When it comes to single target healing, I can put out more HPS than a holy paladin. Show me another healer that can have a 1s spamable heal that will crit for 15.6k and leave a 4.6k 'Shield' (for a total upwards of 20k), while also leaving a steady steam of healing through their Rejuvenation, Lifebloom, and Regrowth. The problem isnt that Resto Druids are 'bad' at single target healing, its that we are so 'good' on specific encounters.

On any fights that require a good amount of movement, any classes that do not have a high reliance on HoTs will be at a slight disadvantage. Last night as a favor to a friend of mine I actually did throw a paladin on Raid healing (with the two other Resto Druids) and they worked beautifully together. Hots took care of a large chunk of damage, while the Paladin used Beacon of Light on the MT and quickly brought up any targets that were at low health. Will we keep doing this? Probably not, but its not a horrible way of doing things.

(as a side note, Healer Composition is generally Holy Paladin x2, Resto Druid x2-3, Disc/Holy Priest x1, Resto Shaman x1.)

@Grizabella

I see nothing wrong with your healer composition, other than I'd convince one of those Priests to roll disc. Druids are the only class that makes sense to stack to me right now.

I'm not quite managing to come up with a gear/buff set that would get 15k Nourishes (I'm capping out at 11-12k in Ulduar gear, Idol of Nourish, using 4 piece T7 set bonus, Glyph of Nourish, and pretty much best in slot in every other slot. Unfortunately I can't get your current gear as you logged out in a feral set, but going by progression, I feel I erred on the side of overestimation.

Throwing on a 4 HoT set-up instead of 3 (not always possible due to Wild Growth's behavior) would certainly bring it closer, but I'm still 1.5k+ off, and that's in BiS gear. I'm not counting potions/trinket activates/procs, but those are clearly outside the realm of discussion for 'spamming'. Naturally, the HoTs themselves would increase the HPS, definitely putting the theorycrafting a touch over the 15k mark (though that does not affect the Living Seed). Somewhat ironic given that they were worried about Druids doing competitive tank healing when they changed Lifebloom.

Anyway, at that point you're not really 'spamming' Nourish, as you need to interrupt every 7/10/18/27 seconds to put up HoTs. I do definitely get your point though, but the HPS is hardly much better than a Paladin (ours put out approximately 14000 HPS in 0 overheal situations), and comes at the cost of no Beacon of Light, which is simply amazing on certain hard modes (Iron Council, Freya, General, Deconstructor). Certainly a viable alternative, but I'd use a Paladin any day of the week on hard modes for the aforementioned Beacon. You are also running with 6-7 healers whereas we use 4-6, so there's a bit more cushion.

Claiming that Holy Paladin raid healing is viable based on the front end of non-hard mode Ulduar using 6-7 healers is a very weak claim, and definitely could use some support from guilds doing hard modes if there any good logs or parses of a Holy Paladin being used as such. I could also claim that a feral druid in DPS spec and gear can tank just fine having used that on some bosses for kicks, but I would sound very silly indeed.

Holy Priests stack just as well as resto druids, but Disc Priests certainly do not (weakened soul), Holy Paladins don't (too one dimensional), and resto shamans are stack, but not nearly to the extent that holy priests/resto druids do.

I modified the Rawr code a bit to include this scenario (as I'm not 100% sure on its current tank healing scenarios), and with 100% replenish uptime and innervate/pot, I came to about 3 minutes (possibly 3:30) of being able to spam this. The shortest hard mode where you need tank intensive healing is probably Iron Council at 6 minutes, or Thorim, but Thorim involves enough tank swaps that you cannot really demonstrate this strategy.

Uhm, relatively mediocre-geared holy pally that knows what he's doing can easily crit over and over for 20k+ at a much higher rate than any tree that I know of. And he doesn't have to worry about keeping up any hots in order to do so.

Apologies, knee jerk posts will lead to knee jerk reactions. The numbers I posted were off Recount from our raid last night. It was during Iron Council on a Blood Death Knight tank. I would surmise that the actual 15.6k Crit happened while he had Vampiric Blood active. The number is real, the situation is…unique

With my current gear set, (4 piece t7, Nourish) and 4 stacks of hots, I can get 11k crits completely unbuffed (aside from tree form), which leaves a 3.3k Seed as well. Again, this number is in and of itself a bit flawed. As you have pointed out I won’t have 4 HoTs up at all times. Lets then abandon this line of thinking, the 15.6 crit is an atypical result. Lets instead focus on a more practical set of numbers.

My spreadsheet has the following HPS information based on my gear.

Regrowth HoT HPS: 416
Rejuvenation HoT HPS: 780
Lifebloom HoT (2 Stack Average) HPS: 966
Average Nourish Hit (Non Crit) (0 HoTs): 4870
Average Nourish Hit (Crit) (0 HoTs): 7305
Nourish Crit Chance: 43%
Spell Power (Raid Buffed) - 2872

Now, assuming that the separate tier bonuses are additive and not multiplicative, this leads to a 33% increase, A single HoT gives a 20% bonus to Nourish as well, so we can multiply the original hit by 1.53

Average Nourish Hit (3 HoTs) – 7,451
Average Nourish Crit (3 HoTs) – 11,176
Average Living Seed – 3352
Adjusted Healing Per Nourish crit – 14528

Expected Healing Per Nourish cast – (14528 x .43) + (7451 x 57) = 10494

I’m not about to try and model Nature’s Grace uptime based of a rotation like this. Lets go conservative and say that my average Cast time on Nourish during the spam is 1.2s. Between passive haste and an ~80% chance to refresh natures grace during a Nourish spam without it falling off, I would expect that average to be higher, but lets see where this puts us.

Nourish HPS – 10494/1.2 = 8745
Total (Max) HPS for the rotation – 10907

Over the course of an actual fight, the sustained HPS number will be lower, as any time spent refreshing HoTs (which have a lower HPS than Nourish) will lead to an overall drop in HPS, but they are needed obviously to prop up Nourish. Also, while more mana intensive a permanent 3 stack of Lifebloom could be kept rolling, it would only increase HPS by 483, but a 4% increase in HPS is hardly worth the enormous increased cost of mana to keep that 3 stack rolling. Weaving Wild Growth into the mix during high periods of damage however would lead to a ~1393 boost in single target HPS, or about a 12.7% increase. This does not take into account the other 4-5 targets it could possibly hit.

So, back to my original (if not ill planned) post. Druids are not bad single target healers. Any time that I’ve been tank healing along side a paladin, I’ve came out ahead on the meters (not that meters matter, but they are the only measurement tool available to use). Because of their longevity (and quite honestly because its more difficult for them to effectively raid heal) I would still rate them as a better single target healer (along with disc priests). However, I would rank Resto Druids as the 3rd best option for single target healing, ahead of Resto Shaman and Holy Priests. On a fight that requires much movement by the raid, or requires chasing down OT’s I might even rank Resto Druids higher as mobility will always be one of our greatest strengths. I don’t want to turn this into a ‘Resto Druids are so awesome’ post, but it is my firm belief that due to our versatility (2/5 for raid healing, 3/5 for Single Target), the fact that we stack as good if not better than any other healing class, Replenish, and a variety of other reasons that we are the most complete healing class in the game.

Sticking a Resto Druid on single target heals is not a horrible idea. Certain fights offer steady raid wide damage, these fights are a Rejuv/WG spammers bread and butter. A Rejuv spammer will output more HPS than any other healing class. Other fights do not however, Rejuvenation/WG spamming leads to more average results. On these type of fights there is nothing ‘wrong’ with assigning a druid to a tank.

Resto Shamans are better tank healers than resto druids, I think. The thing about Nourish is, it gets boosted a lot by hots and the glyph, but its native coefficient is quite low, and while it has that nice +25% crit talent, it doesn't have a spellpower boosting talent like Tidal Waves or Empowered Healing. Glyphed LHW on the tank with Earth Shield will output numbers compatible to Nourish. The advantages of shamans on the tank are threefold:

(a) They have less preconditions to keep up (just Earthshield, vs 3 separate hots for us). This means they are far less likely to be caught with their pants down and GCD-locked during a burst event, whereas this happens to druids a lot more.

(b) Inspiration. People underestimate how much effective healing this is. On our recent Hodir 25 hardmode kill, inspiration accounted for 24% of healing done by our Disc priest -- ahead of all other healing spells used. (I was using Event Horizon Fight Statistics, which keeps track of absorbs and inspiration). A shaman in tank healing gear will easily have 50% crit on LHW, so Inspiration will basically be permanently up.

(c) Shamans get mana return on crit, we do not. They are almost as sustainable as paladins on the tank.

Finally, shamans just aren't as good on the raid as druids, except for a few select fights, so sticking them on the tank makes a lot more sense.

Also, druids can keep their hots to support a tank healer (and should, unless the fight has ridiculous raid damage), just as a shaman could keep Earthshield, so it's not entirely fair to count hots as druid-exclusive hps.

edit: I know people like druids on the raid, and they can certainly put out impressive HPS (13k on ideal fights isn't hard to pull off). Then you look at guilds like Vodka and see their priests output 20k HPS on Hodir Hard during Frozen Blows. And that's without divine hymn.

Imp Tranq is a tolerable choice on some long fights. I definitely like using 2 Tranqs on XT Hard to hit a group two times for Tantrums. That said, I would rarely if ever put a point in Tranq over say Barkskin which as I noted a few pages ago is quite a good talent. I assume most druids taking 1/2 Tranq are doing so as "spillover" from having 1 point left after picking their preferred talents.

Thing about HoTs vs Burst damage on a tank is that HoTs cushion the damage and let the higher burst healers have a little more time before another blow. Even if I'm assigned to the raid I will put, if anything, LB on the tank. With a tic per second of about 1k, why not? I appreciate everything else you said, but I wanted to point out that HoTs are still very useful against burst damage. I'm not saying druids should be assigned to a tank for heals, just that it is good to support a tank with HoTs.

I'm one of those druid healers that have a finger in every pie of raid damage, I should probably be shot for it.

A slow stack LB will average about 1k HPS without counting the bloom. Obviously it bottoms out at 500 HPS and peaks at 1,5k HPS depending on where in the cycle you are. Keeping RJ up as well is a good idea for, as mentioned, SM possibility.

I'm very similar. I believe that we should all be helping each other out where ever and whenever we can. Even if I'm not assigned to the tank, if I know raid damage will be minimal, I will spend some GCDs to throw up hots as well as roll a LB on him. There have been occasions where a few of those ticks kept the tank (and the spot SM or NS/HT) alive due to the MT Healer having to move.

It's difficult imo to quantify the value of hots on a tank for keeping him alive, but I can tell you that prehotting the next tank in the taunt rotation for Thorim hard-mode, and keeping hots on the tank for Vezax and Mimiron P1, both drastically increased tank survivability for us. Most encounters in Ulduar require some healer movement at some point, and those hots are fire-and-forget buffers that helps cover situations where all of your main tank healers can't be casting when you need the heals most.

Maybe this isn't as necessary or beneficial if you have really well geared Druid or DK tanks, but when we are using a prot paladin or prot warrior this HoT buffer really helps.

We have 5 Healer and 1 RetPala.

MT Heal Pala + 2 DisziPriest
Range Healer Druide (me)
Melee Healer RestoShamane

Diszi 1 heals up to the Mana ends, afterwards the other Diszi. takes over.
Priest stand in the black zones and shild their targets.
Shamane take the Earthshild on MT.
Druid heals MT with Reju HoTs.

Group Healer save their Mana for phase 2.

From Druid view. You place yourself against the boss and hit him. Uses the free Casts for your Healing Spells. Reju on the Tank or Wild Growth into the group. With reach the phase 2 should you still have 90% Mana. In phase 2 your Targets should be well supplied with Reju Rotation's. If necessary a Swiftmend or an Wild Growth. In phase 3 I have no more Mana and heal nearly only over free Casts.
I use Glyphe of Reju and also on free Casts Lifebloom for Mana gain.

an example Wow Web Stats

I try to go with maximum intelligence into the fight (regemming, Flask of dest. Wisdom) My Manapool is about ~28.000.