for raiding, 90% of your hps is going to be wildgrowth/incarn windows. Rejuv gets you a bunch too, but the incarn window and wildgrowth should be your focus. that will help alot.
cds have nothing to do with it, rdruids spells are very expensive, theres only 1 way to clearcast as a rdru with regrowth, a mostly untouched spell in terms of priority, other healers have passives ways to get mana back, r druid is the only one that doesnt
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Yeah druid heals are expensive because druids have more than once been able to blanket rejuv raid at all times and never go oom. Mana though shouldnāt be a huge issue if you arenāt doing this though. I can regularly do an entire M+ and drink 2-3 times.
CDs are a big part of druid healing though for mana. It is the only class with 10sec free casting on a 3min cd. I regen a good chunk of mana during that time. Also if you spec into fae-rave you also get a small amount back too every minute.
I was looking for a resto druid rotation guide, thinking that I was the issue, but now I see thatās not the case. In raids, all the healers who arenāt resto druids always end up with over 60% mana, the holy paladin sometimes even at 80% mana and in first place in healing, while Iām left with 0%/10% mana.
I went as DPS to a Mythic +17, the Holy Paladin never had to sit down to eat due to mana shortage, while I, whenever I go as a healer, have to keep eating to replenish. The Holy Paladin was ilvl 400, and Iām ilvl 440
Blizzard should fix this asap.
In raids, spell selection is huge. For example, you should almost never be casting Regrowth if itās not during a clearcast proc or during innervate. Also, you canāt realistically just try to blanket the entire raid with Rejuvenation (especially not with 2 stacks if you take Germination). Itās an efficient spell but still becomes a huge mana drain beyond a certain point. You need to find a good balance with Efflorescence, in terms of maintaining good uptime but not constantly re-casting it every couple of seconds when people are moving around, since it is an expensive spell. In raids, you have some leeway to heal efficiently because you arenāt the only healer. You shouldnāt be trying to heal like you are the only healer.
Also, try to make good use of your mana pots. Use one early and in most cases youāll be able to use one again before the fight is over. Try to use a potion of frozen focus instead of a regular mana pot when you can get away with it. For example, on Sark, during the transition between phase 1 and 2, you can tiger-dash through the three portals quickly and have MORE than enough time after you come back up to use a potion of frozen focus, which should restore pretty much all of the mana that you used on phase one.
In M+ itās different obviously. You need to pre-HoT and keep those HoTs rolling, which not only provides healing on itās own, but also provides both mastery stacks and abundance stacks which serve to make Regrowth actually somewhat viable in M+. You end up doing a LOT of things that you arenāt supposed to do in raid, such as constantly moving your Efflorescence around, blanketing every player with Rejuvenation(s), and using Regrowth even outside of clearcast procs. But we can get away with this in most cases because fights are shorter. Also, the ability to pre-HoT the group before damage even starts uses more mana but itās also an advantage that few other healers have. Your best bet is to just get into the habit of drinking for mana, every time, the moment combat drops. Even if you only get a few seconds in here or there, it adds up.
To be clear, I think that healing is in a pretty bad spot overall right now, but resto druids arenāt really much worse overall than other healers except for maybe paladin. We lack some on-demand burst healing which others like Evoker and Priest can really pump out. We also lack some utility (especially with the new talent trees now forcing us to choose between utility spells that we used to be able to have at the same time). I hope that the new Grove Guardians talent will help with the on-demand burst at least.