They said it couldn’t be done, but they were wrong.  PTD now has TWO max level toons.  If you recall, when Wrath hit I was busy leveling a Warrior who was in his early 60s.  At release, I played my druid as a Boomkin up to level 71, and I hated it.

HATED it.

Too scripted, too much of the same thing over and over.  Moonfire, Entangling Roots, Insect Swarm, Wrath, Starfire.  Rinse and repeat.  Ad infinitum.  Bleh.

But, that’s neither here nor there.  The boomkin spec soured me on the Druid for a bit, and I went back to my low 60s warrior, and leveled him all the way to 77.  Then I heard in guild that we were kind of hurting for healers, so back to the Druid I went, spec’d to Feral IMMEDIATELY and powered my way to 80, enjoying the whole ride.  I went back to Resto immediately, busted out my leaves, and started the heroic grind.  That’s when I remembered something I had all but forgotten –

Soloing as a Tree SUCKS

It may very well be the least fun you can have in WoW, and I mean that in all seriousness.  I’ve already established that I did not like the Boomkin spec.  Well, soloing as a Resto Druid is kind of like that, only without the big damage numbers and extra tricks.  It takes horrendously long to kill anything, and it is incredibly boring.  I can only hit my "2" key (Wrath) 1.5 million times before I tire of it. 

I can hear the counterpoints already.

"Yeah, but it sure is better than it USED to be, at least you have decent spellpower!"

Well, just because it’s BETTER doesn’t mean it’s good.  It still consists of crap repetition with crap damage.  Just because the damage is slightly less crappy doesn’t change much. 

"Well, I can take any mob one on one.  I literally cannot die."

To an extent, sure.  The good thing about soloing as a resto druid that’s nice is my ability to keep myself alive.  Basically forever.  Still, I’d trade survivability for some decent DPS in a heartbeat.

"Why do you need to solo anyway?  You can group at will!"

Sure I can, but that’s mostly based on instance runs.  I still need to be able to quest for cash, and I especially want to finish off the Northrend questing achievements.  I’ve cleared Borean, the Fjord, Dragonblight and Grizzly Hills thus far.  It’s hard to find a group for general questing, as it’s faster for nearly any class to quest alone.

Now, I don’t know how a lot of other solo centric class/spec combinations solo, but I know many of them got some new tricks.  Prot Warriors now have decent damage output AND can take many, many mobs on at a time.  Holy priests can gather a few mobs, shield, and Holy Nova them all to hell.  Resto Shammys still get Chain Lightning to throw around willy nilly.  Holy Pallys…well…I have a feeling they are in the same boat as Resto Druids.

So, enough about the Tree, let’s talk Warriors.

Tankin’ Ain’t Easy

I hit 80 with the Warrior 2 days ago while questing in Storm Peaks (much like his Druid cousin.)  Leveling him was both as easy and as enjoyable as leveling the Druid, perhaps even more so.  The quest design in Wrath is excellent, and it was just as enjoyable the second time around as it was the first. 

Anyhow, with the Warrior things are a little different.  My Druid had good BC end-game gear, and started out with a little advantage.  Heck, I still haven’t replaced a couple of my BC epics, (my belt and bracers) but I’m sure I soon will.  The Warrior, on the other hand, was a fresh 70 for the Wrath content.  So while a lot of you are just picking the most expensive quest reward to sell, I’ve had to equip most of that stuff you’ve thrown out. 

I also leveled him as a Blacksmith, which I believe turned out to be a good choice.  I’ve crafted a lot of good gear for myself as I leveled, and by 80 I had the whole Tempered Saronite tanking set, along with the Daunting Legplates and Daunting Handguards.  Heck, my whole tanking set, including my shield and weapon, came via crafting.

So I had a good but not great tanking set.  It put me around 19k unbuffed HPs, 20k armor, and 513 defense, and I respec’d right away to 15/5/51.  This is the in vogue "deep wounds" tanking build.  Supposedly it has all you need from the Prot tree for mitigation and such along with good DPS output. 

I wouldn’t know though, I just yank this kind of stuff of forums, I really do.

Thus far I have tanked UK, the Nexus, Azjol-Nerub, Drak’Tharon keep and HOL all on regular.  As of last night, I’ve also tanked UK in heroic mode.

Tanking is hard.  I don’t know if you know.  Sure, healing and DPS have their challenges, but in my estimation, tanking is the hardest job there is.  As a tank you have many expectation:

• Lead the run
• Mark targets
• Manage CC
• Pull
• Explain Boss fights
• Manage loot rules

And that’s before actually getting into the actual killing.  I won’t kid around, it’s tough to manage.  It’s hard to get the attention of 4 mobs and keep it.  It’s hard to hold aggro on four different mobs while bloodthirsty, frothing at the mouth, big number hunting DPS are chomping at the bit to let it all out to try and get the top spot in the damage meters.   

In the interest of comparison, here are the other people’s jobs:

DPS

• Kill stuff in the right order
• CC, maybe
• Accept everyone’s criticism for your poor DPS and/or poor aggro management

Healer

• Keep everyone alive
• Cure poison/decurse/etc.
• Accept everyone’s criticism of your lackluster healing abilities, and accept blame for any and all wipes

Now, you all know a healer is still my main.  You should also know that my main WAS a Hunter back before BC hit.  I’m not demeaning the role or difficulty of playing a healer or playing a DPS class.

I’m just telling you, that from my perspective, tanking is harder than both of those jobs.

And you know what?  I’m enjoying the hell out of it.  I liked that we succeeded in heroic UK the other night (and I’m happy that I got a decent tanking sword as well as a tanking ring).  I also enjoyed being front and center and heavily responsible for the group’s success.

I’ll be tanking more heroics, you can bet your Abyss Crystal on it.  To close, here is the Listos version of the post you have just read:  PTD has an 80 Resto Druid and an 80 Prot Warrior, soling as a tree sucks, and tanking is hard.  PTD out.

They said it couldn’t be done, but I did it.  I got my druid to level 80 on New Year’s Eve.  Pretty appropriate, eh?  I dinged while doing the Sons of Hodir questline in Storm Peaks, specifically when turning in the quest that opened up Nifflehelm as a new town with dailies and such. 

I see rep grinding in my future.

Anyhow, at that point it was time for me to log, but the next night I went ahead with the respec to Resto.  I pulled out all my old healing gear, along with one or two quest rewards I had picked up, and a couple of crafted pieces.  It put me around 1250 healing or so in Tree form.  It’s funny how at one time that was a REALLY good number, and now it was iffy for most heroics.

Anyhow, I wanted to hit the ground running, and put out a call in guild chat for a heroic run, preferably an "easy" one, like UK or Nexus.  A couple of people wanted to do Heroic VH, and I said what the heck.  I feel fairly confident in my skill, and figured it to make up for any real gear deficiencies. 

So there I was, my first heroic Wrath instance, Violet Hold.  The first boss we got?  The stinking Voidwalker.

Ouch babe, very ouch.

He is one tough cookie.  As the fight wears on, it just gets tougher and tougher.  Though I have the use of Wild Growth for group healing, it can’t keep up with the kind of damage that guy puts out once he has a few of his adds spawned.  We managed to kill him on the first try, but I died, the only rezzer.  We reset and tried again, and the same thing happened.  On the third try, I basically ignored everyone else about 3/4s of the way through the fight to concentrate on keeping myself alive. 

That worked.  Only the tank and myself survived, but we had time to rez up and continue. 

The second boss was the Consortium dude you have to kite around the room.  Our tank had experience with that, so we plowed through him on the first try.  The last boss was also fairly easy, and we got it done.

All in all, I’m glad I had a tough job for my first heroic, it knocked the old rust off the leaves a bit.

This was also my first time really playing with some of the Druid’s new tools.  Wild Growth is helpful, but not overpowered or anything like that.  I found I was using a similar healing rotation from before 3.02.  The only real difference is I was keeping Regrowth up more often due to the nifty glyph.  I also found that my mana regen isn’t what it used to be, but I can keep up fairly easily with an occasional Innervate.

There is one spell, though, that is essentially useless in my early estimation.  Nourish.  I threw it in a few rotations to see what it could do.  it’s basically a fast, low return heal.  I get better numbers from Regrowth, and it has the added benefit of a lot of crits, the glyphed bonus, and the HOT portion.  Right now I don’t see a real use for Nourish.  If I need an emergency, fast heal, I’m using Swiftmend or NS+HT.  Nourish just doesn’t do enough healing to be effective, IMO.

Still, healing with a druid is just as fun, and I can see myself enjoying many more heroic runs and doing well on the healing meters in raid situations as well.

Since then I’ve also healed Heroic Nexus, which was a fairly smooth run minus a wipe on one of the four pulls in the flower area.  I also got a nice neckpiece off of Anomalus.  I also did a run of Heroic Azjol Nerub last night.  I had heard that this one was VERY tough, but I joined up with a very powerful PUG that was desperate for a healer.  The four DPSers (the tank included) averaged 2200, 2100, 1900 and 1700 DPS.  We blew a  frigging hole in that place.  From what those guys told me, having a shammy along made it easy.  The poison cleansing totem is the bee’s knees on the first two bosses.

So there you have it.  I have my first 11 badges, I’ve now crafted my first two epic LW pieces, the Earthgiving Boots and Earthgiving Legguards, and I’m sitting at around 1450 healing, and rising fast.  I should be in the 1600 range fairly quickly, as I have my eye on a bunch of easy upgrades.  Overall, I’m having a great time in game, and I’m happy to be back where I belong, max level and preparing to raid.  Thanks for reading!

I’ve been in the beta for awhile now, but the fact is I’ve paid no attention whatsoever to anything resto.

I know, I’ve been a bad Tree.

You see, I just wanted to take a gander at the new CONTENT, not the class changes.  I sure as heckfire wasn’t going to take a look at it all weak and leafy.  I went Boomkin in beta to, well, make the mobs go boom. 

I hadn’t even LOOKED at the resto tree until last night. 

So I logged on around 11 pm last night (with my 48 warrior I’ve been working on) to see how my UI looked and get things set up.  Of course, my UI was a bit on the borked side.  So I went to WoW Interface to download any new and updated Addons I needed.  (WoW Interface had a very low bandwidth addons page set up, good idea!)  I also decided to do a bit of spring cleaning, and cleared out the bulk of my Addons folder.  Just too much junk in there.

So here I am wrestling with a new bar mod and working on getting things set up when I get a tell asking if I wanted to heal Heroic Blood Furnace.

Hmm.  Tempting.  I haven’t even LOGGED into my druid yet, I have no idea what talents I’m going to take, and surely his UI is borked, too.

"Sure," I say. 

So I jump over and spec to this.  My method?  I just go down the frigging tree and go "yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes" until I’ve spent 55 points in resto.  Some good looking stuff in there that I had to at least try.  Living Seed?  Check.  Imp Tree of Life?  Check.  Gift of the Earthmother?  Check.  And, of course, Wild Growth.

I looked everything else over.  I had upgraded Clique already, and Grid worked as is.  I had to change my Clique settings quickly to fit in Wild Growth, but that was about it.  I got my bars in reasonably working order, got the daily, and took the summon.

Whew.  I wasn’t prepared to hit the ground running, that’s for sure.  I thought I was going to just spend a couple hours getting things set up.  Oh well.

On to heroic BF.

It went very, very well.  The group consisted a Warrior, a Boomin, a Lock, an Enhance Shammy, and myself.  I know myself and the Warrior are geared VERY well, though I’m not sure of the others we went with.  Still, we went through BF faster than I’ve ever gone though it before.  I’m not sure if we have new, "overpowered" spells and talents now or what, but we wasted that place.  Blew its doors off.  Took it out to the woodshed.  About the only hiccups were a couple times when the DPS pulled aggro from their OPness.  No biggie.  It was a lot of fun, and I look forward to more heroics to see whether that was just a fluke or what.

Here are my initial reactions to the tree changes.

• I LOVE that I can move just as fast as everyone else now.
• I LOVE that I can fricking rez people now.
• I LOVE that I actually got Soulstoned.  As a matter of fact, the one time I died I sat there with a stupid look on my face for a good 30 seconds before realizing I had the option to rez myself.  I guess I’ll have to get used to that.
• I LOVE Omen of Clarity.  Especially since it’s not a buff like it used to be, but an always on, passive talent.  It seemed to proc constantly, and I tried to use Regrowth or another, bigger heal whenever it did.
• I LOVE Wild Growth

It’s not as overpowered as it once was in the beta, but it is a VERY useful addition to my healing arsenal.   I know, 861 isn’t a huge amount.  And the fact that it takes 7 seconds to HEAL that whole amount isn’t great either.

However, it’s a HUGE boon for 5 mans at the very least.  Under normal circumstances, I often have to totally ignore damage to the DPS in tough situations.  I often have to focus 100% on the tank to keep him up in hairy spots.  With Wild Growth, I can work a group heal in WITHOUT losing focus on the tank.  It’s instant, it has a cool animation, and it works.

I’ll have to see in the future how it function in a raid environment, but because it’s a TARGETED group heal, I think it will work VERY well.  I look forward to taking this baby out into Kara or something in the future.

As far as the other stuff, I have no idea if and when living seed went off.  I wasn’t tracking stats or anything, and I had no kind of DPS meter, so I have no idea how, overall, the healing or DPS was.  I’ll try to look closely in the future.  I wasn’t really prepared for this last night. 

The only meter that mattered though, the fun meter, was very high.  Big patches like this one just always bring out the geek in me.  I love, love, love everything so far.  The graphics tweaks are noticeable, I love the new loading screens, I love the new pet/mount system, I love the achievements.  In short, I love WoW patch 3.02.

I’m a fanboy.  Sue me.

A lot of things are about the change, for Resto Druids and for everyone else.  Patch 3.0 and the new talent trees are right around the corner.  We’re going to have new tricks to use, and we all will have a lot to learn.  With all of the changes, though, a lot of things will stay the same.  I thought it would be appropriate to take the time to look back before we look forward to our coming fancy tricks. 

What makes a good druid healer a great druid healer?

I’ve been around the block as a Resto Druid.  I’ve been a part of kills from Leotheras the Blind to Shade of Akama to Zul’jin.  In my time, I’ve worked with quite a few other druid healers, and I’ve also seen how other druid healers play while DPSing with my hunter.  I think I can give a fair estimation of some keys that separate the men from the boys.

Druids are the most efficient healers in the game.  With our innervate ability and our high mana efficiency, we have more healing longevity than other healers.  Also, our healing style is more pro-active and less re-active.  That translates into less over-healing or "wasted" healing and an overall higher rate of effective healing.  A great druid healer will often find him or herself on top of the overall healing charts.  (Excepting, of course, those fights that involve a lot of group-intensive healing, like Hex Lord Malacrass, for instance.)

You can be a good druid healer just by managing lifebloom stacks and rejuvenation rotations efficiently, along with throwing in the occasional regrowth.

In order to be a great druid healer, however, there are a few tools and philosophies you must have a firm grasp on.  Let’s take a look at those.

Swiftmend

The first tool that many druid healers lose sight of is Swiftmend.  If I see a druid in a raid that is in the middle to the bottom of the healing charts, I first look at their breakdowns to see if they are using Swiftmend often.

They usually are not, and often aren’t using it at all.

As a confession, I literally NEVER used Swiftmend in my early career as a druid healer.  I concentrated almost solely on getting the feel for rolling lifebloom stacks with rejuv and regrowth thrown in when necessary.  This got me through regular dungeons and T4 content fairly easily.

Once I hit up heroics, though, the rules changed.  I needed a way to deal with damage spikes when lifebloom and my other HOTs weren’t quite doing the job.  I soon learned the glory of Swiftmend.

Swiftmend is instant cast, has a reasonable mana cost, and it can heal for a LOT.  (As an aside, you’ll notice it will consume either a rejuv or regrowth.  If you have both spells active on the target, it will consume the one with the least time remaining.)  My average swiftmend of a rejuvenation is in the  neighborhood of 3700 or so.  If the swiftmend crits (yes, it can crit) I can heal for upwards of 6k instantly. 

I don’t know why I see so many druids that don’t use this often, but I do.  I think perhaps the tooltip doesn’t quite do it justice.  I can’t tell you how many times swiftmend has saved my bacon, and with that short cooldown I use it recklessly. 

One other note about swiftmend is that it doesn’t matter how many "ticks" are left on your rejuv or regrowth, it will heal the same amount.  So one of the best times to use it is when your HOT is just about to expire.  Unless, of course, you are using it because the tank is about to die.

Nature’s Swiftness

This is our other "oh crap" button for instantly dealing out some big time healing.  It’s also the other druid skill that many druids don’t use often enough.

Couple this spell with healing touch, and you have yourself a fancy little 6k+ instant heal.  You can also use NS to make regrowth instant cast, but for the most part I reserve it for use with my biggest possible heal.  About the only time I use healing touch is when I use NS to make it insta cast.  Sure, it pops you out of tree form (until 3.0, anyway) but it’s worth it if the tank is about to go down.

NS can also be useful to make rebirth instant cast.  If your OT goes down mid fight, you can have them back up, well, instantly. 

I think perhaps people overestimate the cooldown, and that factors into how often they use NS.  They try to reserve it for those true "oh crap" moments.  With a 3 minute cooldown, though, use it early, and use it often.

The Flow

The third thing I would like to address is not quite as concrete as a particular skill you should be using.  My last point focuses on the "flow" of druid healing.

In essence, what separates the great druid healers from the merely good druid healers is how efficiently they manage the global cooldown.  Because so many of our tools are instant cast, we have to focus more closely on the GCD than any other healing class.  For other healers, the GCD is a mere afterthought.  For a druid healer, the GCD is everything.

You’ll often have the task of HOTing up multiple targets.  If you want to be able to run a full complement of HOTs on more than one target, you have to be able to manage the GCD in such a way that ALL your HOTs are up at ALL TIMES.  It’s easy to keep everything on one target at a time, and in fact in those situations I often find myself bored.  If I have to handle 2, 3 or even 4 targets, though, I really have to be on my toes. 

This is where the flow comes in.  In my opinion, you need to have a FEEL for the GCD more than anything.  You have to get an inner sense of how quickly you can cast the next spell.  If I am really on my game, I get into a zone when it comes to managing my HOTs.  On a good night, I can keep full lifebloom stacks on as many as four targets fairly easily.  I can also keep a full lifebloom stack WITH rejuv and regrowth on 2 targets if I’m really feeling the GCD.

It’s difficult for me to quantify exactly how you would go about this.  In my estimation, this largely depends on experience running HOTs on multiple targets.  Over time, you just plain KNOW when you can cast your next spell with no wasted motion or keystrokes, and without allowing a lifebloom stack to expire unless you want it to.  I don’t know of any mods that can really help you with this, though the use of a mod like Clique or Healbot along with any HOT timing mod can make it much easier.  My suggestion is that you just keep on keeping on, and try to push your abilities whenever possible.  Experiment, and see just how many targets you can keep fully HOTed at once. 

If you have a good grasp of the GCD and the flow of druid healing, you can also quite easily work in assistance on other targets.  You’ll know when you can spare a GCD for a lifebloom on a DPS, for instance, or when is the best time to reapply regrowth to the tank.  The best druid healers, in my experience, are those that seem to constantly be casting.  You don’t see them standing there motionless, they almost always have their hands flying back up in the air for their next spell. 

If I see a druid who’s hands fly up only every 4 seconds or so, there is a good chance that they aren’t performing to their full capabilities. 

I know this entire last section is a bit vague, and perhaps more difficult to understand.  I also know, however, that any experienced druid healers reading this will know exactly what I’m talking about.  It’s kind of like when Michael Jordan occasionally got in the zone and "went off" on the opposition.  If you have a good grasp of the flow of druid healing, you’ll often find yourself in your own little healing zone, and the overall healing numbers will definitely bear that out.

Conclusion

I know it can be easy to lean on lifebloom and the occasional rejuvenation and be successful as a druid healer.  If you want to excel, however, you have to use ALL of our tools.  Swiftmend and Nature’s Swiftness are often ignored, and they shouldn’t be.  Anyone who tells you that druids have no good way of dealing with spike damage may have just never played with a great resto druid.  I’m also well aware of the fact that things are going to be changing quite a bit fairly soon.  In my opinion, though, the essence of what makes a great druid healer will remain the same.

Use all your tools, practice, and get yourself into the flow.  I know meters don’t mean everything, but that doesn’t mean it’s not nice to perform well.  Strive for excellence in druidic healing, and you can get there!

No, I’m not talking about your level 80 spec, either.  I don’t expect to see level 80 for some time, so I’m not even thinking about the new end-game right now.  What do you plan to do out of the gate?  Stick with the basic spec you’ve been running, with a few tweaks for new talents?  Or are you considering a major spec overhaul?

Just as this is the best time to change your main, for many of the same reasons it’s the best time to change your spec. 

Take healing classes, for instance.  I will freely admit that I did not level as a healing spec.  Leveling as a healer should be reserved for the purists among us, or those who know they will ALWAYS have a group.

Me?  I’m a casual player, and much of my game time is spent alone.  For that reason, healing specs don’t make sense while I’m leveling.  Now that +healing and +spell damage have gotten together to have their love child in +spellpower, healers should see a healthy boost in their DPS and, therefore, their solo-ability. 

Still, that’s not good enough for me.  If I’m going to be alone a lot of the time, which I am, I want to BURN STUFF DOWN! 

When I copied my druid over to the beta server, I first took an inventory of my gear.  I had some very nice kitty gear, and I initially went with a feral spec.  It made sense since that’s how I leveled and I knew how to play that way. 

But, well, it just didn’t seem fun anymore.  I suppose after 50 levels worth of cat form, it lost its luster just a bit.

So I went back to the drawing board.  I looked at my shiny purple healing gear, and noticed for the first time that it was some pretty dang good caster DPS gear.  Well, it  just turns out that there is one druid spec I have NEVER tried.  Boomkin.

That’s right. Boom Boom, baby!  I have no experience with this spec.  I’ve never even looked at the talents, other than the first 2 tiers or so for my extra points as a tree.  I just kind of went on down and picked up everything that sounded good to me.  I’m not going to bother posting my spec, as I couldn’t even tell you what it is.

What I CAN tell you, though, is that I am having a LOT of fun with it already.  I’ve played the tree for a long time, and I never see crits for more than 2-3k at the most.  With my hacked together boomkin spec, I found myself routinely critting in the 5k range.

Now that’s fun.  Killing mobs before they even get to you?  Priceless. 

Soloing in my live resto spec boils down to a lot of roots and a lot of lifeblooms.  Feeling the raw power of the Boomkin is quite a change indeed.

So this post is for you, healers of the world.  Don’t be married to your PvE raiding spec.  You’ve got leveling to do here! 

Maybe you play a CoH priest, and you’ve had shadow envy for awhile.  Now is the time to explore your dark side. 

I’m sure you healadins are at least a LITTLE intrigued by the newfound power of the ret pally.  Give it a try.

Brain healing shammys, now is the time to unleash your inner chain lightning.

Trust me when I tell you this, going from a healing spec to a DPS caster spec is a LOT of fun.  It’s kind of like putzing around in an old Yugo for awhile, and then your friend loans you his Ferrari.  It’s thrilling to melt pavement for awhile and give the hamsters in your Yugo a rest.  Don’t hesitate to give you resto spec a, well, rest!