Post-Patch: Resto Druid Review

I'll be honest: I think resto made out very well in this patch. I know some druids (Marilyn from Nihilum, for one) were complaining that they weren't getting raid spots in Sunwell level content pre-patch, but since I hit 70 on my tree, I've been raiding whenever I can, and overall I'd say my performance (as a grossly undergeared healer) was very satisfactory. I measure how well I healed by two things: my overall healing output, and my overhealing output. High on one and low on the other generally means I'm making good use of my spells. I've managed to make a very strong showing, matching the healing of better geared people, just by keeping up my HoTs, being proactive, and using Wild Growth whenever possible.

First of all, being able to root indoors is nice, even though as a healer I rarely bother to do it. That means that Nature's Grasp, which is now baseline and works in all forms, also works indoors, which is very useful in heroics. Now that Healing Touch is castable in tree form, I find myself using it a bit more, but it does make Natural Shapeshifter rather useless -- except that you need it to get to Master Shapeshifter, which is well worth the investment. The only complaint I have about the new talents is that since Tree of Life no longer grants extra spirit, I find myself having less spirit than I'm used to and having to scramble to find it on my gear instead. I'm not too worried about it, since I never seem to run out of mana anyway, but since Improved Tree of Life grants extra healing power based on spirit, it's still a very important stat. I did pick up Living Seed (since Regrowth crits all the time now, it's pretty much a guaranteed application, and works kind of like Prayer of Mending except that it doesn't jump around) and Replenish, but not Gift of the Earthmother. I can see where it would be useful, but I just don't have enough points to go around. I'm hoping that with some haste gear, the lack of this talent won't matter too much. Wild Growth is, definitely, one of the best things about new resto. It heals for about twice as much as Circle of Healing over its full duration; if you can manage to pop it on two or more groups in a raid, I'd think that the days of druid healers bottoming out the meters is a thing of the past.

I did pick up Genesis and Moonglow to balance out some of the lifebloom nerf; with 10 more points I will pick up Nature's Splendor. I'm looking forward to Nourish because we'll be able to pull off "combos" with this spell -- Wild Growth the group then spam Nourish on everyone. For that reason I didn't take the Healing Touch glyph -- I still want a big heal available to me, since Nourish will be the Flash Heal of choice at 80.

Now, if only they would make those form-altering glyph available, I'd be a happy tree. Here's an idea -- make a glyph so that tree form is a green tree instead of a dead, brown one. Or maybe, make it so that the tree slowly turns green as it heals and then goes back to brown if enough time elaspes without a heal. Wouldn't that be cool?