I’m a bit fired up about this topic so please excuse me if the tone is a bit rant-ish, I tried to keep it informative, maybe even inspirational. Thanks to Phaelia (My Hero) for helping me to solidify my arguments.

Last night I was running ZA (my favorite instance, NOT) and I started noticing that although there were three healers I was the only one casting heals on anyone besides the tanks, funny that doesn’t seem right. Druids aren’t exactly efficient raid healers. So nonchalantly and surprisingly friendly(for me) I ask the Paladin which add-ons he uses. “None, I don’t need them to heal.” WHAT!?!

“Really?” I say “I find that they help me quite a bit.” To which he replies “That’s cause you’re a N00b!” hmmm. At this point (third boss in ZA) in the raid I am doubling his healing done with 44% to his 22%, and doing it with less over-healing and less gear and I’m the noob. The Priest chimes in at this point to say that he doesn’t use any add-ons besides the guild required, Omen, and DBM. I’m befuddled. I’m out healing the Priest by 12% (he’s at 32% if you’re not good at math). Curious I check the Priest’s gear to see what he’s wearing to try to determine if he’s working to his potential or not and he’s in a mix of T5 and T6 and being out-healed by a Druid in T4 and welfare epics. So healing to his potential? No!

It’s sad to me that there are still people out there who WASTE their gear by not providing themselves with all the information that Blizzard has made available to them. They are at least as gimped as a raider who decides not to enchant, and sockets with green gems because they want to save money, Or who doesn’t use consumables because they don’t see a difference in their damage.

I’m not exactly sure what their thinking is. The comments I heard last night were, “I don’t need mods, I do alright without them,” “Add-ons seem like cheating to me” and “I ALWAYS keep my assignment up even if I don’t top the meters.” Each of these arguments is deeply flawed let’s examine each one-

• “I don’t need Mods I do fine without them” While you may show up on the meters and you may not be the bottom healer on any given night , if your geared to heal say 1.5 Million a night but you’re healing is gimped because you can’t easily see the health everyone in the raid, then you are making another healer work harder to pick up your slack. This means that you’re group will have to drink more frequently and your raids will take longer. Not being able to see everyone at a glance means that some poor Mage sits at half health for longer than necessary then any sort of incidental damage will kill that Mage and your raid will be down a DPS.
• “I ALWAYS keep my assignment up even if I don’t top the meters.” Let me get this straight you managed to make sure that just the one tank didn’t die during the course of the fight. That’s GREAT… but if the rest of the raid dies why you heal just your one target you did no one any favors. All the other healers that have an “assignment” are also throwing heals around the raid to try to ensure that everyone stays up. They are exceeding their assignment and that is the expectation for you as well.
• “Add-ons seem like cheating to me” Blizzard recognized after Diablo II that their audience knew best how they wanted to play a game. In fact Blizzard changed the model of their programming to allow players to customize their inetrface with the game. The Default UI is just a basic get you started level 0 UI so that you can play the game out of the box. If Blizzard didn’t expect you to use add-ons why would they have made all the information that you can’t see in the default UI in the combat log available to you.

As a Druid I find the default UI lacking in several areas. Of course there are other things I use add-ons for but these are the functions I don’t think I could live without.

1. Buff Timers- at a glance I need to know how much time is left on my stacks of Lifebloom. I also have to know which players have a HoT that I could Swiftmend instead of casting a direct heal. Aside from combat situation the raid never has to stop for rebuffs on my account. I know when any players MOTW or Thorns expires and the next time we are out of combat I can refresh it.
2. Aggro Indication- while I’m rolling my HoTs on the Groups Tanks I am constantly watching to see if anyone else is grabbing aggro. On AoE Pulls I start casting Regrowth on a the Mage who is creeping up the meters as soon as I see that an aggro shift is likely. If I waited until the Mage’s health started to drop to start healing him he’d be dead before my spell was half cast. I also like to know when a Tank is no longer taking damage. During trash pulls for example it is common to have four tanks and after a few second only one or two of them are still tanking. To keep casting heals on them would be wasteful, even if I canceled the spell before it landed I’ve wasted the casting time on a target that doesn’t need heals.
3. Button Management- The Default UI has twelve buttons. If you used all the bars that Blizzard would provide you with you’d have six bars with twelve buttons. Seventy-Two buttons not to shabby but how are they laid out? do they look like your keyboard? Are they intuitive? Do they react to your changes in stance? Do they allow you keep keep your hand in one position and still do everything you need to do?
4. Inventory Management- Before I found Bagnon, back in my Rogue days, I would spend a few minutes every session maintaining my inventory. I had a bag for skinning and cloth, a bag for vendor trash, a bag for potions and consumables, a bag for poisons. While this system worked alright, I would spend a few minutes everyday to keep things in some semblance of order or I ran the risk of missing something important. Those few minutes today are enough time to do a daily or two which would go a longs ways towards paying for consumables for the night. On my druid I have 4 complete sets of gear, I carry more consumables to a raid than I care to try to count, and with the addition of daily quests I have more quest items in my bag than ever before. I could not hope to know which feral drops are an upgrade for me if it wasn’t for the fact that I could click a few buttons and see what I have in the bank even from the depths of SSC.

For a raider the most import thing add-ons has to be the increased output that they facilitate. If you are not using add-ons and you miss just one heal in the course of the night you are doing yourseld a disservice. If that one missed heal starts a chain reaction that leads to a wipe you just did 4, 9, 24, 39 other people a disservice as well.

If you want raids to go faster so that OUR guild can farm more than two bosses in three hours, then you should be doing everything in your power to increase you efficiency and your output.

It is not about meters or “epeen” stroking (fun as that can be), it is about my time, your time and the groups collective time. It is not about using a crutch or being a “n00b”, it is about doing your absolute best. It is not about doing well enough to keep your raid spot, it is about the work of all the people in the guild who in return for their effort are relying on you to do give it your all.

Ultimately it is about playing a game, and like any game it is more fun when our team is winning.

Do you wanna see the inside of Black Temple? Me too. So let’s get our heads out of our asses and kill this thing.

Yesterday I realized just how much I miss when I go away for a few days. While I was in Baltimore Mirari AKA Stephen Schmitt released an update for Lifebloomer. Since the he new version has some new features that I find very helpful I figure it is time for a revitalized write-up. .

Lifebloomer 1.5 Released

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.

I just got a new N52te Speedpad I loved my old N52 Speedpad so much that when my puppy Scout chewed through the wires of my N52 I was afraid that without it I would not be able to play. I loved my N52 so much I that a gave several to my friends for Christmas. I would have happily bought another of the Original N52 Speedpads but alas they don’t make them anymore. So I had no choice but to upgrade.

The N52 and its successor the N52te are made by Belkin who partnered with Razer for this recent upgrade. The price tag for the speed pad is high at $69.99 MSRP, I think I paid $39.99 for the old one. While I don’t think the changes from the original justify that much of an increase it does offer some new features: back lit keys (pretty but not necessary), a thumb stick on the D-Pad (I find it clumsy and will probably remove it), and new software.

The software is where the N52te really stands out, where the previous software used two programs, an Editor and a Profile Manager, this one is integrated so there is no more saving a configuration then switching between programs to load the configuration while trying to configure your buttons.

The old N52 had four button states available: Regular, Red, Blue and Green where the new one has only three Blue, Red and Green. The programming for switching between modes was different with the original version as well. With the original the Red State Toggle, for example, was a literal on/off switch push it once for Red State, push again to turn Red State off. With the tournament edition the only way to turn Red State off is to turn Blue or Green State on.

Even with the handful of unnecessary changes and the increased price I am quite pleased with the Updated Version. The buttons are smoother and easier to press (especially the thumb trigger) and the improved software means that setting up new configurations is a snap.

For those of you who are considering getting one and wonder how you might use it here is my current raiding layout:

All of my spells are in macros so that they mouse-over cast:

/cast [target=mouseover] Spell Name(Rank #)

The Thumb Trigger button is set to Momentary Red State, so as long as I hold it I can cast any of the spells listed in Red otherwise my defaults are the spells in Blue. I have my bars setup using Bongos2 so that each form has two states and my caster form also has a paging so that I can set my offensive spells to my default and have my healing spells as my altered state. The Up and Down scroll changes pages, and the click of the wheel cycles through states. The Green state holds my travel forms and my Raid Icons and is not linked to forms so it is static. The under thumb button is Set to Next Target except in green state when it is space bar.

In total I have 7 bars with 15 Buttons each and although some buttons are repeated it feels pretty cool to know that I have 105 Buttons under my left hand at all times. I’m not sure how I could ever synergistic-ally play a druid without it. Shifting into an animal form and still have my healing and offense casting spells a mere click away has made me a much better druid.

Related Links:

Resto4Life’s Discussion of the Original N52 Speedpad and the N52te