Shadowlands: Restoration Druid Feedback

I’ve had some time to review the talent tree changes and thought I’d post my personal feedback here to see what everyone else thinks.

Talents

  • Swiftmend - I am not a fan of changing Swiftmend and have it consume a HoT. It feels bad to push a button that works negatively against our Mastery.

  • Nourish - Bringing this spell back gives a choice but not a very interesting one. With the change to Regrowth (bringing back the 40% chance for the initial heal to crit when the HoT is on a target already) doesn’t make me feel super compelled to choose this talent but I like it as an option.

  • Typhoon - Having to choose between Typhoon (Balance Affinity) and Cat Weaving is a tough pill to swallow. I don’t want to feel like I need to choose Balance affinity to get access to this and then have mana concerns because I’m Boomkin DPSing instead of Cat Weaving. I do like getting access to Maim though so I can live with this because it at least gives us an interesting choice for players who like to DPS at range.

  • Heart of the Wild - I think this is a great talent to bring back. It plays right to the core of class fantasy. I don’t like the numbers. An ability with a 5 minute cool down for 45 seconds of DPS doesn’t feel like a button worth pressing. If my raid/group can lose my healing for 45 seconds, I’m probably not worth bringing to begin with. With the changes to the game where healers brought to groups are mainly brought for DR and DPS, I think this ability just isn’t great. I’d like to see this be a 1.5 minute cool down for 15 seconds. It can be pressed more often, has a shorter window where I could HoT someone up, do some DPS, then swap back.

  • Overgrowth - Why? Maybe its a PvP thing but it doesn’t feel compelling to take this.

  • Germination - This is a lonely talent rarely taken in a row with other great talents. I believe this talent could be altered to fix a major problem Druids face, Raiding. Instead of allowing a second Rejuvenation on a single target, I’d like to see Rejuv include a 3% DR when active on a target. It gives us a compelling talent to take and a competitive reason to bring us to a Raid comp in that “Third Healer” slot against a Shaman/Holy Priest/Monk.

  • Ironbark - I love the fact that Stonebark is combined into the talent but I hate the cooldown time increase. 1.5 minutes is horrible and there’s no reason for this change. Keep the ability at a 1-minute cooldown and include Stonebark’s effect with it. Increasing the cooldown is just another reason to pass Druids over for Raid and it’s a shot at our Mythic+ utility that isn’t necessary.

Missing

  • Mark of the Wild - Where is this? There is no reason we can’t have our buff back given the unpruning that’s occurred. Make it happen, please!

I agree with you. I don’t really understand what they are trying to accomplish here. Like why not bring back the mushroom mechanic? That would have been really cool and something I really miss.

Swiftmend consuming a hot just goes against our mastery.

I want nourish to be good, after them taking away healing touch we do not really have a big heal any more and we are left with spamming regrowth. Which I do not like. But with nature’s swiftness coming back they should have went with healing touch over nourish. It might end up being really strong though. Will just have to wait and see.

Overgrowth sounds cool, but with it competing on the same row of some other really good talents, it probably won’t get taken.

I want mark of the wild back so much. Please!

I think resto druids will be even more suogth after in shadowlands dungeons, considering the aoe nerf. Aoe nerf means classes with higher st dmg and small cleave will do better meaning smaller pulls but moving more forward for the group from one small pack to the next. Even more resto druid friendly.

So i dont think resto has much to fear in general.

I hate to say it, but I think taking a shot at druid’s M+ utility was exactly the point. I don’t expect druids to cheer for it, but it makes sense.

In what way does it make sense? Druid is a successful M+ healer and excels in that content. Druid is not a 1st, 2nd, or even 3rd choice for Raid healing and we aren’t nearly as successful as other classes in that content.

Should Paladin, Priest, and Shaman loose out on Raid utility because they excel there so other healers can catch up?

I absolutely hate this mentality. Nerfing the good to make the bad seem less bad in the game isn’t a solution anyone should advocate for. If other classes are struggling in content, the solution is change those classes so they don’t struggle as much.

4 Likes

I think so. As a Disc, they absolutely need to nerf our passive ST damage and/or our DR, or else Pally/Disc will always be the mythic meta. Of course no one likes a nerf, but never doing nerfs and always doing buffs makes WoW like Diablo, where scaling goes out of control bonkers. That’s obviously a road the devs could go down, but they haven’t because they want WoW to be different - they’ve said as much. I’m not saying this way is BETTER, just that it is the way Blizzard does things. It’s fine if you have a different opinion, and I understand the frustration. I’m sorry I didn’t make that more clear. It obviously is frustrating.

Don’t much care about lore. But Swiftmend was my one and only emergency cast heal on my bar. Everything else was Hots, absorbs and self-heals. Resto Druid is just not viable at the start of this xpac. Time to check my holy priest instead (SW Barrier on a holy priest, what is the world coming to).