Basically, before patch 3.0.2, Druids were terrible at 5 man instances due to a number of reasons.

1. They pretty much only have HoT’s because Healing Touch was (Is) far too larger cast time to use effectively throughout the group. The problem with HoT’s is they may be instant casts, however it takes 3 seconds for the first tick to happen on a Rejuvenation, so effectively there is actually a 3 second cast before you get any healing done. (Same goes for Lifebloom but in 1 sec intervals for a far smaller amount.)

2. They couldn’t res multiple people after a big wipe. SO if there were no Pallies, Priests or Shamans in the group, prepare to run the entire way back because not even a Soulstone will fix it. Typically it’s the healers job to Res the dead but Blizzard decided there needed to be a class that could ‘Battle Res’ so they made a healer capable of that. The trade off: No regular resurrection.

3. The only OH SHIT button a Druid has is Nature’s Swiftness. The problem with it is if  you have a OH SHIT moment at the start of the pull, you are gonna make a bigger OH SHIIIIIIIIIT moment by using it because you just pulled threat of all the mobs from the tank. Which goes back to problem #2.

Blizzard finally decided to cut Druids some slack and give them a Res which for the most part made the 5 man life of a Druid much more relaxing.

In addition to this they also added an ability called Wild Growth to make them effective raid healers.

The common misconception of Druids is that they are raid healers. Wrong. They make terrible raid healers, they are far better at keeping 2-3 tanks at max health then anything because if you get the right rotation you can have 3 stacks of Lifebloom and 1 rejuvenation on each tank, effectively giving each tank approximately 900 HPS x Number of tanks successfully applied on.

The reason why Druids are inefficient at raid healing is because someone else always gets there before the druid. Sure, the Druid has the hot up first, but how much of the HoT is gonna work it’s magic before say a Shaman spamming Chain Heal off everything gets there first? Maybe 3 seconds at most of you have competent healers in your team. So effectively you healed someone for about 1k before someone got their 2k+ heal off. You just got beaten at raid heals.

Now, here’s were Wild Growth comes in.

Wild Growth works by placing a quick interval HoT on a max of 5 targets within 10 yards of the original target that ticks 7 times once per second, starting off from about 350 and gradually dropping to 250 per tick. So an average of 300×7 = 2100×5 = 10500 healing for about 514 mana and instant cast. OP you say?

Consider what is happening two paragraphs up from this one. I’m am still applying HoTs (which don’t cause an instant amount of healing) so they are still “beatable” in terms of other healers wasting the effort but at the same time it isn’t waste because even if the full effect of the HoT didn’t go through, it would still be fairly efficient. Now the heals that counter this? CoH (This does however need nerfing, if only slightly maybe reduce the heals done and the mana cost as well just so it can still be spammed when needed but doesn’t make you invincible to raid damage.) Chain heal (Which has always been around and overused because of it’s awesomeness but nevertheless is the answer to a Druid’s WG.) and Beacon ‘Bacon’ of Light. (This is the ultimate in tank healing, no questions about it, it does require skillful use to make it work for you but it makes Pallies defined raid pickups, saving people from certain doom where a CoH or WG is simply not enough and yet save the tank AT THE SAME TIME!!)

So after all these other healers have done their stuff, how much i left? 4 seconds of my HoT ticking away at full health bars. 4/7th’s of 10k healing lost. Not much left to go.

Opinions?

I raided Boomkin.

I know alot of you are thinking “whoop dee doo“, however being Resto as main spec and having to lead raids in Black Temple only gives you one true perspective. In short, I don’t think I felt so much panic about my mortality as a raider in my life.

For the most part I was still assigning heals and calling out on the spot orders as normal however the realisation of how little control you have over other raiders well being is overwhelming, in alot of cases I find myself dropping out of Boomkin to heal the main tank because his health got to 50%.

Keeping things like this in mind is helpful in regards to coping the usual ‘heal the tank’ calls made by the rogue or the ‘heal my pet’ calls made by the hunter. (Very special thanks to Neph.) I mean, when you think about it, the same thing applies in a real-world scale, of course it’s on a completely different level but it still shares the same prinicple. How many times do you watch a TV show or a movie where someone has been injured badly and the victim is screaming “HALP, MY ARMS BLEEDING!!” to the attendant attempting to save them?

Can you really blame them?

Okay, a wrap up of some of the things I’m gonna be posting (Crying/Exclaiming/Cheering) about:

WotLK (Wrath of the Lich King for those who live under the WoW rock.)

Talents and Abilities – Likely to be posted about most frequently since the expansion is on it’s way and lots of tweaking on Blizzard’s part will be made. (Please give me back my OP Lifebloom!)

Gearing and Statistics – Some of the more technical stuff where new talents and abilities will change the way a Resto Druid (Or any class for that matter) especially where stats like Crit and Haste suddenly become a reasonable suggestion for Druid healing BEFORE end game content.

Raiding and Leadership – As a Raid and Heal class leader I have to be on top of my game 100% of the time and learn about other healers strong points and the effective non healers have on our performance as a whole and adjust the raid and their assignments accordingly so I’ll be posting about experiences about those.

Hope to post soon.