Don't you think 1 point more in Genesis is better than the final point in Living Seed? That is the only place our builds differ and as stated before I'm not yet certain which way to go. By and large looking at my WoL parses, I expect 1 point of Genesis to be more beneficial than 1 point of Living Seed (even in 4.2).

I'm having a really hard time agreeing with dropping the ability to use Nourish and Healing Touch as spot tank heals for the added benefit of Living Seed with Regrowth when the majority of regrowth is simply OoC. I think it's an extremely interesting spec to run, however it would feel rather limiting as far as your role (being able to tank heal vs raid heal, swapping between, etc). I don't think I will run with this right away unless there is strong evidence towards it, but it is definitely an interesting concept.

If you have 25% crit raid-buffed, no NB, and no LS, then 40% of your raw healing is from a crit (or things like crit-derived Efflorescence). That means that Revitalizing is worth 3%*40% = 1.2% raw HPS all by itself. Since you've probably got more than 5400 Int, unbuffed, Ember is less than 1% throughput. Revitalizing is stronger for throughput..

Ember is quite a bit better for mana though.

I'm in Full BIS except Sinestra boots (12 kills no drops at ALL), and cloak, (1 drop...) and AC offhand, and I don't have 25% crit raid-buffed. 22% maybe. Of course RG use change the numbers some, but I doubt I'll have more then 10% healing from it.

That does look closer then I was thinking though, don't forget spirit is worth at best, half of what INT is, so if the 2 gems are close in value (as they seem to be) then getting 54 passive INT > 54 spirit.

By the end of the tier or beginning of next one I'll probably be switching though.

Greentouch, have you considered the following? (spec)

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft


This would allow you to have healing touch/nourish for tank healing situations (in the event you have to tank heal at all) however it does result in dropping NS so I am not so sure how I feel about it.


The alternative would be: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft for me I would assume. I am debating if I would want to keep nature's swiftness for it's usefulness and ability to prevent a death, but I am not sure what the math is behind 3/3 LS vs 2/3.

For the time being I will be using the above spec for maximum regen, NS, and 2/3 LS.



The biggest issue I have overall is LS is purely Physical damage so it would require dumping the vast majority of your CC into the tank to actually gain any benefit from it. I will have to monitor logs and see how useful it really is, but my overall feeling towards LS is fairly *meh*. The numbers would seem fairly insignificant unless I get an insane number of CC procs vs having the ability to cover tank healing when necessary (However, as you said, this does depend on your healing team, and other variables).

This is the same as my spec linked a page earlier except for 2/3 Furor instead of 2/3 Genesis. I think/hope you should be able to run 2/3 Genesis if you have Shard of Woe.

With the Mastery change you will need to cast Regrowth on the Tank regularly since Swiftmend has a longer cd (15 sec) than the Harmony uptime (10 sec). So, it's not really about how effective it will be as a raid healing tool, but rather mainly a fast heal to refresh Harmony, that also puts Living Seed on the Tank. You alternate (it) with Swiftmend and you may even cast it up to once in 10 seconds to refresh Lifebloom on the Tank (though I think I will be alternating that with manual refreshes of Lifebloom as well).
There is no real point in follwing a rigid strategy for refreshing, but one could perhaps try and run two scenarios where one refreshes Harmony with Swiftmend (mainly to activate Efflorescence) and manually refreshes LB in Scenario 1 and Regrowth refreshes both Harmony and Lifebloom in Scenario 2.

I am running 2 points in furor to remain conservative moving forward with Hardmodes. Mana overall on PTR was fine, however I feel that even with SoW 2/3 Furor gives me a bit more wiggle room. For me at least with progression my main concern isn't having additional, increased healing, it's all about being able to have the mana near the end of the fight if it's needed, and to have it for those unexpected hiccups. I'd be afraid primarily on HC progression to be running without Furor with it being practically guaranteed that I will have mana issues. Could I run without 2 points in Furor for the first week of normal clears? Sure. Is there much reason to? Not really.


Speccing out of Furor is something I would be looking at later as I gather gear and as the progression race ends. Having more mana just seems overall better than having slightly more throughput in this situation though.

I ran it for Beth'tilac and wasn't honestly impressed >,< Was less than 1%

I ran without Naturalist tonight using this spec Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft.

My guild cleared 6/7 25m tonight and I just felt like I was destroying the other healers in HPS. I don't know if it was just because of the new mastery or if this spec even had anything to do with it, but I can definitely say I didn't miss Healing Touch at all. Running with this spec might feel a bit weird at first, but after I realized how easy it was to keep up the Rejuvs to have over 90% uptime on Nature's Bounty the "rotation" felt pretty smooth. I was able to Nourish spam just as easily as if I had Naturalist, and the longer duration on CC lets you hold a Regrowth for a spike on the tank followed by Swiftmend which makes Healing Touch not needed at all.

Comparing to some logs from last weeks Tier 11 raids, having Nature's Bounty and Living seed added almost 4% to my healing done. I really like how our healing potential looks going forward into this tier and I think this should be the go-to spec for throughput.

Ran 10m today and downed two bosses (Shannox and Beth'thilac) while wiping the remainder of the time on Alysrazor. My spec pretty much remained as is in 4.1 but I shifted two points from Perseverance to Nature's Bounty (which had 0 points).

Without looking more carefully at the logs, I can't comment on the throughput of Harmony but I really dislike it's short duration causing me to spam Nourish. For Shannox, I had 92.3% uptime on Harmony (forgot to log on Beth'thilac). I'm not entirely sure if my dislike for it is due to the different playstyle (I'm still chasing my WG out of habit). I'd say there's more for druids to keep track while raiding now compared to before. I don't think I'd recommend not taking Naturalist if you are raiding 10m and maybe in 25m until you are really comfortable with the fight and the damage output.

Critical heals for 200% sure does feel great. Mana does feel a bit tighter but I'm currently still glyphing Innervate and using it on another healer (shaman).

EDIT: Would it make sense to use the amount of time saved with Naturalist as a quantifier for how effective Naturalist is on healing?

I'm afraid we started a little fad here... I did say it originally I believe, but to emphasize, the "no naturalist" spec is experimental at best, and only good for a very small subset of raiders.

Geared well enough, probably with SoW so it won't oom you, with a strong enough healer team you never feel the need for those big burst heals.

And yes, ANYONE in a 10 man needs the flexibility from Naturalist.

Looking at all the abilities and numbers for all the healers (I've played them all at least somewhat), Rdruids role is still quite similar to what it was in Wotlk, just more complicated/challenging/fun to play. 90% of our role is raw HPS as a buffer on the raid. Our best heals are hots, we don't burst, group heal, mitigate, absorb, or spot heal as well. (Please don't use this as an excuse to let people die... we still spot heal well enough.) It's not brainless all over the raid hot buffer no, you only start prehotting for damage maybe 5 seconds in advance now while wotlk you basically never stopped.

The class that is MADE to spot heal? Rshamans, absolutely. I wanted to main swap, I thought they were great fun, their mastery and tidal waves beg for spot healing. Pallys are next, they can spot heal raid while keeping a stream of heals on the tank. You might not view it as that, but disc bubbles are a great spot heal... they protect the person until some aoe healing can catch em up, and no heal is faster, because they are instant with no cd. Holy priest I've played the least, but they seemed better at spot healing, obviously better at burst healing.

That's all just theory, all healers CAN spot heal. Who is best in YOUR raid? Forget the class, reflexes and lag matter most. If that's all equal, yes druids are worst, if you are faster then your other healers though, you're a better spot healer.

One last note: I still spot heal. Absolutely. Whenever in my (instinctive) opinion the person may need one. About 10% of my healing. ALL GOOD HEALERS SPOT HEAL. The above discussion is about who actually does most of it, or is assigned it. I don't do heavy spot healing, I never need to burst a raid person from 10% to full... by myself, like ever.

I just don't use HT (nobody would ever, hopefully use Nourish as a spot heal...). I use SM and RG, and RG isn't a huge heal, but its fast and in my raid I'll guarantee there are other heals flying that direction. HT would just overheal 98% of the time. RG get's them into the safer zone quick, and the hot is about as likely to be used as any other hots really. So its just another buffer, which is fine.