Resto druid broken?

[Krowz]

Perhaps broken is a bit harsh. But here is my point

Resto druids have always been raid healers. With wild growth, hots, and now efflorescence, we can heal multiple people relatively quickly. Now with cata, that's not the case, and YES, I understand that this is not WoTLK anymore. But from everything I've seen from beta video's, top guild logs, etc, it seems that resto druids are very good tank healers and TERRIBLE raid healers, and here's why.

3x lifebloom and nourish spam is not only effective healing for a tank, but it is essentially endless healing for the druid. With a low cost to nourish, lifebloom consistently being refreshed, and Omen procs used for healing touch (as it refreshes lifebloom stacks) we can basically heal forever, given you are properly geared with a nice amount of spirit. In periods of extra damage, we can throw on a rejuv for extra healing, swiftmend it for a high instant heal, and continue spamming nourish. But what happens when your raid (or even the other 4 people in your heroic dungeon) take damage?

Lets look at your options, Wild growth and efflorescense.
Wild growth right now, is a joke. With a relatively large mana cost, it should be worth it. Yet it's healing for half of what I saw in WoTLK, while our health pools have Quadrupled. With decent gear, you can expect wild growth to give about 5-7% health to the people it affects, and that's kind of a generous percentage to be honest. Should it be giving 20% health? Of course not, but with a 5k mana cost, I feel that it should be a bit higher.

Your other AoE option, efflorescense.
First, to get this spell, you need to cast a Rejuv (4.8k mana) then cast swiftmend (1.8k mana). Having to cast 2 spells is a bit clunky, especially with how high the cost is, but even when you do this, the buff from efflorescense is 500 or so a second for 7 seconds, meaning the person you swiftmend and anyone directly around him will get the full benefit... a whopping 3-4k health out of your 110k. Again, a simple fix for this would be a moderate buff to the % from swiftmend, and possibly remove the mana cost of swiftmend (this idea is not ridiculous, I remind you holy paladins have multiple heals that do not cost any mana).

I'm finding that my GM is sitting me for holy paladins, and with all these class changes for "bring the player, not the class", this doesn't seem right. My guilds tanks have asked me multiple times, "are you sure you have the right gear set on?" when I cast WG and they see a tooltip saying "healing for 409 every second". I've been told to go boomkin rather than heal in many encounters, and other healer classes are brought in.

I know my class, I've been healing since I started playing, and I loved my druid throughout the last 2 expansions. But I feel gimped at the moment, and being in a progression raiding guild that's very competitive on my server, its not a good spot to be in. Am I doing something drastically wrong, or do other people feel this way as well?


TLDR: Scroll back up and read it you lazy troll :P

[Deleted]

I find it extremely difficult to keep mana in heroics, even with dps moving etc, some bosses just do hard aoe that you can't avoid making it such a mana drainer, i'm struggling atm.

[BoomChickn]

I can see what you are talking about, because we need setup to heal people other than the tank efficiently. But yeah triple stack lifebloom always being refreshed lets us sweep the floor on tank healing. You have to be really careful with raid healing, generally I use wild growth for that, and use clearcast procs to healing touch on raid members that it can be effectively used on.

PS:I am expecting a cost reduction on rejuv tbh, dropping it from 5k mana to around 4k or 3.5k. But yeah balancing wild growth to heal around 7.5% of a player's health seems about right to me. And yeah efflorescence just feels weak now, especially for the setup and mana required.

PPS: love the TL/DR

[Krowz]

If blizzard's intent is to make us more valid Tank healers than the other healing classes, that is completely okay. But, we do need some sort of AoE heal to keep up our group in a heroic. Wild growth and efflorescense COMBINED is over 10k mana and doesn't hold a candle to Light of Dawn (which has no mana cost, btw)

[Myrrar]

Don't compare yourself to other healers or their spells. It doesn't matter, what matters is keeping your group alive with what you have. Pallys are op right now, but a good guild isn't going to sit other healers for only pallys.

You are looking at the wrong guilds if that's what you are seeing. Look at Paragons kills. They take 5 healers, 2 pallys, 2 druids, and a priest. Pally>druid>pally>druid>priest. Another fight they used 6 healers adding a sham with the pallys on top and the druids right behind.

Some fights you will Rj spam again, some fights you will direct heal more, every fight will be different. Some fights everyone will heal everything, sometimes assign groups, good guilds will do what they have to do and change to kill a boss, not sit their healers for all pallys. Druids are in no way bad, gimped, or broken, we are just different for boring easy wrath.

[Krowz]

Myrrar I think your misunderstanding my point a little.

It seems to me that Restro druid have gone from the kings of aoe healing, to laughable aoe. This is cata, we shouldn't be able to hit WG and heal people for 20% of they're health. But a 5k mana cost (roughly 5-7% of your total mana) healing people for 500 a tick when we have over 100k health? That is low. Personally I'm finding that WG is far too expensive for the amount of healing it accomplishes, and so I've practically retired it.

Our other option of aoe is efflorescense, which requires us to either Regrowth a target (extremely high mana cost) or rejuv a target (still, hefty cost) and then use more mana to swiftmend, and after all this mana invested, the end result is a 500 a second heal for 5 people. Not only does it feel clunky, but its just simply not worth it.

One other thing I've noticed is our mastery. For our heals to benefit from it, we have to pre hot a target and then hit them with another spell. What my issue with this is that lifebloom is bound to 1 target at a time. Say the tank is taking constant damage and somebody gets hit by something for x amount of damage reducing them to 50% health. You already have lifebloom at 3 stacks on the tank, so do you Rejuv the other person (not gaining any mastery benefit), nourish them (not gaining any mastery benefit) lifebloom them and then nourish them (losing your lifebloom stack on the tank, or rejuv them and then nourish (alot of mana)? What if our mastery was just a flat % increase to Heal over time spells? What would the counter argument to that be?

I'm not trying to be like, OMG WE'RE SO BROKEN FIX US BLIZZARD, I really would like to see discussion about this and see how other druids feel.

I have 0 issues keeping up tanks, but I do have issues with AoE healing in practically any situation. How are you other (ex) tree's standing up so far?

Note: I LOVE the new way healing is. Mana matters, healers have to pick the proper spells, and it makes our job SO much more fun, This post is not for QQ purposes, I really would like to see some discussion

[Clawtrocity]

I've done a few of the fights in the new raids and with a shaman, paladin, and myself all healing I'm noticing a few things. First I'm running out mana half way into a fight. This isn't a problem with my healing style either, I'm mainly using nourish, OoC HT, and lifebloom. I can't afford to use wild growth or rejuvenate or else I'll go oom even faster. Granted I'm in sub par gear, but so are the paladins who are doing much more healing than I am and not running out of mana as fast. The shaman healer I ran with also was running out mana, but managed to do a bit more healing than me on most pulls.

Tranquility is our only viable raid heal and it's a once per fight kind of thing. Tree of life can be used twice on most fights at the very least and is again really only for emergencies as we can only spam lifebloom while we are in it. Rejuvenate is amazing in heroics when used to heal a player that you don't have time to cast a direct heal on, but other than that it's too mana much of a mana cost.

I know I sound like I'm ranting, but I'm more or less just saying facts and what my opinion on the raid is. I'm now being asked to boomkin for a raid which is fine because I pride myself in my versatility, but I was hoping more for a "having a boomking is really nice" instead of "having a tree sucks". I also hope that paladins don't get nerfed because that's where all healers should be. We should all get more gimicky heals that require no mana, but a pre-req. I.E. the swiftmend idea was great. Hopefully this design is still being polished in blizzards eyes and maybe we will see a day where we still are planning our heals out, but we're also having more fun doing it.

[Myrrar]

We have all the same AoE. If you are talking about RJ blanketing, it still happens. Paragons druids Rj spam, keep LB on the tanks, and use RG with omen procs. They use sm every CD for efflor and use tranq. That's really it. They are so high on the meters because they are aoe healing still.

Besides pallys, we are by far the strongest AoE healers right now. If you look through the world top 10 guilds, RJ still is their number one spell by a ton. The only thing that really changed is keeping LB up, efflor, and using RG when omen procs.

I agree that our mastery could and probably should change. But, you will still use your mastery, but it's not an extremely useful stat UNLESS you are in 10s, heroics, or on fights where you assign groups to your healers. In these cases, it's pretty good and gives more throughput than crit.

If you are talking about heroics:
Tank healing is basic.
Group healing is also basic. If one person take dmg RJ them. If the group takes dmg, WG. If either situation needs more healing, Nourish. It gets the hot on target buff + mastery bonus. Efflor is also helping keep people closer to 100%.

Read my posts in these topics and it should explain, especially heroic healing since raid healing is rather gimmicky right now, how to heal:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...aling-rotation
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...vel-85-healing

[Deleted]

This is 100% the way of what I think of resto healing right now, we are great tank healers but we suck at AoE healing. and one of the solutions I can think of right now it to give OoC to work with instant cast spells or that they just pump up the % of WG and Efflorescense. Or give regrowth a bigger initial heal because the amount of healing it gives for the mana cast is BAD!

[Krowz]

A big help for us would be letting OOC affect WG and RJ. It wouldn't be a complete fix, but a step in the direction

[Barracks00]

I'm a pretty good healer, and I've really tried to adjust my play style to fit what Blizzard was aiming for, but it's annoying when people in a five man are calling me out for not aoe healing enough, when they just don't understand that we've only got two aoe heals, and one requires them to stand in a green circle, and they're on 10 and 15 second cool downs.

[Stanton Biston]

So the technique the druids in my guild are using is to use ToL around 60% mana to spam LB for the OoC procs. It works fairly well.

And I know that personally, I'll probably end up a cat or a turkey just because my guild has a billion tanks and we already have our 2 trees.

[Krowz]

For me, the ONLY spell I'm using in ToL is lifebloom. Wild growth is expensive and the added buff from ToL doesn't help. RG is waaay to expensive to use and doesn't heal for a good amount. I do feel that ToL should affect Rejuv somehow. How doesn't it? It's the baseline druid heal, what we're known for. Perhaps in ToL make Rejuv last for 6 seconds and tick every second? Make it tick 50% harder? THAT would be useful, because right now ToL seems to be more of a mana saver than a CD for bigger heals. The only reason I use ToL is for the OOC procs

[Mav986]

I'm a pretty good healer, and I've really tried to adjust my play style to fit what Blizzard was aiming for, but it's annoying when people in a five man are calling me out for not aoe healing enough, when they just don't understand that we've only got two aoe heals, and one requires them to stand in a green circle, and they're on 10 and 15 second cool downs.

If they die and you know it's not your fault, call them out for whatever they did wrong. Blizzard haven't designed the encounters to be unhealable by certain classes. If people are dying and you're doing your absolute best to keep them alive, then either they're doing something wrong, or you're missing some part of the boss mechanics.

[warrcry]

Resto druids have always been raid healers.

Just no. Did you play during Vanilla or tbc?

[Neotokyo]

finally... someone who understands.. i have been having huge issues in heroics.. I can keep the tank up no issues... but the dps are expendable.. I get bitched at for letting them die but hey if they aint avoiding the damage I aint healing it. Boss fights arent the issue.. its the dam trash... I know CC blah blah blah.. but even with this some of the mobs abilites kick out some serious aoe damage.. which I have to heal.. and to aoe heal people with 100k+ hp when my heals tick over for 2k+ (higher with some spells ofc) but seriously.. if I go healing mad and top em all up to full I almost instant oom. really not enjoying resto right now.

[Ravenblade]

The idea of healing now is not to aim for topping people off and heals only healing a fraction of a player's health is also intended, no class is capable of healing others up fully in one go. Also Druids may have been AoE healers in the past - but this is past now. I'm really thinking that people are still in a phase of transition.

Also I'd rather expect mob and boss damage being slightly re-tuned and only a few minor tweaks on Resto mechanics. Major overhauls or hopes of seeing huge HoTs again...nope.
I remember that I took a few lessons in humiliation in Beta, but then I am always the guy who thinks: "Man, I suck, I must get better ASAP!".

[AetherMcLoud]

finally... someone who understands.. i have been having huge issues in heroics.. I can keep the tank up no issues... but the dps are expendable.. I get bitched at for letting them die but hey if they aint avoiding the damage I aint healing it. Boss fights arent the issue.. its the dam trash... I know CC blah blah blah.. but even with this some of the mobs abilites kick out some serious aoe damage.. which I have to heal.. and to aoe heal people with 100k+ hp when my heals tick over for 2k+ (higher with some spells ofc) but seriously.. if I go healing mad and top em all up to full I almost instant oom. really not enjoying resto right now.

On trash you can usually just nourish the DPS a little, or give them a hot first and then nourish. If they die faster than you can nourish on trash, it's not your healing that's the problem. Then you should have used more CC or the DPS should have moved out of the bad stuff or not taken aggro from the tank.

It's the bossfights that give me headaches. There's lots of pretty much unavoidable aoe damage (the flamebreath of the 3rd boss in hc grim batol for example, he incinerates everything in a 180° cone in front of him, after suddenly changing orientation, and it's extremly hard, nigh impossible, that not a single group member takes a huge chunk of damage from the breath) and in a bossfight a dead DPS actually matters while with trash you can let them die.

[Deleted]

It's challenging, it really is.

But broken? No.

I think a lot of people are stuck in the old mindset of us being able to keep people topped off with relative ease. Me, I personally never cast anything other than a Rejuv on a DPS that hovers around 50% hp, and I make sure to ask my DPSers to use whatever skills they can to self-heal (Enraged Regeneration, Word of Glory, Recuperate etc etc). Sure, it might mess up their rotation a bit but honestly, I can accept us killing the boss 15 seconds later, if it means that everyone is alive and well.

Also, a lot of the AoE damage can be migitated by Anti-Magic Shield, Cloak of Shadows, Barkskin - You have to make sure you tell your DPSers to keep an eye on their own hp and to use their migitative and regenerative skills. They might have a hard time adjusting to it, but it will eventually pay out for the both of you.

DPSers used to see healers as babysitters in Wotlk and for some, that mindset still sticks. But once you make them realize how important it is to survive, rather than squeezing out another 500 DPS, you're going to have a much easier time.

Oh and, avoid random dungeons as much as possible.

[Mroz123]

I remember healing when I first went to heroics in 333+- gear. I was oom constantly now I am in full 346 and it's so much better. Actually more then one could expect from a few item levels. I can imagine even better improvement when I get some 359 epics