Resto Druids Need Help/Buffs

Classes Druid
1

The spec is performing terribly/not being brought for high end content right now.

First, looking at raiding, here is the Resto Druid representation by fight for the last 5 bosses of Mythic CN:

Darkvein - 3% (Disc 34%, Pally 33%, Shaman 27%)
Council - 4% (Shaman 41%, Disc 26%, Pally 24%)
Sludgefist - 5% (Shaman 36%, Disc 33%, Pally 24%)
Stone Legion - 5% (Shaman 42%, Pally 28%, Disc 21%)
Sire - 2% (Pally 39%, Shaman 31%, Disc 26%)

The trend here is unmistakable - Druids have about 1/10 of the representation of Shaman, Paladins and Priests in high end Mythic healing comps. Even on 5 healer fights like Sludgefist, Council, and Stone Legion, the spec is only getting 5% of representation, suggesting they are only being brought like 25% of the time. It’s a big problem that speaks the the overall weakness of the Resto Druid toolkit or at least the fact that it doesn’t hold up to the toolkit of the top 3 healers. You can see from HPS/throughput numbers, all specs are pretty even, but Druids and Monks are just being outright shut out of comps, because if you are only at best able to do the same healing as a spec with significant unique toolkit/utility, you have no value to a raid.

Then, we can turn to Mythic+. Resto Druid M+ strength was often quoted in BfA as a reason why the spec needs to be lackluster in raids. However, the data in Shadowlands shows that M+ is no longer a RDruid strength. The WCL points data puts Resto Druids as the 4th best M+ healer (behind the familiar Disc/Paladin/Shaman triumvirate). Raider IO leaderboards suggest the exact same thing - there are only 2 Resto Druids present in the top 100 M+ runs, with Shaman especially dominating, but Paladins and Priests much more represented.

How is it reasonable for the spec to be weaker in all PvE aspects of the game than the 3 top specs, and to see 2%-5% role representation in high end content when the 3 main specs are seeing 25-40%? At what point can we expect to see some fairness and class balance go out to address these egregious issues?

32 Likes
2

Druid, Holy Priest, and Mistweaver all need some help. They’re all 3 at the bottom of literally all 3 tiers of competitive endgames in WoW (PvP, M+, and Raids)

22 Likes
3

I’d argue that fixing it for RDruid and MW needs to be the top priority. Holy Priests at least have the ability to hit a button and re-spec to another healing spec that is top tier in everything currently. Resto Druids and MW have no other option right now other than rerolling or switching to another role.

16 Likes
4

Holy Priest is literally a steaming pile of garbage in all forms of content. Bottom tier in M+, Raiding, and PVP.

At least you can do the content where I get invited to groups and kicked when they find out what spec I play.

I’m actually rerolling druid currently, my troll is level 54.

3 Likes
5

Throughput classes will never be the play for mythic content. HPS doesn’t matter when abilities can one shot you. With this form of content damage reduction is much more sought after.

Disc brings Spirit Shell/Barrier. Resto for Spirit Link. Paladin for BoP/ Devotion Aura mixed with the highest DPS for healers.

Rest of the classes don’t have the utility/DR that can replace the above classes other the HPS which is why they aren’t represented

6

Which is in itself a problem with class design and class balance. Why should a Resto Shaman be able to do the same HPS as a Resto Druid when they bring so much more outside of that HPS? Resto Druids and Mistweavers either need to do significantly more throughput than the 3 meta specs, or there needs to be adjustments to the toolkits of healing specs to either take away some of the Paladin/Shaman/Priest unique utility, or to add more to Druids/Monks.

I think they should just nerf the HPS of Holy Paladins, Resto Shaman, and Disc Priests by 30-40% across the board, so you can’t just stack your entire comp with these specs and actually need the other specs to be able to have the firepower to get through the encounter.

6 Likes
7

Bruh 30%-40%? I get what you’re saying but they’d be absolutely useless lol

5 Likes
8

Yeah seriously, Holy Priest is literally the worst healer in all forms of content.

Resto Druids are mid-pack for raid/m+. In other words, properly balanced.

2 Likes
9

The spec isn’t properly balanced when it only has 3-5% representation on any bosses that even world 1000 level guilds are working on in Mythic. Period end of discussion.

3 Likes
10

I dont do pve, so speaking for pvp, rdruids and monks are the least considered to get an invite to rated bgs. The high rated rbgs would take Holy Priests over rdruids/mw… 100%.

4 Likes
11

They are utter garbage in pvp too, I already rerolled lol none of the devs play resto Druid so they don’t care about the spec

4 Likes
12

Calling any healer a throughput class is nonsense.

You can check logs, all healers are nearly dead even on output. If you want to make an actual throughput class you need to push their numbers up high enough that you could potential drop a healer for an additional dps.

13

would love to have our mastery back at least :\

we also have some useless talent slots imo

14

I used to be reasonably good at healing in BfA but I’m struggling a lot. Our toolkit didn’t change so much, so I am used to it.
There’s simply too much damage and our HoTs can’t deal with it, have to rotate spam Regrowth in Mythic Plus very often.
We don’t have the burst healing tools (apart from Convoke) that is needed in current SDL dungeons.

6 Likes
15

Throughput as in they offer very little to the group other then throughput

16

Which makes the class balance of healers garbage, because the “throughput specs” need to either do significantly more throughput than the “utility specs” or need to be given more tools to bring more to the group.

2 Likes
17

So many people do not understand the sociology of competitive wow.

The top 0.01% generally must use the absolute optimal comp in order to compete for the top. This comp tends to trickle down to the masses where optimal is not necessary due to not being at 100% optimal playing capacity, and the fights are generally nerfed some along the way.

So, those of us who are not 10/10M in two weeks or less, the specs you play matter much less than they do at the top end. While those specs definitely help for one reason or another (speaking specifically in this case, the cooldowns that disc, hpal, and rsham bring are damage reducing rather than raw healing), doing easier content does not explicitly require an ideal comp.

Yes, disc, hpal, and rsham are overrepresented. That’s because the player base is so meta-oriented that they put on blinders to any other class.

9 Likes
18

The issue is that yes every class can clear heroic and get their +15 done by why have a harder time doing it when you can play a meta class and get it done easier.

as a holy priest I’m doing the content but where I’m struggling as holy I then switch to disc and feel like the +13 I did is now a +11. It’s just easier.

1 Like
19

I agree with your thesis, but whether groups don’t want you because your spec is actually bad, or the they don’t want you because they believe it’s bad (but it’s really fine), the end result is the same. Groups don’t want you.

In a way, player perception problems are even more pernicious than genuine balance problems because Blizzard can’t fix them.

2 Likes
20

The class balance issues are actually legitimate, especially in raids, because effectively what you’re looking at is - all 5 healing classes do basically the same throughput on an aggregate level (maybe HPriests are lower but also this is because most good Priests are playing Disc). However, you then have things like Spirit Link Totem and Devo Aura and Barrier and extremely high DPS contributions from Pallies/Disc Priests and Power Infusion and the ability to put an absorb shield for basically 100% of the raid’s HP every minute (trivializing mechanics), etc. The value of all of these things isn’t accounted for in this supposedly balanced HPS.

What is especially egregious is that Barrier and Devo Aura are effectively the equivalents to Tranq. However, Tranq accounts for in some cases 10%+ of a Druid’s total HPS, but these DR raid cooldowns account for 0% of the Pally/Disc HPS, meaning that even before the inherent value of the DR is taken into account, they are already more effective.

The things that a Resto Druid brings to the raid are all redundant/brought by other specs anyway like Battle Rezz (you are going to have enough brezz classes in any 10 man raid comp), Stampeding Roar (can be brought by any other Druid spec and egregiously, can be effectively talented into by Shaman as well), Typhoon/Vortex/Roots (CCs that can be interchanged for many other CCs in the game). There is simply nothing unique that a Resto Druid brings over and above doing the same HPS as other specs, and that doesn’t fly when you have other healing specs with valuable unique niche functions only available to their spec. MW are in the same boat - as long as you have a Monk of any spec for the boss debuff, they bring nothing of value, and have a weak raid CD too.

I also dispute the notion that it’s some “only matters to the 0.0001%” problem. That’s a load of crap. For one thing, if bosses are made easier by bringing specs with more tools and unique utility, guilds are going to try and bring those specs no matter what. For another, boss guides and raid strategies are generally written using those specs, and most guilds are going to follow a boss strategy that earlier guilds devised instead of making up their own - that also leads to specs being shut out. Finally, just have a look at guild recruitment threads for any guild more than 5/10M - there is literally 0 demand for Resto Druids or Mistweavers right now, and it is next to impossible to find a raid spot. Also, even if you do get in a guild, no stable Mythic guild is going to carry only 20 players or only 4-5 healers - they need to carry extra players to keep raids from getting cancelled when a couple people are out, which then means they will choose the best specs and or best players.

At the end of the day, the only argument to say that healer balance is fine in Mythic raiding is - if you think it’s fine that to play the spec you want instead of one of the 3 dominant specs (which are dominant due to failed class design), you either need to:
(1) Play at a higher level than everyone else on your healing roster such that it doesn’t matter that your spec is poorly designed.
(2) Settle for a guild/progression level that is significantly below what you are capable of or have achieved in previous expansions.
(3) Settle for being only useful and getting to raid progression on a few fights per tier

I think all of those options are unacceptable, and Blizzard needs to address healer balance, viability and class representation with significant fixes. It’s especially disheartening that this is exactly the same situation and effectively to the benefit of the same 2-3 specs as has been the last 3-4 expansions, and that it was blatantly obvious in beta this was an issue, and they just ignored feedback on it once again.

10 Likes