Does anyone else miss the TBC healing style? [Druid]

[Thalur]

i cant get into my resto druid since cata, i cant quite tell whats changed but something feels wrong about it. it was my main during tbc/wotlk and i loved resto healing, and im not sure why now, but i just cant get into it. maybe ive just gone off the class.

Resto healing is getting more and more WotLK-ish again. AoE burst healing is already back to putting Rejuv on the whole raid (in addition to our CD-based spells), and I guess at ilvl 550 it will be no problem (and required) to basically spam rejuv throughout every fight.

Personally I dislike the WotLK healing style, it's just boring. At one point for a movement+constant aoe fight (togc twins something) I made a castsequence macro that would automatically put Rejuv on the whole raid while using WG when ready. It tells me something about the complexity of my class, if a macro can play as well as I.
MoP heroics in blue 450 and the first raid tier were perfect. Triage, limited mana, a lot of choices. Now it's a static rotation with rejuv spam again, like in WotLK.
Edit: As for BC, the game was different back then. People didn't min-max, and when they did in Sunwell, resto druids were benched because they couldn't compete. Not exactly a good state to be in.

[Kuniku]

I VERY much disliked the ToL as a cooldown, which was a big part of not liking cata healing so much, at least now I've got the choice of using something else ^_^

We were always THE HoT class, while HTr4 circumvented that to an extent in vanilla I think TBC was a lot closer to the original design goal of a HoT heavy class, I liked that our HoTs were a buffer to the tanks health, all the HoTs rolling meant that the tank rarely dropped in health, and when he did thats what swiftmend, regrowth and if needed NS+HT was for.

Now it seems too far from that... or is just RJ spam on the raid which sucks =p shall have to give MOP playstyle a go before long though, who knows I might like it now :3

---------- Post added 2013-04-15 at 04:31 PM ----------

Dunno how the TBC style was as I started healing in Wrath, but out of the three expansions I liked healing in early cata the best, provided you at least had some gear. It really separated the good healers from the bad although you did have the factor that dps at that time had a lot less room to screw up which was actually 50% of the new healing game at the time even if people don't realize it. You couldn't heal stupid anymore like before. The amount of patience I got however was so much more amazing as I was expecting a lot more bit**ing on the constant wipes. I actually enjoyed the triage system as long as your group wasn't completely brain-dead. I liked that I had to use ALL my healing spells and CDs to get through. The only spell that should have healed for 50-100% more was Nourish though as it was really too weak. When we got the Cata prepatch they added those clearcasting procs on your screen I personally didn't understand the need for that until the expac hit.
People probably found the new style very difficult, but to me it was a lot more rewarding than the ICC rejuv WG spam. I also like the change to tree of life as you could use it two ways, as a power CD or a mana preservation CD. I get that people missed the permanent tree form (but hey you have it back now), but since the age of transmog I like to see myself in caster form.

I liked the idea of the triage system, it was purely the ToL as a cooldown that put me off cata in general =/

[Theodoxus]

I just want my mana regen back with LB. That was the hardest thing to work around in MOP and why I switched mains to a priest. My poor druid is forever OOM and I haven't played him enough to get better spirit gear. He's basically sitting all alone in the dark, like the mushrooms he heals with.

[Deleted]

TBC's Lifebloom didn't really fit in with the ability's name and therefore most likely Blizzard's intention for it's use. In TBC people found it best to keep it constantly ticking with 3 stacks and not let it bloom. I remember it was very strong in PvP.

[Kuniku]

TBC's Lifebloom didn't really fit in with the ability's name and therefore most likely Blizzard's intention for it's use. In TBC people found it best to keep it constantly ticking with 3 stacks and not let it bloom. I remember it was very strong in PvP.

The bloom worked quite well in PvP, but yeh in PvE the bloom didn't increase with stacks, so iirc it didn't bloom for much more than the 3 stack ticked for anyway, and 3 GCDs was a waste to get it back to full strength, occassionally I'd use a single LB on the raid to spot heal, but due to the nature of HoTs more often than not someone else would have topped them up before the bloom.

[Deleted]

Rej being removed when you swiftmend (think it was accually a tierbonus set/talent that made first introduction of rej staying on the target when swiftmended)
Spamming LB untill ulduar came out (then blizzard invented 5x Rej - WG rotation and this went on untill pretty much now)
Warrior - druid 2v2 (LB was OP, but still prefer my mage - mage pomppyro 2v2 team)

And god i do miss the fact of while in raid the party got healing increase based on spirit. Screw the glyph, bring back the real tree.

[Shiny212]

IMO healing and tanking lost alot in cataclysm, the massive global threat buff making tanking mitigation only and no threat gen made that boring, and the changes to health pools/quick heals vs fast ones and mana cost changes really made healing a bore too.

[Tkaczu]

Resto druid healing style (my beloved in TBC) was destroyed by introducing Nourish spell and blizzard politics to homogenize healers. Period. They were forcing nourish into rotation firstly by implementing set bonuses into tier armor and finally with pretty sad mastery bonus.
Lifebloom lost its concept (bloom in PVE was part of planning and foreseeing damage and absolutely amazing in pvp). Mana conservation was never characteristic of good druid healer, you put hots and put alot of them and ukeep them, so there is no time for 5 sec out of casting rule. And next changes when you couldnt put hots because of mana issues was not time when you saw who is bad or good resto druid, beacuse at that moment all good resto druids stop playing that specc.

[Treesus]

I'd have to agree, WOTLK style healing was the most fun for me. I moved away from my Pally and later my Shaman because I didn't like the 2-3 sec casts only to have someone snipe your heal. Not that I had a problem at the end of the day a healer's job is done and done will if the majority of the raid is alive and the boss isn't. The problem was it felt futile to spend all that time casting a spell only to have 90% of it over heal because someone didn't stick to their assignment.

I don't mind over healing on druid, I looked at my HoTs as stop gap heals, they filled in and topped off and I could, albeit with significant mana consumption, switch and put some big heals down. Now I feel like the only difference between me and the other healers is my utility, and lets face it its lacking. I personally think this is a byproduct of the "everyone should be equal" generation and homogenization of classes to eliminate the "bring the class not the player" mentality that was prevalent in TBC and WOTLK where some buffs/abilities made class stacking the best option even if the player wasn't the best at it.

[Kuniku]

While I think some homogenizing is good, I do think they've gone overboard with it. All the healers and tanks could heal/tank everything, what does it matter if some were better raid healers while some were better tank healers? Raids are supposed to work as a team, people in team have different roles, thats the way it is, as long as they can all do 5 mans, which they could, its not a problem if they're different in raids =/

[Deleted]

Resto druid healing style (my beloved in TBC) was destroyed by introducing Nourish spell and blizzard politics to homogenize healers. Period. They were forcing nourish into rotation firstly by implementing set bonuses into tier armor and finally with pretty sad mastery bonus.
Lifebloom lost its concept (bloom in PVE was part of planning and foreseeing damage and absolutely amazing in pvp). Mana conservation was never characteristic of good druid healer, you put hots and put alot of them and ukeep them, so there is no time for 5 sec out of casting rule. And next changes when you couldnt put hots because of mana issues was not time when you saw who is bad or good resto druid, beacuse at that moment all good resto druids stop playing that specc.

Funny, because the mark of a good healer (including Druids) in early Cata was proper mana management and sure all good resto druids stop playing... right, keep dreaming. Mana should matter, otherwise the just should remove it all together. You know why the queue for dps was so long back then? Because all others who couldn't deal with it gave up. If you were able to get through you had a certain amount of skill and guess what, it paid of in any normal raid PuG I had at the time, because I never had to run with an incompetent healer back then which was quite unique I can tell you. All who made it through were capable, period.

The spammy healing in Wrath had its moments, but now this style is as boring as hell to me. Only rejuving and WG-ing gets old really fast, which is why I like 25-mans a lot less. Hell I even preferred the previous mastery (extra healing if there's already a hot on the target) as it put a bit more tactic in it. Harmony is just boring.

[proteen]

I miss TBC healing as well. There were a lot less filler-spells to use, and intuitively you knew what to do. Rejuv/Lifebloom the raid, HT the tanks, Regrowth for burst heals, Tranquility for heavy raid damage. Thats. It. None of this mushroom garbage that doesn't flow.

[Irisel]

GOD no. I could not even think about healing as a Druid the way things were back then.

[Treesus]

I miss TBC healing as well. There were a lot less filler-spells to use, and intuitively you knew what to do. Rejuv/Lifebloom the raid, HT the tanks, Regrowth for burst heals, Tranquility for heavy raid damage. Thats. It. None of this mushroom garbage that doesn't flow.

I think that's pretty much what bothers me now. The synergy is gone, people will argue otherwise but Nourish has no place in the rotation, and really has no reason to be on your bar. It leaves us with a bastardized Rejuv/WG role with Regrowth/Tranq for OH NOES!!!

I really don't like the abundance of skills, the main reason I can't get into EQ2. Which IMHO is a much better game at it's core, is simply the large amount of situational skills you have to keep on your bars at all time. WoW is not nearly that bad, and probably never will be, but with more and more situational abilties and cooldowns it feels like more fluff less substance.

I do agree mana needs to be an issue, but I think Cata went to far, those first few weeks in heroics were brutal, especially when just about everyone had to relearn lessons from Pre-TBC era. Though now with the SPI changes, its easy for subpar healers to stack spi and spam the raid/5man w/o paying to much attention to their mana (not talking progression style raiding thats a whole different level of committment/playstyle).

But thats the way things are til the role gets turned on its head again.

[Kaylith13]

I enjoyed TBC healing as a resto more than the healing style of now. Although, anything beats vanilla where you stood around spamming Healing Touch on tanks...

[Raugnaut]

I really miss being able to layer Lifeblooms on targets, lining it up so that multiple lifeblooms bloom after a big AoE pulse, topping off a good number of people, with my rejuves/regrowths rolling.

I did tons of overhealing, but nobody ever died to lack of healing (Most deaths were due to mechanics, or enrage on some fights)

---------- Post added 2013-04-19 at 02:52 PM ----------

I miss TBC healing as well. There were a lot less filler-spells to use, and intuitively you knew what to do. Rejuv/Lifebloom the raid, HT the tanks, Regrowth for burst heals, Tranquility for heavy raid damage. Thats. It. None of this mushroom garbage that doesn't flow.

you never used Regrowth for burst. Back then, regrowth was a 2 second cast, relatively cheap (it was a bit cheaper then HT), healed for a small amount, and put a 21 second HoT spell that healed the same as the direct portion over time. It was essentially a cast time rejuvenation, that healed for less per tick, but ticked longer, and had a direct healing portion.

[Schaapa]

Ah, the SSC days! Our raid leader always found tauren swimming backwards in water, as well as tree of life dance hilarious. So much fun on VT and in the raid. While I did get my druid to 90 first, it was not the first to reach 80. I've never forgiven them for removing the old tree of life, I have the glyph though. But having ToL as a cooldown is the worst.

Also, shoo on people yammering about wanting to see their armor while playing a druid. The very reason I rolled one was for the forms, druids are masters of shape shifting(were at leas.t)

[Spectral]

I like the gimmicks of TBC (and earlier) where classes had defined niches other than just Tank/Healer/DPS. Spriests as mana batteries were neat, the big nukes coming from Warlocks and Mages (although imbalanced at times), Paladins as AoE tanks, and so on. I enjoy that from an aesthetic standpoint, but I understand why the game isn't designed that way anymore.

[Deleted]

(although imbalanced at times)

It cannot be balanced if you want to have those gimmicks. One class is the king at something => that class is (by far) the best at that thing.
This is just my personal opinion, but I think that the people who really miss those gimmicks, are people who were not good enough players to be brought in without them. At the moment your own skill and dedication decides if you are in the guild you want to; not the class. I think that is by far the better design!

[Niyari]

wasn't it basically just rolling lifeblooms 24/7 since the bloom effect pretty much didn't scale at all? i don't remember too many people being happy (other than pvp'ers) with that design