Raiding with Resto Druids

Hey there :)

I've been a Restoration Druid, for the first time in months, for a week now! Sunday, January 20th, I respec'd.

It feels good to hop back into the healing game and flex some new muscles in the druid milieu.

On Thursday, January 24th, I got [url=http://wow.curse.com/downloads/details/9503/]Grid[/url], which is a totally rad and helpful tool for my healing experience.
I've been testing it and using it and love it! I highly recommend that all healers use it. I'm sure several KoF healers already do.

Herein, I share some thoughts and observations about what happens when a Resto Druid is in a raid, for the sake of helping healers to maximize effectiveness and efficiency while healing raids with a Resto Druid present, and for the sake of helping to keep the raid alive.

Thanks for reading and here goes!


[b]Instant HoTs[/b]
Resto Druids' instant HoTs (heals over time) are a fast and efficient way to keep non-tank raid members healed and topped off during all raid fights (bosses or trash).
[i]
Consider this:
[/i]
-[b][i]A full stack of Lifebloom can heal for over 6k[/i][/b], if it's allowed to tick and proc its final heal (ticking for [b][i]800+ every second[/i][/b] and 1600+ when the stack buff ends at 7 seconds (accounting for the 1st stack + 2nd stack buffs).

-[b][i]1 Rejuvenation ticks for 1000+ every 3 seconds for 12 seconds for a total effective healing sum of 4000+[/i][/b].

[b][i]A raider with Lifebloom and Rejuvenation on them can be healed for 10,000+ in a few seconds[/i],[/b] which is usually more than enough to bring them back to full health, and can help continue to heal them while and if they take any further periodic, non-agro gained damage.


[b]Raid Healing: Why HoT non-tanks?[/b]
HoT healing with Lifebloom and Rejuvenation can help keep the non-tanking raid healed and topped off with low mana, instant casts.

HoT healing is great for non-tanks (i.e., people who aren't pulling agro and getting 1 or 2 shot, as often happens with powerful ranged dps classes not watching threat, or with random agro target changes from mobs, as built in by Bliz on mobs like Solarion).

Think of the times in a raid when you were missing 1500 to 5k health and didn't get an immediate heal, because the healers were focusing on the tanks. With a HoT on you, you can watch your health go up, without endangering the tanks by stealing their needed focused heals.

This is why HoTs are appropriate and beneficial heals for non-tanking raiders who are usually only taking periodic damage that isn't bringing them dangerously close to death, or down to half or less health.

I found that HoTs were very helpful during Lurker and Voidreaver.
Durking Lurker, I stayed in Tree of Life form the entire time, and continued to cast HoTs on the ranged raid members, like Karmageddon, Darkshott, Sakilady, Mordox, Barandrin, etc.. even while underwater for the Spouts. For whirls I backed up and continued to instant cast HoTs on those who took damage from the whirl/ knock back that seems to hit for near 4000.

I've been to the Lurker fight 4 times. This was the first time that I saw the ranged classes consistently healed and topped off. I'm not sure if that's because everyone was better at avoiding taking damage or if overall all the healers had them in range and got heals off or if it had to do with continual instant cast HoTs covering all of them. Perhaps it was a combination, but I honestly felt that I contributed to that success.

During Voidreaver I noticed that many ranged people with the orbs did not turn 180 degrees and run to the wall, thereby exploding by people, like me. I was continually HoT'ing all the victims of the explosions to help keep us alive through these tactical mistakes.


[b]Bufferin': HoTs on Tanks[/b]
HoTs are fantastic for Tanks, as HoTs are the ultimate pre-emptive heal. They can help mitigate incoming damage to tanks with instant cast heals that will tick every second while the tank is taking incoming damage.

For instance, knowing that Eremon is going to taunt and take lots of damage as soon as Dominicide gets melt armor prompts me to cast a Lifebloom stack and Rejuve on him so that he can be buffered as the damage starts coming in. That is, HoT ticks can mitigate incoming dmg by a subtraction equation such as Mob Hit Dmg Amount minus HoT heal tick = total dmg taken (less than dmg "done" w/out HoT) or something like that. No, the hot isn't reducing the amount of the hit, but it's reducing the effect of the hit. The second the hit lands, it's being healed, partially, by a HoT tick.

This is a nice buffer to assist the MT Main healer (such as the Holy Priest or Pally). I have read about Druids being great MT Main healers, but I'm not going into that here.


[b]OMG I got Aggro! -- Aka I got the mob's attention and it's aggravated at me, and whether or not it's my fault I'm probably going to die..)[/b]
There will be situations in which a non-tank gets aggro or takes a sudden burst of damage and their health spikes to scarily low numbers.

At times like that there are other measures and abilities that each healing class has to cover it. And, of course, the target of this type of damage should be potting, health stoning, and using aggro drop abilities, like going invisible, soul shattering, vanishing, feinting, feigning, fading, cowering, etc...

In other words, if you die in this situation it's not the healer's fault.

Granted, the healers have tricks for huge instant healing and can help save a person who got aggro or is taking expected, random agro target dmg from fights like Solarion, but they won't always be able to save a non-tank with aggro, especially if they are 1 or 2 shot (aka took damage equal to or greater than their total health when hit).


[b]Nature's Swiftness and Swiftmend are your Friends[/b]
NS is a buff that says, "your next nature spell will become an instant.." This applies to non-instant spells, like Regrowth, Healing Touch, Sleep, Root, Rebirth, Cyclone, etc..

Casting instant heals, like Lifebloom and Rejuvenation does not burn the NS buff, so NS can be saved for emergencies.

In the case of someone squishy getting agro, if they do not die after being hit and no longer have aggro, HoTs are fast, efficient, and effective ways to get their health back to full in a few seconds.

If a non-tank aggro target is continuing to take dmg, Druids can help save them with an instant heal for 10,000+ with a Nature's Swiftness (NS) proc and Healing Touch (HT) or Regrowth and Swiftmend.

Overall, NS is an efficient and effective way for a druid to contribute to the OH Sh*T buttons of the raid.

It's wise for Druids to try to save NS for tanks, on boss fights when tanks are prone to severe dmg /low health spikes (from mobs like Prince, Gruul after 7 or 8 grows, Al'ar, etc..).

NS has a 3 minute cooldown, so I really Druids should save it for tanks on boss fights, and augment larger insta healing with Swiftmend, which is only a 15 second CD.

Swiftmend instantly heals the target for the total amount of a Rejuvenation or 18 seconds of a Regrowth.
So, this means that Swiftmending a target with Rejuve ticking on it will insta heal them for 3000-5000.

Naturally, all healing classes have an ability to insta target and help svae someone. The druid NS + Regrowth or HT is just an example for how to address the unexpected or expected by random dmg hits on non-tank raiders.


[b]<3 the Tree[/b]
The Tree of Life is really why a Resto Druid should be in the main tank's party.
This enigmatic form provides +healing received by all party members, w/in 45 yards.
The +healing bonus is factored from 25% of the Druid's spirit. Spirit is the most important stat for a Druid, so this will most likely be near or over 500.
[i]With 500 spirit, the +healing bonus that a Resto Druid in Tree of Life form gives to their party is +125 healing.[/i]

That's a huge buff, and a strong reason to always have a Resto Druid in the raid.

Contrary to misconceptions about ToL movement impairment, the Druid's movement speed is reduced by 25%, which hardly prevents them from healing most or all fights. Even with Solarion, a Druid can swiftshift from ToL to Cat form and Dash away from the raid (as I successfully did when we downed Solarion on Friday, January 25th).


[b]Improved Gift of the Wild Makes the Entire Raid Stronger![/b]
Most Restoration Druids have Imp GotW.

The stat bonuses from this buff are:
[b]+459 Armor
+18 to all Attributes
+33 to all Resistances[/b] (Although sometimes nullified by pally buff, this is valuable if the pally has devotion aura up and in fights that involve more than one school of damage.)

Any addition to "all attributes", armor, and resistances obviously benefits the raid.

Note: there is a bug with the display of this buff in your buff icons for your character. It does not show the "Improved" part of Gift of the Wild.


[b]Ah, the glorious Rebirth, Combat Rez, Battle Rez[/b]
I've always seen Rebirth as a "wipe saver". At the very least it helps to defeat the boss faster.
Rezzing a healer can often prevent a wipe.

On a boss like Solarion, when someone doesn't get away from the raid fast enough, and thus causes a few deaths, Rebirth can make the difference between wiping it up or rezzing people to continue the fight, especially if one of the people killed was a healer or druid (another rebirth).

The new 20 minute cooldown makes it viable to rely on once every boss fight.


[b]Get off my HoT, Man: Healing Assignments and Overhealing[/b]
When Resto Druid healers are in the raid other healers can benefit the entire raid by keeping the functionality of HoTs in mind and by making sure that they do not "overheal" a raid member with a HoT ticking on it.

Making healing assignments clear and making sure that all healers follow and honor their assignments can help to make sure that mana and heals aren't "wasted", which can result in healers going LoM or OOM, and it can also prevent potentially fatal health spikes on their healing targets.

Makela does a superb job at assigning healing targets. As to the execution of these assignments, I've noticed something quite different. I think this has to do with unfamiliarity or simply not being used to being in a raid with a Resto Druid who has HoTs on targets.

Pay attention to the next few raid experiences you're in, whether you are a healer or not, and see what's happening with this overhealing chain reaction and its relationship to death and wipes.

If you are a tank, you clearly have your assigned healers who should not stop healing you to click on a Mage who accidentally didn't move out of Meteor. This should be the job of a "raid" healer, like Resto Druid, who can instantly heal the "oopsie I took some unintended dmg" target or the person taking periodic and consistent, but relatively low-ish amounts of damage that don't take them dangerously close to death, like during the Lurker fight for ranged dps raid members.

If you are assigned to heal a tank, trust that the person assigned to heal the other raiders will do so competently.

It's easy to keep HoTs on multiple targets, like Warlocks, Hunters, Rogues, Mages, Shaman, other healers, etc... And allowing the Resto Druid to do so prevents the tank healers from having to switch their focus and potentially cause a fatal chain reaction.

Often, during fights like Al'ar, non tanks will take random bits of damage, and it's easy for tank healers to follow their healing instincts, and reactively click to heal one of the other targets in the raid, rather than focusing on their duty, their tank, their assignment.

A Resto druid can put an instant cast, low mana cost HoT on the people taking random periodic damage in fights like Al'ar and tick them back to full health in a matter of seconds before they take any further damage that will kill them.

This assumes that everyone in the raid has at least 10k health, and most non super aggro crit hits come in for under that amount, thereby not one shotting people, and aggro usually gets taunted off before they are hit again and dead.
So, effectively, the HoTs can heal the raid members back to full without the need for any other healer to "overheal" or put a heal on the target, thereby canceling out the effectiveness of the HoT.

If a healer focuses on a target that is not their assignment, their assigned target suddenly doesn't have focused healing, and can get fast and huge health drops. This causes a chain reaction, as other healers in the raid notice the health drop, and suddenly change their targets really fast to compensate, thereby no longer focusing on their own assigned target and so on. This is a chain reaction that can and does cause deaths and wipes. Tried and tested practices of following healing assignments prove this to be vital to the success of a raid.

When a HoT is overhealed by Flash of Light or Flash Heal, it invalidates the heal, as the ticks don't go through anymore.
This is why assigned healing is so important.
There will be times and emergencies in which another healer might switch target heal and jump in to help clutch heal and keep someone alive.
But in general a HoT on a non-tank raid target should be allowed to tick through its few second duration and not get healed over and essentially nullified. This is assuming the target isn't about to take another burst of dmg before the HoT runs out.

[i]Preventing mana waste and chain reactions of switch target healing from main tanks can be circumvented by understanding the role of HoTs and by following healing assignments.[/i]
This really is important in long fights like Al'ar in which OOM can be a danger.
Ideally, healers understand their class, spec, gear, and role, and have the right sockets and enchantments, and are at a point in which they don't go OOM. But in situations that are mana intensive, everything should be done to help keep people healed as efficiently as possible, conserve mana, and keep the raid alive.

A mod like Grid is very helpful to all healers who raid with Resto Druids, in that it lets you customize the display of the raid members so that you can see if a target has a HoT (Rejuve or Regrowth or Lifebloom) on them. This alone can help prevent costful overhealing, mishealing, and unassigned healing, and can save the raid mana, life, and wipes.


[b]BIG FAT CAVEAT[/b]
This post is about Restoration Druids in raids, how they function in raids, and how to raid with them. It's not about just me as a resto druid, but about Resto Druids in general. Of course, it draws on my own experience and do I use anecdote to exemplify a point or idea.

So, if it seems like the point here is "invite me to your raid", it's not. It's more specifically, "invite Resto Druids to raids, and when you do here's a good way to know how they function there."
I'd rather see [i]any[/i] resto druid in the raid while I'm on the bench, than 4 holy pallies and priests and zero Trees.


***[i]All the numbers here are estimated minimum ranges based on in-game tests, and are based on 1850 base +healing and no buffs. Therefore, all the effective and actual healing numbers will be higher in a raid than posted above, assuming a fully potted, flasked, buffed raiding configuration. [/i] ***[b] :D [/b][i][/i]