I’ve just started WoW classic recently, after not really playing WoW at all for several years, and not having played Resto Druid for about a decade… so apologies if I’m missing anything here:
I leveled as Feral and then went Resto for PvE, and I’m noticing that my healing rotation is almost entirely rune abilities, i.e. I don’t really use my trained heals. Between Nourish, Lifebloom, Wild Growth and Efflorescence, I have almost all my bases covered. Sure I use Rejuvenation and Regrowth some times too, but they’re rare. And I almost never use Healing Touch.
Is this expected? I mean, I understand if Blizzard has intentionally updated most/all classes with more modern abilities because they’re better gameplay or whatever - I guess I’m just wondering if I’m doing something wrong or if I’m mistaken here.
The main problem, I think, is Nourish. Unless I’m doing math wrong, Nourish is more mana efficient than HT and has higher throughput. And that’s before the 20% bonus. It seems Blizz even went out of their way to make Nourish benefit from all the bonuses that HT gets, which really drives the nail into HT’s coffin.
The only reason to use HT that I can think of now is when you need an instant heal (either from NS or Fury of Stormrage proc) and want to get the most HP healed from that single instant heal.
Frankly, Nourish seems so good that it’s reducing the utility of HoTs. It’s far more mana efficient than Rejuv, and even a little more mana efficient than Regrowth even if Regrowth crits. It’s also a lot faster at healing than Rejuv. Regrowth still has its uses if you need the quick up-front heal, but even that really depends on it critting, which doesn’t seem super great.
Obviously I’m not overlooking the case where you really do want your heals to happen slowly over time, for example because you won’t be available to directly heal your target, or because standing still to cast is not an option. But even then, I tend to just use Lifebloom and let it bloom, because that’s the most mana-efficient heal, and it’s better throughput than Rejuv, and about as good as Regrowth, unless Regrowth crits, in which case Regrowth is definitely better, but then you’re back to the up-front heal, which is not relevant to this specific use-case.
Of course, you still need Rejuv/Regrowth for Swiftmend, so I’m not saying I’d throw them away entirely, but that’s really the main use I can think of here (even for efflorescence, I’ve been using R1 Rejuv). In any case, for Swiftmend to be valuable in this way, you really want to have Rejuv/Regrowth already on the target, so really we’re just talking about the Tank. Otherwise you’re incurring a 1s GCD to use Rejuv before Swiftmend for ~650HP heal, when Nourish is 1.5s and heals for substantially more. Sure, that 0.5 sec, or being able to Rejuv/Swiftmend on the move, may save a life, but with everything I’ve said here, the value of these classic abilities is vanishing.
I could see maybe you’re supposed to have your long-term hots (Rejuv+Regrowth) on your main targets and then start Wrath spam to get Dreamstate going, but even if you’re only healing a single target (tank), Rejuv/Regrowth still doesn’t buy you a ton of time to spam Wrath.
Lastly, since I see pretty much zero value in hard-casting Healing Touch, it’s super annoying to waste 5 talent points on Improved Healing Touch to get Nature’s Swiftness. I kinda wonder if it’s time to give up NS and put those 6 points to better use.
Anyway, am I crazy about all this? Am I missing something
(Edit: Sorry for wall of text 
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SoD devs just lazily replaced all the old skills with OP rune abilities