Resto druids in a nutshell... Lifebloom edition

I took a day on the resto druid side this week for... kicks? and we were short a decurser for Archimonde. Well, technically, I just threw on my healing gear for Archimonde (in feral spec), when one of our mages "had a power outage". (Btw, I doubt I have daily readers, but I also fully respec'd resto right after to do some 2v2).

I'm not going to claim to be a noob at this and say that it was my 1st time ever (although it was probably my 1st time ever to do this since Karazhan), but I was a little rusty. I do, however know all the details about how OP resto druids are, so I'd like to share a couple aspects of it: the overpoweredness of lifebloom, and the unmatched skillset for small-scale arena.

(I've been lecturing the druids in my guild for quite a while about all this stuff btw).


Ok, I'd like go just a little back in history on when this spell, Lifebloom, wasn't all that strong. This spell is a HoT with a backloaded Heal. Your healing gear is broken down for this spell into 46% towards the HoT portion, and 46% towards the Heal portion. The HoT portion ticks EVERY SECOND for 7 seconds and is stackable to 3 stacks. HOWEVER, as recently as a few months ago, your healing gear only affected the 1st stack of your lifebloom. Subsequent stacks of lifebloom got no benefit from healing gear, making further applications of lifebloom pretty much worthless.

Fast forward to a couple patches ago, they added the ability for each stack of lifebloom to benefit from healing... this is where Lifebloom becomes sickly sickly overpowered.

By maintaining a 3-stack of Lifebloom, you are essentially getting the healing bonus from your gear 3 times. Remember, your typical gear druid is probably looking at 225hp/sec for a single lifebloom tick, so getting your full-on 3-stack of lifebloom on your MT all the time would result in 675hp/s... basically the equivalent of spamming lesser healing wave twice for less than the mana cost of 1 of them... assuming you're in the MT group, that benefit is increased by even more!!

BUT....you can further make your lifeblooms completely overpowered. Using 2x trinkets will do this for you. Activating, say, your ZG trinket (I hope you didn't DE it) which gives you +408 healing, and then your Essence of the Martyr results in an additional 60hp/s... yes.. you're looking at maybe 855hp/s lifebloom ticks, at a cost of only 176mana per 6-7 seconds. Yes... 5130hp healed for 176mana. No class in the game can beat that. The reason this works is that once you get your trinketted lifebloom stack on your target, everytime you refresh your lifebloom stack, it keeps the trinketted value, not the untrinketted value.

Best of all, you can actually keep it up on _3_ tanks w/ a decent macro and never letting a bloom drop. So you're looking at maybe 15400hp healed / 7 seconds for ~530 mana. No one can beat that. If you take this into acct, over an 8 min fight, you're looking at 1,000,000 hp healed.. LOL (you'd probably need a decent spriest + potting + 2x innervate to do this of course).

But most boss fights don't even have 1million dmg output total on your raid over 8 min, so this is obviously overkill... but I'm just trying to illustrate how overpowered Lifebloom is.

A guy named Oxylos posted a really great write up on lifebloom as well, which I'm going to quote here, b/c it would be unfair to summarize it. Here it is in its entirety, written on 06/19/2007 11:49:39 AM PDT:

The following is an in-depth look at the increase in effectiveness of Druid healing brought about in patch 2.1 and is intended to inform both the Druid community and raid/guild leaders as to the potential Druids now possess. I apologize for its length but I feel a thorough explanation will benefit those interested. Thank you for your time.

I. Introduction

II. Styles of Healing, Old and New

III. Lifebloom goes on the Patch

IV. Multi-Target Healing

V. Spell Rotations

VI. Helpful Tools

VII. Math

VIII. Conclusion



I. Introduction.

There is a common misconception about restoration druids today. The problem isn’t that other classes misunderstand us, as every class forum would be happy to point out how unfairly they’ve been treated, but that resto druids are misunderstanding themselves. Druids post regularly that they shouldn’t deserve spots in raids, they don’t bring anything another class doesn’t, that restoration is a hopeless offspec and they should all just go feral. Marilyn, the Nihilum Druid Class Leader made a post about how resto druids don’t get a slot in Nihilum raids anymore because other classes bring more raid utility and heal just as well as Druids. Many Druids jumped on board and shouted out to the world just how woefully ineffective they compared to other healers.

And it’s just not true.

First things first, who am I? I’m Oxylos of on Shattered Hand US. I’m a Tree of Life healing druid, currently specced 5/0/56, and before switching to Tree I was a Dreamstate 33/0/28 spec. I have killed both Lady Vashj and Kael’Thas, and will be entering Mount Hyjal and Black Temple soon. I want to address the fact that in Marilyn’s post, he was referring to the game in Hyjal and BT. If it is true that Hyjal and BT are so completely different than SSC and TK that somehow nothing I will say below applies anymore, then so be it. SSC and TK are what I know best, and for the overwhelming majority of forum goers they are the raids they are either progressing on now, or wish to be shortly. Even if Hyjal and BT do drastically change gameplay, this information will still be very relevant for those working through SSC and TK and can at least help such a Druid be a more effective healer until the time comes to take their turn in Hunterville during the tier 6 instances.

II. Styles of Healing, Old and New.

Prior to Patch 2.1 there were several different styles of healing play used by Druids:
1.) Reactive Raid Healing with HOTs - Thought by many to be the primary job of a Tree of Life Druid. The largest concern raised with this style of Healing is that it requires other healers to trust in the Druid’s HOTs and not Flash Heal a target that just received a Rejuvenation. Often this would not be the case and most of the Druid’s HOT ticks would end up as wasted overhealing.
2.) Reactive Raid Healing with Healing Touch - Arguably the worst style of Druid healing possible. While mana efficient due to Balance talents, this was simply too slow to heal several raid members at 3 seconds per cast. Mana efficient due to balance talents but simply too slow to heal several raid members at three seconds per cast.
3.) Preemptive MT Healing with HOTs - Generally what a Tree of Life Druid would do when there is no raid healing to be done. Keeping HOTs up on a single target to help ease spike damage. While helpful to the raid, the majority of HOT ticks end up as overhealing because all other healers are spamming heals on the same target. Unfortunately mana inefficient due to the regular use of Regrowth.
4.) Preemptive MT Healing with Healing Touch - The benefits of this style are tremendous mana efficiency through downranking, especially with the Dreamstate talent, along with landing large heals and taking some of the sting of overhealing out by consistently having a heal ready to land on the target. The largest downfall of this is that by being locked to a three second cast bar throughout a whole fight the Druid loses not only mobility, but also some ability to adapt to changing situations.

With the release of Patch 2.1 a significant change was made to the Lifebloom spell that opened up a completely new and incredibly powerful style of play:
5.) Preemptive HOT Healing on multiple targets while Reactive Raid Healing with direct heals - The idea of this style of healing is to maintain three stacks of Lifebloom on two or more tanks while also throwing out Rejuvenation+Swiftmend or Regrowth on raid targets in need of small healing. This method of play dramatically increases the raw healing output of a Restoration Druid allowing them to heal for nearly twice as much that of an equally geared Paladin over the same amount of time using close to the same amount of mana (math at bottom of post).

III. Lifebloom Goes on the Patch.

Lifebloom is a Druid HOT that ticks for a small amount every second and, after the seventh tick, wears off and heals the target for a larger amount at the same time. Of particular note is Lifebloom's ability to be stacked three times. Stacking it refreshes the seven second duration, while also increasing the amount it heals each tick. Unfortunately when Lifebloom was first introduced, only the first stack got +healing benefits, and adding the second and third stacks only increased the amount healed per tick by the base value of a Lifebloom heal, 39. This is what changed in patch 2.1.

In WoW 2.1, each application of Lifebloom adds the full amount per tick, essentially doubling or tripling the amount healed each second. Now this is strong, no doubt, but there are several factors associated with Lifebloom that are what really make it shine.

1.) Once there are three stacks on a target it will stay at three stacks as long as it is refreshed before the Lifebloom expires and explodes, e.g. within seven seconds. By maintaining a Lifebloom triple stack the target will receive up to six ticks of triple healing for the cost of one spell each time it is reapplied.

2.) The amount each stack heals for is set by the +Healing at the time the stack was first applied. As long as it is not allowed to explode, the Druid could even remove all their Healing gear and still keep the Lifebloom ticking for the same amount.

3.) In a stacked Lifebloom, since the amount healed for is triple the normal amount for the spell, the effect of +Healing added to the spell is in effect also tripled. Because of this the +Healing stat gains more impact than it normally does in other situations or for other healers.

Due to this last factor the Empowered Rejuvention talent gives a much larger return than it previously had and is incredibly useful for increasing the amount of healing done. Additionaly, it is strongly recommended that a Druid equip themselves with trinkets that have abilities that grant a large +Healing bonus on use for a limited time such as Oshu’gun Relic, Essence of the Martyr, Zandalarian Hero Charm, or Eye of the Dead. By popping two of these trinkets for the initial three applications the Lifebloom ticks will heal with the additional power of 500 or more +Healing for their entire duration.

IV. Multi-Target Healing

The key to success with Lifebloom is that not only can it do a large amount of healing when stacked, but maintaining this only takes 1.5 seconds of cooldown out of every six to seven second casting sequence. This leaves the Druid free to use approximately five seconds of casting or cooldown time to cast other spells in-between refreshing the Lifebloom, and also allows them freedom of movement due to the nature of instant cast spells.

The most effective use of this extra time is to keep Lifebloom stacked on one or more other targets as well, effectively doubling or more the raw amount of healing done every second. Unfortunately not all encounters lend themselves to the optimal scenario for this, multiple tanks taking consistent damage. However, in both Serpentshrine Cavern and The Eye, enough battles do fit this mold to make this strategy successful. The following is a list of the encounters found in these instances and how a multi-target Lifebloom style can fit with them:

Serpentshrine Trash: All of it except for Colossi utilizes more than one tank.
Hydross the Unstable: Three tanks at most times (the phase MT + two OTs)
The Lurker Below: One tank in phase 1, several in phase 2.
Morogrim Tidewalker: One tank through the majority of the fight.
Fathom Lord Karathress: Four tanks early on, as the number of tanks used decreases the number of healers taking consistent damage increases.
Leotheras the Blind: Two tanks used, but the nature of this fight makes the Lifebloom strategy ineffective.
Lady Vashj: Several targets taking damage in phase 2.
TK Trash: Most of the trash except for the Phoenixes uses more than one tank.
Al’ar: One tank at a time in phase 1, multiple OTs to choose from in phase 2.
Void Reaver: Another fight out of tree, but still effective to keep a stack on the MT.
Solarian: If the Wrath of the Astromancer debuff is being tanked by two AR tanks Lifebloom is ideal for healing them.
Kael’Thas: One tank throughout phase 1, several tanks during phases 2, 3, and 4.

In the event that there is only one target in need of healing, the mana strain on the Druid will be light enough to maintain three Lifebloom stacks, Rejuvenation, and Regrowth at all times, along with throwing in a large instant Swiftmend whenever the damage spikes the slightest amount.

V. Spell Rotations

Due to the time sensitive nature of squeezing out as much as possible on a seven second timetable, effective use of spell rotations must be made. A spell rotation is a series of spells cast in a specific order over and over. The reason this is done is to set a casting schedule that allows Lifebloom stacks to always be maintained, while giving the player the most flexibility with the time left over.

In a typical two tank situation the first two spells in a rotation will be Lifebloom Tank 1 and Lifebloom Tank 2. These actions leave the Druid with three seconds of time spent with the Global Cooldown on, and four seconds remaining until the first Lifebloom expires. Due to latency it is important to allow for about a half second of leeway during the rotation, so realistically this leaves three and a half seconds of casting time. More often than not the third spell in a rotation will be a Rejuvenation on one of the tanks. Since Rejuvenation lasts for twelve seconds (and should be allowed to expire before refreshed so the last tick heals) a Druid can Rejuv Tank 1 on the first rotation, and then Tank 2 on the second rotation, and keep switching back and forth.

The final two seconds then of a rotation are usually saved for burst healing in the form of Swiftmend or Regrowth. If one of the targets receives spike damage they can be Swiftmended for a large amount, or if a raid member takes some unexpected damage that a raid healer cannot handle they can be Regrowthed. Also if one of the tanks receives more damage during the encounter a Regrowth can occasionally be placed on them for the additional HOT. Generally speaking, Regrowth should be used sparingly due to its heavy mana requirement.

When using Swiftmend it is important to note that if one of the tanks is spiked while the Druid is reapplying Lifeblooms, the Druid should then Swiftmend as the third spell, and reapply Rejuvenation with the fourth spell. Likewise if a raid member falls near death during Lifebloom reapplication, the third and fourth spell can be used to place a Rejuvenation on them followed immediately by a Swiftmend. This use of Swiftmend will deliver a burst heal to the target in 1.5 seconds, the same speed as the fastest heal of any other class while healing for a larger amount than not only their heals would, but a critical Regrowth would as well, and for less mana combined than one Regrowth.

Another important note is that it is fine to not use the fourth or sometimes even third spell in the rotation. The only completely critical aspect of each cycle is maintaining the three stacks of Lifebloom on all the targets it is required on. When the healing requirements are light, keeping up only the Lifeblooms still provides significant healing while not straining mana much at all. In the event that the Druid will likely be unable to refresh Tank 1’s Lifebloom in time (they had to move a bit to Rebirth, for example) they should not attempt to race the clock and cast Lifebloom on Tank 1 again, and instead should refresh Tank 2’s Lifebloom and spend the next spell rotation stacking Tank 1’s back to three stacks. The reason for this is that since the Lifeblooms are cast in immediate succession, if the first one is cast late, the second will also not make it in time due to the Global Cooldown.

Any time a target loses its Lifebloom stacks (including the beginning of the fight before they have any) the first priority is getting up to three stacks on all necessary targets. This takes precedence over almost any other casting except in the case of emergencies. Generally the only times a Lifebloom should be intentionally let to bloom are when the target will not be taking damage for more than ten or so seconds, or if the current stacks were applied midfight without trinkets activated. In this case once the trinkets become available again the Lifeblooms should be left to explode and then reapplied at their full capacity.

VI. Helpful Tools

In order to facilitate the timing progress, there are many tools at the Druid’s disposal that can make life easier. The first and most important is a timer addon that shows the remaining duration of the HOT spells in use. This allows the user to become more comfortable with the specific timings involved with Lifebloom and maximize the time they have within each cycle while also providing an easy reference of targets available to Swiftmend. There are many addons that can fill this role and I personally recommend DoTimer authored by a fellow Horde on Shattered Hand US, and for which updates can be found at http://wow-en.curse-gaming.com/downloads/details/3260/ .

An important aspect in using timer addons is becoming comfortable with restarting the cycle at the last possible moment which is something that truly only becomes refined through experience. The reason for this is that while no raw healing will be lost by starting a cycle over too soon, (with the exception of refreshing a Rejuvenation before it finishes) beginning the rotation a half second early is a half second that could have passed without more mana being spent. This may seem small at first but losing a half second every six seconds over a ten minute fight can add up to hundreds if not thousands of mana needlessly spent.

Another tool which greatly enhances the time efficiency of Lifebloom stacking is setting up macros which cast Lifebloom on specific targets and keybinding them. For example in a given fight I may have these four separate macros:
/cast [target=Calisc] Lifebloom
/cast [target=Dranlo] Lifebloom
/cast [target=Ruler] Lifebloom
/cast [target=Oxylos] Lifebloom
Each bound to a different key. What this allows me to do is refresh Lifeblooms when necessary without having to bother retargeting first. In doing this I can have another raid member targeted during Lifebloom casts ready to be Rejuvenated when I am done. For users who prefer to click or just use modifier keys in general one larger macro can be created to handle all four jobs:
/cast [modifier:alt, target=Calisc] Lifebloom; [modifier:ctrl, target=Dranlo] Lifebloom; [modifier:shift, target=Ruler] Lifebloom; [target=Oxylos] Lifebloom
Whichever way macros are utilized, they are essential to being as efficient as possible in the spell rotation process.

Possibly the largest tool available to the Druid in terms of adding the most healing to the raid is information. Not only knowing exactly what they are capable of themselves by testing in certain situations, but also informing their group, raid, class leaders, and officers what they are capable of. If a Druid is confident that they can keep up two different targets in an encounter (or largely contribute to the healing of multiple tanks) they need to let that be known. When a Druid can keep up an offtank with Lifeblooms and Rejuvenations, it doesn’t help anyone to also have a Paladin assigned to Flash Heal away on that target as well, wasting both effective healing and mana for both healers.

VII. Math

The following math is using the stats of myself and the top geared Paladin in my guild. These numbers are unbuffed with two exceptions. My Lifeblooms will be using my +Healing bonus with trinkets activated, my Rejuvenations will not. The Paladin will be assuming Blessing of Light on the target.

Druid +Healing: 2002.
Druid +Healing with Trinkets Activated: 2512.

Paladin +Healing: 1963.
Paladin Flash of Light Crit Chance: 21.1%. For the sake of easy math this will be rounded up to 25%.

A three stacked trinketed Lifebloom ticks for 888. Over a 6 second cycle it ticks six times for a total of 5328 healed. In addition during that cycle Rejuvenation will tick two times, adding 932 healed each tick, for a six second total of 7192 raw healing. To maintain this costs the Druid 176 mana for the Lifebloom, and 332 mana every 12 seconds for Rejuvenation, coming out to an average of 342 mana every six seconds.

In a 6 second cycle a Paladin can cast four Flash of Lights. On average this Flash of Light will heal for around 1725. One of these casts will crit and heal for 2588 instead. Over the six second cycle this will total 7763 raw healing. Each cast of Flash of Light is 180 mana, and the critical refunds 60% of its cost for a total of 612 mana spent every six seconds.

In addition to being able to move freely while the Paladin is stuck in place spamming and being in danger of losing casting time or being interrupted, the Druid can do the exact same healing to another target fully doubling his output to 14384 healing (85% more than the Paladin) over 6 seconds for 684 mana. It is also worth noting that this difference of mana spent between the two, 72 mana over 6 seconds, when converted to a five second cycle is 60mp5, a difference of base while casting mana regen often made up by Druids through spirit itemization and the 15% mana regeneration talent.

In the most extreme of cases a Druid can maintain trinketed three stacked Lifeblooms on three different targets while also keeping Rejuvenation on two of them for a total of 19712 raw healing over six seconds for 860 mana. That is over two and a half times as much healing output as an equally geared Paladin.

The final case doesn’t present itself too often, and 860 mana can only be maintained for so long, but I think it does serve to illustrate just how powerful Druid healing can be in comparison to other classes. The two tank case happens quite often and when taken advantage of a Druid can serve to be a tremendous asset to the amount of total raid healing for a given encounter, even going as far as to allow less healers to be taken to a fight in place of more dps.

A last few notes on mana in raids. Firstly, a healer should use a mana potion whenever their mana reaches 3000 below their max mana. In the recent patch the reagents for mana pots where changed to be easier to farm and therefore cheaper to buy, in addition to the introduction of Coilfang and Tempest Keep specific mana pots which are incredibly plentiful and free. Mana pots average 2400 mana gain over 2 minutes which is equivalent to 100mp5. Secondly, while it is unfortunate that this style of play dooms a Druid to be within the “five second rule” for mana regeneration at all times, all that spirit can and should still be put to use via Innervates. If a Paladin asks for an innervate, not giving it to them isn’t being a jerk and trying to deny them raw healing, it’s simply acknowledging that someone with 400 spirit is a significantly better target for Innervate than someone with 100. Lastly, most discussion about Tree of Life centers around its limitations in movement and spell selection compared to the seemingly small bonus of Tree of Life Aura. The true benefit of Tree of Life form, which seems to go almost unnoticed, is the 20% reduction in mana costs, most notably to Lifebloom which the 9% reduction offered by the Moonglow talent does not cover. Over thirty seconds of a Lifebloom, Lifebloom, Rejuvenation cycle Tree of Life form ends up saving the Druid 885 mana, the equivalent of 142mp5!

VIII. Conclusion.

In the end it still comes down to competing for a raid spot. I’m not going to claim that we bring more to the table than the Divine Spirit Priest, the first Windfury and Bloodlust, or the first three Paladin Blessings. It is an unfortunate core issue with the Druid class that our perceived raid utility is limited to the meager Mark of the Wild and a Rebirth every thirty minutes. But twenty five man raids bring more than five healers and when looking past buffs at the role of a healer, a well played Druid that can communicate their abilities and perform them can bring significantly more raw healing than any other class in nearly all circumstances. So much, in fact, that a Druid can cover solo what it would take multiple players of another class to heal.


Appendix A. An Example of the Extreme Case

The following is an example of a casting sequence that I use, and that an aspiring Druid could also use to put this style of play to the test. The encounter is Hydross the Unstable. The way my guild handles the adds is two offtanks collect two adds each, stack them, and AE them down. Hydross is also an aggro sensitive fight as HOTs ticking when he crosses over can lead to disaster.

The fight starts:
Stack Lifebloom on the Frost MT to 3. Add Regrowth and Rejuvenation to the MT. Refresh the Lifebloom three or four times and reapply Rejuvenation as needed. Shortly before the transition allow Lifebloom to explode. During the transition, before the switch, Swiftmend off Rejuvenation.
Transition:
Open with Rejuvenation on the Nature MT as it won’t tick for three seconds and all tanks need a small window to establish aggro. Apply Lifebloom to one OT, then the next OT, then the Nature MT. Repeat immediately until they all have three stacks. On the third cycle add Rejuvenation on the Nature MT as the fourth spell. On the fourth cycle add Innervate as the fourth spell (it will be up again before the fight ends). On the fifth cycle Rejuvenation the MT again, and after the sixth cycle allow the OT Lifeblooms to explode as the adds should be down. Maintain Lifebloom and Rejuvenation on the MT until the same transition timing as before, letting Lifebloom explode and Swiftmending the Rejuvenation during the move.
Repeat this every phase, mana pot whenever available, trinket at the beginning of a phase whenever available. Innervate when it comes up again. Successful application of this strategy will be very visible on healing meters assuming the Druid isn’t comparatively undergeared.

Ok, I was going to get into resto druids in arena (someone like me, who hasn't played a resto druid in years was able to get 2100 on BG9, the hardest battlegroup for arena), but this post is getting long, so we'll save that for another entry in the future.

How to improve your raids, WWS-style.

Now, you definitely do not have to be a leader to do this, although I feel it is the responsibility of every guild leader to do it.

When you look at your raid, think to yourself, how can you make this raid better. I can only assume that when leading a guild, you would like your guild to be constantly improving. Whether its constantly getting new blood in, recruiting better members, getting more geared up as a whole, getting more experience working together, etc, you want to see these things happening to make your team play better.

Well, much like a professional basketball coach will do after and before games, a very helpful way to improve your team is simply to review the footage from the night before. Now in Warcraft, its difficult to get a fraps of everyone in your raid... in fact, it's darn near unreasonable to do it. But there is a tool out there that exists called WWS-- Wow Web Stats.

It works very simply... anyone in the raid can activate a combat log. It's built into the game.. you just type /combatlog. What this does is it will output all your combat data (and everyone in range) to a text file, which you can then process in WWS after. WWS is a 3rd party program (a Java web application actually) that can parse that combat log that you just took. It goes into some very very good detail, so you can find DPS holes in your raid, or find strategic errors, or just find slacker members.

http://wowwebstats.com

Now how can you use this tool to help your raids? Well, 1st off, try to download an addon or something like "LoggerHead" which can extend the range of your combat log to 200 yards (default is like 45 yards or something small like that..).

Then just follow the directions on the website and start putting up logs. The important thing is to use this to compare both members inside your raid, and to other guilds logs.

If another guild's rogue can do 1400dps, but your guild's rogue can only do 800dps on the same fight... look into it. One would naturally assume gear, but if you look deeper into it, that might not be the case.

If comparing between gear disparity worries you, its ok.. stop comparing with the top 10 guilds in the world. If your guild just killed gruul, keep paging back until you find a dps log that looks close to yours, and see if there's anything they did slightly better than your guild.

The point isn't to use this as some sort of pissing contest to see how good you are compared to others.. it's to use this as a real tool to try to find DPS holes, problem raiders, etc, so you really have to get into the mindset of using this tool to find what part of your raid to devote more time to.

I mean, if on a whole, you see that your shadowpriests are doing only 650dps on a fight where typically other shadow priests in full Frozen Shadowweave are achieving 950dps on, then it's time to examine what they're doing differently, and how to improve that. Is it DoT uptime? Spell/dps cycle? Meta gem or gemming problems in general? Lack of consumables used? This tool can help you a lot, and it has certainly helped my guild tremendously.

What I've Learned Running A Guild.

Preface: Short warning here, this post may end up turning into a rant of some sort, but that's what I do best!


Now I don't claim to be the best guildleader ever. In fact, I can probably name a few of my shortcomings as a WoW guild leader (and I will later), but I will try to at least bring some light on some things I found to be important... can you apply these lessons in life? Maybe in some context. But here it goes.


1) Understanding your members
Everyone who joins your guild has their own reason for joining. They chose your guild because your guild can offer them something another guild couldn't (whether it was the people, the raiding times, the raiding positions, the pvp groups or hell, maybe you're the only guild he could get into).

Understanding where your members come from is a pretty important part of keeping your guild happy. Now you might think this is overanalyzing the situation (and maybe it is), but generally speaking, you want to try to keep as many people in your guild happy, without compromising someone else's happiness in the guild. If you want your guild to run smoothly, you want to be able to continue offering to that person what they originally joined your guild for. In many cases, you cannot control that... like you can't control friendships. But if you're trying to run a successful raiding guild, you have to cater to their needs (especially your MVP) and work with their personalities.

You know, I have a few emo players that I put up with. I have a few people who just have no skills at all, but high attendance. I have players who refuse to login for a boss where he can't get any decent loot. I have players who will only show up to a farm boss. Should I throw them all away? I mean, a lot of these quirks can hurt your guild if it happens at the wrong time. Honestly, my approach to this (may be different than how others approach it), is that I can still get value from these players. As long as you have a fair and structured reward/consequence system that reflects these types of behavior (be sure not to be too draconian). When these players do decide to play nice, you can extract a lot of value out of them.

2) Befriending your members (or not).
There are people in my guild who can't stand me. I'm a number cruncher. I check WWS logs after every raid. I theorycraft at work. I can be a smartass... I've read hundreds of pages of other people's experiences with different encounters or dps strategies. I tell them they're playing poorly.

Well, how can I be friends with everyone in the guild if I do things that not everyone likes? Well, I can't. I try to be friendly with everyone in the guild, but it just can't happen. But there is something very important that does need to happen... everyone in the guild needs to respect you to some degree.

No matter how much they hate the fact that I'm often quoting how 20 other guilds do something better than we do, and how they do it, the fact is that at least at some level, they respect the fact that I'm actually going out of my way to IMPROVE the guild. So while at some level some people might find me as an overbearing leader, they also realize that nothing I do is going to be for the wrong reasons.

Which brings me to another point..

3) Maintaining respect.
It's extremely important to maintain the respect of your peers. Things fall apart when they will no longer trust you. There are many things you can do which help destroy that trust, and most of it has to do with the level of corruption that sometimes takes place amongst leaders.

You should always remain fair on loot. Just because you're leader and you invented all the loot rules doesn't mean that you can do whatever you want with the loot. You have to follow your own rules too.

There is no perfect loot system, and I understand that. In our own loot system (we use an auction system), there are times where I can see if the auction closes as-is, there would be a serious misallocation of loot for the purposes of raid progression. So while I retain the right to override bids in many situations, when I do so, I prepare myself to justify it in detail to all the other 25 witnesses in the raid... not doing so will quickly make it seem like abuse of power, even if it was clearly for the sake of the guild, and not b/c of some hidden agenda.

And even then, you simply can't justify everything with "it's what was in the guild's best interest". Going back to point #1, you have to know your members, and there has to be some sort of balance between rewarding long time members and doing things solely for the sake of progression. While many times those 2 coincide and go hand in hand, you have to strike a balance for the times when those 2 do not align exactly.

You should also respect other people's time. Just because you're running a tight ship and constantly rotating people in and out, you have to respect the fact that someone really wanted to show up and logged in at 6pm for a raid spot. Even if the player is subpar in someway, and some better player logged in at 7pm, and you want to boot the other player out for him, you have to respect the fact that one guy was on time, and the other wasn't, and either ask nicely, or work something out between the two. Not respecting that players time and effort is a quick way for him to lose respect for you as well.

4) Leading by example.
In the end, it really can't help if most of your guild thinks they can do things better than you can. In order to maintain any sort of control over the guild, they have to trust that the advice and orders you're giving are somewhat accurate. They also have to see that you're practicing what you're preaching, otherwise, they'll just head for greener pastures.

If you yell at people about attendance, you can't be sporting a 45% raid attendance yourself. If you're complaining about lack of consumables used, you can't be going to raids potless/flaskless. If you're complaining about people's DPS, you can't be sitting at last place yourself. This is probably the most obvious point, but it's still one of the most important.

How To Feral DPS in Raids

I was going to write a guild management post next, but this has been on my mind, so I'm putting it down. It's probably one of the more important and frequently asked questions, yet its so simple that I can describe it pretty quickly.

As I previously stated in posts, the reason why Druids are so valuable to raids are their ability to mitigate huge amts of melee damage, AND being able to do mid-level dps with just a simple form change (b/c of how awesome our feral tree is). So great, you can tank... a lot of people get experience tanking from tanking heroics and the like. But most feral druids don't get nearly as much opportunity to dps hard, and end up being quite quite poor at it.


Here is the cliffnotes version if you have no desire to read further:
1) Wait until you have 80-100 energy, then mangle ONCE, then Shred until 4-5 combo points. If mangle falls off, and you only have 3 combo points, just shred again, don't worry about reapplying mangle.
2) Wait until you have ~80-90 energy, then Rip, go back to step 1 and mangle-shred-shred again. Do not do any other sorts of special attacks. Rake, Ferocious Bite, extra mangles are a big big no-no. If you wear a trinket such as Bloodlust Brooch, use it right before you rip.



Explanation in Detail
First, lets go into the cat dps mechanics so you can see how this all works together.

1) The Energy Tick Mechanic.
They might change this next patch in 2.2, but currently, your energy ticks every 2 seconds for 20 energy. This energy tick is completely independent of anything you do. This is why despite the fact that you *might* have 100 energy, if you do say a mangle right before the energy tick, you'll find yourself with 80 remaining energy instead of 60 remaining energy. Mods exist to track this energy tick such as Energy Watch v2. This functionality is also built into X-Perl-Unitframes, and I'm assuming also built into a bunch of other UI mods. But if you can't find it, or aren't sure, you can always just install Energy Watch.

(Sidenote: the term "powershifting" takes advantage of this point, coupled with furor. The reasoning behind this is, assuming you used your last tick of energy and are now at 0 energy, and your next tick won't be for 2 seconds, if you shift out, then into cat in that 2 second time frame, you will get the 40 energy, then the 2second will tick immediately and you'll now have 60 energy, instead of just 20... of course, low ping helps here, but either way, GCD is only 1-1.5s, so you have some leeway here, provided you reacted fast).

2) What attack gives you the most bang for buck for your energy?
Obviously, Shred @ only 42 energy is ridiculous. It scales tremendously with your attack power, and has this wonderful wonderful idol called Everbloom Idol which is easy to get, and which you'll use the rest of your druid career (yes, even better than anything that drops past Illidan) b/c its simple the best by far in the game at this point. Mangle doesn't give you nearly the same bang for your buck. The only other move which competes with Shred is Rip, but this is a finisher.

Because of this, you should never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever use any ability other than Shred and Rip (with 1 mangle to increase the dmg of both).

3) The timing of Rip.
Rip lasts 12 seconds, but doesn't tick until after 2 seconds. So... even if your mangle falls off right after your 4-5th combo point, DON'T SWEAT IT!! As previously mentioned in my cliff-notes summary, after your 4-5th combo point, you should be waiting doing white dmg until your energy is up to 80-90, at which point, you Rip when you know the energy is about to tick over. Then after you rip, you have a 2 second window to apply the mangle before rip even ticks once!! Also, this may or may not be coincidence, but Mangle debuff lasts 12 seconds. Rip debuffs lasts 12 seconds. If you Mangle BEFORE your Rip, your last tick of Rip will not get the Mangle Bonus. If you Mangle AFTER you Rip, your Rip will guarenteed never tick without the Mangle Bonus.

4) Trinket Power.
The great thing about these on-use attack power trinkets such as Bloodlust Brooch, and Crystalforge Trinket is that you can time when you're going to do a big burst (every time you let a rip go), so you can coordinate when to activate the trinket to maximize your burst. Conveniently, Bloodlust Brooch lasts 20s, so if you activate it JUST before your 1st rip, odds are there will be 4-5 seconds left before you're ready to unleash your 2nd rip :>

5) Why Rip at 4-5 combo points? Why not rip when you have exactly 5?
Well, I think many people have already mathematically modelled this and shown that its better off Ripping @ 4 instead of going to 5, but here's a quick explanation (although in nowhere near as convincing as the mathematical explanation). If you have 4 combo points, the odds are that your mangle debuff will have fallen off by the time you do your next shred. Mathematically speaking, the difference in damage between a 4 point rip and a 5 point rip is not that huge. Also, if you crit when you have 4 combo points up, you will lose an extra combo point. In general, its more worth it just to save up energy and start your next mangle/shred/shred/shred/rip rotation. Once you get your gear/critrate up higher, you'll be seeing a lot more 5 point rips than 4 point rips, but your damage should be the same. Remember, if you follow this DPS method, whitedmg/shred will make up 80-85% of your damage. Rip only makes up a 15% component. It is much more ideal to plan for your next Mangle-Shred rotation than it is to obsess over only having 5 combo point rips. If your mangle debuff is still up there and you have time to put in that last shred to get 5 combo points, you can, although honestly, unless you got an extremely happy crit-streak, this will be rare. In general, maybe the better rule of thumb is to simply let your rip go if your mangle debuff is off.

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Anyways, can you see now why if you put steps 1-5 together, this maximizes your DPS? It's really pretty simple, although it might take a couple days of practicing it before it becomes second nature.

Some extra tips:

- Try not to ever cower. 20 energy? Please.... That's almost half a shred. If you feel like you're about to take aggro, simple cool it with your abilities. The only time you should EVER EVER cower is if you're somehow still above your MT on threat, and you have 100 energy banked already, so you're losing energy ticks b/c of your threat situation (honestly, this should be extremely rare.. this means that your white dmg is out threatting your MT...).

- For bleed immune mobs, its still probably not worth it to ferocious bite unless you find yourself with exactly 35->39 energy left, and your mangle is about to fall off. For bleed immune mobs, you basically want to maximize the amt of mangled shreds you can get in. Which means, if mangle falls off, save up 80-90 energy before Mangle then Shred dumping again. If you mangle with 40 energy, you now have to wait 6 seconds before you can do your 1st shred, effectively WASTING half your mangle debuff. This is why you always save your energy before you start with a mangle-shred-shred rotation. This is also why you save this before a rip-mangle-shred rotation :)

My history and learning experiences from running a guild.

Now, I'm not going to claim to be the best guildmaster in the world, b/c I'm pretty certain that there are people in my guild who really don't like me, or think I do an overall poor job.

I think I can safely say that those people are in the minority however.

While I haven't been a guild leader for many years or anything, maybe I'll give a short history on my leadership background before I start dishing out anything you may or may not think is even worth reading about.

To be honest, I never really cared for being a leader, but I did join an one of the most elite guilds on the most popular server in DAoC (Guinevere at the time). That guild was Knight Templars. They were a small elite guild that was extremely elitist at the time. Unfortunately, I had major issues with the way the guild was run. There was way too much favoritism playing out, and there were cliques forming that were imo unhealthy. Which didn't stop me from trying to break into ALL the cliques, but eventually, I just lashed out at everyone for propagating this crappy behavior and eventually got myself kicked out hehehe. Learning experience #1 anyways.

I joined a PvP server and befriended a player who eventually created one of the largest and unwieldy zerg guilds I'd ever seen. With guild sizes typically around 15-25 in DAoC, this guild hit the member limit @ 230. Now this guy wasn't an extremely skilled gamer which became evident, but his ability to manage this 230 man zerg was simply amazing. His zerg leading abilities literally floored me and I decided that no matter how skilled you were, if you were a strong leader, you could achieve successes far beyond what anyone could accomplish on their own, no matter how skilled. Which kind of makes sense in RL... the smartest people, most skilled people aren't necessarily the richest. It's the people who are in charge who always make the most.

Anyways, I became an officer in that 230 man zerg guild, and just picked up leading tips from him (sure enough, he went on to form his own web startup and cashed out after being bought).

In WoW, I didn't have any intention on leading anything, simply to come and PvP with my friends. Eventually, realizing that this was more a PvE raid game than it was a PvP game, I joined a medium sized elite guild, and it just sort of happened b/c I was unhappy about the way things were being run. Fast-forward to now, I've been leading our guild successfully (imo) for about a year now, and I think we're as strong as we've ever been. Obviously the success of our guild is completely due to the hard work of our members, but I'd like to think that I've helped foster an environment conducive to not only the performance of our raid members, but to create an environment where we could introduce new people in without feeling overwhelmed as being the outsider (obviously, the secret to keeping a hard-core guild running so long is to have good new players trained, then coming in to full member status to replace the people retiring).

I think that also helps with why I feel like I'm successful at doing this. I didn't start this guild, and I was a grunt for the most part. But b/c of my experiences from my 1st DAoC guild where I got kicked out for being too forward on my problems with the guild, being constructive led to gradual acceptance from the guild leadership to eventually me taking over. It's also b/c I've had so many issues with the way guilds were being run that I don't allow it to completely corrupt the way it is lead, and how I still hold my basic principals pretty dearly.

Anyways, I thought I had to put this out before anyone started blindly asking where I came from. I'll do an actual post detailing what values I use to run a guild, and in what order they come in.

Feral Druids in Arena

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End-game priorities for Feral Druids

I was going to just edit this in at the end of my last post, Feral Druid Role in End Game Raiding, but it was getting kind of long, so I thought I'd just make another post.

When I'm recruiting Druids these days, I don't think a lot of them completely understand my point of the last post. I mean, its great and all that you have, say, 30k armor, 40% dodge in bear, and that you've tanked lots and lots of things, but for the most part, that's not what makes you truly valuable to a raid. Yes, being able to tank things is great, but practically speaking, a Druid makes for a lousy main tank in most situations. Bosses either end up fearing in which case Druids have poor fear mitigation, or bosses go through some burst phases where Druids have very little to cope with that (say, a fear and you take a big burst, and you know your healing will be out of commission a while) compared to a Warrior who can Last Stand, Shield Wall, etc.

Overall speaking, a druid's main form of damage mitigation is through his armor, and honestly speaking, armor caps out, whereas a warrior's mitigation will never cap out. They can always get more armor, more parry, more block, more dodge, etc. And from an itemization stand point, you have far more to gain when the itemstats are spread amongst multiple stats than if they're only in agi, or only in armor.

So what do I mean? I'm trying to emphasize the fact that a druid's best role is to tank when needed, then to DPS when needed. DPS is a very very important part of the druid arsenal, which I feel like many feral druids fail to emphasize or understand the importance of.

DPS is ultimately the best way for a raid to control a fight. This might not be completely apparent at first, and might even seem a little unintuitive, but bare with me here. DPS allows you to control the pacing of the fight. With almost 40% of all boss fights involving some sort of add control, high dps allows you to kill the adds faster instead of having to worry about tank-controlling them for prolonged periods of time. The very best examples of this are what most people consider the ultimate "PvE Walls" that exist today, Gruul, Magtheridon, Vashj and Kaelthas. In Gruul, high dps results in less out of control growths, which leads to an easier time and less really unfriendly wipes. High DPS on Magtheridon allows you to get past the channelers, which everyone will agree is the hardest part of the fight. Killing the channelers fast allows you to get to the boss fight much more cleanly with more people up (also reduces the time that infernals are around to kill your raid). On Vashj, Phase 2 DPS control is obviously the overriding factor on whether or not you kill Vashj, or wipe to her repeatedly. On Kaelthas, well, if you can kill all the adds on time, you can kill Kael no problem... but killing those adds on time is a very very difficult task :)

Ok... so why the lecture on DPS? Because as a Druid, your greatest strength is your ability to tank, then DPS. Bring you instead of bringing another prot warrior is basically giving your raid an extra-DPSer that you didn't have before!!! I don't think many druids emphasize this portion of their repetoire. They focus so much on tanking, when it comes time to DPS, they barely outperform the prot-warrior they were meant to replace. So I'm going to lecture a little on cat dps here.


GEAR
Does this mean you have to roll on rogue loot? In many cases yes... but here are some resources to help you along with that task...

Emmerald, a mildly famous Druid now in Druid circles, publishes a pretty comprehensive Druid gear ranking list for DPS purposes. While I don't necessarily agree completely with the formula used to create this list, as a general rule of thumb, it is pretty good at ranking all the items. Ok.. so you have a gearlist, so what? Well, you'll find that you won't necessarily be directly competing with rogues on every item. Compare Emmerald's list with a famous rogue DPS gear list, like ShadowPanther.

Emmerald's Cat Sustained DPS Gear List
ShadowPanther's Rogue Gear Rankings

You'll find that while there is some overlap, you can probably convince your rogues friends to pass on an item to you if there is another item in the same instance that is much better for them.

Tier 4
Another thing that some druids might not know is about how overpowered our Druid T4 feral set is. I'm talking about the 2pc bonus which allows a 4% chance to gain 20 energy. This is HUGE. Theorycraft speaking wise, I think it results in around a 10-20% dps bonus.... It's so huge that even if you had access to every item in the game, you would still fit the T4 helm and shoulders into your DPS set b/c the bonus outweighs everything.

Stat Balance

I think this is something that most druids always ask about. The simple answer is, AGILITY AGILITY AGILITY. This the #1 tanking stat in the game (thanks to a ridiculously overpowered agi divider for us druids that gives us 1% dodge per 14.7 agility!!). An example of why even for tanking, agility is overpowered:

8 dodge rating gem (Subtle Living Ruby) gives you a 0.423% dodge chance. An 8 agility gem in contrast (Delicate Living Ruby) gives you .544% dodge chance. And not only that, agility gives you additional crit, and attack power while in cat!! It's a no brainer!!!

But I'm not talking about tank itemization here, I'm focusing on DPS... why is this the best DPS stat? Well, the most frequently asked question is, how do you balance strength and agility? Well, you can't design your own items, so you'll just have to look at a stat-comparing page, like Emmerald's gear list as mentioned earlier depending on what drops, but the thing you can control is sockets. Strength or Agility? Well, the answer is actually a little complicated, and it depends on your current attack statistics, but here is a graph a very smart Druid (of whose name I can't find) made, but it was based on formulas by Lolaan:



Actually.. here's a more accurate one from Tangedyn:



But waaaaaaah... how the heck can I get 3000 ap? Well, honestly, its not as far away as you think!!! You'll find that if you can get blessing of kings and blessing of might, mark of the wild, ap food buff, flask, you're well on your way to 3000 ap, if you're not there already... And if you're at 3000 ap, you're pretty much in the agi>str zone guarenteed. So not only is this the better DPS stat, you'll find that it's still insanely useful if you have to switch between cat and bear without the opportunity for a gear change. Agility is most definitely your friend!

Anyways, this post is getting a little long-winded, but I hope its a least somewhat informative. I want you feral druids out there to understand the equal important of DPS. I'll get into the finer details of druid dps rotations, power shifting, addons to assist on dps, etc in a later post.

Feral druid role in end-game raiding.

This might be immediately obvious to some, but I think I need to explain this anyways.
The reason why feral druids are so strong in end-game raiding is not only for their tanking ability, but more because of how strong the feral talent tree is.

Warriors have been complaining about this forever, but the fact remains that the druid feral tree is so compact that the same tanking spec you use is equally viable as a cat-form dps spec!

How does this affect raids? Well, simply put, a simple gear swap can change you from rogue-wanna-be to melee-tanking-god! This is very key for people wishing to min-max their raid. Most raids, starting as early as Karazhan involve a fight which starts off with multiple mobs and some sort of need for multiple tanks, but inevitably end with a single boss.

Well, say you have 2 protection warriors, tanking a simple fight such as Attumen the Huntsmen. During the 2nd phase where there is both a rider and a horse that need to be tanked, 1 warrior can tank each, no problem. But what happens during the 3rd phase, when there is only 1 boss to tank? The 2nd protection warrior goes to DPS. Very low DPS I might add.

Ok, alternative #2, you have 1 protection warrior and 1 dps warrior. Well, honestly, either of those mobs hit for a decent enough amount that you might not want your DPS warrior in full DPS gear! In fact, he might be in tank gear, and even then, ultimately, he will be tanking a lot of damage. When he switches over during phase 3, how much DPS can he put out? More than if he were a prot warrior, but even then, probably not very impressive damage.

So this is where a feral druid truly shines. You bear form when you have to tank, then switch to cat form the rest of the fight and enjoy some very rogue-like dps!! This extends throughout every instance in the game and every boss I've ever fought so far (and I am quite progressed).

This is why when you analyze the roster of any good guild, you will see feral druids galore.. in instances like Caverns of Time: Hyjal Summit, waves and waves of trash-mobs come at you 16 at a time before finally you have a rather anti-climactic simple raid boss to kill which requires only 1-2 tanks. How can your raid handle 16 mobs at a time every 2-3 min with only 1-2 tanks? It's impossible. 4 might be the bare minimum number of tanks necessary to do it, but even my guild prefers to do it with 5. This is why druids are so great compared to DPS warriors. Even in a dps spec, your tanking abilities and ability to mitigate damage will be head and shoulders above a DPS spec'd warrior, yet as soon as you go into cat form, you can do nearly equal damage (if not more!).

To give you an idea, as a tank currently, I sport something like 34k armor, 20k hp, 52% dodge buffed, yet as soon as the boss comes, I'm 1 itemrack command away from instantly becoming a 3800ap, 44% crit, 8% hit rogue-wannabe. A warrior just cannot switch tanking to dps roles even close to that. That's not even counting the fact that every druid you bring entitles your raid to an in-combat rez and an innervate.

Every guildmaster must love feral druids, even ones who aren't feral druids themselves ;)

My WoW blog

Hi, I thought I decided I'd start to write a blog about WoW, since it is taking up such a large chunk of my free time these days.

I guess I have to start with my qualifications... I mean, I think it'd be nice for people who read my blog to get a little perspective on where I'm coming from.

Who I am in WoW:
Currently, I play a level 70 Feral Druid named Killerets. I am a guild master for a US guild called Mediocrity on one of the more popular server, Blackrock. We are a fairly progressed end-game raiding guild, who currently, as of Sept 7, 2007, have killed 4 of the 1st 9 bosses in Black Temple, and have completely cleared the CoT: Hyjal Summit instance.

I have a level 70 alt-priest named Heal, who is currently Holy Spec'd for Arena.


My WoW History:
WoW is my 2nd MMORPG, my 1st being Dark Age of Camelot. I originally joined WoW from the idea that me and my friends from Dark Age of Camelot would run the ultimate 5-man group gank squad. This did not work in WoW... the PvP system just wasn't there, and there was no incentive to do any sort of world PvP whatsoever. We were power-gamers, so we were amongst the 1st to hit 60 on our server (Blackrock, which at the time was the most populous server out there, even more so than Archimonde and such). Most of the guilds at this time, were only around 10-20 people, and were completely unprepared for the 40 man raids WoW required. Our small little 5-10man PvP guild eventually merged with 4-5 other small guilds at the time to form Mediocrity. We got server firsts in MC before I ultimately quit the game due to boredom and lack of a PvP system.

Fast forward 12 months, some friends convinced me to come back to play casually, which turned out to be very very bad >:) I ended up getting addicted again, rejoined my old guild, Mediocrity, and somehow worked my way up from 7th druid on the bench begging for a spot in BWL, to... 1st druid officer by the time we hit Naxxramas?

Eventually, my analytical approach to helping run the guild won out, and the guild leader title was passed to me upon the release of Burning Crusade, where I've now helped lead this guild to
some decent progression (according to WoWJutsu.com, we are the 314th most progressed guild in the world, out of 35,000 guilds, and 142th place in the US: http://www.wowjutsu.com/us/blackrock/).


What I intend to do with this blog:


Well, I like to rant about a lot of topics. I obviously have a lot of things to talk about. What you'll see are posts about... how to run a guild, tips on running a guild successfully, dealing with drama in the guild, feral druid theorycrafting, druid in arena strategies, general tips on playing a druid in the end game, resources I use to learn about the game, etc.

I am very open to suggestions on articles you think I can enlighten people on. I hope I end up writing for more than just myself!

I love helping people in this game, I don't know why. It actually hurts my sleeping schedule when someone msgs me about Druid advice before I goto sleep, b/c I helping them for hours at the expense of sleeping on time!

I used to be an active poster here: http://vnboards.ign.com/ASP/user_posts.asp?usr=635920
(you might need to register in order to see my post history), where I used to give a lot of feral druid advice, but I think a blog might be more appropriate so I can pick the topics to post on.

About me outside of WoW:

I'm an engineer in California. I work very efficiently, so I get some time to blog at work without impacting my work output :)