The state of Resto Druids

Classes Druid
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With the nerf to Tranquility it looks like druids are now going to be suffering for throughput and raid utility alike.

Legion Resto was perhaps the most satisfying toolkit we’ve had in WoW, with flexibility, great potential throughput, and decent burst, all with the risk of running OoM and therefore being capped by resources. Legion resto, in raid, was all about managing mana, from my own perspective. While I dislike that as a focus for a healer, I did enjoy the rest of the gameplay and felt like druids were both satisfying and reasonably powerful.

In BFA, however, we were pruned, like other classes, in more than one way. I thought I would hate it and almost re-rolled. I am glad I didn’t, because I love the class, nearly regardless of the state it’s in.

However, this recent nerf to out best spell, which had us relegated to “raid cd” healers some respects, hurts us quite a bit. On fights like G’Huun this spell was able to bring the entire raid up from nothing and keep them safe for a good chunk of the fight. Now, it is obviously much weaker. The nerf itself on its own is not the problem. The problem is the lack of general throughput to make up for it. Right now, Archive is the best for R druids on most fights, rendering nearly all the other Azerite useless. Without Tranq as it was, I now spend WAY more mana on Rejuvs and WG, and it’s not sustainable.

We’re stuck putting out single Rejuvs on targets, watching them tick for 1-2% of their HP, and waiting to Cast WG only to have it “sniped” by Priests and other burst healers. It’s really not satisfying. At least in Legion Rejuvs lasted for much longer and we could apply 2 stacks. Druids are pretty much ONLY allowed to shine on fights where the other healers are really really short on gear, or the druid is solo/2 healing a fight. If there is a Priest in the raid, forget it.

With the nerf to Tranq and lack of other changes, it’s becoming clear that druids will be one of the least appealing options for raids, just as we saw with Resto shaman, except they now have been buffed and still have tremendous raid utility, whereas resto has lost significant power in our best spell and lacks much raid utility/throughput in its current form.

Now, I know Tranq over-healed a lot, and I know that druids are not “garbage-tier” healers, but I also know that when you look at other healers moving into 8.1.5 the resto druid is not looking competitive.

I’m curious how other druid players see this, what your thoughts are, and how, if you agree that we could use some changes, that we could improve the spec.

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Tranquility now feels like it’s not doing anything at all… it’s horrible. I knew looking at the numbers it would be a drastic change, but I wasn’t prepared for exactly how drastic. Even my raid leader was like “wth is happening?”

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This isn’t about how to play, Avatan, and while I appreciate the sentiment, I don’t need your help. This is about the class design.

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I meant no disrespect Cenareus and deleted my post.

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6

I think that a Tranq nerf and a buff to other areas of Resto Druid’s kit is a good change, mainly because Druids are supposed to be about consistent healing and not all about one big cooldown, but the problem is that the 10% buff to wild growth it’s not likely enough to compensate, so it really feels like it’s leaving Druid in a pretty weak state for Raids. On the other hand, Druid is already very powerful in M+, and adding even more healing into the basic spells would probably make it too overpowered so it might be a bit hard to find a balance there.

I actually did a few Heroic bosses on my Druid alt and was doing fine on meters (used Spring Blossoms over Inner peace), sadly I think the logs got corrupted or maybe lost with the game files changes and I can’t really go back to evaluate things.

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Preliminary numbers are showing Druid as in-line with other healers, with Mistweaver and Holy Priest (the other low-utility healers) being the outliers (and in Legion, it was the reverse, with druid being the “best” of the low-utility healers). In terms of throughput, it’s not bad, and no change from where it was on the meters pre-patch. In terms of class design…you’re the HoT healers, of course you’re not sniping. It has always been your niche to be the trickle healer.

I don’t think the solution is to buff Tranq back, it’s to give all healers some desirable raid utility.

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Right now there are classes that out-perform us in “trickling”

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After testing how things stand with the depleted Tranq I maintain that this ability is now a god-awful waste of space that is almost entirely useless. Therefore, I switched to my Mythic+ build, Abundance+Germ.

While I hate having to deal with this many GCDs in a raid, this combo is working. Better mana management, more throughput, and with the ever-so-slightly better WG I feel like I can function again.

I’m going to mess around with Azerite traits a bit and test more.

Miss good!Tranq+Flourish, though :crying_cat_face: