It's getting closer to that time and I was wondering what you guys have found is a better end game healing build.

Is ToL that great with bosses hitting so hard or will a mana efficient balance/resto build be better? I was thinking something along the lines of 27/00/34 (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=MtoruVcsZZxgc0xqrco)

Thanks

Turz

Vengeance looks like a nice Talent to have, that's as deep as I would go into the Balance side. My $0.02

ToL was meant to be a raid form, not a party form. With the 70 man instance throwing out so much damage, I don't think HoT+swiftmend and regrowth is gonna cut it. As a feral druid with 750 +healing and 10k mana, I'm going oom all the the time having to throw rank 13HTs to keep up. I don't know how different a resto druid's experience is...

In any case, I've been interested in the build you came up with... I looked at something like it a bit ago and it comes down to
ToL+Empowered Rejuv or Moonglow+Lunar Guidence.

In a raid situation when there are more healers than just you, ToL+ER is the way to go. The way I read ER is that your HoTs get a 20% extra boost from your +healing. Lunar Guidence gives you 25% of your int in +healing/damage. You're gonna have MUCH more +healing than int, so ER will win out there. It only affects HoTs, but in when you're in ToL, you can only HoT =]

So until you start getting into more than 5mans, go with your build. The nice benefit of it is that you're not gimped for damage. You have some of the major balance talents to make your balance spells have a bit more of a kick.

As a note, Natures Grace does proc for any spell, not just damage spells. It's nice when you're healing spells crit and you can throw another one .5s faster =]

Yea, with more healers ToL would be great. That's the problem though. One day half our group is healers and the next just a few. If only hunters could heal, then I would be set : )

I'm going to try both out and see how it goes. I'm still feral also but the times I tried out ToL I was always shifting out and dropping a HT. With the 10 and 25 mans coming up ToL should work better.

Another thing I have to work on is my gear. I've kept up with my healing gear, but my focus has been on feral gear. Not going to work too hard on getting much more until 70 though.


Thanks


Turz

Currently I'm a 1/0/60 build with just over 1k +healing and am finding ToL fantastic. We just 4 manned Murmur for a bit of a laugh without any problems and am yet to find a situation where I really need to shift in and out to cast HT. ToL ftw!!!

The only thing I would say is that it will nerf your damage by so much. When I respecced from my levelling build I couldn't believe the dps difference. Obviously you would expect a fair bit but with mangle critting at 1.1k and ferocious bite at over 3k before I think I'd now find it hard to solo hogger^^. Still it's all about the endgame isn't it and we have to show those priests that we are the best healers in the game ;)...

Tbh, one of my friends who plays a lot more than I do, raided a bit of endgame before becoming a PvP Moonkin.

While he was raiidng the TBC endgame he went for 27/0/34 build because ToL isn't all that it is cracked up to be. I think they had only 1 ToL druid =/

Would a 35/0/26 like this really be so bad (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/druid/talents.html?5110222125031330310000000000000000000 0000050520341001500000000)?

Maybe it's just because I'm fully feral that I dream about all of my damage spells I never cast, or my mana that isn't ever a problem that I would think of a moonkin build that skips the trees.

Granted, I own that the lack of swiftmend makes bigger heals less viable, but...conceivably, this could be a druid with a single set of gear?

Sort of?

Currently I am something like 15/0/56 or something like that.
I tried TOL briefly but I quickly noticed I was an aggro magnet with the added +healing. Additionally I got rid of almost all of my +healing gear for the same reason. I now use mostly +dmg/crit/mp5 gear that gives STA/SPI and INT. This allows me to still grind effectively and keep my raiding status.
I can solo heal a BC 5man fairly easily but havent tried any larger instances as of yet.
Doodaad lvl 70 Drood
Proudmoor Art of War

I respect the Druids who like ToL, but for my tastes it stopped making the cut when they changed how the +heal was applied on it. Although I'm Feral atm, my healing build is 34/0/27

I respect the Druids who like ToL, but for my tastes it stopped making the cut when they changed how the +heal was applied on it.


This was the original way they had it set up in Beta...they never intended it to be from healing cast. This makes ToL durids much more viable in the MT group and you don't have groups of ToL/priest/priest/healadin/healadin.

Personally I'm 5/0/47 (natures grasp ftw), and leveled from 60-70 using this spec. Yes...killing stuff and soloing was a gigantic headache, but I found myself being able to be the *only* healer in a 5-man. I personally LOVE ToL because I was never a HT healer to begin with. Durids are about keeping ppl alive w/ their HoT's and not letting health get below 50-60%. If the MT gets too low I shift out and have an 'emergency' macro to NS + HT rank13, and then shift back to ToL. One thing I have not heard mentioned is the 20% reduction in mana cost when in ToL form. Helloooo....this is huge.


If you want to spam HT all day then roll a priest.

I see the new HT builds as much like the Paladin FoL builds of the 60s era. Its a more powerful and slower heal than FoL, but the idea still applies: spam it on everyone and adjust your rank accordingly, the strategy being to be a consistent source of healing by not running out of mana. I think you need people taking advantage of both the consistent, mana efficiency and max heal, power healing builds in a raid.

We never have room in our MT groups for a Druid as they are typically Druid (me, feral), Warrior, Warlock (imp), Shaman (agi/dps buffs), Paladin (prot spec usually). We could easily force out our prot Pally, but we'd rather keep our healers in our shadowpriest/mana tide groups anyway and keep their mana high. I think I would find ToL more useful if I ever intended to do heroics/5mans as a healer though.

in my opinion, HT is still the best way to heal for long raid boss encounters. it is no longer our most efficient healing spell (taken over by LB), but it is a consistent spell. LB is still the most efficient spell for instant raid heals, while you're MT healing. even priests use greater healing on raid boss encounters, cuz it's their most efficient heal spell, even if it is hella slow.

the limitations imposed by being in ToL form detracts the 41pt talent. it is a better idea to heal in caster form to get the full benefits of all your healing spells, as well as your poison/curse removal abilities. what makes our healing strong as a resto spec are mostly from the empowered talents we have. empowered rejuv and empowered ht offers a substantial increase to our healing abilities, not necessarily the ToL form. try doing a rejuv in ToL and in caster form. You see a difference of like 20 extra hp per tick, give or take. try doing a rejuv with/without empowered rejuv, and u will see an increase of well over 100.

so what do i feel ToL is useful for? it's awesome for PvP healing, for trash clear healing, and probably for most 5man instance runs. any battle that is short will benefit from the faster healing/mana efficiency for HoT's from ToL. chances are, if u spec for the empowered talents, u might as well get ToL, so i suppose it's all gravy. :)

PvP healing?? that's the one time I nevar use it...I usually have a set of hybrid healing/armor gear in case I get agro I can switch to bear.

additionally....downranking doesn't work anymore, so HT is sorta useless unless you use your higher levels. And I also disagree with LB being the most mana-efficent heal. Rejuv is still the most mana effective given its longer duration and mana cost. Then LB, and (now) regrowth is even more mana-efficent than HT (have you seen the cost of it lately?). Combine all of this in ToL form and it's a 20% reduction on top of that ....

the reason why ToL is nice in pvp is when you're facing rogues and mages. u can't be sapped and u can't be poly spammed. just have to watch out for warlocks and their banish. the pros outweigh the cons in pvp... well, i suppose i should say arena. my bad.

downranking works fine for HT. there is no if/and/or but to it. if u mean downranking to ht4 for the .5 sec faster heal, then yes, u cannot downrank that far. however, u can downrank in general, just to conserve mana when u don't need to throw out a large heal. i am using rank 8 and 10 as a feral druid for raid healing. in resto spec with gift of nature and empowered ht, u can heal fine with 6/8/max rank binded.

the main benefit of being resto, is your ability to insta heal with SM and NS, not the actual size of your heal (to a certain point, of course.) once u use up your insta-heals, then u can start upranking your heals to cover your inability to insta-heal.

based on mana efficiency tests, LB came up on top, as long as you don't stack it. HT came second, and rejuv came third. compare the mana cost of both spells, cast time and the total amount healed at the end, not the duration of the spell.

so if u take regrowth and compare it to healing touch (which is actually a poor comparison between a direct heal spell and a part HoT spell, imho), i would say you're comparing HT (max ranks) ~950mana to regrowth's ~750mana (in ToL), 3sec cast, compared to 2sec cast, and total amount healed. HT will do about ~3000 in 3sec, regrowth will do about an initial ~1500? In 6secs, u will do ~6k in heals with HT, and ~5k in heals with regrowth (with 2 ticks of the HoT portion).

HT will spend ~1900mana in 6secs, and regrowth will spend ~2.25kmana in 6secs. then there is the ~80% bonus received from +healing for HT, and ~60% bonus from +healing for regrowth, which makes HT heals coming out larger at the end. If you have Improved regrowth, then u have a 50% chance of getting more heals for the cost... but, that's not very consistent. ToL will give you a bit more to your +healing, but with regrowth, u still cut the +healing bonus by ~60%, which comes out kinda insignificant.

i wish i can access the exact spell stats, but i think i'm somewhat close on explaining the differences. meh. mebbe?


PvP healing?? that's the one time I nevar use it...I usually have a set of hybrid healing/armor gear in case I get agro I can switch to bear.

additionally....downranking doesn't work anymore, so HT is sorta useless unless you use your higher levels. And I also disagree with LB being the most mana-efficent heal. Rejuv is still the most mana effective given its longer duration and mana cost. Then LB, and (now) regrowth is even more mana-efficent than HT (have you seen the cost of it lately?). Combine all of this in ToL form and it's a 20% reduction on top of that ....

I tend to have about 1k +heal self buffed. I recently spec'd ToL ( about 3 weeks ago now? ) and I've been to every boss in Karazhan ( except Curator...never seem to be on in time ) including downing Nightbane. ToL has situations where it's great, and other fights ( Shade of Aran jumps out at me ) where it's not so great.

With a regrowth, rejuv and lifebloom ticking on a tank in my group they are getting around 1k in total. That makes things a bit easier on the priests and pallys too. I've main healed ( and solo healed ) most instances now and even 2 ( ramparts and slave pens ) on heroic ( the only 2 I've done so far ).

When you are the only decurser/de-poisoner then tree is not an option and there are still ways to heal just fine in and out of tree. Like all of our forms it is to be used situationally and not a all or nothing kind of thing.

Like all of our forms it is to be used situationally and not a all or nothing kind of thing.

Exactly. Well said.

I've been toying with a 0/30/31 build for arenas: some dps, good survivability, and crazy support healer with the insta casts, or the 27/0/34 build for raid healing: some dps, some survivability, great regeneration, and solid healing.

so if u take regrowth and compare it to healing touch (which is actually a poor comparison between a direct heal spell and a part HoT spell, imho), i would say you're comparing HT (max ranks) ~950mana to regrowth's ~750mana (in ToL), 3sec cast, compared to 2sec cast, and total amount healed. HT will do about ~3000 in 3sec, regrowth will do about an initial ~1500? In 6secs, u will do ~6k in heals with HT, and ~5k in heals with regrowth (with 2 ticks of the HoT portion).

is that using regrowth with swiftmend?

So is ToL worth getting or not? me and my g/f play her druid and she did have ToL till i started reading this thread and we respec'ed it to this 33/0/28 resto/balance build http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=MxcruVcsbhZZxxcxbqM
but it seems like she and I are running out of mana more than before in instances now with the new spec. Is this a good spec or does anyone have any suggestions? Was thinking of dropping dreamstate to get swiftmend back. Is dreamstate better to have or swiftment?

sorry for all the questions just hard to decide on how to spec her... thanks

Your spec really has alot to do with how you heal. If your one that likes and knows how to down rank your HT spells then the balance/resto spec should work well for you. However, if you like to use your HoT's alot then you really need to think about the TOL spec. I personally have found if I cant keep someone up with my HoT's then I'm not going be keeping them up with my HT's either. I might be able to get 2-3 HT on them but I very quickly run out mana. Though when I focus on HoT's I can normally keep the heals going for 5mins easy. As the poster said before if the tank or one my other targets drop to a critical level I just either shift out and instant HT them or just Regrowth/Rejuv and swiftmend them. I personally am a HoT healer and am looking forward to the Lifebloom changes upcoming.

I personally am a HoT healer and am looking forward to the Lifebloom changes upcoming.

Now that they are finally fixing Lifebloom stacking, I don't really think the Moonglow build has much merit. The Dreamstate build has always been a laughable excuse to get Moonkin. 0/0/61 is going to be the best spec in every way (not that it wasn't pretty much the best already).

Just my two cents -- Tree of Life is a GREAT ability for support healing. For 25 man raids, having your Resto druids have ToL is going to be a huge boon, and even in Karazahn, one ToL druid could be a major asset.

Over most GENERAL play thouigh, I'd probably rather have at least 27 points in Balance for those tier 5 talents, not to mention the offensive pop when needed.