by Rebella

- HoTs, baby! Yeah!

Introduction

A druid is particularly famous for both being in tree form and for having a wide range of heal over time spells (HoTs) to choose from. There are a few different types of PvE trees where the main ones are the 25 man raid healer, the 25 man tank healer or the 10 man healer. These often value different types of tactics and sometimes also slightly different stats on gear. This is going to be a quick introduction to tree healing for those not familiar with it.

Restoration spells

A restoration druid has quite a wide range of healing spells to choose from and tends to actively use quite a fair few of them depending on the encounter of course. The different healing types require slightly different focus on what heals to prioritise. Below I have included the spells you have available for healing as a restoration druid. The spells linked to are the ranks used at level 80.

Rejuvenation – Possibly the tree spell that has had the most love in WotLK. It’s been popular for both tier bonuses and idols. It is a powerful spell and you’re likely to find any kind of tree using this spell quite a lot. It is a heal over time type of heal which ticks every 3 seconds for 15 seconds (unless you have Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation which makes the HoT scale with your haste).

Wild Growth – A smart multi player heal over time effect at the bottom of the restoration tree. It starts out at strong and then goes weaker over time. It has a cooldown so cannot be spammed constantly. Be careful not to waste mana on it by using it on a person stood far away from everybody else. A great choice for raid healing.

Nourish – One of the tree’s very few direct healing spells. It is important to note that the more hots you have going on the healing target, the bigger your Nourish heal will be. This is a very useful spell if you are assigned to tank duty and Glyph of Nourish would be particularly nice for that.

Lifebloom – One of the most important HoTs in TBC is still a good heal, especially if you can master the timing of its bloom heal. Its increased mana costs has made rolling Lifeblooms less popular. Unlike the other HoTs this one ticks every second.

Swiftmend – One of the few talented spells you find in the restoration talent tree. In order to use this ability the target needs to have Rejuvenation or Regrowth already ticking away. The spell will consume the HoT unless you are using Glyph of Swiftmend of course. It’s got a cooldown so its use sometimes needs to be timed carefully.  It is, however, a  seconds great ‘ohshi..’ heal.

Regrowth – This spell has a bit of everything; it’s got a cast time, an instant heal and then continues to tick as a HoT for a while after. With it’s 21 seconds duration it is the longest lasting HoT in a druid’s repertoire.

Nature’s Swiftness – This is another talented ability. After using this ability your next heal becomes an instant cast. It is often a good idea to have a macro with this followed by a Healing Touch heal which makes for a good ‘ohshi..’ heal.

Rebirth – You can resurrect another player while you are still in combat. Its cooldown has been lowered many a times  second and is now only on 10 minutes. You will find that a lot of people will want to try to influence you on who to resurrect, heh.

Tranquility – A channelled AoE heal which will heal players in your party (and your party only). It’s got a long cooldown and has limited uses because it is channelled, there are however times where it is good to know what key you’ve bound this spell to.

Healing Touch – *shudder* this is our mana intensive and slow casting wannabe holy paladin type of heal. (I am such a fan… >.<)

Gear stats

Spell power and spirit are two important stats which you generally want on all pieces of gear (intellect is also a nice stat, but not generally a stat you choose to stack). When it comes to the question of haste versus crit, you will often find it’s good to have a healthy balance and not entirely depend on either stat. You are, however, likely to find more use for haste should you be healing the raid as opposed to a more tank-healer role. This is because your HoTs (which you tend to  stick with in a raid healing situation) generally cannot crit, while Nourish (which you are likely to use when healing a tank) benefits from crit. It is relatively easy to get a decent restoration druid gear kit as you don’t have to roll against all those cloth casters for drops, unless of course you want to try to pry some of their cloth gear off them.

Mana regen

A tree doesn’t often run out of mana, and the tree’s Innervate can often be used on somebody else other than themselves. If it is a mana intensive fight, however, Innervate does give back a decent amount of mana and can sometimes be used twice during a boss encounter if need be. This is of course as long as you don’t wait to use it last second when you desperately need the mana as it’s then likely to be on cooldown the next time you need it.

Keep in mind your mana regen when not casting as well. Because of the amounts of spirit you are likely to have, this regen is quite powerful. Use the time you don’t have to heal to your own advantage to regenerate some mana where you can.

Lastly you have the tricky Lifebloom. Although it costs a lot to use, you get half that mana back when it blooms, therefore when you cast it purposefully to let it bloom the mana cost of using it isn’t as half bad as it seems after all.

Strengths and weaknesses

Because there are quite a few different ways of healing as a tree, not everyone is good at adapting to new situations. It can be difficult tweaking a rotation from only using Rejuvenation and Wild Growth to a more tank healing situation where you will find greater use for both Nourish and Lifebloom. Especially determining when to use what can be difficult. I think a druid could possibly be one of the most difficult healing classes to grasp, mostly due to their different way of healing.

Healing while moving is something a tree is great at. Most of the HoTs are instant cast and we are not gimped by having to move around to heal as much as other classes. The same goes for stun situations where healers are incapacitated as the heals over time will still tick away on the target. Additionally druids are very good at healing multiple targets at the same time because of how strong the HoTs are, how many are available and their duration.

Levelling

You can level as anything you want really; tank, melee DPS (both feral), caster DPS (balance) or a healer. Due to the stats available on low level gear you are likely to be using leather items as cat (melee DPS) or bear (tank) and a fair bit of cloth if you level as owl (caster DPS aka boomkin) or tree. You won’t actually get owl or tree form until you reach level 40 anyway, though, so levelling as either will have you run around in normal form for quite a while. Due to the itemisation of the gear and similarity in certain talents you are likely to find yourself healing instances perfectly all right should you decide to level as balance spec (there are some quite nice mana talents for example such as Dreamstate).

Some of the great things about levelling as a druid is that you can easily stealth down to kill whatever specific mob you have been sent out to terminate and not have to kill your way to it. Then of course you have Travel Form (though thankfully you can now purchase a mount early on) and eventually also Flight Form and Swift Flight Form to make other classes jealous. Teleport: Moonglade is also a useful additional ability you learn early on which can make it easier getting around the old world.

As with any class really, you are likely to find it quickest and easiest to level as a DPS, and both balance and feral are great choices. Improved Leader of the Pack for a feral druid will reduce the amount of downtime as it helps you keep healed and you don’t have to sit down to drink all the time because as a feral druid you use either energy (as cat) or rage (as bear). On the other hand you have the balance druid where you can easily put HoTs on yourself if need be while you run to attack the next mob.

Personally I levelled as feral until level 61 (when I went to Outland) and since then I’ve had boomkin as my preferred levelling spec. One thing to note is that you can easier use gear you gather as boomkin for when you start healing than you can as feral (where the stats are completely different).

Useful websites

Here is a short list of links to sites with useful information about trees.

• Dreambound
• Restokin
• Waiting on an Eclipse
• Elitist Jerks

If you know of other good sites about restoration druids, you are welcome to link to them in a comment to this post.

Summary

A restoration druid has a lot of different spells and these all have their uses. You can be a raid healer, a tank healer and even a bit of both, but you are likely to want to specialise your gear and glyphs for one of these options. Trees are famous for their HoTs, even after the introduction of Nourish.

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Next up in the healing series we will be looking at the Restoration Shaman.

Tags: druid, healing, mana, opinion, spells, stats, WotLK

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010 at 08:07 and is filed under druid, healing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.