Tranq & Wild Growth: Often Forgotten and Misunderstood

A comment on my prioritisation post made me think that perhaps this was a worthwhile topic for a full post :)

Lets start with Tranquility, this is clearly the spell that is often forgotten. I think that many druid are a little reluctant to hit that button, it's such a great spell and it does have that 10 minute cooldown.

Firstly 10 minutes really isn't that long, if you progressing through Ulduar this basically means you can use it every 2 attempts (not taking into consideration trash). I guess a simple way to look at this is if you go more than 2 bosses without using it then your not getting much out of it :)

Secondly I personally use tranq as a catch up spell, it is a great spell, can be a little mana hungry but is a great way to catch up on heals if your raid is taking a lot of damage or you happen to be down a healer or two.

Wild Growth on the otherhand has quickly made its way into the basic play style of many resto druids.

Fact is that Wild Growth is considered a "smart spell", meaning it should target those who are in the greatest need of your heals. Even post nerf (intro of our cooldown), it is a powerful raid heal which has the potential to take up a large percentage of your heal stats.

Their are still some druids out their not using the spell to its full potential and I recommend you have a play with it.

Also it should really be even more powerful in 10man content as your healing half the raid!

Druid Skin Changes

Well I wont be able to grumble about anything Blizzard has or hasnt done. I am eager to see how the Tree forms can be changed if at all as it's based on hair color for bear form.

Posted last night not a day after my post about some of this stuff (I'm not so narrow minded to believe my blog had anything to do with it but it's nice to dream) ;

In our next major content patch, druids will find a host of new textures for two major forms, cat and bear. There will be five different designs for each of these forms for the Horde and Alliance. Night elves can choose to change their cat and bear look at any time by visiting the barber shop and changing their character's hair color, while tauren will be able to change which look they use by switching skin tones in the barber shop -- a new feature for tauren in the next major content patch. Given that there are more hair colors and skin tones than unique form looks, some colors and tones will overlap with these new textures. The hair and skin colors chosen will, in most cases, correspond with the color seen in the look of each form. Some similar colors that may share a particular cat texture will not necessarily share the same bear texture.

We'd like to share with you this new art for each form and faction in four installments. So without further ado, our first preview is for the five new textures of the tauren druid bear form. We'll also show the current form design so you can easily see the extra detail and textures of the new art. Work continues on new looks for the remaining druid forms and we hope to add them in future content patches.

Full story here: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/druid-forms.html

Update: Really sounds like tree is not in line for a change /sigh

New art for two druid forms, cat and bear, are coming in the next major content patch. As this has been a much-anticipated update for druids, we'd like to give you a first look at the fresh designs.

4T8 and Spell Prioritisation

Well got my 4T8 set last night, although I'm still using Valorous Nightsong Handguards but I will swap that out later :)

I saw a big jump in Rejuv heals (which is to be expected) from 8-13% to 20-25% but it also required a bit of a shift in my healing style or more specifically my spell prioritisation.

I dont think that my heals when I'm healing tanks (this is generally my assign) will change that much, I will have an extra tick and also (in theory) a bigger Swiftmend so that will be good for oh crap moments (like Ignis flame jets).

I'll use Mimiron as an example because this is a real all out, as Matt would say heads up method, and is a real indication of whether you've got your prioritisation right.

While healing I ask myself these questions in my head while i'm healing for Mimiron we are primarily looking at the right hand side of my little brain chart :)


In summary where there is raid damage being taken I decide if I'm expecting more damage in the next second or so, if so I get my 'best for the cast time' spell off, being Nourish.

If I'm not expecting more damage I choose regrowth, it has a slower cast time but does have the bonus of a hot.

If there is minimal damage or currently no raid damage I will use rejuv across the raid.

It's worth noting that throughout this process I am hitting Wild Growth whenever it is available and I can afford the use of a GCD :)

On the other side of the chart, my tank healing, I wont use Wild Growth too much on a boss encounter i either; dont know well enough, or I know is going to be a hard slog on mana (i.e. General).

On a side note I was promoted to a Sub Officer last night :) was pretty excited about the whole thing :)

On another side note, just a quick shoutout to Sydera who blog on World of Matticus who I noticed comment on my last post, I was excited to see your name there as I read your blog frequently :)

"Is Tree Form Fun?"

Well we had a vague question asked of us on the wow forums by Ghostcrawler and I thought I would take the time to quickly give my opinion on the matter; I am a little one sided because I really dont pvp that much so my points are more about making us trees feel special :)

"This is an open question to the community. Is druid Tree of Life form fun?"

He goes on to assure us (or torment us depending on how you look at it) that no major changes are on the way for us trees.

There were quite a few comments and suggestions, for my 2 cents worth the primary issue with Tree form is it's common, boring, ugly appearance. I personally have no problems that I cant dps in form etc but some do :)

my points as posted on the forums were;

• Post Death Effects - loved this idea, the concept that people can get a minor heal by standing near our body is pretty cool but doubt that will ever happen
  
• Some Old Look - the main thing i dislike about tree form is when running with multiple trees we all look the same.. makes me feel like a social sheep.
• Skin Customisation - the ability to customise our skins, hang stuff from our branches, have birds living in our limbs etc would be really cool.

The general feeling from a PVE point of view is that people love the healing style and idea of changing into a form however they would like to pretty themself up and be unique. For all the male troll hunters out their you can still find differences in appearances between them, not so with us poor druids.

These points really apply to druid in general, bear form, cat form and travel forms too :) I'd pay a stylist some money to give me the latest french branch styles :)

25man Naxx and Maly pictures

Well I uploaded a few screenshots from Wednesday's guild run :) Thought I would like them here, some look cool :) you can see all my screenshots in full size here

To 4P or not to 4P.. that is the question

Well last night I finally picked up my 4P item, so I now have Shoulder, Chest, Hands and Legs. I really wanted to get Head as it's better than my current head item... but I'll try work on that later :)

Basically this post is about when it's worth using the teir gear for the 4p bonus and when is it not. I have Spaulders of Catatonia which are best in slot, so it got me thinking about when it's worth not using the tier gear for 4P bonus.

I think my plan will be that while Tank Healing I will equip the tier gear for 4p bonus for the boost to nourish. As you may or may not know the 4p bonus for resto druids is a 5% bonus to healing done by nourish per hot up on the target. Now obviously on a fight like patchwerk a druid is usually rolling, Lifebloom, Rejuvination and Regrowth and hit Wild Growth when it's off cool down on the tank(s) (i dont think WG counts as a hot for these purposes but I could be wrong). So thats at least a 15% increase to the healing done by Nourish, sounds sweet right.

Now when I'm raid healing I do not have many hots on ALL the raid so the bonus will not be of much use at all. Without hots the bonus does not come into affect so I will most probably switch out the Shoulder for the better non-tier Spaulders of Catatonia. I will also look for a replacement piece for one of my other slots as 2 is as good as 3 with the bonuses, but only if I can get my hands on another item better than the tier gear.

T8 Resto Piece Bonus

Well I was reading about this the other day and it's pretty cool stuff

Item - Druid T8 Restoration 2P Bonus -- Increases the healing done by your Swiftmend spell by 10%.

Item - Druid T8 Restoration 4P Bonus -- Your Rejuvenation spell also instantly heals your target for its periodic healing amount.

First time I read this I got a little excited as I thought the 4P was saying that it instant healed the total Rejuv amount then ticked but it is really just that the first tick is instant. So you are effectively getting a 1.5-2k instant heal then rejuv ticks as normal. Still tasty and something I'll be working towards come 3.1

I think I'm Happy now

Well after much tweaking and playing I think I'm happy with my new UI.


This is the breakdown of how my UI is split up. I decided to hide my bottom bars as I know the mappings well enough now anyways and also place a bar up the top to highlight my cooldowns so I can quickly and easily see what of my cooldown spells are available. May add my rebirth in there too later.



Modules;

• SatrinaBuffFrame - Allows you to move and customise the Buff Frame.
• HotCandy - I think is a real essential for a HoT based class like druids, will track your LB stacks etc
• Grid - I use grid although HealBot is supposed to be good as well. I added a couple of Grid addons to place corner warnings for stacks etc too and invert the colors! Makes it so much easier to see who needs heals I think (see my config guide)
  
• Decursive - great for single click (left or right) decursing/cure poison.
  
• RangeDisplay - displays the range of your target
  
• Dominos with ButtonFacade - Dominos is an action bar addon while ButtonFacade makes them look purty
• Minimalist - does a few things like hiding chat rubbish and buttons etc but also automates a few painful things like repairs and selling grey items.
• Minimap Button Frame - this mod is cool, it grabs all the icons around your map and puts them into a frame that you can move around.
• Autobar - is a great dynamic bar mod that will give you all you need. Very neat!
  
• Chinchilla - Map movement/customisation
• Recount - Damage/Healing Meters, some guilds ban these because people tend to try to top the list so use this with smarts, fact it's a great tool for breaking down your performance and comparing it to others but nobody cares too much about being up the top of the list as long as your assigns dont die!!
• PitBull Unit Frames 4.0 -Upgraded from 3 and very happy with the new configuration etc (see my review/guide).
• QBar - used to dynamically display your quest items in a bar (Autobar doesnt do this the best.
• SLDataText - provides game stats and info in text on your screen (used to replace FuBar)
• Skinner - This is what makes it all look nice really and added the black bar across the bottom.
  

Other modules that arent visible but still very useful.

• Deadly Boss Mods - must have for raiding, timers and notices etc
• oRA2 - A CT_RaidAssist alternative, another requirement for raiding in most guilds
  
• QuestHelper - this is great for leveling but I recommend turning this off while raiding, can be resource hungry and cause performance issues.
• Postal - replaces and enhances the wow mail system, much better
• WIM - adds a nice chat interface for whispers similar to MSN
  
• ArkInventory - consolidates bags and also allows viewing all yours toons at the same time.
• Cartographer - world map replacement

Bye to a Good Friend: Lifebloom

Well maybe the title is a little over the top but their has been much discussion around the 3.1 changes to lifebloom.

• Lifebloom: Mana cost of all ranks doubled. When Lifebloom blooms or is dispelled, it now refunds half the base mana cost of the spell per application of Lifebloom, and the heal effect is multiplied by the number of applications.

A lot of people are looking at this as a major nerf to the spell but I think it's more of a change to the play style for a large percentage of trees.

My personal opinion on the change is that coupled with the mana regen nerf the double or 100% increase in mana cost is a bit extreme. I would be surprised if it didnt drop to 50-75% through the PTR testing.

LB is one of the most unique healing spells around and it would be a shame for it to be put down as a less important spell in our healing rotations.

Clearly their is a big push towards Nourish and this is yet another nudge in the direction Bliz thinks trees should be going, expect tree overheals spiking after the change and our play style change drastically to suit this big increase in mana usage, i.e. no more laying stacks of 3 on 3 tanks.

Bliz Announces Druid & Mana Regen Changes

So some announcements yesterday/tonight for druids

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14910422662&sid=1

DRUID

• Savage Defense – this is a new passive ability. When a druid in Dire Bear form deals a melee critical strike, the druid gains a damage shield equal to 25% of their attack power. The next hit completely removes the shield regardless of how much damage was done

• Survival of the Fittest has had its bonus armor reduced to compensate for the above increase in damage mitigation.

• Faerie Fire (and similar debuffs) now reduces armor by 5%. See Sunder Armor in the warrior update below for additional details.

• Thorns and Nature’s Grasp can be cast in Tree of Life form.

• Survival Instincts now works in Moonkin form.

• Replenish – to avoid confusion, this talent has been renamed “Revitalize.” It now also works with Wild Growth.

• We are also looking at increasing the sustained (not burst) damage of feral druids in cat form.

Clearly bliz have some 'concerns' with feral druids right now and this patch is focussed on that, althought these are really draft notes and more could be in the mix too.

MANA REGEN CHANGES
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14910422908&sid=1

• Regeneration while not casting (outside of the “five second rule”) will be decreased. We think that (1) the ability to cast heal over time spells and then sit back and (2) benefitting from a clearcasting proc that also gets you out of the five second rule both provide too much mana regeneration, even over short time periods.
  
  
• To make this change, we are reducing mana regeneration granted by Spirit across the board. However we are also boosting the effects of talents such as Meditation that increase regeneration while casting. The net result should be that your regeneration while casting will stay about the same, but your not-casting regeneration will be reduced. This change will have little impact on dps casters, since they are basically always casting.
  
  
• The specific talents and abilities being boosted are: Arcane Meditation, Improved Spirit Tap, Intensity, Mage Armor, Meditation, Pyromaniac and Spirit Tap. Yes this makes these “mandatory” talents even more mandatory, if such a thing is possible.
  
  
• We are also taking a close look at clearcasting procs themselves. One likely outcome is to change them to an Innervate-like surge of mana so that the net benefit is the same, but healers won’t shift to out-of-casting regeneration so often.
  
  
• We balance around the assumption that even 10-player groups have someone offering Replenishment. To make this even easier on players we are likely to offer this ability to additional classes, as well as make sure that existing sources of Replenishment are more equitable.
  

So myself I think that the Mana Regen Nerf is more important to us Tree's as their is minimal changes currently planned for us.

Thorns and Nature’s Grasp in tree form could be cool but it's clearly not going to add much to the appeal of having a Tree in the group.

With the Mana Regen, I'm not all that happy that they are nerfing spirit - mp5 but I guess we have to suck it in. What it really means is that some of the rediculous overhealing will come to a stop and classes that are spam happy will have to actually learn to heal again, not a bad thing really.

I think overall the changes are fine, I suspect alot of QQ regarding spirit nerf but we'll see :D

Have a Good Day!

Resto Buff Foods: Dont Let The Team Down

I thought I would write up about some of my buff foods of choice, as you get into 25 mans etc you will be asked to ensure you have LK Buff Foods (none of that BC crap) and potentially with 40 stam as a minimum.

Now I'm a lazy bastard when it comes to fishing (i like RL fishing) and have only gotten to 260 or so (really should finish this off at some point) so I have picked 2 foods that are easily achieved by farming RED MEAT!

It is essential that you do your Cooking Dailies to get your Dalaran Cooking Tokens and Northrend Spices but they build up real quick and once you have bought the recipies that you and your guildies need you can buy 10 spices for a token.

On a side note I have been selling my spices too for 35g+ per 10 stack so can be a good gold maker as well.

Mighty Rhino Dogs
great as you a upgrading your gear as it gives that mp5 that may be an issue.
Farm Them Rhinos: Borean Tunda

Tender Shoveltusk Steak
this is my food of choice the SP is a nice boost
Farm Them Shoveltucks: Howling Ford

Cuttlesteak
This is probably a good choice once I level fishing as well
Havent farmed these yet so look up at wowhead

Heroic Violet Hold: Zuramat the Obliterator

Well I tried to PuG this last night and failed hard, mainly due to people not knowing the fight, so I thought I would summarise here.

Firstly if you dont have DBM get it! makes life easier!

This guy has three main abilities

Shroud of Darkness
This Heals him but main problem is when a player attacks him while Shroud of Darkness is up, the player will receive a debuff that decreases healing received by 20% and stacks 5 times (i.e. 5 x 20% = 100%) which means you arent going to receive any heals!

DPS STOP ATTACKING, DISPELL IF YOU CAN (or assign someone to do this if your lucky to have a dispeller in the group [magic debuff])

Void Spawns (ads)
Void Spawns will appear that throw all sorts of shadow damage around, these need to be nuked down by the person who has the DoT from the Third ability

Void Shift
A small DoT but it also allows them to attack the spawns.

I'm sure that with the right group (high dps and a dispeller) you should be able to heal through and get the achievement but it's safer to take the ads out.

In Summary this really isnt a DPS race, follow the strat and win win win

EDIT FOR DPS: I did this fight last night on my hunter, quick tip for DPS is to constantly be hitting TAB until you see target change then dps the shit out, they go down damn quick =)

Gems of Choice

These are the Gems that I use in game at this stage, I have found these to be cost effective yet useful!

Red
Runed Scarlet Ruby +19 Spell Power

Blue
Sparkling Sky Sapphire +16 Spirit

Yellow
Brilliant Autumn's Glow +16 Intellect

Meta
Ember Skyflare Diamond - +25 Spell Power & 2% Intellect

Key Bindings

It is important to have all of your "go-to" spells close so you dont need to look at your keyboard frequently (or at all hopefully)

I have other bindings but these are my main ones, however before I go into that I also recommend that you do the following:

1. Bind the Left/Right Strafe to your A/D keys respectively (this means you no longer have a turn left/right button)
2. Learn to use your mouse for quicker turning. I think I read somewhere that you can turn 3 times using your mouse in the time it takes to turn with the keyboard!

This now opens up Q and E for important spells.

My Bindings are as follows:

• 1: Nourish
• 2: Emergency Heal Macro (NS + HT see below)
• 3: Regrowth Macro
• 4: Tranquility
• Mouse Wheel Up: LB/Rejuv Macro
• Mouse Wheel Down: Swiftmend Macro (emergency heal)
• Q: Lifebloom Topup
• E: Wild Growth
• Z: Abolish Poision Macro
• X: Remove Curse
• ALT+Z: Innervate (for someone else, I also have F12 mapped to Innervate myself quickly)
• ALT+X: Cyclone

I also have the following keys bound

• F1: Health Pot
• F2: Mana Pot
• F3: Bandage (self by default)
• F4: Health Stone

I have found that I havent needed much more than that although I do use "7" through to "=" for offensive spells (some fights mean we need to do this too but mainly for dailies etc)

My Useful Macros

These are some of the useful macros that I use to make life nice and easy (that's the place anyways)

Lifebloom Stack and Rejuvination (bound to mouse wheel up)

#showtooltip Lifebloom
/castsequence [modifier:alt,target=player][target=mouseover, exists][] reset=7 Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Lifebloom

Macro can be cast on mouseover target, target, or alt-self. This macro functions as a way to have one button for the heal rotation of Lifebloom/Rejuvenation. If you click it:

• 1st time: casts Lifebloom1
• 2nd time: casts Rejuvenation
• 3rd time: casts Lifebloom2
• (cast sequence resets)
• 4th time: casts Lifebloom3

Mouseover Lifebloom

#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:alt,target=player][target=mouseover, exists][] Lifebloom; Lifebloom

Idea being while you have your mouse over your grid frame you can click to top up your stack
This can be used for all of your spells such as regrowth etc and Innervate too!

Basically the macro will;

1. Check if your hold ALT down, if so cast on yourself
2. Check if your mouseover target exists (this could be mousing over on screen or in the unit frame (like grid))
3. If neither of these give you the normal option to click on the player you want.
   

Dont be so lazy, type them out yourself!!

Mouseover Emergency Heals

#showtooltip Nature's Swiftness
/stopcasting
/cast [nomod] Nature's Swiftness
/cast [modifier:alt,target=player][target=mouseover, exists][] Healing Touch
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Healing Touch wont be used all that much because it is expensive and slow however this will cast Nature's Swiftness (making next spell autocast) and then Healing Touch. I did also add in a [nomod] variable for if you wanted to cast Healing Touch without blowing NS cooldown.

Announce and Res by Scenario

#showtooltip
/say I am resurrecting %t
/cast [combat][modifier:alt] Rebirth ; Revive

This will annouce who you are trying *1 to heal and then cast either Rebirth or Revive based on your combat type. I also added a modifier option but this was more to quickly see how long left on cooldown.

*1 I say trying because this macro isnt going to be smart enough to know if the spell was cast successfully. You could potentially change /say to a healing channel for your raid if wanted.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Help Me

/rw Upyursh is under attack!
/helpme

This one should be obvious enough, if you pull aggro it will send a Raid Warning and an emote to help. This SHOULD get your tanks attention.

Other Useful Macros for Druids
Can be found here at wowwiki

Current User Interface & Modules

This is my old User Interface, see my new one here

Modules from the top down;

• FuBar - Gives the bar up the top with various details, some of the addons I have for this include XP, Money, Friends, Guild etc etc
• SatrinaBuffFrame - Allows you to move and customise the Buff Frame.
• HotCandy - I think is a real essential for a HoT based class like druids, will track your LB stacks etc
• Grid - I use grid although HealBot is supposed to be good as well. I added a couple of Grid addons to place corner warnings for stacks etc too and invert the colors! Makes it so much easier to see who needs heals I think
• Decursive - great for single click (left or right) decursing/cure poison.
  
• PitBull Unit Frames - allows you to customise the Unit Frames etc
• RangeDisplay - displays the range of your target
  
• Dominos with ButtonFacade - Dominos is an action bar addon while ButtonFacade makes them look purty
• Minimalist - does a few things like hiding chat rubbish and buttons etc but also automates a few painful things like repairs and selling grey items.
• Minimap Button Frame - this mod is cool, it grabs all the icons around your map and puts them into a frame that you can move around.
• Autobar - is a great dynamic bar mod that will give you all you need. Very neat!
  
• Omen - Threat Meter, not as important for healers (if you know what your doing) but still good to have.
• Chinchilla - Map movement/customisation
• Recount - Damage/Healing Meters, some guilds ban these because people tend to try to top the list so use this with smarts, fact it's a great tool for breaking down your performance and comparing it to others but nobody cares too much about being up the top of the list as long as your assigns dont die!!
• Skinner - This is what makes it all look nice really and added the black bar across the bottom.
  

Other modules that arent visible but still very useful.

• Deadly Boss Mods - must have for raiding, timers and notices etc
• oRA2 - A CT_RaidAssist alternative, another requirements for raiding in most guilds
  
• QuestHelper - this is great for leveling but I recommend turning this off while raiding, can be resource hungry and cause performance issues.
• Postal - replaces and enhances the wow mail system, much better
• WIM - adds a nice chat interface for whispers similar to MSN
  
• ArkInventory - consolidates bags and also allows viewing all yours toons at the same time.
• Cartographer - world map replacement

The Gear Grind

While you are leveling your Druid you will probably be DPS spec, I went for Feral, and while grinding I picked up any Healing Gear that was an upgrade for me, this probably meant that leveling was a bit slow but it meant that I could potentially heal some normal 5 mans along the way.

Once I hit 80 I used the following page on wowhead to assist me in planning my gear.
http://www.wowhead.com/?items&filter=ub=11;gm=4;gb=1;wt=61:123:24:23:96:103;wtv=100:53:48:28:14:12

I went one step further and converted all of this into a excel spreadsheet so that while doing an instance I could quickly view what potential gear I should be rolling on or using my DKP for, but the site is a great start.

I worked my way up from doing a series of normal 5 mans and getting the odd 10 man invite if I was lucky, to running regular heroics and now 10/25 mans when I can :)