Tree Theory
Somebody posted this on our guild forums:
I need help from the pro healer droods!
I'm going to be making a main spec healer drood and need help on a build. So far this is what I got and I'm all up on suggestions since I've never made one before.
tree spec attempt
Well, you've missed a few things that I think are important. A big one is that you've skipped Nature's Swiftness, which is a hugely important Oh Shit button for trees:
#showtooltip Oh Shit!
/cast Nature's Swiftness
/cast Healing Touch
You can get those points by yanking them out of Tranquil Spirit. As a tree, you're going to have insane mana regen even while casting, and investing five points for a 10% mana cost reduction to a couple of spells is hardly worth it, imnsho.
You can also reclaim all five points from Naturalist, because in my experience the *only* time you're going to cast Healing Touch in combat is with the Oh Shit macro. That talent's there for cats in PvP.
Try something like this spec. Nature's Grace & Nature's Splendor in the Balance tree are very helpful for healing. The only difficult choice was whether to put the last 3 points in Resto into Living Seed or Natural Perfection. I think the 3% critical chance for all spells from Natural Perfection (which is going to include your Rejuvenation ticks once you have 4p T9) outweighs Living Seed, which is cool, but much more situational.
The new Rapid Rejuvenation glyph interacts well with Nature's Grace and the new emphasis on haste in T9+ gearing/gemming. Speaking of haste, you're going to want to try to get about 800 haste rating to hit the hard cap, the soft cap is around 600 rating (see Elitist Jerks for the math.) On a related note, pick up the Idol of Flaring Growth from the Triumph badge vendor.
Swiftmend glyph is a no-brainer, it gives you a free chunk of healing without killing a HoT on your target. The last slot's kind of a toss-up between Wild Growth and Nourish. The Nourish glyph *sounds* good, i mean, 6% per HoT on your target is nifty, but that's really only going to be great for main tank healing, since you won't have multiple HoTs on anybody else. I think if you're going to be doing mostly 5 mans, you go with Nourish because the Wild Growth glyph doesn't buy you anything. If you're doing mostly raiding, Wild Growth edges out Nourish because hitting an additional person is pretty damn spiffy for raid healing, especially spreading from the tank out to the melee. That being said, this really depends on your healing style, and you should make the call based on how you heal.
This is the macro I use for general healing:
#showtooltip Heal
/castsequence reset=combat/target Rejuvenation, Lifebloom, Lifebloom, Lifebloom, Wild Growth
It resets as you change targets, so you can dial up the amount of healing on a target based on need. I tend to run through the entire sequence on the tank at the start of a pull, then focus on DPS that are taking damage due to encounter mechanics and/or being stupid. Usually I just hit the macro once and move to the next target, but if the incoming damage is heavier, two clicks will leave a Lifebloom ticking as well. Lifebloom covers many sins with its heal at the end, which in my experience seems to crit a lot.
I keep that macro on button 1, and put Nourish on 2 and Wild Growth on 3. Nourish is your main "nuke heal" and I use that when the damage gets heavy on the tank or on anyone else for that matter. It crits a lot - we've talented for it - and with my gear that means a 10-12k heal for a 1.16 second cast (before the haste bonus from Nature's Grace, which drops it down to 0.928 sec). I tend to cast Wild Growth on the tank whenever it's up, as that goes a long way towards keeping the melee topped off. Of course, you can also throw it in the caster camp to top them off, although it's usually the melee that need the extra help, in most cases the Rejuvs i have ticking on the casters are more than enough to keep them topped off.
Your other big Oh Shit button is Tranquility - a spell any druid can use, but trees get to use a lot. Our talented cooldown is 3.2 minutes and it causes zero threat. Do keep in mind that it only affects your party - so in raids try to make sure that you're in the same group as the tanks.
Swiftmend is your "Yikes, that guy's taking a lot of damage but isn't about to die" button. If he *is* about to die, hit your Nature's Swiftness/Healing Touch macro.
Of course, all this advice is predicated on you being level 80. If you're starting from level 1, a lot of this is no good - you don't get your key healing tool, Nourish, until level 80, and from personal experience, I can tell you that until you get tree form at level 50 healing is more difficult and mana-intensive. You need a short-cast medium sized heal to take the place of Nourish, fortunately we have Glyph of Healing Touch to make this happen. We don't get Lifebloom until level 64, so you'll definitely be using Regrowth in the early levels more than you will later, so when you get your second major glyph slot, go with Glyph of Regrowth.
Here is how I would allocate your first 41 points on the road to 50. The next priority is to get Wild Growth, which *really* helps. I'd put the next three in Improved Tree of Life, throw another point in Natural Perfection to open up the next tier, then fill Gift of the Earthmother and pick up Wild Growth to end up with this spec at 60. From there to 79, I would say fill in points wherever you think you will get the best bang for your buck. Were it me, the next five points would go into Natural Shapeshifter/Master Shapeshifter to get the 4% bonus to healing in tree form. Once you hit 80, you get Nourish and respec to something like discussed above.
I need help from the pro healer droods!
I'm going to be making a main spec healer drood and need help on a build. So far this is what I got and I'm all up on suggestions since I've never made one before.
tree spec attempt
Well, you've missed a few things that I think are important. A big one is that you've skipped Nature's Swiftness, which is a hugely important Oh Shit button for trees:
#showtooltip Oh Shit!
/cast Nature's Swiftness
/cast Healing Touch
You can get those points by yanking them out of Tranquil Spirit. As a tree, you're going to have insane mana regen even while casting, and investing five points for a 10% mana cost reduction to a couple of spells is hardly worth it, imnsho.
You can also reclaim all five points from Naturalist, because in my experience the *only* time you're going to cast Healing Touch in combat is with the Oh Shit macro. That talent's there for cats in PvP.
Try something like this spec. Nature's Grace & Nature's Splendor in the Balance tree are very helpful for healing. The only difficult choice was whether to put the last 3 points in Resto into Living Seed or Natural Perfection. I think the 3% critical chance for all spells from Natural Perfection (which is going to include your Rejuvenation ticks once you have 4p T9) outweighs Living Seed, which is cool, but much more situational.
The new Rapid Rejuvenation glyph interacts well with Nature's Grace and the new emphasis on haste in T9+ gearing/gemming. Speaking of haste, you're going to want to try to get about 800 haste rating to hit the hard cap, the soft cap is around 600 rating (see Elitist Jerks for the math.) On a related note, pick up the Idol of Flaring Growth from the Triumph badge vendor.
Swiftmend glyph is a no-brainer, it gives you a free chunk of healing without killing a HoT on your target. The last slot's kind of a toss-up between Wild Growth and Nourish. The Nourish glyph *sounds* good, i mean, 6% per HoT on your target is nifty, but that's really only going to be great for main tank healing, since you won't have multiple HoTs on anybody else. I think if you're going to be doing mostly 5 mans, you go with Nourish because the Wild Growth glyph doesn't buy you anything. If you're doing mostly raiding, Wild Growth edges out Nourish because hitting an additional person is pretty damn spiffy for raid healing, especially spreading from the tank out to the melee. That being said, this really depends on your healing style, and you should make the call based on how you heal.
This is the macro I use for general healing:
#showtooltip Heal
/castsequence reset=combat/target Rejuvenation, Lifebloom, Lifebloom, Lifebloom, Wild Growth
It resets as you change targets, so you can dial up the amount of healing on a target based on need. I tend to run through the entire sequence on the tank at the start of a pull, then focus on DPS that are taking damage due to encounter mechanics and/or being stupid. Usually I just hit the macro once and move to the next target, but if the incoming damage is heavier, two clicks will leave a Lifebloom ticking as well. Lifebloom covers many sins with its heal at the end, which in my experience seems to crit a lot.
I keep that macro on button 1, and put Nourish on 2 and Wild Growth on 3. Nourish is your main "nuke heal" and I use that when the damage gets heavy on the tank or on anyone else for that matter. It crits a lot - we've talented for it - and with my gear that means a 10-12k heal for a 1.16 second cast (before the haste bonus from Nature's Grace, which drops it down to 0.928 sec). I tend to cast Wild Growth on the tank whenever it's up, as that goes a long way towards keeping the melee topped off. Of course, you can also throw it in the caster camp to top them off, although it's usually the melee that need the extra help, in most cases the Rejuvs i have ticking on the casters are more than enough to keep them topped off.
Your other big Oh Shit button is Tranquility - a spell any druid can use, but trees get to use a lot. Our talented cooldown is 3.2 minutes and it causes zero threat. Do keep in mind that it only affects your party - so in raids try to make sure that you're in the same group as the tanks.
Swiftmend is your "Yikes, that guy's taking a lot of damage but isn't about to die" button. If he *is* about to die, hit your Nature's Swiftness/Healing Touch macro.
Of course, all this advice is predicated on you being level 80. If you're starting from level 1, a lot of this is no good - you don't get your key healing tool, Nourish, until level 80, and from personal experience, I can tell you that until you get tree form at level 50 healing is more difficult and mana-intensive. You need a short-cast medium sized heal to take the place of Nourish, fortunately we have Glyph of Healing Touch to make this happen. We don't get Lifebloom until level 64, so you'll definitely be using Regrowth in the early levels more than you will later, so when you get your second major glyph slot, go with Glyph of Regrowth.
Here is how I would allocate your first 41 points on the road to 50. The next priority is to get Wild Growth, which *really* helps. I'd put the next three in Improved Tree of Life, throw another point in Natural Perfection to open up the next tier, then fill Gift of the Earthmother and pick up Wild Growth to end up with this spec at 60. From there to 79, I would say fill in points wherever you think you will get the best bang for your buck. Were it me, the next five points would go into Natural Shapeshifter/Master Shapeshifter to get the 4% bonus to healing in tree form. Once you hit 80, you get Nourish and respec to something like discussed above.