Guide

Restoration druids are the mobile healers (healing on the move), next to Holy priests. We focus our healing tactics in active and preemptive situations. An active fight has recurring damage as preemptive fights have anticipated damage. You either keep hot uptime and/or predict incoming damage, then healing when and where needed, while keeping a steady flow of hots on your tank(s).

Table of Contents

I. Statistics
II. Spells, Specs, and Glyphs
III. Gems, Enchants, Consumables, and Professions
IV. Addons, Keybinds, And Macros * Coming Soon *
V. Closing Credits and Other * Coming Soon *

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Statistics

Stat numbers taken from EJ forums. Credit to them.

Bonus Healing: Spellpower

Spellpower is the stat that increases how low or big your Bonus Healing will be. Obviously the more Spellpower you have (ilevel gear), the more your hots and burst heals increase your hps.

Talents: [Genesis], [Master Shapeshifter], [Improved Rejuvenation], [Gift of Nature], [Empowered Touch], and [Improved Tree of Life]. They all may not increase your Spellpower, but increase the healing to specific spells.

Shaman: [Flametongue Totem] or [Totem of Wrath]. *They do not stack.*

Warlock: [Demonic Pact]. *Does not stack with totems.*

Healing received: [Tree of Life Aura] or [Improved Devotion Aura]. *They do not stack or with other trees' auras.*

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Mana Regeneration: Spirit, Intellect, and Mp5

Spirit (with Intellect contributing and appropriate level) will increase your Mana Regen. Spirit will also increase your Spellpower slightly when in Tree of Life by 5% 1/3, 10% 2/3, and 15% 3/3 (you must have Improved Tree of Life talented). 1 Spirit increases Spellpower by 0.15. Example: 50 Spirit = 7.5 Spellpower (usually rounded).

Talents: [Living Spirit] and [Improved Mark of the Wild].

Druid: [Mark of the Wild] or [Gift of the Wild].

Paladin: [Blessing of Kings] or [Greater Blessing of Kings].

Priest: [Divine Spirit] or [Prayer of Spirit].

Other - Basic Campfire: [Cozy Fire].

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Intellect increases your Mana Regen, Mana Pool, and Critical. 1 Intellect = 15.3 Mana and 0.00612 Crit. Intellect also scales with [Replenishment] (1% of their maximum mana every 5 second for 15 seconds or 3% for 15 seconds).

Talents: [Living Spirit] and [Improved Mark of the Wild].

Druid: [Mark of the Wild] or [Gift of the Wild].

Mage: [Arcane Intellect] or [Arcane Brilliance].

Paladin: [Blessing of Kings] or [Greater Blessing of Kings].

** [Fel Intelligence] will increase Intellect and Spirit, but doesn't stack with Mage or Priest buffs. **

[Replenishment] - Classes and Abilities [Paladin - Judgements of the Wise], [Priest - Vampiric Touch], [Hunter - Hunting Party], [Warlock - Improved Soul Leech], or [Mage - Enduring Winter].

Regeneration from Spirit/Intellect When increasing your Mana Regen, this is the way to go. 1 Spirit will not increase your Mana Regen. Your Mana Regen will increase with how much Spirit and Intellect you have with talents, spells/raid buffs, gear/gems, and consumables.

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Mp5 is another way to increase your Mana Regen (it doesn't do anything else, except increase your Mana Regen). Mp5 isn't a bad stat and you may have a piece of gear (via neck and/or ring[s]) with some on it, but it should be the last stat to think about. Not many Leather pieces provide direct Mp5 now, as it did in the Burning Crusade. Many trinkets provide

Talent: [Intensity].

Druid: [Innervate].

Paladin: [Blessing of Wisdom] or [Greater Blessing of Wisdom]. If you are tree punching a boss, you can gain mana back from [Judgement of Wisdom].

Priest: [Hymn of Hope].

Shaman: [Mana Spring Totem] and [Mana Tide Totem].

** MS Totem or Greater/Blessing of Wisdom do not stack like they use to. **

Spell Haste

32.79 Haste Rating gives 1% Haste at level 80.

Global Cool Down or GCD starts at 1.5 without talents, raid buffs, or gear. It's our job to get it to 1.0 second and it can't go below that. I want to say that it's our butter, where as Spellpower is the bread. With having your gcd capped, you increase your healing and raid healing output. You're able to cast more spells at 1.0 vs 1.5. Lag and FPS will also have a toll.

[Gift of the Earthmother]: 10% 5/5 Spell Haste to all spells and 10% 5/5 Spell Haste to Lifebloom. (2% 1/5, 2/5 4%, 6% 3/5, 8% 4/5, 10% 5/5)

[Celestial Focus]: 3% 3/3 Spell Haste. (1% 1/3, 2% 2/3, 3% 3/3)

[Wrath of Air Totem]: 5% Spell Haste. *Does not stack with other Wrath totems.*

[Swift Retribution]/[Improved Moonkin]: 3% Haste. *They do not stack.*

Old GCD Requirements (before patch 3.3): 359 (without CF)

New GCD Requirements (after patch 3.3): 856 (without CF)
New GCD Requirements (after patch 3.3): 735 (with CF)

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Direct Heals Spell Haste will also effect your direct spells casting speed. Talents like, [Nature's Grace] or [Power Infusion] do this. There is [Bloodlust] or [Heroism] as well. They can drop your gcd below 1 second.

** [Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation] is also effected by how much Spell Haste/Haste Rating you have. The more you have, the more you will see Rejuvenation turning into Lifebloom, without the 3x stacks or bloom.**

Spell Critical

45.9 Critical Strike gives 1% to Critical at level 80. Critical is an amazing stat, but not something I would stack unless necessary. Intellect will increase your Critical.

Crit procs these: [T94P], [Living Seed], and [Nature's Grace].

Chance to Crit with these spells: Nourish, Regrowth, Healing, Swiftmend, and Lifebloom's Bloom.

Talents: [Nature's Majesty], [Nature's Bounty], and [Natural Perfection].

Crit provided from other classes: [Elemental Oath] or [Moonkin Aura]. *They do not stack.*

Stat Foundation

With T94P - Haste Cap > Spellpower/Regen > Crit
No T94P - Haste Cap > Spellpower/Regen > Haste

** The reason I didn't list Stamina is because I let this stat balance around talents, raid buffs, and whatever is on gear. I will never gem for it. There are a few enchants that WILL provide it. It's good because it's your life/health, but really isn't necessary to actually stack it. **

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Spells, Specs, and Glyphs

Healing Spells

[Rejuvenation] and [Wild Growth] (5:1 ratio) You will use these to cushion the raid, while others use effective burst heals to top the raid off. You can get off five Rejuvenations every time Wild Growth is on cool down. Maybe six? These will also be your top spells on your foundation.

[Nourish] is our "Flash Heal." There will sometimes be outbursts when you cast this to top off 2-3 or more people (Nature's Grace plays an effect here). I see this as a method. Also, if Regrowth (and Rejuvenation) are applied to your tank(s) at all times and they dip, it's good to cast Nourish for a quick topping. This most likely will show up 3rd on your foundation.

[Regrowth] is used for the long hot and not much of the burst heal. I like to keep this on my tanks 86% of the time and Rejuvenation 14%. I don't use it for anything else except the tank(s). If you have Living Seed talent, it should be up most of the time because of the 25% Crit to Regrowth/Nourish from Nature's Bounty (raid buffs and gear apply 25%+ more Crit).

[Swiftmend] is our *emergency* instant burst heal (which can Crit). Quick topping of a tank or raid member.

[Nature's Swiftness] + [Healing Touch] are used together. NS allows a direct heal (HT, Nourish, or Regrowth) to be an instant burst heal (which can Crit). NS doesn't Crit, but the actually heal being used with NS. HT is best suited with NS because it has the highest chance to crit a 20k. Side note, Healing Touch shouldn't be used for anything else. Except for heroic Anub when using an HT spec.

[Lifebloom] Sadly, LB isn't our bread and butter like it was before the change. It can still be used if you allow it to bloom (gain half mana back). I'll use it on the main tank before a pull - that's it.

[Tranquility] I wasn't going to post about this because I only use it on one fight. But it does have it's importance: keeping YOUR group alive. This does not effect the whole raid.

Other Spells

[Tree of Life Form] is the form we use to heal in 97% of the time. Once in ToL, an aura is applied to the raid that increases received healing. The aura does not stack with [Improved Devotion Aura] or other trees' auras.

[Mark of the Wild], [Gift of the Wild], and [Thorns] are your standard buffs other than the aura you apply to the healers while in Tree of Life. Thorns is used for the tanks and/or fights where you need damage to kill some type of mob(s).

[Innervate], [Rebirth], and [Revive] You know the obvious of these spells.

[Barkskin] and [Dash] I use these all the time for survivability. Barkskin for reducing damage impact and Dash to kite the purser.

[Abolish Poison] or [Remove Curse] At times you'll have to use these spells to cleanse poisons or curses. Fights like Maexxna, Noth, Yogg, Faction Champs, and Deathwhisper for example. I believe Cata is bringing us a cleanse ability (fml)?

[Faerie Fire] You'll use this if you're the only druid, and FF isn't being put up.

[Wrath] (maybe [Starfire]) and [Moonfire] Fights where you'll need to dps because there is no healing or you have to kill something, that no one else can't. Fights like XT2 or Leotheras for example.

[Nature's Grasp] and [Entangling Roots] *may* be used somewhere in an instance to root a mob. Kinda like the scouts in Zul'Aman back in BC.

Specs And Glyphs

I wont go into much detail about each talent, as you can read the talent tooltip. However below are listed specs for 98% of encounters and 2% of major encounters.

Patch 3.3 - CF Spec Your main priority is getting your gcd capped. CF gives you 3% = 98.37 Spell Haste.

* Click This For The Spec *

Patch 3.3 - Drop CF For Other Talents When you reach your gcd cap, CF will play a small role, but not enough to override other talents you'll need. This is the current spec I'm using. I have no need for Nature's Grace because I'm not casting my direct heals at a rapid pace (think tank healing or Val encounter in ICC).

* Click This For The Spec *

Heroic Anub - HT Spec Before patch 3.3 went live, many druids were working on the Anub'arak encounter in ToGC. A specific spec was required to keep up with Penetrating Cold damage. A Healing Touch spec came into play. Additional talents were dropped and gained. You can see Master Shapeshifter was dropped because with every druid who had it, 2% or 4% was a percentage that would increase Anub'arak's healing in phase 3.

* Click This For The Spec *

Valithria Spec You want to increase your healing output much as possible. A Nourish + with hot priority spec or a well organized direct healing spec. Tree Bark Jacket and Restokin for more information on healing Val or Nourish/Direct Target specs.

Major Glyphs You'll do a lot of glyph of swapping while raiding. Try to keep stacks of whichever glyphs you think you'll use the most.

[Glyph of Swiftmend] is used in every spec.

[Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation] and [Glyph of Rejuvenation] are both important and will be used on certain boss encounters (or working together). Debate between normal and hard modes, on where you think it would be suitable to use these.

Note: Rapid Rejuvenation will still do the same amount of hps, but quicker topping of raid members' health. What you truly are losing out on is time. 2:1 ratio.

[Glyph of Wild Growth] Having a sixth target is important, but may be outweighed by other glyphs.

[Glyph of Nourish] is used if committing to a direct target. Perfect in a tank healing build.

[Glyph of Healing Touch] is used in a HT spec, for healing PM targets on heroic Anub or something close to it. It's solid when leveling (healing low level instances).

Others you may use: [Glyph of Rebirth], [Glyph of Innervate], [Glyph of Regrowth], and [Glyph of Lifebloom].

Minor Glyphs Below are the glyphs you should have as minors. Screw the increased time to Thorns and improved swim speed to Aquatic Form.

[Glyph of Dash], [Glyph of Unburden Rebirth], and [Glyph of the Wild].

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Gems, Enchants, Consumables, and Professions

Gems

I'll only be listing level 80 epic gems. You should be min/maxing your character to the fullest. I can understand if currency is tight, then downgrade. But get to farming! It's your personal preference on what you want to gem for your character.

Red Sockets: [Runed Cardinal Ruby].

Yellow Sockets: [Reckless Ametrine], [Quick King's Amber], and/or [Luminous Ametrine].

Blue Sockets: [Purified Dreadstone].

Meta Sockets: [Ember Skyflare Diamond] or [Insightful Earthsiege Diamond]. If you plan to socket Insightful, use one [Nightmare Tear] to clear the requirements.

Blacksmithing Sockets (bracers and gloves)/[Eternal Belt Buckle]: Socket any gem color/type into these/this. You need to be a Blacksmith to use the bracers and gloves sockets. The belt buckle can be bought via auction house or have a Blacksmith craft it.

Dragon's Eye (can only use three of them): [Runed Dragon's Eye] and/or [Quick Dragon's Eye]. You need to be a Jewelcrafter.

** Many ask me why I gem full [Runed Cardinal Ruby] and my reason is I'm so far in the game's content that:
A) I want to increase my hots'/healing output.
B) Getting gcd capped is easily tamable. "
C) Regen is never an issue. **

Enchants

Again I'll only post top enchants, nor am I posting the shoulder enchants from Inscription. You should be working on/exalted with Hodir and I have other options for professions for you.

Head: [Arcanum of Burning Mysteries] or [Arcanum of Blissful Mending].

Shoulders: [Arcanum of Burning Mysteries] or [Arcanum of Blissful Mending].

Cape: [Greater Speed].

Chest: [Powerful Stats].

Bracers: [Superior Spellpower].

Hands: [Exceptional Spellpower].

Legs: [Brilliant Spellthread].

Feet: [Tuskarr's Vitality] or [Greater Spirit].

Weapon (mace or dagger): [Mighty Spellpower]. Weapon (staff): [Greater Spellpower].

Both Rings: You need to be an Enchanter to enchant your rings. Use [Greater Spellpower] on both rings.

Consumables

Keep a good amount of currency, so that you can keep stocked on consumables and glyphs. Listed below are top consumables. For example, I'm only listing Fish Feast rather than a Great Feast.

Food: [Fish Feast], [Firecracker Salmon], or [Tender Shoveltusk Steak] Direct Spellpower increase.

[Spicy Fried Herring] or [Mighty Rhino Dogs] Direct Mp5 increase.

[Imperial Manta Steak] or [Spicy Blue Nettlefish] If you need a Haste or Crit boost.

[Sagefish Delight] I haven't checked on this since the Burning Crusade. It should still stack with regular buff foods. It's nice to keep these around for an extra effect.

[Golden Fish Sticks], [Poached Bluefish], or [Blackened Basilisk] If you want solid Spellpower, but also slight Mana Regen increase + slight Spellpower. I usually keep a stack or two of Golden Fish Sticks on me.

[Cuttlesteak] Gain Spellpower and Mana Regen, but also Stamina vs [Golden Fish Sticks].

Drinks: I'll usually grab mage food/water from the table, but I also keep [Star's Sorrow] on me. Star's Sorrow is pretty cheap compared to other water or liquid brands. 1g/12 honor for 20x.

Reagents: Keep a bag full of [Wild Spineleaf] for your Wild buff.

Potions: [Crazy Alchemist's Potion] (if an Alchemist) and/or [Runic Mana Potion]. There is also potions that restore health, but I usually have hots on myself. Other: [Swiftness Potion], [Potion of Wild Magic], and/or [Potion of Speed].

Flasks:: Keep stacks of [Flask of the Frost Wyrm] and [Flask of Pure Mojo] on you. You can also use [Flask of Distilled Wisdom]. I'm not going into much detail about Elixirs because I don't care for them. There are some that you may use (stat + regen or stat + spellpower increase). Whatever floats your boat.

Personal Note: Try to keep stacks of gems, enchant scrolls, glyphs, and whatever else that wasn't listed in your bags.

Professions

I wont go into much detail about every profession. I will say this, keep TWO primary professions on you (screw the gathering professions).

Alchemist: I believe this is one of the best professions for us in a PvE content. You are able to create your own flasks/potions, extra time for flasks, and gain 46 Spellpower.

Jewelcrafting: Being able to cut your own gems and usage of Dragon's Eye. If my calculations are correct, you gain 48 Spellpower compared to 46 Spellpower from say, Inscription/Leatherworking/Blacksmith/Enchanting.

Cooking (+ Fishing): Being able to provide your raid or yourself food.

First AID: You never know when you will need this.

Edit this article: Patch 3.3 - PvE Restoration Druid Guide

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Audience

I intend this to be an end-all Restoration Druid guide. As such it will be more focused toward a beginning Druid, and more detailed then an advanced Druid might want to read though. But you might get an idea or two, or might be able to give some valuable feedback yourself.

Guide

CONTENTS

Healing is not for the Faint of Heart

Healing is by far the most demanding role, and takes the most skill to really master in my opinion. I’ve been 3 different caster dps classes, a Tank, and a melee dps, and healing is unique in that instead of going through a set rotation on a set target(or priority rotation), I am literally deciding on a gcd to gcd basis, which spell on which target will be the most beneficial.

You need uber fast reflexes to save people, often from their own stupidity.

Most importantly, you need to do all that while maintaining flawless situational awareness. Because if you die, the raid is likely to die.

Some Pro tips:

In most cases, you should use every single gcd in the duration of an encounter. I like to practice this even in five mans, and see how high I can ramp up the over heals. And it’s the best way to get a handle on how much regen you need. (More on that in the gear section.)

Always know each boss fight before you ever go in. ESPECIALLY for a resto druid this is important because one difference between a mediocre druid, and an amazing resto druid is the ability to predict who is going to take damage and have hots ticking in advance.

Always carry all useful glyphs on you. Glyphs are CHEAP, they usually cost 3g each for the mats, so if you’re not a scribe, find one, give them the mats, and have them make you a full stack each of the glyphs and tip them well for their time. Some glyphs are completely useless for certain fights, but can make a significant difference in others, so if you're not switching them when required your gimping yourself.

Always keep hots on the tanks. Worst case scenario if they are taking heavy damage, and especially if there’s any moving the tank healers have to do, you keep full hots on them at all times. Regrowth, Rejuv, and 3 stacks of Lifebloom. You don’t let the lifeblooms, bloom in that case unless you’re moving and the tank needs it. Having all those hots ticking in between the big holy lights can make the difference, and that bloom for in case your cc’d or moving, in addition to a Swiftmend on the run makes resto druids awesome for that pinch healing. For a little less intensive tank healing keep your regrowth and rejuv up and slow stack the lifeblooms. Use one lifebloom, 7-9 seconds later stack a second, then 7-9 seconds later stack a third, then let it bloom and repeat. MUCH easier on your mana. In most farm content keeping either a Rejuv or Regrowth on the tank so you can Swiftmend if needed is sufficient.

Always use Innervate the first time at 50-70% mana (depending on how much mana you have) and then again every time its up, (assuming your below 50-70% of course).

In a heavy raid damage scenario all you do is roll 5 Rejuvs, 1 Wild Growth, rinse &
repeat. Watch for a good chance to use Swiftmend every time it’s off cd.

When it’s necessary to spot heal;
• If speed is not a pressing concern (imminent death in less than 1.5 seconds) and the target has no hot, use Regrowth
• If imminent death looms, use Nourish
• If the target has the Regrowth or Rejuv effect, and Swiftmend is up, use it. (most cases)
• If the target has any hot on them, and Swiftmend is NOT up, use Nourish.

*Note. In most cases, in my opinion reactive spot healing is not our strength, we should be predicting damage, and rolling hots. So to appeal to our strengths more appropriately, I do most of my spot healing with Regrowth. With Nature’s grace up, it’s only 0.14 above the gcd cap for me. If 0.14-0.4 of a second is likely to make or break the fight, then spec into Naturalist, and use the Healing touch glyph. The only time I’ve found that necessary is ToGC 25 Anub.

About overhealing. It doesn't matter. At all. I don't care if your the highest in overhealing, or the lowest. If you don't oom, you can't overheal too much. It can be useful to look at merely to calculate your total raw healing, especially on 5x1 fights to see how tight your keeping your rotation. Just add the total effective healing for that encounter, with the total overhealing for the same encounter, and divide by the number of seconds in combat. Or use world of logs ;)

Even the Effective Healing Meter, while useful doesn't mean everything. Which is most useful in say ToGC Twins: A Resto Druid with 13k hps, or Resto Shaman with 8k hps? I'd put them as equal, most of the Druids healing is small ticks on people who are over 75% hp and not in danger of dieing, while the Shamans healing is a smart cast hitting the people most likely to die (maybe they ate an orb). Without the Druids massive raw healing a lot more people would be in danger of dieing, and without the Shamans smart heals more people likely would die.

Restoration Spell and Glyph Breakdown

REJUVENATION

This is our bread and butter. It’s my #1 heal in at least 95% of fights. It scales with our spell power better than anything else and has the second highest hpct, as well as amazing mana efficiency.

In a nutshell, the more Rejuvs you have ticking on more people, the better. A main strength of the Resto Druid is the ability to heal while moving, so don’t ever stop spamming those hots. Knowing the fight is key, if like in a lot of fights the melee take the most damage, make sure they have a rejuv at all times. Another reason (albiet minor) to prioritize melee is they get the most benefit dps wise from revitalize.

Knowing when, and when not to use the 2 different Rejuv glyphs is important. Since we use a lot of haste now, and rejuv scales sooo well with our spellpower, and now crit, the Rapid Rejuvenation glyph is amazing…. for some fights. And utterly useless, even detrimental in others. Basically the smaller the spread you need for your Rejuv the better this glyph is. In any 5 man, or 10 man, it’s a no brainer. Use it. In 25’s you want to use it in fights where less people, will be taking more damage. As in maybe the melee will be taking the only reliable damage, and there are only 7-10 so it’s a great chance for RR. Saurfang is the best example of a RR fight, your only hitting people who get Blood Boil, Mark of the Fallen Champion, and tanks with your rejuv so having it hasted is essential. However in aura constant damage fights it is useless, to even detrimental, because it’s the same hpct glyphed, but it lessens the spread of how many people you can have rejuv on, and for more minor damage the glyph will put a much higher % of your healing into overhealing.

Glyph of Rejuvenation increases healing received from rejuv by 50%, under 50% health. Obviously this is by far the best glyph… if your raid spends much time under 50%. In actual use I find it rarely surpasses 1% of my healing. However in especially difficult encounters, and progression encounters it can be very beneficial. Don’t forget in a strict 5x1 fight, the only 2 glyphs you really need are WG and SM, so it doesn’t cost much to have it. Unless its progression, I’ll keep my Nourish glyph.

Basically, whenever there isn’t a compelling reason to cast any other spell, your filler is Rejuv, cast it on whoever you think is most likely to take dmg, but don’t stress on it, USE IT, you want to use every single gcd, it’s better to mindlessly Rejuv the whole raid start to finish then stop to think about who should be next outside of your gcd.

WILD GROWTH

Our highest hpct spell. IF there are 3 or more people who took damage, are taking damage, or are likely to take damage within the next 1-2 seconds within 15 yards, you use it. Every time it’s up. A good way to make sure you are using it is the 5x1 healing strat. You do this on any heavy raid damage fight, especially aura type constant damage. (Think Toc Twins, Sapphiron, Sindragosa etc) Its simply 5 rejuvs, 1 WG, 5 rejuvs, 1 WG. I’ll actually count in my head 1-5, then hit WG. Plan ahead who your going to cast it on. Melee gets 90% of mine because:

A. They are clumped up by nature.
B. Once again they benefit the most from revitalize.
C. And finally because they are the most likely to take damage.

Just make sure you don’t accidentally cast it on someone who’s off by themselves. Situational awareness is key, if you hit the one melee who happens to be running away with Legion Flames… you just failed.

The Wild Growth glyph makes it effect a 6th target. And since in a 5x1 fight your WG is 30-40% of your healing that’s rather huge. IF it’s going to hit a 6th target. Which makes it utterly useless in 5 mans, and largely useless in 10 mans. If a fight requires more spot healing and doesn’t have much raid damage this is the first glyph to go.

SWIFTMEND

My favorite spell ;) It’s our lifesaver. In most cases every time it’s off cooldown, I’ll be watching for any target I have hotted to drop to 50% or lower so less of it goes to overhealing and hit them. This is where fast reflexes pay off. Since your likely to have half the raid hotted at any given time in a 25, or an entire 10, you can INSTANTLY heal a spike. The less time anyone spends below 100%, the better. Some might call it heal sniping, but the faster people get healed, the less chance of them getting rng’d to death. You can use an addon like Power Auras, or have it in a key place so you can watch its cooldown.

The exception would be situations where you might want to save it for a key moment. If a fight requires movement you want to keep hots on the tanks at all times (should be doing that anyway) and be ready to wiftmend them if the tank healers are busy moving and can’t heal. Rather then just use it off cooldown, on difficult fights you may want to prioritize key people for your Swiftmends. Like in Faction Champions anyone who’s tasked with cc should have a hot at all times, and save your swiftmends for them, healers, or yourself.

The Swiftmend glyph is the one glyph I almost never swap out. Think of it as a free Rejuvenation every 15 seconds.

REGROWTH & NOURISH

At one time our main spell was Regrowth back when it alone had +50% crit. Having an initial good heal, and an extra long swiftmendable hot is excellent. If you just read the tooltips you might assume spamming regrowth instead of rejuvenation would be higher hps, but in fact, it doesn’t scale as well with your spell power, and the hot can’t crit.

However if the initial heal isn’t wasted, and there is constant damage so the hot does its job, it is right behind Rejuv. Without the t10 or t9 4pc bonus’s, with none of either Rejuv or Regrowth going into overheals the Regrowth would win. My Rejuv (no buffs) tics for 2,721, and averages an easy 1 crit per so 2,721x5+4,082= 17687. Regrowth’s initial heal is 5,500ish, and crits for 8,250 (easy 50% crit rate with talents). The hot tics for 1,414 x9 = 12,726 + 5500 = 18,226 or + 8,250 = 20,976.

So even on an aura type 5x1 fight, don’t be afraid to switch to Regrowths if people are below 60% hp. It will usually be less slightly less hps in comparison due to scaling raid buffed (especially with the sp from a Demo Lock), and of course Regrowth is slower then Rejuv, and more expensive mana wise, but it’s definitely worthwhile as a spot heal.

While both nourish and regrowth now get the +25% crit, only nourish gets the +20% bonus from your spell power with Empowered Touch. Plus with the glyph Nourish will scale with hots much better, making it the primary spam heal. Nourish is obviously much faster as a spot heal as well, but you’ll find once your haste capped Regrowth is better on a target with no hots, because with nature’s grace up its nearly as fast as Nourish (about 1.14 cast, while the nourish dips below the gcd at .85ish) Plus the Regrowth leaves a 27 second hot that heals in its own right, plus being swiftmendable. As well as buffing your Nourish, for any subsequent spot heals.

To reiterate the spot heal rules I mentioned earlier;
• If the target has no hot, use Regrowth
• If the target has the Regrowth or Rejuv effect, and Swiftmend is up, use it. (most cases)
• If the target has any hot on them, and Swiftmend is NOT up, use Nourish.

A single target rotation is Regrowth/Rejuvenation/Lifebloom/spam Nourish, slow stack Lifeblooms and let them bloom, and keep up Regrowth and Rejuv as they fall off.

The Regrowth glyph buffs it by 20% (including the hot part) if there is a regrowth effect still on the target. It was the best second tank healing glyph, but imo the Rapid Rejuvenation glyph is better now. If you glyphed for both Regrowth and Nourish and were to heal the same target that has a Regrowth effect on it, you might think they’d be comparable, but the nourish scales better with empowered touch, and is faster so it wins. I’ve considered using this glyph, and spamming Regrowth instead of Rejuv, it would be higher hps IF the initial heal wasn’t wasted, which if your spamming it through the raid it would be 80% of the time. Plus it would require gearing for more regen as it’s so much more expensive.

Any fight that won’t be pure 5x1 and will have a fair amount of spot healing, and definitely in 10 and 5 mans where I’ll be doing more tank heals, I’ll have the Nourish glyph. It buffs the Nourish by 6% per hot on the target (Don’t forget it has a base +20% for the first hot).

LIFEBLOOM

Lifebloom is without a doubt, our lowest hpct hot and pretty much sucks if you don’t use it properly. Math incoming ;)

A single Lifebloom in my current gear, without buffs tics for 531 which x 9 = 4,779. The bloom hits for 3,346. For a total heal of 8,125 per gcd… which is crap. My Rejuv is 2700 a tic and is guaranteed to crit at least once for a total of about 17,500 in one gcd (no buffs). Plus the bloom is almost always wasted.

BUT before you throw it away, look at what happens when you slow stack and let it bloom. We’ll refresh it after the 8th tic at 1 second left for this. 1st gcd, 8tics = 4,248. 2nd gcd 531x2x8= 8,496. 3rd gcd, 531x3x9 = 14,337 + bloom for 10,038 = 37,119 healing for 3 gcds, which is 12,373 healing per gcd. Not too bad, if I 3 stack it fast and let it bloom its only 25,968. If I keep it rolling, refreshing at 1 second left (after the 8th tic), it’s worth 12,744 a gcd. Worth noting is that the gcd is 10% faster on Lifebloom as well thanks to Gift of the EarthMother.

Since they doubled Lifeblooms mana cost, but it refunds half of it on bloom, keeping it rolling can be expensive, so keep an eye on your mana. Also keep in mind the bloom CAN crit, but with no talents for it, it’s only off your base crit.

What all that math tells us is Rejuv>Lifebloom ALWAYS. You use Lifebloom when 1 hot isn’t enough. Usually that's just the tank; either slow stacking it, or keeping it rolling. The only time I’ll use Lifeblooms on the raid, is if I'm moving and can't spot heal, and someone needs more healing then just a Rejuv. And sometimes if you’re pro, you can find ways to time the bloom. Timing Lifeblooms to have the bloom go off after a Gravity Bomb on XT is one example, most recently on our Sindragosa kill I was timing them for myself when I had Unchained Magic.

The other thing about Lifebloom is it ticks once a second, while Rejuv and Regrowth tick every 3 (excepting RR glyph). Since the tank is taking constant damage and Lifebloom ticks so fast less of it will go into overheals. And having that bloom in the que can be a life saver if you get stunned/knocked back/ am moving or whatever the encounter requires, it’s nice to know if no one gets a heal on the tank for a couple seconds, they’ll have that 10-20k bloom.

Interesting note ;) If you cast a Lifebloom with Omen of Clarity up, you still get mana back. Making it free mana, I use power aura's to alert me to omen proccing, you won't use them all on Lifeblooms if your healing like mad, but if your watching for it you can get a decent amount of extra mana back throughout an encounter.

The Lifebloom glyph adds 1 second to your Lifebloom. I wouldn't consider it worthwhile unless you are keeping stacks rolling on 2-3 targets (Blood Princes maybe?) and have a free glyph slot. On blood princes 25 I'm using SM/WG/Nourish glyphs, and in 10 RR/SM/Nourish, so I can't really think of a time I'd use this glyph.

TRANQUILITY

Very rarely does this great spell get any use. It’s basically like spam casting Regrowth on all 5 people in your group at the same time. The reason it doesn’t see much use is because its incredibily rare for any 1 group to take enough sustained damage to justify it. And of course because other groups get ignored. The only time in recent history I’ve used it outside a 5 man (where it does sometimes save the day) is on the ToGC Twins door strat, where no one moves and you heal through the vortex. Usually as close to 1 Druid per group as possible, and 1 Paladin per group and they all blow their divine sac/tranquility right as the vortex starts, in addition to all the Priests using Divine Hymn.

One other interesting point in regard to Tranquility, is it can’t get line of sighted ;)

HEALING TOUCH

Last and least. The ugly stepchild of our healing arsenal. Healing Touch.
The 3 main reasons it’s not used much are because:

A. Even specced into Naturalist, it’s extremely slow.
B. Because it doesn’t get the + 25% chance to crit that regrowth and Nourish get, giving it a crappy nature’s grace, and living seed uptime.
C. With the Healing touch glyph it makes it less efficient mana wise, and waaaay too fast, as it’s under the global cooldown.

Therefore it’s rarely used but I’ll enumerate the only times it’s worthwhile.

First it’s what you use with Natures Swiftness for your biggest “oh shit” instant cast heal.

Next many druids spec into it and glyph for it for the ToGC 25 Anub fight. The glyph reduces HT's cast time by 1.5 second, mana cost by 25%, and amount healed by 50%. Its usually just used for leveling. It’s the biggest (with no hots up) and fastest spell we have. If you’re healing PC targets, having a spell under the gcd cap is actually beneficial. Sure you can only cast 1 a second, but the initial 2 heals are the key, and if it’s a 0.7 cast time, then you can cast your first 2 heals in 1.7 seconds. Saving 0.3 seconds, which trust me, will save your ass.

And last but not least, it’s actually higher hps on a single target, IF you spec into naturalist, and only use it during a Bloodlust/Heroism (unglyphed). There is only one fight at the moment that it is worthwhile to spec into naturalist for that reason imo, and that is Dreamwalker. Since you want to spec only into talents that increase throughput and don’t care about regen talents, it makes it the one time I spec into, and use it. You may also spec into Lunar Guidance in balance for more spellpower. Use the typical single target rotation I described earlier on Dreamwalker, use Wild Growth off cd if the raid takes damage (not targeted on Dreamwalker btw, it didn't seem to link), but at some point probably in the last minute or so of the fight when all the healers come out of the portals buffed up and the raid blows Heroism/Bloodlust, switch to spamming Healing Touch. On Paradox’s “kill” Healing Touch was 13% of my healing which was rather amazing to me as I only used it for the 40 second duration of Bloodlust, and twice with Natures Swiftness, in a fight 7:12 long.

REBIRTH

The ability, in combat to restore life to a raid member. Obviously very powerful, and with the cd reduced to 10 minutes, there isn't much point in saving it, as you can usually use it once per boss encounter. Usually the raid leader will call for it to be used, and which druid to avoid confusion. Regardless you should have either a macro, or can configure Healbot to announce when you use it, and on whom. This macro (from http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t88239-resto_pve_compendium_general_discussion/) not only announces your Rebirth, but out of combat will switch to Revive.

#showtooltip
/use [nocombat] Revive
/stopmacro [nocombat]
/use Rebirth
/ra Rebirth on %t

There are cases where a FAST enough Rebirth can save a situation, in which case I don't wait for a call. ("So shoot me, I did it without being told and it saved the day") An example would be a progression fight where a key person died and the boss is near death. Tank dies at 5%. An instant battle rez, followed by an instant Nature's Swiftness/Healing touch and he's back in the game, and hopefully either A. Whoever was 2nd highest on threat had the reflexes/awareness to blow cd's, or B. the boss didn't have enough time to kill enough people to wipe you.

The Rebirth glyph allows players to come back to health at 100% hp. If you have a spare slot (a strict 5x1 fight) this can be a useful progression glyph especially in a fight with constant damage where the person is likely to just die again. However I usually have Nature's Swiftness for this.

Innervate

This returns about 8k mana, on a 3 minute cd. I use it as soon as I get to about 65% mana (% used at will depend on the size of your mana pool) to make sure none of it gets wasted, and its up again asap.

The Innervate glyph adds (if used off cd) about 40 mp5. Useful for a new Druid, but shouldn't be necessary at advanced gear levels.

BARKSKIN

USE IT! It’s on a short cooldown so the more often you use it the better. I recommend having it as your most accessible keybind. Besides if your 5 man tank is being slow I find it fun to hot myself and pull with Barkskin up ;) TREE TANK FTW! (warning: high probability of pissing people off ;)
I actually use a complete “oh shit” macro that pops everything useful in one click. Something like:
/use Fel Healthstone
/use Crazy Alchemist's Potion
/cast Lifeblood(Rank 6)
/cast Barkskin

With both the potion and healthstone its almost as good as a NS Healing Touch, in one click with no gcd. This has saved my ass in raids more times than I can count.

Yes... I’m an Alchemist/Herbalist. I will be going into more detail as to professions at a later date, but Alchemy (unless you want to dualspec feral) is imo the best raiding profession. You get the same extra spell power you get from most professions, plus double duration on your flasks, extra benifit from your potions, and access to the awesome Crazy Alchemist's Potion. They are cheap to make, I usually use 1 per fight. To maximize their use, wait until you can use the health, and you get the free mana and random potion effect while you're at it.

As to Herbalism.. that is not a raiding profession. I'm an Herbalist because I enjoy herbing with my Druid late at night while chatting or watching tv. (310% Swift Flight Form=win)

Thank you for reading! Feel free to comment or pm me any advice, commentary, or ways I can improve the guide. My next guide will go into Gear, Talents, and Professions. Tuun's guide, also posted here has an excellent overview of stats.

P.S. Apparently 6 people have voted my guide down without any comment as to why when I clearly said its not finished yet? Please if you have any advice, corrections, or commentary on how I can improve it, it is a work in progress, so say something. Also while I'm hoping advanced Druids can pick up an idea or 2, clearly it will be more useful to a beginning Druid.

Reference

cc = crowd control. Can refer to any ability that renders a player or npc useless.

cd = Cooldown. The time between when an ability is first used, and when it can be used again.

gcd = Global Cooldown. The 1 second cap (at haste cap) for all your abilities.

hot(s) = Healing Over Time spell

hpct = Healing per Cast Time

NS = Nature's Swiftness

regen = Used exclusively in this guide to refer to mana regeneration from all sources.

Rejuv = Shorthand for Rejuvenation

Rng = Random Number Generator

RR = Rapid rejuvenation glyph

Smart heal = A heal that automatically targets the lowest health eligible target.

SM = Swiftmend

WG = Wild Growth

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Audience

Raiding Shaman, Non-raiding Shaman, Raid Leaders, Levellers,

Guide

Raiding as Elemental: Part Two – Rotations and Strategy

After only a month and a half of ICC’s release, and a flurry of interest in the position of Elemental’s DPS levels (See Tier 10 four-piece discussions), it’s time to take a breath and get back to the basics of Elemental combat. I know personally, particularly on new encounters with limited attempts and never-before-seen mechanics, remembering even the simplest fundamentals can sometimes prove vexing. But at a stage of progression bosses and new challenges, refining our damage output is as important as ever.

Note: This isn’t one of those fancy guides complete with maths and complex equations. EJ has plenty of these, and I find that simply spending time on a test dummy helps find the right rotation for your particular haste setup more so then tedious calculations and hours of reading forum posts.

Overview

Elemental is a ranged damage spec, using an array of spells and totems to damage foes. To this end, the majority of spells you will cast will be at range, and will form part of a set rotation, revolving around the cooldown of Lava Burst. Depending on the makeup of your group / raid, making use of Searing and Magma totem are also features of Elemental DPS.

The Standard Rotation

The standard rotation, as I said earlier, revolves around the cooldown of your Lava Burst ability, with Lightning Bolt filling the gaps between casts.

Primarily in a single target situation, getting FlameShock up is the first priority. Followed up by a Lava Burst. Then continue with Lightning Bolts until LvB is up again. Refresh FlameShock when needed. Fairly straightforward, no?

To reiterate - FlameShock -> Lava Burst -> Lightning Bolt (# you can fit in the 8 second coodown of Lava Burst) -> Lava Burst

When to use Elemental Mastery?

With changes to our Elemental Mastery talent from a base crit bonus to a haste bonus, as well as the two piece bonus from our Tier 10 set, the timing of EM can be crucial to maxmising your DPS output.

As a general rule:
- Use EM as soon as possible, and on every available cooldown.
- Try to avoid using EM during Bloodlust / Heroism as this will reduce base cast times well below the GCD
- Consider the use of other "On use" haste procs and effects such as Engineering's Hyperspeed Accelerators and various trinkets
- With the two piece bonus from T10, dont get over zealous on the cooldown reduction; maintain your standard LvB rotation

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Audience

Priests and casters of classes who might wish to migrate to a shadow priest. We were buffed nicely in 3.3 so our single target DPS is comparable, or greater, that other casters.

Guide

Introduction

My name is Hugginss from < The Church > on Darkspear, US server.

I raid as a shadow priest primarily, with a discipline offspec and am comfortable as holy. Any priest worth his/her salt should be competent in all three classes. I believe that shadow is the hardest of the three specs to master due to the complexity of the prioritization and multiple mob dot tracking. I'm not taking anything away from the other 2 specs, shadow is very tricky to maximize dps.

Class Strengths

• Survivability

Shadow priests, since 3.3, can now run Vampiric Embrace throughout encounters without having to apply the debuff to targets. All single target DPS will then heal us. On top of that, we can still cast PW:S in a pinch and *can* (but not recommended) break shadow form to throw a Prayer of Mending *if the situation is dire enough*. This gives shadow priests by far the most survivability of all the cloth caster classes. I suppose Locks are a close 2nd. Remember, dead DPS is 0 DPS.

Single Target

Our single target DPS is good now, not great, but way better than 3.2. This is 100% because our dot ticks are affected by Haste. (VT and DP anyway)

2 - 3 Target

Probably the optimal DPS for shadow priests, rolling three full dot stacks on three targets is where we shine the most.

Other strengths:

Lower hit cap (262 with Draenei), Misery, Dispersion

Weaknesses

• No Nuke
Arcane Mages, Huntards, elemental Shamans go from 0 to max dps right nearly right away. Spriests have a ramp-up time that makes quick target switching undesirable (portals on Jaraxxus, adds on Deathwhisper, less-so Blood Beasts and Oozes on Putricide)

Although, with the 4-piece tier 10, Mind Flay may become a viable nuke.

• Hard to keep track of DOTs on three or more targets
Unless you have a beautiful mind, you'll probably have your VT drop off that 5th trash mob. Mobs help with this, but if there are enough mobs and activity, you’re going to forget something

However, there really aren’t that many weaknesses to being a shadow priest.

Spell Prioritization For Single Target

>> >> >> >>

VT > DP > SW:P > MB > MF

VT should be reapplied within as little time as it falls off as is humanly possible within the context of server lag, etc. VT, with haste, is about 1.2 second cast. In a lagless world, you should be casting VT with 1.10 seconds left on VT. Overwriting VT (not letting it fall off) is VERY BAD!!!

SW:P should never fall off a single-target, and does less DMG than DP by a wide margin now which is why I put it less of a priority than DP... but it should have very high uptime.

DP follows the same rules as VT, but prioritize VT over DP when refreshing.

Mind Blast should be used on every cooldown, but prioritize VT and DP before Mind blast if all three are off CD

Mind Flay is the filler when VT, SW:P and DP all are applied and when MB is on cool down.

Shadow Word: Death should be used when moving, along with Shadowfiend, or DP re-applications

Disperse only when you are not DPS-ing (end of scarab phase in Anub, no real good options in ICC) or if you are going to take an inordinate amount of dmg (Big flying orb on Princes, the brown ooze maybe on Putricide)

Opening Rotation

There are several opening rotations, all are viable, but I’ll give you mine:

>> >> >> >>
VT > DP > MB > MF3 > SW:P. (MF3 = Mind Flay, 3 ticks… or full duration)

Elitist jerks suggests a different opening, the only important point is that you apply SW:P with 5 stacks of shadow weaving and the highest crit rate you can get. The reason for this is that while your Mind Flay refreshes the dot, the SW:P spell remembers how many stacks of shadoweaving you had when you applied it, as well as your crit rate. If you apply it at 4 stacks versus 5, you will do 2% less damage with SW:P than with 5 stacks...

If you have to run in, you could alter the opener. Just make sure there you are full stacks of Shadow Weaving before you apply SW:P.

If you have the Nevermelting Ice Crystal I suggest hitting that before you apply SW:P and after MF3.

Another tip would be to pop a Wild Magic Potion 2 seconds or so before combat so that you get the +200 crit rate on the SW:P for the entirety of the duration of the DOT. Then again during Heroism/Bloodlust

Fights like Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Saurfang, Rotface, Festergut, you should never lose your SW:P. With the trinket and the pot, that’s +1100 crit rate for your SW:P. Raid buffed, for me that’s about 60% crit. Not bad.

Multiple targets

>>

For fights where you have to switch targets a lot (Putricide, Saurfang, Deathwhisper, Jaraxxus, etc) it should be your goal to run perfect dot stacks on each of the targets.

I often will put my primary target on focus so that I can visually track the dot ticks of that target, then I will apply VT>DP>SW:P to the secondary target (ooze on Putricide, Portals on Jaraxxus, Blood beasts on Sauerfang). And VT>SW:P on each other mob that I can.

If you use forte Excorcist you should be able to see the time left on the dots on each of your targets. Refresh VT as necessary and cast MF1 to keep SW:P up on them. I’m sure there are other DOT timers out there that are as effective, or more effective.

For 4 or more mobs:

>>
VT as many as you can, then Mind Sear. Rotate your Mind Sear targets.

Stats

Elitist Jerks has a wealth of knowledge about what stats you should optimize and shadowpriest.com has the BIS gear broken down, glyphs, theorycraft, etc.

http://elitistjerks.com/f77/t84746-shadowpriest_theorycraft_3_3_edition_i_get_little_help_my_friends/

I’m not going to go into those.

However, since 3.3 HASTE is king for multi target fights. Soft haste Cap is about 800... but I would consider getting as much haste on your gear as is humanly possible without neglecting spell power.

MODS

To be an effective shadow priest, you are going to need a few mods to help you micro-manage your DOTs.

• Unit Frames:

The stock UI is weak, but lots of good raiders use it... but they're probably not shadow priests. I use PitBull Unit Frames as it lets me specify which debuffs I can see on the boss, which size they are and the seconds and milliseconds that are left on my debuffs. If you can't see your debuff timers clearly, you will never be a good shadow priest.

• Dot Timer:

Forte excorcist is what I use, there are others. If you can count down from 16, 18 and 19 in your head, simultaneously, three times over, you probably don’t need a dot timer.

• Threat Meter:

Omen gold standard, I guess. Shadow priest threat in 3.3 is actually very high, so this is a must.

• Cast Bar:

Quartz. Shows you your latency, well a good estimate anyway. Good for calculating when you need to refresh VT.

• Raid Frames:

Grid. Grid is the best, uses range well, can be configure with mouse-over macros to abolish disease, cast PW:S, etc. A little tough to configure at first, but very good once you get it dialed.

Grid requires extensions to be really effective: GridStatusRaidBuffs, Raid Icons, etc. There's a bunch in there on Curse.

• A boss Mod:

A good boss mod can help remind you of important boss mechanics. The Post-it notes on your monitor are probably not bad, but I would highly recomment the Deus Vox Boss mod . It is the Cadillac of boss mods, imo. Deadly Boss Mods is an option, as are others.

Rogues and melee, but especially rogues, should always have a boss mod that moves their characters out of fire for them, because they seem to be incapable of moving themselves out of it :P

Optional Mods:

Power Auras: Show’s you various procs, debuffs, buffs, etc… It’s on Kyth’s UI page

That’s all that you really need. There are other kind of stylistist mods, such as Bartender, Parrot, Tidy Plates, etc

Tips and Tricks

Movement

Try and move as little as possible when you are DPSing the boss. This seems pretty straightforward, but you’re going to have to move a lot in the new/harder encounters. When you do move, you should be casting SW:D, DP, ShadowFiend, or some other instant cast that does dmg.

Maintain a perfect cast sequence

A *perfect* cast sequence will have you constantly casting, with very little clipping of mind flay (clipping = not letting the cast run to the completion) and no wasted GCDs.

As mentioned elsewhere, never, never, never overwrite your Vampiric Touch spells. You have to time your cast so that you are reapplying VT within 0.5 seconds of it falling off. As close to zero as you can get it.

I always let my mind flays run to completion *except* to refresh VT. Make sure you have the nochannel macro bound to your mind flay so that you aren’t clipping your mind flays.

Helpful Macros:

1. Macro #1:

#showtooltip Mind Flay
/cast [noChanneling:Mind Flay] Mind Flay

2. Macro #2:

#showtooltip Mind Sear
/cast [noChanneling:Mind Sear] Mind Sear

and the Shadowfiend one:


3. Macro #3:

#showtooltip Shadowfiend
/cast Shadowfiend
/cast [pet, nomodifier] Shadowcrawl

Bind your abilities to keys

Mouse-click casting is completely fail. You should be using your mouse to move around. Unless you have 10 buttons on your mouse that you can bind your casts to, which is perfectly acceptable too, then you should have your abilities bound to your keys.

For me, Mind Flay is bound to the “F” key, which centers my fingers and, since there’s a little raised thing on most keyboards on the “F” key, I don’t have to look down at my fingers. Then bind other abilities close to your base… Don’t bind mind blast to the “O” key, or the “9” because you’re going to have to move your hand around, which is sub-optimal.

Try binding all your abilities to about 4 or 5 keys.. remember you can use modifiers like Control, Shift and Alt for your basic binds.

Shadowfiend

Your pet is no longer really needed to regenerate mana (If you are at the t10 level), so you should use it as a DPS boost. The cooldown is 3 minutes and most fights run longer than that. I cast it as soon as I have my full dot stack on the boss, probably within 25 seconds of the pull. Cast immediately when it comes off cooldown. It will give you an extra 50-70k damage over the course of a fight.

Of course, Anub Hard mode is probably the only fight where mana is an issue at present, and you'll need to manage your fiend a little better in that one. (Immediately after first burrow and right before P3).

Make sure to spam Shadowcrawl so that you get the DPS boost.

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Audience

Raiding Shaman, Non-raiding Shaman, Raid Leaders,Levellers,

Guide

Raiding as Elemental: Part One – An Introduction

As one of the smallest populations out there, Elemental Shaman are often misunderstood and underestimated in a raid environment. But for those of us who choose to master the elemental forces of nature, the resources available to us are scarce.
With the changes in Patch 3.3 and Icecrown Citadel, namely the shift away from Totem of Wrath in favour of a Warlock’s Demonic Pact, Elemental play style has changed significantly. No longer can we rely solely upon on a uniquely strong raid buff to justify a raid position; and with several itemisation issues and a clunky DPS totem system, our need to refine our damage output is greater than ever.

Overview
This guide is a summary of the important things any Elemental Shaman should know before they step into a raid environment. It is heavily influenced by my personal experiences of raiding as an Elemental, back since the days of SSC and TK and Lightning Bolt spam, right up to present day ICC and the dusting off of Searing and Magma Totems. Our latest raid logs can be found at http://www.worldoflogs.com/guilds/6507/.

Elemental is the magical DPS tree of the Shaman Class, the spec chosen by those inclined to damage foes at range by hurling Lightning and Lava, while calling on the powers of the four elements to strengthen their allies. Imbued with the powers of nature, Shaman are spiritual leaders, fierce warriors and wise mystics, channelling immense powers through unrivalled totemic mastery.

/end Lore-rant

Talents, Glyphs and Abilities

Talents:

• Base Elemental Raid spec: 57/14/0
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#hEh0qcdItGfzAo0xxco:Mkb

Raiding Elementals should be looking at a spec incorporating talents in both the Elemental tree, as well as Enhance. Fourteen points is sufficient to gain all the raiding benefits as a caster in the Enhance tree; Thundering Strikes and Shamanistic Focus are the key talents there. The elemental tree is fairly strict, but there is some slight personal preference here; depending on your play style, game play and experience the following specs are optional / may prove useful to you:

• Damage Reduction spec – sacrifices mana regeneration in favour of reduced damage; handy in PVP specs, or raid encounters where less damage could make a difference:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#hiI0qcdItGfzAo0xxco:Mkb
• Nova Spec – for added AOE utility, sacrifices again some mana regeneration in favour of a reduced Fire Nova cooldown and DPS increase; useful for add heavy encounters:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#hyb0qfdItGfzAo0xxco:Mkb

Like I said, the changes are minimal between these, and chances are you’ll pick one and stick with it. Just consider the role you will be playing; reduced damage may be favourable in a raid situation, but not in the daily heroic. Fire Nova might be great on trash, but bad on the encounter that starves you of mana. PVP elementals might want to research more into talents deeper within the Enhance tree, as well as Elemental’s Astral Shift Talent.

Glyphs:

Fairly straightforward;

Major Glyphs include Glyph of Lightning, Glyph of Flame Shock and Glyph of Lava. Until higher levels, namely the increases to Lava Burst via set bonuses, Glyph of Totem of Wrath may be another option. Glyph of Fire Elemental might also be an option on shorter, more AOE dependent encounters (provided you are using DPS totems and running a Demo Warlock). Also Glyph of Chain Lightning may be again desirable on AOE intensive fights (think Anub25 HM), providing you can chain the adds successfully and gain the benefits of the additional bounce.

Minor Glyphs are really not raidbreaking, but Glyph of Renewed Life is handy in-case you fail at reagent stocking. Apart from Glyph of Thunderstorm (see below), Glyph of Astral Recall and Ghost Wolf are other options.

The Knockback dilemma – Thunderstorm is great, I’m sure we have all been on the giving or receiving end of a carefully place knockback in AB or EoTS. In a raid environment this may or not be desirable – pulling trash packs = bad. Whereas knocking back Saurfang’s Bloodbeasts = sometimes good. Again, personal preference here – if you can manage your mana without TS, go for the utility of the knockback. If you find yourself running out of mana mid fight, Glyph it up. Carry a stack for safety.

Abilities:

Elementals main abilities can be divided into three capacities; offensive and support and utility.

Support Abilities:
Our support abilities embody (you guessed it), the totem system. Totems of choice change with group composition, but a summary of each can be seen below. Remember to set up your various Totemic Calls to maintain a set of quickly accessible totems for every occasion.

Totem of Wrath (Fire) – Our BC Iconic Talent and raid support totem. Gives each raid member 280 Spell Power, and increases critical strike chance against all enemies by 3% within range of the totem. Majorly outgunned by Demonic Pact in 3.3. Unless your raid makeup has a Warlock giving DP, ToW is your fire totem of choice in most situations.

Wrath of Air (Air) – Provides 5% Spell Haste to raid members within 30 yards of the totem. As far as I know, still a unique buff exclusive to Shaman. Unless your group is insanely melee heavy and needs Windfury Totem, this is your totem of choice.

Healing Stream Totem / Mana Spring Totem (Water) – The name gives what they provide away, and they are really more Resto-ish anyway. Suffice it to say, if you have Restoration Shaman or Paladin giving Blessing of Wisdom, drop HS.

Strength of Earth / Stoneskin Totem (Earth) – Both are pretty crappy as Elemental, and with the abundance of Deathknights around, SoE is lacklustre in comparison. Drop Stoneskin, if only for the look of having four totems down (or you are nostalgically wearing the T6 Skyshatter set and enjoy the two-piece bonus).

Flametongue Weapon – Revived in Wrath (possibly before?) FT weapon gives a hefty amount of Spell Power to your weapon. Don’t forget this easily forgettable self-buff!

Bloodlust / Heroism – Provides 30% increased haste for 40 seconds, as well as the more important buff of increasing your size and making you angry looking. Also debuffs you preventing the chaining of raid-wide lusts…

Water Shield – Provides MP5, as well as a cool swirly ball of H2O. Keep up at all times. Or don’t. It’s really up to you.

Elemental Mastery – An Elemental Shaman’s only DPS cooldown (Bloodlust excluded). Previously increased Crit, then increased Crit and gave an instant. Presently increases Haste and gives an instant cast. If you are drowning in haste, don’t pop during Bloodlust / Heroism.

Offensive Abilities:

Lightning Bolt – Our primary spell, and the spell you will cast more times then you will care to remember. One of the most mana efficient and scaling spells out there. Together with Chain Lightning, can proc the talent Lightning Overload, boosting the potential DPS of this simple but effective spell. Talents such as Call of Thunder, Elemental Fury and Shamanism increase the scaling, critical strike chance and cast time.

Chain Lightning – The hurty equivalent to Chain Heal. Bounces on up to 3 targets (4 with Glyph) causing less damage as it chains. Clearly one of our sexiest looking spells, CL is fairly mana draining, limiting its use as a solely single target spell. However with the addition of CL to the Shamanism talent, casting with under a clearcast softens the mana costs. Works well on AOE packs, in addition to Magma and Nova.

Flame Shock – Our damage over time spell, searing the target with flames and leaving them to burn to a crisp. The feature of this particular spell is its use as a precursor to Lava Burst and its mechanics; cast Lava Burst on a target inflicted with FS, and it is given a 100% chance to critically strike. Cool huh? Glyph to give the ticks the ability to Crit.

Lava Burst – Added in Wrath as our primary Nuke. A more awesome version of a fireball. Crits on contact with FS dot. 8 Second cooldown. Our rotation revolves around this spell and its cooldown. As a fire spell, provides elemental with a secondary school of magic in the event of interrupts / knockbacks on nature spells. Oh, did I say it was awesome looking?

Frost Shock / Earth Shock – Frost shock slows movement, Earth shock slows attack speed. Useful in a variety of contexts, namely kiting duties and things such as that.

Searing / Magma Totems – Our clunky, yet sometimes effectively awesome DPS totems. The main limitations with these are the limited range, the short durations and the arduous process of keeping them active. Basically you need to run into melee range, deploy your totems of death, and run back out. Magma for AOE, Searing for single target. Capiche?

Fire Nova – Our beloved Fire Nova, in a non-totem form. Sort of. After 3.3 (?) now a castable spell, rather than a totem rocket ship blastoff dealio. Emanates in an outward circular ‘Nova’ shape from your currently active fire totem. Deals fairly decent damage in a small area. Combined with Magma, this combination gives some fairly decent numbers.

Fire Elemental Totem – The Shamanistic force is strong with this one… Summons an elemental of great power (maybe not great; okay-ish). Now on a 10 minute cooldown! Fire elemental is clearly a high school dropout, running from target to target, sometimes not even deciding to attack; other times he simply thinks that running laps of the room is more fun than making big numbers appear. But all in all, fairly effective and the ability to drop on nearly every boss attempt is great.

Utility abilities –

Hex – A pseudo-polymorph, but Shaman-like. Turns the target into a frog, or a toad. I’m not exactly sure. But I digress. The target cannot cast spells or attack, but remains able to move (albeit at froggy-slow pace). Handy in heroics and on bosses with Mind Control (especially if your raidleader doesn’t allow the killing of your fellow raid members).

Wind Shear – Has stolen the previous effects of Earth Shock, namely interrupting spell casting and some abilities. Also reduces threat by a smidge, but if your pulling threat, tell your tank to tank a little bit faster and better then grandma. Has a 6 second cooldown, reducible via Reverberation.

Thunderstorm – I classed this as a utility spell simply because with such as long cool down, it simply isn’t a reliable source of DPS. Rather it provides a mana replenish and a knockback. Hurray!

Purge – Removes beneficial buffs from enemies, and (much more rarely) dispels negative debuffs from allies. Essential on fights like Faction Champs, in PVP and also when you want to remove slow-fall and levitate off pretentious casters who think they can fly.

Reincarnation and Totemic Recall – Handy abilities to be aware of. Reincarnation now has a reduced cooldown of 30 minutes, and totemic recall is useful on fights where movement and replacing of totems is needed.

Useful Links

For a general overview of the Shaman class, Lore and talent builds - http://www.wowwiki.com/Shaman

For recent changes to the class, mechanic disccussion and theorycrafting, you cant go past Elitist Jerks, check them out at -
http://elitistjerks.com/f79/

As far as Official Blizzard forums go, the damage dealing forums can prove useful if you dont mind trawling through bad posts -
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=13395581&sid=1

Coming up –
Part two – Rotations and Techniques
Part three – Gearing, Itemization and Gemming
Part four - ???

Edit this article: Raiding as Elemental: Part One – An Introduction

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Audience

healers

Guide

Introduction
A holy paladin's primary role in a raid is simple: keep the tanks alive. That said, your job doesn't stop there. With one of the simplest and strongest dual-healing skill (Beacon of Light) available, a paladin can easily heal 2 targets at once, and this makes him a potent tank healer as well as allowing him to focus on healing raid members while keeping the tank up indirectly.

In this guide I'll present to you what I feel is the best and most effective way of gearing your holy paladin as well as what talents to get. I'll also tell you why other styles are not as favorable.

I've arranged the guide in a simple format: for those who just need something to follow, just read the start of each section. The explanation and justification is always in the second part of the section.

And lastly, I'll do a section about how to heal in raid, though IMHO healing cannot be fully taught, you need to develop an instinct for it. Nevertheless, I'll give some tips about skill usage, etc.

I'll list out the contents first, so you can just Ctrl+F to whichever section you're interested in. (e.g. you wanna read about how to gear your pally, just ctrl F '[C])

On a side note, I do want to improve how the guide looks with pictures and those 'dropdown' things for skills. (e.g. you mouseover a phrase like Beacon of Light and it tells you what the skill does) , but I don't know the code for it. If someone could teach me how it'll be great!

Contents
[X] Terminology ( GCD? HL? BoL? What's all this?)
[A] Talent Builds (which is the best?)
[Y] Holy Light vs Flash of Light – which is the better playstyle?
[C] Gearing Considerations for HL Pallies (SP? Haste? Crit? Which is my priority? Gemming?)
[D] How to heal as a Holy Pally (what's my priority in raid? What skills do I use? How do I become a better healer?)
[E] General Healing Tips
[F] Conclusion

[X] Terminology
HL – Holy Light
FoL – Flash of Light
BoL – Beacon of Light
GCD – Global Cooldown
DSac – Divine Sacrifice
HoP – Hand of Protection
HoF – Hand of Freedom
HoT – Heal over Time
SP – Spell Power
SS – Sacred Shield

[A] Talent Builds
The 2 most popular (and best) builds are the 51/5/15 and 51/20/0 builds. I usually call them the 'DSac build' and 'Crit build' for simplicity.
51/5/15 Crit Build : http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sxAzxG0sVu0tgzxZVf0x
51/20/0 Dsac Build: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sxAzxG0sVu0tgzxGzmbh

Crit vs DSac
In a nutshell, the Crit build gives you 5% extra crit while Dsac build gives you the amazing skill Divine Sacrifice (Dsac for short) with 6% extra healing (from Imp Devo Aura)

For comparison, I'd ignore the second tier talents in the Ret tree since HotC can come from retadins and Improved Judgements is just pointless. (you mean you can't press JoL once every 60s? ) To be fair I'll ignore Stocism, Toughness and Guardian's Favor as well since they're pretty situational talents. (not every fight has slow/stuns, though the armor buff is nice from Toughness).

In my opinion, Dsac build is by far superior to the Crit build. Why?
Firstly, why do you want to spec something that gives you a CHANCE to crit when you have a GUARANTEED 5% more healing spec available? Theorycrafters may jump in here with all their fancy calculations, but as with all theorycraft – it is just theory. Just because you have a 50% chance to crit doesn't mean you won't go 5 casts in a row without a single crit. On the other hand, 6% increased healing is CONSTANT. You ALWAYS have it.
(You may ask: “Wait wait but it only applies for those within range of your auras! How about those out of range of your aura?”. Obvious → Aura's range is 40 yards, which is the same as your healing range. You'll never be healing someone not affected by your aura.)

Next, Divine Sacrifice is such an invaluable skill that I don't see how you can forego it. Its uses are limitless-> saving the raid in times of sudden large raid damage and your primary raid healers aren't able to keep up for some reason, pre-empting it for any major raid damage (e.g. Vortexes for Twin Valkyrs in TOTC) etc.
Even with the tweak(nerf! :( ) in how it works, the raid damage reduction is still there, so it's still a pretty imba skill.

Benediction is pretty much insignificant given that we have practically only ONE instant cast spell (holy shock). I say 'practically' because Lay on Hands is instant as well, but obviously its long cooldown makes it pointless to include in the discussion.

Lastly, I HAVE tried out the Crit build, all this isn't just theorycraft. But what I notice is that once your crit reaches the 30-40% range, the change in output is insignificant. And you'll always almost hit this range with full raid buffs, with decent gear. For example, my current Crit is 37% unbuffed, but from Recount my heals crit 50~% of the time.

The 53/18/0 build.
And a final note – for those who have armoried me, you'll notice my own personal build is actually 53/18/0, I specced 'Enlightened Judgements'.

This is obviously not for the hit, but for the improved ranged of Judgements. Any decent paladin will know he has to keep Judgements of the Pure up at all times (15% cast-time reduction = win) and I don't like being restricted by the short range of Judgements (20 yards I think) to do this.
I would rather have the freedom to move around to cover heals and not bother about how far away I am from the boss/adds/whatever. Hence I forego the 4% healing which I don't mind since the main reason for this build is to have Divine Sacrifice anyway (of course with D-guardian specced)

[Y] Holy Light vs Flash of Light
The two main playstyles of a holy pally are HL spam vs FoL spam. Both have very different gearing considerations and mentalities. This guide, however, is written for the HL style of playing, which I believe is the optimal style of holy paladin healing.

WHY?
Before I start, let's look at the pros and cons of each style, in general:
FoL:
Pros – Quick, efficient heals, No mana issues.
Cons – Low heal output, to the point where it's insufficient.
HL:
Pros – High heal output,
Cons – Mana issues, Need to have a good understanding of how to prioritize healing, otherwise the slower heals will actually result in lower output overall due to overhealing.

Now, the key comparison would be between having quicker heals or bigger heals, since issues like mana is addressed by gearing up correctly and skill is just developed.
I have personally tried both builds, and I found that the FoL build lacks the output required of a holy paladin. You must always remember that your primary job is to keep the tanks alive. Tanks are often taking large amounts of damage quickly (Impale stacks from Gormuk, Saber Lash from Lord Marrowgar, etc) , and using FoL primarily just doesn't deliver enough healing to keep the tanks up.

A simple example would be to use Algalon → for 10man he swings for 13k each melee hit. The FoL pally would take 2-3 GCDs(Global Cooldown) AT LEAST to top this up, while the HL pally just needs 1.

That aside, it's shortsighted to limit a pally to just tank healing → with BoL he can easily keep the tank(s) up while healing up the raid. With only FoL as your raid healing tool, it's often you'll find yourself falling behind in heals. A holy priest accomplishes exactly what you do in about 5 GCDs with 5 FoL in a single Holy Nova, etc. Of course, you may argue that 5 FoL will hit the 5 targets more effectively than an AOE like Holy Nova – but by the time you hit your 2nd/3rd target a resto druid's HoTs would probably have completed the job.

In a nutshell, the only way for a holy paladin to keep up with the large output healers like holy priests and resto druids is to use HL.

[C] Gearing Considerations for HL Pallies

For completion's sake, I've included a small section about gearing up FoL Pallies at the bottom of this section as well.

READ THIS
For fresh level 80s, While gearing up your holy pally, haste is INSIGNIFICANT. Why? Because you simply won't have the mana pool to support a HL spamming build. So as a general guide, until you have 232/245 ilevel gear (which is pretty easily attainable now with Emblems) , your priority is just one stat: SPELLPOWER.

What I'm covering now involves actively raiding paladins, who have access to at least 232 level gears.

There are 4 main stats that a Holy Paladin needs (in order of priority): Haste, Mana, Spell Power, Crit.
(MP5 is insignificant, if you want math for this you can go google it, many theorycrafters have already proven that Intellect >> MP5. )

Estimated ideal stats for a T9 geared pally (predominantly at least lv245 items)
Haste – 700(cap), SP – 2600, Mana – 29000, Crit – 33%

(My own stats are 745 haste, 2842 SP, 32k Mana, 37% crit with a mix of lv245-264 gear)

Your priority is to cap haste at 700. (exact number may be around 690~ ) which is when Holy Light hits its capped cast time of 1.3s with all procs/buffs. (Judgements of the Pure 15% spell haste, Light's Grace 0.5s reduction, Wrath of Air 5% increased spell haste)
(However, do NOT gem haste. It's a waste of gem slot, yellow slots are only for Intellect. )
As long as your SP is around 2400, it's fine to go and cap haste first, before improving your SP.
Mana comes from gemming Intellect. Jewelcrafters and Blacksmiths will have no problems reaching 29k mana, in fact, most of them have above 33k mana.
Crit is the least important stat among these 4, but still more important than MP5. Hence, crit>mp5.

How to gem?
Almost all of your gem slots should be filled with +20 Intellect gems. Your Meta gem should be the +21Int/chance to restore mana on cast . (once again, math has been done, go google this if you don't believe me).
And just find one item that has the best socket bonus (probably +7 SP) and requires a blue slot and use a Glowing Dreadstone (12 SP/15 Stam) for it, which will cover your Meta gem requirements.

Why do you prioritize the stats this way?
If we do not cap our haste, it is pointless going for the HL playstyle, you're probably better off playing FoL playstyle.
HL pallies NEED to cap haste to fully utilize HL. HL is already a skill with a pretty long cast time (2.xx seconds before procs) so you need to get it down as low as possible to be able to get off those HL casts before say, a tank death.

SP and Mana need to be raised together. If you have below 27k mana, I'd advise you to increase your mana pool before improving SP (e.g. use Intellect trinkets instead of SP trinkets) since it's quite difficult to support a HL playstyle with <27k mana.

On the other hand, if your SP is below 2300, don't bother getting above 27k mana yet, since you WILL still be using FoL in the HL playing style.

Gearing past item level 245 (into TOGC25/ICC)
That said, once you start gearing into ICC and above, you'll find that your gear meets all of the above stats and your stats will approach mine or even pass it. Once that happens, just maintain your haste cap while pushing up your crit and mana pool. I find that 30~k mana is quite sufficient for any fight and the only fight which I've ever OOM-ed in was Heroic Twin Valkyrs. Of course, this requires good usage of Arcane Torrent/Divine Plea, I DO see many pallies go OOM.

Your SP will naturally go up with better gear, there's no need to prioritize it. I would say to pick crit over SP for gear, though most ICC gear is between mp5 and haste so you won't have to decide between that.

And one thing to note- it's not WRONG to go above haste cap either. This is because this haste cap is actually a soft cap which only accounts for HL, it's always helpful to have more haste for FoL and even the initial cast of HL without Light's Grace active.
Hence, pick all the haste gear in ICC instead of the mp5 ones. MP5 still remains an insignificant stat, though not outright BAD to have of course, like.. Agility.

I can't think of more to write here, since I think this priority is quite well known and non-debatable. I'll write more if I receive arguments against this priority.

How about the FoL playstyle?

For those who are adamant about sticking to FoL spamming, you'll want to be gemming SP. Your priority is SP SP SP. Stack as much SP as you can ftw. After SP, probably haste, crit, then lastly, mana pool. Oh yes, having the 4pc T9 bonus would be awesome too. You can now HoT better than a druid!

But what happens when you upgrade to ICC gear and break up the T9 set? Hmmm.

[D] How to Heal

This is probably the most difficult section to write, as it is a very difficult thing to teach. I'll do my best to explain things and provide tips, but ultimately, you need practice.

Tips for Holy Pallies
For beginners, I'll just run through the main healing skills of a pally. Skip this paragraph if you've already had experience with healing as a pally.

Flash of Light – Your fast heal. Used generally when there is some raid damage taken.
Holy Light - Your slower but big heal. Used when large spikes in damage are taken.
Holy Shock - Your main instant heal. Used in emergencies, probably just before a FoL or HL. (because of Infusion of Light talent) (e.g. when there's a sudden spike in damage)
Beacon of Light – Place it on the main tank or whichever tank you're assigned to heal. Make sure it's up at all times.
Sacred Shield – Keep it up on the tank, or if you get bored and have a lot of free GCDs you can just randomly SS/FoL people to pre-HoT them.
Lay on Hands – Use in emergencies when the tank or anyone else is almost dying and still taking damage. Priority to the tanks though. Take note – this puts Forbearance on you, as of 3.3.

Holy paladins are reactive healers, probably the most so of any healing class. We have no HoTs (SS/FoL takes 2 GCDs so it's retarded to rely on this) or shields (SS doesn't count, if you compare it with a priest's shield.. it's crap) for pre-emptive healing, we have no damage reduction talents (like shaman's Ancestral Healing, Disc Priest's Divine Aegis, etc).

Hence, all we are left are our bare, big heals. Therefore, holy paladins need to have probably the quickest reflexes among all the healers. Our strength lies in the fact that we can top up someone with half HP with just one heal, and at the same time keep tanks up easily.

So when do you use which skill?
First off, I need to make this clear: just because you're using a HL playstyle does not mean you don't use FoL.

Even after using HL spam for a long time, I still find that my output from FoL is still of a reasonable amount. This is because of the fact that you don't have to HL spam the whole fight (you'll run out of mana anyway).

The number one most important skill of a paladin is.... no, not Flash of Light. No, not Holy Light either. It's BEACON OF LIGHT.
Yes, this awesome skill is very important. More often than not you'll find this 2nd or even top of your healmeter. It's essential to keep this on your primary healing target (i.e. a tank) at all times. ALL TIMES. All times. Do I have to say it again? ALL TIMES. Ideally refresh it before the ¾ mark, since something may crop up during that short period and you're busy spamming heals and your BoL wears off. Gg tank.

FoL → use it when the raid takes small bits of damage. If you're using something like Grid, just match the number shown to your FoL amount. For example, if your FoL heals for 4k, you see any damage under 6k or so just throw FoLs.
If you're using WoW raid bars, FoL is for those with 70-100% HP.

Holy Shock → use it when there's a need to instantly top up someone, e.g. someone stands in fire abit too long. It should be used frequently though, due to the chance of Infusion of Light proc-ing

HL → use when there's incoming big damage, or when people drop below 60% HP, or when people drop below 70% but are continually taking more damage. Cast at least once every 15s though, to keep Light's Grace up. Do not be afraid to use HL. (e.g. you think 'oh, I can just use FoL to top the person up it should be enough).
The general rule of thumb is if you're not sure whether to use FoL or HL, use Holy Light.

Please note that these are just rough guides. You'll need to develop a feel yourself for which skills to use when. Healing is always situational and reactive, so don't strictly follow any 'rotations', for holy pallies at least. (I don't know much about priest/druid healing)

Arcane Torrent/Divine Plea – First off, all Horde holy pallies SHOULD be Blood Elf, I can't think of any other race with a more beneficial racial ability. (I don't know about Alliance)
Arcane Torrent should be used as often as possible. It's by far your best mana recovery talent, and you NEED to use it often to regain mana from HL spams.

Divine Plea is also very helpful in regaining mana – but do not use it when there's incoming big damage. (e.g. before a Light Vortex for Twin Valkyrs) Otherwise, don't be afraid to use it. It may help to macro any trinkets that give a boost in SP to it since this will be the best time to use them anyway.
Another alternative is macro-ing Avenging Wrath to Divine Plea, but do take note that you cannot bubble after AW is cast.. so it may be a little risky.

How about macros?
There are 2 talents/skills that I recommend to be macroed: Divine Favor, Divine Illumination.
The reason why they should be macroed is because if you don't, more often than not you'll forget about them all together! Healing is already a very busy job, you don't want to have to worry about 2 more skills to press and think about when to press it.

Divine Favor is obviously macroed to Holy Shock, which guarantees an instant FoL or shorter HL after HS every 2mins. Divine Illumination is slightly more controversial, some may say that it's better to keep this free so you can activate it for times of serious HL spamming. However, for the above-mentioned reason, I have this macroed to HL.

And as mentioned above, you can macro AW to Divine Plea, which was what I used to do. But after screwing up a Twin Valkyr fight(yes we were using bubble-sac for vortex) due to pressing that AW/DP macro too shortly before the vortex, I separated them.

For the exact macro.. you can trust my memory and use these or go google it:

Divine Favor/Holy shock macro:
#showtooltip Holy Shock
/cast Divine Favor
/cast holy shock

HL/IoL macro:
#showtooltip Holy Light
/cast Divine Illumination
/cast Holy Light

The 2 talents are not on GCD so you don't have to worry about having to press the macro button twice. One press activates both =)

Who do I heal?
More often that not (in fact, all the time) , holy pallies are assigned a tank(s) to heal. This job is fulfilled by keeping BoL 100% on the tank. HOWEVER, do not assume BoL will ALWAYS heal your tank (e.g. you see the tank take a big drop in HP, and you just confidently HL some other random person) , i've made this mistake before hence I'm warning you all.

This is due to one or more of the following things happening: BoL has worn off, the person you're targeting is out of range of BoL(unlikely, but possible), some game mechanism lag with BoL. The most common error would be the first one. I've never had #2 happening, #3 I don't know, it may be Recount lag too, but I've had tank deaths when I clearly got off a HL cast with BoL still up.

So, just something to take note. The main point is to constantly check on the duration of BoL, so that #1 never happens.

[E] General Healing Tips

Over-concentrating on HP bars
A very very common new healer weakness is this. New healers tend to pay too much attention to the HP bars … to the point they have no clue what is going on around you. I would say this is even more so for holy pallies, since we have no pre-emptive heals(HoTs) or shields or anything of the such, thus we need to be efficient. I mean, druids just run around rolling Rejuvenation on the raid :@

It will be difficult to concentrate on your surroundings especially if it's a healing intensive phase, but it's a good skill to try to develop to would make you a better healer, as well as a better player in general.

Positioning
Related to the previous point, a healer's position is very important. More often than not, you'll need to be in a central location, so that you're within range of everybody in the raid. As a raid leader, I always tell the DPSers to give priority to healers for fights that require spreading out, e.g. Acidmaw+Dreadscale.

Taking glances at your minimap is good too, to help you locate people who are out of range.

Mana management
It is said that all fights have a soft enrage → when the healers run out of mana. Thus, it is vital that you watch out for your mana pool at all times. As a BE holy pally (of course, what other race?) , you should always use Arcane Torrent when it is up. Do take note of the rare fights where you cannot just randomly cast this (e.g. Heroic Anub'arak, when adds are up). Divine Plea should be used often too if you're low on mana.

As a guide, I always try to stay above 40% mana, the moment it goes below I'll always trigger Divine Plea and start using FoL more instead of HL. This is due to the fact that there may be a damage spike and you find yourself spamming HL, and if that happens when you're below 40% you may run out of mana quickly.

Try to take notes of 'lulls' during the fight, when there is less incoming damage.
I'll just use the first 4 bosses of ICC for example:
Lord Marrowgar-> when he's not using Bone Storm
Lady → pretty random spikes in damage due to the caster's bolts.. not very healing intensive, you shouldn't run out of mana.
Gunship is a joke.
Saurfang → Conserve mana till Marks start coming out. Should be no mana issues

There are lulls in most fights, I can only think of few fights that you may run out of mana and have absolutely no lulls.. Algalon comes to mind. Anything else? Heroic Beasts is rather healing intensive for the holy pally after 3 stacks of impale, but then the lull comes when worms burrow.
These lulls would be good to use Divine Plea.

~~
As I said, it is difficult to actually TEACH healing, as there are so many aspects to it and many things and little tricks are learnt through experience. That wasn't really the aim of this guide anyway, so sorry if my tips didn't help much.
I could write a healing-by-encounter guide, but that'll depend on requests though.

[F] Conclusion
I would love to receive feedback to all this, and I'll improve it as I receive feedback. I'll even provide more arguments to convince you if you're not swayed enough by my guide. You can drop me a mail at diabteo@hotmail.com , or simply leave a comment. Of course, you can always PM me in-game on Crazerk @ Barthilas, I'll be glad to respond to any queries. I'll just ignore any random flames like 'OMG YOUR GUIDE SUCKS YOU NOOB' though.

Edit this article: Holy Paladin guide

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Guide

This guide is split up into several sections:

• Talent spec & glyphs
• Gear
• Rotation & cooldowns
• Water Elemental
• General tips

Let's go right into explaining what makes this spec tick.

Talent Spec & Glyphs

18/0/53

The frost build is fairly standard, but there are two extra points you can put toward flavor talents or to help round out your spec based on each fight. I'll go into some specifics here.

Frost Warding – This gives you a chance to gain some mana when you stand in fire or frost (or weird frostflamy stuff. Hi Marrowgar!). Since mana is usually not an enormous concern when playing frost, this talent is not as valuable as it is for other specs. Note that when Frost Warding “procs”, your ward is still intact at full absorption.

Improved Blizzard - You can add 1 point to this talent to give your Blizzard ticks a chance to proc Fingers of Frost, significantly increasing your AoE dps. Note that for encounters which specifically require very powerful AoE, you would probably be better off switching to a fire build. This is mainly a convenience talent that will be useful in common AoE situations.

Focus Magic - This is really a mandatory talent, but I thought I'd add a few notes. First, the buff does stack between two mages that cast it on each other. You'll have 3% permanent crit, and whenever the other mage crits, you'll gain the 10-second buff for another 3% crit on top of that. Your best bet is to trade it with a fire mage; failing that, pick another class that benefits greatly from crit, like a Boomkin or Spriest. Oh, and you can put it on your elemental in solo situations.

Glyphs

• Eternal Water
• Frostbolt
• Molten Armor

There's not a whole lot of room for variation here. Glyph of Ice Lance may prove worthwhile if you can shatter Lances on every ghost charge of Fingers of Frost without fail, but Molten Armor provides a more consistent dps boost.

Gear

Like every dps spec of every dps class, reaching the hit cap for your main abilities is the most important thing to do when thinking about gear. The hit cap for frost is 14%, or 367 hit rating. If you have a Boomkin or Spriest in your raid, you can make do with 11% (289 hit). If you're alliance and there's a spacegoat in your raid, subtract 26 from your situation and you're golden.

Let's delve into the more blurry dps stats. Crit rating, first off, is nasty in the way that your middle school bus driver was nasty. You'll get barely over half the benefit per point of crit rating that you would have from spell power. The reason for this? I'll give you a hint: It has something to do with Shatter and the fact that a solid portion of your casts have this "artificially" inflated crit already.

Haste rating is what you're after. Besides spellpower, it's your best-scaling dps stat. When you are well past 3000 spellpower, haste will start to catch up to the #1 stat point. Use a program like Rawr to weigh your stats and figure out exactly when this happens for you, so you can shift your gemming options to more emphasis on haste. Stacking an enormous amount of haste does put you at risk of being GCD-capped while Bloodlust/Heroism or trinket procs are in effect, but careful planning of your own personal cooldowns will help you mitigate this danger. You can read more below in the Cooldowns section.

Spirit is a little nauseating, and thankfully our T10 and a good selection of other ICC loot contains no spirit. So what makes spirit so bad? If you have 2pc T9, 70% of your spirit is converted into crit rating which is suboptimal to begin with, and once you grow out of that set bonus, that ratio drops to 55%. The mp5 you gain from spirit is largely ineffective as well. So try to avoid pieces with spirit, but keep it in scope: a huge chunk of spirit will provide more dps than a relatively small amount of haste or crit.

Intellect: Just respecced from arcane? Alright, you can finally switch out that Talisman of Resurgence for something a little less...healy. You'll also get a break from the Holy Paladins laughing at you. Bottom line: Don't worry about intellect for frost.

When considering gems, use Reckless Ametrines instead of straight-up Runed Cardinals and Quick King's Ambers, to get that one additional stat point. For blue slots, use Purified Dreadstones.

In summary, this is the stat priority you'll follow as frost.

Hit Cap > Spell Power > Haste > Crit > Spirit

Rotation & Cooldowns

It's okay if you want to laugh at the notion of having a "rotation" as frost, since all you do is spam frostbolt till the cows come home. In reality, your rotation involves knowing when you should deviate from that frostbolt spamfest, and how to treat your procs.

Your standard priority list is:

Before we go further, you should know how Fingers of Frost (FoF) works. When a chilling spell (like your Frostbolt, even glyphed) strikes the target, you have a 15% chance of getting a 15-second buff that activates your Shatter talent and treats the target as Frozen for the next 2 spells you cast, whether they're frost spells or not. Due to latency you can use the second charge of FoF on two spells used back-to-back (one cast-time, one instant) and gain the Shatter and Frozen bonuses for both. This is commonly referred to as the "ghost" FoF charge, and the same type of technique is used by frost mages in PvP. This allows you to use the second FoF charge on a Frostbolt+Deep Freeze, for example. Go to a target dummy and try it out. It will soon become second nature.

Possible Bug: Currently on live, FoF procs on spell hit. In the patch notes, it's supposed to proc on spell cast.

Deep Freeze only does damage against permanently stun-immune targets like bosses and some trash, but when it connects it'll do roughly twice the damage of a frostbolt. Try to squeeze it in at the end of a FoF proc to maximize dps if your latency is fairly consistent.

Brain Freeze Fireball will come into play when you pick up your 2-piece bonus of T10, which gives you 12% haste for 5 seconds after casting it. That's enough time to squeeze in three or four hasted frostbolts, so while the proc chance on Brain Freeze is only 15%, you should aim to keep the buff's uptime as high as possible. If you don't have T10 yet, it's not worth casting unless you're running low on mana. You can still use it on the move, and it'll usually do more damage than...

Ice Lance. Mainly used while you're moving and when you have FoF charges available and both Deep Freeze and Brain Freeze are nowhere in sight; it's not worth it to insert into your sit-on-butt rotation. Having the glyph to make it hit for quadruple damage on bosses is an improvement, but the fact that IL cannot proc FoF gives it dubious worth.

Frostbolt Spam is what you resort to when you're sitting in one place and you have no FoF proc available.

Cooldowns

Your cooldowns are split up into two categories: Offensive and Utility.

Icy Veins (144 sec) - Your bread-and-butter dps cooldown. Try to anticipate a fight's length to give you an idea of how many times you'll be able to pop this ability and when the best times to do so will be. Now, running with such high levels of haste in ICC will put you in danger of being GCD-capped, meaning every spell only takes the minimum 1 second to cast, and any haste you have after that is rather worthless. With Bloodlust, Black Magic weapon enchant, and all the trinket procs out there nowadays, you'll need to be careful of when you use this. Use a buff tracking addon like Power Auras or NeedtoKnow to give you more awareness of how much haste you have at any given time so you know the most efficient moment to pop IV.

Cold Snap (8 min) – You'll have a chance to use this once per fight (maybe more, it depends on whether the Lich King has 12 or 15 phases). Previously, you'd use it to reset Icy Veins, because it was your sole dps cooldown. Well, now we've got Deep Freeze, so be mindful of that as well. You'll want to Cold Snap right after finishing an IV and burning DF so you can do both again immediately, saving you the maximum amount of cooldown time. It can get tricky to do this, especially with how erratic FoF comes to you, but you'll have to play dynamically to make the most of Cold Snap.

(10 points if you can guess the mob in the picture)

Ice Block (240 sec) – Having Ice Barrier means you won't use Block in many of the dangerous, high-damage situations you might have previously. Instead, it will still retain its role as a great way to remove very annoying debuffs. With Cold Snap, you'll get two blocks, but you should plan your Snap usage around dps and not this ability unless you'd die otherwise.

Blink – Frost's low mana consumption rate means you'll be able to use Blink liberally to get to a better position, avoid harmful AoEs, and move in range of your target. Remember, every second you spend running is a second spent not dpsing, and even if you're spamming BF fireballs and FoF lances the whole way, it's still less dps than if you were to simply blink over there and start chain-casting.

Mirror Image (180 sec) – This temporarily drops your threat against the mob you have the most aggro on, then 30 seconds later (whether the images have died or not) you inherit all the threat you dealt over the duration. Use in conjunction with invisibility to truly erase your threat table. I recommend using an addon to track the duration of Mirror Image's threat drop, so you know when you need to begin your invis.

T10 note: The T10 4pc bonus conveys 18% additional damage for 30 seconds after using MI, turning it into an enormous dps cooldown.

Ice Barrier - Keep it refreshed when raid damage is flying everywhere, and don't bother if you're not in danger. It may be peace of mind to keep it refreshed all the time, but do know that if you're doing 6000 dps, casting Ice Barrier will cost you up to 9000 damage dealt. Use it wisely and reap the benefit of effectively having the health of a warlock when it matters, without sacrificing too much dps.

Water Elemental

You're now a pet class. Well, if you were frost before 3.3 you still technically were, but now you have to deal with the waterblobble full-time. Let's go over its strengths and weaknesses:

Strengths

• Fire-and-forget nature
• Does more than 600 dps by itself
• 90% pet damage reduction in PvE
• Immune/100% avoidance on some boss attacks
• Never runs OOM
• Scales with some of your stats...

Weaknesses

• ...but hit isn't one of them
• No abilities other than Generic Colored Bolt
• No way to heal it other than bandages
• Low crit modifier

With these in mind, learn to play to the elemental's strengths and diminish the severity of its weaknesses...well, okay. There's nothing you can do at the moment to help it reach the hit cap or make its crits any bigger. But you can put forth an effort to maximize the time it spends dpsing. For example, on Lady Deathwhisper, you can park him one side of the room, away from the add spawns and out of the way of cleaves, and let him whittle away at the boss's shield the whole time.

Alternatively, you can bind a key to /petattack and use it to direct the elemental's attention to your current dps target. This is also useful to prevent it from breaking CC.

You'll also have to manually move the elemental out of poison and fire and other nasty things by pressing Follow, as they tend to mimic bad mages and sit in one spot and tunnelvision their target unless it moves out of range. If it dies, resummoning it is no big deal, but that GCD cost you precious dps time.

The water elemental is not exactly an intensely high-maintenance pet, but you should learn to take care of it and minimize the chances of negatively impacting your performance like any other aspect of your playstyle. Have fun with the little guy and a year down the road, you'll think, "Remember when the elemental wasn't permanent?"

General tips

Here you'll find some miscellaneous pointers on how to improve your efficiency, performance and overall experience while playing. These pointers are useful for all mages...or any dps class, for that matter.

1. Maintain a clear, functional UI. Avoid encumbering the screen with a lot of pointless addons. Take a look at your setup and ask yourself: “Do I really need all of this?” You'll want to make sure your buffs, debuffs, status, and cooldowns are easily visible and take up a small footprint. Use light-weight addons to keep track of your major cooldowns, abilities, buffs and debuffs without having to scrutinize the buff festival on the edge of the screen.

2. Use the following command to zoom far out and help you keep situational awareness:

   “/console cameradistancemaxfactor 5” (remove quotations)

3. While moving, aim to constantly be doing something productive. Cast BF fireballs, FoF ice lances, a fireblast...hell, if everything is on cooldown or otherwise not available, just spam non-FoF ice lance until you get into position. Just pretend it's like a weak DoT ticking on the boss, that flies out of your hand as you move...of course, with proper positioning, you will be minimizing the amount of time you spent on your feet anyway. Which brings us to...

4. Positioning. By picking a spot close to totems, out of the way of conical or area effect abilities, and spread out from others, you will be keeping yourself safe while maximizing your sit-on-butt chain casting time. Don't tunnel vision, however, as you need to be aware of other raiders and the boss moving around you. Move before the coldflame is within 5 feet you, get the hell out of the way of cleaving adds before they're on top of you, and run from people with raid-damaging auras.

   Oh, and to quote Raisa's High-End Destruction Guide, Know Who the Idiots Are. You've seen them get bowling ball'd by Icehowl. Stay away from them.

5. What skills do you use on any given fight? What cooldowns, utilities, and items do you use in combat? Keybind all of that. I don't care how fast you can click. The boss certainly doesn't care how fast you can click. Your latency doesn't care how fast you can click. Putting all of your skills, whether major or minor, at the tip of your fingers will vastly improve your reaction time and efficiency when moving and attacking. Use a bar mod (I prefer bartender) to create keybinds and modify the look/size of your action bars. Your mouse hand will thank you, and you'll notice a great difference in the speed of your playing.

6. If your tank has solid initial threat generation and/or you plan on using MI at the start of a fight, use a Potion of Speed a second before combat starts; you'll get to use a second potion later in the fight.

7. Use a theorycrafting tool like Rawr to look at your gear options and weigh your stats.

Whoo, that was fun to write. Let me know if I missed anything or if you have suggestions. Thanks for reading, and enjoy playing frost! (weird, I know ^.^)

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Guide

Introduction

This guide will cover how to play a Feral Cat DPS, from the basics of spec and rotation to the more advanced tips & tricks of the class. If you are a veteran Feral Cat most of this guide will probably be useless to you, but if you are an up-and-comer who understands the fundamentals of the playstyle or a beginner Druid looking to try it for the first time, this guide is for you.

At the time of writing I'm on a break from raiding, so I will probably not be updating this guide if significant changes are made to the spec during 3.3. My character is Ark of the Darkmoon Faire EU Server, in the guild Prophecy.

Armory Link

Why play a Feral Cat?

Ferals are one of the strongest hybrid DPS specs. We have unparalleled mobility, bring the 5% melee crit buff and utility in the form of Rebirth and Innervate to the raid, and the priority style of play makes Feral DPS dynamic and fun.

The Basics

Spec

There are more or less two standard Cat DPS specs, one for absolute maximum single-target damage at the expense of AoE damage and a few utilities, and the other with those points swapped around. The AoE spec has a free point that can be place wherever you'd like.

Single Target

AoE + 1

Savage Roar, Rip and Shred are the only Glyphs worth considering for Feral DPS.

Toolbox & Priority System

Feral single target DPS uses 5 main abilities: Mangle, Rip, Rake, Savage Roar and Shred. The goal is to keep the first 4 abilites active as much as possible and use the 5th to burn energy and generate combo points.

Ferals use a priority system rather than an standard rotation. Your next action is not determined in advance but will change depending on your Energy level, the number of Combo Points on your target, the time remaining on Savage Roar, Rake, Rip and Mangle and encounter-specific elements such as target switching.

There are a few basic rules that govern how you work with the priority system:

> > > >

- Only Rip at 5 Combo Points
- Savage Roar at any number of Combo Points. The higher the better, but do whatever you can to keep the buff active.
- If the 30% bleed damage debuff is being applied by someone else, either through an Arms Warrior with Trauma or a Bear Tank, you don't need to keep Mangle up yourself. It's still worth tracking those debuffs in case you need to apply it.

If you're following the system properly your job will be more about refreshing everything one by one as it falls off rather than having to prioritize one ability over another.

There are a few other abilities that you will use:

Tiger's Fury. Restores 60 Energy and gives a small damage boost for 6 seconds.
Use this ability as much as possible, but never waste the energy it provides.

Ferocious Bite. Big-hitting ability, hugely inefficient when it consumes more than 30 Energy.
A difficult ability to work into the system. When used thoughtlessly it can result in other stuff falling off and a DPS loss. When learning how to Feral DPS just pretend this just doesn't exist, the DPS increase it offers when used well is outweighed by it's fiddliness. Should never be used at less that 5 Combo Points.

Berserk. Your damage cooldown.
Only ever use this when you have high energy, preferably after a Tiger's Fury. You want to Shred as much as possible while this is up, but continue to refresh stuff as you go. Wasting CP is guaranteed to happen while Berserking, don't worry about it.

Swipe. Your AoE.
Remember that it's conal unlike the Bear version. Only really useful on add-heavy fights (Yogg+0, Anub'Arak) and trash.

Opener

-> -> 2-4CP -> -> -> * X ->

Where X = the amount of Shreds needed to reach 5 CP. The opener will change depending on the initial Mangle/Rake critting for extra CP, Clearcast procs and misses/dodges. Learn to adapt in order to get the ball rolling as soon as possible. Once everything is ticking, keep everying up according to the priority rotation.

Don't forget to cast Faerie Fire on bosses if there isn't a Bear Tank, Balance Druid or Warlock already applying the -%5 Armor debuff.

The best advice that can be given to someone learning how to play Feral is to practice. Practice, practice, practice! Find a training dummy and glue yourself to it until you have a handle on the system, then go to a VoA pug or such to practice in a raid environment.

Gearing your Cat

While I wanted this guide to contain some gearing information, the emphasis is on practical playing advice. There's enough to get started here but I recommend that you use Rawr to plan your gear progression.

Basics

Gearing for Feral DPS is pretty simple. I'm not going to list all the enchants you should get because it should be pretty easy to figure out. I should say that Agility > Crusher on gloves, Agility > Icewalker on boots even under the hit cap, and Berserking is the best weapon enchant. However, Mongoose is very close to Berserking for DPS, so if you want to use the same staff for tanking and DPS feel free to enchant it with Mongoose.

Hit and Expertise are not particularly desirable for Ferals because an ability failing to land will cost you only a GCD, not Energy or Combo Points. The worst that can happen is you have a second or two of downtime on one of your abilities. While constant misses or dodges can be irritating and cause you to muddle the rotation a little, it will not show on the meters the way you might expect. For reference, the Hit cap is 262 and the Expertise cap is 26.

You should use the Relentless Earthsiege Diamond, and activate it with a Nightmare Tear so that you can use Reds for the rest of your gems.. Put the tear somewhere it will activate a worthwhile socket bonus.

Agility vs Armor Penetration

As you start you should be gemming for Agility only. Once you get a decent amount Armor Pen from gear you should swap all your gems to it. The actual threshold is not particularly important, but 400-500 Armor Pen is a good point to swap. There are currently 2 ways to gear for Armor Pen. One is to soft cap it and get an Armor Penetration trinket, the other is to go for the hard cap.

"Soft Cap" means to get a trinket that gives Armor Pen on a proc, deduct that amount of Armor Pen from the hard cap, and gem Armor Pen until you hit that number. In other words, you want to have 1400 Armor Pen when the trinket proc is active.

At lower gear levels, soft capping is a good option especially with the introduction of the easily attainable Needle-Encrusted Scorpion trinket from the Forge of Souls heroic. Here's a table of the 3 Armor Pen trinkets in the game, where they drop and their stats information.

Name	Drops in	Passive Stat	ArP on proc	Resulting ArP softcap
Grim Toll	Naxxramas 25	83 Hit	612	788
Mjolnir Runestone	Thorim 10 (Hard mode)	102 Crit	665	735
Needle-Encrusted Scorpion	Devourer of Souls (Heroic)	114 Crit	678	722

Depending on what trinket you have, you should change the maximum amount of Armor Pen that you gem for. Once you hit the soft cap you should gem the remaining sockets with Agility. Needle-Encrusted Scorpion is by far the superior item to use, the stats are higher and its proc has a shorter internal cooldown than the other two which results in higher uptime.

EDIT: Apparently NES was hotfixed to have the same 45-second internal cooldown as the other two trinkets. This makes it more or less the same as Mjolnir; it's stats are higher but the fact that it procs off a crit rather than just a hit means that it's uptime will be slightly lower. If you have Mjolnir already then don't tear your hair out trying to get NES, the difference is minimal. (Thanks to Stave of Semper Fortis)

Hardcapping will likely be the superior option in Icecrown Citadel. Gear has such large amount of Armor Pen that the cap of 1400 will be realistically attainable. The trinkets Banner of Victory and Deathbringer's Will are good if you are stacking Armor Pen with the hard cap in mind.

Remember that Armor Pen food exists, Hearty Rhino. You should eat it unless you're capped or not stacking ArP, in which case you should eat Agility food, Blackened Dragonfin. It's so easy to farm as Feral that you really have no excuse not to use it!

Quick T10 note: 4 pieces of Tier 10 ARE worth getting, both because the set bonuses are good and because the set pieces have great stats for Cats.

Tips & Tricks

Feral DPS is like juggling. You are constantly trying to keep 4 timers from going, while managing Energy and Combo Points, Berserk/Tiger's Fury cooldowns, and of course encounter elements such as fire-dodging, target switching and aggro management. However there is always room for refinement, even with something so complex.

For example, here are a few things to think about:

- Rip and Rake will be affected by Mangle at the time to tick occurs. For example, Rake is active without Mangle and it ticks for 100 damage, Mangle is applied and the next tick will hit for 130 damage.
- Rip and Rake will be affected by Savage Roar at the time they are applied to the target.

You may thinks that these are minor points and, well, you'd be right. But they can affect how you apply debuffs. Hypothetical situation: Mangle, Rake and Rip are all down. You have Savage Roar up, 5 Combo Points and enough Energy to apply both Mangle and Rip in immediate succession. The priority system tells you to apply Mangle, then Rip, then Rake However if apply Rip first, then Mangle before the first Rip tick, then Rake, you gain DPS by not wasting a Combo Point and having higher Rip uptime. It it minor things like this that will improve your DPS.

Maximizing Uptime

- Get a good, clear timer bar mod. I use NeedToKnow, but others such as ClassTimer are good too. Whatever works for you.

- Learn the fight. Know in advance when you need to swap targets or move and mold you DPS around it.

- Think ahead. For example, if Savage Roar and Rip and both going to expire soon, consider clipping Savage Roar to free up CP to reapply Rip. Don't burn all your Energy on Shreds when you'll need to refresh Rake and Mangle in a few seconds.

Clearcasting

I haven't mentioned the Clearcasting effect from Omen of Clarity much so far. To new Ferals it can be "helping hand" in keeping the rotation going, which is very useful early on. Like all your tools, you want to get the most use out of it. The most efficient way to use Clearcasts is with Shred as it is your highest Energy move, though I prioritize refreshing debuffs over it.

Note that Savage Roar is not affected by Clearcasting as it is not an offensive ability.

When to Ferocious Bite

I don't like FB much. There are 3 situations in which I use it:

1) I have more than 10 seconds left on both Savage Roar and Rip, Rake and Mangle are both up, Tiger's Fury is off CD, and I have no more than 30 Energy.
2) During Berserk when I have ~15 energy and there's no danger of stuff dropping off once Berserk ends.
3) "Big" adds on fights such as Jaraxxus or Yogg P1, Rip doesn't last long enough to be useful so I just FB at 4 or 5 CP instead, as long SR isn't going to run out.

It's worth noting that the Clearcasting effect will only reduce the initial 30 Energy cost of Ferocious Bite to 0 - the extra Energy to damage conversion remains.

When to Berserk

As with all DPS cooldowns, the more times you use it in a fight, the better for your overall DPS. I like to pop it at the start of the fight as trinkets and Berserking enchant will proc pretty quickly and be active at that time, though of course you should be very careful with threat at this point. If threat is not an issue due to Tricks/MDs, I open with:

-> -> 2-4CP -> -> -> -> * X -> 5CP -> until low Energy ->

Again, where X = the number of Shreds needed to reach 5CP.

Make friends with the Rogues and DKs in your guild, get them to give you Tricks or Hysteria, and time it with Berserk for maximum effect. I should mention that unlike most DPS cooldowns, you should not use Berserk during Bloodlust. The haste will increase your amount of Clearcast procs, as a string of Energy-free moves makes Energy cost-reducing affects useless. The same goes for Speed Potions.

Remember that Tiger's Fury cannot be used during Berserk, but you can use it to immediately fill your Energy bar before using it, or to fill up after Berserk fades. The first is far more common, as it's difficult to let Energy tick up to a Berserk-ready level while maintaining buffs/debuffs.

Spec tweaks

I prefer to use the spec that takes Feral Instinct rather than Feral Aggression. For me +15% damage on Ferocious Bite would equal roughly a 0.5% DPS increase on single target fights (your mileage may vary). The Swipe damage is great on fights like Anub'arak or Yogg-Saron, and Survival Instincts is a great panic button

Of course, you can and should respec according to the fight and your raid setup. For instance, if there is another Feral Druid in your raid the 2 points in Improved Leader of the Pack are wasted, you can swap them out for whatever is necessary. If you're in a progress raid against a Patchwerk-style boss, use the single target spec and so on.

Miscellaneous

- We have a passive 30% movement speed increase from Feral Swiftness, 70% movement speed increase on a cooldown with Dash and Feral Charge for closing distances. Our rotation requires a lot of ramp-up time so we are pretty ineffective where constant target switching is concerned, but these bonuses help alleviate some of that. Make the most of them.

- Be raid-aware. With such a complex rotation is is easy to tunnel-vision on your timer bars and ignore what's going on around you. This will make you a very dead kitty. Pay attention to other raid members and the boss as much as possible.

- We are able to survive much more raid damage than most other classes, due to our 30% AoE damage reduction from Predatory Instincts, Barkskin and Survival Instincts. This is not an excuse to be sloppy, but it affords us a bit of slackery when dealing with incoming damage. For instance, popping Barkskin & SI and having my finger poised over my Healthstone button lets me ignore a opposite-colour Vortex on Twin Valkyrs and continue to DPS.

Professions

If you want to seriously min-max your Cat then Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting are the two best professions, as they allow you to stack more Agility or Armor Penetration, whereas the other professions only give you Attack Power bonuses. Really though, as long as you have two crafting professions you'll be fine.

Gathering professions are inferior for raiding because they don't offer useful stat bonuses for DPS.

Interface and Addons

It is important to have a UI that lets you do you job as well as possible. It's vital to have some way of tracking buff/debuff uptime, ability cooldowns, and Combo Points as well as raidwide things like boss timers and Raid frames.

Here are a few addons I find helpful for Feral DPS.You will probably already have some raid frames and BigWigs (or an equivalent), so I've excluded those from this list.

NeedToKnow

I highly recommend this for tracking Savage Roar, Rip, Rake and Mangle durations. You can track multiple debuffs on the same bar, for instance adding Trauma to your Mangle bar so you can tell if an Arms Warrior is keeping it up.

BasicComboPoints

A simple addon that represents CP numerically rather than with a series of dots. A personal preference thing for me.

BasicComboPoints and NeedToKnow

PowerAuras

I use this to let me know when I get a Clearcast proc and when Tiger's Fury is available for use. Also useful to alert you to debuffs such as Sara's Favour or Paralytic Toxin.

ForteXorcist

Cooldown tracking.

ForteXorcist Cooldown Bar

Example of my UI, slightly outdated.

If you'd like to contact me regarding this guide, PM me here on Stratfu or on Prophecy's website (www.warcraft-prophecy.net). My username is Ark in both cases.

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Audience

The mage has long been touted as the 'Glass Canon' in PVP/PVE events. The term implies that mages can dish out a significant amount of DPS, but are extremely fragile in their cloth armor. Mages are the most offensive spell damage class in the game, but can be easily killed if played incorrectly.

Guide

Introduction

The Warrior can deliver big time damage, has high armor points and significant mobility with Intercept and Charge, but Warriors are extremely vulnerable based on this Mage Strat. Frost Nova, Frostbite, Frost Bolt and Polymorph all root the Warrior and there''s not much they can do about it!

Experienced PVP Warriors will use a 1 Hander and Sheild to Spell Reflect when you cast a spell, but it costs them a lot of rage to do this, and you can just use Ice Lance to waste the Spell Reflect. Like many classes, the key to winning is simply keeping your distance. Blink whenever the warrior uses Intercept. Charge is only a 1 second stun so it's best to just Frost Nova and use that minor speed enchant on your boots!

Counterspell has a longer range then Charge, use it right away at maximum rage to keep them from getting free rage.

Frost Nova as soon as you can or Polymorph - most Warriors will exhaust their PVP Trinket right away so be prepared to double cast. Once you cast either spell, get some distance so that you can cast Frost Bolt before it wears off.

ALWAYS Blink when the Warrior uses Intercept. You don't want to get a Hamstring before you Blink, you can use your PVP Trinket to dispel. Save your PVP Trinket to dispel Hamstring after a Frost Nova, Frostbite or Blink.

Ice Block should always be saved for Bladestorm. An experienced PVP Warrior will time Bladestorm after you have used Blink. But, if you have Blink available use it and start to nuke the Warrior has he spins around hitting air.

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Audience

The mage has long been touted as the 'Glass Canon' in PVP/PVE events. The term implies that mages can dish out a significant amount of DPS, but are extremely fragile in their cloth armor. Mage are the most offensive spell damage class in the game, but can be easily killed if played incorrectly.

Guide

Introduction

Since the introduction of the Death Knight in WOTLK, this class has provided many challenges in the arena. While they are similar to a Warrior, they occupy Unholy spells. Instead of a Rage bar they have Runic Power, which needs to be generated by opponent attacks. Luckily for the Frost Mage, the Death Knight can be easily kited provided you follow this strat. The key to defeating the DK is to constantly counter all their ability to reach you!

Strategy

Ice Armor is mandatory if you have Frostbite built into your talent tree. If you lack this talent, then use Mage Armor as it will reduce Chains of Ice by 50% in most instances. Frost Ward should be refreshed upon CD to ward off the DK frost damage.

If the DK begins to cast Death Grip or Chains of Ice, Counterspell will prevent him/her from doing so with a 4 second silence. It will also prevent the DK from using Strangulate, an interrupt ability. This can't be stressed enough. The goal of this fight is to avoid the DK's ability to reach you, therefore you can Kite and outlast the DK.

Upon interruption of the DK, this will allow you to quickly cast Frostbolt and keep you out of range. If the DK should come within melee range, he can still interrupt your spell cast with Mind Freeze. Or, the Ghoul Pet will interrupt your casts with Gnaw - in which case, you should always dispel with Blink.

Most likely, the DK will open with Chains of Ice. Use Frost Nova then run away (save your blink for Death Grip) and remember that it's on a 25 sec cd, so Blink will be available for each Grip. Frost DK also has Hungering Cold which can root the mage.

If you choose to Blink, be sure to slow the DK in some fashion. Either use Cone of Cold or Frost Nova. The will give you the greatest ability to escape and continue to kite.

PVP Trinkets should be saved for Chains of Ice should the DK get within range.

Anytime the DK uses the Anti-Magic Shell, the mage should Ice Block. You simply can't DPS when the DK and implemented this ability into the fight.

The Shatter Combo

The Shatter Combo is the Frost Mages Weapon of Mass Destruction. Your lack of understanding of this combo will most certainly make your mage more glass than canon. To explain, Ice Lance will do 3x the amount of damage when cast upon a frozen target. Because of this, you can cast Frost Bolt on a frozen target BEFORE Ice Lance and it will still deal the 3x damage. Here are the steps in a Shatter Combo:

1. Cast Frost Nova on a target - set pet to attack/freeze
2. Cast Frost Bolt then immediately cast Ice Lance

Here is some video instruction: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ9fy9DYRWI

Shatter Macro
/use 14
/cast Icy Veins
/cast [nopet] Summon Water Elemental
/cast [pet] Freeze
/petattack [target]

Frost Mage Macros

Frost Bolt Macro:
#showtooltip Frostbolt
/run SetCVar("Sound_EnableSFX","0")
/use 14
/run SetCVar("Sound_EnableSFX","1")
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/cast Icy Veins
/cast Frostbolt
/stopmacro [target=pettarget, exists]
/petattack

Frost Nova Macro
#showtooltip Frost Nova
/stopcasting
/castsequence reset=21|Alt Frost Nova, Cold Snap

Ice Block / Counterspell
#showtooltip Ice Block
/stopcasting
/cancelaura Ice Block
/cast [modifier:shift]Counterspell
/cast Ice Block

Frost Nova + Deep Freeze
/stopcasting
/castsequence reset=21 Frost Nova, Deep Freeze

Fire Ball + Fire Blast - Fingers Proc
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=6 Fireball, Fire Blast

Focus Polymorph
#showtooltip
/clearfocus [target=focus,dead]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]
/script SetRaidTarget("focus", 1)
/cast [target=focus]Polymorph
/stopmacro [nogroup]

Blink
#showtooltip Blink
/stopcasting
/cast Blink

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