Heroics, all-DK-groups and you

[Multibocks]

Ok so the first foray into heroics is in progress and I have beat Moorabi and Eck without breaking sweat. Then I beat my head against a wall on Sladran(whom is really really easy for my shaman group.) I gave up after I was able to hit 50% on him, yeah thats as far as I got before there were too many snakes on my healer. Then I tried Colossus, whom I got to 2% a couple times and gave up.

Next was Draktheron, a totally easy dungeon for my shaman team. Ya I couldnt get past Trollegore, he just puts out too much damage for my druid to keep up. If you arent 80% health then you can be insta gibbed by his corpse explode+melee hit. I'm not sure this guy is possible without much better gear on my tank. I couldnt even get him to 50% before my tank cooldowns were all used and he would just gib me.

OMW to UK and if I cant clear this Im gonna be pissed, lol.

edit: only got one try on Prince Keleseth before GF got home and it wasnt pretty lol. The 4 trash before Keleseth wiped me 3 times, once those guys get their passive fire aura up it wipes my guys out fast.

[Stealthy]

How well geared is your healer? Would it be worth replacing the druid with a priest or resto sham?

Cheers,
S.

[Multibocks]

Well the thing is I could heal as a druid if thats all I had to do. They have a ton of emergency heal stuff: natures swiftness, swiftmend, nourish, and living seed is nice too. However I cant micro manage all that and tank/dps. It's turning out that maybe I should take one of my shaman and spec him resto. That or just heal with Healing Touch on my druid. Rolling LB, Rejuv and Regrowth doesnt seem to even phase the dps heroics is putting out on my tank.

My heal macro right now is going(if anyone wondered):
/castsequence reset=combat/6/target Rejuv, LB, LB, LB, Nourish, Regrowth, Healing Touch

whats nice about it is if I dont need much healing I can wait a few secs and start it all over. However I had to recently change it to add:
/cast [mod:alt] regrowth
for that semi-emergency heal when I need to skip right to it. But like I said, it just doesnt hit hard enough. I think I will change it to Healing Touch and then see if I can respec the druid to more of direct healing method.

[Multibocks]

How well geared is your healer? Would it be worth replacing the druid with a priest or resto sham?

Cheers,
S.

We all just hit 80 so hes very undergeared, mostly blue stuff.

edit: druid healer ('http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Dentarg&n=Iillimatic')
tank: I cant search for him for some reason name is Tôol on Dentarg

edit: got a couple more tries at Keleseth and he just puts out way too much damage for my druid to heal. This fight is really easy on my shaman as I just consecrate to hold the skeletons and magma totems break any ice tomb. I feel like a chicken with my head cut off trying to dps with DKs and heal and tank. It may be worth it to try speccing all my DKs as tanks and then putting all of them in frost presence and letting boss aggro bounce around. Dunno.

[Stealthy]

How well geared is your healer? Would it be worth replacing the druid with a priest or resto sham?

Cheers,
S.

We all just hit 80 so hes very undergeared, mostly blue stuff.

edit: druid healer ('http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Dentarg&n=Iillimatic')
tank: I cant search for him for some reason name is Tôol on Dentarg



If you're willing to spend a bit of money, grab a Titansteel Guardian ('http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41384') along with a Prison Manifest ('http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41384'). You should be able to pick up a Dragon Prow Amulet ('http://www.wowhead.com/?item=37290') from the AH as well. Upgrade your wrist piece to the Overcast Bracers ('http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43264'), your legs to Earthgiving Legguards ('http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43495'), and your boots to Earthgiving Boots ('http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43502').

For rings you can try for the Enchanted Wire Stitching ('http://www.wowhead.com/?item=37079') that drops from Meathook in normal CoT: Strath and the Signet of Ranulf ('http://www.wowhead.com/?item=37058') from King Ymiron in normal Utgarde Pinnacle.

I see you're def capped on your DK, but your avoidance could be a bit better. You might want to start with the trinkets since I see you're still using the ones from the starting zone. Also get one of the sigils from the Venture Bay vendors in grizzly hills....you can get it by completing 3 of the dailiy quests theres, should only take you aboot 10 mins.

Cheers,

S.

[Bigfish]

Druids suck as main healers in 5 mans / heroics. They lack the big "punchy" heals that priests, shaman, and paladins have.

They are awesome group / raid / off healers though. :)

I haven't had any problem with my druid healer, but then, I tend to just have him keeping HoTs up 100% of the time regardless of damage being taken.

[Multibocks]

How well geared is your healer? Would it be worth replacing the druid with a priest or resto sham?

Cheers,
S.

We all just hit 80 so hes very undergeared, mostly blue stuff.

edit: druid healer ('http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Dentarg&n=Iillimatic')
tank: I cant search for him for some reason name is Tôol on Dentarg



If you're willing to spend a bit of money, grab a Titansteel Guardian ('http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41384') along with a Prison Manifest ('http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41384'). You should be able to pick up a Dragon Prow Amulet ('http://www.wowhead.com/?item=37290') from the AH as well. Upgrade your wrist piece to the Overcast Bracers ('http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43264'), your legs to Earthgiving Legguards ('http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43495'), and your boots to Earthgiving Boots ('http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43502').

For rings you can try for the Enchanted Wire Stitching ('http://www.wowhead.com/?item=37079') that drops from Meathook in normal CoT: Strath and the Signet of Ranulf ('http://www.wowhead.com/?item=37058') from King Ymiron in normal Utgarde Pinnacle.

I see you're def capped on your DK, but your avoidance could be a bit better. You might want to start with the trinkets since I see you're still using the ones from the starting zone. Also get one of the sigils from the Venture Bay vendors in grizzly hills....you can get it by completing 3 of the dailiy quests theres, should only take you aboot 10 mins.

Cheers,

S.

I took your advice on the cheaper things from AH, but Im hesitant to go with the Titansteel mace as Im just not sure that a druid can heal this group effectively anymore. I'll give it about a week of trying and if it doesnt work then I guess I'll switch to a shaman.

[weeep]

Why dont you just put regrowth (maybe add rejuvenation) and spam nourish on your main tank? Rolling all HOTs is not a good strategy when you need max HPS as druid.

[Multibocks]

I can try that, thanks.

[puppychow]

i dunno much about resto druids, but on my shammy+mage+protadin team, heres the basic strat I use.

1 key - spams a quick heal on the tank (heals for 5-6k). This is my bread and butter for healing, my 2 key is my "DPS spam/tank spam" key, so I generally spend fights mashing 2 and toss in a 1 (which does nothing on my DPSers/tanks) as my tank drops in health. Dunno what a good heal spell for druids is, but you DONT want just a HoT, you want something that heals for 4-7k, which is usually the damage taken every 5 secs or so by the tank.

shift 1 - puts a earthshield on my tank, does nothing on my team

g key - spams my "group heal" (chain heal self, bounces to rest of party). again, does absolutely nothing on the rest of my team, but heals my team. Probably wild growth for druids?

shift-g - puts a riptide on my tank (instant 3-4k heal), does nothing on my team

h - nature swiftness healing wave - instant 14-20k heal on my tank, used only in emergencies

shift h - unused :)

so basically for most fights I am spamming my DPS keys (2, shift 2, 3) and toss in 1,g,h,shift-1,shift-g as needed. Thats it, I prefer to use as few keys as possible. One thing I do is NOT have any of my DPS keys mapped on my resto shaman, and NOT have any of my heal keys mapped on my DPSers. When you first start out, imo this is much easier. Now I actually run with my resto shaman DPSing, since my tank can live a long time (most fights) without a heal, but when I first started it was very critical that I never miss a heal, so my resto shaman sat around a lot of times doing nothing. WHich is fine, encounters are all designed around tank, 3 DPSers, 1 healer.

[jimbobobb]

I'm gonna come straight out and say it - anyone saying that druids aren't good healers for <insert ANYTHING here> simply doesn't know how to play one or has no experience with one. They're probably the simplest of all healers, and take zero thought.

If you're like most dual boxers, you have a dps macro you hammer on (gonna be honest not sure what you do with DKs) - you simply need to make a macro for your druid that keeps up lifebloom and rejuv at all times, and uses swiftmend.

For instance

/castsequence [target=focus] Lifebloom,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,Rejuvination,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Lifebloom,,, ,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,Lifebloom,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Lif ebloom,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Lifebloom,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,Swiftmend

Depending on how often you smash your dps key, the number of ,s could be a lot or just a few for you. If your guy is taking a LOT of damage, maybe throw a nourish or regrowth in there somewhere.


Just hammer on that, and if you see the tank getting super low, hit the nourish or regrowth keys too. Like really, Druids are just the easiest healers. I just link that key to the same button as my DPS guys DPS macro, and just hit one button whenever I do instances. I could seriously take off every key from my keyboard except my number 4, and do any instance. I just hammer on that and pull stuff with my paladin.

For bosses, get regrowth and rejuv and 3 stacks of lifebloom rolling before you even engage.


Also for trollgore specifically -

Position him so that he is at the top of the stairs, with your tank below him on the stairs. This is not 100%, but he will kill the trolls that come in, and explode them up with him, and your tank being below him on the stairs will miss most of the corpse explosions. Also for his consume (the aoe that hits your group), just hit wild growth whenever it's up.

I really am quite shocked and confused by this lack of faith in druids - maybe you are all too used to reactive healing. Druids are proactive healers. You simply keep all the HOTs rolling, and hit your oh shit buttons once in a while. It takes no thought whatsoever, and in my opinion is the best 'set it and forget it' healer for a mixed setup.

[jimbobobb]

Why dont you just put regrowth (maybe add rejuvenation) and spam nourish on your main tank? Rolling all HOTs is not a good strategy when you need max HPS as druid.Not using your HOTs is bar none the worst advice possible. It makes no sense - why would you NOT just keep the HOTs rolling in ADDITION to using your other heals? I mean, you realize you have 7 - 8 seconds to cast other spells between casting lifeblooms right? You could cast a regrowth, a nourish, AND a rejuvination between refreshing your lifeblooms, and they're still up there, ticking for anywhere from 700-1100 per second depending on your gear.

[Multibocks]

The problem with the druids hots is that you gotta get them all rolling and by the time you do, you need a big heal to get the tanks health back up. I run two keys when doing a boss. F1 heals tank and 2 is dps/tanking. I spam both of these and the problem starts creeping up when the druid or other DKs start taking AE damage. Now Wild Growth is fine and all, but on a LOT of bosses it isnt enough. I'm thinking of speccing my tank way into blood for aura and rune tap(right now hes mostly frost with some unholy.) This means losing my ghoul, however my ghouls usually die early on fights that have lots of AE damage(and are hard for me to heal.)

Right now I am not trying anymore heroics, I'm just doing dailies on my 2 groups and going to buy good gear for my druid and tank. I'm thinking of switching all my DKs to tank specs and tank gear and then leaving them all in frost presence for reduced incoming damage. Maybe this way my druid can keep up with the amount of damage my group takes.

As for Trollgore this is why I get INSTANTLY killed on my tank:



If you've got a Blood specced DK and you keep wiping, I think we've figured out why: Bloodworms getting hit by Consume give him the damage buff too -- for each one!

On Heroic this is a really, really big deal!


WTF why would they allow this fight to work this way? There is no way I can turn off worms. I pretty much have to respec my DKs if I want to get any further in this instance. This also means Army of the Undead is big NONO.

edit: of course if I leave all DKs in frost presence then I have to reactive heal whoever takes aggro, which may make my healing job even more difficult. =/
editx2: WTF this means that if you have ghouls out (not counting worms) he will get an 18% damage buff from consume (not even counting the trolls that come in to fight him.) Good God! No wonder I never got this guy past 50%.

[jimbobobb]

The problem with the druids hots is that you gotta get them all rolling and by the time you do, you need a big heal to get the tanks health back up. I run two keys when doing a boss. F1 heals tank and 2 is dps/tanking. I spam both of these and the problem starts creeping up when the druid or other DKs start taking AE damage. Now Wild Growth is fine and all, but on a LOT of bosses it isnt enough. I'm thinking of speccing my tank way into blood for aura and rune tap(right now hes mostly frost with some unholy.) This means losing my ghoul, however my ghouls usually die early on fights that have lots of AE damage(and are hard for me to heal.)

Right now I am not trying anymore heroics, I'm just doing dailies on my 2 groups and going to buy good gear for my druid and tank. I'm thinking of switching all my DKs to tank specs and tank gear and then leaving them all in frost presence for reduced incoming damage. Maybe this way my druid can keep up with the amount of damage my group takes.



Stack all of the HOTs before the fight even starts. As in really before your tank even runs up, cast regrowth, rejuv, and 3 stacks of bloom on him. Then just make your macro so that it refreshes them. Also make sure you have the swiftmend and lifebloom glyphs on your druid.

I took some gear off my druid to match your spellpower and this is what I found:
rejuv tics for 1100 every 3 seconds, regrowth for 710 every 3 seconds, and lifebloom for 677 every second. swiftmend hits for about 5k, and nourish for 4k. Wild growth heals for around 2500-2600.

Aside from healing pets, which sucks, those numbers should be more than fine for almost anywhere. Just to test them I ran drak'theron keep just now with my druid half naked for a lark. 2600 wild growth is indeed more than enough to counteraffect consume, which only hits for 5kish. And if things really get bad because you missed a few wild growths, then just cast tranquility, which is what I had to do for the last guy when my guys got stuck in the green stuff during a transformation - tranquility ticks for about 4k per 2 seconds.

I slightly modified my macro for these lower HOT numbers, and it was just this:

/castsequence [target=focus, nochanneling] reset=combat Lifebloom,,,,,,,,,,Nourish,,,,,,,,Lifebloom,,,,,,R ejuvenation,,,,,,,,,,,,,Swiftmend,,,,,,,,,,Lifeblo om,,,,,,,,Regrowth,,,,,,,Lifebloom,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,

This was pretty sloppy, like it was refreshing lifeblooms at the 4 second mark and stuff, but even with only 11000 mana I could spam this button for quite some time.

I really think you just might not be used to healing with a druid. Or maybe you just don't like healing with a druid - If you feel more comfortable healing with another class then by all means I would switch. I'm simply saying the problem isn't the healing class itself.

As for your trollgore problem - if that is indeed the case, wow....that just sucks.

[Multibocks]

I think I will just have to spec out of blood worms and not use pets when I engage trollgore. Seriously this boss is so easy on my paladin/sham group that it blows my mind that I am unable to get past him. The first time I ever tried trollgore on heroic I beat him, without even knowing his abilities! I dont use swiftmend often enough, because I havent really figured out a good way to macro it into my healing macro.

edit: ah I see I didnt know that the swiftmend glyph makes it so swiftmend doesnt consume the HoT. Nice.

[badashh]

The problem with the druids hots is that you gotta get them all rolling and by the time you do, you need a big heal to get the tanks health back up. I run two keys when doing a boss. F1 heals tank and 2 is dps/tanking. I spam both of these and the problem starts creeping up when the druid or other DKs start taking AE damage. Now Wild Growth is fine and all, but on a LOT of bosses it isnt enough. I'm thinking of speccing my tank way into blood for aura and rune tap(right now hes mostly frost with some unholy.) This means losing my ghoul, however my ghouls usually die early on fights that have lots of AE damage(and are hard for me to heal.)

Right now I am not trying anymore heroics, I'm just doing dailies on my 2 groups and going to buy good gear for my druid and tank. I'm thinking of switching all my DKs to tank specs and tank gear and then leaving them all in frost presence for reduced incoming damage. Maybe this way my druid can keep up with the amount of damage my group takes.



Stack all of the HOTs before the fight even starts. As in really before your tank even runs up, cast regrowth, rejuv, and 3 stacks of bloom on him. Then just make your macro so that it refreshes them. Also make sure you have the swiftmend and lifebloom glyphs on your druid.

I took some gear off my druid to match your spellpower and this is what I found:
rejuv tics for 1100 every 3 seconds, regrowth for 710 every 3 seconds, and lifebloom for 677 every second. swiftmend hits for about 5k, and nourish for 4k. Wild growth heals for around 2500-2600.

Aside from healing pets, which sucks, those numbers should be more than fine for almost anywhere. Just to test them I ran drak'theron keep just now with my druid half naked for a lark. 2600 wild growth is indeed more than enough to counteraffect consume, which only hits for 5kish. And if things really get bad because you missed a few wild growths, then just cast tranquility, which is what I had to do for the last guy when my guys got stuck in the green stuff during a transformation - tranquility ticks for about 4k per 2 seconds.

I slightly modified my macro for these lower HOT numbers, and it was just this:

/castsequence [target=focus, nochanneling] reset=combat Lifebloom,,,,,,,,,,Nourish,,,,,,,,Lifebloom,,,,,,R ejuvenation,,,,,,,,,,,,,Swiftmend,,,,,,,,,,Lifeblo om,,,,,,,,Regrowth,,,,,,,Lifebloom,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,

This was pretty sloppy, like it was refreshing lifeblooms at the 4 second mark and stuff, but even with only 11000 mana I could spam this button for quite some time.

I really think you just might not be used to healing with a druid. Or maybe you just don't like healing with a druid - If you feel more comfortable healing with another class then by all means I would switch. I'm simply saying the problem isn't the healing class itself.

As for your trollgore problem - if that is indeed the case, wow....that just sucks.

The problem with your cast sequence is you aren't taking advantage of a full 3 stack of lifebloom

I go with /castsequence [target=focus, nochanneling] reset=combat Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Lifebloom, Lifebloom, Regrowth,,,Wild Growth

That will get you a full collection of hots that you don't have to burn any mana for for a good 5-6 seconds. If you need additional healing you can always bind another button for /castsequence [target=focus, nochanneling] reset=combat Regrowth, nourish

I'm not sure why you have the swift mend in there, it is more situational. And should be more part of your oh crap button. It seems like with that cast sequence it would be on cooldown when you really need it.