Another loss to using the Glyph of Healing Touch is the overall power of Nature's Swiftness + Healing Touch. Not a huge loss, but still worth mentioning, in my opinion.

The game is about min/maxing and tradeoffs. With 2 pallies and a priest, I would assign 1 pally & 1 druid to the MT and the other pally to the OT. If there is no OT, I would have the 2nd pally raid heal and beacon the MT. I wouldn't have my priest go disc. I would have him raid healing as holy. If I were raid healing, I'd love to do it on a priest. Imagine this burst healing for XT-002's tympanic tantrum: PoM at -7secs, PoH at -2secs, CoH at 1secs, PoH at 2 secs, PoM at 5 secs, PoH at 6 secs, etc. So I ask this. What is the tradeoff of DiscPriest MT healing & Druid raid healing versus the Druid MT healing & HolyPriest raid healing?

I think what makes druids great is our versatility with 1 spec. We excel in any role. I would argue that priests are better raid healers than us, but it's easier to do it as a druid. Check the leader boards for EHPS. For the most part you have shamans and priests at the top: I would argue that holy priests are better raid healers than druids (refer to WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish).

This brings up an interesting question. If you were heal lead how would you setup your raid for Ulduar. My ideal comp would be 1 Pally, 2 Druids, 2 Shams, 2 Priests. In general, I'd always have 1 pally & 1 druid on the MT, the shams always raid healing, and the 2 priests & 1 druid raid/OT healing.

I'd say this purely depends on the fight but if there is AoE damage then druids will trump disc and arguably even holy priests in raid healing, whereas if the raid damage is single target and can be somehow foreseen then priests (probably both disc and holy) will do better at it. Most encounters with raid AoE damage seem to apply damage as a sort of AoE dot, so druids are excellent at negating the effects of that.

Although it seems to me that most people who run as disc priests do so because they didn't like being holy priests, and obviously you don't want to stick a druid on MT and disc priest on the raid, but you might consider a holy priest on MT and a druid on a raid.

May some moderator answer if it's allowed to post healing strategies for different fights?

I view the druid healing role as playing midfield or halfback in soccer/football. You may tell the halfback to play some more on the D end of things, but he's still going to run up and help the forwards. Likewise, with druids, even if you tell the druid to heal the tank a good druid will know to toss out WG's and rejuvs when they can. We may not be as good as holy priests at raid healing or as good at tank healing as paladins, but we are the best at doing both and simultaneously.

I never thought I'd read that on these forums. Numbers mean things and are a huge tool to improving yourself. Of course, while one may recognize the power of mathematical calculations, it is probably equally important to realize the limits of them. The proper mindset with regards to it is somewhere in the middle, where the two extremes are obviously wrong.

I never thought I'd see somebody take a sentence out of a context and base comment only on it. It's so bloody obvious I was talking about healing done meters, which mean something only when comparing 2 same classes on same targets in a same raid enviroment with same gear level and same spec (and even then it will be so off it's near useless, unless one is a really bad player, doing 50% less than the other).

Healing meters are not useless. It's just as stupid to claim the meters are proof of who is a bad/good healer as it is stupid to claim that meters are a bucket of lies. At the end of the day we all make red bars go green, despite mechanical differences in how it's done. I'm not advocating that priests and shamans are way better raid healers than us simply because of some meters, but I'm not going to deny it simply on the premise that the meters lie. Your thinking is too black-and-white, in my opinion. Healing done meters may be flawed in some ways, but it's way better than going into the cesspool of basing one's opinion on how you perceive your performance, like the WoW forums are notorious for. It's simply important to take it with a grain of salt.

And yet this is a forum for craftsmen and workshop enthusiasts, in a thread about the finer differences between hammers. Yeah they can both hit nails. What of it?



The fact that GHT doesn't change with context is not a negative in itself. Also, the cast time difference is fairly significant to me; it's around or above 0.4 seconds difference. If you really need a very specific situation in which it would be more effective to cast a much faster heal that heals for 25% more on a 'plain' target, here is one:
A raid member with no HoT spikes low, and needs a heal very quickly or they will die from the next hit. They need 5300 health in 1 second and your NG isn't up because you're a raid healer who's been casting Rejuv. Swiftmend is down because you just used it on somebody else. That is the exact situation for which it is useful.

GHT heals for more health on a target with no HoT, and it does so faster. When swiftmend is down, GHT takes its place. Is it worth it for you to spec in such a way that in a rare situation GHT will save a life, but you lose the ability to tank heal? Only you can answer that; it's worth considering though. Druids have lots of options these days. Nobody is saying there is no use for Nourish or for Regrowth. Nobody is saying you should use GHT all day all over the place, or tank heal with it. You could just scroll up and find more info..

Other than "someone isn't paying attention / is slow to their healing assignment", how often or even WHEN does someone get hit with two 10k hits back to back in a matter of 2 secs. Or take a hit and need a heal to be topped off before they get re-hit in less than a second?

There's some rather preposterous situations being thrown around and people aren't thinking about what Really happens. Don't take this as inflammatory. If people feel the need to spec for GHT, then have at it. But the timing involved is one more thing to consider. Raid damage simply doesn't happen by massive chunks in half-seconds. To me, GHT is overkill.

The 2nd boss in Ulduar does that, and he is probably also the 2nd easiest.
Guys, if you haven't done the fights, telling what happens or doesn't happen isn't really productive.

Sorry If I missed something or it has already been talked about, but has anyone noticed a bug with Revitalize. I searched the wow bug forums and didn't notice it. Since Ulduar came out we have had 2-3 resto druids in each raid and none of us spec into Revitalize but it sometimes still procs.