Notes From a Resto Druid

[Neirai the Forgiven]

I do however have trouble keeping the mobs off of me. Mobs on Yesmina means death for her at this point, which means death for the group. Bear form helps, as does barkskin but both use mana. So, at this point I am working on using lower spells for lower threat.. even two spells down (with the +heal she has they still heal well).

Once again, down-scaling your spells will actually increase the amount of threat that they produce.

Let's see how this works. Remember, this is "Bad Math"... not real numbers, I'm just crunching them for the sake of an arguement.

Let's pretend that Healing Touch Rank 13 heals for 2000 damage and you have 800 extra healing because you have talents and gear. 2800 healing. The Rank 13 threat modifier is, let's pretend, 13. So the threat you generate is, ohhh, 215.4 points of threat.

Now let's pretend that HT Rank 12 heals for 1600 damage, same amount of +healing, so let's say it does 2400 healing and has a modifier of 12. The threat you generate per heal == 200 points of threat. Not bad, eh? I mean, the difference is pretty small. But let's say in the average boss fight you heal 100,000 points of damage. With rank 13, that's 7692.9 points of threat, wheras with rank 12, that's 8333.3 points of threat. Considerably higher!

Now, like I said, this is "bad math"... the numbers are probably horribly innaccurate. But the principle remains true -- with ranked-down healing spells, the amount of additional threat created by your +healing is much higher, leading to a higher chance of getting beat on.

When Atavus came to one of our ZG runs, he was using three ranks lower of healing with slightly more than 1.2k of +healing gear. Mobs would break off of everyone to come beat on him. When we got to a hard boss, he started using only one rank lower, and the problem all but disappeared. Somewhere along the lines, the lower ranks of healing created higher ranks of threat.

 

[Yesmina]

Thanks John for your post

I have to go to work, but will think through what you've said. I'll also think through my response and get back to you later.

 

[Yesmina]

Hi again This is a note to John, but also at the end I have put more notes I thought people might be interested in. Enjoy!

John, it would be very helpful to me if you would site a reference page for the threat modifiers that youre talking about.

As of right now the only modifiers I see to threat are in feral forms (ie: bears form get 30% base threat increase; 100 points of damage = 130 points of threat. this number may be slightly off).

I see a modifier for paladins that states their healing spells generate half the threat of other heals. (100 points of healing = 25 points of threat where Druids = 50).

I do have modifiers to my healing spells, but they come in the form of talent points that reduce my threat (ie: subtelty gives a 20% reduction in threat for all healing spells. So 100 points healed = 40 points of threat insttead of 50).

You suggest that each spell has its own 'threat base', so to speak, and your formulas certainly make sense if that's the case (and someone heals in the manner you were referring to). However, the only thing I have found in my research is that threat is based soley on amount healed and it can be reduced (modified) by talents.

Please don't be offended. If this information is out there, I would definitely like to look at it and I would like to post the actual numbers for it so as not to confuse players. I am always open to learn more.

Another Note

I did want to mention, as Im not always the queen of clarity, that i do not continually spam lower heals. I use them on a limited basis to heal a party member other than the main tank (mt). I use my highest rank of Healing Touch on my MT, especially if he is being crushed like a penny on a railroad track. I do use rejuvenation if their HP is staying around 80% and they just need a topper. If I see someone drop a little more I can give them regrowth and use the HoT as an opportunity to regen mana.

Sometimes I dont even use my lower ranked spells. Sometimes I dont use my HoTs. I dont always heal in the same manner for every situation. That would be silly

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Cat Form

Bear form works well to keep you alive with its big boost to armor. But if you are faced with one (not multiple) mob absolutely demolishing you, use cat form and hit cower to drop your threat. The only drawback is that its radius is only 5 yards so it wont work on ranged or casters.

While cower will reduce my threat by 600, it will cost me quite a bit of mana to use. This is unlike the priest's fade which takes very little mana, is an instant cast and works on multiple mobs (sheesh!). That being said, it's best to use feral forms in emergency situations only imo. Use it too much and youll be out of mana before you know it.

HTH someone

 

[Daire]

Id like to see this bumped..I would hate to see this hard work lost forum file cabinent of eternal darkness! I might need to refer to it..if I ever decide i want to heal again

 

[Kagnus]

I would have to browse the past patch notes, but around patch 1.11 or 1.12, Blizzard made some fundamental changes to +spell/+heal and the mechanics of spells so that lower rank spells get less of a benefit from + gear AND generate increased threat. This was mainly due to people loading up on +spell/+heal gear, using lower ranks, and never running out of mana during a boss fight and able to spam spells/heals without the fear of the tank losing threat.

This was not the intentional design that Blizz desired for boss encounters. So they changed the mechanics to make it more beneficial to use max rank heals all the time through the mechanics of both +spell/+heal gear and threat.

 

[Gaviidae]

Thanks Renee! I did my first instance as a Restodruid where we weren't overpowered for the instance and my heals really counted. Whew! It's a lot different than a fire mage.

The numbers, spells, and armor tips were very good. It'll help. I hope.

What you didn't mention and I suppose it's not druid specific but how do you watch the fight? It seems I pretty much spent the fight looking at the left of my screen watching the health bars. I put up the shift-v thing that puts the health bar above them but that wasn't overly helpful. Is there a better way to do this? What it seems I really missed was when someone would grab a bunch of aggro and their health would go down very quickly suddenly and they would die before my heal came (sorry Holly).

Also, is there a way to make the pet bars bigger? We had a pet as main tank in many fights and it was hard to watch him.

And lastly (for now), sometimes my heals didn't seem to take. I noticed once the pet, in this case, was immune. How do heals become immune? And do they get resisted?

I went through 40 things of water in Sunken Temple. Mana useage is something i'm going to have to work on.
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Peridan 70 fire mage/Hogglestock 48+ restodruid/Gaviidae 41 pallybank

 

[Daire]

What it seems I really missed was when someone would grab a bunch of aggro and their health would go down very quickly suddenly and they would die before my heal came (sorry Holly).

Yeah What is up with THAT!!!! no jk.. I was pretty much the DPS of the group,and the lowest level DPS'er. ALL of the tanks were pretty bad. What you will learn as a healer is to kind of.. 'predict' the next step and ways to help you keep your heal from having to be a HUGE heal. Such as throwing out some HOTS to keep everyone up and running.

I think renee has said something to the effect of her priority heals go to tank followed by a DPS.

On a side note, I thought you did really well healing ST, especially for the first time. To your advantage as you level, you will see and maybe even be able to improve peridans performance and AG. mgmt. by seeing the limits as a healer.

 

[Yesmina]

What you didn't mention and I suppose it's not druid specific but how do you watch the fight? It seems I pretty much spent the fight looking at the left of my screen watching the health bars

yeah.. you dont watch the fight you cant watch it. their job is to keep stuff off of you. your job is to keep them alive watch the group as a whole by watching the lefthand side.

Druids healers are masters of heal over time. HoTs are meant as PROactive heals rather than REactive heals. in other words, we heal to keep the hp bar full, to keep death at bay.. not to rush in and save from immediate death (priests do that). Our big heals are too slow for that. So stack up the HoTs do you have lifebloom yet? love it.

that being said, use swiftmend and natures swiftness. If someone is going down faster than you anticipated and youve already got rejuv on them pop off your siwftmend to use the full rejuv and then hit them with another rejuv. Rejuv is your best friend. If they dont have any HoT, hit NS and then healing touch. BAM! full health instantly. of course these have cooldowns

it takes practice to get it down, but you already sound like you know what youre doing.. youll be uber in no time!

no way that I know of without a mod to make the pets bars bigger. Tanks are priority and one DPS.. if the pet is the OT then yes you should heal him second to the tank. otherwise pets are last on the list. after rogues. haha

something handy I have done at times when im healing outside my group (like when i help a group in the ring of blood questline) is to target the mob and look who he is targeting.. and heal that person. you might find that useful sometimes too.

I went through 40 things of water in Sunken Temple. Mana useage is something i'm going to have to work on

its not mana useage you need to work on, its mana regen.. some people will say to bulk up on your int, but that will increase your crit heals which increases your aggro. a better way to do this is to gear up with mp5 and +heal. spirit is a good regen too but remember that it takes 4 spi to = 1 mp5 in combat (2 spi = 1 mp5 ooc). and in combat is where it counts.

unles its a long fight, Yesmina doesnt drink much.. have you noticed? When she is along chain pulls usually arent a problem. but she has a smaller mana pool.. well the ONLY time a big mana pool is useful is when it's full. and thats not usually during combat.

You can have a smaller mana pool but if your heals are larger, why is that a problem.. kwim? youre using less heals, therefore less mana. as long as you arent overhealing that is. and with mp5/spi your mana will regen faster. and that means less downtime.

also: innervate ticks are based on spirit, so the more spirit you have the bigger the regen ticks when you pop off an innervate

well im sleepy im probably not making much sense haha

you might want to check out my other thread HERE for my 'updated' info

Thanks for making me feel useful

ETA; oh ive never seen a pet be immune to heals.. unless it was like a yeti or something hehe.. but ill look into it

 

[Gaviidae]

On a side note, I thought you did really well healing ST, especially for the first time. To your advantage as you level, you will see and maybe even be able to improve peridans performance and AG. mgmt. by seeing the limits as a healer.

Thanks Holly. The worst part of letting you die was that I was watching you more than the others because well...I didn't really care if they died. But you either had full health or quickly had no health.

You're definitely right about it helping Peridan. Really opened my eyes to a healers role. I have threat management pretty much figured out although I'm sure I drive some healers nuts because sometimes I grab agro at the end of a fight just to burn down a mob quickly. I eat and drink after every fight so can quicky heal myself but I know healers can't simply read my mind. Not sure it'll change my gameplay much but it opened my eyes about why healers do some things and a better understanding of how a fight goes down.

Our big heals are too slow for that. So stack up the HoTs do you have lifebloom yet? love it.

No lifebloom yet. And I didn't realize I had nature's swiftness. Problem I had was that because of my low level all of my heals had to be big heals. Good to know that affects threat.

The biggest problem was that the 3 tanks we had would only hit one or two targets so any time we had more than 4 mobs all the extras came to me. I'm used to always being in a group with a mage. Very interesting seeing groups without mages. Gives me an even better opinion of the awesomeness of mages.