Know this Druid!

What better way to get to know me? Here are my answers to this popular healing questionnaire that has been floating around the community.

* What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?

Moonsinnah, Druid, Restoration

* What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)

My focus for healing is the 10 and 25 man raid environment. This is the time my gear, skill, choices, and decisions I have made about my character come into play.

* What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?

Favorite healing spell, that is a tough one. Up until recently, I would have said lifebloom. As soon as I got my druid close to 80 we saw the lifebloom "nerf." Lifebloom costs double the mana, but you get half back if you let it bloom. Ok, oh and the stacks also determine the size of the bloom? Hell yes. 28k bloom crits in Ulduar, those were the days. Then came the nerf to the spellpower coefficient and bloom size for lifebloom. I still feel it's a very useful spell, but the learning curve on knowing when to use it, and more specifically when to cast it, to ensure your bloom is as effective as it can be, is a lot higher than other spells.
-Back to the question... my current favorite healing spell is swiftmend. No, we cannot spam swiftmend, but every 15 seconds or so when it comes off of cooldown we get a free instant heal for base 8k or so as long as that person has a rejuv or regrowth on them, and this won't consume the hot, as long as you are glyphed, which you should be.

* What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?

My least used healing spell is Tranquility. It is an amazingly powerful spell, but for your group only. The times that it is needed, and the only people needing a vital heal happen to be in my group is rare in a raid. In a 5 man, ok, but you don't generally see this situation in a 25man raid. I use Healing Touch+Nature's Swiftness more than I use tranquility, otherwise my least used spell would be Healing Touch.

* What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?

Versatility. Hands down. Jack of all trades, master of none? I don't really feel that way. Can I tank heal? Raid heal? Yes. "But druids are raid healers." Yes, we can offer more healing throughput if we are assigned to raid, but we have no problems whatsoever keeping a tank up if we take advantage of all of our spells.

* What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?

Lack of damage reduction/prevention/absorption effects. This is the one and only major weakness of Resto Druids in my opinion. We don't have wings. We don't have Pain Suppression. We don't have Hand of Protection or Sacrifice. We have one cooldown,(2 if you count swiftmend) that we can potentially pop in an "Oh Shit" situation, but they are weak. We don't have the option of letting our tanks take enough damage that would kill them. Priests and Paladins can essentially let their tanks "die" by preventing an actual death or absorbing damage that would have caused a death. We have to rely on preemptive healing and good response time to ensure we keep our tank above that big hit.

* In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?

For myself personally I think I do best as a raid healer. I usually assign 1-2 healers to each tank and put myself and another on raid healing. Because it is easier for me to heal the raid preemptively, I can for instance, time my Lifeblooms on the melee on Gormuk right before the stomp, then toss other heals wherever they are needed, not having to worry when the melee take damage, because I have already cast the heals that will tick off, bloom, and heal them back to full. Generally I can manage the raid fairly easily on most fights, and toss a few hots to tanks if it looks like tank heals could use some help, or become incapacitated by an effect or something.

* What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?

I have the most experience healing with my Druid. I have started gearing up my Shaman's resto suit and healing a bit too. My paladin is on the back burner, but also has a dual spec resto set. By far, I enjoy healing on my druid the most if the content is challenging because I have the most to offer on my Druid. I feel I know my class very well an am a very efficient healer on my Druid.

* What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?

I don't really have a least favorite healing class. I have not healed on a Priest yet, but I will work on another alt soon. Every healing class is different. Chain heal is fun. Lifebloom is gratifying when it saves someone's life. Holy light bombs are ridiculous.

* What is your worst habit as a healer?

Worst habit... Raid healing can become chaotic at times, especially if I am the only one assigned to keep the raid up, and on a fight like Twins or Hodir where there is constant raid damage and nasty spike damage as well. My worst habit is refreshing a hot on someone that doesn't need it. This happens a few times over the course of every raid. This has never directly lead to a raid member going down, though it is time I could have spent effectively doing something else.

* What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?

Ignorance and e-peens. Stop hitting orbs. Stop standing in fires. Don't stand in front of the worm. Get out of the void zone. Don't stand right next to the add spawn point. And then the e-peen factor, ya know, the "just heal me through it I'm just gonna stand here and keep cranking out my sick deeps over 9000!"

* Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?

Short answer, Yes. At this time I feel like all healing classes have their strengths, but no class is unable to do one single task. Another class might be better at it than them, but when you only have a certain class, they can in fact do what they need to if they are a good player. When you are able to put together a diverse healing group, then you are able to assign each player to their strengths. I feel overall, every heal class is balanced with their weaknesses to their strengths right now.

* What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?

Who was I assigned to heal? Did I heal them enough? Did they die? Did I heal them too much? Was there a lot of overheal that I could have sent somewhere else in the raid? What spells did I use? What percentage of my healing was done by each spell and why? Where did the damage come from? Is that the optimal spell I could be using to negate that damage? Did I keep an eye on everyone in the raid? Was I able to assess on the fly how well the raid is performing, and how well the other healers are performing? Did I abolish any poisons or remove any curses I saw? Was I aware of my mana, and the mana of all other healers? Did I make use of my innervate every 3 minutes on myself or other healers? Or if I didn't, was it necessary that I saved it for that precise moment? These are things I watch in real time via raid frames, and post encounter with recount, combat logs, and world of logs parses.

* What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?

People generally think druid healing is extremely easy. People see 10kHPS numbers from rejuv blanketing on Twins and scream OP. If I were to heal every fight simply with rejuv blanketing, with every GCD spent on a rejuv on someone, not only would I be wasting heals on someone that doesn't need them, but I would be ignoring someone that needed more heals. If I recast a rejuvination on someone, those ticks do them no more good than the other rejuv ticks would have. Twins is a fight where there is so much damage going on, our most efficient HPM cast is used a lot, and works well. This is not to say every fight is like this. I often see 4 spells each with as little at 15% of my total healing done by each. We have a lot of spells, and they are all situational. There are constant situations where a a lifebloom would be wasted, but a regrowth would be optimal. At any given second when I see someone in need of a heal, or know damage is going to go out, I think to myself, ok, do I need a rejuv, regrowth, lifebloom, nourish, swiftmend, wild growth, healing touch, or maybe even a tranquility. That thought is there and and negotiated in the time it takes me to see the damage, and then immediately heal the person. Anyone can click one spell over and over, that is true. But to this day I have only had experience in one fight where that would be considered optimal, and even then I never find myself only using one spell.

* What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?

What spell to use, when to use it, and why to use it. A big part of druid healing is HOTs. To use your hots effectively and optimally, you have to know what damage is going to be coming in, how often, in what chunks, and which hot would be best, or any combination of hots for that matter. There is a balance between hots and direct healing support that druids should feel out, and this could be slightly or vastly different for every healer.

* If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?

Generally high HPS spread throughout the raid, with more healing done to tanks, and myself, because tanks are always taking damage, and my hots are always ticking on tanks, and because I make it a point to take care of myself. Why should another healer have to heal me? If I am taking damage it is generally unavoidable, and if it's unavoidable, you can plan for it.

* Haste or Crit and why?

This is where I might stray from the Resto Druid crowd. I like to balance these two stats. I use instant heals a lot, and I use cast time heals a lot. Now that I have my 4pc T9 bonus, I don't look down on crit as much as I used to, because one of my most used spells and my best HPM spell can now crit. Now... come 3.3 I might be dropping crit to aim closer to 800 haste like a lot of people, but I haven't planned anything out yet.

* What healing class do you feel you understand least?

Priest healing for the sole reason that I have never healed on one. I have logged on a friends account to do some enchanting, and glanced down at his action bar. I was surprised to see how many heals they have, and don't really know much about most of them.

* What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?
I use grid to monitor the raid. Mainly their health and mana, but also any kind of aura, effect, or debuff such as poisons, magic effects, diseases, curses, mortal strike effect, damage buffs or debuffs, specific abilites for encounters such as frost tombs, or impale stacks. I use clique to bind all my heals and most abilites to my Lachesis mouse, and I use a decurse and abolish poison mouseover macro.

* Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?

Generally I value all of my healing related stats; Spellpower, Crit, Haste, Intellect, Spirit and MP5. I don't generally ignore socket bonuses if they are useful to me in any way. If they are free useful stats, I look at them as such. I socket with some Spellpower gems, some Spirit+Spellpower and some Intellect+Spellpower gems. I have always left haste and crit up to the gear I choose. I feel have a nice balance of healing throughput, longevity, and mana restoration.


Whew. Well that is done, and took a lot longer than I thought it would have. A lot of my answers ended up being a lot longer than I thought they would be too. Hopefully that has given you some insight to me, and the way I play my Druid, as well as how I feel about Druid healing in general.

Cheers,
Moon