Resto druids in Cataclysm Raiding/Heroics

[Deleted]

Can I just start this post by saying that this isn't a QQ thread, more of a concern for my once loved resto druid.

I levelled to 85 as quickly as I could mainly questing so I hadnt done a lot of the 5 man instances before I hit 85. Once there I had collected a decent resto set and started running normals to get item levels up to heroic standards, which didn't take long. I found mana a bit of a concern in the first few instances as we were all learning to play again really. Since then I have accrued a decent resto set mostly 346 gear. I have been mostly doing guild runs so Heroics are generally smooth with few casualties and very rare wipes. Our guild hasnt progressed into raiding as of yet, only a brief encounter with new pvp boss in 10man from tol barad (I forget his name)

Now for the semi-rant, I can honestly say my druid (who I loved playing previously) just feels a little erm clunky and 80 paladin ish. Let me explain more, I understand topping up dps isnt a priority now but to me I feel like a slow casting heal bot. there is no speed and urgency to healing anymore. A dps gets low, so what? leave him till u get a clearcasting proc and regrowth him. healing him a whopping 10% of his health if u are lucky with a crit. My time in Heroics pretty much seems to be stacking lifebloom on tank then standing spamming healing touch and nourish (which feels like my holy paladin was at 80, so so dull) throwing the odd regrowth around with clearcasting procs. I rarely have the need to cast anything else. To me this playstyle isn't enjoyable in the slightest. I dislike being static and spam casting. Its why i liked the druid so much previously.

A few things are excellent, I admit tranquility is an amazing heal. too powerful if anything. Also the changes to wild growth are good too. But this always casting long slow heals isnt. I miss hots which were to me the backbone of our healing arsenal! This brings me to my next question :-

Is there any resto druids reading this that has experience of new 25man content and healing style? I've looked at a few wmo logs but they seem very varied. I was hoping for some feedback on here.

I'm not ready to give up on my resto druid just yet but i'm getting close. Any feedback would be appreciated. thanks

[Team Frosty]

I really don't have fun like I used to on my druid. It's just so much of a hassle with Blizzard trying to equalize the healing classes.

[Myrrar]

So far from what my guild has been doing and most of the top 30 or so guilds I've looked at(before everyone including us made our logs private), there are 2 types of raid healing.

1) Assigning groups. Everyone heals the way they would basically heal in heroics(their triage) and help eachother out based off where their aoe/bouncing heals go. This has been working out fine for us.

2) Druids RJ spaming but not exactly the same as Wrath. RJ is still a primary spells along with Wg, just smarter instead of blanketing. They use Wg and Sm procing efflor every CD and RG on CC procs. People are still doing collapse healing to an extent, though it's not as good now as it was on beta since it was mega nurfed, really just depends on the encounter.

Both ways seem to be working fine since all the logs I've ever looked at, druids were right with, right under, or right above the pallys with everyone else trailing behind, though one of the pallys was ALWAYS 1st. This was before the nurf, so it's changed a bit, but it helped the healers even out a bit, at least for us, with druids still topping it or being very high.