State of Resto Druid Healing

[question1]

Hello

My first post so I will build up some background. I started playing as a resto druid at the start of BC and have been a healer since then.

My resto druid Spec: (8/2/31) (not allowed to post links)

This spec is tweaked to maximise the mana and still enhance the most used heals.

Important Starts:

Intellect:
Intellect provides 1 spellpower and 0.00154% to crit per point. In the above spec, one point of Intellect increases your maximum mana by 17.53 (19.28 with 2/3 Furor), and your regen from Replenishment, Euphoria, and Innervate correspondingly.

Spellpower:
Intellect, without the talent bonuses, crit bonus, or mana gains.

Spirit:
Improves your innate mana regen.

Haste rating:
128.05 haste rating gives 1% spell haste. I will provide a small representation of how Haste effects resto druid spells:
The three Haste points that seem to actually help us seem to be as follows:
Haste = 915 -> Rejuvenation gets and extra tick
Haste = 1540 -> Extra LifeBloom tick
Haste = 2004 -> Extra Wild growth tick

Critical strike rating:
179.28 crit rating gives 1% to crit.

Mastery rating:
179.28 mastery rating adds 1.25% to our Symbiosis bonus.

Stats Priority Order

As a resto Druid, working to reach the first tier of raiding in this expansion, one must follow the following prefernece level for stats

Int > Spirit > Haste > Crit > Mastery

How much Haste is good for me?

As mentioned earlier, Haste benifits us a lot but at certain amounts of haste only. So if someone has 1900 haste and are just 104 off getting an extra wild growth tick, get the extra haste and add an extra tick to heals, but if one is at 1700 haste (just a random example), that means you need 304 more haste ! In this case one would rather reforge the extra haste into spirit and drop down to 1500 level, till you have aquired gear that will allow you to get to 2004 Haste without sacrificing spirit.

So Is Mastery any good for me?

As of things stand now, master is the least attractive stat for resto druids. It is extremely situational and in most cases we only get any advantage from it when healing the tank. For this tier of raiding, mastery is not a 'hot' stat.

Is Critical Strike any good for me?

All our HoTs can crit now, so having crit is good. However a good resto druid would never gem/reforge/enchant for crit where other options such as int/spirit/haste are available.

How our spells have changed

Rejuvenation: We can no longer provide a raid blanket with Rejuv because of it's stupendously high mana cost. However, Rejuv is still an important spell for resto druids. The best way to use Rejuv is when you know that none of the ticks will be wasted on overhealing. Rejuv may be used on tank when tank's HP is below 90% or on other raid members at 80% HP (PLEASE NOTE: the percentages are a rough estimate of at what HP level one would expect all Rejuv ticks to be effective heals, the HP percentages are not based on mathematics but just general observation.)

Wild Growth: This is still the spell we have loved since it came into existance, just with a longer cd. However, the longer CD means that one would want to get the best out of every cast. Before casting WG, make sure you are casting it on someone who has 4-5 other players in range. A good healer would never get a WG cast off that does not effect 4 targets at least.

Lifebloom: Strong, Cheap tank HoT.

Nourish: This is the spell you must be spamming when you are doing nothing else.

Healing Touch: Only use if an urgent HP top up needed. Since HP is very expensive, it is a good idea to put a quick rejuv on the low target and then HT to gain mastery bonus on HT.

Regrowth: Fast, inefficient, direct Heal. This must only be used to save someone from dying, in it's current form, this spell is rather unattractive.

Swiftmend: Strong, Instant Heal. The use of this has not changed much.

Efflorescence: This spell has been nerfed repeatedly and does not really perform as well as one would hope. However still very helpful when healing clumped up players.

Tranquility: Very strong spell. This spell is very efficient and works a lot smarter by selecting proper targets to heal. When a wipe seems imminent....use it !

Tree of Life Form: 15% healing bonus and the following benefits:
Lifebloom: now castable on any number of targets. If you are in ToL form, you want to have LBx3 on as many targets as you can.
Regrowth: now instant cast but still expensive and inefficient, use gingerly and as situatinally only.
Wild Growth: now targets 2 extra people.

Rotations

Tank - Lbx3 at all times, rejuv as needed, spam nourish
Raid - Combination of nourish and rejuv, wg and efflorescence as per situations demand.



What does all this mean?
What this mean is that during the first tier of raiding, druid healing will not be what some people (myself included) fell in love with. We are no longer efficient raid healers. The changes made in this expansion have destroyed the druid healing style. Druid are arguably the least fun healing class at the moment. We are pretty much paladins except we cast a LB on tank before spamming our flash heal.
I have been a healer for a long time and I have put a lot of effort into being a good healer. It's not the difficulty that bothers me but the fact that all that I loved about being a druid is now gone. Making something difficult does not mean that it must not be fun. I have loved my druid for years and as any good healer must, I will stick to healing till the next tier of raiding and I would advice any fellow druids who feel frustrated to do the same.
I hope that with better gear, spirit, haste and int will come to a place where we can at least cast Rejuv without having to look at innervate cd. However, as of things stand now...Resto druids may be good or bad, thats individual opinions but personally..I am just not having fun. I can keep groups alive, all heroics are done, had a couple of raids too but sadly, for the first time since I started playing, I have not had any fun healing as a resto druid.

I have however tried to put together a few things which might benefit any fellow druids trying to learn healing. I hope you find the information useful.

[Synwyn]

You should probably give Hamlet his credit when directly copying/pasting his resto cata release thread from EJ.

[Engorgio]

You should probably give Hamlet his credit when directly copying/pasting his resto cata release thread from EJ.

he didnt TOTALLY copy and paste it, he deleted some things from the EJ post lol

[Myrrar]

1st off, there is already a sticky. If you disagree with something on it, post it. If not, there is no reason to post the same exact information. 2nd, as said, Hamlet is an amazing resto druid and writes an amazing guide. Almost every guide will take information from him, but don't just copy and paste and say it's yours.