I did initially title this “Double Resto Specs all the way across the sky” but opted against keeping it. Bad internet jokes are bad and should probably be left to rot, even if they do make me laugh.
For the longest time I went back and forth on how I felt about my fellow priests having two healing specs to use for raiding. On one hand I thought the fact that you can slot yourself into two very different healing roles on the same character was fantastic. On the other hand not being able to jump into a DPS role when required (or for fun) was a definite downside.
From what I am reading, Efflorescence was hotfixed on the beta server to heal for only 30% (instead of 60%) of your Swiftmend over 7 seconds. Some numbers that were thrown out, for epic raid geared toons, is something in the ballpark of 550 hp per second for a total of 3850 hp over the duration of the effect. This is a little bit more than one tick of Rejuvenation and approximately 4.8% of a players life total (assuming roughly 80,000 hp). There are going to be fights where Efflorescence (and Living seed for that matter) are going to yield extremely poor results especially with the 50% nerf to its effectiveness.
What does this mean? If there are fights with these two talents yielding very low numbers you are looking at roughly 6 talent points (15% of our total talent point pool) underperforming. Given that we may need to spec into Moonglow (8/2/31) with the other recent mana regen nerfs the need for slimming down our resto tree points is even more paramount. Certain talents like Nature’s Cure and Nature’s Grace might even be sacrifices to shoe horn in the requisite tools. Might our options be something along the lines of one talent spec that has Efflorescence and Living seed, and another talent spec that has Nature’s Grace, Nature’s Cure, Blessing of the Grove or perhaps something in between. Perhaps some fights might allow us to forgo Moonglow and go heavy into Restoration.
I’m not thrilled about the idea of having two specs just to swap 6 or so talent points but it is something I am going to have to consider. Is this something that bothers you? If you’re like me and have enjoyed putting your offspec (be in Moonkin, Feral Tank etc.) to use on a personal or raid level then it is a somewhat unsettling. This is 100% speculation and me musing out loud and not me saying for sure without a doubt we’ll need two Resto specs because that may not end up being the case. This is more me putting that thought out there and seeing how far people would go to tailor their spec to the fight at hand.
Note: this has been bouncing around in my head for quite some time but as always I highly recommend that you check out EJ and other major message boards as it is not a new idea.
Rank 4 Healing Touch 
I can’t help thinking that Blizzard should really up the number of specs we are allowed, even if the price went up exponentially.
This has become a bit of a hot topic in my guild over the last 24 hours. As a bit of background, I’m our only raiding priest. Since dual specs were introduced I’ve always been Holy/Disc primarily because certain fights suit one over the other. This has caused a bit of drama in the past because all our other healers had to take turns swapping to dps on farm stuff/when we had too many healers. Now at the thought of our two Resto druids also having two Resto specs, our Shamans are revolting (although technically that’s nothing new).
Being able to use WoWhead to save talent trees and then copy them straight into the game will help a bit, but I can’t say I’m looking forward to all the respeccing I suspect that we’re going to have to do during Cataclysm.
My husband, who is a resto druid primarily but has also functioned as our main tank/dps in different periods of the game is definitely considering dual Resto specs, ideally he would like three, 2 different PvE builds and one for PvP. Unfortunately he’ll probably have to tank at some point too, reinforcing my belief that two specs just aren’t enough for people who play all aspects of the game. There are going to be lots of portals to trainers and I guess a warlock to summon everyone back will be a necessity for every raiding guild on a PvP server.
I initially got dual spec on my resto druid so that I could quest in kitty or moonkin spec at a decent pace. I’d have no problem with having 2 resto specs if that’s what my guild wanted – I have to admit to being a fairly poor dpser on my boomkin (hopefully because I just don’t do it enough), but still that is better than none in a pinch, if dps is what’s missing.
I do enjoy playing boomkin and kitty (and bear at a push), but healing is by far my preferred role on my druid, so (as long as I wasn’t doing a lot of questing) I’d be happy with two resto specs.
I tried resto/bear for a while, and I found it incredibly limiting not to have a DPS spec available. Only the most dedicated raiders seem likely to go resto/resto.
Regarding efflorescence in particular, I think you’re right that it’s a highly variable spell. If players are grouped up AND raid damage is happening, like on Festergut, then you get a lot out of it. If damage is all over the place and people aren’t staying still, like Blood Princes, it’s going to do very badly.
One way Blizzard could balance it is to have it work a little like what they have done with tranquility, or for that matter with most aoe dps spells. The reason efflorescence gets so overpowered in crowded situations is that it hits 10+ players, and they all get the full effect of the spell. What if it simply healed the 5 players that most need it, at each tick?
A particular reason I’d like this better is that it would make efflorescence more useful for tank healing. If they balance it around the top end of 10 players all being in the area of effect, then it will be very weak when you cast it on 1-2 tanks.
So intense!
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