Concerns for early healer changes and additions for Resto Druid

[Zerxes]

I wasn’t sure if I should’ve included this in the “Resto changes for BFA thread” or kept it stand alone given its length.
A few things first:

1. I know it’s early and things may change.
2. I am not a theorycrafter or super indepth mathy on these things, but I watch trends and form opinions on what I see, then post it for the more hardcore people to take over.
3. I have only read/watched some info on rdruid/rsham and hpriest so far.
4. While I am aware of some abilities from other healers, I do not know the intricacies of their classes as well as rdruid, since that is my main.

Some concerns from what I have seen thus far:

Blizzard is preaching bring the class not the player, returning to class uniqueness and everyone having their own special utility.

This is fine but in terms of healers, I think it is only fine if the utilities are balanced. In our pool of 6 healing specs there should not be clear winners in every situation such that some classes will never be brought. This is especially important considering blizzard has yet to successfully implement encounters requiring 5 healers. The norm remains at 4 and downsizing accordingly as people get geared and experienced.

My main concern is the recreation of a holy trinity, as we saw in WoD and earlier where you had pally/sham/disc as the god-trio and the last spot could be filled with whatever you wanted.
Paladins are likely always going to keep their niche of the best tank healer, so more then likely there will always be a spot for 1. Shaman are still utility gods, so are highly sought. So there are 2 of the 4-5 spots already.

So let’s look at some of the changes already – unless I am mistaken I heard that capacitor totem is now a baseline ability for rsham? This is huge, given it is an aoe stun which is going to limited to few classes. They already have HTT and SLT and now this? Additionally, if we are talking niches, it seems that rsham is dipping into the mobility domain of rdruid/mw. Rdruid loses displacer beast for a sprint and I heard we are losing dash for it? Yet shaman so far keep gust of wind and have their ghost puppy. Rsham historical niche is a stationary power healer, and spot healer.

Next big one is holy priest with the new “Holy Word Salvation”. I am going to make the assumption that with spell usage that they might be able to get this down to a 3 min CD. No matter the number that’s 2 raid CD’s for an Hpriest and a raid-wide innervate. Let’s compare at an early glance – tranq (no longer mobile): 35% SP + 12% stacking hot (saw hotted get up to 5 stacks in an alpha video). HWS – 115/50?% of SP + renew + 2 PoM’s on each target it hits – seems OP.

I am starting to see the possible new holy trinity of pally/shaman/priest + pick your poison. It always seems wrong to me that there have been or are such clear-cut defined spot-holders. It isn’t fun at all.

Note: Obviously relative strength of healer CD’s matter and that is already being discussed in the other thread so I won’t raise it here.

QUESTIONS:
1. In the above instances what makes a druid stand out against this current iteration of rsham / hpriest CD’s and utility? Are druids going to have the sole combat res like back in vanilla?

Resto Druid Changes:

1. Removal of HT not surprising. Will not be missed.
2. Regrowth – sad to see the loss of the base crit.
3. Abundance – actually like the new iteration. My fear though is that we will get pigeonholed into this talent if they do not reduce the cost of regrowth baseline. This should be a choice on top of a baseline decrease in cost.
4. Germination vs Flourish – crappy choice – agree with Tiberria’s sentiment of getting germination baseline.
5. Is tranq / the tranq hot going to benefit from our mastery also?

ADDITIONS:

With the loss of HT we have a free hotkey. To round out our toolkit and to compete with an ability like holy word salvation:

1. Should we see the return of the MoP healing mushroom? Collects a percentage of our overhealing to be stored to a cap and detonated at our choosing, distributed evenly among raiders? Should there be a time-limit in addition to a storage cap (30 sec like efflo)? Or should efflo act as normal and the shroom can be moved as needed and detonated with a separate spell? Would a flat distributed heal to all nearby raiders suffice or should they add a small additional hot (like T21 dreamer) to benefit our mastery for a short period after the burst heal?
Other then the technicalities of the spell, I personally really enjoyed having this option and felt that it added something fun and rewarding to our toolkit. It gave us the option to make use of some of our overhealing (sniped or other) to some degree.

2. Should innervate stay a 10 sec free casting period or move back to a % regen over some duration similar to the new Symbol of hope?

I wasn’t sure what to title this but I’m interested in others opinions on these concerns, if these are legitimate concerns or not and to discuss some ideas to spruce up our toolkit.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

I've yet to get access but you have to conceed that Resto Druid has FAR too many tools right now for 5 mans. Are they keeping the affinities? The more pertinent thing is whether they lose Bear Form, Cat Form DPS, or Tranq while moving.

As long as they still have the natural bulk and flexibility they will still be a great healer. Maybe not the BEST for raids but that's not the only thing to balance around any more.

[Tiberria]

I've yet to get access but you have to conceed that Resto Druid has FAR too many tools right now for 5 mans. Are they keeping the affinities? The more pertinent thing is whether they lose Bear Form, Cat Form DPS, or Tranq while moving.

As long as they still have the natural bulk and flexibility they will still be a great healer. Maybe not the BEST for raids but that's not the only thing to balance around any more.

The thing is - I would argue that balance for 5 mans doesn't really matter relative to balance for Mythic raids. Healer balance doesn't really matter unless you're pushing keys higher than 15s, and there isn't any reason to push keys higher than 15, because the rewards max at 15. Balance in keys past 15 is really no different than MoP and WoD realm/region leaderboard challenge mode balance.

I don't think it's OK to accept being mediocre in raids due to being perceived as strong for 5 mans, when that doesn't even make a real difference in 5 mans to the reward cap.

[thebdc]

The thing is - I would argue that balance for 5 mans doesn't really matter relative to balance for Mythic raids. Healer balance doesn't really matter unless you're pushing keys higher than 15s, and there isn't any reason to push keys higher than 15, because the rewards max at 15. Balance in keys past 15 is really no different than MoP and WoD realm/region leaderboard challenge mode balance.

I don't think it's OK to accept being mediocre in raids due to being perceived as strong for 5 mans, when that doesn't even make a real difference in 5 mans to the reward cap.

Funny, personally I'd say it's the other way around. Healer balance in raids doesn't really matter unless you're playing in the top 10 (or whatever), either. And in my opinion balance for 5 mans is much more important, because there's only one healer in the group, drawbacks can't simply be taken care of by the other 2+ healers.

Many people outgear +15 nowadays, and that's the reason why any healer can do it. And still there's a massive discrepancy how well druid/paladin perform compared to a monk.

[Deleted]

Druid will easily remain god healer for m+.

As long spec keeps bearform, germination and ironbark it will be best overall.

Blizzard would have to skew raw healing output really hard to make difference with is something they wont do because of raid balance.

[Zerxes]

Maybe I should've clarified that is is from a mythic raid healer stand point. And I think the argument that we are godly in m+ is bullshit. If that was an issue they could tune us down in m+, they absolutely can. Raid absolutely matters - we can't get tier or the best trinkets in m+. And outside of titanforging raid still has the best gear. Until m+ is equivalent to raids they're still not a complete alternative to raiding. Secondly, you no doubt have groups of people who enjoy different aspects of the game. Those who cannot devote time to raid and thus m+ is there only option, those who prefer m+ entirely, those who will only do the bare minimum of m+ for the weekly (me), and those who couldn't give 2 shits about m+. A class shouldn't be underwhelming in raids because they are good in a new feature, especially if that isn't why you play the game. When were talking about druids - while the mastery worked out pretty well it was inevitable that this would be happened due to the difference in group sizes. Less people to heal = more likely to get more than 1-2 hots per target. Once again, this can be tuned so don't use a bullshit argument, not everyone plays for m+.

- - - Updated - - -

As for the argument of the affinities. The dps outputs are equivalent to the base dmg of other healers, if not mistaken. And we have to talent what we used to have baseline - were shapeshifters after all.

[Nermo]

Maybe I should've clarified that is is from a mythic raid healer stand point. And I think the argument that we are godly in m+ is bullshit. If that was an issue they could tune us down in m+, they absolutely can. Raid absolutely matters - we can't get tier or the best trinkets in m+. And outside of titanforging raid still has the best gear. Until m+ is equivalent to raids they're still not a complete alternative to raiding. Secondly, you no doubt have groups of people who enjoy different aspects of the game. Those who cannot devote time to raid and thus m+ is there only option, those who prefer m+ entirely, those who will only do the bare minimum of m+ for the weekly (me), and those who couldn't give 2 shits about m+. A class shouldn't be underwhelming in raids because they are good in a new feature, especially if that isn't why you play the game. When were talking about druids - while the mastery worked out pretty well it was inevitable that this would be happened due to the difference in group sizes. Less people to heal = more likely to get more than 1-2 hots per target. Once again, this can be tuned so don't use a bullshit argument, not everyone plays for m+.

- - - Updated - - -

As for the argument of the affinities. The dps outputs are equivalent to the base dmg of other healers, if not mistaken. And we have to talent what we used to have baseline - were shapeshifters after all.

However, raids in BfA, at least at the beginning, doesn't drop any set item... So this new era, sets for doing m+ doesn't matter at all

[Tiberria]

However, raids in BfA, at least at the beginning, doesn't drop any set item... So this new era, sets for doing m+ doesn't matter at all

Raid tier sets are gone. However, the items that go in the azurite armor slots can not warforge or titanforge. Therefore, to get the highest ilvl items in those 4-6 gear slots (I forget how many total slots they confirmed?), you have no way of getting them outside of Mythic raiding. If it's anything like ilvl in Legion, there would be about a 25 ilvl variance between the maximum non-War/Titan forged item from Mythic+ and the base ilvl in Mythic raids.

- - - Updated - - -

Funny, personally I'd say it's the other way around. Healer balance in raids doesn't really matter unless you're playing in the top 10 (or whatever), either. And in my opinion balance for 5 mans is much more important, because there's only one healer in the group, drawbacks can't simply be taken care of by the other 2+ healers.

Many people outgear +15 nowadays, and that's the reason why any healer can do it. And still there's a massive discrepancy how well druid/paladin perform compared to a monk.

There's a lot more people doing Mythic raiding than there are people pushing keys well past the point where rewards stop scaling. And, healer balance absolutely matters well outside of the top 10. You can be top 500 and still really struggle if you lack the "mandatory healing specs" like HPally and RDruid. And, lower ranking guilds tend to filter down strategies from higher ranking guilds, so if the popular strategy becomes "3 heal the fight to push X faster" or "Use 2 HPallies" or whatever else, other people will try to emulate that strategy instead of re-inventing the wheel.

There are 0 rewards for progressing past M +15, which is essentially the equivalent of a heroic raid in difficulty. There are plenty of rewards, and the content continues to scale with difficulty up to the point that you're clearing the Mythic raid tier, making class balance much more relevant.

[Zerxes]

Not to take away from the balance discussion what do you think should be added to our toolkit outside of baseline germination? Does having healing boomshroom back sound good?

[Tiberria]

Not to take away from the balance discussion what do you think should be added to our toolkit outside of baseline germination? Does having healing boomshroom back sound good?

There's about 0 chance boomshroom ever comes back since Cloudburst Totem is essentially an exact copy of what it used to be.

[Volitar]

Well as for Resto Shaman mobility, they have removed it from Elemental and they have said they want blink to be a Mage niche so I'm guessing they just haven't got around to taking it away from Resto.

[Zerxes]

Interesting idea. Do you think that the way to balance around raids and dungeons is through different sets of azerite gear? I recently heard this in a Preach Gaming video or some wow content channel.

The argument for resto is that we need to be tuned around raids regardless of how strong it makes us in m+ since raids is the best/truest outlet to the best gear in the game. This is discussed above so i wont beat a dead horse.

But I wonder if the azerite gear will be a means to balanace this perceived issue of "to bad about raids, you're strong in m+". Having sets that enhance your raid performance (matched with raid talents) and azerite sets geared towards m+.

[Wild]

I dont know why people always worry about perfect balance at end-game content.
Maybe Method or some other high-end guild cares about the little difference among the healers, I understand that.
But 99% of all the other players just play the game and dont care about math and theorycrafting and all that shit.

I also play Rdruid as main, and I have been playing this class since vanilla. I never "had to" change my healing class just to fit in. For regular raiding and mythic+, I dont see a difference with the classes. I can outheal any class, and I can be outhealed by any class. It depends on the player whos behind the keyboard.
RDruid is a great healing class and extremeily versitile and fun to play. Even the worst nerfs cant kill this specc.

So just relax urselves, let Bfa release and just play the game!

[exochaft]

Ironically enough, this feels like a repeat of discussion back in 10man vs 25man raiding. Now it's mythic+ and mythic raiding, though I don't think Blizz is going to kill mythic+ to solve this issue.

I get the concern, truly do, however I think the main focus should be less about the healers themselves and more about the content design. The reason certain healer comps were always considered "set" was because the content dictated the comps. For example, if you're going to always have burst AoE situations in raid where people have a very high chance of dying to the initial hit, healers with raid-wide damage reduction were typically king. It's similar to the soaking situations in ToS for DPSers, the reason immunity classes were so good wasn't necessarily because of the classes themselves, it was that the content design made them almost always good and relevant. In an ideal world, classes of all roles can have their niches where they are good, but they shouldn't always be the best because their niche situation always pops up on every bloody encounter.

[Tiberria]

I get the concern, truly do, however I think the main focus should be less about the healers themselves and more about the content design. The reason certain healer comps were always considered "set" was because the content dictated the comps.

This really isn't true. What has caused certain healing specs to be considered near mandatory parts of "the meta" has everything to do with utility and toolkit design, and not much to do with content design. If it really was based on how raid fights were designed, you'd see the "optimal comp" shift on a per fight basis, and it really doesn't.

Resto Shaman are mandatory because they have the benefit of 2 full raid CDs at the expense of a tank CD (and tank CD's aren't all that relevant in 20 man raids when you have more than you need anyway). SLT is potentially game breaking. They also have ridiculous other group utility talent options, like a raid wide movement speed increase (something only available from Shaman or Feral/Guardian) and a totem that gives you a free rezz off the b-rezz timer. That toolkit is going to be mandatory/optimal any day of the week. This is the case even though they have had the lowest or close to the lowest raw throughput of any healing spec this entire expansion.

Holy Paladins are mandatory, because they are the only true tank healer. Raid healers are a dime a dozen/interchangable, but no other spec can match their tank healing. That, plus being the only healer with an immunity, and because AM Sac can be like 3x as strong as any other raid CD. Disc Priests are considered all but mandatory (for high end raiding - if you have someone that can play it competently), because they add a lot of free damage, and have more burst healing capability than any other spec.

None of this has anything to do with fight design - it's class design. Throughput isn't important, because all healers are close in throughput, and you have more than enough healing throughput than you need with any spec. Raid healing is irrelevant, because all 6 specs can do it competently. What matters is the extra utility a spec brings over and above just raw healing. It's been the same 3 specs mandatory or close to mandatory for like the last 3 expansions. The only thing that will fix it is better class/spec design, and spreading out the unique toolkit utility among all 6 specs, instead of just 3.

[Purpleisbetter]

Druid will easily remain god healer for m+.

As long spec keeps bearform, germination and ironbark it will be best overall.

Blizzard would have to skew raw healing output really hard to make difference with is something they wont do because of raid balance.

Well. Holy Pala right now are monopolizing the highest keys.

So, we've been taxed for a position we don't even hold anymore.

But honestly, Resto Druid always been solid, like really solid kit that eventually fall short (SoO 25, HFC, Argus just to name the last 3) because of pure number tuning.

After 11 years i think it's time to abandon the ship. Really too tired on waiting the hotfixes that never come.
I'm pulling a Durant here and go Pala.

[Malmmoc]

I'm pulling a Durant here

Leading your team in getting benched for yelling at RL?

(Could not resist. Durant leads NBA in tech fouls this year)

[Deleted]

I am really concerned in general, with how loosing our mobile tranq will affect us in terms of getting a healing spot in good mythic guilds.
Every huge healer cd has some kind of perk to it: Hymn has 10% extra healing for everybody in the time channeled, Revival is instant, Shamans can cast other stuff while using their two totems, Aura Mastery is instant / has the chance to be changed up to dmg reduction vs. soaked dmg, disc got their bubble which is one of the strongest CDs in my opinion, and it's also something instant.

But Tranq now? It just feels like a weaker Hymn. No healing benefit, channeling, no more moving. I really dont like that change. Yes, tranq while moving could be seen as a little over powered. But i think when you look at all the CDs , it just fits to the druids role of being the most mobile healer in raids. Now we loose displacer beast AND the mobile tranq. If resto shamans dont loose their gust of wind, we will easily be outclassed by SHAMANS when it comes to mobility. Really dont like that change.

I also totally agree with Germination being made baseline. It just feels mandatory AND has amazing synergy with our mastery.

[gobio]

I dont know why people always worry about perfect balance at end-game content.
Maybe Method or some other high-end guild cares about the little difference among the healers, I understand that.
But 99% of all the other players just play the game and dont care about math and theorycrafting and all that shit.

I also play Rdruid as main, and I have been playing this class since vanilla. I never "had to" change my healing class just to fit in. For regular raiding and mythic+, I dont see a difference with the classes. I can outheal any class, and I can be outhealed by any class. It depends on the player whos behind the keyboard.
RDruid is a great healing class and extremeily versitile and fun to play. Even the worst nerfs cant kill this specc.

So just relax urselves, let Bfa release and just play the game!

You are posting from your M+ perspective which is fine, but you really lack the perspective of other who do raid, why tell them to relax or do something else if you don't understand them?

1) It is not about 99% vs. 1% and it is not about "you are method or other high end guild" or "you are not method or other high end guild". This is really quite disrespectful to raiders who are still progressing really. There plenty of people who do not consider themselves high end people that are still progressing in mythic raiding. They do care about balance, they can still care about balance, they are not nobody, come on.

2) Of course you being in a M+ environment, could see various healers of different iLVL different gear set up, and thus vastly different healing results. But as a raider, the healers in the same guild are raiding together, they have SAME progression and often similar "skill" more or less. Can you not see that their difference in healing performance are closely tied to class balance? And your personal M+ situation do not apply?

3) you can ask people that share your own perspective (M+ healer) to "just relax" based on your own situation, why are you asking all other people to think what you think?

[axxey]

Funny thing is we've had 2 paladin healers this expansion, one often playing ret, when they weren't healing in mythic clear this week all that happened was tanks healed themselves more. Gotta love that must have niche tank healer.

High m+ keys druids have bear form, paladins have higher base health than other healers 100% of the time(given because they can sacrifice health into abilities) and immunities. Immunities cheese mechanics, just like some raid bosses you took immunity classes, not for their output.