What do Druid Hots actually bring to a raid healing roster ?

[Deleted]

So I had a discussion with my raid leader today, who is a holy paladin, about raid healing and the druid specifically.
Since it was an honest and objective discussion, he told me that he really brought the druid for the combat rezz.
Historically, I have spent the last decade mostly playing healers which act directly, with bursty heals and immediate response to damage.

Because of that, getting used to the hot style healing took me some change of mindset but I figured it out.
However, what did stay with me, was the nagging feeling that Hots do not matter the same way as direct heals do in wow.

At this point, I see the druid like a sort of assistant/utility healer, who creates a bit off an health buffer on as many targets as possible, instead of being a traditional healer role in a raid, of one who saves dieing members quickly.

Rejuvenation is by far our main heal but how much does it actually accomplish per target in a given timeframe ?
The hot takes 20 seconds or more to heal for around 30k + on my ilv655.

Now that honestly doesnt seem like a whole lot on one target and even if you double it up with another gdc of germination, what does this accomplish on a target which sat at 50% health.

Usually 2 scenarios are the case :

1. the person was low enough and in actual danger, for another healer in the raid to use a direct heal and my hot did not end up actually mattering much and im left with overhealing.

2. the person was not very injured in the first place and ive basically topped someone up a bit but he wasnt really in danger of dieing soon.

Sometimes this makes me wonder if my raid would have been better off in progression fights with another holy paladin or a shaman instead of my hot blanketing.


I understand that druids are strong in hps by throwing around those hots over many targets but what does this, in practicality change for my raid is sometimes a bit of a void to me personally.

This doesnt seem to be about saving at all but rather taking the edge off a bit for other healers and being a bit of a health pillow ?


I would really like to hear the viewpoints of some long time druid players on this idea, I have only been with the class since WOD and was very used to being a spot healer.

ps. our healing team in hc is :
pally, druid, monk and spec switching priest.
at times I am considering possibly switching to my shaman.

[Dreyen]

It's not like druids only have HoTs, they have swiftmend, regrowth/healtouch, wildgrowth (A hot but its very fast and bursty..), tranq, etc..

The fact is, rejuv is their most efficient, high hps move, even if it's a hot its really effective at raw HPS. I believe druids are the best CM healer even though they are a hot-oriented class, that should tell you much. If druid hots werent so strong, they wouldnt be high on the heal meters at all... it's not like every scenario is a burst scenario, even if druids have the tools for it.

A quick comparison, you can have a monk put up his wet noodle hots, and spam seldomly low-healing uplifts, or you can have a druid rejuv on cd and wildgrowth on CD, for probably the same hps... and the druid can "imitate" a monk's double uplift with genesis i suppose.

Take that with a grain of salt though, i havent touched restodruid since mop, although from my experience rejuv is extremely effective and druids have the most well-rounded toolkit of any healer.

[Deleted]

You forgot Tranquility. It's the most powerful (?) raid-wide healing CD of the game. Also like Monk or Holy Priest, Druid are good when the whole raid take sustained damage and burst damage, because HOT won't overheal much and the healing power we have on those case really matter.

On fight where the damage are more sporadic and/or centered on the tanks, we do not shine in term of pure HPS but the hots rolling on both tanks is quite the help for your Hpal / Disc, along with the 1-min CD Barkskin (+20% heal on target and 20% damage mitigation for 12sec IS strong). Still, we have some emergency tools too like Nature's Swiftness, Swiftmend, glyphed Regrowth and dare I say Genesis.

We are indeed very different from let's say a Holy Pal, but we're a team in the end and work well with each other. Better than 2 holy pal or 2 Rdrood =)

[rangore]

during fights where the raid isnt topped off for long periods of time (mythic fights and imperator on heroic), or there is predictable huge damage spikes, druids are the best easily. a hot on players that wont hit 100% for the duration is all of a sudden the most efficient and best heal in the game, especially because you can blanket multiple people with it. with rejuv lasting 20 sec (with germ) and predictable damage spikes, start rejuving the raid 5-10sec before the damage and during and you can easily top most hps. and dont forget tranq. 1.5m hp for the raid over a ~4 sec channel. and hots rolling on tanks for a 7min fight is quite significant, even if you are just swiftmending/hting the raid as needed and not casting hots at all.

[uzu1]

one word

Tranq.

A perfectly used tranq is the best raid cd you can ever ask for.

[steezzysteez]

also that rejuv is instant when a lot of other "core heals" got NERFED to have a cast time is another thing Druids excel at. They can maintain healing on a raid during high periods of movement better than most

[Nofo]

spread heals of the gods imo

[Deleted]

Interested in hearing your raid leader's opinion on other healers' roles.

[ryklin]

yeah I wouldn't swap to shaman lol, awful spread healing, only even ok in stacked burst healing (their best scenario)
they're overall the worst healer by a small margin right now

anyways, we're basically tied with mistweaver in 3rd for most scenarios out of all 6 specs imo (in some situations we're ahead, in others mw)

and no fight actually offers enough damage that hots taking 10s or so to heal is actually detrimental because game design, so your raid leader is probably inobservant

the only scenario I can think of where we would be really weak is a boss that marks 3-4 raid members and deals a burst of their hp for 90% of their hp, then does so again 5s later and that's never been a mechanic

hell, we're better than ever now that hots have been lengthened and max hp to boss damage ratios are the lowest they've ever been


to be fair though we are the worst healers for making retards live through shit they shouldn't be in anyways

you should talk to him about mistweavers work though

I'm sure he'll love the idea of heals being fixed to 6-8 targets unless you have lucky procs or dead time to pool, I'm sure he'd think that's unreliable

[Socialhealer]

Rejuvenation is by far our main heal but how much does it actually accomplish per target in a given timeframe ?
The hot takes 20 seconds or more to heal for around 30k + on my ilv655.

rejuv isn't that big rarely see it in top 3 of a druids healing done.

[Nestar]

rejuv isn't that big rarely see it in top 3 of a druids healing done.

Wut? You mean their top heal at all times?

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ling&source=13

[theburned]

on demand burst and healing when it matters.

ToL and tranq helps us do this a lot.
or high sustained spread aoe healing, a bit mana heavy.
on the other hand low mana sustain thus leaving the less important healing to disc priests and other cheap spell classes.
thus lower on meters while a lot stronger in an actual raid team, if you see imperator kills you can see the druids just spam wrath due to other healers being more mana effective.
Also a lot more effective during high movement fights like twin ogronn.

To OP.... your raid leader talks about bringing any class for CR.... jump the boat your raid leader is beyond retarded.
about your scenario's, first of all the scenarios are quite bad compared to current raid design, also we have answers for them.
The first one being a raid member dropping quickly, you can sotf NS regrowth with regrowth glyph, quite instantly 210k heal, or you can just regular heal them for 100k with a regular NS... that person is not going to die, as hes at around half hp. or full by that time, which leaves you over to the second example.
a person not being threatened, just healed up, you have rejuvs for this, and its mana efficient, other classes are more suited for this though, so unless they have to spend excessive mana on it, you don't really have to care much about this, if you feel the rejuv will just overheal a lot... don't do it.
You bring up resto druids being some additional buffer health... how? this is the job of a disc priest, they buffer up hp with strong shields.
resto druids are not great at healing one target in a raid scenario (due to heavy mana costs), but we have a decent solution for that, glyphed regrowth, and in a CM scenario ToL and you get loads of healing on one target during a small time frame, while on the move, you can also have hots up on the tank, and also a mana dump with WG for group healing.

compared to a disc priest they can ramp up healing the more they get to spam pws, think of a fight like butcher, they can just rotate shields, on all the targets taking damage. But as soon as it starts becoming loads of targets like ko'ragh, where it's high bursty intervals of like 5-10 seconds and the raid dropping to 40% of basically every single mechanic, resto druid has loads of answers for this, while the priest will still look decent on paper, hes only good for the few seconds during vulnurability, their raid cd is basically useless. compared to a resto druid who can constantly pull out numbers, our raid cd will do massive healing during expel magic: shadow. While a bit mana costy we also have a good answer to the vulnurability healing, though as explained earlier by ryklin, 3 targets taking excessive damage, so not ideal, but prehotting all 3 of the targets and focusing the assigned target will net you some usefulness during that phase too.

on imperator, you have heavy aoe damage during intervals, while resto druids will not look particularly good for this fight, it will be one of the best healers, why? because we heal the damage that matters, instead of just doing good looking numbers during the soft parts of the encounter, where the healing is basically useless, disc priests and holy palas look better than they are, you need them to do this though, but they aren't the ones doing important healing, thus you need some throughput healers that can handle heavy aoe damage.

tectus, is a place where resto is quite useless, you get one tranq.... otherwise the damage is just spiky, really don't like resto on this fight.

brackenspore, the tranq is really nice... nothing very weird, here you need a disc and a holy paladin though, the resto druid is good, but not too important, shamans are better at shrooms imo, I would say shamans overall is greater at this fight, but that being the only fight where I would consider a shaman... the fight is fairly easy at this point.

kargath... well not gonna say anything about this boss... I just DoC here for some damage.

twins, we provide healing on the move, a strong cd during quake, on our first kills where we had issues with enrage, we could really provide a shit ton of damage at the cost of some healing though. Did above 3m damage at our first kill, died exactly at enrage, thus really important. Otherwise strong aoe heals during the entire encounter with SotF or some heavy healing on the move with ToL.

[Trubo]

HoTs in general are nice as you can apply them early before a burst of damage to ease the subsequent burst healing. In addition, Rejuv and LB are instant cast, allowing one to use them in any scenario where lots of movement is expected, as well as being immune to interrupt (more of a PvP thing than anything).

[Hildrande]

I believe WG got a boost when they fixed the breakpoint. My WG heals for some 20% more than its tooltip. That plus the 5% rejuv nerf, and SotF is now stronger than it used to be. There's more and more high ranked logs with WG as the dominant heal.

This is me in LFR - no ring/trinket procs, no WG/Rejuv ticks while hero is up, with Treants, DoC and Germination, 20% Haste and 24% Mastery with raid buffs, but I forgot to stop casting well in time before the kill, and let Harmony slip a moment:

Wild Growth:
Raw healing: 6.94m
Total mana cost: 26*12080=314k
Healing per mana: 22.1k

Rejuvenation (18s):
Raw healing: 4.41m+488k=4.90m
Total mana cost: 93*3024=281k
Healing per mana: 17.4k

That's a 27% HPM advantage to Wild Growth, over Germinated Rejuvenation!

My Swiftmends heals for 33k, with 26*4160 added to the WGs mana cost above, and 26*33k added to its healing plus the 50% bonus, SotF-ed WGs gives me 26.7 HPM.

If using Rampant Growth, and casting a fresh Rejuv with 0% healing to feed the WG bonus: Adding 3024*26 to the cost, the hpm becomes 22.5. Even without Glyph of Wild Growth it beats 18-sec rejuv in HPM (22.5*5/6=18.5)


Holy crap. Guys, we need to cast more Wild Growths. Unless your WGs overheal 25% or more than your rejuvs, you should gain HPM/HPS by casting more WGs and less rejuvs.

Incarnation is still a very strong cooldown - just remember to cast WG on cooldown when it's up.

[silentdeathz]

I believe WG got a boost when they fixed the breakpoint. My WG heals for some 20% more than its tooltip. That plus the 5% rejuv nerf, and SotF is now stronger than it used to be. There's more and more high ranked logs with WG as the dominant heal.

This is me in LFR - no ring/trinket procs, no WG/Rejuv ticks while hero is up, with Treants, DoC and Germination, 20% Haste and 24% Mastery with raid buffs, but I forgot to stop casting well in time before the kill, and let Harmony slip a moment:

Wild Growth:
Raw healing: 6.94m
Total mana cost: 26*12080=314k
Healing per mana: 22.1k

Rejuvenation (18s):
Raw healing: 4.41m+488k=4.90m
Total mana cost: 93*3024=281k
Healing per mana: 17.4k

That's a 27% HPM advantage to Wild Growth, over Germinated Rejuvenation!

My Swiftmends heals for 33k, with 26*4160 added to the WGs mana cost above, and 26*33k added to its healing plus the 50% bonus, SotF-ed WGs gives me 26.7 HPM.

If using Rampant Growth, and casting a fresh Rejuv with 0% healing to feed the WG bonus: Adding 3024*26 to the cost, the hpm becomes 22.5. Even without Glyph of Wild Growth it beats 18-sec rejuv in HPM (22.5*5/6=18.5)


Holy crap. Guys, we need to cast more Wild Growths. Unless your WGs overheal 25% or more than your rejuvs, you should gain HPM/HPS by casting more WGs and less rejuvs.

Incarnation is still a very strong cooldown - just remember to cast WG on cooldown when it's up.

WG is mana efficient when other healers in the raid pull 5 and 10k hps because they are afk.. who would've thought?


I'm being a bit of a dick here but come on... Using an LFR log as proof of anything is silly.

Similarly, WG still has the issue of being pretty dumb (rather than a smart heal ). I personally prefer having more control (rejuv) over my heals. Seeing it pick the wrong targets just makes me sad. Especially if i'm SoTF. ToL lets me have stronger rejuvs, and cheaper rejuvs to blanked (and pre blanket) more easily.

So the question is, do you NEED that sotf empowered WG? Or are you just soaking up heals that other would've gotten / would've healed up over time anyway.

[Krazyito]

rejuv isn't that big rarely see it in top 3 of a druids healing done.

You obviously don't play a druid, nor heal with one.

[Hildrande]

Using an LFR log as proof of anything is silly.

I don't think you got the point: It's about how good the spells are at turning mana into healing.

If anyone can tell me I'm wrong and why, preferrably with logs, I'll be very thankfull.

[silentdeathz]

I don't think you got the point: It's about how good the spells are at turning mana into healing.

If anyone can tell me I'm wrong and why, preferrably with logs, I'll be very thankfull.

Your point is that Wg is mana efficient and nobody has ever though / realised that before... which just isn't the case. We all know how efficient it is... theoretically.

However, it's subject to the spell targetting itself (often hitting less than optimal people) and so on. So it's HPM is reliant on the fight having phases where you can ensure it wont overheal much. Thankfully highmaul is quite plentiful in that regard... But then, are those phases really in need of SoTF empowered WG? That's debatable. And whether you'd be better with ToL or not is also debatable.

Similarly, gaining HPS also assumes that the damage is quick enough in burst that a SOTF WG isn't going to be overhealed.

Ultimately, I just prefer the utility of the ToL in that you have stronger heals base, stronger rejuvs, cheaper rejuvs, instant regrowths, and an empowered WG. Even on Butcher Mythic I run ToL.

I suppose my biggest point is that WG is great in theory, and in practice good with the potential to be great. While rejuv is always somewhere in between good and great - but since you are able to target rejuv manually you have added control which, IMO, is more important. An example may be mythic ko'ragh where you need to heal the raid. You really want to keep the phys DPS alive. Rejuv lets you target them specifically - WG not so much. A side note/theme of this being - more numbers doesn't always = better.

[Hildrande]

Your point is that Wg is mana efficient and nobody has ever though / realised that before... which just isn't the case. We all know how efficient it is... theoretically.

18s Rejuvenation and 6-target Wild Growths used to have the exact same HPM value - in theory. That's no longer the case.
The breakpoints added a tick, if you just had enough Haste. They fixed the breakpoint, but without reducing WG healing, which can only mean WG got buffed. Then they nerfed rejuv 5%.

That a targeted heal is more expensive than a rather stupid random target heal is good game design.


Numbers from a high ranked log on Mythic Mar'gok, with Incarnation:

Rejuvenation raw HPM: 24.4
Wild Growth raw HPM: 33.4

Overhealing on rejuv in the above log is higher than on WG, with net healing values the difference in HPM is larger, 15.3 for rejuv vs 23.9 for WG, making WG in practice 56% more mana efficient than rejuv in that fight.

[yurano]

Your point is that Wg is mana efficient and nobody has ever though / realised that before... which just isn't the case. We all know how efficient it is... theoretically.

However, it's subject to the spell targetting itself (often hitting less than optimal people) and so on. So it's HPM is reliant on the fight having phases where you can ensure it wont overheal much. Thankfully highmaul is quite plentiful in that regard... But then, are those phases really in need of SoTF empowered WG? That's debatable. And whether you'd be better with ToL or not is also debatable.

How valuable WoG depends entirely on mindset of the raid's healers. You're only considering the viewpoint where healers play whack a mole and spam health pools to 100% immediately.

In lower skill raids (aka anyone who isn't top 1000, which is the vast majority >90% of raids), WoG is amazing. Just cast WoG on CD (when necessary) and keep your mana at 95% and wait. Don't even bother trying to heal (aside from keeping your assigned tank alive w/ LB and RJ). Eventually, everyone will run OOM (as they always will). Thats when you spam WoG and RJ like mad. Back in Cata when WoG was overpowered, I was able to pull 50% healing done with WoG, and top meters while being undergeared for the encounter. Those were good times.

In higher skill classes though, there should be more team work. Other healers should realize that they should prioritize their highest HPM abilities (usually some slow heal like RJ, or AoE like WoG; every class has a similar set of tools, just executed differently). Direct heals should only be limited to scenarios where 1) people are low or 2) big damage inc. In this high skill high teamwork situation, long high HPM high HPS heals like WoG and RJ are incredibly effective. However, it takes the right mindset to execute.

A good example of using the teamwork/hps/hpm metagame is healing tanks. You're going to have LB and RJ (maybe even WoG) rolling on the tank. Whenever the tank takes big damage, its tempting to hit Swiftmend then spam high HPS direct heals like RG. However, if you just hit Swiftmend then float the tank's health with Nourish while HoTs are rolling, you'll not only prevent the tank from dying and give other healers time to throw a small heal (e.g. Riptide) onto the tank, bringing him back to full, but also save your precious mana because you executed in a smarter manner.

@ OP

Unlike DPS, healing is all about the meta game, playing to your strengths. Druid strength has always been high HPM/HPS, but over time. Therefore, what a Druid brings to a raid is high mid-range burst output and float (disc priests are amazing at float with PWS/PoH+DA and are incredibly valued for it). Its definitely not something a whack-a-mole Holy Paladin would understand.

Ofc, if you bring too many healers to an encounter Druids are terrible (e.g. LFR). If you don't bring enough, Druids look amazing (2 heal something that should have been 3 heal).