Aug 31, 2010

Restoration Guide : 5x1 Rotation


Rejuvenation and Wild Growth

This first spell rotation consist in casting 1 Wild Growth followed by 5 Rejuvenation in a row then another Wild Growth, etc. This is the most effective spell rotation because it brings the best throughput to your healing. This rotation is based on keeping Wild Growth on cooldown, using Rejuvenation to cover raid damages.

With Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation you will be able to cover 10+ players depending on your haste. Within this rotation, the glyph gives you more targets without Rejuvenation, you have more choice and more room to spam.

Wild Growth has a 6 seconds cooldown and you can cast another WG while the previous one is already running. The cooldown is short but the 1s difference between the duration and the cooldown can make you refresh Wild Growth on some targets. Normally, if you used Wild Growth, the targets got healed and should no longer be in the priority list. But sometimes and usually on melees, Wild Growth is refreshed so you miss the last pulse, the weakest one. This is quite negligible and you theorically get more HPS using your WG on cd because the server lag helps you to counter this : you usually won't have your WG back just after the 5th Rejuvenation but during it, and adding another Rejuvenation leads to waste up to 1s on your WG.

So to say, try to stick to a 5x1 rotation but if you feel ok adding another Rejuvenation, a 6x1 rotation won't hurt your HPS too much.


When not to use it

Basically, this part should be called "when to use it" because you'll most likely never use it as a pure 5x1 rotation but always adapt it.

However on some fights you must forget this rotation mostly because you need Wild Growth at the right time, on the right targets, and not on cooldown to stabilize raid health.

You must keep in mind that this rotation or any adaptations is helpful on bosses with heavy and regular raid damages, usually called aura damages. To sum it up you have : Marrowgar bonestorm, Festergut, Blood Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, Lich King transitions and Frostmourne rooms, Halion shadow realm. This may be not comprehensive but you got the idea. On every other bosses you shouldn't use it because this is just pointless.

There are always different situations with roster, raid comp, etc.. It's better to include them in the next subsection.


How to adapt it and commons adaptations

Once you understood and practiced this rotation you'll be more than capable of adapting it. The base is : Wild Growth on cooldown. We could say that since you keep Wild Growth on cooldown, your healing is an adaptation of the 5x1 rotation, but it opens the door to extreme drifts.

Basically you will adapt this rotation by replacing a Rejuvenation by another spell. The most common adaptation would be to use Swiftmend instead of a Rejuvenation when you see someone dangerously low. The rotations ends up with : 4 Rejuv, 1 Swiftmend, 1 Wild Growth.

Now you got the concept. Common adaptations are :
- Adding Lifebloom and Regrowth in the rotation allows to greatly assist on tanks.
- Adding Nourish helps to top people up along with Swiftmend.



If you understood well all the first 3 subsections, you are in the right way. I definitely won't say that what's next is useless because it pushes deeper into healing optimization and understanding of class mechanisms. This was the base of the restoration druid. If you practice with those first concepts in mind, you'll improve quickly.

Unfortunately, this is not enough, never enough. Most of bosses ask for other notions, other concepts that are responses to any kind of situation you may face. The combination of all concepts makes you feel confident toward new content or bad raid setup, allows you to make up for mistakes or bad luck and finally react perfectly.

Unlike any dps, this is really hard for a healer to reach perfection or aim for it. Practice is the key to know perfectly what you have to do.

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