I’ve been playing priest (disc, mainly) since Cata and am trying to get back into resto druid by doing some M+. I feel like I have a problem that most people don’t talk about, or perhaps talk about indirectly: I feel like my eyes have to be glued to party frames all the time to be effective. There are so many hots to keep track of, and each one has its own countdown timer! Even with addons like Enhanced Raid Frames, it’s a lot to keep track of.
I feel like part of the problem may be that I feel like I have to have a Rejuv on everyone all the time, because if anyone takes a spike of damage and they don’t have a HOT on them already, it takes a lot longer to heal them up and they are in much greater risk of dying to a follow-up hit.
What this means is that I feel like I can’t “watch the battlefield” nearly as much as I can on other healers. With my priest, I can just cast Radiance to apply atonements to the party and then “watch the battlefield” while going through my damage rotation for 6 seconds. It is easier to anticipate and avoid mechanics - and easier to get a sense of who is about to take damage.
Is this just something I have to (re)learn?
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Honestly, I wish Effloresence auto-applied Rejuvenation to anyone within its radius once every second. It would solve a lot of the issues I seem to have with resto
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Or at least some button we could press that was just “applies rejuv to whoever in your party doesn’t have it” without needing to target somebody. I wonder if there is a macro somewhere for that…
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Would that walk the fine line of macro vs automation?
Like, I know you still have to hit it, but it feels really close.
I know we Hunters can set macros to call a pet, mend a pet or revive a pet based on pet states, but I’m unsure if you could retool that for what’s essentially a buff.
I do know I have a macro that pulls a mount from the ones I entered into that macro based on world states, like if I’m aquatic, ground bound or if you can fly.
Macros have always been really like… complex? In my eyes. I’m sure there’s guides that break down all kinds of use cases, but macros are largely intimidating to me.
It won’t be possible to write such a macro, or addon for that matter. Very early on, Blizzard restricted the ability for macros and addons to make decisions on spell choice or target, they want players to have to make those decisions. Only heals that are built as smart heals will do that.
You could probably make a macro that goes down your party one by one if you’re just looking to get the mastery stack across the board. But if you want to be able to select a target based on their current rejuvenation state, you’ll need to select the target yourself.
I move everything, including frames, close to the center of my screen. That way I can see what’s going on in my peripheral vision. I am always focused on the frames but I can see well enough for mechanics. It does kind of feel like I’m playing the game without really experiencing the game though.
Yeah, moving the party frame to a more central position helps a LOT. I feel that those being in the corners of the screen are really weird, and I’m not sure how people heal on those while paying attention to the center of the screen.
Simple. Roll Mistweaver/HPally, never dispel anything. Just play like a substandard DPS, because gawdangit, that’s absolutely the most fun you can have in WoW, hands down.
Agree as others have mentioned.
I have my raid frames more towards the middle of the screen.
That helps a lot.
Just like you mentioned too, may just be an adjustment from coming back to resto.
You get used to it. Like most specs, after playing it for a while, you feel the rhythm of things, and you don’t have to babysit it as hard.
Frame tunneling is an issue for all healer specs, and I’ve found that–for me–the only way to improve that is repetition via practice.
I no longer suffer from this in RDruid because I just have a familiarity with the rhythms of it. I anticipate damage with full double rejuv-swiftmend-emp WIld growth and then Flourish so I can spot heal and damage when the big boom hits.
Aside from that, it’s just a matter of familiarity.
I also have my party frames sitting right under my feet. Mileage will vary for different players with different brains and different needs, but for me, having the frames horizontally/landscape under my feet rather than vertically/portrait over to my left or right…that makes a huge difference.
Personally I think it’s more worse in Resto then every other Healer, the management of HoTs is pretty crazy especially as it’s how we get our mastery going.
I play all healers minus Mistweaver, and I can comfortably say as every other healer you don’t have to look at frames as much as Resto Druid.
Personally every other healer just having health frames in my peripheral is good enough.
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I use ElvUI, but pretty much any frame setup will allow you to have little squares indicating various HoTs/effects, and when you’re familiar with them, it makes a “shape” that my eye just recognizes, even from periphery.
I know without even looking who has what and who is missing what just from the shape of my markers on the party frames.
I don’t disagree…we have more indicators than any other healing spec that must be curated and handled on the frames. I still contend, however, that with practice, the rhythms and flow of the rolling HoTs becomes second nature and no longer requires the same level of babysitting.
For a new RDruid, this is absolutely gonna be a learning curve situation, but whatever system for tracking HoTs the player uses, it’s a matter of repetition.
I can’t really think of an alternative though, unless Blizzard moves resto druid away from being mostly about HoTs. Like other druids have said, you do get used to it with practice. But there’s really no other way to manage a spec that revolves around applying multiple HoTs onto the entire party.
I think the downside is also the upside to RDruids though.
Yes you need to babysit frames to get going, but once youre set up and the damage is rolling, you dont have to babysit the party frames near as much as you do on other healers since you know they’ve got HoTs rolling and heals coming in.
Little bit of a love hate relationship
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Sure, and honestly the entire druid healing mindset is different from every other healer in that you have to be comfortable seeing health bars dip and not even drop cat form as you trust your HoTs will get them back to full. But someone new to the spec is likely going to be learning that aspect alongside what buttons they need to be pressing. Tracking which HoTs are on each person is going to take more unit frame watching until you get used to the cadence for when you put each HoT out onto each target that comes with practice.
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