I’m new to druid and so far I’m loving it. I’ve been swapping between Balance and Resto.
I’ve always loved to heal but most of my experience is between Monk and Paladin and I’ve never really played a proactive healer and I’m struggling a little in mythics.
I’m only in the +5 / +8 range for mythics.
I find I really struggle when people get low and I don’t have a reliable way to get them back up in a timely manner before more damage comes out. I’ve been trying to keep people pre-hot’d in every fight if I think they might possibly take damage.
Anyone have any tips or tricks for resto healing? Favorite talents, key things that maybe I’m not doing and should? Any little tips that might make my life easier?
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When there is a lot of damage and you are using photo talent put lifebloom on yourself and wild growth is pretty strong as reactive healing. Follow with tranq if you really need some extra push. Spring Blossoms and cultivation should help your hots all heal for more. A reminder that the more hots you have on a target the more each hot heals for (mastery). Make sure you prioritize haste/mastery for resto but generally highest IL is best assuming by chance it does not leave you with a big mastery or haste deficiency.
+5-8 should be cakewalk for resto unless you have a god awful group which is not uncommon in that key range.
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Also good to get your efflo optimized. Ask the tank to try and stay in ti as with spring blossoms you get another stack of mastery. Biggest struggle in those areas of keys is bad people not avoiding avoidable damage. We dont really have as good of a toolkit as monks do when it comes to bursting up 2 or more at the same time. It might sound kind of mean…but just done heal people who stand in fire. Ive ran some +9 and 10s where i would only have to do 8-12k hps during trash…which equates to hots on tank and the random rejuv here and there and can do 8-12 k dps…lots of times in 5-8 i couldnt keep the groups alive doing 18-25k hps and not being able to dps.
Remeber…if you heal bads…you are enabling. So kind of be firm…tell them youre not gonna waste a bunch of gcd’s healing baddies
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If people are randomly dipping low before you have hots on them, try taking cultivation and stacking as much haste and mastery as possible. This will give you fast globals and three hots on the player, which you can then follow up with swiftmend and regrowth.
I prefer germination so I can quickly slap two rejuvs on someone and give myself a 12% regrowth crit bonus. Germ feels horrible at low haste levels, and choosing Germ or Photo is largely personal preference and damage pattern dependent.
Stack High Noon traits, and use Sunfire every 14 seconds. You’ll contribute a lot of damage while still maintaining maximum healing ability. Aside from one Grove Tending trait, Rdruid dungeon healing is well served by the basic kit overall.
It’s your job as the healer to… heal people. No matter how bad they are. Deliberately not healing a bad player in timed content is almost always a poor decision and will make you the baddie, not them.
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I use weak auras to track incoming damage, amd I use plater tk show me what each enemy is doing and who they are targeting.
This is essential knowledge that will help you elevate into a better resto druid. The more you understand how each pull applies damage, the more prepared you will be when you start healing harder content.
Also helps if you have a solid tank like having a warrior intercept Eudora’s powder shot or any other boss that does a strong, single target burst damage. If you notice a warrior doing a lot of intercepts then you’ll see more damage distributed to the warrior in general and you can set up your hots accordingly. Also say you have a DK that has bonestorm up. If that tank is at half health and pulling big, chances are that health will be restored to full almost instantly so using a regrowth or a swiftmend might be a wasted heal.
Globals are very important as the more spells cast means more mana spent, but not necessarily better healing going out.
Instead of letting dps die by taking failure damage, I’ll still heal them, but I have addons that throws their names in party chat if they got hit with avoidable damage. Some people find this annoying but I stand by it firmly. It’s a great resource to learn how to do mechanics and hopefully those players will be more dilligent on doing mechanics properly.
Druid strength (being able to heal while moving and healing continuing to tick while you’re not casting) is offset by needing to have a lot of global to get set up. Over time, you’ll notice patterns and plant hots accordingly. Efflorescence is awesome with the talent and photosynthesis management is some good micro skill to learn, too.
But basically, learn where the damage is gonna go on each pull and have heals already there, it’ll make you seem way better to the outside world. If you’re not gobbling your heals too much, you can keep hots of some kind rolling on the whole party for most of the time indefinitely.
Agree to disagree. Its everyones job to pay attention to mechanics ESPECIALLY in timed content. If you dump your mana load healing bads every trash pack…insert downtime there, let them die and run back…Its a wash either way…but maybe repair bills might help teach some people. And you cant argue the fact that there are lots of people that stand in too much fire. I do it sometime out of principle. But not before i explain mechanics when needed. If they know it and ignore it…i wont heal them. If they dont then i will go over strats and mechanics. This game isnt hard. Strafing out of maddening gaze shouldnt seem as difficult as splitting an atom, and jumping or moving every 2 seconds during the 2nd witch in WM shouldnt take more than a 2nd grade education, but some people make those fails look easy.
My personal belief is its incredibly rude to ‘learn’ mechanics on someone elses key. Thats what M0 and heroics are for. One wipe…rety after 30 seconds of explaining strats…key is dead.
UR imo is one of the easiest keys out there. I dont know if there is a dungeon with as much avoidable damage. But sooo many people hate it…what they actually hate is not being able to tunnel.
I understand your frustration, but this is not the mentality to have in a m+ format.
Someone dying removes 5s from your time, plus the time lost of them running back instead of doing damage. Ideally, they should avoid the avoidable damage, but if they fail to do so the responsibility then falls on the healer. That’s why you’re there, to heal. If you’re deciding to not heal, you’re playing the wrong spec.
I heal and tank keys in the 18 range, and if I adopted this mentality I would never improve.
I agree for the most part. I have been doing nothing but healing and tanking since vanilla. Believe me, i always take less damage taken in group when i heal by a long shot. My situational awareness is aboce par since i did end game content when this game was hard. I do take the time to explain when needed. My guild and wow friends have been disbannded for some time. If i were in a consistant group then it would be different. I really do take my role very seriously, its when other dont. Im not talking about 1 or 2 seconds of standing in a puddle while letting a cast go off. Im talking about repeatedly standing in front of cleaves …not moving to shrooms when you have upheaval…not standing in ward when carve flesh is on you. I know it sounds like a pug QQ. it really isnt. But when those things happen in anything above a plus 5…i wont heal them…when they die…they say “what killed me?” I tell them…then they know. If i heal them through it, they wont know until next group when healer just leaves because of it. My whole point here was to the OP…it might not be his struggle at all. Patially maybe, but alot is the groups and people being uneducated on mechanics. Unfortunatley…lots of people just ‘heal’ over the problem because content is soo easy, there is very few consequence to standing in fire. But it leaves lots of healers getting frustrated, thinking its something they are doing wrong. But if a group is doing their roles fairly well, then healers shouldnt have to push much more than 15k hps on hard trash packs in the 7-12 key range. I jusr want the op to know that information so he/she doesnt get frustrated when 15-20k hps doesnt seem to cut it when he is healing a M+4. I hate to see utility specs like what you and i play to loose more population due to…lets face it…dps who just tab/nuke instead of using an assist macro or making the tank focus…im sure there has been a time or two when you have tanked a pug and a warrior rips something off you even when you have a target marked, and maybe you may have let him tank a bit…until dying maybe…
Anywho… i really wanted to give the OP some perspective before he or she just gave up healing
As somebody just getting into Restoration myself I can’t give you an experienced perspective, but I can give you a bit of what I’m doing to get into it.
One thing I’d say is to pick talents that suit you and what you’re comfortable with.
For example, I understand the strength of taking Feral Affinity and the damage it can provide, I also understand the strength and flexibility provided by Photosynthesis. However, at this stage I’m not comfortable with damage patterns and when I can efficiently switch to Feral form to pump out damage without being punished too badly and I also don’t feel comfortable with micro-managing Photosynthesis yet either.
So instead I’m running Guardian Affinity since I’ll always get value out of the damage reduction and Germination since I find the raw throughput more valuable than Photosynthesis which requires a bit more micro-management to use effectively.
Of course I’ll try out both Feral Affinity and Photosynthesis when I get more comfortable and start pushing into harder content but for now I’m happy picking things that I’m more comfortable with so I can focus more on learning all of my keybindings, learning instances and damage patterns etc.
Thats good thinking. Germination is good but you will find yourself gcd locked almost, and it will chew mana. But you will just have to get to a point when you trust your hots, like you said, undersrand damage patterns. Catweaving will come later, here is a scenario. 2nd boss in underrot…goes into tantrum…you will need probably 12 seconds prior to blanket 2 rejuvs on everyone with germinarion. If you use photo with cultivation…you LB yourself…rejuv everyone and WG a few seconds after tantrum. Photo on yoirself is a mini hero for your hots. And i dont know if there is a stonger healing cd in 5 mans than tranq with LB on yourself when running photo. But remeber with our mastery every hit makes other stronger, thats why passives like cultivation and spring blossoms are so strong…its. ot really the healing they provide…its the effects they give your rejuvs and wild growths.
Catweaving will come when you get the healing pattern down. Once you get that and dont feel like every gcd is used for a healing spell, then you will be able to preemptively hot, moonfire/sunfire/and go thundercat!! But knowing damage pattens is key like you said.
Play around with photo a bit…80% of the time LB is on the tank though.
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One more thing…if you havent done it already…get comfortable with mouseover addon like clique or fine mouseover macros. Im not saying its a must but its amazing how much time they save…eliminating having to click a unit frame before performing an action is huge imo.
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To the 0P. Burst healing is not our strength. Druids struggle with it plain and simple. That being said there are some things we can do about it.
When I started healing on a druid the biggest thing that helped me was conformable with people not being on full health. For me this came from running with a consistent group which I cannot over state the benefits of and learning the fights well.
For example the first boss In tol Dagor does its upheaval attack on some poor dps and knocks then from 100% straight to 20% I know I don’t need a swiftmend for them because they are not about to be taking any more damage so they are not in danger. I will throw them a few hots and let them tick away on them for a bit.
Now as to how to deal with burst when you do need to I do have A couple of things that might help. Firstly the trinket from King rastikan. It is an on use direct heal which has a small heal absorb on you when used. Now what the tool tip doesn’t mention is that it can critical heal too and this does not effect the absorb. This can make for some huge heals over 150k then I just rejuv myself and it takes care of the absorb.
Also trying the layer hots before a swift mend makes a huge difference. By the time spring blossoms, rejuvenate and it’s extra hot from the talent are in people it makes a big difference.
Cen ward is a great talent and I usually try to keep its cd opposite to swiftmed so I have bursty er heals available more often.
To be honest though I found pugs around the 5-8 range probably the hardest to heal. They take so much unnecessary and unpredictable damage.
My biggest piece of advice to anyone especially a healer and especially especially a druid healer is to try and run keys with a group you know.
Absolutely, I’m not currently running the sort of content where mana efficiency is yet a concern though and having the extra Rejuvenations available gives me the peace of mind to actually face it all (I suffer from anxiety). But as I get more comfortable with it all I’m definitely planning to switch to Photosynthesis, I think it’s an interesting mechanic regardless.
I’m sure it will all come in time, as you said I need to learn to trust my HoTs since the playstyle of Resto (to my knowledge) isn’t about topping people to full straight off the bat whenever they take damage but rather letting your HoTs tick away and saving your big heals for the moments you need them, which once again comes down to damage patterns and the likes a lot.
I’m sure I’ll get there. Had a nice moment in the Darkshore warfront where I prepped for the hectic ending part of Maiev and got a juicy Tranq off that kept everybody up. I was the only healer and of course people just face tanked the bad so it was nice to get a bit of a glimpse of what being prepared for damage can do.