Resto Druid

[tethealla]

So now that I have a resto spec, I need help...
1) How should I gem? Dom's Rule of Thumb is to Gem/Enchant for primary stats and reforge for secondary. What are my primary stats? Int?
How important is mastery? Should I follow socket bonuses that give me mastery? What meta? Ember?
2) How should I enchant?

3) How the hell do I heal?
Are we tank healers or raid healers? traditionally we've been raid healers.
Lifebloom is low mana cost, but can only be put on one person. So I'm guessing the tank?
Rejuv is expensive, is this not something to toss on everyone willy nilly any more?
Where does Regrowth come in?

Do you save swiftmend or constantly have it on cooldown for the efflorescence effect?

How often does one cast direct heals? Is nourish or healing touch better? Nourish refreshes lifebloom, I I'm assuming you nourish the lb target.

[Werehamster]

1) Your primary stat is Int. Spirit is the secondary stat you will want at first until mana usage feels comfortable. As your gear level goes up, the spirit you get for free on your gear is enough. If there is a socket bonus worth getting, blue gems should be int/spirit and yellow are int/haste. Yes, Ember for the meta. This is also where I will mention that all things considered equal, Int > Spirit, even when considering mana issues. More Int means a larger mana pool, which means Replenishment, Revitalize and Innervate are all more potent which means more mana in the long run. Mastery is good assuming you shift your healing patterns to use it. (More on this later)

A side note about Haste: There are specific target haste values you will want to aim for where your HoTs will gain an extra tick. http://treebarkjacket.com/2010/11/08/ha ... ruid-hots/ is a good guide to this. If you are close to a breakpoint, switch some gems or gear to get it.

2) Enchantments should follow the same principles as above. +15 to stats for chest, as the Int and spirit together are better than just the mana one. Make sure to get a boot enchant with movement speed. Hands will be haste or mastery, depending on what you need in the haste department. The rest are all pretty obvious (intellect).

3) Now the fun part.
We are neither a "tank" healer or a "raid" healer exclusively. If you'd asked me at the start of Cata, I'd have said tank healer, but recent changes to Rejuvenation and Wild Growth have made both viable.

Lifebloom is one of the key facets of your healing strategy. Yes, it usually goes on the tank except in circumstances where there is no tank in range for the strategy you're doing. The #1 rule of druid healing is to not let Lifebloom fall off. You should have Empowering Touch so you can refresh it with a Nourish, Healing Touch or Regrowth. The main reasons for this are Revitalize and Malfurion's Gift -- every tick of Lifebloom is mana back to you and a chance at Clearcasting. Also every time it refreshes, you give Replenishment to the raid. Typically you will want to use Nourish on the tank to keep it going, as that is the most mana effective heal. Also, having Lifebloom always on the tank means that every heal on the tank will benefit from Mastery.

Ask me and Chuck about Rejuvenation and you'll get two different answers. It all depends on your playstyle and talent spec. There are lots of talents which make Rejuvenation better, but you really need to invest in them to make it worth it. Without the bells and whistles, it has two main purposes: Having something to Swiftmend and something to cast while on the run. Also, if you get it on at least three people at once, you can cast Nourish faster, assuming you take Nature's Bounty. In high raid damage situations, typically I will Wild Growth the raid, then throw Rejuvenation on the people that Wild Growth hit, so Mastery applies.

Regrowth is the "Flash Heal" of the toolbox. It is what you cast when you absolutely need to heal someone right away. With Nature's Bounty, it has a very high chance of crit, which makes it a bit more mana efficient, but it will still eat through your mana like crazy. A good one-two "oh crap" punch is Regrowth then Swiftmend, which leaves Efflorescence under the person. So they have two big direct heals, plus two HoTs on them, all for two GCDs.

Depending on the fight, I will be either using Swiftmend on cooldown, or very rarely. In order to get the full benefit of it, people have to be standing grouped together. Keep in mind that in 4.1, Efflorescence is being changed a bit to be smarter and heals fewer people for more, so it may be more useful when there are only a few people in the group. I tend to think of Swiftmend as Efflorescence with an added benefit of the Swiftmend heal, rather than vice versa. Also, glyph Swiftmend, no questions asked.

Nourish is the heal you should be using if there is no pressing need for extra healing anywhere. It has an inherent bonus to being cast on targets with a HoT on them, in addition to mastery, so it's useful to Wild Growth a group, then use Nourish to top them off. Or just Nourish the tank to keep Lifebloom going. Healing Touch is typically only used on a Clearcasting proc, but can also be used in high-damage situations before you switch into full-out "oh crap regrowth" mode. Sometimes you get lucky and a Clearcasting will proc while you're casting HT and it will end up being free.

As a final note, don't ever use Swiftmend for Clearcasting procs, it costs a third or less than the other two options (Regrowth or Healing Touch) so you aren't getting the full benefit. If you get Clearcasting and have nothing better to do with it, cast Regrowth on the tank. It'll refresh Lifebloom and put an extra HoT on them.

Oh, and I forgot about the two panic buttons we have. Tranquility is an insane amount of healing and will target the people who are lowest. With the cooldown reduced in 4.1, it will be usable at least once a fight, possibly twice. Tree of Life is a whole can of worms, but basically makes Wild Growth hit two extra targets, Regrowth becomes instant and you can have multiple Lifebloom stacks, among other things. Oh and there's Nature's Swiftness, which I usually use for an instant Healing Touch if I absolutely have to get a big heal off while I absolutely have to keep moving.

[Tsquared!]

Great summary!!! One thing to add in connection with Tranq...if you can get off a Wildgrowth beforehand you will be able to get the mastery bonus...so more than 10% on 6-7 targets on Tranq is alot of healing...and if really need to go crazy...hit treeform...Wildgrowth..so you are hitting extra targets and then Tranq which will have the effect of the mastery bonus and the tree bonus!!!

[tethealla]

Wow, lots of info. I read through it a few times and am slowly understand it all. Druid healing is quite different than other healing I've done in the past. Last xpac, I was mostly a shaman and some priest. I am definitely going to have to get my arms around healing in some heroics first. My gear is pretty crappy so it could use some heroics anyway.

Thanks for all the useful info.

[janin]

That brings up a question for my alt druid - how much does the above changes for 5-mans only (not raids)? Is Effervescence even worth it?

Adam

[Werehamster]

Most of this still applies to 5 mans, although Wild Growth's usefulness goes up, since you can usually hit everyone in the group at once. If only two people are hurt, it's probably best to just top them off individually, though.

Efflorescence is still worth it, even more so in 4.1. If you're a melee-heavy group, do it on the tank, if you're ranged heavy, do it on yourself so you can control where it appears.

[tethealla]

One of my druid blogs had a post on the new resto druid mastery:
http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/05/17/shift ... f-mastery/

Things I found interesting:
She tried it out on the PTR and found the following:
1) Lifebloom automatically picks up harmony on it's next tick
2) rejuv does not, but it may be a bug

She had some numbers that looked nice

Her overall opinion was that it's yet another short duration cooldown/spell that needs to be managed on a class that has too many already.

She mentioned that during the cata beta Ghostcrawler said the devs want to make resto druids cast more spells than HoTs without nerfing hots.

She also mentioned that if you just keep swiftmend on cooldown, you'll keep harmony up most of the time... and this could be a positive thing for some druids.

It's worth a read. I found it interesting as someone who dabbles in resto-druidness.

[Werehamster]

Either using swiftmend on cooldown or relying on Empowered Touch to refresh lifebloom (like I typically do) will keep it up 100%, basically making it a nice flat increase to healing with very little change to healing strategy. In fact, I look forward to not having to do things like remember to WG before tranquility or blanket rejuvs before spamming other heals on the raid. Nourish will still require a hot already on the target to be effective, though.

[tethealla]

Starting up Harmony is like a chicken and egg. Harmony requires a direct heal to proc. Nourish is our most mana efficient direct heal. Nourish heals most efficiently if HoTs are on the target. You want Harmony proc'd before casting a HoT.

What may save all of this is that Lifebloom ticks pick up harmony per-tick. This means you can cast life bloom pre-harmony and then nourish to proc it. I hope all HoTs work this way and they were not implemented when the blog author tested it on the PTR.

[tethealla]

I was reading one of my druid blogs today and it was talking about resto druid haste targets. It reminded me of this thread and Andy's write up. I went back and reviewed it since I'm starting to heal more on my druid. I've been doing most things right and other stuff wrong. Mostly my 'oh-shit' reflexes are all wrong.

In any case, I found the haste targets in the blog I was reading today interesting. I wasn't too interested them before because I was so far off from them. I'd choose a haste/X gem when filling a socket, but I wasn't about to achieve the numbers. With the VP->JP gear conversion, I recently purchased several more pieces. I need to be more actively seeking these targets. As a note Andy, the link you posted, gave level 80 haste numbers. [EDIT: I'm wrong, they're for 85] I need to poke around treebarkjacket more for updated numbers. Their tables are better than this way article.... not to mention, their blog articles look interesting.

http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/07/05/shift ... wanting-t/

* If you have no haste buffs Rejuvenation gains a fifth tick at 1,602 haste and a sixth tick at 4,805 haste. WG/Efflorescence gain an eighth tick at 913 haste and a ninth tick at 2,745 haste. Lifebloom gains an 11th tick at 649 haste, a 12th tick at 1,992 haste, and a 13th tick at 3,212 (to the extent that you need to worry about Lifebloom ticks at all).
* If you have the 5% haste buff from a shadow priest/moonkin/WoA totem Rejuvenation gains a fith tick at 916 haste and a sixth tick at 3,967 haste. WG/Efflorescence gain an eighth tick at 260 haste and a ninth tick at 2,005 haste. Lifebloom gains a 12th tick at 1,221 haste and a 13th tick at 2,449 haste.

So what I learned from reading this article is there are many haste targets, not just one. There is the most optimal one (2005+5% buff: WG 9 ticks), but there are some interim targets that are also handy to achieve. When doing 5mans, you're not guarantied the 5% haste buff, so 1602 is useful. I'd say 1221 for lifebloom, but that's almost always refreshed, so it's much less useful of a target.

So something else the article talks about is that our new mastery better point for point than haste unless you can meet the haste targets. So what that tells me is that I should be shooting as closely as I can for 1221, 1602, or 2005. Once I can get another HoT tick, haste out performs mastery. If I can't hit the next target, put the points into mastery.

Of course all of this theory crafting only does so much... Learning to hit ToL or Tranq at the right time will do so much more.