More Tranquility

After <Ferocity>’s first few jaunts in Ulduar we’ve experienced trash doing ridiculous amounts of damage, then doing about half that, bosses not doing what they’re meant to be doing, adds not appearing or twice as many appearing. Suffice to say, Ulduar has been hit and miss for us in our little 10-man progression guild. Despite the hiccups and bad luck we’ve managed to down Flame Leviathan and XT-002 and got Razorscale to 5%. We’re doing okay when Ulduar behaves itself but we’ve had to rethink a few things.

XT-002 was a fight which had us really struggling with tactics. Not so much the tactics for XT’s abilities but for our own personal ones. For the most part, the focus was on the healers during tantrum. As a Druid I tried Wild Growth, which did diddly-squat. I tried Nourish, which worked okay on the four or five people I could cast it on before the rest died. I tried Rejuvs and Swiftmend but that only worked for one person before they all died. Lifebloom was the same and would’ve worked okay if people weren’t getting lightbombed, which meant I was healing them (usually myself as it happens) and not popping Lifeblooms on people.

The only thing left to try was Tranquility. We split the groups to have a Druid in each and it worked fantabulously…until the next tantrum came along and Tranq was still on cooldown. Fel suggested a respec so I quickly put one together on WoWhead and we both popped back to Moonglade and implement the new talent build with two points in Improved Tranquility which has brought the cooldown to 4 mins instead of 10. Doing this means we can Tranq the first tantrum, people have to rely on pots and healthstones for the second tantrum and if we get lucky, Tranq the third tantrum but there can be a few seconds left to wait on the cooldown.

Apparently the tantrum on XT has been changed and <Ferocity> are back in Ulduar tonight so I’m hoping we’ll go straight to XT after Leviathan. We’re hoping to one shot both of them and then spend some time on Razorscale and Ignis but I’m looking forward to seeing how the changes have affected the healing.

G x

3.1 Issues & Tips

I’m not proclaiming to be the fixer of 3.1 issues but I’ve noticed a few people coming to the blog after searching for things like “rolls not showing in chat+patch 3.1+wow” and “patch 3.1 chat text not appearing”. I have managed to get this fixed so I shall try and help out those who haven’t. A lot of people were speculating that the issue was with Deadly Boss Mods, I turned it off and the issue was still present. Same thing for TitanPanel. However, what did get things working again was updating all addons to their current versions and NOT loading out of date addons. It means I’m no longer running my Hunter aspect bars and a few other (non-essential) addons but I am able to see everyone’s messages and my own rolls/yellow information.

I hope that works for you too =)

Now, for the person who searched “resto druid 3.1 rotation” and arrived at my blog, I apologise if it’s a bit late, but let’s bounce some ideas around. As a Resto Druid, I’m guessing that pre-patch you will have been using the Rejuv > Lifebloom x3 > Regrowth/Nourish if needed rotation? Our main focus in this rotation was our three stacks of Lifebloom, which cost very little mana and, with the three stacks, was a great HoT to have on the target as it ticks every second. The whole idea of using Lifebloom was that we kept refreshing it every 8 seconds as that one application refreshed all three. Excellent.

I was on main and off-tank healing at various points when the guild went to Ulduar and I thought it’d be a good opportunity to test out a new healing rotation. That was the plan anyway. In reality we seriously struggled with damage as some points. I found my initial thoughts of a Lifebloomless healing rotation went completely out of the window and I was having to cast everything I had to keep the tanks alive. At one point, though, this happened…

Yes, I had to read the combat log after I saw 20,002 in big green numbers on my screen. “What the hell did that?” I thought to myself, “I haven’t cast Healing Touch (my previous ‘big heal’) on anyone.”

I was really not expecting to see a 20k critical heal from Lifebloom. So let’s have a look at the post-patch Lifebloom:

Okay. Don’t panic if yours looks a little different, especially Mana cost, I have the 5% reduction from the T7 set bonus. Now, to translate the above into numbers that make some sense, I’ll do some heals on myself. With just Mark of The Wild cast on myself and in Tree form.

1 stack – 373 per second / crit = 4589 / mana returned = 490

2 stack – 745 per second / crit = 9177 / mana returned = 978

3 stack – 1118 per second / crit = 13766 / mana returned = 1468

Pre-patch the bloom didn’t scale with the number of stacks present on the target but the HoT did. The bloom part of the buff now does scale with stacks as can be seen above. Over the full rotation of a Lifebloom on a three stack bloom (with the above data) you’re looking at a total of 23,828 healing over 9 seconds. Awesome, huh? No, not really. Because we want efficient healing, not just big heals. What’s the point in having a heal of 20,000 if, when it goes off, the target is at full health? What we would really like is a 20,000 heal when the tank needs it but such is the way with Lifebloom, we would need to predict how much health the tank is going to be down 9 seconds in advance. Yeah, that’s not going to happen.

With the new mechanics of Lifebloom – the increased mana useage and the return upon bloom – we are wanting it to bloom so we can get a little bit of mana back. The three applications of Lifebloom will cost you in the region of 2199 mana, so getting 1468 of that back is quite helpful.

The way I found myself healing, after adapting very quickly to the notion that I need all the healing I can get in Ulduar, was to stack up my 3 Lifeblooms and let them bloom, then quickly re-apply them, using a Swiftmend or my ‘Panic Button’ if the tank’s health drops whilst re-applying, then topping off with a Nourish. Whilst this level of healing certainly keeps me on my toes, there is no room for error like there used to be in Naxx. On main tank healing I rarely healed at full ability, which meant I always had some room to play with if one of the other healers went down. This was illustrated on Thaddius when the two other healers unfortunately killed themselves, leaving me up to do raid and tank healing. My level of healing in that fight was still not quite as intense as it is in Ulduar 10-man on trash. Wasn’t far off, but still not quite as bad.

I think our only option is to heal with everything we have, let our Lifeblooms bloom so we can grab a slice of the mana cake back and use our Nourish and Swiftmends when we need to. If anyone has any other tips, feel free to let me know =)

Oh and that Panic Button I mentioned before is a macro:

/stopcasting
/cast Nature’s Swiftness
/cast Healing Touch

G x