My theory is that because he dislikes r.druid (self admitted) that he doesn’t want to see it get buffed to the point where it actually becomes strong. I know this is kind of tongue-in-cheek, but a part of me doesn’t think it’s too far fetched.
While next season’s r.druid may not be the worst healer, to me it seems very middle of the road and not anywhere near contention of being the meta pick. It still seems like it suffers from the same fundamental problems as it did in season 1 except maybe the overall tuning dial has been raised a tiny bit.
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Lmao what? You’re off your rocker. I co-main a dps and healer and my healer is rdruid. They’re going to be at or near the very top. Middle of the road? 
After the recently announced Disc nerf it’s either monk or druid that’ll emerge as #1 imo, and it’s a close race.
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nah, it’ll still be either disc or monk assuming no new changes. no/weak CDs, bad burst healing, won’t be able to dps much because of all the AOE heal checks, poison dispel less valuable next season…
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Do you play a resto druid? If you think they’re not going to be good then you either don’t know what you’re talking about or are coping. Calling them middle of the road as if they’re a B/C tier spec is just a terrible take tbh.
Yes I do and is my most played toon. We will see. They ARE a B/C right now and I don’t see it changing next patch.
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I saw some people were putting rdruid in the top of their tier lists for M+ and was wondering why.
Their cooldowns seem clunky and annoying in a M+ environment compared to some other healers including MW. Which is an odd reversal compared to early DF where rdruid had great cooldowns and MW had terrible M+ cooldowns. 
I’ve seen maybe around 7-8 youtube vids of people giving tier lists…some people I’m not that familiar with but some known top players like yoda…most people I see have r.druid middle or slightly above middle which I think is more reasonable.
You say “cooldowns” but currently we really only have 1, convoke. Flourish you have to give up photosynthesis and tranquility while buffed is still not good, far too weak for a long channel and 3 minute CD. I’m also not a fan of the RNG of convoke. It’s a 4 second channel and sometimes you pop it right before a big healing check and 1 person just doesn’t get targeted very much…so you either cut it early which feels bad, or pray one of the last spells is a regrowth or swiftmend on that low player…which also feels bad.
Hello my fellow restoration druids! Is it worth it to take abundance over cenarion ward if you are using germination in dungeons? And what do you think about using reforestation over forest’s flow? Thanks! Elmyouu
If we are talking currently in season 1 I can’t say much about raid, but in m+ the vast majority of people take cenarion ward over abundance. It’s a hot that actually feels like it has some heft to it and 20 second CD means you pretty much have it for every mechanic. I’ve tried abundance a lot and for pugs I think it’s fine. You can actually better keep people alive when a lot of kicks are missed because your regrowths are so fast…and they need to be when someone takes a bolt and they need to quickly be healed before they take any more damage. Combined with master shapeshifter and it’s almost impossible to run out of mana. It’s more GCD intensive tho, so it will be a dps loss.
I never tried reforestation when it only required 3 casts, but at 4 it feels unusable. It’s way too annoying to play around in my opinion and the value isn’t worth the headache. Forest’s Flow on the other hand is a great talent. If you have tranquil mind and are vigilant about your lifeblooms then you will get a lot of clearcasts and those extra nourishes are very noticeable.
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Until Convoke gets changed to be used as a proper healing cd in Player Form I don’t see how Resto will be number 1, besides that I think Resto will be ok middle of the pack, I strongly doubt meta.
Having RNG on any skill, let alone a Healer is beyond ridiculous, “ohh sorry we wiped because Convoke decided to do more dps abilities rather then healing”, Or occasionally completely miss heals on players who need it and causes a death.
Which any Resto Druid player knows these 2 situations happen way more often then not.
Even on my PTR testing the same issue that has plagued us keeps repeating itself.
Until they honestly fix our CDs, Tranquility to be used on the move (although rarely played in M+) but still be great to have raiding and remove the ridiculous RNG from Convoke I can’t see us being Meta.
This isn’t DF when Grove Guardians carried the spec anymore. I am definitely not saying we are the worst that is HPal, we do seem way better off the TWW S1 by a mile but definitely not “top tier” as many are saying.
Personally though I’m having a blast as Disc on PTR, stress free, but feel so sad for HPal my usual go to healing alt. 
Buffed you mean the 11.1 buffs? I thought it was good now with the effect channeling faster and the plain % increase in its healing.
The patch notes say “total healing unchanged” for tranquility.
I think the current praise is just cause we’re tuned pretty well right now and resto druid is sorta the win more healer in high keys.
If the group is good at avoidable damage(which high end players are) and its just about the intentional heal checks resto ramping hots playstyle slaps.
Mark is a valuable buff to any group comp.
Our utility is decent, theres fewer poison/curse dispels this season but we still have slows, roots, an easier interrupt, brez, disorient or bash, a knockback.
Our damage, when we can focus on just dps, is pretty decent, the tree changes make dpsing a little easier, we have the options to be ranged or melee dps.
Theres also the chance super high key pushers do the thing where we go boomy the first major pull with all the cooldowns then go back to resto the rest of the key.
We’re like a B+ now for keys. Possibly low A if the tier does its job which is hasnt 90% of ptr testing.
And theres how MW and Disc are early season outliers so theres a decent chance blizz overcorrects like usual. Then we’re just kinda top by default unless pally and shaman gets some big buffs at the same time.
Yeah, I know - I just thought that complete the healing faster would be more benefical… or “useful”.
I think we’re good at the “heavy dot” placed on 2 players thing, but when it comes to the entire party taking big aoe damage I don’t think we are particularly good at it. Every druid on PTR I’ve seen struggles with this if they don’t have convoke. Let’s just create a hypothetical scenario:
2 life blooms out
everyone has regrowth
everyone has rejuv
1 person has cenarion ward
3 trees out on diff players
everyone standing in efflo
SotF wildgrowth the moment big partywide AOE starts ticking.
This is our entire healing kit, but I’m saying this doesn’t do spectacular healing during big party wide damage…especially for the 2 people who don’t have a lifebloom or cen ward. At this moment you have literally no other options besides regrowth which is single target healing.
also: the above requires 11 GCD’s, 3 casts of regrowth, and 1 cast of wildgrowth…and that’s before you start regrowth spamming because you have no other options.
In common pugs like i said solidly B tier, upgrade to last season but not super amazing outside of the class tree reworks.
And if mw and disc get nerfed(which blizz historically does to the season opening outliers) its just kind of us next, shammy mana is horrible again, pally is a mess, holy priest is struggling cause there changes didnt deliver on improving renew or PoH to useable levels and evokers… i dont actually know but ive only ever seen like 3 that werent aug this expac.
Plus we have passives filling in some of that even if rng, verdancy, forest flow cleave, cultivation procs, whatever the hero talents are giving: 20% from bonus healing on a target for that swiftmend/soul with wildstalker, keepers 15% bonus from the treants and dream petals.
Its all cleave and id love less rng, but enough of it to spread around 5 people, closer to 4 unless tank busters overlap the aoe often, which i dont remember from ptr testing, but i didnt do to much of it after the first 2 weeks so i could be wrong.
As a Druid I’d disagree with you. There has been a few iterations on healing from Dragonflight to now. The big change going into TWW Season 1 was the move from one shot mechanics, to mechanics that deal more damage but over a longer duration. This was to give healers time to react and still challenge them without players just being killed in one hit.
In Season 1 most of these mechanics occur over 4 to 5 seconds. I reported this on the beta forums endlessly that this was not a good match for RDruid seeing as they need about 15 seconds for hots to tick, or 7 seconds in the best of scenarios.
Going into Season 1 I played probably hundreds of hours of the beta. Granted going into Season 2 I have not touched it but I have seen some footage. And from what I have seen most of these large damaging mechanics have been extended to 6 to 8 seconds or sometimes even longer. This combined with the mastery changes are VERY MUCH in Resto Druids favor this time around.
Resto has always had some of the highest if not the highest dungeon throughput in the game. They just need the chance to get it rolling. See Khajin the Unyielding from Dragonflight which single-handedly made most groups almost exclusively take Resto Druids to that dungeon.
Well, guess what? There is another Khajin the Unyielding fight in the upcoming season. And you’ll get the chance to see what Resto Druid can really do. 
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The problem is we are forced into regrowth spamming because our hots are weak…and we can only regrowth 1 person at a time. Every single hot in our toolkit will not heal a full HP bar in 6-8 seconds…not even close…and the 2 people who don’t have a lifebloom or cen ward barely get any healing.
The reason convoke is nice is because it also gives you a burst dps option as a healer, so it’s not just used for healing.