I wrote a guest post for Bellwether not too terribly long ago (and that post can be found here) about the use of Nourish versus Regrowth. With the recently announced changes to Wild Growth and Nourish that are planned for the 3.0.8 patch (listed below) this is a good time to add a little more to that post.

• Nourish: Wild Growth applied to a target now increases the healing done by this spell by 20% like other heal over time effects.
• Wild Growth now has a 6 second cooldown.

My conclusion in the original post can be summarized as follows: using Nourish is going to end up coming down to preferences in healing style, comfort level with HoTs, gear, glyph selection, and time needed to land a heal. (Alright, so I expanded that slightly too!)

With the changes referenced above, Nourish is looking more and more appealing, and honestly the spell is starting to feel useful now that my gear has grown substantially (i.e., I have no mana issues and can pretty much play with whatever spell I want instead of having to go with the most efficient healing route I can).

There are times, even without any HoTs on a target, that Nourish is a solid choice to land a quick heal. We can talk about efficiency, HPS, HPM… pick a topic and insert it here basically… all day long, and in the end it still comes down to what gets the job done that you can consistently repeat.

I should interject here that I am not a fan of “rotations.” If all you are doing is memorizing an order for button presses then I’m pretty sure you won’t understand what I mean. If you, instead, are the type of healer that “feels” their way around then you’ll know exactly what I mean.

I use a fairly typical process for determining what spells to use:

• Lifebloom will always be rolling on someone taking consistent damage (the tank).
• Someone who is not taking consistent or heavy damage I generally toss Rejuvenation on.
• Regrowth is normally my direct heal of choice. If I needed to get a direct heal on someone that is not taking consistent damage I like having the trailing HoT. On someone who is taking consistent damage, but that I have plenty of time to cast, I also use Regrowth because it is (typically, especially counting crits) a stronger heal.
• Enter Nourish. I use it in two very different scenarios: when I need a fast heal or someone will die, which means I don’t have the time to wait the extra half-second for Regrowth (or, more accurately, that I’m afraid to wait that extra time) or in the event that I already have a full compliment of HoTs on the tank and just want to top them off again.

I play by feel. My theory-crafting generally is done by gaining a feel for what I need to compliment my style of play, with a little bit of math to make sure I’m not completely off-kilter, and then putting together a set that ensures:

1. My heals are strong enough to heal through anything I have to heal through.
2. I do not have mana regen issues.

With that said, Nourish is an effective heal when it is needed. It will be even more appealing with Wild Growth adding to the bonus healing, especially in spots where you can’t really take the time to drop Regrowth on each of the party or raid members taking damage. It is very situational, but that is part of the beauty of our arsenal of spells.

If nothing else, just remember to try out the spell under various circumstances and see how it works for you. You may never use the spell, and that is perfectly fine. If you are like me, however, and you find a niche where it works (and works well) in your style of play, then you’ll find Nourish to actually be a very nice addition to your repertoire.