Title says it all, going from our legion play style into BFA has been terrible. Its like they forgot druids also heal M+, although i dislike our position in raid healing, its ultimately not terrible, while i prefered doing meaningful healing outside of ONE cooldown, we can still work in raids.
M+ however is terrible, we have to work twice as hard as any other healer, especially on grievous weeks. In legion i could let my hots actually bring people out of grievous, not anymore though, nope gotta hot and spam regrowth, its a terrible playstyle.
The legion iteration of resto druid, talent tree and SotF ring trait, was actually good. It allowed you the be fully equipped for any healing situation being able to use hots to heal people. not mindless regrowth spam.
Idk what the nerfs to resto druids is about, but please for the love of god make the class good and fun to play again.
And a lot of it comes down to competent DPS, especially on Grievous. Are they using interrupts, CC, staying out of bad, being behind trash/bosses as much as possible, sitting and eating/drinking between pulls.
While I don’t play Resto, I love grouping with them in my 7-9 keys. The only time I’ve really seen them struggle is if a second pack of mobs accidentally gets pulled
Yes. It’s depressing. Our mobility got hit. We were never mana efficient …but now it’s terrible.
Going from Legion to BfA is not fun. I’m not sure why Blizz decide to completely gut Rdruid. I main a VDH now because of it.
I spend 90% of my time hoping around in circles while using INSTANT cast heals.
I can teleport 30 yards to a friendlys/enemys possition with wild charge.
Travel form is permitted in more than half of the dungeons, comes with a 20 yard leap, and we have dash. We can shape shift out of snares, and use roots and typhoon to distance ourselves from danger.
What are you talking about? Did you just start in BfA?
The took away displacer beast, they added a cast time to rebirth, they made tranq stationary, they removed instacast Healing Touch.
Yeah that’s a pretty big deal.
Druids dont HOT heal anymore, its just regrowth spam now. SOTF, Prosperity is the way to go, especially if you have fungal growth, our only class specific trait thats not useless. You can basically take rejuv off your bar and same with lifebloom if youre not running photo.
First of all, Healing Touch never was instacast, unless you pic (during Legion) Abundance (and Germination in 5man case) and put 10 stacks of Rejuvs, then you had Healing Touch instacast for like 3-4 sec before refresh Rejuvs.
And Tical is right, our mobility is great and with our CC possibilities it just goes up =D.
Grievous is terrible for everyone, not only druids. If any healer let happen a snowball effect, this healer gonna have a bad time to compensate it. Besides, each boss with each healer has its own way to go. Some bosses are easier for some healer, the same bosses are harder for other healers.
Sure, as a fellow druid, I want them to be buffed =) … But we are in a strong place compared with a lot of healers. Shamans really need love for a long time.
If we need love as you say, then I think we can wait a bit. There are some people who need a lot more love than us. =)
I just started really hard healing on my resto this xpac and the only bad thing I saw was mobility taken away from Tranq. If your healing proactively (which every healer really should) then you’ll be fine. Unless your group sucks.
When I say healing proactively, I’m not just talking about setting up HoTs. I’m talking about proper use of CD for specific mobs or mechanics from bosses. Or setting up your positioning so when everyone else has to move, your already there healing them.
I can’t speak for hardcore healing in legion, but I don’t see any horrible problems for us in BfA.
This post is addressing dungeon healing for the most part.
Resto is incredibly clunky when compared to Legion and feels very similar to Burning Crusade healing. In BC, you made sure to have your 3x lifebloom up on the tank and filled in with regrowth and healing touch. Occasionally, you could throw out some rejuvenations in dungeons but they were still very expensive at the time and really didn’t heal for much. It wasn’t until wrath when rejuvenations were cheapened up and had their potency increased that you could start casting them liberally. This change was the first instance where resto druids became blanket raid healers with rejuvenation, wild growth and nourish as a filler.
What we lost:
Three to six seconds on rejuvenation — we must now spend more globals refreshing while blowing more mana in addition to overall loss of uptime.
Living Seed — At least 57% of the recently crit regrowth, healing touch or swiftmend being converted into healing the next time the target took damage. Not to mention it was stackable to a point. When paired with the abundance talent, it offered amazing healing output with practically 100% uptime on regrowth and a good probability to proc on chained quick/instant healing touches. Now, we can only cast regrowth with a mediocre crit chance and no living seed.
Deep Rooted Artifact Trait — Having our hots refreshing themselves on targets below 35% health allowed us to save globals and mana while also keeping mastery stacks on the target.
Moving Tranquility — Sure, the hot portion was added back, but now we must pay very close attention to when something may be put underneath us in order to get a full cast off. Many times, the party really needs the heals at that specific moment in time, and having to wait to cast can result in deaths or wipes. If you misjudge your timing, you may end up only getting 20% of your most powerful healing cooldown off or risk staying in the danger and eating potentially fatal damage to get more channel time in. The other healers do not really have to deal with this scenario with their major healing cooldown. If you mess this up in a raid, your hps is pretty much toast.
Overall, many times it feels like we are playing a losing battle regrowth spamming somebody with full hots on them and watching their health not really move. We need to use many more globals to keep hots going and on weeks like grievous, we no longer have the ability to top someone up fast with crit regrowth and healing touches paired with living seed buffers. In legion, especially with the tier set from Antorus, I could have five stacks of grievous on every party member and be able to get everything back under control in 10 seconds. Now, you can spend 20 seconds just getting two people stabilized.
We are top tier in mythic + and mediocre in raids but even being at the top doesn’t mean the spec isn’t clunky and more stressful than previous iterations. This point is made more valid when you consider the top talents for mythic + are designed to maximize the globals you have available because the spec just can’t handle the other talents given how global intensive they are.
Stationary tranquility has always been the norm. You were given tranquil mind for ONE expansion out of eight. Calm down.
Displacer beast was a 30 second cooldown. Wild charge is only 15 and it has 6 unique options. If youre still hung up on the loss of displacer beast with all that charge has to offer, then you’re not playing your class properly.
You could maybe argue we had it indirectly in Mists and Warlords through symbiosis on a shaman and aspect of the fox respectively.
That said, resto druid is one of the best healers for M+ and is middle of the pack in raids so this thread is interesting. We did not change all that much from legion, particularly in dungeons.
Another thing I would like to bring up in this thread is that we actually have quite a few talents and talent combinations that work well in mythic+. This to me makes it feel really good to be restoration druid right now. You can try different things and still have success while getting some variety in your healing style.
I’m confused, isn’t Resto Druid the No1 healer for M+ right now?. At least according to Raider_dot_io it shows it as the most played spec at any keystone level and the higher the key the higher it shows (almost 30% at +15s and above).
I play one as an alt, currently around 368-370 item level, haven’t played it that much but feels quite strong in M+, that ofc depends what are you comparing it to: It’s definitely weaker to how it was in Legion but no-healer in BFA is anywhere close to how Legion Resto Druid and Holy Paladin were (for dungeons that is).
I don’t find myself having to work harder on Resto Druid than other healers either, perhaps only if you are cat weaving for nice DPS then yes you are quite busy poping in and out of cat form.
Even as Disc Priest which is No2 in Radier_dot_io I’ve been declined from groups that are exclusively looking for Resto Druid. Which is fine maybe the group needed a Brez or enrage removal but just saying I think community perception at least also agree Resto Druid is strong in M+.
Resto is the top mythic plus healer by a landslide currently, but monk will most likely overtake in 8.1. Druid definitely requires a lot more effort, but that’s a trade off for the convenience and versatility of the overall class (feral isn’t an easy spec either).
Grievous is completely party dependent. I went into an Underrot 8 yesterday and the party was constantly hit by grievous because they couldn’t dodge anything. Did another 8 right after with a different group and it was night and day. Barely had to heal anyone the whole run because they avoided damage and popped personals. It sucks affixes punish healers usually for dps being bad.