Most specs have a set of glpyhs that is optimal. Sometimes you chose between one or more glyphs that are ok. For Resto druids, the proper Prime glyphs are Swiftmend, Rejuvenation, and Lifebloom. Glyph of Regrowth is a “gimmick” glyph. Ok every resto druid worth her salt swapped it in for Chimaeron, but mostly I’ve not seen anyone speak well of it.
What it does, is simple. If you have Regrowth active on someone, and that person’s health is below 50%, it refreshes. It keeps refreshing until they go over 50%. It actually sounds pretty good, then you start thinking…. how often are people below 50%? The other healers get them up past that, incidental heals work, how much good does this actually do? According to WowPopular.com, most resto druids don’t use this glpyh.
Actually, in progression fights? Sometimes people take damage and it just sits because the healers are trying to save the tank, or remember what else they’re doing. Sometimes I know a person is really low but I don’t have time to get him all the way up right now. Regrowth ticks are pretty small, but combine it with a Wild Growth and if the victim isn’t standing in bad any more, it can be enough to keep them going.
Regrowth isn’t a great spell to use. I’ll admit that. The heal is small and the mana cost is high. But it is fast, and if I get a Clearcasting proc better believe I’m using it. In a fight with high damage phases followed by low phases, I know that I can blow 30% of my mana on Regrowth spam and still get it back later. And that ups my throughput on the raid. If I were tank healing, the strategy would be really stupid, but usually I’m raid healing.
Just last week we were working hard on Ryolith and taking a lot of raid damage from volcanos. It was hectic as we learned the fight, and over and over I saved someone thanks to my auto-refreshing Regrowth. Cast it on them when they’re at 10% health, cast on someone else, keep going, save them all.
The glyph I gave up, Glpyh of Lifebloom, increases the crit change of Lifebloom. Which I have up all the time. So a crit chance increase is an obvious, definite HPS bump. But, if it’s not Tree Time, Lifebloom mostly stays on a tank. It’s a nice little bit of healing to help out Kerick and power my Clearcasting. But it’s not winning us the fights.
Glyph of Regrowth is unpredictable. If we do our jobs perfectly, then on most fights it doesn’t help much at all. But on progression fights where we haven’t learned not to take damage, and I am just trying to keep the raid alive another thirty seconds so we can get this phase down and have a better shot next time, it can really do wonders. It’s very much a personal play choice thing. I still might be fail for using it, but I’ve weighed my options and deliberately chosen this fail.
Curious question, are you using Regrowth more than Rejuv?
On some fights? Yeah, or at least they’re real close. Now that my mana issues are manageable, I use a lot…. you’re welcome to look at our logs if you are interested, I’ve been doing combat logs recently, just look for “Crits and Giggles” on Winterhoof.
I used to use Regrowth constantly when I healed on my druid in the beginning of Cata. I didn’t have the patience for Rejuv to heal people up. I eventually just got tired of druid healing and switched to priest healing lol.
Are you still having mana issues?
Not any more, but I do use two mana regen trinkets and Innervate like it’s going out of style.
If I have time to heal someone up, I drop a Rejuv on them then Nourish or HT them to health. If they are really low and I don’t know for sure that I have 7 seconds, I drop a Regrowth. That’s also my strategy if I have a bunch of people to heal.
On one of our best attempts on Ryolith last week, Rejuv way outhealed Regrowth for me. But I didn’t use Nourish or HT hardly at all, so I was using Regrowth and SW as my “direct” heals that fight.
hmmmm
were you wanting to change up your healing style or just talking about how you heal?
Mostly just talking 🙂 I’m always thinking about how I can improve or stretch myself though.
Ah 🙂
Have you checked out Zarm’s stuff? That dude is an insane druid healer
Zarm is not human.
true
but it might give her some ideas!
Yeah, I checked him out. Now I have gear envy. Sigh. I really am thinking about a respec… just have to remember to do it…
I used the Regrowth glyph all through Tier 11 because I was too lazy/cheap to swap glyphs out on Chimaeron all the time. I’ve gone back to the Lifebloom glyph for Firelands because there just aren’t many situations where people sit below 50%, so usually Regrowth drops off without being refreshed.
Lifebloom seems like a lacklustre glyph because I don’t really think of Lifebloom as providing much healing. It just feels like a buff I keep up in order to get other benefits. However, I just looked over our last few raid logs and Lifebloom is my number 3 heal! That honestly surprises me, but it makes me feel like the glyph is a much better choice than I thought.
DPS is science, healing is art, tanking is strategy. It is amazing how much truth is in that statement:
I know my average DPS will increase by 0.0001% if I switch out that gem.
Missing health caused my old raidframe to have black holes, and i filled them with color.
When tanking, I see my whole environment, knowing what will happen next, cooly calculating my moves.
So yeah, if a certain glyph fits your painting style better than the one that has been number crunched to yield 0.0001% more brush strokes per minute – then you should absolutely use it.