How To: Restoration Druid PvE (raid) healing in 3.2
(All Credit for this guide goes to Lissanna of the Druid Forums. The original post can be found here. Also that post is where you can find the most updated version of this guide. )
I originally started this for explaining all the new changes in the 3.1 healing patch. It is now updated for patch 3.2 druid healing. This is written at an intermediate level, where total "experts" won't find that much useful that they don't already know (since i don't go much into the theorycrafting & math), and beginners who are under level 80 and doing 5-man healing would be better off reading my leveling healing guide on restokin.com. However, if you are healing 10 or 25-man raids, this should be pretty helpful for you.
So, lets get into more of the details of what you will need to know to be a PvE raiding healer:
1. Tank healing – Nourish supported by HOTs
2. Tank healing – Lifebloom strategies
3. AOE raid healing – Wild growth and other HOTs
4. Recommended talent spec(s)
5. Glyphs for tank & raid healing
6. Set bonuses and Idols/relics
7. Consumables & enchants
See also: My blog version for slightly better format:
1. Tank healing – Nourish supported by HOTs
About Nourish: Nourish is a spell with a 1.5 base cast time. This was designed to be our flash-heal ability (heal for a moderate amount in a short amount of time).
The effect heals for 20% more (before glyphs & set bonuses) if you have a Heal over time effect (HOT) on your target. The druids have 4 HOT spells that will increase the healing effect: Regrowth, Rejuvination, lifebloom, and Wild Growth. The Tier 7 set bonus and the Nourish glyph increase the amount healed by nourish by 5% and 6% (respectively). With both bonuses, and 3 HOTs, nourish is a really incredible healing spell.
About your other healing spells for tank healing:
Regrowth: 2 second cast direct heal, with long HOT component. In 3.1, the primary use of this is to have a long lasting HOT on your tank. You are welcome to cast this HOT on more than one tank without too many side-effects if you want. No longer recommended as a direct healing spell. Let the HOT run out and then re-cast
Rejuvination: Instant cast HOT that lasts a moderate amount of time. Use this to buff nourish healing.
Lifebloom: Instant cast HOT (with a large heal “bloom” at the end). Lasts short amount of time. See lifebloom page on options for how to use it.
Swiftmend: instant-cast direct heal. Nice if you need some instant burst healing on tank.
Nature’s Swiftness + Healing Touch: large instant burst. Don’t cast Healing Touch without using Nature’s Swiftness.
Tank Healing with Nourish strategy 1: Using nourish with Tier 7 bonus and Glyph combo
-Cast three HOTs: regrowth, rejuvenation, and lifebloom. Then, cast nourish until a HOT spell needs to be re-cast (see page 2 on lifebloom strategies). You want to maintain all three HOTs because you gain 11% healing for each HOT you have on the target. With 3 HOTs, that’s a lot of extra healing your nourish will do.
NOTE: Obviously, you don’t want to use wild growth as a tank heal, unless your tank is in range for 4 other people to benefit from it, since wild growth costs more mana than you want to spend on one target. However, if you are tank healing and raid healing at the same time, and have the mana to use it, wild growth will buff the amount of healing done by nourish with T7 bonus & glyph
Tank Healing with Nourish strategy 2: Using nourish with only T7 bonus or only the glyph:
Without both bonuses, you only gain either 5% or 6% extra healing, instead of the full 11%. In that case, you have the option of dropping lifebloom entirely from the rotation – or keeping it. At a 5 to 6% bonus to tank healing, a single lifebloom by it’s self isn’t that great. However, if you have a preferred lifebloom healing strategy, then go ahead and keep using it.
Tank Healing with Nourish strategy 3: Neither T7 bonus or Glyph:
You probably shouldn’t be tank healing with a Nourish-spam healing strategy if you aren't at least willing to dedicate a glyph slot to nourish. You may just be support tank healing with HOTs or something. However, I consider the nourish glyph "mandatory" for any serious tank healing. Any HOT after your first one isn’t increasing your healing done by nourish if you skip both the glyph & the set bonus. Using at least the glyph is recommended for tank healing. You may also be able to get away with regrowth + regrowth glyph – however, you’re still better off switching out the regrowth glyph for the nourish glyph. You may also be one of those Healing-Touch spec'd healers, but I don't really have advice for that healing strategy.
2. Tank healing – Lifebloom strategies
For PvE healing, you will no longer be able to “roll” triple-stacks of lifebloom on more than one target, because you will spam yourself OOM without doing enough HPS to be worthwhile to your raid. So, these lifebloom strategies are intended for one tank target, in addition to using regrowth, your other HOTs & nourish on a tank. See section 3 for raid AOE healing strategies.
Strategy A: Traditional rolling lifebloom triple-stacks:
This is the strategy most healers have been using lifebloom for. What you do is get three lifeblooms on the target, and then refresh it before it falls off the target. If you have enough mana to do this, you will get the maximum healing out of lifebloom. However, at 800 mana for lifebloom, it costs 800x3 = 2400 mana to get the first three stacks up, and then an additional 800 mana every 9 or 10 seconds to maintain it. Over the course of one minute (~6 refreshes), this strategy will cost you: 2400 mana (initial stacking) + 4800 mana (6 refreshes) = 7,200 mana. This is only the mana cost associated with rolling the lifebloom. It doesn’t factor in ANY of the other spells you will cast during that minute (and doesn’t factor in the regen you gain over that minute), but 7200 mana is a LOT of mana just to maintain lifebloom stacks. You can reduce this mana cost through talents and items that reduce the cost of your spells. However, do not use this strategy if you are running OOM too early in the fight. If you are not running OOM, and you seem to have enough mana to spare, you can still roll 3x lifeblooms, it's just not the "be all end all heal" that it once was.
Strategy B: Slow applying the triple-stack rolling lifebloom:
Instead of immediately stacking lifeblooms at the beginning of the pull, you slowly stack it (ie. cast 1st, 9 seconds later cast 2nd, 9 seconds later cast 3rd). Then, you can maintain that stack over the course of the fight. If lifebloom costs 800 mana, this saves you 1600 mana up front compared to strategy one. Still costs 5600 mana over the course of a minute. If you’re still running OOM, then use my current favorite strategy:
Strategy C: Slow rolling & let it fall off at 3
This is my recommended strategy if you have the T7 bonus and glyph of nourish (that people now refer to as “slow rolling lifeblooms”). It doesn’t have the more constant healing that A & B have, but it maximizes the mana regen while doing the most HOT healing. How it works: Slowly stack it like strategy B (cast 1st before it falls off, refresh 2nd, before it falls off refresh 3rd). Once it has 3 stacks, let it bloom and return mana to you. Then, slowly stack it over time again, let it fall off after third application. Rinse and repeat. You also have the downside of it always having a huge triple bloom at times you can’t control that will likely mostly go to overhealing, as you aren’t timing that big bloom. Remember that you let it fall off for mana regen purposes, not because you get a bloom. If lifebloom costs 800 mana, one minute of casting costs only 2400 mana.
Strategy D: Cast it once and let it bloom.
Don’t bother maintaining stacks at all. Just wait for it to fall off and bloom, then cast it again. Wait for it to bloom. Cast it again. You get a lot of little blooms across the course of the raid, the full benefit of the mana return, it buffs your nourish, but never does very much healing on it’s own. I only recommend doing this if you have BOTH the T7 bonus and the glyph. Otherwise, use one of the other strategies. At 800 mana per lifebloom, this costs roughly the same 2400 mana that strategy C costs.
Strategy E: Forget lifebloom.
If you aren’t using the glyph and T7 bonus combo for nourish, and rolling triple stacks makes you OOM, then just don’t use lifebloom at all for tank healing, and just stick to using your other tools. I don't really recommend this, since you should still use this spell some, and the mana return (if you let it bloom) is still pretty good.
The Nicomacchus strategy:
Nic’s method is: “pretty much change nothing except realize the bloom is now a viable spike heal, and let it bloom at the refresh point if the tank needs it. ” So, a little mix of everything.
3. AOE raid healing – Wild growth and other HOTs
About your HOTs (and other spells) for raid healing:
Wild Growth: Your primary raid healing tool. Will heal 5 to 6 targets (15 yards from eachother) for a moderate amount over 6 to 7 seconds.
Rejuvination: Instant cast HOT that lasts a moderate amount of time. This is one of your primary raid heals. With the Tier 8 four piece bonus, you gain an instant tick at the beginning of the rejuv heal, which will make it your second best raid healing tool (after wild growth). With the rejuv idol, it’s your most mana efficient HOT in 3.1. Without either the idol or set bonus, it’s still a great HOT because it’s cheap and you can swiftmend it.
Lifebloom: Instant cast HOT (with a large heal “bloom” at the end). Lasts short amount of time. Not recommended as a primary raid healing tool, however there are situations were it will be useful, so use sparingly and use your best judgement on this one. The bloom will almost always be overheal in some situations. Some people like to use it, and you will get the mana return, but I don’t really recommend throwing around single lifeblooms as a primary raid heal strategy at the exclusion of other HOTs. It may be possible to maintain a lifebloom stack on tank while raid healing. It may be possible for single lifeblooms to do a fair amount of healing on the raid if they are taking consistent enough damage that you are pretty sure the bloom won't be all overheal.
Swiftmend: Instant-cast heal that requires a rejuv or regrowth on the target. Good for getting some fast burst healing on someone that already has a HOT (regrowth or rejuv) on them.
Regrowth: 2 second cast direct heal, with long HOT component. You can put this on the tanks while you are raid healing, and you can use it sparingly as a raid heal. There may be some fights with constant, or more heavy, raid damage where the long lasting HOT is powerful (ie. Saph’s frost aura in Naxx). However, please don’t spam yourself OOM by using it too much.
Nourish: Makes a great tank heal, however it doesn’t heal enough without HOTs on the target to be a primary raid heal spell. Only use nourish as raid heal if your raid healing target has HOTs on them, or really needs a direct heal to be topped off quick and regrowth or rejuv + swiftmend isn’t an option.
Primary raid healing strategy (especially with 4-piece tier 8 bonus):
Cast Wild growth every time the cooldown is up, if your targets are close enough for it to bounce to at least 3 people. Then, cast rejuvenations on anyone else taking damage. Mix in other spells using your best judgment. Just don’t spam yourself OOM using heals besides wild growth & rejuv.
When your targets are too far spread out: Just do the best you can, and avoid casting wild growth if it won’t heal enough people at the same time. You may ask to be assigned to tank healing for any fight where wild growth can’t heal enough people.
NEW: Combining tank & raid healing - Some people have found that their Ulduar healing mostly consists of putting HOTs on a tank (ie. rolling 3x lifeblooms) and then raid healing with wild growth and rejuv (with some swiftmending) between tank lifebloom refreshes. So, it is possible to go with a lifebloom tank healing strategy and then raid heal between lifebloom refreshes.
4. Recommended talent specs
There is some degree of flexibility in what specs people think are “best.” It’s really up to you (in the end) to pick a spec that YOU think will be best. Here are a couple different options I’d like to highlight. My current favorite is a more well-rounded build that allows for both tank & raid healing, however differences between all the builds are relatively minor. All builds in 3.2 should be picking up Empowered Touch now.
Nourish-focused tank healing build
What it misses is more AOE focused talents (replenish & imp tranquility). It contains Nature’s Grace and points in tranquil spirit to benefit Nourish with HOT healing the most.
Primary “Raid AOE healer” build
Contains more AOE healing bonus talents. Skips Nature’s Grace and tranquil spirit, since you won’t be using as much direct healing, and replenish will benefit you a lot.
Keeps both nature’s grace and 2 points of replenishment at the expense of tranquil spirit & improved tranquility. This more closely resembles my current build.
For a longer discussion of 3.2 talent changes, please see this post
Talents I don’t put in my PvE healing builds:
- Natural Perfection & Imp barkskin – I consider to be PvP talents.
- Naturalist – aren’t that helpful for raid end-game builds, and make better talents for intro-healing before you are level 80.
- Furor – is a balance/feral talent that happens to be in the resto tree.
- Celestial focus – this balance talent ends up costing 4 points to get 3% haste for our spells. It’s really not worth the point investment and it takes away from our better healing talents.
5. Glyphs for raid & tank healing.
All “major” healing glyph analysis:
Glyph of nourish: Nourish heals for 6% for each additional HOT on the target. If you are doing any MT healing at all, you will use this glyph for the benefits outlined in section 1 of this guide.
Glyph of Lifebloom – Increases duration of lifebloom slightly. Good if you are planning to roll lifeblooms on your target, to reduce the amount of mana it costs you.
Glyph of Regrowth – Increases healing done by regrowth if your target already has the regrowth HOT on them. This used to be my MT healing glyph. However, I’m replacing it in 3.1 with the Nourish glyph
Glyph of Healing Touch – Only okay to use if you don’t have nourish yet, in which case most of this guide doesn’t apply to you in the first place.
Glyph of rejuvenation – Requires target to be below 50%, so I don't personally like it, but other people are starting to use it for rejuv-heavy healing.
Glyph of swiftmend – Swiftmend doesn’t consume your HOT when you cast it. Nice to have if you’ve gotten the 2-piece set bonus that increases swiftmend’s healing done and/or you are using swiftmend a lot.
Glyph of Wild Growth – Increases the # of people healed by wild growth by 1 additional target. Great for healing a group of melee, assuming you have 6 people that this would heal at one time.
Glyph of Innervate – Increases the effectiveness of your innervate spell. Use this glyph if you are having mana problems.
Recommended glyphs to choose from for healing:
Nourish
Lifebloom (only if you are rolling 3x lifeblooms)
Swiftmend
Wild growth (skip this for 5-man dungeons, or if your wild growths aren't hitting 6 people in 10-mans at all. This is a great 25-man glyph. You might want the rejuv glyph or something else for smaller group healing)
Recommended glyph trio for overall healing:
Nourish
Wild Growth
Swiftmend
Minor glyphs to use:
Unburdened rebirth
Glyph of the Wild
3rd – whatever you want.
6. Set bonuses (tier 7 & Tier 8 ) along with Relic/idols for Restoration druids
Tier 7 restoration sets:
Hero’s Dreamwalker Regalia (10-man Naxx).
Valorous Dreamwalker Regalia (25-man Naxx):
* 1) The 2-piece set bonus for Tier 7 reduces the cost of lifebloom by 5%. The 2-piece tier 7 bonus is nice for saving you mana, however the 4-piece tier 8 is definitely worth trading up for.
* 2) The 4-piece set bonus for Tier 7 makes your nourish spell heal for 5% more for each HOT that is on the target. This is great for tank healing, however the Tier 8 4-piece bonus really outshines this, too. It’s about equal to the swiftmend bonus, or maybe a little worse depending on how much small-group stuff you do.
Tier 8 Restoration Sets:
Valorous Nightsong Regalia (10-man Ulduar)
Conqueror’s Nightsong Regalia (25-man Ulduar)
*1) The 2-piece set bonus for Tier 8: 10% more healing for Swiftmend. Not a great bonus on it’s own, but if people are low on health, it’s nice to be able to top them off for a big heal.
*2) The 4-piece set bonus for Tier 8: Your rejuvination instantly ticks for a normal tick amount instantly. This bonus is really awesome for raid healing, and is the most powerful set bonus.
Tier 9 restoration sets:
Totally Triumphant Malfurion’s or Runetotem’s Garb (Heroic/hard-mode 25-man token)
Triumphant Malfurion’s or Runtetotem’s Garb (Regular 25-man token & badges of triumph)
Conqueror’s Malfurion’s or Runetotem’s Garb (costs 30 to 50 badges of triumph each)
* 1) The 2-piece bonus for Tier 9: Increases your crit chance with nourish by 5%. Not great for raid healing, but pretty good for tank healing. However, it costs you the rejuv instant heal bonus, so we may be slow to upgrade to this (you may be keeping different raid & tank heal sets in your item-rack for a while). I wouldn’t trade the 25-man Tier 8 for the Conqueror’s garb, however, since the item-levels are too close to warrant loosing our best set bonus.
* 2) The 4-piece bonus for tier 9: Allows rejuvenation HOTs to crit. Probably worth trading your 4-piece Tier 8 for, especially since the stats will end up pretty much forcing you to need to upgrade your gear at some point. Definitely better than the 2-piece tier 8. It should also be interesting to see how this interacts (or doesn’t interact) with our talents.
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Idol/Relics for PvE healing
The idol of flaring growth (#4) is the best current healing idol.
1. Idol of Awakening - Reduces the mana cost of rejuvenation. This would be useful regardless of what kind of healing style you are using. In 3.1, you can buy this with Valor badges, so it will be easily accessible. This is especially really awesome when combined with the Tier 8 set bonuses.
2. Idol of lush moss - Easy to get with 10-man badges, this idol increases the HOT (periodic) portion of lifebloom (and not the final bloom). Especially for people still “rolling” lifeblooms in 3.1, this is still a viable option. Most people who are dropping lifebloom more from their rotations will skip it in favor of the rejuv one.
3. Idol of Flourishing Life - Increases healing done by Nourish. Can be bought with conqueror’s badges. Mostly rejected since our 3.1 role was raid healing. I kept using the Idol of Awakening even after this one became easily available to me.
4. Idol of Flaring growth – Your rejuv ticks give you a chance to gain 234 spell power for 9 seconds. This is an awesome bonus, as it should proc all the time, even if you only do tank healing. I’m working on upgrading to this idol once I have enough Triumph badges for it. You can gain triumph badges from the coliseum 10/25-man, or from doing heroic 5-man dungeons, so even non-raiders should have access to this in 3.2.
(All Credit for this guide goes to Lissanna of the Druid Forums. The original post can be found here. Also that post is where you can find the most updated version of this guide. )