Resto Druid - Legion Talents

[Deleted]

One other thing to note - Wild Growth has apparently been changed back to being an instant cast.

I just wanted to chime in and note that I don't think WG has been changed to an instant cast spell, despite what the spell description/tooltip might suggest. There is currently a PvP talent that makes WG instant cast, so I think it remains a 1.5 second cast time for PvE play.

[Hypasonic]

So when we wanna tranq we /leavegroup and it does 100% more then get reinvited straight after? :P

[Torty]

If you want to make a change, start spamming devs about that absolute atrocity that is Inner Peace right now. I really hope this talent never makes it to live, we will be completely fucked for an entire expansion in case it does. Holy fucking shit, it might be the single most dumb thing I've ever seen made to Resto Druids and I've been playing the spec since Vanilla. Everything else can be changed and tuned, this talent will forever make us useless outside of cds.

Tier 1. From the Regrowth description in wowdb it appears that Verdant Growth will remove the hot, so it will work exactly like glyph at live (wowhead says the same). I can't see it being picked up like... ever? Maybe there will be some specific encounter, but otherwise a pretty useless talent and probably an hps loss. Germination on wowhead talent calculator also has +3 seconds on Rejuv, wonder if it's true or still old tooltip. Cenarion Ward cd needs to be reduced to 15-20 seconds. After Swiftmend change, I don't see it being any useful as it does literally the same, but at the cost of a talent. I really hope Verdant Growth gets redesigned to give Healing Touch something and Cenarion Ward gets a buff. Otherwise it's a pretty dead tier with no choice.

Tier 3. The affinity row is pretty boring. If moonkin form will be a dps cd like devs promised, it's gonna be a default choice. Can't see any other one being picked up during progress unless it's Guardian one for lazy druids.

Tier 5. Cultivation looks undertuned. Even SotF looks better and it's gotten worse after SM cd change. Given the SotF and ToL syngergy with Flourish, I would think that encounter would have to have insanely long damage phases for it to be worthwhile of a pick. In this tier I only see Gorefiend to be the case. Maybe Iron Reaver and Council too. Otherwise I'd pick ToL on all the rest.

Tier 6. A complete joke.

Tier 7. Flourish.

Honestly, pretty disappointing. We had so many interesting talents and tier bonuses over the course of expansions, I would think they'd at least use some of them to make talent choices better. Like, why not give Verdant Growth the t12 set bonus? When your Swiftmend heals, it also heals another target. Why use our most stupid glyph (Rejuv) as a talent? It's not even fun or gives any choices, just a passive cast speed increase to a spell that we are absolutely fine with being slow. It could at least increase the cast time and condense hot duration of Regrowth instead. Stonebark looks absolutely useless outside of 5m and our only mana regen talent comes in a form of a single target nuke. What the fuck, Blizzard? Where are the hot interactions that were promised?

Our PvP talents look at least 10 times more interesting and interactive than this bs. Overgrowth (45 sec cooldown, Instantly applies Regrowth, Lifebloom, Rejuventation and Wild Growth to the target) and Nourish (Reduces the cast time of Healing touch by 1 sec and automatically applies Rejuvenation) look really awesome. Why are they also not PvE talent choices? Could make Nourish increase the mana cost of Healing Touch or something to balance it out.

Honestly, him being involved gives me less faith in the class design than it otherwise was. For one thing, he has made a lot of extremely dumb statements over the last expansion that lead me to question how much he understands healing. Here are some of them
- Druids that think not being able to Tranq while moving is a problem are just lazy Druids
- He thought Holy Paladins were UNDERPOWERED this expansion and needed buffs
- Insisting that Haste > Mastery at the start of the tier (before they implemented the haste buffs)
- Constantly recommending that people (not just Druids all healers) cut as much Spirit as possible from gear in Cata and MoP, but not really raiding Mythic.

I agree with this. Especially in Cataclysm Hamlet's theorycrafting was insanely out of sync with what Druids were actually doing in the raid, it was ridiculous reading his posts on EJ. I think he values things that are not mathematically proven to be correct, but "feel right" way too much, even though ironically he made HealerCalcs, which would make one think that he'd value math at least slightly more. It's not a good quality for a developer. He can't even analyze balance properly with this mindset.

I also haven't seen Nature's Vigil, Dream of Cenarius or any other talents being baseling as others have claimed them to be. Dream of Cenarius can get screwed, won't miss it a single moment, but losing NV is pretty disappointing. EDIT: found it on wowhead, still nothing on wowdb, so not holding my breath. I wish it was an option instead of Profusion (wtf is this talent even?). The only 2 healer specs that got 4 rows of throughput talents instead of 5 are Druids and Monks. Could've at least compensated with not giving us shitty useless talents in some of the tiers. Giving Innervate to Moonkins is just salt on the wound.

[Tiberria]

So when we wanna tranq we /leavegroup and it does 100% more then get reinvited straight after? :P

It only heals party and raid members, so it would only heal ourselves if we did that :P

- - - Updated - - -

The other thing we have to look at is healer utility, and I think we really got hosed here with the removal of Stampeding Roar. Mark of the Wild is not only a terrible concept (they got rid of Dark Intent, being able to Power Infusion others, etc for a reason), it's also completely fucking weak in terms of raid utility value. So, you can give 1 DPS +5% to their primary stat. That is what, maybe a ~3% DPS increase for that one DPS. In a 20 man raid with 14 DPS, 2 tanks doing 50% of the damage of a DPS, and 4 healers combining for 50% of the damage of a DPS, that DPS increase projects out a 0.19% raid DPS increase. That is so trivial and weak that it's pretty much a joke to say that compensates for something as valuable as Stampeding Roar. Removing that utility was not warranted; if they wanted to prop Feral and Guardian up, they should have left Roar alone and given those specs something additional.

Then, you look at what other healing specs bring to the raid over and above their pure throughput (and tank cooldown - which every healer except Shaman brings).

Monks - They kind of get screwed on utility too, but they at least have the ability to immune some mechanics with Diffuse Magic I guess.

Paladins - Where to start? Aura Mastery is still their raid cooldown and still over and above their throughput contribution. They still keep all of their current utility - BoP, Freedom, etc. Plus, the new auras talent row adds another set of utility (potentially +10% healing within 10 yards of them or +10% magic damage reduction). A full personal immunity.

Disc - Still have PW: Barrier over and above their throughput. Life Grip. The flexibility to add significant raid DPS (granted at a HPS loss)

Holy Priest - Life grip. The +10% healing done to the entire raid alone adds more utility than Druids now have.

Shaman - Still have SLT and the ability to talent a second SLT plus all of their cooldowns and utility totems. Reincarnation.

I don't see where the utility is remotely balanced, or where removing Stampeding Roar was warranted in any way. Is the 2 minute Tranq going to be Druid's new "utility"? If so, I would hope that the healing it does isn't counted against our output balance (otherwise it's not effectively utility at all).

[stormgust]

Everything else can be changed and tuned, this talent will forever make us useless outside of cds.

The Prosp/Flourish/SotF/Germ combination will also be rather hard to tune, they're acting as multipliers >=2 depending on specific scenarios.

Tier 1. From the Regrowth description in wowdb it appears that Verdant Growth will remove the hot, so it will work exactly like glyph at live (wowhead says the same).

A straight throughput buff to regrowth will not account for much, regrowth is simply to bad for that. That alone is sufficient for this talent to be removed.
If the HoT component indeed get's removed (I assumed not so far), then it's outright wrong to ever pick this talent given our new mastery.

Cenarion Ward cd needs to be reduced to 15-20 seconds. After Swiftmend change, I don't see it being any useful as it does literally the same, but at the cost of a talent.

Thing is, 30s CD on Swiftmend is plenty enough for an emergency heal. You wouldn't need CW way, it's spot has been taken by the role change of Swiftmend. Even with reduced CD, once you assume that Inner Peace is gone, Prosperity would be the more flexible option to choose. Though I'll stay by neither is needed with Swiftmend on a 30s emergency CD.

Tier 5. Cultivation looks undertuned.

That one actually has plenty room for tuning, so I wouldn't worry to much.

Even SotF looks better and it's gotten worse after SM cd change. Give- eithern the SotF and ToL syngergy with Flourish, I would think that encounter would have to have insanely long damage phases for it to be worthwhile of a pick. In this tier I only see Gorefiend to be the case. Maybe Iron Reaver and Council too. Otherwise I'd pick ToL on all the rest.

SotF/Flourish (assuming the later affects WG), will likely be the choice for 5man. Otherwise it's going to be ToL, and maybe Cultivation depending on how it will be tuned.

Tier 6. A complete joke.

Yeah, that actually describes it quite well. It's really "Rampant Growth tuned for the new SM (i.e. still bad)", "LOL, WTF ?", "Proven to be a bad mechanic"

Tier 7. Flourish.

Yep, as long as it affect Wildgrowth. Otherwise default to MoC.

Honestly, pretty disappointing. We had so many interesting talents and tier bonuses over the course of expansions, I would think they'd at least use some of them to make talent choices better.

Yeah, our T17 bonuses would (in combination) have made a nice bonus, or either of the T18 bonuses would've been nice bonuses. Or take any of the HoT/Healing based legendaries they add for Legion.

Stonebark looks absolutely useless outside of 5m and our only mana regen talent comes in a form of a single target nuke. What the fuck, Blizzard? Where are the hot interactions that were promised?

Well, for some reason we got a single target focused talent tree. Problem is, all of those talents are just replacing eachother, as they would put the affected spells into quite similar roles.

Our PvP talents look at least 10 times more interesting and interactive than this bs. Overgrowth (45 sec cooldown, Instantly applies Regrowth, Lifebloom, Rejuventation and Wild Growth to the target)

Would've been far more interesting than Prosperity, and also provide a fast way to get mastery rolling on a target. By providing this as the emergency button, it would go well with our playstyle. Would also allow for Swiftmend to be kept as it's on live (maybe increased efficiency to make it attractive outside of SotF builds), so it does not harm SotF as a talent.

and Nourish (Reduces the cast time of Healing touch by 1 sec and automatically applies Rejuvenation) look really awesome.

Similarly, would fit instead of Profusion. only problem I see is, that it's effectively replacing regrowth (even with a mana cost increase to HT).

I also haven't seen Nature's Vigil, Dream of Cenarius or any other talents being baseling as others have claimed them to be.

Was a datamine misinterpretation. Those were listed as level 1 requirement, which is a good indicator that they're actually gone.

The only 2 healer specs that got 4 rows of throughput talents instead of 5 are Druids and Monks. Could've at least compensated with not giving us shitty useless talents in some of the tiers. Giving Innervate to Moonkins is just salt on the wound.

They spread one CC row across all specs, which I think is a good thing. What I don't get is, why they kept the second line in the PvE tree instead of moving it to the PvP tree, as another CC is usually not needed for PvE, and instead added all those throughput talents throughout the PvP tree. It's like they got the entire design in reverse here.

[Torty]

I can spend 10 minutes and will design better talents that will see more use and still not be overwpowered (or used often for that case).

Verdant Growth. Increases the hot duration and hot healing of Regrowth by 50% (total increase is ~20%, assuming hot overheals at the same rate as direct cast and not including Living Seed, plus more Mastery benefits).

Cenarion Ward. Counts as 2 heal over time spells. Cannot be applied together with Ironbark. Refreshes Lifebloom.

Soul of the Forest. Reduces the cd of Swiftmend by 5 seconds, 200% for Rejuv, 100% for Regrowth/WG.

Prosperity. Swiftmend now has 2 charges, cooldown reduced by 10 seconds, healing reduced by 50-75%.

Inner Peace. Tranquility cooldown reduced by 90 seconds, healing reduced by 50-75%. No longer grants bonus healing outside of the raid.

Profusion. Healing Touch, Regrowth and Swiftmend can now refresh Lifebloom on top of Healing Touch cast reduction.

Stonebark. Also reduces the cooldown of Cenarion Ward by 10 seconds.

Nerf Flourish to 6-8 seconds (10 seconds is completely insane).

Moment of Clarity. Now grants 3 charges of Clearcasting, can store maximum of 6.


I will still use Germination and Flourish, but then maybe using other talent combos won't be so super bad. Profusion will still probably be bad, but not as bad as it is now. Inner Peace will work like current Paladin wings glyph, which won't make it mandatory as it is in current itteration and not impossible to tweak. Cenarion Ward will see at least some use as opposed to zero. Moment of Clarity seriously needs some sort of buff if they plan for it to see any play whatsoever.

I've heard that there will be more stuff on artifacts, but from what I've seen during Blizzcon it's gonna be passive buffs to abilities. Really hoping this stuff is going to be revized, because frankly it's quite embarassing and doesn't support our "spec fantasy" that they were trying to push so hard. I want more hot interactions in the talents, not cooldowns or single target spell interactions.

[Sprucelee]

Looking at these "legendary" items, this whole expansion is going to be a clusterfuck... basic balance will be irrelevant and all that matters will be what Wowiablo items you found.

I am hoping this is one big troll by Blizz.

[Deleted]

Looking at these "legendary" items, this whole expansion is going to be a clusterfuck... basic balance will be irrelevant and all that matters will be what Wowiablo items you found.

Strongly disagree. This seems perfectly balanced to me...

[Sprucelee]

Strongly disagree. This seems perfectly balanced to me...

Yeah, had commented on that one specifically. Infinite Renew. Balance.

Or how could you not bring a healer with THIS, I could easily maintain that through any hard mechanic.

[Tiberria]

Even if they ultimately get some common sense and don't put these live, you have to wonder about the overall sanity/competence level of the class design team if they remotely thought for even a second that these things were remotely good game design or an intelligent idea. I no longer feel remotely bad for criticizing the class designers or the criticism they take. This has proven that they deserve all of the derision they can get.

[Hypasonic]

Lol at those item's. I'm gonna put my neck on the line and say that those numbers/abilities are "placeholders" until such a time they decide that they actually want to go over them and actually balance them. Or ya know, it could be legit and OP as heck. The cloak seems a bit retarded though, I mean you want to sacrifice someone and not waste a cr? Np, heal them and soak it....yea ok. Better still, bring a holy priest and have 5 players do it at once and (maybe) you might not lose mana if they channel hymn at the same time! Rejoice!

[Torty]

And all these legendary items are BoP, so you will have to farm them in open world or what? This is really ridiculous, I hope stuff like that doesn't make it to live. There's no way anyone will like their BiS to be hidden behind thousands of normal mobs.

[Tiberria]

At minimum, the best way they can salvage this mess would be to put in a restriction that you can only have one legendary item equipped at a time. If they did that and tuned down the truly ridiculous legendaries, it might be somewhat acceptable.

They also really should make these legendaries BoE. It will feel horrible if a BoP legendary that isn't designed for your class drops for you randomly and you can't even sell it. I don't know why not just make them BoE and let people buy the damn things.

[CloudedInSanity]

TIL from this thread. Tiberria is the Floopa of Resto Druids.

[stormgust]

TIL from this thread. Tiberria is the Floopa of Resto Druids.

No, honestly not. Tiberria's concern are valid, only him exaggerating everything is going to far. As it stands, most of our new talents are simply bad (which is obvious for at least the former glyphs/perks: they were such, because blizzard did not consider them strong/interesting enough to be talents), only exception being T75 (and even there SotF is at hand of a role change to swiftmend).

[CloudedInSanity]

No, honestly not. Tiberria's concern are valid, only him exaggerating everything is going to far. As it stands, most of our new talents are simply bad (which is obvious for at least the former glyphs/perks: they were such, because blizzard did not consider them strong/interesting enough to be talents), only exception being T75 (and even there SotF is at hand of a role change to swiftmend).

Some of them are, but he is blowing everything out of proportion (which is often what Floopa does). The entire reason why thisthread is dumb is because we don't even have access to artifact talents or perks yet. So trying to speculate any type of class balance is inherently useless. We would be foolish to assume that Artifacts will not make or break a class. Also, this is literally the first fucking patch of beta. To go on a huge rant about how a class is going to suck on the first stage of testing (actually nothing has been tested yet) is ludicrous. Calm the fuck down for a second, and focus on the actual gameplay of the class. Tuning a spec is easy, making a spec rewarding and fun is not.

Also the change to SotF is essentially negligible beacuse of the CD increase of Swiftmend. I guess it's better burst though! I'm not saying everything is perfectly fine, but saying the sky is falling on the first beta patch is dumb.

[Keiyra]

Calm the fuck down for a second, and focus on the actual gameplay of the class.

On that point, the actual gameplay is looking like a mixed bag. (PvE raiding perspective)

Cons:
LB 10 sec with no refreshes is a lot more GCDs spent on maintenance.
Mastery encourages/rewards poor raid healing gameplay (chasing hots instead of hotting more of the raid)
Tranq at 2 mins take the problem of overly strong raid CD's and pushes that annoying imbalance even further.
No Roar makes for sad resto druid.

Pros:
Balance Affinity boomkin form might be a "fun" option gameplay option for lulls in healing.
Mastery will be fun/effective for tank/small group healing.
There look to be some interesting "burstier" healing options.

Overall meh...waiting for more details - cause if the artifact abilities don't address things...what they've shown so far isn't terribly appealing. (That's completely ignoring the numbers issue, just looking at kit options and ability mechanics)

[Deleted]

Oh dash is now also feral only.

[CloudedInSanity]

On that point, the actual gameplay is looking like a mixed bag. (PvE raiding perspective)

Cons:
LB 10 sec with no refreshes is a lot more GCDs spent on maintenance.
Mastery encourages/rewards poor raid healing gameplay (chasing hots instead of hotting more of the raid)
Tranq at 2 mins take the problem of overly strong raid CD's and pushes that annoying imbalance even further.
No Roar makes for sad resto druid.

Couldn't agree more.

[Sprucelee]

We have been in a solid position this whole expansion in terms of a class that is enjoyable. Compared to other classes, who were relegated to a far more "spammy" and less enjoyable play-style (or just disregarded for certain content), we have been lucky. As someone who also likes PVP and CMs, I enjoyed a ton of content this expansion, which dug even deeper into our talents and play-styles. Druids were highly regarded across all content for the whole expansion.

I also think they did a commendable job balancing classes for mythic raiding (withstanding the long-time issue with Absorbs, and Paladin utility/strength). People spend hours here endlessly arguing about 5% differences in throughput, but the reality is that Druids saw great representation in every single tier. From the #1 guild bringing Druid on the hardest boss of the expansion, and consistently through the ranks, Druids were there. In the end Druids were a fun class to play, and a solid part of any healing team. Cant ask for much else...

That is why my first reaction to the blog, and even now, is positive. They have kept us mostly in-tact.

When it comes to some of the minor tuning issues, I just can't get too concerned. Something like lifebloom's CD and refresh could easily end up being part of our artifact. The unimaginative Tranq talent could easily just go away for something else. And while I might be in the minority, and actually like the new mastery, it is honestly a pretty minor change in the whole scheme of things... We are talking about a single secondary stat weight, content scaling issues aside.

Anyway, I am still looking forward to legion. What I can not understand are the Legendaries (and shared as much, recently). They are bizzare and very concerning. I can only assume there is something major we are missing, and they can't be used in Mythic raiding (maybe their intention is for the new Dungeon system, bringing a full Diablo-esque system to WoW, separate from raiding). IDK, that makes some sense to me, as people climb the new dungeon rank system.