmend (which IMO has turned out to be every bit as indispensable a 31-point resto talent as Innervate was).
I wasn't impressed with ToL when I played around with it on beta, I wasn't impressed when I tried it after the 2.0 patch, and with the huge hitpoint pools that you're dealing with raiding at 70, I'm even less impressed with it. One of the most surprising things healing at 70 is that mobs hit HARD. Like, 4-5k regularly, even on well-geared tanks. I've found myself spamming HT13 on tanks surprisingly often (with +1100 healing or so) just to keep them up. My initial instinct was that ToL's lack of healing/sec was its Achilles heel (heal? /groan), and nothing at 70 has disabused me of that notion.
So given that, I think speccing just up to Swiftmend and synergizing with Balance is the way to go.
Heal/sec
Resto/Balance = 1469,85
Tol Spec = 1027,3
Heal/Mana
Resto/Balance = 5,82
Tol Spec = 6,49
Mana/sec
Resto/Balance = 252,45
Tol Spec = 158,2
Resto/Balance has better Heal/sec for burstdmg. ToL has better Heal/Mana.
If you need more then 1100 Heal per second (with 800 +Heal) you better choose Resto/Balance.
If you don't need more then 1100 Heal per second, you better choose ToL for better Heal/mana.
(single Target calculation)
Not in calculation:
ToL Aura (just apply 40-100 +Heal)
Nature Grace (chance to proc is too small with 5%crit)
Nature Swiftness (3min CD)
Well, it's not quite as simple as your "verdict" makes it sound. And, uh, your analysis is probably a bit too terse to be parsable.
Also, when talking about efficiency, you're assuming no overhealing. It's way easier to control overhealing when you're using HT than it is if you're using a lot of HoTs.
I'm flinding lifebloom to be great in 5-mans because it's really efficient and you can mentally keep track of when the payload is going to hit and only heal that target if you see that their health is getting scarily low. In 10-mans when you've got multiple healers, though, the payload is generally wasted because other healers aren't aware that it's incoming.
Expecting a Tank with 10k-16k HP and 1500 Dps .... If you keep him at 80-90 %, there will be no overhealing.
If I keep him at 80-90%, yes. However I'm not the only healer in the raid, and they're generally not aware of all the HoTs on the tank. Especially lifebloom with its payload.
Can any of you folks see your guilds even lettings Druids tank? I honestly don't see it happening in EJ, so I'm probably going to end up some kind of resto build and give up on my dreams of tanking things.
As a horde druid, you'll probably be allowed to tank until you reach the first boss that fears, and then you'll get yelled at and have to respec resto. And from what I understand, Blizzard's line about fear being scarce in the expansion (that's was the response to why the alliance get two fear ward races and the horde none) is a total crock. Fear is as plentiful in TBC as it was before.
Originally Posted by ruro
Originally Posted by Lord BEEF
There are some hard choices in such a build. Living spirit versus improved rejuvenation, and do you pick up nature's focus? I personally hate playing without nature's focus. If barkskin didn't have a global cooldown I could see living without it maybe.
I don't think you could ever live without natures focus in a healing build, even if barkskin didn't have the global cooldown it's on too long a timer I think.
I ran without NF for a while. It's all well and good for most fights, but then you get an encounter with pulsed AoE damage (like Vael or those little bastards on Gothik) and it's game over.
I changed my mind about lifebloom, in 5-man instances where I'm the primary healer. I now think it's great - instead of trying to play rolling games with it, I treat it as a cheap throw-away heal to drop on anyone besides the MT. The scary-great thing about lifebloom is that it does just about as much healing as rejuvenation, but fires faster and costs less than rejuvenation. And that sound effect when Lifebloom fires lets your players know that you care about them.
That said, I don't think HoTs are going to be the healing game for anyone keeping a MT up under heavy fire where direct heals are feasible (i.e. not during Maexxna web wraps) - they'll be for keeping OTs and DPS alive. I'd still lean toward a HT-oriented build for raid healing.
Actually, the best thing that Lifebloom has going for it is that it ticks every 1 second. Rejuv ticking every 3 seconds is a joke when it comes to overhealing, considering that most other healing classes have 1.5s fast heals or 2.5s slow heals.
I have been doing some calculations on druid healing, trying to figure it out. I've come to the use of Idols and found something questionable and need some feedback.
0,46 Beeing the coefficient given by Wowwiki. Although Athinira has indicated other coefficients are beeing used. This formula seems pretty accurate when compared with my healing in-game.
With no GoN or Emp Rej and +500 Healing HoT with idol
273+((500+88)*0,46= 544 Heal with idol
600+(500+80)*0,46 =867 HoT w/o idol
273+(500)*0,46= 503 Heal w/o idol
600+(500)*0,46=830
Differance
HoT - Idol of the Emerald Queen adds 544-503=41
Heal - Idol of Tenacity adds 867-830=37
So a blue Idol with less iLevel adds more healing than the epic Arena Idol.
My conclusion is: either the epic arena idol is less usefull(*) or there is one or more flaws in the calculations above.
* I don't want this to turn into a debate wheter the HoT part or Heal part of Lifebloom is better, please only discuss the differance in the actual healing done
Do not matter how much you play, you will never get the carrot.
The numbers you get are pretty close and in full healing gear your spell crit my push the Idol of Tenacity over the top as the end can crit while the HoT tick cannot.
Seems to me that the HoT spec would be most suited for FFA healing and supplimentary tank healing. The HT spec would be straight up MT healing. I think the choice in the spec could be chosen on what role you fill in the raid. I do not play a druid, so I could be totally off base.
Can any of you folks see your guilds even lettings Druids tank? I honestly don't see it happening in EJ, so I'm probably going to end up some kind of resto build and give up on my dreams of tanking things.
As a horde druid, you'll probably be allowed to tank until you reach the first boss that fears, and then you'll get yelled at and have to respec resto. And from what I understand, Blizzard's line about fear being scarce in the expansion (that's was the response to why the alliance get two fear ward races and the horde none) is a total crock. Fear is as plentiful in TBC as it was before.
Is fear really that common? I haven't run the level 70 instances yet, but it seemed that most of the fear effects were actually "horror" effects like Death Coil.
Seems to me that the HoT spec would be most suited for FFA healing and supplimentary tank healing. The HT spec would be straight up MT healing. I think the choice in the spec could be chosen on what role you fill in the raid. I do not play a druid, so I could be totally off base.
....and there we have the dilemma.
Yes, ToL seems to be the more support healing spec for raid-wide healing and a HT build the one for MT healing. Ironic that the "support" spec requires an almost exclusive investment in the Resto tree whereas a "main healer" spec actually encourages investment outside of Resto.
Can any of you folks see your guilds even lettings Druids tank? I honestly don't see it happening in EJ, so I'm probably going to end up some kind of resto build and give up on my dreams of tanking things.
As a horde druid, you'll probably be allowed to tank until you reach the first boss that fears, and then you'll get yelled at and have to respec resto. And from what I understand, Blizzard's line about fear being scarce in the expansion (that's was the response to why the alliance get two fear ward races and the horde none) is a total crock. Fear is as plentiful in TBC as it was before.
Is fear really that common? I haven't run the level 70 instances yet, but it seemed that most of the fear effects were actually "horror" effects like Death Coil.
I really wish it was mostly horrors. In 5 mans, it's awful for the physic Screams and intimidating shout mobs. The only good thing is that we have a 30% AoE fear resist + whatever resist gear you wear. It's discouraging that I need to run with shamans for a halfway decent shot at not wiping 5 mans.
I'm fairly confident I will get a chance to tank some high end stuff because one of our 2 MT's has re-rolled to a mage and most of the other warriors are still in love with seeing big shining crits.
Also, feral charge is a god sent. I can count on a half dozen bosses that have knockback with a shorter cool down timer then intercept.
Originally Posted by missiletoad
I get enjoyment out of constructing buildings out of my fries and demolishing them with my chicken nugget army as I make monster noises. But you people. You people are FREAKS.
One of the biggest strengths in the Resto tree for me has always been Improved Regrowth. I know it doesn't have the most spectacular reputation, but this talent is fundamental to how I have always healed in raids and 5-mans. When combined with swiftmend it gives you the highest Healing/Time that I'm aware of from any class in the game (barring NS and LoH obviously), something that is invaluable in 5 and 10 man environments particularly, but also in larger raids.
As great as the 27/0/34 build is in terms of a mix of healing power and solo viability, it just seems a bit to weak in both respects for my liking. Realistically, you can't compare it in healing power to a full restoration build; -100 mana (moonglow on rank 13 HT) and +100 healing on your heals just doesn't come close to a 60% or higher crit rate on regrowth, +3% spell crit, +15% spirit, +20% healing to HoTs, and the utility of Tree Form. Even when you consider the HT efficiency that the hybrid build adds, it pales in comparison to even mild amounts of potting up, which most will be doing in raids anyway.
What's more, you still miss out on all of the really juicy balance talents, though I guess a high level of spell damage would supplement them quite effectively.
Ps: As much as I loathe the idea of sitting in Tree Form and HoT-Botting, I love being able to HT heal the trash and early bosses of Karazhan, then switch to Tree Form and web heal Curator with tremendous efficiency, then switch back to HT. It's this kind of utility and ability to use powerful HoTs AND HT that ensure full resto remains the superior build.
People actually take the +3% spell crit talent? I wasn't aware that had any PvE value whatsoever compared to say, fewer interrupts on my heals, or less threat.
I loved Tree at first, but mobility is something I believe to be essential to druids and raiding in general, even the weakest slows are considered high priority for removal. And I really can't justify taking a 41 point talent and then going into a fight knowing I can't use it because it would make me a liability. And my ability to spread the HoT love isn't any more diminished with a 26/0/35 (I don't believe in taking Natures Grace because I'm crazy) than your ability to provide the steady big HTs with a tree spec, and when Heroic Boss X is cleaving for 9k on rogues, you want those big HT's and you want to be able to last casting nothing but your high ranks.