Ooooh, good point about the DKs. I guess I should plow harder on getting my Priest to 58, then.
This is a mixed blessing, however. (To put it mildly)
There seems to be a big difference in queue times between Normal and Heroic dungeons in NR as well. My pally normally waits 10-15 minutes as DPS for a Heroic, but when my mage was queueing for Normals before lvl 80, most waits were 20+ minutes. Which made it really aggravating when I finally got into a dungeon where I needed to do quests, after a 25-minute wait, only to have the tank quit as soon as we zoned in :mad:
Curiously, now that both toons are doing heroics, my mage seems to have much shorter wait times than my pally. Where my pally almost always waits 15 minutes or more, my mage frequently gets into groups in as little as 6-8 minutes. Both queueing as DPS, so I’m not sure what is causing the difference beyond pure chance. Unless the RDF tries to mix up the classes in each party as much as possible, and there are more paladins than mages, so mages get in more quickly? Or maybe my mage’s being less-geared gives her a higher priority?
This is because beyond a certain level, there’s no gain to be had from running normals, even the TOC and ICC 5-mans. Raiders by the thousands run heroics every day for Emblems of Frost, but you can’t get those from normals, so there’s no incentive. The people who run normals are those who are leveling and those still finding useful gear from them.
I’m not really thrilled about it either, especially since the bosses in the ICC 5-mans drop different loot in normal versus heroic. I need to specifically queue for normal Pit of Saron to get the 2-handed mace off Garfrost, and there’s less chance I’ll get a strong, decent group than I would for heroic.
I wouldn’t be too surprised if the RDF tries to balance the classes, although my recent HoL run had three pallies. But I would think that a toon with a lower gearscore would have a longer wait, not shorter, since she would be excluded from the highest-level dungeons.
ETA: I didn’t see that you were talking about the difference between normals and heroics. A lot more people are running heroics every day than normals.
It would explain why I almost never see a Priest healer when I queue my shadow priest as DPS.
As far as I know it tries to avoid putting 2+ of the same class in the same role in a party, so one pala healing, one tanking and one dpsing is ok, but two paladins as dps is not.
Seeing two dpsers of the same class is rare in my experience.
I’m still waiting for the all-Druid or all-Paladin group, although I did get a group with three Pallies once, tank, DPS, and healer.
Shin Kell and Bosstone gave some decent advice that I mostly agree with. However, there are a few points that I take issue with:
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If you Glyph Healing Touch (especially at your level and until you get Nourish), it’s actually quite an effective and useful spell to fill in a gap in your healing arsenal. I would Glyph Healing Touch and Swiftmend (as suggested earlier) for now. Healing as a druid is much more pro-active than other healing classes, so just try to keep the Regrowth and Rejuv HoT up on the tank at all times, and if you have the mana for it, keep it on that one DPS that insists on pulling off the tank (you’ll have at least one in pretty much every RFD) to be able to Swiftmend them. Or, you could just let them die. Your choice.
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I disagree with Bosstone’s spec as the “core healing spec.” There is basically one spec that you should be looking towards getting until you hit the soft haste cap at 80 (735 - which won’t really happen until you start getting ICC gear anyway). Something like this is what I would suggest to be aiming for at level 80. If mana regen is a concern, then you can take the points out of Empowered Touch and place them in Living Spirit. The 14/0/57 spec is outdated, and as Celestial Focus provides ~120 haste by itself, it’s a pretty solid talent overall, though you do have to have some filler talents in Balance in order to reach that tier. Some druids think Haste is over-rated, but it’s not. Faster GCDs means faster casts which means increased throughput. For a class that is GCD capped more than anything else, that’s an incredibly important stat to cap as fast as possible.
Overall, you should be fine healing instances at level. Just get a few glyphs and learn what your mana pool will allow you to do. Don’t be afraid to ask to drink, and don’t be afraid to let anyone but the tank die. And of course, have fun most of all.
Hmm. Fair enough, although I must say I’ve never suffered for a lack of haste. My Druid doesn’t have Celestial Focus and only has 173 haste rating as an incidental consequence of my gear. Despite that, I’ve been more than capable of healing heroics and the few raids I’ve been in.
Fair point about Healing Touch too. It’s like a crappy Nourish when glyphed, AIUI, but a crappy Nourish is better than nothing. I personally avoid Nourish as much as I can, though, and focus on the instant cast spells with an occasional cast of Regrowth.
Whoops. I was looking at my Feral gear. My Resto gear is better equipped for haste, with 473. Still, it’s not something I’ve actively worked toward, but I suppose I could use some refurbishing and cleaning up.
I think I did the exact same thing and to go one step further, after you train go through your spellbook and put the skill on your bar just to be sure. Especially if you train in something other than your resto spec, I think I ran around with a couple low ranked spells until I got caught by that rankwatch addon.
Hey now! 
I’m just one of those strange people who can’t get used to healing with healbot or clique or any of that. It just feels so weird an unnatural compared to how I’m used to healing. But they do work well for most people so give it a go.
On a totally different topic, I’ve been chain running randoms on my 63ish paladin and I’ve come across one really annoying trait in most tanks. They won’t stop dancing the mob around, now I’m not talking about moving mobs from fire, poison, bombs, death beams. I’m talking about running up to a mob, hitting it once and then constantly moving forwards and backwards pulling the mobs in and out of melee range, or just walking the mobs in a circle. Stop it. Please. You don’t get cool points for waltzing the mob across the room, this isn’t Dancing with The Lich King. It’s become so bad I had to start tanking random myself to keep from going insane… well even more insane.
That kind of jigging sounds to me like trying to deal with the stupid fucking bug where shit keeps getting behind you. Which is deadly for a tank–if an attack comes from behind, you can’t block/dodge/parry.
I’m gonna start doing that on Rillian just to annoy you now.
Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. I do it all the time on my DK tank, trying to keep everything in front of me. Trust me, we’re not doing it to annoy our healers and DPS.
“Dancing with the Lich King”…I like that! 
Nah, the gear difference was referring to the shorter wait times my mage sees specifically for heroics, compared to my paladin. Basically, I was thinking that an 80 that’s been around for a while and is geared in iLvl 219+ stuff isn’t going to find any gear upgrades in non-ICC heroics, whereas a newish 80 who still has several sub-200 slots will find gear upgrades, so the lower-geared toon might get higher priority over the toon that’s only running for the badges.
Hey, on another topic, has anyone else seen that account of the rogue soloing Festergut? It took nearly five hours but somehow he was able to keep resetting the enrage timer. I’m not exactly sure I understand how he did it; maybe someone can explain.
ETA: Patchwerk! Not Fester!
I think a few times it was because of those annoying mob mechanics, but they continued to do it on boss fights and against casters too. Like, run up to the boss, boss isn’t trying to get behind the tank at all and the tank still dances around. I understand that sometimes a mob will get behind you and you have to reposition, but if the mob is standing there nice and pretty why do it?
Go ahead, I’m sure my hunter will be quite annoyed… or at least my big dinosaur will.
From what I recall reading on the WoW forums when the rogue would vanish/shadowmeld it would take him out of combat, thus resetting the enrage timer. At least that’s how I understood it.
Not I. Would have to be an exploit and/or done on a private server.
ETA: Resetting combat should also reset the boss–e.g., HP to full, not just enrage timer reset.
Okay, now I feel awful. Remember I killed all those gronns and got proclaimed queen of the ogres? Now I’ve found 3 quests where I have to kill some of these ogres, and they say stuff like, “You were a … horrible … queen!” and, “Queen Eilyssana, me die now.” 
I feel like a traitor. sniff