partygirl
Legend
-Introduction-
Hi guys Synthax here from Gurubashi Surf Club, today I am going to bring you my guide on how to play, gear, enchant, macro and keybind your 24 druid for maximum healing. this is maybe not going to be the prettiest looking guide out there since i dont really know how to make it look all cool and stuff but it gets the work done
Guide suited for patch 5.4.1
Glossary:
Green stats - the extra stat other than the white stats such as Crit, Haste etc
Rejuv - Rejuvenation
Reg - Regrowth
HoT - Healing over Time
DoT - Damage over Time
Bis - Best in slot
GF(d) - Not obtainable anymore
FC - Flag Carrier
Oom - Out of mana
Table of content: Race choice, Gearing, stat priority, enchanting, macroing, keybinding, choice of playstyle and professions
-Race Choice-
-Alliance-
For Alliance there are two options either the Night Elf or the Worgen.
Night Elf's have shadowmeld wich is a great ability to make "plays" with such as using it when a scatter gets shot at you will not get stunned aswell as using to drop combat to go into stealth or to in arena maybe get a ressurection of if your party member is dead etc, shortened down it has lots of potential for good things.
Other Night Elf benefits are:
Elusiveness - Decreases the chance of getting detected while in shadowmeld by 5% and increases your speed in prowl by 5%
Nature Resistance - Reduces nature damage taken by 1%
Quickness - Increases your chance to dodge ranged and melee spells by 2%
Worgen's have Darkflight wich increases your movement speed by 40% for 10 seconds wich provides amazing utility combinded with Dash and the Blink speed. Worgens is a good FC choise for Alliance just because of that speed.
Other Worgen benefits are:
Aberration - Reduces shadow damage taken by 1%
Flayer - Skinning skill is increased by 15 and you skin quicker
Viciousness- Critical strike chance is increased by 1%
-Horde-
For horde we have two options either Tauren or Troll
Tauren's is the only race that can provide a interrupt or stun for the druid that otherwise has no way to stop enemy casts, the spell is called warstomp and is a 3 second stun that has 3 minutes cooldown and can be great if you know how and when to use it.
Other Tauren benefits are:
Endurance - Increases base health by 5%
Cultivation - Herbalism skill is increased by 15 and you pick herbs faster
Nature Resistance - Reduces nature damage taken by 1%
Troll's have Berserking which increases your haste by 20% for 10 seconds combind that with Lifeblood from herbalism and you can get some crazy cast speed wich is amazing for heavy healing situations and can be the saving hand in bgs / premades.
Other Troll benefits are:
Da Voodoo Shuffle - Reduces the movement imparing effects on you by 15% TROLLS BE FLIPPIN' OUT MON!
Beast Slaying - Damage dealt against beasts is increased by 5%
Regeneration - Health regeneration rate increased by 10%, 10% of total health regeneration rate may continue during combat
-Gearing-
Gearing is one if not the most important part of your druid, with the extra stats you have you do more healing and you have more health to survive longer. In general the gear can vary alot in my opinion there is no BiS because there is alot of pieces you can swap between that are all good, you just need to find out what works the best for you. There are a few parts of gear that are must have for an example the trinket most prefered is the heirloom trinket for that extra resilience, aswell as the Arena Grand Master trinket is also almost a must to have for that 12 stamina boost and the absorb shield other than that you are almost 100% free to chose between gear that are on kind of the same level of stats but the green stats can be different.
Few example armory links of druids you can copy if you feel like it.
Synthax @ Ravencrest (my own druid)
Vanillamilk @ Ravencrest
Supertruper @ Draenor (Gf'd chest piece)
Jucmezz @ Aggramar
Falconhóóf @ Stormscale
If you are unable to obtain certain heirlooms or are just simply to lazy to farm them if you have no character that is level 90 here are a few options you could go with
Head: Lucky Fishing Hat or Spellpower Goggles Xtreme
Shoulders: Hann Ibal's Epaulettes
Chest: Tree Bark Jacket
Cloak: Tumultuous Cloak (of the sorcerer)
Weapon: Riot Stick
Legs: Blackfathom Leggings
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The recomended set and enchants that is considered BiS is the following:
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Head: Preened Tribal War Feathers
Neck: Overlord's Favor
Shoulders: Preened Ironfeather Shoulders Enchant: Greater Inscription of Discipline
Cloak: Ancient Bloodmoon Cloak Enchant: Enchant Cloak - Greater Intellect
Chest: Preened Ironfeather Breastplate Enchant: Enchant Chest - Exceptional Mana
Bracers: Emissary Cuffs (of the eagle) Enchant: Formula: Enchant Bracer - Healing Power
Gloves: Gloves of the Hero Enchant: Formula: Enchant Gloves - Healing Power
Belt: Belt of the High Shaman
Legs: Preened Wildfeather Leggings Enchant: Sapphire Spellthread
Boots: Spidersilk Boots Enchant: Enchant Boots - Surefooted
Weapon: Devout Aurastone Hammer Enchant: Enchant Weapon - Jade Spirit
Held in off-hand: Tome of the Dawn Enchant: Enchant Off-Hand - Major Intellect
Ring 1: Yorgen's Boon
Ring 2: Charged Gear (of the eagle)
Trinket 1:Inherited Insignia of the Alliance
Trinket 2: Arena Grand Master
-Stat Priority-
Now we have come to stat priority and here you are also very free to chose its a lot about your playstyle which we come to later. I personally like to not stack but go for a little more crit, you can also go full crit if you like to or full haste which is great for premades. The crit stat is on a lot of the good gear pieces and haste is kind of hard to find on good gear pieces at this level but you obtain that via enchants. Something that a lot of druids like to do is stack stamina for FC'ing where druids are one of if not the most popular FC because of its great mobility and strong heals. I'm going for a combination of spell power, crit and a little bit of stamina.
The general stat prioritize is: Intellect > Stamina > Spell Power >( Crit > Haste, depends on what you go for ) > Spirit
-Enchanting-
Enchanting you gear properly is going to be a huge advantage over people that does not enchant in a good way or just blindly get enchants for it to look good. But what you need here is a pattern or a combination of stats that you miss on your gear and still want and now with 5,4 the right weapon enchant with the right proc can also do a lot. I'm gonna go through a few options of enchanting
Stereotypical healer: The stereotypical healer is someone that goes something that was used before or have not updated their enchants yet for patch 5.4.0 often with stamina on boots and bracers or intellect on both, they then go with spellpower on hands, resistance on cloak and +100 health or +4 stats on chest, this according to me belongs in the past where enchants were very limited but for now you can get a lot more out of them.
The stamina stacker: This person uses as much stamina as possible it can be a agility item that has more stamina than your intellect item and you still play resto, this person goes with every stamina enchant possible
Glove Reinforcements - 24 stamina
Heavy Borean Armor Kit - 14 stamina (this enchant can be put on chest, shoulders, hands, legs or boots)
Enchant Cloak - Mighty Stamina - 9 stamina
Critoholic: This person goes with full crit to be able to crit heal as many heals as possible for maximum healing and a few enchants in here would be
Enchant Gloves - Blasting - 8 crit
Enchant Boots - Surefooted - 8 crit 8 hit
Enchant Wrist - Greater Critical Strike - 10 crit
Enchant Cloak - Greater Critical Strike - 10 crit
Haste stacker: This person often good for premades goes with haste on all pieces to do quick heals that are average big while they don't crit heal as often as the critoholic
Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed - 9 haste
Enchant Chest - Exceptional Mana - 188 mana (when you spam heal you need this to prevent you going oom)
Enchant Bracers - Greater Speed - 10 haste
Enchant Hands - Minor Haste - 10 haste
Other than all these examples you can experiment around abit or go for combinations of maybe crit / stam, crit / haste, stam / haste etc its all very much to personal preference
-Macroing-
Macros are really helpful to make a lot of your spells much smoothly without having for an example to click a target to root them instead you use a focus macro for an example. Here I am not going to write as much but i will write down some really helpful macros that you are more than welcome to use.
Focus dispel if you pocket heal someone and have them as your focus
Code:
[SIZE=4][SIZE=2]#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast [target=focus] Nature's Cure[/SIZE][/SIZE]Focus root if you're in an arena and want to root the person you focus
Code:
[SIZE=4][SIZE=2]
#showtooltip
/cast [target=focus] Entangling Roots[/SIZE][/SIZE]Mouseover focus macro, hover over the person you want to focus and press this macro
Code:
[SIZE=4][SIZE=2]
/focus [@mouseover][/SIZE][/SIZE]Blink macro makes you come out from catform instantly after blinking to get some heals of faster
Code:
[SIZE=4][SIZE=2]
#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast Displacer Beast
/cancelaura Cat Form(Shapeshift)[/SIZE][/SIZE]Mouseover heal macros almost a must for bgs if you don't wanna click frames
Code:
[SIZE=4][SIZE=2]
#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover] Rejuvenation[/SIZE][/SIZE]
Code:
[SIZE=4][SIZE=2]
[SIZE=4][SIZE=2]#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover] Regrowth[/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE]
Code:
[SIZE=4][SIZE=2][SIZE=4][SIZE=2]
[SIZE=4][SIZE=2]#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover] Swiftmend[/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE]Mouseover Dispel macro
Code:
[SIZE=4][SIZE=2][SIZE=4][SIZE=2][SIZE=4][SIZE=2]
#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast [target=mouseover] Nature's Cure[/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE]Stopcasting macro to fake interrupts from for an example a Shaman
Code:
[SIZE=4][SIZE=2][SIZE=4][SIZE=2][SIZE=4][SIZE=2]
/stopcasting[/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE]Powershift macro
Code:
/cast [nomod,form:4] !Travel Form; [nomod,form:3] !Cat Form; [nomod,form:1] !bear form; [nomod, form:5] !Moonkin Form; travel formThis will moonfire your mouseover, if there is any, and focus the target as well, good for keeping track of DoT on rogue, so you know when to reDoT.
If you wanna use this macro for friendly spells like cure, Rejuv etc., just replace "Moonfire" with the spell, and "[harm]" with "[help]".
Code:
#showtooltip Moonfire/clearfocus [target=focus,dead][target=focus,noexists]
/focus [target=mouseover,exists,harm][target=focus,noexists,harm]
/cast [@mouseover,harm,nodead] [harm] Moonfire
/stopmacro [nogroup]This macro has to be clicked twice, but cancels all forms and WC'es to the target. You can add an "/target XXX Battlestandard or Posion Extraction Totem" for horde, or a friendly player name, and just end the macro with "/targetlasttarget".
Code:
#showtooltip Wild Charge/cancelaura Bear Form
/cancelaura Cat Form
/cancelaura Travel Form
/cancelaura Moonkin Form
/cast Wild Charge-Keybinding-
Keybinds are always helpful in any state at the game, being a clicker where you manually click your spells will never work out good because if you click you will need to keyboard turn to click at the same time and then you lose alot of time that could have been spent doing more healing, damaging etc. you wanna have your core spells as then it is your heals as you play resto and that will be Rejuv, Reg and swiftmend. Have them on easy accessable buttons as 1,2,3 or R,F,C. I use a razer naga wich has 17 buttons and they are really nice and easily accessable so that is a recomendation or at least get a mouse with more than 2 buttons. When it comes to your focus spells I recomend having them on Shift+(any button). We will use Root for an example if you bind your root spell to F and you have the focus root macro then use Shift+F its easy to remember.
When you play arena a good tip is to have your party members bound and yourself so that you wont have to click the frames to heal I use the scroll on the mouse for me and my other 2 teamates. Scroll up for me, Mid mouse for party 1 and scroll down for party 2. That is the main keybinds that are needed to have but then with all your other spells it is what feels the best for you.
-Playstyles-
Here I am going to talk about some different playstyles you can have as a druid and they are kind of different so it is just for you to play and feel what you like the most and it is often that what you like and feel good with you are going to do the best at.
Flag Carrier: The flag carrier is the person that goes for the flag and holds the flag until the enemy flag carrier is dead and the flag can be captured to win the game. A talented flag carrier is always appreciated and will help the team loads to win the game. As a flag carrier you mostly use the stamina stacking I spoke about before. When you flag carry you can take advantage of environment exploiting such as learning how to do different jumps to fake an enemy of you.
The defensive Healer: The defensive healer often goes with the flag carrier and stands on a good distance all the time just to heal and rarely confronts enemies. The defensive healer will also most likely follow the flag carrier into the own base and stand there with him till the enemy flag carrier is down
The offensive healer: The offensive healer will often go with the team that goes to kill the enemy flag carrier and on top of that uses Moonfire and Wrath a lot to help the team to do damage, this person can also be in the front a lot and is not afraid to tank damage while the team can do damage without having an enemy on them to slow their damage down.
-Professions-
Now to professions which is also a big deal and is absolutely worth considering maxing both of them, secondary professions which is First Aid, Fishing, Cooking and Archeology is not important but can be fun anyways. The only one worth considering is First Aid but since your heals are stronger I wouldn't recomend getting it. I personally thing that Herbalism is a must for the haste that is amazing for stressed situations while the other profession doesn't matter that much.
Skinning: Grants Master of Anatomy +9 critical strike
Herbalism: Grants Lifeblood small heal and grants 94 haste
Mining: Grants Toughness +7 stamina
Alchemy: Grants Mixology which makes your potions stronger. For an example Potion of Wisdom from +4 intellect to +14 intellect
Engineering: Grants you bombs that does damage and you can get head pieces like Spellpower Goggles Xtreme
This was everything from me and if you want me to add something to the guide or if there was something I forgot about please leave it in the comments and I will add it in to the guide, I hope this helped you in some way
ALSO BIG THANKS TO SNACK FOR HELP WITH SOME MACROS!
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