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There has been a lot of debate over the usefulness of Resto Shamans and Resto Druids in raiding since Paragon started leaving one or both of the classes out of their world firsts. While we think the general consensus is this shouldn’t start a trend, it does raise questions. What are you concerns with both healing specs? Do you think these issues have been addressed in patch 4.0.6. What specific challenges are you having with either class, either as a raid leader or a player of that class? What about the nerfs to the other healing classes, paladins in particular? Are these going to be effective in balancing the healing classes?
I don’t know, but our Resto Druids are doing really well right now. They are pretty much destroying other healers, except for perhaps Paladins. Now that may just be a lack of skill on the part of other healers, or an abundance of skill on the part of our Resto Druids, but it seems like the spec is having no problems mana wise or throughput wise. Perhaps Paragon’s omission of Resto Druids had more to do with the particulars of the fight than any drawbacks to the spec.
I find it interesting the the world 2nd kill (by Method) had a resto shaman. Granted they didn’t have resto druids, but even among the top guilds there are differences. I believe that for most raiding guilds (even some that are highly ranked in the world) the quality of the player > the class. Yes, some classes may not be as high on meters or whatever, but if you can down content at a pace that is too your liking with whomever you bring then that is good enough. I am sure there will be changes in the balance depending on the patch, tier, or encounter.
I play a holy priest, but our resto shaman definitely pulls her weight (and sometimes more than that!) in comparison to myself and our holy pally. A clutch heal by said to save a person affected by caustic slime on Chimaeron is more important than how the meters rank us. It would be amazing if all the classes were balanced for everything, but that is a pipe dream, and we will have to settle for something close. Right now it isn’t perfectly balanced, but it isn’t the end of the world and things look to be getting some balancing tweaks soon.
I’ve grounded my restoration shaman (which is my main) 2 weeks ago. With average iLevel of 334 I’m struggling at normal dungeons, and I don’t even think about heroics.
My holy paladin, on the other hand, has no such problems. I’m managing healing heroic PUGs and compensate for other players’ mistakes. It’s plain awesome, in comparison to the restoration shaman. So yes, I’ve noticed something’s wrong with my favourite class way before Paragon’s world first.
I’ve played with the same priest and holy paladin for the past six months and already know they’re both very good healers. That being said, I’m a resto druid, and 99% of the time in our raids so far I’ve destroyed them on the healing meters. A resto druid beating a holy priest and holy paladin – oh no, how can this be, the sky must be falling!!! Run for cover!
I know it’s Paragon, and I’ve seen the post on the EU forums full of concern by their resto druid Xaar. But world first guilds have a tendency to stack what is needed for each fight…and if he does slightly less healing than a holy paladin or holy priest in heroic world first kills but he can pull 25k dps as a boomkin, why WOULDN’T they have him dps those fights?
My main is a resto druid and I’ve noticed we have some tools missing from our toolbox. We went from being the backbone of the raid heals to being more of a support class for tanks and raid, not being able to do either very strongly. My druid ilvl is avg 352, and while I can do heroics fine, when I’m groups with less than perfect dps, I can’t keep them up. I’m doing ok in raiding, but it’s pretty stressful and there is no margin for error. My throughput is great and I match the other healers on the recount charts, so I would not say druids are behind the others. If I miss one CD I’m in trouble. On the other hand, I have my paladin to 83 now and in comparison i am amazed at how easy it is to heal on her. I don’t have any issues and no stress on my paladin. I can even heal some stupid, which is untrue about my druid. When I compare the two classes, it seems that the paladin does not have to deal with any of the mana issues that the other classes have, and their heals are very op. I still think the druid has a utility for the raid. They buy time with their HoT’s so the other healers can shine. Sadly, I want to be the one shining and with my current set of tools, it’s not going to happen.
I adore my Resto Druid <3 and like some have said before, on most encounters (unless im distracted or otherwise) i will totally annihilate through the other paladins and priests in my guild (with the exception of a minority). I am not saying "L2P NOOBS" at all as each person plays differently but i am saying that people shouldnt believe the hype just because we dont make the min/max grade of Paragon or other cutting edge guilds does not mean that we cannot hold our own /rawr! ^_^ This isnt a PR stunt, we (Resto druids) dont need to be represented by these guilds to show that we are worth taking or are good players.
It really breaks my gaming heart to see people bench their Restoration Shaman and Druids, especially at below ilvl 350. I’ll talk mostly about Shamans since it’s the class I know best. There is no doubt that Shaman need some help right now, in both tank and raid healing abilities. We have some incredible but some very lackluster main tools. All three of our direct single target heals have a deficiency of some kind and there just doesn’t seem to be much Balance, especially when you compare them to other healing classes.
Druids, I can’t agree that they are having a hard time. In the lower beginning greens and blue’s possibly. Mana replenishment seems to be the toughest one. 4.0.6 should fix this with reductions to mana costs. But if you look at logs from all over the world, you do see Druids hitting the top 5 healers on most of the bosses, you just don’t see Shaman in there at all. In fact, I’d wager to say that Shaman aren’t in the top 40 even. However, Shaman are hitting higher numbers when the focus and concentrate on a limited set of tools, Primarily healing Rain and Riptide.
4.0.6 Doesn’t seem to offer much in the way of fixing it for Shaman.
Sorry for the typo’s meant to say we have some incredible tools and benefits but very lackluster main tools, like our single targets.
As a raid leader and a Resto Druid, I’m finding reading the community’s take on Druids frustrating yet enlightening. Here is a WoL from our 25m Cho’gall kill: http://bit.ly/ijVkS1
I’m not linking this as a quick “Oo, Druid beat Paladin and Priests!” The point is to show that Druids can contribute immensely to a raid, keeping people alive, and getting the raid through an encounter. More than ever before, the timing of things feels important to Druids. Knowing when/where to drop Efflorescence makes it either 100% useful or completely useless. Same with Tranquility–knowing exactly when to use it in a fight quite literally keeps the entire raid alive. We actually decided to go with quite a few Druids for Chimaeron and rotate Tranquilities on Feuds, practically trivializing the encounter.
It is frustrating when people see Blizzard drop the mana cost to Rejuv and then say, “See, Blizzard is pushing us back into Rejuv spam!” and then they go to their raids and focus on Rejuv spam. Instead, knowing WHEN to Rejuv spam is crucial and allows other key timers (WG on CD, LB uptime) to be maintained throughout the majority of the fight. The frustration continues when those who are advocates of Druid healing and not seeing too much of an issue don’t speak up and say what they are doing or linking logs to provide people examples.
Sorry, that was a bit of a mind dump, hope it makes sense.