Cataclysmic Healing: Drood

Chuggin' along, healing heroics, flailing with limited success at raid bosses (Nomnomtron still refuse to fall over).

There's a lot of moaning about on the various fora concerning how hard this expansion is on healers. I think I've made my stance pretty clear on that (it isn't really, assuming your group can collectively outwit a catfish), but as I recently got my druid to 85 and started healing the odd normal dungeon to gear up for heroics I realised one other large factor that may be influencing my position.

My main, being a shaman, has many more tools to help out of the group is less than stellar; short cooldown interrupt, offensive purge, and a potentially long-duration CC (taking this opportunity to once again say how much I hate that I'm forced into enhancement subspec, making these utilities less reliable than I'd like). Add some totems that sometimes help (earthbind, grounding), and I'm actually pretty confident of my ability to cover for DPS or tanks that may lack in several departments. There are limits, of course, but just being able to take up a little bit of the slack helps immensely whilst pugging.

Of course, I don't have the priestly ability to move people out of fire, but such is life.

Now, I consider my resto druid. Being able to remove poisons is a lovely thing, and cyclone and roots are useful in a pinch. But that's basically the extent of the utility provided. Now if I end up with a group of marginal window-lickers, all I can do is heal through the uninterrupted spells/undispelled mob buffs/un-CC'd caster mobs setting fire to my face from afar...

Oh, and battle res. My experience with this from an outsider perspective is that it gets used to raise a DPS in the middle of a raid boss fight, therefore preventing me from reincarnating later when I take a fire bath.

Basically, I feel that I lack tools as a druid. All I can do is heal, and I'm not even convinced I enjoy that under the new healing regime. The joyous mobility of druid healing now comes with a hefty mana price-tag, whilst simultaneously punishing the use of any cast-time heals on a target without a HoT thanks to the mastery. Synergy: you are doing it wrong.

Underlying all this is the nagging suspicion that neither healing spec is actually that great when it comes to raw throughput. However, I'm absolutely positive that my (in)competence and gear are far larger factors in determining success right now. By the time such theoretical concerns as maximum sustainable throughput become significant, things will be patched to Hades and back.

Taking a positive stance, kitty is still lots of fun. Mmm, bleeds.