Unfortunately I haven't been able to get onto the PTR as much I had intended. The nights I have been available the server has died or Blizz have pulled the boss at the last minute.

My guild is taking a look at its healer roster in preparation for Ulduar and considering getting some new recruits. Throughout the current patch we have typically raided with 2 Paladins, 2 Priests, 1 Shaman, 1 Druid. We don't drop down below six healers because the healers would just get bored sitting out so frequently - we all know we are already suffering from a lack of raiding content. For Ulduar we are considering recruiting another Resto Druid but that is only viable if 2 Druids can be used in an optimum setup.

So to those who have spent a good deal of time on the PTR...

How many Healers have you been raiding Ulduar with?
What would you say is the most balanced healer setup? I understand each encounter is different, but in general what is a sensible setup?
Is 2 (or more) Druids viable or even a positive thing?
If not Druid, what class(s) are 'strongest' to stack above 1 per raid group?

Two druids who are used to working together will bring out very strong results, simply because of the way HoTs stack so much better than most other classes that tend to cast the same spell on the same person resulting in large overhealing. Shamans stack pretty well, simply because of the amount of decisions the server takes away from them (their talent that randomly heals lowest raid member, chain heal jumps, etc). Paladins are particularly bad to stack because their biggest trick (bacon on tank, heal raid) can only work for one paladin at a time (1 bacon per target), unless of course you need the second holy for a third paladin to get the third blessing. Personally, I think stacking priests is okay as long as A: they have different specs, B: they have different styles/jobs. Priests and Druids are quite good at being decent at many jobs, which is probably why they're so good at solo healing, and thus are "okay" to stack if they're understanding of eachother, paladins basically specialise at direct heals mana efficiently, so they don't suffer too much from having two of them, but there's not exactly a lot of advantage either. Shamans are the thing I'd bring two of, given the choice. This is in general though, not tailored to Ulduar.

We're going into Uld with 2 druids, 3 resto shammy, 1 pally, 1 disc priest. That should cover and if we find we need an 8th, it can be anyone. Also the shammys can convert to dps easily once the patterns are down.

I know what you're saying about boredom, we're using this time to just practice our coverage and there just isn't enough damage going around... BUT we still aren't immortals so there is room to improve.

Honestly it's hard to say how many of what class healers you would need right now with the significant changes to mana and the new encounters, hard modes and Algalon of which no one can give full information about yet as they are either not fully tuned/untested.

Priests (Disc especially) have slight stacking issues with PoM/PW:S and Holydins have the Beacon thing and the lack of utility on raid healing when you do not need so many tank healers. Shamans are fine due to smart heals and Druids work well together especially with regards to the Nourish boost where you should be able to use it more on raid healing where needed as multiple Druids should result in a much larger amount of the raid with hots on them.

Honestly though 2-3 of any class should not really show any issues in 25 mans unless each Priest is Disc in which case having all but one going Holy would solve the majority of the issues. 2 Druids have never really been bad for healing in raids and I see nothing changing that any time soon.

Well, Swiftmend, but in a world with Glyph of Swiftmend that's really not much of an issue.

Now let's all pray they will add the 15% spirit to spellpower conversion out of treeform as well and we can finally start healing in casterform again. Or am I the only one getting sick of the treeform looks?

I am sure you are joking to an extent, as I do not think they are doing this for PvE druids, it is a buff to resto PvP since with all the cyclone/roots you have to cast coming in and out of tree form is way too much mana.

However if you still want to have max healing output you will need to be in ToL form, great for PvE and select PvP times when your DPS is being focuses and you need major heals to come through.

Edit: All that said, I am sure every druid is anxious to see what skin changes the devs have planned (since they keep mentioning they have some planned for the future).

There is so much with your post (and your blog) which is wrong I do not really know where to start so I will just do the last point.

Regarding healers in general with crit and haste you are again wrong.
Priests and Paladins have crit directly tied to their regeneration (Illumination / Holy Concentration) as do Shamans to a lesser extent with Imp Water Shield.
Priests and Shamans have the majority of their spells in a state of being able to crit while also having Inspiration and Ancestral Healing which provide the armor boost to the targets as well as other synergies with crit (Surge of Light, Divine Aegis and Ancestral Awakening) which enhance their throughput on healing. Druids however have Swiftmend, Nourish and Regrowth as the only ones which can crit and their use is very minimal in our healing even in 3.1 (before you mention Regrowth keep in mind that a lot more of the healing done comes from the hot than you think, so that 40% RG you will cite only had around <20% of that which was able to crit).

For Haste things are a little more equal between the healers but due to our lack of using cast time spells that often and our near baseline (you need T7 gear) GCD limit on our mainly used spells thanks to Gift of the Earthmother we hit a wall on that equality pretty quickly. 3.1 somewhat cripples Nature's Grace due to the duration change which heavily limits its performance for us but that is slightly justified because right now it almost makes crit=haste.

You are right in that crit cannot easily be equated into more HPS in itself because if someone is at a 6k deficit you will not get bonus points for healing them for 10k with a critical. With Regrowth you could reach a point where you had a near reliable critical heal which you would assume healed for 7-8k and if someone got healed less it was not a big deal but that again changes in 3.1 too.

I'm sure others can and will point out the other significant errors you have made and until then I suggest you spend time in research (and experience) before you try and justify your points here especially when they are for the most part flat our wrong.

This situation is not what these forums are really about. This forum is generally not looking at the easy part of the game, it's looking at pushing every little bit out of your performance and optimising everything as much as possible so that when you come across a hard situation you can deal with it properly.

There's a lot wrong with your post, but most of it stems from the current state of raiding. We're in the first tier of raiding at the moment - people are taking less damage in general, and have smaller health pools than with gear further through the expansion. Most guilds use more healers than strictly necessary because of this, and so you will see stats such as haste, crit and spellpower as less effective. Even most PUG players are (on average) in good gear now, so you will tend to see people taking less damage meaning less healing required.

Spellpower is an incredibly important stat for us. Because a large percentage of the healing that we do comes not in the form of big, direct heals but instead smaller ticks, anything that we can do that increases the size of those ticks is beneficial to us. A larger tick size gets people healed up faster, minimizing the chance that they'll die to the next round of AOE from the boss, and freeing you to focus on healing other people. Larger ticks means that our hots work better as a buffer on the tank, providing more healing, meaning that we are better able to address unexpected problems that may arise (melee attack + special + parry hasted melee on tank, for example). The fact that damage is light right now is not an indication that it will stay that way for Ulduar and beyond.

The changes in the amount of overhealing that you are doing I would imagine are related less to the amount of spellpower on your gear and more to how your playstyle has changed between then and now. Overhealing can vary wildly from fight to fight. Compare Sapphiron face rolling Rejuv to Patchwerk spamming the tank as one of the most obvious examples. The numbers are meaningless without any sort of context. Also, remember that hots don't tick when the person is at full health, which is an invisible skewing of the combat log, depending on how much you use hots vs direct heals.

I think that one of the most important arguments for having additional spellpower is when considering worst case scenarios. You'll be really glad you have the extra spellpower if one of the other healers goes down and you have to pick up for them. Similarly if an interrupt or such (think not decursing people on Noth) is missed and the raid starts taking a bunch of unexpected damage. We aren't gearing up with lots of spellpower to keep doing Naxx. We're gearing up for Ulduar where the fights are more then likely going to be a lot harder, have more damage, and have more times when things can go horribly wrong and we, as the healers, have to try and save the raid.

I agree with your point, that we might have to regear/regem for regen because the nerfs will make mana tighter. However, the poster in question states, "Spell power is significantly lower in value than sprit". It's common practice to gear for regen first, and then when you get enough regen go full throttle for throughput stats. Of course if the nerfs bring us below the "enough regen" line then we go back to basics and throw in some new gems or trinkets, but after that point more regen is just redundant and spell power is NOT worth more than spirit.

For the sake of making sure that false info doesn't float around, I'll go over the things turlockmike is mistaken about.

Point 1: More spell power = more overhealing

This is really wrong. You compare your overhealing numbers from when you were first 80 to now, and have noticed that they have jumped up. The reason this has happened is not due just to spell power. Firstly, your overhealing numbers are much more dependent on how you play than they are on your gear. Secondly, this content is really easy and healers are literally fighting for getting the heal first, which is an atmosphere that promotes larger overheal numbers. Third, it really doesn't matter what your overhealing is if you didn't run out of mana. If healers are running out of mana while overhealing is high, then you know that if they used their heals more effectively it would improve the use of the mana they have, but otherwise it's irrelevant. Lastly, overhealing is really a relic of vanilla wow and is not really as horrid as it used to be. It's still a useful measure of performance, but not really the cut-and-dry good/bad healer indicator it was in MC.

"Healing is very different from DPS. More spell power doesn't equal more hps, more crit doesn't equal more hps. Those usually (from what I've seen) equate to more overhealing (which isn't always a bad thing). However, spirit (which helps with mana), int (which also helps with mana), and haste (which lets you cast more often) always helps you last longer in a fight."

Of course healing is different from dps, but that doesn't mean that you can't treat gearing a healer like you would a dps. Crit and SP do equal more hps, always. Haste also does nothing to help you last longer in a fight, absolutely nothing. I'd also like to point out that spell power also has a mana regen component attached to it in that if you have enough spell power that one heal will patch someone up instead of two, then you saved yourself the cost of additional casts. It also frees up GCD's that you would end up using to recast additional heals. If you don't believe me, then shoot for the lowest SP you can manage and gear up specifically for regen, because you'll need all that regen to cover the costs of all the weak heals you throw out.

"the way healing is now, its not a healing race. There is no boss which requires you to chain cast 100% of the time."

Dukes is completely right in regards to this. This forum is about overclocking your performance and squeezing awesome out of non-awesome gear. With this attitude, you'll hit walls in difficult content and more easily wipe in when-the-shit-hits-the-fan scenarios that you might have recovered from otherwise. It's in your best interests to strive for better performance.