Lately there’s been a great deal of hubbub about the lack of endgame viability for the Restoration Druid relative to that of our healing counterparts, the Paladin, Priest, and Shaman. One of the primary complaints is that our class-specific buff, Mark of the Wild, scales so poorly in comparison to those brought to the table by other healers. The description of the group version, Gift of the Wild reads as follows:
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While the spell’s description may sound lackluster, it’s only by comparing Mark to the spells, blessings, and totems that can be brought to the table by other healing classes that the gross imbalance is demonstrated.
Priests: Prayer of Fortitude and Divine Spirit
While it is true that — unlike Prayer of Fortitude — Mark grants a benefit to all stats, most classes benefit only from a few specific stats, usually no more than three. Casters generally rely upon Intellect and Spirit, while melees focus on some combination of Strength and Agility. Common among the two groups is Stamina which benefits all classes. Gift of the Wild grants a total of 14 Stamina. Compare this to Prayer of Fortitude which grants a total of 79. Untalented, Mark grants 140 hit points, Fortitude 790. Are 650 hit points really countered by either 210 mana and whatever benefits can be derived from 14 Spirt (widely subject to the class in question) or 14 more Strength (28 AP for warriors, 14 for rogues) and 14 more Agility (14 more AP for rogues and a negligible amount of dodge)?
Also worth noting: any Priest who has made healing her focus is likely to have picked up Divine Spirit, a buff which grants 50 additional Spirit, further widening the buff gap between Priests and Druids. And, while it costs Restoration druids 5 talent points to grant an additional +4 to all stats, Priests have only to spend 2 talent points to gain the same 35% improvement — a 35% improvement to a spell that’s already much more desirable.
Hands down, Prayer of Fortitude is a vastly superior buff to the Druid counterpart, Gift of the Wild.
Paladins: Blessings
Here’s where Druids are hurt the most. Paladins bring a whole host of available buffs, and despite the hefty upkeep necessary to maintain them, they can afford a myriad of tremendous benefits to a raid group:
- Blessing of Kings: Increases total stats by 10% for 15 min.
Although this ability requires an eleven point investment in the Protection tree, it effectively affords more than double the benefit of Mark of the Wild. And it scales. As raid members improve their core stats by upgrading their gear, this buff keeps pace by granting them additional stat points at the same rate as before.
- Blessing of Wisdom: Restores 41 mana every 5 seconds for 15 min.
Untalented, this Blessing affords casters 41 mana per 5. It can easily make the difference between loss and success for a given boss encounter by tremendously increasing healer longevity. And a Holy-specced Paladin will have picked up the talents to improve this blessing (20% for two talent points), increasing its return to nearly 50 mp5.
- Blessing of Might: Increases attack power by 220 for 15 min.
Compare this to the maximum of 28 AP granted by Mark of the Wild.
- Blessing of Salvation: Reduces the amount of all threat generated by 30% for 15 min.
This buff can theoretically increase the total DPS output of your raid by an incredible 30% since it effectively raises the aggro ceiling that must be exceeded by the raid’s main tank.
Best of all, Paladins stack incredibly well. Adding another Paladin healer means one more of the amazing buffs listed above to be given out to raid members. Like the dilemma faced by Holy Priests, adding another Druid affords no additional benefit to the raid group.
Shamans: Totems, Totems, Totems!
I admit only passing familiarity with the Shaman class. However, take a look at some of the buffs that can be granted to a Shaman’s group in the form of one or more immobile totems:
- Windfury Totem: Enchants all party members main-hand weapons with wind, if they are within 20 yards. Each hit has a 20% chance of granting the attacker 1 extra attack with 445 extra attack power.
- Grace of Air Totem: Increases the agility of party members within 20 yards by 77
- Mana Spring Totem: Restores 12 mana every 2 seconds to group members within 20 yards.
- Mana Tide Totem: Restores 6% of total mana every 3 seconds to group members within 20 yards.
Any of the above buffs is inarguably superior to Mark of the Wild, and in some cases, more than one can be made available to a Shaman’s party. And — like Paladins — it’s almost always advantageous to bring as many Shamans to a raid as there are groups. They stack almost as well.
“Buffing Our Buff”
What can be done to bring the quality of our class buff more in line with those of other healers? One or more of the following changes would be helpful:
- Change the stats granted by Mark to take into account the fact that all classes do not benefit from an increase to all six of their stats. Improve the power of this buff accordingly (perhaps a 25 to all stats).
- Reduce the cost of the Improved Mark of the Wild talent from 5 points to 3 points, in line with the point cost paid by Priests. This would also help reduce the bloat of the Restoration talent tree.
- Add 40 Resilience to this buff. This would improve Druids’ PvP desirability without tremendously affecting PvE balance. At level 70, 40 Resilience reduces the chance to be crit by 1%.
- Allow the resistances granted by Mark to stack with those granted by other classes’ auras (which are inevitably superior and almost invariably available).
At one point hailed as “the best buff in the game,” Mark quite simply can no longer compete. It is outshone in every way by buffs which grant greater and/or more universally useful stat bonuses. This combined with the fact that Druids stack no better than Priests but have fewer, feebler buffs to bring to the table (Mark of the Wild and Thorns versus Prayer of Fortitude and Divine Spirit) make us a far less attractive addition to a raid group than any of the classes with which we compete for a limited number of slots. Without regard to any of the other issues which plague healing-focused Druids, addressing the disparity between our class-specific buff and those brought to the table by Shamans, Priests, and Paladins would go a long way toward improving our viability as valued raid contributors.
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@Graylo: Oh, my mistake!! I’ve adjusted the description to be more clear.
July 4th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Don’t think the stats needs that big buffs really. Though resistances should stack with other buffs, and resilience would be a good idea. Maybe +hit?
And about the talent point… It sucks, should be replaced or adjusted, maybe make it add some additional stats, like +hit or spell penetration.
-Muda (EU)
July 4th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
Thanks for the comments, Muda!
The reason I think that the stats could stand a boost is that the value of the spell is being artificially inflated because it affects 5 stats when in actuality players only benefit from 3 of them. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with +hit, but it isn’t something that benefits all players (healers included) which seems counter to the buff’s concept.
July 4th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
Forgot about healers there, even though I am resto today (respeccing alot, though prefer resto for PvP).
But how about a healing received increased by 1%/rank (talent), and stackable resistances (basic)? You would most likely have one druid in the raid who could do imp MotW, not to powerful, not worse than we have now. Useful in most cases case you usually have some offhealing.
Though, only been to Gruul’s Lair and Kara so far.
Oh, and some Resilience wouldn’t hurt, then you would have all basic stats covered.
Not entirely thought through, but gotta get some sleep, 1:43 am here.
-Muda (EU)
July 5th, 2007 at 1:12 am
Interesting idea about the % to healing received. However, I think the effect would be too similar to — and might easily eclipse — the lackluster Tree of Life aura. The benefit to people who don’t regularly take damage might also be questionable.
I do think that the resistances should stack with other auras, whatever other changes were to be made to the buff. As it is, Mark’s resistances almost never come into play.
July 5th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Resilience for high ranks of mark would be awesome, and would be useful for feral gear selection as well as pvp for all specs.
One thing I can’t believe you didn’t mention when comparing buffs is windfury totem. It outclasses all other shaman totems by quite a fair margin
July 5th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Oh … Windfury. I can’t believe I neglected to mention that one, either. I’ll be sure to add it to the article soon. =) Thank you!
July 9th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
Putting an Anon post I guess, but, shammies have lots of totems, for every goal.
Tremor: Fearbreak
Stoneskin: Less damage taken
Grounding: Spell Redirection
Earthgrab: Slows opponents
Stoneclaw: Tank totem
Strength of Earth: Str Buff
Poison Cleansing: Read the name
Magma / Searing Totems: Damage Dealing
Grace of Air: Agl Buff
Windfall Totem: Reduces damage taken
Weapon Buff totems
Fire Elem Totem: Lots of fire damage totem
Earth Elem Totem: Pocket tank
Ect ect ect
However, about the proposed buff to MOTW, I do not believe it will happen.
Monkeymaifa - Whisperwind
July 10th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Monkeymafia,
I was trying to only include those Shaman totems that might be (regularly) useful during a raid, those that would bring something more or less unique to the table and increase Shaman desirability. I didn’t include the Poison Cleansing totem as poison cleansing can be handled by two other classes. Several of the totems you list are useless in raids (such as Stoneclaw) and I haven’t actually heard of Windfall…
March 9th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
[...] But what is new? Not much. If you’ve been following the other sites, you know that Hemorrhage is currently broken and on the PTR is has been nerfed from 125% to 110%, though the extra damage is going up 6 points for the 10 charges. While this poster may think this is a minor nerf, I’m not at all thrilled by the change. I read elsewhere that Blizzard made this change to give Rogues a utlity to help groups and raids more. If this is the case, I wish they would have allowed it to scale with AP or something. Blizzard should know by this point that fixed point values on end game abilities makes them less and less useful as gear improves. Just ask a Druid. [...]
April 15th, 2008 at 9:16 am
I actually disagree. Now, your point about Resto Druids not stacking is certainly true, or at least a very strong point.
MOTW, isn’t intended to be a situational buff, like totems and blessings. Those are the benefits of our fellow healers, and those classes are distinctly built that way. MOTW is a small increase to everything. Are you saying there are over-buffed groups that tell Druids, “Don’t waste your time?” I don’t think so, and if any Tree’s guild/group is telling you that, I’d venture a guess that they would be not very successful raiders.
I’m of the opinion that even a small increase is preferable to nothing. No cash for Epic gems? Buy greens for 2 gold before the raid to get that slot filled. I run with 4 stacks of healy fish because 44 +heal and 20 Spr is not insignificant. Our leadership assigns Druids to different groups (or lets us figure it out, depending on situation) and emphasizes having MOTW up at all times (OK maybe not worrying about DPSers who die on trash until the next boss).
Now, I like the idea of adding resilience to it, even if just with Improved MOTW (8 resil per talent point), because that gives the feral tree some PVP loving, and makes those feral druids who spec Imp MOTW for raiding an extra tanking kick (and 1% crit damage reduction is nice without being OP.)
(Supposed lack of) End game raid viability for Druids is, IMHO, due to leather healing gear. Or lack there of. There’s like what, one epic leather healing boots, and it’s in SSC? (Hardly early in progression). My boots are some of the best (unless I’m stupidly missing something), and they are blues from MGT. Even with the badge vendor chest and pants (2.4) I’m still losing MP5 and +heal when I break my PMC set bonus.
As for utility, there’s no competition for raid healing. We can, in 10 GCD’s, top off a significant portion of the raid (or all of it in 10-mans). That’s 15 seconds and ~30k healing output. Tell your priests to stop wasting mana on group hugs and let us work
Now tank healing is another thing, but even there we can lauigh at burst damage with swiftmend. (I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir here).
Anyway, not that I wouldn’t mind a MOTW buff! I simply think that gear issues plague us more than anything else ATM.
/raid It’s not THAT bad! Here, I’ll make it better.
/cast [target=opinionofMOTW] Lifebloom
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Medivh&n=Jephaer
Anyway, just recently found this site, love it!
~Jephaer
April 15th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Thanks for the well thought out comments, Jeffy! I agree that we do have itemization issues, but I tend to believe that, while leather is preferred, it doesn’t hurt us too much to consider wearing a cloth piece or two. Resto Druids essentially get to pick from *two* sets of healing gear and — lucky for us — we use Spirit like Priests do. At the same time, Shamans and Paladins generally PTUI on our leather Spirit gear. Lucky us! =)
I guess I have a bit of a Blessings/Totem envy when it comes to building a raid. We do have other nice tools (Thorns, Insect Swarm) but nothing compared to the ability that Paladins have to raise the threat-generation ceiling for melee and ranged DPS. Nor the mana regeneration tools of the Shaman (a Resto Druid will often need her own Innervate). Instead, I can give someone 14-18 Spirit, 14-18 Intellect. Meanwhile, a Blessing of Kings (albeit talented) can give someone 60 Spirit and Intellect. Hardly comparable abilities. T_T
April 16th, 2008 at 11:14 am
You forgot to mention other buffs we give… the healing bonus while on tree form and Leader of the pack for feral druids!
April 17th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
@Come … milkme: I do not have Leader of the Pack. Buffing is generally left to Restoration Druids since Ferals shouldn’t pick up IMotW over Furor. The Healing aura we give is pretty good, though, 150 +Healing at 600 Spirit.