Healing Mastery

[Grazer]

Now that a fair number of us have reached 85 and are running heroics, I was wondering what the healers thought of their masteries.  The druid's symbiosis (increased healing by 10%+ on targets with one of my hots) is ok, but I question how good it will be compared to the other healer masteries. 
(1) For tank healing, as far as I can tell, the initial hot that triggers symbiosis does not benefit from symbiosis.  That is usually lifebloom which accounts for a lot of tank healing.  However, unlike paladin and holy priest masteries, all of our heals (not just direct heals) after the first hot are affected.
(2) It is not a great raid healing mastery.  Similar to (1), since the initial hot is not affected, most of our raid healing will not see a benefit from our mastery.  It might be possible to use WG in conjunction with rejuv to get some benefit, but I imagine that would be rather limited.

How do other healers feel about theirs?

[Clarimari]

I agree with your assessment of Mastery for Druids. I do not see mastery as viable for druid raid healers at this time. 

It looks like Blizzard is pushing us to spec for either tank healing or raid healing. If we are an effective  dedicated tank healer then we stack Mastery and give up the 3 talent points in efflorescence. If we are going to be effective raid healers then we stack haste pick up efflorescence and lose talents in GotEM, swiftmend or Nature's cure.

If Blizzard is going to force us to be tank healers then they need to either buff some of our current tank healing spells namely (HT, Nourish, and Regrowth) or give us some type of damage mitigation to apply on the tank

[Grazer]

Actually Clari, I think blizz is just pushing us to straight tank healing with minor raid support.  When you consider nourish requiring a hot, our mastery requiring a hot, and the cooldowns on our aoe, you get a solid tank healer with limited raid healing abilities regardless of how you spec.  A druid just doesn't have the raid healing abilities of the shaman or priest.  However, wild growth and efflorescence are amazing heals that can make healing the raid significantly easier.  I have found that is not too hard to work them in while tank healing.  I do think that you are right about giving us some sort of tank cd.  I think if they want us to tank heal, then we could use another tool or two to play with. 

Are you sure mastery  > haste for tank healing?  I haven't seen numbers yet comparing them for tank healing, but I thought haste was still the best throughput stat we have after int.

[Clarimari]

According to almost everything I have read so far Once we reach around 1423+ haste, Mastery for tank healing is the way to go. The 1423 haste gives us the 12th tick of LB and 4th Tick of Regrowth. The next haste level that would benefit us is 2K+ where we pick up the 9th tick of WG.  It will be difficult to reach that level (2k) with T11 gear but it can be done. I can get my haste up to 1750 but I start to suffer regen problems with out my egg trinket.

The logic is that we will always have a hot on the tank and the mastery will increase the strength of our heals.

[Grazer]

Clari, do you have a reference?  From EJ:
http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t110354-resto_cataclysm_release/
and MMO:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/806487-Resto-Druid-Guide-Cata-edition
It sounds like int and haste are always 1 and 2 respectively for throughput, even for tank healing.  The real debate seems to be about crit versus mastery.  Where mastery > crit if you can get at least 30% of your heals affected by symbiosis.

[Clarimari]

I totally agree Int>spirit>haste>mastery>crit in that order. But.......
http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t110354-resto_cataclysm_release/
I believe if you read the last few pages of this thread you will see that slourette has done some number crunching and came to very similar conclusions I have. Once you reach the break point in haste - Mastery becomes the better stat especially in longer fights. As our gear gets better and we can reach the next break point (2K+) Then by all means we will need to get enough haste to reach that point. Until that point stacking haste will not give us a tangible benefit like it did in Wrath.

Using Hamlet's spreadsheet as my guide and plugging in my gear at this time. My throughput actually drops when I substitute additional haste for Mastery providing I stay above the 1423 haste break point. 

There are several unanswered questions about Druid mechanics but we are getting off of your original topic. I would love to take this discussion farther maybe in the class forum.