Spirit and Int are not "more or less equal." I recommend reading more on EJ for the exact numbers. While we typically cannot choose one or over the other, a raiding druid will always net more mana per fight from int than spirit. However, each additional point of spirit improves the regen value of each point of int. It simply comes down to if you need the regen or not.Originally Posted by Grimmhorn
A GCD spamming druid who occasionally uses directs will benefit very little from crit. Hence, having higher haste allows you to reach the 1s GCD without the need to spec into Celestial Focus. Resto4Life has a nice calculator to determine your levels of haste to GCD cap from hots. However, gear drops are RNG based and so we can't always be picky about it.Haste vs Crit is more difficult to quantify. Living Seed has made crit a very interesting stat for us. It helps solve the problem of crit heals generally being overheal by putting up a damage shield = to 30% of your crit heal. This will often be 3k-4k worth of healing on a reasonably well set up Nourish (Triple Lifebloom blooms have hit well into 20k heal on a crit but it unfortunately doesn't play with Living Seed.) Haste is tempting because of the lowered global cooldown and speeding up those Nourish Spams. Right now I'm leaning towards Crit when given the choice between two equal sets of gear (common in Heroic/Naxx level items). Uld stuff seems to lean towards Crit. Haste cap w/ GotEM is 359 for a reference point. (Celestial Focus 3% spell haste talent = 253). MP5 is useful, but really doesn't benefit from our talents. Don't run away screaming from it, but it's sorta "Meh".
Based on regen values, Luminous > Purified. However, if you are a SP whore you should have Jewel Crafting anyway and should socket primarily Runed Dragon's Eyes and Scarlet Rubies. You could then say Purified > Luminous due to the spirit-SP conversion.Red = Runed Scarlet Ruby (+19 Spell Power)
Yellow = Luminous Monarch Topaz (+8 Int +9 Spell Power)
Blue = Purified Twilight Opal (+8 Spirit +9 Spellpower)
If you are in a raiding guild, you should be able to swap out Glyphs very easily. This of course assumes you know how to make gold and can procure the glyphs that are useful for progression. The only exception to this are the newer glyphs, but over time they will become cheaper and more readily available. Certain fights benefit more from one glyph over another (depending on your role of course).I'm also using the Wild Growth and Nourish Glyphs. WG accounts for a tremendous amount of healing. It's also instant cast and will generally heal affected members for about 2k before your other spells even have a chance to land (it ticks every second). It's more useful as a 25 man tool than a 10 though, as even in 25 it can be tough to hit the full 6 targets.
The Rejuvination glyph looks good on paper and is actually pretty good for 5 mans. It generally sucks for 10 and 25's though, as anybody who has health low enough to benefit from the proc is almost certainly being targetted by other raid healers.
I always raid heal with the exception of General Vezax. For raid healing, I will use SM/WG/Nourish or SM/WG/RJ depending on the fight. I would not exclude the RJ glyph because there are fights where the entire raid can quickly dip under the 50% zone especially in hard modes such as Deconstructor Tantrum or Mimiron Phase 2. If your job is to blanket the raid in a [WG/RJx5]xInfinity + SM rotation where raid wide damage is actually life threatening, then you will see your RJ Glyph shine. Otherwise, of course, it will be useless.
WG is an absolute powerhouse glyph when it hits 6 targets. 10 man or 25 man, WG is our most powerful cast per GCD. However, occasionally I do see parses of druids where their primarily heal for an encounter is WG. For MT healing, weaving in WG's is a powerful raid supplement. For raid healing, we weave it in between our RJ blanketing. However, if all you are casting is WG you should switch to Boomkin/Cat and do our typical 4-5,000 dps to help speed up the kill.
Nourish accounts for very little of my healing in 25 mans (much more in 10 mans, however) and so I prefer to have 3/3 Subtlety since my RJ spamming tends to grab everything in add intense fights. Improved Tranquility is extremely situational and I doubt most druids would use it twice (let alone once) in most fights set aside cases such as Deconstructor.10 hard mode. Most of the tunnel-visioned "elite" druids will call you a n00b for even considering Revitalize, but I consider it a case of comparing "trash vs trash." In our late stages of talent selection, many of them will be of very little use. Therefor, you should select the talents that best "synnergize" with your play style. But in reality, you should try them all out and see which ones you like best.Degrador put together a very nice write-up for druid specs. I've copied it here to keep things condensed into one package. I've also made some very minor editting adjustments to integrate it more naturally into this post and fix some very, very rare typos.
On heavy raid wide damage, RJ will provide more HPS per cast than LB. However, LB has a lower MPS usage per cast. The bonus for LB is that it's stackable, making it effective to use if you run out of targets to RJ (usually in 10 mans). Basically, RJ is our most efficient heal. LB is our cheapest heal (except on Vezax). Of course, WG is king of HPS, HPM, and HPC provided it hits multiple people. For OoC procs (be it from casting or melee), LB is a great spell for the refund. However, if you need to WG and it's available to cast, it's more effective to just OoC-WG then and there than to OoC-LB than WG at full cost.Lifebloom has changed roles with 3.1. Druids used to "Roll" lifeblooms on multiple targets, stacking the HoT up to 3 and never letting it expire. This provided about 1100ish hp per second per target and could be reliabley done on 2-3 folks, 4 if you were stretching. More than 2 was hard on the mana, but not unreasonable. Now they've changed the mechanics of Lifebloom. Its cost was doubled and it now refunds 1/2 on bloom. You get credit for each stack. This makes rolling blooms very mana intensive and impractical for any stamina-oriented fight unless the tank needs absolute maximum heals. The spell is not worthless, however. The Mana Refund does NOT take into account any discounts you happen to be having. That means single blooms are cheaper. This makes it a perfectly reasonable spell to use for "Touching Up" the raid. It may quite possibley be the cheapest/most efficient heal in our arsenal now (I'm sure elitistjerks have the numbers on this vs Rejuv somewhere). Casting Lifebloom off of a clearcast proc is very nearly a free mini-mana potion. Also note that Lifebloom is a very tactical spell. If there is regular, heavy damage that takes place periodically, you can "Seed" the raid with lifeblooms, trying to land the Bloom after the big hit. It's a great tool despite its naysayers. (Note: Because you generally want the Lifebloom to expire, the LB glyph is pretty much horrid now).
With respect to tank healing, I will only roll LBs on the tank if absolutely necessary. In 25 mans, the MT is assigned a HL bomber and a Disc Priest which is more than enough to cover most situations without the need of additional healing. If I am tank healing (such as Vezax), I will slow roll a LB for the Nourish boost.
RG is another situational spell. On some fights, I rarely use it set aside MT fodder. On other fights, it makes up a respectable amount of my healing. I generally will use it if target has a deficit and can benefit from the HOT component.Regrowth has a very big following. I hate it. Well, I don't care for it. It's expensive and cumbersome. The main reason I use it is not so much for the initial heal, but for the nearly 30 second Swiftmendable HoT it places on the target. Generally, only tanks or people that are going to be doing a lot of kiting (and thus getting range issues) ever get Regrowth from me. Some folks argue that glyphed regrowth is king of the hill (The HoT WILL get the 20% increase), but I found it encouraged poor habits for me personally. Your mileage may vary. It's been generally accepted that Nourish is a superior direct heal for spamming.
I think you're missing part of the point of Nourish. It's the same reason why some druids take glyphed HT. It's our general "flash heal" and flashes are good when players take rapid amounts of spike damage and need to be topped off immediately. It used to be THE spell on razorscale when his frostfire balls could kill a player in 2 simultaneous hits.Nourish is good, but not as much of a workhorse as you'd think. You really need at minimum one hot for it to be remotely efficient. Generally tanks get Nourish spam if they're taking heavy damage. Nourish is also an acceptable flash heal for things like Kel ice blocks. With the right gear/glyphs/talents, you can get some very, very high nourish crits. Generally used as a tank healing spell. Full T7 with Glyph makes for some powerful heals, but I worry what will happen as you change to Uld gear.
With the changes to innervate, it becomes a very useful spell for dps who are not so efficient with their mana pools. If the healing required for the fight is easy, it will be a good spell for dps such as mages. On healing intensive fights, I will generally use it on myself and let the ferals use their innervates on the priests.Innervate needs to be seen as a heal for mana. I usually use it on myself if things have gone very, very badly. Sometimes I cast it on undergeared healers to keep them up and going, sometimes I don't use it at all. There's simply too many variables to tell you when to use this spell. Recent changes make it no longer regen based on spirit so now it's much more diverse. When in doubt, you can always ask on vent what to with it.
The rest of your guide looks pretty good. It matches how I heal in general and is theoretically the highest HPS output per second that can be maintained for insane amounts of time. Where Holy Light spam can maintain 15k hps on a single target, we can do that much in the raid. (FYI, our theoretical high is MUCH higher than 15k hps.) We compliment Holy Pallies the best in that respect.