Dreamstate Build Part II

It was a very successful weekend of raiding and with that came the very successful and thorough testing of the Dreamstate build. This past weekend I healed 25 man Naxx, Maly, and OS +2 drakes. We downed all the raids except OS +2 drakes because the tank had to leave early. We ended up having to settle with just doing OS +1 drake. All in all, it was a good test to see how the Dreamstate build holds up in raiding content.

I am happy to report that I found the Dreamstate Build to be raid viable. I was actually impressed and a little surprised by the results. It was like healing in a simpler time where druids didn't have an AoE heal. But, it was interesting nonetheless. I actually did more overhealing than usual because I was using regrowth more often as my primary heal. I was still rolling lots of HoTs off of members in the raid. I didn't really notice an increase in my healing but at the same time I didn't notice any decreases in my healing, except on Thaddius,a fight that I actually dps'd through half of.

In EoE the two healers that I was comparing my healing to were not there this week. But, I felt like I did maybe a little better than I usually do. Not sure if I actually did do any better but I didn't see any decrease like I thought I might before I tried the Dreamstate build.

Again I didn't have any mana issues but that's what the Dreamstate build is for. The increase to my Spell power was nice but not really necessary. I also did a little PvP with it, and granted I'm just a casual PvPer, I thought the build worked nicely. I probably would of tweaked the build a little and dropped the Tree of Life to get Natural Perfection or Living Seed because I rarely went in tree form as I favored casting Moonfire, Entangling Roots, and Cyclone. And my mana was never lacking which can sometimes happen in PvP because of my misuse of mana when I am spamming mana heavy offensive spells like Moonfire.

To conclude the Dreamstate build is viable and can be competitively used in raiding. It's even a nice change to my druid healing in a small way. I do like that I have options when it comes to healing and that a viable resto build can be different from the cookie cutter 11/0/60 build that so many druids have. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with the 11/0/60 build, I use one very similar to it normally but its a 14/0/57 build. It's just nice to have options. Heh, funny, I am talking about options on a hybrid. But really I tested this build to see that healing isn't just one spec or one tree and that it can be played around with. So I give the Dreamstate build my seal of approval and good luck to druids who want to try it.

Raiding 101

Ever since I started playing World of Warcraft it had always been my dreams to raid, to get online with a bunch of people and use strategy and coordination to take on something that one man alone can not. Don't get me wrong I do enjoy my days when I was an uber awesome Warrior in Diablo or my minion slavedriving Necromacer in Diablo II, and could take on Diablo solo. My fondest memories are watching my massive skeleton army get wiped out by one flame wave from Diablo and there I stand with only me and my golem thinking this is going to be a long fight.

But it wasn't until I started playing WoW that I had truly embraced MMORPG's, I mean battlenet on Diablo 2 was fun but it could not compare to WoW's online play. I choose to start playing WoW over Guild Wars because I had more friends that played WoW. Which looking back was a good choice because Guild Wars has kind of fizzled out after a while, or at least to me it did. But enough about me pre-WoW lets get on to the meat of the article: Raiding.

Although I didn't raid pre-BC and it wasn't until my sever transfer that I got into more raiding or at least into raiding more than just Kara, but it still has been a while ago that I started raiding. And for all of those who have been raiding for a long while, possibly and most likely on multiple toons, they may take it for granted. I hadn't realized until just the other day that there really are new players out there that have not had all the experience with raiding and therefore need to be briefed on the basics.

Step 1: The most importan part of any fight is listen to the RAID LEADER. The raid leader has most likely, except possibly in the case of a pug, done his/her research on the fight, by either looking up strategies, watching videos, or just learning from other raiders. This leaves them with at least a basic working knowledge of the fight. So when the raid leader asks if anyone has NOT done the fight do not be afraid to speak up. You are ten times, maybe even a hundred times more likely to be looked down upon for wiping because "you didn't know" than if you had told the raid leader, so they could explain the fight.

Step 2: If you do not understand the explaination of the fight, after it is given, do not be afraid to ask questions. It is a positive thing to ask questions for a better understanding so you are less likely to make a mistake that could cost the raid a wipe. Raid leaders will be more than happy to take a little extra time to further explain the fight.

Step 3: Come to raids prepared, early, and ready to go. This means have all your flasks, elixers, pots, food buffs, and reagents bought and in your bags. Be online and ready to raid an hour to half an hour before raid time. Most guilds hold a policy that when posting raid times the raid time corresponds to the time of the first pull. Have your gear enchanted, gemmed, and REPAIRED. Make sure you are spec'd to your main spec so the raid is not waiting for you to run to the old world to respec. And another note on spec's have your toon spec'd to there respective PvE spec. Do not come to raids with a PvP spec. You are gimping not only yourself but also your raid.

Step 4: Minimize the amount of time you AFK and how long you AFK for. Take into account that when you are raiding nine to twenty four other people are counting on you to be present and contributing to the raid. And don't think that just because it's trash it's okay to AFK; you can clear trash faster with everyone helping. In short commit to your raid come prepared in RL with drinks, snacks, etc.

Step 5: Don't stand in front of the boss. In general bad things will and can happen if you are standing in front of a boss. You may either get the tank killed or get your self killed. And a dead dps = 0 dps. It could cause a boss to parry and strike the tank more and also bosses commonly have some sort of cleave or cone like ability that hits anything in front of them. So stand to the sides or behind the boss.

Step 6: If it hurts you...MOVE! This can not be stressed enough. So many bosses and even trash have abilities that can be avoided by simply not standing in them. Yet more often than not people tend to lose focus and not pay attention and find themselves dead. Even if they do survive they are just wasting the healers time, focus, and GCD's to get their health back up.

Step 7: Maximize. This step actually goes hand in hand with being prepared to raid but stands to be emphasized. Maximize what you bring to the raid whether it's healing, damage per second, or tanking, be the best at what you do. Each person should know the ins and outs of their class if they want to be the best and if you don't know research it or ask a class leader or another player on your sever that knows. There is so much information out there you just have to take the time and read up on it. Also have a rotation that will maximize what you are doing. All the classes have lots of abilities but not all abilities are useful in maximizing. Same idea goes with spec, not all talents are good for raiding.

Step 8: Have a main spec. Sure it's nice to dabble in gear for different specs and its fine to collect off spec gear when content is on farm. But when it comes to progression stick to one set spec where the raid leader knows what you are and what they can count on you doing. And most importantly raid the spec you want to raid as. Do not feel confined to having to raid a certain way, because WoW is still a game and you need to have fun raiding and doing what you want to do.

This concludes the Raiding 101: first edition guide to raiding in WoW. Hope you enjoy and point new recruits to this post.

Ulduar and Me

I am sure most of us have ventured over to the WoW community site or to MMO champions to check on the little amount of info on Ulduar, which is the next raid that will be coming to Wrath.

I am very excited to check out the new content as are most raiders. Blizzard is saying that "Ulduar is the first example of the expansion's much larger, truly epic scope of raiding." This stance leaves me with high expectations of raiding in the the future of WoW. And on a side note Blizzard has went in a new direction of making most fights accessible to multiple class, i.e. not needing a specific class to do certain jobs because other classes can do it. Also making buffs more raid wide rather than just party wide lends to more or rather less class diversity needed. So no more will be the days of needing a specific person to do a very specific important job that if they mess up wipes the raid. I view this as good and bad. It is good that multiple classes can do given tasks so when guilds are lacking in diversity they can still successfully get through content. However some of the group makeup is lost in that you don't have to place certain classes with other class so they get the right group buffs. Plus there is no new trial by fires, so to say, of a new guy that has a very specific job. I guess that means the new guild scrubs are off the hook. Well not exactly because you can still mess up. But this is always minimized by LISTENING to your raid leader. Plain and simple, imo.

Forgive me I got a little off track. The first encounter is apparently one with vehicles, that scale with gear. So no more naked wipes, i.e. last boss in Occulus and no more equality of players' vehicles like in maly. This sounds like a very interesting encounter that I won't go into detail about because there are the links to them. Although it sounds interesting, I also have a little tinge of dread about it. As my raid leader and me have commonly went on Occulus runs just to entertain ourselves with how even decent players can devolve to total noobs when you put them on the back of a drake. Same goes for maly; even with our more or less skilled raiding core it is still not possible for them to all stay in a clump. They feel a need to spread out and loss coordination. We will see how this first encounter turns out to be. Maybe it will be a noob check to get really going in the instance.

The new raids most interesting concept is a hard mode on bosses. It is stated that eleven out of Ulduar's fourteen bosses will have a hard mode to them. The increase difficulty will reward guilds with better gear and more challenge to fights. This is an excellent concept. Right now 10 man content seems to be harder than that of 25 man. Which is a backwards deal because it may seem like smaller guilds can easily just stick to 10 mans but with increased difficultly in fights like maly and OS with drakes up, 25 man instances have a clear advantage. The saddest part is that after completing these difficult 10 man raids the rewards pale in comparison to that of 25 man content. In a nutshell, I am hoping that the hard mode will prove beneficial and help balance 10 man and 25 man content, but I think I am reaching in hoping that.

All in all I am excited about the hard modes on the bosses and am looking forward to Ulduar. Blizzard claims to have PTR testing up soon on patch 3.1 where they will begin testing on Ulduar bosses, Freya, Thorim, Hodir, and The Iron Council. I am hoping to find the time to get on the PTR and do some Ulduar raiding so I will be more prepared for the upcoming raid. I will encourage and invite my guildies to undertake this adventure into Ulduar with me. Plus the prospect of jumping into unknown territory with no established strategy is just plain AWESOME and hardcore.

Quotes and info taken from WoW community website and MMO champions.

Raiding on Holidays

Well unfortunately last weekend was more or less a flop. When Saturday rolled around we were surprisingly heavy on healers and short on dps. I took the opportunity to roll boomkin for Naxx. After the first pull our raid leader, who is also one of our stronger healers had to leave due to getting called in for work. Which left us even more shorthanded. We were trying to do Naxx with about 21 or 22 people and we were struggling. Early wipes on patchwork got people discouraged. I ended up having to step in and heal a few fights that were harder on our healers, but the stand-in raid leader didn't really want me to respec because for some bosses we could use the extra dps over healers. Needless to say I was a true hybrid in the raid and cursing that dual specs wasn't out.

Not only was the raid struggling but so to was I trying to heal with a strong balance build that skips over most the neat mana management talents. I still had Omen of Clarity, but with only two points into Intensity and zero points in Dreamstate; my mana pool was failing. I haven't felt this way since I first started raid healing. Normally when I am resto I hardly even need to Innervate myself yet I was having to pop it before the fight was even half over.

The moral of the story here is that raiding on holidays even the likes of Valentine's day can have disastrous effects. I hope to see things pick up next week and I still plan on field testing the Dreamstate build I have set up.

Dreamstate

Tomorrow I will be respec'ing back to resto to do 25 man naxx, EoE, and OS. I am feeling the need to experiment once again with the resto dreamstate build. I will be using a build similar to this Dreamstate Build.

This will be the second time I have spec'd the dreamstate build. I am curious how it will do. Right now I am, may I dare say one of the better healers in the guild. But I want to try some different builds to see if I can boost my numbers from what the are already. And so that's why I am trying the dreamstate build this weekend. Currently I am not having any mana issues which is the expressed norm for decently geared healers at this point in the game, hence the nerf to mana regen that is coming. So I am looking at this build first of all to see how it does and if it improves my effective healing. After the mana nerf I might revisit for mana efficiency even if it proves to be less effective than my current build.

The first time I tried the dreamstate build I was just hitting heroics hard and was looking to boost my bonus heals as well as my mana regen. I felt that this build wasn't for me at the time because wild growth was just to awesome to give up. In a heroic which seemed to be usually melee heavy I could easier pop off a wild growth on the tank then one on the ranged. It was a time when wild growth had no CD and AoE heals were for the win. It being the start of my healing career I was just having problems keeping the tank up without rolling all my hots on them. So to be able to wild growth the tank meant that the melee would actually get a heal. This however is a thing of the past. And I feel that I didn't give the Dreamstate build a good enough chance to really see what it's made of.

EoE is the only raid that I feel I will be having feeling the loss of wild growth. Because it seems like the raid takes more AoE damage in Phase two but I have faith that it shouldn't be a problem. Then in naxx I might not top the meters on thaddius but that's an easy fight on the healers. And I am already weak at the loatheb fight compared to the other top healers in the guild that I feel my wild growth loss won't be an issue here either.

In general though I am excited to try Dreamstate again. When I tried to research it, I came across very few posts about the Dreamstate build at 80. This makes this glad to try to generate some press on the Dreamstate build may it be positive or negative. Look for a follow up post after testing it out this weekend.

Healing Touch

Before the mana changes come in patch 3.1 I want to try a sort of Healing Touch build. It focuses on Healing Touch and Nourish. So more on direct heals than on HoTs, which is an interesting concept for a druid healer. However HoTs are not to be excluded entirely. I plan on still using rejuvenation and swiftmend and the AoE heal Wild Growth. Yet so much of druid healing is HoT based, so anything like this pre-Wrath wouldn't even be worth looking at.

But with changes to the Tree of Life allowing Healing Touch and Nourish to be cast in tree form it now may seem viable. Also the resto druid's four set bounus buffs Nourish so that your Nourish heals an additional 5% for each of your heal over time effects present on the target. Currently I never touch Nourish and this build will let me get some mileage out of it and see how I could possibly work it into my healing rotation, hence even if the build is a FAIL I can still learn more about Nourish.

In exploring a build like this I am also going to take a hard look at the Glyph of Healing Touch which decreases the cast time of Healing Touch by 1.5 sec., the mana cost by 25%, and the amount healed by 50%. First off should I even use this glyph? I mean my build is focused on HT, but is the glyph benefical to the build. Or should I leave HT as is and use it more as a greater heal?

Before jumping into field testing this build and the HT glyph lets do some theorycrafting. First lets look at Healing Touch unglyphed. Its a three second cast that heals for 3750 to 4428. This is very similar to Greater Heal, that is also a three second cast that heals for roughly the same amount (3950 to 4590) but a hits a little harder.

Now lets look at Nourish, which is a 1.5 sec cast that heals for 1883 to 2187 plus some for HoTs. This is similar to Flash Heal, with a 1.5 sec cast and healing for 1887 to 2193.

I needed to talk to a priest and after doing so I don't know if this build will even work. Priests have a talent that lets them dally with the 5 sec rule, which is a common healer rule for utilizing out of casting regen. Druids use HoTs to get out of casting regen. This may not be prefect but I am willing to try this build. Mana regen is changing so who knows what will happen. Expect a post some time later about the results of this experiment hopefully I can get it done and field testing in naxx this weekend or next.

The Last Two Points

I raid as a resto druid first and for most, and Evocati does most of its 25 man raiding on the weekend. This leaves me with the week to play around. During the week I often respec to boomkin and as of last week I spec'd back to feral for the first time since I leveled to 80. I feel like I have lost my touch a little in terms of dpsing as a feral druid but that's besides the point. The point is that after messing around during the week, doing dungeons and Vault and 10 mans, I still look forward to spec'ing back to resto and doing what I do best.

Now every time I have respec'd back to resto I use this common build. As you can see this leaves me with two extra points. I have been debating where to place these last two points. Every week I feel like I have placed them in a different talent.

One week I played around with putting two points into Tranquil Spirit which at Rank 2 reduces the mana cost of your Healing Touch, Nourish and Tranquility spells by 4%. But seeing as I rarely use HT, Nourish, or Tranquility often enough to merit picking up these talents. Currently I am only using HT with Nature's Swiftness and I only use tranquility when I can remember and the raid is taking lots of AoE damage. I have yet to find much of a use for Nourish.

The next week I put the two points into Improved Tranquility which at Rank 2 reduces threat caused by Tranquility by 100%, and reduces the cooldown by 60%. This seemed like a decent use of talent points but I still felt like I was forgetting to use my Tranquility very much. Also the times when I was using Tranquility the tank had solid aggro, there was no need for the reduced threat and the CD being reduced didn't seem to make that much of a difference in healing on most fights.

So again I picked up those two points and moved them. The next time I went with Replenish Rank 2 where your Rejuvenation spell has a 10% chance to restore 8 Energy, 4 Rage, 1% Mana or 16 Runic Power per tick. But after researching it on forums and blogs, which suggested that it wasn't worth the the points. I also didn't see any benefit in it. I often roll rejuvs on people to top them off thinking replenish might be helpful but it just isn't worth it. And putting three points into Replenish is an even bigger waste of talent points.

This last week I looked at the balance tree and decided to pick up Nature's Grace. I went as far as putting all three points into it. And at Rank 3 all spell criticals have a 100% chance to grace you with a blessing of nature, reducing the casting time of your next spell by 0.5 sec. But as you may recall I only have two talent points to play around with. Where did I get an extra talent point from you may ask? Well I stole a point from Natural Perfection leaving it with 2/3 points. This drops the your extra 3% spell crit chance to 2% and also the 4% damage reduction is decreased to 3%. In a raid I shouldn't be taking that much damage that this should matter much and the increase in spell crit is minor anyway. This is because I only use two spells that can crit and that's HT and Regrowth. I only use HT with Nature's Swiftness as previously mentioned and with Improved Regrowth Rank 5 my Regrowth crit chance is increased by 50%. So basically its going to crit over half the time with the little crit I have. This is why I prefer taking haste over crit especially with the changes made to haste as it applies to druids. So the combination of Improved Regrowth and Nature's Grace, and also the amount of haste that I have (354 haste rating or reduces casting speed by 10.80%), drops my next regrowth to under a second. I use all this with the Regrowth Glyph that increases the healing of your Regrowth spell by 20% if your Regrowth effect is still active on the target. I have found this to be the best use of my last two well now three points.

In a Rush

Last night I wrote my first blog and it felt pretty good. I laid down to go to bed and realized I didn't even mention a few key aspects of my boring raiding life... such that I had left Peacetime to join Evocati. They have been a great guild to me. They are lead by the more raid orientated members from Peacetime and we are actually getting things done which is a huge change of pace for me. I am now an officer in the guild and I am very happy with how we are progressing.

Even recruiting is picking up. In the last two weeks we have gotten two new resto druids. Scratch that apparently we now have three new resto recruit. I have yet to talk to the third recruit that much who joined yesterday.

Anyway Drudi is the first recruit that we received and Akari our Raid leader did a 10 man naxx run with him last week. Though Akari was trying to help Drudi heal better he wasn't making much headway. I had a sit down talk with him on Sunday and had him respec. From his performance in the 25 man Maly he seems to be doing much much better. Drudi is young and still has a long ways to go but its a road I look forward to guiding him on.

Later that day I got to interview our second new recruit Beasst. His gear wasn't bad mostly gear from 10 mans and he looked like he was ready to jump up to 25 man content. I have yet to heal with him but I am looking forward to truly testing his performance this weekend. By his stats he sounds fine and he raided in BC so hopefully he will find a new home with Evocati.

Now our last recruit, as I just found out today when I was checking our guild armory to see how many druids we had, I happened upon this guy. I have only seen his gear on the armory so I cant make much of a judgement on him as of yet but I look forward to having a personal talk with him later when I get on.

I like to have a chat with all the druids in the guild when they join to assess where they are at and the direction they want to go in. I think it is important that I know all aspects of my class so I can help out other in guild druids that may not take as vested of an interest in there toons.

And just to add we have a druid named Papito that plays as feral but always jumps in as resto in a pinch. He has been a solid healer even for it being his offspec.

Anyway to finish up my chat on resto druids. When the guild was originally formed I was pretty set on raiding boomkin this expansion but we were always short on healers so I stepped up to the role and haven't looked back since. Also when we had started raiding there were three druids that we raided with regularly. A resto, a boomkin, and occationally a feral druid, who was my old class leader in Peacetime, would come with. Originally getting gear from ten mans was like pulling teeth. It didn't help that we raided with three DK's and a mage. On average we had seven people rolling on one tier token. But much has changed as we jumped to 25 mans. The other resto druid that I had faithfully healed with though most of my beginning Wrath experience left the guild. We were pretty low on druids after that when we started 25 mans. Usually it was just me as resto and a boomkin.

To Start Off

Well I have been debating all day about how to start this blog. I'll start with a little about why I am starting my blog. I have been actively reading blogs since I started raiding in BC. Although I started playing World of Warcraft about three and a half years ago, I was quite a noob in Vanilla WoW and never did any raiding on my mage. I ended up taking a break from WoW and not returning to it until two months before BC released. Ah my mage, the first toon I ever made. Looking back he was spec'd so bad and was just as random and horrible as you can imagine. Before the release of Burning Crusade I rolled a tauren shaman so i could practice playing a shammy before the launch of the new Alliance shamans. As you may have guessed I rolled a Draenei shaman named Deatheous on the pvp server of Malorne.

Deatheous was my first raiding toon and he was elemental spec. The first raiding guild I got in was terrible. We couldn't even do Karazhan plus the guild leader hated me but for some reason seemed to have a hard on for my friend believing him to be the greatest player to ever walk the earth. My friend is a great player, I will admit that, but the GM loved him a little to much in my opinion. When we left, my departure was praised, while my friend was practically placed on a funeral pyre and given a true warrior's departure. Two friends of mine and I decided it was time to transfer severs. I wanted to raid and few of the alliance guilds on Malorne were excelling at the time and my two friends being avid pvpers were also unhappy with the alliance performance in our battlegroup. We made lvl 1 toons and went server hopping to shop around for a new server that would be a better fit for our needs. Also Malorne had a rather small alliance population which lead to there downfall.

We settled on Stonemaul and that is where I have been raiding and playing ever since. I went through a number of not very good guilds in terms of raiding. To skip over the boring parts of being in bad guilds and also after leading my own guild "Its not easy being green" which had too small of a member base to support 25 man raiding, I finally settled on joining a guild called Peacetime Mandalorians. This guild was better than any other I had been in and they were farther progressed than I had ever been. The guild leader was rather inactive when it came to a raiding guild. But the raid leader named Kumii, who is now a friend of mine, seemed to carry out the guilds raiding with excellent leadership. Though we only did some of TK and the first boss of Mount Hyjal, it was still a better experience than any other previous guild.

By the time I had joined Peacetime I had switch to playing a druid as my main. His name is Eliose. I raided as feral in BC and now play resto and boomkin in Wrath.

To catch up on the present, yesterday my guild downed its first Eye of Eternity 25 man. It went much better than I had expected it to go. It seems that guild is greatly improving and also it is growing which I am very happy to see. Next week we will be doing Obsidian Sanctum with drakes up. Two weeks ago we tried to do OS 25 man with 2 drakes up and first off we had a few pugs which didn't help but we epic failed at two drakes. So we knocked the difficulty down to 1 drake. Again this was a failure, hence my surprise at doing 25 man Eye of Eternity and completing it on our first guild run of the instance. Though many of the players who attended have down 10 man EoE before. So go go Evocati for next week in OS.
I'm excited to be posting for the first time. Thanks to anyone who feels like reading my blog.

And I hope to make this a druid blog mostly centered on Resto, but I will talk about the boomkin when I get a chance to do so. I have yet to mess with feral much in this expansion despite leveling as feral, but maybe I might throw some of that around.