Let me start off by saying the stats on Trauma suck.  No, they do, you can’t argue that.  No spirit, not even the less desirable m/5… same spell power as on any other main hand or staff from ICC, nothing great… so what makes it desirable?

Each time your spells heal a target you have a chance to cause the target of your heal to heal themselves and friends within 10 yards for 245 each sec for 6 sec.

This proc is what makes this weapon so interesting for druid healers.  Each time your spell heals a target… not each time you cast a spell… each time the spell heals.  So every click of rejuvenation, ever click of wild growth, ever click of any of our HoTs has a chance to proc this weapon.  And boy does it… 1% chance per HoT tick, no internal cool down.

On a fight like Blood Queen, the proc (Fountain of Light) heals for 5-6% of my healing in a 25 man regular setting.  On Sindragosa, where I have long periods with limited casting and more wild growth… it makes up more like 8-10% of my healing.

Now I’m not saying it’s the best for every circumstance.  For example, on Deathbringer Saurfang, the proc probably won’t do you much good.  And you also need gear good enough to “soak up” the stat loss you take by using it… but for a lot of fights, as a raid healer, I’m sad (as a staff & stats lover) to say this really is our BIS.

I’ll still keep a staff around for some fights, and I’ll pick up Sundial of Eternal Dusk as my offhand.  Looks like (unless they nerf  it) this is the bad boy I’ll be ending WotLK with!

On a side note… sorry for the lack of updates recently.  As you all know I recently started my own guild, Sated.  Boy does that take a lot of time to get up and going!  Then, once that started to settle down, the stomach flu made it’s rounds at my house  But now we’re all healthy, the guild is up and running, and it’s back to regular posting!  I hope to have a new video up by the end of the week!

I’ll give you the short summary!

=>We have about 15 solid players… we need to fill in the rest
=> We have hard modes unlocked (10 & 25), but want to push for a GUILD LK kill
=> We REALLY need tanks
=> We also need DPS
=> We could take on one holy/disc priest
=> Horde side, Maiev server

Guild site: SatedGuild.com
Apply at: here

Help bump our recruitment threads: here and here

Thanks in advance to everyone for helping spread the word.  Your reposts, bumps, tweets, and other help is appreciated!  Hopefully this will be a success!

Wow… you go unguided for less than one week and you feel like you’ve fallen so far behind!  Yikes!  Well… I found a new home and am raiding again, so all is well on that front.  Even did some hard mode 10 mans last night with the new guild, and remembered to take some videos… more on that later in the post

First, I wanted to say thank you to a few people: Youki, Cerenitee, Martos, Contrite, Dierdrea and Piptooth.  You guys were awesome to raid with, and to hang out with.  My time in LoD was not wasted because it gave me the opportunity to meet all of you.  I know we aren’t all going in the same direction now, but I wish you all the best of luck in game and out, and I hope we’ll all continue to stay in touch.  And I’m incredibly happy that my favoritest, bestest, awesomest priest in the whole world has gone to the same guild as me, Hi Youki!  Of course he has a new name and a sexy new blood elf body… and I’m stuck being a… cow.  Moo?

Hard Mode Blood Queen Lana’thel

Well it seems that, at least on 10 man, heroic Blood Queen Lana’thel isn’t all that… heroic.  Ok, she does more damage to the tanks and to the raid.  And yep, at the end that damage got to be… well… a lot.  But we very nearly one shot it, and that just sits a bit wrong with me.  I’m linking a video below, however the basic strategy is the same as before.  This is just a kill video:  watch regular mode strategy video instead.

Hard Mode Festergut

This fight is a pain in the ass for one reason… Malleable Goo!  Yep, that fun stuff from Professor Putricde is back!  Basically the professor stands on the balcony and throws goo down the entire fight at you.  It has the same effect as it does when you fight putricide.  It does a lot of damage, and slows your attack/casting speed by 200%.  You have to get quite far away from it too, if you watch the video you’ll see I run away but still get hit by it  Despite my failure, the video might be helpful to give you a look at this ability!  Other than that, the same basic principals of the fight apply, including stacking the inoculation and the damage changing between mostly raid wide and mostly tank damage.

I’ve been discussing something with a friend at work… how important haste is for a restro druid.   I can’t seem to find this information anywhere… I currently enchant and gem for Spellpower and spirit.   I don’t use nourish or rejuv alot, i stick to the hots and heal just fine in most situations.   I never seem top the heal charts tho, even with the highest “active” times.   My one clue is that I might need haste for some reason.

Thanks for writing in!  Haste is extremely important for a restoration druid, especially one like you that tends to blanket a raid with HoTs.  Related Articles: Haste as a Tree,  Resto & Haste

When you say you stick to HoTs I assume you mean you are casting rejuvenation on as many people as possible most of the time, in anticipation of incoming damage… or as it’s normally called “blanketing” the raid.  The one thing limiting how quickly those HoTs go out is your global cooldown (GCD) which is by default 1.5 seconds.  Using talents and haste it is possible for a druid to reach our “soft haste cap” of a 1 second GCD.  Your GCD can never be lower than 1 second.

So basically, if you have a 1 second GCD you can get out 15 instant-cast spells in 15 seconds.  If you are at the default GCD of 1.5 seconds, you can get out 10 spells.  15 heals > 10 heals.  This is why we want to have our GCD soft capped.

So how do you get soft capped?  First let’s look at talents.  I think it goes without saying that you want 5/5 Gift of the Earthmother.  I also strongly recommend that any tree that is not haste capped go down the balance tree far enough to get 3/3 Celestial Focus.  Related Article: Druid Spec & Talents

Then you stack haste via gear, gems, and enchants.  If you have a moonkin -or- a paladin running swift ret aura along with a shaman dropping wrath of air you need less haste.  Assuming these people are in your raid you need 735 haste with celestial focus talented, and 856 with it not talented.  [view full chart]

Although spell power and spirit are both awesome stats for a druid, I recommend the following focus:

Haste (until capped) > Spell Power > Spirit > M/5 > Intellect > Crit > other

Only swap the spirit and the spell power around if you for some reason have mana issues

Hope this helps!

Spirit. I can’t stress it enough  If you have mana issues make sure you are gemming and enchanting for spirit and trying to choose spirit heavy gear.  It doesn’t matter how much spell power you have if you don’t have any mana to cast spells! Focus on Spirit rather than MP5 when you have the option.  Also, I’m sure it should go without saying, but make sure you have Living Spirit and Intensity.

Food and Flasks.  Obviously if you are raiding you are using buff food and flasks.  Don’t be a cheepie, instead of just eating the fish feast pickup some cuttlesteak.  Consider using a Mojo flask instead of a spell power flask… or better (but potentially spendy) use a elixir of spirit along with spellpower elixir.

Innervate Early.  If your guild lets you use your own innervate, do it early.  As soon as you’re down enough mana to not waste any of it.  The CD is only three minutes so in most boss fights you can use it at least a couple times.

Group Composition.  If you’re raiding, try to get into the resto shaman’s group if you have one.  Leach a little mana tide love!!  Make sure your raid has replenishment!  Also, if you for some reason don’t have a priest, make sure you bring your sprit scrolls!

Go Retro.  You might laugh, but I still carry a stack of Dark Runes with me.  I’m serious.  The last time I actually used them was when General Vezax hard mode was… you know… hard.  It’s not much mana but hey, everything counts in a pinch!

On a separate note, I have a new poll up!

As a general rule I try to match socket bonuses.  I know a lot of people prefer to just gem everything as spell power, but I am not one of them, so unless the socket bonus is super-wank I will match it.  Don’t flame me with your math, I don’t care if you use straight spell power, I don’t.  This is what I use:

Red Socket <– Straight Spell Power
Blue Socket <– Spellpower/Spirit -or- (if going OOM) Straight Spirit
Yellow Socket <– Haste -or- Spell Power/Haste -or- (if soft haste capped) Spell Power/Intellect
Meta <– 21 Spell + 2% Int (Ember) -or- (if you have mana issues) 21 Int + Chance to Restore Mana (Insightful)

These are the enchants that I use:

Helm: 30 SP + 10 mp5, from Wyrmrest Accord
Shoulders: 24 SP + 8mp5, from Sons of Hodir
Cloak: 23 Haste (or if you’re an engineer, spell power!)
Chest: 10 all stats
Bracers: 30 Spell Power
Gloves: 28 Spell Power
Belt: Use a buckle or you suck!
Legs: 50 SP 20 Spirit thread
Boots: 18 Spirit
Weapon: 81 Spell Power (staff)

Hope that helps

What is it?

Basically this is a place for not only me, but my good healing buddies (Youki, Cerenitee, and temporarily Piptooth) to hand out little bits of healing advice, and hopefully (if you submit any) answer your questions!  We don’t plan to sugar coat anything, but hopefully we can be helpful

Where is it?

The website is at HealingCouncil.com or you can send questions directly to questions@healingcouncil.com.  So please, ask us a question, we need stuff to blog about, and hey… one of us will probably have your answer!

I’m going to start by saying that I made a video of this, which I talk over to try to explain the strategy and how to do things.  I choose to use our 10 man kill for this because I think things are clearer with less people running around!  So without further ado, here is the video:

Basically, for the first 70% of the fight she alternates between ground phases and air phases.  While she’s in a ground phase, she will cast a debuff called “Unchained Magic” on two people in ten man and five people in twenty five man.  As a healer what this does is form a stacking debuff, that will damage you 7 seconds after your last cast.  The more you cast, the higher the stacks, and the more damage you will receive.  While you have this debuff, heal only when absolutely necessary. I would not recommend going over six stacks.

She also periodically pulls everyone to the center.  When she does this, run out!  She will cast blistering cold which does a ton of damage to everyone within 25 yards.  You are considered outdoors, so as a druid you can pop travel form to get out quickly.  I also suggest using barkskin incase you (for some reason) don’t make it out.

When she goes into an air phase, she will choose two people on ten man, and five people on twenty five man to put into iceblocks.  If you are chosen you will get a blue arrow over your head.  We had our people run to the center, where they then spread out, as to not kill each other with the ice block damage.  If possible, have someone in raid with a mod that will mark her targets so you can apply HoTs to them before they go into an iceblock.  The iceblock damages them, and once inside they can not be healed, however pre-existing HoTs will continue to tick even inside the ice.

Once they are in ice, everyone runs to the middle.  You will see white circles on the ground that you need to line-of-sight using the iceblocks.  If you don’t get out of LoS you probably won’t get one shot, but you will take a lot of damage.  This will happen four times per air phase.  After all four have gone off it is okay to break the people out of the ice.

Once she hits 30% she will no longer have air phases.  At this point she will pick one person at a time to encase in ice.  Our raid stacked in the middle, and had the first debuffed person going to the right, the next to the left, etc.  During this phase she will put a debuff on the entire raid called Mystic Buffet.  It will increase the magic damage that you take by 10% per stack. You can remove the debuff by using one of the iced people to line-of-sight the boss. Once your stack is cleared you can go back to healing or DPSing.  Unchained magic is also still occurring during this phase, as is blistering cold. Between 10 and 15% depending on your group you will want to pop heroism and burn her down, paying less attention to breaking people out of the ice and more attention to maximizing your DPS.  If people are standing out and getting a lot more debuffs during this phase, its a good time for barksking and other personal cooldowns.  If you have a paladin, its also a great time to bubble-sac.

Good Luck everyone with this fight!!

Also, I haven’t forgotten about a Valithria Dreamwalker instructional video… I just thought I’d do this one first!  Also, its 5:30 AM, so I apologize for any typos you may find, I’ll probably find a few to edit out after I’ve slept!

Ok Basically there are four things going on in this fight…

1.) Healing Valithria Dreamwalker - Since the main objective of this fight is to heal her to full, all spare heals should go on Valithria.  This applies to healers and DPS hybrids alike.  I use healbot and was able to set her as my focus, and have my focus on my healbot grid, making keeping full stacks on her fairly manageable most of the time.  If I was a paladin, this would pretty much be my #1 job, all the time.  More on that later!

2.) Basic Circles of Death - There are two types of these in this fight… a light blue one which will explode up with a column of frost damage, and a dark purplish one which will suck your mana dry in a heartbeat.  See circle -> move out of circle –> win.

3.) Lots and Lots of Adds -  There are lots of adds that spawn.  As a healer all you need to know is that some of them do quite a lot of AOE damage, so be ready for it.  But… for the record, here is more information on the different types:

–> Suppressers die fast but reduce the healing Valithria Dreamwalker takes so assign someone to kill them quickly!

–> Kill Blazing Skeletons first, they cause big uninterruptible raid damage

–> Aboms debuff tanks and spawn worms when they die that healers will aggro, so stay back

–> Risen Archmages mass frost bolt for 4k damage, and slow, but it can be mass dispelled

–> Blistering Zombie debuff the tank and shoot out large raid damage

4.) Portals – During this fight portals will open up… if you go into the portals you will find yourself in her room, only with these sort-of floating orbs.  What you want to do is fly right though the center of the orbs.  Doing this will explode them, and give you a stacking buff.  The buff increases healing by 10% and mana regen by a crazy amount.  When they explode they hit and buff all the people immediately around them so its best to travel as a group inside here, and not compete for orbs.  Make sure you’re low to the ground when you’re about to phase out or you’ll fall to your death!

Putting it all Togeter

Here’s the thing… you’re never going to outdo a paladin at single target healing on Valithria, and well… there is a lot of raid damage, and someone has to stay outside healing it while everyone hops into those portals… so suck it up and do it.  It’s your job bitch… I mean… It’s your job tree.

In our particular strategy we had 2 holy paladins who went into every single portal and spammed Valithria Dreamwalker like mad the whole fight (while beaconing a tank.)  Towards the end when the portals were spawinng faster, they were able to get their +healing stacks over 20.  They also got power infusion when available.  They really dominated this encounter!

Then we had three holy priests.  Now, the coolest thing about holy priests on this fight is that you can cast Guardian Spirit on Dreamwalker.  The 40% increase to heals really helps, especially when timed with paladin CDs, heroism, power infusion, etc.  They mostly went into all the portals but took turns occasionally sitting one out to help with raid damage.

Then you had a disc priest and myself.  Shields and HoTs = the anti-raid damage.  I didn’t take any portals because I found that my mana-regeneration was sufficient to last the entire fight without the buff, and because I kept healing raid damage while our palis where inside charging up their über heals.  Just be careful not to get caught in any of the black voids, they’ll suck your mana dry pretty fast!

My advice to trees is to play to our assets.  We can raid heal, we have great mana regeneration… so do that.  Sure, keep full HoTs stacked on Valithria, but keep your main focus on healing the raid and let the other classes focus on her.

I do have a video of our kill but it isn’t very good.  I had been recording my interface so you could see what was happening, but after a lag-out-crash it reset my settings and the interface didn’t get recorded  I promise I’ll get a better recording of this when we do it in 10 man this week, and I’ll even talk over it again!  The one good thing about this video is you can really see how chaotic this fight gets towards the end.

Linkage: Healing Valithria Dreamwalker from a Paladin perspective, Valithria video from a Paladin perspective

As I mentioned at the end of my previous blog, our ten man got the Nausea, Heartburn, Indigestion achievement this week.  I was a bit worried going into it, but we ended up getting it on our second try!  Probably would have one shot it if not for a string of bad luck.  This being the case, I was a bit dumb and didn’t get any of the important parts recorded… sorry!  Anyway… you probably want to know how we did it!

In our setup we had two tanks and two healers.  I’m not entirely convinced you can’t do this with three healers, but I guess it depends on your DPS.  In our setup it was me and a holy priest… I also think a disc priest would be amazing on this fight, but any good healer should work!

Most people’s strategy for Professor Putricide involves a lot of running back and forth across the room depending on what color slime will be dropping out next.  When we do this fight normally that is what we do, however for the achievement we chose to camp under the green faucet.  When the green slime came out, we assumed we would probably get hit. The most important thing to remember here is to stack with your backs facing towards the wall! The reason for this is that when the green slime explodes, you will all fly in generally the same direction.  If someone is facing a different direction, and flies off alone, you most likely won’t have time to re-stack on that person before the slime reaches them if they are chosen as the next target.  All and all this really wasn’t that bad.  Sometimes the slime didn’t even explode… and when it did, the raid was all pre-hotted and the damage was very bearable.

When the orange slime spawns you are already at nearly max distance since you are on the green side.  You will still need to kite, those suckers go FAST!! Us druids can kitty-form and dash, rogues can sprint, engineers can blow their rocket boots, priests could spec into body and soul, you can enchant minor run speed… etc, etc, etc… you get the idea  Any speed increase helps!  Also, although the abomination was not slowing the ooze at all, he was DPSing these orange ones so they would die faster!

Other than this, all the same basics of the fight apply.  Avoid flasks, avoid flying ooze, don’t stand in green puddles, etc.  If you reach phase three, it is identical to the non-achievement version of the fight.

Good luck everyone!