5.1 and resto druids

[Miko]

Looking at WOL's to see what class bring the most HPS is not really a good idea for raid progression. A druid brings more then just HPS. During burst AOE and keeping mana. It's true resto druids maybe be one of the lowest in raw numbers, but they dosn't mean simply bringing in any other healer will instantly make the raid better. I have yet to wipe due to healers allowing raid memembers to slowly die off due to one guy pulling 3-10k less hps. I have however seen raid memebers die due to heals being OOM, or not having a CD to drop on the tank. A druid can throw down 60k hps or better with just SM--->WG and spamming shrooms, doing this also uses 0 mana, so you can keep that mana for when you need that burst. At the end of the fight you might get out heal, but honestly what difference does that make? You're a healer HPS-recounts don't matter, players being alive does.


Also I'll say that being able to move with the fight and provide hots to players that go in and out of differnt phases instant swap of LB is clutch in many fights. Less hps, yes. Less viable, not at all.

[Ankzu]

Looking at WOL's to see what class bring the most HPS is not really a good idea for raid progression. A druid brings more then just HPS. During burst AOE and keeping mana. It's true resto druids maybe be one of the lowest in raw numbers, but they dosn't mean simply bringing in any other healer will instantly make the raid better. I have yet to wipe due to healers allowing raid memembers to slowly die off due to one guy pulling 3-10k less hps. I have however seen raid memebers die due to heals being OOM, or not having a CD to drop on the tank. A druid can throw down 60k hps or better with just SM--->WG and spamming shrooms, doing this also uses 0 mana, so you can keep that mana for when you need that burst. At the end of the fight you might get out heal, but honestly what difference does that make? You're a healer HPS-recounts don't matter, players being alive does.

100% agree, it's not just about HPS.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I think a lot of the problem is encounter design for druids. This tier has way to many "stack up here, and max up your AOE healing, and stay in the glowing floor" which isn't druids biggest advantage. If you had 2-3 less fights of that nature and 2-3 fights of higher mobility and forced spread out then druids would be in a lot better spot.

Honestly healing has been moving in this direction for a while now and it has been driving me crazy. Way to much of "stand in the glowing floor" and way to much "smart heal spam" instead of having to make much of a decision in raid healing and tank healing has seemed to dwindled down a little. At least it isn't what it once was. I think up tank healing, and up brain chooses who to heal rather then client chooses to heal would be better.

[Myrrar]

Also I'll say that being able to move with the fight and provide hots to players that go in and out of differnt phases instant swap of LB is clutch in many fights. Less hps, yes. Less viable, not at all.

Except...not really.

You're right, as has been said in this thread already, hps isn't the most important thing. There have been past tiers where we could almost double others hps and were still sat. We don't have enough solid CDs. Some fights favor Tranq but majority of fights you could swap in any other healing spec and have better CDs, more raid synergy, and niche filling that druids don't have.

When they 'removed' niches to balance healing classes(which I 100% agree with doing) they took most of the things that made us strong and gave it to others. In the same way, the things they gave us to compete with the other specs aren't strong enough to be competitive.


We aren't talking about LFR, we aren't talking about reg modes, we aren't talking about HMs way after they have been on farm and are now overgeared. We are talking about high end HM raiding, which is the only place any type of balance really matters. In any other case it's frustrating, but you don't really need to worry about losing your spot or anything like that. Least not this tier.


This has been a problem every single tier since the game was launched. There has never been a tier where every spec is viable. The problem is that Blizz doesn't address it quickly enough. For the most popular MMO in the world it takes them a full tier or 2 to start trying to fix fuck ups, and it's kind of sad when every other game is hotfixing this kind of stuff weekly.

As was said in another thread, the main problem this tier is two things. 1. that we weren't really needed at all at the beginning of progression so a lot of top guilds don't even have geared druids able to be pulled in for the few fights we are good on. 2. Unless something changes as gear scales we are going to fall even further behind. Unless all the fights next tier just super favor our small niche and nothing else(which they wont) we are going to have some problems.

[Deleted]

my concern is that there hasnt even been a blue post about druids, saying they think they are low / fine / good atm... so no1 knows wots goin to happen. Theres been plenty of hot fix's and adjsutments to every other class but us.

I started playin resto druid at start of the expansion, then quickly realized most the fights (as said above) are stack and AOE fights, where a druid is not taht strong at. So i switched to monk.. but then they nerfed monk to teh ground, and now im bk to resto druid... as u said.. the changes just come way to slow

[ebah]

I'd say rdruids should get like 20% buff to healing shrooms to make druids aoe healing bit more effective.

[skmzarn]

my concern is that there hasnt even been a blue post about druids, saying they think they are low / fine / good atm... so no1 knows wots goin to happen. Theres been plenty of hot fix's and adjsutments to every other class but us.

I started playin resto druid at start of the expansion, then quickly realized most the fights (as said above) are stack and AOE fights, where a druid is not taht strong at. So i switched to monk.. but then they nerfed monk to teh ground, and now im bk to resto druid... as u said.. the changes just come way to slow

That is not entirely true about the blue posts. GC tweeted something along the lines; -We think druids are fine- when they told about the incoming Monk nerf.

[Miko]

Except...not really.

You're right, as has been said in this thread already, hps isn't the most important thing. There have been past tiers where we could almost double others hps and were still sat. We don't have enough solid CDs. Some fights favor Tranq but majority of fights you could swap in any other healing spec and have better CDs, more raid synergy, and niche filling that druids don't have.

When they 'removed' niches to balance healing classes(which I 100% agree with doing) they took most of the things that made us strong and gave it to others. In the same way, the things they gave us to compete with the other specs aren't strong enough to be competitive.


We aren't talking about LFR, we aren't talking about reg modes, we aren't talking about HMs way after they have been on farm and are now overgeared. We are talking about high end HM raiding, which is the only place any type of balance really matters. In any other case it's frustrating, but you don't really need to worry about losing your spot or anything like that. Least not this tier.


This has been a problem every single tier since the game was launched. There has never been a tier where every spec is viable. The problem is that Blizz doesn't address it quickly enough. For the most popular MMO in the world it takes them a full tier or 2 to start trying to fix fuck ups, and it's kind of sad when every other game is hotfixing this kind of stuff weekly.

As was said in another thread, the main problem this tier is two things. 1. that we weren't really needed at all at the beginning of progression so a lot of top guilds don't even have geared druids able to be pulled in for the few fights we are good on. 2. Unless something changes as gear scales we are going to fall even further behind. Unless all the fights next tier just super favor our small niche and nothing else(which they wont) we are going to have some problems.

I think you have missed the point. There is no encounter this tier heroic, lfr, or normal that you couldn't do with a druid healer. We bring plenty of CDs, every class in the game can not be OP and at the top of a chart. IF you clear a heroic boss, you cleared it.. What difference does it make if the disco was 10k hps higher then you was?


I'll also add that with the gear out its only natural that some classes will scale higher then others, doing heroics with a ilvl of 503 or some shit isn't even how the fights there tuned for anyway.

[Ashrr]

I think you have missed the point. There is no encounter this tier heroic, lfr, or normal that you couldn't do with a druid healer. We bring plenty of CDs, every class in the game can not be OP and at the top of a chart. IF you clear a heroic boss, you cleared it.. What difference does it make if the disco was 10k hps higher then you was?


I'll also add that with the gear out its only natural that some classes will scale higher then others, doing heroics with a ilvl of 503 or some shit isn't even how the fights there tuned for anyway.

There are plenty of encounters this tier though, where other classes were light years ahead of druids during cutting-edge progression. If you're in a guild that benches players because their class isn't the best for an encounter (irrespective of personal performance), you were and still possibly are at a disadvantage this tier.

[Torty]

100% agree, it's not just about HPS.

On most progression bosses IT IS about hps. I'm sad to disappoint you, but your couple of normal mode bosses progression probably doesn't give you the right picture.

There were multiple fights in this tier that you had to either underheal or heal in shit gear while the dmg was retardedly high: WotE, Garalon, Empress, Tsulong, Sha to name the few. Those happened to be one of the hardest fights in the tier also. All other hard encounters were just about spikes of high dmg (SK, Zorlok), on which druids are even more shit. I don't have a clue how you can say that HPS doesn't matter on these. Try finding a log without disc priests on Empress and 7 healing it or try finding Garalon without priests and monks with 6 healers. Then come back here and tell me hps doesn't matter.

If you still think that monks were massively stacked prior to nerf due to their utility, then you are delusional. Monks have the most shit utility outside certain encounters (protectors, tsulong) and were on every first kill of every guild. Wonder why. Probably because HPS doesn't matter lol.

[Myrrar]

I think you have missed the point. There is no encounter this tier heroic, lfr, or normal that you couldn't do with a druid healer. We bring plenty of CDs, every class in the game can not be OP and at the top of a chart. IF you clear a heroic boss, you cleared it.. What difference does it make if the disco was 10k hps higher then you was?


I'll also add that with the gear out its only natural that some classes will scale higher then others, doing heroics with a ilvl of 503 or some shit isn't even how the fights there tuned for anyway.

It's not that healers can't do it. There is a reason high end raids normally all use the same tanks, sit certain dps classes and specs, and switch in and out/bench healers. If a monk can do everything a druid can do but better, yes, you will sit the druid. You don't make something 5x harder on yourself by bringing a class you don't need.

We already said we are talking about top progression, not when everyone is overgeared and can execute the strat flawlessly that you can clear it with 4 paladins. The same way that every little thing a tank or dps class can bring is important, so is healing. And in the same way there are dps 'caps' on bosses, there are hps 'caps'.

[Deleted]

thing is, name 1 good thing that a druid can bring to the raid that another class cant?

we obviously cant win on HPS, so we gotta win on utility... and there rly isnt that much that we have, all i can think of is gara for the HOTW when enrage was an issue and 4set pvp bonus spamin ironbark... maybe 2nd phase blade lord? that a shaman can do just as well? lol

[Rorschachs]

Hotw is not better than what a monk or a priest can do. They can do way more damage overall easily.

[Ashrr]

And from the front page...

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Any word on healing mushrooms? They are pretty useless but have so much potential.
Agree they aren't there yet, but we want them to be sutiational, and not used on cooldown. (Source)
Any chance for some 5.1 love? Thank you for responding to my first tweet ever!
Maybe not for 5.1. We want to make sure there's time for players to try out any changes. It's on our radar though. (Source)

Did static mana pools really gave you the freedom you needed to design better enocunters? Are we balanced?
The problem with +Int providing infinite mana didn't manifest until later tiers. Still like the change though. (Source)

And of course, would love to hear how you feel healers compare for PvE and how Mistweavers have played out.
Pretty happy with healer balance overall. MW were too good in 5.0. Raiders discovering Disc now and we have to keep an eye on it. (Source)

We're probably gonna stay the same for some time to come.

[Deleted]

well least they are acknowledging that mushrooms are pretty useless atm, maybe we'll see a small buff or change on them

[Zathan666]

The only buff we'll get in 5.2 will be like this:

"New random mushrooms colors have been added"

[Deleted]

The only buff we'll get in 5.2 will be like this:

"New random mushrooms colors have been added"

wont be a buff, it will be a glyph, a major one at that ;P

[Miko]

I just don't understand why doing 3 maybe 5k hps less then another healer is a bad thing. It's really not a big deal. Besides, who is on the cutting edge of progression now?

[skmzarn]

I just don't understand why doing 3 maybe 5k hps less then another healer is a bad thing. It's really not a big deal. Besides, who is on the cutting edge of progression now?

You obviously have no idea what you're talking about because it's much much more than tiny 5k hps we are talking about. 5k hps is indeed no big deal, but the numbers as so much higher than that unfortunately.

I don't really know from where you're getting the "3 maybe 5k hps" differences.

[nightfalls]

I just don't understand why doing 3 maybe 5k hps less then another healer is a bad thing. It's really not a big deal. Besides, who is on the cutting edge of progression now?

Say that when your tank/raid dies to 10k overkills... Doing less consistently than other healers is always a bad thing. That said your 3-5k number is a pretty dumb point, because variance in play (and healing role) accounts for way more than that. It's hard to ever say a spec does "3-5k" less than another.

Personally I think it's ironic that druids have been iconic "raid healers," but now due to their lack of spammable AoE healing besides rejuv, I see them more and more shoved into a tank healing role only.