With the addition of the Shattered Sun Dailies I find myself wanting for a little more fire power while soloing. Previously I was sporting a full Restoration 0/0/61 build, as the second Tree in the raid I often found myself with the weird healing assignments, the ones that are not conducive to all out HoT healing, so the buff to my Healing Touch and Tranquility were actually doing me some good.

Recently the guilds lead (golden boy perfect attendance) resto druid has been busy with real life stuff and a broken computer so I have had the pleasure of being the “geared” Tree and as such have spent more of my time in a LB, LB, LB, LB, etc. cast sequence. I figure that since I’m HoTing all the time may as well spread some points over on to the Balance Tab.

In the Restoration Tab I took all the Talents that would

1. Increase the effectiveness of my Three Heal over Time Spells (Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, & Regrowth)
2. Increase my Over all Healing Spell Effectiveness
3. Add functionality to HoT healing
4. Preserve my Emergency Button

45 points in Restoration leaves me with 16 Points in hand. Looking at the Balance Talents I wanted to take talents that would make soloing a bit easier in my +Damage Gear and would in some way benefit my raiding.

In the first Tier I took Starlight Wrath because I don’t like the idea of spending 5 points on an ability I can only use once per fight.

By grabbing control of Nature in the second Tier I essentially give myself the same out, and I can reapply if Roots should break early. Seeing as I shortened the cast time of Wrath and Starfire Focused Starlight was an obvious choice. At the end of long single tank boss fights the DPS can start to slow down (a dead mage does no damage) and I find myself throwing the occasional Moonfire to do my small part to help eek out that last 3%, and since I’ve set myself up to Root and Burn Mobs the added damage to my DoTs is always a good idea.

This brings me to the third tier. Like Phaelia I am a big fan of Thorns. I have always kept Thorns up on Tanks and Pets as a way for them to generate a bit more aggro and to squeeze in a little damage too. Who knows how many 1% wipes could have been turned into wins with the addition of just that little bit of damage… For the soloing side I also like the synergy of Brambles and Force of Nature. With the two I can Root the mob down and do a little more damage while they sit there stewing.

Finally in the Balance Tree I picked Insect Swarm. Talking to a few Boomkins I learned that many of them skip this talent all together because adding another Instant Cast and Global Cool Down to their spell rotation seriously gimps their DPS. Since healing is not their job they don’t consider the benefit of the 2% chance to miss or they figure that the tanks are all set without it. Healing is my job and I know what a deal an additional 2% to miss is, and one the soling end I know I can throw three DoTs (Moonfire, Insect Swarm, and Entangling Roots) onto a mob and have them half dead before I even start spamming Wrath. I also like that the HoTs slow the casting speed of all those nasty ranged attack mobs who still get me while they are rooted.

With this new spec I find the following cast sequence works very well:

• Starfire
• Entangling Roots
• Moonfire
• Insect Swarm
• Wrath
• Wrath
• Wrath

Most of the time I finish the mob off shortly after Moonfire expires so I don’t worry about reapplying my HoTs. I have found that if I cast Moonfire right on top of my Entangling Roots it seems to break the root effect less often. If roots breaks before the second Wrath I reapply it for melee mobs and just blast through for ranged.

Related Links

Talent Calculator of this build.
Phaelia’s discussion of Thorns and the benefits Insect Swarm

This week I think I found the balance of Real Life and WoW that works for me. Due to a limited number of Raid Spots I did not raid this week, I could have, don’t get me wrong. I spent only three nights out of the past seven at the computer. Having four nights free gave me time to spend with my wife. We took a two long rides together on her new snowmobile, spent a night with her family and last night, being Valentines Day, we spent the evening hanging out together without so much as a radio on. I think that there have had so much free time that it has started to annoy Mandy. By now she’s probably wishing for more “ME” time.

Since I haven’t been raiding I spent some time leveling a Mage with a few Real Life Friends. Back when I started playing WoW I played almost exclusively with people I knew in Real Life. The two people who got me into WoW and I created a guild called Benevolent Savages. BS was a mature social guild, we worked together through levels 1-60 playing casually, running instances, and doing teh peeveepee. We picked up the occasional additional player when they showed themselves not to be complete asshats. We even grew to a point where we were considering trying to raid End-Game content. It never worked out for a number of reasons mostly I think it was time. Pre-BC raiding was a very time consuming affair and my friends were truly casual players unwilling to set or keep any type of playing schedule. Eventually, my desire to see end-game content drove me to look for a raiding guild and ultimately I made the difficult decision to leave. Benevolent Savages is all but dead now. People still log on and play from time to time and I still keep all of my alts there, but the life is gone the Guild Chat is silent. It has been a long time since I played with RLers and I forgot how much I miss the ease of camaraderie and the fun of playing with people who you care about. What I miss the most though is probably the lifestyle, sign on anytime day or night, have friends online, play together or just shoot the shit while questing, farming, or whatever. If there were enough people online we’d put an instance run together. If you had to go mid-way through you apologized and left, no problem.

This week for the first time in recent memory I have not let myself feel pressured to be signed in, I played when I wanted to, I’ve spent time with the people I wanted to and have been in bed before 12:30 most every night. It has been nice. I’m the best rested, least stressed I have been in a long time. I’ll probably go back into raiding next week, I am a loot whore after all and besides “Who needs sleep?” but I’ll try to remember the lesson I learned this week maybe take a night off from time to time.