Druid strongest healer atm?

[imoom]

After have done icc25 this week i noticed that I was leading healing done with quite alot over the other healers, often 10-15 % of healing done over the 2nd healer (resto shaman), maybe should notice tho that this was a half pug where only me and resto shaman was "good" healers.

Buut. 17k hps on BQL and still 75% of my healing being overheal gives a total output of 65k hps... We did have disc and holy priest with us, aswell as other resto druid, only healing class not represented was holy pala, which i have tested on alt instead.

Can anyone confirm or decline that resto druids are OP, or was it just that the other healers were to bad giving my hots space to pwn?

[Deleted]

Last time I checked, healing meters were not a good way of measuring who's a strong healer and who is not.

[imoom]

Last time I checked, healing meters were not a good way of measuring who's a strong healer and who is not.

You are right. winning healing on all bosses in ICC means nothing. cos the priest prob was the only healer doing miraculous saves on people that was dying...
and then he /afk'ed between thoose occations

[scorch109]

And you brought up an aura fight, if you aren't leading aura fights you're doign something wrong as a resto druid.

[imoom]

... also said that i was 10-15% of healing done over 2nd healer on almost all bosses. just that i mentioned my specific hps on 1 boss doesnt neglect that i said i was leading healing on all bosses. my question still remains if this only was an effect of having quite a few bad healers giving more space for my hots, or if other resto druids have noticed similar things in their raids

[uwmarko]

I think they are, and I have a similar experience. My main used to be a holy pally until this patch when almost everything got nerfed into the ground. I'll avoid that debate here, but let's just say my pally isn't at all fun to play at level 80. So I've benched my pally and will be using my druid for the guild main runs. He is so much fun to play now, and I'm racking up rankings at worldoflogs each run.

But what was expected? I mean it might be an issue with scaling and things will be better balanced at level 85, but the way I see it for level 80 is they took the best raid healer in the game prior to the patch, added reasonable tank-style heals, nearly doubled their mana pool, and gave them decent mana regen (revitalize, replenishment, innervate). I have so much mana+regen (yes, even for 25-icc hard modes) that I'm reforging away spirit! Ummmm, yeah, that makes for a pretty strong healer...

[axio]

If you look at the videos of the raid encounters in beta it seems that Druids are often last, and by a good percent. Holy Paladins took the lead and I believe a shaman was up there as well. With the new healing model it seems that classes without an instant heal will be lower than ones that do have an instant heal.

As a Druid, yeah we have Swiftmend... but it requires a hot on the target. If you don't know that person X is about to take the damage then they likely wont have a hot since mana is too big of an issue to keep rejuv on the entire raid. Imo, Swiftmend needs to be an instant heal that doesn't require a hot on the target, but heals for more if it does. Or even make Swiftmend not consume hots, then make the glyph make it not require a hot but have a slightly larger CD or something.

[exochaft]

Some of this may be playing at lvl 80 and being balanced at lvl 85. However, I think some of this boils down to playstyle.

As a resto druid, none of the spells really fundamentally/drastically changed. The only things that really changed were Lifebloom only being usable on one target outside of ToL, Regrowth's HoT was drastically shortened... that's basically it. The roles of our heals haven't changed much from 3.3.5 to 4.0.1... Nourish is the efficient heal, HT is the slow/strong heal, Regrowth is the fast/expensive heal, etc. I'm leaving Efflorescence out of this, because it didn't change how Swiftmend acts, it just added a bonus for when you use it (although you might think twice about where/when you use SM now). And please don't reduce this to a "ToL nerfs QQ and stuff" thread, please.

The other healing classes either got completely new spells or revamped old ones to where their situational usage was not in practice in 3.3.5. There's going to be a fairly large learning curve for the general population to learn their classes and react as they should to the level of pre-4.0.1 healing. Heck, I know people in beta that have been playing for a while and still don't understand how their classes work, especially in the healing department. While some buffs here and there may be justified, it's mostly a case of people not knowing how to play their classes yet... resto druids just got it easy in terms of the least adjustment needed.

*edit* - I should also mention that the mana regen is so insane right now at 80 that a resto druid could spam HoTs everywhere w/o running dry. That being said, a resto druid can easily ninja-heal over the hardcasters.

[Rankai]

I don't know about the strongest healer but I am having a blast play a druid after patch. Healing is less a spamfest. Poeple rarely spike, you have more time to plan and think of your next spell and actually see the encounter. oh btw blizzard did an awesome job with the raid frames, so much I ditch grid.

[Milky]

Do you honestly think that "winning meters" matters? It only makes self-centered egomaniacs feel better about themselves. Personally, the only reason I use Recount is to check what people were doing during the fight, and I usually do that after the fight is over. I care more for interrupts, dispels, why a person died and so on, than actual hps/dps numbers. Maybe that's just me, but healing isn't something to be "won"; It's a team effort at keeping the raid alive.

That aside, the only reason you're topping meters on most fight now (and you should have been doing that even before the patch) is because you got all the healing spells you'll have at 85, while other healers don't, yet. You're balanced for 85, and playing at lvl 80. More importantly, with content where the healing model is nothing like it's going to be in Cataclysm, you cannot judge objectively. The current model supports the "whack a mole technique" And many fights favor hots and instant heals. Priests (both specs) and Resto druids can "ninja-heal" almost everything, especially now with the Tranquility and Tree of Life changes. Another thing is, like other post(s) have mentioned, a lot of players will need time to adapt to the changes they received.

I personally see druids being one of the weaker healers at 85 as our hots won't be as efficient (and useful) as they are now. We will be mainly buffer healers, like we always have been in some way, in order to buy time for other healers and ourselves to land that direct heal(now that our direct heals are relatively and supposedly better). At least, there will be an expansion where we might actually see some buffs coming along instead of constant nerfs. Most nerfs in the past have been logical, but a nerf is still a nerf! I'd prefer being weak and get buffs along the way instead of being over powered and get nerfed continuously :P

Just off a corner in my head (oh the pain!): If you assign a healer on a certain tank (yes I am assuming that healing assignments will be needed come Cataclysm), and he keeps that tank up for the entire fight, while having much, much lower hps than yourself... Would you say he's a bad healer? I personally wouldn't. Keep in mind that raid healing often yields more hps than tank healing, and a good bunch of us Resto druids were usually given the duty of raid healing while keeping hots on the tanks, but that will change, I can assure you. All healers will be, in theory at the very least, adequate tank AND raid healers; That is the intent. I hope nobody judges healers by merely looking at their hps. A good healer will be sorely missed in their abscence, and you'll appreciate them more even if their hps isn't as high as yours is.

My advice would be: stop caring about meters, because they don't mean anything unless you look at them objectively and from all angles. Meters are the son of the devil, the devil being gearscore of course. Often, dps classes stop focussing on their respective jobs and neglect target swtiches, crowd control, interrupts, moving out of fires, fight mechanics and so on, all in order to look better on the meters. Healers also cannot be distracted by meters and start trying to push more hps. These things often result in wipes, and this is NOT the basis on which you should be judging your raid's performance and your own.

Edited to make it look less hideous! I know it still is

[Milkshake86]

After have done icc25 this week i noticed that I was leading healing done with quite alot over the other healers, often 10-15 % of healing done over the 2nd healer (resto shaman), maybe should notice tho that this was a half pug where only me and resto shaman was "good" healers.

Buut. 17k hps on BQL and still 75% of my healing being overheal gives a total output of 65k hps... We did have disc and holy priest with us, aswell as other resto druid, only healing class not represented was holy pala, which i have tested on alt instead.

Can anyone confirm or decline that resto druids are OP, or was it just that the other healers were to bad giving my hots space to pwn?

Hi glad you learned to druid when they changed it 5x1 was hard and never lead meters by wide margains.

[Glatiz]

they have changed the druid up more than you think. they made nourish a longer casting time, regrowth cost more mana, and lifebloom which can only affect one person. are druids the most OP healer out there? well that depends on how you use your rotation. any healer with the acception of a paladin can tank or raid heal in any spec. i can pull just the same healing i do on my disc priest as i can pull with my druid. Im an aggressive healer so if someone takes 1 damage, im spamming a ton of heals on that person. i top any healer that i run with whether he has the best gear or not. i know my class and i know how to make numbers look big. but its like what some people say the meters arn't everything. If i was pulling 16k healer and we wipe, does it really matter how good i was healing? we didn't down that certain boss. And someone brought up beta. Druids are never last in healing or dps there. though they do change a bit on the tanking prospective, they are overall good at everything.

[Deleted]

If you look at the videos of the raid encounters in beta it seems that Druids are often last, and by a good percent. Holy Paladins took the lead and I believe a shaman was up there as well. With the new healing model it seems that classes without an instant heal will be lower than ones that do have an instant heal.

As a Druid, yeah we have Swiftmend... but it requires a hot on the target. If you don't know that person X is about to take the damage then they likely wont have a hot since mana is too big of an issue to keep rejuv on the entire raid. Imo, Swiftmend needs to be an instant heal that doesn't require a hot on the target, but heals for more if it does. Or even make Swiftmend not consume hots, then make the glyph make it not require a hot but have a slightly larger CD or something.

Im not sure if its the same on Beta server, but when i use my Efflorence ( notice i most likely misspell this ) i cant see the healing done on either Recount or on my screen. when you think about it, thats quite alot of our healing. so i think thats the missing link to be as strong as paladins/shaman on the beta testing. i hope blizzard will look into this.

[Deleted]

idd, noticed that myself. Not in ICC though, we were doing wind, earth and fire 10 man, and with it's jumpy and not very predictable DMG, our druid rocked total healing done.

Though I was mostly concentrated on how much my healing dropped with the removal of judgment of light ^_^' But what I've seen from beta raiding testing, on 85 it's the opposite ^^

[Deleted]

I was having the same results as a Holy Priest in Renew Chakra when there was not a Resto Druid in the raid, so I think its just HoTs thst do the most HPS atm.

That said, recount is a very bad way to judge a healers strength (unless someone is waaaaaay in front, or behind).

[Vicieus]

resto druid fight is resto druid fight.

resto shamans are amazing melee healers because of chain heal, but healing ranged that are spread out means that chain only hits one person sometimes.

I have a disc priest, a resto druid, and a resto shaman. There have been times as a disc priest where i would absorb 23k hps (in theory) on normal lady D (gdkp pug). I can't even imagine how much absorbtion levels I could get now since the changes, and the crit -> mastery reforging. Going from 8500 (self buffed) bubbles to 11,350 (self bufffed).

Kinda sad that I can't be a bubble spammer in Cata. It was a nice relaxing way to heal, and thinking of who was going to take damage preemptively made it fun, and from that you would learn how to avoid damage yourself even on other toons.

[Deleted]

Im not sure if its the same on Beta server, but when i use my Efflorence ( notice i most likely misspell this ) i cant see the healing done on either Recount or on my screen. when you think about it, thats quite alot of our healing. so i think thats the missing link to be as strong as paladins/shaman on the beta testing. i hope blizzard will look into this.

Efflorescence is treated as a pet, if you set recount to combine pet dps/heals (i forget the proper name for the function) then maybe it will show? This works ok for World of Logs so i am guessing may be the same for recount.

[axxey]

If you have 17k of available HPS on BQL then your raid fails incredibly hard and invalidates any judgements made in the rest of your post.

[Bodymass]

Well maybe if Blizz nerfed the hell out of resto druids it would stop people like yourself raving about their healing on healing meters?

[Boomkindance]

All healers have always been strong in their respective duties. It just so happens the fight you mentioned (and this was previously stated) was an aura fight. These are our specialty, and so wont be a good indicator of class balance.

I do like the fact that it is now easier for a resto druid to take up a main tank healing role (though still not as amazing at it as say a holy pally) I kind of like the changes made to some of the heals.

I would say the most awesome healer to play atm would be priest. Im levelling one as disc/holy, trying out both. Smite healing (with shields/penance) is awesome and hella fun. And when mixed with Archangel is quite effective (and looks awesome). Chakra is also the most amazing talent blizz has ever implemented, end of story. I love the direction holy priests are going in that regard, a talent that you can transform how you want it to react to a changing situation is just pure win.

Also, lets not forget that resto druids will not be getting much in cataclysm whereas priests get a passive run speed increase, and every 1.5 minutes can pull someone to them from 40 yards away.... a healer will no longer have to watch someone stand in fire, and be able to do nothing but shield/heal. thats pretty huge for progression.

tl;dr - Are druids in the best place? No. Are they in a good place? Yes.