One of the first posts that really put me on the blogging map was Resto Druid:  5 Things You Should Know.  It was the first post I wrote that got a real reaction from the community.  Phaelia did me a huge favor by posting her reaction to my post on her blog.  It expanded my readership significantly, and it also taught me something:  people did read my blog.  I wrote the initial post in all of about fifteen minutes, just trying to "get something up" for the day, and didn’t give it a whole lot of thought.

That was a mistake.  A big one.

Phaelia’s reaction wasn’t exactly positive, and other bloggers like Runycat had adverse reactions to the post as well.  Honestly, I can’t blame them.  In a lot of ways I showed my early weaknesses as a blogger.  I was too harsh on the class I love, and in a lot of ways I was ill-informed as well.

Since then, I’ve grown a lot both as a druid in game and as a blogger in real life.  For a long time I’ve wanted to do an update to the post with some of my new key thoughts on the druid class, and that time is now.  So without further hesitation, let’s get it started.  Here are five ways to get the most out of a Resto Druid.

Use Your Versatility

The Resto Druid is very versatile.  IMO, they are second only to Priests in terms of versatility.  The Druid goes about things differently, but is also very capable of filling multiple roles. 

Druids, of course, make excellent tank healers.  Rolling LB, Rejuv and Regrowth on the tanks can make all the difference in tough fights.  If I only have to roll my array of HOTs on one tank, I can very easily handle a good deal of raid healing at the same time.  I have successfully ran as the only healer in Kara.  It wasn’t a spotless run, but I got the job done with minimal wipes. 

In a multi tank situation, I can fairly easily roll triple lifeblooms and rejuv on two separate tanks, and if necessary I can roll lifebloom on as many as five tanks at a time.  That’s some pure healing power. 

In a raid healing situation, Druids can do pretty well too.  They can’t compete with a Resto Shammy or a CoH Priest, but they can certainly hold their own.  While our single group heal is largely situational, we can throw multiple instant HOTs quickly, and help out with Regrowth as well. 

Druids can fill any healing role, and don’t let anyone tell you different.  I have led the healing meters while healing the MT, and I have led the meters while raid healing.

Use Your Mods

I’ll preface this by saying you can effectively heal using no mods at all.  You can use standard targeting methods and standard casting methods and be successful.  I don’t think I could live without my healing mods, though.  Here are a few you might want to think about.

Grid

Grid is a raid frame mod along the lines of Pitbull.  People have varying preferences when it comes to raid frames modifications.  Some people love Pitbull, some love Xperl, some love Grid.  Me?  I’ll take Grid.  The reason I am so fond of Grid is it’s compactness.  It gives me ALL the info I need in a relatively small area, especially when it comes to 25 man raids.  One of the keys to good healing is being able to heal the proper targets as quickly as possible.  Preferably by anticipating their damage.  With Grid, I can switch healing targets in a flash, and it doesn’t take up too much precious screen real estate.  In this screenshot you can see how I have Grid set up, it’s on the upper left side of my UI. 

Grid and other raid frame mods usually take a bit of time to set up to your liking, but they are well worth it.  I can track literally everything I need to track in that tiny package, and it works VERY well with my next mod…

Clique

Clique is a casting mod that allows you to cast your spells on a specific target by clicking on their raid frame or portrait or whatever.  What happens is if I want to cast lifebloom on the tank, I just left click on the tank.  I have all the spells that I really need bound to different combinations.  Here is how I have Clique set up.

• Left Click:  Lifebloom
• Right Click:  Rejuvenation
• Ctr+Left Click:  Regrowth
• Ctr+Right Click:  Swiftmend
• Alt+Left Click:  Nature’s Swiftness
• Alt+Right Click:  Healing Touch (I hold down alt and left click then right click for a VERY fast, big heal)
• Shift+Left Click:  Abolish Poison
• Shift+Right Click:  Innervate
• Ctr+Alt+Left Click: Remove Curse
• Ctr+Alt+Right Click:  Rebirth (The best way there is to Battle Rez)

This makes my healing fast, very fast.  I spend a good deal of time hovering over the raid frame of my next target awaiting the GCD.  It might look intimidating at first, but it’s now second nature to me.

HOTCandy

Just about any HOT timer will work, but as a Resto Druid you want to make sure that your LB stacks keep on rolling.  A good timer works great in that regard.  You can see my timer in that above screenshot just under the Grid interface.

Now, there are many more useful mods, but those are the most important, IMO.  I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 or more mods, and at least 20 of those are there to make my job as a healer easier.

Use Your Healing Tools

All of them.  I was guilty of being limited early on, and I didn’t use all my tools.  There was a time, and I hate to admit it, that I NEVER used Swiftmend.  I didn’t quite understand how the spell worked, or how effective it could be.  In my defense, this was early on in my career as a healer.  Now, I couldn’t live without Swiftmend.  It’s one of our most powerful tools for delivering a lot of healing quickly.  It’s cooldown is a mere 15 seconds, so use it early and use it often.  I’ve come across a few druids that NEVER use it, and I make a point to suggest they start.

Another big tool to make sure you use is Nature’s Swiftness.  Coupled with Healing Touch, this is our biggest possible instant heal.  The cooldown is 5 minutes, so don’t bother always trying to "save" it for the biggest, near wipe situations.  Maybe if you had used it earlier you wouldn’t be in that situation!  Almost without fail, the times I most often hear "good healing" from a group member or tank is when I just blew my NS+HT combo to give them a blast of 5k plus health instantly, usually when they were sure they were about to die.  Don’t ignore it.

Another spell you shouldn’t be afraid to use is Rebirth.  Yeah, I know, 20 minute cooldown.  It’s a bummer.  Just remember that the earlier you use it, the earlier it will be available again.  You don’t have to reserve this for the final boss all the time.  I’ve saved a raid in more than one situation by my ability to quickly battle rez a key player.

There is one last healing tool that I want to be sure to call out — mobility.  Nobody can heal on the move like a druid, regardless of the run speed debuff of tree form.  You can still cast your most important heals while running around.  Take advantage of it.  Don’t be afraid to roam a little and get a different view of the situation.  It can also help identify when someone is in trouble.  You aren’t nailed to one spot, get moving!  Priests, Pallys and Shammys are all stuck, you are not!

Don’t Pass on Off-Spec Pickups

This is less important, but if something you could potentially use is going to be sharded, don’t be afraid to speak up!  You never know, maybe some day you’ll want to go Boomkin to shake things up.  Maybe you’ll want to try to OT Kara some day.  Who knows.  You can use a lot of different gear types, don’t let them end up as shards.  Heck, I tanked my first Heroic this past weekend (I’ll post about it in detail later) just by using the assorted tanking pieces I’ve picked up along the way.  I also found that my Cat gear is REALLY, REALLY good.  I’m almost up to par for T5 content in my off-spec kitty gear!

Numbers Aren’t Everything

Skill can make a huge difference in your performance.  I know, I’m living proof.  Because of my casual, part-time play style, I’m more often then not one of the "least" geared healers in any given run.  That doesn’t stop me from being in the top three for overall healing nearly every time.  Don’t get too hung up with your +heal number as a reflection of your healing ability.  A highly skilled 800 heal Druid can easily out-heal a less-skilled 1200 heal Druid.  I’ve done it.  (Though my days of 800 heal are far behind me.)  This doesn’t mean that numbers mean nothing, just that they don’t mean everything.  You do have to have decent gear to succeed in the end game, but you can make up for gear deficiencies by using all your tools.  High level purples sure do look nice, but they don’t do the healing for you. 

Conclusion

And there you have it.  Undoubtedly I could keep this post going, to 10 or 15 or beyond.  But you don’t have all day now, do you?  I love druids, I love their versatility, and I’m fairly confident that my druid will ALWAYS be my main because of that.  I’m glad I was finally able to re-address my class in a more positive way, and I hope you found this post useful.  Later this week I’ll talk about my first Heroic Tanking experience, as well as our progress in BT over the weekend.  Thanks for reading!

I thought I’d go ahead and chime in on one of  Blog Azeroth’s latest shared topics.  This comes from Breana of Gun Lovin’ Dwarf Chick:

What content or goals did you think you would never see, and what have you done? What has surprised you the most? Where do you see yourself in 6 months, after the launch of Lich?

I’ll start with the first part of the question.

What content or goals did you think you would never see, and what have you done?

In all honesty, I never thought I would see very much in terms of 25 man content.  I was always scattered in the way I played the game, and for a long time didn’t devote enough time to any one character to get them ready to raid.  You can see the evidence of this in the fact that I have played since release and still only have two 70s.  I server hopped quite a bit in the beginning, and in retrospect I wish I had just started on Whisperwind, like I should have.  Oh well.

One other thing that helped me along was Blizzard removing attunements.  I don’t know if I would have ever seen SSC if you still had to get attuned, as I have a tendency to carry around those kind of quest chains and not get them done.  Pre-BC, I only ever got attuned to Molten Core.  I never did finish my attunements for Onyxia, BWL or anything else.  My time is at a premium, and I prefer not to spend it running hither and to trying to complete some willy-nilly quest for attunement.

Thanks Blizzard, for removing attunements.

Because of this, I have seen every boss in SSC, and downed all but the Lady V herself.  Well, I never thought I’d get there.

What has surprised you the most?

This weekend I will reach another goal I thought I’d never reach.  Saturday night I’ll be stepping into the Black Temple.  While SSC was always considered well out of reach, I never even considered I’d step into Black Temple, at least not at 70.  I always figured it was a place maybe I’d visit when I had leveled beyond it, but certainly not now.  Frankly, I can’t wait to see what the place looks like.  I really have no idea.  I’ve only watched a video of the Supremus fight, as this is a continuation run and the first boss is already down.  It should be a LOT of fun, and keep your eyes peeled for pics and a rundown sometime next week.

I have no real long-term expectations, but I hope I can at least see a boss or two in BT go down.  Before Wrath.

One other thing that has really surprised me is how well my blog has been going.  When I started out, I was happy that I got over 20 subscribers, and 50 or so hits a day.  Now there are many, many more people who take the time to read my blog, and I’m very thankful for that.  It has been a great outlet for me to invest further in WoW without compromising family time.

Where do you see yourself in 6 months, after the launch of Lich?

I hope that I will have been able to focus on getting one character through the leveling process.  This isn’t to say I expect to be level 80 six months from now, but I hope that I can make a decision as to how I will attack the expansion and the new level cap and work hard at it.  I missed out on a lot in my guild with BC because they were all leveling in outlands while I was in the old world, leveling up an alt druid.  By the time I got to the outlands, a lot of them were well beyond the instances I needed to run.

I don’t want that to happen in Wrath.  With my schedule, I can’t be on the bleeding edge of leveling within my guild, but I think if I focus I can at least stay close.  I just have to decide, will it be my Druid, Hunter, or even my Priest?  The Hunter is potentially the best “leveler” while the Druid would give me the versatility I love.  It’ll be tough to decide.

So there you have it.  I NEVER thought I’d see BT, much less SSC, and I never thought so many people would be interested in reading what I have to say.  Thanks so much for reading!

WoW can be addicting. Seriously. Look it up on Google if you don’t believe me. If you’re reading this blog, there’s a good chance you just can’t get enough WoW. Believe me, I am just like you. I wouldn’t write this blog if I wasn’t in some way addicted to this great game. If you’re not careful, though, WoW can flat out eat your life. Do you find yourself only logging in “for an hour” only to find yourself back in Kara, three hours later? Is your significant other chastising you to no end about that “stupid game” you’re always playing? Heck, do you even HAVE TIME to FIND a significant other? You have to try to find a balance at some point, so here are a few ideas to get you started.

Don’t Forget Your RL Friends and Family

Most of us forge fairly strong relationships in game. A lot of closer guilds actually find the time to meet up IRL. Heck, some people find their significant others that way. Don’t forget your family. Don’t forget your RL friends. We often go to great lengths to plan things in game. We set up Raids weeks in advance, set a time, get everyone organized. Why not translate that skillset to your real life? Set up a night out with all your old friends. Set aside time to spend a night out with your significant other, maybe plan a mini-vacation. Make sure that though you love to WoW, you show those people in your life that they still matter.

I personally don’t play Saturday or Sunday during the day. Why not? Because I have a wife and a little girl, and I spend all week at work. I don’t want to then ignore them on the weekends for a game. I also don’t play when I get home from work, though I’d love to. It wouldn’t be fair to them. Now, some of you may be lucky enough to have a spouse who plays with you, but I do not. I have to compromise because of it, but I NEVER regret that compromise. This brings me to my next point.

Schedule Your Time

Don’t just log on willy nilly whenever you can. This is what leads directly to those aforementioned 3+ hour sessions that were “only” supposed to be an hour. Make a schedule, and stick to it. Heck, if you have problems with that, you can even set parental controls on the WoW site to limit your playtime. It’s extreme, but it can work! It can at least give you a better idea of just how MUCH time you spend in game.

I log on every Saturday night at 8:30, and start my weekly raid at 9. My wife knows and understands this schedule, and because it is clear to everyone, nobody gets hurt. As far as weeknights go, I log on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday nights when her and the baby go to sleep. Now I would love to be able to make my guild raids that happen in the evenings on Tuesday and Thursday, but I’m not going to change my RL schedule for it. I owe my family more than that. Am I perhaps a little behind the curve? Yes. But I’m also a little AHEAD of the family curve compared to many I know.

Remember Your Old Hobbies

WoW hasn’t been around forever. So what did you love to do before you started to WoW? Have you forgotten? Maybe it’s time to pick up a book again, or maybe you should clean the old golf clubs and hit the links. Whatever it is, don’t forget the other things you love for WoW. Yes, I know, WoW is a fantastic game and is a fairly economical way to spend your money - but that doesn’t mean you should forsake everything else for it. Maybe it’s time you went out and ground out a RL tradeskill!

Your reading skill is now 375!

“Sweet, I can read War and Peace!”

I enjoy writing, and fancy myself being paid for it some day. (Technically, I am an editor for a “Fortune 500″ company now, but I want to get paid for FUN writing!) It makes me cringe if I think about how many good “writing” hours I may have wasted in WoW. That’s another reason for my aforementioned schedule, and also a reason I started this blog. It conveniently combines two things I love into one, and I’m very grateful that there is such an avenue available to me.

Conclusion

The whole point of this post is that, whether you realize it or not, maybe you need a little more RL/WoW balance. This is just a game after all, there are very few ways it can help you get ahead in life. I love this game as much as many of you, and at one point I WAS out of control. I used to stay up till 4 in the morning on a regular basis, log in any time I was able, and largely ignore other aspects of my life. Was I any better for it? No. In reality, the more segmented, scheduled way I approach the game has been MORE rewarding. I find that I really look forward to my play nights, and I enjoy the time I do spend in game to the fullest. Think of it this way. I LOVE LOVE LOVE Chili. If I had it for every meal, though, in time it’d lose its luster. If it only comes once a week I can really savor it. Try to savor your time in WoW.

**EDIT: I did an update to this post recently that more accurately reflects what you should know about Druids. Read it here if you like!**

I’m often surprised at what people DON’T know about the healing Druid. Having played one for so long, as my main, I sometimes assume that everyone understands our strengths, weaknesses and abilities. Time and again I’m reminded that that plain isn’t true. Just because everyone has driven in a car, that doesn’t mean they’d now how to drive one. With that in mind, here are five things you should know about your leafy resident healing Druid.

1) Our CC and Buffing Abilities are Limited

We aren’t your typical healing/utility class. When you get down to it, Druid Healers are basically a One Trick Pony. We only have 2 buffs that can be cast on other players that are useful at all, and for the most part we only really use one. Mark of the Wild. It’s a buff that makes sense with the Druid class, as it doesn’t have any one strength as a buff, it just sort of helps everything. Still, our ability to buff ALL of your resistances, stats and armor is nothing to sneeze at.  **Doh!  Forgot one, thanks Another Tree! -Pummra**  We do also have the Tree of Life aura, which increases healing received by group members by 25% of our spirit.  This means Druids LOVE to stack spirit and we often find a place in the same group as the main tank in a raid situation.!

As far as CC goes, yes, we do have some CC. It’s just nearly useless. Entangling Roots can only be used outside. Cyclone can be cast anywhere, but it’s duration is pitiful and useless. We can also put beasts to sleep, but how often are we asked to? Not very. Don’t rely on us for CC, even if we are in a situation where it’s useful, as there’s a good chance we’re out of practice with it. Expect to hear, “Ok, let me find it and put it on my bar.”

2) Utility Spells We DO Have

On a positive note, don’t forget that we can cure poisons and remove curses. I often hear “Druids can DeCurse?” Yes, we can. We have to pop out of tree form to do so, but we can.

3) We Won’t Rez You

It’s not that we don’t like you. We’re not messing with you because of that smart remark about our sister last week. We just can’t do it. I’m still shocked when I hear that people don’t know this, or forget. If a druid is your only healing type around, expect to run back after wipes. Our rez is on a 20 minute cooldown, so we generally save it for “need” situations. Trust me, you’ll be glad you have us when you pull aggro on the boss fight and go down in 2.3 seconds, only to have us bring you right back up. If you’re nice to us, that is.

4) Spike Damage is the Bane of Our Existence

You know how I mentioned that time you pulled aggro on the boss fight? Yeah, don’t do it. While we have the best HOTs in the game (and I’ll get to those in a second) we have the hardest time of any healer with spike damage. Our big heal is slower than any other heal, and we have to pop out of tree form to use it. Our only avenue for a big, instant heal is Nature’s Swiftness, which has a significant cooldown, and Swiftmend if specced for it. Nature’s Swiftness is only good for once fast heal, and Swiftmend just doesn’t compare to a flash heal or the like.

Basically, don’t pull aggro, because chances are we can’t keep you up, especially if we’re in a heroic, and you’re wearing cloth. We won’t even feel bad about it, as there’s really nothing we can do about it. Omen is your friend!

5) HOT, HOT, HOT

We do, however, have the best selection of HOTs in the game. Any tank worth his salt loves a good Resto Druid, and his stack of 3 Lifeblooms and a Rejuvenation. You know those times when it seems like the tank isn’t taking any damage? Look around for your druid and thank him. Our great HOT selection is what makes us so revered in the raiding environment. They way some of those bosses hit, you need a constant stream of healing, and a well-geared Resto Druid can bring just that.

As I see it, we have two strengths in the raiding environment. One, we make excellent raid healers. While a Shaman can heal multiple targets with one spell, a Druid can throw out five or six HOTs in the blink of an eye. A single Lifebloom is often enough to top off any spray damage the raid might take. Our second strength is rolling HOTs on boss fights. Though you might want to assign us to raid healing, make sure you take advantage of our true strength on boss fights. A triple stack of Lifebloom ticking for 600+ every second, along with a Rejuv ticking for 600+ as well is a glorious thing. Don’t forget to use it.

There you have it. Some of these things seem trivial to bring up, but you’d be surprised at what people don’t know. Some other Blog Azeroth bloggers have similar posts if you’d like to read them. Anna of Toomanyannas.com wrote about Shaman, and Aos over on Flux wrote about Tanks. Enjoy!

I’m just catching up here, but this was another good “shared topic” from Blog Azeroth. What do you enjoy about the class you play the most? This is a great topic, because if you are going to invest as much time in a game as many do in WoW (oh boy, do we ever), you’ve got to play a character you like. (Unless, of course, you have some weird love/hate relationship.) Well, I don’t just like the druid class, I like it like it in that fifth grade infatuatory way. It wasn’t always like that, however.

In the beginning. Booooring. Sling a couple wraths at the mob, burn it down with my staff. Ugh. The first levels for the druid class are sloooow going. Every class is that way to an extent, but the druid particularly so. A noob mage can only cast 2 or 3 spells before going OOM, but boy do they hurt! I’d argue that the druid from 1-20 is the most boring class there is. Sure, it’s great that you get Bear form at 10 - a lot of fun to finally be able to shapeshift - but you STILL take forever to kill stuff. Now it’s just even harder for them to kill you. Getting up to 20 was like pulling teeth, but once you get there…

Cat Form, baby! God does the game change for a druid once you get cat form. You go from low and slow damage to mega burst tear mobs to shreds DPS. Oh how exhilarating after 20 levels of tedium. Now I know how rogues feel from level 1. If it weren’t for Cat Form, I probably wouldn’t be a druid today. And my love of Cat carried me all the way to the outlands with the druid (and I don’t even like cats!). I rarely tanked, almost never healed. I just went out and shredded mob after mob after mob.

Instancing. Cat form got me to the outlands, but versatility and fancy tricks took me all the way home to 70 and the “end game.” I’ll never forget my first time in Ramparts, where all my skills were really starting to come together. I was there for DPS, and to off heal if needed. Well, during the second boss fight, the priest went down. It looked like we were about to wipe, but I popped out of cat, blew my BR and tossed a regrowth on the priest when she was back up. Then in the final fight, the tank went down while fighting the dragon, and I saved the group again by going Bear and finishing him off. A druid, when you really have things going, can be flat out amazing and help the group in so many ways.

Flight Form. This, my friends, sealed the deal. Instant flight, without having to shell out the 900 or so gold, at 68 no less? Sign me up! Instant flight can be so fun, I’m sure you’ve all seen the druid suicide dive. There’s nothing better than flying high HIGH HIGH above Shatt, and dropping all the way down, trying to pop flight form at just the right instant to be impressive….or….the wrong instant and be dead.

I love the Druid class because I feel like there is so much you can do with it. You can excel at any role if you focus. Feral tanks, once maligned, are now accepted and often sought out. Cat DPS can be through the roof, as can the OOMkin (though I have yet to try that spec), and a Resto Tree druid is a fantastic healer for raids or anything else. Though I am a Resto Druid now, I still have my tanking and DPS gear in the bank, and I’m always one respec away from filling a different role if the group needs it.  Are you unsure as to whether you’d like to tank, DPS or heal?  Roll a druid!  Just remember I warned you about those first 20 levels!