Just did normal Nerub’ar and oof, something’s feeling off. Running Keeper of the Grove. Maybe I just need more iLvl compared to my guildies (was sitting at 572 before upgrading more gear just a moment ago). Not sure.
But it felt like I couldn’t get health bars to move very much 
Would love to see how others are feeling and faring so far.
No… your feelings are valid. WCL has us on the bottom
Tonight is the first time I moved my Druid from 1st place on the character screen and replaced it with a Paladin. Been playing resto since early WOTLK and this expansion is pretty underwhelming.
Pretty sad at the moment, Balance even feels okay but super squishy. Hope it gets better with gear.
I have never felt so weak compared to my co-healers in my guild. I raid with the same people on the same classes and where I have traditionally been the best healer I am struggling to keep up. Healing my heart out to very little avail, getting annihilated numbers-wise to a priest who just taps halo every once in a while. Resto druid healing feels severely undertuned, unhelpful, and really disheartening to see the results of.
Pretty meh tbh.
Really wish flourish was better or tranq actually did something like the old days. At the least a better way to spread rejuvs for the ramp if theyre gonna be the focus for keeper’s raid healing (not the old auto spread but like memory being worth it or soul garunteeing a second target). I will say mana feels better, as long as i capitalized on downtime to get some wraths out it pretty hard to oom, and with incarn having so much uptime getting a few instants out is pretty easy.
We had our first guild raid last night. I was fairly pessimistic based on what I had been reading on the forums. I’m playing the long-game on gearing, so I went in at 586, no tier, no crafted items, no embellishments, a mix of enchants that I could afford, and still wearing a bunch of blue gear.
My impression was that… this feels really good! Probably the most satisfying part was that there were a few times when it seemed like it was going to be a guaranteed wipe, and everyone had become resigned to that. I was like “nope” and managed to heal the raid up anyway. I have not felt like I had that much control over the fate of the raid in a very long time, and this is occurring when I’m in such terrible gear?
Thinking that this must be just some weird oddity, I checked our logs and it had me parsing 99 on almost every fight.
I really wonder how my experiences are so different than others. The only thing I can think of is that I run a Photosynthesis+Undergrowth+Germination build along with Verdant Infusion. Keeper of the Grove. I don’t use Flourish or Reforestation because I don’t like being overly dependent on long cooldowns (Flourish) and I don’t like the randomness of Reforestation (Trying to hold on to that 3rd Swiftmend to counter the randomness often feels counter-productive).
It will be interesting to see how things change as people get more gear.
I mean, technically speaking, resto druid is literally 15% or so behind the other healing specs in Heroic raid right now. So its terrible numbers / throughput wise. Meaning if Resto druid got a straight up 15% healing buff, it would just be breaking even with preservation / resto shammy etc, and still be below holy pally. But if you have fun playing resto druid then go for it, and I’m sure it will get some buffs on Tuesday so it won’t get any worse at least.
my feeling in one word: garbage
It’s never been worse
Its really annoying to have to wrath for mana. Who else has to do this just to last as long as the other healers? I know monks have mana tea but that gives them 6k mana per second and a 30% mana reduction after use. Wrath gives us about 5k per 1.5 sec cast and costs .2% of mana to even use. I can see this being good for really long fights but it shouldnt be necessary for fights under 5 mins.
Trash.
70k rejuvs while i watch a holy priest press halo and his PASSIVE mastery outheals my rejuvs in overall.
So awesome.
Instead lets play a regrowth build where 40+% of my healing is a direct cast spell. So much for hots doing the work.
Not that im a shining beacon of awesome when it comes to resto ruid, but i can tell you with 100% certainty it takes less work to do more HPS on Shaman, Pres, and both Holy Specs.
I’m ready to drop it already, lol.
I’ve healed 2 raid days on my druid. Full clear normal and first 2 on heroic. Played my resto druid since Wrath. It’s had its ups and downs, but it’s never felt this bad before. And this is even with 2-piece tier. The pres evoker in my raid sneezes and he pumps out 300k more hps than me in a pull. The shamans chain heal and healing rain beat out the hots I’m flooding the raid with, even when I ramp up my tranq. The holy priest uses his halo and his mastery and he competes with me if not beating me no problem. I have to put in so much effort and it falls so far below other healers that it feels like I make very little difference.
I’ve never felt more useless and like such a hard carry before. I’m really embarrassed. I like to push keys too; did my 15s across the board, and 25s and 26s before that. Now I’m worried of what will be possible in this state. I love my druid but this feels really bad.
It feels like the weakest healing spec and then i check logs and it seems to be the truth.
I have an interesting take on this, i think most people use the recommended builds but i switch out a few things that work better for me. Basically forget wildstalker right now, you dont have time to do damage and heal if you are going for keeping everyone up and good throughput this early with everyone so low on gear. This will change as people get heroic geared.
Basically build everything around grove guardians, so raid and mythics (big or small group) you will build your talents around keeper of the grove. Keeping grove guardians up is the first priority no matter what the group size, the only difference is i would take abilities that buff lifebloom and convoke the spirits with the cooldown decrease for small groups, and for raids i would get rid of lifebloom buffs and focus on raidwide healing (all buffed by grove guardians). Such as Rejuv, tranquility, flourish, tree of life, etc. If you are not keeping your grove guardians up then you are losing out on a lot of healing.
If you do this and have grove guardians out all the time you will see the best output you can, all i can recommend is read each ability and see how they affect each other. I see people complain about mastery being weak, but mastery really is only important for five mans, you wont have time to get tons of stacks out in raids, but focus on abilities that give you free stacks (lifebloom counts as 3 stacks, Rejuv puts cultivation, so just rejuv and lifebloom gives five stacks of mastery to the target, an extra for effloressance with spring blossoms, and then whatever the grove guardians put up make it pretty easy to max your stacks out in a small group. In a raid you are focusing less on stacking 5 or more on each person and just focusing on puting rejuv on anyone who takes damage, make sure you know in your raid frames where melee and ranged dps are because Melee will usually take bigger damage than ranged.
My mythic/5man keeper build:
CkGAqvgeoHLefPLb/Pa8nkKXDtxMzYjZmZmFz2ghZZbstYbmBAAAAAAAAAAAwygBzAjgxMmxMzYWGajBAAAAAMAGgZALbjFMNzsMEAACYBzMA
My Raid Keeper build:
CkGAqvgeoHLefPLb/Pa8nkKXDtNmZGLbjZmxiZBzYstNsZbmBAAAAAAAAAAAwyMgZYMjmZAzYmZmZYm2mBAAAAAYAAMGwyyYBTzMLDBAgAWYMA
Hope its helpful
may i ask why using wraths during the downtime? does that recover mana?
yes, Master Shapeshifter talent does that
Master Shapeshifter, Talent bottom Left.
I’m intrigued by this, tbh! I ran double blooms in raid during DF and always had a way better time than the rejuv build. What you’re describing almost sounds like a double bloom build again…
I’ll check out what you’ve got going on and see what I can learn! Thanks for the detailed input 
I do not see a build that is going to save our throughput woes.
I appreciate the positivity some are bringing to the table but there needs to be a reality check with resto druids in raids. I am sure many of us, including me, could do things differently, play better, etc. However, druids are the worst I have ever seen them in raid in playing this game for 15 years. The numbers really are telling.
There will always be a top and a bottom but the difference between the top and bottom right now is significant.
Looking foward to that 8% buff on tuesday, even if it wont fix everything itll be nice to not feel like a complete burden to the raid.
I went from being consistently top of the meter for three expansions to bottom of the meter by a long shot within my own raid group. We’ve definitely got some balance problems at the moment with other healing specs, especially holy paladins (oh my word), but…it still feels good and is fun to play. We’ll get buffed. It will be fine.
This. I play with the same people I’ve played with for years and years, so we all kinda know how we are and how we stack together. The difference tonight was STARK. Resto druid is clearly struggling against resto sham and the holy twins right now. It will get balanced, but it’s not very good at the moment, and it’s a large, very visible gap.