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Raid

So, we’ve learned a little bit about our spells, but perhaps more importantly we must learn when to cast what. This can sometimes be encounter specific so think of these as general strategies that can work well in a wide variety of situations.

Raid Healing Strategy​

To raid heal as a Resto Druid you will learn to anticipate damage. This can be a very rewarding play style as you’ll find your numbers going steadily up as you learn how best to heal each boss. It can be easy as a new player to react to damage going out by casting Rejuvenations on damaged players but you want to try and ascribe more meaning into your casts than that.

How to Ramp​

A ramp is a sequence of play where you prepare for damage on the raid (primarily with Rejuvenation) and then pay off your work with major cooldowns like Flourish. This healing pattern helps to cover the most dangerous moments of the fight, and lets your spells synergize with each other for massive payoffs. You might hear this style of healing referred to as "ramp based" or "preemptive". Most mistakes in raid are due to poorly sequencing these ramp sequences so study this section carefully.

The Flourish Ramp​

Ramp Example

Note that Rejuvenation and Regrowth numbers here are variable and are likely to greatly exceed those displayed above.

Your typical ramp sequence will look something like this:

  1. Begin casting Rejuvenation ~15 seconds before you’re expecting damage. Don’t worry about getting a precise number out since that’ll depend on how much haste you have. As many as you can is fine. You can either Rejuv targets twice for increased mastery value or spread them out for better coverage. If your Incarnation: Tree of Life is assigned here, then pop it before you start casting Rejuv so that you can benefit from the huge mana savings.
  2. As damage is about to hit, cast Swiftmend -> Wild Growth -> Flourish. At the same time as casting these spells you'll also want to cast a Grove Guardian so that you have three out as your Flourish hits. These are off-GCD so can be cast concurrently with your other spells.
  3. Chain cast Regrowth after your Flourish. We have a lot of Rejuvenations out so the Regrowth casts are cheaper and have a high crit rate.

To break it down a little bit, we’re putting out as many HoTs as we can in order to extend them. We’ll hit Swiftmend before Wild Growth in for Soul of the Forest, and so that a Wild Growth is included in Flourish. At the same time we'll get our Grove Guardians out to amplify all of our healing.

See it Live​

When you look at the Casts tab in your log, you'll want it to look something like this: Log Ramp Example

The Wild Growth can be closer to Flourish, and your Grove Guardian timing is slightly flexible but it should be a close resemblance.

Further perfecting your ramp​

  • Your Regrowth casts after Flourish are very fast and completely free. Casting as many of them as possible is a key part of doing good healing as a Resto Druid in The War Within.
  • You can include Innervate before you start your Rejuvenations to save even more mana.
  • If you are using the Power of the Archdruid talent then you can cast one Rejuvenation after your Wild Growth cast and before your Flourish.
tip

Always remember: Your job is to keep people alive, and you should throw everything into making sure that’s the case. Saving people who made a mistake can greatly speed up your progression.

What to do with downtime​

Ramp Example

Our ramps might make up a lot of our healing but we'll still have plenty of time outside of our ramps where we'll want to contribute at least some healing. Here's a to-do list for lower damage periods: Keep Efflorescence down and cast Swiftmend -> Wild Growth whenever the raid is lightly injured. After that, you have a bit of a choice:

  • If significant raid damage is coming up soon, start casting Rejuvenation.
  • Cast Wrath as a filler. Moonfire & Sunfire aren’t great value for their mana cost. Most of your damage will come from Nature’s Vigil so your downtime DPS casts aren’t particularly important.

Tank, Debuff & Single Target healing strategies​

Some fights, like Princess Ky'veza, have a large focus on keeping debuff targets alive. Others have heavy tank damage that you should contribute to.

  • Keep 2 Rejuvenation buffs on the target. If you know who is going to get the debuff before the damage starts then apply two Rejuvenation and Lifebloom.
  • Respond to the damage by casting Regrowth, or Swiftmend if a 1.5-second cast is too slow. While Swiftmend -> Wild Growth is a common raid pattern, you can also use Swiftmend -> Regrowth for heavy single target damage.
  • (Extra) Use Ironbark if the incoming damage is heavy, or if you are currently mid-ramp. This is both a great defensive and adds a lot of healing to the target via Regenerative Heartwood.