Restoration Druid First Impressions [The War Within Alpha]

Hello friends this is growl the war within Alpha is finally upon us I was lucky enough to get early access to check out some of the changes and I'm bringing you my first impressions and review of how Restoration Druid is looking in the coming expansion keep in mind we're still really early so any talks about how weak or strong something will be doesn't hold a lot of water I'm mainly trying to cover the levels of fun and depth that the game play is looking like it's going to provide Druid got a lot new already in the build that was posted in including a reworked class tree new talents and two complete hero Talent builds Resto Druid right now seems like it's staying pretty true to what we'd expect Druid to be but keep in mind it still has enough interesting twists and gameplay changes it's not nearly the same as it was in dragonflight so I think it'll still be fun on release as always druid's a really well-rounded healer in five mans it has lots of good options for healing especially group healing it has very Sol utility and a nearly invaluable group buff at Mark of the wild first let's talk about the hero tree the setup is sort of choosing your play style buffing either your trian or buffing your heal overtime effects you'll notice that the hero trees aren't really that gamebreaking they're basically loaded with passives that just buff your current abilities and don't really change the way that you use them in my opinion they're some of the least gameplay changing hero trees among all the healers that being said I don't think that's a bad thing I mean Druid is a pretty complex class as it is there's a ton of different Hots to worry about in raid I think it's one of the more difficult healers that requires really precise timing and ramping and in Mythic plus you have tons of shape shifting and utility stuff to worry about so I don't necessarily think they needed hero talents to complicate things so I like their decision to just use them to augment two different styles of play I know most players are just going to choose like whatever tree numerically just gives the most healing going to Google a guide and just click the nodes that people tell them to click but I do like that it offers you a choice of sticking with whatever style you prefer the end of dragon flight sort of posed an annoying situation for juren given that they were really powerful but it also relied on that tier set bonus with Grove Guardians so strong direct healing only using Grove Guardians and regrowth instead of the classic like stacking heal over time effects that Druids are used to and even if that ends up staying the meta of using trees I think the Druid like heal overtime play style if you don't want to play the normal way will be way more viable the real big changes that Druid got is in the class tree The Druids tree has been completely shuffled around it now has like three distinct lines you have the melee play style on the left you have Caster range DPS on the right right and then you sort of have like the Healer allaround utility stuff in the middle a lot of the weak nodes that you would feel bad about taking have been removed or updated or buffed so for instance getting things like skull bash the melee kick for dungeons is way more obtainable in a Resto build the downside that comes with choice though is that there's going to be powerful dos that you simply can't take specifically stuff that you used to be able to take that you now can't now that there's competitive options in all sides of the tree you may have to sacrifice things that you wanted like incapacitating Roar or defensive options or maybe heart of the wild my biggest worry currently right now with the tree in dragonflight there was a ton of really high damage sort of one-hot stuff like really heavy hitting bosses that sort of forc jids to take defensive talents and there's so many good defensive nodes in here so I worry that the high keys are going to force us to kind of take some of these left nodes and leave some of the more fun options unpicked but that's a high Mythic plus meta problem keep in mind that won't have an effect on tons of people just looking to heal Dungeons and play with their buds honestly my only real complaint with the tree right now is that the AOE Sunfire if you want that it takes three whole points to obtain it's such a powerful damage option even if you're mostly a defensive Druid still throwing that AOE Sunfire on a pack of mobs does a lot of damage and it really really effective however you know again if you aren't needing to use that or maybe you're raiding it might feel nice to be able to save those three points and use them on something else the spec tree the Resto tree is pretty much unchanged however there's a few things missing and a few new nodes that I think are important to highlight uh the big one is that adaptive swarm is gone adaptive swarm is a really powerful spell don't get me wrong but I'll just be honest with you I felt the gameplay of it was really uninteresting and I'm so happy to see it's gone it essentially devolved into you just use it on cool down or else you're losing a lot of output which often just means that you download a weak Ora it just plays a noise or tells you when to use it a lot of these weak oras even told you the Target that you're supposed to use it on so I'm really glad to see that gone I think that it helps with the bloat of the class another thing that's gone is moonin form uh it's just not even in the class tree anymore I kind of like it because because previously you would be like well do I Moon can weave or do I catw weave but now it's more of like a fluid experience it's just like well you know do I want melee damage do I want range damage do I want both do I want neither it's not necessarily a one or the other choice although it may come down to that sometimes although I'll definitely be able to miss like being able to convoke in Moon conform to get you know a full moon and Starfall and all that but speaking of fluid one of my favorite new additions to the tree it's called fluid form this is a new class talent that allows you to cast rake or shred in human form this means that you don't have to spend that extra Global shifting into cat form you can just easily sneak in one or two spells before going back into human form to heal this combines also very well with some new spect tree talents that I want to talk about here as well call of the Elder Druid and dream of scarus Call of the Elder Druid gives heart of the wild once per minute whenever you switch forms into combat forms not only is this going to buff your damage obviously but then now it's going to synergize with the third Talent which when I explain it it'll all come together dream of scenarious converts all of your damage with shred swipe wrath and Starfire into healing so now all three of these means that you're just going to be shape shifting and catw weaving so much more in Mythic plus and it's really going to feel so much more fun it's going to feel fluid and effective a lot of times it's hard because you don't want to go into cat form because let's say things feel safe you press cat form you know you press rake one time and then oh no your team steps in something stupid and now it feels like why did I just switch into cat form and do nothing now it doesn't even take that Global to switch into a cap form you can just immediately go in and out uh it feels really really good I was enjoying playing with it keep in mind that during like heavy AOE damage I tried to just pop heart of the wild and just Spam s wipe and Shred but that wasn't enough uh I did have to shift out of form in order to do bigger healing obviously we don't know the final tuning but it was mainly just helping top people up if they were taking some minor avoidable damage let's say a pull that only does tank damage it helps keep the tank topped but it's not necessarily like you know a major healing cool down that's doing tons and tons of healing it's really a great supplement to Heart of the wild you know those times when you pop heart of the wild and then your idiot DPS just stands in a puddle takes 90% of their health and it's like well you feel like you should top them but are they really in danger now they'll just passively get healed up assuming that you have that talented so you can just sort of sit in heart of the wild it just makes it way more effective I'm been talking a lot about DPS but let me be clear that it sort of works both ways when I talk about the talents being improved if you're more defensive minded let's say you're someone that doesn't prefer to do as much damage you know you feel like your teammates are all monkeys you pug a lot you just want to keep your team alive you also have a lot of really strong options that you're putting your points into that any DPS minded player or you know monkey healer won't have available to them so one new Talent is thriving vegetation I would consider this sort of a raid Talent it boosts your Rejuvenation it gives it a direct heal and then it also makes it last a lot longer but this combining with all the defensive talents and some of the other bonuses in your class tree meaning that if you decide to skip out on DPS and you're mostly just creating a healing build you're going to have way bigger levels of survivability and boosted healing compared to like a DPS minded healer so overall I think it's just a big win for Druids you know again I'm an aggressive sort of Mythic plus push damage healers but there are a lot of benefits for defensive minded healers as well honestly the biggest negative reaction I see as I mentioned earlier is just because there's so many good nodes that you won't be able to take you know it can feel feel bad especially stuff that you used to have previously stuff like incapacitating Roar that you might not be able to take but I think it's just a byproduct of you know now you have a lot of options at your disposal but I can see why that might frustrate people another Talent change is uh or I want to mention is the return of prosperity Swift men getting two charges this was a talent that I really loved in BFA I didn't like it at first but it super grew on me by the end of the expansion I'm really happy to see it return mainly because it just gives you a little bit of on demand healing it makes jid feel like more of a traditional healer and less with Hots uh it also lets you really benefit from the soul of the forest Talent if you're using it well that being said it feels a little weird with the changes to Swift men now that it requires having like specific heal over time on that person part of the flexibility of prosperity in BFA was that you can use Prosperity was your Swift men into regrowth even if someone had no Hots on them let's say someone again in a pug takes an unexpected burst of damage they might not have any Hots on them already you just Swift men regrowth and then it does a significant amount of healing and you sort of can't do that anymore and it requires one extra Global I do think the change to Swift men back in shadowlands does take away a little bit of the fun but I'm glad still to see it return but you might notice that it's in the area that previously was occupied by flourish so now where is flourish and unfortunately for Mor DDS you'll find it back as a choice node with photosynthesis this is something that I think uh might upset a lot of Druids especially those who have gotten used to playing with both of the talents in Dragon flight specifically flourish got nerfed a lot in Dragon flight because it was so easy to get to and you could combin it with other talents like photosynthesis that made it really strong they had to Nerf it pretty heavily it's like definitely a shell of what it once was in my opinion I think I'd like to see a really big buff to flourish i' want to see it return to former glory as like a strong burst healing coold down instead of just kind of like a whatever press it cuz I have it button uh I really think it should be strong on demand and then you sort of have that option of well do I want a big strong cool down and flourish or do I want that constant flow of healing that photosynthesis gives me keep in mind though again we're very early in the alpha I think this one hopefully is still being cooked up uh besides that I have had a chance to heal a few dungeons as duid and the alpha they don't have Mythic plus difficulty yet obviously we're very early uh but I do want to comment a little bit on how to felt to play and I really really enjoyed it it felt very true to Druid at the same time the new catw weaving and shape-shifting talents felt amazing obviously if you're not using those it's going to feel you know a lot more classical but I definitely went all in right away with all the different damage options healing Wise It's like pretty much what you'd come to expect with DD you know you have your really big heel over time effects stuff like life Bloom e florescence uh scenarion award and then when people are in danger you throw out your wild growths and your regrowths you know pretty classic same stuff you're not going to have any crazy new utility all that's mostly the same but honestly Druid utility is like it's never been in short supply anyway I don't really think that's a bad thing overall I was really really happy I enjoyed my time playing Druid in the alpha I'd be pretty optimistic if I was Druid coming into the new expansion and that's basically My overall overview and first impressions on the class after checking out the tree and playing it in some dungeons so I appreciate you guys watching thank you I hope to cover tons more of this content specifically about healers going into the new war within expansion if there's stuff that I missed things that you wanted me to talk about or things that you hope that I talk about in the future I'd love you guys throw them in the comments I'm going to try and nail out some videos as stuff keeps getting released and posted and I do hope to keep the Mage videos up soon uh as well but it's going to be a little tough juggling everything but thank you so much for watching and following and uh Happy keying friends [Music]

Channel: yumytv

Views: 35,997

Keywords: shadowlands, wow, world of warcraft, mythic plus, warcraft, mmorpg, yumytv, yummytv, growl, gameplay, castle nathria, raiding, healer, patch 9.1, discipline priest, disc priest, priest guide, disc priest guide

Id: zNDIh0m478Q

Length: 13min 46sec (826 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 18 2024