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.

[mjdoom]

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.
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And when you guys do this it makes my job easier so that I can contribute while having a nasty headache :P It always amazes me how little healing I really have to do in an Onyxia run. I think I was at or close to max mana when she died.

- mjdoom

[TheDragoon]

It always amazes me how little healing I really have to do in an Onyxia run.  I think I was at or close to max mana when she died.
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So was I, but that was mainly because I had been resurrecting people while out of combat and then I drank as she got down to about 10-15% to get to full mana for the last push. :)

[kandrathe]

I don't understand the problem?

If this arrangement suits your needs, then why is there something broken?

Talents were never meant to be invested fully into 1 tree and result in a well-rounded version of that class. Full investment means specialization in 1 area, deficiency in other areas. I think they've accomplished that for the most part w/ Holy & Shadow.
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If Talents were not meant to be fully invested in one tree, then why the dependencies which require 5, 10, 15, 20 or 30 points invested to select the next tier. No, they are a tree where the more desirable talent enhancements require lower level investments. So I cannot be "well-rounded" by choosing the best talents of each of the three trees, I need to get stuff I don't really want to fullfil the requirements to get to the skills I do want.

My beef with my Holy Spec'd priest was that she would only excel in group play as healer, and the pain of corpse walks through STV when I could not complete quests at my level without calling/begging for help. I had to become a sort of stalker, trying to find areas where other people were also questing to take advantage of their killing, while in return healing, and buffing them so as not to be a total leech. But, that was not always possible, and often the quests I needed to do were devoid of players.

I think what clinched the respec for me was being Lvl 39 and struggling to do [38] Kurzen's Mystery, the troll 4 tablet collection quest which requires you to travel to 4 ruins and fight through the trolls. Using every tool in my arsenal (even mind soothe, MC, fade) I was finally able to succeed and finish that quest, but it took me at least 6 hours and countless corpse runs. It was 6 hours of sheer drudgery and it did not make the game fun. Killing speed per troll was terribly slow (30-45 sec), and any additional add was usually death. Often the tablets were guarded by 3-4 trolls with 2 or more patrols. Many times I would get up to fighting the last mob, only to have respawns wipe me out.

My feeling is that the Holy tree gets you very little until the end game, when you will do most of your play in parties. IMHO, Priest is one class, that requires one spec for questing (unless you run with comrades) and another for party play. For me, there is not enough damage output (and as Treesh says, other bonuses) in the Holy tree to allow for investing 31 points to get Holy Nova. I decided that for now, I would focus on maximizing my abilitiy to solo quests, while still being a viable healer for instances.

What is "broken" in my opinion is that until the changes to the shadow tree, Blizzards vision of a priest was as a group healer. The discipline and holy trees still suffer from that mind set, such that if you want to specialize in healing, it pretty much neuters you in your ability to cause damage and thus solo quests. I've played the other "healing" classes as well, and I find that the priest is unique in their almost total dependence on others to kill. Even little things would help, like a chance for Mind Blast to cause a 30 second stun giving some CC besides Shackle, useable on more mobs. Blizzard did make changes to the Shadow tree, allowing priest a new arsenal of damage.

I have 31 points in the shadow tree now, and this is the spec I will probably aim for;



Until the end game, when I will probably respec again, as my damage abilities will be trumped by my need to be a better healer.

[vor_lord]

You're probably thinking of my mini-guide to healing that's posted in the strategy forums, but I never said that greater heal would be used for most of my healing.  I said that I could see maybe trying to make it about half my healing if things worked out right.  But that statement assumed an investment in Improved Healing, which reduces the mana cost of Greater Heal by 15%.  But, since I play on a PvP server and do a lot of PvP, I've had to abandon that idea and switch to a hybrid build.  Silence and Mind Flay are just too important to give up in PvP, and without Improved Healing, there's no benefit to casting Greater Heal over Flash Heal.  One might think that there's still a slight mana cost benefit to Greater Heal, but in reality overhealing and the inability to take advantage of critical heals reduces the mana cost savings significantly.  I don't remember the last time I used Greater Heal.  It's been a while.
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So I'll chime in with my lower level priest experience ;) All of this is 5 man (not raid) but I wanted to comment on the relative gimpiness of Holy due to its tendency to boost Greater Heal.

I use Greater Heal most of the time (actually it's just plain Heal right now, but the point is the long cast big heal). I find it to be more mana efficient (even though I'm currently fully Shadow specced at level 38) principally because of the regen I can get by casting less frequently. With no +crit gear and no Holy Spec I rarely critically heal anyway so I don't overheal much.

However, "most of the time" is when things are very controlled. Main tank is taking all the damage at a rate I can predict, etc. In this situation, it is highly unlikely that my mana efficiency matters one whit. When the stuff hits the fan, I am using flash heal and renew, and PW:S. Then mana efficiency is really needed (and right now I don't have it with the Shadow tree). I don't see the tendency to use Flash changing significantly no matter what spec I might have.

Once I've had a little fun toying with Shadowform, my plan is to respec to a tri spec, mostly for mana efficiency. I haven't soloed signficantly since level 23 (one of the benefits of being a priest on Terenas with a decent sized group of similarly leveled lurkers) so my shadow spec is kind of silly -- more than anything it is nice for when trying to run instances shorthanded for the challenge.

Currently my plan is to go something like 21 disc/22 shadow/8 holy, but I keep changing my mind. I'm mulling several specs, but I am rarely tempted to go further than 10 points into Holy, as I don't see the sheer usefulness of Flash Heal going away at any level. Inner Focus is hard to ignore.

When things get ugly I use flash heal, and so most of the Holy tree is unattractive when compared to Shadow and Discipline. And I'm pretty much a pure PvE grouping priest even if my current spec doesn't show it.

[MongoJerry]

And about holy nova and holy fire, in release the priest boards were filled with complaints of "why have the top tier talents doing damage rather than healing better?"  I guess you don't agree with all those other priests either.

I think that it's obvious that I do. Priests in release only ever saw the gimped Holy Nova that only did around 120 damage. If it did around 350 damage every five seconds, then a whole lot more people would have loved the spell the way I did.

I think the main thing you are forgetting is the difference between PvP and PvE.  PvE isn't solely about how much damage can you pump out in a short amount of time.  The aggro reduction would be a help when your fade is still in cooldown (and would be even with improved fade). The AoE heal is nice.  And it's not just a "save the group from a wipe once in a blue moon" skill MJ.

Why are you getting on your PvE vs PvP high horse? Two of the three examples I gave were PvE examples, and the primary story example involved a PvE adventure in Blackrock Depths. Damage dealing isn't limited to PvP. Priest can actually deliver a fair amount of dps for a PvE party between heals and that extra dps often saves the party by killing mobs faster. That's why I like stuff like the old Holy Nova and the new wand-autocast. More damage dealt = less time the mobs have to beat on your party = good.

Regarding the old Holy Nova, it was great in a party that only had one mage or warlock to handle aoe situations. When you only have one primary aoe'er, it really helps to have secondary characters who can put out some supporting aoe and kill the mobs faster than the primary aoe'er can do alone. That's why it's crucial for shamans to drop fire totems, hunters to throw up volleys, and warriors to throw out all their aoe skills if the situation allows it (they might have to tank a difficult elite, so that's not possible in all situations). The beauty of the old Holy Nova was that it gave a holy priest an extra dimension. He or she could add his or her own damage on top of what was going on and help bring the mobs down. Holy Nova could only be cast once every five seconds, but that was fine. You just pre-buff Shield mage, Holy Nova, flash heal, flash heal, Holy Nova, Shield mage, flash heal, flash heal... etc. It was great. It let the priest fill a new niche roll. As it stands now, Holy Nova just encourages holy priests to stay in a one-dimensional heal-bot role. I like healing and supporting a party, too, but sometimes it's nice to be able to break out and do something else on occation.

But since you've made up your mind on beta holy nova and refuse to actually see what this version of holy nova is like, it's fruitless to continue the discussion and I don't like my opinion being belittled instead of actually discussed.

I in no way feel that I have belittled you. And what's more, I gave long and specific reasons why I don't like Holy Nova. Disagreeing with you is not belittling you. I have played a priest for a very long time and know a lot of its ins-and-outs. I've tried many many respecs to see what different priest builds are like and I've found that Holy Nova isn't worth the 31-point investment. It's certainly not worth giving up Inner Focus, and it's not worth giving up many of the other more useful talents that are at the priest's disposal. If Holy Nova as it stands were a 21-point talent, then I could see why some priests might get it. But as a 31-point top of the tree talent? No way.

And the reason why I keep mentioning how holy nova isn't pointless is because while the holy tree is "broken", it's not broken because of holy nova.  It's the other talents available that make the holy tree less than desirable.  It's not a neutered holy fire or neutered holy nova, it's the great utility of the other trees and lack of anything really unique in the holy tree that make it less than desirable.

Since I spent three long paragraphs discussing this issue and you make no allusion to them and since you made your strange reference to PvP when more of my examples were PvE rather than PvP related, I can only conclude that you didn't actually read my post before responding to it. You're right that it is fruitless for the two of us to continue discussing Holy Nova when you don't actually read my posts before responding to them. However, I make my posts not only for your benefit but also for the benefit of the rest of the people who read these forums. You are welcome to join in the discussion or not as you please. However, I would ask for the simple respect that if you reply to one of my posts that you read it first.

[Warlock]

Kurzen's Mystery is a hard quest for it's level. No elites, but a lot of normal mobs that spawn quickly and run for help. On my Druid I eventually did it in a group (working on other quests in the meantime) that included a couple of overlevelled characters, making it trivial. My Warlock had it easier (send in VW, read tablet while it's getting killed, run away) but still died a couple of times.

[Treesh]

Since I spent three long paragraphs discussing this issue and you make no allusion to them and since you made your strange reference to PvP when more of my examples were PvE rather than PvP related, I can only conclude that you didn't actually read my post before responding to it. 
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I didn't make it clear that not all of my thoughts in that post were directed towards you. I should have made that clearer. I did actually read your posts and I actually do agree with what you say about the holy tree in general. I just happen to think that if someone wants to build a holy priest for their own amusement, they shouldn't listen to all the "experts" out there telling them it's crap and who refuse to accept another opinion or viewpoint. That's why my last paragraph telling others (and certainly not just you as you seemed to have thought) why I keep harping about holy nova. I certainly owe other people that respect.

Edit: Typo and added what's in italics.

[Warlock]

Since the topic has drifted a bit...

Speaking as a Druid healer, I don't quite grasp the issue with Greater Heal. Healing Touch takes almost as long to cast and is usable - clearly so, since I don't have a faster direct heal that has any sort of efficiency and have successfully healed in all the 5 to 10 man instances and part of molten core.

I do use my faster spells (Regrowth, Nature's Swiftness) when needed and can see that Flash heal is better than Regrowth (reliable, fast, front loaded) but it doesn't look so much better that I'd give up the efficiency of the big heals unless I had to. So by analysis without personal high level Priest experience Flash Heal looks like an emergency spell filling the same role as Regrowth, but from observation and discussion it's the spell most used by Priests. What it is about Flash Heal that makes it so much more attractive a healing option in actual play?

[MongoJerry]

I didn't make it clear that not all of my thoughts in that post were directed towards you.  I should have made that clearer.  I did actually read your posts and I actually do agree with what you say about the holy tree in general.  I just happen to think that if someone wants to build a holy priest for their own amusement, they shouldn't listen to all the "experts" out there telling them it's crap and who refuse to accept another opinion or viewpoint.  That's why my last paragraph telling others (and certainly not just you as you seemed to have thought) why I keep harping about holy nova.  I certainly owe other people that respect.

<3 Treesh. Misunderstanding corrected.

Back to your quote:

it's the great utility of the other trees and lack of anything really unique in the holy tree that make it less than desirable.

This is exactly what I'm talking about with the old Holy Nova. The old Holy Nova *was* something unique and desirable. It was something that made people go, "Woah! That's cool! I didn't know priests could do that." Oh, well. Maybe I'll try to put up something on the official forums and see if I can get Blizzard's attention with it, but I doubt it'd work. Hopefully, one day, priests will get their turn.

[Pantalaimon]

What it is about Flash Heal that makes it so much more attractive a healing option in actual play?
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This all started about how the holy tree is, while a viable playstyle, somewhat... lacking in versatility. The whole tree is about buffing greater heal.

The thing about flash heal is two-fold for me - more chances to crit, bringing its mana efficiency almost on par with an untalented greater heal, and flexibility, which you already mentioned. Why use a 3.5 second heal when I can cast flash twice, heal the same amount, and either use less mana (critted) or slightly more?

I think the major harping about the holy tree is you spend 31 talent points to basically handicap you into using mostly greater heal in order to not have wasted your talent points, or you can go into discipline and give you utility that applies to all situations, not just one spell (15% regen while casting, a spirit buff, a free spell that has a higher crit chance).

Edit: wording

[Pantalaimon]

Hopefully, one day, priests will get their turn.
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Yeah... can't say I'd be disappointed with a class quest. :D

[MongoJerry]

I do use my faster spells (Regrowth, Nature's Swiftness) when needed and can see that Flash heal is better than Regrowth (reliable, fast, front loaded) but it doesn't look so much better that I'd give up the efficiency of the big heals unless I had to. So by analysis without personal high level Priest experience Flash Heal looks like an emergency spell filling the same role as Regrowth, but from observation and discussion it's the spell most used by Priests. What it is about Flash Heal that makes it so much more attractive a healing option in actual play?

In a nutshell, unless you spend a *ton* of points in the Holy talent tree, there's no benefit to using Greater Heal over Flash Heal. Greater Heal has a theoretically small numerical mana efficiency advantage over Flash Heal, but the fact that a person is more likely to overheal or waste critical heals more using Greater Heal removes most of that mana efficiency. Meanwhile, Flash Heal is much more flexible. You don't have to bite your nails hoping the heal lands before your target dies, and you can choose to switch targets quickly back and forth depending on who is taking damage in a given situation. It just overall allows more flexibility than Greater Heal does and since in practical situations it has about the same mana efficiency as Greater Heal, why wouldn't you use Flash Heal?

Of course, one could then argue that a good priest ought to invest heavily into the holy tree and increase the mana efficiency of his or her Greater Heal spells. But then again, one could also put those points into the Discipline tree and improve one's mana efficiency, total mana, and mana regeneration and therefore have more mana to cast all spells -- not just Greater Heal. It's not that Greater Heal is a bad spell. It's just that there isn't the incentive there to use it.

[lemekim]

I think the reason why Greater Heal has an advantage over Flash Heal (besides somewhat higher efficiency) is because of the way the new Spirit system works. This is especially noticeable in Molten Core and Raid situations.

A lot of people in raids use CT_Raid or similar mods, so they have the auto-cancel on heals if the target is above certain health %. So often what will end up happening if several people are healing the same target is that it might take 2-3 casts for the priest to get their Greater Heal to actually cast. 2-3 attempts of those is 7-10.5 seconds, so given the new spirit rule, this will give those priests 2-5.5 seconds of spirit regeneration (since they haven't actually cast a spell). This might not seem like much, but that's 150-300 mana back right there on a spell that costs 820 or so mana with talents. That's a LOT of mana saved.

Meanwhile, with the Flash Heal, it will probably take you similarly 2-3 casts to land it. That's 3-4.5 seconds, which is not enough time for spirit regen to kick in. So while in theory they are similar in efficiency, because of the spirit bonus Greater Heal will come out on top.

[Roland]

In a nutshell, unless you spend a *ton* of points in the Holy talent tree, there's no benefit to using Greater Heal over Flash Heal.&nbsp; Greater Heal has a theoretically small numerical mana efficiency advantage over Flash Heal, but the fact that a person is more likely to overheal or waste critical heals more using Greater Heal removes most of that mana efficiency.&nbsp; Meanwhile, Flash Heal is much more flexible.&nbsp; You don't have to bite your nails hoping the heal lands before your target dies, and you can choose to switch targets quickly back and forth depending on who is taking damage in a given situation.&nbsp; It just overall allows more flexibility than Greater Heal does and since in practical situations it has about the same mana efficiency as Greater Heal, why wouldn't you use Flash Heal?

Of course, one could then argue that a good priest ought to invest heavily into the holy tree and increase the mana efficiency of his or her Greater Heal spells.&nbsp; But then again, one could also put those points into the Discipline tree and improve one's mana efficiency, total mana, and mana regeneration and therefore have more mana to cast all spells -- not just Greater Heal.&nbsp; It's not that Greater Heal is a bad spell.&nbsp; It's just that there isn't the incentive there to use it.
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This is probably a stupid question, but why not just slightly lower the mana cost of Greater Heal and/or slightly raise the mana cost of Flash Heal? Maybe even drop .5 - 1.0 seconds off the casting time of Greater Heal, bringing it down to an even 3 seconds? This would lower the mana efficiency of Flash Heal (forcing it into a more situational use skill, i.e. topping off or getting that one quick heal in to save the day before following up with the big one) while simultaneously raising that of Greater Heal, making it a more viable choice in the long run since overheals wouldn't waste quite so much mana? Throwing in a tiny reduction to the casting time would also help, as although .5 seconds isn't huge for such a long-casting spell, it can make the difference, and would also help push the heal efficiency into Great Heal's favor. Even adding a tiny cooldown to Flash Heal, possibly in addition to the above, would help make it more difficult to just chain-cast Flash Heal. Say, 2.5 seconds? This would make it so that, for 1 second after completing a Flash Heal, you can't use it again - just long enough to make you really think whether waiting to fire off another one, or using a bigger, better Heal (like Greater Heal) would be the better choice?

I'm not saying any of these fixes would necessarily work, but IMHO and with my limited experience, I think they'd be the perfect solution to the Flash Heal vs. all other heals argument. It wouldn't do much of anything in the way of improving the Holy Tree, but at least it would round out the healing options a bit, instead of being a one-trick Healbot (you'd be a multiple-trick Healbot instead! ;)).

[MongoJerry]

I'm not saying any of these fixes would necessarily work, but IMHO and with my limited experience, I think they'd be the perfect solution to the Flash Heal vs. all other heals argument. It wouldn't do much of anything in the way of improving the Holy Tree, but at least it would round out the healing options a bit, instead of being a one-trick Healbot (you'd be a multiple-trick Healbot instead! ;)).

Priests are already multi-trick healbots as it is with Renew, Flash Heal, Shield, and Prayer of Healing. Then there's Dispell Magic, Cure Disease, and first aid bandages, too. For my part, I don't need the additional headache of having to fit Greater Heals in there, too. However, I have often thought that if Master Healer reduced the cast time of Greater Heal by a full second rather than a half a second, then that would make it and Greater Heal somewhat interesting.

I think the reason why Greater Heal has an advantage over Flash Heal (besides somewhat higher efficiency) is because of the way the new Spirit system works. This is especially noticeable in Molten Core and Raid situations.

Yeah, you're right that the new change to spirit does make Greater Heal somewhat more mana efficient in raids. We actually tried using Greater Heal on a Molten Core raid once for a couple of bosses, and I frankly would have liked to have experimented with the idea more. The trouble with using Greater Heal in a large raid setting, though, is the old mantra "Things Go Wrong" and when you're fighting a large Molten Core raid boss, there's ample time where "Things Go Wrong."

To take advantage of Greater Heal's mana efficiency, everyone would have to set their mana conserve options down to a low value -- to around 65% rather than the more normal 80-85% Flash Heal level. That's already asking your main tank's health to get pretty low. Then, one can imagine that sometime during a 15 minute fight, the main tank's life might be at 66% and then the tank might get hit by two or three critical hits in a row. With Greater Heals reducing the frequency of heals landed by more than half, it's easy to picture a point where a tank dies before a four second spell cast manages to land -- especially in situations where there are only a few healers healing the main tank because other healers are healing other warriors who are tanking side mobs or are just healing random other people in the raid party. Even when there are a large number of healers healing, though, chaos and randomness show that over a course of a long fight there will be times when most of the healers line up their heals with each other and again, at those points, a tank will be susceptible to quick poorly timed hits. With Flash Heal, the tank starts off with higher health and heals are landing more frequently, making the raid less likely to be hurt when "Things Go Wrong."

[lemekim]

Yeap, using Greater heal is dangerous because of the reasons you listed, but it can be quite useful in two situations:

1) The mob does relatively weak and constant DPS, without significant bursts.

Example: Golemagg's dogs, Domo's Elites, Sulfuron's range attack, early stages of Garr.

2) The tank has very high life, due to gear or buffs (probably 8k+). Easier achieved by alliance rather then Horde, thanks to the Blessing of Kings. Then the buffer is much bigger and you can afford to use slower heals.

Point of note here is that Greater heals do have another weakness. Certain bosses like to do either interrupts or high damage attacks, so that one will interrupt their heal. If this happens often, lesser heal is more reliable, since interrupting a greater heal stops 2.5-3k of healing, while interrupting a flash heal only stops 1-1.5k.

So with high enough buffer you can use GH, albeit you still probably need to use FH on bosses that like to cast certain spells randomly (Geddon comes to mind).

What we do if we try to take advantage of Greater Heal efficiency is we mix it. Some healers use Flash Heal, others use Greater Heal. At some point the healers can switch, or usually we just get the priests that are flash healing Innervated, and keep going. Between Innervate and CT_Raid, the healers won't run out (unless something is killing them, but that is a different story and problem!)

[Kevin]

Yeap, using Greater heal is dangerous because of the reasons you listed, but it can be quite useful in two situations:

1) The mob does relatively weak and constant DPS, without significant bursts.

Example: Golemagg's dogs, Domo's Elites, Sulfuron's range attack, early stages of Garr.

2) The tank has very high life, due to gear or buffs (probably 8k+). Easier achieved by alliance rather then Horde, thanks to the Blessing of Kings. Then the buffer is much bigger and you can afford to use slower heals.

Point of note here is that Greater heals do have another weakness. Certain bosses like to do either interrupts or high damage attacks, so that one will interrupt their heal. If this happens often, lesser heal is more reliable, since interrupting a greater heal stops 2.5-3k of healing, while interrupting a flash heal only stops 1-1.5k.

So with high enough buffer you can use GH, albeit you still probably need to use FH on bosses that like to cast certain spells randomly (Geddon comes to mind).

What we do if we try to take advantage of Greater Heal efficiency is we mix it. Some healers use Flash Heal, others use Greater Heal. At some point the healers can switch, or usually we just get the priests that are flash healing Innervated, and keep going. Between Innervate and CT_Raid, the healers won't run out (unless something is killing them, but that is a different story and problem!)
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Your druids are a "natural" fit to the greater heal spot and depending on how you set up the healing my be filling that roll anyway. I know I do when I heal with my druid in Molten Core or Onyxia. Regrowth will lose so much of the benefit of the HoT and is such a mana hog that my healing touch (which is pretty much greater heal) is the spell of choice. I will land a few here and there on the tanks and see flash heals get interrupted. Just a thought, let your druids heal like druids and keep them and the priests happy as well. :) And yep my innervate will usually go to a priest, though I do have more spirit than some of the priests I've raided with, but I also have a smaller total mana pool than them as well (though generally more HP). So there are times when I get the innervate but that is rare in the big raids.

[MongoJerry]

What we do if we try to take advantage of Greater Heal efficiency is we mix it. Some healers use Flash Heal, others use Greater Heal. At some point the healers can switch, or usually we just get the priests that are flash healing Innervated, and keep going. Between Innervate and CT_Raid, the healers won't run out (unless something is killing them, but that is a different story and problem!)

Do all your healers have the same mana conserve setting (at about 65% to maximize Greater Heal's effectiveness) whether they are using Greater Heal or Flash Heal? If they have different settings -- like 65% for Greater Heal and 80% for Flash Heal -- then that means that those who Flash Heal will do most of the healing and those with Greater Heal will rarely land a heal. If they have the same settings, then I suppose this could work, although again, you're allowing the tank's health to drop to a pretty low level.

Another problem with Greater Heal is if the tank is moving quite a bit -- say the main tank is getting feared or he's chasing after Shazzrah -- then there is a greater chance for Greater Heal to get broken due to the main tank being out of range at the end of the heal.

[lemekim]

We would specifically mention which fights we would use Greater Heal in and the healers would adjust accordingly. I am not sure how our healers handle the cutoff in CT_Raid - I think there might be different cutoffs for different heals, or maybe they just increase it when they switch to another heal, it's not too hard. We don't really use it often, you just have to use common sense I suppose to see when you can use it to your benefit.

And no, I am not saying it justifies building a whole tree around it, but it does have some uses.