Resto Druids have been left in shambles with no clear direction. The latest patch notes gutted the spec, leaving many of us wondering what the long-term vision is.
But this isn’t just a Resto Druid issue. Holy Paladins were also left with little to no meaningful changes, while the same handful of already-strong specs continue to receive the attention they need to stay competitive.
Blizzard, what’s the intended direction here? What is the design philosophy behind these changes? Right now it feels like some specs are being left behind while others continue to be prioritized.
We don’t expect every class to be at the top, but we do expect every spec to have a clear identity, a purpose, and confidence that it’s being actively supported.
10 Likes
Remember when we used to be the HOT healer class?
Those were the days.
9 Likes
Like forreal, im trying to figure out what class to go with next tier , and resto druid does not seem like it has a direction….
3 Likes
I am very very disappointed with the upcoming changes to Verdant Infusion. Being able to extend HoTs on a target (usually the active tank) has become a core part of our play style. To have that aspect of our gameplay simply removed feels really bad. It means that we will have to spend a LOT more GCDs on boring maintenance healing just to maintain uptime on the HoTs that we were previously able to extend.
While it will be nice to have Swiftmend as a mostly independent emergency heal, it’s not worth the tradeoff, not even close. Resto Druid is already one of, if not the highest CPM healer. How can they remove the one ability (extending HoTs via Verdant Infusion) that saved us a few casts and call that a “quality of life adjustment”? Or am I just assuming too much that “quality of life adjustment” is supposed to mean an increase in the “quality of life”?
I’ve also always loathed the idea of Swiftmend removing HoTs from it’s target. It’s bad enough that Swiftmend even requires a HoT in the first place, it feels terrible when it removes it, considering that so much of our play style is about stacking HoTs. While Verdant Infusion will still exist in 12.1, and will still prevent a HoT from being removed, I don’t know that the talent will be worth taking purely for that one purpose after having the HoT-extension component gutted.
12 Likes
im disappointed a bount shaman
1 Like
Honestly cannot fathom the reasoning behind most of the changes they make these days.
- Promise game would be less CD focused = make it CDs are stronger than ever
- Promise game would be slower paced = people are dying in less than a GCD
- People saying RDruids have too many globals = make a change to give them more
Honestly, I didn’t want to believe they were using bots/AI to balance the game but… There is no cohesion in any of the changes they make, they are polar opposite to what everyone expects/wants.
8 Likes
Im convinced they just dont like rejuvenation; like because they made a tierset that involves it even slightly they just had to nerf the talents around it to keep it just as meh feeling the next season.
Cultivations 2 points now (didnt see that mentioned anywhere) germination lost is duration increase for even shorter rejuvs, abundance changes capping at 5 instead of 10 for less mana reduction and crit, the general VI change making every hot feel worse.
If they had touched nothing but the swiftness improvement talents for the tierset and the tranq change i think we would have been pretty solid season 2. Nothing else they did feels like an improvement.
- No better way to manage lifebloom (lost the one good way with VI)
- More 2 pointers when we should have less since every 2 pointer option gets skipped regularly.
- No actual damage changes just aura buffs on what we have.
- Possibly worse mana management with nerfed abundance and the new innervate lost its double cast for us, so if youre stuck giving it to the monk or priest we just get nothing now.
1 Like
Looking at the history of WoW druids are one of the most consistent classes for performance. I doubt you’ll be losing a raid spot with the new patch. The new item levels are going to push hots like rejuve higher than before and a lot of talent changes seem to be focused on filling out the resto tree and making certain builds better.
Personally, I don’t like a resto druid without tree form so I’d be happy if it made it into the cookie cutter builds for progression.
I doubt monks will need innervate. Did they nerf their tea?
well were doing 35% less healing than everyone else i dont see how we would have a snowballs chance in H*** to get a raid spot
2 Likes
The fact that resto druid is dead last in both HPS and DPS in M+ by a large margin on the PTR yet received not so much as an aura buff in the latest tuning is pretty sad. I’m not sure where they are raid-balance wise but the only reason they were briefly on top in season 1 M+ was MotW. They weren’t ever impressive healers in M+ in season 1 and now that a druid DPS is popular for S2, nobody will take them just for MotW this time (not that being taken for that reason actually makes playing the spec fun anyway).
All QoL improvement suggestions from both beta and PTR were ignored.
Kittyweaving is a joke (nightmare tab-target playstyle that is very easy to improve if they’d stop ignoring feedback). Casterweaving talents are pretty lame and unreliable even if starfire spam does brief high burst. The dream of cenarius mechanic uses an outdated targeting mechanic compared to how MW smart healing currently works. Taking the damage talents is also rough talent-tree wise for minimal payoff.
Very high maintenance GCD requirements and outdated mechanics.
They gave the best new HoT talent to Mistweavers this expansion in Mistline. The only mechanical changes they are giving resto druids make their HoT playstyle worse (VI nerf and abundance clunky re-design that’s entirely raid-centric but still annoying to raiders as well).
They left a mechanic on regrowth that they purged from the resto shaman at the end of beta because they thought it was a bad playstyle (whispering waves). There’s literally a developer note when WW was removed referring to it as an unfun playstyle:
- Developers’ notes: We’re aiming to add more interesting decisions to Restoration which has felt lacking in Midnight as well as addressing a core talent issue pushing gameplay towards a repetitive playstyle. To accomplish this, we’re returning Tidal Waves to the talent tree, updating Ascendance with a different set of mechanics, and removing Whispering Waves. We feel this will be more exciting to play with and prevent current and future issues with Whispering Waves pushing gameplay too far towards an unfun playstyle. Thank you for your continued feedback!
For some reason Whispering Waves is an unfun playstyle for shaman but definitely how druids want to be playing?
It’s really odd to have a split regrowth mechanic in a class that already has a HoT like rejuv to do spread healing where regrowth is supposed to be balanced around single target healing. Why not buff rejuv for spread healing and focus regrowth on single target balance? Instead it’s maintain specifically 5 rejuvs (a short duration maintenance HoT that does minimal healing itself) for a big buff to regrowth and then spam that?
3 Likes
At this point im just holding out hope for an aura buff that brings us up to middle of the pack, specifically to rejuv and wildgrowth, so that rejuv feels good to cast outside of the abundance cap and wildgrowth wont feel as anemic once we loose uptime from the season 1 teirset.
The last time we were this far behind we had just gotten a purposeful 20% nerf and then a bug fix that was another 20%, and took them 4 weeks to balance.
For a later update; the spec needs more interesting interactions between our hots instead of the one way relationship where everything ends up buffing regrowth in the end; We need to be able to do things to hots that are already out; we need meaningful choices on where/who to cast our hots on, not an apex where you waste tons of overhealing on yourself to max mastery stacks for aoe healing, and a generally better way to use the apex blooms in aoe.
3 Likes
I don’ think blizz cares … even in the Druid discord the Druid writer hasn’t even wrote anything about Druid ptr feedback..
Druids are lost without a leader
3 Likes
Very disappointing. I should not have bought this expansion… 
4 Likes
They should just let us, the Druids work on the class and we decide as a council what powers elune and the blizzards will bestow upon us for the time being.
We are lost without our powers, and need adaptive swarm, flourish, verdant infusion and just overall, to be a HOT class, as we were.
In all seriousness - Why would you guys change the class though?
It’s too bad the top Druids across like esports and content creation all seem to be okay with the direction of the class. I guess when all you do is compete in mythic+, only thing that matters is the power level, not the fantasy or interesting gameplay.
Oh well, classic+ Druid better be good!
1 Like
ima give reactive resto druid healing a chance lol. regrowth spam and maintain 5 rejuvs it is then. doesnt sounds too bad.
HoTs healer but our HoTs literally last 2 seconds and and barely do anything. Feel like you have to work over time to do a fraction of what other healers do with one button. I really don’t think Mark of the Wild really makes up for how bad resto druid feels to play. Half the time i forget to put it on when doing random dungeons and i don’t even notice the difference.
5 Likes
Yeah, had my gripes with Resto Druid in Season 1 but towards the end I just felt complete burnout with the button mashing just to keep HoTs up. Don’t get me wrong the results were great but, the focus you had to have was just too taxing for me.
I made the jump to Holy Pala for Season 2 and it’s definitely not as strong as Resto Druid is but, with the simplicity after being a druid is night and day. Maybe it just resonates better with me but, honestly the change to Verdant Infusion was the final nail in the coffin for me as a Resto Druid. It was already GCD heavy and that just increased that.
2 Likes
I’m being outhealed by other healing classes in significantly less ilev gear using one heal. While I struggle to maintain five rejuvenations that are nearly worthless and spot heal, they have turned a Hots healer into a reactive class that can’t heal it’s way out of a paper bag unless they have cast five spells first, that will drop off soon after casting one reactive heal. I’m plowing through mana like never before and struggling to have any at all left during demanding raid fights. I’ve been resto Drd for almost two decades and this is the worst state resto has ever been.
3 Likes