Funny, I find that holy paladins are the easiest to beat if you have better reaction times and situational awareness than, say, a senior citizen. In my guild, we raid with two trees, 1 disc priest (who occasionally goes holy now for dual spec and does very well at it), 1 holy priest, 2 holy paladins, and occasionally 1 resto shaman (if she shows up). Prior to 3.1, the other tree and I battled for the top spot on the meters. We have similar gear and good synergy; we talk about healing styles and bounce ideas off of each other. We work hard to be good healers, so it's not that we don't know what we're doing here...

As of 3.1, the holy priest is surpassing us (as well as the disc priest, when he is specced into CoH for certain fights). I think it would be rather arrogant to suggest that because s/he is being beaten, that s/he must not know how to heal. Experience also has nothing to do with it. I acknowledge it is possible that healing classes have some adjusting to do given the broad array of changes that were made and perhaps the meters will shake themselves out to where they were before, but it is also plausible (and, in my opinion, highly likely) that priests just got buffed *that* much. You say it's quite easy to compete with priests; well, I'm countering that with wondering why you're having a hard time with holy paladins. And moreover, how "hardcore" are we speaking here? I mean, have you completed or attempted these fights in a serious way in 25-man?

As for shamans...I'm unsure as to what to say to that, because I can't fathom losing to a shaman. Oh well.

I was looking at the new idol today, [Idol of the Flourishing Life], and i was wondering how it compared to [Idol of Awakening].

The [Idol of the Flourishing Life] increases Spellpower by 187.

As an example, say i heal for 4k nourishes on average, non Crit. With the new idol does this make it heal for 4187 instead?

It is situational. I wouldn't use the Nourish idol unless you are healing the main tank. I typically end up throwing Rejuv's out more often than Nourish, so I use the rejuv idol. I managed to snag the Nourish Idol off of trash before General last night, so I am going to experiment with it a bit.

No, it would increase non-crits with no hots by 129, crits by 194, non-crits with one hot glyphed by 164 and crits by 246, etc. Unless you're doing a very significant amount of healing with nourish and little with rejuv, the awakening glyph is better. The mana reduction on rejuv makes a very nice, cheap heal to toss out whenever you have spare GCD's.

I was thinking about a direct heal build too, for special occasions. And a druid ceirtanly can do direct healing, but imho, compared to other classes he is pretty weak at it.
So from Blizzards point of view, an instance like ulduar 10 man has to be doable with every possible healer combination, so in Wotlk they gave the healer classes new abilities to cover that.
But i dont think cause of this a druid should stand there and spam his "flashs" (nourish, regrowth, glyphed HT, why do we have 3 skills for a playstyle we never really do anyway?) if he wants to be effective and play well.

Lets take a heavy raid dmg situation like Mimiron Phase 2, for those who havn't seen that encounter yet, its something like Sapphiron but the dmg inc is significantly higher and "spikier", means every one is getting hit, but on top of that, something like 5-7 people are getting hit very hard.
Now what can you do about that as a druid? You could stop your hotting, and go to heavy nourish spam to heal those 5-7 ppl. But your hots drop and in the end you maybe safed 2-3 ppl but because your hots are missing some other people are dropping too...
Long story short, i think in a raid with a setup of 6-8 healers you have to work toghether in a situation like this. Priests and Shamans for example are very strong at topping of those 5-7 ppl with things like chainheal, while you (as a druid) are very strong at keeping a very large amount of people alive with your hots till those chainheals are kicking in.
Having Reju up on 15 people and WG at another 6 is soooo much more effective heal than spamming like 10 flash heals in those 16 seconds. Sure there are situations where a flash like nourish is very very useful and i dont want to miss it anymore but overall i dont recomend doing it all the time in every situation.
But well thats one cool thing about resto druid in wotlk, there are so many options and so many playstyles and many things work, so i dont want to talk you out of it but if you really like spamming flashs and stuff you might wanna try a paladin? /cower

Sounds to me more like you don't know any resto shaman that can pull their weight. All the healing classes are fairly well balanced at this point (to a degree). A well played resto shaman can easily climb near or to the top of the meters in a heavy raid damage setting. In fact, the same can be said of almost any class at this point. Any class can top the charts on any given fight given the correct assignment (as is evident by the bulk of these recent posts). I think the largely ignore factor is skill level. Perhaps Daedalix plays with a much better Holy Paladin than you are accustomed to. The sheer fact that you play with an "If they show up" type of resto shaman tells me that they probably wont beat a regular raider, nor should you expect to be beaten by her, as such your Resto shaman experiance is tainted.

But please, can we abandon this silly, "How can I top the Healing Charts" discussion? It is not beneficial. There is a large difference in figuring out how to most effectively heal (or maximize your HPS) as a resto druid, and learning how to top the meters. Rolling lifeblooms on 4 targets in BC would drive a druid to the top of the meters, but I think most would be in agreement that it wasnt the 'most effective' method of druid healing. Topping the raid healing charts only helps yourself, A conversation about the merits of Rejuvenation vs. Lifebloom vs. Regrowth (and its effect on the other healers in your raid) however, is helpful for the education and benefit of everyone that reads these forums. Healing is not DPS, you don't get an extra cookie by topping the meters. You should not be competing with the other healers you raid with.

@ Naliehna

I'm going to crunch some numbers tomorrow, but I dont think resto druids are much weaker than most healing classes in the direct heals department. A Lifebloom + Rejuvenation + Regrowth Hot + Nourish (Glyphed or Tier Bonus..or both) + Living Seed combo can lead to some crazy single target HPS. I'll need to poke around to compare and see what other classes can sustain at this point, just some napkin math gives it around 8300 HPS in my current gear. That is without including living seed, and only counts the Nourish glyph (not the tier 7 bonus). It also doesnt take into account the GCD's required to refresh the HoTs. Tomorrow I should have some free time, i'll work at getting a better max HPS value, that includes GCDs, and Living Seed Procs. I would suspect that paladins have us beat on single target throughput, but that we hold an advantage over both Shaman and Priests (in terms of Max HPS). Granted, this 'rotation' is harder to maintain that a single spell spam, but thats one of the fun aspects of being a resto druid.

This is the strategy that I've taken on. I've dropped GOTE and gone for a Glyph'd HT kind of spec. So the tank gets the typical RG+RJ+3LB with Nourish. The raid will get HT and WGs, until the T8 set bonus of course.

Lately, I've been quite frustrated with my raid healing in Ulduar... It feels like everyone is just healing that little bit quicker than me, which leaves me with only RJ+WG on the raid. I think with the speed that random people can die in Ulduar, glyph'd HT seems well suited.

This is the same techinique i was using last night on Mimiron. I found it was quite effective, and my HPS went through the roof in that phase. I was using a 5 Rejuv 1 WG cycle pretty much.

And i believe you are referring to the Resto Itemization thread.

Thank You I found what i was looking for nearly instantly. Gl in ulduar!

Regrowth is a godsend for mimiron p2. Unlike what it says in some places (like stratfu - whose page is based on the much easier 10 man version), the largest amount of damage in that phase actually comes from heat wave. What worked for us was assigning a few targets to each pair of healers. Personally I kept rejuv and regrowth on all the targets, swapped RG with lifebloom when moving from the laser (actually one of the few places LB is good for raid healing). Trying to heal this phase with nourish ia definite no go.
To be honest I find nourish to be close to useless. Granted I don't have the 4t7 nor the glyph - but one is going away anyway and the other is competing with other pretty decent glyphs. I guess I can full hot the tank and nourish him, but having a holy paladin handle that with a basic hot backup is much better and leaves me free to raid heal. There was one fight so far (up to general) that I had to use nourish and that was Ignis. Other fights with heavy hitters (Hodir, Thorim) have a single tank, so it's not really needed if you have someone else covering that corner.

I'm not really clear on your spec. Is it for tank healing or raid healing? You specced into both HT and nourish/regrowth. Any build without GotEM is presumably for tank healing only, but then why get HT?

I definitely find HT glyph spec to be working great for me in Ulduar. However, HT is not optimal in a tank healing build. It's really only suited as your direct heal in a primarily HoT playstyle. It's for a raid healer, when you need a quick heal and swiftmend is on cooldown.

So a better option for a HT spec would be to drop Nature's Bounty for GotEM. You should also consider swapping Nature's Grace for Subtlety or Natural Perfection. Your direct heal is HT which neither crits that often, nor do you chain-cast it that often...nor does it benefit much from the cast time reduction. A build which focuses on RG/nourish AND HT, but without GotEM does not seem very effective to me.

I also agree with the posters who say Druids are the worst primary tank healers, and the best raid healers.

As for spamming glyphed HT on raid members during heavy raid damage, the numbers rarely line up in a way which makes this a good choice. You will always provide more HPS and usually end up with more living players by laying down Rejuvs (even without the set bonus) on as many people as possible. It only takes a few seconds for the healing to have surpassed HT spam. Each Rejuv cast is potentially ~12k of healing per GCD, while HT is only about 5500. As long as the player can survive until the first and second tick, Rejuv will always be better. If the damage isn't deadly, Rejuv is more efficient. If they can't survive until the second tick of Rejuv, chances are other players aren't going to survive either and they better be getting hit by a chain heal or coh soon. HT spam might save a player or two in the very short term, but in almost all raid damage situations it will have you desperately trying to catch the incoming damage, and failing due to your lower HPS.