Hey all, I’m going to dip my toe into the resto druid pool. From the early research I’ve done, it seems that most of them that heal keys take Wildstalker which seems to force you into catweaving dps, right?
Here’s the thing. I’m that person who wants to play a druid but not shapeshift much (or rather not be in melee). Is there a place for a resto druid that just casts ranged attack spells in keys?
Thanks!
Keeper of the Grove is right up your alley. Wildstalker just pulls ahead due to how the healing in high keys + damage output performs compared to KoTG.
You’ll be fine doing either one 
play which suits you best
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IMHO, Resto Druid’s damage is so bad no matter what you do, it doesn’t matter much, but yes, Kat is a bit ahead. Dumping Swipes onto a pack, and Rake and Shredding to a 5 point Rip in Single Target … it’s noticeable, but not significant.
Khickun-weaving is a bit more fire and forget - very easy to just tap Sunfire when the mobs are grouped and Starsurge every now and then from wherever you are, get a good hit + mana returned… but you’re not really going to add much in reality when DPS are bursting for 2-3 million a second in ST, and 10-20 million in Multi.
And whilst I prefer Grove for Raid and Dungeon, as Grizzle said you’ll probably get more value out of Wildstalker from a sheer dps point of view.
Resto’s damage is so low that it really is just how you prefer to heal, Wildstalker’s with lifebloom is usually better for the cleave and spot healing that mythic plus damage profiles put out, but Keeper works too as long as you can take advantage of the ramp healing.
I run wildstalker keys with magic damage build while pugging and the difference is pretty negligable because of how little time i get to dps and how easy maintaining sunfire is in large packs.
Wrath spam for MS when you have time to keep up mana, starsurge/Call is fun enough with a good tank, convoke can still be used in cat for single even without the cat damage talents to okay affect.
It feels bad half my hero talents dont do anything but doesnt really affect anything in the grand scheme.
Do think they need to update the hero talents with the new damage split in mind if we’re keeping them the next few expansions; Bloodseekers need to spawn from moonfire (why does feral get a baseline way to trigger both but restos gotta pay for theres in rip/rake) and GI/BI should work with bite.
I’ll echo what others have said, rDruid’s damage is so low in keys that it really doesn’t matter. I play wildstalker, cat weave a lot, and in mid/high level keys where I have to do a lot of healing I’m averaging only about 350-400K overall. In low keys, 9 or under, I still only do about 500-600k overall…and wowOP shows this to me as ~85% damage parses. In other words, doing NO damage isn’t significantly different from a high damage rDruid parse when you consider dps are doing 3-4 mill overall.
I haven’t tried a KotG focused m+ build where a bulk of your damage is doing starfire in big packs, but I’ve heard people say that it does decent damage. It’s not going to do as much as cat weaving but it’s significantly safer. Even cat weaving as wildstalker I still do a fair amount of starfires on big packs with elder druid+doc. Starfire DoC healing is actually pretty insane in medium/big sized packs. If you like wildstalker’s healing profile better you can still choose to not catweave, KotG doesn’t add a whole lot in terms of damage anyway.
…but the key point to emphasize is that rDruid’s damage is so low that it really doesn’t matter…play whatever it is that gives you the best chance of keeping the group alive…and the nice thing about rDruid is that we have a lot of real choices when it comes to viable talents and builds in m+.
So wait I"m confused, let me understand this… Archon.gg ( Healer Rankings for +7 to +18 Mythic+) shows that the healers are gravitating around 400-500k dps, with Disc and MW having an edge on that.
You guys are saying that Rdruid’s damage is so low it doesn’t matter, but according to that data it’s not even very behind than the damage-to-heal healers. This could apply to every other healer that doesn’t need damage to do their job? 
Yes, it applies to all healers. Healer damage is so low across the board that it doesn’t matter. Discs are switching to oracle which is a lot less damage but it doesn’t matter because the healing is so strong.
Disc priests doing 200-250k dps overall playing oracle and thats currently the meta, they go oracle to do huge shields so people dont die but do far less overall throughput then rdruid does atm.
Thanks for all the input. So it seems like KotG is what I’ll be leaning toward, so long as its still okay in M+ and not a massive gimp to healing potential . I just really don’t want to cat dps and since Wildstalker seems to really want that playstyle, I’ll go Keeper
true druids do this:
http s://giphy.com/gifs/sunday-boring-sweater-eJKom2gOpHjTpjords
Just chiming in to say druids do good dmg. It just depends on how aggressive you play.
Kotg and wildstalker are both equal in my experience. I’ve played just about every variation of talent build you can think of and basically anything works. So just pick whatever suits your playstyle.
For proof that we do dmg (from a 13 workshop I just did:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/9PfqwzVpDR4bChMx?fight=2&type=summary
Moonkin vs Cat DPS is very comparable, cat shines a little harder on 2-3 target, and Moonkin shines harder on massive aoe pulls. Both pretty similar for single target I’d say, except master shape shifter cat convoke has the best single target burst.
The different playstyle/builds for damage:
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Wildstalker cat with the circle of life (faster dots) talent. You basically just prio rake/rip on everything, long rip on big targets, or baby rips spread out if there’s no prio target, and moon fire on single target. This won’t have infinite mana so it needs to watch mana usage and use innervate intelligently. I still take dream of Cenarius even on this build.
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Wildstalker cat with master shapeshifter. This gets more value out of Dream of Cenarius, because you can spam swipe with the crit combo point talent to almost always get 2 combo points from swipe, then rip targets, since rake is weaker. Swipe can almost entirely solo heal the whole group during hotw on those mass pulls people do. This also has WAY stronger single target convoke burst due to ferocious bite being boosted by 60%. And you get infinite mana.
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KotG boomkin. I don’t even bother moon firing, Sunfire only at 2+ targets if I’m not feeling lazy and spending a point on it. I just spam Wrath at 1-2 target and spam Starfire at 3-4+. Starfire is like 10% more dmg on 2 target, but Wrath is more healing until 4 targets then they’re the same. During hotw spamming wrath can solo heal most things damaging your group. While Starfire can single handedly heal anything if it’s a 10+ mob pull. Dream of Cenarius healing isn’t smart or spread so you never rely on it fully, just see if its working or not.
The different playstyle/builds for healing:
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double lifebloom, germination, photosynthesis, nurturing dormancy, abundance/cen ward. Exploits 4pc tier set the most, keeps 2 targets super healthy, efflo heals like crazy, then double rejuv the other people and spam heal to fill the gaps. Cen ward is a little harder and it’s more triage. Abundance is easy mode.
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germination, abundance, nurturing dormancy, Flourish, arch druid. Idea with this is just maintain 2 rejuvs on everyone, flourish to help maintain it during AOE, then spam regrowths to fill. Use wild growth on cooldown to fish for arch druid and send on rejuv to upkeep rejuvs for abundance. I really like to take Regenesis with this for the bonus rejuv and tranq healing and tranq becomes an amazing emergency heal. Naturally goes well with KotG for the massive rejuv boost. Doesn’t exploit 4pc nearly as much but still fine.
Both heal styles work for either hero spec too. Kotg shines a little more with the rejuv focused build, and gets a free instant double wrath or Starfire every 5 regrowths to weave in for a big heal. All builds take 1 min convoke. Mostly used on damage, and can still heal well with Dream of Cenarius.
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That’s such a useful thread.
I was concerned about my dmg not being able to pull more than 400k on average.
Good to know I’m not alone.