Welcome to the Halls of Origination ... you're healing.

I finally got my Cataclysm Beta working again after downloading an extra 2GBs of content.

It was time to take the plunge and try my hand at healing a dungeon. I found myself quite apprehensive. As much as I’m confident healing on my Restoration Druid I very rarely heal random PUGs on live. I usually prefer to heal for my friends and guildies. So it took a bit of courage to branch out and heal a PUG with a completely new – and untested – talent build and a shaky knowledge of my (now much changed) healing spells.

I hadn’t played this Druid from 80 to 85. I had a premade level 85 Druid in a peppering of greens with a couple of blues that I had taken for a quick tour of Deepholm and Uldum to unlock the dungeons in those zones. I queued up and within a couple of minutes (before I had a chance to chicken out and Leave Queue) I found myself standing in Halls of Origination (Level 84-85).

Halls of Origination

After a brief moment of panic I reminded myself of Blizzard’s propaganda: Restoration Druids who already use more spells than Wild Growth and Rejuvenation won’t find the new style of healing difficult. Since I still use Regrowth, Lifebloom and Nourish quite frequently I figured I might be one of the lucky ones. How hard could this possibly be?

Before I could think any further into it the tank had pulled and we were off!

Within 2 trash packs I was completely out of mana. I started out healing in a similar fashion to what I would do in a dungeon today. Full HoTs on the tank with a smattering of Rejuvenations and Wild Growth for the party. I quickly discovered this was simply not feasible unless you have a patient tank who is willing to let you drink between trash pulls, and even with a patient tank you couldn’t pull this type of healing off on a lengthy boss fight. The Druid tanking my run was an efficient type, and was steadily moving forward as he pulled trash groups.

After realizing I was completely out of mana I reached for my Innervate and sprinted off to catch up to the tank. As he pulled the next batch of mobs I got a large shock: the effects of Innervate were barely noticeable to look at my mana bar. I actually thought for a few seconds that I might not have actually used the spell. I was forced to heal lean and mean. The DPS were left to fend for themselves, the tank only got Lifebloom and Rejuvenation. To my surprise this was fine for trash. Blizzard really did follow through on their promise that tanks would be taking steady damage.

As we continued on I experimented with my arsenal of level 85 Restoration spells to get a gut feel for numbers and what was working vs what wasn’t useful. These are mainly gut feelings that I had based on just one dungeon run and then reviewing the combat parse I logged.

Mana

I had a mana pool of approximately 68 000. I thought this was quite large but I chewed through it incredibly quickly. Gone are the days of spamming/pre hotting targets unless it’s really, really necessary.

Innervate is either broken or needs some tweaking. I really didn’t notice any mana returns and found it pretty worthless. This is quite sad considering how much more useful it could now be that we actually have mana issues.

Lifebloom

It’s going to take me a while to remember that Lifebloom can only be cast on one target.

In the heat of AOE damage I often found myself casting Lifebloom on DPS which meant that the tank automatically lost his stack. This was really frustrating because I had just wasted some of my precious mana and now had to recast it on the feral druid.

As much as I like the new addition to Tree of Life – you can cast Lifebloom on multiple target while Tree of Life is active – I also am worried about how I’ll adapt to that. I think it might take me awhile to get a handle on the single target vs multiple target thing especially considering what a short period Tree of Life is active for.

Nourish and Healing Touch

Just didn’t cut it. Really didn’t cut it.

I had read a post from Restokin (prior to the Nourish nerf mind you) where approximately 27% of her overall heals were Nourish based. I was expecting to cast this a lot and while I did try it out I found myself cancel casting more often than not because it was both too slow and too weak to spend any mana on.

My average Nourish hit for 5993 health. The single time it crit, it hit for 10262 health. When your average DPS has over 70 000 health and your tank as 110 000 health this just pathetic. Add to this a slow cast time and I panicked often that my target was going to die mid-cast.

Healing Touch wasn’t much better. The cast time felt even slower again (it isn’t but it sure felt like it!) and it hit for an average of 11 892 health. I was really disappointed, I thought they wanted to make Healing Touch useful for Resto Druids? Perhaps in a raid situation where I can spam direct heals on a single target this may be useful however I’m quite skeptical.

Rejuvenation

I ran with this build. I think in a raid situation, I would change the top tier talent to Naturalist instead of Blessing of the Grove, but I wanted to try out the increased Rejuvenation healing talent while in a 5 man group.

Rejuvenation did the majority of my healing overall coming in at 30%. Based on the number of casts, Rejuvenation healed more with less over healing than the same number of Lifebloom x 3 stacks. I think in its current form I will still be relying on Rejuvenation quite a bit during AOE damage.

AOE Healing/Tank Healing

For the first time in my healing life I felt quite weak when there was AOE damage hitting the entire group.

Don’t get me wrong, Restoration Druids have an arsenal of spells that are designed to handle incoming AOE damage. I just didn’t have the mana to really use it. I learned quite quickly to stop trying to keep everyone at 100% health. Instead I was simply grateful to keep the party at about 50% health and have no one die.

The AOE intensive fights left me completely and utterly out of mana. Each time I thought “that’s it we’re going to wipe because I have no more mana” the boss would die and I would sigh in relief. I alternated between Rejuvenation and Wild Growth HoTing and when off cool down, jumped for the new Tree of Life for these moments.

Tank healing was much easier. In Wrath of the Lich King tanks get hit hard and in level 80 dungeons I often find myself rolling full HoTs on the tank and then jumping back in with a Nourish during large damage spikes. In Halls of Origination, a Regrowth, Rejuvenation and Lifebloom stack was ample at keeping the tank steady and often at full health.

Efflorescence

Efflorescence seemed pretty neat, except for one teeny, tiny problem: the final spell animation isn’t currently implemented in Cataclysm Beta. Instead Efflorescence appears as a big green blob on the ground. My party members kept running out of it thus totally defeating the purpose. But I can understand why they ran. I have to admit even I ran out of it first it popped up. I wasn’t until I started noticing the Efflorescence ticks on my screen that my brain linked the cause and effect correctly – then I ran into every Efflorescence I could!

Sadly World of Logs didn’t record data for Efflorescence so I couldn’t tell how effective it was however I’m quite excited by it and am glad that the radius has been increased to 8 yards and we have a little bit more control over its placement with the change to Swiftmend proccing it.

The New Tree of Life

Well we still have the same Tree Form model for Tree of Life. So much for looking like one of the cool Argent Defender trees in Darnassus.

The Tree of Life buff was actually very useful especially for oh shit, I don’t know how much incoming damage is going to come in… everyone is getting low on health moments.  Having instant Regrowths were especially cool even with a very reduced HoT timer. My major problem with Tree Form is that it made me OOM so quickly that I then had to really pay attention for the remainder of the fight.

I am still concerned that Tree Form will just not be used once you get a bit of gear and that still makes me quite sad.

Healing Summary

Overall, even though I struggled and had some minor freak outs moment, doing this dungeon was good for me.

Even with the nerfs and mana issues I still really enjoyed the feel of Druid healing even if I’m no longer a dorky, adorable, tree. I was also really happy that with all the complaints about dungeon difficulty (too hard!) on the beta forums, my group got through the entire instance with no deaths and no wipes. Perhaps I was really lucky and got 4 quite experienced people or just maybe healing has been tuned to work quite well for each level of difficulty.

Leveling up I would expect to have mainly greens with a few blues mixed into the pile, so I think my premade Druid was a pretty good representation of how most healers will be geared when they enter Halls of Origination.

While I juggled and ended most boss fights without any mana left, part of me thinks isn’t that a job well done? I used all the abilities I have as a Druid and got through it without any deaths with the mana I had available to me. What more can you really ask from an encounter or a healer?

It's not by coincidence that I'm posing in a graveyard

I tried. I really did. I waited until I had gathered more than 200 Emblems of Triumph and bought my Tier 9 set to see if it would make a difference. It didn’t. I still struggle to heal as a Restoration Shaman. I’m always a step or two behind the rest of the party. I’m looting mobs from the last pull. I’m drinking. I’m 10 yards out of range.

I’m pretty sure that it’s not the spec at fault – it’s me.

Even though I gave up on the Shaman a few months back I didn’t stop reading all the Restoration Shaman blogs that I have subscribed to. I think I was still looking for an answer, convinced that I had missed some crucial “rotation” or combination of spells, which would explain why I was so bad at playing this spec.

All that reading has paid off. I think I know why I couldn’t play the Restoration Shaman. It’s because I played a Discipline Priest first. My approach to healing with the Shaman was warped.

Why am I giving up on the Shaman? I think it comes down to two problems: no mobility and no damage prevention.

Riptide is the only instant heal available to a Restoration Shaman. And it’s on cooldown. That means that it’s the only spell I can cast to heal you while I’m moving. If we all need to run out of something nasty, I have to wait until I’m in the clear, then start up a Chain Heal or Lesser Healing Wave, then 2 seconds later you will get receive said heal.

If we all need to run out of something as my Priest I have 4 “instants” at my disposal. I can Renew (which I swear is more powerful than a Riptide tick) or send you 1 tick of Penance. I can hit you with Prayer of Mending and instantly heal you for a huge amount or I can Power Word: Shield you for an instant 2k+ heal (and that’s just from a glyph!) and then effectively pause your dropping health bar until I can fire off a party heal or a full Penance or Flash.

A Lesson from Pit of Saron

At about the time I was giving up on Restoration I was fortunate enough to be grouped up with a Restoration Shaman for Pit of Saron while I was playing Cassandri as DPS. I ran the instance with our healer set as my Focus target. I was open minded – perhaps here was my chance to learn how to play from another player, spell for spell.

As we approached the first boss I wondered how the Shaman was going to heal this. I can’t imagine a fight more difficult to heal as a Shaman. Lots of movement. And party members need to be spread out to avoid the rock throw which means that Chain Healing isn’t an option. As least we had Frost Resist Totem.

We wiped.

This is how I approach this fight as a Shadow Priest:

AoE off the boss to kill his adds at the start. DPS the boss until he has thrown a few rocks. When he goes to forge a weapon, run behind a rock to line of sight him. Your debuff is probably around 10-13 stacks by now. As soon as the debuff wears out, run back out to try and refresh Shadow Word: Pain before it expires. Wait til he forges a new weapon (around another 13 stacks), run behind a rock to LoS him.

The Shaman blamed the group for the wipe: “You didn’t LoS enough. You can’t let it get to 10 stacks!”

In every other run I’ve done we’ve all waited until the weapon forging – usually every second rock throw or so – before dropping the stacking debuff. Right or wrong, this means that every other healer that I’ve played with during the previous 20 runs or so could manage to heal through about 13 stacks of the debuff: Druids, Priests and Paladins.

On the second attempt we huddled and LoSed the boss after every single rock throw which gave the Shaman just enough time to get off two chain heals while we were stacked. Our health bars remained in the 30-60% range the entire fight. In the end I helped heal. My Shadowfiend and Dispersion won us the kill. Everyone else was dead.

I do think that fight is particularly punishing to Shaman. But the experience further cemented in my mind that other Restoration Shaman, not just me, struggle to keep green bars full in instances.

The Dungeon Finder Mentality

The players who run Wrath of the Lich King heroics are not approaching combat with the same mentality as my groups did when I first started healing as my Restoration Shaman in Naxxaramas/Tier 7 days.

In one of my first blogs for HoTs and DoTs I talked about how easy/difficult I found each of the Wrath Heroics to complete while healing as my brand new Restoration Shaman. I concluded by the end, when I was wearing all the ilvl 200 Epic faction rewards and Epic Heroic drops, that I was now over-geared for Heroics. How times have changed!

My party would listen to me when I said that they needed to group up around me for Chain Heal. They listened to me if I asked for a mana break. They declared “good job!” if I struggled to heal through a boss but somehow kept us from wiping. Even back then I struggled the most with heavy movement fights like Telestra (Nexus) and the Collusus (Gundrak).

These days tanks will not wait until I’m in range before pulling. Tanks will not wait while I regain my mana. Party members believe that it’s ok to stand in Flamestrike and be healed through it. Party members believe that if you want to stop in order to drink, you’re a bad healer. Party members believe that if everyone’s health bar is under 20% when the boss dies that you’re a bad healer.

Warped Thinking

It’s not so much that I’ve been spoiled playing the Discipline Priest (or maybe I have, they are pretty cool), it’s just that the way I approach healing is warped.

Discipline feels very aggressive to me, almost devious. You can quickly throw out a huge series of instant casts: shield, shield, shield, Prayer of Mending, Renew and then have a nap in the corner. Or better yet, skip the nap and hit “f” and Penance and suddenly you’re DPSing the enemy with your healing spells. Or you can just wade right into melee distance and Holy Nova while you run in circles like a mad man: healing and dealing damage at the same time instantly.

There’s a type of insanity to Discipline which I love. And it’s the only reason I hold a tiny amount of love for PVP in my heart – because this spec is so suitable for the battlefield mindset. One moment you might be struggling to keep you and three other friendlies around you alive and then the next moment you’ll realise that your teammates need a bit of help in order to finish off that enemy Paladin … and so you help bring him down with a fast Penance followed up by Shadow Word: Death. (And we all know that, just like a murloc,  if you leave a Paladin with less than 10% health he’ll run away only to return with 5 of his friends looking for revenge – and with a full health bar too.)

I think a Discipline Priest enters combat, and builds healing threat, slowly. We can enter combat with our “heals” already in place. We have a bit of time before our Prayer of Mending goes off. In the Burning Crusade that Prayer of Mending heal threat wasn’t even attributed to the Priest, it was attributed to the healed target. Most of the time that first bounce would be attributed to the tank thus helping them build threat at the start of a pull. I’m used to having a few seconds to myself at the start of combat to orient myself and get into a good position before I need to start casting.

Priests are encouraged to take breaks while healing – we’re not built to spam cast one or two spells without pause for the entire duration of a boss fight. The Priest heals selectively, casting the right spell on the right target at the right time. They are encouraged to take pauses and conserve their mana pool. I believe, although I’m no expert, that this might be what Blizzard are getting at when they say that Discipline needs some work to be ideal single target healers – they can do some amazing things to mitigate incoming damage, but they can’t deliver their heals at the same steady, sure pace that a Holy Paladin can. A few seconds without heals and your tank can be dead. And a tick of Renew ain’t gonna cut it.

I believe I’m guilty of not adapting my approach to suit my Restoration Shaman. Perhaps I need more time away from the Priest, as Discipline anyway, before I should try Restoration again.

I think I would be better served spam healing my targets before they take damage instead of losing precious seconds at the start of combat. I think I need to stop trying to get into the “ideal” position and instead make do with wherever I happen to be when combat commences. I think I need to get heals on my tank (small ones perhaps) as they’re still picking up adds, instead of waiting until I’m sure they have them all neatly standing in one spot. I think I need to treat my spells as a “rotation” get into the habit of casting a set sequence instead of waiting to read the situation, then determining which spell to cast, and then casting it. I think I need to stop worrying about mana conservation and overhealing.

I think I need to work at being a bit more steady, a bit more predictable. I think the only way to “proactively” heal is to make sure that I always have heal about to land.

Do you think I’m on the right track?

Thank God for Dual Specialisation

Well all this reflection has been motivating. It’s been months since I healed as my Shaman. I haven’t completely given up on Restoration, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the healing spec for me.

At the moment I’m giving Xata a second chance by using her secondary spec: Elemental. But my adventures as an Elemental Shaman are a topic for another day, I think!

Ancient of War in Zangamarsh: The new Tree of Life?

OK it creeps me out a teeny bit when I write a post about how I personally envision things changing… and then I read a short paragraph from Blizzard that sounds eerily familiar.

Now all I need it my “Rampaging Tree Bash” spell and I’ll be a happy Elf.

ps. This is the third time (1 & 2) something we’ve suggested at HoTs and DoTs has become an official change – how freaky is that?!

How about this for the new Tree of Life artwork?

So I’ve calmed down a little bit since first reading that Blizzard intends to remove Tree of Life as a Druid shapeshift form. But a glimmer of hope still remains – there’s a small chance that the new version of Tree of Life might be even cooler than being a tree 100% of the time (ok, a very, very small hope glimmer).

Maybe Blizzard will manage to implement it in a totally cool and wonderful way that will make turning into a tree even more special than it is now. Perhaps there are ways to lose permanent Tree of Life form without totally sacrificing our identity as Restoration Druids.

I’m not the only one thinking about it either. As I was thinking about this topic Keeva, Beru and a veritable forest of trees have been writing on the same topic.

The Good

I’m not part of the Class Changes Department at Blizzard (or whatever it’s called) but I’ve come up with some ideas for the new Tree of Life. Pay attention Blizzard – here is some feedback from a Tree of Life devotee! The rules: must retain the essence of being a healer and a shapeshifting Druid.

By Chance

Tree of Life will be a visual effect – something to highlight a proc or event like Argent Defender or Eclipse. It would need to be tied to something that happens a lot during combat and something that’s not just a PVP or raid-only ability. Restoration Druids playing all different styles of gaming – PVP, Dungeons and Raids should get to experience the new Tree of Life.

A Bonus

When Tree of Life does kick in it needs to feel special and wonderful. In my mind I keep linking this to playing the Pokie Machines (I promise I’m not a gambler!). You know how exciting it feels when the machine starts ringing, the lights are flashing and the game screen pops up exclaiming: You’ve Won 10 Free Spins! Well that’s how Tree of Life should feel.

Perhaps even though the shapeshift is out of our control you’ll get a sudden increase in your healing output, haste or the like. How about the next five spells are guaranteed Critical Heals? I want the new Tree of Life form to feel exciting – like you’re winning a million 50 cent pieces at the Pokies. Whether it gives us extra healing, crit, haste I don’t care but I want it to feel special and FUN.

With Polish

The new improved art work for Tree of Life needs to be god damn awesome or as Barney Stinson would say…. LEGENDARY! I’ve been talking up for years the big cool trees hanging around Darnassus (see above). Perhaps we could shift into something more like that in Cataclysm?

Oh and Blizzard if you read this – I was very disappointed that you didn’t announce our new level 81 spell: “Tree Bash”

The Bad

The new Tree of Life will fail if Blizzard choose to implement it the way I’m expecting them to. And I’m putting it out there right now, if Blizzard choose to implement it like this, I’m switching my main in Cataclysm to either my Discipline Priest or my Mage. I’m that serious about it.

Tree of Life becomes a 5 minute cooldown spell that you, the Druid, choose to cast in anticipation of the “optimum” time to make best use of the buff/specialness it gives you.

If they do this, Tree of Life will simply be like Innervate – something you really love having but try not to ever rely on because, well it has a cooldown and you can’t trust it to be available just at that right moment. Before you know it the fights aren’t hard because you out-gear then by a couple of tiers and you never even consider clicking/press the button to activate it because, well why would you – you don’t need it.

If Blizzard do this then Tree of Life really deserves a funeral and a tombstone because it’s just a nice extra. It’s not really a defining part of what your class and spec is. Tree of Life has become no more than a glorified On Use trinket.

R.I.P
2006 – 2010

Tree of Life
(aka Wilted Broccoli)

Beloved Protector
Sadly Missed by the WoW Community

Tranquility and Cataclysm

Out of all the new spells released by the class previews, the one I’m most intrigued by is the Shaman level 83 spell – Healing Rain.

I can just envision its usefulness going off in the middle of Wintergrasp healing everyone of your faction within range. I can also see it being used to lightly top up not just 1 party in your 25 man raid team but your entireraid group.

I simply can’t believe that Blizzard would give this mechanic to just 1 type of healer in Cataclysm.

I’m taking a guess (read crossing my fingers and hoping) that Restoration Druids will have tranquility reworked into a similar style spell. A raid wide heal spell that has weaker throughput in exchange for hitting more targets? Yes please.

Useful for constant raid wide damage but the mana cost and heal throughput would obviously not as strong as current AOE healing spells Wild Growth and Circle of Healing which are limited to 5-6 raid members only.

A Bit of Marketing

I know that all these Class Previews have been released to drum up anticipation (and Sales) for Cataclysm. All the new abilities are meant to sound awesome and overpowered – that’s how they talk you into buying game copies! They won’t need to actually nerf everything down to scale until Patch 4.1 after all.

Let me just say that whoever is in charge of Shaman, Mage and Paladin marketing gets my thumbs up. Reading the class previews has definitely made me rethink what class I want to play in the next expansion. And considering that Paladins and Mages received a lot of attention and pats-on-the-back at the start of Wrath of the Lich King, too… well I think perhaps I might have more fun playing something else.

And whoever is in charge of Druid marketing? Not well done. Not well done at all. There’s still time. Read this article. Read what other die-hard Restoration Druid writers are blogging about and think carefully about how you approach Tree of Life.

R.I.P Tree of Life

When Blizzard asked last year for feedback on the Tree of Life form I was really surprised at the number of Trees who gave it scathing commentary. Turning into a tree is one of my favorite things about being a Restoration Druid – its an identifier, unique and special.

I can’t say I’m surprised, the feedback thread alone make me expect changes were on the way, but I still feel its a hard hit to take.

Tree of Life is changing from a passive talent to a cooldown-based talent, similar to Metamorphosis. Mechanically, it feels unfair for a druid to have to give up so much offense and utility in order to be just as good at healing as the other classes who are not asked to make that trade.

We are exploring the exact benefit the druid gets from Tree of Life. It could strictly be better healing, or it could be that each heal behaves slightly different. You also will not be able to be banished in Tree of Life form (this will probably be true of Metamorphosis as well).

Additionally, we would like to update the Tree of Life model so that it feels more exciting when you do decide to go into that form. Our feeling is that druids rarely actually get to show off their armor, so it would be nice to have at least one spec that looked like a night elf or tauren (and soon troll or worgen) for most of the time.

Couple this with the fact that restoration druids are to receive no new spells makes me wish I’d never looked at the damned post in the first place.

So the rational part of me knows that being upset about it is silly -  Blizzard will make sure that us tree aficionados can adapt to this “hopping in and out of tree form” idea of theirs.

The irrational/emotional part of me feels as if they’ve chopped off my branches and I won’t be whole again. Just another squishy night elf who looks like everyone else.

For a full read of the Druid Class preview click here for the official forum post.

Teldrassil Sapling: Summon your brand new level 80 Restoration Druid and gear them!

I don’t talk about her very often but I have a sapling – a fresh level 80 Restoration Druid – called Restori. Yes, I have two Restoration Druids. Restori currently resides on Nagrand and she’s a big Tauren.

I’ve found myself starting to focus on how to best gear up Restori without raiding (well not much) so that when I’ve got the spare time in the future I’ll be able to PUG the occasional raid for pure fun.

Gearing as a Casual

The best way to gear her is by running heroics. While doing this research I couldn’t stop thinking that this is quite a time consuming and painful way to go about gearing.

I’m sure that joining a guild that runs 10 mans twice a week gearing up would actually be easier. If you have a playing schedule that allows you to join a 10 man raiding guild I strongly recommend you consider that path.

Saplings and Haste

When I first went back to Restori last week I had a grand total of 88 Haste. Those first couple of heroics were painful. While the haste cap isn’t a strict requirement for 5 man dungeons I’ve been spoiled playing Lathere. I’m working and gemming to reach at least 735 Haste and I’ll use a build that talents into Celestial Focus.

What to buy first?

While there are some nice items in heroics, the majority of really good pieces available to baby trees come from Emblems and crafted gear. Restori has very limited gold at her disposal so most of her gear is going to come from Emblems.

I’ve included a list of the best pieces available below so you can make up your own mind how to best gear your sapling but if you want to do the majority of gearing via Heroics this is the order of how I’m spending my Emblems of Triumph and Emblems of Frost.

Note: Don’t follow this as gospel – shuffle it around a little based on what you pick up while doing random heroics. There is no point upgrading the Shoulders first for instance if you have a good ilvl 200 Blue piece yet your wearing a terrible pair of green gloves.

If the average Heroic gives you 5 Emblems of Triumph you are looking at 66 heroics to get all those pieces.

To get the first 3 Frost pieces (the last 2 are just wishful upgrades) it will take 9 weeks if you stick to doing the daily heroic and weekly raid each week.

The Big Picture

The set I’m aiming for with Restori can be seen here along with my talents, gems and enchants: “Best in slot” Restoration Druid Gear without Raiding.

If you have plenty of cash available and want to inject this into your Sapling there are some great crafted and Bind on Equip epics you can pick up from the Auction House.  On Barthilas these items cost approximately 15000g each so unless you are at gold cap I would suggest making sure that a resto druid is what you like playing before splurging!  This list can be seen along with a different talent build and gems can be found here.

The Gear List

I’ve tried to keep the number of options limited. Basically if there are two ilevel 245 pieces that can both be bought for Emblems of Triumph I’ve only listed here the better itemised of the two. This is the same for crafted gear.

Sometimes the cloth pieces are better than the leather so while there is nothing wrong with choosing the leather piece, I am only listing the item that has the best itemisation for a tree.

* There are a couple of fantastic items in here that drop from easily pugged raids. Feel free to ignore them and go straight to better options. Or use this list to compare those items to others available in that slot.

Meet Snakevenom, Holy Priest Extrodinaire (yet, like so many Priests, still unable to remove poisons)

Cassandri and Lathere would like to introduce Snakevenom, a golden, glowing Holy Priest. After a Vent discussion regarding the change to the healing Priest Tier 10 set bonuses he posted the following article on our guild forums. We thought it was too interesting not to share. This post is by Snakevenom.

Old Tier 10, 4 piece bonus:

Your Circle of Healing and Penance spells have a 20% chance to cause your next Flash Heal cast within 6 sec to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance spells.

New/Redesigned Tier 10, 4 piece bonus:

Increases the effectiveness of the caster’s Power Word: Shield and Renew spells by 5%.

While I applaud Blizzard for listening to the feedback of the Priest community, implementing a change of this magnitude four months after 3.3 was released is absurd.

If you have the current 4 piece Tier 10 and like it, congratulations: it’s gone.

If you geared for off-tier pieces, you are now expected to waste Emblems of Frost and DKP to re-itemize. If, like me, you spend your DKP elsewhere and bought and sold Primordial Saronite, you have just lost four months worth of Emblems. For you, Patch 3.3 might as well have been released today.

I will not be saving Emblems for this new 4-piece. However, I would be furious if I thought it was good enough to justify completely re-planning my gear set.

Like many full time Holy Priests I currently run a Holy (Renew) / Holy (Flash Heal) dual talent specialization – swapping from spec to spec depending on the demands of the encounter. For example, I use my Holy (Renew) build to heal Blood Queen Lana’thal. I get a lot of healing out of Renew in this fight. My Recount for this fight looks about like this:

• Renew: 35%
• Circle of Healing: 28%
• Prayer of Mending: 21%
• Impowered Renew: 11%

When you add up the percentage of healing provided by Renew and Empowered Renew, Renew makes up 46% of my overall healing. A 5% Renew boost (if I were to equip 4pc Tier 10) should increase output by 2.3%.

However, in order to equip 4 pieces of Tier 10 I would need to drop two pieces of Tier 9 and would thus lose my Tier 9 2pc bonus: 20% gain to Prayer of Mending. Starting to look like a pretty stupid upgrade?

Prayer of Mending with Tier 9 2pc = 21% of my healing
Prayer of Mending without Tier 9 2pc * 1.2 (120%) = 21% of my healing
Prayer of Mending without Tier 9 2pc = 17.5% of my healing

or look at it like this:

T9 2pc is 3.5% of my overall healing. The 4pc T10 would net me a 2.3% healing gain overall – and that’s in a fight where Renew contributes significantly to my healing output.

Now With Spikes!

Chavez sums it up nicely in this thread at Plus Heal (I apologise if you’ve already read it – I thought it was very funny and right on the money, too):

I’m not typically one who rags on Blizzard, because they made a great game and human beings make mistakes. Goddamn though. Was months of commentary ranging from legitimate theorycraft and analysis to downright QQ not enough for them? Imagine if it was Chrysler:

Chrysler: Hey guys we’re replacing the tires on our new line of minivans with large steel wheels with spikes in them.

Customer: Um we don’t think that’s a good idea. The spikes will tear up the road.

Chrysler: We feel that adding the spikes will help our minivans have a greater off-road capability and add an element of fun to the highway experience. Internal testing has shown that this feature is no less enjoyable or effective than regular rubber tires, which are boring anyway.

Customer: It’s not a good idea. Nobody’s gonna get the steel spike wheels. They’re just gonna go somewhere else and buy the regular rubber tires.

Chrysler: We feel that this is a very promising feature on our new line and we’ll let the evidence speak for itself once it goes live.

The tires are released onto the market

Customer: Hey Chrysler. Remember what we told you about the steel spikes being a bad idea? Yeah we were right.

Chrysler: …

Customer: Well?

Chrysler: Ok, you’re right. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll come out to your house and replace the spike wheels on your car with rubber tires. But you have to be currently using the spike wheels. Oh, and to make up for it, we’ll make them the best tires money can buy.

Customer: What? I got rid of my spike wheels because they’re garbage. The tires I have now are fine, but you’re saying I miss out on what you’re offering as a consolation because I did what I said I was going to do about your bad idea?

Chrysler: Yeah pretty much. Oh, while you’re at it, get fucked.

The Solution

In my opinion, the Priest healing 4pc should look like this:

Snakevenom’s Tier 10, 4 set bonus:

Increases the effectiveness of the caster’s Power Word: Shield and Circle of Healing spells by 10%.

Boosting the effect of Power Word: Shield benefits Discipline Priests (who we share our set bonus with, lets not forget) by improving one of their core abilities. In turn, boosting Circle of Healing buffs one of the important, and lets not forget unique, spells that Holy Priests have at their fingertips – and a spell that we use in near about every single encounter. Renew is far too situational to make a good set bonus.

My solution benefits both Discipline Priests and Holy Priest equally – yet neither really benefits from a boost to two spells at once because neither type of healing priest uses both of these spells.

In the example above – Blood Queen Lana’thel – my Recount breakdown of my spells was like so:

• Renew: 35%
• Circle of Healing: 28%
• Prayer of Mending: 21%
• Empowered Renew: 11%

I calculated above that the latest Tier 10 4 piece bonus change would improve my overall healing by 2.3% (boosting Renew). I also calculated that Tier 9 2 piece bonus is approximately a 3.5% boost to my overall healing. I think it’s fair to say that Blizzard are aiming for the 2-5% benefit per set bonus.

Boosting my Circle of Healing spell by 10% would boost my overall healing (in the example above) by 2.8% (10% of 28%). I think that’s more than reasonable. I think the final Tier in the expansion should be truly impressive and the investment of 4 pieces of gear should net you a higher healing gain than a 2 piece bonus.

But I’d take a 10% boost to Circle of Healing and a modest 2.8% overall healing increase for a Tier Set Bonus that I can benefit from in all encounters.

Chain Heal: When it works, it's beautiful

I am convinced that, somewhere along the path towards healing greatness, the Priest or Shaman must accurately be able to predict, and eventually plan for, the outcome of a Prayer of Mending or Chain Heal.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Any Priest – well any Priest that plays with sound – will recognise the sound of a perfectly executed Prayer of Mending healing its way around the group.

As for Chain Heal? Restoration Shamans get a visual light show to tell us if we’ve been successful. The more white lights, the better. At the moment I’m thinking about Chain Heal.

I tried to heal Trial of the Grand Crusader 10 for the first time this week. I failed. Quite a bit. But fortunately I wasn’t the only one. So when a single Chain Heal beam went out and only hit one target I don’t think too many people noticed. I can only hope that my raid members were too blinded by Snobolds and fire to notice my Chain Heal failing.

Perhaps it’s based on some out-of-date Prayer of Healing (the Priest, party-wide, AoE heal) theorycrafting but my understanding is that AoE healing is somewhat like AoE damage. If you hit less than 3 targets, you probably should have been spending your cast time and mana elsewhere. So 1 beam of Chain Heal? How embarrassing. 3 beams? I’m happy.

If you’re not familiar with Chain Heal there are two things you should know:

1. The Resto Shaman picks the target: who gets the first hit and healed the most
2. It can jump to and heal an additional player but only if they’re standing nice and close. It can jump a couple times.

Every time I cast Chain Heal it’s a gamble. Have I picked someone standing out on their own? Is that gap between the tank and melee less than 12 yards? What are the chances that this one will conveniently bounce back to me because I could use a heal too…

Here are some of the most common configurations that my Chain Heals like to take on. I was never one for star gazing or constellations, but I’ve got names for these:

Common Chain Heals: The Hunter

There’s one of these in every 5 man group – a ranged DPS who not only stands at absolute max range, but also off to the side and way behind you. This means that when you’re in OMG-everyone-is-taking-damage mode and chain healing your lowest health party member one after another you might forget to swap to a different type of heal to keep this sole individual alive. At least I forget. This one is particularly painful to watch because 2 seconds later the rest of the party, including you, is probably still taking damage.

Hunters standing at 44 yards (or whatever it is) are enemies of the effective Chain Heal.

Common Chain Heals: The Bridge

It may not look like it at first glance, but this is actually a modified version of “The Hunter”. In this configuration you, the Restoration Shaman, compensate for the poor positioning of the rest of the group by placing yourself right in the middle in an attempt to bridge the giant gap between the ranged and melee group. As long as the ranged DPS aren’t standing at absolute max range you can pull this off.

Common Chain Heals: The Melee Bonus

This is what Chain Healing should look like, right? You heal up your tank by a nice amount and miraculously get all the melee DPS at the same time with no extra effort.

Common Chain Heals: Stupid Giant Hitbox

This is the Melee Bonus without the bonus part. Did you know that some bosses are so freaking bit that their hit box has a diameter of more than 12 yards? Chain healing off the tank doesn’t always mean the melee get some of the love.

Common Chain Heals: The Dream

Note: Dramatization – You can’t actually heal 5 targets with Chain Heal.

In an ideal world all my Chain Heals would look like this. Neatly zigzagging their merry way through the group to heal whoever needs it. I did once get a couple of heals off like this during a VoA Koralon kill. It seemed as though there were an infinite number of players nearby just standing around ready and willing to form the next step of the chain!

Perhaps when I’m a Restoration Shaman expert all my Chain Heals will look like this…

6 days of healing with Rank 1 Earth Shield and Riptide...

I hope you’re laughing. Cause I sure wasn’t.

Thank you Lionel from Old Kingdom and thank you for installing the Rank Watch add on.

The best gear for Restoration Druids from Icecrown Citadel (25)

This gear guide is a follow up from my Patch 3.3 Gear Guide for the Casual/10 Man Raider. The guide is focused on raiders who have access to 25 man content through their guild. I’ve included 5-6 options for each slot to ensure that there is both heroic and non heroic items available for those raiders who don’t progress through 25 man heroic content.

The second wing of Icecrown Citadel – to be released this week – includes some really juicy drops for Restoration Druids like:

• Helm of the Elder Moon
• Professor’s Bloodied Smock
• Leather of Stitched Scourge Parts

Notes

• All options included here are leather armor and from normal and heroic difficulty modes. I also include heroic 10 man gear as I’m expecting most 25 man raiders will participate in 10 man raids as well.
• You can download an excel spreadsheet with the top 20ish pieces per slot based on this list if you prefer. I like to keep a printed copy on my desk so I can quickly and easily decide if I should spend my hard earned DKP on an item when it drops.
• This spreadsheet is purely based on the best stats for Restoration Druids so you will see the occasional +Hit or Balance item in the list.
• For some slots the Balance tier gear actually ranks better than the Restoration pieces in some cases. I’ve not included these because I’m assuming trees will be aiming for the Restoration tier bonus.
• The weightings behind these gear options can be found here, and a full loot rank template here.

Restoration Tier 10 – Lasherweave Garb

I just wanted to reiterate how to get your Tier 10 gear for those who are still unsure. Even if you have access to 25 man raids and Tier tokens you still need to purchase the base ilevel 251 Lasherweave set before you can upgrade it to a 264 set.

If you wish to own all 5 pieces of Tier 10 you need:

• 405 x Emblem of Frost for the base ilevel 251 set
• 5 x Sanctification Token to upgrade to the ilevel 264 version
• 5 x Heroic Sanct. Token for ilevel 277 heroic pieces