What's a Resto Druid's "niche?"

[TheFishyOne]

Pallies are excellent tank healers, Shammies are excellent raid healers, and Priests are just plain excellent healers. Where do Druids fit in this?

I ask, because I am thinking of rolling a Druid with the eventual goal of Healing, already have a Pally (who tanks), and am disinclined to roll Priest as I enjoy the challenge of hybrids (hence, the tank Pally). I am also Alliance, so no Jesus Beams for me.

[Lorilay]

Pallies are excellent tank healers, Shammies are excellent raid healers, and Priests are just plain excellent healers. Where do Druids fit in this?

I ask, because I am thinking of rolling a Druid with the eventual goal of Healing, already have a Pally (who tanks), and am disinclined to roll Priest as I enjoy the challenge of hybrids (hence, the tank Pally). I am also Alliance, so no Jesus Beams for me.

It depends on your spec, but with the two most common ones you're a solid single target healer and great at raid healing when there's predictable damage going out on a large part of the raid.

[tunguska]

Druids have the most powerful HOT's which should always be active on the main tank.

[Charizard]

Incredibly high HPM.

[Handlock]

Druids are great tank healers. They have the most mana efficient healing and can keep going forever while putting out pretty good numbers. On top of that, they bring literally the two best raid utility skills in the game: Innervate and Rebirth. So it's a pretty good healer that has by far (like no contest whatsoever) the best utility.

In later content, you also need druids for raid healing as blanketing the entire raid with Rejuvenation becomes important, although that's not really something you do until probably AQ40 and Naxx.

[Norjak]

Tranquility is situationally useful. Druids are great tank healers & they complement other classes who have short-cast, direct heals such as Pallys.