Quick question. If you cast LB while clear casting is up, will it return the 400mana still or will it calculate the free cast and return nothing?

And swiftmend, at least for me. I was a lot more conservative than Beef was on this fight, but he was paying attention to healing Manly, which always leads to some extra healing, heh. Anyways, I mostly just made sure rejuv was up on the tank and cast-canceled regrowth, trying to keep it up as much as possible, and the rest of the time I kept my finger hovering over swiftmend so I could efficiently cover tank spikes. Plus a WG on guys in the green cloud if I was nearby, but generally I tried to stay clear of clouds so as to not overcrowd them. Pretty sure I only hopped in two total.

In general I find the lack of LB prominence in druid healing to be kind of disappointing, as well as the bonus on mana back. Previously, it was clear when you were doing it "right", and there were efficiency penalties when you screwed up, but now, if you drop a LB it's no big deal because you get a big heal and mana back. And there's not really a 'wrong' way to blanket the raid with Rejuv and WG. The whole thing just feels kind of sloppy...I don't feel stressed about GCD very often like I did before, because I'm just kind of haphazardly throwing out rejuvs and nourishes, and WG just about every time the cooldown is up and anyone's taken raid damage.

Maybe as I get more used to it I'll be happier with it, but I miss the rhythm of pre-3.1 healing. Ulduar healing just feels pretty random to me, at least.

I guess I can see the argument for that, but again if you want a fast touch-up heal your other healers are still better suited to it with shield, riptide, and holy shock.

I just tested this.

I had no stacks of lifebloom on my and was just spamming nourish to proc ooc. Once ooc procced, I casted lifebloom. Once lifebloom bloomed, it returned 489 mana.

I repeated the same test except I kept a 1 stack of lifebloom on me so that the second lifebloom would be a clearcast. It returned 979 mana.

Repeated the same keeping 2 stacks on me so that the third lifebloom would be clearcasted, it returned 1468 mana.

repeated the same by keeping a three stack up and refreshing it with a clearcasted lifebloom, besides draining my mana, to keep up, returned 1469 mana. Not sure why I got 1 extra mana here? I tested the other two. a single lifebloom returned 490 mana and a 2 stack still returned 979 mana.


It was mentioned earlier in this thread that revitalize is an overall bad talent. I had it before the patch, and with how often I spam WG, it's even better now, but would those talent points be better spent somewhere else?

Well Revitalize got better, but Living Seed got a LOT better and Celestial Focus (the other competitor for the points) is still a better investment in my opinion. I was healing one of the cat tanks on the crazy cat lady, and got some insane returns -- something like 10-20% healed for Living Seed -- ahead of some actual healing spells.

The thing about Celestial Focus is this. A lot of the progression guilds raid pretty hard to try to get Ulduar down, and you can't always guarantee a raid composition that would haste cap a druid. Furthermore, 4 out of 5 tier 8 pieces for resto druids have CRIT rather than HASTE. If you decide to go for the set bonus, you will need to find alternative sources of haste. Finally, burst damage on some fights finds me (and probably many other druids) casting actual cast time spells like Nourish and Regrowth. In this kind of environment haste on gear and haste from talents become more and more valuable compared to marginal raid wide mana/energy/etc return. At least that's my 2 cents.

Getting celestial focus requires that you take nature's grace plus one other talent in balance. I don't think nature's grace is very exciting anymore though I have it in my current spec.

I like revitalize over natural perfection though. It has a fairly decent return now that it works off of wild growth. I think people look at it unfairly since they compare it to replenishment because the names were the same, when really you should compare it to what your other talent choices are.

Here's a mimiron parse where we had two resto druids who both have revitalize so you can see how much mana it restored. I think it's preferable to 3% crit.

WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish

Revitalize is still poor in terms of throughput and probably not worth the 3 points it takes to max out, however, after perusing last weekend's Maly 25 fight it returned a big chunk of mana for most of our dps and it also affects every other power source. It's a unique facet of our spec that no one else can bring to the raid, so I choose to bring it. We run with as many as 3 Trees all with 3 styles so I won't post all the numbers because they aren't impressive in that light, but I personally received 2200 mana back in a single attempt from Revitalize and it was about as effective as Judgement of Wisdom for our dps. The alternatives are minor mana efficiency on Nourish and/or a bigger HT, which I might use once per night. I can't justify spending 3 talents points on 3% crit...
[edit: Beef beat me to the punch and provided some numbers above with a more reasonable raid comp]

I would concur with Melador's conclusion about the hectic state of our healing right now. I switched to a more casual raid group so it was hard to notice, but it's abundantly clear that our healing is entirely sporadic and slipshod now. One might describe it as "face-rolling-HoTs". I'm trying to help some of our Trees with their healing and all I can tell them is "...RJ everyone who is or might possibly take damage...WG every 6 seconds...RG big hits... roll everything on the tank." The inclusion of a smart-heal only added to the blind nature of our healing. You used to have to be very succinct in who you chose to use a precious GCD on.

They stated that they wanted to free us of our LB-rolling chains, which they have, but I'm not entirely convinced that it was for the better. We now have more (or shorter) GCDs and more leeway in how to spend them. Guess I can't complain.

A point about Rejuv that I have not heard mentioned in my very long period of healing as a Tree: our talents are multiplicative (Emp Rejuv @ 20%, Imp Rejuv @ 15%, Gift of Nature @ 10%, ToL) and Rejuv is the only HoT with a talent specifically dedicated to increasing its effectiveness by a set %. HT has 40% but does not gain from Emp Rejuv. So it stands to reason that as our spell power goes dramatically up (as it has from TBC to Wrath and with each tier of gear) that Rejuv would see the largest increase in effectiveness. It scales the best.

Completely agree with that.

We've been banging our heads in 25-man against XT-002 mostly due to lack of DPS so can't say much about 25s, but we've had some decent progress with 10-man this week.

Overall, I'd say that the art of healing as a tree wen't from "Van Gogh" to below average graffiti. In 10-man Razorscale is just pure Nourish spam staring at the health bars 100% of the time - you're half a GCD late and someone dies. Just awful. Hodir is just pure nightmare with facerolling RJs and WGs. So far I have not seen a fight where it would be actually "interesting" or "challenging" to be a healer. It's all brute force healing now. Having to use Rebirth on some trash - priceless.

The only interesting thought I had lately about healing was that LB glyph is counterproductive suddenly - especially on XT-002 where Gravity Bomb is 9 seconds long. I decided to scrap my LB glyph and I'm going to try hit people with single LB right after they get Gravity Bomb so the LB will expire immediately after the GB hits. Other option is to untalent LB as well and hit people with a 3-stack, but that will make keeping LB on the tank(s) much more difficult.

EDIT: Before anyone says that Paladins are better healing fireballs on Razorscale, it was 10-man, and it was me as a tree, a disc priest, and a resto shaman - we got it done, but it wasn't fun.

Thanks for the test. I'm just getting off work now 12 hour days suck so I couldn't test it myself.

I'm not sure if I understand what you mean, or if you understand what I'm trying to say. I was arguing that sneaking in a heal (like Lifebloom) on a target as a raid heal isn't going to save somebody that was dangerously low on health, and that its only real purpose was to snipe (steal) healing from other healers. Driving up your own heal meter, while driving up the over heal of all your other healers, while not REALLY healing any substantial damage. Throwing a meaningful heal at a target whom is dangerously low is the correct thing to do. That is not 'heal sniping' that’s called 'teamwork'. If someone has under 5k health left, I don’t care who's assignment it is, I’m going to try to throw a heal that direction

Concerning Lifebloom as a raid heal, Lets let as a few simplified examples of general types of raid healing.

1) A target is dangerously low on health (missing 15k or more health):
This situation obviously calls for fast healing. Lets cast a lifebloom?...somehow I think the 450 HP/tick given off each second by a single application of lifebloom aren’t going to fit the bill for a 'fast heal'. Rejuvenation/Swiftmend might be the first choice to try to heal a 15k Deficit, but arguments could also be made for a Rejuvenation/Nourish, a Regrowth/Swiftmend, Nature's Swiftness/Healing Touch, or even a Regrowth/Nourish Combination. All of these stand to heal a dangerously low target much quicker than a Lifebloom x2 (followed by a 9 second wait)

2) The target has taken a good amount of damage (10k), and is unlikely to take any more damage:
Nearly any spell in our arsenal can take care of this in a single application. 1 application of Rejuvenation could take care of all the damage, with the drawback of a 15 second wait time. 1 Regrowth could crit and take care of most of the damage instantly, and leave a nice long hot. A rejuvenation/Nourish (or Rejuvenation/Swiftmend) could heal all the damage in the space of 1 GCD, and still leave an 18 second HoT on the target....or we can cast Lifebloom twice, wait for it to do 900 per tick for 9 seconds, and then heal the remaining damage with the bloom. If the target hasn’t taken any more damage in those 9 seconds, this will be overheal. Obviously Lifebloom is not strong in this situation either. It costs more than a rejuvenation, which makes rejuvenation a better choice for efficiency, but is much slower than any other method, making it a worse choice for speed.

3) The target has taken a good amount of damage (10k), and is likely to take more damage:
Very similar to the situation above, only, more value should be placed on future heals. More emphasis should be placed on healing the target quickly to avoid a possible death. A Regrowth, and Rejuvenation/Nourish (or Swiftmend). all become better options. The single application of Rejuvenation as well as Lifebloom x2 diminish in value due to the long time required for the healing to take place. Regrowth costs the least mana in this case, and has the advantage of not requiring a follow up cast, but both Rejuvenation/Nourish and Rejuvenation/Swiftmend have the advantage of the much stronger Rejuvenation hot placed on the target, making them better in my eyes. Obviously Lifebloom x2 (despite its cheaper cost) is less than ideal, since it expires completely after it blooms, and barely healed original 10k damage.

4) The target has taken slight damage (5k or under):
A rejuvenation is likely the best choice. The advantage is that this slight amount of damage is a low priority for all the other healers as well, and your rejuvenation has the least chance of getting over written by a direct heal. A single nourish (non Hotted) also will heal this damage up quickly. A lifebloom can heal this damage, (but at 9 seconds compared to 6) but will also be cheaper than an idoled Rejuvenation after mana return.

There are many more examples to list, but these examples make my point i feel.

Now, I realize that this is far to rudimentary for an advanced forum such as this, yet I feel that breaking down each of these scenarios and logically looking at the benefits to each of our spells is a worth while exercise. In each of these standard scenarios, I cannot find a time where lifebloom is better than another spell I have available to me. This is not to say that Lifebloom is worthless at all times, I am not trying to make this point. Lifebloom is useful on tanks, targets that are running out of range, or in very special cases where the incoming damage is very predictable. The correct information to draw out of this is that Lifebloom is slower and less hard hitting than the other spells we have available. I challenge you to complete this exercise for yourself, do this on paper (or on a word processor, you may be surprised)

1. State your goals as a healer (Is it to effectively keep people alive, or is it to top the healing charts at all costs, or something else entirely?)
2. Define each situation you think you could run into as a healer (or at least the basic ones)
3. Compare the relative strengths and weaknesses of each of your spells for each situation, use this to decide which spells work better for your objective
4. Test
5. Repeat steps 3-4 as needed.

From doing this on my own right now, I’m very interested in trying to work Regrowth more into my Raid healing rotation. I'll test it this week, if it works for me, I’ll keep it. I would encourage everyone else to be more critical of themselves before they start defending their personal healing style with such force. One of the great things about restoration druids is our wide range of spells. With such a great array of tools, its very possible to heal competently even when we aren’t using a tool to its fullest potential. Can I use a screw driver as an Ice pick? Sure, but it would do a much better job at turning a screw. Can Lifebloom raid heal? Yes, but that’s not the point. The point is Rejuvenation is better at it 90% or more of the time. Hanging on to an example that makes up 10% of the possible encounters and shouting that lifebloom is better doesn’t prove that Lifebloom is a better raid heal, but rather, its a better raid healing spell for that encounter.

I completely agree that having a really quick heal to snap out some life-saving healing is very good. However, the point being raised is whether the sacrifice one makes for this ability is worth the loses on other fronts. Yes, you save a dps when he would otherwise die and you effectively grant your raid an additional 4k dps that it wouldn't have had otherwise. However, there comes a point when the sacrifice hurts your overall healing and puts additional stress on other healers because you are less strong in areas that you took hits in to take glyphed HT and associated talents.

My main issue with the popularity of this spell is that you portray that the person would die without the .5s cast HT. I raise the contention that if you cannot afford the time of a 1.4-1.2s cast or you cannot rely on a 15 sec cooldown swiftmend/ NS+HT, then there's more wrong in your raid than you not keeping up. The encounters aren't balanced for you to require whip-crack glyphed HT speed heals to keep people up. If the window is really that small, you either royally screwed up prior to that by waiting too long to heal, or the healee was doing something stupid and in that case probably deserve to die if the damage is that fast. Healers have the ability to make up for people's mistakes more than others, which has grown into a kind of expectation that you're responsible for making up for them. There comes a point where you have to decide whether it's your fault for letting the guy die or his fault for riverdancing in the void zones. Of course there are instances when it's no fault of their own, whether through bad luck or encounter mechanics, but you should be able to cope with them, between yourself and the team of healers in the raid. You shouldn't have to shoulder all of the responsibility for every near-death experience.