Current changes, requests, etc. that I am working on can be found in the 2nd post of this page here Tree Healing Guide (IN PROGRESS)
If you haven't read the FAQ posts, please refer back to it here. Or more specifically where it says "Please note this post is not for general discussion about Restoration. It is being critiqued to become a Think Tank article. Please limit responses to the actual content of the first post, anything remotely derailing from the critique will receive an infraction."
I put this together a little while ago and posted it on my guild website. I pulled a lot of information off the Moonkin TTT article written by Arawethion, as I couldn't think of a better base outline. I have taken what a lot of people have commented on these forums, as well as other forums, and made a general outline of Tree Healing. I am looking to update this, get a better picture of what needs to be added, taken out, and get more facts and statistics based on math, rather than me just saying "this is bad".
The general Idea of how I play a Restoration Druid was said best a few months ago by one of my trial members:
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Originally Posted by Exemplar
Druids are better used for foundation raid healing (rolling rejuvs and wild growth on as many targets as possible), leaving other healers to top people off. This sounds easy on paper, but you also need to factor in movement, possibly rolling LBs on tanks, Tranquility use in dire situations, conserving your own mana enough so that you can give out your Innervate to other healers, emergency NS+HT or SM on someone with 2% hp, helping the other healers top people off before a huge wave of incoming damage (Algalon or Freya), etc. etc.
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With that, This thread is going to go over mechanics (or anything else that I (or we) feel that need to be added) of a general "Raid Blanketing" healing style.
Druid Abbreviations and Terminology that you will run into quite often:
In resto druid discussion, you hear a lot about 5x1 healing. What this simply means is the druid is going to cast 5 Rejuvenations, followed by a Wild Growth. Then repeat that, as they heal accross the raid (or in most of our cases, Grid). This style of healing is called blanketing, and it usually allows us to cover 3 groups at a time, with some very strong healing.
[Swiftmend] - SM
[Celestial Focus] - CF
[Living Seed] - LS
[Nature's Swiftness] - NS
[Healing Touch] - HT
[Nature's Grace] - NG
[Wild Growth] - WG
[Gift of the Earthmother] - GotEM
[Tree of Life] - ToL
[Empowered Touch] - ET
[Natural Perfection] - NP
[Lifebloom] - LB
Talent Points:
The core of the spec will include the following talents:
[Will be updating this section shortly]
18/0/53
This spec is focused on a full powered Rejuvenation/Wild Growth for a raid healing druid. It skips Living Seed and Empowered Touch, making Nourish a weaker spell, allowing room for Regrowth to be our "go to Flash Heal". Regrowth can benefit from CF, NG, and the full 10% of GotEM, and it doesn't need the 2 points in Empowered Touch, allowing us to keep Revitalize and pick up CF.
There also comes a point where you will no longer need Celestial Focus; aka, when you reach the soft haste cap (see below). Then it comes to choosing a talent spec with "extra" talents.
11/0/60. We basically eliminated the extra points in Balance we used to pick up CF. That gives us 7 points to use in the restoration tree. Talents to pick up quickly will be ET (for Nourish), and LS (for Nourish and Regrowth). 2/3 NP or 2/2 Improved Barkskin is your choice of where to spend the last 2 points. I personally choose 2/2 Imp. Barkskin for 10% extra damage reduction. Algalon Stars, Twins Vortex, as well as many other encounters this talent CAN become very useful. However, you may also never use it. Now when talking about the use of Regrowth over Nourish more often, I think at this point, putting our 7 points back in resto, mainly buffing Nourish, making it our go-to spell once again, if a HoT is present.
These talent choices are based on my play style and personal preference. A lot of druids do not pick up revitalize, as they feel giving this "minor" benefit to other healers and the DPS isn't a big deal, or isn't their job. This is one of the biggest debates/discussions around.
Jula's post with a combat log is one good example of how Revitalize can help your raid.
The Glyphs:
[For a more detailed look into the glyphs, see the Glyph Discussion thread to determine what glyphs may be best for you. Link will be provided once the overhaul of our Resto threads is done.]
[Glyph of Nourish] - A strong buff to Nourish, used well with tank healing.
[Glyph of Lifebloom] - Useful for rolling on tanks while tank healing.
[Glyph of Wild Growth] - 20% increase to one of your primary spells.
[Glyph of Innervate] - 43.70 MP5 If used every 3 minutes.
[Glyph of Swiftmend] - A must have if you use this spell a couple time per fight.
[Glyph of Rebirth] - Not a bad choice for progression. It was nice for the Tank in IC Hardmode.
[Glyph of Regrowth] - An alternative to glyph of Nourish, can be used well for tank healing.
[Glyph of Healing Touch] - Used for a quick sub 1.0 second heal. See's very little use in standard raid healing builds.
[Glyph of Rejuvenation] - One of the better progression glyphs. Anub'Arak, and AoE Damage fights. It is most useful when learning and gearing up to an encounter.
[Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation] - New glyph added in 3.3. Great for non 25 man content, and still good if there is more than 1 Tree in the raid or it fits your personal healing style.
Rejuve, Wild Growth, and Swiftmend are my standard Glyphs. 3.3 allows us to weave in Rapid Rejuvenation, most replace the original Rejuvenation glyph. Personal Preference will take place, based on your role/healing style. Again, see the Glyph Guide for more information on these glyphs.
The Stats:
Your core healing stats consist of the following:
Intellect - Provides 0.00612% to crit per point, along with 15.3 mana per point. (0.006732% crit and 17.16 mana with Blessing of Kings). Raid buffed, each point of intellect provides 0.210 MP5 through replenishment alone.
Spirit - Provides 0.15 spellpower per point with Improved ToL. With Blessing of Kings, Living Spirit, and Improved Mark of the Wild, it provides 0.19+ spellpower.
Haste - 32.79 haste rating gives 1% spell haste. There is a threshold at which haste loses some value; this occurs when the GCD hits 1.0s. Below this cap, all of our spells feel the full value of haste. Above it, Nourish and instants no longer benefit from haste, but all other spells still benefit fully. Haste is a very valuable stat under the cap.
Critical - 45.9 critical strike rating gives 1% to crit.
The mana regeneration formula used:
ManaRegen(SPI, INT) = (0.001+SPI*0.003345*(INT^0.5))*5
This means that Spirit and Intellect both effect eachother. 1 point of Spirit does not have a static MP5, as its MP5 gain is based on how much Intellect you have, and same goes the other way.
My stat priority will almost always run in the following order:
W/O 4T9 set bonus = Haste to cap > Spellpower > Spirit > Intellect > Haste rating > Critical.
With 4T9 set bonus = Haste to cap > Spellpower > Critical > Spirit > Intellect > Haste.
For exact numerical comparisons, plug your setup into
Tree Calcs
Spellpower & Coefficients
This portion was directly taken from Nofair's
Restoration Itemization
Spellpower increases the healing of each spell differently. In the table below the number in the "no talents" columns are how they scale without any talents. The full talents column is the coefficient if you have Master Shapeshifter, Gift of Nature, Improved Rejuvenation, Empowered Touch, Empowered Rejuvenation, Genesis and Tree of Life active. After some testing Nofair concluded the following:
- Gift of Nature and Genesis stack. They increase HoTs by 15% (1.15 coefficient) instead of 10% and 5% seperately (1.155 coefficient). They also stack with improved Rejuvenation (making the coefficient for this spell 1.3).
- Empowered Rejuvenation affects both the final Lifebloom ticks as the initial Regrowth heal. Genesis does not affect these.
- Master Shapeshifter, Tree of Life aura and Gift of Nature with Genesis are all multiplicative. This means: healing * 1.15 (GoN + Genesis) * 1.06 (ToL aura) * 1.04 (Master Shapeshifter).
- Wild Growth's extra bonus healing is divided equally over the ticks, in contrast to the base healing which heals less each tick.
SPELL NO TALENTS FULL TALENTS
Lifebloom HoT 0.666 [0.095] 1.013 [0.145]
Lifebloom Bloom 0.645 0.939
Rejuvenation 1.88 [0.376] 3.233 [0.647]
Regrowth Initial 0.537 0.781
Regrowth HoT 1.316 [0.188] 2.002 [0.286]
Nourish w/o HoT 0.671 0.814
Nourish with HoT 0.806 0.977
Healing Touch 1.611 2.439
Wild Growth n/a 1.225 [0.175]
The numbers in brackets are the coefficients per tick (these are more important as Nature's Splendor uses these coefficients for each tick).
Haste Rating:
When people talk about a "haste cap" on spells, they mean reducing 1.5 second cast time spells, such as Nourish and instant casts, to a 1.0 second cast time spell. The following requirements are needed to obtain 1.0 second cast on Nourish and GCD's without the use of NG, but also factoring in GotEM:
With [Improved Moonkin Form]or[Swift Retribution] + [Wrath of Air Totem] (8%)
NO [Celestial Focus] [Lifebloom]: 449 haste rating. All other spells: 856
[Celestial Focus] [Lifebloom]: 339 haste rating. All other spells: 735
[Wrath of Air Totem] Alone (5%)
NO [Celestial Focus] [Lifebloom]: 563 haste rating. All other spells: 980
[Celestial Focus] [Lifebloom]: 449 haste rating. All other spells: 856
[Improved Moonkin Form]or[Swift Retribution] Alone (3%)
NO [Celestial Focus] [Lifebloom]: 638 haste rating. All other spells: 1063
[Celestial Focus] [Lifebloom]: 523 haste rating. All other spells: 936
With no haste buffs (0%)
NO [Celestial Focus] [Lifebloom]: 757 haste rating. All other spells: 1193
[Celestial Focus] [Lifebloom]: 638 haste rating. All other spells: 1063
Set Bonuses:
If you can't get an abundance of frost badges, get 4PC T9. It is easy to get with the new dungeon system.
Item - Druid T9 Restoration 2P Bonus = 5% crit to a spell that makes up for less than 10% of your healing with over a 50% chance to crit before this bonus.
Item - Druid T9 Restoration 4P Bonus (Rejuvenation) = Allows one of our HoT's and our primary healing spell to crit, rendering critical rating useful.
Item - Druid T10 Restoration 2P Bonus = Weaker than it reads. 30% less decay adds less than 5% healing to this spell. Use the tree calcs spread sheet to determine how much it will effect your WG.
Item - Druid T10 Restoration 4P Bonus (Rejuvenation) = Still has a lot of unknown effects and data. Best case scenario, it will be nearly a 15% increase to rejuvenation healing. This bonus has the ability to become very strong, or very weak.
It is not recommended by me that you break your 4PC T9 to pick up this 2PC T10. However, some do. Check in the Treecalcs spread sheet or Rawr for any HPS confirmations.
Gems:
I have always been a fan of socket bonuses. I have had the standard of running this setup:
Red:
[Runed Cardinal Ruby]
Blue:
[Purified Dreadstone]
Yellow:
[Reckless Ametrine] - to haste cap
[Luminous Ametrine] - after haste cap
Meta:
[Insightful Earthsiege Diamond] - Ember Skyflare is an alternative, but should only be done with proper stat weight/gemming/trinketing. This is the last place you should drop regen.
Idols - Pretty simple really:
[Idol of Flaring Growth] - Easy to obtain with Triumph.
[Idol of the Black Willow] - 22 SP upgrade from Flaring Growth. Nothing better in the game.
Trinkets:
Things to look at in trinkets are usually a static spellpower gain, along with another effect such as MP5, or a proc/use of the sort. Most of your proc's on healing trinkets would be MP5
[Sif's Remembrance], or mana return of the sort. Outside of mana gain, trinket proc's that increase our spellpower and other stats are often not very well utilized when it comes to healing. Static gains of mana or just static trinkets, like
[Illustration of the Dragon Soul] are generally what you would look for.
The worse proc for us is haste. Remember that even if you're under the soft cap, haste rating that's applied in a short burst (such as the
[Embrace of the Spider] effect) will be mostly over the softcap. Don't make the mistake of averaging out the haste value from a trinket and then applying it all at a sub-softcap value. If you have control over the haste effect
[Scale of Fates], you can mitigate this somewhat by activating the trinket only at the beginning of possible Regrowth spam, or hasted rejuvenation needs, and maybe a needed tranquility. In the end, haste proc trinkets are the worse trinkets we can find, as past the soft cap, they don't speed up any of our GCD's or 1.5 second spells.
Finally, the
[Solace of the Defeated] both heroic and non equip is extremely strong. The two versions of it are the two best available trinkets before ICC, by a wide margin. Even then, if regen is slightly even needed, will most likely remain the best.
Consumables:
[Flask of the Frost Wyrm] will remain the best, unless HP is needed, then Stoneblood is good there.
[Potion of Wild Magic] are best for healing, especially with 4PC T9. If you have mana issues,
[Runic Mana Potion] is clearly your choice.
[Crazy Alchemist's Potion] is ideal of you are an alchemist.
Enchants:
Excluding profession bonuses.
* Head: 30 spellpower/20 crit (Kirin Tor revered)
* Shoulders: 24 spellpower/15 crit (Sons of Hodir exalted)
* Back - 23 haste
* Chest - 10 stats. 8 stats is cheaper option at a tiny stat loss.
* Wrists - 30 spellpower
* Gloves - 28 spellpower
* Leggings - 50 spellpower/20 spirit. 50 spellpower/30 stamina is another option if you want more HP.
* Boots - Run speed/15 stam.
* Weapon - 63 spellpower to a 1H, or 81 spellpower to a staff.
Note: If mana is an issue, or your missing 4PC T9, then the MP5 version of the Helm/Shoulder enchants can be a good alternative.
Professions:
Tailoring gives a strong HPS benefit.
Lightweave Embroidery - Spell - World of Warcraft gives 295 spellpower for 15 seconds, 35% proc on spellcast, 60 second cooldown. It can proc off HoT ticks, making the average proc time around 2 seconds. 70 spellpower is a decent estimate of the average benefit, minus the 23 haste you'd normally have on your cloak, so the total benefit here is worth roughly 55 spellpower (A bit less if you're below the haste softcap, potentially slightly weaker than the other professions). Amusingly, the enchant also gives 1 Spirit for some reason. However, as a healer, and as a resto druid, it is harder to weigh the proc. Not a bad profession if you decide to pick it up.
Darkglow Embroidery - Spell - World of Warcraft offers you a gain of approximately 33 MP5
A minor bonus of Tailoring is that one [Eternium Thread], you can swap your leg enchant between 20 Spirit and 30 Stamina for encounters where extra HP can be beneficial.
Alchemy: With either
[Flask of the North] or Mixology (with your
[Flask of the Frost Wyrm]) will give you 47 spellpower.
Allowing:
[Endless Mana Potion],
[Crazy Alchemist's Potion], double-duration Flasks, and the ability to transmute a gem once a day.
Blacksmithing: An extra socket each in your wrists and gloves, each with a
[Runed Cardinal Ruby], gives 46 spellpower. An alternative to this with and being under haste is socketing with
[Reckless Ametrine] for a little more haste.
Enchanting: 23 spellpower to each ring gives 46 spellpower.
Inscription: 70 spellpower/15 crit to shoulders in place of the Sons of Hodir enchant gives 46 spellpower.
Jewelcrafting: 3
[Runed Dragon's Eye] in place of 3
[Runed Cardinal Ruby] gives 48 spellpower.
Leatherworking: 76 spellpower to bracers in place of the usual 30 spellpower gives 46 spellpower.
Engineering and Skinning are weaker, both giving less benefit than the 46 spellpower.
Engineering gives Hyperspeed Accelerators (340 haste for 12s every minute) and 27 spellpower to cloak. You are losing 23 static haste from your back piece to gain 27 spellpower. Like the trinkets, haste uses/proc's are not very appetizing. Rocketboots however, can be fun, and very useful in some encounters.
Skinning gives 40 crit rating.
Mining and Herbalism provide minor survivability benefits, but no HPS gain.
Gear selection:
End game caster gear have Intellect, Stamina, Spellpower, and 2 out of the following: crit rating, hit rating, haste rating, or Spirit. When determining the value of any piece, these are a few things to look for:
- Higher-ilvl gear is stronger. Spellpower increases very regularly with ilvl, so it is a predictable gain.
- More sockets are better (since they allow us to stack more spellpower, or haste when needed).
- Crit rating effects Regrowth, Swiftmend, Nourish, Healing Touch, and the bloom of Lifebloom, seeing less than 15% of our total healing on average. 4PC T9 allows it to effect Rejuvenation.
- Haste rating is very important, until you hit your soft haste cap.
Your tier pieces since T8 run 2x Spirit/Haste and 3x Spirit/Critical. With haste being so important to us now, I recommend to run 2xHaste and 2xCritical, bringing in that 5th piece from a non Tier item with haste. In T9 your legs and shoulders have haste, and T10 your Gloves and Legs have haste. In T9 or 10, running 4PC with the a Haste chest slot is your prime choice. However, any haste piece that replaces a Tier crit piece will do.
Useful Macros:
[Will be adding a little bit more. Addons & UI, Macros, and possibly tips on certain bosses, like Anub'Arak or Faction Champions]