Variations on this 27/0/34 druid healspec can be quite effective. I’ve used a couple variations on it and will prolly tweak it again soon after I start back up.

There are 2 main variations on this hybrid, one I’ve seen called “mana-mend” and the other called “hybrid raid healspec” or some such thing. Both have the 27/0/34 but the focus is on different things. Both of these specs still deliver excellent HOT capabilities – though not as powerful as a tree, but still far superior to any other class. In addition, there is more versatility and survivability to make up for not being a tree. Casting a Cyclone to get yourself or someone else out of trouble can come in handy (get the avoid interrupt talent up to 100%). Hibernate, or a Nature’s Swiftness with a big heal can come in handy also. The key with both of these specs is to max the healing talents in tier 5 of the balance tree, and also get swiftment and Nature’s Swiftness in the resto tree.

Mana-mend is probably better for 5-man runs, anything where the druid is the only healer. It focuses on mana efficiency, with the 9% mana reduction talent in the balance tree and the 10% mana reduction in the resto tree. Healing Touch are considerably more efficient mana-wise this way, and without another healer along, there’s no risk of it turning into a giant overheal when someone sneaks a shorter-cast-time heal in under it.

Once you’re in larger runs where there’s another healer along, your big heals are not used often, as most other healers can cast quicker – even with your 3.5 second cast time reduced to 3 seconds with the talent, it’s still a comparatively slow cast, and other healers will sneak heals in under yours most of the time. So you’ll find yourself doing a lot of overhealing unless you stick with heal over time spells.

That’s when you’d want to respec to the raid hybrid, which relies much more on HOTs – specifically on Regrowth crits, which can happen quite regularly with the resto talent, and will deliver a 0.5 second quicker cast time on the next non-instant cast spell with the balance tree talent. The next spell would likely be another Regrowth – quicker cast from the crit bonus, and with another excellent chance to crit again. You will use your big heals so seldom that you might even consider giving up the cast time reduction altogether and putting the points elsewhere in resto.

That’s just my $0.02.

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this build for levelling up, though I do describe something similar in Talent Spec: Levelling Restoration/Balance. This article outlines a spec that combines points from both (with a detailed breakdown level by level) and that lets you retain some soloability/questability but still learn how to heal on the way.

The HoT-style of healing isn’t something you’ll likely see as viable until much later in the game (when you have the Lifebloom, Tree of Life, and the +Healing to support it).

I hope this helps!

My best +spell gear is +111 to heal and +96 spell damage. By switching out some pieces my +heal drops to +33, but my mana pool goes up by about 25% which I need to do for some pug’s.

I like the idea of this spec (with the 1 point moved to Moonkin), but I am too new to WoW and Druids to understand the implications of the reduced mana cost for regrowth (other than my mana will last longer now).

A second question would be if you still do recommend this build, what order should I take the talents in? All resto first then add balance? All balance first? Thanks for any input you can give me.

Oiy

I like the idea of using regrowth to help prevent heal overs. I will down rank some and see how that goes tonight. As well as installing X-perl.

Thanks for your input and ideas!

Shal

By the way, Sepethrea in Mechanar is generally hard for other healers whenever they’re being followed by a fire elemental, whereas druids can just spam HoTs all over the party while running to a safe place where to cast some direct healing spells on the tank.

Regarding the raid healing, I think you should be the one to be assisted while healing the tank (or tanks! we can heal more than one!), and help with a bit of group healing, not the other way around This is what we do best. If you’re not doing it already, ask for your healing leader to let you heal two tanks at a time.

As I’ve mentioned somewhere else, paladins usually “steal” our heals with their flashes of light, either healing sooner, or ignoring our HoTs. It is understandable, on the other hand: it’s so fast and efficient they can just spam it when needed without losing a few precious seconds checking who has what HoTs and for how long. When group healing is required, I use regrowth most of the time so my spells aren’t wasted in overhealing (the direct heal portion will make other healers see it’s been taken care of, in a quite intuitive way), and HoTs mainly preemptively when someone’s gonna take damage but isn’t hurt yet (lifebloom is great for this, although watch for your target’s aggro!).

Maybe you already have one, but it’s a good idea to have an addon to see how many people are targetting your target. I use X-Perl, which also has a lot of fancy utilities such as showing other party members’ casting bars. This way if I see someone’s already being healed, I switch to another target. Some use other methods to cast spells such as directly clicking on raid members (for example assigning shift click rejuvenation, alt click lifebloom, click regrowth), but I’ve never felt comfortable with this so I don’t know how this would work there.

I don’t know if this helps, but this is what I do

This may not be the right place for this but…

Any tips? I usually start off with LB-RJ-LB-LB then a swit mend in necessary. Rarely do I use a regrowth. Started trying to throw out some lower ranked HT after the first couple of hots, in order to handle some spikes in damage. In raids, I usualy get assigned to assist healing a tank along with healing the raid.

BUT I WANT TO TOP THE CHARTS!, if only once, just so I know I can do it. I also want to heal a heroic and feel compfortable. Just a side question (curious only, when healing a heroic, do you usualy have a few deaths?)

As you may have noticed, I have no other druid healer in my guild to compare experiences with…kind of on my own here…

Thanks for your patience, and any comments will be appreciated.

Shalura, Draenor – Marginal Heroes

If you are mostly in heroics, Karazhan, or maybe even the early 25-mans, I think either of the Balance hybrid specs are great. I myself was a Dreamstate druid for months and loved it. Solo viability was great, I had an extra point in Doomkin form so I could even change to dps in raids if healing was sufficient (though my bags were always full with multiple gear sets!).

If, however, you are in SSC/TK or Hyjal/BT, I would expect you to find a tree resto spec to be more effective in healing. In these later instances, the fights simply lend themselves better to rolling powerful lifeblooms, raid healing with HoTs, occasional Regrowths, but casting HT becomes a very rare experience. Of course, it’s still possible to heal as a hybrid spec, but I don’t think it’s the “best” under the definition I gave above. Paladins will heal 3 people before you heal 1. You could heal a tank with HT, sure, but you could heal 3 with the more powerful lifeblooms afforded by a tree spec (check out Empowered Rejuvenation, the talent deep in the resto tree – it is ungodly!!).

I do agree with the others that your gear will also have a big effect on which spec is best for you. But as you progress through Kara and the others, your healing will grow and changing to tree spec will augment your healing even more. Keep an eye on MP5 (eep another debate! I prefer MP5 > spirit but definitely have a mix) because going from a Dreamstate spec (if you choose to try that one) to a tree spec is a big change in mana management.

Feel free to check my armory. I am almost always first by far in healing in my guild (now Hyjal/BT level) and have found a deep resto spec to be the optimal configuration for healing at this level – and that after a lot of testing!

Good luck-
Adarel
Scarlet Crusade

But if doing the best for your guild is not your priority, dreamstate and other balance/resto spec can be wonderful. Sure you won’t top healing charts, but you’ll do fine and you’ll be able to solo more easily (especially in 2.3) when you’re out of the raid.

It all comes down to how you see yourself in the game and what you are thinking is worth sacrificing for the sake of progression.

Kapoue
Earthen Ring