A month and a half ago, I felt the need to sum up my thoughts on raid healing as a resto druid. I did so in this post:
http://kyliaar.wordpress.com/2009/08/01/raid-healing-analysis-as-a-resto-druid/.
Since then a few things have changed. Here is my new spec:
In addition to this, I swapped out Glyph of Regrowth for Glyph of Nourish.
My reason for going this route is because I have seen a lot of resto druids singing the praises of nourish as well as seeing how nourish has been buffed recently. I also see a real failing in my previous build because any single target healing on a tank taking heavy damage is very mana intensive and extremely dicely. I experienced this first hand in 25 man Ulduar in Iron Council. I was asked to keep up a druid tank on one of the council. I was able to do so successfully but I felt pressed against the backropes. It was extremely challenging and I knew that was partially due to my HoT build.
After that, I endeavored to work out a good hybrid spec that was equally good with single target healing as raid healing. The build above provides both but you do loose some out on the boosts that your HoTs would give. Note that I continue to emphasize haste and haste talents. That is very important I find no matter what you are doing.
Strategies
I do want to talk about different strategies I tried. Essentially, I tested different things out and found that nothing changed anything I have said earlier about HoTing. Spamming rejuv is going to give you more mana problems and slower heals without the Tier 8 4 piece bonus. With each spell, I found that I could not find ways to use them without loosing HPS than what I described earlier.
I think the clincher for me really seeing the value in this build and not just seeing it as a slight nerf was on Anub,arak, the last boss of Trial of the Crusader. There are periods in there where tanks heavy constant damage. We were running with a pretty light healer group and I found that I needed to proactively spam nourish on the tanks or they would go down. Watching 13k crits go off and the tank go back to full really sold me on the value or this hybrid spec.
November 1, 2009 at 7:53 am
I am a holy pally, a full-time tank healer and this post makes me extremely happy.
What I want to do is get my resto druid to be kind of like this and then do General Vezax/Anub hardmode in ten man with just the two of us healing.
With 10 man hard mode vezax I usually just solo heal until the ad spawns and then we switch to the priest/druid on the tank and off tank. I want to try the resto druid healing solo until the ad spawns and then I’ll just beacon heal the tanks for the entire second phase. This’ll take us from 3 healers to just 2 for more dps and a shorter fight.
With 10 man hard mode anub, I go all out on the tanks and the resto druid overlaps when she can but pretty much looks after raid. I feel as if I’m putting too much on her and want to go 50/50 in terms of tank heals and raid.
Do you think this plan is ok? I’ve never played a resto druid so I don’t really know. I do want to lighten her load though. Any tips?
November 1, 2009 at 9:47 am
I really can’t comment on how you and a resto druid should heal together or whether it would be enough to take on hard modes. By Anub hard mode, do you mean 10 man heroic? I myself haven’t attempted to heal either fight. I have been doing much more boomkin lately.
However, the one thing I can say is that my resto build seems to give me the best for any healing situation I get thrown into. The switch to a nourish buffed build was key to being able to do quick, mana-efficient big heals. I would feel the lack of that even in 5 man ToC before.
November 1, 2009 at 3:29 pm
In 5 man ToC you mean the final phase of the black knight right? I find that and the female paladin who fears you and summons a shade like a warlock to be the two things that always get me try to tank instead of heal.
I always thought that it was my class (which I qq lots about) so its new to me to hear that a resto druid finds themselves lacking too. I always saw resto druids as this invincible, “we’re going to out hot everything, rawr” sort of healer.
It was nice reading a different type of healer’s blog and mindset on things. You should blog about your boomkin. That’s something else that I don’t know anything about. Except that they give me tasty, tasty crit.
November 1, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Yes… the black knight can get insane, especially if the adds are handled badly. I think it is important to mention that there is no one right to heal that is optimal because you may need to optimize in a different direction, based on the encounter or dungeon design. There are much different requirements for Ulduar than ToC. Expect the same to be true for the next content patch.
I am not really experienced enough as a boomkin to be able to offer more insight than can be found at other sites like elitistjerks or moonkin specific forums. I am sure I will want to consolidate my experiences and thoughts into written form at some point though.