About your HOTs (and other spells) for raid healing:
- Wild Growth: Your primary raid healing tool. Will heal 5 to 6 targets (15 yards from eachother) for a moderate amount over 6 to 7 seconds. For info about wild growth’s targeting, please see Dreambound’s post.
- Rejuvenation: Instant cast HOT that lasts a moderate amount of time. This is one of your primary raid heals, even though it is a single-target HOT. You can spread it around on lots of people, and it is very mana efficient. It can also be swiftmended and it buffs the healing done by Nourish on raid members.
- Lifebloom: Instant cast HOT (with a large heal “bloom” at the end). Lasts short amount of time. Not recommended as a primary raid healing tool, and works much better as a tank heal. However, there are situations where it could be useful, so use sparingly and don’t spam it around.
- Swiftmend: Instant-cast heal that requires a rejuv or regrowth on the target. Good for getting some fast burst healing on someone that already has a HOT (regrowth or rejuv) on them. You should use this a lot when raid healing.
- Regrowth: A fairly mana expensive direct heal, with long HOT component. You can put this on the tanks while you are raid healing, and you can use it sparingly as a raid heal on the other raid members. It will benefit a lot from the haste changes in patch 3.3. This is going to be a relatively quick direct heal with a great HOT component at high amounts of haste, so it is going to increase in usefulness as a raid heal, especially since you can still swiftmend it. However, please don’t spam yourself OOM by using it too much.
- Nourish: A short cast time direct heal, which is stronger when there is at least one HOT on the target. Recommended use is as a direct heal for dealing with burst damage for raid targets that already have a HOT on them (especially if swiftmend is on cooldown). You can cast it occasionally on targets without HOTs only as an emergency heal, since it is a lot weaker without HOTs on the target.
- Nature’s Swiftness + Healing Touch I usually make a macro that pairs healing touch with nature’s swiftness (see above macro). I only use HT with that NS macro (NS+HT). I don’t have it on my cast bar otherwise. Don’t bother glyphing for the faster cast HT as a primary healing strategy, and don’t use the long/slow cast version without Nature’s Swiftness.
Primary raid healing strategy:
Cast Wild growth every time the cooldown is up and raid members are taking damage, especially if your targets are close enough for it to bounce to at least 3 people. Then, cast rejuvs on anyone else taking damage. Mix in other spells using your best judgment. Use a mix of swiftmend, nourish, & NS+HT to help top people off when HOTs aren’t enough. Some people in 25-man raids may have the majority of their healing coming from only rejuv & wild growth, though burst raid damage in some fights requires more direct healing than rejuv-blanketing.
When your targets are too far spread out: Just do the best you can with rejuv, swiftmend, & nourishes. Avoid casting wild growth if it won’t heal enough people (at least 3) at the same time. The melee in the raid are usually grouped up enough to cast wild growth on them, even if the casters are really spread out. Then, use rejuv, swiftmend, & nourishes on the range DPS that is more spread out.
Combining tank & raid healing: A lot of responses to my healer survey responded that they use a combination of tank and raid healing. Almost no one responded that they only heal raid members without also healing tanks some, too. The most common tank/raid healing combination strategy is: putting HOTs on the tank (ie. rejuv, regrowth, sometimes lifebloom) and then raid healing with the primary raid healing strategy described above.
Variations on tank/raid healing combo strategies:
It is possible to go with a lifebloom tank healing strategy and then raid heal between lifebloom refreshes. The more common lifebloom strategies for the combo tank/raid healing are: slow rolling x3 with blooms, or more sporadic stacking where it may fall off even before 3 stacks. Another variable part of the strategy is how much Nourish gets used. Healing 5-mans and 10-mans will usually require more use of nourish than 25-man healing, but even 25-man healers will vary on how much they use Nourish on the tanks or raid members. Most druid healers will use a mix of various spells, rather than 2-button (rejuv + Wild growth) healing.
Rolling Hots
Mother Bear - Tank
Big Bear Butt
Foofy's cupcake
Graymatter Moonkin
Druidmain
Nerf this druid
4 Haelz
Dreambound Druid
Tree Bark Jacket
Relevart's Druid Reliquary - Moonkin
Feral Aggression
World of Matticus
Malchome's Mind on Gaming
Upyursh druid blog
Think Tank
The Fluid Druid
Hots N Dots
Leaf Shine
Sunfyre's Nest
Stray Egg (moonkin )
Random Moonkin Generator
Tastes like battle chicken
Restoration Druid
Revive and Rejuvenate
Primal Precision
Leaf-head Resto blog
Treebound
Shades of Grey
Stories of O
Druidify
Feral Instincts
Qieth's Quips
3. AOE raid healing – Wild growth and other HOTs
About your HOTs (and other spells) for raid healing:
Primary raid healing strategy:
Cast Wild growth every time the cooldown is up and raid members are taking damage, especially if your targets are close enough for it to bounce to at least 3 people. Then, cast rejuvs on anyone else taking damage. Mix in other spells using your best judgment. Use a mix of swiftmend, nourish, & NS+HT to help top people off when HOTs aren’t enough. Some people in 25-man raids may have the majority of their healing coming from only rejuv & wild growth, though burst raid damage in some fights requires more direct healing than rejuv-blanketing.
When your targets are too far spread out: Just do the best you can with rejuv, swiftmend, & nourishes. Avoid casting wild growth if it won’t heal enough people (at least 3) at the same time. The melee in the raid are usually grouped up enough to cast wild growth on them, even if the casters are really spread out. Then, use rejuv, swiftmend, & nourishes on the range DPS that is more spread out.
Combining tank & raid healing: A lot of responses to my healer survey responded that they use a combination of tank and raid healing. Almost no one responded that they only heal raid members without also healing tanks some, too. The most common tank/raid healing combination strategy is: putting HOTs on the tank (ie. rejuv, regrowth, sometimes lifebloom) and then raid healing with the primary raid healing strategy described above.
Variations on tank/raid healing combo strategies:
It is possible to go with a lifebloom tank healing strategy and then raid heal between lifebloom refreshes. The more common lifebloom strategies for the combo tank/raid healing are: slow rolling x3 with blooms, or more sporadic stacking where it may fall off even before 3 stacks. Another variable part of the strategy is how much Nourish gets used. Healing 5-mans and 10-mans will usually require more use of nourish than 25-man healing, but even 25-man healers will vary on how much they use Nourish on the tanks or raid members. Most druid healers will use a mix of various spells, rather than 2-button (rejuv + Wild growth) healing.