[Resto] Druid Guide - 5.0+

[Jumpieboi]

Just a small little tip I've found for heroic Feng - if you're having trouble staying in during the velocity and casting tranquility, put symbiosis on a shammy to get their spell "Spiritwalker's Grace" which makes you able to cast non instant spells while moving for 15 seconds.

So I would pop that, then use tranquility for the full affect, rather than having to run out half way to avoid killing the raid with Resonance.

[draykorinee]

I love my shrooms, like others its my filler now instead of nourish and regularly does 5-10% healing. I switched out regrowth glyph last night it added 500k to WG but lost nearly 1.5mil from regrowth and I used regrowth more too, and I found the ability to swiftmend off regrowth inconsequential seeing as so many were rejuved.

Thats a great tip jumpieboi, Ill bare that in mind when I start heroics :P

[land]

Just a small little tip I've found for heroic Feng - if you're having trouble staying in during the velocity and casting tranquility, put symbiosis on a shammy to get their spell "Spiritwalker's Grace" which makes you able to cast non instant spells while moving for 15 seconds.

So I would pop that, then use tranquility for the full affect, rather than having to run out half way to avoid killing the raid with Resonance.

This. The best thing ever. I use it a lot on first boss of HoF to allow me move to under the ember while tranquin on the move. Just amazing.

[Rorschachs]

Now that they have overbuffed disc priests.. Can we officially be considered the worst healers?

[Deleted]

Now that they have overbuffed disc priests.. Can we officially be considered the worst healers?

I don't know. I hope we won't be in that spot again as in T11. If our healing output isn't higher than classes with damage reduction raid cd's, will we be benched for progression? I'm not in a hardcore progression guild so I wouldn't be replaced, but I'd feel forced to reroll to benefit the raid better.


From WoL MSV HC top 40 rankings, both 10 and 25:

Stone Guard: 2 druids in 10's, 1 in 25's
Feng: 1 druid in 10's, 0 in 25's
Gara'jal (not entirely trustable though cuz of the spirit realm): 2 druids in 10's, 2 in 25's
Spirit kings: 4 in 10's, 1 in 25's
Elegon: 3 in 10's, 0 in 25's
Will of the Emperor: 4 in 10's, 0 in 25's


From WoL HoF n top 40 rankings, both 10 and 25:

Imperial Vizier Zor'lok: 1 in 10's, 0 in 25's
Blade Lord Ta'yak: 4 in 10's, 0 in 25's
Garalon: 0 in 10's, 0 in 25's
Wind Lord Mel'jarak: 4 in 10's, 0 in 25's (lol disc priests)
Amber Shaper Un'sok: 3 in 10's, 0 in 25's
Grand Empress Shek'zeer: 0 in 10's, 0 in 25's


Obviously monks are raping most of the rankings, sometimes all top 40 rankings are from monks... but at least I noticed quite some paladins and priests of both specs. If there was little of anything it was druids and shamans, especially druids in 25's. (By no means do I think that WoL gives a perfect view of what classes are balanced/in need of buffs, but it could give an indication.)

[Ashrr]

Now that they have overbuffed disc priests.. Can we officially be considered the worst healers?

Depends. We are nowhere near having the highest raw throughput, but many encounters benefit from having a resto druid or two in the group for the mobility and utility we bring. We're actually pretty good in some encounters this tier, especially if people are spread or there's movement involved.

Speaking from a 10 man HC perspective. If your raid leader bases decisions solely on WoL numbers though, you're probably out of luck :P

[Rorschachs]

The encounters that benefit from having resto druids also benefit from having monks in the group. I wonder how many resto druids rerolled monks.

[lowvie]

Honestly if I had the time to level up again and gear up a new toon, I would've rerolled monk a long time ago.

[Torty]

The encounters that benefit from having resto druids also benefit from having monks in the group. I wonder how many resto druids rerolled monks.

Not all of them, for example Tayak is soooo resto druid oriented, too bad it dies withing 2-3 pulls even on heroic. But yeah, you are pretty much right. It's safe to say that all encounters that were regarded as 'druid bosses' previously are also 'monk bosses' now.

We've killed first 4 bosses on 25m heroic yesterday.
1. I felt OK on Zorlok. Tranquility is a good cd due to Barrier/SLT not covering a whole lot of people on most F&V. Ability to heal on the move on 2nd and 4th phases is pretty good. Basically you can get people to higher hp before Force and Verve, can save a couple of lives. Disc Priests are still waaaay too strong on this because of Spirit Shell, but resto druids definitely feel strong enough to bring to this encounter. I ended up doing less hps than disc priest only and slightly less dps than him out of all healers. I was staying on 2nd platform echo while he went to 3rd one with raid which scews numbers slightly, but gives you a general idea.
2. Tayak is pretty much a druid boss all the way. I did highest hps and dps out of all healers by a pretty large margin. P2 is everything druid can dream of: whole raid is moving and getting pretty high damage. If you Symbiosis shaman, you can also tranq Unseen Strike. The debuff healing is also good as a druid, you don't even spend mana on that.
3. On Garalon druids are okish. There's a lot of raid damage, but also a lot of targeted damage. Monks are pretty retarded on this, but druids can contribute in dpsing. Encounter is 7 mins length which is ideal for Heart of the Wild. I've done 9 mil dmg (22k effective dps). I ended up pretty much at the bottom of hps meters because I spent so much time not healing, but all in all it wasn't THAT bad.
4. Meljarak is a disc priest boss even more than Tayak is a resto druid one. Bringing 2 of these means that other healers can just pick their noses, which I happily did even though we had only one. I was basically dpsing 80% of time, ended up doing 28 mil dmg (priest did 2k less) and twice less healing than disc priest. I guess any healer works here, because encounter isn't healing intensive at all. Most of the time you will end up healing the tank and basically all healers get into last phase with 100% mana. Bring 1-2 disc priests and fill rest healer spots with whatever, doesn't matter. The dullest boss from healer perspective since Garr in Molten Core (not even kidding here).

[draykorinee]

I never cared much for numbers, but after our first forays in to HoF and getting beaten by our off spec shaman and trounced by our paladin i'm starting to get annoyed :P Tayak I can just start to edge our paladin at least, getting replaced for a monk in december due to RL issues I doubt I'd be welcome back from a healing PoV.

[Rorschachs]

Honestly if I had the time to level up again and gear up a new toon, I would've rerolled monk a long time ago.

I got my druid to 480+ilvl but I am leveling a monk anyway. I think with about 470+ilvl I will be able to heal as much as my druid.(I am actually always 1st on healing with my druid but I am just playing with some bad healers.)
I have been druid for more than a year so it is going to be difficult to quit it; but having played every other healer for a good amount of time I think we are the healers that lack the most(in general).

The things that annoy me the most :

1-)Healing Touch and Nourish sucking so bad. With 20 sec harmony and 15 sec lifebloom we have a lot less to watch or cast compared to cata.. These skills being so behind regrowth made it even worse. I feel like I am healing using 4-5 skills which is really really getting boring. (regrowth being my best choice in almost every case is annoying to me..)
2-)Inability to spam heal. Its not like I cant wg,swiftmend then blanket rejuv or anything but it is not efficient enough. I am never feeling like I am keeping my raid up during spike damage If I am not using a cooldown of course.
3-)Not being able to contribute in damage. Heart of the wild kind of makes up for it but still I want to be able to dps whenever I am not healing, instead of just for 45 seconds.
4-)Wild mushrooms. I am not saying it is not useful at all; but it does so little amount of healing that it rarely even matters If I use these or not. The incredibly low mana cost makes up for it, but this skill just feels so wrong and poorly designed for druids.. Why did we even need this skill?

[Myrrar]

Why did we even need this skill?

It's not working as intended.

From looking at blue posts it seems like it's not supposed to be a part of our rotation, but it's supposed to be good enough to use in certain situations. If the situation is supposed to be when aoe damage is extreme or just something to use between phases and save for big bursts isn't really apparent. It's not particularly good for either of them.

They said they know they aren't what they were supposed to be though, just haven't said how they plan to fix them.



Main problem is our niche is gone and any strong points we had are now covered by other healers. Healing balance is just...really bad this tier. But, most tiers have 1-2 healing specs that are awful and 1-2 that are OP.

[Min]

Hey everyone.

Been lurking the druid forums for a while and finally decided to join the community here. I've been healing on my druid since Firelands, and I'd say I'm a fairly solid healer at this point. There's some things I've been reading around I'd like some feedback on though (Regarding 10 man heroics).

Is Glyph-ed WG worth it normally now? I remember back in DS this was generally not recommended.

Should I be aiming for more throughput as opposed to mana regeneration? Some threads commented that in 10 man guilds at least, we should not be stacking spirit since efficient haeling is more key (I'm still using Int food and flasks), but it seemed to referring to normal modes more. Right now I'm sitting at around 9.7k spirit with the DMC Relic and the WoE Normal trinket for Regen.

In a few pages back in this thread, there were some posts regarding Mastery vs Int in terms of the throughput stat. Is there anywhere I can find out more and read about this? I've tended to just opt for Int by default generally speaking.

[Maxvla]

Glyphed WG is better in any raid size. Aim for throughput above all else if doing 10 man heroics. You have good trinkets so mana regen shouldn't be a problem. 9.7k spirit is a lot. I have 7.2k and am 4/6 heroic MV 6/6 normal HoF without mana issues and your WotE trinket is better than my trash trinket.

Mastery vs int is not a choice you have to make often, only in gems. The difference there is very small, but if you really want to min-max you'll have to experiment on your own to see what you get. There is a breakpoint where mastery becomes better, but nobody has taken the time to find it. Going int and not bothering with the experiments will give you almost the same results, so it's up to you. I think the Method druid who was talking about it said the difference was like 4 healing on a tick of rejuv from 160 int to 320 mastery. 4 out of a 16k tick is small enough to ignore for most people.

[nevermore]

TLDR: Long post stuffed with my personal views on Resto Druids. Please don't flame, I am very much open to proper criticism and discussion (that's the whole point of me posting this).

I've decided to give my Resto Druid a shot again this expansion, but after two weeks of agony I ran back screaming to my Priest.

I have played a Druid throughout BC till late Wrath and cleared everything with a very decent guild, but the inherent design flaws just forced me to reroll after Ulduar (ironically, that's also when Resto Druids were at their peak -- in my opinion).

The sad thing is that currently you're actually hurting your raid by playing a Resto Druid. I can see them worthy of maybe 1 healing spot in 25 mans, but if you're doing 10man and especially heroic modes, that's just no thanks. They no longer have a niche (pumping out stupid amounts of HPS for basically no mana by covering 15+ people with Reju/WG throughout the whole fight was in fact very powerful but it's no longer viable nor needed) and they don't have the tools or the variety of spells that other healers do.

Personally I find these things the most illogical/irritating:

* No spammable group heal. After the devs re-designed Holy Radiance for Paladins it became obvious that they intend every healing spec to be able to deal with longer periods of raid healing. Now, it was mostly fine because of the low mana cost of Reju/WG (even though in many ways it was sub-par since it's a purely proactive healing style, compared to the reactive group healing of other classes -- again, we're back to niche boss fights), but currently it's not really an option.
Let me demonstrate this with an example. When I'm on my Holy Priest and big raid damage is happening (Elegon last phase, Force and Verve, etc), this is what I do:
- cast Divine Hymn if it's my turn for a raid cd
- cast Cascade (smart heal with cd), cast Prayer of Mending (smart heal with cd), cast Circle of Healing (smart heal with cd), spam Prayer of Healing until something comes off cooldown.
- I also have Lightspring healing low hp people without me having to do anything (the strongest HoT in game, eh) and I could maybe put down Sanctuary but currently it's not worth the mana cost
>> I always have something to cast. I also have stuff that heal for me.

However, when I'm on my Druid in the same situation this is what I do:
- cast Tranquility if it's my turn for a raid cd
- Swiftmend
- WG
- Bloom my mushrooms if I've put them down earlier
- look dumb till something comes off cooldown
>> Now obviously we have stuff to cast in between, but none of them are actual raid heals and when your raid is getting pounded it's just a sad story. You can of course start throwing around Rejuvs (or Lifeblooms if you're in tree form) but you're burning up your mana for something that isn't nearly as effective as what other healers can do for much less.

* Swiftmend's ground heal effect being tied to... Swiftmend. Once known as Efflorescence, it's just an illogical design that turns your emergency single-target heal into a non-emergency non-single target use-on-cooldown semi-raidheal (this sentence needs more hyphens). Like, what. It also needs a larger radius but that's just me being needy.

* Harmony, Lifebloom and having to spend time and mana on maintaining stuff. I hate the Resto Druid mastery. With passion.
I don't want to go through the masteries of other healing classes, but they all share one common trait: they require 0 player interaction. They're just there, boosting dem' numbers. Resto Druids on the other hand are forced to cast a direct heal every x seconds in order to maintain the (theoretical) same efficiency as the rest.
This might not be that big of an issue, but there are times when you really don't want to cast a direct heal, or Swiftmend, or Bloom, but you have to. It's wasted mana, it's wasted time, who thought this would make a good design is just beyond me.
Instead of putting 100% of your focus into healing, you have to split your attention to maintain Harmony and Lifebloom, and when you're pushed to the max it's the last thing you want to do.

* Mushrooms. Yeah, been discussed over and over in this thread so I won't go into it.
With a bit of tweaking this spell could be the ideal solution to not having a spammable raid heal and not having burst healing.


I know there are amazing players out there who make Resto Druids shine (and if those players are teamed up with sub-par healers Resto Druids suddenly become great, but it has nothing to do with actual class balance). But give those players any of the other healing specs and they'll suddenly become even better.
Niche fights are few and far inbetween, and the once successful healing style is no longer viable. Healers and fights have been homogenised to no end, and somehow Resto Druids ended up with no compensation, a clunky healing style and a distinct lack of (healing) tools.
And Harmony. I hate you so much.

[Maxvla]

I agree with harmony being annoying. As a person who enjoys the game of being efficient with spells, having to cast either a RJ to swiftmend or a Nourish/RG when they aren't needed and I could be regenning that mana, it's just not so good. Usually it's not a big deal, I'll have a clearcast proc so I can put up a seed at least, or I'll already have a RJ on the tank.

Regarding your Elegon thing, even on heroic there is plenty to do, especially on 10 man. I'll run in Nature's Vigil and ToL, RJx10 and LBx10 to get that damage on the boss and heal the raid keeping WG and shrooms on CD. If the raid starts dropping I'll tranquility while keeping up RJs/WG/WM.

I agree with your point but not your example. A repeat cast multi-target heal would be a great addition to druids. Something like WM but without any setup time, just a cast time.

By the way, druids are much more viable in 10 man than 25. Not sure why you say the opposite. In 25 man they seem superfluous, in 10 man they are half the healing force.

[land]

The encounters that benefit from having resto druids also benefit from having monks in the group. I wonder how many resto druids rerolled monks.

Druid's are the best on the move and have a good raid CD plus insane mobile burst with ToL.
Monks have constant & cheap aoe healing (which is being nerfed on 5.1), but have shitty burst and shitty raid cds.

Yes, I see them ranking really well on WoL but now that I play a MW monk I can see that a lot of that healing is aoe from our cheap hot that blanks almost and entire 10 man raid all the time. Great aoe healers, shitty tank healers and shitty burst / raid cds.

---------- Post added 2012-11-12 at 02:56 PM ----------

By the way, druids are much more viable in 10 man than 25. Not sure why you say the opposite. In 25 man they seem superfluous, in 10 man they are half the healing force.

Oh right, forgot to agree with that, we're shit on 25m. If only they'd buff mushrooms, then we might someday become actually useful on 25 mans....

[Deleted]

Saw some disscusion with Spiritwalkers Grace and Tranquility... Second boss tornado phase... YES!!!!!

[Ashrr]

TBH, they should make running Tranq baseline or like Starfall. Would give us somewhat of a niche in best healing mobility now that Monks have taken our old heavy throughput spot away, without breaking too much of the so called "healer balance".

4. Meljarak is a disc priest boss even more than Tayak is a resto druid one. Bringing 2 of these means that other healers can just pick their noses, which I happily did even though we had only one. I was basically dpsing 80% of time, ended up doing 28 mil dmg (priest did 2k less) and twice less healing than disc priest. I guess any healer works here, because encounter isn't healing intensive at all. Most of the time you will end up healing the tank and basically all healers get into last phase with 100% mana. Bring 1-2 disc priests and fill rest healer spots with whatever, doesn't matter. The dullest boss from healer perspective since Garr in Molten Core (not even kidding here).

How do you handle Rain of Blades? We spread out because of the bombs on the ground when we did normal mode and had to rotate tranqs and other healing cooldowns because it's 40k damage per second in 10 man normal and 60k in heroic. I was thinking it would be better to spread - stack - spread - stack like Feng Arcane phase (assuming you don't get bombs during Rain) but it wasn't really needed in normals. I might be trying the boss tomorrow.

[Rorschachs]

Druid's are the best on the move and have a good raid CD plus insane mobile burst with ToL.
Monks have constant & cheap aoe healing (which is being nerfed on 5.1), but have shitty burst and shitty raid cds.

Yes, I see them ranking really well on WoL but now that I play a MW monk I can see that a lot of that healing is aoe from our cheap hot that blanks almost and entire 10 man raid all the time. Great aoe healers, shitty tank healers and shitty burst / raid cds.

---------- Post added 2012-11-12 at 02:56 PM ----------



Oh right, forgot to agree with that, we're shit on 25m. If only they'd buff mushrooms, then we might someday become actually useful on 25 mans....

The shitty cd part might be the only thing that makes me keep going with my druid. We don't really have good burst heals either you know.