Dominating Druid Healing Part 2

Last time in part 1 we looked at glyphs and spec for trees and had some good discussion in the thread.  It appears that most of you were doing pretty well when it comes to not doing something particularly weird.  Now that you’ve tweaked your spec and glyphs if necessary let’s look at what you should be doing in those raid healing situation to maximize your healing prowess.

There does seem to be some undo concern about patch 3.1 and the effect it’s going to have on us trees.  Unfortunately we can’t effectively answer all of those without making this post way too long.  So while I hate to do this to you, you’re going to have to wait another couple of days to get our complete analysis of how those changes are going to effect us.

Instead, what we’re going to do is tell you what you should be doing now in this post, and then next time I’ll cover how those things are going to change slightly with the new patch.  If we don’t cover the current situation, the changes won’t make a lot of sense and we certainly want to cover them in sufficient detail on both sides of the 3.1 line.  So let’s cover effective healing as it currently stands.

Druid healing is all about making life bars stand still under any amount of incoming damage.  Let’s put damage on a scale from 1 to 5 with Patchwerk hateful strikes being a 5 and something like random trash aoe being 1.

Every other healing class is supposed to use a spell that matches the incoming damage with a heal that replaces what was lost.  A heal too small and the life bar never hits the top.  A heal too big and you just lost too much mana.  The focus here is to keep life bars at or near 100% by applying the proper ‘fill’ spell to top people back up.  Druids are different.

You can think of other healers using a paintball gun to fill in the places that need more green.  A druid uses a lot more finesse.  Druids heal with a collection of brushes; some small, some big, to fill in those empty spots.  It takes more time and patience, but it’s also less messy.

The druid is also going to match incoming damage, but they don’t worry about time quite as much.  Let me explain what I mean.  A Vigilant Shade pops up in Naxx.  The blast shadow bolt hits a number of party members.  There’s going to be another one in a few seconds.  What do you do?  If you’re a Paladin you probably spam FoL to top everyone up.  A Priest hits CoH, a Shaman Chain heal – that sort of thing.  The purpose is to try to get everyone back to 100% NOW.  If you don’t get caught up, the next damage could put some folks in the danger zone – especially if that shade pops out when your group is already engaged with some mini spiders, and a pat, and  . . .

The druid combats this a different way.  Seeing incoming damage he can just throw Rejuvenation on the party members that got popped and then go do something else.  With 2,000 or so spell power, that Rejuv is going  to tick pretty big – and the current damage is taken care of as well as anything further the party member might get from the same mob.  Incoming damage at level 1 and a level 1 style HoT; the next 15 seconds is pretty much taken care of.

The party members’ life bar stands still, basically with no real need to top it off.  Seriously, I hope the shade is dead in under 15 seconds.  Once the damage stops, the remaining portion of the HoT timer will top off the health bar with no need for anything else to be done.  The hard part is trusting that bar to do it’s slow climb.

Another way of looking at it is that HoTs work more like mitigation.  Every HoT you use is more like adding a boatload of armor.  The bar may not move toward 100%, but it shouldn’t drop any more.  What you are doing is counting on the fact that your HoT will be there longer than the damage.  Thus, the time component becomes the real issue.

Which leads us to an interesting point.  Because you can ‘fire and forget’ with HoTs, you can also get really good at anticipating incoming damage and get the HoT in place before the damage happens.  When you do that effectively, now you can talk about keeping a life bar at 100%.  That’s when you’re getting really slick.  Knowing which spell to apply to which party members can pretty much leave the paladin sitting there twiddling his thumbs and doing some DPS because there really isn’t anyone to ‘top off.’  Just ask Zmack about that.

So let’s put it all in perspective.  Your first option should always be Rejuvenation.  It doesn’t heal real big, but it is instant cast and will take care of about 50% of all incoming damage to everyone but your tank.  Let’s call that your level 1 incoming damage heal.  Rank 2 is Wild Growth.  It ticks bigger, especially at first, and you don’t even have to aim.  Rank 3 is Regrowth; nice initial heal and a good HoT on the back end for those times when you are dealing with damage that could really put people at risk.  Rank 4 is Lifebloom, probably the best anticipatory heal you’ve got, but you really need to use it properly.  Also in the Rank 4 category is Swiftmend.  Swiftmend is just nearly on par with nourish and instant cast to boot.  And for Rank 5 damage, Nourish.

Yes, I left out Healing Touch.  There is really never a situation where Healing Touch is the best option.  A glyphed HT is not as good as Nourish at the same cast time.  A non-glyphed healing touch takes almost as long to cast as a Regrowth and Nourish, which would heal for more.  It’s not that HT is a stupid spell, it’s just that everything else is better, so why use it.  I will agree that if you are ever going to pop HT it should be right after Nature’s Swiftness.  But honestly, if you already have a Rejuv and Regrowth on your target, Nourish is a better spell even in that situation.

Also not in the list above is Tranquility, which some of you believe is the best heal we’ve got.  But, considering that even with 2 points in Improved Tranquility, you’ve still got a 4 min cooldown, it’s not really something you can rely on as a ‘got-to’ heal.  Plus, using Tranquility without those 2 points is probably going to take you out of the fight anyway since without the threat reduction you’re basically dead if you use it.  I won’t fault you if you like it, and I’ve toyed with those 2 points myself from time to time, but generally I feel like if I really do my job with HoTs I never need to use it anyway.  And even in those cases where it might save folks, it’s probably a wipe regardless of what Tranq does.  It’s the best “OH CRAP” heal in the game by far, but it’s probably better to just never get to that point in the first place.

So here is how all of this works together.  Let’s say you’re in OS and fighting Sartharion.  The tank is taking Level 5 damage, the off tank somewhere between 3 and 4, and everyone else 1 and 2.  There’s a lot going on.  But the Druid can keep all of the other healers fairly bored.

The tank gets Revuj, LB, LB, LB, Regrowth, Wild Growth.  For the rest of the fight it’s basically keeping those HoTs in place and perhaps throwing in a Nourish from time to time if your other healers are busy.  The Off Tank gets a Rejuv, LB, Regrowth – and you’ll probably let the LB go ahead and bloom.  Everyone else can just get a Rejuv except that mage and Lock who are probably making the Off Tank’s life nutty by pulling aggro from time to time from the fire elemental adds.  Those two dudes get Rejuv, Regrowth and that will probably get it done.

By putting Wild Growth on the MT, those two clothies will probably be prioritized in the list, so no need to target them with that one.  If things get bad, since you’ve already got Rejuv on just about everyone important it’s an easy thing to yank their life bar up a few thousand with a Switmend right NOW and wait for the incoming heal from the other direct healers.

Lifebloom doesn’t go on anyone but tanks.  It is too mana intensive and doesn’t last long enough to just go throwing it around.  The one exception is Sapphiron, where you will want to use a single LB to mitigate the constant level 2 damage everyone is taking.  LB and PoM make Sapph a cakewalk.  But in almost every other case Rejuv is a better choice.  (This is especially true in 3.1, so you might as well get used to it now).

Now, lots of people keep LB rolling on the tank, and that’s a good way to go right now, but considering the changes to LB incoming, you might want to reconsider that and begin using LB the way they intended, and are about to force.  So let’s take level 5 damage and split it into big, really big, and huge.  For big damage, one LB, really big gets a 2 stack, and huge gets all 3.  Then let them bloom.  Yes, go ahead and let them bloom, in a few weeks you’ll have almost no choice anyway, so live with it.

I’ve seen new druid healers throwing LB on everyone first, then trying to get a Rejuv up and THEN doing whatever else.  You can see on our damage tree why that’s upside down.  Start with Rejuv, and then build up from there.  With that being said, you’re also smart people so if you KNOW that the incoming damage is going to be a 3, then START with Regrowth and add a Rejuv.  That’s the way I stack on a tank with Patch incoming.  Regrowth as he starts the pull, Rejuv before Patch crosses the slime, then LB X 3 right as he’s taking the first hit.  Now it’s just on the the off tank(s) to do the same thing, then managing all those HoT timers the best you can.

90% of the time I’m just watching bars with healbot and guessing – “Rejuv or Regrowth?”  Some folks get both, some one or the other.  The best way to learn this is to ask the other healers in your next raid to leave your group completely alone and let you fly solo.  Start watching how your own HoTs work on those life bars.  Put up a HoT and then watch what happens and resist the temptation to top people off.  Open Recount to the Overhealing score and really REALLY try to keep it at 0%.  It’s the only way you’re ever going to get to the point where you know which HoT will fill that bar back to 99.9% with nothing else added.

Really, most of the time you should only be hitting wild growth every time the cooldown is up, throwing regrowth and Rejuv on everyone else and LB the tanks.  That’s 90% of the time folks.  Start with Rejuv, then ADD Wild Growth, then ADD Regrowth, then LB (to tanks only please) then Nourish if needed.  Even then, you CAN very well just hit Regrowth again (until patch 3.1) since Regrowth with Regrowth already on the target is the best heal you have.  Don’t believe me – check this out.

The basic tenet goes like this – If Rejuv will keep the bar from moving left, it’s enough healing.  Once the damage stops it will move it to the right toward 100%.  If you have Rejuv up and the bar is STILL moving left, put up Wild Growth.  Two HoTs up and life still going down?  Add Regrowth so the thing stops moving.  It’s real simple, and remember you have to take into account that those HoTs will still be ticking when there is no damage taking place.  Or, that the HoTs will be ticking bigger than the incoming damage if you have stacked them properly.  That means the bar stands still, and then gradually moves to the right as the damage goes down.

Now, the other healers in your group can make this very difficult to learn intuitively.  They see 75% life and instantly heal.  About the best thing for you to do is some heroics and really play things a little recklessly.  Let your tanks’ health drop closer to 50% or so before you Nourish, that sort of thing, so you can really tell how far that bar is moving.  Don’t just fire your HoTs all over the place even if you have full mana, and wait until someone actually needs to be healed before you HoT them to death.

Also, those other healers will kill your overhealing numbers.  Paladins are the worst.  They overheal more than anyone and will virtually guarantee that your overheals triple.  That’s ok, it’s what they do, but you’ll need to make sure that as you practice this that you keep everyone, especially the paladin, from healing anyone in your group.  Even if you make a few mistakes and have a couple of deaths on trash pulls, you’ll be a much better healer for it.

So there is our analysis of the current methodology of Dominating Druid healing.  I promise we’ll take an in-depth look at the changes in patch 3.1 soon.  If anything, we’re getting some huge buffs.  And our view is that you won’t really even have to change your style all that much, you’re just getting a better Level 5 heal.

I recognize the fact that for the seasoned piece of wood out there you’ve been doing this or something very nearly like it since you were just an acorn.  But for the fellow who just sprouted limbs it will help them refine their style by using the proper priorities.  So test yourself for the next day or two while we work on how to continue making the world a greener place going into patch 3.1.