Regrowth

When I first read about the druid Regrowth spec I was sceptical to say the least - it seemed to be a theoretical exercise that ignored the practicality of a druid's strengths and weaknesses. However I've now tried it, and am a cautious convert...

On my restoration journey I've tried pretty much all the specs: Moonglow (quick, I need a healing build, I've been asked to switch from moonkin and the raid starts in 20 minutes!), Heart of the Wild / Nature's Swiftness (a big mana pool, wouldn't it be lovely if a hybrid spec can work in a raid?) and then Swiftmend. All the way through I've struggled to do decent raid healing, with a couple of exceptions.

The thing is raid healing is very different from dungeon healing, an crucially heal over time spells don't stack. On the first point - at any level of progression raid there will be a fair number of healers, and although theoretically overhealing is bad in practice it's impossible and undesirable to coordinate the healers too closely. If you try for efficiency what you'll actually get is underhealing and characters will die. Secondly one of the druid's great strengths is the Rejuvenate spell - use it on the tanks, warlocks, those DPS who can't help drawing aggro, and the whole raid in burst damage situations. For one druid (the one with the most +healing) this will give spectacular results, but the other druids are left choking on their dust.

Those other druids are left looking at fast spells - very low ranks of Healing Touch, and Regrowth. Regrowth is expensive, but with my moonkin experience I'm used to judging how quickly to exhaust my mana pool (or how many consumables to use!) according to the length of the fight. Having also picked up my fifth piece of the tier 2 set on Thursday my Regrowths are usually very fast (74% of the time with the Onyxia buff!), and I also have Nature's Swiftness for the occasional emergency. I'd like to have at least two Swiftmend druids in the raid, but otherwise Regrowth definitely has its place.

PS. I often find "published" specs sub-optimal. For Regrowth I'm using this - since the most of the Balance tree is filler, and my cat gear is pretty good, I prefer those damage talents so I can actually quest a bit. Similarly the standard moonkin spec didn't include Improved Healing Touch, whereas a spec that takes that actually allows you to be a pretty decent dungeon healer.