Druid Heals need a little help on stradegy

[BlazeDale]

Hi all,

I play a druid and I recently hit 80 just this last Friday. I feel I'm doing pretty well as a tree healer but when I get into Heroic Halls of Reflection I have trouble keeping up with heals. Every other 5 man is pretty much easy and I just fall asleep through them but that one keeps giving me issues.

Part of the problem is bad tanks as I usually get a pure pug group for it. All the dps pulling agro, tank missing 3 adds and me getting chain slapped by them, but occasionally the tank has agro on everything and just drops like a sack.

My normal strategy is to keep both Rejuvenation and Regrowth on the tank and spam Nourish and keep up Wild Growth. I'll even Swiftmend / instant cast Healing Touch in tight spots when the tank is precariously low. Sometimes this just isn't enough and the tank just dies.

For group heals when I see incoming damage (Agro switches to a DPS) I'll throw a Rejuvenation on the dps and then throw Nourishes as damage comes in. I've attempted to precast Regrowth on the entire group and even Rejuvenation but that usually results in my death from healing agro.

Here is a link to my Amory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...hos&cn=Clovers
If any of you druid pros see something wrong with my spec please let me know. And I realize that some of that gear is DPS with hit and no Spirit but they are the best I've found thus far.

I've been working hard on my gear and I realize that some of it isn't gemmed or enchanted (mostly the blues/low level epics as I plan on getting something better soon).

I gem as follows:
Red: Spell Power
Blue: Spirit
Yellow: Haste

I actually gem the Purple Spirit/Spell power for Red and Blue seeing as you get more Spell Power that way.

Please give me some feedback. Am I doing it wrong or am I just plagued with bad/under geared tanks?

[MellvarTank]

Lifebloom is another powerful (mana-hog) spell unless it blooms.

Have you read up on your Druid changes? Haste cap is where you want to be, and glyph your rejuv. FYI: The T9 Boomkin gloves are better than the T9 healing gloves for haste. I'm not sure I'd ever gem a pure blue, I'd think you should gem spell power, haste, and spell power/spirit (purple) in blue sockets. I can't have a look at the spec yet, but if you want some extra haste dip lower into the balance tree for the haste talent until you can re-spec out of it.

[BlazeDale]

I usually don't cast Lifebloom unless I have a Clearcasting proc. Free mana is fun. But honestly I don't have time for that kind of nonsense in Heroic Halls of Reflection. Usually on those wave pulls I'm hitting 2500ish H/S is that a good number or should I be higher?

Currently I am speced into Nature's Grace in the Balance Tree so I do have that haste from that as well as Celestial Focus for the 3% haste. I have 666 spell haste unbuffed atm and I know I need about 1k to reach the 1 sec GCD. I have about 2k unbuffed Spell Power.

I hope this information helps.

[MellvarTank]

Upgrading out of blues will definitely help you out in that instance. Usually what you'll find is that it is DPS that makes that instance hard, not always tanks. Are you using Healbot or Grid? I know it seems odd to ask, but the addon's are what make healing do-able in sketchy situations, and although I'm relatively sure Blizz doesn't make it impossible to do without I do believe they design encounters around pushing it.

Another thing: Are you cleansing/decursing/etc.? Poison bad.

[BlazeDale]

I definitely cleanse though sometimes I have to heal over cleanse. My mindset is to get them to safe levels then cleanse when I feel I can spare the GCD. When someone is below say 30% ish I'm healing over cleansing.

Currently I use Grid for healing. I use GridStatusRaidDebuff and GridStatusHots on top of it though I might need to configure it a little better to manage my Hots. Right now it just displays a number that is total incoming heals from hots. It works to prioritize people who are about to run out of hots but does differentiate between hots. I also use decursive for cleansing.

One thing I want to do is get a mouse with a few more buttons so that I can keybind some mouseover macros but that will not happen for awhile.

Understandable that dps can make that place hard. On one run each dps was doing about 2k and new waves were coming before the previous wave died.

[BlazeDale]

Good news people. Yesterday I brought my Druid healer to ICC 10 and got Saurfang down. Not bad considering I just hit 80 last Friday. =)

[ambalika]

I've been farming all three Frozen Halls (HC) instances for a while now in the hopes of ever seeing my battered hilt drop.

Yesterday I had a bit of an unique experience, with a (bear) tank asking me not to start healing ahead of time as it screwed up his aggro ... .

With the amount of spike damage coming in beside the evil poisons and curses that swallow up GCD's, I was pretty reluctant to give that a try, but hey, everything to please a tank as he's supposed to keep my barky behind out of trouble.

Only one wave later the bear tank just left group, so I'm guessing he was having issues with threat generation in general as we did clear it with the same group with another tank (with regular precast hot's etc.).

Does anyone know what the relative value of heals over time in tps is vs. aggro-moves/taunts from the tanks. I thought heals cause 1/2 threat vs. damage and taunts have a really big multiplier so as to outdistance both the healer and the dps.

How do other tree druids handle HoR HC?
Do you cast HoT's preemptively or do you wait for the first hits to land?

[MellvarTank]

Cast them pre-emptively, but smartly. Good tanks will out-threat you no matter what, but snatching healer aggro on one of a mob of five will usually get you a few smacks before the tank can pick it up off of you (he is concerned about the other 4 and the DPS going all out on them). Usually I will have hots on me before the mobs are there, (warrior) thunderclap is enough to out threat about any heal.