Are druids capable of being the sole healers for their groups? It depends, of course, but my own experience is that for non-trivial content it seems to me that there are some circumstances in group content where I don't think that I have the tools necessary to keep everyone alive on my own. That said, I may be using the tools we're given incorrectly, and I ask for your advice on the following situation, and my current tactics: Healing when several group members are being smacked around by several not-so-gentle mobs (yellow cons in ToR or AH as an example) With one or more adds beating on non-tanks, I find Survival/ Forceful Rejuv/ Survival (if needed) to be effective at first. After the second cast of Survival, and with several group members health at 60 again and dropping quickly, I usually cast single target heals because a slow group heal won't do much for anyone if the tank (or the tank and several others) is/are dead when it lands. I always remember that once the tank grabs agro and has three or more mobs hitting him, he will spike sharply until the adds can be put to sleep. I'll use Third Spire and SoTW or CoS and oftentimes throw a Bear (on the tank) Fireflies is usually already on the tank. Other buffs I try to keep up are RG on the tank and someone else, Mysterious Ways, and Hide of the Reptile. Once that second Survival is cast, I feel like I have lost control of the situation and that the RNG has mostly taken over. In the few seconds where, say three mobs are beating on three people with several of the people losing maybe 40% health a round there's not much I can do but pray that the player will get a lucky melee round or that a heal (Vivi, Adrenaline, Steri, whichever is up in that order) will not not crit. Nature's Blessing is useful in this kind of scenario but that AA has a long cool down timer, and it is usually not up. There is one idea I don't always implement and that is debuffing an add or two in this scenario during spell casts with my Assist and BoR hotkeys. I don't yet have the muscle memory to do this automatically when a lot of other things are taking place. I also don't know that it would make a difference if the adds were BoR'd sequentially, that being because the AA is single target and has a recast delay. On the other hand, I have read that stacking Frost and BoR mitigates more damage than slowing a mob. And on the third hand, the shaman's AE slow to me is much more useful in this type of situation, as more time between melee rounds allows more time for spell recast timers to tick away, and more importantly allows more time for a heal to land before an otherwise DEATH BLOW is delivered. Is there a general principle which might say, for example, that BoR lowers average damage in a round by a mob by, say 2-3%? As I write this, I am becoming more convinced that I need to work the debuff into whatever else is going on even though the benefits aren't game-changing. Is there a solution out there for druids who need to heal several group members who are taking repeated, quick, heavy damage? Lousy and/or ghost heals Lately, I have had some heals cast, with the correct casting text and focus effect text, and then they have just disappeared completely. They do not land according to my logs. There is no further message about the heal after the casting/focus text. No one is healed notwithstanding the lack of healing text. The spell gem is grayed out, though, with a normal recast timer. I first noticed this when AH came out, and I thought it might have something to do with geometry. It also happened in ToR. Has this happened to others? Is there a way in-game of working around this bug, maybe by being in a certain position relative to the people being healed? I haven't experimented with replicating this in non-combat tests but I will if no one else has run into it. Lousy heals just refer to non-crit heals. A bunch of them consecutively can end someone, and the way I understand the math is that we can expect 5 non-crits in a row about 2% of the time. This with white wolf and all healing AA's (forget Nature's Blessing for now) To me, this chance is too high. Is there a way to reduce this by increasing the chance of a crit heal outside of wolf and the healing AA's? Maybe a buff, or a bard song or a potion? HDex (where you move your hands more fluidly while casting)? Heal Amount? Twinheal....
I have a max healing AA Shammy, I have to spam heal in T2 zones for single target, I still cast my slows even though I barely notice a difference these days if at all. We also get an AE slow AA, I think druids should get an AE Attack debuff AA that might help some. At least my group heals are good though.
If you have multiple mobs in camp, and they are all beating down a different group member, then its an official ohshiz moment and you should be pleased with any outcome that doesn't involve a wipe. Blow the situational tools you have at your disposal, hope your other group members do the same, and everyone cross your fingers. You mention casting Survival a second time. Survival has a recast time of 90 seconds. If you have multiple mobs in camp, each beating down different group members for such a long period of time, then your tank is either dead or extraordinarily bad at being a tank. A good healer can only make up for so much tank suck. You also mention putting adds to sleep, are you referring to mez? If you've got multiple mobs in camp, giving the entire group a shared beatdown for 90 seconds, why is it taking your mezzer such a godawful long time to lock everything down? An effectively geared and AAd druid can be a capable sole healer. Absolutely.
Druids have an AE Attack debuff spell at level 97. I expect it will be a couple expansions before a similar AA appears, if ever.
Up the value you place on the normal group heal. Once you've used survival and your two faster cast single heals, your two remaining heal options are 2.2s vida, and 2.7s group heal. You are MUCH better off casting the group heal if it will land for value on multiple targets, because the half second more spent in casting it saves the 1.8-2s worth of global cooldown needed when casting a second spell to heal another player. Stop thinking of the group heal as something special and think of it as Vida+. Replace as many of your Vida casts as you can with the group heal in any situation where you may need to heal damage on any additional targets. Group heal will also heal whoever takes damage while its casting. Which is very important when aggro isn't locked for whatever reason. It's great in PoWar, where mobs may be spinning around smacking 2-3 different players. You're able to deal with that damage without worrying about picking the wrong target at the start of the cast. In pulls of 3 where they don't all lock on one player, I use Viv or Survival on the initial spike, sotw during gcd, followed by the next fastest heal that's up, then grab a quick target to BoR during gcd, remote heal off that if needed, else quick heal if up, group heal if it's not. Once it stabilizes a bit, I try to cycle targets and get Lustrous Frost and BoR on targets. Frost reflects a heal that easily replaces Vida in your heal priority, and you can BoR or Storm Strike during the following gcd before assisting back to a player. When multiple players are taking damage after the initial spike, I do group heal, two multibind heals, group heal and repeat. With assisting out to Remote and SS when they're up. A lot of mobs in AH are immune to root, but try to remember which ones are vulnerable and use Paralytic Spores to punt one away if there's no enc/bard to deal with adds. Paralytic Spray can also be amazing for this, but you have to be really careful about where you use it. Aggroing through walls or Z-axis can make the situation a lot worse. I try to keep reptile up on my group if we might be dealing with bad pulls, Mysterious Ways isn't worth mem'ing at all. Spirit of the Bear rarely ever lands on tanks that need it because the AC conflicts with paladin Armor of the Inquisitor, SK's Confrontation recourse, and with Imperator's Command from wars. I end up using it on non-tanks who won't have conflicting buffs. Your tank and rest of the group also need to do their part on using discs and off-tanking correctly. A low-CC group with one tank and one healer is always going to put strain on its weak point of keeping the tank alive on larger pulls. Our heal rotation forces us to spend a lot more time casting our Light heal than clerics, so we do have times when our heal frequency slows down. Damage spikes during those period can and will be deadly. Your tank and other group members should have tools to help, let them know that you do need help on pulls like that when deflection/guardian/mantle isn't up.
