Thanks a lot for these informations, I know how to gear up properly with the three other healing classes, but a tree druid has such a unique healing style I was wondering how appropriate this knowledge is.

Basically max out your +heal with whatever you have available, with only 100 mp/5 while casting unbuffed I can pretty much solo heal heroics and only use a handful of waters. Regular instances I can go through the whole place without drinking once, just use innervate when you drop below 25% and you are good to go. Keep the lifeblooms rolling out to anyone who takes damage and you have to have a really bad tank/group/pull for anyone to actually die.

I'm really confused by your statements about VR. I've found my tree to pretty much destroy the other healers on this fight in particular, and on fights where movement is required in general (or like Mag where movement happens to you). This week's VR I was literally 200k above the next healer in line and had to comfort my pally friend who was annoyed with how much she had to move. Hard to FoL spam while moving.

There are several things which are obviously key to good tree healing. One of the statements above struck me as odd:

Ok, chain heal is hax because you don't need to have any idea who your heal will hit past it's primary target. That's a whole bunch of spam ability in one button. But... I hardly think I'm playing whack-a-mole, and lifebloom is anything but slow -- it's the same fast heal as a trinketed healing stream but bigger at a 3 stack. Smart preventive healing comes with experience.

On Void Reaver for example I keep all hots on the current tank and keep a few on the OTs who are trying to build threat. I run out when I'm getting bombed, and I hot people near me if they get an inadvertant ball. On Morogrim I know to keep heals on the single MT and when murlocs are inc I start spreading RJs to the mages and warlocks and switch my heals to the pally with RF on who is trying to get threat up. I swiftmend either mages taking burst dmg, the MT. or the pally. Or I maybe throw some hots on the various raid members (OTs, graves, etc).

Tree healing is all about being able to *anticipate* damage. I'd rather spend my 176 mana for a lifebloom when I see the red aggro dot in grid than wait until they're -2k.

I used these two fights as examples b/c I have pretty pictures for them this week:

Void Reaver
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y278besaba/713VR.jpg

Morogrim
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y27...a/712Morog.jpg

As Eluned's photobucket links are down I'll link our tree's latest Lootreaver meter.

Any place where he can heal multiple tanks, he crushes all others on effective healing. I only hope there's places to use this type of healing in Hyjal and BT. Also, spell haste is bad. Why waste itemization points on that over raw healing power? BT healing loot doesn't seem very 'Green'.

Well there arent many targets for him to heal. Aside from 2 prot warriors, 2 ferals and a fury warrior, we might bring 1 rogue to a raid. The fights in SSC and TK arent melee friendly, so we dont bring them.

In this case, Bust was healing 4/5 melee in the raid.

This used to be the case, but is no longer true. Leotheras, Hydross, Lurker, Morogrim (especially), FLK -- all have vital roles for melee. You're doing yourself an injustice by not giving them a chance. Very few casters can maintain 1200 dps on a single target for 8 minutes straight, and be able to keep going for another 8 if needed. Good rogues can.

Back on topic:

We bring a single healing druid to our raids currently, and I'm getting the feeling I'm not using him effectively. He's not a bad player, but it just feels like there's nothing for him to do. I almost always put him on MT duty, since our paladins and shaman do FoL/CH top-ups on the raid, with me assisting using CoH. His effective healing is incredibly low in comparison to our other healers (sometimes as low as 50%), with good overheal % (as low as 10-15%).

Here's a couple of WWS parses: his name is Xyton. Anyone have any suggestions for me to bring to him? He's been with us a long time, and I don't want to have to replace him due to "poor" performance (there's some pressure this way, as he is seen as a weak healer -- I'll take the blame if it's my fault for giving him the wrong jobs).

July 17th raid: Wow Web Stats
( Lurker: melee and cross healing; Hydross: MT heals; Leo: MT heals; FLK: healing the hunter tank together with a boomkin, who is the other druid showing up on the meters)

July 13th raid: Wow Web Stats
(similar roles)

Suggestions for Xyton? Suggestions for me as to how to use him most effectively? If the answer really is "be in tree, and keep HoTs up on 1-2 targets, with occasional Swiftmends and Lifeblooms on the raid" ... I'll do it. If I can be shown that having him smooth out spikes is worth a raid slot, even if effective heal is crap-all ... that's worth it to me.

Edit: he's currently Moonglow/Swiftmend: The Armory

Personally, I am a ToL druid and one of those who is slightly biased against Dreamstate druids. I feel that if a druid is putting 30+ points into balance, that is 30+ points missing from the restoration tree, missing raid-vital healing talents. I just really strongly doubt a Dreamstate druid has the capabilities of a tree.

So, take this from that perspective. Tree druids are great at raid healing and main tank healing; although for fights like Hydross where there is alot of spike damage, they may get delegated to solely keeping hots up on the MT and the rest of their time spent either healing the add tanks, water tombs, and any other raid damage.

HoTs definitely smooth out spike damage, and will probably save wipes from time to time.

The biggest problem in my own guild's raids is people not trusting the HoTs to tick, as our pallys sometimes totally disregard the healing assignments and heal over my HoTs. Another one issue is raiders assuming the HoTs are always going to tick at small amounts. I wouldn't really call 1000 per tick for 4-5 ticks or more all that small.

Also, resto druids can shine in VR, if only because they're the only healer that can really heal while moving. I honestly can't imagine why they wouldn't shine in VR. However, I'm usually one of the tank healers, though i will throw HoTs around me if i have a couple extra seconds.

Barkskin plus no-threat-specced Tranquility is godly. I've been in a couple situations where everyone in the tank group was taking major damage and pretty much saved our raid from that one combination.

As a last thought, any tree druid without Grid set up to show where your HoTs are will probably not be as effective as one using Grid or a similar addon. I have grid to show me aggro in one corner of a person's box, lifebloom in another, rejuv in a 3rd, and regrowth in the 4th, with incoming heals' notification in the bottom middle. Seems to work great for me.

Tonight, if i remember, i will take several screenshots of SW_Stats of Overheal, Effective Heal, etc and post them here. We'll probably be doing Karathress and maybe start Leo. My stats below are unbuffed.

In our exerience Leo is a cleave/bleedfest which leads to a lot of downtime for melee, Lurker requires any 15 people to stay alive long enough to kill the boss. The adds get sheeped and taken down 1 at a time anyhow. By the time we get to the 3rd melee add the casters are nuking it too. Morogrim is great for melee I agree, but the most important part of that fight is AoE.

With all the movement required in SSC and TK, ranged classes just dont have to move as much. I count my blessings that I am one of the lucky few melee. If I wasn't tanking I'd be "In your raid, lifebloomin' yer tanks!"

One thing to consider about lifebloom is that due to it's "rolling" nature, use effect trinkets are (if I may say so without being lynched) horribly overpowered. The Tree in my guild uses a ZHC and can keep 900 per tic lifeblooms going on 2 people pretty much indefinitely with a shadowpriest in his group. Adding Rejuv for the simple ability to swiftmend and he can almost solo heal a MT.

It's important to remember that healing meters are an information tool and nothing more. By themselves they provide little useful information, it is all in how well they are interpreted.

Kinda reminds me of old raiding in EQ. We used to have someone on the raid whose only job was to keep the next tank targetted - this was so that if the MT died then the healers could just use /assist and immediately target the next tank to start heals asap. What this meant was that the targetting person provided absolutely no damage, healing or anything else to the raid. But he helped prevent a lot of wipes which wouldn't show up on any meters.

You are right that HoT's on the MT are pretty useless when everything is going smoothly as the MT should be getting plenty of heals. But when things get messy and healers die or get interrupted then those HoT's may be all or most of the healing the tank is getting. If they can keep him alive long enough for heals to resume then they have saved a wipe.

So on Morogrim I see the main benefit of HoTs as being for when the main healers get earthquaked, tombed or need to dodge adds. If your HoTs help prevent the tank die during these events then they are doing a great job. Far more important than if you were topping the healing meters.

I disagree with this greatly. For VR, I am usually assigned to be the VR Assist healer, in which I am just constantly spamming premade macros that /assist Void reaver and then pumps out hots. at the same time, i am able to drop HoTs while running from orbs (being able to heal while moving is such a huge advantage to this fight). Allowing the lifebloom to stack on your three MTs (at least that's our strat) while being able to run and avoid mobs can keep most tanks up throughout the poundings and VR knock back transitions. Another advantage is the ability to land big heals with swiftmend on spike transitions or if another MT healer is silenced.