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Feral (Healing)
Ok, as a feral druid you probably know a lot of what to wear and how to behave when in your cuddly kitty form or your even cuddlier bear form. How about when you are in your cuddly elf form? Or your very cuddly (?) tauren form?
Well, there are actually a lot we can do while not quadrupedal, we can heal, we can nuke 'em down with our pretty sparkly spells, we can use our weapons to bash some mob's head in, we can do our famous NE dance, and we can discuss the pros and cons of different detergents when it comes to their ability to remove bloodstains from leather. Among many, many, many, many,...,many other things...
So your group does not need a furry tank or sneaky cat? What do you do? Say "well, thx a lot for the invite, guess I am out of here then..."?
BEEEP! Wrong answer.
You say "Ok, I heal then", pull out your prepared heal bag and impress everyone by keeping them alive and well through the massive onslaught of nasty mobs of all sizes and flavors.
Easy? No. Possible? Yes.
Btw, I warn you already, I just know this will be a long post, so grab a cup of tea and some cookies, cuddle into your favourite comfy chair and enjoy!
Your talents
Even if you are feral to the bone and can't even remember how you look like in caster shape, chances are you have taken a few points in the Resto tree. If not, consider if you shouldn't make some small alterations in your spec.
First out is Omen of Clarity. This is actually one of the best spells ever for a feral. Since it procs (and it procs often!) on melee damage and nothing else it actually seems tailored for a cat or bear. How often do you melee while healing anyways?
However, Omen of Clarity requires at least 10 more points in the Resto tree. So what else to take in there?
Well, for starters, you have to pick at least 5 points in Improved Mark of the Wild or Furor. 5 points in total in those two opens up the next tier, which contains Naturalist, another spell with a very nice effect for a feral.
In the next tier there is Intensity, which, besides the very nice instant Enrage-rage it gives, also is very good for the healing druid since it allows some of your Spirit-based mana regeneration to continue even while casting.
Actually, I like all five of these talents very much in my feral specc, guess that is why I have taken them all and have a total of 19 points in the Resto tree. Not bad for a feral druid, eh?
To balance things off a little, there is the Nurturing Instinct talent deep in the feral tree, but this is more of a pvp spell since you will rarely try to heal in dungeons or raids dressed in your tank or dps gear. And I guess your healing gear is rather devoid of Strength?
Talking of which...
Your healing gear (stats)
As a feral, you probably haven't had first tjing on any of the healing drops you've encountered in your dungeon runs, but maybe you have gotten lucky and run with some healers that didn't need the stuff that dropped. Or maybe you have bought yourself some rep items, or have collected some quest rewards on the healing side.
I will not dwell on where to get healing gear, but I will spend a little time discussing the stats you want to be looking for on the gear.
When you are healing, regardless of class or specc, you have two goals:
1. heal as much as needed
2. heal as long as needed
You start the fight with a full mana pool. Well, maybe since you are feral and thus dressed in the Real Healers’ hand-me-downs and probably very untalented in the mana-increasing department, it may be more appropriate to call it a mana bathtub.
Anyways, as you start healing you pull the plug on your bathtub, and the sweet blue mana starts going down the drain. When the tub is empty you are out of mana but hopefully your friends will have killed the mobs by then.
In longer fights, however, you might face the shiny bottom of your tub glaring back at you when the mob is only half-dead, and if that happens all your friends will most likely be very dead pretty soon.
Luckily there are some ways of getting more heals out of that tub of yours, and those ways are:
1. Increase the size of your tub
2. Increase your mana regeneration
3. Increase your healing bonus
4. Downrank your healing spells (actually it’s dubious if this qualifies here, but I will leave it and comment on it)
Tub size
The amount of mana you have at your disposal is dependent on how much Intellect you have. Now, while a large tub is pretty neat to have it will run dry eventually if you keep using the mana in it. So, while tub size is important, it is more important to make the mana in it last longer and/or heal for more.
Mana regeneration
What if someone didn’t turn off that bathtub tap, but instead left it dripping? As we all know in this era of energy saving awareness, a water tap left dripping can fill a whole bathtub in a surprisingly short time. Same goes for your mana regen, only in your case, you want that tap to be dripping as much as possible.
There are two stats that will help you pry that tap open, and that is mana/5 and Spirit. Mana/5 will give you the stated mana regeneration at all times, regardless if you are casting or not. Spirit will give you mana back only when you are NOT casting, and after a cast you will have to wait 5 seconds until the Spirit-based mana regen kicks in.
You can get 30% of that Spirit-based mana regen going even when casting if you choose the talent Intensity in the Resto tree. Besides the mana regen bonus it has a nice effect for a Feral too, so it’s not a total waste even if you rarely heal.
A Resto druid will have a whole bunch of other nifty Spirit-based talents and thus a reason to stack the Spirit high, but a Feral won’t, so if you have to choose between mana/5 and Spirit go for the mana/5.
There is one occasion when a lot of Spirit is useful for a Feral as well, and that is when you use your Innervate on yourself. However, since it’s possible to switch weapons in mid-fight you can create a macro that will swap your regular healing weapon for one with more spirit on it for the duration of the Innervate, to maximize the mana regen.
#show Innervate
/equip Serpentcrest Life-Staff
/cast [target=Yourname] Innervate
/equip Shard of the Virtuous
Click the macro once to swap to your Spirit-weapon and to cast Innervate on yourself (or whomever you have named as target), click it twice to swap back to your regular healing weapon. (Now isn't that a nice oxymoron... a healing weapon...)
For more in-depth info on mana management for druids please head over to Resto4life and read Phaelia's excellent article there.
Healing bonus
By choosing gear, gems and enchants that add +healing you will get more healing done for every mana you spend. More healing will keep your friends alive for a little longer, and will ease the strain on you.
The amount of extra healing each spell will get depends on its cast time, its duration, and whether is direct or over time. For example, your Rejuvenation will get 20 % of your heal bonus per tick, each application of your Lifebloom will get about 7 % of your heal bonus per tick and with about 40 % of your heal bonus applied to the final heal, your Healing Touch will get 100 % of your heal bonus.
Downranking
This means to not use the top rank of whichever spell it is you are casting. Lower ranks cost lower mana and thus you have more mana left after the cast. Of course, lower ranks heal for less but this can be offset by stacking a lot of +healing.
The sweet combination of downranking and stacking +healing was utilised by ingenious players back in the old misty pre-TBC days, and it led to them being able to heal almost indefinitely without running out of mana. This was not the way things were supposed to be in Blizz’s opinion, thus nowadays downranking a spell is penalized so that the healing per mana remains about the same regardless of which rank you use.
Downranking can still be useful on occasion though, if for example a rank 9 Healing Touch will be overhealing too much, you might perhaps wanna consider using a rank 6 or 7 instead and save some mana. I am not that big a fan of downranking, since when healing as a Feral without the handy Resto talents, you will probably need your heals as big as you can get them anyways.
Your threat
Your party have pulled a group of mobs and the fighters are busy taking them down. You are busy keeping your friends alive, staying at the back, trying to be inconspicous.
However, when you are healing your buddies the mobs start to dislike you. All of them start to dislike you. More and more. Suddenly one of them decides he's had enough and comes running towards you, intent on smashing your face in.
What do you do? Well, you are a druid, you can always drop into bear to get a little more thick-hided to live through the beating until the tank can come taunt the mob away from you.
But while you are in bear form none of the others in your party will get healed. They may not need to be healed, but then again, they might.
Luckily, there are some cool ways of lowering the amount of threat your heals create.
Make friends with an enchanter in good standing with Honor Hold and persuade her to enchant Subtlety on your back.
Carry around some trinkets that you may switch to if you have problems with your threat generation. Be aware that you can't swap trinkets while in combat, so you must have them equipped at the start of the fight.
Good trinkets for this is Hypnotist's Watch, a quest item from a Hellfire Peninsula quest, or Jewel of Charismatic Mystique, a drop from the 3d boss in Shadow Labyrinths. They are on a 5 minute cooldown so you better not have to use them too often.
While you are on your friends-making tour, find an Alchemist to make you some Shrouding Potions as well. Keep in mind though that these nifty pots share the cooldown with mana and other potions, so using one potion will keep you from using another until the 2 minute cooldown is up.
Your threat (Plan B)
But what if lowering your threat isn't enough? Well, you can always throw up the Barkskin which lowers the damage you take and let's you keep healing uninterrupted even when being beaten on.
And a Herbalist might be good to know as well, since if you are nice to her she might give you some Fel Blossoms, that will shield you, like a priest's shield, for a little while.
These moves might buy the tank enough time to come pick up those nasty mobs again, but if all else fails, do drop into bear and let the others fend for themselves for a while, at least until the mobs stop hitting you. A dead healer is good to no one, and in bear you can take a beting better and heal yourself at the same time if you can kick in your Frenzied Regeneration.
Your picnicbasket
Even if you are a casual druid mostly intent on tanking or dps-ing you may wanna keep a little picnic bag at the bank for those extra special occasions when you dabble in the healing way.
Remember that nice and friendly Alchemist? Now is the time to be even nicer to her.
Mana potions is a staple for any healer, you never know when it may save your lives. Keep a stack or two in your bag.
Elixir of Draenic Wisdom is a Guardian Elixir that will increase your mana pool and (if you have the talent Intensity) your mana regen too.
Bring along some Elixir of Healing Power as well, since it's a Battle Elixir you can use this and the Draenic Wisdom at the same time.
Fishermen and -women skilled in the art of cooking are also a good addition to your friends list, since they might give you some Blackened Sporefish or Golden Fishsticks. Or you can always buy them from the AH.
If you have the talent Intensity (it's the third time I've mentioned this talent in this article, it must be a good one!) the Fishsticks will give you about 7 mana/5 compared to the 8 mana/5 from the Sporefish. So the choice is basically between 44 healing and 20 stamina.
Gems and enchants
Lastly, a thought about enchanting and gemming your healing gear when you are Feral:
Your healing gear will most likely be blues with maybe a few BG or heroic shinies thrown in. Is it justifiable to put expensive enchants and rare gems in blue gear?
In this case, I’d say it is. As Feral, you are not going to be first in line when the sweet epic healing gear drops. You will probably be stuck with your healing gear for a long time until all the dedicated healers have geared up, and if you want to make a significant contribution when needed, you better make the most of the gear you have.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
A Feral Druid's Illustrated Primer - healing
Saturday, February 16, 2008
A Feral Druid's Illustrated Primer - cat stats
***This article is outdated***
Feral(Cat)
And what are the preferred stats for the kitty-cat? You didn't think it would be the same as for the cuddly bear, now would you? Well, there is one stat both the cat and bear want - Agility, but generally if you are dressing for cat you take your bear gear and shove it down your bags.
A druid in cat form is a lean mean killing machine, a sleek and furry bullet aimed straight at the enemy and your goal is to make sure they don't know what hit them before they are dead.
The key to hit the mobs hard is to stack up on Attack Power (AP). The more AP you have, the more pain you deal to the mobs.
Attack Power is a stat of its own and many items sports something like "Equip: Increases attack power by "some number here".
A druid in cat form also gets AP from Agility and Strength. One point of Agility gives one AP but one point of Strength gives two AP. Would seem that Strength is better then? Well, that is a tricky question, because it so happens that one point of Agility also increases the Crit chance, and thus the total dps of your cat.
So Strength or Agility? Well, for a lvl 70 cat druid there seems to be an equilibrium point at around 225 dps accordning to wowwiki.com if you have the talents Heart of the Wild and the Predatory Instincts.Check you character's melee tab and the Damage info to see how much your dps is.
Until you reach that number it is more beneficial to your AP to stack up on Strength, after that the increased Crit chance from the Agility will give more total dps.
Another nice talent for the cat to have is the Naturalist talent from the second tier in the Resto tree - not unattainable for a feral druid, especially since you most likely want the Omen of Clarity, which requires at least 10 Resto points.
However, what is the use of having a paw like a sledgehammer if you miss your target and drives that sledge deep down into the flag stones instead? Ouch, that would be painful for you, not the mob! Let's make sure you hit that mob next time, ok?
A single-wield (or maybe I should say single-paw) white damage attack or special attack (your Mangle, Claw and all those others energy-costing attacks you do) has a base chance to miss a lvl 73 mob of 9 % (yes, we are talking raid bosses again). You can decrease this by increasing your Hit rating and when you have 142 Hit rating you will have done all that is in your powers to do to eliminate the chance that you may miss the mob.
A new stat introduced in patch 2.3 is Expertise, and it affects the chance that your target will dodge or parry your attacks. As a true feral sneaky cat, however, you are not really planning on attacking something up front are you? Attacks from behind can't be dodged or parried, so this is not a stat you have to worry that much about ;P
So to conclude this short stats speech, a kitty-cat brimming with AP, Strength, Agility and Hit rating is a kitty-cat you don't wanna mess with.
Stay tuned, next episode of this Feral Druid's Illustrated Primer will deal with Feral(Healer).
Until then!
Friday, February 15, 2008
A Feral Druid's Illustrated Primer - bear stats
***This article is outdated***
One of my favourite books is Neal Stephenson’s “A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer”, and one day as I was browsing forums, wikis and wow-related blogs I got thinking maybe I should do a small compilation of these druid things I have read about and the things I think I know and have learned from my own experinces, written from a feral perspective and - BAM! – the name “A Feral Druid’s Illustrated Primer” was etched in my head.
My druid Joaquime is feral at heart, even though she occasionally ventures into the balance tree to fight like a laser chicken. However, feral does not equal “incapable of doing all the other things a druid can do”, and I have picked up a grain or two of druidic wisdom (mostly from other people) during my WoW-years that I figured I could share.
Note: This will not be a guide on how to tank, nor will it be a guide on how to heal, it will be more of a “so you are 70 and you are a feral druid, here are some things that you might find interesting to know and consider”-sort of thing.
Primer = A book that covers the basic elements of a subject.
Enjoy!
Feral(Bear)
What stats should you aim for and how much?
A feral druid’s first concern should be to make herself uncrittable, and since you are a lvl 70 druid you want to be uncrittable by all the top mobs that may come running to you, intent on smashing your face in, ie raid bosses. The chance for a raid boss to score a critical hit on you is 5,6 % (for some reason raid bosses are considered to be lvl 73, even though they are shown as skulls, which should indicate they are at least 10 lvls above you...)
So, uncrittability is achieved by
1) taking 3/3 of the feral talent Survival of the Fittest, which gives you a 3 % reduction to the chance of an enemy scoring a critical hit on you, AND
2) stacking Defense or Resilience until they add another 2,6 % chance that you will avoid a critical hit. Defense is usually preferred since, unlike Resilience, it increases Dodge chance as well, but any of the two will do the job. You will have reached your coveted goal at 415 Defense or 220 Resilience. If you have a little of both, check the tooltips for each stat and add up the numbers.
Please pay attention to the difference between Defense rating, which is not the same as Defense. For some reason Blizz has a plethora of different ways to confuse us all, and this is just one of them. You stack Defense Rating to get Defense, and you stack Resilience (not rating!) to get Resilience.
In my opinion, hoarding up on Defense after you have reached crit immunity is rather useless. You get a slight increase to Dodge, but you have no use for the Defense-induced Block or Parry. Better to increase other stats then.
The second thing you want to start amassing is Armor. Your thick furry hide is the one thing that protects your fragile innards and warm heart from the cold cruel world out there. Love it! Get a lot of it! Maximize the talent Thick Hide and keep an eye out for items with their armor value in green - that means that they are extra good for that sweet protection.
Armor is also increased by one of the druid's other favourite stat - Agility. It also increases Dodge and Crit, and you want a lot of the two first at least for starters. Dodge to avoid as many of the mob’s hits as possible, Armor to reduce the hurt of the hits you can’t avoid, and Crit is a nice bonus to giving that nasty bucket of smelly old carp that’s trying to take you and your friends down a little extra painful taste of his own medicine. Get as much Agility as you can – there is no such thing as too much Agility.
For some reason the impact of Agility on the Dodge is not shown in the tooltip, but it's there, rest assured of that.
Dodge rating is another stat that the just-turned 70-druid might wanna check out, since you have no other means of avoiding a hit, you have no shield to block with and no weapon to parry with. (Yeye I know you do have weapon equipped, but Blizzard in their mysterious ways have not yet seen fit to tell us all how, exactly, a bear utilises the pretty blunt weapon she somehow carries with her underneath that furry exterior.)
Aim for about 30 % Dodge unbuffed to start with. The talent Feral Swiftness adds 4 % to your Dodge, take it! In my experience, it is usually not necessary to gem or enchant for Dodge, a lot of the gear you will be interested in has Dodge rating on it, and anyways I prefer stacking pure Agility over Dodge rating for the extra benefits of that stat.
A slight note though, on some bosses it seems too much Dodge may interfere with your rage generation, but generally it’s the more Dodge, the merrier.
Same thing here as for Defense btw, you stack up Dodge Rating to increase your Dodge.
Stamina is the last of the really must-have’s, a good feral druid needs a large health pool to soak all those un-dodged hits that gets through your thick bear fur. Once your gear covers the basic uncrittability you can start stacking Solid Star of Elune’s or other gems with stamina in your gear. Don't worry too much if you miss out on the socket bonus, or if it's a real nice one, try to find suitably colored gems with stamina and some other nice stat on them, like the Jagged Talasite or Shifting Nightseye. Also, don't forget to take the talent Heart of the Wild, which will give you a sweet flat 20 % Stamina increase in Bear form.
Other stats that are interesting are Crit and Hit, but for a starter druid they take secondary place to the holy quintuplet(is that even a word?) mentioned above. Hit rating makes you hit your target more, Crit rating makes you more likely to get a critical hit when you do, and as you know, the more you damage that mob, the more threat you generate, the more your dps’ers and healers can unleash on the mob and you respectively without having to worry about taking aggro. Crit is also crucial if you have the talent Primal Fury, which you do have, right? Free rage for every crit? Gief!
So now that you know which stats to aim for, check out this sweet tool from Rawr to see how you can make your own druid dress up in different outfits and how it will affect your overall stats.
Stay tuned for the next part - Feral(Cat)
Type rest of the post here
Friday, November 16, 2007
Just the Bare Necessities?
So how did you spend the patch day?
I got my baby warrior Dizzie out of her hibernation, scuttled over to Theramore and cheered at the sight of so many new yellow exclamation marks! I love doing quests! Happy as a hobbit in a wine cellar she ran around exposing agitators – but wait? Why didn’t I get credit for exposing them? Got just 1/5 and I had killed/scared off more than that! Bugged q or what? *getting mad at Blizz for another patch day f-k-up!*
But wait again - *blush* - I realised I was in a raid group…was waiting for the other raiders to show up and we had already started invites… ah well, it was time for me to let my baby rest up a little more and get one of my big girls up to action again.
Wednesday is one of our usual Kara raid days and (despite it being patch day) we clung to tradition and went there to kill off some of the nasty denizens of that dreary cobwebbed place.
For some reason that I can’t recall at the moment I was there on my (usually) lethal feral druid Joaquime (think we were a little short of healers at the time as they were downloading the patch after work and I had offered to heal at the first bosses so we could get the raid started, but I am not sure…my memory is excellent, only very short…)
Anyways, the healers popped up after all and I shifted into bear for the those trash clears to the Huntsman. I haven’t been tanking in Kara for months and was a bit surprised to find that I could not pull aggro from the other tank, a warrior.
Our gm’s warrior has always been a bit tricky to pull aggro from but far from impssible, the other warrior I used to run with was way too easy to overaggro, all I used to do was hit the mob and it immediately switched its attention to me, didn’t even have to use growl or anything. (And before anyone starts yelling at me for pulling aggro off the other tank so the healers have to ping pong heal, I do it to get some extra nice rage going and then I don’t mind giving it back for the rest of the fight).
This one warrior, however, was impossible to peel. Even when I used growl which, if I recall correctly, is supposed to glue the mob’s attention to you for 6 seconds, all I got was a lousy blink of the mob’s target switching before he went back to hammering away on my plate-clad friend. Gah, I had to use enrage throughout that entire trash clear except when I was tanking a mob or two of my own.
Well, this warrior and also our gm’s warrior have been running thru Kara for many weeks now while I have been ambling along far behind on mostly my warlock Paynne or my priest Jools, so I guess I am pretty undergeared compared to them.
And some nice leather gear actually did drop during that run, [Edgewalker Longboots ] from Moreos and [Bracers of Maliciousness ] from the Maiden, both of which would have been a huge upgrade for my kitty cat, but they went to a hunter instead of me. (Actually, the Huntsman dropped the [Bracers of the White Stag] for me since noone else wanted them, could be useful if I ever respecc to Moonkin).
Well, they were more than huge upgrades for the hunter too so its not that I mind him getting them, and I guess I could have argued my case if I wanted them and I didn’t bother, but still…when is a bear a bear and when is she a cat? Is the bare necessities for the bear only and not for the cat?
I am feral specced, which happens to encompass both bear and cat shapes. I am not either-or, I am both. I tank when tanking is needed, I do pretty good dps when dps-ing is needed. Actually I heal when healing is needed too since was healing at the Maiden in my healing gear, my druid HoTs are pretty neat even in feral specc. And now that I think about it, I was actually blasting my way to the Maiden with starfires and moonfires and wrath’s, courtesy of the new +spell damage on the healing gear, otherwise the only way I would have killed any mob was if it had laughed itself to death at the pitiful spell damage I could do in my healing gear. Hmm, I guess this raid did get to see me shine in all my capabilities…=)
For those pulls and/or boss fights that don’t require two tanks I do immensly more dps in kitty shape that in bear, and if we have two tanks already I might stay in cat form for the whole run.
I don’t want to roll on healing or spell damage gear unless noone else needs it, but what about dps gear? The pure tanking items that drops in Kara that I can use are rare, and some of these my fellow tanks have their eyes set on too, so even if they drop I may not get them. Am I doomed to wait until all rogues/hunters/shamans have gotten their leather dps drops until I can get a shot at them? How am I ever gonna get into Zul’Aman if I can’t upgrade my gear? Am I whining about something that is not an issue really?
Well, I have found two ways to resolve this not-really-a-problem-but-could-be:
* I will check the Kara loot lists and actually do the maths for which items would be an upgrade for me, both in bear and in cat form
* I will keep going to Kara with my druid (well, with all of my attuned girls actually) and get me those nice [Badges of Justice ] for the sweet rewards
I won’t be imba geared in a week or even two with this strategy, but at least I have a plan. And then I will grab that aggro back from those plate-clad target dummies easier than…, than…ehh, well, easier than a very easy thing!
Raid evaluation
- The new ”change out of bearform if you accidentally press a spell that you can’t use in bearform”-ability. NOT a good thing to do while tanking (yeye I know I can disable it but you try to get me to do that in the heat of the battle).
+ We are going pretty well atm. Some new players with us, and only one stupid wipe. Runs still takes a little to long though, we should be able to clear Huntsman, Moroes, Maiden and Opera in less than 2 hours.
