i hate to help chase you away, but someone who hasn't actually cleared Naxx yet, or beat Sarth up with any drakes, doesn't really get to comment on how much healing the current content requires.

Stick around for a bit though and you might learn something. But post less and read more.

The major flaw in all the arguments presented is the absolutes that we are throwing out. Turlockmike isn’t completely wrong in the fact that yes, we do need mana as well as a means to regen that mana. It would be amiss however to claim that 16 points of spirit is always more valuable to a druid than 19 points of Spell power. This is really what these boards are about, finding a balance, and finding a numerical value that we as healers can assign to gear so we can actually say 'yes, this is better'.

If anyone has ever seriously played a DPS, or DPS alt (I do 10 mans with my hunter) then they have a bit more experience gear balancing than most healers. Let’s take a real life example. Currently I have a fairly fresh level 80 Death Knight that I started for fun. On a per point of stat basis, raising my hit rating will give me the most DPS. So what do I do with that knowledge? Should I grab all the +hit gear i can, gem everything with +16 hit gems, go charging into naxx and expect to do 4k DPS? Of course not, hit caps out around 8%, there comes a point where gearing for STR and EXP and CRIT actually lead to better DPS on a per point basis. It would be laughable for me to actively seek out more hit rating after I hit that 8%.

The same is true for healing, only....we aren't given a hard number that we can rely on. As I tell most new healers I come across, ‘DPS is a science, healing is an Art’. Much of what we do is based on a personal preference, and as such, only general guidelines can be established. There are no "Gem for INT until you reach 1012 INT stop and start gemming for Haste" rules for us to follow, no "reach 750 mp5 then gem SP", there are no rotations that are guaranteed to bring about the most HPS in every fight. All we can do is make general rules. Generally, they are accepted as...

1. Gear for enough mana/regen to last you the entire fight
2. Gear for Haste to bring your Global Cool down to 1second
3. Gear for Spell Power

Obviously these are not hard and fast rules. Gear has a mixture of all sorts of stats that are useful for a Resto Druid, and we cannot control when or what drops. Each of these rules are open for debate, and even within the rules there is discussion about how best to go about it. Will a Resto Druid who doesn’t follow these guidelines be able to heal effectively? I do not doubt it. However, as it has been said, this entire website is not dedicated to being simply 'good enough' but rather, to be the best that we possibly can be.

Back to my earlier example regarding hit rating. For my DK, I have saved 2 separate loot rank lists. The first values everything by the accepted values. The second list is identical only I have set the value for hit to 0. Healers don't have hit rating, we have mana. Most contributors and readers of this forum are much closer being 'mana capped' then to being starved for mana. With this in mind, the loot and stat ranking that occurs here will downplay the overall role of our mana regen stats, similar to a stat list that does not take into account hit rating.

Now, unlike a stat like hit rating, there are very few item slot options that will even allow us to ignore our mana regen stats (Int, Spirit, Mp5) as nearly every piece of gear we find will have a mixture of those 3 stats.. It makes sense to include them into our overall ranking calculations. The high gear level we receive, the more diminished our regen stats will become, and the more important our throughput stats will be.

This actually brings me to your point concerning the 3.1 regeneration nerf. The sky is NOT falling. Other then the increased cost of Lifebloom, I actually can not find a single change to my mana regeneration during the course of a normal fight. On a typical fight I spend nearly all of my time inside the 5 second rule, this change does not hurt me. Very rarely am I personally in a shamans group, and as such I hardly ever received the benefit from the shaman mana regen totem. The fact that this will no longer stack with the pally blessing doesn’t change anything for me. I will have to make due with a smaller return on my innervate, but rarely is my innervate used. Somewhere lost in the shuffle of this whole mana nerf is the fact that we will be getting better gear, with better mana regeneration stats built in. A few weeks into working on 3.1 raids these few changes wont seem that terrible.

In regards to overhealing, the answer you seek is simply "Bring less healers". This isn’t a problem with just druids, nearly all healers are finding that their overheal percentages are climbing. This is both nothing new to World of Warcraft. When a guild first steps into a raid, It is generally accepted that they are in the worst gear they will be in. As tanks gear up they gain both mitigation and avoidance. So after 2-3 months of clears you can expect your tank to not only get hit for less, but to actually get hit less times. Even if you keep the same gear, you would find your overhealing numbers would go up slightly if you cast the same spells. Add into the fact that now your spells hit harder and that less raid members stand in the fire as they figure out where to go (hopefully) and one would expect overhealing to go up considerably.

You are also right. Spell power doesn’t equal more HPS on the meters, it is completely dependant on what I do. But that is akin to the statement 'More attack power doesn’t equal more DPS'. You are correct, the actually increase of the DPS will depend on the player doing the correct things. The greater Attack Power will allow him to achieve higher DPS, but only if he does things correctly. This is the same with healing. Does more spell power on my gear mean that I will heal for more? No. I could spend all my time spamming Healing Touch on myself if I were an idiot. The more correct statement is "More Spell Power equals more theoretical HPS". Does more HPS make you a better healer? No. Does it allow you to be one? Yes.

All this is to getting us sidetracked. Your original argument (in post 723) was:

Spirit > MP5 > INT > Spellpower > Haste/Crit

This is the miss information. Looking at your regen stats alone the list should change to

Int > Spirit > Mp5 (In terms of Item budget)

Technically speaking my personal loot list has (based on my current gear)

Spirit = .3908
Int = .5504
Mp5 = 1

which means 1 point of Mp5 is worth more regen than 1 spirit or Int, but I’ve yet to see blizzard make any gear that has a +80 mp5 on it....for a rough idea about how blizzard weights stats there are gems for 16 Spirit, 16 Int, but only 6 mp5. Using the numbers above, we can find the possible benefits of each gem

Spirit: 16 x .3908 = 6.25
Int: 16 x .5504 = 8.806
Mp5: 6 x 1 = 6

This clearly favor a hierarchy of Int > Spirit > Mp5 on a basis of regen alone. You may argue that Spirit should receive a bump based on the +healing it can add, but trust me when I say that this will not change the value. In order for Spirit to even equal the total value for Int, you would have to weight Spell Power at more than 1, which then makes spell power your most wanted stat (which you have said it shouldn’t be)

Values for these mana regeneration numbers can be found using simple math and are only open for slight amounts of debate. Your exact values are based on your gear, but should be fairly similar to mine. If you can crunch some numbers and prove that 1 spirit is worth more mana regeneration than 1 int....I will gladly show you where you've made a mistake in your calculations.

Apologies if this question has been asked already, but is there a problem with Druid healing on 10man Sarth 3D and Phase 2 on 25man Malygos for the 6 minute achievement? This is assuming we have a Holy Paladin healing the MT on Sarth. I'm mostly asking because the guild I'm in is working on these achievements, and on both occasions I've been told that Druid healing isn't that great for the burst damage the raid is taking on these specific encounters. While I don't necessarily agree, I've only been raiding in WoTLK for alittle over a month, which isn't alot compared to the amount of time I raided in TBC, so I'm just asking if there really is a issue with Druids trying to raid/drake heal on these specific encounters, or if its dependent on group setup, or if maybe the info I'm being told isn't accurate. Thanks in advance.

No, Druids can do fine healing those encounters.

I can field the part about Sarth, since I duo-healed 10man 3d with a Pally earlier this week. This fight is particularly about the type of spells you are casting and when you cast them than anything else. The pally's assignment was to heal the MT where I had the assignment of healing everything else. I did have a little help from our Ele shaman during twilight torment, and he also healed the disciple tank when the dps went in the portal. I rolled all three hots on our Add-tank and drake tank while topping off the raid with rejuv's from lava strikes and loose adds. During Lava walls I kept a rejuv on the MT as well just so I could swiftmend if needed since pally's are not as mobile as I am. Once Twilight torment started happening Wildgrowth and rejuv covered that nicely with aforementioned chain heals from an ele shaman. The tanks did spike some, ie. the add tank spiked when all the whelps spawned which I covered with a little Swiftmend & regrowth and full hots of course. And the drake-tank spiked mainly when he had Shadron and Vesperon, which I also covered with regrowth and Swiftmend. The biggest problem we had was watching the MT's health on lava walls after shadron went down, which is the opportune time for Swiftmend.

To provide an alternate perspective on druid healing in OS10-3d, I typically also heal it with a paladin. However, our assignments are the opposite -- I deal with the Sarth tank (and spot heal the raid when I feel like it), and he does the rest.

Our reasoning for this goes something like...
There are two limiting factors for Sarth tank healing: mobility and throughput. When it comes to mobility, resto is unrivaled, least of all by paladins. IoL and holy shock can only go so far. You're not going to take a huge hit to your throughput (though you'll definitely take some) when you have to move for a flame wave. When it comes to sheer potential throughput, our class has every ability to heal through sarth-like damage with a full HoT stack and a direct-heal spam of your choice.

I'd argue that not only is a resto druid viable for MT healing on Sarth -- it might in fact be optimal. But I don't think that really matters too much in the scale of things.

Short answer: yes, resto is perfectly viable for both encounters.

This is what I had assumed, thanks for the confirmations. The one night I did go, a lot of things were going on like not everyone AoEing adds when the 2nd set of whelps spawned, resulting in 1-2 people pulling aggro, etc, so I couldn't accurately gauge whether it was just my fault or some people screwing up. I've seen videos before hand on druids doing each role, but my Healing Leader said that Druids are the weakest overall at raid/drake healing on that fight, since it's pretty much looking like he's gonna be the only one healing the MT here, so I just wanted some outside opinions on the matter. Thanks.

Blizzard said they were tunning Lifebloom mana cost a bit, probably from 75% to XX, but we haven't heard about that in a while... Also release date is probably very close now, so I think we need to ready ourselves to play with the current Lifebloom PTR, anyone seen any blue post about it? I was looking for it but I don't see them commenting on Lifebloom for ages.

Hello guys...
Since the Ulduar (3.1.) is going to release very soon and a lot of changes are going to happen i would like to ask you what are you planing to do? I mean, due the fact that Lifebloom will be "nerfed", spirit will be worthless (more or less) etc... Do you have any idea about some kind of new specc, rotation?

If your guild is worried about healing 25man Maly 6min in phase2, drop a glyph like regrowth or whatever and pick up a Healing Touch glyph. Don't worry, you can go back easily, each glyph costs tuppence, then respec into Naturalist, again, you can spec back after he's dead. When phase2 starts, roll lifebloom/rejuv on the tanks then start spamming HT on whoever takes damage. This encounter lasts so little time that I don't even give a second thought to my mana - I just burn through it like mad, personally I try to toss my innervate after the first vortex on a suitable mage, but if you don't have other mana+ cooldowns like pot/trinkets and you're not confident about your mana, it's probably best to save it in case you need it.

To address the part of your comment that wasn't, spirit will not be worthless. Due to the intensity buff, it will be just as valuable inside the five-second rule. It's our OOFSR that changes with the spirit nerf, and honestly that's just going to hurt us on trash. This just means we're going to have to actually *use* the mage water we pick up at the start of the run.

Edit: @Norfair -- All of that is remarkably comforting to hear.

Edit 2: Oh, it'll also be a little annoying not seeing our little blue bar shoot up during phase changes (Ie Malygos).