Glyph-Swappage in ICC10

Blood Queen Lana'Thel was the start of something I had struggled, fought, kicked, and screamed against doing for as long as I could:

...having to swap my glyphs mid raid.

For a long time, I succeeded in getting away with using only three resto glyphs: nourish, WG, and swiftmend. It was a good mix of tank and raid healing love, and it got us through most of ICC. When Lana'thel gave us a 0.8% wipe, however, I knew I needed to bite the bullet and change up my glyphs, throwing a rapid rejuv in place of WG, since the spread of our little 10-man raid prevented me from hitting more than 4-5 people at once with the spell.

...then came Valithria. I was raid healing, so I needed WG back; I put in WG over nourish to see how the rapid rejuv glyph felt some more.

...and Sindragosa. Well, dang, I needed nourish again (until they just told me to go feral for it!), and RR wasn't as useful as WG.

...and Lich King. More spreading, massive damage, nourish beats out WG. I think. Or maybe I need Nourish AND WG, and RR will get the bench again. Still trying to decide on that!

...and of course the rest of the instance, which in many cases in conducive to using the WG glyph, especially trash, and some bosses that would probably be better with a RR glyph rather than WG due to raid spread.

/sigh

So now I carry a stack of WG glyphs and RR glyphs: in most cases, a fight will tailor itself to one or the other. My limited bagspace cries against carrying more nourish glyphs, *cough*buttheguildbankiskindlyprovidingstoragespaceforthat*cough*. This is likely the most irritating thing I have found about glyphs thus far, and an unfortunate side effect of progression raiding in an instance that was built to have something more than cookie-cutter boss fights. While I certainly enjoy having a variety of boss encounters, "needing" to swap my glyphs around for each boss is particularly annoying, and I entirely blame the introduction of the rapid-rejuv glyph.

It was fine before this glyph came along. I had my three glyphs, and I was set. Then RR came along and had to spoil the party. I cannot deny its usefulness any longer: there are boss fights where heavy raid damage is going out over too spread a raid for WG to be as effective, and chain-gunning lifeblooms isn't effective enough, and I "need" that hasted rejuv to keep the raid alive on a progression boss.


KAE'S GLYPH LIST

This list assumes that a boss is "progression," or otherwise "not on farm." Farmed bosses are easy enough for the guild that a glyph swap is not necessary to ensure victory. Experience and gear will move a boss from a guild's progression list to their farm list.

This list is also based on 10-strict raiding with a mix of ranged/melee and 2 (sometimes 3) healers, no others being resto druids.

Lower Citadel - Marrowgar:

• Swiftmend: generally a good idea, and with the movement phase, definitely a good idea here.
• Nourish: two tanks plus a spiked player makes nourish an excellent glyph choice.
• Rapid Rejuv: in his whirl phase, people will be fleeing in all directions, and may not stay in range for healing. Faster HoT ticks may or may not be beneficial here, depending on how far out your raid spreads (thus leaving heal range, etc).
  
• Wild Growth: while some strats may have the whole raid clump up in melee range, generally there won't be a need for aoe healing, unless you have a large number of raiders all prancing about in the fire. More of the raid healing will be needed in the whirl phase, when raiders aren't nicely clumped. If your guild uses a brute-force-gear-overwhelm strat that keeps the whole raid clumped up in the whirls, WG would be an obvious choice to take as a glyph for this fight.
  

Lower Citadel - Deathwhisper:

• Swiftmend: I love this glyph.
• Nourish: tanks will be taking some spikey hits, and some dps may need a quick top-off over the hots already running on them before they get one-shot by a ghost, aggro, etc.
• Wild Growth: most of your ranged and healers will be grouped up together, with periodic damage from aggro, the boss, and death runes. Melee/tanks will also be grouped with pets, though may be spread out too far to make the 6-target WG as useful. In phase 2, everyone will be clumped generally, and death runes can be quickly countered with this.
• RR: not as necessary here, imo. Given the spikey nature of the damage, a longer-lasting rejuv serves as a steadier base for Swiftmends and hot-buffed nourishes. Lifebloom easily serves here as a good quick-ticking hot.
  

Lower Citadel - Gunship:

• Swiftmend: /love
  
• RR: Faster ticks on the tanks = glorious.
  
• Nourish: assuming a 2-healer set up, you WILL be casting nourish on a tank, and you want it to be as buffed as possible. You may also need your nourish for an aggro-pulling dps on your own ship.
  
• WG: given the split of raiders between the two sides, on top of the players jumping in cannons, WG simply will not be hitting 6 players regularly. Raid-wide damage isn't as much a concern, either, as much is negated by pressing the "w" key to get out of targets.

Lower Citadel - Saurfang:

• Swiftmend: yep.
• Nourish: tank healing and mark-of-the-fallen-champion healing, easily boosted by hots makes this glyph a no-brainer.
• RR: the faster ticks allows this spell to counter the random-target DoT debuff without any other healing (in most cases).
• WG: given the ranged spread and debuff-based raid damage, WG glyph will only be effective in the melee. Usually, the melee won't all have damage, so it's just a revitalize-love on the melee in one GCD. This is an option if you have a cohealer who is taking care of (or helping with) the DoT debuff. If you don't have revitalize, then it's a non-issue.
  

Plagueworks - Festergut:

• Swiftmend
• Nourish: lots of tank-healing here. I'd consider it a necessity.
• Wild Growth: assuming you group your melee and healers and tanks (and pets) in melee range, you will (probably) find the 6 targets quite useful for raid-healing through some of the inhales and exhales. Target your WGs on the boss to ensure the tank shares them.
  
• RR: could also be useful here, but I view it less so than WG. This will be a matter of raid makeup: if you are putting more players out in ranged (and away from AoE heals), RR will become more useful. Lifebloom can easily be used on ranged players, however.
  

Plagueworks - Rotface:

• Swiftmend
• Wild Growth: most of the raid will be grouped up and taking splash damage together.
  
• Nourish: depends somewhat on your makeup and assignment. If you're mostly healing the kiter, you will want to prioritize mobility; if you find you are needing to heal the MT with Nourish, then the glyph will certainly be a boon. Nourish will also be enjoyed for boosting through a player who has the disease on them (for those that don't cleanse immediately) to help cut through the healing debuff, and for all those times swiftmend is on cooldown as people run through slime, get sprayed, etc.
• RR: The faster ticks may be detrimental on keeping the hot going on those who run out of range (to merge oozes) and in keeping players swiftmendable: aoe heals will take care of most of the raid-wide damage. Situationally, with a kiter running through slime pools/ooze, it could be useful.

Plagueworks - Putricide:

• Swiftmend
• Nourish: even with three healers, you will be healing tanks, especially in P3.
• RR: helpful for cutting through raid damage as the group spreads out around slime puddles, particularly in P3. It also results in faster revitalize procs on your abom for extra energy, since the ticks occur more quickly.
• WG: this one has some usefulness for raids that group up on green ooze explosions to help spread out damage. In most cases, you will be able to bridge your WGs across the raid, as long as they are disciplined enough to stick more or less together (through P1/P2). P3 it is unlikely that you will have 6 players/pets close enough together.
  

Crimson Hall - Blood Princes:

• Swiftmend
• Nourish: 3 tanks, 3 healers. Druids will most often be assigned to the kite-tank, but even with the heavy mobility, nourish is useful for healing your tank. A possible alternative is RR, if you find your mobility is more important.
  
• WG: when raid damage happens, it will usually be on a clump of players, and I found that the 6-target was frequently useful. Your own raid makeup and guild's style (and habit of grouping together) may alter your choice.
  
• RR: could be useful, but lifebloom can serve the same quick-tick purpose in raid healing. If you find your raid does spread out too much for the 6-target WG to be useful, swap your WG with a RR for the quick-tick heal.

Crimson Hall - Blood Queen Lana'thel:

• Swiftmend
• Nourish: even if you're put on pure raid-healing duty, you will likely be using nourish on the dps. It will be more useful, at least, than WG, since the raid is so far spread out.
  
• RR: given the spread of players, you will be using rejuv heavily in tandem with lifebloom, swiftmend, and nourish as raid heals. The glyph will help immensely in off-setting the heavy raid damage.
• WG: it is unlikely that a 10-man raid will find much use for a 6-target wild growth in this fight, where it is detrimental to group up. It is more common to hit 3-4 players with your WG in this fight.
  

Frostwing Halls - Valithria Dreamwalker:

• Swiftmend
• Nourish: whether you are "raid healing" (including the tanks) or dragon-healing, nourish will be used a lot.
• RR: a definite if you are dragon-healing. As a raid-healer, the raid damage tends to come in spikes, and often the raid is spread out too much to make good use of a WG glyph. You must balance the quicker-ticks usefulness with the fact that it doesn't last as long on the raid/tanks, making their swiftmend eligibility more prickily!
• WG: only applicable if you are put on raid-heal duty, and only if you have a large group of ranged players who will be grouping up on you, and near the dragon. The splash can help heal the dragon as well as your co-healers and the ranged dps.
  

Frostwing Halls - Sindragosa:

• Swiftmend
• Nourish: even with three healers, you will be tank-healing in parts of P3. Between ice tombs and the unchained magic/instability debuff, healers will be rotating who is doing the active tank healing.
  
• WG: your raid will be grouping up, a lot. You will also be able to easily walk up to bridge your WG with the melee. With the constant raid-wide damage, WG is extremely useful in this fight.
• RR: WG and lifebloom easily make up for not using the quicker ticks of this glyph, since the raid is mostly grouped up. The longer ticks of an unglyphed rejuv will also help those players that are ice tombed, as it will continue to heal them even when they are in ice tombs and suffocating, if applied just before they are tombed.
  

The Lich King

• Swiftmend
• Nourish: even with three healers, you will be tank-healing a decent amount. It also helps if you get sucked into the blade in P3 and you need to heal Terenas.
  
• RR: given the amount of movement and tank healing and heavy damage in this fight, faster-ticking rejuvs are a blessing.
• WG: your raid should be clustering together often enough to make WG useful; however, the RR trumps it. If you want to replace any glyph with WG, I recommend replacing Nourish with it.
  

So, how about other raiding trees? Are you needing to carry around extra glyphs to swap them around mid-raid? Is this a phenomenon limited to the 10-man raiding scene, where nourish abounds in usefulness for many fights?