Just briefly, the stuff I'd written was more with raiding in mind. In a 5-man context, lots of things are more useful than they otherwise are--Mastery and NS are good examples.

Compared to my experience raiding 10-mans on beta in decent gear, raiding 25-mans on live has been somewhat more frustrating due to severe mana limitation and general inability to use Rejuv much. I want to see if that changes with gear or with a bit more practice.

I think people are underselling Swift Rejuv a little. Maybe right now when you really don't cast consecutive Rejuvs much, it will be weak to start out. Once you're using Rejuv much at all though, saving 20% of the cast time is a big boost to the spell for one point.

I believe the design intent is that you can handle every situation just as well as another healer, but some other healer may be slightly better or slightly worse at it. If it's the case that druids are getting sat on certain fights, or that they are just absolutely dreadful on a certain fight, Blizzard will probably change it.

From what I have done so far using 2 Pala/Druid/Priest + 1 Shaman I wouldn't say we need to be benched on anything in particular. Saying that it does feel like the vast majority of encounters (no experience on the final 3 bosses yet) have revolved around some pretty intense AoE healing which require everyone to make heavy use of their AoE heals which seems to leave us feeling like we are falling short although I don't think it's actually as bad as what we think. Holy Paladins stand out the most thanks to the mana-free AoE heal which tends to be their #1 healing spell for a large chunk of the encounters but hopefully Blizzard will do something there as it was a pretty obvious blunder to have an AoE and a single target heal share the same free resource and expect the one doing the lowest numbers to get much use at all.

It strikes me as a bit odd that despite their changes to healing they still cannot notice how strong AoE heals are (in terms of efficiency and speed) compared to every other heal in regards to the cost/speed/power ratio "rule" and as a result they are again making every fight incorporate heavy AoE damage mechanics to bandage over the problem. I wonder how long it will take of AoE heals being the #1 used spell on all classes on pretty much all encounters until something clicks on their end.

On magmar did your raid stack up the entire fight?

I've seen some people saying they spec out of Nature's Bounty, I just wanted to say I see it as a required talent. Regrowth is our only fast burst heal, and its useless if you aren't specced into it. I almost never pay the mana cost for it because its so ridiculous, but that's where all my clearcasts go. Free Regrowth is much higher hpm then a rejuv or anything else! It seems to be about the same healing as a Healing Touch, but almost a full second faster cast.

We just did the first 3 bosses in BWD, and I was first or 2nd in each pull, druids seem to be perfectly fine. If there are 2 tanks, keep up 2 stacks of lifebloom, use every clearcast for regrowth, and use WG and SM off cd for aoe damage. Only ever use RJ on someone with another hot for mastery bonus, and use Broccoli form (heh, TOL) and tranquility for the heaviest damage phases. As has been said, in TOL all you do is WG/SM and LB spam till you get clearcasts which go to Regrowth. Using Broccoli form and Innervate as soon as possible and then again, and a potion of concentration made it so I could do use RJ conservatively during heavy damage if TOL wasn't up. I had about 114k mana fully buffed.

This is the spec I use and recommend.

WoW Talent Calculator - Sigrie.


Ah thanks, forgot about that. I guess it still is the 80 int from mixology.

The spec you recommend skips Master Shapeshifter -- the single strongest throughput talent point druids have, since it applies to caster form. If you really don't like HT and really like Regrowth, drop Empowered Touch or a point in Furor or maybe a point in Efflorescence.

Personally, I think it's a mistake to ignore HT. Perhaps the thing to drop to get both HT and RG talents is GotEM -- it seems to be doing about 2% of my healing at most.

edit: Yes I mostly agree with that spec, although I might even drop the last GotEM point for NS. Regrowth relies on Living Seed going off to compete with HT for healing done, though. On the other hand, using clearcasting on Regrowth saves a bit of mana, since HT has a long cast time, which increases probability of a clearcasting going over a clearcasting, wasting a proc.

This also happens to be my impression of our situation in 25man so far. So far being 8/12 with Nef, Alakir, Chogal and Twilight Council left, the boss we really felt the lack of our “burst” AOE healing was Chimaron phase 2 where everyone stacks up to split damage and needs to be healed up fast and we ended up replacing me for a priest. Granted it is nothing like LK HM where we were clearly disfavoured, and as a poster above said, there may be differences where some healers are better in some situations and some are worse, and I might feel this way because AOE haeling was our strongest point before. I just can’t figure out what’s our strong point in this expansion yet.

I haven't found resto druids to be weak so far. We lack burst, but encounters give you time to heal. WG is amazing, our mana situation is better than most healers, and lifebloom is surprisingly amazing. Clearcasting is probably the most powerful regen talent among healers, if used wisely.

I worry about the last tier of the expansion due to systematic druid weaknesses which resulted in healing druids being benched for the last two expansions, towards the end.

edit: Minor suggestions for resto druids:

(a) Make Swift Rejuv reduce GCD of lifebloom also.

(b) Remove/rework blessing of the grove. I can see no druid spec (either resto, balance, or feral) that would take that talent. That is usually a sign the talent is badly designed.

(c) Make nature's grace reduce Rejuv mana cost for the duration. We need a limited ability to rejuv spam to counter raidwide damage. Healing spread out people has always been our strength, with gutted rejuv it's getting very hard.

(d) Consolidate points a little more.

Wait, what? You keep saying that, are you solely talking about playing in TOL form? Or are you suggesting putting up those in TOL form at the beginning and keep refreshing them with Nourish/HT for the whole fight? Seems kinda unflexible to me to use roughly 4s out of each 10s to refresh those, but are you saying it's worth it?

You can use Nourish/HT to refresh 2 stacks even outside of treeform. I was able to do so for almost the entire Omnitron 10 kill.

I certainly agree, our strengths are extremely high hpm, and just high raw healing. Which has always been our only real strength since we lack inspiration, tank cd's, absorb effects, and burst heals.

I am a bit concerned blizzard is going to balance healing, without giving us more utility. If we bring the same amount of healing then the other healing classes, then why bring a druid? With no absorbs, -10% dmg, tank cd's, or burst aoe healing, we need to be able to outheal other classes to earn the spot. In the situation where you need burst group heals, we still make great tank heals... but suffer without -10%.

What I LOVE about the cata changes for healing though, is the Resto druid "skill cap" (the difference between a poor healer and superb) has gone up about 900 percent. Smart cd usage, using your mastery, using clearcasts, maximizing haste cd's, especially Nature's grace, Efflo placement and timing, maintaining multiple LB stacks, etc. If you are getting consistently outhealed there is a lot you can look to improve. So much better then endless 5x1.

One final tip... try and use tranquility every fight, but I'd recommend popping barkskin first each time! Reduces the chance it will get interrupted. I usually save it for the last heavy aoe damage I can expect in a fight, because that way I don't waste it on bad pulls, and that will be when its most needed with other healers likely oom or even dead.

Yes, it certainly adds challenge to keep them running nonstop considering it takes 4+ seconds of cast time. But considering how OP LB is hpm wise, if there are 2 tanks taking damage, it's certainly worth it. You also get double the clearcasts from MG, which you can use to spot the raid with RG, or to switch to HT on the tank if needed.

I was popping Broccoli as soon as I had my food buff and the 2 tanks were in range, and then maintaining it for the 2-3 minutes we have between pulls. Not everyone would want to do that of course, but I'd rather do that then nothing, and its a solid boost to have them both going from the start, and still be able to pop Broccoli form with first heavy aoe damage.

Also, you CAN refresh one of the LB stacks manually with another LB. When I cut it too close and then needed to move its saved it for me. Only problem is, it has to be the same stack. Sometimes the 2nd disappears, sometimes it doesn't. If they both stay you can continue to refresh manually the SAME stack the rest of the fight, to save that 1 second of cast time.

Some testing is in order to verify, but doing it to the top LB on my grid caused the 2nd to disappear, but not the 2nd down. I default to hotting from top to bottom, so maybe is always the second stack you can refresh with LB? Certainly need to figure out for sure what dynamic is allowing it sometimes and not others.