What does resto druid bring to the table that other healers don't in shadowlands?

Classes Druid
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Dumb question I know but I hope people can make me understand what they can do. I come from FFXIV so my viewpoint is skewed from that angle if that helps anyone better understand.

I am looking for a healer that can:

1: Spend minimal global cooldowns on healing. Like my nightmare is just spamming healing over and over and over again. Like take AST in FFXIV for instance, I can weave in off global cooldowns between my malefic damage spells all day long and barely need to cast a GCD heal. I love it.

2: get in the fray and contribute extremely large damage, whether it is through buffing allies DPS (like paladin’s night fey blessings) or through raw damage on their own.

But more than that, what unique things does resto druid really bring?

I’ve heard on youtube apparently resto druids don’t bring much utility, but to me that is kind of ??? because the only utility people care about in FFXIV is how much DPS you bring as a healer. Whether it’s via buffing DPS or personal DPS.

My take, which might be incredibly stupid for the record:

When I looked at wowhead resto druid talents and legendaries and stuff I saw that we could actually stack A LOT of damage into feral form especially with the venthyr covenant ability.

Set up HoTs and then go absolutely HAM.

Random build idea:

Covenant: Venthyr. Ravenous Frenzy.

Legendary power: Oath of the Elder Druid

Conduits:
[1] Born of the Wilds
[2] Endless Thirst

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When people say resto doesn’t bring much utility they’re referring to raiding. It’s m+ they shine in where you can shift into feral and bang out some dps while your hots do their job.

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You can do the same as a resto in raiding you just have a diff stat prio in comparison to mplus we also cure poisons that ok shammy can do too but priest/paly/monk cannot. With the first tier of sl being very bleed dmg centric a resto druid would actually be helpful to cancel the tick dmg effect

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Stampeding roar and heart of the wild are greatly underestimated imo.

Tbh I don’t know how they’ll stack against other healers, but I’m personally so happy to get those two back that I don’t mind,

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None of what you listed helps for raiding which is where druids fall short. Druids are already number 1 in 5 man content so its not an issue. The only way druids will be top healers in raids is if their hps is just completely busted. They can’t compete with the damage reduction that shaman, priest, paladin provide.

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And they never will. That’s not what we do.

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I know that… which is why I stated the exact criteria of how they could ever be valued over them in a raid.

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Sounds like you want to play another class.
Thats not what druids do.

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resto druids are masters of healing over time

most healing spells they have can be cast instantly, while on the move, which helps them to excel during fights that require a lot of movement

as a raid healer, a druid will typically keep a few heal over time effects rolling on at least one tank, especially lifebloom, but their main job is to “raid heal” by casting spells like rejuvenation and regrowth on everyone else. This way, another healer, who is dedicated as the ‘tank healer’ can try to focus on healing just the tanks

because you said you don’t like spamming the same heal over and over again, resto druids are probably your worst nightmare as a healer. in past expansions, and possibly shadowlands with the right legendary item, spamming just one healing spell on the entire raid as much as possible was the ‘optimal’ way to play them.

that said, in shadowlands you can gain heart of the wild that, for a 45 second period, will turn you into a more effective cat or laser chicken, allowing you a window to do some decent damage.

resto druids are a versatile healer. in shadowlands, they can reduce how much damage the tank takes by 20% for 8 seconds with ironbark and this is on a fairly short 1.5 minute cooldown, and if the tank or another ally does die, they can resurrect while in combat, they can innervate another healer to temporarily remove the mana costs of their spells and the druid will get the same effect but at 50% effectiveness, and new in shadowlands a resto druid can stampeding roar, giving all players within 15 yards a huge movement boost for 8 seconds, which is ridiculously good utility in many raid encounters when quick movement is needed. Note: shamans can do a similar thing with windrush totem but they have to talent into it.

overall however if your goal is to do damage while healing, I would recommend you instead take a look at either a holy paladin with glimmer, or a discipline priest

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For raiding they’re mediocre. They’re super efficient, but their HoTs get wasted by direct heals, much of their utility goes to waste, and they don’t bring any raidwide buff or debuff.

Forr Mythic Plus their design is absolutely fantastic. They hots are super efficient and tick to full effect, you can heavily ramp up healing with their mastery on a small party size, they are hyper mobile, and can utilize hots and dots to both deal damage and heal at the same time.

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Jesus Christ you’re dense. I’m saying resto druids would need to have over the top hps to compensate in order to win raid slots. Like on legion when they could blanket the entire raid in rejuvenation. What does that have to do with “playing another class”?

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You obviously don’t know anything about healing.

Healing meters mean nothing.

Raid healing is different from 5 man in many ways, but the most notable difference is assigned tasks. Ei… Cd usage and assigned targets.

Topping healing meters is absolutely meaningless and every competent raid/healing officer knows this. You clearly don’t.

Resto druids are best utilized for giving a consistent stream of party heals, preparing for incoming damage, and cd usage.

If that style of raid healing isn’t for you, pick another class.

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We already have iron bark. Shadowlands is just baking our stonebark talent into the spell and increasing the cd.

It’s currently on a 1 min cd and lasts 12 sec.

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Lol healing meters are useless. Ya because druids being head and shoulders above every other healer when they had tier 19 was because of assigned roles right? You’re a joke.

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If you want to do dungeons and 2v2 arenas, resto is fantastic. And at least two of the covenant abilities look like they will be solid choices for resto to either pop extra heals or contribute some damage.

Resto druids, on top of all of the utility mentioned above, also get to choose whether they contribute damage as melee or ranged. I hate being forced to use my druid for healing, but when I do heal, it’s great fun

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Yes. They dont mean anything.
Its only good use is to better analyze over-healing and heal overlap to guage how efficient your heaing team is and whether its time to swap one out for another dps.

I know that regardless of what those meters said, those healers had assigned roles, yes.

Every healer has its up and downs. We cant be #1 all the time or else nobody would play anything else.

You dont have any argument here. You lack any kind of understanding about BASIC raid healing strats. You just want to top healing meters. The only joke here is you.

Further more, the t19 bonus is back in SL via our legendary.
Were also getting a leg/wrist legendary that has a 25% chance after WG to make your next rejuv/regrowth hit 3 targets.
Like… what are you crying about?

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You don’t even understand the premise of the argument. I’m sure you think you are qualified because you downed some puggable bosses in mythic, but you don’t even understand the nuance of the conversation. Resto druids lack raid utility which they can overcome through raw healing throughput. Healing throughput does matter, maybe not to you who hasn’t cleared anything remotely difficult, but guilds don’t just ignore a healers output just because he placed a power word barrier on the ground. By your moronic logic resto druids would never be in raids since they don’t offer strong raid utility and their healing numbers for some reason aren’t of any assistance in your opinion towards downing a boss. In each patch cycle for the last few years resto druid raid usage has directly correlated to their healing output, that’s not a coincidence.

Also you don’t even have the experience to know why T19 was so strong. Go ahead an research legion legendaries and artifact tree and maybe you can piece it together (doubtful) why resto was so busted with those things combined. 1 SL legendary isnt equal to what those 3 were able to synergize to.

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If you put more effort into your arguments than you did your failed armory searches, we could have avoided all this pointless debate. But no, you want to make this personal because you lack any actual argument.

/golf clap

Which is why r-druids have some of, if not the most powerful raid cds in the game?

Oh my sweet summer child.
More inexperience talking.

This wasnt said anythere.
You have a sever lack of reading comprehension.
Do you take long showers with all these fake arguments you make up in your head?

Cd usage and healing throughput go hand in hand.
You think just because a healer topped the overall meters that they did well?
Thats ignorance.

The reality is that some healers might spend 50% of the fight sitting on their butt doing nothing,(or doing damage) and thats ok, because they were given a raid spot to use their high throughput CDs when called for, during key, predetermined phases of the fight. Thats how you kill bosses.

Youre right… its stronger.
The only trait we arent getting back is deep rooted.

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Druid (non healing) utility in raid is straight up not very effective in raids because bosses are not affected by some of the stuff they bring or someone else brings it already, and having more than 1 druid makes this even worse.
Druid healing is often confused with put hots for triage and wait for them to heal people slowly, in raids and m+ in most high-end content you are expected to top people as quickly as possible with some exceptions that you must be aware of.
Which means a lot of their heals go to waste and their throughput is very low if you don’t pop CDs or stack tons of hots to abuse the mastery but the latter is not easy or quick to do in a raid with 19 people, this does make them great tank healers tho.

So what you bring to a raid is being able to prepare for incoming heavy damage and being able to deal with it very well with your 3 big CDs, then there is innervate which is very good but the new shadowlands trait is gonna make it’s use confusing.
They also have good personal defenses with bark and bear vs most of the other healers

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But… Msyltek.
“hOw dO i tOp hEAliNg MeTerS??”

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