Trees aren't very touchy feelyFollow

I play a resto druid and was just looking over my talents (don't worry, I'm not going to bore you all by posting them) and had a few thoughts on healing touch.

Being a ToL resto I never use it, not even when PVE-ing as a caster. The one and only time I would is the group saving "OH SHI-!!!" button (NS+HT). Do any of you healers add some talent points just to boost the healing from such an emergency macro?

The only talents you can take that directly buff it (and not the other heals) are Empowering Touch(healing bonus), Naturalist (casting time), and Tranquil spirit(mana cost). Since you asked only for the emergency macro, that automatically counts out Naturalist since it won't do anything unless you wanna do some resto melee. try outdpsing that! Talent for talent, tranquil spirit is worth VERY little and there are much better talents there and some which have been passed up at the beginning tiers which are superior. Empowering Touch isn't worth much either. Albeit it is an alright talent, it would get little use because of the 3min CD from NS. There is also the Improved Regrowth talent that is at the same level, which is a pretty good talent (not including the talents that may have been passed from above).

If you're tree specced, you won't be using this much if at all (without NS), because it shifts you out of tree and you can simply just use swiftmend when needed. I'm a tree druid and the only time i use it (without NS) is in heroics when the tank isn't well geared for mitigation / avoidance. that S1 geared warrior that thought he could tank heroics killed me on the inside. Even then i usually can get by, by only using regrowths and swiftmends for emergencies.

Remember guys, just because you HAVE tree form, doesn't necessarily mean you NEED tree form. I am a full resto druid (61 points in the right tree) and I find lots of situations to use HT. During Prince on phase 2 if we only have 2 healers, I drop tree form and spam HT. During SSC last night I was popping out of tree form to pass around down-ranked HT's after our main tank died on a trash pull (he was also my healing target). My guild ovverrides HoTs too quick for them to matter, so direct heals are all I got to help there. I also dropped into caster form and spammed max-rank HT when Hydross enraged with 2% health left.

HT is very useful for times when you need a lot of healing in a short amount of time. HoT's are incredibly mana-efficient, and in raids you usually have another healer providing direct heals, but there are times where for 20-30 seconds you need a constant stream of heavy healing, or where your +heals are too low to make your HoT's count, and in those times you want to pop out and caster-heal.