Resto Druid needs some serious work / re-designs for 11.0.5

Okay lets face it - no amount of % buffs are going to fix this spec. Though it is definitely undertuned healing-numbers wise and aura buffs are nice, most of the issues with Resto Druid actually stem from its inherent design just being outdated and archaic. Where other healing specs have been innovated and improved over expansions, Resto Druid has much stayed the same, and even regressed in many aspects this expansion. It is terribly un-fun to play, and just weak, full of design flaws.

Lets take a look at a lot of the issues with Resto Druid right now:

Little to no emergency/recovery healing in dungeons. Convoke is extremely unreliable, and tree form is a weak 3 Min CD.

Any sort of recovery healing requires a lot of GCD’s to be casted before spamming regrowth.

In dungeon environments, having to cast 8 globals (bloom x 2, rejuv x 5, wild growth) to get hots up on the group just to be able to begin to cast regrowths and do some relevant healing does not feel good and is just cumbersome, tiring, and quite
frankly… annoying.

Extremely counter-intuitive playstyle in terms of raid healing.

You’re spamming out a bunch of hots and overhealing before any damage actually goes out, without anything to increase the duration of rejuv on people with full hp, and no way to spread rejuvs automatically. Its literally just a budget disc priest and a watered down ramp healer at this point that doesn’t actually ramp heal properly because by the time damage goes out your rejuvs are almost gone.

Design-wise, raid healing on this spec is just so terrible. Rejuv should have a longer duration on full health target similar to how it used to work (back in Legion was it?), and there needs to be a rejuv-spread node. Or, implement some type of shield mechanic that rejuv gives people at full hp.

  • As Automaticjak has highlighted in his videos recently, Resto druid healing power is more Regrowth-focused and not HoT-focused in dungeons; anytime you don’t have 20 GCD’s to prepare for damage in order to stack hots for your mastery before regrowthing, then you will do pitifully low amounts of healing. Along with this, regrowthing (outside of tree form) requires rooting yourself in place, statically casting, which is never good, and feels terrible.

Due to having such a GCD-intensive spammy playstyle for healing in M+, RDruid has incredibly low damage because it just doesn’t have GCD’s available for spreading dots and doing damage in cat form

Tranquility is an out-dated, and quite frankly awful healing CD and needs to be drastically changed

Why does Tranq still require standing still to cast with how incredibly weak it is? Give it a longer HoT component, give its HoT a stacking damage taken decrease component, make it 2.5 mins by default and just bake the Inner Peace node into Tranq by default and put something else in its place that is actually helpful. Inner Peace is complete garbage.

Flourish / Photosynthesis being in the same node

Why? PLEASE just give resto druid Flourish by default and put an actual useful node in its place that can innovate the spec.

Just wanted to highlight some of the weaknesses for Resto druid right now, I’m seriously hoping there are still more changes to come for Resto for 11.0.5 to shore up a lot of these weaknesses, or its going to be in serious trouble still.

17 Likes

I feel at this point, we need such an overhaul… it isnt coming until next expac or at the very least a new raid tier. There isnt enough time to overhaul AND test the spec before 10/22. Theres some minor fixes they could do to tide us over but they feel that they have done enough with the two new talents they added

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They could make the spec feel much better until a rework by reducing regrowth healing and massively buffing hots so that ramping in m+ is actually rewarding and not just a setup for regrowth/nourish spam. Damage could be fixed by massively buffing moon and sunfire. Maybe mass barkskin so people don’t die while hots are ticking? :eyes:

My two cents anyway. Druid could also use some kind of cleave instant heal like their 2 piece bonus in DF season 3 if damage on players is going to stay this bursty.

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They should give resto druids a capstone ability that summons a tree vehicle and the druid can jump inside and drive it around and shoot heals on the team. like 1 is a single target machine gun and just fills them up like 500% max hp heal over 3 seconds and then one is a huge grenade that heals an area and increases healing done with a heal over time on the buff, and the whole time you’re in the vehicle it’s just non stop tranquilitying

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Not enough time to reworks now.

Just make Flourish and Tranq worth to pick… Done, we’re good for M+ and better in Raid with those 2 class defining CDs being actually useful/better.

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I’ve already tested Rdruid and I agree with everything you said.

I encourage everyone to leave feedback in the ptr threads until we get a more serious tree revamp.
The small changes comming in 11.0.5 address the problems in pretty much all the wrong ways, pushing more power to regrowth with natures swiftness talents and the the DF season 3 tier, no mastery clean up so we can have some free gcds, no splitting the really dumb choice nodes (prosperity and VI, flourish and photo) and more competition for talent points in the bottom third of the tree.

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Yep, it’s not good. I’ve been playing rdruid since vanilla, and it hasn’t felt this bad in a very long time. Blizz just needs to look at the data… druids are at the bottom in both m+ and raid healing. I used to really like healing m+, but it just feels like too much of a struggle to keep up with all the burst damage. “Just hang on group and wait for my hots to top you up”. So I dusted off my sham, gotta do something fun, right?

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Its amazing how much feedback is being given on the ptr forum on classes/specs that dont have a fraction of the problems that we do.

I feel like our fellow trees are asleep at the wheel.

What I heard is they don’t have a Druid Designer, so I even not sure if they can hear from us, or they care of our druids. What I have seen is since this new season, rdurids are so weak and the buff is still not good enough.

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Today, I’ve decided that if the 11.0.5 redesign is DOA and that I must continue to waste hours attempting to que for keys and being declined for lack of a blue-hued name, I am unsubscribing and will not be returning.

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wildgrowth needs to be instant cast and heal for 50% more

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It should be instant if it’s empowered with Soul of the Forest.

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can they plz buff this class, every single key today that i havent timed had a resto druid healer that couldnt keep up with the unavoidable mechanics that have to be healed through. even with proper personal defensives rotations.

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Nature’s swiftness should make it instant and apply lifebloom to all targets.

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The fact that they didn’t buff Rejuv or make Tranq actually usuable in M+ and they can SEE the statistic data that resto druids are bottom of the barrel. We use to be able to walk and Tranq in m+ in Legion, and made our spec actually fun??? to play. They have done nothing to address how bad resto druid is with the “rework.” We need some kind of healing absorb shield with our rejuv to make it actually useful or something. because you design dungeons where every other mechanic is a almost a 1 shot.

The fact that I constantly have to put Rejuv on people in case I need to swiftmend into a cast of regrowth for them just to get Topped off, but other healers press 1 button to full HP is insane. If you are trying do 12 m+ keys and up, you will not get invited. You actually need a full m+ team first, and I doubt anyone will want you bc you’re a resto druid. LOL. The people who are designing Resto Druid need to get fired.

tldr: blizz devs are shaman mains

At this point they just need Germination to just almost double Rejuvenation and get rid of Lifebloom incorporating it in the Rejuventation

ie: Rejuvenation heals xx (XXX if talented into Germination) over xx time and at the end or is dispelled heals for XX.

I feel like part of the problem is they said they would slow down the damage and they didnt at all, it’s still bursty af, which resto has a hard time dealing with.

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Some biggest points of feedback. Flourish is garbage. It doesn’t feel satisfying. Bump it back up to 100% increased hot speed.

Swiftmend requiring a hot is garbage. Please go back to the the days where swiftmend didn’t need a hot, or at least make that a part of the swiftmend talent that everyone picks anyway. It’s supposed to be a BURST heal, it shouldn’t have a requirement.

Tranquility. Fun fact, if you don’t pick Flourish, which most people don’t for most content, this is your ONLY major healing cooldown, and it’s garbage. So garbage that a mistweaver can instantly do the same healing on the same cooldown. Actually if you pvp the only reason you ever take or use this ability is because in PVP it’s a paladin bubble, you’re immune while you cast it. I really want to drive the fact home that our major healing cooldown is used as a defensive bubble.

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There is a druid at #14 of all healers having 1 less key timed at a +14, he did more damage and healed more than his shaman alt. People need to stop buying into the stigma that druids are bad then maybe more people will invite them.

They are fine for mythic+ just require far more knowledge due to how the healing is handled. Rshaman just answers everything after its happened, which is far easier then disc/rdruid ramp ups.

Raids not so much but if your under healing rdruids are good enough that they can outheal half the healers in hps.