Now that we are a few weeks into the raid content, I thought it would be an appropriate time to have some discussion regarding the current state of the Resto Druid. I am going to offer some numbers and data below to support what I am about to say: Resto Druids are currently not in a good place. We continue to deal with the same issues that we struggled with for the majority of Cataclysm – we lack the toolkit to deal with burst AE healing. As the weeks have passed and other healers have obtained more gear and become more comfortable with their toolkits, the discrepancy only continues to become more noticeable. This is only further exacerbated by the fact that every other healing class received abilities permitting them to be stronger at dealing with this type of raid damage.
I have a few thoughts on how to fix this that I will discuss later on in this post, but first I thought we’d take a look at the numbers.
I went ahead and pulled all of the healing numbers from the past three weeks of raiding utilizing Raid Bots (an amazing too in so many ways!). I only pulled numbers from normal 25s for the purpose of this analysis. I did this for two reasons: 1) 25s are my preferred raid style and what I am passionate about fixing; and 2) there is simply not enough heroic data yet to look at (although I will tell you from the data I pulled, Druids are a bit worse off in heroics). I understand that three weeks isn’t a huge sample selection, but it is all the data we have at this time, and throughout those three weeks is fairly consistent, leading me to believe it will not appreciably change in the weeks to come if things stay as they are currently.
I have taken a look at the content as a whole and then drilled down to each of the six encounters for a more in depth look. The first set of data that I’m going to share is an overall view of how the healing classes are comparing as a whole.
Here you can see a few things. Monks are undeniably the strongest healers at this juncture in the game with none of the other healing classes coming close to them in performance. They are followed by Shaman and Paladins, with Druids and Priests bringing up the rear. You can see the bump in Holy Priests when they got their buffs to PoM and (I think) PoH. As you can see, Druids and Priests are trailing behind the other three healing classes by a fairly appreciable amount.
Let’s take this one step further, and examine how we are doing on a fight by fight basis to see if we fare any better on the individual mechanics of certain encounters.
The Stone Guard
Depending on how your raid handles this encounter, there is the potential for Druids to be fairly strong performers on this encounter due to how spread out the raid can be at times. You see this in the numbers here as Druids are slightly ahead of Paladins and Shaman, yet still a large margin behind Monks. Of all of the six encounters that we are going to look at today, this is the only one where Druids seem moderately strong.
Feng the Accursed
Feng is an encounter that emphasizes the weaknesses in our toolkit. Throughout the fight you are riddled with damage that requires you to top your raid up quickly. And as you can see here, Druids fall short, and as other classes grow stronger the contribution of the Druid grows weaker. This is exacerbated on heroic, where the damage is much more significant, comes out much faster and must be dealt with much quicker.
You can see here, again, that monks are dominate on this encounter, with a slight drop when Zen Sphere was nerfed. Shaman perform well, with Priests and Paladins trailing them and Druids falling behind.
Gara’jal the Spiritbinder
This encounter will somewhat depend on if you have the ability to enter the spirit realm, and admittedly who is running your parses. This encounter is a bit different because if your raid performs properly, there isn’t a lot of raid damage until the end of the fight. Which, consequently, means that it will be a bit frustrating to heal as a Druid, because the less there is to heal, the worse a Druid will perform.
In looking at this encounter yuo can see that Druids fall slightly ahead of priests, but again appreciably behind Monks, Shaman and Paladins.
The Spirit Kings
This is an encounter where, by all logic, Druids should perform well because the raid is frequently spread out to manage several of the differing mechanics of the fight – although they are also grouped quite a bit as well. Regardless, the times of raid spread prove to be insufficient, as Druids are again just about the priests, and quite far behind Monks, Paladins and Shaman.
Elegon
Of all of the encounters, I feel that Elegon highlights the problems in our toolkit the most. There are frequent periods of burst damage. There are times when the members of your raid require quick healing. And there is a steady period of increasing raid damage. All of which Druids struggle to manage (I have yet to end this fight not so OoM that I’m having to wait for mana to regen to cast at the end of the fight).
You can see here that Monks are again miles ahead of everyone else, with shaman coming in second, and also significantly ahead of the other three classes. Paladins, Druids and Priests are fairly close, with Druids ending on the bottom, but above Disc Priests.
Will of the Emperor
This is another encounter that really has the potential to play towards the Resto Druid toolkit, because of the periods where the raid is spread out a bit. However, we fall quite short of Paladins, Monks and Shaman who are dominating fairly equally here. The only classes underperforming Druids are priests. And both priests and Druids are significantly behind. I’m not comfortable speaking for priests, but I do have a few thoughts on how to shore up Druids.
So Why Are We Looking At This?
Because there is a discrepancy in Druid healing that needs to be fixed. It is easy to say we have a problem, or feel that since you don’t have problems the class as a whole doesn’t have a problem. But the numbers don’t lie. In reviewing them for the past three weeks of raid content it is quite clear that both Druids and Priests are not performing at the same level as the other healing classes.
This causes a discrepancy that is frustrating, and is only exaggerated as we move into heroics and gear is increased. I am pointing this out because something needs to be adjusted to get us back where we need to be to be both competitive and effective performers.
How Do We Fix It?
I feel the main problem that Druids continue to struggle with is that our toolkit cannot handle burst AE damage, yet encounters continue to incorporate this type of damage. This is further frustrated by the fact that all of the other healing classes have tools to deal with this, while Druids are (again) left with Rejuv and Wildgrowth as our only tools to combat the damage patterns. The prohibitive cost of Rejuv means that Druids run themselves out of mana trying to use it, and end up being insufficient if they try to conserve mana. Even using tools like NS and OoC procs, we are still woefully short.
I feel one of two things needs to happen to put us in a position that is comparable to the other healing classes: Mushrooms need to be fixed and/or the cost of Rejuv needs to be reduced. Without some combination of these two things occurring Druids will continue to fall behind as we progress into this tier of raid content.
I think that reducing the cost of Rejuv is a fairly straightforward suggestion that doesn’t need additional elaboration. However, fixing Mushrooms is more complicated as there are more problems surrounding them.
First, the placement mechanic is terrible. The set up time for mushrooms is prohibitive, needing three GCDs to execute the spell (which heals for such an insignificant amount) means that the setup time is rarely worth the healing you receive from it. This is something that we have complained about from day one. If Mushrooms are ever going to be a practical part of the Druid toolkit they need to work as a single mushroom, or a single drop.
The second problem is that the healing is so insignificant that it does not counter the giant gap in our toolkit. If we want mushrooms to be practical, and if we want them to be what they were designed to be, they must heal for more than they do currently. For the set up time, they should do comparable healing to PoH, Healing Rain, SCK. Even if they manage to fix the first problem (the set up), if they don’t heal for a damn, they are going to continue to be largely ignored in our toolkit. Honestly, I’d be just tickled if they said “Mushrooms aren’t working, let’s can them and go back to the drawing board”.
I’m trying not to sound like a broken record for the second expansion in a row.
But I am becoming increasingly more frustrated as I see hotfix after hotfix, and patch note after patch note, yet see no mention of tweaking Resto Druids. I’m not asking for the world, I simply want a toolkit that makes me equally competitive to my counterparts, and makes me an equally viable option for my raid. I’m tired of seeing my mana bar empty for healing the same damage as they guy next to me without the same restrictions on his mana because his toolkit functions more fluidly.
It is my hope that the Devs also have this data, and are also looking at it. It is my hope that we will soon see some changes roll through that will put us in a better place overall. Because right now my frustration is starting to outweigh the enjoyment that I’ve always found in healing.
Falling Leaves and Wings 
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you aren’t a broken record at all. This is the same problem yet again where they seem to think our spell set is sufficient but comes up woefully short. Same thing as with Tier 11 though when the other healing specs get their feet on solid ground and have sufficient regen to support their arsenal it gets worse. This is compounded with Monks being the flavor of the month healing wise.
My biggest gripe has been mushrooms and what they think they “gave us” as far as new abilities goes. The only new ability we got (sans Ironbark which simply had to happen for us to even have anything of that ilk at our disposal) is mushrooms yet Blizzard repeatedly says “we don’t want them to be rotational”. Ok…if you don’t want them to be rotational what do they want them to be. Did anyone else get new healing spells that are non-rotational that aren’t an optional talent? Sure they could argue the setup time should ONLY be done when there is nothing pressing to do but even then the amount they heal for could only be described as healing meter fluffing and it does a bad job of it at that.
As of right now we have a few obvious weaknesses. a.) We cannot compete with burst AoE healing for intense fight mechanics b.) We perform even worse when burst AoE healing while the raid is clumped up (spin to win as an example of competition) c.) We perform poorly during any encounter where the damage is spiky but not necessary severe, meaning our HoT’s get sniped.
We will always excel in fights where the raid is spread out and taking continuous damage. The Twin Valks and Blood Queen being good semi-recent examples of fights where our style of healing was perfectly tailored to match it.
I would argue that wild mushrooms does need to be worked into the rotation. Where some classes have spinning crane kick, healing rain + chain heal, Light of Dawn, Prayer of Healing etc. us having Effloressence (15 second CD), Wild Growth (10 second CD) and Mushrooms (10 second CD) might allow us to be competitive with a more mana efficient rejuvenation.
After writing that and reading it it does sound a bit bitter. Geez…it’s really easy to get a bit negative when venting about this situation. I still put up pretty decent numbers and I am very happy with my performance. I would just like druids to be more versatile and more well rounded. I don’t think that is too much to ask.
“The only classes underperforming Druids are priests.”
I remember reading a tweet from GC saying that raidbots isn’t factoring in SS correctly or at all. Disc might not be as bad as listed inside their top 100 parses.
HPriests are getting a buff to their Chakras in 5.1, so they should be fine hps-wise in regards to other healers as well.
Unfortunately, I know nothing about end-game Druid healing, and can’t contribute to that side of the conversation 😦
I can’t speak for how WoL is treating Disc Priests. I just know that our priest has tried disc several times and felt it was such rubbish he’s gone back to holy each time.
I’m happy to see Holy get tossed a bone. I can only hope that Druids are next on that list.
Disc is really poor right now. It’s by far the worst healing spec, as indicated here:
http://www.raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Score/25N/all/14/60/default/#fo00000
(you’ll have to scroll down and add in Disc and Resto Shaman manually)
In addition I’ve had a really bad time in dungeons on mine. It feels like using a dungeon-geared toon in heroic raid content right now and if your spirit is below 4000 you get awful mana regen on top of it. I was apologizing to my group and thinking I was rusty until I did more instances and realized the spec could be considered – if not broken – cracked.
But it’s not as bad as raidbots indicates. Raidbots parses its data from WoL, and WoL cannot accurately track SS (one of Disc’s top mitigation due to how it’s calculated). It’s a known issue: http://forums.worldoflogs.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3484
I won’t say it’s not the worst, but it’s not as bad as WoL/Raidbots says it is.
While I agree that druid healing doesn’t feel as responsive at other healers at this point, I’d be interested in hearing some additional discussion that goes beyond the main point you raised above:
1. HPS issues are not necessarily toolkit issues and toolkit issues don’t necessarily equate to HPS issues. The latter was very much the case in T11 and T12, where druids worked with their same arsenal and yet saw very different results. This begs the question–why?
2. There will always be some sort of HPS spread between healers. Where do you draw the line? (EG: the spread on Elegon is 22k HPS, while the spread on Will is only 9k HPS). How are druids, who consistently seem to be in the middle of the pack, being “left behind”?
3. What is it about druids that makes them incredibly effective in PVP, where burst is quite prevalent, and yet keeps them from being similarly responsive to burst damage in PVE? How can they be good at one, and not the other?
4. What weaknesses are acceptable as a druid healer (conceding that we can’t all be awesome at everything)?
Lastly, and this actually came up through a couple discussions with other druids as of late, is how to handle the pendulum effect that seems to crop up quite often with druid healing. IE: when mana is tight, and you can’t afford to pre-blanket as often, performance is low to moderate. But, when you can afford to pre-blanket (or Rejuv the world), performance increases substantially. What is it that you think could be done to address the low end without impacting the high end? Personally, I don’t think decreasing the cost of Rejuv would be the right solution there.
Anyway, just some thoughts. Keep your head up, and do remember that HPS isn’t everything.
Let me see if I can answer your questions:
1) I have pretty strongly touted that Druids have had a toolkit issue since the start of Cataclysm. While I agree that HPS issues aren’t the same, per se, as toolkit issues, I think it is folly to argue that the latter doesn’t affect the former. You asked about T11 and T12, but I feel you answered the question in your final statement: as mana pools began to grow, you became less restricted about using your inefficient toolkit to produce the healing results necessary to be both competitive and succeed. I also feel this issue is further complicated by the fact that most other healing classes received new tools to deal with the damage that Druids have always struggled with, increasing their already exists ting arsenal, while Druids were largely left with the same toolkit but had their ability to use that toolkit severely restricted via the new mana design. Druids are the only class lacking an ability to deal with burst raid wide damage. This is a toolkit issue. That subsequently affects our HPS because our suboptimal toolkit isn’t competitive or comparable to what other healers are able to do. On an idividuak level, I think the HPS of our spells (save Mushrooms) are fine. However, the problems comes from our main spells not being given the opportunity to be functional in our current raid environment, which subsequently has a negative impact in our overall HPS. Giving Druids the ability to adequately deal with burst AE damage would put them on more even footing with Shaman, Paladins and Monks.
2) As for where to draw the line, look at where Shaman, Monks and Paladins are in the chart for Emp. I feel that close knit line is how healing should look for ALL healers on EVERY encounter. Where a healer of any class who knows their class and plays well will be equal in performance. While I agree a 9k discrepancy is quite different than a 22k discrepancy, I don’t feel that either are ideal or optimal.
3) As for PvP – I can’t speak for PvP in MoP, but I do know that Resto Druids have not been a popular option for PvP healers in 3 or 5 since TBC/Early WotLK. I don’t know how they are fairing in things like rated BGs. However, I do know that the Resto Druids I’ve spoken with who are avid PvPers have all had the same complaints: we lack tools to be effective against burst damage. Basically if you can’t anticipate the damage and have your LB already running and a full set of HoTs already running, you are done. As I don’t PvP, I don’t know if that has change in MoP.
4) As far as weaknesses go, I feel this is an interesting question to answer. Druids are supposed to be the master of HoT healing, but raid design the past couple of expansions has been such that Heal over Time abilites have not been largely favorable and faster, more immediate healing has been a necessity. The problem I have is that in the current design it almost feels like Druids have no strengths. Everything we can do, someone else can do it better. I would be happy to feel like my toolkit is capable of managing the same tasks, for the same costs, as the other healers in my raid. Which, right now, just isn’t the case. And, in hindsight, perhaps that is Blizzard’s fault, and that the idea of HoT healing is antiquated and no longer a feasible option. For the last couple of tiers I have often felt like a niche healer, with no niche. Perhaps the homogenization of healers is to be blamed here, but the fact remains that that we have fallen behind three of the five healing classes.
With regards to your last point/ question, I would counter that the pendulum effect is what Static Mana Pools are supposed to combat. So, all else being equal, the problems we have now will continue to persist, because our toolkit/mana dichotomy will largely remain the same. As such, the problems that we experience now are arguably the problems that we will continue to experience the entirety of the expansion if 1) they are not resolved; 2) raid design drastically changes; or 3) Other healers are given the same restrictions that Druids have. Of those three options, I think we can all agree that the first one is more favorable. I agree reducing the cost of Rejuv is not the most ideal solution. I would much rather have something workable to replace Mushrooms. I offered a few suggestions back in early beta that would have been much better options, but be that as it may, if we don’t want to make Rejuv cheaper, then we need a version of mushrooms that is both worth using and fills the gap in our toolkit.
While HPS isn’t everything, it is grossly discouraging to watch your mana bar bleed and your performance be mediocre, at best, and knowing there is little you can do about it.
“3. What is it about druids that makes them incredibly effective in PVP, where burst is quite prevalent, and yet keeps them from being similarly responsive to burst damage in PVE? How can they be good at one, and not the other?”
PvP burst is largely a single target phenomenon, isn’t it? Certainly there’s nothing like a raid wide burst down of health in pvp. Single target we have NS-RG and swiftmend at the ready. Druids are still weak on reacting to target switches, thought the Lifebloom glyph helps. Resto druids are also (or at least were, not sure how they’re faring after the HotW nerfs) successful because of the offensive damage they can put out with HotW, which is less meaningful in PvE. So, I’m not seeing the relevance of pvp success to the pve problems beru’s identified.
The conjunction of these sentences is somewhat perplexing as well:
“HPS issues are not necessarily toolkit issues and toolkit issues don’t necessarily equate to HPS issues”
“how to handle the pendulum effect that seems to crop up quite often with druid healing”
The pendulum problem effect is quite clearly due to the fact that resto druids have a gap in their healing toolkit. A gap that goes unfilled when mana is tight and that gets sledgehammered by a tool that wasn’t meant to fill that gap. It’s not like resto druids are strong against burst aoe damage even with infinite mana. They aren’t strong because they have no tools. This was true in Dragon Soul when mana constraints were largely non-existent. If you solve the toolkit problem and give resto druids a way to deal with burst aoe they don’t have to resort to polluting the raid with rejuv spam once they have do have mana because they’ll have an effective tool.
“3. What is it about druids that makes them incredibly effective in PVP, where burst is quite prevalent, and yet keeps them from being similarly responsive to burst damage in PVE? How can they be good at one, and not the other?”
Druid PvP strengths are multi-fold and, other than mobility, largely irrelevant to raiding.
Instant-cast spells can’t be countered and locked out, so HoT healing is impervious to one of the main ways to take a healer out of the fight. Shapeshifting breaks roots, so rooting a druid healer in an unfavorable location (hostile totem farm, DnD, out of LoS, etc.) doesn’t work too well. Instant-cast DoTs can help add pressure on the opposing healer and, again, can’t get the druid spell-locked. Blanketing HoTs on the team can nullify the steady drain of diseases and other DoTs. Truly badass PvP druids can make use of all their forms as the need and opportunity arises. I’ve seen druids shifting from tree to bear to kitty and back, depending on which abilities they needed at the moment. I don’t know about the current state of resto PvP affairs, but in the past, given comparable gear and skill, a resto druid was never going to lose a one-on-one fight.
You must have missed all of Cata because druids were hands down the worst PvP healers for that entire expansion. The loss of tree form armor buff combined with our lack of burst healing (gee, where have I heard of that issue before) and lack of external cooldowns meant we were crap. My resto druid had over 4k resil with some heroic DS gear at the end of Cata while my holy paladin was in a mix of LFR and JP pieces and my holy paladin had infinetly more survivablility. We were particularly vulnerable to target switches thanks to the limitations on Lifebloom and the time it took to restack it (meanwhile the paladin had beacon, a better interrupt, all the hand spells, ect).
Ironbark and the Lifebloom glyph have helped druids to the point we’re no longer abysmal in PvP but we’re hardly the top healer right now (shamans and paladins are doing the best at the moment). The reason why? Once again burst is king and guess what? I hate sounding like a broken record so I’ll just leave it at that.
I agree with you whole heartedly Beru- I might not be cutting edge progression anymore due to work constraints but even in a casual 10 man setting I feel like I either missed a memo about druid healing or we *could* be in a better place (after visiting many guides, talent specs, mr.robot etc). I think the boss I struggle the most on is Elegon, even used sparingly/staggering them once all your cd’s are down I find myself praying people remember to use their cookies and ffs reset your stacks while I stare longingly at my cd timers going COME ON TRANQ, COME ON TOL, COME ON INNERVATE etc.
I am currently playing a holy priest. We are 4/6 normal mode currently and I have to say that I love the struggle to keep everyone up. The constant problem of managing my mana. We have no shaman or monk healer in our setup. Our healing team consists of another holy priest and a paladin. And I think we are doing ok. I had no fun if we rofled our way through normal modes.
So even if priests are pretty low right now I find no reason to complain.
I feel that, perhaps, you may not have gotten the point of the post 🙂
Worth pointing out that it is irrelevant which mode you select with regards to normal vs. heroics, as WoL difficulty detection is broken and both normal and heroic data is being collated into the normal mode.
I stopped reading when I got to the first graph and saw that you were using lottery winners as representatives an entire class. Instead of using top 100s you’ll want to use “all parses”, linked here:
http://www.raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Score/25N/all/14/60/default/#fo00000
Druids and Holy Priests are significantly better than the top 100 scores would indicate, with scores falling right about at the average of them all. .
Considering that the list you linked is not appreciably different than the one at the start of my post, perhaps you should now take the time and finish my post.
To illustrate the differences for you:
Monks are down .2 to 99.2
Shaman are up 1.3 to 92.5
Paladins are up 2 to 88.5
Druids are up 4 to 87.7
Holy is up 5.8 to 87.0
Disc is up 2 to 78.8
The only place there is any kind of gap closer is bringing us closer to paladins. The remaining discrepancies are still quite the same.
My reply came off a bit harsher than it sounded in my head. There IS a significant difference between the two scores, though, because those numbers look small when you look at them as x/100 but they are fairly significant when viewed as x/range of healers. When calculating percentiles in the range of healers, with Disc being 0 and Monks being 100:
-(top 100 chart) Druids are in the 21st percentile (82.5-77.1) / (99.7-77.1)
-(all parses chart) Druids are in the 43rd percentile (87.7-78.8) / (99.4-78.8)
If you intend to influence Devs I doubt they’ll take into account opinions made based exclusively on outliers, which is all a top 100 chart is. I’ll go back and read your article though, since that was a bit flippant to dismiss something that likely has good points.
Thank you for the insights and putting a quantitative analysis against how I’ve felt lately as a long time resto druid. Some of the pressure lately from Mogu-shan Vaults, I feel, comes from the fact that I’m just being purely outhealed by the monk healer in our 10 man raid group. Aside from your stance that resto druids don’t have a toolkit that fits as well with current content, do you have any thoughts on the fact that monk healing will preempt resto druid healing in many cases?
Still catching up on all your posts… I just read your post from 6 Aug and “The Monk Problem” from your experience in Beta. I have had the same experience in live LFRs and in my raid group.
But for the purposes of this thread. There are plenty of times where I have found myself looking for a go to spell that can handle burts of AE damage. Pre-hotting the raid with Rejuv used to take care this easily, but I can’t afford the mana cost anymore. Stacking life-bloom in tree form is a precious cooldown I save when I know big damage is coming. I’ve tried doing a better job of adding in mushrooms to my rotation when the raid is grouped up, but other than giving me something to click on for 3 GCDs to save mana, I don’t see too much benefit.
Do you see anything changing significantly when the tier gear starts rolling in and we are able to start stacking crazy amounts of haste?
I think Bliz is still punishing us for having achieved epic-heal status in the BC. I still maintain that everything went south for resto the day they took out multiple LB stacks. If we are not pre-emptively preparing the raid for the incoming damage, what is the raison d’être of our class?
I could not have said it better than you have here:
“I feel one of two things needs to happen to put us in a position that is comparable to the other healing classes: Mushrooms need to be fixed and/or the cost of Rejuv needs to be reduced. Without some combination of these two things occurring Druids will continue to fall behind as we progress into this tier of raid content.”
Let’s face it. Lissana called it before the MOP beta came out. It was easy for Bliz developers to take a spell they had already programmed into the game, i.e. Wild Mushrooms, and adapt it as a resto spell to save themselves the work of developing a new spell for us.
They won’t lower the cost of Rejuv b/c they thought it was making us lazy. Too many dps were railing against the satanic dangers of hots and overhealing. Lately I’ve even found myself trying to re-cast WM during raids b/c it is supposed to be a cheap AOE heal, even though it doesn’t do anything, instead of spamming Nourish – even though rationally I know this won’t work. As stated in the blog above, WM has the potential to be the druid’s Circle of Healing, which could actually solve problems if it was viable to cast after a pull.
Also here’s a fun fact for you guys: I’m in a guild that has black-listed resto druids from raids. I’ve been told to level my shammy or loc if I want to go on guild raids b/c they don’t want “under-performing” classes.
Bliz has fixed us for pvp but not pve. I would ask them to please think more about how their decisions will affect life within the player base, even if the reactions of some players are kinda stupid. In pvp they decided to just give us more utility, and to be fair, more burst throughput with NV. But at the end of the day we are supposed to be a healing class. Are people really this but-hurt about the state of druids years ago that they are determined that we, like Germany, will never again rise to the power we so readily abused? Why won’t Bliz let resto druids have spells that are affordable to cast (i.e. rejuv), viable within a rotation (WM), or good, old-fashioned pre-emptive hots (non-TOL multiple LB stacks)? Or could this be on-going resentment about Tranquility?
I can tell by my reference to the holocaust that I’ve crossed the line into irrational hyperbole land, so I’ll end my reply/rant……. now.
There is somthing not right thats for sure, I am Item Level 480 so not to shabby, normally raid in 10 man , did LFR today and a Pala and a Monk had 20K plus more HPS then me, i pushed the boat out a few times and could not get close, when i was close to running out of mana they both had over half left.
In 10 man i run with a pala, Disc and a DK tank and sometimes it feels like i might as well not bother , my overheal is silly sometimes, our pala is starting to stack int , i have tried both int and spirit and nothing seams to change apart from running out of mana more,
I worked myself through the whole thread and i feel totaly helpess … I’m about gearing myself for raids and get the feeling that this is totaly superfluous!
Yesterday I was kicked from my first (random) 10-man despite having better gear than the monk-heal. Even the riadlaid knew my skill from common ulduar raids. Simple reason: “Druids are too low atm” … great ….
Do you expect any solution by Blizz in the near future?
I’m really thinking about to retire my Druid early and play my DK tank 😦
I wasn’t shocked when I started reading this. Enveloping Mists gives a truckload of health, instant while channeling soothing, boosts soothing, no mana, and (the broken part of it) has no cooldown. The only thing monks are really spending mana on is renewing mists, which isn’t a big loss thanks to mana tea. I don’t know how much this will change do to the fact that they’re complaining that the Serpent statue is “limiting them like a totem, and the bubble blowing of they’re mastery is widely being ignored.
Man, u sure know how to complain. Ur druud is usually right in de middle of the healingpack numberwise and still u rant on about how stuff isnt fair compared to you! I play a holy priest, how should i feel about ur graphs then?
In our 25 man raids the druuds do more than good, even topping the meters at certain fights. Same goes for me as a holy priests, some fights i struggle to keep my hps up par but at certain fights i soar high. Imo this is not a case where druud should be buffed but more a case of u adjusting ur playstyle, it is a new xpac, ur supposed to alter ur playstyle instead of just complaining about how ‘bad’ ur class is. If there is something u can conclude from ur graphs it is one thing: monks need a nerf. Take into consideration that monks are a new class, do u remember dk’s in wotlk? Exactly overpowered as hell then nerfed to the point that they werent more special than others. I expect the same to happen to monks in the future.
All i can say is if u couldnt top up healing charts in cata as druud an u cant do it now at any point, then ur doing something wrong. I know/knew ppl that play druud and can/could do what you cant/couldnt.
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I’m pretty glad to see this, to be quite honest. I previously quit playing at the tail end of Wrath, so coming back to druid healing in MoP was… jarring, to say the very least. I already knew about the loss of Tree of Life (it’s part of the reason I quit pre-Cata in the first place), but I had *no* idea about the fact that we could no longer cast Lifebloom on multiple targets, and that is an absolute crutch and a half. And yet anyone I talked to about how inefficient I felt as a druid healer persisted to tell me how OP I was. Well, constantly being OOM as a result of *trying* to deal with heavy raid damage and failing is not exactly what I consider OP at all. So this post was very validating to read, if ultimately very worrying. I’ve been saying since the first day I came back how it feels like while many other healers got new things to work with, we got… mushrooms. Hooray. And nothing much as far as I can tell in MoP, since as I remember Mushrooms were there in Cata, too.
I feel like Blizzard only focused on how apparently exceptional we are in PVP – apparently, since I don’t arena at all – and nerfed us to deal with that, while not giving a care to what it did to PVE raiders.
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thanks for the write up. i used to heal as a holy priest in vanilla and bc, but then quit wow until a couple months ago. i decided to try resto druid and, generally speaking, am enjoying it, having fun, etc.
my crew raided 10 man MP last night for the first time. we’re all noobs and undergeared, but miraculously we got to the second boss.
anyhow, my point is i felt pretty good on the first fight, but pretty helpless on the feng fight — by the time my heals took effect, the shammy had essentially relegated me to overhealing. it was pretty frustrating and i assumed i was doing something wrong. and, i just can’t get the shrooms to work efficiently for me.
anyhow, it’s nice to read that pro people feel the same thing.
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