Paladins and Druids to get a Lift

[Kevin]

Regarding the rest of the tree, you've nailed the problem right on the head as far as the problems at the top of the tree -- that those talents expect a person to be using greater heal rather than flash heals.  That's just totally ridiculous and the Holy Tree should be reworked just for that problem alone.
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I agree with the problems with Holy being mostly in the opportunity costs. This is the same problem a warrior proteciton tree suffers and warriors have 2 other nice talents in improved shield bash and concussion blow that might draw them to the top of the tree, but after 15 points in protection it is generally a "do I really want to give up mortal strike, all this extra crit damage, all this extra rage I can generate, etc, etc.

In respect to Greater Heal how do you think a druid heals? Our primary heal is essentially greater heal and we don't have a bubble, our instant cast HoT doesn't run as long and our mana hog regrowth is slower than a flash heal (and doesn't heal that much more up front since pretty much all priests have the 10% improved healing) and even talented makes you rely on the RNG for that crit effect. Healing Touch is generally 60%+ of my healing and I overheal around 5-8% total (I like recap) and most of that is from the crit effect on Regrowth. If recap could count overheal from HoT's it would be worse, but then so would priests numbers. This doesn't seem to be any more overhealing than a priest does. I use 3 ranks of healing touch to make sure that I don't over heal. But I see no reason that a priest with more options for healing can't heal with a greater heal.

Now I do see why with all the other options you wouldn't heal with a greater heal simply because you don't need to. I also agree with the fact that improving greater heal at the cost of all those other talents, since you don't need it to heal well, isn't a great idea either. But I still don't see why you can't be a good healer with that as your main heal. This is exactly what Brista thought as well when he posted about his build idea and the fact that he mainly uses greater heal now.

In raids as a druid I do use CT Raids overheal protection because, well, I have to use Healing Touch or burn a lot of mana with Regrowth and watch a crit be an over heal and have the HoT pretty much always be wasted as well. I've actually gotten very good in Onyxia at being able to time the start of the cast of my healing touch so the spell lands right after her breath attack lands and actually heal the MT. There were comments on teamspeak in the last run from the priests of "I can never get my flash heal in" and it was coming from pretty much all of them because my timed healing touch was taking care of all the healing. Of course if I was off the flash heals would hit and the tank would be fully healed with about .1 to .3 seconds left on my cast so I was happy to have CTRA stop it for me. I mentioned I was doing this then one of the priests started to use greater heal to do the same thing and then I had a full mana bar a lot as it was generally a race between us.