World of Warcraft®

Hey folks.

So I have been playing my Resto Druid for a while now and always considered it a very viable healer especially throughout 4.2.

With the changes in 4.3 I still considered it very viable but just recently come to question that. A few other Resto's I know have switched to HPriest or HPala and then watching the recent Fatboss weekly they commented on how Resto's really don't bring much special to the raid and further to that don't bring any Dmg Red abilities to the team that can be applied to other members.

What are people's views on this? Im currently 2/8HC on contemplating whether it would be of benefit to the team for me to change.

Thanks

24/04/2012 13:17Posted by Polo

What are people's views on this?

There's no argument that a Resto Druid brings nothing to the raid other than pure healing output and of course a Tranq(Both of which can be brought by other class variants). For example, you have no form of AM, PS, Disc Bubble etc.

Re-rolling, at this stage of Dragon Soul? I'm sure you will be able to make it through all the encounters as a Resto Druid, especially with the 15% Nerf. Speaking in terms of MoP, it's hard to judge what will be a viable healer setup at this stage of the BETA. I would recommend have at least one healer Alt of a different class ready to go in-case you find your Druid isn't viable. However, try to keep your Druid as geared as possible, as you don't know what various patches will bring.

As long as your other healers aren't druids as well, there's little point to change. They are viable, and after the nerfs it doesn't matter much. You can feel the difference in mitigation on encounters perhaps if a druid is there instead of a pally, but it's still perfectly doable and there are loads of druids who raids hardmodes.

My guild has resto shammy, resto druid, holy priest and our druid can chuck out some impressive healing over the long fights as well as a battle res as we dont have a DK or warlock.

I personally still rate resto druids highly, we have used one on all of our kills to date (5/8HC).

Biggest problem for druids is people toppin off targets they have cast HOTs on. Means the druid wasted his time and mana just for some ticks of overhealing.

As healers in their own right druids are fine but its too easy for others to negate druid healing by spamming quicker spells. I do this to our druid sometimes for a laugh. He uses the same amount of mana but gets no healing for it..... Mwahaha

26/04/2012 12:09Posted by Blinkz

Means the druid wasted his time and mana just for some ticks of overhealing.

Hot before they're healed up? I mean damage is predictable. Of course there's no way to avoid over healing

Seems he means someone has taken some dmg, druid casts a hot on him, that manages to heal for one tick then a priest/shaman/pally casts a direct heal on the person healing them to full leaving the hot to tick into overhealing, saw that happen a lot in eq when my cleric used a HoT and someone else didn't see that and used a direct heal, a HoT is a lot more mana efficient but not if it is wasted.

Druids ain't bad at all they just have HOT's and Nourish as the great healspell. However you'll need a good tank and good DPSers with good gear in order to keep em alive.

A druid contributes with raid cd (tranq) and battle ress. :) My guild is addicted to resto druids due to the battle ress, compared to other classes they can glyph it so the people getting ressed gets full hp. If a dk or lock resses there is a risk the target will die instatly before the healers manage to heal him up.

<3 to the resto druids.

i rather co-heal with a good player and then the class doesnt really matter these days to be honest, only had something against healing with a druid when progressing on ship hc ;P

but yeah with 15% nerf nothing really matters now, no need for spirit links and what not, no idea what mop have in store tho ;P

Well, before the wild growth nerf druids were quite useful because of there raw aoe healing.
Right now i do sometimes miss it seeing how other classes do way more aoe healing in certain situations.
However, overall, aslong as you know how to play your druid you wont be too far behind or even bring in more raw healing then other classes.

So basically what im saying, we lost one of our advantages but were still quite viable imo.

Well in DS with the stupid damage tanks and raid take (talking about hard modes), the most valuable asset healers have are damage reduction abilities.
Priests have GS or PS/PW:B
Paladins have HoS
Shamans makes up for it with either SLT, their mastery which will see them critting 120k+ GHWs, and Ancestral Healing.
Then you get the druid... Their strongest assets were Tranquility and WG, one has been eclipsed by the new priest Hymn, and the other got nerfed to the ground.
Our main RDruid quit just last week, and since we run with 3 healing priests, I proposed to our officer if he wanted me to switch to my druid instead.
His answer was: 'Are you insane?? I would never replace a priest with a druid. If we have one it's good, but it's not essential.'

So this sums it up a bit, having a druid in the raid is still a good thing, but when you need to optimise your setup (like for 10 man), and you have all the classes available, almost no guild will ever pick the druid.
Now if you feel that your guild progress is stalling due to tanks dying from lack of heals or cds, then you may want to consider re-rolling, if the issue is related to people standing in fire and not avoiding obvious damage while you enjoy playing druid, then stick to him.

The blood elf above pretty much summed up the situation. Although it doesn't matter that much now that the nerf will reach 20%,but in general:

We're in terrible shape in PvP ,completely broken.
We're in bad shape in PvE ,there is no reason to prefer a druid,but we can offer an acceptable amount of healing. Nothing more other than that though.

And,like with every other class right now, the devs are not bothering because they got their eyes focused on the expansion now. Just hope things turn out better there and have patience,because it is unlikely that anything is going to change until then.

Hi Pinus, haven't seen you for a while

Already covered that on another thread, aloha. ;)

Pinus \0/

little late to this the druid main heal is healing touch P: sorry if this has been corrected im reading through from start of topic :D

Druids have almost all the possible pure healing spells found in every other class, apart from spammable AoE heals (you can overcome this with Rejuvenation and the Swiftmend talent when correctly used. Thing is, with a druid you tend to rely only on filling the bars while a paladin has defensive cooldowns he can cast on others, priests have an enormity of shields and defensive cooldowns and shamans have Spirit Link which is outright awesome in emergency situations. Nevertheless, I don't find much problems healing in raids. I can always pop a tranquility when things get rough (arguably better then Divine Hymn, since it has no target cap nor cap on the number of heals), or get into Tree of Life and spam Lifebloom x1 stack on everyone.

I agree, when things get tough, other classes can manage much better, still you have solid healing assured when you get a druid. And who doesn't like HoTs?

01/05/2012 00:00Posted by Insightful

Druids have almost all the possible pure healing spells found in every other class, apart from spammable AoE heals (you can overcome this with Rejuvenation and the Swiftmend talent when correctly used.

Serious?

I guess the "almost all" covers alot ;)
I like healers being different. But they should listen to PTR feedback properly.