[WoD] Battle Rezzes and You: What Every Druid, Warlock, Death Knight, Hunter, and RAIDER Should Know — Part 1

Battle resurrections went through another big change at the start of Warlords of Draenor.  Instead of being limited to 1 battle rez for a 10 person raid and 3 for a 25 person raid, battle resurrections are now available on a charged based system.  Your raid starts with one available battle rez and then after a few minutes an additional resurrection can be come available.

Battle Rez Charges

For each raid encounter, your team will always start with 1 battle rez, and will gain 1 additional battle rez charge every 90/x minutes, where x is the number of people participating in the encounter.

For example, a 10 person raid will earn a charge every 9 minutes (90/10 = 9).  Since most encounters are less than 10 minutes in duration in LFR, Normal, or Heroic raid, you will probably have only the starting battle rez available to your team.

During a flex encounter with more raiders, such as 15 people, the raid will earn a charge every 6 minutes (90/15 = 6).  It’s feasible that a raid encounter on LFR, Normal, or Heroic mode could last 6 minutes, in which case you would start with a single battle rez, and then after 6 minutes of fighting the raid boss, a second charge will be earned by your team.

During an encounter with 20 raiders, the raid will earn a charge every 4.5 minutes (90/20 = 4.5).  During a 10 minute encounter (something typically seen in high difficulty Mythic raids), the team will earn a total of three battle resurrections through out the duration.

You do not need to use a charge in order to get a second charge.  The timer starts ticking the second an encounter is pulled.  In a 20 person raid, the second battle rez is earned 4.5 minutes into the encounter, the third 9 minutes into the encounter, etc.

A battle rez only counts against the raid’s charges when it has been accepted by the target player.  If the target player declines the battle rez, the raid will NOT lose the charge and the caster’s battle rez will NOT go on cooldown.  If a battle rez is pending on a player (meaning they have neither accepted or declined) the caster’s battle rez will be unavailable until the target accepts, or it will be refunded if the target declines.  This last bit may not seem important, but if you having a pending resurrection and someone potentially more valuable to your raid (i.e. a tank) dies, you have the option to decline the battle rez so that someone else may use it.

The Battle Resurrection Cooldown

The tooltip of a typical battle rez says the spell has a 10 minute cooldown.  This is not the whole picture.  If you are in a dungeon, participating in a group quest, or you are just casting the battle rez on someone while soloing out in the world, your spell will indeed have a 10 minute cooldown.  However…

Raid encounters change everything. For simplicity, I’m going to use a 20 person raid team in these example (meaning the raid will earn a battle rez charge every 4.5 minutes).

All battle rez casters will have their battle rez go on and off cooldown at the same time.  If a Druid casts Rebirth 2 minutes into the fight, the raid will then have 0 battle rez charges remaining and all Warlocks, Druids, Death Knights, and Hunters in the raid will have their battle rez spell go on cooldown.  All caster’s battle rezzes will go on cooldown if another member of the raid team accepts a battle rez and the raid has no additional charges.

If a caster’s battle rez has gone on cooldown, the length of this cooldown is the same as the time remaining until the next charge. In a 20 person raid, the caster’s battle rez cooldown has a maximum of 4.5 minutes.  If a caster rezzes someone 3 minutes into the encounter, the cooldown for every battle rez caster in the raid will be 1.5 minutes long since the team’s second battle rez becomes available at that time.  If a caster uses the first battle rez on someone 5 minutes into the encounter, the raid will have earned a second charge and no one’s battle rez spell will go on cooldown.  If the raid team has additional charges, all battle rez casters will NOT be on cooldown, even the caster.

Effectively, in a 15 minute encounter with 20 raiders, a sole Druid can cast all three Rebirths.  She could cast them once every 4.5 minutes, or, if raiders have died only after 13.5 minutes have elapsed, she could cast all three in quick succession.

No matter how much time is left on a caster’s battle rez cooldown, it will reset at the end of a boss encounter (killing the boss or wiping to the boss).  However, if a battle rez was used on the trash leading up to a raid boss, that specific caster will have to wait for the full 10 minute cooldown before being able to cast it, even if the raid has pulled a boss and the raid has charges available.  In this scenario, other battle rez casters will still be able to use theirs normally.

Tracking the Shared Battle Rez Charges

The best way to manage your raids shared battle rez charges is to use a simple tracking addon.  Personally, I find oRA3 to track encounter battle resurrections very effectively.  The oRA3 addon does a lot of raid leader related things (tracking healer and dps cooldown usage, making it easier to invite many people at once for a raid, etc), but for battle rezzes specifically it puts a timer and a counter on my screen, which tells me at a quick glance how many battle rezzes are currently available in this encounter and how long until the next one will be available.  It also shows who rezzed who throughout the encounter.

Since I’ve been using oRA3 as a general raid addon for years, I haven’t searched out other options for battle rez tracking.  If anyone has a suggestion for a solid, standalone, battle rez tracking addon I’d love to hear about it!

Tracking Your Eclipse State

I’ve never been very good at keeping track of my Eclipse state.  The default interface bar isn’t very intuitive and the arrow is difficult for me to notice.  I glance up at the bar, see the indicator in the blue side and proceed to spam Starfire…even if it’s pointing TOWARDS the moon icon (which would indicate I need to cast Wrath to keep it moving in that direction).  The color and location stand out…the direction the arrow is pointing just doesn’t.

At a quick glance, my brain just can't understand that this bar is saying "cast Wrath NAO!"

Previously, back in WoW 3.x days, I used Power Auras to put a big colored circle over my head whenever I was in an Eclipse state.  That worked alright.  I would usually spam Wrath until the blue circle appeared, and then Starfire until the orange circle appeared.  But this was back when Eclipse was merely a spell proc.  If I ended up casting the wrong spell for too long, I would still proc Eclipse eventually.  Sure, by playing like that I was not maximizing my abilities and cooldowns, but at least I wasn’t utterly screwed.  Now, if I find myself spamming Starfire when Wrath is the only way to get the arrow moving again, I’ve really hurt my DPS by losing out on ANY opprotunity to hit an Eclipse until I notice my error.

I have gotten better at noticing the direction of the arrow, not just its location… but it’s still very tricky for me, especially since I don’t find myself running as a Moonkin very often.  After searching for addons and ways to indicate which spell I should be casting, I’ve come across three different options and I thought I would outline them here in case someone else was searching for a similar solution.

Tracking Eclipse in Power Auras

This is my least favorite of the three, and also the one I’ll be removing from my UI soon.  I’m still mentioning it because I do think it could be valuable to players who process this kind of information.  Don’t get me wrong though, Power Auras is an amazing addon that I would recommend to anyone…it just doesn’t display Solar/Lunar Power in a way I can find meaningful.

In order to get my Solar/Lunar Power information to display, I used a combination of four Power Auras.  Two of these auras are similar to what I used before; they create an the appropriate blue or orange circle when I am under the effect of an Eclipse.  The second pair of auras is set to display the numerical value of Solar and Lunar Power so I can track how much more Power I need until my next Eclipse.

Solar Eclipse State

Version:4.9; b:0; g:0.5294; icon:Ability_Druid_EclipseOrange; buffname:Eclipse (Solar); x:141; texture:5; PowerType:208; threshold:0; wowtex:true; spec1:false; size:0.57; y:100

Lunar Eclipse State

Version:4.9; g:0.451; icon:Ability_Druid_Eclipse; buffname:Eclipse (Lunar); r:0.1255; x:-186; texture:5; PowerType:108; threshold:0; wowtex:true; spec1:false; size:0.57; y:100

Solar Power Number

Version:4.9; b:0; g:0.5255; thresholdinvert:true; icon:ability_druid_eclipseorange; x:168; bufftype:10; texture:45; alpha:1; PowerType:208; threshold:0; textaura:true; spec1:false; size:0.77; y:100; finish:0; stacks.enabled:true; stacks.y:98; stacks.Relative:LEFT; stacks.UpdatePing:true; stacks.h:2.51

Lunar Power Number

Version:4.9; g:0.5922; thresholdinvert:true; icon:ability_druid_eclipse; r:0.1882; x:-212; bufftype:10; texture:45; PowerType:108; threshold:0; textaura:true; spec1:false; size:0.35; y:100; stacks.enabled:true; stacks.Relative:RIGHT; stacks.UpdatePing:true; stacks.h:2.51

(…I’ll get an image of these auras up soon, I just don’t have one available right now.)

In the end, my issue with the Power Auras display was the same as with the default UI Eclipse Bar.  After leaving a Lunar Eclipse state, I should continuing casting Starfire in order to gain Solar Power.  The blue number on the left has decreased to 0 at this point and an orange number pops up on the right that, as I cast Starfire, increases to 99 at which point I hit a Solar Eclipse.  Having to cast Starfire while the numbers are in the orange (Wrath) side doesn’t jive with me.  I could find no clear way to indicate which direction my Solar/Lunar Power was moving.

Someone who has more experience as a Moonkin or can keep track of their spells better would probably be fine with these auras.  Me…I’m a healer by trade.  The delays needed to mark trash and CC targets are enough to make me completely forget what I was doing for the last pull as DPS.  Honestly, everything becomes a muddle when I am basically spamming a few spells several pulls in a row.  As  healer, I usually have no rotation to speak of and I certainly have no need to keep track of what spells I was casting as I go from one pull to the next.

I need something glaringly obvious.

Shadow’s Eclipse Monitor

I really like this addon.  It’s very simple, very easy to set up, has some customizations…but, most importantly, it’s obvious.  Glaringly obvious.  The addon keeps track internally of “what direction” the arrow is going in and says, in WORDS on my screen, what spell I should be casting.

No ambiguity here.

This addon is exactly what I was looking for.  Something to spell out in straightforward words exactly what I should be doing.  No confusing bar with an arrow I barely notice and deceptive color cues.

Even better, the addon can predict my Eclipse state.  When I’m in the middle of casting a Wrath that would cause a Lunar Eclipse, it preemptively turns into the word STARFIRE so I know to get that button ready next.  This feature did take me a bit to get used to, I kept canceling that final Wrath so I could switch, only to have the addon flash back to WRATH since I hadn’t actually triggered the Eclipse yet.  However, once I understood what was going on, I was able to smoothly finish casting my current spell before moving to the next.

The bar is confusing, but the words are clear --- Cast WRATH!!!!!

The only problem I have with this addon is that it doesn’t indicate how much more power you need to gain before causing an Eclipse.  Though it has that prediction feature, I’d like to have some indication of how much power is needed before hitting an Eclipse state.  Will I need just 30 more Solar Power to get to a Lunar Eclipse, or 80?

This addon is available at WoW Interface: Shadow’s Eclipse Monitor.

I changed a few settings away from the default, including the size, font type, font colors.

Balance Power Tracker

A fellow guild member introduced me to this addon.  It’s like the default Eclipse Power Bar, but way better.  It’s cleaner, for one, certainly fits in better with the rest of my UI, and it’s customizable.  It has the same idea of the Blizzard bar; the default options have it blue on the left half, orange on the right half with the number in the middle and an arrow moving back and forth.

I kept most of the default settings…but I made one major adjustment.  I choose to have the bar show the color which indicates which spell I should currently  be casting.  After hitting a Solar Eclipse the bar turns orange.  And it stays orange until I hit a Lunar Eclipse, which is when it turns blue to remind me to spam Starfire.

Yay! I don't have to worry about the arrow because the Eclipse bar turns completely orange to tell me that I should be casting Wrath.

Balance Power Tracker has a prediction system that I would say is much more robust than what is offered by Shadow’s Eclipse Monitor.  Instead of having only an early indication for an Eclipse State, it predicts how much Solar/Lunar Power you’ll have after your current cast ends for each cast.  Again, it takes some getting used to…the number you see isn’t what you have, but what you probably will have once your spell lands.  If the prediction bothers you, it can be disabled.

Either way, I like this addon.  A lot.

It also has some other neat settings you might want to play around with, such as setting the bar vertically instead of horizontally and the ability to have the bar fade out when not in combat.

This addon is available from WoW Interface: Balance Power Tracker.

My Set Up

For now, I think I’m going to keep both Shadow’s Eclipse Monitor and Balance Power Tracker installed.  The fully colored bar is amazing, but when it comes to DPS I like to keep an indicator down by my character of what I should be doing and I feel like a bar would be too bulky to have low on my screen.  Eventually I will probably phase Shadow’s Eclipse Monitor out – I don’t like the lack of a Solar/Lunar Power indicator and it is technically duplicate information in my UI – but, for now, I really like how it says so clearly and in my face the name of the spell I should be casting.

Shadow's Eclipse Monitor & Balance Power Tracker: working together to keep me sane.