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.

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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

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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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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.



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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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Thanks go out to Deku of Executus(EU) for this little gem, via Elitist Jerks:

Thought I’d link a WOL from our 1 shot of PP last night. (seeing as the old resto pve thread is closed I’m assuming this is the new one to post stuff like this in)

World of Logs – Real Time Raid Analysis

As you can see the benefits from Revitalize are quite amazing, considering this was only from 1 attempt and all we did was make sure it had a rejuve active at all times. Our Abo controller had so much energy compared to last week when we didnt spec for it.

Considering the slowing debuff costs 50 energy, gaining 504 just from Revitalize is quite significant.


If you’re not familiar with how the Abomination works, it’s more like a possess, or a costume, rather than a vehicle or a pet. You become the abomination – you don’t control it as a pet, or jump into it as a vehicle. You touch stuff on Putricide’s bench that you probably shouldn’t touch – and next thing you know, you’re a big, hulking.. thing.

When you become the Abom, you have an energy bar. That energy bar is replenished when you gobble slime puddles, and then you use the energy to slow down the oozes that chase your raid members around. So, basically – you need as much energy as you can get, so you can help your raid members out as much as you can.

What the above quote has highlighted is that not only can the Abom get energy from drinking slime, but also from a resto druid’s Revitalize talent (something I had no idea about). With two Revitalize druids in the raid keeping Rejuv on the Abom at all times, he received 500 energy. The “slow” ability costs 50 – so that’s the equivalent of 10 “free” slows over the course of the fight. That’s quite a substantial amount.

We’ve killed Putricide on 25, but hey, I’m always for making things easier – so I intend to go back to Revitalize for this fight. Mostly though, I wanted to share with those of you who might not have him down yet – it could be something that helps you out. I know that in the beginning we had some times when our Abom controller didn’t have enough energy to be able to slow the ooze – and it can create chaos. This little tip may help smooth things out a little.


My “Icecrown spec”

I don’t like giving up the “tried and true” specs, but on the other hand, I’m not afraid to try something a bit different, even if it will reduce my healing slightly, if it will benefit the raid overall.

I’m going to make my second spec something like this:




It’s not cookie cutter, it’s sits me below the haste soft cap (currently), and it might make some people cringe.


If you’re wondering about Imp Barkskin – back in Ulduar there were some high-end raiders who used it for hard modes and novelty fights, so I am always open to the idea of using it (if only temporarily) on any fight where a bit more survivability can make all the difference. With fights like Festergut and Putricide, where there are predictable or timed bursts of big damage, I love it.

Revitalize: I’ve wanted it back for a long time, and Putricide is my window. I didn’t want to give up my beefier Barkskin, so I decided to drop Living Seed. I wanted LS for times that I have to spam Nourish on someone; particularly Festergut and Putricide (phase 3) when tank damage is huge. We had a heartbreaking 0.000something% wipe on Putricide when we lost a healer and then a tank died, and suddenly he was back at 900k. Ugh. So I hesitated over dropping Living Seed.

But, thinking about it… there were far more times that a non-slowed ooze killed us or caused enough chaos to rattle us and eventually cause a wipe. I doubt that Living Seed would make or break the fight, but giving the Abom 250 energy could certainly make attempts much smoother.

However, I didn’t want to drop Nature’s Grace, because I do find it helpful during those SPAMSPAMSPAM moments when you have to save someone’s life. Ideally I would have both NS and LS.. but I decided LS was the more situational, and less likely to save the raid in an emergency.


Glyphs

I’ve taken to carrying a bunch of our main glyphs around with me, so that I can reglyph as needed. Sometimes our staples aren’t particularly effective on some fights. I’m not glued to the Glyph of Swiftmend anymore. WG is highly effective on fights where people are generally bunched up, but if they’re not, it can be a bit of a wasted slot. So I don’t really believe we have “must-have” glyphs anymore. It’s easier to just carry a stack of each and reglyph when I need to.

Thinking aloud time:

For Putricide, if I’m going to be Revitalizing the Abom, I’ll take Rapid Rejuv. I was thinking of dropping it for Putricide, to be able to cover more people with Rejuv, particularly in P3. But faster Rejuv ticks on the Abom means more faster energy return, so I might go with RR for now. Plus, fast ticks on people in P3 (especially tanks) is valuable.

Nourish – for the times when I have to Nourish up an ooze victim, and to supplement tank healing, particularly in P3.

Swiftmend – I have actually dropped Swiftmend for most fights; most people would gasp, but having to reapply a HoT is a minor inconvenience in terms of time and mana, and I felt I could get better value from another glyph. Of course, the other argument is that if you SM someone else’s HoT, it’s rude and wastes their time and mana, and throws our their rotation – but if a situation calls for a better glyph than SM, then I do not think I can afford to take the polite option and glyph for someone else’s convenience. Of course,I do try not to SM someone else’s HoTs!

In the case of Putricide, though, having that precious HoT drop off is a bad thing, I feel – when people need Swiftmending on Putricide it’s usually because they need (and will continue to need) a bunch of healing, right now. Ooze victims take continued damage, particularly if he’s a jerk and puts a slime puddle under them, then everyone blows up. I don’t want that Rejuv stripped off when I Swiftmend. The tanks in P3 need Swiftmending frequently – and I definitely don’t want their HoTs stripped off, every tick counts in those final seconds.


So for this fight:

Rapid Rejuvenation – for Abomination energy, reactive/fast healing on spotty raid damage, and quick ticks on the big tank damage in P3
Nourish – for extra healing on ooze victims, and tank healing in P3 (if necessary)
Swiftmend – to make sure precious HoTs are never stripped of people taking ooze damage, slime puddle damage, or debuff damage in P3


And that’s how I’ll be swapping things around for Putricide.

Hope the Revitalize tip helps!

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Reader question time!

“I’m a shameful clicker but I can see the benefit in key bindings. I want to know from someone who is well versed how to go about key binding … how to change my mindset. I currently use WSAD for directional control, mouse for camera control and click those buttons furiously. My most common used spells with are bound to keys 1,2 and 3, but I’m mostly a clicker.

Can you give me some advice on how to swap to binding more of my abilities? How should I control my character?”



The transition from clicker to keybinder

There are two basic options; you could either go “cold turkey”, bind all of your frequently used abilities, and learn them all at the same time; or, you could bind a few at a time, get to know them, then bind a few more.

I found it quite easy to do them all at the same time, because I chose bindings that made sense to me (more about this later). But if you feel it’s a bit too much to learn all at once, just bind a few, get used to them, and then bind another, and another, etc, as you become more comfortable.

As druids, some of our keybinds will overlap with our different forms. Some abilities will be the same in every form, and some will be unique, but share a keybind. Depending on how you set yourself up, this can mean a LOT of keybinds. Because of this, I recommend that you create a table to record your binding choices, so that you don’t lose track of what the bindings are for each form. I’ll explain this more later, too.


Click casting vs keybinds

If you’re used to clicking, you may prefer to use click casting, which means you simply hover over the target’s frame and click a button on your mouse. The more mouse buttons you have, the more heals and spells you can bind (you can also use alt/shift/ctrl modifiers). Some frame mods such as Healbot and Vuhdo have this feature built-in; if you are using Grid or other frame mods, you will have to install a standalone mod like Clique.

Alternatively, you can use keybinds, which is where you have to target the person you want to heal (either by clicking on them or hovering over them if you are using mouseover macros), and then striking a key on your keyboard.

These options are completely personal preference, and neither is better than the other – you just need to find the one that suits you best. You can also use a combination, if you prefer.

(Personally, I find that using my mouse exclusively causes fatigue in my right hand, and makes me stumble on my clicks. I find striking keys to be more precise for me, and less tiring on my hands.)


How to actually bind your abilities to keys

If you choose to use keyboard keys, you can set these up through the in-game key bindings menu. However, it’s a huge list, and can be a pain. You’re much better off using a bar mod to place your abilities into, or even easier, download the mod “Bindpad“. This mod allows you to simply drag your abilities, macros, equipment or items (like potions, food, etc) into a page of empty binding slots, then you simply left click on the ability you want to bind, hit the key or combination of keys that you have chosen for it, and you’re done. Bound!

Here’s an example of what it looks like:




Most of the good bar mods will also let you bind the slots on your bars, rather than single abilities. This means that when you shift to other forms, your 1-2-3-4-5 (etc) buttons will now be used for your cat abilities, bear abilities, and so on. Some bar mods are also compatible with dual specs.


Druid forms and dual specs

Some abilities will be the same in every form – for example, I want 2 to be barkskin, because I can use it in every form. Or you might want to keep Tranquility available for every spec – just in case you have to pop out of Moonkin form to save the day. So some abilities will be the same regardless of your forms. But you might like to have your 3 button do something different depending on your form. For me, it’s LB, LB, Mangle, Mangle (caster, tree, cat, bear). 4 is Rejuv, Rejuv, Rake, Maul.

Alternatively, you can build macros that will choose an action dependent on your form. For example, “if I’m in tree form, use rejuv; if I’m in cat form, use rake; if I’m in bear form, use maul”. Or, “If I”m stealthed, use Ravage; if I’m not stealthed, use Shred”. This saves on bar space and key bindings; you don’t need to have 3 different key binds for your different stances; you can just have one button and one binding, and the macro will check whether you’re a cat or a tree before performing the action.

Not only does this save space, it will save you going mental trying to remember 3 or 4 times the number of key bindings!

Here’s a list of handy macros: Useful macros for druids

For the abilities constant through your forms (eg Barkskin), just bind the ability directly, in bind pad. For abilities that share a bind with feral form abilities, you can either put them on a bar and bind the SLOT, or put them into a conditional macro and then bind that macro in bindpad. Whichever suits you best.




To make it much easier on yourself, I really do recommend that you draw up that table of all the different binds for your forms, so you can remember which are constant and which will change if you shapeshift. This will also make it easier to decide whether you want to bind them directly, or have them share keybinds with other abilities.


Using “logical” bindings

When making new bindings, I try to choose keys that remind me of their associated spell. For example, Alt-W is wrath, Alt-S is Starfire, Alt-R is Entangling Roots. It’s simplistic – but it helps.

I also “pair up” abilities that are similar or complement each other. For example, 3 is Lifebloom, and Shift-3 is Wild Growth, because WG to me is similar to LB but on multiple targets. Rejuv is 4, and Swiftmend (which is used with Rejuv) is Shift-4. My two direct heals, Regrowth and Nourish, are 5 and Shift-5. Abolish Poison is G, and Remove Curse is Shift-G. As you can see, I keep “pairs” of spells together because I consider them to be similar.

I use similar abilities across various characters. For every class, “1″ is my emergency button. Nature’s Swiftness+Healing Touch, Ice Block, Feign Death, Desperate Prayer, etc. “2″ is my “protect me for a few seconds” key – Barkskin, Power Word: Shield, etc. I use the same bindings for my cat finishers and my hunter pet finishers.

G and Shift-G on my druid are poisons and curses, and show up on my raid frames as green and purple respectively. On my priest, I’ve configured Grid to show diseases as green and magic as purple, and I’ve bound Remove Disease and Dispel Magic to G and Shift-G, just like my druid. When I see a green or purple frame, I don’t even have to process whether it’s a disease or poison or curse or magic – my muscle memory says “green – hit G” and “purple – hit Shift-G”.

If you keep similar abilities on the same binds across all of your characters, it will help you to commit them to memory much faster and easier.


Other tips

Other than the logical bindings, keep your most frequently used abilities on keys that are the easiest to reach, and limit the modifiers.

I have small hands, so I try to limit myself to 3, 4, 5, plus all of the left-hand letters except Q and Z (my small hands makes stretching my pinky awkward and clumsy). This is personal preference – if you can comfortably use your pinky, then you open up a few more keys to use.

3, 4 and 5 are my frequent, basic heals – Lifebloom, Rejuv, and Regrowth. The modified versions (Shift-3, Shift-4, Shift-5) are WG, Swiftmend, and Nourish. All of these are easy for me to hit without stretching, and don’t cause me any fatigue. Don’t bind your most common spells to a key that makes you stretch or strain!

Less important or infrequently used abilities can be bound on the right-hand side of the keyboard to save space on the left. For example, Innervate is Shift-I, Hurricane is Alt-H. The cooldowns mean that I can’t use them frequently, so using right-side binds frees up space on the left. It will mean that you have to take your hand off the mouse momentarily though – if you’re not comfortable doing that, if it feels clumsy, then stick with the left side of the keyboard.

Keep your emergency buttons easy to reach. Nature’s Swiftness/Healing Touch, Barkskin, Swiftmend, Tranquility, health stones and potions, bandages. You don’t want to have some crazy binding for your health stone – it has to be easy to get to!

Your mouse wheel is great for changing forms. It’s super fast. I use:



• Down: cancel all forms

• Shift Down: travel
• Ctrl Down: Tree
• Alt Down: Bear
• Up: kitty
• Shift Up: flight form


I use Down to return to caster, but using the same scroll binding twice will also return you to caster form. For example, scroll up – kitty. Scroll up again – back to caster.


WASD (keyboard turning) vs mouse turning

Finally, a note on movement.

Using your mouse to turn, reposition, and move your character is faster and smoother than using your keyboard. Keyboard turning gives you that “shuffling” look as your character slowly turns to the direction you want to face. In situations where you have to run out of fire (etc), it can mean the difference between taking a tick or two of damage, or none at all.

Personally, I use a hybrid mix of keyboard and mouse turning, and so do many druids. The reason for this is because many of us use mouseover macros or click-casting (clicking on your target with your mouse button to heal them). This ties up the mouse for periods of time, meaning that you have to fall back on your W key to move forward. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to use your W key to move forward, but I definitely recommend that you get used to using your mouse to do quick turns if you need to run. Shuffling will slow you down. It only takes a moment to move your mouse out into the open, turn, and then go back to healing while you run with W.

Backpedalling (”S”) is okay as long as it’s not used to get out of fire, etc – it’s too slow. I will often backpedal here and there to reposition, if my mouse hand is tied up; otherwise, I simply mouse-turn quickly.

Different people use different methods, but that is mine, and it serves me well.



As always – this is just an insight into how I do things, and what works and is comfortable for me. Explore for yourself, see what works. Click casting, binds, mouseovers – there’s a style for everyone, it’s just a case of finding what’s comfortable for you, and then training yourself to use it – either all in one hit, or gradually.

It’s not difficult – just write down what you want to do, bind a few spells, and start practicing until it’s second nature.

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Finally, we have some clarification about our Tier 10 4pc bonus.

Ghostcrawler has confirmed that our 4pc Tier 10 bonus does NOT mean that Rejuvenation will jump and leave our original target, to land on the random target. It will stay on your original target, but basically pop up on another target as well.

When it procs and “jumps,” is the initial Rejuvenation (the one that caused the proc) consumed, or does it continue to tick normally?


The latter. The Rejuv doesn’t leap off of the target you actually wanted to heal. You just sometimes get a second hot on someone else. It sounds like it was broken on the PTR for awhile, but we’re pretty sure it works correctly on Live, and if not, we’ll get it fixed.

Posted by Ghostcrawler   [Source]


See? I told you guys not to stress about it

We still don’t have all of the information required – like whether it is a smart heal – but it’s good to get that clarification that it won’t remove your original Rejuv and throw it on someone random.

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For those not in the know, Gift of the Earth Mother has been redesigned, and the upshot is that we need a whole lot more haste to get to the haste soft cap – which is very important if you spend your time tossing out HoTs on as many people as possible.

It means that you now need more than double the haste that we used to aim for (in order to get our GCD down to 1.0s). Because we now need so much more haste, some players are opting for 18 points in the Balance tree to be able to pick up Celestial Focus, which awards you 3% haste.

It’s a temporary shortcut to the soft cap, basically.



How do I know how much haste I need?

The basics:

25man raiders will often/usually have Boomkins/Ret pallies and Shamans to provide their respective buffs (Imp Moonkin, Swift Ret Aura, and Wrath of Air – remember though, boomkins and pallies don’t stack). If this is true, you will need 735 haste if you have 3/3 CF, or 856 haste if you don’t have points in CF.

10 man raiders may find themselves without one or both buffs, so you may need to have higher haste to compensate for these times.

Everyone’s situation and gear varies – so to see how much haste you’ll need for various combinations of talents and buffs, here’s the full breakdown.



Do I really need that much haste?


To put it very simply – being at the soft cap will allow you to HoT more people. HoTting more people = more healing = a pretty big deal.

We’re not talking about trying to top meters or snipe heals here – it’s about being able to cover as much of the raid as you are used to covering. If you’re used to being able to cover a dozen people with Rejuvs, plus toss the occasional WG and maybe a heal to the tanks, if your haste is low (post 3.3), you’re not going to be able to heal that many people anymore, because you have to wait longer for the GCD to finish before you can HoT the next person.

What effect will this have on your healing and the raid’s success?




If you’re chasing some anecdotal evidence that you need to bump up your haste value – I took Kiiva (my other healy druid) into heroics last night to get her started on some new gear. Problem: I totally forgot to respec her for 3.3 with CF. Trying to get through the whole group with HoTs on Loken felt SO SLOW. I could still do it, definitely, but even on a 5 man group it felt slow and as though it was really hindering me. I definitely wouldn’t want to heal a 10 or 25man raid without more haste!



What do I need to give up to be able to take Celestial Focus?

This is mostly personal choice. I chose to drop 3 points in Revitalize and 1 further point in Living Seed (now 1/3).


There’s not really a right or wrong way to choose the talents to pluck your points from. Most people will drop Living Seed, Revitalize, or Empowered Touch to be able to get CF. There’s not really a “cookie cutter” CF spec – it’s up to your personal choice and style to dictate where to borrow those points from.




• If you tank heal quite a lot, you’ll likely want to keep Living Seed and Emp Touch, but drop Revitalize.
• If you raid heal more, and particularly if you mostly do 10s and can’t always guarantee a Replenish in the raid, then you’ll probably prefer to prioritise Revitalize.
• Points in Empowered Touch is entirely personal choice; many people say that they “hardly ever use Nourish” and only ever use Healing Touch with Nature’s Swiftness, so losing Emp Touch is no big deal. You need to weigh it up against ther others and decide which is more valuable to you, your style, and your situation.


Personally – I love Revitalize, but I chose to give it up because it is less valuable in 25s than in 10s, and I value it less now. I still love it – but if it’s not going to get as much mileage, then I can consider dropping it (for now).


I originally decided to take 2 points out of Empowered Touch to give to Revitalize, but my basic (no-HoT) Nourishes were losing about 1000 healing, and I didn’t like the thought of 1000hp smaller Nourishes. I do use Nourish quite a bit, and in situations where you may need to “spam” to top people up in a hurry, I wouldn’t want to be losing 1000+ healing off each cast. So I weighed things up and decided that I could do without Revitalize for the time being, in favour of beefier Nourishes (should I need them). I love bringing interesting utility to the raid – boosting melee DPS with Revitalize – but for now, I’ll keep my slightly larger Nourishes.


I’ve also lost a point in Living Seed, but since I will likely be (mostly) raid healing, that’s also not the end of the world. If I pick up more haste gear, I’ll probably put points back into Living Seed first (but this will depend on how much direct healing I’m finding I need for IC).


All up, I don’t think I have sacrificed too much in order to temporarily squeeze Celestial Focus into my spec.


Need help choosing a CF spec? Try Lissanna’s 3.3 healing guide – here are her suggested specs.



When can I take points back out of CF and get my old talents back?

Taking points in CF can just be a temporary measure until you get more haste gear to reach the cap with haste alone. Then you will be able to remove points in CF and go back to your old spec, if you like.

Use this list to find out how much haste you will need in order to drop back to 2/3 CF, keeping in mind which raid buffs you are likely to have. Remember, for example, that if you don’t have any shamans dropping Wrath of Air, you’ll need higher haste than someone whose raid does have a shaman.

For raiders with both Moonkin/Ret and Shaman buffs, you’ll need the following haste to be able to drop points in CF:




Example: Keeva has picked up a couple of nice haste rings, plus upgraded her helm, and is now at 764 haste. That’s pretty darn close to 775, so if I wanted to, I could drop back to 2/3 CF to be able to put a point back into Living Seed.

I’m going to wait a little while though, just in case I take a big upgrade that has no haste on it, and my haste drops down. I like to have a little bit of wiggle room.


What about gemming for haste?

Some druids choose to gem for haste rather than taking points in Celestial Focus. You can either use Reckless Ametrine or Quick King’s Amber to boost up your haste a little.

If you’re gemming instead of taking CF, I believe you need about 100 haste to offset the 3% from CF (please someone correct me if this is wrong – you know how I am with numbers). If this is true, then you’d need to swap in 5 King’s Ambers into your gear. To me, this is a little much, but it will depend very much on how attached you are to those 4 or so extra points in the resto tree.

I’ve opted to use Reckless gems in some of my yellow slots, but I’m not aggressively gemming for haste at this point. My haste has already jumped from 617 to 764 in the last few days, and I’m sure it won’t take long for me to get enough to be able to drop CF and return to “normal” gemming.



Where can I get more haste gear?

Tree Haelz put together a list of the haste gear available in 3.3 – check it out if you’re not sure where to get your next piece of haste armor.



I hope this helps the trees out there who aren’t sure what to do with their haste and talents.

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I’m really looking forward to the random, cross-server PuG system.

I love to PuG. Call me crazy, but I really do love it. What I don’t enjoy, though, is having to find groups. Even as a healer, even though it’s easy to “get” groups, because healers are in demand – I still find it tedious to join a group, see that we only have 3 people.. start heading to the instance, realise that the rest of the group thought they’d stay in Dalaran until the group was full.. wait for another person to come to the stone – all while the rest of the group whines for summons. Blah. It’s really what discourages me from grouping with random people – I’m too impatient for everyone else to get their act together.

So I can’t wait for the random PuG system that fills the group for you, and teleports you right to the instance. Zap!


It’s either PuG, or take off my pants

I remember my very first heroic, back playing my NE druid. It was harsh. I remember having to spam heal the tank just on the trash pulls – and that was in one of the easiest heroics, Slave Pens. I thought it was crazy difficult.

Later playing Keeva, throughout TBC we jostled for the top guild on the server, and we were pretty much geared to the teeth. Heroics became so easy that I could tab out and talk to people on MSN during fights (bad druid!), or watch TV. Once you outgeared the content, Heroics became just as easy as doing a normal instance, really.

So I started to strip down for heroics.

That is, I would remove some gear to make it more interesting. More of a challenge. Less power, smaller mana pool, etc.

My outfit of choice was usually my Blue Overalls, Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat, and Farmer’s Broom. I found that I could remove choice visible items from my set, but keep the items that didn’t show – so that it looked as though I was wearing just the RP set, but I still kept a decent amount of healing:

- Neck
- Cape (not shown)
- Belt (looked fine with the overalls)
- Boots (I’m Tauren – they don’t show anyway)
- Bracers (no gloves though, too bulky)
- Rings
- Trinkets
- Idol

I managed to keep around the 1400 healing mark, which was around about the amount of healing I started doing heroics with, which was perfect to provide a challenge.

Farmer Keeva will heal you!





Note: I don’t do this sort of thing if I think it would jeopardise the run or annoy people. Someone did blame me for a wipe once, but he pulled two groups of mobs when the group wasn’t ready, and everyone agreed it was his fault, not mine. It’s really not my style to do things “4 lolz” at the expense of the group – I just sometimes feel like stripping my character down will be more challenging and engaging than steamrolling it.



Me, Keeva, Kiiva, Christmas, and waiting for ICC


As you guys know, I mainly do 10 man raids on Keeva these days. With ICC looming, Christmas around the corner, and two jobs, I don’t have much time to play at the moment. But I find that when I am online, I don’t care for any of the stuff I used to like to do. Farming, grinding, collecting achievements, doing dailies. I used to really enjoy that. Now, it bores me. I try to fish for a while, but zzz. I haven’t done my Argent dailies for ages, despite wanting the mounts.


I just want to raaaaaaaaaid.


In the small amount of free time that I get to be online, I want to log on, do some raiding… and then I usually have to log off. I don’t really mind what I raid.. I just want to get in and heal people.


Obviously, Keeva gets locked into TOC10 and TOGC10, so I can’t go PuG that with her outside of normal raid times. We also PuG TOC25 and TOGC25 on weekends, so I can’t take any groups through the week.


That’s where Kiiva (or “scrubby Keeva” as I have affectionately nicknamed her) comes in. Kiiva has a couple of TOC10 items, but the rest of her gear is crafted, with a smattering of Naxx gear and some blues. I refer to her as “my baby druid”.





I answered a call in Trade the other day for a healer for TOC10. I linked my achievement, and told them that I had also done TOGC10, and TOC25 on my main, just to give them a little more confidence in my ability. I was invited, and headed to the instance.

When I got in there, the raid leader looked at my gear, and said,

“16k hp and mana??????”


I laughed, and told him I had done it before, and it would be fine.


One of the healers disconnected very early on the beasts encounter, and the other one died partway through Icehowl, meaning I had to solo heal it. And I did, just fine.


At the end, I got a bunch of surprised whispers about my healing. It felt really good. Obviously, I knew I could heal it; I had done it before; but it was really nice to go into a group where everyone doubted you could handle it, then to have the other healers die or disconnect, and still pull the group through it (especially if your gear is pretty bad). It was great. For the rest of the night I helped the priest learn the fights through whispers, and passed a healing neck to her (Kiiva is my alt, after all.. and I had already picked up some shoulders). Another 25man raiding druid jumped in after that, and it was a really smooth run.


I love doing raids on Kiiva because her gear gives a bit more of a challenge. People look at her Charmed Cierge and think “we’re doomed.” Then, miraculously, it’s a great run, and everyone learns not to judge a book by its scrubby, scrubby cover.


It just goes to show that if you know your class (having played 5 druids over 4 years helps), if you know how to manage your miserable 16k mana, if you know the fights already (I think I could do TOC with my eyes closed).. then you know the dance, you know when certain damage is going to come in, and what to cast to prepare for that… and you can do it with 16k mana and ~1800 spellpower. And boy is it fun!


So here’s to PuG raid leaders who take chances.



We pug TOGC25


On weekends, a priest in the guild runs his own TOC25 runs. There are a couple of GDKP runs on the weekend too, but our “thatpug” runs have cemented themselves as (I guess you could say) the premier PuG hordeside. We clear everything in about an hour, very smooth. The loot is done through a standard main spec /roll (the usual deal), which is less attractive than GDKP to many people, but our runs are so smooth and quick that we still have a huge demand for spots.


With the calibre of players turning up, the DPS output and how smooth the runs were, we decided to try TOGC. At first it was almost for laughs – to see if a PuG could clear hard mode Beasts (something than many guilds are still working on), but we really started to see that there were some high quality players showing up, and we realised it wasn’t such a silly idea after all.


We killed Beasts on our 5th try – first time we had been in there. 46 attempts remaining. We also killed Jaraxxus. He didn’t drop my trinket.


This weekend, our second week of tries, we got Beasts on the 4th try – 47 remaining. We one-shot Jaraxxus, and got Faction Champs in 3 attempts.


We’re coming 6th on server progression, although nobody can officially recognise us because we’re not a guild


Note: A few people have said, “It’s not a PuG if you have the same people going each week” (ie, “you’re cheating!!!!”) but in reality, there’s really only a small core of people who go each time. The priest hand-picks the best people available, and while it does include people he knows (because he knows their level of performance), it’s not always the same group.


Some have also said “why don’t you just join up as a guild” but the fact is, we all have guilds already – and a lot of the people that we bring in are skilled, geared alts, whose mains are already saved because they belong to progression guilds. We like coming together on weekends, but we have our own guilds that we want to stick with



My name is Keeva and I love to PuG!

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Just in case some of our respective readerships don’t overlap – Lissanna from Restokin is running a Resto Druid survey on the official Druid forum.

Hey everyone! I’m going to work on my 3.3 healing guide. However, before I do that – I want to get some input from all of you! I’m looking for people who are already level 80 who heal in PvE (either 5-mans or raids).

So, I created a short healer survey designed so that I can compile a little bit of data before I finalize my decisions about what my new healing guide will look like.


It’s a multiple-choice survey, so it only takes a few minutes. Go post!

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A friend of mine has been away from the game for a while, and asked me what had changed about druid healing, what he needed to know.

I thought I would post this super-quick “crash course” of how I heal the bosses in TOC. Not fight strats, just bullet points of exactly what I do. Take these with a grain of salt though; remember that I am a 10 man raider, and you may do things completely differently. This is what works for me


Northrend Beasts

Gormok the Impaler

• Keep full HoTs on the current tank and pre-hot the second tank before they switch

• Keep Rejuvs on the melee group
• When your boss mod announces the spell interrupt in 5 seconds, get ready to WG melee. Announce – wait – stomp – WG. Along with the Rejuvs you have on them, this will top them up nice and quickly.
• If someone is hit by fire, Rejuv and be ready to Swiftmend them. They will take more damage the longer they stand in the fire; so if you see them move out immediately, they should be ok without follow-up healing. If they stand in it for a few seconds, you may need to toss them extra healing.
• Toss a Rejuv on a Snobold victim; they shouldn’t take too much damage
• Occasionally you might need to WG people near the Snobold victim since they do some AoE fire damage sometimes.


Acidmaw & Dreadscale

• Keep full HoTs on the tanks as they go into this fight as they may still have debuffs on them

• Keep tank HoTs up, free-heal as people take damage
• Keep an eye on the melee group who may take slime pool damage if they’re not paying attention


Icehowl

• First and foremost, never stand between Icehowl and the big double gates at the back of the room; if he blasts you into them, you may not be able to run away fast enough when he targets you (speaking from experience).

• Keep full HoTs on the current tank and be ready to pre-HoT the other.
• You’ll get to know his timing. As he runs out to stomp and blast everyone to the walls, I run a few steps to make sure I’m definitely not going to the gates, then I toss a WG just before we get stunned. It will help top up the damage while everyone can’t move.
• As you get better at timing this, you can pepper the raid with Rejuvs before he stuns everyone. Anyone at low health just before the stun is going to die – prioritise picking them up before he does that move.
• WG the people who get frozen, since they are likely to be close enough to all be hit by WG.



Lord Jaraxxus



• Pre-hot the tank during the boss chatty time. Keep HoTs up.

• Note: In heroic you may be locked out of healing when the Mistresses are up due to an ability called Mistress’ Kiss. If you get this debuff try not to cast Regrowth or Nourish; but if you do get interrupted, make sure you call this out so your other healers know.
• Toss a Rejuv on anyone who gets Legion Flame – it will cover them for any incidental damage they take while running it out.
• Keep an eye on melee; I sometimes keep Rejuvs on them because they are prone to taking damage if someone with Legion Flame doesn’t run out fast enough.
• For Incinerate Flesh, I Rejuv, Swiftmend, and then Nourish until the debuff drops off (this is the ability that you have to blast-heal the person for a certain amount to kill the debuff, or the raid will take AoE damage).
• When Mistresses are up, watch your frames for a purple squiggle icon. Throw a Rejuv to that person; they are about to be thrown in the air and dumped for fall damage. Wait for the damage, then Swiftmend.
• Spot-heal anyone who takes damage from volcanoes, lightning and whatnot.



Faction Champions

This is a bit of a free-for-all fight, but some people seem to end up “tanking” some of the NPCs. My advice is to keep HoTs on anyone who is being picked-on repeatedly, and also perhaps on any key CCers – you don’t want to lose them. As much as I can, I will toss HoTs around the raid; I use Regrowth a fair bit in this fight. Nature’s Grasp gets used a whole lot, too.


Twin Val’kyr



• Cycle Rejuvs on everyone in the raid

• Extra HoTs to the tanks when you can
• Be ready to Swiftmend anyone who bumps into the wrong coloured orbs.
• If you see a bunch of the wrong coloured orbs heading your way, and you can’t dodge them, Rejuv, Barkskin, and get ready to Swiftmend yourself. (I usually wince as well, I’m not sure if this helps..)



Anub


• Pre-HoT the tank on the pull; keep full HoTs up.

• When the Nerubians pop up, HoT up that tank. If you get aggro, run them over to the tank.
• Toss a Rejuv to anyone who gets the Penetrating Cold Debuff.
• In P2, keep HoTs on the Nerubian tank until they’re dead.
• Be ready to cat+dash if Anub targets you; run to the most distant ice patch (on Heroic, don’t run through it; run around it)
• Spot-heal as necessary, don’t get hit by the little bugs
• In P3, keep HoTs on the tank, and HoT up the add tank when they emerge
• Toss a Rejuv on Penetrating Cold as usual


During Leeching Swarm
This is where your mileage will vary greatly. Our usual setup is Disc priest/Resto druid; the priest handles the raid while I keep full HoTs on both tanks, and toss Rejuvs to the Penetrating Cold victims. Many guilds do it the opposite way, with Resto druids looking after the raid. You’ll need to find what works best for you. The way I do it:



• Keep full HoTs on both tanks, but make sure you keep an eye on the adds; when they’re dead, stop healing the add tank!

• NEVER USE TRANQUILITY.
• Rejuv any Penetrating Cold victims
• Make sure you use your Barkskin if you get Penetrating Cold
• If I (and a few others) get very low, I will usually WG myself, because it will heal us a little, but not a whole lot. The aim is to keep your head above water, but stay as low as you can. I find WG is just enough to act as a stabilising buffer when I get really low, but not so much healing that I interfere with the boss kill.


I know some people out there will think that’s a crazy ass-backwards way to do it, but it works very nicely for us. 10 and 25man strats will vary, as will normal/heroic. This one works really smoothly for us, but may be a complete disaster for you. I suggest reading a few other resto druid strats to see what various other people do, and see which suits you best.

And there you go – that’s how I heal TOC10/TOGC10.

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