Hey.
I don’t want to get all negative so at first I would like to admit: mythic plus is fun to play and it’s challening even on my pretty low skill level. But.
It implicates from the post theme - I am an healer. I really enjoy healing people and WoW in this sense gifts us really unique experience. But I really tired to play resto druid. I main this spec since Legion and if in Legion resto druid was replaceable by pallys at least - now it completely dominates m+ area of game. Bad thing here is that high key meta affects our regular pug runs. I have to wait like 2x queue time for the key with my pally.
There are two aspects of gameplay that affect healing balance. First is utility. Every healing spec have different kit and druid shines with the best one. I don’t have problem with it. Actually I agree that niche of highly versatile highly mobile spec should be occupied.
Second one is healing itself. And here lays the big problem. There are not so much places in game where you can be punished for slow healing - it makes burst healing classes a bit useless. Restoration druid is capable to heal every pull because of slow damage patterns (compared to Legion) and both insane and passive single target tank healing with photosynthesis. That makes druid too good - ability to passively heal while doing damage and utilty stuff.
I think that druid should be nerfed in terms of healing. HOTs should heal less or
tank healing should require active participation. Every other class should be oriented more firmly to their supposed role. I really want to play something else than druid and I want to see more interesting picks at MDI in terms of team compositions.
Now when you look at top teams sure trees dominate, but other combos are doable and anyway MDI can go die, most of us are too far away for it to matter.
Battle res is not that important IMO. It is a good thing but people use resto druid not because of it. Usually eng res is sufficient. Anyways you can get boomie or guardian or DK in your team and have regular CR with a better value because it’s a CR for healer whose survival is more important than survival of DD.
I am sorry if I misread or overlooked, but what class would you love to play instead in M+ as healer ? Asking out of curiosity.
My friends have complained about healing M+ as priest or shaman - they can manage, but feel they lag behind the rest. Whereas paladins and monks seem to feel fine inside their skin.
I think the most fun one in terms of mechanics is Disc. Also I like shammy’s visuals but I can’t suggest realistic buff for shammy that will make it good in m+.
Anything will work if it’s not the same spec for multiple years.
For me as tank, the notable issues in terms of ‘crazy pulls’ has probably been disc. They seem to lack that ability to stabilize the party mid incoming aoe. I havent noticed as tank the shammies issues, but disc on its own has problems with me as tank. Monk - I constantly “bleed” and I kind of feel spiking more with discos.
Engineers can do it too. Except tanking engineer. They have problems.
And you are right about that, but all he is saying is that engineering also provides a cr, i went engineering to provide a little more utility for myself as hpriest
It’s still just not the same - and the fact that you have to choose a profession to have that isn’t balance
bres is definitely the main issue - but they don’t need to necessarily even give other healers a bres, they just need to give more classes in general a bres. If one or two other dps classes brought a res, the resto utility is still less relevant - it’s not necessarily a healer problem so much as a general utility across classes/specs problem
Druids can just do everything with moving, and do not need a cooldown. We were running 90k hps on saurid packs in AD on bursting last week without anything special. Other classes have to time their healings a bit better (cooldown usage). And can often do less on the move.
Overall I think actually that the holy paladin is better on non-pro level. We get here or there that avoidable damage, and the pala is very strong in burst heal back. Also together with beacon play it has very strong for healing multiple players with just a couple of abilities, while still focusing on dps too. Also in terms of utility it has some cheat mechanics with BoP, BoF and bubble. And don’t forget the best dispel (cleanse) in the game.
I mained a resto shaman full legion, and the shaman in M+ is just sad. I stopped playing it in s1, and I know there has been a lot of buffs, also this season again.
But it is just not enough without a tank cooldown. I still have no idea why Healing Tide Totem did not get the Tranq-treatment (bonus heal in 5-man). And blizz took away the efficient single target heal of the talent Crashing waves (2 tidal waves for 1 riptide) AND Ancestral guidance. This was the big decision in legion to play, and blizz just took them both. Of course with also the loss of Gift of the Queen, shaman lacks options. It is not only in the numbers, blizzard! 20% healing rain buff is not making or breaking it.
I think the thing is… druid resto counter almost all mechanics thrown at players, look at affixes:
Raging - druid can dispel it from key mobs
Necrotic - roots, typhoon, ursol
Sanguine - typhoon
Bursting - prehot, pop tranq which heal 100% more in 5man
Bolstering - roots, taunt, typhoon, ursol
Quaking - instant casts
Grievous - keep hots and you’ll be fine
Skittish, Explosive, Volcanic - minor impact, but still druid can push off mobs from dps, can hit explosive orbs from range and can still heal while dodging volcanoes
On top of that cat-weaving is super strong (I never thought it is THAT strong), prowl + mass ress as free skip, mobility… Mythic+ is just Eden for rdruids.
I play hpally on M+ (currently I mostly run retri, but still) and while I don’t feel weak I can’t overcome some mechanics with my class’ mechanics and I use full potential of my class (taunting tides on myself, keeping enchanted ones out of mobs, dpsing while healing etc.).
Although, there is too many variables, someone would have to gather all aspects and mechanics of Mythic+ to be able to balance all classes to be similar yet different enough to make class choices interesting.
Dunno why they nerfhammered resto shammy, our mastery sucks, stun totem was cool and they halfed stun duration, GotQ was interesting cause it could double increase health by 10% so it was good to counter bursty damage, as @Tsjod said HTT should have been stronger in small content since its healing is just laughable. They took away AG too? Geez, not everybody knew that, but there was juicy AG+CBT combo which felt rewarding.
They really should think with classes reworks before implementing them.
I actually play my hpala together with a beartank, and that gives immediately also roots, typhoon, vortex, battleres. And I have a BM hunter in my team which removes raging
The hpala is by the way doing tons of damage while you just heal your team, by having glimmer applied on targets. And with crusader strike you do dps while you get more holy shocks out, which can be used for offense or defense
We also have a taunt, and we have instants (beacon + holy shock) for quaking and burstings. With nice glimmers applied grievous is not bad either. On the move having to heal without holyshock you can still use martyr for a cheap mana flash of light as instant.
And still we cheat things like nettles of the tried with BoP and Axes KR with BoP, we bubble-run on the mushrooms on mushroomboss UR (and we can dispel the stuff too!), we place consecrations behind the spores and the group on 4th boss UR. Unlimited cheat options with the hpala
People also play MW and hpala in the MDI as long as there’s a DK in the group so it’s not 100% druids, it really depends on affixes but if anything I wouldn’t nerf Druids but buff under performing healing specs to be competitive enough.
tbh I don’t know whether the devs know what to do at this point in terms of balance both in PvE and PvP.
They do, but that’s still only a limited number. You can add one or two more, is the point - it doesn’t need to be the healing classes that even receive them.
The issue goes beyond healer balance and spans across other roles. Some classes and specs are just better for competitive M+, like warrior for tank, rogues/DH/DK/monk for melee dps, melee dps being more desirable than ranged dps, etc. Rogues especially are almost mandatory.
As for Battle Rez, all druids have that, but that doesn’t make all druid specs equally desirable. I wanted to play feral this expansions, like I had in the past two, but that just wasn’t an option. BRez doesn’t make feral more desirable than a rogue. Moonkin is more wanted than feral, but most MDI comps are still three melees.
