Resto druids in 4.3

[Thayala-US]

I've been trying to assess the state of resto druids this patch. My guild has had a lot of druid trials that haven't been very good at all. I'd like to understand if druids were nerfed so badly, if some just haven't learned to compensate for the changes, or maybe it's a mix of both?

[timbaLt]

Resto is in a poor state right now. WG nerfs were way too hard, especially seeing how stupidly broken Holy Radiance is (even without T13 set bonus).

[Noxous24]

I'm a Resto Druid, and I used to always function amazingly, being a pure throughput healing class, it's what I did best... But the changes to Wild Growth are very tough, I can understand why Blizzard wanted to nerf it, but they should have either nerfed the heal or the cooldown, NOT BOTH... And now, because this tier is full of incredibly high AoE damage, I can't keep up to it anymore without exerting myself and going oom by spamming my non AoE heals indefinantly...
Needless to say, I swapped to pally heals. Much stronger heals, more engaging, and more importantly, it has the throughput that I once had.

[Deleted]

We are so stupidly broken right now that even stats barely matter to our output. I've tried over 10+ respeccs and reforges since the patch and the differences were close to zero. Whether I had 20 mastery or 16 or 13,my output stayed pretty much the same. I overhauled to crit,same,overhauled to spirit,same.

There is pretty much nothing a druid can do to get off the position we find ourselves in right now. The nerf has been too severe and we are barely mediocre healers at the moment.

[Deleted]

I only raid a bit of normal (2/8) but I know a good few HM raiders, and most of their druids have rerolled paladins. As has been said, in a tier with a lot of AoE damage the WG nerf was too much without giving us a better option than rejuv spam. Yes WG was OP, and yes it needed fixing, but as a pure throughput class, nerfing it that much and that way was wrong.

[emni]

I suppose it depends what you mean by "haven't been very good at all".

In 10-mans a good druid can still match a paladin or a shaman on healing done, even on a stacking fight. When I say "match" I mean that being lower than them by a small margin is still good. This has nothing to do with druids being crap, we're just designed around our heals being very strong in a scenario where there is AoE damage and people are spread (think Ragnaros), while paladins and shamans are designed around stacking. It's unfortunate that most raids in DS are stacking fights.

The only department in which druids truly lack in is mitigation and tank cooldowns, which are very much needed this tier unlike the last. It is the very reason you're often much better off with taking a paladin who can do the same healing as a druid _and_ brings cooldowns in addition.

To be honest, I wouldn't recruit a new druid this tier. But if you already have one in your ranks, I wouldn't sit them out.

[Drefan]

I suppose it depends what you mean by "haven't been very good at all".

In 10-mans a good druid can still match a paladin or a shaman on healing done, even on a stacking fight. When I say "match" I mean that being lower than them by a small margin is still good. This has nothing to do with druids being crap, we're just designed around our heals being very strong in a scenario where there is AoE damage and people are spread (think Ragnaros), while paladins and shamans are designed around stacking. It's unfortunate that most raids in DS are stacking fights.

The only department in which druids truly lack in is mitigation and tank cooldowns, which are very much needed this tier unlike the last. It is the very reason you're often much better off with taking a paladin who can do the same healing as a druid _and_ brings cooldowns in addition.

I've to agree to some extend. I raid 10Man and I'm kinda always comming out on top on healing done. I guess druids have to be carefull dropping efflorecence this patch, since its great if i hits more then 1 player. In my guild we don't have a cooldown problem with tanks (paladin + warrior) having raid cooldowns we're usally fine. I time my ToL just before the raid start taking alot of dmg so I got people pre hotted. I still think druids are viable but we're not as strong as before. I run with as little spirit as possible and I don't have any major mana issues if I use my pot + innervate correctly.

[ganush]

I have actually gone pally this tier. I found I did fine with throughput, but the key for me was to actually stack spirit over mastery and go back to rejuv spamming which I found terribly un-engaging and is a state of healing for resto I hoped I'd never see again. That combined with my offspec being boomkin, I just am finding holy/ret to be a much better fit for our raid group now in so many ways.

[Deleted]

well, R shammys are buffed to the eyeballs atm..

But, druids are still very viable, im raiding with my druid atm (3/8 HM) and no problems. Still topping healing and nice control.

But I have to agree they are the lowest healers at the moment

[Deleted]

I mainly heal LFR on my druid but occasionally step into guild raids when we're short. I'm finding this patch very painful. Sure I can come out high in LFR by doing silly things and relying on at least 3 of the other healers being terrible but in our guild 10mans I struggle. Even on ultraxion with red buff I get beaten by our palys/shaman.

I think the issue comes down to the huge WG nerf (I still cannot get used to the timing on the new cooldown, it just feels clunky), efflorecence being such a small area (compared to other equivalents) and our horrible lack of prevention cooldowns.

Hpaly and Rshaman are currently riding high on the buff wave with Priests bobbing about on the surface and Rdruids being sat in aquatic form well below the surface :P

[nooty]

I raid with Paladin and Me healing 2 man except Ultraxion i top on everything .

On Morchok Heroic we going 4 healers still for safety but both can solo heal each side np .
Progressing Yorasj Heroic we 2 man healing it and ye i feel healing was not a problem but if i could get some tank cd's like castable Barskin and 2mins Cd on Nature's Swiftness instead of 3mins would be nice .

Wild growth is now my 2nd top .

If Efflorance should effect all target and should stay on ground till my next swiftmeld Cd should be nice buff:P


http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...acwin/advanced

[sapdori]

Tried resto for a day and went back to feral. If you want to be successful in pvp as a resto druid you need to be insanely good and you also need to be playing with teammates that are really good

[emni]

I've to agree to some extend. I raid 10Man and I'm kinda always comming out on top on healing done. I guess druids have to be carefull dropping efflorecence this patch, since its great if i hits more then 1 player. In my guild we don't have a cooldown problem with tanks (paladin + warrior) having raid cooldowns we're usally fine. I time my ToL just before the raid start taking alot of dmg so I got people pre hotted. I still think druids are viable but we're not as strong as before. I run with as little spirit as possible and I don't have any major mana issues if I use my pot + innervate correctly.

No no I didn't mean to imply that a resto druid cannot top the meters, just that if it happens that you end up 2% below an equally geared paladin, it doesn't necessarily mean you're not good at all.

[Deleted]

Nothing wrong with Resto atm, just play better.

[Restofari]

Even if you're close to a holy paladin on heal meters, aura mastery doesn't show up at all. They should change the resist to absorb, so we could see the 1-2 million healing they're actually ahead of us.

[Deadanon]

Druids have quite a few positives that very few other classes have. They have the strongest hots ingame that are almost essential for quite a few fights in DS. I much more prefer to take a druid that can keep a hot on tank while in twilight than having a meterwinning morons that let tanks die.

The greatest thing about Druids is ofc their ability to cast hots BEFORE dmg happen. That means when they learn the fights, they will be able to do the right things (if the player is skilled enough) to keep ppl topped up.

Holy radiance is op atm - but then ppl also need to realise that Holy paladins are totally worthless atm as spothealers on tanks. The dmg that a tank can take in 2 hits is just stupid now and those hits can come within 2 sec of eacohter. That pretty much means that another healer has to be on the tank as well - and hots are the perfect way to fill up a spot reaction heal.

THey are nerfing both 4 set bonus and increasing mana cost of holy radiance and Im pretty sure thats not the end of it. For me - holy priests are by far the strongest healers in DS atm cause they have the full arsenal of heals. Their group heals are very powerfull - their single target heals are on par with paladins. And since many fights are 1 tankable in DS - beacon of light becomes a useless feature for palas.

---------- Post added 2012-01-26 at 11:16 AM ----------

Even if you're close to a holy paladin on heal meters, aura mastery doesn't show up at all. They should change the resist to absorb, so we could see the 1-2 million healing they're actually ahead of us.

Use meters that show absorb then ? Skada shows it. And since most palas cut down on mastery - we are not seeing big numbers compared to dis priests.

[Restofari]

You got it confused with the holy spec mastery "Illuminated Healing" absorbs.
I'm using Skada, and Aura mastery doesn't show up, only absorbs.

Aura Mastery is this:
"Improve the effect of Resistance Aura by 100%. Lasts 6 sec."

[Deleted]

Nothing wrong with Resto atm, just play better.

Yes play better...play better, play better...(heard that since the beginnig of this patch)

I'm raiding 10 man with priest/pally, currently 6/8 heroic. The fights I'm awesome at are hagara, due to the ice phase where resto druids pwn. And Warmaster Blackhorn, where also the movement is amazing for resto druids. Ultraxion, I fall behind quite a bit, as our pally gets the red buff. Yorsaj, I have been on a kill and I can heal it, but I don't feel completely adequate there. Yon'ozz there is usually a maximum of 2% difference in the three of us healers. And I'm usually maybe 1% behind our paladin on our Spine progression (but thats progression...)

You can push the meters, and have fights which you own at, which in it's own way makes this tier more interesting than the last tier, where if you weren't topping there was something wrong with your play syle (barring Hc baleroc, the pally fight) In our own way this tier, especially in 10 man, there is a massive push for us to be adaptable, tank healing when needed, hots when needed, taking care of the random players that stand in fire. I feel a bit like the glue sometimes with our healing team which sometimes is more fun, than just seeing yourself consistantly topping the meters.

Having said that I do think we lack external cooldowns and yes it would be nice to either have a shorter cd on nature's swiftness or a "placeable" efflorescence (damn the players who move somewhere random when you go to swiftmend them :P).

[Torty]

The state of resto druids atm is similar to what we had in the start of Cataclysm. If you have an ability to bring another healing class, bring it.

On some encounters this tier druids were so bad, it was not even funny. I had to rip my ass off, get rank among top 10 to lose to our paladins who /trollfaced to rank 100+. When they managed to get rank in top10, I was like 10-20% behind on hps and that's with Tranq shown in log while BoSac and AM not. Really, I'm pretty sure I will outheal my own druid on my paladin once I manage to get my hands on ilvl403 HoU and ilvl403 Maw.

[Thehavalina]

Tried resto for a day and went back to feral. If you want to be successful in pvp as a resto druid you need to be insanely good and you also need to be playing with teammates that are really good

Not a PvP thread.