Lifebloomer the most helpful Restoration Druid Specific Add-on I have found, has been updated for 2.4.

Lifebloomer is helpful for monitoring and rolling stacks of Lifebloom on your Tanks. With bars to show the duration of the three Druid Heal Over Time (HOT) Spells and an indicator for Global Cool Down (GCD), this add-on is my primary method of healing during Multi-Tank fights.

Those of you familiar with Lifebloom will find the addition of Healing and Damage indicators on each Unit Frame. A simple color coded number shows you at a glance which of your tanks are still taking damage and how much they are taking, the numbers indicate damage to the target with and the colors show whether or not the target has aggro. Yellow numbers mean the target has aggro and blue show that the target is aggro free. During four tank trash pulls it is hard to tell if a tank is still taking damage (your heals can be so l33t) and you don’t generally have time to watch four targets that closely. With the addition of the damage/aggro indicator you can suspend unnecessary healing or add more HoTs or throw a Direct Heal if your HoTs are not keeping up.

Also new is Debuff reactive frames which show Curses and Poison as a colored border on the frame. This is nice because it puts that information where your eye’s are already looking instead of having to look elsewhere on the screen.

New Users

Add-on Set-up

After extracting to your “c://program files/world of warcraft/interface/add-ons/” folder make sure you activate the add-on by visiting the add-on button on the character load screen.

On login hit escape to go to your in game menu. Find the Add-on tab at the top of the Interface Pane then select Lifebloomer from the list of Add-Ons there. From these menus you can, set click to cast spells and abilities, adjust the size, spacing and color of the bars. Now that Lifebloomer is compatible with Clique you may choose to download and use that instead of the basic click casting capabilities found here. I find the mouse-over casting with my speed-pad works best for me so I don’t bother with these, if your like me you want to verify that the click casting is disabled.

Usage

In a party with Lifebloomer showing target any friendly player that you would like to roll Lifebloom on when targeted their name should appear on the Lifebloomer Bar. In order to lock your target you simply click the middle button to the left of the bar (looks like the Hunters Mark debuff). You can add multiple Lifebloomer bars by clicking the Plus Sign Button at the bottom left and target and lock as above. To unlock the target simply target your the character you’d like to heal and re-click the lock target button. To remove extra frames click the minus button (at the top left of each bar). To hide the whole add-on you can either click the minus button at the very top left, or your can type /lb h (/lifebloomer hide)

Functionality

When you cast Lifebloom on your target the bar will begin to decrease right to left indicating how much time remains on your targets Lifebloom buff. As time nears expiration the bars will change color. You want to try to always be casting your new Lifebloom as the bar turns red, helping to ensure that you are getting the most possible ticks for your mana. Lifebloomer has two smaller bars that run along the top and bottom that show you the time remaining for your targets Rejuvenation and Regrowth Heal over Time (if you cast one) this way you can tell when it’s time to recast. For both RJ and RG you want to let the buff expire before reapplying in order to max out your mana efficiency.

When to use Lifebloomer

Main Tank Healing- When healing a main tank in a 5, 10, 25 or 40 man group you should try to keep a complete 3 stack of Lifebloom up at all times. Then if the HoT is not enough you might considering adding Rejuvenation or Regrowth to cover the damage. keeping either RJ or RG up at all times will also allow you to cast Swiftmend if your Tank should get critted or experience spike damage.

2 Tank Healing- Similar to single tank healing you can easily keep a full stack of 3 Lifeblooms up on two targets simultaneously. It is also relatively easy to keep a rejuvenation up on both targets most of the time. If one Tank is experiencing spike damage (with practice) you can even get a Regrowth into the mix without having to let either stack of Lifeblooms lapse.

3 Tank Healing- While more challenging than 2 Tank you can keep 3 stacks of Lifeblooms rolling at once. You can even throw one Rejuvenation cast in per cycle. Lifebloom Healing three targets is not effective for dealing with lots of sustained damage so you will probably need to have another healer in the group (chances are you’ll be in a 10 man for this type of pull anyways)

4 Tank Healing- Not for beginners, You can keep 4 targets Lifebloomed simultaneously, it is not easy and you cannot cast any RJ without losing control of at least one stack. This type of healing is useful in larger raids to help alleviate spike damage while other healers cast big heals with longer timers. To increase your mana efficiency it is important to stay focused and keep your stacks from expiring as your Mana/Heal drops significantly each time, you have to start a stack over.

5 Tank Healing- Uber-Advanced, with Spell Hast Itemization it is possible to reduce your GCD to 1 sec instead of 1.5 in this way you could potentially roll Lifebloom on 5 Targets. From what I’ve seen in order to stack enough Haste to make this work you would sacrifice +Healing and MP5 making the amount of time that you could roll and the size of the heals fairly ineffective.

Raid Healing- As with single and double tank healing it is possible to roll lifeblooms on one or two targets and still have time to throw a regrowth or a few rejuvenations each cycle. As a resto druid you should always try to roll Lifebloom on at least the primary damage taker, but as I’m sure you know there are times when others in the group will take incidental damage and you can’t just let them die (unless they’re Mages, then they probably deserve it… JK… No, I’m not…)

Of course there are times when rolling Lifeblooms is not effective, for example bosses without an aggro list make Lifebloom a very inefficient spell.

I am curious to hear about the rotations that other Raiding Druids are using. I understand that healing is situational so if you find a rotation that works particularly well in a situation please let’s talk about it.