Ha! I wish I had that sort of luxury. We just had a major fallout with a bunch of tanks basically ceasing to raid with us for various reasons and a number of people picked up those roles as well as they can. The result is that I can't even imagine raiding without 3/3 sub at the moment. Maybe a month from now when our tanks get a bit more situation-aware. DTPS charts look really "interesting" right now.

Does even 1/3 or 2/3 sub make any practical sense? To me sub is either 0/3 or 3/3 talent - if you need reduction, you want it all, if you don't need it, why would you care about 10%. There are so many other optional talents in resto tree.

Okay I actually had time to look at your parse. OUr healing chart might ook strange to you, but our top 3 healers on Hodir had the same total healing done as your top 3..... but our raid took 3 million more damage and 1 extra minute to beat him. Ret pally heals are through the roof on our encounter.

We made a few attempts at Freya +3 on 10 man and I can't imagine how you can do that fight without it. Also the Thorim arena would seem impossible without it. I can think of many times that my little druid butt has been scurrying around trying to avoid adds and such(shadowmeld ftw), but I really can't think of anytime that I thought-"man if my casted heal just hit for a bit more". All I can say is that you are much braver than I am.

I've done Freya10 + 3 with 0/3 subtlety and GHT, it's not that bad. What are you getting aggro on, Storm Lasher? Also, while GHT does heal for a bit more, I think a more apt hypothetical would be "man, if only my casted heal was twice as fast."

If you have trouble with arena aggro, you need to either switch the classes tanking in there, or add a healer to help spread out the healing aggro. I single heal Thorim arena 10man. We put 2 in tunnel and 4 in arena on 25man. No aggro troubles.

Yeah, I wasn't really talking about 10 man Thorim it is cake. I have solo healed Thorim arena, XT and Kolgoran on 10 man. Normal 10 man Uldar isn't very hard. We run with a pally and at least 1 DK tanking arena on 25 man, but pull aggro I do.

I was under the impression those guys on Freya ignore normal aggro rules and just do whatever. Am I wrong?

Also Nature's Grace, like all other haste increasing talents (such as Tidal Wave) does not decrease the GCD.

NG certainly does decrease the GCD. Otherwise it would be of very little benefit to either resto or balance druids since almost all of their "usual" spells (exceptions Starfire, Regrowth) are already at the GCD or less.

Back when NG lasted 12s it did not reduce the GCD.

It will not reduce the GCD below 1s.

You are absolutely correct.

I've really always thought of subtlety as more of a 5man talent than a raiding talent. Raid tanks just produce so much more threat that I'm only taking agro if the tanks are going down or an add spawns/comes in from my side of the fight. In these situations I'd be taking agro with or without the talent. That said, there's nothing else worth taking at that level so I have it.

At least for me, the argument for 3/3 Subtlety isn't so much "I'm going to pull aggro off the tanks because I put out so much healing" but rather "When an add spawns, it's just that much easier for the tank to pull it off me with their aoe threat moves" Yes, you have Barkskin, yes, Imp Tree gives a good bit of armor, but I'd still prefer that add to only have to take 1 tick of Consecrate/Death and Decy/Swipe/Tclap to aggro onto the tank instead of taking 2 ticks and possibly getting a swing off on me. Also remember that by the time that add even gets in range of the tank's aoe I might have had hots ticking on 10 different people for 3-4 seconds, which can add up to be a decent amount of threat. I won't list them all, but there are enough fights with adds that I think it's a valid investment of talent points. Besides, unless you're going for a Glyphed HT build, you're probably going to put at least 2 points into it anyways to reach the Tier3 talents.

It's pretty obvious that Rejuv and Wild Growth have the highest healing per cast time out of our spells, so if you use them exclusively you will maximize your HPS. HPS isn't everything, though. If you have a choice between having higher HPS and letting someone die, what will you do?

That's absolutely true, but like someone said before "we don't raid in vacuum". How you heal and how much you heal for is dictated what 5-7 other healers do, and in general overall behavior of 25 people (yes, that includes you).

So while in ideal world we could probably just do raid healing and roll our hots and all be on pace for #1 in the world, nobody else really gives a damn how you do it so long the raid accomplishes their objectives. Your stats posted have Lifebloom, Swiftmend, Nourish, and even Tranquility - so apparently you felt like some of those are actually necessary now and then. Did your raid "rely" on you casting them? Since you actually used them, I suppose the answer is: absolutely.

When I get asked to heal the offtank - what am I going to do? Say: "no no - that's not my job"? Or if someone dies after they get spiked for 20k then finished off by some aura or even pitiful add that didn't quite get picked up yet, that's when you wish that you had a nice good heal for that. I could simply say: "you guys suck" but that's not really constructive, is it?

More often than not, this is a false choice. You might save one person by dropping your Rejuv/WG rotation to Nourish right now, but in 10 seconds two more people whose hots dropped off will be in trouble. Run your max HPS rotation and let the classes suited to spot healing cover that.

As you've said, this is exactly true.

If you're asked to heal the offtank, yes, you should say "no no - that's not my job" assuming there's a paladin or disc priest, or resto shaman available. Obviously if you're the only choice, then yes you should do it (obviously this happens quite a bit more in 10 mans), but if your raid leadership is assigning a resto druid to tank heal over any of those three choices, you have organizational issues. To turn things around, what would you do/think if your guild said 'Ok, paladins heal the raid, resto druids, you're on maintank healing'.

How we heal and who we heal is dependent on the 3-5 other healers in the raid. If they're not being used optimally, you need to take a step back and fix that problem before going forward.

Swiftmend is also a powerful tool for those spikes, and is conveniently usable on anyone with a rejuvenation on them.

You are assuming I even cast gHT/Nourish on XT at all. I just checked last night's parse, I didn't cast either even once. I'm not sure how using a fight like this as an example makes sense.

Essentially people are splitting hairs over which tool to use. If I follow your suggestion, it's neither. I guess I could glyph WG/RJ/SM and call it a day. I'd top more charts, but that would cripple me in emergency situations. Your bias comes from your BiS gear and Hard Mode raid guild. My guild isn't doing heroic hard modes yet.

Oh and why did you cast Nourish 12 times? Also, why did your Shaman die? I mean it could be for some other reason, but is it possible one more big heal would have saved him?

At any given moment there is a finite amount of healing to do. Meters often simply reflect who's heals landed first, just as much as who heals the best. On paper there is no problem with this. But you seriously want me to just spamming my RJ/WG while I see 3 people sitting at 20% health?

Doing what is best in theory, is not always best in practice. It assumes too much. You are assuming my other healers are fast enough, you are a assuming the raid has a good balance of classes/gear/skill, you are assuming my raiders are taking minimal aoe damage, you are assuming that I can't pop one or two gHT and continue hotting up the raid, etc etc etc.

If they are at 20% in a constant dmg situation then a rejuv + WG would still be fine. What he's arguing against is making poor healing choices like nourish spam when it is not necessary or helpful based on the class you're playing or the fight you're in.

There are only a couple fights I use nourish more than a couple times (especially on non-tanks) and XT is not one of them. Think overall healing strategy and not you healing in a silo.

This is not a false choice, it is a fundamental tradeoff in healing between 'spike' and 'pressure.' Blizzard is well aware of this tradeoff and designs their spells accordingly. Pressure heals: efficient, slow, spammable, low hps in isolation. Spike heals: inefficient, fast, tend to have cooldowns, high burst hps.

Knowing when to respond to spikes and when to respond to pressure is a fundamental healer skill, and comes from experience. To be honest, I don't think there is 'the right way' to make this tradeoff. As others said, it depends on encounter, healing lineup, the skill and latency of other healers in your guild, etc. Druids are very strong pressure healers, but sometimes we need to help with spikes too, just as other healers sometimes need to help us with pressure healing.

Or you could just faceroll Rejuv/WG all day. That works too, I guess.

Your emergency tools are swiftmend and NS. Almost always a well timed nourish will do just as well as a glyphed HT, but you're not wasting other tools to get it.

You don't need to full heal a non-tank...you just need to get them out of the danger zone so the rejuvs, chains, and CoH can get them back to full. You're trying to do too many roles with your character, when there are 5 other healers that can support you.

They don't bring me because I heal like a paladin. They bring me because I level off raid and tank dmg and heal like a druid. If my guild needs a Flash heal spammer they can bring a priest or pally.

Seriously though, in our guild we have 4 trees, 1 shaman, 1 paladin, and 1.5 holy priests. I'm doing what I can.



Okay, let's change gears.

I see some "pro" druids place a point into Improved Tranquility. Can someone explain why? I don't even have it on my bar anymore.

I mean in the time you channel the spell, couldn't you RJ/WG etc your whole party just as well? And why would you wanna focus on your whole party only, are trees getting put in melee groups or something?

Am I missing something?

In my healing spec its a point that had to go someplace and all other choices were at best equally meh, and I think you're missing the utility of tranquility.

There are times, just often enough, that the very very strong healing of just your group from tranq is a lifesaver and vastly out does the healing you could otherwise be doing during that channel. Its extremely situational, but in those situations absolutely unbeatable.

I cannot imagine having a button which could help the raid not on my bars at all, even if I only occasionally press it.

I'd say it's more of a utility option. Where else are you going to put that last point in? 2% mana on Nourish, 20% boost to your NS/HT, 10% reduced threat? All the options are lack luster, so I guess it comes down to a personal preference.