I still swear by 33/0/28.

Tried out tons of fun little specs, ranging from 27/0/34, 23/0/38, 0/0/61, 21/0/40, 0/22/39 (I swear to God I was high when I did that), and 0/30/31.

In the end, Dreamstate just won my heart.

The constant flow of heals I burn out is extremely steady, especially with a 12k mana pool, a shadow priest, alchemist stone, and occasionally a mana spring.

I also have the benefit of NOT being in a shadow priest group due to my self-sustaining longevity, which allows a DPS or another healer to take advantage of it.

However, I do not use HoTs as much as I should, mostly because I hate fucking up a perfect endless cycle of healing the tank/target as soon as he takes enough damage for rank 7 to top him off again.

26/0/35 proved valuable as well. I do not like Nature's Grace for healing, as it's main "power" is from slappin down a regrowth, which really fucks up my ... rotation, I guess. I prefer to keep cast times at a very consistant level, especially on an encounter where burst is predictable.

I just can't bring myself to use tree, even with nearly 600 spirit and 1400 healing, I still see shamans as the more powerful raid healer, and losing the very efficient, giant heal blows. Granted, the HoT power is amazing, but I still like NS+HT for "oh shit" situations, and massive regen.

Also, fuck the 15% reduced speed. Cave in fucked me up last time I was a tree.

I suppose the power of Spirit is to get outside the 5 second rule. If you're downranking, it's much harder because you need to be letting heals go off much more often. I would've thought a 23/0/38 build would be much more appealing to most people, as you end up with swiftmend, more spirit regen, more hot power and still keep the mana reduction on HT.

I'd be interested to know how you have a 12k mana pool though - In my healing gear fully buffed I have ~11.5k, and I'm feral spec (so 20% more int from HoTW). My healing gear isn't very shabby either (~1450 +healing, ~650 spirit as feral, bugger all mana/5 though).

Counting full buffs, BOK Included.


I also went gimp and tossed 30 int on my staff. It might be like 11.8-9k or something, but I round up.

EDIT: Ignore me, I'm retarded. It's only 11.3. I pull numbers out of the air. But with a wisdom next patch it'll be 12k, and I'll pretty much always have one up considering how cheap they are :P

I personally have the (nearly) full resto spec, simply because there are no synergies to the resto tree tiered low in other trees. I just don't like to miss out on the heavy resto things like Swiftmend, Living Spirit or Empowered Touch.

The thing I don't like though, is the current state of Tree of Life. I can't get around to gimping myself in the form and getting put into the MT group. You could pretty much gain the same mana efficiency by letting that mana tide and/or Shadow Priest regen that mana for you. In the end, that extra +healing on your MT won't cut. This is personal opinion though. I liked it alot more when it gave your healers +healing based on your spirit instead of the healing received.
Not being able to cast Healing Touch is the other part. When your MT is in trouble, you'd have to shift out of ToL, then cast NS+HT13 and spend another 660 or so mana to shift back in ToL. NS feels kind of wasted when you're in ToL.

The reduced movement speed just makes no sense at all, I really do not see the point of this. If this is to make it seem more realistic in a game where nearly nothing is based on realism then I don't know.

Anyhow, I personally enjoy being spirit heavy. I have around 570 spirit buffed with BoK, Divine Spirit and Mark of the Wild. It really adds up, my innervate gives me a full mana bar of 9k when I use it. I always pop my innervate along with my Bangle of Endless Blessings (+130 spirit for 15 seconds) and I just can't get myself to replace the trinket for anything else. Mana is almost never an issue, you have the potions, the spirit and where Priests go oom, you innervate.
It's not only innervate though, you can regen back mana now and then since you're not constantly casting. Thinking about it, you're usually casting though when you're in ToL-form and having Spirit along with that doesn't make that much sense.

In the end, I don't feel Tree of Life deserves to be a 41-point talent. It's too situational and too restrictive for the benefits it gives. I guess it has to fit your playstyle but not mine anyhow.

(I apologise for the lack of structure or mixing subjects in between, but I'm generally not that good at writing long posts)

Famous last words before a raid leader goes ballistic on vent because a cave in landed on someone who wasn't topped off.

Two problems with this statement. For starters, you assume every single healer in the raid is just doing his own thing, sometimes healing the raid, sometimes the MT. That's pretty unfounded. Most raids probably have raid healers and MT healers. How the raid healers top off the raid is entirely up to them.

However, I'd argue that the faster the raid is topped off the better. The 1.5s cast time of a Flash of Light or Flash Heal is the same as the global cooldown after a druid casts a HoT. It also heals faster, and can be cancelled if necessary. HoTs generally have the advantage in efficiency, so that's a point in their favor (generally because of paladins and their ridiculous mana regen making efficiency moot).

I like HoT healing. However I know that my throughput is much worse than with a HT build. Back in Naxx (when you could only be resto to raid), I would often top the healing meters with Healing Touch spam (2 second Rank 3 was my dirty little secret). When patch 2.0 came out, I tried tree form. I like the feel of it, I really do. But I dropped a very long way on the meters. Having to tell your entire raid to stop healing a certain way because a druid wants to spec tree form seems pretty reactionary to me. Raid healing for 2 years has been pretty good if you ask me.

You really shouldn't be telling the other healers in your raid to not be healing. You should be telling them that they don't NEED to heal certain players, and if they're having mana issues they should happily not heal them. If they aren't having mana issues, it's strictly better for the raid to top them off, HoT be damned.

In some fights when it gets really hectic or you need to be mobile, HoTs can be really nice because other healers can't keep up even using their quick heals or if they can't stand still to heal. Use them when they're useful, but understand their limitations and don't force them where they don't fit.

Also someone earlier said that a rejuv+swiftmend combo was wasteful and shouldn't ever be done, but I disagree. It's a fast 1.5s emergency heal that can be done on the run, is cheaper than regrowth, and is roughly the same amount of instant healing. I wouldn't use it all the time, but it's certainly nice if you spot a rogue that's eaten a cleave and is in risk of taking another at any moment and dying. Or if you need a quick heal on the move.

Once again, I see comments basically saying "I suck on the healing meters". Healing meters don't matter, don't even load them. So what if you are 5th on the list.

Druids would always be on top if we got credit for the lifebloom ending heal.

From grouping with a tree form druid, the speed debuff has always been a reason to avoid the talent. There is no reason for this restriction.

As a non-druid healer, I have always viewed the aura in the same way a warlock views CoE. It doesnt really help the druid but has a big impact on large raids. I realy would like to see the original buff to out going heal spells vs the current implementation. This change would make the form, as is, a much larger benifit to the raid.

As a class with one or two instant heals every boss fight, there are dozens of times instant cast dots would have been usefull. Its often hard to realize how important they are until you dont have them. Unfortunatly, the slow debuff on the form has always made the tree druid I group with a liability. That in mind, there are several fights where dots (Kazzak for example) are a key healing factor for the success of the encounter. Fortunatly for the rest of the healing classes, this is the exception rather than the rule.

Some possible changes:
A. Make the form a combination of talents such that the form itself has a speed debuff and limited bonus, the 35 point talent removes the debuf, and the 41 talent grants improved aura.
B. Turn into the spin so to speak, and leave the speed debuff but grant additional bonuses such as extra spell resist, increased spirit regen ect.
C. Alternativly switch the aura to the original implementation.

For the healing meter issue: the only class with all its heals showing on the meters is the paladin. Priests don't have PW:S and PoM, Shamans don't have Earth Shield and Druids don't have Lifebloom. All the "healing meter" thingie is screwed up from the start.

I've been thinking of going away from my tree build as I'm currently actually never using the tree. I was thinking of something like this: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=MtrbziccZZxxcbeqMco

• I will lose tree, which is currently pretty much worthless in 5-man and pvp. I only use it in gimmick fights such as 2-man azuregos.
  
• Improved regrowth is nice but not essential, I do not pvp in arenas these days and in battlegrounds I will be usefull anyway.
  
• Empowered rejuvination will hurt some to lose, I like powerful hots. However it does not work on the end part of the lifebloom on others anyway.
  
• Will also lose 3 points in sublety, I hope I won't miss them a lot as I often pug with semi sucky tanks.

However I will gain:

• Lunar Guidance, will help with all healing spells as it will give me slightly above 100 more healing. Offsets the loss of my hot power and is a pure bonus to my healing touch.
  
• Moonglow, 9% mana reduction is a lot.

I have not decided about natures grace or 5% spirit yet.

For me it feels like a fair trade and I will even get slightly more pew pew power, even if I doubt I will use it. My plan is to use ht7 (after tips from here) mostly and full rank ht if someone takes tons of damage. Will probably continue to use lifebloom a lot though, both on the tank and on groupmembers that are damaged. However, is it worth to have a rejuv rolling on the tank when I'm solo healing?

In terms of 5 manning/pvp, yes a hybrid build is often better. Makes you more versatile. But in terms of raiding, tree druids are very powerful. Granted the speed nerf is stupid, but there are a lot of fights where I never move. And if I do, it move a very small amount. You can also shift in and out of tree form with no problems if you bind it to a key you have good access to. I bind my shifting to a custom mouse key.

As far as rejuvenation. In 5 mans I basically keep lifebloom and rejuv going. I let lifebloom end, unless it is a really hard hitting boss. There are cases however in heroics, say Mechanar with the fun Temper Forge-Destroyers, that I do nothing but HT rank 9-10 to keep that tank up. Anything else is pretty futile with those.

I Unless your raid leader never puts you in the MT group, I don't entirely agree with this. Currently, if you are in the MT group, every single heal is getting buffed from your aura to anyone in that group. Highly valuable to the MT. However, if you were to switch it back where every healer in your group gets a bonus, that would only help if you were not in the MT group. And it would only account fof 4 people if you were to cram 4 healers with the druid. The only way that would be acceptable is if they increase the aura by 50% of spirit or something.