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Mailbag: Tree of Life Usage in Heroics
Published on November 21, 2007 by Phaelia 
Mailbag, Spells and Talents 
13 Comments
I was flattered to receive this e-mail from Gillir of Stormrage’s Dreaming (who recently completed a very nice update of his site’s aesthetics – be sure to check it out!):
Thought I’d run this question by you and see if you can help. I healed my first heroic the other day and did it as tree, but it was tough. Is it viable to tree-heal in heroics? Or is caster form preferable? Thanks for your help.
This is a pretty common dilemma faced by healing Druids when we first begin running Heroics. On the one hand, our Restoration tree (pun intended) encourages a more passive HoT-based style of healing. This style works great in raids where you can provide a nice buffer against spike damage on one or more targets while still retaining your ability to throw Lifeblooms to raidmates who take only occassional damage. But in Heroics, you will often find yourself hard-pressed to keep up with the high damage output of many of the trash mobs leading up to bosses (in my experience, most of the bosses are only marginally more difficult than their non-Heroic counterparts). For many of these mobs, the +Healing total you’re likely to have when first starting makes it near impossible to keep up through Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, and Swiftmend alone. Access to Healing Touch is a near essential.
Even with the higher +Healing totals you’ll have after your guild has completed Karazhan, there are still some mobs and pulls on which you may not feel comfortable being unable to burst heal. Two examples of these types of pulls are the Bog Giants of Heroic Underbog (hitting for 7.5k on cloth) and the 2-pull of non-CCable Coilfang Defenders in Heroic Slavepens. Of course, with the recent change to shifting so that actions taken which cannot be performed in your current form will cause you to deshift, using Tree of Life should seem substantially less cumbersome than it did before. There’s no harm in starting out a fight in treeform as long as you are able to anticipate needing to use a Healing Touch. And as long as you can unshift should you need to move somewhere quickly.
This isn’t to say that Tree of Life doesn’t have its uses (using it on Blackheart the Inciter in Shadow Labyrinth will keep you from doing anything but walking around, hitting groupmates with your leafy branches); it’s a great mana conservation tool when you don’t need to move around, decurse, or use Healing Touch. But you shouldn’t even feel slightly bad about not being able to leverage it well in Heroic instances, especially when you’re first starting.
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Tree healing is tough in a heroic- and solo healing, nearly impossible, depending on the place\boss. Mana conservation is not what you need, you need to be able to keep up with the hits your tank is absorbing. Its rare for hots to be able to do that. Innervate and potions will help- usually, solo healing, youll need all the mana you can get.
If youre not solo healing, you can go tree, probably. Youll still need to watch your mana consumption, as that in all likelihood means you have less DPS on a target.
To me, solo healing a heroic is the best way to gauge healing skill in the game. You cant sit back and coast, you have to be on the bounce and making things happen.
So far, in heroic instances, I have yet be required to leave treeform ever. There’s still a few instances I have left to do as heroic: shattered halls, arcatraz and mana tombs. But, outside those instances treeform has proved to be quite successful so far in repeated runs.
One thing that helps is to use rejuvenation to spot heal over lifebloom if there’s a good possibility of further aggro/dmg as swiftmend can provide the burst heal capability that heroics require. For the tank I just do the usual stacking of lifeblooms (trinketed when possible) and rejuvenation if needed. I’ll toss a regrowth on for the extra hot where required as well.
My gears getting better, nothing crazy though… it’s at 1553 healing now (1640 with full healing gear), but I didn’t start out with this gear in heroics and did fine.
The real test came tonight as our paladin tank was a little bit crazy (he had a death wish?) and not bothering with CC’s most of the time. At one point he had a tempest-forge peacekeeper and three (3!) of the bloodwarden’s on him all at once. I was a pretty happy to pull that off with no one dying (the damage was all over the place that fight with no one going unscathed), as well as other interesting pulls throughout the run. This is solo healing too, I’ve done runs with two healers and usually the other healer falls asleep if one of us doesn’t ‘attempt’ to dps (<3 hots).
Ah, I love playing my druid and enjoy your Blog, thanks!
I use Tree form in Heroics while killing those trash mobs I know can handle. For example in Underbog, with all trash except giants, and certainly not during bosses. Less mana, less drinking, less stopping.
I’m not so worried about not being able to use tree during boss fights: the only thing we lose is mana efficiency, since healing touch makes up for the extra HPS the tree aura brings (even if someone’s off-healing). With my current gear (also around 1600+), innervate and maybe a potion if mana runs low and it should be fine.
From my point of view, heroics are mini raids where people have to come prepared (gear-wise and skill-wise). As in every raid, you expect EVERYONE to know their toon and be able to overcome the difficulties.
In your first runs, chances are that your healing will be about 1k. That is actually marginally enough for lower ones like SP.
On the other hand, other members of your party have to be competent themselves. Problem here is that people usually tend to blame the healer.
In my early tries on SP, I had 1.2k healing which is actually pretty decent. I remember joining a pug where the tank still had some green items on and the blue ones where even un-gemmed or gemmed with green ones. The result was that he was 3-shotted by trash. And of-course they blamed it on me :S.
So my first point here is to pick your group carefully because a bad one will cost you time and money.
On the other hand there is the need for proper crowd control and kiting, otherwise, you will have to spam heal everyone and probably easily pull healing agro and die.
Mages are expected to spam sheep on their mark and hunters must have improved ice trap and spam it as well. Succubuses just DO NOT work in heroics. A skillful mage/shamman/hunter can easily kite around difficult trash like Coilfang Defenders and even soloing them while your tank holds the other. If you still have loose mobs like in the second boss in BF, get you rogue to blind one for 10secs since this might be enough to make a difference. Your tank (hopefully a warrior) can also disarm powerful mobs like the demons in BF which can hit for 21k on cloth if allowed.
If people are not able to cope with this, then you are in trouble and you will whipe A LOT.
Bottomline is that you actually should not have to spam heal anyone else rather than the tank. And in most cases, one or two regrowths should be enough. If you find spike damage on the rest of the party, someone is not doing his job right. I almost never leave ToL form. I only do it usign my “OH-DAMN” macro with Nature’s Swiftness and HT for an instant big heal after an unlucky crit or something.
Also using elixirs and golden fish sticks is always a good idea if you feel yourself undergeared.
PS
I hate the fact that healers are expected to compensate for other people’s incompetence…
For me its possible to stay in Tree in, lets say, 95% of all heroic instances. Going usually with a feral druid/prot tank with full T5 and BT/MH loot it is definalty no problem. I still prefer to stay in caster tho as mana reg isnt a problem, but being able to kite a mob, throw in a cyclone to give your tank 4 more seconds to pick up that not tanked mob, or jsut simply to nuke with 710 dmg wraths while that big furry bear seems to be taking no dmg at all with 3 LB´s ticking
I tend to prefer to start fights in treeform just to establish my LBs with the heal aura bonus, and then will often just switch out of treeform for mobility’s sake. Plus, I like being able to throw up a cyclone (or sleep if applicable) in case a mob gets out of control. I’m sittin at 1877 heal so I can make it through basically any heroic in treeform, but I just don’t see the point. The DPSers run oom faster than me anyway and we usually end up waiting on them while they drink at some point.
And fyi, as for Blackheart the Inciter – he will change your form at times. My favorite was when he had me go into kitty form (as a healer) and then had another druid in group cast hibernate on me. Thank god he was almost dead…no healer for 30 seconds = big time trouble.
I find it depends on the boss. I’m tree specc’ed but because of my role in raids I tend to heal in caster form most often. That said, there are situations that I find I’m more effective in Tree. One example would be Nethermancer Sepethrea in Heroic Mech. Since damage is being spread out among part members, Tree matches up with the quickest and most efficient way to keep everyone up: instacast HoTs and Regrowths if things go bad.
My general rule is caster for concentrated MT damage and tree for general raid damage spread among many people.
I was just wondering what exactly the requirements are for healing heroics, I’m trying to make a list of the gear I need to get but I’m not totally sure what to shoot for >.>
Somestha, here’s the list I’m using on my “quest” after better gear:
http://druid.wikispaces.com/Healing+Gear+List
Also, here’s a “pre-raiding gear” that I think is enough to start on heroics:
https://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11381213&sid=1
Thanks Phaelia for posting this and thanks for all the helpful and insightful suggestions.
I’ve been experimenting with hybrid healing. With 27 points in Balance and 34 in Resto, it has seemed to be a nice +Healing and mana reduction/regen spec. Plus you get Insect Swarm which helps your tanks with the 2% decreased hit chance and some damage over 12 seconds. Meanwhile, Improved Brambles doesn’t do much more than Thorns, but every bit helps! With Lunar Guidance (which requires 20 points in Balance that become mostly dump points) +Healing jumps up to around 150 additional +Healing from Intellect. You also get Nature’s Grace and Moonglow which reduces the mana cost of several healing spells by 9%. I have more than 2k healing in this spec, which was a huge feat for me; I never thought I’d see the day my druid was over 2k healing. =)
I was asked to go full Resto with the Resto Tree spec, but my +Healing took a huge dive when I switched. When the number dropped so much I felt like someone just kicked the shit out of me! I’m not able to gather the info from the numbers going into the Tree Form to find out what I really lost in +Healing being that the stats never change nor show the proof of what we get from Tree Form. And the main targets I heal are never in my party to get the extra buff from tree. So to go hybrid or Tree is the question. Can anyone supply me with the actual facts of what healing bonuses would be in tree? * side note: I still end up in caster form because I’m popping out to cast Swiftmend etc and Insect Swarm is great on those raid bosses! **Thanks for reading!**
@Bipolarpixi: Lunar Guidance converts 25% of your Intellect to +Healing. Tree of Life converts 25% of your Spirit to +Healing … but only for those people with whom you are grouped. Assuming you’re in the MT group (as a Tree of Life Druid should typically aim to be), you shouldn’t see a tremendous difference if your Intellect and Spirit levels are close. Also, note that the 9% mana cost reduction from Moonglow does not apply to the cost of Lifebloom (already a cheap spell). MG/LG is nice for Druids who want to direct heal; a heavier Resto build is designed to augment our heals over time. Make the decision for how you want to spec based on the playstyle you enjoy, but make sure you look at the whole picture! =)