[Krenian]

Ohai.

Yes, this is your DK DPS author asking you silly healers some advice.

On some times, I play my druid and he's resto. Now I think I do right but I wouldn't mind a couple of tips when it comes to healing. I usually use my HoTs and simply shove HoTs with Wild Growth and that's about it.

One thing I do notice though is that I rarely to EVER use Nourish. I actually dislike the spell. Is this right to feel this way with the spell? I just don't see the point.

Also, I have an abnormally high Mp5. It's pretty silly. Anything that could be looked at would be appreciated.

So honestly? I'm asking for a full Healing 101 with a druid if possible. Whatcha guys think, what am I doing right/wrong?

Like I said, I usually go Rejuv, Lifebloom, Regrowth and Wild Growth from time to time. I rarely use the big Healing Touch unless it's got Nature's Swiftness.

Here, here is mah Armory: The World of Warcraft Armory

So, am I doing it right?

[Bashal]

I have a druid healer alt as well.

I understand your dislike of nourish, in the sense that it throws off your rhythm stacking hots.

There are times, though, when you really need to throw in some spike healing. With raid heals, swiftmend usually does the trick, and you can go back to HoTting. Even if you have to apply rejuv to the target first, it's still faster than using a spell with a cast time.

Another option, if only a moderate amount of spike healing is needed, is to cast regrowth. And it adds another HoT, one with a really long timer, which is sweet.

I find Healing Touch, as it sounds like you do, has too long a cast time to be useful unless used in conjunction with nature's swiftness. It's like a more powerful swiftmend that way.

In short, I really only use nourish when a tank is in trouble and needs (multiple) spike heals. And usually only if my swiftmend and NS + HT is on cooldown.

EDIT: like you, I also find that my mana bar is there only for show... unless I need to throw out more nourishes. That will chew up my mana faster than throwing out HoTs.

[Coro]

I have healed as every class throughout the game, and my two favorite class/roles are holy priests and restro trees.

Restro trees are very fun to me because they can be played in SO many different ways. I'm going to tell you how I heal as a druid, and I promise you, I'll probably be the only one that plays him the way I do. There is no "right way", just do whatever is best for you.

I use nourish if I am tanking healing and his hp starts to spike. I prefer to keep 3x Lifebloom, rejuv on the tank, and then wild growth to help the aoe heals. That's MT healing.

If I am raid healing, I will just throw around wild growths every possible chance, rejuvs when applicable, and occasionally throw an extra lifebloom on the tanks.

I actually don't use swiftmen and don't even bother putting a talent point into it *gasp*. Most people call me a "noob" or whatever because of it, but then I always end up top healing and impress everybody, even do better healing on my druid then my priest even though priest is my main.

[Bashal]

Source: Coro I actually don't use swiftmen and don't even bother putting a talent point into it *gasp*.

I've seen enough druid healers to know it actually isn't trerribad to skip swiftmend and/or nature's swiftness. I like them, and I use them, but resto druids are flexible enough to be able to do without them.

[Aliena]

Of course they're able to do without them, just as a holy priest is able to do without Guardian Spirit. It's still depriving your class of a tool you could be taking advantage of to make yourself a better healer suited to more situations.

Expanding your toolbox and making use of every tool you're given to handle whichever situation is thrown at you is what makes a good healer, not skipping cheap and more than worthwhile talents cause you're "still good without them". Can you be good without them? Yes. Could you be better with them? Yes. Do you prove anything by skipping them other than that you're stubborn? No.

There are several ways to play a resto druid. One is to hot everything up with rejuv and wg and crack the healing meter jackpot. Another is to actually keep an eye on the people that need heals the most. This is where Nourish plays a part. If you're assigned to tank healing, Nourish is what you should be using after you get all your HoTs stacked on the tank.

If you're raid healing, Nourish is excellent to counter spike damage on a raid member. Examples are Ignis Slag Pot, Kologarn Grabs, Faction Champions focus fire (also an excellent situation to use swiftmend/NS) and any similar situation.

It's a situational spell to counter quick burst damage and to give druids more versatility in the way of tank and 5-man healing. HoTs will still be your main healing spells, but forgetting about Nourish as well as forgetting about amazing spells like Swiftmend and NS automatically makes you a worse healer than you could be. Even if you don't use them all the time, keep them at the back of your mind!

[Krenian]

Thanks folks, I'll try to keep that silly Nourish flash heal type in the back of my mind. I'm also glad that I am actually doing a fairly good job healing wise then with what you stated druids usually do.

Couple of questions:

1) Druids are good at what exactly? Single target? Raid heal? Both? I'm more curious as to what exactly I should try to look into when it comes to that situation. I find if I have to heal a tank, I can keep him up long enough but sometimes I just cannot for the life of me deal with a tank that takes a huge spike damage even with Nourish. I find nourish doesn't heal enough for it. What can I do to alleviate this? My biggest problem when I'm healing in a raid situation (I only do 10 man with my druid as resto, and 5 man's a non issue), there are some fights that I struggle with bursts. Particularly Iron Council when my tank takes a whopping shot from Steelbreaker. I always find that he takes half his health in damage and I'm left going er er er now what! And I throw Nourish like mad but he stays low pretty damn often. And this is every time Fusion Punch goes in. I wanna be able to feel like I don't have to panic when I see his health drop halfway.

2) Gear wise is my bigger question: Am I too high Mp5? Is that why my Nourish is low? What should I be looking to change exactly? Yeah, stupid and not a good place to be (Should be in the Halp section but I prefer this place cause of the amount of people that could easily look into the thread.), but I'll try myself here anyway.

I'm really looking more towards a basic idea of what I should look for. I'm also only using Grid however I'm open to add ons that could help or macros (I work with both for my DK thousands of times so yeah.)

Thanks ahead of time!

[Aliena]

1.) Right now, druids do everything well. There'll be some heavy nerfs inc, but right now they're stupidly OP raid healers and good tank healers. Since "stupidly OP" beats "good", druids will usually be assigned to raid healing - although of course that also depends on your raid leader's familiarity with strengths and weaknesses of healing classes. For example, I joined a 10-man TOC for shits and giggles today in my normal gear and holy spec and got assigned to tank heals of all things.

The more HoTs you have on your target, the more Nourish heals for. Your spellpower is pretty low, especially for Ulduar - to improve a druid's throughput, gem spellpower. Especially if you don't have any mana issues like you're saying, spellpower is the way to go. Once you're comfortable with your regen, always gear for throughput. That goes for every healing class, really.

A lot of people are most comfortable using healbot or Grid & Clique, which basically allow you to change everything into a mouseover macro. Personally I ride best with just Grid, but it's all a matter of trial and error, comfort and habit. What I can suggest is having your raid frames in a position of the screen that doesn't obstruct your view of the scene but at the same time is everpresent. Also, Grid is GREATLY customizable... usually a vertical health frame setup with obvious indicators for things important to you (poisons, curses, low health, aggro, debuffs that result in spike damage) works best. Also, get GridStatusRaidDebuffs if you don't have it yet!

[Llego]

Your mp5 is most likely really high right now largely due to the fact that your choices in gems are all spirit. I'd change those out for some spell power gems and see where your stats are after that. Particular gems to look for would be:
Blue slot: Purified <gem quality here>
Red slot: Runed <gem quality here>
Yellow slot: Luminous <gem quality here>

As for enchants, it's almost always best for a druid to grab the spell power enchants over spirit or intellect, unless you are seriously lacking either of those two stats. I recommend changing those out ASAP.

Your spec is pretty much right on, although you are a little low on haste so you could check out putting one point into brambles and getting celestial focus, which increases spell haste by 3%.

Glyphs look alright, but if you really don't use nourish that much you might want to look into getting the glyph of rejuvenation. This glyph will heal targets below 50% health for 50% more. Rejuvenation will most likely be your most used spell, so this glyph will probably greatly increase your healing output.

Nourish is simply a spell that a lot of druids don't use because swiftmend is more powerful, is instant, and you can cast it on the move. There aren't a lot of times where you will have to stand and just spam nourish on a fully HoTted raid/party member, largely due to the fact that heroic bosses don't hit hard, and in a raid situation there will be other healers filling in the void left by MOST of your hots. That isn't to say that nourish is so bad that you should avoid using it, because it is good in certain situations. Those situations are just hard to find

Feel free to ask more questions, I'd be glad to help!

[Libicocco]

In general I'd concur with what's being said, but also add that if you're really concerned about weak Nourishes, spec Empowered Touch. You might not want to take points out of anything that affects a larger part of your arsenal of course, but you can swap a point out of Tranquil Spirit easily enough. 2% cheaper on a situational spell is nothing. 10% more power on a situational spell, might be. Doubly true if you've already hit the point where you're swimming in mana.

[Mwawka]

You asked about dealing with spike damage. This is where Swiftmend can be a life saver. You can instantly pop a big heal on the tank. When I am tank healing I basically roll 1 LB til it is about to drop, then if the tank needs a top off let it bloom, if not I will add a second stack, and repeat this process as LB is about to expire. It can give you a little healing boost when needed. I keep Rejuv and Regrowth up all the time and use Nourish as my top off heal once all my HoTs are rolling. If I feel I am falling behind I use Swiftmend to top off that extra little bit to keep my stress level down. Don't forget about WG either as it can be cast on your tanks whenever it is available or save it for raid spike damage moments if you aren't finding you need it on the tank. Of course you have to be reactive and use all your tools. If you feel like you just can't get ahead, Nature's Swiftness can get you back on track.

This is a good example of why you should use all your tools and not get locked into a smaller set of spells even if you can heal effectively with them. I know that when I started healing I did not use Swiftmend or Nourish, but when I got comfortable enough to add them, my ability to deal with things going wrong increased dramatically and made me a better healer. Why deprive yourself of the joy of saving the DPS who stands in something he shouldn't or giving the tank healers a little extra support when needed if you have the tools to do so. It can save wipes!

[Krenian]

Good ideas from all of you, thanks for letting me know a few tidbits. I'll apply em when I have to heal on the druid. Looking forward to any tips and advice people can give about playing a healer, particularly a resto druid better.

[insertname]

I'll add my two cents. As you experiment with nourish, I would suggest making your Nature's Grace proc very visible if you do not do so already. I use power auras for that. Now that it only lasts 3 secs it will enable you to more easily take advantage of the buff in the form of additional hasted nourishes or hasted regrowths. As far as raid frame addons go I swear by Vuhdo + mouseovers.

[Llego]

Source: Krenian Good ideas from all of you, thanks for letting me know a few tidbits. I'll apply em when I have to heal on the druid. Looking forward to any tips and advice people can give about playing a healer, particularly a resto druid better.

I'll go over what I generally do when raid healing and then tank healing here. I really, really wanted to include it in my guide but it was at the point where it was going to be much more info than was needed if I went much more in depth on some of the things.

Ok - If I am raid healing.. First of all, I'll make sure that I have rejuv and regrowth on the main tank and any other tank involved in the fight. If its early on in the fight or if I've been lucky with my mp5 trinket I'll drop a 3 stack of lifebloom on them as well. Lifebloom for me is really situational, really helpful for direct tank healing, but not extremely mana efficient while raid healing. When I'm watching the raid; I'll usually try to negate damage by just tossing rejuv's out on people, and if there is heavy raid-wide damage (Hodir, Hard Mode IC) I'll use wild growth when its off cooldown. One thing that is so, so powerful for being the best possible healer, and I know that I've said it before, but adding debuffs into grid and being able to see and react quickly to those debuffs will keep your raid alive much more efficiently and save dps classes from popping cooldowns to save their lives when they don't need to. I know if I were a mage that had to health pot rather than haste pot I'd be one pissed of mage!

I'll try and do a thread tomorrow when I'm actually at a computer with WoW on it to give a grid "tutorial" of kinds.

Anyway, now that pretty much covers raid healing, when you have those hots up on raid members, if they do begin to take spike damage just swiftmend into a nourish or a regrowth.

As for tank healing, I'll usually start off with rejuv/regrowth on the tank and then add 1 stack of lifebloom every 8 seconds until its fully stacked. Always avoid "rolling" lifebloom, as you're just throwing away mana after its 3 stacked. I'll then use nourish or a glyphed healing touch, depending on which encounter exactly I'm doing. As the lifebloom ticks off, I'll re-apply it in the same fashion as before, and always make sure regrowth/rejuv stay up. Wild Growth is your friend here too, as you really won't be focusing on raid healing as much, popping it often will alleviate some of the pressure from other healers.

[UncleLurn]

If you're MT healing, and you don't have Swiftmend, you're really gimping yourself. Actually, if you're raid healing, and you don't have Swiftmend, you're really gimping yourself. In 10-man encounters where there's heavy raid damage, and I'm on spot-healing, I'll try to keep a rejuve active on every single raid member. Twin Valkyrs hardmode is a good example of when I do this. The reason why Swiftmend becomes important in this seems obvious to me, but I'll point it out anyway. If someone takes a spike of damage (which in that fight is rather easy to have happen), you Swiftmend them for ~10k+, and we're back in the game.

Unless they're a terrible, squishy rogue, then they just get to chew on the colosseum floor for a while. :P

My MT healing is not so different from what Llego said. I'll try to get a Regrowth/Rejuve at least rolling on the tank before the pull. You have to be careful with that, of course, since if the tank takes damage but does no threat, suddenly you've got a lot of aggro all of a sudden. I remember learning that lesson very painfully on Drakkisath, long ago. Wild Growth can play an interesting role in tank healing. I'll often use it as a quaternary hot, useful especially because it ticks every second (like Lifebloom), instead of every three (like Rejuve/Regrowth).

While I'm not a fan of Nourish, it definitely has its uses, especially since it has a high crit rate (depending on your spec). In my opinion, you're better off using Nourish situationally (spamming the tanks during P3 on Anub10 hardmode) and use your hots more liberally. But, that's just me. It's good to top people off when your hots just aren't ticking for quite enough, and Swiftmend is already on c/d.

For raid healing, as I said above, I like to try to keep Rejuves rolling on the raid, but glyphed Wild Growth is extremely effective. That much should be pretty obvious. One thing about raid healing that I've noticed is that sometimes, you learn who needs heals before others. This is especially true in 10-man runs, but sometimes, you just know that the DK is going to get hurt because he's got low FPS and can't run out of the fire right away.

Also: Coro, if you're guaging your effectiveness as a healer by the meters.. well, I suppose then Swiftmend isn't going to necessarily show itself as the best heal you could have in your arsenal. My Swiftmend usage is about 1/5th of my highest heal spell (Rejuve), but it's so useful for emergency situations that I would never give it up, no more than I'd give up Nature's Swiftness. I won't call you a noob, since that's not exactly constructive, but I do think you're losing out on a very powerful spell, and you're running the risk of being a detriment to your raids, especially if you're planning on/already doing hard modes.

[Ariadnah]

Source: Aliena There are several ways to play a resto druid. One is to hot everything up with rejuv and wg and crack the healing meter jackpot. Another is to actually keep an eye on the people that need heals the most. This is where Nourish plays a part. If you're assigned to tank healing, Nourish is what you should be using after you get all your HoTs stacked on the tank. If you're raid healing, Nourish is excellent to counter spike damage on a raid member. Examples are Ignis Slag Pot, Kologarn Grabs, Faction Champions focus fire (also an excellent situation to use swiftmend/NS) and any similar situation.

This is so true.

One day I'm healing the raid, say Twins 35 HM or Steelbreaker where there is constant damage I put out over 8k hps, top of the meters. The other day I will be tank healing and although I've effectively kept the tanks alive I'm frowned upon as my healing drops low on the meters. (And people think I've been slacking that day)

Raid healing is easy, HoT the lot and let the pala's worry about the big heals. But I've learned to enjoy Nourish too on spike damage (as well as using Swiftmend A LOT). On 10 man Yog 0 lights I'm the only healer in the outside room and damage on people can go nasty. Especially if you are decursing too and have to catch up healing, you will thank Bliz on your knees that you have Nourish.

Resto druid can be played in many varieties. I'm really glad Bliz has enabled us to be flash healers too when the situation requires us to. HoT'ing the raid became a bit boring after doing it for years.

[Pavidus]

A lot of what I say may already have been said. I unfortunately am too tired to ready every post, but I'm never too tired to give straight advice.

Druids are easily the absolute best for raid healing, and for the most part, that's what they're assigned to. But they can make great tank healers, even on long fights if you know what you're doing.

I haven't done tank healing in, well, forever, so I'll just tell you how I heal.
On fights with little raid damage, I do a lot of helping out with the tank, Regrowth/Rejuv/Lifebloom. Slow rolling Lifebloom and letting it drop after 3 stacks, throwing out Nourish until a Living Seed procs. (Depends on the fight, no need to waste mana if you're gonna need it later.)

When there is raid damage, and it's predictable, I prehot with Rejuvenation, and once the damages starts coming in, I cast Wild Growth on CD, and just keep rolling hots.

In most fights, I see hots as something that simply slows down incoming damage so a Holy Priest or Shaman can use their bigger raid heals and such to bring them back up. I see no need to use Swiftmend unless someone is below about 40% and still taking damage, and no need to use Nourish unless they're under about 50% and still taking damage.

During fights with moderate raid damage, I keep Regrowth and Rejuvenation on the tank, and when/if I have time, I'll slow roll Lifebloom on him. (Letting it fall off at 3.)

Fights with mass raid damage, or spiky raid damage. Koralon, Kologarn, Ignis, Hodir, I blanket the raid with Rejuvenation, and Wild Growth on CD once, for example, Hodir casts Intense Cold (not sure if that's the exact name, I'm tired). At this point, I should have about 13-15 Rejuvinations ticking (Obviously a few of them only have 1 tick left before they expire), and sometimes there's no Priest or Shaman there for the bigger heals, so I'll just spam Nourish between Wild Growth CDs till the effect is over. My hots alone can keep them up through the damage, but why risk it?

More specifically on Nourish. If glyphed and spec'd for it, a 232/245 geared Resto Druid's Nourish should be able to crit between 12 and 14k (maybe even 15k), with around 55-60% crit chance on Nourish from talents and t9 bonus. If you're tank healing, I'd say you wanna stack more and more crit rather than haste, because you can probably get 22-24% base crit, and still have enough haste to get Nourish under a 1 second cast time with Nature's Grace.
Specifically, Iron Council, if you have Swiftmend, then you should be able to use it on every Fusion Punch. If you're Nourish is weaker due to lower gear, you can precast Nourish while he's casting Fusion Punch, and Swiftmend for upwards of 25k (if both of them crit). Fusion Punch SHOULD be dispelled immediately, so it shouldn't be an issue after the initial damage. Heck, I think you could even spam Nourish back to back for all of the first phase and Innervate and be just fine because the other two hit like chumps.

Your mana regen looks fine to me. Like the others said. Once you get enough mana regen for you to comfortable heal the content you're raiding in, without ooming, gem SP.

Your spec looks very accurate. Though I would take the two points from Tranquil Spirit and put them in Empowered Touch. You shouldn't be casting Nourish a whole lot, unless there's intense raid damage going on. And because of that, you're not going to need the mana reduction. However, when you do actually use Nourish, you're going to want it to heal for as much as you can. You especially want that talent if you're tank healing most of the time.

Glyphs. Swiftmend and Wild Growth are musts for raid healing. Nourish you only need if you're tank healing. For raid healing, I suggest Glyph of Innervate. (Pauses so you can all laugh, and get it out of your system.) I suggest this glyph over the commonly used Glyph of Rejuvenation for one main reason. You rarely ever gain this benefit. This may be different for undergeared players, but this is how I look at it. If a player is under 50% health, and they don't have an incoming flash heal, then something's wrong. Someone's not doing their job, somewhere. Whether it's you or another raid healer. I have tried Glyph of Rejuvenation many times because many resto druids tell me many times how awesome it is, and every time I have used this glyph, I have seen little to no benefit from it. Because... no one is ever under 50% for more than 1 tick of Rejuvenation, it just, doesn't happen. However, I see benefits from Glyph of Innervate ALL the time. If something goes wrong, and someone dies, or a bunch of people take a ton of damage and eat up my mana, that means I get more mana from my Innervate. Or if someone dies, and they get brez'd and need an Innervate, at least I'm getting some mana back too. I rarely use Innervate on myself, because my raid leader, a mage, is always askin' for an Innervate so he can maintain is 10 or 11k DPS a little longer, and that's fine because my mana regen is good enough to last through every fight in ToC, assuming nothing goes horribly wrong. lol.

But that's completely personal preference. My experience is bad with Glyph Rejuv, and good with Glyph of Innervate. You might find Glyph of Rejuv more handy than Glyph of Innervate. Try them out, see what works for you.

Sorry my post is so long, I get carried away. Nutshell explanation, Rejuv and Wild Growth are you best friends, get enough regen to last through your fights and then stack SP, and ANTICIPATE damage. Can't stress that enough. 10+ rejuv's up before a raid wide damaging effect occurs = leet god damn heals. 3 rejuvs up and you're... well... you're failing.

Slightly off topic. The only time I'll be using Glyph of Rejuvenation is on 10ToGC for Anub. Mana is no problem on that fight, so Glyph of Innervate is useless, and Rejuvenation healing 50% more during phase 3, and critting, = much easier to handle Penetrating Cold. We're gonna try two healing it with 2 druids.