Honestly, having to kitty weave and spec Necrolord to do semi-acceptable damage (2-4k dps) in M+ is obnoxious.
Why can’t I spam wrath, moonfire, sunfire (3 abilities) like Holy Priests do for the same amount of damage.
Healer damage needs to be buffed and normalized across all specs
I agree. I am personally hoping we get a third DOT option in the new talent trees. That would add quite a bit of dps to our balance builds imo. 
Necrolords will give you better dps at the cost of worse healing…I don’t think a resto druid needs to spec Necrolord - it’s more of a min/max thing. (I think Necrolord is better for most tyrannical weeks, but I personally think Convoke is the better heal cooldown, so I’d prefer to use NF on a heal intense week for example).
You can still do very good dps as balance affinity in higher keys, doing exactly what you said (spamming wrath and making sure your dots are up on every single mob). It’s extremely important to use your eclipses correctly though, or you’ll have a hard time hitting that 3-4k dps mark.
gl friend 
Moonfire, rake, rip…
Too many dots already, I would rather give some of our dots to warlocks so Wrath and Starfire can start doing dmg again.
was referring to balance affinity for a third dot, not feral. I think feral affinity dps is fine
I’m not sure about warlocks, i know they have a dot focused spec as well…but balance druids have identified with dot abilities for a very long time - so when you say “too many dots already”, i kinda giggle, considering we’re one of the most HOT & DOT focused class in the entire game (as a whole, because it spans multiple specs - especially if you include feral playstyles as well, whereas warlocks really only have affliction).
Which dot abilities would you want to take from druid and give to a warlock? Nature and demonic magic are like polar opposites from a fantasy pov, so not sure that’ll ever happen…but i can see insect swarm being demonic in a way - since locusts are big in that area of high fantasy.
Either way, i would hope whatever is going on with warlocks is completely separate from how they decide to look at balance affinity abilities and its dps potential imo, since this is a healer issue.
and just to give an opinion on the last part of your post, I’m fine with wrath and Starfire dps. I think they hit very hard if you utilize eclipse and (if nf) convoke correctly
Holy priests use 7 abilities to get good dps, of course over half of that is in one ability, and that’s boon. Comparing healer dps to rsham and Holy priest is kind of like any other dps spec trying to compare to destro lock or survival hunter. You’re looking at outlier specs that are a little on the busted side.
I play both but I mostly play resto. My 240 priest does as much dps as my 270 druid, so while I get the frustration, we are by a large margin the hps healer this expansion in comparison. The roles have completely reversed from last expansion and I honestly don’t have a problem with. I’m glad Holy is finally good after pretty much every healer spec was overlooked for druid last expansion.
I don’t even think we need better DPS options, I think we would just need tweaks around the edges to make it less punishing to weave in for DPS.
Like maybe make NS a finishing move (or make it like predator swiftness) while in feral, and let us use it for all heals. Just tweaks.
The part I have issues is the GCD of form shifting. My RSham and HPriest don’t pay a penalty in time to shift into a DPS mode. I enjoy my Rsham, though I’m not committing to it because it has been iffy in expansions as a healer way more than Rdruid. But my RSham can do more DPS with WAY less effort despite being 25 ilvls lower. Just the ability to seamlessing work in damage is the key.
With Druids having to shape shift to DPS (which I do like), we need something to help so we aren’t losing 4-5 globals per pull going into form between heals.
I think the mechanics are there, just needs tweaks, nothing completely new.
Just like I’d love to make it more seamless for catweaving as guardian. Again, the mechanics are there, just some adjusting. Like let Ironfur carry over for like 1/2 duration when you leave bear form. Stuff like that.
Not new options, just adjustments to what we have.
Lets bring back insect swarm and have it steal health from enemies and give health to nearby allies. The HoT DoT combo.
I love how I essentially started another thread on the same topic, got a ton of backlash, but here you get supportive & constructive comments lol.
Anyway, yes I support this. Healer damage is too low across the board. I’d say resto, with feral affinity, has one of the best dps (for healer) toolkits in the game, it’s just that the damage is tuned too low. Probably because we don’t get any DPS benefit from mastery, and there isn’t enough energy/energy regent in cat form.
You get that solo and M+ are two completely different things… right?
If rdruids could swap to dps spec inside M+, I promise you they would.
You wouldn’t hear “bUt I dOnT liKe iT”
My opinoin is that healers need less 1-trick burst damage abilities, and more sustained. Holy Priests traditional damage toolkit just doesn’t feel at all satisfying to use. Doing damage as pandaria-era disc was super fun, Blizzard should take some lessons from that.
I was thinking the same thing with making it more of a utility type of dot as well…with working similarly to how crows work in diablo 2 (with lowering accuracy or w/e).
But honestly, your idea is way better since we don’t see many effects like that 
Pretty sure carrion swarm used to work somewhat similar to that and there were resto builds that used it back in the day (pretty sure you gave up tree of life to go deep enough in the balance tree to get it, just can’t remember if it was bc or wrath). Would definitely be cool if it made a return at some point for both specs.
Never touching kitty form and only keeping up moonfire and sunfire is like 3k dps alone…but I agree with the spirit of your post. The gcd cost of having to switch forms before you can do the bulk of your damage handicaps R.druids dps too much.
I have 2 suggestions for a fix.
1 is you boost moonfire and sunfire damage while reducing affinity damage (or don’t reduce it since it’s not that much damage)
2 is you take affinity form transformation off the gcd in pve only
Damage is already boosted, and there’s a way around the Shapeshifting gcd 
Winner winner
This is like saying feral doesn’t need a boost in AoE because it already received buffs. Just because it received buffs doesn’t mean it’s in a good spot.
If you are trying to deal the maximum damage it requires cat form and this necessarily requires you to blow globals when you need to switch in human form to heal.
The new talent trees showed natures vigil as an option. And Holinka mentioned adaptive swarm as another talent option in one of the interviews so there’s atleast some damage there.
One of the passive used the old dream of cenarius icon but it could also be the overheal shield from nightfae. If it isn’t that’s a good simple single target damage buff to wrath and would combo well with the balance section of the class tree.
Having both catweaving and balance spam casting as a viable option would be best.
Healers aren’t meant to put most of their focus on damage.
And Druids are the Shapeshifting class. They’re meant to shift in and out. Yay class fantasy.
The trade off to spending global doing all of this is that most of Restos abilities are instant. No cast timers involved
Says who? If healers aren’t meant to focus on damage then why is 1/2 the time spent in a dungeon there is no healing required? R.druid’s damage is the biggest reason they aren’t top tier in M+.
Shifting in and out isn’t the problem, it’s the GCD that is incurred which makes swapping between healing and dpsing very inefficient and is a big reason that r.druid’s damage isn’t great much of the time. When you can stay in affinity form you can do respectable damage though.
I don’t see how that matters because the complaint is that r.druid loses a lot of damage when they have to switch back n forth and lose a lot of GCDs. I could see it being a tradeoff if r.druid had extremely strong healing to balance their lower damage, but you could easily argue that healers such as hpriests and r.shamans have even stronger HPS while doing significantly more damage with much less effort.
You’re mistaking primary focus with no focus. I never said they aren’t supposed to DPS. Said it’s not supposed to be their main focus. Big difference sir.
Correct. and being able to stay in your chosen affinity form longer comes with practice and experience and familiarity and a good group.
Because the GCD spent shifting into Balance affinity, and then the GCD casting Sunfire is equivalent to the cast timer of casting Chain Lightning. For example.
Swapping back into Base form and casting Rejuv is the same as casting Healing Wave, so on and so forth.
You’re still wasting a GCD of not being able to do anything when you are switching back and forth. The fact of the matter is that r.druid’s damage is much lower than healers such as hpriests and rshamans. No amount of skill can change that.
R.druid is also more punished than those other healers when having to heal unexpected or avoidable damage that causes you to shapeshift back and forth multiple times. Also, in damage heavy fights where you have little or no time to keep shapeshifting you will be stuck in human form a lot and be doing crap damage. Fight SD’s torvald in anything above a 20 and see how much time you have to be in cat or boomy form.