I’m not 100% sure I’m playing yet, but I am waiting to see if blizzard delivers an authentic vanilla. That being said I rolled a warrior back during vanilla and stuck with him into wrath. I mostly tanked through BC and wrath I started going casual. This time around I want a change and I am thinking of rolling a healer. I know priests were pretty popular but it seems like everyone rolls priests because of this. I am looking for someone that rolled druid back then or on the private servers to give me their honest opinion. Mainly are they easy to lvl and are they raid viable?
Druids are one of the easiest class’s to level (go feral, just get a healing set of gear and you’ll be fine for healing dungeons).
Druids are versatile and have lots of utility.
The only problem is your hots don’t stack (3 druids can’t rejuv the same person)
Druid is S rank leveling class. It is only matched/beaten by Hunter.
It is a great class for both off-tanking and healing. While leveling you can use feral easily, then tank instances for fun but complete a healer set to learn healing on the way up!
I fully plan on maining a tauren druid in classic. They’re the 2nd best levelers beaten only by hunters.
As for their raid viability, yes. They’re viable. But raids typically don’t take more than 2 or 3. Maybe 4 at most. This is partially because druids are the least played class and partially because an optimal raid may only need 2 druids.
they are typically heals in raids
but really fun to play. can do everything.
mages are second best levelers, followed by druids. hehe
I’d have to disagree lol. Druids are arguably the best. Hunters in a general stance are best but when it comes to speed levelers druids take it in many cases and supposedly the record is held by a druid.
Druids level fast because they’re basically a rogue who doesn’t have to eat between fights, and doesn’t generally have to vanish if too many adds show up. But you have to level feral, which can be a pain if you intend to do another spec and want to spend 1-60 learning that spec (or if you want to do dungeons as you level, cause that will mean maintaining two sets of gear so you can heal, sub 60 dungeons can generally be healed off spec, but off spec with no healing gear would be a nightmare).
That being said, my favorite character to farm with in TBC was my resto druid.
Moonfire 15 elves or so, cover myself in hots, and hurricane them down while they beat on me.
Druids as healers are… a toss up. Resto druid effectiveness relies heavily on the priests (and paladins, if you’re alliance) recognizing that the people in the raid who might appear to need off healing are actually fine because they’re covered in hots. The same druid can top the healing meters, or top the overhealing meters depending on the other healers in the raid. (Though, in all honesty, you’re always going to be topping the overhealing meter). For 5 mans, resto druids are great if your group is confident, because a resto druid will seldom need to stop to drink. Unfortunately, that brings us to the real sticker for druids. Res. Having a druid for a healer means that, unless you’ve got a shadow priest or dps shaman (or a paladin who is… not healing for some reason) every time someone dies, they’re running back, because druids can only res one person every… (my memory fails me) 35 minutes?
Yes druids are fine to level and fine at solo content. In group content you’ll be stuck as a healer though so if that’s not what you want don’t roll a druid.
The epic raid gear sets are all healing based which sucks for druids. I really wish they didnt pigeon hole them like they did and basically mandate them to heals for raids due to gear.
Yes there are other options but no sets (except maybe the AQ set and of course PvP) that really offers any benefit to feral. Maybe they will rebalance the sets some, who knows.
They’re not a tossup, they’re raid heals - and damn good ones.
As someone that led raids from Vanilla - WOTLK it’s not an issue as long as your headers communicate. And you’re not going to do well if they’re not communicating anyway.
OP, you made clear that you are approaching this as someone who specifically wants to heal, so the dire “you’ll be forced to heal” comments so far in this thread are totally without purpose or value. You won’t be forced to heal, many will expect you to heal, you want to heal, sounds like everything is just happy as could be.
You’re a great dungeon healer and enable other hybrid specs to join the run as a spriest or ret, etc, will have a non-battle rez which the group will require. Your hots will be valuable and appreciated in a dungeon.
Hots are generally worthless in a raid unless you have a specific tank healing assignment. The reason for this is the same reason why druids seem to struggle on the healing meters so many seem to love so well; you only possess hots and very slow cast but astonishingly powerful and efficient direct heals, both of which require a high level of awareness from your fellow healers who have the ability to spam fast direct heals. Since this awareness is often not present, your hot targets will usually be spammed to full health by these healers, making your hot a waste of mana. As your higher rank healing touches are 3+ seconds cast, these faster healing classes will snipe your target more often than not, making your HT a waste of mana.
This leaves you with down-ranked healing touches which work fine, are quite efficient but underwhelming to use.
Your real value as a raid healer probably comes from your non healing abilities, clear poison, decurse, brez, innervate and the ability to nuke some damage with starfire here and there on urgent kill targets.
BONUS: While its value as a set is debatable, you’ll be happily chillin in full T1 in IF/ORG while your raid mates are still just happy they have purple pants.
Feral leveling has zero downtime.
Rank 4 Healing Touch is your go-to heal in raids. You’ll just be topping off players or decursing, but you should have way better mana regen than any other class. You’ll only use Rejuv on the MT and never Regrowth. I cleared Tier 1, 2, and 2.5 back in the day; as heals you can get by without really knowing the fights lol.
without evidence to backup my statement, I’m going to disagree here – with the caveat that we’re not talking about a dead server, or largely unpopulated zones. And what do I mean by that? Mages only excel if they are AoE Grinding – and AoE Grinding is only successful in a variety of key factors:
(a) Melee only mobs (ideally)
(b) dense population of mobs
© reasonable respawn
(d) mobs do not have status impairment effects (fear, stun, horror)
But my challenge is not a, c, or d – it’s b. On a populated server, in a populated traffic zone, finding AoE grinding spots that aren’t (a) camped by other mages (or parties of mages) or (b) being ravaged by other Horde/Alliance questers is difficult. Hunters can handle 2-3 mobs easily, with little downtime and keep pushing thru quests- mages require more downtime and are only efficient to handle multiple mobs if they can herd/handle 5+ melee mobs with room to kite/blizzard.
They are indeed great at leveling, but between mana downtime and reliability on AoE grinding to be a leader in this pack, Hunters generally have an easier time leveling faster.
Again, mostly just my two cents with no empirical data.
It should be rank 3 for people under X HP and 4 for over.
I feel bad clipping Druid hots, but at the same time, if a fury gets chunked for 50% hp, am I supposed to wait for the hots to slowly bring him up and just hope he doesn’t get cleaved again during that time?
I just assume get him up ASAP if mana isn’t an issue.
Yea, in Vanilla, you generally don’t wait since 1 hot per class isn’t going to heal anyone before they potentially take fatal damage-- gotta use that Regrowth or HT (likely the latter unless you want to OOM fast)
I leveled and raided with this Druid in Vanilla.
Feral leveling is awesome. No down time, and you tear stuff up.
You are a very effective healer in feral spec with healing gear. If you go resto spec you’re going to be that much more effective in raids, but you lose a lot of flexibility outside of raids.
Your go-to spell in raids is rank4 Healing Touch. Make sure you watch your target, and if the heal gets sniped, shuffle so you don’t cast and waste mana. Do not jump, because that will delay you from starting your next cast.
Dungeons could be annoying due to the 30 minute cooldown on Rebirth. But they are perfectly good healers. And since they are rare, you tend to have less loot competition in raids.
Resto Druid was my main toon on Malyglose back in Vanilla. Druids are great healers, decent on mana and offer a lot of utility… one problem not sure if it has been brought up… only 1 res every 30 mins and it cost a reagent. This is only a problem in 5man content. Make friends with a ret pally or something. Its not a game changer but I have been passed up because of it. And definitly should be noted when thinking about maining a Healer.