I have revised my original opinion on this topic. You can find the updated analysis here: Idol Chatter.

Leighbra of Sentinels (US) writes in with this question:

At the moment, I have 494 Spirit unbuffed. I’m at about 675 fully raid buffed. I don’t have any idea how I ended up with so much Spirit and have been looking at what I can do with my enchants to play with that number, but I’m cheap and don’t like to re-enchant things… I have the [Idol of the Emerald Queen] equipped, and of course Lifebloom is my most commonly cast spell. So, from my Tree of Life aura, in raids, that means about 135ish additional +Healing for the people in my group.

I’m trying to figure out if it would be more beneficial to the guild/raid (not just my healing numbers) for me to be in a group with our tanks and to equip that often discarded [Idol of the Raven Goddess], especially after it gets buffed, than me having the [Idol of the Emerald Queen] equipped. Especially on Gruul, when after 8 growths we tell our DPS to heal themselves, and have all 8/9 healers focus on our two tanks.

First of all, great question, especially in light of the upcoming update to our idols. Previously, the [Idol of the Emerald Queen] was indisputably the best one available to us. This is kind of sad considering it’s a blue item from a non-Heroic dungeon (Shadow Labyrinth). It really speaks to the — likely unanticipated — power of Lifebloom. With Patch 2.4, however, the bonus to your Tree of Life aura from the [Idol of the Raven Goddess] will jump from 20 to 44, certainly a marked improvement. And while I hesitate to tell you definitively which Idol will be better for you and your raid, I can help give you a list of considerations to help you decide!

1. You have to remain in Tree of Life form to get any benefit from the [Idol of the Raven Goddess]. You mention Gruul’s Lair as a consideration, but I would personally be terrified to try to avoid shatters with Tree Form’s 20% speed reduction. Of course, you aren’t as likely to need to be healing while moving around in preparation for a Shatter, but it’s expensive to shift in and out that regularly. Similarly, if you ever find yourself forced to return to caster form for extended periods of time, this is not the Idol for you. For instance, I’m often forced to shift to caster in order to NS + HT and then stay there until I’m able to spare the GCD to switch back. Your experience may vary, however. I know a lot of Druids tie their Nature’s Swiftness to Regrowth to avoid popping out to caster form.
2. The [Idol of the Emerald Queen] is pretty awesome since its healing bonus (+88) gets tripled when you stack up Lifebloom. That’s 264 +Healing for your LB x 3, albeit only for yourself and only for that spell. I’m pretty sure that this wasn’t taken into account when they allocated itemization points. It should really be a purple item, in my opinion.
3. The [Idol of the Raven Goddess] does not scale. Its +Healing bonus is a static one that becomes less significant as your Spirit increases. Still though, to get the same amount of +Healing added to your Tree of Life aura, you’d need 176 more Spirit. That’s not a low number!
4. Do you use an addon like Recount? It will give you an idea of what percentage of your total healing is comprised by Lifebloom. The higher that percentage is (I usually run about 80-90% Lifebloom), the more attractive the Idol of the Emerald Queen will be. If you’re regularly doing 47% of your raid’s healing in 10 mans, I’m tempted to say a buff to your own healing is going to outweigh a buff to the healing from your raid’s other healers.

If you consider the above, it should help you make the decision which you want to use. Obviously, the greater the amount of healing necessary to the tank, the better the [Idol of the Raven Goddess] becomes so it will potentially become more attractive. However, it’s going to be REALLY hard to beat 264 +Healing to your own Lifebloom stacks! I would, of course, love to hear opinions from readers. Have any of you found an Idol that you feel surpasses the value of the [Idol of the Emerald Queen]?

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There is some exciting news about Patch 2.4 from Community Manager Drysc today:

Although not terribly relevant to your discussion I thought I’d jump in and let you know about some Spell Haste changes in the upcoming patch.

In 2.4, Spell Haste will reduce the global cool down on spells, down to a minimum of 1 second. It won’t apply to melee and ranged abilities though however.

Ironically, this news comes just days after an e-mail from Sydera of Vek’nilash (US) in which she inquires:

I have been wondering about something for a while and have no other resto druids to ask. Why do you think there is so much spell haste on the Zul’Aman and T6 content items? What are we going to be doing in Hyjal and Black Temple that makes spell haste necessary? Is this bad design, or is there something to be learned here?

My healing style relies almost exclusively on instants. My guild is 1/4 TK and 3/6 SSC right now, and I tend to use regrowth about once per boss fight and healing touch pretty much never. If I use HT, it’s with nature’s swiftness every time. My general rotation is rolling lifeblooms and rejuvenation on tanks. Is something going to change this for the T6 stuff?

In responding to her question, I generated a list of spell haste items that would be appropriate to a cloth or leather-wearing healer by filtering the armor on WoWHead. Those previously scoffable eight items are now looking a lot more attractive. Because in the now immortal words of reader Zackoria:

HAHA! LIFEBLOOM! LIFEBLOOM LIFEBLOOM!!! Castable healing? BAH! ONLY THE ACCURSED GLOBAL COOLDOWN CAN RESTRAIN US FROM WORLD HEALING DOMINATION AHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!!

(Endgame-equipped) Druids just got (up to) 33% closer to World Healing Domination.

Read about 2.4 details as they arrive at ElitistJerks.com.

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Leighbra of Sentinels (US) would like to know:

Several times I have had people tell me that we have spells that put threat on our target in combat instead of giving us that threat. When I ask which of my spells does that, and they say “Oh you know, like the Priest’s ‘whatever’ spell.”

Well, that doesn’t help me a ton, now does it? LOL

If you could help clue in a clueless tree, I would love it!

The Priest spell to which people are referring is Prayer of Mending. This is a spell that, once cast upon a target (generally the tank), will “pop” for 800 base healing the next time that person takes damage. The PoM buff will then jump from the original target to another raid member and heal her the next time she takes damage. It can jump a total of five times and can be used every 10 seconds. Since the heal is a buff, the healing it does is associated with the buff’s recipient rather than with its original caster (the plucky Priest).

In the same way, the final bloom from a Lifebloom that is allowed to expire grants threat to the person it heals rather than to us. However, the threat that a bloom grants is roughly equivalent to the total threat granted to us by six ticks from a single stack. In other words, your tank doesn’t gain a “leg up” on you in terms of threat since you will have acquired as much threat as she has. But if you can set things up ahead of time, casting Lifebloom on her just before she engages a new group of mobs, you will get none of the threat from your HoTs while she gets the threat from the bloom. Remember that she will only get threat for effective healing, so you will have to allow a health deficit for the bloom to heal or this won’t work. Because in a multi-mob pull (where this tactic is most useful), she’s likely to be taking a lot of damage, it can be difficult to not heal “too much” but not let her die, either, so this might take some practice. You can also throw a Rejuvenation on her before the pull to grant her a little more threat-free healing (though, Rejuvenation doesn’t grant her any additional threat since it has no bloom component).

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Reader Seperioth of the Venture Co (US) writes in with this question regarding the Leotheras the Blind fight in Serpentshrine Caverns:

My guild is attempting Leotheras the Blind in SSC. When Leo spawns your mirror demon on you, I run into trouble.

I got mine once, and [another Resto Druid] got his once. I got mine down 25% before the raid wiped... and he almost got his killed before the demon killed him.

My question is... as a Resto Druid is there anything I can do to work through this? My DPS as Resto is almost non-existent. I also get squished by my demon's hard hits.

I stack Stamina gems wherever I can and Stamina patches, but I still get smacked down.

So I was wondering if you or anyone you knew had an idea on how Restos should go at this fight.

Since my guild has currently stalled out after taking down Lurker, I haven't seen this fight personally. But I'm not opposed to doing some research. WoWWiki.com describes this ability as follows:

Inner Demon

• Around ~25s into the Demon Form phase, Leotheras will summon an Inner Demon from up to five raid members.
• Inner Demons spawn with ~11,000 health.
• Each Inner Demon can be attacked only by the person it spawned from. You have 30 seconds to kill your own Inner Demon. If Leotheras returns to humanoid form while your Inner Demon is still alive, you will become Mind Controlled for 10 minutes (non-removable except through death).
• Inner Demons hit for very little and can easily be healed through, dealing ~1000 damage melee and casting a 3.5k damage Shadow Bolt (reflectable!).
• Inner Demons take increased damage from Arcane, Nature, and Holy spells.
• Inner Demons will not be summoned on the person with aggro.
• Hunters, Warlocks, Shamans, Mages and even Priests should make sure their pet doesn't get the killing blow; the Mind Control is only prevented if the player's character deals the death blow.

And from the Leotheras the Blind Guide from Equisite Pain of Proudmoore (US):

You have approximately 30 seconds to kill your Inner Demon and it should be the only thing you focus on if you have one. If you do not kill it in the time given then you will be Mind Controlled and the raid will have to kill you. Some classes may find it hard to deal with the Inner Demon. Here are some suggestions for each class:

Resto Druids: Change your weapon and go into Caster form, spam Wrath and Insect Swarm. Have at least +500 spell damage.

So from this, we can infer the following:

• At this level of progression, you're likely to have around 1500 or more +Healing. That converts to the 500 or more of the spell damage that Exquisite Pain recommends. A weapon swap to a high spell damage weapon wouldn't be a bad idea, though, assuming you have access to one that will give you more spell damage than does your healing weapon.
• Wrath spam is better DPS than is Starfire spam (at the expense of lower DPM, but this is an issue of generating burst) and doesn't suffer as much from spellcasting delay woes. You should also keep Moonfire ticking away on your demon and use Insect Swarm if you have it since your Inner Demon is susceptible to both Nature and Arcane damage.
• While the DPS from Thorns isn't stellar, there's no reason not to use it for this fight. Avoid using any form of damage shield for this fight. If your Mirror Image dies due to damage taken from Thorns, you won't get credit for the killing blow and will get mind controlled (ouch!). (Thanks to Dellan for this information!)
• You should not be healing yourself unless absolutely necessary. Even casting a Lifebloom is using a GCD that could otherwise have been spent to cast Wrath, Moonfire, or Insect Swarm. Trust in your other healers to keep you alive.
• Use Barkskin. That will reduce the damage you take by 20%, 40% of the total time you're facing your Demon. If possible, pop it while she's winding up for her first Shadow Bolt. It affects spell damage, too, and will let you get off a few Wrath spells that won't be delayed by incoming damage. For this reason, it's great to use when you already have your DoTs running. (To take full advantage of the spellcasting delay prevention, I'd avoid casting anything insta-cast unless you need to do so to stay alive.)
• If you have a +Healing trinket like the [Essence of the Martyr], use it. The EoM will grant you an additional 100 spell damage for 20 seconds (66% of the fight against your Demon). That's also a 20% increase to your +Damage, assuming you're running 500 spell damage. This works even better if you have a spell damage trinket such as [Xi'ri's Gift].
• Consider using consumables like spell damage food ([Crunchy Serpent] or [Poached Bluefish]) or [Superior Wizard Oil]. These are easy and relatively cheap increases to your spell damage.
• If you're still having trouble, consider speccing into 5/5 Starlight Wrath, shaving 0.5 seconds off the casting time of your Wrath spell. This could represent up to a 25% increase to your DPS output when spamming Wrath and will make your Wrath easier to cast when Barkskin is on cooldown.

These are just some extrapolated strategies from what I've been able to read about the fight. I'd love to hear from a few of you who have actually seen this fight.

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Lilleknurhår of Thunderhorn (US) writes in with the following question:

My guild is doing Zul’aman, and my question is about two of the chest-drops which you get there. One is [Robes of Heavenly Purpose] and the other one is [Shimmer-pelt Vest]. As you know, one is leather and one is cloth. I went to ZA with my guild, and got the “Robes of Heavenly Purpose”, although some of my guildmates couldn’t see the point in a Druid wearing it since it’s cloth and say that the Shimmer-pelt Vest is better for a Druid. Currently I’m wearing my cloth chest, and I’m very happy about it. I dont think I would change to the leather chest even if it dropped … but am I the one who is wrong?

I’m glad that Lille wrote in with this question. I recently picked up the Shimmer-pelt vest myself and have been wondering how it compares to its cloth counterpart. I personally have no qualms about picking up a cloth item if has superior healing stats (although all things being equal, including aesthetics, I’d opt for the leather item). This, of course, does not apply to PvP where our ability to turn into a Bear can be so helpful. So let’s do a quick comparison of these two items.

While the Shimmer-pelt Vest is pretty straightforward, the Robes have 3 sockets (2 blue, 1 yellow) to worry about. My preference for slotting these would be 2 x [Royal Nightseye] and 1 x [Dazzling Talasite] since, as you know, I value mana regeneration. If we assume that we’ve slotted the Robes in this way, here’s the breakdown of what you would gain and lose from opting to wear the cloth chest piece over the leather one:

Obviously the leather chest piece wins out in overall survivability with higher Stamina and Armor. However, since switching to Bear Form is not generally the preferred method of dealing with threat in PvE, I wouldn’t place too much emphasis on the additional armor. Let’s consider the other stats. The leather chest piece affords you an additional 120 mana and 6 MP5 at the expense of 15 Spirit and 27 +Healing. With the recent changes to Intensity and assuming that you have Living Spirit and use Innervate as often as you can during boss fights (where mana is more likely to be an issue), Blizzard’s current item value for Spirit matches up fairly closely to its value for MP5. That is, 2.5 SPI = 1 MP5. That makes the 6 MP5 gained basically cancel out the 15 Spirit lost. That simplifies our comparison to the following:

Now it comes down to your personal preference. If you’re trying to bolster your +Healing value and are happy with the size of your mana pool, I’d say go with the cloth chest. If you want to increase your longevity a bit, choose the leather. Either way, the two items are so close in value that I’d recommend deferring the cloth to Priests first since they don’t have the option to pick up the leather chest. (If the cloth were far and away better than the leather chest piece, I wouldn’t necessarily make this consideration.) Of course, the aesthetics of the cloth chest piece might be reason enough for you to opt for it over the leather chest, but still politeness seems to imply that you would wait for a run where no other cloth wearers need it before rolling. Both chests drop from the introductory bosses of ZA so you’re likely to see plenty of both.

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