From gear to Reputation grinds to non-combat pet collections, Blizzard seems keen to make players feel like they’re making progress. Unlike many competitors, however, they have yet to add the most significant, non-combat progression path: player housing.
Community Spotlight
Published on December 5, 2008 by Phaelia 
Artwork, Blue, Community, Macros, Tree-Shirts 
14 Comments
New Tree Shirts and Long-Sleeved Options
The Feast of Winter Veil is coming up which would be a great time to hint-drop about wanting a Tree Shirt or two from a certain blog. *Nudge nudge* In preparation for the holiday season, I’ve added three great new designs:
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- Tree of Life Emblem
The first is the orange symbol that features prominently on the chest of our Tree of Life form. Although I’ve featured it on brown shirts (mostly), you can switch the color of the shirt to whatever suits you best. The nice thing about this design is that it’s vector-based and should print as a crisp, understated option for the discerning tree. - Restoration Wreath (Autumn) by Diego SS. Dicaro
The second design is a autumnal variation on Eggo’s earlier Shift Happens Restoration Wreath design. This design was requested by several readers, and Eggo actually sent it in a number of weeks ago. Sorry that it’s taken me so long to get it added! - “Shift Happens” Grid from Valenna
Finally, Valenna created a design for the “Shift Happens” contest earlier this year. Since he’s pretty much my best friend, there was no question as to whether I would add it, but I really love it! It features 8 rounded squares with each of the Night Elf forms (including the still-awaited critter form). The design includes black, purple, orange, brown, and light blue and should work well on many different shirt colors.
Also note that many designs have long sleeved options. Colors for men are unfortunately typically limited to black or white, but women have several to choose from. To view all long-sleeved shirts:
- Visit the Spreadshirt storefront.
- Under the dropdown All Products, select Men or Women.
- Under the dropdown All Articles, select Long sleeve shirts.
Looking for more information about delivery times? See Spreadshirt’s Shipping Page.
[Intravenous Healing Potion] Macro from Vreenash
Some of you may not be familiar with the [Intravenous Healing Potion]. This item was newly added with Wrath and is sold by Angelique Butler in the Dalaran First Aid shop at a starting price of 2g 70s. Essentially, it’s an infinite-use health and mana restore for 3 minutes (usable only outside of combat). This macro deploys the IV and gives instructions to those nearby on how to use it:
#showtooltip
/s =/\= Intravenous Drip has been deployed =/\=
/s –Stand still while clicking to regen Health/Mana–
/use Intravenous Healing Potion
According to Vreenash, he’s seen overwhelmingly positive response in battlegrounds, particularly Arathi Basin. Perhaps best of all, this item can be deployed and used by a Feral or Balance Druid while still in form, allowing you to help out with healing during downtime.
Note: These items do not stack. Always use a fresh needle.
Favorite Posts of Late
There have been an incredible number of useful and informative posts in the wake of Wrath. Here are a few of my favorite:
- The Bear T7 List: Part I | Part II from ThinkTank
Kalon releases some great bear-oriented gear lists along with ratings. - Feral Factions from Of Teeth and Claws
Karthis submits an overview of the best Feral-oriented rewards from various factions to help you plan your reputation grinds. - Pre-Naxx Feral Worksheet from Of Teeth and Claws
A spreadsheet of Feral gear to help kitties and bears prepare for raiding Naxxramas. - Pre-Naxx Moonkin Gear: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 from Gray Matter
Gearing up for a little Pew Pew in Naxxramas? Graylo has you covered with this extensive guide of available and recommended upgrades. - Resto Pre-Raid Gear from Elitist Jerks Forums
Tuftears of Stormrage (US) summarizes pre-Naxxramas gear by slot and type in an easy to read format. - WotLK Cooking 375-450 from Kaliope’s WoW Crafting Blog
Kaliope walks you through reaching 450 cooking in Wrath. It’s more difficult than you might think! - WotLK Wallpapers from Banana Shoulders
Missing Northrend while away at work? Siha has created several gorgeous Wrath of the Lich King wallpapers at 1680 x 1050 size. - Wrath: Overview of Daily Quests (Level 70-75) from Yashima Plays
Yashima lists the available daily quests and from level 70 to 75, their location, associated faction, and reputation awarded.
Ghostcrawler says L2Play (with Druids) and “Dude”
There are plenty of druids topping healing meters.
I think where the problem comes from sometimes is that you need healers who are good at working with hots. When someone has a hot on them, you have to be able to guess if that hot will heal the dude and if it can do it fast enough. Inexperienced healers sometimes stomp on hots, wasting the druid (or priest) mana and making sure that the hot-healer appears to have not contributed much.
This has been a long-standing problem for Druid healers. Given the competitive nature of healing, training one’s guildmates to not overwrite your HoTs is pretty difficult. Does anyone have any tips?
Other Blogs to Visit
As I suspected, the release of Wrath has contributed to a whole new crop of great blogs to visit and subscribe to!
- Cenarion Musings
Restoration Druid Pixiedark ponders Cenarius. - Chrille
PvP, Feral, Taurens, and machinima. Could there possibly be a more interesting combination for a blog? - A Druid in Time
From reader Shopshopshop of Uldum (US) comes this great new blog on playing a casual Restoration Druid! - Druid Heal
Raaff the Tree shares his thoughts on Druid healing, starting with Talents! - Eighty Percent Fur
With a name that sounds strangely reminiscent of a Fergie song, Lushious blogs about all things Feral Druid. - Moonfire
Real life couple Gwyn and Cablin of Bronze Dragonflight (EU) play Restoration and Balance Druids respectively. One has to wonder about the “discussions” that occur when spell power gear drops! - One Rogue’s Journey
According to Zaltu of Scarlet Crusade (US), “Rogues do it anywhere in between ninety and two-hundred and seventy degrees.” Kind of makes you shift uncomfortably in your chair, doesn’t it? - Rawrbitchrawr
Stompalina of Staghelm (US) shares personal character stories alongside theory development on her Restoration-oriented blog. - Shields Up
Drugfreeyth of Teldrassil (EU) delivers an eclectic mix of “Restoration Shamans, black holes, backstabbing, and ponies.” - Stealth Runs
Furble writes an interesting blog that focuses on completing stealth runs through instances. - Threat Monster
From Zaydok of Stormscale (US) comes this great new blog about “threat build” warriors who tank with an aggressive style.
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| Warcraft Dryad by Marina Siu-Chong |
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*hugs* .-= Softi´s last blog ..Dum di dum di dum =-.
The Intravenous Healing Potion, I used one then it pop from my bags.
About druids working with other healers, so far I think druids do fine, if not better than the rest.
Overwriting HoTs is really an old problem for which there are some workarounds. The first thing to do is to talk to other healers, because some of those not experienced are not really aware of the issue, and with all this re-rolling for WotLK you may end up with a really confused group
Some healers look obsessed about topping off health pools which is actually a druid’s job.
Addons like xperl also help to have at least a better idea of which targets select first, so they can give less priority to those highlighted with HoTs.
Knowing the encounter helps a lot as well because healing assignments can then be way more accurate, bringing a better understanding between the different classes.
Last night I did Malygos-10 with 2 CoH priests. After a few tries I became aware of how bad my reactive raid healing was, and the incredible amount of mana I was wasting (I’m not sure if I actually needed the mana, but I was using a pot on every try). I started focusing more on the tank and pre-HoTting specially before every Vortex, and that worked way better. I had no mana issues, and specially one of the priests started doing more effective group heals without that much pressure from the tank. Even though it wasn’t the problem we were having (we got to phase 3 on every try that I remember, until it died), things were smoother that way.
Assignments are always tricky, so it’s good to have meters (Recount is quite popular, useful and easy) to check who is healing whom, for how much, and with how much overhealing. Is any healer having mana problems? Does anyone have too much mana? (if it’s a druid, maybe he can spam some more HoTs!).
Healing is all about teamwork, so we’d better talk to our teammates
Hm, overwriting HoTs… In which cases does it appear? Which Hot overwrites which one? Does CoH overwrite Lifebloom? Does Lifebloom overwrite CoH? Does Lifebloom overwrite Lifebloom from another Tree? I haven´t been aware of this topic until now. Could you please tell me what is it all about?
Than kyou very much in advance & best regards!
ST
ps: Please excuse my bad English since english isn´t my native language;)
“This has been a long-standing problem for Druid healers. Given the competitive nature of healing, training one’s guildmates to not overwrite your HoTs is pretty difficult. Does anyone have any tips?”
Cattle Prod? Works best with Taurens.
Graylos last blog post..Pre Naxx Moonkin Gear Guide: Part 4
ST, spells don’t actually “overwrite” each other (except if you re-cast one of your own HoTs on the same target), but if a player takes some damage, you cast let’s say Rejuvenation on him and then MacPriest Healall decides to heal him to full health with a Flash Heal before it even ticks once, rejuvenation goes wasted.
This HoT-versus-direct heal fight happens quite often, and ends up with lots of mana down the drain, so healers have to learn to pay attention to HoTs and “respect them” whenever healing speed is not critical (of course if the target’s gonna die if you don’t heal fast, to hell with the HoT, do it fast!
).
I’m a chronic overhealer, especially with the rolling LB stack. Any hints for how to avoid this? My usual rotaton is LB, rejuve, LB, LB and then keep the LB stack up and re-cast rejuve when it expires. Throw in a regrowth when/if needed. I use swiftmend or NS/HT as panic buttons.
I didn’t know that HoTs could overwrite each other.
/hintfortopic
There has to be a way to analyze the combat log to see when someone tops health off with a direct heal on a target that still has hot ticks left. Does WWS do this?
Is it me or does the first emblem look like the point of view of a OB/GYN?
Just Sayin….
@Wynn: Yes, each IV is a single use, and they don’t stack.
@Ermengol: Some really great advice, thank you!
@ST: HoTs do not overwrite each other. When people refer to “overwriting HoTs”, the term is a little misleading. What they’re actually talking about is someone casting a direct heal on a target who already has one or more heals over time on them. The HoT then ticks away ineffectually. It used to be, however, that Druid HoTs did overwrite one another with the higher +Healing value winning. They had to abandon this paradigm when they decided to focus us more toward HoT healing and less toward Healing Touch.
@Graylo: I’ll have to try that … ^^
@TKC: You aren’t the only chronic overhealer. All Druids are. It’s just the nature of the … Trees. The only type of overhealing you should worry about is overhealing resulting from your direct heals (Regrowth, Nourish, Healing Touch).
@Wewhoeat: That’s an interesting idea, but I’d rather encourage people not to overwrite HoTs to begin with rather than figure out who to complain to when it happens. At the same time, I don’t want to seem “greedy” and claim all the targets for myself.
@Aju: I happily don’t have enough experience in that area to say. I didn’t think on it TOO hard, but I don’t personally notice any similarity!
Ermengol & Phae, thank you very much for making the topic clear to me;) In fact this “problem” is handled in my group by using an indicator for incoming heals within the addon grid.
In my experience you can never expect a HoT to heal all it´s potential healing. There will definitely be reached the end of the life-bar before the HoT is over in most cases. The good side is: There will be new damage within seconds which will be handled with our still ticking HoTs;)
About the hots issue, it really depends on healers composition.
In bc when I was assigned to raid healing I was like ‘WTF?!?!’, such a waste of my hots, when you have excellent raid healers in the group.
I found that healers are way to obsessed with meters and trying to top the chart. That can be a problem when you can’t stop casting and watching what’s going on in a fight, who’s taking damage, etc.
You’re simply casting non-stop trying to keep everyone alive.
I did a little experiment the other night during a 25-man naxx: I was assigned as a raid healer, which basically means to heals some splash damage during pulls, and hot the tanks on a boss fight, and sit back and watch until someone was being hit by a brick or something.
I used wild growth and regrowth as main heals, and rejuv and lifebloom when I knew the damage wasn’t serious enough that it needed to be healed right away.
After the raid I was analyzing the meters (wwsstats) and I topped the charts, even though my heals where pretty much overwritten all the time, by the other healers who didn’t stick to their assignments.
Healing is not an easy job, you always want to keep everyone alive and that is a big problem.
It’s really difficult to watch how someone’s life is getting low and not try to heal him.
You lose sight of your assignment trying to heal someone who is being watch by other healer and things can go bad.
There is no need to train your guildmate to not overwrite your hot. You have to choose the correct spell for the correct situation. Having a good knowlege of each event and boss capacity.
Boss with continuous damage on all raid like sapphiron or felmyst, playing with rejuvenation is a key, boss with aoe damage use wildgrowth, boss with targeted damage use regrowth ,nourish or rejuv+swiftmend.
This is how i heal in a 25 raid according to wws:
Patchwerk:regrowth 39%, lifebloom 37%,rejuvenation 11%,swiftmend 9%…
globulus:wildgroth 54%,regrowht 21%,liblebloom 9%, rejuvenation 7% swiftmend 7%etc…
saphhiron:rejuvenation 60%,wildgroth 10%, nourish 9%, regrowth 7%,swiftmend 2%.
Each event need a different healing
I think also that to be effective, you must no let a GCD be not use.
A good druid is someone with a good adaptation and anticipation. I don’t put my hots one someone who already received damage but on someone who will receive some .
Trough BC and now in WOTLK, i was always managed to be a top healer and i was a member of Top guild pre wotlk (killed muru and KJ pre nerf).
Sorry for my very bad english
@Arnen: I think self-restraint and the ability to resist being the hero (or trying to “beat” someone else to a target) is definitely a skill most healers (myself included) could stand to work on.
Regarding trouble being on top of the healingmeters…
I don’t know if there is much difference in a 25-man raid, but in our 10-man raid where I regularly heal together with a priest and a paladin, I dominate the meters, usually I heal 100% more than both the paladin and the priest do each, sometimes only 50% more, but I’m always #1.
Not that I really care about the meters, I just try to be as efficient as possible with my healing and keep everyone alive. I have lifebloom and mostly rejuv running on both tanks when they are tanking and raidheal with a mix of LB, Rejuv, Regrowth and Wild Growth depending on the situation, topping the tanks off with Regrowth when they get low.