Living seed heals after the next hit, this was changed a while back.
Under optimal conditions, living seed increases the direct-heal portion of regrowth by 22%, assuming a modest crit rate of 65%. Improved regrowth improves it by 41% for 5 talent points.
It's not so bad. Take it.

Assuming base 15% critrate on regrowth and living seed, an average regrowth will heal for 0.85x + 0.15*1.5*1.3x = 1.1425x.
Add imp regrowth and it changes to 0.35x + 0.65*1.5*1.3x = 1.6175x, or 41.5% increase.
The figure without living seed is 0.35x + 0.65*1.5x = 1.325x, which gives seed the 22% increase.

I think the bigger problem with Living Seed is that the value of the seed is 30% of the amount of healing that was actually done. So if by the time you get your regrowth off the target gets topped off, your living seed will have a strength of 0 (worst case). The times Living Seed would seem to be best is on a tank you know will get hit again soon (proccing the seed), but tanks are also the target most likely to get topped off by another healer before your regrowth completes casting. They really need to make the strength of the seed equal to 30% of the amount that would have been healed for the talent to have any real value. That being said, I still took the talent for lack of better things to take...

When do you really want Seed to work for you other than in a crazy high-throughput situation on a spiked tank, though? I mean, yeah, it'd be great if it were a flat +critheal increase, but in practice I find that it doesn't make too terribly much difference. Crit Regrowths are already almost always overheal for raidhealing anyway in my experience.

I dunno. I guess I just don't see a huge issue with it. IMO giving Nourish a bump (3.0.8 will certainly help but I dearly hope they're not done with the spell) and making Replenish something more than a place to dump those 3 otherwise-useless points are massively, massively more important IMO.

An interesting discussion developed last night in raid between me and a resto from another guild.

I prefer to use the BC style healing with some changes:

Lifebloom on tank(s) + Rejuvenation and Regrowth if it's a single tank. I use Nourish to heal spikes if all three hots are up and Swiftmend is on cd. If there is any melee damage taken, I immediately hit Wild Growth. As far as stats go, I tend to balance things but always gemming for spell power and using Int (orange) and Spi (purple) when the socket bonus is worth or if I know I will replace the gear very soon.

His healing style appeared to be more of this:

Stack as much haste as possible. Use Regrowth on many targets that could possibly take damage for later Swiftmend usage. Use Rejuv occaisonally and LB on only one tank.

At one point I noticed Regrowth on about 15 different targets in the raid. to be fair, I didn't ask him the glyphs he has and I for one, use Innervate instead of Regrowth.

I was quite shocked and surprised by this healing strategy. He remarked to em that Regrowth is his favorite heal and our only other good heal is talented, glyphed HT. Obviously since I am only presenting what I remember of the conversation, I may have inadvertently left out pertinent information and I apologize in advance for that.

My question is: Is this a popular style or is it strange to others as well? I felt like he was trying to make the resto druid into a different healing class instead of promoting the strengths.

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Another question, if you have three resto druids in a raid vs. Patchwerk 25man, is the best strat to roll all three hots on all three tank targets? If there is a different strat, please explain it.

I think it's still early enough in the expansion that there is some room for argument about healing strategies (and healing is a 'black art' after all, not a science like dps). That said, it's hard to envision any strategy that doesn't roll lifeblooms on the tanks as good. It's simple to see why -- having almost an equivalent of HPS of flash of light constantly on the tank at the cost one global cooldown and a little mana every 9 seconds or so is just too good to pass up in the vast majority of fights. Even in fights like Sapphiron where druids mostly end up casting Rejuvenation and Wild Growth on the raid, it's still generally a good idea to lifebloom the tank.

Similarly, any strategy that spams a single spell is probably not very good. We have a lot of spells, and if someone says they haven't found a use for them, well they probably haven't thought about it very hard. Even paladins have spell decisions now.

Personally, if I have no specific healing assignment, I am 'tank centric,' in that I roll full hots on however many tanks there are, and spend the remaining cooldowns on raid healing. I see druids who mostly spam wild growth, which won't stay effective for long. Once wild growth is on cooldown, raid healing decisions will presumably be split between nourish (if urgent heal is needed, e.g. ice tomb), rejuvenation (for predictable damage, e.g. sapphiron), or regrowth (if damage is high but not super urgent and you expect more damage later). I look at healing as anticipating the 'shape of the damage' and 'playing tetris' with the spells you have available to best 'fit those shapes,' if that makes any sense.

For your Patchwerk question, it depends on what other healers you have. Druids make fine single tank healers -- they can have full hots and spam regrowth/healing touch to keep up a hateful tank. However, in our raid we have enough single target tank healers where I can afford to have full hots on all three tanks. I think that's a better use of a druid on that fight, anyways.

I have to admit, the idea of just spamming regrowth is alien to me and hardly seems effective at all. I agree with Rijndael that there isn't a reason to really do that with all of the options open to us. We are not Paladins, and I really feel that a Druid who isn't taking full advantage of his class is not doing it right. I am very much a HoT roller, but I am also able to fill multiple, just about any, rolls whenever necessary. What I do on a boss fight changes with each boss that we do. Originally, when my guild first took a shot at Patchwerk, we ended up killing him with me rolling full HoTs (minus WG to avoid healing the melee) and casting Nourish (for the cast time) on the main tank. With the exception of a resto shammy who occasionally bounced CH off of him, I was his only healer.

This has changed some as my guild geared, and now I find myself usually rolling HoTs on the MT and the hateful tank(s) at the same time. During Sapphiron, I will keep HoTs on the tank and/or raid heal, depending on what is needed and what composition our raid is that night. On Sartharion with three drakes up, I am responsible for healing the warrior tank who tanks all of the drakes. By myself. I do this by rolling full HoTs (plus WG, which is excellent as a spare HoT and for dropping some heal on the melee in range) and casting Regrowth or Nourish, whichever is more necessary, and using Swiftmend if I need a burst heal that isn't cast. I've also been charged with raid healing most of Naxx's bosses at times and heal both tanks and DPS during trash.

I'm explaining all of this because I truly feel that as it stands, the Druid class is one of the most versatile healers in the game right now. We can do just about anything if we're competent. I also feel that if you're just spamming Regrowth or Healing Touch, you are not maximizing your potential as a Druid. Druids are not one-button wonders. If you want that, you should probably start thinking about playing a Paladin (I realize they have more than one button, but they are much more limited than we, or really any other healer, are).

In any heroics, I can run around like crazy and never go oom, I don't even need innervate. At some bosses I even end up at 90% mana.

In raids, however, it's completely different. I usually oom in the first 1-2 minutes of the fight. So I'm just curious - what's other resto druids healing "tactic" in raids? Do you use rejuv/lb or just spam WG and Nourish/Regrowth? Or is it normal to oom so fast?-.-

(In armory it's not the raid gear I use, I usually switch egg for Alch stone and legguards for Earthgiving and bracers for some blues with more +spi. So my mp5 in raids is about 320-350 self-buffed, is it really not enough?)

I think it may be helpful if you told us what you do in raids, and what the healing lineup is like, along with their assignments. A WWS link would be very helpful as well for troubleshooting.

My guild isn't raiding atm, so I'm usually either joining pugs (for 10-man Nax and OS/VoA) or raiding guilds invite me to help out (for 25-man Nax), so can't really say the setup and assignments. In 25-mans I'm usually on raid heals with 2 more healers + helping out on OT. Only WWS I have is from Patchwerk, but it's completely useless with my question, I think.

What I mostly want to know is the healing "tactics" of others - as in most/least used spells and etc.

The same as it has always been:
1) Roll LB/RJ/RG on your MT (or assigned tank) - there are very few occasions where not doing this is a smart option.

Then either:
2a) Roll the same on additional tanks.
or
2b) Raid heal with whichever spell suits the occasion best (RJ, RG, WG, LB).
or
2c) Supplement your MT (or assigned tank) healing with Nourish or Regrowth (with 4T7 Nourish is slightly better).


Its all variable based on how many healers you use, what classes they are, how good they are, which boss you are doing, what tactic you are using, relative gear level.. and so forth.