Dynalisia

Why do you consider putting the third druid on raidhealing wasted? And what about a druid in a strong haste set? (which is in my opinion a very powerful raidhealer on Twins).


I was under the impression that the tree auras did not stack. I can't quickly find any information about this though, anyone else want to chime in for confirmation either way?

 

• Playered

It's infuriating, I actually want to try a general full raid healing role on Twins (sans a LB roll on a tank ofcourse) due to the nature of the raid damage being mostly periodic - suited to our spells rather well.

I've felt that several times throwing just a LB (7sec - 4k~) on people with Flame Sear (6sec - 9k~) helps rather noticably - RG again covers things nicely due to the HoT component being well used on the Flame Touched.

Sadly it's a completly stupid idea to replace a Priest or Shaman with a Druid on raid healing, which is a rather sad state of the encounter when doing this is unfeasible despite the obvious niche for it.

 

Benita

You misunderstood me. On other encounters where tank damage is not as massive on so many targets but rather spikey instead, the hots overheal alot more and a healer with big direct heals is more suitable. For example a 2nd druid healer on the felmyst tank is a stretch already, a 3rd a waste.
I am pretty sure that druid healers on twins are decent to good, depending a bit on what tactic you use, but they shine on tank healing as in any fight with 3-4 steady dmg targets.

If we have 2 i use LBs on all 3 tanks and the 2 extra hots on pet and the tanks. If we use 3 i use the extra hots to counter flame sear dots with rejuvs and the occasional swiftmend (although it is a bit random with ~3 rejuvs ticing and a 40% time window to swiftmend).

Wowwiki agrees with you. My bad then, looks like our healers shaped up instead

 

malthrin

Yeah, that's what I was thinking in retrospect - put the third Druid on tank healing and free up a Paladin.

Do you have a WWS showing how this would compare? None of our Druids have strong haste sets, sadly, but I'm curious how it would turn out.

 

Kalaghan

I'm confused. I was under the impression it does stack. I distinctly recall there being 2 seperate buffs when we've had 2 trees in group together. Am I remembering completely wrong? Is the buff misrepresented? Or is wowwiki just off on this one?

Edit: And to clarify, I mean two seperate buffs in addition to the ToL form - so 3 icons. I thought the whole issue with them
changing the aura from a +healing for your group to a +healing recieved was due to OP 5-tree groups (never actually raided as resto back then).

 

◊ Noressa

The icon shows up for all of them. I believe only the highest one is used, but I haven't tested it.

 

charriu

Last MH we had three druids in the tank group, and I had some 1221 ticks with lifebloom. Look at my armory, this simply isn't possible with my gear without the buffs stacking.

Wow Web Stats if you want to look at it.

 

Natureseer

The tree aura does stack.

 

Dynalisia

Wow Web Stats

Here is a fairly recent WWS of a twins kill where we had 3 resto druids in the raid. Dhorelian is rolling on tanks only, Artrey is rolling on tanks and crosshealing some and I'm raidhealing with a 300ish-rating haste set, which knocks regrowth down to almost being like a flashheal. With Sunwell gear this also isn't too harsh on my other stats, my main sacrifices being the spellhaste battlemaster's trinket and the haste belt from Gurtogg.

I think this was the first time I did this job and I remember going more or less oom when Alythess was somewhere around 40% that time. Since then I've become a bit better at managing my mana on the fight and equipping myself properly (hello there crescent moon idol ). All in all I felt I was certainly competitive as a raidhealer, even if we lack the multihealing burst of a shaman or priest.

 

Ribeye

I don't think there is a better fight in game, except maybe Felmyst Phase 2, for a regrowth spamming druid to really excell than Twins. I generally concentrate on the Flame Sear Targets Primarily and inbetween I keep up some rejuves on the tanks. LBs would be fine but the healing is so intense that it is really impossible for me to roll them, so what's the point. I pot twice, innervate myself, and even use resto drums sometime around Phase 2 and still always end this fight bone dry...What a great fight!

 

Nihlo

talking about haste...

Did you take a look at the s4-Moonkin-Dagger ? [Brutal Gladiator's Blade of Alacrity] has got 227 spell-haste. If you say a resto-druid should have about 180-220 haste for lifebloom you could reach this "cap" by one single item which you can even change in combat if you don't need the +haste anymore.
Of course you would loose a lot of +heal if you use this dagger (it hasn't got any spelldmg) but you would also gain some by using your normal healing-gear instead of a spell-haste-set (about 5 diffrent items for 220 haste) and you could swap the dagger in combat in different phases of an encounter...

 

Benita

Yes, also switching macros/addons that equip a +healing/spelldmg weapon during a cast to use both the haste and the oomph and then switch back to the haste weapon on the next instant/cast comes to mind.

Not a very well thought through item if you ask me.

 

Dynalisia

Rolling 5 stacks of lifebloom has very limited use (fun method to cheese group instances with, that's about it in my experience) and I wouldn't see it as the main reason to get lots of haste. Basically as I see it there are two levels of haste:

1) The level you get for 'free' on your Sunwell items (and some ZA/badge), which' main use is to smooth out rotations that in essence don't change.
2) The level you might have to make some sacrifices for, which' main use is raidhealing.

The second one is where that item, or the Swift Judgment mace might come in handy. However, as you say those two items take out a huge chunk of +healing and because on most items you get both high +heal and haste, it's not simply a question of swapping in some extra +healing gear instead of haste gear to compensate for that. In essence, you could be going in with some insane amount of haste (500-600), but at most a karazhan amount of +healing (1700-1800ish).

On the other side, raidhealing is mostly a matter of patching up small hurts, or quickly responding to someone almost dying. Both things that would go together well with smaller, but faster healers. Regrowth would become quicker than a flash heal and a Rejuv+SM combo would go down in almost a second.

All in all I think it is an interesting trick to have in your bags for sure and I guess that for most of us it would simply come down to being able to actually attain the required rating for it or not. Cheesy as a resto druid might be in Arena's, you do need to invest a bit of time into it, something not everyone has. With the summer coming and the inevitable lull after Sunwell, I'll probably give it a shot though.

@ Ben: Shit I didn't even realize switching weapons didn't trigger a GCD.

 

malthrin

Impressive, definitely good to see that this can be workable. Do you think this kind of playstyle would benefit from dropping tree form to take Nature's Grace?

Switching weapons does incur a global cooldown, but if you switch after you begin casting a spell (ie, /cast /equip macro), the global cooldown will usually be finished by the time the spell has finished casting. I'm definitely going to make an effort to get the weapon; getting Cyclones down to 1.1 or 1.2 seconds makes them very difficult to pummel.

 

Kalaghan

It does trigger the GCD, but, as Ben said, you can do it during a cast. Say you tie it to a macro that first casts regrowth and then equips the weapon. As long as your regrowth isn't under 1.5 seconds, the GCD triggered by the weapon swap is shorter than the cast time and so it's already done when you finish the cast. However, if you were to swap the weapon first then you'd have to wait the full 1.5 seconds before you even begin the cast.

Apparently, it's even possible with instant casts that due to latency you can cast the instant and equip an idol immediately after, and have that cast treated as though you had the idol equipped. Most of the discussion regarding this has centered around moonkin idols, I'm not too sure what the final conclusions were as it was still in the air how well this worked and it was a major patch or two back when I was reading about it. One thing to note though, spell haste won't affect the weapon swap GCD. So if it's a 1.5 second cast or instant cast and you have spell haste, then the swap GCD will slow you down.

 

• giansm

I've always been skeptical about this sort of thing. It rests on the idea of "hiding" the weapon swap GCD inside a spell cast or a real GCD. The problem comes if you want to cancel a cast that you used to hide a weapon swap GCD; it won't cancel the weapon swap GCD so you end up being stuck on it.

I've also heard what Kalaghan said about the weapon swap GCD not being reduced by haste, which would make it problematic for instants as well. Just wondering, is this phenomenon (weapon swap GCD not being sped up) considered true and general knowledge? I've been hearing about it but always regarded it as something possibly true but unconfirmed.

 

Dynalisia

Perhaps, but it would be impractical I think. Between things like attendance of druids, attendance of other healers and which healers are best for a certain fight, the occasions you might get to do this are pretty limited. As such, I would never actually respec for it.

Also, you burn through your mana extremely quickly as it is, even though I had a spriest I ran oom before that encounter was done (even though the pace slows down when Blue is dead). With that spec, without ToL and with having an even quicker casting time, you'd probably get in trouble really quickly, while also increasing your own and other's overhealing by a fairly big margin. It would definately be fun to try out bringing one less raidhealer to twins and giving a spamdruid with that spec two innervates to see what he could do.

 

Kalaghan

Does spell haste reduce the GCD on physical special attacks? I had always assumed no (unfounded assumption though, I think), in which case the weapon swap issue would seem to be consistent.

 

• giansm

No, haste is not supposed to affect melee GCD at all, that's something Blizzard said when they originally announced the change. Your explanation sounds accurate

 

Ribeye

When I'm not out kicking ass as a Resto Druid, I often play my Shadow Priest alt. One great mod that I discovered on Shadowpriest.com was Facemelter. It basically uncomplicates the process of when to use each spell to best maximize your dps rotation and not accidentally miss the application of a dot or whatever. It does occur to me, after using it awhile, that the nature of Shadow Priest dps isn't all that different than Resto Druid healing. Attempting to keep up Lbs, rejuves and maximize a regrow now and then almost lends itself to the idea of a similiar mod for druids.

Maybe the idea is farfetched or even unneccessary but I do know that I often lose my hot rotation for whatever reason and it can be difficult to jump back in without letting the entire thing fall apart like a card house. Letting Lbs slip on one target happens, but in the haste to catch back up on that person you can quickly lose the others under your watch. Does anyone else think this would be handy, or is healing just too different than dpsing to even consider it? I realize some druids might find it unneccessary, and I'm sure there are Shadowpriests that argue similiarly against Facemelter, but many have embraced it and show a distinct dps increase because of it.

 

Kalaghan

For anyone who's interested, I just did a messed up test to see if the tree aura stacks, and it does. I made it more complicated because I had the weaker aura of the 2 of us, and I was the constant tree in the group. Anyway, I was able to estimate my fellow druids spirit within 2.

Math:
My ticks were 44 higher with him in the group.
44/1.26 ~=35 (I was healing a warlock)
Lifebloom Tick Heal Coefficient = 51.8%*1.20*1.10 /7= 9.768% (that's base * emp rejuv * gift of nature / 7ticks)
35/9.768% ~= 358
358*4 = 1432 spirit (Jaina buff)
1432/2 = 716 spirit <===additional spirit required to cause the healing difference via our aura(s)

Actual spirit = 718.

I know...I failed in experiment design. We had a minute bio break during a raid and it was done spontaneously.

 

Kalaghan

Just saw this was a double post (I know...like 2 months after). Sorry, not sure how that happened.

 

Holo

About the weapon swapping could you explain how could you do that kind of weapon swap. Because before you start the cast you need the haste one equipped and at the end of the cast you need the healing one then switch back to the haste weapon to start the next cast right? How could you make that if when you swap a weapon does trigger the GCD.

 

Kalaghan

You wouldn't be able to get the benefits of both on the same cast. The idea would be if there was say one phase of a fight where haste was valuable and another where +heal was more important it would be useful. That, or if you wanted haste on specific spells and +heal on others (eg. have your MT LBs with max heal, but your regrowths hasted).

 

Benita

Start to cast a Regrowth with the haste weapon equipped, it will lower the cast time. Equip your healing weapon after you started the cast and receive full +heal on your regrowth as it counts it at the end of the cast. Then you get one instant without the haste, during that gcd it switches to the haste (+heal counts at the beginning here). Then you do the regrowth again.
I agree that its not like having 2 weapons equipped at the same time, but for certain spell rotations/speccs its abusable.
There are addons that already switch idols depending on the cast or spellsurge addons that switch weapons and "hide" the weapon switch gcd in the next cast gcd. That already seemed borderline cheating to me.

Also with the exception of warriors and maybe ferals that start to heal somewhere (stance classes) i dont see the reason why someone should be able to switch weapons. You could fix these abuses by just increasing the weapon gcd to something like 3 seconds or more.