Resto Druid has had a rough start to the expansion. Rather odd nerfs as the expansion went live turned out to be a big miss and the spec required multiple buffs (totaling 17%) to regain a sense of viability. 11.0.5 is their first opportunity to do more than just aura buff the spec and they've taken some (somewhat small) swings.
New Talents
Renewing SurgeThose who have been playing a while might recognize this as an old Legion tier set. Cooldown reduction on
Swiftmend is actually very powerful right now because we have a ton of effects attached to
Swiftmend:
Cenarius' Might,
Soul of the Forest,
Grove Tending,
Implant,
Reforestation,
Verdant Infusion, and our current tier set. At
Renewing Surges peak of +40%
Swiftmends this talent would be absurdly powerful. Unfortunately, it has the same issue that the original tier set version does: it's a linear reduction and the target has to be on deaths door to get full value but the healer ecosystem doesn't work that way. Allies are often either full health, or dead. In most scenarios you'll be
Swiftmending someone at 70-80% health and getting a couple of seconds off
Swiftmend.
That doesn't mean it can't be a powerful talent, but I wish they'd make it more consistent by giving a flat reduction at all times and then a bonus if the target is low health if they'd like to keep that flavor. I'm giving this one an
A- purely for how big even a couple seconds off
Swiftmend could be.
Wildwood RootsA quietly powerful increase to our ramp healing. The GCD cap of 0.75s applies here, so you're looking at about 40% more
Regrowth casts after you press
Flourish. This is also a tier 1 talent which means it's very accessible and it feels great to play.
In Mythic+ it's an ok complement to recent
Cenarion Ward buffs. Nothing incredible but you might still pick it up.
Forest's FlowA slightly remade but neutered version of our Dragonflight season 3 and 4 set bonus and without the incredible power that our 2pc brought. Targeting on the tier set was always fairly awful and overhealing was very high. I'm not seeing this ever being good in raid at its current power level. In Mythic+ it might be fairly popular but I expect people will find it's a smaller contribution than they'd like - and it's in a more awkward part of the tree for Mythic+.
A Collection of Thoughts
A Sneaky Nerf
Reforestation now requires four
Swiftmends to proc instead of three. They might have thought three would be too powerful with a source of
Swiftmend cooldown reduction but this still seems unnecessary, though minor. In raid you often want to pair
Reforestation with
Convoke the Spirits and / or
Flourish anyway so you'd sometimes cancel early stacks so that you could hit this timer without losing
Swiftmend casts. That should feel a little less necessary now. This change was not in any of the 11.0.5 patch notes.
The Untouched Class Tree
Much has been said on the state of the class tree and the
Wowhead druid writers put out an article on issues we had and the direction potential fixes could take at the start of the expansion. It's slightly disappointing to see another patch pass with no changes at all. Fluid Form remains difficult to use and unenjoyable to setup, our pathing still consists mostly of different form abilities, and our exciting capstones still include a small self heal when damaged. It's not an easy problem to solve, though some progress will be expected at some point.
Bits and Pieces
While less significant than the above, we also get the following:
But, Does it Help?
This is definitely a positive patch for Resto Druid. I don't think they've really broken new ground here, and most of the new talents are just retreads of all tier sets but they're a power increase. While I enjoy the current playstyle quite a lot, those who don't aren't likely to find much here that'll change their mind. These are bits and pieces changes that don't really move the spec much in any direction at all (though the cleaned up tier 1 section of the spec tree is quite nice). Give Resto Druid a try because it's still everything it used to be and three aura buffs in it's starting to shine. Also, everyone needs to experience 0.75s cast time
Regrowths at least once in their lives.