It doesn't really matter whether you're in a shadow priest group or not, all that matters is how much more mana you have with the flask than without. The distilled wisdom flask grants 1072 mana with Blessing of Kings, and the mighty restoration flask grants mana equal to: time (in seconds) * 5. This means that it beats the distilled wisdom flask in 3m34s. Even on a short fight where you are receiving a mana tide, distilled wisdom is only better until the 4m25s mark. However even with a mana tide, the difference is not large enough to make up the mana for a single lifebloom past 3m50s. I didn't list the wisdom flask because at least for our guild almost everything takes longer than this.

I think CasterWeaponSwapper is supposed to be able to do an Innervate swap, but I don't use that mod so I don't know for sure. The main reason I didn't put in a mod section is because a lot of it is preference-based (what raid frames, what boss mod) but I can put a list of popular ones. How does this sound: raid frames (Grid/sRaid/Pitbull/xperl), unit frames (Pitbull/xperl), boss mods (DBM/BW), and hot tracker (chronometer, others?).

By the way, does anyone know of a better hot tracker than chronometer? The thing I don't like about it is that it re-orders the bars based on time spent, and shows too many bars. I would prefer a mod that always kept the bars in the same order and only showed bars for lifebloom on the targets you are trying to roll it on (maybe only show a bar if the lifebloom has 2+ stacks, or show a bar for people on a pre-determined list).

Can anyone point me to a Tree aura VS other party auras (for the tank that is) calculation.

example, tree aura vs devotion aura. I asume the calc as been done but I haven't seen it

awesome guide, nice to read even though I don't play a druid myself

HotCandy is better, since Chronometer bugs a lot with it's bars and when mobs get killed, making you lose cd bars in mid-trash.

Look on Druid - Tree Concerns and Issues - Page 6. Dukes calculates that on a warrior with 18000 armor, the best devotion aura (improved, with tier 5 set bonus) provides 5.4% damage reduction. Later on Vernichter confirms this number and calculates that a standard improved devotion (without set bonus) provides 3.9% damage reduction. This is straight mitigation, and so the tank never takes this damage.

For the tree aura: say you have 600 spirit, this means your aura adds +150 healing. Since rolling lifebloom's coefficient is 29.42% this adds 44 to the tick value. Assuming we are trying to prevent a tank spike death that happens in 2 seconds, and assuming we have two druids on the tank, these lifeblooms will tick for a total of 44 * 2 druids * 2 ticks = 176. Say there's also a couple of paladins landing a FoL (I'm going to say they're not landing HLs, since if they are then the tank is probably not going to die). I'm not sure what the coefficient is with a holy spec but let's say it's 50%. If they both land the tree aura contributes 150 healing. Thus the tree aura contributed 326 healing. If the tank has 19k hp and is in danger of losing all of this, devotion will protect him from 771 damage even if he receives no heals. This number is more than twice as much, and damage mitigation is inherently "safer" than healing (since the damage never happens), so devotion blows away tree aura for the MT.

Honestly said, comparing auras of different classes is rather pointless.

First, because you can have both auras on the tank at the same time. Second, because the usability of an aura is highly dependent on the situation.

For example, on encouners like Hydross Devotion Aura is completly useless. So ToL beats Devotion for this fight.

No it is not, First of all, you might not get all auras.

As pointed out, if you've got 1 tank, and in the example warrior.
you can have 4 other players with auras.
you can get warlock/shaman/paladin/tree
But, you can also get warlock/paladin/2xtree

Also, if you've got 2 tanks in the group, let's say they're both warriors.
then you can only pick 3.

Don't forget that things change if you go with a paladin or druid tank. Example, a druid might not get anything at all out of the extra armor and he will still need a warrior in the group for hp shout.


Just to me, it doesn't make any sence to have a shaman in the tank group, first of all, it's a waste of heroism (if you can't temp swap him that is). but also an imp stoneskin totem reduce an attack by 52 damage pre mitigation. 18000 armor would otherwice reduce that by 63% = 33 less damage per hit.

I'm not sure what a raid boss hits for post mitigation but it's well 4-6k, 33/4000 = 0,825% damage reduction.


Further more, the auras works differently, +hp will only make it easier for the healers to heal and will prevent the person from dying by spike damage.

Damage mitigation will reduce the damage and will thereby be one of the best ways, as you won't need to heal up the reduced damage, will lower the chance that the tank dies by spike damage. The tank will require less heals.

Tree aura will make heals on the tank be more effective. This will also lower the chance that the tank dies from spike damage (as the tank should have more HP due to the heals he just got). May cause overheal and thereby loss of effectivity.

I dubt this is anything new, I just miss an analysis of how they work, so you just don't go with the "same old, same old" and don't think about, example, that a bear might not get anything from devo, (not sure about that but our bear was very close to 75% in ssc/tk gear)

dubble post :S where is that delete post button

I've found Evocation2 to be really handy for swapping in spirit gear for innervates. It does auto-swap back at the end of innervates which could potentially cause GCD issues, but for me at least forgetting to swap out of my spirit gear was a bigger problem. :P

Well the main reason I was comparing devotion and tree aura was because someone asked. Also as Nahiag points out, if you have two tanks that you want to receive good buffs the group can be somewhat tight since only three auras will fit. It helps to know which auras are best to put in.

About shamans in the MT group: they are mostly for Windfury and Strength of Earth, in order to buff threat generation. They can be swapped out for heroism (there should be someone you can give assist that can handle this) or if a lot of people are threat-capped the heroism can go to the tank.

You should try tree healing for 1-2 raids to see the difference. IF you are primary healer and not only helping at healer shortage of course.

I'd imagine it's rare for a tree to exclusively raid heal, can't remember when I did that last time. But in a one-two tank situation there are many gcd-s to be spared for raidhealing. I use mainly LB for that, single stack and letting it bloom. Depends on the encounter of course if I know that the incoming damage is enough to kill a player, I use the rejuv+swiftmend or NS+regrowth combo. Highly situational. But the main tool is LB.

No. Your main problem will be moving, not interrupts. Your mobility is highly gimped with such a long casttime main spell. But with your healing output you shouldn't have problems with aggro either, so it's just personal taste what you pick.

You can do both. Typically in any fight where there are less than 4 tanks, I use my spare GCDs to raid heal. There's really no reason not to, unless you have mana concerns.

I'd suggest coordinating with other healers in your raid group with mods to assist in raid healing efficiency. We all use Grid with the incoming heals indicator as well as indicators for various HoTs. It's not perfect, but you'll see a considerable improvement if you can get them on board.