I really have to say that I am unimpressed by yet another holiday achievement demonstrating a lack of foresight on the part of the developers.

I’m referring to “Charming” which requires you to acquire Lovely Charms and turn them into a Lovely Charm Bracelet (10 charms are then made into one bracelet). You can get the charms by killing any green+ mob. So you can collect them by grinding, doing quests, or doing dungeons – anything that will have you killing green+ mobs.

BUT – you need to land the killing blow to receive the charm.

This is obviously not an issue when you’re soloing, since you’ll be dealing all the killing blows*, but it means that healers either miss out while in groups, or they have to spam AOE to try to steal kills – because we don’t do the killing in dungeons.

(*Note: since it goes off killing blows and NOT who tagged the mob, if you are grinding mobs out in the world, someone else can steal your charms by finishing off your kill before you get a chance to. This is a double blow for healers who don’t have a DPS spec, since we can’t burst mobs down like a DPSer can, leaving us vulnerable to having our kill stolen. I had people steal several of my kills yesterday.)

Of course, when someone points out the inequality here, the typical responses are things like:



• “Just go to Ulduar and use the seige engines for 1000 charms a minute!”

• “QQ, just go do some daily quests, stop whining.”
• “It’s always going to be harder for a non-DPS class to DPS mobs, durr” (wow..)
• “You have an AOE spell, try using it.”
• “Don’t you have a dual spec? Go DPS and quit crying.”
• “onoez, you have to do some WORK to get an achievement? Boohoo” (whoooooooosh, there goes the issue at hand, sailing right over the top of your head…)


Yes – there are ways for you to go out there and use vehicles for 5 billion charms a minute – that’s so awesome! I’m so happy you enjoy doing it that way! But it doesn’t change the fact that during everyday, normal play, a DPS class will receive more charms than a healing class – without even trying. Charms will simply drop into their bags while they do anything – BGs, dungeons, raids, daily quests, grinding. But the healers don’t get any from BGs, dungeons or raids (unless they are DPSing at the same time).

The imbalance is obvious.

Quoting poster Proxima from the forums, who hit the issue right on the nose:

This argument is so stupid it’s mind boggling.

DPS: Do what you always do, get lots of holiday items.

Tank: Do what you always do, get some holiday items.

Healer: Do what you always do, get jack squat. Instead find some way to game the system and listen to idiots on the forums claim this is somehow logical and balanced, not to mention “Working as intended”.

Christ, it’s not like the imbalance isn’t ludicrously obvious.

(my emphasis)

And Carmelita:

If i were a DPS by the end of the two weeks I would have all i needed by doing what I normally do, but being a healer means I have to go out of my way to do dailies that are boring to me and grind mobs that take twice as long for me to kill as compared to a DPS. It truly is the principle of the matter for me.

Spot on.

It’s not that we can’t get charms. It’s that other people will get all the charms they need (and more) without deviating a single tiny bit from their normal daily routine – while healers have to go out and farm for them, either by grinding mobs, doing dailies in overpopulated areas, or by going into Ulduar and killing Flame Leviathan trash. DPSers can do this achievement passively, but healers (and to a lesser extent, tanks) will have to go out and spend extra time farming for the items for the achievement.

Is it a big deal? Not in the grand scheme of things. Does it cripple my ability to get an achievement? No (in fact I already had the achievement, retroactively). But even if I already had the achievement, that doesn’t stop me from feeling annoyed that Blizzard can’t seem to see achievements that are skewed. I don’t like it when things are unfair.

It’s a matter of principle.

YES, I could go quest. Or grind. Or zoom around in Ulduar vehicles, blowing up dwarves for great justice. I’m not unable to get charms. I’m not unable to do this achievement through my own means.

But DPS classes are getting charms fall into their bags as they go about their daily business (dungeons). When I do the same, I get nothing – UNLESS I spend the run doing whatever I can do AOE down mobs OR I go and do vehicle quests or lolfarm the Flame Leviathan trash.

If it’s still not clear that it is unfair – then here’s another example. Your guild does their usual clear of ICC. Trash galore. Charms drop, but ONLY go to the DPS classes – none of the healers get any. How is this fair?

A DPS friend runs a heroic with me. For running the heroic, he is rewarded with 2 Emblems of Frost and 13 Lovely Charms. I did the same heroic, but only get 2 Emblems of Frost. Fair?

Let’s go even further and put it into monetary terms. Bracelets (=10 charms) are selling for about 20g. So for every 10 charms you collect, you make a 19g profit. For running that heroic, my DPS friend received 2 Emblems of Frost and (the equivalent of) ~25g. I get 2 Emblems of Frost.

See?


Once again – yes, I could go do dailies, or grind, or farm Ulduar for my charms. But that is not the issue. The issue is that DPS classes will have the charms fall in their bags during normal, everyday instances that they would have done anyway – while healers have to go out of their way to go get them. The ease of acquiring them is NOT the issue – it’s not hard to go “farm” them – the issue is that it is blatantly unfair that some people are awarded these items almost passively, while others don’t – despite having contributed equally to the kill.

I really truly do not understand how Blizzard can’t see that this is unfair and unbalanced. This is not a “wah wah, life is so unfair, why do you hate healers so much” post. It’s just a simple statement of fact – this achievement is skewed, and it is unfair to healers.

Attaching a quest item to a killing blow shows incredible lack of foresight on Blizzard’s part. And when it’s brought to their attention, frustratingly, they tell us it’s working as intended.


Big deal? No. Disappointing? Very.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Healing Dreamwalker: Channeling your inner warlock
• Resto druid tips for Icecrown: The Plagueworks
• Resto druid tips for Icecrown: Lower Spire

Via mmo-champion:

Some of the weapons from the Lich King are not as good as we had hoped. To encourage you to want these new weapons, we have decided to change some of the old combat ratings over to better ones. We have obtained a preview of these changes, for your perusal, on behalf of the Beijing development team.

Royal Scepter of Terenas II: MP5 replaced with haste
Archus, Greatstaff of Antonidas: critical strike replaced with haste


This is a welcome change; suiting up with 4pc T10 creates a bit of a haste deficit, and I know that many people were concerned over our lack of decent weapon choices. It’s nice to see the gear guys are apparently paying attention to what we need.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Quick 4pc T10 fix; Trauma buffed (slightly)
• 4pc Tier 10: Rejuv does NOT jump off your target
• Should it all be BOA?

Just a quick plug for my guild – Inexorable (Horde, Caelestrasz-US) is currently seeking healers.

I’m chasing a pally, a priest, and another druid.

We raid Wed/Thu/Mon 7:30 to 11:00, and Sun 6:30 to 11:00 server time (Aust EST). We’re currently leading the server with 10/12 bosses down in Icecrown, about to go work on Sindragosa.

We have a really great healer group, but could just use a few more before we start hitting up the hard modes.

Please visit www.inexguild.com for more information (or you can send me a note if you have any questions).

Possibly Related Posts:

• Healing Dreamwalker: Channeling your inner warlock
• Valithiria Dreamwalker impressions
• Resto druid tips for Icecrown: The Plagueworks

A quick change to the 4pc bonus on our Tier 10 gear (source):

The rejuvenation procs from the Druid Tier 10 will now work better in a raid group and not avoid targets that have any rejuvenation spell on them though it will continue to avoid targets that have the casting druid’s rejuvenation on them.

Also, Trauma has been buffed slightly; the proc is no longer limited to one party. I think though that many people will still consider this proc underdone, and would ask for either the 10yd range to be extended, or the proc rate to be increased.

Perhaps now that it’s on their radar, they will consider another small tweak. Have to wait and see, I suppose.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Lich King weapons: crit and mp5 axed for haste
• 4pc Tier 10: Rejuv does NOT jump off your target
• Should it all be BOA?

Brace yourself kids, this is a hefty one.

There aren’t many fights in the game as novel (for healers) as Valithiria Dreamwalker. The “boss” in this encounter isn’t DPSed down; instead, she begins at half health and must be healed to full, at which point she will do a massive AOE attack and kill all of the baddies in the room (and you win).




So it’s a fight where healers have to think as if they are a DPS class – and squeeze every last bit of extra healing out. Normally, we react to incoming damage, and choose the heals to counteract that damage. Sometimes it works, sometimes not; sometimes our heals land for full, and other times they overheal because someone healed our target first.

Not in this fight; there’s millions of health to be healed, zero overhealing, no such thing as sniping – just an open invitation to put out the highest HPS you possibly can. And because there’s no overhealing, druids can perform very well when pitted against the traditional single-target healers.

This is the one fight where the healing meters really DO matter.

So, in the interests of putting out as much healing as you can, what steps can you take to maximise your performance?* Below are some tips that may help you maximise your healing for this fight.

*Note: some of these tips may seem a bit extreme for you, particularly if you’re not in a guild that min/maxes for raiding. You may not be willing (or able) to swap gems and glyphs around for one single fight; that is absolutely your choice – but for those of you who want to maximise your healing potential, like a DPSer would – here are some options.

Also, obviously, these tips are aimed at healers who will be healing the dragon primarily. If you are assigned to heal the raid, then you should be throwing HoTs on Dreamwalker, but raid healing “as normal” – so I wouldn’t advise you to change to a throughput spec/set – you may run into mana troubles.

---



First: Ignore your mana and regen

Collecting green clouds will give you a stacking regen buff that will pretty much give you infinite mana (for an excellent guide on how to maximise these buffs, go check out Falling Leaves and Wings). This means that you can ignore mana regen from gear, gems, enchants, potions, etc – you won’t need them. This opens up options to regem, re-enchant, and respec for more throughput, without caring a whit for mp5.


Gear

T10 bonuses are very poor on this fight. T9 on the other hand will perform well, but you will be walking in with lower spellpower and you need to take this into consideration. I suggest that you plug your stats into Hamlet’s TreeCalcs spreadsheet to work out whether you’ll be looking at a nett increase in your healing by stepping back to T9.

Crit will serve you well in this fight; don’t dump a bunch of spellpower or haste for it, but any incidental crit is great to have.


Gems

Try to gem for as much spellpower as you can. I kept some Reckless gems in, to stay around the haste cap. If you are a little under the cap, Nature’s Grace will help bridge the gap in your haste from gear, since you’ll be getting lots of crits from Nourish.

For your meta gem, use either Revitalizing Skyflare Diamond or Ember Skyflare Diamond. The mp5 on the Revitalizing diamond is useless, obviously, but the 3% crit healing is great for Nourish spam (and critting Rejuvs, if you’re wearing your T9 set).

According to EJ, Revitalizing edges out Ember for this fight. Remember, 60-70% of your healing is going to be coming in from Nourish spam, so you want to grab some crit if you can. The Revitalizing diamond is an awful choice for us, normally – but great for this fight.


Enchants

Swap your spellpower/mp5 head and shoulder enchants out for spellpower/crit (Sons of Hodir, Kirin Tor). Again, this is a step that will cost you a little money to do (and if you want to swap back later), but it will depend on how much you really want to maximise your character.

Tailors can drop the 23 haste to cloak enchant and go with Lightweave Embroidery, which I believe averages out to 73.5 spellpower. Normally, proc-based spellpower boosts aren’t so great for us, because they may happen during a time when our heals will overheal (then we have to wait for the internal cooldown to use them again). But on this fight, there’s zero overhealing, so not a bit of that proc is wasted. It’s like enchanting your cloak with 73.5 spellpower, yum.


Glyphs

Nourish, Rapid Rejuvenation, and Swiftmend.


Consumables

Flask of the Frost Wyrm, +46 spellpower food, Potion of Wild Magic.


Spec

Depending on whether or not you are already haste soft-capped through gear, there will be a couple of different ways you could spec. If you still need haste, then you’ll need to stick with Celestial Focus, which will give you fewer points to spend in the resto tree.

Incorporating CF

If you need to spec into CF, I would spec something like this: 18/0/53



• Revitalize and Wild Growth are useless, skip them.

• 2 points in Natural Perfection for 2% crit (there’s that incidental crit we can pile on!)
• Living Seed is nice to have, but it is unreliable since she isn’t being hit very often and most of the seeds will be overwritten as you spam. It’s a nice bonus, but if it won’t fit, don’t worry about it.**

**Note: I believe you’ll get more out of 2 points in NP rather than 2 in LS. If you believe this isn’t the case, please let me know.

No CF

If you’re already haste capped (or almost) and you can free up those Balance points, I would go this way: 14/0/57



• 3/3 Nature’s Grace. Nourish should already be a <1sec cast, so NG won't help you there, but it will make a marginal difference to your Regrowth refreshes, and fill in the gaps if you are just shy of the haste cap. It's one of those "might as well fill it out" talents, for this particular fight.

• 3/3 Natural Perfection for 3% crit.
• 3/3 Living Seed – every little bit helps. LS will be unreliable and mostly wasted, but it came in at ~4.5% of my healing (and I wasn’t even critting for the big numbers that come with getting your buff stacks up).. so it’s another “nice to have” talent.


Non-negotiable talents

2/2 Empowered Touch and 5/5 Nature’s Bounty. 60-70% of your healing is going to come from Nourish, so you definitely don’t want to skip Empowered Touch, especially.

I’ve seen some people deliberately skip over these (probably because it has something to do with their every day spec). Don’t – Empowered Touch especially will provide a huge boost.


Rotation

Set Dreamwalker as your target and focus before the fight starts. On the pull, pop a Potion of Wild Magic. As you run in, toss a Rejuv up, hit your Nature’s Swiftness/Healing Touch combo (for a chunky heal before you lose Wild Magic), and Swiftmend. Find your position, and start your normal rotation.

The basic rotation should go like this:



• Keep Rejuv and Regrowth up at all times

• Slow-stack Lifebloom
• Nourish “spam” in between
• Swiftmend your Rejuv on cooldown. Note: you’ll need to make sure it’s Rejuv and not Regrowth; the easiest way to do this is to cast Swiftmend straight after you cast Regrowth, so that Regrowth is definitely the longer HoT, and it chooses to Swiftmend your Rejuv.
• When NS comes up again, it should be roughly in time for everyone to pop all their cooldowns (Bloodlust/Heroism, GS, potions, etc) because they have a large stack of portal buffs. When it’s called, pop another Potion of Wild Magic and hit your NS/HT combo, hopefully for some obscenely large amount Note: Bloodlust/Heroism won’t help you here as you’re casting instant HT plus <1sec Nourishes, but timing your NSHT with all of the buffs and a potion means you should get an enormous HT crit.
• Try to Rejuv just before you enter a portal, and as soon as you come back out, for maximum uptime.



UI enhancements

HoT timers

First of all, unless you’re a Healbot user or an LUA guru and you can create your own HoT timers, you’re probably going to run into the problem I had, first attempt:

“AMG, I CAN’T SEE MY HOT TIMERS!” *flail*

I’m used to having all of my timers on Grid, and everything is precise and neat and in static positions. Since Valithiria isn’t a raid member, she won’t show up on Grid, so you can’t use Grid to track HoTs on her. Healbot users can set her as their focus, and she will show up on Healbot (yay!), but for Grid users, you’ll need a HoT counter to track your timers on her.

There are a bunch you can use – HoT Candy, Dotimer, Quartz, Class Timers, I think Lifebloomer does all HoTs too. So if you’re already using one of those, you’re fine.

I quickly grabbed Class Timers and configured it to show me a large HoT icon (bars don’t work for me) and a simple timer next to it. As the HoTs tick down, they reshuffle to display the next-to-expire spell at the top. So basically all I have to do is keep an eye on whatever is on the top of the list, and refresh that next.

Alerts and alarms

Using Power Auras, I assigned some super annoying alarm bells and whistles to Swiftmend and Nature’s Swiftness, to make sure I use them on cooldown each time. I have to say – having Swiftmend chime at me is a much easier system than looking at a cooldown.

Acquiring your target

Most people set Dreamwalker as their focus target; unfortunately when you take portals, your focus resets, and you have to get it back again.

Kae from Dreambound suggests a couple of macros to get her back as your target ASAP:

/focus Valithria
/cast [@focus] Rejuvenation

/target Valithria
/cast Rejuvenation


Both of these macros will re-acquire her as either your focus or just your target (I recommend focus, because if you accidentally click on someone else in the raid, you’ll lose the dragon as your target again), but it also casts Rejuv, which saves you a keypress. Seconds count in this fight, so bundling a Rejuv in with finding your target is a great idea. Thanks Kae <3


HPS, HPET, and Rapid Rejuv

I've heard people discount the RR glyph because "it makes you refresh Rejuv more often, which means you are wasting GCDs that you could be using to spam more Nourishes."

I'll repost something my mage friend Cogfizzle posted, because it explains quite well why this thinking is incorrect (he's a creepy gnome.. but he's good at math, so I don't mind having him around most of the time).



As far as DPS (err… HPS?) strategy on this fight, basically think of yourselves as affliction warlocks in a general sense.

Your goal is to maximize healing done in a given time. Since you only have a certain number of seconds available before the boss dies (err… is healed?), if you want to maximize HPS, it stands to reason that on any given one of those seconds, you want to be using whichever ability you have at your disposal that will cause the highest amount of damage (err… healing?) to the boss. It’s not about the HPS of a spell per se, it’s about the HPET (Healing Per Execute Time) – so even though a Rejuv lasts 15 seconds (unmodified), it only costs 1.5s (unmodified) to cast. Its HPS may not be as large as nourish, but its HPET is enormous.

Since I’m not a druid, and also not active in wow anymore (so no parses from my guild to draw from), I’m going to pull the first set of HPET numbers I see off EJ, and sort largest to smallest. They may not exactly match your numbers, but they’re probably roughly proportional (poster did not state which glyphs were in use.)

Rejuv – 19603
Regrowth – 15756
Lifebloom – slow 3 stack w/bloom – 15067
Lifebloom – rolling – Once it is rolling, 1 cast is worth 7 ticks of 1893 or 13251.
Nourish(w/glyph 3 hot) – 12169
Nourish(w/glyph 2 hot) – 11640
Lifebloom – fast 3 stack w/bloom – 10649
Nourish(at least 1 hot) – 10582

And then you simply base your next spell on this priority list. Rejuv is at the top for HPET, so that’s going to always be your obvious first choice – spending a second casting rejuv is always going to give you more raw healing than spending a second casting nourish (no matter how many hots are buffing it). Rejuv, Regrowth, slowstack lifebloom, and use Nourish as a filler when there are no higher-value spells to cast.

Now, as for the rapid rejuv glyph causing you to need to recast rejuv more often? That’s a good thing. Because rejuv is your #1 top HPET spell – the more often you cast it, the more often you’re taking a second or so of time that would otherwise be spent on low-value Nourish filler and using high-value rejuv instead.


So you can see, the Rejuv, Regrowth, slow stack Lifebloom (w/bloom), and Nourish strat is going to give you the best output for this fight. Oh, and don't be tempted to fast-stack Lifebloom (a bad habit of mine), thinking that getting it ticking a 3 stack faster will mean more healing - as you can see from the example numbers above, it actually cuts the HPS quite a bit if you do that.

Again, if you use Hamlet's spreadsheet, you'll be able to plug in your own stats and spec to find your personal potential HPS for a Regrowth, Rejuv, slow stack LB and Nourish spam rotation.


So - do you have to do all these things to win against this fight? Nah.. as long as your healers are getting their stacks up, and doing a moderately decent job, you'll win. If you don't want to change your gems or spec etc, you'll probably still do fine (not sure how heroic mode be, though)... But this is the one fight where we can sit down and put together a proper rotation for maximum HPS - and theorycraft how to gem/gear/enchant/play in a way to maximise our potential output. It's so different and interesting to our usual buffer-style healing - I'm making the most of it

Possibly Related Posts:

• Healers and Killing Blows
• Inexorable is looking for healers
• Valithiria Dreamwalker impressions

I have some tips on Valithiria Dreamwalker – spec, glyphs, gear changes, UI, rotations etc – I’ll post those a little later as a mini tips post (and later, I’ll integrate it into the Frostwing Halls tip post). For now, I just wanted to reflect on our first encounter.


Don’t discount your druids

Contrary to what some people may believe, druids are strong on this fight. The basic thinking in my own guild (much to my extreme frustration) was something along the lines of “Pallies are obvious, and priests have big heals.. so you druids will have to heal the raid.” That was very disappointing for me, because I had spent half the day planning on how I was going to respec, regem, and re-enchant my gear – basically maxing out my character for the fight. I worked really hard to get ready, and I was upset that I was going to be relegated to raid healing.

The consolation prize was, “you’ll still be putting your HoTs on her.”

Bah..

I wanted to show them druids aren’t automatically the bottom of the barrel for this single-target fight. I know I’m not going to catch the pally (or in our case, the shaman). But I also know I can give the priests a bloody good run for their money, and I can’t help feeling annoyed when I’m relegated by default, because “everybody knows that class XYZ is better for this fight”. Especially when MANY of the posts I had read were from people saying they would favour paladins and druids for healing her.

At the last minute I was swapped to healing her, rather than the raid – and I achieved what I wanted to, putting out some very respectable HPS.


It’s not about showing off

I wasn’t setting out to “win on the meters”. It really wasn’t about showing off or pulling massive numbers. I just wanted to show that we are capable of putting out solid HPS on the fight. It makes me cranky when people pigeonhole us as being “just” raid healers. It makes me especially angry when it gets sugar coated with comments like “you’re just so good at raid healing, that’s all.”

How can I explain… yes, I wanted “glory”, but not in a public sense. This is the one fight in the game that we can put on DPS shoes – tune our gear for maximum output, and try to stick to a watertight rotation – and I wanted to tackle that challenge. Not because I want to be a DPS class – I definitely do not. I just like tackling different situations.

This fight is completely different to how I’m used to healing – we think on our feet a lot of the time, and I’m not used to trying to stick to a strict spell rotation. I know I can think on my feet to pick the right spells and keep people alive – but I wanted to challenge myself to see how well I could do if I had to stick to best practices and a particular spell order.

It wasn’t so much a competition with the other healers, but a challenge to see how I could stack up if I had to turn my healing on its head.


I did well, but I’m not happy

I’m not completely happy with how I went; I pulled about 11k HPS, which was competitive. I ended up sitting between the pallies and priests (shaman at the top). But I know I could have done so much better.

I missed some portals due to tunnel-vision, and didn’t really get a hang of breaking the green clouds until the end. The most stacks I had were probably 2-3, where other healers had 15-20! So I know I need to tighten that up.

I also realised (in a panic) that I couldn’t have Dreamwalker on Grid, so I didn’t have my normal HoT timers. Squinting at buffs on my target frame wasn’t working, so I had to quickly download an extra HoT timer to help me out. I downloaded Dotimer and frantically set it up, blown up to a billion times the normal scale. It was quick and dirty, but it was better than frame buff icons. Hard to get used to though – so I had a slight handicap there. Timing my HoT refreshes wasn’t great – I was clipping badly.

But I was competitive, even with the UI handicap and the hopeless cloud-flailing (ugh.. so annoyed at myself!)

I tell you what though – I think I got a taste of DPS tunnel vision – no wonder DPS classes have a bad rep for standing in stuff or being less aware of their surroundings (just generalising here, obviously). It’s so easy to slip into your own little world of MUST PUMP OUT BIGGER NUMBERS. I barely saw the room around me – it all melted away, and all I saw were HoT timers and portals.


Next time: tighter HoTs, less flailing

So… armed with a bit of experience, my goals for next time:



• make a target macro so I don’t keep losing her as my target. Yes, she’s a whopping great dragon in the middle of the room, but I still managed to click on other people by accident. Seconds count, and fumbling on your target is bad.

• tweak Dotimer to get my HoT rotation as tight as possible (done – I’ll show you guys later)
• DON’T FAIL AT CLOUDS
• Mark healers so we don’t all run for the same portal



So.. the heal-to-DPS fight – what did I think of it?

I really liked it, for something different. I certainly wouldn’t want to be in this kind of role all the time – I do prefer the “think on your feet” style of healing, rather than just sticking to the highest HPS rotation possible. But I enjoyed the challenge of a healing encounter that was entirely different to anything we’ve seen in the game.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Inexorable is looking for healers
• Healing Dreamwalker: Channeling your inner warlock
• Resto druid tips for Icecrown: The Plagueworks

This is part 2 of my Icecrown “tips” series; part 1 (Lower Spire) is here. These are literally all just off the top of my head as I sit here – so I may have missed some. If you have any others, please let me know and I will add them in (and credit you, of course).



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The Plagueworks

Precious & Stinky



• Keep Rejuv up on as many people as you can, particularly on Stinky, who has a continuous damage aura.

• DBM (or similar) should give you a countdown to Decimate. Hit Barkskin just before Decimate goes off.
• Make sure the tank has HoTs going into Decimate; I Swiftmend him immediately and then focus on picking up others in the raid.
• If you can, put full HoTs on the tank who is temporarily unhealable, so that when the debuff lifts, he immediately gets healed.


Festergut



• We put some/most of our healers in melee range so they don’t have to run to get spores (and stop casting); but as a druid, you can easily run and heal, so being out at range is fine. Better you running around than a ranged DPS (as this fight is a DPS check).
  
Even so, during the third inhale, you’ll want to stand and heal the tank, so make sure you don’t have far to run to the designated spore point.

• If you are raid healing, this is what I do:
  

  • First inhale: Rejuv as many people as possible, WG the melee.

  • Second inhale: HoTs on the tank; WG to cover limited raid damage, spot heal if required
  • Third inhale: Full HoTs on the tank (I roll a 3 stack of Lifebloom), WG the melee, Nourish the tank between HoT refreshes. Pre-HoT the next tank before the switch.
• When Festergut begins to cast Blight, hit Barkskin, and begin Rejuving the raid again (return to first inhale).
• Resurrecting someone can be dicey if they won’t get at least 2 lots of Inoculated; other healers can protect them from dying during Blight, or you can wait to rez them until just after Blight, so they get a full set of Inoculated. Communicate with your other healers on this – and don’t forget to give the person Mark of the Wild when they pop back up.


Rotface



• If you are targeted for Mutated Infection, hit Barkskin to help mitigate the damage as you run over to the ooze kiter. Throw a Rejuv on yourself, too.

• Depending on your assignment, try to keep HoTs up on the MT and on the kiter; if the kiter goes out of range of heals momentarily, or the healers have to move briefly, your HoTs will act as a buffer on those tanks until everyone can reposition.
• Make sure you can see Mutated Infection on your raid frames. As soon as it pops up, I cast Regrowth on the victim as they run out; the direct healing will land at a good time to counter the first chunk of damage, and leave a small HoT on them to help to top them up while they are taking their ooze over to the kiter. This is personal preference; you may prefer Rejuv/Swiftmend – whatever works best for you.
• When Rotface starts doing his Slime Spray ability, hit WG on yourself, and it should pick up anyone in range of the boss who took a small amount of damage from Slime Spray (hopefully they got out after a tick or two!)


Professor Putricide



• I specced into Imp Barkskin for this fight (mostly), as there are a lot of predictable chunks of damage that he throws out, and that little bit more damage reduction can save you. For example:
  

  • Glued to the spot by an ooze, and the boss throws a slime pool under your feet (more common than you might think)

  • Malleable Ooze is thrown towards you and you only spot it at the last second – Barkskin to try to save yourself.
  • Final phase – a bit more damage reduction means surviving longer and keeping the tanks up longer.

  If you have space in your spec (ie, if you’re haste capped and can afford to spend the points), I recommend it, at least while you’re still learning the rhythm of his abilities, and the healers are getting used to the damage in Phase 3.

• Revitalize returns energy to the Abomination (see post here for more information). This may help you smooth out the fight by guaranteeing the abomination always has enough energy to slow the oozes, plus do damage as well. You may like to consider a talent build that has Revitalize in it.
• If you have Revitalize, keep Rejuv up on the abomination, and cast WG through it. You’re going to fall down the healing meters a bit, but giving energy to the abom will help the fight go more smoothly if you’re still learning it.
• If you are targeted by the green ooze (and rooted to the spot), or you are running over to stack on the person who is, hit Barkskin just before the ooze reaches its target, to mitigate some of the explosion damage.
• Try to Rejuv as many people as possible before that explosion, so they are healing themselves as they go flying across the room.
• If you’re targeted by the brown ooze, Barkskin, Rejuv yourself, run – and be ready to go to cat form and sprint if it gets too close to you.
• If it targets another person, put full HoTs up on them before they run away, so that if they run out of range of other healers for a few seconds, they still have HoTs as a buffer.
• In the final phase:
  

  • Barkskin yourself.
  • keep Rejuv up on the tanks at all times; if they die, Putricide heals for an insane amount, and it will likely mean a wipe.
  • be ready to Swiftmend/NS+HT the tanks.
  • blanket as much of the raid with Rejuv as you can, to try to counter the raid damage.
  • Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation will heal the raid faster, but you’ll be covering fewer people – so you may prefer only to use it if you are working with a second druid. Coordinate with your partner on which groups to cover. For example, I’ll cover 2&3, you cover 4&5, and we overlap on tanks. That way, almost the entire raid should have Rejuv up.
  • if you don’t play with a second druid, you may find RR to be a hindrance because you can’t cover as many people, to counteract that huge raid damage.
  • if you can, get extra HoTs up on the tanks to give them a buffer. In particular, find out what the tank rotation order is, and try to pre-HoT the next tank in line, so that when he takes the boss, he already has heals ticking.
  • WG through the melee if you have any spare GCDs.
• Mana shouldn’t be much of an issue in the early phases, as there isn’t too much damage that can’t be avoided. So I can usually afford to toss my Innervate to someone else. If you find you are having problems with mana, particularly in the third (blanketing) phase, consider having your Idol of Awakening handy, to swap in for Phase 3.

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urg…

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I recently updated my Guides section, and added a “Strategies and tips” section – for boss guides, encounter tips, and general tricks that druids may find handy to know.

I won’t be posting full strats for the Icecrown encounters; plenty of other sites do that, and they do a fantastic job of it, too (I recommend StratFu and Tankspot). Instead, I wanted to go over some druid-specific tips for Icecrown – things that I have found really useful to employ.

I’ll add this to the Guides page, and later, when the next wing is released (and Arthas is down) I’ll update it. And, hopefully, I’ll be able to update the posts with heroic tips as well, if there are specific tricks to help beat heroic mode. If you have any little tips to add, please let me know, and I will edit them (with credit of course).

As always – this is not a strict “you must do this” guide – your guild may use entirely different strategies, and these tips may not apply.



---


Lower Spire

Lord Marrowgar



• You can’t use Barkskin during Bone Spike Graveyard.

• During Bone Storm, hit Barkskin, toss a Rejuv on yourself, and stay put to keep healing (just avoid fires, obviously). His Bone Storm damage is not very strong on normal mode, so there’s no need to run.
• We stack right up behind him, on his hit box – if your guild does this, right click on the boss and start tree-punching for some Omen procs, if you need the mana.


Lady Deathwhisper

This is mostly a reactive healing fight, so there isn’t much to say, other than:



• Decursing is top priority.

• Toss Wild Growth onto someone when they get the Death & Decay debuff; you should hit all victims that way.
• In the final phase, if you see a ghost aggro on you, Barkskin and run (kitty sprint if you have to). If you’re missing health, or if there is a badly timed D&D or other damage from the boss, you can’t afford to be hit by a ghost. Kite him until he de-spawns.


Gunship Battle



• Stand on the very edge of your “home ship”, between the cannons. As long as the boarding party stay fairly close to the edge of the enemy ship, you will be able to heal both ships at the same time.

• If for some reason you can’t afford to move much – for example, if you are assigned to the tanks and need to stand still to cast Regrowth/Nourish a lot – you can stand still and take rockets – just hit Barkskin and throw a Rejuv on yourself (beware of doubles or triples though!). Yeah, it’s a bit noobish to stand in the Bad Stuff(tm) but if it means you’re going to save someone, I consider it the lesser of two evils. Plus, on normal mode the rockets don’t hurt much anyway.


Deathbringer Saurfang



• Don’t ever battle rez someone who died from Mark of the Fallen Champion! They will rez with the debuff still, die immediately, and heal Saurfang again.

• In the early stages, I find there is little healing to do, so I often help DPS the blood beasts. Just don’t let them touch you!
• By hanging back on the healing in the early stages, I have full mana later if there are marks building up and things get a bit frantic. It also means I can easily give my Innervate away.
• If you are arranging in advance to give your Innervate to someone, make sure they pick a position in range. You don’t want to have to move to go Innervate them, or you may give the boss more Blood Power.
• If you have been assigned a Mark victim to heal, put full HoTs on that person. I keep Lifebloom rolling on them, and use Nourish if they are dipping low.
• Try to keep at least a Rejuv on the other victims, to help your other healers. I Nourish if I see anyone dropping low, but don’t forget your assignment (if you have one).
• Save Barkskin for if you get Mark on yourself.
• If you see a Blood Beast running for a ranged player, you can use Entangling Roots to hold it in place until it can be nuked down. Just don’t root one next to a player, or it will turn and hit them, which gives Blood Power to Saurfang.
• If you aggro a Blood Beast, hit Nature’s Grasp and leg it. Hopefully it won’t touch you, but if it does, it will only get one hit off before you escape to a safe distance.

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After an absolutely flawless attempt (but a 4% wipe to her enrage timer), we had two attempts left at Blood Queen on 25. It was looking good – we just had to tweak things to squeeze a tiny bit more DPS out.

We wiped due to an unlucky double-melee pact (yuck), and everyone ran back. One attempt to go. I had a soulstone that had gone unused, so I popped up, ran to the safe side of the room (very important, as I’m SO nervous about pulling and wasting attempts), and rezzed a few people to save them the run back.

Aussie lag attacked. I should have anticipated it, and I’m kicking myself over it. I rezzed a shaman, and for a split second, the game/server registered that he was on the Queen’s side of the room before he teleported to where I was standing.

+combat, +death, no more attempts for the week.

A few moderately naughty words on vent from me (mostly along the lines of “I am quite certain I was on the safe side of the room”), and a lot of disappointment from everyone else. I felt absolutely horrible.

Afterward, the people who had seen it happen claimed they thought the shaman had ankhed, because it looked for all the world to them as though he had jumped up on the spot, right near the boss (you’d have to be pretty stupid..!). But no – he hadn’t “popped”. I had rezzed him, but the lag had him stand up on the spot and then reappear at my feet. In that split second, the boss decided he was close to her, and we lost our attempt.

I should have realised it would happen. We now have a new policy – no rezzing, just run back.

It wasn’t really my fault, others vouched for the fact that I was well inside the “safe area”, but I felt like an absolute dog for the rest of the night – wasting our last attempt when we are working on server first. I got a lot of nice whispers telling me not to worry about it.. but I still felt guilty and angry and stupid.

One of the really horrible downsides to limited attempts – accidents and lag robbing you of tries. Blah.

Sorry Inex, we’ll get her this week, I’m sure.

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