I have two Trees: Tamaryn, the level 80 Tree, and Songlark, the level 62 Tree. Both were leveled as Resto back when leveling as Resto was seen as being at best a little unusual and at worst downright masochistic and insane. Either way: these days, with LFG and the ability to level pretty much without leaving a city, it’s much more feasible.
So, in the vein of my instancing tips for new hunters, here’s my advice for new leveling sproutlings:
1.) Rejuvenation and Regrowth are your friends. They are your bread n’ butter spells until you get higher up on the tree ladder. Use Rejuv as sort of a blanket heal, and use Regrowth to fill in the gaps.
2.) But what about Healing Touch? Acceptable as a pre-Nourish flash heal if you glyph and talent for it, but doing so is not mandatory by any means. Just be aware that unless you’re flash-heal-ifying it, you probably shouldn’t be using it (until you get Nature’s Swiftness). The cast time is too slow. Regrowth is almost as good, is a quicker cast, and has a HoT at the end.
3.) Who Should I Be Healing? In an ideal situation, the tank should be taking the most damage and you should be concentrating on that person. Obviously, there are things like AoE damage and the like. At low levels, the best you can do for minor AoE damage is to toss a Rejuv on everyone… it will usually take care of it. When crap hits the fan, you will need to prioritize your heals, in which case keeping the tank and yourself alive is probably the most important. Speaking of which…
4.) Watch your own health bar. I know this sounds silly, but I have this in here because this is a common mistake among new healers and heaven knows I had this problem for the longest time. I would be watching my party’s health bars like a hawk and suddenly die because I forgot to check my own. Don’t feel too bad– a lot of new healers fall victim to this. It’s just something to practice!
5.) When should I be healing? Back when I was leveling Tamaryn, I had to be veeeerrry careful about not healing too early, or I’d pull aggro. These days, thanks to greater tank threat generation, that problem is pretty much non-existent, although it’s still worth knowing about. Don’t unload all of your heals onto the tank right at the beginning of a pull. Toss on a Rejuv just as he’s running in and then go from there.
After that, thanks to the magic of TreePower, you will find in many lower-level dungeons that you don’t have a lot to do other than let your HoTs tick. Don’t worry, if you like casting, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to Heal Like a Maniac in raids once you’re all grown up. (*cough Valkyr Twins cough*)
6.) Tranquility? Awesome for when AoE damage gets out of your control. Causes a ton of threat, but again– that’s not as big of an issue now as it used to be.
A note here, for when you get into raids: It only effects the members of your party. That is, the five of you that you see in your party and not the entire raid. Still, don’t immediately dismiss this spell just because you are in a raiding environment. I think I was once laughed at for using it in a raid (I say “think” because what happened was that somebody made a non-specific snide comment right after I used it.) Assuming that was directed to me, what that person didn’t realize was that everyone in my party, myself included, was taking tons of AoE damage. Tranquility was perfectly justified and I got the last laugh. So there.
7. Barkskin is Awesome. You get Barkskin at level 44. Put it somewhere prominent on your action bars and learn to love it. Mobs on you? Barkskin. You’re taking lots of damage? Barkskin. You get one of those random huge DoT debuffs that various mobs like to fling at you? Barkskin. A lot of new trees forget about this spell, but it’s amazing, so get in the habit of using it!
8. What Do I Do With this Newfangled Lifebloom Spell? Use it when you need an extra HoT. Use it when you anticipate someone taking a lot of damage in the next five or six seconds. Use it when Clearcasting procs so you get free mana back. Bellweather has some awesome Lifebloom tips (as well as hot pictures of Gambit) over at her blog.
9. Only YOU Can Prevent Forest Fires: I know we’ve all heard “Don’t stand in the fire” a million kazillion times before, but it bears repeating if you are new to healing because sometimes, we just get so zeroed in on staring at those health bars that we forget to watch our surroundings. Don’t let that happen to you! Remember– you’re a druid and as such you have a bunch of heals that you can cast while moving. Not to mention that a quick shapeshift will get you out of most snares, and you’ve got Cat Form + Dash at your disposal if absolutely necessary. Don’t stay rooted (groan) to the spot when bad things happen.
10. Dance Often. Because you’re a tree, and not dancing is a crime.
Need More Info?: I talk about Leveling Resto Specs here and about general Tree’ings here. Happy Healing!
And one tip for any non-healer druid: use your Innervate spell on your healer when (s)he goes OOM in the middle of a fight. This has happened to me a couple of times when too many mobs are aggroed and is a wipe preventer! 😉
Great stuff. My druid Nogomo hit 50 a few days ago and loves being a tree 🙂 It’s harder to find good basic stuff for “droods” than it is for hunters. By the time Omogon had hit 50 I had read volumes on hunters.
Thanks very much for this 🙂
Can you answer a question though? I can’t seem to figure out or get a clear answer on if Spirit is a more important stat than spell power ?? I sometimes see gear with piles of spellpower and not much else and then I see gear with piles of spirit , often mixed with intellect or stamina. I know that stamina is not all that important……but can you give any insight on spell power vs spirit for a Resto ?
@ Omogon – Spirit is good– Spellpower is better! (I do like Spirit, it gives me yummy things like mp5. However, you typically get more bang for your buck with Spellpower.)
I’ve found that early on glyphing and talenting Healing Touch is a very good idea for the leveling druid. It’s a good spell when both rejuv and regrowth are ticking but the target is still taking too much damage… You know like when the ‘Tank’ really isn’t a tank? (looking at the ret pally who tanks without a shield, you didn’t survive because you’re so awesome, you survived because I was able to brute force heal you through that fight). I highly recommend spending the talent points and getting the glyph while leveling. It’s another button to push too!
A few other very important spells are cure/abolish poison, remove curse and Rebirth. Rebirth is your combat res, and can save a wipe if used properly. Always have reagents on hand if you aren’t glyphed. Don’t burn your cooldown on DPS asking for combat res if things are going well otherwise, but if the tank goes down don’t hesitate to use it… especially when the alternative is a corpse run back to BRD or sunken temple which always results in lost party members.
Also I might add that using an addon such as Vuhdo is a great help to leveling as resto. It helps you monitor who is taking damage, who has aggro, who has an active HoT and it’s timer, who has a debuff on them and when locks have cast life tap. It also puts your health bar in the same context as your party’s health bars which helps with keeping yourself alive as well. It’s convienently immune to the UI bug where you might keep a lower level of a spell on an action bar if you are dual spec and train outside of one spec. For me it really helps me enjoy an instance more because I can actually see things going on around me rather than concentrating on getting this information from the regular unit frames.
Pike, Long time listener, first time Poster. 🙂 Great tips for the new trees to learn. An addition to number 9 on your list… Get GTFO. If I only had one addon, this would be it. I am concentrating so hard on healbot that even I forget to look at my toon, but GTFO sounds a klaxon when the ground doesn’t like me even more. During the Krik and Ick fight in PoS, it will even start going off before the ooze hits the ground. Be careful though. It has scared the crap out of me on more than on occasion when it goes off. 🙂
Urak the Patient, 80 tree/bear on Cenarion Circle
For the Horde!
Good Guide!
I coulda used this with my druid when i first went resto.
Extra Pro tip: Go deep resto ASAP so at Level 60 you can get Wildgrowth.
Will make levelling through 5mans MUCH easier.
Healbot is also your friend – and can be made to be quite tree friendly.
Ive got big health bars for each party member and room below each bar to clearly show the 4 main hots – regrowth, rejuv, wild & lifebloom, as well as the seconds left on each hot.
This makes rehotting targets so very easy.
Before healbot i had heaps of trouble keeping hots up when healing got hectic. – especially lifebloom.
IMHO at low level grab a big bunch of spirit & int gear (of the owl) ftw, and glyph innervate 🙂
My favorite Druid dance is the bear dance. I’m sorry, but the image of a bear rearing up on his/her hind legs and dancing on them… love it!
Um Pike? I just had to assure my husband that you and I had had no contact what so ever on this topic before the writing of this message. ^_^ He’s leveling a treeling, and I made a joking comment the other night that to heal as a tree is to wave your branches like you mean it. And what do you post? Hehe!
I’ll keep this post close at hand for the husband. Even though I just read the entire thing to him, after checking that he wasn’t taking a drink on number 9.
Now to get him to dance in tree form. *plots*
I played a resto druid for a while (gf’s char)
The trouble is on easy content you do tend to fall asleep, and it you start hurricaning suddenly the dps hate you.
I love the fact that resto has 2 emergency buttons, swiftmend and natures swiftness. More than one time when I was dozing off in an heroic and the tank decided pulling everything and not popping a CD was a great idea – rocket boots to get in range > Swiftmend > NS HT to save the day.
Oh and my personal favourite is the Tree /sleep animation
Thanks for the quick and clear answer 🙂 Could I suggest another topic for you?
“Healbot for Dummies” so far the most challenging places I have been are BRD and Sunken Temple. I have managed quite well by just setting the tank as my focus and watching the other groups members health bars…..but I have no clue how the pro healers in my guild manage in 10 or 25man groups ..especially if they are assigned as Raid healers.
I have looked at the website for healbot and it looks very complicated
@Omogon – I used Grid myself and it *really* takes some of the bite out of healing more than 5 people. Best bet to get started before Pike writes up a guide is to find a you-tube video of how to configure Healbot. I usually just grab one of these and follow along!
::looks at Pike:: You *are* writing a guide right?
😉
@ Omogon & Windpaw – I’ll be honest here… I don’t use Healbot! =X I just use XPerl…