Raiding as a Tree - Page 6

Pyros · 12/05/07, 7:10 AM

Originally Posted by shibou

So i had a thought. Healing is either enough, or not. Once you have enough gear to beat a fight, gear upgrades are unnecessary. As you upgrade your gear, some talent points could be spared for more utility making fights faster or easier.

Since my gear is more than sufficient, i went and spec'd THIS.

It's a dreamstate spec with imp FF and no HT talents. I was playing like a tree spec, mainly spamming lifeblooms rejuvs and regrowths while keeping FF up. Dreamstate and moonglow makes up for the loss of tree form's 20% mana redux and lunar guidance helps make up for the lack of empowered rejuv. Unbuffed, i lost about 30 per tick on a single lifebloom and 70 off rejuvs and gained 3% hit for the MT and allowed most of the dps to swap out hit gear as well as insect swarm (which i only kept up ~50% of the time since i'm pretty lazy).

Curious if anyone else has tried something like this and their thoughts on this spec for learning encounters come sunwell.

I'd say the biggest loss on this build is swiftmend, which I used to save our mt quite a decent amount of time because of stupid healers topping the raid instead of keeping the spam on the tank. However if you run with 2 resto druids, having one with swiftmend/tree aura and the other with your build would probably be a good idea.

Another thing tho I think you'd be missing is hit%. You don't have any of the talents, and probably none on gear, so you'll be getting a decent amount on FF resists and IS resists, which would maybe negate some of the mana gains, making it less efficient than the usual tree spec.

I don't know, I'm not too thrilled about it.

Norfair · 12/05/07, 7:24 AM

Saying that your gear is "sufficient" for a fight or not is a rather weird statement. You could beat Molten Core in level 60 blues, so you could say it was "sufficient". However we all know it's a hell of a lot easier when you were in tier3. I think having good gear and specs, and therefore maybe a bit too much mana regen and/or +healing bonus is always welcome, as it reduces uncertainty and risk of wiping due to "bad luck". If Lifebloom would tick for 5000 per tick, the MT would probably never die. Of course, that number is impossible, but the higher the number, the more room for error you have. A Dreamstate spec with imp FF will have benefits as well (higher dps), but you have to consider whether or not that benefit outweighs the extra "margin" you get from having a full Resto spec. I'd rather keep to my Resto spec as I find that a lot more safe than having a little bit more dps (and therefore faster kill), but this is just based on gut feeling and not on actual numbers.

giansm · 12/05/07, 1:13 PM

You lose so much healing power with that spec that I'm inclined to say you might as well just spec moonkin and DPS. You lose about 90 hp/sec on a triple lifebloom stack, which is the equivalent of dropping about +300 healing on your gear. You also lose the ability to swiftmend, which hurts your MT healing. You lose improved regrowth, which hurts your ability to quickly spot heal the raid. I'm not saying that IFF and IS aren't raid viable, I'm just saying that if you're going to get them you should probably just go moonkin and not try to continue healing.

Checotah · 12/06/07, 2:48 PM

Addition:
Boot Enchant: If vitality is difficult to find, Magister's armor kits (scryer leatherworking) are another option. (3mp5)

Question:
Also, I have a question for the community about HoT timers. Have any of you come across one that registers mouseover heals? So far, NECB and HoTCandy do not register mouseover casts.

Thanks!

Noressa · 12/06/07, 3:24 PM

The newest Dotimer does for me. It tells me how many stacks of LB I have on my target as well.

Aesthetic · 12/11/07, 7:31 AM

This is a hella long post and I've read as much of it as I could. I didnt see anywhere that listed where the + healing curve is for a resto druid. Mine is currently at almost 2020 all buffed. I've tried testing out how much healing I'm losing by ditching +heal in increments of 100. By going down from 2020 to around 1700ish, my rejuv goes from 991 a tick to 863. Currently my personal raiding achievements are only kara, zul aman, & Gruul's (although i havent received any gear from Gruul yet). Anyway, here is a link to my armory if anyone could give any feedback as to what they feel would be best for me to go for at this point. +heal ok? or ditch some for more spirit / mp5?

The World of Warcraft Armory

side note: I might be wearing the dark blessing mace I just got off of zul'jin in my armory. I've decided not to wear it yet (or maybe not at all) until I can stack more +haste gear to make it worth it. I see at the beginning of this post that spell haste rating is pointless for druids since we mainly HoT. Although with haste rating stacked along with the scarab of infinite trink that would make a 1 second regrowth cast time when it procs. Since there is a global cd on instant cast heals it would make regrowth a nifty life saver along with all of our other "o shit" buttons. Eh, I dunno I just started thinking about the haste thing since I got the mace. Id hate to see it go to waste if there was something I could do to make it work for me.

I usually raid with the Lights justice w/ +81 healing chant on it. My spec is full resto (including all the HT talents) is because I run a lot of heroics. Which I usually stay out of tree form for heroic boss fights.

Also, I see the original post along with a lot of replys on lifebloom stacking. Awhile ago I researched a lot of forums/guides on this topic. I found that there is a big split of people that think stacking lifebloom is the way to go and others that think that letting 1 lifebloom expire then reapplying another is best. I, personally have been doing the 1 and letting it go. I know it has a nice tick stacked but I felt that it wasnt very mana efficient not letting the end "bloom" pop every application. Seems like a waste of a good 2k heal. Especially on MT's when there are generally other people healing them as well. I find that one rejuv, lifebloom and possibley a regrowth ticking at all times does the trick nicely. Eh, I guess it depends on the fight & healing assignments. Anyway, any helpful input would much appreciated. Thanks!

Noressa · 12/11/07, 10:56 AM

There is no real +healing curve that I can think of, I'm not sure quite what it is you're asking aside from "rate my gear and suggest my upgrades". Your gear is more then fine for the content you're on. There is no curve for our +heal, if you have the mana to sustain your healing. Since our 3-stack lifebloom gets 150% of our +heal bonus, the more you can manage for that (generally considered our staple heal) the better. General rule of thumb is if you're not running out of mana get more +heal, if you're having mana issues, focus on your regen.

As for healing style, consider it this way. In the 7 seconds it takes for the lifebloom to go for the 2k bloom, you're getting ~240 per tick, with we'll say 2k for the sake of argument. That's 1680+2000, or 3680 healing. A triple stack of lifebloom during that same period gives you 4,320 healing assuming a 6 second refresh for the same mana cost. You get 700 more healing for the same cost, not including any trinket effect you may get. It's not a wasted heal by any stretch. 3 lifeblooms, rejuv and regrow will do an amazing amount of healing, yes, but your efficiency goes down if you don't stack it.

As for haste, regrow is typically cast once every 21 to 26 seconds as a HOT refresh, so having a trinket that only really effects that as a spell is mostly a waste. Get the lower city prayerbook, essence of the martyr or Tome of Diabolic Remedy, all easily accessible.

Lear · 12/11/07, 11:02 AM

Originally Posted by Aesthetic

This is a hella long post and I've read as much of it as I could. I didnt see anywhere that listed where the + healing curve is for a resto druid. Mine is currently at almost 2020 all buffed. I've tried testing out how much healing I'm losing by ditching +heal in increments of 100. By going down from 2020 to around 1700ish, my rejuv goes from 991 a tick to 863. Currently my personal raiding achievements are only kara, zul aman, & Gruul's (although i havent received any gear from Gruul yet). Anyway, here is a link to my armory if anyone could give any feedback as to what they feel would be best for me to go for at this point. +heal ok? or ditch some for more spirit / mp5?

If you're dying to raid damage get more stamina. if you're running out of mana get more mp5/spirit. Otherwise, grab as much +heal as you can get away with. There's no such thing as enough until your lifebloom ticks are hitting for your MT's full hp every tick. Spell haste and spell crit are both nearly useless to a ToL, so +heal is the only effective route to improving your total healing.

Originally Posted by Aesthetic

Also, I see the original post along with a lot of replys on lifebloom stacking. Awhile ago I researched a lot of forums/guides on this topic. I found that there is a big split of people that think stacking lifebloom is the way to go and others that think that letting 1 lifebloom expire then reapplying another is best. I, personally have been doing the 1 and letting it go. I know it has a nice tick stacked but I felt that it wasnt very mana efficient not letting the end "bloom" pop every application. Seems like a waste of a good 2k heal. Especially on MT's when there are generally other people healing them as well. I find that one rejuv, lifebloom and possibley a regrowth ticking at all times does the trick nicely. Eh, I guess it depends on the fight & healing assignments. Anyway, any helpful input would much appreciated. Thanks!

Not much controversy here. Outside of exceptionally low +healing values rolling a lifebloom is the clear winner in HPS and HPM. The one edge case that comes to mind is if you're raid healing and you're able to spam single lifeblooms on different targets every cooldown without losing them to overheal. I guess there has to be a guild out there without resto shamans somewhere...

giansm · 12/11/07, 11:34 AM

If you're healing one or more tanks you want to stack +healing as high as you can afford, while not running out of mana. This is mostly because of the amazing scaling on a 3-stack lifebloom: it receives about 30% of your bonus healing per second, which is in the same ballpark as a casted heal and not other hots.

Also as far as I can remember the debate about 3-stack vs. let-bloom was around early in TBC but is pretty much dead by now, I don't think many people advocate letting them bloom anymore at least on tanks. I think that change of opinion may have been around the time that lifebloom was changed to allow the full +heal bonus to all three stacks, which was a major buff to 3-stacking. Rolling a stack, in addition to providing equal or more healing, provides much steadier and more consistent healing.

Edit: I'm not really sure what you mean by "healing curve" so if you're still interested maybe you could elaborate on that a bit.

Bigtoy · 12/19/07, 1:18 PM

I've been working on a new macro for tree healing.

/target TANKNAME
/cast [modifer: shift] Rejuvenation [modifier: ctrl] Swiftmend [modifier: alt] Nature's Swiftness [nomodifier] Lifebloom
/cast Healing Touch
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

I create one for each tank in my guild and I map them to F, G, C, V. So for my main tank, Schwa, my keystrokes are as follows:

F: Lifebloom schwa
Shift-F: Rejuv schwa
Ctrl-F: Swiftmend schwa
Alt-F: NS/HT schwa.

I've been using Clique/Grid to keep my HoTs up, but I stare so intently at my grid that I often lose track of my assignments in highly mobile fights like Alar. It's taken some getting used to, but I really like it so far. It's really fast to adjust the tanks for each raid, or even in the middle of a raid.

Code-wise, I'm not wild about using /target at the top as you can also put in target=Schwa in each brace but this is easier to cut/paste for each tank. But this has been working better for me.

xynce · 12/23/07, 3:14 AM

I noticed nobody mentioned any sort of synergy between Masquerade Gown and Bangle of Endless Blessings. This seems like a very nice way for druids to leverage spirit based regen for tree form without having to be a 375 mooncloth tailor, nor is it otherwise very difficult to obtain. I don't think I would go the spirit route for regen when healing from a group with few tanks. Proccing the gown and popping the trinket means the raid gets an on-use trinket like effect for +healing (275 spirit, or an extra 68 healing to any healer doing anything to the tank) while having a very beefy innervate, meaning you can afford to spam much longer, meaning you can hopefully proc either (or both) more often.

However, I'm not sure how effective that would actually be because between consumables and being a tree I have very few mana issues but it would be an easy option for anybody just breaking into tree healing.

Does anybody know what the proc rate and procs per minute happens to be with both the gown and the bangle?

taiketsu121 · 12/28/07, 3:17 PM

another good spec choice is for reduced mana, and high healing power.

my spec is 27/0/34 that way i get everything that is really needed for druid healing. all that i miss is impowered rejuvination and a few points in improved regrowth. i miss one point in improved regrowth, but i get alot more healing power as well as getting the reduced casting time on regrowth. i find it quite helpful when healing in the 25 mans because i can put out the big heals and i do not waste as much mana as would be expected because of the 10% mana reduction from moonglow.

this is also good because i use the ribbon of sacrifice trinket as well as the lower city prayer book, and i use them both and rank 1 healing touch to stack up the ribbon's effect. after i have the 5 stack of the ribbon i can either instant cast a healing touch 13 or i can just cast it depending on the amount of healers on the tank.

also another good strat is to use regrowth first which has ~50% chance to crit on my target from the talent+my crit chance and that will reduce my casting time by .5 seconds making my healing touch rank 13 a 2.5 second cast which is not as bad as expected.

Kamileon · 12/28/07, 4:19 PM

No, Healing Touch bad.

Edit: No seriously, you need to go back and read up on the OP and healing with Lifebloom and rolling lifeblooms. Using Healing Touch regularly is outdated and you're not doing yourself or the people you're healing any favors by still using it. You'll still use more mana overall with 10% from moonglow and the much more expensive regrowth/HT spells than if you use Hots, even out of tree. If you're seriously looking for a high-healing, reduced mana spec, 27/0/34 isn't it.

apochrypha · 01/04/08, 5:56 AM

Been keeping up with this thread a bit. I posted a while back on the first page about mana issues and would like to say that since the 15%>30% intensity buff and going back to LB spam, I have had 0 mana problems and top meters. Thanks blizz.

About the +healing curve thing, I gear for a balance of stats. Imo, spirit is built into our gear sufficiently enough not to use the 9 healing + 4 spr gems. I think a target of stats to have for BT raiding is approx. 200-250 mp5 and 1900-2100 +healing. Of course, everyone is different and has access to different gear. When we started hyjal I was at about 150 mp5 and 1650 +healing.

The real conflict a druid faces is the battle of the global cd. Its incredibly annoying to me to have to wait for my gcd to be done before I can do the next thing I want to do.

For those doing dreamstate or w/e build... just my opinion, but if a guild wants a direct healer, they will take a paly or priest who have far better MPH heals. Lifebloom is the most overpowered heal ever. Factoring in lifebloom and prayer of minding on our raids, I'm almost always top on healing (although it doesnt always seem like it due to much of lifebloom healing being credited to other raid members on the bloom). Just my opinion...

Blackpatch · 01/07/08, 1:11 PM

Originally Posted by Bigtoy

I've been working on a new macro for tree healing...

Thanks for this macro! There are some typos in it. The corrected version is:

/target TANKNAME
/cast [modifier: shift] Rejuvenation; [modifier: ctrl] Swiftmend; [modifier: alt] Nature's Swiftness; [nomodifier] Lifebloom
/cast Healing Touch
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()