[Resto] finally bottom level

[Deleted]

Holy priest have been shafted for years. The first priest in any guild almost always had to be disc until WoD, it didn't even matter how good/bad holy itself was.
Dozens of times i've heard "youre only here because of spirit link" over the years. and shamans have very little utility besides that especially since removal of tremor totem. they do have an OP interupt but your rarely short on those, purge also was useful but also usually you had plenty.
Paladins have been known to be bad at aoe healing for years only getting some aoe in last few expansions, the big thing they bring aside healing is hand of protection which all specs can do. righteous fury had its occasional use too.

I've never heard anyone say something like that about druids, CR is an obvious plus, they can bear+taunt in an emergency, they have CC options, innervate was important, they are traditionally strong on aoe heals and only sporadically been very bad at tankhealing.

i mean heck, wasn't it a druid that solo healed heroic rag?

so treating holy priest and disc priest as a different class is a bit silly imo, it happens to classes with multiple dps specs too, one is usually gonna be better and pre legion it wasnt really hard to flex between specs. legion is the first xpac priest didnt have the choice to be the best healing spec basically.

shaman is filled with cooldowns which is really relevant for progress since the healers are usually undergeared and you pull through with cds. also it's not like their healing is hurt by having utility, it's still high. they can have windrush totem, the ress totem which doesnt count for a cr, 10% health, interrupt, which arent huge but makes them versatile. and link by itself puts you into the one of the best utility category. im not sure while you're talking as if it's not one of the strongest utility in the game if not the strongest.

none of the thing you listed for druid is exclusive for resto or even druid(cr is basically nothing since it's capped and 3-4 classes can do it) the only thing you can mention as an extra is movement and survivability, but it's not like you dont manage with a hpala or a shaman.

when paladins were bad "aoe" healers they were single handedly the best tank and single target healers and they were pretty much musthave in any raid. so im not sure, is this an argument of hpala being bad somehow? because it's not true. now they are not even bad at raid healing, kings at spothealing and again the best cooldowns possible and they heal burst really well. prot has cheesed so many fights in the past it's a really good utility. also the big thing they bring is devo aura, hello? which now flexes into being whatever you want. also beacons are just crazy all together.

yes heroic rag on 10 was solohealed by a resto druid but im not sure how that's relevant (also that was a very special case, it's not like everyone was doing it), ive never said resto druids have never been good before. but many times they have been bad. pala and shaman have never. also btw in the same raid you had to have disc and holy pala absorbs to kill the gate boss so resto druids were benched. or the spider boss where you had to have dmg reducions and link.

idk man, I actually dont understand how you possibly believe druid could be argued to be better than these classes now or even in the past over pala/shaman/priest (minus recently). I mean this arguement was much interesting during t19 when druid actually outperformed in healing, now it's not even that...

[Pokas]

This post tries to argue that druids are doing badly right now, which is not the reality. Druids are still present and viable even at the highest levels of play. Druids are actually the second healer with most kills on M KJ, right after Shamans. And this is not considering the ridiculous 3 druids builds that were present in several top guilds in their first kills in the last bosses. Druids' raw output is balanced and in pair with the other healers, but druids still have an insane unbeatable toolkit, with perfect mobility, the best tank/single target CD in the game, an excellent and consistent raid CD and ridiculous survivability (and i am not even talking about minors, like innervate, vortex etc), and all of these considering a raid scenario. In M+ druids are still ridiculous overpowered, because that toolkit is just more and more considerable.

[Tiberria]

Yes, Holy Priests have been gutter tier several times over the last few expansions, but the thing is - even when they were terrible, Disc Priests (pre-Legion) were always a mandatory spot, so you always had a priest healer locked in anyway, which isn't all that bad considering you have 4 healing spots and 5 healing classes to begin with. The first tier of Legion was the first time Priests were questionable in terms of being an automatic raid spot.

Holy Paladins literally have never been weak and never had to suffer with the ebb and flow of healer power that every other spec has. They have been the top throughput healer half the time, and even when they weren't, 1 and even 2 of them were typically mandatory in every raid comp. Shaman have not been weak/non-viable recently, but I specifically remember them being terrible in the first 2 tiers of Cata (to the point that Paragon or Method wrote an article about why the entire class is not worth using for raiding), were weak during the first half of WoTLK, and pretty mediocre in MoP until they got buffed through the roof for SoO. They haven't really suffered in the last 2 expansions, but there were plenty of times prior to that where they had big issues.

Also, any one saying there has never been a time where RDruids were not top tier is just delusional. There are loads of examples.
- While they had top tier throughput in WoTLK, they were generally considered non-viable/not wanted on Heroic Lich King, because HoT healing was trash against the infest mechanic.
- The spec was generally considered pretty terrible in the first tier of Cata, and they eventually had to scrap the initial mastery design and rework it completely. In Firelands, RDruids were OP (probably about where they were in 7.2 as a comparison), but they over-reacted and over-nerfed the spec for Dragon Soul, making it pretty much a bottom feeding spec.
- The spec was widely seen as total trash the first tier of MoP. It got massive buffs going into ToT, but was still pretty underwhelming and generally behind everything but Shaman (and Shaman still had MTT, etc.) It was then buffed massively again for SoO and was finally middle of the pack.
- The spec was decent in Highmaul but was pretty much considered trash in BRF largely because of poor scaling and a negative throughput 4 piece bonus. The spec was excluded from something like the first 10 M Blackhand kills (yes people will argue this is because you wanted 2-3 boomkins, but still). With strong set bonuses in HFC, it was back to middle of the pack.

Realistically, the only times RDruids have been totally dominant in raiding over the last 10 years is Firelands and the first tier of Legion. Other than that, its quite a bit of time as the worst or 2nd worst healer, and quite a bit of middle of the pack at best.

And, the spec is not in a good spot right now. It's barely above the bottom, and it's ridiculous that it is lower than RShaman/HPally given the extra stuff those specs bring over and above throughput numbers, and the inherent weakness of HoT heavy healing in a lot of cases.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...gregate=amount

Plus, I think the ilvl scaling is absolutely a legitimate point. At some point, the people wearing T19 are going to have to switch out to T20 because of the raw ilvl gains. And, if they don't, the spec will continue to scale at a significantly lower rate relative to other specs and fall further behind, because you aren't getting ilvl upgrades in 25% of your gear slots while the rest of the healing specs are. You can see that trend line here, where Druid HPS has been pretty much flat for the last several weeks, whereas most other specs (barring Shaman and this is expected with their mastery design) are scaling upwards steeply.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...&timespan=1000

And, then, you can look at heroic, which has about 6 times the people doing it as Mythic, and Druids are the weakest healer there.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...t&difficulty=4

I think at the end of the day, they should at least remove that -5% to all spells aura nerf that they put in for 7.2.5 to at least buff the spec up to middle of the pack, especially given that the tier situation means that it is going to continue to slide further with every passing week.

- - - Updated - - -

This post tries to argue that druids are doing badly right now, which is not the reality. Druids are still present and viable even at the highest levels of play. Druids are actually the second healer with most kills on M KJ, right after Shamans. And this is not considering the ridiculous 3 druids builds that were present in several top guilds in their first kills in the last bosses. Druids' raw output is balanced and in pair with the other healers, but druids still have an insane unbeatable toolkit, with perfect mobility, the best tank/single target CD in the game, an excellent and consistent raid CD and ridiculous survivability (and i am not even talking about minors, like innervate, vortex etc), and all of these considering a raid scenario. In M+ druids are still ridiculous overpowered, because that toolkit is just more and more considerable.

The reason why Druid representation on KJ is so high is because before the most recent set of nerfs, certain classes without reliable movement speed options (especially Priests) were close to unusable on the fight because they had such a hard time staying alive. They just took Druids because the output was reasonable enough and the mobility was invaluable. With the nerfs, that benefit is largely negated.

[Nevcairiel]

The reason why Druid representation on KJ is so high is because before the most recent set of nerfs, certain classes without reliable movement speed options (especially Priests) were close to unusable on the fight because they had such a hard time staying alive. They just took Druids because the output was reasonable enough and the mobility was invaluable. With the nerfs, that benefit is largely negated.

If anything that shows that it just doesn't matter? Clearly they killed KJ Mythic with plenty druids, so even if they are the "worst" (which I still doubt), it just doesn't matter because you can still kill the hardest boss in the game right now.

[Purpleisbetter]

If anything that shows that it just doesn't matter? Clearly they killed KJ Mythic with plenty druids, so even if they are the "worst" (which I still doubt), it just doesn't matter because you can still kill the hardest boss in the game right now.

Back to square one:

Why did we had to get such a hard set of nerfs if it didn't matter?

Again, taking the early kills is cherry picking af, people were riding the T19 wave that made us much, MUCH stronger then the other specs.

For late kills, while it's true, anything works, R.Druid are at the bottom. Is just that simple.

The real question is: now that HPals and HPriest are dominant as R.Druid were, what those two spec should expect ? Another array of stupid, undeserved and badly executed nerfs like R.Druid got?

I hope Blizz learned its lesson here, at least with healers.

[Cheze]

the reality is log rankings put far too much emphasis on raw throughput; it's fun to hit a high number but all healers are more than capable of meeting the throughput requirements of every fight. One healer or another being ~5% ahead in aggregate rankings is just not a concern when constructing a raid team, and shouldn't be when deciding personally which class to play.

the reason that many druids were used in early maiden/avatar/KJ kills has nothing to do with how much throughput they do vs other healers and everything to do with mobility being extremely important on those fights.

[Deleted]

I specifically remember them being terrible in the first 2 tiers of Cata (to the point that Paragon or Method wrote an article about why the entire class is not worth using for raiding)

correct me if im wrong but isn't that the time they conveniently got spirit link? I think they got compensated very well...

- - - Updated - - -

the reality is log rankings put far too much emphasis on raw throughput; it's fun to hit a high number but all healers are more than capable of meeting the throughput requirements of every fight. One healer or another being ~5% ahead in aggregate rankings is just not a concern when constructing a raid team, and shouldn't be when deciding personally which class to play.

the reason that many druids were used in early maiden/avatar/KJ kills has nothing to do with how much throughput they do vs other healers and everything to do with mobility being extremely important on those fights.

it's absolutely relevant how much throughput classes with less utility do against the ones that are cluttered with them. With the current distribution of useful and unique raid utilities and cooldowns pala and shaman should never heal more than a monk or druid. I would not mind if monks had a better healing performance than druid for example based on this logic either...

[theburned]

dont complain about hps all healers do atm very similiar hps just ask yourself if your spec is making fun to you if you answer no then play something diffrent if its yes continue to play and dont look so much on hps better safe your buddys and progress/kill bosses on hc/mythic enjoy your time have fun but if you cant have fun then better look for something better that can fill your void

*edit*
Oh and dont act like you all playing in top 20 guilds where you need all healers as a alt.

Well druid for top 20 guilds was really good, dont see how this is very relevant for anything. And not like druids suddenly becomes worse with a bit of gear, while other classes might become a bit better.
Also I am in a top 10 guild, dont have to act like it.

[Tiberria]

correct me if im wrong but isn't that the time they conveniently got spirit link? I think they got compensated very well...

Yes - they got Spirit Link late in the first tier of Cata, but even with Spirit Link, RShaman were considered a meme level of terrible in Firelands, because their throughput was awful and the fights were too spread out too mobile. They only became good in Dragon Soul when the fight design suited them better.

At any rate, sure, healing throughput doesn't matter all that much as long as you have the raw overall HPS to defeat the boss. However, given that it isn't all that relevant, why did they see the need to apply the level of nerfs on the spec that they did going into ToS, especially once you switch to T20? If we're going to argue that was acceptable, should we also be arguing for similar throughput nerfs to Holy Paladins and Holy Priests going into Argus? Or are we just going to be dismissive and defeatist and let that standard only apply to Druids?

- - - Updated - - -

Well druid for top 20 guilds was really good, dont see how this is very relevant for anything. And not like druids suddenly becomes worse with a bit of gear, while other classes might become a bit better.
Also I am in a top 10 guild, dont have to act like it.

If Druids don't scale as well with gear as other healers, yes they become worse relative to other healers when it comes to raid composition selection. And, while that throughput delta may not have mattered for top 20 guilds (because the mobility, etc. became a bigger deciding factor), who's to say it isn't going to matter for top 100, 200, 1000 guilds, given that those guilds almost certainly need more total throughput from their healers because they aren't as skilled at executing mechanics, etc? This is especially the case given that they felt the need to nerf most of the mechanics that made class mobility mandatory after those top 10-top 20 kills, making that lack of throughput/throughput scaling that much more relevant. 99% of even Mythic raiders don't play at the top 20 level, and you can't dismiss those concerns as irrelevant just because it worked at the highest possible level.

[theburned]

If Druids don't scale as well with gear as other healers, yes they become worse relative to other healers when it comes to raid composition selection. And, while that throughput delta may not have mattered for top 20 guilds (because the mobility, etc. became a bigger deciding factor), who's to say it isn't going to matter for top 100, 200, 1000 guilds, given that those guilds almost certainly need more total throughput from their healers because they aren't as skilled at executing mechanics, etc? This is especially the case given that they felt the need to nerf most of the mechanics that made class mobility mandatory after those top 10-top 20 kills, making that lack of throughput/throughput scaling that much more relevant. 99% of even Mythic raiders don't play at the top 20 level, and you can't dismiss those concerns as irrelevant just because it worked at the highest possible level.

First of all the main gear scaling we will get in the upcoming weeks will be netherlight crucible, its not like druids will scale less with this, unless heavily behind.
25 ilvls lost on 4 pieces, which will still take some time to actually get over what you have already after all the months of farming nighthold, this is a bit taxing, but its not super significant, and you can argue you would take that swap earlier at like 15-20 ilvls pr piece. so you would just have to compare that to other classes.
The main issue with KJ is that its difficulty now mostly comes from executing mechanics (soaking shit, not standing in orbs and spreading out with dreadflames) there are some bursty spikes which is what is dangerous, armageddon doesnt really kill you, maybe the odd 2-3 stacks, but you wont bring a druid just to deal with this. Otherwise the healing requirement on KJ is very low and otherwise on tanks which druids are fairly good at aswell. No pala in for this discussion, they will always have their raid spot, its just a thing.
The thing is that druids has a fail safe, which priests don't have, and shaman will have to give up their movement healing or wind rush for it, and paladins just dont have one. Monks do, but quite honestly if you are losing your spot to a monk, its not because he is the better class.
And well the netherlight crucible will really make this fight a lot easier, if you cant keep up with the healing it wont be because you brought a druid over a shaman/priest/monk it will be because people are fucking up armageddons (or taking double stacks which btw druids are one of the best healers at covering up) there is no healing check in last phase. there is no real healing check outside of adds either.

[wakii]

In all honesty the goal for that thread was just to point out that Druid is falling behind in HPS just according to records. In my personal experience I feel it in every raid. The moment a skilled player take over a Paladin or Priest I have little chance to compete (no T19, no external mana). The worst thing is, that it seems a Paladin/Priest can pull out same or higher numbers than us by using 50% less mana. I'm just not ok with the nerfs we received in the start of ToS but as long as top 100 Resto Druids riding their T19 (+ external mana) it always will look as Druid is still a thing. The truth is, we are just behind in HPS. Ofc reasons are many as boss mechanics, hots etc but when I play a character in WoW I want to play competitive and will carry my weight. Right now I can be happy not to be in a Top 100 guild as I would even start to be afraid of getting benched for a Holy Priest or Pala as there is no single reason to bring a Druid (only 4/9 Myhtic though).

[Marrilaife]

Right now I can be happy not to be in a Top 100 guild as I would even start to be afraid of getting benched for a Holy Priest or Pala as there is no single reason to bring a Druid (only 4/9 Myhtic though).

Top guilds bring resto druids all the time with all the reasons to bring a druid (mobility, blink, cr, ironbark, hotting spread targets, tranq on the move, innervate), you seem to think hps can be the only possible reason to bring a class?

That's what baffles me, people who play in some world rank 2k guild shaking their pants over losing their raid spot while the spec is widely used by top guilds just fine and even top guilds saying things like "resto druids are especially useful on mythic Avatar" (that's from Fatboss guide, from world top 16 guild). And another example, Joshpriest from Method saying in his video they had to actually justify bringing a disc priest to mythic KJ because it's completely useless during intermission, and generally pala / druid / shaman are widely used healers on that fight, no one needs to "justify their spot".

And tbh, at the level you're playing I've never ever saw people being benched over their class, unless the raid leader is retarded. People are usually benched for fuckups. And at the slightly higher level, if the class is massively unviable (which r-druid doesn't classify as) if the raid leader has a good player in his hands he'd rather encourage him to reroll to another class than discard him for a random trial. Or often the player themselves will request to be allowed to class switch if they feel their current class sucks. I knew 3 MW Monks in EN who all switched classes in NH (to disc, pala and druid respectively) because they felt Monk healers were sub par. They weren't just thrown out of the window by their guilds.

And if you were in top 100 guild... well you'd have 3-5 alts for splits of different classes and you'd play whatever is best for the fight.

Atm both on Mistress and Avatar (2 hardest bosses excluding KJ which has very few parses) resto druids are more used than both specs of priest combined.

There's a difference between pure high numbers and usefulness. For example, on mythic Avatar enhancement shaman ranks higher in dps than beastmastery hunter. But bm hunter is way more widely used than enha shaman, what comes? Well bm hunter is ranged, has great mobility and immunity to solo a mark, enha shaman doesn't bring anything crucial to the fight so ends up being used way less.

Another example, vengeance demon hunter has one of the highest dps among tank specs, yet ends up being the least used tank by mythic guilds.

Yeah, I know it would be great to have everything, high numbers, great cds, utility, mobility, and whatnot, but can't always have it all.

P.S. I have no idea where does the notion come from that resto druids are only looking good because they ride on "external mana", I just checked 3 mythic KJ logs that were published by western guilds and druids are really not the prio for innervates. If there was any class that fulfilled your criteria (feed innervates to look good) that was disc in NH and to lesser extend MW Monk in EN.

And wisdom... ret palas in 2k17 lul.

[Purpleisbetter]

"Yeah, I know it would be great to have everything, high numbers, great cds, utility, mobility, and whatnot, but can't always have it all."

I wonder if we have healing specs with great throughput and strong utility :O ...

Top guilds used druids because, guess what, were also delivering top numbers.

Right now, in Argus, R. Druid are replaceable.

Let's take it for what it is: a throughput healer that lacks in throughput with lot of mobility in case they tune a boss around that. Which won't happen, KJ flurry of nerfs docet.

Don't take it down to H Priest vs MW Monk vs R.Druid, because it's mostly about set bonuses and synergies with legos. It's more, much more about "should i stack 2 H Pals or R Shams instead?"

[Leafcast]

"Yeah, I know it would be great to have everything, high numbers, great cds, utility, mobility, and whatnot, but can't always have it all."

I wonder if we have healing specs with great throughput and strong utility :O ...

Top guilds used druids because, guess what, were also delivering top numbers.

Right now, in Argus, R. Druid are replaceable.

Let's take it for what it is: a throughput healer that lacks in throughput with lot of mobility in case they tune a boss around that. Which won't happen, KJ flurry of nerfs docet.

Don't take it down to H Priest vs MW Monk vs R.Druid, because it's mostly about set bonuses and synergies with legos. It's more, much more about "should i stack 2 H Pals or R Shams instead?"

Sorry that your guild is going to be sitting you. Let us know how you like your new class when you reroll.

I for one am either 1st or 2nd on every progression kill, and I offer more utility to our raid 2nd only to our rsham.

I for one, will not be seeing the bench during any raid this expansion

[gaymer77]

First off dude, you're wrong about druids and your feeling that druids are being forced into T19 or being benched all together. Also gear does not make you a skilled player and it has been proven time & time again this fact. It can, however, take a faceroll class and make it even more faceroll. I would like to point out that when BC was released in China and they got their region first kill of Illidan, most of their players were in T3....because skill > gear. If you're falling behind in your raid spot, it might not be a gear issue but a player issue. Raid teams will bring a good player that does their job right over someone who out gears a good player (assuming the good player isn't tragically behind in gear in comparison). Druids have always had raid spots in ALL expansions because of their versatility and utility along with powerful healing. Paladins haven't always been a guaranteed raid spot either. Until they got their AOE healing, there were plenty of fights where they were a liability compared to other healers who had powerful AOE healing (like a druid). In WotLK you had either a resto druid, disc priest, or holy paladin MT healing (with a druid being preferred because of their utility, ability to roll hots on the raid at the same time as keeping the tank alive, and pop tranq if there was a large raid wide dmg). Then you had another resto druid, holy priest, or shaman raid healing. Granted I've never been in a "hardcore" raiding guild other than being in a guild in vanilla that was raiding Naxx and had several KT kills in before BC came out (we were working on our forth legendary staff when BC came out), I have been in progression raiding since I've been playing. Never once have any of the guilds I've been in benched a player for not being a flavor of the month class. They ALL have, however, benched players for under performing for their skill level, failing raid mechanics, being under geared, or having spotty raid attendance. And don't get me started on clutch healing or pvp healing. Druids shine in those aspects. Again I say, if you're having issues with playing a druid you should look internally not at combat logs of other guilds and what THEY choose to bring.

[CupcakeMia]

I feel like you're looking at the stats all wrong, people that have higher ilvls as druids right now are:
-The very few that have really high ilvl t19 TF
-The druids that have swapped to t20 for pure ilvl.

Since the first category has very few people in it, it's not statistically relevant, the second category then encompasses all the druids that think ilvl is better than equipping t19, when the difference in ilvl has to be massive to actually unequip it. Yes t19 is BiS up to like 945 ilvl, perhaps even more.

Thus what you're really comparing is druids equipping the wrong things (Probably not very good druids) vs the general population of the other healers that just equips whatever high item level piece that comes their way. Most of the druid top parses that compete with other healers were done between 925-930 ilvl, druids of that ilvl that are equipping the right things can easily compete with higher item level healers.

I'm not making any comments on whether this is a desirable situation or not, but resto druids are not straight up the worst healers.

[kooz]

I just got the fourth tier piece and tried to heal host (it's on farm) with rsham and hpal in the spirit realm, t20 with the sotf lego and velens/dmc, ilvl around 930. If anything this fight is probably best for t20 on paper, but still I feel t20 sucks even there. I ran sb but maybe germination would have worked better. I could have done better though with sotf sniping, just didn't play that build in a while.

[axxey]

Using t20 host and sisters i keep up with throughput(to a break even point, not much ahead), other fights not being optimal can't remotely keep up with spike healers at all.

[kooz]

just forgot to mention on host in terms of hpsI ended up close to other healers, but our hpal is always 95+ on every fight.

last week I healed it with t19 and it felt more taxing on mana as I used germination. With t20/sb it's more relaxing, less mana issues.

[Gidarth]

Jesus this threads. As everybody else put before me, HPS is not the sole reason to bring a healer, ask any mist weaver with decent throughput and no utility. Also the healing model for druids is quite different (proactive, not reactive), so its not very comparable to any class save maybe disc.