Tal's Guide to Being a Tree

Welcome to Talarashne's Guide to Being a Tree. I will endeavor here to impart my knowledge and wisdom on the art of being a tree. I hope that you find it usefull.

The first thing I'd like to state is that healing as a Restoration Druid is an extermely variable thing. No two Trees will heal in the same way, each has their own quirks and oddities, and I am no exception. The most important thing for a healer is to heal well. If you heal well and keep the raid alive, as long as they're not being extraordinarily dumb, then you've done your job. Who cares if you don't do what I lay out here. Success is the only true measurement.

I only will put down here my thoughts on how to proceed, and you can take them with a grain of salt. This is how I've found it's easy to be successfull. I've read numerous websites, sometimes I agree and sometimes I don't, with the authors. This is a combination of this various information that I try out and test at various times. It's generally not a good idea just to look at my gear or my talent spec in the armory at any given time. It might be bear, it might be tree, I might be trying a slightly different talent spec to compare numbers, etc.

Do as I say, not as I do.

I will be adding to this guide as I go along, but here is what I plan on covering. I'll be adding and updating the original thread here to contain the most recent information.

This information affects Restoration Druids as of the 3.3 patch at max level of 80.

I will be covering the following in stages.

1. Talent Specs
2. Glyphs
3. Gearing Stats and Stat Priority
4. Gems and Enchants
5. Professions and the Tree
6. Your Spells and You
7. How to Raid Heal the Tal Way
8. Usefull Spell Macros
9. User Interface Tips and Tricks

If you'd like me to cover something else, please let me know and I'll add it.

Part 1: Talent Specs

When you are first level 80 you will not be haste capped, and you will need as much help in your haste as possible. Therefore this is, in my opinion, the best starting spec for a brand new tree at level 80.

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0qG0u0hZZf0IubuxVuVcsVo

Most of this spec you won't be changing. You can drop a point of Subtlety and put it somewhere else in the Resto tree if you'd like. The main thing to notice is that you're building up to putting 3 points into Celestial Focus on the Balance tree. This is entirely to get the 3% haste that talent gives. It's the equivalent of 98.37 hate rating which is fairly significant when you're gearing up. Druids use haste to get to the 1 second GCD, so you can increase your heal throughput.

Also a note on Revitalize. Some people don't take this because they don't see it as directly affecting their healing numbers, but during a fight you should be using Rejuvenation and Wild Growth heavily (we'll get to that later), and this will let your raid gain more mana during the average boss fight than an innervate spell, plus the additional dps that comes from the addition of runic power or rage. I'd not skimp on Revitalize. Use it.

You'll be holding this spec for quite a while, until your gear is very heavy with Tier 10 gear. At that point you will be able to adjust your talent spec however you wish, and you'll have a better idea what to do with it. However at that point I recommend this spec.

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0qG0zZZf0IuwuxiuVcsVo

It removes the Celestial Focus and Nature's Balance talents from the Balance tree, and puts those 6 points into the Restoration Tree. 2 points in Empowered Touch, and 4 in Tranquil Spirit. Once you're haste capped, you don't need Celestial Focus, and you shouldn't rely on Crit based talents, such as Nature's Balance. While the additional casting speed is nice, you'll only very rarely proc it with your healing, as most of your heals won't proc the ability. The 20% increase in power of Nourish, and the 8% reduction in cost will be more usefull and effective every time you use it.

These are both for a more raid healer oriented setup, as it's what trees do best. You'd spec slightly differently to be a full time tank healer, but I'm not going to cover this, because tank healing as a druid while definitely possible is not recommended unless there are no other healers besides Druids and Shaman. The likelyhood of that doesn't deserve you to have a secondary spec of a tank healing tree. You'll want your secondary to be cat/bear/boom so that you can more easily solo or quest.

Part 2: Glyphs

Everyone should use at least the following two major glyphs, if you plan on being a raid healer as a tree.

Glyph of Wild Growth - Extends your Wild Growth to one more target. This is important because the two piece Tier 10 bonus makes the healing of WG not reduce anymore. You'll be spamming Wild Growth every 6 seconds or so, so it's nice to hit an additional target.

Glyph of Swiftmend - This lets your swiftmend go off without eating your rejuvenation on the target. This is huge. You can maybe argue with me about Wild Growth but if you argue with me about Swiftmend I'll question your sanity. Swiftmend is an instant big heal. you need this to not eat your hots. Must have.

Your third major is a little more up in the air, and will be more of a personal choice. I personally would avoid the Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation]. It basically reduces how many targets you can have rejuvenation on at one time because it speeds it up. This is maybe more of a tank healing glyph. You get more healing on your one target quicker, and you can keep it refreshed on a tank or single target easier, but for a raid it's not the best. Same with the Glyph of Nourish]. Good for tank healing. If I were a tank healer I'd have Rapid Rejuvenation, Nourish, and Swiftmend. No question. As a raid healer though, they don't do the job.

I'd also not use Glyph of Healing Touch even if I were a tank healer. I'm not sure what this is good for at max level. Maybe at 85 they make Healing Touch usefull, but you'll almost never use it while you're healing. Just about Worthless. Also Glyph of Lifebloom is not worth your time. We used to roll lifeblooms at 70 on targets, but not anymore. You'll use lifebloom, but not enough to make this worth it. Also Glyph of Regrowth is probably out. Some people like this one but I find that I'm not casting Regrowths on top of each other a ton, so the 20% boost doesn't come into play except in rare circumstances. There was a time when Regrowth was much bigger than now, but while you'll use it, you won't do it enough or have enough time to really make sure you pop off the regrowth on someone. Nourish replaced Regrowth in 3.1 or 3.2 for being more effective for spot healing and this glyph went downhill.

That leaves three worth looking at, and which you pick is up to you.

Glyph of Innervate - if you're finding that you're running out of mana alot on boss fights, and you're using Innervate appropriately, then you might need a boost to it. This will give you a bunch more mana via the innervate. I'd almost say to NOT make this you initial third glyph at 80. Heal for a bit without it and learn when to cast an unglyphed Innervate. How much it gives back to you, when you need to tap it. You might not need this glyph. This comes more into play when you FORGET to hit the INnervate and you're low on mana, or you die and get rezzed and need a BIG innervate. It's definitely useful, even if you know what you're doing, but it's not necessarily a must have.

Glyph of Rejuvenation - This one is more fight dependent. If you're doing things right people aren't sitting at sub 50% health frequently. it's great when you can hot up a couple groups with rejuvenations for a decimate though. They get back to 50% fast and someone who is really hurt can get some quicker love. How often that will happen though is more situational. It's definitely not something you'll always see a benefit from. It's nice when the raid is taking massive damage though.

Glyph of Rebirth - This is a cool one but also very situational. Without it the player rezes at low health. If there is fire in the room, or a cleave they're near, they might go plop immediately with no time to get heals off on them. This helps prevent a battle rez from being wasted When combined with an instant cast from Nature's Swiftness though (I'll show the macro below) it'll give you an instant 'bring the tank back up' button. Where at the cost of a global cooldown, and perhaps not even that, you can rez a flattened tank instantly at full health. That can turn a fight from a loss to a win. I like this one alot as well, even though it's highly situational.

As far as minor glyphs the only one I'd say is necessary is Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth because running out of reagents mid fight and you can't battle rez because of it is embarrasing. Otherwise, none of them affect your healing output.

Part 3: Gearing Stats and Stat Priority

Probably the second question people have over how to set up their basic character is how to gear for it. What kinds of gear should they be looking for? Well it's pretty simple. If you see a leather gear piece with stamina, intelligence, and spirit on it, as well as spellpower and haste, and possibly some gem slots. That puppy is for you. Cloth gear is fine, many Resto druids will pick up some cloth spirit pieces for their healing set, but all the best in slot stuff is really leather.

More important than anything else is Spellpower. Boring but gtrue. It makes everything better. No matter what, the best 1:1 trade is to get more Spellpower. Don't give up Spellpower for any reason.

Second up. Haste. 32.79 haste will give you 1% spell haste. If you've taken Celestial Focus like I recommended and have 3 points in it you'll need 735 haste with 5/5 Gift of the Earthmother as well, and with all raid buffs (which we don't always have... ie we need a Wrath of Air totem more regularly) If you've dropped Celestial Focus you need 856 Haste to reach the cap. The cap being a minimum of 1 second on your Global Cooldown. It's the only other way to speed up your amount of heals you spread around the raid, other than pure Spellpower.

Thirdly, Spirit. Every point of Spirit provides some spellpower (1:0.15) and even more with some raid buffs. Plus it increases your mp5 in and out of combat. If you see gear that has Stamina and Intelligence on it, but no Spirit but it's leather it's Boomkin gear. It's not for you. If it's a massive upgrade anyway go for it, but ALL your gear should have spirit on it anyway. Don't go looking for it, but don't gear around it either.

Lastly, Crit. This is pretty unimportant these days. 45.9 crit rating gives you 1% additional spell criticals (critical heals do one and a half times the healing of a normal heal). Lot sof stuff can crit. Nourishes, Healing Touches, Swiftmends, REgrowths, the LifeBloom, and Rejuvenation ticks with the 4-t9 bonus. If you get the 4 piece T9 set bonus crit can be important, but since 3.3 you're going to want to gear for Haste since they raised that haste cap and nerfed Gift of the Earthmother. You won't hopefully be sitting in 4pc T9 for long anyway. Crit won't work on lots of your stuff, and honestly you shouldn't worry about it. For the most part you're not going to be doing alot of crit work. Some offset pieces or even tier pieces will have crit on it. That's fine, and it can fill out your gear if you're haste capped.

Spellpower > Haste > Spirit > Crit

Oh i suppose I should mention Intellect. It increases your crit, and gives you mana. It's going to be on eveyrthing you wear. If you have gear without Int on it (other than like trinkets) you're doing something really wrong. don't even worry about this. You might get lower int here or there on an item, but it won't impact you all that much. Also MP5. It's on some gear. You'll get more mana from a good piece with spirit on it. The number might be pretty but you really don't want MP5 you want Spirit. it'll work on you and it's better than I guess Hit, but honestly don't worry about it. You want other stuff.

Some people feel you should gem for the Haste cap. I disagree with this. Math indicates that pure Spellpower wins out over the Haste gained from an even exchange. Your number one gear priority is Spellpower. You should gem and enchant as much as possible for it. You should even Flask for it.

Aim for the haste cap through gear alone. You can get it via just gear pieces. Take haste items over crit items, etc.

Part 4: Gems and Enchants

Gemming and enchanting your gear is pretty simple and straightforward. I'll just list it out. Whenever you get a new gear piece get the enchant on it, and gem up your slots. If it's something you KNOW you're going to replace soon, it's ok to use a level down gem to save money. In most cases it's only going to cost you a few spellpower for a few hundred gold. Or ask someone in the guild to help out.

Gems

Red: Runed Cardinal Ruby. Put this in fucking everything you can, I don't care if it's a yellow slot, and you lose the set bonus. Screw it. Slot it with one of these.

If you MUST gem with something else, or you're aiming for the haste cap, gem with a Reckless Ametrine in your yellow slots.

Nothing else. If you need more mana and are thinking of using a Purified Dreadstone then stop thinking about needing more mana, and think about how you can conserve mana better.

Use an Ember Skyflare Diamond for your meta. You should have enough rubys to make it nice and active.

Enchants

Head: Arcanum of Blissful Mending (You can find it at the Wyrmrest Accord in Dragonblight from their quartermaster)

Shoulders: Greater Inscription of the Crag from the Sons of Hodir in Storm Peaks. You have been working on your Hodir rep right?

Back: Greater Speed

Bracers: Superior Spellpower

Hands: Exceptional Spellpower

Legs: Brilliant Spellthread

Boots: Tuskarr's Vitality

Weapon: Enchant Weapon - Mighty Spellpower or Enchant Staff - Greater Spellpower

That's it. Accept no substitutes.

Part 5: Professions and the Tree

If you want to utterly maximize your stats you can change your professions to help you as much as possible be the best healer you can. I don't fully follow this. One of my professions is a skinner, cause it's quick dirty and easy money when leveling. For the most part it's nowhere near as able to make money as say....Enchanting...but it's something I don't have to think about. However if you're up for doing the best professions you can possibly do....Here ya go. Each profession obviously has other stuff that goes along with it from mounts to cool toys or whatnot. I'm just covering the consistent stuff that will be there that will always affect your healing throughput. I'm going to rank them in order of benefit.

Tailoring well...I don't tailor, on any character, so I don't fully get what this can do for you. However I think that you can put Lightweave Embrodery on your cloak instead of the speed enchant. So at the cost of some haste, you get 295 spellpower for 15 seconds, with a 35% spellcast proc, and a 60 second cooldown. Estimates at 72 spellpower, but minus 23 haste (from the loss of the speed enchant). So basically you'd trade 23 haste from the enchant on the cloak for 72 spellpower. It's worth it, particularly if you're haste capped. I dunno if I'd level tailoring for it, but it's something to consider.

Jewelcrafting can use 3 Runed Dragon's Eye's rather than 3 Runed Cardinal Ruby's giving you 48 spellpower.

Alchemy boosts your flasks. Basically you get 47 extra spellpower, plus the flasks last twice as long.

Blacksmithing gives you two extra sockets (one in bracers and one in gloves) gives you two more Runed Cardinal Ruby's and 46 spellpower.

Enchanting gives 46 spellpower total from enchants on the rings.

Inscription gets to do a 70 spellpower/15 crit enchantment to your shoulders rather than the Hodir one, which gives you 46 spellpower.

Leatherworking can apply 76 spellpower to bracers instead of the usual 30. 46 spellpower.

Engineering doesn't really give you any benefits to your healing numbers, you can put 27 spellpower on your cloak rather than 23 haste, and Hyperspeed Accelerators don't do jack for healing. Skinning gives you a passive 40 crit rating increase, but we don't really care much about crit. Mining and Herbalism don't do anything for you. Mining increases your stamina, Herbalism gives you a heal you'll never use because it's inferior to your normal ones.

Do with all that what you will. Personally I have Alchemy and Skinning. I'm fine with it. I don't need to totally min/max. If I did though I'd take Tailoring and Jewelcrafing, or Jewelcrafting and Alchemy. Honestly Jewelcrafting and Alchemy would work well together for money ( you could transmute gems and then cut them and list them on the AH ) so I'd probably go with that. Hell I might change mine to that.

Part 6: Your Spells and You

Here I'll list out the spells you'll be most familiar with as a tree. If I don't list it here you're not going to be casting it much. Oh sure you might moonfire on a boss to add dps for a final push rather than wipe, but I'm not going to talk about that... much. I'm going to list out the heals in the order of importance to you. Remember not every tree heals the same way, and there are different styles. This is how I do it, and what math and general opinon shows is the best way to go for a tree on raid healing. Special situations call for different spells, so at all times this list doesn't hold importance wise, but in general, I think it does.

This section is just discussing the spells. The next section will discuss how to actually use them, in which order, and in which situations.

Heals over Time aka HOTS:

Rejuvenation: Used to be an afterthought. You'd roll some Lifeblooms, throw down a Regrowth and then add on a Rejuvenation. Nowdays this one is king. You should consider it your primary healing spell. Unglyphed with Rapid Rejuvenation you can be rolling this on 15 or so poeple in a raid at any one time if you're haste capped (though since you'll be doing other things generally you won't be covering more than 2 raid groups in a 25 man, and hence you won't need to worry about more than 10 people anyway...but still...) This spell gives you the most healing done per second of all your spells. Period. In most circumstances your primary reaction should be to cast this spell on someone targeted by the boss, getting a debuff on them, getting aoe damage, being a rogue in melee range, etc. In 3.3 this is absolutely, without question, your best spell.

Wild Growth: This is right on the heels of Rejuvenation. It lasts 7 seconds, and targets the lowest 5 (6 if you're properly glyphed) health people within range of the target. That part is key. Whatever your target is affects who gets the wild growth. You can't contain it to your raid group if you're raid healing, you can't specify who gets it etc. However with a T10 2 piece set bonus it wn't reduce it's healing over time as well. Once you get 2 pieces of T10 this absoultely should be spammed whenever it's available. We'll get to that later.

Regrowth: This is a grande sized direct heal that leaves a 21 second residual hot on the target. It's good to get a burst of healing on someone in the raid, especially if you know they're going to be taking more damage soon (see "healing rogues" below). If you have Nature's Grace it can chain cast on multiple poeple, but casting it repeated on one person is a waste, as you're overwriting the hot itself, and wasting mana efficency. Good for keeping on tanks at all times, along with Rejuvenation.

Lifebloom: This used to be the king back in BC. You'd roll lifeblooms on the tank before anything else. Of course that means it got gimped so that we'd use other spells. So we do. And lifebloom fell down. You can stack it three times and each stack makes it heal more in it's hot, but it doesn't last long, and at the end of it it will 'bloom' for a big burst heal. You can restack it even if it's at 3 to keep it 'rolling' rather than 'bloom', but that is mana inefficent because you're losing the bloom on the end (which returns 1/2 the mana cost to you). This was the main nerf. It put alot more of it's weight into the end heal itself, rather than in the hot ticks. Otherwise this spell is really really mana expensive, and then takes three GCD's to refresh. You're gonna use this in two circumstances which I'll outline below, tanks, and occasional raid situations. However it's now your weakest hot.

Direct Heals:

Swiftmend: Hopefully you listen to me and glyph for this to NOT eat your hots. In which case this is a great strong INSTANT heal. It has a short cooldown so you can't spam it, but it's great for when someone is taking a ton of damage, when you're getting wolloped, or when the tank needs some extra healing on it in boss situations. it'll heal off the lowest ranked spell on the target. If you want a big boom, it's nice to chain this right after a Regrowth on a tank to avoid using a GCD on it. That combo will bring most characters up pretty high.

Nourish: This is a venti sized direct heal that gets stronger the more hots you have on the target. It's a quicker cast time than Regrowth and is the best way we have to spam heals onto a target. It's like our "Flash Heal". You'll use this mostly when the tank is fully hotted, and needs more health, as well as to top off raid members who have taken big spike damage.

Healing Touch: You'll basically not use this. I'll show you a macro below to use with this spell, so that you can have an instant big cast on it, for an additional big emergency heal, but it's only slightly stronger than swiftmend, and really you're not going to use this much, so don't worry about it. You wont' even have it on your cast bars.

Channeled Heals:

Tranquility: You won't use this much. It's pretty weak, is on a long cooldown, and when you channel it for 8 seconds you can't cast other hots. Mostly you'll use this when the raid is fairly clumped up on a boss, and the tank has died, and you're trying to keep as many people up for a few more seconds to get that boss dead.

Utility Spells:

Rebirth aka Battle Rez: This is pure druid win. We can rez IN battle. Nobody else can. If you've glyphed for it when you rez someone they'll pop up to full health, otherwise they'll pop up at low health, standing where you cast the spell. Don't let them pop up when there is fire in the spot or they'll die immediately again. Once they pop, if you're unglyphed get big heals on them fast (rejuvenation->swiftmend is a nice start). I'll cover more about how to use this effectively, and some macros later.

Innervate: This returns mana to the target. (2.25 * 3496 (a level 80 druid's base mana pool) = 7866 Mana (this will come into play later)) We'll show you a macro to make an innervate me button to have so you don't have to target yourself to hit it. This is one of the main ways, if you use it right, to keep you from running out of mana. It used to be a BIG and long cooldown spell, but now you need to use it regularly.

Abolish/Cure Poison: These are two spells. One cures a poison, the other leaves a slow debuffing tick on the target. You'll mostly use Abolish Poison now (it's going away in Cataclysm supposedly) but simply put it'll remove poisons from the target as an instant cast.

Remove Curse: Instant cast, removes curses.

Barkskin: Dont' forget you have this. It's a great way to reduce damage to yourself when you know raid damage is imminent and avoidable.

Offensive Spells:

If for some reason you're in a raid situation when you don't need to heal, and the raid needs to pump as much damage as possible into it's target...Then use Moonfire, and then Wrath spam until the Moonfire is up, and Moonfire again. You'll be in caster form, your mana will suffer, and you'll probably do around 800 dps, but in some situations it's necessary. You'll have those two spells on your bar. Also you will have Hurricane on there for same situations but with AOE damage. For the most part though you'll only exceedingly rarely be casting offensive spells.

Part 7: How To Raid Heal The Tal Way

Raid Healing as a Tree is a game of Whack-a-mole. You just need to know which hammer to use at any given time, and you'll learn over time the subtlys of this. Every tree heals different. I know Ogg heals different. This is how I do it though, and I don't think I suck that bad.

Situation 1: Rolling hots on a tank, and healing a 5 man group

Often in fights you'll need to help out on healing the tank in addition to the raid. You should arrange your raid healing bars so that the tanks are organized together, or you know who they are. You should AT LEAST keep a rejuvenation on all tanks at all times. Particularly in a 25 man setting with 3 druid healers, those 3 rejuvenations on the tank at all times can make the tank healers life FAR easier.

When the tank is taking significantly more damage you'll want to apply a Regrowth in addition to the rejuvenation. Be sure to time the Regrowths if possible so you're not overwriting them too soon. It's a 1.5 second cast, so start the refresh when the regrowth is at about 2 seconds remaining (i'll show some tricks later to seeing the timing on spells).

Should the tank really need all out heals, then pop on 3 stacks of lifebloom. in the olden days we'd 'roll' the lifeblooms and renew them before they 'bloomed' at the end. Don't do this. It'll effectively make them cost double the mana and eat through your mana fast. Let them bloom, regain your mana, and then restack. If the bloom is consistently wasted, then you shouldn't be rolling it on him anyway and reduce back down to just rejuvenation and regrowth.

If you are a raid healer, but healing in a tank in a heroic for instance just keep rejuvenation and regrowth up, unless significant incomign damage is going on, then roll lifeblooms as well. If there is alot of raid damage going on, then roll the lifeblooms and don't let it bloom. The mana issue shouldn't matter in a 5 man boss fight and saves you 3 GCD's for the other members of the party.

You should be able to have rejuvenation, regrowth, 3xlifebloom on your tank, as well as a rejuventation on each member of your 5 man, and topping off big damage by casting Swiftmend when it's up, as well as Nourishes.

Practice doing that in a five man, even when the damage isn't there. Cast Regrowth, then Rejuvenation on the tank, so it only costs 1 GCD for both spells (because the Rejuvenation is instant it'll share the 1.5 second cast Regrowth cooldown), then rejuvenations on the rest of the group, then lifebloom stack the tank, then practice keeping all them active at the same time, while hitting swiftmend and nourish.

If you can juggle those in a 5 man you're ready for a raid.

Situation 2: Raid taking significant area damage

Lets start with your two most important spells at level 80. Wild Growth and Rejuvenation. There is something jokingly called the 1/5 or 5/1 resto druid healing method. You cast wild growth, then you cast 5 rejuvenations. Repeat.

In the time it takes you to cast those 5 rejuvenations your wild growth will be off cooldown. Even if you're fully haste capped with a 1 second GCD, it'll take 5 seconds to roll rejuvenations on a 5 man group. Once those five are applied you hit wild growth, which hopefully you've glyphed (and eventually geared to make non-reductive) so it hits 6 targets.

This is particularly usefull for periods of fights with massive raid damage going on. In a 25 man group you can effectively roll rejuvenations on 3 groups of 5 people, along with hitting wild growth 4 times in about 15-20 seconds depending on your haste and latency. Often if you know the damage is coming you can preapply these rejuvenations and just keep them rolling.

For instance at the start of Festergut when the entire raid is taking massie damage, you should be rolling as many rejuvenations as possible, and hitting wild growth every time it comes up. That's the most effective way to heal at that point.

Situation 3: Spikey targeted damage to the raid.

Let's say a boss targets a member of the raid, who isn't a tank, and starts hitting them with something so they start taking considerable and significant damage. If the first hit takes them to nearly half, or over half, be prepared that a 2nd or 3rd shot might kill the raid member. You don't have time to hit them with a Regrowth, the cast time is too long. Cast a Nourish on the damage, followd immediately by a rejuvenation, to share the GCD. With one GCD you'll heal up a good amount of damage, and apply a rejuvenation in case there is more damage. And now because there is a rejuvenation on the target, you can hit them with swiftmend IMMEDIATELY if more damage is incoming. If a raid member does something taht is going to get them 17k damage, and then possibly more, or there is area raid damage a Nourish/Rejuvenation (if not already applied) followed immeidatley by an instant Swiftmend will cover all that damage, even if the spells don't crit, and leave a rejuvenation on the target for 15 more seconds to each up even more if necessary.

If the raid member is taking slow, but steady raid damage, like the blood damage in Saurfang where a raid member say is taking 3k every few seconds, a rejuvenation should do fine, and if the damage gets a little ahead of the healing, bumping the raid member to full with a Nourish will make it so.

Also in those instances if you know when the debuff giving damage is going to wear out a strategic lifebloom is nice. If you cast a lifebloom on a target when the debuff reaches 8 seconds the lifebloom will 'bloom' when the debuff ends, cleaning up any damage that might remain from the damage debuff.

Intermission and Consideration

Notice the spells we're using. Keep in mind while you're doing ANY of this, if there is any kind of raid damage at all you need to be casting Wild Growth about every 6 seconds when it comes up. It is by far your most efficient raid healing spell. One thing to keep in mind though is who you have it targted on. I find it's usefull to keep my main target on the main tank at all times. This way a wild growth will always help out the healing of the tank, if needed, as well as the melee who tend to take more raid damage than ranged anyway. If you need to heal a ranged group that you're a part of, then just target off the tank, and you'll be targeting nobody. This will spread the Wild growth to targets near you isntead and help in that regard. In this sense either always be targeting the main tank while healing, or yourself. Rarely will you target anything else.

Also notice no use of Healing Touch. You won't be using it in your normal rotations. There is always something better than it. I wouldn't even bother having it on your bars. Hopefully they fix it in Cataclysm.

Tranquility. It's alot of mana and when you cast it you can hot people. This is only really going to be used when you're tightly clustered, don't need to move, at the end of a raid boss fight when you're simply trying to keep everyone up you can for 10 more seconds. If you us this any other time than the last 10 seconds of an insane fight you're just wasting mana and letting your hots drop off = not good.

Situation 4: Medium number of raid targets taking damage somewhat regularly in big bursts, or slow over time.

Say you are doing Firefighter and the melee need to go into the fire to dps the head of mimiron in phase 3. They're going to take significant damage, and you need to give them a burst of healing already, as they're already down. Start with a Regrowth, followed immediatley by a Rejuvenation. hit the rest of the raid members who are taking said damage with a Regrowth/Rejuvenation hit. This will provide generally enough healing for most dps to stay up while taking raid damage. If necessary you can help them stay up with Nourishes and Swiftmends. Regrowth is nice here because it gives an immediate burst of healing on the target, but also applies a very long 21 second residual hot which will help soak more damage going along. Combine that with the REjuvenation and they should be fine.

Situation 5: Healing Rogues

Rogues for some reason take a shit ton of damage sometimes. When this happens see Situation 4. Hit them with a Regrowth and REjuvenation. Always know where rogues are and have quick heals ready to go. They'll stand in that fire and rely on you to keep them alive if it'll up their dps because they're all bastards.

Situation 6: Battle Rez

Using your battle rez effectively is very important. I'll list a macro below to combine this with nature's swiftness in order to have an instant cast battle rez. basically you'll want to have two buttons on your action bar somewhere. One that is your straight up battle rez. The other is the macro that is a combination 'instant cast' and the battle rez. The macro will always show it as usable, but the battle rez without the macro will not show as castable unless you're in range of the corpse. You need to see both of them in order to not waste your instant cast ability.

When someone dies, wait for the raid leader to call out a rez. If not, ask if you should rez so and so. If they say yes, get yourself in range, make sure you're not in a spot that will likely be taking area damage (can't always do this, but try not to rez someone while YOU'RE standing in the fire. They'll die immediately when they rez.)

Once you have permission, are in range, you can stop your healing (which you should still be doing hitting hte raid etc, and then hit your instant rez button. It'll use a GCD but you can keep healing instead of haivng to pause to cast the rez.

When the player pops up immediately cast nourish on them to give them a buffer (unless you're glyphed for a full recovery which is nice) and then rejuvenation and swiftmend, and if they're still down a regrowth. Get them up to full immediately. other healers will help. Do NOT cast regrowth first. the cast time is too high and the player will be too low on health. Nourish first, followed by rejuvenation and swiftmend.

Situation 7: Innervate

We'll talk later about managing your mana with addons, but basically your innervate is going to restore 7866 mana to you. You'll need to give yourself visual cues, or audio cues, that you've used that much mana. once you're down abotu 7k or 7.5k mana you should use your innervate immediately. The closer you get your innervate to this point the longer you'll last in a fight. If you cast it that first time, the second time your innervate comes up 3 minutes later you might be back there. You'll essentially be able to heal forever.

However, keep in mind exceptions. What fight is it? Learn the fights, learn when there are pauses in fights of raid damage, and STOP HEALING. Get outside the 5 second rule and your mana will really pour back into you. If you have 2-3 raid healers, in slow parts of fights, just stop healing entirely unless the shit hits the fan. let your mana come back. SAve your innervate, and then if someone dies you can pop the innervate on them instead after a battle rez and bring them back into the game.

To start though, learn to manage your mana, and knwo when you need to use your innervate. start with using it when you're down about 7500 mana and then reuse as it comes up, and then you'll learn when and which fights you can just save the innervate and not use it at all, in case someone else needs it.

Situation 8: Abolish Poison and Remove Curse

Both are instant casts. Your heal bars, or decurisve addon should allow you to quickly cast these on people. Know if there is someone witha poison cleansing totem down, and if so don't waste your GCD casting Abolish poison. Fight for the removing curses though. Cast and remove curses whenever you can, but not at the expense of your healing.

Situation 9: You're taking a ton of damage too.

Hit Barkskin. Keep healing. It'll keep you up longer through the bad shit and let you drop a single rejuvenation on yourself to keep you up.

Conclusion

I've covered alot of situations, but obviously not all. However hopefully this will give you some clue on what order and priority to give your spells, and some orders to cast speciifcally in situations. the more you do it the more it'll become second nature.

Also keep in mind the basic healer order.
1) Heal yourself
2) Heal the tanks
3) Heal everyone else

If you're dead, everyone is dead. If the tanks are dead everyone is dead. Better to lose a single dps than yourself, even if they're calling out for heals. Sometimes you need to let people die. it's called Triage. Once you get better at healing have recount open, and have the dps numbers there. If possible give preference to those with better dps. If your choice is to let an 8k dpser die, or a 4k dpser die, let the 4k die. Learn who is who, and who you need to make sure lives. It's won more than one fight just letting someone die rather than risking both their lives.

Part 8: Usefull Spell Macros

You only need a few spell macros believe it or not...That's because you'll be doing most of your healing, or should be, whackamole style using Vuhdo, Healbot, Decursive, etc. I'll cover how I do that in Part 9 (I use Vuhdo).

For now though here are a few you might want. These are only specific resto druid macros. There are others you might be interested in that any druid might use. I'm not going to cover those.

Big Hit, Happy Body

/cast Nature's Swiftness
/cast [help] Healing Touch

This gives you a quick Big Healing Touch that's cast instantly. It's really the only use for it currently. Otherwise it's cast time is too long, and while you can shorten the cast time with glyphs and/or macros then it becomes not as efficient as Nourish. It's totally a failed spell (Healing Touch). However you can get some use of of it by pairing it with Nature's Swiftness. This way it goes instant and becomes basically a second big instant heal to match a swiftmend when your tank or a player is really getting ganked. You can modify it to be this way as well.

/cast Nature's Swiftness
/cast [help] [target=focus] Healing Touch

This way you make your main tank target your focus. (I recommend this anyway that way you can always have a focus frame somewhere of the main tank, and his target, which is generally the boss. That way you see boss health easily, can target the main tank easily to both heal him, and to focus your wild growth so that it hits everyone in melee range) Once your tank is your focus you can use this button as an extra "oh shit" button for the tank should he/she be really low.

Though honestly you're not going to use this one a ton. It's good to have it on your bar.

Make Rocket Go Now

Battle Rez's are important to get off fast. Sometimes that 2 second of cast time can make all the difference.

/cast Nature's Swiftness
/cast Rebirth

What I do is have two buttons on my bar. One is straight up Rebirth, the other is my Macro Rebirth above. The macro won't show when you're in range of something because you can cast Nature's Swiftness. If there's a way of modifying the macro to show it on the button as being the casting range of Rebirth instead of NS let me know. Anyway when you're in range via the Rebirth button, you can just hit your macro rebirth and voila. Instant Cast Rebirth. That 2 seconds can save the day when a tank goes down on a big boss.

Me Want Mana

Your innervate button will target.....your target. But often you want to use it on yourself.

/cast [target=player] Innervate

This way you have an 'innervate me' button next to your 'innervate someone else' button.

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As I said there are other macros. If you have any good ones let me know and I'll add them. However most other resto druid macros generally revolve around cast sequences of healing, and/or curing poisons or removing curses etc. We'll be doing all that with our UI addons.

Part 9: User Interface Tips and Tricks

Coming Soon