As I get closer and closer to 70, I've been doing a lot of thinking as to what the best spec would be for a druid healing. Having not played beta, I'm not entirely sure how effective druid healing is in certain contexts (i.e. whether regrowth/rejuv/lifebloom are good enough to be bread and butter healing spells in tree form or if healing touch is still the primary spell in the druids arsenal). Basically, it seems like there are two big healing specs, both with advantages and disadvantages.

First was full resto, which focuses on the power of HoT spells in addition to regrowth and swiftmend.
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...50531502531051
Only the essential talents to the build have been filled in as they are pertinent to healing. Basically, this build is the HoT build. It gives you the most powerful HoT spells in the game and gives you tree form, which helps whichever group you're in as well as making regrowth, lifebloom and rejuvenation much cheaper and more manageable over time. Here is the dilemma:

Healing Touch spec:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...00501502000000
This spec has the most powerful healing touch in the game, no contest. Key balance talents such as Lunar Guidance and Dreamstate play off of the druids intellect, adding more mana regeneration and more healing. Moonglow also reduces the mana cost of your healing spells, and Nature's Grace is just butter. This spec has the most powerful healing touch spell in the game, and it's predominantly balance. Bonus points because it lets you farm a bit better =D.

The real question is, what is the most effective method of healing in TBC, in both dungeons and raids, and which spec would you rather use? There are definately variations on each, but the basic question remains the same: HT or HoT spec?

EDIT: After looking at the specs more, you could also spec improved FF over Dreamstate if you wanted to add some more raid viability to the build. It's pretty flexible, the only real talents that matter are Dreamstate, Imp. FF, and the three below it. All the other talents are just filler.

It seems to me, from my experience, that druids are meant to be hybrids now. Meaning a feral/resto build is the way to go, imo. Alot of the offset pieces have high AC, Str+Agi and +healing. I don't think speccing a full resto build is going to be beneficial at all. Whilest I enjoy healing, I'm trying to be realistic and open minded. It looks to me, at least at the moment, that druids are going to be doing a fair bit off offtanking and such, while still being called on as healers if deemed necessary.

I was thinking about this earlier, and came up with this spec. It seems a little odd at the moment, but it looks fairly solid to me.


http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...01000000000000

You still want to min/max everything; why be subpar in a raid if you can be exceptional?

I dunno what you consider sub-par. I do, however have 1100 +healing in my pre-bc gear, so my healing is still extremely efficient with just imp healing touch. Maybe I'm just living a dream right now, hoping that there will be more to the class than in the past. From what I've seen, Karazhan doesn't seem *TOO* healing intensive, so I feel that my spec posted above might be acceptable. That's the only BC "raid" instance I've been able to catch a glimpse of.

Also, I think taking mangle was just the dreamer in me hoping for a chance to DPS or something, haha. Mangle is certainly not needed for tanking, but once again, probably just my hopes and dreams.

What I think is the issue here is, healing and healing effectiveness is encounter specific. It's why there are constantly so many complaints about the Holy tree (Priest); Blizz want to get creative and give us new spells (Bandage Totem, Circle of Healing), except healing 'tricks' are encounter specific, and then fall under the "gimmick" spell by some people.

So the problem with comparing your 2 specs is, they aren't really comparable. Does the encounter have a lot of AoE damage, where multiple people are being hit all for relatively small amounts of damage? Or is the encounter tank n spank, needing massive hp/s rather than endurance.

As far as min/maxing goes, that's where healing (for a Druid) stands. Paladin, Priest, and Shaman don't really have this issue, as they don't have the extreme different healing styles. Healing Druids are unique in that way.

I have self been thinking of starting this thread as every other Druid thread only talking about Feral and lololol crits.

Anyway. My view on the druid as a PvE Raid healer is definatly a ToL HoT healer. Lifebloom, Regrowth and Rejuv with swiftmend is what makes the class. Both palas and Priests are imo capable with big heals. But this is only my view on how to play and not the min/max way.

Put aside my view I'd like to know how the talents effect +healing. Gift of Nature and Empowered Rejuvenation have both different descriptions. Does an 3.0 sec HT count as a 3,5 sec spell and therefore recieve full +healing? I have searched after the +healing formulas and found the formulas over at http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Plus...d_Plus_healing but I haven't been able to get same numbers as ingame.

How would the formula for rejuvenation with GoN and Emp. Rej look?

+healing should be applied BEFORE talents are taken into account. So a 3 second HT spell should count as 3.5 when it comes to figuring in +healing. Thats why the mage changes recently. Now the talent specifically states it lowers the +damage coefficient. Safe to assume that unless specifically stated in the tooltip, your spells are safe.

In instances so far I have seen a lot of AEing bosses. Some of it not so minor. So I would assume that this discussion is more leaning towards 5man instances as in a raid you will have sufficient healers anyways, whereas a 5man will be reliant on only 1 healer (often anyway). As I said earlier though, the bosses often have AEs, and the AEs are quite harsh =). A fast casting single target heal is essential though as the tank is going to get pummeled =/.

I guess in the end it depends on the tanks you are grouping with. If they can take the beatings as you renew everyone to ensure they live through the next AE barrage, I would suggest going for a more HoT friendly spec. If however the tank is dropping like a rock, got for the more single target friendly spec so you can use the extra 3 seconds that would have been your second HT, to renew/LB the group.

That HoT spec is either exactly or 95% similar to the druid's current build who I've been running with since day 1. Being on the receiving end of the heals, I have no complaint. She put the remaining talents in balance because she hates melee DPS, and with some of the TBC quest items, she can output some decent damage.

Yeah if your primarily healing in ToL form you almost could forgo Naturalist and all of the HT talents entirely and just focus primarily on HoT spells, which is what you'll be best at anyways. Frees up points to make you quite a good PvP healer by giving you 16-17 points to spend in balance/feral.

It's an agonizing decision. The HT spec of yours is exactly what I would go with, if I were chosing that route. The reason being is not so much the really, really, really nice PvE stuff like dreamstate and lunar guidance, but just the idea that outside a raid, you can actually do a decent job of killing stuff, which lets you farm and PvP.

But you miss swiftmend. Oh swiftmend, what a wonderful talent that is. It's so good that it's tempting to go balls-to-the-wall HoT spec. But then you end up with ~49 points in resto and once again you're Gimpy McHealbot who everyone laughs at in PvP and you can't even go farm your own stuff.

I'll probably end up going with a 34 resto 27 balance build similar to this:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...00521502001000

Extremely strong HT. Moonglow and lunar guidance actually do quite a bit to help regrowth and rejuvenation as well, so you can still use them liberally. Overall staying power is very close to a heavier resto build, and it also has some decent nuking ability