Post
by Treezus » Sun Apr 07, 2024 3:04 am
I play exclusively in Tree Form and, of course, I love it. I view other resto druids who don't use it with a combination of pity and bewilderment. I also keep getting told that it's a very weak spec but, in my view, it merely has a high skill ceiling that many druids have yet to reach. That said, while I'm not in the secret druid class discussions, there are problems I'm aware of need to be addressed:
1) You can't have more than one tree druid in the raid. All hots will be overridden by the stronger healer, and assigning heal groups for hots means that some parts of the raid will not be adequately covered and reduces the overall healing of both druids. I consider this an oversight. Solution: Rejuvenation stacking, at least to 3. This makes having multiple tree druids viable since the stronger healer won't be cancelling out weaker healers.
2) The lack of a mana-efficient direct heal while in Tree Form. Downranking Regrowth to acceptable levels of mana consumption just gives you a very weak Regrowth. You're better off dropping the form, casting a mainline HT, and then recasting Tree of Life. This might not have been intended. Solution: HT castable in Tree Form, or replaced with something like Nourish.
3) No out-of-combat res mechanic. Druids are forced to use jumper cables or smelling salts because of the long CD on their battle res. This makes 5-man groups annoying for everyone if no-one else has a res. I consider this a quality of life issue. Solution: Add the Revive spell to the game.
4) Tranquility. Outside of extremely limited situations, the spell is functionally useless. No-one I'm aware of even has it on their bars. The purpose of the spell is to provide a large AOE heal that stabilizes the raid against high incoming damage, in a way that's stronger and more efficient than a blanket of Rejuvenations, but also incurring a lengthy cooldown. I would consider a rework of the spell but without turning it into its retail equivalent, as that would be an incredibly powerful spell. Here's an example of how it could work:
Tranquility (Rank 4), 925 Mana, Channeled, 10 min cooldown. Regenerates the X most injured allies within 40 yards for Y every 2 seconds for 10 sec. Druid must channel to maintain the spell.
The term "group members" being replaced with "most injured allies" allows for this to affect the entire raid, as long as they're in range. X can be a number that's at least 5. Y can be a number that's at least Z+75% of the druid's healing power. Doubling the cooldown in ensures that it doesn't trivialize fights since its purpose is to give the druid a panic button that can help prevent one disaster.
(EDIT) 5) Atiesh group aura. This one's tangential since it affects all resto druids and not just tree druids. While the mp/5 is neat and is in keeping with the spirit of what the original developers were going for (one of the staves being for mana regeneration purposes), it's not as useful as the other Atiesh staff buffs. I'm aware that the developers have no interest in changing how Atiesh works, but if it were to be changed the aura could look like this:
Equip: Allows (5%/10%) of your party members' Mana regenration within 30 yards to continue while casting.
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