Choose the right target
Choosing the right target to heal is an important element of the healing gameplay. It's even more important for a restoration druid because we change target almost all the time. When you reach the haste cap, you have to react quickly and you only have 1s to choose the next target.
Here is a list of things that might help you making a better choice:
- You must track targets with Power Word: Shield on your interface and avoid casting hot on them unless they are low on HP.
- Sensitive targets: you must track boss abilities timer and important debuff on the raid and be ready to focus on the targets. To give you some examples : Hot melees on Blood Prince Council before Valanar vortex, Dark Pact in melee on Lana'thel, pre-emptive heal for the Soul Reaper on Lich King, debuffed player on Halion.
- Healers don't take advantage of Jugement of Light because they don't hit the boss.
- Rogues and DKs have good cooldowns to keep them alive whereas Warriors don't. Warriors also play in Berserker stance and take 10% more damage.
- Good healers know the link between the game and their raid frames. If you feel good doing that, you can sometimes target people by clicking on their character because you spotted incoming damages for some reasons. It's not easy to do and does not always work but it's definitely possible.
I usually know what targets I want to take for my next 2-3 casts. Anticipation is the key and you have to draw your own healing pattern, adapting it, taking into account all unpredictable events. For instance, you can plan your Lifebloom refresh and thus, know how many people you can heal before.
How to use Wild Growth
I'm making a special subsection for Wild Growth because I think it needs some precision. It follows the Choose the right target explanation because it's mostly to clarify targeting issues.
If you are experienced at healing in raid you know that sometimes your Wild Growth doesn't hit all 5 targets (or 6 with the Glyph). Thereby, this is important to always hit the maximum number of targets. Wild Growth targets the lowest HP players in priority and will usually hit pets if people are full HP.
To get the best of your Wild Growth, you have multiple opportunities:
- Melees are usually good targets for Wild Growth. In most cases, melees are sensitive targets for damaging ability and will take more overall damages. Wild Growth will almost all the time hit 6 targets. But you have to keep in mind that most classes tend to react the way you are and heal melee which leads to massive and useless overheal while casters lack of focus.
- Don't use Wild Growth on people targeted by a "go away" ability because they will be apart from the raid. For example, it could be Unchained people on Sindragosa or tanks in many situations.
- Spot off-centered people and don't target them to use Wild Growth. Usually on bosses where people stand and dps, you can easily spot them in the game and avoid targeting them.
- You can definitely "manually target" someone who is in a good position by clicking on his character. I usually do that on Marrowgar during the Bonestorm to avoid targeting wrong people. Regarding this link with the "real game", you will surely noticed that when you raid a lot with same people, you can recognize their character through their skin, movement and spec. It builds confidence and trust between raiders.
- Finally you have an alternative I usually use: you can target yourself. You are the only character in the raid of whom you know the precise location. Thus, you can easily move to a location to use your Wild Growth and be sure to cast it exaclty where you want it to land. For example, I target myself on Putricide when I have to gather up on a Green ooze, just after the Spore explosion on Festergut or during the Bonestorm on Marrowgar.
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