[Resto] Harder to play and weaker than other healers?

[Sunfyre]

How is rejuv tracking any different from riptide, lifebloom any different from earth shield, and swiftmend (15 sec cd) any different from unleash elements (also 15 sec cd)? Harmony tracking isn't really something you have to do, it just stays up from healing normally.

I'd say he wasn't giving it a real try.

Riptide has a cooldown, so you're not blanketing the raid with it -- you don't have to worry about earth shield blooming -- unleash elements doesn't require you to make a judgement call on who you're going to heal for the most effective efflorescence.

[teddabear]

Again, what does wrath paladin healing difficulty have to do with mists paladin healing?

---------- Post added 2012-12-20 at 06:54 PM ----------



Never said I was the best out there, but I'd be willing to bet if you watched footage of your own play, you arent as perfect as you think either. Specific to that video was that was only a small part of that video and was the first time all night that a tank let through an explosion so i was playong catch up all the way to the end and I was in unfamiliar territory trying to catch up being the only healer as well as dealing with the debuff and keeping tanks alive as well as the burn phase coming up all at the same time. Our previous pulls and the cut out portion of that video were much cleaner and less haphazard.

I like how you bring my ability to play into a debate about an entirely unrelated subject though. If you can win your arguments on their merit, you attack the person you are debating. Real mature.



If you can't see how having 2-3 resources instead of one right away makes a class harder to play I don't know what to say. It is easier to know if you have mana you can cast any druid spell, any time. If you want to cast a holy power spell, but dont have any you have to use a different spell, one not taipored to your current needs. Your healing isn't as good plus the extra attention monitoring the additional resources takes means you wont be as responsive either.

--

Agreed with the poster who mentioned shamans. They are very similar to druids, but I think they are still slightly harder.

The resources you are bringing up aren't all that difficult to manage. Having poor burst healing now that the game is mostly 10 man is a far more significant disadvantage. In your example you say you were playing catch up the entire fight. How would you have done this with a healer with significantly worse burst healing?

[Maxvla]

I have a 90 monk I had thought to reroll to at one point, but after playing it a bit, I found all the extra junk too difficult to keep track of. I could either focus on keeping smooth chi and mana tea and mana management, or I could focus on the encounter/raid, but not both at the same time. At the time I was thinking of doing this, fistweaving was still the predominant monk healing style (not so anymore) so I had to keep up with being in melee range with something to hit (and if there was a priority burn target switch to that) and keep up the healing buff from blackout kick, and make sure my statue was always in a good spot. It was just too much work to be a good monk and I didn't have fun playing it. Despite the massive numbers difference then, I stayed with druid. Since the nerfs, monks have come down quite a bit, but still lead druids. I do have a disc priest I am gearing up to use for specific fights (empress heroic), etc and may eventually switch mains to that. I actually have a blast playing my disc, but know I don't get anywhere near as much out of it as a top disc priest because I've barely played it at all, compared to years of resto druid. I actually play it more like a dps with major raid cooldowns, using primarily atonement based healing, shelling to counter fight mechanics, and barrier/PS for reduction on group/single.

The example you speak of was an unexpected raid wide burst that hadn't happened all night, so I was unprepared. Having watched that portion of the video several times I know there are numerous things I could have done better, but in the end nobody died and we got the kill. I think that being a mostly hot healer helped being able to single heal that encounter and that a predominantly direct healer that focuses more time per person would have been less easy to recover with. Due to the nature of the fight, though, a disc priest would have been the easiest to recover because they can place absorbs on the debuffed person instead of being forced to feed the damage build up.

[Lothrik]

Noticed this topic and thought I'd drop in my two cents.

I play a Disc Priest. Raidbots is pretty much on the ball for the past 60 days of SpecScore for healers.
http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/#00000000...00000000111111

As far as I can tell, Resto Druids have no niche right now. They aren't "better" at anything than any other healer, and are frequently worse. Any time I see a Resto Druid parsing, I know something is up -- the other healer(s) died, were DPSing more than healing, aren't actually healers and were forced to play offspec, or are just borderline incompetent and their guild hasn't realized it.

[Myrrar]

I am a RDruid and my bf is a resto shammy, I think we are prob more than above average healers.

We decided to try and do a character swap just for fun so I play his shammy and he plays my druid. He found all hots hard to track and too many things that requires attention to keep up ( lifebloom, harmony and swift mend) not to mention he didn't even bother using tree form when its needed! Lol. Also he was frustrated by the weakness of the spells and the amount of mama needed for regrowth(in his opinion the only good spell). Clear casting was just a nice little green thing on the screen....

Me on the other hand having been playing RDruid from the very start found all his things easy to track (earth shield, riptide etc.) You can argue that its cos they are so OP ( which they are not, I out heal most class healers in raids) but that's my point, cos some classes are OP it doesn't require you to really learn the class to heal for raids etc. ( maybe that's why there are very little RDruids in your chart of healers, cos its hard to be a good druid healer to heal for a proper raid group)

its easy to play a druid, we have what 4 spells only? But its hard to play a druid to a good standard because we have so little mechanics and tools. When the tank drops very low other healers have all their flashy spells to cast, and we have to choose between spamming regrowth and go oom or hope for a clear casting , or hope that we didn't NS+HT on that stupid mage who didn't get out of the purple stuff. If you think you know everything about a druid healer to say that its the easiest then maybe you are not playing it right, or you are missing a lot of then things a druid need to do in order to be a good druid healer, in the position we are in now.

Druid is not the best healer ATM I agree,but are by far not the weakest or by any means the easiest healer. As I always say 'bring the player, not the class.'

All this shows is when you are used to playing with hots you can easily pick up other hot like mechanics. This does not show shamans are somehow easier than druids r pretty much anything else.

---------- Post added 2012-12-27 at 08:27 AM ----------

I don't understand shit, when you are saying that disc priests are so easy to play. There's like three times the amount of spells discs use compared to druids, track twice the amount of cooldowns/abilities/procs and actually have to plan healing ahead unlike druids.

I have a bachelor degree in math and raid in top 10 guild. Haven't seen your characters at all. Link me your druid and priest, then we can continue the discusiion. Until then, I'm assuming, that you are just either clueless about how these classes work or troll.

And agree with this. You seriously have to have never really played another healing spec to its full potential, which is the whole point of this discussion, to think any of them are easier than rdruids. I love my druid, but she's close to braindead to play almost perfectly.(balance CDs, perfect spell usage, blah blah)

[Keiyra]

Having healed with all specs (besides Mistweaver) Druids are probably the easiest spec to play at an acceptable level and have the smallest difference in output between an average player and a great player - in large part due to their relatively small healing toolkit. Their kit is straight forward, not terribly complex and in general pretty effective. They're currently only really missing burst healing.

That being said, its not like the other healing specs are hard either (few things in this game are "hard"), but they are slightly harder/more complex in relative terms. Seriously if "hard to play" was a scale of 1-10, we are saying resto druid pve is a 4.0 and the rest of the healers are between 4.1 and 4.7. (pvp is a whole other beast where yes, things can get harder/more complex in a hurry)

Where playing a Resto druid is "harder" is in trying to pull out the same numbers as another healer. You really have to be on your game to crank out as much as a well played pally/monk/shaman/holy - i'm leaving disc out because there's no way anyone should be keeping up with a well played disc. SS is op (with maybe a few fight exceptions)

[VoljinforWarchief]

Druids have the simplest and most straight forward spell set to use. That makes them "easy" so to speak. We put out pure healing and we do it well. Any schmuck can load up hots and use some direct heals. We don't have alot of CD's to manage, not alot of crazy mechanics. So in that sense yes we are the "Easiest" class to play as a healer.

Where the skill comes in and where people struggle is resto druids need to be better at anticipating things and predicting what will happen. Our spellbook doesn't give us anything hard to figure out or to use, but knowing when to use them during the fights and how to sue them is the difference between a good and bad druid. This is more crucial for druids than anyother healer(besides possibly disc since they need to shield at the correct times) If we get too far behind on heals we can lose a player. If we aren't prepared in advance a quick bit of excessive damage can leave us scrambling(possibly without answers if you blew your few CDs) The other classes can go "oh damn that's too much, big heal save the day!" Druids can't, at least not like other classes. We have to have no fear of overhealing so we can load up hots in advance, but be smart enough to not overheal too much and waste mana pointlessly. These are all mental things that for alot of people are hard to do. That leads to posts about Resto being weaker or harder to play. They can't handle the mental side(and that's fine! each to his own!) Our approach to healing in this regard is much different then the other classes(never played a monk healer so that one im not talking about) and that also makes it a harder transition from another class to druid to heal(or vice versa)

[Deleted]

I don't understand shit, when you are saying that disc priests are so easy to play. There's like three times the amount of spells discs use compared to druids, track twice the amount of cooldowns/abilities/procs and actually have to plan healing ahead unlike druids.

I have a bachelor degree in math and raid in top 10 guild. Haven't seen your characters at all. Link me your druid and priest, then we can continue the discusiion. Until then, I'm assuming, that you are just either clueless about how these classes work or troll.

Sorry but I refuse to believe a healer which has 90% of it's healing constituted from 3 short cooldowns plus a passive effect is anywhere near the most difficult healing specialization in the game. Don't give me the "oh but I need to look at boss timers" because that's bullshit any decent healer does that.

Quite frankly though about resto you've said it yourself, resto is easy to play to a similar standard as other resto but in the current state of the game have fun out healing any old random who's went discipline because discipline is fucking impossible to mess up.

[Deleted]

Disc is not harder than resto druid. Not by a large margin. The main issue here, is that all of a disc's spells are fire-and-forget.
You say that you have to track Cascade and PoM - thing is, it hardly matters who you cast them on, and after spending the GBC, they just do their thing, all on their own. PoM can be compared to WG, in this case.

A "good" resto druid has to be aware of swiftmending the correct target to get full uptime on effloresence (while it can be used to top someone off quickly, for example during arcane phase on feng on a velocity target, it is far better spent on a player that's stacked, as effloresence will get to tick more). You also have to make sure to use it on cooldown, which means you have to predict what target you want to swiftmend.
A "good" resto druid pre-places shrooms in lulls of damage, to get slightly more burst healing for raidwide AOE's.
A "good" resto druid has to know when to use a hot (rejuv) to heal a target, and when to use a direct heal - if the target is just going to be overhealed after 2 ticks of rejuv, without ever taking more damage, you might aswell nourish for half the mana. Vice versa, if you have to nourish twice in a row on a target, you should have thrown a rejuv instead.
A "good" resto druid has to make use of things like Nature's Vigil (if taken over HOTW due to need for burst healing) and Treeform as throughput cooldowns - disc's througput cooldowns are both just clicked pretty much on cooldown (excluding needing to use them at a specific time, such as Zorlok's force and verves in P2 - I'm pretty sure they're 50 seconds apart, so you'd have to delay Spirit shell quite a bit to cover 2x FNV's?)

This means that a resto druid has to know the fight, and when to expect damage spikes, far more intimately than a disc priest - the druid has to judge if the damage that comes will be big enough to warrant hotting up. The priest just shields, because he'll always be first in line to deal with the damage, which means it'll hardly be more advantageous to NOT heal.

I can assure you, anyway, that disc is far too easy to play, as I've witnessed this reset - we had to bring in my resto druid alt for shekzeer heroic, so I jumped on my disc priest for the 10 man alt run, with a resto druid (old main, rerolled shaman a few weeks back).
My disc had 481 average - this was literally the first time I played it in a raid setting that was not LFR.
The druid had 492 average - he has played druid as a main since he joined us in firelands (and probably before that, but I obviously wouldn't know), and for 10 heroics till he rerolled this tier, keeping an average of the 90th percentile and maintaining top 20 ranks on 6 of the 9 heroics he healed on the druid. What I'm getting at, is that this guy is by no means a scrub - but compare his far superior healing experience, and his far superior gear, to these logs:

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-z9h0x0qslnlst9ii/

If I can come that close to his output, while completly neglecting to PoM for 99% of the evening and mostly just spamming holy fire/smite (more than 20% of my healing from the smartheals it gives) in lower gear, with no experience, then yea. It is extremely easy to pick up, no questions about it. If resto druids are harder is down to one's personal opinion, but right now, I'd say it deffo holds true - a resto druid has to work double as hard as any other healer to keep up.

my respect to this guy, for the form and content.

[Sinitar]

I see that people have interpreted the thread title differently, and that's not bad at all. After all, I invited you all to an open discussion. Still, what I meant by 'harder to play' had less to do with actual class mechanics and what it takes to heal the raid through an encounter.

Since druid spells are quite weak and expensive, I always have to prioritize heals and think things through before tossing that expensive WG or rejuvenating people. We may have less keys to press and a pathetic amount of spells compared to other classes, but that does not make it any easier. If anything, I have to use everything I got just to keep up with them. Being versatile allows you to counter mechanics using the tools you have at your disposal. But what happens when you have no such tools? We have to improvise, of course, and that eats my mana pool like you don't know what. Priests have amazing group heals. What do we have? WG? Rejuv blanketing?

Palas have great tank healing, yet we only have a regrowth that scales poorly and HT, which nobody uses due to its poor connection to the rest of the spec(Not sure about monks, but every healer has a mechanic that speeds up their biggest heal-palas get that 1,5 sec from Holy shock crit, shamies have riptide etc).

Shamans have healing rain, which covers the whole raid and heals for almost double the amount of efflorescence.

So, how exactly is resto druid easier when you have to cover all of these weaknesses with the spells we have? Other healers simply use their heals, while we have to devise ways to use them for maximum effectivity.

[Rorschachs]

Sorry but I refuse to believe a healer which has 90% of it's healing constituted from 3 short cooldowns plus a passive effect is anywhere near the most difficult healing specialization in the game. Don't give me the "oh but I need to look at boss timers" because that's bullshit any decent healer does that.

Quite frankly though about resto you've said it yourself, resto is easy to play to a similar standard as other resto but in the current state of the game have fun out healing any old random who's went discipline because discipline is fucking impossible to mess up.

Having 1 ability doing the most healing doesn't mean that only using it is enough. Not the case with druids, if you are healing with rejuv, wild growth, swiftmend and lifebloom.. you are doing it right. In a raiding environment where you have to watch things resto druids are going to be the most comfortable healers ; because all you do is click buttons. You can't really change your style of healing as a druid anyway and in ALL kind of scenarios your usual rotation of healing is the right rotation.

Where the skill comes in and where people struggle is resto druids need to be better at anticipating things and predicting what will happen. Our spellbook doesn't give us anything hard to figure out or to use, but knowing when to use them during the fights and how to sue them is the difference between a good and bad druid. This is more crucial for druids than anyother healer(besides possibly disc since they need to shield at the correct times) If we get too far behind on heals we can lose a player. If we aren't prepared in advance a quick bit of excessive damage can leave us scrambling(possibly without answers if you blew your few CDs) The other classes can go "oh damn that's too much, big heal save the day!" Druids can't, at least not like other classes. We have to have no fear of overhealing so we can load up hots in advance, but be smart enough to not overheal too much and waste mana pointlessly. These are all mental things that for alot of people are hard to do. That leads to posts about Resto being weaker or harder to play. They can't handle the mental side(and that's fine! each to his own!) Our approach to healing in this regard is much different then the other classes(never played a monk healer so that one im not talking about) and that also makes it a harder transition from another class to druid to heal(or vice versa)

You are talking about every healer in the game here not just druids. No healer has that "save the day" button(except for cooldowns but resto druids have a cooldown anyway). If you are doing everything right and you can't do enough hps to compensate for the damage then you don't have anything to do. This is just clearer to resto druids and feels like a resto druid issue because you have to be retarded to not do everything right and say "Oh I could've done that." as a resto druid.

@Sinitar

You don't have the best tools for the job. Doing things right won't change that.

And you are making no sense at all. You have to cover all of the weaknesses? If you can cover these weaknesses, then they are not weaknesses. If you can't, then you can't. so..
If your understanding on devising ways to use your skills for maximum effectivity is casting more rejuvs or having to waste more mana on tank healing compared to other classes and you think doing these are hard then.. I don't know what you think other healers are doing.

[Kjalar]

I think the general consensus here is that:
1. resto druids are not hard to play compared to other healing classes, BUT
2. resto druids are weaker in general, no matter how well you play it.

However, let's look at FL raiding where we were kings - what have changed since FL? We weren't nerfed hard, we've actually got some QoL improvements. The thing is that other classes got huge buffs. Resto shamans do >50% of their healing through fire-and-forget yet very powerful spells and CD's. Paladins got huge burst AOE healing and great CDs. Discs... well, you all know about discs, hopefully nerf is on the way.

What I'm trying to say is that it's not that druids require significant buffs - it's the other classes' pure throughput should be toned down, especially their AOE healing.

[Sinitar]

That's exactly it SoltheDruid. Our scaling seems to suck this expansion. Although I never played resto before MoP, something feels way off when you get some extra 4k intellect and your spells receive some minor improvements. At the beginning of Cata, when my holy pala shed some of her HC gear and got some epic items(apart from weapon;still wore the HC one), the change was obvious. My heals almost doubled, and even holy light healed a fair amount. WG's healing is way too low for the mana cost it has. It's barely worth casting. I mean, what's 30k hp over 7 seconds for a char that has over 300k hit points? That's pitiful.

[Deleted]

I kinda agree on the top level, the best healing players will prove that other classes excel above Rdruids atm, however most people dont play on this level, and in all fact we offer some nice aspects.

What i've been thinking about mostly is our mana regen cd, i get the feeling it needs updating, since it still works from manapool and yet this wont change anymore. Which means no matter how geared we get, innervate doesnt change, i think it needs to go back to the spirit buff that it was in wotlk. Other healers have much better cd's in this respect and tbh if what blizz suggests about adjusting healing in different tiers to keep the high difficulty rather than 'i just have a million spirit and can spam for eternity' then innervate rly needs a change.

Thats just my opinion.

[Deleted]

First at all i have to say sry for my bad english.

I play Resto Druid since BC and i was always glad with him.
The most time i play him in 10 men raids and never had Big problems with him.
Also i dont think the Druid is a weak healer in 10 men.

But since MoP the Druid is in 25 men raid not anymore first choice.
I start playing him in 10 men raid and was fine with him but then i changed to 25 men raids and was very sad after the first raid.
whatever i´ve done in the raid i couldnt came on my hps and was most time last in healing.
first i thought ok mybe i have to train to heal in 25 men raid but after a few raids and many changes in healing talents and reforging it was the same sad thing afterall.

it is a fact that the druid has to take time to heal with his hots. but most bosses u dont have a chance to let ur hots tick.
so the discis and pala and also the shaman do the best work on the group heal and absorb on the raid.
I still dont understand why there is such a big whole between healing 10 men and 25 men raids for druids.

In PvP the Druid is nearly op when i hear talking my frinds about him.
10 men he is good but 25 men no chance to be nearly good as other healer classes.

So i think its up to Blizzard to find a change to make the druid more interesting to play in 25 men.
i only read holy priest buff or monk nerf oder pala buff.
But the Druid is the only class which wont be buffed.
And with the nerf of naturs virgl you wont see the druid heal anymore in 25 men raids.
And thats because blizz cant handle the druid to be in all ways good.
There is such a big differenz between 10 men 25 men and pvp like i told.

So at all the druid heal is the only heal class which is not often played in 25 men raids.
And everyone who had played a druid in 25 men raid knows what im talking about.

So once again sry for my bad english.

Nice greetz

Mellt

[Deleted]

my WG heals for about 70k when buffed and with SOTF... ive been getting a lot of high ranks lately, rank 4-7 on some fights.. and thats since i got 4set and SOTF, give it a try.

I never really rank when we raid, cause we have a disc priest in our raid .. but he didnt come last nite and my healin was gr8

8 Deathruler Protectors of the Endless 10N Hard
81579
8 Deathruler Sha of Fear 10N
55059
8 Deathruler Feng the Accursed 10H
78758
27 Deathruler Grand Empress Shek'zeer 10N
71672
30 Deathruler Lei Shi 10N
55722
40 Deathruler Amber-Shaper Un'sok 10N
59112


also did 94k healin on garalon normal but didnt log it as i dc'd and forgot to relog lol - woulda been rank 4 tho

couple ranks from last nite.. i know a lot were nromals but, its xmas, chill time!

[darklogrus]

Seems like this expansion that our niche of HoT spells is really no match for the burst damage and burst healing that has been going on in raids. Even when I anticipate the burst damage from a mob with Rejuvs, SM and WG one of the other classes will always burst heal the grp back to full health.

[Meejum]

my WG heals for about 70k when buffed and with SOTF... ive been getting a lot of high ranks lately, rank 4-7 on some fights.. and thats since i got 4set and SOTF, give it a try.

I never really rank when we raid, cause we have a disc priest in our raid .. but he didnt come last nite and my healin was gr8

8 Deathruler Protectors of the Endless 10N Hard
81579
8 Deathruler Sha of Fear 10N
55059
8 Deathruler Feng the Accursed 10H
78758
27 Deathruler Grand Empress Shek'zeer 10N
71672
30 Deathruler Lei Shi 10N
55722
40 Deathruler Amber-Shaper Un'sok 10N
59112


also did 94k healin on garalon normal but didnt log it as i dc'd and forgot to relog lol - woulda been rank 4 tho

couple ranks from last nite.. i know a lot were nromals but, its xmas, chill time!

thats not necessarily a good thing. what this says is that Druids can do well in the absence of a disc priest while using a very restrictive playstyle. Sadly this will probably only get worse if the next patch bonus to SOTF remains.

[Soullord]

you can simplify any healer class to play it at a simple level

spam your mana efficient heal and forget about everything else buffs,debuffs,timers,etc.

you can squeeze a lot of extra healing from any heal class be it druids, paladins, shamans, etc. compared to someone who doesn't

you can prepare your druid to have enough haste to reach several haste thresholds

extra lifebloom ticks
extra wild growth ticks
extra tranquility ticks
extra rejuvenation ticks

many at different haste levels if you wish to squeeze more healing from your druid you also have to keep track of several things

1 ) what benefits the raid more from symbiosis
2 ) Is Lifebloom at 3 stacks and rolling
3 ) Is there a chance to drop a mushroom
4 ) How long before Harmony buff expires
5 ) cooldown on Tranquility
6 ) cooldown on tree of life
7 ) cooldown on innervate
8 ) cooldown on barkskin
9 ) cooldown on wild growth
10) cooldown on ironbark
11) cooldown on swiftmend
12) cooldown on nature's swiftness
13) rejuvenation on 3 people?
14) anything to remove with nature's cure
15) is there a clearcasting proc (regrowth|healing touch)
16) are there adds lose (entangling roots | cyclone | hybernate(ooc))
17) is there a dead person (rebirth|rebuff)
18) is there a damage phase (heart of the wild:wrath|moonfire)

And that is before you start making desicions about who to heal with what spell (lifebloom,rejuvenation,wild growth, tranquility,healing touch,swiftmend,regrowth, mushroom bloom) so yea druids may not have to keep track of things like holy power but I would have to say it's one of the classes that keeps track of more stuff while in combat.

[Puupi]

Our progress is now 15/16 HC 10 man. I'm a resto shaman and my healing partner has been a resto druid throughout the progress. The difference between resto shaman and a druid is quite small. Shaman has better cooldowns (healing tide > tranquillity, ascendance > tree of life+ nature's vigil), druids overall mana efficiency is higher (atleast when paired with shaman due to mana tide). When you are "normally" healing your tanks/raid, druid is slightly more efficient mana and hps wise. Shaman is more bursty and shaman needs to setup a majority of his heals. Druid is very mobile and stable. But when it comes to cooldowns, shaman beats druid hands down.