Is the resto druid whine really justifiable?

[snaxattax]

resto druids are generally perceived as the weakest healer in a 25 man because they don't have absorbs and their cooldowns are relatively weak. i'm not sure that even with the buff that a resto druid tranq will out-heal a shaman popping EM+berzerking+ascendance+healing tide. the only real benefit they bring is another source of battle rez... but usually in 25s you have tons of warlocks, moonkins and DKs to cover this role which further skews things against druids in 25s.

monks have avoided being completely useless in 25s because their throughput is substantially higher, and isn't gimped by raid size.

most 25 man raids use druids as moonkin for symbiosis, innervates (moonkin don't need their own innervate to maintain mana), and extra battle rez.

[Projali]

Druid throughput is fine in a vacuum. It's when you get into a raid environment where there's absorbs and monk throughput that you run into issues with overhealing and meter envy.

Druid positives:

• Symbiosis is great. Another cooldown for your tank is a positive. Getting spiritwalker's grace can help make tranquility less of a burden to use. (not specific to resto)
• Their throughput over sustained periods of damage is good.
• Stampeding Roar is great on some fights (not specific to resto)

Druid problems:

• Healing Touch and Nourish see virtually no use as regrowth is just flat out superior.
• Rejuv is a mana hog if you try to blanket style like Wrath. As I understand it, Blizzard doesn't like this style for druids despite many druids loving it.
• A HOTW Moonkin tranq is comparable/better throughput than a resto's tranq? What?
• Druid's lack strong reactive healing tools. Swiftmend which requires a hot and NS+HT are about it.
• Ironbark is really the only utility this spec has that isn't just "ramped up healing output." The one minute cool down is a great change.
• Wild Growth gets outshone by other smart heals (let's be honest, PoM is just stupid good). It also bounces to pets. Woof.
• Mushrooms remain an incredibly frustrating mechanic at times.
• In ten mans where healer damage output can be important, disc and mw provide better damage output and heal while doing it.

Druid's have not evolved beyond the niche of a pure throughput healer. Monks do it better, provide more utility and can do it all from melee with no risk of ranged mechanics. Paladins and disc priests limit the effectiveness of a druid's throughput with absorbs and damage reductions. Shamans provide Vigor and Earthliving just from simply casting their direct heals and HST/HTT are vastly superior to WG/Tranq. The nature of those mechanics are superior to throughput because it is simply better to prevent the incoming damage in the first place than it is to have to heal it back up. When you look at paladins, priests, shamans and the newly designed monks, everyone's play style has changed quite a bit since BC. Druid's really haven't seen drastic changes in mechanics.

Chances are unless you're pushing heroic progression, you will do fine as a resto druid if you play well with your team. The class can still be very frustrating when your rejuv ends up providing virtually no benefit to the target when you cast it, though.

But hey, at least you guys aren't as bad off as resto shamans in 10 mans, eh? EH?

[Glurp]

A lot of fights this tier don't allow Rejuv to be used to it's fullest. If Rejuv can't be used properly then resto druids are bad. In some cases it might just be the fact that you're in a mid level guild and none of the other healers are allowing the Druid's HoTs to tick properly and just spam heals until everyone is 100%.

[AvatarM]

At least I play in 10 mans. If I played in 25m, probably i would already stopped playing or rerolled. I powerlvled a disc priest, since my guild lacks one, if situation doesn´t change in 5.4 PTR, i will reroll for it. 491 ilvl in 2 weeks /cheers =(

[nightfalls]

• Healing Touch and Nourish see virtually no use as regrowth is just flat out superior.
• Rejuv is a mana hog if you try to blanket style like Wrath. As I understand it, Blizzard doesn't like this style for druids despite many druids loving it.
• A HOTW Moonkin tranq is comparable/better throughput than a resto's tranq? What?
• Druid's lack strong reactive healing tools. Swiftmend which requires a hot and NS+HT are about it.
• Ironbark is really the only utility this spec has that isn't just "ramped up healing output." The one minute cool down is a great change.
• Wild Growth gets outshone by other smart heals (let's be honest, PoM is just stupid good). It also bounces to pets. Woof.
• Mushrooms remain an incredibly frustrating mechanic at times.
• In ten mans where healer damage output can be important, disc and mw provide better damage output and heal while doing it.

What I'm reading is "Blizzard doesn't know what druids' direction should be"

- Absorbs are eating up Rejuv because Blizzard specifically doesn't want Rejuv blanketing. So Rejuv is underpowered (compare to ReM for instance)
- Healing Touch and Nourish seem crappy because there's little to no direction as to the tank healer role (despite the fact that druids do have potential if spells are worked right to contribute good single target healing)
- Outside of Rejuv blanketing (which Blizzard doesn't want) druids are a purely reactive healer, yet as you mentioned their reactive healing is little-to-none
- Wild Growth problems are similar to Rejuv (Blizzard doesn't want "blanketing" hence nerfing the CD but without it there's little to no power to the abilities)
- Ironbark is a positive change, Symbiosis is also in my opinion
- I think we can all agree Mushrooms are a complete failure of design so far?

Point being, I think Druids can either use some more proactive abilities. Redesigning the mastery is a good place to start, almost all mastery have some sort of proactive or even reactive aspect except for druids which is just straight up throughput. Another positive step would be more short-cooldown abilities that can allow for more Rejuv spreading and WG blanketing (Tree of Life is a talent and it's Lifebloom blanketing is one place to start).

For instance, perhaps a 1 minute CD that shortens the cooldown of WG by 50% and "bounces" Rejuv to hit two targets when cast. Perhaps a buff to Living Seed (or allowing it to proc off of Rejuv). Having a 1-2 minute throughput cooldown (for burst AoE) that creates a "WG - RG - RG - WG" rotation (possibly substituting Rejuv for RG) would go far.

Or maybe Blizzard should admit that Druids should be more reactive and allow for more direct healing and "rolling" HoTs. Mushrooms could also be changed to make them more reactive.

Either way the class needs a redesign in my books, shame as they had good potential but as many, many people will agree, a lot of its potential got spent on monks.

[Druover]

OP, for what its worth, I love resto druids and dont want the class to be redesigned at all. I know I'll get flamed for this. But I have a few arguments for why we might be lower on rankings:

1. Everyone says the good heals switched to disc back in 5.0 right? So why would trees be on top of WoL in 5.2?

2. As people gear up, absorbs are going to steal more and more of our hots. Its just the way it works. So as people's gear gets better, and HPS in general goes up, absorb classes will start to dominate sites hps meter rankings. I admittedly didn't see it, but I would guess that an evenly geared/skilled disc and tree would be very competitive the first weeks of new progression, and it will decrease as gear increases.

But thats just the way the classes work. Trees throughput potential is just as good, if not better. It just doesn't show up that way on meters. I think blizz has addressed alot of the concerns with trees, and I think we will be one of the top if not the top class with the 5.3 changes (changes to both trees and absorb classes).

I love the heal style of resto druids. I'm fine with tweaking things, but I dont want to become more reactive. Its easy to play whack-a-mol on grids. I like the planning aspect.

[Ryzzen]

OP, for what its worth, I love resto druids and dont want the class to be redesigned at all. I know I'll get flamed for this. But I have a few arguments for why we might be lower on rankings:

1. Everyone says the good heals switched to disc back in 5.0 right? So why would trees be on top of WoL in 5.2?

2. As people gear up, absorbs are going to steal more and more of our hots. Its just the way it works. So as people's gear gets better, and HPS in general goes up, absorb classes will start to dominate sites hps meter rankings. I admittedly didn't see it, but I would guess that an evenly geared/skilled disc and tree would be very competitive the first weeks of new progression, and it will decrease as gear increases.

But thats just the way the classes work. Trees throughput potential is just as good, if not better. It just doesn't show up that way on meters. I think blizz has addressed alot of the concerns with trees, and I think we will be one of the top if not the top class with the 5.3 changes (changes to both trees and absorb classes).

I love the heal style of resto druids. I'm fine with tweaking things, but I dont want to become more reactive. Its easy to play whack-a-mol on grids. I like the planning aspect.

Where do you see a tree on top of WoL? You mean 10 normal LS, where he 2 healed with a seemingly very bad holy pally? Ya, let's use that for arguments sake. In 10 man, 2 healing, a druid can do well. There will actually be stuff to heal, unless the other healer is a disc or holy pally that actually know how to play their class.

[AvatarM]

OP, for what its worth, I love resto druids and dont want the class to be redesigned at all. I know I'll get flamed for this. But I have a few arguments for why we might be lower on rankings:

1. Everyone says the good heals switched to disc back in 5.0 right? So why would trees be on top of WoL in 5.2?

2. As people gear up, absorbs are going to steal more and more of our hots. Its just the way it works. So as people's gear gets better, and HPS in general goes up, absorb classes will start to dominate sites hps meter rankings. I admittedly didn't see it, but I would guess that an evenly geared/skilled disc and tree would be very competitive the first weeks of new progression, and it will decrease as gear increases.

But thats just the way the classes work. Trees throughput potential is just as good, if not better. It just doesn't show up that way on meters. I think blizz has addressed alot of the concerns with trees, and I think we will be one of the top if not the top class with the 5.3 changes (changes to both trees and absorb classes).

I love the heal style of resto druids. I'm fine with tweaking things, but I dont want to become more reactive. Its easy to play whack-a-mol on grids. I like the planning aspect.

WTF are you talking about?? You are happy to be OK? Raids dont need OK. Beeing a Resto druid, you are nerfing your guilds progression. Absorbs need to be nerfed. Why the fuck shields have 15 secs durations and HoTs have 12 secs? attonement need to be nerfed, and 5.3 changes are nothing, priests will continue to attonement their way to top healling metters and do 70k dps. You do 70k dps while top healing? NO. Your nerfing your raid. You do 330k dps as a tank while doing 90k hps+ (paly tanks) you are nerfing your raid not bringing them.

"My guild is fine with me". This is crap. A 10 man raid comp that have a disc priest and paly tank is like to have 11 players in 10 man raid. If you dont have them, you are doing heroics modes in SUPER HARD MODE, and if you dont raid 5 times a week, 134123 hours per day, with a subpar comp, you will probably not see lei shen HC dead before 5.4. For me, its not OK.

[Deleted]

I miss the good old days when healing was about your ability to actually keep people alive instead of your ability to top the heal meters. It does not matter, at all, what your HPS is if you could have saved the main tank and failed to do so... just saying!

so when your dieing on megaera rampages because a mistweaver monk is doing 200k, a paladin is doing 200k, but the druid can only output say 120k... then people start dieing... your telling me HPS doesnt matter then?

[Sunfyre]

Balance Druid tranquility is also on an eight minute cooldown, so it's hard to really say that in any way it's better.

[nightfalls]

so when your dieing on megaera rampages because a mistweaver monk is doing 200k, a paladin is doing 200k, but the druid can only output say 120k... then people start dieing... your telling me HPS doesnt matter then?

Not only that, but I don't really think druids are the best triage healers either compared to say a paladin, shaman, or of course the well-placed Void Shift.

[Raugnaut]

Something that I mentioned in a previous threads was buffing Living Seed in 3 ways, which are A) allowing Living Seed to proc from all critical heals, B) Allowing Living Seed to stack, capping at 50% of druid's health, and C) granting Living Seed "overkill" protection- I.E if a target with 100k hp and a 30k seed takes 120k damage, the Seed blooms, "healing" the overkill damage, and leaving the target with 10k health. Similar to absorbs, yes, except it counts as pure healing.

[Deleted]

Where do you see a tree on top of WoL? You mean 10 normal LS, where he 2 healed with a seemingly very bad holy pally? Ya, let's use that for arguments sake. In 10 man, 2 healing, a druid can do well. There will actually be stuff to heal, unless the other healer is a disc or holy pally that actually know how to play their class.

This is exactly what he is saying. Numbers wise resto druids are balanced. With current healing (absorb) mechanics they just look worse than they actually are.

[Pull My Finger]

On a side note, the term and mindset of "outhealing" is one of the ridiculous things ever. I have a feeling that some healers are actually dps in disguise and heal because it secures their raid spot.

[Deleted]

Not sure why they ever destroyed rejuv blanketing and just gave it to paladins as another part of their godmode toolkit

[Abattoir]

Our guild is by no means hardcore, but is currently 12/12 norm and would have been a little further if we had not made the decision to change from 10 to 25 man just after the start of the tier which meant teaching/gearing/getting to know new members.
I heal as Resto along with, usually, another druid, a Holy priest, a pally and a shammy and tbh so far I cant see what all the whining is about. Maybe once we start hitting the harder HC modes I will but up until now all 5 of us have been taking turns topping the meters depending on what fight it is and never is anyone so below the rest that I've though it was due to the spec being broken, usually its just down to that fights mechanics or someone having an off day.
Our new buffs will be welcomed but really I don't see why theres so much hate. If your only priority is topping WoL then your not playing the game right.

[Deleted]

I have played a resto druid for a number of years now and I do feel that absorbs are undermining the resto healing set at the moment.

As as example, when we were progressing HC Council. My overhealing was more than the disc priest and holy pally's combined in our 10 man.
Their main healing was their absorb mechanics rather than direct heals. It made me a sad night elf.


The mushrooms were a good step to help with the overhealing issue but I think they were terribly implemented.

A guild mate of mine actually came up with a pretty decent idea for mushrooms but i'm sure it would be horrible to implement.

1. You can place a mushroom buff on a player, one to a player maximum of 3 up at any one time. (hilarious to see a large mushroom growing out of someone's back)

2. The charge up mechanic is the same, overhealing grows them.

3. Range is the same, 8 yards, only now your mushrooms are mobile instead of trying to predict sometimes where your raid might be.

4. To prevent abuse of healing done by the mushrooms in pvp for example, a single mushroom cant heal a single player for more than 8% of their hp.

5. However, the different mushrooms can heal the same player. So if the three players with the buffs are grouped up, then those people can take up 24% of their total hp as a heal.

As i said, i think it would make the mushrooms an extremely viable and flexible tool but then I can imagine the implementation of it would be a total nightmare from a coding perspective.

[devildjz]

I have played a resto druid since vanilla, and granted we've been the best healing class sometimes and the worst other times. But never have I experienced this much whine on druids beeing underpowered.

I see all these threads (Here on mmo-champion and other places) where people are crying that they can't keep up with the other classes, and that they are rerolling disc priest or what ever. And it kind of bothers me because I do not preform bad at all, and is yet to be outhealed by any other healer (i've played with disc priest, holy paladin and resto shaman) in a 10-man environment.

So why all the whine? I look at these threads and see the problem mostly as a "L2P" issue.

And yes, I know that we could use some imporvement in 25man, but it's not as bad as people make it sound.

Other Things later even in 10 men if ur Beating ur Holy pala with 30% i really really wanna see your logs either ur just here to troll on druid or ur Pally is so bad that he cant even beat Resto Druid

[Deleted]

Your healing teammates are most likely rubbish if you're on the same gearlevel and they are unable to outperform you. Granted, the step between the restodruid and rest of the healers are smaller in a 10man enviroment.

I have played a resto druid since vanilla, and granted we've been the best healing class sometimes and the worst other times. But never have I experienced this much whine on druids beeing underpowered.

I see all these threads (Here on mmo-champion and other places) where people are crying that they can't keep up with the other classes, and that they are rerolling disc priest or what ever. And it kind of bothers me because I do not preform bad at all, and is yet to be outhealed by any other healer (i've played with disc priest, holy paladin and resto shaman) in a 10-man environment.

So why all the whine? I look at these threads and see the problem mostly as a "L2P" issue.

And yes, I know that we could use some imporvement in 25man, but it's not as bad as people make it sound.

---------- Post added 2013-05-21 at 04:16 PM ----------

Tortos is a shitfight due to wildgrowth targetting pets unless players are one lower health. Mushrooms hitting pets as well severly nerf the potential of that spell.

If you not outgear them by a large margin, they are not good enough. A Holy Paly played properly should outheal you on most fights, if not all fights. Monks palyed properly too, they are improved versions of us with uplift and infinite mana with meta gem procs + jabs, they reforge all their spirit into crit/haste. Disc priests are simple better then Resto druids, cause of their utility, they are OP in double dip fights like Horridon, Jinrok and Jikun, cause of damage modifiers; and they can simple snipe all your heals in situtations like thunderstruck, dire call, and etc..

Even with 5.3 nerf and duid buffs, even if we had the same troughput, we don´t have the same utility. With a tank paladin and a healer in 10 man, you can simple 1 tank fights like Megaera and Iron Qon. All other classes bring utility to the raid. Mistweavers don´t, but they have uplift/thunder focus tea, that are very strong for thunderstruck and dire call situations. Our "version" of this is Shrooms, but they dont work when the raid is spread. Our better CD is Tranquility, but moonkins have it too, so why bring resto druids over this classes? In 10 man, take a balance druid, put a disc priest and a paly healing. Monk in 3 healing fights or fights like Horridon, Lei shen, Tortos. I think the only fight that resto druid is the better "doubles" on heal are Tortos, Mistweaver + Resto Druid.

[Druover]

Your healing teammates are most likely rubbish if you're on the same gearlevel and they are unable to outperform you. Granted, the step between the restodruid and rest of the healers are smaller in a 10man enviroment.



---------- Post added 2013-05-21 at 04:16 PM ----------

Tortos is a shitfight due to wildgrowth targetting pets unless players are one lower health. Mushrooms hitting pets as well severly nerf the potential of that spell.

I'm sure you saw that in patch 5.3, players are now getting more heavily weighted than pets when determining smart heal (WG) targets