The Druid Dilemma: Worst Healers Post-Naxx

#0 - Nov. 8, 2008, 12:57 p.m.

While we argue about the merits of AoE healing, it seems that no attention is being given to the scaling potential of healers in wotlk. Not so long ago, haste wasn't a predominant stat and crit could be easily avoided; however, this is no longer the case in WotLK. To attain a piece of gear without either haste or crit is a rare gem that only druids treasure. What does this mean for druids?

While most healers benefit greatly from the plethora of stats available on gear, druids are faced with the grim reality that their itemization will rarely be ideal. Crit rating in particular only benefits a small portion of their healing arsenal while haste is a rather poorly itemized stat for their hots and is further marginalized by being easily capped out in conjunction with the GotEM talent. The conclusion is obvious, druids will fall pray to the same issue that plagued mages throughout BC -- poor scaling.

The most sensible solution would be to allow crit to affect HoTs in a similar manner that it affects warlock's DoTs. While haste would still be a less than ideal stat for druids, it does not touch the uselessness of crit and it would not be as difficult for druids to avoid maxing out haste if they no longer have to avoid crit.

I would also like to address potential concerns with this change. I feel that many of you will be mostly concerned with the PvP implications of this adjustment, so I would like to put your minds at ease first and foremost. If the scaling of crit onto HoTs is placed in a talent such a GotEM, many PvP druids will rarely even attain that talent due to the much more desirable balance talents available. Furthermore, druids are poised to be one of the weaker healers in Wotlk. While I know those of you not as apt in PvP might not able to surmise the state of PvP at 80, many top druids, such as Hafu, are already rerolling to another healing class in preparation for wotlk (a shaman in Hafu's case). The reasons for this include the inability to attain feral charge, the nerfing of lifebloom, the mass buffing of discipline priests, riptide for shamans, BoL for paladin, and many other more minute changes; however, such a discussion is well beyond the scope of this thread. Please try to focus on the scaling of resto druids in PvE for this thread, as I have no interest to discuss the future of druids in PvP.

Ghostcrawler

#142 - Dec. 1, 2008, 5:53 p.m.

A few random thoughts:

-- When you talk about scaling, you have to separate a few different issues:
1) Does the class / talent / spell scale?
2) Does it scale well once it has good gear?
3) Does that gear actually exist?
4) Is it readily available or is it hard to get?
-- Some classes complain about having too many stats and others about not having enough stats. They are just different class styles. There are advantages and disadvantages to both.
-- Our goal is not that every stat is useful for you.
-- Our goal is not that only stats which are useful for you appear on your gear.
-- One of the interesting things about resto seems to be that there is some player preference involved in how you heal. Some use Regrowth a lot now, others use Healing Touch, and others stick with rolling blooms. While it may end up that someone can prove one of those strategies sufficiently trumps the others, for now it is cool to see the experimentation.
-- That said, we do worry if Nourish's niche is too narrow. We'll see. It is getting compared to heals with very good glyphs affecting them.

Ghostcrawler

#212 - Dec. 2, 2008, 11:36 p.m.

I have to admit that after my reference to Nourish yesterday I was contacted by several very good raiding druids who told me I was out of my mind and that's it's a really good spell. When I asked them why so many druids don't like it, their response was that it's Flash Heal, and they want it to be something else.

So there you go. When I have healed as Resto, I didn't use Nourish much, but I should give it another look.

This is antecdotal data, and it's just as easy for anyone to say that they talked to a druid who said they can heal everything with Rejuv so Rejuv is OP. That is why we tend to be persuaded more by numbers (and even more by in-game numbers), but I do place a lot of value on the opinions of skilled players too.

On the topic of number of stats, as I said, you can play that card both ways. If you only need say spellpower, then it's relatively easy to just stack spellpower (warlocks were in this situation in much of BC). If you need lots of stats, it can sometimes be hard to fit the jigsaw puzzle to get them all (Prot warriors were in this situation in much of BC). As I said, there are advantages and disadvantages to both. We disagree that classes or specs who need fewer stats are at a competitive disadvantage or we would stop designing classes that way.

I agree with a couple of posts in this thread that players tend to look at all the loot tables in the game, imagine that they have all of that loot, and then compare themselves to other players of equal gear. The reality is that very few players are ever in that situation of being unable to upgrade, and to be honest, the game starts to be a lot less fun when you do reach that point. The potential to improve your character is one of strongest motivators to keep playing WoW.

There was an orange bow and orange blades in BC. Did that mean that hunters and rogues lacking those weapons were uncompetitive? Not really. Did that mean the trend was to keep dropping better and better hunter and rogue gear compared to other characters? Not really. It is a useful tool to imagine gear that is several tiers higher than current itemization and estimate what characters will look like then -- we use it ourself. But remember that gear is not real gear. If resto druids fall behind when everyone has 10,000 spellpower, then we're not really going to lose sleep over it, because the game will have changed so much by the time that gear becomes reality. If they fall behind when everyone has 3000 spellpower, then maybe it's a problem (though we don't think it is the case that they do).