[ Warcraft ] [ MMO ]

The last article I covered how I ended up healing. This one I’ll focus more on the the nuts and bolts of druid healing. This will focus around group healing, but I’ll attempt to interject other healing styles and give Naxx boss examples of where group druid healers need to switch healing style.

For first time healers, spec pretty much down the Resto tree avoiding [Replenish] and [Natural Perfection] while leaving room for five points in [Genesis], three points in [Moonglow], two points in [Nature's Majesty], three points in [Nature's Grasp], and one point in [Nature's Splendor]. Yes, I know this leaves a lot of room to place points. However, the 14/0/57 talent tree is a very known tree while still leaving players room to customize their character.

With this basic concept in mind you have a choice of heading down a pure-HoT/group heal (what I do) or more of a directed healing to make [Healing Touch] a useful spell during raiding. If you plan on doing the former then you need to ensure that you place points into [Naturalist], [Empowered Touch], and [Tranquil Spirit].

From here on out you basically play the, “What spells am I using?” game. You can use a WWS parser for off-line processing or “Recount” mod for in-game processing to get this information. Since I run the Experience guild website, I use them equally. Both are great tools for understanding what other healers are doing within a raid. I do recommend healers not fall into the DPS chart trap. The tools should be used to understand problem areas, but within a 25 man raid you want all five to six healers to split healing equally to reduce stress on all the healers.

Once you’ve decided how you play and you’ve talked with other healers then you can go back to your talent tree and move points around. When I started I pushed points into Tranquil Spirit, Empowered Touch and didn’t put anything into [Master Shapeshifter] talents. I soon changed that as I rarely Healing Touch. As of writing, I still have points in Empowered Touch, but I’m suspecting I’ll move that into Tranquil Spirit for the mana reduction of [Nourish] that I always use. I would almost be tempted to pull the point out of [Nature's Swiftness] and reallocate it into Tranquil Spirit as well to make it 6% reduction in mana cost, since I have yet to be able to effectively work it into my healing rotation.

Druid healers have a wide array of tools for group and single target healing, and part of being a druid healer is finding your niche. Since I’ve moved away from heavy direct healing it does cause us issues on 25 man Patchwerk, but it improves life for majority of the other bosses. So be aware your healing style will affect your groups performance on some bosses.

My advice is simple. Have one. You don’t need to go as far and as complex as DPS rotations. However, having a simple rotation to fall back on when there is nothing serious happening will help reduce the “Oh Shit” factor. When I started my rotation involved stacking 3x[Lifebloom], [Rejuvenation], and throwing a [Wild Growth] or [Regrowth] depending on the needs of the Melee around the tank, or if the tank needs an extra burst of healing.

This is the simplest and most basic concept. It also breaks now my firm rule of “Use Instants casting times first.” As a result, I shifted over to using [Swiftmend] instead of Regrowth. The above rotation works pretty well for tank healing in 10 man, but since we had a paladin healer whose strong point is fast/directed heals I quickly moved to group healing in our 10 man.

I can already hear the regrowth druids grind their teeth, and if you feel Regrowth is a good thing for you then use it. As I’ve said before I play the “Instance Spell” game. If my target is not in critical danger then a Rejuvenation is a better option. It always me to move on to other targets that need more of my attention.

With this being stated lets discuss where this fails.

• Patchwerk - This is a direct heal case. The recommendation if you are not specced to reduce Healing Touch time is throw up a Rejuvenation before your tank goes into battle, then use Swiftmend if the target is seriously low, or spam Nourish. You need to ensure that Rejuvenation is always up. If you have T7 or T7.5 4-piece set this is also a good thing since it improves your Nourish by 5%. In a battle like this it would be nice if you could keep all HoTs up on the tank, but that is unrealistic.
• Loatheb - This is a limited-heals case. You have three seconds to do as much healing as you can. [Tranquility] and Healing Touch are your friends. Even if you are not specced for Healing Touch. It normally weights in at a 2.5 second casting time (or does for me). Giving you a chance to time the heals right when the “Necrotic Aura” ends and giving you enough time to throw a Rejuvenation/Swiftmend on another target, or if you are smart you can throw a Rejuvenation first, then start the Healing Touch. Yes, your target will not gain anything from the existence of the Rejuvenation during the healing block, but it when it drops you can do two solid heals in a very short time.
• Kel'Thuzad - This isn’t so much a special case, but a “Oh Shit” case. The “Frost Blast” is a killer for druid healers with the fact the target takes 104% of their effective health in 4 seconds. The recommendation here is to hold your Swiftmend for this effect, and throw Rejuvenation + Swiftmend and then throw a Regrowth or Nourish. The Swiftmend (assuming full health) should be enough to ride it out, but it is never best to leave things to chance if you everyone else is healthy enough.

I need to also point out that a Rejuvenation + Swiftmend + Nourish can clock in at a 10k to 20k heal at the cost of about 3.5 to 4 seconds. The expensive is in the global cool downs.

I will say as a group healer my top healing spells are Wild Growth (thrown around the tank, or around the ranged) and Rejuvenation. The third tends to swap between [Swiftmend] and Lifebloom depending on the battle.

Lastly, watching your cool down timers. Unlike DPSing, most of your healing spells have no cool downs. It’s too easy to hit them again and again without realizing it. Refreshing a HoT too soon will costs you a global cool and mana. If you are keeping three stacks of lifebloom on the tank and you don’t refresh it then it will cost you even more mana and multiple global cool down time. These lapses may not be serious during the “peaceful” healing timing times, but they will causes deaths in the hectic times.

Starting out if you are going with a simple HoT only rotation my recommendation are [Glyph of Rejuvenation], [Glyph of Lifebloom], and [Glyph of Regrowth] for majors and [Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth] and [Glyph of the Wild] for minors. They are good starter glyphs, and they will be great for the simple rotation.

There has been much poo-pooing of Glyph of Rejuvenation. However, when you're stuck as a group healer on Gluth it’s a good glyph to have around since you’ll be trying to HoT every player in your raid quickly before going back for deeper healing. And it is surprising how much that extra in-between ticks help. However, it is a niche glyph, and as a result most consider it junk. =(

Now, when you decide to use Swiftmend, I highly recommend trading Glyph of Regrowth or Glyph of Rejuvenation for [Glyph of Swiftmend]. I originally threw out Glyph of Regrowth or Glyph since I am a heavy Rejuvenation user. However, in the end it too went away when I needed to [Glyph of Innervate] for 25 man raiding(Note on Innervate: Paladins are the worse class to innervate since they don't stack Spirit).

Mind you, if you decide you use Healing Touch heavily by all means consider using [Glyph of Healing Touch] the reduction in casting time makes it much more useful, but it nerfs the healing amount down far enough you may as well use Nourish or Regrowth.

Your choice of mods are even more personal. I’ll list out ones I use and others recommended, but I will not get too great into it. Each person has their own play style and so milage on any recommendations will very more greatly than builds/rotations. I personally am very happy with using the build in Raid Groups that blizzard provides to swap between party members. I use my left hand for casting spells, and right hand for movement.

• Class Timers - A nice mod that when focused on a target will tell you when your HoT timers will elapse, plus it will show your general cool downs for most spells (e.g. Wild Growth).
• Deadly Boss Mods / BigWigs Bossmods - Both of these are good for showing what events are coming up and what the boss will be casting. Either one is a must for doing raiding. I originally started with Deadly Boss Mods, but I have now swapped over to BigWigs--there are a few extra nicety like distance alert for Kel’Thuzad in BigWigs.
• Omen Threat Meter - This may be 100% useless in 3.1, and is pretty useless for a healer in general. However, a very useful tool for DPS and tanks. I run it out of habit if nothing else.
• Grid - This is a different way of showing everyone in your raid, and there are many articles on how to use it. As well as a lot of different plugins for showings HoTs and other useful tidbits of information. Honestly, I’ve yet to be comfortable enough with it. It feels awkward and too small.
• Clique - Lets you case spells via right, left, shift-right, shift-left, etc clicking on a target. Nice idea, and I know many that love it, but I live, breath, and game on my MacBook Pro. As a result, it just doesn’t work well with the touchpad. If I ever decide to swap over to using a trackball or a nice multi-key controller I will reconsider it.
• Recount - Not really a healing mod per-say, but a nice tool to review a fight. Most raid leaders run this so they know how to split DPS/Healers up for Gothik or Thaddius mini-bosses. It’s also a good way for a healer to quickly dissect what other healers are doing between boss fights. It has given me great insight on the fly as to how I can change my healing style to better fit within a group.
• Decurse - Grid, and other tools do this as well, but I find having a block dedicated to what I can remove for poisons and curses is very nice. It also works out well if I have to be on the run (e.g. Sapphiron) or if I’m sitting still (e.g. Noth).

Like with everything else, start off simple. As you have frustrations with a task then start looking for a tool reduce that frustration.

I have to throw this in, because this is what causes me to drain my mana pool faster than Mac Truck size hole in a swimming pool. It takes time and practice getting use to keeping an eye on multiple things at once while moving and being called out to do specialized utility tasks (decursing, innervating, battle rezing, etc). Getting to a point where all these things don’t overwhelm you is the first and foremost task. You could be the best healer on the planet, but if you can’t manage the information flying at you then you’re no better than a stump in the forest.

There sadly, is no magic I can give you for this. The only thing I can say is to keep cool, know exactly what you need to do (e.g. on Heigan during the dance part.. Dance and put everything else out of your mind at first) to survive, and then you can focus on keeping others around you alive. The more you panic the worse off your raid will be.

I’ll be blunt about this. Healers and Tanks are critical. A tank that can’t keep aggro will wipe the party every time, and a healer that can’t keep calm and focus on the basics will either burn their mana pool down or loose track of their charges and will wipe the group. You can recover from a few stupid mistakes by melee and range DPSers. If you can’t keep focused and calm you put additional stress on other healers and stress on the tank that now has to worry about popping trinkets and pots to keep themselves alive while you freak out. =)

And most importantly, FOLLOW YOUR RAID LEADERS DIRECTION!

I hope you find this interesting and insightful. The best advice I can give any new healer is to ask questions. Talk to other druid healers, talk to healers of other classes, and talk to your tanks. Nothing makes a tank more nervous than not understanding why heals are happening (or not happening) the way they are use. And don’t be afraid to ask the raid leader to switch up healing assignments if you feel uncomfortable.