I completely agree with you about regrowth. With the current burst-centered boss fights blizzard has put out for us to do in BC overheal, and, thusly, regrowth, is definitely a raid-friendly heal; i use it in my rotations every fight for 3 reasons:

1.) honestly the innital heal is nice to have. It may not be big but with a target at low health the innitial chunk is definitely nice; gives the hots a head start

2.) longest duration hot, aka swiftmend garuntee. Especially if you are assigned multiple targets regrowth basically ensures there is something to swiftmend off at all times

3.) 60% crit rate-this is where regrowth shines. In ToL it is cheap and hits like a truck when compared to other spells with a similar casting time. The crit allows me personally to downrank and still get a large heal off with the hot as a bonus

I dont have the best healing gear available as im not fulltime resto specced (or rather hardly ever), i guess thats why i make less use of NS and swiftmend
I would agree on +healing being the better choice than +mp5, but then again you never compare the +18 healing gem to the +3mp5 gem, but to the +9 healing +2mp5. Not all fights are a mana drain, but if you dont want to keep 2 kinds of healing gear to switch out mana regen parts if necessary, the multicolor gem is the better choice, even on red sockets.

This is me on our first Archimonde kill.
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...4406-4810&a=16

I also kept IS and decurses going, i could have taken a bigger bite of total healing needed, but mostly to the disadvantage of other healers rather than a bigger failsafe (healing meter<raid progress). No spriest, just chain using pots and innervating myself once.

Still, what is majorly broken is ToL restrictions. You either can heal very efficient or you can play a full healer.
In fights with alot of aoe dmg, it mostly means they are dynamic, means you cant use ToL. Or theres depoisoning/decursing, then you cant use it either. Also it disables the possibility of keeping up IS as a healer on MT healing heavy fights (or ff if theres no feral/balance druid around).

In the end you can use the 41 talent in maybe 60-70% of the fights and in half of it, it just saves you some mana pots. If the 35-40 points talent wouldnt be what it is, we would see 90% of the healing druids without ToL but as balance/resto with natures grace and maybe even dreamstate.

If you are concerned winning the meters, then go roll a DPS class.

Healing is about enabling the team as a whole to win.

If your team mates are using mana inefficient fast heals just to top the meters, then the raid leader needs to adjust some attitudes. This is especially for tree druids assigned to general raid healing. The whole team should understand the nature of druid HOTs and learn to stick to their own assignments.

If you are assigned to HOT the main tank, then your job is not to do MOST of the healing. It's to do the MOST IMPORTANT healing. I sometimes find myself praying that a HOT will tick when the tank is down to 20% health and my priest is two seconds away from landing a greater heal. Sure, 90% of the ticks are wasted. But that other 10% of the ticks are golden because they land reliably when the tank needs them most.


The cruel irony of healing meter competitions is that not all heals are created equal. It's about applying the right amount of healing in the right place at the right time without sacrificing efficiency.

Don't get me wrong: tools like SW Stats are great for diagnosing issues in your healing strategy. I wouldn't think of getting rid of them. But it's a tool, not a scorecard.

Actually we've changed things up in terms of healing assignments lately. Most of the time we raid with 2 ToL druids and when we're both there, we are the primary MT healers usually with a single paladin as backup. Generally we've freed up 1-2 MT healers per fight and reassigned them to raid healing making everything just seem a lot smoother. We obviously own up the charts doing this which, as you've stated before, is singularly unimportant but when you have 2 people doing a combined 1800 or so hps on the MT you've covered the damage output of the vast majority of bosses we've fought.

The real kicker is that for about 1 out of every 2 GCDs, on average, we're still able to throw a lifebloom on the raid. So with our MT healers also throwing out raid healing we find we're just getting more healing out of the same, or less, healers. I'd be interested to see how many other guilds are using their druids this way and if they are finding success with it.

By being dreamstate specced, not only do you miss out on swiftmend (which is a ridiculous amount cheaper mana-wise than HT, whether you're tree specced or not) but you also miss out on ~20% more +healing on hots. If you're tree-specced, it's even better because you're 20% more mana efficient.

We've gone from 2 druids healers, one tree-specced but not using it (he preferred HT spam with hots in between) and one dream-state specced (who then switched to swiftmend/balance a while after), to have two tree-druids. It's certainly different as a tank when you get 4 hots on you (or even 6 if regrowth goes on) and knowing that they'll flow no matter if people are silenced, to getting silenced, having a hot tick or two because people were keeping it up in between things and so it didn't happen to be on, and then waiting for a ~5-6k heal from someone.

The difference on hot's between being dreamstate and not is something like ~30% total from rejuve, and ~15% total on lifebloom, along with 50% more crit on regrowth, and 20% less mana cost on everything, and having swiftmend there for rejuve too. It's certainly a significant difference from being dreamstate specced and using hots.

I've found that tree form works best in everything up to ssc. We down Void Reaver but a tree druid wouldn't really shine during that fight.

Assuming you have decent gear as in lots of Karazhan loot and a piece or two of tier 4, you have enough +healing to have over 600 hp/s with just 3 lifebloom stacks. Along with this, you should have enough mp/5 to be able to refresh lifebloom every 5-6 forever if you don't cast much else.

I also have the use heroic trinket that i can pop while i cast lifebloom and if i don't let it fall off, i can push 3 lifebloom stacks to over 750 hp/s.

Combe this with a rejuv every once in a while and swiftmending when the tank takes a spike and you win. This is not saying much, but i have an easy time topping the heal meters for a raid night with just these few things i do.

IMO, ToL healing is pretty much pigeonholed into tank spike insurance. FoL + LB3 + Reju + timed GHeals, with swiftmend ready. I don't really see any unique niche for dreamstate, because if you are going to do timed big heals, it might as well be the holy priest. The other priests are most likely shadow.

ToL is not great for raid healing. Resto shamans can chain heal multiple members by the time you struggle through GCDs and whack-a-mole to spread slow HoTs.

With a single ToL in the raid, and yes I know most of the elite guilds just use one, I would agree with you. With 2 ToLs on the MT though I'd argue that they absolutely become your primary MT healers. Between trinketed lifebloom stacks and the occasional swiftmend, you're covering a very large percent of the incoming damage.

The thing about the Dreamstate build is, although it's supper efficient due to huge amounts of mp5, there isn't really a need for mp5 past a certain point. You only need enough regen to cover the mana you're using in a fight. The more mana you use the higher your regen needs to be. So if you're spamming Regrowth the whole time you're going to need a ton of regen to keep going, but if you're using Rejuv and rolling Lifeblooms then you need much less.

People with Dreamstate builds talk about having 180-200 mp5 unbuffed so they could heal forever even if their HoTs aren't as powerful as a Tree druid. However, I've found that I only need around 160 mp5 unbuffed to heal "forever" in Tree form. So basically, I last as long as a Dreamstate druid, but my heals are more powerful. Although, I'm not arguing against people who use a Dreamstate build for the use of Balance talents. My own build is part Balance. I just think that going Dreamstate purely for healing is a waste.

I think that for TBC Blizzard turned Healing Touch from our staple healing spell into a utility spell. It's there for us to use with NS or to toss up when we have the time to cast it, not really for chain casting anymore. Pre-expansion I used to chain cast HT rank 4 over and over while keeping Rejuv up, but now, even if I have time to cast HT I'm still better off just throwing up a Lifebloom most likely.

Just stay out of tree and heal on VR. You have to burn some mana pots, but you should be getting plenty of those for the TK instances. I'm usually 2nd on the fight in healing done behind the shaman that is casting chain heal on the rogues. Basically, I rotate HoTs on the tanks, rogues, and the rest of the raid when they don't get out of the way of the orbs in time. I'm of the opinion that ToL is useful if your guild has a glut (or at least enough) holy priests and paladins. If your raid doesn't have the people to cover the chunk heal roles, or already has a tree then maybe HT/Dreamstate will work better in your situation. I'm in love with being a ToL druid until I play arena matches. Then, well, I wish I was a paladin. The problem with ToL isn't in PvE, it's in PvP. HT/Dreamstate will have more tools (from the extra balance talents) to keep themselves alive and CC more effectively.

I would guess around 1k is doable in blue questrewards? That should be enough as tree for heroics. The beauty of 5man is that you can totally disregard mana regen, as there currently is no 5man encounter that would take your total mana pool plus innervate plus pots. After a fight you can drink anyway without serious problems.

Spirit is still a killer stat for 5man because you not only gain regen (which is still nice ofcourse) but 1/4 of your spirit is direct +healing with the ToL Aura. This thread mostly covers concerns for raid encounters where you while fully potted have to hold up as much healing as you can for 15mins or burst healing situations after 5min of constant healing.

Id suggest to get some -threat trinket tho, the "fade" from those are quiet useful in 5mans.

By the time you reach heroics, you should have all the good blues and then you can upgrade to badge and reputation rewards (CE offhand, shatar mainhand, KoT bracers etc).
If you want to get as far as you can on your resto druid, you can go tailor and craft the Primal Mooncloth set+boe items. That set is enough for anything up to the end of BT maybe. Might be a bit much for a casually played alt tho.