Big changes for druidsFollow

I think I'm disappointed because I got a different impression of Ghostcrawler's triage vision.

Was under the impression that we'd have to decide who to heal and who not to heal - for a bit. Imagine my impressions summed up as two short internal monologues:

Pre-expansion impression

"Oh, tank and random DPS took damage, I'll heal the tank first and then the DPS if he takes more damage"


Post-expansion impression

"OH SHI- my tank is dying - RIGHT NOW! - and so is everyone else, but my biggest heal has a 2-second cast time and what's even worse, I'M ALREADY SPAMMING IT!"

It just feels horrible. Probably the least gentle transition in a game I have ever witnessed, including Sony's New Gaming Experience which literally tore Star Wars Galaxies apart in a frothing blood frenzy.

It's not that healing is hard. Most boss fights look something like this:

Lifebloom x 3
Nourish
Nourish
Nourish
- OOC proc -
Regrowth
Swiftmend
Nourish
Nourish
Nourish

It's mind-numbingly simple. The issue is when someone suddenly stands in fire or gets hit by the boss' random "I'll pwn you now" ability. While the triage intention is for you to evaluate whether saving that DPS is better than keeping the tank secure, the reality is more like:

Lifebloom x 3
Nourish
Nourish

"OH SHI-!"

Regrowth
Regrowth
Swiftmend
Regrowth
Tree of Life
Lifebloom fades.

"F*CK!"

Rejuvenation
Rejuvenation
Lifebloom x 3
Healing Touch
Healing Touch

"FFS OMG FML!"

Barkskin
Tranquility

- Wipe -

It's pretty funny when you think about it. And yet, it makes me sad.

Not that I liked the sudden death approach in WOTLK raiding and TOC either, but it did take the pressure off of me. If the tank got fragged by some special ability and we wiped, I'd blame it on lag and my inability to predict the immediate future. Now, groups take maybe a minute to wipe, but the wipe was destined to happen from the moment something went wrong. Like a snowball that starts rolling down a mountain. It forces the healer to fight an uphill battle for a minute or more before folding. A minute of uphill battling that ends in failure easily puts a player on a tilt. It breaks him or her down mentally and tensions arise in the group chat.

It gets even worse if the tank or DPS don't realize this new play style. They'll start ******** at the healer, accusing him or her of slacking, when in reality the outcome of the fight was determined the moment some DPS stood in a fire and the healer decided to heal him instead of the tank, thus allowing, say, Lifebloom, to fall off the tank and put the snowball in motion.

Feels ridiculous to know that this will end in a wipe, and there's nothing you can do about it, except try to toss out heals until you all die.

I can't say I use Nourish anymore at all. It just feels like a waste of time. Same HPM as HT, but worse HPS, and both refresh LB now...

It's more like:

LB+RJ on tank
Swiftmend tank on CD
Wild growth + Efflorescence for DPS
Healing Touch for tank heals
Touch up DPS with RG/HT when OOC procs

If it gets much worse than that I'm not going to be able to handle it anyway, so I just do the best I can. Tranquility gives me one chance to "reset and start over" but it's only used if I feel we'll push through. If I see things about to head south early I can hit Tree, but I have a hard time using it to "save" a bad pull. It's so clunky as a response to a bad situation. In my experience at least, if I don't hit tree early enough to get a few extra LBs rolling before I need the extra healing, I quickly blow through all my mana.

But I've mostly been running half-PuG'd normals with guildies, so it's not really stressful at all.

Edited, Jan 27th 2011 10:27am by someproteinguy

That's my thought at least... *shrugs*



Slightly old numbers with my crappy gear; but still more or less valid. RJ's HPM is better now, and the Nourish number doesn't include keeping a HoT on (as I understand it). Still I asked myself this, how many times did I get myself in trouble in the middle of a Nourish cast? Especially considering that it heals for so little, and is only about 18% more efficient than just hitting HT; but only if you have a HoT up.

I mean if Nourish was enough to keep the tank up, or had HPM more along the lines of Swiftmend or Lifebloom, or if HT didn't refresh LB, I'd make use out of it. But as it stands the efficiency gains are so minimal while spamming, it hardly seems practical.

Also I asked myself what I'd be doing in the time I was waiting to cast HT rather than spamming Nourish. Most of the time I'm either standing there and recharging mana, or topping off the DPS if needed, or moving to a better position. If I'm recharging mana while waiting to cast HT, that kind of cancels out the efficiency gains of Nourish. If I'm healing DPS, chances are they'd be getting to dangerously low health during a Nourish cast. If I'm moving, that means I'll be in better position later if stuff hits the fan. The downside, of course, being that my LB timer isn't being constantly reset.

I dunno, Nourish just doesn't seem to have a lot going for it anymore.

Edited, Jan 27th 2011 11:20am by someproteinguy

I should get myself a HoT meter. My bane right now seems to be losing Lifebloom.

Just healed a regular dungeon and had two cases of fail. Identical for both cases was a lack of time to heal everyone. I was at 80% mana when we wiped both times. My HPS simply wasn't high enough.

Of course, the other similarity might have been a fail DPS and a fail tank. To quote the tank "No, I don't use Word of Glory. I don't see why I should."

Oh man.

I can't say I have a lot of over-heal with HT. With tanks running around with like 120k health I can wait to cast until HT will give me no over-heal and they'll still be at 75% of max health. That feels like it's still in the safe zone to me at least.

I suppose I don't mean to totally discount Nourish. Efficiency is efficiency, and 18% more doesn't hurt. It's still on my bar and I use it at times; but really it's bound to '7' now, way over there on the right. ----> keep going... ----> further ---> about here.

Clarity Edit: If the difference is between casting 3 nourishes or standing there picking your butt for 5.5 seconds and casting a Healing Touch; with a stack of LB rolling, sure you'll be ahead with Nourish spam. Ahead by about 18% if there's no over-healing either way. But if there's anything else to do in those 5.5ish seconds, you have to ask yourself if you're really better off rooted in place spamming a weak heal on the tank or if you should be getting something else done in that time, and casting a HT with a relatively minor loss to mana efficiency.

Judgment call to be sure, but how often are you standing there for 5-6 seconds with only the tank taking damage?



My indicator turns red when I have 1 second left to start my Healing Touch/Nourish cast.

I lose it sometimes too. But most of the time if it falls off, the DPS were having a lot more problems then the tank, and a Tranq. tends to be just around the next corner anyway...



Grid or GTFO.

Edited, Jan 27th 2011 12:45pm by someproteinguy

I've used grid, it's fine, but HB is better for hots.

I'll get one when I'm not at work. Maybe tonight, but more likely tomorrow.

google came up empty for good SS of hots. :(

Maz, Quartz still exists and still works well, hell I use it and that should tell you enough.

Edit: Protein, safesearch is your friend.

Edited, Jan 27th 2011 11:26pm by Aethien

Which is more than fine for heroics, especially with 346 gear, but when you get to raids and its like "By the way, remember when we said healing would slow down? We were kidding. EVERYONE IS TAKING DAMAGE HEAL THEM NOW!!!", it's fustrating. At least in five mans its pretty black and white - you **** up, you die, I alone am in control of healing. When you toss the other two healers, tank CDs, exactly how much of this raid damage is avoidable, etc. in it starts to feel hopeless. Especially given the lack of tools we have that aren't necessarily mana-efficient, but rather that don't drain my mana to empty in times of need.

It was fun to be out of mana at the end of a Deadmines boss fight back when I was gearing up and feel accomplished for making it. It's fun to see DPS low but be able to ignore it or toss a RJ their way because you know you're the only one healing and they aren't at any great risk. It's not fun to have to blow through all my mana because we got Magmatron and Electron up at the same time, and then be stuck playing catch-up until we inevitably wipe - essentially due to our healer comp.

Im using vuhdo for heals. Once you adjust it, works like a wonder.

I wanna see Mazra ******** about healing after he tries healing Halfus.
And I`m not even saying he has to have the worst drake combo. The easiest one is hard on heals for the first 5 to 10 wipes already.

"Okay, let me roll LB"
Tanks pulls.
"Oh **** his health is almost gone, wtf, he just pulled, RG + SW and RJ. Ok, ************* Shadow Nova, someone interrupts that. LB to renew, Oh god the other tank activated the drake, TL. keeping 2 tanks up and helping shammy with raid: LB, LB, WG, RG+SW, LB, HT, RG, WG, RG, HT, LB, HT, HT, LB, RG+SW, HT, HT, **** my mana, Innervate, WG, RG+SW, HT, HT..................okay we only have one tank now, I can go dps and Pally and Shammy will keep tank and raid up."


If you get the worst combo, its that but with less effective healing because of stacking Mortal Strike througout the hole fight that takes a lot to fade.

I posted some videos on youtube of me healing some 10man bosses. You can see how I use vuhdo there.
This is Halfus:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiuJsGkUDGY


Yeah, yeah, I`m not your best healer around. I`m a moonkin at heart, I`m just filling a healer spot that we were lacking. Yesterday we killed Maloriak with me dpsing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Rvnc5lO_DY

And, yeah, I made a lot of mistakes. =p


Edited, Jan 28th 2011 6:25pm by Brisin