Resto - BFA Changes

[fallenangel-succ]

But, Holy Priests are getting a 2nd full raid cooldown to compensate, in addition to a raid wide Mana Tide type effect that will make their spec all but mandatory in every raid comp. Where is Druid's compensation? At the same time as they are getting a 2nd raid CD, we are losing all of our personal throughput CDs outside of Tranq if we want to keep Germination.

Comparing specific abilities between specs is pointless.
As for your predictions...it was doom and gloom for Legion, sprinkled with cheers for SotF. It didn't quite work out like that, though. I can't be sure but I also recall you calling holy priests mandatory for Symbol of Hope. We all know how that worked out.

[Tiberria]

Comparing specific abilities between specs is pointless.
As for your predictions...it was doom and gloom for Legion, sprinkled with cheers for SotF. It didn't quite work out like that, though. I can't be sure but I also recall you calling holy priests mandatory for Symbol of Hope. We all know how that worked out.

When you're talking about something as standardized and necessary to viability as raid CD, yes it makes sense.

[fallenangel-succ]

When you're talking about something as standardized and necessary to viability as raid CD, yes it makes sense.

Mana regen is not a raid CD, and therefor has nothing to do with the discussion, then.
Barrier is a whole different beast entirely and certainly not ideal in many cases. Yet disc is viable.
Mana tide is buffed by the resto shaman artifact.
Revival is just not very strong.

[Cheze]

it's important to remember that the azerite neck stuff will probably add/modify abilities also

which is another way of saying 'wait and see' which isn't very satisfying, but still

[Deleted]

it's important to remember that the azerite neck stuff will probably add/modify abilities also

which is another way of saying 'wait and see' which isn't very satisfying, but still

But if we can’t theorycraft on datamined abilities how would we survive the months between now and the 5th of September (yea you heard it here first ^.^)

[Super Kami Dende]

Germination and Flourish being on the Same Tier is the biggest Aids change.

[silkworm]

I'm not sure what kinds of high key's you've been pushing, but the ability to top someone off from 70-80% a whole second sooner is a huge deal when you're running out of cc or on some bosses like hyrja and you'd see it fairly often if you watch vids and streams...

I mean anything over +18 is high key for me. Well now with higher gear maybe 19 or 20 is the norm. 15-16 and below is like LFR now if you are all around 950 ilvl.

My point is, in any high key where mechanics can one shot even the tank you are not able to save soemone who has no Prydaz, no survival cd's available at that moment(or does not use them), no avoidance gear, low on versatility, does not know the combat etc. A good example is avalanche in Neltharion's lair. Most people who does this dungeon in lower keys (15 and below)does not even know it because it does not one shot you. You don't even notice it as dps because the healer has to heal you right. It is avoidable and easier to avoid with a weak aura help. But in +18 +19 or above it can one shot most dps, or make them so low that they can't survive other collateral damage. Either they avoid that shit, or use CD, have Prydaz or has %20 avoidance on gear. No amount of skill or talent can save them at that point.

So that 1 second extra is not that useful. As you do keys, you should know which packs to open tree form and even in Tree form where you have insta cast regrowths with +%15 heal(MoC talent)and extra healing from tree with Velen's , with %100 crit (Abundance talent)and with double rejuvs on them(mastery bonus for your crit regrowth) and Dreamer buff (2pcT21), in each gcd you can heal for 4 mil easily + your hots ticking (200-250k rejuv ticks say hello) + 1 mil living seeds on them but still you can not save them unless they do one or all of the above to survive the mechanic or pack in question.

So coming back to original question, removal of HT has no effect. There was no reason to use it, therefore there is no reason to worry about it being removed.

[axxey]

Avalanche is a cast ability by breakers, a stunable and CCable mob and it has travel time falling from the roof and you can just move out of it, if you're getting hit by it you shouldnt be doing high keys.

Revival is instant and shorter cooldown than most raid CDs.
Tranq standing still will be cancer and everyone(developers included) forget than unlike other raid CDs you're also not casting for that 8 second channel and have fall off of your normal healing throughput.
Divine hymn the stand still equivilent has holy priest mastery ticks and 10% increased healing taken on targets for 8 seconds.

[Tiberria]

Avalanche is a cast ability by breakers, a stunable and CCable mob and it has travel time falling from the roof and you can just move out of it, if you're getting hit by it you shouldnt be doing high keys.

Revival is instant and shorter cooldown than most raid CDs.
Tranq standing still will be cancer and everyone(developers included) forget than unlike other raid CDs you're also not casting for that 8 second channel and have fall off of your normal healing throughput.
Divine hymn the stand still equivilent has holy priest mastery ticks and 10% increased healing taken on targets for 8 seconds.

Not to mention that DH gives 10% healing to every other healer in the raid for that duration, and that extra power needs to be factored in. The problem with stationary Tranq is that is mechanically the worst raid cooldown in the game, because it has all the mechanical disadvantages with nothing special about it to offset those disadvantages.

Healing Tide Totem - Scales fully with haste, instant cast/no channel/movement restriction. You can continue casting other spells during its duration.

Revival - Instant cast/immediate up front healing. Generally heals for a lot less total healing and not as good on ticking raid damage as the duration based CDs, but it's a 1 GCD set and forget, and has the advantage of being able to be used as a snap reaction save in situations where 8-12 second duration CDs are too slow.

Power Word: Barrier - Instant cast, no channel or movement speed restriction. Strongest raid wide damage reduction CD in the game. Limited by range (but they made it a lot bigger). Other big advantage is that it doesn't count as healing on meters, so you basically get the use of it for free, whereas the healing of throughput CDs typically constitutes up to 10-15% of your total throughput, and the specs are balanced around that throughput.

Divine Hymn - 8 second channel. Can't cast spells during it. Forced to stand still for 8 seconds. Gives +10% healing taken to the entire raid, so buffs other healers over and above its meter throughput. Fully scales with mastery, and mastery contribution under Echo of Light constitutes a lot of healing that is actually done by DH, but not attributed to it on logs (it's a lot better than WCL makes it look).

Aura Mastery - Assuming that you take Sac, 6 second duration. Requires standing still to make the most of it, but unlike Tranq/DH, you don't lose the entire value of it if you have to move a step. You have to cast spells to empower it, which cost mana. Also have the option to talent into a strong damage reduction CD instead of Sac (Mercy is generally pretty terrible), so the extra flexibility is nice.

Tranquility - 8 second channel. Can not cast any other spells during its duration. Can not move during its duration without cancelling it. No special bonus effects like the +healing Divine Hymn has. 0 scaling with haste. Scaling with mastery is weak, because it's a raid wide spell, and you typically only have 2+ mastery stacks on a subset of the raid (but the new scaling HoT effect will help somewhat with this if it counts as a Harmony HoT).

That's the inherent problem with Tranq. It's the worst of all of the raid cooldowns. You have every possible limitation, with no special perks associated with it. It's just throughput and nothing else. It also historically doesn't do more throughput than the other raid CDs, despite them making statements about how it should "heal for more than HTT and Revival", etc. in the past. Even if it did 20% more healing, it's probably not all that valuable, since the other raid CDs have to be good enough, meaning you won't need it.

There's a reason it's had movement available for it 90% of its existence as a raid viable spell; it's needed to make up for the overall mechanical inferiority. They need to either put the mobility back on it, or rework the mechanics of the spell (hint - 8 second channels are dumb game design in 2018) to compensate.

[worcester]

@Tibberia Not sure how accurate wowanalyzer is but the +10% healing taken actually seems to heal more than DH itself (on top of half of DH is healing is made up of Renew the Faith contribution via PoM and Renew) the biggest downside is that it's spread over 8+10-to-15 seconds (so 23s worst case scenario) for all the heal to come through (while other cooldowns take 0-8 seconds to do all its healing), which is a bigger weakness than not being able to move.

Let's not forget that Velen's is also skewing the power level of cooldowns (esp. AoS and LW). And the infinity healing combo shamans can do (although only useful on 1 encounter which 99% of raiders haven't done) besides being so well rounded and having spirit link - which in my opinion is the most powerful cooldown. The game director plays a resto shammy so I guess it can't be helped.

IIRC, they are adding the Cata tranq hot back so tranq might once again be one of the stronger cooldowns. I feel like they want to move rdruids to a more tank healing spec with all the hot stacking and how their mastery works and how they are pushing Ironbark (which is the best external based on availability) and making flourish compete with germination, changes to regrowth etc. Because currently there is 1 tank healer spec while the rest of us 3 raid healers are fighting for spots. I always imagined holy priest or mw would change, but seeing the hpriests changes it is out of the running.
Would rather be a niche spec with a permanent spot than being the "4th" healer every tier.

[Glormon]

[MENTION=689066]
I feel like they want to move rdruids to a more tank healing spec with all the hot stacking and how their mastery works and how they are pushing Ironbark (which is the best external based on availability) and making flourish compete with germination, changes to regrowth etc. Because currently there is 1 tank healer spec while the rest of us 3 raid healers are fighting for spots. I always imagined holy priest or mw would change, but seeing the hpriests changes it is out of the running.
Would rather be a niche spec with a permanent spot than being the "4th" healer every tier.

Just adding in my 2 cents to this. It doesn't make a lot of sense to make -two- dedicated healing classes that focus on the tanks, when the current one already does its job perfectly fine with randomly added in spells from the other healers as fights progress. I imagine in part why most of the classes became more aoe healing focused is because how ultimately encounters were being designed with the constant or frequent damage the raid was taking as a whole. Having two folks specifically designed to keep just the one or two guys up just doesnt seem to mesh well in my mind. Becoming a "niche" spec doesnt help to get a permanent spot when theres already an existing one that works and is already well known for its role in a comp.

[worcester]

I get your point. However with that logic, why even add more specs to the game.

Becoming a "niche" spec doesnt help to get a permanent spot when theres already an existing one that works and is already well known for its role in a comp.

This was rhetorical because no single spec should be considered to have a permanent spot due to an important niche (at the bare minimum there should be at least one other spec sharing that niche). Bubble disc had a unique niche and were also "already well known for its role in a comp". So why is that not okay and this is okay? 5.0 mistweaver had a completely smart heal kit, when og throughout healers were using archaic "party" heals and "ReM but doesn't bounce to the whole raid" i.e. smart healing isn't ok but Beacon is?

Wish I could go back in time and post your response to everyone who complained about absorbs and smart heals.

[silkworm]

Avalanche is a cast ability by breakers, a stunable and CCable mob and it has travel time falling from the roof and you can just move out of it, if you're getting hit by it you shouldnt be doing high keys.

My point was to explain having insta Healing Touch with abundance talent was/is useless in any given scenario. It was probably only one instance where you may have actually used HT but I wanted to explain that even that is irrelevant and HT loss means nothing.

[Purpleisbetter]

Insta HT have huge place in quakening weeks or tyrannical Medivh.


Quite useful on WoA and in VoTW at Eye boss.

HT has its.small niche, but it's an irrelevant spell in any raid scenarios

[mytheiya]

you people are makeing me depressed..I only play resto druid, and if I cant raid because wow breaks my class I'm gonna cry

[Nevcairiel]

You should dig up all the doomsaying from before Legion launched, and somehow Resto Druids still raided.

[wakii]

Just relax guys, most of you playing druid for ages now and you should know how the game works (Paladin/Disc/Shaman is and will be the meta). You talking about Tranq mobile vs stationary ... man really? before you even press the button a disc just sniped you anyways. Just enjoy the class because of its coolness but expect to be bottom healer (except some special fights that favor hots). Nothing will change

[Deleted]

(...) Just enjoy the class because of its coolness but expect to be bottom healer (except some special fights that favor hots). Nothing will change

First of all: I agree that some changes sound questionable. I mostly dislike Flourish and Germination on the same tier - not because Im afraid we won't be competetive but rather because it limits our infight options and reduces the amount of buttons to push even further. Rdruid is already a rejuv bot removing even more possible actions could make the class less interesting.
However, this whole "we are gonna end up being the worst healer" seems a bit overdramatic. We've been between decent and completely overpowered throughout legion with ToS being the exception due to T20 so I really don't get it why people act like rdruid are and have been bottom tier. So far, the BfA changes seem to be inconveniences (DB and tranq - which right now is a rly strong cd even though some people act as if it bad) or changes which make the class less interesting to play, however, there are not really any changes that would threaten the viability of rdruid in the following raids.

[torros]

First of all: I agree that some changes sound questionable. I mostly dislike Flourish and Germination on the same tier - not because Im afraid we won't be competetive but rather because it limits our infight options and reduces the amount of buttons to push even further. Rdruid is already a rejuv bot removing even more possible actions could make the class less interesting.
However, this whole "we are gonna end up being the worst healer" seems a bit overdramatic. We've been between decent and completely overpowered throughout legion with ToS being the exception due to T20 so I really don't get it why people act like rdruid are and have been bottom tier. So far, the BfA changes seem to be inconveniences (DB and tranq - which right now is a rly strong cd even though some people act as if it bad) or changes which make the class less interesting to play, however, there are not really any changes that would threaten the viability of rdruid in the following raids.

They should just turn all healers into shamans so they can all be OP. They get the most ridiculous cooldowns, ank which seems to be unconsidered with all of the brez complaining/nerfing nonsense, a better efflo, better mana efficiency, etc, etc. And don't even talk to me about them in pvp.

At least if they are going to continue nerfing druids and buffing shamans give people the option for a free character swap to change your nerfed healer into an rsham.

Every other healer has a more frequently used spell that scales regardless of group size like light of dawn, CH, POM, where wild growth is always limited to 6, efflo only hits 3.

[Slaxx]

However, this whole "we are gonna end up being the worst healer" seems a bit overdramatic. We've been between decent and completely overpowered throughout legion with ToS being the exception due to T20 so I really don't get it why people act like rdruid are and have been bottom tier.

I got to agree there, I love playing my druid and like you said just for t20 i had some issues keeping up with the other classes. T19 and 21 i'm most of the times ahead of everyone else.