Have any raids gotten together on the PTR to test the multi-druid lifebloom method of healing? I know it may be a challenge on everyone's regular realms, but the PTR allows more of a population of resto druids to congregate; the only difficult part would be getting the other raid members to agree to have druids be the primary healers by using HoT spells.

Then again, if we (druids) can get 40 of us together to down Onyxia, we could possibly pull this off ourselves...

This is wrong and I'll use your own math to prove it.

Now taking the numbers you quoted, namely spending 5700MPM on keeping 3 lifebloom stacks going, and multiply it by 0.8, a tree would be spending 4560MPM. That is a difference of 1140 mp/minute, or 95 mp/5. Unless you happen to have over 950 intellect (which I doubt is even possible), this beats the pants off of dreamstate regeneration. If you toss in higher mana cost spells such as rejuvenation or regrowth, the equivalent mana regeneration for tree becomes much higher, though you may also go out of mana eventually with the unforeseen added expenditures. While this doesn't take into account loss of decurse/depoison/other abilities, I believe this does provide the highest indefinitely sustainable HPS in the game bar none.

Another aspect to consider is that if you are healing entirely with HoTs, then the 5 points in empowered rejuvenation (which affects all HoTs despite the poor name?) is unreachable if you also have 33 points in balance for dreamstate.

Obviously 33/0/28 is the route to go for healing touch as a main healing spell, but if you plan on using HoTs deep restoration is clearly the superior choice (despite the frustrating lameness of tree form).

Another thing to mention is that you will almost certainly pick up the 15% more spirit talent, so you'll end up with more regen from that. If you then gear slightly more in favour of spirit (using Bangle of Endless Blessings instead of a mana/5 trinket, for example) you can gain a lot out of it. Oh, and 25% more effectiveness on Lifebloom because of Empowered Rejuve, AND the tree bonus on top. The effectiveness of a Tree-specced druid for pure HoT healing massively outdoes a Dreamstate healing spec.

One thing to mention, which I just mucked about with on Test server, is that when you use the Bangle of Endless blessings and stack lifebloom, the amplify effect from tree-forms +spirit bonus continues after the use effect wears out. The effect from Fecundity (Ribbon of Sacrifice trinket) doesn't however. Seems like Amplify Magic and Tree form's aura apply different rules to the Ribbon, which is quite weird. I was able to get a 718 tick of Lifebloom with full stack of Ribbon/Essence of the Martyr active though, so in a raid situation with Amplify and more +healing (running ~1350 on test, ~520 spirit so add another 130ish for tree aura) I can see Tree's keeping 750/800+ stacks running constantly on people in their group (those affected by aura), which is rather good really.

LC Prayer book is also a very good tree longevity trinket, if you bind the trinket to your lifebloom spell, and assuming you cast 8 lifeblooms while the trinket is active (accounting for latency, and that you might not be using every GCD that is available), it works out to an equivalent of saving 176 mana every minute, or 14.6 mp/5 and +70 heal equivalent.

Can anyone do the math on the Bangle and how it affects mana regeneration over time? Currently I am using it as my 2nd trinket with the prayer book as my first, but once I get enough badges for Essence of the Martyr I'm not sure which trinket to replace. Having a +spirit buff for innervate is pretty nice, I'm just not sure how it works out in the long run when compared to other trinkets.

It's so good it will be in danger of a nerf. Imagine just bringing 3 such druids to a raid. All of a sudden they can keep the main tank healed of 2400+ DPS just be refreshing a stack every 7 seconds. It's a stable 2400 hp/s too...the granularity of the heals is very low. Unless your MT could get killed from full->0 in under a second, he's going to get a tick of that healing. This is what makes Lifebloom superior to the other HoT spells. Meanwhile, it's easy to either heal others with a Lifebloom stack or keep a Rejuv up on the tank and use Swiftmend (and maybe NS Regrowth) to cover damage spikes just in case while a couple "normal" healers top off whatever the several thousand points of HoT healing aren't.

15% mana regen in casting, proc rate seems ~1/min (internal cooldown, etc).
If you get 1 mana/tick from 4.5 spirit (thanks boevis), and assuming 15 mana/tick base:
400 spirit = 104/tick = 260 / 5
500 spirit = 126/tick = 315 / 5
600 spirit = 148/tick = 370 / 5
700 spirit = 171/tick = 427.5 / 5
800 spirit = 193/tick = 482 / 5

So say you have 600 spirit and 0 mana/5, and then you get one proc/min. Assume that every 6 minutes you use the trinket 3 times and one of them co-incides with the bangle proc.

If you are constantly in the 5 second rule, that means you get 5 lots of 30% regen (15 sec), 1 lot of boosted 30% regen (15 sec - ignore the 5 secs of extra from the other regen), 1 lot of boosted 15% regen (20 sec), and one innervate with boosted regen.

600 spirit: 370/5 would be 56/5 with 15% regen, or 112/5 with 30% regen.
730 spirit: 443/5 would be 67/5 with 15% regen, or 134/5 with 30% regen.

5 lots of 30% regen (15% extra): 56mana/5 over 15 secs = 168 mana back each = 840 mana
1 lot of boosted 30% regen (15% + 130 spirit extra): 67/5 over 15 secs = 201 mana back = 201 mana
1 lot of boosted 15% regen (130 spirit extra): (134*4 - 112*4 = 88) mana back = 88 mana
1 lot of innervate with boost (400% + 130 spirit): 72*4*4 = 1155 mana if your mana pool can support it which it should be able to if you're refreshing during it.

So over a 6 minute period, assuming you're using it like this with 600 spirit (not unreasonable imo) and you're getting 1proc/min average, you get 2284 mana total, 381mana/minute, or ~32mana/5. That's assuming I got the maths right, obviously. You also get the benefit of ~30 more +healing to the aura if you're using tree form. Innervate really makes the trinket shine as without it you'd "only" get 18-19 mana/5 total out of it.

Spirit/4.5 Dukes, iirc.

Our normal raid setup is 8 or 9 healers. 3 Paladins always (blessings), 2 healing priests normally (at least one with spirit), 1-2 shamans, 1-2 druids. Shamans are always nice, as although their healing power is (generally) slightly less than the other healing classes, totems for another group easily outweighs any negatives on that side, and they have chain heal/earth shield. Of our 2 healing druids, one is 27/0/34 and the other is 1/0/60 but doesn't use tree for raiding, and very often comes top 2-3 of effective healing (was top of effective on leotheras by about 10% which may just be luck of getting 5k+ heals off on the tank at the right time).

I still don't see why Tree has a slowing effect on it - the fact you can't depoison/curse is enough of a hindrance (or do the opposite and let depoison/curse work and leave the slow - its a 41 point talent so theres no way it should have so many detrimental effects.)

How do you compare? With a healing meter that counts the last tick of Lifebloom to other players? (And that tick can be a 25% of a TOL heal). I always win in heal every other class if i take in count the overheal (a TOL has like 10-15%, not 25-30%). And I'm talking about now, not 2.1.

TOL isnt for main healing anyway (not very efficient, but i do Heroics in TOL as the only healer) but is great for stacking HOTs on the tanks and healing for virtually no mana the raid. Healing 2794 (what i heal now) for 176 mana is great for ppl that dont need uber fast heal.

And, sometimes, as a gift, chaining single Lifeblooms I give the tank 96 TPS.

Okay this thread is about ToL being a main tank healer. As a Tree I disagree with that. Trees just can't MT heal, we jsut can't. But that's the point of the trees.

The purpose of Trees is to be a hot machine on raids to cancel out all those lovely AE spells pretty much every single boss in BC has. The other purpose of a tree is to take spirit items over regen items.

Personally on Test my 3 stacks are hitting 560. Even thoguth this seems large, compared to 2-3 pallies spaming the tank it's like an ant. It's just there to give a slight boost to the tank so he lives just a tad bit longer. It's pretty obvious to me Trees were just meant to be the raid healers.

And as for this whole "IWONDAMAGEMETERSME>YOU" argument. Of course a tree will more than likely be the #1 or #2 overhealer, they can't control that. They see a guy taking damage they're gonna slap a hot of some sort on them, there's no way for them to tell "let see, I think he'll get for exactly 2k damage, so I should do rank 4 of this paticular hot". That's just doesnt happen.

I'm very spirit heavy in my gear, breaking 600 with full buffs, and if I ever get Nightbane's staff it'll be 660. And I never have major mana issues. I always use just as many potions as the priests and our HT druid, if not the same then less.

3 stack of lifebloom, trinketted, ticks for 650+ without amplify magic on test (1400 base healing, +288 from trinket) for me. Add in Rejuve for ~800, regrowth for ~400 and you end up with 1k healing per second on a single target if you keep everything up. That's maybe slightly less than FoL spam from a paladin, but you get about half the time free for keeping hots up on other people and it's more mana efficient as a tree in general.

The point of having a tree keeping hots up on MT is that in between those two crushing blows for 4.5k you get a load of hot ticks, which effectively turn those crushings into normal hits whilst you continue to raid heal. It's a buffer against burst damage, as other people have said, and the reaction time is non existant, plus you can always swiftmend for a pretty decent amount (2.5k+).

The bloom shows up as a person healing themselves, "your Lifebloom heals you for 1156" or whatever, not the person who cast it (same mechanic as Prayer of Mending/LoTP/Judgement of Light).

One of the tree druids I sometimes run 5 mans with went into arena in a tree form the first time. Against a warlock. Got banished.

This would never happen to a (holy) pala, so druids definitely aren't taking their place.

Tree Form in my opinion is essential in some encounters. After reading all the replys I can see some of you thought like I did, until I tried it with the right build and stats.

Personally, HOTS are the ultimate dmg mitigators. I dont' know about you but I hate those fights where the tanks HP is jumping from 100% to 20% and so forth constantly. Hots prevent this spiking dmg from happening. I simply run Regrowth, Rejuv, and Lifebloom (1x stack, repeated as it procs) to mitigate the dmg. If I see a significant spike, I hit swiftmend and often paired with Lifebloom brings the tank back up. I only stack Lifebloom 3x if it is a critical moment (such as Gruul's AE silence) however this could change in 2.1 for me.

Also, you can stack Lifebloom 3x and refresh it every 6 sec. With the right stats you can actually GAIN mana from this.

If you believe HOTs aren't worth it then simply stop laying hots and cast HT and you'lll see what the difference is. HT hits hard but it's wayyy to slow. It's not like pre-BC where we could get 2 sec casts of HT that hit for a decent amount.

Also, the tree aura is essential as well. if you are in the main tank group and within 45 yards of the MT, according to the tool tip (since they changed it) every single heal on that MT from anyone in the raid will get that buff. With 600 spirit, that's 150+healing. Ever since I switched to spirit it has seemed to make a difference.

Also, there is a quote in this forum that I had to respond to:

You are basing this on healing meters, which is the most inaccurate way to gauge healing for a tree druid, because you do not recieve any registery of hots in the combat log if the target has full health. The only time tree druids will "smoke" you is if they are instructed to heal the entire raid in a mass dmg encounter. The only guaranteed credit we get is regrowth and lifebloom procs.

Lifebloom actually works along the same mechanic as Prayer of Mending, where it shows up as healing done by the person you cast it on (say I were to cast it on someone called Bob, it would be "Bob's Lifebloom heals them for 1200" not "Dukes's Lifebloom heals Bob for 1200"), so it's not guarenteed. I'm pretty sure most people forget this and so assume that Tree's are pretty worthless for healing when you look at healing meters. It does help to cut down on overheal % though