Nerf Resto-Druids!

[Lynlyn]

While I cannot necessarily argue for shaman being up there, I will say that resto druids are on par with both priest specs and paladins. I would even say that disc priests are slightly better than druids since they have amazing cooldowns and shields are just so awesome for certain fights (plus, like holy priests and shaman, they can bring 10% less physical damage to the tank).

If the other healers are good, they won't waste the mana healing a person that has enough hots to heal up any damage they have taken (if more damage won't be incoming for a while, since damage is really predictable in many situations now), similar to de-prioritizing people with shields on them. It also might just happen that healers in general won't bother healing someone almost topped off since none of their heals are small enough, so hots will claim more overall healing. This allows hots to pull slightly ahead of direct heals and those that use them.

As for holy priests, they actually have more throughput than druids do (if you were to average out tranq and tree form over time) and much better hpe for spells like poh. The thing is that it is more convenient for druids to "beat" holy priests on the meters in most situations now due to the nature of hots and druid cooldowns.

In addition, because all of the non-priests primary aoe's are smart heals combined with single target, and a priest's primary aoe heal heals the group, the priest can't spam poh effectively and increase their numbers since after the first few seconds there are always two or three people almost topped off. If you were to have a raid with only priest healers (or if only the priests were trying) for fights like ryolith, priests would probably be able to pull rather far ahead in WoL, since they would be able poh spam almost the entire time with no smart heals making groups uneven.

As stated earlier, holy priests have way better dpe than druids with their spells, and really thrive in burst situations. However, since the tranq cd was reduced, druids almost always have a burst cd for burst phases, so priests never have the opportunity (or need) to thrive after a big hunk of damage is taken out of the raid. The thing is, priests can do just as much healing as druids (especially in 25man where glyph of poh and the holy mastery can have their full effect), but druids can just look better due to whoring spread out burst phases and claiming heals for small bits of damage.

Also, though it shouldn't need to be said, pretty much all of the top druids on World of Logs are perfect examples of gimmicks, judging by the numbers. My guild has done this before too: you just bring either fewer healers or have the other healers hold back, then the desired healer "wins" and ranks on WoL. That or the other healers they heal with are not trying.

[SilkforCalde]

Druids only top meters because of slow raid wide aoe damage that won't kill anyone ever. If druids had equal throughput as other classes, they would be the least desirable class because up front throughput is way better than healing over time, and shields are infinitely better than both. Druid tank healing is on par with other classes. Druid reactive healing, as in being able to quickly heal someone that is near death, is far worse than the other healing classes. We have already established that raid wide cooldowns are roughly equal between healing classes.

If you think blizzard is going to nerf druids you are fooling yourself. Nobody is "stacking" resto druids like they did with priests when they were "overpowered." If you think druids numbers on logs should be equal to other healers you clearly have no grasp with how the healing model in this tier works or how the healing mechanics interact between classes.

Actually in the majority of healing situations, HoT is much better than slower direct healing. For raid healing, historically speaking hots have been how it should be done. The raid wide AOE isn't particularly slow, btw. And it will kill people if it's not healed, which druids are by far the best at doing. If druids had equal throughput, they'd still be considered perfectly fine tank healers and the best raid healers. They just wouldn't be the best by a staggering margin.

Shields are not at all infinitely better than anything. That's a laughable claim and casts doubts on all your statements. It seems to me like you haven't put any thought at all into this. There's a reason why resto druids and holy paladins are both dramatically superior healers to disc priests. Shields actually aren't that good at all in Cata. Druids should never heal reactively. That's a sign of a druid that has no comprehension how to play their class. In fact, no healers should be necessarily healing reactively unless someone took unexpected damage, which is typically a sign of personal failure. That's something I've seen from a lot of healers, and is one reason why I believe myself to be a dramatically superior healer to 99.999% of the healers I have run with in the past. You don't heal reactively. That's a trap of failure. Healing is very predictable, which is one reason why healing is the easiest role in this game.

We've actually established that Tranq is by far the best raid cooldown and then some in every fight in Heroic T12 except Baleroc, BTW.

If you don't think resto druids will be nerfed, you haven't been paying attention to how Blizzard reacts to situations. When the outcry becomes loud enough, they will make changes. The outcry is plenty loud enough. We will definitely see resto druid changes, if not nerfs.

---------- Post added 2011-08-19 at 10:35 PM ----------

While I cannot necessarily argue for shaman being up there, I will say that resto druids are on par with both priest specs and paladins. I would even say that disc priests are slightly better than druids since they have amazing cooldowns and shields are just so awesome for certain fights (plus, like holy priests and shaman, they can bring 10% less physical damage to the tank).

If the other healers are good, they won't waste the mana healing a person that has enough hots to heal up any damage they have taken (if more damage won't be incoming for a while, since damage is really predictable in many situations now), similar to de-prioritizing people with shields on them. It also might just happen that healers in general won't bother healing someone almost topped off since none of their heals are small enough, so hots will claim more overall healing. This allows hots to pull slightly ahead of direct heals and those that use them.

As for holy priests, they actually have more throughput than druids do (if you were to average out tranq and tree form over time) and much better hpe for spells like poh. The thing is that it is more convenient for druids to "beat" holy priests on the meters in most situations now due to the nature of hots and druid cooldowns.

In addition, because all of the non-priests primary aoe's are smart heals combined with single target, and a priest's primary aoe heal heals the group, the priest can't spam poh effectively and increase their numbers since after the first few seconds there are always two or three people almost topped off. If you were to have a raid with only priest healers (or if only the priests were trying) for fights like ryolith, priests would probably be able to pull rather far ahead in WoL, since they would be able poh spam almost the entire time with no smart heals making groups uneven.

As stated earlier, holy priests have way better dpe than druids with their spells, and really thrive in burst situations. However, since the tranq cd was reduced, druids almost always have a burst cd for burst phases, so priests never have the opportunity (or need) to thrive after a big hunk of damage is taken out of the raid. The thing is, priests can do just as much healing as druids (especially in 25man where glyph of poh and the holy mastery can have their full effect), but druids can just look better due to whoring spread out burst phases and claiming heals for small bits of damage.

Also, though it shouldn't need to be said, pretty much all of the top druids on World of Logs are perfect examples of gimmicks, judging by the numbers. My guild has done this before too: you just bring either fewer healers or have the other healers hold back, then the desired healer "wins" and ranks on WoL. That or the other healers they heal with are not trying.

I've never seen a priest push out over 35k heals per second like I have on my druid (without tranq, btw). Not even close. Druids are dramatically superior to priests as healers. The only healer I would compare to druids would be paladin.

[Lynlyn]

I've never seen a priest push out over 35k heals per second like I have on my druid (without tranq, btw). Not even close. Druids are dramatically superior to priests as healers. The only healer I would compare to druids would be paladin.

Ah, I raid with a holy priest who can hold 42k with mostly poh, coh, and pom, then we generally are not very stacked so I am not sure how effective her hws was (but to my understanding it isn't that great). I can hit over that with tranq, but I am only at like 39k at best without my cds in similar situations... I have never tried being holy on my priest yet though, so I am not sure if it is as easy for most priests as she makes it look.

[Siri]

I don't get what you guys think should be done?

Are druids supposed to be nerfed so their throughput is equal that of other classes? Nobody will play a god damn druid then if thats the case.

I say it again.
read. the. thread.
You obviously haven't. If you think you did, you didn't pay attention.

[cleotaurus]

Actually in the majority of healing situations, HoT is much better than slower direct healing. For raid healing, historically speaking hots have been how it should be done. The raid wide AOE isn't particularly slow, btw. And it will kill people if it's not healed, which druids are by far the best at doing. If druids had equal throughput, they'd still be considered perfectly fine tank healers and the best raid healers. They just wouldn't be the best by a staggering margin.

Shields are not at all infinitely better than anything. That's a laughable claim and casts doubts on all your statements. It seems to me like you haven't put any thought at all into this. There's a reason why resto druids and holy paladins are both dramatically superior healers to disc priests. Shields actually aren't that good at all in Cata. Druids should never heal reactively. That's a sign of a druid that has no comprehension how to play their class. In fact, no healers should be necessarily healing reactively unless someone took unexpected damage, which is typically a sign of personal failure. That's something I've seen from a lot of healers, and is one reason why I believe myself to be a dramatically superior healer to 99.999% of the healers I have run with in the past. You don't heal reactively. That's a trap of failure. Healing is very predictable, which is one reason why healing is the easiest role in this game.

We've actually established that Tranq is by far the best raid cooldown and then some in every fight in Heroic T12 except Baleroc, BTW.

If you don't think resto druids will be nerfed, you haven't been paying attention to how Blizzard reacts to situations. When the outcry becomes loud enough, they will make changes. The outcry is plenty loud enough. We will definitely see resto druid changes, if not nerfs.

---------- Post added 2011-08-19 at 10:35 PM ----------



I've never seen a priest push out over 35k heals per second like I have on my druid (without tranq, btw). Not even close. Druids are dramatically superior to priests as healers. The only healer I would compare to druids would be paladin.

You don't make any sense. You are just telling me I am wrong without offering any reasons at all. If druid throughput is equal, how the hell would a heal over time be better than healing up front? They heal for the same amount, yet one takes time to do its work, and during that time the player with the hot can still die. A hot is better than a direct heal? Rejuvenation takes 12 seconds to heal its amount, and it takes 8 seconds for wild growth. You propose that this is better than a circle of healing that does all its healing up front? Want to know how many wipes in p2 rag i've had where someone just eventually got melee'd down by their add? "Well, I had wild growth and rejuv on you, but it just didn't heal fast enough. I could have thrown you a direct heal, but its too slow and I had to get hots up on the other players or they would have died too."

"That's a laughable claim and casts doubts on all your statement." You say this, and then offer absolutely nothing to back up your statement. Shields are FAR superior because not only do they prevent the next attack from killing a player, they can be used preemptively to stop damage altogether.

As for saying that druids should never reactively heal, you are living in past expansions. Druids cannot just hot up an entire raid all the time, they will run out of mana. You really think a druid can anticipate which player is going to get faceragged, or which player will get targeted next? How are you supposed to know which person is going to fuck it on world of flames? How do you know which elemental is going to take the longest to die, or be enraged when it hits the player? How do you know which player is going to get RNG flame blasted on bethtilac? How do you know which player is going to stupidly take torment ticks when they already have the debuff, or take stacks higher than they are supposed to? How do you know which player is going to stand in magma lines and drop his hp to 20% right before a stomp? How do you know who is going to eat a brushfire and who is going to stand in front of a lava worm, or get hit by a tornado?

Fact is, theres a ton of stupid aoe damage gimmicks in firelands, and not one of them is a raid killer. Do you seriously believe that people are wiping because they didn't have enough aoe heals? When people fuck it on mechanics, resto druids are the last ones to save their asses from anything. Where other healers have raid cooldowns, druids have aoe spam.

If you really have a problem with resto druids on top of stupid metrics like recount and world of logs, then you really should reroll a dps class because your priorities are out of line. Getting a top ranked parse on world of logs doesn't involve "already guys I am going to play as hard as possible and see if I can earn that top rank." It involves "alright guys, lets cheese this aoe damage mechanic so I get stupid high hps and make all these retards on mmo-champion cry because they don't understand anything about raid mechanics."

Blizzard has already officially stated they believe all of the healers are in a good position. Keep crying, all you are do is beating a dead horse.

[SilkforCalde]

You don't make any sense. You are just telling me I am wrong without offering any reasons at all.

Stopped reading here. That's the kind of hypocrisy that makes my blood boil. You told me you were right without offering any reasons at all. So where does that leave us? Nowhere. The numbers do not lie. That's really all that matters. Everything is inconsequential and will get ignored by nearly everyone.

[Kenai]

All CDs have their place right now. On domo, SLT sits for 2 ticks during scorp. On some fights it's great, some fights not. Tranq, barrier, and SLT are all really ment for stacked aoe phases and some are better depending on the type of dmg going on.

On any fight where it's not just big aoe dmg to the whole group, but certain players take more than others due to something (again like domo someone running in after a bomb) it's a great CD. It actually saves lives where they would have died if it was just tranq. Since it disperses dmg, on straight, hard aoe, like Rhy p2, Beth p2, stuff like that, Tranq will shine.

People like to generalize way too much. Saying 'tranq is better than CD X' or 'CD X is better than tranq' is just wrong. They are all just different spells that do different things. Out of all the CDs, SLT is probably the worst, but it has it's place.

Why don't more people read posts like these? So nice.

I can agree that Druid HPS is probably too high compared to other healers. The problem with using purely HPS as an example of Druid OPness (sorry if this is reiterated but I read like the first and last 3-4 pages) is that unlike the other healers, Druid has absolutely nothing that isn't going to be measured by HPS. No mitigation, no passives like Inspiration, no difficult to measure buffs/funky CDs that are useful if situational like SLT and AM and DG and what have you. All of those are very useful for healing and/or protecting the raid at least part of the time but do nothing for HPS. Rebirth is arguable as a useful utility CD, but ultimately a non-issue with the brez cap, only being slightly better than Warlock and pretty much equal to the other Druid specs if they bother to glyph it. I admit their style of healing does seem tailored to this tier, but honestly if it is brought more in line with other healers but still higher that shouldn't matter very much, HPS is not the only thing that matters after all.

Basically I am hoping that they do nerf Druid HPS (some), but give them a mitigation CD or something to compensate. Then they will most likely be in line with other healers (except maybe Shaman, but give them a way to heal spread out raid members more effectively or single target CDs for a tank and they should be ok too).

[cleotaurus]

Stopped reading here. That's the kind of hypocrisy that makes my blood boil. You told me you were right without offering any reasons at all. So where does that leave us? Nowhere. The numbers do not lie. That's really all that matters. Everything is inconsequential and will get ignored by nearly everyone.

I did offer reasons, 5 paragraphs worth. Maybe if you didn't stop reading you would have seen the reasons. Here I will repeat them for you:

On why hot healing is worse than instant heals/shields:
They heal for the same amount, yet one takes time to do its work, and during that time the player with the hot can still die. A hot is better than a direct heal? Rejuvenation takes 12 seconds to heal its amount, and it takes 8 seconds for wild growth. You propose that this is better than a circle of healing that does all its healing up front? Want to know how many wipes in p2 rag i've had where someone just eventually got melee'd down by their add? "Well, I had wild growth and rejuv on you, but it just didn't heal fast enough. I could have thrown you a direct heal, but its too slow and I had to get hots up on the other players or they would have died too."

On why shields are the best form of healing:
Shields are FAR superior because not only do they prevent the next attack from killing a player, they can be used preemptively to stop damage altogether.

On druids reactive healing is bad, and an unavoidable mechanic:
Druids cannot just hot up an entire raid all the time, they will run out of mana. You really think a druid can anticipate which player is going to get faceragged, or which player will get targeted next? How are you supposed to know which person is going to fuck it on world of flames? How do you know which elemental is going to take the longest to die, or be enraged when it hits the player? How do you know which player is going to get RNG flame blasted on bethtilac? How do you know which player is going to stupidly take torment ticks when they already have the debuff, or take stacks higher than they are supposed to? How do you know which player is going to stand in magma lines and drop his hp to 20% right before a stomp? How do you know who is going to eat a brushfire and who is going to stand in front of a lava worm, or get hit by a tornado?

On why recount/WoL doesn't mean anything:
Getting a top ranked parse on world of logs doesn't involve "already guys I am going to play as hard as possible and see if I can earn that top rank." It involves "alright guys, lets cheese this aoe damage mechanic so I get stupid high hps and make all these retards on mmo-champion cry because they don't understand anything about raid mechanics."

[lopk]

I say instead of nerfing resto druids, we buff all of the rest!

But I will agree, they are pretty powerful

[tahlbrar]

Take a look at the arena brackets....

LOl rest shammy, resto shammy, resto shammy. oh look! kitty cleave hpally.
xD

[Sprucelee]

Wow, you really don't know these fights and you really don't know how to read.

The best HM strat for Domo is what works for your raid. The vast majority of kills have taken many scythes, often more scythes than leaps.

Phase 2 Shannox is pure AOE damage with very little tank damage. It's when my druid goes from #2 on healing meters to #1 by a LONG shot. Throughout the fight there is AOE damage as well when Shannox throws his spear. HOW CAN YOU NOT KNOW THIS?

My comments about Spirit Link totem are true. The totem is garbage unless someone spikes. In a situation with flat AOE damage, like most Firelands fights, Spirit Link totem does almost nothing. That's true. Tranq is a vastly superior cooldown in nearly every situation. That's true. Spirit Link totem is incredibly useful in PVP and marginally useful in PVE. That's true.

Shannox is a single phase encounter (either normal or HM). LOL. He has an ability (magma rupture) when you kill Riplimb in EZ mode, but its not a phase. But that's irrelevant, you don't kill the dogs in HM, and that means no magma rupture. So obviously you have not even seen or completed HM Shannox. It is all tank damage and spike damage from rageface, unless someone stands in fire (like his spear..). There is no serious AOE damage at all.

Why would you even attempt to tell me how 25 Domo HM is done when you have never done it? Check 25-man heroic WOL. You will see the top HM parses are dramatically lower than normal parses, because the strats are totally different. The #500 parse on normal has higher HPS than the #8 parse on HM. Hmm.... I wonder why? There is something called concentration in HM, a 100% buff that is removed when you take any damage. Scythes are on tanks (or skipped entirely), and never the raid, so the raid keeps the concentration buff and more deeps.

I can't believe you arguing with me about fights you have never seen, you don't even know the basic HM mechanics...

[Myrrar]

People who aren't in HMs consider when both dogs are dead P2 which is probably what he's referring too.

And that's the main reason these topics are pointless.

1. Too many people who haven't seen the fights commenting on them.
2. Too many people biased by their class
3. Too many people with tunnel vision not seeing that HPS no longer has any meaning in WoW. It just doesn't.

Yes, SLT is not great unless someone spikes. This happens on pretty much every single HM fight. Too many people who haven't stepped into HMs like to comment on how healing balance works in HMs.

text

It really seems like you don't have a lot of experience in HMs from your comments, or you just do your own job and not pay attention to others. That's fine and all, but not really a worthwhile argument when everyone who has, from all healing classes, are trying to explain that's just not the case.

We have been sat progression fights due to not having spike healing, single target or AoE. This isn't an opinion, it's a fact. So claiming hots are super important is just false. No one has ever been sat due to not having enough hots.

Hots a buffer healing. As said so many times, just like raid CDs, hots have their place. They buff the meters which is great and all and helps stabilize the raid, but they still are not as good as direct and/or spike heals. You can have a raid without a bunch of druids depending on hots, you can't have a raid with all druids mostly depending on hots. Hots are amazing and they have to be since our direct healing isn't great. But that's like saying paladins are worthless because they don't have a hot or strong AoE.
All healing has it's place. It's called a niche, and Blizz loves to talk about and play with them.

Again, maybe you have only done reg modes, but reactive healing is huge in FL. Druids should be proactive healing at almost all times. But a good 50% of dmg in FL is random and/or spike. Places where proactive healing does nothing.

No one has established Tranq is the best CD. You think your opinion = fact which isn't the case. Tranq is not the best CD in the least. It's the best CD in certain situations, as is aura mastery, as is SLT, as is guardian spirit and pain supression and PW:B. You can not look at the whole all you want, but take a raid and use only druid CDs and see how it goes. GL. Least you'll have a lot of BRs ready when your druids die because they can't move due to channeling.

[Sprucelee]

People who aren't in HMs consider when both dogs are dead P2 which is probably what he's referring too.

Makes it tough when someone is arguing with everyone, and even referencing HM's by name, when they have never touched them.

Like many, I only saw normal once.. heh. Kill dogs what?

[Myrrar]

Makes it tough when someone is arguing with everyone, and even referencing HM's by name, when they have never touched them.

Like many, I only saw normal once.. heh. Kill dogs what?

lol Yeah. In the end HMs and reg modes are drastically different when it comes to things like this. While I understand people have opinions and want to be involved in the discussion, min/max class balance is not based around reg modes....at all. It's based around HMs.

I can see why people think druids are just 'soOP' and want to argue it to the end, but in reality it's just not the case in progression that matters.

[Alhoon]

3. Too many people with tunnel vision not seeing that HPS no longer has any meaning in WoW. It just doesn't.

But that's simply wrong. Take Beth'tilac HC phase 2 as an example. Depending on your healing setup, you'll have a couple of tank healers and the rest healing the raid. Since apart from tank healing there's only constant increasing aoe damage pulses, you'll require certain amount of raid-wide HPS to beat the encounter. Nothing else matters except how much HPS you can output. If you wipe, you can turn your eyes to HPS meters and immediately find a reason why you didn't kill the boss: the healer who's on AOE healing duty and who's output is lowest on phase 2.

[Irisel]

It's so ironic that resto shamans are the weakest PvE healers and the strongest PvP healers. It seems the exact opposite for resto druids (not factoring holyprst-pvp)

---------- Post added 2011-08-20 at 01:39 AM ----------

Either troll or an incredibly clueless person.

Resto druids are probably the worst healing class for t12 content, which requires the group to have as much damage reducing raid cooldowns as possible.

I beg to differ. They are in the top two imo for t12 content.

[Myrrar]

But that's simply wrong. Take Beth'tilac HC phase 2 as an example. Depending on your healing setup, you'll have a couple of tank healers and the rest healing the raid. Since apart from tank healing there's only constant increasing aoe damage pulses, you'll require certain amount of raid-wide HPS to beat the encounter. Nothing else matters except how much HPS you can output. If you wipe, you can turn your eyes to HPS meters and immediately find a reason why you didn't kill the boss: the healer who's on AOE healing duty and who's output is lowest on phase 2.

That's a minute or 2 of 1 fight. HPS still has no real place to judge healers. And no, that's not really how it works. If you die p2 in Beth and only look at hps meters...that's not really going to tell you anything. Blowing CDs in an appropriate order, people using defensive CDs, which classes are doing what all attributes to an instance like that.

Again, the only place HPS matters is reg modes because the dmg and mechanics going out are fairly small and simple. In regs with even 1/2 FL gear you don't even need ToL or tranq or any other CDs to complete a fight anymore besides maybe Domo and Rag. Ofc, they help, but HPS really......really doesn't matter.

The only time HPS matters is when you look at a fight with 2 of the same class healing the same thing(raid or tank) with around the same gear and one is doing significantly more than the other. Than you know you have a problem. Comparing HPs between classes is pointless, becuase they are not balanced around being equal.

Again, it's like saying Pallys are terrible healers because on an aoe phase they wont have high HPS. Everyone has their jobs, and HPS shows nothing between classes anymore.

[Siri]

On why hot healing is worse than instant heals/shields:
<text>

That can and will happen with heals that do everything up front as well because you can argue
that any heal that is big enough to make the difference means you're not healing someone else
and then they might die instead.

On why shields are the best form of healing:

Shields are sometimes the best form of healing but you give the impression that it always is.
PW:S is, without a doubt, the best instant in the game. However, you need to know that that player
will take damage within the next 15 seconds or the shield will do nothing. if an expected spike on
a player that is hurt never happens and you had a shield on that player, the shield and the mana
used is wasted. If the player was healed instead of just shielded he would still be healed.

On druids reactive healing is bad, and an unavoidable mechanic:

It's already been stated several times that druids do indeed need something like a buff to regrowth to
better cope with sudden spikes.

On why recount/WoL doesn't mean anything:

I strongly believe this to not have been true since TBC, except for certain bosses. Neither as healer nor dps.
For healing it is mostly a matter of how few healers you think you can get away with for an encounter.
In Wrath my guild used less healers for heroic Sindragosa than virtually any other guild, as a result we who
healed got high rank hps numbers virtually every kill.

Again, it's like saying Pallys are terrible healers because on an aoe phase they wont have high HPS. Everyone has their jobs, and HPS shows nothing between classes anymore.

HPS certainly has a place in judging how healing classes perform, you just can't look at it in a vacuum like some
people do. Because of their nature druids are going to end up highest on the meters. The question is how far
ahead they're supposed to be. I think this might have been what you really meant, just think of it as a more detailed
explanation.