I use in on Sarth3D when we have 2 drakes up, a pile of adds and normally just as Twilight Torment - Spell - World of Warcraft pops up the first time I use it to boost the healing on the 3 tanks in my group.

I almost never use it if I'm healing. Many thanks to the person who pointed it out for Loatheb - I didn't even think about it when we did him last night, but it would have helped. Usually for him, I keep 3 stacks of LB on the MT, timed to bloom during the 3 seconds (that'll be a walk in the park when 3.1 comes out and the blooms stack!), one stack on as many other people I can, WG as soon as the window opens, swiftmend the tank, then RG/Nourish, depending on how much time I have left.

But I use Tranquility ALL THE TIME when I'm DPS or tanking. I particularly like it for tanking the last boss in UK, since it ignores LOS. We kill him the first time, hide behind a pillar, I pop Tranquility to top off the raid while we sit through the Boss Monologue. Basically, in any case where we have a lot of raid damage, I'll use it to take some load off the healers at the cost of a bit of DPS.

I use it in Heroics when there is a large amount of AOE damage usually caused by someone screwing up. In 25 mans it loses its effectiveness because it only heals the 5 people in your group and is not a smart Hot like Wild Growth. That said, if your in a group with the tanks and they all get hit pretty hard, then its a good time to use it. The other time I might use it is if my group all gets hit very hard for some reason or another, and I am on raid healing so I do not need to worry about keeping tanks up. Other then those three situations I almost never find myself using it.

With Improved Tranquility talent points, the spell is amazing for 5-man instances. It becomes usable every 4 minutes and causes zero threat, which means it's basically a free full-party-heal every single boss fight. It's also useful when trash pulls get dicey due to unfortunate patrols and whatnot, mainly because of the threat-free aspect: you can fully heal all the dps in a matter of seconds without pulling all the adds onto yourself.

In 25-man and to a slightly lesser extent 10-man, the spell is much diminished in utility due to the party-only limitation. It can still be useful, but it is a lot harder to find times where it will be maximally useful. It is still helpful for things like Loatheb, Patchwerk's enrage, Sapphiron, and so forth, but it's definitely not worth 2 talent points of improvement.

Another good place to use Tranquility is the Deep Breath on Malygos phase 2. What I am doing there is pre-WG and Barkskin+Tranquility on the breath itself. Another resto druid doing the same ensures that 2 groups of all five will get close to 0 dmg. Trivialises the healing there by a very big amount.

On Heigan catching that casting time increase debuff makes your Tranq 30 sec long channel, useless, but fun xD

And as noted above, it's a superb spell when talented for a starter druid in heroics. Was my lifesaved in so many situations.

Our best raid heal at the moment is not Nourish. It's Healing Touch by a mile. 1 second cast without haste, 6k hits and no need for HoTs or anything on the target. Costs me about 650 mana per cast. It's easily the best raid heal in the game. Add that to the fact that we can keep all our HoTs on the tank at once and we're easily the best healer out there for almost any situation. The only problem is, we have to spec a different way for heavy tank healing. There goes my dps 2nd spec, eh. Oh well, c'est la vie.

You're wrong, hitting sub 1second Nourish casts is good (though I agree about NG not being worth it). It means the heal arrives earlier and prevents a possible death if they take more damage just after your heal lands. You're thinking about this like you're trying to dps something. You don't want reliable healing output, you want to be able to burst your healing if and when it's needed. Shamans are strong because their chain heal jumps to those who need it, not because it's great on the first target; they're strong because they have a second heal on the lowest % hp target within range of their heals every time they crit most of their spells; the fact that Riptide is instant and Earth Shield is reactive. They don't have a cast time on half of their healing. Where as our HoTs have to be on the target before they take damage, or we have to be pre-casting/reacting to damage. That's why shamans are so strong, it's because they're easier to play, not because they're a better class.

All of my rejuv casts are on people who are about to take damage, not on people who are low on health. I can see that Blizzard want us to use Rejuv over lifebloom when there's some but not a lot of healing on that target. I tried healing without using lifebloom at all and although it feels weird and slightly less secure, you don't have to worry about the rejuv falling off all the time - just refresh it when it's down. I don't suggest doing this in raids or new boss fights, because lifebloom is just that good - but if you're in a 5man or 10man and farming content, just try it. It lets you take a difference stance on your healing spells, I assure you. Personally, I won't be going for the tier set except for maybe the 2 pieces with haste for the swiftmend bonus.

Have you thought of the combination of 4pcsT8 bonus + rejuv Glyph?
Then you have the possibility to use rejuv reactive because of it's instant tick + the target gets 50% more heal when he's low on health

You realize you arguing Flash of Light for a raid heal? Putting you on raid healing duty is akin to telling the pally to raid heal. /facepalm

I'd still much rather use regrowth. Not only is the long HoT nice, its swiftmendable. Just gives you more bang for your buck. I don't see the point in trying to emulate a Pally when you're in a raid with other healers. Not that regrowth is really needed (Sarth when dumbass dps get caught in the flame wall comes to mind) anyway. Rejuv is almost always going to be enough if your dps aren't asleep.

I think the issue with sub 1 second casts is the GCD. No matter how much haste you have you can't get the GCD under 1 second, so spamming a sub 1 second healing touch is the same as spamming a 1 second healing touch, anything under that is wasted.

If I need instant healing I just use nature's swiftness and healing touch or regrowth. Lately I've been using regrowth with my nature's swiftness, just so I can immediately follow it up with a swiftmend if more healing is needed. I have never once since wrath came out spammed nourish on any target. There's never been a need. I realize with 3.1 I'll need to change my approach, but for now I think nourish is a waste. I do use nourish occasionally after a nature's grace proc from regrowth, if the target needs that sub 1 second cast, but that so rarely happens its probably not worth mentioning.

I've always viewed druids as the damage mitigator. My goal is to relieve pressure on the direct healers/chain healers with rejuv on as many targets as possible while keeping the tanks hotted up. My hots alone won't heal anyone in the raid, but at the same time it keeps them all from dying. Occasionally the damage will be high enough I start spamming regrowth on the raid, but NG makes this great and with the changes coming in 3.1 this may not be as attractive to me.

I don't agree with your assesment that you need burst healing over reliable output. I guess its all in how you view your own role in the raid. My goal is to make healing easier on everyone, not snipe heals to make myself look better on a meter.

While I agree that our main job is to mitigate incoming damage and grant other healers more time to react fast, I still think that quick heals are very valuable. The NG change has made me play a lot less with regrowth and play around with a bit of my points allowing room for HT while still strengthening Rejuv and wild growth to their fullest. This gives me a very fast heal without any kind of requirements or cooldowns. sometimes people take spiky damage a lot more often than NS is ready and it lets me use swiftmend a lot more freely knowing that I always have a fast tool available.

Regarding sub GCD casts its the same story as rank 1 frostbolts really. All good frostmages have this spell bound because a 1 sec snare is very handy. Also if you spec and glyph fully into HT the point isn´t to create an economic heal, the point isn´t to spam it and thus you don´t need to worry about the fractional secconds that are blocked by the GCD cap afterwards. BUT, even in the situations where you might want to spam it you are helped by going below the GCD. Two people gets to close on KT and gets icetombed, casting two heals thats faster than your GCD lands sooner than casting two spells thats has exactly the GCDs cast time. Besides this, human reactions are not perfect. Lets say that your reactions slow you down 0.1 sec, if that time is taken from time you´r GCD was free to use it´s still time spent not casting, but if that time was taken from GCD blocked time it isn´t time wasted on human reactions.

Long story short we all have diferent styles of healing but I´m finding glyphed HT a very handy tool besides my arsenal of HoTs.

I play with a HT spec, and there definitely is an advantage to further decreasing the cast time below the GCD. Obviously not when you're spamming the heal back-to-back, but how often do you do that? Basically never for me; hots do almost all of my healing. The point is, when somebody needs a direct heal and needs it quickly, every fraction of a second counts. Whenever I spec into Regrowth or Nourish my heals feel so slow, and I start to worry that somebody is going to die while they're casting.

While both of those are powerfull tools you can´t count on them all the time either. Natures grace will not always be up when people around you takes spike damage nor can you double swiftmend if one player hurts another with some raidboss mechanic handled the wrong way. The drawback of swiftmend is also that you haveto have a hot on the target and quite simply you won´t always have hots on everyone. Sure, tossing one and then swiftmending is fast... but then again glyphed HT is faster.

I can see where you are coming from. I just never have had to heal one tank exclusively, we've always had lots of pallies and priests and there is no point in a druid on MT duty when a pally or disc priest is available. Beyond hots, obviously most druids try to keep the tank(s) hotted up even when on raid duty.

On burst damage like KT frostblock, I have just always rejuv + swiftmended or used nature's swiftness. Its still 1 sec (GCD) and doesn't require me to take up a glyph spot for HT. I just don't see the need for glyphed HT anywhere in my healing routine. Its right there with nourish, a spell I never use. Even with less healing and no glyph you get more benefit from regrowth + hot + possibly swiftmend. Even fights like maly p1 where 4-5 people are taking big hits I just WG and Rejuv. That combined with a chainheal and another WG or COH is usually more than enough.

Come 3.1 I'm not going to have much of a choice though, going to have to switch to using nourish more since I probably won't spec into NG and the regrowth glyph is already kind of useless for anything other than MT duty.

So I hate nourish and HT, and regrowth is getting nerfed. Can't wait for 3.1

I think you're referring to circumstances that don't exist in the game as long as your DPS aren't standing in the fire. We'll see what happens in Ulduar, but as of now there aren't any fights where the raid takes enough fast, imminent death, damage that you'd need more than one swiftmend or a NG proc. You can heal KT Iceblocks with a non-hasted regrowth, thats really the only massive damage I can think of besides Gluth, but Gluth is pretty moot since the raid doesn't take any damage and you can take your sweet ass time topping them off

There is a new trinket found from Kologarn which is very interesting:


I would easily replace MDF with this due to the nature of our healing meaning we are normally putting two spells out per 5 seconds at least resulting in an 80 MP5 effect with near 160 in spam situations. I quite honestly am really stunned by how amazing it appears to be and slightly question if it will end up being nerfed eventually.

I think we see raiding form diferent angles, I am not talking about perfectly executed kills where everyone is behaving like they should. That kind of fight happens when bosses are on farm, they are not hard at all and don´t require top performance from the healers present. What Im refering to is fights where everyone is still learning to execute them. In these fights people do take damage that can be avoided once you know it. But with good healing many wipes don´t haveto be wipes. You´re also right that you don´t need haste to technicaly manage two icetombs, but no healer executes new fights perfectly from scratch either. Glyphed HT is faster and thus lets you handle situations before experience kicks in to make them easy.

If you are at a 1 sec GCD wouldn't, during spam phase, this trinket be worth 230 mp5 ? ( 5 cast multiplies by the 46 mana it reduces ? ) + the 100 spirit ...

I really don't see the HT glyph being able to fit into my book for Ulduar. Its a good alternative, but after seeing these fights, its pretty seldom when a flash heal outweighs a rejuv or WG to raid heal. Nourish is definitely a better tank heal, I get higher HPM and HPS out of it.
Now the rejuv glyph I could see being quite useful with the t8 4pc. It might only see a bonus on the instant hot proc, but even then you're looking at a 3.5k normal or 5k crit on it (assuming it does). Either way, that goes a long way in closing the disparity in our ability to raid heal, topping off people quickly. Esp. since WG is not as viable as it is in current content due to the spread-out nature of the new fights.

It was a guarded estimate which took latency and reaction speeds into account. Replenishment is never the full effect but more between 70-85% on a per fight basis counting the assumed mana for the duration against the actual amount gained so I tend to try and always devalue the figures slightly to get a more realistic value.

There is also an Intellect trinket (with 108 Int / 850 SP for 10 sec proc) and while the Intellect is naturally stronger the proc is better in the hands of a DPSer and I highly doubt it could be compared to either Spark or IDS.

I'm not dumb, I understood his problem. But I'm just saying you're thinking about it like a dps would. Yes, for a caster going under GCD is just a waste of stat points - but it's not true for a healer, it means the heals get there earlier. The fact of the matter is, if you're constantly on GCD/cast time as a druid now days, you're probably going to run out of mana in moments - pick your time to heal and don't overheal like a paladin.
It's very nice that you have nature's swiftness, I agree. However, on such a large cooldown it is not something to be relied upon. You can't know that the target needs a sub-1s cast until after he's dead, in which case it's safer to be sub-1s. The longer someone is on a low amount of health, the more chance they are to die. So you want to get them back up to full health as soon as possible. Having sub-1s cast means the raid member you're healing is going to be in dangerous territory health wise for less time.
Disc priests are damage "mitigators." Druids WERE there to relieve pressure on the direct healers, but now we're one of the strongest direct healers, thus it's our job to do the direct healing and have the others relieve healing on us.
It's not about sniping heals, if I meant sniping heals, I'd say sniping heals. What I'm saying is: when there's raid damage, we have *the* quickest spell without a cooldown to react to that, so we can heal the raid members up and stop them from dying. We have by far the most solo 10man healing potential. Maybe you're stuck on the TBC druid where we had huge mana efficiency and we had to predict everything - those days have past, let them go.
I take it you've never done sarth3drakes? There's plenty of time when there's hard-to-avoid damage that needs to be topped up. People coming out of portals into the lava wave for example - you really need to heal them or they WILL die within a regrowth cast.

I realise that for the past age druids have been really good at mana efficiency and really bad at direct healing, but that doesn't mean we'll be that way forever. We're much better at being asked to HoT up the tank and start healing the raid at the same time. We hardly lend anything more to staying on the tank compared to disc priest/paladin, so why should we waste our time with that when we have such a strong raid heal that we can do whilst keeping up the HoTs?

p.s. Why is a level 63 priest saying anything on these issues? I can only assume that you don't have any experience.

What he has set his characters as has nothing to do with his argument. As to this glyped HT vs regrowth debate, I think it is foolish to argue about which is "better", considering that each heal has its pros and cons. I can see using HT in encounters where you are confident that the player will take no further damage, or when death is imminent and you don't want to/can't use swiftmend or nature's swiftness. However, regrowth has its place to shine in situations where the hot is useful and able to be swiftmended. I suppose you can argue either way, but the consensus is that regrowth is for the raid, nourish is for the tank, and healing touch is there to use once every 3 minutes with NS. I don't deny that HT is good in certain situations, but regrowth is likely better in most.

I do not deny that our direct healing ability has improved by leaps and bounds, but as long as our mechanics encourage setting up combos with HoT's, then we will always be a HoT healer and thus more of a shield. I like to think of the healer "niches" not so much as definite categories, but as a continuum. One side is probably disc priests, the other is paladins. We're in between, and probably closer to the disc priest side. Recent changes have probably slid us a bit closer to paladins and away from disc priests, but I still believe we are more like mitigators than we are like direct healers.

I'd also like to point out that as we are healers, there are few absolutes in how one should play like there are with dps. As a dps character, the best spec is always the one that does the most damage, and that will never change. With healers, conditions change so much from encounters, raid composition, and gear that all we really have are rules of thumb. At the end of the day, however, the correct method of play is whatever gets you through the instance. I think you can make a case for glyphed healing touch and probably be effective, but I think there are more pros to regrowth. It would probably take some WWS's to convince me that regrowth might not be as superior as I would think.

I don't think there is any comparing to be done about regrowth + nourish / HT. Regrowth is a different designed heal that was great pre 3.1 due to the talents and glyph, but that's over. Of course its helpful to keep regrowth on the tank(s), and very mana efficient to do so. As far as a raid heal though, if you're casting HT instead of regrowth or rejuv, I think you may not be seeing where the strength of the class lies. In fact, if you're not careful, HT will leave you behind as a raid healer. Take mimiron's napalm for example. They take 6k a second for 8s seconds, and he throws it to a new player sometimes at 6, meaning 12k damage overlap. If you had just been spamming HT, they have no residual hot left over. If you don't swap to the new guy, he'll die too. If you had used regrowth as the opener then nourish/rj after, you could toss a regrowth to the 2nd person and know they still had some leftover to top them off, or be swiftmended if they got hit again. It just works more reliably for us.
A priest can toss a free flash heal in MT heal downtime, or a shaman can start a chain on a group of people just hit by an aoe, but we are most definitely designed to be the aggregate of healing in between all that, not glyphing and speccing to snipe heals as HT means to do. Its HPM and HPS are outweighed by nourish + seed on the tank, and generally not necessary on raid members, vs rejuv + wild growth. Pre-rejuving / regrowth + nourish makes for excellent and efficient emergency healing.
I understand it scales well with spell power, but the numbers have been crunched and it just doesn't stack up. If you want a flash heal though, to each their own. Different guilds run different healing setups afterall.