AlbinoCow
Vaco Del Blanco
WORK IN PROGRESS
Table of Contents
1. Intro
Glossary:
CD - Cooldown, a spell that has a required time before you are able to use it once again or can be used to describe the period of time it takes until the the spell is able to be used again
GCD - Global Cooldown, the period of time implemented before you are able to use another spell / ability which is also affected by Global Cooldown
CC - Crowd Control, any type of ability that makes the targeted player lose some aspect of control over his/her character (Stun, incapacitate, root, etc.)
EFC - Enemy Flag Carrier, the enemy player who is holding your flag in Warsong Gultch
LoS - Line of Sight, term used when you are out of range (usually from material objects rather than distance) of a player's spells / moves
HoT - Heal over time, any ability that applies a "buff" that will periodically heal the target
DoT - Damage over time, any ability that applies a "debuff" that will periodically damage the target
2. General
Spells and Abilities:
Moonfire - Your main DoT, very mana efficient compared to sunfire. Can be used to keep classes who can stealth from stealthing and stay in combat (when no allies around you are in combat), rather than using a GCD to get into bear form and then taunting. If you are comfortable enough in a fight to start spreading DoTs but still want to retain mana incase the fight it lengthy, just using moonfire is the ideal way to spread pressure while conserving mana.
Sunfire - Your second Dot. Sunfire costs double the mana of moonfire. In addition it even deals less overall damage. Used whenever moonfire is already on the target, you have free GCDs and mana conservation is not necessary. Applying both DoTs to a swap / main target is useful in aiding your team in landing kills. Both moonfire and sunfire hit for the same initial and DoT tick, however moonfire lasts 30% longer.
Rejuvenation - Main, spamable HoT. Keep on any teammate that is damaged / will be taking incoming damage.
Lifebloom - HoT, heals for slightly more than rejuvenation per second. Lasts 15 seconds if being applied fresh (no lifebloom already existing on the target). Upon expiration of lifebloom, heals for ~ 750-800 hit. Only one target can have lifebloom applied, if cast on a second target the lifebloom will be moved to the new target and not heal for the expiration burst healing. See Tactics section for very valuable information on lifebloom
Regrowth - Casted direct heal / small HoT, heals for decent immediate damage and then applies a small Hot. The pluses to the ability are its fast cast time, the negatives are the high mana cost and the fact that compared to other hard casted heals of other classes, it heals for significantly less immediately and overall. Don't see the negatives and think regrowth isn't worth casting. It is still the general go-to immediate heal. Healing touches long cast time is not good in many high pressure situations.
Healing Touch - Long-cast, mana efficient direct heal. Use whenever there is low pressure on you / your team and a teammate needs to be topped off.
Swfitmend - Your main burst heal spell, 30 second CD (un-talented). Very large heal with a decently long CD, so make sure you utilize it well. Casting the second it is off-cd will only leave your team and yourself open to being bursted easily. As stated above, lifebloom early expiration burst heal can be used in many cases so swiftmend can be saved to use in more dire situations.
Solar Wrath - Casted, direct damage spell with a decently fast travel time. Costs NO mana, so can be used with no heed to your mana. Used to help burst / finish off enemies when your team is generally topped / no incoming pressure.
Prowl - Your stealth ability. Cat form passive speed is 130% and being in stealth no longer reduces your speed. With that buff, using stealth to cross mid and using dash while stealthed is even more useful than before. Take advantage of it. Some pretty obvious ways to avoid being caught in stealth is to stay behind where a target is facing. You don't have to be directly behind him/her but as long as they aren't facing you at any time, they will not be able to see you. Prowl is off the GCD so it can be used directly after an instant spell. Keep track of whether you are in combat or not at all times. Prowl can be used to interrupt any ability being casted onto you, or just cause the enemy to have to re-target you. 10 second CD once you de-activate stealth.
Bear Form - While it seems like a simple ability that has obvious benefits, there are a lot of underlying effects bear form can really have because of its mechanics. To start with the obvious, going into this form will increase your stamina and armor by a noticeable amount, allowing you to take a lot more damage. But a side effect that many people don't think about is that when swapping forms your hp is increased through %. Too show how this % conversion is so useful for any non-guardian spec druid is simple. Well take 6k out of bear form druid, and say in bear form he has 9k hp. So he goes bear form and takes 3k damage, leaving him at 6k hp or 66% hp. If he goes back out of bear form he then will have 66% of 6k, which is 3960 hp, meaning he effectively took 2040 damage from start to finish (rather than 3k). So not even counting the damage mitigation bear form placed on the incoming damage, there was a ~47% reduction of the incoming damage compared to if you were staying in non bear form the whole time. Now the % is based on the difference in hp by your bear form and non bear form. To find out how much damage reduction % you personally would have, go into bear form and divide it by your non bear form hp. However a side effect is that heals on you will be that % lower once you go back to non bear form. So, staying in bear form outside of times where incoming heals > incoming damage is actually pointless (of course you have to consider the physical damage mitigation difference). Generally I stay in bear form to mitigate the initial burst of incoming damage (especially high physical damage), however keep count of the HoTs / incoming heals that are on you and judge according. By being in bear form you are forfeiting your ability to continue healing your teammates and yourself. Important times not to stay bear form is after any incoming damage has ended and your healers are trying to top you. Unless you are going to take more damage immediately or soon after, your gimping your healers and your own HoTs,making them essentially heal you for less.
Growl - This spell can be used to stay in combat and keep an enemy in combat, however it requires to be in bear form which would take a gcd and isn't always the best thing to do for kiting. Also used to taunt hunter pets off targets like your rogues, other healers. However, a taunt on a hunter pet only works for as long as the hunter doesn't "tell" it to attack the target again, or a different target. Also if you taunt it and the target it was originally attacking stealths or dies, the pet AI ( artificial intelligence) will automatically attack you next. This could be overridden if the hunter "tells" the pet to attack a different target meanwhile or if you stealth / die or gain enough distance compared to where the pet is located. That is just something to keep in mind, sometimes you will taunt a hunter pet and it'll come back to bite you in the butt and annoy you for a few seconds even after it has left from the initial taunt.
Cat Form - 130% passive speed, can use prowl and dash. Reduces fall damage considerably, use this to mitigate fall damage in most areas when neccesary. Can be used indoors unlike travel form. Will go over the reason this ability cannot be ignored while outdoors later on in the guide.
Travel Form - 140% passive speed, cannot use any abilities or spells besides barkskin. When entering an indoors area travel form will stay applied for a short period of time. The length of that time depends on your entrance into the indoors area and the indoors area itself. For example entering the mouth of horde tunnel from certain angles will allow you to stay in travel form till nearly the boots buff. However, other angles will cause travel form to almost immediately disperse. Test out certain angles for each faction side and the other entrances to any indoor area. Think how much space this can give you when being chased, or even the difference of getting to cap before an enemy picks your flag, just because of this little aspect. If you character falls into, or is in water, your travel form will turn into your aquatic form. This will grant you ~140% swimming speed. Upon leaving the water, even just jumping up from the surface of the water, you will return to deer form. Keep in mind, if you are swimming in the water and jump out of the water only to land in the water again, there will be a slight delay of the reappliance of aquatic form and you will lose speed compared to just staying in the water.
Entangling Roots - Medium cast time, root-type CC. Use to peel melee off you or your teammate or hold a ranged enemy in place to enable easier kiting, ranging or allow your teammates to catch up and attack the enemy. Do not be afraid to use this spell generously, but know when to use it over when not to. Should also be used to to intercept certain movement abilities. A warrior's charge, survival hunters harpoon, regular hunter's disengage or a goblin's rocket jump. Timing must be impeccable, but if timed correctly the enemy target will end up only going ~ half of where they were supposed to. If you land it too early, the enemy will still be rooted but generally still have their movement ability. Keep in mind that if a rooted survival hunter tries to harpoon a target, the target will still be rooted for 2 seconds and harpoon will go on CD but the survival hunter will not move to that target. Has a 35 yard range, which
Barkskin - Very useful, life saving ability. Can be used in all shapeshift forms (even aquatic) and while CC'd in any way. Generally saved for when you are about to take massive damage and especially when you are going to be stunned. This ability is also off the GCD.
Nature's Cure - Your dispell ability. An 8 second CD will be in-acted upon removing any magic, poison or curse. So, while dispelling a CC as fast as possible is essential, if you see the CC coming and dispell before it hits and the dispell removes any other form of magic, poison or curse, you will then not beable to dispell the CC you aimed to dispell. Knowing when to just heal and when to use dispell more heavily in a fight is very important. Using dispell is important, but over-using it can leave your team open for getting killed depending on the situation.
Dash - 3 minute CD ability that increases your speed in cat form by 70% (making it 200%) for seconds. It is off the GCD, so can be used directly after a spell /ability and also at the same time as barkskin or prowl in addition to that spell used prior. If used while outside cat form, using this ability will place you into cat form. The buff lasts 15 seconds and leaving cat form at any time will null the effect. But, reentering cat form will once again increase your speed by 70%.
Additional Tactics :
Shifting - There is now a 1.5 second CD placed onto any shapeshift form after cancelling it. The CD is placed solely onto that form. This was put into place to try to nerf power-shifting. There are still ways around it though. First off the act of entering or leaving any shapeshift form will abolish any slowing or rooting CC on yourself. So while you cannot immediately re-enter travel form to continue moving at 140% speed, just leaving travel form will take off the slow on you. Next key part is the fact that all other shapeshifts are still available immediately after cancelling any one form. While cat form is 10% slower than travel, if a slow is placed on you, just go into cat form for 1.5 seconds then back to travel form. Or use bear form if speed isn't necessary and damage mitigation is. Or just cast a rejuv, swiftmend, lifebloom while continue moving if you need to be topped off while kiteing. All these choices are very important to remember when under pressure. Also while indoors cat to bear form is still very viable in removing slows, as well as bear to cat depending on the situation at hand.
Lifebloom - On a fresh lifebloom (15 second duration),if lifebloom is recast on that same target in the last 4.99 seconds of its whole duration, the lifebloom will be reapplied with the time left on the original lifebloom and most importantly the burst healing will proc from reapplying it. Once recasting lifebloom on a target and the new lifebloom has a duration of 17 seconds - 20 seconds, you can recast lifebloom on that target can cause the expiration burst heal to proc at 5.99 seconds. Utilizing the reapplying early burst heal from lifebloom is very useful but i have not seen a resto druid use it knowingly yet. It is great for keeping swiftmend off-cd so you can save swiftmend for a larger most necessary time. While you could just wait a few seconds and the lifebloom will proc on its own, many times it is necessary to get a quick little burst heal in on the lifebloomed target. The mana cost for lifebloom is lower than swiftmend and regrowth, and you will likely have to reapply lifebloom once it expires and any of the extra time left is rolled over into the reapplied lifebloom. Keeping track of lifebloom's remaining duration is essential in controlling your teams / your healthpools. This should always be up on main targets / frontline, or can be used on yourself to slowly heal yourself while being able to concentrate on healing other players. When you know your are going to get stunned or take incoming damage, lifebloom should be applied to allow not only a HoT but the burst heal all while moving or even while you are CC'd. However, since only one target can have lifebloom applied, be careful who you use it on. Moving lifebloom around too much will take up GCDs and lower your healing, cc, damage output.
Table of Contents
- Intro
- General
- Talents + Races
1. Intro
Glossary:
CD - Cooldown, a spell that has a required time before you are able to use it once again or can be used to describe the period of time it takes until the the spell is able to be used again
GCD - Global Cooldown, the period of time implemented before you are able to use another spell / ability which is also affected by Global Cooldown
CC - Crowd Control, any type of ability that makes the targeted player lose some aspect of control over his/her character (Stun, incapacitate, root, etc.)
EFC - Enemy Flag Carrier, the enemy player who is holding your flag in Warsong Gultch
LoS - Line of Sight, term used when you are out of range (usually from material objects rather than distance) of a player's spells / moves
HoT - Heal over time, any ability that applies a "buff" that will periodically heal the target
DoT - Damage over time, any ability that applies a "debuff" that will periodically damage the target
2. General
Spells and Abilities:
Moonfire - Your main DoT, very mana efficient compared to sunfire. Can be used to keep classes who can stealth from stealthing and stay in combat (when no allies around you are in combat), rather than using a GCD to get into bear form and then taunting. If you are comfortable enough in a fight to start spreading DoTs but still want to retain mana incase the fight it lengthy, just using moonfire is the ideal way to spread pressure while conserving mana.
Sunfire - Your second Dot. Sunfire costs double the mana of moonfire. In addition it even deals less overall damage. Used whenever moonfire is already on the target, you have free GCDs and mana conservation is not necessary. Applying both DoTs to a swap / main target is useful in aiding your team in landing kills. Both moonfire and sunfire hit for the same initial and DoT tick, however moonfire lasts 30% longer.
Rejuvenation - Main, spamable HoT. Keep on any teammate that is damaged / will be taking incoming damage.
Lifebloom - HoT, heals for slightly more than rejuvenation per second. Lasts 15 seconds if being applied fresh (no lifebloom already existing on the target). Upon expiration of lifebloom, heals for ~ 750-800 hit. Only one target can have lifebloom applied, if cast on a second target the lifebloom will be moved to the new target and not heal for the expiration burst healing. See Tactics section for very valuable information on lifebloom
Regrowth - Casted direct heal / small HoT, heals for decent immediate damage and then applies a small Hot. The pluses to the ability are its fast cast time, the negatives are the high mana cost and the fact that compared to other hard casted heals of other classes, it heals for significantly less immediately and overall. Don't see the negatives and think regrowth isn't worth casting. It is still the general go-to immediate heal. Healing touches long cast time is not good in many high pressure situations.
Healing Touch - Long-cast, mana efficient direct heal. Use whenever there is low pressure on you / your team and a teammate needs to be topped off.
Swfitmend - Your main burst heal spell, 30 second CD (un-talented). Very large heal with a decently long CD, so make sure you utilize it well. Casting the second it is off-cd will only leave your team and yourself open to being bursted easily. As stated above, lifebloom early expiration burst heal can be used in many cases so swiftmend can be saved to use in more dire situations.
Solar Wrath - Casted, direct damage spell with a decently fast travel time. Costs NO mana, so can be used with no heed to your mana. Used to help burst / finish off enemies when your team is generally topped / no incoming pressure.
Prowl - Your stealth ability. Cat form passive speed is 130% and being in stealth no longer reduces your speed. With that buff, using stealth to cross mid and using dash while stealthed is even more useful than before. Take advantage of it. Some pretty obvious ways to avoid being caught in stealth is to stay behind where a target is facing. You don't have to be directly behind him/her but as long as they aren't facing you at any time, they will not be able to see you. Prowl is off the GCD so it can be used directly after an instant spell. Keep track of whether you are in combat or not at all times. Prowl can be used to interrupt any ability being casted onto you, or just cause the enemy to have to re-target you. 10 second CD once you de-activate stealth.
Bear Form - While it seems like a simple ability that has obvious benefits, there are a lot of underlying effects bear form can really have because of its mechanics. To start with the obvious, going into this form will increase your stamina and armor by a noticeable amount, allowing you to take a lot more damage. But a side effect that many people don't think about is that when swapping forms your hp is increased through %. Too show how this % conversion is so useful for any non-guardian spec druid is simple. Well take 6k out of bear form druid, and say in bear form he has 9k hp. So he goes bear form and takes 3k damage, leaving him at 6k hp or 66% hp. If he goes back out of bear form he then will have 66% of 6k, which is 3960 hp, meaning he effectively took 2040 damage from start to finish (rather than 3k). So not even counting the damage mitigation bear form placed on the incoming damage, there was a ~47% reduction of the incoming damage compared to if you were staying in non bear form the whole time. Now the % is based on the difference in hp by your bear form and non bear form. To find out how much damage reduction % you personally would have, go into bear form and divide it by your non bear form hp. However a side effect is that heals on you will be that % lower once you go back to non bear form. So, staying in bear form outside of times where incoming heals > incoming damage is actually pointless (of course you have to consider the physical damage mitigation difference). Generally I stay in bear form to mitigate the initial burst of incoming damage (especially high physical damage), however keep count of the HoTs / incoming heals that are on you and judge according. By being in bear form you are forfeiting your ability to continue healing your teammates and yourself. Important times not to stay bear form is after any incoming damage has ended and your healers are trying to top you. Unless you are going to take more damage immediately or soon after, your gimping your healers and your own HoTs,making them essentially heal you for less.
Growl - This spell can be used to stay in combat and keep an enemy in combat, however it requires to be in bear form which would take a gcd and isn't always the best thing to do for kiting. Also used to taunt hunter pets off targets like your rogues, other healers. However, a taunt on a hunter pet only works for as long as the hunter doesn't "tell" it to attack the target again, or a different target. Also if you taunt it and the target it was originally attacking stealths or dies, the pet AI ( artificial intelligence) will automatically attack you next. This could be overridden if the hunter "tells" the pet to attack a different target meanwhile or if you stealth / die or gain enough distance compared to where the pet is located. That is just something to keep in mind, sometimes you will taunt a hunter pet and it'll come back to bite you in the butt and annoy you for a few seconds even after it has left from the initial taunt.
Cat Form - 130% passive speed, can use prowl and dash. Reduces fall damage considerably, use this to mitigate fall damage in most areas when neccesary. Can be used indoors unlike travel form. Will go over the reason this ability cannot be ignored while outdoors later on in the guide.
Travel Form - 140% passive speed, cannot use any abilities or spells besides barkskin. When entering an indoors area travel form will stay applied for a short period of time. The length of that time depends on your entrance into the indoors area and the indoors area itself. For example entering the mouth of horde tunnel from certain angles will allow you to stay in travel form till nearly the boots buff. However, other angles will cause travel form to almost immediately disperse. Test out certain angles for each faction side and the other entrances to any indoor area. Think how much space this can give you when being chased, or even the difference of getting to cap before an enemy picks your flag, just because of this little aspect. If you character falls into, or is in water, your travel form will turn into your aquatic form. This will grant you ~140% swimming speed. Upon leaving the water, even just jumping up from the surface of the water, you will return to deer form. Keep in mind, if you are swimming in the water and jump out of the water only to land in the water again, there will be a slight delay of the reappliance of aquatic form and you will lose speed compared to just staying in the water.
Entangling Roots - Medium cast time, root-type CC. Use to peel melee off you or your teammate or hold a ranged enemy in place to enable easier kiting, ranging or allow your teammates to catch up and attack the enemy. Do not be afraid to use this spell generously, but know when to use it over when not to. Should also be used to to intercept certain movement abilities. A warrior's charge, survival hunters harpoon, regular hunter's disengage or a goblin's rocket jump. Timing must be impeccable, but if timed correctly the enemy target will end up only going ~ half of where they were supposed to. If you land it too early, the enemy will still be rooted but generally still have their movement ability. Keep in mind that if a rooted survival hunter tries to harpoon a target, the target will still be rooted for 2 seconds and harpoon will go on CD but the survival hunter will not move to that target. Has a 35 yard range, which
Barkskin - Very useful, life saving ability. Can be used in all shapeshift forms (even aquatic) and while CC'd in any way. Generally saved for when you are about to take massive damage and especially when you are going to be stunned. This ability is also off the GCD.
Nature's Cure - Your dispell ability. An 8 second CD will be in-acted upon removing any magic, poison or curse. So, while dispelling a CC as fast as possible is essential, if you see the CC coming and dispell before it hits and the dispell removes any other form of magic, poison or curse, you will then not beable to dispell the CC you aimed to dispell. Knowing when to just heal and when to use dispell more heavily in a fight is very important. Using dispell is important, but over-using it can leave your team open for getting killed depending on the situation.
Dash - 3 minute CD ability that increases your speed in cat form by 70% (making it 200%) for seconds. It is off the GCD, so can be used directly after a spell /ability and also at the same time as barkskin or prowl in addition to that spell used prior. If used while outside cat form, using this ability will place you into cat form. The buff lasts 15 seconds and leaving cat form at any time will null the effect. But, reentering cat form will once again increase your speed by 70%.
Additional Tactics :
Shifting - There is now a 1.5 second CD placed onto any shapeshift form after cancelling it. The CD is placed solely onto that form. This was put into place to try to nerf power-shifting. There are still ways around it though. First off the act of entering or leaving any shapeshift form will abolish any slowing or rooting CC on yourself. So while you cannot immediately re-enter travel form to continue moving at 140% speed, just leaving travel form will take off the slow on you. Next key part is the fact that all other shapeshifts are still available immediately after cancelling any one form. While cat form is 10% slower than travel, if a slow is placed on you, just go into cat form for 1.5 seconds then back to travel form. Or use bear form if speed isn't necessary and damage mitigation is. Or just cast a rejuv, swiftmend, lifebloom while continue moving if you need to be topped off while kiteing. All these choices are very important to remember when under pressure. Also while indoors cat to bear form is still very viable in removing slows, as well as bear to cat depending on the situation at hand.
Lifebloom - On a fresh lifebloom (15 second duration),if lifebloom is recast on that same target in the last 4.99 seconds of its whole duration, the lifebloom will be reapplied with the time left on the original lifebloom and most importantly the burst healing will proc from reapplying it. Once recasting lifebloom on a target and the new lifebloom has a duration of 17 seconds - 20 seconds, you can recast lifebloom on that target can cause the expiration burst heal to proc at 5.99 seconds. Utilizing the reapplying early burst heal from lifebloom is very useful but i have not seen a resto druid use it knowingly yet. It is great for keeping swiftmend off-cd so you can save swiftmend for a larger most necessary time. While you could just wait a few seconds and the lifebloom will proc on its own, many times it is necessary to get a quick little burst heal in on the lifebloomed target. The mana cost for lifebloom is lower than swiftmend and regrowth, and you will likely have to reapply lifebloom once it expires and any of the extra time left is rolled over into the reapplied lifebloom. Keeping track of lifebloom's remaining duration is essential in controlling your teams / your healthpools. This should always be up on main targets / frontline, or can be used on yourself to slowly heal yourself while being able to concentrate on healing other players. When you know your are going to get stunned or take incoming damage, lifebloom should be applied to allow not only a HoT but the burst heal all while moving or even while you are CC'd. However, since only one target can have lifebloom applied, be careful who you use it on. Moving lifebloom around too much will take up GCDs and lower your healing, cc, damage output.
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