Preamble (feel free to skip the first part, I have a tendency to write too much)

So, people have long tried to make spread sheets for druid healing as is done with pretty much every dps class/spec and some healers, and always run into some rather firm walls. Making a paladin spread sheet is comparably easy because 95% of the raid healing output of the class can be summarized into 2 spells, maybe with some different ranks of them. Different ranks allow paladins to dynamically convert mana to +healing or vice versa. A paladin can always use a little bit of extra mana using higher ranks of HL or more HL and less FoL. This makes creating a paladin spread sheet pretty much just finding the balance for any given set of current stats of the values of int, crit, mp5, and +healing. 5 times the effort could yield a spread sheet a couple % more effective, but the human margin of error is so much larger than the inaccuracy of even a very simple spread sheet, that there isn't a lot of point.

Shaman effectively have even less to think of as they seriously spam 1 button, somtimes they even just cast that 1 spell on the tank the entire time, letting the bounces chain to the melee. One of ours literally just watches tv for most of the raid with another healer on follow and a g15 macro that spams chain heal the whole time if he's in combat, and drinks if he's out of combat. Sometimes he pays enough attention to drink manually instead of wasting a lot of water with his g15 spamming drink every ~2 seconds. So, yeah, all you have to do for a shaman spread sheet is do +healing vs mana balance for a couple ranks of CH.

Priests and druids have actually distinctly different abilities not just "shorter smaller heal, and longer bigger heal" and varying regen abilities, and as such I don't think have ever really been figured too well in a spread sheet post BC. Depending on how this one goes, i may try and figure out something similar for priests.


The Basic Idea

So, instead of trying to come up with a spreadsheet designed around telling you X item is better than Y item and how much dps you will do like the damage spread sheets, my goal is to match gear with fight duration, casting rotations, and strength of hots. This would allow you to see what what gear you need to use in order to sustain a given rotation for the whole fight.

(more rambling, feel free to skip to the next section)

For example, and where this idea came from: Normally i find myself fine on mana in all but a few crazy circumstances, mostly where i was blowing off extra mana in less than efficient ways because i knew i had plenty, then 3 healers died or something and i had to go crazy and needed more. Most fights are short enough and lifebloom cheap enough for a 650+ spirit innervate and a stack of mana pots to get you through just fine, maybe a couple dark runes if you really need. So, killed council last week and i found that in an 11 minute fight, where i didn't want to use dark runes in case i needed my healthstone to live, that i was just slightly short on mana (no shaman or sp) of being able to roll lifeblooms on 4 tanks the whole fight. (WWS) We, like many, had brought a couple extra healers (mostly because our damagers decided to not show up that night, spring break and all) so it was actually fine that i let lifebloom drop of 1 of the tanks for a minute or so, but we never bring more than 6-7 healers unless our damagers just don't show up, and the general plan would be to have 2 sets of druid hots alone do almost all the healing on the rogue, mage, priest tanks, with 1 priest doing shields / heals on all 3 of them when they take a big chunk of damage. But yeah, to the point, I found myself wanting just slightly more mana, mostly because i didn't have enough mana to battle rez. Ideally, I'd like to know this before the fight, as i could have given myself a shaman or something, or used an [Flask of Mighty Restoration] over [Elixir of Draenic Wisdom] / [Elixir of Healing Power]. Usually i prefer the +healing and spirit of healing power / draenic wisdom, but in retrospect a bit more mana would have been nice and for me at least, buffs are easier to change than gear. I may try and snag a second ZA chest and belt and try to make those an easy piece to swap for more mana.

But yeah, anyway, the point is, I could have/should have figured that out ahead of time, because if we had our normal complement of 7 healers instead of 10, me dropping to 3 tanks with lifeblooms for a minute might have screwed us.

So, most fights can be expressed in some sort of preset form like:
4 tanks with lifebloomx3
lifebloomx3 on 3 tanks and rejuv on 2
lifebloomx3, rj, rg both on 2 tanks + X swiftmends per min
lifebloomx3, rj, rg on 1 tank + X swiftmends per min
lifebloomx3, rj, rg on 1 tank + X swiftmends and Y regrowths per min

those, maybe a few more sequences, and some options for using a rez, innervate usage, potions, dark runes, ns-ht, buffs, and fight duration, basically can give you a distinct mana requirement. Unlike some classes, druids basically either have enough mana, or they don't. Having more mana is often quite useless unless you can get to a whole different rotation somehow, having less is really bad. A priest with slightly too little mana cancels a heal here and there that was borderline on if he should have cast it. A paladin or shaman uses a different rank for a couple heals. A druid lets his hots drop of forcing a shift in other healers healing output to compensate and undermining the entire roll of being a constant stream of healing. TBH i haven't really done the math on something like downranking rejuv, but i just can't see that as practical. Downranking regrowth as a flash heal is for the sake of a spread sheet, pretty much the same thing as just casting it slightly less.

So yeah, the idea would be to see for a given set of gear, what rotations are mana sustainable and the strength of each hot. Ideally, i would also like to make it work backwards such that you could say 'I want to do rotation A, pure lifebloom spam," and it would show you the mana required, and let you adjust gear to meet that.

Because the idea is not to determine a pure "this is your best set of gear" but rather more of a "if you had all these items to choose from, which ones should you use for this fight" I'd also like to include something of a bank feature to let you more quickly choose from all of the items you actually have, gemmed and enchanted like you actually have them, and build from that a set that can sustain a certain rotation for long enough. I wouldn't really aim to do that till a 2.0 or something, after i have the basic functionality worked out.

So, questions for you
1. What rotations make sense? Basically a list of what hots on how many people + a number of regrowths or swiftmends, or NS-HTs per minute.
2. Do people that downrank regrowth as a flash heal see a large benefit to including that as an option at all, or is just knowing that 5 full rank regrowths per minute is the same as 6 (or however many) downranked ones? That seems like you could approximate it pretty well and would add a lot of complication to include.
3. Seriously does anyone not have all the same relevant talents? I really don't care about what hot rotations feral druids or balance druids pressed into healing for a fight can sustain. The only thing i can really see varying without just being a terrible decision is whether tranquil spirit and natural shape shifter give you cheaper NS-HT casts. Meh, maybe i'll include an option to be a bad spec just so i can show people why i was so emo last night healing a spontaneous kara/mag/gruul as 13-11-37, because oh god was doing a raid in completely +heal and spirit focused gear without emp rejuv, tree form, living spirit , imp DS, BoW, a shaman, or a sp terrible. I could barely cast anything before i was oom. Magtheridon wouldn't let me run away and drink like all the nice players in arenas do
4. Google spread sheets work for everyone?



edit: This will simplify my quest for a sustained 3k +healing and a 200 +healing aura, my pre wotlk goal by allowing me to more easily see what i need to get. If i can't figure out a way to pull that off, I'll just retroactively pretend that i meant 3k healing including my aura, duh, as that's very doable.