@Smudgey: I agree; the Idol of the Crescent Goddess is probably one of the best available to those of us who use Regrowth. =)

I recently changed my main raiding char from lock to resto and the gear i applied to join the BT farming guild with was just Season 3 with a few pve extras (3 or 4 items). First surprise to me was that Season 3 gear is actually alright for Black Temple. It has pretty high +heal and the mp5 on it is barely less than t5, so if you chug pots and beg a shadow priest in your grp it’s not a problem at all. I’ve since gained a bunch of high Spirit items so the deficiency is starting to balance out, but the 4 set pvp bonus remains very cool. It’s like having a free 200 haste on your regrowth.

So what i do it’s make sure i got that bonus running on trash. Always. The drop in some of your other healing stats is more than made up for by the fact that your heal arrived first and did not overheal. Faster than Shamman’s chain heal The icing on the cake is if you team it with some Spell Haste items you can get Regrowth cast time really low, in the area of 1.6 or even 1.5 seconds. For boss fights this is not great beacuse you can sure goo oom pretty damn fast that way. The cost reducing trinket from Hydross will be excellent to reduce this, but i primarily use it on trash mobs.

One thing I’ve always wanted to see but never had the spare cash for is to see what happens if you spec to get Nature’s Grace from Balance and Improved Regrowth from Resto in a hybrid build. Combined with the set bonus and haste items you would have some rocket-fuelled regrowth casts in much less than 1.5 secs. It would be crazy (…stupid, but fun)

Before my haste set, I was loathe to use regrow to raid heal since it made more sense to me to heal 2 targets with lifebloom over 1 with regrow and refreshing lifebloom on 2 targets with 1 instant which may or may not allow the other lifebloom stacks to drop. (5 seconds in a perfect world on the lifebloom & 1 regrow, adding 1 more lifebloom brings it to 6.5 seconds which only allows .5 seconds of delay.) While .4 seconds may not seem like much, really it is.

I’m in the process of getting the Icon restored to me, and for trash I’ll be equipping it over the one from Shadow Lab. I guess my suggestion for people still trying to work on a main healing set, much less a haste set should stick to lifebloom, but once you can fit haste into the mix, regrowth becomes a much better raid spell while still allowing you to keep your HOT’s on your main targets.

@Rethic: I was worried about the change to mana regeneration being nerfed before 2.4, as well, but luckily it seems to have survived in tact. I think this points to a revised model that Blizzard has in mind for raids where success is less determined by the mana of your healers and more determined by DPS output and overall skill at responding to crucial events (like AOE damage). They must have become bored with the idea of chain-chugging potions to get by (as I think we all have). Hopefully things will stay this way! As to your question, I did take into account the nerf to the bloom and the Empowered Rejuvenation boost.

@Smeeg: I’m very happy that Regrowth is getting a little more limelight but I don’t know if I agree that it’s problemsome when one spell constitutes the large majority of your healing. Shamans heal primarily through Chain Heal, for instance, and are quite effective at it. I guess from a boredom perspective, though, more variety is preferable. I think Priests are a good example of this with multiple viable spells available (and needed) depending upon the situation. =)

@Brent: I wasn’t proposing to use Regrowth as a tank heal but as a raid heal. You should still definitely be stacking Lifebloom (and Regrowth and Rejuv) on your tanks but not be shy about using an extra Regrowth (before the prior one has expired) if you need a burst of healing on your tank but don’t have NS or SM available to you.

@Roxana: That’s definitely a strategy I haven’t seen before. Do you mean that you don’t keep LB stacks rolling on your tanks? There shouldn’t be any reason you couldn’t do both, at least once you’re comfortable with the timing. In my mind, the health spike normalization you can guard against for your raid can be more useful than topping the effective healing meters (though that’s certainly nice, too!).

@Icyslush: I think there were plenty of rather potent Arena nerfs for Druids (drinking nerf, Cyclone range nerf, Lifebloom bloom nerf, 4-piece set bonus nerf). I will be very surprised if Druids continue to make a strong showing at upper-end 2v2 or 3v3 post-2.4.

@Brexan: Let’s hope not. =)