I recently took a look at the recent expansion changes to the tools available to both Warden and Fury and it kind of blew me away how bad of a position Warden is compared to its druid counterpart. I am strictly speaking about healing or tools that help in healing, although I think as far as damage goes Fury wins out too due to how dumpster melee is in general atm. Here are a couple of the highlights I found: Fury Armor of Seasons equivalent applies the stamina bonus to the entire group, not just tanks (description still implies it should only hit tanks though), Warden still only applies to tanks. Pact of the Cheetah now also grants 40%+ damage reduction during its duration. Porcupine now has a maximum health bonus, which I assume is supposed to be % instead of flat. If it does indeed become % based this gives Furys another huge bonus for group healing, since people having more hp arguably helps druids more than any other healers. Why did Furys get all these changes but Warden received nothing as far as I can tell. Is there something I am missing? It seems like these kind of changes would greatly benefit Wardens as well, and I feel like non shaman healers definitely needed these kinds of tools going in to this expansion. The only real change I have seen or heard of is the auto attack multiplier being increased on our offensive stance. But that is so inconsequential given the terrible state auto attacks are in right now, and also doesn't help us as healers in the least.
I have no problem healing in this expansion. I've seen Photosynthesis go up to 12m / tic and the group HOT do about 9m / tic. Sure, I wish I had wards, but as long as you don't die in one hit, you should live. DPS Wise, I can maintain about 90-100m DPS on an epic training dummy, a bit lower on heroic mobs due to mitigation. As far as buffs go, I rerolled the fury I built into a warden shortly after 100 so I have no point of comparison.
Point #2 about pact of cheetah. The damage reduction only applies to falling dmg, this didn't work properly in the past and on the recent fix they messed up the description. Tested this on my fury yesterday, it's not giving any dmg reduction except on falling dmg.
Hrmm... I thought I tested this against some melee damage hits and it seemed to be working as active damage reduction on those as well. Granted my testing wasnt very controlled or extensive. Also it seems weird that the spell description would specify that the damage reduction only works for level 95 and up if it was only for falling damage. Also I don't think anyone would ever complain about the amount of healing that druids can pump out. Just that we have a hard (and rather low) ceiling that is max hp, which can lead to one shots. Which is why the fact the Fury group Armor buff applying to all members is rather nice since it is a pretty significant hp boost. I find it a little bit strange that the Warden's only applies to fighters when the values are identical between the Fury and the Warden buff.
The biggest issue with druids (really no-warding healers) right now is that our heal are, effectively, capped. Senned pointed out that she's gotten ticks in excess of 12m per tick... which is totally meaningless if your target only has 3, 5 or even 11m. Any heal in excess of player pools is useless.. unless you're a shaman. Right now non-warders, literally, cannot do anything to make their healing more effective. For wards, however, stats ALWAYS make them better, because they don't care about health pools. Until health pools are increased to the point where heals of all type benefit meaningfully from stat increases, it will continue to be a shaman dominated healing game. This is especially true when there are unpredictable hits coming in above or near hitpoint totals.
or just overheal to stack a bit and work as some kind of ward stored overheal .... though may make druids OP, so there should be a cap ... but if a 9 million health tank can take a 18 million hit ... a non warder can effectivelly do nothing
