Originally Posted by
Dracodraco
Sorry to say, but this is bullshit. You want to protest against PWS spam, when what makes druids overly powerfull is the fact that they can roll double rejuvs in 5 mans right now? Resto druid and Disc doesn't play much differently, and you're envious of the druids. Let's put it in perspective -
Druid healing and toolkits:
The basic heals.
Rejuvenation.
WG.
Effloresence.
Lifebloom.
Swiftmend.
Genesis.
They accomplish these tasks:
Rejuv - mobility + coverage of group to anticipate damage. Double-rejuv talent makes it VERY spammy.
WG - used-on-CD aoe heal. one of druid's two AOE heals.
Effloresence - Ground AOE you want to keep
Lifebloom - tank damage buffer.
Swiftmend - more tank damage buffer/snapheal.
Genesis - used to combat burst. Uses up all rejuvs you've spammed in order to burst people's HP up - big effect causes big issues (all hots suddenly lost, need to spend time ramping up).
Disc healing and toolkits:
The basic heals.
PW:S.
Prayer of healing.
Prayer of Mending.
Penance.
Solace.
Holy Nova.
Archangel.
If you so choose, CoW.
Lvl 90 talent (halo).
They accomplish these tasks:
PW:S - mobility + coverage of group to anticipate damage. Currently VERY strong (1 shield has same or better throughput as the double-rejuv from druid, with half the globals spent).
Prayer of healing - heavy mana cost AOE heal that can be used on demand; no cooldown.
Prayer of Mending - cheap heal that can be pre-emptively placed in anticipation of future damage; with 3-4 bouncing a group they do a significant amount of healing.
Penance - tank damage buffer/snapheal.
Solace - instant heal that helps keep AA stacks up + returns mana.
Holy nova - cheap AOE that can be spammed without actually losing mana, useable on the move (gives you something to do even if PW:S, Penance and Solace are all exhausted).
Archangel - the counterpart to druids Genesis; instead of sacrifising your current stability, you build stacks when there's downtime, so you have it ready for
emergencies. This is far more effective because instead of giving up your entire buffer of hots(absorbs) to burst, this *is* your buffer - sacrifice healing early on for a major return when it's actually needed. As mentioned, solace keeps stacks up meaning as soon as you dedicated 3-4 smites to it, you'll never lose the benefit during that pull/fight.
CoW - extremely strong tank healing ability to compliment the "basic" heals.
And last but not least, Halo - that thing can still pack a serious punch if you know how to place yourself correct. I usually use it to heal the melee, and at optimal distance, it hits for about 30K, for less mana than a flash heal at the same speed of a flash heal - and half the cost of a PoH. This can very well be the counterpart to effloresence.
The raid / party CDs will have the druid winning (60 sec cd ironbark, 3 min tranq, 5 min HOTW vs 3 min pain supp/barrier), but only because throughput and consistency is so damn important at these gear levels.
Essentially, I can't find anything in druids toolkit that isn't atleast partially matched, or outclassed by priest, apart from the cooldowns - the only thing that is lacking in the current content (5 mans and CMs), is the output difference. There's no denying that druids do have a stronger output - but they have a stronger output than every healer. That means nerfs to druids - not buffs to discs.
The fact is, though, druids probably spend more of their time nursing their 10x rejuvenations on the party, than disc spends casting PW:S throughout a dungeon.