This is for discussion and analysis of the various glyphs available for Restoration Druids through the Inscription profession. This initial post will contain a list of all Restoration glyphs (and any non-resto glyphs that may be of signicant interest to Restoration druids), what they do, and any special notes about game mechanics that may be unclear from the wording of the glyph. Due to their nature, all minor glyphs are included regardless of what spec they technically fall under.

At level 80 all characters have 6 glyph slots, 3 major, 3 minor. There is no extra glyph slot for being Inscription.

Also note that any ability that increases the duration of a DoT/HoT does not alter the damage per tick of the ability unless specifically noted.

Major

[Glyph of Lifebloom]- 'Increases the duration of Lifebloom by 1 second.' This has no effect on the bloom portion.

[Glyph of Swiftmend]- 'Your Swiftmend ability no longer consumes a Rejuvenation or Regrowth effect from the target.' You still need a Rejuv/Regrowth on the target.

[Glyph of Rebirth]- 'Increases the amount of health on a character brought back to life by Rebirth by 100%' Health only, not mana.

[Glyph of Regrowth]- 'Increases the healing of your Regrowth spell by 20% if your Regrowth effect is still active on the target.' This affects both the HoT and initial heal. The bonus does not compound with multiple recastings of Regrowth.

[Glyph of Healing Touch]- 'Decreases the cast time of Healing Touch by 1.5 sec., the mana cost by 25%, and the amount healed by 50%.'

[Glyph of Rejuvenation]- 'While your Rejuvenation targets are below 50% health, you will heal them for an additional 50% health.' The extra 50% only affects the Rejuvenation tics, and manifests as a second heal called 'Glyph of Rejuvenation' after each tic. Brief experimentation suggests that this doubles up on targets with talents/abilities that boost healing done on them, causing the Glyph proc to be more than 50% of the Rejuv tic.

[Glyph of Innervate]- 'Your Innervate spell now grants you full mana regeneration while casting for 20 sec, in addition to the effect on the primary target. Innervate's effect is instead increased by 20% if you are the primary target.' The 20% when used on self is multiplicative, making the bonus 500%. This is technically a balance glyph but is of interest to Restoration druids as well.

Glyph of Nourish- 'Your Nourish heals an additional 6% for each of your heal over time effects present on the target.

Glyph of Wild Growth- 'Your Wild Growth now affects 1 additional target.

Minor

[Glyph of Challenging Roar]- 'Decreases the cooldown of Challenging Roar by 30 seconds.'

[Glyph of Aquatic Form] 'Increases your swim speed by 50% while in Aquatic Form.' This additive, making the swim speed bonus 100%.

[Glyph of Dash]- 'Decreases the cooldown of Dash by 20%'

[Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth]- 'Your Rebirth spell no longer requires a reagent.'

[Glyph of the Wild]- 'Decreases the mana cost of your Mark of the Wild and Gift of the Wild spells by 50%'

[Glyph of Thorns]- 'Increases the duration of your Thorns ability by 50 min when cast on yourself.'

That is correct. There is no sort of stacking, but any further refreshes will be 20% stronger than base.

My experiences with raiding thus far have me using Swiftmend, Regrowth and Innervate for 25 mans. In 10 mans I would like to drop Innervate for Rejuvenate, but that would require Innervate glyphs to become significantly cheaper allowing easier swapping.

I am very unsold on the Glyph of Lifebloom. With the changes in Lifebloom (healing less at 80 per tic than it did at 70 pre-3.0) I get much less use out of it for purposes other than tanking healing than previously. Rejuvenate, Regrowth, and Wild Growth have all done a much better job of raid healing. Extending the duration from 9 seconds to 10 seconds does lower the frequency of refreshing, but with the loss of mana regen from 70 to 80 I am no longer as GCD capped previously.

I know in beta the regrowth glyph had an issue with refreshing itself.

If you cast a 3rd regrowth on the same target, it doesn't refresh the hot. Has this been fixed?

Just tested in game and it works fine. Right now I am using regrowth, swiftmend, and lb, and will decide based on further raiding whether innervate is useful or not. So far I have not had many mana issues though, but only cleared half of Naxx10 (slow levelers!). LB vs Innervate will just depend on if you need more healing thoroughput or more mana efficiency in the end, and that depends on your raid setup, encounter, spec, and gear really. I expect that all serious resto druids will be using the swiftmend and regrowth glyphs.

Aye, the appeal of innervate for me is that rarely if ever do I save innervate for myself... in the past it has always gone to mages. The interesting twist for the usefulness of this glyph is to see how other classes are doing at mana efficiency. From the idea that the innervate to another class is likely, I'm intending to go with LB, Swiftmend & Innervate... I'll switch out the Innervate for Regrowth if it's not getting enough use.

I want a Glyph of Gift of the Wild that removes the reagent requirement. I don't use that many, particularly compared to Sunwell learning days, but I'd love to be reagent free.

I am thinking that Swiftmend and Regrowth are going to be on every resto druids glyph page. As far as LB v. Innervate - I just really don't see the extra second on LB being worth it compared to the benefit of Innervate (especially if you blow the innervate on someone else). Given the re-design of raid healing around being mana-limited, I think Innervate will be of great benefit to us, especially when we are talking progression/slight under-gearing. Given that LB is already extended by 2s via Nature's Splendor, I can't see the extra healing of that tick being as significant as the bonus mana regen/free mini-vate.

As usual, testing will need to be done, but that is how I see things.

In a raid setting I can only see this pushing you OOM way too fast especially given that Blizz is designing fights around mana management. In fact, I am wondering that if the Wild Growth nerf goes through, if a built taking imp. ToL and going over into balance to get a couple of points in dreamstate might be viable on mana-intensive encounters.

I think the LB glyph is strong, but not as strong as having the imp. innervate/mini-vate for a raid setting. Again, this will come down to some testing that I haven't done (I am trying to enjoy this run up to 80).

Yes, the Innervate Glyph is very interesting, and probably needed.
I personally would skip the Regrowth Glyph, it's not needed at all. With Nourish in our repertoire I simply won't re-apply another Regrowth.

Lifebloom 3-stacked is probably still the Healing Spell with the highest HPM for Druids. With some Naxx Epics and Badge- /Heroicloot you will quickly have a Manapool >16k and a Manaregen of more than 800, which makes Lifebloom alot more interesting again. The longer duration of Lifebloom just gives us alot more sparetime in Raids. We can for example easily keep 3 stacks up on 3 Tanks (with possible additional HoTs/Direct Heals on the MT) and also throw a couple of direct Heals or HoTs/Wild Growth's all over the place wherever it's needed in the spare six seconds before we reapply the Lifeblooms.

This will, if used correctly and not totally brainless, lead to a pretty high HPM with a minimum of Overhealing (due to the Nature of HoTs) - be it in Raids or Parties. Manaissues should not occur if you got a grip of the encounter and it's duration, since you will adapt your Healingintensity in such a situation.

About Blizz designing the fights around manaconservation - I personally haven't heard of that, but i'm sure there will be long fights where you have conserve alot, and there will be short fights where you have to push your HPS to a maximum.

Edit:
My (major) Resto Glyphs would be:

Lifebloom
Innervate
Swiftmend

I tested glyphs a lot during beta and came to some conclusiong.

Innervate glyph is almost required at early stage of raiding and it becomes much much much more interesting when you get some more gear and can allow yourself to cast innervate on someone else. Of course this means that you will have to plan your gear accordingly and stack spirit.

Swiftmend glyph I found to be a bit underwhelming. I don't know of a lot of druids that use swiftmend on cooldown and with the price of rejuv being around 300 mana there is no reason to just reaply it after you use swiftmend.

Regrowth glyph is really good when paired with Ht glyph because in some fights the shear amount of damage that goes out on the tank is overwhelming that 20% more healing helps a ton especially with imp regrowth. 10k regrowth crits and a chance to swiftmend and hots with it is pretty powerful when used inteligently.

Healing touch Glyph to me is the must have glyph. 5k heals a second is just much more powerful than anything. Having a real fast heal. When paired with lifebloom fully stacked it comes down to around 6k hps (granted the mana cost is pretty important) and 6k hps gives ample time to other healers to do their thing in order to bring the targer to full health.

Glyph of lifebloom is pretty bad. You can get much more out of a 1 point talent in the balance tree. It would have been a very very good glyph if it would have been "you can now stack lifebloom up to 4" rather than 1 more second.

Glyph of rejuv is pretty interesting because it seems like rejuv is becoming one of the best spells in our arsenal on some fights and the 50% more healing is great when rejuv ticks for 1700 ... but I think there are better glyphs.

My glyphs

Glyph of innervate
Glyph of healing touch
Glyph of regrowth

Well that is when someone on my server will have learnt innvervate and regrowth ...

Managed to grab a Swiftmend glyph the other day and after running alot of heroics I'm in love. It's just so awesome and I've found myself using swiftmend alot more now since it only costs one GCD instead of two since in alot of cases you wanted to keep the hot running aswell. I can see it being less useful in raids but still a top choice in my opinion.

Second slot will go to the lifebloom glyph while it's not that strong and nerfs the use of the bloom a bit, since it takes longer to bloom, I like it. The extra second before you have to refresh means you can get more stuff done in between and more importantly makes it easier to get a second or two of regen outside the 5sr which once you start getting up to 1600 spirit will be quite alot of mana.

Currently also using the innervate glyph but it feels very weak. It has zero benefit if you innervate yourself since even without it you'll get a full mana bar without any problems. And this early on in raiding I just don't see it being feasible to give away your innervate since you'll have to hold back alot.

I never got the regrowth glyph on beta so I haven't played around with it yet. But I can't see the big appeal in it since regrowth is so reliant on critting to be worth casting. While it does have +50% crit from talents it doesn't guarantee it and if someone has a regrowth hot on them and takes another hit I'd rather swiftmend them or nourish. Regrowth may heal for more then nourish if it crits but it also costs more mana and casts slower unless you have nature's grace up all the time. The spell just has too many ifs around it to make it good.

If the rejuvenation glyph boosted the actual hot instead of adding a second heal and increased the swiftmends it would be very good but now it feels meh. I'll do some testing with it versus regrowth/innervate for that third slot.

Ok wait, HT glyph? No, just no. It heals for less then Nourish, assuming the hot bonus, and costs way more mana. You also need to spend alot more talent points to make it your <1s heal. Nor can you spam it for more HPS then Nourish since it can't be chained faster then the GCD which is the same speed as Nourish.

With all that said my choices will be swiftmend/lifebloom/rejuvenation but the third one may change depending on how it works out.