Welcome to our Ny’alotha tips and tricks guide for Restoration Druids. Please remember that the suggested talent and essence builds are meant to provide the best assistance to the raid team during mythic progression. These are not the only viable talents, and various talent combinations work for many of these fights. Also, remember that the talents are selected to maximize the potential for success on progression, not for parsing. Finally, many talents are situational and are better for different raid teams, strategies, and healing compositions. Do not take these talent suggestions as law, they can be changed based on the individual situation. If you have any further questions please comment below or tweet me @Healcraft.
Wrathion, The Black Emperor
Important Talents
Tiger Dash, Incarnation: Tree of Life, Spring Blossoms, Flourish
Essences
The Ever-Rising Tide, The Formless Void, Conflict and Strife, The Well of Existence
Healing Strategy
This fight has a decent amount of movement, especially if you are on soaking duty; therefore, Tiger Dash can be very useful for getting around quickly. It is very important to remember that on Mythic, shapeshifting will remove stacks of the movement debuff. This makes Mythic mode essentially Heroic mode for Druids in terms of mechanics. In terms of healing, the primary sources of damage will be from the Incineration debuffs and Gale Blast. You can pre-stack your ERT major essence before these go out in order to boost healing. Additionally, these are good times to use Incarnation and Tranquility.
Maut
Important Talents
Renewal, Incarnation: Tree of Life, Spring Blossoms, Flourish
Essences
The Ever-Rising Tide, The Formless Void, Conflict and Strife, The Well of Existence
Healing Strategy
The majority of the healing on this fight will occur during the stone skin phase, when the DPS takes a lot of reflected damage. During this phase you want to start out with using Incarnation, ERT major, Innervate, and spam Rejuvenation in order to get maximum stacks of the ERT healing buff. Afterwards, you want to use Tranquility and immediately follow it up with Flourish. This way, your tranquility heal over time effect will be extended on the raid for the majority of the stone skin phase. Continue to use Wild Growth and Rejuvenation often for the rest of the phase. It is important to remember that the mana orb mechanic on this fight means that you are unlikely to run out of mana, so keep spamming those abilities!
The Prophet Skitra
Important Talents
Mass Entanglement, Incarnation: Tree of Life, Spring Blossoms, Flourish
Essences
The Ever-Rising Tide, The Formless Void, Conflict and Strife, The Well of Existence
Healing Strategy
Mass Entanglement is very important for encounter so you can control the Images of Absolution. Mass Entanglement is the best way to handle these in the entire game. For healing, there are only two abilities/phases which you need to keep track of – Shred Psyche and Illusionary Projection. Shred Psyche happens during the first phase, and does a large amount of raid damage shortly after the add spawns and finishes its cast. You want to pre-stack your ERT major and cast Wild Growth right as the add finishes its cast. During progression, you want to save your Incarnation and Tranquility for the phase two stage where the raid takes increasing sustained damage. However, if you are very efficient with these phases, you can use your big cooldowns for Shred Psyche.
Dark Inquisitor Xanesh
Important Talents
Renewal, Incarnation: Tree of Life, Spring Blossoms, Flourish
Essences
The Ever-Rising Tide, The Formless Void, Conflict and Strife, The Well of Existence
Healing Strategy
This is a very boring fight to heal. There is not much going on if everyone properly moves away from the damaging mechanics. However, use your cooldowns early and often for maximum efficiency. Healers are also often chosen to kick the ball because the reduced damage debuff effects us less negatively.
The Hivemind
Important Talents
Renewal, Incarnation: Tree of Life, Spring Blossoms, Flourish
Essences
Vision of Perfection, The Formless Void, The Ever-Rising Tide, The Well of Existence
Healing Strategy
This fight has a lot going on and a lot of different sources of nearly constant raid damage. However, the most damaging ability is when the bosses switch control of The Hivemind and trigger the Devouring Frenzy ability. During this time you will want to use your cooldowns. Other damaging abilities are Echoing Void and when Aqir Darters spawn. Avoid Acidic Aqir’s when the roll around the room. Finally, you can use Ursol’s Vortex when the Aqir Drones spawn to keep them under one of the bosses for cleave.
Shad’har the Insatiable
Important Talents
Renewal, Incarnation: Tree of Life, Spring Blossoms, Flourish
Essences
Memory of Lucid Dreams / The Ever-Rising Tide, The Formless Void, The Ever-Rising Tide, The Well of Existence
Healing Strategy
This is another fight with fairly consistent damage throughout. Although, the second phase (66%->33%) has the most amount of damage. You’ll want to save most of your cooldowns for this phase. Depending on how you feel your mana is, you can take either Memory of Lucid Dreams or The Ever-Rising Tide as a major essence. Whenever someone has a four-stack of the Spit debuff on them, you want to make sure to heal them and potentially use Ironbark on them as well. They will be taking heavy damage until the expiration of the debuff. Finally, on Mythic difficulty, when the Living Miasma targets you, you receive a heavy slow. However, shapeshifting will remove this slow from you.
Drest’agath
Important Talents
Inner Peace, Incarnation: Tree of Life, Flourish
Essences
Vision of Perfection, The Formless Void, The Ever-Rising Tide, The Well of Existence
Healing Strategy
Having a short cooldown on Tranquility really shines on this encounter. Due to this, we recommend taking both the Inner Peace talent and running the Vision of Perfection essence. With both of these, you will have a 1.5 minute cooldown on Tranquility. This will help you heal through the frequently occurring Throes of Agony and Entropic Crash. On this fight, guilds will typically set up a melee and ranged group. The melee will be running from tentacle to tentacle. However, in order to hit the tentacle, they will be located in a smoke cloud. This makes it difficult to heal them from the outside (where most Restoration Druids will be located; Holy Paladin and Mistweaver Monks are the preferred healers for the melee group). Despite this, Restoration Druids have a few tools that can help them heal the melee group without needing to step into the smoke cloud. First, you can place your Efflorescence under the tentacle and this will heal the melee inside of the cloud. Second, if you are standing outside of the smoke cloud, but within 40 yard range of the melee, both Wild Growth and Tranquility will bounce into the smoke bomb. Meaning, if you target yourself with Wild Growth, the other heal over time effects can jump onto the players inside the cloud. Try to use these tricks to help your melee healer out!
Il’gynoth, Corruption Reborn
Important Talents
Mass Entanglement, Inner Peace, Incarnation: Tree of Life, Flourish
Essences
Memory of Lucid Dreams / Vision of Perfection, The Formless Void, The Ever-Rising Tide, The Well of Existence
Healing Strategy
Your healing strategy for this encounter will greatly depend on which overall strategy that your raid team is going to use. Teams continue to use both the no dispel and dispel strategies. If you go with not dispelling, then the raid team will be much more spread out. Whereas, if you are dispelling, you should have range on more people. If you are not dispelling, you will also have more mana free to use and not have to take Memory of Lucid Dreams for extra regeneration. However, if you are dispelling, you may want to consider taking Memory of Lucid Dreams as a major to help you with mana. With that said, the lower CD on Tranquility is far more preferable than Spring Blossoms on this fight due to the spread out nature. Use yours cooldowns early and often, as the damage tends to be fairly consistent throughout the encounter. Also, Mass Entanglement is essential for helping your raid crowd control the blood adds during the final phase of the encounter.
Vexiona
Important Talents
Incarnation: Tree of Life, Spring Blossoms, Flourish
Essences
The Ever-Rising Tide, The Formless Void, Conflict and Strife, The Well of Existence
Healing Strategy
For the majority of this encounter, there will not be much to heal. However, our talent and essence build is meant to maximize throughput during the final 40% burn phase where damage severely ramps up. During Phase 1, you will mostly be worried about properly dispelling Annihilation stacks off the tank, and keeping the Despair debuffed tank topped on health. The only sources of damage should be the raid wide moderate damage that goes out when a Dark Gateway spawns (try to pre-cast Wild Growth to go off right as the gateways spawn) and any adds that are not properly dealt with. Try to use Tranquility and Incarnation early as to put them on CD so they will be up again for the final burn phase. You’ll want to fully stack your ERT prior to each Heart of Darkness cast, as this is the primary source of damage during this encounter. Incarnation is very useful during these casts as well, as you’ll need to be moving as it goes out.
Ra-den the Despoiled
Important Talents
Renewal, Incarnation: Tree of Life, Spring Blossoms, Flourish
Essences
The Ever-Rising Tide, The Formless Void, Conflict and Strife, The Well of Existence
Healing Strategy
This encounter has a lot of good opportunities to show off your healing. Each time a round of orbs spawn, you’ll want to immediately start stacking your ERT. This is because, most of the orbs will do some sort of ability which requires healing right after they hit the boss. The most important is when the Void orb hits the boss, and the entire raid receives a healing absorb debuff. You will want a fully stacked ERT + Tranquility to heal through this absorb as quickly as possible. Additionally, the other orbs (Vita/Nightmare) also do significant raid damage when they are absorbed by the boss. High stacks of ERT with a Wild Growth and Flourish will make quick work of this. Flourish will be up for every orb spawn, so make sure to use it there. In the final phase, be careful not to heal players afflicted with the Corrupted Existence debuff too much. However, you do not want to completely ignore them. Prevent them from dying, but never come close to topping them off. You’ll also want to be especially careful not to heal yourself too much if you are targeted with Corrupted Existence, because you will already be getting healed by your Ysera’s Gift.
Carapace of N’Zoth
Important Talents
Tiger Dash, Incarnation: Tree of Life, Spring Blossoms, Flourish
Essences
Memory of Lucid Dreams, The Formless Void, The Ever-Rising Tide, The Well of Existence
Healing Strategy
On Mythic difficulty, the vast majority of the healing on this encounter will be centered around consistent damage in Phase 2 and bursts of damage during Phase 3. Due to the long and taxing nature of the fight, I recommend taking Memory of Lucid Dreams as a major during progression. During Phase 1, there is not much to heal. The only major source of damage is when the Gaze of Madness adds target players with Breed Madness. This should be interrupted by DPS and not be a major issue. Despite this, you will want to use Tranquility and Incarnation during Phase 1 in order to put them on CD early and able to be used during Phase 3. During Phase 2, you will be dealing with fairly regular damage from Mind Bombs, Mental Decay, Mycelial Cysts, and Eternal Darkness casts. However, most strategies require you to save your large CDs for the final phase. Due to this, try not to use Incarnation or Tranquility until Phase 3, but feel free to use Flourish off CD to heal through Eternal Darkness. During the final phase, your cooldowns will likely be assigned by your raid leader. However, if they are not, here are some tips for usage – you want to make sure to Wild Growth + Flourish right before Infinite Darkness hits the raid. Also, Incarnation is very strong to use during Infinite Darkness because you will be moving and being able to instant cast Regrowths to save people will be helpful. Finally, because it is difficult to use Tranquility on Infinite Darkness, you can use it after Insanity Bomb goes off. However, you will need to be careful about grabbing too much aggro on the Nightmare Antigen which spawn. Ask a Paladin for a BoP to avoid death to aggro.
N’Zoth the Corruptor
Important Talents
Incarnation: Tree of Life, Spring Blossoms, Flourish
Essences
Memory of Lucid Dreams, The Formless Void, The Ever-Rising Tide, The Well of Existence
Healing Strategy
When you first start progressing on this encounter, it will seem like there is a lot of damage constantly going out. However, as you progress, the damage will go down drastically as your raid handles the various mechanics properly. As with Carapace of N’Zoth above, most of your major cooldowns on this encounter are likely to be assigned; but, I will add suggestions here just in case they are not. Before each Paranoia+Torment combo, which is the deadliest moments while upstairs in Phase 1, you want to use a major raid cooldown. If you are not assigned to Tranquility, you will want to use Wild Growth + Flourish. If you are assigned to a Psychus group, you will want to make sure to have Incarnation available for healing that group. Furthermore, you are able to do a large amount of damage to Psychus during these phases to make sure your raid meets the DPS check. Keep Sunfire/Moonfire on Psychus, and weave in Wraths as often as possible. Finally, if you have it, you will want to use Forbidden Obsidian Claw once Psychus has reached at least 6 stacks. This, on its own, will do around 3 million damage.
In Phase 2, the major sources of damage are Evoke Anguish and Harvest Thoughts. Tranquility is good for Harvest Thoughts, because you are standing still. However, you will want to use Incarnation for Evoke Anguish, as you will be needing to move often before and during the effect. Once you reach the secret mythic-only phase, you should be close to a kill. Try to contribute to boss damage during Shattered Ego phases and the secret phase, as there is not much healing to be done.
Conclusion
Thank you for checking out our Tips & Tricks guide for Restoration Druids progressing through Ny’alotha! If you want even more Restoration Druid information, click here for our full 8.3 guide. Also, feel free to comment below or interact with us on twitter. Happy Healing!
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