One of the challenges of raiding in WoW is group combination and assignments. Assigning the players to task at which they excel or can use their abilities to their fullest is obviously what we all strive for. Where in a five man instance numbers are easy, one tank, one healer, 3 DPS, things get a little dicier as more people are added to the mix. Then you have to look closely at a number of different areas, including gear, experience and spec.
Most of the time, you end up with roughly 3 or 4 of your healers assigned to specific people, like the MT, the OT, and perhaps the Melee DPS, then the rest get assigned to the “raid.” As a raid healer your job is to basically try to chip in anywhere damage is being taken. Some people will assign raid healers to specific groups, others not. In the raids I have been in, the raid healing role was kind of a “if it bleeds, toss a heal”, free for all mentality.
So to the question at hand: do Resto Druids make good raid healers? Let’s take a look at the pros and cons.
Pros:
- Nobody, and I mean nobody, has as many useful insta-cast healing spells as Resto Druids. We can lay two or three good hots on people before many a priest or pally finishes one spell windup. Our Insta-Cast HOTs can also tick for quite a bit, especially if we have time to put a couple LBs on, or a LB and Rejuv. In a lot of raid encounters, buying a second or two for the other healers to do their job can save the day for a DPS taking damage.
- Acting as a raid healer takes advantage of another strength of the Resto Druid – mobile healing. In a lot of raid fights, being able to get the heck out of the way without sacrificing any real heal time can be a HUGE benefit. I have a tendency to run around while raiding for no good reason, really…just to keep my eye on all parts of the fight. Many druids have great situational awareness, as their healing power is less dependent on staying still while casting.
- We also have the freedom to find people to Battle Rez if necessary. We are the only ones that can prolong a fight by bringing other people back up, and frequently this can be the difference. The Resto Druid assigned to the tank can’t take the couple of seconds out of his/her spell rotation to rez somebody. A raid healing Tree can quite easily.
Cons:
- In some ways, acting as a Raid Healer hamstrings some of the Resto Druid’s biggest strengths, namely focused HOTs on 2 or 3 tanks. Our nice buff to healing from the Tree of Life aura is largely lost in this capacity as well, depending on what group we are stuck in. If there is only one Resto Druid in the raid, you are doing the tanks a disservice, IMO, if you assign that tree to raid healing.
- Resto Druids really have to rely on the other raid healers for most of the heavy lifting. If there is a LOT of Raid damage, there isn’t much we can do to help. Obviously that kind of situation is tailor made for a CoH priest or a Resto Shammy. Our HOTs do a great job topping people off and buying some time, but we don’t have a real good way to heal for a lot quickly, especially if the damage is extremely spread out.
- If you care at all about the healing meters, which you shouldn’t, you’ll hate raid healing as a Tree. Your numbers will really look pathetic. More often then not, your wonderful HOTs will get overwritten by the other raid healers. Honestly, though, there’s only two things I care about when healing in a raid: how many people died, and whether we were successful.
Conclusion
So what do I think? Well, I’ll be honest. When I first started raiding, I would get the tiniest bit offended at being assigned to raid healing. To me, that was the RL saying, “I don’t trust you, so I’ll just put you on the raid.” Like everyone who raids, I had worked hard on my gear, stats and abilities. You go into raiding after accomplishing a lot in this game, and raid healing felt like the back seat. Part of the issue with me personally is that I raid in an alliance, so the RL didn’t know me all that well.
Now I realize that raid healing isn’t necessarily the back seat. The fact is, a lot of healing assignments are dependent on the group composition. If there are two Tree healers, the best spot to stick tree #2 is on the raid. You don’t need two Trees to run HOTs on the tanks, at least not in the encounters I have dealt with thus far.
Being largely assigned as the raid healer has also removed my tunnel vision for the most part. I feel a little more invested in encounters, as I have more freedom as a raid healer. I even spend some time DPSing here and there. 
In the end, if you have more than one Tree in your raid, then yes, Trees make fine raid healers. If there is only one, though, you’re gimping your group by not taking fully advantage of the Power of Tree by assigning the Resto Druid to the tanks.
Still, I’m just glad I’m raiding! Thanks for reading!
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I actually found myself happy as the proverbial pig in…poo last week when our guild went on an unexpected jaunt to Mt. Hyjal. I checked in late in the eve to see how the regular Kara run had gone and found myself invited to the raid and assigned to heal it.
As undergeared as I was, it was great to stand (or is it sway) in the back and scatter those HoTs around. LifeBloom is amazing and I loved knowing I was making a solid contribution to a run I had no business being in! So…oh yeah! We be good!
Very thought out article, PTD. Something I’ve come to expect from you (though I do like the more personal stuff as well).
Anyway. I love raid healing — I always feel a bit restrained when being put on the tank, and normally, even if that is assigened to me, I manage to have spare rotations for everyone else as well without losing my lifebloom stack. Perhaps it has just been the groups I’ve been with, but it works well enough for the lot of us (and, normally, a tree isn’t the the only healer to the tanks, due to our inability to deal with spike damage).
Couple of thoughts:
1) Trees getting assigned to raid healing? Who’s leading this raid? Why am I in it?
2) Eek, my tank just took spike damage. /casts swiftmend or nature’s swiftness. Spike damage gone.
Exceptions for 1): All druid Kara or an exorbitant amount of trees in a 25-man.
Exceptions for 2): Dang, 15 second or 3 minute cooldown. /e hopes for plenty of time between spikes.
I almost always assign Myself to tank healing, whether its 3-4 in Hyjal or one tank in BT. I almost always take on that mantle of tank stabilizer and find it enormously valuable. However, I will say this: there are always exceptions to the rule. While I wouldn’t normally place a well-geared Druid on raid healing I give Myself that very task on a few occasions. Naj’entus is a fight where I cannot overstate the value of spam casting Regrowth on the raid. I use rank 8 and use a mouseover macro keybound to My Nostromo n52 and just pop pop pop Regrowths over Grid as fast as the little casting bar can handle. I end up top of the healing meter even with several well geared and highly skilled Priests and Shaman in the raid. The extra HoT after a Regrowth crit continues to settle the massive amount of raid damage during that fight. I have also found the tactic useful during some trash encounters in BT. Hyjal however, is still largely LB spam accented with a Rejuv every now and then, which also tends to land Me on top of the meters.
While this may seem like an isolated use of non-LB healing, I have to say I think the right Tree on raid healing can be exceptionally valuable.
Raid healing?? I prefer it, but i’m talking about the whole raid, there is absolutely no reason in my experience that I good resto druid cant maintain 3 lifeblooms easily and a rejuv if needed on the MT and still be throwing LB’s around the raid. If you need to focus a regrowth on the group, refresh the tank first and away you pop. My guild mates are constantly laughing at me when they see this tree waddling around the whole raid throwing blooms up for all he’s worth and dropping rejuvs / blooms on our locks who dont have mana left.
Seriously, enjoyed my browse through the site, will be back for more reading…
Cybac:
All fine and good, but I should point out that maintaining 3LB stacks and rejuv on the MT leaves you only one cooldown per two cycles. With a 1.5 second global cooldown, that means you only get to cast one extra LB on the raid ever 12 seconds. Helpful, possibly, but not to any sort of make-or-break-the-raid degree. Not trying to knit-pick… ’cause I know I throw LB around if I’ve got one or two tanks with stable healthbars and raid damage happening.
I can certainly see how Lonetree’s methods could do well in scenarios where the entire raid is taking damage and tank damage is light(er). Definitely something I’m keeping in my back pocket.
My druid is level 62 atm, and is feral i want to switch to resto when i hit 70, except I am looking for a basic ack ground on how to heal in raids…. I have been searching in google and everything seems really poorly explained…. because I am a newbie to resto healing on a druid. Can anyone give me a basic idea of how to heal in Karazhan in different situations.
@BK
There really are two things you would do in Kara. One job would be to roll Heal over time spells on the tanks. This is really the resto druids greatest strength. Lifebloom and Rejuvenation are the two main HOT spells that we use. Lifebloom is the most unique spell we have. You can stack it up to three times to increase its effectiveness, and in addition to that, if you get a stack of it running, you can refresh the WHOLE stack with as single cast, as long as the stack doesn’t expire. What this means is you get a full stack of lifeblooms on your healing target, and then “roll” that stack for as long as you can. At around 1900 +heal, my lifebloom stack heals for over 700 EVERY SECOND. That is some powerful healing. You also try to keep rejuvenation up, which is a more standard HOT. It does not stack and ticks every 2 seconds. I believe mine ticks for somewhere in the 800-900 range every two seconds. I hope this isn’t too confusing, it’s late.
The other thing you might do is be assigned to heal the raid. Instead of rolling HOTs, you’ll be healing reactively based on who takes damage. When I raid heal, the spell I use the most is Regrowth. It is my quickest casting big heal, and can take care of most nicks. I’ll also drop lifeblooms and rejuvenations here and there when needed. Most of the time as a raid healer, though, I’m spamming regrowth.
Does that help at all? Let me know if there’s something you still need to know or don’t understand. Thanks for reading!