As another two weeks have passed, it is time to take another look at how Druids are faring in this tier or content. Since we’ve already talked quite a bit about why we are having problems, and how it needs to be fixed, I’m not going to elaborate a whole lot more on that. This is partly becaue the new charts show some interesting things, and I have a few other things I want to discuss.
Let’s start with what the numbers tell us. As a reminder, I am only evaluating how Druids are performing in a 25 man raid content because this is my raid setting. If you are raiding 10s and rocking it, good on you! Go on with your bad self.
25 Normal
In looking at these numbers, you can see that Druids are still rolling along at the bottom. Disc priests have soared as they received buffs and starting gaining familiarity with their toolkit. Paladin and shaman seem to have plateaued, while Druids continue to struggle with the same problems we have since release. Aside from priests, not much has appreciably changed since our last look.
Until we take a look at how heroics are looking.
25 Heroic
I think we now have enough people stepping into heroics that it is worth taking a quick look at how we are doing. Druids are again bringing up the rear. However, what I find more interesting about this graph is how the rise of the disc priest has affected the other healers. You can see that, as priests turned back to disc, the added mitigation brought some of the other classes a bit. You see that is has affected Druids and holy priests the most. For Druids, the added mitigation only increases our frustration that were previously only competing with raw healing done – it essentially almost makes our “niche” non-existent as absorbs, combined with the powerful mana regen and tools available to disc priests, prevent the damage that our hots would have buffered while waiting for other heals. I think holy took such a hit because many priests moved to disc, so the sample size is much smaller than in previous weeks.
While the rise of our bubble lords did some to equalize everyone but Monks, we find that Druids are still struggling to keep up with the pack.
ARGH! So is it ever going to get better?
This little tidbit was in twitter the other day. So…here’s hoping!
Why aren’t we going to see anything in 5.1?!?!
Well, I’m not on the dev team, but my best guess is that they want to see how the chips fall after the monk nerfs. Does waiting fix up problems, even if the monk nerfs help us? No. Regardless of the nerfs Mushrooms need a fix. Regardless of nerfs, we still need a way to deal with burst AE damage.
However, of all the healers, I suspect that the monk nerfs will be felt by us the most. That is to say that, of all the healers, we will probably receive the most benefit. And I suspect that Blizzard wants to see exactly how that is going to play out. Is it frustrating nothing is being fixed in the interim? Hell yes! But it is mildly refreshing to see something definitively saying mushrooms aren’t in a good place.
It is NOT just you
Amongst other things I’ve done this week, I made the mistake of going to the official forums. Unfortunately, I can never take unsee what was seen there, but there was one thing I wanted to clarify.
In all of the back and forth and arguments happening, I saw the statement that if you are struggling to heal and perform as a druid “it’s not the class, it’s you” thrown about several times. It was enough to make my blood boil, because it is an inherently FALSE statement.
I will not disagree that sometimes the player is the problem, the caliber of players who have been complaining and struggling is indicative of the problems with the class right now. On my raid team right now, I consistently feel that if I do my BEST I’m in the middle of the pack (at best) and if I don’t do my best I’m bringing up the rear – and trust me, being the bottom healer isn’t something I’ve dealt with well. Especially when I know that I’m working hard, and I know that I’m a strong healer.
When I heal with another, very competent Druid and we can both rank in the top 100 Druids parsing…and we are healer 4 and 5 of 6 healers, that is a problem that is absolutely NOT player related. When I can rank in the top 20 Druids parsing in a fight to have two classes out heal me my more than 20k HPS in the same fight – that is a problem that is NOT player related.
If you are struggling, do not assume it is you. The class is not in a great spot right now in 25s. Take the time to review your logs, evaluate your performance and find areas of improvement. But if you are still performing well against your class, please do not get down on yourself because some idiot is being close minded and freely tossing around opinions that are inherently wrong. Always look for improvement in your play, always. But if you are strong comparative to others in your class – it is NOT you, and there IS likely a disconnect within your class that needs to be fixed.
And last but not least, seething that’s helped me is to stop looking at any color other than orange on the healing meter at the end of the night. If it isn’t orange, I don’t care. I’m going to go compare myself only to other orange meters to find improvement – because doing anything else at this point is an exercise in frustration and only gets me down on myself. So I’m focusing in things more in my control – and I’m focusing on improving my own play pull after pull, and raid after raid. Because, really, what else can you do?
Falling Leaves and Wings 
I don’t think you’ve made your case that druids need a boost.
Judging by your graphs, it’s not druids that need a boost, but more that Monks and Disc priests need a significant nerf. The other four specs are relatively clustered together. Someone will always be at the bottom of the HPS meter, and this time around, it’s druids.
Nerfing other classes wouldn’t help at this point. Blizzard has attempted to fix this situation, and I agree, made the discrepancies a little less shown. I do not agree, however, that nerfing other classes would give druids a proper toolkit to perform in many 25man fights due to the burst damage on short timers in many fights. While overall the differences are smaller, there are still some fights where I get completely blown away by all of our other healers, and never blow them away (maybe compete, if I get lucky). I honestly believe that I am a pretty good druid healer. I also outgear our other healers significantly.
@ Rohan –
This is a post that started six weeks ago, and I’ve revisited every two weeks. What I’m asking for is to have the TOOLS to make me an effective healer, which right now is what Druids are sorely lacking. In not one of these posts have I said all of our abilities needed to be retooled, I’ve simply said that given our mana, the way we a scaling, the cost of our spells and the toolkit we have to work with something needs to change. I know all of that wasn’t restated here, but this is the third time I’ve visited this topic and I wanted to discuss fresh ideas. The thought was that those who had been following the topic (part 3!) would have already been familiar with the other posts.
I challenge that statement that there always has to be someone bringing up the rear of the healing meter. Why is that something that we feel is necessary? Why can’t all healing classes be so competitive that there is no definitive “last spot”, and a good healing playing their class well can come out on top regardless of the restrictions of their class.
The last thing I will comment on is asking for nerfs. Having been a subject of “tranq envy” and bringing nothing to the table but my raw ability for output, I will never advocate the nerfing of a class. If one class is too strong, I think other healers should be adjusted to the top – not the other way around. At least that is my opinion on it 🙂
Try healing in the same raid setup with 2 disc priests , 2 holy paladins and a monk. Yesterday I felt like deleting my shaman for good. I suspect Druids have it even worse however speaking from experience I know what the logs are showing but as a heavy progression raiding shaman I feel a little feverish.
Our shaman generally perform very, very strongly. But we also regularly run with to Druids, so that may be part of it. We just now got a consistent priest on our roster, after ours decided he wanted to tank instead, and you can definitely feel the difference when they are in the raid. I do not envy your position 🙂
I am curious to see how the monk nerfs play out and shake up the current healing paradigm.
Some priest and monk balance will allow us to grow into our raid roles also. Lately I’ve been really down on how this is all playing and for the sake of my boyfriend who tonight finally had enough of my negativity I will say that I am hopeful and will try my damnest to make it work either way.
./shakes fist at blizzard
Gotta love that slip in the last paragraph . . . “seething that’s helped me” . . . I’d wager there is a lot of inward seething going on . . . 😉
Er…. 😛
i dont know why people think we are bitching about HPS. We realise that there is always someone on the bottom of the healing meter. This is about something missing in our toolkit.
Possibly the large graphs displaying HPS contributes to that impression?
Yes it does, should have worded my reply a little bit better. Somethng is missing though, there does not seem to be a flow to druid healing like there once was. I am finding I just cannot keep up with the other healers, and I feel useless. /shrug. I will just keep trying my best.
Hey Rohan –
I think perhaps by this post in the series the reasoning behind the graphs, as well as what I feel they represent might not be clear. In the first post in the series I addressed it in detail – the problems and the fixes – and I simply haven’t gone over that again with each post in the subsequent six weeks. And I can see how that might be misleading. The core issue is that we have a problem/gap in our toolkit that needs to be addressed. This is largely reflected in our numbers comparatively to the other healing classes. IF (and that’s a massive if) our heals have time to do their job, I think we would be fine. The problem is that with the continued homogenization of the classes, our niche is no longer really required, and we’ve not received the tools in that regard to put us n equal footing with most other healers. I think if you will talk to many Druids they will tell you they feel as though we have to work twice as hard for equal or lesser results – which isn’t something that should not happen – and is largely the result of a toolkit that hasn’t really been updated in over four years, despite all of the other changes occurring in the game.
I don’t think that being at the bottom is the problem – it’s the HUGE gap between top and bottom. Top is 100k hps, bottom is 70k. That’s ridiculous.
I suspect the drop for holy priests came about because the priests are reforging for discipline now rather than holy, and when they play holy for some fights that would make them a bit less effective. But that’s just a theory.
Why not Change WG?
Higher initial heal and lower hot Or lower inital heal and much shorter CD?
Or would that make restos again OP?
Problem is target cap. Ten man druids are coping on fights like feng through using soul of the forest to buff their wild growth. Ask anyone how it feels to be able to tickle six of a 25 man every 16 seconds, and they’ll sob as healing rains, divine radience and a 24 person cap renewing mists uplift turns it all into overheal.
I wasnt clear. You only hit 6 targets, while other classes aoe heals react smartly, jumping from target to target, triaging automatically like healing rain, or spreads healing evenly, buffering people with shields even, reducing overheal.
A druid hits swiftmend, prays the person was positioned correctly, wild growths, and hopes it gets to tick, and then fills with rejuv, but not really, because the oombeast is ever present and no one likes looking at 50% rejuv overheal on their WoL afterwards.
How about druid spirit shell? Short time dooldown that makes hot ticks no longer directly heal, but accumulate until triggered with a second button? It’d not change druid healing at all, but allow us the possibility of reducing overheal, and through clever play, reduce overheal?
Feels like other classes get all the cool ideas.
Stupid phone, how do i edit this? Last part there was supposed to be “give us a burst healing tool.”
Also, what’s a dooldown?
I Just made this post on the EU forums
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/5967337538#1
It is an idea I have had for a long time
Careful what numbers are being reviewed here. Spec Score is what’s shown.in the two linked graphs – this is NOT HPS or Throughput solely.
Spec Score is the best measure I’ve been able to come up with to compare specs across all fights of a given tier. The goal has been to minimize the effect a “gimmick” fight has on the overall rankings and generally normalize fights to have a common ground of comparison.” – from http://www.raidbots.com website.
If you look at the “HPS”/throughput tabs:
25 normals, you’ll see Disc priests & Monks equal for throughput, paladin’s 3rd, & then the rest. Which is logical, because the more mitigated damage, the less there is for purely throughput specs to heal up – which holy & resto (both specs) mostly are.
25 heroics, shaman make a return, but holy priests & resto druids remain firmly last.
This week has been the week that nealy made me quit, my healing at times is 30k plus under our disc healer and he never runs out of mana , he is not even close to running out of mana on top of that he is doing 20k+ DPS which helps on progress,
Think i need to find a group which does not have a disc/pala healer and a DK tank
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