I first want to say that i really like the addition of Tree form to resto druids. The cheaper cost of hots and the increased power of heals are a great help to our healing toolkit. The only thing is that the animations are really bad. I expect these animations are just temporary.
The addition of casting wrath in tree form is a great help for those healers that have time to cast wrath during boss fights. Only thing is that i personally do not like that playstyle and to be honest dont have time to cast any wraths during boss fights. Most boss fights in ST iam fully focussed on healing and not casting wrath. Therefore is the dreamstate rune useless in most cases.
The Living Seed rune also needs some more love. The effect itself is quite cool, get an extra heal when target takes damage or get healed. But maybe increase the duration of the seed on the target, when living seed is on the tank it instantly gets eaten most of the time into overhealing. And when the seed is on a raid member it mostly runs out and never gets used. 10 seconds is quite short for this to work on raid members, maybe double it to 20 so it has more chances to pop.
When using Living Seed the Dreamstate rune is totally useless, unless you are one of those druids that cast rank 1 wrath. In the case we resto druids use Living Seed it feels like we have no usefull Rune on the feet slot. I mostly use Survival of the fittest in this case but i rarely use it. We either need a new Feet rune for healing or maybe change the existing runes to that it is usefull for resto healing. Some suggestions could be that Dreamstate also triggers from healing like the ST setbonus. Or maybe add an additional effect to Survival of the Fittest so that it increases healing done.
One of the coolest things from playing Night Elf in Warcraft 3 was the iconic Tranquility spell. I honestly think this specific spell is one of the most iconic spells there are in all of wow. I have had tranquility since level 30 and i have never used it once, why would we anyway because we have wild growth for group healing. Tranquility feels slow, expensive and doesnt heal that much. It would be a shame if this iconic spell would not get some love and attention it deserves. Instead of just complaining i would also make a suggestion on what could be done to give this spell some attention. Maybe create a new rune for the feet slot.
Rune of Improved Tranquility: Tranquility ticks every second, heals all party members and heals all other targets effected by your regrowth and rejuvenation. 10 min cooldown.
As for now i see 2 possible playstyles in phase 4 as a resto druid.
1 Deep Resto with effloressence
2 Natures Grace with Elune’s Fires (NGEF)
I would love it if the NGEF playstyle would be viable as i really do not like being forced into Swiftness for effloressence.
The NGEF playstyle would be for fights where effloressence would have low usage, like fights with a lot of movement and fights that people have to spread out, think of C’thun.
NGEF would also mean that we will run Living Seed, and go improved Regrowth. As Regrowth triggers Elune’s Fires and has an almost garantee to pop Living Seed on the target. The reduced cost of Regrowth from Tree Form is lovely for this playstyle, but even with the 20% reduction it is quite expensive to cast. Maybe Improved Regrowth talent could also reduce the spellcost by a small bit to make it more useable.
tldr; Fix Feet runes (Dreamstate) & Tree form animation, give love to Living Seed, tranquility and regrowth.