Relearning how to do it all again

Raided on the druid the past couple nights. The first night was, well, interesting. The second night I felt like I had a grove going. There was a bit of a learning curve but considering that the playstyle will change for Cata, I am not too worried.

Efflorescence

This is extremely potent, obviously, when the raid is stacked up. If you stack up ranged on say Sindi, for example, it is a boost. It does not seem to crit (/sad). With raids at it's current state, I find it the "Swiftmend to get a new heal" mechanic clunky. Of course, I still use it but doesn't mean I think it makes the most sense right now.

Wild Growth

While the cooldown has changed, it is subject to crits which I was happy to see.

Nourish and Healing Touch

I don't do heroic 25 mans, so Healing touch never got used except when macro'd to Nature's Swiftness. For the first time, though, I am seriously considering drop NS entirely.

Nourish does not seem viable with our current mana pools. I couldn't get my self using enough to refresh lifebloom because I was not a tank healer. Think this will be shelved until Cata.

Tree of Life

Still figuring out the best times to use this. What is funny is my muscle memory got the better of me on Sindi. Get gripped to Dragon, shapeshift to travel form, run run run jump.... into tree-oh-crap I didn't mean to do that! Took me a few tries to untrain myself.

I loathe clicky things, so to remember the best times to use the cooldown will take some getting use to. I will get there, once the rest of healing feels more natural.

Nature's Cure

The commonly heard words when this talent is brought up is "There are other classes who can do it, I am not needed."

Well, our team lost two priests and a pally. This is a serious blow to our dispelling power and I felt someone needed to help pick up the slack.

Mana

Night one was very rough for mana. I wasn't using revitalize enough and dropped too much spirit because I was testing out of combat regen, not in combat regen (don't be like me). I have since reverted a couple peices of gear back to their full spirit values and now sit over 1k spirit again.

Weapons

The healing effect on Trauma now seems less important to me than haste and other stats, so I pulled out my old LK 10 staff, Halion (Staff of blah blah blah). The loss of the off hand seemed minor compared to the gain in sockets, haste and crit. But what about the Int on the Spindle, you say? I am still experimenting and may switch back to the combo later.

Gear

I did not have the 4pc set, so I reforged spirit to crit. And I don't have full leather. I want to say that I'm not worried about the 5 percent loss. The truth is, I am lazy and don't wish to gem a new belt and hat.

If you haven't already, pick up the formerly Moonkin idol in place of your resto one. It has haste AND crit for the loss of spirit. And speaking of idols, I had almost 15 total sitting around. They got sold/deleted since their effects are removed. Holy bank space Batman!

A slightly bitter rant

For a long time, I wondered why Blizzard thought all we did as druids was hit rejuv and twiddled our thumbs. I, myself, rejuved the raid, hit tanks with rejuv and lifebloom (regrowth if I had time) and used WG when cooldown was finished. Where did I have time to dink around? So I seethed and loathed all the druids who gave Blizz their seemingly ridiculous idea.

Then I had a talk with our other resto druid. He said something to the effect of What else were we supposed to do? Between the 4pc bonuses, trinkets and weapons, rejuv was the best way to soar on healing. Then I stopped being so mad at druids and started to get really pissed at the devs.

Now, I see that there was a little too much focus on our niche (raid healing) and not enough focus on us as a more complete healer.

Took me long enough to get to that realization. On a side note, our formerly one spell healer is happy and feels more engaged with the new changes. I hope the rest of you feel the same because it should mean more fun.