Resto in 7.2.5

[Deleted]

Holy priest is most certainly going to blow away resto druid in raw HPS come T20.

Luckily resto druid will continue to dominate holy priest in every other area.
So please stop the memeing resto druid is as locked in to the 4 healer comp as are holy pala and resto shaman going into tomb.

Movement no utility elegiggle

[Shaker]

"Every other area" that never mattered in NH and won't matter enough in ToS.

Innervate is the most valuable thing, but they will just eat their own and do less healing. My main alt is a holy priest and I have the cloak, so I see both sides of the fence here. H-priest will be preferred.

[Purpleisbetter]

Because movement is totally tuned around druid mobility

Stop pretending there are reason other then raw healing to take resto druids :X

[StaeleAilar]

"Every other area" that never mattered in NH and won't matter enough in ToS.

Innervate is the most valuable thing, but they will just eat their own and do less healing. My main alt is a holy priest and I have the cloak, so I see both sides of the fence here. H-priest will be preferred.

this is the situation i am in. Albeit my priest doesnt have tier or the cloak, it is 900 ilvl. So it's not a huge jump to swap to it, its like 100m AP from concordance in holy and shadow specs.

I haven't *super* enjoyed the resto druid playstyle, but it seemed to be about the only way to get onto a healing team other than playing a paladin or a shaman. And i was hoping to avoid playing one of them for another expansion. Nothing against them, i just wanted a change of pace. But... at this rate, to guarantee a spot, even a trial spot in a lot of teams it's looking like it may be time to dust off the paladin and shaman haha.

[Rici]

I have no doubt: if the day comes where resto druids are not in place #1 and have a guaranteed raid spot, Blizzard will intervene the exact second and buff the spec to be able to heal like every raid encounter alone... They wanted druids to be the best solution to every situation in the game for years now, why should that change? So no need to worry or thinking about rerolling. Give them one or two rounds of hotfixing once raids are open and you will see.

[Purpleisbetter]

I have no doubt: if the day comes where resto druids are not in place #1 and have a guaranteed raid spot, Blizzard will intervene the exact second and buff the spec to be able to heal like every raid encounter alone... They wanted druids to be the best solution to every situation in the game for years now, why should that change? So no need to worry or thinking about rerolling. Give them one or two rounds of hotfixing once raids are open and you will see.

MoP, 25m.
WoD.

Btw ofc hotfixes will happen; orange bar is supposed to be longers the other colors.

Call it nature.

[Deleted]

have you presented an argument for why druids should have more raw throughput than holy priests

[Tiberria]

have you presented an argument for why druids should have more raw throughput than holy priests

Druids absolutely should have more raw throughput than Holy Priests, because the type of output Druids deliver is inherently less valuable than the type of output/damage patterns HPriests offer. In particular, the holy word spells offer a massive amount of single target/AoE healing burst, and that type of burst is often what actually matters on progression and when healing matters because they actually actively save people/get you out of problematic situations. On top of that, the bulk of the remaining HPriest output is based around solid single target healing, and direct single target heals - all basically spells that deliver their pay dirt in <2.5 seconds. Excluding mastery healing, which is a HoT that is faster than even WG, only about 10% of priest healing actually comes from HoT effects. Upwards of 20% is from those Holy World spells that deliver amazing clutch healing when it's actually relevant.

In comparison, roughly 85% of Resto Druid is tied up in 19/15/7, etc second HoTs. While they can look good in terms of padding the fuck out of meters, especially when the raid isn't always at 100% health, if you pull your head out of your ass and think past raw HPS, it's not hard to figure out that HoT based healing is the weakest form of healing, because of how long it takes to complete the healing. Exactly what advantage does a HoT that does 1 million healing but lasts 19 seconds have over a 1.5 second cast time heal that does 1 million healing, or god forbid a ridiculous instant cast like Holy Word: Serenity. Unless they want to make stuff like Swiftmend hit as hard as the holy words, then yes - a Druid absolutely should bring more throughput than a Holy Priest to compensate for the lower quality of that throughput.

Plus, Priest HPS numbers don't reflect the 10% raid wide healing taken buff that Divine Hymn gives all other healers, making their HPS output at least 5% lower than it should reflect.

- - - Updated - - -

I have no doubt: if the day comes where resto druids are not in place #1 and have a guaranteed raid spot, Blizzard will intervene the exact second and buff the spec to be able to heal like every raid encounter alone...

Resto Druids didn't have a "guaranteed raid spot" at any point during WoD - you're obviously just trolling. In fact, the spec was outright excluded from something like the first 10 Mythic Blackhand kills due to just not being any good. Paladins, Shaman, and (pre-Legion) Disc Priests had mandatory guaranteed raid spots throughout most of the last 4 expansions. Druids? Nope, it only ever happens when the spec has overwhelming pure throughput, precisely because of the mechanics of the spec. If you're going to be 90% HoT healing, you need to do more healing than specs with higher quality healing output sources to be equally viable.

[Purpleisbetter]

have you presented an argument for why druids should have more raw throughput than holy priests

Simple version:

If i do 1000 HPS over 19 seconds and you do 1000 HPS over 1.5s cast, then i'm fucked, and you not.

Cannot be any easier to understand then this.

[Deleted]

I guess a little above average hps via shitty hots for 2 damn patches is what gets ppl bothered. Never mind how paladins and priests have been performing, actually throughout the entire history of this game (RIP priest, hasnt been top healer spec since months now got too used to it over 10 years huh ) , or shaman as a matter of fact where you could literally do half the hps of a druid between two spirit links and htts and you'd still be brought.
But I don't even care how they so obviously overnerfed the spec because they dont have any clue how the mechanics they designed actually work in practice, but why the hell would I wanna play with shitty swiftmend cdr and putting healing into the efflo. If I wanted to heal with a circle on the ground I'd play shaman and actually be a rewarding mythic content spec horrible understanding of the class in general

[Deleted]

What this boils down to is this statement being wrong:

the type of output Druids deliver is inherently less valuable than the type of output/damage patterns HPriests offer.

In a vacuum raw throughput is raw throughput is raw throughput. The actual value of healing patterns is dependent on damage patterns. As such class balance is a problem of encounter design as much as it is one of class design.
If you want to solve all those problems from a Druid perspective by cranking up the HPS to 11 so you can smash through any and all damage patterns then I want to call that bad design.

Small nitpicky stuff because I just can't help myself: The advantage of long hots is that you can prep them. Holy Words don't quite play out like you present in your argument because muhh divinity up time. Very large parts of HPriest throughput is not directed. Cast times still matter. Mobility still matters. Survivability still matters.
None of those specifics really matter though. The problem lies on a higher level.

Simple version:

If i do 1000 HPS over 19 seconds and you do 1000 HPS over 1.5s cast, then i'm fucked, and you not.

Cannot be any easier to understand then this.

19 > 1.5

[Purpleisbetter]

You trolling. You f*ing trolling.

Doing 1000 in 19 seconds is better then doing 1000 in a second and half.

P.s.: no, over time healing has no advantage over direct healing.

Get the fuck out.

[Leafcast]

You trolling. You f*ing trolling.

Doing 1000 in 19 seconds is better then doing 1000 in a second and half.

P.s.: no, over time healing has no advantage over direct healing.

Get the fuck out.

Not that i'm in favor of the rdruid nerf as that is what I main, but you're being a little overdramatic by saying that hots are never better than direct healing? Did you ever heal mythic Cenarius? raid wide, small ticking damage constantly throughout the fight is perfect for hot classes by keeping people higher longer. Hots are also more efficient than direct heals on few target debuff encounters like Soul soakers on mythic guldan. Of course direct heals are useful there too, but having a Rejuv, Germination, Cultivation, Wild growth and Lifebloom/cenarion ward on each of our rogue soakers did a TON of work, especially during the storm when all the other healers can't do anything.

Again, I understand the knee-jerk reaction to nerfs, it hurt me inside too to see the shoulder nerf in conjunction with everything else, but you have to give credit where credit is due.

[Sinitar]

At the same time, Mathezar, you can count on one hand the encounters where Hots shine. Let's start with EN and then move onto NH. Nythendra was very much a snipe heal fight, same for Il'Gynoth, Enrethe, Ursoc, Xavius. The only resto druid friendly fights were Cenarius and Dragons of Nightmare.

Then, we have NH, where snipe heals always worked better for: Skorpyron, Trillax, Spellblade, Star Augur, Krosus, Botanist, Gul'dan(Arguably, it's more like a niche fight for resto druid really).

Hot favorable fights in NH: Chromatic, Tich, Elisande due to lots of movement and constant dmg.

So, make your pick. Would you choose the healers who are constantly better on most fights, or a niche healer like a druid where they do work on very specific encounters with very specific raid aoe damage?

All in all, I firmly believe resto druids should have the highest throughput of all healers, because they are also the healer who does the most overhealing, and whose heals go to waste a lot of the time when other healers snipe your heals.

[Tiberria]

Not that i'm in favor of the rdruid nerf as that is what I main, but you're being a little overdramatic by saying that hots are never better than direct healing? Did you ever heal mythic Cenarius? raid wide, small ticking damage constantly throughout the fight is perfect for hot classes by keeping people higher longer. Hots are also more efficient than direct heals on few target debuff encounters like Soul soakers on mythic guldan. Of course direct heals are useful there too, but having a Rejuv, Germination, Cultivation, Wild growth and Lifebloom/cenarion ward on each of our rogue soakers did a TON of work, especially during the storm when all the other healers can't do anything.

Again, I understand the knee-jerk reaction to nerfs, it hurt me inside too to see the shoulder nerf in conjunction with everything else, but you have to give credit where credit is due.

Even in those situations, HoTs over direct heals don't really fundamentally have an advantage. If you have a HoT that does 100k healing and a direct heal that does 100k healing, and the HoT is able to do full effective healing, what is the advantage of waiting 19 seconds for the HoT to fully tick vs just instantly healing the target up with a direct heal when the health deficit reaches the point that the direct heal will be effective. The situations that you gave as examples are just situations where the damage patterns of the fight allowed HoTs to reach the same effective healing rate as direct heals, as opposed to being strictly inferior.

As far as pre-hotting - people don't seem to realize that the entire concept of pre-hotting is that you are deliberately throwing away a portion of a HoT's healing to get a portion of it healing when you need it the most. Still no real advantage to that over just fucking using direct heals to begin with, especially given how relatively little most HoTs heal for during a specific burst window. I.E, if you're pre-hotting for a 6 second damaging ability, you are only getting 32% of Rejuv's healing (6/19 seconds) during that window. You would need to have over 3x as many HoT effects active as a direct healing based healer is able to cast direct heals to even reach parity, and even then you still don't reach parity given that you're dumping mana into pre-hotting HoTs at a fraction of their effectiveness, while the direct healers are getting 100% of the effectiveness on the same relative mana consumption.

Druids absolutely should have the highest effective healing, and Mistweavers should have the second highest effective healing because of the lower quality level of the effective healing those specs produce. Of course, whenever that actually happens, you have the Paladin and Priest sycophants screaming bloody murder because they want their higher quality healing, their higher quality utility, and on top of that they also want to call mobility utility while not calling stuff like Beacon/tank healing niche utility.

[masterhorus8]

You trolling. You f*ing trolling.

Doing 1000 in 19 seconds is better then doing 1000 in a second and half.

P.s.: no, over time healing has no advantage over direct healing.

Get the fuck out.

You used the wrong term. HPS over 19sec means you're doing 1000 healing average per sec over 19 sec. Not 1000 healing total over 19 sec, like you were implying. Just relax.

[Purpleisbetter]

Not that i'm in favor of the rdruid nerf as that is what I main, but you're being a little overdramatic by saying that hots are never better than direct healing? Did you ever heal mythic Cenarius? raid wide, small ticking damage constantly throughout the fight is perfect for hot classes by keeping people higher longer. Hots are also more efficient than direct heals on few target debuff encounters like Soul soakers on mythic guldan. Of course direct heals are useful there too, but having a Rejuv, Germination, Cultivation, Wild growth and Lifebloom/cenarion ward on each of our rogue soakers did a TON of work, especially during the storm when all the other healers can't do anything.

Again, I understand the knee-jerk reaction to nerfs, it hurt me inside too to see the shoulder nerf in conjunction with everything else, but you have to give credit where credit is due.

Listen, in Cenarius we were good because each cast of our reju added more then any other healers' filler heals. It worked because you were sure to add, say, 1200 healing over the duration of the hot rather then 1000 from another healer's filler.

It was just that. If healing is perfectly balanced, more direct healers can simply wait for the raid to take a more appropriate amount of damage before dumping.Is the same exact thing, but faster.

The same principle work for Tycho or Aluriel, or any boss where we used Germi.

Hots are not "more efficent"; they WERE tuned to be stronger per cast(netting the mastery stacks and whatnot). THAT is what did "the job".

That -4% across the board nerf won't last long unless its the Devs intention to have druids to fall from grace for a tier. I'm really salty about it, not about the nerfs per se, but rather because i'm stuck with my feral spec with shitty legos.

[Leafcast]

Listen, in Cenarius we were good because each cast of our reju added more then any other healers' filler heals. It worked because you were sure to add, say, 1200 healing over the duration of the hot rather then 1000 from another healer's filler.

It was just that. If healing is perfectly balanced, more direct healers can simply wait for the raid to take a more appropriate amount of damage before dumping.Is the same exact thing, but faster.

The same principle work for Tycho or Aluriel, or any boss where we used Germi.

Hots are not "more efficent"; they WERE tuned to be stronger per cast(netting the mastery stacks and whatnot). THAT is what did "the job".

That -4% across the board nerf won't last long unless its the Devs intention to have druids to fall from grace for a tier. I'm really salty about it, not about the nerfs per se, but rather because i'm stuck with my feral spec with shitty legos.

Lets wait for at least the first week of heroic ToS before we all swap to feral I'm still confident that we'll be able to pull very competitive numbers.

[fallenangel-succ]

I do agree to what you're saying to what extent Tiberria, but this is why the shoulders are so good - they let you prehot without wasting mana. Other parts of the toolkit (Flourish, Ghanir, Velen's) also benefit from this playstyle.
For cutting edge progress druids will be fine because healers don't get set in these sort of guilds anyway, and so the shoulders and 4p19 interaction should be strong enough.

[theburned]

Hot favorable fights in NH: Chromatic, Tich, Elisande due to lots of movement and constant dmg.

So, make your pick. Would you choose the healers who are constantly better on most fights, or a niche healer like a druid where they do work on very specific encounters with very specific raid aoe damage?

All in all, I firmly believe resto druids should have the highest throughput of all healers, because they are also the healer who does the most overhealing, and whose heals go to waste a lot of the time when other healers snipe your heals.

aluriel and guldan? not on that list, druids were insanely strong on both those fights because of our focused healing, last phase botanist? Only fight we struggled on was augur and that was mostly due to how you just needed the DR cds in last phase. We werent anything amazing on krosus, but still perfectly fine (we ran 2 rdruids first week, no real issues there.)

You should also read up on what niche means, cause resto druids clearly does not fit as a niche healer, when we are only lacking spot healing and a raid wide DR cd.
We are mostly at the top of the pack or 2nd at most other healing styles.
Active tank healing probably the strongest healer, passive tank healing 2nd to paladins (which is their niche)
Focused healing into (2-6) predictable targets we still remain the strongest healer (which is considered to be a niche where we are unrivaled.), sustained aoe healing, highly competitive due to the nature of our hots (shaman and hpriest can arguably be better here.)
medium duration bursts 20-30 sec we are still very strong, probably only fight against discs.
Still have the best tank external aswell.
Our mobility is better or on par with mw, otherwise just crushing every other healer. This goes for getting from point a-b, when it comes to being able to heal on the move we can move during 9 out of 10 gcds. MW and new disc are the ones who come closest with 4-5/8-9 gcds.
Our survivability is really strong with bear form, guardian affinity, 1 min cd 20% DR, we dont have an ankh/immunity, but those have heavy cds, cutting edge mythic fights tend to test you a bit more than being able to immune something every 5-20 min.

While a bit irrelevant to healer discussion we are ahead or competing with paladins on healer dps, (some outliers with paladins where they just get so much from double wings, or that they have slightly easier access to dps legendaries.)

To me it looks like we are competitive at everything, if we were to also have the best throughput, we are pretty much unbeatable in every single aspect apart from spot healing, and that we lack that raid wide Damage reduction cd.