Granor of Turalyon (EU) writes in with this question:

I made my way to 70 as a Feral Druid but a (hopefully short-term) healer shortage in the guild has been persuasion enough for me to respec to Resto, and I love it.

The problem I have is that I now find it very difficult to kill mobs outside of raids and groups. I would like to stay Resto when the expansion arrives, but I’m worried that I will be left behind as my friends speed ahead to 80.

Since the changes in Patch 2.3 where Blizzard gave healers free spell damage, I no longer have trouble completing Dailies and killing things that try to eat me while I’m fishing. My favorite technique when soloing involves Thorns, Insect Swarm, Moonfire, the occasional Wrath and a bunch of HoTs while they impale themselves on my thorny exterior (posterior?). Obviously, a certain level of gear is necessary to accomplish this, but it’s a lot of fun. For reference, I have around 650 spell damage in my healing gear which, while nothing compared to an equivalently-geared damage caster, is more than sufficient for the mobs you encounter outside of instances.

With the recent announcement regarding universal spell power in Wrath of the Lich King, leveling as a healer will be a lot more plausible than it was in TBC since you’ll have the same spell damage as damage casters (you’ll probably forego pieces with spell crit, though). Of course, you might also consider a hybrid build that includes talents from Balance and Restoration. These types of builds were very popular at the start of TBC, partially because of the synergy a healing Druid gets from Moonglow, Lunar Guidance, and sometimes Dreamstate and partially because it took a considerable amount of +Healing to make Druid HoTs viable enough to justify delving very deep into the Restoration Tree.

Maypole AoE

One option Mr. Phae and I are theorycrafting over is to have his Mage spec Frost for the 85% slow effect on Blizzard and for me to spec Restoration to pick up 3/3 Improved Tree of Life for the 360% armor bonus. I’d then ride around on my Frostsaber, rounding up however many non-spellcaster mobs I could, then shift into Tree of Life to let them beat on me while I cast HoTs on myself. Once they were all gathered, he’d start with a Blizzard to slow them down and AOE them until they die, giving us their loot. The things that could make this strategy viable are:

• Improved Tree of Life
  This talent is rumored to grant 360% armor contribution from all items and enchants.
• Brambles
  With this improvement, each hit from Thorns will deal 245 damage so that I’m contributing to the damage output. This is in addition to the Daze effect which will help keep them away from Mr. Phae.
• Barkskin
  If I get into trouble, I can use Barkskin and spam Regrowth.
• Hurricane
  Once they turn away from me in disinterest, I can drop out of Tree of Life and use Hurricane (which will no longer have a cooldown).
• Innervate
  For the Frost Mage this time. Mr. Phae is considering continuing to gem for Spirit if we try this.
• Leather armor
  I may end up having to pick up the Badges leather chest piece if my guild can’t kill the third boss in Mount Hyjal for [Don Rodrigo's Poncho]. I’ll also probably have to replace my cloth [Slippers of Dutiful Mending] and equip my [Wildfury Greatstaff] for an additional 1800 Armor.
• Omen of Clarity
  Because it’s fun, and I’m always looking for a reasonable justification to talent for it. I’ll be standing in melee range of mobs for at least a little while and can beat on them with my leafy branches in between refreshing my Lifebloom stack.
• Revive and Wisp Form
  Revive because I’m sure I’ll have to rez Mr. Phae a time or two while we get the hang of it. Wisp Form for the same reason (but for myself).
• Free water and biscuits
  Also, ports to easily sell our copious loot or repair our badly damaged gear.

We might also try with Mr. Phae specced for Arcane. This would be most viable if it turns out that I could hold aggro through HoTs since Arcane has an inherent 40% threat reduction (in which case, I’d drop Subtlety for sure). The build I am considering for this experiment looks like this. I haven’t decided whether I’ll steer clear of Subtlety for the additional threat from HoTs. Mr. Phae thinks there’s no way I’m going to hold their attention for very long (or even if I will want to). Obviously, it’s sort of incumbent upon you to find a Frost Mage partner to try this, but I’ll be sure to share news of either our legendary success or epic failure.

Do you have any special plans (or outlandish schemes) for how you’ll level when Wrath of the Lich King is released?

Related Posts

• Mailbag: A Deforested Restoration Build?
• Mailbag: Tree of Life Usage in Heroics
• Mailbag: WotLK Item List

  A reader writes in with the following:

I’m a raiding Resto Druid.  And I do quite well. I’m one of the guild’s strongest healers (11/0/50).  But I battle to heal a heroic. *sniff*  Some heroics are fairly okay, but something like Magister’s Terrace gives me leaf curl.  What am I doing wrong?  I have more than 2K +Healing when buffed (1.9K unbuffed), and mana isn’t a problem.  My average ping is 400ms, a result of where I live and where the server is situated.

I’ve reached a stage where I actually don’t want to heal heroics for my guildies … but I’m too scared I’m going to be the cause of a wipefest.

It feels like I just can’t cope with splash damage, and I’m doomed to always have a back-up healer in my groups because I can’t cut it on my own.  Rolling Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Regrowth, NS + HT, SM — you name it, I’ve tried it and I’m using it as best I can. It feels like we survive by pure luck … not because I can heal.

*serious case of Resto Blues*

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Dealing with splash damage can certainly be tricky for a Restoration Druid, though not unfeasible. You’ve mentioned some of our most well known techniques (NS + HT, Swiftmend) above, but there are a few other things I would recommend that you try, particularly with respect to Heroic Magister’s Terrace.

Selin Fireheart

There are two encounters where party-wide damage is distributed at regular intervals. The first such fight is Selin Fireheart who performs an ability called Fel Explosion after each crystal is drained. You will know it’s coming because he shouts, “Yes! I am a god!” but just before he starts to drain a crystal, he’ll yell, “My hunger knows no bounds!” That should be your cue to start throwing a Lifebloom on each of your party members. These Lifeblooms should end up blooming just after he’s started damaging your group, and you should have no trouble putting up a LB on 3 of your groupmates before refreshing the LB stack on your main tank, leaving you to top off just one other group member. This type of preemptive healing via cheap and fast-casting Lifebloom is a great way to deal with damage you know is impending.

Vexallus

Vexallus can be a particularly tricky fight, depending on your group’s composition. The strategy relies upon having one or more groupmates or their pets available to soak up the charges of Energy Feedback debuff from the Pure Energy adds that spawn throughout the fight. Because this debuff increases the amount of damage taken (and due to Vexallus’ periodic AOE), it’s important to get rid of these charges periodically. There are several methods of doing this:

• Have a Hunter pet or Voidwalker soak 2 rounds of the debuffs before allowing it to die
• Have a Paladin kill the adds and then use Divine Shield
• Have a Mage soak the debuffs and Iceblock and Cold Snap/Iceblock (when available)
• Have a Rogue soak the debuffs and use Cloak of Shadows

Either way, you’ll want to coordinate with your group to decide who will take which round of charges. You should be able to heal most players through 2 rounds of debuffs (2 mobs per round = 4 total debuffs) before he or she needs to use the appropriate special ability to remove them, though some are certainly more squishy than others. One additional ability at your disposal as a Restoration Druid is Rebirth. You can opt to use one of your DPSers to kill the Pure Energy and soak the debuffs, allowing her to die after two rounds, then cast Rebirth on her so that she can do so again. This will often buy you enough time to kill Vexallus, at which point the debuffs are removed automatically.

Priestess Delrissa

This is a tricky fight and one for which you definitely don’t want to be using Tree of Life. It’s also a great opportunity to show off your amazing crowd control skills with 1-2 mobs that you can effectively crowd control at a time. If you happen to get Garaxxas the Hunter and his ravager pet Sliver, you can keep the pet locked down with Hibernate until your party is ready to deal with her.

Perhaps most valuably, you can cycle Cyclone between all of the other adds with the exception of Priestess Delrissa herself. Your groupmates will invariably be switching targets throughout the fight so just pick who you’re opting to take out of the fight for 9 seconds and let them know not to worry with them. I find Cyclone to be especially helpful on Yazaai the Mage as it interrupts long-casting spells like Blizzard (don’t forget you can shapeshift out of his Frost Nova and Polymorph) and for stopping the massive damage from the Rogue or one of the two Warriors who have elected to pick on a clothie groupmate. Just don’t forget that Cyclone only has a 20-yard range.

Also, be sure that your tank pulls ALL of the groups that come before the Gazebo area, including the two small groups tucked into the enclaves on either side. One or more unlucky Fear uses and you’ll have 3-5 more mobs to deal with.

Kael’thas Sunstrider

There are several things you have to watch out for during the Kael fight. Don’t stand on top of the flaming spheres that indicate an incoming Flamestrike, don’t stand within melee range of the Phoenix, and keep strong healing focused on your tank during the ground phases. During Gravity Lapse (the phase where everyone is thrown upward and can “swim” through the air), you’ll notice beams that connect each party member to Kael’Thas, draining their life away. For these phases, I find it most helpful to “swim” back and forth behind his stage area (affording a significant amount of coverage from the orbs) and throwing a Lifebloom on whoever is in range before moving back across. Make sure that your groupmates know that they must be in range of one end of the stage or the other and that they shouldn’t travel toward the door if it can be avoided.

General Tips for Magister’s Terrace

In addition to the fight specific tips above, I’d also give the following general advice:

• You can often view Tranquility as a fight “reset.” If group healing ever gets out of your control, pop Barkskin and use Tranquility to restore your whole group to full health again. And then don’t let it happen again for another ten minutes.
• To maximize the benefit you’re getting from abilities that have cooldowns (Nature’s Swiftness, Swiftmend, Tranquility), I recommend using the addon Ghost Pulse. Originally recommended to me by reader Ammeli, GP flashes the icon of any ability as soon as it becomes available.
• Ethereum Smugglers can be very annoying, teleporting into the middle of your group and exploding all over everyone. Stop them from doing this by casting a Cyclone on him just after he teleports. The ability is on a cooldown, and he won’t be able to do so again immediately.
• Make sure someone in your group takes out any Warlock Imps that come with trash pulls. They’re very low health and can be dispatched with 1-2 hits by most casters but can harry you mercilessly if left to their own mischievous devices.
• Have all your ranged stand as far as possible when fighting the Sunblade Sentinel. Their Chain Lightning AOE won’t hit outside of a certain range, reducing the amount of group-wide healing you’ll have to do and letting you focus more on your tank.
• During the packs of Brightscale Wyrms that lead up to the fight with Vexallus, do not start casting HoTs on your tank too early. If you pull them away from him too soon, he’ll have trouble regaining aggro on them and you’ll die. A better option is to wait until he’s about half life and then hit him with a larger heal.
• Whenever possible, your tank should pull any groups around a corner. Many of the mobs in Magister’s Terrace are ranged casters who will happily blast away at you or your tank unless forced to run around a corner to reach you.

I hope that this advice is helpful to you! Magister’s Terrace can be a very fun instance to run as a Resto Druid once you’ve learned enough tricks to help you deal with splash damage. Of course, even the best healer can’t make an instance successful if her groupmates aren’t supportive. Make sure you nudge your tank, CCers, or DPSers in the right direction if something they’re doing is making your job harder!

Does anyone else have advice to share from their time in Magister’s Terrace?

Related Posts

• Mailbag: Tree of Life Usage in Heroics
• Mailbag: Preferred Tank
• Mailbag: “Tree Tactics 101″ from Bigtoy of Cho’gall

The following is an e-mail from Nichgoul of Al’Akir (EU) who wrote in to share his impressions of the usefulness of spell haste. As I have little experience using spell haste myself, I’m soliciting opinions from those of you who have been able to put together a haste set, either primarily or situationally.

After healing in our recent night in Mount Hyjal, I was annoyed at the fact that, while there were five tanks all taking damage, I could only Lifebloom four of them. While this is a dream scenario for Resto Druids, I had to leave one tank out. Since the changes in 2.4 (spell haste now reducing the global cooldown to a maximum of one second), I have gone about looking up how much spell haste is needed to reach the super-tree mode of having five global cooldowns per rotation as opposed to four.

How much spell haste do I need? *

In theory, the minimum number of spell haste required is 113, although due to latency this isn’t realistic. To be 100% certain that you will make the 5 GCD target, you’re looking at closer to 180-200 spell haste.

Where can I get spell haste?

First of all, start running ZA. While there is no leather +Healing gear that has spell haste in this instance, there are four Druid-usable items that do:

• [Brooch of Nature's Mercy]: +33 spell haste rating
• [Cloak of Ancient Rituals]: +25 spell haste rating
• [Dark Blessing]: +30 spell haste rating
• [Signet of the Quiet Forest]: +30 spell haste rating

The four items alone total to 118 spell haste rating. You can also get gems that increase spell haste, the best of which fits a yellow socket and increases spell haste rating by 8.

What does this mean?

This means that with the gear from ZA and 3 or more spell haste gems, you’re looking close to or are reaching the 5GCD per rotation. (The gear from ZA unfortunately doesn’t have sockets, but if you get items drop that don’t need for regular upgrades, you can socket them for spell haste.)

Is it worth all this effort?

In my opinion, yes. Whether you let this gear replace your current healing gear is more of a personal choice, but the extra time while general raid healing is nice as it means that you can get a Rejuvenation + Swiftmend off quicker and generally have more GCDs to play around with. If you carry this gear with you in your bags you can equip it when necessary. For example, when 4/5 tanks pop up that need healing simultaneously then I would highly suggest switching gear. Here’s why:

If your triple-stacked Lifebloom heals a tank for approximately 700 HPS, being able to stack on four tanks will produce 2,800 healing per second (this is already a larger healing per second output then any other healer can sustain). However, you will be locked down to just casting Lifebloom on the tanks. If, however, you have enough spell haste to cast five insta-cast spells, you will have one GCD free to heal yourself, the raid, or to boost a tank with Rejuvenation. Of course, you could now keep five tanks triple-stacked, which would result in 3,500 HPS, way above what any other healer can match over a sustained period of time. These stats also increase with an increase in your +Healing value; if the 700 HPS were increased to a still-plausible 800 HPS, you’d be looking at 3200 HPS without spell haste and 4000 HPS with it.

This extra GCD also opens up additional spell rotations, using Rejuvenation and Regrowth, for example. **

This rotation doesn’t require full spell haste, just a few items to get the Regrowth off in the second rotation. This cycle costs 742 mana every five seconds:

LB 1, LB 2, LB 3, RJ 1
LB 1, LB 2, LB 3, RG 1

A haste-heavy, 5-GCD cycle (requiring around 200 haste rating) can keep up Rejuvenation and Regrowth on two tanks while triple-stacking Lifebloom on all three. This cycle costs 869 mana every five seconds:

LB 1, LB 2, LB 3, RJ 1, RJ 2
LB 1, LB 2, LB 3, RG 1
LB 1, LB 2, LB 3, RJ 1, RJ 2
LB 1, LB 2, LB 3, RG 2

I personally believe that this increase in healing per second and the ability to simultaneously stabilize five tanks’ health (or four tanks with a random spell every seven seconds), definitely gives enough reason to go out and start collecting spell haste as a Resto Druid.

* Information gathered from http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t17783-druid_raiding_tree/
** Information and rotation designs gathered from http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t17783-druid_raiding_tree/

Nichgoul is specifically asking for feedback on the above, and I’d love to hear your thoughts, as well!

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I have revised my original opinion on this topic. You can find the updated analysis here: Idol Chatter.

Leighbra of Sentinels (US) writes in with this question:

At the moment, I have 494 Spirit unbuffed. I’m at about 675 fully raid buffed. I don’t have any idea how I ended up with so much Spirit and have been looking at what I can do with my enchants to play with that number, but I’m cheap and don’t like to re-enchant things… I have the [Idol of the Emerald Queen] equipped, and of course Lifebloom is my most commonly cast spell. So, from my Tree of Life aura, in raids, that means about 135ish additional +Healing for the people in my group.

I’m trying to figure out if it would be more beneficial to the guild/raid (not just my healing numbers) for me to be in a group with our tanks and to equip that often discarded [Idol of the Raven Goddess], especially after it gets buffed, than me having the [Idol of the Emerald Queen] equipped. Especially on Gruul, when after 8 growths we tell our DPS to heal themselves, and have all 8/9 healers focus on our two tanks.

First of all, great question, especially in light of the upcoming update to our idols. Previously, the [Idol of the Emerald Queen] was indisputably the best one available to us. This is kind of sad considering it’s a blue item from a non-Heroic dungeon (Shadow Labyrinth). It really speaks to the — likely unanticipated — power of Lifebloom. With Patch 2.4, however, the bonus to your Tree of Life aura from the [Idol of the Raven Goddess] will jump from 20 to 44, certainly a marked improvement. And while I hesitate to tell you definitively which Idol will be better for you and your raid, I can help give you a list of considerations to help you decide!

Continue reading ‘Mailbag: Idol of the Raven Goddess’…

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There is some exciting news about Patch 2.4 from Community Manager Drysc today:

Although not terribly relevant to your discussion I thought I’d jump in and let you know about some Spell Haste changes in the upcoming patch.

In 2.4, Spell Haste will reduce the global cool down on spells, down to a minimum of 1 second. It won’t apply to melee and ranged abilities though however.

Ironically, this news comes just days after an e-mail from Sydera of Vek’nilash (US) in which she inquires:

I have been wondering about something for a while and have no other resto druids to ask. Why do you think there is so much spell haste on the Zul’Aman and T6 content items? What are we going to be doing in Hyjal and Black Temple that makes spell haste necessary? Is this bad design, or is there something to be learned here?

My healing style relies almost exclusively on instants. My guild is 1/4 TK and 3/6 SSC right now, and I tend to use regrowth about once per boss fight and healing touch pretty much never. If I use HT, it’s with nature’s swiftness every time. My general rotation is rolling lifeblooms and rejuvenation on tanks. Is something going to change this for the T6 stuff?

In responding to her question, I generated a list of spell haste items that would be appropriate to a cloth or leather-wearing healer by filtering the armor on WoWHead. Those previously scoffable eight items are now looking a lot more attractive. Because in the now immortal words of reader Zackoria:

HAHA! LIFEBLOOM! LIFEBLOOM LIFEBLOOM!!! Castable healing? BAH! ONLY THE ACCURSED GLOBAL COOLDOWN CAN RESTRAIN US FROM WORLD HEALING DOMINATION AHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!!

(Endgame-equipped) Druids just got (up to) 33% closer to World Healing Domination.

Read about 2.4 details as they arrive at ElitistJerks.com.

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