Healer Dragon AA

[Mermut]

As a druid, I'm already able to overwrite my own primary HoTs. As a warden, my ticks get bigger over time so overwriting is bad. This makes the 2nd and 4th bubbles of heal line bad for Jam. The extra triggers on the death save.. I've never used the two Jam can already spec for.

Given that, I'm wondering if there is anything worthwhile to take in a raid build on that page. What are other people's thoughts?

[Zanku1]

nope the only thing I took was the added pot for heal stance and the reduction in casting speed for my group reactive

 

[Mermut]

Any of the other heals have any thoughts at all about the new AA? Where they plan on putting it (even if it's not in the dragon page) and why? I'm still at a loss on Jam and I was hoping for at least a little discussion...

[Cecie-SP]

To be honest, the new Dragon trees (for healers, anyway) don't offer much. If you have a decent second Heroic choice, that may be a better place to put your 20 new AAs. 

[Mermut]

I've also freed up some usless AA from my warden tree, so I've got extra AA to spend from that.

I could take another heroic endline, but one is better for group protection and one is definite for a tank that is taking heavy damage. Given the talk we had about changing the raid setup a bit, I'm still in limbo on which will be best for Jam since I'm not sure which kind of group she's going to be in..

I'm still interested in what other people are doing and why though. Jam isn't my only healer and learning what other classes are doing helps my toons of that type and it also helps me balance Jam to compliment the other healre in my group.

I actually had a chat in game with Soteria that gave me some good ideas. I guess I'll just have to do it in game and not in the forums.

[-Soteria-]

:) I'd read the question, but we'd already discussed it to some degree on beta and I couldn't really come up with any great new ideas since then. Heh. One thing I'd talked to elli about is the fact that they actually changed the "dps" line in the dragon tree- I'm sure you've noticed, but originally it was a crit bonus buff that stayed on basically until you cast a professional heal spell... I think that was kind of meant as a tool for easier solo play, and maybe occasionally for a backup healer during fights where the main healer doesn't need any help. But now it's a bit different - it's a crit bonus buff that lasts 5 seconds, but you renew the 5 seconds every time you cast a damage spell/combat art. Essentially that means that as long as you're hitting attacks pretty often, you can maintain it, even if you need to sneak in a quick heal now and then. Well... as a cleric, a "quick" heal isn't really my thing... but in relation to druids, here's a thought... Druids have 2 heroic endlines that essentially convert the druid's dps into healing for the group: howling with the pack (25% of direct damage converts to healing for the group) and protective instinct (portion of the druid's damage converts to a 10 second ward). I would propose that in this expansion, howling with the pack would be more useful. I say that because the ward from protective instinct is capped at 30% of the warden's own health, and in this expansion people aren't really being one-shotted anymore, so being able to restore a ton of health during a damage spike is potentially more valuable than a relatively small ward. Plus howling gives a second stun/stifle/fear/mez break and a 30% damage reduction on the druid, which means more alive druids to keep healing. The reason I bring those up is this thought...if howling converts 25% direct damage to heals... and druids are doing 300-600k dps on average... I'm thinking maybe a druid could pop the dragon tree dps spell for extra crit bonus, then pop howling with the pack, and dps like crazy for 20 seconds... if my logic is correct, that should be potentially well over 150k hps as well as a big dps spike, which in the case of a warden could be maintained while running, as long as you could keep melee range on the mob. Could be a great tool for add swarms, where increased damage is coming in, and a burst of damage would be helpful to eradicate the adds. 

 

Of course, I'm not a druid, I don't even play one on TV... so that's just a random idea that Elli and I had tossed back and forth one day. Elli was trying it out to see if it pans out in practice, and based on her heal parses last night she seemed to be doing something right... she did a 79,000 hps parse on a 2 minute pull, on the 2nd try with the Ageless Custodian, which was the highest heal parse of the raid.

 

Just thought I'd share that train of thought... :)

 

[Mermut]

Howling of the Pack is Jam's only stun breaker, so that's what I use it for. I've never been comfortable using it as a heal because, frankly, balls out dps isn't my idea of the best tactic for me to take when my group needs LOTS of healing RIGHT NOW!

I did get some feedback in the eq2 forums... to take Faith of the Fallen as a second heroic endline... if I'm in an MT or OT group. Which is sort of what I was thinking, or taking Protective Instinct, if I end up being in the dps/extra tank group. That's another reason I'm on the fence, the raid set up is still fluid and what's useful in one spot is mostly useless in the other.