With regard to the Swiftmend Glyph, I am afraid I don’t know the answer for certain. My guess is that its prioritization remains the same as it always has been since that would be the simpler way to code for it.

I have a slight unconventional way of healing and it has trained me, taught me, and done me well over the past 3 years of my being resto/playing WoW as a druid.

I basically put every hot I have on a tank before bosses and with an easy crit from regrowth I get the living seed planted on him/her as well. This is really mana inefficient but spirit is my life and love so I usually have 1k mp5 (while not casting) easily in a 5-man and as a resto-druid I try not to cast too much.

My unconventional form of healing is… I don’t like lifebloom very much if at all. I use it, somewhat reluctantly. It has been this way since I first trained it in BC. I’m a rejuvination gal and now at level 80 in my blues… my rejuv ticks for 2000 in five mans plus 15% to restore mana, energy, rage, runic power makes it very nice.

There are certain bosses that generally hit hard. For example in Naxx; the boss that does the insect swarm (forgive me for not remembering his name). The tank is supposed to GTFO when he’s getting stacked with the swarm because he’ll take a ton of damage. Ideally he won’t take any damage but sometimes he does and we actually just heal it which makes Nourish very nice because I can get 10k Nourish crits on the tank while having all my hots up which basically keeps him at well enough high health with the other healer paying attention, as well. In the mean time of this fight I can have hots up on people who are taking damage during the fight due to adds, etc. It is quite lovely.

I don’t know. I like Nourish when my hots just aren’t quite enough to keep a tank at 100% health and I like Wild Growth when multiple people will take some damage or are taking some damage because although it starts at 800 and goes down.. it does help quite a bit.

I have one question:
For the Swiftmend Glyph…. even though it does not take a rejuv or regrowth off of the target… does it still “use up” the one that is less on time left to tick. I notice when I swiftmend a rejuv off it usually gets 10k-15k but my regrowth is significantly less. Is it random which one the swiftmend would use without actually taking it or is it still the one with less time left? I am reluctant to get the glyph if my chances are that it will just take a regrowth over and over or just an average of the two.

@Saba: Oh yeah … my mana regeneration dropped more than 150 MP5 while not casting just from copying my character over from live to beta. THAT was painful, especially to someone who has always emphasized regen and longevity over +Healing.

@Ghostboci: I haven’t heard that Tranquility will affect those outside of your own group. The tooltip description over on Wotlk.Wowhead.com still reads, “Heals all nearby group members for 3035 every 2 seconds for 8 sec.” Do you recall where you might have seen an indication to the contrary?

@Lake: I want to take a look at Glyphed HT with the new base speed, but I got turned off by the number of changes that invalidated a lot of my testing. I should have something around expansion release (when I’m more sure they won’t pull the rug out from under me). Thank you for the kind words!

@Nismorack: GotEM is a really horrendous 5-point talent at the bottom of the tree. Unless they seriously overhaul it, I don’t see many going for it.

@Zaira: I was under the impression that Blizzard is pushing nearly all spell casters to value Spirit to some degree (well, at least some Mages and Shadow Priests). Is that incorrect?

@Calay: Haha … well I’m glad that you came out of the woodwork (get it?) to post something! A lot of Druids are looking at the possibility of a Dreamstate-based healing build, just like the start of TBC. Perhaps fewer now that WG isn’t quite so terrible, though.

@Drun: “Last night I did a Hyjal pug on the PTR, when they found out I was resto they almost kicked me from the group since resto druids are “worthless” and several of them were druids” < LOLWUT? Where is their cross-spec love? I've always been very supportive of my Moonkin and Feral brethren. Granted, it might have something to do with discouraging them from switching to Restoration and taking all my -- *ahem* -- I'm sure it was because we are all members of the same great class.

@Inwe: Yes, I have noticed a change, and it stinks. I dropped 150 MP5 while not costing. I understand they want mana management to play an important role again, but I really enjoyed my infinite mana after 2.4!

@Mordekai: Interestingly, all healers need not only to be viable but to be roughly equivalent. I remember at the start of the game, Blizzard labeled Priests as "Primary Healers." As you might expect, this label dissuaded players of other classes with heal spells (Shamans, Paladins, and Druids) from speccing to heal. Everyone wants to feel equally viable, especially if they don’t possess a great love for the role and are only playing a healer to help their guildmates.

@Marc: Thank you very much. That’s really nice of you to say! =) And it HAS been really nice to see more Druids around lately, even if I suspect a lot of it has to do with how well we did in S2 and S3 Arenas.

@Meanderingmind: Thank you for the insighful commentary. As you noticed, I recycled it in my followup post to this one!

@Sem: Well, thankfully we did get a little something back with the latest news. Let’s hope for a polish of Gift of the Earthmother to make it a little more useful!

@Hokuto: I do consider Lifebloom to be one of our “main tools”, and it’s getting a pretty big kick in the tuckus. ^_^

Ok, some are TOO tuned down (Wild Growth, I’m looking at you), but hey, at least none of our main tools are worse than on Live. I guess we could cherish that.

# Glyph of Regrowth – Increases the healing of your Regrowth spell by 20% if your Regrowth effect is still active on the target. (Old – Increases the amount of your initial Regrowth heal by 50% if your Regrowth effect is still active on the target.)

Now I guess 3.0 is close. There’s nothing else left to nerf.

We nerfed Lifebloom because it was just too good. It just healed for incredible amounts at good mana efficiency that other healers would have had trouble matching. It’s much more fun to buff spells than to nerf them, so we try not to let any of them get out of control. But sometimes it happens.

Nourish and Wild Growth are both situational. We actually tried hard not to hand out new healing spells that needed to be put into a normal rotation. Nourish is good to use when healing a tank, either in a 5-man or a raid. It seemed less effective than Regrowth probably because the Regrowth glyph was too generous. Sometimes you can’t wait for that Regrowth tick.

Wild Growth isn’t intended to make you an awesome group healer. Shamans and Priests are awesome group healers, but can’t hot the way a druid can. What Wild Growth is intended to do is let you heal a group when you are the only healer, or heal a group in fights (usually boss fights) where you don’t have an opportunity to distribute hots to everyone. Without going into a lot of detail on new bosses in case you’d spoiler averse, there are bosses in Naxx and then the Malygos raid itself where you periodically can’t get a bunch of heals up and yet the raid is still taking damage. Wild Growth is really helpful in those situations.

Let’s review each of these in turn.

Nerfing Lifebloom makes sense, it was far too powerful. The problem is that our other HoTs haven’t been buffed to make up the difference. The only increase we’ve seen for the Rejuvenation and Regrowth HoT effects is a talent in Balance. As a result, we’re forced to make up the difference with direct heals. This is the single largest contributor to the general feeling that we’re being shifted away from what we felt was our style and niche.

Druids don’t mind having situational heals. No one whines that they don’t use Tranquility often, it has a niche and it fills it well. The problem with Nourish and Wild Growth is that “situational” doesn’t begin to describe them. Even without the Regrowth Glyph Nourish is inferior to Regrowth. It heals for less on average, has a roughly equivalent cost after talents (even with HoTs already on the target), doesn’t confer any additional benefits (a Swiftmendabel HoT for example) and runs into GCD issues if you’ve got Nature’s Grace going. The only niche it has left to heal are those situations where the heal absolutely must be .5 seconds faster than Regrowth, which is what NS or Swiftmend are for.

Wild Growth’s niche is obvious, it just fails to fill that niche in any meaningful way. Even in a Heroic its targeting is the cause of consternation and frustration, while its cost and healing barely warrant its use. In raids it’s practically a null factor. Blizzard is assuming you have at least one of each healing class in your raids, which means that you can count on the Priests and Shaman to have AoE heals covered. Wild Growth’s niche is effectively non-existent. It is the single most worthless top-tier talent since Lacerate crowned the Hunter’s Survival Tree.

As we speak Blizzard is bringing in the next build. Hopefully there’ll be a light at the end of the tunnel.

MeanderingMinds last blog post..My Tank is Fight

Pre-BC: cast downranked Healing Touch, hotbar NS/max-HT for instants, only ever Innervated priests, had one great buff and a possible raid saver with Bres. We were the least played class for a very good reason. Anyone that raided any spec but Resto had a very forgiving guild. But some of us played on (albeit resto spec) because /purring at hunter pets is always amusing.

Sometimes I feel the transparency of the game detracts from the enjoyment. It -is- very important @feedback is given but please don’t be morose about the changes as min/maxing is a temporal aspect to the game that never stays constant.

Optimistists unite!