Changes from Wrath to Legion

[Lusid 0]

Hi everyone, Just came back not too long ago from a long break. Last time i played was Wrath, and my friends convinced me to return with Legion. I have to say i'm happy i did, and having a lot of fun on most of my characters... Except my resto druid. I've adapted to a lot of the changes (with a lot of help from this site, many thanks) with little to no problem except my druid. I don't know if it's all healing or just druid changes but i remember gearing spell power and spirit to have very powerful HoT's active and a nearly limitless mana pool. Now i got myself some heirloom gear to help me through 80+ but i'm having a hell of a time performing at all with this character. I remember having Rejuv on my group was enough to handle the small off hits that happened, regrowth being my main heal to suppliment regular attacks, lifebloom (rip stacking) keeping a very rapid heal stream going and wild growth if a big AoE came up. Rarely if ever would i need to use healing touch.

 

Now i'm watching rejuv barely make a dent in my party's health, regrowth seeming like it's a very low level heal with hardly any HoT attached, and Healing Touch feeling like i need to spam it half the time. I took a look at some of the numbers and it looks like regrowth for example only heals for ~1400 and a 400(!) heal over 12 seconds. To put things into perspective i'm sitting at 27k HP. Lifebloom has some nice numbers on the HoT end, and swiftmend has a semi-respectable 4600, but this all seems VERY low. So i'm reaching out to you guys not so much as a tell me what i'm doing wrong, but more what's changed in how a resto druid works between Wrath and Legion? I'm very much hoping it's not gone from "Use the right heal for the job" to "Put ALL your HoT's on and spam HT as needed". That would make me very sad.

[Pandacho 286]

Hello,

I think the main problem here is that you are not on the max level yet, even not close (if I got it right from your post).

WoW went long way through the years and on some stage classes and specs became pretty much uneven in performance while you are leveling. It is a bit annoying but leveling to 100 is so fast nowadays (a couple of days played or people just choose an instant boost) that it just remains as is.

I'm not sure where exactly you are having these many problems with healing because it's one dungeon once and move to the next area most of times. Or are you questing in a resto spec?

Anyways, back to the answer:

the classes are unbalanced and your gameplay in Legion wouldn't be 'full' until you'll get your Artifact and all the talents at least. The amount of your healing done is unbalanced and the numbers mean very little while you are leveling. Druid's healing didn't change a lot from what you are describing and a resto druid is one of the best healers in Legion for both raid and 5-man content.

The only thing I can suggest is to get a lot of patience :) and to level fast maybe even not in resto but in guardian or to boost your druid straight to lvl 100 and skip all the annoyance. 

 

[Modinstaller 0]

I'm in the same situation, moved from wotlk (private servers) to legion. The first time I got to heal a dungeon, I was amazed at how useless I was (and that was in a legion dungeon).

 

Compared to wotlk, healers are really really weaker now. You're not going to see a holy pala one shot the health of a dps with a hl crit. And if you do, you won't see the pala doing that for the rest of the fight, cause he'll run oom in a matter of seconds. I feel like the focus is now way more on dodging stuff, and for tanks on using mitigation at the right moment, rather than taking it all in and asking the healers to heal it up. Also, you'll need to conserve your mana way more.

 

The spells have also changed a lot yeah. Regrowth is still very strong, and it'll be your fastest single-target heal in any circumstances. You won't want to spam healing touch on the tank in mythic+ runs where the damage becomes high, you'll want to spam regrowth, or the tank'll just die. Since you heal a lot less compared to wotlk, and because of the way mastery works, you usually have to pre-hot everyone you expect will receive a burst of damage (and I mean really pre-hot, double rejuv, regrowth, wild growth, and efflo, and then using your artifact that doubles your healing for a few seconds).

 

So it's still pretty much a case of keeping everything up on everyone as well as predicting who will take damage and pre-hotting them, that much didn't really change from wotlk. It's just that you'll have to stack up your hots a lot more especially in 5-man dungeons, use healing touch as a filler, and spam heal the tank with regrowth when he takes a lot of damage (not in raids of course, or you'll run oom 3 minutes into the fight).

 

Pandacho has a point also, our class gets a lot stronger with the artifact (and some of the lvl 100 skills, mastery, talents).

[Sighelm 2]

Haven't leveled a drood this xpac, but in WoD it was a pain too. Assuming they're going through with the buff to Regrowth tomorrow (not in the patch notes, but it appears like that might be a mistake according to some folks on the blizz forums), that'll help a lot -- it's supposed to be our big fast expensive heal that tends to get spammed in dungeons, but Legion's removal of major glyphs was not kind to it. Panda is definitely right in that we get a lot of power at level 100 -- Essence of G'hanir is our one of our best ways to respond to bursts. 

In the meantime, Cenarion Ward is your friend. Also, try to have 3 mastery stacks on the tank and 1-2 on anybody you expect might take damage at all times.