Your Nourish takes you five seconds to cast? You need to get farther away from Heigan.

I am Druid Healer in a well-going content-clear guild, and a few days ago my Class Leader asked me why I was constantly behind the other healers on the healing meters...

Here is our WWS: Wow Web Stats (Treeston, that's me)
"Bibabuzelkuh" and "Psychobilly" are our other two resto druids in that run, whereas only the former has the same equip niveau as I have. (Check our armories for Gear information, we're on EU Azshara)

I tried myself, but I just noticed that I have more casts of Regrowth, but less HoT ticks...am I just using the wrong spells/healing the wrong targets?

From what I see with a quick perusal of your WWS, there are three main problems that could cause this. The first is you only have a 78% prescence, which either means you die a lot early in the fight or you were late to the raid. Secondly, by looking at who you are healing, it appears you are much more focused on tank healing than the other resto druids. They seem to be very proactive about healing raid damage and tank second whereas you are very much more on the tank. In fact, on one boss fight I looked at, it appears that you did like 60% of the total tank healing. You also have an absurd amount of overheal (especially on Regrowth).

To me, it seems as though you haven't learned which spells to use most effectively when, and the other resto druids seem to be much more cut-throat about picking up the raid healing. This is boosting their numbers and pushing you down. So, you need to focus on spell usuage and to be more competitive.

That's what I see, but others might think differently.

And from what I remember, this really hurts living seed if you spec for it.

@StolenLegacy
You did around 500 casts of RG but only 70 or so RJ? If the target isn't close to dying, just put a rejuv there.

(Also: Do not sign your posts, read forum rules)

You have too many healers for Naxx (unless you are going for the no death achievement), so healing meters are just measuring who is a better sniper.

Easy guide to topping healing meters as a resto druid:

Step 1: Lifebloom/Rejuv every tank who is taking damage. If you find yourself with spare time, also put Regrowth on them.
Step 2: Is the raid expected to take damage? (Malygos/Thaddius/Maexxna/Sapphiron/Loatheb/Gothik dead side/Kel'Thuzad/etc.) Wild Growth on every cooldown, and blanket the raid with Rejuvs. Modify this step appropriately so you don't run out of mana, but still cover the damage when it happens.
Step 3: PROFIT!

Edit: That isn't to say this is all there is to druid healing, you also want to learn to respond to spikes with Swiftmend, Nature's Swiftness and Nourish, and learn when Regrowth is worth using on the raid. But learning these things will not make a big difference on the meters, though it will make you a far better healer. Also druids have enough spells where there isn't a single good healing style -- some druids use Regrowth as a main spell rather than Rejuv and have good success with that.

Edit2: For reference, here is a recent WWS: Wow Web Stats

Is 7 really considered too many these days? My guild normally brings 7, sometimes 8 if we just end up with it, and seem fine. I've been wondering about this, cause the healing meters end up being somewhat odd compared to what most people usually see, and so maybe it's an overstock of healers. I'm guessing 6 is what people consider optimal these days? (WWS Example for out of whack meter results: Wow Web Stats )

Thanks a lot for the tips, I will try that on our next raid.
@Inorrri: You can mouseover a spell to see its english description, but here is a short table with the main Druid Heals:
Nachwachsen - Regrowth
Blühendes Leben - Lifebloom
Wildwuchs - Wild Growth
Pflege - Nourish
Verjüngung - Rejuvenation
Samenkorn des Lebens - Living Seed
Rasche Heilung - Swiftmend
Heilende Berührung - Healing Touch
Gelassenheit - Tranquility
Anregen - Innervate

5-6 healers for Naxx is fine right now. Some guilds could probably even run with less. The content is just not that much of a challenge right now, and the extra DPS can just get you through the raid quicker. Of course, when Ulduar comes out, guilds will probably bring around 7-8 healers for progession, and adjust it accordingly.

StolenLegacy, right. Most of needed info was said above, so I'll just give numbers from my raids (don't have wws parses)
WG: 25-30%
Rejuv: ~20-25%
LB: ~15-25%
Regrowth: 10-15%
Everything else

I'm generally #2 on overall and #1 on boss fights with 2-4 priests, 1-2 paladins and 1-2 resto druids (1 of them is me).Yes, I know I said Nax-25 can be cleared with 3 healers, it's just that raid leaders from my previous raiding guild didn't quite understand that, so I managed to end most of boss fights with 80% mana without innervating (and yes, scoring #1 on healing done as well)..


Buttom line: you're a hot healer, not a nuker. So use hots as much as possible.

I have a question regarding heal parses. I'm in a 25-man raid guild that has cleared Nax 10/25, Maly 10/25, and OS+2D 10/25. During raids, I am always at the top of the healing done parse, and whenever there are multiple druids we are inevitably ahead by 500-1000 HPS overall, sometimes more.

Other healers and the leadership believe that either: 1) Heal parses are druid-biased, blaming some of the overhealing of other classes on the constant ticking of our HoTs. 2) Parses only tell part of the story (this being a catch-all way of dismissing the heal parse)... I agree that overall healing/HPS doesn't indicate who is being healed and how, but shouldn't overall healing still be indicative of other healers' performance?

So basically my question is: Should other healing classes be comparable with druids on the parse? Are heal parses biased towards druids somehow? Is it normal for the druids to always be at the top of the heal parse? Here's an example from OS25+2D:

Wow Web Stats

Well most of those fights favor druids so its not a surprise that they are on top. Multi drake Sarth has 2-3 tanks taking damage almost constantly for the first half of the fight and they are probably not close enough most of the time for chainheal to bounce although there is enough raid damage happening that it should keep them busy. Hoting everybody that takes steady damage gives druids an edge on meters

Saph is a no brainier as so much steady raid damage is happening. If you go crazy and maintain rejuve on 15+ targets on that fight most ticks will end up healing something. A few ticks will be sniped but many will land. Even on KT there is fairly steady damage incoming so maintaining a rejuve on several targets is not a bad idea. Druids also tend to have the quickest option for landing a good sized heal on anybody frost blasted. A 1sGCD rejuve followed by a swiftmend will probably be the first heal nuke to land if they are in range of you to begin with. Additionally there are off tanks during phase 3 that you can hot in addition to the MT padding the druid lead.

I will comment that your resto shaman should be doing much better on the meters however. Even if your druids are very very good at prehoting chain heal should put him very close behind on the overall heal. Is it a gear issue or a skill issue? The second holy priest is also not accomplishing much but his gear looks weaker than the others. Regardless the overall healing looks about right considering the fights favor druids quite a bit in that parse. The only one that seems far too low is the shaman. I'm assuming both of those druids are generally considered some of your strongest healers? The ones that will keep a target alive if anybody can?

Most of my guilds parses come out with the druid(myself) on top followed closely by the shaman. We'll have a moderate lead over the priests and pallies that will be in a fairly tight pack. The only reason I lead is my raid tends to use me as a tank buffer any time there is more than 1 tank on the field and the steady hots generally do more than chainheal on the raid. Fights with a single tank and random raid damage (aka something not worth prehoting due to randomness) normally put the shaman's on top the priests/pallies in their normal clump and me right behind the shaman.

some basics first
The World of Warcraft Armory
WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Druid -> Talent Calculator
369 haste
2150 sp with majestic figurine up

resto druid healing via glyphed HT.

you dont actually lose your big heal. you actually gain a bigger (and actually faster) heal. the spec revolves around a modified 14/0/57 where you actually do end up taking naturalist and empowered rejuv instead of subtlety and whatever else you decide to do with the useless points (replenish i guess).

the strategy now becomes roll hots on the tank/offtank. wild growth as needed and when you need a big heal, regrowth followed right after by a healing touch. simple.

now heres some numbers for ya. as of doing these tests...im assuming u have the regrowth, swiftmend and healing touch glyphs and regrowth is already on the target. i used myself, only buffs i have are gift. 369 haste. my gcd is 1.348 (1.078 for the heals affected by GOTEM)

worst case scenario:

regrowth hits for 5500. 1.8 seconds
healing touch hits for 5300. 0.9 seconds
swiftmend for 6100

Total amount of heals. 16900
Time to complete cycle- 1.8 + .9 + .5 = 3.2 seconds

the .5 is time u have to wait for your GCD to catch up

so under worse case situations for the cycle, you heal the target for almost 17k, a number healing touch would heal for under best case situations raid buffed. cycle took 0.2 seconds more then a HT would have.

now lets see best case scenario.

regrowth crits for 8300. 1.8 seconds (or 1.2 if u had a natures grace already)
healing touch crits for 8400 0.4 seconds. (or 0.3 if you have one of the 505 haste trinkets or a BL)
swiftmend crits for 11000

Total amount of heals. 27700
Time to complete cycle-

1.8 + .4 + .9 = 3.1 seconds

or if u had a natures grace before starting the cycle:

1.3 + .4 + .9 = 2.6 seconds

the .9 is time u have to wait for your GCD to catch up

as u can see u clearly heal for a lot more then a standard HT would and in a similar (or shorter depending on natures grace procs) amount of time.



now, this is all assuming u do everything on 1 person. what could also happen is u regrowth the tank, then use the .4 second HT on a dps. this way you lose almost no time healing the tank but can still heal the dps in a really quick amount of time cause chances are, they might need it.


i really dont know how this would work for those using standard ui cause the targeting would take too long imo but for the grid/clique or healbot (i use healbot) users, it shouldnt be a problem.

also, i realize this eliminated the use of nourish completely. nourish was, by design, only useful for its speed. by having this new cycle, you have a quicker heal in HT while still retaining your big heal via the cycle i displayed. this effectively makes the t7/5 gear useless as there are better pieces for everything but the gloves (pants are arguable but i like the KT cloth pants or even the sapph cloth pants more).

thoughts? am i missing something?

Looking at WWS parses to determine where your healing can be improved as a guild is pointless right now. Crazy mana regen combined with the low difficulty of the fights in Wrath make for a poor foundation to improve on. As people are forced to pay attention and conserve mana and the fights are much more healing intensive, meaningful discussions will be valid. Right now I just know there will be a ton of changes in 3.1 to both how we heal and the content itself. It's just too hard to judge right now unless your guild is wiping to something constantly. Most guilds just need better players, not better healing strategies.

I agree with this idea.

The best and currently only meaningful way (I think) to use this data is to compare two or more healers with the same healing assignment of the same class. For example, if you have two Priests on raid heals and two Druids on tank healing, you can compare those four healers with respect to their class. Obviously, this will leave many situations where no direct comparison can be drawn.

I also think that comparing healing done to overhealing is useful. The best healer in a group should be 1-2 on healing done and bottom 2 on overhealing done. Of course this varies from boss fight to boss fight, so again it's hard to develop a standard for healer effectiveness.

That's exactly what I'm trying to determine: Whether we have some weak healers or if the meters are just not very indicative of healing ability.

Very good point. Granted pallies and priests like to say that druids push them into overhealing since our HoTs are constantly ticking, or say that their class is "geared towards more overhealing," but these seem like cop-outs.

Also good to know that there are some situations where no direct comparisons can be made. I guess it's difficult to compare overall healing or HPS of a tank healer against a raid healer and expect them to stack up equally.

I think this can be useful, as long as we are comparing apples to apples. For instance, a lot of overhealing on druid HOTs is not reported, while paladins assigned to keep up a tank on a hard hitting boss will always generate a lot of overheal, regardless of skill level.

In practice, overhealing in the raids I am in tends to go by class: druids tend to do the least reported overhealing, followed by priests, then shamans, and finally paladins.

Overhealing can be a symptom of poor play, but in my opinion overhealing is an effect of a class whose healing granularity is ill suited for the damage pattern of the encounter. What do I mean by this? Well, an encounter has a certain incoming DPS, that must be countered by healing. So, to keep up a tank vs a boss with DPS X, your _expected_ HPS on the tank must be at least X, and MOREOVER the variance of your healing must be low enough that the tank never gets spiked to death. If the variance of your healing is high, you will heal in big chunks, like paladins with holy light or priests with greater heal. Some of these chunks will land when the tank is full or nearly full, resulting in overheal, while others will land when the tank is low. Because the healer MUST maintain at least X HPS, AND relatively low variance to avoid death spikes, if X is high he will spam the high healing spell, resulting in a lot of overheal.

Druids, by contrast, even if they are assigned to tank healing have a lot of their healing come in little predictable chunks, with low variance. This is why, even taking unreported HOT overheal into account, their overhealing will be lower than that of priests and paladins. I think for this reason classes whose high HPS healing mode has 'high variance' will always have a lot of overhealing, even if they are good players.

Just a little update on this. I was guildless and bored, so I organized a Nax-25 PuG. With 6 healers, we managed to clear Plague + Spider Wing + Patchwerk in 1 go. Aiming at a full clear today. Most of the failchecks like Patch and Heigan were 1 shotted.

So.. if a pug manages to do it with 6, then for any raiding guild it should be <5.

You can also easily do naxx with <15 DPS so why replace extra healers with extra DPS? Groups bring more healers in order to gear them up and DE less gear. Having extra healers skews the meters but in such an easy environment analyzing healing is always going to be trivial and misleading.

You can also easily do naxx with <5 healers so why replace extra DPS with extra healers? Groups bring more DPS in order to gear them up and DE less gear. Having extra DPS makes the run faster and in such an easy environment analyzing healing is always going to be trivial and misleading.

Just to back this up, this is a parse from a Sap kill a week before the WG/CoH nerf, I was playing with seeing how many Revjs I could get ticking at the same time and managed to out heal even the CoH spamming priest. As others have said I am in no way saying this is the be all and end all of healing style but you can use it to prove a point. The point I was proving to the other healers was that the WG nerf is nothing like as harsh a nerf to healing output as the CoH nerf is to priests.

Parse here: Wow Web Stats

^ Guy beat me to it.

If healers are good, the outcome of most of the fights will always be the same - boss down without a wipe whether it's 4 healers or 10. Extra DPS, however, will always bring extra damage > faster kill time > less pressure on everybody > smoother runs (this part only works if healers are good).

I said in an earlier post that i thought nourish would become very powerful in 3.1 (just a guess after playing around) due to its low mana and buff to intensity, though after really trying it, Nourish just doesnt do as well as HT. I really tried using nourish in my rotation, but its just not very reliable. Its very RNG versus Glyphed HT (which ive used since 3.0 and have LOVED and defended intensly) Seeing this really shows its power, and reassures me that im not a noob for using HT glpyhed (ZOMG U LOZES UR NS+HT!) which... ns +ht is ok, but more or less becomes overheal... with HT glyphed i use NS + regrowth--just in case my regrowth is going to fall off i can refresh it real fast (or NS+Regrowth+ swiftmend if i really needed)

After really thinking, in ulduar is there going to be another set bonus with nourish to make it better and worthwhile or possibly a glyph? i currently have Headpiece of reconcilliation, Leggings of mortal arrogance, Spaulders of catatonia, so i dont really want to use t7.5, just because best in slot = best in slot.
I think if nourish had more talents (like combine imp regrowth to include nourish, thatd be sweet) or a glyph it might be viable. I mean, who is going to wear t7.5 in ulduar for set bonus?