Resto Druid strong in Mythic +. Why?

Classes Druid
1

Hi all. I really enjoy healing dungeons and i’ve noticed that druid is very strong on the leaderboards basically since the disc nerfs, I guess.

So, I was thinking of trying it out more. I mained druid WotLK and in every xpansion i check it out again.

I dont plan on playing anywhere near the level of the leaderboards, but I was wondering what makes them so strong and if that trickles down to lower keys. Looking at their toolkit, nothing jumps out to me as particularly spectacular.

Any guidance would be appreciated. Thank you.

2

I think it comes down to Resto Druid being top tier in every single category when you think about what they bring to a M+ group, the only slight weakness would be spot healing but even that one can be decently covered with the proper talent build, Druid also has a very flexible talent tree where a lot of things can work in M+ depending on what you need for the dungeon (other healers have less options in their builds).

Lets see:

HPS
The only healer that arguably can have more throughput in M+ is Monk, but even then Resto Druid is more mana efficient and has access to stronger CDs.

DPS
In general just by applying sunfire to the pack of mobs you can do a decent contribution, or if the group is good at avoiding damage you can spec into Feral affinity and do great DPS through catweaving (even better than Disc priest if given the chance).

Defensives
Resto Druid definitely took a nerf in this category compared to Legion, but having on-demand access to Bear form plus Barkskin in such a short CD is still very good. Depending on the situation I’d rank Resto Druid somewhere between No1 and No3 on this category.

Mobility
(no need to explain)

Utility
I think Druids, Shamans and Monks are the 3 healers with the strongest dungeon utility, this again depends on the situation, so dungeons and affixes play a part in what’s the most useful utility.

The most valuable tool any healer brings is probably Brez, every group always wants to have one and Druid is the only healer that brings it, the nerf to Blood DK also makes Brez even more valuable.

Druid is also one of only two classes that can remove enrages and having stealth on a healer is great too: Not only it enables death skips but also if there’s a wipe after skipping mobs you can run back in stealth and rez your party.

Ease of play
I’d say that mastering a Resto Druid can be pretty difficult, there’s a lot of room for min/maxing, specially if you take your DPS into account and try to catweave for extra damage. However playing Resto Druid it at a base level to be effective at healing without trying to min/max everything is quite simple, most groups are ok with you just focusing on healing and keeping them alife.

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3

Thanks for the thoughtful reply…you have me convinced!

4

I was going to give my response but holymonky pretty much covered it so yea, wha the said : )

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Ridiculous utility and the ability to apply most of our healing before the pull so we can spend the first several seconds playing DPS and/or socket wrench.

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Resto is top of the leaderboards because they have good teammates. If the group knows what to rupt, avoid, knock back, stun etc… down to a science, Druid hots will keep them all alive while cat form dpsing chomps at enemy health. Utility is really good, don’t get me wrong. But spot healing is too garbage for a resto Druid to excel in healing and damage in pugs. Speccing into spot healing will reduce or eliminate the time you have to do damage. (Example: cenarion ward will heal the tank while you’re doing damage. But if you have to spec abundance or prosperity to spot heal dps taking avoidable damage, you’re losing valuable dps time.) And healer damage is mandatory in high keys.

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If you don’t plan on playing anywhere near the level of the leaderboards, then any healer will work just fine. Mistweaver Monk is the only other healer I’ve played and I would say that works better for low keys and pugging than druid does.

Mistweaver is more intuitive to pick up, also has a great toolkit, and has much stronger spot healing which is required for pugs who go out of their way to try and die. All the other healers work great too, the disparity is only towards the top end for some of the reasons listed above.

I’m very confident every healer is easily capable of +15’s in time. If you’re going for world firsts, that’s a different story.

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Fair point, and I totally agree with what you say, the better your group the more time you can spend DPSing and even with great groups there will be times where you need to forget about DPSing and fully focus on healing.

However that’s true for the other healers too, as an example, Disc Priests need to take Twist of Fate over Schism for situations where more spot healing is needed, that’s a much bigger hit to their DPS than a Druid taking Abundance over Cenarion.

Overall, however I agree, if you want to have an easier time healing lower keys and bad groups then the best choice is probably Monk due to how strong their single target healing is (they can take a player from near death to full in a couple of globals).

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9

Totally agree with you there.

I have done relatively high keys (around +14 to +17) on Priest (both specs), Druid, and Monk, and some lower ones (+6 to +10) on Shaman and Paladin.

In terms of healing “bad” groups at lower keys I think I agree the Monk is probably the strongest. The other one I found surprisingly good at it was Resto Shaman, however this one is harder to execute, for it to excel and “carry” you need to know the dungeon very well yourself.

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Spot healing for an Rdruid can really be solved in a few different ways. Yes you can switch into more single target builds in talents, but you should search for trinkets also that provide healing. Example. I have Mirror of Entwined Fate which has really helped me out when ever its available. The down side is that it’s on a 2min CD. It places an absorb shield on you, but our HoTs quickly take care of it.

Also we have a few different builds that work well. So find one that you like best and run with it. I personally like 1,2,2,3,3,1,1 but do switch it up by going 3,2,2,3,2,3,1 from time to time. I.Love.Photosynthesis.In.Dungeons.

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