I understand you’re wanting to reduce the number of buttons for Resto Druid (bloat). I have a suggestion on how to change skull bash and accomplish your goals without creating more imbalance between Resto Druid and other healers (in particular Resto Shaman):
Resto Shaman is arguably always better than Resto Druid unless the druid is very significantly overtuned in terms of raw healing. Thunderstorm knock up, Capacitor Totem, Wind Shear (ranged kick), Skyfury group buff, and Bloodlust are all arguably stronger versions than what Resto Druid brings to the table;
Resto Druid also suffers from M+ ramp up time where Resto Shaman doesn’t. If I need to be combat resurrected or to run back to the battle after drinking while my party moves on to the next pack, it can be extremely difficult to catch up. While I believe people are exagerating on live, there are players that will always bring a Resto Shaman rather than a Resto Druid in M+ for this reason (perceived higher risk);
Suggestion: Rename Skull Bash for Resto Druid (maybe “Thor’s Hammer”) and make it a ranged kick that works in all shape shift forms;
Suggestion (button bloat): Remove Ursol’s Vortex talent/ability just for Restoration Druid, and change the talent to a passive Typhoon “knock up” instead of a push back. Problem solved, one less button and complexity on the Resto Druid bar (Vortex) while maintaining the balance (especially between RDruid and RSham). Also, you’re removing some further complexity for new players in having to macro Vortex/Typhoon.
Idk if you are talking about a certain spec or not but I actually feel Druid has came out great amongst all the pruning.
I mainly play balance but had been eying feral. i know feral is getting big changes but overall I feel like i still have most of what I had if not more, class wise.
This whole thread is about resto druid losing skull bash next expansion not feral or balance. Feral\Balance didnt really have a ton of CDs/tools like some other specs
overally fearmongering? the whole point of a beta/alpha is to give feedback on changes. Blizzard removed kick for high end mplus reasons so i think its fine if people raise a point/raise alarm to say hey, i actually like having more agency on my resto druid interrupt is useful in solo content\pvp and argue for a revert.
Next expansion they have greatly reduced agency of healers mostly because of current high end play and i dont like that personally because i dont think the game should be designed around high end play. You should be able to do damage or interrupt on a healer for other content type or playing with friends. Just because the 0.001% of high end esport mplus healers are required to do damage and interrupt due to pushing the extreme of content i dont think they should mess up the game for others for the few. 99% of content right now you dont need to dps or interrupt as any healer to complete it .
yea i like more agency to a point too but i think this situation with healers losing kicks is a bit of a conumdrum.
I like having SB but also DPS as a role has had it way too easy and ive even encountered some who do even aim to kick even though all three dps should have more kicks total than the tank and heals by the end of a M+.
I hope we can get back to a point after where SB is returned but overall I think kicks being mainly a dps thing will be good, even if temporary.
then just disable healer kicks in mplus if its a problem for mplus, personally for me at least removing this kinda stuff from healers is going to make them less fun to play. But i get where you are coming from dps need more responsibility.
Losing kick on resto is going to suck so bad in solo play pvp\solo play PVE. I also noticed the damage is way down on healers as well.
I also think blizzard could do a better job with telling people how they die. Like ALL Abilities should be labelled as “avoidable” or “unavoidable” damage. If a DPS dies or takes tons of damage it should come up on the core UI what dps is not doing a good job avoiding fire.
ultimately its blizzards product so we’ll have to see what they go forward with and adapt. I would say a good thing is that if needed they can always fall back to what was successful if this change doesn’t work out.
yea there goal is to reduce mental load. I just argue that 99% of content for a healer doesnt require a kick in order to complete the content its just nice to have if you want to help out friends etc. They want feedback for the alpha so this is the forum to provide it
Yea most of the time it is constructive in nearly all the posts i have seen about it in the offical feedback forum threads it has been, obviously if you are looking in random discussion boards not directly requested by blizzard you are going to find customers talking about it and being angry about it.
Blizzard just has to be prepared for new healers to start playing at the expense of frustrating existing healers that is the reality and any good game dev will likely expect that based on this feedback.
My argument would be to just disable healer kicks in mplus to try keep some of the healers happy.
I would say most of it has actually been pretty sharp on the rude side. They also don’t only look at the forums, they gather opinion and feedback from anywhere people talk.
Yea which seems to be the notion of the changes overall. Again, if anything is too bad of a change at least they have a successful notion to fallback on when needed.
This could be a good middle ground. We’ll have to see what they will end up landing on.
I am specifically talking about forums\threads they ask for feedback on the topic. Outside of that fan subreddits or discords are going to say whatever they feel about these changes. Good developers looking at other areas of the internet for feedback would be able to filter this to understand why some people dont like these changes.