While still early in development, Restoration Druids have seen some noteworthy changes both beneficial and detrimental since the start of Battle for Azeroth alpha. In addition, we'll be entering the post-Legion era sans artifact which reduces us back to our base toolkit with a few notable exceptions.
The largest and probably most controversial change to Restoration Druids is a reduction in our mobility. First, the T30 talent
Phasenbestie has been removed.
Phasenbestie's blink has become a staple in our toolkit with most Resto Druids rarely swapping to other talents on the same tier. The blink allowed us instant movement with a short speed boost that was frequently used to avoid certain mechanics altogether.
Phasenbestie will be sorely missed, but it's not without an upside. For starters,
Spurt had its 3min CD reduced to 2mins with a small 10% movement speed and 5 second duration nerf. While this might not appear as a buff, I tend to prefer a shorter CD for greater access as it's rare to need the full duration of the sprint. To build upon the new
Spurt, the new T30 talent is
Tigerspurt.
Tigerspurt replaces
Spurt, but gives us a 200% movement speed increase that reduces over 4 seconds on a 45s CD. This will be a great option for scenarios requiring quick escapes but not necessarily prolonged movement. We'll still have access to
Wilde Attacke allowing us to disengage to an ally's position or other charge like abilities depending on our shapeshift. It'll never be the same as
Phasenbestie, but it's a step in the direction of making blinks more unique while still giving us mobility options.
Second, one of the largest adjustments for me and likely most Restoration Druids is stationary
Gelassenheit. Without
G'Hanir, der Mutterbaum, we lose the ability to
Gelassenheit on the move meaning if you move while channeling
Gelassenheit, then the ability will cancel and you'll likely begin to cry. Blizzard has doubled down on the change by reintroducing the stacking HoT that
Gelassenheit applies per tick stacking up to 5 times. While this makes
Gelassenheit potentially the strongest or one of the strongest healing cooldowns in the game, it will require exceptional positioning in addition to good timing. The HoT also provides some additional mastery and haste scaling for
Gelassenheit. It'll be an adjustment to not instinctively
Gelassenheit and then immediately run and jump all over the instance, but we've dealt with this inconvenience before and we can deal with it again, albeit begrudgingly.
In regards to the rest of our artifact, it's not the end of the world that we're losing
G'Hanir, der Mutterbaum. Many of the traits were passive healing increases, minor mana regen increases and mana cost reductions. Most of these can be balanced into the base abilities, so I wouldn't fret too much about those. Other more impactful traits had a RNG component to them and were hit or miss (such as
Traumwandler). While I like the added flavor, I'm perfectly okay with these falling away. The one trait I'm having a hard time parting with is
Persistenz. On live we can have 4-7 extra seconds on our
Verbesserte Verjüngung and DoTs. While it doesn't seem like a lot of extra time, going back to the base duration requires more micromanaging and a lower overall HoT count in raid. This remains to be seen if it'll have larger implications beyond quality of life. Fortunately, our artifact ability,
Essenz von G'Hanir has gotten baked into the
Gedeihen talent but the cooldown has been increased to 1.5min. I think that's a good design decision to allow us access to that on demand burst cooldown, but I would have preferred two separate abilities as they were not always used exclusively together.
To accompany the change to
Gedeihen,
Steinborke and
Verschmelzung have swapped places on the talent tree opening up some interesting choices on those talent rows.
Gedeihen has almost been exclusively the choice on the T100 talent row due to its flexibility in most PvE content, but having to compete with
Verschmelzung offers an interesting choice between an on-demand burst cooldown versus a sustained spot-healing increase that requires potentially more mana usage. I could make a case for either talent in current content, but this really exposes
Moment der Klarsicht as the clear weakest talent of the three.
Moment der Klarsicht's mana savings is rarely worth it in dungeon content as you're frequently able to drink between packs of mobs and the increased
Nachwachsen healing is just not enough to justify losing the extra cooldown with
Gedeihen or the overall increase in the number of HoTs (and
Meisterschaft: Harmonie) a player can have with
Verschmelzung. It is possible that Blizzard intends for Restoration Druids to utilize more
Nachwachsen in raids based on them removing
Living Seed and baking a lot of that power directly into
Nachwachsen itself as well as changing
Überfluss to reduce the cost and increase the crit chance of
Nachwachsen based on the number of
Verbesserte Verjüngungs actives. Combine this with
Moment der Klarsicht and there's potential, but I'm fairly skeptical of this Regrowth-based playstyle; however, it is alpha and anything is possible. The other implication of the
Steinborke/
Verschmelzung talent swap is the ability to take both
Verschmelzung and
Frühlingsblüten allowing you to have an additional HoT on multiple members of your party/raid. Add in the additional
Gelassenheit HoT and it's possible that members of your raid/party could have between 7-9 HoTs on them making
Meisterschaft: Harmonie very valuable.
To round out the changes so far, Blizzard has pruned a few other abilities entirely and returned some old favorites.
Healing Touch has been removed, but it's not a spell I'll lament losing.
Healing Touch was an awkward piece of our toolkit that never really felt like it had a place. With a long cast time that required us to be stationary and only moderate healing, efficiency was about the only thing it had going for it and even then, it felt better to cast a free
Zorn and spend the saved mana on a
Verbesserte Verjüngung or
Nachwachsen. Additionally,
Besänftigen and
Überwintern have returned for all Druids. I'm not terribly excited for their return as they were of limited use prior to their removal especially with players opting to brute force most situations where they could prove useful, but perhaps now with the scaling difficulty of dungeons through Mythic+ we'll find significantly more opportunities for this set of utility.