In this guide I will tell you all I know about druid healing in 4.2+. We are still very versatile, meaning we can Very effectively raid heal or tank heal.

Index

1.1 Talents
1.2 Glyphs
1.3 Stats
1.4 Druid Healing and Situational Awareness
1.5 Enchanting, Gemming and Reforging
1.6 Add-ons and UI

1.1 Talents

Suggested Build: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0hbbZcZRfzhdMruouo:ocVoVbzc

Reasons for the build:

This Build is Brilliant for all forms of healing. You can or raid heal, most of the time you end up doing both those jobs at once anyways . The one change you might want to make, depending on how much tank damage you are having if you are set to that task only, you might want to put some points in living seed. Besides that though Living seed seems to not really be worth it.

1.2 Glyphs

Prime:

First choice
Glyph of Rejuvenation: Increases the healing done by your Rejuvenation by 10%. (MOAR HEALING RAWRRR) <– Winner there

or

Glyph of Regrowth: Your Regrowth heal-over-time will automatically refresh its duration on targets at or below 25% health. (Only used in fights like chimaeron)

Second Choice

Glyph of Swiftmend: Your Swiftmend ability no longer consumes a Rejuvenation or Regrowth effect from the target. ( Means you don’t have to recast your Rejuv or Regrowth) /win

Third choice

Glyph of Lifebloom: Increases the critical effect chance of your Lifebloom by 10%.

 

Glyph of Regrowth: Your Regrowth heal-over-time will automatically refresh its duration on targets at or below 25% health. (Use this for 25 man Raid healing)

Major Glyphs

First choice
Wild Growth: Wild Growth can affect 1 additional target. ( More raid members being healed = more Win IMO )

Second choice
Glyph of Healing touch:  When you cast Healing Touch, the cooldown on your Nature’s Swiftness is reduced by 10 sec.

Third choice

Glyph of Healing touch: When you cast Healing Touch, the cool down on your Nature’s Swiftness is reduced by 5 sec. ( Must have for tank healing Spec )
or
Glyph of Rebirth: Players resurrected by Rebirth are returned to life with 100% health. ( this isn’t as important as you can only do one B res per fight with a 30 min cool down now )

Minor Glyphs

First choice
Glyph of Mark of the Wild: Reduces mana cost by 50% ( Rebuffing silly people who die to fire in combat )

Second choice
Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth: Your Rebirth requires no reagent ( Cause who wants to buy those bloody things)

Third choice
Glyph of Dash: Reduces cool down of dash by 20% ( good from running back from dying !!!) or.. For getting the hell away from things like ORANGE SLIMES!!!  (updated bad thing “ OMG FIRE  OMG FIRE AHHHHHHH” )

1.3 Stats

Haste ( the most amazing thing known to the tree ): The first crucial number for you is 2005. That is your new haste cap you should strive for at level 85 as shown by the haste brake points.  All of these assume a 5% haste buff from a Moonkin, Shadow Priest, or Shaman totem.

• 916: 5th tick of Rejuvenation. You should have this in any raid gearset.
• 1573: 9th tick of Wild Growth and Effloresence with Dark Intent. If you have DI, you only have to make it to here instead of 2005 to get this nice bonus.
• 1602: 5th tick of Rejuvenation without 5% haste. If you’re missing the haste buff, you really want to be at this point or higher.
• 1779: 6th tick of Rejuvenation with Nature’s Grace.
• 2005: 9th tick of Wild Growth and Efflorescence. This point is very valuable, as these two spells make up a large portion of our healing.
• 2032: 6th tick of Rejuvenation with Shard of Woe proc active. If you have a Shard, this is only a small leap from 2005 and makes your trinket use much more effective.
• 2490: 7th tick of Rejuvenation with Nature’s Grace and Shard of Woe active.
• 3106: 11th tick of Wild Growth/Efflorescence with Nature’s Grace.
• 3478: 6th tick of Rejuvenation with Dark Intent.
• 3754: 10th tick of Wild Growth/Efflorescence.
• 3967: 6th tick of Rejuvenation.

If you can’t reach the 2005 haste cap in your current gear. Try to get to 1779, its really worth it for the extra rejuvenation tick for when you use natures grace. The extra advantage to being at 2005 haste is your nourish and healing touch cast a lot quicker, which is just generally more sextastic

 

Intellect:  In simple terms, it is amazing and is our best stat, it gives us spell power, mana and crit. Intellect is more important than any other secondary stat.

More technical side:  Intellect provides 1 spellpower and 0.00154% to crit per point. With Mark of the Wild, Heart of the Wild, and Astral Leather Specialization, it provides 1.169 spellpower and 0.0018% crit (555 points per 1% crit, a bit under 1/3 of a crit rating). Similarly, with these talents, one point of Intellect increases your maximum mana by 17.53 (19.28 with 2/3 Furor), and your regen from Replenishment, Revitalize, and Innervate correspondingly. These things together make Int the best stat for both HPS and mana.

mastery (Symbiosis):  Simple Terms.  Mastery is the best secondary stat after you have reached the highest attainable haste threshold for your gear level. 143.42 mastery rating adds 1% to our Harmony bonus. This is essentially a flat bonus to all healing (albeit an additive bonus, so slightly weaker than it looks). Aside from haste breakpoints, mastery is the secondary stat giving the best throughput increase.

Crit: My Thoughts on this: I feel like Crit is a far better stat for a DPS than it is for us. On a boss, everytime you Crit and deal extra damage, it’s simply that, extra damage. As a healer, when you Crit there is always a good chance that it goes to overheal. Plus, I don’t like relying on a “chance” to crit. That being said, of course Crit isn’t bad for us, and sure it’s nice when things do crit. I just think that it’s still not going to be a stat I focus on, rather it will be a stat that tags along on my gear that is no longer worthless.

 

1.4 Druid Healing and Situational Awareness
The one Important thing you need to know about druid healing is What is the right time to use what spells to counter the incoming raid/tank damage. The Spells we have at our disposal at the moment are Nourish, Regrowth, Lifebloom, Healing Touch, Rejuvenation, Swiftmend, Wild growth Tranquility, natures swiftness, Tree

When to use spells, 10/25 man environment:

Regrowth: whenever someone’s health is quite low and needs a quick top up to avoid death. If you can afford the time use Noruish as it is more mana effective. It is faster then what a hot would heal for and when Swiftmend is on cool down.

Lifebloom: Seeming Lifebloom can only be cast on one target at the moment, Its extremely beneficial to the raid if it is kept up on the tank who’s is taking the most damage at all times. Also Keep it up at all times to Make use of Replenishment for the raid   Also, use on multiple targets if you are in tree form =] good for the mana pool and healing

Rejuvenation:  Though we no longer blanket the raid the way we did in WLK, this spell is still central to our healing. It does very high amount of healing, is quite efficient, and it enables Swiftmend. Because it is a moderately expensive instant, it can burn your mana quickly if you start spamming it–you must break that habit from WLK. But whenever you can cast a Rejuv that will not be mostly overheal, it is an excellent choice (how to know when this is, of course, is not easy, and is one of the hallmarks of good healing). In addition, you will often maintain Rejuvenation on a tank who’s taking any significant amount of damage. In general, your “filler” healing is a mix of Nourish and Rejuv, based on your mana.

Nourish: The Druid’s cheap heal. Put simply, you cast this when you’re not casting anything else. Gauge your mana consumption to know when you need to try to work in more Nourish, and when you can afford to fill time with extra Rejuvenations instead. The tank is always a good target for Nourishes in spare time because of the free Lifebloom refresh.

Swiftmend: Instant heal when someone has a regrowth or Rejuv on them. This is a very strong heal and is a very good “OH SHIT” heal to keep someone alive. Also it is best to dump it on the Melee even if they are all mainly full health due to the large aoe circle of healing it puts on the ground called Efflorescence!!

Wild Growth: Keep on raid at all times, every time it’s off cool down, Use it!!!! It’s a very strong aoe hot that will go to people near the person you dump it on.

Tranquility: use this in high periods of spike damage or when the whole raid gets a big hit such as on Ragnaros when he uses his seeds to damage the raid. This is also now on a 3 min cool down, so make sure you use it more than once in a fight.

Natures Swiftness:  is an amazing “OH SHIT” heal when used with Healing touch. I am getting up to 80-90k crits. It is great for when a tank is very low on health

Tree of Life: use this whenever the raid or tanks start to get hit hard.. In addition to the 15% healing bonus, this has a few effects on our healing spells:

• Lifebloom: now castable on any number of targets. This is handy since Lifebloom does moderate healing and is very cheap. In a fight where you don’t need Tree for other purposes, shifting to cast primarily Lifebloom for 30 seconds lets you use ToL as a very good mana cooldown.
• Regrowth: now instant cast. Not a throughput gain since Regrowth is a 1.5 cast anyway, but this allows use while moving and also gives you much quicker reactive healing. Because of all the Lifeblooms you use during Tree of Life, you get a lot of Clearcasting procs from Malfurion’s Gift, and can turn each one into a free instant Regrowth. The Regrowths even refresh the Lifeblooms.
  If many people in the raid need healing quickly, shifting to cast instant Regrowths can help hit people who need the most healing immediately. Be careful though, as this can be expensive. Still use a good amount of Lifebloom when people aren’t in danger of death.
• Wild Growth: now targets 2 extra people. Simply makes WG slightly better to use even than it ordinarily is.
• Efflorescence gets a double benefit from the 15% Tree boost (since the underlying Swiftmend was already boosted). Again, simply makes a good spell even more effective during Tree.

Also.. Remember to use this spell.. seeming its on a 3 min CD a lot of people forget to use it. Take advantage of it whenever you can.

Innervate: In general, you will now cast this on yourself on cooldown. Use the first one in any encounter after you dip slightly below 80% mana, and then on cooldown after that. Innervate is now extremely weak when cast on targets other than yourself, and this is rarely going to be worth doing (in the event that you are going to cast it on someone else, remember to install a Glyph of Innervate).

1.5 Enchants, Gemming and Reforging

Enchants
Excluding profession bonuses, you should use:

• Head: 60 Int/35 crit (Guardians of Hyjal revered).
• Shoulders: 50Int/25 haste (Therazane exalted).
• Back – 50 Int
• Chest – 20 stats
• Wrists – 50 Int
• Gloves – 65 mastery
• Legs – 95 Int/55 Spirit ([Powerful Ghostly Spellthread])
• Boots – Run speed/35 mastery
• Weapon – Power Torrent
• Offhand – 40 Int

Gemming:

Meta: [Ember Shadowspirit Diamond] in your meta socket. To meet the requirement, gem two [Reckless Ember Topaz] wherever you can get the two best yellow socket bonuses. (As noted above, you might gem some haste as necessary to reach the 2005 mark).

Red: [Brilliant Inferno Ruby]

Yellow: [Artful Ember Topaz] or [Reckless Ember Topaz] depending on your haste

Blue:[Purified Demonseye]

 

Reforging

You have two options when it comes to reforging. You can take Crit or spirit and turn it into Haste or Mastery.
If you are having mana issues, Reforge the crit to Haste/mastery.
If you are not having mana issues, Reforge the Spirit to Haste/mastery.
Reforge everything to Haste.. Unless there is already haste on the gear or you are at the 2005  Cap, after that. Reforge to mastery.

1.7 Add-ons and UI

The Main healing add-on I use is called Vuhdoo. It’s like healbot, but heaps more customizable. Make sure to watch the video in 720p to see what’s going on