Input on new Druid heals

M

metvayne1

Dalayan Beginner
I am posting to give some thought I have on the new druid changes. So far, I think the changes are wonderful a give druids a niche in healing, while allowing them to be more functional while doing so (alloted time to dps, or debuff while HoT takes effect).

A druid's ability to heal in a pinch was somewhat compromised. That is, when a target is taking large amounts of damage per second, and require immediate healing. This is understandable, since a druid's new healing ability actually make every healer around them better and more efficient with the use of their HoTs. The only problem is the use of two HoTs with a cast time of 3.4s each (after CSI 7) consumes a lot of valuable healing time, which is what these changes I feel were trying to get away from. That's almost 7 seconds of time that the druid is unable to mend their target or conduct any other function. HoTs are incredibly efficient but they take several seconds to take effect. This issue is amplified by the fact that their big heal is now 3.4s (after CSI 7) and weaker, and their quick heal is not as strong. With this current circumstance as is, a druid can almost never solo heal a main tank that is taking any large amount of damage. They are in effect, a permanent compliment to any cleric or shaman.

I would like to propose possibly cutting 1 second of casting time from their HoTs. This would still leave Elixir of Bliss at least almost 1 second faster. Any alternate opinions welcome.
 
Also what is very dangerous, is that once both hots where off the tanks health can go waayyy down wayyyyy fast. Basically if you're solo healing you have to use a combination of hots/and your crappy big heals. I'll probably load CHeal too from now on.
 
Last edited:
I didn't get to fool around with the HoT too much, but the idea is great. I'm really enjoying the direction they took with druid healing.
 
If the tank is taking so much damage that you can't keep them up with two hots going, maybe you need a second healer? Keeping CH loaded is always a good idea, too.
 
Sanyia said:
If the tank is taking so much damage that you can't keep them up with two hots going, maybe you need a second healer? Keeping CH loaded is always a good idea, too.
Click to expand...

The issue is there are situations where as a druid you need a second healer and as a cleric you don't and that is sort of silly (raid things excluded)
 
In my situation I didn't need a second healer, but I've died with both hots on me :mad: , and had the tank drop to 20% before I was like "goddamnit how many heals do I have to use".
 
Its almost like the key to druiding now seems to be having a timer next to your eq window and doing mental math to know when they're going to drop, and having a new hot just about ready to hit when they do. That, and trying to prevent both hots from fading at the same time. That's just absolutely terrible.

Instead of straight up reducing the cast time, what about a single target self buff, that has a cast time of either 3.4 seconds with CSI7, or a bit shorter, perhaps 2.4, that will decrease the cast time of your next hot by the length of the cast time of the buff? Fades on cast, obviously. That way the cast time is still there, but you're just displacing it.
 
I don't see any reason not to lower the cast time, as HoTs take a few seconds before they even heal (after they land). 3.4s + a few seconds is a ridiculous amount of time to wait.

edit: I also think the second druid on the raid is now weakened in terms of healing the MT, whereas a 2nd cleric or shaman wouldn't be.
 
Last edited:
smadcatc said:
I don't see any reason not to lower the cast time, as HoTs take a few seconds before they even heal (after they land). 3.4s + a few seconds is a ridiculous amount of time to wait.
Click to expand...

^

Now that this is the bread and butter of druid healing, it makes them less than desirable as a main healer. Druids are basically just efficiency boosters for everyone else.
 
smadcatc said:
I don't see any reason not to lower the cast time, as HoTs take a few seconds before they even heal (after they land). 3.4s + a few seconds is a ridiculous amount of time to wait.

edit: I also think the second druid on the raid is now weakened in terms of healing the MT, whereas a 2nd cleric or shaman wouldn't be.
Click to expand...

We had a raid with 3 druids on it yesterday, and yeah I would agree that that is not really ideal.
 
Druids can still main heal, they just have to predict damage being dealt like 10 seconds ahead which isnt always possible. Reduced cast time on hots seems like a good fix that wouldn't really mess up balance.
 
jew_nose_it said:
We had a raid with 3 druids on it yesterday, and yeah I would agree that that is not really ideal.
Click to expand...
We had one too and it was pretty awful, even when just one druid was on HoT duty. When we had to heal 2 tanks it was still horrible.

I quite liked our old heals. I find hots excellent for duoing / grouping depending on setup, but I'm still not fond of the idea of having 8 heals and having to eliminate a few to still be able to do other things (in my case: relic nuke, archaic debuff, then depending on situation SoA, rain, tgbae nuke).
I quit using CH and Gheal and try to replace them with runic heal, but it obviously doesn't always work.

I'm interested in what this new self-buff will do, but I don't look forward to searching for it (has anyone gotten the 63 Ghot yet?).

If we're keeping hots, reduced casting time would be great, or maybe have the firs tick always do a double heal or something. I'm bad with ideas in the morning.
 
The group hot is really good, we got one the first night it came out but i haven't seen any others since. Gthot makes 1-2 druids veryyyy good in raids.
 
tinkaa said:
We had one too and it was pretty awful, even when just one druid was on HoT duty. When we had to heal 2 tanks it was still horrible.

I quite liked our old heals. I find hots excellent for duoing / grouping depending on setup, but I'm still not fond of the idea of having 8 heals and having to eliminate a few to still be able to do other things (in my case: relic nuke, archaic debuff, then depending on situation SoA, rain, tgbae nuke).
I quit using CH and Gheal and try to replace them with runic heal, but it obviously doesn't always work.

I'm interested in what this new self-buff will do, but I don't look forward to searching for it (has anyone gotten the 63 Ghot yet?).

If we're keeping hots, reduced casting time would be great, or maybe have the firs tick always do a double heal or something. I'm bad with ideas in the morning.
Click to expand...

The toll it takes on your spell bar is another flaw i found as well.
 
Another possibility would be to cut the hot durations in half and add an on cast pure heal. Give quick heal its old cast time as well. This would give druids a healing niche, but reduce problems associated with handling burst dps when main healing. It would also reduce the stacking issues when multiple druids are on a raid.

One of the big problems with pure hots on 6 man is that druids have to cast and refresh their hots at certain times to be efficent and keep good healing flowing. When you encounter a fight with movement or stuns or other effects that can break this rythem, hots end up fading at times when the tank needs pure heals to stay alive. This can cause the druid to get stuck chain casting their now far less efficent pure heals to keep the tank up and unless they get a lucky crit they have no chance to get hots back on the tank.
 
Silosobi said:
Another possibility would be to cut the hot durations in half and add an on cast pure heal. Give quick heal its old cast time as well. This would give druids a healing niche, but reduce problems associated with handling burst dps when main healing. It would also reduce the stacking issues when multiple druids are on a raid.

One of the big problems with pure hots on 6 man is that druids have to cast and refresh their hots at certain times to be efficent and keep good healing flowing. When you encounter a fight with movement or stuns or other effects that can break this rythem, hots end up fading at times when the tank needs pure heals to stay alive. This can cause the druid to get stuck chain casting their now far less efficent pure heals to keep the tank up and unless they get a lucky crit they have no chance to get hots back on the tank.
Click to expand...

you nailed it, this especially was the case the other night. Chloroshock has the same cast time as ancient did but less powerful
 
metvayne1 said:
They are in effect, a permanent compliment ... to any shaman.
Click to expand...

They are just a compliment with group heals,complete heals,HoTs without sideeffects?
Even their bread and butter spell Revitalize (level 63!) heals for more than the Shammy Relic (!!)
single target heal.

If anything they should add some penalties to the Druid HoTs (Shammy style 20% slow or the
like) if not remove them completly.
 
Having 2 druids in your raid is even worse than it was pre-change. In a land where clerics literally do not exist, where you don't want more than one druid, and shaman have zero group healing capability.. what is a guild to do..
 
Ulandz said:
They are just a compliment with group heals,complete heals,HoTs without sideeffects?
Even their bread and butter spell Revitalize (level 63!) heals for more than the Shammy Relic (!!)
single target heal.

If anything they should add some penalties to the Druid HoTs (Shammy style 20% slow or the
like) if not remove them completly.
Click to expand...

Explain how this is balanced. Don't get me started on what shamans can do.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom