It's who you know

I thought I wasn't very good at druid healing last week.

This week I am reasonably confident.

Last week I did some pugs.

This week I ran instances with my friends. Turns out, my firends know how to play, but we knew that.

Sure, I have upgraded my gear a little since those iffy, unpleasant, fail-ridden regular ToC pug runs that left me questioning the effort I'd put into my druid, but even at that, the difference between healing that lot of wackaloons and healing my casually hardcore guildmates.

When I was pugging, my HoTs were almost useless - there was too much damage coming in to let those ticks do the job. I had to nourish spam everything and there just weren't enough swiftmends and nature's swiftness cooldowns available to get pas tthe damage spikes from the poor aggro management, and the tank didn't have nearly enough mitigation. Sure, I was only at 1100 +healing at the time and my HoTs weren't strong enough to do their job right, and my direct heals were still hitting weaker than I probably needed them to, but as a run that should have been giving me the chance to apply actual experience to all of the how-to info I'd picked up from the interwebs, it was downright discouraging. I wasn't able to use my HoTs correctly or effectively and I wound up healing like a paladin spamming Nourish in the place of Flash of Light. To be honest, I was feeling pretty bad.

But then, 400 +heal and four much better group members later, I was sitting in heroic Violet Hold wondering if the run was bugged because the tank pretty much only needed a rejuvenate ticking all the time with the occassional lifebloom chaser and wild growth took care of the majority of the party's woes. Sure, Nourish was there for spikey damage that came in once in a while, but for the most part, stacks of HoTs did the job just fine, and my mana pool certainly appreciated the break.

So, I took three vital lessons from these two very different nights.

1) Pugging still sucks. Sure, picking up an extra hand or two when you're working with your competent buddies is the only way you get to do runs some nights, but jumping into the shallow end of the WoW talent pool and taking whatever random assortment of failknights you get is a recipe for frustration and repair bills. I have always hated pugging. For the most part, hating pugging as a dps-only class is understandable. One thing I took away from my BC-era paladin pug healing was that being in one of the two pivot roles does reduce some of the frustration in pugs because you know that at least the tank or the healer is going to be able to pull his weight, but as the saying goes, you can't heal stupid. As much as I like the idea of the new cross-server LFG system coming in 3.3, and as optimistic as I try to be that the tool will mean easier, quicker group formation and more instancing, I temper that optimism with the knowledge that most puggers will still be the same old puggers who have made me cry so many times before. I think I need to stick to the rule that at least one other member of my group, preferably at least two needs to be a guildie or other competent friend, just so that there is some reasonable chance that I won't wind up beating my head on my lapdesk.

2) Druid healing really is different than paladin healing. Getting used to the idea that those HoTs will do the job, eventually, is a very hard bridge to cross. My previous healing life was all about whack-a-mole big heals. I didn't have a HoT, I didn't have a group heal. I smashed the health bars up, hit them hard and fast and when the AoE damage was coming through I had to always keep that one expendable party member mentality as the FoL cast bar just seemed to go slower and slower. Getting used to the sight of a health bar not moving when the spell goes off was a bridge to cross. It made me nervous. Sure, once you get rejuvenation and wild growth going with a decent bit of power behind them, the heals are coming and you're fine before you know it, but it's still a big shift in philosophy that I really was only able to make once I was playing with a group that had a tank who could keep aggro and pick up runners and dpsers who would get out of the fire. HoTs always work just fine alone when the damage stops. The trick is that you need the dps to be smart enough to stop the damage coming in.

3) Gear does matter. The more healing you do with every spell, and the more spells you can cast in a given fight, the more likely you are to keep the group standing. You need to know what you're doing, but part of that is knowing when you have the gear, and how to get it if you don't to meet the challenge in front of you. There is a nice feedback loop to grouping - you learn how to heal, but you also get drops that make healing easier in the first place. Eventually, you reach an altogether better place. It's frustrating getting there, but the difference you get with a few hundred spellpower and a little confidence gained in success is larger than the sum of its parts.