Tree Stats

We have a few guildies leveling druids, and wishing to become healers, and therefore asking me how I do it. I always say healing is easy, and in raiding I usually do very well on the meters (although healing meters are only so useful for gauging a healers abilities). Although I find healing easy, and by easy maybe I mean I get into the habit of it and become so quick, I begin to get bored, I think it is important to know how to begin as a new druid healer.

I want to write a full resto druid guide, but for now, I will start with basics for those who have leveled to 80 and now want to become a tree. Your tree spec should be similar to my druids. Tree stats IMO go as follows: Spell Power>Spirit>Haste> >Intellect> Mp5> Crit

• SPELL POWER- Spell power affects how big your heals are including your HoTs. This is the main focus on most casters whether you are dps or a healer. This should be what you gem for mostly, in your gear to increase your heals.

• SPIRIT- Focus on getting your spirit high enough to sustain you through a boss fight, and you should never have to worry about running out of mana. Spirit gives us a small buff to spell power in tree form as well so, get plenty of spirit and spell power before you start raiding.

• HASTE- Although most of our spells are instant casts, haste is an important stat for druid healers. Haste reduces the global cooldown on our spells which means, when we want to cast  Rejuvenation on many members of the raid we can do so much faster because our spells will be ready to cast quicker. As far as our casting spells such as Regrowth and Nourish these spells cast time will be reduced. Being quick is one of the most important parts of being a healer.

• INTELLECT- I would put this stat above Mp5 because it can also add to your crit rating. Although crit isn't great for druid group healers, it is a useful enough stat to find important. Also having a larger mana pool is always nice, can't rely on unlimited amounts of spirit to keep filling your pool back up.
• I almost forgot about this stat lol, because I don't really look for how much int is on my gear, thanks for the reminder Finwe.

• Mp5- This stat recently was buffed for all classes, so druids now benefit more from it. But again, it is inferior to spirit because spirit gives us spell power. Mp5 increases mana regen while casting, but druids spend much more time in the five second rule than many other classes. The five second rule is important to understand for healers, so quickly review it here.

• CRIT- is not that important of a stat for druids. It doesn't affect our HoTs, but it does regrowth and nourish. Since many of our spells aren't affected and we are meant to be healers who top people off, and mitigate damage taken by keeping HoTs on the raid, we don't need giant crit heals. 
• Side note to crit, many druids are now relying on nourish for tank healing. If you find yourself tank healing a lot then crit becomes much more important. It depends on how often you raid or tank heal. If you use nourish a lot and it is one of your primary spells then crit is great for you.

This should be able to get you started on druid healing. Understanding why these stats are important should help you to realize what your focus should be on during a raid.