Boevis

I loathe point systems for healing unless they are specifically designed for your class and take into account (or allow) raid buffs. Usually once you pass 200 healing or 20 mp5 above/below where they were designed, they fall apart.

 

Solstice

I agree that the +hit is fairly useful and would provide a reasonable dps increase for melee heavy raid setups. Nevertheless I cant justify having to to spec so deep into balance, and furthermore have to spend 3 points for such a mediocre talent. Particularly when you compare it to other t7 talents such as SM and LotP.

Overall I'd say that imp FF is not something any RL could seriously consider given the viability of moonkins in endgame PvE. A quick glance at this table shows that not only do Moonkins provide substantially less dps than any other caster (with the exception of elemental shamans) they also have by far the lowest DPM. Take the comparison with shadow priests for example, a moonkin would do 19% less dps for 45% less dpm. In terms of raid support, if faced with a choice between Moonkin aura, Imp FF and IS or VE, VT and misery, I know which I'd rather have.

 

Narugh

Do you people who HT heal in raids still downrank?

 

• Playered

I just use R11 for my HT and try only really let it go off if the tank has a deficit higher than what a pally can spam heal off easily, more of a backup so to say. Never really had an encounter where mana has been a huge issue that consumables havent been able to make up for on this and it suits me rather well =p

But I suppose its down to your guilds healing style, we've always had paladins always spam healing the tanks the entire time so we've never needed to have another class downrank to achieve the same effect.

 

Kretschmer

I've always been a HT user; the efficiency and precise nature of the spell is appealing. And - with the smaller sizes of today's raids - there's less of an issue of flash heals interrupting your efforts.

One question I do have: Do HoTs interact properly with overhealing meters? I always run into trees that brag about topping their respective meters, but it doesn't seem to make sense. The nature of Hots should counter the minor tree aura bonus and 20% efficiency edge. I also wish that guilds would step away from meters for healers, as it's possible to pump out a lot of healing without really contributing to keeping the tank up (i.e. babysitting the warlocks).

 

• Daboran

The very nature of a HoT means it cannot overheal according to any meter you care to name. It can tick away un-needed sure, but no mod I know of tracks this. Add to this the fact that it is very easy to put instant cast HoT on every member of the raid and you can attain some insane healing figures in ToL.

Pre-TBC I was always within the top 3 on healing as I abused HoT liberally even back then, I daresay I would be ToL now if Blizzard had made the form more enjoyable to use and more feasible in Heroics

 

Aranan

That's why stuff like http://lossendil.fr/serendipity/ is useful. It lets you see who certain players are spending time healing.

HoTs shouldn't be healing a player at all if they're at full health (rejuv and the tick part of regrowth at least, not sure about lifebloom).

 

CasT

meters have always been off. You could still dps the core hound packs in MC remember....

The beauty of a HoT healer is that a regrowth heals 3k crit and another 2.5k in hots filling the last percents on an offtarget (trash member). A HT healer would either overheal or leave some of the HP bar empty (rather the latter).

Do not matter how much you play, you will never get the carrot.

 

Unraveller

Or, more likely, your paladin/shaman/priest just flashed healed the balance of the damage and you have 21 seconds of useless HoT ticking. Which in my experience, is the more likely scenario. I have never met the paladin who said "I won't top that rogue up, he has a regrowth ticking".

 

• Playered

Normal hot ticks cant overheal, the excess healing is ignored.
Lifebloom final tick(1k~ one) counts as a heal cast by the person who it was cast on, not by you (nor does it get the gift of nature 10% bonus). I could be mistaken but thats what my basic tests seem to show.

Sadly as Lifebloom is one of my primary spells now, I dont rank that highly on healing meters, but I dont really care :P

 

◊ Lord BEEF

I'm 34/27 right now (swiftmend/lunar guidance) and I really like it, but I think I want to boost my hots a bit more since I use those so frequently, and pick up natural perfection to help survivability in arenas.

I think what a lot of people overlook in regards to hots is that they provide stability. If you have to move out of a breath, out of a void zone, or away from a rogue you can still be providing some healing to your target.

After playing around in wowhead, it really is frustrating how godawfully bloated the resto tree is. Here's the spec I'm thinking of:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=MzjZZxEcoeqMest

53 damn points in the tree and I still can't get sublety which would be very nice for heroics and pvp dispelling, and natural shifter which I find generally useful as well.

I really wish they'd compress tranquil spirit and improved regrowth to 3 point talents each instead of 5.

Check out my friend's bitchin' Lord of the Rings Art

 

• Playered

Could you not ditch Living Spirit for 3 more points in Subtlety?
Or ditch some points in Imp. HT or Tranquil Spirit unless most of the time your not in tree form... in which case you can also ditch spirit :P

Atleast it would be a mix of those which you could sub out to get max Subtlety if I was you.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

I doubt I'd really spend that much time in tree form really and I do use healing touch quite a bit still.

As for living spirit, that's one of the things I really want in this build. I'm at 419 with just mark at the moment, which is 516 with divine spirit and kings. Living spirit would push me to 586 or so, giving me a total of 70 spirit which I'd say is pretty significant.

Check out my friend's bitchin' Lord of the Rings Art

 

Tuftears

Yes.

To expand on that, if a tank is going to be taking heavy damage, I chain HT rank 7 or so, or bump up the HT as needed. I'm aiming for about 2k to 3k a heal. I respecced recently to have both empowered HT and 10% mana cost reduction on HT, which helps on those 'endurance' fights.

Against some enemies, I'll cancel the heals if the tank isn't actually hurt, but against others like the heroic bog lords, it's just not safe to do so.

upstart feline miscreant (47 feral/14 resto)

 

Boevis

I hate to say it Beef ... but you'll probably end up respeccing for arena like every healer in my guild.

Our Bloated resto tree has been one of my complaints since 1.8. Oddly, another of my complaints is that I can't spend all of my talent points on healing talents like Priests and Paladins (and shamans used to) 49 talent points and I'm done for my healing, leaving 12 points to spend on nothing, or I can go hybrid and spend ~25 points on talents that have nothing to do with healing and really don't make me capable of filling other raid spots (Though I am tempted to spec 0/30/31 for Magtheridon and arena, then go back to full tank the rest of the week for gruul/karazhan).

As you said, there's too many talents that cost us 5 but are really only worth 2 or 3, yet we still take them because the good healing talents in other trees are too deep to consider (if you're going tree/emp rejuv)

 

Kretschmer

What's the best endgame balance/resto spec for a healer? At 63, I'm using this:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=MtMrzicsMZZxEc0ba

Good combination of damage talents and healing talents.

One option at 70 is to go for healing throughput with swiftmend:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=MtMrzicsZZxEc0xqMMo

The other would seem to be dreamstate's mana regen and the Ht talents in resto:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0tMrzissMuZZxEc0xkM

I prefer to heal with healing touch, while using rejuv (or lifebloom, I'm guessing soon) to heal incidental damage on the DPS. Is the regen of dreamstate worth giving the spirit, swiftmend, and gift of nature talent points?

 

Jorah

Much of the dilemma I've run into so far with TBC raiding is finding exactly *what* the raid requires of me. When all the feral business got buffed, many of our Druids went feral, while others left the raid game entirely in January.

So we currently have 4 Druids in the guild. The thing with picking specs is that you need to take into account how many Druids you are bringing to a raid, and ensure they are each filling a niche for the healing. It has been better to have a variety of builds amongst us, than all of us specc'd into exactly the same thing.

For example, in my guild is not worth bringing more than 1 tree to a 25-man raid. We don't really use trees at all in Karazhan (there was a couple of occassions, but its not the usual way we approach that instance). The thing with trees, as has been mentioned already, is they are too inflexible.

Now 1 tree healing on the MT on Maulgar, alongside a priest and a paladin is a fair mix. But after several attempts the first couple times, I found it much more efficient and better (read: safer for our tanks vitality) to use HT for healing.

Couple that with the fact that Karazhan is so hybrid friendly, I use a balance/resto spec most of the time so I can maintain effective flexibility. I am usually filling a hybrid heal/dps slot there, so I'm not a main healer. I supplement damage and healing as needed for encounters.

Here's the 1st build I tried: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=MtLrzVcshZZxxctcqb0o

It was very decent and viable, but it didn't do enough in terms of helping damage in Karazhan. I only used this build in that dungeon. Learned the hard way that I may as well have done Moonkin. But at the time I wanted to have stronger HoTs. I just didn't realize that this build didn't have the mana efficiency required to uphold both ends of the bargain at that time.

Here's the 2nd build I tried: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=Mt0rdicsxuZZxxIxho

I went for buffage, mana efficiency, and situational healing. I enjoy this build very much, but it certainly requires a larger intellect pool. Mine is less than optimal, but I'm working on it, and so far, this build has been solid.

For Maulgar, we usually have 2-3 Druids. Two are heal specc'd, one is usually bear. We use 1 tree and 1 HT maxed druid (37 in resto with Natural Perfection). We've gone in with two trees before, but it didn't work out how I thought. Though that Tree Druid doesn't *have* to use tree form, when you spec that deep into Resto, placing those left over points is a sad task; there is rarely any place worth putting them. Which brings me back to our initial issue: speccing balance/resto instead of full resto, since trees have been more of a hinderance to our raids than a help. Perhaps we are not properly assigning the tree roles within the raid. Either way, HoTs seem most useful when used on someone that is not going to be taking a lot of damage (ie, rogues, shamans, other healers, etc).

Right now, I intend to have at least 1 tree in a raid, but that is becoming hard to justify. It is *too* specialized and limiting, not flexible enough.

 

• Playered

I dont get why people have trees focusing on the MT, the power of HoTs really only shines when theres primarily 3 people all doing it together. Tree aura while nice in the tank group I've always found better on raid healing because once the HoTs are up they are effectivly doing nothing to help the tank.
Sure while raid healing they can pop off HoTs on the tank, but really your better off having one of your primary tank healers being one who has the ability to instantly heal more than regrowth can when it crits - soley down to the nature of fights now and how much HP tanks have.

 

Jorah

I can agree mostly. The power of HoTs currently isn't fully realized unless stacked on an MT with other HoTs, and they shine during moments where the target is not a heal priority, or not taking a lot of damage. Hence why my experience has been that tree form isn't all it's cracked up to be. HoTs are very situational, as far as how valuable they are in any given encounter. Before MoV got buffed, if our raids didn't have a pally we just HoT'd the MT through the Repentance; we didn't need to bother with stepping into the consecrate in melee range. That's how powerful HoTs can be. That's a rare fight where the primary heal target will receive NO other healing for 10 seconds while taking constant damage, and still live to tell the tale (last stands, shield walls, and consumables aside).

For Druids though, it's one of our strongest healing spells, if only because of the casting time. 3 seconds for HT if you're the primary healer in a damage intensive fight means dead tank. We've got the most powerful HoTs in the game though. They are just so damn niche ...not quite strong enough to be a great primary healing weapon, but strong enough to be a reliable spell.

But all of that is kinda off topic. Until we are regularly doing 25-man encounters in my guild, I'll be sticking with a balance/resto build for heroics and Karazhan. So far, HoTs and tree form don't make or break any of those encounters.