Epic Dolls cohosts Leala and Rae chat Resto4Life author Phaelia up about all things Druid in an 84-minute podcast revolving around the Balance, Feral, and Restoration specs.
Reader Treibh of Vek’nilash (US) recently submitted a video capture of his guild Cohors Praetoria successfully downing the Illidari Council. You may remember an earlier video from Ammeli of Defias Brotherhood (EU) that generated discussion on the use of Healing Touch to heal that fight. Here Treibh presents an alternative strategy wherein he stays in Tree of Life for the duration.
Since I (still) haven’t seen this fight, I asked Treibh a few questions:
How would you describe your role in this fight? Are you primarily healing a single MT? Multiple MT/OT? MT + raid?
I’m responsible for rolling Lifebloom on the Gathios, Zerevor, and Malande tanks, and then using my 4th GCD for whatever. Typically, that means helping out on the Veras tank when he is up or tossing in a Rejuvenation on one of my Lifebloom tanks or even the raid if needed.Do you ever have trouble avoiding Flamestrike? How important would you say the speed enchant is for boots in this fight?
Avoiding Flamestrike isn’t too bad if you are aware of your surroundings and are ready to move. I can’t say I’ve died to AoE on this fight since we’ve learned it, and I’ve always done it in Tree Form. I’d say Boar’s Speed is pretty important – for this fight and really the majority of late-T6 and Sunwell fights that I’ve done so far.I see two Trees in that video. Can you see the forest … for the Trees?
The other Tree (who also has the same assignment I do) in the video is Vashir. We have a third Tree Druid (Ibou) who wasn’t there that night, but all three of us are usually in the raid. Our guild has done pretty much every first kill from the start of T5 through Brutallus with three Tree Druids in the raid. Three Tree Druids on, for example, a seven-healer Brutallus kill isn’t what you’ll find on any of the common strategies, but we’ve made it work for our guild for the last year pretty well.
For those curious about the video soundtrack (someone inevitably asks), the first song is “Galvanize” by the Chemical Brothers and “Anthem” by Moby.
Thanks for sharing, Treibh!
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I am excited that BRK is back, though!
/cry I love you, ty for everything.
Hey
Well regarding the fight against the council (the most boring fight in-game) it is my experience that druids do really well in roles where they are not assigned to a tank healing role (the rogue tank is an exception). The 2 things we do well is healing poison when the rouge is vanished (regrowth ftw), or keeping lifebloom on the tanks close to you, and using regrowth or what not to heal spikes on dps that will happen, since they hardly can be bothered to move. People need to spread out so CoH or chain heal isn’t as effective as many people think.
Another fight where druids rule the meters is Illidan. When our guild kills him we are 2 druids healing parasites and agonizing flames. We have a system where I cast regrowth and the other druid stacks 3x Lifebloom. In fact I get approx. 55% of my healing from regrowth in this fight, and I hardly ever heal the mt. The thing is that spreading out is important, so raid healing druids stand at the back out of range of the mt. However, we are no. 1 and 2 on healing.
Sorry about the wall of text. Like the blog alot, although when it comes to late end game raiding +heal is more important than mp5s. I can go through an entire council fight and only use my innervates on the mage tank (and that is mainly because i’m bored).
/cheer
/Balderun
omg my message marked as spam? Here it is again. Thank god I like to copying before posting things.
I generally agree with the approaches discussed here. Our guild (http://www.eq-wow.com) also uses 3 druid trees (although usually only 2 on-line) and it is true that MH and BT are our playground. I also go for full teardrop gems, since I really rarely go oom while always topping the meters, even against shammies and priests.
I don t like using Healing Touch without NS. The cast time is way to big, lack of fast healing makes people nervous and many things can change in 3 seconds (2,94 secs with my haste :p ) including a very probable death since there is too much random damage.
On Illidari Council I have done it healing every possible combination. Usually I am on mage tank duty, who takes rather steady amounts of damage that is excellent for HoT healing with a regrowth now and then to even out spikes. In the mean time, the extra gcds are used on the rogue or the MT who usually stand close. As Balderun said, the innervate goes to the mage tank if he needs it (meaning he slacked potting
)
When I am on Rogue duty, the job is even easier since most of the time the rogue is vanished and his tank gets minimal damage. It is a bit more mana consuming though since I use more regrowths to compensate for spikes when he aggros the tank again or when he poisons a raid member. Now here is one of the most important parts of the fight. You need to cast a regrowth on the poisoned member as fast as possible otherwise chances are that he will die. Get some unit frames that show the poison and start casting asap. (I use X-perl with click2cast)
I have healed the main tanks only once, but don t have to really say anything here. A bit more mana consuming than healing the mage, since there is more damage. Innervate was used on me.
On Illidan we are always on tank duty. P1 we all heal the MT. A shammy heals the parasite victim with us throwing a lifebloom on him while he moves to the kill spot. On P2, all druids keep full HoTs on both tanks. It s a nice opportunity to better familiarize urself with mixing and matching ur GCDs to keep them all up. P345 I m usually again on tank duty, MT and lock. We don t top the meters usually since the splash damage makes shammies and priests really overpowered (especially with the haste gear they have now for SW) but again noone dies which is our goal anyway
You can check how we do it if u go on the video section on or media page
http://www.eq-wow.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=95
Dimmy
Glad to see the rolling lifeblooms are still worth doing. My trash healing assignment is rolling LB x3. For bosses, it’s the same if I can, raid healing if I can’t. I didn’t used to think druids were good for main tank heals, but I’m finding they’re much better than I thought and I love main healing. I don’t rule any meter except the overheals, on which I am dead last ^_^. I do about 10% of the heals that way. Go Lifebloom!
Wait… there are resto druids using healing touch? And not only when coupled with NS?
I don’t think I’ve ever done council not in tree form… Mother maybe in the beginning when we were learning her, but not council O.o.
Also, they assign each of your lifebloom rolls for you? They just tell us to heal “X tank” and that’s what I do. Also toss rejuvs on poison and aoe tanking noobs.
Yeah our guild runs with about 3 trees too (some rare times 4), and we’re on the first boss in SWP. We make it work ’cause our guild thinks we’re HoT
.
Hooray for a video from Cohors Praetoria! I am also from Vek’nilash (Collateral Damage) and Cohors Praetoria is well-known to be a class act. I’m glad to see that they appreciate druids of the leafy variety. Treibh, I’ll certainly keep your video in mind when I’m making healing assignments for this fight.
To respond to Tenka: I like more control rather than less in healing assignments. If I have two tree druids on Hyjal trash, and I assign each one to roll LB on four tanks, it’s really bad if they both pick the same four. So yes, I’ll say I have Feral 1 in my rotation, you’ve got Feral 2, and we’ll both roll stacks on the pally tank and the warriors. It may be a preference sort of thing, but I like the most clear instructions possible–whether I’m giving or receiving them.
We usaly go with 2 and sometimes 3 resto druids on councill (and the entire BT/MH too), im usaly healing magetank and priest tank and some raidhealing if my GCD allows for it. Dont need speed enchants on boots if your quick and run asap. Thats the best part of beeing druid, you can run and HoT
http://wowwebstats.com/gtxvkbs63s3bi?s=110536-138096
@Balderun: Thanks for the tips on how your guild leverages Resto Druids for this fight. You say that your guild rarely assigns Druids to tank healing for this fight; is there any reason that you couldn’t watch the Rogue tank’s poisons while still rolling Lifebloom on 1-2 other tanks?
@Dimitris: Sorry your original comment was marked as SPAM. Sometimes that filter behaves oddly. Thanks for sharing the different approaches your guild has used when doing this fight and for the video.
@Boudi: Haha – yeah, your overhealing will come out deceptively low when relying almost exclusively upon Lifebloom. Just remember that it doesn’t tell the whole story. From what I’ve read, overhealing will start showing up in the combat log for WotLK which makes me wonder if that doesn’t also include overhealing from wasted HoT ticks. Hmmmm.
@Tenka: There are the occassional Dreamstate-based Druid healers that stack spell haste and use Healing Touch primarily supplemented by their weaker Lifebloom stacks. It’s not a style that appeals to me, but I can see how it might be a refreshing change, especially considering the Balance talents you could pick up simultaneously.
@Sydera: I’m usually too harried to make such specific assignments in my raid. And in my experience when I do, I end up having to change them 2-3 times because I forget to take something into account. ^_^
@Razulath: True that about HoTting on the run! I just find it painful to run SO slowly so it’s worth it to me to sacrifice the stats I could get otherwise to get Boar’s Speed on my boots.
Not really on-topic but quite interesting is going raid-healing while on tree form, semi replacing an AOE healer.
The fight is Reliquary of Souls. A very healing intensive fight at phase 3.
Since at the beginning we lacked aoe healers, I was assigned as a “joke” to keep a group up alone. Noone is laughing now cause not only I managed to do it but noone died.
For those who do not know the fight, there is a debuff ticking every second for added damage. 100-200-… and so on. At some point, the debuff starts ticking for more than 3k at which point the boss must go down fast.
I throw a lifebloom on each group member and let it bloom. After a while, all the players get a rather steady stream of healing which is enough to keep them all up. When the debuff ticks about 3,5k, I use my Tranquility which evens out the damage again. Unfortunately, when Tranquility fades the tick is now close to 4k which means that the fight will end soon. So I try to concentrate on potting/HSing my-self and spam on an extra dpser.
The fight is usually finished at the end of tranquility.
I use the same tactics on Hex Lord Malacrass, although there I start pre-rolling lifeblooms about 2-3 secs before he starts his volley.
However, this does not work with Sunwell fights that require aoe healing. Simply because lifebloom is way too slow on its output. I find that spamming regrowth is really effective, with minimal overhealing (provided u know where to cast). However this is only feasible there because the fights are relatively short with burst damage, otherwise you will find urself out of mana very fast. Just remember to pick up mana biscuits and use them after every pull
@Phaelia, I use 12 stamina on boots o.O 30 MORE HP FTW
@Razulath: What? What? NOoooOoOOooOooOooo! Boar’s Speed! Stat!