Druid "how-to" guide request

[Sol]

So how do you druids play your class in raids? what spells are efficient?

what works well? what doesn't?

[Rawk]

I'll let you know how I play Rawk. Probably different from most other druids. I have built Rawk to be a healer, and that's where he excels. He is built 15/0/36.

In raids Rawk is all healing. Occasionally if I think about it and turn my attention to a boss I'll pitch a Faerie Fire at it. Otherwise it's all in the healing. I get focused on all the health bars in CTRA to the point where I don't see anything else. At times I won't even notice for a bit that the raid is moving up. As far as spotting roamers, forget about it. I also rarely see anything that's said during combat due to my focus. I keep up a constant scan of all the health bars, but I spend most of my time on whoever happens to be the current damage magnet(s). If I remember it I'll also thorn up said damage magnets. A lot of people wouldn't want to play this way. I don't get to see much of where we are or what we're fighting. For a lot of people that would be painfully boring, but I don't notice it because of my ability to focus. I spam heal the whole raid. I have a hard time concentrating on one tank. That's where I get bored. I guess the way I do things stems from being an air traffic controller, being totally focused on what's going on with multiple aircraft at the same time. This is why I can focus on the whole raid and pitch heals where they're needed (This doesn't make me any better or worse than other healers, just different.).

As far as what spells I use... My primary spell is Rejuvenation. It's instant and relatively cheap in mana. I might have as many as 8 rejuves going at once in a nasty fight. For higher impact healing I use Regrowth. It's much more expensive in terms of mana, but it leaves behind a regen (that stacks with Rejuvenation) along with the heal, so it tends to be effective for me. Healing Touch almost always takes too long to be worthwhile for me to cast. There is one exception. If I see a tank about to bite it (I've done this with DW many times, and with Sol several) I will hit Nature's Swiftness which makes my next nature spell an instant cast, then Healing Touch to give the ailing tank my biggest heal as fast as I can. Then I'll follow up with Regrowth and Rejuvenation to stack up two regens on him. I find that warriors are the only ones I ever use Healing Touch with. Regrowth is sufficient for all other classes in my experience.

Mana management is critical in this. In a nasty fight I can blow through my mana pool in 30 seconds. Innervate is an absolute must-have to do this. I blow my Innervate just about as often as it's available to me in a raid. The thing I have to be careful about is to hit escape to untarget so it casts on me (I use Cosmos/Khaos which has smart casting. If I don't have a friendly target selected any friendly spell I cast will automatically be cast on me). More than once I've given DW Innervate. I hope he appreciates all the mana that I've helped him regenerate in our raids. hehe. I've found that I can set a pace of healing where I run out of mana each fight without needing to turn to a potion for more (which gives me the potion as an emergency reserve).

In smaller groups with plenty of healing I've done some dps or tanking. I'm not sure how Hurricane or Insect Swarm will affect how I play Rawk. The debuff aspect of Insect Swarm is nice and will be a nice complement to Faerie Fire. I'll just have to experiment to see how it'll fit in with my style. As I said, my style is not one that is going to be nice for sight-seeing or action, but it suits the char and suits my style with the char in my opinion. Rawk gets a lot of agro, which for me is good feedback that I'm doing things right. Rawk outheals Holy spec priests, so I'm happy with his contribution to the raids. One of these days we'll have enough healage that I can start running my shammy or mage to explore other aspects of raiding.

[Duerdon]

When I was balance speced, I'd do healing from time to time when I saw the healers mana getting low, but for the most part would throw out Faerie Fire, Moonfire, and if the mob was up long enough would toss out Starfire. That has all changed though.

Now that I'm fully resto speced (10 points in Balance) all my mana is pretty much going to heals. I throw faerie fire on bosses, and will also be doing insect swarm since its an attack speed debuff and is insta cast, but other then that all mana will be to heals. Thorns on the tanks when I remember to do so or am asked for it, but yeah...heals all the way. Like Rawk said...for the most part Regrowth+Rejuvination will be the main casts. With resto spec the benefits of having both on a person are crazy. Rejuvination gets plenty of mmff with some of the resto talents so is perfect for casters who get rushed or quick agro from fights. Natures Swiftness is pretty much reserved for those "holy crap" situations where a tank is in dire need of a big heal. I haven't had innervate long so can't really say how thats used by me, but for the most part will probably try to keep it available for priests in big fights. However, that could change since I've only had Innervate for a day. :p

Rawk pretty much has the healer side of druids down. Same with small groups.

I'm not really a big fan of the Balance tree anymore with the furbie as the last tier. Its ok for mages and all, but its not raid aware, so all the mages have to be in the same group as the druid...which leaves them somewhat vulnerable since the druid can't cast any heal spells while in Moonkin form.

I haven't played with Feral at all, so the feral druids will have to fill in the hole there. :)

[Potpie]

Innervate is an absolute must-have to do this. I blow my Innervate just about as often as it's available to me in a raid. The thing I have to be careful about is to hit escape to untarget so it casts on me

You can heal & cast beneficial spells on every single raid member and never directly target one.

Hit the spell shortcut, click on the person's CTRA tile.
Person in same party as you? Hit the spell shortcut, press F1 thru F5; F1 is yourself, F2, next party member in the column, etc.

My primary selected target stays on a hostile and never changes.

As a shaman, I do not ever directly target any friendlies ever - on raids or parties. I keep the current MA hostile target selected at all times, and throw around cures and heals with this method.

When I accidentally get a friendly selected as my primary target is when I get REALLY screwed up. ;)

[Rawk]

The way I target heals is to keep my left hand fingers over the 7 8 and 9 keys (Healing Touch, Rejuvenation, Regrowth). I mouse over and click on the toon's title in CTRA then hit whichever heal I need. My 0 key has Nature's Swiftness so it's very close by in case of emergency. I have cure poison on 5 and cure curse on 6. My healing array are all grouped close so I can send out the love as quickly as I can, which has gotten pretty fast with practice. I keep MOTW on the - key and thorns on the =. 1 is attack, 2 through 4 are dd's. For raiding I may move Hurricane, Faerie Fire, and Insect Swarm into 2-4 since they will have more utility for me. I'll have to experiment with that.

After further consideration (I'm posting from work) My build is 13/0/38. I put 13 points in balance to get improved thorns.

[Queprur]

Now that I am Feral / Resto specced, I'll be in cat form sneaking around on someone's heels so they get the +3% to crit buff... It works for ranged and melee...

IF I need to do some quick healing, I can pop out of feral form and cast a heal or two, but I think I'll be more effective now as a DPS character. I guess we'll see how it works, and determine if it is worth having a Feral in the group.

I paid to re-spec one time and played the full Resto as a healer and I found myself casting the Rejuvination quite a bit, to top off everyone's health. In combat, I would cast the Regrowth on the tanks all the time, and in the danger zone, the Nature's Swiftness / Healing Touch. Full Restroation specified Drood is an EXCELLENT healer and overall a very effective support character.

[Potpie]

I mouse over and click on the toon's title in CTRA then hit whichever heal I need.

There is a subtle what I call "secondary targeting system" or "sub-targeting system" built-in that you are not taking advantage of.

The process is essentially backwards from the way you describe you do it now, but your primary selected target never has to change.

People say they think I'm good at playing the "shaman main healer" role - maybe that's my secret, I dunno - I thought everyone knew about the sub-targeting system. :)

[Aessina]

PP has a good point, something I took a little bit further when I played. Get CastParty, unless CTRA or CastParty are completely botched, they still work together. Then you can assign spells to mouseclicks, like alt-leftclick on someone in CTRA and you toss a big heal on them, ctrl-rightclick and they get a little heal, etc....

This utilitzes the same "targetting subsystem" PP is talking about, with the benefit of cutting everything down to one action instead of two.

[Myrkris]

The way Rawk and D talk about healing, we may have been misusing our druids in raids when we have them as primary backup for a priest who is assigned to a MT. If they are almost exclusively using HoTs, having them doing things like spamming regrowth to keep Sol up on the Spider priest is just a waste of their mana because it doesn't allow the HoT portion to run. It would probably make more sense to have a shaman in that position, since we can actually heal faster in terms of health per second output, and we don't step on our own HoTs since all of our heals are direct heals.

Instead, since the druids are mainly doing HoTs anyway, they should be on general healing duty, the way Rawk describes his normal play style.

Basically something like this:

Priests do the heavy healing assignments, like one each on MT/MA.
Druids do general healing, keeping dps and other healers up.
Shamans either back up priests on a 1-2 per priest rotation (depending on the fight) or help the druids with general heals. Can also be primary healer for a single character, if that's necessary.

What this type of task organization does is leverage the specialties better, IMO.

For example, spider priest fight:

MT has a priest and 2 shamans assigned to him, with at least one backup of each ready to step into the fight. If it's a MT like Sol (6k+hp with raid buffs, as best I can tell) the priest can efficiently use GH as long as Sol is at half health or below. This allows the priest to cast GH when sol is say 75-80% health, with CTRA set to cut the heal off if he's over 60% (or whatever) in the last half second. The shamans job is to spam anytime he's heading south of 50%, to keep him at 50% or over. Having a druid toss in regrowth and rejuv and keep them refreshed, plus renew and shield as necessary from the priest should keep him up unless something really odd happens.

The challenge of ZG is that we need to customize our healing strategy to every boss, and shift it in the middle of every fight once the boss transforms.

EDIT: BTW, Healing Touch is actually a druid's most efficient and effective healing spell, as best I can figure looking at amount healed, talents, and mana costs. It just takes so damn long that no one likes to use it, but for a druid who IS playing MH for a MT, it would probably be better for them to use it and cast more like a priest, surprisingly enough.

[Sol]

myrkris, i like your train of thought.

since i can go from 90% to 10% in about 3 seconds against Bloodlord or Snake boss in Snake form. seems like its not a bad idea to have the heals starting at 90% so that its hitting me before Merc or I croak.

[Myrkris]

BTW, just as a note, a shaman with no +healing gear and no crit heals should still hit 587hps using Lesser Healing Wave (1.5 sec cast), 646hps if they take Purification. With the +healing gear I have, I should hit 700hps with around 15% crits added on. Even the snake priest will take a bit to kill Sol if two shamans are trying to keep him over 50%, which should allow the priests to use bomb heals more effectively.

Where we really seem to have problems is regaining the pattern if the MT goes down. We probably need to plan better for Backup MT heals, so we can switch more smoothly if the boss outdamage spikes our healing.

The other place we're likely to have more hitches in the process is swapping out healers. That will be necessary at times, and will certainly take practice.

[Rawk]

I know about the alternate form of targetting, but for me it hasn't been as advantageous as for a shaman because I have no intention of joining melee. While a shammy would be targetting a new mob after each one dies to join the melee I am just sitting back and casting so I would have to retarget a mob each time one dies. It's doable, but I don't think it's any more efficient than the way I heal. However, CastParty and casting debuffs more often could well make it worthwhile to change to the other style. I'll have to give it a try.

[Duerdon]

I will throw in a voucher for Cast Party. I freaking LOVE that mod. Cast Part and CTRaidAssist almost make healing enjoyable heh heh.

[Aessina]

It'll make cures a breeze, if I remember correctly, they are all instant cast for druids. So if you have CTRA set up to color the background of people affected by stuff you can cure, it makes it real easy to manage curing everyone.

[Sol]

for boss fights, if people are running the addons that interrupt healing if the target is over a certain %, turn those things off.

we've been having problems with burst damage and the MT needs constant healing, even if the MT is 100%, he could be at 5% 2 seconds later, so the heals have to be constant.

literally

[Phebus]

I know I am joining this chat a bit late, however I am usually top 2 in healing in any raid/group I go into. I am full restoration with a few points in feral to get the feral charge.

On raids I do exactly as someone else said with watching boxes and just mousing over and clicking the name to target them, then hit the respective cast button depending upon the severity of the heal needed.

On 10 man raids i almost always just use regrowth and rejuv, however on the 40 man i tend to use the healing touch or whatever it is called alot more. In the 40 person environment the only time i throw regrowth and rejuv are on the non tank classes because hopefully they will not need much more healing then that, and the HOTS are quite nice.

Now for healing the tanks it is a bit different, i usually just use the healing touch because most of the time another druid has already hit the tank with the HOTS and that would be a waste of my mana to just reapply it, in my opinion.

As for the use of my innervate, I tend to be selfish with it, unless i think i am going to die, I will usually use it on myself. I try to pay attention to who has what tanks, and who is down and what tanks may need extra healing do to said people dead, so then if the backup healer is oom I may innervate them. It is all intense and fast paced, just requires a good bit of focus and getting to trust the group and understanding hwo the group will react in different situations.