Okay, so Long story short; i took this patch as a time to learn a new class/spec. and im struggling with resto druid.
Question 1; anyone know of a weak aura with a good lifebloom timer? Wowhead says to put it on 2 targets; then refresh when it has 4.5 seconds left. so looking for a timer for that.
Question 2: whats the best way to stabilize a group after significant AOE damage? - For arguments sake; not a good time to channel tranq or its on cooldown
Any other tips/tricks would be helpful.
In terms of builds, I’m using Wowheads.
I am running the ramping rejuv Raid build for raiding and Mythic+ - Lifebloom for mythics.
To be clear, this is 4.5 seconds or less. You don’t need to aim for exactly 4.5; just don’t re-apply too early is what they mean.
Convoke has a 1 min. CD talented and can be used quite often. Otherwise, Wild Growth+Treants is your usual play. Keep in mind that Treants are off the global CD. Pre-buffing your WG with a Swiftmend is good, and just in generally, pre-HoTing when you know damage is coming is the way to prepare.
For stabilizing assuming 5 man dungeons, maintain efflo and rejuv/germ like usual for the mastery increase and if any target is taking extra damage drop cenarion ward or ironbark on them then follow with
Cooldowns availible → natures swiftness then convoke; hope rng is on your side and it focuses on heal casts with a flourish proc. If running keeper drop a treant first for the bonus healing.
Major cooldowns not available-> make sure both lifeblooms are out, preferably one on you for the tick speed increase. Swiftmend the lowest health target for the SotF proc and wildgrowth, then either drop treants or regrowth spam, preferably with clearcasts banked for the bonus healing and/or nourish cleave.
In raids keep efflo under the melee and lifebloom om the tank for thr clearcast procs. I generally focus in rejuv blanketing between buffed wildgrowths and then using those to ramp with incarn/treants, flourish or tranq which reduces flourish’s cooldown to keep the group stable during high damage moments between other healer cooldowns.
Unfortunately convoke is the only good way to stabilize after significant AOE dmg. Rdruid is a spec where you need to know when damage is coming because if everyone is taking or just took big AOE dmg and you don’t have any hots out then you are in rDruid’s worst possible scenario.
I don’t raid, but for m+ are you playing WS? If you are make sure you are very focused on trying to proc blooms. These are 20% increased healing, plus an additional mastery stack, plus 2% increased healing per bloom if using Root Network…but that’s like 35% increased healing for that person.
The main ways to proc these are efflo, wildgrowth, regrowth, and swiftmend if running Implant. Efflo is the most efficient, but there’s so much movement that it’s not always a good option. Wildgrowth is good but it’s on a CD and has short duration. If you are vigilant about your lifeblooms you can spread regrowth to all 5 people with 2 regrowth casts and 1 lifebloom cast assuming you are running rampant growth. 1 regrowth cast will put it on 3 people, 1 of the 2 remaining you can cast a lifebloom and cast regrowth on the remaining person. That’s 2 regrowths and 1 lifebloom cast and now all 5 people have regrowth on them.
just a fyi, i’ve used Vuhdu for many years, and the lifebloom setting on your raid/party frames can be set to have a timer, plus a color based option (starts green and fades to red as the duration progresses, so you’ll have a good idea for the refresh window).
For your second question, Convoke is a pretty versatile spell…it’s not only a dps cooldown, but I find it to be a reliable way to stabilize a group during bursty AOE…especially if you’re good about having your hots on people. Be sure to have Nature’s Swiftness active when you use it, for the extra burst.
I just use Healbot raidframes to keep track of Lifebloom.
For AoE damage, you should already have quite a few casts of Rejuvenation out on the group beforehand (basically always), which means you should have a decent number of Abundance stacks already, which means that Regrowth should have a very low cast time (potentially even quicker than the GCD), nearly guaranteed crit, and be almost free to cast.
Spamming a few of those hard-hitting Regrowths on top of the Rejuvenations that are already ticking, and maybe throwing a Soul of the Forest + Wild Growth in there should take care of pretty much any AoE. Use Convoke if it’s an emergency.
Well to be clear for the OP, they have their own internal GCD, but they don’t trigger the GCD for other abilities so they can still be used in conjunction.
If it’s a 5man don’t forget the power of triage healing instead. Druid is pretty good at that.
Swiftmend one DPS, NS regrowth a 2nd, cen ward a 3rd. Or if I’m running Abundance and had enough time to layer hots on like 2 people, just regrowth spam me and the other remaining, weaving in rejuvs in between with Vegetation upfront heals. Etc etc.
It’s kind of like having 5 water pipes bursting at slightly different rates and you just go to each patching as much of the holes as you can until they all slowly stabilize. You get a feel for it.
The most important thing is just knowing the encounters and knowing when people arent in danger anymore. I will heal a big AOE heal check just enough and leave everyone at like 30-40% and go back to dpsing cause I know literally no other damage can happen right now. Downside is it makes people that don’t know that panic and blow health pots or whatever for no reason
