A Look Back at Restoration Druid in Dragonflight & War Within Wishlist – Editorial

With the sun setting on Dragonflight and The War Within on the horizon, our Restoration Druid Writer, Voulk, offers a retrospective highlighting Restoration’s journey in Dragonflight and shares their hopes for the spec’s next evolution with a War Within Wishlist.

The Resto Druid Journey through Dragonflight

Season 1: Early Mythic+ dominance and week 2 raid buffs

Resto Druid went live in a decent but not exceptional state. Our kit worked quite well and our talents were interesting but a small throughput buff wouldn’t have been unwelcome. We got one, kind of. Week 2 of the season gave us a 5% healing buff and doubled the effective strength of the Luxuriant Soil talent. This might not seem all that relevant but this early decision actually had a big impact on how the rest of the expansion would go for Resto Druid. Our power coalesced around Rejuvenation and competitive alternative builds fell by the wayside. In 10.0.7 we got another buff in a revamp of our spec tree. This notably let us take Photosynthesis in a raid build which is a very nice buff to all HoTs out and a great complement to Luxurious Soil. We were overshadowed by Preservation Evoker but it was a decent tier to be a Druid. Vault also laid a lot of the foundation for the machines we would become one tier later.

In Mythic+ we were one of two healers that could handle early healing checks and did very well. These checks were nerfed constantly through the season and your healing choice ended up quite flexible by the end.

Season 2: 40 Rejuvs

The combination of Photosynthesis, 50% haste, Flourish, Luxuriant Soil and our season two 4pc bonus (even more HoT speed!) combined to make us a raid powerhouse. You could cast 20 rejuvenations, press Flourish and then AFK and still come back to two Rejuvenations on your entire raid. You could then cast free Regrowths for upwards of 45 seconds before they started to fall off again. It was the good kind of absurd that you wouldn’t want to play every single season but it was incredibly fun for a tier. We were particularly good at Sarkareth where our incredible burst healing was near unrivalled. Toward the end of the season (10.1.7) we got another minor talent revamp and the addition of Grove Guardians – an off-GCD pet that spams healing into random targets. Further foundation laid for season 3.

In Mythic+ we performed well until 10.1.5 turbo buffed Holy Paladin. It was a little more difficult after that.

Season 3: The Fall of the House of Flourish

So Luxuriant Soil was overpowered and gameplay warping. Patch 10.2 was a fine time to nerf it and they did. Unfortunately, they bundled in heavy nerfs to Flourish and mana costs. What was a legitimate issue was attacked from multiple fronts unnecessarily instead of removing the talent that made Season 2 possible. A season 3 tier set focused on Grove Guardians furthered the narrative that we weren’t playing the same Resto Druid as before. There was still the heart of a ramp healer but the payoff was different. We weren’t a burst healer anymore and we could scarcely afford the mana to be anything else. Word of god said that it was part of a larger mission to nerf both mana and raid cooldowns across the board but tuning was poor and we ended up with a season where you were either carefully managing your mana or pretending it didn’t exist at all – depending on what class you played. They made scratchy attempts at reversing it through the season with mana buffs but it did little to balance the specs and our previous mana conservation method that you could actually play around (Abundance) was a shadow of its former self. We’re going to discuss both mana and this new version of Druid later in the article but this was a messy tier for Resto Druid and healer balance in general.

In Mythic+ the spec benefitted from huge Cat Form DPS buffs very early in the season. Most abilities did 2x+ the amount of damage as before and as a result Druid is played a lot at all key levels. The addition of Grove Guardians is quite nice here since having an off-GCD heal you can press while in Cat Form opens up a lot of new gameplay.

Druid Talents

This section will mostly be focused on the class tree because the spec tree is actually fairly good outside of a few areas. It’s a unique challenge to fit four specs into one tree and it was one I expected a lot of iteration on through the expansion. We got some, but for the most part, the tree got a little weaker with every pass. Let’s look at some of the biggest pain points:

Rising Light, Falling Night

Including throughput nodes in the class tree is awkward because 90% of the time you’re making an error in not trying to hit each. Rising Light, Falling Night is a rather extreme example because it requires a six point investment. Of the six points, you get value out of two of the points, sometimes in raid. In Mythic+ you get value from only one. There’ll always be some amount of pathing you have to do in a talent tree of this size but this is an extreme example. I’m not making an interesting fight-by-fight choice, I’m locking in throughput and I’ll spend as many points as I need to get it. The downside to this is I lose being able to pick nodes that might be more fun. The throughput node isn’t even particularly interesting – it’s just versatility or flat damage / healing but I’m compelled to get it anyway.

Improved Sunfire

From a play perspective Improved Sunfire is now in a much better place and is easier to take when you need it. It is unfortunate though that they decided to remove Sunfires identity and put it in as a choice node instead of being baseline. Moonfire is our single target DoT and Sunfire is our AoE DoT, unless you don’t pay two points for it. Then it’s just… weak Moonfire. Early on I expected a lot of filler nodes just to fill out trees but moving into War Within we can probably do better than splitting a spell from its purpose.

Ironfur

Ironfur is a key Guardian ability that is almost completely useless for other druid specs, Resto included. Armor increases are very niche if you aren’t tanking things and so it just goes permanently unused. That wouldn’t necessarily be an issue except that it’s in a key place on the tree and blocks access to Thick Hide.

Undertuned Spec Nodes

• Nourish. It’s telling that even in a raid with single target healing checks, this still wasn’t close to viable. Competing against Grove Guardians makes it even worse comparatively.
• Power of the Archdruid. Our third tier is extremely competitive which leaves Power of the Archdruid looking fairly poor by comparison. It could fit in as an easier to play version of some talents around it if it were slightly stronger.
• Invigorate. Invigorate has a lot of anti-synergy with other resto druid abilities that prevent you really making a case for it anywhere. If you extend the Invigorated HoT with Flourish or a similar effect it’ll just stop working. You can’t get very creative with it.

Were Tier Sets a Success?

Here’s a fairly brief look through our Dragonflight tier sets:
A fairly dull set to start with but it was a decent power increase – mostly driven by the powerful 2pc. No issue with reintroducing tier sets to the start of an expansion with something a little plain.

One of the strongest sets we’ve gotten in a long time. Read through the “Journey through Dragonflight” section for a refresher but the HoT tick rate here compounded with the growing number of similar effects we had access to to turn Rejuvenation into a juggernaut, or rather, two juggernauts per player.

Every expansion you get at least one weird set where they try something new. This one was clearly designed to showcase the new Grove Guardians ability and it does that but also pushed them to a greater percentage of our power than I’m comfortable with given how little synergy they have with our other button presses. Fine as a once-off, but also a good reminder that Resto Druid is not and should not become a “pet spec”.

In general, Tier Sets are a good way to add variety from season to season but whatever tuning goals they have for them should be more closely adhered to. It’s unfortunate if you get a 5-6% tier set and then have to share a role with specs that get 20%+. It can also mean you lose power if you go from a strong set bonus in season X to a much weaker one in set Y. It could be better for the game overall if they just represented less of your overall power. It might be fun to get a set that makes my Grove Guardians better but a little less fun if it turns them into my best button press by a significant amount.

The Blurring of the Resto Druid Niche

Modern Resto Druid (Legion onwards) has enjoyed one of the strongest healing designs in the game. It was a gold standard healing spec. During some tiers it became a little too spammy but for the most part it was a strong burst healing spec via incredible ramps. There was a weaker preparation phase where you’d get rejuvenation on as many people as possible, and then a payoff phase where you’d cast Flourish and do a lot of healing. In many ways, it was similar to Discipline Priest. Our payoff would usually last a little longer than Disc and deliver its healing slightly more slowly which made each slightly better at different things.

In season 3 Resto Druid was transformed. Ramp potential was dulled by a significant Flourish nerf and any buffs we got in return did more for our sustained healing than our burst. A famously bursty healer became more of a sustained one and the gold standard of healing spec design was lost.

Modern raid design doesn’t put a very high value on sustained healing specs and hasn’t in a very long time. You’re much more likely to die from the burstiest parts of each fight and as a result you want to bring healers that excel in that niche.

Mana

I think mana can serve a useful purpose in the game in making spell selection and timing more interesting. There’s a balance to be struck where you don’t have an infinite resource but also don’t run out of mana in four minutes with a fairly typical rotation. Alternatively, mana can be baked into spec design itself like Mistweaver saw this expansion with Mana Tea. Being able to interact with it more directly can be quite an interesting path to take.

Season 3 resto druid is an example of mana being too restrictive while the healing abilities themselves don’t heal for enough. You pay a lot but you don’t get a lot of value for your mana. Whichever design they decide on for mana, it should be applied across the board. It doesn’t function when it’s a resource for some but not others and this is an area of the game they haven’t gotten right for years. Druid itself spent little mana in season two, such were the number of free Regrowths. This would be a great area for a proper development post in Alpha so that they can outline what their plans are moving forward.

Dragonflight Highlights

The Rise of Cat

A real highlight of the latter half of Dragonflight has been the buff and re-focusing on cat abilities in Mythic+. I think the spec plays best in this environment when you have access to various levels of complexity and Cat talents are a great way to add a high-skill option for players that want to maximize DPS.

Healing Sarkareth

Dragonflight had a few strong healing bosses. Rashok, Kurog, and Sarkareth in particular. The intense but short phase 1 damage started the second the boss pulled and came in short bursts throughout the phase. There was a lot of optimization you could do there to save your guild a lot of pulls by healing for more.

Early Grove Guardians

I’ve been mixed on Grove Guardians overall but as an off-gcd ability that supplements our other abilities, I think they’re very interesting. Particularly in Mythic+ but in Raid too. I don’t think they are interesting enough to build the spec around but they’re nice if they’re ~5-6% of our power which they were on release. I’m curious to see whether they further explore this off-gcd space for rotational spells since it’s very rare in the healer landscape outside of defensives and some major cooldowns.

Small amounts of borrowed power

It’s been really nice to be able to play without layers of systems on top of our characters in this expansion. If it was an experiment it has worked for sure.

The War Within

There are a ton of unknowns still regarding War Within but we do have an early preview of one of our Hero Talent trees and a name on the second. These are going to be iterated on a lot and so I’ll try and be very general with my feedback this early. Here’s a brief wishlist, and some of it will repeat what I’ve seen earlier in the article:

• A deeper look at mana economy across the board.
• A more powerful Flourish button to improve ramp payoff.
• A smaller focus on Grove Guardians. They’re great in small doses, not big ones.
• A look at tertiaries to reduce the amount of power they provide considering their rarity and ability to warp your gearing.

Hero Talents

We already know that the “Keeper of the Grove” Hero Tree is going to focus on Grove Guardians. It’s unfortunate that they’ve already committed a tree to what should be such a small part of our kit. If they’re going to stick with that I’d love it if they made Grove Guardians more interactive. Dropping a pet that heals random targets for 15 seconds with little synergy with the rest of our kit isn’t an ideal starting point for a full talent tree. I will make a note on Guardian of the Grove, which increases all healing you do for each Grove Guardian you have out. That’s a step in the right direction but it should be even more entwined with our kit.

We don’t know anything about the other yet but it’s shared with Feral so I suspect it could be shapeshift-related – think Master Shapeshifter. This is an easy space to make an interesting hero tree in, but a difficult one to make strong in raid where any use of Cat Form can be heavily restricted by raid mechanics and spending a lot of your GCDs in form is harmful to your healing. I’d like to avoid a situation where we have one tree that’s good in M+ and one tree that’s good in raid so hopefully they can deliver a tree that appeals in both – particularly given Keeper of the Grove might already be of mixed popularity on theme alone.