I don’t play any druid spec but just from observation here… I see 20x more ferals than I do any resto druid. In fact i see feral druid basically in every shuffle lobby and blitz. I rarely see resto druids on either one lol.
DRUID
Restoration
Nature’s Swiftness healing bonus is now 40% less effective in PvP combat.
Cenarion Ward healing is decreased by 20% in PvP combat.
Renewing Surge is 75% effective in PvP combat.
Forest’s Flow is 50% effective in PvP combat.
Reactive Resin is no longer a PvP talent and has moved to the Restoration talent tree.
And hpally got buffed lol. Resto Druid was already a bottom tier healer. When you can’t top someone with two rejuvenations, 3 stacks of life blooms, cenarion ward, while in tree form spamming regrowth, that indicates a big problem. On top of that, resto Druid ooms a lot quicker than any other healer. Now rdruid will basically be unplayable. Sad to say, worse than Mistweaver and I just so happen to play both healers.
At this point I’m pretty sure someone at blizzard has a personal vendetta against rdruids. These changes make next to no sense from any angle (unless they think an extra NS charge will put them over the top - unlikely, and it just reinforces extremely lame regrowth-based healing).
Not only is rdruid bottom of the barrel in arenas and BG’s, they’re also bottom in M+, and bottom in raid healing. You literally can’t get an invite to a group above an M+8 b/c you’re basically just griefing trying to play as an rdruid. It’s kinda sad when playing the class you like is basically just griefing your team in every aspect of the game relative to other healers
You’re only looking at the PVP section. Those abilities were adjusted this patch.
New Talent: Reactive Resin – When your Restoration heal over time effects are removed by enemies, they are replaced with Reactive Resin, healing an ally over 6 seconds. Multiple stacks may overlap. Passive ability.**
New Talent: Twinleaf – Nature’s Swiftness now has 2 charges.**
New Talent: Wildwood Roots – Abundance now also reduces the cast time of Regrowth by 5% per stack. Cenarion Ward’s cooldown is reduced by 10 seconds and its duration is increased by 2 seconds.**
New Talent: Renewing Surge – The cooldown of Swiftmend is reduced by up to 40%, based on the current health of the target. Cooldown is reduced more when cast on a lower health target.**
None of those address the core issues which are mana efficiency, and the fundamental design flaw of resto’s entire throughput revolving around big regrowths, which is incredibly lame considering rdruid at its core should be a HoT-based healer.
Resto Druid got bunch of buffs that also affects PvP so if anything they should be better now.
Nature swif gets lower healing but not gets 2 charges, that’s a buff in PvP no matter how you try spin it
Also H Paladin is top in arenas but Druids are still more useful and overall better in blitz being a valuable FC now that MW got its mobility severely nerfed
And this isn’t a real tuning patch , it’s talents rework so if Druids severely underperform , next Tuesday will be the real tuning patch and they will get adjusted then
Any Healer outside of HPal/Disc/Pres needs to be buffed but last I checked Rdru has more representation in the top 1000 of 3v3 than Rsham/MW/Holy Priest so it’s definitely not worse than MW or bottom tier in general.
I also think both of those classes should get buffs. Your argument here is nonsensical. I don’t see how it’s just acceptable that half the healing specs are heads and shoulders above the other ones. It’s not even close or debatable, and probably the single biggest contributing factor to the severe lack of healers overall in arenas.
Edit; and ya, rdruid might actually be good at 20%+ mastery, but that just circles back to my “fundamental design flaw” argument, because specs shouldn’t only be allowed to excel mid-late expansion but be dumpster-tier for the first 6-12 months just by virtue of a halfbaked, poorly thought out main secondary stat
Any time Rdruid’s have good throughput on their HoTs we end up with super damp meta.
Rdruid is the healer equivalent of Demon Hunter. When either spec is doing very well numerically, people hate it because it requires a lot less thought then almost any other spec in that role and turns arena into “1,2,3” sim until the other team dies.
That’s the only reason I can think for Blizz being slow to roll out massive buffs for Rdruid, on top of the class having 3 other specs to balance, one of which is currently VERY dominant
Every other healer is a lot more susceptible to kicks than druid when their HoTs are actually good and they don’t have to spam regrowth to keep people alive. When HoT throughput is high, druids get to PvE at a pillar all game with a lot less counterplay than every other healing spec
Thats the point I’m trying to make. When HoTs do comparable throughput to other specs casted heals, rdru becomes the “faceroll” healing spec and it leads to higher dampening because even if their mana regen is worse than other healers, they can full hot both their partners and drink whenever they want basically.
That’s definitely one playstyle. My preferred style is more aggressive with fishing for bash clones. I think kitty weaving is also possibly a thing? It could be fun if tuned right.