Fieryeel

Do you guys always check out healing meters?

There are officers in my guild who often argue with me about this.

In every fight, several officers would always review the healing meters to see who was doing badly, who was top on healing and so on(which I do like, it means me feel good to see my name high up, especially once on Nightbane where I was doing 65% healing against 2 others).

Meanwhile several other officers are very irritated by the healing meters, which they claim do nothing more than to discourage the ones who are low due to having a bad healing position(for example, told to stick to an OT and only heal OT), make those who are at the top feel proud, and simply signify nothing more than who got the good healing role and who got the bad. In their opinion, healing meters mean absolutely nothing as your only role is to keep your assigned target alive.

Anyone care to offer their opinion on this issue?

 

Aneldarr

The healingmeters shouldnt be used to evaluate all healers preformance against eachother, only those who had same or similar job. Else it will be inaccurate. Our healingmeter is usually toped by a shaman, then 1 or 2 druids, the CoH priest and then just random. It doesnt say if those in the top did a good job (read what they where supposed to do). How much a healer heals isnt always important. What is important is to keep your assignment alive (decursed and so on).

 

Prinsesa

I never look at healing meters and don't consider them a very accurate nor reliable gauge of a player's performance.

Unlike DPS meters, where your goal is simply to put out as high a total as possible, healing is very subjective.

If a Druid's Lifebloom ticks consistently catch the steady incoming damage to the tank, my own effective healing with FOL is being driven down, but that doesn't make my rank 11 Holy Light any less valuable if the tank takes a nasty spike.

On top of that, we're both going to show up below the COH Priest or the Shaman on a melee-heavy Void Reaver attempt, but again, that does not mean any of us are slacking off.

As long as the player(s) assigned to the healer is alive when the boss keels over, you can mark that as a Mission Accomplished.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

lairpie

Healing meters, and more specifically the detailed breakdowns that go with them are an incredibly valuable tool. Its only the incredibly short sighted idea that somehow the person at the top wins and the person at the bottom loses that so many stupid people embrace that hampers their use. Many of the people here have spent countless hours pouring through WWS parses which are just extremely elaborate meters. Furthermore, the entire idea that whoever is at the top of the dps meters is best is also pretty stupid, but its at least easier to figure things out. Looking at who people are healing, what spells they are using, things like that are extremely useful.

Random procs for faster casts just don't cut it for a class whose entire nature is to be a reliable source of healing. Bracing ig you're loaded on mana or insightful if you can use the mana at all are the only way to go. One possible reason to use seasprays would be if you had all reds and wanted to activate a IED with a minimal number of changes, though that seems somewhat of an odd situation.

Brewmaster of WBC

 

• Playered

While healing meters are nice for easymode farmbosses and keeping an eye on people just doing plain-out horrible, im putting more attention into the "who did this person heal" and "who was this person healed by" to make sure people are doing their damned jobs than being concerned about generic meters for Sunwell etc.

 

Dynalisia

Maybe im asking something really stupid here, but are you sure Kreeg's Stout stacks with the Fishstick's food buff?

 

swills

The only healing 'meter' I use these days is Recount. Being able to see who my Druids healed and how they healed them is far more valuable than the simple static 'healing done' numbers.

 

Valraven

Well, concerning healing meters I`d still like to see one that adds the final heal of lifebloom to the total healing done of the concerned druid (after 2.4. the combatlog shows it like "Valravens lifebloom heals Valraven for 1900" or something, so it should be possible?).
Looking through a BT WWS, the sum of all final lifebloom heals added to the total healing done of all members was about 5.600.000. Divided by 3 druids, that would give us quite a push on the healing meters (same with priests pom and Earthshield) *sigh*

 

Shonassir

First off, I'd like to say the guide is fantastic. Obviously it has its flaws, but for the most part I think it covers what I've been trying to tell my raiders for a very long time. I raided Pre-BC as full feral and turned resto after having to compete with other ferals and rogues for gear. I ended up being the only resto druid in the guild at the time, so I received all the gear I needed. I had my own guild in Gurubashi called MyrmÃ*dons but we recently merged with Eternal Raiders due to some of our core members needing to take time off for real life. I've been the raid leader pre-BC and continue in that roll, even with the merge. One of the biggest things I try and explain to my raiders is:

1) Meters are great to have and give you a general idea of how well you or others are doing
2) Meters are not the end all (i.e. first doesn't always win, last doesn't always lose)
3) Meters are shit if you didn't down the boss (yeah, you can top the DPS meters, but if the rest of the raid isn't there, you mean nothing to. A Raid works as a unit, one person cannot do it alone)

In reference to the posts made about healing meters, the way I've always calculated how my healers are doing is comparing the Healing Done to the Total Overhealing Done. I generally expect my druid healers (including myself) to be on the bottom of the Overheal due to the mechanics of our HoTs, and the Paladins, Shamans, Priests to be somewhere near the top. Generally the only time I have a problem with healers is when they burn their mana too fast, they may top the healing meters but if they are sitting 100k Overhealing over the 1 below them, there is a problem. Mana efficiency is the key. I had a resto shaman that was REALLY good, but he just could not hold onto his mana. I took him aside and discussed mana efficiency, watching your heals and toss them where you really need to, or right as a spike is timed to go off (shatter etc) and he went from top of the Overheals to 5th or 6th. He also conserves alot more mana and we don't have a problem with healers running out of mana now.

I haven't read all the pages here, but personally I don't raid as a tree druid. I used to but found that a lot of the time we had one already so I personally raid 27/0/34. I'm curious if anyone else uses this talent spec? I find I still have no problem with mana regen (I sit at 206 mp5 while casting unbuffed) and I have no BT or Hyjal gear (although I have gotten them into Hyjal recently and I myself have been to Black Temple with a few other guilds when they lack healers...anyone else think Teron Gorefiend fight is cake even for healers?) This talent spec I found is also MUCH better for completing dailies and even PVPing world style, (I have 11/11/39 for arenas). It gives us the ability Insect Swarm (which can GREATLY benefit on boss fights, especially stacked with Scorpid Sting from a hunter), Nature's Grace, Lunar Guidance, and Moonglow. I find that not being in Treeform I tend to raid heal more than I did (which is not a problem) and Nature's Grace comes in handy when chaining Regrowths. In Hyjal last night I had no problem whatsoever with mana during the trash or Rage / Antheron fights standing next to Jaina with her spirit buff. I think fully raid buffed standing 20yds from Jaina I was well over 500 mp5 while casting with over a 12k mana pool and roughly 1940ish + healing (I sit at 1851 normally). Rolling lifeblooms and Rejuvenations are definately the most mana efficient spells in the game (especially during silence/fear fights). I think the biggest tip to healers besides gear/gemming is how to keep them mana efficient, and this goes for some druids I've met as well.

In reference to my Insect Swarm / Scorpid Sting discussion, I'm also curious if anyone has a guide out there for support classes? I've been looking at certain skills in the trees of every class and am currently working on my own guide regarding them. Some others include a druids Demoralizing Roar, a warrior (either dps or tank) Shouts, Warlocks curses, and Hunter's improved mark just to include a few. My goal is to find a nice medium for all the classes so they can still heal / put out the dps they need to, while supporting every other class in the raid to greatly increase what they already do to create a "utopian" raid group, so to speak. Any comments (preferably sent as PMs) would be great. Thanks and I look forward to becoming a core poster here as the information I have read from this and a few other guides seem invaluable.

 

Kundilaf

I am actually checking out a 24/0/37 Spec right now - I have to meet a 10 Post Requirement before i can post up my spreadsheet, but the results are really interesting - to offer a teaser:

Lifebloom HPS within 1% of a 42+ point Resto Build even at 2600+heal and Lifeblooms that are actually greater HPS below 1900 +heal.

I had started with 28/0/33 or 27/0/34 but felt that 2 Points of Emp Rejuv was more valuable than Moonglow.

 

lairpie

The problem with healing as any spec that isn't 41+ resto is that you haven't really gained anything raid useful at all and have unarguably lost raid useful things. No one will claim that tree specs are the most fun specs for farming and such, but one of the core ideals of this thread and in fact the EJ forums as a whole is maximizing raid potential. Lunar guidance is a good talent, but you have to give up points in Emp Rejuv to get it, which depending on your gear often leads to an actual loss in healing, especially as your gear gets better. Being able to keep insect swarm up is a nice bonus in the absence of a moonkin, but you can do that as 11-0-X that just happens to not be in tree form just as easily. Living spirit is just as much mana regen as moonglow is mana savings (depending on gear, obviously) so really all your doing is trading tree form and some +healing for nature's grace. I can't say that's never ever a good trade, but I'd argue its a bad trade far more often than a good one.

If moonglow applied to lifebloom too, and lunar guidance gave you 2-3 times the +healing that it does damage (reasonable, based on gear equivalents) a lunar guidance/moonglow/swiftmend spec would really shine as a raid viable alternative to speccing tree form for people who aren't actively using the tree form aura much. I think you would see many people flip to that in a heart beat, but if you're truly trying to maximize the benefit you bring the raid as a healer, you just can't currently do it w/o being 41+ resto other than a few isolated fights. No one, and certainly not me, thinks you're stupid or something for wanting to be a spec that is way better for everything other than raiding at the cost of being a spec that is slightly worse for raiding, but everyone who has ToL is doing so because its worth it to us to respec to something more fun whenever we're not raiding, or play alts or just suck it up and accept that we're a lame spec because its better for the raid, not because we didn't know there was a balance tree with far better setup talents than the clumsy resto tree.

Brewmaster of WBC

 

Kalaghan

I have a big issue with people who look at over-healing as the be all and end all. It only matters if mana limitations impact how you heal. Generally, if you aren't running out of mana, then I don't care what percent of your heals are over-healing. All over-healing means is you wasted mana (well, and possibly the opportunity to heal someone else, but then that should be reflected more accurately in other meters since it addresses effective healing). Efficiency is great but if you can't get the job done then it doesn't matter how efficient you are.

Regarding raiding as a tree druid. The aura is nice, but it's not the core benefit. It's the mana efficiency gained from it that makes the biggest difference (I always look at it as 25% more mana regen. and 25% more base mana). That mana efficiency is not impacted by having another tree in your raid. Further, you're sacrificing empowered rejuvenation in a 27/0/34 build and that's a lot of healing lost. Yes, you're able to solo/pvp better now. However, you are not optimized for raid healing (if that's acceptable for you and your guild great, but you should be aware of the trade-off you're making). If you're really stuck on getting IS and don't have a moonkin in your raids, it's still obtainable without giving up empowered rejuvenation. Lunar Guidance is clearly inferior to Empowered Rejuvenation in terms of increased healing (unless you're using HT a bunch...in which case I go to the poor man's pally argument). This means the only thing you've given yourself is the ability to be more efficient when outside treeform (i.e. so you can keep IS up). I really don't think the lost healing is worth it.

I'm not sure of a overall utility talents guide, I would guess it's already kicking around here somewhere. If not, it's certainly worth something worth starting. I'm not as ambitious as Giansm (much love for what you do) and I'd like to see a thread like that done right, so I'll happily pass on that task.

And for whoever asked, I believe Recount does track the final heals of LBs, though I'm not sure how accurately. I think it works off of the time data that's stored, since my meters generally will reflect LB blooms accurately, but others' meters do not, unless they have sync turned on (default is it stores time data for yourself but not others I think). But again, I've heard concerns regarding it's accuracy. Also, if you raid heal with LB much you'll notice a significant increase in your overhealing once this starts being tracked.

 

Kundilaf

And I'll leave it up to you to decide based upon real data when a hybrid spec is more effective. I've found that with a modest amount of +int, and 2 points in Emp Rejuv it takes a LOT of +heal (2600 to be exact) to even create a 1% difference in Lifebloom ticks.

I agree - it'd be nice if the scaling for Lunar Guidance matched gear scaling, but again, I am throwing out the teaser that the healing output of 24/0/37 surprised me greatly. For sure I've spent lots of time and gold respeccing, but I think the increased burst healing generated by Nature's Grace/Improved Regrowth combined with the minimal loss of HoT healing(use the spreadsheet to see just how little) might be just enough of an excuse to justify raiding as a more DPS-capable Healing Spec if you don't need the tree aura.

 

Uldreth

After trying many builds, I think I've come across what works best for me while keeping this in mind. 15/0/46 is the way I go and I really like the utility it provides. Maxing out Nature's Focus and Subtlety in a pure resto raid build always seemed like so many wasted points. 46 points in resto provides all the essential (and some non-essential) core talents.

It seems like half the fights in T6 in beyond are spent out of tree, or 50/50 (like Felmyst). Keeping IS up on fights like Archimonde or Kalecgos is just one more thing I can do with spare GCDs.

 

Kundilaf

Yes - it seems liek I am spending a TON of time out of tree form...

I've previously raided as 11/0/50 to get IS, and I can see 13/0/48 for IS + Nature's Reach (30 Yard range really sucked on Kaz'rogal).

I don't see where you put the other 2 Points - Brambles to buff tank threat?

nevermind - I see, Control of Nature.

I'd probably put the points in Entangling Roots and 2 Points in Brambles, I figure what the heck - it is a tiny buff, but a buff none-the-less, for our tanks.

 

Cube

The issue that I have with a non-tree build is that it focuses on our casting-time spells makes us into gimped pallies/shaman. Regrowth/HT spam is tremendously inefficient. And most raid groups run with 1, maybe 2 druids. The rest are a mixture of the other classes. In that situation, pally-style healing is useless, because there are other classes that do it better. Nobody has the HoT ability we do, so we, as a class, should go for that.

Also, losing Empowered Rejuvination seems... wrong. With 5/5, every point of +healing is worth 1.2 +healing. Lunar guidance, at T6 level gear, will get you about 600 int, which nets you 150 +healing from LG. To equal that amount, you'll need 150/.2=750 healing to have better HoT's. It seems that it's not a 1% difference, it should be much more than that.

 

Shonassir

Theres no doubt that Emp. Rejuv. is a great talent spec. In my personal experience with druids in similar gear, due to my Regrowths + HoT stacks, I still sit above other healers and low on the OH. The Lunar Guidance talent with over 500+ int puts my bonus healing almost a full 200 of what it usually is in ToL. The other thing is, I DO spend alot of time OUT of ToL, so I saw no point in getting that. I never using HT unless coupled with a NS even w/o ToL spec. Regrowth is my heal of choice when someone needs a quick buff heal. Definately ToL is a good spec for raids, not argueing that, but using more than 1 ToL in a raid seems useless (1 for the group with tanks). That extra aura isn't going to help on someone getting hit by Rage's frostbolt in Hyjal, you need someone with a fast cast spell like Regrowth, especially if they're out of range, running to them isn't much of an option in ToL unless you're really good @ shifting. Also I'm not sure about any of you other druids, but if a stray mob happens to target you, casting a Cyclone without being interrupted has been extremely beneficial to me in the higher end raids when there are more mobs running around. A full stack of Lifebloom on my target currently ticks anywhere from 660-720 with Idol of the Emerald Queen. I'm not sure where it is for you tree druids, but I'm going to assume that those numbers are still really close. Unfortunatley I'm in class at the moment and it won't let me visit a talent calc, but I do have 2/3 Living Spirit and 5/5 Subtlety as well. Any thoughts on just 1 tree druid, max of 2, and then a few hybrids?

 

Kundilaf

Not quite - Emp Rejuv nets you 1.2*Coefficient*(+Heal)/HoT Ticks. That is a pretty heady increase, but not quite the same as +20% to healing.

The spreadsheet can be found at:

HERE

It is currently set up for Manual Character Stat Inputs - which means that the Calculation for Natures Perfection does nothing(due ot the fact Natures Perfection is reported on the character sheet - but I figure 1%*talent point to crit isn't huge for the two spells that use it). I'd like to set it up for gear calculations, but that will have to be something that is done iteratively.

(edit - I also haven't started working on haste yet, and the Mana Modeling is more an afterthought than anything constructive)

I found the difference was 1% (actually 1.0907%) or 9.19 HPS assuming about 600 Int and 2600 +heal.
(edit - If using the lifebloom idol the % diff will decrease a bit as well)

 

lairpie

You can get 2/5 emp rejuv and 3/3 LG. That's how they're coming up with LG coming close to emp rejuv, only if you don't get moonglow in favor of 2/5 emp rejuv. The problem is, if you keep 2/5 emp rejuv, you have gained absolutely no +healing, no moonglow, no nature's grace, the only thing you've done is lost tree form to be able to farm a bit better, and have gimmicky nature's grace. The only way to really make great use of nature's grace is with regrowth, which you simply can't afford to use a ton without tree form or moonglow. If you go ahead and get moonglow too to help with mana for huge regrowth use, you have lost a bunch of +healing.

Brewmaster of WBC

 

Kundilaf

[Idol of the Crescent Goddess] helps greatly (Idol swap a'la /equip after you /cast line in your macro). As do [Drums of Restoration]

But one interesting thing about Nature's Grace is that it is active for 15 Seconds, so even with moderate use the benefit persists.

Again, note, I am not married to this spec, but I definitely think it is worthy of peer review, and I know this is the site to actually look at the data(aka my spreadsheet) and give some consideration to the results. I'll have a stand-alone post up in about 5 minutes. (edit: Maybe not... gonna have to wait a few days, I don't meet the minimum post requirement to post my own thread)

 

lairpie

First off, 2600 healing isn't a far off number at all. No one really said it isn't but the number was stated like that was somewhat far off. That's obtainable (raid buffed obviously) with 0 sunwell gear. A memento that hasn't dropped for us and t6 shoulders/chest which I'm not taking because they're mediocre upgrades for me and good upgrades for anyone else would put me just short of 2600.

For people with little enough healing that LG might be better at all than emp rejuv, its obviously acceptable at your level of progression to spec something more fun, more flexible, and less raid ideal. That's not a burn on your guild, but I can't really believe that are many guild where they're all gung ho doing everything they can to progress through pve content like making spec sacrifices, and their druids have sub 2k healing. Furthermore, if your gear is at a level to have that little +healing, you probably badly need the mana savings from tree form. I actually did have lunar guidance for a while after hitting 70 because it provided more benefit in more of the things I was doing. I dropped it for stupid tree form which I quite honestly think was poorly thought out and poorly implemented at the bottom of a tree (haha) scattered with talents that don't really work with each other while many of the best healing talents are in the caster dps tree. Like I said, I basically hate tree form, and am one of those unlucky druids that exist around the world that for some inexplicable reason DC and can't log back in for sometimes 10 tries any time i zone, dc, or log off in tree form. But its still the spec I always raid as because it just is better for almost ever single fight than a resto/balance hybrid spec is.

Hitting cyclone while you're in tree form auto cancels the form and casts in the exact same amount of time it takes to cast it if you're not in tree form to start. That's really the big hit against most of the arguments for non tree specs. Probably 90% of the supposed benefits of a non tree spec are also benefits of speccing for ToL and just not using it 100% of the time. The only thing you get with any benefit is nature's grace because moonglow and LG force points out of emp rejuv and living spirit, direct analogs for +healing and mana. In the end, depending on gear and all, you probably come out roughly the same for mana, with slightly less +healing if you get moonglow, or behind on mana and about the same on +healing if you don't assuming you're never ever in tree form in a raid even if you have it. So all you're really doing that makes much of a difference is getting NG over ToL. That is just a bad trade.

If you have to move, tree or not, to go heal someone that's frost bolted on rage, they're dead unless you're NSing them. And yes many of us are very good at shifting. I'm a grand marshal druid that's probably done enough WSG to hit exalted 10 times, I'm quite comfortable with my C key (cheetah). Spread out healers better and while its certainly worth trying, your regrowth should rarely be the saving heal on people that get frost bolted while your paladins sits there spamming the tank or whatever. Like, 1-2 druids worth of hots is all the tank really needs on a consistent basis and every paly, priest, shaman, and druid can try and heal the frost bolted person for a cast or 2 and the tank won't die.

Oh, and about having 2 tree druids then any other resto druids after that being a hybrid spec, how many healing druids exactly are you bringing?

Also, I have bags full of drums of resto and all the leather I need to hit 375 waiting for as soon as I get and enchant my S4 ring and sunwell trash ring.

Brewmaster of WBC

 

Cube

That's exactly what I said. I was talking about +healing, not the overall effect. The end effect is what you stated, but the overall effect of ER is that every point of +healing counts as 1.2 points for HoT's.

 

Kalaghan

Unfortunately I'm not a macro guru, but my concerns with this would be:
1. Is there a way to tie a macro in to healbot? I looked into it a while back was unable to find a way. If not, can it be done with Grid? I've never used it but this might be motivation for a switch.
2. The idol swap to regrowth would work to be sure, but what about swapping back for Lifebloom? I know I tend to spam click my LBs to ensure I get them off asap once the GCD is up (with the exception of the first cast of the cycle). This will be even more true on fights once I get my haste set up and running. Can the macro be written such that the swap back to the LB idol only goes through if the LB cast was successful?
3. I'm under the impression that when swapping the moonkin idol in after an instant cast (macroed) there is still a slight delay in terms of GCD reset (along the lines of 0.1seconds). So, if the idol swap would work properly with the LB idol (i.e. would you get the effects on the first cast), then would it cause any unwanted delays? Has anyone done any testing with this?

And yes, you're correct, even with moderate use you would still use the Nature's Grace proc. However, you will also get far fewer procs with moderate use since Rejuv can't crit. I've never actually tried it, but I suspect LB, with the final heal credited to the recipient, would not proc Nature's Grace. Can anyone confirm? This means you would only proc Nature's Grace on regrowth casts. Suppose you cast it once per 10 seconds with a 60% crit rate. That means you save an average of 0.5seconds x 60% = 0.3seconds every 10 seconds, or roughly you get 1 extra GCD a minute. That's far more frequently than I use regrowth, but even so, I don't think that's going to provide a substantial healing increase. Regardless, as has been noted the strength of druid healing is largely in its consistency and going for NG just doesn't play to that strength.

 

Cube

Lifebloom does not cause a NG crit, even when it crits on you.

 

david0925

1.Using seaspray is a mean to fulfill both blue AND yellow socket requirement for IED (assuming you want to use one), otherwise for yellow socket you can just use 10 haste rating gems

2.Spellhaste meta is horrible after the 2 milllion nerfs done to it.

Maniq is my hero