Resto Druid PvE Raiding

This post is about modding and gearing a newly leveled 80 Resto Druid for PvE Raiding.

Get your mods.

Go to http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/default.aspx

At a min, get Healbot, Decursive, Recount, and Deadly Boss Mods. Those will serve you well.

Now on to gear.

So you've just hit 80. You are now a LvL 1 Raider. Now what? Get geared up, that's what.

Well in one afternoon of farming mats and doing dailies, you can get your overcast crafted set to get you out of any greens or weak blues. It also has resil on it so its ok for bg's and wg if that's your thing. More importantly it's stats are adequate enough that it will get you ready to start your heroics. It's cheap and easy and disposable, yet adequate to get started.

Overcast Set
(a full 8 pieces set:Helm, Shoulders, Chest, Bracers, Gloves, Belt, Leggings, Shoes)
+ 3028 Armor
+299 Spirit
+450 Stamina
+300 Intellect
Improves resilience rating by 300 (350 with the set bonus)
Increases spell power by 527

To buy it, it will cost around 600 gold.
To harvest it, it will take the following mats:
- 84x Heavy Borean Leather ( or 504 Borean Leather)
- 8x Eternal water (or 80x Crystallized Water)
- 5 gp tip per piece optional.

You can get an epic weapon in 10 days from the tournament dailies, but you'll prolly get one faster in heroics.

Ok, heroics. Where do I go and what am I looking for?

I found this concise outline by Sevi from Crushridge server:

"You should be gearing and gemming for Spellpower, Spirit, and Int. Haste is nice but not critical, crit is largely unimportant.

Here's a list of drops from Heroics that are really nice to have.

Helm: Helm of Anomalus. Heroic Nexus, drops from Anomalus.
Neck: Necromancer's Amulet. Heroic Culling of Stratholme, drops from Salraam the Fleshcrafter.
Shoulders: Silent Spectator Shoulderpads, Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle, drops from Svala Sorrowgrave.
Back: Subterranean Waterfall Shroud. Heroic Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom, drops from Jedoga Shadowseeker.
Chest: Insect Vestments. Heroic Azjol-Nerub, drops from Anub'arak.
Wrists: Plague-Infect Bracers. Heroic Culling of Stratholme, Mal'Ganis. You could also get the Handler's Arm Strap from King Dred in Heroic Drak'Tharon Keep.
Hands: Grotto Mist Gloves. Heroic Azjol-Nerub, drops from Hadronox.
Waist: Belt of Blood Removal. Heroic Gundrak, drops from Gal'darah. Alternatively, you can get the Belt of Vivacity from Volkhan in Heroic Halls of Lightning.
Legs: Kilt of the Forgotten One. Heroic Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom, drops from Herald Volazj. Alternatively, you can get the Leggings of the Winged Serpent from The Prophet Tharon'ja in Drak'Tharon Keep.
Boots: Boots of Transformation. Heroic Gundrak, drops from Gal'Darah.
Ring 1: Spectral Seal of the Prophet. Heroic Drak'Tharon Keep, drops from The Prophet Tharon'ja.
Ring 2: Band of Enchanted Growth. Heroic Oculus, drops from Mage-Lord Urom.
Trinket 1: Talisman of Troll Divinity. Heroic Drak'Tharon Keep, drops from The Prophet Tharon'ja.
Trinket 2: Egg of Mortal Essence. 25 Emblems of Heroism.
Weapon: War Mace of Unrequited Love. Heroic Nexus, drops from Keristrasza. Alternatively, you can get the Staff of Draconic Combat from Lay-Guardian Eregos in Heroic Oculus.
Off-Hand: Book of Obscure Remedies. 25 Emblems of Heroism.

Weapon enchant should be +50 spellpower. Chest should either be +8 mp/5 or +8 to all stats. Pick up +18 spirit to bracers and +28 spellpower to gloves. Get the head enchant from Wyrmrest Accord - you'll want to rep them first, then the Kirin Tor in case you don't get Anomalus' headpiece. Get Honored with the Sons of Hodir for the shoulder enchantment.

Edit: Forgot about crafted items. Sadly, there aren't many that are worth getting. The Alchemist BoP trinket is good, and maybe the titansteel healing mace if you're in dire need of a main-hand weapon.

So! There you go. Heroic loot list. That'll put you light on haste/crit and heavy on regeneration, which isn't bad for heroics / entering Naxx.

P.S. I hope you like trolls. You'll be spending a loooooot of time in DTK/Gundrak."

I think this is good advice and will get you in the door of for raids.

I would add that you should be sure to really get on the Sons of Hodir faction line. Unless you are inscription, you must do this chain to exalted for the purple shoulder enchant.
Go here for more info on Hodir:
http://www.wow.com/2008/12/02/wrath-101-the-sons-of-hodir/

Get your Wyrmrest Accord tabard before your 1st instance. You need to wear it during any heroic to get that faction to revered for the head enchant.

You are shooting for
1800+ spellpower,
Alot of int and more spirit
220+ haste (with GotE + shaman and moonkin raid buffs you should get to 1 sec gcd).

You are also looking to benchmark yourself at 2k+ healing per sec at Naxx/Uld.

Also, look up your character at http://be.imba.hu/ to see where you need to improve.

That's it on noobie resto druid raider gearing. Hope it helps!
 
Thoughts on Ulduar Heal rotations:

"My most used spells vary a great deal on what the fight is. Hodir? WG/Lifebloom. Razorscale? Rejuv. Council? Regrowth. (This is the only fight where I'm using a lot of Regrowth - the HPS is great but it destroys my mana.) Deconstructor? Nourish. Ulduar is a lot more dynamic than Naxx was for druid healing.

I cast rejuvs on pretty much everyone who might take damage, all the time. I run with the Idol of Awakening, which makes Rejuv super cheap. I also roll hots on the tanks whenever I can, to help out the tank healers.

If you're getting heal sniped, consider using more Nourish - I'm finding Ulduar doesn't have the luxury of letting all your hots tick. WG and Rejuv won't keep people up when they're taking spike damage - tantrums, hot pocket, fisted (heh heh Kologarn.) Even under normal conditions, either people risk taking a second giant damage spike and die, or your other raid healers see that they're still low and drop more heals. This is frustrating on the meters, and wastes mana and time. The Nourish glyph is really a must have for Ulduar. You WILL need this spell. With hots rolling, mine crits pretty regularly for 8-10K, sometimes a lot higher, and I'm in T7.25 still, no T8. It's like our own little Flash of Light."

The problem with rejuv is that you have to keep it rolling to be effective. Which means for 10 mans, its not that big of a deal. add 15 more ppl and that's alot of rejuvs to roll.
 
I like this thread!

I am partial to grid (including the druid dot specific modules) over healbot, but definitely second the other addons.

There's a pretty excellent level 80 gear guide by slot here. Lots of cloth mixed in, though, so purists (like me) need to filter that out.
http://www.wow.com/2009/01/06/shifting-perspectives-gearing-your-restoration-druid-at-80/
A lot of that is redundant with what Omega posted below.

I'd argue that there are some very good crafted pieces: Wispcloak (back / tailoring), Earthgiving Legguards (pants / LW), Earthgiving boots (boots / LW), and Titanium Spellshock ring (finger / JC). Additionally, an expensive but effective weapon combo is the Titansteel Guardian (mainhand / BS) / Faces of Doom combo (offhand / inscription).

Kind of a more general druid thing: the best gear evaluation toon I've found is to use pawn, which allows you to set up custom weightings. And then I use the weightings from WoWhead to give me a cat/bear/resto/balance value. While in some cases there are more subtle spellpower vs. mana vs. crit vs. haste tradeoffs can't be easily quantified, this lets you get a "one composite value per spec" approach which is great for quick eyeballing, especially in 5-mans.
 
-Official Proclamation!-
As the Resto Class Leader I deem This thread good!
-lol- On a serious note... Lots of good stuff in here! Alot of it i went over about rotations last time someone needed help but yeah. For Ulduar healing it requires alot of quick healing so dont be supprised if nourish is doing 30% of your healing whether in 10 or 25 man.For Glyphs- Glyph of Nourish and Glyph of Swiftmend are a MUST for raids. Also in Ulduar your are gonna be using your wild growth Cd whenever its up especially in 25 man.
-Addons- For addons obviously Deadly Boss Mods is a must but Also grid is amazing too. It works great and its very easy to use. Curse.com can help you with that.
-Any other druids with questions, of comments are free to post here-!!
 
Also note the changes they did to mp5, spirit based regen, and the innervate change
With this change i have found it to give roughly 40% of your total mana back depending on what it is... Using it at the right time becomes key as using it too soon is obviously a waste or too late and you run out of mana. A 3 min cd gives you room to play around a bit with it so i would suggest testing around with it seeing what works for you.
-Special thanks to Omegajet for the very...long and informative post-
 
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Yeah, the 3 min innervate creates an interesting dynamic. Before, I think you could get away with using it when you needed it ... whenever that might be. Now, to get maximum use, you'd want to hit it early, even if your usage is stable, just to make sure the spell's available later on in the fight. So overall, it requires more active management for sure.

Do you guys use decursive? Generally, I've gotten away without it by tailoring grid just right. But for awhile I did use decursive and found that ... while I cannot stand mousey healing ala clique, I really liked the left-button right-button simplicity offered by decursive. So I'm thinking that perhaps I should get it back in the mix.
 
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INNERVATE: So... Totc was interesting for me... I found out your REALLY need to work on your innervate timing if you want to get full use of it. Not so much as using it too soon but using it too late, boss fights which last a long time and require alot of healing i found if i use it faster i find that its cd is up when i need it whereas when i used it late...It wasnt up when i really needed. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!
 
Interesting. Seems like progression might be:

Burn mana to ~50%
Innervate
If emergency during next 3 minutes, pop a mana pot
Otherwise wait until innervate back up, then innervate again
 
For some fights i've been poping it sooner maybe around 65% mana. It would put me back up to around full and then the CD wouldnt seem like so long i i did get low. then i have pots for backup.
 
Scrap all the gear stuff now and just:

1. Farm ToC Reg and H ToC. Do instances for conquest and triumph badges.

2. Go for gear score for the most part.

3. Get the best enchants.

4. Make every gem +23 spell power gem (or the jc spellpower class gem).

5. Profit.
 
You need to look at and evaluate the healing addon Vuhdo for us please. It seems to combine many of the features you spoke of into one tool. As a healer on his way up (I hope) I would like to see several of you use this for a few raids.

There are some great words of wisdom here by guys who know their subject well! I helps!
 
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