HOTW vs NV and SOTF vs Incarnation

[Liax]

I've been thinking a lot over these talents, even tested them via simcraft and I'm still not convinced over peoples choices on why they are better.

Soul of the forest... Very situational at best. Having to time Swiftmend just before Wild growth for it to be anywhere near useful... very clunky and annoying. But overall higher uptime than incarnation.

Nature's vigil is overall has the same type of thing going for it. Static increase from HOTW, and NV is a 3 min cd.

Thoughts on this?

[dennisdkramer]

I havent healed progression content in a while, so take my words with a grain of salt I guess

Druid talents are a shining example of the design goals of the new talent system. For the most part, you can pick between them, they each have their own associated playstyles and utilities, and none is so strong you feel obligated to use it. SotF isnt just about a simcraft spreadsheet, it can be used to help with specific mechanics, or just used rotationally if that's something you're comfortable with. Even the trees, although they're bad, are an easy 'set-it-and-forget-it' throughput increase. Incarnation is a strong cooldown, but takes some skill to properly utilize and does absolutely nothing for you the 3 minutes that its on cooldown.

As a resto I would probably NOT take dream unless tank damage was sporadic and spiky I guess, and even then it'd be a stretch to justify. NV vs HoTW is a simple matter of "do I need a burst cooldown on this fight"

[Catokot]

I pretty much always raid with tree right now. Sotf is amazing in theory, but it falls apart if you actually monitor the exact healing you get from it. ToL gives us a solid throughput cd if you need sustained healing, or 30 seconds of spending minimal mana. This, combined with tranq, means you have a cd every 90 seconds to play with. For the level 90 talents, heart is a static 6% int increase, putting its sustained throughput not much behind nv, while providing an amazing dps cooldown (seems to be very important in quite a few fights). If you really feel you need the extra cd you could take nv, but I can't really think of any fights where this would be the case. Granted, I haven't seen any of hof heroic yet, so take my word with a grain of salt.