My own healing output has improved drastically since I joined my guild last July when we were working on Ulduar.  I recently became an officer in my guild and succumbed to temptation, taking a peek at my own application thread from those days to which I now have access.  I found that the other Restoration Druids in the guild were scratching their heads over my performance when I joined the guild.  They knew that I knew my class, but were puzzled by my low healing output and my spell casting decisions.  It seems that I was focusing very narrowly on my healing assignments and relying on a wide variety of spells, rather than filling my rotation with the spells that had the highest throughput and efficacy, Wild Growth and Rejuvenation, and showering the raid with the HOTs.  I remember having a couple of conversations with them at the time and learning from them that what they wanted from me was to diversify my healing in terms of targets, while narrowing my healing in terms of spells used.  Eager to please, I learned this lesson well.

Last night, in a 3.5 hour run in which we cleared 10 bosses, 71% of my healing came from 2 spells, Rejuvenation and Wild Growth (76% if you count the Rejuvs that “jumped” to new targets from my t10 4pc set bonus).  75% of my heals were overhealing.  I don’t think I needed an innervate the entire night.  I have become an expert in the topping off of everything around me that moves.  My other spells have been relegated to “situational,” while these two spells are my bread and butter.  The results in terms of my performance on a numerical graph have been phenomenal.  The results in terms of the joy I take in healing have been pretty flat.

I remember raiding at the end of BC and the constant push to roll Lifeblooms on the tanks.  I remember the trepidation that I felt when I learned that in WOLK the developers were jacking up the mana cost of Lifebloom to the point where it was out of the question that this would be our role in raids going forward.  As the expansion opened, I embraced my full compliment of spells and truly enjoyed spinning out a web of spells to sustain my raid members.  When I learned that some of the strands of the web were much weaker than others, I jettisoned them one at a time.  Lifebloom became an afterthought as the expansion released.  Nourish was out when I left behind the 4 pc bonus from T7 gear.  Regrowth got dusty as my raid leaders stopped assigning me to anything but our strength, raid healing.  My wonderful toolbox got smaller and smaller.

Don’t get me wrong.  I still use all of my spells situationally, and I heal much differently depending on whether I’m in a heroic or a 10 man or a 25 man raid.  But my true passion in the game is healing raids, and it is there where I am the most limited in terms of spells to use to maximize efficacy and throughput.

Am I nervous about the upcoming changes in Cataclysm for Restoration Druids?  Sure.  There is not nearly enough information yet to have any solid idea of how strong or weak we will be as healers.  It is scary to come from a place of dominance and eagerly step into one of uncertainty.  But as a class that is both hugely powerful in some ways and hugely limited in others, I think our class is broken in its own way.  A tree that is too top heavy cannot bend in the wind, lest it become overbalanced and crash down. It is true that the goal of  making all healing specs at least viable in all situations and widening us out of niches will inevitably work better for some classes than for others.  We might end up with the short end of the stick for a while.   But if the developers are, in fact, successful in their bid to make our full toolkit of spells viable, it will be, in my opinion, liberating and exciting.   I don’t want to be a one-trick pony.  I want the fun of thinking on my feet, making quick decisions, having an array of choices for an array of situations.  I want to learn from mistakes how to approach things in a different way.    Of course I hope that the changes don’t weaken me to the point that I’m not a viable choice to bring on a raid.  But I trust that there will be enough testing and observation that if I’m unbalanced, the developers will do their damndest to set me back on my feet.   I believe that is just what they are trying to do now.

I watched the Blizzard Developer chat unfold on Twitter last night and thought there was some pretty good news for us trees coming up in Cataclysm.  Tranquility, for example, will be raid wide, last as long, but gain additional tics from haste.  Hoorah!  The New and Improved Tree of Life On a Cooldown TM (Batteries not included.) will “morph” existing spells making them behave differently, with some possible examples given such as Regrowth being instant cast and Lifebloom applying a 2 stack upon cast.  All of our spells are getting the once over to make sure they have defined niches.  But the one thing that really caught my attention and imagination was this: 

 Tree of Life is getting a whole new model (think Ancients of War)

Now, I’m sure it won’t go down this way, but the first thing I thought of was how HUGE those Ancients are out in Zangarmarsh, and how FUNNY it would be if we got not only something like that shape, but something like that SIZE for shifting into TOL.  Think of the advantages… we wouldn’t have to take any crap for standing in fire because we wouldn’t be able to help it.  We’d get all the best loot because we could threaten to shift into TOL and squash the entire raid if we didn’t get our way.  We’d do MASSIVE boss damage when we shifted and our butt pinned the boss to the far wall like a bug.  Awesome.  Awesome sauce.

Sylly prepares to play a tree at the masquerade ball

 Hey, hey, everyone!  It’s been ages and ages since I’ve posted here.  I enjoyed the break for the most part, and was considering letting my account with the hosting company lapse and letting Rolling Hots roll right off into the sunset.  But there were many, many topics over these months that I considered posting about while I was away, and several that I sort of framed out in my head, as in, “this is how I *would* post about this if… you know… I were blogging.”  Then I got an email that told me my bank account was charged via the convenience of automatic renewal with the web hosting service I use and, without necessarily meaning or deciding to, I had purchased my blog for another year.  So I’ve had that rolling around in my head for a couple weeks.  And then the Cataclysm class previews started rolling out and I, like so many others, sat on the edge of my seat waiting for the druid preview to come out.  I was also asking myself in the back of my mind if I would be motivated to write about the changes.

I read all of the unfolding class previews with a great deal of interest and enjoyment.  Not only are some of the new abilities for other classes going to be fun for them, they are going to make playing alongside of them more fun and interesting.  Healing rain?  Camouflage?  Dark Intent?  Bring it, Baby, bring it!  So when the time came around for the druid preview, I was practically salivating with excitement.   Our preview was finally posted, I tore through the content of it, and, admittedly, my first reaction was a sinking heart.  No new toys to play with, a new talent that wasn’t explicated enough for us to do anything but guess how it worked, a mastery bonus that seemed questionable, and no healing in tree form.  I felt like someone stole my Easter Basket. 

As I am wont to do, I started reading voraciously around the internet on the topic.  I read expansively on the official forums, looking at the reactions of other players.  I read each of Ghostcrawlers responses on the topic.  I read all the Resto druid blogs I could get my hands on to see what bloggers were saying.  Although much of what I read out there completely backed up my own initial response, I have to admit, timidly, that my opinion began to change.  And while I saw some posters on forums feeling the way that I was starting to feel, I do not believe that I ran across a single blog post from a Resto Druid who wasn’t either lamenting or lambasting the decision to move tree form to a cooldown. 

 It was this silence in the blogosphere that finally led me back here to my own blog, which, by the way, was a mess.  I had dozens of comments that had never been approved, tons of spam comments that needed deleting.  My Word Press had not been updated to the newest version, nor had 14 of my plugins.  I had to reset passwords and update my Hostmonster account.  I then had to download and install WOW Model Viewer in order to monkey around in photoshop and create an image for the post.  In short, I decided to write a post and it took me just under 24 hours of work before I could write the first word.  Please remind me not to stay away so long. 

Want to know how I feel about the changes?  Pretty good, overall. 

Now wait.  Before you start lobbing rotten tomatoes at me, hear me out.  Am I bummed that I won’t get to heal in tree form all the time?  Well, sure I am.  I love being a tree.  I identify with being a tree.  I love that “mmmBLUARF! sound I make when I shapeshift into tree form, dancing as a tree, running as a tree, the casting animations of tree… all of it.  I like that being a tree makes me a special and unique snowflake in the world of WOW healers.  But, here’s the thing.  More than I like that, I like playing a healing class that has a very well defined role and the tools that it needs to do it well.  If tree form were essential to that, I’d jump on my sword for it.  But, as Ghostcrawler has pointed out, it is not. 

Although I started playing Warcraft during the Burning Crusade expansion and distinctly remember dinging 50 and dancing around happily in my newly acquired tree form on the floor where all the Dragonkin pulls are in Sunken Temple, I know now that tree form was not original to the game, but was  added in BC.  So there is that. 

But I also remember that tree form in BC was pretty damn gimped.  It had a snare effect that slowed down your movement speed, and, although it was a healing form that buffed some healing spells, it completely prohibited you from casting others.  In fact, you couldn’t automatically shift out of tree form to cast, say, Moonfire, or even Healing Touch!  You had to click on caster form, then cast, then click back on tree form.  There was a tradeoff for tree form.  There were compromises.  And Resto druids did not always use it.  It was a choice.

When WOLK came out, many of these restrictions were lifted.  We were able to cast our full healing arsenal in this form, making all of our spells benefit from the buff.  The snare was removed.  Somewhere along the line we also got the ability to autoshift out just to cast a damage spell.  And, because we could fully heal in this form, our healing and boss encounters were balanced around the assumption that we were in this form always.  The Tree of Life buff stopped functioning as a buff and started functioning as part of our healing composition.  It became a given.

Now, I don’t really agree too strongly with Blizzard’s rationale for moving Tree of Life to a cooldown from its current iteration.  They want to have one spec showing off the armor they design?  Ok, fine… pick one of four.   Or… wait… who cares?  Do YOU look at your own or your raidmates’ armor while healing?  I sure as hell don’t.  The argument that each of the druid forms unlocks some unique resource ability (i.e. rage for bears, energy for cats) but Tree Form doesn’t?  Bullshit.  Neither does Moonkin. 

 The argument that we have to give up too much to have access to damage dealing abilities, while other healing classes do not… well… that is true to an extent.  A Holy Priest doesn’t have to rotate between gimped damage spells and gimped healing spells if they feel like DPSing a mob at some point.  If they are bored and DPSing and someone takes a collosal hit, they can pop off a full strength heal without having to use an extra click to get into their healing form.  But that doesn’t hold as much water for me as the fact that our Crowd Control requires a shift out then back into tree form, because Crowd Control is something I actually use, believe it or not, and not just because I’m bored.  I Cyclone mind controlled raid mates on Deathwhisper; I occassionally root a blood beast on Saurfang.  And I don’t PVP.  I am certain that I would use this sort of ability, and damage spells, far more often if I did.  Although I’m usually up at the front of the line grumbling when some PVP issue accounts for changes in my own abilities, I do recognize that the game and specs have to function for both PVP and PVE players.  It’s not my favorite part of the game that this is so, but it is what it is.  So, in the end, this argument from Blizzard is, for me, stronger than the others.

But that argument is not compelling enough for me to feel good about the preview.  Certainly not.  So… what has changed my feeling?  These five six things:

1)  Because our healing is now balanced around us being in tree form, and all of our spells are also balanced around us being in tree form, but in Cataclysm they will not be and tree form will be moved to a cooldown ability, we ARE getting a new toy.  We’re getting a new cooldown.  As I have said, I love being a tree, but when it comes down to it, what I really love is healing a raid and doing it well.  If I have to give up some pixels for part of the time I’m healing in order to get a new mechanic that has the potential for awesomeness?  I’m sorry to say it, but /target pixels, /wave.  Of course, I’m very eager to see where they go with this change and what the cooldown looks like.  If it’s lackluster and not a good trade, I’ll be pissed.  But what if… just what if… it’s something really cool?  really fun?  really engaging?  really interesting in terms of theory crafting and game play?  If that’s the case, then it might just liven up our healing experience in unexpected and energizing ways.

2) GC did say that they would consider a minor glyph allowing people to keep in tree form for those who really just want the damn art, dammit!

3) HOTs benefiting from Crit and Haste? OMG yes PLEASE!  That change is just awesome!  I don’t know about you all but I tried Glyph of Rapid Rejuv and dropped it like a hot potato.  The shortened time between Rejuv ticks was not nearly enough of a benefit  for me when the Rejuvs fell off so fast that I was jumping around like an idiot to reapply them constantly.  But if those Rejuvs had ticked more often for the same duration of time?  Pure… freakin… win.  And Crit benefitting HOTs is just as tasty.  No longer will I feel like Crit is a waste if I’m not using a very specific sub set of my spells.  It will always be good.  Oh, so good.  Om nom nom.

4)  The Mastery Bonus, when I first read it, left me depressed.  Who cares if HOTs increase in effectiveness on low level targets?  Isn’t the point of HOTs to keep people topped off?  But then I remembered that I had read that one of the changes that they are moving toward in Cataclysm is larger health pools and that healers would no longer need to keep people topped off just to keep them alive.  I have a feeling that we are going to have to get used to seeing health meters somewhere between the two extremes of topped off and Holy Shit! that we are now accustomed to.  I believe that HOTs will function less as a means to keep people topped off, and more of a means of keeping incoming damage mitigated.  Now… I am almost exclusively assigned to raid healing in my guild’s 25 mans.  And I do a very good job of it.  All the druid healers in my guild do.  We’re insanely good as raid healers.  But… it makes me a little giddy to imagine how much of a benefit we would be with these larger health pools and more steady damage.  I don’t know about you, but a ridiculously large amount of my healing is wasted, either in overheals, or when other healers stomp my HOTs.  I think we may just have a very solid, and very fun healing niche in Cataclysm to look forward to, and the Mastery Bonus will help us to be strong not just as topper offers, but in a real healing crisis.

5) This may be too optimistic, as they have had trouble balancing our full arsenal of spells in the past, but it is exciting to think that, because it seems to be a goal not just for us but for all healing classes to make healing about interesting, engaging choices, they might actually fix our toolbox of spells to the point that they are all fun and interesting to use.  Ghostcrawler talked about using Lifebloom as a tank healing spell again, possibly allowing Healing Touch to renew a Lifebloom stack (!), and changing Tranquility to act more like Divine Hymn instead of just pouring healing only on the druid’s own group.  Those are interesting and exciting changes and I’m really looking forward to seeing how they play out in the Cataclysm world.

6) Because of the current balance around us always being in tree form, Tree of Life is currently wasted space in our talent tree.  My hope is that it will be removed, freeing up space for options that add utility and help us to improve our game.

If these things don’t motivate you past your sadness of losing tree form, I am sorry.  I am Sylly Sad Tree for you.  Even for myself I am sad about this change.  But I guess for me, while I love being a tree and being in tree form itself, the majority of the fun I find in the game is not in the art of my toon.  Don’t get me wrong, I do find tons of fun there.  But most of my fun comes from raiding, from pulling together with a group of friends and solving the steps of the puzzle and executing them perfectly in order to beat a boss, bring him down.  I LOVE the mechanics of healing on my druid.  The way our class meets the challenges of the game are nothing short of elegant.  It is a joy.  That is why, although I wouldn’t be happy about it, if I had to assume the guise of a naked male leper gnome in order to heal raids as a Restoraion Druid, I would.  And, though it makes me shudder now, I strongly suspect that, given time, I’d develop some affection for my pathetically ugly avatar.   So, in the end, I am sadly willing to trade out my constant tree form for flashes of tree laced with super awesome.

/ducks from incoming rotten tomatoes

There’s a really interesting conversation going on over on the official healing forum right now about how to make healing more interesting.  The gist of Ghostcrawler’s position is that healing becomes boring when the content becomes outgeared or healing mechanics become too powerful.  Whereas DPS can still have fun by trying to bring a boss down as quickly as possible, and tanks can have fun by trying to add damage or dropping gear or trying for the highest mitigation, healers are able to either do laughable DPS or just sit back on their heals and pick their nose in these situations.  He suggests that he’d like to see the healing mechanics change for Cataclysm as follows:

…higher health pools but also lower heals (and tank avoidance) overall. Hopefully everyone won’t be on the verge of almost dying, yet the risk of overhealing will be more real such that you can’t just madly spam all of the time if you want to make it to the end of the encounter.

While this would certainly make healing more challenging in every situation, not just when the party outgears the interest, it isn’t exactly a radical shift.  It’s very similar, in fact, to what we’ve already seen many times.  We get too powerful, they nerf our spells, ,we get more gear and get too powerful again.  It seems like if Blizzard really wanted to make healing more interesting they should get out of the box and get a new perspective on things.  I know that’s not easy to do in any case, but I was thinking about it today and I had an idea.  Don’t know if it would work… at all… but it seemed like it would be fun and add a whole new dynamic to the game…

What if our overheals actually increased group success in some way, but there was some cost to be paid for it? 

For example, what if overheals began to add a stacking buff to the target that enhanced what they were doing?  Tanks could get an increased threat buff (or increased damage), DPS would get increased damage, healers would get increased healing or spell power.  If you use a medical analogy for healing, the actual healing would be like taking the needed dose of medicine.  The overhealing would be like taking medicine plus vitamins and supplements, like Popeye eating his spinach.The benefit could be balanced against the shifted threat mechanics (if DPS buff gets too high they’ll pull aggro from the tanks so healers would want to carefully choose how much to overheal DPS).  Or perhaps the healer’s mana cost for spells could begin to increase incrementally for each overhealing buff stack that was out there on their party or raid.  Or there could be a limited number of buffs any healer could cause to be up at one time.  Or maybe having a buff from overhealing would also decrease the effectiveness of further incoming heals on the target by a percentage, causing healers to need to weigh the costs.  It’s kind of fun to think about possibilities.

This may not be a tenable idea.  What I know about video game design you could fit in a thimble.  But it does seem an interesting solution to the problem that the contribution of healers to an encounter can only reach a certain level before it just becomes waste.  DPS getting better and better is omfg awesome, dropping bosses like flies.  Tanks getting better and better may not have impact scalable to DPS, but the bosses will still go down quicker.  Once you reach a threshold where everyone is healed, though… there’s just nowhere else for that to go.  Especially for druids who heal in tree form and cannot do any damage at all.  At the very least, my little idea made something useful out of healers going above and beyond.  Their overhealing would contribute to the increased efficiency of completing the encounter, but would have some type of limits or ramifications that made the mechanic interesting.

I don’t know if I would enjoy this if it were in place, mind you.  It might be a huge pain in the ass, totally unwieldy.  But it IS interesting, isn’t it, to think about us having the ability to affect the fight in some way other than keeping mana bars to 100%?  I wish that Blizzard would do some thinking along THOSE lines.  Not necessarily adopting my own idea, but looking for others that lie outside of the box they seem to be in.  If not, we’re in for more of the same.  OP healers>healing nerfs>nerfed healers getting better gear>OP healers.  After a while that cycle seems to just be a spiral down into nowhere.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much you know, how much experience you have, how skilled or talented or team oriented or fan-freakin-tastic.  There are times when you just do something so goofy that no one can save you from yourself.  /sigh.  So let me tell you about my day.

Today in WOW was a day much like any other for me.  I had hopped on to do a couple dailies during a break from some other things that needed done around my house, etc.  I was working through the Argent Tournament dailies when I got a whisper from a guildie. 

“Hey there!  What’s shakin’?” says I.

“Has anyone talked to you about Wild Growth?” he asked.

Alarm Bells.

“Nope.”

“Do you use a macro to cast Wild Growth?”

More alarm bells

“Nope.”

Here comes the embarrassing part… brace yourselves for me.  It isn’t pretty.

He says to me, “Well, I think you are using Rank 2 instead of 4.  Could you check?”

I, in a fit of brilliant eloquence replied, “lol shut up.”

“Not kidding,” says my guildmate.

“That’s just embarrassing,” was my next response, “hold on, gotta respec.  I only have two ranks.  Period.  /facepalm.  I don’t know how or why.”

“Uh,” says the poor guildie charged with approaching the idiot tree with her lolfail, “that’s easy to fix.”

“What an ass I am,” I replied.

/sigh.

I can tell you with perfect certainty that I HAD trained all levels of Wild Growth at one point.  I still do not know how or when I lost two of them.  I don’t know if it happened during one of the patches when we had our talent trees wiped over and over again, or whether (dear God I hope not) I’ve been casting this spell at half level since the last time I specc’ed boomkin and went back to resto before dual specs became available, but it could be that I’ve been doing this for a very, very long time and had no idea.

/long, protracted, wilting, defeated sigh.

I sure wish I would have noticed.  Then I could have a) spared myself the embarrassment of having my guildies know and discuss my stupidity (they’re totally sweet and supportive, but GAWD how embarrassing!), and b) not been gimping my raid for… who knows how long?  That’s the worst part.  We’ve been knocking our heads against the same encounter for a couple weeks looking for any edge and here am I… doo de doo de doo strolling along oblivious to the fact that I could be doing a hell of a lot more healing than I am.

It does, however, explain a lot.  lol.  You betcha.  I could NOT figure out how the other druid I heal with was outperforming me so consistently when my gear is actually a bit better than his.  mmhmm.  Now I have an idea why that was.  It was because every time I cast my group heal HOT it was healing at about half of what it should have been healing… on six people at a time.

I think I may have to retire and go play Hello Kitty Online.  I might be more prepared for that one.  lol!

On the other hand, at least the Innkeeper in Dalaran coughed up a toothpick for me today.  Sylly the Hallowed at your service.  Also, Sylly the Jackass.  /facepalm

Treebeard says no way, Jose!

Hahahah!  My Photoshopping is cracking me UP this morning!  Eat your heart out, Will Smith!

Ok, ok, so my version isn’t perfect and it’s kind of messy and yaddah, yaddah, yaddah.  It’s still cracking me up.  =)  Besides, I had to clone stamp out an entire Will Smith AND add a Spam costume.  /rofl!

Sorry, I digress.  There really is a post coming.  A post about spamming. 

Under pressure of fail, I have made many changes lately.  As I’ve mentioned here before, I’ve moved my talent spec more toward the cookie cutter variety.  I’ve changed out my glyphs.  I’ve upgraded my gear.  And now, I’ve become a spambot.

Because of the highly overpowered state of Rejuvenation right now, making it arguably our best spell, my healing has been reduced to the following:

1) if raid healing, spam Rejuvenation on everybody on every possible GCD.  Punch Wild Growth when the cooldown is up.  Rinse.  Repeat.

2) if tank healing, throw up HoTs on Tank.  Keep one eye on tank’s health bar in case oh, shit buttons are needed for supplemental.  Spam Rejuvenation on everybody on every possible GCD between renewing tank HoTs.  Punch Wild Growth when the cooldown is up.  Rinse.  Repeat.

How do I feel about this?  Well… I have mixed feelings, to be certain.

There is no doubt at all that the changes I have made are improving my healing output.  Take a look at the WWS standings from one of my first nights healing with my new guild (You can click on images to enlarge them).

If you are having trouble seeing that, I’m coming in at #5 healer with 10 percent of the heals and 34% overhealing.  I was… appalled.  Here’s a look at the spells I was using that night.

That’s a lot of Nourish, right?  But keep in mind I was still rocking the T7.5 4pc bonus and had the glyph, so Nourish was strengthened considerably by every HoT on a target.  But the resulting 53% overhealing on that spell shows that much of that casting was wasted effort.

On the other hand, there is a really nice variety of spells going on here.  I was reacting to different situations in different ways, throwing out what I felt were the most appropriate spells for each healing situation.

Well, I got callled out on this a bit, and rightfully so, by my new guildies.  “Sylly,” they were too nice to say, “wtf are you doing? Pull yer head out of that barky arse!”

And so I set out on my quest to become a spambot.  I haven’t transformed completely.  I still waste oodles of time in my spamming in comparison with the other trees in my guild.  But the results of this change, in combination with the other changes I have made recently, are obvious.

Here’s last night’s WWS report showing healing standings:

Again, you can click on that to make it bigger, but the summary is I was 2nd in healing at 16% of healing for the night, and my overheals dropped to 20%. 

Here’s my spell usage:

Yea, that’s Rejuv at 57%.  Wild Growth at 20%.  80% of my healing came from these two spells. 

So, although I know just as well as the next guy that I should have a care when looking to a healing meter ranking to judge my healing performance, last night my assigned targets certainly were not dying through any fault of my own, and my healing output certainly shot up noticably, which is cause for great relief and internal celebration on my part, I gotta admit it.  But…

But I’m a spambot.  I’m not a creative practitioner of the healing arts, weaving the healing magic.  I’m a spambot whose goal is to use every possible cooldown to cast one of two instant cast spells.  And that makes me sad.

One of my raidmates recently mentioned something about his UI during a raid and brought up an addon I had never before heard of, VuhDo.  My big ol’ pointy ears perked up immediately, as VuhDo was, apparently, a raid frame addon which is highly functional for healers, along the lines of Grid.  I did some research into this addon and learned that it does indeed function like Grid/Clique, but with additional bells and whistles built in that would elminate the need for SEVERAL other addons I currently used.  Really?  Really!  Of course, I had to give it a try!  Wheeeee!!!!

The first thing I did was to remove Grid and all Grid associated addons from my addon folder.  Those I eliminated immediately were Grid, GridStatusLifebloom, GridManaBars, GridStatusHots GridIndicatorCornerText, and Clique.  After the raid last night I also removed HoTCandy, and will soon be confident enough to remove SmartDebuff.  That’s right.  VuhDo quite comfortably replaces EIGHT addons I was currently using. 

I then downloaded VuhDo from Curse.com.  You can find it here.  Out of the box, VuhDo showed up like this on my UI (Click on image to link to larger version):

It automatically put a link in my FuBar, but it also adds a button to your mini map so it is very easy to find the configuration panel and get started.  Here’s a shot of what the config panel looks like:

Every function on the config panel has a tool tip when you hover over it that gives you a pretty good idea of what it does, unlike the Grid setup which is always confusing for me, even when using guides.  I was able to find my way around and figure out what I wanted to do quite easily.  However, there is a Wiki available for Voodoo that has a user manual (so nice!) and you can find that here.  In addition, there is a very long thread on the Plus Heals forums that the author responds to quite regularly to address user requests and issues.

I was able to do all of the same mouse click assignments that I had setup for Grid very easily.  Here’s the config panel for mouse click assignments:

As you can see there are many, many click combos available making this incredibly functional.  I was able to map all of my heals plus decurses and poison cures to very comfortable combinations using my five button mouse, shift, and a couple of alt combos, with dozens of options still open.  You can also assign clicks for targeting and macros.

Once I had my heals mapped as I wanted them to be, I set about customizing the way that VuhDo looked on my UI.  You can start with the Move tab and relocate things where you want them to appear.  One of my favorite functions about this portion of the setup was a button you could click and hold that would show you what your raidframes would look like if you were actually in a raid, so that I did not have to beg people to join a party or raid group with me just to have some idea of what this would look like when I joined a raid.  You can see that function in this screenshot:

There are functions to change the scale of your raid frames, the group arrangements, the appearance, the font, and so forth.  You can make your name always appear first in your group if you wish, or to make your group always appear first.  You can skin the frames as you wish, using something similar to what’s above or choosing as I did, to have each frame colored according to player class.  Mana bars automatically appear under raidmates who use mana.  You can also set this up to show rage, energy, or runes.  I ended up being able to make the raidframe look and feel very similar to when I was using Grid.  Here’s how my UI looks with VuhDo while soloing in Dalaran:

Here it is with a raid group forming up:

And here it is in the middle of us fighting Yogg Saron (I had forgotten to disable HoTCandy before logging on, which explains why it is shoved up and scrolling over my minimap in this pic):

As you can see above on the VuhDo frames, with this addon you can map HoTs to different locations on frames and give them colored buttons with timers, just as you can with Grid if you add a host of companion addons.  But with VuhDo, this function is built right in.  Lifebloom was already set up to have a red background if one LB was stacked, Yellow background for a 2 stack, and green background for 3.  The red dots you see in each frame are from a function that you can enable that shows you if Swiftmend is on cooldown and is available for a raid member based on what HoTs are currently rolling on them (cool, huh?).

Other cool functions included a buff watcher that you can put GOW and/or Thorns on to monitor whether everyone has the buff and click on to instantly cast it.  You can also set the program to autores raidmates out of combat.  You can customize aggro frames, target frames, colors and frame appearance for debuffs, and many other functions.

I will be working with my setup before I next raid to move the frames a bit farther apart, as I had some trouble with information overlapping a bit last night.  I also need to make some changes to how a poison shows up on the raid frames, as my choices made it so it wasn’t very apparent and I ended up using Smart Debuff for Yogg on Phase 2, although I am sure that I can drop that addon very soon once I get the kinks worked out.

In all, this was a very fluid, responsive, and intuitive experience for me.  I am not deleting Grid and associated addons from my computer altogether just yet, as I’d like to test drive VuhDu more before I make a final decision about it, but overall I was excessively pleased with this addon.  I was able to pick it up and run with it through a progression run on the first day I had it with very little trouble at all and many things that pleased me greatly.  I’d recommend that anyone give it a go.

Oh, and… drumroll please….

We got our guild first Yogg Kill last night!!!  Woot!!!

It’s time for tree mail! Woot woot! Tree Mail is the section of the blog here that I devote to answering reader questions.  Today’s question has to do with keeping up mana and comes from Naomi, a druid who is new to healing and who has just hit level 70.

Yesterday once I hit Northrend I started healing an instance here or there, ya know Nexus and UK.  Man….

The combination of me not really knowing the best, most mana efficient way to keep my group up combined with the tanks, being in level 70 greens was tough.  Being that I don’t have nourish yet, what’s your advice for me to be sucessful in 5 mans?  I found myself needing to drink after every single pull, and the boss fights (specifically the lady that splits into 3 adds in Nexus) to be really really challenging for me.  I’ll tell you what I was doing, that may help:

I was rolling lifebloom on the tank, along with rejuv and keeping regrowth up (he was taking alot of damage lol) and then occasionally even had to use HT, even when NS was down >.>   AND…of course the group was taking lots of damgage, so for them I’d use Wild Growth and lifeblooms and rejuvs here and there.

Naomi, thanks so much for the question!  Since I don’t have access to your armory to look at everything you’ve got going on, I’m going to give out some general advice here and hopefully a combination of some suggestions I make will help you out.

1)  Spells

Ok, first let’s take a look at the spells you say you were using to heal the instances.  First, you say you were rolling Lifeblooms on the tank.  This used to be standard practice for Restos in every situation, and still provides a nice way to keep a steady stream of healing on your tank.  However, patch 3.1 made this a much more expensive spell to cast in terms of mana usage, while increasing the heal the spell does when blooming.  In addition, allowing the spell to bloom also gives mana back!  This doesn’t mean that you should let it bloom every time before stacking it up again, nor does it mean that you should stick with rolling it.  What it does mean is that, as you level up, practice watching this spell as it gets closer to the bloom and make a decision about what you want to have happen next.  If the tank is low enough on health that a biggish heal would not be wasted, let the spell bloom.  You’ll get a nice topper on the tank and be refunded some of the mana you spent to build up the Lifebloom stack in the first place.  If the tank is topped up as the Lifebloom winds down, it might be a better choice to cast again, rolling the HoT.

You were right to keep Rejuv and Regrowth on the tank as buffers, although it is always preferrable to wait for the tank’s health to drop a bit to refresh the Regrowth on the tank if you can, so that the large front loaded direct heal portion of the spell does not go to waste.

I would probably wait for the tank to go down to about 75% health, cast Regrowth, then add a Rejuvenate.  If he is taking steady damage that those two HoTs are not covering, I’d add Lifebloom, stacking as needed.  Decide whether or not to let it bloom.  The bloom is great for handling timely damage, but you have to watch this carefully and decide.  Handle spike damage with Swiftmend whenever it is up.  You can also refresh Regrowth to cover a spike if that spell is nearing completion.  NS +HT is another option. 

Your choices for raid heals are good ones.  Rejuv is probably our most mana efficient spell at the moment.  Wild Growth is also nice, but if you are struggling with mana, think twice about keeping it up constantly, as it can be a big ol’ mana hog to do that.  Don’t cast Wild Growth to top off 2 people if mana is a concern.  Use it judiciously.

2) Glyphs

I don’t know what Glyphs you are currently using, but you might want to consider looking to Glyphs to help you with Mana Conservation.  Glyph of Swiftmend might make all kinds of sense for you, as it will deliver a Swiftmend for spike heals without consuming any HoTs and forcing you to recast them.

Lifebloom might be another good option, as it extends the HoT of this spell, making it more mana efficient to use because it ticks longer.

Glyph of Regrowth will make that spell more powerful if you are able to refresh it before it expires, again making it more mana efficient.

3) Talents

There are many talents built into the Restoration and Balance trees that you might consider using, as they are primarily designed to conserve mana, or have that effect.

Tranquil Spirit is a talent you might consider if you use Healing Touch with frequency, as it lowers the mana cost for this spell, as well as for tranquility.

Living Spirit is a great buff to your spirit, which is the primary stat for Druid mana regeneration.

Omen of Clarity is a talent all restos should take as, when it procs, the next spell cast is a mana freebie.  woot!  =)

You should not only take Tree of Life, but make sure that you are always healing in tree form.  If you are having trouble maintaining mana for healing, don’t be popping out of tree to help DPS, etc. etc.

Moonglow in the balance tree reduces the mana for casting Healing Touch, Rejuv and Regrowth for you (plus Nourish once you get that spell).

Nature’s Splendor in the balance tree extends Rejuv, Regrowth, and Lifebloom, making them more mana efficient.

4) Enchants and Buffs

Many times people do not bother to enchant their gear unless it is gear that they have farmed, that they intend to keep for a long stretch of time, that will not soon be replaced.  There is a good deal of logic to this, especially when discussing the high end enchants.  Mats are extremely expensive, so it makes little sense to pour money into gear that you will be shedding in a level or two. 

However, if you are struggling to maintain mana, consider putting not the best enchants on your current gear, but some of the mid or lower range enchants.  The mats are much, much cheaper, and the enchants will still provide benefit to you.

Mana enchants, for example, are available for chest and bracers.  Spirit can be added to bracers, boots, or weapons.  Add Intellect to weapons, bracers.  Consider adding spell power to other slots, as stronger heals require fewer heals overall.

You can also consider purchasing buff food and potions/elixirs to help.  Again, don’t go for the high end goodies unless your purse runneth over.  But going for some of the Burning Crusade level buff foods and potions can help tremendously.  Look for buff consumables that are affordable to you and buff spirit for higher mana regen or Int for a larger mana pool.

Also, make sure that you are familiar with the buffs each class can give you, so that you can be sure that all of the members of your current group have cast the most beneficial buffs on you for each instance.

5) Addons

It might seem a little silly to suggest that an addon could help you with mana conservation, but hear me out.  Adding a HoT timer such as Hot Candy might, indeed, help.  Here’s why.  These HoT timers provide a very accurate picture of where your HoTs are in terms of the time that they have left.  If you practice renewing them at the last moment, you will save mana.  You will cast less frequency if you are casting only as needed, right?

6) Speak up

You said in your email that your whole group was taking lots of damage.  Sometimes that’s just the way of it.  Lots of AOE damage = very busy healer.  However, sometimes the reason people are taking lots of damage is that they are not playing well.  The tank is not tanking well and is dropping aggro.  The DPS are aggro monkeys and are stealing aggro because they’re stupid.  Someone is standing in fire.  People aren’t doing what they need to do to remove curses or debuffs.  The point is, if you see lots of people taking damage, if you take the time to learn the fight and know what the mechanics are, you can and should point out if they are doing something that is making your job much harder than it needs to be.  I recently did a series of posts where I interviewed lots of tanks about what they do and asked them for some advice for healers.  A healthy number of them said that the best advice they could give was to speak up if something was going wrong and the healer had some constructive advice to throw into the mix.

You will find that as you level up and gear up (and gain practice) that mana issues become less and less of a concern for you in 5 man content.  In the meantime, however, I hope that these suggestions provide you with some compass in terms of where to go to fix your current concerns!

If you are interested in having a question answered in Tree Mail, please contact me using the contact form here on the blog. Please indicate if you would (or would not!) like to have your email featured on the blog. I’ll be happy to respond either way.

The last tanking guide in the four part series is now up, Tank Triage:  Healing Druids.  This time I have

Elathan
Nephis, from Two Classy
Liquidnight
The Big Bear Butt, from The Big Bear Butt

to thank for their time and contributions to helping us healers become better at what we do by adding to our understanding of what they do.

Overall, I think this project was a great success.  I think the tanks did an excellent job of answering the questions in a thoughtful way that is simple enough for us healers to get a grasp of what they are doing when tanking.  I hope that you all are as pleased with the results as I am.