Harmony, Lifebloom, and You! (with logs!)

My doodle of how I imagine my tree healing :D
Inspired by the ever funny Allie Brosh from Hyperbole & a Half

I wanted to devote a post to Harmony (our Mastery) and Lifebloom as I’ve found many druids (whether mains, offspecs, or alts) were not realising the value of these things, not maintaining good uptime on them, or both. These two things are extremely important to druid healing. Lifebloom especially is crucial to our mana regen (from Revitalise procs), to our clearcasting (as, for Resto druids, Lifebloom is our only ability which grants Omen of Clarity for our healing spells), and to our groups, as Lifebloom provides Replenishment for our party or raid.

For anyone wondering what I mean by uptime - uptime is referring to how much the ability or buff is active throughout a fight. So, for a quick example, if you maintain Lifebloom up perfectly through an entire fight, the uptime would be 100%. If you only had it up for half the fight, it would be 50%. 

Ideally, both Lifebloom and Harmony will have an uptime of 100%. In actuality, it will vary a little bit; for example, on the Alysrazor encounter, when Alysrazor crash lands there is no damage going out until she takes off again. Healers in this period are all DPSing both to help damage her and also for the mana return from DPSing her in this phase. During that period you won’t be maintaining Lifebloom or Harmony as you’ll be busy DPSing. The end uptime percentage on these abilities for that fight will be below 100% as it simply isn’t in the mechanics of the fight. Now, compare that fight to, say, Baleroc, where the primary healing is all big direct heals on the tanks and Shards of Torment soakers. This is a fight where it’s pretty easy to get 98%+ uptime on both Lifebloom and Harmony.

Keeping context of the specific fights in mind, a practical uptime for both Lifebloom and Harmony should be between 80% and 100%. You should always aim to be as close to 100% as possible.

Harmony 

Harmony, the Resto Mastery: Your direct healing is increased by an additional x% and casting your direct healing spells grants you an additional x% bonus to your periodic healing for 10 seconds.

Your direct healing spells (Nourish, Healing Touch, Regrowth, and Swiftmend) proc a buff called Harmony - this buff lasts for 10 seconds and boosts your HoTs by x% (based on how much mastery you have).

This is extremely important to maintain as it strengthens your HoTs. This is especially important while raid healing - many druids simply fall into the Rejuv, Rejuv, Rejuv, Wild Growth! spam while raid healing and forget about their direct heals entirely, or just think that because they’re on raid they shouldn’t use any other spells. Unfortunately this results in you gimping your own HoTs (as well as wasting an arsenal of useful healing spells). If that buff isn’t active, your HoTs have no benefit from your Mastery (and yes, that buff needs to be active before you cast the HoTs). Harmony needs to be active for your HoTs to be as strong as possible.

As I mentioned above, fights like Baleroc or Shannox with a lot of single-target healing focus are a bit easier to maintain good Harmony uptime. Fights with heavier raid damage such as Beth’tilac or Lord Rhyolith tend to be more difficult to maintain good uptimes for as you have to balance weaving in your direct heals with your raid healing.

Swiftmend counts as a direct heal and will proc Harmony, so if you’re really pressed to maintain the buff you can use Swiftmends to help activate the buff and, while SM is still on cooldown, through in a quick Nourish, Healing Touch, or Regrowth to keep Harmony active until SM is ready to use again.

5 man dungeons are probably the easiest place to maintain good Harmony (and Lifebloom) uptimes, as there’s plenty of direct healing to do on the tank (and sometimes on the DPS as well!). You can easily keep it active even when the tank isn’t taking much (or any) damage - simply toss a Nourish on him; it will refresh your Lifebloom stack and activate Harmony for next to no mana cost.

Using Nourish to activate Harmony and refresh Lifebloom is also a great thing to do pre-pull, whether in 5 mans or in raids. The mana cost is negligible and both the Replenishment and Revitalize procs from your Lifebloom will restore the mana quickly. It ensures you go into the start of the fight with Harmony active (which is especially helpful if AoE damage starts right away, so you can spread some HoTs immediately). 

Lifebloom

Lifebloom! Lifebloom is one of our most important spells. It is crucial to keep Lifebloom up whether you’re healing a 5 man dungeon, a 10 or 25 man raid, a heroic raid, or PvP.

Lifebloom in Cataclysm plays a central role in our mana regen and management as well as being a healing tool.


Lifebloom procs Revitalize, which grants us mana. 

Lifebloom also is the ONLY way to get Omen of Clarity procs for healing. None of our other healing spells will proc OoC/Clearcasting. We have to spec into Malfurion’s Gift in order to enable our Lifeblooms to provide OoC. If your Lifebloom uptime is low, you won’t have as many clearcasting procs from Omen of Clarity, which means you won’t be able to cast spells with no mana cost. This will seriously hamper your mana over the course of a fight!

Lifebloom also supplies Replenishment for you and your party or raid - Replenishment grants up to 10 party or raid members mana regeneration equal to 1% of their maximum mana per 10 seconds. This is important both for you and your group! Replenishment helps your fellow healers and your casters. This also makes maintaining Lifebloom even more important in 10 and 25 man raids if you only have a few classes in your group who can provide Replenishment. if you are the only person in your 10 man group who can provide Replenishment and your Lifebloom uptime (and hence, Replenishment procs) is low, you are severely limiting Replenishment for your fellow raiders. Similarly in a 25 man group, if there are only a few of you providing Replenishment, you can be preventing your fellow raiders from having Replenishment, as each class’ replenishment only affects up to 10 people. So a Resto druid could provide Replen for an entire 10 man raid but you would need 2 or 3 Replen providers to cover a 25 man raid (possibly only 2 as your non-mana users won’t need it).

Lifebloom tends to be a bit easier for people to maintain than Harmony, as most seem secure with having to maintain a stack of 3 on their tank. It can also be refreshed quickly if needed by simply recasting it on the tank, though it’s best to refresh it with at least a Nourish (if not Regrowth or Healing Touch) when you can while raid healing so that you activate Harmony as well.

It’s also good to get into the habit of always having Lifebloom up, and 5 mans is a great place to practice it - always keep it up, even through all the trash! Some may be surprised to hear me suggest that, but I’ve seen many druids in 5 mans only putting Lifebloom on their tank on boss fights. Keeping Lifebloom up and maintaining it, even just with lots of Nourish casts when your tank is taking little to no damage, will go a long way in helping ingrain the habit of keeping it up. It will also keep your tank topped off, especially with the Nourish casts in between heavier damage portions (and will keep Harmony active!). The Replen and Revitalize procs will also help restore your mana between trash pulls and bosses, so less time spent drinking!

Again, as suggested in the Harmony section, it’s good to get your 3 stack of Lifebloom up pre-pull, and just refresh it into the pull with Nourish to proc Harmony. Also, if you’re lucky enough to get Dark Intent, your warlock will love you as all the Lifebloom ticks will give him a full 3-stack of his Dark Intent buff pre-pull! 

I should also note: Maintaining Lifebloom is absolutely crucial as I’ve mentioned. There are times, however, when you may be unable to stack Lifebloom on your tank - you may be positioned out of range, for example. In cases like this, stack Lifebloom either on yourself or on another suitable target (if you’re focussing a specific DPS, perhaps a broodling soaker on Beth’tilac, you could stack Lifebloom on them). You can always move the stack back to the tanks when you’re back in range. You absolutely must keep Lifebloom up at all times though.

Analyzing Logs: Harmony and Lifebloom

Logs are the best place to see how you’re doing in terms of maintaining good Lifebloom and Harmony uptime. Whether you’re looking to improve on your own healing, evaluating a new app for your guild, or helping a friend, Logs are extremely helpful all around for analysing your healing.

World of Logs is where tons of Logs are uploaded by guilds for analysis. It can be a bit confusing at first if you’re not familiar with it, so here’s how to navigate to the information we’re looking for. With pictures! You may have to click the screenshots to get a better view.

Here’s a log for one of our nights last week. This is the Dashboard page, where you’ll be brought to first when selecting a night’s logs. To look at a specific player, use the drop-down menus: Here I’ve gone to Players > Druid > Derwent.

For looking at Lifebloom and Harmony uptimes in particular, you should really look only at Boss fights during raids. Looking at the full report can really skew the data - the person you’re looking at might have been AFK or outside the instance during some of the trash mobs, or they might have been DPSing for some of the fights, or perhaps were swapped out for another raid member for some fights. It’s best to look either at Bosses (to include all of them) or to go to specific bosses and look at them one by one. The time in parenthesis by each boss name is the length of the kill, and an arrow off of any bosses will show multiple attempts/wipes on that boss if it wasn’t killed the first time.

Here I’ve gone to Full Report > Bosses > Ragnaros 25H.

Once you’ve gotten to a specific player and a specific boss, you can then go through the tabs to get more information. For Harmony and Lifebloom in particular, it’s best to look at Buffs Cast. This will bring up the following screen:

On the left are the Buffs I cast throughout the fight. You can see Mark of the Wild up at the top at 100% uptime - a static buff of course on the entire raid throughout the fight. Next up is Lifebloom, up at 87.2%, and Harmony at 82.6%. Could be higher, particularly my Harmony which I’ve maintained higher in our other kills, but still good and realistic given some of my other duties in the fight (I do meteor knockbacks in phase 3, Stampeding Roar in phase 2, plus the brief RP time before phase 4). Context is of course important, but you’re still always shooting for that ideal of 100% uptime.

For interest’s sake, we can scan down the rest of the Buffs there. My Power Torrent procced 16 times throughout the fight, giving it a 25.5% uptime. I had 27 Clearcasting procs throughout the fight from my good Lifebloom uptime. I used Tree of Life 3 times, Barkskin 8 times, Innervated myself 4 times. I used Cat Form 3 times along with 3 Nature’s Swiftness casts, and I even Shadowmelded once! (It tends to help me avoid aggro from the scion spawn in the second intermission).

Moving to the right, you can see my Debuffs cast - Exhaustion from Heroism, I cast Moonfires on the Meteors I was knocking back, and Concentration from a Concentration Pot.

Moving to the right once more, you can see Power Gains - this is the mana I gained throughout the fight. Reviltalize and Innervate gave me back the most mana. Heartfire is the Resto t12 2-piece bonus, which is a pretty good mana return throughout the course of a fight. Replenishment there is how much my Replenishment provided to the raid - to see how much you yourself gained from Replenishment, simply click the Buffs Gained tab, shown below, in which you can see the mana gained from Replen (and also from a Concentration pot). 

 

That all is also looking at a fight which was 12 minutes long - some numbers will be lower for shorter fights.

Some Examples

Here are just a few more examples of some logs looking at Harmony and Lifebloom uptimes.

The following log is one from a Baleroc kill. As I mentioned earlier, because of all the 

direct healing required in this fight, this is a much easier fight to maintain near-perfect Lifebloom and Harmony uptime. You can see there’s a 98% uptime for Lifebloom and 96.6% uptime for Harmony.

I also found the following two logs from kills of Lord Rhyolith - both kills were about 4:40 in length. This is a good comparison of the same encounter, the same length of time, and the effects of high and low Lifebloom uptime in particular.

If you look at this first log, you can see Harmony uptime is up at 92.2% and Lifebloom uptime is up at 87.1%, good. If you look just below that you can see Clearcasting (Omen of Clarity) procs: 21! If you look over to the right for Power Gains, you can see Revitalize restored 66,639 mana.

If we compare that with the following log, you can see Harmony uptime in this log is low at 49.5%, and Lifebloom is only at 31.4% uptime. This also resulted in significantly lower Clearcasting procs - only 8! That can really add up over the course of a fight. If you look to the right, you can see their Revitalize only provided 49,874 mana. While that’s not too low (Rejuvenation also procs Revitalize, which helps there, and the size of each druid's mana pool does factor in as well), that’s still a disparity of 16,765 mana. 

So as you can see, good Lifebloom uptime is really important for mana as well as healing!

I’ve certainly rattled on enough, so I think I'll wrap it up here. Remember, good Harmony and Lifebloom uptime is important and, as ever, practice makes perfect! Don't be discouraged if you're a bit low to start with - just keep working at it and it will improve.

A good tracker for Harmony and Lifebloom can also go a long way! I have some useful Power Auras for keeping an eye on those (full details in my My User Interface / Addons post!) which may be of help to you - the Harmony one in particular displays when the buff is active and has a timer to show you how long is left on it. Many of you likely have some means of watching your HoTs on targets to keep an eye on your Lifebloom, but if you like you can also use the little power aura to show you when your Lifebloom is active as well (this aura does NOT show stacks or timer for Lifebloom, though).

Harmony Power Aura:

Version:4.22; b:0.0549; g:0.4863; icon:Spell_Nature_HealingWay; buffname:Harmony; r:0.1843; x:-85; customname:Harmony; texture:23; alpha:1; inVehicle:0; wowtex:true; combat:true; size:0.25; y:-160; texmode:1; ismounted:0; timer.b:0.9294; timer.h:2; timer.Texture:WhiteRabbit; timer.enabled:true; timer.r:0.9882; timer.cents:false; timer.Relative:CENTER; timer.UseOwnColor:true

Lifebloom Power Aura:

Version:4.22; icon:INV_Misc_Herb_Felblossom; buffname:Lifebloom; x:-45; customname:Lifebloom; alpha:1; mine:true; inVehicle:0; groupOrSelf:true; customtex:true; combat:true; size:0.1; y:-115; ismounted:0

Simply copy, open up Power Auras, hit 'Import' and paste the code into the import bar!

Happy healing!

Healing and Battling the Firelord, Heroic Ragnaros!

417 pulls later, the Firelord has been vanquished! Last Wednesday we finally killed Heroic Ragnaros! A big congratulations to all my fellow guildies in Drow, it was 7 long weeks of hard work but we pulled through and got him down! A bit unfortunately, the inevitable nerfbat hit the night before we killed it, which was rather disappointing. We had been getting deep into phase 4 the week before and were on our way to a pre-nerf kill, so it felt a little like the rug had been pulled from under us there. But, life goes on, and all the work we put in up to that week was certainly a big deal! We were very happy to get our kill, and we finished up with a US 11th 25man kill, which was a great achievement for the guild. Now, we prep for 4.3 and Deathwing!

Reesi of The Inconspicuous Bear put together a great video of our kill, featuring the PoVs of one of our DPS warriors and one of our Boomkins. I’ll share that with you all below, then I thought I’d talk a bit about the fight and healing it!

Hands down this was one of the most challenging fights I’ve ever encountered, and quite likely the most challenging encounter ever placed in the game so far. There were a lot of mechanics to learn, abilities to dodge, adds to control... on and on! all while meeting tight DPS checks. 

Like much of this tier, the high DPS requirements for the fight required running fewer healers. Some of the first Heroic kills used only three healers, though for our work and comp we settled on using four healers. We did do a night of work three healing late on (when one of our healers was out for the night), which was a fun additional challenge, but our kill used four. We used a resto druid (me), two paladins, and a holy priest.

The fight has a lot of phases and is very long (our kill was around 13 minutes), with damage varying from light to heavy throughout the fight. Mana management and careful planning of cooldowns and heals used is crucial on this fight to ensure you’re maximising your healing done, your mana saved, and your cooldown usage.

Because of the importance of mana in this long of a fight, it’s important to ensure you’re making the most of all your heals and not wasting any. Careful thought of when and where to place abilities like Efflorescence, Wild Growth, Tranqs, etc, go a long way in this fight. While there’ll definitely be times where someone way out of group absolutely needs a Swiftmend, and should get one, as much as possible Efflos are good on groups to max the healing done. Similarly with a spell like Wild Growth, times when a misplaced cast hits someone who’s off on their own so no one else gets ticks can be costly.

The first phase is fairly light healing wise - you have to heal up raid members after Wrath and Hand of Ragnaros and after each Magma Trap explosion, but you have a fair bit of time between each of these abilities, so you can generally afford to use more mana efficient heals to top people up. Tanks do take a lot of damage in this phase though. Popping Tranquility after the first Magma Trap explosion is actually a nice time to use the cooldown - it will heal up raid members very efficiently, and the cooldown will be available in later phases should you need it.

The two Intermission phases are quite interesting to heal, and how I decided to handle them actually prompted me to change my spec. I save my Tree of Life cooldown for the two Intermission phases - the entire raid is getting wrecked and is usually quite spread out at first due to stunning and killing the Sons of Flame. So quick heals, good raid coverage, and mobility are all extremely helpful in these phases. Mana efficiency is also huge, especially before Phase 2 and eventually Phase 4, where raid damage is quite intense. Bring in Tree of Life! 

Popping tree form in the Intermissions allows me to cover the raid with Lifeblooms to help manage raid healing, free instant Regrowths on all the Omen of Clarity procs (and without OoC when necessary) to top off raid members who dip very low, and of course Wild Growths and any Rejuvs or Swiftmends as needed. The raid gets hit very hard in the Intermissions and, especially when running few healers, it’s crucial the raid is getting healed up. ToL is great to pop in these phases on normal mode as well! Covering the raid in this way with ToL is great for mana efficiency and allowed me to go into our phase 2 and phase 3 and 4 with a good amount of mana ready for the heavy raid damage incoming.

I changed my spec slightly largely due to the Intermissions and any quick top-ups I was doing with Regrowth on OoC procs in the other phases. Normally I like running 3/3 in Living Seed, however, I found myself using Regrowth a lot more than usual while healing the raid, especially in those Intermission phases in Tree of Life form. I decided to change my spec and pick up 2/3 in Nature’s Bounty for the increased Regrowth crit chance. I opted not to go 3/3 as I preferred to keep Nature’s Cure for the magic dispel (Lava Waves aren’t necessarily deadly, but the dot is, so having a dispel ready for any raid member who accidentally got clipped was very helpful). I also kept points in Moonglow and Furor to maximise my mana pool and savings. My spec looked like this (8/2/31):

I must admit I enjoyed the reduced Nourish cast time from Nature’s Bounty as well. This ability feels much more like a nice tool for when we’re focussed on raid healing - as we spread Rejuvs, it makes it easier for us to cast a quick but mana efficient heal in the form of the hasted Nourish. We can either use that Nourish to perhaps small top up a raid member, top up a tank, refresh Lifebloom on a tank, or simply ensure our Harmony mastery buff remains up. This talent really doesn’t seem great for dedicated tank healing, though, as spreading 3 Rejuvs just to gain the hasted Nourish seems like a waste of globals and mana.

I generally ended up using my second Tranq on the second intermission phase - I could have used it during the Molten Seeds in phase 2, however, as everyone was stacked up for portions of it, topping the raid up wasn’t usually too difficult. The second intermission phase, though, there’s additional heavy damage on the tanks, who are picking up the Scions. This can make balancing healing the tanks and raid challenging, and it ended up being more helpful having the Tranq ready for the raid in this phase to catch raid healing back up in between the large hits on the tanks.

Phase 2 is an interesting phase. There are various strategies for dealing with the Molten Seeds, ours involved essentially a stack and run method for each wave. This was a fairly challenging phase to heal as well, mostly as there is heavy raid damage and a fair bit of movement. The seed explosions (and any remaining magma trap explosions) cause heavy raid damage which needs to be topped up fairly quickly. There’s also potential damage from World in Flames - while this damage is 100% avoidable, there are always instances when people take a tick, whether due to lag, getting into an awkward spot, etc. Generally it’s best to ensure people are topped off as the flames start to go off to give that leeway in case someone eats a tick by mistake. Tanks are also getting hit during these phases, particularly when on the run from the Seeds. I usually tried to save either my Swiftmends or a Nature’s Swiftness with Healing Touch for these times - they made some crucial saves on the move!

Phase 3 is primarily a DPS burn with a lot of avoidable damage. You basically must beat the third meteor spawn - the third spawn drops two meteors, and having four meteors up in phase 4 is just... a guaranteed wipe pretty much! This phase has World in Flames again but it’s easily avoidable, so the majority of the damage is just on the tanks in this phase. Because the DPS is so tight, I actually get to chill by the tanks and be on meteor knockback duty along with helping on the tanks. 

Phase 4 is a mix of heavy damage on the tanks and alternating heavy and light damage on the raid. There’s a bit of time before the first Frost Breadth spawn when Superheated starts stacking up on the raid, so the overall raid damage ramps up quite quickly. Once the raid is settled in the Breadth, though, damage drops dramatically (at least until you have to move to a new Breadth). Tank damage remains high and you have to keep an eye on any raid members who might have to kite a meteor out of the breadth spawn. Keep it together, though, and you’ll get him down!

One frustrating thing I found over the course of this fight was keeping my Lifebloomx3 stack on the tank. There are quick tank swaps in this fight due to the stacking dot Ragnaros places on the tank. This makes for a bit of an awkward decision - do I spend 3 globals applying a stack to the taunting tank, or leave it on the previous tank while healing the new one? The non-tanking tank will still take some damage from the dot, so it’s not necessarily a waste, but it is frustrating. I know our Pallies stopped switching beacons on every tank swap as they found it inefficient. 

I ended up mostly planning my Lifebloom stacks in advance some. For example, in the seeds phase in Phase 2, the tank during the stage in which we had to run from the seed spawn would take a lot of damage from Rag while we were on the move, so I’d stack my LB on her to help increase the healing on her. Meanwhile the tank who taunted after the movement piece didn’t get hit as hard, due to Ragnaros stopping melees briefly while casting World in Flames. Going into the second intermission phase I placed LB on the tank I was healing for the Scion spawns. In phase 3 I kept my LB primarily on our warrior tank as he tanked the majority of p3 - a combination of avoidance and World in Flames casts meant the dot generally didn’t get too high on him, which also allowed our bear (Reesi!) to go cat form and add in some more damage.

This does highlight the bit of frustration with fights such as this though, as swapping our Lifebloom stacks between tanks in quick tank swap fights can be very inefficient and frustrating. I commented on this the other day in the Druid Class Feedback Blizzard had posted the other day (you can see links to the post and also my feedback in my post yesterday, viewable here: Resto Class Feedback).

Another good thing this fight especially highlights is Barkskin is your best friend! Every druid should really have this on their bars if they don’t have it already, as it’s such an amazing damage mitigation cooldown. I actually ended up planning out a lot of its use as well on this fight to maximise its effectiveness - I was generally able to use it every Magma Trap explosion, every Seed Explosion, and have it up for emergencies in World in Flames phases. It’s such a great ability both for this fight an others!

Overall impressions: It was a very long haul but it certainly feels like an accomplishment, especially working with 24+ other people to execute all the coordination to down this boss. It was undoubtedly a team effort and I can’t praise my guildies enough for all the hard work put in. 

Healing the fight was a lot of fun, especially planning when I wanted to use cooldowns, managing my mana throughout the fight, and even planning which heals I preferred to use and when to ensure I was getting the most out of my heals and keeping my mastery buff up.

Druids especially shine on this fight I think, as our hots and raid healing abilities are extremely helpful for some of the movement portions of the fight, particularly when it coincides with heavy raid damage. We also can do an excellent job on tank healing - certainly a strong portion of my healing was on tanks as well as raid, but in particular I always feel Resto druids fit a nice niche of tank healing/support while being able to maintain good coverage on the raid. Paladin’s Hand of Sacrifice was of course very helpful on the tanks, which is a bit unfortunate that Druid’s cannot match that ability. Shaman get a bit of the short end of the stick with all the movement in this fight, however they can perform very well if focussing on tanks. Priests of both specs seem to perform well - Holy’s Lightwells are extremely useful (provided your raid uses them of course!) and Guardian Spirit can be great for tanks on the move in Phase 2 and for the heavy damage in Phase 4. Discipline can also do well, though Power Word: barrier seems more useful for reducing trap or seed explosions in phase 2 and potentially in phase 4 when the raid is actually stacked up.

Now to prepare for patch 4.3 and the battles with Deathwing! I have a bunch of ideas for other posts too so now with some extra free time as we get back to a farm schedule, I'll try to get some more posts up soon. 

Happy raiding!

Mana Management as a Resto Druid

Battling Sinestra!

A quick update to start! Apologies for the lack of posts recently, I’ve been very busy still in game and in real life. We’ve been pushing progression hard these past few weeks but with some good results, we’ve gotten 25 Ascendant Council and Cho’gall down on heroic, as well as a quick Al’akir heroic kill on 10 man outside of raid hours to get a good look at the fight. We’re working full time on Sinestra now, which has been quite a lot of fun. The fight is pretty neat, and has a, er, fun version of Twilight Cutters - think Halion cutters that chase random raid members.

There’s also been a lot of news updates about Patch 4.1 on the PTR, but with how quickly that’s changing and updating, I’m best off pointing towards MMO-Champion for the latest updates rather than trying to rehash all the news.

Instead I thought I’d make a post about the most important thing for healers in Cata - mana management!

It’s a bit of a fallacy that Resto druids have no mana issues - we have to manage our mana as much as any other healer, and you can easily run OoM if you’re not careful. 

The most obvious tools in our mana-management arsenal are Innervate, Revitalize (talent), our Replenishment, and Omen of Clarity (which now only procs for healing spells when you spec into Malfurion’s Gift).

Let’s start with Innervate.

Innervate: Causes the target to regenerate mana equal to 20% of the casting Druid’s maximum mana pool over 10 seconds.

Innervate is our key mana-restoring tool. It’s generally best to use your Innervate early and often so you can make as much use of it as possible during a fight. Generally the best time to first pop it in a fight is when you are roughly 20% down on mana, so that 20% back is theoretically topping your mana pool off again (or close to it). You don’t want to pop it too early, though, as you don’t want to waste it if you’re topped off and it’s still ticking. After that initial use, you can generally use it on cooldown through the rest of the fight (with the exception, perhaps, of certain fights or mechanics which result in you regenning enough that the timing of your later innervates might be wasted).

There are also several tricks you can do to maximize the mana you get out of your Innervates.

Timing Innervates with Procs

Timing your Innervate with item or enchant Procs can provide substantial boosts to your Innervate, such as the Power Torrent proc (Increase Intellect by 500 for 12 seconds), the Mandala of Stirring Patterns proc (Healing spells have a chance to grant 1926 Intellect for 10 seconds), or the Engineer tinker use Synapse Springs (Increase Intellect by 90), etc! Our Innervate is based off of our Maximum Mana Pool when used - so syncing it up with these procs or other abilities (such as a Priest’s Hymn of Hope) which increase our mana pool will increase the size of the Innervate.

Addons such as Power Auras Classic can be extremely helpful in knowing when item procs are occurring to help you time your Innervates with them. Use your judgement though - all of these procs and uses have cooldowns, so there may be times where you simply have to use your Innervate before a proc simply because it cannot wait.


A quick Power Aura code for the Power Torrent is:
Version:4.9; icon:Ability_Paladin_SacredCleansing; buffname:Power Torrent; texture:172; alpha:0.7; isResting:0; inVehicle:0; spec1:false; combat:true; size:0.49; y:-50; ismounted:0

Just click 'import' on the Power Aura edit page (/powa) and paste that code in. That code will make a lightning bolt appear in the centre of your screen when the proc is up, but you can easily change that to suit your liking!

Trading Innervates (Update: Trading Innervates is no longer viable as of Patch 4.2)

If there are multiple Resto druids in your group you should see about trading Innervates. The Glyph of Innervate is key here - the Glyph gives you 50% of your Innervate’s effect when you cast it on another target. If you and another Resto druid are both Glyphed, by trading Innervates you each gain their full Innervate plus half of your own. This can go a long way in maintaining both of your mana throughout a fight. Be sure to communicate when you’re trading, particularly that first one, so you can each keep Innervating each other on cooldown!

You can also set up quite lengthy circles of Innervates, particularly if you have several Boomkins in your group. Generally the boomkins won’t need their own Innervates, particularly in raids with Replenishment. This frees up the Boomkins to Innervate you and other healers. If the boomkins or another Resto druid innervates you, that also allows you to Innervate another healer, helping your fellow healers out over the course of the fight as well. To simplify things over a course of a fight, it may be helpful for Innervate targets to be assigned, ie Resto druid Innervates Pally, Boomkin 1 Innervates Resto Druid, Boomkin 2 Innervates Priest, etc. 

If you do not have another Resto druid or a Boomkin in your group, the Glyph of Innervate can still be useful for you, particularly in situations where an Innervate might be needed on someone else. Another healer might be struggling, or a healer or mana-using DPS may have been Battle Rezzed and so almost out of mana - having your Innervate glyphed gives you that bit of extra flexibility to Innervate the person who’s in greater need without completely sacrificing your mana return should you need it.

Revitalize and Replenishment

Revitalize is an extremely important talent in the Resto tree. 

Revitalize: When you periodically heal with your Lifebloom or Rejuvenation spell, you have a 20% chance to instantly regenerate 2% of your total mana. This effect cannot occur more than once every 12 seconds. In addition, you grant Replenishment when you cast or refresh Lifebloom, which grants up to 10 Party or Raid members mana regeneration equal to 1% of their maximum mana per 10 seconds, lasts 15 seconds.

We have our own little mana battery in this talent, restoring mana through Revitalize’s main effect and also in granting ourselves and our party and raid members Replenishment.

It is extremely important that you maintain good uptime on Lifebloom. While Rejuvenation can also proc Revitalize, Lifebloom is much less costly in terms of mana spent, grants Replenishment, and also plays a key role in our Omen of Clarity procs (which I’ll cover next).

Omen of Clarity and Malfurion’s Gift

Patch 4.0.6 saw a change to Omen of Clarity and it will now only proc for healing spells if we spec into Malfurion’s Gift. It is now an essential talent in the Resto tree, do not forget to pick it up!

Malfurion’s Gift: Whenever you heal with your Lifebloom spell, you have a 4% chance to cause Omen of Clarity.

Again, it is extremely important to maintain Lifebloom on a target, ideally a 3-stack. Not only will it grant Revitalize and Replenishment, as detailed above, but it will grant the chance for Omen of Clarity to proc. Generally, the most likely target for a 3-stack of Lifebloom will be one of your tanks, most likely your main tank target if you are tank healing. Do not hesitate to maintain that stack on a tank even while primarily raid healing, though. If you are in a fight or situation where there is not a tank target for you to heal (healing Rohash/East platform in Conclave of Wind, for example), use your best judgement on who to heal, whether it be another raid member or yourself.

Clever use of Omen of Clarity procs is essential in your mana management. Healing Touch, Regrowth, and Swiftmend all consume OoC. Generally you don’t want to Swiftmend for an OoC proc as it’s a reasonably cheap spell. If there’s little other damage going out and so no reason to use a HT or RG, you may want to pop a SM on a target who needs it just so the OoC proc isn’t wasted. 

Healing Touch and Regrowth will be your most likely use OoC procs. If you are tank healing, Healing Touch will likely be your best use of your OoC as it hits hard enough for your tank heals. Use Regrowth on your best judgement. The best time for Regrowth OoC uses though is definitely in Tree of Life form - spreading Lifeblooms around the raid will be increasing your OoC proc chance, and ToL grants you instant Regrowths, so this will give you tons of instant free Regrowths to cast out on raid members.

Mana-Saving Talents

There are several talents we can spec into to help with overall mana cost. Moonglow is a very useful one which reduces the mana cost of our spells by 3/6/9%. This talent is in the Balance tree in the second tier. 

Furor in the first tier of the Feral tree is also a helpful talent which increases our maximum mana pool size by 5/10/15%. Our mana pool size affects our Innervate, Revitalize, and Replenishment, so this talent will help increase not only your mana pool size but those mana generating abilities as well.

Intellect

This is touched on above with Furor - our mana pool size affects our Innervate size and our Revitalize and Replenishment procs. This is part of why Intellect is such an excellent stat for Resto druids, particularly for regen.

 Although it may be tempting to gem for Spirit for the regen, favouring Intellect is the best course of action for Resto druids. Our in-combat regen tends to seem fairly low, relatively speaking - even on my main I’m at only about 2.6k in combat (self-buffed, mind), my other Resto druid who is in a mix of 333 and 346 gear is sitting at around 1.9k in combat self-buffed. It doesn’t seem like a massive amount, especially if you start comparing it to, say, a Holy priest, who may easily be hitting 3k+ regen in combat. The difference, particularly with Holy priests, is their talents boost their in-combat regen based on their Spirit specifically (Holy Concentration), which is why you may often see them favouring Spirit quite heavily.

Our mana regen is based largely on our Innervate, our Revitalize, and Replenishment, and Intellect will increase the effect of all of those. 

Healing and Planning

One of the biggest things in our mana management will of course be what heals we use and how we use them. Good use of our Omen of Clarity procs, covered above, is of course crucial to our healing and mana management. The use of the rest of our spells is also extremely important.

Lifebloom should always always always be up. If you don’t have a tank target to place it on, cast it on yourself or another raid member. It’s ok if it falls off - sometimes it can be quite useful to let it bloom, in fact - just be sure you put it back up right away. A 3-stack is best to keep up as much as possible. Many healing addons like Vuhdo and Healbot have HoT timers built-in which can help you keep track of your HoTs, though you can also find separate HoT timers or set up a Power Aura to let you know if your LB has fallen off.

One of the biggest issues that Resto druids seem to have today is moving past the Rejuv and Wild growth spam that proliferated during Wrath of the Lich King due to the nearly unlimited mana reserves. It is no longer feasible to simply continually spam Rejuv/WG. Don’t get me wrong, these two are extremely important spells in our healing arsenal. We just don’t have the mana to be able to spam them unnecessarily. While Pre-HoTing is still useful in certain situations (eg, you know a large quantity of raid-wide damage is about to hit), you can’t continually cover the raid and you can’t do so too far in advance. Our Rejuvs are of a shorter duration than they were in Wrath so you would have to refresh them more frequently, resulting in even more mana spent (and wasted). If the raid is fully topped with no incoming damage you are simply wasting mana on overheals. 

Similarly, many advise to use Wild Growth on cooldown - I prefer to advocate using WG on cooldown as necessary. The key is those last two words - as necessary. If the raid is taking constant AoE damage and 5+ raid members are always in need of heals, then it’s easier to use WG strictly on CD. If the raid is topped and there’s no incoming damage, spamming WG wastes not just mana but also the cooldown itself. As it’s a smart heal, it will hit those who are most injured, so it’s not really as feasible to pre-HoT with it (at least, not in 10- or 25-mans; in 5-man dungeons it will hit everyone in the party regardless). 

When AoE damage is expected, WG makes an excellent reactionary tool to hit right as that AoE damage hits. Keep in mind how Wild Growth heals as well - ‘the amount healed is applied quickly at first, then slows down as it reaches its full duration’ - so those quicker initial heals are best when applied for actual damage, rather than always pre-applied so only those final slower ticks actually have healing to do.

Overall, healing is much more reactive than it was in Wrath, so we need to be smart about when it’s viable to pre-HoT and when it’s more advisable not to.

As mentioned earlier, Regrowths are generally best saved for OoC procs, particularly in ToL form. The mana cost is very high for a spell which generally doesn’t hit too hard (especially if it doesn’t crit and you don’t have Nature’s Bounty), and you can easily spam yourself OoM if you’re only hitting Regrowths.

Don’t underestimate the value of Nourish. It’s a great spell for smaller damage, and if you’re, say, just keeping the tank topped off and refreshing his LB stack, Nourish is a great spell to do that. It’s so low cost that with LB up you can basically gain mana as you’re casting Nourish. Just be careful when tank healing that you don’t get caught flat-footed and miss a HT if you need that bigger heal!

Knowing the Fight

The best tool in your arsenal will always be knowledge. While there will be times when there’s unexpected damage (someone stands in something bad, RNG results in some bigger tank hits, etc), the majority of damage in fights is predictable and learnable. You know there’ll be bigger tank damage when a dragon does a breath, or heavy raid damage on something like Magmatron’s Incineration Security Measure. Learning fights and when to expect damage can help you plan which heals you need to use and when and can also help for planning your mana management throughout the fight. For example, if you know damage is light at the start of the fight, you can conserve a bit more so that you’re ready for a big burst of damage that may be coming in another minute or two. 

Also, knowing about how long the fight will last and what’s to come can help you greatly in planning your mana usage. If you have a ton of mana left and a very short period left in the fight, you can easily dump that mana and heal very aggressively. Similarly, if there’s a period of very low or no damage coming up that will give you time to regen mana (such as Magmaw when he is impaled on the spike), you can afford to spend more mana before that when you know you’ll have the opportunity to regen.

Tree of Life as a mana cooldown

This is an interesting strategy which I use in certain fights. Tree of Life is very effective as a healing cooldown (and even as a DPS cooldown if needing to help put some DPS into a boss) but it can also function as a mana cooldown of sorts. This is most effective in a fight that has pretty heavy AoE damage coming out in a mana-intensive phase. It can be very helpful for mana because ToL allows you to spread your Lifeblooms all over the raid to help heal up that raidwide damage, and Lifebloom is a much cheaper heal than Rejuvenation. Not only that, but the increased OoC procs from all of the LBs allows you to throw out those free instant Regrowths as well.

My best two examples of this are Valiona&Theralion and Nefarian phase 2, both fights when I use ToL for both the increased healing and for mana conservation. V&T can be a pretty mana intensive fight with all the raid damage that goes out, particularly on Heroic, so mana can easily get low when covering the raid. On V&T I tend to use my ToL form on a heavy damage phase when my Innervate is about halfway off cooldown, allowing me to recover some mana while throwing out those cheap LBs but still effectively healing the raid non-stop. 

In Nefarian phase 2 on the platforms, ToL can again be extremely effective in keeping the members of your platform healed by spreading LB all over them. It’s also much easier in that phase on Nef to keep multiple stacks of LB on each targets since there are much fewer people on your platform (as opposed to the full raid).

Pots!

Never forget the value of a potion! A personal favourite of mine is the Mysterious Potion, as it restores health and mana and is fairly cheap and easy to make (it requires Deepstone Oil, made from Albino Cavefish). This can be a great potion to use to get you both mana and health back. It does have a range so you can get unlucky with a low effect, but still a nice pot to have a stack of nonetheless. 

The most amazing potion though is definitely the Potion of Concentration. There’s a little bit of a drawback in that you have to sit and channel it, which puts you out of commission for 10 seconds (be sure to let the other healers know when you need to stop to use it!), but it restores a tremendous amount of mana. If you can use it, I definitely recommend it! Again, knowing the fight can be helpful here - knowing when there’ll be a period of low damage that will allow you to channel that potion. I also recommend popping Barkskin before potting to help mitigate any damage you might take.

Triage

Triage is extremely important and there will come a time where you have to make split-second decisions about who you heal and with what. Again, knowing a fight may help you with this - is there a certain class or raid member who needs to stay alive to perform a crucial role? (Perhaps that rogue needs to stay alive to interrupt). Can you afford to lose one of the tanks or is it essential they’re both kept up for a required tank swap? Is the boss almost dead, should you be focussing on the DPS to help burn that last few percent of HP, or do your fellow healers need help so the entire group lasts longer? Don’t forget to heal yourself too!

Generally these are the ‘oh shit!’ moments and decisions start happening on the fly. You won’t always make the right decisions, and they won’t always be easy - I’d certainly prefer no one die! But if it’s a situation between, say, a DPS dying and a tank, the DPS loss might lead to a wipe, but if the tank dies it’s generally almost guaranteed to lead to a wipe. 

While this is largely general healing advice, mana management does come into play as well as it will be affecting the choices you make on who you heal and which heals you use. It’s especially important towards the ends of fights when every healer is running low on mana. There are also times when people can (or, in the case of a fight like Chimaeron, must) sit at lower health - healthpools are very large and topping everyone’s health may not always be necessary. Again, knowing the fight can help here - if a big AoE damage spike is expected, your party members may need to be topped off, but if not, they may be just fine at lower HP for a bit!

Don’t stand in the fire!

Finally, spatial awareness, knowledge of fights, and personal cooldowns are important for everyone - that is to say, DPS and tanks as well as healers. If someone is standing in fire or poison or whatever else and just not moving out of it, it’s avoidable damage that you’re being forced to heal through (and burn through mana). 

Most classes now have personal damage reduction cooldowns (like Barkskin for all druids, Divine Protection for paladins, etc) they can use. It’s also important that tanks be using their damage mitigation cooldowns - you’d be amazed at just how many tanks don’t use any of their myriad of damage mitigation/reduction cooldowns and just expect healers to heal them through ridiculous damage.

I mention this last bit largely as a reminder that DPS and tanks have their part to play as well as the healers. Healer mana is limited, and any unnecessary damage taken by party and raid members (healers included too!) is mana wasted for the healers. 

I also bring this up as I’ve heard many healers getting discouraged, particularly in PuGs (oh, the joys of the LFG tool!). While it can be great practice (nothing teaches you to deal with healing crises better than a PuG that’s just pulled an entire hallway in Stonecore, for example), it can also feel very discouraging. It’s always good to examine how you handled the situation and think ‘could I have done something differently to prevent that person from dying or that wipe from happening?’ There are times though when people were simply standing in fire / standing in a frontal cone / inexplicably jumped off a ledge / DPS taunted the boss / so forth! I have noticed an increase in pressure on healers, as when people die or there’s a wipe for many the first thought is ‘wtf the healers messed up!’ This isn’t always the case, though, so don’t forget to look to see whether someone was standing in something they shouldn’t have been!

As always, good luck and have fun!