Restoration Druid Talent Thoughts

Anyone claiming to be proficient in their class and considering offering suggestions to others had better be prepared to display their own talent tree and discuss the reasons behind each point that they chose.  So, without further ado, here is my current tree.  I am currently experimenting a modified healing style that I will discuss later in this post, so if anyone is wondering about the Nature’s Bounty talents, that’s what’s going on.

9/0/32

I assembled this talent tree based on a lot of reading in other blogs and discussions with other druids.  As I said, I’m trying to new method of healing.  In the past I did not place points in Nature’s Bounty for the increased critical effect chance of Regrowth.  Regrowth is an expensive heal that canbe very addicting to use.  For the most part, Regrowth was not part of my healing set except if a tank was dying and I popped Tree Form so I could spam instant Regrowth until other healers could get stronger heals on the tank and his/her health returned to a safe level.

However, after recent discussions with another druid who whipped my roots in heals without putting forth much effort, I decided to try an aspect of her healing style and see what it did for me.  If you read closely, the secondary effect of Nature’s Bounty is that it decreases the cast time of Nourish by 30% when three Rejuvinations are active.

“What does that mean, Goose?”

Basically, spread some Rejuvinations and your Nourish can be thrown out much faster.

“But why is that useful?”

Well, when raid-wide damage start pumping out, Wild Growth is an excellent spell to cast out to coushin impacts.  However, once Wild Growth is cast, short of activating Tranquility, Druids may begin to cast around Nourishes and Healing Touches.  On mechanics where raid damage is not massively heavy but does require some healer action, Druids often find themselves doing a lot of overhealing.  Of course Druids are notorious for large amounts of overhealing; it’s just the nature of the beast.  Overhealing causes infficiencies if not properly controlled and can cause you to start firing blanks prematurely…I mean run out of juice…I mean your branches start to droop…moving on.

Other Druids begin spreading around Rejuvinations on targets not effected by the Wild Growth (especially considering that Wild Growth LOVES to prioritise Hunter pets).  Firing off that Swiftmend gives us the additional AoE from our Efflorescence (if talented, which it should be).  Chances are that Druids using this style already spread at least 3 Rejuvinations, so placing points into this talent is an added effect that will allow the Druid to get our Nourishes out faster than normal.

“Where are you going with this, Goose?”

Hang in there, young Padawan.  I have a tencdency to ramble, but I eventually tie all the loose ends together.  Direct your attention, if you will, to the discussions all around the Druid forums about haste rating and the impact it has on our heals.  I’m not going to list all of the haste breakpoints right now, but pay attention to the 2005 haste rating breakpoint (assuming no Dark Intend buff).  At 2005 haste rating, Rejuvination has already picked up it it 5th tick (916 rating), Lifebloom moves from 10 ticks to 12 ticks (1221 rating), and Wild Growth and Efflorescence move from 7 ticks to 9 ticks (2005 rating).  These haste increases help to increase your healing throughput through additional ticks from the same mana cost and decrease cast times of our other spells.

Finally, look at Nature’s Grace in the Balance tree.  For those of you who don’t feel like readin the talent directly, I’ll summarize.  You gain 5/10/15% spell after you cast Moonfire, Regrowth, or Insect Swarm.  This effect last for 15 seconds and has a 1 minute cooldown.  This further decreases the cast time of our spells.

 

About My Main: Goose Igaly

Night Elf, my looks and background. My first ever race and definitely my favorite. I know that the race itself offers no bonuses to my healing, but hey, myself and my kind are majorly responsible for all that is happening in Azeroth. Well, us and the Blood Elves back when they were the High Elves, but I digress.

Druid, a style of play. Jack of all trades, master of none…except healing…and tanking…and dps…yeah, I take that back. Druids are just awesome. If you don’t like them, don’t play one. Druid players have a love of their character that is unique.

Restoration, a way of life. Likely the second most important job in any group, possibly AS important as the tanks themselves. Let’s be honest, when the shit hits the fan, who gets blamed first? Just saying. Healing is a mentality, a passion, a profession. Understanding the incoming damage, knowing which of your tools will take care of the job the most efficiently, and occasionally blowing Tranquility when it’s not needed just because it looks cool. Some get it, others don’t.

I leveled my druid strictly as restoration. I played with the “crit-chicken” aspect of the tree a little bit, but never felt comfortable as a DPS and did not understand tanking enough at the time to roll as a bear. Thus, it took me 8 months to get to level 80, but a joyous 8 months those were, spent mostly in dungeons pumpin’ out heals that made me feel like I was truly living up to the name of Tree of Life.

Shortly after I reached level 80 I got invited to heal an ICC 10. Now, my gear was mid-heroic dungeon range at the time, and I had no idea what Tier even meant; I was purchasing gear whose stats I liked. Not sure that I even hit my 2 set bonus in those days. Anyway, I was invited to heal ICC when my gear was WAY too low to even be considered. The raid leader was the GM of his guild, and he was awesome. The only question he asked was “Can you keep my raid alive?”

Of course my reply, this being my first raid, was, “I don’t know, but I’ll do my best.”

“Good enough for me,” was his reply. Now, this is a story that requires a post all its own, so I will revisit this story another day, but this was the beginning of my raiding.

Those were the days back when I was on Cenarion Circle. A cozy server with decent people. I’ve since transferred to Sen’jin with some Real Life friends (I know, I have a hard time believing they exist too), and am currently a member of the casual raiding guild SummuS. I joined this guild this past Saturday after two weeks of being pugged into their raid to heal. So far, I have no complaints.

Looking forward, I intend to continue casual raiding with Gooseigaly and enjoy the content. I must admit that I am EXTREMELY skeptical of the Mists of Pandora and the havoc that plans to be wreaked on the talent trees. Something about the simplicity that is being implemented just turns me off. But who knows? Maybe this will be the greatest thing since buttered bread. Lord knows I was a cursing druid when 4.0 hit and the druid style was changed into what it is today.

To other Restoration Druids out there: hang in there. I know a lot of people who have played down druids in current content, but in my opinion there is nothing as satisfying as being able to shift into the mother of all oaks and spread that nature goodness around the raid and then shift for a cat nap while the cute mage in the back scrubs the ears.

Let’s Try This Again

As you can see, this post is 3 months shy of my first post that began this blog. When I made the first post, I was in a progression 10-man in Firelands (though, strangely, we only ever got Beth down on farm…) and did not take the time to blog. My intent is to start off again and hopefully keep the motor running and the transmission engaged.

As a first real post, I’d like to share that I have just returned from 6 months of not playing WoW. I found that I was in the game like a full time job and that I was not getting anything else in my life accomplished. What needs accomplishing, you ask? Well, I’m now a year into my new home and most of the rooms still require remodeling and painting, there’s still some interesting wiring going on in the attick (ok, I ran through that spelling 6 times and that’s the best I’ve got), and a lot of trees that require dropping and stumps to grind.

That said, you may see occasional updates about these when there isn’t much else to write about. I will try to keep the posts external of the game to a minimum, but no promises there >:D.

So, hello, greetings, welcome, glad to be back, and any other greetings required/appropriate at this time. I look forward to building this blog into a semi-enjoyable read. Of course, no one is reading this now, but I hope that in time to come that I can become at least somewhat insightful into the classes and roles that I play.