Maybe there was an older post on this. But with the changes to specializations what did most druids choose for primary and secondary? Evocation/Alteration Evocation/Conjuration Alteration/Evocation etc... Just looking for thoughts about this, especially looking for thoughts from Raiding Druids.
Evo / Conj. Nothing that is alteration costs any significant amount of mana. Evo is your NSW and DD's, conj the rest of your dots.
Raiding main druid here. Evocation as primary spec is a no brainer since a good chunk of our DPS is done via Wrath, with very high mana cost, and also because you have to cast it on cooldown so you can't really align it with Gift of mana procs. The secondary one for me is easily conjuration. Alteration is only roughly comparable to conjuration if your raid is lacking healers, you spend most of your time healing, you don't DoT very much and use your gifts of mana on your DoTs. In this case alteration and conjuration are both crappy but I would still pick conjuration for the occasional encounter where I can multi DoT and save a lot of mana.
Evo + conj. When I group or raid I have wrath on cool down and even if I'm mainly healing I still cast enough dots that conj is a worth getting as my 2nd best spec.
Evocation main is an easy pick. Secondary is a bit more fluid. For raiding, I think conjuration takes a pretty clear win, unless your guild is seriously lacking healing. For grouping it's a lot more debatable and probably depends on group makeup and the content you're doing whether alteration or conjuration is more useful, but I'd lean alteration. Since you mentioned primarily raiding, I'd say evocation main, conjuration secondary is a safe bet.
Evocation/Alteration here, been raiding since Velious. Healing essentially uses no net mana, no matter the situation or circumstance. NSW is twice the dps of Sunpyre and Horde combined (and those, plus aura, are the only conjuration spells I use on raids, I rarely have remote mem'd on raids). The reason I set alteration as secondary was simply for healing. You shouldn't overlook the specialization augments, such as Splinter of Potency (evocation), Tome of Manipulation (alteration), and Bixie Summoner Stone (conjuration). For example, Splinter lowers the mana cost of NSW by 626 with each cast. That may not seem like much, but it adds up.
This directly contradicts itself. You call it out - healing essentially uses no mana no matter what. So why the hell would you make it secondary? All the spec does is reduce mana cost. You said you DO use Horde and Sun dots. Those are 2 of the most expensive spells you have to use. Why would you not make Conj the second and reduce their cost, since it's significant, and actually gain something here?
After a battle rez or call, I need to conserve mana for group heals. My main concern is keeping the group up so they can do their dps, and grow my mana pool so I can resume my own dps. That's why I continue to be evocation/alteration.
