....

RJ is our best 'raid HoT' because 1900/3 RJ ticks vs 400/1~ LB will always mean RJ heals more until the final tick of LB hits in (10 seconds off) but then you still have 2~ more ticks where RJ will again overtake LB in the end. It lasts almost twice the duration, is Swiftmendable if the target takes a burst and it's cheaper (assuming Idol, else its not far off) while outperforming LB on a HPC/HPM standard.

Everything else should be used to complement RJ on fights like Sapphiron - ie WG on the melee if they get hit by Blizzard as they are clumped, LB to help keep people topped off (as RJ is not enough to cover the damage) or RG if people get spiked a tad and they benefit from the upfront 5-7k direct heal too (the HoT will never be wasted either).


On Patch I tend to always spread HoTs out on the targets taking the most damage (MT/OT1) and then put my focus mostly on the MT due to the more steady damage they take, but also being ready to help support the OT(s) if required. However you are perfectly viable to focus on one target with HoTs and RG/Nourish/HT* if that is what your raid setup requires you do.


For occasions like healing through Twilights Torment I am slightly heavy handed with using Regrowth then sprinkling WG/RJ/LB around as a secondary thought due to the incredible amounts of Raid-HPS you can put up rather quickly by doing so.
I wouldn't say RG is horribly inefficient (because it's not assuming you crit and get LS) even if the HoT doesn't really get used but I do feel slightly bad by using it too much, however Nourish really doesn't shine out as enough of a unique purpose to be worthy of using instead of RG on the raid.
Even if the possible change of WG counting as a Nourish booster happens I doubt I would ever consider it for anything beyond using on Tanks purely because in situations where I would have HoTs up on raid members then RG will most likely get use from the HoT/LS and thus out perform Nourish there too.

I guess Blizzard intended direct healing to be done by RG for the Raid, and Nourish for the Tanks in order to keep them from overlapping in purpose too much without directly making them worthless for the other job (just slightly less efficient).
They have done a pretty good job at giving better purposes to our spells in Wrath than TBC honestly and once people get used to WG being a secondary raid healing tool instead of a primary one. That said I am still dubious around Nourish and HT on the MT at this time but perhaps Ulduar will give us tighter jobs where we cannot count on another healer to suppliment our HoTs in order to not use them as intended.


One thing I have been lazy of since WoTLK has been bothering with a DoT/HoT timer addon, despite not having one I haven't had many issues on serious encounters of HoTs falling off on much and on multi tank encounters I just end up feeling the rhythm and generally knowing when to do what in my cycle regardless.
I'm not sure if I want to bother with one eventually or not, less clutter is always good and I am not a fan of Grid either so that limits my options slightly.

That's pretty much what I'm doing as well (minor difference: I tend to Rejuv, rather than single LB, when I'm trying to anticipate semi-random damage). Wild Growth is a bit farther down my priority list because we've been raiding with 2 CoH Priests; it's not worth casting unless there's enough AoE damage that I'll get the first two ticks of WG before CoH happens. I'm not sure if I'll need to move it up or not - CoH nerf, yes, but glyph of HL may pick up the slack. Does that glyph trigger on overheal?

Anyway, Regrowth and Rejuv are my main two buttons. I don't use Nourish or non-NS HT. Lifebloom gets rolled on tanks and Swiftmend is my go-to button when I want to cast a Regrowth but happen to be moving. Here's a question, to keep the discussion moving: what kind of neat uses of Tranquility have you found? Does it still ignore LOS (it did in BC)? So far the one particularly nice use I've found for it is to allow the Hunter group + pets to DPS straight through the first 7-8 seconds of Twilight Torment.

Lifebloom glyph is definitely worth it. :o A lifebloom stack is the highest HPS and HPM HOT we have. The implication is there should always be a lifebloom stack on the MT. The glyph gives you more time to refresh that stack; which definitely helps when you're raid healing. Secondly, even if you're excellent at timing LB, it still gives you one free second of healing. Which translates into increased output and/or mana regeneration.

I'd actually take LB glyph before regrowth glyph. Because regrowth x2 won't be cast except on the tanks. And when it comes to the tanks, my sentiment is trees are better than anyone when it comes to HOTs. So I put up the hots, and let my priests or pallies do the direct heals :p That said, if you're the main healer and you're mainly assigned to one target, then you don't really need the LB glyph. 9 seconds is enough if you're not constantly switching to heal other people.

I would say it depends a lot on the other healers in your raid and what your job is. If you are low on group healing, you aren't overhealing with regrowth, and you aren't going oom, it's probably a valid thing to do. In my guild there is no way I could manage a regrowth on players taking light damage, someone else would have them topped up in probably .5-1 seconds, even nourish is unnecessary in my guild. But if you find yourself doing a large portion of the group healing, regrowth is an amazing heal. It does a hefty chunk of health, can proc living seed to protect against further damage, as well as leaving a hot that ticks for a lot these days. And beyond that gives the option of swiftmending for 27 seconds (I believe).

My guess is that if regrowth is working for you now it can only get better once CoH and WG get a cooldown. The only thing I can see "wrong" with regrowth is its 2 second cast time. What I've found since hitting level 80 though is that regrowth is probably better than nourish in 90% of situations, and I would only use Nourish in a situation where I can't swiftmend and would rather save Nature's swiftness, and think the 2s cast of RG is too risky. When I first got nourish I tended to forget about it and just used regrowth, but once in awhile you run into a situation where 2s is too short and 1.5s is just fast enough, and now that I've got used to having a 1.5 second heal I would say I used it probably only a few times per fight, more on fights like KT with the Frost Blast, and less on fights where the damage on a single target is less severe.

But as for the are you "doing it right"? I would go back to your own raid group and your role in the raid, because right now druids can have a variety of roles. We can do group healing, tank healing, spike healing and anywhere in between. I personally am always rolling lb*3 and rj on the main tank, and depending on the fight I am either helping with group healing (Saph 25 man), focusing on the tank (Maexxna), or doing as much healing as Taurenly possible (10 man Saph). And anytime our raids are lacking a paladin healer I tend to pick up slack on the main tank, but that again is just a raid setup thing, because we could probably get a priest to do the same thing (or a shaman :P but this is a point of very much debate in my guild right now).

I've read a whole lot of discussion here and elsewhere on Nourish vs Regrowth and ultimately I'm still not sure of the whole situation. Ultimately I think I'm just not convinced of the holy awesomeness that people ascribe to glyphed Regrowth. I've seen the numbers*, and pre-4T7 glyphed Regrowth comes way out ahead of anything Nourish can put up, but pure numbers are not as convincing for healing as it is for dps. Definitely useful to know, but I see people looking at the numbers and saying "case closed" without any more effort. This doesn't sit well with me.

I think my problem with Regrowth is when I use it. My general healing plan is to get a Lifebloom stack and Rejuv up on the tank. On bosses that hit hard, I'll usually use Regrowth as an extra hot. I did this a lot during BC, though a lot of bosses in Wrath don't have consistently high incoming damage for it to be used this way. Any raid healing I do is done through Wild Growth (except in cases the damage will be healed back by other healers too fast, especially if it's predictable like P1 non-Vortex raid damage in Malygos) and Rejuv.

Going with this, Regrowth would only be useful to bring a tank back up from 60-70% or so to full. If the tank is lower, it's usually Swiftmend or NSHT time. If neither of those are an option, I wouldn't want to trust my tank's life to the extra cast time of Regrowth vs Nourish, so Nourish gets used. Nourish has worse numbers, but if the tank is sitting at 20%, the only thing that matters is getting him back up out of the danger zone ASAP. Even if you want to risk the extra cast time on Regrowth, its impressive numbers are highly, highly driven by the crit rate, and I wouldn't want to cast a Regrowth over Nourish if I'm relying on it to crit to save someone's life.

So really I don't see a very big window to even use Regrowth in such a way that gets a lot of mileage out of the glyph. Bringing the tank back up from ~65% health to near max seems to me like it would be ideal, but I'm not even sure that's a role that a Druid casting Regrowth is even ideal for. I suppose there's always dumping leftover mana the last 5-10% of a boss's health, I suppose, but... :p

While I certainly use Regrowth more often than Nourish, I don't really see the spells as competing for the same niche. Regrowth's many strengths over Nourish do not matter when you're in a situation that Nourish is particularly well-suited for.

Ultimately I'm just left a little confused at what people are seeing in Regrowth that makes it so impressive. The numbers are great, but healing is more than just the numbers. Am I missing something, i.e. some role that would put Regrowth more in the spotlight for me and my raid?

*The numbers on Regrowth in particular I do have some quibbles with, but that's another post by itself. Short version has to deal with averaging out 82937234 variables over time, which doesn't have a whole lot of weight when the RNG aligns itself against you and Bad Things happen. Consistency is a very valuable and apparently somewhat underrated concept in healing.

I agree with you Mauhan in the tank healing situation you stated.

If you look at the tank's health and you haven't cast anything yet, and he's in the moderate danger zone (probably from 40-70% depending on the fight) I would cast nourish.

The times I would cast regrowth are if I am a primary tank healer, and he is taking steady damage but isn't in the danger zone yet. For example on Maexxna when she frenzies, and the tank dips to say 50%, I would probably swiftmend first. If swiftmend is on cooldown, I nourish, if I swiftmend and the tank is still at risk, I nourish. Now once nourish/swiftmend/nature's swiftness has brought the tank to somewhere safer like 80%, I would probably want to regrowth, because it's higher HPS.

This is the way I see it. basically regrowth is better if you have time, but if you don't think you have 2s to finish regrowthing, and you can't swiftmend, you nourish.

This is sort of the way I think about healing, a different heal for the risk the person has of dying within a small period of time. My general priority goes, from most to least at risk of immediate death: NS-HT>Swiftmend>Nourish>Regrowth>Wild Growth>Lifebloom>Rejuvenation.

Oh the other reason is because the developers have already realized that people know that regrowth is better. They plan on improving nourish in the future and adding a glyph for it to give it a spot on druids rotations.

Depending on the situation, Regrowth spam vs Nourish spam with Regrowth already on actually puts the HoT portion in favor of Nourish use. But I'm not arguing that Nourish is better numberwise. I already said Regrowth wins there.

I think what it boils down to is that I see a valid use for Nourish (OMG must heal tank now, but Swiftmend and NS/HT are down) which cuts into what used to be Regrowth's niche. I don't see very many opportunities to really put Regrowth and it's glyph to ideal use, though, and that isn't in line with all the fanfare a lot of people make over it.

Maybe it's due in part to me usually being paired with a Paladin healer in 10 mans? I'm not sure, really, but I don't see myself being the one best suited to bringing a tank's HP back up in big chunks. It doesn't mesh well with the old philosophy of serving primarily as a buffer on tank HP, which IMO has only got stronger in Wrath raiding where bosses, in general, seem to be less of a direct threat to the tank.

Anyway, I do support a plan to buff Nourish, as it needs to be more comparable in the numbers section regardless (and especially so independent of the 4 piece T7 bonus, which won't last long into Wrath). I'm curious to see what Blizzard would come up with for a glyph for it. Hearing Druids say they don't even have the spell bound makes me cringe, though.

I'll have to start comparing WWS reports to see if I'm casting a significantly lower number of Regrowths or something. I'm beginning to suspect this discrepancy is somewhat only in my head, since I do see a valid use for it thus making the Regrowth glyph a solid option. Maybe I'm casting it just as much as others, but without their accompanying glee. I'll have to look into this. :p

Though... I still say numbers aren't as meaningful for healing as they are for DPS! That would make for a more productive post, most likely, but I don't know if the interest is there.

GC has said that they're considering adding Wild Growth to the spells that give it the 20% bonus. That would be nice and make it a pretty useful spell for handling party damage in my book. Wild Growth the party then use Nourish to top off the lowest members of the group. Sometimes I find that using Regrowth can be dangerous if it doesn't crit. Of course it crits more often than not, but if you get an unlucky streak 2s feels very slow, especially if you need to get everyone in the group up ASAP, or the tank is taking big hits.

If they're adding a glyph for Nourish, personally I'd love to see it refresh one of our HoTs, maybe Rejuvination.

Right, the only argument that I've seen for Nourish is that sometimes you just don't have the extra .5s to Regrowth. Two counterpoints to that:
1) If the tank is taking enough damage that he'll die in less than two seconds, do you really want to be casting a 5k heal instead of 8k + Living Seed?
2) What on earth were you doing that let the tank get so low, or that you didn't predict the damage?