WoW Rest Stop

I have many toons but the one I am most comfortable playing is my resto druid.  The trick of playing a class well is knowing without any hesitation what action to take and then being able to have your keyboard set up so you can do this instantaneously.  Due to my countless hours spent raiding this is second nature to me.  The trickiest thing about playing a druid is the sheer number of heals from which to choose.  The funny thing is when the Cataclysm expansion was announced many druids were upset that we got no new spells.  We currently have Healing Touch, Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Nourish, Regrowth, Healing Touch, Wild Growth and Tranquility.  Today most druids only use Wild Growth, Nourish, and Rejuvenation.  When I saw that we didn't get an additional spell like other classes got I was relieved.  My feeling is we have plenty of tools in our arsenal but many of them are useless due to the way they are set up.  Every patch has seen different spells be powerful.  In Vanilla healing was mainly Healing Touch with an occassional Rejuv, Burning Crusade it was Regrowth and Lifebloom, and now WotLK is the spells I mentioned earlier.  We have plenty of spells, the issue is many of them just aren't as good as the others and Blizzard plans to fix that in Cataclysm.  A quote by Ghostcrawler confirms my suspicions:

To those players who say they don't want to cast a lot of different spells, I'm a little perplexed as to what you thought you were getting into with the Resto druid. Surely you thought there would come a day when we'd try to make those other spells attractive again or else cut them. :)

Putting on my prediction cap, I think Catacylsm will see the rise of Healing Touch as a main spell again.  This spell was the only thing druids used in Vanilla and things have sunk so low for it that I don't even have it on my cast bar anymore.  The biggest issue with Healing Touch is it is ideally suited to be a main tank healing spell except it's mana usage is a bit too high and the casting time is a bit too long when compared to a paladin's holy light.  Blizzard has said repeatedly that they want mana to be a consideration for druids when making decisions.  My prediction is they are going to make  healing touch an extremely mana efficient spell in Cataclysm and the total amount healed will be more than nourish.  That still gives Nourish a place in your arsenel as it will still be a faster heal which many times is preferred.  I will bet that the cost of rejuvenation and wild growth will be increased so as to discourage the spamming we saw in WotLK.  To make tranquility more effective I'd love to see it be able to be cast quicker than once every 10 minutes as that makes the spell ineffective as something to include in your rotation.  My preference on this spell would be to see some other effective in addition to healing like an increase to mana regeneration for your party/raid while it is being channeled.  Even better would be an effect similar to heroism as this spell will be way overpowered in Cataclysm if shaman are the only one's that can use it.  Even better would be to give heroism to all the hybrid classes (this seems more like a paladin spell anyway) as it would pretty much ensure that every raid would have someone able to cast it and not make shaman a required class for every 10 man.

Anyway ... I like where Blizzard is going with Cataclysm by recycling our old spells and looking to make our decisions tougher in the future.  Only players that know the class fully will thrive and it will be fun to try to use all our tools again.