With all the non-raid spec gear in TBC, I am building a balance/resto druid. I am trying to decide whether to go 40/0/21 for nature's swiftness or heavier into balance for Force of Nature.

Is the damage output of the treants worth losing the instant heal?

I would go for the treants, they're good for soloing elites/big groups, and you can just throw on a regrowth and a rejuv for healing

I have been wondering about the same thing for a Longg time, i did some dps tests and stuff like that, on cloth mobs or cloth players in pvp the trees crit from 375-450(per tree) which i find pretty impressive, compared to a instant wrath, already almost being 1 second cast the world cooldown would help so much unless your running and want to instant cast.. but the overall dmg from trees will go up to like 5k on a boss whereas a wrath will do from 1200 to 2600(crit)... go trees! ALSO sinse you put out that you would maybe use for instant heal, its still nice to have for that reason, but if you need to heal yourself in a raid your healers arent doing they're job correctly, you can jsut get the Healing touch cast time reduce to help you out a little which isnt so bad.

Treants are amazing, but so is nature's swiftness...

It all depends .. if you find yourself dying to often and think u could have survived with NS, take it..

Seriously, try both out .. I'd love to hear what you think cuz its a difficult one..

I've tried both and I have to say the following:

with NS every 3 minutes i can survive a little longer in battle.
with FoN every 3 minutes I get a am almost assured a kill.

Hey, they have their problems but the trees bring a lot to a balance build imho. some classes are pretty much unbeatible without them in fact (warlocks spring to mind).

with NS every 3 minutes i can survive a little longer in battle.

IF you only use NS for healing that is.

If you do.. well.. more power to you.. erhm. :p

NS imo, though I've never played balance. Trees do look fun, and are slightly annoying to me on my warlock, though I still melt through boomkins like butter. Amazes me how many druids I fight in bg's / arenas that dont decurse...

Elz, are you planning on doing a lot of PvP'ing, or mainly instancing? If you plan on PvP'ing a bunch, are you goign to focus on the BG's themselves, or arenas?

I stayed balance (roughly 43/0/18, without force of nature) for about 2 to 3 weeks. Then I switched to 1/0/60 and haven't looked back. I do a lot more to help my raid group as a heavy resto druid than I did as a balance druid.

Having used both force of nature (I did have it for a little while) and nature's swiftness, I would definitely choose nature's swiftness. Pulling out an instant root, hybernate, heal or whatever else is great utility.

Pulling out an instant root, hybernate, heal or whatever else is great utility.

It really isn't. If your guild brings you because you are balance (most notably Moonkin) Then they will definitely want you for that 5% crit, think of it as 5% more DPS for your party.

Assuming you also went 40/0/21 You would have to make sacrifices to get NS. You could only max out one talent between Balance of Power, Wrath of Cenarius and Moonglow. All 3 of are very important for raiding moonkins, especially BoP (for me anyways) Helps getting to the hit cap, a lot easier.

I have been thinking hard about respeccing to 43/0/18. I really only use my treants in PVP (although I do pvp a lot) and duels, since they tend to die fast in raids. I would like to max out subtlety AND Intensity. As a 44/0/17 I usually have to pick one, and I recently respeced to max out intensity instead of subtlety (only 4/5 now).

In any case even if you don't go for treants (some moonkins just don't like them) I really don't recommend a 40/0/21 unless you maybe want to heal while DPSing in pvp/arena.