feraltree.blogspot.com Open in urlscan Pro
2a00:1450:4001:800::2001  Public Scan

URL: http://feraltree.blogspot.com/
Submission: On February 21 via api from US — Scanned from DE

Form analysis 1 forms found in the DOM

http://feraltree.blogspot.com/search

<form action="http://feraltree.blogspot.com/search" class="gsc-search-box" target="_top">
  <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="gsc-search-box">
    <tbody>
      <tr>
        <td class="gsc-input">
          <input autocomplete="off" class="gsc-input" name="q" size="10" title="search" type="text" value="">
        </td>
        <td class="gsc-search-button">
          <input class="gsc-search-button" title="search" type="submit" value="Search">
        </td>
      </tr>
    </tbody>
  </table>
</form>

Text Content

FERALTREE

Adventures and musings of a resto-feral druid in WoW. Welcome to FeralTree!









WEDNESDAY 23 NOVEMBER 2011


THE MANY USES FOR THE TREE OF LIFE COOLDOWN! AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE



I've been meaning to write this post for a while and I've finally finished the
drawings for it! I've been having fun recently doing some lighthearted doodles
for guildies (inspired by one of our boomkins who also likes to make doodles). I
love drawing tree form, and what better way to do a post about the many
wonderful uses of our Tree of Life cooldown than by doing a bunch of doodles for
it! Let's dive in.

Tree of Life: Shapeshift into the tree of life, increasing healing done by 15%
and increasing your armour by 120%. Also protects the caster from Polymorph
effects. In addition, some of your spells are temporarily enhanced while
shapeshifted (Lifebloom, Wild Growth, Regrowth, Entangling Roots, Wrath).



Heal Moar!!!!

Throughput Boost!
This is the most straightforward use for the Tree of Life cooldown - it
increases our healing done by 15%. This is a great and simple use for ToL - is
the tank getting absolutely wrecked? Pop ToL and heal to victory! A period of
raid-wide damage? Pop ToL and heal heal heal! (More tricks on raid healing with
ToL below!) Want to boost your Tranquility even more? Pop ToL, activate Harmony
and Tranq away! You can plan to use it in advance if you know a period of heavy
damage is coming, or pop it in an emergency when you need that extra boost.



Raid Healing with ToL!
This is one of my favourite uses for Tree of Life. I often save ToL for specific
points in fights with heavy raid-wide damage. I pop ToL and spread Lifebloom all
over the raid - single stacks, multiple stacks, whatever's needed. This gets
tons of Omen of Clarity procs, which I can use to throw out instant free
Regrowths to top up anyone who needs a bigger heal. I work in Wild Growths as
well (which hits an extra target in ToL), and Swiftmend as needed. You could
throw out a couple of Rejuvs as well, but all the free Regrowths going out will
set up Swiftmendable targets, so while ToL is active I wouldn't use too many
Rejuvs.

This strategy will give you a tremendous amount of raid coverage at an
incredibly low mana cost. Lifebloom is an extremely cheap spell, so you can
spread it over as many people as you can and barely see your mana dip at all.
All of the Omen of Clarity procs will let you throw out the free Regrowths as
well, so you'll have tons of big instant heals going out at zero mana cost as
well. Wild Growths will still cost mana of course, but should absolutely still
be going out, as well as Swiftmends as needed.

Lifebloom does a good amount of healing, so don't discount spreading it around
the raid! Don't forget - it stacks and it blooms. All druids should be running
with 3/3 Gift of the Earthmother in their spec regardless, and this talent
increases the bloom from Lifebloom by 15%.

This strategy also gives you more mobility in phases of heavy raid damage, the
instant Regrowths let you pop off some bigger heals while on the move instead of
having to stop to cast.

Don't be afraid to use Regrowths without OoC if you need to! It will cost more
mana of course (so be careful not to spam it!), but if it's a choice of someone
living or dying, you should use it.

Some examples!
5-Mans: This is a great trick to use on the Panther boss in Zul-Gurub
(especially if your tank got a few too many cats!). The entire group is getting
wrecked - you can easily cover all five people in the group with 2-3 stacks of
Lifebloom. All of the OoC procs will let you get instant free Regrowths for
bigger heals on party members or the tank, and you can layer on Wild Growths on
cooldown as well. You might want to keep a Rejuv on your tank so you can
Swiftmend him if necessary in case he didn't have a Regrowth thrown on him.

Raids: Obviously you can cover more raid members with Lifebloom in a 10man than
in a 25man, but it is still an extremely useful strategy. Two examples!

Beth'tilac: I use this strategy all the time on Beth'tilac when I go up top to
heal and in the final phase. It is especially useful up top as I can cover
myself, the tank, and the DPS up there with LB, get quick top-ups on me and the
DPS with the free Regrowths, cover everyone with Wild Growth, Swiftmend when
needed, and continue my direct heals (Healing Touch and Regrowths as needed) on
the tank.
It is also a mana efficient way to cover the raid during the final burn phase
and will help you manage your mana in what is a very intense healing and mana
phase without reducing your healing done.

Ragnaros: I love using Tree of Life on the two Intermissions phases. The entire
raid is taking lots of damage from the Lava Bolts during these phases, and in
the second Intermission phase your tanks are also taking a beating from the Lava
Scions. Using ToL here allows you to be mobile when your raid is very spread out
and to quickly and efficiently heal and top-up raid members. An instant Regrowth
on someone whose health is low can save them from being killed by another Lava
Bolt! It will also help conserve your mana for later phases, especially the
Molten Seeds phases which have a significant amount of raid damage.



DPS!
Tree of Life can be great as a DPS cooldown! ToL reduces your Wrath cast-time by
half, so you'll end up with about a 1 second cast time (possibly less if you
have Nature's Grace procced or Heroism). This can be really wonderful in fights
where there's a significant DPS burn needed during a period of low or no raid
damage, and also it's just extremely fun to do! Not to mention a treant casting
Wrath looks amazing! A great example is the Alysrazor fight in Firelands - when
she crash-lands, she takes additional damage, attacks restore your mana, and no
damage is going out until she starts to take off again. So, pop treeform, and
pew pew pew!!

Also, if you do any BGs or Arenas, it can be a fun little way to finish off an
opponent. They won't be too happy with you though!



Annoying Rogues (and PVP fun in general)!
Speaking of BGs and Arenas... I don't PVP too often, so when I do I like to have
a bit of fun. I don't profess to be an expert at PVP though!

ToL is of course a great cooldown to use in general in PVP, I find especially in
BGs if someone (or many) decide to beat on me for a while. If a melee comes to
hit me, the instant heals are amazing for surviving (especially when they pop
their cooldowns) as you can lay on the HoTs and do larger top-ups with
Swiftmends and instant Regrowths without worrying about getting interrupted. The
more-skilled PVPers out there will probably have interrupt-juking down to an art
form, but I still have some ways to go with that!

ToL also increases your armour, makes you immune to Polymorph, and allows you to
cast Entangling Roots instantly, so you can root people and flee if your
Nature's Grasp is on cooldown. Don't forget to cast Thorns on yourself! (ToL
doesn't boost Thorns, but it's still good to cast if a melee is poking at you!)
It can also help you live a bit longer as you try to either flee, CC, or just
wait for a peel or some DPS back-up.

If you want to have a bit of fun with your would-be assassin, you can also throw
out a classic /dance or /cheer or /wave while in treeform. Prepare to have them
harass you for the rest of the BG though! Just greet them with a /smile when you
see them again.



/dance!
One of my favourite things about Tree of Life form (and why I miss the
perma-tree form so much) is the sheer light-heartedness and goofiness of the
form and all the fun emotes and play you could have with people. Though I prefer
the old Treant form, the new tree form can have a lot of fun as well (its
flailing is even goofier than the treant flails!).

I most sorely miss the light-hearted fun I would have constantly with my
permanent tree form. I'd jump around, run into walls, /dance, /cheer (my
favourite), back when I was an engineer I'd rocket boot and parachute off the
steps in VoA or random cliffs (a tree floating down on a parachute was amazing).
A treant running around looks hilarious - they always look very busy, as if
they're rushing about yelling 'NO TIME TO STOP!! MUST GO HEAL THINGS!!' Not to
mention the fun had with guildies threatening to chop me down/set me on fire/etc
while I shed leaves on them. All these poor Worgen, they finally got to come
play and they lost all the trees they could have peed on!

I absolutely love the cooldown ability, don't get me wrong, but I'm still
disappointed that I had to lose my permanent tree form just to get it. I wish we
could get some option to turn on the form (perhaps out of combat) just to have
some fun without a duration!



Nods here to the ever funny Allie Brosh from Hyperbole and a Half 

That about wraps it up! Do you have any uses for Tree of Life that you've found
particularly useful or fun? Share in the comments!

Posted by Feral Tree at 14:00 1 comment:
Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest
Labels: Doodles, Healing, Restoration, Tree of Life



SUNDAY 23 OCTOBER 2011


NEW DRUID TALENT TREES IN MISTS OF PANDARIA (WOW 5.0)


Another Blizzcon has come and gone! I didn’t get to go in person but I watched
the stream again this year. It was a lot of fun! The Q&As were pretty good as
were the panels (I really enjoyed the art panel again this year), I even checked
out some of the SC2 matches (hopefully I can learn something and try to get a
bit better at it!). The Foo Fighters put on an awesome concert closing night!
All in all a good time.

The next WoW expansion was announced, Mists of Pandaria, however I’m not going
to go into that today as it would certainly take up an entire post! 

One thing that was definitely interesting was the new talent tree system! The
new system sounds cool and potentially a lot more fun. One of the primary goals
behind the revamp was to try to make talent trees more fun and customizable,
which was the original intent behind the current format of them, however lead to
the ‘cookie cutter’ builds which the devs aren’t too fond of. I’m sure even with
the new system there’ll be setups that are more optimal for certain things,
whether PVE, PVP, or certain encounters. It seems like  the abilities themselves
will be a bit more fun though and a bit more mixed, so I think there will be
some flexibility still there.

As is my understanding, the new talent trees will work as follows. You still
select your specialisation (for Druids it would be Restoration, Balance, Feral
(cat), and Feral (Guardian) - they officially split the bear and cat specs for
5.0). Choosing a specialisation will give you access to specific spells in
addition to the core spells across all specs. They didn’t give too many examples
of this sort of thing, but they did mention with the new cat and bear specs, a
bear will not be able to use Shred or Rip, and a cat won’t be able to use
Survival Instincts or Frenzied Regen. Based on this we can gather that certain
abilities will only be available to certain specialisations. 

Talents, on the other hand, will be available to all specs. This is where you
can customize now, and is potentially quite fun as it can give you access to
abilities that before were only available to specific specs. You get a talent
point every 15 levels, six in total, and you choose each tier from three
options/abilities. If I remember right, you can’t do more than two in a row down
one tree, so it encourages more mixing rather than just going straight down. 

It was suggested as well that changing talents will be easier to do than it is
now and that you will be able to do so ‘out in the field’. If I’m understanding
this correctly, you should be able to swap your talents while out in the world
(out of combat, of course) without having to go back to your trainer, and it
will be similar to the ease of swapping glyphs. It seems you still have to go
back to your trainer if you want to do a full respec (to wipe your talents and
specialisation if you were, say, changing from Feral to Balance). 

Enough preamble, let’s take a look at the proposed Druid talent tree! Keep in
mind this may change a lot between now and 5.0 release. Thanks to MMO-Champion
for the screenshots of the talents.





Tier 1: Feral Swiftness - Displacer Beast - Tireless Pursuit
This first set of talents is clearly about mobility. Displacer Beast is an
interesting one, it’s kind of like a mix of Blink, Cloak of Shadows, and Vanish.
The random direction aspect is a bit odd, and I wonder if that will stay in.
It’s a pretty powerful ability, so the random direction may be to help downtune
that a bit perhaps. My only concern would be, in a raiding context, the
potential hazards of that - displacing into lava, a trap, a cleave, who knows!
Tireless Pursuit sounds nice for escaping snares and roots, particularly with
the speed boost to help you get farther away. Feline Swiftness is a nice
straightforward speed boost, which I quite like.




Tier 2: Nature’s Swiftness - Renewal - Cenarion Ward
This tier is focussed more on healing abilities. Nature’s Swiftness is almost
the same as its current implementation for Resto. In this version the spell cast
is cost-free, which is nice. The most interesting change there though is popping
NS makes the spell castable in any form. This could be a very nice talent for
bears and cats, as using NS to battle rez someone would allow them to stay in
form. This would be especially useful for bears as it can be so difficult to use
a bear battle rez in PVE encounters. For cats and moonkin it will likely reduce
the hit to their DPS from shifting forms to rez someone. 


Renewal is a straightforward talent, it’s exactly like the current Desperate
Prayer for priests. 
Cenarion Ward is a bit odd. When I first glimpsed it I thought it was a shield
of sorts, but that’s not what it is. Basically it seems a way of pre-HoTing -
imagine placing this on the tank pre-pull, when he takes the first hit from the
boss it will start healing as a 6 second HoT. Kind of underwhelming.


Nature’s Swiftness would probably be my pick in that set, especially for
healing. CW doesn’t seem too great a healing ability. Renewal is a nice
survivability talent, I’m not sure whether bears might prefer that or NS. NS
would allow them to throw a Healing Touch or Regrowth on themself - Renewal
would be a bigger heal but NS would let them cast BRs while tanking. 




Tier 3: Faerie Swarm - Mass Entanglement - Typhoon
Faerie Swarm is essentially an upgrade of Faerie Fire (which it appears we will
still get, as this talent would replace FF if chosen). Pretty much just adds in
a movement speed debuff. Mass Entanglement could be interesting for mass CC.
Typhoon though I find the most fun out of the tree as it makes Typhoon available
for all specs and usable in all forms.  As much as I dislike knockbacks
(especially when I’m tanking), this seems like a fun thing to get. Admittedly
I’m already planning on ways to annoy my tank friends by tree-phooning them
while healing runs! It will be nice though for fights that require knockbacks
for any druid to be able to pick it up instead of requiring they all go Moonkin.




Tier 4: Wild Charge - Incarnation - Force of Nature
Wild Charge gives a movement ability of some sort to each spec/form. Bear form
is basically like current bear form, a charge which immobilizes the target and
grants the bear 30% haste. Moonkin gets a sort of Disengage effect, allowing
them to leap backward and gain Solar or Lunar energy. Caster form lets you fly
to an ally’s position and the next healing spell cast costs no mana. 


Force of Nature seems like it could be fun - based on the tooltip, it seems you
summon some treants to come help you deal damage or heal (and perhaps protect
you while tanking?). I’ve always thought the idea of Resto summoning more
treants to help them heal would be tremendously fun. I don’t think this talent
will be feasible for Resto, though, which is sad. This is due to the last talent
option:


Incarnation is both interesting and odd at the same time, and makes me wonder
what their plans are for Resto. Essentially, Incarnation activates a sort of
‘super shapeshift form’. The two examples they gave were Feral, granting you use
of abilities which normally require stealth, and Resto, granting the current
Tree of Life cooldown abilities. This is what’s a bit odd. Based on the Wild
Charge tooltip (non-shapeshifted Wild Charge giving a free healing spell), it
seems as though they will continue to keep Resto as caster form rather than any
return of Tree form. Basically Resto is required to take this talent, as the
Tree of Life cooldown is such a significant cooldown for Resto. It certainly
goes against the devs saying they want to provide more choice as, for Resto at
least, there’s not much choice there. The other two talents do not seem anywhere
near as valuable for healing as ToL (I’ve been working on a post that discusses
all the valuable uses for the ToL cooldown). Gaining an extra Wild Growth
target, being able to spread Lifebloom to multiple targets, and instant Regrowth
casts are too important to bypass this talent. It’s an absolute must-have for
Resto. 
Honestly I also find it a bit sad that, judging by the rest of the talent tree,
a Resto druid may not get any tree form at all if, for whatever reason, they
decide not to pick up that talent.




Tier 5: Demoralizing Roar - Ursol’s Vortex - Bear Hug
This is a new version of Demo Roar, as the current implementations of Demo Roar
and Demo Shout will be gone in 5.0. Ursol’s Vortex seems fun, essentially an AE
deathgrip. Bear Hug is mostly amusing for the name, should have some uses,
likely more in PVP. 




Tier 6: Heart of the Wild - Master Shapeshifter - Disentanglement
The level 90 tier for the druid feels pretty lackluster. A lot of the other
class level 90 talents were very interesting - Warriors could choose to get
Bladestorm, Shockwave, or a new ability called Avatar. Rogues could pick up
Shadowdance, Killing Spree, or Vendetta. Priests even had one called Void Shift
that allows them to swap their health %age with a friendly target. Those all
seem much more fun and interesting than the druid ones. 

The talents are focussed around shapeshifting and I suppose with emphasizing
Hybrid roles. HotW cooldown would grant, for example, moonkins to generate Lunar
or Solar power from healing spells, and would gain 50% of Intellect as Agility,
etc. I suppose this may have use in PVP particularly for the druid really
performing several roles (especially in, say, Arena, where they might have to
off-heal, etc). I don’t see this being particularly useful in PVE though. It
might be occasionally helpful perhaps in an emergency if, say, healers are down
and a Boomkin needs to help heal some. It really doesn’t seem too exciting
though.


Master Shapeshifter essentially gives you a stacking buff whenever you
shapeshift which increases your melee or spell damage. Again, I don’t really see
this being particularly useful, particularly in a PVE context. I can’t see many
cats or boomkins shifting forms to throw out a random Moonfire/Rake/whatever.


Disentanglement seems a bit useful mostly for the heal. Removing roots is always
nice but doesn’t seem particularly amazing (and is a bit disappointing that, not
only will all specs have to talent that ability, it’s our level 90 ability). 


Overall though the 90 talents seem lackluster and, while perhaps trying to be
‘druid-y’ and ‘hybrid’, don’t really seem exciting or that useful.

There was also mention of a new druid healing spell that is basically a Resto
version of Wild Mushrooms, where the Mushrooms heal instead of deal damage. Not
too sure how I feel about that. I can see occasions where it might be useful,
but it’s not particularly exciting, and will likely be pretty situational. Also
assuming you have to plant the three mushrooms like Boomkins do, that’s another
three globals spent not healing. It’s fine to plant pre-pull on a fight, but
it’s just like the current Lifebloom 3stack tank-swapping issues at the moment.
Three globals just to set up some healing, which obviously prevents you from
doing any healing in those three globals. It seems like it will be clunky and
inelegant and ultimately not too fun to use.


I’ll close with a sample talent tree which, in the above implementation of the
talent tree, I would likely use for Resto. The talent tree is from Wowhead's
sample MoP Talent Calculator.




Feline Swiftness for the general speed boost, which is always useful (and will
likely allow a straight stat enchant to boots rather than requiring one with a
speed increase). Nature’s Swiftness for the free instant spells, which I feel
wins out for Resto - I’ve found NS to be way too valuable for me to really want
to drop it, and Cenarion Ward seems lackluster as a simple HoT activated on
damage as opposed to a normal HoT. Renewal would be nice for survivability, but
I feel NS wins out for the Resto toolset.
Typhoon is mostly for the fun of grabbing it and useful for any additional
fights which require knockbacks. Incarnation, as I mentioned above, is a
must-have for Resto. Ursol’s Vortex I mostly grabbed for the fun of an AE
deathgrip, though I don’t really see much use for any of those three talents for
Resto in PVE. Lastly I grabbed Disentanglement, as the others don’t seem
particularly useful for Resto (though also the tooltips shared by Blizz don’t
describe much of the Resto benefits). Shapeshifting to get out of roots is
useful and the heal when shapeshifting is nice for survivability.

Anyhow, I’ll wrap up there for now. Obviously this will likely undergo several
changes before 5.0, hopefully it will be a lot more refined and improved by
then. I look forward to playing with all of these in the Beta though! What are
your impressions of the new talents? 

Posted by Feral Tree at 18:13 4 comments:
Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest
Labels: 5.0, Mists of Pandaria, Restoration, Specs, Talent Trees



WEDNESDAY 5 OCTOBER 2011


HARMONY, LIFEBLOOM, AND YOU! (WITH LOGS!)



My doodle of how I imagine my tree healing :D
Inspired by the ever funny Allie Brosh from Hyperbole & a Half


I wanted to devote a post to Harmony (our Mastery) and Lifebloom as I’ve found
many druids (whether mains, offspecs, or alts) were not realising the value of
these things, not maintaining good uptime on them, or both. These two things are
extremely important to druid healing. Lifebloom especially is crucial to our
mana regen (from Revitalise procs), to our clearcasting (as, for Resto druids,
Lifebloom is our only ability which grants Omen of Clarity for our healing
spells), and to our groups, as Lifebloom provides Replenishment for our party or
raid.

For anyone wondering what I mean by uptime - uptime is referring to how much the
ability or buff is active throughout a fight. So, for a quick example, if you
maintain Lifebloom up perfectly through an entire fight, the uptime would be
100%. If you only had it up for half the fight, it would be 50%. 

Ideally, both Lifebloom and Harmony will have an uptime of 100%. In actuality,
it will vary a little bit; for example, on the Alysrazor encounter, when
Alysrazor crash lands there is no damage going out until she takes off again.
Healers in this period are all DPSing both to help damage her and also for the
mana return from DPSing her in this phase. During that period you won’t be
maintaining Lifebloom or Harmony as you’ll be busy DPSing. The end uptime
percentage on these abilities for that fight will be below 100% as it simply
isn’t in the mechanics of the fight. Now, compare that fight to, say, Baleroc,
where the primary healing is all big direct heals on the tanks and Shards of
Torment soakers. This is a fight where it’s pretty easy to get 98%+ uptime on
both Lifebloom and Harmony.

Keeping context of the specific fights in mind, a practical uptime for both
Lifebloom and Harmony should be between 80% and 100%. You should always aim to
be as close to 100% as possible.

Harmony 

Harmony, the Resto Mastery: Your direct healing is increased by an additional x%
and casting your direct healing spells grants you an additional x% bonus to your
periodic healing for 10 seconds.

Your direct healing spells (Nourish, Healing Touch, Regrowth, and Swiftmend)
proc a buff called Harmony - this buff lasts for 10 seconds and boosts your HoTs
by x% (based on how much mastery you have).

This is extremely important to maintain as it strengthens your HoTs. This is
especially important while raid healing - many druids simply fall into the
Rejuv, Rejuv, Rejuv, Wild Growth! spam while raid healing and forget about their
direct heals entirely, or just think that because they’re on raid they shouldn’t
use any other spells. Unfortunately this results in you gimping your own HoTs
(as well as wasting an arsenal of useful healing spells). If that buff isn’t
active, your HoTs have no benefit from your Mastery (and yes, that buff needs to
be active before you cast the HoTs). Harmony needs to be active for your HoTs to
be as strong as possible.

As I mentioned above, fights like Baleroc or Shannox with a lot of single-target
healing focus are a bit easier to maintain good Harmony uptime. Fights with
heavier raid damage such as Beth’tilac or Lord Rhyolith tend to be more
difficult to maintain good uptimes for as you have to balance weaving in your
direct heals with your raid healing.

Swiftmend counts as a direct heal and will proc Harmony, so if you’re really
pressed to maintain the buff you can use Swiftmends to help activate the buff
and, while SM is still on cooldown, through in a quick Nourish, Healing Touch,
or Regrowth to keep Harmony active until SM is ready to use again.

5 man dungeons are probably the easiest place to maintain good Harmony (and
Lifebloom) uptimes, as there’s plenty of direct healing to do on the tank (and
sometimes on the DPS as well!). You can easily keep it active even when the tank
isn’t taking much (or any) damage - simply toss a Nourish on him; it will
refresh your Lifebloom stack and activate Harmony for next to no mana cost.

Using Nourish to activate Harmony and refresh Lifebloom is also a great thing to
do pre-pull, whether in 5 mans or in raids. The mana cost is negligible and both
the Replenishment and Revitalize procs from your Lifebloom will restore the mana
quickly. It ensures you go into the start of the fight with Harmony active
(which is especially helpful if AoE damage starts right away, so you can spread
some HoTs immediately). 

Lifebloom

Lifebloom! Lifebloom is one of our most important spells. It is crucial to keep
Lifebloom up whether you’re healing a 5 man dungeon, a 10 or 25 man raid, a
heroic raid, or PvP.

Lifebloom in Cataclysm plays a central role in our mana regen and management as
well as being a healing tool.


Lifebloom procs Revitalize, which grants us mana. 

Lifebloom also is the ONLY way to get Omen of Clarity procs for healing. None of
our other healing spells will proc OoC/Clearcasting. We have to spec into
Malfurion’s Gift in order to enable our Lifeblooms to provide OoC. If your
Lifebloom uptime is low, you won’t have as many clearcasting procs from Omen of
Clarity, which means you won’t be able to cast spells with no mana cost. This
will seriously hamper your mana over the course of a fight!

Lifebloom also supplies Replenishment for you and your party or raid -
Replenishment grants up to 10 party or raid members mana regeneration equal to
1% of their maximum mana per 10 seconds. This is important both for you and your
group! Replenishment helps your fellow healers and your casters. This also makes
maintaining Lifebloom even more important in 10 and 25 man raids if you only
have a few classes in your group who can provide Replenishment. if you are the
only person in your 10 man group who can provide Replenishment and your
Lifebloom uptime (and hence, Replenishment procs) is low, you are severely
limiting Replenishment for your fellow raiders. Similarly in a 25 man group, if
there are only a few of you providing Replenishment, you can be preventing your
fellow raiders from having Replenishment, as each class’ replenishment only
affects up to 10 people. So a Resto druid could provide Replen for an entire 10
man raid but you would need 2 or 3 Replen providers to cover a 25 man raid
(possibly only 2 as your non-mana users won’t need it).

Lifebloom tends to be a bit easier for people to maintain than Harmony, as most
seem secure with having to maintain a stack of 3 on their tank. It can also be
refreshed quickly if needed by simply recasting it on the tank, though it’s best
to refresh it with at least a Nourish (if not Regrowth or Healing Touch) when
you can while raid healing so that you activate Harmony as well.

It’s also good to get into the habit of always having Lifebloom up, and 5 mans
is a great place to practice it - always keep it up, even through all the trash!
Some may be surprised to hear me suggest that, but I’ve seen many druids in 5
mans only putting Lifebloom on their tank on boss fights. Keeping Lifebloom up
and maintaining it, even just with lots of Nourish casts when your tank is
taking little to no damage, will go a long way in helping ingrain the habit of
keeping it up. It will also keep your tank topped off, especially with the
Nourish casts in between heavier damage portions (and will keep Harmony
active!). The Replen and Revitalize procs will also help restore your mana
between trash pulls and bosses, so less time spent drinking!

Again, as suggested in the Harmony section, it’s good to get your 3 stack of
Lifebloom up pre-pull, and just refresh it into the pull with Nourish to proc
Harmony. Also, if you’re lucky enough to get Dark Intent, your warlock will love
you as all the Lifebloom ticks will give him a full 3-stack of his Dark Intent
buff pre-pull! 

I should also note: Maintaining Lifebloom is absolutely crucial as I’ve
mentioned. There are times, however, when you may be unable to stack Lifebloom
on your tank - you may be positioned out of range, for example. In cases like
this, stack Lifebloom either on yourself or on another suitable target (if
you’re focussing a specific DPS, perhaps a broodling soaker on Beth’tilac, you
could stack Lifebloom on them). You can always move the stack back to the tanks
when you’re back in range. You absolutely must keep Lifebloom up at all times
though.

Analyzing Logs: Harmony and Lifebloom

Logs are the best place to see how you’re doing in terms of maintaining good
Lifebloom and Harmony uptime. Whether you’re looking to improve on your own
healing, evaluating a new app for your guild, or helping a friend, Logs are
extremely helpful all around for analysing your healing.

World of Logs is where tons of Logs are uploaded by guilds for analysis. It can
be a bit confusing at first if you’re not familiar with it, so here’s how to
navigate to the information we’re looking for. With pictures! You may have to
click the screenshots to get a better view.

Here’s a log for one of our nights last week. This is the Dashboard page, where
you’ll be brought to first when selecting a night’s logs. To look at a specific
player, use the drop-down menus: Here I’ve gone to Players > Druid > Derwent.




For looking at Lifebloom and Harmony uptimes in particular, you should really
look only at Boss fights during raids. Looking at the full report can really
skew the data - the person you’re looking at might have been AFK or outside the
instance during some of the trash mobs, or they might have been DPSing for some
of the fights, or perhaps were swapped out for another raid member for some
fights. It’s best to look either at Bosses (to include all of them) or to go to
specific bosses and look at them one by one. The time in parenthesis by each
boss name is the length of the kill, and an arrow off of any bosses will show
multiple attempts/wipes on that boss if it wasn’t killed the first time.
Here I’ve gone to Full Report > Bosses > Ragnaros 25H.





Once you’ve gotten to a specific player and a specific boss, you can then go
through the tabs to get more information. For Harmony and Lifebloom in
particular, it’s best to look at Buffs Cast. This will bring up the following
screen:




On the left are the Buffs I cast throughout the fight. You can see Mark of the
Wild up at the top at 100% uptime - a static buff of course on the entire raid
throughout the fight. Next up is Lifebloom, up at 87.2%, and Harmony at 82.6%.
Could be higher, particularly my Harmony which I’ve maintained higher in our
other kills, but still good and realistic given some of my other duties in the
fight (I do meteor knockbacks in phase 3, Stampeding Roar in phase 2, plus the
brief RP time before phase 4). Context is of course important, but you’re still
always shooting for that ideal of 100% uptime.

For interest’s sake, we can scan down the rest of the Buffs there. My Power
Torrent procced 16 times throughout the fight, giving it a 25.5% uptime. I had
27 Clearcasting procs throughout the fight from my good Lifebloom uptime. I used
Tree of Life 3 times, Barkskin 8 times, Innervated myself 4 times. I used Cat
Form 3 times along with 3 Nature’s Swiftness casts, and I even Shadowmelded
once! (It tends to help me avoid aggro from the scion spawn in the second
intermission).

Moving to the right, you can see my Debuffs cast - Exhaustion from Heroism, I
cast Moonfires on the Meteors I was knocking back, and Concentration from a
Concentration Pot.

Moving to the right once more, you can see Power Gains - this is the mana I
gained throughout the fight. Reviltalize and Innervate gave me back the most
mana. Heartfire is the Resto t12 2-piece bonus, which is a pretty good mana
return throughout the course of a fight. Replenishment there is how much my
Replenishment provided to the raid - to see how much you yourself gained from
Replenishment, simply click the Buffs Gained tab, shown below, in which you can
see the mana gained from Replen (and also from a Concentration pot). 



 

That all is also looking at a fight which was 12 minutes long - some numbers
will be lower for shorter fights.

Some Examples

Here are just a few more examples of some logs looking at Harmony and Lifebloom
uptimes.

The following log is one from a Baleroc kill. As I mentioned earlier, because of
all the 
direct healing required in this fight, this is a much easier fight to maintain
near-perfect Lifebloom and Harmony uptime. You can see there’s a 98% uptime for
Lifebloom and 96.6% uptime for Harmony.




I also found the following two logs from kills of Lord Rhyolith - both kills
were about 4:40 in length. This is a good comparison of the same encounter, the
same length of time, and the effects of high and low Lifebloom uptime in
particular.

If you look at this first log, you can see Harmony uptime is up at 92.2% and
Lifebloom uptime is up at 87.1%, good. If you look just below that you can see
Clearcasting (Omen of Clarity) procs: 21! If you look over to the right for
Power Gains, you can see Revitalize restored 66,639 mana.




If we compare that with the following log, you can see Harmony uptime in this
log is low at 49.5%, and Lifebloom is only at 31.4% uptime. This also resulted
in significantly lower Clearcasting procs - only 8! That can really add up over
the course of a fight. If you look to the right, you can see their Revitalize
only provided 49,874 mana. While that’s not too low (Rejuvenation also procs
Revitalize, which helps there, and the size of each druid's mana pool does
factor in as well), that’s still a disparity of 16,765 mana. 




So as you can see, good Lifebloom uptime is really important for mana as well as
healing!

I’ve certainly rattled on enough, so I think I'll wrap it up here. Remember,
good Harmony and Lifebloom uptime is important and, as ever, practice makes
perfect! Don't be discouraged if you're a bit low to start with - just keep
working at it and it will improve.


A good tracker for Harmony and Lifebloom can also go a long way! I have some
useful Power Auras for keeping an eye on those (full details in my My User
Interface / Addons post!) which may be of help to you - the Harmony one in
particular displays when the buff is active and has a timer to show you how long
is left on it. Many of you likely have some means of watching your HoTs on
targets to keep an eye on your Lifebloom, but if you like you can also use the
little power aura to show you when your Lifebloom is active as well (this aura
does NOT show stacks or timer for Lifebloom, though).





Harmony Power Aura:
Version:4.22; b:0.0549; g:0.4863; icon:Spell_Nature_HealingWay;
buffname:Harmony; r:0.1843; x:-85; customname:Harmony; texture:23; alpha:1;
inVehicle:0; wowtex:true; combat:true; size:0.25; y:-160; texmode:1;
ismounted:0; timer.b:0.9294; timer.h:2; timer.Texture:WhiteRabbit;
timer.enabled:true; timer.r:0.9882; timer.cents:false; timer.Relative:CENTER;
timer.UseOwnColor:true


Lifebloom Power Aura:
Version:4.22; icon:INV_Misc_Herb_Felblossom; buffname:Lifebloom; x:-45;
customname:Lifebloom; alpha:1; mine:true; inVehicle:0; groupOrSelf:true;
customtex:true; combat:true; size:0.1; y:-115; ismounted:0


Simply copy, open up Power Auras, hit 'Import' and paste the code into the
import bar!

Happy healing!

Posted by Feral Tree at 20:40 5 comments:
Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest
Labels: Cataclysm, Guides, Harmony, Healing, Logs, Mana, Mastery, Restoration



WEDNESDAY 28 SEPTEMBER 2011


4.3 PTR RESTO CHANGES - TO THE GROUND!


The 4.3 PTR is finally up and rolling, which means lots and lots of news,
changes, more changes, and even more changes!

Resto druids everywhere did a double take with this first round of 4.3 PTR patch
notes which included the following:
-Wild Growth healing has been reduced by 20%.
-Glyph of Wild Growth now also increases the cooldown by 2 seconds.

This is a pretty substantial nerf and is a really perplexing one. This is
essentially nerfing Wild Growth back to its state at Cata Launch - significantly
less healing done and a 10 second cooldown. This is boggling because WG was a
huge issue in 4.0, Resto druids simply were substantially behind other healers.
They needed a boost to simple raw output so badly that in patch 4.0.6, Wild
Growth got a 30% buff to its healing done and its cooldown reverted back down to
8 seconds. Now 4.3 wants to... bring back the old WG output and CD and bring us
back to those output issues of 4.0?

There's an attempt at smoothing over the glyph change by describing it as a
means to give Resto druids 'more choice' in which glyphs to use. This neglects
the fact that there are really only 4 decent glyphs for Resto druids to choose
from to begin with. Wild Growth, Healing Touch, Innervate, Rebirth. Usually the
Healing Touch and Innervate glyphs are the two people swap between. Even moreso,
for those druids that opt not to pick up Nature's Swiftness, the Healing Touch
glyph is useless for them so they really only have 3 choices. So, there's no
choice component in this at all.

It's a straight attempt to strongly nerf Wild Growth. And with this component
now as well, we basically have to choose whether to sacrifice 1/6 of the output
(chopping WG down from hitting 6 targets back down to 5), or to gain an extra 2
seconds on the cd. I imagine many will simply be dropping the glyph. And from
our great choice selection, I guess we can run... the Innervate glyph. Hooray. I
can now get a little more of my Innervate on the rare occasions I cast it on
someone else following the Innervate nerf.

I can certainly understand wanting to nerf Wild Growth, as it's usually in the
top end for heals used in Resto druid's healing (with exceptions being in fights
like Shannox, where tank damage and healing is the primary component, bringing
Lifebloom and Healing Touch towards the top of heals used per fight). But a nerf
this substantial that brings it back to its 4.0 state is ridiculous, as it's
likely going to bring back the same issues that caused it to be buffed in 4.0.6.
Druids still have no mitigation abilities, Holy Priests will now be getting a
boost to Divine Hymn to give them their Tranq-like raid cooldown, and, despite
having good direct heals, druids will still not be preferred tank healers over
Paladins (and possibly now Shamans, with the 4.3 shaman changes). It's the same
issues for druids all over again.

If a nerf is even necessary, a more reasonable nerf to Wild Growth would be a
lot better - even a 10% nerf to the healing done by WG wouldn't be as bad as the
current 20% nerf. The increased cooldown from the Glyph is really too much and
seems a terribly poor decision. While similar to the change listed for the
Priest Circle of Healing glyph (the glyph has the same effect as WG; its 4.3
change also increases the mana cost by 20%), an increased mana cost is a lot
less costly than an increased cooldown.

There are also concerns that the Tranquility cooldown changes have faded in
people's memories some - Ghostcrawler did acknowledge around early 4.2 that
Resto druids often 'win' at meters due to the inflation caused by Tranquility.
With this acknowledgement was the hope that they would keep this in mind for
future healing adjustments so that druids didn't receive unnecessary nerfs due
to the HPS inflation caused by Tranq. WG numbers are always high for druids but
the strength of WG was definitely something that was needed because druids
didn't have the output of other healers pre-4.0.6 when WG was buffed.

I sincerely hope the WG glyph change will be reverted and that the nerfs in
general to WG will be reduced.

I'd hope for some other improvements for Resto druids as well in 4.3. Our talent
tree still needs work. Living Seed, Blessing of the Grove, and Nature's Bounty
all remain lackluster talents. Nature's Grace still should be swapped with
Genesis in their tiers in the Balance tree as well.

Having to spec Nature's Cure for a magic dispel seems a frustrating choice (for
Shaman and Paladin healers as well - all three classes have to spec to pick up
Magic Dispel). Magic Dispel I think should simply go along the route of
Holy/Disc priests, who gain the ability to dispel friendly targets when
specialising in either tree. Healers are the only ones with an ability to magic
dispel friendly targets currently anyway, it seems a waste of a talent point as
the dispel is often required in everything from 5 mans to 25 man heroic raids.
Even if there aren't that many things which need to be dispelled, the few things
that can be dispelled are powerful enough spells that they simply must be
dispelled.

This is still just the first round of the PTR and the very first release of the
4.3 PTR. Hopefully there'll be many more adjustments and changes to come, and
hopefully they'll reevaluate this Wild Growth nerf. There are a lot of changes
for the other healing classes; an interesting one is Holy Priests will now get
their raid cooldown with a talented Divine Hymn that has its healing increased
and its cooldown cut down to 3 minutes. First glance at the DH change seems to
put it about in line with Tranquility (keeping in mind DH is a direct cast only,
while Tranquility applies a HoT). The main difference is DH also applies an
Increased Healing buff, which is hopefully accounted for in DH's actual heals as
well. It will certainly be a potent cooldown for Holy priests, and hopefully
will be kept in line with Tranq.

They've also started previous PTRs with very large nerfs which they've later
scaled back some, so hopefully we'll see this nerf scaled back and toned down in
the coming weeks. The Resto community will hopefully have their concerns heard
(and we can certainly see through the alleged 'glyph choices' idea to the actual
blatant nerf it's attempting to gloss over).

Here's hoping for better news to come.

Posted by Feral Tree at 12:30 4 comments:
Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest
Labels: 4.3, Feedback, Nerfs, PTR, Restoration, Wild Growth



TUESDAY 13 SEPTEMBER 2011


HEALING AND BATTLING THE FIRELORD, HEROIC RAGNAROS!




417 pulls later, the Firelord has been vanquished! Last Wednesday we finally
killed Heroic Ragnaros! A big congratulations to all my fellow guildies in Drow,
it was 7 long weeks of hard work but we pulled through and got him down! A bit
unfortunately, the inevitable nerfbat hit the night before we killed it, which
was rather disappointing. We had been getting deep into phase 4 the week before
and were on our way to a pre-nerf kill, so it felt a little like the rug had
been pulled from under us there. But, life goes on, and all the work we put in
up to that week was certainly a big deal! We were very happy to get our kill,
and we finished up with a US 11th 25man kill, which was a great achievement for
the guild. Now, we prep for 4.3 and Deathwing!

Reesi of The Inconspicuous Bear put together a great video of our kill,
featuring the PoVs of one of our DPS warriors and one of our Boomkins. I’ll
share that with you all below, then I thought I’d talk a bit about the fight and
healing it!





Hands down this was one of the most challenging fights I’ve ever encountered,
and quite likely the most challenging encounter ever placed in the game so far.
There were a lot of mechanics to learn, abilities to dodge, adds to control...
on and on! all while meeting tight DPS checks. 

Like much of this tier, the high DPS requirements for the fight required running
fewer healers. Some of the first Heroic kills used only three healers, though
for our work and comp we settled on using four healers. We did do a night of
work three healing late on (when one of our healers was out for the night),
which was a fun additional challenge, but our kill used four. We used a resto
druid (me), two paladins, and a holy priest.

The fight has a lot of phases and is very long (our kill was around 13 minutes),
with damage varying from light to heavy throughout the fight. Mana management
and careful planning of cooldowns and heals used is crucial on this fight to
ensure you’re maximising your healing done, your mana saved, and your cooldown
usage.

Because of the importance of mana in this long of a fight, it’s important to
ensure you’re making the most of all your heals and not wasting any. Careful
thought of when and where to place abilities like Efflorescence, Wild Growth,
Tranqs, etc, go a long way in this fight. While there’ll definitely be times
where someone way out of group absolutely needs a Swiftmend, and should get one,
as much as possible Efflos are good on groups to max the healing done. Similarly
with a spell like Wild Growth, times when a misplaced cast hits someone who’s
off on their own so no one else gets ticks can be costly.

The first phase is fairly light healing wise - you have to heal up raid members
after Wrath and Hand of Ragnaros and after each Magma Trap explosion, but you
have a fair bit of time between each of these abilities, so you can generally
afford to use more mana efficient heals to top people up. Tanks do take a lot of
damage in this phase though. Popping Tranquility after the first Magma Trap
explosion is actually a nice time to use the cooldown - it will heal up raid
members very efficiently, and the cooldown will be available in later phases
should you need it.

The two Intermission phases are quite interesting to heal, and how I decided to
handle them actually prompted me to change my spec. I save my Tree of Life
cooldown for the two Intermission phases - the entire raid is getting wrecked
and is usually quite spread out at first due to stunning and killing the Sons of
Flame. So quick heals, good raid coverage, and mobility are all extremely
helpful in these phases. Mana efficiency is also huge, especially before Phase 2
and eventually Phase 4, where raid damage is quite intense. Bring in Tree of
Life! 

Popping tree form in the Intermissions allows me to cover the raid with
Lifeblooms to help manage raid healing, free instant Regrowths on all the Omen
of Clarity procs (and without OoC when necessary) to top off raid members who
dip very low, and of course Wild Growths and any Rejuvs or Swiftmends as needed.
The raid gets hit very hard in the Intermissions and, especially when running
few healers, it’s crucial the raid is getting healed up. ToL is great to pop in
these phases on normal mode as well! Covering the raid in this way with ToL is
great for mana efficiency and allowed me to go into our phase 2 and phase 3 and
4 with a good amount of mana ready for the heavy raid damage incoming.

I changed my spec slightly largely due to the Intermissions and any quick
top-ups I was doing with Regrowth on OoC procs in the other phases. Normally I
like running 3/3 in Living Seed, however, I found myself using Regrowth a lot
more than usual while healing the raid, especially in those Intermission phases
in Tree of Life form. I decided to change my spec and pick up 2/3 in Nature’s
Bounty for the increased Regrowth crit chance. I opted not to go 3/3 as I
preferred to keep Nature’s Cure for the magic dispel (Lava Waves aren’t
necessarily deadly, but the dot is, so having a dispel ready for any raid member
who accidentally got clipped was very helpful). I also kept points in Moonglow
and Furor to maximise my mana pool and savings. My spec looked like this
(8/2/31):





I must admit I enjoyed the reduced Nourish cast time from Nature’s Bounty as
well. This ability feels much more like a nice tool for when we’re focussed on
raid healing - as we spread Rejuvs, it makes it easier for us to cast a quick
but mana efficient heal in the form of the hasted Nourish. We can either use
that Nourish to perhaps small top up a raid member, top up a tank, refresh
Lifebloom on a tank, or simply ensure our Harmony mastery buff remains up. This
talent really doesn’t seem great for dedicated tank healing, though, as
spreading 3 Rejuvs just to gain the hasted Nourish seems like a waste of globals
and mana.

I generally ended up using my second Tranq on the second intermission phase - I
could have used it during the Molten Seeds in phase 2, however, as everyone was
stacked up for portions of it, topping the raid up wasn’t usually too difficult.
The second intermission phase, though, there’s additional heavy damage on the
tanks, who are picking up the Scions. This can make balancing healing the tanks
and raid challenging, and it ended up being more helpful having the Tranq ready
for the raid in this phase to catch raid healing back up in between the large
hits on the tanks.

Phase 2 is an interesting phase. There are various strategies for dealing with
the Molten Seeds, ours involved essentially a stack and run method for each
wave. This was a fairly challenging phase to heal as well, mostly as there is
heavy raid damage and a fair bit of movement. The seed explosions (and any
remaining magma trap explosions) cause heavy raid damage which needs to be
topped up fairly quickly. There’s also potential damage from World in Flames -
while this damage is 100% avoidable, there are always instances when people take
a tick, whether due to lag, getting into an awkward spot, etc. Generally it’s
best to ensure people are topped off as the flames start to go off to give that
leeway in case someone eats a tick by mistake. Tanks are also getting hit during
these phases, particularly when on the run from the Seeds. I usually tried to
save either my Swiftmends or a Nature’s Swiftness with Healing Touch for these
times - they made some crucial saves on the move!

Phase 3 is primarily a DPS burn with a lot of avoidable damage. You basically
must beat the third meteor spawn - the third spawn drops two meteors, and having
four meteors up in phase 4 is just... a guaranteed wipe pretty much! This phase
has World in Flames again but it’s easily avoidable, so the majority of the
damage is just on the tanks in this phase. Because the DPS is so tight, I
actually get to chill by the tanks and be on meteor knockback duty along with
helping on the tanks. 

Phase 4 is a mix of heavy damage on the tanks and alternating heavy and light
damage on the raid. There’s a bit of time before the first Frost Breadth spawn
when Superheated starts stacking up on the raid, so the overall raid damage
ramps up quite quickly. Once the raid is settled in the Breadth, though, damage
drops dramatically (at least until you have to move to a new Breadth). Tank
damage remains high and you have to keep an eye on any raid members who might
have to kite a meteor out of the breadth spawn. Keep it together, though, and
you’ll get him down!

One frustrating thing I found over the course of this fight was keeping my
Lifebloomx3 stack on the tank. There are quick tank swaps in this fight due to
the stacking dot Ragnaros places on the tank. This makes for a bit of an awkward
decision - do I spend 3 globals applying a stack to the taunting tank, or leave
it on the previous tank while healing the new one? The non-tanking tank will
still take some damage from the dot, so it’s not necessarily a waste, but it is
frustrating. I know our Pallies stopped switching beacons on every tank swap as
they found it inefficient. 

I ended up mostly planning my Lifebloom stacks in advance some. For example, in
the seeds phase in Phase 2, the tank during the stage in which we had to run
from the seed spawn would take a lot of damage from Rag while we were on the
move, so I’d stack my LB on her to help increase the healing on her. Meanwhile
the tank who taunted after the movement piece didn’t get hit as hard, due to
Ragnaros stopping melees briefly while casting World in Flames. Going into the
second intermission phase I placed LB on the tank I was healing for the Scion
spawns. In phase 3 I kept my LB primarily on our warrior tank as he tanked the
majority of p3 - a combination of avoidance and World in Flames casts meant the
dot generally didn’t get too high on him, which also allowed our bear (Reesi!)
to go cat form and add in some more damage.

This does highlight the bit of frustration with fights such as this though, as
swapping our Lifebloom stacks between tanks in quick tank swap fights can be
very inefficient and frustrating. I commented on this the other day in the Druid
Class Feedback Blizzard had posted the other day (you can see links to the post
and also my feedback in my post yesterday, viewable here: Resto Class Feedback).

Another good thing this fight especially highlights is Barkskin is your best
friend! Every druid should really have this on their bars if they don’t have it
already, as it’s such an amazing damage mitigation cooldown. I actually ended up
planning out a lot of its use as well on this fight to maximise its
effectiveness - I was generally able to use it every Magma Trap explosion, every
Seed Explosion, and have it up for emergencies in World in Flames phases. It’s
such a great ability both for this fight an others!

Overall impressions: It was a very long haul but it certainly feels like an
accomplishment, especially working with 24+ other people to execute all the
coordination to down this boss. It was undoubtedly a team effort and I can’t
praise my guildies enough for all the hard work put in. 

Healing the fight was a lot of fun, especially planning when I wanted to use
cooldowns, managing my mana throughout the fight, and even planning which heals
I preferred to use and when to ensure I was getting the most out of my heals and
keeping my mastery buff up.

Druids especially shine on this fight I think, as our hots and raid healing
abilities are extremely helpful for some of the movement portions of the fight,
particularly when it coincides with heavy raid damage. We also can do an
excellent job on tank healing - certainly a strong portion of my healing was on
tanks as well as raid, but in particular I always feel Resto druids fit a nice
niche of tank healing/support while being able to maintain good coverage on the
raid. Paladin’s Hand of Sacrifice was of course very helpful on the tanks, which
is a bit unfortunate that Druid’s cannot match that ability. Shaman get a bit of
the short end of the stick with all the movement in this fight, however they can
perform very well if focussing on tanks. Priests of both specs seem to perform
well - Holy’s Lightwells are extremely useful (provided your raid uses them of
course!) and Guardian Spirit can be great for tanks on the move in Phase 2 and
for the heavy damage in Phase 4. Discipline can also do well, though Power Word:
barrier seems more useful for reducing trap or seed explosions in phase 2 and
potentially in phase 4 when the raid is actually stacked up.

Now to prepare for patch 4.3 and the battles with Deathwing! I have a bunch of
ideas for other posts too so now with some extra free time as we get back to a
farm schedule, I'll try to get some more posts up soon. 


Happy raiding!

Posted by Feral Tree at 17:02 1 comment:
Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest
Labels: 4.2, Firelands, Healing, Heroic, Mana, Restoration

Older Posts Home

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)



ABOUT FERALTREE

FeralTree is a blog devoted to druids, with a particular focus on restoration
and feral druids, as well as raiding and the rest of World of Warcraft.

Topics range from specs, raid encounters and upcoming changes to world events,
achievements and other fun things in the World of Warcraft.



PAGES

 * About Me
 * Cataclysm Resto Druid Guide
 * Cataclysm Feral Druid Guide
 * Cata Faction Rep Guide for Resto and Feral Druids
 * Raid Encounter Guides
 * Cataclysm Beta Raid Previews
 * Videos by FeralTree
 * PVP Lessons for PVE: Step into the Arena!
 * Home




SUBSCRIBE TO FERALTREE!

Posts
Atom

Posts

All Comments
Atom

All Comments





BLOG ARCHIVE

 * ▼  2011 (29)
   * ▼  November (1)
     * The Many Uses for the Tree of Life Cooldown! An Il...
   * ►  October (2)
   * ►  September (3)
   * ►  August (1)
   * ►  June (2)
   * ►  May (2)
   * ►  April (3)
   * ►  March (3)
   * ►  February (3)
   * ►  January (9)

 * ►  2010 (76)
   * ►  December (7)
   * ►  November (10)
   * ►  October (13)
   * ►  September (14)
   * ►  August (12)
   * ►  July (20)




SEARCH THIS BLOG






MY BLOG LIST

 * The Daily Blink
   Hello world!
   1 year ago
   
 * Righteous Defense
   Hello world!
   2 years ago
   
 * orcish army knife
   Horde appoints former Old Horde official as its chief administrative officer
   2 years ago
   
 * HoTs & DoTs
   Mengapa Bermain Casino Online Lebih Menguntungkan? Ini Alasannya
   4 years ago
   
 * Jaded Alt
   Different types of PC games
   5 years ago
   
 * Disciplinary Action » Disciplinary Action Adventures: Episode #13
   2017 #GamerSecret Santa
   6 years ago
   
 * Druid Main
   Model Sepatu Sneakers Wanita 2017
   7 years ago
   
 * The Inconspicuous Bear
   TiB in 2017
   7 years ago
   
 * Leafshine: Lust for Flower
   What a partnership!
   7 years ago
   
 * Murloc Parliament
   Keep [Thing] Up and Refresh [Thing] When It Expires, Cast [Ability] When
   [Thing] Procs, and Use [Other Ability] On Cooldown
   8 years ago
   
 * Postcards from Azeroth...
   #1126: Curse of Naxxramas
   9 years ago
   
 * Falling Leaves and Wings
   Hello, World.
   9 years ago
   
 * Type "H" For Heals
   [MoP Beta] Priest Mana Regen Revisited
   11 years ago
   
 * Tree Bark Jacket - restoration druid blog
   New recruit
   12 years ago
   
 * thetenmanbear
   
   
 * Cynwise's Field Notes
   
   
 * Mortigan The Warlock
   
   
 * Girls Don't Play WoW
   
   
 * Honeymint Tea
   
   
 * WoW.com
   
   




FERALTREE ON TWITTER!

Follow me on Twitter!



FERALTREE ON FACEBOOK!





FOLLOWERS




RECOMMENDED LINKS

 * FeralTree YouTube Channel
 * The Inconspicuous Bear Forums (Resto, Bear, and Cat!)
 * World of Warcraft
 * MMO Champion
 * RestoDruid.info by Keeva
 * TankSpot
 * Elitist Jerks
 * Blog Azeroth
 * The Daily Druid




CREATIVE COMMONS

All work by Derwent(FeralTree) except where otherwise cited.


FeralTree by Derwent is protected under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 license. If intending to use or share
anything on this blog, please cite/link/give credit back to the site. If unsure
about the use of any content please don't hesitate to contact me through
comments, Twitter, or email.






SUBSCRIBE TO FERALTREE!

Posts
Atom

Posts

All Comments
Atom

All Comments




Copyright FeralTree 2010. Picture Window theme. Powered by Blogger.



Diese Website verwendet Cookies von Google, um Dienste anzubieten und Zugriffe
zu analysieren. Deine IP-Adresse und dein User-Agent werden zusammen mit
Messwerten zur Leistung und Sicherheit für Google freigegeben. So können
Nutzungsstatistiken generiert, Missbrauchsfälle erkannt und behoben und die
Qualität des Dienstes gewährleistet werden.Weitere InformationenOk