So I kind of wimped out with my talent spec when Patch 2.3 was released. I gave up on my radical idea of going healing Boomkin and instead went with a much more traditional spec of 11/0/50. Since Mr. Phae is taking a break from PvE at the moment, I decided that I'd take a break from PvP and pull my points out of the Feral tree to pick up Living Spirit and a few other more PvE-oriented talents. And before you comment with "OMG DURIDS R 4 HOTS", I sunk points into Healing Touch talents due to the increased emphasis on Heroic instances from daily quests and badge rewards. So far, I'm really enjoying the changes.

One of my favorite changes to my spec is the addition of Insect Swarm, the 11-point Balance talent:

While Insect Swarm is one of the highest DPM (damage per mana) spells in the game, it has the added benefit of preventing 2% of incoming damage on your tank. That's 2% less damage you have to heal and it scales in a way that nothing else (available to Druids) does. The more damage your tank takes, the more damage that's mitigated, completely independent of your +Healing or +Damage totals.

While the benefits of Insect Swarm are fairly obvious, the hardest thing about using it was figuring out how to integrate it into my healing strategy. After all, healing is different than dpsing, and mixing the two can be cumbersome. Which is why I developed the following macro:

#showtooltip Insect Swarm /cast [target=mouseover,exists,harm][target=target,exists,harm][target=targettarget,exists,harm] Insect Swarm

This macro first attempts to cast Insect Swarm on your mouseover target, assuming it exists and that it's aggressive toward you (harm). If it cannot find a mouseover target, it will attempt to cast upon your normal target with the same stipulations. By combining this macro with the techniques described in my earlier article on Healing via Focus Target, you can set your main tank to your focus target, then mouseover Insect Swarm his current target. You still have the liberty to Insect Swarm other mobs, but be careful that you don't DoT something that will later need to be crowd controlled. For this reason, it's often a good idea to make sure that your tank's target is missing a bit of life before you cast Insect Swarm on it, both so you're sure it's not a target he's only targetting to generate a little bit of aggro and so that he has time to build some threat before you DoT it.

Here is a revised version of the above-mentioned macro to also include Faerie Fire and Moonfire. It will cast these spells in the order Insect Swarm, Faerie Fire, Moonfire and will reset its sequence after 7 seconds:

#showtooltip Insect Swarm /castsequence [target=mouseover,exists,harm][target=target,exists,harm][target=targettarget,exists,harm] reset=7 Insect Swarm, Faerie Fire, Moonfire

Related Posts

• Debuffing Your Focus Target
• Balance Tree … Uprooted and Transplanted
• Heal Self by Default

I logged on last night and quickly realized that I was being "that guy" after not checking the "Load Out-of-Date Addons" box. A couple of minutes later, I was Ms. Responsible again, noticing all the kinks in my updated interface (Pitbull dims my character portrait out like I'm out of range, for instance). Monday-Wednesday are scheduled 25-man content and unfortunately we kept to that schedule this week, despite the release of Zul'Aman. I stopped by Zangarmarsh when winging my way to Gruul's Lair, fished two pools of Steam Pump Debris, and nabbed my copy of [item]Weather-Beaten Journal[/item] (I'm enjoying the ItemStats integration — can't you tell?). I'm pretty excited about that since Phaelia doesn't have a gathering tradeskill and isn't a Dwarf so has never had the option to display pretty gold circles of loot-potential on her minimap.

We had a particularly rocky start in Gruul's Lair last night, due partially to the change to Fear mechanics that causes the Warlock Ogre in the Maulgar fight to continue beating on his tank after he fears. Once we changed our strategy to have two tanks on him, one taunting when the other was feared, we got him down immediately. At about this point, we started having server issues though, likely due to the plethora of guilds exploring Zul'Aman (/jealous) and crashing the instance server. Once the instance server came back up, we cleared to Gruul and downed him on our first attempt. And then the server crashed before we could loot him. T_T Raiding on Patch Night for the lose. In a way, I think it's better that we didn't get to see what Gruul would have dropped for us before the server crashed. Seeing the item you want rot because of in-game issues would have been heartbreaking to someone. At least now we can all assume he dropped [item]Pocket Lint[/item] and Warlock loot.

The best part of last night's raid was experiencing first hand the changes to Intensity. I should have checked my pre-patch mana regeneration while casting, but it seemed to have substantially improved last night. Where I was once using one [item]Fel Mana Potion[/item] per Maulgar attempt and one [item]Super Mana Potion[/item] and one [item]Fel Mana Potion[/item] on Gruul, I didn't have to use a single one all night. I even finished Maulgar at 60% mana, having only used Innervate on myself. Vonya is also enjoying the changes to Meditation (the Priest version of Intensity). Of course, it might have also had something to do with my shiny new [item]Drums of Restoration[/item]. On that note (har har), I've been trying to come up with a good party-say or emote to tie to their use. Here are a few possibilities under consideration:

• Phaelia rocks out to the tune of 25 MP5 for her party.
• Phaelia beats on her drum. You feel energized by the rhythm.
• /p "Pa rum pum pum pum! 600 Mana from my Drum!"
• /p Bah! Who needs a Shadow Priest when you've got Drums of Restoration? (Me, that's who.)
• /p "I'd like to dedicate this one to Elune. 25 MP5 coming right up!"
• /p "BAM BAM BAM!"

Anyone have any better suggestions?

Related Posts

• Intensity to Become 30% Regen while Casting
• Revaluing Spirit
• Guest Post: Moonkin Mana Regeneration

Someone reported that Tree of Life has the ability to cast Remove Curse with the latest build in on the PTR. However, this has subsequently been demonstrated as untrue. Casting Remove Curse while in Tree of Life will automatically shift you out. Sorry for getting your hopes up (and mine, too)! Thank you to Frogs for the correction!

Related Posts

• Patch 2.3 Cometh
• Druid Changes on PTR
• Trinketed Lifebloom Nerfed on PTR

German Community Manager Zolphea writes:

Also an einer Terrorkatze wird, unseres Wissens nach, nicht gearbeitet.

Was wir jedoch planen, ist, Baumrinde mit Patch 2.3 in der Katzen- und Reisegestalt nutzbar zu machen.

Mein gott! I don’t speak German! What does that mean?!? Oh. PvPScene also has the translation:

Currently we are not working on a Dire Cat Form. But what we plan is to make Barkskin available in Cat and Travel Form!

I don’t get “caught” in kitty very often, but this might help when trying to get away and getting mace stunned while a cheetah. I guess they decided not to allow Bear Form to use Barkskin because they feel that it would be unbalancing in PvE.

Related Posts

• Ommra: Barkskin to Be Usable by Tree of Life
• (No More) Water Under the Bridge
• Cheetaz R 4 Run

Many players often feel pressured to spec one way or another. While the people doing the pressuring may sometimes make valid observations, more often it seems that they are doing so because they have read that one build or another is considered “optimal.” A friendly visitor (name withheld by request) finds herself in this situation right now. She writes in:

I keep feeling pressure (whether intended or not) to respec full Resto. Would you Armory me and look at my talents? I’m thinking I lose more than I gain by going full Tree… I have two of the 21 point Balance talents and Swiftmend.

Can I be just as good a PVE healer at 26/0/35 or is Tree Form necessary?

You can absolutely be a great PvE healer with this build! After all, a good healer doesn’t rely upon her talent spec or her gear. You can get some great efficiency increases from some of the talents further down in the Restoration tree, but the basic concepts remain the same. The spec you’ve chosen is very similar to one of my favorite specs, and it’s the one that I used when I first started doing Heroic instances. At that point in my progression, my +Healing value was too low for Lifebloom and Rejuvenation to deliver the HPS necessary for Heroic trash that hits like a Hurtful Strike. By instead focusing talents on improving Healing Touch, you’ll be able to deliver faster, less expensive, and more powerful versions of our high HPS heal, Healing Touch, a spell which isn’t even accessible to the Tree of Life. Of course, at 1200 +Healing, you have the flexibility to go either way.

The Moonglow (9% mana reduction on Healing Touch, Rejuvenation, and Regrowth)/Lunar Guidance (+25% Intellect to +Healing) build actually simulates a weaker form of Tree of Life, with the following differences:

• It’s available all the time and can be used in situations where you need to remain mobile.
• You retain access to Abolish Poison, Remove Curse, and Healing Touch (in addition to being able to buff).
• Encourages you to stack Intellect rather than Spirit. When you’re just starting out, a little bit of Spirit will go less far than the same amount of Intellect. Spirit becomes more viable the higher its stacked.

Prior to the 2.3 change to spell damage, this sort of build would be one of the few ways to retain soloability and still do well as a healer. Of course, both a pure Restoration build and a build like this one will be getting stronger after 2.3, so don’t be shy about speccing more deeply Restoration if you decide that’s what you want! Overall I think you’ve done an excellent job selecting your talents. I would, however, encourage you to consider moving 5 more points into Tranquil Spirit for the 10% mana reduction on Healing Touch as you likely employ it a great deal. If you can learn to live without it and often team with great tanks, you might be able to rescue your points from Nature’s Focus (interrupt prevention) for just such a purpose.

The bottom line is, stick to your guns. If you feel comfortable healing in the spec you’ve chosen and don’t often find yourself wishing “oh, but if only I had XYZ” then no amount of coaxing by your guildmates should convince you to the contrary. From what I can see, you’ve got everything that’s really important to help you heal well, including Swiftmend and Nature’s Swiftness. And we can all Lifebloom stack, specced for it or not.

P.S. For those wondering why I eventually changed my spec from one based on Moonglow/Lunar Guidance, I had to for PvP. Unfortunately, there is less flexibility in such an environment.

Related Posts

• Talent Spec: Leveling Restoration/Balance
• Shake My (Talent) Tree
• Mailbag: Tree of Life Usage in Heroics