Winfurae

I play enhancement/resto druid at 1900 (waiting for points update to buy the helm on wednesday before pushing for 2k+).

It depends really. Against some druids this works, against others who just spam lifebloom it doesn't. What you need to do is try and cyclone the blooms, as you said, and make coordinated switches. The weakness of a druid is healing multiple targets when they are both under pressure (in my opinion). Be clever while using cyclone, cycloning a dps target to avoid healing works great as well. The druid has to nuke alot against any druid healer team.

I think we've got like 80% win against this combo, only losing to ridiculous shatter combo's and an unlucky CS or fear. What I usually do is sit on the mage, annoy him with wind shears and groundings. Once he's getting low on mana we switch to the priest and finish him off. The shaman will have to do a fair amount of healing (either himself or the druid) to be able to live through coordinated burst. Long fight.

Not met this combo yet, smells like an auto loss on Ring of Valor. Never stay in tree form against any lock/healer or lock/casterdps team. It's useless. I'd focus the destro lock and interupt poly's / fears. Do not use heroism as the mage will just spellsteal it and you'll have to purge it off. I never use heroism against a double dps team that has a mage.

You can't, really. It's quite hard on Blade's Edge and you should try and force them to fight downstairs. Focus the shaman, but only interupt lava burst and focus interupt fears from the warlock and/or a chaos bolt when you're low hp.

Dangerous setup when they play extremely agressive (priest dispelling all hot's). I usually purge the priest clean and try and sit on him. Don't be afraid to switch to the rogue though, after evasion is gone you should be able to dish out some really good damage. Cleanse yourself (totem+cure toxins) on every gcd you have available. Make sure your druid stays far away from you so there's no way the priest can fear you both.

 

shokinezu

Howdy, jerks. Wanted to ask a question, I'm attempting to gear up my warrior buddy at the moment in 2s, and we are having SERIOUS problems fighting any team with a mage. My warrior constantly gets rooted/sheeped all to hell, and frequently does under 10k damage to such teams, especially if they are double dps and I get blown up instantly. Any advice? I have tried cycloning the mage, but this is a stopgap measure at best since cyclone lasts less time than fnova, and I usually get CS'd as I go in for the cyc. Any suggestions?

 

grizadams

Yeah, sheep with no magic dispell is pretty foolproof. See if you can get your warrior to spell reflect a sheep, and you'll have a moral victory at the least. Or maybe pyrrhic.

 

Fennis

As a long-time bear, I am relatively new to healing. In fact, I only heal in arenas. My team is currently at 1000, so I am looking at beginner advice as opposed to perfecting an already good team. I play with a BM hunter and a mage on my 3v3 team. I am deep resto, all the way to WG. So, with that disclaimer, I have a few questions that seem to be recurring themes:

1. How do you deal with locks, or even worse, a rogue/lock/shaman comp? That seems to be my nightmare right now. With locks generally, we are trying to sheep the lock -- more to throw the team off their game in the early moments and avoid the initial burst as much as anything else. I am staying out of tree form to avoid the banish. This seems to be the only real time I am falling way behind on healing. The RLS comp just seems impossible for my group.

2. Are you playing offensively at all or just healing? In doing 2v2, I know playing offensively is a must, but how does that translate into 3v3?

3. Why are most trees specced into Nature's Splendor and Nature's Reach? I am not using my balance spells often and it seems to me that having a shorter "bloom" timer on lifebloom would make sense.

4. Is it worth speccing into Naturalist to get the reduced cast time on Healing Touch, then get the glyph to reduce the cast time to 1.1 seconds? I know the heal is reduced, but as a pure heal, that seems to make sense to me. Most of the top trees, however, have not gone that route and I was just wondering why.

5. When playing against a rogue, do you spam abolish poison or just heal through it?

6. I would also love opinions on when to truly tree-tank (stand there and heal through whatever is coming) vs trying to kite melee dps. Obviously, LOS'ing casters is mandatory, but if there are exceptions to that, I would be interested in hearing about them as well.

 

Felixalias

(Not answering 1 as it's a comp dependent question and I don't have experience running hunt/mage/dru)

2. In 2s, a good druid plays very offensively with an IS spec (like 24/0/47). In 3s, your offensive pressure will come mostly from Cyclone/Bash, the odd Moonfire kill when your team is locked down with someone at 2%, and Faerie Fire on Rogues, if possible. You generally can't afford to play that offensively as a druid, as most of your GCDs will be spent HoTing the other team's target AS WELL as pre-hotting another; if it looks likely the team is going to switch to you, you'd better have some HoTs (I personally go for 2LB/1Rejuv) up, or you'll be dead in a silence.

3. All will be in Nature's Reach for Faerie Fire/Cyclone (see previous post). As for Nature's Speldor, although certain times an early Lifebloom final tick could save a life, you shouldn't be relying on that when throwing up the lifebloom stacks; Obviously, you can and should let them fall off if that final heal will go to good use, but in most cases, I don't see where a single talent point would be more beneficial. Remember, it's also adding time onto Rejuv and Regrowth; the Rejuv time is very important as it allows for you to keep up a HoT for swiftmend without managing it quite as much.

4. I've only seen Zdr do this. I really couldn't tell you why they go this route, but consider that spamming Healing Touch basically makes you into a shittier version of a Paladin; One lockout/silence and you're dead, plus you've just thrown away your mobility. Take a look at how much Healing Touch does at 50% vs Nourish; not a huge difference, really.

5. Always have Abolish and your HoTs up, aside from this a lot of druids recommend spamming Tree Form in order to guarantee that Wound Poison (and not Crippling, which is canceled by form change) is removed.

6. Against warriors, kite. Nature's Grasp and Cyclone (watch for Zerker Stance/Spell Reflect) are your friends. Time Barkskin with Bladestorm. They should basically never be able to touch you.

Against DKs, I myself prefer to tank or escape with Nature's Grasp; If you don't have Nature's Grasp, make sure you at least have full HoTs before trying to cast a Cyclone/Entangling Roots, or you'll get locked out/silenced/stun'd into death. I like to time Barkskin for Gargoyle.

Against Rogues, it's sort of your choice; I usually face them with mages, at which point I'm spamming Tree Form to escape roots and get around some LoS, so basically tanking. I'd time Barkskin either for an in-LoS opener, or an unlucky stun.

(My Druid is Ringzero - Drak'Tharon, so this isn't Gladiator advice, just my personal experience)

 

Shayo

If I were to see your comp in 3s, I wouldn't worry about if we were going to score a win so much as how fast we'd score a win. The only thing I can think of for you to try different is to have the mage sheep the shaman. I'll eat it off him with my felhunter, but it'll cost him a purge or a heal.

Depending on your skill level, you can safely stay in tree. You should set your focus target to the warlock via gladius, and watch his cast bars (I use quartz for the customizable cast bars). If he starts casting banish, stop what you're doing and drop tree. Even if he's not targetting you. He can't cast the spell at all on invalid targets, so if he's casting Banish, he's casting it with you as the target.

Regardless though, when we pop bloodlust, someone on your team is going to die. It's entirely possible though that we'll just gib your mage - we've blown mages up inside of a couple GCDs before. Also remember that our shaman will be purging your hots off our kill target during bloodlust. Just because someone's fully hotted doesn't mean they'll still be hotted at all in 4-5 seconds. Pay attention to that. I'm not going to lie to you, it's going to require a great deal of skill on your part to beat RLS.