Is it normal to feel with resto that you have to spend much of your time healing and don’t get to DPS much? Perhaps I’m applying my HoT’s more than I need to, but I sure feel that my GCDs are all used up without getting the chance to do much DPSing.
I assume we are talking m+, please correct me if not.
The biggest offender for Resto Druids, are that many people default to do very bad healing rotations - spamming rejuvs or naked regrowths.
If you follow the core healing rotation, you will do an insane amount of HPS with very few GCDS - Adaptive Swarm on cooldown, 2x lifeblooms out, efflorescence down. That’s your core spells to have high uptime on - the lifeblooms aren’t always needed at 100% uptime, but Swarm and Efflo should be. When you need more healing, that’s when you use your most efficient spells, so you get the most amount of healing per GCD - you regrowth someone without lifebloom, so the hot cleaves into LB targets, you use swiftmend and WG for aoe, you got cenarion ward, flourish, convoke etc - all short cooldowns that does tons of healing for little gcd investment. Also the new talent, Grove Guardians, are off the gcd and should be the vast majority of your m+ healing overall. Don’t hold the charges, use them all the time.
For DPS uptime, the easiest path is to use sunfire, and throw moonfires on everyone until you get more comfortable with trusting your hots and not doing unecessary healing. Nature’s Vigil is also a significant amount of your overall DPS, macro it into Flourish. When you get more confident, you can shift into moonkin or cat form, or both, and spend more gcds dps’ing. Remember that Grove Guardians can be used while in shapeshift form.
TL;DR - learn to use your efficient healing spells, gives you infinitely more GCD’s for dps’ing.
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Great reply. I appreciate all the info. Yes, I was referring to m+.
It’s normal because Resto Druid is a healer where it pays to be as proactive as possible, and we are one of the worst reactive healers. That means that we are actively casting heals even when everyone is at 100% in many cases, because we’re not reacting to the present situation, we’re preparing for the future.
Other healers, with a more reactive toolkit, really don’t have much to do once everyone is at 100%. This gives them a lot of time to DPS.
If you have a good group, you can be less proactive with your heals, and have more time to DPS. But take it too far and you will find yourself in a tough spot when a lot of healing is suddenly needed.
You use to be able to do some DPS cause nourish use to keep your hots up. Then they removed nourish’s ability to add time to your hots and now you’re spending your time refreshing them even with the swiftmend perk. I was starting to raise a resto druid to heal but they gutted nourish and I instantly dropped it. Good thing I did it casually cause i had a feeling this would happen.
in 10.2 they upping dmg on Wrath & Starfire by 90%…maybe they thinking that will make rdruids cast some nukes as well…
I agree basically only rejuv for a flourish ramp for Nature’s Vigil. But since that’s nerf if you keep your dots up you can do around 15 to 16k DPS sitting there. I generally spike to a out 40k on a decent pull with NV and I average about 20k DPS without CDs. And maybe like 15k on a boss depending on the fight. If you are playing with a group and can owl or cat weave you can do more damage. But ideally in M+ you wanna do only as much healing as you need to. Also the new trees are a great way to fill the gap with a global instead of rejuv (assuming you hit that alot). All in all it just takes practice. You’ll also do more damage depending on how well your group is playing. People not getting hit with avoidable damage frees up quite a few globals vs DPS standing in a swirl or frontal.
3300 m+ RDruid player here. As many have stated we are 100% a proactive/ramp based healer. Once you are comfortable with your spells, (of which there are a phenomenal amount of guides to help you get started on your RDruid journey. I started RDruid this xpac and it’s how I started) Your success in m+ comes down to two main points:
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How well you can predict incoming damage by knowing boss AND mob abilities (most deaths in runs happen during normal mob pulls)
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CD management.
With flourish gutted, new mana management play style, new treant play style, and ranged dps play style being superior now to kittyweaving, and new damage profiles (move toward single target and away from AoE…supposedly) I can’t even begin to talk about CD management because the game will be very different for resto druids next patch.
The best thing you can do as a resto is to know the fights. Know which mobs do AoE, which cleave, which need kicked and if they don’t do massive damage. These are things that if you can catch them happening before they happen, you can quickly prepare and go back to DPS
In the coming patch the best dps comes from going master shapeshifter and sunfire + starfire 4+ mobs, sun-fire + moonfire + starfire 2-4, or sunfire, moonfire, + wrath single target. We will have an easier time this coming patch getting our damage out due to both our set bonuses be able to be used from moonkin.
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Are you doing PUGs? If so, then “probably”.
Rather, of all the healers, resto druid is THE GCD healer, and misplays hurt your usage
Yea, I’m only doing PuGs.
I can’t agree more with what others are saying. I mained Resto Druid for DF S1 (only just over 2k), and Resto Shaman for S2 (currently 2.2k). I pulled the druid back out after Grove Guardians were added and definitely agree, it is all about the right spells at the right time, knowing the fights and whether the group is coordinated or knows the fights themselves.
Shaman has been much easier to handle healing in PUGs when the group makes mistakes while still getting in some DPS. That has not been my experience with the druid, though GGs have helped, it is a lot harder to heal through mistakes on the druid because most of the spells are HoTs and require a ramp for greatest effect.