[Restoration] Mana running out too soon - Help

[Acalanto 0]

Hi all, 

 

First time posting here and first time playing as Resto Druid in a current expansion. So, I am having troubles about manage my mana. I could notice that just a few pieces of gear really have the spirit stat and that concerned me a little. 

 

My gear is not full heroic by this time yet, but I am worried about what should be my spirit cap, last expansion we were used to cap 20k of some stats, but now with these item shrinks I am kinda of lost right now. 

 

I know that I need to get more used to use the right spells at the right time, for example: right now when things get crazy, I using too much Regrowth, but not only it, when there is a huge amount of AOE damage, I am probably screwed, most of those Heroic encounters let me running out mana 2-3 minutes before it ends, that's varies when I have a better group, that is equals to less damage taken as well... but mostly, my mana is flying away from me. 

 

These are my current stats, but my question is: how much of spirit are you guys really comfort using? How much I probably need to set this cap? My major concern is set this number too high and lose performance or too low and doesnt make any difference.

 

1,715 Intellect

2,385 Stamina

930 Haste

719 Mastery

449 Crit

249 Multistrike

134 Spirit

0 Versatility

 

Thanks for your attention. 

 

Regards,

Acalanto.

Edited November 24, 2014 by Acalanto

[Krazyito 521]

That spirit value looks grossly low. In 635 and not even having spirit on all the pieces available, I have 1013 spirit.

Are you 100? Cause you should have like 700 base spirit.

Don't worry about too much spirit right now. Just get what you can and you can go down later.

[Impurex 5]

Like you said, the real manawasters are regrowth and wild growth. The easiest one to solve will probably be wild growth. Get your rejuvenations up more on all targets, try to use your healing touches/regrowth procs/swiftmends on DPS'ers more than only on tank and limit that spell. Regrowth is hard to use less off, because sometimes it's just needed. 

 

Wild Mushrooms are awesome (I feel), so don't be afraid to tell your group to stand in it as much as possible at the start of a dungeon. This takes away quite some pressure. Also get used to always spamming healing touch on the tank when you aren't doing anything else. The living seed buff it gives means tanks can take the next hit without damage giving you more time to do other stuff.

 

I had mana issues at the start of heroics (ilvl 610), then started stacking it like crazy (buying a pvp spirit trinket) and now I'm at ilvl 630 I started dropping nearly all of it except the 680 ring. I'm at 970 now and have no problem healing.

 

Also, despite the fact that swiftmend should probably be used as much as possible, I tend to save it if I can healing touch instead, because swiftmend can save me a regrowth manacost when I need quick healing.

 

Short pointers:

- ALWAYS have lifebloom active on the tank. It's easily refreshed if you get used to healing touch. Free regrowths are awesome

- Don't use Wild Growth, only if you're absolutely sure it's needed

- Use Wild Mushrooms, they heal quite alot and are quite mana efficient 

- Use rejuvenation on everyone that gets alot of damage. I use the germination talent so that the one guy that always stands in stuff always has 2 hots up.

- Spam healing touch to 1. always keep lifebloom up (also done with regrowth procs) and 2. when you have nothing better to do.

 

 

 

[EDIT] Oh, and for now during heroic dungeons, I use glyph of rejuvenation and Glyph of healing Touch (and rebirth) for reasons stated above. I almost always have rejuvenation up on 3 or more targets, and healing touch is my filler spell. This will be swapped out when raiding hits, because I will probably not cast healing touches alot.

Edited November 24, 2014 by Impurex

[Vagrant 0]

Try practicing in the healer Proving Grounds.  That's a great test of your mana efficiency.  If you don't stay on top of things, you get off balance and have to resort to Regrowth and Wild Growth.  PG is a good way to practice watching for when damage appears, so you can handle things with poise and not panic.

 

134 is insanely low for spirit alone.  I assume you are just quoting the spirit from gear, and not the total spirit including base spirit.  My gear spirit is 230.  Look for trinkets, rings, cape, and neck pieces with spirit on them.

[Acalanto 0]

These are really good infos here, thanks for the fast reply guys. 

 

That spirit value looks grossly low. In 635 and not even having spirit on all the pieces available, I have 1013 spirit.

Are you 100? Cause you should have like 700 base spirit.

Don't worry about too much spirit right now. Just get what you can and you can go down later.

 

Sorry, I just copied those stats from AskMrRobot, but I didnt realized they were just from my gear. My real spirit stat is 918, and I am at lvl 100 as well. 

 

My iLvl gear is 624 for now, you can check my armory here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/ursin/Mihrun/simple

 

 

Like you said, the real manawasters are regrowth and wild growth. The easiest one to solve will probably be wild growth. Get your rejuvenations up more on all targets, try to use your healing touches/regrowth procs/swiftmends on DPS'ers more than only on tank and limit that spell. Regrowth is hard to use less off, because sometimes it's just needed. 

 

Wild Mushrooms are awesome (I feel), so don't be afraid to tell your group to stand in it as much as possible at the start of a dungeon. This takes away quite some pressure. Also get used to always spamming healing touch on the tank when you aren't doing anything else. The living seed buff it gives means tanks can take the next hit without damage giving you more time to do other stuff.

 

I had mana issues at the start of heroics (ilvl 610), then started stacking it like crazy (buying a pvp spirit trinket) and now I'm at ilvl 630 I started dropping nearly all of it except the 680 ring. I'm at 970 now and have no problem healing.

 

Also, despite the fact that swiftmend should probably be used as much as possible, I tend to save it if I can healing touch instead, because swiftmend can save me a regrowth manacost when I need quick healing.

 

Short pointers:

- ALWAYS have lifebloom active on the tank. It's easily refreshed if you get used to healing touch. Free regrowths are awesome

- Don't use Wild Growth, only if you're absolutely sure it's needed

- Use Wild Mushrooms, they heal quite alot and are quite mana efficient 

- Use rejuvenation on everyone that gets alot of damage. I use the germination talent so that the one guy that always stands in stuff always has 2 hots up.

- Spam healing touch to 1. always keep lifebloom up (also done with regrowth procs) and 2. when you have nothing better to do.

 

 

 

[EDIT] Oh, and for now during heroic dungeons, I use glyph of rejuvenation and Glyph of healing Touch (and rebirth) for reasons stated above. I almost always have rejuvenation up on 3 or more targets, and healing touch is my filler spell. This will be swapped out when raiding hits, because I will probably not cast healing touches alot.

 

That is exactly what I suspect, every guide I read said that I need to use Wild Growth on cooldown (everytime that more than one guy needs to be healed), and I was doing this. I always use Regrowth when I have that awesome proc, because I can cast it for free. 

 

But I have a doubt about Lifebloom, I read that it heals for an additional amount when its expire, so I am always trying to wait the exact moment that it expire to renew, does it really worth the wait and the management?

 

 

Try practicing in the healer Proving Grounds.  That's a great test of your mana efficiency.  If you don't stay on top of things, you get off balance and have to resort to Regrowth and Wild Growth.  PG is a good way to practice watching for when damage appears, so you can handle things with poise and not panic.

 

134 is insanely low for spirit alone.  I assume you are just quoting the spirit from gear, and not the total spirit including base spirit.  My gear spirit is 230.  Look for trinkets, rings, cape, and neck pieces with spirit on them.

 

That's right. I copied the wrong number, but I do need to look for those other pieces of gear that can give me extra spirit.

 

 

Like I said, thanks for all your replies, guys! 

 

Regards,

Acalanto.

[Impurex 5]

That is exactly what I suspect, every guide I read said that I need to use Wild Growth on cooldown (everytime that more than one guy needs to be healed), and I was doing this. I always use Regrowth when I have that awesome proc, because I can cast it for free. 

 

But I have a doubt about Lifebloom, I read that it heals for an additional amount when its expire, so I am always trying to wait the exact moment that it expire to renew, does it really worth the wait and the management?

 

Check this post for the mana and healing efficiency of your spells: https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/7792-restoration-ability-analysis/

You can see Wild Mushrooms are indeed awesome if they can hit 3 people. You can also see Wild Growth is really inefficient, but offers great healing on alot of targets.

 

Guides are mostly focussed on "optimal" ways to play in a raid envirement (or simulation). Here's some math:

Wild Growth costs roughly the same as 5x rejuvenation. It heals 5 targets for about a rejuvenation each. This means this is as mana efficient as rejuvenation, but ONLY if all 5 people actually need it. In heroic dungeons, this basically never happens. 2 people stand in stuff, and you can choose to spend 2 global cooldowns on rejuvenation or 1 global cooldown on a 2.5x as expensive wild growth. (because it heals 2 people only). The reasons all guides recommend it is that 5 rejuvenations on one cast is ofcourse extremely beneficial to your total healing in raids (where you spam a button on every single GCD)

 

Lifebloom heals for quite alot when it expires, but don't try to depend on it. You shouldn't hold off with healing touch fillers or regrowth procs just to let it bloom. The real value of lifebloom is proccing free regrowths, and therefore you always want it up. 

 

Vagrants tip on the Proving Grounds is really viable in my opinion. Gold will probably be near impossible in the beginning, but after doing it over and over again you will start to master your druid priority's and damage predictions, and finish gold nearly every time. This basically means you're 100% ready for the real stuff.

Edited November 25, 2014 by Impurex

[Acalanto 0]

Check this post for the mana and healing efficiency of your spells: https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/7792-restoration-ability-analysis/

You can see Wild Mushrooms are indeed awesome if they can hit 3 people. You can also see Wild Growth is really inefficient, but offers great healing on alot of targets.

 

Guides are mostly focussed on "optimal" ways to play in a raid envirement (or simulation). Here's some math:

Wild Growth costs roughly the same as 5x rejuvenation. It heals 5 targets for about a rejuvenation each. This means this is as mana efficient as rejuvenation, but ONLY if all 5 people actually need it. In heroic dungeons, this basically never happens. 2 people stand in stuff, and you can choose to spend 2 global cooldowns on rejuvenation or 1 global cooldown on a 2.5x as expensive wild growth. (because it heals 2 people only). The reasons all guides recommend it is that 5 rejuvenations on one cast is ofcourse extremely beneficial to your total healing in raids (where you spam a button on every single GCD)

 

Lifebloom heals for quite alot when it expires, but don't try to depend on it. You shouldn't hold off with healing touch fillers or regrowth procs just to let it bloom. The real value of lifebloom is proccing free regrowths, and therefore you always want it up. 

 

Vagrants tip on the Proving Grounds is really viable in my opinion. Gold will probably be near impossible in the beginning, but after doing it over and over again you will start to master your druid priority's and damage predictions, and finish gold nearly every time. This basically means you're 100% ready for the real stuff.

 

Thanks for all these tips man. It was exactly as you said. I got more gears today and I tried to practice in dungeons and in the proving ground as well. And It worked just fine... I tried to not keep pushing buttons all the time and try a little bit more calm approach, watching my buff, the party buffs, and I almost got the gold medal. It was close, each time I tried I got farther. I am not running out of mana in Heroic encounter anymore, I am practice a lot this night using your guys tips. 

 

This case is closed for me :P I will practice more, learn more about this class cooldowns and rotation and I guess I will be fine next week when we start raiding this current content. Of course I need to farm a lot better gear, but this farming will help me to learn more. 

 

Thanks again. 

Regards,

 

Acalanto.

[Thundderz 0]

Something that can help you is to make sure you keep your mastery: Harmony self buff on you 100% of the time it is a little buff to your healing and you only need to cast a direct heal every 20sec.

 

Also, i use mouse over macro for all my heal and defensive CD, so i can keep an eye on the tank HoTs. That way i don,t over cast LB or rejuv or 2nd rejuv with germination talent.

[Krazyito 521]

That way i don,t over cast LB or rejuv or 2nd rejuv with germination talent.

 

Remember that all periodic effects take the 30% "Pandemic" effect where you can refresh them within the last 30% of the buff and it rolls over.

 

For example, since Rejuvenation (and Germination by extension) have an 18s duration with the talent you can refresh a rejuv anytime under 5.4 seconds (18*.3 = 5.4) and the remaining time will roll over into the next one.

[Impurex 5]

Remember that all periodic effects take the 30% "Pandemic" effect where you can refresh them within the last 30% of the buff and it rolls over.

 

For example, since Rejuvenation (and Germination by extension) have an 18s duration with the talent you can refresh a rejuv anytime under 5.4 seconds (18*.3 = 5.4) and the remaining time will roll over into the next one.

 

Which is probably the best update ever done by Blizzard. 

 

@ Acalanto, glad it helpen man, good luck on your wow adventures! Last pointer, ALWAYS be in treant form. There is no excuse.

[Krazyito 521]

I stopped liking treant form when they took it out in Cata as a permanent form.

I just go into cat form / bear form way too often to move / live to have to worry about a cosmetic form.

[Impurex 5]

My comment was not intended to be serious as quality improving. I just miss the good old days... :( 

 

Fun fact, stand in a campfire in Treant form and you'll be a burning treant for a minute. I always set that up before bosses :D 

[Krazyito 521]

Nah I understand. Kaz is a supporter of treant form as well, but I value movement and utility so much more. Having to use multiple globals for me personally just to go back to treant form is not an option for me. =P

(more for convenience and annoyance than for performance though, obviously I don't use every single global)

[kimboy11 0]

Hey,

 

ilvl 635 druid here with 1112 spirit. 

 

Most probable reason you are running out of mana is because the party is taking way too much damage than it needs to. 

 

That is why you tend to spam wild growth or regrowth. 

 

To be honest I mostly never use healing touch because I use regrowth with the glyph and it just seems too slow for me. By the time you use one healing touch some idiot in the group gets his health cut down to 30% and you cant keep using healing touch on tank while having to heal other members. 

 

What I normally do is always keep lifebloom up on tank and 2x rejuvenation and mushroom underneath him. You do overheal quite a bit but you can use healing touch (on the tank) while all the HoT are on and can focus on the dps to heal if they need it. 

 

You got to know the fights. Time your wild growth when you know everyone is going to get hit. Also there are times when tank is going to get heaps of damage so time it and put Ironbark on him. This buys you time to heal others (while always having lifebloom and 2xrejuv) the mushroom you can change to dps while using wild growth.

 

Always carry Draenic mana potion - these help alot. difference between a wipe and boss kill.

 

Always carry Gorgrond mineral water or ask mage for conjured mana fritter - these are used inbetween fights to quickly gain mana because tanks aren't going to wait for you and you can't always rely on spirit. 

 

Also during a boss fight using timing your tree of life is important too. I assume you know the benefit of turning into the tree. 

 

At the end of the day I believe it depends on the skills of the other players.

Their positioning and standing in pile of poison can cause heaps of damage while there is also AoE dmg you have to worry about. So if people are able to negate some damage by being smart and moving before they take damage is a big help to your mana.

 

For example last three days CM UBRS right?

 

Every group had similar gear. First 3 groups only made it past 1st boss and took probably 15 wipes each? and they were terrible at 2nd boss. blamed me for overhealing etc (i'm HoT what the hell do they expect right?) no mana blah blah blah. I was telling them to move out of shit and stuff but they would always die and take way too much damage.

 

Last group I was with: 

 

1st boss - 0 wipe

2nd boss - 2 wipes

3rd boss - 1 wipe

4th boss - 2 wipes 

 

we were going for bronze but one guy had to leave so I didn't finish it. But what I'm trying to say is in those wipes it was just stupid mistakes that got us killed. I was fine with mana. especially in the 2nd boss the dps took barely any damage (dispel the poison) etc. people know what they are doing so it lessens the burden on the healer.

 

 

[Thundderz 0]

Remember that all periodic effects take the 30% "Pandemic" effect where you can refresh them within the last 30% of the buff and it rolls over.

 

For example, since Rejuvenation (and Germination by extension) have an 18s duration with the talent you can refresh a rejuv anytime under 5.4 seconds (18*.3 = 5.4) and the remaining time will roll over into the next one.

 Yeah i know that, my comment was more oriented to some rdruid spamming rejuv for no reason. 

[gonlaz 6]

Many times it's the groups you're pugging or running with. I know in my guild runs I have virtually no mana issues, fast forward to each random and it's 2x rejuv, mushroom, regrowth over and over, genesis, etc and the tank is still down to 10% health, not to mention the a-hole lock that can't pop sac or move out of swirlies. Triage healing, yay! (and let's not get started on grimrail depot, lol!)

Edited December 2, 2014 by gonlaz

[Labellanotte 0]

There are a couple other points that I find helpful on this.  First, remember to make use of Empowered Ironbark.  This has been a nice enhancement to our toolkit (IMO), not only to mitigate some of the incoming damage, but too buffing your HoTs on the target while it's active.  Also, for Wild Growth, when you DO use it, try to make sure it's hitting as many people as possible.  Sometimes, when you're really spread out, targeting the tank for the Wild Growth may hamper its ability to reach some of the ranged people.  I like to try to position myself between the tank/melee group and the ranged group when I can and targeting myself so it spreads to as many people as possible.  Lastly, I've been playing a resto Druid since WOTLK as a main and EVERY expansion I start off struggling with mana and then it eases up as gear starts flowing. Don't give up! 

[Acalanto 0]

Guys, seriously, thanks a lot for these infos. 

After I read those first ones I changed my way to play and everything changed. Of course that my group composition matters a lot, but I was able to finish a lot of encounter with 75% percent of mana and only in those hard ones when people screw around I stand with less than 30%.

 

I got some new gears as well, 639 ilvl gear now, and I got Gold medal at providing grounds at first try. Things are getting better. Yesterday we started our Normal raid, and my performance wasnt that great, I wasted my mana a lot, mostly due to unnecessary raid damage, and of course due to my lack of raid healing experience, first time in real raid encounters healing. But I could stand ~24k HPS, but I know that with better time and spell management I can probably do better than this. 

 

I will change a couple things tonight, before start the raid and I will use the best enchants I can get. I was using cheap ones, so I know that my haste can be a lot better and the spirit weapon enchant can help me too.. 

About all those preparation raid items, I am carrying all of them all the time. Draenic Mana Potion, Mana Potions, flasks...

 

Maintain rejuvenation in all those 20 members is too much,  mana will run out really fast. How you guys do? Do you focus just in some groups or do you keep healing everyone?

 

Here is the log of last night fight against the Butcher. Our pally kicked my ass in healing matters :P I need to beat him, it is personal. hahahahahaha

 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/YD12vQydAmNwpKcq#fight=6&type=healing

 

Regards,

 

Aca.

[Ceria 0]

I would first try increasing your positioning and uptime for Wild Mushrooms. On a fight like The Butcher, multiple people are constantly taking damage close together, so you should be seeing a much higher % of your healing coming from Wild Mushroom. Also, you can place Rejuvenations on the members of the soaker groups that are currently soaking damage, or going to be soaking damage very shortly.

It also looks like your Harmony only has a 68% uptime. This is quite a bit low, and you can significantly increase the healing from your HoTs by increasing the uptime of Harmony. It is vital that you do your best to keep Lifebloom, Wild Mushrooms and Harmony up on this fight (Lifebloom Harmony should always have near 100% uptime). If you don't have them already, Weakauras or TellMeWhen and raidframes like Grid or Elvui can be setup to help you keep better track of these.

In regards to Rejuvenations, you'll get better with practice! It's kinna intuitive once you get used to it and a fight's mechanics. The tanks always get them, and usually two if you have Germination. If you have raidframes, you should get in the habit of checking the debuff icon location over a players name and HoTing them if you see one (a lot of these do DoT damage, or explode to do damage after it ticks down). Overall, I would say if you know a player is going to be taking constant damage over a certain period of time, or if you are the only healer and that person can go sitting at mid-range health for awhile, use Rejuvenation. Don't forget about swiftmending these every CD.

The exception is when you have a small window of opportunity to cast but a large amount of incoming damage... like Tectus's Tectonic Upheaval, which is where you should use Wild Growth and then Tranquility/Rejuvenations, while making sure Wild Mushrooms is up and prepped ahead of time with whatever Rejuvenations you can spare on already damaged targets before it goes off.

Edited December 8, 2014 by Ceria