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
野性位移 has been removed.
野性位移'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.
野性位移 will be sorely missed, but it's not without an upside. For starters,
急奔 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
急奔, the new T30 talent is
猛虎冲刺.
猛虎冲刺 replaces
急奔, 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
野性冲锋 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
野性位移, 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
宁静. Without
加尼尔,母亲之树, we lose the ability to
宁静 on the move meaning if you move while channeling
宁静, 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
宁静 applies per tick stacking up to 5 times. While this makes
宁静 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
宁静. It'll be an adjustment to not instinctively
宁静 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
加尼尔,母亲之树. 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
梦行者). 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
延绵不断. On live we can have 4-7 extra seconds on our
强化回春术 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,
加尼尔的精华 has gotten baked into the
繁盛 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
繁盛,
石木树皮 and
萌芽 have swapped places on the talent tree opening up some interesting choices on those talent rows.
繁盛 has almost been exclusively the choice on the T100 talent row due to its flexibility in most PvE content, but having to compete with
萌芽 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
洞察秋毫 as the clear weakest talent of the three.
洞察秋毫's mana savings is rarely worth it in dungeon content as you're frequently able to drink between packs of mobs and the increased
愈合 healing is just not enough to justify losing the extra cooldown with
繁盛 or the overall increase in the number of HoTs (and
精通:相生) a player can have with
萌芽. It is possible that Blizzard intends for Restoration Druids to utilize more
愈合 in raids based on them removing
Living Seed and baking a lot of that power directly into
愈合 itself as well as changing
丰饶 to reduce the cost and increase the crit chance of
愈合 based on the number of
强化回春术s actives. Combine this with
洞察秋毫 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
石木树皮/
萌芽 talent swap is the ability to take both
萌芽 and
春暖花开 allowing you to have an additional HoT on multiple members of your party/raid. Add in the additional
宁静 HoT and it's possible that members of your raid/party could have between 7-9 HoTs on them making
精通:相生 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
愤怒 and spend the saved mana on a
强化回春术 or
愈合. Additionally,
安抚 and
休眠 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.