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Resto Druid Questions

Mainly this is directed at drew, but any advice would be great. I'm basically wondering what mouse over macros you use, as well as addons for resto druid healing. I seem to need some help on managing the timers on my hots..hoping theirs an addon to help me watch that better. Also, suggestions on how to heal as a resto druid in a raid environment would be great, spell priority what to absolutely keep up at all times..etc Thanks in advance.

footballdude
Premium Member
join:2002-08-13
Imperial, MO

footballdude

Premium Member

I could use a primer here as well. My son's druid is level 71 now and I've been trying to heal Nexus and UK. So far I've had goof groups where everyone draws aggro and the tanks don't have defense gear and it's been a real challenge to keep everyone up and not go oom.

Stonehawk
Service with a smile
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join:2001-05-17
Madison, WI

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exactly...my 68 druid healer is well geared for the level, and heals a decent group well.....

get a fail group such as above, it gets real tough

drew
Radiant
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join:2002-07-10
Port Orchard, WA

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Well, let me gather some links from other threads and provide them here and write something up.

hsindogg
Premium Member
join:2002-06-21
Potomac, MD

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I use Grid, with some Grid plugin modules.

Here's a good guide on how to use grid to track HoT's on you targets.
»treebarkjacket.com/2009/ ··· racking/
»www.resto4life.com/2008/ ··· e-boxes/

In a raid environment, you need to know you role first. Are you being asked to heal tanks, heal raid, or heal certain people (such as TOC25 Jaraxus Incinerate Flesh).

Then understand your spells, and how you are going to use them to counter any incoming damage. Druids heals are best suited for pre-healing so that it can counteract income damage over time. Your best heal will be Rejuv, then Wild Growth, then either Regrowth or Lifebloom in a raid environment. If you're asked to do a more specific job, such as single heal, Nourish (with 2-3 hots on target) is very powerful, and so is a Glyphed/Spec'ed Healing Touch spec.
hsindogg

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hsindogg

Premium Member

Another thought, Druids are not great reactive healers, our strength comes from pre-healing targets that we anticipate incoming damage.

An example is on Korolarn. You have 1 tank taking direct damage. Another offtank only taking damage when he does Meteor Fist. As a druid, I'm thinking I need to keep up Regrowth, Rejuv on the MT because he's taking direct damage, and Lifebloom him when I get a free GCD (probably not often in this fight). OK...now the OT only takes damage when he does Meteor Fist. Using DBM timers, 2 seconds before Meteor Fist, I refresh Regrowth on both tanks, and Rejuvs, and WG on the MT. Meteor Fist hits for about 35K split between 2 targets. So I know my tanks have about 40k HP taking 15-18K every 2 seconds or so. I have 3 HoTs on each tank, and now I proceed to spam Nourish, which can crit for 10-12k in a 1.1 second cast, until Meteor Fist is over.

Knowing Korolarn does Burning Breath about 10 seconds after Meteor Fist, I rejuv as many RANGED people as I can, then about 1 second before Burning Breath happens, I WG anyone in the Melee group because I know all charges of WG will be used. Then I go back to Rejuv'ing as many people as I can, and WG'ing melee again 6 seconds later when it is off CD.

So, as a Druid, you need to know 1) Your role, 2) who is going to take damage, 3) how much damage, 4) how often.

Know all those aspects, you can then devise a plan to best use your heals to counteract income damage and keeping people alive.

9.8k HPS on Heroic Twin Valks, zup

drew
Radiant
Premium Member
join:2002-07-10
Port Orchard, WA

1 recommendation

drew to hsindogg

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LOL, so I was going to link my post on the subject of mods, but it has the EXACT same links that hsindogg See Profile's does.

Both guides are perfect.

As for macros themselves..

#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover,help,nodead][help][target=player] Swiftmend
 

Now replace Swiftmend with whatever spell (Healing Touch, Nourish, Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Regrowth, whatever.) you want to use. I recommend NOT doing this for innervate until you get used to the system or you're going to waste it a few too many times in clutch situations.

Here's where we have a bit of a problem. I don't heal like typical resto druids. The stuff you read about on EJ is good for like 20% of situations IMO. I don't waste a GCD and attention on the spriest that, after knowing the encounter, should NOT be taking anything but incidental damage that can be fixed by a rejuv on the target after the fact. This is why my effective healing is higher than a lot of resto druids. I play a hybrid reactive/proactive style.

Take an encounter like Gormokk the Impaler in ToC10. Other than melee and people with snobolds on them, there is NO REASON ranged will take more than a tick or two of fire damage. Thusly, it's not effective to roll rejuvs on your entire raid. You're wasting mana and GCDs. You're also going to be focusing too much on timers and not enough on the "oh shit" moments.

My strategy is pretty much this: Rejuv and Regrowth on the MT at all times. At least Rejuv on the OT (if applicable) and Regrowth if he's taking damage from a tick of something (Gormokk's impale?) constantly. This sets up a couple of things: 1) Hots for Swiftmending 2) 2 Hot'd Nourish spam. The most important person(s) in your group is 99% of the time going to be the tank(s) even when raid healing, keep your hots on the tanks.

On the rest of the raid, I keep rejuvs on people in a priority system:
1. Players that are going to be taking damage on a set schedule. You know that ABC Boss does an AOE stomp in a 360 degree radius in 10 yards from him that knocks some players back and does ~50% of their life? Figure out how many players and how many GCDs you'll need to use to get them with rejuv on them. Then if it'll take you 6 GCDs, cast your first rejuv with 6 seconds (assuming 1s GCD on rejuv) left on the timer.
2. Players who constantly don't know how to get out of fire quickly. If you run with the same group often, you'll run across a few people like this. They may do great DPS or whatever, but they take a little extra damage.
3. If I really have nothing to do, I'll throw rejuv on players like rogues, DPS wars and DKs to help try to give them energy/rage/RP through revitalize. This is so trivial it's almost not worth doing.

Regrowth is a non-favored heal by many in the druid community. The mana cost is relatively high and the cast time is long. However the HOT is a very, very long lasting HOT and I find to be worth it for tanks.

Nourish is your go-to spamable reactive healing spell. I prefer it to glyphed HT since I don't think I have a major glyph to spare right now. It increases in strength with each of your HoTs on the target: Rejuv, Lifebloom, Regrowth and Wild Growth. I use this spell very often. After some discussion on the forums here with xcal784 See Profile, I realized (or more accurately, was told) that Nourish is still very powerful even if the target doesn't have a HoT on them and moved from using Regrowth to fill that niche.

Wild Growth is your AoE healing spell (Tranquility? What the hell is that?). I glyph it for the 6th target. Use it whenever there would be at least 3 people benefitting from the HoT it provides. Using Gormokk as an example, I target a melee (usually a DPS not a tank since the DPS is too far away from the tanks) player and cast it literally as the stomp happens to heal up the players ASAP. The healing is front loaded and WG loses it's effectiveness as it ticks.

If you're sub-80 (IOW, no Nourish), glyph HT and use it as your Nourish. I'd use Regrowth far more in that scenario too, though that's a debate in and of itself.

I think the best way to be an effective druid healer is to not just be the ____ healer. You're rarely going to be main tank healing, so don't just heal the raid. If I have to make a decision between making sure the tank lives and a DPS, I'm going to choose the tank 100% of the time and take the disapproval from the group (if any) for letting a DPS die and then explain that I find the tank to be the #1 priority. If they don't agree and continue to complain, mental note goes on and I likely won't play with them again.

I forgot to mention Lifebloom so here are my thoughts... Use it when you're MT healing (as if...) and roll it, usually to a 3 stack. Don't be afraid to let it bloom. The spell is far too mana intensive to use for raid healing, though if you need to heal someone in say ~6 seconds, but not before then (think Gravity Bomb in XT HM, that plague spell from Grob) and they'll often be away from the raid, I'll toss a LB on them as they run away and by the time they're back to their position, they've had it bloom and healed them (usually) back to full or close to it. Don't be afraid to use it with clearcasting procs to get some speed healing in on someone and then let it bloom for free healing + free mana ;) I use lifebloom less than a lot of players, so take my opinion for whatever you want.

Some general closing thoughts:
1) Be aware. Learn the encounters and figure out where your job will be most needed. Pre-HoTs are often your friend.
2) Play your druid how you enjoy playing your druid. Keep in mind that your play style may not be considered optimal, but if it works, it works.
3) Don't over write your HoTs unless you know it's going to expire and you won't be able to get back in range or put it up again and they'll be taking damage during that period. It's a waste of mana.

3.3 changes the class in some interesting ways.
1. Gift of the Earthmother (the talent deep in resto which allows us to reach the 1s GCD easily) is changing and we're going to need almost double the haste to be at the same point. Combined with the fact that GotEM is going to affect all spells now, stacking haste is really important. You're going to want to shoot for as high as you realistically can get. Don't gimp other stats (spell power, intellect and spirit) to get there, but keep it in mind. It will also be a good thing for my play style as it'll shave even more time off Regrowth's cast which makes it even better for me :)
2. There's going to be a glyph to make rejuv tick faster based on your haste. The jury is out on this one and keep in mind that if it's ticking faster, the duration is going to be less! There hasn't been enough testing for me to figure it out. I might transfer over and check it out...

xcal784
join:2009-02-27
Coolville, OH

1 edit

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All I can say is hit up some other forums and read up on stuff. No single person is going to give you a complete picture or all the info. You have to go read 4-6 different ways people heal then experiment yourself to know which to use or to invent a new hybrid way like Drew has done that works for him personally. I'd suggest you search here for older threads as well as Plusheal.

Ref:
»www.plusheal.com/viewfor ··· 43da8f21

Very good info in:
»www.plusheal.com/viewtop ··· 5&t=4573

---------------------
"If the tank dies it's the healers fault. If the healer dies it's the tanks fault. If the dps does it's their own damn fault."

drew
Radiant
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join:2002-07-10
Port Orchard, WA

drew

Premium Member

After doing exactly what xcal has said to do, I'll say that I disagree with him regarding "4-6 different ways."

Unless a 10% priority change in less than 10% of situations counts as a different way. There's either "roll rejuv on as many targets as you can" with a bit thrown in or the way I've outlined in my post.

I do recommend looking at more than one source, however.

xcal784
join:2009-02-27
Coolville, OH

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said by drew:

I don't heal like typical resto druids.
Your healing strats should be weighted accordingly. People should check out some commonly accepted strats & EJ strats at minimum. 4 different strats is a very solid minimum to check out.

Example:
Drew's Strats
Common Strats
EJ Strats
Others Strats