Cataclysm: Two Weeks to GO

It's been a while since I posted something a tad comprehensive, I had keyboard issues (yes mutliple keys missing). Ok it's no excuse, it's only two weeks to release. Unfortunately, I won't do a complete guide at the moment because there are still gray areas I have to explore in depth. Compared to our Wotlk gameplay, we will face many challenges and choices in Cataclysm. Needless to say that the healing role is the most revamped and Dps/Tanking remain almost the same. Let me draw a quick picture of the situation.

First of all, mana management is much tougher than before. If you start to abuse Rejuvenation and blanket the raid, it definitely won't work. But at the same time, you are pulled by the damages taken and you don't really know what to do to keep covering as much people as you would like to. It could be sometimes very frustrating to run out of mana early is the fight but most of the time, something went wrong. The idea that you have to chose a spell according to the situation is quite flawed. Especially in hardmode, you are constantly overwhelmed by damages and you are forced to use your big spells not to feel useless. What's obvious is the ridiculous scale between 1) your heals 2) HP pools 3) damages taken.

We have also lost some synergy between our spells and the only mecanism that comes close is our Mastery. As you might know, if a target already has any hot, your healing spells are increased by 10% (+additional mastery) on this target. While Lifebloom doesn't benefit from itself to take advantage of Mastery anymore, Wild Growth and Rejuvenation still work pretty well together. But with the increased cooldown on Wild Growth, you often feel powerless to cope with damages using Mastery.

Efflorescence got nerfed to the ground along with all other aoe heals from Paladins, Shamans and Priest. It now heals for about 600/s alone in it and is target capped. To sum it up, a proper Efflorescence in melee will heal for 200/s with already a good gear. When you compare those 1400 over 7s with the average 110 000 hp of anyone in the raid, it's quite negligible especially when you take some 30 000 aoe damage every 3 seconds. Moreover, Efflorescence is bound to Swiftmend and it removed one of our emergency button. Swiftmend was an insane spell and became something definitely useless taken aside. I actually think that on many fights where you can't properly use Efflorescence, we will drop it.

Tank healing is carried by Lifebloom which has become more than mandatory. Its interaction with Revitalize, the Glyph and our Mastery make it something you should have stacked x3 on the tank 100% of the time. Nourish has its place when there are downtimes but Healing Touch is more our basic direct tank healing tool.

Clearcasting procs from Omen of Clarity also have a major role in our healing. Lifebloom coupled with Malfurion's Gift will ensure regular procs which have to be spent quickly. Regrowth is definitely the best way to. Would it be on the tank or on someone else, it will help a lot topping up people while conserving your mana, because mana matters. The impressive number of procs might make me revise my previous paragraph. Spending those procs on the tank would help a lot. Unfortunately you almost always have someone to save from imminent death. I found myself praying for procs during Regrowth cast because afterall, proc or not, you have to heal.

Finally, Tree of Life appeared to be a great cooldown. Used properly, it helps you conserving your mana to a large extent. For 40s, you forget Rejuvenation and start to cover the raid with Lifebloom keeping Wild Growth on cooldown (prioritizing targets buffed with WG) . As soon as you have a good bunch of Lifebloom running you start to have a lot of Clearcasting procs, consumed with Regrowth to fill the howls. Lifebloom mana cost is negligible and you will definitely spam it, even stacking it on some people dangerously low. Along with Innervate trading on cooldown (with other Resto or Moonkin druids), those are your tools to keep up the pace without (dramatic) mana issues.

But ToL is not only a mana cooldown. It also helps you with healing and must be used during hard times. As you will get experience on bosses you will find by yourself the appropriate moment to use it. Anyway, it's often intense from the pull to the kill. Remember that you have one Tranquility per fight and you would better use it carefully, at the right time, covered by Barkskin if possible. It's now a great raid-wide healing cd.

It brings me to the end of this post but to the beginning of a huge amount of info that will come in the next few weeks, prior and after the release. I will add pov Resto Druid strategies for all the incoming bosses in both normal and heroic modes (while hardmode is mainly +damage +hp +abilites). But most of all, I've come to something very fresh about cross-class teamplay, gear choice, spells rotations and priorities. Be ready, it'll be huge.

Stay tuned.