Restoration Druids in my eyes didn't change a whole lot in this patch which I am really greatful for because nothing is less fun then perfecting a class for three years and then being told to relearn them again (in my opinion)! But the few changes that we did encounter were definitely for the better.
Mana Changes
On the Druid Forums before the patch went live I read that a lot of Druids were planning on regemming completely into Spirit now that Intellect no longer increases our mana pools and strictly increases our heals only. But once I got into the game and started healing some 5 man's I still had no mana problems. Now, to be fair I'm in Heroic Dragon Soul gear and we won't know how we'll be in Heroic Blues but it still seems that Druids are the best class when it comes to mana regen. I feel the way mana regen will work is at lower item levels we're going to want to gem spirit in our blue glear. But when we graduate to raid epics we will switch back to Intellect gems. Innervate will be the envy of the healing community once again especially since they buffed the amount of mana it gives you!
Tank Healing Cooldowns!
Tank healing cooldowns and the fact that we finally have them is amazing! Ironbark reduces incoming damage by 20% and Cenarian's Ward is a shield that heals on damage (similar to Earth Shield for Shamans). Before we had no tank cooldowns and not much of personal protection cooldowns at all and now we at least have SOMETHING to give to the raid other than awesome AoE heals and the fact that you're a tree with an awesome dance!
Healing Cooldowns
We now currently have three healing cooldowns to use at a raid level in Mists of Pandaria. We kept Tranquility, which is still universally known as the best healing cooldown in the game, and we have Incarnation: Tree of Life (our old Tree of Life cooldown) or Force of Nature depending on which is found to actually heal more. And we will pick up Nature's Vigil at level 90 which increases our healing by 20% for 30 seconds and 25% of our healing is down as AoE damage. That gives us a total of 3 healing cooldowns, 2 of which increase all of our healing by 20% with no restrictions on healing abilities that it affects.
And most importantly...
We Can Be Trees Again!
Obviously, we are the best healers in the game specifically because of this fact. If you pick up the minor glyph Glyph of Treant it gives you the Treant Shapeshift ability. Our caster forms still hold our 4% healing increase (that is invisible) so this is a cosmetic change only. But having trees in your raid just makes your raid 10x cooler for every tree you have!
In this patch Druids definitely came out ahead and I feel are one of the strongest healers once again. We didn't lose any healing cooldowns and only became stronger. AoE fights with all of our healing increases, our slowing capabilities with Typhoon and Ursol's Vortex for add phases that need stopping and the ability to do DPS while not sacrificing healing with Nature's Vigil will make us pretty handy on add phase fights.
On Thursday (hopefully) I will be covering Holy Paladins in the PvP scene since that is what my Holy Paladin majors herself in. The Disc Priest will happen next Tuesday and Shaman will wrap up the series next Thursday! That's the plan anyway and hopefully that doesn't change at all.
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