Tuesday Part 2 (27 Jan) - Druid Healing

Tuesday Part 2 (27 Jan) - Druid Healing

Healing ICC25 with two other druids gave Wild a chance to compare how we heal across a range of encounters in the most difficult dungeon in the game right now. Our roles were different. Wild was primarily raid healing, although as I always do I watch the tanks and get heals and Hots on them whenever possible. The other two druids were tank healers, but I'm sure they tossed a fair amount of raid healing out there, particularly on encounters where raiders are Marked or otherwise targeted and need extra help.

Here is how the final numbers came out:

#1: DC (pally), 4438 hps and 16.8% of the healing
#2: Mg (druid), 3861/16.2%
#3: Pd (druid), 3107/13.0%
#4: r-shaman, 3200/10.9%
#5: Wild, 2140/8.8%
#6: Cy (pally), 2435/7.4%

There was a part time 7th healer who didn't get enough chances to be included.

There's a pretty wide range of hps (healing per second). The two top healers got in almost twice as much healing as Wild did. Again, that is partly due to the roles, but it's still a pretty wide disparity.

So I decided to compare the three druid healers. First was in raw output, getting a look at what spells were used, how often and how much. The stat haste is important, as would be mana if healing had to be slowed down to preserve mana. Druids in a 25 man with innervate and a shadow priest (we had one) should never, ever run out of mana, so I'll assume that wasn't an issue.

Here is the breakdown by spell. Spreadsheet like tables are beyond the feeble ability of the TSN forums, so if you want to see the numbers nicely arranged go to the blog site.

Spells --> Rejuv WG LB Reg Nour SM Total Casts
Pd 2364 1413 599 673 0 36 3954
Mg 2053 1282 1524 422 59 45 3360
Wild 1201 2838 1178 283 120 0 3349

The first three spells (rejuvenation, wild growth, and lifebloom) are all instant cast spells. As a raid healer I was spamming WG whenever it was available to me (which is every 6 seconds) so that explains the large number there and in part the smaller rejuv number, since WG replaced a rejuv I would have otherwise cast. Longer cast spells regrowth and nourish are more often used by tank healers, and that is clear when looking at the reg numbers being higher for Pd and Mg. Nourish is a special case, as it is a matter of debate and preference whether nourish is better than regrowth. I like nourish and as you can see Wild used it liberally, mostly on raiders who needed more healing help than an instant cast HoT could do. Also, on marked raiders, once a regrowth has been cast Wild would switch to nourish to keep him alive. Obviously Pd does not like using nourish. Then we come to SM (swiftmend). This is a nice spell that can be instantly cast for considerable healing, but also must have a HoT on the target for it work. It is often used as an emergency heal. Spells with conditions give Wild fits and so I often forget to use it.

Total casts simply adds up the number of casts, with one exception. WG hits multiple targets (up to 6 if glyphed for it, which most druids are). I used 5 as the average so divided the WG numbers by 5 to get an idea of the number of casts. Pd got a lot more casts than the other two druids, including more longer cast spells, which is another thing to look at further.

What all this says is that there are valid reasons why the raw healing numbers fall out the way they do. But what does it say about the amount of healing being done? For that we also have to look at gear and at set bonuses.

Wild has the T9 two piece set bonus which buffs Nourish (Wild also glyphs nourish so one can see why I use it). Mg has both the T9 two piece set bonus and the four piece bonus, which adds a +crit chance to every rejuv that is cast. On average Mg's rejuv's will do more healing than Wild's or Pd's. Pd doesn't have any T9 bonuses, but he does have the T10 two piece set bonus. This bonus increases the healing of wild growth, so on average his WGs will heal for more than Wild's will. So, we have Mg and Pd with set bonuses that improve their healing over Wild's.

Now let's look at gear numbers:

Stats --> Health/Mana SP/Crit Regen/IC Haste
Pd 18757/20931 2623/17.02% 642/347 749
Mg 18972/22641 2610/20.77% 742/433 315
Wild 18227/19746 2270/14.52% 680/388 606

There are two big numbers that just jump out here, which is Wild's spell power (SP) and his crit (crit % determines how often a spell will crit, which greatly increases the amount of healing for that spell cast). A deficit of more than 300 in spell power compared to the other two is a major reason Wild's heals will heal less, and low crit means Wild will get fewer crit enhanced casts. A partial equalizer is haste. Pd's extremely high haste allowed him to cast faster, and that is clearly evident in the total number of casts. Mg has the better overall stats and finished ahead of Pd in total healing, but Pd was able to get close by being able to cast more often. Wild has double the haste of Mg, but in this case it didn't seem to help Wild as Mg had a slightly higher cast rate even with the lower haste. This might be something Wild should look into from a technique perspective.

I hate to say it's a gear thing - but it's a gear thing. I hope the two druids will be involved in the healing discussion, because I'd also want to discuss techniques that might help Wild heal better.

One more thing. All the stars have aligned and Wild has made a major investment in gear. You know about the new boots. You remember that Wild also got a Crusader token, and with that and 75 triumph badges (knocking Wild down to zero) Wild purchased the T9 helm, giving Wild 3 pieces of T9 gear. Then, after feverish internal consideration, Wild decided to spend 50 of his 77 valuable frost emblems on a new cape. Wild was wearing an ilevel 213 cape, and rather than wait to reach 95 frost for the big ticket items, I felt it better to get something that Wild will use for the distant forseeable future. [Drape of the Violet Tower] is an ilevel 264 cape that blows away the old one. Wild now has two pieces of i264 gear. Wild drove Happy crazy collecting the five gems Wild needed, and then had to make two trips to Dragonblight to get the head enchant and to make the mats to embroider the cape. Total outlay for gems and enchants was over 1300 gold. Let's replay the stats now:

Stats --> Health/Mana SP/Crit Regen/IC Haste
Pd 18757/20931 2623/17.02% 642/347 749
Mg 18972/22641 2610/20.77% 742/433 315
Wild 18227/19746 2270/14.52% 680/388 606
Da New Wild 18927/20916 2361/18.60% 720/423 506

The stats are still well short of the other druids, but for Wild that is one sweet upgrade, and one that will at least get him into the ballpark with the big boys.

PS - Wild's ToC10 run will be reported in the next post, but to wrap up the above discussion Wild won another item from that run (a belt). It was a small upgrade, and like many small upgrades Wild lost some stats and gained some stats. Another 400 gold in gems and mats later, here are Wild's latest stat numbers:

Stats --> Health/Mana SP/Crit Regen/IC Haste
Pd 18757/20931 2623/17.02% 642/347 749
Mg 18972/22641 2610/20.77% 742/433 315
Wild 18227/19746 2270/14.52% 680/388 606
Da New Wild 18927/20916 2361/18.60% 720/423 506
New Wild #2 18827/20976 2375/19.67% 723/424 446

Wild improved on mana, SP, and crit, all good. The loss came in +haste, which will have an affect on Wild's longer cast spells. It won't affect the speed of Wild's instants, though, as Wild is still above the cap for haste that would affect instants, which is 440 haste.