Reflections From The Pond

Posts Tagged ‘druid’

Or possibly quadruple spec.

Remember how I fiddled about trying out druid healing specs but avoiding the overcooked broccoli form because, well, eh, for no other reason actually than the slightly withered look of it. No, I tell a lie, I actually avoided it partly because every time I see a tree I think aha there’s Zetter (our resident tree!), and the one time I actually specced into this brassicaceous form (for a Masquerade Party!) I couldn’t find myself on my screen, must have been that damned Zetter blocking me all the time! Oh, wait…

Anyway, I suddenly felt kind of extremely silly trying so hard to heal as a druid and not take advantage of their imba 51 point spell, Wild Growth, so I decided to rectify the situation by karaoke! doing the one thing a poor dual specced druid should do. I specced lazer chicken, of course!

Fast forward a few days to a Naxx run, which I entered as my beloved prime time spec, feral, but for the very first time I was in there as a full-time kittycat – miaow! – instead of the tough tank-with-my-face slim and well-muscled pretty bear, and I promptly discovered why meleeing the in Naxx is hell.

Especially for a class with a pathetic aoe (well, not pathetic maybe but not a fast one in my tank-oriented bear spec due to the 50 Energy required). So maybe especially for a druid that refuses to realise that cat and bear have slightly differently oriented specs nowadays. And especially if you don’t want to switch to bear for the much more powerful bear swipe because you don’t want there to be any confusion as to who the tanks are in this run, m’kay.

The trash pulls was a pain (single-target ftl in the crackling aoe fireworks), and Anub’Rekhan was even worse.

Run to boss, open up the can of whoopass, claw that boss til he bleeeeds, uh-oh, he calls on his little friends so run away, little girl, run run after the big friends instead and scratch and claw and bite them to death, and then scoot across the room to refresh all your bleeding nasties on the big ugly arachnid, only to run out again when his little friends came back for seconds. Lather, rinse and repeat.

I spent more time running back and forth than I did dealing out pain! Well, maybe not, but it was an awful lot of running around, and only one dash.

So, since a druid is all about shapeshifting, I promptly switched talents and moved over to the feathered caster variety. Granted, I had no hit rating whatsoever in my former leafless healing set, and of course I had forgotten to change my glyphs from the resto to the whoopass variety, but I still did an imba amount of damage compared to my poor kitty! Yellow numbers popping out ftw!

And in this form I did something, never recorded once in over 200 surveyed worlds (bonus if you recognize the quote) 50 Naxx runs, I snagged me a Safety Dance achievement!

Fast forward a few days again, when the meandering wit and erratic whims of my druid made her ditch her feral spec and actually go for a fully fledged leafed resto build. Yes, one including the flaxen walking brassica.

Happy as a kid in a candy shop she ran around in Stormwind trying to talk to her stationary kin (who were not responding btw) and was going to take a quick peek at her resto glyphs that she luckily still hadn’t gotten around to swapping for pew-pew ones when I realised that her primary spec, the one that’s always been feral, you know, the one that now had a brand new decidous branch (/giggle) instead, this spec was not decked out in resto glyphs but was, in fact, still sporting heavy duty bear tank glyphs. The resto glyphs were, naturally, still safely attached to her moonkin spec.

/facepalm.

So shall I get me new glyphs? Or shall I swap my specs? Or, given that I probably will feel the urge to reclaim my furriness real soon, and it’s not entirely improbable that I will actually get me two feral specs, one for the in-your-face tankmaestro and one for the sleek death-on-paws, shall I just turn a blind eye to the glyph department for the time being?

Or shall I just avoid the entire mess and go level my priest instead?

No, seriously, why can’t a gnome be a druid?

There is one immediate and profound question -- what size bear would she be?

But apart from that, is there something inherent that prohibits a gnome from studying hard and learning the tricks and become a shapeshifting druid or is it plain old discrimination?

Tauren and Night Elves are the only races that can become druids, but although both are very old races as opposed to the younger race of the gnomes, there does not seem to be any physical or  spiritual criteria for becoming a druid, only the racial one. And if Night Elves can become druids, why can’t Blood Elves? After all, they share the same heritage.

Maybe it’s something taught?

The druids learned their ways from Cenarius, the son of Elune, the Moon Godess and Malorne, the White Stag. Cenarius was brought up by Ysera, the Green Dragon Aspect and Protector of the Emerald Dream and he taught the druids to be the keepers of the world, to heal and nurture it and to keep the delicate balance of nature. The druids’ powers come from nature itself and their affinity with nature is strong enough to let them change their shapes.

Now, the druids do not rely on Nature exclusively, because some of their offensive abilities like Moonfire and Starfire actually uses Arcane powers, but the absolute majority of the spells at their disposal are of the Nature school (or the Physical variety when they are in Cat or Bear form).

Is it maybe so that gnomes can’t use Nature spells at all, maybe it is impossible for them to learn how to tap into the forces of Nature and shift into a tiny teddy bear?

Well, actually none of the classes available to the gnomes (Warlocks, Mages, Warriors and Rogues) uses Nature damage spells of any kind (Rogues’ poisons are Nature damage I believe, but that is something applied from without), and if you are to believe Gearmaster Mechazod the gnomes were originally created by “The Grand Architect”, a Titan keeper from within the halls of fabled Ulduar.

According to the Gearmaster, life is “a condition that eventually befalls all of the creations of the Titans!” 

In other words, the gnomes supposedly started out as robots of some kind, and, over thousands of years, slowly turned into fleshy beings!

(The Gearmaster is busy reverting this condition in the quest The Mechagnomes in Borean Tundra atm, go there and help Fizzcrank stop him!)

So, given the gnomes’ possible un-natural creation, born from cogwheels and metal and tinkering and far from the lush green forests of the Emerald Dream, maybe they are barred from tapping into the energies of Nature and thus truly unable to become druids.

(Although it would not be too unreasonable to assume that during their long historical transformation from fleshless to fleshy they would have approached the natural ways somewhat, and that it would not be impossible for a determined gnome to go the whole way and totally embrace Nature, would it?)

But what about the other races? Hunters use Nature spells, Shamans use Nature spells, and you can find Hunters or Shamans of every race there is, except gnomes (edit: or humans or undeads). So it seems all most other races can tap into Nature powers, why can’t they become druids then? Is Blizzard oppressing us?

I say we should start up a rebellion! Let’s all join in the People’s Front of the Emerald Dream and fight Blizzard for our right to be druids!

Even if we can’t be druids we can have the right to be!

So, a druid healer who is not a tree, is that any good?

Well, the jury is still out on that one but I did perform some crime scene investigations last night.

Exhibit A: Heroic Drak’Tharon Keep.

The group: Me, leafless druid, a DK tank, a rogue and two hunters.

My compadres were dressed in a mix of epics and blues and my own gear was a mix of lvl 70 and lvl 80 epics, with a few blue Northrend quest rewards and dungeon drops thrown in for good measure.

My stats (unbuffed): 1351 bonus healing, 10% crit, 259 mp5 while casting, 716 Intellect, 568 Spirit and 13 956 Mana.

Preparations: Healbot prepped, some time spent considering general spell rotation ideas. Glyphs chosen were Swiftmend, Rejuvenation and Nourish.

Let me tell you about the wipes.

Wipe 1

The Ghouls pulled from the second room into the small passage are not nice.

Wipe 2

The Ghouls are still not nice.

Wipe 3

King Dred and his henchies are not very nice either, especially when everyone is doing the headless-chicken run around.

And that was it. No more wipes. There were a few deaths and some very very terrifying moments when I was sure I would lose our DK tank but somehow I miraculously managed to keep him up, with amazing luck and a benign providence and his using his cooldowns and me employing the tested method of panicky clicking and swearing. Oh, and a very liberal use of Swiftmend and Nature’s Swiftness.

Let me tell you about the spells I used.

Rejuvenation was a favourite, after various enhancing talents it ticked for about 1250 every 3 seconds for 18 seconds. Used on every party member, including the tank and the hunters’ pets.

Regrowth I used almost exclusively on the tank, with a direct 3,5 k heal and a 750 tick every 3 seconds for a total of 27 (!) seconds.  The tank also got a lot of Nourishes chucked his way along with Swiftmends. Nourish was also the spell mostly used on the other party members if I felt the Rejuvenation would not suffice.

The Healing Touch was exclusively used after a Nature’s Swiftness as a oh-shit heal.

I popped Tranquillity  in the latter parts on two of the boss fights and it really is a truly amazing heal!

Lifebloom, the spell I had thought I would use a lot, having heard our resident Tree talk about rolling stacks of these on tanks and others, was actually mostly forgotten. I tried to put up a few stacks occasionally but I usually lost rack of them and they bloomed.

The heals proportions in the whole run, trash and boss fights were as follows:

Now, I am not saying these are the optimal spells to use, I suspect they are not but I am totally new to the druid way of healing and still learning :-)

The amount healed felt a bit so-so after being used to my shamans regular >10 k heals and 18 k crits, but it seemed to be adequate for the most times. (And horribly inadequate at a few crucial times though :-()

What I really missed was a real group heal that is not on a 4 minute cooldown, for the trash pulls especially. WTB Chain Heal or Circle of Healing. (I know a resto druid can get Wild Growth but the whole point of this experiment is to see if I can get a viable resto druid build without the Tree of Life, the prerequisite for Wild Growth.)

Let me tell you about my mana regeneration.

At times I felt I was running a bit low on mana, but this should be taken with a grain of salt coming from me, the compulsive mana-regeneration freak. (I still feel uncomfortable popping a Frost Wyrm flask instead of the Pure Mojo one on my Ulduar-raiding resto shaman.)

I used a mana pot twice only, and I never used Innervate. Not because I felt I didn’t need it (and I actually didn’t but I usully get itchy when I see half my mana bar gone) but because I had totally forgotten I had that spell.

I never had to stop healing because I was oom and the trash pulls went pretty fast because I did not need to sit down and drink between every pull. Given that I was running without any Intellect or Spirit buffs, no Blessing of Wisdom or Mana Spring totem and no Replenishment, I think my mana regen is actually pretty good.

Let me tell you about my glyphs.

Glyph of Swiftmend is absolutely amazing. Popping a Swiftmend for an instant 4+ k heal, and still have 15-25 seconds left of ticking heals is a bliss.

Glyph of Nourish was rather good too. I usually had a Rejuvenation and a Regrowth ticking on the tank, which meant an extra 12% heal for him, and most of the time when I used Nourish on a dps they already had a Rejuvenation swirling around them, so 6% extra for them.

Glyph of Rejuvention is of more dubious use. Of the in total 447 Rejuve ticks that went off during the run only 27 were when the target was below 50% health. I might have to rethink using this one, and replace it with something else. The question is with what.

So, what do I need to improve?

I must get more spellpower. Either directly or indirectly from stacking Intellect, so I need to do some research on which is best and where to get it. (I think I have Spirit on every damn thing I wear!)

I must fix me some macros! The Swiftmend was a bit of a hassle to use, since I needed to target the one I wanted to use it on. Mouseovering on Healbot was not good enough, so I need to fix that.

I must work out some figures for which spells work best in which situations. I am a bit worried about my not using Lifebloom a lot, but it might be due to me being a total noob when it comes to druidy healing.

And I need to get some more practice.

But all in all, not a bad run and not a bad try. I am not discouraged yet! :-)

After I wrote in my last post that getting a new skin for the Druid Treeform and not having to look like overcooked broccoli all the time might get me to try out the resto way for my druid, I got an idea.

(Don’t get me wrong, I think the Tree form is absolutely adorable. On others. Every time I see a tree I want to hug it, but I can’t get over my aversion at being a Tree myself. I’m a bear! Or possibly a cat.

This runs even deeper than my aversion against getting gear with Spirit on for my warlock. Spirit! I’m a warlock! But I bite down and silently accept running around in Spirit gear and my Fel Armor on.)

The idea was, is it possible to have a viable healing build without taking the Tree talent? To heal in caster form? Or would it be as silly as trying to tank in caster form?

Back before WotLK, there was a variant healing build called the Dreamstate build, called so because it went deep enough into the Balance tree to get the Dreamstate talent (which requires 25 talents in the Balance tree, a total of 28 if you take all 3 ranks of it). When you only had 61 talent points to place, this meant you would not be able to take the Tree of Life. Now, with 71 talents to spend, you can get both Dreamstate and Tree of Life.

So what does the Tree of Life do, besides turning you into a deciduous saplette?

The tooltip says

Reduces the mana cost of your healing over time spells by 20% and grants the ability to shapeshift into the Tree of Life. While in this form you increase healing received by 6% for all party and raid members within 45 yards, and you can only cast Restoration spells in addition to Innervate, Barkskin, Nature’s Grasp and Thorns spells.

The Tree of Life also opens up the possibility to get Improved Tree of Life, which for another 3 talent points

Increases your armor contribution from items while in Tree of Life Form by 200%, and increases your healing spell power by 15% of your spirit while in Tree of Life Form.

So, with the full Tree of Life-talents I will get 20% mana reduction for the HoTs, 6% increased healing received for the entire raid, and increased healing spell power with 15% of my spirit. Hmm…

Now, everyone and everything can be bought, it is just a matter of finding the right price. Will these very nice talents be enough to buy the silence of my esthetic sense?

Let’s ponder that for a while and take a look at which healing spells I will have in my arsenal.

Healing Touch, the big, long-cast heal, similar to Greater Heal for priests and Healing Wave for shamans.

Nourish, the Flash Heal or Lesser Healing Wave of the druid with the added perk of extra heal if I have HoT active on the target.

Regrowth, the I-can’t-decide-whether-to-HoT-or-direct-heal-spell-so-I’ll-do-a-little-of-both.

Tranquility, a channeled group heal spell with a very long cd (10 minutes if untalented, can get it down to 4 with talents).

Rejuvenation, your basic HoT. Not stackable.

Lifebloom, your special HoT that stacks and refunds mana if you let it bloom.

Wild Growth, the group HoT 51-point talent in the Resto tree. This is one spell I will probably not get if I dive down into the Balance tree.

 
Ok, healery spells sorted, now let’s see if I can find a way to mitigate the loss of the mana reduction, the increased healing and the increased spell power that comes with not taking the Broccoli of Life.

So, what Balance talents  are good for healing?

In the first tier, I want to get 5/5 of Genesis. 5% healing increase for the HoTs, yes please.

The second tier holds Moonglow, which with 3/3 points reduces the mana cost of Healing Touch, Nourish, Regrowth and Rejuvenation by 9%. Not the 20% reduction from the ToL but on the other hand the reduction applies to some other spells as well (but not to Lifebloom)

I will also take Nature’s Majesty. 4% crit chance increase for Nourish and Healing Touch. I have a feeling the healing out-of-tree will be biased slightly towards spells with a cast time, and crit would be welcome then. This talent also opens up Nature’s Grace, where 3 talent points will give you a 20% spell cast speed for 3 seconds on every spell crit (and wouldn’t it be great if HoTs could crit then!) and also Nature’s Splendor. Increased duration of HoT’s, this means more heals creamed out for the same amount of mana – yay!

This is where it gets hairy because now there is no talent left that gives direct bonuses to healing, but I need to fill something out to open up the next tier. I choose Brambles, because that will at least be of benefit to the tanks and melee, and then I can go down to the fourth tier and fill up Celestial Focus. 3% extra spell haste, thank you.

Fill up Brambles with the last 2 points and Lunar Guidance opens up for me to take 3/3.

And now I am seriously stuck! I need 2 more points placed for Dreamstate to open up, and there are really nothing I want. I’ll go with Insect Swarm (could be marginally useful if I have some time over to DoT up the boss), and I’ll stick one point in Improved Moonfire. (Was thinking of Nature’s Reach, but I’m not gonna be pewpewing, and why would I want improved range on my feral Faerie Fire?)

So, 3/3 in Dreamstate and I’ll leave the Balance tree.

 
Let’s go Resto!

Have you ever realised how much a druid’s talent trees are intermingled btw? Not a single talent in my shaman’s resto tree top tiers is useful for anyone else but a resto shaman, but the resto druid tree holds a lot of talents useful for her other specs. Like Furor. Not a single benefit for a healery inclined druid in that talent, yet it is in the resto tree.

So since I don’t have much choice in the first tier I’ll go with 2/2 Improved Mark of the Wild and 3/3 Nature’s Focus.

Second tier, 5/5 in Naturalist (see how this is a useful talent for other specs as well?) and 1/3 in Subtlety. Skip Natural Shapeshifter because I am not gonna shift a lot.

Third tier, 3/3 in Intensity to be on the safe side even with Dreamstate, and 1/1 in Omen of Clarity, the often-proccing talent that every druid has, no matter what spec.

Improved Rejuvenation fully talented is a must-have, but I am not sure how many points I should put into Tranquil Spirit. Every point reduces the mana cost of Healing Touch, Nourish and Tranquility with 2% up to a total of 10% when all 5 points are taken. How much am I going to use those spells? Quite often, I suspect, but let’s stay with 2 points only for now so the next tier is opened up.

I have a spell like Nature’s Swiftness on my shaman healer, and it has saved the day many times, so this is one talent I am snatching as fast as I can. Gift of Nature is also filled up to the max, and I think I’ll put 2/2 in Improved Tranquility as well. 4 minutes go fast in some boss fights, and it is a great group heal spell.

I’m starting to run a little low on talent points so I’ll skip Empowered Touch and take 5/5 in Nature’s Bounty. Nature’s Bounty gives a 5% increased crit chance for Nourish and Regrowth per point, and the talent below it, Natural Perfection, gives a 1% crit chance increase for ALL spells. But given that the only other healing spell of mine that can crit is Healing Touch I’ll skip that particular talent.

The talent Living Spirit in the next tier is debatable for me. I am going to rely heavily on Intellect for mana regeneration due to the Dreamstate, and without the ToL spirit-based spellpower I think this talent may be pretty useless to me. Swiftmend is a good one though, so I’ll take that.

I’m popping another point into Tranquil Spirit top open up the next tier, where I’ll take 5/5 Empowered Rejuvenation and 3/3 Living Seed.

And that’s it. All talent points spent. And this is the build it gives me.

The things I will be missing are Wild Growth, which sucks but I will just have to do without it, Gift of the Earthmother, which will be slightly offset by the Celestial Focus from the Balance tree, and Revitalize.

I may fiddle around with some points once I get the opportunit to try this out for real and see how it works, but this feels like a good build to start with. 

So, the answer to the above question is no. I am not willing to trade my furry behind pale caster beauty for a more wooden look.

This way of healing will not be as spirit-based and HoT-based as a ToL-healing, it will be relying more on intellect and cast-time spells, and I think the benefits from the Balance tree will more than compensate for the loss of the perks from the broccoli. The loss of the 6% increase in healing received might be harder to work around, and I will just have to see how this works out  if I find a group willing to try out a druid healer who is not a tree :P

 
And this brings on a whole slew of new questions. What Glyphs could be useful for me? What gems? What enchants? And how will I use my spells to get the most of them?

The answer to those questions will be coming in the next instalment of this how-to-heal-like-a-priest-when-you-are-a-druid series. Stay tuned!

My druid Joaquime has long flowing white hair.

Apparently this will mean that when patch 3.2 hits, she will transform into a cat that looks like this:

or a bear that looks like this:

Joaquime is one happy druid, I can tell you that! :-D

(For a peek at what kind of cats and bears druids with other haircolours will turn into take a look at MMO Champion.)

New Moonkin and Tree forms are under development, and I am really looking forward to that too.

I would love a white lazer chicken, and if she didn’t have to walk around looking like overcooked broccoli Joaq might even try going resto for the very first time in her feral life!

One of my all-time favourite bloggers, Phaelia of Resto4Life, recently announced the wonderful news that she and Mr Phae was gonna have a baby!

Resto4Life was one of the blogs I stumbled upon a slow day at work in november 2007, and it inspired me to start this blog of my own. Now, while I most amble along and write odd pieces of whatever I have on my mind at the moment, Phaelia had a beautiful blog running with a lot of news and theorycrafting and it was one of the prime sources of resto druiding out there on the ‘net.

As she announced the news of her baby, she also retired her blog, finding it impossible to balance all things in her life. She is sorely missed by many many people, but I think she did the right thing. Some things you are better off ending when you are on top.

Now, it seems that a new gear item has turned up on the PTR, a beautiful leather chest perfect for a resto druid. The chest is called Phaelia’s Vestments of the Sprouting Seed.

This actually makes me all teary-eyed. I think she is truly worthy of this recognition from Blizzard, the work she put in for the resto druid in particular and the WoW community in general was simply outstanding and she helped so many people (me included, with some blog-related problems I had) become better players and better bloggers.

I am actually seriously considering respeccing my feral druid to resto just so I can get this chest-piece!

Sometimes when I ran instances with my resto shaman Larue a kind druid would tell me to yell if I wanted an Innervate.

I routinely replied that I have little use for Innervate since I don’t stack Spirit and told them to save it for themselves.

I had not given this much further thought because I hardly ever run out of mana, and then someone did Innervate me without asking on a long fight where there were no Replenishment available. To my surprise, my mana bar started filling up rather quickly and I decided to actually look into it a little more.

Larue has a measly 145 Spirit at lvl 80, all of it base Spirit, not a single point from items, which gives me a mana regeneration of 123 mp5 while not casting. In combat the mana regeneration from Spirit drops to zero since I have no talents available to keep it running. (For comparison my holy priest Jools has 483 Spirit at lvl 71, and a Spirit based mana regeneration of 495 mp5 while not casting.)

So, even if I did get a 400% increase to my mp5 from the Innervate buff it would still be zero, right?

Yes it would, but the Innervate buff doesn’t end there, does it. It also says on the tooltip that during the 20 seconds the buff lasts you will have full mana regeneration, ie your mana regeneration while not casting!

And full mana regeneration for me means (unbuffed)

-214 mana per 5 seconds while in combat (none of it Spirit based)

-337 mana per 5 seconds while not casting (123 from Spirit and thus 214 from items)

Should I get a 400% increase to my Spirit based mana regeneration it would mean 496 mp5 from Spirit! Add that to the 214 mp5 from items and we are looking at a whopping 710 mp5 for 20 seconds!

710 mp5!! And with my usual buffs on it would be even more!

I know its not much compared to what a holy priest or resto druid would get (Jools, for example, would get almost 2000 mp5 even at lvl 71), but it is still a lot when your blue bar is running dry.

Never again will I decline a kind offer of an Innervate when needed! So, to answer my initial question, No, Innervate is not wasted on shamans!

*Disclaimer:  And of course I will not ask for an Innervate when there are others present who would benefit much more from it!

***This article is outdated***

Feral (Healing)

Ok, as a feral druid you probably know a lot of what to wear and how to behave when in your cuddly kitty form or your even cuddlier bear form. How about when you are in your cuddly elf form? Or your very cuddly (?) tauren form?

Well, there are actually a lot we can do while not quadrupedal, we can heal, we can nuke ‘em down with our pretty sparkly spells, we can use our weapons to bash some mob’s head in, we can do our famous NE dance, and we can discuss the pros and cons of different detergents when it comes to their ability to remove bloodstains from leather. Among many, many, many, many,…,many other things…

So your group does not need a furry tank or sneaky cat? What do you do? Say “well, thx a lot for the invite, guess I am out of here then…”?

BEEEP! Wrong answer.

You say “Ok, I heal then”, pull out your prepared heal bag and impress everyone by keeping them alive and well through the massive onslaught of nasty mobs of all sizes and flavors.

Easy? No. Possible? Yes.

Btw, I warn you already, I just know this will be a long post, so grab a cup of tea and some cookies, cuddle into your favourite comfy chair and enjoy!

Your talents

Even if you are feral to the bone and can’t even remember how you look like in caster shape, chances are you have taken a few points in the Resto tree. If not, consider if you shouldn’t make some small alterations in your spec.

First out is Omen of Clarity. This is actually one of the best spells ever for a feral. Since it procs (and it procs often!) on melee damage and nothing else it actually seems tailored for a cat or bear. How often do you melee while healing anyways?

However, Omen of Clarity requires at least 10 more points in the Resto tree. So what else to take in there?

Well, for starters, you have to pick at least 5 points in Improved Mark of the Wild or Furor. 5 points in total in those two opens up the next tier, which contains Naturalist, another spell with a very nice effect for a feral.

In the next tier there is Intensity, which, besides the very nice instant Enrage-rage it gives, also is very good for the healing druid since it allows some of your Spirit-based mana regeneration to continue even while casting.

Actually, I like all five of these talents very much in my feral specc, guess that is why I have taken them all and have a total of 19 points in the Resto tree. Not bad for a feral druid, eh?

To balance things off a little, there is the Nurturing Instinct talent deep in the feral tree, but this is more of a pvp spell since you will rarely try to heal in dungeons or raids dressed in your tank or dps gear. And I guess your healing gear is rather devoid of Strength?

Talking of which…

Your healing gear (stats)

As a feral, you probably haven’t had first tjing on any of the healing drops you’ve encountered in your dungeon runs, but maybe you have gotten lucky and run with some healers that didn’t need the stuff that dropped. Or maybe you have bought yourself some rep items, or have collected some quest rewards on the healing side.

I will not dwell on where to get healing gear, but I will spend a little time discussing the stats you want to be looking for on the gear.

When you are healing, regardless of class or specc, you have two goals:
1. heal as much as needed
2. heal as long as needed

You start the fight with a full mana pool. Well, maybe since you are feral and thus dressed in the Real Healers’ hand-me-downs and probably very untalented in the mana-increasing department, it may be more appropriate to call it a mana bathtub.

Anyways, as you start healing you pull the plug on your bathtub, and the sweet blue mana starts going down the drain. When the tub is empty you are out of mana but hopefully your friends will have killed the mobs by then.

In longer fights, however, you might face the shiny bottom of your tub glaring back at you when the mob is only half-dead, and if that happens all your friends will most likely be very dead pretty soon.

Luckily there are some ways of getting more heals out of that tub of yours, and those ways are:

1. Increase the size of your tub
2. Increase your mana regeneration
3. Increase your healing bonus
4. Downrank your healing spells (actually it’s dubious if this qualifies here, but I will leave it and comment on it)

Tub size
The amount of mana you have at your disposal is dependent on how much Intellect you have. Now, while a large tub is pretty neat to have it will run dry eventually if you keep using the mana in it. So, while tub size is important, it is more important to make the mana in it last longer and/or heal for more.

Mana regeneration
What if someone didn’t turn off that bathtub tap, but instead left it dripping? As we all know in this era of energy saving awareness, a water tap left dripping can fill a whole bathtub in a surprisingly short time. Same goes for your mana regen, only in your case, you want that tap to be dripping as much as possible.

There are two stats that will help you pry that tap open, and that is mana/5 and Spirit. Mana/5 will give you the stated mana regeneration at all times, regardless if you are casting or not. Spirit will give you mana back only when you are NOT casting, and after a cast you will have to wait 5 seconds until the Spirit-based mana regen kicks in.

You can get 30% of that Spirit-based mana regen going even when casting if you choose the talent Intensity in the Resto tree. Besides the mana regen bonus it has a nice effect for a Feral too, so it’s not a total waste even if you rarely heal.

A Resto druid will have a whole bunch of other nifty Spirit-based talents and thus a reason to stack the Spirit high, but a Feral won’t, so if you have to choose between mana/5 and Spirit go for the mana/5.

There is one occasion when a lot of Spirit is useful for a Feral as well, and that is when you use your Innervate on yourself. However, since it’s possible to switch weapons in mid-fight you can create a macro that will swap your regular healing weapon for one with more spirit on it for the duration of the Innervate, to maximize the mana regen.

#show Innervate
/equip Serpentcrest Life-Staff
/cast [target=Yourname] Innervate
/equip Shard of the Virtuous

Click the macro once to swap to your Spirit-weapon and to cast Innervate on yourself (or whomever you have named as target), click it twice to swap back to your regular healing weapon. (Now isn’t that a nice oxymoron… a healing weapon…)

For more in-depth info on mana management for druids please head over to Resto4life and read Phaelia’s excellent article there.

Healing bonus
By choosing gear, gems and enchants that add +healing you will get more healing done for every mana you spend. More healing will keep your friends alive for a little longer, and will ease the strain on you.

The amount of extra healing each spell will get depends on its cast time, its duration, and whether is direct or over time. For example, your Rejuvenation will get 20 % of your heal bonus per tick, each application of your Lifebloom will get about 7 % of your heal bonus per tick and with about 40 % of your heal bonus applied to the final heal, your Healing Touch will get 100 % of your heal bonus.

Downranking
This means to not use the top rank of whichever spell it is you are casting. Lower ranks cost lower mana and thus you have more mana left after the cast. Of course, lower ranks heal for less but this can be offset by stacking a lot of +healing.

The sweet combination of downranking and stacking +healing was utilised by ingenious players back in the old misty pre-TBC days, and it led to them being able to heal almost indefinitely without running out of mana. This was not the way things were supposed to be in Blizz’s opinion, thus nowadays downranking a spell is penalized so that the healing per mana remains about the same regardless of which rank you use.

Downranking can still be useful on occasion though, if for example a rank 9 Healing Touch will be overhealing too much, you might perhaps wanna consider using a rank 6 or 7 instead and save some mana. I am not that big a fan of downranking, since when healing as a Feral without the handy Resto talents, you will probably need your heals as big as you can get them anyways.

Your threat

Your party have pulled a group of mobs and the fighters are busy taking them down. You are busy keeping your friends alive, staying at the back, trying to be inconspicous.

However, when you are healing your buddies the mobs start to dislike you. All of them start to dislike you. More and more. Suddenly one of them decides he’s had enough and comes running towards you, intent on smashing your face in.

What do you do? Well, you are a druid, you can always drop into bear to get a little more thick-hided to live through the beating until the tank can come taunt the mob away from you.

But while you are in bear form none of the others in your party will get healed. They may not need to be healed, but then again, they might.

Luckily, there are some cool ways of lowering the amount of threat your heals create.

Make friends with an enchanter in good standing with Honor Hold and persuade her to enchant Subtlety on your back.

Carry around some trinkets that you may switch to if you have problems with your threat generation. Be aware that you can’t swap trinkets while in combat, so you must have them equipped at the start of the fight.

Good trinkets for this is Hypnotist’s Watch, a quest item from a Hellfire Peninsula quest, or Jewel of Charismatic Mystique, a drop from the 3d boss in Shadow Labyrinths. They are on a 5 minute cooldown so you better not have to use them too often.

While you are on your friends-making tour, find an Alchemist to make you some Shrouding Potions as well. Keep in mind though that these nifty pots share the cooldown with mana and other potions, so using one potion will keep you from using another until the 2 minute cooldown is up.

Your threat (Plan B)

But what if lowering your threat isn’t enough? Well, you can always throw up the Barkskin which lowers the damage you take and let’s you keep healing uninterrupted even when being beaten on.

And a Herbalist might be good to know as well, since if you are nice to her she might give you some Fel Blossoms, that will shield you, like a priest’s shield, for a little while.

These moves might buy the tank enough time to come pick up those nasty mobs again, but if all else fails, do drop into bear and let the others fend for themselves for a while, at least until the mobs stop hitting you. A dead healer is good to no one, and in bear you can take a beting better and heal yourself at the same time if you can kick in your Frenzied Regeneration.

Your picnicbasket

Even if you are a casual druid mostly intent on tanking or dps-ing you may wanna keep a little picnic bag at the bank for those extra special occasions when you dabble in the healing way.

Remember that nice and friendly Alchemist? Now is the time to be even nicer to her.

Mana potions is a staple for any healer, you never know when it may save your lives. Keep a stack or two in your bag.

Elixir of Draenic Wisdom is a Guardian Elixir that will increase your mana pool and (if you have the talent Intensity) your mana regen too.

Bring along some Elixir of Healing Power as well, since it’s a Battle Elixir you can use this and the Draenic Wisdom at the same time.

Fishermen and -women skilled in the art of cooking are also a good addition to your friends list, since they might give you some Blackened Sporefish or Golden Fishsticks. Or you can always buy them from the AH.

If you have the talent Intensity (it’s the third time I’ve mentioned this talent in this article, it must be a good one!) the Fishsticks will give you about 7 mana/5 compared to the 8 mana/5 from the Sporefish. So the choice is basically between 44 healing and 20 stamina.

Gems and enchants

Lastly, a thought about enchanting and gemming your healing gear when you are Feral:

Your healing gear will most likely be blues with maybe a few BG or heroic shinies thrown in. Is it justifiable to put expensive enchants and rare gems in blue gear?

In this case, I’d say it is. As Feral, you are not going to be first in line when the sweet epic healing gear drops. You will probably be stuck with your healing gear for a long time until all the dedicated healers have geared up, and if you want to make a significant contribution when needed, you better make the most of the gear you have.

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Feral(Cat)

And what are the preferred stats for the kitty-cat? You didn’t think it would be the same as for the cuddly bear, now would you? Well, there is one stat both the cat and bear want – Agility, but generally if you are dressing for cat you take your bear gear and shove it down your bags.

A druid in cat form is a lean mean killing machine, a sleek and furry bullet aimed straight at the enemy and your goal is to make sure they don’t know what hit them before they are dead.

The key to hit the mobs hard is to stack up on Attack Power (AP). The more AP you have, the more pain you deal to the mobs.

Attack Power is a stat of its own and many items sports something like “Equip: Increases attack power by “some number here”.

A druid in cat form also gets AP from Agility and Strength. One point of Agility gives one AP but one point of Strength gives two AP. Would seem that Strength is better then? Well, that is a tricky question, because it so happens that one point of Agility also increases the Crit chance, and thus the total dps of your cat.

So Strength or Agility? Well, for a lvl 70 cat druid there seems to be an equilibrium point at around 225 dps accordning to wowwiki.com if you have the talents Heart of the Wild and the Predatory Instincts.Check you character’s melee tab and the Damage info to see how much your dps is.

Until you reach that number it is more beneficial to your AP to stack up on Strength, after that the increased Crit chance from the Agility will give more total dps.

Another nice talent for the cat to have is the Naturalist talent from the second tier in the Resto tree – not unattainable for a feral druid, especially since you most likely want the Omen of Clarity, which requires at least 10 Resto points.

However, what is the use of having a paw like a sledgehammer if you miss your target and drives that sledge deep down into the flag stones instead? Ouch, that would be painful for you, not the mob! Let’s make sure you hit that mob next time, ok?

A single-wield (or maybe I should say single-paw) white damage attack or special attack (your Mangle, Claw and all those others energy-costing attacks you do) has a base chance to miss a lvl 73 mob of 9 % (yes, we are talking raid bosses again). You can decrease this by increasing your Hit rating and when you have 142 Hit rating you will have done all that is in your powers to do to eliminate the chance that you may miss the mob.

A new stat introduced in patch 2.3 is Expertise, and it affects the chance that your target will dodge or parry your attacks. As a true feral sneaky cat, however, you are not really planning on attacking something up front are you? Attacks from behind can’t be dodged or parried, so this is not a stat you have to worry that much about ;P

So to conclude this short stats speech, a kitty-cat brimming with AP, Strength, Agility and Hit rating is a kitty-cat you don’t wanna mess with.

Stay tuned, next episode of this Feral Druid’s Illustrated Primer will deal with Feral(Healer).

Until then!

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One of my favourite books is Neal Stephenson’s “A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer”, and one day as I was browsing forums, wikis and wow-related blogs I got thinking maybe I should do a small compilation of these druid things I have read about and the things I think I know and have learned from my own experinces, written from a feral perspective and – BAM! – the name “A Feral Druid’s Illustrated Primer” was etched in my head.

My druid Joaquime is feral at heart, even though she occasionally ventures into the balance tree to fight like a laser chicken. However, feral does not equal “incapable of doing all the other things a druid can do”, and I have picked up a grain or two of druidic wisdom (mostly from other people) during my WoW-years that I figured I could share.

Note: This will not be a guide on how to tank, nor will it be a guide on how to heal, it will be more of a “so you are 70 and you are a feral druid, here are some things that you might find interesting to know and consider”-sort of thing.

Primer = A book that covers the basic elements of a subject.

Enjoy!

Feral(Bear)

What stats should you aim for and how much?

A feral druid’s first concern should be to make herself uncrittable, and since you are a lvl 70 druid you want to be uncrittable by all the top mobs that may come running to you, intent on smashing your face in, ie raid bosses. The chance for a raid boss to score a critical hit on you is 5,6 % (for some reason raid bosses are considered to be lvl 73, even though they are shown as skulls, which should indicate they are at least 10 lvls above you…)

So, uncrittability is achieved by
1) taking 3/3 of the feral talent Survival of the Fittest, which gives you a 3 % reduction to the chance of an enemy scoring a critical hit on you, AND
2) stacking Defense or Resilience until they add another 2,6 % chance that you will avoid a critical hit. Defense is usually preferred since, unlike Resilience, it increases Dodge chance as well, but any of the two will do the job. You will have reached your coveted goal at 415 Defense or 220 Resilience. If you have a little of both, check the tooltips for each stat and add up the numbers.

Please pay attention to the difference between Defense rating, which is not the same as Defense. For some reason Blizz has a plethora of different ways to confuse us all, and this is just one of them. You stack Defense Rating to get Defense, and you stack Resilience (not rating!) to get Resilience.

In my opinion, hoarding up on Defense after you have reached crit immunity is rather useless. You get a slight increase to Dodge, but you have no use for the Defense-induced Block or Parry. Better to increase other stats then.

The second thing you want to start amassing is Armor. Your thick furry hide is the one thing that protects your fragile innards and warm heart from the cold cruel world out there. Love it! Get a lot of it! Maximize the talent Thick Hide and keep an eye out for items with their armor value in green – that means that they are extra good for that sweet protection.

Armor is also increased by one of the druid’s other favourite stat – Agility. It also increases Dodge and Crit, and you want a lot of the two first at least for starters. Dodge to avoid as many of the mob’s hits as possible, Armor to reduce the hurt of the hits you can’t avoid, and Crit is a nice bonus to giving that nasty bucket of smelly old carp that’s trying to take you and your friends down a little extra painful taste of his own medicine. Get as much Agility as you can – there is no such thing as too much Agility.

For some reason the impact of Agility on the Dodge is not shown in the tooltip, but it’s there, rest assured of that.

Dodge rating is another stat that the just-turned 70-druid might wanna check out, since you have no other means of avoiding a hit, you have no shield to block with and no weapon to parry with. (Yeye I know you do have weapon equipped, but Blizzard in their mysterious ways have not yet seen fit to tell us all how, exactly, a bear utilises the pretty blunt weapon she somehow carries with her underneath that furry exterior.)

Aim for about 30 % Dodge unbuffed to start with. The talent Feral Swiftness adds 4 % to your Dodge, take it! In my experience, it is usually not necessary to gem or enchant for Dodge, a lot of the gear you will be interested in has Dodge rating on it, and anyways I prefer stacking pure Agility over Dodge rating for the extra benefits of that stat.

A slight note though, on some bosses it seems too much Dodge may interfere with your rage generation, but generally it’s the more Dodge, the merrier.

Same thing here as for Defense btw, you stack up Dodge Rating to increase your Dodge.

Stamina is the last of the really must-have’s, a good feral druid needs a large health pool to soak all those un-dodged hits that gets through your thick bear fur. Once your gear covers the basic uncrittability you can start stacking Solid Star of Elune’s or other gems with stamina in your gear. Don’t worry too much if you miss out on the socket bonus, or if it’s a real nice one, try to find suitably colored gems with stamina and some other nice stat on them, like the Jagged Talasite or Shifting Nightseye. Also, don’t forget to take the talent Heart of the Wild, which will give you a sweet flat 20 % Stamina increase in Bear form.

Other stats that are interesting are Crit and Hit, but for a starter druid they take secondary place to the holy quintuplet(is that even a word?) mentioned above. Hit rating makes you hit your target more, Crit rating makes you more likely to get a critical hit when you do, and as you know, the more you damage that mob, the more threat you generate, the more your dps’ers and healers can unleash on the mob and you respectively without having to worry about taking aggro. Crit is also crucial if you have the talent Primal Fury, which you do have, right? Free rage for every crit? Gief!

So now that you know which stats to aim for, check out this sweet tool from Rawr to see how you can make your own druid dress up in different outfits and how it will affect your overall stats.

Stay tuned for the next part – Feral(Cat)

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