Look, it's very simple. Druids excel at healing gradual raid damage where a lot of the raid is below max hp, but the burst isn't high. Damage like Iron Council phase 1, or Mimiron phase 2 (or Sapphiron if you want a Naxx example). The fact is, a lot of encounters in Ulduar have very bursty raid damage with long 'lull' periods where not a lot of damage is happening (Kolo, Razor, Ignis, XT). Druids can be reasonable at healing these, but their limitations start to show if you bring NOTHING BUT druids on the raid. So for example, I have seen a holy priest and a resto shaman 2 heal raid damage on Ignis 25, whereas I couldn't heal it with another resto druid. I don't think either me or the other druid were particularly bad, we just ran out of burst healing options during some 'rare unlucky events' and some people died.

If you have a raid with a few holy priests, druids are better on the tank in 'bursty' encounters. That said druids are a type of healer who can help out significantly on raid damage even if assigned to the tank, due to the way their healing mechanics work. But the days of Naxx raid healing dominance of resto druids are over. Holy priests are just more suited to the kinds of encounters Ulduar has.

I am not aware of any encounter in Ulduar where raid damage cannot be healed by stacking holy priests.

I've never seen another person argue that druids don't excel at healing the raid in Ulduar. I'm kind of confused as to how we could see things so completely differently. Perhaps everybody I've ever healed with has been a terrible player that makes me look awesome in comparison, but I think it's more likely that druids are extremely good raid healers for ulduar.

How are druids poor at healing burst raid damage with long "lulls" in between? Sounds perfect for hots! For example, I find druid healing extremely well-suited to healing ignis raid damage with just the same old Rejuv and WG spam.

1. Divy up the raid between you and the other druid.
2. Roll rejuv on the 12 targets you have + LB on the MT.
3. Profit.

Tantrum healing works the same. Kologarn & Hodir both work the same (Druids are excellent healers there if you're looking to slash healers for the hard mode).

Please stop posting nonsense and maybe the tread topic will thrive.

All of these 'bad luck' situations can be handled by druids. Most of what you've mentioned I've seen and overcome (even in a 2 druid raid heal setup). Just because you feel inadequate in your raids doesn't mean all resto druids are inadequate. Please analyze the incoming damage and the tools you and your fellow healers have to deal with it. Your comments suggest this has not been done and are just throwing out how you feel about things. Play as a team. Coordinate heal strategies with your fellow healers.

So, about these glyph things...

What Rij is posting is not nonsense, well not all of it at least. For bursty raid damage druids are capable, but not the best at healing large amounts of damage quickly, which is important in many encounters. As a raid healing leader AND a resto druid I know of our difficulties. We can put out obscene HPS numbers by rolling Rejuvs on certain encounters...numbers that would put all the other classes to shame, but we often lack enough abilities to give health NOW when a target is low. Yes we have swiftmend (once every 15s), yes we have Nature's Swiftness and Healing Touch (once every 3 minutes), generally this is enough, however (and I see his point) it could be handled better with a Holy priest in the mix. There is no reason to be mean to Rijndael over this. Can two druids be stuck on raid healing and handle it? Sure, Is this the best possible setup? Not even close. In fact, I would likely laugh at someone who would even suggest that the BEST raid healing setup involved stacking druids. Capable yes, optimal no.

Also, he makes a good point which you skimmed over rather callously. He admitted that a druid can heal these bad luck situations, but argued that doing it on a consistant basis is not something we are good at. I would agree whole heartedly with this statement. The question is not 'can we?' but 'can we do it consistantly?'. I beleive that yes we can, but it is more the exception than the rule. You sir (Nut) are talking more about feeling than Rijndael. He has looked at his tool set and the tool set of his fellow raiders and how came to the conclusion that he doesnt have the best tools to do the job (which is correct)

Lets separate raid damage that is raid-wide and random-target damage. Druids are excellent for healing the first, but not so good for the 2nd type, as it tends to be more burstly and lethal. Raid-wide raid damage is, at least in Ulduar, usually in a form of the dot and thus druids shine.
For nearly every fight in Ulduar, having 2 druids is better than 1, as the hot coverage gets a lot better. You can laugh if you want, but I suggest actually finishing the instance first.

Druids and priests are both excellent raid healers. I can see having 3 druids and no priests as a bit excessive, as a balanced mix of healing classes if always preferred. But my ideal healing group, if there is such a thing, almost always includes 2 druids.

The original comment that started this "discussion" was A lot of raid damage in Ulduar is not well suited to be healed by a druid and the supporting evidence was given that stacking Druids is not the most effective strategy for healing Ulduar raid damage.

The problem is that the conclusion (Druids are unsuited...) does not follow from the premise (Stacking Druids is bad...). I can completely agree that stacking Druids is a sub-optimal strategy without giving one bit of ground to the suggestion that Druids are unsuited as raid healers and I should hope that, on reflection, others would come to the same conclusion.

There are some situations where Druids aren't good (multiple people get Napalm, multiple people get hit by Detonating Lashers, someone gets Nature's Fury & doesn't move) but those type of situations are either avoidable by good play or are beyond the capabilities of ANY healer to address on their own. However, a Druid has strategies they can use to help with those type of situations eg. pre-RJing all melee on Mimiron for the entire of P1 helps mitigate accidental bomb damage and a multi-napalm (wasteful I know but we regen to full between P1 & 2 anyway).

Perhaps to get this discussion back to glyphs, we could talk about how we can cope with forms of damage which we are perceived to be weak against. Pre-hotting + a fast Nourish/glyphed HT can quickly save one target and the pre-hot helps another healer have time to land a slower, more effective heal (like Cheal).

A good raid healing setup for Glyphs might be Rejuv (to maximise pre-hotting capability in the face of high damage), WG and HT.

No swiftmend? Personally that's the one glyph I'd never go without. I've moved away from the rejuv glyph of late. Used it in naxx but looking at the logs I found that while rejuve frequently was at least 20% of my heals up to 40% depending on the fight the glyph of rejuv proc was less than 1%. There are a few situations such as tantrum or frozen blows where it might provide more of a benefit but otherwise it is rare that someone is likely to stay below 50% for more than one tick without some other healer trying to flash heal them.

The obvious ones are Swiftmend and Wild Growth. The debatable third ones for me would be Nourish or Lifebloom, but lately I've taken to glyphing Rebirth as it's invaluable for hard mode learning attempts. Too often battle rezzed folks would simply be killed upon rezzing due to the large random raid damage flying around.