• Playered

The problem is Pre-2.4 spirit was shit and you lowered your potential power of LB by gimping your stats in favor of spirit, and ToL Aura is technically one of the weaker MT group buffs.
Its somewhat like the saying "prevention is better than the cure" - reducing the damage taken is a better option than being able to heal up said damage abit easier afterwards.
With both Bangle and Darkmoon you have far too much emphasis on regeneration and Essence of the Matyr would be a better replacement for one of them.

Concerning ToL aura its applied at current time of spell cast, so pimping your spirit then shifting into tree does nothing because once your pimped spirit fades your buff lowers down too.

 

Lailoken

They fixed that a while ago. The bonus readjusts to your current amount of spirit while in treeform.

 

Pyros

Yea the 3person thing is really what's preventing me from farming it as much as I want. I have 2 accounts so I only need one more person, but blackrock is still in the middle of nowhere, and you can't use the summoning stone at 70, so getting someone to come just to click on the crap is hard. If someone knows any trick to bypass the whole thing, I'll take, else I'll have to resort to paying random nubs in town to come click for me. As alliance with Ironforge being right next to it I guess it's not so much of an issue tho.

 

meringue

So our guild has recently experienced a healer shortage resulting in this bear being converted to tree. In some raids I am the third tree, but still only 7th healer. Due to the fact that I raided feral until last Wednesday, I have mostly gear that the regular resto's didn't want or already had (go go Vashj shoulders). We have had some success since I switched, killing both Teron Gorefiend and Gurtogg Bloodboil this week. So now we are a 4/5 and 5/9 guild. Here is my dilemma: do I run with my druid main in mixed kara/T5 gear + Shroud of the Final Stand (thanks Supremus trash!) as the third tree or is my raid spot better filled with my T4 holy pally? I really wanted my druid in for BT this week so I could make all the shadow resist patterns, and that rep is obtained now. I prefer the mobile and varied healing style of the druid but from reading the thread it looks like the 3rd tree is rather superfluous. Both are keyed for T6, although that was supposed to be for emergencies only. So my questions are: when is it strongly preferred to bring the paladin over the druid and what assignments do you give to three trees in a 7 healer raid. I figure I'm boned on DKP no matter which one is in the raid, but I'd prefer to only have to gear up one. Armory profiles included for gear comparison, ideally it will notice that the pally is no longer wearing her Lovely Purple Dress soon. Thanks for assistance!


Meringue, druid
Ephelea, paladin

 

Norfair

I think something's wrong with your paladin's armory, it doesn't show all items and it says 1100 +healing and only 33 mp5. I assume you don't want to go with those stats into BT/Hyal. But yes, an extra paladin is nice as long as you don't have 3 yet, but we sometimes run with 3 trees as well and it works. If the gear difference is too huge, I'd suggest taking your druid or just run Kara/ZA/heroics like crazy with your paladin in order to get some nice badge gear.

 

Pyros

To be honest, while druids keep stacking ok, you definitely want a balance between your healers, and not overstack one type(barring specials encounters, 3priests for bloodboil totally trivialize it since you can just poh the bloodboils easily and a lot of prayers jumping around). Druids are very good at some fights, and not so good on others, and if you have 3druids, you might lack some healing in particular situations. If you can only choose between druid and paladin(assuming you're fine on resto shaman and holy priest), it also depends on how many paladins you usually have. If you run with 2, then I'd say yes, a holy paladin might be better. If you run with only one, a paladin is definitely better.

Situations where 3druids are not so good:
-Najentus, the hots take time to fill people back to full life before a spine, regrowth is long cast and inneficient. One druid is enough on the tank to stabilize, 2 will probably make most of the healing on him superfluous.
-Teron, I'm not sure 3druids alone can keep the tank up on bad strings of hits, because swiftmend only goes so far sadly, and teron hits like a truck. Assigning a druid to raid healing on teron is not efficient at all either, because you need people topped off asap so they don't die to consecutive shadowbolts.
-Archimonde, while druids make good healers there, you want a decent number of priests and paladins because they have tools to keep healing while feared(bubble, fearward, if youre horde your priests can be undead). Matter of taste tho, I guess druids would do fine if you have enough priests on the side.

That's all I can think of honestly, it's not that much. Most fights will see the 3 stack of lifeblooms on the tank healing ~40-60% of the incoming damage between hits, making tank healing trivial. The issue I have with stacking druids is, while we're good for healing timed AE damage(like flame burst on illidan), we somewhat suck for random AEs, or fast repeating AEs(najentus, or illidan phase2 when he bombs people). We fall behind and people die if they're unlucky with targetting.

In the end, it's up to you and your guild, if you don't have 2paladins every raid tho, imo the blessings totally offset any kind of druid perks. There's simply no class that cannot use at least 2blessings efficiently. If you already have 2 paladins, I guess a 3rd druid isn't bad, it's also a 3rd innervate and a 3rd combat rez, which comes handy when learning new encounters.

 

GTtheBard

Yea, I have heard that it's too much mp5...but they're still the best trinkets I've got right now, and being able to spam heals like a Paladin is sweet when learning fights. I'm focusing on getting the Badge Pants and T5/Badge Shoulders right now, and will definitely look into Martyr as the fights become shorter and less mana intensive due to people moving correctly. I'm kind of a noob when it comes to healing trinkets, as I always forget that they're done with their cooldowns. After reading through this topic, I'll most likely macro it to Rejuv or Lifebloom so that it'll be up as often as possible, whenever I do obtain it.

About the aura...oh, well then. That's good information to know. Time to clean out my bags a bit.

Thanks a bunch

 

Pyros

You can try getting revered lower city(by running heroic auchenai/sethekk or *gasp* shadow labs, and then get lower city prayerbook. It's one of the best trinket you can get early on really, because it's both +healing and +mp5.

 

• Playered

All those 3 fights its possible to become #1-#3 on healing done while primarily raid healing or doing it on the fly if your reaction speeds are good (and you dont have 3 Resto Shamans on Teron ofcourse :P)

I would say Naj'entus is a perfectly acceptable Druid fight no matter if you are tank healing or raid healing, infact its one of the better ones as people take damage all the time which allows regrowth to tick quite often.

Archimonde too your the perfect anti-doomfire, and movement does not impair your ability to heal tanks. Your actually more useful when people are not adept at avoiding Doomfire because hots just are so efficient here. We often have our Ferals healing aswell which bump it up to 3 Druids healing on the fight, im not sure how well you would do if of only 8~ healers 3 were Druids though, we tend not to score that high on tank healing in the end of it from my experience.

Teron.. well its a Shaman fight on raid healing, but again you can still do well enough on either role, and to be fair once LB/RJ is on the tank you might aswell throw off raid healing too - but having sole Druids on MT is very risky without atleast one person doing anti-spike.

 

Bigtoy

While we're on the topic of trinket selection, it's worth reiterating [Battlemaster's Perseverance] as one of the top tree trinkets. I've noticed it's not on the front page list of trinkets but with the 2.3.2 trinket nerf it has the highest baseline +heal (outside of the Memento) as well as a very useful ability for keeping yourself alive in rough PvE content.

 

the_mort

I really like the Battlemaster's Perseverance. I wrote a macro for the on use effect and barkskin, 1750 extra hitpoints and 20% damage reduction can save your live.

"Progress just means bad things happen faster." -- Granny Weatherwax

 

ModusTollens

So the guide is telling me that [Royal Nightseye] is a better blue gem in all cases, correct? I see many druids in my guild that have more experience (I switched from a raiding rogue) stacking [Purified Shadow Pearl] in their blue slots instead. I guess I am having a hard time understanding why I am not gemming for more spirit in all cases, as it seems all Druid gear has +spirit.

I normally save innervates for priests, btw.

 

grutak

MT:

That is from the first post. 1 shadow pearl is 4 spirit. If you go by the quote, thats equal to 1.392 mana/5 after buffs and after you innervate your self. Since you said you don't innervate yourself, then its only worth 0.84 mp/5. Now the royal nightseye is a static 2 mp/5. You would be getting twice the mana regen out of the nightseye as compared to the pearl.

When 2.4 patch goes live, this information will have to be updated. You could read the thread about the Int->Spirit conversion to try to get a good understanding of how your druid will be affected by the changes. I say "try to get" because, while I understand the changes, I'm not not to sure of how the relationship changes between mp5 and spirit for 2.4. I will continue to read(since I am a math dummy) and wait for the much smarter people to form a conclusion.

 

fuzzynavel

Weapon Advice please. We are just into the T6 content and I am still using the staff from Maiden (I know /shrug) and the off hand voodoo shaker from badges. We are done with TK and SSC. It looks to me like in 2.4 the best weapon for +healing (my spirit is fine as is my mp5) will be the new badge mace and my current offhand. Any other advice? Obvious illidian's staff would be great, but even staff from archimonde is lower total healing. I am i missing something? With the new mp5 calcs and tree of life aura losing effectiveness rapidly, I am looking for just more + healing right?

Any advice would be great, TY!

 

• Playered

Highest healing -> lowest.
Illi MH + Archi OH
Badge / S3 MH + Archi OH
*Vashj MH + Archi OH
*Archi Staff
Gurtogg Staff

Regen is a moot point in 2.4 but the two * marked items have equal~ amounts fyi.

Generally however your going to be out of luck on the Illi MH and its somewhat wasted on a Druid aswell as we have no use for the proc, time pending on S4 that might end up being the best/easiest option as it should be somewhere around 480-500 healing in itself unless your in Sunwell.

 

fuzzynavel

Thanks pal.

 

• giansm

I actually use the Battlemaster trinket myself, I just hadn't put it in the guide since the passive +heal trinket section is a link to a wowhead search and not a list. About the Nightseye vs. Shadow Pearl discussion: in terms of mana regeneration, Nightseye is almost always better than Shadow Pearl on live right now, even if you innervate yourself. The only reason (on live) to go with the spirit gem is if you really want the +1 healing on your aura, but it's probably not worth it.

The way things are looking on the PTR, Shadow Pearl may be a better gem. It's slightly worse in terms of mana regen if you don't innervate yourself, but a decent amount better if you do, and it's close enough that the bonus to the aura may mean something. However you really want to go for [Royal Tanzanite], which is not unique anymore on the PTR. You may be interested in reading post 238 in this thread.

 

• Playered

I dont get Battlemasters, +4 passive healing vs +50~ healing/26sec from EoTM? its really seemingly pointless to me (unless ofcourse you dont have EoTM yet or so).

 

Aciara

Unless you (like I do) forget to use it most of the time. +4 passive > not using +50~ healing/26sec.

Wash the spears . . .
. . . while the sun climbs high.
Wash the spears . . .
. . . while the sun falls low.
Wash the spears . . .
. . . who fears to die?
Wash the spears . . .
. . . no one I know!
- Aiel chant

 

Junx

Aside from the uproar over the HT bonus to the PvP set, which was colossally dumb, I've been pleasantly surprised at the new gear we've seen so far for the 2.4 patch. I'm also noticing that all the haste gear generally replaces spirit for haste and starting to (maybe) see a logic to it. I'm thinking perhaps Blizzard has in mind a second role for us as some type of HoT raid healers if we stack enough haste, with the change to the GCD, allowing us to hit more targets.

For raids that bring two trees this could mean the second aura isn't 'going to waste' if one druid stacks spirit, sits in the tank group and does the normal job of tank HPS buffer while another stacks haste and alternates between being an additional tank HPS buffer and a raid HPS buffer.

Whether or not HoTs would ever be truly effective as a raid healing mechanic, outside of certain gimmick fights, with CoH, FoL and CH spam flying around is not something I think is very likely, but the introduction of tree and the LB changes later on totally changed how we healed. Maybe haste, and whatever they have in store for WotLK, could shift things around again?

 

grutak

You're really hurting your self if you don't use all of your abilities, including trinket /use affects. I have both my Lower City Prayer Book and EotM macro'd through Clique(set up for a custom macro) for lifebloom. So they go off with in 3 seconds of every cooldown. Here's the macro i use:

/run SetCVar(\"Sound_EnableSFX\",\"0\")
/use Lower City Prayerbook
/use Essence of the Martyr
/run SetCVar(\"Sound_EnableSFX\",\"1\")
/cast [target=mouseover] Lifebloom
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

It also disables the annoying sound effect for when the trinkets aren't ready.

 

• giansm

Well, normally my trinket setup is both Battlemaster's and Martyr. If you had to choose between Battlemaster's and Martyr for some reason (maybe you have a Memento, or feel like you want to wear a regen trinket) then the decision would probably be based on whether the mini healthstone effect on Battlemaster's would be useful or not.

 

Edghar

I'd have to disagree on that. While other healers will see slightly more benefit overall from the <50% proc, to say this is useless for a druid is way off. When your tank dips below 50% this is exactly when you are casting your direct heals (Swiftmend, NS/HT, etc). The cooldowns of these two are the only limiting factor.

 

meringue

To avoid starting a "what about this piece of loot now" discussion, with the changes to spirit regen in 2.4 how would you change the weighting of intellect, spirit and mp5 in the Loot Rank from the first post?

 

• giansm

Assuming the 2.4 PTR changes stick, I'd probably use this one: purple lootrank for a purple set, and this one: red lootrank for a red set. What I mean by this is, take an item like [Thunderheart Spaulders], which has two blue sockets and a +7 healing socket bonus. If gems were free, would you gem it with two [Royal Shadowsong Amethyst] (and keep the bonus) or two [Teardrop Crimson Spinel]? If you like the purple gems and the socket bonus then go with the purple link, if you like the red gems then go with the red link.

Keep in mind this isn't asking you which gem you prefer, since even the purple link suggests putting 3x red in [Thunderheart Tunic] and 1 red, 1 purple in [Life-step Belt].