(Resto) First time in M+. Some questions from an eager player

Hey everyone! I have played WoW over the years but always as a hyper casual since it was only ever my backup game to play when bored with others. I’m hoping to spend this season to actually get better and try harder content, so this is my first season ever trying M+. So far my general experience has been really enjoyable. People have almost all been really pleasant to play (pug) with. Kittyweaving is the most fun method of dpsing that I have experienced so far as a healer. Some runs have been smooth as butter, but others have been an absolute demoralizing nightmare (Grimrail I’m looking at you). Slowly getting more addons/weakauras which help immensely. Hope you all don’t mind a bit of a lengthy post with some general feelings and questions.

Does the healing style change for rDruid when healing Grievous? Should I be spamming Regrowths when people get stacks? I have been trying to read up on guides on how to heal M+ and it seems to be recommended to not obsess over constantly topping people off. Trying my best to learn that, but I assume that Grievous is kinda an exception to this so you can remove the stacks?

There are some runs where it feels like literally all I can do is just spam heals nonstop and barely take my eyes off the party frames. This makes me apprehensive to try to push higher because I am worried I won’t be able to keep up. But…the more dungeons I run, the more I am getting the feeling that a lot of this is just people eating mechanics all the time? My highest key so far is a +11 and it was quite easy, but lots of my +4-10 keys have been hell to me (often going oom every other pack due to the required healing).

Because of those moments where I am having to spam heals nonstop, I have been taking Abundance and Germination. Honestly I really like both of these and feel like I can’t swap off them because I don’t feel the longer CD talents will cut it for me. I totally see the value in Cen Ward and Flourish (Flourish especially seems really cool), but perhaps get the impression that they may work better for playing with groups who know how to avoid damage better, and healers who know their spec better? I could be totally wrong with this but Germ certainly feels like a safe, noob-friendly option thus far and I’m really partial to it. And then Abundance has really nice synergy with Germ and makes all the Regrowth spam much more efficient.

How does Mother Tree leggy feel in M+? I have been running Circle so far and really enjoy it, but I have trouble responding to big spikes of group-wide damage when it is unplanned and I have no hots rolling. So many GCDs are used and it takes a while to ramp everything up and get people healthy again. I’m considering giving Mother a run to help alleviate this, but the 40% chance seems kinda annoying. Also, does it apply Germinations to people who already have Rejuvs?

A non-Druid related question, but…what is the name of the addon that announces if mechanics are happening to certain players? Like if I am being targeted for X skill. I’m still having trouble pulling myself away from staring at my frames when incoming damage is high and I have been eating certain mechanics which of course makes it worse. The example in particular that I’m thinking of is the bulls in Iron Docks. I swear they don’t face their target when preparing their charge skill and I all of the sudden see them do a 180 and rush towards me. I downloaded DBM today but it only seems to work for the demon affix thing and if I’m standing in stupid.

My current item level is 276ish. I’m starting to develop more confidence the more I play, but I still worry that I am going to be undergeared if I try to push any higher and cause people’s keys to be depleted. My personal goal is to be comfortably running +15s by the end of the season and hopefully get the mount (it’s really pretty). I believe at this iLvl I should be more than good running +15s, yes?

Thanks for reading all of this and thanks even more if you take the time to reply. I can’t find my Druid in the list of characters here to post from, so if it’s worth anything my raider,io profile is Zamalaki-Draka (can’t post links).

Firstly, don’t ever take germination. Its just not good atm. Always take flourish to use after you’ve casted a wild growth during periods of heavy party damage intake. Just use the standard legendaries, Circle + Covenant legendary. Wouldn’t really bother with anything else. If you’re doing a high key and you’re very scared you can even go night fae since Convoke is a good panic button, though its not really ever required.

Healing Grievous largely has to do with gear, so if your gear sucks you’re going to have a tough time with grievous. Such affixes like that are typically trivial to heal through late-expansion, but painful to heal through early in an expansion. (healer power increases significantly as an expansion goes on).

Healing through Grievous now at 280+ ilevel is quite easy and should be largely trivial, so you shouldn’t have much issue with it… Get your 4-set bonus, take necrolord, Plague Deviser Marileth soulbind (taking triple potency in the tree), and make sure you have the Floral Recycling potency conduit, the Evolved Swarm conduit, and Unstoppable Growth conduit. The Floral Recycling conduit makes your swiftmend heal hugely, so you can instantly swiftmend anyone to full since they should already have a HoT on them from your 2-set, plus a rejuv. Having the 4-set is nice also, but not as required. But work towards it asap.

With how strong swiftmend is with the swiftmend potency conduit, you shouldn’t have to regrowth spam too much in keys unless you’re with a terrible group that is taking loads of avoidable damage. Wild growth + rejuv + 2-set heal over time and Spring blossoms should take care of most grievous no problem. Fort weeks take cenarion ward though, you shouldn’t ever really take abundance on a Fortified week.

For M+ mechanics, until you have more experience with the keys and know the mechanics, I wouldn’t use just BigWigs + LittleWigs addon… I would also download WeakAuras here:

https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/weakauras-2

and then import these Dungeon WeakAura packs into the WA addon:

https://wago.io/SL-Dungeons (For Streets and Gambit)
https://wago.io/BFA-Dungeons (for Workshop and Junkyard)
https://wago.io/Legion-Dungeons (For Karazhan keys)
https://wago.io/WOD-Dungeons (For Grimrail / Docks keys)

Its really annoying to have to do all 4, but since we have keys now spread out across 4 expansions its what you have to do.

This will tell you when you’re targetted by stuff, and what to do when key mechanics are happening.

Don’t overthink things, its mostly the same on grievous week… Keep rejuvs out when needed, Wild growth on cooldown when theres group damage, Flourish it during big damage, keep your Spring blossom down over people, swiftmend low health dudes, regrowth or natures swiftness + Regrowth if needed while swiftmend is on CD. Cast Hibernate on that Bat when it comes out from the dreadlord miniboss.

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Play around with the talents and leggos. Until you are comfortabled getting use to trusting HOTs to do their work (it takes time, no pun intended), just focus on healing and worry less on DPS.

One set up that I played with when early in my gear progression was Dark Titan’s + Photosynthesis. Getting a 2nd lifebloom is nice, because you can essentually use it as a quasi Circle of Life & Death, since if you put it on you, your HOTS tick faster. Put it on the tank, and you get increased chance for blooms. By having two Lifeblooms out, your chances for clarity procs get increased. Taking the clarity conduit, you can get increased healing out of clarity proc regrowths. It can turn regrowths into a pretty strong and overall not as mana intense spell.

Also if you are just starting out, I’d go with Night Fae. Convoke is an excellent Oh Crap ability to have. You can still practice catweaving, and sometimes if convoke is up, I know there isn’t anything big coming, I’ll just convoke in feral after I’ve got full bleeds up on the focus. Since I pug most of my runs, I tend to stay NF just to have that extra CD, because PUGs are Pugs.

But druid just takes some time to get used to. The odd part is when I go back to my priest, I keep missing HOTs because I’m so used to HOTs doing the work so I can catweave.

The problem with that conduit is that your 2 set hot will be the priority for swiftmend to consume. Given how weak that hot is, the conduit does very little if that is the hot consumed.

As for the OP, verdant infusion is a safe and easy Lego to use if you’re struggling to keep people alive as well.

If you have to spam heals like crazy in lower keys, it’s likely because people aren’t interrupting things or standing in things they shouldn’t be.

It just takes practice for sure as resto can feel like easy mode if you pre-hot damage you know is coming, and can feel frustrating and difficult if you’re trying to catch up.