Crucial Roles and Failure

Currently, my guild is working on hardmode Twin Val'kyr in ToC 25 (we've beaten it several times in 10). We've tried many different strategies, but they all revolve around one thing: soakers.

If you're not sure what a soaker is, it's a person who is the opposite color aura of the group they are closest to, and their job is to soak incoming orbs before they hit the raid, as well as dodge their opposite color orbs so that they do hit the raid (and thus buff damage). A soaker has to be highly mobile, as standing still to cast is a bit of a danger to them, depending upon persistence of orbs.

But because the soaker's job is so vital, and because they are a little ways out of the group, when they mess up...it is very, very noticeable. And if one dies, it can often cause a chain reaction for other soakers to die, as they suddenly have to cover a wider range, with more chance of being swarmed by the wrong color orb. You can take a hit from one opposite color orb, but more than that and you're generally dead, if you're not a tank.

My guild spent 3 hours, 25-26 attempts, last night on this fight. I was a dark soaker for the light side the entire time. Sometimes I could execute it perfectly til a wipe; many other times I died early. Some of it is RNG; you have nowhere to go and too many orbs of the wrong color flying at you, and your Barkskin can't soak that much damage, or you get a debuff of the opposite aura at the wrong time. Some of it is a split decision gone awry; you make a pathing choice under pressure and it puts you into a dead end of your own design. Some of it is lag; with so many orbs flying around, spell effects and people packed into one space, your computer can hiccup you into a stack of death, or your latency can show the orbs to be farther away than they actually are. Some of it is just being human; it's a high pressure fight, you have a high pressure job (run, soak, dodge, heal, stay alive), and you're going to mess up.

The worst part is the feeling that you messed up, you know you messed up, and it's likely your mess up is going to cause a chain reaction of deaths, either from orbs getting through or because your other soaker(s) now have to cover more ground (making their jobs more stressful and have a larger margin of error). Besides that, your mess up is obvious, when a soaker dies, it's a Bad Thing. You can lose a DPS or two so long as your damage can keep up with shields and the enrage timer. When a soaker dies, it's often a multiple blow: you lost a shield for the raid and, in our strategy, likely a healer.

The only fight that has stressed me out more was trying to two-heal hardmode Anub'arak 10 with a Disc Priest, and not by a lot. Playing a role that is so crucial that, within the confines of the encounter's start to finish, you have a very low margin of error (and your errors in fact increase the others' margins of error), tacked onto a job that already had a low margin of error (raid healing for auras requires intense upkeep, especially on those with Touch of Light or Touch of Dark when there is no aura switching) is very taxing. And the knowledge that not only did you mess up, but some of the things you messed up to are out of your control while plenty of others were and you just made a stupid split second decision, and sometimes you're not even sure which ones are which...

Let's just say I feel rather terrible about last night and the wipes I contributed to. I feel even worse because I don't know if I am even improving at the job. I really hope I am, because we have 17 attempts left for tonight.

Worrying About Nourish

It happened over and over. Regrowth Glyph was too powerful, Wild Growth was too spammable, Lifebloom too strong for too little. And so we were changed, restricted, modified and retooled. We haven't turned out badly, but it does bring forth a concern about the next spell I feel is in line for reduction. Nourish.

Why Nourish? It seems like a pretty well thought out spell. It has a decent cast time, heals a mild amount of damage, and the healing power of it is increased by having your HoTs on the target (and more still with glyphs and armor bonuses). Why is it so concerning?

Well, if you look at the WWS reports of my guild's last raid (which are indicative of a trend; every raid's WWS reports have looked similar), you might notice the problem. Names blacked out for privacy's sake, first letters left because I need something to reference them by.


These are the boss healing numbers for successful boss kills of Flame Leviathan (which doesn't factor into the WWS), Razorscale, Ignis, Deconstructor, and Iron Council, with the inclusion of one wipe on Iron Council and two wipes on Kologarn. There was also a Paladin healer, but I didn't include him as it was unnecessary information.

You can see on the chart that myself and Druid T are rather close in numbers. However, there is a huge gap between myself and Druid S, a gap of roughly 1.5 million effective healing and 2% overheal (or 10% in the case of Druid T).

These are my healing spells (same fights, ignoring Potions):



Druid T's:



Druid S's:



Druid S used Nourish 59% of the time, had more effective healing, less overheal, and almost the same focus as Druid T. This focus was large, indicating a great amount of raid healing. With the majority of raid healing being Wild Growth, and Wild Growth being used only for 24% of the other healing, over half the time Nourish was not being used in conjunction with other HoTs. With Druid S's gear and raid buffs, there were no mana issues and no mana potions taken.

This is not an isolated incident. I have spoken with others in different raiding guilds, and their Druid healers who top the charts use Nourish just as much. This seems to be along the same lines as when Wild Growth was in its heyday. It's not mana troubling, it heals a decent amount without needing the modifiers, is quick to cast (especially with enough haste), and it makes a pretty FWOOSH sound. All indicators that Blizz devs are soon going to be looking at it and seriously considering changes, if they aren't already.

This may be paranoia on my part, but no tree who has watched the trends of change to our class and spec of late can say it doesn't bear the signs.

EDIT: Just to clarify, since one of my friends already asked me, no, I am not losing sleep over this or freaking out or anything. I'm not really worried; it's just a title.

Lifebloom 101: A Guide for the Saplings, the Unseasoned, and the Stupids

It's come to my attention that not everyone knows how Lifebloom works! /gasp

This is of course me being in my own little druidy world assuming everyone's got the lowdown on the HoTtest heal ever. However! I think I can write well enough about it that I can lay it out, give it a good going over, and hopefully my faithful readers (I'm assured I have more than one!) can point out any errors I make, as I can be prone to them.

Let's begin, shall we?

To start off, it's called Lifebloom! Aw, how cute. It's your life, and it's blooming up, up and up! Just the way we all like it. I'm not sure many people like when their bar starts dropping, unless they're a mana starved tankadin. Even then, they want it to go back up. Mmm, delicious heals.

Right, moving on.

Next, let's look at the mana cost. There's only one rank of Lifebloom (at the moment...WotLK may change that) and it has a fixed mana cost of 220 mana. If you factor in Tree Form's 20% reduced mana cost, it becomes 176. That's really inexpensive, which is really helpful, but we'll go into that more later when we start talking about how it's used.

40 yard range, that's pretty standard. Instant cast, too, is fitting in with the druid's unique playstyle. And now we're on to the meat of the skill.

"Heals the target for 273 over 7 sec. When Lifebloom completes its duration or is dispelled, the target instantly heals themself for 600. This effect can stack up to 3 times on the same target."

What does it all mean, Bellwether?!

I'm glad you asked! See, Lifebloom is a HoT. What's a HoT?

Heal
over
Time

Still with me? Okay. So, Lifebloom is a HoT which is applied to a target for the sole purpose of healing them. It can stack up to three times, and heals for more each second with each stack. Like this:



Now, that's not the most optimal casting order when you have one target. That would look more like this:



Or:



And so on with many variations and Swiftmends thrown in at opportune moments.

But it all really depends on what your tank needs at the time! We won't get too picky about that now. Especially since it's dragging in other skills and I'm focusing on just Lifebloom.

Now, Lifebloom lasts 7 seconds. And if you let it expire within those seven seconds, it "blooms." The HoT buff disappears and the target heals themself for a set amount. This bloom amount does not change with varying stacks. A stack of one will bloom as much as a stack of two as a stack of three.

Now, let's take apart what I just said.

First part: the disappearing of the buff after seven seconds. You want to keep the Lifebloom rolling at 3 stacks constantly. This is the most efficient (PvE) use of Lifebloom. With multiple tanks, this is up to 4 tanks with three rolling lifebloom stacks (depending on your latency) due to global cooldown and ignoring any need to use another skill within that rotation (Innervate, emergency Nature's Swiftness plus Healing Touch, Rebirth, etc.) This makes the mana efficiency of Lifebloom all-important due to a Resto druid never being outside of the 5-second rule. Never.

Next part: The bloom. The bloom counts as the healing of the target it blooms on. Basically, this heal will not show up on your healing meters, and will give the person it blooms on threat. This sounds good in theory, but in PvE cases Lifebloom should not be allowed to bloom as much as it is in your power to keep it rolling. It is highly mana inefficient to allow the spell to bloom, but that part will also be explained a bit later in the post.

Final part: Since one Lifebloom will bloom as much as a stack of two or three, it is important to realize you should not stack it if your plan is to allow it to bloom (such as giving the tank one lifebloom before he pulls, giving him bloom threat).

That's all well and good Bellwether, but why do we care?

I'll tell you why!

Once you get into 25-mans, Lifebloom will become 80-100% of your healing. Multiple Lifebloom stacks rolling on multiple tanks. Druid healers fill their own special little niche called "damage mitigation." Our job is to give the tank a steady supply of regenerating health while the other healers (priests, paladins and shamans) take care of burst/spike damage. Basically, we're a living Major Troll's Blood Potion on crack and caffeine with ADHD.

Now, let's address the bloom. That little bugger has its place, sure enough as I type this now. This place is snuggled securely in the (un)welcoming arms of PvP. You see, when Lifebloom is purged or spell-stolen, it blooms automatically on its target, granting them that last spurt of life as a sort of consolation prize. However, this will only work on the last Lifebloom in the stack. You can have two out of three purged from you and get nothing in return, so don't get too cocky. They're also handy when you're being forced to turtle in bear form and can't get to your buddy to give him or her a good heal boost.

So, let's summarize!

Lifebloom is mana efficient and low cost as long as you keep your stacks rolling. You don't want it bloom unless you have no other choice or are giving your tank initial aggro on a pull, and then it's best if it blooms on a stack of one. If you do it at any other time, congratulations! You just casted the longest delayed-time heal in the game for minimal results.

Any questions?

EDIT: It turns out there were questions! What follows is a conversation I had with my fellow bloggers to clear up some of the misconceptions about Lifebloom!

Matticus: since it expires afte 7 seconds
Matticus: dont subsequent lifeblooms like trigger the bloom when it overrides previous blooms?
Matticus: like, bloom, bloom, bloom, bloom OH SHIT HE BLOOMED and start over?
Bellwether: you just keep refreshing the three stack
Bellwether: the timer starts over when you add a new lifebloom
Matticus: one timer for ALL three stacks?
Matticus: not one time for EACH stack?
Bellwether: you can stack lifebloom three times on one person. so it's one stack of three individuals.
Matticus: and adding a 4th does ntohing
Bellwether: just refreshes the timer to keep it from blooming.
Matticus: *scratches head*
Twalkins: Are you familiar with sunder armor, Matticus? Maybe lacerate?
Matticus: *blink*
Matticus: healed my whole career
Twalkins: Ah...guess not.
Twalkins: Hm.
Twalkins: Lifebloom stacks on a single target up to three times.
Matticus: that part i get
Twalkins: So if you hit someone three times with LB, they will have three stacks for seven seconds.
Twalkins: If you hit them again with LB, it won't add a fourth stack. It will simply refresh the duration of the third stack, bringing it back to 7 seconds.
Matticus: like a judgement..
Leafshine: So each cast of Lifebloom resets the timer.
Twalkins: Like a judgement.
Matticus: otherwise i have to recast the seal and judge it again..
Twalkins: Right.
Twalkins: Instead of having to rejudge, a druid has to re-LB three times to get the three stacks.
Leafshine: Yes.
Twalkins: Once LB blooms, all three stacks go away. You'd have to start over.
Leafshine: Yes.
Twalkins: And no matter how many stacks you have, it will always bloom for the same amount.
Matticus: and when it booms, the amount healed makes no differennce be it one boom or three booms
Twalkins: right.
Matticus: and i dont understand this 5sr stuff and how it relates to druids. depending on the encounter, i stay inactive for a while to try and spirit regen my mana
Twalkins: it'd be pretty cool if you could choose when to bloom lifebloom.
Bellwether: We can't be inactive.
Bellwether: It's not how we work
Twalkins: 5 second rule means that you won't regain any spirit-based mana until after five seconds pass of no casting.
Bellwether: We're keeping the tank with a steady regen going.
Matticus: right, that part i get
Bellwether: If we "take a break" the tank loses that steady regen
Siha: Priests are the only ones who _can_ be inactive, really.
Twalkins: So you don't have time to stay out of teh 5sr when LB is only 7 seconds.
Phaelia: druids are pretty much always in 5SR but we have tools that make up for it
Bellwether: especially with multiple stacks
Phaelia: such as lower mana cost spells, Innervate
Phaelia: and general awesomeness
Matticus: you cant just like... sit there for 10 seconds and rely on other healers to do stuff?
Leafshine: And we stat heavily for Spirit if we're seep enough Resto to be trees.
Bellwether: That's not what we're there for
Phaelia: we are healing stream totems
Bellwether: We're there to keep the tank steadily regenning life while other healers care for the spikes.
Leafshine: We are the steady buffers.
Leafshine: We keep Prot Pallies happy with constant mana regen…
Phaelia: when I heal on tough encounters with multiple stacks rolling, my face is about two inches from my monitor and i rock back and forth to keep my rhythm ... you would think me autistic to see me heal ^_^
Leafshine: *nods*
Matticus: okay, so hypothetical scenario.
Leafshine: My attention rarely wavers from the top left hand few inches of the screen...
Bellwether: and if it ever blooms you're like "Dammit! My whole rhythm is out of whack!!!"
Matticus: 3 tanks on a boss. all three tanks are steadily taking damage.
Matticus: do you go from tank 1, to tank 2, to tank 3? or do you stack up 1, then move onto the next?
Matticus: or just not care about 2 of them?
Bellwether: you stack on all of them
Twalkins: You can easily keep three stacks up.
Phaelia: i do 1, 2, 3 ... i rarely worry with spamming 3x
Twalkins: four depending on latency.
Bellwether: and you stack 1,2,3
Phaelia: especially at the beginning where other healers are likely to be on top of things
Matticus: lets assuming you're on lan
Matticus: and latency means nothing
Bellwether: 1,2,3
Twalkins: You'll have no problem 1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3 lifebloom stacking.
Phaelia: besides doing 3x on 1 then 2 then 3 would be so expensive ^_^
Bellwether: And you would interrupt stacking three on one of them to refresh on the others and it would be a mess.
Phaelia: i have trouble with 3 tanks + rejuv cycles
Matticus: i see

And then another conversation, only a bit later, with a former guildy:

Harl: so spellsteal counts as a "dispell" effect in terms of whether lifebloom blooms or not?
Bellwether: yep.
Bellwether: had Alt help me test it out
Harl: interesting... does that mean the mage doesn't actually steal anything?
Bellwether: i don't know
Harl: or does the target and the mage benifit?
Harl: er, benefit even
Harl: does it still the whole stack?
Harl: er, steal
Bellwether: just one
Harl: the target gets credit for the heal when it blooms, right?
Bellwether: yes
Harl: so you could drop a single cast on the tank and let it bloom at the start of a fight as a minor agro gain?
Harl: or is that even significant?
Bellwether: yes
Bellwether: as long as you drop it before the tank actually pulls
Bellwether: otherwise it just negates your aggro
Harl: I'm fuzzy on how much threat healing generates
Bellwether: one sec, I'll find you the article
Bellwether: http://www.resto4life.com/2008/01/21/mailbag-bestowable-threat/
Harl: oh, you even mentioned that part in here. I just hadn't read that far, yet

The mage part is an interesting question. I'm going to assume when a mage spell-steals a lifebloom, they get it and the person losing it gets the bloom. Anyone know otherwise?

EDIT2: Helpful commenter celimos replied:
"when a mage steals it it blooms on the original owner, the mage get the buff, and it will bloom again on the mage afterwards."

Mana Recovery

For Restoration and Balance druids, mana is all-important. Without it, we're reduced to smacking things futiley (or, in the case of our owlbears, semi-futilely) with our weapon or tree-fists. And as mightily powerful as you think your tree-fists are, there are more useful and important things you could be doing. Therefore, it's important to learn as many ways as possible to keep your mana up. Hopefully, this should help, and if I'm missing anything, I'm counting on my limited reader base to help me fill in the gaps. Phaelia also recently added an article on the same subject, and I would encourage you all to go read it, as she has the math to back it up and I didn’t say everything she did. It would feel like plagiarism! However, I did add a few things she overlooked, especially as I am looking at this from both a Balance and Resto perspective.

Talents
Balance
Moonglow – This talent reduces the mana cost of your Moonfire, Starfire, Wrath, Regrowth, Rejuvenation and Healing Touch spells by 3/6/9%. Moonkins are especially mana-pressed (hence the derogatory term “Oomkin”) so any reduction on cost is helpful. Since it works with three healing spells as well, it is also good for Balance/Resto hybrids.

Dreamstate – This talent allows 4/7/10% of your intellect’s worth of mana to regenerate constantly, even while casting. This used to be the defining talent of the popular Dreamstate healing build, but now it is used mainly by Moonkins, with Restos favoring the tree healing specs.

Moonkin Form – This form allows your mana to regenerate from successful melee damage. Make sure to have an AP staff on macro equip for when this becomes necessary (I recommend the Cenarion Expedition Exalted rep level Earthwarden, or, if PvP is more your style, Twalkins/Twalvanis of my guild recommends any of the Gladiator's Maul variants).

Restoration
Natural Shapeshifter – Reduces the mana cost of all shape-shifting by 10/20/30%. This is a must for all feral druids, and is handy for anyone who knows how much shifting forms occurs in arena. Is also welcome for when you are forced out of form to decurse or abolish poisons (depending on your form at the time). However, due to the abundance of other talents in the restoration and balance trees which are more readily available, it may be wise to skip this unless you are a raid healing 1/0/60 or 0/0/61 spec.

Intensity – Allows 10/20/30% of your mana regen to continue while casting. Every druid, no matter spec, should consider this talent (it has bonuses for ferals as well) as it is remarkably powerful.

Tranquil Spirit – This talent reduces the mana cost of Tranquility and Healing Touch by 2/4/6/8/10%. This may not be worth taking, however, if you are not a 0/0/61 or 1/0/60 raid spec, as Healing Touch and Tranquility are highly situational.

Living Spirit – Increases your total Spirit by 5/10/15%. Since Spirit is connected with mana regeneration, this is another helping hand on the way to keeping your mana pool available to you.

Tree of Life – Though this form limits what healing spells you can cast, their cost is reduced by 20%. This form should be used wherever mobility isn’t an issue, due to the 20% movement speed decrease.

Trinkets
Lower City Prayerbook – Though this is only helpful for restoration druids, it decreases on use your healing spellcast costs by 22. Now, this may not look like a lot, but with five casts of Lifebloom within this 15 second timer, you have already saved mana equivalent to one free Lifebloom. And with its nice bonus to healing, this is an all-around good trinket.

Pendant of the Violet Eye – Most people are raiding at least into Kara these days, so I don’t see this as too high a goal to consider unreasonable (drops from Shade, one of my favorite boss fights). This pretty trinket, though having no “equip” effect, on use will return you 21 mp5 per mana-costing spellcast for its 20 second duration. Of course, you have to remember that as soon as the 20 seconds are up, all that mp5 disappears, so your spell cast speed should still slowdown a bit to take advantage of this ability. As it only has a two minute cooldown, it is good to use this trinket whenever it is available. And since this operates on mp5 and not on spirit, pairing it with your innervate will give no special bonuses.

Bangle of Endless Blessings – Phaelia over at Resto4Life wrote an in-depth article describing how best to use this particular trinket. Its on-use ability increases the wearer’s spirit. This works well with innervate, which increases your spirit-based mana regen by 400%, and 100% while casting. Couple with a high-spirit weapon to switch out and your mana will boost rapidly. Its equip ability is handy as well when it procs.

Dark Moon Card: Blue Dragon – This allows, on a 2% chance proc, with each spellcast to gain mana regeneration while casting. This is a good trinket to have if you are strapped for mana or an anticipating a long fight. Without an equip use, however, it is slightly weaker than a trinket with straight mana regen. Natural Perfection's Aftereight wrote a very nice article about it.

Party Members You Love to Have
(Retribution) Paladins – You’re maybe thinking “What?! Who uses ret pallies?” Well, my guild does. We also use prot pallies. And, you know, a holy pally. Somewhere. He’s lazy. But having someone with judgement around is spectacular, especially if they’re the obliging sort who will judge the mob with wisdom to return mana to whomever smacks it with a stick. They also bring lovely blessings which boost your mp5 dramatically. However, as a boomkin, you may want to forego the Blessing of Wisdom in favor of Salvation. Any pally can give you blessings, however, so that is why ret is in parentheses. The more pallies you have, the more blessings, though you cannot get two BoW.

Shadow Priests – Oh, how I love thee. Their special abilities return health or mana to the party, easing up your job in one way or another. There’s hardly ever a reason to not want them around.

Feral Druids – Specifically, ones not tanking (though we love them, it is not in the same way as pertains to this article). As ferals, they don’t especially need their innervate, nor will they be wearing gear to capitalize on it. Often, they don’t mind shifting from kitty to pop one over to a druid (or priest) who asks. If they are a tank, an option is for them to throw an innervate on you right before pulling. This does waste some mana you could gain from that innervate, but shifting out of bear form mid-fight is suicide, and that is mana you would not otherwise have. My tankbear does it to keep me from drinking between fights. But he’s impatient.

Mages – Arcane Intellect increases your intelligence, which increases the size of your mana pool. The larger your mana pool, the more you have to play with. Also, they bring these nifty little tables with delicious biscuits.

Holy Priests – These priests have a spirit buff. This is excellent, as druids are spirit-based mana regenerators, and innervate is based off of spirit.

(Resto) Shamans - I totally did not forget them so Mahndo has no reason to be upset at me. Right? Right. On with the explanation part. Why does everyone love Shammies? For the totems. Shamans can drop mana spring totem, which gives 20 mana every 2 seconds (at the highest rank) to anyone in the party within 20 yards. And restoration shammies have the talented mana tide totems, which don't live as long but restore 6% mana every 3 seconds for 12 seconds (total of 24% mana).

Lesser Known Consumables
Major Dreamless Sleep Potion – These are highly situational, for moments where you only have a brief rest. Used judicially in boss fights, they return more mana than you would get off of a regular super mana potion, with health returned to boot. But you are out of commission for 12 seconds and if the sleep is dispelled you stop regaining mana. Before using these potions it is recommended you announce it, and scope out a fight prior so you are aware of your time constraints. I personally found them handy while chasing after Thrall, the noob in the leather gear who charges into mobs without waiting for the healer’s mana and rides a horse in such a way that travel form outstrips it. No wonder he couldn’t escape.

Fel Mana Potions – For this potion, you really need to read this article. (Yes, I link to Resto4Life a lot. That’s because she knows what she’s talking about.) Their nasty debuff effect can easily be cancelled out by making sure your base healing/spell damage is high enough to buffer it, or by drinking an Adept’s Elixir (for Balance) or Elixir of Healing Power (for Restoration).

Demonic Rune – This must be carefully used as it does hurt you for a possible 600 to 1000 health. Its return, possible 900-1500 mana, is light, and is best used for shorter fights where you are in negligible danger and your pots are on cooldown, or you don’t want to waste them (though traveling with downgraded mana pots is also recommended). Since they do not share a cooldown with potions, they can be handy for emergencies in boss fights when everything else is on cooldown. They can be farmed easily from the satyrs in Felwood but are Soulbound, so you must do it yourself. This is easy for even a Restoration druid as they require only one or two applications of Moonfire apiece. They can also, in an emergency, give you a durability-loss-free kill, as if you can time it so you kill yourself with one of these it counts the same as if a pally DI’s or a lock hellfires to death. Please, however, wait to make sure it's going to be a wipe before suiciding.

There. It's a bit short, I'm aware, but, like I said, I don't like repeating what other people have said, especially when they get to it first. I'd shake my fist at Phaellia if she wasn't so darn helpful and informative and nice and stuff.

I hope this helps, though it is by no means complete.

A Helpful Hint for Arena Shammies

You can't be sapped in ghost wolf.

Thank you.

(This short, simple, sweet advice brought to you by Mahndo, and it was brought to him by some very awesome warrior in a battleground)

Dalliah the Doomsayer and Tree Form

Most 5-man bosses (heroic and non) are cake for Restoration Tree Druids to heal through. They all have their quirks, but generally we keep our Lifebloom stacked and Swiftmend when appropriate and everything goes well. Perhaps we even chuckle a bit when we get that “increased cast time” debuff. “Oh noes, my instant casts are…still instant cast!” But there’s one boss who can be a real pain if you don’t know what you’re coming up against. That would be Dalliah the Doomsayer of the Arcatraz. This is a guide for those Resto Druids who are Treeform Healers and have never had to come up against this particular boss but are planning on soon/eventually (you need to do Arc for your Kara key and she drops a good off-hand and on heroic a nice healing gem).

Two of her abilities are not your concern. These are her Whirlwind (you should not be standing close enough to her to get hit by this) and her Heal (which is the responsibility of other group members to interrupt; you don’t have one and need to concentrate on healing anyway). The two of her abilities you need to watch for are Gift of the Doomsayer and Shadow Wave.

Gift of the Doomsayer is the reason Treeform Druids have such an issue with this fight. Periodically during the fight she will cast this debuff on the target highest on her aggro list. This should be the tank. When this debuff appears on the tank, all healing needs to stop. This is because this particular debuff (looks similar to Shadow Protection buff with a red box around it) gives the caster (Dalliah) a healing every time the affected (your tank) is healed. This means every potion used, every straight heal and every tick of an HoT will heal Dalliah. Any healing done with this debuff on needs to be emergency only, as it will only prolong the fight. Therefore, it is important to try something new.

Get out of Treeform.

Whenever the debuff is on the tank, do not heal. When the debuff is off, however, cast Regrowth + Swiftmend, then Healing Touch. If your tank is really low on life, Rejuvenation + Swiftmend for a quick jump can be substituted. Repeat Healing Touch if necessary, but be ready to cancel it if the debuff reappears. This is the best way in my experience to heal through Dalliah.

The other attack you have to watch for is only in heroics, and is not as situational as the Gift of the Doomsayer debuff. This is Dalliah’s attack “Shadow Wave.” There are two reasons you need to watch this: 1) it attacks a target for 2500 and gives a debuff lowering Shadow Resistance; 2) it targets the player furthest away from Dalliah. Do not let this be you. Whether you’re with a PUG or Guildies, explain to them this particular nuance, decide appropriately who will be in the back (either due to high Shadow resistance or high HP) and then make sure this player is kept topped-off. This player will not receive the Gift of the Doomsayer debuff, and therefore can be HoT’d to your heart’s content.

As long as your tank and melee immediately exit Whirlwind and someone interrupts her Heal, Dalliah should be an otherwise easy fight.

To add, Dalliah is immune to taunts. Therefore, if you're worried about your tank (most likely happens in a PUG, not with experienced guildies) bring something like a Hypnotist's Watch to lower your threat. Also, your tank, if preferred, could always just "click off" your HoTs, but it adds much more hassle than required than if you simply do not add any.