My Tauren Druid has just hit 60 and is now ready for high instance raiding (Scholomance, Stratholme, ZG, AQ, MC, BWL). She is specced 31 Restoration / 20 Feral, and has so far installed CT Raid Assist (with Boss Mods) and Decursive for version 1.10.

Since I'm completely new to raid healing (as a Druid), and don't want to reinvent the wheel, I'd be thankful if someone could give me a complete introduction how to setup and use things. For example, which mods/tools should I use, how should I configure/setup these, which skills should I have where in the bars, what are the healing priorities (who should get healed/revived first), what are the best emergency measures and tricks, which limitations exist, when should I shapeshift to bear or cat form, and so forth.
The best way for such an introduction is probably a complete description of a typical MC raid with a healing Druid. Of course, any feral tips would also be very useful.

Thanks in advance for any advice

A copy-n-paste from previous posts, or links to related threads, are also fine.

ct_raid_assist, decursive are must habe, everything else depends on what you want.

You didn't mention equip, but most druids focus on +healing.

Healing priorities depends on your raid and boss.
If you are healing tanks, you should generally expect a priest to be quicker. (So e.g. cast a 1000 healing spell, if the tank will have lost 2000 hp.)
You should try to relay on healing touch, and only cast regrowth in special situations.


The most common healing spell should heal around 1100-1200 hp. (It depends on your equip, which rank that is.)

Revives are on a 30 minute cooldown, that means you shouldn't use every revive on the first try.

Well the biggest limitation of druid healing is the 3 second cast time.

I agree with teske, but it's worth elaborating on a couple of things. (Bear in mind that I haven't raided in about 3 months, so a lot of this is probably pretty dated.)

Rank 5 and up healing touch receive the full benefit from +healing equipment. What this effectively means is that at a certain amount of +healing rank 5 healing touch becomes more efficient than rank 10. (It's somewhere are 230 for me, but it would depend on talents and all that good stuff.) Once you hit that figure, rank 5 ht becomes your bread and butter heal. (Although there are times when you'll be using rank 10 when a large damaging spell in coming in at a predictable rate ala Ony. - Thanks Gnollguy. )

By and large you'll be leaving the clutch healing to priests and shaman, who both have far more efficient fast casting heals. (I know that we have Regrowth, but as GG pointed out, most of the time the HoT is just overheal and thus waisted mana an pointless threat.) However, that said, there's nothing like hitting a tank with NS + HT when things have gone a bit sour.

I personally didn't use rejuvination that much, although you can cast it on rogues who have run out of range and are waiting to bandage to get them back in combat quicker. (I think we had rejuv + renew stacked on our main tanks, but can't remember. Wasn't my job since I had crappy gear. )

What else, what else? Umm, don't forget to bring lots of reagents for GotW. Buffing 40 people one at a time isn't fun. (Really, really not fun. Believe me, I've done it a couple of times.) As for bar setup, it's really up to you. I run around with 4 ranks of HT (5, 6, 8 and 10) and 2 ranks of Regrowth (5ish - I can never remeber - and max rank) although I typically only use regrowth (either rank) for healing on AoE pulls in 5 and 10 man instances.

For the most part, the best advice I can think of is talk to the guild class leader about this stuff, and the person who is handling your groups healing strats. They'll both be able to give you specific advice and instructions that will work for your guild. No point me saying use rank 5 HT when they're expecting you to spam rank 10 on an off-tank.

Read the druid faq:
WoW Forum, Druid, FAQ

Especially the part about innerverate, that one is pretty intresting. I think most druids/priests don't know how the spell works.

And yeah, if you are feral, you need a mod for item switching. I don't know which to recommend, as I don't have any points spent in feral.

One more edit:
Improved regrowth is an intresting talent, which unfourtanetly didn't fit in your build.
In general all the percent increases are applied before healing. (Discussed a few weeks ago here.) Improved regrowth increases your crit rate and is thus applied on top of your +healing gear! (Except quick calculations show, that it doesn't make a difference.)

Good call. Best druid FAQ I've seen. (With the exception of Alamo's of course. )

Decursive is not a "must have". I've raided Zul'Gurub, the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj, the Molten Core, and Blackwing Lair in their entireties without the need for it. While some players enjoy having the mod make decisions for them by mashing on a single button, there's nothing "necessary" about it.

Ofcourse you could also set your priority list and thus make most decisions yourself.

Heh, you know that's not what I mean. I laugh every patch day when mages in the guild say "Wow, we're going to be in trouble since Decursive isn't working right now..."

Setting the priority list doesn't lessen the automation of the game lent by Decursive. If anything, it increases it. I find it to be a short hop to the "Auto Rogue" macro set that requires a player to mash on Sinister Strike and have the mod use the appropriate rogue skills.

Maybe I'm just too oldschool.

Decursive, or the built-in version of CTRA is a bane, when fighting against the Debuff-Boss, Chromaggus. Because that fight is a line-of-sight dependent one, just relying on Decursive will kill your raid.

The good thing about 1.10 is, that most dispell abilities will now check if your target needs to be dispelled at all. And if it does not need to be dispelled, no mana will be consumed. With that change Decursive is obsolete in my opinion.

-Arnulf

Well wheter decursive is truly essential is a somewhat offtopic question. I'd say everyone should be able to decurse without it. I consider it to be the most unfun aspekt of raiding.

Anyway, on topic: Both of the decurse spells have a shorter range than your healing spells. Which means e.g. you can stand outside of Alexi Barovs Aura and heal, but you have to move into the aura to decurse. A lot of special abilities have exactly the same range. For example IIRC the debuffs of Lucifrons, Gehennas, Geddon.

Thanks for the tips so far. My Druid's gear has currently over +300 to Healing total. I've been raiding the Blackrock with 5-people parties for some healing training this weekend, and so far I'm pleased with the new role as healer and occasional tank/damage dealer. If only Mana wouldn't run out so fast, but that's a problem with any class in WoW, I guess

One minor technique I've aquired is to have a mental count to 5 after every heal. You can work the 5-second rule to get a single tick of mana regen in between casts. Obviously you won't be doing this if you need the heals immediately.

As an outsider, I have a few tips:

1. Innervate your priests as often as possible. The only exception is when you want to innervate a mage who is making water for a priest.

2. Save your combat rez ability for when your priest goes down. You might be tempted to rez a tank in order to help get a mob off your priest, but advanced druids go bear form and get mobs off their priests that way.

3. Achieve mana efficiency by experimenting with different ranks of heals. The lower the rank, the higher the efficiency. The higher the rank, the more healing gets done per time, but also the more overhealing gets done per time. It's a fine balance and what ranks you use will depend on your situation and equipment.

OK, I might have been more or less kidding about the third one.

From a raid stand point, I have to disagree with this one. If Priest(s) is(are) going down or are getting attacked, going bear isn't going to help the raid survive (something has already gone horribly awry at that point). Bringing up a tank (even MT if they go down and the ST takes their spot) in a raid situation may benefit the raid far more than bringing up a Healer that is down (as you usually have backup healers).

On particular time this saved our ass was against Firemaw. I think we only have 5 warrior that run, and I was MT. I died at about 30%, and got combat ressed. A few other tanks died. So I ran in to OT. Then the MT died at 10% and I was back at the top of aggro and tanked until the end. That was a fun fight .

Priest much?

I normally ask priests what their spirit is, if I don't know them well and I'm considering whether or not they're going to need an innervate. Some priests go entirely +mana/sec, so if they have really low spirit, it'll be a waste of time to innervate them.

On the other paw, if I'm fine on mana, which is more often than not now that I have the Stormrage 3-piece bonus that gives +15% mana regen when casting, then I'm happy to innervate a priest.

Combat rezzes are fairly situational... I would only rez the tank if I thought that would turn the battle around. But that situation can happen in the higher-end raids.

I have hotkeys for max-rank healing touch (11, go go AQ20), rejuvenation, and regrowth. THen on the side, I have Healing Touch 5, 7, and 9. I have Decurse. That's pretty much it. Oh, and Nature's Swiftness and Innervate.

*Sigh* One would think the comment about innervating mages who are making water for priests would have achieved enough of a "tongue in cheek" tone to let people know of the joking nature of the post. Apparently not.

Battle Rezes. I've used them to good effect on Mages, priests, druids, paladins, warriors, hunters (get that tranq shot back in the rotation) and even warlocks. I've battle rezzed rogues as well but that was only because I knew we wouldn't be to another boss in under 30 minutes and I figured eh more DPS won't hurt and I don't see anyone more important going down. But I've never battle rezed a rogue and thought "that just saved a wipe". Sorry rogues, you're the only class that hasn't had that happen for me yet in a raid though I've battle rezzed rogues in 5 mans and felt that prevented a wipe.

I've used battle rez as a soulstone on another rezzer. New it was a wipe hit them and made sure they waited till the mobs reset to accept it.

But yes I believe a battle rez can be used on any class and still be a wipe saver, though generally another healer or a tank is the best bet. And druids getting a little chain battle rezzing going on can be a big deal too. If there is a dead priest and a dead druid with a battle rez up, the druid will be battle rezzed first.

Well that plus saying your one serious comment was the only one that wasn't serious got it across for me. But it is just text. Oh well I chuckled at your post and a few of the replies. So it wasn't completely lost. I still felt I should put a serious answer in on battle rezzes though.

It's not your fault, Blizzard defined the roles. Only fight I can think of where a Rogue being battle rezzed could prevent a wipe is Broodlord.

We'll regularly rez any rogues that go down during Ragnaros to keep our dps nice and high. Of course, I say regularly... but nowadays we're not seeing them die often at all.

I can see rezzing a rogue during the Sartura fight, since being able to stunlock mobs is so important in that fight.

My few cents as a druid who first set foot in a raid instance (Onyxia's Lair) one year ago this day...

Mods:

CT_RaidAssist is almost a must-have. You can get by with the built-in raid interface (or even without any at all), but CTRA offers a much tidier presentation. Being able to see everybody's health/mana/buff/debuff status is an extremely useful thing to have. I'd recommend getting having the groups sorted by class, so if someone calls out their name, you can find them easily, wheras people get shuffled among different groups. Bind a key to toggle it back and forth with group sorting so you can easily select groups for buffing GotW, or if you're assigned to watching certain groups.

Set it up to show MotW for all players so you know when people need to be rebuffed (eg. following a resurrect, or if it's been 30 mins since a guy was resurrected and everyone else's GotW is still fine but they need a new MotW). I personally have mine set to show MotW, Fort, AI, and PW:S, so I can monitor the raid's 3 main buffs, and keep track of the 'Oh crap, someone's in trouble' shields. I'd also recommend setting it up to show curses/poisons in the background colour for each player, so you can see the curable debuff status for the raid.

Decursive/CTRA built-in equivalent: Not a must-have, but a time-saver. I'm of somewhat mixed feelings on this one, since I've played both with and without it. It allows for laziness, as you can just hit one button and cleanse everyone, but keep in mind there are situations where you will want to make the decision as to who to cure, so I would not recommend getting too dependent on it. You can set them to use some crude logic/priorities (eg. decurse mana-using classes first, or decurse the MT first), but sometimes it's just better to do it yourself. I'd recommend learning to do the job without it at the least.

Jobs in the raid:

Healing... depends on your assignment. Typically I'm on a tank, keeping rejuv ticking away to smooth the damage, and maybe/maybe not using HT depending on priest coverage. If not on a tank, watch your party and the rest of the raid in general (or assigned groups if that's the way the raid is organized). Other healers tend to be better at spot healing though, due to their short-cast heals. Toss a rejuv to keep them up, save the regrowths for emergencies, as they are mana-expensive.

I typically do keep multiple ranks of heals around. The largest rank of HT (*STILL* haven't gotten Rank 11 to drop in AQ20 yet, grr) ends up unused a lot of the time except for emergencies. As you get more +healing gear (and +heal is definitely something to focus on IMHO), you end up with more mana-efficient heals once you can start shifting to using lower ranks. As I mentioned, I'm usually on a tank, whose rate of damage is typically fairly consistent, so I try to gauge which I need to cast... also depends on priest/other healer coverage of course. Sometimes it's the good ol' cast-the-big-heal-and-cancel-at-the-last-moment-if-they-don't-need-it method (no more autocancelling by mana conserve mods). If I'm the sole healer on a tank (doesn't happen often, but sometimes is required if other healers go down or end up being shifted to other targets), keep rejuv ticking, put regrowth HoT on there if needed (time it so that the direct heal part doesn't get wasted), and then chain cast the appropriate rank of HT to keep them near top... don't overheal as that'll waste both your HT as well as any HoT's that may be ticking. This'll run your mana down soon especially if you end up having to spam a few regrowths, but sometimes if you're the only one... *shrug*.

Innervates... I don't have this anymore *evilgrin*. I will agree that it is quite handy to have, especially when first learning an instance as well as when people are not as well geared. As you progress though, the need for it starts diminishing. Priests, especially those with a spirit-focused build, will benefit the most from it. And if I get to an instance early and a mage is conjuring water, yes I will innervate them .

Rebirth... who to resurrect will depend a lot on the situation. Back in the days when people wouldn't get pulled into combat right away, often the strategy was to resurrect another priest/paladin and have them resurrect as many other people as they could before they got pulled into combat... obviously that doesn't work anymore. Sometimes it'll be a tank. Sometimes it'll be your high DPS'ers. Hunters as mentioned early for Tranq shot. Sometimes it'll be a healer. Sometimes it'll be a big long res chain of druids if we all get unlucky and die

Going bear form... not a really common thing. Have had to do it on occasion to take over one of Garr's adds or Lava Reavers until a warrior could get over. There's the odd story out there of the druid who's tanked Onyxia/etc. due to the MT dying and them being next on the agro list from healing. Your armour in healing gear won't be nearly as high as in dedicated tanking gear (if you've collected such). Keep a high armour weapon (Warden Staff or Unyielding Maul) to swap into place. On occasion I've been a main tank or offtank if we're short a warrior, and I do carry around a set of gear for such situations (Go for high AC, +sta, and a good mix of +str/+agil since crit mauls are a great agro holder. +Defense as you are able to obtain, but don't sacrifice the other stats for it). One exception I can think of is the Battleguard Sartura fight in AQ40, where two of the adds are each handled by a hunter, warrior, and druid with feral charge. Distracting shot/intercept/charge/taunts/bash/etc. to try to keep it out of the way of the rest of the raid. I'll be in healing gear for the most part, but with more AC rings/trinkets/etc. thrown in.

Cat form? Well, if you're on trash mobs and the healing is excessive, you might as well contribute some DPS, as long as your raid lets you. I have to admit for the Nefarian fight I throw on a bit of hybrid gear (I drop to about 7000 mana buffed, +350ish to heal, get to about 1000AP in cat [no battleshout, boo], 20% crit... yes I'm feral specced these days. Granted that's a lot of good gear in there as well...) and I'm allowed to go claw on the Drakonids with the rogues at the start, then pop out to heal when required. I'm not contributing a huge amount of damage (1/2 at best of our top insanely geared combat rogue, but only because I can position myself behind the mob to continually use shred), but it means drakonids die faster, and we don't get swarmed as quickly, and I still have a good healing base. Plus when the druid calls and I get to scratch Nefarians' back...

Going cat + cower (if you have furor for the immediate energy) is sometimes useful if you gain agro, but a lot of the mobs in the raid instances hit hard enough to squish you in 2 shots, so you may not live to lose the extra agro. Still, useful in some situations, like the Razorgore encounter. Often though with a loose mob, you have a better chance of surviving by going bear until a tank can pull the mob off.

I once got yelled at for combat rezzing the MT. How was I to know he was in range of the OOC rezzer? (This was a long time ago, late in 1.6, maybe early 1.7.) Given that it was basically an uber-PuG, it seemed a little unfair to me.


I find the energywatch mod handy for this sort of thing, as it gives me a rough idea of how much longer until I'm out of the 5second rule. I've tried counting to 5, but I always forget about it when things get hecktic.

Yup, if you have an off balance/partially new group, and have the fight under control, but look like you might be perilously close to a second spawn of sons, a rogue just might save the day.