Dreamstate

I tried out feral tanking a few weeks ago and did not enjoy it very much because my gear was so low. I felt completely ineffective. Supposedly when my gear improves, I should find tanking more feasible.

However, I really enjoy healing as usual. My usual build is full resto....treebeard and all. The HOT dance is really dynamic and fun....as opposed to the usual static heal drone you have to be as a holy pally.

I'm definitely not saying that druid > pally heal for sure. I'll take easy mode holy pally healing in raids any day of the week. I'm a big proponent of max healing paladins in the raid over holy priests. It was something I didn't understand about my old raiding guild. Why take a fleshy OOM bot over a energizer bunny mana pally?

And by prefer...I mean having 3 paladins and 1 priest over 1 paladin and 3 priests. I still think Holy Priests are very crucial to raids. Fort buff alone is painful to live without.

So back to the druid. I really wanted the druid up because I'm hoping to do more progression with JAE in the 25 man sector. One of the things I felt we lacked was significant rolling HOTs on the tanks.

For fights that require a lot of movement. I really favor having a balanced raid with great mana efficient flash heals mixed with HOTs mixed with impressive 8k Greater Heals. I call it a perfect symphony of healers. Put the right combination together and it's poetic.

And while I've been gearing up my druid, I've mostly been full resto. However, quite recently, it hasn't been as straight forward. The raid and party needs fluctuate a great deal depending on who is currently present. We had a pretty big influx of level 70s in our guild lately. It's hard to predict if I should bring dps or healing.

So last week, Taint suggested I go Dreamstate Moonkin. It was on the fly but I agreed and tried it out. My main concern was if I'd still be able to main heal fine without Swiftmend.

Two doubts I encountered right away. 1) NO boomkin gear at all 2) My normal reliance on Swiftmend in my HOT cycle

What I found was that in Resto gear, thanks to the last patch, I still have about 400 base spell damage. So I was actually able to do decent dps....not good or great...but decent. It actually ended up not being a problem at all. I have already begun to collect boomkin gear. My base spell damage now has gone up to 539 unbuffed in just the last 3 days. (thank goodness for old unfinished quests and heroics)

After I respecced Dreamstate for Kara, I was quite concerned about my ability to main heal. However, I did a heroic Ramparts afterwards and it seemed okay. I did find that I have to use my Nature's Swiftness/Healing Touch Rank 13 macro more often. Also, I'm forced to use Regrowth more often as well. But not having Swiftmend seems doable now that I've gone a week without it.

Also since, then I've solo healed Heroic SP, Mechanar many times. My current opinion is that this spec is quite viable. And with even better gear (my bonus healing is only 1300) this spec will be even more viable.

In fact, the more time I spend in this spec, I start to think this is a truly viable spec in the right hands...meaning you really have to know the two trees well enough to make up for the handicaps.

Also, it's just amazing to be able to have ONE spec and two modes of play.. NO RESPEC! It's great. For example, tonight we lost a rogue 7 bosses into Karazhan. We ended up picking up a disc/holy priest for the last three bosses. I was able to switch immediately to boomkin gear and dps for the rest of the raid.

Another huge bonus is with heroic instances. This build now allows for another healer to fit into our party easily without anyone needing to respec to make the instance work.

I'm currently working on tweaking my dreamstate build to accomodate my play style more. The one I'm using now was thrown together super fast.
Here's the one I've built this week that I might switch to:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0t0rdicsRuZZxLfLcq


(the mana dance)
Mana regen with Dreamstate is great. When I was farming Beads in Nagrand to get the [Kurenai Kilt] I never had to drink. I just did a mana dance every now and then and poof, I'd be full again.