Druid raiding advice (especially for House of Thule)

Discussion in 'Priests' started by Lenowill, Jan 8, 2020.

  1. Lenowill Augur

    Hey all, a friend and I are looking for advice/guides about raiding as a druid, especially as would be relevant to the House of Thule era (we're on Miragul), but general principles and rules of thumb would still be useful to us as long as they still apply in a level-90-capped world.

    We're especially curious to see what spell line other people load out with for raiding (and why), and when they tend to use the various available cooldowns.

    What is your bread and butter for tank healing? DPS-group healing? DPS/burn/burst window optimization while remaining able to spot heal if need be? Any macros you'd recommend?

    Thanks!
  2. Belkar_OotS Augur

    Well, you will likely get different answers from every druid since as a healing class with strong utility and dps our function can vary widely based on raid composition and event. Also... Much has changed since HoT was live current content. For example, druids in HoT were not need to be extensive group healers due to some necro abilities that healed. Dots had not been revamped so nukes were the primary group dps option.

    My approach: heal first (piles of s roll down hill, your miss you job if you let others die preventable deaths), debuffs/buffs second, dps last.

    I always have the 5 main heals up. Luna group heal, survival emergency group, vida spam heal, adrenaline fast heal and rejuv fast heal. I also keep growth and skin memorized for buffs. (Can cycle in aura and other things for skin as needed).

    As a druid team we each keep 1 or 2 debuffs ready (foliage, ro, etc). This is easier now with the AA changes.

    I personally always keep twincast spell memorized for when I can change spell sets for dps.

    At this point I am deciding what event specific things I have going, remotes? Cures? Nukes or dots if we have debuff slots available etc.

    A lot of druids would drop skin and vida for a burn situation to give them more available nukes if you needed fast spell swaps as those 2 don't have big recast times. Be liberal with your spell sets and don't be afraid to make event specific sets too.
  3. Darchon_Xegony Augur

    Create a new hotbar with 12 hotkeys each for loading spell sets. Your boilerplate spell sets for standard grouping and raiding in HoT I’d recommend as:

    Normal Spell Set:

    Summer Nuke
    Winter Nuke
    Vida Heal
    Adrenaline Heal
    Invig Heal
    Lunar Group Heal
    Survival Group Heal
    Remote Nuke/Heal
    Nature’s DoT
    Reptile Tank Buff (Flex)
    Growth Tank Buff
    Twincast

    Full Burn Spell Set:

    Summer Nuke
    Winter Nuke
    Vida Heal
    Adrenaline Heal
    Invig Heal
    Lunar Group Heal
    Survival Group Heal
    Remote Nuke/Heal
    Nature’s DoT
    Sun DoT
    Horde DoT
    Twincast

    Full Heal Spell Set:

    Sundew Twinheal
    Promised Heal
    Vida Heal
    Adrenaline Heal
    Invig Heal
    Lunar Group Heal
    Survival Group Heal
    Remote Nuke/Heal
    Nature’s DoT
    Reptile Tank Buff (Flex)
    Growth Tank Buff
    Twincast

    Rebuff Spell Set:

    Group Skin
    Group Regen
    Group Damageshield
    Mammoth’s Force
    Invig Heal
    Lunar Group Heal
    Survival Group Heal
    Remote Nuke/Heal
    Mask Self Mana Regen
    Self Damage Shield Coat
    Growth Tank Buff
    Twincast

    That gives you 4/12 of your hotkeys on page 1 of this spell set hotbar. The remaining hotkeys I would recommend be only single or double spell sets. These are spells sets that you saved with just one or two spells and the rest of the spell gems being empty. The benefit of saving spell sets like this is that when you load them, they will only swap out the spell gems in those slots. Personally I use slots 9 and 10 as my flex slots. Here are some examples of single or double spell sets I use:

    Single Skin in slot 10
    Group Skin in slot 10
    Skin to XYZ Debuff in slot 10
    Fire Proc Aura in slot 10
    Ice Proc Aura in slot 10
    Vinelash in Slot 10
    Chant Corruption Cure in slot 10
    Breeze Group Cure in slot 10
    Blood single curse cure in slot 10
    Ice Debuffs (Breath in slot 9, Frost in slot 10)
    Empathy DoTs (Sun Fire DoT in slot 9, Moonbeam Ice DoT in slot 10)

    These all are simple hotkeys like /memspellset Normal or /memspellset Fire Proc Aura. Clicking the former will load all 12 spells in the order listed at the top of my post. Clicking the later will just unscribe whatever is in spell gem 10 and scribe Fire Proc Aura there.

    Beyond those for hotkeys I would recommend quite a few. For some of these people will recommend making one hotkey that does all of these actions or they will recommend putting each individual action on a hotbar and multi-binding a specific key to these similar actions. Whatever you prefer works.

    Survival Hotkey:

    /cast 8
    /alt act 2056 (Wildtender’s Survival)

    Nature’s Nuke Hotkey:

    /alt act 3728 (Nature’s Bolt)
    /alt act 954 (Nature’s Fire) *** It is useful to copy this hotkey and remove this line for several events/named that penalize Fire spells.
    /alt act 956 (Nature’s Frost)

    Full Burn Hotkey:

    /alt act 1211 (Focus of Arcanum)
    /alt act 1480 (Spire of Nature)
    /alt act 386 (Nature’s Fury)
    /alt act 515 (Improved Twincast)
    /alt act 953 (Destructive Vortex) *** TDS AA

    This full burn hotkey is just a quick way to activate all your burn AAs. It’s not optimal in all scenarios. For example using spell Twincast or Bifold early in the fight before using Improved Twincast can be wise as it will begin their short 5min reuse timers allow them to potentially be up later in a longer burn fight. Similarly delaying your use of Destructive Vortex until all your DoTs are on may give you an additional tick or two of its power rolling on all your twincasted DoTs. But generally these are small concerns.

    Pet Swarm Hotkey:

    /alt act 520 (Nature’s Guardian)
    /alt act 8603 (Spirits of Nature) — I will always be annoyed at how short the range on this AA is compared to the above AA.

    Tank Buff Hotkey:

    /pause 7, /alt act 284 (Spirit of the Bear)
    /pause 17, /alt act 699 (Swarm of Fireflies)
    /alt act 519 (Convergence of Spirits)

    Adding CoS to this hotkey is a personal preference. The pro of having it included is it ensures you use the AA and your tank will benefit from the HoT ticking and AC/DS. The con for having it included is that you will maybe use your most powerful instant heal ability before a fight or at a time when the tank is full HP rather than saving it for an emergency.

    AE Heal Hotkey:

    /alt act 35 (Mass Group Buff)
    /alt act 185 (Spirit of the Wood)
    /alt act 257 (Nature’s Boon)
    /alt act 959 (Blessing of Tunare)

    A few comments here. Ideally before every engage you are using Tranquil Blessing to bank the ability for use later. So the first line of MGB may not be necessary if you’re diligent about it. But once Tranquil Blessing is in game... saving MGB isn’t really important unless there’s some fight with mass dispells and you want to rebuff at a point in the fight? Also see above discussion about including Convergence in the tank hotkey. Same applies for Blessing of Tunare. Maybe when you’re wanting to fire off your MGB HoT it’s a preemptive action and having a direct heal included in the hotkey is unnecessary in these times. Up to you.

    I would recommend using GINA for alerts on timers coming back up and things ending. A few specific recommendations I’d make:

    Spirit of the Great Wolf. Create some warning for this AA ending. Once you hit HoT and have a raid BP you can keep either self or group wolf form on 100% of the time, and you should be doing so. Have a GINA timer or just a GINA alert for the buff ending so you know that you need to hit the other one that is now refreshed. I’d suggest specifically a 6second countdown timer which is triggered from the message - The spirit of the great wolf leaves you. - which is the worn off text. Then at the conclusion of that timer a screen alert and audio alert. The reason I suggest this is sometimes you’ll get the worn off text and a GINA trigger but the buff still has several seconds remaining due to server tic differences. And if you’re coming off Single wolf form and going into group wolf form, you can have group wolf form not stick because it is slightly weaker (very annoyed by this as well, wish they were identical power)

    Season’s Wrath. Create a GINA trigger for this spell wearing off. Just a simple - Your Season’s Wrath Spell has worn off - and have it give a screen alert maybe audio alert. Alternatively create a GINA timer for 1minute based on your casting the spell with an alert for the timer ending. This just allows you to constantly keep up a nice Damage Debuff on a single target. Our other Debuffs all last long enough that you rarely need to refresh them.

    Reptile/Growth. Create a GINA trigger for you landing growth or reptile on tanks. Figure out what your duration on reptile and growth each are and have timer overlays that give you the name of the tank and the buff. I’d suggest adding an early kill trigger phrase for Reptile (Your Reptile Spell has worn off), since they do have counters and can end early if the tank is tanking multiple mobs or dies. Also I’d suggest adding a 2minute until expiring warning on Growth so that you know to reapply the buff so that it’s HP bonus doesn’t degrade at all.

    Gift of Mana. Create a GINA trigger for GoM procs so you know when you can use big DoTs for free.

    Invest in either a shaman alt/box for Alchemy. Save all the foraged dream dust and future versions of it and get a shaman to make you Tonics of Resonant Elemental. These add up to a lot of damage when you use them in groups or raids where you’re Nuking frequently.

    I’d suggest staying updated on the latest sympathetic DD augs. Make sure the one you get is a DD Proc not a 1tick DoT. The DoT ones waste Debuff slots and are generally worse for druids.

    Doing the above two things and having your Proc Aura on can add up to quite a lot of damage when casting things like our Winter Nukes which each have 3 spell effects that can trigger procs like Resonant Antonica, Sympathetics and Proc Auras.
  4. Rolaque Ancient

    For out of group tank healing, it's always your vida spell. For in group, situations often demand a fast heal, whether group or single target, so using vida only for out of group saves the fast casting adrenaline and rejuvie lines for your group. You can set up a macro to cast rejuvie, adrenaline, vida in that order, or you can multi-bind them to a specific key.

    For raid boss debuffs, always do those first, then start healing. Just be sure the tank always has agro before you debuff. If your group dies on impact, that's a different problem and it's not due to you debuffing before healing.

    As for dps, I don't recall doing anything other than an occasional nuke on trash mobs.
  5. Lenowill Augur

    Thanks much for the replies. The advice makes it easier to wrap our heads around this.

    The memspellset hotbar suggestion looks really good for druid, and we'll be looking into GINA. I don't have any other specific questions at the moment.