Treeforms Resto Druid Guide (patch 1.8)

Treeforms Resto Druid Guide (patch 1.8)

by DeathKnight042 » Wed Apr 06, 2016 4:36 am

Introduction
Greetings. My name is Treeformdps an Alliance Resto Druid on the pvp server. Im writing this guide in hopes of catching the interest of players thinking of raiding as a resto druid as well as people just starting out as a fresh level 60 wanting to raid.

I think Druids are an integral part of a raid. You wont find a guild without at least 2 or 3 resto druids. Their Hots provide essential Tank and Raid healing and their dispells are great for any MC or Chromagg encounter.

In this guide i will show you what I know as a druid, and hopefully the community can help me in fixing any errors in this guide as well. Also If any experts in theory crafting are reading this I would gladly appreciate your help in clearing any confusion about Stats.

Talents
First ill start with talents. Basically there are two ways of Playing a Resto Druid to my knowledge.

!) The Swiftmend Spec. This Spec is designed to hot up your raid and/or tank with your hots and use swiftmend. This is the current spec i am using.
Link: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#0zL0bZZxEcqeqVo

You experts might be thinking," Why take 2 points natural shapeshifter and not Improved Tranquility for the threat reduction?" I rarely find myself in a situation where i need to use Tranquility. Whereas Natural Shapeshifter will help on a fight such as Nefarion or any boss/player that uses a polymorph effect.

2) The Moonglow Spec. This spec is designed to use the Natures Grace Talent to provide faster heals with healing touch. The natures Grace Talent will reduce the cast time by 0.5 seconds after any casted spell crit. It can be a Moonfire, Regrowth, Healing Touch, Wrath, or Star Fire. With this build you can solo more than the Swiftmend build. It is also more mana efficient than Swiftmend and your mana will last longer on fights such as Chrommagus or Nefarion due to talents that reduce mana cost on your spells. With this build you might also be expected to buff thorns on your tanks due to the 3 points in Improved thorns.

Link: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#0zLxcMxsZZxxcktq

They are both great builds and i recommend you try them both.

[size=150]Your Stats and YOU![/size]
Healing+ or bonus healing
Resto Druids and all healing specs benefit from the HE+ or Healing Plus. Which is a number that increases the amount of health your heals heal for and boosts the effects of your healing spells. All of your BiS and Pre-BiS will have HE+ on it.
HE+ is bound to a healing coefficient. This coefficient is based on your heals and the cast time of your heals.

The Max Rank Healing Touch has a 3.5 base cast time without the talents so it would recieve 100% of your bonus healing. instant cast HoTs are set at a cast time of 1.5 seconds. So dividing instant cast heals by your Max Rank Healing Touch base cast time would give you a percentage of the bonus healing you have. (ugh math. ikr) So if we divide 3.5 by 1.5 it would be 43%. So your HoTs are made up of 43% of your bonus healing. Regrowth is an exception though since it is both a hot and a direct heal.

Intellect
Now this doesnt mean you stack Healing without looking at other stats either.
Take intellect for example. Every point in Intellect increases your mana. more mana means more heals which means less dead players. Every 60 points in intellect increases your Spell Crit by 1%.

Spirit
Spirit is also an important stat for a Druid. Spirit regenerates mana that was lost by spell casts. Spirit has a 5 second rule with mana regeneration. This means that your Spirit's Mana regen will not kick in until 5 seconds after a spell is cast. Spirit is based on a formula: Mana Regen= 15+(Spirit/5). The result is how much mana will regenerate per tick. Three points in the talent Reflection though lets you regenerate 15% mana while in combat though. You gain 15% more mana regen in combat with the Tier 2 Stormrage 3 set. thats 30% mana regen that bypasses the 5 second rule. So Druids benefit greatly from spirit.

Spells, Spells, Spells...
And now we come to what Spells we use. Utilizing these Spells depends on your spec and what talents you use.
But first we must talk about downranking our spells. Downranking means we use a lower rank of a spell so we dont go oom faster than a rogues sprint.

Healing Touch
Healing Touch is your main direct heal. Most druids usually use Rank 3 or 4 for mana efficiency. rank 3 having a 2.5 second base cast time and rank 4 is a 3.0 base cast time. With Improved Healing Touch their cast times are reduced by .5 seconds.

Rejuvenation
Rejuvenation is our main HoT. It Is used on tanks as well as the whole raid. It is an instant cast heal that lasts for 12 seconds. Most Druids will use Max Rank of this spell due to its healing. Its not recommended that you spam this spell all over the place as it can oom you relatively quickly.

Regrowth
Regrowth is both a direct heal and a hot. healing the target after being cast and healing over time. I use regrowth in almost every fight in raids. I usually down rank my regrowth to rank 5. If you find Rank five is too mana hungry you can down rank to 3. Form what i've heard rank 3 is a safe bet for regrowth, especially with the 50% crit with . Regrowths Hot lasts for 21 seconds.

Swiftmend
This spell is restricted to the swiftmend spec. It is an instant cast spell that equals the effect of a full rejuv or 18 seconds of regrowth. It requires you to have a rejuv or a regrowth on the target. Funny thing is that its not restricted to just your hots. it can be triggered with other druids hots too. so your druid friends can boost your healing without them even knowing... unless they pay attention to their raid frames hehe.

Natures Swiftness
Natures Swiftness is an instant cast talent in the restoration tree that Makes your next spell cast instant. I use it mainly as an emergency panic heal button and then use Rank 10 Healing touch, or i use it to make rebirth an instant cast Brez. Speaking of...

Rebirth
Your one and only rez. Cool down lasts 30 minutes. Your raid leader might call out a player that died for you to rez.

Gift of the Wild/Mark of the Wild
Your Class Buff. duration is 30 minutes. Increases armor by 285 and all attributes by 12 and increases resistances by 20. Has an increased duration to 60 minutes with Gift of The Wild.

And Thats it. These Spells will Carry you through most of your Vanilla Career as a Resto Druid.

Lets Talk about Best in Slot and Enchants
This will be a short section as there is an exceptional List by the Druid Taladril on the Forums. I will just make some recommendations on what type of weapons you wield. Staves vs. MH/OH.

Druids benefit greatly from Main Hand/ Off Hand. This means competing with our Paladin/Shaman friends. While Priests Sit on their throne with their fancy Benediction. Maces such as Lok'amir(84 healing) or Jin'dos Hexxer(51 healing) are amazing maces that will increase your healing greatly. The best Off hand at the moment is Alterac Valleys Lei of the Life Giver. it gives you 53 healing. Adding that to one of the two maces i mentioned makes their combination better than most staves combined excluding enchants. Well thats all I wanted to mention.

You will need a staff that is high in Spirit though when you need to innervate yourself. Will of Arlokk is a great example of a high spirit staff.

Ill put the Link for the List Here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... U/pubhtml#
Happy hunting :) .

Enchanting your gear
These Are the Best Enchants For your gear:
Weapon : 55 Healing
+20 spirit for your high spirit staff.
Head: Animists Caress
Shoulder: Exalted ZG Enchant.
alternative:Argent Dawn revered Enchants
Chest: 100 mana or +4 stats
Bracers: 24 healing
Gloves: Mount Speed
Legs: Animists Caress
Feet: Movement Speed.
(Most people take some stat for feet such as spirit or stamina. I prefer Movement Speed. To each their own.)

Advanced Tips
Here are some tips when raiding.
1. Learn your boss fights well. It will help you to anticipate the damage and heal accordingly before any nasty priest or paladin/shaman gets the better of you. We call this precasting. Think of it like a guessing game of damage.

2. Most guilds have healing assignments where you may be asked to heal a tank. this does not mean that you just heal that tank. If and when your tank is at near full health, you can float around some. throw a hot here or there around your raid. just be sure to know who it is you are healing or else the tank could die due to a cleave when hes at low health.

3. Have fun. Just have fun playing this class. you are a druid. You can be a bear, a cat, or a retarded seal(arf arf).

Addons
Here are some of the Addons I use. To me these Addons are essential to my raiding Experience.

Luna Unit Frames
Luna unit frames in my opinion is the best Unit frame addon out there. It has a click cast feature which allows you to click on a player in your raid and use a heal or decurse on them.

KTM
I know mostly DPS use this but it is useful for a healer too. never know when your heals aggro the boss hehe.

Detox
A good decurse addon. Can put a certain class on priority. Reccomended over decursive.

La Vendetta or Big Wigs
Both are good boss mods. Personally Big wigs is a safe choice because i have been told that some timers are not right. when using La vendetta

Super Macro
Absolute must for any class imo. Better than Blizzards in every way.

SW_Stats
I find this is what most people use as a Healing or Damage Meter. Its always good to check where you stand within your guild.

Theorycraft
Helps to know how much your heals actually heal for. this addon will calculate your healing with certain spells.

Atlas&AtlasLoot
I usually use this for its wishlists. Helps me know what gear i still need to get. And its a neat Wardrobe Addon too.
Outfitter
I use this addon to switch weapons or to switch certain gear for fights. Would reccomend it.

Macros
Macros are an essential part for any class. Druids most definately. SuperMacro is needed for one.

Combat rez. Announces your target so you and the other druid dont end up wasting a rebirth.
/y Combat-res on %T !
/cast Natures Swiftness(optional)
/cast Rebirth(Rank 5)

Innervate. Yells who you are innervating while casting it.
/y Innervate on %T !
/cast Innervate

A good rejuv macro so you dont end up overwriting your partners HoTs.SuperMacro needed
/run local check=true; for i=1,32 do if UnitBuff("target",i)~=nil then if string.find(UnitBuff("target",i),"Spell_Nature_Rejuvenation") then check=false; end end end if check==true then CastSpellByName("Rejuvenation(Rank 10)"); end

Natures Swiftness+ Healing Touch.
/cast Nature's Swiftness
/cast Healing Touch(Rank 11)


Conclusion
And there you have it. My healing guide for this patch and beyond. Hopefully this guide can make a decent druid out of you and help to improve later on. I had alot of fun making this guide and would like to see it be a successful one. I will check this guide from time to time to check for any suggestions or errors pointed out by you fibe people of the community. I wish you luck on your travels and challenges.

Elune Watch Over Us
Earthmother Guide Us
Last edited by DeathKnight042 on Thu Apr 07, 2016 2:58 am, edited 11 times in total.
Treeformdps- S I X Swiftmend Spec Druid- Nostalrius PvP.

Went in as a shitter, came out as a Druid.
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Re: Treeforms Resto Druid Guide (patch 1.8)

by DeathKnight042 » Wed Apr 06, 2016 4:37 am

If there is more i need to add i will. dont be afraid to critique. :D

Edit: Changed +3 stats to +4 stats. my bad :)

Edit: Due to the Shutdown of Nostalrius I will not be continuing this guide. Id like to say thanks to the comments and you Readers for taking an interest in this guide. It was a fun ride.

"When one door closes, another opens."
Last edited by DeathKnight042 on Thu Apr 07, 2016 6:36 am, edited 2 times in total.
Treeformdps- S I X Swiftmend Spec Druid- Nostalrius PvP.

Went in as a shitter, came out as a Druid.
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Re: Treeforms Resto Druid Guide (patch 1.8)

by Shiggys » Wed Apr 06, 2016 12:30 pm

Hi Deathknight,

Which rank of Rejuvenation should I use in Raids? Just max Rank? Or can I also downrank this one after a certain point of Bonusheal?

Also, what kind of Bonus heal number should I aim for, before trying to get into LBRS/UBRS Groups? First time I ever play healer, and I dont wanna be that guy that sees his poor group mates die because I dont know exactly if I am ready or not.
Shiggys
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Re: Treeforms Resto Druid Guide (patch 1.8)

by Finalfurashu » Wed Apr 06, 2016 2:17 pm

DeathKnight042 wrote:If there is more i need to add i will. dont be afraid to critique. :D

make a tl;dr
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Re: Treeforms Resto Druid Guide (patch 1.8)

by CovertFox » Wed Apr 06, 2016 2:47 pm

Finalfurashu wrote:
DeathKnight042 wrote:If there is more i need to add i will. dont be afraid to critique. :D

make a tl;dr


If ally is Dead and class in ('Priest','Paladin') then cast rebirth rank 5
else if ally is alive and health < (100%) then heal shit.
CovertFox
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Re: Treeforms Resto Druid Guide (patch 1.8)

by Undertanker » Wed Apr 06, 2016 7:14 pm

Few things here.

+4 stats chest. / 150 mana (if that one is out yet). It's a guide, not a discount shopping list.

Mention Regrowth R3 as well. Especially if you are specced 50% regrowth crits.

Mention to obtain a high spirit stat staff with +20 spirit enchant for when you need to self innervate.

With Swiftmed - mention WHEN to use it. Swift is always mana intensive and forgoing moonglow you have to save where you can. It is beneficial to wait right before a HoT falls off to use this ability so you get the full duration of healing from your HoT + the healing from the ability. This is where a recommendation of having timers enabled for your friendly target HoTs.
Undertanker
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Re: Treeforms Resto Druid Guide (patch 1.8)

by DeathKnight042 » Wed Apr 06, 2016 8:58 pm

Undertanker wrote:Few things here.

+4 stats chest. / 150 mana (if that one is out yet). It's a guide, not a discount shopping list.


Whoops seems i made a mistake on the stats enchant. The 150 mana enchant is restricted to Leg or head. 100 mana seems to be the only mana chest enchant.
Treeformdps- S I X Swiftmend Spec Druid- Nostalrius PvP.

Went in as a shitter, came out as a Druid.
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