[Resto] Harder to play and weaker than other healers?

[Deleted]

[...]
I am not using any healing addons, nor mouseover macros
which I think would be hard to do on any other healing class.
I used to use healbot to heal in cata, then I changed comps and have not installed any of the addons.

I am using standard blizz interface and I am targeting players to heal them by clicking names in raid frame :P.
In case anyone asks why in hell one would want to do that!? my answer is - because I CAN!.

Again this would be hard to do on other classes, which in my opinion proves that healing on druid is much easier than on anything else.

Sry, but I don't see why this would be a proof, that druids are easier.
Imo, as a druid you would profit much more from mousover macros or a click addon, because of the many instants we have.
On a class using primarly casting heals you have enough time to pick a target with the mouse and trigger a spell with a keybind, while the prvious heal is still casting.

But I'm also not using any healing addons beside Grid2. I'm targeting with the mouse and casting spells with keybinds.


@Maxval
The way you are describing druids you could also describe a shaman.
Earthild on one target, glyphed riptide on anyone who takes damage...
The "hardest" part back in Cata was to enshure to have the right target for your chain heal. Afaik this part is gone, but I might be wrong here as I hadn't time to play my shamy yet.

The only thing, which might make a druid easier, is the fact that we have lass spells we can use which are usefull. As Norish is currently a complete waste of mana and time, and HT only makes sens with NS.

[Thalur]

Again this would be hard to do on other classes, which in my opinion proves that healing on druid is much easier than on anything else.

Except that your 40k HPS were done by main spec healers in blue gear, while with your item level, you should be aiming for a lot more (depending on the boss and number of healers of course). On Tayak you can do 50-60k, while on Garalon you should aim for 70-80k. On Tayak I can easily do 40k on my Shamy alt, but that doesn't mean he's easier to play. Actually he is, but that's a different story. Resto druids are not easy to master, and since a lot good resto druids switched to other classes, it is easier than ever to get a WoL ranking if you're good. But that takes a lot more than simply using 3 spells.

[Bloodglorie]

I disagree that druids are harder to play, I'd say druids are a bit easier or about on par with difficulty.
(Not claiming to have class mastery or have content currently on farm mode)

We normally run a Resto Druid and Disc Priest for two heals and then a Resto Shaman or Holy Paladin as a third.
Under normal circumstances me and the priest are on par, normally me being slightly ahead.

Last night we ran RDruid, Disc Priest, and another RDruid (Pug).
The closest attempt we got on the Blade Lord (8%) (wiping on enrage timer) had heals as follows - RDruid (Me) > Disc Priest > RDruid (Disc and Lower RDruid were on par with each other)

I have about 4 iLvls above the priest. (485 vs 481)
Other RDruid had 5 iLvls above me. (490 vs 485) (I'm not bashing the druid, he did fine overall, he just should of been a bit better with his gear setup)

All that to say, yes druids might be the easy mode of the healers, but that doesn't mean there still isn't stuff to learn.

Overall I think druids are in an alright spot, I do think they lack in a heavy burst for big damage abilities but can heal the whole raid at a lower mana cost. The only I found I can do good burst without blowing mana is with cooldowns, otherwise my pool falls quickly. Along with that we have some useless spells like the shrooms and nourish. We have our moments but almost anything we can do, another healer can do on par along with better burst.

[Tinsoul]

The MoP LB change was required for pvp. The MoP harmony change wasn't needed. It's not quality of life - it raised the skill floor. I find the druid the easiest of the 3 healing classes I play ... by a fair margin.

Overall I think druids are in an alright spot, I do think they lack in a heavy burst for big damage abilities but can heal the whole raid at a lower mana cost.

Along with that we have some useless spells like the shrooms and nourish. We have our moments but almost anything we can do, another healer can do on par along with better burst.

Buff shrooms. Fixes both those problems. Really all that resto needs.

[Maxvla]

Paladins in LK expa used to spam Holy light without being OOM, if you had enought haste you could just use that relic i forgot its name (the one who decreased holy light manacost) that combined with the AOE heal that holy light gave was too strongth. This combined with the judgment of wisdom if i remember well made holy paladins sooooo easy to play.

Thats why they were needing all the cloth and mail items >.< but that is another story lol

Again, what does wrath paladin healing difficulty have to do with mists paladin healing?

---------- Post added 2012-12-20 at 06:54 PM ----------

Also, aren't you the druid that was in the Amber Shaper skip-phase-two video? I'm just going to be frank and say there are multiple deficiencies in your playstyle.

Never said I was the best out there, but I'd be willing to bet if you watched footage of your own play, you arent as perfect as you think either. Specific to that video was that was only a small part of that video and was the first time all night that a tank let through an explosion so i was playong catch up all the way to the end and I was in unfamiliar territory trying to catch up being the only healer as well as dealing with the debuff and keeping tanks alive as well as the burn phase coming up all at the same time. Our previous pulls and the cut out portion of that video were much cleaner and less haphazard.

I like how you bring my ability to play into a debate about an entirely unrelated subject though. If you can win your arguments on their merit, you attack the person you are debating. Real mature.

All you are doing is drawing out more specific details. If I were to sit here and pick apart the resto druid spellbook tooltips it would sound complicated to a new player as well. Chi/holy power are just a way blizz balances mana costs without making all classes feel the same - you cast something in order to cast a different spell free of mana cost - you're making it out to be more difficult to understand than it really is.

None of the healing classes blatantly vary in difficulty, because it simply isn't something you can measure. They're just different. Additionally, someone could be playing their class correct, but not to it's full potential - which often requires a great deal of skill.

If you can't see how having 2-3 resources instead of one right away makes a class harder to play I don't know what to say. It is easier to know if you have mana you can cast any druid spell, any time. If you want to cast a holy power spell, but dont have any you have to use a different spell, one not taipored to your current needs. Your healing isn't as good plus the extra attention monitoring the additional resources takes means you wont be as responsive either.

--

Agreed with the poster who mentioned shamans. They are very similar to druids, but I think they are still slightly harder.

[DetectiveJohnKimble]

There are several other specs that you can play more inefficiently than a resto druid and still do the required amount of healing to beat an encounter. To me, that makes resto druid one of the harder specs to play if you define 'hard' to mean meeting the thresholds you need to meet for a boss fight.

Besides that, druids also need to maintain virtually 100% uptime for their mastery, while other classes just get innate healing from their masteries. Resto druids also have to worry about using swiftmend efficiently, in part because it's tied to their AoE healing and needs proper placement (and isn't spammable/ground targeted). To me, all of the above is harder than worrying about another resource bar. It's not like those resources are just coming in randomly and you need to use it reactively- you know when you're building the points because they're tied to the abilities you're using, so it's not especially difficult to figure out.

[Deleted]

the holy power system of the holy palladin just makes it so easey you don't even need to care about your mana. and divine plea is the same as inevete because there are alot of down time on damage where you can use it you get plenty of chances to use it. i have never played shaman seriusly (only healed a coupple of ds pugs) but it was so easy keep healing rain down and then just mana management just never stop casting if you have down time cast lightning bolt. druid aint hard either but its just as hard as any of the others.

[Beastest]

to the OP try using mana cooldowns innervate/use trinkets early as early as you can while getting the full use. Also you can use your tree of life for a mana cooldown. Spread as many lifeblooms as you can and you get almost continuous OOC procs for any instant healing you need. Usually you can make it fit with a situation in a fight and get a really big boost to your hps in the process.

I don't find druid any easier or harder than any of the other healing classes I have played. Maybe a bit more active since most of what you use is either instant or reaction to OOC proc but probably simpler with a grid/clique style addon.

I find the key to keeping up the HPS is Rejuv. On fights where I get a few of those sprinkled around the raid are usually the ones i get the best ranks on WOL. From what I can see druids have a very high sustained hps and our cooldowns are maybe a bit lacking but with a lot of utility. As far as utility we probably have more than most classes twice over. On fights like hm bladelord it becomes really obvious. Dash/roar, Barkskin/might of ursoc, I love using symbiosis to borrow spirit walkers from our shaman so we have spirit walkers + tranq for p2. The biggest lack for druids is the burst group healing that makes us pair really well with druids and pallys.

I almost always hang with the other healers my 10man group uses. In my group we use Resto druid, Holy Pally, Disc priest. and Resto shaman. depending on our comp for the night. There are a few exception. I always get owned in healing on the first boss in HOF but thats mostly because the burst healing on some of the other classes just dwarfs druids but the first in Vaults I destroy all the other healers in my group but in my opinion they all even out in the end.

[Sinitar]

Some very good posts have been added to this thread. Unfortunately, I can't possibly reply to all, and by this time, it's probably irrelevant anyway.

I want to mention that managing a secondary resource such as holy power or chi is not difficult at all. Truthfully, I find it more bothersome to keep track of my LB so that I can switch it between tanks and not allow it to wear off when not needed. I also played a holy pala at the beginning of Cata and healed through BWD up until Nefarian, and I really enjoyed holy power. Having that extra 'something' that alleviates the stress on your mana pool is a great asset in my opinion. Besides, it's not that hard to get used to it once you raided a couple of times.

What I meant by difficult is that the druid needs to know the raid mechanics intimately in order to be good at it. With my holy pala, all I did was healing. This druid, on the other hand, requires calculation and knowledge. Should I use a rejuv on that low HP raid member, or regrowth before he dies due to poor management of Jasper chains? There's a lot of factors to consider when playing a druid, factors that I overlooked when playing my pala and shamy. Then again, that's just my personal opinion.

[Maxvla]

How is having another resource to keep track of not harder? With a class that has only mana, you know you can cast any spell you want any time. With holy power or chi, you either have to keep a mental tally as you go, or check every time you want to use a spell that costs that resource. Both of these is more difficult than checking your mana every so often.

One of the reasons I stopped playing my monk alt was keeping up with all the extra junk felt like work during raids.

Keeping track of lifebloom is really easy. It sits on your raid frames that you are looking directly at most of the time.

[ganush]

How is having another resource to keep track of not harder? With a class that has only mana, you know you can cast any spell you want any time. With holy power or chi, you either have to keep a mental tally as you go, or check every time you want to use a spell that costs that resource. Both of these is more difficult than checking your mana every so often.

One of the reasons I stopped playing my monk alt was keeping up with all the extra junk felt like work during raids.

Keeping track of lifebloom is really easy. It sits on your raid frames that you are looking directly at most of the time.

I don't find playing a Pally anymore difficult than playing a druid. Pally's can muscle through damage in a way that druids can't right now, and that alleviates some of the need to manage your second resource well. Due to the nature of druids in MoP, i find it requires far more fight knowledge and planning to be competent than it does playing Holy Pally, even with an extra resource to manage. To play either class really well requires skill and for me one is not easier than the other. Those are the only two classes I've healed with at a higher level of play, so I can't speak to the other three.

To just flat out state Druids are easymode, is far from a complete picture of what it is like to play them and totally misleading to anyone reading who doesn't play a healing class.
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[nightfalls]

I don't find playing a Pally anymore difficult than playing a druid. Pally's can muscle through damage in a way that druids can't right now, and that alleviates some of the need to manage your second resource well.

That's not a question of easy, that's what others in this thread are admitting, that druids are underpowered in that they don't have a "spam" aoe heal. I'm pretty sure a big consensus is that many people would like to trade simplicity (that "simplicity tax") for some more power when it comes to burst aoe even if it would require more mana management and positioning quirks.

And druids are definitely one of the easiest PvE classes to play, just since they are throughput-based classes and there's relatively little planning required. It's not a "easymode" issue, it's a class design issue that healing touch isn't even useful compared to regrowth, and that there's only rejuv blankets for aoe. Harmony is not difficult to maintain (never was) and especially not after the duration was extended so swiftmending on CD will automatically keep it up. And wild growth has a decent range (compared to say, holy radiance) making the only real decision making whether you use swiftmend as a tank or raid heal.

Compare Lifebloom and Earth Shield (their single target heals) to Beacon of Light in complexity.

It's pretty sad, considering I switched from healing on a druid to healing on a paladin this tier just because druids lack a lot of tools for the raid mechanics; after doing so, I'd definitely say paladins are (much) harder to learn, but more powerful if played well.

[hulkgor]

Personally i consider Resto Druids to be one of the easiest classes to play, mainly in regards to healing classes. Most of all, it suffered no changes for the past expansions... rolling lifeblooms on tank, keep harmony up and use rejuv\swiftmend\wild growth accordingly... even tree of life is just the same. We just got an additional cooldown on Nature's Vigil if you decide to use it, but its mostly the same. Very easy class. Incredibly powerful aswell, but i'd sure like some changes to it...

Oh, forgot the new usage of Wild Mushrooms, which can be useful\fun, but barely game changing or hard to use.

[Myrrar]

He's not saying 'if you play a resto druid you're bad because it's so ezaaay'. He plays a resto druid.

For a druid high end to really keep up they have to be very good at playing resto. That does not mean the spec is hard to play, that means the spec isn't in a good place. If you ignore healing and put all the classes together and say 'this is what you have to do to play the spec as close to perfectly as possible' resto druids are pretty easy. We have less in general to worry about and we have way less options. The difficulty comes in general playstyle, since we are more proactive instead of reactive.

Still, that has nothing to do with the spec being hard or not. The main reason it's considered 'hard' is due to druids just not being good. We don't have enough skills, procs, CDs, passives, and other things to really give us a ton of options. 'My priest in green gear can beat my druid' has nothing to do with either specs difficulty.

If we had as many options as other classes I'm sure most druids would be able to pick it up, but I doubt anyone who really plays multiple healers can say druids are hard without laughing. The problem is seeing logs with all other specs playing like shit, druids playing almost perfectly, and the other specs still beating them.

A good healer is a good healer and will be a good healer on any spec they play because they will push to master that spec. No reason to get shitty when someone says your spec is simplified or anything like that compared to other specs. Healer effective healing, hps, and amount of stuff they have is crazy unbalanced right now.

Again, a spec being good or bad has absolutely nothing to do with it being hard or not. You can only push yourself as far as your spec will let you.

[Deleted]

I do not see how Resto is any harder to play than the other healing classes. There are a few spells with unique effects (Wild growth range but there is not much managing we have to do really.
If someone shouts: "MASTERY. You need to do something to keep it up 100% of the time." he didnt use his brain...
Mastery duration: 20 sec.
Swiftmend CD: 15 sec.
The healing per mana of swiftmend is already so amazing that you want to pop it on cd anyways. That means mastery will always be up. Sometimes you want to delay it a bit, but that would mean there is AoE damage incomming, and no dmg to heal yet. This gives you time to cast a nourish or something.

In my opinion resto is one of the easiest healing specs to play. Just predict damage and you will be fine
It has been said that resto is kinda weak atm, but I am not noticing it since I play in a very casual guild.

[timbaLt]

and yet top guilds are clearing heroic modes with druids on their roster....

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...d-resto-druids

Druids could use a few buffs but that isn't reason to reroll.

Blood Legion doesn't use a single Resto Druid. I'm sure other top guilds are similar.

[Torty]

Blood Legion and Exorsus both don't have a resto druid in their roster. Out of all top10 25m guilds only Method used 2 on progression. I've done some math back when we just killed Sha heroic on the amount of healers used by these guilds:
druids: 9
monks: 19
paladins: 21
priests: 14
shamans: 14

iirc I only counted people with 8-10+ heroic bosses killed for that moment. That would disqualify alts and some people that were only used on couple of bosses. Basically that's what resto druids had comming for ages. Rerolling to a paladin, monk or priest would be the safest way to get raid spot even if you already have 2 of each in the guild and only yourself as a druid, which is exactly what a lot of druids in these guilds did. Others rerolled into moonkin. The same trend as with 25m raiding decline is going with druids ;p You will only see less of us in the future.

[Torty]

I find it interesting that every healing class will say that they are the bottom and that they need a buff. Each class has a thread like this. Each and every one of them, and not just healing classes. The only role I don't see saying that they are at the bottom are tank classes, though, that is only when they are specifically talking about tanking.

You should spend less time reading different class forums and more time raiding. That might give you an idea how classes actually do in this tier, when you manage to down more than 4 bosses.

Another way would be checking out some kill videos of top guilds or checking wowprogress for spec usage statistics. Doesn't take a genious to figure that enhancement shamans and resto druids are pretty shit this tier.

In other words, go troll other class forums.

[Thegaga]

http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/#00000000...00000000111111
Stats for the 5 healing classes. But so far I haven't had any problems with healing so far this expac. Once you get 4 peice it gets alot better/easier. Mind you I'm not in a top guild, Just a 9/16 heroic guild. For the most part we've only been three healing garalon.

[Juvenate]

I would argue that yes Druids are a bit more difficult to play than some of the other healers, but not all of them. Some of the other healers do have quite a learning curve (Disc Priests) to get the most out of them. But I will say that some healers (Shaman in particular) don't require the same amount of effort as Druids.

In my 25's, I look at our Shaman's top heals and they are always: Healing Rain, Healing Tide Totem, and Healing Stream Totem by a LARGE margin. I think there is something wrong if the majority of your healing done is by fire and forget smart heals. That requires no skill or thought.

Now that's not their fault, it's just how they were designed and the options they have. But I would say it's a bad design for smart healing to make up such a significant portion of your healing. Healing should be about choosing the right spell at the right time. It should be about making decisions. If you ask me the smart healing is just out of control.