I have to agree on that, the amount of heals that druid output when its most needed shines best and can hardly be argued with. IF the druid knows when its going to be needed and spams hots on the priority targets right before it (any kind of silence->MT hots, raid dmg spikes on melees, throwing a hot on a archimonde air burst target before he flies away).
You can win healing meters, more importantly your heals are just there when it gets nasty which is what its all about.

Was thinking about a massive healing output specc and came up with this:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Now the idea behind this one would be to spam regrowth, possibly with the regrowth idol, 2set t5, 2set t6 and being in a spriest group or chain drinking mana pots or both
Still need some gear for that, but in theory this looks very decent with almost as good hots as ToL and a big amount of more max healing output for 11% more mana spent. Plus ofc no usual tree restrictions, but no aura bonus.
Could also switch the 3 points from Moonglow to Empowered Rejuv, but thats overdoing it alot i guess (but theoretically even more healing output).

I've tried a similar spec before, however remove the points from Natural Perfection and put them in Lunar Guidance as that effects the initial cast of Regrowth aswell as the power of Swiftmend iirc. Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Its a nice build, with the Focus meta gem you can pump out alot of healing quickly however it will drain your mana even with the Hydross idol and downranking which is why Tree is inevitably better for spamming Regrowth.

Well i was trying to get the extra +healing on hots since thats what you do while theres not alot of raid dmg spikes, but yeah i guess lunar guidance brings more to the table than that effect.

Dont get me wrong here, i wasnt planning on 24/7 regrowth spamming, theres simply no reason to heal efficiently in alot of encounters. I can name alot of encounters where you need the spike healing rather than effective longterm raidhealing and with spriest group, innervate and pots you can hold out on spamming regrowth quiet long (after all its only 11% more mana cost not 20%) while providing massive healing output when its needed. Illidan would be the best encounter to demonstrate this, even the phase that needs the most healing is spikey in itself too and on top of that the healing gets alot easier after 2mins or so.
On the other hand in the most encounters where you can heal efficiently, after a kill or two you end up doing it but you simply dont use pots anymore. Nice side effect but thats not what speccs are about for endgame raiding.

And ofc thats not a specc to keep a MT up, but thats not the right use of a druid imho anyway. Paladins just shine on it and more importantly they are way worse on any other kind of healing which means the versatile healer (druids priests) has to take over the job thats not always there. Same for shamans just on the other end really.

I really disagree with that statement. From my experience druids are absolutely superior MT healers, I'd even go so far as to say that paladins are better at raid healing than druids are. Druids who raid heal are generally spamming lifebloom on everyone in sight. About 1/2 second after they do that, some priest or shaman is going to flash heal or CH them back to full and there goes the HoT. Yes, you do a fair bit of effective healing but your overheal (if it were reported) would be spectacular.

I really think that HoTs just shine on MTs. They take damage often meaning that each individual tick of a HoT has a much better chance of actually doing healing. I can tell because my overhealing goes up when I'm healing an MT meaning my HoTs are at least doing partial healing more.

Our healing stability really seemed to increase when we swapped the paladin / ToL roles in a raid. Our pallies can FoL all day long on a raid just as well as they can on a tank, and our tanks health isn't nearly as spiky with ToL HoTs on them. When we had 2 trees, we covered all of the tank healing for most of the fights. Now, we're usually just using 1 tree + 1 paladin on MT healing, depending on the fight obviously.

Even with just me, my effective healing when on tanks is through the roof. Here's a WWS from last night's raid with me assigned to heal Iorek, our MT, all night. Just for reference, Eir is a prot. pally, Magna is an enhancement shaman, and Mortra and Sintez are our shadow priests. The rest are heal specced healers.

Wow Web Stats

Pyxis, thanks for sharing your WWS. I thought you had another tree druid you worked with, though?

I don't agree with this statement. Trees take a severe hit to healing on Morogrim when tombed since their lifebloom stack expires. Depending on your trinket cooldowns you may not be able to double trinket before starting a new lifebloom stack, which means losing 200ish extra healing on a triple stack lifebloom tick.

Effective Healing is a competition between other healers in the raid. Trees, if on tank duty, will always beat other healers due to the fact that lifebloom ticks every second and beats everyone else to the punch. I've been playing around with tree recently and my effective heal has gone up dramatically, but what it doesn't show is a tree's inability to perform in "clutch" situations. Sure, with a consistant lifebloom stack going on the tank these situations should be rarer, but a 3.5K swiftmend only buys enough time for another healer to do the job. The days where I NS HT crit the main tank for 9K and receive golfclaps from the raid are gone. Yes, I could break treeform, but then why do I want to go so deep in the resto tree with juicy tier 5 balance talents in reach?

My true issue with tree is flexibility. Its enough that hybrids can only do one role at higher levels due to gear/talent constraints, treeform limits those even more. Tree gives you a very specific task, hot cycles. Damage intake on the tank does not matter, you have a cycle of hots you keep up, every now and then you swiftmend...the end. I miss determining a rank of HT, cast canceling, pretending insect swarm is useful, and depoisoining/decursing. I feel braindead in treeform.

This is just insane!

1) HoTs are amazing burst protection.

A) Superior healing throughput during a spike window:

During a 2 second window you are *guaranteed* two 1k ticks of LB, plus a swiftmend. Compare this to the 2/3 chance you have to land a Healing touch (pre-casting, accounting for the fact that you may have cancelled immediately before the burst) and it's no competition. As you can see, the shorter the window to heal during burst the better deep resto becomes, since LB healing and the probability of an HT landing go down in lockstep, but swiftmend remains static as it is an instant cast. This might inflect at some point due to the possibility of being in a global cooldown, but surprise 100-0 deaths in < 1.5 seconds are truly rare.

B) Guaranteed character

Tanks often die due to healers being incapacitated or distracted (e.g., person X yells for healing in vent, all the healers momentarily switch to him). HoTs continue ticking even if you start casting a heal on someone else.

2) The raw healing throughput of druid HoTs outrageous.

With optimal gear and buffs it is possible to sustain an 1600+ tick lifebloom stack on a warrior. No other class can even conceive of sustained aggregate 5k hps. While in practice, the number will be considerably lower, the potential is still mind boggling.

All this healing matters -- With more healing done by fewer raid members: extra healing can be devoted to the non-tanks; extra dps can be subbed in; other healers can sustain their mana longer, both because they heal less and because they can use more mana efficient spells; other healers can focus more intently on their non-healing roles (e.g., keeping inspiration/ancesstral fort up, dispelling, maintaining proper positioning).

3) HoTs fill a niche in healing that no other class can duplicate.

A) HT is non-unique
HT healing is very similar to priest GH, but the druid lacks:

Inspiration, a dramatic reduction in spike damage and overall healing needed;
vastly superior spirit regen during 5SR management due to 4 spi v 4.5 spi per tick, lack of Inner focus + clearcast chains, and 5% extra spirit for the priest;
quicker reaction time (2.5 sec GHeal v 3 sec HT)

B) HoTs instant cast nature grants less tangible benefits

A druid is completely mobile while casting LB, Rejuv, Swiftmend (admittedly at a bit slower of a pace). They can also not be spell locked. Knockbacks or interrupts will not cancel a heal mid-cast.

C) Extra time in spell rotations

Due to the cycle HoT spell rotations, on many fights deep resto druids will have a global cooldown or two free every 6 seconds. This gives time to spot heal, rez, etc. while losing no healing output on your main target(s). Admittedly this is a double edged sword as LB requires an ironclad use of one global per 6 seconds per target. I would count this flexibility in an HT builds favor net, but the better one is at anticipation (e.g., innervate a target before they call for it, preemptively abolish, rejuv a target while you see them being targetted but before they take dmg), the more favorable deep resto becomes.

4) HoTs allow for greater control of your mana pool

A) LB is amazingly efficient

Tree druids can put out the most healing of any class given the same amount of mana, lifebloom has ridiculous HPM. As a side note, this also means that a druid can maintain a 1000+ HPS trinketed lifebloom on the main tank even if they are completely out of mana, simply by refreshing lifebloom every 6.5 seconds. Every other healer is rendered almost completely useless if they run out of mana and don't have a potion cooldown / shadowfiend / mana tide / whatever to get some mana back.

B) Mana efficient base spell rotation gives added flexibility


Druids thus have an incredibly efficient base healing spell, and can choose to use other, less efficient spells as needed. This gives them control over their mana pool while still allowing them to do their central job unabated. Other classes (FoL spam is closest) don't have this same level of control. This has many benefits, such as

*Group composition: Since druids can heal more or less indefinitely when using just LB or LBx2, they can be put into groups that don't provide them regen (like the tank group), freeing up a slot for vamp touch/mana tide.
*Mana transfer: druids are the only class that has the ability to controllably transfer excess mana to another class, through innervate.
*HPS: Druids marginal heals (regrowth/HT during a LBx1 cycle for example) are some of the least efficient in the raid game, but by using every second, druids can match/exceed every other classes single target HPS. I'd compare them to arcane mages in this respect -- the class can dps forever with a conservative rotation (AB AM, scorch--> AM on CC), or can burn through all of their mana very quickly (AB spam) when dps, or in this case hps, burst is needed.

To Zure - you forgot one thing

Amazing Efficiency
Tree druids can put out the most healing of any class given the same amount of mana, lifebloom has ridiculous HPM. As a side note, this also means that a druid can maintain a 1000+ HPS trinketed lifebloom on the main tank even if they are completely out of mana, simply by refreshing lifebloom every 6.5 seconds. Every other healer is rendered almost completely useless if they run out of mana and don't have a potion cooldown / shadowfiend / mana tide / whatever to get some mana back.

Whats the difference between a Druid using HoTs, or a Paladin spamming FoL on the tank? not very much.
The Paladin will do more HPS due to crit, we will do more HPM.
Assuming all HoTs are up, 900 Rejuv, 900->2700 LB, 500 Regrowth = 4100/3sec
FoL I believe heals for around 2k by our Paladins now, so thats 4000/3sec (excluding crits)


The one issue I have is when things get bursty and I've already used my NS and Swiftmend im pretty much feeling helpless and hoping another healer can cover it quick, because my target will die unless I have the grace time to setup all my HoTs and incorporate HT's into it

There is a big difference really, because the druid can do other stuff while HoTing the tank (such as HoT an offtank), and the druid has instant cast swiftmend as well. Also a lot of encounters require movement at some point, HoTs can be applied/refreshed on the run while FoL spam cannot.

I totally agree with Ribeye...

...apart from one little detail: Do NOT use Lifbloom stacked twice!

Either cast a single Lifeblooms on multiple targets or stack it up three times and keep it rolling. A double-stacked Lifebloom should never be used. It just can happen when you intended to stack it up but had to switch the target.

One can argue about using Regrowth, but as a matter of fact, you will have a hard time topping the healing meters without using it. The mana efficiency is not really an issue, since tree druids tend to have enough mana and regeneration for most encounters even without Innervate.

Innervate just on your self? Well it surely helps topping the healing meters, but I think Inervate should be used according to the situation. General advices suh as "Use it only on yourself!" are not very practicable. Use it on whoever needs it, for some encounters/situations this can mean "Cast it on a Mage".

From my experience druids really shine when there is a lack of healing in the raid. If you go into 25-man instances with only 4-5 good equiped healers, druids will allmost always top the healingmeter.