Aug 31, 2010

Restoration Guide : Tank healing, Raid healing, Tank & Raid healing


This part is not exactly a "how to" because the whole guide tends to help you succeed in all those 3 aspects. Because they are deeply linked, I chose to regroup those 3 notions to understand the differences, what you get, what you lose, and then the combinations of both and their adaptations.


Pure tank healing is about permanent focus. It could be 2 tanks but it's still the same. On few bosses or when you are strictly assigned to that, you'll need to focus only on tank. Tank healing works well with the Glyph of Nourish coupled with the Living Seed talent. Lifebloom brings constant healing, if you let it fade it takes time to get back to 3 stacks and it doesn't effectively heal when you do it. Refreshing it costs mana but allow more Nourish spam. To sum it up:
- Rejuvenation
- Regrowth
- 3 Lifebloom : refresh or bloom
- Nourish spam

Then you have different ways to assist on tanks:
  • the light assist consist in just Regrowth and Rejuvenation. It helps giving you the possibility to use Swiftmend if needed and add some support healing between big heals.
  • to assist more on the tank, you add Lifebloom rolling. See Lifebloom subsection for more.
  • the strong assist asks you to regularly cast Nourish on the tank and not only when he got hit.

Raid healing is all about keeping people alive. Sometimes it means topping them as fast as possible, sometimes it's more stabilization. Sometimes damages are quite predictable, sometimes they aren't. You must constantly try to identify what kind of damages are coming. This is easy when you are experienced on the encounter but design can make damages random or unpredictable. Once you have identified what to expect, you have to choose between:
  • aura fights: rotation 5x1 and its adaptations // Festergut, Sindragosa, BQL, Halion
  • targeted abilities fights: Rejuvenation, Nourish/Regrowth and Swiftmend assisted by Wild Growth and Lifebloom when needed // Lady D, Saurfang, Rotface, Blood Princes, Valithria, Putricide

Now comes the interesting part : tank + raid healing. This analysis is a response to the restoration druid strengths, possibilities and common assignations. Its helps you to gauge your gameplay according to the encounter. When you comprehensively understood a fight, you are able to choose the right tank healing strategies with the right raid healing strategies during the entire fight. I'll try to explain it as clearly as possible. To make it simple, Tank + Raid Healing is about 2 major elements:

  • "encounter requirement ratio" = combination of "who need heal, how much heal do they need, when do they need this heal"
  • "your healing ratio" = time spent on tank and time spent on raid : response to requirement ratio through your assignation and raid healing setup.

An easy example to illustrate this: Marrowgar

In normal phase:
- requirement ratio = 95% tank / 5% raid (spiked target and possibly people in fire)
- your healing ratio = 90% tank / 10% raid

In Bonestorm phase:
- requirement ratio = 0% tank / 100% raid (spiked target and heavy raid damages)
- your healing ratio = 0% tank / 100% raid

Marrowgar is an easy boss to analyze because the 2 phases are really distinctive. On the other hand, a really interesting boss to analyze would be Festergut where you need to progressively switch from massive raid healing to a lot more tank healing. The ratio progressively shift from 5%tank / 95%raid to 85%tank / 15%raid.

Remember that it is not about amount healed but time spent. It usually takes a lot of your time to actively heal a tank, but if you do raid healing along with it, you could spend more time on the tank but still heal more on the raid.

Your healing ratio must not always match the encounter requirement ratio for obvious reasons. The most common ones are:
- the encounter requirement ratio is not a given data, you can't really calculate it, it can change depending on boss phases and RNG.
- your assignation is sometimes important to strictly follow
- you insist on tank or raid for some reasons (mistakes, healer died, bad luck, etc.)

This analysis is about theory but can recap very well all encounters. There are other ways to analyze healing on each boss and you could find tricky situations where mine doesn't work. But more than an analysis, it's typically the feeling I have when I discover an encounter where tank and raid take substantial damages.

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