Yes, your primary heal should be plain old Healing Wave. Healing Surge is too mana-inefficient to use on a regular basis.

@joe:

Maybe, but I'm not getting any significant throughput on Healing Wave. My usual tank has 180k health; healing wave isn't even budging that bar.

Mind you, it does very well on my usual mage - but then, so does Riptide, and that gives me another CH supercharge target.

The efficient heal just doesn't seem to heal /enough/.

To be honest, and I'm a resto druid so it's a little bit different, Healing Touch (basically, Greater Healing Wave) has been my "spamable" heal. If it's a health deficit that can be replaced by Nourish (Healing Wave) it's not worth healing, in my experience. I've been better waiting until there's a larger deficit and using something else.

Incidentally, that tank might want to rethink his gearing strategy. 180k? Eesh. 150k and some avoidance or mitigation would likely make him a far better tank.

"I've been better waiting until there's a larger deficit and using something else."

See, the idea is you use Healing Wave/Nourish/Heal/Holy Light while you're waiting to need something else. It's not huge throughput, but it costs almost nothing. And if you finish the spell before you need the something larger... well, that target has that much longer before they'll need the something larger.

My Healing Wave is only 8 or 9 K (on someone near full health), but it's always casting, giving me chances to proc with improved water shield, ancestral awakening, ancestral healing, and earthliving weapon. Maybe the other healers don't have that much going on with their base heal; I haven't done anything on any of them since Wrath ended.

@Saeadame

This list helped me immensely when running with my druid thru the first few heroics:

http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t110354-resto_cataclysm_release/#Our_spells

Frankly, if you're not using your hots to keep people above 80 and using nourish to fill, you're probably using too much mana. Nourish and lifebloom should use about the same or less mana than you can regen, very very efficient. for heavier damage, rejuvs, wild growth, and regrowth with clearcasting as much as possible.

@grimm Unless your tank is in full raid gear he has too much hp. 180k is overkill and he is probably losing out on mitigation/avoidance which will just make your job harder, he needs to think about regemming.

My usual tank (druid) sits around 150k and is gemmed/enchanted for avoidance/mitigation, I have no problem keeping him up in heroics with shield-riptide-GHW when needed then just use HW on the dps if needed. Usually manage to keep him and the dps 80-90% hp through all fights with no mana issues (my ilvl 359 ish)

On some fights in HoO i actually got outhealed by my totem and earth shield......