Healing Touch + Hybrid BuildFollow

Well I don't play my druid much anymore unless my guild needs a healer for something, either raiding or instances. With the new changes to +healing I am sitting at ~550 spell damage. Not to bad. so I was thinking about a new build for her:

29/0/32

OR

34/0/27

Anyone else think these might be viable for Heroics and maybe raiding?

Actually, I'm pretty sure many people have an easier time in 5-man content with a dreamstate-HT build than a ToL build; I know several druids who are ToL and r0x0r in raids, but have a hard time with mana management and keeping everyone alive in 5-manned heroics.

Just depends on how you want to handle your healing I suppose; I'm more of a HoT person so if I ever go resto I'm sure I'll be going pure ToL.

I think im one of the few that uses a dreamstate build in the higher instances like SSC / TK (soon mh!)

The fact is ofcourse you wont be topping the healing meters constantly.

however your regen is absolutely fantastic (especially with 2.3)
your a very solid Tank healer that works even better in combo with lets say a paladin. Let the paladin spam his fast heals while you top the tank up with 5ks a heal.

Biggest reason for me to choose that build is the other players not getting the hots and spamming 1k heals making my hots useless.

all combined its still an viable build imo for the instances, not sure yet bout mh ofcourse.

just my 2cents

I love my dreamstate build (34/0/27). Just getting started on heroics so I cant comment on them. ToL was more efficient but not a ton. I main healed BM twice in a week or so, 1 tree and 1 dreamstate, and both were very efficient.

I aggree that the healing is viable for most stuff but the dmg part is harder to do. Still possible but you have to work at it (yep, sounds like a Moonkin to me). You have to rely more on your gear to do dmg since you skip dmg increasing talents, and we know how hard it is to get leather +dmg gear sometimes. You will wear a lot of cloth in this build at first.

Until you have the spirit gear I think you will see a bigger benefit from dreamstate since Intel is more common on our gear.

The biggest difference that ive noticed is that ToL healing stays ahead of the dmg better but dreamstate catches up better. if you have a good party you can rely on ToL rocks, if your pugging and the team play might be sloppy you will like dreamstate. Of course if you have any plans on soloing...

I have been working on an alt lately thats going dreamstate but was thinking of using this build 34/0/27

It really is just some minor changes to the resto tree.

The problem with Dreamstate builds is that a druid's forte is their HoT's. Priests and pallies both have better single-target heals, but no one can touch a druid's HoT's. Dreamstate builds are focused around HT, so aren't optimal.
They are still possible. They just don't play to a druid's strength. And they may even be better than tree form for heroics, where it's more likely that you'll have a chance to put out a bit of dps, and the big heals are more important since you'll be the only healer.

And on a side note, we have a doomkin (48/0/13) who occasionally switches out to heal (our first Hydross kill this weekend, for example, when we were desperately short on healers), and does pretty well (lifebloom lifebloom lifebloom). Does he stand up to the other healers? No, but he still does pretty well.

I can only disagree with that part. I bolded the stuff that really bothers me.

Yes, long cast time will indeed make the spell benefit more from +Heal. However, that does not mean that a spell is always better to use because it benefits more from +Heal. For example, my Pally's Flash of Light takes 42.86% of my +Heal while Holy Light takes 71.43%. Yet, usage of HL is reserved for emergencies and FoL remains the spell of choice to spam because of its great heal/mana ratio. But I digress.

The part I disagree the most with is when you say burst healing is the best to deal with "Oh shi-!" moments. While it is true that on-demand burst is great, like a Nature's Swiftness + max rank HT, casting a 3-second heal is not exactly what I would call the best recovery time.

The point is good, but the context is wrong. If you were spamming your HoT's when the tank gets chain-crushed or something, you could then shift out of ToL and start casting HT while your HoTs, as well as the other healers, would maintain the tank alive. Otherwise you're stuck spamming a high-rank HT constantly just "in case" something happens. And even then, you do not know when the tank is gonna receive that burst of damage. Maybe it'll be just 0.5 seconds before your current heal finish casting, or maybe your heal will have landed *just* before the burst damage and then you will have to deal with the 3-second cast.

Well, that's my take on it, at least.

And finally, AoE damage is *definitely not* when HT shines. It's where HoT's do. Your party will be dead thrice by the time your first HT goes off. On the other hand, you can slap a few HoT's on everyone while another healer uses instant heals to make sure they don't die before the HoT's work their magic.

Edited, Nov 28th 2007 2:12pm by Selverein

The comparison is rather accurate I believe.
I was just pointing out that if you use HT for its high +Heal ratio, you have to use max rank, otherwise it's pointless and you might as well use a spell with a lesser, but still good, ratio. (Like Lifebloom)

I don't shun Dreamstate builds, I just believe ToL make the most out of a Resto Druid's strengths.